Chapter Text
Bucky has never considered himself university material, to be completely honest, but somehow he’s ended up at one. Which is why he’s here, at the university quad, sitting on a bench and reading something about a guy called Prometheus and drinking his mocha with a dazed expression.
Mornings really aren’t his thing, you see.
Neither is mythology. But seeing how he’s an undeclared major, he’s somehow ended up in mythology. “It’ll be fun,” Steve said, “You’ll learn things.” Bucky has since decided that Steve is stupid and also that Bucky is stupid for taking advice from an art major.
Since Bucky doesn’t quite know what to do with himself, he gets to be undetermined. And the main reason why he’s not sure is because he’s missing a limb. Specifically, his left arm.
Bucky has never been one for sitting around in an office job, but most of the things he is geared towards – engineering, sports, mechanics – requires two arms. So. Bucky is stuck in a mythology class reading about some guy who had gotten his liver picked out by a vulture because he was dumb. Like Steve. Steve is dumb.
Briefly, Bucky daydreams about a vulture picking out Steve’s liver. It makes him feel better about being up at stupid o’ clock in the morning. He may have been in the army, but that does not mean he’s up at the buttcrack of dawn every morning like a lunatic. That would be Steve. Steve is a lunatic.
He’s so preoccupied with staring listlessly at the page in front of him that he doesn’t notice the redhead bobbing toward him in the mingled mess of students. It’s not until she’s upon him that he lifts his head and startles slightly. A charming smile meets his bleary gaze, and he curses the owner a little for being so peppy in the morning.
Of course, he would never curse Natasha Romanoff to her face, because he values his family jewels and he also is not that stupid, thank you. And he has full confidence in Natasha’s ability to remove him of those assets.
“Morning, James.” She purrs at him, and he winces inwardly at her use of his first name. Why can’t she just call him Bucky?
“I wasn’t in class yesterday – did I miss anything important?” She asks, tilting her head a little bit to the side.
Nat is in his Beginner Fencing class, even though it is quite obvious she doesn’t need to be. Bucky is pretty convinced she’s some sort of master ninja or something, and that’s part of the reason the younger woman is so terrifying.
He knows that he gets strange looks in that class sometimes. After all, he is an amputee. But, the good thing is that in fencing you only really need one arm – in fact, sometimes your free arm can get in the way. Nat has been the only one to truly understand that and go out of her way to make friends with Bucky, always choosing him to be her partner when they spar in class.
“Nah, nothing really,” he replies, taking a small sip of coffee. “We just went over footwork again since a lot of the others can’t seem to get a grip on the forward lunge without tripping over their lead foot.”
Nat smirks, flipping her hair out of her face. “They’re amateurs. Eventually they’ll get it.”
“Nat!”
Natasha turns at the shout, and Bucky looks around her curiously. A blond man is walking toward them, a coffee thermos in hand, his boots surprisingly silent on the concrete. Jeans hang low on his slim waist, and a baseball cap shades his eyes. Bucky is pretty sure his t-shirt is too tight to be legal.
“Hey, Bullseye, how are you today?” Nat asks him, right before the guy drops his head to her shoulder.
“Awful,” he groans out, and she pats his head with pity.
“I’m not sure how you’re not a morning person,” she says, “what with your upbringing and all.”
“Hmph.”
“Well, chin up, because you’re making me look bad in front of my fencing friend.”
The blond stiffens, raising his head slowly to look at Bucky. Bucky straightens, fiddling with the arms of his backpack and dropping his head quickly.
“James, meet Clint Barton. Clint, this is James Barnes.” Natasha smiles at Bucky as he extends his hand.
It takes Clint a second, but he reaches out and firmly grasps Bucky’s hand with his own, which is callused and strong. He glances at Bucky, wide-eyed, and Bucky notices a blush is beginning to creep along his cheekbones.
“I really need to get to class,” Clint suddenly blurts out, “we’re palpating heifers today.”
