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She tapped her knee in exasperation and listened to the scratch of the pen on paper next to her.
“How did you even manage that?” the red hair turned her head towards her companion. “I was not looking for what? Thirty seconds and you…” the rest of her rant silenced by the arrival of a nurse.
“Mr. Barton? The man with the arrow in his…”
“Jep. That’s him. Get that stick out of his ass and then stab him with it, please.” The woman groaned and Clint sighed.
“Don’t listen to Nat. She is just angry that she didn’t get to stick stuff up my ass.” The blond nurse chuckled.
"Believe me. As long as it is just in your butt and not any other holes of your body I've seen and removed worse."
Clint followed the nurse, leaving Natasha in the waiting room of the ER.
“What was the weirdest you ever had to remove from someone’s body?” Clint asked, lying down on the bed in the room after changing into a hospital gown.
“Oh man. There was so much.” The guy laughed and then seemed to think about the question. “I think the weirdest thing so far this week was an arrow from someone’s bun, and apparently he was the only one with a bow on the shooting range.”
“Touché.” Clint laughed.
“Your friend out there was right. How did you manage that?”
"Don't tell her. The strap of my quiver opened and apparently one of the arrows was in there with the tip up and I have the habit of sitting down on everything that is behind me."
The blond nurse laughed.
“Stuff like that usually doesn’t happen.” He replied and puts the gloves on, poking at the skin around the arrow.
"Hey. Careful. Usually, I want people to buy me dinner first. And, believe me, Hot Nurse, whose name I didn't catch, but stuff like that just happens to me." Looking to the side, Clint caught a light blush on the nurse's neck.
“Uhm… Steve… Steve Rogers. And I am about to remove an arrow from your bun, I think I am entitled to touch it without dinner.”
“Yeah. Better that way. My husband wouldn’t approve.” Clint said casually. Then he frowned. “Steve Rogers? Captain Steve Rogers?” He turned his upper body around to look at Steve. He frowned at the arrow (or Clint’s butt, but that couldn’t be, it was a great butt).
“Uhhhm… was… yeah. How do you know?”
Clint laughed, only yelping when Steve moved the arrow and pulled it out quickly and started to stitch the wound together.
“Oh man. Phil will have a field day when he finds out who touched my butt today.”
“Phil Coulson?” Steve asked absently and Clint hummed.
“Yeah. He’s my husband. So I think he wouldn’t mind a date.”
Steve snorted and put a band-aid over the stitches.
“Sorry. But I don’t go out with married people. So. As good as new.” He frowned again for a second and Clint raised an eyebrow.
“What?”
“Don’t let him come by while I work. He would do that.” Clint thought for a second, then nodded.
“He would. Don’t worry. I’ll make sure he won’t come by. See you next time, Captain Rogers.” Clint gave a mock salute and left the hospital room. Steve smiled, looking at the clothes on the chair. When he heard a yelp outside and an exasperated “Clint!” he chuckled lightly. This was definitely the boyfriend, Coulson had always been talking about.
See, after the secret organization SHIELD Steve and Coulson and many others had been working for, had shut down, Steve had, instead of being reassigned to another unit, taken up the offer of going back to New York, building up a new life. Following his mother's footsteps, he had become a nurse in the same hospital she had been working for before getting sick and dying when he was 18. Some of the older nurses remembered the little Rogers boy and had taken him by the hand and welcomed him like family after his return.
He loved working in the ER, meeting interesting people and it made great stories when he met up with Rhodey, Sam, Tony and many friends of his on Saturday evening in one of the many bar’s Tony owned. His friends had loved the story about the arrow-bun of their old friend Phil’s husband. Sometimes they missed the people they had been working with. Thor Odinson, who had gone back to Norway or wherever or Jane Foster, his ex-girlfriend who had settled in Alaska.
Now, a few weeks after meeting Clint, Sharon, a nurse Steve worked with on a regular came into the breakroom where Steve was typing away on his phone and called out.
“Hey, Steve. There is someone in the ER asking for you by name. He has an arrow stuck in his upper arm, he said you’d know.”
Steve groaned.
