All in all, Bucky could never say whether was pleased or annoyed when the continental United States seemed to explode with super villainy.

Not that he wanted anyone hurt, or appreciated the property damage after a battle, but constantly being called to assemble kept Tony from retreating too far into his lab after Pepper moved out.

And, though Bucky felt like a yellow-belly coward, he was secretly relieved being out on battle made it so he didn't see Pepper often. Every time he set eyes on her, he felt the need to apologize, even though he knew it was Iron Man as much as anyone else who had gotten between her and Tony.

Not him.

Assembling on a regular basis also allowed Natasha to lead more in the field. She'd take out a smaller team consisting of herself, Clint, and Thor for backup when dealing with small-fry, and missions that required some subtly. She was a damn good second in command, and Bucky let it be known to SHIELD and anyone else who'd listen that she should take over if Bucky ever fell.

Natasha, on hearing this, raised a perfect eyebrow. "I'm not American. I can't be Captain America."

"Lady America," Bruce corrected, with a smile that was more a wince.

"Captain America," Clint corrected. "Still gender neutral."

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses," Tony quoted, flopping down on the couch in the living room. He saluted her with a iced tea that was probably more Long Island iced tea - back when there was a Long Island. Clearly, talking about Bucky's death made him uncomfortable, but Bucky had learned the hard way it was better than leaving it up in the air.

"And fighting with a shield is really not my style," Natasha continued.

Bucky shrugged. "So melt her down and make a vibranium widow's bite. I'll be dead - what do I care?" Though his heart did throb a little at the thought of destroying Steve's shield.

Maybe something showed on his face. Natasha sighed, muttered something in Russian, and then brushed a kiss on his cheek. He took that as a yes.

But the month from Hell dragged on. Some days, the team got only a few hours rest before Shield picked up a lead on something rotten going down, and then there would be a new call to assemble.

When at last all five of them chased a sea serpent back into the pacific ocean on a formally pristine Maui beach, they stood together on the beach, all staring after it, to weary to be satisfied.

Iron man was silent, listing against a sullen, rather than angry, Hulk. Thor held Mjölnir to his side in a loose grip, his shoulders slumped. Natasha and Clint were practically hanging off one another to stay awake.

At last, Tony broke the silence. He sounded weary, even through Iron Man's computerized voice. "I have a beach house on the Big Island."

"Of course you do," Clint muttered.

Iron Man's head turned his way. "You don't have to crash there, Barton."

Bucky didn't think he had the energy to make it to the next island over, but the sand right here looked mighty fine. And if he was feeling this low, he couldn't imagine how the normal's - Tony, Natasha and Clint, - were coping. So he made an executive decision.

"All of you, gimme your communicators."

They looked at him like he was crazy, and he motioned for them to hurry up with one gloved hand. "Even in the war, we got forty-eight hour leaves. I'm putting in the call to Fury. Unless the Earth is ready to blow up, I don't wanna even hear the word 'assemble' for the two days. So give 'em to me, Captain's orders."

He didn't miss how everyone tried - and failed - to mask relief as they handed over the comms. They might pay for this later, but Fury did have an entire headquarters full of super secret spies to take care of minor emergencies.

Bucky tucked the communicators in his pocket. "Iron Man, you got enough juice to give us a lift?"

There was a telling pause. Then, "More efficient if we all go together. JARVIS is calling a water taxi."

More efficient. Yeah, right. That was Tony speak for he was running low on power, and he hadn't bothered saying a word. Bucky would kill him later.

Until then, he found some shade under a nice palm tree and sat down, pulling the cowl off his head.

The other Avengers took his cue and pulled up a spot as well. All except for the Hulk, who simply lay on the beach where he'd stood, the waves lapping at his toes. He'd shrink down to Bruce-size in a few minutes.

Leaning back against the palm tree, Bucky took a breath to brace himself, touched his own communicator, and put in a call to Fury to advise him of their new status.

Tony's beach house was big and, as promised on the tin, on the beach. That was about all Bucky had time to notice before he staggered to the nearest bedroom, stripped to his boxers and undershirt, and fell face-first into a large bed.

