Chapter 2
The Other Guy was a restaurant Steve had discovered one night when he was feeling particularly desolate and had a hankering to get very very drunk. At the time, Steve hadn’t really been able to appreciate how cool it was, later finding out that it was actually a renovated old greenhouse. That alone was enough to keep him coming back, though there were also other perks.
“Here comes my favorite fossil.”
Steve smiled at the nickname as he and Bucky made their way over to the bar. “Hey, Nat.”
Natasha Romanoff was one of the first friends that Steve had made when he came to New York. If not only for the fact that she was the one who helped him get drunk in the first place, and was also the one to get him into a cab and safely home that same night. She had also gotten a hold of Steve’s phone somehow, so that in the morning he was able to match the fuzzy image of a redhead to an actual person that texted him to see if he hadn’t died from the fifteen shots he had taken. Ever since then, Nat had been a daily presence in his life and was largely responsible for getting Steve to go places other than his apartment after work. There was a lot that he wanted to thank her for, and he tried to show it in every way that he could. Even though he had a feeling that she knew already.
Nat leaned against the bar, propping her elbows on top of the counter as they made their way over. “Anything interesting happening at the museum?”
“I’m afraid your fantasy of Night at the Museum is going to have to wait another day.” Steve worked as an assistant for the curator at the Museum of Natural History, and ever since Nat had figured out about it two years ago, she’d dubbed him “the fossil” and relentlessly teased him with questions about dinosaur skeletons coming to life. “Also, you know I don’t work the night shift.”
“Eh, a girl can dream.” Nat smiled but her expression shifted into one that Steve had grown to recognize as she caught sight of Bucky standing just slightly behind him. See, Nat had earned herself a nickname over the years of working at The Other Guy. It was no secret that Nat was dangerously good looking, with her red hair and curves for days, and she had a reputation for using it to her advantage. An urban legend of the bar said if Natasha decided to snare you in her web, the situation was guaranteed to end with her breaking your heart as she kicked you out of her apartment the next morning without a second look. Not to mention that if you dared to lay a hand on her without her permission, you might not live to see the sunrise. The bar flies called her ‘the Black Widow’, in reference to the spider that’s been known to eat their male partners alive after mating. Not that Nat minded in the slightest. “Care to introduce us, Steven? It’s terribly rude to let him stand there like that.”
“This is Bucky. And unfortunately, he’s not on the menu.”
Nat pursed her lips in a pout. “Aw. He looks so delicious too.”
“Excuse me?” Bucky looked like he wanted to turn around and bolt out of there as fast as he could. He whispered to Steve on the side, “I thought you said you found someone who could help.”
“Don’t worry, she’s harmless. Usually.” Steve gave Bucky what he hoped looked like a disarming smile. Bucky returned it with a glare.
Turning back to Nat, Steve stuffed his hands back in his pockets and this time was able to keep his fingers from playing the imaginary piano. “Our breakfast plans aside, we’re actually here to ask a favor.”
“Oh?” Nat’s eyes moved back and forth between Bucky and Steve, a wicked glint shining in them. “If you guys are in need of fuzzy handcuffs-”
Steve’s face flushed bright red. “God- No, Nat! Not that kind of favor.” He really wished that she could hear all the profanities he was yelling at her inside his head at that moment, since there was no way in hell he was going to be able to even look at Bucky for the next fifteen minutes. If he didn’t think Steve was a freak before, he sure fucking did now. “We need to borrow your car.”
Nat raised an eyebrow. “You’re serious?”
“Would I be asking you if I wasn’t?” Steve sighed, still trying to fight the blush that he felt crawling up his neck from her previous comment.
“Point taken.” Nat’s face softened at his redness and she tucked some hair behind her ear. “Look, you know I would lend it to you in a heartbeat, but it’s actually out of commision at the moment.”
Steve’s entire being deflated. “What? What happened?”
“I was dumb enough to let Clint use it for the weekend and, lo and behold, he ran it into a fucking tree when he was out with his hunting buddies.” Nat rolled her eyes, looking more exasperated than he’d seen her in weeks. Clint was a good friend of Nat’s from college and from the few times that Steve had met him, he’d seemed like an okay guy, if not a little on the wild side. Of the three of them, it made sense that Clint would be the one to smash up Nat’s car. Steve just wished that he would’ve had better timing.
Bucky was the only one to seem concerned about Clint’s safety at the moment. “Is he okay?”
“Yeah, he’s fine. My car got knocked around worse than him. Figures.” Nat fiddled with the apron she wore around her waist and looked up at Steve cautiously. “I know you don’t really wanna hear this, but have you thought about asking…” She leaned in closer to Steve, lowering her voice, “…you know, Peggy’s parents?”
Steve froze. “No. I couldn’t.”
“Steve, they told you that if you needed anything-”
“Nat.”
