#wintersilver

Pietro’s cheeks flamed red. “This boy will run rings around you any day! Or have you forgotten how many times I said ‘on your left’ to you on this morning’s run?”

“Speed isn’t everything, boy,” Bucky drawled. “Technique’s what you need.”

Pepper looked despairingly from one to the other of them as the argument escalated. Bucky had risen to his feet and they were standing almost nose to nose, haranguing each other.

“Enough!” she yelled finally, banging the clipboard she held on a nearby table. They both startled, turned to look at her… and she noticed something very interesting. Mentally filing the thought, she waggled a finger at both of them.

“Behave. I want you to raise the maximum amount for the Maria Stark Foundation, and I could care less which one of you it is. Now get out there and give the crowd a show.”

“Yes, Pepper,” they chorused, but she could tell that neither one of them was truly cowed. Satisfied that the row had been averted at least temporarily, she turned away.

“I’m gonna raise more than you,” Pietro sniped under his breath at Bucky as they waited to go out onto the stage.

“Is that a challenge?” Bucky’s eyes sparked fire back at him.

“Damn right it is!”

When Stark finally brought the hammer down on a bid of five hundred and fifty thousand dollars - more than three times what any of the other bachelors had brought - Bucky swallowed. Maybe this was a bet he was going to lose, after all. Still, he lifted his head and strutted out onto the stage confidently.

“Five hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” Tony cried after a frantic few minutes of bidding. “Any advance on five fifty? Sold, to bidder one forty-five!”

“That’s the same bidder who bought me,” Pietro said incredulously as Bucky joined him backstage, “for the same amount. Over a million dollars all up. Who has that kind of money?”

“Someone who thinks you two are being ridiculous,” Pepper said dryly, walking up with a little smirk on her face. She waved a bidding paddle at them. 145.

“You bought us? Why?” Bucky demanded.

“Because it’s the only way I can get you two on a date.”

That made no sense at all. They both stared at her, utterly confused.

“With each other,” Pepper clarified, laughing as they looked first shocked, then sneaked quick, surreptitious glances at each other. “And I’ve thought up the most fantastically romantic first date for you to go on, too!”

“This is a whole new level of matchmaking, Pepper,” Bucky finally found his voice.

She shrugged. “Eh. Cheap at the price, if it stops you two dancing around each other. Eight o’clock sharp tomorrow morning, be on the helipad on the roof. Don’t make me come looking for you!”

Pietro looked almost shyly at Bucky as Pepper walked away, and after a moment Bucky looked back at him.

“Well, that was unexpected.”

Pietro laughed at the remark. “It certainly was! What do you think this date she is sending us on will be?”

“No idea.” Bucky paused, and then smiled slowly. “Whatever it is… I know I’m looking forward to it a lot more than I would be having to dance attendance on some rich society lady.”

There aren't many people on this world that can make the former Winter Soldier nervous. He doesn't normally feel the need to hide himself away from social interaction, just standing sentry as other people speak to him and for him and generally not needing to say a word to the contrary unless something truly provides him some inconvenience. Even if he doesn't always feel the comradely emotions that come naturally to the other Avengers, there's still the idea that Steve, at the very least, has his best interests in mind. Bucky hadn't let Steve tear apart his team for those interests, had mended things with the Iron Man himself instead of providing Steve the opportunity to tear himself apart again.

But, being as there are only a few people in the world that manage to make the Winter Soldier even slightly nervous anymore, it's only natural that three of those few people call the tower that Bucky lives in their home.

The first is Pepper Potts, and he fears her not because of any power she exerts, but because of that which she does not. She has both Tony Stark and Steve Rogers at her romantic beck and call, James Rhodes as a close personal friend and adviser, and she chooses to not use any of it. She could take apart the world without lifting a finger, and Pepper Potts does nothing of the sort. She smiles at Bucky every time she sees him, calls him Sergeant Barnes and sends him on his way (or offers him a cup of tea with a penchant for gossiping with him about people he does not know). He thinks he would commit egregious acts of violence for her, even if she would never ask.

The second is Wanda Maximoff, who has magic enough to let her manipulate the mind of anyone she wants. She has made apologies and promises to never do it again, has gone through training to make it easier for her to control her craft, but she still terrifies Bucky a little bit. She has nothing on her brother, though.

Pietro Maximoff has the laugh of an angel. He carries himself quickly and yet so gracefully, laughs with his entire body, smiles with his entire face, and he's maybe the prettiest little thing that Bucky has ever seen. He came back from the dead with some fancy healing machine that Tony designed with Rhodey, Bruce Banner and some other doctor - Helen Cho, the one who helped design the machine that got rid of the trigger words as well - and that's a power in itself. Anyone who wasn't enhanced, Tony says, definitely would not have survived the shooting as well as the machine, and Bucky doesn't know how to thank anyone for Pietro's survival. He would have never known Pietro without the work of Tony Stark, and he thinks about that every single day.

