Stranger Who Knows All My Secrets [A Marvel FanFic]

Chapter 22: Are You DTF?

Elena had become very sick of Bucky looking like a disgruntled third wheel after Steve had brought Kristen to meet everyone in October and up until that night, she had promised not to meddle in Bucky's love life as everyone else did. However, she had finally reached the limit of how much of his complaining she could take and came to the dramatic conclusion that Bucky needed a girlfriend, or at the very least, to get laid. Elena was not like everyone else when it came to meddling, she was very little talk and all action. The night Kristen met everyone, Bucky was sitting awkwardly around the table with Natasha, Sam, Banner, and Steve listening to them talk and get along with the woman from statistics like she had hung out with them a million times before until eventually, he ducked out for some air after becoming anxious.

The size of the crowd inside the small bar had become too much for Bucky. He was more than uncomfortable, the noise was distracting and all of his senses had become overstimulated causing his chest to tighten in the way it usually did before he had a panic attack which generally consisted of him just sitting in stone-cold silence and pretending everything was okay. Natasha often described the appearance of his panic attacks as looking like he really needed to take a shit, while Sam thought they looked more like he was trying to hide a hard-on. It took Steve a while to teach everyone how they could spot them since Bucky didn't freak out like his schizophrenic mission partner, yet she and Steve were the only ones who actually knew what to do when his own mental processes began to kick into overdrive. 

The solution, of course, was to relocate and decompress, though Natasha seemed to believe that alcohol was a more legitimate solution and Sam tried to help by telling awful jokes. Bucky was actually pretty damn good at de-escalating himself without anyone's help. He simply excused himself and looked for a quiet place to hide while he talked himself off a ledge in his mind. That night, the quiet place was just outside the doors to the bar and he stood alone in the cold autumn evening like a statue, trying to keep his feet firmly planted on the floor so that he wouldn't blast off the planet like a rocket and that was when Elena had finally shown up. 

She was late like she had been several times since the Frenchman reappeared in her life. Bucky appreciated that she decided to keep him company instead of going inside to join the others right away, listening to him grumble about how nice Kristen was which caused the Romanian to claim that he had a green jealous monster sitting on his shoulders which was probably a little true. After a few minutes, Elena reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out his phone, and took control of it because she knew he had never put a lock on it. He had gotten into the habit of simply going along with the strange things she did, there was no reasoning with her most of the time and he watched curiously as she downloaded something called Hinge from the app store and began punching in his information.

"No, absolutely not." Bucky said when he realized what she was doing.

"Too bad." Elena said as she tapped away on his phone.

"Why do I even bother arguing with you?" Bucky asked.

"Because your brain needs stimulation otherwise dementia would set in." She teased before she took a long hard look at him as if analyzing something before drastically skewing the age on the dating profile which made him laugh very loud.

"Thirty-Eight?" He questioned.

"I can put a hundred and eight if you want but I don't think that'll get you a lot of dates." Elena said and he sighed in concession.

"Okay, pictures." She said, pulling out her own phone and scrolling through her photos.

There was a lot of him weirdly and he had no memory of taking most of them.

"When the hell did you take these?" Bucky asked.

"I've been plotting for a while." She smirked.

"You're a freak. Oh, come on I look stupid in that one!" He said but she still texted him a picture of one where he looked very grumpy in the gym at the compound.