"Comin'" he replied, putting his phone away and stood up, jogging into the waiting area. And yep, there was Phil's husband Clint and the red-haired woman, Nat apparently. Clint waved his uninjured shoulder.
"Hey, Steve. Told you I'd come back." He stood up from his chair smiling way to bright for someone who had an arrow sticking THROUGH his upper arm. Nat stood up as well, following Clint into the room Steve showed them to.
"I'll be right back. Change into the gown, I think that calls for a bit more than a few stitches."
The red-haired woman glared at Clint. And while Steve went, telling one of the doctors, he heard a suffering "Why is it always me?" from her and barely kept himself from chuckling.
When he came back, Clint sat on the bed, legs crossed.
“Steve. That’s my friend Natasha, she isn’t as dangerous as she acts. I really think she just needs a hug, but when I try she threatens me to cut off my dick and Phil wouldn’t like that. Nat, that’s Steve, the Captain my husband has a boner for.”
Steve blushed and chuckled, while Natasha growled at Clint. Then she stood up, looking Steve up and down, assessing him.
“Natasha Romanov, I was working for SHIELD too. Mole in Red Room.” She held out her hand.
“Steve Rogers, Howling Commandos most of the time. So you are the Black Widow who brought all the information to Fury.” Natasha smiled.
“The one and only. It’s an honor to meet you, Captain America.” She put special emphasis on the name his Unit had given him back then and he groaned.
“Please don’t. It’s embarrassing.” Then he turned to Clint. “As for you. I am not sure if I want to know how it happened, I just know that the doctor will be there soon. He will assess if you need surgery or not.”
Clint nodded.
“I hope not. Phil wouldn’t like that at all. And for how it happened…”
Natasha interrupted. “He tried to shoot over his shoulder and the arrow got stuck. Then he fell forward.”
“As I said. Things like that just happen to me.”
Steve just nodded.
“He is right. These things somehow always happen, always around me.” Natasha sighs and Steve cracks a smile.
“Don’t worry. Phil wasn’t any better. I know the one or other story.”
"Oh. Tell me." Clint leans forward and nearly falls from the bed. Luckily the doctor comes in right at this moment and both, Steve and Natasha leave the room.
“I had to interrupt my break. Care to join me?” he asks her and she shrugs.
Back at the table, she smiles.
“So, Captain. What are you doing, since SHIELD is gone?”
Steve waved his hands around.
"This. Am here often. I love it here. It kinda feels like home to me, being here either with my mom when she was working or when I was sick and in here as a patient. I spent a big part of my childhood here and it pulled right back when I left.” He shrugged. “Some of the older nurses here are the only family I have left besides friends I made in SHIELD. Mom died years ago. No boyfriend or girlfriend. Nothing. Just me. And what is the Black Widow up to.”
Natasha smiled at him a bit sadly then she perked up.
“I teach. Like everything really. Combat, weapons. Everything. Clint wants to teach archery but Phil doesn’t think it’s a good idea and I happen to agree.” Steve nodded.
“My friends love the story about the arrow in his butt cheek.” He said seriously, before cracking a smile.
The next time he told the story about meeting the Black Widow was a week later when Phil sat in a bar with them and told them all that, yeah, sadly, all these stories about his husband were true. But he wouldn't change any of it. He loved Clint after all.
In the end, this wasn't the last time he saw Clint in the ER with Natasha and every time they came by, they asked for him. No one else pulled arrows out of Clint's ankle, heel, again the butt cheek and so many other places, sometimes not even listening to the story because he really didn't want to know.
Natasha was with him every time.
One afternoon she sat in the gym, stretching while Bucky was warming up, still getting used to being out of the army and starting to deal with his PTSD with regular exercise. Natasha, being trained in working with PTSD-patients and being in close contact with the VA in New York, was the best who could help him and the one he trusted most with it.
Bucky had come back from combat a few months earlier, granted leave after his Unit had been ambushed and despite nearly losing his arm he was one of the three survivors of his unit. All of them had gone back home, not being able to fight more after losing his sister Rebecca and many of his brothers and sisters in arms in the ambush.
