the “are you… throwing up in there?” and “why aren’t you eating?” prompts for fenrir!quinn. I wonder how badly the boys would react if she not only wouldn't eat, but absolutely could not keep anything down.
The shit with Hydra and the inevitable collapse of SHIELD happens in October, so when Quinn comes home to them, it’s very near her birthday. Of course, Quinn probably doesn’t even realize it’s her birthday, but Steve and Bucky know. What’s most important is the fact that she’s there. Quinn may not be Quinn, not yet, but at least she’s not dead anymore. An amnesiac of a soulmate is better than a dead one.
Less than a month has passed since Quinn came back to them and Bucky can’t lie and say it hasn’t been hard. Quinn’s pretty much barricaded herself inside her room and Bucky and Steve have fallen asleep in front of her door more times than he can count when she wakes them up with her screams. She won’t let them inside, afraid she’ll hurt them by mistake when she’s in too deep, and Bucky looks at that hopefully because if his soulmate wasn’t in there then she wouldn’t keep them out.
Love’s no a walk in the park, Bucky’s learned. Definitely worth it, in the end—Steve and Quinn will always be worth it—but it’s not easy. Steve wants to celebrate, but Bucky doubts there’s much to celebrate on Quinn’s end. November twenty-first is probably another date on the calendar. But Steve does make a pumpkin pie because it was always Quinn’s favorite and her ma always tried to make it for her birthday instead of a normal cake.
Quinn comes out of her bedroom, blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, in a pair of Steve’s boxers and one of Bucky’s shirts. Despite the fact that she now has clothes of her own thanks of Natasha and Miss Potts, she still prefers theirs. Once, she whispered that Bucky and Steve’s are worn in and more comfortable than the brand new fabric of what’s in her closet. Neither of them tried to explain she’d have to wear her clothes to break them in because they sure as fuck don’t mind to see her in their clothes.
Steve startles when he turns around and sees her in the doorway. “Oh. Uh. Quinn, I didn’t hear you come out of your room.” He tries to move in front of the oven so she can’t see inside and Bucky snorts. Real subtle move, Rogers, he thinks. Quinn obviously notices and cocks her head to the side. “I wanted to surprise you,” he cofesses with a sigh and slides back over to where he was before so she can see the pie on the rack. “Pumpkin pie,” he explains when she steps forward and bends over to squint and look inside. “For your birthday.”
“My birthday,” she repeats slowly as she stands back up, whole body tense. That’s not new. Whenever she walks around in their presence, she’s always tense. “Today is November twenty-first.” The way she says it…he suddenly realizes that she must’ve had no idea about the importance of the day. She says the date like it's a brand new fact to be remembered.
“Yeah,” Bucky speaks up from the table and her eyes move over to him. “Today’s your birthday. You look fantastic for someone that’s ninety-three today.” A lame attempt at humor. Bucky and Steve force smiles, but her face remains blank. “You loved pumpkin pie before it was a trend.”
Steve pulls the pumpkin pie out of the stove and walks over to set it down in the middle of the table. “You had it for almost all your birthdays. I know it probably can’t compare to your mom’s recipe, but I thought why not start the tradition back up?”
“Besides, it’ll be the first decent meal you’ve had since—” Bucky makes a face and stops and edits what he was going to say. “First nice meal you’ve had since you’ve been here.”
“I don’t remember—” she stops. “They never let me eat food—” she fumbles to try and come up with the best thing to say, but whatever she says will only break Steve and Bucky’s hearts if how Hydra treated her is involved. “Thank you,” she finally decides on.
Stiffly, she takes a seat at the table while Steve cuts and serves out pieces to the three of them. Bucky’s a lot better at keeping an eye on Quinn as she slowly eats away at her piece and not being obvious about it than Steve is. Steve only takes a couple of bites before he stops and looks at her, glances only lingering longer as time passes.
It doesn’t take long before Quinn starts to get twitchy. “Can I eat this in my room?”
“Of course you can,” Steve answers. “You don’t have to ask.”
Steve looks a little discouraged when she picks up her plate and disappears out of the kitchen, so Bucky reassures him with, “Hey, at least she’s eating.”
-
After that, Steve decides that he wants to try his hand at cooking. He always makes sure to leave a plate out for Quinn. It seems to go well because they always wake up to her dishes on the counter, cleaned both of food and grit. And there’s never anything in the trash to hint that she’s just throwing the food away when their backs are turned.
What concerns Bucky, though, is the fact that as time goes on, Quinn only looks thinner. Steve notices it, too, because he works to make the food richer and heavier, so they’re more filling and can hopefully put a few pounds on her. It doesn’t help.
Bucky finally caves and invites Bruce over to dinner in hopes that he can catch a peek, maybe see if there could be something else that Bucky and Steve don’t know about that could be behind the weight loss. Its the only option they have because they’ll never force her to see a doctor and he’s pretty sure she won’t go see one willingly, not with the bad relationship she has with doctors. Bruce is almost as much of a ghost as Quinn is, which is ironic since they both have such loud demons, so she has no idea he’s there until she drifts into the kitchen and tenses up when she spots him at the table.
