. (differentcall) wrote in districtmarvel, @ 2015-12-23 21:56:00 |
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Entry tags: | bucky barnes, natasha romanoff, steve rogers |
Who: Natasha, Bucky, and Steve
Where: Natasha's penthouse-also the car on the way there.
When: Immediately following Clint's anniversary party.
What: Keeping up appearances, selling the lie, everything is gross, etc.
If it were up to Natasha, she would have simply shoved Steve out the other side of the car doors and directly into oncoming traffic once she'd given the driver her address. Anger was not an extremely productive emotion; she knew that. It could save your life in a pinch, it could make you fight back, stand up straighter, hit harder, but when it came to political maneuvering and machinations, it didn't do much but muddy the waters. And Natasha was very good at political maneuvering, manufacturing stories and rumors and using flash and dazzle to misdirect. She'd gotten them out of that one neatly. Put on a show, but it had been a good kind, the right kind, the kind everyone always hoped they'd encounter at a party, and it would be spreading around like wildfire.
Which was only one of the contributing reasons why she felt the finger-itching urge to shove Steve into oncoming traffic. Because he never fucking learned, because he had no self control, because he never just put himself in the shitty position, he always dragged other people into it with him, willingly or not. She hadn't gotten to say one goddamn word to Clint, on a night that - even if he hadn't wanted her to be there, it would still matter to him that she'd come, that she'd seen the obstacle course, that she thought no less of him on the other side of it, and now there was nothing to be done for it. There was no going back after that oh-so-grand exit the three of them had made. She'd wanted to be able to get at least one fucking thing with him right.
And more to the point, what Steve's little meltdown had done to Bucky, who was wedged between them in the backseat of the car and currently vibrating with tension.
For Steve, it was impulse, it was anger, whatever it had been was something he should have been able to keep under his control. For Bucky, it wasn't like that. There was no control when something like this lit him off.
She'd seen it before. They'd been at enough of the same parties - different circumstances, Bucky as the conversation piece and herself as the arm ornament of someone, and it had been years ago, when they'd been younger, but she'd seen it. She'd seen him knocking his head against the wall, get tranquilized once or twice to bring him out of it. It was better when Peggy was there, or Tony, someone who knew how to handle him.
Someone was going to have to do something, clearly, and there was no situation in which Natasha could imagine Steve being any sort of useful. Squeezed into the backseat of the car, the privacy panel up between the three of them and the driver, she turned to James and reached out, taking his face in her hands, firmly. He didn't like to be touched, not by her, and she knew it, but it had grounded him enough at the party, so it seemed like a first step. "Listen to me, okay?" she said, her voice low. Private, as if they were the only ones in the car. "Nobody got hurt back there. Not Steve. Not you. Nothing bad happened, and you didn't do anything wrong. You did so good back there, James, you didn't hurt anybody - no, look at me. Right at me, that's it. You didn't hurt anyone. You wouldn't. I know you wouldn't, I trust that. You're James Barnes, and everyone calls you Bucky, and you like mushroom risotto and really terrible filthy books, you're a person. And Steve's just fine, we got him out of there. Can you say something for me? Give me a heads up that you're here with me on this one?"