Chapter 2
“You’re joking right” Bucky groaned as he flipped through the FM stations on the radio “I thought everything had Bluetooth nowadays”
“Hey, I already told you what I went to school for, do you really think I’m making the big bucks here” Julia said with huff but knew he was coming from a friendly place “I think you just got used to all your fancy superhero technology and forgot how us normal people live” she chuckled and watched as they past the state line going into Maryland.
“Excuse you! first of all when I was growing up in Brooklyn, Steve and I—-“
“You guys were really poor and had nothing and probably had to walk 100 miles in the snow without shoes on or something, right?” The grin she had on her face only widened when she saw Bucky roll his eyes in a comically exaggerated manner
“The Captain America exhibit at the Smithsonian is a standard 11th grade field trip” she giggled
“Okay okay, fiiiiiine” a smile evident on his face “So we’re going to your parent’s house? Are you living with them or…?”
Julia started going through her phone
“No. I have an apartment, and a roommate, Alice. We met in college. She didn’t even give me a hard time when I dropped out” her voice was casual, not fully acknowledging what she just admitted “We're only going to my parents house because they said I could turn their pool house into a makeshift, uhhh, situation room type thing. And Alice didn’t want me turning our living room into a ‘crazy person art exhibit’” she chuckled and picked up her notebook, running her fingers over the spine “What? Did you think this is all of the information I have?”
Now Bucky was quiet for a while, just driving according to the directions that were on her phone’s map app. Julia thought he was trying to take something in and was going to ask before he broke the silence
“…So, you’re doing this all by yourself?” His tone was calm but with an underlying uneasiness that Julia really could make out.
“Yup” she answered and turned to face him when she noticed a slight furrow in his brow “Uh, I mean yeah. Mostly. Al, sometimes helps me by letting me bounce ideas off of her or even suggesting her own. She’s really good at stuff like that. Sometimes I get so blinded by the trees, I can’t see the forest, ya know?” Her smile was sincere but the tone was a little self-deprecating. Due to the unknown tension she suddenly felt “But it’s not, it’s not really her thing so…”
Bucky just stared at the road, clearly thinking about something but not wanting to say it just yet. Julia started again
“Like I told you earlier, I’ve been tracking this for a while and most of the things that have gone on have been crimes that could be easily reported as something else. It’s easier to tell a newspaper that someone drove off with an ATM in the dead of night instead of just literally picking it up. My parents support me although I’m pretty sure they think this is just some kind of distraction”
With that Bucky found a new way to approach his query
“A distraction from what?” He tried to make his voice sound friendly instead of accusatory.
“Oh! Uhhhh well…” Julias face turned bright “You see I…” “Lied about graduating college?”
“Hey! I said I went! I never said I graduated! How did YOU know about that anyways!?”
Bucky quirked an eyebrow and glanced over to her briefly. Her face turned from red to crimson and she pinched the bridge of her nose and groaned loudly
“Ohhh god me and my big mouth” she turned towards the passenger window to hide her embarrassment “…I think you’re just too easy to talk to Sgt. Barnes” she grumbled
A soft smile crossed his face but was glad she didn’t see
“Me? I haven’t been called that in some odd 70 years” he joked “I just think you’re too much of an open book Ms. Price, I can hardly wait to find out more lies about you” he snickered but clearly just giving her a hard time “So why did you drop out anyways?”
Julia sighed, still reeling from humiliation but then gave a slight chuckle
“Alien Invasion actually” seeming to visibly relax “I was close to graduating, and I promise that’s true, but when a giant portal opens in the sky and the city of New York gets attacked by thousands of creatures and things you could never even have fathomed before, sometimes you have a mental breakdown and can’t muster up the will to go to classes”
With that Bucky just shrugged and nodded his head slightly “I don’t think I could really argue with that”.
For a while after that, the tension was gone and the drive was mostly in comfortable silence, listening to the radio and sometimes singing along. Small talk and mostly non-invasive questions managed to pass the time until they pulled into the driveway not long after sunset.
“You grew up here?” Bucky asked as gave a whistle looking at the small mansion of a house they pulled up to “dang what do your parents do for money?”
Julia rolled her eyes as they both excited the car
“oh you know, tax fraud, money laundering, embezzlement from a Fortune 500. Standard jobs” she winked and he let out a small moan
“Really?” he stared incredulously
“They’re both retired now but my dad used to be a judge and my mom was an amazing real estate agent. I guess I just got lucky. But come on, the pool house is around back”.
Bucky followed her lead while taking mental notes of the sights around him. It was a quiet seeming neighborhood. Pretty removed from what he would’ve considered the nearest ‘downtown’ area. There were hedges instead of a fence that separated the neighbors house from this one. Once they made it to the backyard, he stopped in his tracks. There was indeed a pool. A pool with a hot tub connected to it with a currently running waterfall. There were pool chairs and an outside tiki hut that he assumed was used as a bar. It was a beautiful backyard, amenities aside, the greenery was immaculate. However the reason he stopped walking behind her was because in that in that hot tub connected to the pool with a waterfall, sat two very happy, possibly very inebriated, older people who suddenly called out
“Hey Juju!!” And “Juju Bean!!!!”
This made Julia stop in her tracks, muscles stiff as a board before she turned around comically relaxed.
“Hiiii Momma! Hiiiii Papa! I’m just here with a-”
she paused and looked at Bucky who was trying his best not to laugh at the nicknames “-a friend to help me with my project! He’s an expert on this stuff and we need to get going” she motioned for Bucky to get his ass over here, to which he sauntered along enjoying her embarrassment.
“Have we met him before? He looks familiar!” Her mom said with a big smile. However that made Bucky stop smiling and clearly made Julia nervous as well
“No Ma’am! We haven’t met!” He called out with his Hollywood smile and charm “I just have that kind of face I suppose!”
“Well just treat her right!” Her dad replied, giving him a wink and raising the neon green tropical drink in his hand. “Oh my god….” Julia muttered under her breath before “Thank you! Goodnight! I love you!” she spoke quickly and grabbed Bucky's wrist in order to pull him into the pool house “Let’s. Go” she said before yelping and moving her hand “Oh! Oops!” She giggled “Static shock I guess” and she finally opened the door and got them inside.
The inside of the pool house was cluttered. There was a couch on one end, a coffee table pushed to the side, two large folding tables covered in loose papers and folders. The biggest thing though was a cork board that seemingly took up the entire left wall. On it were news clippings and printed out pictures and strings connecting them to written on notebook paper. It was something out of an old detective movie.
Julia turned around and stretched her arms out spun around a “So this is it!” A crooked smile on her face, nervousness showing though.
“Yeah,” Bucky answered as he walked around taking it all in. “I would have to agree with Alice. This does look like a crazy person art project” he teased her and got another eye roll.
Julia then started talking and showing him what each ‘pile’ was but Bucky wasn’t really listening to any of that. He was good at pretending so that she didn’t notice but the only thing on his mind was the shock they got when she grabbed his wrist. He didn’t know if she noticed that he grabbed his metal arm or not but he did know that human skin doesn’t create static when it touches Vibranium. Under any circumstances. So now this whole situation finally had his full attention. Something was strange and he was going to figure it out.