Chapter Text
James Buchanan Barnes is no longer the Winter Soldier.
James Buchanan Barnes still occasionally finds himself in situations that are best navigated in assassin mode.
And this is one of those times.
He shifts position as silently as he can, tapping one finger against his earpiece. “Yelena,” he whispers, in Russian; Russian words always seem to leave his mouth more quietly than English ones do. “Status.”
He’s answered by static and silence, which isn’t anywhere even remotely close to a good sign. “Yelena!”
Another burst of static finally gives way to her voice, just as hushed and focused as his own. “Target in sight, I think. Nothing’s getting past Mom…I’m sending the images to Dad now.”
“Send ‘em to me, while you’re at it. I’d like to have a bit more of a read on this situation.”
“You know I can’t risk that. Hold on, Natasha’s giving me the danger signal-“
The transmission cuts out again. Bucky’s jaw tightens in frustration, and he lifts his hand back to the earpiece. Sam looks over at him from his post a few feet away. “Stop moving, man,” he hisses. “Do you want to mess this up?”
Bucky glares at him, but begrudgingly settles back down into his position. When they’d first set out on this mission, Yelena had been in his ear the whole way through, keeping him updated on every move they’d made. But now, with target after target singled out and eliminated, and the mission objective nowhere in sight, her updates have become more and more sporadic. Which doesn’t help matters any on Bucky’s side of things; with his unpredictable future in-laws at its forefront, this mission has the potential to go irreparably wrong in numerous ways, all of them leaving a lasting, perhaps permanent, impact. And because his own part of the mission largely depends on his ability to stay absolutely still, there’s nothing he can do but stay in position, feeling tense and worried and ridiculously exposed.
There’s been no word from Natasha. Whether that’s good or bad, he doesn’t have a clue.
The mission continues, more around him than involving him. Sam exchanges a few brief words every now and again with the other guy- Jaime, if Bucky remembers correctly, no one he knows, just someone who came highly recommended for this sort of deal. Technically, Clint should be around, but he’s already disappeared, probably onto a roof somewhere, which is yet another sign that Clint is a lot smarter than the rest of them when it comes to things like this.
In reality, it’s only about an hour, but it feels like half an eternity before the piece of plastic in Bucky’s ear crackles to life again. “Mission complete!” Yelena reports happily. “Target acquired. Natasha says it couldn’t have gone better, Mom’s a mess, Dad’s drinking vodka so he can pretend he doesn’t have emotions. The usual.”
All things considered, “the usual” is about as good as Bucky could have hoped for, and he lets himself relax a little. Yelena must have done the same thing, because she isn’t bothering to keep her voice down anymore, and Sam shoots Bucky an incredulous look. “Dude, seriously? You’ve got Yelena over there giving you the play-by-play?”
“Excuse me for taking an interest,” Bucky fires back. “I’ve never done this before, and there’s a whole lot of people out there who would rather I didn’t do it now, especially with Natasha. I want to make sure it goes okay.”
“Assassin paranoia,” Sam pronounces sagely, in his best counselor voice. Bucky contemplates throwing something at him, but he’s still not supposed to move, so he settles for his best death stare. Sam just laughs, leaning casually back in his chair. “So? How’d the girls do?”
“Pretty good, from the sound of it, once they got Melina on the same page as everybody else.”
“Well, that’s one half down,” Sam says. “One to go.”
“Actually, that half’s done too,” Jaime puts in. “I’m all finished, Mr. Barnes, if you want to see what the damage is.”
“Yeah,” Bucky says. “Yeah, why not.” He must still not be entirely used to feelings yet, because he’s done way harder things than this, but he still feels as nervous as he’s ever felt in his life as he stands up and surveys the mission results.
It’s…not bad. It’s not bad at all. It’s better than he could have hoped for.
Not many tailors are up to the difficulties of making a one-armed wedding suit, but the challenge hasn’t fazed Jaime at all. The light blue jacket leaves the metal arm completely exposed, but not in a strange or disconcerting way; it looks intentional, somehow. Better than that, it looks good. The shirt under the jacket is…white, a lot whiter than anything he’s used to wearing, but it looks just as good, just as…normal. That’s what the whole ensemble looks like: not like he’s the Winter Soldier getting married, not even like he’s an Avenger. Just like he’s any other guy, lucky enough to love a girl like Natasha and even luckier that she loves him too.
He can’t say anything for a very long moment. And once he can, he doesn’t know what to say. Before he can figure it out, Sam- looking pretty sharp in his own crisp white shirt- is reaching around and plucking the earpiece out.
“We’ve got one idiotic grin over here, Yelena,” he reports. “Mission successful. And hey, send me those pictures of Nat’s dress, I want to lord it over Buck that he doesn’t get to see it yet.”
“That just leaves Mr. Barton, wherever he’s escaped to,” Jaime says.
