Who: Bucky Barnes, Clint Barton, Natasha Romanoff What: Can't recluse for very long in a town this small, Bucklesby, sorry. When: A day after Constantine's cockalicious birthday bash. Where: Bucky's home. Rating: E for emotions, I think, but probably fine otherwise.
These were not pieces that required a Natasha-caliber level of spy to be able to assemble into a coherent puzzle. Any sophomore in a suburban high school - even one without friends but with a working cable connection - could have figured out the bare bones here. Steve had avoided Pancho's, as had James, and while neither of them were exactly crazy partiers, it was still a notable simultaneous absence. Steve was avoiding her. There was nothing else she could call it - she had informed the guy that she had died back home, and in any other circumstance, she had a hard time believing the Steve Rogers who occasionally referred to her as his "wife" with a complete lack of irony would have ever let her out of his sight.
Really, though, and this was the biggest: James had told her he would talk to her once it was done. James had said he would call, and James hadn't called.
She had a hard time believing he would have either forgotten or just chosen not to do it, not to her. There was no offense she could take to that: however this conversation had gone, it had gone badly. And he had retreated, somewhere into his own head or his own house, so he could lick his wounds and simultaneously keep tearing himself to pieces, over and over again. It was no great mystery; she might have done the same, in his situation, but if he wasn't going to call, she wasn't going to leave him there to chew himself down tot he bone.
Showing up was bold. Showing up with Clint at her side was bolder, but it had felt - right, somehow, to ask Clint to come along with her, for reasons she hadn't started to unpack. Maybe it was nothing more than she knew he put James at ease. That he mattered here, the way he did to her, or maybe after the last week or so, it would have felt too loaded to come on her own without telling Clint first, that she was going. She didn't know why it felt more appropriate to bring him along than it would have to relay the story secondhand, just - he should be here for this. He should. And so he was, now that they were approaching James's place from the back.
The way he was sitting. The lines of his shoulders, the set of his jaw - something in her heart twisted, and she wasn't sure what kind of name she was supposed to give that twist. Maybe it was just the fact that his posture made it clear that she had been right. She would have loved to have not been right. "Broken tech, Barnes?" she said, taking a step onto the porch, but her voice was achingly gentle. "Thought I'd have heard from you by now, you too good for us?"