Bucky tries to set Natasha up with Sam. He's a bit late for that party, but he managed to find Steve's shield and replace Sam's wings: he'll come up with something for her.

Translation note: "sobrat"; Russian; meaning "brother, fellow(man), confrere, congener".

The Love

"Sam seems awful sweet on you," Bucky told Natasha out of the blue one day.

Their little road trip was, for all intents and purposes, over. Brooklyn had become a ghost: the streets were changed, Steve and Bucky's friends and neighbours had died off, and the descendants of Bucky's sisters had scattered to the four winds, not one remaining on their mothers' home soil. Steve had torn himself away from the empty husk of his once-home long ago, and when Bucky felt there weren't any more memories to be wrung from the half-familiar, half-wrong streets, he made no secret of how badly he wanted to run too.

Stark hadn't stopped them; he never did like making friends the easy way. Consolidating all the Avengers candidates – old and new – in that building of his was going to take ages, if it happened at all. So, with the sight-seeing and reminiscing and ill-advised business meetings over with and Stark's lawyers done hashing out the legality of Sam's new wings (Natasha pitied Bucky a little; he'd tried so hard to do it right, but there was no way the examples he'd had to draw from weren't all rotten to the core), the four of them drifted back to Washington.

Sam re-established his civilian life like this had just been tour number three and made sure they all understood that he could not and would not be their friend and their therapist at the same time. Actually, he wasn't a doctor qualified to be anyone's Proper Shrink at all. But he reserved the right to leave them self-help materials and referentials to more qualified professionals when and as he saw fit in his capacity as the self-appointed Responsible Adult-slash-Only Sane Man. Steve, meanwhile, found a new apartment without holes and ears in the walls and, one morning, helped re-introduce Bucky to Peggy Carter. Bucky started thinking of something to do with his life that didn't involve poking holes in people, claiming 'housewife duty' for himself in the meantime, and Natasha... lingered. Came and went through the others' personal spheres like a benevolent enigma; crashed at either Sam's or Steve's place at night as their collective mood struck them. Bucky needed the bone-deep familiarity of Steve's face to be the first thing he saw whenever he woke up, meaning there were two beds crammed into Steve's bedroom and the spare was free for the taking. So as long as she cleaned up after herself and pitched in for her share of the groceries, Natasha didn't physically inconvenience any of the boys.

They were humoring her, she knew. Until she either moved on by herself or started looking like she needed help to, they would roll with her eccentricities like they rolled with the loose screws in all of their heads, the way you rolled with any of the harmless little pathologies of those you'd been through hell with. She'd agreed with Maria to keep tabs on the DC trio just like Maria was doing in New York with Stark, Banner (who had an apartment with his name on it in the Tower that he'd only occasionally occupied until his SHIELD-issued cover fell through) and Thor (who had an open invitation but, between his duties off-world and Dr Foster's scientific pursuits, used it only sporadically), but this? Was not that.

Truth be told? Much as she usually enjoyed being anyone but herself, this version of Natasha Romanoff had a good thing going.

She had no better place to be, at any rate. With the world busily convulsing as it turned itself inside out and Hydra remnants scurrying every which way, odds were this life, its little bubble of domesticity and normalcy, would pop sooner or later. But Natasha's new cover could wait until it did.

In between helping Steve and Bucky move Steve's belongings into their new apartment and helping Bucky shop for things of his own, she'd shaved the sides of her head down to a semi-transparent red fuzz and learned she totally rocked the lazy hawk.

"There's an awful lot of fellas sweet on me at any given time. It's a skill," Natasha said now, lounging on the couch with Bucky cross-legged on the floor in front of her, folding laundry on the coffee table.

"And not just white fellas, huh?" Bucky remarked, and Natasha looked up from her phone (Sharon was having a less than challenging day at work and kept distracting Natasha from her own work with cat videos) to raise an eyebrow at him. "What?"

"Not just those, no. Like I said, it's a skill. It transcends the silly social constructs we've imposed on this imperfect world."

"Can't say I'm surprised." The smile he gave her was terribly fond, but as soon as she answered it with a smirk it upended itself and turned into an uncomfortable frown. He pulled a pair of Natasha's running pants from the laundry basket and folded them. "It's just – I don't have a problem with it, and I know Steve doesn't either. Sam seems to know that, so I guess they talked about it at some point."

Natasha raised an incredulous eyebrow.

"But he's being awfully obvious about it. Which is what happens when you're in love, I know, but he's my friend and I worry –"

"Oh my god," Natasha interrupted when realisation hit. "Nobody's going to lynch him for hitting on a white girl, you ridiculous mama bear." The look on his face made her snort. "None of this worried you all those times Sam and I shared a hotel room."

He stared for a moment, not comprehending. Then he squeezed his eyes shut, dropped his face in his hands, and muttered fuck, fuck, fucker under his breath. "You're right. Shit, I can't believe..."

("Did you have this problem too?" he'd asked, the last time this happened.

"They got me when I was five," she'd answered after a long moment. "By the time I got out age had taken its toll. There wasn't anything there to come back and confuse me in the first place."

There had been layer upon layer of false memories instead, and she'd had those for years and years.)

