Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was not the first time Bucky walked past the LGBT group poster. An LGBTAQ+ Club, the poster called it. The letters were painted in the colors of the rainbow above a drawing of a circle made of chairs with anthropomorphized hearts sitting on them. It was difficult to ignore, but Bucky did his best.

The poster kept drawing his attention and that made him uncomfortable, especially when he wasn't alone. If his friends caught him looking at it, it would lead to so many uncomfortable questions he was not yet ready to answer.

He was very determinedly staring straight ahead as they walked past the notice board, but Jane grabbed his hoodie and made him stop in his stride. "Hey, have you seen this?"

His stomach twisted into a painful knot, but her finger was pointed at a different poster than the one causing him distress. A green sheet of paper advertised a science fair with a competition; the deadline for project proposals was four weeks away.

"What do you say, Barnes?" Tony asked, his hands grabbing Bucky's shoulders from behind. Despite being a year above Bucky, he was several inches shorter and needed to stand on his toes to look over Bucky's shoulder and Jane's head properly. "Are we going to enter?"

"You're not allowed to work together," Jane reminded them. There was an incident in the fifth grade that involved a robot going berserk and a destroyed classroom.

"I'm sure everyone's forgot about that already." Tony waved his hand and poked Bucky's side. "C'mon, we could bring back the bionic arm project. Build you one that-"

"We broke my prosthesis the last time we tried," Bucky interrupted him.

"I paid for it!" That was an understatement. Not only did Tony's parents pay for a new prosthesis, they got Bucky a better one. His own family would never have been able to afford a myoelectric one.

Despite that, Bucky was no more inclined to let Tony experiment on him again. Not because he didn't trust Tony or because he doubted they could invent something amazing together, but because his arm was too personal. Besides, last time it had almost landed Tony in a boarding school. "You electrocuted me."

"Just a little."

"You could ask Bruce Banner?" Jane suggested, looking at Tony. "He's smart."

"Does that mean you'll be my partner?" Bucky asked.

She smiled at him. "That's why I made you look at it."

"I see how it is," Tony muttered, crossing his arms on his chest.

"Don't pout," Jane turned around and hugged him. "We still love you." She had the ability to combine sincerity and gentle mocking in a way that made everyone's hearts melt.

"Platonic threesome forever," Bucky said without taking his eyes off the board to look at them. "Science Club forever."

He was trying to keep his eyes glued to the science fair poster, but his eyes were constantly turning to the rainbow one as if on their own accord. He noticed the hearts each had a small flag painted on their bodies, each of them representing a different orientation. Bucky only recognized a few.

He also noticed the meeting time.

He really wished the club would be meeting at a time that collided with his activities.

His Thursday afternoons, however, were completely free.

***

The Science Club met every Wednesday and Friday an hour after school let go for the day and Bucky, Jane and Tony were its most active members – to the point where some people forgot there were other people involved. Usually Bucky didn't even expect anyone to else to attend.

He was used to walk the deserted hallway on his own. There were no other activities taking place at the same time in the surrounding classrooms, and while Bucky was almost always on time, Jane was almost always half an hour early and Tony fifteen minutes late.

As such, he passed another notice board on his own that afternoon and he felt his heart pounding in his chest. He walked a few feet past it and then turned around. He glanced up and down the corridor, and seeing no one, he approached the notice board.

There was a copy of the same poster he had seen earlier.

Only it had "Fag Club" written across it in a red marker.

Bile rose in Bucky's throat.

"Did you do that?"

He jolted. The voice behind him sounded angry. He turned to look at its source and saw a skinny blond kid with his face twisted with rage.

"It wasn't me," Bucky protested.

"Because if you did-"

"I didn't do it!" Bucky protested and lifted both hands in protest as well as to show that they were completely marker free.

The boy's face soften a little, but there was still a crease between his brows. He sighed and stepped past Bucky, shrugging off his bag. He unpinned the poster and crumbled it in his hands. "Almost daily," he muttered. He bent over and pulled out a new sheet of paper.

"Did you draw that?" Bucky asked. He should get going, but his feet had taken roots. He had never met a kid who openly declared themselves queer and the possibility of getting to know one did weird things to his pulse.

"Yeah." The blond pinned a new poster to the board, shoving the pin through with so much angry energy that Bucky wouldn't want to be on the other end of his rage, even if the boy was about a head shorter and looked like he would fit through a needle's eye without effort.

"You're good."

The boy glanced at him with wide eyes. "Thanks," he said uncertainly as if he never considered that before. The traces of anger disappeared from his expression, leaving a neutrally polite smile behind. He picked up his bag with his left hand and offered the right one to Bucky. He had blue eyes to go with the blond hair, and full lips that stood out in his thin face. He had a smear of purple paint on his left cheek. "Steve Rogers."

Bucky accepted the handshake, belatedly realizing how clammy his hand was. Great first impression there, Barnes. "The name's James Barnes, but people call me-"

"Bucky, I know," Steve said with a firm nod. "We have a few classes together."

Bucky opened his mouth to apologize for never noticing, but he was interrupted by the sound of sneakers against the floor behind him and Tony's voice calling his name.

He dropped Steve's hand and took a step back. Without even needing to see himself, he knew his cheeks had turned red.

Steve's face looked dejected only for a second before he slung his bag over his shoulder and turned to leave. "Nice meeting you," he tossed over his shoulder just as Tony crashed into Bucky's back.

"Are you fraternizing with the enemy, Barnes?" he stage whispered.

Bucky froze. "An enemy?" he asked, turning slightly to separate himself from Steve's poster.

"The Art Club," Tony said in a tone that suggested Bucky might be a little club. "The arts and the sciences can never get along." He grabbed Bucky's hoodie and pulled him towards the classroom that hosted the Science Club.

***

He was leaving his History class the next day when someone's fingers brushed against his hand and pressed a piece of paper into his hand. He glanced to his side and met Steve Rogers' gaze. Steve smiled at him and then sped up his walk to catch up with another boy.

Bucky glanced down at the note in his hand to find the message "Room change for the meetings. 3PM, every Thursday, Classroom 4B." written in a neat handwriting.

He could feel blood rush to his face and cold sweat break on his back.

Steve knew.

Or thought he knew something.

Bucky looked around, his heart beating fast. He wasn't one of the extremely popular kids, but his handsome smile and hanging out around Tony Stark definitely improved his rep, and he was happy in his position within the school's social hierarchy. He'd heard enough stories about what could happen to a kid as much as suspected to be queer. He already had enough insecurities about his prosthetic arm.

And the truth was, Bucky wasn't even really sure he belonged in the queer kids' club or support group or whatever it was meant to be. He had never kissed a boy, but he made out with a girl or three. Yet he couldn't help but notice the way t-shirts clang to the bodies of the jocks and the cocky smiles some boys mastered caused jolts of heat in the pit of his stomach. At the same time, he noticed the way girls' legs looked in short skirts and the way they bit their red lips. He really liked girls. But boys turned his head as well. And the people who were both or neither, too. People in general.

Only, based on his experience he was zero on the Kinsey Scale and he was not actively looking to remedy that.

***

Yet that afternoon he found himself pacing outside the classroom 4B. The classroom was quiet and through the open door, Bucky could see Steve sitting behind a desk sketching in his notebook with intense focus in his expression. There was no one else there.

For a moment Bucky wondered whether Steve was the only member. Then he heard steps and the most obvious reaction was to jump behind a different half-closed doors to watch from there. The footsteps belonged to Natasha Romanova's high heel boots. She was one of the girls who Bucky had kissed in his life and wasn't that ironic.

He watched her disappear in the classroom and wanted to leave, but his feet were glued to the floor. Therefore he was there when Sam Wilson, whom Bucky knew as a smart kid in his Lit class, walked into the classroom together with a serious-looking dark-haired girl.

There were queer kids in the school.

The realization was overwhelming and he had to grip the handle of door he was hiding behind to hold himself steady.

Maybe they were kids who felt like him, with too many questions spinning in their heads and thoughts they had trouble cataloguing. Maybe they were people he could talk to.

Maybe…

And maybe their identities would be well-known around the school in a few weeks because they broadcast their meetings so openly.

Someone pointedly cleared their throat and Bucky jumped. He looked around, wide-eyed, and noticed the janitor frowning at him.

It was only then that Bucky noticed that the door he was using as a shield had on it a pictograph of a skirt-clothed stick figure. He took a deep, steadying breath, then looked the janitor straight in the eye and smiled his most charming smile.

Then he walked in his most confident stride away from 4B.

Chapter Text

"The door stays open," Bucky's father shouted from the living room while Bucky was helping Jane out of her beige leather jacket. Ever since Bucky hit the puberty, it was a standard reaction to any girl visiting him, but there were no such warnings regarding his male friends. It made him wonder if in the case he found himself a boyfriend, he could perhaps lose his virginity in the comfort of his bedroom with his parents none the wiser.

"There goes my plan to make a teen mum out of you," he muttered and Jane giggled before shoving his right arm. His left sleeve was pinned to his shoulder; he had deemed this a "one arm is more than enough" Saturday afternoon and he knew Jane wouldn't mind.

She walked into his room and settled on his bed with her legs crossed and her back against the headboard. He sat down on the floor and leaned against the bed.

Bucky loved his room. It was the smallest room in the house, smaller even than his little sister's room, but it was a space all of his own and contained everything he needed. The walls were covered in movie posters and charts, his bed had comic-themed sheets, and his bookshelf still held enough books he was yet planning to read.

"Ideas?" Jane asked and pulled a notepad out of her bag. On the top page, she had written "Science Project" in green letters.

"If we're setting guidelines, nothing involving chickens," Bucky said. "And, please, no volcanoes. So overdone and unimaginative."

"And nothing that requires experiments on living beings," Jane said. "Including human volunteers."

Bucky laughed. He reached over to his desk and pulled the bottom drawer open to look for his notes from experiments and occasional reading. Jane's interests lay in physics and astronomy while Bucky enjoyed engineering. Not the computer stuff, but real, tangible machinery, nuts and bolts. He searched for ideas that would play to both their strengths.

"What about time travel?" Jane suggested. Bucky paused in rummaging through his drawer and grabbed an eraser from his desk to threaten her with possibly throwing it at her.

"It isn't possible," he insisted, though he knew that wasn't the best strategy with her at all. Jane didn't believe in the impossible – just things that needed yet to be discovered or invented. "Even if we agreed it can be done," he corrected himself, "we don't have enough time to invent a time machine for the contest."

"We have four weeks to come up with a project proposal. We can gather enough theory in that time and if we create a prototype, we can use it to gain more ti-"

Bucky wasn't sure whether she was joking or serious, but he interrupted her by half-heartedly tossing the eraser her way anyway. It bounced off her shoulder and fell on his pillow.

Jane threw it back at him and hit him square in the chin, and Bucky gave her a look of mock outrage. He was about to retaliate when his phone went off.

"And when a theory emerges/Consistent with the facts/The proof is with Science/The truth is with Science." Seeing as Jane was here with him, he didn't even have to look at the caller ID. It had to be Tony. Bucky dropped the eraser to the floor in order to pull the phone out of his pocket.

"James Buchanan Barnes," he said into it just because he could imagine the face Tony would pull. "Hey, Tony. I've got Jane here, I'm putting you on speaker."

"Why would you do that?" Tony asked just as Bucky was setting his phone down onto his bed by Jane's feet. "I could be about to tell you about an embarrassing rash on my intimate bits."

"Nah, you've Rhodey for that," Bucky said with full confidence, in time with Jane's startled chuckle. "If you're calling me, it's about something I'm willing to hear about." Tony, as lovely as he was, was a peculiar person and Bucky was often glad that wasn't the only one having to put up with him. There was a group of people that formed around Tony, a lot of them attracted to the aura of money but a few also interested in him as a person for reasons Bucky couldn't quite understand even though he was a member of that particular club.

"I'm calling to complain," Tony said. "Bruce turned me down."

"Aw," Jane said and her expression actually transformed into a genuine pout.

"Did you try flowers?" Bucky asked. He then instantly wondered if homoerotic jokes were a good idea, but it was already said.

Tony ignored his joke. "I was really nice about it, I didn't even make fun of him. I don't think I said anything inappropriate. But he says he has no time with the college credits he is taking and everything." Tony let out an exaggerated sigh. "And Rhodey and science… Whatever, I don't need friends, I'll build myself-"

"Tony," Jane interrupted him. "Be at Bucky's in twenty. I looked at the rules and there's nothing about the teams having to be two people. It's just conventional."

When Tony ended the call, she sighed and looked at Bucky with a regretful expression. "I really thought Bruce'd work with him. They could get along and god knows he needs more people who get him... Do you think I hurt his feelings?"

Bucky bit his lip and tried to not think about it too hard. "He'll bounce back."

Exactly twenty minutes later, Tony stood at Bucky's front door with his ridiculous red car parked in the driveway and sunglasses on his nose. "What are we working on?"

"Time travel," Jane said while Bucky shouted over her: "Not time travel!"

Another two hours later, they got no further in her list of ideas than to a list of definite NO's.

***

It was not until Tuesday that Bucky ran into Steve Rogers again. It was in the restroom, where Steve was just washing his hands when Bucky walked in. "Whoa, what happened to your face?" Bucky asked, momentarily forgetting what he had come there to do. Steve had a spectacular shiner that colored his face purple and made him squint.

Steve shrugged and offered Bucky a grin that looked off with the bruise taking up so much of his face. "I ran into someone's fist. Nothing unusual."

