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Natasha gets the drop on him two days after the failed invasion.
Steve’s half-expecting a more thorough interrogation than the one he received out in the field, so he’s slightly more composed than he would have been otherwise, but he’s not sure how much that really counts for when Natasha’s managed to corner him while he’s dripping wet and covering what remains of his dignity with only a flimsy, too-small towel.
In retrospect, it makes sense that she’d seek him out here. In the wake of the events in New York, only Thor got a free pass in terms of consequences (fucking off back to Asgard with his murderous step brother in tow is probably more important than the mountains of paperwork and damage control the other Avengers have been saddled with, but still -- Steve’s a tad jealous, he’ll admit it). Stark opened his tower to them in a show of solidarity (and, from what Steve’s gathered, a subtle plea for camaraderie and companionship) and Steve and the others have been here ever since, though Steve (and by extension, Bucky) plans to return to Brooklyn the moment Maria Hill and Nick Fury are satisfied he’s hoodwinked the American public into believing he’s the same blue-eyed golden boy from their history classes. Until then, though, Steve’s here, consistently being confounded by the way Stark drowns himself in excess and wondering where the hell he went wrong in his life to find himself here.
(The war typically presents itself as the obvious answer and Steve’s content to leave it at that for now)
In any case, here Steve is, fresh out of the shower and positively gaping at Natasha Romanoff where she’s perched on the edge of his sink, legs crossed delicately and smirk tilting her lips. She’s dressed casually in dark-wash jeans and a hooded sweatshirt Steve’s photographic memory helpfully reminds him was tied around Clint’s waist just yesterday, but for all that it appears she’s made an effort to be non-threatening, Steve feels small and vulnerable beneath her hooded gaze. Shit, he knows why she’s here, both in the literal sense and the abstract. She wants to discuss Bucky, and obviously felt she couldn’t do that with Bucky around, so… yeah.
Here’s the thing: in the aftermath of Loki’s assault on New York, Bucky’s spent practically every second glued to Steve’s side. He sat through a stiff introduction to the rest of the team pressed thigh-to-thigh with Steve in that shawarma restaurant, occasionally mumbling something in Russian that Natasha would raise a brow at, or Clint would splutter with laughter over (even Thor would quirk a bemused smile, and Steve had to remember that Thor’s All-Speak had to come in handy in all kinds of situations); he kept a hand curled into the fabric of Steve’s uniform while Steve haltingly explained what had happened to a very stoic Maria Hill with Natasha looking on from the background, blank-faced and terrifying; he’d also latched onto Steve the moment Stark tried to lead him to his own room in the Tower, and let loose something that really, really resembled a growl when Stark made some crass remark about Steve robbing the cradle (Steve had suspected what Stark meant by that, but he’d still flushed to the tips of his ears when he looked up the definition later that night). Suffice it to say, there weren’t many chances to catch Steve alone these days; Natasha had apparently taken that as a challenge.
Steve would be impressed if he weren’t currently deeply, deeply mortified.
“Captain Rogers,” Natasha begins coolly, folding her arms underneath her chest. Steam from his shower curls around her, and it’s weirdly enchanting, like watching some ethereal creature emerge from the mists to mingle with mankind. Natasha could be fae, Steve reasons; with everything he’s seen, it wouldn’t even rank in his top ten. “We need to talk.”
“This couldn’t have waited until I grabbed my clothes?” he asks, even knowing it’s futile. Natasha wants to talk, which means they’ll talk, end of discussion. He’s already reaching for a second towel before she’s settled on a response.
“You know it couldn’t. I can’t exactly chat with you when you’ve got that stubborn shadow nipping at your heels, can I?”
“Seeing as this involves Bucky,” Steve returns dryly, tying off the towel around his waist and ruffling his damp hair with the other, “it seems to me it’d only be polite if we were in on the conversation.”
Natasha’s lips thin. “The Winter Soldier” -- and it’s such a pointed jab at Steve’s supposed naivety he has to suppress an exaggerated eye roll -- “is an expertly trained, highly dangerous operative who has been linked to Soviet Russia and a half-dozen terrorist organizations.” If Steve didn’t know any better, he’d say her next pause is less certain, more defensive. “Including Hydra.”
The towel nearly slips from Steve’s grasp.
Before Steve can blurt out that that’s impossible , that he died ensuring that Hydra crumbled back in the forties, Natasha’s whipping out a manilla folder from somewhere, brandishing it as one might a gun in a threatening display. Steve’s eyes zero in on it instantly, though Natasha doesn’t offer it him, or flip through its contents.
“Stark, at my request, hacked into the city’s security feeds and found footage of the Soldier right before you made contact with him. There was a group of men and women with him.”
“Civilians,” Steve mutters absently, barely aware of the words leaving his mouth. Natasha pays him no mind.