She took pity on him and kept her voice gentle. "Did you remember something or did this come out of nowhere?"

"I don't know if I remembered before or after I opened my mouth," he admitted. "But my father had this conversation with his own sister once. Almost word for word. I was... very small. My mother was pregnant and I helped her with the laundry. They thought I wasn't listening, I guess. The guy Aunt Marianne fell for was called Clay. I always pictured him with the wrong skin color because of that name. Weird dissonance." He shook his head and raked a hand through his hair, sighing. "But not half as weird as this."

"Whites and non-whites have been able to marry for almost fifty years, you know."

He let that sink in. "Wow."

"The president had one white and one black parent."

He conjured up a weak smirk and lobbed a pair of socks at her. "Alright, alright, I get it."

"It could've been worse. You could've not remembered it at all," she said, leaning forward to ruffle his hair. "So you cherish that memory and I'll update the script: you confront me about Sam's apparent feelings for me by way of an anecdote from the twenties and remark how nice it is how society has progressed, because it means that unlike your father, you're not speaking up out of fear of the wrong random passers-by finding out, but because you're a consummate busybody and your first instinct upon seeing one of your friends unwillingly single is to play matchmaker. Of course you try to deny your underlying motive, to play it off like maybe you've got your own eye on a black girl somewhere, how would I know? But I wasn't born yesterday, so I tell you not to even think about it. You try to play innocent and promise not to pull anything, I call you on your blatant lies, you bat your big blue eyes at me some more. I remind you that we are partners in matchmaking, that we combine our powers to use against Steve, we do not turn them on each other, and we part ways just waiting for the inevitable."

"You know me too well. It's scary," Bucky said, beaming.

"Reading you is like reading a billboard. That's what's scary, sobrat. I'm embarrassed to admit we're products of the same evil science division."

"Kids these days. Spoiled rotten by the progress of technology," he tsk-ed. "So you're not interested in Sam then?"

Oh, she was doomed. So, so doomed. Natasha really did want to keep him. She wanted to have pointedly casual conversations like this and rag on his terrible pronunciation of Russian and dress him up and destroy his enemies, and she wanted to get fed and doted upon and sometimes absently petted, like she was his fucking cat, forever. It was like Clint all over again.

"Whether or not I'm interested is beside the point," Natasha said, far too indulgently and not caring. "No matchmaking."

He gave her a long, shrewd look.

Of course

there was matchmaking.

I-oOo-I

Bucky sidled up to Sam at the kitchen counter as smoothly as if he rolled in on a tiny train track, and set a bag of groceries on the counter. "Heeeey, Sam."

"Heeeeey, Buck."

"Did you know," Bucky said, snatching the knife and cutting board from Sam's hands with deadly domestic grace. "that blacks and whites have been able to get married in every American state for almost fifty years now?"

His mechanical arm was almost a blur as he took up chopping paprikas where he'd cut Sam off. Fucking super soldiers.

"I may have heard something along those lines. The once. Through the grapevine. In encoded smoke signals," Sam said. He leaned a hip against the counter, arms crossed and eyebrows raised in amusement. "I mean, I didn't sleep through the past fifty years like you did, but it's such an esoteric bit of knowledge."

Grinning wolfishly, Bucky moved on to decimating the leek and waggled his eyebrows at Sam.

"You got designs on me, white boy?"

"Nah, not me."

"That's being legalized in an increasing number of states too, you know."

"One thing at a time." Bucky reached out with the hand still holding the knife and gently turned Sam's head until he was looking out into the living room where Natasha lounged in all her faux-hipster glory, engrossed in whatever she'd been up to on her phone all day. Bucky looked pointedly at Sam. Looked pointedly at Natasha. Looked pointedly back at Sam. Waggled his eyebrows again. "It's legal now."

"Oooooh," Sam said, finally catching on – and laughed. "I don't think she's the marrying type, man."

"But the option is open to you. Just saying." He gave Sam a hugely exaggerated saucy wink and then started making shooing motions. Still with the damn knife. "Now scram. How many times do I have to tell you, guests do not do chores or prepare their own meals in my household."

"You were making your emergency grocery run," Sam protested. "We're hungry. I think Steve may have collapsed under the strain of his suped-up metabolism, I don't even know where he disappeared off to."

"He's still talking to the phone company about that hidden number we want. I can feed you faster if you stop making excuses."

"Alright, alright, you're the king of the kitchen."

"Damn straight."

Sam plopped down on the couch beside Natasha and started in a whisper, "Did you hear...?"

"He has no idea," she whispered back, shooting him a smirk. "Humor him. For me. I think he's decided it's my turn to get compensated for past altercations. He'll find the ceramic knife set in my Amazon wish list soon enough and forget all about this matchmaking stuff."

"Sounds likely enough," Sam allowed. "But do you really think leading him on until then's a good idea?"

"If he keeps it up and it bothers you, blow him off politely, just don't enlighten him. We have a right to our privacy, and no good will come from setting unrealistic examples for him about how many of your questions will actually get answered as a free man in the twenty-first century. Besides..." Natasha paused for a moment to applaud Bucky for slicing three potatoes in a row in mid-air. "He's a big boy. He'd hurt more thinking we've been treating him like a fragile little flower than finding out we were harmlessly messing with him a little."

