#charmingrelic

@charmingrelic​

she’s never done well with orders.

(neither has he. isn’t that funny.) which is why it’s worth remarking that there’s no hesitation in the way her free hand goes to the back of his neck and pulls him down to meet her lips, in the way they align so perfectly against one another. she’s breathing hard because they were just running, his heart is pounding against hers because they were two seconds away from blowing this town to the moon. 

it makes her sick, how hungry she gets when their lips meet, how electric the connection between them is. it’s been bitter years of fighting and running and trying to forget. it’s been screaming and guns pulled and the hidden ebb and flow of fucking do it, for chrissake just pull the trigger already. it’s been regret and shame and anger. she is supposed to be better than this. kiss me. a harvest festival in the balkans, the crowd working to their advantage. kiss me as a small parade of revelers with horns and drums rolled passed. it’s funny-- they’re dealing with amateurs tonight. they’re lost in the crowd, in an alley, now, the small woman pressing him against the door with one hand on the gun at her hip and another on his neck, her thumb right below his jaw. kiss me. it was the best solution, kiss him, divert attention even further from themselves as they tuck into an alley, a doorway, away from trouble nipping at their heels. kiss me. she’s better than this. ( than what? than to continue to kiss him. ) kiss me. she knows this play. it only works when people don’t really know what they’re looking for, or when they’re rookies of the stupidest kind. in this case, it’s both. the small crime syndicate that operates out of this town has no idea what it’s stumbled upon-- they’re not prepared for the operatives of ginny and bucky’s caliber to be coming down upon their heads. (there’s at least six others ginny would consider dangerous within a square mile. more pressing than the amateurs that almost caught sight of ginny and bucky bickering in their base of operations. “our interests are aligned, darlin’. don’t pull that trigger.” ginny still has a price on her head a mile high, and bucky would always be a pretty prize for a number of syndicates.)

she breaks the kiss like letting go of a live wire- sudden and severe. her lips are on the side of his face, her breath in his ear.

" well, i mean my bad. i seem to have come at a bad moment. " the uninvited guest in question was someone who was knocked out with a bloody and broken nose. eve would hate to be him when he woke up.

"fucking moron," he doesn't even realize what he's saying because he's more focused on the blood pouring from bucky's flesh and blood arm onto his couch. his couch because his apartment was closer. "the couch is the most expensive thing i have." that's not even true, it his weapons by miles but those don't count.

he pressed a wet cloth to the wound on bucky's arm, not gently.

@charmingrelicJames Barnes is high on the list of people that Genevieve Jack Bauer would prefer to not meet in a dark office in a German occupied town in France. the small soldier would prefer to meet any number of Germans, Russians, or Italians, the punchables. conversely, preferably not Americans or Allies, seeing how it’s frowned upon to kill them to keep them quiet about what they think they saw Corporal Bauer doing. dressed in the German greys, the young spy says a silent prayer of thanks to St. Michael for stalling Barnes’ trigger finger when he first saw her.who are you. what are you doing here.

there’s more knocking, keys being rifled through, harsh words of warning in German. ( that’s the rub, she’s found out. these Germans think like soldiers. they need to think like spies. ) the office was supposed to be empty, the town nearly abandoned, but it wasn’t abandoned just yet. it was supposed to be Cpl. Bauer’s job to find out why. 

munitions. old, maybe from the last war, but at this point– 

“I’ll take point, hands raised.” they might shoot on sight, but she doubts it. she’s talked her way out of worse situations and there won’t be much talking this time. “then we hit ‘em.”  low, hillbilly accented, and fast, no chance of being overheard properly. Cpl. Bauer stands and walks calmly to the door“<>” the accent is flawless Swabian, perfectly annoyed and a touch sleepy. not even a glance back to where Bucky was positioned behind a file cabinet before she opens the lock- think like a spy, not a soldier. that’s how they’ll win this. 

@charmingrelic

ask questions you cowards 

13. What about your muse makes you sad?

A LOT OF THINGS but that’s too much text so. Rod is a dude who had the potential to be good, or at least better than he is, and spends his whole life being kicked around and trying to be the worst he can be; because that’s how he’s been shown he can prove his “worth” and get what little affection that he can. He’s terrified of everyone he loves and he’s scared of showing any weakness in case they leave or shoot him, but he still tries to scrape out some goodness when he can play it off as a joke. And then he never really gets a chance to live long enough to pull himself together and be something different.