But, it's not like he can say anything to Pietro. The boy is only twenty five, and even if that's physical only a few years younger than Bucky, it feels like a few centuries. And anyway, he's... Pietro is too good. He's sarcastic, has the kind of mouth on him that makes the 1930's in Bucky want to cover his ears so his mama doesn't wash his mouth out with soap, but he's still so good on the inside. He'll rant about global warming, about the humanitarian crisis in other countries, and he's the most forward person on news that Bucky knows.

It doesn't help that Bucky knows that Pietro likes men; he's very vocal in interviews as well as he is when he and Bucky are having conversations on the couch at three in the morning when neither of them can sleep. Steve, a light sleeper on his best days, laughs at Bucky when he comes back into their shared floor smiling. He knows how Bucky feels, of course. He can still see it all over Bucky's face, Winter Soldier or no.

He comes out this morning and nearly chokes on his spit: Pietro is at the table with the rest of the Avengers for breakfast, except... Well, he's wearing a skirt. And sitting in Clint's lap. And Bucky may be half way to punching one of his closest friends in the face before Natasha cuts him off mid step, grabbing his arm and twisting him into an alcove off of the main room with feline grace that drags him off of kilter even if he doesn't want to go. Natasha pushes him against the wall and keeps him there with a blade at his shoulder, which is fair.

"What?" he barks out, gritting his teeth. Natasha raises an unimpressed eyebrow.

"This is Pietro's first time being comfortable enough to wear skirts in front of us. You do not enact any violence right now, jealous or not, идиот. You do not make him uncomfortable, and for the sake of everyone here, you don't get Clint's blood on light blue fabric. Just don't. Tell him he looks pretty and move on," Natasha commands, and as much as it burns in Bucky's throat, he nods. He can move on, if he must. If Pietro will be happy. She allows him out of the alcove by making the knife disappear, tucking it into one of her many pockets. Even in regular clothes, Natasha has more pockets than anyone he knows.

“I like the skirt,” he says to Pietro, though he can’t make himself make eye contact. He smiles though, which he considers a step up. He doesn’t catch the flash of disappointment on Pietro’s face, nor the way that the speedster slinks out of Clint’s lap, putting himself directly in Bucky’s way. The soldier is getting tired of people getting in his way, but he still can’t make himself get angry with Pietro. He looks so pretty.

"You do not like it?" Pietro says, his accent thick and adorable on his tongue. Bucky smiles at him softly, tilting his head forward, but making sure not to be too outright in his affection for this young man who is obviously seeing Clint.

"I like the skirt, мышка," Bucky replies, his smile turning into something sad. "But it isn't my place," he admits, turning to walk past Pietro, who does not try to stop him again. Pietro, however unfortunately, will at least understand why Bucky has to keep his distance from complimenting the other man now, even if it will make Pietro keep his distance in other ways. As much as Bucky wants him around, as much as Bucky always wants Pietro around, with his light and his laughter and all of his newness, it is not what is meant to be. It's evident in the shade of Pietro's silence, the way that he doesn't reach out a hand for Bucky as he so often does, and Bucky can already feel the loss taking home in his chest.

There's a reason why Bucky cannot keep things and people that are made of light. He is not made to hold that against him, and anyone in the universe can tell.

He goes through the motions of getting his tea and getting his food, but he does not stay in the dining room with the rest of the Avengers, nor make his way to the breakfast nook that he and Steve and Sam occasionally pack themselves into. It's not uncommon for him to disappear into his and Steve's apartment all day, not uncommon for him to disappear at all, because Bucky oftentimes wants to disappear more than he wants to be a person. That's beside the point though. He had a good reason to be afraid.

The next time he reappears from his floor, Wanda finds him in the gym less than a minute after his entrance. He looks up at the ceiling to silently curse Friday, gritting his teeth as he prepares himself for the shovel talk that will certainly come from the woman who could take him apart into shards. Instead, she sits down on the training mat and makes a gesture for him to join her. He does so with a look of overt confusion, to which she hums.

"My brother, as near and dear to me as he is, is also an idiot," she says apropos of nothing, laying down on the mat and gesturing for Bucky to do the same. He does, crossing his arms behind his head and looking at the ceiling with her, which seems to go up and up and up forever, even if Bucky knows it's only the equivalent of three floors. Clint had asked for the extra space up there for tightrope practice, which Tony had taken as a challenge. It's funny to watch Bruce watch Clint up there, even if he's constantly on the edge of looking as if he's about to go green.

"So am I," Bucky admits after a few moments, because of course he hadn't said anything to Pietro before it was virtually confirmed that he was not available. Wanda looks at him, a slow scan that Bucky can practically feel, before she nods.

