Soft Robotics ✧ Bucky Barnes

(sensor[1.31]);

I laid on the floor of the lab, staring into the darkness and probably getting god knows what chemical residue in my hair. I felt safe in the lab. No one would come down here and ask me—

The lights switched on. I covered my eyes with my arm.

"Gracie? You in here?" God dammit, Tony.

I stayed in place. He probably couldn't see me behind the counter. Maybe if I didn't move, he would give up and leave.

"Gracie? FRIDAY said you're in here. Plus, I can see a pair of vintage heels that fill me with such visceral disgust that I know they must belong to you. Why are you on the floor?"

He came around the corner and stared down at me.

"I came down here to work," I said.

"Doesn't explain why you were on the floor in the dark."

"I realized I've never been in here by myself, since I never used to come in when you and Bruce were both on a mission, so I don't know where the light switch is."

"It's actually behind a shelf. You gotta stick your hand in there to get to it."

"I slipped on something liquid on the floor in the dark."

"Ouch."

"Then everything bad that's ever happened in my life flashed before my eyes, and I didn't have the will to get up."

"Uh huh."

"And that's the story of why I was on the floor in the dark."

"Thrilling."

He sat on a stool above me, careful not to get his suit dirty. I was still in my clothes from dinner too, but the difference was that Tony had probably had a better night than me, and that I couldn't think of a single reason to care about anything.

I couldn't believe I'd been crying on Bucky, when I should've been the one comforting him. He'd opened up to me, and I felt like I'd let him down by not being able to say the right thing.

"Tall, dark, and moody told me I should come check on you. He thought you might be upset?"

"Bucky did? He asked you? Where was Nat?"

"I'm going to pretend like that question isn't wildly offensive."

"I just meant that Bucky would probably ask—"

"I was the one who noticed you were gone, for the record. He heard me ask FRIDAY where you were. I noticed you two leave, and then he came back without you. I was worried he might've thrown you off the roof."

"Stop joking about him being violent."

"Well, I assumed you wouldn't stop singing along to Taylor Swift, and that it was a completely justified murder."

"He wouldn't hurt me," I insisted.

"Okay," he shrugged. "Are you ever planning on getting up off the floor?"

"No."

"I'm not going to ask what happened."

"Okay."

"I simply don't care."

"Cool."

"You wanna make some weird shit?"

"No."

"You wanna shoot some shit with a laser?"

"I don't work with weapons anymore."

"You don't have to work with the laser. It's already built."

"Yeah, okay." I finally got up off the floor.

"Text Bruce; he'll want in on this."

I opened my phone to see a missed call and a text from Bucky: Please don't hate me. Please don't avoid me this time.

I replied quickly: I could never hate you

Then I texted Bruce: Come to the lab and be destructive with us

An hour later, approaching midnight, my mood was much improved. Tony was blasting a Black Sabbath album. He was taking cover behind a refrigerator of samples and throwing test tubes into the air for us to try to shoot. Mostly, we'd ended up shooting holes in the scrap metal that we set up behind the throwing area. The test tubes landed in a pile of other glass shards.

"Stop squealing when you pull the trigger!" Tony shouted at me over the music. "You sound terrified."

"Am I squealing?"

"Yeah," Bruce said. "Try to make it lower. Like a battle cry."

I laughed and passed the weapon back to Bruce.

"Sir, Captain Rogers is on the elevator heading to this floor," FRIDAY interrupted.

"Dammit, Cap," Tony said. He'd told FRIDAY to warn him if anyone was coming. "Grace, go distract him while we clean this up. He'll have a conniption if he sees what we're doing."

I ran toward the elevator, trying to think of what could best distract him. I thought I'd ask him for help with something. Maybe I'd take him to a storage room and have him carry random boxes to random locations until he caught on that I was stalling.

But when I turned the corner, I frowned. Steve couldn't be coming in through the elevator. The doors were wide open, and he wasn't there.

Four steps closer, and I could make out that the elevator was sensing a man's legs in khaki pants. They were preventing the doors from closing.

Four steps closer, and I could make out that the man attached to the legs was in the elevator. He was sprawled out awkwardly across the tiled floor, unnaturally, as if dumped there.

Four steps closer, and I could make out that the man was dead. There was a bullet wound in his chest, staining his polo shirt red.

Four steps closer, and I could make out that the dead man was Colin.

I ran back to the lab. I couldn't form coherent sentences to explain. Instead, I dragged Tony by the sleeve of his shirt, Bruce following close behind. I led them to the scene.

Soon after, Steve and Natasha arrived. Tony had called them. SHIELD arrived. It became a crime scene. More Avengers seemed to hear what was happening, and trickled in. I backed into a corner. I didn't know if I was allowed to leave, since I had found the body. No one spoke to me.

When the doors to the stairwell burst open more forcefully than when the others arrived, I knew it was Bucky. And somehow, when he finally got there, I realized I'd been waiting for him.

His eyes scanned the hallway, but they didn't land on the crime scene. They skipped over the body. He'd been looking for me. He came straight over to me.

"Are you okay?" he asked, gripping my shoulders and looking over my body, as if I might have been injured somehow.

I nodded, still not able to speak.

"Do you want to stay with me tonight?"

I nodded again, and he started to guide me away from the scene with a hand on the small of my back.

"Grace, we're gonna need to ask you some questions," Maria Hill called out to stop us, not unkindly.

"You can ask her tomorrow," Bucky called back.

He tapped fours on my back again that night, all the way to his apartment. I didn't need to count my footsteps.

A/N: Colin said 😵😵😵