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Professor Barnes was a fucking hardass.
Professor Barnes was sent from hell to torture Steve Rogers and see to it that he never graduated from art school.
Professor Barnes was going to be the sole reason Steve’s life went from being on a path toward art and creativity and nosedived toward something perfectly boring like accounting and numbers.
No one could critique accounting and numbers. You either got it right or you didn’t.
Art was speculative and as it stood, Professor Barnes hadn’t liked a damn thing Steve had submitted this year.
And she was currently staring over his shoulder at the painting he was working on and the mantra going in Steve’s head was to keep working and refuse to apologize for anything.
“Mr. Rogers,” she commented with absolute disdain, “This could easily be spray-painted beneath any overpass in the city. Why are you painting me a jejune picture of a border collie?”
Steve wanted to say, “I’d love to see street art like this in an overpass.” What he said instead was something more grasping, appeasing, mildly defensive and kind of pathetic. “You said to paint something that inspired us personally. I helped rehabilitate this dog after she was abused and abandoned,” Steve said proudly as he refused to be cowed. “She is the essence of forgiveness and determination and resilience.” There, he was proud of himself.
Professor Barnes breathed out loudly through her nose.
Steve very pointedly dipped his paintbrush back in the dark gray and kept working. She was going to fail him. She was absolutely going to fail him.
He was gripping the paintbrush so tightly that he actually smudged the edge of his image when a loud voice rang out from the door and startled him.
“Mommy!!”
Suddenly a student Steve had never seen came sweeping into the classroom, hastily set his coffee next to Steve, and wrapped Professor Barnes up in his arms.
It was the first time Steve had ever seen her crack a smile, and he watched her hug the student back as he took note of the man’s right hand coming around the professor’s back to meet his left which was a dark metal prosthetic.
“Bucky!” she scolded, but it was half-hearted and said through her obvious happiness. “Bucky, you make such a scene!”
“I wanted to surprise you!” he announced as he pulled back to look at her and-
Oh.
Oh god.
Oh Steve’s fucking god.
This man was beautiful.
This man was the kind of man poets wrote sonnets about. Poets wrote whole literary masterpieces just trying to capture the essence and beauty of someone like this man.
Steve wanted to recite Shakespearean soliloquies about love and he didn’t even know this man (or very much Shakespeare).
But this man-
This man who dared to come sweeping in and disrupt Steve’s horrible class.
He was a god and Steve was willing to give his life over to the worship of such a deity.
Artfully messy brown hair and a five-o’clock-shadow paired with warm, smiling eyes and a strong jaw.
Steve was gonna die. Right here on Professor Barnes’s plastic covered floor.
Steve was gonna die and it wasn’t going to be from eating his own paints or from being bashed over the head with a palette by an irate art professor. It was certainly going to be because this man standing before him was so goddamn gorgeous Steve’s whole body was just going to give up.
He had a mental image of him just collapsing right there in the middle of the floor, palette and paintbrush flying up into the air like a cartoon before crashing down on top of him. Steve set his palette and paintbrush down in a hurry to prevent any such calamity, his eyes never leaving the man who stood just feet away from him.
The man- this Bucky- was grinning at their professor now and Steve barely registered him saying something, making an apology to the class for the interruption and brushing off Professor Barnes’s scolding unfazed.
“You can’t just transfer here and interrupted my classes between all of yours,” she was saying.
Bucky laughed. “This is the first time!”
But the professor tried to shoo him from her room and Steve’s heart lurched in his chest at the very idea that he would be separated from Bucky- this man, this model, this masterpiece.
The smile lighting up Steve’s whole life didn’t even dampen when he glanced at an indulgent Professor Barnes- the masterpiece’s mother, Steve realized somewhere distantly in his preoccupied mind. Steve looked back at the masterpiece again. He was so stunning. So perfect. Steve didn’t want him stepping toward the door. Come back. However, Steve said exactly none of this so Bucky went to pick up his coffee and presumably leave.
But he stopped.
He glanced down and his smile instantly fell from his face.
And Steve’s heart also fell from his chest.
Bucky looked up at Steve. His beautiful blues that Steve wanted to paint and stare into looked back at Steve’s own darker blues and no smile appeared on his face.
And this was bad in so many ways.
So many ways because the smile had been gorgeous and it had made birds sing and sunshine come out and Steve’s heart soar.
Bad because Bucky’s frown made Steve’s heart physically ache and Steve remembered learning that emotional pain and physical pain both affect the same parts of your brain.