And just like that he’s gone, rushing away from Natasha and Bucky before Bucky can formulate a response. He looks at Nat, who gives a small shrug.
“It’s not you,” she says. “He’s always nervous around new people.”
“… Heifers?” Bucky asks, still unsure of what just happened.
Nat grins. “Clint’s an Animal Science major. Heifers are cows.”
Bucky rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I know that. What’s palpitating?”
“Palpating. Means he’s sticking his arm up their ass to check if they’re pregnant.”
Bucky gapes at Natasha a minute and then stands up and shakes his head. He shoves his book in his bag before slinging it on his shoulder. “It is too early for me to care about how that works.”
Nat laughs at him, and then he’s saying goodbye to her and headed to class, his mind lingering on the nervous man.
Who apparently does pregnancy checks on heifers with his arms.
… It really is too early for that.
---
“Art majors are so weird, Buck. So weird.”
“You are an art major,” Bucky points out, snagging an apple as he and Steve make their way up to the cash register.
“That makes me even more qualified to say so,” Steve replies as he also grabs an apple and somehow finds a place for it on his tray. While Steve might be an art major, he still looks every inch of a jock, which amuses Bucky to no end. Especially when Steve attracts eyes left and right.
“Well, whatever weird thing happened to you involving art majors, I bet my weird experience tops yours.” Bucky swipes his card and gives the woman a cheery smile, that she wearily returns.
“Oh yeah? How so?”
“Well,” Bucky begins, as the pair begins to scope out a seat in the crowded dining hall, “I was talking to this chick who’s in my fencing class, and one of her friends walked up. I swear to God this guy looks like he walked straight out of a Keith Urban video. Please tell me you know who that is.” Bucky eyes Steve, who gives him a halfhearted shrug as they sit down.
“Sweet lord, I swear you’re actually from the 1940’s. He’s a country music star, okay?”
“Okay.” Steve lifts his burrito as Bucky starts picking at his fries.
“Right, so basically the guy looks like some sort of real life rancher or some shit, and you know what the first thing he said to me was? That he was late for class because he had to go stick his hand up a cow ass to see if it was pregnant!”
Steve chokes a bit on his burrito, and Bucky snorts at him. “Told ya my day was weirder.”
“Okay,” Steve coughs, shaking his head, “you definitely win.” He turns his attention back to his lunch, leaving a few minutes of silence as Bucky contemplates his fries far more than sticks of potatoes deserve.
“You know,” Bucky says thoughtfully, carefully examining a fry, “I’d probably ask him on a date.”
“You’d ask almost anyone on a date, Bucky.”
“Rogers, will you please get laid and get that stick out of your ass, oh my god.”
---
When Bucky sees Clint the next time, it’s almost by accident.
He and Natasha are walking out of fencing class, and Clint is waiting outside the athletic complex. Natasha catches sight of him and waves him over, but upon seeing Bucky the shorter man stutters a step. Nat rolls her eyes and grabs Bucky’s arm, dragging him toward Clint.
“Wait, Nat-!”
“He’s gonna have to get over talking to people at some time, and there’s no time like the present.” She grits out, then smiles at Clint as they stop in front of him. “Hey there, Bullseye. How’s it goin’? You remember James?”
Bucky attempts to put on his best smile for the nervous man. “Please, call me Bucky “Even though your girlfriend insists on calling me James.”
Clint swallows. “Not my girlfriend. Also I need to go, right now, immediately.” He casts a pleading look at Natasha.
“O…Kay?” Bucky replies, confused as to why Clint is rushing off again.
“I have cow bones in my backpack that I need to take to my professor as soon as possible. As soon as possible being about five minutes ago. Natasha?” Clint’s drops Bucky’s gaze again, looking desperately at the redhead, and Nat sighs and pats Bucky’s shoulder. “Catch ya later, James.”
Bucky watches them leave, his mind still reeling. Cow bones?
Well. At least he can say with confidence that Clint has a boner for him.
