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Bruce didn't actually expect Barnes to ever seek him out.
On reflection, he realizes that was kind of dumb. He has absolutely no objection to the fact that Betty appears to have adopted both displaced, nonagenarian and yet in some ways very definitely young men as some kind of set of surrogate nephews. If anything it's kind of a relief, since the rest of her biological family more or less disowned her when she disowned her father, and Bruce knows she's been feeling the lack. He'd been much less wild about her being personally involved in procedures designed to hit all the bad, bad buttons of a man still regularly having psychotic breaks, without general anaesthetic, but he will and in fact did admit he was wrong there and completely underestimated the self-control of the guy in question.
And so really, if he'd stopped and thought about it properly for a minute, it would've been self-evident that eventually, the general orbit of "figuring out where the minefields aren't" would involve him, if only because Betty involved him. So to speak. He'd been thinking mostly about threat assessment of the Other Guy, which he's pretty sure Barnes is intelligent enough to skip right to "nightmare" and save himself some trouble. He'd forgotten to remember normal social things. Which figured.
Even so, he still wouldn't've guessed why.
He feels a bit bad about it in the end, actually, because he's been almost as bad as Betty and hasn't really been out of the labs much beyond collapsing at home for the last two weeks. And he knows - hell, even Security and the rest of the Tower staff know - that while Barnes will actively (if quietly and unobtrusively) scrutinize every other part of the building when he's there, his interest (or rather, his cope, Bruce thinks) ends abruptly at the labs.
Since there are days Bruce still has anxious moments about being in a building with real live (easily broken, fuck, so easily broken) human beings sharing it with him, he can sympathize. A lot. It just means the man has to have been waiting for a while to find Bruce somewhere else, without Betty, and Bruce feels a bit bad about that.
Thus far, Bruce has more or less stayed out of what Tony insists on calling The Great Assassin Rehab Project no matter how many times Betty threatens to actually hit him, Tony, with a chair over it, other than the occasional help brainstorming. Bruce figures they're well into the "too many chefs" area of helping, especially with Tony so invested, and also the guy doesn't need to feel any more like he's under a microscope. Probably the most he's actively interfered is a couple of times intervening to make Tony back off, preferably before Steve breaks his nose for him for seriously overstepping.
"You mean well," Bruce'd said to Tony the first time. "So this is me, as your friend, stepping in to tell you when meaning well's just going to end badly and the best way you can help is shutting up and leaving well alone."
Some days Bruce fantasizes about a time machine, so he can go back, kidnap Maria and Howard Stark, bring them to the future and force them to sit through a few parenting classes so maybe their son'll come out with a few less pathological ways to show his affection for people. Just a few.
Basically, Bruce figures if for some reason his involvement is actually needed, which he can't imagine really, Steve'll ask. Until then, he'll just stay out of it, keep himself to himself.
But now Barnes finds him in the mostly empty coffee lounge. He does get a coffee first. Watching him, Bruce schools his face out of a sympathetic grimace: he remembers being on the other side of that kind of skin, wary of everyone breathing not because you're afraid of them - the idea's actually ridiculous enough to be funny, because what the hell could any of them do to you? Absolutely fuck-all, that's what - but because you're afraid of what'll happen to them if you have a bad moment.
Of being afraid, not of anyone else, but of yourself on their behalf. He'd lived that. In retrospect he can see why Tony honed in on him, actually, because of that. And if Bruce had any idea what would help that dial back a bit, here and now, he'd do it. But he doesn't.
So when Barnes approaches the table, with the frustrated-yet-resigned tinge to his expression that Bruce also knows from the inside, the one that means you're pretty sure you are going to screw up this whole "people" thing (in his case because it'd been a year and a half since he saw more than one at a time), Bruce half-closes the tablet-laptop he's using and says, "Look, just to get it out there, I want to say: don't worry about it. I'm friends with Tony, I'm really not easily offended and I'm pretty good at figuring out what people mean from what they say. And if I can't," he adds, "I ask."
Betty'd once crunched the numbers, such as they knew them, and figured that to maintain health on an ordinary physical regimen (whatever the hell that was for super-soldiers, Bruce hadn't pursued that), Steve and Barnes needed at least 4500 calories in a day; Bruce's willing to go out on a limb and say Barnes still isn't getting that. With his hair pulled back with an elastic and jeans and a canvas jacket over a hooded sweat-shirt, you could pretty much be forgiven for thinking he's a stressed out grad student, or some other kind of ordinary twenty-something with too much to do and not enough food and sleep to do it on.
As long as you didn't know anything about how people moved and what it meant, anyway. If you knew that, everything about him screamed death.
The quirk of Barnes' mouth at Bruce's deflection doesn't quite actually reach his eyes, but they look a little less closed and wary and calculating. It still takes him a second - a split part of it spent tracking someone moving behind Bruce - before he says, "Do you . . . have any kind of . . . fixed objection, to Elizabeth learning how to use a weapon?"