Sam looked dubious.

Natasha brushed her knuckles along his cheek while Bucky's back was turned. "You're a great soldier, and great with soldiers, Sam. I'm a great spy, and great with assassins and ex-brainwashees. Take my word on this one."

Well, Bucky's curiosity was insatiable now that he was finally able to feel curious again without having to worry about getting his brain fried for asking questions, but Natasha was probably right. A lot of the vets Sam knew struggled with the constant hyper-alertness they'd grown accustomed to in warzones and balancing the need to feel safe with the inevitability of not being able to know and control everything, but Bucky seemed to have come out of seventy years of torture and murder thinking, 'Have you looked at me lately? I am literally superman. If it hasn't killed me yet it's not gonna kill me now, so damn right I'm sleeping with the front door unlocked. If it was good enough for the forties it's good enough for the twenty-tens, and by the way, I tear the doors off of cars with my bare hands. Where are your locks now?' Natasha had been shrouded in mystery and misconception from the very start and it had never bothered Bucky much. Hell, by this point he'd practically adopted her, wildcarding and curveballing and all.

Sam shrugged. "Okay."

I-oOo-I

"He's not being very subtle, is he?" Sam asked later that evening, snorting to himself. "Like, at all. And here history had me thinking he was such a sly devil."

Bucky had talked about the pros and cons of the 1940's dating scene and grilled Sam and Natasha about the current one all throughout dinner and the movie. Every last one of the countless 'hypothetical' questions he'd asked had featured the 'hypothetical' scenario of Sam and Natasha hooking up. Steve had failed to make up his mind about whether to groan or grin.

"I give it a year," Natasha yawned. Sam was starting to suspect she was naturally a nap-after-sex type, when she let herself be natural. "He's still growing back the necessary brain functions for smooth-talking."

Sam hummed and nuzzled into her neck. "You think they had fuck buddies in the forties?" he wondered idly. He had one arm wrapped around her waist and the warmth of her bare back pressed into his chest, and was starting to feel pleasantly drowsy himself.

Now Natasha snorted. "People don't change their ways, only the face they put on about it for others. Bucky just doesn't know how to read our modern clues. Steve might. He's had more time to socialize in our time."

"Bucky was supposed to be the ladies man back in the day, though. Performing is one thing, but you'd think he'd sense something."

"Hmm, true." Natasha absently reached up to scratch Sam's scalp. "And Steve hasn't shown any sign of trying to stay politely out of our business either."

"We have been very sneaky," Sam said, and nipped at her shoulder with a grin.

Natasha gave him one of those amused, close-lipped smiles over her shoulder. "Your spy game shows promise, Private Grasshopper."

Then she curled up and fell asleep in his arms, and Sam thought that maybe Natasha's 'opening up to your friends for no other reason than that you can' game showed promise too.

I-oOo-I

Alright, so Natasha did a little more than just 'linger'. She got to know Sam's other friends on saturday nights (introducing her as Just A Friend for simplicity's sake). She gave Bucky tips on things that had helped her own deprogramming throughout the years (and maybe the tight jeans and leather vest – restrictive, non-stretch fabrics to trick his body into thinking body armor on days when his preferred Normal Person wardrobe left him feeling too alienated – served a dual purpose, but so what). In turn, Bucky taught her the lindy hop, the jitterbug, how to swing like a real forties girl, and she soaked it up like a particularly greedy sponge (skills were like false identities in that you could never have too many, and a helluva lot less likely to be considered unhealthy besides).

An outsider might have said she was putting down roots. Natasha herself was itching for an opportunity to unleash her fantastic quip about portable potted plants.

That being said, she had to fight down the urge to throw a smoke bomb (hell yes she was carrying) and make an unnecessarily dramatic escape when one of the grocery store employees greeted her with a cheerful 'welcome back!'. The locals in Sam's neighbourhood were starting to recognize her. God, she was in deep.

Sam got a shopping cart and took the grocery list from his back pocket. Natasha waited until they were out of the cashiers' line of sight and hopped into the cart. Without missing a beat, Bucky sighed, rolled his eyes, and turned back to get a second cart.

She'd trained her boys so well.

"Oh, get me those," she said in the candy isle, pointing at the mini M&Ms.

Bucky dropped a bag into his cart.

"And one for at Sam's place."

Bucky grabbed another bag and gave her an odd look. "You're gonna get fat," he said, looking away and biting his lip.

Sam gasped dramatically.

Natasha's spider-senses started tingling.

"Little plump girls get underestimated even more than little skinny girls," she said with a shrug.

"Oooh, burn," Sam crowed.

"Hey, I like a woman with a little meat on her bones," Bucky protested far too cheerfully. "There was this girl in France – Veronique? Monique? Dominique? – I don't remember her name, but God, I couldn't keep my hands off of her. Soft and squishy all over and giggly as anything. I wanted to eat that girl."

Natasha snorted. "Try not to get carried away now. We're in public, and don't think for a second people aren't staring intently at your ass and what you're packing."

Bucky ever so casually bent over to lean his elbows on the cart, grinning hugely. "Just saying. If I were making moves on you I'd buy you five of these. Wouldn't you, Sam?"

