[ The last time she’d asked, a quick check-in in front of the rest of the team, Bucky had given a pithy deflection. They’d been around strangers, around Walker, and so it was nothing but a joke and sidestepping the issue. You know me, I’m great,

I’m fine,
it’s fine,
everything’s fine,

but in the end, it feels like he owes Yelena some honesty. No amount of therapy would have made that swallowing darkness easy to handle, and his nightmares have gotten worse again since their little jaunt into another plane. He hasn’t been sleeping well; hence the texts to her to begin with. He gestures for coffee. ]

Been better. The Void shook us all up. And I was technically unemployed before this but gotta say, this isn’t the next job I expected. I was originally thinking maybe manning Sam’s family fishing boat.

[ And now: his phone’s been blowing up the last few days with a meticulous future itinerary curated by Val and Mel, a press gauntlet featuring magazine covers and interviews and sound bites and Good Morning America, and he doesn’t feel ready for any of it. Is it even possible to stop this train and get off it anymore? Hard to say. ]

So I guess we should talk about whether or not we’re coworkers now.