“You were right before, actually,” she continues, in a tone that suggests this is an unforeseen development, and Steve really has to work at not setting his jaw against her assumptions; super soldier or not, his teeth need a goddamn break. “They were scientists that the Soldier was guarding -- we assume he was meant to get them out of the city alive, before they were taken out by our not-so-friendly visitors. But then he ran into you.”
“It’s not like I did anything--”
Another look from Natasha and Steve shuts his mouth with an audible clack . Right. No interrupting the master spy.
“Stark tracked the Soldier and his wards back to what we thought was a foreclosed apartment building. They went in, only the Soldier came out. We matched up your side of the story to the rest of the footage, and the Soldier didn’t leave your side after that.” Natasha cocked a brow at him expectantly. “Makes you wonder what happened to the scientists, doesn’t it?”
Steve wasn’t made for head games. He heaves a sigh and leans his weight against the glass sliding door of the shower stall, waiting her out. Water droplets continue to roll down his skin, making him long for privacy so that he could properly dry himself off. He’s no stranger to nudity in the face of virtual strangers, but that was the army; he hadn’t had much of a choice if he wanted a chance to scrub the muck and blood from his body. He’d hoped that now he was out he could reclaim a portion of his modesty, but that looks to be nothing more than wishful thinking on his part again.
Eventually Natasha decides she’s tortured him enough and cuts neatly through the ensuing silence. “Obviously we went looking for them, and we found them exactly where the Soldier left them. And it turns out that that foreclosed building had, at some point, been converted into a cross between a safe house and a research lab. That kind of thing would normally be on SHIELD’s radar.” It’s important, he thinks, that she’s letting him in on this at all. That she’s trusting him with this -- the knowledge that SHIELD somehow managed to drop the ball here. He doesn’t know why, exactly, but he holds tight to the fact as she goes on. “Fury and Hill are still interrogating the scientists, partially because of that, and partially because of what we found in that building.”
She waves the folder, instantly drawing Steve’s eye again. It suddenly looks much more imposing than it had a moment ago.
“This isn’t everything,” she says, “because we don’t have everything. There are pieces scattered around the globe, and I’d know that because this concerns me, too, to an extent. It was a Hydra safe house, Captain, and in it we found detailed records of the Winter Soldier.”
It takes a moment for that to sink in. Hydra, the Winter Soldier’s connection, all of it. But when it does, when Natasha’s words hook under his skin and seep into his bones… If not for the door at his back Steve might very well collapse under the sudden weight of his own failure.
He thought he’d put an end to Hydra when he crashed Schmidt’s plane into the Arctic.
He thought he’d been doing the right thing, giving his life for his country, to save millions of lives and leave the future a brighter place, without Hydra’s shadowy tentacles pulling strings like the puppet masters they so clearly wished to be. But of course he didn’t accomplish that; he didn’t even accomplish his own death , let alone that of a Nazi organization hellbent on world domination. Christ, Jesus fucking Christ --
“Captain.”
Natasha’s sharp voice drags him out from the sea of doubts he’s flung himself into, and he jerks his head at her (when did he start avoiding eye contact), prompting her to keep going. If she has more to say he needs to hear it. He needs… he needs to know what else he did wrong.
There’s a whisper of a sigh that might come from Natasha and might come from his own imagination. Then she says, her voice no longer quite identical to the shing of steel against steel, “The files on the Soldier are outdated and incomplete. However, with what we could find, combined with a few… unsettling discovered in the lab itself, Barton and I came to the conclusion that he -- Bucky -- may be best off left in your care after all.”
That’s enough to jar Steve from his stupor completely. “What?” he breathes, hoarse. In the back of his mind he’d been convinced that this was Natasha easing him into a demand that he deliver Bucky into SHIELD custody; that he’d have to fight tooth and nail just to be able to visit Bucky, if they didn’t decide to--
This is unexpected, to say the least.
Natasha shrugs, uncrossing her legs as she leans forward a bit, gripping at the marble countertop and meeting his eyes. “Nothing’s clear yet,” she admits, “but Barton found evidence that supports the idea that Bucky wasn’t working for Hydra willingly. Evidence that says he’d been coerced, or… brainwashed is the better term, I suppose.” She pauses again, just a second in which she flicks her eyes away from Steve’s before returning his gaze with such an intensity that he nearly jerks back. “Torture. They tortured him, Rogers. For years. Decades. And I know some of what he went through because… he trained me. Briefly, when I was still in Russia. Whatever they did to him, they did it to us, too, me and the other girls in the Black Widow program. I remember only fragments of our time together, they took that from me, from him -- but you were right, before. He’s… probably a good man.”
