Do You Trust Me? // Bucky Barnes

7

Ava

He was watching her intently as he sat on the other side of the table and Ava couldn't help the smirk that seemed to settle over her features. She liked to look at pretty things and the surly, quiet, tensed up Super Soldier staring at her as if he could see right through her was very, very pretty. In fact, maybe pretty wasn't the right word for him.

The more she looked at him, the more she sank into the intensity of his ice blue eyes. Cold, with flecks of grey and navy. When Ava watched him the way she was watching him now, he wouldn't close them. The man had an intense staring problem. A staring problem Ava enjoyed testing. Occasionally, he would let his lips hang open slightly and his tongue would push into his cheek, or over the fullness of his lower lip and each time he did so his eyes would narrow. Ava liked it when he looked at her like that. Like he was picking her apart and piecing her together all over again.

Biting her lip as she leant back in her chair, Ava ran her eyes over him and silently celebrated the way he shifted in his seat; as if just by looking at him she made his skin crawl.

Hate me all you want, she thought, I've felt it all.

Bucky scowled. Ava grinned.

Bucky

"Jesus Christ." Sam grunted as he rolled his eyes and Bucky broke his focus to look at his partner. 

Sam's forehead was creased as he raised his eyebrows at Bucky and nodded towards where Ava Hall sat. 

"Problem, American Eagle?" Her voice was like silk - all smoke and husk and danger - and Bucky hated it. He hated that her joke made him smile. He hated that when she uttered that stupid variation of Sam's two aliases, Sam's face dropped into a furious scowl and Bucky's lifted into an amused grin. 

Shit, he cursed internally, I should have thought of that one. 

"Yeah," Sam grunted. "Don't call me that."

Ava shuffled in her seat, folding her arms over her chest as she quirked an eyebrow and resumed her staring at Bucky. He stared back. 

She had warm eyes, despite the air of ice that breezed off of her with every movement; a golden brown with hidden greens and a ring of grey. Those eyes flashed with fire with Sam's next words.

"Gonna tell us who you work for, Sergeant?"

Bucky sat forwards.

"Don't call me that." Dark and damaged. Ava's voice was a void and her entire being seemed to radiate fury.

"Why not?" Bucky ran his eyes over her slowly, noting the way her shoulders straightened and she swallowed, as if the title was a lump in her throat - stuck and painful. "Sergeant?"

Her smirk dropped and her eyes simmered. 

Bucky thought she might be kind of beautiful if she really let herself smile.

Peter

"I should be the one in there." Joaquín Torres paced back and forth as Peter pressed his ear against the door in an attempt to hear what was going on in the other room. "She won't talk to people she doesn't trust, kid. She's stubborn. Always has been. And God only knows what she's been through since -"

"Since the grape wiped half of us from existence?" Peter glanced to him with a smile.

"Well, yeah." Torres stopped walking and ran a hand over his face.

"So." Peter stood taller. "Should we...?"

Torres smiled. Peter placed his hand on the door handle.