Chapter Text
Bucky noticed the first thing you did each morning was make a coffee. Before you even said good morning you headed straight for the coffee machine and poured yourself a massive cup.
Over time, he realised that you used the same cup most mornings, only deviating from this when it wasn’t clean or someone else was already using it.
The next thing that struck him was that you always had 3 sugars in your coffee. But not a straight 3 sugars, you woul put 2 sugars in and before moving away from the kitchen, you would look around to make sure nobody was watching before quickly putting a 3rd one in.
Lastly, he noted that you would fill your cup 2/3 full with coffee and then add the creamer from the fridge.
On nice mornings you would take you coffee and sit outside near the pool. On overcast or rainy mornings, you would sit by the window, sometimes on the floor, in the movie room and just watch the rain while you sipped your coffee.
You never considered yourself a predictable person or someone who stuck to certain rituals or routines, and in most of life you weren’t. Except when it came to your morning coffee.
One rainy morning, you were sitting by the window, watching the rain run in rivulets down the glass and splash in puddles around the yard, when you felt a presence nearby.
You looked up and saw Bucky standing beside you. “Hey Bucky, you wanna sit?”
Bucky looked down at you, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
“You’re not disturbing me” you told him. “I feel calm when it rains and I’m happy to share that if you would like to?”
“It’s ok Yn,” he replied “I’ll leave you be for now, but maybe tomorrow, if you’re here?”
“Ok Buck, you’re always welcome to sit with me, wherever I am” you smiled at him and he quickly turned and walked away.
You and Bucky hadn’t interacted a lot in your few months at the compound but what time you had spent with him intrigued you. He was quiet, sometimes dark and brooding but, given his history, that was no big surprise.
What surprised you the most was the joy that radiated from him at times. It didn't happen often, but when it did, it made your heart sing. Mostly because it was so rare, but also because, with everything he’d been through, he deserved some joy in his life.
You could tell he fought it, that happy feeling, but when he gave in, the genuine smile on his face made your day.
The Next Day
Bucky was already in the kitchen when you came down to make your coffee. You noticed that the cup you usually use was already on the bench. Thinking Bucky was using it, you got a different cup and made your coffee, heading outside because it was a nicer morning than yesterday.
Bucky turned from what he was doing, saw you heading out the door with your coffee and frowned. He’d got your cup out ready for you and you hadn’t used it. This confused him but he put it away, in the back of the cupboard so nobody else would accidentally use it.
After making his coffee, he went and stood by the window and watched you, quietly. You looked so peaceful, he didn’t want to disturb you, so he just watched.
“Hey man, why don’t you go talk to her.” A voice said beside Bucky.
He turned around to see Steve standing beside him “I don’t want to disturb her, I don’t think she really like me.”
“Don’t be silly, why would you think that? I don’t think there’s anybody here she doesn’t like, or who doesn’t like her.” Steve responded.
“I… Well, it’s just… Oh don’t worry about it, I’m going to my room. I’ll see you for training in 30 minutes?” He asked Steve.
“Yeah sure, see you then.” Steve replied, unsure if something had happened to make Bucky think that you didn’t like him.
*****
Over the next couple of weeks, Bucky observed your routine again, thinking maybe he had got something wrong.
Day 1: Same cup, 2 sugars and a sneaky 3rd, 2/3 cup of coffee, 1/3 cup of creamer. Sitting outside or by the window.
Day 6: Same cup, 2 sugars with a sneaky 3rd, 2/3 cup of coffee, 1/3 cup of creamer. Sitting outside or by the window.
Day 17: Same cup, 2 sugars, then a 3rd when nobody was looking, 2/3 coffee, 1/3 creamer, outside or by the window.
He couldn’t work out why his gesture all those weeks ago failed. You have literally been doing the same thing every morning. No deviation to the routine. He vowed that he would try again tomorrow and maybe this time actually sit with you.
Later that day
Steve walked up to Bucky “Come with me, Tony wants us in the conference room in 5 minutes.”
Bucky followed behind Steve, wondering what he could want the 2 of them for. When they walked in Yn and Clint were already there.
Tony: “I’ve got a mission for you.”
Yn: “All 4 of us?” Excited to go on a mission with Cap & Bucky, but particularly Bucky.
Tony: “No, I only need 3 of you, Clint and Yn, you will be going, but it will be either Cap or Bucky that goes with you. I wanted them both here because whoever stays behind will be doing the comms and planning for the rest of you.”
Steve: “Well, I’m probably better with computers than Bucky is”
Bucky: “Hey man.. I’m alright with computers, as long as someone shows me what to do. But given it’s Yn’s first proper mission, Steve probably should go”
Tony: “That’s settled then, Steve, Clint, Yn, suit up, wheels up in 1 hour.”
Bucky headed back towards his room. Steve caught up to him not far from the conference room.
“Hey man, why aren’t you going on this mission. It will be a good excuse to spend some time with Yn and get to know her better?”
“Steve, I just don’t trust myself to not stuff up. Yes, you’re better with computers, but if I stuff up out there, on her first proper mission, bad things could happen and I don’t want to be responsible for that.” Bucky replied, walking off.
Steve sighed and went back to the conference room to talk to Tony.
1800 hrs that night
The quinjet takes off with you and Clint, Steve is flying. While you were on the way to your destination, which only Steve knows so far, he queues up the mission info on the big screen so you can all go over it.
You will be arriving in the middle of the night, going straight to the safe house then heading out to do what you have to do tomorrow at 7am. If you’re lucky you’ll all get a couple of hours sleep.
Having never been on a mission before, you don’t think you’ll get any sleep and you are proven right. You sit in the lounge of the safe house, thinking.
“Man I wish I had some coffee” you thought out loud to yourself, when all of a sudden you hear..