“So. How went your date yesterday?” she called over and he sighed, landing one last punch on the punching bag.
“Didn’t show up.”
“Really?
“Don’t look so surprised. I was glad actually.” Bucky shrugged. “Don’t need any more blind dates. If I want to go on a date it is with someone I met in his natural environment, somewhere where he feels comfortable and not… dunno.” he sighs, then changes the wrappings around his hand and joins Natasha in the fighting area. The red hair nods and purses her lips.
“So not setting you up with my friend then.”
"By friend, you mean Clint and Clint is married." He looks at her and she sighs. She had rather been thinking about Steve, the bisexual single nurse she had met more in the last six months than she ever wanted to meet a nurse. But he was a good guy and they would get along great, she was sure of that.
“Well then. Let’s go. How’ve you been since the last time?”
"Better. It really helps." Bucky replies and gets into a fighting stance. Natasha nodded and licked her lips.
"Then let's go, Barnes. See if you can take me today." She smiled teasingly and he gave a cocky grin.
“If we could maybe have Steve?”
“Is that Natasha? What did Clint…” Steve came out of the nurse room and stopped, seeing Natasha propped up against Bucky, not really needing his help but it was part of the plan, so she let it be. “Okay, wait. What did you do? You don’t get hurt.” He said accusingly and she smiled confidently.
“It was Barnes’ fault. He made me lose my weight on the wall. I fell like… could have been two floors. Three? Dunno. Took me by surprise.”
Steve raised an eyebrow, not believing one word she just said. At least about the ‘took me by surprise’ part. The man by his side, Barnes, looked sheepish but not really fooled by it either.
“She insisted we come here and let her ankle get checked instead of just wrapping it up.” He explained and Steve nodded. Extending his hand towards the hallway next to the reception desk, he turned to Natasha with a smile.
“You know the way. The same room as usual. I’ll be right with you.” He went back into the nurse station, gathering some supplies, while Natasha and Bucky walked down the hallway and she sat down on a bed in a room that looked like every other hospital room so far, but there were a few photos on one of the walls.
Bucky went towards them to look at them.
Not photos. Drawings. He studied them and frowned.
“Is that…”
"Clint? Yeah. Some of his rather impressive… incidents." Steve said, entering the room and already pulling a pair of blue gloves over his hands. "And you Miss Romanov. Are you sure you didn't develop a little crush on me? How else should I take that you are back AND demanding for me?" Natasha laughed in delight and it stunned Bucky for a second. He had never heard Natasha laugh for real and it sounded so nice and not at all like the tough woman he had gotten to know. It sounded carefree and honest. Raw.
“You wish Cap. Nothing like that. You know I never want to be there half the time Clint get here and I really don’t want to completely fuck up my ankle. Fury offered me a new job, beginning next year and I’d rather be uninjured by then.” She gave him a smirk and he smiled.
A smile that could light up a whole night if needed.
A smile that could rival the sun and every star known to man.
And Bucky felt enthralled. This was what he had meant, talking to Natasha earlier before she fell. A known environment, something the man he wanted to look at knew. Something that made him relaxed, carefree.
An environment he could be himself. Around people who knew him. Where he didn’t have to be shy and uncertain of what would happen next.
And this was the man, he wanted to ask out.
He stopped. Natasha. He sat down on a chair by the side, watching them bicker while Steve took a closer look at Nat’s ankle and made sure nothing was broken. It had been slightly swollen when they had wrapped it before leaving for the hospital and the swelling had gone back already.
But the reason the redhead had wanted to go to the hospital wasn’t the ankle check. It was the nurse. She wanted him to meet Steve.
“I’ll be back in a minute, getting some balm for the muscles to relax but you are fine. The ‘pain’ if there even is one should be gone by… dinnertime.” Steve said, fixing her with a suspicious look, glanced at Bucky, smiled at the vet and left the room. Natasha looked at him and raised an eyebrow.
“What do you think? You didn’t want me to set you up with him so I had you to meet him like this. Thought it would work. Did it?”