Bucky looked at him with wide eyes and wondered whether it really bothered Steve so little or if he was playing brave. "Was it because…?" he gestured vaguely, not sure how to put his assumption into words.

Steve understood anyway and shook his head. "No, not that. He was spouting bullshit and I called him out on it." He crossed his skinny arms on his chest and lifted his chin defiantly. Then he dropped the pose and gave Bucky a questioning look. "Speaking of, you didn't come."

With a frown, Bucky shoved his hands in his hoodie pocket. "What makes you think it's something that'd interest me?" Damn, he really didn't want to have this conversation somewhere where anyone could barge in at any moment.

Steve shrugged. He kicked air with his left foot. "You were looking at the poster."

"Maybe I just liked the art." It came out wrong, but there was no way to take it back now.

It was Steve's turn to frown, though he couldn't hide the flustered flush in his cheeks. "It isn't even good. I want to redo it, do something less cartoonish."

Bucky opened his mouth when the door flew open and he barely had time enough to step to side to let Brock Rumlow through. Brock, with his team jersey and posture that took more space than necessary, was the epitome of the unpleasant sort of a jock.

"What, is the queer hitting on you, Barnes?"

"Shut up," Bucky snapped, turning red. "You're just jealous," he added when he realized his initial reaction was the wrong one. That wasn't much better, but it would do for the moment it took him to storm out of the bathroom. Steve was on his heels, but Bucky didn't turn around. He still needed to visit a bathroom and there was one on the floor below.

"You're a coward, Buck," he told his reflection in the mirror there.

Chapter Text

Sometimes, well-meaning assholes called Bucky brave. For facing the world without the arm he had lost. They meant well, but they never realized how stupid it made him feel to be called brave for something that was a necessity.

Bucky hated being called brave; he hated feeling like a coward, too.

Not sure what else he could do, he decided to approach Natasha on Wednesday. He found her in the cafeteria during the lunch break, sitting at a table with Clint Barton and Jessica Drew. She had her legs up on the chair next to her and an expression that dared anyone to say a word about it.

"Natashenka," Bucky said with a bright smile and leaned against the backrest of that chair. "Looking good." Natasha was a beautiful girl, thought it was never easy to guess what she'd be wearing. She looked downright preppy the day before and soft goth a few days back. Today she was wearing a blue t-shirt with only enough of a hint at sleeves to meet the dress code, skinny jeans, and black converse.

"What do you want, Barnes?" she asked in a monotone. Her nails were the same shade as her t-shirt.

Bucky aimed for nonchalant charm in his pose. "Can't I just want a few minute conversation?"

She shook her head. "You want something, spit it out."

"A cup of coffee this afternoon?" Bucky suggested. Clint cleared his throat; so he and Natasha were on again. Jessica snickered.

Natasha shook her head. "Been there, done that."

Bucky glanced at Natasha's friends. Barton spoke Spanish, Jessica was fluent in Russian. Bucky chose French. "I need to talk and I'm desperate," he said.

She stared at him for a moment with an expression that suggested she could see his soul. "Okay," she said finally. "I've got Drama Club after class. 5PM?"

***

Bucky was sitting on a desk with his feet rested on the edge of Jane's chair. Tony paced around, stopping occasionally to exclaim an idea. They hadn't agreed on a project yet.

"We could program our own AI," Tony was suggesting, his arms spread as if he wanted to hug the whole classroom. "Something like SIRI, only better."

"I can't code for shit," Bucky protested.

"It's just another language," Jane said. "You're good with languages."

"Yeah, not programming. C'mon, something we can all work on?"

Just then the club's supervisor poked his head in. Dr. Selvig was a good guy, really, caring and fatherly and a little eccentric. He was a strict mentor, though, not tolerant to their fooling around.

"What're you working on?" he asked, eyeing the notes in Bucky's lap.

"We're trying to come up with a project for the Science contest," Jane said. She didn't suggest time travel again.

"We're in the middle of a fruitful and fulfilling brainstorming session," said Tony.

Bucky just scrambled off the desk and took a chair next to Jane instead.

Dr. Selving looked between them with a furrowed brow. "What about the Science Quiz?"

"Not enough people to form a team," Bucky said. "Again."

Dr. Selvig was proud of his own string of victories in the Science Quiz competitions while he was a student himself and every year it hurt his feelings to see the current Science Club fail to even meet the required number of members.

"So we thought- We all have various engagements. Tony is on the Student Council, Jane is working on the yearbook and- Don't you have a Model UN, too, Jane?"

She nodded. "United Kingdom. And Bu- James is with the school paper."

"Just the Science News column and language quizzes," Bucky shrugged. "But, what was I-"

"We're all busy people," Tony said. "And seeing as the Science contest is directly related to, you know, science…"

"We figured it'd be a good use of our time here," Jane finished. When Mr. Selvig's frown didn't relax, she added: "Imagine, we could win."

Dr. Selvig stared at them for a long time. Then he nodded and left.

"I have it!" Tony exclaimed suddenly. "We could build a robotic arm."

"No!" Bucky clutched his prosthesis protectively with his right hand.

"Not attached to you. Stop being so self-centered, Barnes."

***

Bucky ended up being late to his meeting with Natasha. She was glaring at him from behind her frappucino when he stormed in through the door.

"Natashenka," he nodded at her with a sheepish grin as he sank into the seat opposite from her. "How was Drama? Did you get all the roles?"

"Just the lead ones," she replied. She pointed her spoon at him. "So, what do you want?"

Bucky took a deep breath and then remained silent.

"James?" she prompted him.

"Where do you know Steve Rogers from?" he asked, finally.

She blinked. Her lips parted in a look of genuine surprise. "Is that a trick question?" she asked. "He goes to our school, same year and all. I've Art with him."

"That's not- Look, this is about-" He shifted in his seat uncomfortably and looked around. The coffee shop was across the street from the school and most student came here or the diner a few stores down the street. Even now he could see a group of cheerleaders at one of the tables. And the Junior class president, who was a friend of Tony's, half-hidden behind her laptop at another. He switched to Russian. "I want to talk about the Thursday club."

"What- Oh, James Barnes. Do you think you turned me?"

Bucky felt his cheeks heat up and he was trying to will his body to not do this to him. It didn't obey. "If I had, you should tell Barton. But that's not- I was thinking that maybe it's something for me." It was easier to admit in a language that wasn't his own, but he still found his knees trembling when he met Natasha's gaze.

She was looking at him curiously, her eyes bearing deep into his soul. "Then come in tomorrow," she said. "It'll be good for you."

He pulled the menu out of the holder just to give himself something to do that wouldn't be looking at Natasha. "What do you even do?"

"Talk about things we can't talk about elsewhere."

Chapter Text

Usually, Bucky strode through the hallways, with earphones in his ears and fast steps, composing articles in his head to the beat of the music. That Thursday afternoon he was dragging his feet.

Yet he was the second person to arrive.

Classroom 4B was in fact Mr. Coulson's. Mr. Coulson taught anything to do with politics and supervised the Model UN, and he was generally well-loved in the way teachers too awesome to be easily approachable were. The classroom itself was unexpectedly cheerful, decorated in maps and the desks were painted a variety of colors.

Steve Rogers was sitting at the blue one right at the front and center of the class, bent over his sketchbook with a single-minded focus on his face. There was a folder lying by his elbow. It wasn't until Bucky stopped right by his desk that Steve noticed him and looked up.

"You came," he said and smiled.

Bucky shrugged. "Yeah." He took the seat next to Steve and dropped his bag to his feet, and tried to ignore how much he wanted to run away. "What're you drawing?"

"It's not finished yet," Steve said, shielding the drawing from Bucky's curious gaze. Then, however, he somewhat reluctantly straightened in his seat and moved his arms out of the way, nudging the sketchbook a little closer to Bucky with an almost embarrassed smile on his face.

It was a rough sketch, but some parts of it was already taking the desired shape. Bucky could see a girl sitting on the top of a wall while another person leaned against it. There was a hint of a dialogue bubble, though still empty. "You're really talented," Bucky observed. He reached out to touch the sketch, then realized it was probably a bad idea not only because his fingers were clammy and shaky, and he dropped his hand to his lap.

He looked up at Steve, who was looking at him with a bashful expression, and Bucky found himself fascinated with the length of Steve eyelashes when the boy looked down. They were impossibly long, longer even than those that Bucky could see in his own mirror and he had received some envious comments before.

"Have you thought about submitting something to the school paper? We're always short on illustrators and no one knows the first thing about comics or anything, but everyone always demands strips."

Before Steve could respond, they were interrupted by Sam's arrival. Bucky was vaguely familiar with Sam Wilson, though he couldn't quite figure him out: they were in the same year and both carried the label of the smart kids, even though Sam was smart in a different way, always knowing his answers in all the humanities classes. He was the star of the Track & Field team, too, athletic, but not fitting in with neither Brock Rumlow's nor Thor Odinson's crowd. And he was always so laid-back though not because he was usually stoned the way Bucky suspected Clint Barton to be.

"Hey," he said cheerfully, offering them both a bright gap-toothed smile, and took a seat at the green desk next to theirs. He kicked his feet up on the desk. "I wasn't expecting you here," he told Bucky.

Bucky gave him a small wave. "I'm not sure I'm really supposed to be here."

"Which letter are you?" Sam asked, leaning back in his chair to look at him properly past Steve, who returned to his sketch almost the very moment Bucky stopped paying attention to it.

"What?" Bucky linked and gave Sam a confused owlish stare.

"In the acronym."

Bucky felt blood rush to his cheeks; he was embarrassed both by failing to figure out Sam's question and by not having an answer ready. "Not really sure," he admitted, shifting awkwardly in his seat.

"The Q can stand for 'questioning', too," Steve said, looking up briefly.

"I'm the A," Sam said.

"Ally?" Bucky asked, immediately feeling stupid when Sam smirked.

"Ace. Panromantic asexual, to be exact."

Bucky would have needed more of an explanation for that, but that was exactly the moment Natasha and a dark-haired girl, whom Bucky now recognized to be Maria Hill, walked in. Natasha took the route around Bucky's seat and ruffled his hair. "James Buchanan Barnes, I'm so proud of you," she said before dropping her bag onto the red desk behind him and Steve. Today, she was wearing skinny jeans, plaid shirt, and hipster glasses.

Maria took the yellow desk behind Sam. She was a serious girl, a year above Bucky, who would certainly be aiming for a valedictorian if she wasn't in the same class as Tony and Virginia Potts. Bucky couldn't remember ever talking to her before.

"Looks like everyone is here," Steve said, putting his sketchbook aside and twisting in his chair. Bucky opted for abandoning his seat and sitting on the desk.

"Statistically, you know, there should be so many more people," Sam mentioned.

"It's not so easy to gather the courage," said Bucky and his ears heated up.

"No shit," Maria muttered.

In Bucky's pocket, his phone buzzed. He took it out to find an email from Jane.

From: Jane Foster
To: James Barnes, Anthony Stark
Subject: Science Project
I'm still not sure about the project. Anyone can build a robot and I heard Fitz and Simmons from West High teamed up. If we want to succeed outside school, we need something unique.

He decided that it didn't require his immediate attention and put his phone away again.

"That reminds me," Steve said, looking at Bucky's phone, and then turned to his own bag and pulled out a folded paper. He handed it to Bucky, and it turned out to be a pamphlet printed out on a regular printing paper. Nothing fancy, even if it was printed in color. "It has some useful links you might want to look up."

"All of them safe for work, unfortunately," Natasha said.

Steve blushed and let out an embarrassed chuckle.

"Not so safe for parents, though," Maria said.

"Yeah," muttered Sam.

"Thanks," Bucky said and started putting the pamphlet away into his bag when his phone buzzed with another notification.

From: Anthony Stark
To: Jane Foster, James Barnes
Subject: Re: Science Project
We'll make our robot the best robot ever made for a competition. The perfect robot. Worth of Tony Stark's reputation. Badass awesome features to include: Go!

Before he could even finish reading it, he received a response from Jane.

From: Jane Foster
To: James Barnes, Anthony Stark
Subject: Re: Re: Science Project
We won't solve anything over the email. Emergency meeting. You guys are both free, right?

Bucky sighed.

"Everything alright?" Sam asked. Everyone was looking at Bucky with a variety of concerned expressions and he wondered just how distressed he looked.

"Just-" Bucky shrugged and looked around the room. "My friends don't know I'm here," he admitted, embarrassed. "And we're working on a project and- Yeah."

"Is that Tony Stark demanding your attention?" Natasha asked, leaning back in her chair. "You'd better go then, before he GPS-stalks you all the way to here."

"He's not that bad."

"Just barely," Maria said.

Steve leaned closer to Bucky, nudging Bucky's knee with his arm. "If you need to leave, that's alright," he said, though his voice betrayed a hint of disappointment.

With another heavy sigh, Bucky shot an email back to Jane and Tony. "I should probably go. This is stupid."

"Hey, it's alright," Sam said.

"Trust me, we get it," said Maria.

Steve smiled at him a sad little smile. "There's always the next week."

"Go before they hunt you down," Natasha said.

When Bucky was almost out of the door, Sam called after him: "Hey, Barnes? It was nice having you here."

***

Bucky replied to the email conversation on his way out of the classroom. When they agreed on meeting place, he calculated that it would take him less time to walk to Tony's from school than it would have from his place, and so he stopped at a bookstore. He bought himself a novel as a reward for actually attending the group. Sure, he hadn't stayed for long, but he had gone and that counted.

