Chapter 1
Bucky has always taken up really weird jobs- like really weird. Once he was a mascot and got beaten up by twelve year olds regularly, he also worked at a camp for a while doing maintenance and not once but twice some kid shit in the shower. He once wrote Hallmark card sayings for a while, which led to writing out fortunes for fortune cookies. Steve had been particularly impressed with some of the ridiculous things he’s written and honestly Bucky was impressed too. He just wrote down the cheesiest things to come to mind and his boss loved them. He had been really upset when Bucky eventually left that job to be a professional pet cuddler, which led to him somehow finding his way into professional human cuddling, which he left quickly because he was paid to be the big spoon, not someone’s therapist. His time as a bed warmer was the most fun though, and warming up super comfy beds was the best job ever.
So Bucky was more than used to a little bit of strangeness to his jobs because the most normal job he’s ever had was an ice cream flavor tester. That hardly meant he was prepared for his job working for Tony Stark, not that he knew whom he was working for at the time. He came across the job at an art gallery that he only went to because Steve’s art was there and he was being supportive. The last thing he expected was to be cornered by a hot red head that looked about ready to eat him. “You looking for a job?” she asks, a slight Russian accent to her voice.
Fuck no Bucky was not looking for a job if it meant working for her. “Uh, nope,” he lies. He did actually need a job and fast but he wasn’t about to get involved with the sketchy red head.
“I’m sure you will be after you hear my offer,” she says confidently. Bucky hoped that didn’t mean that he was about to get murdered. “The job pays well- twenty five thousand a month-” she starts and Bucky cuts her off.
“Sold,” he says, not caring if he just sold himself to the Russian mafia or not.
The red head smiles, “I thought so. The rest of the job includes you spending money outside of that allowance,” she says.
Bucky frowns, “wait… I’m getting money to… spend money?” he asks to make sure he understood this right.
“That’s right. When can you start?” she asks. Fuck, three weeks ago would have been nice but he tells her he’s available immediately.
*
The first thing Bucky does is buy a whole new everything. He got told to spend big, which was convenient considering he needed new pretty much everything. In the first week he got a new bed, new furniture for the living room of his ratty apartment, a new TV, and a bunch of new clothes to replace everything with holes in it. Which was basically everything. His friends were suspicious of his new spending habits so he eventually breaks and tells them he got a new job.
“A new job doing what exactly, you’ve spent like three thousand dollars in the last week,” Steve says, looking around at his living room furniture anxiously.
“He makes a point,” Wanda adds, raising an eyebrow at him.
“Uh… it’s kind of difficult to explain. I… get paid to spend money essentially,” he says.
“That was not hard to explain,” Wanda points out.
“That’s too good to be true,” Steve says, hands on his hips.
“I’d think so too if thirty thousand dollars didn’t show up in my account eight days ago,” he says. Plus the card he’s been using to spend his employer’s money.
“So you get thirty grand to go spend?” Wanda asks.
“No, I get the thirty grand and then I go spend money. Money that is not the initial payment, which was five grand more than it was supposed to be. Apparently I got an early bonus.” Or that’s what the email said anyways. After that it was the regular twenty five thousand a month and Bucky shitting his pants at such high bank account numbers. He’s never seen anything higher than a few thousand if he was lucky and now he was basically rich. Actually next month he’d be rich, now he was mostly in denial that that much money could even exist.
Steve and Wanda’s eyebrows shoot up, “who the hell do you work for?” Wanda asks.
Bucky shrugs, “some rich guy, that’s all I know. He didn’t want to give out his name for some reason.”
“He’s probably in the mob or something,” Steve says.
“Do you always have to rain on my parade? Just let me be rich and happy okay, I recently discovered I have back problems after spending a night in my extremely comfortable new bed and woke up feeling less like my spine is made of iron. I didn’t even know I had that feeling until now.” But it now that he felt less like his spine was solid he was happy about it and he wasn’t giving up his job even if he did work for the mob.
*
Tony tracks Bucky’s spending meticulously and snorts at his spending habits by the end of the month. “What?” Pepper asks, frowning.
“Natasha picked an interesting one this time, this guy’s spending habits are ridiculously practical,” he tells her.
Pepper frowns, “really?”
“I know, the last person to have this job bought a sports car but this guy? We’ve got clothes, a bed, furniture, a gluten free vegan diet, a TV, some other practical ends and odds. The most impulsive thing on this list is the TV.” Tony wondered if the vegan diet was connected to ethics or a simple preference, because if it was ethics this guy was not going to like finding out who employed him. Not that they lasted very long usually, the job had a pretty high turnover rate because people were only good at spending money in theory. People that didn’t have money typically reached a point where they realized there was nothing else that they wanted and even vacations lose their novelty. That or they developed a drug habit.
