Chapter 27

January, 2015

Townsville, Australia

Bucky was flipping through his notebook when he heard the noise: a metallic clank emanating from the bathroom, followed by a muttered curse and then dead silence. He closed the notebook and got to his feet, running a mental check of the safehouse – he had sightlines on all the windows, and he'd have noticed them being breached. None of Meg's handy devices had picked up on external surveillance. He knew there was a small, frosted-over window in the bathroom, but anyone trying to breach the safehouse would have to smash it to get in.

Clenching his jaw, Bucky padded toward the closed bathroom door and murmured: "Meg?"

There was another clank, another curse. "Yeah?" her voice was muffled. That only made Bucky's hackles rise further, though they had multiple codewords she could have used to indicate that she was in danger.

"What's going on?" he asked, eyes darting around the rest of the safehouse.

There was a long sigh. "I'm kind of… stuck."

"Stuck?"

There was rustling behind the bathroom door, and then he heard her scrabbling at the door knob. Seconds later the door cracked open.

Meg was awkwardly hunched over the doorknob. She had somehow gotten herself tangled up in her shirt, with the back of it pulled over her head, one arm folded uncomfortably under her nose, trapped in its sleeve, and the other sticking under her armpit. The shirt was covering most of her chest, but Bucky's eyes still darted away – that was a lot of skin, and having that in his head wasn't going to do anyone any favours. In studiously avoiding her bare skin, Bucky noticed the toolbox propped open in the sink, and the scratch on the mirror. Meg blinked at him from behind her trapped arms and mussed-up hair.

"Meg, I…" he shook his head, mouth opening and closing. "What the hell are you doing?"

Her cheeks went pink. "I'm… there's a connection loose in one of my moorings, I was trying to fix it."

He looked from her sheepish expression, to the toolbox, and back to her predicament. "Why didn't you ask me?" he finally asked, aghast.

Meg blushed further. "I don't… I thought maybe… I didn't…"

Bucky brought one hand to his forehead and laughed, shaking his head. "Okay, okay, let me just…" he sidled into the bathroom, chuckling under his breath, and reached up to help Meg untangle herself from her shirt. Once her left arm was free she managed to pull the shirt back down her midriff and tidy her hair, still looking flustered.

"I didn't want you to feel like you had to," she said, crossing her arms and avoiding his eyes. "It's not a hard fix, I thought I could-"

"I'm sure you could," he said, holding up his hands. "But you can always ask, Meg." He watched her until she met his eyes, and then smiled. "Might save you getting stuck in your own clothes."

She scowled at him.

"Come on," he laughed, and made a turning gesture with his hand. "Tell me what to do, and I'll do it."

Meg scowled at him for another moment longer, then sighed. "Alright. I'll just…" she put down the lid of the toilet and sat on it, swivelling so her back was lit by the window. Once she was settled, she wrapped her arms around her torso, curled her fingers under the back of her shirt and pulled, lifting it just above her two metal moorings.

Bucky crouched behind her and shook his head to focus. He'd seen people's backs before, this was fine. He was fine. "Okay, so what's wrong?"

Meg rolled her shoulders, and he watched the muscles pull and loosen down her back. "I think there's a loose connection in the left mooring, it just needs to be tightened."

He reached around her for the tool box, his forearm brushing her shoulder. "Does it hurt?"

"No, it just feels… kind of numb? Like a pinched nerve, pins and needles."

He tutted. "Okay, what am I looking for?" He ran his eyes over her right mooring, seamlessly lodged in the fair skin of her back, but he was no engineer. Having a problem to look for helped him focus, though, and he managed to mostly avoid noticing the warmth radiating from Meg's skin and the curve of her waist.

Meg hummed. "It should be moving slightly whenever I move, like…" she rolled her shoulders again. "Can you see it?"

He frowned. "I think so, do it again?"

She did, taking a deep breath in and out at the same time, and Bucky saw one of the socket connectors jiggle minutely. "Alright, got it. It needs tightening?" He selected a torque wrench from Meg's tool box.

"That's right."

"This isn't because of anything I did when I took out that kill switch, is it?"

