Whatever the right moment was, it was not five hours later in the dinner hall when Jane was fishing a ten out of her pocket to pay for her grilled chicken salad and soda with. Steve was just leaving, a large takeout bag swinging in his grip as he whistled a tune. Jane froze when she spotted him, right in the middle of collecting her change from the checkout girl.

As with Bucky before, she was immediately assaulted by the blue of his eyes set in that classically handsome face. His shoulders were so broad that they filled her vision, and fed into a narrow waist, giving him proportions most men could only dream of. His biceps strained against the sleeves of his shirt in the most hypnotic way. Hadn't Darcy said something about his arms? She sure wasn't wrong.

He said hello to a few people walking by, but seemed to be alone. They were in a room with at least a hundred other people, and yet somehow, he locked eyes with her.

"Dr. Foster?"

Jane raced through the crowd, almost dropping her dinner. She threw up the hood of her jacket, disappearing into the swarm, and leaving Steve to scratch his head and (hopefully) decide it hadn't really been her at all.

This time, both of them were together. In fact, the whole Avengers team barring Thor and Bruce were together. Steve led a discussion about some possible HYDRA cells found in the far East. With Bucky ever present at his side, they argued loudly over strategy: how and when to infiltrate, containment, how to handle any possible civilian interference. It was a lot of standard hero stuff that went way over Jane's head. She'd only been passing through on her way back to the lab, and as the meaning behind the team's meeting became clear, she picked up the pace. This was probably one of those 'Heroes only' things.

She was almost to the door—for once she appreciated her petite size and near silent footsteps—when something strange gave her pause. Her ears picked up a low feminine voice, and she chanced a look to see that Steve was no longer speaking. Agent Romanov had taken the floor. Whatever she was saying went in one ear and out the other, for that was when Jane noticed one other important fact.

Steve and Bucky were both staring at her.

Jane didn't want to look back. She wanted to turn her head and continue on to the sanctuary of her lab, where four walls and a big heavy door protected her from things she wished not to think about. She wanted to get as far away from those two as possible, before the heat rapidly building in the pit of her stomach caused her to lose her mind, jump into their arms and re-enact everything that had happened in her dreams last night.

And the way they looked at her, it was just so… Jane couldn't describe it. Their eyes followed her every step, wide and unblinking, as if in a trance. If Jane didn't know better, she'd think it was deliberate. That somehow, someway, without her ever needing to speak a word to their faces, they just… knew.

But they couldn't know. Not yet. Not for a long time. Maybe not ever…

As Jane's legs started to obey her again, she allowed herself a quick smile and a wave, and then she got the hell out of there. She didn't even wait to see if they returned them.

Two days later, Jane caught them in the middle of a date.

She had thought, rather foolishly in retrospect, that if she left the tower at its busiest time of day, she could avoid seeing them again. She took to taking long walks in Central Park, or shopping in Times Square. She even went out to the Statue of Liberty and climbed all the way up to the crown. She got home at quarter to ten with a souvenir T-shirt and some tiny figurines. She handed one of them to Darcy, who accepted the gift with a muted 'thank you' before quickly excusing herself.

She'd been acting strange for a while, Darcy. Almost a week had passed since that day in the lounge, and since then, she'd gone from following at Jane's to barely acknowledging her at dinner and shaking her head every time Jane jumped behind the nearest large object before Steve or Bucky passed. She had even stopped visiting the lab, not that Jane had been spending much time in there herself.

On this night, after a long day at the Planetarium, followed by a trip to Madame Tussaud's wax museum to kill another two hours, Jane stopped at the nearest restaurant to grab a quick dinner. It was a sports bar, reeking of beer and full of drunken hooligans shouting at the various games broadcasted on the rows of wide screen TVs. Jane had to cover her ears and yell her order at the waitress. It was not the kind of place she would ever expect a member of the Avengers team to frequent, much less two of them.

She had forgotten that Steve and Bucky were also two guys from Brooklyn.

