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The mission override comes with the strong sense that protecting this man is one long pain in the ass.

Infinite Coffee and Protection Detail is a Marvel Cinematic Universe fanfiction series by Owlet, focusing on Bucky Barnes. It diverts from canon after Captain America: The Winter Soldier and ignores Avengers: Age of Ultron and later movies.

The first story in the series, This, You Protect, follows the Winter Soldier after he decides to save Captain America's life instead of finishing him off after their fight on the helicarriers. Out of HYDRA's control, the Soldier now has a new mission - protect Captain America - but Steve does not make it easy for him. Subsequent stories cover Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes's lives together after they finally make contact. The series deals with some darker subject matter at times, but is mostly light-hearted and often very funny, without being callous or dismissive toward Bucky's issues.


Infinite Coffee and Protection Detail provides examples of:

  • Affluent Ascetic: Steve is sitting on 70 years' worth of Army back pay, and Barnes on "approximately seventeen million dollars of former HYDRA funds". They initially live in a modest apartment in Brooklyn, and then move into Avengers Tower, without exorbitant spending.
  • Amnesiac Hero: Barnes, initially. Mission Briefing has most of his memories, but it only shows specific ones to him when requested (it can and does decline sometimes) or when it thinks they'd be prudent.
  • Apology Gift: Barnes gets Sam a plant as a "Sorry I broke your wings and kicked you off a helicarrier" present.
  • Bad Mood Retreat: Part of Barnes' protocol is to retreat to a safe spot when he's upset. When he has access to his and Steve's apartment in Avengers Tower, his safe space is often a particular end of the couch, pressed tightly into the corner against the back and armrest, with a view out the floor-to-ceiling windows where he can see Brooklyn.
  • Benevolent A.I.: JARVIS, who is both helpful and polite, and takes Barnes's odd mannerisms and speech patterns in stride. Barnes calls him Building, even after learning that JARVIS is in fact just the AI controlling the building, and not the building itself.
  • Bookworm: The only thing Barnes likes as much as a good grilled cheese and some homemade cookies is a good book.
  • Blade Enthusiast: Barnes always has at least three knives hidden on his person. He once went so far as to modify a pair of dress shoes to have a blade hidden in the toe and heel. In his defense, they do come in handy for protection detail.
    Everyone needs one more knife. He takes three.
  • Brainwashed and Crazy: A HYDRA reprogrammer successfully turns Mission Imperative against Steve, resulting in a Fighting from the Inside scene in which Barnes resists Mission's shrieking at him to kill Steve instead of its usual litany of "protect" and "contact".
  • Brooklyn Rage: The average New Yorkers Barnes meets are not much impressed by his glaring and snarling. Some glare and snarl right back. Steve, a fellow Brooklynite, notes with dismay that people used to be nicer.
  • Call-Back: In The Long Road Begins At Home, Barnes buys Steve several pairs of pajama pants with silly patterns for Christmas, in recognition of how Steve's sheep-patterned pajama pants are what kept Barnes from succumbing to his programming.
  • Celibate Hero: The members of the "Anti-Valentine's Day No-Touch Club." Steve is a Chaste Hero, Barnes Hates Being Touched, Banner avoids emotionally charged situations because of his Hulk issues, and Maria Hill is implied to be mostly asexual and/or aromantic (although she does enjoy Eating the Eye Candy). Steve and Barnes remain in the club even after they begin a physical relationship in Upgrade: Advanced Happiness Skills.
  • Cheap Costume: Barnes finds 126 pictures of the same group of young people wearing poorly made Sioux war bonnets on Tyler's phone.
  • Chekhov's Gunman: The real estate agent sent by Tony, who introduced Steve to his new Brooklyn apartment, is not seen by Barnes when Steve first meets her. When she returns because Steve wants to move, and Barnes finally sees her in person, she's made a Face–Heel Turn because HYDRA promised her "so much money" for bringing the Asset back in.
  • The Comically Serious: The Mission Imperative is more than just the Winter Soldier programming shrieking at Barnes to protect Steve. As the story progresses, it slowly develops its own opinions and personality, all conveyed through perfectly timed declarations of CONFIRM. It's afraid of Cat Eleanor, it declares Barnes's desire for an extra-large bathtub to be a secondary mission, it likes grilled cheese with ham, mustard, and arugula, and it gets stupidly, hilariously excited when Barnes finally makes contact with Steve.
  • Control Freak: Deconstructed; when the Howling Commandos were founded, Bucky took to bossing them around and mother-henning them constantly in an attempt at drawing attention away from the fact that he was going to pieces both mentally and physically after what happened to him at Azzano. When he fell off the train and apparently died, the team fell apart and couldn't function anymore.
  • Cool Old Guy / Cool Old Lady: The Olds, Barnes's three elderly neighbors in Brooklyn, are amazing and help kickstart Barnes's recovery from The Asset into a human being, then later agree to help him spy on Steve. He declares them Mission-Assists, basically his first friends.
  • Cope by Creating: Barnes stress-bakes as part of his coping mechanisms.