"No, you didn't do any damage then. This just happens sometimes. Side effect of having machine parts in your body, I guess." She shrugged, and Bucky took a steadying breath.

"I'm going to touch you now, that alright?" He wanted to be sure she was ready, as he knew a lot of her nightmares were based on people messing with her back when she couldn't see them.

Meg took a deep breath, and he saw her wipe her palms on her jeans. "Yeah," she whispered.

Bucky set his flesh hand on her warm skin beside the mooring, to steady her, and used the torque wrench with his metal hand. He worked quickly, conscious of Meg's carefully steady breaths and his own distracted state of mind. As he tightened the connector the last few revolutions he had to slide his flesh hand upwards over her warm skin, and Meg shivered.

"Sorry," he muttered, and then pulled his hand and the wrench away. "How does that feel?"

"Hm?"

"Is the connector tight enough?"

"Oh, uh…" she flexed her shoulders and spine, and cocked her head. "Yeah, that's much better." She sighed and lowered her shirt again. "Thank you, Bucky."

"You're welcome." He packed away the tools and stood up, resolutely ignoring the tingling in his palm. "Uh, anything else, while I'm at it?"

Meg stood too, and Bucky noted that her cheeks were still pink. He felt bad for embarrassing her, but who knew how long she'd have stayed stuck before she asked for help. "I think that's it for now," she said, and smiled. "How's the arm?"

He blinked and looked down at his metal arm. He'd gotten so used to it, it was easy to forget that it was a machine, a weapon. It was especially easy to forget when Meg was hunched over it with a precision tool, treating it like a part of him that she could fix, or when she curled her arm around it as they walked. "Uh, it's… fine, I think." He smirked, and then flexed the arm so it was bent backwards, a move that a regular elbow joint would never be able to do. "But I don't know, does this look normal to you?"

Meg rolled her eyes and elbowed him when she squeezed past him out of the bathroom. "Looks about as normal as the rest of you," she shot back, and Bucky smiled in her wake.

February, 2015

Townsville, Australia

Maggie had been doing her very best to 'get over' Bucky, with the help of her research and her sheer determination. She constantly reminded herself why she shouldn't act on her feelings, and why it was important that she and Bucky stay friends. She established clear boundaries for herself, restricting herself from casual touches and maintaining friendly politeness. The encounter in the bathroom, when Bucky had put his hand on her bare skin and said you can always ask, had just cemented the need for her to maintain her distance. She'd been too emotionally compromised, too wrapped up in his touches and glances.

So Maggie threw herself into her own interests. While Bucky wrote or read, she built things. She designed programs and machines, though she rarely fabricated her designs, and she tinkered with her wings. She repaired things around their safehouse, and fixed their neighbor's car engine. She put more effort into her various therapies, trying out experiences that scared her and thinking through her traumatic memories. She avoided EMDR, because that required Bucky's participation.

If Bucky noticed any change in her behavior, he didn't say anything. He kept his head down and focused on his own therapies and hobbies. But there was a charged air in the safehouse now, as if they were both simultaneously relieved and frustrated at the distance between them. Whenever they brushed past one another, or their fingers touched when they cooked together in the kitchen, sparks crackled along Maggie's skin and she had to swallow past a lump in her throat. She'd realized that their casual teasing and joking had crossed some invisible line and become flirting, but she couldn't seem to stop herself.

She allowed herself to notice other people – walking down the other side of the street, at another table at the café, on the beach. She found herself noticing both men and women, feeling that now-familiar tingling sensation in her lower gut when she noticed the way someone walked, or wore their hair, or the shape of their face. It was new and exciting, but nothing was quite as powerful as the way she felt when she looked at Bucky.

One suggestion from the Internet had been to discuss the situation with friends and loved ones, to get perspective. Maggie didn't have many of those, but she realized that dealing with this problem exclusively in her own head was problematic. She recalled what Bucky had said about elderly people being wiser, so she took herself for a walk to the park and sat down beside the nearest old lady she spotted. The woman was soaking up the sun on a park bench.

When Maggie sat down beside her, the woman turned to face her and said: "Hello, dear. Lovely day, isn't it?"

Maggie, who had been too caught up in her own head to notice the day, took a moment to squint around at the sunny park. "… Yes. It is."

