#he's been lost at sea i'm not about to let the rafters get their hands on him and umm yk

[thisghosts-obsessions-again]

Bold of me to assume I can do this without the walk-through. It's fine I guess?

[marvelstoriesepic]

Flufftober (day 12+13)

Pairing: best friend!Bucky x Reader

Prompt: “This is spooky.” - “Really?” + Attic

Word Count: 1.8k

Warnings: mentions of death

Flufftober Masterlist

Dust has been clinging to your nose and throat ever since you set foot on that rickety attic ladder, like a dry irritation that causes you to cough every few breaths.

You swipe a hand across the tops of several old, brown leather suitcases and the impact stirs up tiny particles. They swirl in circles through the air, caught in the glow of the single bare bulb dangling from the rafters. Its dim, yellow light barely cuts through the heavy gloom, leaving corners in shadows and only partly displaying the chaotic sprawl of old relics surrounding you.

Bucky is crouched just a few feet away, focused on a box crammed with his grandfather’s clothes.

The old man had passed just over two weeks ago, leaving Bucky’s grandmother with the dismaying task of sorting through her late husband’s belongings. She couldn’t face it. Losing your husband and having to go through his possessions after his passing surely has to be as daunting as one could imagine. Her knees probably wouldn’t even let her make it up that attic ladder again.

So, Bucky had offered to handle it.

He told you he hadn’t been close to his grandpa. He never even mentioned the man to you before, only a day after his passing. The only things you knew about James Barnes - “Yes, I'm named after him. Call me James, doll, and I'll walk outta here!” - is that he was a World War II veteran, a former officer in the 107th Infantry Regiment. He lost his left arm in battle, though the details of that story are now buried with him.

He had always been a man of few words, so Bucky told you, especially when it came to the war. He never seemed eager to talk about the past, or anything else, really. He was a crabby old man. But you saw the understanding in the way Bucky talked about him, the quiet respect for the restrained silence the man had lived in.

Bucky also admired the way his grandpa had been so passionate about his wife. You saw it in the way your best friend's eyes lit up as he recited how the old man may not have been warm and welcoming to him and his sister and easy to get along with, but he had loved Bucky’s grandmother deeply, treating her like she deserved.

You like to think back to that smile on his face as he said that part.

So, since Bucky took the death of his grandfather on lighter shoulders he insisted he'd be fine going through the stuff the man left behind. And since this could take some time, he asked you to come along yesterday. Of course, you said yes.

Out of the corner of your eye, you catch Bucky pulling an old camouflaged soldier’s uniform from the box he’s been rummaging through. The worn fabric lifts in his hands, the hat already lying on the wooden floor beside him.

“Hey, you think this would suit me?”

He throws you a half-grin, holding the uniform up just enough for you to get a look.

You glance over, letting your eyes sweep over the fabric for a moment, before smirking at him. “You wish it would,” you hum, light tone filled with teasing.

Bucky snorts and folds the uniform back with careful hands while shaking his head at you.

Your attention settles back onto those old suitcases you’d been dusting off. The latch of the first one gives with a faint click and you open the lid slowly. The stale, musty scent that greets you drifts to the background of your focus, eyes fixed on what’s inside. Photographs. A sea of black-and-white images, scattered and layered, with a few yellow edges, so many faces frozen in time.

Your gaze lands on a photo, in particular, one that pulls you in drastically, eyes frozen on it. Your mouth falls open, and your hand moves forward almost on its own. You lift the old photo gingerly between your fingers, bringing it closer for a better look.

You blink a few times, almost in a daze, almost expecting the image to change, as though your mind might be playing tricks on you.

“This is spooky.”

You’re not even sure who you’re addressing - Bucky, yourself, the empty air, or maybe the ghost of his grandfather lurking somewhere in the shadows. But your eyes remain glued to the photo.

“Really?” Bucky’s amused voice drifts up from half behind you, and you hear the smirk in his tone. “If this is scary for you, you’d be doomed in a horror movie.”

You sigh in mock frustration, finally able to tear your gaze away from the almost haunting image. Turning to him, you lift a finger at him, half-scolding. “Alright, first of all, don’t you dare say that. I’d make way smarter decisions,” you shoot back, ignoring his infuriating smirk spreading wider. “And second, that’s not even what I meant, you jerk. Look at this.”

Sliding over to him a little, you hold the photograph out for him to see.

Bucky barely glances at it before raising an eyebrow at you, expression confused and casual. “Yeah, so? That’s my grandpa.”

