Barnes wasn't quite sure about where Darcy was taking him, but she wasn't wearing leggings, a scarf, or a knitted hat – all of which were her wardrobe staples – which could only mean that he was not, in fact, being dragged by his friend Darcy, and was instead being dragged by Miss Lewis, PR Manager for The Avengers et al. Ltd.
He was just glad that she wasn't wearing a suit, like she had been when she'd been sorting out who would be making the action figures, plush toys, collectable vinyl (sometimes pose-able) statues, and costumes for retail. He'd liked that look on her, but she'd been stressed the whole time. That she was dressed nicely, but not like a Business Woman, meant that this shouldn't be stressful.
He did wonder why it was just him that she was dragging though, and where they were going.
As usual, Darcy displayed her superpower (she claimed it wasn't, but Bucky wasn't budging in his opinion on the matter) of being able to read his mind.
"Sam is bringing Steve and Scott, Clint is collecting Wanda from the facility, Nat is herding Vision and Thor, and Tony will bring Bruce. Everybody else had commitments they couldn't break or reschedule. Since we were all in different places this morning, we're meeting up there," she said.
That didn't tell him where 'there' was, but by now, he'd learned that if she didn't want to tell him straight up, then nothing would make her spoil the surprise. The one time she'd been kidnapped by a rogue cell, Darcy had been tortured, horrifically, for three hours before they got her out – and she'd been sassing her kidnappers and running her mouth about cat memes the whole time. Not a word on the team, or anything that the rogue cell had wanted to know. She had also sent three grown men to cry in a corner just from her verbal assault, and kicked another one in the balls.
He'd never admit it, but some days, Bucky was pretty sure that Darcy Lewis was his hero.
~oOo~
When they got out of the taxi, Sam, Steve, Clint, Natasha, Wanda, and Vision were all waiting there already. Bucky couldn't see Tony, Thor, Scott, or Bruce, but he could hear them, so that lot were there somewhere as well.
"Lewis, I bow at your feet," Sam said with a grin as he walked up to them. "You're about to make me a hero to my niece and nephew."
"You're not already?" Darcy countered with a very red smile.
"Oh, my being the Falcon is all well and good, but just having a toy line doesn't mean much unless I get them free for 'em. Meeting Cookie Monster though? Whole different thing," Sam asserted. "Oh yeah, and you've really made TicTac's day, getting permission from his baby-momma so his little girl could be up here for this."
"Thought you'd appreciate that," Darcy agreed. "How much did Barton crow when he was handed a script for a bit with Big Bird and Snuffy?" she asked slyly.
"Oh man, there are no words for how thrilled he was," Sam supplied, and the look on his own face spoke volumes. "I got pictures."
"Wait," Barnes spoke up. "Cookie Monster... Big Bird and Snuffy... We're going to be on Sesame Street?"
Darcy had made kids shows part of the team's post-mission wind-down. It helped them all get a dose of what was still good and bright and happy in the world, and also provided some cultural basics for those who weren't so familiar.
"Yup!" Darcy confirmed happily.
"Please tell me that Steve's going to do a bit with Super Grover," he begged with a grin.
"He is," Darcy confirmed. "He's also going to spend a bit of time in Hooper's Store with the talking food."
"Ha!" Bucky barked, tickled at the prospect.
~oOo~
Darcy watched with glowing contentment as Tony, with Hoots the Owl, did a really nice jazz number. Let it be known, the genius knew what he was doing when it came to playing piano. He seriously had to get more of his unsung skills known to the world. Layers. The man had multitudes. Also, Hoots was Tony's favourite Sesame Street character since he was a kid – not that his current musical tastes gave any hint to it – and Tony wasn't entirely sold on the owl's new look, but he rolled with it all the same.
Darcy had passed that along when talking to her counterpart for the show, as she had all of other muppet-meet preferences for the team, and Darcy was pretty sure that Tony and Hoots performing a jazzed up version of A New Way To Walk (in honour of SI's move into the medical field, with advanced prosthetics and machines to help paraplegics walk again) would be going viral pretty soon.
The other musical Avenger was Clint, and he played guitar and sang What's the Name of That Song? with Big Bird and Snuffy. Not out of nothing, there was a full 'bit' around the song, and Clint loved that he got to sit in Big Bird's nest for some of it. Darcy was taking pictures all day of the team, and had even brought a portable colour printer and a satchel of photo paper, so they'd all have something they could sign with the puppeteers, then frame and hang on their walls later.
Nat adored Rosita, and teaching the teal, Latina monster girl about different sorts of spiders (in Spanish and Russian, as well as English), and Wanda had a ball playing One of These Things with Ernie and Bert, as well as counting up to the Number of the Day with Count von Count and a whole lot of puppet numbers.
