Elevated

“Silver,” Tony asked her very seriously on Friday, “Why the fuck does Encino Man keep coming up here?”

Bruce looked up from the Coolidge machine, “I think Encino Man fits Steve better.”

“You’ve seen Encino Man?” Tony asked, stunned. Bruce wasn’t particularly into movies and Tony’s jokes tended to go right by him.

Nora spun her tablet pen. There had been a new one sitting with her stuff the day after hers was eaten by the machining station. She shuddered to think that Tony might have purchased it for her. It was a good thing they’d be back in their own lab on the ninetieth floor on Monday. She couldn’t stand the idea of him being nice to her just because he’d seen her have a breakdown.

Nora had hit the button for the lab, positive that Bruce and Luna would still be there, after the very short coffee run she’d had with her father. Unfortunately, then she had burst into tears so when the doors opened, she’d been sobbing into Bucky’s coat. Bruce had stuck around to hug her after she finished, but Tony had hightailed it for the stairs the second he’d seen her.

She felt a flush creep up her neck. She felt extraordinarily embarrassed still, for sobbing all over Bucky. He didn’t seem to mind when she touched him, and he often steered her by the elbow when they were out, but she was positive that it had been a bit much. He hadn’t come for coffee after, and she’d gotten her phone out once to text him but put it away again.

Darcy had invited her out for drinks after work and she was really looking forward to it. She had sorrows to drown.

“Silver!” Tony barked.

The pen in her hand flipped away, bouncing off the end of the couch and rolling towards the kitchenette. The three of them watched it go.

“Could you keep a handle on that pen?” Tony snapped, “Your lack of dexterity is going to bankrupt me.”

Nora let out a hard puff of breath, “Says the man replacing an eight-million-dollar particle splitter he never uses.” She pushed up off the couch and went to find the pen. When she pulled it out from beside the recycling bin, it was covered in green dust from Tony’s accident a couple weeks before. She frowned and wiped it on a nearby rag.

Tony thumped a hand on his desk, “Are you going to answer my question or not?”

“Which one, I wasn’t listening?”

“Fucking Robocop!” Tony gestured wildly with a hand, “Why is he always here?”

“Oh.” Nora answered. She scooped up her tablet from the couch and shoved it into her tote bag, “Yeah I don’t think I will answer that one.” She swung the bag over her shoulder and grabbed her coat. She could stash her tablet in Jane’s lab for Monday, and never have to set foot on Tony’s floor again.

“Bucky and Nora are friends.” Bruce supplied easily from his spot at a worktable.

“I’m sorry?” Tony bit as Nora started towards the elevator, “Robots don’t have friends.”

“Careful Tony,” Nora called back as the door slid open ahead of her, “Your children will hear you.”

“Aha!” He shouted back, leaping to his feet and upsetting a handful of delicate pieces of hardware, “You said Tony!”

Shoot, Nora thought as the doors slid shut, she hadn’t meant to let him know she liked him.

She took the elevator down to Jane’s lab and was surprised to find it already empty. She put her tablet in a rarely used corner where it would hopefully be safe from coffee-related accidents until Monday. It was supposed to be a weekend but that didn’t tend to stop Jane when she had a good idea. Then she took the elevator back up to Darcy’s apartment. She didn’t bother knocking because she knew Darcy was expecting her.

“Nora!” Jane and Darcy cried together from the couch. They were both already out of their lab clothes, Jane into a navy jumpsuit and Darcy a short black dress.

“Hey. Am I late?” Nora dumped her own bag on a chair in the dining room and started to rifle through it for her makeup bag.

“No,” Darcy supplied, “We hit a snag.”

“What kind of snag?”

Jane made an embarrassed noise. Over her, Darcy said loudly, “Jane misread some of our data from Nevada and we went in completely the wrong direction.”

Nora made a sympathetic noise. She was intimately familiar with the disappointment of science gone wrong. Odin’s stupid rock had run them in circles for weeks. She was still bitter and more than a little glad it had exploded itself so she didn’t have to deal with it anymore.

Even knowing she wasn’t actually late, Nora felt a little bad holding her friends up. She made short work of her makeup and managed to make both wings of her eyeliner match on the first try. Then she hit a snag with her hair (stupid ponytail bumps) and had to recruit Darcy to put it up instead. The woman did some elaborate small braids and pinned it all into a sort of half-up situation that Nora liked a lot, and knew she’d never be able to recreate. She changed into the shortish skirt she’d worn on their last outing. It was maybe a little much, she didn’t really plan on getting flirted with tonight, but it would be a shame for the skirts only outing to have resulted in a disappointing date.

When she was ready she started to pull on her coat, only for Darcy to loudly announce, “We aren’t going yet.”

Nora blinked at her, “I thought- why not?”

“We’re meeting Wanda and Nat downstairs first.”

“Oh,” Nora let her coat drop and slung it over her arm instead, “I didn’t realize they were coming.”

“Uh-huh,” Darcy was practically vibrating with excitement, “I figured that if we met up on ninety-five we could have a couple drinks of Tony’s good booze before we go.” She waggled her eyebrows and Jane laughed. Nora nodded along. She’d been to the lounge before (she still thought it was bizarre that they hung out there like some sort of dorm commons), and she’d had a drink in Tony’s penthouse that was ridiculously good. She didn’t know if that was because of the expensive alcohol, or if Tony was some sort of mixologist.

She let Darcy lead the way to the elevator, chatting the whole way about her latest date who she had initially met on the subway. He had been carrying a guitar which it turned out he didn’t play and was actually an elaborate set piece for landing dates. Nora thought the whole thing was ridiculous, but Darcy seemed to think it was funny.