Sam groaned and bent over too, dropping his head on Natasha's shoulder. "Oh god, not this again."

Natasha laughed.

"Yeah, that one was kinda obvious, wasn't it?" Bucky admitted unrepentantly.

"You're always obvious," Natasha said. "You're 'firing bazookas at mosquitoes' obvious."

"I sure hope you don't treat strangers the way you treat us, man," Sam said, shaking his head fondly.

"Hey, I'm messed in the head but I'm not that messed in the head. You're just special."

"I am so very flattered," Sam deadpanned.

"Speaking of, cart me over to the beauty isle, will you," Natasha said, gesturing imperiously.

"Here's your chance to practice acting natural, Buckster." Sam stuck his head close to Bucky's and lowered his voice as they wheeled her over. "Girls these days like their men either metro or cucumber cool. Any sign of mockery, incredulity, or contempt and you're out."

"I grew up with three sisters, you think I don't know about feminine care routines?" Bucky mumbled, studying the displays of make-up and beauty creams with that look of bemused wonder that meant he was trying to connect dusty and battered memories to their modern counterparts. "...or knew."

While Natasha rifled through the selection of foundation, Bucky snatched something from another shelf, peered intensely at the label, and then held it up to Sam.

"Is this true?" he whispered. "Can over-the-counter product really do that now?"

"I don't know?" Sam whispered back. "Maybe a little?"

"Gotta be at least a little, right? Steve says there's super-strict rules about not lying about what you're selling these days. Flour's gotta be flour and nothing but flour, not two parts flour to eight parts whatever junk you happen to be able to pass off as flour. That kinda thing."

"It probably doesn't do shit, man. No amount of regulation will stop companies from finding ways to sell you hot air cut with lies."

"What size are we talking about, anyway?"

"Why, how big you got 'em? I thought you super soldiers didn't –"

"No, not me."

Natasha didn't pretend not to be listening. Bucky turned toward her and braced himself. "Natt – Natasha?"

"Yeah?"

"Here." He handed her the little jar. "It's on me. Try it sometime. You know, where I –" He gestured helplessly. "– shot you. I know you hate how much the scar – scars – stand out. I don't know how well it works, but it never hurts to try, right?"

Frowning, she read the label.

Moisturizing, pore-cleansing, wrinkle-lifting, and scar-fading skin rejuvenation cream. Good grief.

"Unless you just hate how impractical it is when you're trying to pass for a non-combatant, but you're more of a battle trophy kinda gal otherwise," Bucky went on uncertainly. "I knew a couple of guys like that, loved their scars like others loved their sweethearts. In which case I guess I can get you some of whatever you use to cover them up on the job."

Natasha was glad Nick hadn't left a number to contact him by, because for a moment she was this close to calling him to ask if she'd ever been this bad. If she was still this bad. If, when you switched out her non-existent childhood for the twenty-five formative years of mundane domesticity Bucky had to draw from, this was exactly what she was like too.

I-oOo-I

An inconspicuous number of days after that heart-warming yet cringe worthy incident, Natasha lured James 'Curiosity Cannot Kill A Cat' Barnes in by laughing evilly at Captain America-themed boxer briefs on Amazon, showing him how the site worked, and then, when her phone went off right on cue, dashing off to run a Very Sudden And Very Important Errand for Sharon. She bought donuts and a Starbucks coffee with white chocolate and five other deliciously decadent ingredients and snuck them into the movie theatre where they'd agreed to meet, because she was just that good and sometimes you had to treat yourself to the benefits of your hard-earned skills.

Sharon's chick-flick of choice was ninety-five solid minutes of fluffy mindless relaxation, and as expected, when Natasha hacked Steve's online bank records later that night, Bucky had indeed made a substantial Amazon purchase after she left.

Steve discovered all his underwear suddenly had his face on them not long after.

The knives Natasha had been expecting were nowhere to be seen, though. Bucky just kept up the attempts at matchmaking instead – in between replacing random household items with ridiculous merchandise and making Steve hunt down their original things like Easter eggs.

Sam backed out of the game before long, as expected, but did not, in fact, spill the beans, which was something of a surprise. He'd been deeply perturbed by the way Natasha explained the minor meltdown Bucky had had following a violent robbery the two of them foiled during a late-night emergency snack run –

("I just wish he'd talk to a professional. It's like nothing I've said has gotten through to him at all."

"What you have said has gotten through just fine, it's your angle that's insufficient. You're thinking of him only as your run-of-the-mill vet and POW again. This was the first time he's broken character since he took up being Bucky Barnes Mk II, and ironically, the only truly, deeply ingrained instincts he has left are telling him he didn't really have any say in it because whether or not to intervene wasn't a matter of choice. That's why he's so unsettled."

"Break character? What, like he's been – putting on a act all this time? Literally?"

"That's oversimplifying things. But after the way Hydra worked him over, do you really think he just naturally snapped back to being this staggeringly well-adjusted guy in a matter of months? He's not duping us, he's not even duping himself. He is doing incredibly well. But on some level, he's still only playing the part of the kind of free man he wants to be, taking his cues from the person he remembers being in his youth. And he's determined to keep playing that part until it comes natural to him again and he doesn't revert back to Hydra's settings whenever the effort of being his own handler-programmer gets too exhausting or something jolts him out of the harmless civilian persona he's adopted."

