Elevated

On Friday, they made plans to have margaritas at Jane’s. They hadn’t in a while and Nora really felt like she needed to unwind.

She loved the lab, and working with Bruce, but they were back to getting frustrating, garbage results. It left her annoyed and a little bit sad. Then there was the thing with Bucky.

He had come into the lab and she’d known immediately he was upset. Partly because it was several hours too early for their usual trip to the coffee shop, and partly because he was dressed for the gym and still sweating. He hadn’t told her why he was upset. She hadn’t really expected him to, but she still would’ve liked to know. Instead, he’d asked if his hand was cold.

It was a little cool. It was, after all, made of metal. She just didn’t really understand why he was asking. He stayed for a minute, then took his hand back and left. The whole episode had stuck with her because it was so intensely strange. But he’d come back at noon and the two of them, without Luna, went to the Spruce. She’d asked him the way she always did if he knew what he wanted, and for the first time he did. She felt better knowing that even though he knew what he wanted, he still wanted to go get it with her.

It wasn’t until she was lying in bed that night, that the image of him in a very tight, very sweaty t-shirt came back to her. She tried to banish it from her brain. It didn’t work. She really needed a margarita.

“Nora!” Thor boomed when he opened the door.

“Hi Thor, how’s it going?”

“Very well. We did battle with large robots. Of course, we were victorious.” He smiled broadly and gestured her into the apartment.

Nora never really heard about the team’s missions and she didn’t make a habit of watching the news. She did occasionally have messages relayed by FRIDAY when she got to the lab that Bruce was otherwise occupied and wouldn’t be in. She assumed that meant superhero business and that it wasn’t any of hers.

“That sounds cool. Is everybody alright?”

“Quite well,” Thor answered letting the door fall shut behind her, “Clint destroyed three with one arrow. It was truly impressive.”

Nora was still a little sour at Clint for telling tales, but that was pretty impressive, so she nodded while she dumped her coat and purse on one of the tall island stools. A thought occurred to her, “Did Bucky go?” She felt like kicking herself for the question, but Thor didn’t mind answering her questions.

“Indeed.” Thor nodded, “His skill with weaponry is a sight to behold.”

Nora didn’t really know what that meant and she wasn’t sure how to feel about it. She nodded for lack of anything to say. The door swung open and Jane and Darcy tumbled in.

“Sorry!” Jane said, already crossing to plant one on Thor.

“Jane knocked over my coffee cup while we were shutting down and ruined the spectrometer.” Darcy supplied.

“Uh-oh,” Nora thought the event was probably at least half Darcy’s fault for leaving the coffee on top of the spectrometer but she didn’t say so, “Think Stark’ll replace it?”

Darcy shrugged, already rooting through the cupboard for the blender, “I’ll just steal one from R&D tomorrow.”

Jane had wandered down the hall to change out of her coffee-soaked sweater and shouted back, “Who are those guys you don’t like again?”

“Oh, Shmidt and Fowler. Definitely steal one from them. They’re the third office on the left.”

Darcy nodded seriously and Nora knew she would. She dumped ice in the blender and followed it with tequila. Thor hovered somewhere at the edge of the kitchen. Nora glanced over her shoulder and he fidgeted, “What’s up Thor?” She wondered if maybe he took issue with Darcy indiscriminately stealing lab equipment.

“May I join you?” He asked tentatively instead.

Nora wasn’t really sure why he couldn’t, he did fairly often when he was around, but Jane came bouncing back down the hall in a hoodie and answered, “Sorry Thor, not tonight.”

“Ah,” He looked bummed but managed to shake it off and grinned, “I see there is to be girl talk. I shall remove myself. Farewell Nora and Darcy.” And then he was off, pausing to loudly greet Wanda and hold the door for her, before disappearing towards the elevator.

“Hi Wanda.”

“Hi, how are you?”

Nora shrugged, “Okay. The lab’s still cursed.” She squinted at the woman, “Hey, you’re a witch, right?”

