Runaway (Bucky X Reader)
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Summary: You are a photographer in a small town on the coast of Oregon and manage to run into a dog one morning with no owner in sight, a dog which leads you straight to Bucky Barnes front door.
Words: 2 256
Warnings: None
A/N: I’m have risen from my tomb.
She watched the clear water from the river run through the grooves in the sand before blending with the ocean, listening to its calming sound. She could hear the seagulls circling over the port settled in the bay further down the shoreline, scouting above the fishing boats which had just came in from their morning catch, but seagulls were far from the only birds that were awake. Sandpipers had ran along the water all morning and chirped lightly along with a few, shrieking, Herons, and the forest which spread out behind her back was filled with the sounds of Northern Flickers and woodpeckers.
If she looked up the river she could still see the beavers she had seen as she first came to the rocky beach that day — gathering twigs to their lodge by the southern fork of the river — and the polaroid in her pocket showed the Roosevelt elk's she had seen half an hour prior. Nature was bustling with life in every direction she turned, and she loved it. Sitting there in that moment, she couldn't understand how she had lived in the city for so long.
She was born in the city and lived her life there until just five years prior. It was after the office she worked at began to talk about firing people that she decided to leave whilst she could to it on her own terms. She had taken all the money she had and found a small house in the town of Greenridge Bay, the most remote and calm place she had ever seen or heard of with a total population of two thousand three hundred. There, she lived a peaceful life as a photographer for the local paper. She didn't get a fat paycheck every month and she didn't live five minutes away from the subway and ten five-star restaurants, but that was far from a bad thing.
As she sat on the gigantic, driftwood, tree that had resided on the beach for years — hoping she might catch sight of a few sea otters or some distant whales to snap a picture of — she heard heavy panting and the rapid approach of footsteps. She turned towards the sounds just in time to see huge, overjoyed dog, running up to her, wagging its tail wildly with its tongue dangling outside of its mouth.
"Hi there, big guy." She called to him, hesitantly looking at him before scanning up and down the shore, seeing no one. "Who did you run away from?"
The dog had one ear peaked with the other bending forward floppily at the middle. It's fur was a warm brown and fading to beige in the parts where the fur grew longer. It's eyes were the brightest gold she had ever seen on a dog, and she would have lied if she said it wasn't the cutest dog she had ever seen as well.
"You're a good dog, right?" She questioned, in which the dog responded by sitting down in front of her, tail still wagging. She then caught a glimpse of a red collar hiding in the longer fur around it's neck with a steel pendant in the front.
"Charlie?" She read off of the tag, causing the dog to tilt his head and inch forward, melting her heart on the spot. She looked up and down the shore again, but there was no one else on the beach, and as she looked up towards the trail leading down from the road, there was no one there either.
She flipped the tag around as she still held it, revealing a local address. She contemplated whether he could have ran all the way from that address to the beach just outside of town, but he seemed like a strong and adventurous dog, and she didn't doubt he could have.
"I think we should wait here in case your owner catches up to you, but if not, then I'm taking you home, okay?" She suggested, giving him a quick scratch behind his hanging ear.
Charlie sat down next to her, seeming to have no desire to leave her side whatsoever. As time passed, he proceeded to lay down in the sand and gaze out to the ocean where a flock of whales had gathered. Whilst Charlie remained there — as calm as ever — Y/N kept looking up and down the beach floor any sign of a possible owner. They waited for five minutes, and five minutes turned into ten, until they eventually had been sitting around for twenty minutes without any luck.
"Maybe we should go to your house?" She looked down at Charlie who turned to look back at her upon hearing her voice. "We might as well wait there, right?"
She added a bit of excitement to her voice, and Charlie was up on all fours in no time. As she rose from her seat on the driftwood, his tail was wagging again, and as she began heading back to the trail leading away from the beach, Charlie following her loyally. It was quite obvious that Charlie's owner had taken their good time training the big dog. He followed by Y/N's side as if he was on short leash, when in fact he had the possibility of running wherever he so wished at any given moment.
"You really are a good boy, huh?" She came to the conclusion, watching Charlie to her right as he held his head low to catch the scents along the trail.
It took them an hour to reach the area of the address mentioned on Charlie's tag, but he certainly didn't seem to have minded the long walk and — in all honesty — neither had Y/N. He had happily followed her the entire way and had been just as happy as when Y/N picked up a stick and began to throw it for him along the way, and when they took a quick stop at a gas station and Y/N bought him his very own hotdog.
"Alright, lets see here..." Y/N said as she looked at the map on her phone and at her surroundings, trying to find house number forty two. A few of the houses had no numbers on them that she could see, but soon she noticed she didn't need to run around and look at every house number down the long street. By her side, Charlie gave off small barks and whines with a wagging tail as he looked at a white house with ivy crawling across the façade, a tennis ball laying in the grass of the front lawn.
Y/N headed up to the gate in the fence that surrounded the lot, Charlie expertly sneaking off behind a bush just beside the gate where there was a missing plank, creating the perfect entrance for him, and also exit.
