Elevated

Tony really didn’t seem to know how to take the cookie. The two-dollar baked good, motivated purely by the fact that he wasn’t as awful as he could be, threw him for a complete loop. He shot her weird looks for days and didn’t erase anything off her whiteboard.

Nora couldn’t take it. She bought a series of Santa hats and reindeer antlers and put them on all his suits. He was outraged and went back to bothering her. She was strangely relieved. Bruce thought it was all pretty funny and was mostly back to normal.

Thor came to the lab looking extremely morose. Nora hadn’t seen him since she went and asked to borrow Odin’s rock. He apologized very seriously to her, Bruce, and then Tony. Nora suggested that he probably shouldn’t keep any more artifacts on his coffee table. Then she asked if he wanted to take Luna to the park and he perked up again. The two of them took off for the elevator.

“What’re your holiday plans Nora?” Bruce asked, while they waited for FRIDAY to compile several data sets into a more user-friendly spreadsheet. It was four days until Christmas, and Bruce insisted they take the whole holiday off, Christmas Eve to Boxing Day.

“This.” Nora answered. She spun her tablet pen and watched Tony pile spinach and green powder into a smoothie cup at the counter. She frowned. It looked disgusting.

“You don’t visit your dad?”

The pen flew from her hand and ricocheted off Dum-E to roll under a Camero. Nora and Bruce watched it go. Tony turned and muttered, “What the fuck?”

Nora clicked her tongue unhappily. She didn’t really want to crawl under the car to find it, “I do not.” Bruce was just looking at her, and he’d seen her decline calls from her dad, so she figured she ought to elaborate, “We do not get along.”

Tony snorted, “Even your family can’t manage it, huh Silver?”

“Yep. See, I keep a messy kitchen which he can’t stand, and he gambled away the inheritance that was supposed to get me through school in an illegal basement casino and still has the nerve to call and ask me for money.” It was a little mean of her. Tony dropped his smoothie cup in surprise and green powder shot up in a cloud to cover half the kitchenette.

He swore with venom. U rolled over, intent on cleaning it up, but likely to cause greater disaster. Nora watched the two with raised eyebrows. Bruce made an upset noise from the couch beside her. “It’s fine.” She waved a dismissive hand.

“That’s not fine, Nora.” Bruce said softly.

“Alright, it’s not fine. But I’m fine. I got myself through school and I don’t answer his calls anymore. So, to answer your original question, I will be spending my holiday eating pie and waiting patiently to come back and explore our data.” She lurched up from the couch and wandered over to the Camero. The pen had rolled almost fully under it to the other side. Nora rounded the car and only had to crawl a little to fish it out. When she stood up, Tony was squinting at her. “What?”

“What kind of pie?” He asked.

It was a weird question. She shrugged, “I dunno. Whatever I feel like making.”

“You make the pie?” He was really surveying her now. He looked pretty ridiculous covered in green whatever. U was ineffectively pushing around a rag.

“Yeah. I like to bake.”

Bruce nodded because he knew that, “She makes great brownies.”

Tony pointed at her the way he sometimes did when he was trying to fire her, but said instead, “You can come to team dinner if you make a pumpkin pie.”

Nora frowned at him, “Pumpkin pie is for Thanksgiving.”

“Pumpkin or you aren’t invited Silver.”

Nora was pretty sure he felt bad about his earlier jibe. It seemed like he was trying to make it up to her by being nice and didn’t quite know how. She tapped her pen on her leg, “Fine. What kind of pie do you like Bruce?”

Bruce lit up, “Strawberry rhubarb.”

The elevator swished open. Tony threw up his hands, “Seriously, what the fuck?”

“Hi Bucky.” Nora tossed the pen back towards her tablet on the couch and turned to gather up her coat from the suit in the Santa hat, “What kind of pie do you like?”

Bucky had a hand blocking the elevator from closing. Despite the fact that winter kept getting colder, he still wore the same leather jacket and seemed unbothered. He waited patiently for Nora to pull on her toque and mittens. He seemed confused about the pie question, if looking the exact same as usual indicated confusion. He shrugged.

Nora clicked her tongue, “I don’t think we have time to figure it out before Christmas.”

Bucky hadn’t known how to go about getting a phone.

He’d never had one before, and he didn’t know what was involved in setting it up. Sam would know, but he wasn’t fucking asking Sam. Steve might know. But if he didn’t, he’d want to ask Sam and Bucky wasn’t fucking asking Sam.

He asked Clint instead.

His reasoning was this: Clint had royally fucked up the whole team for three weeks, because he opened his mouth and aired Bucky’s business. He had been extremely sorry and said he had learned his lesson. Bucky figured if he asked Clint, he would keep his fucking mouth shut.

When he knocked on Clint’s apartment door, he’d answered and looked at Bucky like he was insane. That was fair. Bucky had never been to his apartment before. He was let in anyways.

