49 [Chicago, Illinois]
Bucky tried not to leave Natalia's side very often. To be honest, none of them did, and they all buzzed around her to heed her every beck and call; three helpless and ultimately useless men. And as much as Bucky wanted to talk to Natalia about what she'd said about marrying him earlier, he thought now wouldn't be a good time.
It hurt to watch her heal. He looked at her, with the pain meds and the broken nose and the giant cut on her forehead and thought, four days. Four days for me, maybe five. A week at the worst and here she is, suffering, and there's nothing I can do.
He looked down at his hands, his bare right wrist, and swallowed and put them away. If he did anything and she found out, she'd suffer even worse than she already did and he didn't want to see her tears. Still, the urge was there, a false assuage to his particular cocktail of guilt and self-hatred.
He looked beside him to look at Steve, and he scooted desperately closer to him and luckily Steve scooted closer as Bucky did, on instinct, on intuition, Bucky didn't know, but his presence was an unspeakable comfort.
Clint came back in with a bag of fast food for lunch. He pulled out the tray connected to Natalia's bed and scooted himself up to her, nudging her gently to get her to open her eyes as he took out her meal and placed it in front of her, then shared a corner of her tray with her for himself. He leaned over and handed the bag to Bucky and Bucky handed it to Steve, feeling his appetite gone.
"How're you feeling?" Clint asked Natalia as she started to pick at her food. He took a bite of his burger. "How's your wrist?"
At the same time, Steve leaned over to Bucky and said quietly, sternly, "you should eat, Buck."
Natalia held up her wrist and Bucky stared forward at her. "Still hurts," she said.
"You can eat it. Clint probably didn't get you enough," Bucky replied under his breath. "I'm not hungry and you eat enough for two fellas, anyway."
"Belova got you pretty good there," Clint commented, and Bucky watched him take her hand gently. "But I bet you'll be fine before you even know it."
"She's a trouper," Bucky added louder and Clint smiled a little.
"Nat, tell your boyfriend to eat," Steve said and Bucky frowned.
"Eat, James," Natalia said and Bucky sat back uncomfortably as Steve put a hamburger into his hands.
"No promises," he grumbled, but luckily, Steve and Natalia let that one go.
A minute later, Steve spoke again.
"We gotta figure out what we're doing next," he said. "If we have a plan." Bucky looked down at his burger. He'd only nibbled at it a little when Steve nudged at him. He wished Steve had just taken it. It was hard to eat when he kept looking at his wrist.
"You got any suggestions?" he asked.
"I'm thinking about it," Steve said with a shrug. "Fighting Black Widows isn't really my terrain."
"She's not a Black Widow," Natalia replied like a knee-jerk reaction, like Bucky had predicted she would. "There aren't Black Widows plural. There's just one and it's not her." She looked down again and slowly dipped a few fries into ketchup.
"Yeah, that's what I meant," Steve backpedaled. "Sorry." Natalia shrugged.
"It's fine," she said. "We just have to do something about her. That's the important thing."
"I miss being at home," Bucky commented quietly and Natalia looked over at him sadly.
"Yeah," she said. "I do, too."
And this was especially strange for Natasha, because even in her apartment with James, she'd never necessarily considered herself as a person with a home. It was a roof over her head on a street in a country and the only thing that made it even remotely special was James in her bed and Steve across the road, but suddenly, she'd missed the constancy. The solid stability. As a decently nomadic person and one who was cautious with letting her heart long for things, she was surprised to find that she missed staying in one place. Waking up every day in the same bed in the same room next to the same, wonderful man. Having a routine, something normal, something comforting. She didn't like moving, she was starting to realize. She didn't like moving. She'd just never had much of a chance to figure that out until now.
Meanwhile, Bucky was also missing home and rubbing the skin of his right arm hatefully with his thumb.
