Now I need to know is this real love
Or is it just madness keeping us afloat?
And when I look back at all the crazy fights we had
It's like some kind of madness was taking control
And now I have finally seen the light
And I have finally realized
What you need
Muse, "Madness"

oOoOoOo
May 16, 2012
Farmer's Market, Malibu CA

For the first time in his life, both of Steve's soulmarks are quiet, happy pulses in his chest, and the feeling is indescribable. He can't remember the last time he was ever in this good a mood, practically bouncing between the stalls and tables stacked high with produce and homemade goods. It's nice to be able to be in a crowd without anyone noticing he's here.

It's more difficult to pull himself away from the market than he anticipated. His fingers long for a sketch book and a quiet corner, long to capture on paper the family of five buying fruit, the couple arguing over lettuce, the dreamy-eyed reader with her hand propped on her chin and her eyes focused on her book, the clearly-bonded triad who can't stop touching each other's hands and arms and shoulders having lunch three tables down. It's been a long, long time since he's felt this content. If he ever did.

He's also never seen so many soulmarks in his life. Even serving in the War, with all the casual nudity that came with it, he never did more than catch a glimpse of the Howling Commando's marks. It's a different time and a different age, and the morality of soulbonds has evolved, and he knows that. But in his day, soulmarks were a private thing, to be shared only with one's bondpartners. Baring his chest for Project Rebirth, with one blended soulmark and one unblended, had been the hardest part of the whole process. Seeing so many symbols, blended and unblended, on display, is a little uncomfortable and vaguely pornographic.

Maybe it's time to go , he thinks after he catches himself staring at a woman who reminds him of Toni, draped over a man who, from the back, if he squints, resembles Bucky.

He manages to extract himself from the market, making his way back to the parking lot where Hogan, the driver JARVIS was kind enough to hire for him, waits with the windows down and the top rolled back.

Hogan peers at him over the top of his sunglasses as he approaches the car. "All done, Captain Rogers?"

Steve smiles and opens the passenger-side door, puts the bag of produce in the back and settles into the seat. "I am," he says, a little proud that he remembered to use the seatbelt without prompting this time. "Thank you for waiting for me."

Hogan waves him off and turns the engine over. "All part of the job, sir," he says. "Where to now? Back to the mansion?"

Steve takes a last, wistful look at the market, promising himself another time. "I have one more stop to make first," he says, digging in his pocket for the piece of paper he wrote the address on, then holds it out to Hogan. "Do you know where this is?"

Hogan takes the paper and squints at the printing, lifting his sunglasses to do so. Steve flushes a little, because his mother and the nuns at the orphanage had despaired, and rightly so, of curing his chicken scratch penmanship. "Oh! Yeah, I know where that is, Captain." He hands the slip back and puts the car in reverse, backing out of his parking spot. "Toni's loves their stuff. Mr. Barton used to commission pieces all the—" Hogan's mouth snaps shut so fast, Steve hears his teeth click. "Shit, sorry, Captain. I didn't mean to say that."

Steve still isn't sure how he feels about all that, about Toni's...proclivities and her ongoing relationships, he's still stuck on processing their completed soulbond after all, but he's pleased to discover that the abrupt, unexpected reminder doesn't upset him in the slightest. "It's fine, Mr. Hogan," he says. "Clint is a friend."

The relief on Hogan's face is obvious, and his shoulders relax. "Good. Still, client confidentiality is something Stark Solutions employees are supposed to keep in mind."

Steve tilts his head, frowning. He thought Hogan was from the car service Toni said she used when she didn't feel like driving or flying places. "You're an employee?"

For some reason, Hogan looks amused as he spares Steve a quick glance. "Yessir. I head up security at Stark Solutions now, but I started in the transportation department as a driver. Toni didn't mention?"

"She didn't, no. I thought JARVIS hired her car service. I hope I'm not taking you away from your real job."

"Nah," Hogan says easily. "I've got good people who can keep things going while I'm away. Driving Toni's just an extra thing I do when she's in town. You know, keep my eye on the boss in person." He glances at Steve again with a grin. "And the boss's friends, too. Makes her feel safer."

Steve frowns at that. He knows Toni's had some close calls, but the way Hogan says it makes it seem like there's more than just the handful of incidents he's heard of. "That usually a concern, keeping her safe?"

"Captain," Hogan says, in the tired tone of a man twice his age, "you have no idea."