"You are. But only because you cannot see how much my brother is obviously... what do Americans say? Head over heels? For you, that is. He has had feelings for you for months," Wanda says casually, as if she is not dropping a bomb directly into Bucky’s lap and waiting for it to go off. This has to be a joke. “I’m inside of his head, you know. We’ve been like this my entire life, depending on each other for everything, even before I was given an expansion on my powers by HYDRA. He was a part of me before anything else.”

Bucky doesn’t know what to do with this admittance. As far as he knows, perhaps only Clint knows this much about the twins. Bucky feels very much like he is intruding on a private club, even if this feels as much like an invitation as anything else.

“And if I don’t want him back?” Bucky offers, even if it’s so obviously not true. Wanda laughs, twinkling bells to her brother’s angel song, and she stands from his side easily, using a bit of her magic to float her onto her feet.

“That is not something I am worried about, James Barnes. Just as I am not worried about you hurting him, even if you are both idiots. You will treat him right,” Wanda says, her eyes twinkling, and then she’s gone.

“Friday,” Bucky says to the ceiling, “Did that just happen?” Friday makes a noise of amusement that a program should not be capable of before answering.

“Yes, it did, Sergeant. Mister Maximoff is on his way, I believe,” Friday replies, and then Pietro is on the mat with Bucky, taking up the place that his sister had been. He’s still wearing a skirt, which Bucky doesn’t know how he runs in, but now with a sweater that looks like it belongs to Wanda, which almost makes Bucky wince. Pietro and Wanda usually steal each other’s clothes when they’re hurt or uncomfortable, and Bucky hates to have caused that, if he did. Instead of speaking, Pietro lays down, leaning against Bucky until he seems to collect himself together.

“You really thought I was fucking the old man?” Pietro asks, and Bucky can’t control the way that he chokes on his own spit. He has to sit up because he’s laughing so hard, knocking Pietro from his place leaning on his flesh shoulder, and eventually, Pietro is laughing as well. He’s sitting up to lean on Bucky, sitting up and getting closer to Bucky, sitting up and moving so that he’s sitting on Bucky’s lap, steadily set with his hands on Bucky’s shoulders. Bucky’s eyes are wide and he’s barely breathing, just looking and looking and looking. Pietro smiles down at him and kisses Bucky softly, like he means the world, and Bucky cradles his hips between his hands like glass, like a breakable thing, like an angel.

steve: steve has a lot a lot a LOT of trouble keeping his hands off of bucky. years without him has made steve needy--and hes always been a cuddly guy--so its hard for him to get used to the concept that bucky might not be ready for that . there are a lot of instances where steve goes in to get intimate (spooning, neck kisses, etc) and bucky leaps away at top speed. steve always apologizes for AGES afterwards, though, and he slowly starts to understand and bucky slowly gets better with contact.

sam: very minimal contact, in general. theres the grazing of fingers and thighs accidentally but for a very long time, they don’t get too intimate. it’s not till sam has a night terror and just kind of ... he needs bucky, and bucky knows how that is, and so sam crawls into bed with bucky and they fall asleep tangled together like vines of ivy. 3rd boyfriend steve takes a million pictures and makes them his phone background so fast. overall a lot of sam + buckys connection is emotional and it doesnt need to reach a physical level, unless one of them peaks and just needs really badly to know the other is there.

natasha: if theres anyone other than steve that bucky feels comfortable with touching, it’s natasha. it’s a different kind, though. where steve is bear hugs and neck kisses and nose boops, natasha is flicks of the ear and tacklehugs and biting bucky’s nose. she’;s not /overbearing/ or causing bucky pain, and she knows when to back off when bucky starts breaking down, but she doesn’;t treat him like fine china. they spar and they wrestle and in the end bucky falls asleep with their legs tangles and a mouthful of natasha’s hair and that’s just the way he likes it.

tony: probably the best for bucky. he knows what its like to fear real intimacy and touch, and he can read bucky like a book. he likes testing him--holding his hand especially, but he doesn’t mind when bucky jerks away, in fact, he usually catches it before it happens and switches to just linking their pinkies, just as a test run. they don’t cuddle much to be honest, but tony’s who really warms up bucky to small signs of intimacy-hand holding, linking arms, longer-than-need-be hugs. every once in a while when bucky’s in tony’s workshop listening to the sounds he gets bad flashbacks and tony just places a warm, calloused hand on bucky’s face and rubs his cheekbone with his thumb until it’s okay.

pietro: pietro has a lot of similar issues with physical contact... the first time they hang out though, pietro claps bucky on the back and bucky loses it and pietro feels like SHIT afterwards. like sam , a lot of their connection is emotional--the understand each other’s hydra trauma and they can talk about it honestly. pietro’s one of the best cuddlers buck’s ever encountered, though, and the first night pietro sleeps over pietro’s the big spoon and nothing’s made bucky feel as safe as pietro’s steady heartbeat and strong arms around his waist. while not super intimate, every touch is just that much more special.