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samwpmarleau · 3 months

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fic: clippers

aka 1,500 words of me continuing to not accept bucky’s tfatws hair

Dr. Raynor had recommended it, though Bucky suspects she wasn’t the only person involved. These days, there’s a whole pack of people with say-so over his life, getting their jollies by hanging freedom over his head. She said it might help with people’s perception of him if he looked less like he did as an assassin. If he looked more like the young war hero who fought Nazis.

(Saving the universe counts for nothing, does it? he’d wanted to say but didn’t.)

It had irked him, the suggestion. Perhaps because it wasn’t really a suggestion. Raynor had thought he was resisting just to be contrary. He hadn’t had an issue with dressing like a twenty-first century civilian, after all, nor concealing his metal arm beneath jackets and gloves, so what’s the problem, James?

(That’s different, he’d wanted to say but didn’t. That’s so I don’t frighten anyone. So I don’t get stared at and invite questions people don’t want the answers to.)

All right, maybe part of him was just being contrary, because he’s already at his wits’ fucking end with how many conditions and surrendering of liberties this goddamn pardon has. But as he stands at the mirror, sharpened scissors in hand, it is not contrariness that makes him hesitate.

Nor is it the unfamiliarity of cutting his own hair, for he’s done that many times before, both before the war and since. He’s even got a picture to reference of some duck-lipped model showing off what Bucky can only describe as Generic Modern Man Haircut. He’d be Just Some Guy walking down the street with it, which is exactly what the government wants.

So, he does it both because he must and because any reason he can think of to not do it sounds pathetic, and although it’s not the fresh sort of cut he’d get from a proper barber, it’s serviceable. A few strategic passes of gel to disguise any unevenness and he’d be good to go.

(He’d tried that once, in Romania, having a professional touch up the ends, had even managed to tamp down his discomfort through the shampooing and smalltalk. The minute the man brandished the scissors and approached Bucky’s head with them, however, it was all he could do to not take those scissors and stab the man in the carotid out of pure reflex. He’d made it to the alleyway outside before expelling the street mici he’d had only an hour earlier, overcome by how easy the murder would have been. How natural. How he could have eliminated the entire shop of innocents before anyone knew what hit them. Erase the security tape, if there was one, and slip back into the ghost he was for seventy years. He’d returned in the dead of night to leave an envelope with a note of apology and a wad of lei and, needless to say, from then on the only blades that touched his hair were his own.)

He doesn’t recognize the man staring back at him in the mirror, once all is said and done. Which is a bit ludicrous; it’s a haircut, not plastic surgery, and for most of his conscious life he’d had short hair. This shouldn’t be any different. Yet, still he stands there in the bathroom with scissors in his hand and a sink full of brunette strands, for far longer than is reasonable.

He sucks it up, eventually, adjusts to the new length — or lack thereof. In fairness, some of it is easier. Showers are shorter, his hair tie budget is nonexistent, the drain clogs with less frequency, and he doesn’t look quite so much like a drowned rat when it rains.

Dr. Raynor is pleased when he shows up. She says it suits him, that it makes him look normal, that folks will have a harder time recognizing him as the Winter Soldier.

(They already don’t recognize me, he wants to say but doesn’t. I could be standing in front of a newscast about myself and no one would notice. I spent the better part of a century in the shadows — you think I don’t know how to hide?)

“James,” she says in that self-righteous way she does so well, “this is progress.”

She must be right, for she’s got that fancy, framed degree up on her wall that says she’s right, and there’s the goddamn pardon thing that means he cannot step one foot over the line no matter how ridiculous that line is. He utters a thank-you to her, white-knuckles his way through the session, and continues trying to cobble together a life.

Sam brings it up one day, after Walker, the Flag Smashers, and Bucky’s tentative integration into the Wilsons’ orbit. “Meant to say, looks good, man.”

It’s an innocuous statement, really. Well, it should be. Sam regards him a little too long, a little too probingly, for Bucky to believe that it is, in fact, innocuous. Sam’s gauging his reaction is what he’s doing, so Bucky denies a reaction that permits any gauging at all. The slight frown that appears between Sam’s brows tells him he succeeded.

Sam keeps up the ruse nonetheless, following it up with a playful insult as to Bucky’s cutting skills. He texts him the address of someone who is, allegedly, the best barber in Louisiana, tells him he made an appointment for tomorrow afternoon. Bucky goes. It’s not like he’s got anything better to do these days.

