bucky woke up already irritated. Not annoyed. Not grumpy. Irritated.

The kind of irritated where the sunlight coming through the curtains felt too bright, the sheets felt too warm, and every sound in the apartment seemed specifically designed to get on his nerves. To make things worse, the damaged HYDRA chip buried in his neck had been flickering on and off since dawn.

A sharp pulse. Then another. Each glitch sent a cold wave through her thoughts, making his hyper-aware of everything around him. Every creak of the floor. Every hum of an appliance. Every movement in his peripheral vision. It wasn’t enough to take control of him, but it was enough to leave him tense and exhausted.

By breakfast, he’d already slammed two cabinet doors, threatened a coffee maker, and spent ten minutes glaring at absolutely nothing. The chip kept feeding that irritation. Someone breathing too loudly? Annoying. A text notification? Annoying. The temperature being one degree too warm? Extremely annoying. By the time you saw him, bucky was sitting stiffly at the table with her arms crossed and a permanent scowl on his face. His jaw was clenched, his eyes were sharper than usual, and every few minutes his hand would drift toward the scar at the base of his neck as another glitch sparked through the damaged implant.

“Before you say anything,”

he muttered, not even looking up,

“today is not the day.”

A brief pulse ran through the chip. His expression somehow became even more irritated.

“…And if you ask me what’s wrong, I am going to become your problem.”

The worst part wasn’t the anger—it was the awareness. Every glitch made him more alert, more focused, more conscious of every little thing around his until his nerves felt completely raw. he wasn’t losing control. he was trying very hard not to. And that effort was making her even grumpier.

And after all, he's madly love you. You're the best thing ever happen to him and he try so hard do don't disappoint you...