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Steve had always seen the intangible red strings that connected people to their soul mates. His mother had told him it was his imagination and not to talk about it. When he was ten just before his mother got sick she and Bucky’s mother had taken him and Bucky to Coney Island and let them wander on their own while they’d shared coffee. He had felt drawn into a fortune teller’s tent and Bucky had followed. The old woman had explained what the strings were and what it meant that they were connected to each other and another. She’d also warned them about society’s views on matches that weren’t just between a man and a woman and to never let society’s views bother them. Bucky had believed her, had always believed him before that, even if he couldn’t see the strings himself. They’d followed their third string all the way to the coast one day and Steve had sketched them and their strings with the third stretched across the Atlantic. They’d sworn to someday find their soul mates but it had mostly been a pipedream. It had never stopped Bucky from flirting and chasing dames (hadn’t stopped Steve for that matter) but they always came home to each other. Skinny little Steve with his artistic skill and innocent face was quite the hit with the bored housewives that had money to spare even with the depression.
But then war had broken out once again. Bucky enlisted. Steve met the other person their strings were tied too. She was beautiful and smart and didn’t take shit from anyone. She helped him rescue Bucky but war mostly kept them apart. Bucky was there when Steve told her about the strings. She’d been pretty receptive to the whole thing but there was a war going on around them. Alone time for the three of them was hard to come by but they made the most of what they had.
Waking up was confusing and terrible and heartbreaking and like being kicked in the chest repeatedly. He’d seen broken strings on men and women that had lost their soul mates. According to SHIELD (and yeah, he’d doubled and tripled checked) Peggy had died twenty three years ago and he’d watched Bucky fall but his strings weren’t broken. One still led east while the other west but it made no sense at all. He didn’t know what to do so he just hid himself away and demolished punching bags until Loki happened.
A month later he returned to New York from his road trip still resolutely ignoring his strings. Two days after Thor arrived his Lady Jane and her handmaiden Darcy joined them at the tower. Steve hadn’t been formally introduced to them but Clint and Natasha talked about Darcy (Clint called her the Ipod Ninja) as if she was a cross between a pet and a favorite younger sibling. Bruce and Tony (mostly Tony) wanted to have Jane’s babies (Tony had made the comment but Bruce had nodded his agreement).
Steve was still resolutely ignoring his strings. One was pretty stationary (like Peggy’s had been before they met) but the other one was all over the place (like Bucky’s had before the war). He was pretty sure the person it led to now lived in the building. Sometimes his string went through the ceiling and sometimes it went through the floor and sometimes he watched as the string swung slowly back and forth as if his other third was pacing a floor above or below him. But he was pretty damn good at suppressing his curiosity.
He’d taken to following the others’ strings. Tony’s string led to Bruce and Pepper which he should probably mention at some point because Tony seemed to be driving himself nuts in an attempt not to hurt either of them. Steve wasn’t all that surprised, he’d seen a fair amount of triads of every possible combination even before he woke up. Race and gender had never meant much when he could see the bonds between people.
Thor’s string was gold in color until it hit the exact mid-point between him and Jane before turning a deep vibrant red. Steve wasn’t sure what to think of it.
Natasha, Clint and Phil’s string(s) was(were) weird, not because it was a triad but because unlike his strings or Tony & Bruce & Pepper’s string which started as one string and split into two, their strings looked like they’d been tied together. It looked as if three all three had been broken before being knotted back together. And boy had that been a shock.
The day Clint and Natasha had helped the still healing Phil into the common room had been the first time he’d seen just where and how their strings met. Phil had been too far away for him to have seen the knot before and while Natasha string had led in the same direction as Clint’s they didn’t have the ‘standard’ second string linking them to just each. Clint had been wearing a defiant glint in his eyes. The quick flicker between his knotted string and Steve’s split string had been the closest Clint had come to admitting he could see them. Steve’s quick glance at Tony, Pepper and Bruce, a twitch of his ring finger and a sheepish shrug had Clint relaxing. Steve wasn’t one to judge even if he’d never seen a bond like theirs before.