"...are you serious?"

"Oh, Sam. Isn't it obvious?"

Only to her, apparently.)

– but it was so obvious Bucky was having a good time messing with the lot of them that letting him have his fun while it lasted had, apparently, won out.

Which meant Natasha was the only one still being regaled with redundant odes to Sam's attractiveness, combat skills, and other great qualities, and 'oops, did we agree to all go see the game together? Stark's stopping by to have a look at my arm and I want Steve to hold my hand while he waves his scanner phone in my general direction to do so, so I'm afraid you two will have to attend on your own. those tickets cost an arm and a leg, wouldn't want to waste them, right?' made way for 'hey, I heard about this club downtown that comes really highly recommended. Steve and I are old farts who only like stone-age music, but maybe Sam would like it'.

If Bucky didn't resort to sex toys or some other blatantly ungentlemanly method by the end of the month, Natasha decided, she'd come clean about having been in a scandalous secret affair with Sam since the height of their Insight Day adrenaline high.

I-oOo-I

Natasha's nose called her straight from her shower to the kitchen. It was not the disaster area clichés had taught her to expect, though Bucky had managed to both burn his attempt at a meal to black sludge and make it explode across a quarter of the kitchen. He was slumped in a chair at the kitchen table, hands lying limply in his lap and staring dejectedly at the tabletop. His apron was stuffed halfway into the trashcan and there were black smudges on his face, like a poor man's imitation of war paint.

"Impressive," Natasha said. "What were we having?"

He groaned and collapsed onto the tabletop, burying his head in his arms. "Kitchens don't work the way they used to."

He'd mastered and reinvented every feature of this one within a week.

"That seems a bit dramatic for some burned water," Natasha said, taking the apron from the trash and throwing it across the hall into the doorway to the laundry room.

"I used to be better at this."

"At cooking?"

"At doing nice things for people." Bucky raised his head just enough to prop his chin on the table, stare through his hands at the opposite wall, and mumble, "I know I used to be good at this, I can feel it. I... I remember bringing a girl home once to borrow one of my sister's good dresses. I'd set her up with Steve so we could all go out together, him and her and me and my sweetheart. I remember waiting outside Rebecca's room while she changed and knocking on Steve's door with that girl on my arm, and his mom telling us he'd come down with something, and I thought, 'but he was fine when I saw him this morning, how much rotten luck can one guy have?'. Steve says I talked her into going out anyway just like I talked her into accepting my sister's dress, and the girl met her future husband that night. She was poor as dirt but the guy was from a good family. They eloped and had five kids, and one of those kids became a doctor and invented the cure to some kind of nerve disease. Steve looked them up when he first woke up here. Apparently they were friends of ours right up until the war. I held their first baby."

Quite a butterfly effect for one failed attempt at matchmaking.

"And now..." Natasha finished.

"And now," Bucky confirmed morosely.

"You know –"

"If you say it's the thought that counts I'm upending dinner on your head," he growled. "And don't even start with the 'nothing the Winter Soldier did was your fault Bucky', that's not what I'm talking about."

What with the almost palpable cloud of miserable, frustrated failure hanging over him, she was inclined to believe him. He hadn't so much as tipped a waiter for seventy years, it was bound to be tricky to get back into the habit of being... good. Of being more than what his fists and good aim could make him.

(God knows Natasha had had to learn the value of not phoning such things in from scratch.)

"The intent matters to the recipient. The result matters to you. I get it, sometimes the thought just doesn't count for enough, no matter how much of it you have to go around. But you can't force something like this, Buck." She reached out a hand to ruffle his hair, then reconsidered and plastered herself across his bowed back instead. He turned his head toward her and she wrapped her arms around his stomach, patting his firm abs. "Just keep at it. One of these days Steve's single-mindedness and Tony's lack of professionalism and you being legally dead won't be standing in the way, and you'll find you never lost your touch. It's just that in this century, you're surrounded by idiots who insist on making life difficult for themselves and everyone around them."

"You realise Operation 'Set Natasha Up With Sam' is still ongoing, right?" Bucky pointed out with a small smile.

Natasha returned it. "That joke, my friend, is on you. You just don't know it yet."

I-oOo-I

"You two would have such beautiful babies," Bucky whispered as he and Sam watched Natasha fail once again to beat Steve's Mario Cart high score, muttering angrily about cheating super soldier reflexes all the while.

Sam sighed. "Bucky, I asked you to stop going on about that."

"I know. I'm sorry. But you would, and you're both being stupid about it."

Grown men were not designed to pout; Bucky looked ridiculous doing it.

Not for the first time, Sam was tempted to set Bucky straight about the nature of his and Natasha's relationship and redirect all that time and energy of his into helping Sam not ruin a good thing by wanting more than Natasha could give. But no. He couldn't do that to her. Natasha wanted her privacy – Natasha needed her privacy. She had made every horrible secret she'd ever kept public for the whole world to see, hadn't had a choice in the matter – not anything a good person would consider a choice, at any rate, and oh, she had so much more good in her than she ever seemed to give herself credit for – and had dealt with the deadly fall-out all alone for months. After all of that, she needed to feel like she had some control over her personal information again.