"Are you out for a walk?" the woman inquired, folding her hands in her lap. She had glasses with thin gold frames, and a cloud of white hair.

Maggie took a deep breath. Small talk – she could do this. "I am. And yourself?"

"Oh I don't do much walking these days, but coming down here is better than rattling around at home."

That sparked a polite, friendly conversation between Maggie and the old woman – Beatrice – in which they discussed the weather, the difficulties of finding fresh fruit, Beatrice's family, and something that had happened with a local politician recently. Maggie found herself slipping into the conversation quite easily – she was naturally curious, and the opportunity to learn more about normal people was fascinating.

Eventually, the conversation steered toward Maggie, and what she was doing with her life. "I'm travelling at the moment," she hedged. "I'm travelling with this man, who's my friend, but I need to stay friends with him and I'm having trouble with that. What advice do you have?"

Beatrice's eyes glinted. "I must say, it's been a while since anyone has come to me for relationship advice."

Maggie smiled. "That seems like a waste of valuable knowledge."

"Ah, well. Just so we're clear, you're having trouble with things getting a little too friendly, and not the other way around?"

"Yes, that's the problem."

"And you don't want to be with him?" Beatrice rubbed her papery hands together.

Maggie opened and closed her mouth, which made Beatrice laugh. "Oh dear," she chuckled. "Are you sure you can't be with him? Nothing worse than regrets, sweetheart, and I should know."

Maggie bit her lip. "It's not about what I want," she eventually said. "It's just… not a good idea. For a lot of reasons."

Beatrice tugged at one of her hoop earrings. "Your heart doesn't care much about reasons, I'm afraid."

"But hearts don't actually have anything to do with feelings," Maggie protested. "They're just a muscle. All of this… it's in my head."

Beatrice laughed again. "I see now, you're a thinker. My son's a thinker, but my daughter's more of a feeler. My daughter has to remember to think things through, and not to throw herself head-first into situations. My son, however, has learned that not everything in life makes sense. Sometimes he has to accept that there are things he can't change."

Maggie slumped. "So you're saying it's hopeless?"

"Not at all! But if you're sure that it's not a good idea for you to be with this man, if you're sure that you're not overthinking and rationalising your fears…" Beatrice leaned back, scrutinising Maggie. "Then go out, have fun. You're young."

Maggie thought about that for a while, but Beatrice didn't seem to mind the silence. After a few moments, she nodded, and they went back to discussing Beatrice's children.

After half an hour, Beatrice got to her feet with a groan. "I've got to get home to feed my birds, lovely, but I hope you work things out with that man of yours. I'm here every other day if you'd like to chat again."

Maggie knew that making such a connection was dangerous, but she was sure there was no harm in coming back to the park another couple of times. "Goodbye, Beatrice. Thank you, and I hope bingo goes well!"

When she got back to the safehouse that afternoon, Bucky looked up from his book. "Good walk?"

She shrugged off her backpack. "Good. I, uh…" she bit her lip.

Bucky's lips quirked. "What?"

"I think I'd like to go out tonight. To a… bar. Or something."

"Oh," he folded his newspaper. "Sure. Did you want me to come?"

"If you want," she smiled. "You don't have to, but I know you've done that sort of thing before, and… I'm worried I'd do something wrong." She'd been thinking it over the whole walk back – she supposed she might be able to assimilate by herself, but the idea of going out and enjoying herself, while Bucky stayed at home, seemed strange. And she didn't like the idea of keeping things from him. She could maintain her emotional distance from him and still have fun, she was sure of it.

"Ain't much to it," he grinned. "You don't mind me coming?"

She shook her head. She was going to be very clear with herself – they were going together as friends, as allies. Nothing more.

"Alright. What made you decide this?"

She didn't think that saying an old lady at the park called Beatrice told me to would go down well, so she shrugged. "It's something that people do."

"And now it's something that we're going to do," he said. "For the mission?"

Maggie couldn't help but smile at him. "For the mission," she agreed.

