Late Again

She bakes cookies when she's nervous. It wasn't something either of them noticed for a long time. Of course they noticed that every time they left for a job for S.H.I.E.L.D. there would be a pile of cookies in a Tupperware box outside their apartment door with a note telling them to call her. That was at the start of their relationship, before she had a key to their apartment. They'd always limp inside with the box, share the cookies between them and then curl up together in bed before calling her and telling her they loved her. When they saw her the next morning she'd ride them both into the mattress.

Then she got a key to the apartment, and the cookies would be on a plate on the kitchen table, and she'd be curled up on their couch with her cell phone clasped in her hand, a blanket pulled up to her chin. One of them would bundle her up in their arms and take her to bed with them, and she'd wake up sandwiched between the two of them, both sleeping peacefully as though they hadn't been out in the middle of no-where getting their asses kicked.

That was when Steve realised why she baked for them. Bucky was working alone in Kosovo with one of the S.H.I.E.L.D. compiled teams tracking down some old Hydra agents. He'd been gone for a day and half already, and although he'd promised them both that he'd call, there had been nothing.

Steve's fingers trace anxious circles on her shoulders as they sit on the couch. He's due back in four hours, and Steve reminds her that there's no point in worrying herself. "Bucky can take care of himself. He'll walk back if he has to."

It does little to calm her nerves (or his), so he grabs his sketchpad and a book from their shelf. He passes her the book and tells her to read while he sketches her from his chair. She pulls the blanket they'd retrieved from the bedroom up around her and settles back to read aloud. Every so often she tries to turn to look at the clock on the wall behind her, but Steve instructs her gently not to.

"Keep still, baby." He soothes from his chair, pencil flicking over the paper and constructing the soft angles of her face. "Can't draw you if you keep moving like that."

She apologises meekly and begins reading again, her soft, wavering voice washing over Steve and calming him as he sketches. When he finishes it's an hour and a half until Bucky's due home. He can wait that long. She apparently can't, as she stands up abruptly, her hands shaking, and moves into the kitchen. Steve watches from his place in his chair, halfway between amused and confused. She pulls her apron off its hook and loops the cord twice around her waist, tying it at the front before scooping her hair back into a bun. When she lays out her ingredients he follows her into the kitchen and stands a few feet off, his arms folded over his broad chest.

"You can help, if you'd like." She calls over her shoulder, her voice strained and quiet. She doesn't look at him as she speaks, but he joins her, washing his hands before measuring out the flour when she hands it to him. He's in no mood to joke and neither is she, so they work in silence. As the times passes, though, Steve realises he's relaxed. Doing something with his hands is therapeutic, and when he looks over to her he can see her shoulders have relaxed too. She seems more at ease as she puts the cookies in the oven and sets a timer on it. They spend the rest of the time waiting for Bucky to come home cleaning the kitchen.

She hangs up her apron - it' the same one they'd bought her for Christmas along with the necklace she'd been admiring in a shop window in passing - and turns to Steve, shooting him a nervous smile. He reaches out and rubs his thumb along her cheekbone, smearing away the traces of flour there. His warm palm spreads across her cheek and he pulls her in for a kiss. It's chaste and quick and over quickly, but it's the comfort and closeness they both need.

"I get it now." He tells her, his voice soft. "I understand why you bake for us. It's not a welcome home gift, is it?"

She shakes her head and nuzzles his hand, turning a little so she can kiss the base of his palm. He smiles despite his nerves and kisses her forehead just as the timer goes off. She pulls the cookies out of the oven and checks the time. He was due home five minutes ago. Five minutes isn't enough to get worried about, so she pulls out the cooling rack and organises them slowly, methodically, before she finishes drying the dishes with Steve behind her, his arms wrapped around her waist so he can drag her against his chest.

Then he's fifteen minutes late and she's starting to get a little nervous again while she takes out the plate she always puts the cookies out on. She puts them in the same pattern they always go in, the tower shape with one cookie at the top. She steps back and checks the time. Twenty minutes late. She calls his cell phone and it goes straight through to answer phone. She leaves a message, trying to sound as upbeat and casual as possible - "I didn't bake these cookies for nothing, Barnes." - but Steve can see how worried she actually is.