They walked up the few steps that led to the windows door together before Y/N knocked three times, Charlie sitting down beside her as they waited. She tried to listen to hear something from inside and peak through the big window centered in the door, but the screen door on the inside blocked her view and she couldn't hear anything, so she knocked again. Before lowering her hand she glimpsed at her watch to see it was only seven in the morning, leading her to believe that Charlie's owner could possibly be asleep.
Suddenly she could see the screen door open up only to reveal a man in only sweatpants on the other side, his hair messily falling out of a knot at the back of his head. He furrowed his brows and he caught sight of the stranger at his doorstep, but his tired expression softened upon seeing his dog next to her.
He opened the door and knelt down, Charlie jumping at his owner and desperately licking his cheek. "Oh hi buddy!" The man smiled warmly, wrapping his hands around his trusted companion.
"I found him on the beach of the northern fork about an hour and a half ago and saw your address. He seemed pretty hungry about half way so I really hope you don't mind that I bought him a hotdog." Y/N broke the sweet reunion as she felt she had to explain herself. The man seemed to realize he wasn't alone then and rose to his feet, taking a moment to actually look at who had shown up by his house with his dog so early on a Saturday morning.
His lips parted slightly, looking at Y/N who was looking down at Charlie with pure love in her eyes. Her camera was hanging from around her neck and her nose was rosy red from the cold, and the sun managed to shine on her at such a perfect angle that her luminous eyes seemed to glow. He couldn't help but think about what the odds of her turning up with Charlie and not some hardcore hiker or old lumberjack. He didn't believe in faith and destiny, but they sure made the situation make more sense.
"No not at all, thank you... I'm Bucky, by the way... Bucky Barnes." Bucky said, reaching his hand out towards her. Y/N looked up from Charlie, eyes accidentally looking over his well defined torso on their way to meet his eyes. She shook his hand, trying to ignore how good looking he was.
"Y/N Y/L/N." She had the decency to reply back with, causing the corner of his mouth to twitch up in a slight smile.
"I'm going to connect the dots here with the camera around your neck and your last name being Y/L/N and guess that you're that photographer for the Daily Ridge, right?" He managed to figure out, remembering how impressed he was by a few pictures she had taken a few weeks prior down by the port that had earned her a whole page in the local paper. "I really like your work."
"Sorry, no autographs." She said humorously, causing them both to start chuckling.
"Have you lived here long? I don't recognize you, and I know I would recognize anyone with such a cute dog." Y/N's voice became goofy as she ruffled the fur on Charlie's head and gave him a quick scratch behind his ear.
"Moved here just little over a month ago. To get Charlie someplace more suitable for his free-spirit." Bucky joked, smiling to himself as he managed to get Y/N to chuckle once more. "I don't know how he made it all the way down to the beach. He tends to sleep in his dog house in the backyard and he never goes anywhere, but I guess something made him leave this morning."
Y/N looked up at Bucky just as he looked down at Charlie, stroking his ears back. She couldn't help but smile at the thought which came to her mind at that moment.
"Would you mind if I took a picture of you and Charlie?" She dared to ask. Bucky's eyes drifted back to hers, confused as to why she would want one.
"Only if we make it to the front page." Bucky continued with his lighthearted and witty tone as Y/N clearly seemed to like it.
"We'll see about that one." She smiled and took up her camera, motioning at Charlie which Bucky caught onto quickly, telling Charlie to sit at his side. Y/N walked down the steps for some distance, aiming the camera at the open door where Bucky stood shirtless with Charlie sitting stoically by his side and looking at Y/N. she snapped the picture after a short countdown, the polaroid slowly being printed out on the spot.
"Thanks." She smiled up at Bucky. "If you're not to busy, I wouldn't mind meeting Charlie again, under more organized circumstances, of course."
The corner of Bucky's mouth quirked up again. He was trying to wrap his head around the whole ordeal. Dating was not something he had done in modern time, and even though he didn't know Y/N, he knew he had never met someone like her. Every single part of her intrigued him, and he would be a fool to mess things up.
"Well, you know where to find me." He smiled and gestured around him to his house.
"I sure do, Bucky Barnes." Y/N put her hands in the pockets of her jacket and began to walk backwards to the gate. "I sure do."
She didn't allow herself to look back at Bucky. If she would have, she would have found him looking after her until she vanished behind the corner of his house, only to have him inch around the corner to keep looking at her. As she began to walk downhill and knew for sure that Bucky couldn't see her anymore, she dug out the polaroid from her pocket. She looked down at it, looking at Bucky's bright, ice, eyes and his brown hair that had once been in a bun at the back of his head but spread all over the place in the picture. She looked down at Charlie who sat beside him, the rays of sunlight lighting up his fluffy fur, the crawling ivy, and revealing a few dandelion seeds that flew in the air.
She couldn't remember the last time she had taken a picture so perfect, nor one that caused her stomach to flutter in excitement and her cheeks to hurt from smiling.
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