By the time Hogan parks the car in the lot in front of Lady Lexa's Fine Jewelry, Steve has a very good idea of exactly the kind of concerns Hogan has in keeping Toni safe and secure. Precious little of it has to do with the fact that she regularly seals herself inside a tin can and goes flying off at Mach speeds.

He's more than a little shaken as he gets out of the car and walks to the door of the shop, because Hogan's stories are hair-raising tales of broad daylight kidnapping and bombs exploding and multiple assassination attempts. Part of him wants to rush back to the mansion, check with his own two eyes that Toni's still there, and then wrap her in cotton and tuck her somewhere safe.

There's a little voice in the back of his head, though, reminding him that not only did he sign up for an experimental medical procedure, he also jumped out of planes often without a parachute, stole German tanks to run blockades, palled around with some of the craziest no-fear soldiers the US Army had to offer, and charged gungho into Axis-held territory without a second thought, so maybe he doesn't have much room to talk.

oOoOoOo
Stark Mansion

The mansion is quiet when Steve walks back through the door, bag under his arm. He pauses for a moment, but can't even feel the vibrations through the floor that the soundproofing in Toni's workshop doesn't quite contain. He nods to himself, smiling in satisfaction. Toni must still be out putting her new armor through its paces.

Good. That gives him time.

He makes it into the kitchen before JARVIS greets him. "Welcome back, Captain Rogers. Did you acquire everything you need?"

"I did, thank you JARVIS." He sets the bag on the counter and starts hauling produce out to wash. He glances out of the window over the sink as he does, squinting at the far-distant horizon. "Is Toni still flying?"

"She is," JARVIS replies. "Ma'am has been airborne for approximately forty-five minutes, and does not seem inclined to return soon. Still, I advise haste, Captain. Ma'am will no doubt find something to tweak or tinker with before long."

"Noted, JARVIS. Keep me posted."

"Understood, Captain."

Steve keeps an eye on the window as he does all the prep work, dropping the vegetables into the pot he left simmering on the stove earlier. He's only ever done this once before, when he bonded with Bucky, but his mother made sure the recipe was ingrained in his head. She'd already been sick by then, determined to pass on a tradition she said went back generations, so when he met his soulmates, he could treat them accordingly.

Toni's kitchen looks nothing like the simple kitchen of his mother's house, but somehow it's easy to imagine his mother's voice guiding him through the steps of the stew and the batter, the dough and the mead. Whether you marry or you bond, Steven, whispers the ghost of Sarah Rogers, remember you come from a long, proud history of Irish traditions. Bread and salt to bless the union, stew and mead to promise fulfillment, and wedding cake to start your lives together sweetly.

The nice thing about a modern kitchen, he figures, is that he's not waiting for one thing to finish before he makes another. The bond meal he'd made for Bucky had taken him the better part of a day on their rusty old wood stove. Toni's meal will take only a couple of hours.

He's washing the dishes by hand when JARVIS chimes softly. "Captain, you should be informed that ma'am has decided to return to the mansion."

Dammit, he's not ready yet. Steve sighs and pulls the plug on the sink of soapy water, drying his hands. Not a big deal. This is why he made contingency plans. "Thanks, JARVIS. Are you able to keep an eye on the kitchen for me? And ask Toni to come to the courtyard before she comes in through the … hangar? Is that the right word?"

"That is within my parameters, Captain. I am happy to assist."

oOoOoOo
Toni

Toni is one hundred and ten percent in love with her armor.

She's been flying for awhile now, nothing but sky above her and sea below her, the best kind of wide-open space to put the suit through its paces. Once the California coastline is at her back, she opens up, full-throttle and spends the next hour doing loops and barrel rolls, tight corkscrews and hairpin turns, bursts of acceleration and sharp, abrupt braking, doing her level best to make the system redline, stall, cough and die.

The suit doesn't even sputter. It responds to every muscle movement, every microgesture, as though it's reading her thoughts. "J," she says, breathless after pulling out of a steep dive in time for her right gauntlet to skim the surface of the water, "Take dictation. Dear Steve and James: I regret to inform you that the armor and I ran away to Bora Bora, for I am madly in love with it. It's not me, it's you. Love, Toni."

"Dictation noted, ma'am," JARVIS says placidly, "and filed directly in the trash bin."

Toni laughs and lazily rolls into a climb, hitting the cloud ceiling at a dizzying speed. "Not letting me break up with my soulmates, huh?"