---
A week later finds him in fencing class with Natasha. The pair are out on the floor, their foils in hand and masks on. It makes talking a little more difficult, but Bucky’s had questions about Clint itching on his tongue all week, so when Nat blocks one of his forward thrusts he blurts out, “Hey Natasha, why does Clint hate me?”
“He doesn’t,” she replies, whipping the thin blade around neatly. He springs back to avoid her parry, tapping his foil against hers before attempting to tap her chest, missing entirely because her footwork is fantastic. “He’s afraid of talking to people. We’re working on it.”
“We?” Bucky smirks, knowing she can’t see it, but trusting she’ll hear it. “Thought you two weren’t a couple.”
“We aren’t, considering he’s gay.”
The words catch Bucky off guard, and Natasha takes advantage of the slight pause in his movement to strike with lightning speed, tapping him on the left side of his chest – though knowing to keep off the shrapnel scarring.
“Gotcha, James.” She pulls the blade away, and they both step out of fighting stance as the professor walks over.
“Good job Romanoff,” Fury says, looking pleased with her. “Barnes, remember to let your hips lead your legs and to keep your torso still – otherwise you’ll get hit like that every time. You two are free to go. The rest of you!” He turns, addressing the rest of class. “Finish up those sets! Just because Barnes and Romanoff look like extras from The Princess Bride is no excuse to stare!”
Natasha pulls off her mask, smirking at Bucky as they move to the dressing rooms to take off their gear. She wordlessly unzips his jacket and he returns the favor, shrugging off the bulky material.
Nat speaks up as she’s removing her chest guard. “Do you have a class after this?”
Bucky looks over at her. “Uh, not for another hour and a half… Why?”
“Clint and I usually go to lunch. Since we’re out early I was gonna meet him over by his class. Wanna join us?” She throws the guard in the bucket with a disdainful look before meeting Bucky’s eyes again.
He shrugs with a grin, slinging his pack across his shoulders. “Sounds like fun.”
They exit the gym together, and as they reach the stairs, questions begin to fall out of Bucky’s mouth before he can think to censor them.
“So why’s he afraid of talking to people?”
“Just shy. He grew up in a small town in Virginia. But I keep telling him that if he wants to be a vet, his people skills have gotta get a bit better. I don’t care if he says he can talk to farmers, with the way he’s headed he’s gonna be big news once he’s out in the real world.”
“He’s on track to be a vet?”
“Not just on track. He’s top of the entire Pre-Vet degree, first in his class, and he’s holding a 4.0 right now.”
Bucky’s knees go a little weak. Cute and brainy? That’s okay with him.
“Where are we going anyway?”
“Clint’s class is shop lab, over in the Ag building.”
Bucky looks at her, eyes furrowed. “We have an Ag building?”
She rolls her eyes. “Yes, James, we have an Ag building. And an Ag Department. One of the best in the state, actually.”
It turns out that the reason Bucky hadn’t known about the Ag building is because it’s on the far end of campus, secluded from the main hub. The building is older, and it strikes Bucky because of all the plants surrounding it. They are everywhere. It is little off putting, but at the same time it makes Bucky smile a little bit as he feels the different culture of the building.
Natasha seems to notice the look on his face, and she gives him a knowing smirk. “The Horticulture majors are very proud of their gardens. If you tell Clint that you like it he’ll pass it on. They would appreciate it.”
They enter the building, and it appears that the plants continued inside as well. Large ferns and trees occupy pots in each and every corner, their labels on careful display.
Natasha ignores Bucky as he gazes around, trying to read each one, and leads him over to a particularly spiky tree, which is labelled as a Madagascar Palm.
“Pachypodium lamerei,” Natasha says, eyeing the barbed trunk. “It’s mine and Clint’s meeting place. We call it the Spiky Death Tree.”
“Alright then.” Bucky says with a grin, trying to not look too obvious as he looks around for Clint. There’s a class in session just down the hall, and there’s a voice drifting from it.