She backed off, noticing the strain in Steve’s voice and Steve was thankful she did. They hadn’t spoken about Peggy or her parents since his early days in New York, and just hearing her name ripped open a fresh wound in Steve’s stomach.
Nat, trying to lighten the tension in the air, turned towards Bucky and winked. “Well, since you guys are stuck for now, you might as well stay for breakfast.”
Bucky swallowed and looked warily at Steve. “Uh…?”
“Great! It’s on me.” Nat hopped over the counter without even waiting for Steve to reply and linked her left arm through Bucky’s right, leading him over to a table while Bucky gave Steve a nervous looks over his shoulder. Steve trailed a few steps behind, trying in vain to sew up the remnants of his stomach as he wondered how much Bucky had heard. He really was trying everything he could think of to help Bucky get to Boston, it’s just… he couldn’t contact Peggy’s parents after all this time. Not after what had happened.
Steve sat down across from Bucky at the table Nat led them to, situated in the back of the restaurant in a part that had been left out of the renovation. It resembled a type of patio and was encased by glass panelling, letting the hazy morning light that was so associated with the city float inside and paint the room in gold. The light seemed to make everything especially lovely that morning, Steve noticed, and he couldn’t help sneaking a look at how it seemed to surround Bucky in an almost angelic glow. He fought off another wave of redness coming to his cheeks, turning to smile up at Nat as she brought them both mugs of coffee and some creamer cups. Steve preferred his black, taking a sip as he watched Bucky empty three creamers into his mug and then dump a packet of sugar into it as well. The action seemed familiar and when Steve realized why and whom had also had that habit, the rip in his stomach seemed to pull wider.
Nat had taken upon herself to have the cook make them something special, a surprise of sorts, and left Bucky and him sitting there alone. For some reason, Steve had the feeling that Nat had a hidden motive for offering them to stay, but it was quickly forgotten when Bucky spoke up from across the table. “You know…you didn’t have to do all this.”
“What do you mean?” Steve took a sip of his coffee and focused his gaze on anything other than Bucky’s face. Or hands. Or him at all.
“Trying to help me get to Boston, and probably wasting a perfectly good morning.” Bucky ran his right hand through his hair, then rested it on the back of his neck. “I’m sure you had better things to do.”
Steve let out a little chuckle. “Not really. My life is pretty dull as is.”
Bucky looked over Steve for a moment and then shook his head, saying, “Nah, you don’t seem like a dull guy.”
They both were quiet for a few minutes after that, sipping at their coffee and Steve’s mind whirred with what Bucky could’ve meant by that. Did he mean that he thought Steve was a fun guy, or was he just saying that he thought Steve was a weird freak that liked to do strange things? He really hoped it wasn’t the latter because if Bucky went away from this thinking that he actually was into fuzzy handcuffs, he might have to kill Nat. Unless, Bucky was into that sort of thing. Get your fucking head out of the gutter, Rogers!
“So, you and…Nat, is it? You guys seem pretty close.” Bucky pulled a napkin from the dispenser stationed next to them and started tearing at the corner of it absentmindedly.
Steve smiled a bit. “Yeah, we are.”
“Must be, if she was willing to lend her car to you without any explanation of why.”
“We trust each other. She has my back, and I have hers.” Steve watched as Bucky kept tugging at the napkin, his fingers jaggedly ripping a line towards the middle. “It’s how things work with us.”
Riiiiiip. “She your girlfriend?”
Steve almost choked on his sip of coffee, setting down the mug as he coughed out, “W-What? No, Nat and I are just friends.”
Bucky’s fingers stalled and he looked up at Steve, his expression something Steve couldn’t place. “Oh..okay.”
“I mean, i-it’s not like I don’t find Nat attractive, we just, um, we work better as friends.” Steve felt the urge to cringe at his rambling, probably because he wasn’t helping his case at all by stuttering and bumbling like an idiot, and bit his lip when Bucky’s gaze moved back to the napkin. Neither of them said anything else for a while, and Steve was starting to worry that soon these pauses between them were going to grow larger and larger until they weren’t going to talk at all. Granted, he barely knew the guy so there wasn’t much to talk about, but Steve didn’t like sitting across from Bucky without at least trying to create some form of conversation.
He cleared his throat. “Is it okay to ask what the trial was for? If not, I completely understand.”
Bucky’s shoulders tensed at Steve’s question and he raised his mug to take a long sip of coffee before answering. “Yeah, it’s cool. I, uh…I’m getting tested to see if I’d be able to use this new tech of sorts…It’s a thing that hasn’t really been tried before but all the magazines I’ve read said it works so..”
Steve leaned forward in his chair. “What kind of thing?”