  • Crazy-Prepared: Barnes always has an arsenal's worth of weapons on hand and all too often needs it for all the random HYDRA assholes who keep following him and Steve around.
  • Creepy Good: Downplayed, because the story is from Barnes's perspective and his actions make sense to him, but Barnes's behavior toward Steve in This, You Protect would be pretty disturbing to someone who didn't know his intentions. He stalks Steve, breaks into Steve's residences, and bugs Steve's personal effects. This is demonstrated in The Long Road Begins at Home when Barnes reveals that he monitored (stalked) Steve (and Sam, by proxy) from the hedge across the road, and broke into the house twice. Sam is naturally disturbed by this and informs Barnes that he'll be changing his locks, but Barnes approves because that makes Sam safer. He may have dubious methods in ensuring his mission (and mission-assists)' safety, but his intentions are good.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle: Barnes against HYDRA agents, every single time. He's so good at taking them down that he can do it without killing them.
  • Cuteness Proximity: Barnes toward Tony's lab robots, especially Bite-Size. After Barnes reproaches Tony for assigning Bite-Size a gender without first asking, Bite-Size hugs him in gratitude.
  • A Day in the Limelight: The companion short story A Chance to Try Bravery is from Steve's POV, and is the one and only non-Barnes POV in the whole series, unless you count circa 1944 Bucky Barnes as separate from 2014 Barnes. Steve's POV reveals several things that don't come up elsewhere: Bucky was struggling with PTSD during his entire time as a Howling Commando, the experiments he was subjected to in Azzano had already begun changing his body, Barnes occasionally talks to himself and invasively pats Steve down for injuries after every training exercise and op, and Barnes told Steve he was Barnes's favorite person no matter the size while doped up on painkillers after the robot attack.
  • Dark and Troubled Past: Besides Barnes' years of captivity as the Asset, Lidia is also implied to have a dark past and shares things in common with Barnes. She is also often compared to Natasha with similar mannerisms. While looking to restrain Big Ugly, Barnes notes that Lidia is most likely to have weapons out of the Olds. At one point, she says one day she will tell the other characters about her family.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Barnes's robotic-yet-sassy inner monologue and debates with the Mission Imperative side of him is one of the trademarks of the series.
  • Death of Personality: After Barnes makes contact with Steve, it's slowly revealed that Barnes isn't quite the same person as the Bucky-person Steve knew back in the forties and earlier. One of the first differences is that Barnes doesn't like orange juice, while the Bucky-person did. However, later on, Steve decides that Barnes is clearly still his Bucky; Bucky's loyal and steadfast and dedicated aspects are just most prominent in Barnes, rather than the sweet-talking ladies' man everyone saw. This is also discussed in Team Building Exercises, when Thor tells Barnes that there are healers on Asgard that could easily restore Barnes back to what he was before HYDRA got him, ergo, turn him back into the Bucky-person. Barnes considers the offer briefly, until he thinks on the ways he's changed since escaping HYDRA, and the life and identity he built for himself. He wonders if the Bucky-person would like Cat Eleanor, or know how to make the sushi chef at his favorite restaurant laugh, or remember the Olds or how hard he worked to become a person again. In the end, he decides not to accept.
  • Determinator: Barnes will protect Steve. No matter what.
  • Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: Barnes is surprised every time he’s informed that he talks to himself: Mr. Hayashi saying he talks to his soup, Clint asking him whether he knows he yelled at Steve the entire time they were on their first mission together, etc.
  • Dirty Old Woman: Lidia is a downplayed example whose tendencies are limited to Eating the Eye Candy and Played for Laughs, exhibited when she helps Barnes surveil Steve with his sniper scope and muses that she would've bought her own ages ago if she knew it could be used to watch young shirtless men through their own windows, and later when Barnes FaceTimes her and she tells him that she likes him enough to pick up his call while in the middle of watching Magic Mike XXL. And when Sam helps Barnes FaceTime the Olds for the first time, Lidia picks up, and she describes Sam as "that handsome Sam Wilson".
  • Disability Immunity: Barnes's fragmented mental state gives him some resistance to HYDRA code word-induced mind control. The Oh, Crap! moment when some HYDRA jerk tries to control Barnes with his old code words and he just responds with a Slasher Smile is always funny.
  • Doesn't Know Their Own Birthday: Chapter 23 of The Long Road Begins At Home centers around Steve taking Barnes out for an entire day doing Barnes's favorite things from both before the war and after HYDRA. Barnes can't help but enjoy it, but he keeps wondering to himself why Steve's doing all this, until Steve presents him with a cupcake with a lit candle and tells him happy birthday. The entire concept of birthdays wasn't even on Barnes's radar, so he's completely caught off-guard. Back during This, You Protect, he correctly guessed the passcode on Steve's phone to be 0310 (March 10th), Barnes's own birthday, but failed to recall just why those particular numbers were significant to Steve, or that they were even a date.
  • Eating the Eye Candy: Used to humorous effect.
    • Barnes lends the Olds his sniper scope so that they can help him surveil Rogers while he fixes their door. When it's Lidia's turn, she says that if she knew she could watch young shirtless men through their own windows, she would have bought her own ages ago.
