It had been another long week for Bucky, which was a surprise considering there were no magical mishaps, ghosts appearing, or random powers now going around. No, his exhaustion came from his job- maybe it was the monotony, or maybe he just was counting down the days until Spring Break, but for whatever reason, he had been exhausted Friday night. He had been looking forward to spending Friday in the apartment, maybe pitching in for a pizza with Steve and watching ‘old’ movies (old to some people, anyway).
Fate didn’t seem to have that in store for him, though. Steve had gone out and James hadn’t heard from Yelena or Nat all day. Bucky had figured it was another quiet night in for him when he stepped into the living room to find his red-haired roommate already there. It was a pleasant surprise, though.
“Hey. Fancy meeting you here.” Had he used that line before? Probably. But he’d be damned if it wasn’t the truth.
Natasha was enjoying her job but sometimes it was challenging. Granted, the school she’d gone to had been run by the KGB except for those few years in Ohio, and sassing the teachers was something you knew better than to do, but these kids took sass to a whole new level. She had to work really hard to reign in her temper but so far, she was managing it. Even if she did end up going to the gym and beating the shit out of a bag to get it out of her system some days.
She had decided to stay home Friday night, ordering Chinese takeout and reading. She could have gone out with Yelena but she thought some time at home was in order. However, when Bucky came in, she couldn’t help but smile. She didn’t mind in the least that he was there too even if she wasn’t going to tell him that. “Hey you,” she said. “Yeah, I didn’t feel like going out tonight. Though I’d order Chinese and hang out here. You want some? Do you even like Chinese?” Natasha realized there were a lot of little things she didn’t know about him and that was one of them.
Bucky knew a thing or two about the stressors of this job. There had been more than a few times he’d been tempted to break his desk after talking to a student, but he was getting better at keeping his cool over the past year (or at least, keeping his cool in front of the kids). That didn’t mean the snark didn’t get under his skin sometimes, and a part of him wondered if this was some sort of karmic revenge for how he once was as a student.
Probably not.
The smile was what did him in. He paused for a moment, taking in the food containers and the woman with the book and who was he to refuse? “I can tolerate it,” he said with a smile, wondering if she had any idea of how much Chinese food he’d eaten living in New York before this. Probably not.
Heading to the kitchen to grab a plate, he tried to start with small talk, offering to grab her a drink from the fridge before heading over to sit down and start filling his plate. “So uh…what are you reading?”
“Chinese doesn’t get any better than San Francisco and the place I usually order from gives me free egg rolls because I order in Mandarin,” she laughed. Sometimes knowing multiple languages was good for something. “I’m almost embarrassed to admit what I’m reading. Confessions of a Shopaholic. I should have said some highbrow, academic thing but nah, I’m reading Chick Lit. It was one of those zone out days.”
She put down the book and watched him as he got his food. It surprised her how easily she’d gotten used to his presence. She didn’t see Steve that much, Yelena usually had plans so a great deal of the time, it was her and Bucky. Considering they’d only known each other casually before, he was quickly becoming one of her favorite people to hang out with.
“That’s the trick, huh?” He smirked at her as he started to load his plate with noodles. “I wonder what I get if I order my next pizza in Italian.” Probably a confused teenager on the other end, but it was amusing either way. As he fished for a good piece of chicken with his chopsticks he gave her a look at the name of the book. That was a thing?
“Can’t say I’ve heard of it. Any good?” He wasn’t one to judge. He was around when Tolkein wasn’t exactly considered ‘high class’ literature. And he’d also be pained to admit the kind of pop trash he read as a kid (but it wasn’t like they had a television when he was growing up).
If pressed, James would admit the same thing. He hadn’t really had a chance to get to know her before this, and he was slowly realizing that had become one of his major regrets in their old life. He’d always assumed there would be time, but things moved quickly after he was finally deprogrammed and then she was gone. At the time, he mourned her as a colleague. Now, though, he was just glad she was here and they had a second chance.
“Yeah, it’s not bad. Sometimes you just want to read something that doesn’t make you think. Like when you’ve had a long day at work or something shitty happens, it helps to just do something mindless,” she laughed. “And it’s better than beating stuff up although I’ve been known to do that too and sometimes that’s what you need but this wasn’t a beating stuff up day.” No, today she was just tired and didn’t want to do anything other than sit at home.
“Damn, people would think we were so boring, sitting here with nothing going on. Not saving the world, or getting into trouble, just being ordinary people. It’s not all that bad, you know?” God knew they’d both done their share of both good and bad. They certainly deserved a little normal.
