Bucky Barnes (notzimniysoldat) wrote in madisonvalley, @ 2018-01-09 21:18:00 |
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Entry tags: | !closed, !complete, !completed gdoc, !log, ~2018 january, ~25 points, ~~bucky barnes (notzimniysoldat), ~~liam dunbar (werewolflikeme) |
WHO: Liam Dunbar and Bucky Barnes
WHAT: Chatting
WHEN: Sometime last week
WHERE: Rogers-Barnes-Mars house
WARNINGS: accidentally injuring one's self with kitchen utensils!
STATUS: Closed/Completed Gdoc
Liam had been with Molly for a long time now. Longer than he’d ever been with anybody. That was both awesome and terrifying, and he wasn’t exactly sure how to deal with it. He wanted to be with her as much as he could. At least he knew that much. He was also starting to hope that Bucky and Steve were getting used to him. Surely they knew by now that he wasn’t going to hurt her ever, at least on purpose.
Today he was going to Molly’s house for the express purpose of talking to whichever dad happened to be around. He was done being afraid with them and he really wanted to have a mature relationship with them. Also terrifying, but it was time he stepped up, for Molly’s sake.
Now that Christmas was over, and things had calmed down, it was time to do this for real.
Taking a deep breath as he climbed the stairs, he knocked at the door nervously, wondering which one would show up today.
***
Bucky had a pretty great Christmas and New Year's, so he was still in a pretty great mood into January. He and Kara still had a lot to talk about and work through, but their family was whole, happy and healthy. The rest would fall into place. He was looking forward to teaching the girls how to fix up the car they'd bought for them to share. They probably wouldn't like it very much, but it would be good for them and get them invested in their car. Bucky considered that a win-win all around.
He was home this afternoon because it was the one day he had off from both shops, so when he heard the knock on the door, he wasn't too surprised. Someone usually came by for one thing or another. That someone wasn't usually Liam though, at least not for him. Bucky opened the door and stepped aside to let his daughter's boyfriend come in.
"Hey Liam. Molly's over at Darcy's I think," he said, "but you're welcome to stick around until she comes home."
***
“Yeah, I know,” Liam said. That was one of the reasons he’d chosen to come here now. “I wanted to talk to you.”
And he was definitely going to be glad to get it over with. Bucky was by far the scariest of the two of them, and if he could survive this, he was pretty sure that Steve would be a breeze.
***
That was a little surprising but Bucky liked the kid well enough so he’d see how this all played out. “Alright, well come on in. I was just getting started on dinner. You can help while you tell me what’s on your mind.”
He shut the door behind the kid and led the way into the kitchen. Stew was going to be for dinner, courtesy of the crock pot, so it was just prep work to get the meat and vegetables into the pot. “What’s up, kid?”
***
“I just wanted to talk,” he repeated. “You know...about me. And you. And Steve. I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to be with Molly for a long time. And I want us all to get along. I don’t want you hating me, and I don’t want to be afraid of you guys.”
He paused, rather proud of himself so far.
“I want what’s best for Molly, and I know you guys do too.”
***
Bucky could appreciate where Liam was coming from, but he also found it funny because the kid was talking way too seriously for someone as young as he was. It wasn't like this was the 40s and getting married right out of high school was the thing to do. He'd raised a big stink about Molly thinking she was ready to have sex and then she came home drunk on New Year's. It was just more proof that Molly wasn't ready for more in his mind and he had the same opinion of Liam.
"I think you'll find Steve and I can be pretty easy going most of the time," he pointed out as he went back to preparing the meat for the stew. He was cubing it with a sharp knife but he wielded it expertly and not to make a threat. Molly wouldn't be too pleased with him if he went around threatening Liam anymore than usual. Lately it was just castration since she seemed to be so focused on sex.
"We don't hate you, you know. Give you a hard time? Absolutely. We're her dad's." That was just a given and he thought they'd been pretty tame all things considered. He'd known some dames' fathers to be polishing their guns when he picked up their daughters. Bucky was never that heavy handed. Even if there were currently four ways he could kill Liam without having to take more than a step to find a weapon.
***
Liam, of course, thought he was ready for more. Well, sort of. He wanted to wait for the right time and he was getting the idea that the ‘right time’ was kind of hard to find. Or maybe there really wasn’t a ‘right time.’ Either way, he wasn’t about to have sex with her on New Years when she was drunk. He wasn’t that kind of a guy.
“I guess I was just hoping we could be more...friends, instead of me always being afraid that you’re looking for a reason to kill me.”
