None of my friends are good at math and I need a tutor but you're very intimidating.
Steve didn't want to look at his test grade—the disappointed look on Mr. Stark's face said it all. It wasn't anything he hadn't expected, of course. He was good enough in the humanities, and could fake his way through science, but math had never clicked.
He turned the test over anyway, a big red F scrawled across the top, under which was a request for Steve to come see his teacher after school. He sighed. This was the third test in a row that he had failed, and it was only the third marking period. He couldn't afford to fail more than one quarter—he had already signed up for a full-summer art camp at the school he wanted to go to, and summer school would ruin that for him—and he had just barely passed second quarter. There was still one more marking period to go, and he really couldn't fail both. That art camp was notoriously hard to get into, and it was one step closer to his dream. He was applying to the school in the fall, and having attended that camp would greatly increase his chances of getting in.
He tugged gently at one of his many piercings, sighing. He couldn't deal with this. Why couldn't math be more like art?
"Great job, Barnes," Mr. Stark said, handing back his test. Bucky turned it over to see that not only had he gotten a perfect score on the test itself, he had also gotten the bonus correct. Mr. Stark had warned them at the beginning of the year that calc 2/3 was incredibly difficult, but Bucky was making his way through with flying colors. He was part of a small group of students who had skipped a year of math back in middle school, the elite math students, such as it was. Very few students reached calculus, even fewer took AP calc, and only a handful took calc 2/3. But math just came easily to Bucky Barnes.
The bell rang, signaling both the end of the period and the end of the school day, and the students filtered out of the room.
"Barnes!" Mr. Stark called, and Bucky turned.
"Yes?"
"Can you stay a moment? One of my trig students is really struggling, and I would like you to tutor him."
Bucky nodded. He knew that Mr. Stark only asked the top students to be tutors, and so that it was an honor to be asked.
"Wonderful. He'll be here momentarily."
Head down, Steve trudged to Mr. Stark's room. He was sure that he was about to be reamed out for not having a head for math, and he had far better places to be, anyway. The art teacher had open studios after school, and Steve was working on his college portfolio. She said he was the best student she had ever had, and his portfolio had to reflect that.
He wasn't expecting to see one of the most popular students in the school standing there as well. What the hell did Mr. Stark want with both him and James fucking Barnes?
"Rogers," Mr. Stark greeted. "You know Barnes?"
"I've heard of him…" Steve mumbled, not looking at James. Everyone had heard of him. He was ridiculously popular, good-looking, an athlete, all that. He hated to jump on the James Barnes bandwagon, but he loved to stare at the other boy when he thought he wouldn't notice.
"I've asked him to tutor you," Mr. Stark announced, and Steve raised an eyebrow.
"When?"
"Every day after school," James cut in.
"No!" Steve said, eyes wide, but Mr. Stark cut him off.
"You need to pass my class, Rogers. This is your only option."
They started the next day, Steve sitting in the coffeeshop near the school sullenly staring at his open math book while waiting for James. He could be finishing his self-portrait, but no. He was stuck instead reviewing stupid math. He hated everything. The only thing he didn't hate was his coffee. This place had great coffee. They were a little privately owned place, not a chain, and they had the best quality for a pretty low price.
A few minutes later James strode in, spotting Steve where he was hiding in the corner. "Hey."
Steve waved half-heartedly.
"So, I know you said you've heard of me," James said. "But I want a chance to do this all right, so, hi, I'm James Buchanan Barnes, but you can call me Bucky."
"Steve Rogers…" Steve said slowly. There was no way Jam—Bucky had heard of him.
Bucky was craning his neck to look at Steve's math book. "Law of sines, law of cosines? Great. I love triangles." He grinned. "That's pretty straightforward once you know which numbers go where. Plug them into the formula, cross-multiply, and solve."
Steve stared at Bucky like he had grown an extra head. "In English, please?"
An hour later Steve could solve triangles with the two methods, and he had also missed his open studio.
He sighed, pissed with Mr. Stark for not even asking if after school was okay.
"What's wrong?" Bucky asked. He had grown somewhat accustomed to Steve's noises of frustration over the hour they had been working.
"I do things after school," Steve admitted. "Things that I'm actually good at, things that mean something to me. My chance to get into college, get a good scholarship. I need that money—my mom's spent so much on my medical bills over the years that a lot of it ended up coming out of my college fund."