He chuckled as he ate and gave her a half-shrug. No. It wasn’t that bad. “You still haven’t heard about why I’m no longer allowed in the school gym, have you?” Maybe she had. He knew the students liked to spread that story- how the history teacher had beaten the shit out of one of the practice bags and basically launched it across the room and almost hit the gym teacher.
It was why the school needed a new gym teacher, actually.
But that was months ago. James smiled at her. “Sometimes boring’s nice, though. I spent years dreaming of boring. Boring people don’t know how good they have it.”
“I’ve had a couple of students ask me if I knew you when they saw us talking one day in the hall but they didn’t say why,” she had suspected there was a story behind it because of the way the kid had said it but she hadn’t been able to find out exactly what. “I can get information out of just about anyone in the world but I swear to god, teenagers are a completely different thing. I haven’t been able to find out anything so you might as well tell me.” She took a bite of lo mein and then smiled once she had swallowed. “Spill, Barnes.”
“Yeah? What did you tell them?” He was genuinely curious about what Natasha Romanoff might be saying about him to the kids. He’d tried to keep it mysterious for now, but sometimes, he felt like his past was an open secret. Who hadn’t heard of the Winter Soldier? How could they not put two and two together?
“Teenagers are the worst,” Bucky chuckled and shrugged. “But I can’t say our job is ever boring, right?” He sat back, considering which version of the story to tell her. Then, he went for the easy one.
“I punched a hole in the wall.” There it was. The simple version. “Technically, I punched through the wall and into the math class, which is what really got me in trouble.”
She laughed and nearly choked. “Oh hell, you didn’t?” It wasn’t hard to imagine honestly and she could see how he might have done that. “And all I heard was that it was a good idea not to piss you off. Didn’t have a clue why they said that but I knew that it wasn’t a good idea to piss you off anyway.”
Bucky chuckled a little awkwardly at the confirmation, looking down in embarrassment as she mentioned that bit. “Yeah….kind of embarrassing. And here I was thinking I was in control,” he half-joked but there was a seriousness to it. A regret.
He hated losing control like that, but sometimes the Soldier lingered.
Changing the subject, he looked back at her and smiled a little bit. “So, when’s the big show?”
Natasha heard the tone in his voice and she understood. She knew what it was like to fear a part of yourself that you had thought was long buried. “You are in control,” she said quietly, looking him in the eye. “You had a bad moment. Everyone has them. If I ever think something’s slipping, you know I’d tell you, don’t you? Because I would.”
If there was anything Natasha was good at, it was changing the subject. “We haven’t even picked out a musical yet. It’ll be after spring break, probably early April. That’s what they told me they usually do. Nobody can agree right now. The theatre department usually puts out three or four suggestions and lets the students vote. They aren’t brave enough to let the students pick their own, god only knows what we’d get.”
“Sometimes,” he sighed and tried not to dwell on it. His voice had gone quiet for just an instant, glad as soon as she moved on with him. He’d heard it all before- it wasn’t his fault, he wasn’t himself. It didn’t matter. The guilt would always linger.
And the programming, somehow, remained. No one could control him, but that muscle memory was still there.
“Kind of makes me miss the days of Cole Porter, doesn’t it?” He grinned. “Can’t go wrong with Anything Goes.”
Natasha perked up at the suggestion. “Oh that’s a good one!” She leaned over the arm of her chair and grabbed a pad of paper that was there. “I had completely forgotten it. It’s got a big cast so there would be plenty of parts, the choreography might be kind of difficult but we could switch it up….” she was talking to herself as she scribbled, and then she started laughing. ‘I’m sorry, I just kind of went off on a tangent,” she said. “But I’ll mention it at the next meeting we have. I think it’ll be fun and the kids should broaden their horizons.”
“You’re telling me you actually know what I’m talking about, huh?”
To be honest, Bucky was surprised that Natasha had heard of the show, let alone was familiar with any of it, but he also felt strangely proud about it. He chuckled as she wrote it down, chewing slowly and studying her face. It was interesting. The Natasha he’d remembered from their old life seemed so different to him- stoic, sarcastic, always with the weight of the world on her shoulders.
Back then, he would venture to say they all felt that way. Here? Here was different. Not for the first time, he was grateful for that.
“Just don’t tell them it was my idea. Unless they like it.”
She laughed. “Your secret is safe with me. Now hand over the eggrolls.” Natasha grinned and held out her hand. This was turning out to be a fun night, after all.