SIXTEEN—NOT SO ALONE
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MY BED WAS all too welcoming when I finally stumbled my way into the dark room, a wet trail of (now cold) tears falling down my cheeks. The room across the hall, occupied by my parents, was—thankfully—silent, a clear reassurance that they were completely clueless to my late night...encounters. 

Rubbing my eyes with the heels of my hands, I padded over to the dresser and reached for a tissue to blow my nose. That damn Bucky Barnes, I cursed him in my head, when did he begin to have so much power over me? 

But no. I would not allow that power to tighten its grasp on me. He was a stranger. He had no power over me. 

He's not much of a stranger anymore, El, an annoying, yet clear, voice nagged at me from the back of my mind. 

Deciding I was too tired for such an argument with my inner conscience, I shook my head, threw away the tissues, and practically collapsed on my bed, exhaustion tugging my eyes shut before I could even climb under the covers. 

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As the night dragged along, the moon shone brightly into the young woman's bedroom, the curtains rustling gently from the slight breeze blowing in through the open windows. Crickets chirped in the nearly black forest, oblivious to the goings-on in the house less than one hundred yards away. 

The door to Elda Reid's door was softly opened, the hinges creaking quietly, albeit loud enough to act as a disturbance to the peaceful silence of the room. The sleeping body in the bed inhaled deeply, her chest rising with the new breath, then falling as she released it. Her legs curled up underneath her, she looked like a small child trying to conserve warmth in the dead of winter. 

Footsteps were not heard on the carpet, but a figure crept forward, reaching out. Their fingers grabbed onto the covers, pulling them back and opening the bed. In an elegance unlike any other, they moved the young woman's legs slowly and soundlessly, leading them to lay underneath the sheets. Tucking the sheets up and under her chin, they patted her hair softly and watched with a fond smile as she grasped onto the blankets tightly, eyes still closed in slumber. 

Careful not to wake the twenty-six-year-old, the figure leaned down and pressed their lips to her forehead with a softness known only to mothers. Her hand still smoothing down the messy head of hair belonging to her daughter, she let a small, sad smile grace her aged face. 

"Sweet dreams, my night owl," she whispered. "Goodnight."

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It wasn't until the morning sun was glaringly forcing its way into my room when I finally woke up. Rubbing my eyes, I groaned and pushed myself up on my elbows. The sheets fell away from my body and I looked down at them, confused. Either I had crawled underneath them during the night, or someone had come in and tucked me in. 

I chuckled, but with my fatigued muscles from a long night of much-needed sleep, it came out sounding like a strained wheeze. 

Pushing myself out of bed, I ran a hand through my tangled hair—or tried to, more like, as my fingers quickly got stuck in the knots that required a heavy brushing. Ignoring the mess on my head, however, I trampled downstairs, not caring that I was wearing the same clothes I'd been in the day before and had gone to bed in. 

My mother looked up from her book as I entered the kitchen, lifting a mug of coffee to her lips with a small grin on her lips. "Sleep well, honey?" she asked. Her eyes flicked to my haphazard appearance, her smile growing wider.

Taking her words as a stab to my messy hair, I tried desperately to tame it, but to no avail. I hated the way she could unnerve me with her words like that. If only she told me what she meant, instead of dodging issues with her cryptic messages. 

Of course, our relationship was never squeaky clean. Even when Cade was still around. 

The mention of Cade reminded me of my midnight argument with Bucky, and my hands found my shirt's hem, squeezing into fists. As much as the anger should have dissipated over the last eight hours, I still felt like depriving him of breakfast. He had no right to talk about my brother like that, not without knowing anything about him. Or me.

"Come get something to eat," my mother summoned me to the kitchen, her head tipping down to read her book as soon as she saw me moving. Typical. Never really cared enough to make sure I did something right, just wanted to make sure I did it. 

In a few minutes, I'd made myself a piece of toast. I reached into the cupboard to grab a stick of butter, but instead, I saw a large jar of peanut butter. 

"Mom?" I asked. "Did you buy peanut butter?"

She nodded, eyes never leaving the pages as she turned to the next one. "We assumed that you'd be in need of...restocking your shelves, so we took the liberty of buying your groceries."

While a normal adult would burst with thanks at the thought of their parents buying their food for them, it only bit at my core, flaking into anger as it boiled in my veins. "Oh," was all I could manage without giving her a snarky remark at nine in the morning. 

"A simple 'thank you' would suffice," she chastised lightly. 

Rolling my eyes and grabbing the peanut butter, I bit out a, "thanks, Mom," feeling like a scolded child after breaking the rules.

The morning was relatively uneventful until Mom looked up from her book (finally) and gestured for me to follow her. My hands began to sweat as I noticed that she was heading down the hallway leading to Bucky's room. The door was still closed, but I didn't know what to expect with this unusual intervention. 

