to be cringe is to be freeee

Jaw tight Bucky takes it, his hair brushed over the swollen and cut planes of his right cheek. If she reached out and touched it, would it hurt?

“You okay?” His question is quiet, and the others don’t hear. It’s meant only for her.

Blue eyes hidden behind thick lashes make her pause, make her movements a bit stunted. Ava nods, looks away as Bucky slips his arm back into place, soft whining from the metal plates that had been forced into his skin.

Alexi tries to rally, tries to gather some sort of limp courage but it falls flat. “We are a team. We are the Thunderbolts!”

“I don’t know what that means.” Bucky mutters with furrowed brows and he looks tired, Ava thinks. He always looks tired.

“It’s her peewee soccer team thing,” Ava sighs, a crick growing in her neck and she rubs at, gloved hand pressing into the tight muscle.

Alexi presses and John snaps, holding up his bent shield in angry protest. Yelena groans, casting her face upwards and Ava examines them, a group of unfiltered, unneeded ‘heros’. And heros is a choice word.

Her gaze drifts over the group, skimming faces without settling, until it finds Bucky. He’s already watching her. His jaw is tight, his brows drawn into something unreadable, and the sight of it stills her breath. The weight of his attention makes her feel bare, as if she’s stepped into a harsh light she wasn’t prepared for, too bright, too revealing.

“Oh my god stop!” Yelena yells, and both Alexi and John quiet. “There is no us, there is no we. Bob changed into that thing, and there is nothing any of you can do about it.”

Anger flares in Ava’s chest, and her hands brace on your belt. “ And what did you do exactly? Cuz I seem to remember you getting your ass beat way worse than mine.”

“Yeah yeah, I suck,” Yelena snaps, pointing to her chest. “I’m terrible, we’re all terrible. Ava you’re not a hero you’re not even a good person!”

Ava blinks, heat creeping up her neck as her gaze darts away to the floor. She lets out a quick, dismissive scoff—more reflex than humor—anything to cover the sudden rush of embarrassment.

She doesn’t look at him. Can’t.

“Bitch,” she mutters, and Yelena shrugs, flailing her arms in agreement.

Alexi attempts to reason with Yelena, his voice straining for calm, but the spy snaps back at him, sharp and unyielding. Ava remains silent through it all, weight settled on one hip in a posture that reads as annoyance more than ease. Still, she feels it, feels him. The steady pull of his attention, his gaze lingering, assessing, seeing too much. It crawls under her skin. She doesn’t want it, can’t afford to want it, and the awareness knots tight in her chest.

When Yelena spits her final insult and stalks off across the street, the tension breaks. Ava turns away, fingers pressing hard against her helmet, as if the pressure might quiet the unease buzzing through her. John stalks away, and she goes to do the same, needing any sort of reprieve she can grasp.

She begins to phase but she feels it; the warm pressure of touch. Pausing, she turns her head, and Bucky is beside her, hand on her upper arm. He silently drags her to a makeshift alcove, hidden from the others and the street that’s filled with dust.

“You alright?” He asks, tender, like he cares. She wrinkles her nose immediately.

“I’m fine.”

His blue eyes flick her over face and his human hand brushes one of her bangs out of her face, exposing the bruise on her cheek. “That hurt?”

“No,” she murmurs, looking away. “Does yours?”

Bucky shrugs. “No.”

“Good.”

“Good.”

They stand beneath the shallow alcove of rock, close enough that the air between them feels charged, too full of all the things neither of them is brave enough to say. The stone above shelters them from the world, but not from each other. Ava looks at Bucky and her chest tightens—, his expression soft but aware, eyes searching her face like he’s trying to read words he doesn’t understand. He opens his mouth, then closes it again, jaw flexing with restraint, as if the words are too heavy to trust to sound. She mirrors him, heart aching with exhaustion, the same quiet longing. Their gazes hold, linger, fracture, saying I feel it too, I’m scared, please don’t make me say it out loud. They both remain, suspended in that fragile state, saying everything in silence because saying it aloud might shatter what little safety they have left.

“I’ll go find John,” Bucky says after a moment, not looking at her before he brushes past. Ava feels it in her sternum, that pull to him, that desire to know if he’s hurting or alive or okay.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” she whispers, but he hears it. He pauses, his back to her. “I’m…I’m glad Sentry didn’t hurt you too badly.”

Buckys head dips, hair brushing over his shoulders. Ava holds her breath, wondering if he’ll do the safe thing and ignore her, if he’ll look away, pretend she isn’t there, fold whatever this fragile, dangerous thing is into a box and seal it shut forever.

She tells herself she wants that. Wants it to die quietly, to shrivel into nothing until it’s only a faint memory, something small and distant from a time when she hadn’t felt quite so unbearably alone. But the thought still hurts, sharp and hollow, like mourning something that was never allowed to exist in the first place.

“When he grabbed you, I couldn’t breathe,” Bucky says slowly. He half turns, his eyes focused on the broken rubble surrounding them. “I know how hard his punches are. I thought, ‘She doesn’t have the serum. She can’t take a hit like that’. And then he grabbed you and I couldn’t breathe.” He fully turns to her, clenching his jaw so tight she wonders if it hurts. “And the worst part is I know you’ve been hit harder, that you can take it.”

“Bucky-“ Ava tries because she needs him to stop, needs him to stop pulling the threads of this fragile thing.

“I don’t want that for you,” he shakes his head, hands moving to brace on his hips. “I don’t want you to be hit, or grabbed, or alone, ever again.” Her throat feels dry and her skin buzzes in a way that has nothing to do with her phasing. Bucky’s face crumbles and he breathes out through his nose, nods a little. “And I don’t know what to do with that.”

Ava flexes her gloved hand, the leather creaking under the strain. Her mouth twists, jaw tight, and for a moment she can’t bring herself to look at him. When she finally does, her eyes are guarded, brittle.

“Nothing,” she says, too quickly. “We don’t do anything.” A breath slips out, sharp and controlled. “We can’t afford to.”

He doesn’t flinch at the denial. Instead, he tilts his head just a fraction, his eyes lingering on the rumble like he’s weighing something he won’t say—something he refuses to let surface.

“You are, by the way,” Bucky murmurs, his tongue running over his teeth. “A good person.”

Ava scoffs softly, the sound coming out sharper than she means it to. She looks away first, like that might break the moment, like distance might make his words lose their shape. Her fingers flex at her side, restless, and she shrugs as if it’s nothing, like it didn’t land somewhere deep and tender.

“Yeah,” she mutters, dismissive, almost careless. “You don’t know me.”

But her chest feels tight, and she hates that it does. Hates the warmth curling there, the dangerous little spark of wanting to believe him. So she swallows it down, schools her expression into something neutral, and pretends his voice didn’t linger, pretends she didn’t want it to.

Bucky nods once. “Maybe not. Maybe not well,” he pauses, blows air out and the exhausted look is back on his face. “But I wanted to.”