They stepped off onto the ninety-fifth floor and were immediately subject to a booming greeting from Thor. Nora ducked out of his way as he swooped in to kiss Jane and dumped her coat on the back of the couch, “Hi Clint.”

“Hey Nora,” Clint answered, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was instead looking at Darcy, who had beelined directly for the bar and was inspecting the contents with interest.

“How’s it going?” Nora asked.

“Fine,” he answered. His eyes remained glued to Darcy, even as she turned to start pouring something into a shaker.

Nora raised her eyebrows, “Hey Clint?”

“Yeah?”

Nora took two steps closer and brought her elbows to rest on the back of the couch. She leant forward so that she could mutter in his ear, “You’re staring.”

Clint started, shooting her an extremely nervous look before sitting up straight, “I didn’t- I wasn’t- just-“

“Mhm.” Nora was pretty sure she knew why Clint had been trying to invite her to the diner, and she thought it had very little to do with her presence at all. Darcy, as far as she knew, took very little notice of Clint. She mentioned him occasionally in passing but seemed to harbor some sort of grudge. Clint, from the expression on his face, was head over heels for Darcy. Nora raised her eyebrows at him. He shut his mouth firmly, a distinct red tinge climbing up his neck.

“Nat! Wanda!” Darcy chirped from the bar, “I made apple pies!”

Nora pushed off the back of the couch. The two women stepped off the elevator together, dodging around where Jane and Thor were still locked in some kind of embrace, the latter whispering in the former’s ear. Wanda smiled and Natasha did something that had the appearance of a smile but lacked a little of the intention, “Hi Nora,” Wanda greeted, waving.

Nora shot Clint one last appraising look that he ducked his head to avoid, and wandered to meet her friends at the bar, “Hi Natasha. Hi Wanda, how’s it going?”

“Good,” Wanda answered. Natasha nodded a hello beside her. “I heard your dad came to visit?”

“Oh boy,” Nora muttered, “Can I have two of those Darcy?”

There was a round of raised eyebrows directed at Nora. Darcy poured and distributed shots around the bar, shouting as she did for Jane, then adding, “Rough week, Nora?”

“Yeah,” Nora answered easily, “I cut off my dad and then sobbed all over Bucky.”

Bucky knew what he expected to see in the lounge when he and Steve got off the elevator. He expected that Clint and Sam might be playing a video game on the couch. He expected that Thor might be watching a movie. He expected that Natasha might be there, sitting off to one side, reading a book.

He did not expect to have the breath knocked out of him.

It wasn’t the skirt that did it, he was sure of it. The skirt, on its own, was nothing special. It was black, shortish and tightish but not extreme in either aspect. Bucky was sure he had seen similar skirts while he was out of the tower in the past week, and they had no effect on him at all.

It was something about Nora in the skirt.

He made it half a pace off the elevator and stopped dead. Steve crashed into his back and they both stumbled two paces further into the lounge. Steve opened his mouth to say, “Buck, what-“ and Bucky threw out a hand to whack him in the chest. The question died in the air.

Natasha turned to glance at them, one perfect eyebrow raised. Ordinarily, that might make Bucky nervous. He had an automatic reaction to Natasha that put him on edge and he didn’t like when she took too much notice of him. Ordinarily, his entire brain was not devoted to tearing his gaze from the relatively conservative hem of Nora’s skirt. Steve slapped a hand to Bucky’s shoulder and shoved him. He stumbled a few paces further into the lounge, turning to shoot Steve an acidic look.

“Hey everyone,” Steve greeted loudly, looking Bucky dead in the eyes. Bucky frowned deeply at him.

“Hi Steve, hi Bucky.” Bucky thought that Jane, Darcy and Wanda probably also said hello. They also were probably wearing clothing of some kind. He didn’t notice. He looked at Nora, “What are you guys up to?”

Bucky had really thought that he was going to be able to speak to her. He’d been trying, practicing with Sam and Steve and Clint, to say more than two words at a time. Looking at her in the lounge with her hair pinned up and the fucking skirt he thought he’d be lucky to say a single word. He was pretty sure whatever he tried to say would come out sounding like; You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met.

“Thor wanted to watch a movie.” Steve answered. He started towards the couch and elbowed Bucky in the spine on his way by, “Where are you all going?”

“Plato’s.” Darcy chirped, grinning, “Nora said she’s done with hipsters so we’re gonna try to land some stockbrokers instead.”

Bucky recognized it easily this time. The hot, awful wave that rolled through his body and left him feeling sick. Fucking jealousy. Jealousy that Nora was off to some bar where men that were not himself would get to see her. Jealousy that Nora might flirt with them or might not. Jealousy that again, twelve or so hours from now, Bucky might be listening to Wanda talk about how Nora gave someone her phone number. He looked at Nora, but she was looking somewhere over his shoulder, a soft frown on her face.

He didn’t want her to go. He wanted to go with her.

Instead, he stayed rooted to the spot. An immovable object in the living room as Jane announced they had to go, and Wanda and Nat moved to the elevator. He watched Darcy bounce off from behind the bar as she, weirdly, grinned at him. He watched Nora grab her coat from the back of the couch and pull it on, then turn to follow her friends.

“Bye Bucky.”

He reached out and snagged her elbow, gently, in his right hand. There was a warm tinge to her cheeks and she studied his face like she always did. He wondered what she saw. He didn’t think he could manage the whole thing but, “You look beautiful.”