    • Steve wearing a tightly-fitted tux leads to plenty of ogling.
    • When Tony badgers Barnes to try out his cool balcony swimming pool, Barnes eventually relents and strips. Completely. And then goes for a swim. Maria Hill is mesmerized by the sight, and for being the scariest person in the Tower by Barnes's standards, that's saying something.
  • Expospeak Gag: Barnes isn't terribly familiar with modern life or culture beyond what he needs to complete his missions, and he discovers new things fairly frequently.
    • Unfamiliar with Coachella and modern etiquette of posing for photos, he deduces from the pictures on Tyler's phone that the young attendees are "suffering from extreme dehydration and heat stroke" because they all had their tongues hanging out.
    • The first time Barnes tries Starbucks, he describes the logo as a woman being devoured by a cephalopod.
    • He overhears Steve singing a song to himself about a "bejeweled lady cosmonaut" through the bugs he's planted around Steve's apartment.
  • Face of a Thug: When Pepper needs to go to a fancy conference in Paris for networking purposes, she asks Barnes to come with her as her bodyguard, describing him as the scariest person she knows. Sure enough, whenever someone gets handsy with Pepper, all he has to do is stare at them and they back away.
  • Fighting from the Inside: Near the end of This, You Protect, a team of HYDRA operatives break into Barnes's apartment to reclaim him. When his neighbors call Steve for help, the leader of the team manages to take control of Barnes using some of his code-words and gets him to point a gun at Steve. Steve gambles his life on Barnes fighting for control and stays put, talking him down, and knowing that he'll die if Barnes succumbs. What finally pulls Barnes through is the sight of Steve's sheep-patterned pajama pants. In defiance of the Mission Imperative shrieking at him to shoot Steve, the Mission Head can't conceive of how a teary-eyed, bedheaded, unarmed, sheep-patterned pajama pants-clad Steve Rogers could possibly be an appropriate target.
  • Flat "What": A non-negligible percentage of Barnes's internal narration consists of just "What.", because Barnes is often confused by human interaction and civilian life in the modern developed world in general. In general, Barnes almost never punctuates his questions interrogatively, which just has the effect of making his narration even drier and funnier.
  • Fun with Acronyms: After Fury's (fake) funeral, Barnes spots Fury visiting his own grave and muses that he'd probably fake his own death too if it turned out he was running "Secretly HYDRA In Every Last Department".
  • Genius Bruiser: Barnes is a highly skilled combatant, as in canon, and when he doesn't have HYDRA frying his brain all the time and gets to act on his own initiative, he's very resourceful.
  • Going Commando: Halfway through The Long Road Begins at Home, Steve tells Natasha to please make Barnes buy some underwear because he's tired of looking at his balls. This implies that HYDRA never let the Asset wear any with his tactical gear, because comfort is mission non-compliant.
  • Golem: When Steve helps Esther carry her groceries and asks if the brisket she bought was for Shabbos (the Jewish sabbath), she seems surprised that he knows what Shabbos is, asks him if he's Jewish, and compares his size to that of a golem.
    "The only Jews I've ever heard of that come in your size are golems. Are you made of magic and clay?"
  • Good Feels Good: Barnes's self-imposed "help out his friends and acquaintances" project.
    Project #2, assist others with identifiable problems, is easier. All it takes is observation and action. He helps Katie lift two heavy sacks of coffee, and after her pen runs out of ink one morning at 0520 and she’s unable to locate a new one at the coffee bar, he takes to carrying two extra pens around wherever he goes. They fit nicely next to a knife, with a few sheets of paper folded carefully behind them, in case Rogers needs to draw. He talks Ollie through replacing the washer in his kitchen faucet via Lidia’s iPad. He takes Barton to the Carp on a bad day. These are positive occurrences, expanding Barnes’s interior sense of quiet.
  • Hates Being Touched: Barnes, in the earlier stories. For a long time, he dislikes hugs and finds most forms of physical contact stressful, with the notable exception of Hair Club working on his hair. This persists until the last three narrative installments of the series, wherein Barnes starts developing feelings for Steve and "changes his mind about touching".
  • Heroic BSoD:
    • When Barnes visits the Howling Commandos exhibit in the Smithsonian, he overhears a pair of women bemoaning a man's death. At first, he thinks they're saying that Steve's dead. Mission Imperative starts shrieking at him for failing his mission, and he feels himself going cold and briefly considers messily killing the woman who offhandedly said that Steve was dead. It turns out that they were talking about Bucky Barnes being dead and how sad Steve must have been; because they're looking at the big glass display about Sergeant Barnes, just like he is.
    • A much milder version that isn't Played for Laughs happens with Sam when Barnes sees Sam's picture of himself posing with his late wingman Riley, and notes that Sam doesn't really smile anywhere near as brightly as he did in that picture. Barnes draws a connection between who Riley was for Sam, and who Barnes himself is for Steve, which knocks Sam off-kilter enough that he has to rush out for a late night walk to pull himself together, hastily claiming he's out of wine (he's not). Barnes bakes him a batch of chocolate chip cookies in apology, and the three chew through the entire batch plus the wine over stories about wingman Riley, long into the night.