They were two tables down and across from her, directly in her line of sight. Jane had her menu over her face as she contemplated picking up and running without bothering to wait for her order. Over the bombardment of cheers and beer tankards clinking, Jane had no hope of making out their hushed conversation. They were huddled together, candlelight bathing their handsome faces in a golden glow. They were so close, Jane thought it only a matter of time before their lips met. As soon as the thought entered her mind, she dropped the menu and didn't pick it up again.

Her food arrived, and she ate it slowly, every bite deliberate. She was hunched over her plate, using her long hair as a curtain to hide her face. She looked up once in a while, just to make sure they hadn't moved or seen her. They'd taken to watching one of the games, a baseball game. Their plates were gone and it looked like they were waiting on some desert before they left. Jane noted the much nicer clothes they had on. It didn't fit the location at all, but looked so good on them that Jane wanted to slam her head against the wall. As if one of them wasn't bad enough. Together, they were so hot it should be illegal.

"Ma'am? Did you hear me?"

Jane jumped and looked up. The waitress was standing over her table, frowning at her.

"Huh? I'm sorry, I was a little distracted," she said.

"I was just making sure that everything is okay," said the waitress.

"Oh yeah, I'm good. The food is all really good, thanks."

"And will you be having any dessert?"

"Dessert?" Jane cast one more glance at Steve and Bucky, now enjoying a huge bowl of chocolate ice cream. Then Bucky got some on the side of his lip, and Steve leaned over to remove it with his mouth. "I… think I'll just have some decaf please."

The waitress scribbled on her pad. "One decaf coffee, and I'll bring you the check as well."

As soon as she was gone, Jane cupped her hands over her eyes. If she positioned them just right, she couldn't see an inch of Bucky as he pulled Steve by the collar to give him a proper, and obnoxiously long, kiss. After that, she drank down her coffee as fast as she could and left cash payment on the table. She threw on her coat and kept her collar up as she all but ran by. They were so wrapped up in each other that they didn't see her go.

Unfortunately, that meant they also didn't see the greasy little man with the camera coming up just behind them.

He moved around Jane, no doubt expecting her to just keep walking like any other oblivious New Yorker would do. So when she didn't, he seemed to need a moment to process that she wasn't leaving.

"You know, it's rude to spy on people when they're trying to have a moment," she said. "Let alone take pictures of them without permission."

The little man looked at her through beady eyes behind thick glasses. He had his hand on the camera flash, about to disable it. Not that it would be enough to keep a pair of super soldiers from hearing the clicks of photos being taken. Really, Jane was helping this man. She was saving him from getting a metal fist in his face.

"If they wanted privacy, they shoulda stayed in that fancy tower," the man drawled before waving Jane off. "Now beat it, lady, I'm working here."

He started to pass her again, his camera at the ready. Soon, the beautiful moment Jane had borne witness to would be tarnished, all because of some nosy paparazzi. The idea ignited something in Jane that, long ago, only the theft of her life's work could've set off. It was therefore only a half formed thought in her head to stick her foot out long after she'd already done it. The man pitched forward, failing to break his fall by grabbing a tablecloth. He took a small family's dinner with him as he fell on his face. His camera had slid into the corner by the TVs. The cracked lens gave Jane a sense of deep satisfaction, as did crushing it under her shoe as she walked toward the exit with a spring in her step. She never even saw the two pairs of eyes watching her go.

Jane woke up one morning with an itch in her throat that she couldn't explain. She tried several times to cough out whatever was bothering her, but the itch persisted. It wasn't until Tony stopped her in the hall to say hello, and her only response was a faint and hollow squeak, that she understood the problem.

"Just a simple case of laryngitis," the doctor told her an hour later. "Drink plenty of fluids and don't try to speak, and you'll be right as rain in just a few days."

