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As a trained spy and assassin, Yelena considered herself to be pretty observant. It was in her nature to pick up on small details and clues— the things that other people would usually miss. It was a reflex at this point, and it was what made her so good at her job.
However, she didn’t need to call on these skills at all to know something was up when Bucky sped past her open door with an oddly shaped lump in his jacket. She looked up from her phone, frowning at the odd sight. Was he hiding food? He didn’t think the rest of the team were that bad, did he?
“Bucky?” she called down the hall. She heard a quiet hiss of pain and then a thud.
“Yep, I’m home,” Bucky answered shortly before shutting his bedroom door.
Well. That was just weird. Normally, he would’ve stood in the door frame for a chat or gone for his usual lap around the floor to check up on everyone. Straight to his room was strange for Bucky, especially with the door shut. Yelena had realised that he liked to be able to hear everything that was going on in the tower.
Maybe he had just had a bad day, and he really did need those snacks. She could admit to being a bit of a hoarder if need be too. It was best to leave him be. He would come out when he wanted to.
===
Things only got weirder when Sam wandered through into the living area later that day, peering around the space with a clear judgment, no doubt ensuring they were treating the old Avengers tower right.
Yelena, Walker, and Alexei stared up at him from the sofa with matching expressions of shock and confusion. What was he doing here? He was still trying his very hardest to sue them, and wasn’t showing any signs of letting up. Had he come to rip it out of them in person?
Yelena tried to hide her smile as he noticed Ava disappearing as she ventured out of her room. Instead, she raised her eyebrows at Sam.
“Wow. Captain America has come to visit us in person. How nice,” she said, sounding utterly uninterested as she looked back down at her phone.
“Oh I know this one!” Alexei turned to Walker. “This is flying man who kicked your ass!” He laughed, clapping Walker on the back harshly.
Walker huffed. “He didn’t— Look. That’s in the past.”
Sam levelled him with a harsh stare.
It was at that moment— right when Sam was trying to be most intimidating— that Ava reappeared next to him, looking him up and down stating, “I don’t know what Bucky sees in him.”
Yelena couldn’t contain her laugh as Sam actually yelped and went careening back into the wall, almost falling flat on his face in the process.
“Shit!” He exhaled harshly, hand to his chest. “Bucky, fucking sort them out!” He called as he rubbed at his face.
Bucky’s door opened a small sliver and he peered through. “Not my job. Come on.”
Sam glared at them all before entering the room and shutting the door behind him. There was an unspoken unanimous decision to remain dead quite in the moments following. Ava even stepped closer to the door, craning her neck to hear better.
There were some loud noises of shock from Sam and a “When you said emergency, I wasn’t expecting—” before a lot of frantic shushing from Bucky.
Ava looked back at them, mouthing ‘what?’ in confusion. After that there was only silence and she joined them on the sofa.
“So why is Sam here?” Walker asked, clearly not thrilled, but also just as intrigued as the rest of them.
“An ‘emergency’ apparently?” Ava shrugged. “It can’t be that bad he would’ve told us if it was. He’s probably just being dramatic again.”
Alexei hummed in agreement, looking deep in thought.
Bob wandered into the living area, plopping down onto the sofa in his usual spot.
“Hey guys why’s Bucky’s door shut?” he asked, yawning.
“Sam’s here,” Yelena answered.
Bod stopped mid stretch. “Oh,” was all he said, looking to the door with a worried expression.
In the past few months, the only times Sam had come over was to discuss the court case with Bucky, which always put him in a bad mood for the next day or two. But when Sam exited the room about twenty minutes later, there was no tension between the two of them; just an amused Sam and an exhausted looking Bucky.
Sam shook his head as he walked backward towards the elevator, still facing Bucky as he spoke. “I seriously can’t believe you, man,” he laughed.
“It’s not funny,” was Bucky’s only response before he wandered through into the kitchen, shutting his door behind him.
By this point, only Yelena and Bob were left in the living area. She turned to him on the other end of the sofa and mouthed, “It definitely is funny.”
Bob smirked in the way he did when he was trying not to laugh, eyes scrunched and lips pursed, looking back down at his book.
In the kitchen, Bucky checked the list they kept on the fridge that contained everyone’s food requests for the week, before grabbing his coat and pulling it on.