That night, Maggie and Bucky went to a local dive bar – they wanted to avoid the cameras in higher end establishments, and Bucky said that most of his experience came from rougher places. They ordered drinks, found seats at the bar, and settled in. Maggie was startled by how loud it was – the music, the conversation, the laughter. She sat and stared, sipping her drink and absorbing the atmosphere. Bucky, sensing that she needed to take a few minutes to adjust, struck up a conversation with their bartender.

Maggie decided she liked the bar. It was slightly overwhelming, but she liked that people came to gather in groups to have a good time. It reeked of stale beer and sweaty bodies, but no one else seemed to mind. She was also curious about the effects of alcohol in social settings – she'd seen evidence of intoxication in her targets before, but had only been looking for weaknesses. She wondered what made people want to get drunk, and what it felt like. She would never know, thanks to the serum.

Bucky ordered them a few rounds of different drinks, and laughed when Maggie made faces at certain kinds of alcohol.

"So is it like you remember?" she eventually asked, when the rising and falling conversations in the bar hit a new peak around 11.

Bucky threw back his whiskey and scanned the room, considering. "Not quite. The clothes are different, people act kinda different…" he cocked his head. "But it's still nice, y'know?"

Maggie swung her legs back and forth as she sat on the stool. "Yeah. More dancing back in your day though, right?"

Bucky rolled his eyes and looked at the dance floor in the corner of the bar, where three middle-aged-men hopped up and down to the pop song playing through the tinny speakers. "I don't think this is that kind of bar."

"We could try to find one?" As soon as the words left her mouth, Maggie nearly kicked herself. What was she doing? She was here to see the social scene, not to find ways to make things more complicated with Bucky.

He shrugged. "Alright. You finished your drink?"

Maggie looked at her half-full cider, sighed, and chugged the whole thing. "Yes," she said when she was done, wiping her mouth.

"Damn, Meg," Bucky laughed, shaking his head as he got off his stool. "You don't muck around."

She hopped off her stool and grimaced. "I don't know if I like cider."

"I don't think it's meant to be consumed quite so quickly," Bucky laughed again, holding the door of the bar open for her. It was significantly cooler now, and she wrapped her arms around herself.

"So I don't think they have dance halls anymore," Bucky said as they stepped out onto the street, and looked around, scratching his head. Men and women in party clothes strolled up and down the street, laughing and stumbling on the sidewalk. Maggie smiled at the sight of one man being half-dragged between his friends, singing loudly. She looked up and down the lines of buildings and spotted a sign with a neon dancing lady.

"How about that one?"

Bucky took one look at the building she'd pointed out and started laughing again.

"What?" she asked, frowning at him and at the building. "It says dancers!"

He tried to stifle his laughter, but didn't quite manage it. "I don't think that's the sort of place we're looking for, Meg."

"Why?"

"Uh, I don't think people go there to dance."

"Then why would they go there? And why does it say dancers?"

As they walked down the street, Bucky explained the concept of a gentleman's club.

"Well that doesn't sound too bad," Maggie eventually decided. "It's just a business. Did you ever go to any?"

She noted, with fascination, that Bucky was embarrassed. He ducked his head, hiding his face in his hair, and wouldn't meet her eye. "You did!" she crowed. "Why are you blushing?"

Bucky threw his hands up. "I don't know, I guess they're not usually seen as very uh, stand-up establishments. They were kinda seedy back in my day."

"You still went, though," she teased, laughing as his cheeks darkened.

"Only a couple of times!" he protested. "Once with Steve in New York, but we were only there for five minutes before he had an asthma attack and we had to leave."

"Oh my god," Maggie breathed, grinning from ear to ear. "And the second time?"

"In the war, with the Commandos. We stayed… longer, that time."

Maggie cackled. "I bet you did, Steve didn't have asthma then. Whose idea was it to go?"

Bucky cast his eyes skyward, as if hoping for rescue. "It was Dugan's!" He looked back down and spotted a building with blue lights around the door and a bouncer out the front. "C'mon, let's go in there, they've got music." He put his hand on her elbow and steered her across the street.

"You're changing the subject," Maggie laughed, but didn't push further. She'd never seen him so embarrassed before, and she thoroughly enjoyed his flustered expression.

