one

The first time Pepper meets James Barnes he's the Winter Soldier, spitting in Russian and trying desperately to pull his metal arm out from underneath a steel supporting beam. The last few minutes have been a blur, and she's not entirely sure how she came to be in this position; she'd been having lunch with Steve - which was really a cover. Steve wants to learn everything he can about the world, and most of the people he knows are either generally away on officially unofficially sanctioned covert operations, or they're Bruce (who, while brilliant, has specialised sets of skills), or they're Tony, and Pepper doesn't want to make Steve spend more time with Tony than he has to (they're lucky if they get along even half of the time). She may run a Fortune 500 company, but Pepper always has time to help friends - when he had bundled her out of the door of the cafe with no warning and then the building had collapsed around him. But she's glad that she's here, because when Steve reaches out to touch the other man, the Soldier flinches away from his hand so hard that he smacks his head against the beam and when he faces Steve again, he looks a little dazed. Pepper can see that Steve, for his part, looks more than devastated. There's a distance in his eyes, and Pepper acts on instinct, walking over and drawing him down into a hug. The Winter Soldier renews his struggling, but he doesn't seem to be looking to get away.

The second time Pepper meets James Barnes she's introduced to him properly. It took three solid months of deprogramming, but the scientists, who were technically ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. (although Pepper doesn't believe the organisation is truly over for a second), had reached a point where they don't think that he'll be getting any better, and Steve has convinced them to release Bucky into his care. Pepper doesn't hesitate or allow herself to feel nervous when she reaches out to shake his hand. She hasn't gotten everything she has by indulging in hesitation or nerves. But Bucky does not make to shake back. He doesn't look hostile, though, only wary, slightly cornered, and Pepper drops her hand without remarking on it. She hasn't gotten this far by letting things become awkward, either.

-00000-

Like her and the rest of the Avengers when they have nothing more pressing to do, Bucky technically lives in the Tower. Pepper doesn't see him around often. He's not exactly personable, but Pepper doesn't blame him at all. Frankly, she doesn't understand why he isn't much worse, but he breaks three mugs in a week when other people come near him and he moves to get out of their grasping range so fast - it becomes the absolute objective - that he forgets to pay attention to whatever else he's doing.

He shares a floor with Steve, although Pepper doesn't know exactly how that floor is habitated between them and she doesn't ask. But even when Steve reaches out to him, they only come into contact half of the time. On those rare times when Steve manages to lay a hand on Bucky's shoulder (always the shoulder, never anywhere that could imply any intimacy other than vaguely friendly), he tenses up, inclines his head away from the gesture, and Steve moves his hand away soon after.

Bucky is getting better; he speaks mostly in English now, if nothing else. But he seems always fated to flinch away wherever someone reaches out to him. It is, therefore, understandably a shock when Natasha returns to the Tower almost a month after Bucky.

They'd gotten warning she was coming back. She'd called ahead to talk to Steve about distracting the crowd while she went into the Tower through the underground car park and when he'd mentioned Bucky was living there too, she went so perfectly silent that Steve had thought she hung up on him. It was only after she said "I look forward to seeing him then" that he lost the stricken look on his face.

Natasha slips out of the elevator a day later and Steve is still outside talking to whoever happened to be passing by, but Pepper and Tony are having one of their rare days off watching television, and Bucky has camped out on the furtherest armchair in the sofa set, closest to the elevator, and has been watching the doors intently.

When Natasha steps into the room, Bucky leaps to his feet and strides over to her. Natasha must see something in his face that Pepper and Tony don't, because while the both of them nearly tumble off the couch in an aborted attempt to intercept him Natasha relaxes, or, at least, she half-smiles in that way of hers.

Bucky stops in front of Natasha, and doesn't hesitate for a second, reaching out and putting his hands on her waist and stomach. Pepper doesn't speak much Russian, just enough to get by in a business meeting, but she understands enough of what Bucky is saying to know that he is apologising to her for something, and apologising repeatedly. Natasha reaches up and lays one of her hands over Bucky's on her hip and murmurs something back and "huh" Pepper thinks. "That's interesting."

two

Natasha and Bucky like movies. It's not really something Pepper expected of them. Natasha is so intense, so focussed, she actually hadn't thought of her having hobbies outside of beating people up and taking down supervillains. She especially hadn't thought that Natasha spent her down time watching dance movies. There's clearly a story there, but Pepper is good at knowing what she needs to know, and Natasha's questionable taste in film isn't one of those things.

Bucky doesn't relax, and he's not overly fond of loud or sudden noises, but he seems to almost power down when he and Natasha curl up on the couch to watch Footloose for what has to be the fifth time by now, their legs tangled together. Pepper would think he was asleep, if it weren't for the way he sneaks frequent glances at Natasha during every dance sequence. Natasha doesn't seem to notice; she stares at the screen almost ravenously, and yes, there's definitely a story there. Pepper has seen the way Natasha moves. She thinks she would have been a fantastic dancer.