(She needed a periodic reassurance that she was in control of her everything, period.)

If that meant keeping their relationship a secret from all their friends and never knowing if she'd be bunking over with him or the others until he was brushing his teeth, so be it. Here and now, Sam could give her that without harming himself in the process. And here and now, Sam could be content with the emotional distance she wished to keep.

"As my father used to say, 'I'm sorry but' isn't a real apology," was all Sam told Bucky.

Bucky gave him an odd look for a moment, and then stood. "You're right. I'm not actually sorry. I'm too frustrated with the two of you to be sorry. But I shouldn't bother you about that after you've asked me not to, so I'll go complain to Steve instead."

And he clapped Sam on the shoulder and went to help Steve with the snacks.

Natasha raised her eyebrow at Sam over her shoulder.

Sam shrugged.

"He's got a point this time. Our offspring would have good odds of great genes and devastating looks," she deadpanned.

I-oOo-I

Natasha emerged from the bathroom grumpy and aching and exhausted, but clean, and found Bucky in the kitchen pouring boiling water into an old-fashioned metal hot water bottle, spilling over his metal fingers without a care.

"Hey," he said, screwed the stopper onto the bottle, dried it off, and slipped it into a pale blue cover. He held it out to her, the spare end of the cloth sack first. "Here."

Natasha almost got a little misty-eyed from the force of her gratitude, it was that bad.

"How'd you know?" she asked, taking the bottle and pressing it to her abdomen without preamble. She sagged into him and groaned dramatically, her eyes slipping closed. Her kingdom for the ability to go back to bed and get another five hours of sleep – proper sleep.

Bucky's hand carded through her hair. "Blood in the laundry room."

"Ugh. Sorry, I thought I'd cleaned that up," she mumbled into his shoulder.

He shrugged. "Must've happened on your way out."

After she'd cleaned up the first mess she'd made putting her soiled bedclothes into the washing machine. Because it was that bad.

"I don't know whether to be flattered or insulted that you didn't assume I'd been attacked."

He huffed a laugh and steered her gently into a chair at the kitchen table. "My youngest sister used to have the same problem. She slept on a piece of oilcloth for a week every month."

"And that is why I get a shot every half year," Natasha said in a flat, dead voice. The alternative was a tone of voice that reflected the carnage going on in her uterus. "I didn't bother tracking my usual stuff down when I was overseas, I didn't think the first time it came back would be this bad."

"Want me to make you something?"

"Oatmeal. The way Steve makes it, but with lots and lots of honey." She let her head loll back and watched Bucky take out a pot and ingredients upside-down. "You are an angel, Bucky Barnes."

He smiled faintly. It looked sad. "You're the closest thing I have to a sister now, you know. No-one else around willing to get pampered."

Aww, Natasha thought. It was sad.

"A Red Room sister to replace the star on your arm?"

As predictably as if she'd literally pushed a button, his hand went to his metal bicep – bare and brand-less ever since Tony'd gone at all the nasty Hydra hooks in his arm with the prejudice of a man who once woke up from an attempted assassination with a car battery lodged in his chest.

Ugh. Now she was being sad.

Bucky made a face. "Sweetheart, I love you, but I'm not getting your face tattooed on my arm."

It startled her so much she laughed herself boneless.

"Here you go, Natty," he said a couple of minutes later, setting a steaming bowl of porridge down in front of her and his own by the seat across from her.

"Natty?"

"You don't like it?"

She gave him her best side-eye as she blew on a spoonful of oatmeal. "Is that an old-timey nickname?"

He raised his hands defensively. "Nadia, then?"

"Not if you're going to pronounce it Natty-a, you awful, awful Yank."

"Ally?"

"That's not how Russian patronymics work and you know it."

"But we'd match!" he said, grinning. "Bucky and Ally Barnesanoff. Ally and Bucky Romarnes."

"Natty is ridiculous," she said decisively, and focussed on her food.

Five spoonfuls later:

"You're the only one who gets to use it. And only because 'Bucky' is equally ridiculous."

"Going down in history as 'Bucky Barnes' instead of 'James' is my proudest achievement." She didn't even have to look up to feel him beam. "Taste good?"

"Like heaven, as always."

"Good. I'm still not sure how I turned our food into an explosive the other day, so it's better to be safe than sorry."

They ate in what Natasha thought was a companionable silence for a while, but apparently the sister comment had been more than just a passing thought.

"All of this... trying to get you your man, I mean... it's not just because I shot you, back before. You know that, right?" His expression was painfully earnest. "I want to give something back to you for everything you're giving me."

Natasha's brow furrowed in confusion.

"Except for Steve, literally everyone I ever – everyone is gone," he said tersely, staring hard at the tabletop. "And my nieces and nephews... that's a bad idea right now. Steve's a life-saver in more ways than I can count, but he needs a life outside of worrying over me too." He looked up. "I don't know what either of us would do if you weren't around so much. You and Sam both, though, you know, he doesn't come around to be a freeloader quite as much. Just... you being here – being my... my 'Red Room sister' –"

Oh Barnes, you smooth-talker, Natasha thought with terrible affection.

