Elevated

Nora’s dad called twice more over the holiday and she ignored it both times. She really just didn’t have the energy for that.

She had gone home after midnight on Christmas and spent the whole cab ride trying to examine the feeling in her chest. She kept examining it while she brushed her teeth and got ready for bed. Then when she woke up, ate breakfast, and walked Luna.

Nora was pretty good at recognizing how she felt about things. She was also pretty good at communicating her feelings to other people. She hated being misunderstood and the fact that it had happened so often since taking the job on the ninetieth floor really drove her crazy. As a general rule, she liked to get everything out in the open and see where it settled.

This was different.

She had been forced to acknowledge to herself, after Darcy’s questioning, that she might have a small, tiny, really just miniscule crush on Bucky. The man was some sort of superhero and he was built like it. The two times she’d seen him in a t-shirt after a workout stuck with her in a way that was both frustrating and a little indecent. That wasn’t to mention his cool blue eyes and the way that he just looked at her.

After a few dozen trips to the Spruce and an hour spent sitting in his kitchen, she had realized that he wasn’t just stupid beautiful. He was sweet. He liked science and adventure stories. He had old-fashioned manners and protected her from little things like bikers and big things like exploded laboratories. She was again being forced to acknowledge that her crush was maybe not so small, tiny or miniscule. One might instead describe it as huge, massive, or gargantuan. Hulk sized. Tony Stark ego sized. Really why else would a person spend a whole day baking eight different pies?

The only place to process the information correctly was the floor of her living room. She lay on her very plush rug and let the warmth of her gas fireplace wash over her. Luna seemed to get that she was spiraling and stretched against her side. Nora stared at the ceiling and considered it, the way she often did the research she wasn’t allowed to take home.

If it was anyone else, she probably would have said something. Admitted it, out loud, and let the information do whatever it was going to do. It would be excruciating, probably, but then she could move forward with her life regardless of the outcome. Except it wasn’t anyone else. It was Bucky.

The problem was twofold.

Her ability to read Bucky was nearly non-existent. She could tell when he was uncomfortable because he straightened up an extra inch or so to his full height. It was a really small difference, he was huge anyways, but she had spent enough time standing right beside him to notice. She could tell when he was annoyed because he made kind of a growly noise or scowled. She could infer when he didn’t understand a question because he didn’t answer it. If he didn’t know how to answer it, or didn’t want to, he would shrug instead.

Besides that, she only knew exactly what he told her. She got information in pieces from his yes or no answers, and sentence long stories. She knew exactly what kind of coffee he liked because they ranked it. She knew the same about pie (lemon meringue). She knew he liked when she talked about the lab because he’d said as much.

She was sure that he liked her, because if he didn’t he definitely would have quit coming by the lab. She just couldn’t really tell how much. He listened to her, he’d saved her from an elevator, visited her in Medical, and he let her hold his arm when he was stressed.

He hadn’t hugged her back.

It wouldn’t have been a big deal to tell him and find out he didn’t like her the same way (It would, she would be crushed), but she didn’t want him to feel awkward. She’d come to understand that he didn’t have a lot of friends. What Darcy, Jane and Wanda had told her was all correct. He didn’t really like people, he didn’t talk much, and he didn’t tend to leave the tower.

He liked her. Talked a little. Left the tower with her a few times a week. It was enough to know that he must consider her a friend and enough that she didn’t want to ruin it.

She stared at the ceiling some more. If she was trying to calculate gravitational forces for the multi-solar system the Coolidge machine had been telling them they lived in, it would have given her less trouble. Because at the end of the day, there were only two options. She could tell him and risk the horrific awkward fallout that might follow. Or she could not tell him and carry on pretending that she had made eight pies because she wanted everyone to have their favourite for Christmas.

She didn’t like either option.

Bucky had slept.

Really well.

Almost three hours in a row.

He never got three hours in a row. Sure, he’d woken from a nightmare then and spent twenty minutes sweating and trying to remember that he was in his apartment and not a squat in Berlin, but he had done it. He even managed to go back to sleep once he knew where he was and get another hour. The headache from the two days without still lingered, but he didn’t feel like complete shit anymore.

It was like standing at the kitchen counter with Nora and watching her take bites of pie from the same plate had stomped all the memories down where they couldn’t reach him. He thought instead about her red lips and the line of her skirt.

The phone in his pocket vibrated and he was still distracted enough about the skirt that he pulled it out.

“What is that?”

Fuck.

Bucky turned slowly from where he sat at the kitchen island with a slice of Nora’s leftover lemon meringue that had made its way to the lounge, to survey Sam where he sat on the couch elbow-to-elbow with Clint. The two men were playing some sort of video game that Bucky vaguely recognized because they played it often but had never tried. Sam was wearing a shit-eating grin that was somehow wider than usual. Clint was pointedly not looking but had a kind of tense, pinched look about him like he was expecting disaster. Steve had looked up from his book and was shooting a bewildered glance from Sam’s face to Bucky’s phone.

“Since when do you have a phone?” Sam crowed. He threw down the controller and Clint made a panicked sort of noise that indicated they were about to lose because of it. Steve put his book down.

Bucky shrugged and turned back towards both the pie and the phone. He hoped Sam would leave him alone, even as he knew there was no way in hell.

“Who’s texting you?” He jumped the back of the couch and strode towards Bucky.

He really would like to read the text from Nora but instead he put the phone face-down on the island and covered it with his metal hand. Whatever she had sent him, he’d be damned if Sam got to see it. He took a bite of his pie.

Sam practically vibrated at his elbow, “Is it Nora?”

“Sam,” Steve called from his chair, “Leave him alone,” but he sounded sort of pleased and it lacked the required firmness to get Sam to do anything.

“Did you get a phone just to text Nora?”

“No.” Bucky answered. Because that was true. He’d gotten a phone so she could text him. It had worked too, she did text him. It didn’t really help his ability to respond, it turned out that he had just as much trouble typing words as saying them, but she didn’t seem to care. She texted him anyways. The day before she had sent him a short novel on how Tony’s robots were chronically unhelpful and she could only contribute his never fixing them to the fact that he loved them like children. He liked reading it, hadn’t responded, and she’d texted him again later to ask if he liked chocolate. He’d responded yes to that one.

“So, is that not Nora?” Sam interrogated, “Should I text her and ask if she’s got your number?” Then there was Sam’s phone.

Bucky leveled a finger at him, “Fucking don’t.”

Sam put the phone away. He looked giddy. Bucky waited until he was safely back on the couch beside Clint before he flipped his phone to read the message.

Clint keeps asking if I want to go to that diner he likes and I can’t quite figure out why. If I say yes do you want to come?

Bucky shot a hard look over his shoulder at Clint. Why the fuck was Clint asking Nora to go to a diner? He knew they talked sometimes. She told him they ran into each other. She liked him and Bucky had appreciated that when Clint had taken her to medical because he couldn’t do it himself. Suddenly, he felt pretty fucking suspicious of Clint. Did he text Nora?

Bucky had wanted to go to the diner. Weeks ago, he had tried and couldn’t make it. He also found he would really like to go to a diner with Nora. He wasn’t quite sure why the fuck Clint had to be there, he wanted that less, but he typed his reply anyways.

yes