A minute or maybe an hour later, the bed dipped and he heard Tony's exhausted voice say, "Only three bedrooms here, and you took the master suite."

"I'm Captain, I get the big bed," Bucky replied petulantly. He ought to offer to take the couch, but hell, it wasn't the first time he'd shared a bed with one of his men. Winters grew cold in northern Europe, and everyone said he and Steve were like sleeping next to a cook fire anyhow. Bucky turned over, his back to Tony. "No snoring."

And whatever Tony said was lost as he fell back into sleep.

Bucky woke about six hours later, feeling muzzy. The weight of someone else's arm was warm across his chest. Tony twitched in his sleep, which was what had woken him up. Bucky hoped it wasn't a nightmare, though from the way Tony took sharp, shuddered breaths, it sounded like it.

"Hey." Bucky prodded him in the shoulder. "Snap out of it."

Brows drawing briefly together, Tony rolled over to the other side of the bed. He was wearing only garishly red boxers, and several ugly bruises stood over his back. Price of fighting sea monsters - Bucky's had already faded to yellow, thanks to his healing factor - but he didn't like to see proof that the Iron Man armor had some gaps.

He spent a few moments more than what was probably decent taking in the lines of Tony's back, the divots right above his hipbones. The air conditioner was running full blast in the room, and Bucky already felt chilled where Tony's arm had been resting. Briefly, he thought about pulling Tony in again; he could blame it on being a little grabby in his sleep, but... No. Tony might read more into it, and it wasn't right to lead a man on like that.

Bucky had enough rest for a bit. He sat up and took in the room.

The Iron Man suit sat, assembled in the corner. An electric cord ran from the wall outlet to the heart of the suit.

If Tony was charging it that way, the armor must have been close to dead of power.

"I'm still going to kill you, later," Bucky promised.

And Tony, who was asleep, muttered into his pillow, "Hmm, no. Pancakes first."

Flashing a smile, Bucky rolled out of bed to see what he could scrounge up to wear. His uniform still had sand in it.

Luckily, Tony, in typical playboy fashion, had extra clothes in various sizes in the dresser drawer. It didn't take long to find track pants and a tank top. Then, closing the door behind him, Bucky padded into the living area in search of coffee.

Thor was the only other one recovered enough to be awake. He sat on the couch with a box of half-eaten pop-tarts by his side.

"Captain!" he greeted, the TV remote looking tiny in his large hand. "We have once again made the top headlines for vanquishing our foe."

Bucky grunted and flopped down beside him, running a hand through his hair. It stuck up everywhere. He needed a haircut. "Sure. It's not every day you get to chase a sea-monster back into the ocean."

But as the news story cycled around again, the focus wasn't on the sea-monster at all, but of an image an amateur photographer had taken in black and white: Bucky leaning back against the palm tree, cowl off, and in that unguarded moment, looking every one of his ninety-five years in exhaustion. Around him, the other Avengers were sprawled, weary beyond all telling. Bucky was the only one who remained upright, and that was because he'd just gotten off the phone from chewing the ear off of Fury - Bucky knew that - but in that second in time he looked like a sentinel.

It was a sign of how useless he'd been that he hadn't even noticed the photographer.

"Great," Bucky groaned, throwing his head back on the couch. "Give that man a Pulitzer for photography."

"Indeed, that is already been discussed," Thor mused, and Bucky side-eyed him. Sometimes he got the impression that Thor had a very subtle sense of humor.

Thor continued, just as upbeat, "The local villagers have already announced they will honor our victory with a great feast. They call it a luau! There will be a roasted pig, and I understand this is a high honor."

"Pretty sure it's a promotional thing. You know, 'The Avengers ate here, you should too'," Bucky said because the streets of Depression-era Brooklyn raised cynics (unless your name was Steve Rogers), and Bucky was no exception. But his stomach gave its own opinion. Fire roasted pig did sound pretty good right now. He could eat one half, Thor the other.

Shrugging, he leaned back again and put his feet up on Tony's fancy coffee table. "As long as Delaware ain't blowing up or something, maybe we should." It had been awhile since they kicked up their heels as a team, anyway.