Bucky walks through the door thirty minutes late and makes some dumb comment that the apartment smells like cookies. She doesn't even care, just wraps her arms around his trim torso and squeezes him just hard enough for him to know that he's an asshole before kissing him. And then Steve's there beside them, one arm around Bucky and the other around her, and he kisses Bucky before asking quietly what happened. The other man shakes his head tersely - he doesn't like talking about missions around her, thinks it'll upset her - before kissing him again.

"Let's get you two to bed then." He jokes, reaching for a cookie as he leads them to the bedroom. He strips down to his boxers and turns to open his arms to them - one of them is going to jump him and he knows it - but they both just stand there in the doorway to the bedroom awkwardly. His arms lower and he sighs. "I'm fine."

"Why didn't you pick up your cell?"

"It ran out of charge, doll." He says with a rueful smile, walking over to them and tugging at her t-shirt expectantly. "Come on, I'm the hero of the hour. I at least deserve to come back to my favourite guy and girl."

She smiles a little at that and strips off down to her underwear, and Bucky leads her to bed where they curl up waiting for Steve. She's on one side of Bucky and Steve's on the other, and they cling onto him like children while he cards his fingers through their hair and whispers sweet nothings to the pair of them. They fall asleep with the apartment still smelling like cookies.



Steve doesn't tell Bucky about the cookies, but he figures it out for himself after she moves in and Steve's off with Romanov in Russia. The morning he leaves they're both kissing him and reminding him to keep his cell charged - he promises he will and he leaves with a smile on his lips. He's gone for the weekend so they spend it fucking lazily around the apartment, not bothering to get out of bed until they're hungry, and even then they only order a takeaway and eat it on the couch in sweats and t-shirts.

She's got some paperwork to do for work so she curls up in his arms with her laptop and begins tapping away while he places distracting, lazy kisses along her shoulders, and more than once she has to put the work aside to fuck him into the couch cushions. Finally the work is done and finished, and she can give him her undivided attention again, so he orders another takeaway and drags her into the shower to fuck in there while they wait.

Then it's Sunday, and when they finally leave the bedroom at ten in the morning they both decide they should clean the apartment for Steve's return - as Bucky points out he's going to be horny as hell when he steps through the door - so they get to work. Of course the job takes about ten times longer than it should have done because Bucky decides to wear a pair of low slung jeans and take off his shirt, and she works in her underwear. They spend the few hours working teasing each other mercilessly, and when the apartment is back to it's normal semi-respectable state he grinds up against her, backing her up against the wall and making her laugh.

Then it's three hours until Steve's due home, and the nerves begin again, as they always do for her when one or both of her boys are away. Bucky's nervous too - she can tell despite the jokes he keeps trying to make. They stick a crappy b-movie on; it's some dumb comedy one of them picked up from the store a few weeks before, but neither of them are concentrating on the movie. They both stare blankly at the screen, not absorbing the bad jokes or terrible timing. They're both thinking about Steve.

Bucky suggests a way to calm their nerves wordlessly. He reaches over and his fingertips brush the nape of her neck, and he pulls her in for a kiss. They make love on the couch, and it's hot and sweaty and messy, the two of them moaning loudly as Bucky moves, rolling his hips between her thighs relentlessly as they fuck out their frustrations and nerves. He comes hard inside of her just after she does, and the two of them just lay there, clothes long since discarded, carding their fingers through each others' hair, breathing heavily in the aftermath of their orgasms. He offers to clean her off in the shower and she nods, allowing him to pick her up and carry her into the shower.

They kiss in the steam, tongues slipping into each others' mouths as the warm water hits them. He massages shampoo into her hair from behind, enjoying the gentle moans that escape her lips. She turns and reaches up to do the same to him, lathering up his unruly locks before washing the bubbles out. It's a relatively short shower for them - normally he'll pin her to the wall and suck on her lower lip and yell for Steve to join them. Then she'll be pinned against Steve's chest and he'll hold her while Bucky fucks into her, and then they'll switch so that Steve's the one moving in and out of her and Bucky is the one murmuring dirty nothings into her ear, telling her how good she looks when Steve fucks her and how good she sounds when she comes, and how much he wants to fuck her all over again with Steve watching, and wouldn't you like that doll?