“Right, so we’re gonna actually start welding and I swear to god if any of you show up in anything but a long sleeve shirt the Prof is gonna have my ass, so please regulate dress code even if I don’t. He can’t actually get onto me because of reasons, but seriously, any of you little cute Ag majors show up in shorts or open toed shoes and I will accidently drop an anvil on your foot or something. I haven’t decided yet. And with that, I’m tired of looking at all of you, so class dismissed.”
There is a huge mass of shuffling noises and the clomping of boots, and then people begin to emerge from the classroom, their voices rising to fill the hallway as they chat to each other.
Clint is the last to exit the room, accompanied by a short black haired man who is wearing jeans, Converse, and an AC/DC shirt that looks older than Bucky. Clint himself doesn’t look too different from when Bucky first saw him; his boots and jeans are the same, but he’s wearing a different t-shirt. They each have a coffee thermos, and Clint is grinning at the other man as he speaks.
“I swear that goddamn Scandinavian in my electrical class is trying to show me up, Clint, and do you know how not okay that is? I don’t care if it’s an intro class, it’s not okay and it never will be.”
“Isn’t he your best friend, Tony?”
“That is beside the point and you know it, Barton.”
Clint chuckles, then catches sight of Natasha, and claps Tony on the shoulder. “As much as I want to hear you lament about your woes, but I have a hot lunch date.” He starts walking away, and Tony puts a hand to his chest in offense.
“I will stand by the claim that my ass is better than Romanov’s any day!” he calls.
Clint outright laughs. “Goodbye, Tony!”
It’s then that Clint spots Bucky and suddenly he drops his cheerful demeanor as though it has somehow burned his entire being. He swallows, and Bucky tries not to let his gaze trace the way his Adam’s apple bobs.
“I’ve invited James to lunch today,” Natasha explains cheerfully, “so try to be pleasant, yes?”
Clint nods a little shakily. “I think I might be able to manage that.”
Nat nods, and then turns on her heel and leads them out the door and back toward main campus.
---
The conversation at lunch is mostly between Bucky and Nat, with Clint listening quietly at her side.
“Four pages and a half pages on the first day of class? Jesus. What kind of vindictive professor do you have?” Bucky shakes his head disbelievingly as the redhead smirks.
“A history one. Seems pretty standard for them. Since then I think I average about six pages of notes a lecture, so the first day was by far the easiest.”
Bucky’s lucky. He gets to type up most of his notes, and Steve says Bucky types at an unbelievable speed, but even then six pages is absolutely insane to him. If he were in that class, he would hope that his professor would be okay with him asking for a printed version of the notes. There would be no way for him to keep up otherwise.
Clint suddenly coughs, and Bucky’s eyes flit toward him in concern.
“In my basic animal health class, we had a timeline with eighty-six citations we had to know,” he murmurs, and his smile seems quiet. “So I think Nat had it pretty easy.”
Bucky’s heart stutters at the sight of that smile, but he tries to hide the (most likely deafening) pounding with a noise of disbelief. “Eighty-six? What the hell? Was your professor vindictive or something?”
“Most likely.” Clint shrugs, and it’s like conversation is suddenly easy for him. Bucky takes it as a small victory. “The worst part was that he didn’t realize when he went over the allotted class time. I think the front row was ready to pitch a textbook at him. Luckily one of the older students stopped him before the younger ones had a come-apart.” He chuckles at the memory, shaking his head a bit.
“I’m surprised the older student didn’t just rip into him,” Bucky replies, and he notices how Natasha is smiling at him from the corner of her eye, encouraging him to keep Clint talking. Not that he really needed encouragement anyway.
“She wasn’t far off from doing it.” Clint suddenly meets Bucky’s eyes, and Bucky feels his lungs freeze. “Of course, we pre-vet students tend to be a scary bunch, though the professors are much scarier. Who do you think teaches us to castrate?” Clint glances at his watch, then grimaces. “Gotta run, else I’ll be late for anatomy. Thanks for lunch, Nat.”
