Elevated

Darcy and Jane got back in the middle of the week and insisted they plan to do something on Friday. Usually, they would get together at Jane’s, but apparently Nevada was so boring that they wanted to make up for it. Nora agreed to meet them at a little bar about halfway between the tower and her apartment. She also insisted they invite Wanda, because she found her funny, and Natasha because while she found the woman a little scary, she had also been fun. Nora liked the idea of having a little group of friends she could go out with. She hadn’t since her undergrad.

She realized pretty quickly that she had no idea what to wear. The bar was kind of a hipster-brewery deal which meant she didn’t have to be fancy, but if she wasn’t trendy in some way she’d stick out like a sore thumb. She wondered vaguely what Natasha would wear if she came, and then decided she just didn’t have the mental fortitude to compete with whatever it was.

Instead, she left work a little early on Wednesday and went to a boutique a few blocks from her apartment. She hemmed and hawed for a while and decided on a short skirt that covered enough of her legs and was tight enough it wouldn’t expose her in a breeze. She shoved it, a pair of platform sandals, a long sleeve shirt, and her makeup bag into a tote and hauled it all to work with her Friday. She left Luna at home with instructions for her fifteen-year-old neighbour to walk her twice.

It took her almost twenty minutes to get on the elevator to the lab. She wondered vaguely, if she texted Sam, if someone would come rescue her from the elevator before she passed out if it stopped. It didn’t stop, and she remembered in the hallway like she always did, that people didn’t just die from being in a small space.

Bruce glanced at her when she walked into the lab, “Alright Nora?”

“Yep.” She dropped her bag under her table, “I’m going out after work so I didn’t bring Luna and I had a fight with the elevator.” He made a sympathetic noise, “I brought brownies to make up for being late though,” She dug the tub out of her bag and held it aloft. Bruce grinned.

They made it halfway through the day, before their numbers went to shit. They had been getting extremely interesting readings from the new Coolidge Machine, which let them run their Radiation experiment, which also got interesting results, which they ran through several more Galler calculations, and then they needed more Coolidge readings, and all of a sudden the machine decided that once again it lived in a solar system with more than one sun.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Nora grouched, whacking it several times with the flat of her palm as though that would reset it somehow, “Bruce, this tower’s haunted.”

“Ghost’s don’t exist Nora,” He asserted, but he was looking at the readouts with distaste.

“It was working fine like ten minutes ago,” she gestured at it wildly, “Why does it keep thinking we have two suns?”

Bruce frowned at the readouts, then the machine. He squinted, “That’s a good question.”

Nora blinked, then she squinted at the machine too, “You don’t think,” she trailed off.

Bruce hummed, “Tony’s in Malibu. We’ll have to wait until he’s back to see.”

“Damn,” Nora replied. She wandered off to finish running her Galler calculations in the meantime and hoped that Stark wasn’t planning to be too much longer. She really wanted to know if there was a reason for the machine to be acting crazy. It wouldn’t help them finish their work, but it would be very interesting if there was.

At four she helped Bruce click off all the machines they’d used that day and then wandered down the hall to meet Jane and Darcy.

“Hey,” Darcy called, waving her mug wildly, “How was work?”

“Our machine’s possessed again. I’m pretty sure the tower’s haunted.”

Jane made a weird noise from her spot at a whiteboard, “Do you think there’s a reason for the machine to be acting crazy?”

“Yeah. Ghosts.” Jane shot her a look over her shoulder, “Okay fine. Yes, I do, but we can’t test it until Stark gets back from Malibu. You forgot a cosine.” The scientist snapped her fingers and started scribbling on the board again, “What time are we leaving?” She asked Darcy.

“Six,” Darcy answered, “Wanda’s coming, dunno about Nat.” She took a drink from her mug.

“Cool. Can I change at your place?”

“Yeah.” She set the mug down on top of a stack of papers, which leant dangerously atop a radioscope, and stood up, “Come meet us when you’re done Jane.”

Jane waved a hand absently as Nora and Darcy filed towards the door. Nora managed to only hesitate a little on the ride up to Darcy’s. She lived on the same floor as Jane and Thor, but in a smaller apartment. Hers was a one bedroom. She had filled it with stuff, books and rugs and knick-knacks. She had an impressive record collection, and let Nora pick one to spin while they got ready.