After that point was reached small spending habits were consistent but not what Tony was looking for, so everyone went their separate ways and his employee got a hefty severance package for their troubles. Tony didn’t mind that people moved on, sometimes things didn’t work out, but it always left a bitter taste in his mouth knowing that he somehow managed to fail in paying someone’s way through life as a fucking billionaire. That didn’t seem like the kind of thing a guy with his tax bracket could fail at.
“Is that… okay?” Pepper asks somewhat hesitantly. She’d never outright tell him but she didn’t understand why he even had someone doing this job and he wasn’t intent on telling her either so they left it.
“No, but he’s new. There’s always an adjustment period,” Tony says. Usually the adjustment period when the opposite way it was going right now given that people started with big purchases and moved down towards the smaller more practical things, but apparently this guy was different.
Tony opens up the email he set up to communicate with Bucky and starts writing.
*
Bucky frowns at the email, unsure what it even meant.
To: Bucky
From: AES
What tax bracket do you usually fall into?
-AS
Uh, the poor one but Bucky didn’t know if that was the right answer. After some quiet deliberation he decides that he’s reading too much into it and tells his mystery employer that he was usually pretty damn poor.
To: Bucky
From: AES
Yeah, I can tell. Up your game.
-AS
Bucky frowns at the reply for a long few moments before shrugging. So this guy wanted to up his game, fine, there were expensive things that he could buy. There were lots of expensive things that he could buy. He could totally up his game.
*
Tony and Natasha sit perched in a room waiting to hear back on some negotiation thing that Tony was mostly letting Natasha handle. Pepper did these sorts of things all the time and if Tony wasn’t around for some reason it made sense to teach Natasha to do Pepper’s job in case that happened. After Obadiah he made her his business partner much to the annoyance of everyone else that thought she was ‘just an assistant’. They had no idea how much Tony expected of his assistants and given how much of a shitty boss he was ne knew damn well that Pepper was already prepared to deal with someone as demanding as him and as flighty too.
“Am I doing well a this? This sort of… thing isn’t exactly my area of expertise,” Natasha says. She doesn’t look nervous or conflicted, which is good, and Tony has seen her give presentations. Whether or not she was in a situation she was confortable with was irrelevant because she knew how to look like she was confortable. That was a difficult to acquire skill and not many people could pick up on it.
“You’re doing fine, Natasha. Trust me if you weren’t Pepper has less patience for incompetence than me. You’d be fired if you weren’t good at this,” he tells her.
She smiles at him, “you don’t have patience for incompetence?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.
“None,” he says honestly, “why do you think I hate Hammer so much. He goes on and on about how much of an expert he is but when it comes down to it he’s fucking useless.” Half of his shit didn’t even work according to Rhodey, who would know considering his former job. And due to Hammer’s inability to build shit Rhodey was now permanently disabled. He took it better than Tony would have but that’s just Rhodey. He was calm and level headed in all things whereas Tony was far more impulsive. It was probably why they made such good friends, Tony pulled Rhodey out of his comfort zone given that someone had to make sure he wouldn’t die, and Rhodey made sure Tony stayed grounded at least a little.
“I thought you hated him because of Rhodey,” Natasha says.
Tony shakes his head, “nah. I’ve hated him since we went to school together as kids. Well, I was a kid; he was your average teen. Rhodey just cemented my pre-existing opinion that he’s a fucking jackhole.” Natasha snorts and then giggles, an odd action coming from someone as non-nonsense such as herself.
“That’s true I suppose. I’ve never been fond of him myself, too arrogant. You might be an arrogant ass but at least you’re arrogant about things you’ve earned the right to be arrogant about. Hammer? Not so much.” That was true, and Natasha hadn’t much liked him when she was first hired and made no attempt to hide it either. Pepper had considered firing her for it but Tony pointed out that there was no harm in hating your boss, or in this case your boss’ boss. That and he rarely found people who stood up to him; always too afraid he’d retaliate in some way or something so she was a breath of fresh air. And despite her dislike she worked with him just fine, which was what Pepper had been worried about. Eventually she warmed up to him and they were decent friends now, which was a bonus when they worked so closely with each other.
“Hammer should consider a career in being a professional failure. He’d actually be good at that,” Tony mumbles as his phone goes off. The text alert was designed to tell him when Bucky had used his card. Tony raises an eyebrow at the number he finds on the screen and decides to investigate further, snorting at what he finds.
“What?” Natasha asks, head tilted to the side.