“Um..” Bucky ran a hand through his hair and then rested it on the back of his neck, keeping his eyes trained on a spot across the room. “It’s for my arm. A prosthetic, actually.” He moved his hand to scratch at his left arm again, and suddenly it made sense to Steve why it was hanging so awkwardly. “I was in a… a pretty bad accident when I was younger.”
A lump formed in Steve’s throat, large and painful, and he tried to grasp at something to say in response. All that came out of his mouth, pitifully, was, “I’m sorry, Bucky..”
It was a few more seconds before Bucky nodded, leaning back in his chair and rubbing at the back of his neck again. The light coming from above them shone down on him in a new way and this time, it looked like he could’ve been carved straight from the mind of Michelangelo. All sharp angles and anguished detail. The perfect painting of a haunted man.
Steve chilled to the bone at the sight.
It was then that Nat chose to appear once more, raising an eyebrow at the two of them and holding a tray that presented a delicious array of french toast. “Everything alright over here?”
“Yeah, we’re good.” Surprisingly, Bucky was the first to speak. Even though he covered himself under the disguise of a friendly smile as he looked up at Nat, Steve could tell he was hurriedly clearing the air surrounding their conversation and took note of it.
Nat gave Steve a look that questioned Bucky’s statement, but Steve just nodded in reply. Shrugging, she placed the plates down in front of them and as she walked away, Steve felt her hand gently squeeze his arm. A silent surge of courage that he didn’t even realize he needed until that point.
Through the rest of breakfast, he and Bucky shared idle conversation, mostly about the city and what they both were doing there. Steve talked about how he worked at the museum and how his boss was a pretty cool guy, while Bucky lamented about his office job and what a pretentious asshole his boss could be. They then moved on to discuss things more about their hobbies, Steve finding out that Bucky was into baseball which added a whole new slew of comments about how the Dodgers were the greatest team in history, and Bucky prodding Steve about letting him look at his sketchbook. The conversation circled around and around before they landed on tales about hilarious situations their friends had gotten them into, both of them having plenty to share in that department. At one point, Bucky even had Steve in stitches over a particular outrageous story involving a very large hammer and some alcohol, when Nat actually had to come over to tell them to quiet down before her manager made them leave the restaurant. Which only sent the both of them into more gales of laughter.
Bucky held his side as he let his giggles settle, tears in his eyes from the force of his laughter. “Shit, man…I feel like I’ve known you forever.”
Steve managed to straighten up in his chair and smiled over at Bucky as he waited for his breathing to slow, coming down from his high. “Maybe we were friends in another life or something.”
“Aw, don’t get all philosophical on me now. You just told me ‘bout a time when you basically wore an empty bag of cheetos as a hat! How am I supposed to take you seriously ever again?” Bucky grinned as he reached a hand over to give Steve a noogie, Steve laughing and batting away his hand while Bucky tried in vain to mess up his hair.
“I was drunk! And it was Nat’s idea, not mine!” Steve finally managed to wrestle Bucky’s hand from his head, holding it in his for a moment before playfully tossing it back towards Bucky’s chuckling figure. There was a warm fuzzy feeling spreading throughout Steve’s body and it almost made him feel as if he was floating a few inches above the ground. It was amazing, he thought, that Bucky and him were already so close when they had met just that morning. If Bucky had been just a few minutes later or earlier, who knows if they would’ve ended up where they were now. A small twinge of hope inside Steve that said they might’ve. “Speaking of Nat, we should probably get out of here before we get her fired.”
Bucky sighed and stood from his chair, giving Steve a gorgeous little smirk. “I guess so. To be honest, I think she was tempted to slip something into our coffees just to make us shut up.”
“Nah. Nat would kick your ass, both mentally and physically, before she resorted to that.”
Bucky laughed, grinning. “On the topic of my ass, it’s pretty fucking sore from sitting in that goddamn chair. Like who invented that? Satan?”
Fucking hell. Steve quickly focused his gaze on his shoes, giving a little chuckle and mumbling something in reply while he tried to shove all thoughts of Bucky’s ass from his brain. He was making real progress in the friend department and couldn’t afford to screw it all up by getting a tent in his pants.
They both made their way through the front doors and out onto the sidewalk, melting into the crowd but still somehow in their own little bubble. Steve mentally sketched a picture of that moment; a black and white mob of bystanders milling to and fro, and them in the center, highlighted in color so vibrant it could rival the sun. Bucky was talking excitedly about something related to the Dodgers but all Steve could focus on was his eyes. They were a storm upon themselves, alight with lightning against the backdrop of a smoking navy sky, and it was all Steve could do to not trip over his own goddamn feet.
Eventually, either by some stroke of luck or lack of attention to their surroundings, they ended up standing on the steps of the MOMA, cheeks wind-burnt and lips chapped from the cold November air. Bucky looked over at Steve and raised an eyebrow, nodding towards the museum. “You wanna take a look?”
Steve smiled. “Sure.”