“Well there’s coffee here but I don’t think that helps you right now.” The voice was familiar but you couldn't quite place it.
“Umm.. Wh.. Who are you and umm.. where, where are you?” You’re confused because this isn’t coming over comms, you don’t even have your ear piece in right now.
“Yn, it’s Bucky. Tony had the safe house wired so we could talk to you even when you aren’t wearing your comms.”
“Oh Bucky, you scared me, I didn’t know that was a thing.”
“Sorry Yn, I didn’t mean to scare you. If I was there, I’d make you a coffee to say sorry.”
“It’s all good Bucky, everyone else is in bed, but I couldn’t sleep.”
“Scared, excited or nervous?” He asked
“A bit of everything to be honest. I hope I can do Tony and Steve proud and nail this mission”
“I’m sure you’ll be fine, in fact better than fine. You’ll knock it out of the ball park. I have faith in you, and Tony obviously does too, otherwise he wouldn’t have picked you to go on this mission.”
“That’s kind of you to say Bucky. I’m going to go see if I can get an hour or 2 sleep before we have to be on our way. Thank you.”
“No problem Yn.” Bucky responds “Sleep well and be safe tomorrow. We haven’t lost an Avenger on a mission yet, we’re sure as hell not going to lose one on my watch.”
You knew Bucky was a bit of a space geek, so were you to be honest and he had just quoted a line out of one of your favourite space movies, whether he knew that or not you weren’t sure but it was comforting all the same.
3 days later
Your mission has been successful so far, you have neutralised the threat and obtained the intel you needed. You just have 1 more part of the mission tomorrow morning, then home on the jet. You are scheduled to be back at the compound by about 2100 tomorrow evening.
You’re happy with your effort so far and Steve has been praising what you’ve been doing. Each night, you are up at the same time and have an earnest conversation with Bucky about how the day went, what your fears are for the following day. Each night he talks you round and sends you off to bed with the phrase: Failure is not an option!
Mission: Day 4
You all head out to the final location. This one should just be recon and gathering data from some old computer drives. This is your area of expertise and, although there is no known threat, Steve & Clint will have your back and watch out while you’re occupied downloading the info you need.
You were about 2.5 hours in, and had downloaded all the data from 3 of the 4 drives in the room. While you were in the middle of the last one, Clint and Steve stood up to attention, looking around and at each other, when there was a large bang just outside the door
“You go that way, I’ll check this side” Cap said to Clint.
There was nothing you could do to hurry the download, so you just had to sit and wait and hope it wasn’t anything serious.
“Yn, hurry, we have to go” Steve burst back into the room. “Clint’s holding them off but there are about 20 of them, we can’t get rid of them with only the 2 of us.”
“Steve, if I interrupt the download now, we’ll lose everything from the last drive.”
“That’s ok Yn, we need to go now. We have the data from the other drives so that will have to be enough.”
“Steve, just give me another 15 minutes and we’ll have everything.”
“Yn, we don’t have 15 minutes, we probably barely have 5. Now as your CO, I say let’s go.”
You gathered up all the other USBs you had loaded data onto and put them in the pocket of your combat pants. The guys wore them all the time and you could see why. They were light, kept you warm but not too warm and had cool pockets to hold a bunch of stuff.
Steve headed out the door, with you right behind him. After just a few steps, you realised you’d left the last USB in the computer. Even though you wouldn’t get all the data on it, if the enemy agents got hold of it, it would be bad. It had identifying information on it about the Avengers and the compound and Tower.
“You looked around and could see Steve fighting off some agents. You know it would take you 30 seconds max to retrieve the USB, so you made a split second decision to run back to get it.
You’d just pulled it out of the machine and dumped it into your pocket when you saw a flash of light and then everything went black.
Steve pov
We ran through the door, trying to get out to the jet, Yn was right behind me.
“Bucky, can you give us a clear path back to the jet - if not clear, then less cluttered than the others?”
“Sure can Steve, take a left up ahead. But you said we, you know you’re by yourself, right?”
I looked around and couldn’t see Yn anywhere. “Shit.. and no calls of language please. Bucky, can you see Yn? She was right behind me and now she isn’t”
Through the ear piece I heard Bucky repeat my curse. “Shit, Steve, I don’t know where she is. I can’t get any body heat signatures except yours and the agents you’re fighting, Clint is already on the jet. There is a massive heat signature in the lab you and Yn were just in, but it looks like an explosion. I can't tell if she’s still in there.”
“I’ll head back in and see, but I don’t know why she would have gone back in there, we were clear.”
I headed back in and covering myself with my shield, ran through the fireball into the room. There I saw what I didn’t want to see.
“Bucky, tell Clint to fire up the jet, I’ll be there in hopefully a few minutes, and we need to go straight away. Let Bruce know that we will need medic assistance for Yn as soon as we we land.”
“On it Steve, what’s happened?”
“I’m not sure, there seems to have been an explosion, she’s unconscious but she’s breathing. I can’t see any obvious injuries so anything wrong seems to be internal. We’ll let you know when we’re in the air and what our ETA is.”
I picked Yn up and raced out of the building. Thankfully the other agents seem to have disappeared, so I had a clear run.
As I approached the jet, I could tell it was running, Clint came to help me get Yn in and strapped onto the medic table and I immediately jumped into the pilot seat, closed all the doors and took off.
“Bucky, we’re in the air, I’m going to fly a bit faster than normal, but I don’t want to jolt her round too much back there. Can you let me know if there’s any weather issues at the compound that might impact our landing?”
“All clear so far Steve, I’ll let you know if it changes. Bruce and Tony are aware and waiting, we’ve also got Dr Cho on the way in case she can help.”
‘Thanks buddy, we’ll see you in a couple of hours.”