Steve’s brain was lit up with sorrow right now from that frown and from the prospect of Bucky leaving, but also, another part of Steve’s brain was probably lit up because Bucky Barnes was somehow even more beautiful was he wasn’t smiling.
The serious look on his face made something dark in Steve’s heart catch fire and he wanted nothing more than to cup that face and kiss the pouty lips on it, to smooth the crease that had just formed between his brows.
Steve needed to focus though because something had changed.
Bucky was staring back at him.
Bucky was staring right back and it took Steve a second to realize it.
Bucky was speechless as well.
Could it be that Bucky found Steve attractive? It seemed like a long shot that love at first sight could not only exist, but occur between two people at once as if struck by Cupid’s arrow. But surely if such a thing existed, this was it.
Because Bucky was looking back at Steve, his mouth gaping a little bit.
And then his jaw closed.
It open again.
It closed.
He glanced up and down Steve’s face.
His mouth opened and closed again.
He looked like a fish just pulled from the water and still trying to figure out what had just happened.
His eyes raked over Steve’s body and Steve was glad he set down the palette and paintbrush so he didn’t look like some cartoon caricature of an artist.
Bucky was taking him in. The most beautiful man Steve had ever seen in his life was looking him up and down and at a loss of words to speak to him.
He could say anything. Bucky couldn’t go wrong. Steve would accept anything from this beautiful lips.
But in a way, Steve was grateful because what would he even say in return? He’d probably attempt that Shakespearean soliloquy.
Bucky seemed to really struggle for words for a second more before managing one.
“You-“
“No, YOU,” Steve wanted to say, but he definitely didn’t. Too stunned. Too absolutely sure that he’d been transported from the art building to somewhere men glimpse gods.
“You-“
Bucky was trying again. He was so much stronger than Steve right now.
“You-“
His mouth, his frowning face and pouted lips were beautiful. No matter what he said Steve was probably going to reply with nothing but lyrics from love songs and poetry and-
“You put your paintbrush in my coffee.”
It took a good eight or ten seconds for Bucky’s words to even register.
Then Steve’s eyes darted to the paintbrush he’d just set down. The paintbrush that he set down to avoid embarrassing himself in front of Bucky. The very one. And now here he was having the absolute worst, most mortifying moment of his entire life thanks to said paintbrush.
His paint water sat a few inches away from a coffee that was still three-fourths full and steaming and sporting a dark gray-black swirl just floating across its surface.
Steve could feel it the second his face went red, but it still took him a second or five to react.
And then he jerked the paintbrush back out of the coffee, plucked it into the water, looked with perfectly horrified eyes up at Bucky, and then made an unintelligible noise meant to be an apology before dashing for the door as fast as he could possibly go.
He didn’t even grab his satchel.
Or attempt to salvage his dignity.
To make matters worse, he was completely aware of the sound of his Vans squeaking against the floor of the corridor with every step and how they echoed loudly enough to be heard all the way back to the classroom.
For the next twenty-four hours, all Sam could tell you was that Steve yelled through the door, “Of course she hates my work! She’s made the greatest masterpiece in existence!”
For the next forty-eight hours, all Natasha could tell you was that Steve had almost made a god swallow a paintbrush.
Steve did not leave his room for more than food and quick bathroom breaks.
Steve did not talk about how his life had crumbled and fallen to pieces in the span of about a minute and thirty seconds.
Steve absolutely did NOT go to class.
Steve tried his very damndest to die of embarrassment while wallowing in self-pity. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t even said anything. He hadn’t apologized. He hadn’t said, “Excuse me,” before he ran. He hadn’t even managed an, “Oops.”
He missed two classes and some quality studio time just trying to forget he had ever enrolled in art school to begin with.
But one thing he did do-unfortunately- was check his email.
Please come back to class or see me during my office hours.
Professor Barnes had left her office hours in the body of the email even though they were in her signature. She did not mention her son, Steve’s art, or Steve trying to poison her son and then abandoning his art.
Steve evaluated his situation and tried to decide if going back to face his entire class or going alone to face his harsh and insufferable teacher would be worse. Neither option seemed particularly appealing, but he somehow decided that his teacher alone would be better. Easier to die without an audience.
He showered and dressed like a man going to a funeral which he figured was probably accurate so he chose his nice, soft black sweater to wear. If he were going to die, he wanted his ghost to be wearing something comfortable for all of eternity. He left the squeaky Vans in favor of something quieter. A ghost with squeaky shoes would be embarrassing. And in the rare event that Professor Barnes didn’t cause his death, having to escape in squeaky shoes a second time may be just enough to ensure it anyway.
