Chapter Text
“Left!” Barnes barks to you.
You tuck and roll underneath the table, springing back up on the other side. With the exception of your quick, shallow breaths, you’re as silent as he is.
You jerk your wrist and the handle of the butterfly knife that was strapped to your forearm falls into your hand. You pivot on your left foot toward the guy you’re fighting while also opening up your weapon. With a quick efficiency, you jerk your knife into his throat, pull it out, kick him out of the way, and you move onto the next one.
Barnes is on the other side of the table, taking care of the other mercs. You hear them exchange blows, the slight grunt from your mission partner, but you’re taking on two right now. He can take care of himself.
Step, duck, never stop moving. Get behind them. You spring over a coffee table, kicking it onto its side behind you as you go. Just a little something to slow them down just a bit more while you pull another knife from one of the concealed pockets of your tac vest.
You dodge left. One brings his gun up to aim, but you dodge the other way. One of your hands, clad in leather fingerless gloves for grip, curls around the seat of a chair. You execute a cartwheel, the other hand holding the knife between your fingertips. You jerk your hips just right at the peak of the arc and do a split in the air, slowing down your momentum just enough. The pose also tends to throw people off, which is to your advantage. Who the hell expects someone to just do an upside-down split in the middle of a gunfight?
Still. They just need to be still for one split sec–
You throw the knife and it lands in the eye of one of them. You don’t even recognize your victory or your aim, you just recognize neutralized . You swing your legs, plant both feet on the ground, and drop low.
The one whose brain is currently impaled on your knife falls to the ground. You shift the folding knife from your non-dominant hand to your dominant hand.
Bitch didn’t even know you were working at a handicap.
You can tell the remaining merc is coming to the same conclusion, because his eyes widen slightly. You hear another one coming. Barnes is fighting behind the merc facing you, and you register the movement and recognize Barnes is handling it so you focus on the merc you have to take out.
You actually allow yourself to grin at this last asshole. Bullets ran out a long time ago and now it’s time to shine, motherfucker.
You’re chasing him now, this beefy guy who probably has six inches on you, who clearly isn’t versed in anything but some basic hand-to-hand and guns. You have him backing away, the look in his eyes one of panic.
Pfft. You’ll use a gun if you need to, but they’re too loud and too inelegant. You can’t control them as easily. Not tactile and hands-on enough.
You spring over the knocked-over coffee table and with a wicked grin you don’t realize you’re still sporting, you advance on him. Your fingers stay still, steady, ready, clutching the knife perfectly. Tight but not straining. Relaxed but not loose.
He turns around and runs for the exit. Well, he starts to run to the exit, because he made a classic mistake: turning his back on you. That’s more than enough opportunity to take advantage of.
You flick the knife out and it lodges firmly in the middle of his back. You watch his spinal cord sever between his T11 and T12, and he crumples to the floor. You take two steps, snatch up the knife– he gurgles, and he’ll be dead in, oh, twenty seconds?
You join Barnes, who looks like he might be struggling with the last one.
“Left!” you tell him this time and Barnes dives right just in time for your knife to get the last bad guy in his throat.
He crumples. The air is full of dust, smells like blood, and a sudden and eerie silence descends upon the room. Threats eliminated, you proceed to calmly start collecting your knives from their victims.
“You got it?” you ask flatly. With practiced efficiency, you jerk your wrist to pull the knife out of that one guy’s eye socket. You wipe the vitreous fluid off on the back of the dead man’s jacket before sheathing the knife.
“Yeah,” Barnes responds with just as much flatness to his voice. He taps his breast pocket. While you’re kicking over another body and wiggling the knife out of his ribs, Barnes goes into the kitchen and gets himself a glass of water. Damn. You didn't mean to hit the bone.
You don’t even thank each other anymore. You’re a team, as much as you abso-fucking- lutely hate it. At least you can be professional together.
You walk side-by-side out of the “safe” house you broke into. The chip is securely in Barnes’ pocket. Threats are neutralized. Your mission is done and you don’t have any other reason to speak, so you don’t.
“So why did you pair those two up again?” asks Stark after the debrief. Steve glances at him.
“Because it was a stealth mission,” says Steve evenly, picking up the chip and placing it in the shiny silver briefcase.
“Nah… it’s because you wanna see who’s better, right?” Tony probes.
“They have different strengths and weaknesses.” Steve shuts the briefcase.