Clints apartment was clean, but not tidy. There were pieces of trick-arrows all over the place. He also had two guitars and a banjo which Bucky thought was interesting. His furniture was all grey, but he had a very plush purple rug in the middle of the living room. He waited near a framed poster for a circus while Clint wandered off to put his hearing aids in.

“What’s up Bucky?” He asked when he came back. He looked wary, like he’d managed to mess something up again and didn’t know what it was.

“I need a phone.”

Clint frowned at him. He furrowed his eyebrows. He opened his mouth and shut it. He opened it again and shut it again. It seemed like he really wanted to ask a question, and then kept deciding better of it. “Is this because Sam keeps texting Nora?” He burst finally.

Bucky made a noise that could only be described as furious and Clint threw up his hands, “Fuck! Okay! I’m not going to say anything!” He sort of winced and continued, “They’re going to notice when you have a phone all of a sudden though.”

“It’s fine.” Bucky said, because it was. His plan was to get his hands on a phone and find out if it meant Nora would text him. If she didn’t, he’d throw it off the tower roof and nobody would have to know he tried. If she did- He didn’t want to think about it too hard, but he didn’t think he’d mind Sam giving him shit about the phone.

So, the next day Clint found him in his own apartment and handed him a phone. He gave Bucky an appraising look and said, “You know how to use that thing?”

Bucky made another annoyed sound, and Clint fucked off. He did know how to use the phone. That had never been the issue. When he met Nora at Tony’s lab, the issue quickly became that he didn’t know how to tell her he had it.

She quizzed him briefly about pie flavours and he had no answers. She asked him about Christmas and he shrugged because he didn’t really care about the holiday, and didn’t think he had any plans. He listened to her explain about Tony apparently losing his mind over a chocolate chip cookie. The entire time, the little brick burned a hole in his pocket. Nora didn’t have Luna today. He wasn’t sure why and he missed her because he liked the little dog, but he also missed her because the street was crowded, and he had the phone but no idea how to tell Nora, and the thing in his chest was sharpening its claws against his ribcage. For the first time in a long time, he wasn’t sure he was going to make it to the coffee shop.

“Bucky?” Nora stopped walking. It was an insane thing to do on a New York sidewalk, he nudged her elbow to steer her out of the walking traffic of the sidewalk and towards an alcove in the face of a nearby building. She looked at him the whole time and frowned when they were tucked away out of the crowd.

He wasn’t sure what she was seeing. Steve and Sam and Natasha could all tell when he was slipping. They knew it from the dangerous set of his posture. He didn’t want Nora to see that.

“Do you want to go back?”

He really didn’t. Not because he wanted a drink, but because he wanted to be able to go somewhere with her. And because turning around meant that she would go back to the lab and he wouldn’t see her anymore. Maybe not for days with the holiday creeping up. He shook his head. Nora tilted her head and studied his face. He was sure she was seeing whatever the dangerous thing was. He was sure she would make them turn around anyways.

“Would it help if I hold onto you?”

It was a bit like getting knocked off a building. His stomach lurched. The air slipped out of his lungs and he didn’t know if he was going to get it back. Static leapt across his chest and down his arm. Nora continued, totally unaware that he was spinning apart.

“I’ve seen Steve hold your shoulder when you’re nervous.” Nora took a step closer and looped her arm around his, curling her hand around his bicep. She held his right arm and he could feel the gentle pressure of it. He wanted to know, badly, if her hand was warm, “Better?”

He nodded. He’d forgotten all about the crowd. He thought maybe, with her hand on his arm, he could go anywhere. He felt grounded even as his mind continued to spin. With her arm wrapped around him her whole body was close when they started back down the street. Pressed against his side and leaving sparks everywhere she touched. She didn’t let go, even when they got to the coffee shop. He went in with her and she ordered for him because suddenly he couldn’t remember what he had wanted when they left the tower.

He made a frustrated noise when they got back outside because he was supposed to walk on the outside of the sidewalk, but he didn’t want her to let go.

Nora laughed, “You’re so old fashioned,” she took her arm back and he felt the loss in his bones, but then she slipped around to his other side and looped her hand around his metal arm instead, “Okay?”

It wasn’t. It wasn’t nearly as good. He could feel a sort of pressure through the plates, but it was dull. He wanted her to touch him where he could feel it properly. He nodded anyways because he didn’t feel like he would crumble anymore. They made it all the way to the tower before he remembered the phone in his pocket.

He fished it out in the elevator when she let go of his arm. He didn’t know how to say what he wanted, but it didn’t matter. The second it was out of his pocket Nora said, “Bucky! You got a phone!” He held it out and she took it. She tapped the screen rapidly and gasped, “I’m your first contact?” She grinned wildly, “I’m texting myself by the way so I have your number too.”

She passed him back the phone and he looked down at her name in the contact list. He supposed he could ask Steve and Sam for their phone numbers, but he found he didn’t much care if he had them or not. He shoved it in his pocket as the elevator opened and Nora stepped off into the lab, still smiling. The warmth of it spread through his whole body.