Elevated

“Why the fuck,” Nora jumped, the pen she’d been spinning sailed off into the servers and she spun her chair to look at Tony where he’d stalked into the lab, “Did FRIDAY just tell me I can’t have my own elevator footage because of you and Barnes?”

Bruce shot her an alarmed look from his desk.

The day had been going so well. She and Bruce had finished their paper. They’d sent it off that morning and then sat and enjoyed the feeling of accomplishment. Nora was positive that it was going to spur an entirely new category of research and they’d have dozens of ideas to pursue the second other scientists got their hands on it.

Nora blushed, remembering the lingering way Bucky kissed her every time they stepped in the elevator to go to the lobby, and took back every bad thought she’d ever had about FRIDAY. She really didn’t need Tony to see that.

Tony looked outraged at her embarrassed expression, “Are you dating the fucking Terminator?” He continued and then choked, “Have you been- In my elevator?”

Bruce’s eyebrows climbed his forehead and he opened his mouth like he was going to say something but didn’t.

Nora leveled a finger at Tony and said firmly, “You can’t ask me that. You’re my boss.”

“What the fuck’s been happening in my elevator?” He cried, distraught.

“Nothing- scandalous,” Nora muttered. It wasn’t. Or maybe it was. The way Bucky kissed her sometimes made her feel like she was starving but he’d yet to touch her in a way that could be considered impolite.

Tony’s distress shifted a little into confusion. Luna crossed the lab to press against his legs and he patted her as he continued to grill Nora, “I don’t- He doesn’t speak! How the hell?”

Nora frowned. She was pretty sure Tony was trying to ask how Bucky had asked her out. Clint had similarly attempted to grill her on the topic. She didn’t understand why everyone would be so confused, or how it was any of their business anyways, “Maybe not to you. Hey, if I ignore you, will you leave me alone too?”

Tony scowled, “You know he’s an assassin, right? Toppled governments? Killed dozens?” He said it with surprising venom.

Bruce flinched and set his mug down. He looked extremely uncomfortable.

“Yeah,” Nora scowled in return, “And Bruce crushes cars with his bare hands. And you made an evil superintelligence on purpose.” He opened his mouth but Nora cut him off, “What is your problem? Do you really think you all should be held responsible for shit you had no control over?”

He opened his mouth and closed it. Then again. Luna licked his hand and he flinched, then patted her ears. He turned around and stalked out of the lab. Nora watched him go. She spun her chair towards Bruce when the door whooshed shut, “What the hell was that?”

Bruce frowned, “They have a difficult relationship.”

“Oh crap,” Nora muttered, “Do I need to apologize?”

“I don’t know,” Bruce answered, “Maybe.”

Nora thought from the way he was still holding himself, as though he’d been tossed into a pit of snakes and any movement would have him liable to be bitten, that she probably should. She frowned at her desk instead.

They killed the rest of the day puttering around and calibrating equipment that probably didn’t need to be calibrated. Then they called it early. Nora rode the elevator up a few floors with Bruce, then asked FRIDAY if she could go see Tony. The AI gave her an affirmative and took her up the handful of remaining floors to the penthouse.

“Seriously, what the fuck?” Tony griped immediately from where he slouched against the couch cushions with a drink in his hand, “You don’t have penthouse access.”

Nora shrugged and shot a curious look around the room. It was mostly the same as the last time but a few of the paintings had been traded for what she was sure were even more expensive paintings. She hooked Luna’s leash on the suit near the elevator and signed for her to sit, “I just asked FRIDAY if she could drop me off.” Tony frowned deeply as she crossed the room and sat on the couch across from him, “I wanted to apologize. Bruce said you and Bucky have a complicated relationship,” Tony snorted into his glass, “I shouldn’t have been so snippy. It is not, however, any of your business.”

Tony surveyed her seriously, which he never did, “He’s dangerous.”

“Yes,” Nora answered, nodding, “And so are you, and so is Bruce, and Wanda, and Thor. Did nobody read my contract?” Tony frowned and she knew he hadn’t, “I understand that you’re concerned, but he didn’t hurt any of those people because he wanted to, and he’s not going to hurt me either.”

Tony didn’t usually have trouble finding words, but he made a strange growling noise and threw back his drink.

“Why’s that hard for you to believe? You didn’t have a problem when I told you the Hulk didn’t scare me. Isn’t it the same? Bruce doesn’t have any more control over him than Bucky did the-“ she didn’t finish. She didn’t want to name the person he’d been that had left him so hurt.