    • After a HYDRA operative resets the Mission Imperative from protecting to killing Steve, and Barnes successfully fights it off, the Mission Imperative goes silent for a long time in confusion and hurt. It finally comes back when another operative tries to code-word the Asset, and successfully overrides the codeword so Barnes maintains control.
  • Hidden Depths: Lampshaded and referenced by Hill, when JARVIS orders an extra-fussy English afternoon tea setting as a snack for the team and Clint, who has thus far been shown to be a silly sort of character, unexpectedly gushes over the china and delicately pours everyone tea. Clint tends to have a taste for the finer things- during the same scene, he's outraged that some HYDRA jerk apparently has a lost Vermeer painting in their possession and tries to make arrangements to steal it from them, and he also knows quite a bit about poetry.
  • Important Haircut: When Barnes agrees to bodyguard Pepper, the Tower's in-house barber disguises him by cutting his hair short and shaving his scruffy beard down into an ugly Tony-style goatee that does not work on him at all, which, combined with sunglasses, makes him basically unrecognizable in case there's any HYDRA jerks still out there looking for him. As soon as the detail is over, he completely shaves his beard off, making him look a lot like he did pre-1945. This happens to coincide with the conclusion of the majority of his recovery.
  • Innocent Fanservice Guy: Barnes learns that in the modern day, people generally wear swimsuits when using swimming pools, even on private property, and that swimming pools nowadays are unisex by default. He declines when Steve asks him to put on a swimsuit, not seeing what the deal is, and Maria Hill certainly doesn't complain.
  • I Need a Freaking Drink: In The Long Road Begins at Home, Barnes reveals to Sam that he broke into the latter's house twice by picking the lock on the back door and figuring out the code to his security system. Sam proceeds to fix himself a screwdriver that's half orange juice and half vodka. (The usual recommendation for screwdrivers are two parts orange juice to one part vodka.)
    Flying Sam then performs a strange action. He moves slowly to the refrigerator and removes the orange juice bottle. He calmly reaches down a glass and pours half a glass of juice. He then reaches down a large bottle of vodka from inside the freezer, fills the glass the rest of the way, and drinks the whole thing quickly.
  • In-Series Nickname: The Olds call Barnes "Jimmy" after he introduced himself to Ollie as "Jim Buchanan". Ollie's full name is Oliver Peters.
  • Jewish Mother: Esther is a Jewish grandmother who takes an interest in the lives of her fellow Olds, as well as Barnes and Steve. She has many culinary opinions (and thinks those who disagree with her are wrong), and teaches Barnes how to make his caloriffic snacks. Barnes is invited over for Shabbos with candles, singing, and brisket in This, You Protect.
  • Knee-capping: Barnes's preferred method of dispatching HYDRA agents and anyone else he needs to beat the shit out of is to shoot out or smash their kneecaps. It quickly and thoroughly incapacitates all but the most highly trained combatants while also being nonlethal.
  • Last-Name Basis: Barnes, to himself and most people who aren't Steve or the Olds, when he decides he doesn't want to go by "The Asset" anymore and needs a civilian alias. Steve calls him "Bucky", of course, which slightly bothers Barnes for a while as it refers to someone that he isn't anymore, while the Olds call him Jimmy.
  • Literal-Minded: Barnes, albeit in a slightly different way that suggests that he doesn't quite understand civilian human behavior. For instance, when Steve reminisces about the time when he put a smelt in the Bucky-person's Sunday shoes, Barnes agrees with Bucky getting angry about it- not because it stank the place up and possibly ruined his good shoes, but because aquatic creatures don't belong in footwear.
  • Madness Mantra: A mild version, but Mission keeps shrieking "LOCATE" repeatedly at Barnes while he's on his way to follow Steve to New York like a little kid asking Are We There Yet?, anxious because Steve is out of their observation range. It finally shuts up when Barnes puts his foot down and tells it he will comply "in 3.5 hours", the duration of their train journey.
  • Mind Hive: After Barnes's mission shifted from "kill" to "protect", his mind fragmented into three distinct entities in a similar vein to dissociative identity disorder. The Mission Imperative (the Winter Soldier) gives him all-caps Robo Speak orders that keep him focused on the mission. The Mission Briefing (Bucky Barnes) has access to his memories from before the fragmentation, going all the way back to his childhood, and decides which ones to show him. Finally, the Mission Head (James Barnes) is Barnes's public face, and makes decisions based on the information Briefing gives him, and his orders from Imperative. Head frequently debates and talks with the Imperative and the Briefing, to the point of Head asking the Briefing or the Imperative for clarification or thanking the Imperative for overriding his old HYDRA code words. Although Barnes doesn't have control over what the different parts of him say to him, he can choose how he interprets or acts on their input, or even decline or ignore it altogether. Also mentioned on occasion is a fourth entity that Barnes calls the Asset, which is described as stirring deep within him when it senses violence. When Steve takes Barnes out to a Russian restaurant, the Asset feels content as Barnes samples vodka and eats caviar.
