BUCKY

“If you don’t want her to know how you feel about her, maybe you should stop looking at her like that,” Sam said at my side, sipping his coffee as he skimmed the newspaper.

“Like what?”

I didn’t really need to ask. I was guiltily aware of the look in my eye as I’d watched her with her strapped-on headlamp and small kit of tools to fix something Yelena had done to the TV in a fit of anger. The focus in her eyes, the nimble movements of her thin fingers, everything she did, was captivating.

Is this how it was supposed to feel? Like every little part of her was distracting, overriding my attention and my common sense? Because it was excruciating.

“Like you’re some honor-bound knight and she’s the princess you won’t let yourself have,” Sam said laconically, cutting his eyes at me.

I whipped my head back around to be sure Indy was still too absorbed in her task across the open floor of the living space to notice our conversation at the dining table. She had a single, thick glove on, a chip of some sort pinched between her fingers, poking it with what looked to me like a pen, but was probably actually some crazy advanced tool.

“Would you keep your voice down?” I hissed.

Sam rolled his eyes and folded his newspaper, crossing his arms on the table on top of it. “You two cuddled in your sleep a week ago and still nothing?”

I shot one more quick glance at Indy before shaking my head. “Look, she… she needed-” me. “She needed comfort. She was finally opening up. It had nothing to do with… anything else.”

Sam frowned and sighed heavily. “Come on, Bucky. You’re telling me that holding her, sleeping next to her, waking up with her — none of that made you want more than just that one night? None of it made you change your mind about all this ‘I can’t give her what she needs’ shit?”

I clenched my jaw, glaring at him. “No.”

He had no idea how close I’d come the morning after the 'slumber party’ to wrecking everything.

I’d woken up first, with her small back pressed into my stomach, my arms curled around her waist. Her hair was in my face, and while it smelled great — her and her coconut addiction — it tickled my nose. I groggily shifted my face upward, still not entirely awake enough to grasp the situation I was in.

But my movement caused her to stir. She rolled in my arms, her restfully blank face just a few inches from mine. Immediately, her fingers found the chain around my neck, hooking limply into it like it was instinct. My heart pounding in my chest shook off the last of my sleepiness.

I lifted an unsteady hand to brush a few thick, wild pieces of brown hair gently back into place. And when I removed my hand, her eyes were open and on me.

“Sorry,” I whispered, mortified. “You… your hair was…”

“’S okay,” she mumbled through a quiet yawn. “What time is it?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. Just woke up.”

“Hmm,” she hummed, eyes slipping lazily closed again. She scooted closer to me. Probably because I ran at an alarming temperature post-serum and she was always complaining about how easily she got cold. Her forehead touched my shoulder, and she nestled into me, rubbing her face on me like a cat trying to get comfortable.

I watched her in wonder, still amazed that she could be so… at ease with me. I’d been certain for so long that no one would ever freely choose to be in a room with me, let alone snuggle into me the way she was doing. At every turn, she surprised me.

She peeked one hazel eye open and looked up at me, a tiny smile appearing at the corner of her lips. How could she be so sleepy and still look so mischievous? “Sorry,” she breathed. “Do you mind? You’re warm.”

I chuckled once, breathlessly. “No, it’s fine.”

At that, she shuffled even closer, wrapping her arms around my waist and pressing her face into the crook of my neck. And I froze.

I lost track of time while we laid there, wrapped around each other like lovers in the living room floor. Every beat of my pulse felt like it was sending electricity through my body. Every breath she took against me had the air stuttering in my throat. She was still awake. I could tell by the way her fingers slowly toyed with the loose string on the back of my shirt.

I was gripped by the sudden, unyielding desire to kiss her. A desire I’d shoved down so many times it was impulse at this point. But this was different. It burned fiercer. Hurt worse. And I knew the only way to make it hurt less would be to tip her head up and press my lips to hers. To finally show her how much she really meant to me.

But fear had paralyzed me. I’d wasted every last second deliberating… until my chance was gone. Sam had begun groaning and in response, Kate had snorted herself awake. Indy had given me a tired grin and pulled away from me without another word, standing to start a pot of coffee. I told myself I was used to feeling like I was missing pieces of myself. So her casually going on like nothing had happened when I’d had the most peaceful night of sleep I’d had in years was… well, that was fine. Preferable, really. How much worse would it have been if she’d read into it?

