Steve/Bucky, post-TWS, Natasha POV
Natasha Romanoff, The World’s Best Spy herself, was on a secret mission: find a date for Captain America. It seemed to be more difficult than she had thought. Her first step was to raise Steve’s attention to one of her friends, a sweet girl really, but he answered by simply saying he didn’t have time to date. Natasha made note of that: he has to know her already.
She couldn’t help that her brain had wandered to Agent Carter first. She would’ve been perfect in every possible way, and Natasha could see that Steve knew this, but unfortunately that ship had sailed, just as painfully for Steve as for Peggy. The highly respected woman had grown old, lived another life, an alternative without Steve, and now she and her gray hair was lying in her deathbed (as it is custom for normal, not-frozen people).
Natasha stepped out of the elevator, and silently sneaked into the corner of one of the Avenger tower’s rooms. The Winter Soldier ‒ James ‒ was sitting on a chair with a straight back and looking ready for anything. Steve was clenching the back of the chair and leaning over the other man, their faces close to each other’s. He was talking with a muffled sort of whisper.
Natasha realized she’d been sneaking out of habit again, so she quickly said hello as if she’d just walked in. Steve immediately straightened and jerked his head up, and James assumed attack position right away.
“Jesus, Nat,” sighed Steve, then turned to James. “Buck, this is Natasha. Remember? She’s with us.”
Natasha narrowed her eyes suspiciously. She still wasn’t convinced that confiding in an assassin who had presumably caused all the mysterious casualties of the last fifty years was a smart idea. Although with steely firmness, the man was eyeing her with a similar uncertainty through the little gap his greasy hair provided.
Never turning away, Natasha sat down on the couch across from them but still keeping her distance from James. Her attention stayed on him for a little while more, then wandered on to Steve, and she tried on a half-smile. “You haven’t managed to wash his hair all this time?”
Steve scratched his naple. “I haven’t thought of that. By the way, I don’t think he appreciates being talked about like he’s not here.” Steve looked at him staring at the floor still in a soldier-like position, and sighed. “Bucky, sit down,” he said as softly as he could. The man lowered back onto the chair. “Listen, Buck, can you wash your hair?”
He stared up at Steve, confused, and got an accepting smile in return.
“I’ll try tonight,” said Steve, turning to Natasha.
She nodded. He definitely didn’t have time to date. The ideal person was somebody he already knew.
“There’s that blondie. She works here.”
“I don’t have time to date. Does anyone want coffee?”
Natasha nodded again, then looked at the black cloud sitting across from her. Steve’s friend. Steve wanted him to be here. So Natasha made an effort occasionally, for Steve.
“Джеймс.” The man jerked his head up as if he’d been turned on. “Кофе?”
He replied in Russian. Natasha looked up at Steve whose face was suddenly filled with sadness. “I think you should make him one. Just to show him that not everything’s a duty.”
Steve agreed and turned away. Natasha got up and followed him. “Steve, don’t worry. I know it seems like he’s only reacting to Russian‒”
“We grew up in Brooklyn. He’s as American as it gets. And now he’s only reacting to a language he’s been trained to. Of course I’m worried.”
“You’ve got huge faith in him, Steve. He’s here because of you. He’s not dead because of you. If you really think he’s worth saving, it’ll be you who saves him.”
Steve sighed. “I know, gotta be patient.”
The next day, Steve showed up with a scratch under his right eye. He was followed by James and his shiny, stylishly parted, and effortlessly flowing hair. Those present in the room were seemingly contemplating if they should ask about it or not. Finally Natasha took the matter into her own hands.
“I see the hair washing effort was successful.” It seemed like the team members went through an “aha” moment in unison. It also seemed they were kind of grateful.
Steve smiled at his Bucky softly. “I could be a hairdresser.”
And to the team’s utter surprise, James let out a sound very similar to laughing. In fact, he replied too: “When you’re not saving the world, that is.”
Steve chuckled as he briefly patted the man’s flesh-and-bone shoulder, then walked further into the room and stopped beside Natasha.
“I have no idea what you’ve done to him but congratulations,” she whispered. “He might not be completely hopeless after all.” Steve, still looking at James, just smirked.
So, Natasha summed up her mental notes, Steve’s ideal partner would be someone already past the get-to-know phase to not have to spend a lot of time on that.
“There’s that nice receptionist girl. You chat with her every morning while drinking your coffee. That’s basically a date.”
Steve tore his gaze from the man standing in the door, and looked at her. “I appreciate the effort, Nat, but I really don’t have time to date. If she can’t save the world with me, she doesn’t really stand a chance.”
Although he was joking, Natasha could see the truth in that. The woman on Steve’s side had to be someone he was working with day after day. She scanned through the team and suddenly came to a realization: they were all men. She didn’t discard the idea because she couldn’t imagine Steve with a man ‒ she could, in fact ‒ but because she didn’t think Steve could imagine himself with a man. After all, he’d grown up in an age when that sort of thing had been illegal.