  • Mundane Luxury: Sweets, grilled cheese, and hot baths become Barnes's greatest pleasures.
  • Must Have Caffeine: Barnes loves his mochas. And despite his super soldier physiology, he still demonstrates symptoms of caffeine withdrawal if forced to go without coffee for too long.
  • Mysterious Protector: Barnes's M.O. in This, You Protect toward Steve, overlapping with Stalker without a Crush. Keeping an eye out for lurking HYDRA agents is one thing, but bugging Steve's jackets is crossing a line by most people's standards.
  • Naked People Are Funny: Put simply, Barnes doesn't quite understand modern civilian nudity taboos.
    • Soon after moving into his rickety old Brooklyn apartment, Barnes goes down to the unlit basement to take a look at the washing machine and dryer. After finding that the lightbulb in the basement's just burnt out and that the machines are operational, he breaks off the machines' coin-op mechanisms, does some laundry, and throws the clothes he was wearing into the wash, leaving him standing in a dark basement in nothing but night-vision goggles and combat boots while he waits for his clothes to wash. Luckily, no one walked in on him.
    • Barnes is urged by Tony and Steve to go for a swim in the Tower's rooftop terrace swimming pool, and learns that people in the modern day usually wear swimsuits, even when swimming on private property. Steve protests when asked to join him in the skinny-dipping, but Barnes doesn't see the big deal, since there is a video on YouTube with over 800 million hits of some SHIELD agents undressing a newly defrosted, unconscious Steve down to his birthday suit and ineptly wrestling him into some civvies. Later that day, they all watch it together, much to Steve's mortification.
  • No Indoor Voice: Early chapters describe the Mission Imperative side of Barnes as "shrieking", and the fact that its contributions to Barnes's internal narration are all written in all-caps strongly imply that it's loud and hard to ignore. It does try to whisper sometimes, but it still gets Barnes's attention all the same. For a good chunk of The Long Road Begins at Home, though, Mission speaks in all lowercase letters.
  • No, You: According to Steve, Barnes' drink is not coffee, because coffee is a mild form of punishment. Barnes' inner narration retorts, "You're a mild form of punishment."
  • Not a Morning Person: Barnes is extremely irritated at Steve's habit of going for a morning run at an ungodly early hour. Steve remarks that when Barnes was younger, he'd sleep until noon if allowed.
  • Not So Above It All:
    • Barnes has an occasional petty streak that starts all the way back to the first time he broke into Wilson's house. He realizes with a flash of anger that he's Steve's Bucky. In lieu of punching something, he instead sets the ringtone on Steve's forgotten smartphone to the banjo ringtone he'd come to despise from the cellphone Barnes had pilfered earlier. Unfortunately, this backfires. Steve turns out to like the banjo. He sets it as his alarm clock sound, which Barnes gets to hear through his bugs every day at ass-o'clock in the morning. Whoops.
    • Barnes suspects this of JARVIS after it "subject[ed] him to Stark's ideas" of what constitutes an acceptable email address (all of which are morbid, hilarious, or inappropriate in true Tony Stark fashion) before bringing up "a perfectly reasonable option already available".
  • Odd Friendship: Barnes the socially awkward reformed killer and Pepper the ladylike businesswoman, and between said socially awkward reformed killer and a building (well, technically the AI that inhabits the building).
  • Oh, My Gods!: Barnes tends to use Communist historical figures this way, such as "Thank Marx" or "Jesus, Mary, and Stalin."
  • One-Man Army: Barnes manages to take on an entire base full of HYDRA mooks while only sustaining minor injuries and without killing anybody, except the lady who fell into her own cloud of insta-kill spray.
  • Poor Communication Kills: A downplayed example. After Steve and Barnes came out by getting caught kissing on camera, Lidia texts Barnes "how could you" and does not reply to any follow-up texts. Barnes is so terrified at the thought that the Olds would disapprove of him (and his being in a same-sex relationship) that he goes non-verbal. It turns out Lidia is not homophobic and is actually glad that the boys finally got together. She's just upset that she had to find out via the television instead of firsthand, and has a bad habit of not charging her phone.
  • Power Dynamics Kink: Hill verbally takes some of the Avengers down several pegs, and Natasha likes what she sees.
    "You're a teeny tiny person."
    "Yes, Clint. A teeny tiny person who has worked for years with superheroes despite not having any powers and who was trained by Nick Fury. Who has happened to read both the personnel and psych evals of every person here. I don't need powers or a weapon to take you down. I could do it with eight well-chosen words. For example, the first of your eight words is Blackpool."
    Barton looks pale. Romanoff looks. Lustful.
  • Pragmatic Hero: Barnes is on the lighter end of this trope. He's devoted to his mission of protecting Steve and to "good-guy non-lethal", but if pursuing these goals requires him to commit minor crimes, lie about his identity and backstory, or commit nonlethal violence against Asshole Victims, he will do it and he won't be torn up about it.
  • Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: A Rare Male Example. As the Avengers plus Hill and Barnes are going over some HYDRA files, they ask Barnes about a particular person who shows up in the files. Barnes feels himself dissociating at the sight of the man's photo. After several moments of deep breathing, he manages to force out "sexual sadist", all but stating that this man has sexually assaulted Barnes. Tony calls an end to the meeting so they can all go get drunk to forget about that, and Barnes gives Maria the go-ahead to make that man pay. A few weeks later, a newspaper clipping shows up in Barnes and Steve's tower apartment detailing that man's arrest, charges of multiple counts of pedophilia, and his very long prison sentence. Barnes bakes Hill some macarons in gratitude.
  • Real Men Cook: Bucky Barnes, cybernetically enhanced super warrior and baking enthusiast.
  • Real Men Wear Pink: Barnes takes an interest in styling his long hair, courtesy of Pepper, Natasha, and Hill, forming a little group they call the Hair Club. At one point, pre-contact, he buys a pretty glass French press and threatens to kill the thug who jumps him and makes him drop it, if the thug broke it. He also starts going into battle with his bangs pinned back with a sparkly butterfly-shaped hair clip, and develops a taste for chardonnay.
    Tony: You don’t, I dunno, want to maybe drink something a little more manly?
    Barnes: Why the hell do I need to prove my masculinity.
  • Reformed, but Not Tamed: Barnes, a bit. He's doing his best to be a good guy, including trying not to kill people (not even HYDRA agents), but he is still capable of being a very scary man and threatening all manner of violence when the situation calls for it - such as when helping the Olds with their Jerkass landlord.
  • Returning War Vet: Barnes's cover identity in his New York apartment. The other Olds (plus the Hayashis) don't have a hard time buying it, what with the near-constant haunted look in his eyes, the nightmares, his jumpiness, and his difficulties with civilian life all implying hard military service for the whole of his adult life. It isn't untrue. Mr. Hayashi even tells his daughter, after Barnes rushed out during their first encounter without finishing his soup, that Barnes reminded him of some of the POWs from his childhood in Japan who would keep half the village up with their nightmares, or had to walk into the forest sometimes to find themselves again.
  • Robo Speak: The mission imperative's contributions to Barnes's internal narration consist of single words or short military-sounding phrases typed in all-caps with no punctuation.
    CONFIRM
    DENY
    WITHIN OBJECTIVE PARAMETERS
    LOCATE
    PROTECT
    CONTACT
    OVERRIDE
  • Robot Buddy: Tony has two new ones to replace Dum-E and U: Bite-Size and Hamburger Helper. Bite-Size and Barnes become fast friends when Barnes insists on using gender-neutral pronouns with Bite-Size. Hamburger Helper doesn't appear until Barnes gets severely injured, whereupon it takes to its temporary job of helping Barnes walk and get to the restroom very seriously, and tries to carry him instead.
  • Running Gag:
    • Barnes complains about how terrible Natasha is and calls her a “brat”.
    • Barnes describing pop culture, modern things, and emotional expressions using scientific, analytical terms.
  • Secretly Wealthy:
    • While trying to figure out how to buy Christmas gifts, Barnes has JARVIS wire him some money from some bank accounts known to be associated with HYDRA, for a total amount in excess of $17 million USD. He only uses the money to buy himself some bare essentials, and to do nice things for people like purchasing gifts or making massive anonymous charitable donations, because that's the complete opposite of what HYDRA would do.
    • Barnes was initially concerned Steve didn't have enough money for basic needs. He actually has about 70 years of Army backpay, but continues to live like a normal person even after he's moved into Avengers Tower.
  • Secret Secret-Keeper: The Olds realized who Barnes was after a few weeks of him moving in, but decided to play along and keep his protection of Steve secret.
  • Shame If Something Happened: Barnes' method of getting Michael O'Riley, the Olds' sleazeball landlord, to stop harassing his legal tenants. He threatens to sic the drug runners (who O'Riley lets hole up in his building and inform the police about) on O'Riley's wife and two children.
  • Shell-Shocked Veteran: Barnes is one after 70 years of being HYDRA's property. Mr. Hayashi grew up around veterans who would wake up screaming in the middle of the night, or have to go into the woods to find themselves. Ollie recognized Barnes as a vet with "battle fatigue" (shellshock/PTSD) in their first meeting. Sam, as in canon, works in therapy with veterans. Observing one of Sam's sessions, Barnes notices a woman whose face had the same blank expression as the Asset when she first started talking.
  • Shipper on Deck:
    • When Barnes rediscovers his sex drive in Upgrade: Advanced Happiness Skills, JARVIS discreetly helps him out by including a bottle of personal lubricant in one of Barnes's book orders. Once Steve and Bucky do finally get together, JARVIS continues his assistance by helping them come up with excuses to give the rest of the team when they're "busy", and takes the liberty of ordering a (fictional) book called The Practical Guide to Gay Sex for them, which leads to Steve coming up with a detailed plan for exploring their sexual preferences.
    • The Olds have also shipped Steve/Barnes from the outset, congratulating the boys for finally getting together in A Minor Misunderstanding, Solidarity, and Reunion because Everyone Can See It according to them.