“You can’t just pretend this doesn’t exist, Buck,” Sam said sternly, leaning forward on his elbows. “She obviously cares about you. Aren’t you curious about how much?”

Yes.

“No.”

“And if she came to you,” he drawled. “You would turn her away?”

How many times had I pictured that impossible scenario? How many times, in the dead of night, had I wished that I’d hear a knock at my door and she would be on the other side of it? Just as many times as I’d fantasized about her pressing her body against mine, not for the hugs she usually gave me, but to kiss me. To wind her fingers into my hair and draw me in closer. To say my name and make me feel like it really belonged to me and not some bright-eyed boy who died in a war. But that would never happen.

“Yes. I would.”

“Then you’re right about one thing,” Sam said, face crumpling with disgust. “She does deserve better.”

I didn’t argue with him as he left the dining table and headed down the hallway. How could I? It was my mantra at this point. Look at Indy? She deserves better. Think about her smile? She deserves better. Consider kissing her after she willingly spent the night in my arms? She deserves so much better.

I looked sadly up at Indy, so far away with her tools and her technology and no clue of the absolute hell she was putting me through.

INDY

My organized attempts to thwart what we could all sense stirring with Hydra had been professionally titled Project Safeguard. It was largely dependent on what I had not-so-professionally nicknamed The Hydra Hunter, the program I’d created myself to basically do my work for me. As soon as anything I’d deem questionable popped up across (most of) the globe, I would receive all the information involved here at the compound.

So far, the extra task force I’d gotten Fury to sign off on had pulled through for me. I’d split them in half and sent one group south and one group east. Our affiliation being what it was — a barely-legal intelligence and enforcement division — meant that we didn’t have the resources for large teams of mechanics, medical techs, operators, etc. So, I was gearing up for my first actual field mission.

On top of the slow but steady stream of Hydra the task force was pulling in, one of our intelligence analysts in Teregova, Romania had become compromised. The upside was that this particular analyst was an AI rather than a person; more malleable. The downside was that I was the only person under the small umbrella of our operations with both the clearance and the skill set to repair, recode, or do whatever was necessary to fix it.

Kate and Yelena doubled down on my firearm and projectile training during the week we had to prepare to leave. Along with myself, Sam, Bucky, Kate, Yelena, and John, we only requisitioned a single field doctor; Teregova was a small village, mostly industrial. There was nothing larger than a pharmacy nearby, but we had to be careful not to draw too much attention to ourselves. A tiny, insulated place like that would be wary of a parade of suspicious newcomers.

Which is also why our field medic Dr. Rhonston, Kate, Sam, and John were staying in the tiny AirBNB we’d rented while Bucky and Yelena guarded me as I repaired the tech. They’d be close by enough that we were covered if anything happened, but we wouldn’t all be marching through the village like the world’s most obvious spies.

My leaving to take care of business in the field also left one big hole behind. My work at the compound was ongoing, dynamic. I couldn’t conveniently walk away from it and still expect things to be in working order by the time I got back. Luckily, I’d been in correspondence with an old friend who was both willing and able to fill my position remotely during my absence.

“Thanks again for this, Bruce,” I said into my phone, zipping my duffel bag up on my bed. “I really appreciate it.”

“Anything for the next wave of superheroes,” came a deep, rocky chuckle from the other end. “Be careful out there. I’ll let you know if anything serious comes up.”

“Will do. I’ll contact you once we’ve landed.”

I met up with the others on the ground floor of the compound and the seven of us headed to the airport. We were flying commercially this time. Sam and Rhonston sat together in the center aisle, Kate and Yelena on the right and Bucky and I on the left. John, ever the background character, sat directly behind Sam, annoying him by nudging his foot every few minutes.

When we finally took off and my knuckles turned white on my armrest, Bucky bumped his elbow against mine and arched his eyebrows at me, half concerned, half curious. I shook my head and gave him a self-deprecating smile; I always got a little jumpy on airplanes. It was a height thing.

Things between us were so much easier nowadays. Maybe it was because we understood each other better. I predicted his moods before they came to pass and he… well, sometimes it felt like he was reading my mind. It had dawned on me recently that Bucky had seamlessly transitioned into my most trusted friend.