“Oh, come on, you don’t expect me to believe that, do you? She’s a knife-wielding assassin with a tragic backstory that leads to her feeling broken and alone. He’s a vibranium arm-wielding assassin with a tragic backstory who went to therapy, so he’s less broken and alone, but still not great. They’re basically the same person, Rogers.”
Steve finally looks up at Tony, not bothering to hide the irritation on his face. He grasps the handle of the briefcase and holds it by his side.
“First off, it’s not that simple and you know it. They’re both talented. They get along fine. I don’t see the need to cut one of them.”
“Well, I do. We're kinda drowning in assassins here. Between Barnes and Romanoff, we already have some overlap, but add in her? No, I think we should cut one of them.”
“Natasha does tech. Neither of them do. We can’t cut her.”
“Not talking about Romanoff, I’m talking about Bar–”
“I want Bucky on the team,” says Steve flatly, starting to walk toward the door. Stark follows, undeterred.
“Well, I want her on the team.”
“Why can’t we have both, again?” asks Steve, starting to feel something like a headache begin to pound between his temples. He can’t really experience any ailments, so that’s why he thinks this is more of an emotional headache rather than a physical one.
“Because we can’t have two people with basically the same skill set. It’s putting our eggs in one basket. We can’t lean too heavily into assassins,” Stark argues as Steve begins walking down the hall to the vault.
“I don’t think it’ll be a problem to have two senior team members with a similar skill set,” Steve emphasizes.
“Oh, we’ve been over this–”
“She deals almost exclusively in knives. Her strategy is generally to stay far enough away to not get hit, and his arm really lends itself to close quarters combat. Both can handle guns, but Bucky’s a little better. Bucky favors weapons he brings with him, she’s better at improvising one. She’s much more graceful than he is, and she can do stealth much better than he can. He’s stronger and bigger. He uses his environment for protection in the heat of a battle, she tends to hide better.”
Steve stops in the middle of the hallway and looks at Stark.
“I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. They both have strengths and weaknesses.”
“Details,” says Tony, shaking his head. “Subtle details that if they actually have to come into play on a mission they’re both on, then we’re better off pairing one of the assassins with someone who can fill in the gaps.”
He stops right in front of Steve and stares at him.
Steve knows, deep down, that Stark is kind of right. At least on some level, they should be spreading out the talents more. There is a lot of overlap between you and Bucky.
But he doesn’t want to demote either of you to another team. You’ve earned your place on the core Avengers team; neither of you would take kindly to being demoted to any of the support teams. You’ve been here longer than he has and have been excellent at every single thing he’s ever asked you to do. Bucky’s his best friend and being on a team is good for his mental health, and he’s also been excellent at everything he’s ever asked him to do.
“Let’s talk about this another time,” Steve says, shaking his head. “It’s not like there’s a limited number of slots on our team.”
“No, but we still don’t want to double up–”
“Alright, alright. Let me get this in the vault. We’ll talk about it later.”
Bucky is indifferent to you.
He believes you’re an excellent fighter. You two work well together. He’s always felt like he could trust you, at least to keep each other safe and to complete the mission. You share relevant information willingly, and never engage in useless small talk. Aside from the one time when you two were walking behind a smoker where you told him you were mildly allergic to smoke and asked to move, you never seemed interested in getting to know each other. You're private. So is he.
Basically you’re the perfect mission partner for him.
Well, maybe he’s not indifferent to you, per se. He actually looks forward to working with you. He relaxes a little every time he learns that you two are assigned a mission together. He knows he can rely on you. He respects you and your talents, especially for an ordinary human with no powers. You’re like a security blanket, but with a bunch of knives and hand-to-hand combat skills that he leans on to keep him safe.
Actually, yeah, he kinda likes you.
You two are similar. It’s actually a huge relief to Bucky. Even when you two bump into each other in the common areas of the Compound, you merely acknowledge each other and then get back to what you were doing. If there’s any small talk between the two of you, it’s something along the lines of “Do you need a spotter?” Or perhaps “The mission brief didn’t mention it, but I’ve been to this city before and you probably want a base layer this time of year.”
It is a wonderful working relationship.
Even things like patching each other up after getting beat up is efficient. You take off your shirt and show him where you got stabbed, then he stitches it up without being asked. He takes off his pants, you extract the bullet from his thigh, and then stitch him up in turn. Bucky once told you he prefers a stitch or two when he’s shot in a major muscle, and you remember every time. Your hands are steady, but neither of you waste your breath apologizing to one another for causing more pain.
When he sees you in the gym, he knows immediately it’s a flexibility and agility day for you, which means that it’s leg day for him. You reserve flexibility for twice a week; he does the same but for leg day. On your leg days, he does core. On your core days, he does arms, and so on and so forth. It’s a nice rotation.