"– it makes everything not seem so desolate. And I want to repay you. Make you comfortable too."

She let that sink in for a moment. Then she allowed herself the weakness of ducking her head to avoid his eyes. The blatant body language would help get the sentiment across to him more easily, sure, but she wanted to not have to hide feeling so vulnerable too, and – oh, fuck it.

"You don't have to repay me anything," she said, laying her hand over his on the table. "You're giving back plenty just letting me be those things to you. Being your Red Room big sister makes everything not feel so desolate for me too."

He turned his hand palm up and squeezed hers. Then he leaned in close. "Who says you're the big sister?"

Her head snapped up, her mouth open wide in only slightly exaggerated outrage. "Need I remind you, I've been at this freedom game a lot longer now than you have."

"I have twenty-seven years of freedom before Hydra and the Red Room to draw from. And don't give me that look. I was born first, I'm taller than you are, and anyway, I'm always the big brother regardless." Bucky smiled. "And I take good care of my little brothers and sisters."

Natasha's expression softened without her prompting, and she let it. "You do, don't you?"

I-oOo-I

"Let's get married," Natasha said out of the blue one day.

Sam knew what a bad idea it was to encourage her, but there was orange juice coming out his nose before he could help it. "What?" he spluttered. "Motherfu– ow. Goddammit."

Her mischievous smirk was unwavering, but she patiently waited to speak until he'd hacked up the citrusy fire lodged in his nasal cavities into the sink and concluded that snorting tap water to rinse out the lingering smell did as much harm as good.

"We elope to Vegas, honeymoon for a week, and get divorced. Then we go home and carry on as we have been," she explained.

Sam wiped the tears from his eyes and looked at her as sharply as the fruity trauma would allow. "Are you okay?" he rasped.

Natasha shrugged, smiling more warmly. "I've never done anything like it before. It'll be fun."

"Does the sanctity of marriage not mean anything to you?"

"Nope."

"That's not what all those civil rights movements were for, you know."

He dropped back into his chair, coughing. Making vaguely apologetic cooing noises, Natasha rubbed his scalp and swiped a stray bit of moisture from the corner of his eye with her thumb.

"I disagree. It's not real freedom until you feel free to make terrible jokes out of it just because you can. We helped make the world a little bit freer. We should celebrate."

"Save the world, get hitched, meet Elvis?"

She waggled her eyebrows. Good lord, he thought, seeing the exited glint in her eyes. This woman is wonderful. And absolutely cray-cray.

"I have officially lost control of my life," Sam announced aloud. "And possibly my sanity."

There had to be a line, though, and if he didn't draw it now, he never would.

"Alright, let's do it. On one condition – you meet my mama first."

Natasha's expression shuttered immediately.

Sam shrugged and grinned, making as light of it as possible. "Fair trade. I step out of my comfort zone, you step out of yours. Besides, mom's always loved knitting sweaters for my girlfriends."

"Did you introduce Steve to your mother before you got back into the game for him too?"

"Nah, girl. There's a difference between things you either die for or learn to live with, and things you want in your life."

There was a long moment of silent, blank-faced staring. Then her eyes grew heavy-lidded and her smile returned, soft and – dare he imagine it? – shy. "Okay." And then, there was the twinkle and the cheek again. "Husband."

"Wife," Sam returned, warm, buoyant happiness rapidly filling his chest. "Wanna live in sin a little more while we still can?"

Natasha nipped at his lower lip and snuck her hands under his shirt for an answer.

I-oOo-I

Three weeks later, she stopped at the top of the stairs to his mother's apartment building to pat her hair into shape. "What'd you tell her about me?"

"First name and coloring. Your sweater's gonna look great on you, promise."

She gave him a quick, speculative look, and sure enough, when he said, "Just be yourself. For me?" it morphed into a longsuffering was that really necessary? one.

"Your funeral."

"Mom will love you, Nat. She's the one who raised me to, after all."

That got a smile out of her, and there was a little extra bounce in her step as they crossed the hallway to his mother's front door.

Her married couple nickname was going to be 'Cat', Sam decided. 'Catty Nat'. 'Catsy Nat'. 'Kit-Cat Nat'. It was gonna be a glorious week.

I-oOo-I

Halfway through Father Elvis's speech, the doors to the garish little Vegas chaple burst open and a stocky blond guy in a bomber jacket and reflective purple shades came running up the aisle, yelling "I OBJECT!"

"I hadn't gotten to that part yet, pal," Elvis said jovially. This probably happened all the time around here.

"NOT WITHOUT YOUR BEST MAN, NAT!"

"There you are!" Natasha tugged her hands from Sam's and threw herself at the newcomer, who caught and spun her, the neon-colored tulle layers of her costume flashing as she laughed. "I thought you'd never show."

"Hi," Sam said as the new arrival set Natasha down and whispered in her ear. "Sam Wilson, nice to meet you. Is Natasha leaving me at the altar and running off with the bridesmale? Is that what this is? I shouldn't have gone for the sequined pants, huh? I knew it."

The new guy looked up and laughed. "What? Your pants are awesome, man."

Natasha stole the guy's sunglasses and raised an eyebrow at Sam over the top of them.