I didn’t spend as much time with him as I did with the girls, but the conversations we had together, the ideas we discussed and the things we taught each other, had brought us closer than I think either of us were expecting. I guess that’s what people mean when they say ‘quality, not quantity’.

“Have you always been afraid of heights?” Bucky asked, resting his chin on his fist.

“Yeah, pretty much,” I shrugged. “I’m okay on roller coasters. You’re there and gone. But just… hanging out high as hell in the air? Not my idea of a good time.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, I’m not crazy about it either.”

I bet you aren’t.

I looked over at him and had another of those surreal moments where young and old Bucky were kind of smushed together for a minute, like reality had folded his parallel selves against each other. I was consistently and forcibly reminded that the man who sat next to me was more than just the guy I told my petty problems to and nonchalantly leaned my head on during movies and, one time, platonically cuddled through the night with. He was also a century old hero who’d been through more than I could stand to think about sometimes.

“Can you tell me something?” I blurted before I could stop myself.

“Sure,” he said. But I saw a brief flash of hesitance in his eyes before he covered it with curiosity.

"What were you like? Before-?” I trailed off, an eyebrow rising.

He inhaled deeply, looking like he was taking a math test with his forehead screwed up and eyes roaming around on the ceiling of the plane. “I was… Dumb. Young and dumb.”

I stared at him for a minute. “Well, that told me nothing. You’re still dumb.”

His shoulders shook with laughter, and I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. Sometimes it caught me off guard, how readily he laughed now, how uninhibited it sounded.

I grinned at him in return, hitting his elbow with mine. “Seriously, though, come on. Steve talked about you here and there, so I know a little bit through him. I’ve heard you were quite the ladies’ man back then.”

“Like I said, I was young and dumb.” He grimaced and shook his head, cheeks flushing a little.

“Steve also said you were the only one who protected him when he was… y’know, all tiny and lacking in musculature.”

Bucky didn’t look up from his hands in his lap, but he took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, I was.”

I put my hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently. His blue eyes found mine. Memories, horrors, and more swam in them. He missed Steve. I would have been a pretty shitty friend if I hadn’t noticed by then. The way he sometimes saw something old as hell (sorry, antique) and turned to speak to someone who wasn’t there. The way his face would fall when someone mentioned Steve not being here anymore. The wistful look he would get sometimes when he saw children playing on the sidewalk in the city.

“Tell me about it,” I suggested gently.

His eyes kept their melancholy, but his lips tilted up infinitesimally. “You sure you wanna hear an old man’s war stories?”

I felt my own eyes grow wider. I had some interest in history (not a lot, by any means, but I’d gone through a WW2 phase in childhood) and Bucky had never exactly been loose-lipped with that time of his life. Sure, I had higher clearance than the rest of the team, so I knew most of the redacted parts of his government file. But hearing it straight from the source was different from reading facts off a screen.

So I grabbed his arm, pulling it enthusiastically into my chest and leaning my head over onto his shoulder with a wide grin. The answer was clear: Tell the story.

He chuckled once and glanced out of the window before starting his tale.

“When I was a young, dumb kid, I thought I was going to save the world…”

BUCKY

The plane ride overseas was both the best and the worst. Thanks to Sam’s careful shuffling of our seats, I was sitting next to Indy. And she was asking questions about me.

If her interest in me and my past wasn’t conflicting enough for me, she was also respondent. Almost every story I had for her, she knew the ending to. She predicted the outcomes easily, and I had to remind myself that Indy was the only one of the team who had access to every preserved recording of those details.

And yet, still, she reacted with shock, anticipation, indignance, sadness, and joy over every point in my story. She sat with her shoulder against mine, a few unexpected stray tears slipping from the corner of her eyes for men she’d never met. Men I’d thought I would die beside. And hell, if it didn’t make me feel more for her.

By the time I told her about the bomb, the train, the fall… everything after… she was squeezing my arm with an unexpected firmness. Worry and suspense coalesced in her wide eyes like she was watching a movie and wished she could tell the main character to stop. But this was history. There was no stopping it.

So she listened to every last scrap of memory I could scrounge together and offer her from that time.

“The night before I shipped out, I told Steve we were going to the future.”

