No chute
Joaquín woke up with a mild headache. He figured he had forgotten to drink enough water the day before. It happened when he was too excited or too stressed. Today was both. He went inside the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face. He examined his brown skinned head in the mirror. Then he used his fingers to comb his hair. Not much, though. He needed to have the front to look cutely messy. Perfect. He put some cologne on and made sure his shirt wasn't smelling too bad.
"Come on, Lt Torres, you can do this."
But he was smiling. His nerves were a wreck but he felt like a child on a Christmas morning. So excited to open his presents yet with the fear he would get disappointed - or be disappointing to others. Yes, this was exactly what he felt every day of his life he woke up to work with Samuel Wilson aka the Falcon.
"You got this."
He ran back to his room and started packing his stuff in a hurry. He checked his phone to see if there was new intel (there wasn't) before leaving to the base with the rest of his unit.
Joaquín knew he didn't have a chance with Sam. But working alongside him, simply being around him - that was plenty enough for him.
When he got to the base, he first checked in with the pilot. Nothing to report. He thus looked around but did not see the man he was looking for. He went to the upper level, where the locker room was, to rearrange his stuff in his backpack and stack some away. As he left the room, his eyes finally spotted Sam and he felt that familiar knot in his stomach. At the same time, his heart ached. Sam was looking at one poster in particular and Joaquín didn't need telepathy to know what he was thinking.
"He seems like a good guy" he said in an attempt to... whatever he thought he was doing. (He knew Sam didn't hand the shield back only for a white guy to carry it one day later!) "You know him?"
"No."
Sam finally detached his eyes from New Captain America's poster. Joaquín bit his lips but he had the instinct to talk about their upcoming mission right away. It seemed to work; Sam looked focused. As they climbed down the white metallic stairs leading to the runway where their plane was waiting for them, a white man came to them and more specifically, to Sam.
"You shouldn't have handed the shield!"
Joaquín frowned but Sam didn't appear to be bothered - or even surprised, for that matter. He called the man by his name - Buck - and kept walking. Joaquín stood still. They seemed to know each other but not in that way that their relationship welcomed external audience. Thus the lieutenant fell behind and took another path to join the plane. He settled his bag in the cockpit next to the pilot and they talked a bit about the route. When he heard Sam getting in the plane, Torres couldn't help but glanced at him. And notice the white man who had followed him inside. But hey, if Sam said nothing against it, he would hold his tongue too.
***
"So, where's the chute?"
Joaquín looked up from the green forest flying below them, taking his eyes away from Sam he had been delightfully watching dropping off the plane and falling freely for a mere second before activating his wings - something he would never get tired of gazing at.
The white man was looking right at him. He shifted on his feet uncomfortably.
"There's no chute. We're too low."
The man had to know that, right? By all means, if he were here, he knew what they were doing and how. True, Sam and he didn't seem to get along a lot - Joaquin shamelessly admitted he had been spying on them throughout the trip. And the way the white man stared almost all the time had him feel unease.
"I don't need it anyway."
Torres chuckled - before realizing the man was serious. Like seriously thinking of throwing himself out of a plane, seventy meters above the ground with no kind of flying tech on him at all. As he was looking out for Sam - surely, Sam was about to pick him up - the man grabbed his left sleeve. And ripped it off.
Holy shit, thought Joaquín as he was realizing that one, this man was Bucky Barnes, aka the Winter Soldier, Steve Rogers' childhood friend (and that explained why Sam and he knew each other) and two, that he would be lying if he said he didn't want to take a closer look at that dark metal arm. He licked his lips.
"You sure about that?" he asked, more concerned than before.
Bucky turned to him and had just that one smirk at a corner of his mouth - but it truly transformed his face and let one hope for even better. And those eyes, too...
"Yeah."
And just like that, he jumped. Then screamed.
Joaquín immediately bent towards the open space, nearly tripping and falling too, in order to visually follow the body disappearing between the trees. Because of the sound of the plane, he couldn't hear the landing nor see it - they were already too far away.
"Oh my God, is he okay?!"
Sam's voice answered him in his earpiece with am amused voice.
"Don't worry about him. He's fine."
Joaquín closed the panel and went back into the cockpit. The pilot glanced at him.
"Everything went fine?"
The lieutenant sat down next to them. He only had two images in mind: a sublime vibranium arm and the Winter Soldier falling from his plane.
"Yeah. I guess."