And maybe he could find a pretty dame to spend some time with. A quick talker with dark eyes, just so he could get this - whatever it was - out of his head.

As it turned out, they had to take a rain check on the luau. Fury called twelve hours later with an emergency that they wouldn't - couldn't - ignore. Some bright bulb had taken over a nuclear power plant, and then made a mess of the situation.

Radiation was nothing to the Hulk, and Tony remote piloted a suit into the reactor core. All in all, it resolved quickly, though it took all of Bucky's charm to get the Hulk to stand still afterwards, and let himself be scrubbed down for decontamination.

But after that... after that, there was finally a bliss filled week where evil decided to take a break. So the Avengers did, too.

"Alright, kids." Bucky heaved one overflowing sports bag in each hand. "Gear up - gloves, helmets, the works."

Instantly, he was surrounded by a group of rowdy eight-to-ten year olds, all clamoring for "their" helmet or mitt. All the equipment was the same, but try telling them that.

Bucky waited until most of the squabbling had passed, then glanced over. The head coach was talking to an anxious parent, a boy by her side. Wrangling parents was a part of the reason Bucky volunteered as only an assistant coach on his off time (he just didn't get how people would flip their lid over a little bruise or a black eye nowadays, and that hadn't gone over well with a few parents) - well, that, and the whole "consistently being on call to save the world/city" problem. Being an Avenger made any other commitments secondary.

But today he wasn't Captain America. He was James Barnes, assistant coach to the single worst co-ed little league team in the LA Basin.

Snugging his traitor LA Dodgers cap on his head, he grabbed his own mitt, and told the kids to meet him in the field for catching drills.

They did, shrieking like a bunch of hooligans. They were mostly low-income, inner city cases who got referred over by local YMCA's. Most of the kids were more interested in throwing a ball at each other's heads rather than learning the value of teamwork, but Bucky figured at least they were letting off steam. Sports had kept him out of big trouble when he was young - it might do the same here.

One of the boys had held back. Turning, he pointed up at the stands. "Who's that?"

Bucky glanced over and rolled his eyes. Maybe his enhancements had done something for his vision, or maybe he could just recognize Tony anywhere (and he was firmly not thinking about that).

"Get out there and partner up," he said to the boy, then bent to fish a light wiffle ball out of one of the sports bags. Taking note of the speed and direction of the wind, he cocked his arm back and let the ball fly.

He'd been aiming for the top of Tony's head, but it bounced harmlessly off the surface of his tablet he'd been holding, instead. Tony startled, looked up, and casually threw Bucky the finger.

Grinning, Bucky jogged over. "There are children present, you ass. What are you doing out of your cave?"

"Bruce's running a simulation that's powerful enough to use most of Jarvis' processing power for the next ten hours," Tony said. He looked pale in the bright sunshine, though he'd cleaned himself up, shaved away his five o'clock shadow, and wore a T-shirt that was... a little tight.

Tony looked pointedly out to the field, where the kids had gotten a hold of some of the baseballs and were tossing them back and forth to (and sometimes at) each other.

"They're kids," Bucky drawled at his confused expression. He didn't ask again what Tony was doing here. He had a feeling he already knew. "They're kinda like adults, but smaller."

"Louder," Tony replied.

"That too. It's good when they're loud - it's when they get quiet, you have to worry."

"Sounds like a voice of experience."

Bucky snorted. "My parents were Irish-Catholic. I was the oldest outta four."

Tony, mercifully, didn't ask what happened to Bucky's sisters. They all got split up at the orphanage, but Bucky doubted a one of them had survived the HYDRA bombing of New York.

"C'mon," he said, forcefully turning his mind from that, too. He hooked his hand under Tony's arm and pulled him to his feet. "The coach is busy, so you get to help - You fancy types know how to play baseball, right?"

He half-expected Tony to say no, but the man shrugged, folded his tablet into quarters (apparently, the next gen StarkTablets did that) and stuck it in his back pocket. "Baseball, no. Lacrosse, yes."

