Why did I get to be on 'supper' duty? I don't cook any better than anybody else.

All right, yeah, I knew why. Because Barnes was here and Steve was going to stick like glue. Anyway, if Steve made dinner, I might have to be in the dining room with Barnes and yeah, no.

So, supper duty it was.

I knew what Steve liked to eat - lots of protein - I wondered if our guest-slash-IED liked the same thing. Looking at him, it didn't look like he'd gotten a lot of anything to eat anytime lately, so maybe he wouldn't be too particular. And I did not want to see him being particular.

Steve was digging through the first aid kit and Barnes was still giving him the 'please see me' look. Which - considering Steve's laser focus on him anyway - was strange.

"What are you looking for?" I asked.

"Scissors. I need scissors for the gauze. What kind of first aid kit doesn't have scissors?"

"The kind where everybody in the room is already carrying something sharp, maybe?" I offered. That made Steve scowl, but it didn't seem to make any impression on Barnes. "You know, you bandage him up now and you're just gonna have to bandage him again after he has a shower."

Steve shook his head and kept looking through the first aid kit. Barnes looked at me but I couldn't tell if he agreed with me or wanted to kill me. "Dinner'll be cooking that long," I tried again with Steve. "Better to have the bandages put on only once."

"We have waterproof tape."

Well, arguing with Steve wasn't going to get me anywhere, so I headed into the kitchen and started going through cupboards, wondering what was the best thing to make for dinner for a mythical assassin who could kill me with his pinky.

Steve followed me in and started pulling open drawers. Probably looking for scissors. Barnes kept his eyes fixed right on him.

"What's for supper, anyway?"

"Supper," I muttered. "You know, nobody's called it 'supper' in seventy years, right? It's called dinner these days."

Steve laughed. "All right then, what's for dinner?"

"Something that doesn't need to be eaten with a knife. How're you doing, anyway?" I asked and Steve looked like I'd asked the world's weirdest question.

"Me? I'm fine."

He found scissors and turned back to the dining room before I could ask him to prove that. Barnes looked down just as soon as Steve turned. Like he wanted to stare some message into Steve, but only when Steve wasn't looking.

I kept looking through the cupboards for something to make that couldn't be used as an excuse for disemboweling me and finally decided to make my Mom's beef & macaroni recipe. The stove was set right where I could keep an eye on what was happening in the dining room while I got started on that.

Not much was happening.

Steve was bandaging Barnes' right hand. Maybe bandaging his real hand would make it harder for him to kill us. Maybe, but I doubted it. But that's all that was going on. Steve's head was down, paying attention to his task and Barnes was staring at him. When Steve looked up, Barnes looked away. When Barnes looked back, Steve looked down.

I didn't get it. I had no love for Barnes but Steve did and he was acting like it was every single day that his best friend came back from the dead. Again. If it was Riley sitting in that chair -

Riley.

God, Riley.

Even thinking that Riley might suddenly appear next to me hit me so hard I had to go to the other side of the kitchen so Steve wouldn't see me trying to not break down.

There wasn't a day I didn't think about Riley. There was hardly a night I didn't dream of him falling to his death.

If he reappeared in my life, even after seventy years, even if he'd forgotten me and tried to kill me, if Riley somehow some way came back into my life, there wasn't anything I wouldn't do to find him, help him, protect him. Take care of him. And God help anybody who got in my way.

I wouldn't treat him like an unexploded land mine.

The water was boiling on the stove so I got back to making dinner, mac and cheese and beef with a bag of frozen corn thrown in just because Barnes didn't look like he'd eaten anywhere near enough any time recently.

I was just dishing my masterpiece up into a bowl when Steve came into the kitchen. He looked at me a second and asked, "You okay?" and I tried not to lie when I answered,

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine.

He didn't look like he believed me but he didn't push it.

"Is supper ready? Thanks for making that, by the way. I'm going to get some clothes for Buck. I'll be right back."

And he disappeared into the back of the house and I was left in the middle of the house with Barnes still at the dining room table staring at his metal hand like he'd either never seen it before or was trying to think of ways to weaponize it. You know, more than it already was.

Was he an IED waiting to explode?

Maybe he was just a guy with the worst PTSD in history.

If he was any other soldier, I'd be doing my best to help him.

If he was Riley…

I stuck a spoon into a bowl, grabbed some napkins, and carried it all into the dining room. Barnes watched me with no expression.

"Here," I told him, holding the bowl out to him. He didn't take it and he didn't take his eyes off of me.

Maybe he was planning my extinction.

Maybe he was exhausted.

"It's - uh - supper. You look like you could use it."

That got him to look from me to the bowl and back at me, but he still didn't take it.

Maybe he wasn't used to people taking care of him.

"I'll leave it here for you," I said. I set the bowl and napkins on the table next to him and turned back to the kitchen. "Whenever you want it."

Back at the stove, I gave a look to Barnes. He had the bowl in his left hand and he was taking a spoonful of food into his mouth. He chewed it at first like he was checking for booby traps and then - then his face changed, slow, from a drawn, pinched, 'he's trying to poison me' expression to a relaxed and open and surprised 'he's not trying to poison me' expression.

I guess he wasn't used to people being nice to him.

He actually looked over at me - I don't think he was expecting me to be looking at him - but he looked over at me and for a second or longer, I could see Riley there, bent and bruised but holding his own, and when Barnes met my eyes, I smiled.

If I smiled at him or if I smiled at Riley, I don't know. But I smiled and Barnes ducked his head fast like he was caught off guard and kept eating like somebody might come along and take it from him.

In another few minutes, Steve came back with an armful of clothes.

"All right, Buck. You ready to have a shower? Bathroom's back this way. Here, I'll take that."

He brought Barnes' empty bowl to the kitchen and put it in the sink. Barnes brought himself into the kitchen and I'd never realized just how small that kitchen was until he was standing right in front of me, with wild hair and hard eyes, in full battle armor and weaponized arm.

Standing that close, even his whiskers seemed lethal.

I gave a fast look to Steve who looked concerned which did nothing for my sense of personal safety.

"Hey, man," I tried with Barnes.

"It was good," he said. "Supper. It was good."

Totally not what I was expecting.

"Oh. Good. Thanks," I answered, trying hard to not show how relieved I was not to be getting disemboweled. "Plenty more whenever you want it."

He nodded once and followed Steve who threw a grin at me before he headed down the hall to the bathroom with Barnes following.

Somewhere, I thought Riley was probably grinning at me too.

##