"Hey, that's totally something you would do, don't even deny it. It would be the perfect plot twist to this crazy plan and I wouldn't even mind that it was at my expense, but even my awesome improvisation skills have their limits."

"Now that you mention it, I'm ashamed the idea hadn't occurred to me. But no. Sam, this is Clint, my old partner. Clint, this is Sam, my two-minutes-away-from-husband. Sam helped me and Cap put you out of a job."

"We duel at dawn," the guy declared.

"Damn, man, can it wait a day? You'd be cutting my wedding night awful short there."

"I like him. You picked good, Nat." Clint held out his hand, which Sam shook. "Clint Barton, nice to meet you."

"Sam Wilson, likewise."

"You don't know half of it, pal. You were a pararescue Falcon, right?"

Sam blinked. "Uh, yeah. The Falcon these days, I guess, but – yeah."

Clint grinned. "My code name was Hawkeye."

"You boys did not know this," Natasha said, putting one hand on each of their shoulders and leaning in close. "But you are now officially best friends. As long as you associate with me, you will be inseparable. You'll make bird puns. You'll raise foulmouthed cockatoo babies. You'll wear matching shirts – I'll get them made for you."

"Oh god," Sam said, barely keeping a straight face. "This is the woman I'm marrying. Why. What have I done. Et cetera et cetera."

"She has pretty great taste in shirts," Clint conceded.

Elvis scraped his throat.

"But first, you, walk me to the altar, and you, marry me."

"Sorry man," Sam told Elvis, turning back toward the altar and holding out his arm to Natasha, who had backed up a couple of steps so Clint could actually lead her forward.

"Happens all the time," Elvis confirmed.

I-oOo-I

Despite Natasha's ominous claims about genetically fusing him and Sam at the hip, Clint and Sam got to know each other a little and he caught up with Natasha in what Sam was coming to recognize as spy-typical cryptic terms before politely buggering off the next evening. That left Sam and Natasha to do what honeymoons were supposed to be for, which in their case was screw each other senseless and not give a damn anymore who noticed.

Sam insisted that they not traumatize the room service lady, though.

The government clerk who handled their divorce papers at the end of the week gave them a mightily unimpressed look. "Land of the free!" Natasha said in a heavy, affected Russian accent, and Sam gave up his straight-manning attempt and buried his face in her hair, wheezing with laughter.

I-oOo-I

They were forewarned by the presence of Steve's bike in Sam's driveway, so there were no shots fired or bones broken when they stepped into the living room and were greeted with a loud, bright and energetic 'SURPRISE!'. It had also given them the opportunity to agree to play the cool cat and look bored until it either killed them or made their guests make funny faces.

The faces were priceless.

"You couldn't even pretend to be surprised?" Steve complained.

Natasha tilted her head, increasing her unimpressed-ness another three hundred percent.

"Whatever," Bucky said, and elbowed Steve with a look of determination. "Speech."

"Right."

Steve's grin was disconcerting.

The decorations were cheerful and extravagant but conspicuously non-specific. There were big pieces of cloth thrown across the dining table, though, covering piles of unidentifiable objects.

Sam and Natasha barely had time to exchange alarmed glances before Steve grabbed them both by a shoulder and manoeuvred them toward it.

"We were worried where you'd disappeared off to at first, but then Clint dropped by and mentioned that you'd eloped," Steve said. "The three of us celebrated Bucky's success, but of course you're the ones who should really be celebrated. So without further ado –"

Bucky pulled one of the cloths up and away and revealed –

...a cake in the shape of a life-size baby.

Steve beamed at them. "You youngsters may think you invented sex, but Bucky and I know perfectly well what such a sudden and unexpected union means. Congratulations, mom and dad to-be!"

Dead silence followed. Sam and Natasha caught each other's eyes.

"Am I hallucinating?" Sam asked under his breath.

Natasha shook her head and covered her mouth, visibly fighting for composure.

"I get to be godfather, right?" Bucky asked, grinning from ear to ear. "I put so much effort into getting you two together, I feel like I was there when this baby was made."

Natasha caved and folded in on herself with the force of her laughter.

"Guys..." Sam started, just the tiniest bit unsure whether to give in and laugh his ass off too or play it safe on the teeny tiny off chance they weren't trying to mess with them. "There is no – we didn't –"

"We've been together since Insight Day," Natasha finished for him, wiping her eyes and hiccupping a little as she fought to get her breathing back under control. "There, I said it. We're an established couple. We're starting to see our first anniversary looming on the horizon. We're in love and have been for a while, even if we didn't start out like it when we first started having sex."

"HA!" Bucky crowed. "I knew it! Pay up, Steve!"

Sam and Natasha's jaws dropped.

Steve whipped out a camera he'd been hiding on his person and snapped a picture of their faces at the speed of light. Money exchanged hands, and Bucky and Steve high-fived.

"We've been had," Natasha said wonderingly. "I've been had."

Sam shot her a worried glance, but she looked at Steve and Bucky with rare, unrestrained delight. "You two finally learned to tell a lie."

And that's what they ended up celebrating that day: two supersoldier padawans graduating to Sith Lords.

Well, that and Bucky and Steve's new puppy, who had been chewing on a meat ribbon under the table all this time.