  • Shoot the Television: As Barnes and the Avengers review the data dump Fury sent them, the screen shows the face of one of Barnes' former handlers/abusers and implied rapist, sexual sadist Dieter Graummann. Barnes reflexively punches the screen with his metal hand and has two knives out before he starts thinking again.
  • Shout-Out: A common trope in Avengers fanfiction is team movie nights, and The Long Road Begins at Home is no exception.
    • The Christmas after Barnes makes contact with Steve, the Olds come over to Steve's apartment for Christmas and Lidia really wants to watch Hallmark Christmas movies. Ollie vehemently refuses to watch any garbage about "some poor girl falling in love with a secret prince".
    • Barnes finds a version of A Christmas Carol made with puppets to be surprisingly affecting.
    • After Barnes breaks down and tells Steve and Sam about all of the ways HYDRA abused him, Sam suggests that they spend the rest of the day eating pizza and watching the stupidest movie they can find, which turns out to be a movie about dogs playing basketball. Barnes is certain it's lowered his intelligence.
    • Barnes bakes five dozen peanut butter chocolate chip cookies for the team. When he and Steve bring them up to the common room, the only one there is Clint, who eats them all while watching a movie about people who sing with bows and arrows. Barnes surmises that there might be a bit of a theme going on with Barton.
    • At Barnes's first official Avengers movie night, they agree to watch the Star Wars Original Trilogy on account of Steve not having gotten around to seeing it, either. Barnes notes similarities between Luke Skywalker and Steve, feels some uncomfortable twinges when watching Han Solo get frozen in carbonite, and empathizes with Darth Vader's character journey.
    • For Valentine's Day, they watch a few animated movies. First up is a movie about a little girl working in a magical bathhouse who finds her way home, next is about an alien befriending a lonely child, and the last one is about a robot that chooses to be kind instead of a weapon and saves the world. Barnes finds them all surprisingly affecting. Steve finds the first one's (nonstandard) anime art style strange enough that he actually shuts up for a bit, while the last one inspires Barnes and Steve to sit a bit closer together.
  • Silk Hiding Steel: Pepper Potts, as in canon. She's polite, girly, fairly emotional, and also a skilled multitasking businessperson and negotiator.
  • Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Two examples, both one-sided.
    • Barnes does not like Natasha - there's just something about her that puts him on edge - although they are technically on the same side and never come into open conflict. Natasha likes him fine, however, and they eventually settle into something closer to Vitriolic Best Buds (with the vitriol mostly internal on Barnes' end, because he's not the demonstrative type).
    • Tony Stark dislikes Barnes because the Winter Soldier killed his parents, but instead of seeking revenge (a bad idea because Barnes is pretty popular despite his social issues, and also taking revenge on a guy for what he was brainwashed to do would make Tony look like a jerk), Tony channels his animosity into harmless petty trolling. Barnes refuses to rise to the bait.
  • Slasher Smile: Barnes likes to grin at people who piss him off, which runs the gamut from HYDRA jerks who try pulling his old code words on him, to Tony Stark. (Well, at first.)
    [...] he simply smiles at Stark. Slowly. He thinks about knives while he does it.
    Stark turns pale.
    Nice.
  • Slash Fic: The main installments of the series only depict Steve and Barnes's relationship as a platonic bromance, but the final three short story-length installments take their relationship to the next level, as Barnes starts developing feelings for Steve and Steve confesses that he's had a crush on Bucky since they were teenagers. Those installments, however, still keep perfectly with Barnes's usual Spock Speak voice by being "the most prudish porn you'll ever read".
  • The Speechless: The Mission Briefing side of Barnes is implied to be what's left of "the Bucky-person", and unlike Mission Imperative, it doesn't speak so much as it just shows Barnes memories. And even then, it won't always show Barnes a memory just because he asks. It can be surmised that Briefing aims to protect Barnes from being overwhelmed by 90+ years of memories, most of which are awful, as he tries to piece himself back together and protect Rogers, but beyond that, there's not much that can be discerned about Briefing.
  • Spock Speak: Barnes's inner monologue is a military-flavored ongoing analysis of his surroundings and the events in terms of how they relate to the Mission, only snarkier and peppered with the Mission Imperative shrieking Robo Speak orders at him in all-caps.
  • Sweet Tooth: Before he even has a sense of personal identity beyond The Asset, Barnes develops a taste for white chocolate mochas. He later takes to baking with a vengeance.
  • Supreme Chef: Toshiro Hayashi, the owner and chef of Barnes's favorite restaurant The Lucky Carp, Esther, and later Barnes himself.
  • Talking to Themself: Barnes responds to the other sides of him, which is depicted in a similar fashion to a real-world Dissociative Identity Disorder-style split personality. He mostly only responds within his own head, but according to a short from Steve's POV, he sometimes talks to himself aloud when he's focused on something. Additionally, during the scene in The Long Road Begins at Home where Barnes recounted all of the ways HYDRA abused him, the Mission Head kept pleading with the Briefing and Imperative to stop, fearing that the intel would only hurt Steve, switching between a high, terrified voice that Steve likened to Bucky's childhood voice, and the flat Imperative's tone.