"What do you want to go to school for?" Bucky asked. "I'm going to Penn State in the fall for math, actually."
"Art. That's what I do after school—open studio."
"You any good?" Bucky asked curiously.
"How much time do you have?"
Bucky frowned, confused. "I don't have to be home until dinner—so, two hours."
Steve nodded. "That's plenty of time." He pulled out his sketchbook and a pencil and set to work.
A little while later he tore the page from his book and handed it to Bucky. It was a sketch of him, shaded and as good as Steve could do.
Bucky raised his eyebrows. "This is really good. I think you should have no trouble getting into art school."
Steve sighed. "Except I'm not getting anything done on my portfolio. I need to have a good portfolio to be accepted, and I just lost all my time to work on it. That being said, I can't afford to fail trig, either. I'm going to art camp at the school I hope to go to this summer, and if I fail math that's off the table."
"How come?" Bucky asked, leaning forward. "Mom won't let you?"
Steve shook his head. "Summer school."
Bucky nodded, head tipped in thought. "So. You don't want to do after school, and—when are your study halls?"
"Fourth period every day."
"Okay, so that won't work. What do you do over lunch?"
"Lunch?" Steve usually stayed in, sitting by himself on the steps leading up to the seventh grade hallway, which led off the auditorium lobby, earbuds in (most of his friends were at the performing and visual arts studio where he took—and taught—art lessons a couple times a week). Sometimes there was lunch open studio, although that was generally more for the underclassmen and middle schoolers, so he usually didn't go. "Nothing. Why?"
"I was thinking that I could stay in and we could do your math tutoring then, instead of after school."
Steve frowned. "But you go out to lunch with your friends, don't you? Why would you give that up to stay in with a nobody like me?"
Bucky shrugged. "It's the best of both worlds. I'm kind of sick of going out to lunch, anyway."
"Okay, so let me rephrase that—you'd spend your lunch period doing math? Willingly?" Steve stared at Bucky. "Are you crazy?"
Bucky shrugged. "I like math. I'm majoring in it and all."
Over the next few weeks Steve improved drastically at trig, pulling a high C on his next test, then a B on the one after that. He came to Bucky, glowing, and Bucky praised him like he deserves.
He had to admit that the skinny little artist, the one he would have never looked twice at before, is growing on him. Steve brought him sketches every once in a while, and they were always fantastic, and shared his music (none of it anything Bucky had ever heard of before, but he had usually stuck with what was on the radio, and Steve's stuff was far more on the indie track).
It was already almost the end of the fourth quarter, and graduation was looming over Bucky. He was helping Steve prepare for his trig final (and taking in the sketches covering his notes), and was surprised to find that he didn't want to leave the stubborn little thing that he had been tutoring. At some point along the months he had been working with Steve he had fallen for him.
Well, fuck.
Steve didn't want to think about graduation, didn't want to think about having to watch Bucky cross that stage and walk out of his life. He wanted…he didn't know what he wanted, besides Bucky staying with him.
Was this what having a crush on someone felt like? He wasn't sure. No one would ever be interested in the skinny asthmatic artist, and so he hadn't let himself be interested in anyone. He was surprised that Bucky had stuck around past what Mr. Stark had ordered, even. And so he was even more surprised the next day.
"My grandparents are coming from Michigan, and we're having a pre-graduation party for me while they're here. I mean," Bucky looked flustered, "it's my graduation party, but we're doing it before graduation. My point is, would you like to come?"
Steve grinned. "If you really want me, then sure, I'd love to."
Steve was used to a very different kind of party than the one he was currently at. His friends at the studio threw semi-regular parties (there was one that evening, actually), and they were very lovely artist affairs that ended with at least half the group unable to go out for fear of being arrested, and he was sure that Bucky had been to some of those parties, too (the popular crowd did have parties like that, right?), but this was a family affair.
He had had a brief moment of panic when a grinning brunette girl he vaguely recognized as a member of the cheerleading squad accosted him, sure he was going to get kicked out. He had dressed pretty nicely, a flannel button-down and scarf hiding most of his tattoos, but the ones that were still visible might be a bit much, especially combined with his piercings. Those he couldn't hide—they marched up both ears, as well as the ones in his eyebrow.