Sometimes, whoever happens to be in the Tower will join them, but there's only so many times you can watch John Lithgow preach about how God doesn't want people to dance before you want to find this ridiculous town yourself and give them something to really be scandalised about. Tony encourages her to watch Footloose with Natasha and Bucky as often as possible.

But no matter how many times they've seen the movies, whenever they are asked, Clint and Steve will never say no to watching them. They always take the armchairs, one on either side of the couch, and they almost never look at the screen.

Pepper sees the way Clint looks at Natasha, like she's a point of light in the darkness. And Steve, well, Steve is weird about Bucky. She knows that they were best friends since childhood, but she still don't know for sure how their floor in the Tower is shared (although she is aware that the second bedroom hasn't been used). And Steve has friends, of course - he likes Natasha a lot and he gets on well with Clint and once a week he goes over to DC for the VA meetings lead by Sam Wilson - but she knows, without having to ask, that there's a part of Steve that he tries so desperately to hide that wants it to be just him and Bucky all the time.

Pepper might explode if she has to look at the smiling face of a young Kevin Bacon again, but she microwaves some popcorn and brings it over to Steve and Clint anyway. She has been in their situations, once.

three

When Natasha walked into the main kitchen of the Tower with an impressive black eye blooming on her left side, Pepper had handed her an ice pack before she'd had the chance to ask. Natasha smiled that half-smile at her. When Bucky followed nearly a minute later sporting what looked to be two broken fingers, Pepper's first thought was to dive back to her handbag, where she kept a number of useful items, including her taser. Seemingly sensing her thoughts, however, Natasha had reached out and laid a hand on her arm, telling her that they had been sparring, and did she perhaps have something to tape Bucky's fingers together, because they would heal soon, and she's hate it if they healed wrong. That would mean she'd have to break them again.

Bucky had actually smiled at that. He's been getting himself back, slowly, and Pepper has found that he smirks often, but she'd only ever seen him smile at Steve before.

The thing is, everyone always holds something back when they're sparring. They see no use in hurting themselves or others when they're just practicing. But not Bucky and Natasha. There is intent, there - to maim or to harm; to win. There is no friendly blows between allies, it's not a joke or a game or a practice, there is only the Winter Soldier and the Black Widow, and it is over when one can't get to their feet again in under five seconds.

Natasha wins more often than not. Pepper was surprised by that. Not because she didn't know what Natasha could do and not that she didn't think the other woman wasn't good at what she does (she's seen it too many times first hand to not know that Natasha is incredible), but Bucky is taller, heavier, and the first time she had seen in him the flesh he had helped to collapse a building around him. But the next time she walked into the gym to bring an offer of food, she could only watch as Natasha ducked in low under Bucky's reaching metal arm and swiped his legs out from under him. Bucky hit the ground hard enough that Pepper could hear the breath involuntarily whoosh out of his lungs and then Natasha finished her rotation to land the same foot sharply on his stomach.

Pepper doesn't like to be surprised. She likes to know every variable. She doesn't really know Bucky Barnes, but she spent weeks with Natasha, even if she was undercover, so it's her she goes to to slot another fact into place.

Natasha smiles at her in a way that reminds Pepper that she is dangerous - she may be fighting with Tony and S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers, but she's been trained almost since she could walk to kill - and for all that Pepper hates surprises, that she keeps facts stored in mental folders, she forgets that about Natasha, sometimes. Compared to the people Pepper sees every day, even the man she shares her bed with, Natasha seems so well adjusted.

But she doesn't ignore Pepper, threaten her, or even tell her to mind her own business. Instead, she tells her that it was the Winter Soldier who trained her, Bucky who taught her to kick and punch and block and even speak English. How, in the field, a fight between the two of them could go either way, and the Red Room always sent the Winter Soldier after the big targets before the Black Widow, but on the sparring mat, it was hardly a fair fight. Because Bucky trained her and the Red Room didn't allow its creations to take assignments until they can take down their own trainer. Bucky's weaknesses on the mat are her strengths and she's learned from the beginning how to defend herself against his offense.

