Work Text:
Bucky Barnes considered himself a pretty responsible guy. He'd been salutatorian of his high school class—that damn art class he'd taken sophomore year to impress Lindy Adams had kept him from valedictorian—and had juggled playing three sports all four years. He was punctual, he remembered his responsibilities, and mothers loved him.
Which is why it took until February of his freshman year of college to forget his laundry in the washing machine. Bucky did not embrace the stereotypical college guy attitude of Febreeze and wear. He did his laundry every Wednesday and washed his sheets twice a month. He'd been called vain about his appearance; he liked to look put-together and neat. He even ironed some of his clothes, a sight that had made more than one of the guys in the dorm stop and stare. He was always very prompt about switching his clothes and folding his laundry to avoid weird wrinkles.
But this particular day, he'd gotten a history paper back with a C on it. A C! He, Bucky Barnes, had gotten a C. He'd never gotten a C in his life. It threw his whole day off, and it wasn't until he got back to his room after working in the student cafeteria and looked at his stripped-bare bed that he realized what had happened.
“Shit,” he groaned. His roommate, Tim Dugan, looked up from the German book he was muttering over.
“What's up?”
“I left my laundry in the washer.” Bucky thumped his head against the wall by his bed. “It's going to be all gross and smelly.”
“I bet the laundry bandit got it,” Dugan said.
“No!” Bucky bolted from the room, not sticking around to hear just what kind of awful things the laundry bandit did to other people's clothes. He raced to the dorm's laundry room and threw the door open, panting.
There, on top of the washer he'd been using, was his blue laundry basket. With all his clothes neatly dried and folded. Bucky stood for a minute, gaping. Someone had switched his laundry for him, sacrificed the requisite dollar for the dryer, and then waited around to fold his clothes for him.
He grabbed his basket and walked slowly back to his room, glancing around like the good Samaritan would just poke his head out of his room and reveal himself.
“Someone dried and folded my clothes,” he told Dugan.
“Yeah, the laundry bandit. Told you.” Dugan shrugged.
“I thought the laundry bandit would, I don't know, throw my clothes out the window or something,” Bucky admitted. Dugan snorted.
“Nah. Some guy's been taking care of people's forgotten laundry since last semester. Some guys think it's kinda weird.” Dugan grinned and wiggled his eyebrows. “Not like you mind another guy all up in your underwear.”
Bucky huffed, partly amused and partly surprised. He'd never told Dugan he was into guys; Bucky liked girls, too, so he'd had stories to tell when Dugan started talking about girls. “How'd you know I like guys?”
Dugan stared at him, wide eyed. “You like guys?”
Bucky felt the blood drain from his face. Dugan had been fucking with him, making a joke, and now Bucky had outed himself to someone who thought liking guys was something to make fun of. Bucky swallowed hard, suddenly feeling a phantom ache in his left arm where Brock Rumlow broke it junior year after Bucky came onto him.
“Well, anyway.” Dugan brushed it aside like it was nothing. “I think it's great. Sometimes I leave my laundry for the bandit on purpose. Wouldn't want his do-good muscles to get rusty.”
Bucky was still stuck on the outing himself part, but Dugan had gone back to his German like Bucky hadn't just almost had a heart attack. Dugan glanced over at him and gave him a sheepish grin.
“Hey, look, I'm sorry if I made it weird. I, uh, I didn't know.”
“You—” Bucky cleared his throat. “You're...okay with it?”
“My brother's gay,” Dugan said simply. “I'll stop trying to set you up with girls.”
“Well, I'm bi,” Bucky corrected absent-mindedly, brain switching gears now that he felt safe again. “Does anyone know who this laundry guy is?”
Dugan shrugged. “No idea. No one's ever caught him in the act.”
Bucky couldn't get it out of his head. For some reason, the laundry bandit became linked in Bucky's mind with coming out to Dugan, which had been a surprisingly great advance in their friendship. Dugan didn't act any differently, except sometimes he'd eye a guy walking by, elbow Bucky, and hiss, “Is he your type?” Bucky felt a huge relief. After the issues in high school, he'd become pretty wary of who he told. The laundry bandit had eased some of that. Sort of.
Bucky would pop his head into the laundry room any time he passed it, but he never saw anyone folding clothes. Most guys just shoved their laundry into the basket directly from the dryer. It made Bucky shake his head. Did no one care about their clothes anymore? Dugan thought Bucky's fascination with the laundry bandit was hilarious.
"So not only do you like guys, you like guys you've never seen?" He teased.
"I didn't say I like whoever the guy is." Bucky rolled his eyes. He didn't like someone he'd never seen nor spoken to. He just wanted to see what kind of guy did such a good deed.
