bucky haircut headcanons bc i can’t stop thinking abt it
in my mind, bucky has had several haircuts in his life, but only a few styles that were important.
the first time he cut it was when he was drafted.
before that, it hadn’t been cut in at least a few months. not long, not like it would be later in his life, but enough. enough that boys and girls alike would run their fingers through soft brunette ringlets, because it was just long enough that it had this sort of youthful wave to it. it was nice.
short and strict, but he kept as much as he was allowed to. there’s no room for your bangs to fall into your eyes when you’re on the front lines, y’know. and bucky didn’t necessarily like having his hair short, but it drove home a point he hadn’t been able to swallow when he was younger: sooner or later in his life, he’d have to conform. i he couldn’t always get steve out of fights, or let his hair get long and messy. at some point he’d stop having a playful boyish charm and start being seen as an immature man with no life direction.
bucky never did have to conform the way he thought he would. he didn’t leave the army and settle down, or have kids. instead he fell from a train into an infinite winter and impossibly endless pain.
not that he noticed it. those years were a haze of pain and fear and anger and missions. he didn’t cut his hair. he was a soldier, not a barber. sometimes he would be deployed and notice it shorter, but that never mattered. the only thing to ever matter was completing the mission and going back to sleep and praying they wouldn’t wake him up again, but they always did.
and then he was free. his hair was messy and unkempt, but so was he. from fight after fight to the wakandans saving him, and it never occured to him he should cut his hair. it didn’t seem all that important anymore, all things considered. people these days didn’t seem to care too much either.
but when bucky was alone? when he left wakanda, when he got his own place again, when the quiet was too quiet? he needed something, he needed some sense of normalcy, some reminder that he’s still him. so bucky hacks at his hair and he grabs razors and by the time he’s done the bathroom is a fucking disaster and the sun is peaking over the horizon but his hair is short again, he looks like some ghost. he looks like sargent james barnes, he has his face but stole his smile and replaced it with frown lines long ago. he looks like he should’ve died in the 40’s.
when sam sees him, he doesn’t ask questions. they’ve got bigger things to worry about.
and it’s with sam, some several months later, when bucky is resting his head in sam’s lap and sam is carding his fingers through dark hair, that bucky feels a bit more like himself again.
“hair’s getting long,” sam might say. he’ll ask bucky if he wants it cut.
bucky will faintly wonder if sam cares, if sam has a preference in whether or not his hair is long. maybe he asks him, and maybe sam laughs gently and kisses his cheek.
so bucky grows his hair out. it’s a bit uneven, it doesn’t look the best, but it’s the best bucky’s felt in a long time. he can look in the mirror and know he is all that he was before, but he’s also everything he can be in the future, and maybe that’s okay. besides, sam seems to like tugging at his hair, and who is bucky to take that simple pleasure from his newly announced fiance?
prguitarman
gamechangershow
titsay
germansingergirl