  • Technical Pacifist: Or, as Barnes puts it, "good-guy nonlethal". He goes to great pains to not actually kill anyone, determining that this would distress Rogers and be sub-optimal for the Mission. This results in him shooting out a lot of kneecaps.
    • After he raids the HYDRA base, he even goes so far as to put a tourniquet on a woman's leg so she doesn't bleed to death before the police show up and arrest her along with everyone else in the base. This kind of stuns everyone a bit, HYDRA goons and Avengers alike, because it shows that he's not so messed-up after all.
      HYDRA desk jockey: Oh, Jesus, the Asset's self-actualizing.
    • Unfortunately, this is subverted when Barnes winds up breaking his "good-guy non-lethal" parameters in the sequel. A HYDRA goon knocks Steve's shield aside with a people-vaporizing energy blast, not unlike the kind they employed back in Captain America: The First Avenger. Barnes thinks through just how close Steve came to dying or becoming permanently disabled from that energy blast, and sees red. He charges over to that particular HYDRA goon, disarms him, and then pummels his face into mush.
  • Tempting Fate: Barnes really isn't paranoid because HYDRA really is out to get him. He decided to monitor a tiny real estate agent sent from Stark in person rather than from across the street, because "She's just one lady. It's like she's HYDRA." She really has defected to HYDRA and tries to code-word the Asset. Luckily, Barnes was immediately creeped out by her, and Mission Imperative returns to undo the effect of the codeword.
  • That Man Is Dead: Barnes doesn't really think of himself as the same person that he was before HYDRA picked him up, referring to his pre-1945 self as "the Bucky-person", who, in his book, died when he fell off that train, as well as referring to the Bucky-person in third-person, e.g. "did he" instead of "did I". Sometimes, he fears that Steve wants him to be the Bucky-person again, whether Steve is consciously aware of that or not, and Barnes doesn't feel that it's possible for him to do that now.
  • Tranquil Fury: Barnes, while slaughtering the HYDRA agents.
    The clench of anger in Barnes's chest has released. Inside, he is chill and silence. He is eyes connected to hands connected to triggers. His metal arm windmills, deflecting bullets. Like Rogers's shield. He plows through these assholes like retribution.
  • Trauma Button: Barnes finds that he has a lot, no thanks to HYDRA.
    • He doesn't like it when large quantities of water flow down his face because it reminds him of being hosed off after missions, which is why he sticks to baths for a good while until he starts working out regularly with Steve, and even then, his showers have to be scalding hot.
    • Another one is anything that squeezes both sides of his head, because that's what HYDRA's mind-wipe equipment felt like. Steve suggests sparring to Barnes, and puts boxing headgear and gloves on him, the former of which makes Barnes dissociate and mistake the headgear for the mind-wipe equipment. Barnes thinks he's being threatened with a mind-wipe as punishment for failure and that the boxing gloves are restraints, and he mistakes Steve for a handler and thinks his handler's trying to test him. Knowing what happens when he fails and also realizing that he no longer wants to be with HYDRA and deal with their "tests", he sees red and tries to defend himself against the handler. As a result, he punches Steve so hard he nearly takes Steve's eye out.
    • When Steve suggests that he and Barnes take a little trip down to DC, Steve suggests that they take one of Tony's private jets, because it's more spacious, more private, and comfier than either a car or the train, noting Barnes's claustrophobia and dislike of being around too many people. Unfortunately, the jet winds up tripping a totally different trigger in that its pressurization reminds him of how it felt in HYDRA's cryotube in the seconds between when his body froze and his brain shut down. It makes for a miserable hour, and Steve agrees to take the train back to New York with Barnes when it's time to go home.
    • The sight of Dieter Graummann causes Barnes to snap and break the screen in Stark's conference room. All he said on the subject was that Graummann was a sexual sadist, with the implication that he assaulted Barnes.
  • Town Girls: Maria Hill (more mature downplayed Lad-ette) as the Butch, Pepper Potts (Silk Hiding Steel) as the Femme, and Natasha as Neither.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Barnes loves grilled cheese sandwiches. Cookies are a close second: at one point, he muses that if Esther ever made her peanut butter cookies for Steve, Barnes might actually consider breaking his mission to steal one. On the liquid front, he likes the three-shot, two-pump white chocolate mocha with extra whip.
  • Unfortunate Names: The Asset decides to rename himself to Barnes. It's a normal, civilian name that would prevent him from being distracted because "Asset" sounds like "Asshat" and would "inspire derision".
  • Verbal Tic: Barnes refers to some characters with their designation and name. Cat Eleanor, Flying Sam, Building JARVIS, mission-assist [NAME], green-thing Hulk, etc.
  • When He Smiles: Pre-contact, whenever Steve gets to see Barnes, he smiles so brightly that Barnes refers to it as the "sunrise smile". Barnes wants to make Steve smile the sunrise smile as much as he can. Much later, he sees Sam's picture of him posing with Riley and describes Sam's smile in that picture as his version of the sunrise smile, and that he also hasn't ever seen Sam smile like that.


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