"Discounting the anomalous events of your first meetings with them, ma'am, their presence in your life has been beneficial in nature. Without a compelling reason, I'm afraid it goes against my secondary protocols to permit you to run away to Bora Bora with the Iron Maiden armor."

"Spoilsport," she says with a grin. Consulting the HUD shows her position as nearly two hundred miles from the shore. While it might be time to turn back, now that she's in international waters, it's also time to blow shit up. "Give me some drones, J. I need to test the repulsors and the targeting system, so the trip back's as good a time as any." She pauses, checks the time in the corner of the HUD. "Steve back yet?"

"Captain Rogers returned to the mansion approximately thirty minutes ago. Drones are launching from the Aerie now, ma'am. Intercept time is estimated to be two minutes."

"Let him know I'm on my way back, would you, J? There's a good kid." Just because she can, she engages in more aerial acrobatics on her way back to land, reveling in the intuitive response of the armor. "The drones will be in range in thirty seconds."

"Good." Almost before she can do more than think about it, the suit starts shifting around her, the subtle alignment corrections that allow for offensive, tactical maneuvering and weapons use. "You sure I can't run away with the armor? God, she's handling like a dream."

"You may not, ma'am," JARVIS says, and Toni grins at the reproachful tone. "Drones on approach."

"Alright," she says, feeling more than hearing the whine of repulsors powering up. "Let's see what this baby's packing. Don't go easy on me, kid."

JARVIS's silence is a tad offended.

A drone drops out of the sky above her, spitting bullets in her direction. She rolls right in a tight spin, blurting an involuntary "Whoa!" at the suddenness of the attack. Training rounds or not, they'll still bruise if they hit her. "Oh ho," she chortles, eyes narrowing as the HUD matrices lock onto the drone and three of its buddies still in cloud cover. "So you're going to be like that, are you kid? Fine. We'll play rough."

It's always more difficult to engage in tactics in wide-open sky. Toni far prefers landscapes she can hide and maneuver around, use rocks and buildings, trees and water features, blind spots and straightaways to her advantage. Unfortunately, the city of Los Angeles (and New York, for that matter) frown on unnecessary dogfighting in the heart of downtown, so she makes do with what she has.

The four drones fall into formation and begin an attack pattern, strafing her flight path in front and behind her position. She brakes hard, feeling g-force press on her body, but pleased to note it's not nearly as strong as it should be. The armor drops like a stone, falling a hundred feet before she turns her boot jets back on and arrows back out over the water at a steep angle of ascent.

"Alright, junior," she says, eyeing the tracking data on the edges of the HUD. They're right behind her, slightly below. "Let's see how you handle this." She decelerates abruptly, diving for a few hundred feet. As she sails past the formation, she rolls onto her back, bringing her arms up, palms out.

The repulsor blast is gentler than she remembers it ever being on her muscles, but stabs out and tagging a drone on the rear aileron. The drone's blip on the HUD blinks as smoke erupts from its tail and falls out of formation.

"Drone 4 disabled," JARVIS announces. "I am returning it to the Aerie."

Before she can fall much farther, Toni flips down again and accelerates to nearly Mach 1, looping wide to head for the shoreline again. "While I appreciate your cost-saving, J, I built them to blow them up."

"Very good, ma'am. Plotting intercept course."

"What?! No! That's not what I meant!" Eyes wide, Toni throws herself right as the drone screams through the space she just occupied. Her followup repulsor shot is almost perfunctory, and the drone explodes in a satisfying shower of shrapnel. "JARVIS," she says, low and dangerous, "I'm going to install you on a Speak 'n' Spell."

"Of course you are, ma'am," JARVIS replies placidly. "But prior to that, you may wish to be aware of your six o'clock."

Toni lets a stream of epithets fly as two of the remaining drones strafe her, rounds pinging off the legs and back of her armor. She spins left, wild and wide, dropping like a stone as she rights herself vertical and fires on the rightmost drone. The repulsors score a direct hit on its undercarriage. Its mechanics whine, high-pitched and distressed, before crashing into its undamaged partner.

Toni smirks as she regains her altitude, watching the two drones plummet into the ocean. "How 'bout that, kiddo? I killed two with one blow."

JARVIS's reply is dry and amused. "A stunning achievement, madam. But if I may say, you are still short by five if you wish to match the Brave Little Tailor."

"Killjoy," she laughs, scanning for the last drone and lazily banking through the clouds.