He’s the only white guy in the place, which elicits both stares from the other patrons and a hearty laugh from the barber resetting his station. “Sergeant Barnes?”

“How’d you guess?” Bucky deadpans, earning himself another laugh.

He’s gotten better at controlling his fears, his impulses, so the barber’s array of scissors and razors does not send him straight into the alleyway like it did years ago. The soul food from around the corner stays firmly in his stomach. The barber himself — Marcus — is jovial, considerate, and does his best to counter the uneasiness Bucky knows must be rolling off him in waves. Some good-natured shit-talking to cap things off.

Despite it all, when Marcus asks, “Just maintenance, sarge? Or you lookin’ for something new?” Bucky pauses.

And pauses some more, prompting Marcus to ask again, “Mr. Barnes?”

“Sorry,” Bucky says, realizing he’s a few more seconds of silence away from making Marcus genuinely concerned. “I just, uh …”

“I got a few suggestions, if you need,” Marcus offers. “Bit of fade on the sides, or —”

“No,” Bucky blurts out.

Marcus holds his hands up. “All right, no fade then.”

“That’s not — I didn’t mean —” Bucky takes a deep breath through his nose, exhales through his mouth. “I’m not trying to be rude, it’s …”

Bucky looks in the mirror again. Takes in the same face he’s seen for the past seven months, ever since Dr. Raynor gave him the suggestion-that-wasn’t-a-suggestion. He trusts in Marcus’s talents, that even Sam would find it worthy of a compliment.

(He can’t say he’d turn down a compliment from Sarah either, flirting ban be damned. It’d be Sam’s own fault, anyway.)

“I’m growing it out,” Bucky declares, as much to himself as to Marcus.

“Okay, cool. I can see it.” Then Marcus adds, almost pleads, “I gotta at least clean it up. No disrespect, but did you use a hacksaw?”

Bucky lets his mind drift as Marcus’s twang launches into another story. Half an hour later, he comes away with a list of must-watches and must-eats, plus a full pamphlet on how to not fuck up Marcus’s handiwork. After a generous tip and firm handshake, Bucky emerges from the shop feeling … not strange, exactly, but something.

The unspoken change, once it’s noticed in the months afterwards, garners him a variety of responses from the Wilson clan. When Bucky’s birthday rolls around, Sam and the giggling boys go in on a smorgasbord of scrunchies and clips that Bucky’s fairly certain were designed for a six-year-old girl. More seriously, a tin of pomade that Bucky knows is damn expensive.

For Sarah’s part, several hours later, the pain-pleasure of her knotting her fingers in his hair as she gasps out his name like a prayer is, he thinks, a resounding endorsement.

(Dr. Raynor would — possibly literally — smack him in the face with disappointment if she saw. Walker’d taken care of that, though, of her say-so having any bearing on his choices. Not that Bucky plans on sending the man a thank-you note or anything.)

As it nears his shoulders, Bucky supposes it does make him resemble the Winter Soldier. More than the bright-eyed draftee who gave his life for god and country, anyway, or the subject of the post-Snap government’s rebranding campaign.

Except, in his reflection he also sees the fugitive who’d been coaxed by his elderly neighbor into Sunday dinners of enough sarmale and mămăligă and papanași to give even his metabolism a run for its money. The man who’d been gifted new life, goats, and an affectionate nickname by Wakandans who never once looked at him with fear. The reluctant soldier who stood side-by-side with a talking raccoon and Asgardian god against an alien onslaught.

And maybe it’s silly to put so much stock in something as simple as hair. Maybe Bucky’s value system is in worse shape than his ability to tell fact from fiction when he wakes from a dream (a memory?).

But when he stares into the mirror with the Louisiana heat sticking hair and clothes alike to his skin, a house full of scampering feet, bickering, and hot breakfast just outside the door, it is not the Winter Soldier or James Barnes The Upstanding Member of Society that he sees. He sees himself. Just himself.

“You good, Buck?” Sarah asks when he comes downstairs, worry in her eyes. “You were in there awhile.”

“Yeah,” he wants to say — and does, because he can, because it’s the truth. A smile creeps onto his face. “I’m good.”

#idk man i saw some tweets about how bucky is seemingly going back to the long hair for thunderbolts and went oh???#anyway. there's a bit of #bucky x sarah #because i couldn't help myself but most of this is gen if that matters #also feat. bucky's awful therapist #bucky barnes #christina raynor #sam wilson #sarah wilson #marvel fic #my fic

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