She told, or rather wrote, as much to the small gathering of her friends in the waiting area. Tony wished her a swift recovery; Bruce helpfully produced a pad of paper and a pen; Darcy sat back, tapping out a drumbeat on the coffee table and saying nothing. From then on, anyone jane had to talk to during the day first received a note carefully written in her messy shorthand explaining the situation. Lucky for her, she had her lab to hide out in while she recovered, where she wouldn't have to see or talk to anyone if she didn't want to.

Come to think about it, why hadn't she been doing that all along?

She typed away on her computer, writing new equations and answering emails from colleagues, passing countless hours in blissful solitude. She sent Erik a quick message upon receiving a voicemail, explaining why she couldn't call him back and where she was in her research, and then her stomach rumbled. Absently, she reached for the bowl of pretzels kept around for snacking during long work sessions. She felt around the bottom, finding nothing but ceramic and some loose piles of salt. Jane pulled the bowl into her lap with a sigh. Of all the days to forget to refill it.

Grabbing her jacket, water bottle, and notepad, Jane left her lab to automatically lock itself and went in search of a more balanced meal. She followed the familiar path from her lab to the elevators. Reaching for her ID, she hesitated. She waited for so long that when the doors did open, and a group of technicians walked out, Jane nearly drew blood biting her tongue to keep from screaming. As they filed out, the elevator area was deserted. Not a single soul to be found. Jane rode down ten floors feeling like the tiniest noise could make her jump all the back to the twenty-eighth.

Tony had recently put in a full service food court on the main floor, complete with two pizzerias, a Chinese restaurant, and Subway. A fresh tomato and bacon sandwich was starting to sound pretty good to Jane. To get there, one had to walk past the fitness center where all the training rooms were located. Jane liked to think it was a subtle way of discouraging people from immediately running to the McDonald's. There were a couple of people inside, running on the treadmills and lifting weights, but it was the two men trading punches in the main training room—the one that just happened to have a window taking up the entire south wall—who got her attention, and taught her two very important things.

The first was that, contrary to what she had spent her whole life believing, there was, in fact, a god.

The second was that God really hated her.

That was the only way Jane's once purely scientific mind could explain this. Why, after over a week of successfully avoiding them, she would find Steve and Bucky in the training room, shirtless, moving so fast they could hardly be seen. Sweat poured. Muscles flexed.

It just wasn't fair.

All thoughts of food flew right out the window. Steve delivered a punch that Bucky deftly caught in his metal hand. The gears whirred and spun. Jane heard them through the crack in the side door right next to her. He then kicked Steve's feet out from under him, sending both of them tumbling to the ground. They rolled around, hands all over the place, pulling at each other's hair and ripping fabric. It was clear that this fight was about to turn into something else entirely.

The notepad slipped from Jane's fingers. Two heads immediately shot up, and Jane stumbled back with a gasp. Even with all their enhancements, there was no way their hearing was so good that they could hear from behind a plated glass window.

Except… when Jane backed away, the window was exactly what her back hit against. When she looked to the side, that door was ajar, and she was not on the same side of it that she had been a moment ago.

'You've got to be kidding me,' she thought frantically. 'I literally walked in here to watch them without even knowing I was doing it?'

'Apparently so,' said another, unhelpful part of her brain.

"Hey there, Dr. Foster," Bucky said. He was on his feet before Steve and needed less time to straighten up and get his shirt back on. "Seems you can never give us a moment alone, can you?"

It would have been a far more humiliating repeat of their first shared encounter, but at least this time, there was no anger in Bucky's tone. He seemed more amused than anything, and as Steve righted himself, the combination of their friendly grins and sweaty states were enough to make Jane feel like she would explode.

"What's the matter?" Steve asked after a period of silence. "Cat got your tongue?"

The question brought Jane back to full awareness, and she scrambled to pick up her notepad and turn to the pre-written first page. She held it up for the two of them to read.

"Laryngitis, huh?" Bucky clicked his tongue. "That's a shame. Better hope you don't meet your soulmate."

