The apartment smelled faintly of soy sauce and overambitious stir-fry—the kind where the vegetables started the evening with optimism and surrendered somewhere around the three-minute mark.
A carton of fried rice sat abandoned on the coffee table, a fork sticking out of it like a tiny white flag.
Rhiley was curled into the corner of the couch, swallowed by an oversized sweater she wore like armor disguised as comfort. A book rested against her bent knee, forgotten for the moment, while a half-full glass of wine hung loosely from her fingers.
For someone who had spent most of her life surrounded by chaos, she looked almost peaceful.
Almost.
The lock clicked.
Rhiley glanced toward the door.
Steve stepped inside and closed it quietly behind him.
He moved the way he always did—carefully, deliberately, with a soldier's instinctive tension. As though every room still had the potential to become a battlefield if he wasn't paying attention.
His shoulders carried too much.
Guilt. Grief. Responsibility.
Things Steve Rogers was remarkably good at carrying and spectacularly bad at putting down.
Rhiley watched him take off his jacket.
"You good?"
He didn't answer.
Rhiley's eyes narrowed slightly.
"Right," she murmured. "So, no."
Steve crossed the room and sat on the opposite end of the couch, his hands clasping together between his knees.
Rhiley closed her book, sliding a bookmark between the pages.
"You haven't told me what happened on that mission."
"Nothing happened."
She stared at him.
"Steve."
"I'm fine."
"That's adorable." She placed a bookmark between the pages and shut her book gently, as though noise might break him.
His eyes flicked toward her.
"And a lie," she added. "You're terrible at lying. I literally fought Nazis. Those guys had smoother poker faces."
For half a second, the corner of Steve's mouth lifted.
Then it disappeared.
Rhiley's amusement faded with it.
She set her wine down on the coffee table.
"What happened?"
Steve looked toward the floor.
"I don't trust S.H.I.E.L.D."
Rhiley blinked.
"Wow."
Steve looked at her.
"Welcome to the club." She said, "We meet Thursdays. Jackets and trauma provided."
Despite himself, Steve almost smiled again.
Almost.
"They're building something," he said.
The humor left Rhiley's face.
"Project Insight."
Steve nodded. "Satellites. Surveillance. Target acquisition based on future threats before they happen."
YOU ARE READING
Radioactive | Bucky Barnes
Fanfiction"I want to go back to the time you first told me your name." Rhiley, the twin sister of Howard Stark, finds herself wrapped up with the one and only James Barnes. The next time she sees him is on her new assignment with the 107th Infantry Regiment...