Bucky sighed. Why did she always know what would work? Smirking, she leaned back against the headboard waiting for Steve to come back. When the blond did, she smirked, standing up and taking the balm from his hands. Then she gave him a slip of paper and smiled at him.
"I know you get off shit around 4 today, so both of you, 7 pm at the diner opposite Stark Tower. Tell Peter, the waiter there, it is my treat, he will know. Have a great evening and get to know each other. Have fun. Bye." With that she left the room, leaving the balm on the bed and Bucky looked after her.
Steve was staring at him.
“Did she…”
"Set us up? Yes. Now your next question is probably do I want to?" Bucky took a deep breath and when Steve nodded he decided to go in all or nothing. "The answer is actually, yeah I would like to. But not like… this." He gestured to the door where Nat had disappeared. "Properly. So, Steve, I think. I would like to, maybe, take you out? A date? The diner near Stark Tower, 7 pm? Sounds like something you'd be interested in?" It came out way more confident than Bucky felt but then again, when Natasha tried to set him up with someone, she couldn't be that wrong, could she? They met twice a week for 8 months already after all.
Steve ducked his head, cheeks turning slight reddish.
“Yeah. I’d love to. 7 sounds perfect. Meet you there?” he asked shyly and Bucky smiled, feeling light and yeah. That was how he wanted to go out on dates. No blind dating or something. That. Exactly how it happened right here. Right now. “’s that your number, Bucky?” Steve smiled, holding up the piece of paper with Bucky’s number scribbled on.
Bucky snorted.
“Definitely. You got it from Nat, it will be exactly what it says it is.” Then he walked towards the door, turning to Steve only when he was right next to him.
“See you at seven? Write me before that, so I have your number.” Steve just nodded, dumbfounded and then Bucky was gone.
The brunette took the subway, shooting Natasha a text, complaining about not waiting for him to drive him home.
When she replied he knew the thanks were received even if not mentioned.
In his apartment he was rifling through his wardrobe, looking for something presentable and finally settling on a short-sleeved simple black shirt and his grey skinny jeans. The clock showed 5 pm and his phone vibrated, an unknown number showing up on screen, a message and a photo attached to it.
Just got back home. Getting ready now. See you at 7.
The photo showed Brooklyn from an open window and Bucky tilted his head. Then he went to the window in his living room, looking out the window and seeing a window on the opposite of the street open, same height as his. He huffed amused and opened his window as well, snapping a photo from the building, the open window in the middle of the picture.
Me too. See you ;)
Just seconds later, Steve looked out the window of his apartment, gaping at Bucky who just shrugged, telling Steve something along the lines that he hadn’t known either and turned away from the window, walking into his bathroom and closed the door. He heard the phone he had left next to the open window buzz, but stripped down instead, getting under the steady stream of the shower.
Showered, his chin long hair still drying and dressed only in his jeans, he went back to the window, taking a look at his phone.
Nurse Steve: Does that mean I can offer you a drive home later?
Bucky: Maybe. Let’s see how it goes. I don’t put out before the second date.
Nurse Steve: What a pity. Here I was hoping me and my bike could convince you…
Bucky: Let me see that bike of yours and I may be inclined to call seeing you from my living room window the first date ;)
Nurse Steve: You won’t be disappointed. See you there? Have to leave now. Bug Tony in giving it back or you won’t get to see it.
Bucky: Yeah. See you later. Be safe.
Taking the subway to Manhattan and getting out at Stark Tower (so creative New York) he entered the diner, seeing Steve immediately, getting pestered by a man, said man actually being Tony Stark. When Steve’s eyes found Bucky, he shoved Tony away, said something to him and waved the vet over. Tony, still standing next to Steve and let his glace travel over Bucky.
“So. You’re Cap’s mystery date.” Bucky raised an eyebrow, quietly challenging Tony to say something and the young genius snorted in delight. “You don’t take shit. I like you.”
"He trains with the Widow. Naturally, he doesn't take shit."
“What can I say. I grew up with four little sisters and you’re not much different from them Stark. And now, if you’d be so kind.” Bucky made a huge gesture towards the door and Tony laughed in delight.