She and Bucky presented their fabricated IDs at the door, and then stepped into a room that was significantly darker than the dive bar had been. The first thing Maggie noticed was the music – the bass was heavy, pounding through the air and rattling the windows, thudding in her chest. There was no conversation to be had here, the music overrode it all. There was a bar near the door, but the rest of the space was filled with a sea of people, jumping and spinning with the music, waving their hands and dancing with each other. On the other side of the room was a booth with two men wearing backwards-facing caps, nodding their heads along to the music and twisting controls on the desk before them.

Maggie's mouth fell open. She'd never been anywhere like this, save for a few half-remembered missions. The lights were colorful; blues, purples, reds and oranges blinking in and out, illuminating the crowd and then falling into darkness. Strobe lights beamed out from the DJ booth, flickering and arcing. It was disorienting, and impossibly loud, but Maggie didn't want to leave. The music was a physical presence here, pulsing with the lights and the movements of peoples' bodies, overriding speech and thought.

Maggie and Bucky stood side by side inside the club, staring at the moving bodies. Maggie watched as a man and a woman – strangers, surely – slid together in the crowd and wrapped their arms around one another, moving together with the beat.

Suddenly, Bucky's mouth was by her ear: "This definitely ain't like I remember." His breath prickled along her skin, and the low, magnetic fascination in his voice echoed her own swirling thoughts.

Maggie took a shuddering breath, shouted "I'm going to the bathroom!" and fled from Bucky's side, pushing through the press of people. She slammed through the door into the brightly-lit women's bathroom, and pressed her back against the wall.

"What am I doing," she groaned, squeezing her eyes shut. She'd just wanted to observe what people did at night, to have fun, like Beatrice told her to. So far all she'd done was make everything so much more complicated. She couldn't go out there and dance like that with Bucky, she knew that was too dangerous.

The music was muffled in the bathroom. Once she'd mentally kicked herself enough, she went to the sink and washed her hands, rolling her eyes at herself in the mirror. At that moment, the door banged open and emitted a small group of laughing, gossiping girls.

"… oh my god, Clara, the way you were dancing with that guy? Girl you can move." The speaker, a tall brunette with a bright pink top that read Brains, Beauty, Booty laughed breathlessly and then noticed Maggie at the sink. "Oh hi, hun, I love your shirt!"

Maggie blinked and looked down at her shirt, a bright floral tee. "… Thank you," she murmured, and smiled up at the girls. There were five of them, and she noticed that only one of them slid into a cubicle. The rest milled in front of the mirrors, touching up their makeup and moving their hips to the muffled music.

She'd had some practice with polite exchanges of compliments, so she made space for the girls at the sink and then said: "I like your makeup," to the tall brunette. "It's very skilfully done."

The brunette blushed, and the other girls laughed. "She'll be thinking about that for a week," said a shorter redhead. "You don't wear makeup?" she asked.

Maggie touched her bare face. "I… haven't ever really worn makeup. I know how, but I don't have any."

The fifth girl came out of the cubicle and washed her hands. "I've got lippy if you want some?"

The short redhead gasped and clapped her hands. "Yes, let us do your makeup!"

Maggie grinned, and looked around at the girls, with their flushed faces, bright clothes and bubbling laughter. They smelt like vodka and flowery perfume, and their smiles were genuine. "Yeah, alright."

Fifteen minutes later Maggie and the girls burst out of the bathroom in a bouncing group, laughing as the music washed over them full-force. Maggie's face was touched up with whatever they'd had in their handbags; eyeliner, red lipstick and some kind of spray that made her skin glowy. The girls headed straight for the dance floor but were cut off by Bucky, who pushed through the crowd toward Maggie with a furrowed brow.

"Are you alright?" he called over the music, eyeing the laughing, inebriated girls. "You were in there a while."

The tall brunette, Sarah, stared at him with wide eyes. Maggie didn't blame her, Bucky looked good even in his jeans and plain blue top. She nodded at him, showing him with her eyes that she was fine.

The girls were kind of gaping at him now, ogling his hair and his jaw and his broad shoulders, so she shouted "this is Bucky!" to them. There was a chorus of shouted "hi!"s and then they were all sweeping onto the dance floor. Maggie followed their lead, jumping up and down with the beat and twisting her arms. She supposed this was the best audience for her first attempt at dancing – drunk, occupied with their own dancing, and in the dark. She and Bucky had formed a kind of circle with the girls, moving with the music.