And Peggy, of course, was out of the picture. So only one option seemed to remain: Natasha. Even though she’d always seen Steve as a friend, now she tried to disregard that; he obviously had a ton of attractive qualities both outside and inside, but he definitely wasn’t her usual “type.” However ‒ she thought about it briefly ‒ she could be attracted to him once she got used to this new point of view.
The next time she gave it another go, the two of them were sitting in a car. She’d successfully managed to make the conversation a bit deeper before she threw in the well-aimed question: “Who do you want me to be?” Steve’s answer was both relaxing and devastating at the same time. “My friend.”
She could see that Steve wasn’t okay. Yes, the stuff with James had certainly stirred things up, but there was something else too. She saw an emptiness in him that she’d registered as the lack of romance and intimacy, and that she, as his caring friend, was ready to help to fill. But she couldn’t spot any other ideal partners as of now ‒ maybe she could come up with another way to just cover the emptiness for a while…
Occasionally, Natasha forgot to turn off her “spy function” inside the tower. She truly had no intentions of interfering in the personal lives of others, this was more of a mere occupational disease; nevertheless, this resulted in her becoming an ear-witness to lots of discussions that intended to be private. For the second time today, for example. The previous one had happened between Tony and Pepper, and it really wasn’t interesting enough to listen to. It had been one of those little meaningless fights of theirs again. This, on the other hand, was interesting.
“So I thought that, you know… maybe this reminds you of‒ I mean I don’t know if it helps or not, I just thought maybe… I know it means a lot to me, so I hoped that maybe for you too…” Steve was stuttering. Natasha had never heard him this hesitant before.
“A photo,” stated James.
“Do you remember this night?”
“You’re smaller here.”
“Yes… The picture was taken when you organized that date with those girls. We went to the Stark Expo. Remember?”
“I was always protecting you,” said James.
Steve sighed and whispered: “I know.” Then he chuckled. “Didn’t make a difference though. Do you remember the ending of that date?”
James let out a solid laugh he was getting so good at. “You’re such a dork.”
“Oh Buck…”
Natasha heard the rustle of clothes and movement which made her form the deduction that the guys were hugging. She also assumed the conversation came to an end, so she silently slid away in the direction from which she’d come from.
“Bucky, listen to me,” spoke Steve with arms in the air. “Put the knife down. No one wants to hurt you.”
“I fell victim to your stubborn friend’s sound reasoning, otherwise I wouldn’t be here,” muttered Tony in the corner, rubbing the spot on his neck where he’d been punched. The cables he’d been holding were now scattered across the floor.
James was standing behind the chair like a great cat ready to jump. His recovery had been progressing surprisingly smooth and fast, but he’d been triggered every once in a while which made him switch back to the robot/Winter Soldier mode, thus getting reminded of his original mission to kill Steve.
Fortunately, the number of these episodes had been decreasing, thanks to the therapy plan worked out by Steve and Tony.
Steve was blinking at Natasha desperately. She confidently shook her head and motioned at his direction encouragingly. She’d realized that Steve was in fact very much capable of calming James down; she’d realized that he only reacted to Russian so quickly because he’d been getting his commands in that language. However, the point of this whole thing was to wipe that programming out of his brain: no more commands ‒ he wasn’t a computer, after all. That’s why Natasha had decided to never talk to him in Russian again (however happy she’d been to be able to finally use her native language again, even if their conversations had been mostly one-sided).
Steve turned back to James. “Bucky, it’s me, Steve. Remember our little apartment we were renting in Brooklyn? It was so small that we had to sleep on one mattress… ehm, and we were lucky if we had enough for money for just one meal. You kept putting the change in that little ceramic bowl on the top shelf. You said it was to keep us from using it up. We only climbed up there as a last resort.”
James’ so far straight face now started to turn sad as the memories of penniless months and years were crawling back to him, so Steve began to search for better tales. “Remember the pharmacy on the corner? However busy you’ be, you’d always make sure to pick up my medications. You know, I always thought that it was because you liked the afternoon cashier girl, but then…”
James’ muscles relaxed a bit and his face went softer. Steve, looking slightly embarrassed, glanced at the team behind his back, then proceeded more quietly after a resigned sigh.
“And there was that Christmas… Remember that Christmas, Buck? I’d been gathering all my spare change for that gift, even though I knew I couldn’t afford it. And then you had to give it back, and I was so ashamed, but you said that it was okay… And you bought me a‒”
“‒new inhaler,” said James. The knife slipped from his fingers and dropped on the floor with an awakening thud. The smile on his face quickly turned into dread as he slowly came to realize he’d attacked the people who’d been just trying to help.