"I stopped at your place on the way," Jane said when he arrived. "I thought we could walk together, but your parents said you weren't home." She didn't phrase it like a question but that was how Bucky understood it.

He shrugged, avoiding her eyes. "I had a thing," he said. Only a split second later did it occur to him that he could have mentioned the bookstore visit and left it at that. Instead, he decided to change the topic and focus on the project: "I think we're going about it all wrong," he said and sat down onto the floor of Tony's room. His workroom or office or whatever it was, actually, because his bedroom was separate from it. "We're looking for something cool to build when we should be looking for a problem we can solve. That's how the best ideas start. So: what do you need the most?"

Without even looking at each other, Tony and Jane replied unison: "A lab assistant."

Chapter Text

The next day, Bucky was too distracted by his new book to pay proper attention to his surroundings. It happened to him sometimes, when the book he was reading was particularly good, and though he had been told before, repeatedly, that reading and walking combined poorly, he couldn't quite help himself. He read about quarter of the book in the hour it took him to walk to school and didn't put it away once he entered the building either. It was early and the corridor was almost deserted.

He should have seen it coming. His nose deep in Valiant, he collided with another body. The person it belonged to groaned while Bucky struggled to not drop the book.

"Ugh, sorry," he muttered and finally looked up from the novel. His eyes came to rest on Steve's red face. Bucky's own cheeks heated up immediately. "I wasn't looking." Out of all the awkward ways to start his school day…

Steve took a deep breath and then smiled, though it looked a little tense. Being stepped on had to be quite unpleasant. "It must be a good book," he observed, his tone light.

Bucky lifted the novel so that Steve could see the art on the cover. Though Steve's face showed no condescension, Bucky went into a defensive position immediately out of habit: "Don't judge by the cover." Of the two cover versions he knew were available, the copy Bucky owned had the less serious looking one. It hadn't mattered to him when he was picking it up the day before in the bookstore, but now he felt a little embarrassed. He was a teenager, after all, and he was holding a sci-fi paperback for an artist's inspection. Though most of his peers would probably care very little what little Steve Rogers thought about them, Bucky realized that to him, Steve's opinion mattered.

"I wouldn't dare to. What's it about?" Steve leaned against the locker that could have very well been his; Bucky realized he wasn't sure.

"Military sci-fi. The series's called Lost Fleet and it's… It's really smart and a great read, okay? The main character, he's been in cryo and lost in space for a hundred years and then he comes back and he's a legend, but everything he's been fighting for is sort of twisted and people use his name to justify these twisted views on valor and-" He paused to take a breath and then continued, trying to hide the embarrassment in his voice. "It's much better than I'm making it sound, okay? It's really great and I can't recommend it enough."

To his relief, Steve looked much happier now. The smile reached his eyes, his whole face lit up, and there was a hint of amusement in his expression. Bucky wasn't sure if Steve found Bucky's enthusiasm for the particular book so funny or if it was the way Bucky had failed to describe it. He wasn't going to ask. "It sounds interesting," Steve allowed.

"It is! I swear it's awesome. Hey, I could lend you the first book in the series if you wanted?" Though letting people borrow books usually led to having more free space on the bookshelf forever, Bucky had never learned not to do it. Especially if it meant encouraging someone else to read something he himself had enjoyed.

The offer took Steve by surprise because he needed a moment to respond. He smiled and nodded. "That'd be great. Thanks."

Bucky caught himself grinning in excitement all the way to his first period.

***

The pamphlet Steve had given him lay in front of Bucky on his bedroom desk. He had yet to look through it properly, because the day before he only got home late and because, embarrassingly, it required more courage than he would have guessed. Though he wasn't sure why, the idea of actually committing to research felt like a very serious step.

Closing his eyes for a moment, he focused on gathering his courage. It seemed ridiculous, but he felt that exposing himself to all the information would make it much more real, the thing about most likely not being heterosexual, and that would end up changing his life irreversibly, possibly in ways he wasn't ready for.

He had to do it at some point, though.

He forced himself to open his eyes. His tablet propped against one knee, he pulled the pamphlet closer.

A knock on his door interrupted him and he had all of five seconds to grab the paper and shove it into the top drawer of his desk. He almost toppled over his chair and his tablet fell to the floor and Bucky cursed.

"Language, James," his mother said, though gently. "The dinner's ready."

"I'll be right there," he said and repressed a sigh, grabbing his tablet from the floor. It looked unharmed, though it started rebooting itself and there was a new scratch across the screen.

When she closed the door behind her, Bucky didn't return to the pamphlet. It would be better left for a time when he was home alone. Instead he took his copy of Dauntless, the first in the Lost Fleet series, out of his bookshelf to put it in his schoolbag.

Before he packed it, though, he wrote his number on the first page. "If you want to discuss the book," he added underneath.

Chapter Text

It wasn't until the Monday morning that Bucky could see Steve again, but this time around instead of relying on a coincidence to bring them into the same general area, he actually sought him out himself. The corridors were still relatively empty, though there was a group of jocks with an early morning practice and Bucky waited for them to clear out before he approached Steve. The other boy was standing at his locker, the one at which Bucky had run into him on Friday, his back to it and flipping through a day-planner.

Bucky leaned against the locker to Steve's right. "Hey."

He received no reaction. He cleared throat and tried again, louder. "Steve?"

Steve startled and looked at him, eyes wide. "Hi," he said after a moment. "Sorry, that's my deaf side." There was probably enough of confusion on Bucky's face showing before he figured out what Steve meant, because Steve closed the planner and pulled at his right ear. "This one's just decorative," he explained. He turned to face Bucky fully before Bucky could move to Steve's left side.

Bucky nodded, swallowing any comment about how the decorative ear did a great job (because really, who complimented someone's ears for their aesthetics?), and pulled his school bag off his shoulder. "I've got something for you," he said. He dropped the bag to his feet, opened it and pulled out the book. "Here," he said, shoving Dauntless towards Steve.

Steve looked between Bucky and the book with his mouth open in surprise before accepting it. "Thank you. You'll have it back before the weekend."

"I promised, didn't I?" Bucky said with a shrug, lifting the bag up again and slinging the strap over his shoulder nonchalantly. "Don't worry about giving it back. I've read it already, so keep it as long as you need." Though Bucky liked to get his books back and he believed most could be read in less than a full afternoon, he didn't want to rush the other boy. How was anyone supposed to enjoy a book under pressure? That was how most books he had to read for school were ruined for him.

Steve thanked him again, put the book into his own bag, and excused himself because he needed to get to a classroom that was on the other side of the school. Bucky watched him go, smiling to himself. He couldn't help the feeling of excitement; he really looked forward to talking about the book with him.

When he turned around to head for his own locker, he found Virginia, generally referred to as Pepper, watching him with concerned gaze. Pepper was Tony's friend and people often assumed they were dating, though that wasn't the case. Bucky only knew her vaguely. "I heard he's trouble," she said, thoughtful.

"Who? Rogers?" Bucky blinked in surprise, too startled to even blush. He looked over his shoulder, but he couldn't see Steve anymore. "He doesn't look like bad news." In fact, Steve looked rather harmless for someone capable of such a defiant expression as he had seen on Steve. Except for how he always had bruises that were only just disappearing.

Pepper shrugged. "Not much more so than Tony Stark, I suppose."

"And we put up with Tony just fine," Bucky agreed.

Later, when he received a text from Tony, he just groaned.

from: Tony
we had conversation. we had a conversation about art club people. why are you breaking my heart like this?

Because he was an ass, he replied:

to: Tony
Your lack of capitalization hurts my eyes. Pepper'd be in the Art Club if it didn't collide with the Student Council. Think about that.

from: Tony
exception

Bucky wanted to write back that Steve should be one, too, and that the whole thing was stupid and in Tony's head anyway. He didn't, because he had no idea why exactly he should say Steve had earned that sort of status.

***

Bucky was sitting on the living room floor surrounded by papers when his little sister danced in.

"What're you doing?" Becca asked and sat down to him, grabbing his left sleeve. His younger sister was eight and she and Bucky didn't resemble each other much. Where he was a spitting image of his father, she looked much more like their mother, with hair the shade that some people argued was brown while the hairstylist insisted was blond and would look just wonderful lightened a bit. Becca's parents agreed that there was no reason to change it before she was a teenager.

"Hey, kitten," he said. "How about you pin it up for me?" he asked, pulling a safety pin out of his pocket and handing it to her. The sleeve got in the way, but he hadn't felt like going through the hassle of pinning it up himself when settling in the living room.

"What are you doing?" Becca repeated, dutifully rolling up his sleeve. Bucky liked to work in the living room, the noises from the kitchen and the sound of television helping him focus, but it usually ended up with someone distracting him.

"Trying to get some engineering behind all this," he said, gesturing his hand around to the papers covered with ideas and requirements. "I'm building a future."

That was when his phone buzzed, still on silent after the day at school. He grabbed it and opened the text he'd just received.

from: Unknow
I'm 60 pages in already. Not that you asked for a progress report but I thought I'd let you know I like the book. Geary's a hero after my own heart. But I wouldn't want to be in his situation.

Bucky saved Steve's number before responding.

to: Steve Rogers
I always want progress reports, comes with being a nerd. What, you don't want to wake up 100 years into the future and lead a fleet?

from: Steve Rogers
Not particularly. But I hear they have robots and a little more equality.

Though Bucky had heard that one before, he still chuckled to himself.

to: Steve Rogers
We have robots already. I'm building one right now.

Technically, the robot was still in the stage of ideas being tossed around, but they had figured out enough to have basic requirements for it ("If you want something useful in the lab, I say grip is most important," Bucky had insisted, demonstrating what he meant on his prosthetic hand.)

from: Steve Rogers
And I'm working on the equality.

"What're you smiling about?" Becca tried looking over Bucky's shoulder and he quickly pressed the phone screen down against his thigh. He wasn't sure why, because there was nothing exactly incriminating. Yet he didn't want her to see.

"Nothing," he muttered, edging away from her.

"Do you have a girlfriend?" she asked and reached for the phone. Bucky threw himself backwards, away from her grabbing fingers. It would have been easier to let her see, and yet he was incapable of acting rational. He landed on his pencil case. He only hoped he wouldn't end up with ink stains all over his t-shirt and the living room carpet.

"Is it Jane?" For whatever reason, Bucky's family lived under the impression that one day he and Jane would realize their eternal love for each other, get married, and raise kids together while solving the world hunger at the same time. As much as he loved Jane, as a friend, few things made him as uncomfortable as unwarranted assumptions.

"I don't- Leave me alone, oh my god." Trying to push his sister away with his foot while trying to shove his phone into the pocket of his jeans would be a hassle in itself, but with his scattered pens digging into his back, he was really regretting his choices. Only he really didn't want to give up now.

Their mother appeared in the doorway. "What's this all about?" At that moment, Becca was holding Bucky's ankle in both hands, trying to trap his other one with her legs, and it flashed through Bucky's mind that they'd perhaps both benefit from some sort of self defense classes. Their fight was extremely graceless.

"Mum! James has a girlfriend and he won't tell me!"

"Leave your brother be, Rebecca."

When Becca dropped his leg, Bucky sank to the floor with a sigh of relief. He finally managed to place his phone securely in his pocket and for the moment, he didn't even really mind the mess he was laying in.

"So, who's the girl?" his mother asked, because apparently curiosity would soon kill most of the Barnes' family. At least satisfaction would bring them back.

Bucky groaned. "Oh, for f- It's not-" He forced himself to sit up again. "I was texting a new friend I made. His name's Steve. Jesus."

Chapter Text

Bucky was taking his usual route to school when a car stopped right by him. It was an older model, but someone kept it well-cared for and the white hood was decorated with red details. Bucky stopped walking and pulled out one of his earphones just as the driver's window rolled down.

He was faced with Sam's gap-toothed smile. "Hey Barnes."

"Wilson." Bucky smiled back.

"Walking to school? I can take you," Sam offered, gesturing with his thumb to the back seat of his car. "I mean, I've got to stop to pick up Steve, but you can both fit in the car just fine."

Forcing his smile to stay on his face, neutral and polite, Bucky shook his head. "Thank you, but I'll walk." He walked every day, all the way to the school. When asked, he usually laughs it off.

"Are you sure? It will take you, what, another half an hour at least?"

"Twenty minutes if I put something fast-paced on." Bucky tapped the mp3 player fastened to his belt. He didn't mind walking, especially when the weather was as nice as it was then. There were only a few weeks of pleasant weather left in the year and then soon he would have to start considering the bus.

Sam looked at him with an arched eyebrow. "Too good to be seen with the likes of us?" His tone was joking, but there was a hint of something more serious in his voice, too.

"No!" Bucky shook his head. That assumption was the last thing he wanted Sam to think, though if he was completely honest with himself, the idea of people noticing he hang around the LGBT+ Club kids was a little nerve-wrecking. "No, there's nothing wrong with you. Or Steve." He sighed and made a vague gesture that would tell Sam absolutely nothing. "I just- I like walking. It helps me think."

To his relief, Sam smiled. "So that's why you're so smart."

"Nah, I'm just naturally brilliant."

Sam laughed. He nodded at Bucky. "Alright, Barnes. I'll see you at school, then."

Bucky nodded. "Yeah. Thank you for the offer."

"No problem, man," Sam said, already scrolling the window closed while Bucky put his earphone back in.