(He counted in English, she counted in Sokovian. It was adorable.)
Thor talked about different weather patterns with Baby Bear and a lot of the children who were Sesame Street regulars, and Vision did his best to explain to Murray what the word 'vision' meant, and why it was also his name. Sam had the singular privilege of baking cookies with Cookie Monster – and getting the blue monster to wait to eat the cookies, rather than launching himself straight at the tray when it was hot from the oven. Scott explained about Big and Small to Zoe, and they watched some ants build an anthill together.
Bruce had a moment with Oscar and a couple of the adult, human cast members. He explained that, for him, it really wasn't easy being green, as well as told them all how Oscar wasn't the only person he'd ever met that loved trash. He did his bit to raise awareness of people who were living surrounded by it, who lived off it, and who didn't have the luxury of new things. Even showed them how to turn trash into something new and useful – which upset Oscar a little bit, to everybody else's amusement.
As promised, Steve had a short skit with Super Grover, as well as spent some time in Hooper's Store to talk to the food there about the sorts of things he grew up eating, and 'learning' about a healthy, balanced diet.
And Bucky met Elmo.
~oOo~
"Hey everybody, it's Elmo! Oh oh oh, and Elmo is really excited today, because Elmo will be making a new friend! Yeah. He should be here any minute, oh, there he is! Mr Barnes! Mr Barnes!" the little red monster called, and waved eagerly. "Hello Mr Barnes!"
Bucky chuckled as he walked over to where his mark was, an X in black tape on the ground.
"Hello Elmo," he said. "How are you today? Oh, and please, call me James, or Bucky if you prefer."
"Elmo will call Mr Barnes 'James'. Oh, and Elmo is very well, thank you. How are you?" Elmo asked.
"Today, I'm feeling pretty good," Bucky answered. "But then, I get to meet you. That's pretty special for me."
"Really?" Elmo asked, and the puppeteer very cleverly made Elmo's eyes somehow get bigger and a little star-struck. "But, but James is a hero, one of the Avengers who protects everybody, and Elmo's just Elmo."
"And Elmo is a very wonderful person to be," Bucky said firmly. "Besides, I wasn't always a hero," he pointed out.
"You weren't?"
"Of course not! I was just a normal kid growing up," he said with a chuckle. "I had two arms and everything," he added.
"But, but James has two arms now!" Elmo exclaimed, confused.
"Well, yes," Bucky said, and then pulled off the glove and rolled up the sleeve on his left arm. "But this one isn't the arm I was born with. This one's a prosthetic."
"A pros-thet-ic?" Elmo sounded out.
"It's a fake arm, to replace the arm that I lost, so that I can still do things," Bucky explained.
"What kinds of things?" Elmo asked, interested.
"Well, it's really good for getting the lid off of pickle jars," Bucky said with a grin, "and I've used this arm to pull open a door that was jammed, so that people could get to safety. One of my favourite things to do with this arm is give hugs though."
"Elmo likes hugs!" Elmo exclaimed.
"Yeah? Well, would you like a James Barnes hug? Fake arm and all?" he suggested.
"Oh yes please, James," Elmo agreed, and furry little arms were wrapped around Bucky's middle.
Two big arms, one flesh, one metal, wrapped around the little puppet.
"This is a nice hug," Elmo said.
"It's a really nice hug," Bucky agreed. "I'd heard you gave good hugs. Nice to finally find out for myself. But do you know what else I heard? I also heard that you like to sing."
"Oh yeah!" Elmo agreed, and looked up at Bucky. "Elmo loves to sing! Would James like to sing a song with Elmo?"
"I'd love to," Bucky confirmed. "In fact, I'd like to sing Monster In The Mirror. Would that be alright with you?"
"Yeah!"
Watching Bucky and Elmo sing "Wubba Wubba Wubba Wubba Woo Woo Woo" was probably the cutest damn thing that Darcy had ever seen in her life. When Natasha and Bruce invaded the spot to join with "Do not wubba me or I will wubba you"? Well, that was gold, and Darcy definitely took a picture of them all being adorkable with Elmo – and quietly whispered to the director to not call 'cut' (he whispered back that it hadn't even crossed his mind).
Never mind Tony's jazz number with Hoots. This would go viral. Monster In The Mirror was up there in most top-ten lists of Sesame Street songs already. Add in three Avengers being adorkable as they sang it with Elmo? Yeah, that would be all over the internet.
Partially because there would definitely be people psychoanalysing it, taking it apart, pointing out that the Hulk was a monster, that the Black Widow and the Winter Soldier had very bloody pasts... but they were right there, on camera, owning that, and doing a dorky little dance as they sang the song with Elmo.
Darcy privately predicted that there would be a lot of random 'wubba'-ing going on in the Tower and at the facility in the days ahead.
~The End~