“Exactly.” Steve smiled at him calmingly. “You’ve always been taking care of me.”
“Stupid gift,” stated James, and going around the chair, he sat down. “Yours was better.”
Steve kind of blushed.
Natasha felt unnecessary there but didn’t clear her throat to prevent the possibility of scaring James. She glanced at Tony who was now carefully approaching the guys with the cables in his hands. The electroshock therapy designed by Stark and tailored specifically to James had been gradually proving to be very successful, and Steve had been getting more and more hopeful about the man’s memories after each session.
Of course, Tony wasn’t able to move as quietly as Natasha, so Steve heard his steps. He turned around. “Maybe it’s better if I do it. Just tell me what and where,” he said as he grabbed the cables from Tony. “Buck, I’m gonna put these on you now, okay?”
James nodded.
The unlimited power of our loved ones is never to be underrated when it comes to our recovery.
Steve cleared his throat. “Anyways, I’m glad you remember that Christmas. It means a lot.”
James hummed, then asked: “What happened with Agent Carter?”
Natasha pressed up against a wall behind a door as the two men walked past her.
“Bucky… A lot of years have passed. Peggy’s grown old.” Steve’s voice sounded sad.
“I’m sorry.” James’ voice was dry.
“The most important thing is that now I got you.”
Natasha couldn’t hear the rest of the conversation ‒ if there was one at all ‒ because the men moved past earshot. She slid out from behind the door and headed to one of the rooms. A realization started to take shape in her head. She was well aware of her freshly formed plan’s level of disrespect, but felt obliged to execute it. She had that mission, after all, to get a date for Captain America…
So that night, after making sure the man was already inside, Natasha sneaked up to James’ room, feeling half proud and half ashamed. There was only silence for a while. When she was actually starting to believe she’d been wrong, suddenly a sound of distant footsteps appeared and began to grow louder and louder.
Natasha, being the remarkable spy she was, quickly copied and pasted herself on the ceiling.
Steve stepped out of the room, and carefully looked around before closing the door behind himself. Natasha smiled confidently.
After Steve disappeared at the end of the corridor, she waited a few more minutes, then popped off from the ceiling, and started to make her way to her own room. But then she heard the returning footsteps. Desperately scanning the place for a hiding spot, the only option she finally deemed manageable was the oleander on the other side. Although she tried to hide as best as she could, she was very much hoping, for the sake of both of their conscience, that Steve was enough under the spell of James’ presence.
He appeared on the corner and hurried to James’ door. There was one thing Natasha had not mentally prepared for though, and it was the sight of the lube and box of condoms in Steve’s hand. He quietly knocked. The door sprung open, and Natasha could only see a metal arm clenching Steve’s t-shirt ‒ and him smiling ‒, using it to pull him into the room. The door closed with a faint poof.
It seemed that her suspicion had just been confirmed. And she would definitely have to digest the unsolicited propositions of her imagination.
Now Natasha had been contemplating the hows and whens of her confronting Steve that she knew about him and James.
First she’d tried to come up with it during lunch, but then Tony had popped up, followed by Clint and soon the others too. She would’ve tried again during a mission but Steve was out of the helicopter and falling in the air before she could’ve said anything.
The next morning she firmly grabbed Steve’s arm and pulled him aside from the receptionist girl with whom he’d been talking to while drinking his coffee. But when she opened her mouth, there was an unmissable shout from Tony, so they rushed into the room where they found the man on all fours, scrubbing the rug with a towel, and James standing beside him, with eyes fixed on the floor.
“This is an expensive carpet,” grunted Tony.
“I’m sorry,” said James.
Tony hissed resignedly, stopped scrubbing, and instead started to pick up the pieces of the mug. “Not that I can’t buy a new one, but you know, I would prefer you keep control over your arm or not drink coffee while standing on carpets. Thanks.”
Steve moved closer to James, touched his hand, and whispered something that Natasha couldn’t hear because of the distance between them. They looked cute together, truth be told.
Shaking her head, she spun around, and headed to the elevator.
Passing by the reception, she smiled at the girl Steve had been drinking coffee with, and wondered if she was just thinking of it as an act of kindness or was expecting something more from him. Probably the latter, although she must be awfully delighted by just the mere opportunity to talk to Captain America himself.
Natasha stepped outside and lit a cigarette.
She’d used to love to feel the warmth of the fire while inspecting the snowy landscape in her fur coat ‒ this habit had been altered since, as there was no snowy landscape or fur coat anymore, thus making the warmth of the fire less important as well. But for some reason she kept the habit itself, maybe because this was the only thing she had left that reminded her of home; she insisted on her cigarettes imported from Russia.
“Беломорканал?” said James, suddenly appearing beside her. There was a Lucky Strike hanging from between his lips.