Darcy dressed in a swishy sort of long black skirt and a red top. She braided her hair elaborately. Nora curled hers.

“This is already fun; I never dress up.” Nora remarked as they each did their makeup in different mirrors in the bedroom.

“Me neither.” Darcy sketched out an elaborate wing on her eye, “I feel like we barely leave the tower.”

Jane turned up after they were ready and wasn’t ready at all. She scrambled to change into a pair of black trousers and a blue knit top and then Darcy helped do her makeup while Nora fixed her hair. Wanda met them at almost exactly six, and they all took the elevator to the lobby. Nora was glad she didn’t have to come back to the tower at the end of the night.

The little hipster-brewery was cute. It had a rooftop patio with big wooden picnic tables. They mostly served beer, but Nora got cider. She felt pretty strongly that beer was gross. She spent fifteen minutes at the bar inside getting flirted with by a man in a plaid shirt, before he asked for her number. She gave it to him and only felt a little bad about landing a date while she was out with her friends.

Darcy told them all about the date she went on with the security guy, who it turned out was nice but not at all interesting. Nora had an excellent time.

Sometimes on weekends, Steve tried to assert that they should sleep in.

Instead of waking up at the crack of dawn to go to the gym, Steve thought that they should act like ordinary people and sleep in, then lounge around.

Bucky thought sleeping in sounded pretty good, except that he could barely manage to sleep in the first place. Every night he lay in bed, or on the couch, or sometimes the floor, and slept in fits and starts. Sometimes, if things were really good, or he was really exhausted, he managed a few continuous hours. Usually, he slept in clusters of thirty minutes, scattered at random between midnight and five. He was sure that if he was anyone else, he would have made himself sick. As it was, he didn’t tend to feel very good.

So, when Steve suggested they sleep in, Bucky just pretended to sleep for a little longer. He lay in his bed, and stared at the ceiling, and tried not to think about the last time he’d seen Nora.

He didn’t do a very good job.

It was nicer than remembering his nightmares, but it still left him feeling vaguely sick and he couldn’t quite put his finger on why. It had been nice, he thought. The elevator ride to the lobby. She had smiled at him. Invited him to go for a walk. So why did his stomach twist when he remembered it?

Maybe because he hadn’t gone. Every day he sat on his couch, or in the lounge, or on the balcony, and watched the clock roll over from eleven, to twelve, to one. Disappointment soured in his gut as he missed his chance each day, and still he couldn’t bring himself to move his feet the next.

Bucky decided, suddenly, that he couldn’t lie in bed anymore. Instead, he yanked on a hoodie and made a break for the elevator and the lounge, hoping that Clint or Sam would be there to distract him. They weren’t, but Wanda and Natasha were.

He very briefly considered turning around. Natasha still made him anxious and ashamed, but Wanda was okay. She was softspoken with everybody, not just him. They both glanced at him as he made the decision to step off the elevator and approach them where they sat in the kitchen.

There was a platter of fruit and another of baked goods on the counter and Natasha waved him at it as she continued their conversation, “I thought Darcy hated beer.”

“She does,” Wanda answered, shooting Bucky a soft smile as he sat down a few chairs down from her, “She drank it all night anyways.”

Natasha hummed and sipped at her coffee, “Odd choice of venue for her. Why did she pick it?”

“She said she wanted to get a cute hipster’s number,” Bucky could sense the strangeness of the words in her mouth and knew she must be quoting Darcy, “She was a little jealous when Nora got one.”

It took Bucky a second. First there was the little zing of electricity that shot through his arm and across his chest. It did something strange with the lingering feeling in his stomach. Then he realized what the words Wanda was saying actually meant. Something hot and awful rolled through him. He wished he’d stayed in his bed, pretending to be asleep.

Wanda and Natasha both wandered off to the elevator, still discussing Wanda’s night, but he found it hard to listen. When he stood up to leave, he found the fork he’d picked up with his left hand had been crunched into a neat little ball.

He had been doing well, but the rest of the weekend was excruciating. He felt like he couldn’t focus. The strange hot something continued to roll through him. He didn’t recognize it, and he didn’t know how to get rid of it. He did have the overwhelming urge, on Monday, to run to the elevator. He stood frozen in his apartment instead.