Bruce woke up shortly after five in the morning. Still in his sweatpants and a loose t-shirt, he went out into the hall on a quest for coffee. He stopped halfway down the hall, his path blocked by a limp body on the floor. He sighed; it was Captain America, sprawled gracelessly on the carpet like a frat boy, snoring softly, shoulder propped against the door behind him. Bruce noticed the doorknob had been turned around so it locked from outside. He decided he was better off not knowing, stepped over Steve's legs, and continued down the hall. In the common room, he found Tony and Clint reclined haphazardly on sofas, surrounded by laptops, pizza boxes, and empty hard lemonade bottles. Vaguely wondering when Cap and Hawkeye had gotten there, he shook his head and went up a floor to the kitchen to make coffee. He wasn't the only one who was going to need it.
Bruce was still in the kitchen two hours later, reading a science journal and munching sweet potato chips when Clint dragged himself in. Before Bruce could say a word, Clint waved a hand in a fairly universal "shut up" gesture then continued in sign language: Don't talk. Can't hear. Hung over. Coffee?
Having only understood about half of Clint's signing, Bruce pointed at the coffee pot. After most of a mug of coffee, Clint pulled himself up onto a stool at the island across from Bruce and reached over to steal a chip. Bruce pushed the bowl toward him and haltingly signed: Hi. I know ASL not very much sorry.
Clint groaned and lay his head down. "At least you know some."
They sat together munching quietly for a while before Steve wandered in, rubbing at a crick in his neck that Bruce was completely unsurprised he had. Bruce set his tablet down. "Did the three of you go on a bender last night?"
"Huh?" Steve blinked at him. "Oh, no. Or, he and Tony might have. I don't know." He poured himself the rest of the coffee and took a sip. "I was trying not to get strangled. Why does this thing have so many buttons?"
Bruce got up to help Steve with the top of the line, Swiss-made coffee maker. "What do you mean you were trying not to get strangled?"
"Coffee, then explanations."
"Alcohol doesn't affect you, right?" Bruce crossed one arm over his chest. "Then why would caffeine?"
"Because I think it does."
Clint ate another chip, not even trying to catch any of the conversation going on behind him. Bruce leaned against the fridge. "Fine. But who was trying to strangle you?"
Steve rubbed at his neck more. "Uh, the Winter Soldier."
Bruce's eyebrows shot up. "He was here?"
"He is here; I brought him here."
"Why would you bring him here?"
"Where else would I bring him?" Steve drank more of his coffee and shrugged. "S.H.I.E.L.D.'s non-operational, he doesn't belong in any kind of ordinary prison. Is this Avengers' Tower or not? 'Cause that's what the sign says."
"You have a point." Bruce opened the fridge, pulled out a glass dish of lasagna, which he stuck in the oven to heat, and a bowl of tabbouleh, which he started eating with a spoon. "You get lasagna for breakfast. Why was he trying to strangle you? Other than the obvious explanation of 'he's a killer,' that is."
"What part of 'he's my friend' is so hard for people to understand?"
"The part where he tried to killed you, and Natasha, and Fury, and—who's the guy with the wings?—Sam, and a whole bunch of other people."
"Yeah, well, you broke Harlem. And a helicarrier."
Bruce pointed at him with his spoon. "You've crashed three at once. Also that sort of wasn't my fault."
"Not Bucky's fault either."
Bruce opened his mouth, shut it, then shrugged and ate another bite of tabbouleh. "Point taken. Where'd you find him?"
"An E.R. in North Carolina."
"Barton help you bring him in?"
"Actually, he walked in, in the middle of Stark berating me for bringing Bucky here."
"Why can't he hear? I feel weird talking like he's not in the room but..." He looked at Clint slumped on the counter with his face in the crook of his elbow. "Was he in an explosion?"
"No, apparently he's been hard of hearing since he was ten."
"Really?"
Steve shrugged. "That's what he said last night. Apparently he had S.H.I.E.L.D. issue hearing aids that went dead along with all his other gadgets when S.H.I.E.L.D. fell apart."
"Hm. On the subject of gadgets, how much do you know about your buddy's arm?"
"It hurts when around your throat but it doesn't beat Tony's Hulk-proofed doorjambs. And it prevented the E.R. from giving him an MRI. Other than that, I don't know anything."
"It's just, you know I have a side interest in biomechanics and the like, which includes orthotics and prosthetics." He scraped some dregs of tabbouleh together, spoon clinking against the bowl. "Actually got an email from Wounded Warrior Project a while back even though that's not my usual field. No one has anything like what he's got, just based on what little I already know. I'm particularly curious about the neuro-interface—"
"Doctor," Steve looked at Bruce over his coffee, "I don't know anything."
