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Joaquin needs Sam and Bucky to make up already.
Sam had been utterly miserable after the New Avengers announcement, and Joaquin had spent the next month watching him get increasingly annoyed and depressed every time Bucky Barnes comes up. There’d been some back-and-forth phone calls between Sam and Bucky that hadn’t ended well, and with no natural resolution on the horizon, Joaquin decides that something has to be done about it.
So Joaquin comes up with a plan.
A very good plan, honestly.
Simple, too.
He just has to fly to the Watchtower, sneak inside, leave a note for Bucky that lures him somewhere public and neutral, then separately convince Sam to meet Joaquin there under some excuse. Once the two of them “accidentally” run into each other, they’ll be forced to talk it out face-to-face like adults, and hopefully either resolve the argument or finally make out about it.
Joaquin is honestly fine with either outcome at this point.
Anyway.
That plan fails on Step One because Joaquin nearly gets killed.
It hadn’t been hard to slip in through the roof access point. He’d folded his wings tight against his back and gotten inside without issue. No alarms start blaring. No one in sight either. So far, so good. The Watchtower is obnoxiously big for the several people that actually inhabit it, and Joaquin thinks they’d all be asleep at this hour anyway. He finds the elevator access and hesitates for about two seconds before deciding he is absolutely not trekking down ninety-whatever flights of stairs for this mission.
In hindsight, this is a mistake.
The elevator arrives. The doors slide open.
And John Walker is standing right there.
Joaquin only manages a startled half-breath before a hand grabs him by the front of his jacket and yanks him clean off his feet. He feels like a ragdoll with how easily he’s being manhandled, boots not-quite reaching the floor, as he gets an up close look at Walker in all his sharp focus and barely-controlled aggression.
He abruptly remembers two important facts—
One: John Walker has the super soldier serum.
Two: John Walker once killed a man in broad daylight.
But, Walker doesn’t seem overly murderous right now sooo…
Eh. It’s probably fine.
“Hey,” Joaquin says. “Joaquin Torres. Just visiting.”
Walker’s blue eyes lock onto Joaquin with an intensity that makes his pulse jump for reasons that are not entirely fear-based. “Torres,” he repeats, and recognition flickers across his face a second later. “Falcon?”
“Yep. That’s me.” Joaquin awkwardly gestures at the hand currently bunching his jacket up into his neck, and tries not to think about this action in a different context. “Can you…?”
Walker stares at him another second longer before his grip finally eases.
Joaquin drops flat-footed onto the floor, tugging his collar straight. “Thanks,” he says, rubbing his throat. Is his face flushed? He hopes not. If it is, hopefully it’ll be dismissed as difficulty breathing after being choked out, or something. God, this is not the time to be making new discoveries about himself.
Walker speaks after a moment. “Why are you here?”
Joaquin debates lying for about three seconds before giving up entirely.
What does he have to lose?
“I’m trying to get Sam and Bucky to stop whatever weird passive-aggressive divorce thing they’ve got going on.”
“And your genius plan was breaking into the Watchtower?”
“When you say it out loud like that, it sounds bad.”
“It is bad.”
“It was going to work.”
Walker raises an eyebrow. “You got caught on the top floor.”
“Okay, technically the plan failed, but emotionally I still feel good about the concept.”
“Good luck with that, considering Sam hates us.”
Us meaning the New Avengers, presumably.
Joaquin is vaguely aware of the tension that Sam and Bucky had with Walker, but Bucky seems content enough to be on a team with Walker now. And while Joaquin can’t exactly refute that assessment of Sam’s opinion on the New Avengers as a whole—
“Sam doesn’t hate Bucky.”
Walker frowns a bit. “Well, Bucky thinks Sam hates him.”
It’s Joaquin’s turn to be confused. “What?”
“He said Sam isn’t answering his calls.”
“Sam said Bucky’s the one who doesn’t want to talk to him.”
Walker rubs a hand down his face. “Jesus Christ.”
“Right?” Joaquin says. “This is what I’ve been dealing with for a month.”
Walker shakes his head. “He’s been moping around here acting like Sam wants nothing to do with him.”
“Sam’s been doing the exact same thing in Louisiana.”
“God, these idiots…”
Joaquin waves his hands. “Thank you.”
Walker lets out a long sigh, looking deeply, personally offended by the existence of this particular miscommunication. “Okay. Is there any way I can help? Or did your plan not extend past this break-in?”
Joaquin fluffs up, offended. “I did think this through beforehand!”
“And…?”
“And,” continues Joaquin. “I was going to bait them into meeting up.”
“We might as well toss them both into a room and lock the door behind them.”
“Yeah,” Joaquin says, and tries very hard not to think about the fact that Walker could probably do the tossing singlehandedly. His brain, unhelpfully, keeps circling back to the feeling of Walker’s hand twisted in the front of his jacket, and that effortless strength lifting Joaquin completely off the floor.
He can still feel the phantom pressure against his throat.
The memory sends an embarrassingly warm feeling curling low in his stomach.
Joaquin wonders, briefly, what would happen if he asked Walker to do it again.
Not in a fight.
Just—
For fun.
He shuts the thought down quickly.
Okay. No. Terrible idea.
You cannot ask a guy you met less than an hour ago to manhandle you because you thought it was hot, Joaquin tells himself. That is insane behavior.
He forces his thoughts back on track before his expression gives him away. Besides, there’s no reason to be weird about this. If he and Walker get Sam and Bucky to finally get their issues sorted out, Joaquin will probably end up at the Watchtower more often afterward anyway. Sam and Bucky attached at the hip tends to mean everyone around them gets dragged together too.
Which means more opportunities to see Walker again.
A lot, probably. Hopefully.
Yeah. Yeah, okay. That’s perfect actually.
“We should swap numbers then,” Joaquin says casually, and offers his phone, “so we can coordinate how to get them to the same place at the same time.”
Walker takes it, and enters his contact. “Might as well.”