Chapter Text
The first time Steve met Bucky was online.
"Hi! I saw your roommate profile on the University website and I thought I should message you. I think you’re the only one that put their tumblr URL on that page and I really respect you for that. I was too afraid to do so, but I’m glad I found someone that I could connect with. My name is Bucky by the way. Well, that’s a nickname. Full name is James Buchanan Barnes. Anyway, let me know if you’re interested in rooming with me next year!"
Steve read through the paragraph a few times before it finally hit him. Someone wanted to live with him next year. He pulled up Facebook and typed in the name “James Barnes”. It didn’t seem like any of the results that were listed were the guy who had messaged him. He deleted the search and instead tried “Bucky Barnes”. Almost immediately, he found the boy who had sent him the message.
Bucky’s profile picture was a solo one of him at what Steve assumed was prom. He was smiling effortlessly at something that someone off camera had said. Bucky’s hair was short and slicked back and his all-black outfit outlined his figure nicely.
Bucky was hot. Steve was intimidated. He started flipping through the other pictures on Bucky’s profile. Steve learned that the boy was in theatre, was a pretty large nerd, and was intimidatingly attractive.
‘I’m glad I found someone that I could connect with.’ Steve decided to reply to Bucky’s message.
"Hello! Thanks for sending me a message, but I think I might have already found a roommate. You seem cool though, and I wouldn’t mind being friends when the semester starts!"
Steve read over what he had typed and realized he didn’t mean a word of what he had said. He threw caution to the wind, deleted the whole thing, and sent Bucky a friend request.
"Hello! You seem really cool and I think we might fit well together. I just sent a Facebook friend request to someone I assume is you. I hope we can get to know each other a little more, and maybe we’ll decide to live together. Feel free to message me on Facebook because Lord knows the tumblr messaging system sucks. Thanks for messaging me!"
Steve sent the message before he could think too much about it. At the very least, he could be going into college knowing someone other than his cousin. If everything worked out, he could end up having a super hot, nerdy roommate.
The second time Steve met Bucky was move-in day.
Steve had been pretty lonely the first few days of dorm-life, seeing as he was the only one living in a four-person suite. The suite itself didn’t help his loneliness. It was the biggest dorm suite Steve had ever seen, and one of the reasons he had chosen this school. The front door opened into a rather spacious living room that included a mini couch and an arm chair. Straight back from the living room was the first bedroom, the one Steve and Bucky had claimed. The living room also gave way to a hallway which led to the bathroom and the other bedroom. A great feature about their suite was that the shower was in a separate room than the toilet. There was a sink in the toilet bathroom, and a sink outside the shower room. Steve loved the amount of space the dorm offered to four people. But for the first few days of his college experience, he was the only one occupying that space. Even though the honors kids on his floor got early move-in, he was still alone for half a week.
Things kind of sucked for band kids that way.
Steve Rogers played the trombone in the Marvel University Marching Band. He couldn’t be happier with his choice to stick by music for all those years. Even though he technically hadn’t met his roommates, (or anyone else that lived on his floor for that matter) he still felt like he found a place where he could finally be himself. He had been at college for four days, and he already felt like he found some life-long friends.
Steve had gotten used to living alone and only seeing people at rehearsal. It had taken three days to get over his loneliness and he was starting to feel at peace. Especially when he got to take uninterrupted, mid-afternoon naps.
So when he walked into his room during the two-hour lunch break, he didn’t expect to see a flurry of people moving in and out of his bedroom.
He walked into his room and casually set down his instrument. The flurry of people hadn’t noticed him yet. After standing awkwardly next to his bed for about a minute, he finally spoke up.
“You must be Bucky,” he said to the boy he knew belonged to that name. Bucky, who had been standing on his desk hanging up a picture, turned around and flashed a smile.
“Steve!” he said with joy in his voice. “I wasn’t sure when you’d be back today.” As he climbed down from the desk, Bucky looked around sheepishly. He didn’t seem to have a system of unpacking as his belongings were strewn across the entire room.
“I’m sorry about my stuff, I don’t know where I want everything to go yet,” Bucky said. A blush was rising to his cheeks and Steve laughed.