"Whatever, rich boy. Just keep the kids from hitting each other with bats. It's not hard."

An hour later, Gerri, the head coach and full-time police officer, joined a bemused looking Bucky.

"If you told me two years ago Captain America and Iron Man were going to help me coach my little league team, I would have detained you for a 72 hour hold in a mental facility."

Bucky snorted. The kids were clustered around Tony, who was explaining something in wide sweeping gestures - what it was, Bucky had no idea. Trust Tony to overcomplicate a simple game like baseball.

"Why do I get the feeling he's undoing all our work?" Bucky groused.

But watching Tony there, standing in the sun, the lines of his body as he waved his arms in manic glee, something warm shivered through Bucky. A clench of feeling he used to get when meeting a pretty girl's eyes across the dance hall, or sometimes when Steve had beamed his thousand-watt smile at him. He'd always acted on the first, never on the second, but he knew what it was. Attraction.

Aw, shit. He'd always had a weakness for his best friends.

Bucky was long used to clamping down on such thoughts, but it didn't mean the knowledge wasn't now simmering in the back of his mind.

Worse was when Tony spotted Bucky and Gerri watching. He turned to walk up to them. His smile was quick and sharp, but it did the same warm things to his insides that Steve's smile always had.

Bucky was in so much trouble.

"I'm thinking pizza party?" Tony said, then looked at Gerri. "Oh hi, I'm Tony Stark. You might know me from saving the world with this guy a dozen times."

Gerri, bless her heart, was mostly unfazed. She held out her hand. "Glad to meet you, Mr. Stark."

"Call me Tony. And pizza party! What do you say? I know a place that does gluten free. They don't deliver, but that's what I pay people for."

"Most of these kids already get too much junk to eat at home," Bucky said.

"Wow, really, Captain Calories?" Tony lowered the edge of his sunglasses to glance at him. "I thought depression-era kids ate everything in front of them."

"Hey, at least when the bread was cut with plaster, it was only plaster. I've read the back of boxes nowadays, all the chemical dioxide crap that goes into everything."

"If you break down any component down to it's chemical-"

"At least get some peanuts," Bucky said. "This is baseball, it's traditional."

"Peanuts? With allergen rates skyrocketing these days, are you kidding? Never mind, you're not. Okay, pizza, we're doing this. I'm calling Happy."

Bucky cleared his throat, crossing his arms as Tony pulled out his phone and rattled off basically one of everything to his driver. Each boy and girl would probably take home a pizza. Bucky actually didn't mind one way or another, but squabbling with Tony has and always would be, fun.

Gerri was looking back and forth between them, one eyebrow raised. Chances were, she was just as blindsided as everyone was the first time under the full focus of Tony Stark, but Bucky couldn't shake the feeling she might see a little too deep.

"Done," Tony announced, sliding his phone back in his pocket. He caught Bucky's look and held up his hands. "Next time, I'll stop by a farmer's market on my way in. They can have all the oranges and raw honey they want. It'll be great."

"What's wrong with peanuts?" Bucky wanted to know.

Gerri just grinned as if she didn't want to get in the middle of this, and announced she was taking the group for a cool-down run around the bases.

Suddenly, there was an almighty BOOM in the distance. Bucky turned to see a yellow and orange fire ball bloom up over the distant trees and buildings. It was followed by a rat-tat-tat of semiautomatic gunfire.

Bucky caught Tony's eye. "Happy was my ride," Tony said, sensing his question. Did he bring the armor?

Bucky didn't have his shield, but he went nowhere without a concealed handgun and a knife. Minimum. He jerked his chin to the parking lot. "My bike's out back."

Tony nodded and broke into a sprint.

Turning, Bucky located Gerri, but she was already herding the kids to the dugout that was at least partially underground, and therefore safe. They couldn't do better than with a policewoman as their protector. It might be gang violence, might be aliens for all he knew nowadays, but she'd do right by them.

Gerri waved him on. "Go!"

Even with Tony's head start, Bucky still beat him to the parking lot. There was barely enough room for two to fit on the crotch-rocket. Bucky drove, and did not let himself think about how Tony pressed behind him, one arm wrapped securely around his waist.