“Where are you going?” Yelena questioned.
“Food shopping,” he responded simply as he opened the medicine cupboard and pulled out a box of plasters. He applied one to a small gash on his thumb, maybe one the injury he’d suffered earlier when Yelena had heard him hissing in pain.
“You don’t need that it’ll heal in like half an hour,” she pointed out.
Bucky put the box away and went to retrieve his shoes from the door. “It’s easier. I don’t want to catch it on something again.”
“How’d you get that?” Bob asked, looking up from his book.
There was a pause and Bucky did up his laces before he replied, “Just caught it on something.”
Yelena frowned at the vague response and Bob shrugged. Then he sat up a bit more, looking at Bucky properly.
“Wait, why are you doing the food shopping? You hate the food shopping,” he asked.
It was a valid question. Bucky had very loudly made it clear when they all moved in that modern shops were not for him. He claimed there were too many stupid people and too many confusing things. Yelena had clear memories of going with him once and watching him grit his teeth as he struggled to push the cart through busy ailes of loitering people. Shortly after, he had almost had a fight with the self service machine, and Yelena had had to take over and tell him to wait outside.
So the fact that he was going voluntarily was a shock.
“I need to get some stuff so I thought I might as well.”
“You could’ve just put it on the list,” Yelena offered.
“Well I need it soon so,” Bucky stood awkwardly at the door for a moment before turning to leave, “bye.”
What had gotten into him today?
===
Yelena had decided to go to the training room, and had found Walker, Ava, and Alexei already there. Without Bucky though, they often didn’t get much done when they were in there at the same time. She ended up sitting cross legged on the floor across from Walker while Ava laid on her back next to them and Alexei leaned against the wall.
“Bucky’s being weird,” she complained, sighing.
No one liked it when something was up with Bucky. He was the most consistent thing on their team so it was unnerving when he was acting off.
Walker nodded in agreement as he traced the dents and grooves on his shield. Bob had tried to bend it back to shape after everything had been sorted out, but it was still a little wonky.
“I agree. I’ve barely even seen him today,” said Walker.
“Maybe he just needs some alone time,” Ava piped up from her place on the floor. “You have to admit it gets pretty loud around here.”
“Well that’s what I thought at first but then he went and did the shopping,” Yelena frowned.
“Ha! He did what?” Alexei laughed. “You’re joking!”
“Nope. Completely unprompted, he just got up and went. He said he needed some things pretty soon but he didn’t say what,” Yelena recalled. She picked at the carpet on the floor as he thought, something that Walker frowned at her for.
“Did he come by and check on you guys this morning?” she asked.
Walker shook his head. “No. Like I said, I've barely seen him all day.”
“He didn’t come see me,” Alexei confirmed.
“Me either,” Ava concluded.
Yelena got up from the floor, instead walking laps of the room so she could think better. “So he’s shut in his room, he did the shopping, he didn’t come find any of us this morning like usual,” she looked back, “not even Bob?”
Ava shrugged, “I didn’t see him go to Bob’s room.”
“And he invited Sam around who didn’t seem to be in a bad mood when he left for once,” Walker pointed out.
Yelena hummed in acknowledgment.
“This is definitely weird,” Alexei said.
“Oh!” Yelena walked back over to them. “This morning, when he got in, he walked past my room and there was like,” she gestured vaguely to her torso with her hands, “a little lump, in his jacket.”
“And you didn’t ask what it was?” Ava rolled her eyes.
Yelena raised her hands in defence. “Well at the time I thought maybe he was hiding snacks or something!”
“Wait a minute,” Alexei interrupted, “this reminds me of something Natasha did when she was very small.”
Everyone looked up at him with intrigue.
“Yeah?” Yelena prompted him to go on.
“Now you wouldn’t remember this ‘Lena because if she was small then you must have been tiny! But oh Natasha— she was such a sweet little child— so kind— and one day she comes home with big lump under her shirt,” he waved his hands under his shirt to demonstrate, “and I go to her and I say ‘Natasha, what do you have?’ and she says ‘it’s nothing, daddy, it’s nothing!’”
Walker and Ava exchanged glances at the length of the story, wondering when it would become relevant, but Yelena just stood and listened quietly.