But the girl was grinning widely as she stuck her hand at him. "Rebecca Barnes, Bucky's little sister. You've got to be Steve—Buck doesn't shut up about you."
Steve blushed, but was saved by a voice behind him.
"Leave the kid alone, Becca."
Steve spun to see Bucky grinning at him. "You look good. Um, so you know…my family might think you're my boyfriend. I've never said anything to lead to that, but they assumed it anyway. I'm sorry in advance for anything they say."
Steve's heart had leapt at boyfriend, but sunk again when Bucky had said he'd never said anything to lead to that. Oh, well. No use in scaring Bucky off.
A few hours (and many relatives approaching Steve, both in approval and very obviously in disapproval) later, the party was winding down. Steve still couldn't say it was really his scene, but he had gotten some great sketches.
"Enjoy yourself?" Bucky asked, sneaking up behind him.
Steve shrugged. "Not really my kind of party, but the food was good."
Bucky arched an eyebrow. "Not your kind of party? Now I'm curious."
Now or never, Rogers. "Are you doing anything tonight? Natasha's having a party at the studio tonight."
"The studio?"
"It's this art school a few miles down the road, open evenings and weekends for anyone who was accepted. Kinda like a private art academy. They do all kinds of visual art there, as well as all kinds of performing arts. That's where all my friends are. I take classes—well, they're not exactly classes, not at the level I'm at—and teach the little kids. Nat's in the dance program."
Bucky looked confused, and Steve couldn't blame him. He was pretty sure that his explanation had made no sense. "They don't have the funds yet to open as a full-time school. But, my point is, they let some of us use the studios on Friday and Saturday nights for parties—art parties? There's one tonight. That's my kind of party, and I want to know if you want to come along."
Bucky shrugged. "Sure. Anything I need to bring, or…?"
Steve shook his head. "It's all very casual. We do some work—not on our actual projects, on anything fun—teach each other, hang out, all that. Just gotta be careful not to get arrested. We're not all…one hundred percent legal, shall we say?"
"Sounds fun."
"Great. I'll pick you up at 7:30."
Bucky was a little nervous about this whole thing—he wasn't exactly part of the artist crowd—but, it turned out, he didn't need to worry. It seemed like Steve had talked about him just as much as Bucky had talked about Steve, and he was welcomed in right away.
Steve's friends were a bit overwhelming. He met the ones Steve was closest to—Natasha and her dance partner Clint (Bucky had never met a male ballet dancer, but had to admit, after catching the end of a routine, that his jumps were incredible), Sam from the theater department, and writer Peggy, who had dragged her girlfriend along.
"So this is the infamous Bucky!" Peggy teased. "The one who likes math."
Bucky shrugged. "You all do art—I do math. There's this quote my mom told me once, when I was younger. 'Mathematics may not teach us to add love or minus hate. But it gives us every reason to hope that every problem has a solution.'"
Steve frowned. "Can you write that down for me, please?" He handed Bucky a scrap of paper and one of his drawing pencils, then, once he had them back, vanished.
Bucky started to go after him, but Clint held him back gently. "Let him go. In the meantime, come have a drink. Nat makes a mean spiked punch."
Bucky was pleasantly buzzed by the time Steve returned, hands covered in paint. "C'mon, Bucky. I have something for you to see."
Steve grabbed his hand and pulled Bucky along, away from the pounding music and lights, up a unlit flight of stairs, and into a dark studio.
"It's not dry yet, but it's your graduation present. I had planned on making you something, but I hadn't decided what until you said that quote."
He flipped on the light, and Bucky stared at the painting in the middle of the room. It was the quote he had used, painted elegantly onto a small canvas and framed with swirling tendrils. It was a work of art.
"I still need to sign it, but it should be dry soon, and then it's all yours," Steve said, looking at his toes.
"I love it," Bucky reassured, coming to stand in front of Steve. "It's small enough to put in my dorm room—I'll hang it there and think of you."
Steve laughed. "I'll miss you." He looked up at Bucky. "I'll miss you a lot. Unless I scare you off…"
"Scare me off?" Bucky began to ask, but was silenced by Steve's mouth on his.
After a few moments Bucky pulled away and looked quietly at Steve. "Mathematics may not teach us to add love, but maybe it helps some of us find it."
Steve laughed and kissed him again.