She finds the drone a few minutes later, and begins to get the sneaking suspicion that JARVIS is toying with her, since he keeps ducking the drone in and out of the clouds. After a prolonged, frustrating hunt, she drops on top of the drone and shoots it at point-blank range. "Alright, kiddo," she says, letting the drone fall and readjusting the contours of her armor for top speed. "Jesus, I must be halfway to Japan out here. Time to go home, I think. Let Steve know I'm on my way back, please."

"Of course, ma'am. Captain Rogers requests that you meet him in the courtyard prior to entering the flight bay."

Toni frowns and opens the throttle, diving to skim along the rippling surface of the ocean. "Okay. Is there something wrong?"

"No, ma'am. Were I to wager a guess, I would say he intends to surprise you."

A hundred yards in front of her and to the left, a pod of whales breach the surface, and Toni angles onto her side to watch them until she passes them. "With what?"

"That would ruin the surprise, ma'am."

When the cliffs south of her home come into view, Toni changes her flight path to parallel them, chewing on her bottom lip and doing her best to quell the urge to snoop on what Steve's been up to while she was out. JARVIS would have told her if it was anything bad, but not knowing things has never been her strong suit.

She distracts herself by flying as close as she dares to the cliff face, figuring the intense concentration required to keep the tips of her knees and chest from banging into the sheer rock wall will be enough to prevent her from overriding JARVIS's privacy protocols and demanding answers.

It's still a near thing. By the time she sees the broad beach with the dock, the curiosity is killing her. Adjusting her path away from the cliff, she soars up, until the mansion rises in front of her. She cuts around it, arcing wide to the courtyard in the front, and light winks at her, a brilliant flare that draws her attention.

Her breath catches in her throat when she sees the source. Steve is standing in the middle of the courtyard, in full Captain America regalia. The uniform is form-fitting and sleek, with broad chevrons flowing into the white star centered on the muted blue chest. His cowl is back, the wind ruffling through his hair as he tilts his head up, shading his eyes, to watch her approach. The rim of the shield on his back winks again as he shifts his weight.

She cuts her boot jets a dozen feet up and lands in her usual crouch, letting the helmet flow back from her face as she straightens. In the armor, she's the same height as he is, and there's something surreal and more than a little amazing to be looking him straight in the eye. She swallows hard, smiling faintly. "Captain," she says, grave and respectful.

Steve smiles back, lowering his hand from his eyes, and there's something soft in his expression. "Ms. Stark," he replies, just as grave and respectful. He reaches out and runs his bare fingertips over the additions she made to the paint design. "These are new," he says, tracing the lines of the white star on her left pectoral plate and then the red star on her right.

Suddenly bashful, she ducks her head, feels her cheeks reddening, is absolutely horrified that she's reduced to being awkward and shy. "You know me," she says lightly. "Never been able to not advertise." She raises a hand, letting the glove portion flow into the wristplates, baring her hands, and smooths her palm over the chevrons. "You look good in it. Like I should feel bad about debasing a national icon with my widely-reported debauch lifestyle."

Steve's grin is bright and sudden, and he slides his hand up over her shoulderplate to hook around the back of her neck. "You're far too late for that," he says. "I was on a USO tour, after all. I caught more than one eyeful of someone else's fun along the way."

Her eyes slide half-closed and her head tilts forward, all of their own volitions, when his thumb starts rubbing circles behind her ear. "You've completely ruined the illusion for me here, Steve," she says, voice more a purr than human words.

"Sorry," he says, but doesn't sound at all apologetic. And there's nothing but fond amusement coming across their bond either.

"You're okay with the armor then?" she mumbles, head lolling down. "I wasn't sure you would be after tearing apart so many of them."

Steve tenses for just a second, but it's there and gone in a flash. Toni smiles to herself; they're both getting better at coping and adjusting. "You redesigned the whole thing," he says, resuming his efforts to make her melt into a puddle inside the armor. "It's different, the contours, the material. I can tell. Plus," and she can hear the wry grin in his tone, "it helps that it's painted with my mark."

"Mmmph." With effort, she raises her head so she can look him in the eye. "What're we doing out here, Steve?" she says, husky and deep, and a thrill shoots through her at the way his eyes darken. "There's a perfectly good bed inside."

Steve steps back with a funny, endearing smile Toni can't decipher, and his hand drops away from her neck. He reaches over his shoulder to pull the cowl on, adjusting it with deft tugs. "I thought I'd ask you to take me flying."

She blinks and straightens, because that is a recurring dream of hers, and it has been since she first got her pilot's license all those years ago. "You want to go flying," she says, just to be sure she heard him right. "Instead of taking me inside and having your way with me."

