They say Steve lives for his work and Steve's in love with his work. Steve hides in his work.
Natasha's arrival really had turned quite a bit upside down in Starklandia, but if Bucky was being honest with himself he'd say that a lot of the contributing factors were already there. It was no secret that there was still a great deal of tension and unresolved emotions shifting between himself, Steve, and Stark. None of the three of them were exactly great or even subpar at expression emotions in a healthy way. Bottling everything up hoping it would just go away or stubbornly sticking to the mindset that it could be dealt with later because it was easier to just think or talk about something else kind of seemed to be the trend. Deflection, distraction, both ran rampant and for Steve and Bucky that had always been the easy way out. It kept them from having to have that talk that they should've had a hundred years ago.
Insert Natalia Romanova and more of those complications that added fuel to their avoidance habits came into play. Bucky knew he needed to have a conversation with Steve about it. He'd known for a while, and maybe that was why he hadn't been quite as guarded with his exchanges with her as he needed to be. But they'd found a new sense of freedom where they could talk openly and now that they had that, neither was too keen to go back into hiding. His relationship with her was something he'd never told Steve about, but it wasn't intentional. At least, not at first, or so he told himself. But it kind of felt like that talk that never happened, only he knew that if he didn't tell Steve about it that the weight of it would fall on Natalia, and she was under enough stress as it was. Especially after that kind of beautiful disaster that was the conversation between himself, her, and Clint.
That talk, involved something that both men knew had always been there but they didn't dare go there for so many reasons that shouldn't have mattered but ultimately had and kept them in a comfortable state of familiarity that they both treasured and fought with their lives to maintain. Each was too important to the other to ever lose what was there, and the fear of that happening had always held them back from ever going there. The only time Bucky almost had was during World War II, after that burning building explosion when Steve got him away from Zola, but even then they'd kind of both put a stop to it before he could say too much.
Somehow he knew, when he heard Steve's voice after the knocking, that this was going to be that talk, or at least, some variation of it. He was going to have to tell Steve about Natasha, he was going to have to tell him about a lot of things he'd rather keep avoiding. When Steve had said they needed to talk, he knew it wasn't going to just be about the bar fight.
Having been on the floor trying to sort of fix a wobbly table leg using his fist as a hammer, he stood up and brushed his jeans off with his hands. "Hey, Steve," he said. He'd pulled his hair back out of his face while he was working, and wished he hadn't because he couldn't run his hand through it like he so often did when he was nervous. Nervous; that was such a foreign feeling that he rarely if ever had associated with his relationship with Steve. But today he was. "I'd offer you a seat but I'm still kind of working on that."