The truth was, Bucky simply didn't get along with cars very well.

***

By then, Bucky already knew which classes he shared with Steve Rogers. History, in which Steve sat exactly in the center of the class and was actually active, sometimes to the point of arguing with the teacher; he had a sharp mind and a sharp tongue. And French, where Steve always took the seat in the front, on the opposite end of the row from Bucky, and spent the lecture quietly taking notes unless asked a question directly.

Bucky always sat in the first row, both because he liked to know what was happening in the class and because it was usually easy to get away with slacking when one sat at the very front. In French, Sam sat between Bucky and Steve.

That day, Monsieur Dernier was just explaining the common mistakes the class was guilty of in their last essay when Sam nudged Bucky. Bucky glanced at him and Sam handed him a piece of folded paper across the aisle separating them. When Bucky gave him a questioning look, Sam nodded towards Steve, who was sitting at his desk seemingly fully focused on whatever notes he was writing down.

Sam shrugged and Bucky took the paper, thanking him with a nod. He glanced around to see where the teacher was and then unfolded the paper. It was a drawing.

A really good drawing, too, not a simple doodle. Stylized as a vintage advertisement, there were two old-fashioned looking robots – all squares, buttons, and levers. They are holding their hands. Beneath them were the words: "Robots for equality".

Bucky couldn't help but laugh, quickly covering it with a chuckle.

He glanced at Steve and caught him looking. Steve smiled at him, bright and mischievous, and winked. There was something about Steve's smile. He wasn't a stunningly beautiful guy, but there was something about the way he smiled, the look in his eyes. Something that lit up a spark deep within Bucky's body.

He blushed and ducked his head.

"Monsieur Barnes, would you care to explain what I've just said?"

Startled, Bucky turned to the teacher with wide eyes and guilty face, but his uncertainty lasted only for a second. Then he took a quick look at the blackboard to note what was written there and launched into a long-winded explanation elaborating on the last point. He hadn't been paying attention, but he had always been good at winging it.

Monsieur Dernier stopped him only when Rumlow in the back of the class yawned ostentatiously.

Chapter Text

Bucky thought about putting the drawing on his wall, taping it between the ages old Star Wars poster and beautiful chart about Mars probes Jane had got him, but he wasn't sure he wanted to face the questions his family would likely have. Yet the drawing was too nice, too important, for him to simply throw away. He made to put it in the top drawer of his desk, the one that really needed sorting, when he noticed the pamphlet he had not so much forgotten about as trying not to think of.

He took it out and stared at it for half a minute. He was home alone – his father was still at work, mother had gone out to meet a friend, and Becca had a dance class. The timing wasn't going to get better.

His heart beating a little too fast, Bucky hid the drawing and took the pamphlet and his tablet instead, settling on the bed. Then he got up again and went to close his door. It wasn't as if he was going to be looking at anything dirty; there was that one time he had experimented with internet pornography and found out that a) it was really awkward to try watching it when his family was at home b) the things he could access for free were of really questionable quality in all aspects and the trailer-like arrangement of disjoined scenes left him feeling unsatisfied c) begging Tony to teach him how to get rid of malware afterwards was beyond embarrassing. However, he felt it would make little difference if his parents caught him browsing porn or LGBT+ youth help websites. He would have to design something to shoot himself out into space with regardless.

The flyer had headers in the color of the rainbow, sections on various topics from "Questioning?" to "Coming Out to Your Parents and Friends". The first one was relevant to Bucky's interests, the last one only made his chest tense. His friends would perhaps be alright, but the idea of telling anything to his parents was terrifying. Not that there was anything to tell, anyway. It was all pure theory so far.

As soon as he thought that, an image of Steve's face swam up to the surface of his consciousness. He squashed it immediately. Where did that even come from? Sure, Steve Rogers has something charming about it and the mischief in his eyes made Bucky—

No, he wasn't going to let his mind wander in that direction.

Instead, he started to make his way through the recommended links in the "Questioning?" section. First thing he noticed was that the majority of everything was aimed at the gay teens. "Does questioning automatically make me gay?" he read and it made him pull a face. Why did everything have to be one or the other? But when he thought that, he had to admit that there was a part of him that hoped that maybe he could be simply straight.

After the third set of questions to ask himself and the fourth website to tell him to not put too much pressure on himself, he slowly backed out. There was tension building in his chest that he didn't like. Bucky knew all about panic attacks, had had his first one when he was twelve, and this wasn't it but he still didn't want to risk it turning into one.

He put the tablet away and grabbed his pillow, hugging it to his chest. For a moment he just sat there, breathing in and out until he could do it easily. Only then he picked up the flyer again to look at what even he was questioning about. There was a short glossary of terms and labels, each one explained in two or three sentences.

Until that day, he hadn't even known there was a difference between romantic and sexual orientation.

The language talent in him cringed at the suggestion that "pansexual" had to have anything in common with kitchen utensils.

The questioning boy in him wondered whether maybe it could be the label that fit him.

Or maybe bisexual?

Or—

The air was getting thin again.

"Why do we need so many labels?" he typed into the search bar of his browser in frustration.

One of the top search results turned out to be: "Discovering a label that fits you can be incredibly empowering."

Bucky wished he knew that feeling.

***

"That won't work," Jane said, looking at Bucky's design. His drafts were spread on half of the desk, he was sitting on the other. Jane and Tony were studying them carefully. He had settled on something that looked like a robotic arm, bending in the elbow and full range of motion in what could be called a wrist. The hand part's design was more a three piece tweezers than a hand with flexible fingers.

"Hmm?" As much as Bucky was trying to focus, his thoughts were on the research he had been doing the night before. Instead of asking what was wrong with his design, he wanted to ask Jane whether he was giving off some sort of vibe.

"This," Jane tapped the top part of the robot with the back of her pencil. "It'll be too heavy, the whole thing'll keep folding down. You need more support… here." She already started drawing her correction.

Tony nodded. "Jane's right. Are you okay? You're like, three miles away." He snapped his fingers in front of Bucky's face. Bucky glared at him.

"Yeah, I'm fine." He rubbed his nose, then brushed his hand through his hair. It was getting a little too long and when he shook his head to clear his thoughts, a few strands fell back into his face. He brushed it away again. "I was thinking," he said in hope of getting his brain back on track. "That we need it to do more than just lift a thing here, twist a screw there. First of all, if it's going to be helpful, it needs to do things without, well, without you having to interrupt whatever you're doing to input a command, right?"

"Voice commands," Tony suggested.

"If you can program voice recognition that won't make me want to cry, I'll have to marry you," Bucky said impulsively. Jane laughed.

Tony clasped Bucky's shoulder with one hand. "Sorry, Barnes. You're not my type."

"What do you have against smart and beautiful?" Bucky asks.

Tony snorts. "You're lacking in certain areas." He gestures to his chest.

There're things Bucky wants to say. Would you really let that get in the way of our love? or something along those lines. The joke doesn't feel right, though. He offers Tony a small smile and a shrug and then returns to their designs.

"To add to what Bucky was saying earlier," Jane says. Bucky isn't sure if it's to break the awkwardness or because she'd like to get the conversation back on track. "It shouldn't be just an assistant. I think it'd be great if it could be a true companion."

"How're we going to get all this done in the time we have?"

"I told you we should work on time travel."

Chapter Text

Bucky noticed Steve walking across the parking lot. He was wearing a leather jacket, too broad for his shoulders. It was well-kept, but bore marks of age. Steve's hair were messy from the wind that was sweeping the streets that day. His left shoe's laces were undone.

And in that moment, Bucky caught himself thinking that Steve was beautiful.

It was a purely aesthetic observation.

***

"This one girl," Maria started. She sat at the same table as the last time, leaning back in her chair. "She told me I was too conventional for someone who was- For a lesbian." She said the last word quickly, as if she was trying to get it over with. As if she was unused to the taste of it in her mouth.

"What? Do you need to dress up to match your orientation now or something?" Bucky asked from his spot on a desk. He had once again taken a seat next to Steve and then ended up sitting on the desk instead of at it. Meanwhile, Steve had turned in his seat so that he was leaning against the backrest with his chest, arms folded up on it. "That's bullshit."

"I know." Maria shrugged. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a plain black t-shirt. Bucky thought she was extremely pretty but he had always been under the impression that she was didn't want people to get very close to her or notice her in any other way than someone flawlessly efficient and smart. "My orientation isn't my world view or fashion style, thank you very much. Though I guess it affects the former if not the latter. But... It just got me thinking. How much of my time and effort do I put into meeting someone's expectations? When was the last time I did something without wondering- Sometimes I want to cut my hair, or dye it, or wear something different, but I don't want people to think about it. I don't want them wondering, why did she do that? I want to say: because I fucking wanted to and that should be a reason enough. No need to pick apart everything I do."

"So why don't you?" asked Natasha. Everyone turned to her and she smiled at them with mock-innocence in her face. Today she was wearing a pair of elegant slacks, a white blouse and a cute pait of tiny fake pearl earrings in her ears. "It's not like anyone's opinion matters."

"That's easy for you to say," Maria said. A small crease formed between her brows.

"Yeah, no offense but you sort of swap styles at the speed other people change socks," Sam pointed out. His chair was standing only on the back two legs and he was keeping himself balanced with one hand gripping the desk.

"None taken. I don't understand why people stick to one particular style anyway. If I wake up and want to smear eyeliner all over my face why shouldn't I just because I wore a floral dress the other day?"

"I want to pierce my ear," Steve said suddenly, drawing everyone's attention to himself. He looked a little pensive.

"You'll get sepsis and die," Sam said.

"I won't get sepsis."

"Remember that time you tried to pierce your lip and almost took your tooth out?"

"How does one do that?" Bucky asked. He didn't need the mental image of Steve with a lipring. He really didn't.

"By being Steve Rogers," Steve answered with a self-deprecating shrug. "And I'd have a professional do it this time around."

"I know a guy," Natasha said.

Sam sighed. "If it'll make you happy."

"I have an idea," Bucky heard himself say. "How about we all get something done? I mean, why not?"

"And here I thought you'd be joining me in the reasonable human being corner, Barnes." Sam didn't even try to hide the sense of betrayal from his expression, though there was enough exaggeration in it for Bucky to assume it wasn't entirely serious.

Bucky rubbed the bridge of his nose and shrugged with his right shoulder. "I just think, why not? We'll be able to say we've done it at least." He couldn't quite believe the words that were coming out of his mouth. He caught Natasha smiling at him, though, and when he glanced at Steve, the blond boy was looking at him with appreciation. Bucky couldn't help but smile back, warmth spreading through his chest.

"I'm in," Maria said.

Sam let out the deepest sigh Bucky had ever heard. He was, however, smiling.

***

"That wasn't something I'd have expected to hear from you," Steve admitted afterwards, catching up with Bucky in the corridor. Bucky would not admit it, but he had sort of hoped Steve would which was why he had slowed down his pace compared to his usual stride.

"Are you going to say I'm too conventional?" he asked with a hint of a smirk.

Steve smiled sheepishly and ducked his head. "Well, you… come across that way. A little bit. Not in a bad way."

"Yeah, I know."

"Yeah. Oh, I finished the book," Steve said suddenly, shrugging his bag off one shoulder and unzipping it.

"I have the second one for you if we can stop at my locker," Bucky said when Steve handed him the book. "If you liked it enough?"

It was silly, how pleased he felt when Steve nodded in response. "It was good. Could use a few more robots." Steve winked at Bucky who remembered there being none. Which was ironic, considering the book sort of inspired the drawing that now resided in Bucky's drawer. "And a few, you know, characters that explicitly aren't straight."

"Yeah."

"I just notice those things," Steve said, brushing his hair out of his face. It hadn't even been falling into his eyes.

Bucky bit his lip. He dropped his gaze to his shoes and kept it there for a while as they walked. "Have any recommendations?" he asked finally, almost unsure whether he is ready to admit it was something he wanted in his life.

Steve sighed. "I don't know. I can recommend a bunch of YA novels with no happy endings but for some reason I don't think that's what you want."

"Not really." Bucky looked up and offered Steve a smile, though it probably came across as a little bitter. No happy endings was the last thing he was interested in at the moment.

Chapter Text

from: Steve Rogers
Welcome to Night Vale.

to: Steve Rogers
What?

from: Steve Rogers
Google it. I think it's something you'd enjoy.

***

They turned in the project proposal a few days it advance. Jane wrote most of it, because anything Tony wrote had to be heavily edited and Bucky hated that part of any projects. Why did he had to explain it before he finished the work on it?

With that out of the way, they could start the actual work. That, on the other hand, was Bucky's favorite thing to do. The hands on approach. Even though it meant hours spent in Tony's workshop until they fell asleep on the floor between the workbenches or their parents came to drag them home.

With a deadline for his latest school newspaper article looming on the horizon, too, he didn't have much free time left. Especially when all his pitches were being rejected. Apparently the school newspaper wasn't the right platform for information about research into reproduction in space; his article on science diplomacy was too much of an opinion piece; and he refused to write another word on climate change, as important a topic as that was. "One of these days I'll give up on you and start a blog instead and then you can find someone else to fill four pages with coherent words," he had told Pepper before settling on the story of the mysterious sailing stones of the Death Valley.

He didn't have much free time left.

And the time he had was spent not thinking about Steve Rogers. Or about himself. Not at all.

Except, Bucky was starting to notice things he didn't pay attention to before.

