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I woke up saturated in a vaguely familiar but unwelcome scent. It took maybe two seconds for the panic to kick in.

“Off,” I gasped, squirming and shoving at the arm wrapped around my chest. “Off, get off!” I didn’t know where I was, who I was with, who was holding me down...

I clawed at the edge of the mattress and tried to use it as leverage to pull myself free. “Get off,” I snarled, some distant part of me aware my voice was verging on hysterical. “Get off me.”

I felt the hard lines of a much larger body shift behind me and instantly froze.

“Calm down,” a sleepy voice urged as the arm around my chest shifted and a big hand ran soothing circles over my hip. “It’s just me. It’s Bucky.”

Bucky, the alpha that kidnapped me. The alpha that I was pretty sure I’d mortally wounded. “Can you -“ I wriggled. “I want to get up.”

“Later,” Bucky grumbled, nosing at the back of my neck. “Comfortable.”

Why did these assholes think they had the right to fucking touch me when I was sleeping? I drew my head forward and snapped it violently back. Bucky must have realised what I was going to do because he released a breathless gasp, somehow avoiding a broken nose as he rolled me effortlessly onto my stomach.

“Don’t -“ I cried, going still when I felt his hand grab my nape. All it would take was for him to press down and I wouldn’t be able to breath. Death from suffocation. Would it feel like drowning?

“Bucky, what are you doing?” Steve asked, his tone disapproving despite the fact he wasn’t doing anything to get him off me.

“I was just trying to...” Bucky trailed off, his grip around my neck loosening. “Damn, sorry Tony. I was still half asleep. You took me by surprise.” Bucky moved back, finally letting me go. “I wasn’t going to hurt you.”

I wanted to move. I wanted to get up and put some much needed space between me and them, but I just knew the moment I looked up I would see the small space I was trapped in and I would have a full out panic attack. I felt frozen, despite the fact my body was shaking hard enough to make my teeth rattle.

“Buck, why don’t you go sort breakfast. Tony and I will be along shortly.”

“Yeah, yeah ok,” the other alpha said, his voice small as he thankfully left the room.

I felt the bed dip and realised Steve was next to me. I curled further into myself and tried to remember the things Pepper would say when I was freaking out.

Breathe with me Tony.

“Don’t touch me,” I said, when I felt Steve shift around.

“I won’t if you don’t want me to.” Steve said softly.

“Oh right, because what I want is clearly of the utmost importance to you guys.”

Steve was quiet for a long moment. “Look, I get it. You’re scared, and you every right to be. Bucky and me, well...we’ve never met an omega like you before and I guess we sort of underestimated how independent you are. The truth is that you outsmarted is on more than one occasion and we weren’t ready for that.”

“Are you actually apologising for not doing a better job of kidnapping me?” I asked incredulously, turning around to face him.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Steve sputtered, his cheeks turning a faint shade of red. “I just want you to understand that we’re not doing any of this to hurt you, Tony. You’re just making it kind of hard-“

“So it’s my fault for not being more incompetent?” I snapped, my anger quickly replacing my earlier panic.

“I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just that, usually, after the initial panic wears off most of the omegas we rescue are thankful. There’s so much worse out there, after all. They at least understand that we’re not like them.”

“Not like who? The rapists? The molesters? Way to set the bar fucking low.”

“I’m not saying this right,” Steve said, wiping his hand over his face tiredly.

“No, I think you’re saying everything perfectly. You want to take me back to your little wonderland so you can lock me in and gently encourage me to let some asshole alpha stick his dick in me and knock me up, all for the greater good. Am I right?”

Steve gave him a hard, long look. “Nothing I say is going to convince you that you’re safe with us, is it?”

I returned his look with one of my own and felt pleasantly surprised when he wilted a little under my gaze. It was at that moment, bizarrely, when I realised I probably had more than a decade on the alpha.

Another thought occurred to me suddenly. “Bucky, he’s getting breakfast?”

“Yeah, he’ll be back soon.”

I looked at him expectedly and Steve just stared back. “Okay, I’ll bite. How exactly is he up and moving?”

The man took a swan dive out of a moving car. With the injuries he sustained, he was lucky to be breathing, never mind pinning me down and moving around, getting breakfast.

Steve growled softly, a gentle reminder that he was still pissed at me. “He’s a fast healer.”

“That’s it?” I asked incredulously. “His face looks like someone went to town with a cheese grater. You don’t just walk off that shit.”

Steve pursed his lips.

“Is he a mutant?” I asked. I looked the alpha up and down. “Are you?”

Bucky reappeared then, balancing three bowls in one hand and a jug of water in the other. He smiled sheepishly at Tony, his skin littered with scabs that looked weeks, not days, old.

“Well, don’t you look chipper?” I said brightly, internally cataloguing each wound and trying not to goggle at the fact that he was actually OK. What the hell was going on?

“Thanks for noticing,” Bucky said brightly, placing a bowl of brown gruel in my lap. “Hope you guys are hungry?”

“Famished,” I said, using the sort of accent my mom paid thousands of dollars in allocution lessons for me to perfect. “Thanks Buck.”

I dug in, unaware how hungry I was until I started shovelling the lukewarm mush into my mouth.

I had maybe one blissful moment of silence before I felt both men’s eyes on me. “We need to talk,” Steve said, his expression harsh.

“So talk,” I said, trying for nonchalance despite the anxiety I could feel building in my chest.

“We’ll be home in a couple of hours,” Bucky said and he sounded delighted by the idea.

“Home sweet home,” I said flatly. “I can hardly wait.”