“Bring him on Saturday. The boys will love him. Just looooove him.” Tony hollered and left the diner, winking and waving at them. Steve sighed and gestured to Bucky to sit down.
“Sorry. Hoped I’d be rid of him before you get here.” Steve blushed lightly as Bucky sat down, smiling at him brightly.
“No worries there. It was fun.” Steve smiled bright, eyes lighting up in mischief.
“Yeah. I think he didn’t believe me about how gorgeous my date was.”
Bucky snorted.
"Smooth, Nurse Steve. Are you trying to flirt with me? Because I have to say, it would work better with one of these short nurse outfits. I mean..." Bucky trailed off, Steve bursting out in laughter and the brunette leaned back in his seat, taking in the sight of his date.
"Yeah. But sorry to disappoint. I have kind of a five-date rule for that." He shot back and Bucky snorted.
“Yeah. I had these rules too.” He drawled. “Then they always started to stand me up, so I gave up on that. But see. I know where you live. I can sneak in through your window, kidnap you and tie you to a chair. Then I’d get my fifth date for sure.”
Steve flushed bright red. A sight to see, Bucky thought by himself.
The waiter arrived, Peter as Nat had said, and they ordered, Hamburger and French fries and Bucky ordered a Milkshake, Vanilla, along. It was Natasha’s treat after all. Then Steve leaned forward onto his arms and smiled.
“So. First question. Been bugging me since earlier. Bucky? What name is that?”
Bucky snorted. It was either the first question they had (and it meant they were interested in him) or they never bothered to ask (then they only wanted him for his booty, which was A+ but he had more to offer seriously).
"My parents named me James Buchanan. Bucky had been my childhood nickname, not even my parents calling my Jim or Jimmy and if you do so, I'll throw you out of the window." Bucky warned the blond when his eyes light up mischievously. "My last name is Barnes. Back in the Army, I was always JBB or Bucky. Sometimes Sarge but only when they were drunk.” He concluded and Steve nodded.
“You were in the Army? What happened? I mean… you’re back. And apparently… Nat.” He began to stutter and it made Bucky feel giddy inside. Most only gave him pitying looks or thanked him for his service. Steve, who apparently had worked for SHIELD before, had enough experience of his own apparently not to pity the poor veteran. At least not yet.
“There was an ambush on one of our bases. My sister and I were there with most of our unit. Only I and two others made it out alive. Lost my oldest little sister and nearly my left arm.” He nodded towards the left arm where some of the light scars stood out against his skin.
Steve frowned then murmured “Sorry to hear that. Lost some good men too. Women as well. It is hard to be the only one alive. You said something about more sisters?”
Bucky swallowed. That was the topic he hated talking about. This time though, he kept it short when he explained. Maybe some other day Steve would get the whole story.
“My parents picked them up from school. Someone ran a red light, hit them in the side. Dead on impact. All of them. And please don’t pity me now. I don’t need that. It was bad luck. Faith. Whatever you want to call it. I just…” he started to ramble, nervous playing with his fingers, glance glued to the table until someone pried his hands apart and he looked up into Steve’s gentle eyes.
“Take a deep breath, Buck. I get it. I hate being pitied as well. My mom died when I was eighteen. I am an only child. My dad died back a long time ago, in a war just two months before I was born.” Bucky’s breath evened out and he smiled gently at Steve.
Moving on to less sensitive topics when dinner actually arrived, they bonded really well and then Steve held out his hand towards Bucky.
“I remember I offered you a drive back. She is in the garage in Stark tower. And maybe you could come over to my apartment for breakfast tomorrow around 9? Or is it too forward?”
The vet smiled happily, taking the blonde’s hand and let himself be pulled up, saying goodbye to Peter, the waiter, who confirmed the check would be taken care of (by Miss Romanov or Mister Stark), and let himself be pulled towards the big glass building on the other side of the street and into its underground garage where a beautiful black Harley was waiting for them.
And when Bucky was awake at 7 am, sitting at his open living room window, enjoying the morning sun and the silence like every morning but this time noticing the extremely attractive nurse on the other side of the street, it was just the first of many mornings.