“Still the best cigarette brand,” nodded Natasha, answering the question. “I’ve never seen you smoke.”
“I don’t,” said James. Upon seeing Natasha’s raised eyebrow, he added: “I rarely do. I need it now.”
“Don’t worry about the carpet. I bet Stark sleeps on pillows filled with money.”
There was a moment of silence, then James spat out: “I just don’t want to disappoint Steve. Again. It feels like I’m disappointing him. I’m not recovering fast enough. There’s still a lot I don’t remember.”
“Look, you can’t rush it. But I think you’re doing fine. And Steve… he’s so damn blind when it comes to you that I guess he’d only be disappointed if you didn’t even want to get better.”
James stared into the distance, puzzled. They hadn’t really been talking, the two of them, so it hadn’t even crossed Natasha’s mind to share that specific piece of information with him instead of Steve.
“You know,” Natasha started, “this 21st century is unbelievable. Much freer than your age was, I imagine.”
“‘S a shame you can’t smoke indoors anymore,” said James with a disappointed tone. “And girls get offended so easily because of some comments…”
With a devious little smile, Natasha threw away her cigarette and stepped on it. “Does Steve know you’re complimenting girls?” And with that, she was gone, headed back into the tower, leaving a very confused James behind.
The following morning Natasha marched into the building with her usual, perfectly made hair and a cup of coffee in one hand, smiled at the receptionist girl, and targeted the elevator. Just a few sips of her drink, and she was already on the right floor, so she headed to the room where they held their morning meeting, when suddenly she felt a hand on her arm.
Her attention snapped to the person she was immediately planning on kicking in the head, but then she registered that it was only Steve.
“Oh, sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” Steve started apologizing.
“It’s too early,” she said.
Steve motioned sideways. “Can we talk?”
Natasha raised an eyebrow and smiled, but followed him to one of the corners.
“So, uhm, Bucky told me that you… uhm, Nat, whatever you might be thinking, it’s not true…”
She let Steve’s stuttering go on for a little while with a grin on her face before cutting in at some point. “You convinced people back then with this too?”
Steve’s head had been getting pinker but now it turned downright red. “I… this isn’t‒”
“Look, I told James too, people are much more accepting in the 21st century. It’s not perfect but you two will be fine. I’m sure as hell nobody’s gonna say a bad word about this here. Look.” Natasha pulled out her phone, typed in a few words, and held the device up in front of Steve. “People are writing stories about gays! And about the straights too. It’s called fanfiction. There are quite a few about you too, actually… in several pairings.”
Steve kept swiping the screen down with widened eyes. “Oh no, no, we’re not doing that!” He grimaced at one of the stories he started to read, then with a shake of his head, he passed the phone back to Natasha.
He was eyeing her for a while with a puzzled look on his face, and he wanted to ask how she knew about him and Bucky, but finally decided against it. Unnecessary. Natasha simply knows. And turns out, it was okay. They were safe.
“Of course I’ve done bad things…” blushed Steve.
“Just say one,” said Tony, heading towards the Avengers tower.
“Okay, so there was this coat in a store that Bucky would always stop in front of. One time while he was at work, I went inside to check the price tag on the coat. I knew I could never save enough money to buy it even if they’d put it aside for me for months, so I was pretty beat-down about that.” Steve kicked a stone that would land after about a mile of low flying. “I sat down in front of the store, and an old lady sat down beside me. She looked like someone of at least some level of wealth. She asked about it and I told her everything. How much Bucky liked that coat, and the old one having holes in it and not being warm enough anyway, and how I’d never be able to afford it, and that Bucky would have to make do with the cheapest, again, still… We were sitting there for about half an hour, talking. When I got up, she insisted on walking me home, even though I told her I wasn’t living far from there. Then I got a package a week later with the coat in it. That was my gift for Bucky that Christmas.”
“As heart-warming it might be,” said Sam, “it doesn’t count as a bad thing.”
“A few days later it turned out she’d stolen the coat.”
“The only bad deed of the flawless Captain America isn’t really bad. On the contrary, it’s sweet, actually,” stated Tony. “Why am I not surprised?”
“Romantic,” added Sam.
“Okay, guys, flawless is a bit of an overstatement,” laughed Steve. “Consider my one true sin and crime…” His eyes wandered off to the distance.
Sam wrinkled his forehead. “Which is…?”
Tony nodded forward with a smirk.
Not far from them, three figures were coming their way: Natasha, Clint, and James, eating a donut. When the two rows passed each other, Steve stopped, stepped in front of his Bucky, and stole a bite of his dessert with a perky smile. James smiled back at him with those sweet lips of his which Steve just couldn’t resist, so he leaned in and kissed the man’s sprinkle-stained mouth, then caught up to Tony and Sam with long steps.
“This 21st century isn’t so bad sometimes.”
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