Of all the things Natasha could have said, this is what floors him. Because this requires a level of trust that he didn’t think it was in Natasha’s nature to give (with the exception of Barton, for obvious reasons), and for her to offer a part of herself -- a real part, separate from the facades she wears and discards on a daily basis… he’s humbled by it, honestly. Captain America may be a paragon of truth and justice, but Steve Rogers knows that he very much is not -- so it’s staggering to see Natasha putting her faith in him regardless.
“Everything else you can read in the files,” Natasha says, nonchalant again, shoulders a relaxed line as she slips down from the sink and slaps the folder against he chest; he fumbles to get a hold on it before the remnants of his shower soak into the fragile documents, and he catches the faint uptick of Natasha’s smirk from the corner of his eye. “Now, don’t misunderstand, Captain -- Barton and I agreed on this, that we’re content with you looking after Bucky for the time being. He’s comfortable with you, for whatever reason, and that’s good for him right now. But Fury wasn’t a part of this decision; he’s going to want Bucky to come in. I’d bet on him dusting off a variant of the speech he used on me. It’s… persuasive.” She smiles, suddenly, and while it doesn’t quite reach her eyes Steve can’t help but mirror it. “You’re stubborn, though. Use that.”
Steve manages to swallow past the lump in the throat, fingers tight around the edges of the folder. He’s a little overwhelmed right now, struggling to process everything she’s thrown at him; but there’s a part of him that’s settled, as well, because this exchange has reassured him that he made the right call with Bucky after all. And it’s tied him to a purpose -- keeping Bucky safe and… well, after he has a look at these files he’s sure he’ll be able to come up with a few more pressing goals to work towards.
“Thank you,” he says, low and quiet.
Natasha tucks a lock of hair behind her hair, brushing off his gratitude with an eye roll. She starts for the door, looking over her shoulder to smirk at him. “You’re the man with a plan, Captain,” she says, like that explains everything. It really, really doesn’t, and she seems to realize that he won’t appreciate the vague response, because she after a moment she adds, “And Barton apparently thinks you live up to the hype. He also may have something of a crush on you after he saw you decapitate an alien with your shield, which probably has something to do with it.”
That has Steve barking out a laugh, shoulders shaking with his mirth, and when he gets control of himself again Natasha’s standing in the open doorway, watching him with carefully controlled amusement coloring her features. It’s a heartbeat later that he realizes she wasn’t amused at him, precisely, because the moment she steps out into the hallway Bucky is there, looking like he’s just woken from a nap, hair disheveled and sporting an imprint of Steve’s wrinkled sheets on his cheek. Steve would happily greet him with a smile if not for the fact that Bucky knocks the breath out of him when he all but tackles him with a flying leap from the doorway. Breathless and grinning with it, Steve’s laughing as he staggers back a step, arms instinctively wrapping around Bucky’s waist. His dark thoughts dissipate in a flash when Bucky’s warm and solid in his arms. This easy affection with a man Steve hardly knows would definitely be freaking him out more if it didn’t feel so damn nice.
“Hey, Buck,” he says, biting his lip to stifle another laugh at the look Bucky’s giving him -- a little cross, a little bemused, like he’s annoyed with Steve and can’t figure out exactly why. It’s… cute. “Sleep well?”
The folder is still clutched in his hand, and he hopes it isn’t digging uncomfortably into Bucky’s back. Although he can’t tell if Bucky even notices it, seeing as he’s a little preoccupied with gawking at Steve’s bare chest. A flush starts to creek down Steve’s neck and he swallows again.
“Buck?” he repeats.
Bucky drags his eyes up to look at Steve properly, blinking once, twice. “You took too long.”
Steve snorts. “Did I? Sorry, Natasha needed something from me.”
Bucky’s eyes narrow to incredulous slits. He doesn’t say anything, just wriggles out of Steve’s embrace and grabs onto Steve’s wrist to tug him out of the bathroom. Steve goes willingly, deciding it’s easier to go along with Bucky’s will than to question him right now. They end up in Steve’s (borrowed) bedroom, and Bucky takes great care to arrange the both of them on the bed to his liking, with Steve acting as a makeshift pillow and Bucky sprawled out on top of him like he’s part octopus, part blanket. Steve can’t say he minds all that much; Bucky’s warm and his hair is soft where it’s draped over Steve’s bare skin.
He’s going to have to address this at some point, the tender spot under his ribs and the swoop in his stomach from having Bucky close to him, but not now. And the folder -- that’s for another time, too, despite the itch under Steve’s skin to know what the hell Bucky’s been through. He hasn’t forgotten that dead-eyed look Bucky gave him during the battle, because it looked entirely too much like how the shell-shocked boys did in the war. But that’s -- he can deal with it later, when Bucky isn’t dozing on top of him. And when Steve isn’t half-naked. Shit, he really should’ve gotten dressed before he let Bucky push him onto the bed; he’s soaking the sheets, for Christ’s sake.
But yeah, later. He’ll enjoy this quiet moment while he can. It’s only fair to Bucky, anyway.