He paused.
“Unless, of course, you are looking for a reason to kill me.”
***
Bucky chuckled. "Nah, not kill you," he assured Liam. Maybe maim a little bit, but he wouldn't say that because he didn't want to scare the kid and he wasn't so sure his brand of humor would go over well at this particular moment in time. Maybe he had been a little too hard on the teenage werewolf if he was so worried that all Bucky wanted to do was kill him.
"But sure, I can work on being a little more friendly." He was positive that he'd gotten it through to Liam that if he ever hurt Molly, it wouldn't be good for him. Bucky handed Liam some potatoes, a knife and cutting board. "Go ahead and cube those," he instructed. "Have you ever made stew before?"
***
Did Liam cook? No, no he did not. His mother rarely cooked. With his father a surgeon and his mother a successful lawyer, they usually ended up eating out. Or sometimes, for special occasions, his mother would hire a cook for a few days. But he was definitely never allowed in the kitchen.
“Um, no. I’ve never even boiled water.”
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t learn.
“Show me?”
***
Bucky would definitely help Liam change that if it was something he wanted to improve on. The fact that the kid asked him to teach him went a long way for Bucky. "Boiling water isn't that hard. Neither is cutting up potatoes," he assured Liam.
He moved over to stand in front of the cutting board he'd given Liam and then took one of the potatoes. "Always rinse these off first, just to get any lingering dirt off of them. I had rinsed them already so now it's just a matter of cutting them," he explained. "The way I like to do it is to cut them in half lengthwise first." He did that and set one half aside before putting the other half flat on the cutting board. "Then cut it in half again," lengthwise this time as well, "and last, hold those two pieces together and cut them widthwise so that they're roughly the same size." It happened to take four cuts and it left him with eight pieces of potato.
Bucky handed the knife to Liam. "Now you try it on the other half."
***
Liam actually paid attention. This in itself was a big deal. He wasn’t the kind of kid who really enjoyed school, or learning, so when he paid attention when he was being taught it was a huge sign of respect. And he did respect Bucky. He’d been hard on him and sometimes hard on Molly, but he’d always had their best interest at heart.
Even if it wasn’t their best interest from their point of view.
After watching, he took the knife and tried himself, actually doing an okay job.
“Like that?”
***
Bucky stepped to the side and watched Liam as he went through the steps one by one. It wasn't perfect but he hadn't expected it to be perfect. "Yep, like that," he replied encouragingly. There were nine more potatoes to get through, so Bucky gestured for Liam to take another one. "Keep going," he instructed, only this time instead of watching, he turned back to his own task in taking care of preparing the meat.
Because he generally cooked alone, Bucky fell into an easy silence as they worked side by side. It wasn't until Liam was on his second potato that he added, "You can toss them right into the crock pot once they're cut." He'd make sure the kid stuck around for dinner too, since he now had a hand in cooking it.
***
Liam definitely wouldn’t turn down free food. Being a werewolf and a teenager made the whole eating-everything-in-sight thing even worse.
He looked up at him and nodded, and as he did, the knife slipped, slicing deeply into his finger. He bit his lip to keep from saying a swear word, and pulled his hand away so as not to get blood in the food.
It would heal before Bucky really had a chance to even look at it, but that didn’t mean that it didn’t hurt like hell.
***
Bucky saw the knife slip and immediately reached for the knife so that Liam could take care of keeping his hand away from the food. He'd learned fairly early on how lycanthropy could spread from Liam to Molly because that was what he worried about more than anything. He put the knife in the sink since it was now unusable.
"You alright?" he asked as he handed over a paper towel so that Liam could wipe off the blood even if the wound had healed already.
***
Liam wasn’t an Alpha, so he couldn’t possibly turn anyone into a werewolf, even if he wanted to. In his world, only Alphas could do that. So Bucky and Steve had pretty much nothing to worry about in that regard. He wouldn’t do it anyway. He’d been turned against his will, and he wouldn’t do that to anyone else. Well, unless it was to save their life.
“Yeah,” he said, looking at his finger after he wiped the blood from it. There was nothing there, not even a scratch or a scar.
“Pretty handy, huh?”
***
Bucky liked Liam's attitude about it, even though he knew from experience a cut like that hurt like hell. He'd been through a lot of things that hurt like hell. "Sure is. I could've used that, but Steve got all the positives from the serum," he replied. Bucky healed at a faster rate than most humans, but not as fast as Liam and certainly not as perfectly. He had plenty of scars littered across his body from knives and bullet wounds to shrapnel and electrical burns.