“Bucky. I told him to try harder so he did- he paid off some dude’s hospital debt. Is there a tax bracket in which someone is so poor they stop being selfish? Because I have never met anyone who suddenly got access to a huge amount of money that didn’t immediately spend it on themselves,” he says. Every person, every person, who has taken this job always spent huge amounts of money on themselves at first, it wasn’t until later that they thought of other people. his phone buzzes again and Tony’s eyebrows lift , “and he donated money to disabled vets. Who is this guy?”
“Did I… pick badly?” Natasha asks, frowning.
“I did the picking, you did the talking. So no. But this guy is interesting that’s for sure. And addicted to Starbucks, who even buys that many frappuccinos in a day?” he asks more to himself than Natasha. And they were those sugary frou-frou things that were lies, not caffeine. Absolutely disgusting.
“Is that a bad thing?” Natasha asks, clearly trying to feel out what was going on here.
“No, not necessarily anyways. This isn’t what I expected but that isn’t a bad thing at the moment.” He did hope that Bucky spent money on himself at some point but his spending habits were more than interesting enough to keep around.
*
To: Bucky
From: AES
You do know that when I told you to try harder I meant spend more money on yourself right? I hope that Steve Rogers guy is happy because he either has one good friend or he ran into the right stranger at the perfect time.
-AS
Bucky frowns at the email, not totally sure what to make of it. What was he supposed to do? Buy a sports car that he’d never be able to afford if he didn’t have this job? What idiot would do that? Sure he’d be rich now, but if he got used to a certain kind of lifestyle that would all be pissed down the drain as soon as he either lost the job or moved on from it. He wasn’t going to develop a lifestyle that he’d never be able to keep up, that was irresponsible at best. So he figured he’d pay off Steve’s hospital bills.
He hadn’t been impressed about it either, even going as far as to try and make Bucky take it back, which was ridiculous. Sam, who usually hated Bucky on a good day had actually hugged him and thanked him when Steve had stomped out of his apartment to have an asthma attack in the hallway. Generally they hated each other for no real reason, but Bucky knew what Steve was struggling with the bills and given his health issues getting a full time job or five was out of the question. And Sam, despite Bucky’s not liking him much, was a genuinely good guy who did his best to help but he had his own shit to take care of. Bucky wasn’t looking forward to Steve finding out that Bucky paid off all his student loans, Sam’s student loans, and his own student loans too. He’d probably acquire another hefty hospital bill honestly.
To: AES
From: Bucky
I paid off my student loans. It counts as money spent on me.
And he could afford Starbucks now too. He basically drank his weight in Starbucks for the last two days, which was awesome. He could afford groceries now too, and accommodate for Steve’s expensive diet. Sam had been fine with pretending that he got a raise at work so Steve would think he bought all the gluten free vegan stuff. He might not like Sam buying the food either, but he could at least justify it with Sam eating the food too. He’d freak out if he found out it was Bucky. But try as he might if Steve ate anything that wasn’t gluten free or vegan his system freaked out, especially with gluten. It was just sad to see him live in the bathroom for a week because he ate the wrong thing and couldn’t function until his body purged whatever it was from his system. The benefit was that Steve could make really good gluten free vegan mint chocolate brownies.
To: Bucky
From: AES
Hardly. Seriously, try harder. I’ve never met someone who needed prodding to spend absurd amounts of money. Go live a little.
-AS
Bucky snorts at the email his phone alerts him to, shaking his head. His employer sounded snarky at least, like he had a sense of humor despite employing terrifying redheads.
To: AES
From: Bucky
Since you’ve clearly got ideas care to share?
He was curious about his employer and what, exactly, he was supposed to be doing here. He was told to try harder after dropping a huge amount money on various bills. What the hell else did this guy want? Of course when he gets a list of stuff his eyebrows shoot up and he wonders how rich this guy is when the first restaurant he suggested had entrées that went for ten fucking grand. He really hoped he wasn’t working for Hank Pym because that guy is a dick. But then what the hell would AES stand for? Bucky wasn’t sure if that was a company acronym, a name, or some random letters this guy typed in or something.
To: AES
From: Bucky
I’m not spending ten grand on a nicely placed spinach leaf. A vacation sounds fun though. I have family in Romania.
Not that he wanted to visit Aunt Ethel but Wanda’s brother Pietro was doing his PhD there and it would be kind of nice to surprise her with a trip to visit him. She missed her twin more than she let on and Bucky missed him too. Hell, maybe he’d even take Clint along for the fuck of it seems how he could afford it now. He missed his boyfriend too and Bucky was sure he could plan something with Wanda to give the two some space. Maybe if he was feeling brave he’d visit Ethel and use Wanda as a shield.