Tony's communicator watch pinged, and he yelled something that Bucky couldn't catch, even with his enhanced hearing. It didn't matter. He turned the corner and raced down the next street where the smoking ruin of a limo lay, bullet holes littering the side panels.

People were starting to crowd around; Some were on their cell phones, some looked on, afraid, but none were carrying weapons. Or if they were, they concealed it well. Whoever had done this had fled.

The wail of sirens were getting louder as Bucky, several civvies, and Tony got a burned and unconscious Happy out of the wreckage.

Tony's limo. First Pepper had been targeted, now Happy.

Bucky scanned the gathering crowd, taking in every face. Then he looked to the limo, noting where the bomb had went off and where the majority of the bullet holes had been clustered - to the center of the vehicle, not the front.

He stepped closer to Tony, who was hovering over his friend, his hands shaking.

"Tony-" Bucky said in an undertone.

"I know," Tony snapped. He met his eyes and Bucky saw fear there, but also anger. Tony understood, faster than he had. He was in danger. "I'm not leaving him. Watch the crowd for me."

Bucky put a hand on his shoulder, but stood and did just that - one hand on Tony, the other touching the handgun in his pocket - until the first ambulance arrived.

The hospital entrance was soon a madhouse with media. Happy was put under medical sedation, and it didn't take long for the rest of the team to arrive, though there was nothing much they could do. Happy was expected to survive, but not without a lot of physical therapy on the way out. Tony sat by his side and insisted the TV in the hospital room be turned to Downton Abbey, for Happy's sake.

As soon as he could, Bucky pulled Natasha aside and into the hallway.

"You're thinking what I'm thinking 'bout this, right?"

There were very good reasons why Nat was his second in command. She nodded. "Someone expected Tony to be in that limo."

And he might have been, if Tony hadn't sent Happy for pizza. Bucky felt sick inside.

Natasha continued, "Stark made a lot of enemies while he was a weapons manufacturer. Even more when he stopped."

"I want an Avenger with him at all times, until we get this figured out." Until we put some heads on some stakes, he mentally added.

She raised an eyebrow at him. "Clint's already scouting parameter, through the vents."

Bucky's grin had a feral edge. "I don't care what Fury says about you, you're alright, Natasha."

"I could kill you, in six ways," she said coolly.

And didn't Bucky and his confused libido know it.

Speaking of libido's, he had to make himself go back to the room, sit, and not hover while Tony tapped on this tablet, scanning through news reports and whatever JARVIS could pick up from satellites.

Tony suddenly made a deep, throaty sound that made Bucky's head snap up and around to him like he was on a goddamn magnet.

"Find something you like?" Bucky asked, his throat feeling a little dry.

Bruce's head had come up as well, looking between them, but said nothing.

"Got the download from the limo sensors and cams," Tony said in satisfaction.

Clint, who had come in and switched with Thor for patrol, looked at him sharply. "You have cameras in your limousines, Stark? How paranoid are you?"

"Hello!" Tony waved at himself, then, depressingly, at Happy on the bed a few feet away. Clint winced.

Tony flipped the tablet around so all could see. The image he pulled up was grainy, so Bucky stood and peered for a closer look, but there was no point. Even with the mask and sunglasses, the blond hair and strange metallic glint around the man's left arm told him everything. "Hans Gruber," he said lowly. "That's the asshole that fired a grenade at us in the Las Vegas tower."

Tony placed two fingers of the left side of the picture and stretched it out, as they did nowadays. "What's this?" he asked, meaning the arm. "Some kind of fashion statement? GWAR's coming back in style?"

"It's a cybernetic metal arm," Natasha said.

Everyone turned toward her. She was staring at the picture, her lips pinched so hard they were white around the edges.

"Nat?" Clint asked, softly.

She didn't take her eyes off the picture. "I know who this is. I thought - I hoped it wouldn't be..." She shook her head.

Bucky had seen only brief flashes of fear from her, usually in the middle of a battle going wrong. Natasha was never rattled. Never like this. Clint nudged in close, not putting his arm around her, but silently offering support. Natasha leaned into him.

