Hi! If you ever feel up to taking another request, I've been thinking. Reader is late 30s-early 40s. Super friendly and crazy competent, works as an armorer for the new avengers, but used to be with SHIELD (or wherever you want to place her past), gone with the blip. She's been around beautiful agents/people and has been flirted with nearly every day (hello, comics Clint). I'm curious as to how Bucky stands out from the crowd, gets her interested and deals with someone who's well established in her life. I'm sure he'd rock her world if she gave him a chance.
Thanks for creating and sharing such awesome stories!
You don’t get flustered easily.
That’s what comes from surviving SHIELD, losing five years to the Blip, and then coming back to a world that decided you were still useful enough to keep. You’re 39 years old and you’ve long since learned the difference between flirtation and respect.
The Avengers Compound armory is your domain now.
You know every weapon’s weight by feel alone. You know which alloys sing under stress and which crack under pressure. You know how to take apart a rifle blindfolded and put it back together better than it was before. You’re friendly—warm, even—but never sloppy. Competence radiates off you in a way that makes people stand a little straighter when they speak to you.
You’ve been flirted with by the best of them.
Agents who grin like they invented charm. Soldiers who think scars are a conversation starter. Men and women who mistake proximity for intimacy. You smile, deflect, keep moving. You don’t need attention. You’ve had it. You’ve outgrown it.
So when James Barnes starts showing up in your armory, you notice him because he doesn’t do any of that.
The first time he comes in, he doesn’t say much. Just a quiet, “Hey,” and a nod toward the bench where his rifle rests. He watches your hands—not your face—as you work, tracking the precision with a soldier’s eye.
“Your left stabilizer’s slightly off,” you tell him without looking up.
He blinks. “It is?”
“Mmhmm. Quarter millimeter. You compensate without realizing it.”
He considers that. Doesn’t bristle. Doesn’t joke. Just absorbs it.
“Can you fix it?” he asks.
That’s it. No swagger. No flirting. Just trust.
You do fix it. And when he takes the rifle back, he tests the balance, eyes widening just a fraction.
“…Feels better,” he says.
You smile then. Not because he’s handsome—though he is, devastatingly so—but because he noticed.
After that, he keeps coming back.
Sometimes it’s for maintenance. Sometimes it’s for advice. Sometimes he just stands near the doorway like he’s deciding whether to interrupt, until you wave him in with a screwdriver clenched between your teeth.
He never leans too close. Never comments on your body. Never asks questions that don’t have a purpose. When he compliments you, it’s always about your work.
“You make this look easy,” he says once.
“It’s not,” you reply.
“I know,” he says quietly. “That’s why it’s impressive.”
That’s when you realize he’s different.
Not because he’s famous. Not because he’s dangerous. But because he sees you as someone established. Someone whole. He doesn’t try to wedge himself into your life—he waits to be invited.
It takes weeks before he asks you anything personal.
“You were Blipped,” he says one evening, handing you back a calibrated pistol. Not a question.
You nod. “Yeah. Came back to a desk that wasn’t mine anymore.”
He hums, understanding heavy in his chest. “Me too. Not the same way. But… yeah.”
You glance up then, really look at him. The way his shoulders stay tense even at rest. The way his eyes flick to exits without thinking.
“You don’t flirt,” you say lightly.
He almost chokes. “Is that a complaint?”
You smile. “Just an observation.”
He hesitates, then: “I wouldn’t know how. Not with someone like you.”
Someone like you.
Not a woman. Not a target. You.
That’s what gets you.
When he finally asks you out, it’s awkward in the best way. No grand gestures. No assumptions.
“Would you want to get dinner sometime?” he asks. “No pressure. I know you’ve got a life.”
You do have a life. Friends. History. A body that knows what it wants and doesn’t waste time on maybes.
But you also have curiosity now.
Dinner turns into conversation that stretches until the restaurant closes. He listens more than he talks. When he does talk, it’s careful, honest, unvarnished.
You don’t feel like you’re teaching him how to treat you.
You feel like he already knows.
When you finally take him home—your place, your choice—he follows your lead with reverence that borders on awe. His hands are strong but controlled, like he’s afraid of overstepping.
“You okay?” he murmurs, forehead pressed to yours.
You laugh softly. “Bucky, I promise—I know how to ask for what I want.”
Something in his chest breaks open at that.
And when you do ask—when you tell him exactly how to touch you, how to move, how to ruin you—he listens with the same intensity he does in the armory.
He doesn’t try to prove himself.
He learns you.
Later, tangled together, you trace the metal of his arm with idle fingers.
“You stand out,” you tell him.
He exhales, almost shy. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” you say, smiling into his shoulder. “You didn’t try to be impressive. You just were.”
He pulls you closer, grounding himself in the weight of you—real, present, choosing him.