“I remember the smell of scorched brick in Austria.”

“Steve and Peggy really were made for each other… you should have seen them.”

These last little bits of myself that felt like scooping paper photographs out of the sea, wet transparent things that sometimes drifted out of reach. I’d guarded what little of it remained fiercely; it was really all I had left. But without thinking about it, I was spilling every last detail I could dredge up.

I wanted to keep her at arm’s length for her own safety and my sanity. But I wanted her to know me. It was a hard line to walk, letting her in, but keeping her from the spaces inside me where nightmares and worse lurked. Harder still because it was too damn easy to tell her everything I could barely stand to choke out in solitude.

It shouldn’t be this easy.

How was I supposed to keep any boundaries between us when everything in me wanted to there to be nothing between us? Not secrets, lies, half-truths. Nothing but whatever this connection I thought I felt to her was. The only reason I allowed myself to continue tearing these walls down between us, continued opening myself up to her this way, was because I knew she didn’t feel the same. It was the one thing convincing me that being vulnerable with her was the right move. That I wasn’t just trusting her because I was blinded by my feelings for her. That my being close with her wasn’t something to feel guilty over, because it wasn’t ‘making a move’.

But the distant remorse that still punctuated every emotion I felt toward her made me think maybe I was breaking my own rules. Whatever was happening with me - with us - it wasn’t something I could influence. There was no slowing it, no stopping it, and no avoiding it. And she didn’t even seem to be aware. Not of the way I found increasingly vague reasons to be around her. Not of the way I couldn’t keep from smiling when she looked at me. And definitely not of the desire that stirred behind my eyes every time she spoke my name.

By the time my story was told, I felt… a little unsubstantial. Like by speaking all these things out loud that I’d mostly kept to myself, I had removed some toxin that had been weakening me. I guessed I had some lethargy to look forward to — the kind you feel after healing from sickness. The thought wasn’t as upsetting as I thought it might be. Mostly because, at the end, she still looked at me like I was just Bucky.

O o 0 o O

The house Indy had procured for us in Teregova was, as most things in the village seemed to be, small. We arrived around midday and, unfortunately, had drawn so much attention coming into town that we decided it was smartest to wait for nightfall to launch the next phase of the mission.

Because it probably weighed the equivalent of two of her, I carried Indy’s solidly cram-packed suitcase (which, she explained to me, contained the tools she would need to fix the AI terminal as well as the equipment to correspond with her other contacts). She gave me her usual You’re Such A Good Friend, Bucky smile and I died a little inside… again. I thought maybe the worst part was that I knew I could push those boundaries if I let myself; what Steve had told Indy about my popularity with women back in the day was more true than I ever hoped for her to know. It would be so easy to pull her to me and flirt with a smirk on my face and my fingers beneath her dimpled chin.

It had been next to impossible to wrap my head around the idea of normal, romantic interaction after everything… I’d had no success the few times I’d attempted to flirt with other women after deprogramming. I was beginning to wonder if that was just because I needed time, now. Time to, I don’t know, calibrate myself to another human. I knew it would be easy with her. Everything was. Ruthlessly easy.

Indy had her larger bits of equipment set up in the cramped living room of the house in almost no time, leaving us a good handful of hours to prep for whatever we might find. Chances were, it was nothing. But intelligence reports showed patterns of suspicious activity in the area, and we weren’t certain it wasn’t sabotage.

The tiny house had two rooms aside from the little living room/kitchenette combo. Kate announced immediately on entering that there was one room for the girls and one room for the boys. Which is why, two hours until the agreed-upon departure time for our three-man team, I was sitting with my back against the wall on the floor of the room furthest in the back, legs stretched straight out in front of me despite the limited floor space.

Sam was lying on his back along the adjacent wall, hands over his eyes like the small space gave him a headache. I sympathized. John and the doctor sat on the edge of the bed, talking about some periodical they both enjoyed. The doctor - I think his name started with an R - kept throwing me the same cold, wary glances everyone else did. Disappointing, but not unexpected.

I tried keeping myself still. Tried keeping myself from thinking about her the way I always did when I had nothing else to occupy my mind (and, a lot of the time, when I did). But my leg muscles were practically twitching with the urge to go find her. When I couldn’t keep myself in place any longer, I stood and turned toward the door.