A month after that Steve had caught Natasha staring at the photo of him, Bucky and Peggy that Phil had found for him. He hadn’t asked what caused the frown and intense stare and she never offered an explanation. A week later she and Clint were sent on a mission so classified Tony hadn’t been able to find any information on SHIELD’s database. According to SHIELD they were on vacation. They were checking in with Phil regularly but all communications were in a rotating code that only the three of them understood. Tony (Jarvis) and Bruce had attempted to break the code but two weeks later they still hadn’t broken it. Phil answered questions about the missing duo with ‘it’s classified’ though Steve had even overheard him say it to Fury.
Two months after Clint and Natasha disappeared, they got the answer to what Clint and Natasha were up too when they carried in a battered and exhausted Bucky. It didn’t matter that he only had one arm, looked like he’d gone three rounds with Hulk and hadn’t had a decent meal in weeks. Bucky was ALIVE and here.
The next two weeks were spent at Bucky’s bedside unless he was called away for Avengers related issues. He was so wrapped up in Bucky he missed out on the Pepper/Tony/Bruce sit down. It took him a while to notice that Darcy spent time with Bucky when he and the others were called away but always managed to leave any room he was in. When he finally caught onto that fact he felt extremely guilty.
Bucky called him a moron but didn’t offer any advice on how to make up for the fact that he’d pretty much been a complete dick to her. They’d lived in the same building and shared the same friends for the past four months but he hadn’t so much as said a single word to her.
At a loss for what to do he asked Clint for advice. Clint had given him a deer in headlights look before fleeing up into the vents. He hadn't been all that surprise. Clint was generally friendly but he tended to disappear when emotions showed up. He moved on to Natasha next. Her advice had been to go talk to Darcy.
Which turned out to be easier said than done. Darcy was an avoidance ninja, probably got lessons from Clint and Natasha. She dodged him for two full weeks before he managed to corner her in her bathroom while she was showering. He waited outside the door until the water turned off and said, “We need to talk Ms. Lewis.”
“Jesus, Fuck, Cap! I’m naked, go away!” shouted Darcy through the door.
“No. We need to talk but you keep running away from me. I need to apologize. I’ve been a huge bastard to you and I’m sorry. But I’m not going anywhere until you talk to me,” answered Steve.
“If I promise not to avoid you will go away until I get dressed?” asked Darcy.
Steve took a second to think about it but he was pretty sure she wouldn’t keep that promise so he said, “We really need to talk and I know you’ll go back to avoiding me as soon as I leave. I know I deserve it but I need to tell you why I’ve been such a dick.”
“I know why, I can see the strings too,” came the muffled reply from Darcy.
“Peggy, uh, Agent Margaret Carter, she was our third, but she died. I even triple checked, but I woke up and they were both dead but I still had two unbroken strings. I didn’t, uh, know how to feel about waking up to two new soul mates aside from angry and grieving so I just ignored it and I’m sorry because you didn’t deserve that at all,” rambled Steve as he rested his head against the bathroom door.
“God dammit, Cap!” muttered Darcy as she pulled the door open and ended up on her ass with a lap full of super-soldier. He managed to catch most of his weight on his right arm as they landed so she wasn’t crushed and she managed to keep her towel on but his head ended up even with the girls. His bright red blush and awkwardly sweet attempt to remove himself from her made her hug him tighter instead of shove him away. She may have cackled just a bit (she did have a bet with Bucky about just how red she could make Steve blush after he pulled his head out of his ass).
Steve knew he was blushing but he relaxed into her hold when he figured out that every time he tried to get up she held on tighter. Bucky might have been the ‘player’ but Steve had spent over a year on tour with a bunch of choirs girls. He definitely wasn’t the blushing virgin Tony liked to tease about being (okay the blushing part was true but there had been girls, women actually, even before the serum). The fact that they were pretty much cuddling on a bathroom rug while Darcy was clad in just a towel had Steve laughing out loud. If his laughter had a slightly hysterical edge to it Darcy didn’t mention it. She also stopped holding back her own laughter at the absurdity of their current situation.