haven ; 𝐛. 𝐛𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐬 , 𝟏

011. a budding friendship

ELEVEN—A BUDDING FRIENDSHIP
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THERE WAS NO way in hell we would be friends.

"You're out of your mind," he grumbled, stuffing his hand into his pocket. "I'm not letting you do that."

For my whole life, I'd always refused to listen to anything I didn't want to hear. Maybe this time, I should have stopped after he shot down the idea about four million times. But I found myself rolling my eyes, placing my hands flat on the countertop as I stared at the tall, dark-haired man in front of me.

When he didn't move a muscle, I threw my hands up in the air, a scoff falling from my lips. "Why not? It's become such a problem in the last few weeks, it's time you take care of it."

He flashed his dark eyes at me. "I like it."

Cocking an eyebrow, I crossed my arms and jutted a hip out to the side. "You look like a grown man trying to go back to his emo phase in high school. And, dare I say it, you sound like it, too. You need to find ways to lighten up, or you're never gonna find a girlfriend."

Bucky glared at me but said nothing.

I shrugged, letting a smirk grace my lips. "It's the truth, Mr. Barnes. Just let me clean it up. You'll be just as rugged and 'I'm a handsome nineteen-forties boy' as before." My cheeks flushed pink at the words that flew from my mouth, cursing my unfiltered mind.

He didn't seem to notice, however, simply shaking his head and scoffing in response.

"I'm not letting you cut my hair."

Perhaps it wasn't a good idea to start out our friendship with changing the way he looked. I'll admit it, I was wrong. But that didn't mean I would drop the subject.

"Come on, Buck, we could completely shave it off, I'm sure you'd look just as good with short hair!" I tried to convince him, following him around the kitchen as he actively dodged me and my requests to cut his hair. 

He shook his head, his curtain of locks waving with the motion. His eyes were clouded with the past as he replied simply, "I'm not that person anymore."

Sighing, I stomped after him as he went for the front door, presumably heading for the garden. "You can't keep doing that!"

"Doing what?" He retorted, his angry steps turning into more of a brooding strut. The sunshine hit his hair, making it appear golden for a moment before I blinked the glow away. 

I sped up to fall into step with him, stopping once we reached the edge of the thick trees surrounding my isolated house. "Running away from your problems isn't going to work. If you try to forget about them, they'll just keep coming back until they take you out."

Bucky cocked an eyebrow. "Those are some pretty wise words coming from an unemployed gardener."

My jaw went slack. "What are you talking about?"

He shrugged. "You've been at the house for almost a month. No one would let their employee avoid working for a whole month." He smirked. "I'm observant."

Eyes wide, I shook my head. "How do you know that I don't work from home? You know, that I have one of those jobs where I can...work from home? So I can stay home? And...work?" The words stumbled as they fell out of my mouth, my cheeks burning red with embarrassment. It was astounding how flustered his mere presence made me.

His eyes flitted to mine and I felt my stomach flutter as I took note of a lightness in their blue depths. It was a gentle amusement, the clarity of his eyes so out of the blue that I could tell I was seeing someone from the past, someone he'd forgotten the existence of. "You watch movies all day. And if you're not doing that, you're out here, planting new seeds. And if that isn't the case, you're reading."