Professor Barnes had her door closed when he arrived at her office so he sat in one of the empty chairs outside the door until a scared looking girl came shuffling out. She looked like she regretted every moment she spent in there, but Steve wanted to shove her back in the room so it wasn’t his turn yet.
The girl went scurrying down the corridor and down the stairs and Steve swallowed thickly, collected what very little he had left of his wits, and stood from his seat.
He didn’t have to knock. Professor Barnes saw him immediately.
“Ah, Rogers,” she said without very much inflection or without welcoming him in. Steve shambled forward anyway until he was able to pull out a chair and sit down in front of the woman who would be deciding his fate of whether he should just drop her class or whether she would be having him roasted for dinner tonight. Steve considered it could be both and looked up at her with a grimace and bated breath.
“Steve,” she began and her tone had changed from how she usually spoke to him in class. “What happened the other day?”
Steve’s stomach somehow managed to twist itself into a bigger knot than it had already been in for days now which could be considered the most impressive feat Steve had ever managed. If anyone could accurately measure stomach knots, Steve was sure he was going for the gold.
“I’m so sorry,” he sputtered. “So sorry.”
“What happened?” she asked again.
“I-“
He could feel the words on the top of his tongue and he had to physically force them from his mouth.
“I put my paintbrush in your son’s coffee?” he squeaked. The high pitch his words took on seemed so bizarre for someone who usually had a deep, steady voice.
She smiled, but it didn’t seem like she was mocking Steve.
“And so you left class?”
“I panicked and ran away,” he admitted, his hands clasped together in his lap tightly.
“I’m not a counselor so please take nothing that I say in here as anything medically professional, but have you considered any treatments for or taken any steps to help lower your anxiety?”
Steve shook his head quickly. “It’s fine. I’ll just- I shouldn’t be doing this. I’ll just drop the class and-“
“Drop my class?” she asked scandalized. “Rogers, you have more talent and potential than anyone else in that class. You don’t act on it, but it’s very clearly there.”
Steve was already shuffling to go when the words stopped him instantly.
“Uh, what?” he asked. He was aware he always sounded like an idiot these days. He was coming to terms with it.
“Your subject matter baffles me repeatedly, but your skill? It’s not easy to find, especially not in someone as young and inexperienced as you are. Please come back to class and keep working on your art.”
She slid two pamphlets about dealing with social anxiety over to him and he picked them up and held them between his two palms in his lap.
“Thank you.”
“So I’ll see you in class tomorrow?” she asked.
Steve nodded. He would make it back to class tomorrow. It seemed apparent he wasn’t going to magically die in his room at home so it made sense to do it artistically, just wither away from embarrassment as he painted among eleven other students.
At least it would make him become one of those rumored stories kids tell that no one can verify, but everyone believes is at least based on a modicum of truth. Every school had its urban legends and Steve assumes dying as one of those was better than dying as a nobody.
“I’ll be there,” Steve managed and turned to leave when Professor Barnes opened her desk drawer.
“Then I guess I can give you this.”
She held out an envelope with nothing written on the outside and Steve took it hesitantly.
“If you’re not interested, you don’t have to reply.”
“Reply what?”
“Well, read it, Rogers,” she said with a small smile, “It seems my son thinks you were the best art in the room the other day.”
Steve’s breath stopped.
Steve’s heart stopped.
Steve’s whole world stopped.
Something was wrong.
Professor Barnes was a fucking hardass.
Professor Barnes was sent from hell to torture Steve Rogers and see to it that he never graduated from art school.
Professor Barnes was going to see to it that Steve never forgot his most embarrassing day in art school.
Professor Barnes was going to be the sole reason Steve’s life went from being on a path toward art and creativity and nosedived toward something perfectly distracting and amazing and beautiful like Bucky Barnes.
The professor motioned with her hand for Steve to vacate her office so he clutched the envelope, his heart somehow now up in into his throat. His scrambling feet barely made it halfway down the hallway before he was tearing into the envelope.
It was just an index card, no special artwork or Hallmark signatures. Which was fine with Steve. He was too busy freaking out to appreciate that kind of sentiment right now anyway. He was an artist. He didn’t expect everyone else to be.
The words Bucky had written across the card were scrawled in a slanted, but neat font (Steve, of course, would call it the most exquisite handwriting he’d ever seen):
Let’s meet up somewhere. You are too gorgeous to see only once. Besides, you owe me a coffee.