Alexei went on. “And she was such a bad liar, your sister was— all of the time she would say ‘I didn’t do it! I didn’t do it!’ but you would know because she always had this little look on her face and— oh anyway she takes it out of her shirt and there’s a rabbit! She said she found it by itself outside and she wanted to take it with her and—”
Yelena tuned out the rest of the story after that about what they did with the rabbit and how hard it had been to find its owner.
“So you think Bucky has… a rabbit?” she questioned.
Alexei shrugged.
“Well he might have some sort of animal,” said Ava. “It would explain why his door’s suddenly shut all day.”
Yelena would be getting to the bottom of this.
===
When Yelena opened the door to Bucky’s bedroom, she was not expecting to find a small, skinny looking white cat tearing into his pillows.
“Oh hi,” she cooed, stroking its little head and watching as it caused mass destruction. “You should not be doing that but I won’t stop you yet because Bucky was so stupid to bring you here and not tell us.”
By the time Bucky returned, Yelena was sitting on the floor of his bedroom with the little cat in her lap, grinning up at him as he entered.
“Hello, Bucky,” she smirked, “would you like to tell me who this angel is?”
He just groaned and put down his bags which seemed to be full of Icarus food and toys. He rubbed at his face, gesturing at the cat in exasperation before sitting down on the bed heavily.
“It’s Alpine,” he stated simply.
“And you didn’t tell us why?” Yelena questioned, a little sad as Alpine squirmed out of her lap and clawed her way up Bucky’s leg.
Bucky cradled the cat like a baby and scratched under her chin. “I didn’t think Valentina would let me keep her.”
Yelena let out a laugh. “You know Valentina can’t tell us what to do, she just buys the stuff.”
He sighed. “I know, I just wanted to be careful. She’s so small. And skinny. Someone was chasing her out of a shop when I found her.”
Yelena grabbed a toy with some feathers on the end and dangled it above Alpine, smiling when the little cat batted at it. “It’s okay. She just needs a little bit of love. She’s a thunderbolt.”
Then she paused, frowning at Bucky. “Wait. You called Sam over for this?”
“I panicked!” Bucky said defensively. “I didn’t know what to do with her!”
Yelena just laughed, patting him on the back. “You’re a terrible father.”
“You take that back!”
She retrieved a bowl from the kitchen to put Alpine’s food in, then left Bucky to it for a while, instead joining the rest of the team in the living area.
They looked up expectantly.
“It’s a cat,” she announced.
“What?”
She just shrugged as she planted herself next to Bob, peering over at his book.
“What are you reading?” she asked.
Bob perked up, showing her the cover. “So it’s about…”
===
Alpine quickly became part of the family. She mostly sat perched on Bucky’s shoulder as he went about his day, but she also enjoyed curling up on Bob’s chest when he laid down, and anyone’s lap that was free. It became a habit to leave most doors open so she could roam the area as she pleased.
When the team were away on missions for a few days, Bob would send little picture updates of what the two of them were up to: once, a photo of her in front of the tv captioned ‘Alpine watching Jurassic World’; later her sniffing uninterestedly at the tv wires captioned ‘she says it needs more mice.’ Knowing the two of them were together when the rest of them had to go away put everyone’s minds at ease.
Life was good for Alpine because there was always someone around to fuss her, and life was good for the team because the house was never empty.
The hood of Ava’s suit and the dip of Walker's shield were deemed perfect napping spots by the cat who was, at times, immovable. No one dared to disturb her while she was sleeping, not wanting to risk a telling off by both Alpine and the rest of the team.
Alexei made a habit of loudly proclaiming his love for the cat every time she came into view, but usually scared her off with his abrasiveness. Despite looking fed and healthy now, she was still skittish at times. She refused to be touched by Valentina, which still made them laugh every time she tried.
She had a soft spot for Sam, and would end up on his shoulder within five minutes of him being there, which Sam still hadn’t decided whether he loved or hated. He came around more often than that, claiming to be checking that Alpine was still well cared for, but Yelena thought that it was just an easy excuse.
Alpine spent most nights tucked in with Bucky in his bed like the princess that she was, but she seemed to have a sense for when someone was having a bad night, and would scratch at the door persistently until she was let in.
If she left her door open at night in the hopes to lure Alpine into her room, no one had to know.