'You don't know the half of it.'

"Well, since Buck and I are finished for the day, we were thinking about grabbing a bite to eat," said Steve, rubbing some loose droplets out of his hair. "After we've cleaned up, of course. If you're hungry, we'd love for you to join us."

He looked so damn sweet and earnest. Jane wondered how Bucky could resist just kissing him all the time until he lost his breath. She fumbled for the pen in her jacket pocket and started to write out a polite refusal, but her stomach was faster than her hand. It let out the long, loud whine that echoed the room. And this place appeared to have stereo sound.

"I guess that answers that," said Bucky. "We'll just be a few minutes if you want to wait right here."

Against all logic and the furious urging of her voice of reason, Jane waited. It was twenty minutes before they returned, freshly washed and dressed without a hair out of place. Jane couldn't be sure that they hadn't taken a quick shower together before returning, and now that she had that image in her head, Jane knew exactly what she'd be dreaming about tonight.

The three of them strolled into the food court as the two related to Jane stories of their youth in the twenties and thirties. Steve was all too happy to regale her with one particular tale in which Bucky attempted to impress their schoolyard friends by claiming he could throw twenty rocks in the blink of an eye, and then busting two windows upon being goaded into demonstrating.

"So out comes Mrs. Gorwin, the oldest, meanest teacher in the school," Steve said, tightening his grip around the reddening Bucky's shoulder, "and she was a lot faster than she looked, so before any of us know it, she's right on top of Bucky, beating him with her ruler."

"She wasn't that fast," Bucky grumbled.

'Maybe you were just slow,' Jane wrote.

"I think she's got it," said Steve.

The two of them laughed (or wheezed in Jane's case), as Bucky turned away from them, muttering about being ganged up on before taking a huge bite out of his burger.

"Quit belly-aching, you jerk," said Steve. "Don't you want to tell the lady some embarrassing stories about me now?"

Bucky smirked. "Don't push your luck, punk. Because the stories I've got? No one would look at Captain America the same way again. Remember the clam dip incident on the Fourth of July?"

"Never mind. Shut up."

"Oh, so you can dish it out, but you can't take it? You hearing this, Doctor?"

'I'm hearing it, all right.'

"Well, I can't wait until Dr. Foster has her voice back. Then we can hear all of her most embarrassing stories."

The two of them laughed, and Bucky gently nudged Jane in a playful way. All she could offer back was a weak half-smile.

An elderly cleaning lady walked up and down the rows of tables, collecting trays that had been left behind by careless patrons. She reached their table, about to take the drink cup sitting between Steve and Jane, when the former stopped her.

"Sorry, Ma'am, I'm still drinking that," he said.

The woman brought a hand to her face. "Oh dear! Please forgive me, young man, my eyes aren't quite what they used to be. I'm rather blind as a bat, I'll admit." She put the drink cup back where she found it, stopping for a moment to linger on Bucky. "That's an interesting glove you're wearing, dear."

Bucky clenched his metal fingers before pulling his sleeve over them and coughing an awkward thank you.

The woman started to back away, though her aging eyes never left them for a moment. A smile brightened her wrinkly skin.

"Did you need something else?" Steve asked.

"Oh no, I'm fine," the old woman said. "I'm so sorry for staring. It's just that you three look so lovely together. Has it been long since you found each other?"

Steve blinked, as did Jane, and finally Bucky. He glanced at the other two for a moment.

"Er… sorry, we don't really know what you mean."

"Well, of course you're a triad," said the woman, who must have been really blind because she didn't looked phased at all when Jane's jaw dropped onto the table. "You must be. You look just like me and my old men when we were young. Oh yes, Jack, Seymour, and me. What a trio we were. I could never have asked for two better men to spend my life with."

The woman went off to her next table, so lost in her memories that she must have forgotten she had been talking to someone. Neither Steve nor Bucky had time to correct her (at least as far as they knew). The strangest part—and the thing that made Jane extremely nervous and oddly hopeful—was that it didn't look like they had intended to do it at all.