“Maybe,” Tony answered. He set down his glass on the coffee table with a click and stood, “Be careful, Nora.” Then he walked off to the staircase in the corner of the room and disappeared.

She watched him go. He’d never called her by her first name before. She didn’t understand the situation, but nobody seemed inclined to tell her about it and she knew it wasn’t up to her to solve. She got up and rounded the couch to grab Luna before calling the elevator. She took it two floors down to Darcy’s and knocked this time, even though she knew Darcy was expecting her. She was still feeling a little salty towards Sam for breaking up what had been rapidly becoming a very heated kiss and which she had yet to recreate.

Darcy threw the door open and her wide grin faltered when she saw the frown on Nora’s face, “Whoa, what’s up with you?”

“I don’t even know where to start.”

They were supposed to order food to Darcy’s but at the look on Nora’s face Darcy decided that would no longer do and they took the elevator 98 floors to the lobby and hopped in a cab. The restaurant they landed in was close, tiny, and had a little patio they could sit on with Luna. Nora wondered immediately if Bucky would like it.

They ordered drinks and food and Nora unwound the whole long story. From the confession to the kisses, the date, and Tony’s weirdness. At the end of it, with Darcy grinning widely and half a very large margarita in her system, there was only one thing left to say.

“Who doesn’t knock?”

Something in him had been knocked free.

It was like a dam breaking and letting loose everything that it had been holding back. After the first time with Nora on his couch, he was suddenly aware of how often his mouth hitched up into a grin. It happened when they went to the diner, and for coffee. He smiled at Steve when they trained and at Sam when he complained about his date going poorly.

It wasn’t like it had been, he could remember a time where he’d smiled at everyone, but it wasn’t so difficult anymore. Steve was as pleased as Nora had been. He grinned fiercely in return and Bucky felt like he’d gotten something back.

He was starting to think he could be better. Maybe not fixed exactly but a little less broken. A little more himself. He wondered if it would help to look the part.

It hurt sometimes, to look in the mirror. To see the scars, and the metal of his arm. He couldn’t do anything about that, there would be no fixing it no matter how much he wanted to. But he could look at himself and not see the soldier. Not be reminded of who he’d been when he stumbled out of cryo and into the world a killer.

He tugged at the ends of his hair and frowned. He wasn’t really sure how to approach the problem. There was no chance he could sit in a barbershop and not lose it. Not with a stranger holding a pair of scissors near his neck. He could remember, vividly in a way that made him clench his fist on the countertop, killing someone with a pair once.

“Alright, Bucky?” Clint asked the question with a wariness usually reserved for approaching deadly wildlife. He was cooking something with Wanda, some kind of soup that smelled delicious and entirely unfamiliar.

Clint was a good friend, Bucky thought, and had been punished for it pretty consistently over the last few months. He felt like he owed the man an answer that wouldn’t give anyone cause to be angry with him, “Need a haircut.”

Some of the wariness dropped away, “Oh. I go to a place downtown,” he waved a hand generally east.

Bucky shook his head, “Can’t.”

He was positive Clint got it, the same way he understood the booth problem at the diner. He nodded, his mouth twisted a little like he was trying to come to a solution and couldn’t.

“I could do it,” Wanda said, glancing at Bucky from the stove, “I used to,” she paused and pushed her own hair back, “I used to do Pietro’s.”

Bucky was aware that Wanda used to have a brother. It was one of the things they didn’t talk about. The same way they didn’t talk about the other losses that stalked each of them. Bucky wondered if Wanda wanted to. He’d told Nora about his mom, just a few words, and the horrible grief that twisted up in his chest loosened a fraction.

“Okay,” Bucky said, then, “Please.”

It felt like something, leaving the kitchen to follow Wanda back to her apartment. Clint shut off the stove and wandered after them. Bucky was grateful. He was sure he couldn’t hurt Wanda, but he felt better with Clint’s eyes on him too.

“You miss him?” Bucky knew the answer. But he also knew better than anyone that sometimes a person needed a question to say how they felt, even when it was eating them up inside.

Wanda nodded. She had waved him into one of her dining chairs and Clint hopped up onto the kitchen counter opposite him, “Steve said you had a sister.”

Bucky nodded, “Becca.”

It wasn’t the same. He went away and Becca got to live. She stayed in New York, went to school, became a nurse, got married. She lived a whole life and then died of a heart attack in her sixties. But he hadn’t been there. To him she’d died at seventeen, the last time he saw her when she came to say goodbye before he got on a boat.

Wanda met his eyes. They sat with it, together, and the weight felt lighter.