“Don’t worry about it! I had four days to get my crap together and you’ve had about four hours. Just let me know if I can help at all.”
Bucky smiled. “You could tell me if this picture is straight.”
The picture may be straight, but I sure as hell am not. Steve thought to himself. He’d be an idiot to deny the fact that Bucky was attractive. Or the fact the he might be attracted to Bucky. But he wasn’t going to get into that shit. Bucky was his roommate and Steve had already convinced himself that nothing could ever happen. First of all, he didn’t even know Bucky’s sexuality. For all Steve knew, Bucky was straight. But even if Bucky did swing that way, Steve wasn’t going to let anything happen. Steve didn’t even know what his sexuality was. He was always attracted to girls and he liked the idea of being with them. But, occasionally, he’d look at a guy and feel something similar. He’d been coming to terms with the fact that he might be bisexual, but he wasn’t ready to admit that to anyone. Let alone himself. He wasn’t comfortable thinking about it, so he knew he wouldn’t be comfortable talking about it.
“Yeah,” Steve told Bucky. “It looks good.”
Steve didn’t even have feelings for Bucky. He just knew that his roommate was the definition of “hot college boy”. And he really liked the idea of being with a hot college boy.
“Are you hungry?” Steve found himself asking Bucky. “I have two hours until I have to be back at band and you look like you could use a break.” Bucky looked around at the messy room and shrugged.
“Yeah, it wouldn’t hurt to eat something. Hey, have you met Tony and Phil yet?” Bucky asked.
“Not personally, no.”
“Oh, this will be fun.”
Bucky hopped down from the desk and led Steve into the common room.
“Apparently they’re good friends from home. They have matching bedspreads and everything.”
There had been a group chat where they shared facts about themselves. Matching bedspreads had never come up. Steve didn’t know what to think.
“Hi!” Suddenly, there was a medium-sized boy standing in front of Steve. “You must be Steven.”
“Uhh, it’s Steve actually.” Tony had an impressive mustache and goatee combination for a college freshman. He nodded and went back to unscrewing something from his bed.
“You’ll have to excuse Tony,” said a voice from the corner of the room. “He’s used to working with robots, and doesn’t deal well with people. I’m Phil Coulson.” Phil held his hand out and Steve took it.
Bucky was right. Phil and Tony had matching bedspreads, but it was worse than he’d imagined. It seemed as if there was a mirror in the middle of the room and everything was just reflected over to the other side. Steve didn’t know what to think, but he figured that first impressions usually aren’t correct.
“We were just about to get some lunch,” Bucky told the other boys. “Do you guys want to join us?” Phil and Tony exchanged a look, and agreed to tag along.
***
“So that’s when I said ‘Her name is Lola.’”
“I can’t believe you actually named your car Lola,” Bucky was crying from how hard he was laughing. The suite mates had gone to a shitty diner within walking distance from campus. They regretted their decision when Tony’s ass slipped into the booth cushion.
Steve had been right not to trust his first impressions of Tony and Phil. They explained that everything of theirs matched because it was cheaper to buy everything in pairs. Tony had told Steve and Bucky that he was big into building stuff and playing with computers. He also was technically already a sophomore at MU because of the amount of AP and college-level classes he took in college. They pretended to be impressed, refraining from mentioning that both of them were about 6 credits away from also being sophomores.
Despite the atmosphere of the diner (that they would never be visiting again), the four of them hit it off. They told stories about their hometowns and discussed different clubs they wanted to join.
Steve was having so much fun getting to know his suitemates that he completely forgot to check the time.
“Steve,” it was Bucky that remembered for him. “Don’t you have band?”
“Shit!” Steve checked his watch and bolted up from the table. He dropped a 20 on the table and apologized for running out like he was. He grabbed his trombone and got his ass to band. He was seven minutes late and had to run laps, but it was totally worth it. Steve actually felt excited about getting to know this group of boys. He knew that they were going to make his freshman year interesting at the very least.