“I’m going to see if Indy needs any more help out there,” I muttered.

John’s eyes, predictably, narrowed on me. “You barely know how to connect a desktop to wifi, how do you think you’re going to help Indy with all the techy stuff she does?”

Before I could respond, Sam had piped up from his spot on the floor, not even bothering to lift his head or move his hands from his eyes. “He’s half-cyborg, maybe he can communicate with them somehow.”

I rolled my eyes and turned to leave, making my way down the narrow hall. I had to walk sideways so my shoulders didn’t reach from wall-to-wall. The foundation was a little uneven, thin tartan carpeting tearing near the baseboards. The air was chilly, even inside the house, and I wondered offhand whether Indy had brought anything thicker than her usual Stark Industries hoodie with her.

I was just thinking I had an extra jacket in my duffel bag if she hadn’t when a muffled chorus of giggles drifted to me from the girls’ room. I was about to walk right past, en route to the living room to check that Indy really didn’t need help. And if she wasn’t there, I’d have the pleasure of sitting alone for a while rather than packed into a badly-insulated box with three other grown men, most of us sized well beyond reason.

But Kate’s voice spilled into the hallway, drawing me back. “Come on, you’ve got to pick at least one.”

“Well, if I have to choose,” Indy said, faux hesitance laced through her words. “Christian Slater in Heathers.”

Kate and Yelena both groaned.

“Yikes.”

“You have such issues,” Kate laughed.

“Leave me alone, JD was hot. And loyal. And yes, maybe a little crazy, but who doesn’t love that?”

“People who don’t need therapy,” Yelena droned in her thick accent.

“Alright, we’ve done musicians, movie stars, politicians-” both Yelena and Indy gave exaggerated gags at that last one “-how about Avengers?”

Were they… picking guys? My heartbeat quickened and I wasn’t even sure why. Suddenly, my back was pressed against the wall next to the door. I could so easily be caught, but… I’d never known, never even allowed myself to wonder, what type of guy Indy was into. Sure, there was that blond rich kid, McKay, but I had to believe she was only interested in him professionally.

“Thor,” Kate called out.

“Hm,” Yelena deliberated quietly. “Banner.” There was a moment of silence before she spoke again. “What? He’s intelligent and destructive.”

“And had the hots for your sister, so ya know, maybe tread lightly there,” Indy chuckled.

“Well, what about you then, Indy?” Yelena asked. “Who would you pick?”

I realized then that I had fisted my hands at my sides, was holding my breath, was staring at the door frame like I was both terrified and in awe of it.

“This game is a little different for me than you guys,” Indy began slowly. I could hear the smile in her voice. “You guys knew one of them each. I knew all of them a little bit. And I met them all when I was a teenager.”

“Oh, well, then you definitely had a crush on at least one of them,” Kate said proudly, like she’d riddled something out. “Which was it? Tony? Is that why you have that picture with him in your office?”

“Ew, no!” Indy said in a horrified squeak. “Tony was like… a brother. A really snarky and unusually irresponsible older brother.”

“Alright. Steve, then. He’s everyone’s type.”

“Nah, not mine.”

Oh, thank God.

“So what is your type, then?” Kate asked.

I felt my lungs trying to shrivel and die in my chest at the warring urges to both run away from whatever her next words were and to stay and find out. My feet wouldn’t listen to my brain, though. Seemed fitting since my heart had stopped listening to it months ago.

“Tall, dark, and handsome tends to be the trend.” Her voice was somewhat self-deprecating.

Before I had time to really react to that, both Yelena and Kate said, “Loki!” at the same time.

The three of them laughed, while Indy insisted he didn’t count since he wasn’t an Avenger.

“Although, I guess I do have my history with the bad guys as well.”

An unwelcome mental image of McKay with his head bent down toward Indy’s, her small hands on his shoulders, popped into my head and I gritted my teeth so hard I almost chipped one.

“Well,” Yelena said with a sigh. “There’s only one person close enough to being an Avenger that fits all the above requirements.”

The silence then was pregnant with confusion.

“Bucky, obviously!” Kate said patiently. “He fits the tall, dark, and handsome bill. And he was a villain.”