You nearly sputter, your features twisting with disbelief, voice rising in exasperation. “So? Bucky, that’s basically you! He looks so much like you, it’s creepy.”

Bucky glances back at the photo, then at you with skeptical eyes as if he can’t quite see it. But you can. A shiver crawls up your spine. The man in the photograph is practically a mirror image of Bucky, right down to the sharp jawline and the brown fluff of hair. The uniform he’s wearing is the same one, Bucky had just held up moments ago. But it does look crisper, newer in the photo, carrying the sheen of wartime life before it was buried under years of dust and disuse.

The statue of this man, that is Bucky but also not, is so strikingly familiar, with long limbs and lean muscles. But it’s the face that gets to you. The contours of his nose, the angle of his chin, and, more than anything, the gaze. It’s that same piercing look Bucky sometimes gives you, the one that feels like it’s peeling back the layers of whatever conversation you’re having, seeing past your words, seeing past the barrier you had put up to shield your long boiling feelings.

Only here, in the photo, Bucky’s grandfather is giving that exact same look to a person behind the camera, eyes soft and laced with those kinds of emotions you never dared to put words behind when you caught them in Bucky’s eyes. But now it’s easy. It’s so clearly love that illuminates his grandfather’s features here, adoration, which makes it easy for you to guess that who he’s staring at must be his wife. Bucky’s grandmother.

Bucky hums in response, still looking at the photo with mild interest. “Well, he was my grandpa. I guess it makes sense we’d look alike,” he says with a shrug, seeming rather unbothered.

You shake your head with a huff. “Still spooky,” you mumble and Bucky lets out a soft laugh.

He’s about to turn back to the box of clothing when you utter something you clearly should have thought through.

“He was handsome, though.”

Your gaze is still fixed on the image, but you feel an infinitesimal shift in the air. You don’t even need to look at Bucky to know what’s coming next. Imagining the way his eyebrows raise high up his forehead and the slow, smug smirk stretching his cheeks as the meaning of those words sinks in; you begin to feel heat spread across your neck, reaching your ears.

His eyes are boring into you, you feel them prickling your skin.

“Oh? Handsome, huh?” He draws the words out with exaggerated slowness, playful teasing dripping from his tone.

You sigh, meeting his gaze and rolling your eyes for good measure, though you can feel your heart quicken and the edges of the photograph slightly crinkle in your grip as you fidget with it in your lap.

Bucky is full-on smirking, eyes gleaming in that same way again, so full of emotion, practically lighting up the whole attic, making the dusty old bulb above feel utterly irrelevant.

“Don’t you flatter yourself now, Barnes,” you mockingly chastise, the playful annoyance a show to mask the unsteady rise and fall of your breath. The tug of a smile breaks free.

“Nah, doll, I gotta,” he protests, still beaming, still so full of light. “You said we look so much alike it’s creepy, right?” He leans forward, eyes burning into you, practically setting your skin aflame, making it sizzle under his heat. “So if you think he was handsome… maybe you’ve got something you wanna tell me?”

You snort, trying again to play it cool, but your heart is pounding, hands threatening to grow slick around the paper in your grasp.

Another deep, dramatic sigh is released from your body. “You don’t need me to tell you you look good,”you mutter, making it sound as casual as it would come out, and turning back to the suitcase full of photos. “I’m pretty sure you’re aware of that.”

You busy yourself with the pictures, keeping your shoulder turned in Bucky’s direction. But you still feel him. The air has thickened between you two moments before already but it increases within seconds, an unspoken tension threading through the attic space.

It takes him a moment to respond, and when he does, his voice is so soft and gentle, serene, but also so full of a weight you haven’t been able to prepare for.

“Still feels nice hearing it coming from you.”

Your movements come to a halt at those simple, sincere words. A small, almost shy laugh is all you get out. You’ve never been shy around Bucky, always comfortable with him, bantering back and forth with a lightness that normally only eased you.

But there also never was that kind of palpable tension in the air between you. So electric. So charged. So unrestricted. As if the walls to your feelings have crumbled, rocks tumbling into tiny pieces, stone dust shedding from its fragments that now fabricate the air, shaping it to this intimate fervor that makes it hard to breathe.

“Well, fine,” you finally manage to say, trying for a teasing laugh that comes out perhaps a little breathless. “You’re pretty handsome, Buck.”

You don’t turn to face him, eyes and hands on the photographs in the case before you - fixed, but not focused. The people in the pictures are blurred.

In the quiet that follows, you hear the sharp intake of a breath from behind you.

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