Band had been horrible. Because of the rain, both the afternoon and the night rehearsal were inside. Unfortunately for the marching band of 200+ people, the indoor football field wasn’t air conditioned. Steve was sweaty, tired, and just wanted to crawl into bed. He left the field, and walked back to his dorm in the pouring rain, content with pretending it was enough of a shower for the night.
He knew that he was going to have to talk to his suite mates for a few minutes before heading to bed. He also knew he’d be able to fake his way through a little social interaction before collapsing.
Then he opened his door.
“Steve!” he heard a few people shout. “You’re home!”
“I, yeah I am.” He had opened the door to find about fourteen people he’d never seen in his life crowded into their common room. There were at least five people on the couch, definitely more chairs present than they owned, and everyone else smashed together on the floor.
“It’s Clint’s birthday, so we were celebrating with a movie night,” Bucky explained to him, clearly a little annoyed with the amount of people taking up his space. He gestured to a thin boy sitting next to a red-head. Clint waved and smiled through a bite of cake.
“I’m finally eighteen!” He shouted, his voice muffled by the cake. Steve wished him a happy birthday and stepped around the numerous people on the floor. One girl he recognized from color guard—he thought her name was Mary, or Maria or something—offered Steve her hand when he started to lose his balance. He smiled at her gratefully and toppled into his bedroom.
As he started to close the door, Steve felt resistance and saw Bucky follow him into the room.
“I’m so sorry, Steve,” he starts to apologize. “I didn’t know so many people were going to follow us back here. Clint seemed like a cool guy and it’s his birthday and I didn’t want him to be sad and lonely on his birthday but that led to all these people being here and…” Bucky trailed off when he heard Steve chuckling softly.
“Bucky, it’s completely okay. You’re a great person for doing that for him. I just didn’t expect to see so many people in my dorm. My day was kind of shitty and all I really wanted to do was fall asleep.”
Bucky’s eyes cast downward at that.
“But now that all these people are here, you might as well introduce me.”
“Are you sure? You just said you wanted to go to sleep.”
“Yeah! I don’t know anyone other than you and people in band. That can’t be too good for my social life.”
Bucky smiled and opened the door to introduce Steve to everyone. The movie had ended while they were talking in the other room and people were starting to talk amongst themselves.
“You know Clint already,” Clint waved again.
“That’s Natasha,” the red-head from earlier nodded.
Bucky rattled off names while pointing to different people around the room. Steve was amazed by the ease with which Bucky remembered who was who and how he met each one of them. Steve tried to keep up with all the names and faces, but he was never good at remembering things like that. He stored Clint and Natasha in his brain, and nodded along while Bucky named everyone else.
When he finished, and Steve had introduced himself properly, people started trickling out. Someone mentioned playing a game of mafia and the crowd of people moved down the hall.
“Mafia?” Tony asked after everyone had gone.
Bucky all but choked. “You don’t know how to play mafia?!”
He grabbed Tony by the wrist and pulled him down the hall to the game in progress. Coulson and Steve were left to clean up after everyone that had been there. They discussed who had been there and Steve admitted to not knowing the names of a majority of the people he had just met.
“Don’t worry,” Phil comforted him. “Together, we could probably name at least five of the hundred people that were just here.”
“I strongly believe we could get at least seven,” Steve laughed.
The two cleaned up what was left and Phil told Steve that he was going to bed. Steve bid him goodnight and decided to take a shower. It was still raining outside, and he knew he wouldn’t want to wake up in the morning to shower for band.
Steve jumped in the shower and washed off the filth of his day. While he shampooed his short hair, he let his mind wander to what he thought of the people he had just met.
Clint and Natasha seemed inseparable already. They had all been living on the same floor for less than a week, and people were already starting to form cliques. Steve hated cliques. Rather than beginning to judge people, he thought about the girl that had helped him not to fall.
Maria, her name was definitely Maria. She lived at the end of the hall in the six person suite. Steve knew he had seen her going in and out of the doors with the flag bag strapped to her shoulders. He’d actually offered to help her multiple times, but she politely declined every time.
