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Maybe it started when Steve asked you to help get Bucky's crimes as the Winter Soldier expunged. You had pull as a lawyer and a Stark to get it done and it was Steve asking. After he disappeared in time, you got to work, learned everything you could from the files and from him. It was much easier reading the files than the quiet former assassin.
When asked, he moved into the Tower so you could be together more. It was your home away from home and you quickly learned your way around him as easily as your way around the Tower, even with the constant visitors of varying super capacity. Where everyone else kept their distance from Bucky, you stayed with him. You had a job and one grumpy, quiet old man wasn’t going to keep you from seeing it to the end.
After three months of fighting for a fair chance for the World War Two veteran and Captain America's best friend, he started therapy. He didn’t like therapy, but he didn’t say he didn’t like it. You saw it in the way he was silent after, looked like the world on his shoulders was too heavy. Two months into therapy, he asked for help looking for an apartment. He parroted the therapist, he needed to relearn independence and stability in himself. Five months after your brother was gone, so was the one stable thing in your life.
Maybe it started when you got the call Bucky had missed therapy. Dr. Raynor called you first when Bucky was thirty minutes late. You apologized and promised you would call him, but she already had. Repeatedly. You had thirty minutes to get ahold of him or he would officially miss court appointed therapy and a warrant would be put out for his arrest. You called forty times in that thirty minutes as you rushed to his apartment, terrified he'd done something stupid, but you found it empty.
Then there he was, walked in handcuffed to a police station. “I'm his lawyer,” you snapped and he stopped, turned toward you, and asked what was wrong. You could have been angry, but you were afraid. “I thought you were hurt,” you said, and one of the officers tries to pull him, but he’s every bit a supersoldier Steve was.
“I'm sorry, doll.” It was a whisper meant just for you. You nodded, but couldn’t forgive him yet. He went back and you waited for Dr. Raynor who took Bucky and Sam to an interrogation room for another quick ssession.
Maybe it started when you saw him on TV, in the background of Sam Wilson telling it like it is, just as always, to members of the GRC. He watched Sam, Captain America, like the weight of his shoulders was finally lighter. Everyone in the room, the nation, was watching Sam, but you couldn’t help a tiny smile spreading at that relief.
Maybe it started in Delacroix, Louisiana, where Bucky invited you to a celebration with Sam, his sister, just about everybody that lived in the tiny town. When you walked up, with a cake in a plastic container in his metal arm and his flesh one on your lower back, he smiled and it was like seeing an injured animal taking its first steps to freedom. He moved his arm from you and set the cake down before introducing you to Sam's family. When you went back to New York, you had FRIDAY send Sarah a little gift for being so lovely, deposited directly into her account so she couldn’t say no or shred a check.
Maybe it started when you took him to see Pepper and Morgan one year after you both lost the most important people in your lives. You both enjoyed sitting at the end of the dock, shoes off and pants rolled up. Morgan was playing fetch with her very goofy puppy, Pepperoni. He carefully put his arm around your shoulders, the flesh one. He so rarely used the metal around you. You looked at him in that moment and before he could move, assume he had overstepped, you leaned and captured his lips with yours and then you leaned your head on his shoulder and sat like that until Pepperoni launched over you both and into the lake.
Maybe it started when he danced with you in the kitchen back at the Tower. It was silly and playful and relaxed like he almost never was. It was just the two of you, making dinner, with some 40s music he was teaching you to love. You swayed and twirled and he dipped you and pressed kisses to your lips. After dinner, your curled up together to read and ended up kissing. It slowly deepened until he had to part, eyes asking permission. It wasn’t fucking or sex, he made love to you that night with such passion, you knew you never wanted him to leave your arms.
Maybe it started then or maybe one of the other million moments could have started the slow spiral, falling in love with James “Bucky" Barnes. You’ve never defined the relationship. He's not your boyfriend or your lover, not your partner or even friend with benefits. He's yours and you’re his. When your PR team, working with him on his Congressional campaign, asks for an official endorsement, you happily give it. With your help, he gets his seat, but you know he could’ve done it all on his own. You couldn’t be more proud of your Bucky.
You rent a house together in D.C. for when he has to be there and you wake up together on the morning of his first day and you both go down to have breakfast. You scold him a little for putting his arm, so lovingly crafted by Shuri, through the dishwasher, but can't help but laugh at the lopsided grin he's wearing. He wraps his arms around you and its nice until water drips all over you shirt for the day and you scold him again. He helps you pull the shirt off and licks his lower lip at all that bare skin. He disappears to get you a new shirt and you feel a weight on your left hand that wasn’t there before.
When he gets back down, he smiles at you staring at the engagement ring. It’s that soft smile only you get to see and you get up and move to him, kissing him. There’s no question because he knows the answer. There’s an exchange of ‘I love you' and you couldn’t be happier.
Who knows when it really started, but you’ve found the love of your life and you'll never let him go.