ic contact ★ i'm just a shot away from you

[lostsoldier]

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"JACK DAVIS"
"FRED MONROE"
"SHIRTLESS MAN ON 005"
"MISS C4 2015"



James Buchanan Barnes

[ text ★ voice ★ video ★ action ]

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[lostsoldier]

[ Considering how few things don't require hands, it's not so bad of a trade-off that she have something to focus on. He listens, letting her talk herself out if she wants, while he rifles through for the right knife, something sturdy with a big enough blade and handle surface that will give purchase to the tape. ]

What, are you telling me the house didn't take kindly to that?

[ His tone is flatter than the words deserve, tired, but gentle in its prodding her to continue. Laying the knife out on the table with a muted clunk, he squares it up with the tape, then reaches to take the gloves from her hands. ]

Your comm, too.

[alsohawkeye]

Believe it or not, they weren't entirely won over by our charm. We overplayed it a little and ended up having to fight our way out through a bunch of thugs with whatever cash we could carry. Or stuff in my bra. [ She watches as he picks the knife, approving the choice with a nod. Sensible.

When he asks for a comm she steps nearer the table and leans forward until the device falls out of the loose, stretched-out v-neck of her tee. She steps back, and looks at him like she's expecting a remark. ] I couldn't figure out anywhere else to keep it.

Don't zip the bags all the way back up, [ she adds, still a little defensive, ] I had to open that with my teeth.

It took me so long to get all that stuff together. [ She kind of laughs as she says it, like you wouldn't believe how dumb it was, but the chuckle catches and her breath comes in and out too quick and then she can't stop, and she ducks her head and presses a forearm to her chest, shoulders heaving with each shallow gasp. ]

[lostsoldier]

[ He knows better than to question what a woman pulls out of her shirt front, okay. The bags are left half-zipped as requested, metal fingers line up the comm alongside the other items, but as her head ducks, he goes still. Listening, before he glances to her.

(She shouldn't let him see this, he thinks; she shouldn't let anyone see where she's weak. But everyone breaks.)

He doesn't reach for her. That seems too coddling somehow. But his metal thumb finds the bag zipper again instead, using that as an excuse to take a step in. Black combat boots come up parallel just to lean one warm, human shoulder up against hers, steady. ]

Breathe. [ His voice is even, close at her shoulder. ] I'll get you fixed up.

You're gonna find the source of this thing and they're gonna cure it, or none of us are going to live long enough to worry much about it anyway.

[alsohawkeye]

[ He's right, she shouldn't. So much of her is spent on making sure no one ever sees her vulnerable that even halfway into a panic attack there's a part of Kate's brain that's kicking herself for not being able to hold this in until she could get back to her room. It doesn't help. It's sort of funny how much it feels like hands have got hold of her lungs and heart and are squeezing.

She doesn't even notice Bucky move until he speaks near her ear. Her shoulder shakes against his but she leans into the contact, and pressing closer helps fend off the worst of the trembling, tamp it down to just the arrhythmic shudder of hyperventilation. He's solid and grounding (not to mention a necessary aid in remaining upright), and she tips her head up and back, staring at the ceiling as she struggles to get her breathing back under control. Her eyes are wet but her face is still dry, and chapped lips move as she speaks under her breath, a word between each inhale and exhale. It's halting and stammery, but she grits her teeth until it's recognizably counting - down from ten in French and then in Mandarin. ]

[lostsoldier]

[ His metal hand moves to her back, resting there cold but stable against her trembling, and for what seems like a long while he just stands like that, supporting her weight, letting a little of his own settle back against her. He feels so heavy suddenly, old and tired and quietly, vainly desperate between each of her shuddered breaths to just fix this, even if he knows it's something she has to fix herself. So instead he keeps breathing, too. Stubbornly, he lines up an inhale here, an exhale there with his own, until the rhythms of their chests start to fall into sync. ]

Good. [ Murmured when her breathing starts to even. Good, like he's said it a hundred thousand times, or at least a few that he can remember, to little girls with long knives and young men with bloodied fists, and if the association gets under his skin, it's a skin that fits, too. Nothing he is is clean, but not all of it's broken. ]

But your Chinese is going to need some work, [ is added in bone-dry Mandarin, a gentle dig when she finally gets through a set clearly enough to translate. (Her Chinese is fine.) (She can kick him later.) ]

[alsohawkeye]

[ Her next exhale comes out her nose as a snort but it takes a few more before she manages to huff even a simple reply. ] Fuck off. [ Tone is hard - it's hard enough just to get the inflection right so the words mean what they're supposed to - but if it's possible to pick anything out of that hoarse and breathless Chinese curse it's dry and fond and grateful.

She almost puts her head on his shoulder. She comes close, she even lets her neck tilt that way a little for a moment. He's the right height for it and she can see herself pivoting in to press her face into his chest, catching the last of her breath through his shirt, dark and warm and his arm around her until she feels a little less like she's going to die in the next ten minutes. It's not thought so much as urge, a craving in the pit of her chest as the panic recedes but its fluttery edges linger in her lungs. She tries to remember the last time somebody held her and it wasn't that long ago it was Peter and she was almost dead and this is already a stretch for them, isn't it? Hands on backs and careful teasing and this brief, unplanned glimpse beneath her competence. He didn't ask for this. He didn't sign up to be her keeper the way she agreed to be his, didn't come into this (friendship or whatever) with eyes open to the mess and volunteering to take it on, asking to be trusted with who and what she is. That's not really fair to him or the team(??) they've become but it still feels like an imposition. He's got his own shit to deal with and she's shown him too much already; probably they'd both end up uncomfortable with more. ]

And if you tell anyone about this I'll cut your nipples off while you sleep. [ The twitch at the corner of her mouth makes clear that threat's only sort of real, as she takes a deep and settling breath and steps away like ripping off a bandaid. She moves towards the table, with the knife and the comm and the tape and the gloves and sets her forearms on it. English this time. ] Scissorhands me.

[lostsoldier]

[ It's not the imposition that bothers him, but the trust it implies — the vulnerability she'd expose as a result. The day he'd met her, he'd come a few heartbeats and fortuitously timed passersby from trying to snap her neck and put her out an airlock, and some days all that's changed between them is that's not immediately necessary. (Some days, he wonders if he'd hesitate, if it was — but they don't test it, and he's not sorry for that.)

But her head tilts that slight degree, and his chest aches in a way it hasn't for weeks now, like the tightening of the string that tethers him to his own ribcage, and for a second her weight against his arm feels like his arm instead of somebody else's. She doesn't close the distance, though, and neither does he. It's better if he doesn't. ]

Yes ma'am, [ is his answer, with a cheeky lift of his chin when she pulls away. (That quite the threat, ok, he's not taking any chances.)

He doesn't tell her to say goodbye to her gloves, that this is going to hurt like hell now and twice as bad when they cut them off again, because he imagines he doesn't need to. He just opens a glove between metal fingers and teeth and gets started. ]