He got out of the shower and continued to think about her. Maybe he should ask her out? Probably not. Steve had never been the one to initiate relationships. Peggy had asked him out originally. He wasn’t even sure if he really liked Maria, he just saw her every day at band.
He decided against acting on anything just as Bucky opened the door to their bedroom. Thankfully, Steve had just pulled on his boxers and his roommate hadn’t seen anything that would take their friendship to another level.
“Sorry, dude,” Bucky was breathing heavily. “I just thought you needed to see what just happened.” Steve pulled on sweats and a shirt and followed Bucky down the hall.
Bucky knocked on the door at the end of the hallway and Maria opened it, her mouth open in a wide smile. She pulled the door open all the way to reveal Tony being yelled at by an angry blonde girl.
“WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU EVEN THINK IT WAS OKAY TO SAY SOMETHING LIKE THAT?!” She roared.
Everyone else in the room was snickering and Tony was the brightest shade of red Steve had ever seen anyone. Bucky leaned in to fill Steve in on what was going on. Apparently, the blonde girl was named Pepper and she was the narrator. She was also having a ton of fun with the newbie. Tony had never played Mafia before, and Pepper took the advantage to mess with him.
Bucky also told Steve that Pepper and Tony had gone to the same high school, so she knew a lot about him. And what buttons of his to push. Steve locked eyes with Tony and saw a small plea for help in his eyes.
“Pepper, what exactly did Tony say to invoke the wrath of the narrator?” Steve asked.
“I guessed that Maria was the killer and then Pepper tore my head off!” Tony whined. Some of the snickers had turned into full-fledged laughs at this point.
Steve took pity on Tony and explained to him the real rules of the game. Pepper smiled the entire time and then apologized for scaring the shit out of her friend.
“I just couldn’t resist!” She told him.
Bucky was laughing the hardest at this. He grabbed Steve’s arm to keep his balance and asked his roommate to stay and finish the game with them. Steve agreed and sat down next to Bucky.
“Okay,” Pepper started. “Now that everyone knows the real rules, we can play the game.” She dealt everyone a card and began to narrate their story.
“It was a dark night on the campus of Marvel University…”
Steve ended up being one of the mafia. He used his innocent look to his advantage and played off not knowing what was going on. By the end of the game, no one believed him that he was one of the mafia. Bucky least of all.
“But you were so innocent about everything that happened!” He yelled at Steve. Steve couldn’t help the smile that formed on his lips.
“I guess you’re just really gullible, Buck.”
Everyone laughed as Bucky threw up his arms in anger. They decided to end on that game and everyone said goodbye for the night.
Steve, Bucky, and Tony walked back to their dorm together, discussing the things they didn’t know about each other. Both Bucky and Tony claimed that they didn’t trust Steve after that stunt he pulled in the game.
Steve laughed. “If you were surprised by that, you have a lot coming to you.”
Bucky and Steve bid Tony goodnight and went into their shared bedroom.
“You know, I wasn’t expecting you to look the way you do,” Bucky told Steve after they had crawled into their beds.
“What do you mean?” Steve asked his roommate.
“Most of your pictures show a scrawny kid that couldn’t weigh more than 100 pounds soaking wet.”
“Yeah, I actually get that a lot. When I was growing up, I wasn’t very healthy. I was small and got sick a lot. But Mother Nature took pity on me in junior year and I hit a huge growth spurt. It was weird getting used to my new body, especially the fact that people started looking at me differently. I’m pretty much used to it now, but I still get weird looks from people when they see what I used to look like.”
Bucky was silent. Steve guessed that he had fallen asleep. It wasn’t weird for people to ask Steve about his body, he was used to it. He was glad Bucky had asked him about it. He hated when people skirted around the fact that he used to be a twig. Steve knew that he had a great body now, but he still sometimes felt like the insecure, sick kid from his childhood.
“I like both versions of you,” Steve heard Bucky whisper, almost inaudibly. It was obvious that Bucky was almost asleep. Steve thought that Bucky seemed like the kind of guy that liked to have the last word, and he wasn’t surprised that Bucky had commented on his physique. He rolled over, mumbled his thanks, and let himself fall asleep.