Following her nonetheless, I wiped my clammy hands on my shirt, waiting for her to drop the bomb, that she knew I was harboring an international criminal in my guest bedroom and that I was going to be forced to turn him in to the CIA, that I would never see him again, that I would have to pretend I'd never known him—

"Are you alright, El?" She asked, stopping in front of a closed door. But it wasn't the closed door that would open into Bucky's room. It was the door to his room. Cade's room. I hadn't opened that door in years, not counting the time I grabbed extra clothes for the three men when they stayed over for a few nights. 

Looking up at her, I tried to read her facial expression and figure out if she was on my trail. Of course, I was never a good detective. It was part of the reason that I was unemployed. "What do you mean?" I replied, crossing my arms and trying to seem nonchalant. Although nothing about this situation was nonchalant. 

"I...forgive me if I'm mistaken," she started out, her sharp eyes piercing mine, "but I thought I heard you talking last night."

My blood turned to an icy slush. She knows she knows she knows she knows she knows—

"I don't know what you were saying, but you sounded upset. I wanted to know..." she paused, seemingly unsure of how to go on. "I wanted to know how you're handling things." Tilting her head to the side, she angled her face to the closed door of my brother's room. 

Furrowing my eyebrows, I threw my hands up. "Handling things? How am I handling things? You make it sound like Cade was some...dark cloud on our life. Some unspeakable time in our life that we're not allowed to talk about."

Mom held her hands out and tried to hold mine, but I tore them away from her reach. "Elda, I know it's been hard—"

"It's been hard?" I scoffed, my words rolling off my tongue in icy, jagged shards. "I'd say that's the understatement of the century. He was my brother, the most important person in the world to me, and you expect me to never talk about him? In case you forgot, he was your son, too!"

She flinched and I reveled in the feeling of causing her the pain I'd felt. 

"Stop trying to understand me. Stop trying to read into everything that I do and expect to come out with a philosophical explanation that makes me seem like an emotionally damaged teenager!" I hissed, practically spitting the words in her face like venom. "You don't get to know everything about me anymore. You lost that privilege a long time ago."

Mom didn't say anything, her eyes wide with shock, a glassy coating of hurt that shone in the sunlight. Wiping her hands on her shirt, she took a deep breath, gathered herself, and walked away, back towards the kitchen. She distanced herself with every step, in every meaning of the phrase. 

I hung back for the next few minutes, trying to keep my built up anger from coming out again in the form of a torn up scream. I couldn't give her that satisfaction. I would keep it together, I would hold in the anger, because letting it out would only make things worse.

Slowly wandering back to the living room, I hovered by Bucky's door. I knew I needed to talk to him, but I was in no mood to do it now. Still, I couldn't move my feet from their position in front of his door, unwilling to walk away.

Then, I heard it. Just loud enough for me to hear it. A tapping on the door, coming from inside the room. Nothing to it, just two soft taps on the wooden barrier between two broken, barely healing people. 

But knowing he was there, standing just behind the door, caused a gentle smile to rise to my face. In that moment, I felt a little less alone.

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thanks so much for reading! so the middle section may have been a little confusing, where elda's mom comes to tuck her in, but that was just my way of developing her character and showing a more dynamic side to her, not just a cold, unfeeling version of her mother that you probably thought she was before this chapter. i'm trying to make all of my characters as real as possible, with realistic flaws and realistic issues that they're dealing with. besides, of course, bucky's ptsd from being a hundred-year-old assassin for hydra. how am i doing, though? with the realistic plotlines from elda's family?

okay, so big question here:

for the (very very very) far future, how do you guys feel about smut? would you rather there be:

1. a written out, detailed smut scene 

2. cleaner, not as descriptive smut scene (written with elegant word choice, ya know?) 3. implied smut, so you know it happens but i don't write it 4. both 1 + 2–clean version would be published publicly, while detailed version would be published privately (you would have to follow me to read it)

please let me know, i'm not entirely sure whether or not i will even have a sex scene in this book because barneid is too pure but we'll see...i also want to get a general consensus from you guys to see if it would be popular among you or frowned upon. this is a situation where i write to please you guys! so please let me know what your thoughts are!

alsoooooo

my birthday is in less than a month, woop! july 8, people! put it in your calendars! i expect flowers to be sent to my house and a million birthday wishes by that time, lol

we are also, as of right now, this moment, #7 on the list of #bucky ! that's HUGE!!! the stories surrounding HAVEN have thousands of reads and votes, while mine is virtually unknown, so that means a ton to me, yay!

thanks so much for reading, you guys, it's nearly midnight and i'm tired so goodnight.

published on: june 9, 2018