Tony appeared in the doorway, his hair sticking up at odd angles. "Tell me there's coffee."
Bruce reached behind Steve for the carafe, poured a mug, and held it out to Tony. "And there will be lasagna in about five minutes."
"Mm." Tony sipped his coffee appreciatively. "You are a much better housewife than Pepper, you know that?"
"She's a CEO, that doesn't generally coincide well with housespouse."
"Neither does multi-disciplinary physicist." Tony put a hand on Clint's shoulder, causing him to look up. "You alive, Angry Bird?"
"Alive, headache-y, light sensitive, glad to have the world on mute for once, but alive."
"Great."
Clint returned to his elbow.
Tony shrugged and looked at the other two men. "And now we know why he's always Nat's designated driver."
Bruce set aside his now-empty bowl. "I dunno, there are a lot of empty bottles downstairs."
Tony shrugged again, sipped his coffee, and looked at Steve. "How'd you know where the kitchen was."
"I didn't." It was Steve's turn to shrug. "I followed the smell of coffee."
After the three of them who weren't vegetarian had had lasagna, Steve made a peanut butter and honey sandwich, took it downstairs, and carefully let himself into Bucky's room. Bucky was flat on his back in bed with his left hand held toward the ceiling, watching his fingers flex. What had been a nice glass and metal desk the night before was now a pile of ragged shards and twisted aluminum. Bucky lowered his hand and sat up. Steve held out the sandwich on its paper plate. It was the least weaponizable meal he could think of. Bucky took it and ate voraciously then let the plate fall to the floor. Steve sat in the as of yet still intact desk chair. "Can I ask you some questions?"
Bucky nodded.
"What's your name?"
He opened his mouth, shut it, then frowned. "I don't know."
"What year is it?"
"Nineteen..." he shook his head, "seventy-six?"
"Where are we?"
"I have no idea."
"Who do you work for?"
Bucky shrugged. "I don't know. I—do I even have a job? I don't—I can't remember anything." He paused. "I don't know who I am. I don't know." He looked up at Steve, on the verge of hyperventilating. "Do you know?"
"Yeah, I know."
"Who am I?"
Steve took a breath. "Your name is James Buchanan Barnes, and you're my best friend."
"I don't know who you are."
"I know." He hesitated then continued. "You're suffering from brain damage of some sort, it's messing with your memory. I honestly don't know if you're going to remember this conversation five minutes from now but," he leaned forward and took Bucky's right hand in both his own, "I promise I'm going to find a way to help you. Okay?"
"Okay." Bucky nodded then glanced at the remains of the desk. "Did I do that?"
"Yeah..." Steve stood up, grabbed the trashcan from the corner, and carefully started clearing up the broken glass and metal. The last thing he needed was to provide the Winter Soldier with improvised weapons whenever Bucky started fragmenting again. "You want more to eat?"
Bucky nodded.
"How much more?"
"A lot more."
#
In his workshop, Tony tinkered with a wireframe blueprint while watching security feeds of Steve making a stack of sandwiches, Clint asleep on a couch, and Barnes staring off into space. Bruce was in the room with him, so he didn't feel the need to creep on him like he was doing the others. The door to the workshop opened, Maria Hill strode in and went to lean with faux nonchalance on Tony's workbench. "So I get here, and Jarvis tells me that you could use my expertise up here. Given the many potentially questionable things I have expertise in and the many even more questionable things you tend to get yourself into, I'm a little bit worried."
"Hm, I hadn't even asked him to get you. Good thinking, Jarv."
"You're welcome, sir."
"Anyway," Tony collapsed the wireframe he was working on, "your various expertise could prove valuable on a couple of little issues we've got. Number one is a very cranky, hungover, deaf Barton—"
"Barton's hard of hearing, not deaf; yes, the difference matters—hang on, is he here?"
Tony pointed at Clint's unconscious form on the video feed. "Showed up last night. Other issue is that Mr. Rogers also showed up last night and he brought a new neighbor with him."
Maria crossed her arms. "Would you care to clarify that?"
"Captain America has the Winter Soldier locked in one of my guest rooms." Tony pointed at a different feed.
"Well, that's...not what I was expecting."
"Yeah, me neither, and believe you me I'm not a fan of having the bastard who shot Fury in my tower but, as Capsicle is quick to point out, there's not really anywhere else to stick him. You have a psych degree of some kind, right? Mind trying to at least partially defuse the ticking time bomb Rogers is currently making sandwiches for?"
Maria took a step toward the screen, watching as Barnes suddenly grabbed an alarm clock and threw it viciously against the wall. "If that's even possible."
