Secret Door: the one where the morning after rolls around
President James Buchanan Barnes is the first president to occupy the White House without a first lady ever since… well, President James Buchanan Barnes. But he’s not too worried about it, since he got his best friend from college acting as his VP, supporting him just like only someone who knew everything about him could do. What happens when feelings from the past start to resurface?
Or the one where you and Bucky used to date but now you got a country to run.
for general warnings and author’s notes, please go to the fic’s masterlist.
specific warnings for the chapter: angst, alcohol, alcoholic amnesia, involuntary non-consensual voyeurism, guilt, suicidal feelings, anger, insecurity, tears
Bucky’s P.O.V.
I’d forgotten how she stole all the blankets.
It was such a small, silly thing, and yet realizing that after all these years, I didn’t remember it anymore got to me. There was a time where I used to boast that I knew everything about the woman lying next to me, and although I liked to think I still did, there was a considerable gap in my knowledge of her history, a gap that was placed there despite me.
I still didn’t know what made her break up with me back then.
Sure, I knew I wasn’t the easiest person to be around. I partied too much, drank my weight in alcohol every night. And not with cheap beer, oh no. It was always expensive shit - the same kind my father used to drink back when he was still alive.
More often than not, I’d wake up without any recollection of the previous evening. But that was okay. Because she was right there to help me, wipe the sweat from my forehead and let me know it was all going to be okay.
She was everything to me, until one day, she wasn’t. And when we first started working together in the world of politics, it was hard not to be resentful. I had done everything for her, back then. I loved her. And she’d just traded me for another person, like I was nothing to her at all.
I remembered seeing them fucking one day, when I went to her place hoping to get her back. The sounds I heard from that bedroom had haunted many sleepless nights, and they still did, even so long after.
I didn’t believe I was truly over what had happened until tonight, when I finally had the chance to have her again. No more memories of jacking off to her and her ex, just me and her, together again, at last.
I reached out blindly to pull her body closer to me, and was surprised to not find anything there. Startled, I sat up quickly, brushing the sleep away from my eyes as I struggled to adjust to the lack of lighting in the room, and that’s when I saw it…
She was trying to sneak out, wearing my hoodie over her dress, her heels dangling from her fingertips as she stared at me in guilt.
It felt like I was going to die.
“Where are you going?” I asked, even though the answer was pretty obvious. Anywhere but here, and although I was a mixture of incredulous, sad and angry, I still couldn’t help but think that she looked so fucking cute wearing my clothes.
“Are you going to leave?” I pressed, sitting up on the bed as I watched her fidget. It hurt more than I cared to admit, the way she avoided my eyes and refused to answer. Getting out of the bed and ignoring my naked state, I was almost gentle in the way that I pressed, “What is it, then? Wasn’t I enough for you? Back then, right now?”
She looked shocked, her wide eyes told me so. I suppose that she didn’t expect me to reopen old wounds, but they felt pretty present to me at that moment. “Did you stop loving me?” The question I always wanted to know escaped me without much difficulty.
I don’t know if I would be able to say the same about the way I would deal with the answer.
“Because I never did.” The hurt was obvious in my voice, and it took a sharp inhale from her to snap me out of the past and back to the present moment, a moment I didn’t even want to be living.
“James, what do you remember of those times?” She surprised me by lowering her shoes, slowly making her way back to the bed, where she sat down next to where I was standing. “The times when you would drink yourself blind, only to wake up in my arms, safe and sound. What do you remember?”
I didn’t know what to say, so I remained silent. “Come here,” she quietly begged, reaching out for my hands until I was sitting next to her in bed, her thumbs rubbing circles on the inside of my wrist.
“You don’t remember. You don’t remember how it ruined me to be the one to pick up the pieces of the man that I loved, night after night. I know you don’t remember, but I’ll never forget.”
“It broke my heart.” The worst part about it was that I knew it to be true. I couldn’t even deny it. “You were becoming your father and it hurt too fucking much.”
“And when you told me what your dream was…” She continued as I stared at her through water-filled eyes. “I knew there was no way you’d get better if I indulged your wild side any longer.”
“You were already so close to losing your scholarship…” She stopped to take a deep breath, before completing, “so I knew the only thing that could possibly speak to you was if you lost me.”
I had no idea. I knew she’d broken up with me because of my ways, of course - it was the reason why I decided to become sober, but I had no idea she had done this sacrifice for me, so I could become the man I needed to become to get this job done.
“You were my origin story,” I laughed through the tears, letting her tug me down so she could rest her head on my shoulder. “You could have talked to me, though.”
“You know what?” She conceded, “I suppose I could.”
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