15. Would you like your muse as a person if you met them in real life?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Real talk, I am smol, and despite my love of theoretical murder and violence, not a very punchy person. I think it’d really depend on context and what else was going on at the time. 

17. Why do you think you connect to your muse?

@charmingrelic | your muse falling asleep with with head on mine’s lap | wwii

it’s been over a year since they first met, back in that cold november behind enemy lines. ( it feels like a decade, it feels like another life. ginny isn’t going to dwell on it. she’s learned not to dwell on much these days. there’s the task at hand and how to achieve it, there’s how many guns there are in the room, there’s how many escape routes. ) it was undeniably tense given the weight of all of their secrets, but she liked bucky, even through the lies and secrets and likelihood that both of them would die before seeing each other again. 

they can’t risk a fire, not now. the cold french farmhouse they’re posted up in is supposed to be deserted like the rest of the town. they’re almost out of ammo and it’s too close to where they do not want to be.  propriety is something neither of them have, not in wartime, not as soldiers– though she’s sure it took some adjusting on bucky’s part once he learned who and what ginny actually was. 

things change quickly. they’re both, if nothing else, adaptable. 

it’s not worth dwelling on. not now.

dusk is falling and they’ve been running since noon, though ginny isn’t sure how long bucky’s had to be awake. she’s taking first watch, but they can’t sacrifice bodyheat with the january cold. there were some blankets left when the family fled, some pillows. 

bucky, for his part, starts upright, leaned against ginny as they’re wrapped in the blankets. even as tired as he had to be, she knows it took him wrestling his brain with the question can i trust her can i trust her can i trust her can i trust her before his eyes stayed closed for longer than a few seconds. 

after the second time he woke with a start and nearly elbowed ginny in the nose, she places a pillow on her lap and told him, “just fuckin’ lay down.” her voice must have said she was going to make him if he didn’t, or maybe he was too tired to argue, or maybe he accepted that if she was going to slit his throat like the spy she was (like they both are) he might as well be comfortable for it. 

curled up around her, his head on her lap, it is, at least, warmer. his breathing falls into even sleep, ginny keeping her focus on the door before her. it feels like she’s intruding on his sleep as it is, even though she’s his pillow. looking at him would cross a line, make things harder, stranger, when they have to part again. eventually, though, boredom gets her and she looks down to the young man laying across her lap.

he looks older in sleep, impossibly tired and worn. his smile and bravado mask it well during the day, but the war hasn’t spared anyone. least of all, bucky barnes. in this quiet moment, she wishes it was different. it couldn’t be, it can never be, but…

she takes her left hand from her side. she reaches, slowly, gently, forward. when it’s a few centimeters from resting bucky, she feels an iron grip on her wrist. his dark eyes are open, wild in suspicion and low level panic; his left hand is on his own knife on his thigh. the grip from his right hand on her wrist is hard enough that she’ll bruise, but the young woman doesn’t even flinch. “stop, buck. it’s fine.” he stays twisted on her lap, looking up to her for any sign of a lie. her gaze is steady. “let go, bucky. go back to sleep.” orders, something neither of them do well with, usually. but he’s so tired, he’s ran so much, and maybe it matters that they’re on the same side, technically, even with the lies, even with the secrets. 

he shifts back to be on his right side, but his left hand stays on his knife. when he releases her hand, she doesn’t hesitate this time. she pulls him closer to her, her arm draped over his side and bent so that her hand is balled into a fist right at the collar of his coat. when his hand stays at his knife and his breathing doesn’t ease, ginny sighs and grabs his hand in hers, lacing their fingers and tucking both their hands back up beneath his chin. 

neither of them say anything. their gloved hands stay there, fingers intertwined, bucky’s back pressed into ginny’s chest. it takes him a lot longer to fall asleep this time, but he doesn’t almost stab her when he wakes up almost six hours later. that’s progress.

( she doesn’t think what happened to you. she doesn’t pity or mourn for him. she understands too well to speculate; she knows what happened to him. in one way or another, it’s the same as what she’s seen, what she’s been through. the war hasn’t spared anyone. least of all the kids who signed up to do the right thing. doing the right thing feels a lot like mass murder sometimes.