returnjourneylogs | spoopy meetcute

Entry tags:

spoopy meetcute

Passengers: Grace Gibson and Bucky Barnes.
Location: Bucky's Room, Warden Room 104
Date: Jan 29
Summary: Spook and Spooky have a meetcute.
Warnings: n/a

( as promised, bucky spends the rest of the day in his room going over the materials he's downloaded to his communicator and continuing his research. while he isn't in any particular rush to meet this grace gibson that has joined their number, he can't help but also wonder what exactly she means about her abilities.

could it be that in the time she was dead something had been done to her? that a secret was withheld in her absence, and so all she knows is what was told to her? would the people around her be honest enough? her naïveté seems to indicated otherwise, a restricted life that left her trusting, easy enough for silco to twist the truth and for her to believe it. though the circumstances are nothing alike, bucky can't help but feel defensive on her behalf, as he would were she rebecca. adults taking advantage of the young never sits well with him.

he's still reading whenever she chooses to come by. )

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It took the better part of two hours for Grace to work up the courage (and work down the social anxiety, panic, stress, terrible self-esteem and memories of past meetings with new acquaintances that went horribly wrong) to leave her room. Her gentle suggestion had not exactly gone over as smoothly as she had hoped-- there were a lot of people with a lot of strong opinions, and some of them seemed... well, angry, for lack of a better word.

Although for once they were more or less generally angry at their entire situation aboard the Peregrine, rather than angry at her for any reason, so she'd take that as a net positive. And there were a few people who were actively nice to her right out of the gate, which was new. Though none of them had been in her presence yet, so that explained that. (Excepting of course William, who Doesn't Count, somehow.)

One of those had seemed to be something of a leader... or if not a leader, someone less reluctant to take initiative than some of the other wardens. James, he'd said his name was. She had seen him break up a fight, during those first invisible days. She'd told him... some things about herself, and he'd had a surprisingly strong reaction-- maybe he'd been through something similar. Maybe this could be a friendship worth cultivating, if at least because it could be worth having someone who can definitely handle themselves in a fight in her corner.

Or because she's just so used to following the first Person Who Can Punch Good that she can find around. God, she hates herself sometimes. Oh, well.

There's a knock at his door.

He glances up at the knock, realizes it's likely Grace. Finishing up the sentence he's on, the soldier marks his place before pocketing his CommLink and walking to the door.

The pneumatic door slides open. Bucky still needs to get used to that.

"Miss Gibson?"

She smiles-- or tries to smile. It doesn't really work. She always looks exactly as nervous as she feels.

"Just Grace is fine," she offers, tugging the hems of her sleeves down over her hands. "Nice to meet you. Sorry about the... well, the thing I mentioned."

Because there's no way he doesn't sense it by now. The creeping dread, the pressure of being watched. He said he wasn't worried, and she'd warned him, but still. There's a reason people avoid her. She hovers on the doorstep, still half-expecting to get the door slammed in her face again.

Yes, the thing. To say Bucky doesn't feel anything after laying eyes upon her wouldn't be true, but the level of dread or fear he's supposed to be feeling, or rather what she anticipates, doesn't quite strike in the way that she, or he, expects. There's a quiet lingering, a tug whispering in his ear telling him something is amiss, that he need only look to see the truth of how wrong everything really is.

Except nothing is ever in perfect order anyway, especially in Bucky's life, so even as the strange calling insists, the Winter Soldier's logic rejects the notion after enough silent prodding, eventually amounting to Bucky tilting his head curiously as his eyes trace the ceiling idly, waiting for the murmur to return. It instead melts into the rest of the static paranoia in his head, and he can only raise his brows in bewildered acceptance when the pressure dissolves into something already long familiar.

"Yeah, I think we're good, Just Grace," he says, gaze flicking back to meet hers as a lopsided grin accents the tease. "You don't need to apologize for anything."

You don't have to apologize. People keep telling her that. She's not sure she'll ever be able to accept it. She watches his expression change while he processes exactly what she's doing to him, a battle between instinct and logic that usually takes weeks to acclimatize to-- and it's over in a matter of seconds.

That's impressive enough on its own, and then he smiles. Oh no.

"That was fast," she remarks, eyes wide. "Quick recovery one of your... things?" She's still standing on the doorstep-- anyone could be listening. For all she knows, she's not the only invisible person in town.

The pause she makes has him looking past her with a quick glance, a step back following as he nods her inside. This isn't something either of them likely want to share in the hallway.

He waits for her to enter, for the door to fully close behind her, before he answers.

"One of them, yeah, though I think in the case of what you're really trying to ask it's more to do with how much, uh. Hm. How much suspicion? Is already on my mind in the first place." Which can't be helped, being what he is, what HYDRA made him. "After a point you either accept it or go mad."

He seems to be one of the former camp.

Grace glances briefly around the room-- it doesn't look different from her own, other than having someone else living there. Unsurprising; all the shiny metal and weird fluorescent lighting permeates the rest of the ship too.

He mentions suspicion, and she tilts her head, her stare falling back on him.

"Sorry to add to the pile," she offers sheepishly. Her hands twist together, as if she doesn't know what else to do with them. "How have you been holding up since you've been here? It can't be easy when everyone's a stranger."

The other thing of note about his room is really how untouched it looks aside from the bed not being made.