'I'm on the twenty eighth floor,' Jane wrote. She then took back the pad and hastily scrawled a second message under it. 'Thanks again for buying lunch. I promise I'll pay you back.'

"Don't worry about it," said Steve. "Thanks to all the military back pay, we've both got more money than we could ever spend."

"Just think of it as our way of paying you back for what you did at the restaurant."

For the second time, Jane dropped her notebook. Getting to her knees, she scrambled to pick it up, but in her haste she lost her pencil, and had to fish a spare out of her pocket.

'The restaurant?'

"Yeah, you know, giving that reporter what for," said Bucky. "I would've beat the shit out of him myself, but since you got to him first, I think we owe you one."

"Let us know if some nosy bastard ever tries to bother you," said Steve. "We'll take care of it."

'My heroes.'

Bucky smirked. "Just doing our job."

The elevator dinged, but when the doors slid open, at least ten people were packed inside, and none of them looked happy at the prospect of another occupant, let alone three.

"It's okay, we'll take the next one," Steve said.

He waited for the doors to close and for the car to reach the next floor before pressing the button again. Jane watched the lights flash over the dozen or so elevator doors. It was to her dismay that the next closest one was nine floors up, and traveled at a pace so slow, it might as well have been moving backwards. The longer it took, the more time Jane spent with Bucky on one side of her and Steve on the other. She was caught between the two of them. If they wanted to reach out and touch, they would only find her in the way.

"But that was something with that woman," Bucky said, breaking the silence. "I'm not sure what she was getting at, but it was kind of funny, wasn't it?"

Jane's fingers clenched around the pen so tightly, it was a wonder the thing didn't snap yet.

"We actually do have a second set of soulmarks," Steve said, looking pensively off into the distance. "Not a lot of people know that."

Jane gave him what she hoped was a look of surprise, releasing a breath when he seemed to buy it.

"Most people are shocked when we tell them," said Bucky. "They all think we're this ideal couple because we met young and are still together."

'Ninety years is a long time,' Jane wrote.

Bucky shrugged. "I wish it really was that long, though I doubt I would have survived dealing with this guy all that time. Did you know he once jumped on a grenade before he got the serum? Damn idiot I got saddled with."

"Love you, too, jerk."

Bucky shot him a look, one that most would mistake for anger if they weren't close enough to see the heat and the love in his eyes.

With shaking hands, Jane wrote:

'You guys really do seem perfect.'

"Eh, we have problems just like everyone else," Bucky said.

"We sure do," Steve chuckled.

"But I guess I'm okay with a few more decades of watching his back. Even if we never find our third, this is good the way it is."

The look the two of them shared right then… it was something else. Not even her parents ever looked at each other like this. Not even that famous old soulmate couple who lived on her block—the ones who met at age five and died at age one hundred and five within an hour of each other—ever looked at each other like this.

This was something Jane thought she never should have seen; something intimate and private between two people who were truly made for each other. This was how soulmates were supposed to be, and here was Jane, just a random stranger with words on her hips. Jane, who had watched more than one lover walk away because they found someone they could love more than her.

Jane, who fate dictated to be with these two men who already had each other.

If she hadn't been there, they probably would've kissed. Jane wanted to excuse herself and go take the stairs again, but it was another overhead announcement that the two of them were needed that saved her.

"Once again, duty calls," Bucky sighed. He smiled once at Jane before Steve took his wrist and pulled him along.

"Get some rest for that throat, Doctor," Steve said.

Though the elevator arrived just moments later, Jane didn't get in. She watched them go until they disappeared from view, and she missed it. She was alone as she'd ever been, thinking about today and the day before that and every other day since this whole mess started. Over and over again, she replayed all their touches and their smiles and their words of love, all of which could only have ever been for each other.

And she wondered why they would ever need a third.

Why they would ever need her.