Wanda shook her head, grinning, and said over the sudden noise of the blender, “Not really.”

“Dang.” Nora muttered, “Did you go to the thing with the robots?”

She nodded, starting loud and then dropping her voice as the blender cut off, “Yes. It was a mess. Everybody was fighting.”

“Well, duh?” Darcy said, pouring drinks into the glasses Jane had salted.

“No, I mean each other.” She went to sit on the couch and Nora followed, accepting two full glasses from Darcy and delivering one to Wanda before sitting down on the other end, “Sam and Steve have been fighting for weeks and now it seems like Bucky’s mad at both of them.” She sipped her drink and hummed, “Clint wouldn’t say a word the whole day. Usually, he can break the tension but he told Natasha he’d learned his lesson and that was it.”

“What does that mean?” Jane asked, taking up a spot on the rug beside the coffee table and then muttering, “I really wish Thor wouldn’t leave his weird rocks here.” The artifact from their first margarita night was still sitting where the Norseman had left it. Jane eyed it as though the apartment wasn’t also filled with half-disassembled equipment of hers.

Wanda shrugged in answer, “I’m not sure. He must’ve set off the rest of them somehow.”

Nora wondered if their fight had something to do with the way Bucky had turned up in the lab and frowned as she sipped her own drink.

“Speaking of superheroes,” Darcy said, flopping into an armchair, “What’s going on with you and Bucky?”

Nora choked on margarita. The other three women looked at her, “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Darcy said loftily, “That you go out for lunch three times a week.”

Jane’s jaw dropped, “No!”

Darcy shot her a frustrated look, “Jane, he walks by the lab every time, how have you not noticed?” She scanned Nora’s face intently, “So?”

“We go for coffee.” Nora muttered into her drink, feeling suddenly embarrassed and not sure why.

Wanda looked interested, “Really?”

Nora didn’t really know what to make of her tone, “Yeah, why’s that weird?”

Wanda shrugged an answer and said mildly, “He doesn’t really go out.”

“No,” Darcy said loudly, “He never goes out. And he hates people. He’s literally never said a word to me.” She leant a little towards Nora, “What do you talk about?”

“I dunno,” Nora answered, feeling defensive, “Stuff? The lab? Movies? He’s quiet but that’s fine.”

“Do you like him?” Darcy prompted.

“Well yeah, why else would I go?” They stared at each other. Nora understood a beat late, what Darcy was asking. She felt her face go hot, “I mean- No- Just-“ She made a frustrated noise.

Darcy looked smug.

Nora spent the entire next day staring at the Coolidge machine and trying to forget about Darcy and her questions.

It really was ruining their lives. Not being able to get their work done was driving her and Bruce crazy, but not being able to fix it was killing Stark. Nora tapped her foot. She spun her pen. She thought really hard. Then, suddenly, she had it. She knew exactly what the problem was.

She ran to find Thor, Luna hot on her heels.

The air in the lounge was horrifically awkward. It had been for days.

Sam and Steve still weren’t really talking to each other, and Bucky wasn’t really inclined to speak to either of them. Clint was acutely aware that he kept putting his foot in his mouth and refused to say much of anything. Tony was spitting mad about all of it.

“-complete clusterfuck, somebody better start talking.”

Nobody did.

“For fuck’s sake Cap, aren’t you supposed to be leading this outfit? Fucking lead!” He gestured wildly towards the group at large. As far as Bucky knew, Tony didn’t really like that Steve was in charge, so he must’ve been pretty desperate to try that card.

Steve shuffled his feet. He glanced at Sam at the kitchen island, then Bucky on the couch. The awkwardness stretched.

“Help me out here Barton!”

Clint answered immediately and with venom, “No fucking way.”

Tony opened his mouth to shout some more and was cut off when the light in the ceiling tinged green and FRIDAY began relaying an emergency message. In most cases, Bucky knew, green was good. It meant things were okay. In the tower, green was not good. Green was especially not good in the afternoon. When Bruce was in the lab. With Nora.