He stands, kissing her temple quickly, then looks at Bucky. When he drops his eyes, Bucky’s not sure if he’s imagining the slight blush on his cheeks.
“It was nice to see you again… Bucky.” Then he’s gone.
Bucky feels slightly threatened, but also doesn’t want him to go.
---
There are a lot of stereotypes around living with art majors, but Bucky finds that Steve just doesn’t fit into any of them. Thanks to his military background, he is rarely messy, and he doesn’t host a large amount of clutter anywhere in their apartment. His behavior is never erratic – in fact, it’s rather orderly and precise. He keeps a predictable schedule, which makes living with him almost too easy.
Of course, he and Bucky had served together, so perhaps it’s only due to their shared past that Bucky finds living with Steve as easy as walking.
In the mornings, Steve is always up first, just as the sun is rising, to depart for his morning jog. From there, it is up to Bucky to make breakfast – if he actually wakes up in time to do it – and get the coffee going (which he always has time for). Steve returns, and after throwing the paper plates in the trash and getting mugs to take with them, the two head off for classes. Sometimes from there they could catch lunch, but due to their conflicting schedules meeting together is sometimes a challenge – especially since Steve works the art gallery and Bucky mans the rec center desk.
Tonight is one of the rare times they have an evening off together, and so the two are using their precious free time to study. Not because Bucky particularly wants to, but he knows that if he flicks on the television and ignores his damn mythology book, Steve will pout those big blue eyes at him until he grows so guilty he’ll feel like he owes America an act of charity to counter the grievance of causing Steve Rogers disappointment.
He is pretty sure Steve knows that he isn’t actually reading his mythology textbook, though. He’s been staring at the same page for the last three minutes, and to be quite honest reading about Zeus screwing a Titan is not that interesting. Zeus screwed everyone. Bucky’s pretty sure that’s why the Greeks fell to the Romans – Zeus was just too busy having sex to notice invaders on his doorstep. Probably.
In any case, Bucky isn’t actually absorbing anything he’s supposed to be reading, because his mind keeps flitting back to play Clint’s smile over and over again, which really isn’t fair. Clint isn’t allowed to be distracting when he isn’t even in the damn room.
“Spill, Barnes.”
Bucky looks up to see Steve staring patiently at him from across the room, where he is seated at his easel, sketching out his latest project for his watercolors class. Steve hates that class.
“Spill what, Rogers? My water?” Bucky jerks his head towards his glass.
“Spill about the thing on your mind, which is obviously bugging you. You’ve been frowning at that book for the last five minutes. It feels personally victimized.”
“Screw you.” Bucky sets his jaw stubbornly and flips the page, wishing he still had his other arm so he could also flip Steve the finger, though he’s pretty sure the message is received loud and clear.
His moody silence broods for about ten minutes until he sighs angrily, glaring at Steve, who looks up and meets his look with raised eyebrows. “What?”
“Now you made me wanna talk about it.”
“Yes.”
“You planned this.”
“And?”
“And you’re a dick.”
Steve lifts a shoulder in a half-hearted shrug, furrowing his brow at the easel in front of him. He really hates his watercolors class.
“It’s a guy, okay?”
“Okay.”
“And he’s really hot, okay?”
“I’d kinda figured that.”
“And I really want to ask him out but Natasha might shove my balls back into me.”
“Natasha from fencing?”
“Natasha from fencing.”
“I think she was in my intro to fine arts class in freshman year,” Steve muses, glaring at his project, while Bucky contemplates throwing his mythology book at him because Steve made him talk about his feelings and now Steve won’t even look at him and that’s not polite.
“You do realize you’re not helping.”
“Mm. Probably not. But you should ask him out.”
“Did you not hear the part about Natasha and my balls?”
“Should we be discussing Natasha and your balls while simultaneously discussing this male heartthrob of yours?”
“I’m going to shove your fucking balls back into you.”
“Language.”
“Did you just say ‘language’ you absolute fucking hypocrite?”
“Fuck off.”