[oom] secrets will out

[nerves_of_ice]

Clearing underbrush by hand is messy work, but he's gotten the last of it knocked out for the season and can't help but take a little pride in that. Bucky considers sluicing off the grime in the shower and decides on a different, faster option.

He wanders back into the hut a little while later and slings a towel around his neck to stop his hair from dripping. He has to move Sharon's tote bag from the top of the clothes chest where she sometimes leaves it while she's sparring with Ayo, and sets it aside on the floor while he digs out a fresh set of clothes.

Somewhere deep inside the bag, her phone rings. He makes a mental note to tell her she's missed a call, and takes his wet clothes outside to hang them out to dry. When he comes back, the phone's ringing again.

And again, a third time, then a fourth, while he frowns at the bag and argues with himself. He doesn't want to invade her privacy, but something's clearly up.

On the fifth set of rings, Bucky digs out her phone and looks at it. He frowns sharply on seeing the contact, and answers the call without speaking.

Comments

[nerves_of_ice]

“Kind of, yeah,” he says, absolutely serious.

The kettle behind him squalls and he lets go of her hands to twist around and shut it off before turning back to her. He hadn’t actually wanted coffee; he’d just needed something to do.

“It’s not like we ran out there unprepared, either. We packed supplies - even weapons, left word and trail markers, and were planning to explore an area on the mountain and were taking what should have been an easy shortcut to get there. You might have done the same damn thing, and I’d have understood it.”

Frustration leaks into his tone by the end.

[from_the_outside]

"I wouldn't have, because you asked me not to do shit like that without telling you first," she says, a little sharply. "And because everything I've heard about the area outside the main bar – from you, even – is that it isn't safe. The paths change. Nobody knows what's in the woods or if it's even possible to get to the mountains."

She folds her arms and does her best to breathe. "Look, Bucky, the fact that you don't think I have to worry, or you don't get why I do... until you understand where I'm coming from, I'm not comfortable taking a field mission."

[nerves_of_ice]

“I left word,” he starts, before he’s cut off at the knees and knocked speechless by her declaration. Bucky stares at her in shock and disbelief.

“You’re blackmailing me?”

[from_the_outside]

She looks at him like he has two heads. "What? No. How is that blackmail? I'm just telling you what I'd need to feel comfortable doing it."

Sharon frowns at him. "Do you seriously think trying to understand my point of view is so hard it borders on impossible for you?"

[nerves_of_ice]

“It sure as hell seems impossible for you,” he snaps. The air’s too close in here all of a sudden, thick and stifling.

[from_the_outside]

She blinks back a sudden sting of surprised pain, her arms tightening. "Right."

Her throat works, before she loosens her arms and turns to grab her tote bag. "Then I'll try to do better."

[nerves_of_ice]

He doesn’t try to stop her, instead holding himself so still that it feels like he’s balancing on the edge of a cliff, every muscle taut. He can’t get a full breath against the way his throat tightens and threatens to choke him, but it doesn’t matter.

“All I asked was that you not be reckless,” he squeezes out, low and flat. “I never tried to stop you from doing what you need to do, what you’re good at. Don’t you think I know I’m paranoid? But it’s not fair to you if I use that against you, if I - and now you pull this, like it’s my fault that you’re locking yourself up—-“

[from_the_outside]

She shoulders her bag and turns back to him, her own body a long line of tension. "First of all, it's not your fault, it's my choice. I'm trying not to be reckless. With you, with me, with everything. I've been trying really damn hard. Secondly, I haven't tried to stop you from doing what you need to do, either."

Sharon watches him for a long moment, caught like an animal in flight, and shakes her head. "You should have seen your face when I told you the mission was done and I'd be here," she murmurs, her voice going softer, quiet. "You were so relieved."

[nerves_of_ice]

"No? Then what do you call this?"

He starts to explain further, or to try, but she keeps going, her tone more gentle, even as her words slice through him and leave ice in their wake. Anger bleeds into self-loathing as he breathes, "So it is my fault."

[from_the_outside]

Sharon reaches up to her head, which is starting to ache, fiercely. "Jesus, Bucky, it's not your fault."