Two weeks later, Bucky was doing his laundry and noticed the same basket on top of the same washer through all his changing loads. He peeked cautiously into the washing machine and found the clothes inside damp but dry enough that he knew they'd been sitting there for a while. He bit his lip and then hastily moved them to the dryer and forked over an extra four quarters, hoping he didn't shrink anything.
When he went back to get his last load, no one had come back for the other laundry. He folded all his clothes and his eyes kept going back to the unassuming white laundry basket, empty and waiting for its contents to be returned to it. He finished with his own clothes and glanced around. There was definitely no one else in the room.
Bucky went to the door and glanced both ways. The hall was empty. What if he started folding the clothes and their owner came in and had a problem with him? He didn't want to be accused of being a creepy underwear snatcher. He didn't need that getting around now that word of his double-swinging door of sexuality was sort of spreading.
But he couldn't just leave the clothes in a heap, not when someone had folded his for him. It didn't take that long, really; it was a pretty small load of clothes, and the clothes themselves were pretty small. Either this guy was doing his girlfriend's laundry or he was tiny. The next article of clothing he grabbed was a pair of boxer briefs. Tiny guy, then. Probably. Bucky left the laundry basket, full of freshly folded clothes, on one of the shelves so no one would knock it over to get to the dryer, then left and put it out of his mind.
Two days later, he glanced into the laundry room as he passed, checking for the laundry bandit like always, and noticed the basket and the clothes were still sitting up on the shelf. Bucky frowned. Who forgot their clothes for that long? He knew the underwear had writing in it; he hadn't stopped to read it when he was folding the clothes, but he'd noticed and laughed, like maybe the kid had seen an after-school special on college and had followed the rules perfectly.
Bucky hesitated at the threshold of the laundry room. It would be really weird to show up at some guy's room with his laundry. Wouldn't it? But he'd spent a dollar and ten minutes drying and folding those clothes; they shouldn't sit and gather dust. He quickly dug up a pair of underwear and looked inside. Steve Rogers. It shouldn't be too hard to find him, once he asked the RA.
Steve Rogers—and his roommate, Sam Wilson—turned out to be four doors away from Bucky, and when he thought about it he remembered seeing a waif of a guy slipping around the hall sometimes. He considered leaving the basket in front of the door and just high-tailing it, but if the kid forgot his clothes for almost three days, he'd probably leave them in the hall, too. Bucky took a deep breath and knocked.
The door swung open to reveal a guy who couldn't possibly be Steve Rogers, because he'd never fit in the clothes Bucky had folded. He raised an eyebrow at Bucky, then glanced down at the basket in his hands and looked surprised.
“Oh,” he said. “Are those Steve's?”
“Uh,” Bucky responded eloquently. “They were in the laundry room. For, um, for three days.”
“Yeah, I didn't even think about that. Steve's been in the hospital.” The guy reached out and took the basket. Bucky found himself slightly reluctant to let go, like he was responsible for these clothes now. They'd bonded in the folding process.
“I'm Sam.” The guy balanced the basket on one cocked hip and stuck out a hand for Bucky to shake. “Steve's roommate. You know Steve?”
“Bucky. And no,” Bucky admitted. “I just found his clothes.”
“How'd you know they were his?” Sam got a little wrinkle between his eyebrows and Bucky licked his lips nervously.
“Well.” He drudged up a laugh that sounded only slightly awkward. “When I found them—I mean, they were in the washing machine. All day. So I, well, I put them in the dryer. And then I folded them. And his name's in his underwear,” Bucky said the last part in a rush.
Sam started to laugh and Bucky felt simultaneously reassured and foolish. “Now that is ironic.” Sam said.
“That his name's in his underwear?”
“Nah, man, that you took care of his laundry! Steve does that when he finds abandoned clothes. Puts 'em in the dryer, folds 'em. Guess he's got good karma.”
“He's the laundry bandit?” Bucky blurted. Sam laughed again.
“Yeah, I've heard some guys using that name. That's Steve. He likes to make people's lives easier. Except his own.”
“What happened to him?” Bucky asked, a little worried. He'd become pretty invested in this laundry bandit guy over the last two weeks, and kind of distantly fond of the tiny elf dude the clothes belonged to over the last three days. “Why's he in the hospital?”
“Pneumonia.” Sam rolled his eyes. “He gets it all the time when he hasn't been sleeping enough. Which he hasn't, because he's been tutoring some girl in art history for the last few weeks after doing his own homework and working.”
“Is he gonna be okay?” Bucky's voice came out far more concerned than he'd meant it to, and he flushed a little. Sam shrugged.