“Hey, Quinn,” Bucky greets and watches as her hand twitches down by her side, reaches for a weapon that isn’t there anymore. “This is our friend, Bruce Banner. He lives a few floors down. He’s here for dinner.” Quinn nods stiffly. “Were you hungry?”
“I’d like to eat in my room,” she says with a clenched jaw, eyeing Bruce warily.
“Sure you can,” he replies quietly.
Dinner goes without a hitch after she head back in her room. Bruce doesn’t bring up Quinn which worries Bucky even more because he feels like if there wasn’t a problem then Bruce wouldn’t be afraid to say it in their suite. He probably doesn’t want to spook Quinn and doesn’t say it where she could hear with her enhanced senses. So, Steve and Bucky sit through dinner, tension probably radiating off of them.
Finally, the hammer drops when Bucky walks Bruce back to his own floor. “She’s not eating,” Bruce informs him when they’re outside his door. “If she is eating then it’s definitely not enough. If she was eating as much as she should, she wouldn’t look the way she does.”
“She has to be,” Bucky shoots back. “She cleans off her plate every single night. I know she’s not throwing it away because there’s nothing in the trash.”
“I hate to remind you of this, but she’s one of the best assassins and spies in modern history. If she doesn’t want you to know she’s not eating, I don’t think it’d be that hard for her to do.” Bruce sighs. “I don’t want to scare you, but you have to get her to start eating. She might not carry around a metal arm like you do, but if she has the super soldier serum then I’m sure she has an enhanced metabolism and after awhile, her body is going to start breaking down if it hasn’t already started to.”
Bucky takes a deep breath and scrubs a hand across his face. “Just when I think things are gettin’ a little bit better,” he snarls under his breath. Bruce pats him on the shoulder sympathetically.
-
There’s no way Bucky can sleep with Bruce’s words banging around inside his head. He’s thinking about how he can sit Quinn down and tell her she needs to eat without taking away her autonomy. He doesn’t want to order her, but if it’s about her safety, he’s really debating on doing it which probably makes him a shitty person.
Late in the night, Bucky hears her bedroom door open. She’s loud about it. A lot louder than she normally is and that’s…odd. He quietly slides out of bed and as he peeks outside his own door, he sees the bathroom light on and hears wretching. Heart in his throat now, he closes the door behind him and darts over to the bathroom to knock.
“Quinn,” he calls out between her heaves, not so loud that it won’t wake up Steve but he knows she can hear him with her enhanced senses. “Are you…throwing up in there?”
“No,” he hears her snarl but then there’s another wretch.
Not sure if it’s good or bad that she’s still stubborn. “I’m coming in,” he tells her as he pushes open the door. If she’s okay enough to lie then he thinks it’ll be okay for him to break the rules a little and check on her even if she probably doesn’t want him to.
Quinn’s curled around the toilet in silent agony and Bucky walks over to sit on the rim of the bathtub, close enough to her that he can pull her hair out of her face for her. There’s sweat on her forehead and she’s so pale that he’s almost sick himself with worry.
When she’s done, Quinn flushes the toilet, wipes her hand across her mouth, and then leans back against the wall. She’s shivering and he wants to wrap his arms around her, but he’s already pushing his luck with her personal space. She won’t look him in the eye.
Bucky takes a deep breath. “Did you have a bad dream or does this have to do with why you’re not eating?”
Quinn closes her eyes and presses the heels of her hands against her eye sockets. “I’m trying,” she whispers hoarsely. “The food–” she moves her arms down to wrap them around her stomach. “What you give me isn’t the same as what they did. They woke me up from the ice and shoved tubes down my throat to feed me. I don’t remember being awake as long as I’ve been now. They never fed me more than before my mission and before I went back to the ice.”
“Yeah, I guess what we give you must be a lot compared to what they did,” he realizes wryly. No wonder she hasn’t been gaining any weight. She’s been throwing up whatever they try giving her. “Why didn’t you tell us, Quinn? We could’ve figured something else out.”
“I was afraid–” she hesitates. Even though she says, “I was afraid of disappointing you,” he knows what she means is that I was afraid you were going to hurt me. The unspoken words are shots to the heart. He’s happy Steve isn’t awake to hear this. Steve’s heart bleeds more than Bucky’s and Bucky’s is gushing blood right now.
“I want you to know something, Quinn,” he starts slowly and she lifts her eyes up to stare into his. “I will never hurt you. Steve will never hurt you. That doesn’t seem possible, but it’s true. If it ever turns out not to be and we ever lay a hand on you then you have permission to rip our throats out, okay?”
Quinn’s eyes dart to the side. “You don’t speak for the both of you.”
“You’re right, but I’m sure Steve will say the same thing,” Bucky retorts. “Now, I want to help you eat, but I ain’t a doctor. Banner, who we had dinner with, he is. He can help with this. Or we know another doctor, a nice gal from South Korea, Doctor Cho. If you’d be more comfortable with her, we can call her to come see us.”
She chews her bottom lip. “Will you two be there?”
“If you want us to,” he answers.
“Yes. I want that.” And then she leans to the side so she can put her head in his lap and his heart is racing but it’s for a whole completely different reason now.