“Hey!” Indy’s voice nearly made me jump. I thought for a moment I’d been caught. But she was still talking to Kate. She sounded partly offended, but mostly hurt. As if Kate had insulted her rather me. “Bucky wasn’t a villain. The Winter Soldier was. In the same way a computer virus is. It’s not its fault, it’s just what it was made for.”

My head was empty. Mouth open. Heart throbbing.

Yelena cleared her throat like she wanted to disagree but wouldn’t. I could hardly blame her.

I didn’t really know how to feel about this. About any of it.

“Sooo…” Kate dragged the word out in an overly relaxed way. “Does that mean we’re right? Is it Bucky? That’s why you two spend so much time together, right?”

“No!” Indy said in alarm. “We spend time together because we’re friends! And as for the other thing…”

My throat tightened uncomfortably. Come on, Indy, spit it out.

“I maybe used to have a little bit of a crush on him when I was a kid. Before he unfroze and became an actual person in my perception instead of just a hot guy in uniform from a history book.”

Kate broke out into chuckles while I rocked back on my heels in shock. “You would have crushes on historical figures.”

“Hey, have you seen the footage of Steve coming back with those 400 POWs?” Indy asked defensively.

My face was on fire, wasn’t it? The cold I’d previously been fixated on couldn’t touch me now. Something in me was swelling, lifting, flying overhead in big, carefree loops. This much rapid fluctuation of extreme emotions couldn’t be good for a man of my years.

“Yeah, most people have. But usually people are staring at Steve,” Kate said. I got the feeling she was part of ‘people’.

“Yeah, Bucky was, too,” Indy said so quietly I had to lean closer to the door to hear clearly. “That’s what caught my attention. He was handsome, yeah, and strong and brave and all of that was obvious, even from just that footage. But his eyes, the way he smiled… he looked so proud when he looked at Steve. I wanted someone to look at me like that.”

There was another brief pause, during which I was sure they’d all hear my heart thudding out of control in the hall right outside the room. My breathing felt uneven. Was I still breathing?

Then, in true Indy fashion, a joke broke the quiet weight of the moment. “Also his ass was killer.”

“Odd choice of words,” Yelena mused.

I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from snorting in amusement.

“So, do you still… you know? Would you ever…?”

I needed to move. Needed to get out of here right now. This was a question I didn’t want the answer to. But also craved perilously.

“Would I ever what?”

If she said no… I wasn’t sure I could predict how painful that would be.

“You know, with Bucky and that old crush of yours…?”

But if she said yes, it would make every day harder. I may have told Sam I would turn her away if she came to me, but I wasn’t fully convinced I had that kind of strength. But I couldn’t afford to hurt either of us that way.

“She’s asking if you’d sleep with him,” Yelena said bluntly.

While Indy spluttered in astonishment, I tipped my head back against the wall and tried not to linger on thoughts I’d had during sleepless nights, desires I only allowed myself to picture for brief flashes.

“Well,” Kate interjected. “I really just wanted to know if there’s a possibility of anything happening.”

“Again,” Indy said. “We’re just friends. He’s incredible. I think he’s the best, but there’s really nothing romantic going on between us.”

I wasn’t sure if it was hope or dejection I felt when I realized she had avoided the actual question. Yes, there was nothing romantic going on — at least on her end. But did she want there to be? Would she hate the idea? I felt simultaneously relieved and stifled not to have an answer.

“Now, I swear, if I hear that either of you mentioned that I had a crush on him when I was younger-“

“Oh, calm down, you big nerd,” Kate chuckled. “We won’t out you.”

Unable to wrap my head around any more information, I staggered silently away from the door, into the living room that I barely saw. How did I feel about this?

How the hell do I feel about this?

On one hand, I wanted to laugh, to celebrate whatever small win it was that she had - at any point in time - looked at me in such a flattering light. But then, there was the guilt, the nagging feeling that indulging in my excitement over her little secret was wrong. And maybe it was. There was the pain, again. The knife that twisted in my side more and more whenever I felt like there could be more to her feelings for me than simple friendship.

It would be harder, keeping myself from her, if she felt the same.

God, this swinging pendulum of emotions was exhausting. Like my life hadn’t been draining enough in its entirety. I sighed and lowered my head, hands dangling between my knees as I leaned forward on the couch. Who was I kidding? This was already getting harder every day.