Actually the only thing Bruce does find a disconcerting about Barnes and Steve are the moments like this, where - regardless of content - the shape of how they talk or ask things or talk about things or the way they insist on using Betty's full name is clearly that of two reasonably well-brought-up young men from the first half of the last century, and how endearing it ends up being. It's been ages since Bruce had a grad student, but it's the same damn feeling, and feeling that way about Captain America and the Winter Soldier is just damn weird.
The content of the question is enough of a surprise, though, that Bruce finds himself saying, "She does," before he's actually thought it through, out of - well, sheer, slightly frustrated certainty. Betty did object. Strenuously. Immovably, at least so far.
This fleeting sort-of-smile is a little more genuine, and Barnes says, "I know. I can deal with that. I just . . .want to find out if I have to convince you, too."
For a second Bruce almost automatically points out that when it comes down to it, whether or not he had an objection wouldn't matter given it's Betty, but he sits on it. All things considered he kind of doubts Barnes is under the impression he's got any kind of sway over Betty, which means he's asking either because leaning on old habits to talk to people at all means he has to, or because he's actually being thoughtful enough to try and avoid causing a relationship conflict.
If it's the latter, it means the next time it comes up, Bruce can razz Tony about being officially less thoughtful - in the strict "thinking about" meaning - than a traumatized amnesiac with a stranger. So he thinks he'll settle on the latter. Tony needs that kind of thing sometimes. Competition can be good for him.
So instead Bruce tries to think of how to put this, and ends up with, "I don't actually have that much that's mine, in general, beyond my undying gratitude. But if you can convince Betty to pick up some kind of self-defence anything more thorough than 'my cousin taught me how to hit people properly when I was a kid, I don't need anything else', my undying gratitude is absolutely something you will have."
Barnes relaxes a little and Bruce adds, "For the record, I've been trying for twenty years without any luck."
The nod Barnes gives is obviously meant to stand in for a good-bye as well as an acknowledgement, because after he says, "Thank you," he leaves.
Bruce figures that, as first conversations go, that wasn't too bad.
It's six or so when Betty makes it back to their suite to change, because - in what's actually a pretty blatant way of ensuring that Pepper and Betty both eat real food - they're taking Jane and Thor for Ethiopian food. Betty's frowning in a way that's one step up from her scowl as she brushes her teeth and brushes out her hair, and eventually Bruce comes to stand in the bathroom doorway and ask, "Something wrong?"
She puts down the brush, looks at him via the mirror for a minute, and then her lips compress and she says, "You're not allowed to say anything," in a warning tone. Then she picks up the brush and runs it through her hair one or two more times before she says, "As of Monday I'm learning how to effectively use a handgun."
Effectively almost has air-quotes around it. Bruce doesn't say anything, but he does let his eyebrows go way up, and wonders how the hell Barnes managed that. Because Bruce is impressed, and frankly he wouldn't've put Barnes as being up to effectively manipulating anyone. Or really managing to coherently argue if Betty got stubborn.
Betty starts to french-braid her hair and turns to give him a dire look. "Anything," she repeats, and Bruce holds up both hands.
"I didn't say anything," he says, mildly. "I'm just a bit surprised, considering how against it you've been always been before now."
"Yes, well," Betty says, messing up the braid in her defensiveness and then making it worse, enough that Bruce steps into the bathroom and wordlessly offers to do it for her. She accepts, and sighs. "Before now, the fact that I can't use a deadly weapon hasn't been undermining someone's already fragile mental health."
. . . clever son of a bitch, Bruce thinks, and keeps the amusement off his face. Because that'd probably actually do it. It wouldn't even take much - just outright saying, it's making me crazy that you can't defend yourself would probably do it, and Barnes'd probably be willing to say that, to Betty. For that matter, Steve'd probably back him up.
It's also probably true. That wouldn't hurt. But the combination of the need to look after someone and the sheer flattery of being that important - that would actually work. Seriously clever son of a bitch.
"I don't think Pepper knows how to shoot anyone," Betty complains, as she hands Bruce the silver-coloured elastic and Bruce shrugs.
"Pepper more or less gets followed everywhere by Stark Security," he points out. "You refuse to let them follow you."
"My life isn't that dangerous!" Betty objects, and Bruce shrugs again.
"So don't do it," he suggests and gets glared at. This time he doesn't hide the slight smile, but kisses her temple instead.
"You're happy about this," she mutters. "Don't even try to deny it. You're lucky I love you."
"You know," Bruce says, "I think I am." He kisses her forehead and says, "Just because you can use it doesn't mean you have to, Betty, and it'll keep Barnes from getting it into his head he needs to try to stalk you and Steve everywhere to keep you from getting killed, which is a bit much for anybody." Bruce has no problem with going right along with this line.
Betty fakes a bit more glower and then gives up and leans her head on his shoulder. "It's probably a bit ridiculous to be worried the General will find out," she says, resignedly.
"If somehow the rumour mill gets ahold of it," Bruce says dryly, "we'll make sure to add in the bit about who's teaching you to make sure he doesn't actually get happy about it."