With her hair flying around her face and surrounded by the smell of spilled drinks and dancing strangers, Maggie made eye contact with Bucky. He looked just as uncertain and bemused as her, though he seemed to relax into the movement a little easier. He winked at her, and she swallowed.

Sarah seized her hands and pulled her into a spin, and Maggie closed her eyes against the strobe lights. She might not be able to get drunk, but she could do this. She could relax.

An hour later, Maggie danced by the edge of the crowd with Sarah as Bucky and the other girls went to the bar for a drink. She thought it was strange that the girls didn't appear to need to know anything about them to want to dance with them, but she supposed the alcohol had something to do with that. She'd seen other people in the crowd come and go, dancing a few songs with a complete stranger and then whirling away.

Bucky was always alert, monitoring the crowd and the exits just like Maggie, but he seemed to know how to do this – to ingratiate himself to strangers and move with the music. Maggie had tried very hard not to watch him dance, but she couldn't help herself sometimes. His movements were restrained, allowing the people around him to move, but he was graceful, sinuous. She wondered how much of that came from his training as the Soldier, and how much was natural talent. It didn't really matter, when all of it nearly drove her out of her mind.

Sarah sang along to the current song, rolling her shoulders and hips to the beat. Sarah's hand landed on Maggie's arm, and slid up to her shoulder.

Maggie bit her lip. She'd noticed that Sarah was attracted to her – she'd been trained to read body language by HYDRA and the Red Room, and she'd learned even more with her recent research. Sarah had gravitated toward her throughout the night, and her coy glances and reaching hands could not be mistaken.

Maggie thought about it, as Sarah's left hand came to rest on her waist. Sarah was objectively good-looking, with curly brown hair, a tall athlete's body, and laughing green eyes. Maggie was still getting used to listening to her body, but she was certain she was attracted to Sarah, in that instinctive way she was attracted to some strangers. The warm touch of her hands sent sparks shooting across her skin and into the pit of her stomach.

After taking a minute to consider her options, Maggie cocked her head and asked: "can I kiss you?"

Sarah's pupils dilated. "Hell yes."

Maggie only had a second to realize that she hadn't done any research on this, before it was happening. She supposed there was something to be said for natural instinct, because her eyes closed at the press of warm lips, and she tilted her head to avoid smashing her nose into Sarah's. The kiss was soft, and startlingly warm, and Maggie gasped when Sarah's tongue teased at the seam of her lips. She surged forwards, encouraging the touch, and her hand slid unconsciously to cup Sarah's cheek. The kiss tasted like vodka cranberries and skin. Sarah's hand was in her hair, and Maggie felt good.

After a few seconds she pulled away, because she didn't know how to breathe. She opened her eyes to Sarah's white grin.

They kept dancing, and Maggie considered the kiss. Objectively it seemed strange that people would want to put their mouths on each other, but subjectively, there had been a natural instinct inside her that had wanted to, had known the basics. Of course, she had no idea if that had been in any way a good kiss.

"Was that good?" she shouted into Sarah's ear, and the girl laughed.

"You bet your ass," Sarah called back. "You're so hot!"

Perhaps Sarah might not be the best of judges. But she'd seemed to know what she was doing.

Maggie continued to contemplate the kiss, and almost unconsciously her eyes flickered toward Bucky as he turned away from the bar with his hands full of glasses. Sensing her gaze he looked up, and his eyes glinted.

"Oh you've got it bad, don't you?" came Sarah's voice, and Maggie leaned back to look at her.

"What?"

Sarah tipped her head at Bucky as he and the other girls moved through the crowd. "It's alright, beautiful, I don't blame you!"

Maggie grimaced. "I'm working on it. Thank you for the kiss."

Sarah laughed, leaned forward to give her a peck on the lips – which Bucky saw, his eyebrows rising – and twirled away with a wink. "Anytime, beautiful!" she shouted, and liberated one of the drinks from Bucky's hands.

Bucky raised an eyebrow at Maggie, but she merely shrugged and took a drink of her own, slipping back into the rhythm of dancing with the group.