She wrings her hands, and he spares a glance, not having seen the gesture in a while. Whatever she's gone through must have left this mark, fraught apologies and wary self-consciousness driving her thoughts and actions. The poor thing. She's certainly far too sweet to have deserved something so damning.

"You're not another to the pile. Don't worry." Bucky offers an easy smile, a friendly cant of his head. "Everything in there already is far worse than anything you've made me feel."

Reaching forward, he tries to offer a reassuring touch to her shoulder, though whether or not it actually comforts is a question of its own. Bucky doesn't let it linger, afraid he might scare her off or offend her by taking the liberty so freely. It's impolite, anyway.

"They're not too bad, though. Strangers. They're different, but they don't have expectations either. Of who I'm supposed to be, or who you should be. We have blank slates here, yeah, and no one is familiar right off the bat. But we have more control of who we want to be here than somewhere where we're already known. At least, that's what I think."

He alludes to something negative in his mind, and she's about to shut down that kind of talk immediately-- he's been nothing but considerate and kind to her, after all-- but then he thoughtlessly reaches out, a reassuring tap on the shoulder.

She freezes in place. It's all she can do to keep from flinching back out of reach. Normal people do that, she thinks, he doesn't know. He doesn't know. It's a moment before she remembers to breathe again. She turns, pretends to be fascinated by a fake plant or something, while her face turns a selection of unflattering colors.

"People know you, then? Back home?" She clears her throat a little-- it comes out slightly croaky. Like the ghost of a frog. "Or who they think you are?"

He swallows at the question, wonders if it even matters at this point. "I had someone who really knew. Before. He's. He left, though."

The problem of it all, really. Maybe if Steve hadn't gone, he would have stayed, wouldn't have wanted to be elsewhere entirely when the opportunity presented itself. Even the lure of space pales at the sight of seeing Steve happy. Nothing brought that anymore though. Not really. Not since the war. Bucky's own safety was a necessity, and they both know they're far too different from the men they were before the war to go back to what once was.

"The rest think they know. But they don't."

He left. The way he says it speaks volumes more than the words themselves. Is this why he came? Was there nothing-- or no one-- left for him, back home? Grace turns back to face him, to look him in the eye.

"And you'd rather nobody know you at all than everyone knowing the wrong thing. I get that." Grace smiles, tucks her legs up underneath her in a curled-up sitting position, hands laid gently in her lap-- which now hovers in midair. As if it's the most normal thing in the world. As if knowing a truth about James has allowed her to relax, somehow.

But she'd already told him over the network what she could do, and he wasn't afraid of her (yet, always yet), so what did she have to hide? It's how she'd like to be known. The reality of her. He should understand that.

"Yeah. That's. Yeah." He chuckles to himself, offering a smile. It takes a moment for the fact she's now floating in air to register, and when he does, Bucky just raises a brow, chuckles again, and admires the space between where she sits and the ground. She had warned him after all.

"Damn, that's real neat. Can you fly and all that too? Like Superman or something." His gaze flicks back to meet hers as a fascinated beam starts to split his face.

Edited 2022-02-25 19:46 (UTC)

It's half a beat before she realizes he's not freaked out (and actually seems to be reacting with a little bit of wonder, childlike, which is charming and she's trying not to think about that). Sheepishly, she smiles down at her hands.

"Not exactly the same, maybe, but I can go pretty fast. They clocked me at 65 miles an hour once!" It's not often she gets to brag about her abilities-- people are usually so unsettled, it's hard to convince them that no, actually, it's extremely cool, what I can do when they're trying to get away from her as quickly as possible. In fact, it's a little uncomfortable, as evidenced by the color that just won't leave her cheeks-- time to redirect. "What about you?"

Sixty-five is damn fast, especially for someone who grew up with cars that maxed around that. Her enthusiasm only adds to his, and he feels rather giddy, being able to discuss anything like this at all. Truly a wonder, when it's been years since he's been awake for only a few to have managed. Shuri being the last person who has comes to mind.

"That's nothing to scoff at! You could race a cheetah at that speed! You ever, y'know, fly along with birds just to see what it's like? Join the v-formation? It's not flying, but I can top out running about eighty to ninety." Miles per hour. "Improved reflexes and muscle control. That kind thing."

The idea of racing cheetahs and joining in on a bird migration makes her laugh-- genuinely, because it's literally never occurred to her before. But likely she couldn't; animals tend to react poorly to her presence, and the last thing she'd want to do is scare some birds off course or piss off a hungry cheetah. Still, the image is something.

"That's amazing! And useful! I didn't get any of that. Nothing physical, anyway. I mean, besides this..."

Grace unfolds her legs (she could float in her sitting position, it doesn't make a difference, it just feels wrong, somehow) and hovers over to a side table. She spares a glance over her shoulder, hesitating.

"Don't freak out."

And she shifts, the edges of her form becoming wispy, dissolving, like smoke into the air. Her colors fade out, the details of her blur, and the contrast of her cranks up, like slipping into shadow in a dimly lit room, but she hasn't moved.

Then she does; she floats, uncannily, directly through the table. Once on the other side, she sticks her arm through the wall and wiggles it around, just for emphasis. She smiles-- wider, a line pulling across her stark face-- and just like that, she's back, normal, just a girl hovering a few inches off the ground, like nothing happened.

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spoopy meetcute

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