Pepper finds that what she is not surprised about is the way Natasha lies down beside Bucky after the five seconds are up and twines their fingers together. Or the way that they start murmuring to each other in Russian, staring at the ceiling.

four

It takes a good four months before Bucky decides he wants to get back out in the field again. That's not exactly how it goes, of course. The news of S.H.I.E.L.D. being rebuilt does not come from Maria Hill, as Pepper expected it to, but from an agent she's never met named May, who doesn't flinch away or really react at all when Tony practically explodes in her face over the fact of Phil Coulson's resurrection (or, not-death). Neither Natasha nor Clint seem at all surprised by either revelation, but Pepper knows that that doesn't mean anything. Natasha does, however, pull the new Agent aside and Pepper would love to know what they're talking about except she doesn't think she could successfully eavesdrop on the two of them. As it is, she only hears Agent May saying something about Coulson recruiting strays that Natasha actually laughs at. She doesn't have a particularly delicate laugh, not like the rest of the image she puts forward. Pepper has a feeling that it's not something she's had much practice at.

Steve insists on joining the new S.H.I.E.L.D., hoping to keep an eye on it's actions and the people it recruits (and the look Agent May leveled at Steve then for his insinuation that Coulson wouldn't do the right thing was hard enough that he actually stumbled over his next words), and Bucky insists on following him.

It goes well for months. Natasha and Clint have always left the Tower for weeks on end on missions, but now Steve and Bucky do, too, and Pepper only has to share Tony and the Tower with Bruce for the most part, when he can be dragged away from his machines by either one of them. The Agents return periodically, and Pepper knows that the reason they so readily talk about what she assumes is classified information is because of the tortured look Tony gets in his eyes when he thinks about how that could've been him, saving the world.

And then Steve gets injured. It's not life threatening, but he loses enough blood from the bullet wound through his shoulder that S.H.I.E.L.D. insists on keeping him under observation overnight. Bucky returns to the Tower alone, and Pepper sees him walk out of the elevator from where she's sitting in the next room. His hair is shorter, but other than that, he looks exactly the same as he had the first time she had seen the Winter Soldier: furious and dangerous and wide-eyed terrified.

She is about to go to him and offer him whatever he needs, but she hears footsteps coming down the stairs and she doesn't remember Natasha coming back to the Tower but there she is standing two steps above Bucky. Bucky mumbles something that Pepper doesn't hear (and doesn't think she'd understand even if she did. For a brief moment she had considered teaching herself Russian, but it had felt strangely invasive) before he reaches forward and wraps his arms around Natasha's waist, resting his head on her chest. His face is turned away from her, but Pepper can see the way his shoulders shake, and Natasha reaches one hand up to card her fingers through his hair, the other moving slowly across his his back.

Pepper forgets, sometimes. They've been through hell, and worse than hell. They grew up too fast and too hard, and they've lived more life than they should have. But compared to the rest of them - S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents and the Avengers alike - Steve and Bucky are just kids (Truthfully, she doesn't know exactly how old Natasha is, but she suspects that the files she has seen aren't correct. She suspects that Natasha herself doesn't know). They're young enough that if they were born into this generation, the people they grew up with would still be in collage, or getting their first jobs. They lived through the Great Depression and they fought for their country when they were barely out of their teens, but Bucky just watched his best friend since childhood almost bleed out, and Pepper is well aware that most adults, who have gone through a stable childhood and emotional development, couldn't handle that; let alone a kid who had to learn too quickly how not to be one and so never really developed any coping mechanisms other than repression.

Pepper slips away to another room before they notice that she saw the way that Natasha lets Bucky cry into her shirt and presses her face to the top of his head. She can't help but wonder if Natasha cries sometimes, too.

five

Pepper and Natasha have reached an understanding, and that understanding is that if Pepper makes enough noise when she opens the door, she can enter Natasha's floor whenever she pleases. The understanding came about originally as a way to warn Natasha of any attacks on the building after she had insisted on JARVIS being removed from her floor, but it has since mostly been used for the moments when Tony has done something so monumentally stupid or frustrating that Pepper needs some time to herself.

Pepper generally uses the floor as a private, quiet space to read or work or sit with her head in her hands. Natasha does not consider the Tower a home base, but rather a brief respite from the rest of her life, so more often than not her floor is empty and peaceful. Even when Natasha is there, she mostly leaves Pepper to her own devices, finding things to occupy her in another room. When Pepper was in collage, her roommate was always trying to drag her to parties or clubs and playing her music too loud. Pepper would have given anything to have traded her with someone like Natasha.

Natasha is currently at the Tower, but she only returned two hours ago, and Pepper doesn't hear her moving around in another room, so she guesses the other woman is probably sleeping. She settles down on one of the armchairs, kicking off her shoes and curling her legs up on the cushion, and opens up her book.

She's been reading for about half an hour when Natasha's bedroom door opens, but it's not Natasha who slips quietly out. He's wearing pajama pants, but no shirt, and his hair is decidedly tousled. Bucky Barns offers no explanation as he makes for the kitchen, only quirks his lips up slightly. Pepper turns back to her book.