Technically, he’s wrong about that; Thor and Bruce are also groomsmen alongside Clint. But Bruce is taking care of his own outfit to make sure it can stand up to an unexpected code green, and Thor is…definitely not the formalwear type unless it involves a cape. There’s also Nick Fury, who’s going to be performing the ceremony, but he’ll probably just show up in the same long black coat as always.
So Clint is the only one M.I.A., which Bucky can’t blame him for. But it doesn’t take long, once Sam hollers for him to get back inside, for him to reappear, suspiciously puffy-eyed. “Pictures,” he explains hoarsely. “Nat. In her dress. I’m a marshmallow.”
Sam immediately cranes his neck to look over Clint’s shoulder. “No fair! I didn’t get those ones!”
“The future Mrs. Barnes, I presume?” Jaime says, and Clint, agreeably, tilts the phone so he can see, while still keeping it out of Bucky’s line of sight.
“This is a conspiracy,” Bucky grumbles.
“You bet,” Sam says. “Melina seems pretty big on the “groom doesn’t see the bride before the wedding” tradition, and if there’s one person whose bad side I don’t wanna be on, it’s your crazy Russian mother-in-law.”
“I’ll say this, Mr. Barnes,” Jaime says, smiling at him. “You are a very lucky man.”
“In more ways than one,” Bucky agrees. And he doesn’t even have to see Natasha in her dress to know that.
One person, however, does have mercy on him. Halfway through Clint’s shirt fitting, his phone lights up.
I didn’t know it was possible to wrap this much fabric around one person. Or to take this long doing it. What do you say we put our old skill sets to work, ditch the friends and family and disappear somewhere?
He grins at that. As much as Natasha wants a normal-person wedding- and to be honest, he wants the same thing, no matter how unlikely they are to get it considering their guest list- she’s spent too long as Black Widow to be comfortable as the center of attention for long. Meet you in twenty, he texts back.
The reply comes a moment later. I don’t even know where we’re going. But no pancake houses.
It’s uncanny, the way she’s able to read his mind like that.
Jaime steps over to him as he looks up from his phone. “I’ve seen that look before,” he says. “Not one for the pomp and circumstance?”
“Neither is she,” Bucky says. “But we both wanted one thing in our lives that we got to do the way everybody else does it.”
“And I’m honored you chose me to be a part of it,” Jaime says. He winks. “Take the back door on your way out. No one will be the wiser.”
Considering he’s the bridegroom, it’s surprisingly easy for him to slip out unnoticed, Winter Soldier skills notwithstanding. But then again, by the time he leaves Clint and Sam have launched themselves into a completely nonsensical debate about who has the better bird-related superhero name, so he’s more than happy to leave them to it.
He and Natasha end up meeting up outside the same little cafe where he had his disastrous date just before the whole Flag Smasher debacle got going. Predictably, Natasha looks as composed and put together as if she didn’t spend the entire morning trying on four hundred white dresses, while he looks as flustered and desperate as if he’s just escaped from a hostage situation. Which actually isn’t a bad metaphor, now that he thinks about it.
He nods toward the waving cat statuette as they sit down. “Cats and my love life. Always connected somehow.”
“Well, there’s riskier things to build a romance around. Like being brainwashed assassins for decades, maybe.”
The lightness in her tone proves she’s only teasing, but the mention of risk makes him remember something, something he’s been meaning to bring up but hasn’t found the time for in all of the pre-wedding craziness that’s been taking up every spare minute since they picked a date.
“About that,” he says. “About it being risky. Sam’s been getting phone calls. From government people. Most of whom think-“
“That a “superhero wedding” is going to turn into the place to be for every wannabe supervillain from here to Madripoor, and we’re both crazy to be getting married to each other at all, let alone doing it in public. Yeah. I know. I’ve been getting the calls too. I told them they could save their objections for the part of the ceremony that asks about them.”
That reply is so perfectly Natasha that he can’t do anything but stare at her for a long moment. Because honestly, he never would have thought of saying something like that. And even if he thought of it, actually saying it would be a whole separate problem. “I love you.”
She shrugs. “Like you said when I first started thinking about that, there’s nothing anyone can throw at us that we can’t handle together. Besides, have you seen our guest list? Even if most of them are going to be crying their eyes out and/or drunk by the end of things, they’ll still be more than able to handle any uninvited guests.”
“Oh yeah, the guest list. We still have to finalize that.”
She waves that aside. “Later. We’ve got plenty of time, still, to worry about things. I’ve had as much of the planning and organizing as I can take for one day. Right now I just want to sit here and have a minute to myself with the reason why I’m doing it all in the first place.”
By now the waitress is sliding two steaming mugs of coffee in front of them, so he picks his up and raises it in a mock toast. “To being normal people,” he says.
“To being normal people,” Natasha echoes. “And to trying to pull off a normal-person wedding with two-thirds of the Avengers and my crazy Russian spy family in attendance.”
They both drink to that. Deeply. And Bucky has the feeling that this is just the first of many cups of coffee they’ll both be needing to get them through this whole thing.
Funny how doing things like a normal person can be harder than doing them like a superhero.