it's strange to think about. a time, many many moons back, when a younger, less burdened version of himself would recoil from the storm. look out a bedroom window and know, without asking, he'd be walking through that foot of snow to school. bucky remembers, in as loose a way he can, how winter stung and turned his joints stiff. he remembers becca, scarf bunched up around her chin, begging him to come outside and play. make a snowman. start a fight.
what he doesn't remember, though, is when that changed.
hail hits the window and all he feels is comfort. finds familiarity in how it refuses to relent. one beat after another, somewhere, a block or two away, a car alarm has been hounding for twenty minutes and it's almost enough to drown out the knock. once. twice. at the third, he knows they'll not leave. had spotted his dismal kitchen light on, flickering with a swelling system's indecision. and he should have joined it. not walked through a living room that sits mostly bare. not pressed a metal palm to the door face and peered, blankly, through a peephole that revealed too much, too quick. bucky shouldn't have opened the door at all.
" go away. " is out before the entrance is fully open. flat. it skates through the ridges of his teeth and only just, at that. " whatever it is, i don't wanna hear it. " or, in the shuddering reality that curiosity got the better of him, he'd hoped to have airs of deniability, at least. say he met @riphalos' eyes and didn't flinch.
that's what he wants to say. he'd been a better liar once, too.
broad shoulders bar entry and hard eyes sit somewhere between the arch of loki's brows and his gaze's simmer. hot in contrast to the wind. to a bite he wants to replicate every time his doorsteps darkened. nails drag the hardwood of his doorframe and, for a moment, he lets the quiet have them. stands stalwart, unwavering, with his chin high and his lips thinned in the slightest of frowns.
" there is no this, " this game. he feels too much like the cornered hare for his liking and bucky's scowl sinks leagues for it, " fuck off. "