She's happy for them.

one

Pepper had actually liked Natalie Rushman, after she got over the whole 'flirting with Tony' thing. And she likes Natasha, now that she's past the whole 'secret S.H.I.E.L.D. agent' thing, because Natasha is an oasis of calm in Pepper's chaotic life. She's the only one who understands the depths of Pepper's occasional frustration, and she's equal parts assessing and snarky, depending on what Pepper needs to hear after Tony blows something new up. She thinks of Natasha as a friend, or at least, she thinks of herself as someone Natasha has never idly considered murdering, and she is very happy about that.

So when she walks into the shared living space in the Tower and finds Bucky lying on top of Steve on one of the couches, the two of them looking more than halfway to needing to find their own room, Pepper doesn't even hang up her phone before she throws it at them, narrowly missing hitting Bucky in the side of the head. And that's how Pepper finds herself furious; shouting at a national icon and an ex-brainwashed assassin and doesn't even think to be scared or embarrassed, or about the show that Happy must be getting on the other end of the line. Pepper doesn't stop to listen to what Steve or Bucky have to say for themselves (or even if they move, since they haven't yet), she storms straight off to Natasha's floor.

Natasha is reclined on the couch, reading one of the books Pepper left behind (she figured that Natasha would like books about dancing as much as she likes movies) and her eyes are drawn immediately to Natasha's left hand. There's a ring there. It's plain, but it's unmistakably a wedding ring, and Pepper has to stop in her tracks and take a few deep breaths. She hopes that Natasha isn't the type to shoot the messenger. But she can't have her not know.

"Bucky and Steve are making out in front of the TV."

Natasha looks up from her book and draws her eyebrows together slightly. She looks concerned, and Pepper doesn't blame her. She hasn't quite gotten her voice down again to its natural level.

"Alright then. I'll make some noise if I go downstairs so I don't have to see Steve with his hand down James' pants again. It was unwanted the first time, although the second and third were just for fun."

Pepper doesn't gape, because gaping isn't something she does, but she is surprised. She didn't think Natasha would be one for sharing. "But...doesn't it bother you?"

Natasha's eyebrows get closer together, but she doesn't look concerned anymore. Pepper thinks she can actually feel the icy abyss of death, and she resolves to be more understanding of Tony when he double-checks the windows at night after he's disagreed with Natasha. "No. Should it?"

Pepper is definitely confused now. "Well, I thought– You and Bucky–"

And Natasha smiles at her. Teeth and everything. Pepper has to take a seat.

"There is nothing like that between James and I." Natasha says, and the grin disappears from her face as quickly as it appeared, but her eyes are still bright. "If he were a woman, I think you would call us hetrosexual life partners."

Pepper is possibly more confused now than she was before this whole conversation started. "You mean, you two have never–"

"No. Never." Natasha sounds amused. "In a very dark time of our lives, we were the only ones there for each other. James was kind to me, when he should not have had the capacity to be kind, and I have never thought of him as anything other than a man. More than that, I have gone through what he is now."

There's something Pepper can't quite get her head around. She's never had much time for giggly gossip and she doesn't imagine Natasha has either, but she has to ask. "But you've never even thought about it?"

Natasha seems to consider this for a second. "Maybe in another world, if we were two different people and James hadn't been in love with Steve since he was old enough to know what love was, maybe then we would have. But not even Hydra or the Red Room could wash away what Steve is to James, and I was too young when I knew him well to think of anything but getting ahead and completing my next mission."

They sit in silence for a while. Pepper files away all this new information in her head. Steve and Bucky are together. Probably have been for a very long time. Natasha is married, but not to Bucky. Warrants some further investigation.

Natasha's phone ringing breaks the quiet. It's sitting on the coffee table, and Pepper sees the name 'Clint' flash up on the screen before Natasha snatches it up.

Pepper watches the way that Natasha's face softens as she answers the phone; the corners of her lips curving up slowly, the smile reaching her eyes. She winks at her, and Pepper knows.

-00000-

Pepper leaves Natasha to her phone call. She has told her more secrets than Pepper ever hoped to have of her (not including the ones on government records), and she decides to give her some space for a few days.

She goes to Tony's lab. Bruce is there, and he and Tony are poking at things (actually, mostly Tony is poking at Bruce) while Rhodey's face on one of Tony's monitors laughs at the two of them. Pepper thinks back to what Natasha said, and she thinks she understands, now, why Tony was so quick and keen to have Bruce move in to the Tower with him. Why he calls Rhodey at odd hours of the night to ask about aerodynamics and airplane engines and all sorts of things he already knows and Rhodey only offers token protests. She had always thought it was a action born of anxiety and abandonment issues. But maybe there is more to it than that.

Pepper turns on her heel and pulls out her phone. She has her own friends too. She calls Maria Hill.

A/N: More platonic soulmates in everything that's all the end.

Now with the unintentional prequels Afraid To Run Away and Down Came The Rain