You’re in the gymnastics section of the gym, twisting, turning, tumbling, swinging rhythmically on the pommel horse, the rings, and balancing on the beam for several long moments, much longer than Bucky ever thought possible.
But the bars.
The fucking bars.
You’re a goddamn artist on the bars. Bucky really admires that about you: the gracefulness of your movements and the pure, raw talent he sees. He’s seen you fall ten feet onto concrete into a seamless tuck that rolls into a run and barely make a sound. In contrast, Bucky would probably crack the pavement from his bulk and have to scramble to move again.
Bucky is facing the mirror in the squat rack, but he watches you in the background and takes the time to observe. Your face is a mask of pure concentration. He can hear your elevated but controlled breathing as you keep your body at a perfect angle while orbiting around the horizontal bar. Even your speed is steady and even. He can count an eight-beat to your movements.
You turn your body in midair to face one direction, then another, swapping between orientations so fast that he’s stunned you’re not dizzy. You tuck and flip twice in the air over the bar, grab it one handed, swing around so you’re above the bar perpendicular to the floor, and somehow stop your momentum enough to just hover there. You’re pin-straight. He sees your chest rising and falling, sees the tiny twitches of your muscles keeping you balanced, and he’s just amazed.
Then you hold your position, breathing out slowly as you face the wall, glaring hard at it as you focus. Several seconds pass before you swing forward, around, flip to face the other wall, and execute an aerial split.
It’s a fucking masterpiece.
You inspire him. Bucky can’t do anywhere near what you can, but seeing someone succeed makes him want to succeed, too, in whatever he’s doing today. You push him to go harder. He hopes he pushes you, too.
You hate Bucky Barnes.
You hate his goddamn smugness. You hate how he barely has to try to do anything, he just does it and is good at it. You hate the way he looks at you, with bland disinterest because you just know he doesn’t particularly want to be partnered with you. You hate that he never says hello– only ever nods, like a fucking asshole because you clearly aren’t worth wasting breath on– and you hate that the only time he deigns to talk to you is about a fucking job. And you hate that you two seem to have similar schedules, but you’re not gonna change your schedule for him, goddamnit.
You hate how he stares at you with mild disdain on his face as he’s doing squats. You hate that he can build muscle so easily due to his biology, and you can’t. Sure, you’re strong and flexible– but biological males have that natural testosterone response to exercise you don’t.
So you channel your frustration into the areas you know you excel, especially compared to Barnes.
You’ve seen him on the rings a couple times, mostly doing pull-ups. He’s not too shabby on them, though you’ve never seen the man do so much as a tuck. You’ll fully admit that he has decent balance… but not like you.
You’ve had a nearly singular focus for your whole life. You even took up gymnastics events that women don’t typically compete in: pommel horse, rings, and horizontal bar. Fuck gender norms. You like to think of it as you being a better gymnast than Barnes twice over.
Being a gymnast is one of the few edges you have over ol’ “Murder Eyes” Barnes. It’s even how you got your code name: Twist.
Not that you’ve ever heard Barnes actually saying your name at you. He doesn’t address you enough to warrant using even your fucking code name, the douchebag. You’re pretty sure he doesn’t even know your real name.
You finally feel at peace on the horizontal bar. You can indulge in your own securities and confidence here. Your proficiency as a gymnast is one of the rare things you’re vain about. Well, is it vanity or is it just confidence? You know your body so well, you know how to use it, how to move exactly how to get to where you want to, and you can fit into a cupboard and Barnes can’t, so there.
Fucking dickbag is staring you down with those Murder Eyes. You don’t let him psych you out. You’re a goddamn professional, even if he’s acting pretty unprofessionally by just staring at you, clearly unimpressed.
Pull yourself up, release, aerial, grab, flip once more, double tuck, overhand grasp, swing, 360°, again, again, build up all the momentum you can, release, body tighttighttight like a bullet and then finally the dismount.
Double twist, double salto, legs together as you land. There’s a mere moment where you’re unbalanced, thighs tensed in a quarter-squat, shoulders forward, then you recover your balance, straighten up, and get back to it.
You hop up the platform one more time, and you keep going. Your muscles are stretched in the most satisfying ways. You crack your neck and roll your shoulders. You begin again, ignoring Barnes and hoping to god that you’re gonna have a decently long break before you have to deal with him and his smug-ass bullshit again.
You do not get your wish.