He saw Maria talking to a girl in an oversized pink sweater and Maria's eye told a story with how they went from staring at the girl adoringly to scanning their surroundings for threats. He saw Steve cleaning a slur off his locker with tension in his shoulders. He saw a couple of college age guys at the bookshop and he forced himself to not stare at their casual touches or the rainbow wrist band one of them wore.

Maybe he should write an article about that interesting psychological fact, the tendency to suddenly see something everywhere once you started thinking about it.

He noticed other things, too. The way Sam's arm fit easily around Steve's shoulders when he saw them in the hallways, for example. Or the way they laughed together, how Steve leaned all into Sam's space with a huge smile on his face. Or the strange pull in Bucky's own chest whenever he witnessed these things.

***

Bucky's mother watched tv while she folded laundry, which he was quite happy with. It meant that when he settled on the living room floor, there was already something to provide a background noise. Even if it was one of those never ending family sagas where someone was always pregnant and some sort of a scandal loomed on the horizon, about to make beggars out of the wealthy protagonists.

"You can switch to something else if you want," his mother told him, handing him the remote. His father didn't understand, but his mother already learned that Bucky focused best with something playing in the background. It wasn't a distraction or a form of procrastination.

He shook his head. "I honestly don't care what's on. Whatever you want to watch is fine." He didn't need to be entertainment by the show. All he needed was for it to play in the background while he was writing.

His mum shrugged and went back to her laundry. Once Bucky had overheard her admitting to a friend that she didn't make her kids do this instead because she enjoyed a mindless task after work to rest her brain.

The particular show she was watching had a gay couple among the cast. A stock, stereotypical one but very present nonetheless. And though Bucky wasn't paying much attention, anytime either of the pair appeared on the screen, he could feel the heat of a blush spreading down the back of his neck. He felt as if his mother could tell just from watching him and the characters in the same room that he swung a certain way (or, as he was inclined to say, all ways). He wasn't going to hint that this show was relevant to his interest at all.

"Ah, I really hoped it'd work out for them this time," his mum commented when it turned out the couple wouldn't be getting a baby. Again.

Bucky was saved from any sort of reaction by his phone suddenly buzzing with a (mass) text from Natasha.

***

from: chernaya vdova
Guys, start thinking about what you want to get. I'm getting us an appointment :)

from: Unknown
Well. SGR, you're going to be the one explaining this to my ma.

from: Steve Rogers
Your ma loves me.

from: Sam Wilson
'cause she doesn't know you well enough.

from: Unknown
Stop with the spam.

to: Sam Wilson, Maria Hill (?)
Where do you even have my number from???

to: cernaya vdova, Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson, Maria Hill (?)
I'm with Maria on this.

to: Maria Hill (?)
It's you, right?

Chapter Text

It would have been much easier to work on their robot if they all didn't have so many other engagements. What could be done in hours took days because between their parents enforcing curfews and extracurricular activities, they had to do with minutes at a time instead of what they'd actually need. It didn't help that they couldn't work on it while in the Science Club anymore. The classroom wasn't exactly equipped for it and Dr. Selvig didn't want them running around during the club time.

"What about Thursday?" Jane suggested when the three of them once again opened the topic of suitable work time.

Bucky sat up abruptly, then winced immediately when he had hit his head in the process. Tony steadied the things on the workbench above him. "Don't break anything, Barnes!"

"Sorry," Bucky muttered, reaching up to make sure there was enough space between his head and anything else. "Anyway, I've a thing on Thursday."

"What sort of thing?" Jane asked curiously while she combed her fingers through Bucky's hair expertly to make sure he was not injured.

"I'm okay." He batted Jane's hand away, more in fear she'd notice the blush spreading across his face and neck rather than because he actually minded being fussed over. Just the thought of trying to explain himself was enough to make him flustered. "Just… a thing. Hanging out with friends."

"We're your friends," Tony pointed out. He actually pointed at them all with the wrench he was holding.

"I have other friends." Maybe there was no need to sound quite so defensive, but Bucky couldn't quite help himself.

Of course, it wasn't an answer enough for Tony. "Like who?"

Bucky shrugged. He lied back down and grabbed his tools, determined to continue his work on the robot rather than allow this inquisition to continue. "Like Natasha Romanova," he said as dismissively as he could manage.

"Romanova's seeing Barton again," Tony said, poking his head under the bench.

"He did say a friend," Jane pointed out. "Leave him alone, Tony. What I'm thinking is, we each work on this when we can. And check in together when we can."

Tony let out a deep and pained sigh. "I'll program the door to let you two in. But don't mess with anything."

***

Bucky hadn't exactly lie to Tony and Jane. About Natasha being his friend. They were, sort of. In that vague "we have gone out maybe three times and decided amiably to not do it again" way.

He was, however, rather surprised when she approached him after school and linked her arm with his. She was wearing a black t-shirt with a USA flag on it under a leather jacket, skinny jeans, and a pair of white but strategically dirtied sneakers. "Hey."

"Hi." He smiled at her but arched his eyebrow. "What do I owe the pleasure to?"

"Can't I just want to hang out?" Natasha asked with innocent eyes.

Bucky laughed. "Sure," he said. "But I thought you've been there, done that. I also thought you lived in the exact opposite direction…"

She elbowed him, just lightly. "Speaking of, how come you never hang out with us?"

"I… do?" he answered slowly, figuring out that by the vague "us" she meant the Thursday club. Did they meet on other times, too. He hadn't known about that.

"You come to the meetings, that's not the same," she said. "That's not the same at all. Are we too good for you?"

"I think the phrase you're looking for is-" Bucky stopped abruptly, suddenly awfully aware that Natasha had worded it precisely the way she intended to. "Do you guys actually hang out just like friends?"

She gave him a curious look, one that suggested he might be growing a second head he had so far failed to notice. "Well, of course? Not like a group, but look, Sam and Steve hang out a lot." And did Bucky know a thing or two about that. "Maria and I take self-defense classes together. Steve and I collaborate in Art sometimes. And Steve and Maria have these meetings where they plot to take over the world for its own good."

Bucky could assume the last statement was a joke, but there was nothing in Natasha's tone to confirm the assumption. "We're hanging out right now," he pointed out. "It's just- I didn't really have that much time lately. With the whole science project and everything."

"Sure, sure. How's your robot going?"

"Also, Steve and I swap book and other media recommendation," Bucky added and his cheeks turned pink at the arch of Natasha's perfect eyebrows. Even though there was no reason for him to blush. "Robot's going… It's going. It moves now. I can show you some day if you want." He tried not to imagine Tony's face if he heard Bucky was inviting Natasha Romanova to his workshop.

"Is that something like 'Come look at my collection of prohibited Western music vinyls?'" Natasha asked with a small smirk.

"What?"

She shrugged. "Just a memory my folks brought with them from the motherland. Are you propositioning, Barnes? Because-"

While Bucky had previously turned red at a simple arch of Natasha's eyebrows, now he was able to easily switch the gears. He repressed the embarrassment and responded with the same teasing tone Natasha was using on him. "Is that what this is about? Are you hoping I'm trying to seduce you?"

"Fearing, more like," she answered and stuck his tongue out. "I think we can both do better elsewhere."

"Wow, Natasha, you know how to make a guy feel loved."

She laughed. "Well, isn't it why you've got me saved in your phone as Cernaya Vdova?"

Bucky stopped walking and stared at the girl for a moment. "Alright, how do you know that?"

"You don't need to know everything, James. Don't you know that curiosity killed the cat?"

He rolled his eyes and almost impulsively said: "You know that's not the whole saying, right?"

"Yep. But I've got one for you in Russian: Любопытной Варваре на базаре нос оторвали."

Bucky made a face and pulled away from Natasha. "Alright, that's mean." Then he threw his arm around her shoulders, because he wouldn't give her the satisfaction of disturbing him. "You're getting further away from home with every step. How about I feed you before I send you on your way?"

Later, his father welcomed Natasha with the words: "You're not Jane." She replied with: "I could be?" Bucky personally felt his father should have looked far more concerned.

Chapter Text

There were very few places at the school where one could escape to when craving solitude. Schools, in the nature, were never meant to be a solitary environment. Usually, Bucky didn't mind that – he was a social creature and enjoyed the company of others. There were, however, moments when a hiding place could come extremely useful. Especially when he was skipping class.

He knew of one such place where he could hide. There was a door that led to the roof. The door itself was locked and Bucky had never found a way to get through it, though there wasn't much on the roof for him to do anyway. It was the landing where the door was situated that he could spend the hour before his next lesson. There was nothing else but the door and a little floor space on top of a short flight of stairs. It was a little dim and dusty, but it was remote, quiet, and rarely occupied.

Except it wasn't as empty as Bucky had expected.

When he got there, Steve Rogers of all people was sitting on the floor with a notepad propped against his knees. He had a pen in one hand and another one held between his teeth. When Bucky entered his space, Steve looked up with wide eyes, startled. He pulled his pen out of his mouth, though, and offered Bucky a grin. "Hi."

"Hey. Shouldn't you be in class?" Bucky asked, dropping to the floor. There was only so much space and he had to fold one of his legs under himself to fit in with Steve there, even as the other boy shuffled to give him room.

"Free period. Shouldn't you?"

Bucky shrugged. "Gym. I didn't feel like locker room today."

A corner of Steve's mouth lifted in an amused smirk. "Not worried you'll get in trouble?"

"High IQ, high GPA. Screw physical fitness."

Steve laughed, but his eyes visibly moved down Bucky's body. His gaze returned to Bucky's face quickly, but Bucky noticed the once over. And though he tried really hard to ignore it, his stomach made a flip anyway. It wasn't particularly unpleasant.

To distract himself from it, he nodded towards the notepad resting against Steve's knees. "Drawing?"

Steve shook his head and turned the notepad towards Bucky so that he could see the writing covering the page. "Extra work for French," he explained with a small sigh. "Makeup work."

Surprised, Bucky arched an eyebrow. He knew Steve was quiet in the lessons, but he had never realized he actually sucked at the subject. "Do you want me to look over it for you?" he offered.

"Thanks, but… I'm okay with the writing. It's the speaking part that's an issue, the accent. So my grades slip." He rested his head against the wall behind him, but his eyes remained locked on Bucky.

"I could help with that, too. I've tutored before." Bucky wasn't entirely sure why he was saying that. He definitely didn't have the time at the moment unless he was going to sacrifice more hours of sleep. Yet there was the idea of spending time with Steve and that felt rather pleasant.

"How many languages do you actually speak?" Steve asked curiously and though there was genuine interest in his voice, Bucky wondered whether he was deflecting.

"Hmm. I'm fluent in French, and pretty good with Russian and Spanish. But there are so many more I want to learn." Though Bucky didn't consider languages his primary interest and no one could force him to study linguistics or etymology of words, he loved learning to speak them. The mastery of variety of languages offered a strange power and he wanted it.

Steve shook his head slightly. "Is there anything you can't do?"

Was Bucky imagining the fondness in Steve's tone? He wasn't sure but it sounded like it. "Well, push ups have been something of a struggle lately," he admitted with a small chuckle.

"I bet you do them one armed."

Bucky let out a startled laugh. He shook his head and gestured towards Steve's schoolwork again. "Really, though. I can help you."

Steve averted his eyes. His long eyelashes brushed against his cheeks. "I can't pay you. You don't have to help, I'll get by."

"You don't need to pay me," Bucky said quickly, genuinely surprised that Steve would even think about that. "Just draw some more pictures for me, maybe?"

***

After his accidental meeting with Steve, Bucky ran into Maria. He had found her standing at his locker, in fact, an eraser in one hand and brushing its remnants off the locker door with the other. His stomach made a leap and this time it was far from pleasant.

"Well, hi," he said slowly, adjusting his bag's strap on his shoulder awkwardly.

Maria turned to him and shrugged. "Barnes," she greeted him with a nod and pocketed her eraser.

"Do I want to ask?"

She shrugged again. "I wanted to be done before you came back. Figured there was no need for you to see it."

"Thank you," he said, trying to force his voice to stay steady but he heard it break towards the end of the sentence. He rested his forehead against the front of the locker and took a deep breath. The corridor was quiet and there wasn't anyone but Maria to see him lose his confidence.

Maria patted his shoulder. "It's gonna be okay."

Bucky straightened up and looked at her with determination he did not feel. He nodded. "Yeah, it's going to be alright," he said. "I'm already the one-armed nerd, it can't get much worse than that."

"Hey, no one thinks nerd is a bad word anymore."

"Yeah, sure." He smiled weakly.

"Maybe someone's just pissed at you. You know how people get, they want to insult someone, they call them gay."

"I guess."

"C'mon, Barnes. Head up. I doubt anyone even saw. You'll live."

Chapter Text

Steve was standing at Bucky's door and the front of his hair was teal. Bucky had never wanted to kiss anyone so much. It hit him like a wall of bricks, that sudden realization.

"You dyed your hair," Bucky said and immediately felt stupid. Steve was probably perfectly aware of his dye job.

Steve laughed, rubbing the back of his neck. "Yeah. It was a spur of a moment."

"I like- It looks great."

"Thanks." Steve ducked his head, a shy smile on his face. Then lifted an eyebrow and spread his arms. "Well, can I come in? Or-" He hesitated and when he spoke again, he sounded a little uncertain. "We agreed on today, right?"

Bucky blinked and, after a moment of imitating a fish out of water, finally mentally kicked himself. The mask of charming confidence slid back in place. With a wide inviting gesture, he stepped to side and let Steve in. "Welcome to my mansion," he said with a grin.