The intimacy of the shower almost makes them forget their worries about Steve, but as soon as they step into the bedroom to see the Super King Sized bed - the biggest they could find so all three of them could sleep comfortably - they remember him, and the worry starts all over again. She pulls on fresh sweatpants and a vest and leaves to the kitchen silently while Bucky sits on the edge of the bed, thinking about Steve on his own.

When he goes into the kitchen she's making the dough for the cookies. That's one good thing about one or both of them going on a mission - they get a plate of cookies to devour. When she glances back to look at him she casts him an almost relaxed look before going back to the dough. He takes a seat at the kitchen table and watches her put the tray in the oven. He watches her clean up the kitchen slowly and methodically, and then watches her hang up her apron. He stands up and kisses her exposed shoulder blade, hugging her tightly from behind and telling her that he loves her, and that Steve loves her and that when he gets back the three of them will have the best sex of any of their lives. She laughs at him and swats at him gently so that he can let her get the tray out of the oven.

Although he never explicitly tells her or Steve that he knows, he picks up on her mood more carefully every time after that when he can smell cookies.

The cookies come out of the oven and Steve's ten minutes late. Bucky shrugs it off and says that his pickup was probably a little late, and she sinks back into his arms on the couch, playing into his soothing words. When he's twenty minutes late and the cookies are on the plate on the centre of the table he kisses her forehead and tells her he's probably debriefing Coulson. She nods and they sit on the couch again, cuddled up under the massive, thick blanket they bummed off Clint. He's fifty minutes late and Bucky blames it on traffic, but when the cookies have been out of the oven for an hour he tells her to call Steve's cell phone. He picks up, but the signal is terrible, and all they can hear is the word 'late' before it cuts out. Bucky jokes that at least he's still alive and she punches his arm hard before curling up to him. Steve's nearly two hours late and Bucky can't come up with an excuse, but he knows that she doesn't want to hear one so he hums an old song from the forties to her, one that he was humming on their first date while he and Steve cooked her dinner.

Steve's two and a half hours late and they're both getting nervous. She tentatively suggests that they do something to keep their minds occupied, and Bucky knows exactly what she's talking about but he kisses her forehead and says no. "Got to save some for Stevie, haven't we, doll?"

She calls Steve's cell four times when he's nearly three hours late, but it just rings and rings. She leaves a casual message the first time, and the second time she passes it to Bucky. The third time she just asks him to call, and the fourth time she doesn't leave a message. Now he's almost three and a half hours late, and Bucky's pacing the apartment while she tries to get hold of someone from S.H.I.E.L.D. But of course, it's one in the morning and no one's answering.

When Steve comes through the door four hours late he can smell cookies baking in the oven and see a plate on the table. Someone runs into him, practically tackling him back against the door and he gives a shout of surprise, which brings Bucky out of the bedroom. She's clinging to his torso, telling his abdominal muscles how much she hates him and loves him, and only raises her head to kiss him before she's hugging him again. Bucky pulls them both into a tight hug, kissing Steve over her head and calling him an asshole and a punk and theytold him to keep his fucking phone charged.

He apologises, kisses them both again and fishes his cell out of his pocket, explaining that he took a S.H.I.E.L.D. bike to get back as quickly as possible, so he couldn't pick up and answer them. He also explains that the pickup was very late due to stormy weather - the pilot wasn't going to land until Natasha threatened him with a particularly creative and painful death. Bucky blesses the Russian assassin before clapping Steve around the ear with his right arm and asking why he didn't call. Steve apologises meekly again, his fingers curling into her hair as she wraps her arms around his torso more tightly.

"Right, let's go to bed." He says, looking between the two of them and grinning. "I think I'm the hero, and I also think I need some sort of compensation. I've had a hard day at the office."

They laugh and Bucky pulls the cookies out of the oven to let them cool on the side. He grabs the other plate and brings it into the bedroom with them, and when she asks what he's planning on doing with them he just winks.

It turns out he doesn't have time to do anything with the cookies - by the time he's set them down on the side and taken off his shirt she's already been tackled Steve to the bed and they're stripping each other off. Bucky smiles.

Yes, she bakes cookies when she's nervous.

Notes