The panic was instant. It shot though him like a lightning bolt, setting every nerve on fire. It was like it had been in the lab when Tony had snapped at her, magnified a hundred-fold. He needed to be where she was, and he needed to do it now.

Tony shouted for FRIDAY to give him eyes on the lab and she replied that there were none. Bucky was dimly aware of just how horrible that meant things were. Together they hurtled for the elevator, Tony overriding FRIDAY’s lockdown and sending them towards the lab. Bucky thought Steve was trying to tell him something but he couldn’t grasp the words. The doors slid open. The hallway looked the same, he thought, but it wasn’t. It was all wrong.

He slammed into the vault door, the edge of the metal buckling under his hand.

“Tony!”

“-can’t get in until the Code Green-“

He slammed his fist into the door again, which screeched and bent but didn’t move, “Fucking open it!”

“Bucky,” Steve locked an arm around him and pulled, hauling him backwards away from the door.

For a horrible second Bucky was sure he was going to hit Steve. He was going to hit Steve, and then he was going to peel the door open, because Nora didn’t like closed spaces and he needed to get her out.

But he couldn’t get her out of a Hulk proof lab. The thing in his chest was killing him. It was shredding his heart and his lungs and tearing its way out of his throat. It was ripping him apart, slowly, as the seconds ticked by. One awful piece at a time. He needed in the door. He needed to know she was okay. The thing grew. What if she wasn’t?

There was a whoosh, and the door opened.

Bucky did hit Steve then, shoved him hard and was through the door in the same second. The lab was ruined. The tables and screens and equipment shattered in pieces across the room. He could see Bruce, slumped in a corner. His feet slid on the rubble and he hit the edge of a table-

“Hi Bucky.”

She was sitting against one of the servers, her legs stretched out in front of her. Her clothes were covered in dirt. There was blood on her face, but she was looking at him, an odd kind of expression on her face that wasn’t a smile but was trying to be.

“Nora,” A little of the panic ebbed, slipping to the edge of his mind. He crossed the lab in a few quick steps and dropped to his knees beside her, reaching to touch her face and examine the gash that split her forehead.

“We broke the lab,” she muttered, “Thank god I left Luna with Thor.” And then huge tears started to roll down her cheeks.

Bucky made an upset noise and wrapped his arm around her. She let him, burying her face in his chest.

“Bucky,” He spared a glance at Sam who continued firmly, “She’s gotta go to medical.”

Right, Bucky thought, that was a good idea. He hooked his left arm under her knees and lifted her easily. She huffed in surprise against him and gripped a handful of his shirt, “I can walk,” she mumbled.

“No.” Bucky answered. He thought she probably couldn’t, but he also didn’t want to let her go. He thought she wouldn’t really mind, and she didn’t seem to. She let him carry her back through the ruin of the lab to the elevator. Clint and Sam followed but he didn’t pay them any attention.

He remembered when the door opened on the eightieth floor, that he was fucking terrified of the medical floor. The labs were bad. Medical was a nightmare. He thought he might feel the same way about hospitals and doctors in white coats as Nora did about elevators.

“Bucky, give her to me.” Clint said. He stepped forward and put a hand on Nora’s back.

He made a noise because he didn’t think that was fucking likely, but Sam took a fistful of his hoodie and said firmly, “Buck you gotta let her go.” Bucky understood that as much as he didn’t want to, he wasn’t capable of letting a stranger touch her. He was sure he would lose it, and her forehead was still bleeding. He let Clint take her, even as the pain in his chest surged up again and Sam said, “We’ll wait right here, Clint’s got her.”

He pressed his back to the wall of the hallway beside the elevator and slid to the floor as he watched the two of them disappear through the swinging doors at the end of the hall. Sam slid down next to him and put a hand on his knee. It didn’t stop him from feeling like he was drowning.