His heart was beating stupidly fast when he closed the door once Steve was inside. There was no reason for him to felt so intensely about this; they were going to work on school, nothing more. Yet he was stupidly aware of the house being empty otherwise and just how badly he wanted to run his fingers through that blue hair of Steve's.

Steve, hands in his pockets, looked around curiously. They were still in the entry hallway with a door opening into the kitchen to the left, and an archway living room door and a staircase leading to the first floor on the right. "This's a nice place," Steve said.

Bucky shrugged. He gave the interior design of their house little thought, perhaps with the exception of his own room. "We painted the walls recently? Let me take your jacket?"

Steve was wearing that oversized leather jacket of his and Bucky figured that if nothing else, Steve would look a little less like a dirty fantasy if he wasn't wearing it.

He had no idea where it was all coming from, but if he was honest with himself, it was not entirely new.

Steve shrugged his jacket off his shoulders and let Bucky hang it by the door.

It helped.

Only a little.

"My room's upstairs," Bucky said, happy with the steadiness of his voice. They were just going to work on French, nothing else.

Steve nodded, threw a grin at Bucky, and moved up the stairs. He paused in the middle of the staircase, though, his attention attracted by one of the framed pictures that hung on the wall there. "Your family?"

Bucky knew exactly which picture it was. Him with his then three-year-old sister in his arms standing between his parents. "Yeah. Mum, Dad, me and Becca." He came up behind Steve and nudged his back, prompting him to move. He didn't like looking at that photo for too long. It was pre-Accident; the boy in it had two arms. He had trouble reconciling that sight with his mental image of himself.

Steve resumed his walk up the stairs but not without looking over his shoulder at Bucky, grinning. "Bucky and Becca?"

Bucky laughed. "In my parents' defense, I'm James and sister's Rebecca."

"It must be nice, having a big family."

That surprised Bucky, because he's never thought of his family as big. There were only the four of them. He pointed over Steve's shoulder to his bedroom door when the other boy paused on the top of the stairs. Then he asked: "You don't have siblings?"

"It's just me and my Mum," Steve explained. He didn't elaborate and Bucky didn't ask.

Steve entered Bucky's room and looked around it with even greater interest than he looked at the house in general. He walked slowly along the wall, his gaze on Bucky's posters.

"Say it, I'm a nerd and a geek," Bucky said, feeling rather self-conscious all of sudden. He closed the door and joined Steve in looking at the Star Wars poster.

"Nothing wrong with that," Steve said and the smile he offered Bucky made Bucky's heart skip a beat.

"Oh, before I forget," he said suddenly and pulled his bag to the front of his body to unzip it. "I brought back your book."

With a nod, Bucky took out the next two volumes out of his shelf and handed them to Steve in exchange for the one Steve's already finished.

"I'll make a scifi fan out of you yet."

Steve grinned. "I'm not protesting."

They were standing way too close. Steve's eyes were impossibly blue, framed by those dark eyelashes, and his hair was blue as well, and his lips were curled up in an amused smile and… Yes, Bucky wanted him.

He cleared his throat, painfully aware of his lack of subtlety, and took a step back. "French."

An hour later, they were interrupted by a sharp knock on the door and then the door being opened almost immediately.

"I believe we've a rule about the-" Bucky's father paused abruptly with his head in the room, staring at the two boys sitting on the floor. They were looking at him with startled surprise. "You're not…"

"No, that's very much not Jane," Bucky said with a sigh.

Steve lifted his hand in an awkward greeting. "I'm Steve."

"Schoolwork," Bucky said and lifted his French textbook up for his dad to see.

He wondered what his father saw when he looked at Steve and he arrived at one conclusion: trouble. Scrawny Steve Rogers with blue hair, and a black band t-shirt, and his sneakers falling apart.

A crease appeared between the man's brows, but then he nodded and closed the door again.

Bucky was sure he wouldn't have done it if he only knew how many thoughts Bucky had had over the past hour about peeling Steve out of his clothes.

***

"You're a disgrace," Tony told the robot.

The robot twirled around and made a series of insect-like sounds. It dropped the mug it carried and its content spilled on the floor.

"Don't be mean to him," Jane said.

"When did we decide the robot was a he?" Bucky asked.

Chapter Text

They won the school round of the competition by default. There was no one else with a project. They all knew the regional round won't be that easy.

Bucky read and watched things Steve recommended and suddenly he didn't feel so lost or so alone.

He was helping Steve with French and he loved every moment of it. Even if he wanted to touch Steve all the time and didn't dare. He liked Steve's company and he didn't want to complicate everything.

Natasha finally made an appointment for them.

from: Cernaya Vdova
Usual day and time, different place :) Anyone can take a car?

from: Sam Wilson
I can.

to: Cernaya Vdova, Sam Wilson, Steve Rogers, Maria Hill
Nat, can you text the address to me? I'll have to take the subway.

from: Sam Wilson
Why don't we all do that?

from: Steve Rogers
That'd be more fun.

from: Maria Hill
No one has to worry about driving.

from: Cernaya Vdova
ADVENTURE!! :D

to: Cernaya Vdova, Sam Wilson, Steve Rogers, Maria Hill
I don't deserve you.

***

Bucky was far more nervous that Thursday than he thought he would be. He knew exactly what he wanted done and also knew that his parents were going to disapprove. Even though what he wanted was fairly mainstream.

He chose to stop at home even though that meant taking a bus to manage time-wise, but he really wanted to change out of his school clothes. The black t-shirt he decided to wear had short sleeves and revealed almost the whole length of his prosthesis. For a moment, he considered grabbing a bag to throw a hoodie in just in case of any insecurities taking a hold of him, but then he just pocketed his wallet. He did his hair, too, and the finishing touch to his look was his green and silver tie, hanging loosely around his neck.

Then he snuck out of the house hoping no one noticed him leave.

***

He'd been sitting on a bench at the station for several minutes, playing Plants vs Zombies on his phone without much actual focus and plotting an article in his head when Sam sat down to him. "Hey there," he said, poking Bucky with his elbow. "Ready for today?"

Bucky paused the game, pulled his earphones out of his ears, and put his phone away. "Hi. As ready as I'm likely to be," he said with a self-conscious grin.

"Just remember you're the one to blame for this." Sam was smiling but there was no doubt he did actually mean his words.

Bucky sighed. "My brain hiccupped there, I swear. But… I actually want to go through with it?"

"You don't have to, you know? None of us would hold it against you." The almost goofy smile on Sam's face was replaced with a more serious expression. "It's supposed to be all in good fun."

That called a grateful smile to Bucky's face. "I know. Romanova'd tease me forever but… I know. But I do want to. Even if my parents won't be happy about it at all." He smirked. "Maybe because of that a little bit too."

Sam laughed. "Yeah, I hear you. Ma will have my hide. I might need to bring Steve home just as a buffer. Ma loves Steve."

Something twisted painfully in Bucky's chest. "Even with the blue bangs?" He gestured to his own, boringly brown, hair for emphasis.

"Steve's an angel according to Ma. Can't do no wrong. She feeds him cookies whenever she sees him, it's awful." Despite his words, Sam's tone was full of fondness with maybe a hint of amusement. Bucky didn't want to feel jealous or heartbroken over that, he had no right to. Yet he couldn't help the pressure around his heart.

He grinned, though it might have come across a little sour. A change of the topic was in order and so he, despite some self-consciousness, said: "Hey… thanks about not making a big deal about the subway."

Sam shrugged. His face softened but for some reason, Bucky didn't feel uncomfortable about it. There was just something about that boy – when he looked at Bucky like that, there wasn't pity but sympathy.

"Don't worry about that, dude," Sam said. "As Maria said, at least no one needs to worry about driving." He paused for a moment. "So cars, eh?"

"Yeah." Bucky let out a sigh and fingers found a loose thread in the hem of his t-shirt to play with. "It's how- Just, cars." For a moment, he wanted to tell Sam so many things. About the Accident. About how his therapist was unhelpful: too focused on the obvious even after Bucky had come to accept his injury and would have much rather dealt with his aversion to car rides. "It's not like I can't at all-" He forced himself to shut up and shook his head. It wasn't a good topic. "Let's talk about something happier." Despite saying that, he didn't actually have a topic to offer.

Sam thought about it for a moment and then said: "Have you heard about Pluto?"

Bucky sighed once again and continued to pick at the thread. "Not actually a planet again. On its way to get an invitation back in the club but not actually there. It was just a debate. I'll be writing about that for the school paper."

"Oh," Sam said and the disappointment in his voice was almost tangible. Bucky wasn't sure whether it was because Bucky ruined his attempt at a cheerful topic or if he was genuinely sad about Pluto.

"Yeah."

"So that topic is out. Let's see." Sam tapped his chin and then a smile spread over his face. "Only three months until I get to see my boyfriend face to face again." He did a sort of a sitting dance on the bench.

That was unexpected and Bucky's face had to look embarrassingly confused because Sam laughed.

"I've never told you? Here." Sam pulled out his phone and opened the gallery. "Riley. He's literally perfect. Or would be, if he didn't live forever away." He turned the phone so that Bucky could comfortably see the screen. The boy in question was a well-built blond with an easy grin.

"He looks nice," Bucky said, trying to not let the embarrassing relief that flooded his mind show. He had no right to that feeling. "I didn't know you had- I sort of thought you and Steve-" He forbade himself from hiding his face in his hand, but he could feel a blush creep into his cheeks.

"Steve? No. He's like, my best friend. But I think we've missed the point at which we… could have entered the relationship train? Just never were single at the same time and that ship sailed, you know?"

There was amusement in Sam's face. He winked at Bucky and leaned in conspiratorially. "Besides, he's trouble."

"People keep saying that."

"He got me suspended last year."

That stunned Bucky into a silence for a moment before he asked: "How?"

"Well, there was this rally he made me go. I was still wearing the school jersey and there were pictures that made it into the local paper… Yeah, that sort of thing." Yet he sounded fond and like he'd love to say more, but he was interrupted by the arrival of Natasha and Maria.

Chapter Text

The woman Natasha took them to – "Call me Sif." – was intimidating in the best possible way. Like she would take on an army all by herself for the right cause.

"Next time, don't bring the whole classroom," she told Natasha while she pierced her snakebites. Natasha didn't flinch, at the scolding or the piercing of her skin.

Bucky watched Steve lie blatantly on the form he was forced to fill out (he claimed to have no health issues whatsoever) and otherwise lurked in the background while his friends were going through various procedures. Maria got her lobes pierced. Sam settled on an eyebrow piercing and then kept muttering something about regretting ever befriending any of them.

"Ever considered a tattoo?" Steve asked, catching Bucky looking absent-mindedly at the displayed designs.

"Hmm? Not really." He thought about it, once or twice, but he could never settled on anything he'd like on his skin permanently. "You?"

"I'm getting a watercolor stain tattoo one day," Steve said, gesturing to his left forearm. Bucky could imagine it vividly, though perhaps mostly because Steve's skin was already often covered in paint. "Some people think it looks messy but-"

"I think it'd look great," Bucky said earnestly. Then again, he couldn't think of a look that wouldn't go with Steve's face. Even the now faded dye in his hair looked great and it probably shouldn't have. Maybe Bucky was simply biased.

Steve beamed at him before turning to Sif, who'd called his name. He got both his ears pierced at once, having confided in Bucky before that he was thinking about perhaps stretch them in the future.

Then it was Bucky's turn. He smiled bravely and hoped no one could see his knees shake.

"So which one will it be?" Sif asked, already knowing that she would be piercing an ear again.

"The left one," he said, trying to sound casual. But she could probably sense how wound up he was, because she tapped his clenched fist with one finger.

"Relax," she said, before turning her attention to his ear. She cleaned his lobe with a swab and marked his ear, showing him the mark in a mirror. He could only nod mutely, though he wasn't sure what he was afraid of. Surely not the pain – he knew pain very well.

Not that there were that much pain. He could feel the needle penetrate his earlobe, but that was all. Then the stud was in and Sif showed it to him in the mirror again. "What do you say?"

The relief he felt was more than just being glad the procedure was over. He felt like he could take a lungful of air for the first time in years. "Yeah, that looks great."

"How do you feel?" Maria asked, clasping his shoulder.

Bucky grinned at her. "In control."

***

Back on the subway train, Sam and Maria subtly physically manipulated Steve to take the last remaining seat in the car. Bucky could tell they were doing exactly that and he was sure Steve could, too, but it was probably the only way to get Steve to sit down without protesting. He didn't seem to mind at all.

Usually, Bucky was the quiet and well-behaved young man in public transport. Today, the five of them were the sort of loud exhilarated group the other passangers were glaring at. He couldn't bring himself to feel too guilty.

They'd been on the subway for barely five minutes when Natasha suddenly pushed Bucky towards Steve in a middle of conversation. Not having had enough time to steady himself, Bucky crashed against the other boy. He was about to apologize, but Steve laughed in his ear and wrapped his arms around Bucky's waist. So Bucky went with it.

There wasn't much of the seat left between Steve's spread legs and most of Bucky's weight ended up resting on his own legs, but it still felt nice. In that adventurous way uncomfortable positions can be only when you're in good mood, among friends, and with a boy you're crushing at aiming his bright smile at you.

Bucky rested his prosthetic arm around Steve's shoulders and used his right one to hold on the side of the seat to steady himself. He was taller than Steve, tall enough that with some trying he could probably rest his chin on top of Steve's head. For some reason, he didn't think Steve would appreciate that and so he leaned down slightly so that they could look at each other comfortably. It was intimate – they were so close, their noses almost touching, and maybe if their friends weren't there, Bucky would have gained enough courage to lean in for a kiss. He didn't.

