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Never had I ever seen someone look so lost in their own skin before. Was your first thought when Steve brought his best friend from his past life to the tower. You’d been living in the tower for nearly a year now and considered yourself close with the Avengers; you were an engineering technologist, the best of the best. That’s how you found yourself present at this moment, you had been tasked to help de-programme the Winter Soldier from James Buchanan Barnes. After his physical he was to be sent to your team who’d try to get a grasp on the technology used to trap this man in his mind. As soon as you saw the broken man in front of you, you knew instantly that you’d do anything and everything in your power to set him free from himself.
Whilst working with the former super assassin you formed a relaxed companionship, he favoured you working with him directly in contrast to any other members of your team, and once he became more stable and in control of himself, he continued to come and see you daily. He became your closest friend in the tower and you often spent all of your free time together, watching movies, talking, or even just reading in a companionable silence. You were there for him through everything, the nightmares, and the PTSD episodes after harder missions, you was his main confidant and he considered you one of his best friends.
You had subconsciously fallen for the former Winter Soldier, he was always on you mind, the person you found yourself always most excited to see. You couldn’t tell him, you couldn’t risk such a valuable friendship for your own selfish reasons and you feared his inevitable rejection, so you bottled it up and kept it to yourself. You did a good job at ignoring it, pushing the feelings down until one morning when you was sitting in the kitchen on your laptop you overheard Bucky groaning in a losing argument with Sam and Steve.
“Come on dude, she’s a great girl and it’s just one date!” Sam enthusiastically explained to him with a pat on the shoulder.
“Yeah, it’ll be good for you Buck,” Steve softly added. “Besides, even if it doesn’t work out romantically, you need other friends than just me and Sam.” Your eyes looked up at this and you tried to stifle a laugh at Steve’s reasoning.
“First off, Wilson, you’re not my friend. And I do have other friends! Y/N here is my friend, we’re friends right? Tell them!” Barnes retorted, pointing a finger at Sam and gesturing to you with his other hand.
“Hmmm, I’ll have to think about it,” was your response, accented with you finger on you chin and you looking up. Bucky let out a joking hurt gasp at this and you laughed, “of course we are you idiot, we’re friends guys! But you should go on that date, Steve’s right it’ll be good for you and you never know, she might be your perfect girl!” It broke your heart to say it but it would be good for him to get out there and meet someone.
As it turns out, you were right. Bucky reluctantly went on the blind date and although it didn’t work out he continued to go on more dates with different women. And it was good for him, he seemed happier than you had ever seen him. The two of you started to drift apart, you barely saw him and you also saw less of the avengers as Bucky was usually your main reason to hang around with them, you got stuck into your work and became quite anti-social. You was pretty sure Bucky had forgotten about you, but as long as he was happy you were okay with being nothing but just a part of his recovery. If you care about someone, you should want them to be happy. Even if you wind up being left out.
Little did you know, Bucky couldn’t stop thinking about you. He went on all of these stupid dates to make everyone else happy, and so far they just made him miserable. He was sure you didn’t reciprocate his feelings as you’d never done or said anything to suggest so, he thought that maybe he would find someone from these dates who could love him. He always showed Steve and the other avengers a fake smile, thinking it was convincing enough but obviously his best friend saw through this. Whenever he was with everyone, he found himself missing your presence but assumed you was busy, which was the excuse you gave him every time he asked before you drifted apart.
Maybe you wasn’t as busy as you made out to be, but you was always busy, working on new projects and helping Tony. You enjoyed being busy, it helped you keep your mind off of other things and gave you an excuse to not attend the avengers get together nights, you were sure that Bucky was probably bringing along a girlfriend to them by now and that was something you weren’t prepared to face yet. So you were surprised when Steve Rogers himself turned up at your lab one afternoon, pleading you to start spending time with Bucky again.
“Please Y/N, he misses you, he’s just too stubborn to say it! He just seems so down sometimes and I don’t know what to do, he won’t talk to me about it, and he always opened up to you, can you just try for me? Please,” you never thought you’d see the day Steve Rogers would need something from you, but here you were. You let out a light chuckle at the mention of Bucky’s stubbornness.
“Fine then Captain, I’ll go see him tonight and try to lift his spirits,” you explained to him. He looked a bit nervous and his arm lifted to scratch the back of his neck.
“Umm, well, he has a date tonight, so tomorrow?” was his response. Your face fell a bit but you like to think you managed to cover it quickly.
“Tomorrow then,” you replied with a tight smile, not quite reaching your eyes and you sat back at your computer, Steve took this as his cue to leave.
That night you struggled to find sleep, you found yourself worrying about Bucky even though it probably wasn’t as bad as Steve was making it out to be. After 2 hours of tossing and turning you decided to walk around the tower, maybe it would tire you out a bit. As you roamed the floors you didn’t expect to see any lights on, but you saw the gyms fluorescent lights brightening the hall and the slamming of fists against a punch bag and decided to investigate.
Once you approached the open door your demeanour started to fill with worry and concern at the sight of Bucky, still in his dress shirt but with buttons loose and the sleeve of the left arm thrown across the room, his hair escaping its once neat bun and sticking to his face with sweat and punching the bag of sand with all his strength. You could see he didn’t bother to wrap his right hand and the skin of his knuckles was raw and bruised, the time was 01:00 am so you could only guess he’d been here since after his date. But what broke your heart the most was tear stains that ran down his face.
He didn’t notice you come into the room, he was fully concentrated on battering the punching bag despite the blood running down his knuckles and how he was drenched in sweat. You froze momentarily in shock at the sight but soon after you sprang into action, knowing touching him wouldn’t work in your favour you slowly approached him and softly spoke his name.
“Why does nobody want me?” His broken voice reached your ears as his attack on the punching bag slowed down and silence filled the room. Your brow furrowed at this in confusion.
“What are you talking about Bucky?” He let out a humourless chuckle at your words.
“I go on all of these stupid fucking dates and none of them turn out right or even go moderately well? Today, as soon as she saw this thing,” he frantically pointed at his arm. “She put two and two together and ran away, didn’t even get through the starter before I scared her off. I know I’m a monster, but I’m trying, I’m really trying to move on, do good. But someone up there hates me Y/N, God forbid somebody loves good old fucked up Bucky Barnes,” he never looked your way as he spoke. You was speechless as your brain tried to process what he was saying, and your heart ached for him. He lifted his arms to start punching again, a few tears escaping his eyes again, you walked over and gently grabbed his arms, pulling him into your embrace. He collapsed into you, a defeated man.
“Hey, listen, it’s alright, feeling a little heartbroken now and then is a good thing. It’s how you know you still care. It’s how you know there are things for you in this world that still matter, that are still worth hurting for, Bucky,” you spoke whilst stroking his hair as silent sobs wracked through his frame.
“People are dicks, Buck, and if that girl was too stuck up to even give you a chance, she’s not worth it. None of them are worth it. If they took the chance to get to know you they’d easily fall for you, trust me I know,” the words flew out of your mouth and before you knew it those steel grey eyes were looking into yours.
“Shit,” you let out and your hand flew to your mouth.
“What do you mean, Y/N?” He questioned you, you thought he’d be disgusted or annoyed but you detected a hint of amusement in his voice and a sparkle in his glassy eyes. You opened your mouth to try and form a reply but nothing came out. A watery grin spread on his face and then his lips were on yours. You could taste the saltiness of his tears, but you didn’t care because you both could be happy together now.
Bucky Barnes had fallen in love with you too, for you had saved him from himself.