[ he latches onto that joke like it's a lifeline, automatically rolling with it, batting the humour right back at her: ]
Y'know, he keeps challenging me and I keep telling him that it's not fair, it's not just matching Soviet super-serums, but that the arm gives me an advantage— I think he still wants to give it a shot to see how it goes, though.
[ but then yelena is uncurling his metal fingers, and running her own finger against what would've been lifelines. it's just a faint, distant pressure — nothing too sensitive, nothing that ought to knock him so far off-kilter, and yet he feels it like a shiver down his spine regardless, just with the objective knowledge that she's touching him; that her finger is running along his palm; that they are practically holding hands. brains are wired so weird. it's like not being able to look over the edge of a balcony and yet experiencing vertigo anyway, just from knowing how high up you are.
and there she fucking goes and names it again. bucky feels like he ought to be embarrassed at being called-out so easily, his ploys and behaviour so transparent; but in the end, his voice just sounds hesitant. doubtful. ]
Are you sure? It's not... I mean, I can't imagine it's comfortable.
[ he doesn't clarify if he means the cold metal, or the fact that it's a prosthetic at all, or something else entirely. it is a nice design: a sleek black silhouette and golden accents. not quite the iron weight it once had been, and yet no matter how good it looks — the ferrari of bionic arms — and how he's fine with it in combat, pouring a drink, chopping vegetables, bucky still feels subtly ill-at-ease with it for 'skin'-to-skin touch. for anything more intimate like holding a hand, like touching someone's jaw, or more. he's had decades and decades of his left hand being the bloody one: the one used for blocking bullets, for smashing faces and breaking bone and death, death, death.
no subject
Y'know, he keeps challenging me and I keep telling him that it's not fair, it's not just matching Soviet super-serums, but that the arm gives me an advantage— I think he still wants to give it a shot to see how it goes, though.
[ but then yelena is uncurling his metal fingers, and running her own finger against what would've been lifelines. it's just a faint, distant pressure — nothing too sensitive, nothing that ought to knock him so far off-kilter, and yet he feels it like a shiver down his spine regardless, just with the objective knowledge that she's touching him; that her finger is running along his palm; that they are practically holding hands. brains are wired so weird. it's like not being able to look over the edge of a balcony and yet experiencing vertigo anyway, just from knowing how high up you are.
and there she fucking goes and names it again. bucky feels like he ought to be embarrassed at being called-out so easily, his ploys and behaviour so transparent; but in the end, his voice just sounds hesitant. doubtful. ]
Are you sure? It's not... I mean, I can't imagine it's comfortable.
[ he doesn't clarify if he means the cold metal, or the fact that it's a prosthetic at all, or something else entirely. it is a nice design: a sleek black silhouette and golden accents. not quite the iron weight it once had been, and yet no matter how good it looks — the ferrari of bionic arms — and how he's fine with it in combat, pouring a drink, chopping vegetables, bucky still feels subtly ill-at-ease with it for 'skin'-to-skin touch. for anything more intimate like holding a hand, like touching someone's jaw, or more. he's had decades and decades of his left hand being the bloody one: the one used for blocking bullets, for smashing faces and breaking bone and death, death, death.
humans are fragile, and so terribly breakable. ]