"Not everything is about sex, Toni," Steve says primly, even though the hint of a grin betrays his amusement.

"Then buddy, you got stuck with the wrong soulmates," Toni replies, with a snort. "Cos Bucky's just as insatiable as I am. God help you when we're all together again, is all I'm saying."

"I imagine I'll be very tired in the morning," Steve says, unflappable. "But it'll be worth it."

She stares at him, an eyebrow arched. "Flying."

He beams. "Flying."

She sighs and pulls the helmet back over her head, mimicking Steve's gesture with the cowl of his uniform. "Fine," she grumbles without any actual disgruntlement. "But if I drop you, don't blame me. I don't usually fly tandem."

Steve moves to her side, slings an arm around her shoulders and steps onto her boots. Her arm automatically moves around his waist. "You won't," he says, with perfect confidence that does weird, fluttery things to her stomach and throat. And then she feels the faint vibration of the static locks on the palm of his glove and the soles of his boots charge and connect, holding him more securely than Fort Knox against her. "Mostly," he adds, "because you already thought of it."

She's grateful the faceplate is down, because she's positive the heat in her cheeks mean her face is on fire."Do you know how often Clint falls off a building? Or how many times Tash tries to stick to the walls even though she's not really a spider? Everyone has static locks on their uniforms, just in case I need to grab them quick."

"Makes sense," Steve agrees, and he's back to smiling that weird, fond smile, and their blended mark pulses warm and happy.

Belatedly realizing he can probably feel her embarrassment through the bond, she snaps her jaw shut and shuffles her feet. Her hand settles on Steve's hip, and she charges the static lock on that gauntlet. Just in case. In the next second, they're airborne, rocketing into the sky, and Steve's whoop of sheer delight rings in her ears like silver bells.

oOoOoOo
Somewhere In Southern California

Bucky doesn't think he's fidgeted so much in his life. The three hours in the quinjet have been the longest three hours he's ever spent. Full of nervous energy and unable to sit still, he's lost track of the number of times he's lapped the hold with restless pacing. His skin is itchy, humming, and while it's not painful, it's helping to tip him into edginess.

"How much longer until we get to the mansion, J?" he asks for what has to be the thousandth time now.

JARVIS never seems to mind answering, though; his tone never shifts from its usual pleasant register. "Seven minutes, thirty seconds, sir. I am now within range to connect with the JRV-Malibu servers, and am downloading pertinent updates."

Bucky has no idea what importance that has, and right now doesn't actually care. He resumes his pacing, making tight circles, and tries not to worry about the fact that his bonds have gone quiet again. They've been spiking and ebbing for hours now, since long before he was aware of it this morning. In hindsight, he should have seen it from the moment he opened his eyes. All's been silent for at least thirty minutes now.

"I'm picking up an open comm channel," JARVIS says suddenly, and now there's a different note in his voice, slightly upbeat pleasantry replaced with cool efficiency. "Sir, it appears to be a frequency used by the Avengers, specifically, the multichannel ma'am uses while flying."

God, he'd welcome a distraction from the gnawing worry and anticipation building. "Let's hear it, J," he says.

"-op squirming, Steve!" Toni's voice comes, loud and clear and with that exasperated plaintive note she usually reserves for Clint stealing her apples. "I'm not a fucking jungle gym!"

"The view is better from up here," Steve replies, his voice innocent in the way that always means he's being devious and knows he'll get away with it. "The way the armor curves at the small of your back is almost like a-"

"If the next word out of your mouth is 'saddle', Rogers," Toni says, low and dangerous , "I will dump your ass in the Pacific and leave you to swim back."

Bucky's grinning like an idiot, and a wave of aching need clenches a fist around his heart, strong and sudden. He sits in the pilot's chair, closes his eyes, and tilts his head back to listen to their voices. Already the itch in his skin is receding, soothing away, fading to nothing, his restlessness calming with the voices of his soulmates in his ears.

"Did you feel that?" Toni's quieter now, all good-natured squabbling gone.

"Yeah. Bucky." A beat. "He should be here. I miss him."

"Me too. We'll call when we get back. See if we can get him out here. We shouldn't have left him behind."

"We needed the time. It wouldn't have been fair to him. Can you honestly tell me you wouldn't have hidden behind him instead of deal with me if he were here? I know I would have."