Steve wound his fingers into Bucky's tie and for a moment Bucky thought that maybe Steve was going to pull him in. His heart jumped painfully with the thought and he held his breath. But Steve only smirked and asked: "Slytherin?"

"Slytherpuff, actually," Bucky admitted and tried to crush the sense of disappointment.

"Wouldn't have pegged you for one," Steve said.

"If you're going to say you thought I was a Ravenclaw, I'll bite you."

The grin on Steve's face was devilish and Bucky was starting to suspect there might be something to everyone saying Steve's trouble. "I thought ravens pegged or something."

Bucky considered it. Dipping down and biting Steve's chin lightly. He decided just to stick his tongue out instead.

"That's not what I was promised," Steve said with a mock pout and behind Bucky's back, Sam laughed.

***

"Being in a good mood suits you," Natasha said when she caught up with Bucky halfway to his home.

"What do you mean?"

"Confidence looks good on you when you're not faking it."

Chapter Text

The first problem cropped out when Bucky realized the dinnertime was approaching. He wished he could say he had no idea what his parents would think about his pierced ear. But instead he was certain they wouldn't be happy about it. His hair was far too short to cover his ears, and he wasn't supposed to take the starter stud out for weeks. Even if that hadn't been the case, he probably wouldn't be able to take it out himself. The fingers of his prosthesis simply weren't dexterous enough.

He hadn't thought this through.

He briefly considered faking sick and hiding in his bed to avoid his parents for as long as possible. Then he reminded himself he wasn't a coward.

His mother wasn't paying that much attention to him when he entered the kitchen and asked whether she needed any help. She was fully focused on the salad she was mixing in the bowl and she simply gestured toward the cupboards. "Can you get the glasses, please? And ask your Dad and Becca what they want to drink."

That went well. Maybe they wouldn't notice. It was just a small piercing anyway.

He collected the glasses and put them on a tray which he carried to the dining room, supported against the forearm of his prosthesis. Then he found out what his father and sister wanted to drink with dinner, by shouting from the bottom of the stairs, and got scolded by his mother appropriately. She still hadn't noticed.

All that done, Bucky took his seat at the dinner table. His chair was next to Becca's, across from his parents. There was no way for him to hide.

It took his father exactly three minutes to notice Bucky's new piercing; they hadn't even started eating yet.

"What's that in your ear?" he asked with a frown. His tone betrayed that he already had some idea and wasn't necessarily pleased with his son.

"What do you mean?" Bucky tried to fake innocence. He reached for his right earlobe, only then for the left one. His lobe was still a little swollen. "Oh, that."

"Yes, that."

"James has an earring!" Becca shouted, her voice ringing in Bucky's ear. He flinched. She batted his hand away from his ear.

"Let me see," his mother said as she reached across the table to take hold of his chin and turn his head to side. "Oh James," she sighed when she could see the piercing properly.

"That's all you're going to say to him?" his father asked her before turning to Bucky. "What the hell were you thinking, James?" His voice wasn't loud enough to be classified as yelling but it was getting there. He lifted his body from his chair, his palms on the table. Bucky's father had never ever hit him, not once, but he wasn't easy to argue with.

"Becca's got earrings too," Bucky pointed out and pushed his chair back to get out of his parents' reach.

"She's a girl," Bucky's mother said softly as if that made some actual difference.

"So what? It's just an earring. I didn't drop out of school or get anyone pregnant or-"

"James," his mother interrupted him, gesturing to Becca with her eyes. Apparently he'd opened a topic unsuitable for his younger sister's ears.

"I told you," his father said to his mother. "I told you he was going to get in trouble yet."

Becca pulled at his sleeve. "Are you involved with the bad crowd?" she asked, and Bucky instantly wondered if that was something she'd overheard adults talking about.

"This is ridiculous," Bucky stated. He got up to his feet, ready to leave the table and avoid them until they calmed down. "It's just a piercing. For f- Hell, even my physiotherapist has his ear pierced; it's not a big deal. I just wanted to, I don't know, do something."

"So you got a hole drilled in your ear." His father stood up as well. "Were you even thinking? Do you know how many health risks- What will people think, James?"

"It's always about that, isn't it? You know what?" Bucky slammed his open palm against the top of the table. He would have used a fist, but he had some sense of self-preservation. "I don't give a damn what people think. Maybe I'll get a tattoo next. Full sleeve. It'll be nice to have people stare at the right arm for a change. Maybe for something I actually chose to do with my body."

He turned on his heel and walked out of the dining room, wishing it had a door instead of an arch so that he could slam it.

"Where do you think you're going, James?" his father yelled after him. Bucky could here his footsteps and his mother mother's quiet but insistent warning voice: "George."

"My name's Bucky," Bucky called over his shoulder. It was a little childish, he would admit that. He didn't care.

He slammed his bedroom door shut and sat down on his bed, waiting for someone to come up the stairs and shout at him some more. That didn't happen.

***

The next problem came the day after at school. Bucky wasn't sure how to explain he had got his ear pierced at the same time as the infamous Steve Rogers and his LGBT+ Club; and he was fairly sure that people by now had at least a vague idea who the members of it were. Bucky had no desire to confirm their suspicions.

He chose the brave strategy of avoiding everyone as best as he could. Fortunately, he'd managed to avoid both Jane and Tony. He noticed Natasha and Steve once; they were sitting on the stairs in one of the corridors. Natasha waved her detention slip at Bucky, who assumed she had got it for refusing to take out her snakebites. Bucky lifted his hand in a greeting but didn’t stop to talk to them. Steve didn’t notice him, his nose deep in a book. That actually made Bucky feel a little sore.

The first comment he received was from Tony and that was after school in his workshop.

"You have your ear pierced," he said in an accusatory tone.

"Stellar observation," Bucky groaned.

"But why?"

"Because. Is there a rule against body modification in the shop? 'Cause I've got to confess: my left arm is all metal and plastic."

By that time, Tony was already pulling at Bucky’s earlobe. "Do you want some sort of a communication device to fit into it? Or data storage? C'mon, Barnes, I'm waiting for your ideas."

Chapter Text

The first person Bucky came out to was Jane.

Well, technically, the first people to have any idea were those from the Thursday club, but they were extrapolating rather than being told. Bucky knew how each of them identified – Sam was panromantic asexual, Natasha demiromantic bisexual, Maria a lesbian, and Steve bisexual. Meanwhile, Bucky came up with "undecided, like in college, but definitely not straight; I'll get back to you".

So Jane was the first one he actually told.

It was Saturday and for once they weren't actually working on anything, just hanging out – which mostly consisted of they both poking through various devices in compassionate silence. Bucky had needed that. In Jane's room, no one was stopping them from closing the door – if Jane's parents thought there was something going on, they apparently didn't consider stopping it necessary.

Bucky liked Jane's bedroom. It had a rather accurate model of the solar system, complete with the moons, hanging from the ceiling, and the ceiling was covered in glow-in-the-dark stars that formed actual constellations. One of the walls was covered in hand-written physics equations, some of which went over even Bucky's head. He loved these things, and he liked that he could just sit on the floor there with his tablet balanced against his knees and his phone next to him and do whatever he wanted to the sound of Jane typing away on her tablet. If conversation happened, it was pleasant, but if neither said a word, it wasn't an issue either.

They'd been quiet for a while when Jane nudged his back with her foot from where she was sitting in her computer chair. "Hey, did I compliment your piercing yet?" she asked.

"No, you've made no comments yet." His chest tightened immediately when the attention was directed at his pierced ear, but he relaxed when her words sank in. She wasn't going to be a jerk about it.

She grinned and leaned closer, inspecting the stud in his ear. "I just never thought this would be your style," she said but without malice.

"I'm not sure it is," Bucky admitted. He could feel his cheeks warm up with a blush. "But I'm glad I did it. Not so sure about having had the left one pierced, for practical reasons, but that's not the point."

"Don't tell me you were terrified of having the gay ear pierced." Jane smirked.

Involuntarily, Bucky flinched and hung his head. "I might have been," he said with a shrug, avoiding her eyes. They fell into a few moments of an unusually awkward silence. Then Bucky took a deep breath and forced himself to ask: "Speaking of, sort of, how do you feel about labels?" He was still staring rather intently at the tips of his shoes rather than looking at her.

It took several heartbeats before she replied: "I don't think I've really given it much thought before?"

Of course she hadn't. She hadn't needed to, because her life made sense.

There was a loose string poking out of the cuff of Bucky's jeans and he twisted it around his index finger and pulled at it. He shuffled in his position. He opened his mouth to speak, took a sharp breath, and then frowned and shrugged instead of speaking. He tried again. "I think... I think they can be pretty useful. To figure out things inside your own head and stuff. Fuck it, I'm not making any sense, am I?" His little speech ended with a self-deprecating laugh.

"Bucky?" Jane nudged him gently again, this time with her hand on his shoulder. "I feel like you're trying to tell me something? But there's data I'm missing."

"I think I'm pansexual," he said. He blurted it out without being ready to hear it in his own voice and it hit him right in the centre of his chest when it reached his ears. He turned to Jane with wide eyes and his mouth half-open in shock. Clearing his throat, he shook his head. "I'm pretty damn sure I am, actually. All data supports it."

Jane nodded. She got up from the chair and sat down to Bucky on the floor. "I've no idea what to say so I'm going to hug you, okay?" she said.

Bucky nodded, and when she wrapped her arms around him, he felt sense of relief flood him almost instantly. Returning her embrace with his right arm, he settled his chin on her shoulder and smiled to himself. "So we're good?"

"Of course we're good," she said after she'd pulled away from him and sat back on her feet. There was a genuine smile on her face. "Did you honestly think I'd have a problem with it?"

"It's not exactly scientifically measurable thing," he pointed out and she punched his right shoulder lightly, chuckling.

"Is there a boyfriend, then?"

Bucky closed his eyes. "Nope."

"But there's a boy," Jane insisted.

"Why do you think so?" He opened open eye and looked at her curiously.

Jane shrugged. "I think if there was a girl, you wouldn't be thinking about these things so much?"

Closing his eyes again with a groan, Bucky let his head fall backwards. "Not necessarily. Maybe I'd be thinking about it even more. Or just the same. Having a girlfriend wouldn't make me, ugh, straighter, or anything."

"Sorry. Right. But there is a boy, isn't there?"

"Guys and girls aren't the only people in the world, you know," he said but then looked at her with a sheepish smile. "But yeah, there's a boy."

"The Art Club guy."

He knew he had to look like a tomato when he nodded. "Yeah, him."

Jane grinned and nodded her head as if to herself. "Thought so." She was quiet for a moment, but filled the silence with shuffling to Bucky's side so that he could rest his arm around her shoulders. "You know, if you've told me like half a year ago, about him I mean, I'd been heartbroken."

That took Bucky by surprise and he stared at her wordlessly for a way too long before he brouht himself to speak. "What?"

"You know." Jane waved her hand as if it was nothing important. "I sort of... I used to have a crush on you."

"Used to," Bucky repeated, his brain focusing on that piece of information for some reason.

"Yeah. But there's a guy I met through Mock UN and he's funny and kind and--"

"And all the other things I'm not," Bucky interrupted her, teasing, and pocked her side with his finger.

"Oh, shut up. I think he likes me."

"He'd better." Because even if Bucky himself had never really considered Jane in that light, she was definitely worth people's attention and deserved the best. "Who is it?"

"Oh, um, Norway."

Bucky gaped. "Thor Odinson? Football team blond giant?"

"Stop being judgmental. He's actually really smart." Jane pouted.

Bucky lifted his hands. "Well, he's like three times hotter than me, I'll give you that at the very least."

"James Barnes, have you been ogling my prospective boyfriend?"

"Jane Foster, are you listening to us? When did we become the people who discuss guys?"

***

There was a boy alright. Admitting it to Jane made it seem awfully real, the feelings Bucky'd been harbouring for Steve. So he wasn't surprised, just mildly irritated, when his stomach filled with butterflies at the sight of Steve's name on his phone's display. Bucky'd received a picture message from him.

When he opened it, he found himself staring at his own face grinning at him. Or, his face drawn in pencil.

Steve made him look amazing. Bucky knew he looked handsome enough, but Steve's version of his face was actually stunning.

to: Steve Rogers
Wow, Rogers.

Okay, that was not the best response, but his brain seemed to freeze.

from: Steve Rogers
That bad?

Biting his lip, Bucky considered an appropriate response. His heart was doing some acrobatic exercises when he typed the message.

to: Steve Rogers
You're sending me pictures of attractive guys. I think I should be jealous.

Steve's response came almost immediately and made Bucky chuckle. And blush.

from: Steve Rogers
You do own a mirror, right?

to: Steve Rogers
Mirrors don't like me.

from: Steve Rogers
Do they explode because they can't handle you?

to: Steve Rogers
Nope. 's the pansexual inherent invisibility that's the issue.

He would have loved to flirt - they were doing something of that sort, right? - but coming out to someone he knew for sure wouldn't freak out felt just as good.

Chapter Text

When you heard someone cry in the restroom, the polite thing was to pretend you didn't hear and get the hell out of there. Bucky didn't choose the polite thing to do; it just didn't feel right. Particularly when he was almost certain that it was a girl and the restroom was a boys' one. He needed to do at least a little bit of investigating.

