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In her defense, it's a tear-your-hair-out busy day in the SHIELD medical wing, and she's slightly frazzled and he's very cute. Not that her nursing skills are slipping one bit, thankyouverymuch. Allie may be a bit of an airhead when it comes to everything else, but she knows the human body damn well. That's why SHIELD hired her.

"All stable?" Lynn asks as Allie emerges from the room where she's just finished checking on the field agents they've decided to keep for observation following contact with some sort of gaseous weapon.

"Yup." She shoots her supervisor a good-natured if slightly tired smile. It's shaping up to be one of those days; not quite noon, and her fitbit has already vibrated to tell her that she's met her step goal. "And complaining about being stuck here."

"Tough luck." The head nurse pushes a set of vials into her hand, already walking away to attend to her next task. "Go draw these from James in E-3 before the poor boy passes out, will you? We told him not to eat and then left him waiting all morning."

"Yes ma'am." Allie grabs a bottle of fruit punch from under the desk in the nurses' station and pokes her head in the door of exam room three. "James? Blood draw?"

James nods, abandoning his apparent counting of the ceiling tiles and straightening. "Yup." He looks about thirty, with dark brown hair that would probably brush his shoulders if it weren't in a ponytail, contrasted by bright blue-gray eyes. Instead of a uniform, he's wearing jeans and an "I heart NY" hoodie, his right sleeve already pushed up, the cuff straining to stretch enough to encircle his bicep.

"Sorry about the wait. We got slammed with emergencies this morning." Allie apologizes, setting down the vials and juice and retrieving supplies from the cabinets. "Let me get you taken care of so you can go get some food and enjoy your day off. Er. Well. You look like it's your day off." Lovely, she's babbling a little. Okay, yeah, he's uncommonly cute for an agent. That's no excuse. She's either had too much coffee or not enough.

"It is." He confirms, fixing his gaze on the opposite wall as she ties the tourniquet and wipes down the inside of his elbow with alcohol. Aw. He seems a bit shy and not entirely comfortable with needles. Not exactly what she would expect from a field agent, but with those muscles he must be one.

"Any fun plans?" She tries to keep him talking to distract him.

"My friends are all out of town, so I'll probably stay in and read."

The needle does not want to go into his damn vein. "Oh?" She asks, trying to be gentle about trying again and hoping he doesn't realize she's having trouble. "Reading anything good at the moment?"

"My friend gave me a copy of The Martian for my birthday. I haven't started it yet, but the summary sounds good." Although Allie is staring intently at his arm and that vein that she's trying to spear for the fifth time, she can hear the faintest smile in his voice. Boys and their science fiction. Or at least she assumes from the title that it's science fiction.

"I haven't heard of that one. What's it about?" God, this fucking vein!

He winces slightly. Okay, he's definitely aware that she's struggling, but he's gentleman enough not to say anything about it. "Astronaut gets stranded on Mars, has to figure out how to survive until he can get rescued."

This isn't working. Allie sighs in defeat. "I'm sorry, your vein isn't cooperating. Are you sure this is the arm you usually have blood draws from? Maybe I should try the other."

James gives her a strange look. "Sure." He says drily. "If you can find it in a ravine in Europe somewhere."

Allie starts and then blushes as red as the lettering on her patient's sweatshirt. His other arm—hand kept tucked out of sight in his sweatshirt pocket this whole time, now that she thinks about it—is a prosthetic. Of-fucking-course it is. "I'm so sorry! Lemme keep trying." It just has a realistic silhouette because SHIELD makes really fancy prosthetics. Like Director Coulson's. That's probably why James isn't on duty right now. He must've lost his arm on an op and still be learning to use his new prosthetic. She feels like a total ass now.

Luckily, eighth time is the charm, and the needle goes in on the next try. "There we go. Sorry about that." She should keep him talking, to keep his mind off the needle. But what does she even say after that awkward little exchange? "So, um, you like science fiction, huh? I bet you get a kick out of all the superheroes and mutants and aliens that we keep finding lately."

"It is kind of cool." He admits, but his demeanor is definitely changed. He's gone back into his shell.

"You ever get to work with any of them?"

"A few."

"Wow, how was that?"

"Scary."

It's probably just as well that she's finished, because he doesn't seem inclined to start relaxing with her again. "You're all set. Here, have some fruit juice to tide you over until you get to proper food, and be careful not to stand up too quickly."

He nods and accepts the bottle. "Thank you."

Allie is in the hall trying to argue one of the gassed agents back to bed a minute later when she sees James out of the corner of her eye, holding the door on his way out for an agent on crutches. The agent she's talking to freezes and stares over her shoulder, jaw dropping. "Holy shit. Is that the Winter Soldier?"

Allie slowly looks down at the label on the vials still in her hand. Barnes. Barnes, James B. As in Captain America's friend Bucky Barnes. As in the Winter Soldier. Holy shit indeed. Cute. Shy. Polite. Needle phobia. Messy ponytail. "I heart NY" hoodie. Winter Soldier?! She's going to need more coffee to get her head around this.

It probably goes without saying that the shyness and discomfort with needles is actually mostly-concealed PTSD and social anxiety as a result of his years with Hydra.