James Bucky Barnes, the former soldier, doesn't think he's got any gentleness left in him. But Grace Juniper Cunningham, the former child prodigy, strongly disagrees.
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"𝘐 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘐 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘣𝘳𝘰𝘬𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘣𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘯."
"𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘴�...
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It wasn't until Natasha, Bucky, and Steve returned that I finally came to terms with the fact that I was being ghosted by a man old enough to be my great grandfather.
On Saturday morning, after they'd cleaned themselves up, Nat and Steve entered the sitting area where Wanda and I were talking. I couldn't help but watch the entryway out of the corner of my eye as the others chatted. I was hoping he'd come in behind them.
And he did. When Bucky came in a few minutes later, I felt my heart pounding. He had a cold, almost irritated expression on his face, but it didn't deter me—I'd seen him with that expression last weekend, and he'd softened around me. I got up and went over to him without thinking, like he was magnetic.
"Hey," I said, smiling before I even reached him.
He looked past me. "I can't. I'm sorry," he muttered. He sidestepped me and went straight over to Steve.
I sat back down with Nat and Wanda. I started a conversation with them about Wanda's current TV interests, speaking way too brightly to overcompensate for how embarrassed and hurt I felt. If I had been alone, I probably would've been crying. They both frowned, but responded to cover for me.
I kept trying to catch Bucky's eye, at least to shoot him a questioning look, but he wouldn't even glance at me. He stayed far enough away that I couldn't ask to talk to him alone without yelling across the room. Not that I would've tried to talk to him anyway, when he apparently wasn't interested in me. I had (some) dignity left.
As soon as he'd finished whatever conversation he'd needed to have with Steve, he stalked out of the room without a word to anyone else.
I decided to focus my energy elsewhere.
In the two years I'd been away from the Avengers, Steve had called me once a month to chat for ten minutes or so, always during the week that my rent was due. He never mentioned my rent, but I knew the calls were reminders to pay it. I also used his calls to track my periods, which usually came soon after, but he didn't need to know that.
The reason for this habit wasn't that Steve and I were exceptionally close—I didn't think I'd ever even spent time with him outside of work—but rather that Steve himself was exceptionally dependable, and he was wary of losing people.
It had started before I quit, when I mentioned offhandedly to him that I'd nearly been evicted because I kept forgetting to pay my rent. Steve had sighed, asked me what day it was due each month, and wrote it down in his little notebook. The next month, at the end of a meeting, it had been an order: "Grace, don't help Clint with facial recognition until you've paid your rent."
The team had laughed, and it became a running joke, but he continued ordering me to pay it each month up until HYDRA got to me. When I was missing, I was pretty sure Steve was the one to make sure my rent got paid and that I had an apartment to return to.