"Who is he?" Tony asked, his voice hard.

"They call him the Winter Soldier." She took a breath. "Most of intelligence agencies think's he's a ghost. No one is sure who he works for, or even if he actually exists. But I've seen him." Then she tugged down the hem of her jeans and panties to show some skin. Bucky, torn between looking away and looking closer, didn't get much of a choice when he spied the wicked bullet scar just over her otherwise perfect hip. "I got this when he shot through me to get to his target." She quirked her lips. "Bye-bye bikinis."

Clint brushed his lips against Natasha's temple. "War wounds are sexy, babe."

She twisted a smile at him, and now Bucky did glance away, wanting to give them some privacy. And yes, there was jealousy there, too. He hadn't had a pretty girl on his arm since - gosh, the little village the Commando's had stopped at right outside Paris. Even then, she hadn't been his girl. Just a little shelter from the night. A little company to get his mind off Steve.

He wondered if she ever told her grandchildren about the smooth American soldier who had made her giggle during war.

"What else can you tell us about him?" Tony asked, and there was an intense glint in his eyes that Bucky wasn't sure he liked.

"Only that he never misses."

"Well, he's oh-for-two this time," Bucky grumbled. Clint raised a fist, and they bumped. Sometimes he had a handle on this new millennium thing.

"That's a point," Bruce said, speaking up for the first time. He removed his glasses and rubbed a smudge with the edge of his shirt. "For a man who supposedly has a scary kill record, there's been a lot uh," he glanced guilty at Happy, "accidental collateral damage."

Tony visibly paled. "Collateral damage." Then his eyes flicked to the right, and to the left as he thought rapidly. "Yeah. Okay." He walked out.

"Um, what?" Clint asked, looking at the others in confusion.

"Go after him," Natasha snapped to Bucky.

She shouldn't have bothered. Bucky was halfway out the door.

For someone without enhancements or magical abilties, Tony could move fast when he was angry. Bucky caught up with him at the elevator, and just managed to slide in as the doors shut.

"Plan on going lone wolf again, Ace?" Bucky asked, lightly.

Tony didn't meet his eyes. His gaze was somewhere in the future, planning the only way a Stark could. His fingers twitched in the same way they always did before a fight. "Nope. I'm just opening our hailing frequencies, Captain."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Bucky asked.

But before Tony could reply. The elevator opened to the lobby floor, and the horde of media waiting outside for them burst into a frenzy. Tony turned to Bucky and winked. "Put on your game face."

Bucky forced himself into casual arrogance, the sway of a man looking to impress a dame on the dance floor. Dealing with the media was a sort of dance, anyway, and he'd always been good at it.

They walked out among flashing cameras and shouted questions.

"Mr. Stark!" One obnoxious reporter asked, shoving a camera phone in their faces. "Was this an attempted assassination on you personally, or an attack on the Avengers?"

"Captain America!" another yelled, "Can you comment on what the Avenger's response will be?"

Tony straightened and jutted out his chin. "You want a response? You got it."

Oh no, Bucky thought. Keeping the movement small so that it wouldn't be picked up by the cameras, he moved closer and rested his fingers on small of Tony's back in warning; Tony's muscles were tight and trembling with pent-up rage.

But Tony's expression was cool as he looked into the cameras and said. "This is a message to the coward known as the Winter Soldier: You've just made a fatal mistake, buddy. I'm an Avenger, and when you mess with one of us, you get all of us." He tilted his head slightly, considering. "But let's cut to the chase. You wanted a fight? You have it. Here's the address to our headquarters: Ten, eight eighty Malibu Point. Nine oh two six five. Come on by, on the off chance you're a man."

Then he turned and walked back the way he came. There was a stunned silence, even from the reporters, and it took everything Bucky had not to look as gob-smacked as he felt.

Well, there was nothing else for it.

"We'll leave the door unlocked," Bucky added, and threw a sarcastic salute to the cameras, the world, and hopefully the Winter Soldier.

Then he turned and followed Tony out.