“Probably. He's used to it. He just hates being in the hospital.”
“Must not hate it enough.” Bucky remarked. Sam nodded. They kind of stared at each other for a second, and then Bucky felt ready to beat a hasty retreat from this fairly awkward encounter. As he turned to go, he heard Sam start to chuckle, then full-out laugh.
“He really has his name written in his underwear?” Sam snorted. “He's such a dork.”
Two days later, Bucky was messing with different fonts to try to make his paper stretch without writing anything more. Part of him, the perfectionist salutatorian part, was appalled by how little care he was putting into this paper—you're going to get another C, and you're going to deserve it, a little voice hissed in his brain—but he was exhausted and midterms were terrible and he was starving but had made a goal not to leave his room until his paper was finished.
Someone knocked on his door, and he welcomed the distraction. He opened the door and knew instantly the kid in front of him was Steve Rogers. For one thing, he was tiny. For another, Bucky had folded that Captain America shirt. He had not planned on Tiny Steve Rogers having an incredible jaw line or unreal blue eyes.
“Hi,” Steve Rogers said. “I'm Steve Rogers.”
Bucky nodded. “Bucky Barnes.” He winced a little. Obviously Steve knew who he was if he was outside his door.
“You folded my clothes and took them back to my room.”
“Yes,” Bucky agreed. He winced again. Usually he was a pretty smooth guy. This was ridiculous.
“Thanks for that.” Steve pointed those earnest blue eyes at Bucky and Bucky bit his lip. “I usually don't abandon my clothes like that.”
Bucky felt the side of his mouth quirk up. At least he knew that look was charming. “From the sounds of it, you don't abandon anyone's clothes like that.”
Steve shrugged, unabashed that Bucky knew his secret. “Why shouldn't I help someone if I can?”
Bucky could feel a grin taking over his face and wanted to duck his head to hide it. This kid couldn't be real. “Well, you helped me,” he told Steve. “You took care of my clothes a few weeks ago. Thanks. I guess we're even.”
“I thought I recognized those jeans.” Steve grinned back at him. “I remember thinking they'd probably make someone's ass look fantastic.”
Bucky raised his eyebrows. “What's the verdict?” He pitched his voice low and was rewarded by those baby blues going a little darker.
“Can't see,” Steve said boldly, almost challengingly. Bucky obligingly turned around, shooting Steve a look over his shoulder. He turned back around and Steve grinned wickedly. “Guess I was wrong.”
“Oh, screw you!” Bucky laughed, completely surprised and delighted. He was not expecting sass from a guy with his name written in his underwear. “My ass is amazing.”
Steve bit his lip, his ears getting red, and Bucky felt butterflies kick up in his stomach. “Well," Steve said a little awkwardly, then thrust a wrapped plate toward Bucky. “I made you cookies as a thanks.”
“Wow.” Bucky pulled the foil off the plate and took a cookie right away. “Where'd you make cookies?” Their dorms didn't have kitchens, not even a communal one like some of the other buildings had. He took a bite and almost moaned. Pumpkin chocolate chip was his favorite.
“Okay, I bought them,” Steve confessed. Bucky almost choked on the cookie because he started laughing so hard. Steve ducked his head, grinning, and took a step back. “I better get going,” he said. “Thanks again.”
“Anytime.” Bucky sounded a little faint. He felt a little faint. “Hey, Steve.”
“Yeah?”
“Do you...” Bucky ran a hand through his hair, hesitating. He hadn't asked a guy out since Rumlow, and that had not turned out well. Steve was small, but Bucky didn't believe for a second he'd hesitate to clock someone if he thought they deserved it. Besides, if Steve was into guys he was probably into his hot roommate, Sam. “Hope you feel better,” Bucky chickened out, forcing a grin.
Steve tipped his head to one side, eyes narrowing a little, and Bucky willed his heart to slow down. Steve had his name written in his underwear and folded strangers' laundry. He wasn't going to try to beat Bucky up for maybe coming on too strong. And Bucky was a lot stronger than he'd been when he was a junior in high school. He figured he could handle Steve Rogers.
“You want to go out sometime?” Steve asked, and Bucky felt his eyes go wide.
“Yeah.” He grinned. Steve grinned, too, and they stood there grinning at each other before Bucky came to his senses and grabbed his phone. Steve did the same and they exchanged numbers. Bucky felt like his heart was going to take off and leave his body, he was so giddy.
“I'll call you,” Steve promised. He turned and walked away, and Bucky watched his tiny little ass walk away. He couldn't wipe his smile off his face. Dugan was going to give him so much shit for this and he didn't even care. The laundry bandit had been a fortunate encounter indeed.