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The cat was already in the Tower by the time Bucky got back from the mission.
He blinked at it. It blinked back. Orange, fluffy, and mean-looking, with a face like it owed taxes. It sat in the middle of the kitchen counter like it paid rent.
He didn't address the team around the kitchen island, already knowing who the culprit was. "Bob," Bucky called, voice flat. "Why is that cat here?"
From the hallway, Bob popped in, smiling like sunshine, wearing a hoodie a few sizes too big (Alexei’s, probably), and holding a half-built birdhouse.
“Oh, that’s Crumb,” he said. “She followed me home.”
Bucky’s brain short-circuited. “She—what? We were in a missile silo.”
Bob shrugged. “She was hiding behind some crates. I think she’s cold.”
“She bit Red Guardian,” Ava said dryly, peeling apart a piece of toast without looking up.
“I deserved it,” Alexei mumbled, holding an ice pack to his hand. “I tried to pet her with my big meaty hands. She must have sensed that I am a great warrior and was threatened by my presence.”
Yelena shook her head with a small smile. “Last week it was a pigeon. Before that it was that… what was it? The baby goat? In the elevator?”
“That goat was having a bad day,” Bob said defensively.
Val entered just in time to see Crumb launch herself at the toaster. “Oh, hell no.”
“Don’t scare her,” Bob said, moving quickly. “She’s still adjusting.”
“She’s chewing the power cord!”
Bob scooped her up with the tenderness of a Disney princess. Crumb hissed and then promptly fell asleep in his arms.
“She trusts me,” Bob said proudly.
“She’s plotting your death,” John muttered around his coffee cup.
---
They tried rules.
They wrote a sign on the fridge: NO MORE STRAYS.
Bob added “...Without Asking”.
Yelena added “...VAL” under that.
---
Next came the kid.
Well. Not a kid. A 19-year-old hacker from Russia who had tried to rob a military convoy the New Avengers were assigned to protect. Bob had found him unconscious, brought him back to the Tower, and made him a grilled cheese.
By the time Val figured it out, the kid had already fixed their internal comms and was arguing with Alexei about Russian poetry.
“Bob,” Val said tightly. “Did you kidnap a war criminal?”
“Technically,” Bob said, “he surrendered.”
“To you?”
Bob beamed. “I’m very persuasive.”
---
By the end of the month, the Tower had:
One cat (still angry),
One pigeon (in a shoebox with Tweety written on the side),
One hacker teen (surprisingly helpful),
One goat (unaccounted for), and
One Bob, who looked happier than anyone had ever seen him.
“He doesn't want to be alone,” Bucky said one night, watching Bob read on the couch with Crumb in his lap.
Yelena didn’t answer right away. She just leaned against the wall beside him, sipping tea out of a mug labeled Don't Talk to Me Until Mission Debrief.
“He’s not,” she said eventually. “Not anymore.”