Soft Robotics ✧ Bucky Barnes

(variable[2.02]);

"Grace, at some point, when everyone is taller than you, you've got to accept that you're the common denominator."

"Don't listen to him," Steve told me, standing up. "I used to be shorter than you are. Being tall is a state of mind, not a measurement."

My heart swelled, but that statement wasn't true—his cutout in the Smithsonian had a couple inches on me. I wondered if Steve was lying to inspire me, or if he remembered himself as being even smaller than he was. The latter, I thought.

Then Steve hugged Sam too (Sam was a huggable guy. Probably the second most frequently hugged Avenger after Thor).

As he and Steve sat down, Bucky dragged the armchair close to the arm of the sofa, where I was. "Forgot that you two know each other," he muttered to me, not sounding pleased.

"Know each other?" Sam scoffed. "We've got a baby together."

Obviously this was an inside joke, but I clarified for Bucky just in case: "He means Redwing. I designed Redwing."

"That was you?" Bucky asked, betrayed. Damn. I didn't know that was a sore subject.

"What's going on here again?" Sam asked, gesturing between me and Bucky. "I never know what's going on with you, Bucky. You never talk to me unless you need something."

"Why else would I talk to someone?" Bucky asked. "I'm not gonna talk to someone unless I need to talk to them."

"See," Sam said to Steve, gesturing to Bucky like he'd demonstrated his point.

"What if Sam needs something from you? How will you know if you never ask?" I asked Bucky.

"Then he can talk to me," Bucky said, and I was excited, anticipating an old man rant. "And I'd be a lot more willing to listen if I knew every time someone spoke to me, it was for an actual reason. It'd be a perfect system if everyone would stick to it."

"So I shouldn't talk to you unless I need something?" I asked, wanting to hear him keep talking. I loved when he talked for longer than a sentence or two. It didn't happen often.

"No, that's different," he conceded.

Damn. Wrong question.

"I'm different," I bragged to Sam.

"I get it now," Sam said sagely. "His cyborg brain can only process so many words per day, and you're the one using them all up."

"Yeah, that's it," I said happily.

I flipped my book back open once they started talking amongst each other, because I knew I was going to lose interest in their conversation. They were all older than me, and they all had shared interests in sports and danger and training, so it was a reasonable assumption.

Sam wanted to catch up with me, though. He'd seen Steve and Bucky a lot more recently than he'd last seen me, so he kept asking me questions, pulling me into the conversation. And I kept answering happily. Bucky kept watching me.

"What?" I finally muttered.

"Nothing," he muttered back.

"You're so moody," I told him. I reached over, across the arm of the sofa, and flicked his jaw to see if that would dispel any of the tension from it. It didn't.

"Are they always like this?" Sam asked Steve.

Steve glanced at us and then back at Sam cautiously. "You know as much as I do."

As I looked down at my book, barely pretending to read, I watched Sam out of the corner of my eye. He'd gotten his phone out, even as Steve steered the conversation, engaging Bucky again.