"You're not always right, you know," Toni grumbles, and Bucky's smile grows painfully wide, eyes burn with a sudden prick of tears, and he laughs outright when Toni squawks indignantly. "Steven, I am not a surfboard. Don't you dare stand up! The static locks aren't going to hold against that much dr- STEVE!"

He feels a sudden flare of sheer panic from Toni and a sudden flare of exhilaration from Steve. The comms crackle under the onslaught of Steve's cheering laughter and Toni's stream of desperate, inventive epithets. He opens his eyes, peers through the windshield, scanning for two dots in the sky, sees them off to the left, plummeting from the clouds.

"J," he murmurs, and his heart picks up the pace, hammering a couple of frantic beats in his chest. Because even though he has perfect faith Toni will catch him, Steve still can't fly.

"I anticipated your request, sir," JARVIS says, "and have altered our flight path to intercept."

-
Toni

The armor shifts, flattens, angles, streamlines as Toni makes a desperate dive for Steve's falling form. The idiot is laughing his goddamn head off, arms and legs spread to provide drag against the wind. She isn't sure, though, if that's to give her extra seconds to catch up, or because he wants to make the dive last longer.

The HUD screams data at her, calculating trajectory, likely landing zones, intercept points, wind speed. She ignores it all, practically willing herself to go faster. The distance between them closes rapidly, and she stretches out a hand, brain crunching the shifting physics of how close this is really going to be. The ground's getting awfully close. She's not going to get him in time to get back into the sky. The best she can hope to do is snag him, slow their fall as much as she can, and then take the brunt of the rest herself. The armor should hold. She hopes.

Steve rolls over, with a lazy smile, and reaches up her. She slaps her gauntlet against his glove, and the static locks adhere to each other. "I knew you'd catch me," he says, and she pulls him flush against her, locking her arms around his waist, kicking her feet down and burning her jets for everything she has.

"Hold on," she says through gritted teeth, and squeezes her eyes closed. "If I survive this, remind me to kill you," she mutters, and braces for impact.

When it comes, it's gentler, more metallic and darker than she expected it to be. It still jars her, rattles her teeth in her skull, and she bounces twice before coming to rest against something hard and unyielding, Steve sprawled atop her.

She triggers the helmet to fold back, and lies there breathing for a second, trying to get her heart rate back into a semblance of normal, staring at the ceiling overhead. That breaks through the haze of amusement, panic and excitement hammering through the soulmarks. Wait. Ceiling? What ?

"In my defense," Steve says, pushing himself off her chestplate and pulling his cowl away from his head. "I wasn't trying to skydive without a chute. I was trying to get back onto your boot, and-" His eyes shift to over her shoulder, widen, and his mouth snaps shut abruptly.

She forgets the mystery of having a ceiling above her in a heartbeat, and is on her feet without quite planning on moving, reaching out to haul him with a gauntleted hand fisted in the material of his armor back towards her. "Goddammit, Steve," she says, and leans her forehead against his cheek. "Don't do that to me. I can't lose you this soon after finding you." She swallows hard, and the muscle in his jaw jumps under her temple. "Bucky can't lose either one of us either."

"Toni," Steve says, strange and strangled, his hands close mechanically on her shoulders, pushing her back, trying to spin her. "Turn around."

"I can't leave you two alone for a second," Bucky drawls from behind her, and she sags against Steve, clutching his shoulder as she spins too fast. Her brain, normally faster than lightning, is having trouble parsing the obvious hold of a quinjet around her, complete with a dent in the far wall where her shoulders hit. Bucky, lean and lethal and geared for war, grins at them both, sprawled in the pilot's seat with an ankle propped on the opposite knee.

"Buck," Steve says thickly, and holds out the arm that isn't wrapped around Toni, hand extended to him.

Bits of her armor are folding, retracting, sliding away. She doesn't remember giving the command, but she must have. "James," she breathes, hitches. "You're here."

Bucky's grin slowly fades. "Christ," he murmurs, swallows, comes to his feet. "Look at you two." His hands are trembling, flex and relax at his thighs. "Just look at the two of you."

"Three," Toni says, holds out her hand. She's never been more sure of anything in her life. "Us three."

"C'mere, Buck," Steve says, wiggles his fingers invitingly. "Toni's right. Us three."

One halting step towards them leads to another, and then Toni's smothered in arms and hands, the tickling brush of long hair and the tang of leather armor and sun-warmed metal, chins digging into shoulders and awkwardly grasping fingers pulling at already sore muscles, but it doesn't matter, because there's nothing but joy singing through her soulmarks.