Before Chapter 52

Anna POV

"Tell me something I don't know about you already." I sighed, sitting cross-legged at the foot of the bed, across from Bucky. I would have been next to him, curled right up under his arm, but he had a cold. He claimed he didn't know why; Steve and I, on the other hand, thought it was because he fell asleep outside of the plane on the last raid.

Bucky sniffled, making a gross wet sound that he'd stopped apologizing for about an hour ago, and shrugged. "Not much to tell that you don't already know." He told me in a nasal voice.

"C'mon, I bet there's something I don't know." I coaxed him, and reached forward to yank the blanket back over his shoulder. He rolled his eyes at me; he kept saying I was babying him. In my opinion, everyone deserved to be babied once and a while—especially when they were sick. I even made him chicken soup. No one got my chicken soup unless they were sick (hence, why I smacked Howard's hand with the spoon when he tried to steal a shred of chicken). My grandma taught me when I was old enough, since Billy had gotten rheumatic fever. The broth was a little salty, the vegetables were soaked briefly in water with cumin, to give it some kick, and thick, doughy egg noodles topped it all off.

Bucky shrugged, and raised his bowl of soup towards his face to take a long, slurping drink. "I can play the piano." He said once he put the bowl down.

I'd been raising my spoon to my mouth, but I dropped it quickly after I processed what he told me. "What?"

"I can play the piano." Bucky repeated. My brows furrowed in poorly hidden skepticism, and Bucky rolled his eyes. "When I was 13, I was living across from a music shop, run by this lady—Virginia—and carry around this big stack of flyers all the time and stick them on car windshields. She couldn't pay me very much, so she gave me piano lessons."

My eyes narrowed, and I reached over and gave Bucky's leg a hard pinch.

"Ow!-Hey! What was that for?" Bucky complained, frowning at me.

"When you asked me if I played an instrument and I told you about the whole clarinet and violin fiasco when I was 12, why didn't you bring up the fact that you could play something?" I asked him, taking his empty bowl to the sink.

Bucky shrugged again. "I dunno…You're just more interesting." He said with a wry smile.

"You're interesting!" I shot back.

"Not really." Bucky said with another shrug.

I huffed and hopped over the baseboard, plopping back down on the bed. "You are interesting."

Bucky was a little amused at how insistent I was being about this, so he smiled. "Name one thing." He challenged me.

"You play the piano." I said automatically.

"Do you know how many people play the piano?"

"Do you?"

"Well, n—that's not the point!"

"You're an interesting person!" I insisted one more time before getting up, shutting the shades and grabbing a book. "Sleep." I insisted, shoving his shoulder. Normally, that'd do squat, but because he was either sick, or just playing along, he fell over on the bed. He sniffled again, and I threw a hankie at him.

"I can't believe you don't think you're interesting." I commented a few minutes later.

"I don' need to be interestin'." Bucky mumbled into his pillow.

"And why not?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

"'cause 'yer what's interestin' 'bout me."

The first of my one shots! Some will make you squeal from the cuteness of it all, some will make you cry, some will make you laugh! And, some may foreshadow some pretty important things. ;)

If you think that Bucky Barnes, under a blanket, drinking soup and with a stuffy nose isn't the cutest thing ever, I'm sorry, but you're wrong.

~Christianne