The casual investigation turned into knocking on the cubicle when he recognized the girl's shoes. White sneakers with spiders drawn in sharpie – he had seen Natasha wear those. "Hey, are you alright?" he asked.

There was a beat of silence before she answered: "None of your business, Barnes."

"Что случилось? Почему ты плачешь?" What happened? Why are you crying? If she asked him to leave after his questioning, he would. But he had to at least try. They were becoming closer lately, weren't they? Friends cared about each other, they didn't let each other cry alone in the bathroom without at least trying to figure out the reason.

She was quiet for so long that Bucky had almost taken it as a hint for him to leave, but then the cubicle's door opened. "Хватит задавать глупые вопросы и обнять меня," Natasha said. Stop asking stupid questions and hug me. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her mascara smeared.

Bucky pulled her close with his right arm and rested his prosthetic hand tentatively on her waist. She buried her face into his t-shirt and wrapped her arms tight around his middle. Natasha was even smaller than Steve was and Bucky nuzzled his face into her hair while she took deep, shaky breaths.

"You never saw this," she said in English. "This never happened." It didn't sound like a threat, exactly, but Bucky had to assume it was.

"Is there anything I can do?" he asked softly.

"Нет." No. "I'm alright. I'm fine. I just… I just have emotions sometimes, okay?" she muttered those words into the fabric of his shirt and sounded more tired than upset.

Bucky was about to respond when the door to the restroom flew open and Brock Rumlow walked in. He arched both eyebrows at Bucky and Natasha. "Couldn't find the way to a supplies closet?" he asked. It sounded like he wanted it to come across as teasing, but there was something malicious in it.

Natasha pulled away from the tight embrace, but before she removed herself entirely, she stepped up on her tiptoes and kissed Bucky's cheek. She then made her way past Brock without so much as looking at him.

Bucky shrugged in Brock's general direction. Brock glared at him.

***

It was raining that afternoon and Bucky resigned to having to take the bus. Even with an umbrella, he didn't want to walk all the way home in rain, and he didn't really like dealing with umbrellas to begin with. Buses were more difficult to deal with than subway but they were better than cars. He could do it with only mild tremor in his knees.

He ran into Steve at the bus stop, where the boy was hiding under the narrow roof and pulling his oversized jacket closer to his body. His hair was wet and his skin paler than usual.

"You look like your lips are going to turn the color of your hair soon," Bucky said when his gaze landed on Steve, and then he immediately blushed. At least his pink cheeks could be explained away with the cool air.

"Yeah, well." Steve shrugged. "Combine shitty metabolism with even shittier blood circulation and you'll get Steve Rogers, the human ice cube."

Bucky wanted to pull Steve to himself and warm him up. They were out in the open, however, and so close to school. At least, that was his excuse for not doing it. "I feel a compulsive need to hand you a towel and make you hot chocolate," he said instead.

Steve leaned his head to side and smiled. "You know, I could be swayed."

***

They ended up getting off the bus at Bucky's stop. Bucky could feel himself vibrating with nerves and excitement, though he wasn't entirely sure why. There was the tension from being in a moving vehicle, yes, and he had spent the bus ride hoping Steve wouldn't notice how white his face had to be. But this, when his feet were on steady ground, that had more to do with Steve. And Bucky wasn't sure why he was more affected by his presence than usually - and usually Steve's proximity felt intense enough already. No one was paying attention to them, and Steve had been to his house before. Only, that was under a different circumstances. It was one thing to help someone with their school struggles and completely different one to feed them hot chocolate.

"Do you need a dry t-shirt or something?" he asked the moment Steve took his jacket off, and tried to not dwell on the mental image of the other boy in his clothes. He had never quite understood the appeal of someone else wearing his clothes but now it gave him butterflies just thinking about it.

Steve shook his head and smiled. "It's dry," he said, gesturing to his t-shirt. "It's just my hair that got rained on."

"Maybe you should dry it or something?" Steve was already struggling with a long list of health issues, Bucky was certain he didn't need a flu on top of that.

"Now you sound so much like my Mum," Steve laughed, elbowing him lightly as they headed towards the kitchen. "I'll be fine."

Bucky ducked his head to hide how flustered it made him. Right, mothering someone probably wasn't the best way to their heart no matter their relationship to their actual mother. Now, hot chocolate on the other hand…

He started pulling the necessary tools and ingredients from the cupboards when he noticed Steve rubbing his hands together. It looked like he was trying really hard to get rid of the cold and numbness.

Bucky put his mugs aside and gestured for Steve to come closer. "Come here," he said, reaching for Steve's hands. His own left one was completely useless at providing heat, but he had his own ways around it.

When Steve stepped closer, looking at him expectantly, Bucky took hold of his wrists and placed Steve's hands on his own chest, rubbing them with his right hand. The cold sank through his t-shirt but he was a little too distracted by the thought of Steve's hands on his body and oh, fuck, what am I doing to really mind. Plus, he really wanted to get Steve warm again. He couldn't very well draw him pretty pictures if he let his fingers freeze.

Steve was looking at him with wide eyes and arched eyebrows and a hint of a smile. There was something curious and expectant in his expression, and he stepped even closer.

Though the back of Bucky's neck was burning with how hard he was blushing, he couldn't look away from Steve's face. Steve was beautiful. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

Bucky wanted to lean in and capture Steve's lips in a kiss. He wondered what it would be like. Steve's lips would be cool and it would be gentle and romantic. Bucky imagined it in the third person, what a pretty image they would paint – Steve on his toes, his eyes closed, those long eyelashes, and Bucky himself with his neck slightly bend to kiss the shorter boy, his hand holding Steve's to his chest.

Bucky moved closer and Steve's forearms pressed against his torso. He was very aware Steve had to feel his heart racing.

Steve stepped up on his toes.

The sound of steps in the hallway made Bucky jump back. He made an awkward half-turn to hide his embarrassment, knowing what had almost happened and what he had almost been caught at. He rubbed the back of his neck nervously and when he glanced at Steve through the corner of his eye, he could see Steve wiping his bangs out of his face in a similar gesture of discomfort.

Bucky's mother stepped into th kitchen and paused in the doorway, looking between them with a startled smile. "I didn't know you were home already, James," she said.

"I took the bus."

She nodded and her gaze flickered to Steve, who smiled at her politely.

"Ma'am."

Bucky's mother let out a startled laugh. "Well, I can't say anyone's called me that recently," she said, offering Steve her hand. "And you are…?"

"Steve Rogers, Ma'am," he said, accepting the handshake. Bucky watched them nervously and tried to not think about Steve's hands too much. "Bucky and I share a few classes. He's been helping me lately."

Steve had good instincts, but there was something about it that bothered Bucky a little. That he talked about their schoolwork instead of claiming to be Bucky's friend.

"We just stopped by for chocolate," Bucky said, nodding towards the items he had placed on the counter. "I thought I could show Steve the robot." It was a spur of a moment decision.

Steve's eyes grew wide. Bucky shrugged and winked at him. Steve grinned.

Chapter Text

"You made a great impression," Bucky said genuinely, smiling to himself. It had stopped raining and they walked down the street, avoiding the puddles. Steve had his hands in the pockets of his jacket, but he kept looking at Bucky. Though that might have been just because he wanted to be sure he heard everything Bucky was saying, it still made Bucky's heart flutter.

"Doesn't happen often," Steve admitted. "I don't think your Dad liked me much that one time."

"Eh." Bucky waved his hand. "Dad's got terrible taste. It's almost impossible to impress him; I wouldn't worry what he thinks. I don't leave a good impression on him half the time," he added with a small frown. He and his father were still on very strained speaking terms after their latest argument.

"I'm sorry," Steve said. He pulled one hand out of his pocket and reached out to touch Bucky's arm reassuringly. With more layers of clothing between them now that they were dressed for the outside world and its chilly weather, Bucky couldn't actually feel much more than pressure where Steve's hand rested, but he still felt warmth spreading through him. His mind jumped back to standing so close to Steve in the kitchen. They had almost kissed, hadn't they?

"It's what it is," he said. He wanted to reach out and take Steve's hand in his own but he didn't. They didn't have the sort of relationship that allowed handholding and he couldn't be sure Steve wanted anything of that sort, anyway. That moment in the kitchen… he couldn't know whether it actually meant anything. "He just… he really desperately wants me to fit in and—Like I said, it's whatever."

"So, I'm getting to see the robot?" Steve asked, and though the change of the topic was abrupt, Bucky was grateful for it.

***

Technically, Bucky shouldn't be bringing people to Tony's workshop, but after he scanned his fingertips – a measure he had always found a little too serious for a high schooler's workshop – there was nothing stopping him from letting Steve through the door.

Tony's workshop looked a little like a garage with few clean surfaces available and was very much well-used. Bucky didn't bother to explain much of the equipment and works in progress to Steve; he only cautioned him not to touch anything. Just in case. One could never be entirely certain what Tony was working on – some of it could easily explode in their faces or try to eat the alive.

He beelined to the robot and removed it from its charger before turning it on. Jane kept insisting they needed to make the robot capable of connecting itself to the charger by itself, but they had yet to perfect that. And they weren't entirely sure it would be safe to leave the robot unattended – it kept picking up things it wasn't supposed to and dropping them when something else drew its attention – Bucky wasn't sure why Tony couldn't get it to finish an action before it started a new one. So far, three coffee mugs were destroyed, but more were sure to come.

The robot came alive with a beep and then circled Bucky while spinning simultaneously. Bucky glanced at Steve and saw an uncertain amusement on his face.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm happy to see you, too," Bucky said to the robot. "Kiss," he commanded, and smirked when he heard Steve made a surprised sputtering sound.

The robot made one more spin before it brought it hand/head part up to Bucky's cheek. Its three tweezers-like fingers touched a point on Bucky's cheek and spread out with an exaggerated kissing sound.

Steve laughed. Bucky grinned at him. "The first time we tried this, he almost took my eye out," he admitted. He rested his hand on the back of the robot and gestured for Steve to come closer. "He works with voice commands now. I could program your voice in," he pointed at the button in the base of the robot, which would allow him to do that, "but then Tony'd find out and he'd reprogram my mp3 player or something and I can't deal with that shit."

"I'll try to not get you in trouble," Steve said, walking around the robot to take a better look at him. He looked interested enough for Bucky to feel pleased with himself.

"Everyone tells me that's a promise you can't keep," Bucky said. Maybe there was a hint of challenge in his gaze when their eyes met; he was curious to see how Steve would react.

Steve froze in his tracks and then frowned. "Yeah? They would, I guess," he said, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jacket.

Bucky bit his lip and dropped his gaze to his shoes. "I don't care," he said. "Living safely isn't getting me anywhere, anyway. As long as I don't end up suspended… I don't need colleges to see that."

To his surprise and relief, Steve chuckled. "Sam told you about that one? Just so you know, he was far from innocent. No matter what he says."

Bucky was about come back with a witty remark when he heard the sound of someone outside the workshop's door putting in the security code and scanning their fingerprints. Jane was supposed to be in one of her extracurricular, which left one person.

"Shit," Bucky muttered under his breath.

"I suspect I'm not supposed to be here?" Steve asked.

"Something like that," Bucky said and then the door was sliding open. Bucky's heart was racing in his chest.

"What's he doing here?" Tony asked, addressing the question to Bucky but looking at Steve. He didn't look openly hostile, but to suggest he was pleased to see Steve would be a lie.

Steve folded his arms on his chest and raised his chin. His feet looked so firmly planted in the floor that Bucky thought Steve might even withstand the first punch, if there was one likely to be thrown. He was even shorter than Tony – and Tony was short – but that didn't stop him from looking like an immovable object. Unfortunately, Bucky knew that Tony could be unstoppable force.

"You don't have the clearance," Tony said to Steve this time.

Bucky stepped between them before Steve could come up with a smartass reply. "C'mon. This is on me," he told Tony. "I wanted to show him the robot."

"But why?"

Steve cleared his throat. "I'm not going to steal your blueprints and sell them behind your back if that's what you're worried about," he said. He didn't sound exactly apologetic.

"Ha, but the thought crossed your mind! But you'd have to be smarter than me for that. Which you aren't." That, Bucky assumed, wasn't even meant to be an insult as much as a statement of fact. Few people were smarter than Tony – though Jane and Bruce Banner came close and were likely equal to him – and he knew it.

"Can we not do this?" Bucky said. The robot, activating his default command for prolonged idleness, spun around. "I just wanted to—I wanted to brag, alright?" He could feel his cheeks heat up.

Tony stared at him for a long moment, looking like he was trying to solve some sort of a difficult puzzle. If he wanted to make a comment, he didn't get a chance, because Steve spoke.

"I can help you with presentation," he said, now in tone that sounded like a peace offering rather than a challenge. "You've got an interesting thing here, but you'll want to attract audience. Hopefully in a non-destructive manner," he added when the robot suddenly reached for one of the tools on a workbench and, as he pulled it out, sent several things clattering to the floor.

Bucky looked at Steve curiously – and a little surprised. They hadn't discussed anything like that.

"By the way," Steve continued, uncrossing his arms and letting them fall to his sides, "I was under the impression you two weren't supposed to work together?"

Bucky and Tony looked at each other and shrugged.

"They think Jane'll act as a buffer," Tony said. "Frankly, I don't know why."

"If it were up to her, we'd be working on a time travel machine. I'm the only reasonable person here," Bucky said.

Steve laughed. "God help us."