Only two days later, you’re summoned to the briefing room. You had your hopes up that Barnes wouldn’t be there, but of course he was.
The mission is straightforward. There’s a bunker in the middle of nowhere that someone, somewhere thinks is suspicious. Ground-penetrating radar can’t get through the trees, so you gotta go check out the bunker. You leave the bunker as is if it’s just some paranoid old coot, or you burn it the fuck down if it actually is as sus as it seems.
Yes, yes, it’s definitely a simplified version of what’s going on, but it’s not an inaccurate one. Whoever prepares the mission briefs tends to be a little wordy and formal.
Oh, and that’s another thing you’re better at than Barnes: you can write mission debriefs way better than he can, and actually turn them in on time. Mission debriefs must be written by all involved members, so it’s not like he can relegate you to secretary, just there to take notes or some shit. You don’t want to throw a shit-fit, but you might just do so if he tries to pull that shit. Well, you’d throw a shit-fit regardless, but it’s a matter of whether or not you do it in front of someone else.
You and your least-favorite human being on the planet file silently into the quinjet, both of you with a pack over your respective shoulders. Both of you are in your tactical gear already.
“Good afternoon, passengers,” says Sam from the pilot seat, grinning at you two. “Thanks for flying Wilson Air with nonstop service to… aw, I still can’t pronounce this.”
“Mastigouche,” you say, hanging up your pack on one of the cargo hooks and strapping it in with the netting. Barnes does the same beside you.
Sam snickers. Barnes doesn’t react in any way.
“Unpronounceable French place in the middle of the Quebec woods.”
“I suppose. ETA?” you ask in this no-nonsense sort of way. You’re ambivalent to Wilson. He’s a bit goofy for your tastes, but he’s competent. Excellent pilot, too.
“About three hours. Get comfortable. Yo, Buck, have you listened to Trouble Man yet or nah? Because it’s a two-hour long record, and you’re stuck with me.”
Oh, right. Wilson and Barnes are… friends. Of some sort. Though if you were to interpret the look on Barnes’ face in a very charitable fashion, Barnes looks… begrudging about Wilson’s familiarity.
You strap into the passenger seat behind Wilson, rolling your shoulders a little. The bars you worked on yesterday need to be replaced. You’ve worn down the metal so much that you’ve worked a groove into it, which is also a signal to you that you have to mix it up some more.
“I like 1940’s music,” Barnes says flatly.
“I’m just asking you to go about thirty years into your future, man, which is fifty years in our past. You gotta get some Marvin Gaye in your life. Hey, Twist, back me up here.”
Oh, you hate it when people do this. They see you alone and think you’re lonely, so they do that awful thing where they transparently try to rope you into the conversation.
You keep your face neutral even though this is testing your patience. You already didn’t have a ton when you walked onto the plane, but Wilson is quickly starting to drain it.
“I don’t really listen to a lot of music,” you say, trying to kill the conversation right then and there. That may or may not be true, but you don’t want to continue talking.
“For real? What do you usually listen to when you do, though?” asks Sam. Meanwhile, he goes through the takeoff process so smoothly you almost don’t notice it.
“It’s usually the radio, so advertisements, mainly.”
Sam chuckles.
“Ahh, you two are perfect for each other. That’s the sort of shit Bucky would say, isn’t it, Buck?”
Excuse you, bitch? Is the first thing that comes to mind. You merely affect a bland expression on your face.
“Yes, I would say Barnes is as competent as I am, and we work well together,” you say with crisp professionalism, interrupting Barnes before he can say anything.
“Y’all even flirt the same way, damn.” Sam sounds genuinely amused by this.
“Since when is making a factual statement flirting?” Barnes asks, sounding a little incredulous. You agree– something that pains you– but you busy yourself by flicking through your tablet with the mission brief on it. You know this shit backwards and forwards. You don’t need to read it, but you do want to look busy.
“I’ll tell you when you’re older,” says Wilson smugly.
Despite yourself, you smirk at the satellite photo of where the suspicious bunker is supposed to be. Alright, Wilson might have a big mouth but at least he’s kind of funny. Sometimes.
You raise your eyes to look at the back of Wilson’s head. You raise a brow. In the corner of your eye, you can see Barnes’ head tilted incredulously with his brow knit together in mild confusion.
Barnes makes a sort of impatient sound.
“Anyway, what are the weather conditions at the destination, Sam?” Barnes asks. You don’t like him, but you at least appreciate that he also gets annoyed with Wilson. It’s better than encouraging his blathering.
You tune out the men. You’re good at that.