He pulled another knife from the knife block and handed it over to Liam. "Try to be more careful this time, alright?" Bucky didn't want the kid hurting himself every time he tried to cook. That wasn't any way to get him interested in learning how to make other things.
***
Liam’s body healed so perfectly that he couldn’t even get tattoos - the ink would just get pushed out and everything would go back to the way it was. It was really hard to kill a werewolf, if you didn’t know exactly what you were doing.
He took the knife again, and this time worked more carefully, and with more attention and precision. No matter how well it healed, he really didn’t want to cut himself again.
“How did you guys end up taking care of Molly in the first place?”
He knew they weren’t really her dads, but he wasn’t here when they’d become her guardians.
***
Bucky finished up the meat once he was sure Liam was alright with the potatoes. He moved onto the other vegetables next, cutting up carrots and celery first. It was pretty companionable all things considered, even when Liam asked about how they ended up taking care of Molly.
"Well, by the time I got here, Steve had already adopted Molly," he explained. "I was...not in the best frame of mind but they both took me in without a second thought. Molly in particular, she just treated me like I was completely normal." That had been invaluable to him, especially in the beginning. "I knew I had to look out for her and keep her safe. Somewhere along the line, I realized just how important she was to me and I wanted to show her that. So I adopted her for Christmas that first year I was here."
***
Liam nodded, taking it in. He knew that Molly had a hard childhood back home, seeing her parents murdered in front of her and everything. She didn’t talk about it much, but they’d been together a long time and he knew a lot about her. It was nice for them to give her a home, and at least a little bit of normalcy, as it were.
“I am happy you’re there for her,” he said. “I mean, I know I’ve been a dick about your rules and stuff but I do know you’re looking out for her. And that...that’s pretty cool.”
***
Bucky had come a long way from the broken man he'd been when he'd first arrived in Madison Valley. He'd already been in Madison Valley for a year and a half but they had all been through so much that it was hard to believe. Now he was a dad and he was going to be getting married. It was strange, but good, and he understood the sentiment Liam was trying to share.
"We can be pretty strict," Bucky agreed with half a grin. "I think part of that is because I remember how I was when I was your age." The world had been very different then, but it wasn't enough to ease his worries about what might potentially hurt his daughter. "But as boyfriends go, you're pretty good." Sure, Liam had to work on his anger issues, but this whole conversation was a good first step. Bucky certainly approved of it.
***
“Well...I mean, I really do care about her. We’ve been together a long time. It’s not just some...take her on a date and be done with her thing.”
Liam would never do that, but he really wanted Bucky to know that he was serious and that he was mature and all the stuff he would want him to be. Even if it wasn’t entirely true.
“And...I, well, I tried to keep her from getting drunk at the party.”
***
"That's why I think you're pretty good, Liam," he replied. "And I appreciate that you tried to keep her from getting drunk. Some things, you just can't talk people out of and that's okay. She dealt with the consequences of her actions and I can only hope that she'll think twice about drinking again." Bucky knew he couldn't control Molly like that though and Veronica did have a point about it being all the more appealing the more he told Molly no.
"As long as you're not the one leading her into trouble, you've got nothing to worry about," Bucky promised.
***
“I don’t like being around drunk people,” he said. “Because I can’t get drunk. It’s boring to sit around and watch people act stupid when you can’t join in.” And he especially didn’t like seeing Molly act stupid. It made her worry that bad things were going to happen to her.
“I won’t do that. I mean, I’ll get myself into trouble. I’m good at that. But not Molly.”
***
Well, that he could agree with. It was one of the downsides of the serum for both him and Steve, though he'd definitely been more of a lush than his pal. There were a few things now that could get him tipsy when he wanted to celebrate with everyone else, but he didn't need to get drunk to appreciate a good drink.
"You've got nothing to worry about," Bucky reassured him. At least until he got Molly into trouble or hurt her. Liam really was a good kid though, so he wasn't all that worried. "Alright, let's get this all in the crock pot and then we can play video games until Molly comes home." Most teenagers liked video games, he was pretty sure.
***
Sure, Liam liked video games a lot! They were fun. He hadn’t expected Bucky to like them, since he was from the past and everything, but all the better. Maybe they could bond when he kicked his butt at GTA or something.
“Sure, sounds good,” he said, and scooped up all his veggies. He couldn’t help but wonder what Molly would think when she got home and found them playing video games. Should be amusing, anyway.
***