April, 2015.

Gdansk, Poland.

The knife slipped. Bucky kept them sharp mostly out of boredom, even the ones we had found in the drawers when we moved in. And regardless of how careful I was around them, the knife still slipped. Right from the counter top, slick with water from rinsing vegetables, and across my palm, right underneath the joint at my fingers.

I made some small noise, a hiss or a whimper. Bucky came downstairs from the bathroom, noticed the drops of blood falling into the sink, and stood beside me.

I didn't hesitate when Bucky reached for my hand. He turned it palm-side up, laying my hand in his. There was something oddly intimate about the position. The heat from his skin radiated readily to mine. More heat, from his hip to his shoulder, seeped through my clothes.

"This seems superficial," he said. He laid a towel over the cut, curling his fingers and mine to put pressure on the wound.

"Nothing some butterflies wouldn't hold closed," I agreed. It stung.

"Do you have any in your kit?" he asked. He ducked his head down and took a step away from my side. "I'll get it for you."

"Just bring the whole thing. I'm not sure what all I have left," I said. I uncovered my hand while Bucky went for the crammed-full first-aid kit in a drawer. The cut had already begun to clot itself off, and only a narrow swatch of blood the length of the cut was left on the towel. I turned on the cold water at the sink and used my intact hand to rinse out the towel.

"What do you need out of here?" Bucky asked. He sat the kit on the counter and popped the tabs open.

"I can use some peroxide to get the rest of the blood off this, but there isn't any in there," I began.

"My sister always used cold water. Both of them did, actually," Bucky said simply. He started to pull a couple small bandages out before pausing, hands poised a few inches above the first-aid supplies and frozen. "What a--what a strange thing to remember."

"Us girls have lots of tricks for getting bloodstains out of things," I laughed. "There should be some army antibiotic cream in there and a little bit of gauze. I'll tape it all down until I know it's healing better."

Bucky didn't look as I rinsed off my hand more purposefully and then dried it again, wincing as I went. He handed me the antibiotic cream, a generic version of Neosporin, and the gauze and tape when I asked for it, but he never looked at the cut.

"You don't like blood, do you?" I asked as I situated the last piece of tape over the palm of my hand. The stinging had died down as my nerves got accustomed to the sensation, but I wasn't looking forward to using my hand for the next week or so.

"Not particularly, no," he confirmed. "I can handle it. I always patched Steve up when he got a bloody nose or something, but I can't say I ever went chasing after a career where people are always bleeding or broken."

"Takes a special breed," I confirmed for him. I held out my hand for him, showing off my handiwork. I hadn't patched myself or anyone else up in months. "There it is."

He held my hand again, lightly, and turned it palm side down. The tape reached across to the back of my hand, but just barely.

"What are these scars from? On your knuckles?" he asked. His thumb, cold and yet still gentle, brushed across my knuckles.

"Once upon a time, I boxed," I answered, looking down the reddened areas of my hands.

"Busted your knuckles, it looks like," he said. He flipped his right hand over to show me subtle scars that matched my own. Needless, to say, his left hand was free of such marks. "Probably more than once."

"I forgot you boxed," I told him. I traced his fingers the way he had done to me and felt him hold his breath.

"I didn't know that," he countered. I let go of his hand and swept the bandage wrappers into the trash. I decided dinner could wait and stepped away from the kitchen. The lower level of our apartment seemed so much more cramped than any other. The foot of the bed was barely two feet from the opposite wall and a little over a foot from the end of the kitchen counter. A spiraling staircase to the upper level bathroom took up even more space in the small room.

"I shouldn't have let that slip. I didn't realize--"

"Don't worry about it. I don't think you've compromised my memory too badly," Bucky teased, smirking at me and just about sauntering to the bedside where I sat. He dropped onto the bed and laid flat on his back, his socked feet still firmly on the floor. "How long did you box?"

"Started in high school, just as something to do with my dad," I began. "Then kept it up when I was in the army and in SHIELD. It was a good way to blow off steam. You? I mean, if you're remembering anything about it."

"All that started coming back as soon as I saw your knuckles," Bucky laughed, still laying on the bed. I decided he looked quite comfortable and laid back as well, turning on my side and bending up my knees so my whole body was on the bed. "Started when I was young. My father had boxed in the army and wanted his son to do the same. He found a gym that would train me when we moved to New York, but after the Depression and him and Ma dying I couldn't pay for it. Ended up going to a YMCA once I found steady work."

"Welterweight champion, three times over," I finished. Bucky turned his head towards me.

"How'd you know my weight class?" he asked.

"SHIELD had quite an extensive file on you," I explained proudly. "So did the Smithsonian. The Brooklyn YMCA you won at still had plaques up about James B. Barnes when we started looking for your life story."

"Not that you didn't already know my life story when you went to work at the Smithsonian," Bucky guessed. I shrugged my shoulders as best as I could considering the position I was in.

"Couldn't make it too obvious," I said. "Had to play the part Fury set up for me."

Bucky quietly watched me as I steadied my breathing. It had been a long time since I let Fury come to the forefront of my mind; I kept him neatly squared away in the far recesses of my memory. Buck knew all this. He slowly rolled himself over to face me and continued to wait for me to speak next.

"I enjoyed the work I did there," I told him, staring at a spot on the wall over his shoulder. "The archives and cataloguing. It was like having pieces and parts of my mind in my hands. Something tangible, that I could sort. And there were computer databases, so when something got lost, I could just 'control F' and get its exact location in the stacks. And nobody ever shot at me. That was nice. Old war vets would sometimes argue with me, but no one ever shot at me."

Bucky chuckled and glanced at the space between our bodies, about a foot of wrinkled and crookedly aligned sleeping bag.

"No shooting sounds like a nice job," Bucky mused.

"I mean, the bureaucracy sucked. It was horrible. So much red tape and so much schmoozing," I groaned dramatically, coming back to a happier place in my mind. "But yeah, no shooting was the best part."

*

Author's Note:

I'm back! Even if it's only for a very short holiday weekend before my university classes hit full speed. I'm hoping to knock out a few chapters over the next few days, so keep an eye out!