Nothing she's trying to say seems to be making anything but the wrong impact, and she doesn't know if it's because she's saying it wrong or because she's wrong. It's all so twisted up she can hardly find where it all started. "I'm with you. That means I should consider your needs and mine when I make a call. That's what I've been trying to do."

She drops her hand and looks at him, steady. "And I'm not trying to stop you from doing anything. I'm pointing out you have different rules for yourself than you do for me. That's fine; I get it. I know I break easier than you do. I know stuff that would kill me is stuff you can just brush off. I just want you to acknowledge it. That it's different."

[nerves_of_ice]

"When you make a call," he repeats, low and flat and desperately controlled. "When you make a call. Which I don't need to know about, even when I ask, until I back you into a fucking corner where you can't evade any more. Right. Got it."

He shakes his head. "It's not different. Strength and stuff like that may be, but the rest isn't. And I don't get why you say it is."

[from_the_outside]

"Fine," she snaps, frustration boiling over. "Be my handler, then. You make the call, if it's only okay for it to be my choice when you agree with it. And, by the way, you have known about it. Fury hasn't actually needed me, he's wanted me. If something came up where it was actually life or death that he have me there, I'd have told you about it. Nothing he's had has been worth me leaving."

[nerves_of_ice]

Be my handler. He physically recoils from the slap of those words and the idea behind it, coming up against the counter behind him. In the next instant cold anger sears through him.

"If that's how you insist on seeing it I guess there's nothing else I can say." He comes off the counter with shocking speed and stalks past her to the hut's door.

[from_the_outside]

She doesn't try to stop him; how could she? "It seems to be how you see it," she says, instead, her hand so tight around the handle of her tote her knuckles have gone white. "I can't seem to do anything right."

[nerves_of_ice]

He pauses by the door, every muscle in his body tight. "You could stop making assumptions about me. That'd be nice."

[from_the_outside]

"All right, I'll bite."

Both of them are so tense it seems a foregone conclusion they'll snap in half. "What assumptions am I making about you?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"That I want to control your choices. Your handler?" he spits. "Come on!"

Bucky whirls back around to face her. "That I don't need to know the real reason you're making some of them when it's because of me. That I'm too fucking fragile to deal with it. And whatever the hell you mean about things being different for me than for you. How's that for a start?"

[from_the_outside]

"You're the only one here who seems to think you're too fragile to deal with it," she shoots back.

"When you asked me, I told you. And I don't understand how you don't see that it's different! Are you trying to tell me you'd be fine with me doing some of the things you've gotten up to at the local, as long as I leave a note? Okay. Why don't I go double check on that cave you brought down on the damn werewolf and make sure it did the job?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"Name one single time I tried to keep you from doing something you thought you should do!" he challenges. "All I ever asked was that you be careful and not be reckless! You want to go looking for a werewolf? Fine, go! I trust you!"

Even as he shouts it, his gut twists inside him, and bile floods the back of his throat.

[from_the_outside]

"Fine," she snaps.

If he weren't still in the doorway, she'd go slamming through it, just as reckless as he'd asked her not to be. "Then let me use the door, and I will."

[nerves_of_ice]

He can feel all the blood drain from his face at her demand, but if he argues with her about it he'll be proving her point and making himself a liar.

Silently, moving with obvious reluctance, he steps to the side.

[from_the_outside]

The thing is, neither of them are all that good at backing down. All he'd need to do is admit he doesn't want her out there in the woods; all she'd need to do is admit she's been holding herself back with the full knowledge that he doesn't want that.

Instead, they're here staring at each other, at an impasse, until Sharon grabs the hunting bow she'd left near the table the day before and pushes past him, jaw set and stubborn, to open the door to the bar.

[nerves_of_ice]

It takes an act of will not to move.

"Sharon." A muscle in his jaw works as he swallows hard against the tightness in his throat. "Just. Be careful. Please."

[from_the_outside]

She looks up at him, her hand on the handle of the door, her eyes still flashing and her face still flushed with temper. "Don't worry, I won't do anything you wouldn't do."

[nerves_of_ice]

He takes the lash of her words in silence and just looks at her, waiting.