Chapter Seven
Bucky is consumed with thoughts of Natalia. He floats through that evening and the next day with a dreamy look in his eyes as he remembers her laughter and her smile. She is a risk. She is exciting. And the mystery she is. She could be any number of things and any number of people, but what he knows about her is that she is kind and she is understanding and she's shown an interest in him and his baby and he can't remember anyone ever having done that before in his life.
He takes Stevie home and gives him his medicines, a variety of inhalers and an immunodeficiency shot, and plays with him until Stevie's falling asleep on the carpet, and then Bucky picks him up and tucks him into his bed with a kiss.
The next few days are rather uneventful. Bucky goes to work and comes home to take Stevie on walks and give him his medicine and stare at the ceiling until morning. His flashbacks still come and the nightmares still torment, but he keeps moving. He always does. He has to. But his excitement about Natalia admittedly makes it a little more bearable.
On Saturday, Natalia calls again.
"I was thinking about taking a bus tour of the city, but I think you'll be a far more effective tour guide," she tells him. "What do you say?"
"I'll get the stroller ready," he says and she shows up at his door minutes later, a big smile on her face and her purse slung over her shoulder. Bucky invites her in, even though the place is a mess and he knows it, and she greets Stevie with kisses and cooing. He's gathering up the things Stevie will need, packing emergency medicines and some toys into the diaper bag on the counter and Natalia is holding Stevie and playing with him by the kitchen table. He stops for a minute and watches her, watches her hold his baby and love him and for a split second, he deeply regrets that Stevie doesn't have a mom. It's not something he thinks about a lot because he's got so many other concerns on his mind, but for that moment, he wonders if Stevie's missing out. If there's a kind of love that Bucky can't give him and Bucky swallows.
Natalia's good with Stevie and she's beautiful with a baby in her arms. Bucky wonders if things might be different, if he had been a different person and led a different life. He wonders who he might be, and if the scene in front of him would be part of it.
Once they're ready, they take the same bus Bucky takes to work into the city and Natalia holds Stevie the whole way there, bouncing him on her knee. He can hear her singing to him softly sometimes, songs he's never heard in Russian, and he leans in a little closer to hear.
The city is enormous and, Bucky thinks, beautiful. He's excited to show Natalia all his favorite parts, the parts a bus tour would never show her. He wants to find the restaurants he ate in growing up and the places he used to know. But honestly, he'd see everything with her. He'd even take her to the tourist traps and let her see those if she really wanted to. He wants to see her see them.
They start on a street Bucky's all too familiar with, one he used to walk every day when he was a kid. They get Stevie settled into the stroller and Bucky pushes him along, Natalia at his side.
"I know some really great places we can eat today," he says. "And some fun sights to see. We can try to find something that'll entertain us and Stevie."
"I'll follow you, tour guide!" Natalia says to him and smiles. Bucky smiles back. "You know this place so well," she continues after a beat. "You've lived here a long time?"
"I've lived here my whole life," Bucky says. "And I came back after the army." Natalia nods.
"You always say 'the army'," she says casually and Bucky looks over. "You never say 'the war'." He feels something in him freeze up and he looks away. The subject changed? What happened to talking about the city?
"Didn't do a lot of fighting," he admits as they walk. "I wasn't really in the war, but I was in the army."
"How long did you spend there?" She asks and Bucky can feel his story unraveling for her. He's not sure he's ready to say.
"Only about a year," he says. "About a year with the US army. I would have been there longer, but I was taken prisoner during my third battle." Natalia's watching him, he can feel her eyes. His hand tightens on the handle of the stroller.
"How long…," she starts to ask, and then trails off. Bucky swallows. When he answers, it's in a voice as low as a whisper.
"Seven years," he says. The answer raises as many questions as it answers, because why would the enemy keep useless prisoner for so long, and he knows why, but he's only known Natalia for about a week and he's not ready to explain the gritty details and he thinks she can see that in his face and she stops asking.
"I'm sorry," she says and Bucky just looks down.
"Don't worry about it," he says. "I'm fine now." This isn't entirely true. He doesn't care to share these details, either.
They pack the day with activities. They walk up and down Main Street and Wall Street and 42nd Street and Bucky discreetly slips a paper mask over Stevie's mouth just in case, even though Stevie absolutely hates it and keeps trying to pull it off. Bucky didn't plan on it, but they wind up at tourist traps anyway and Natalia buys herself 'I 3 NY' t-shirts and hats and mugs and scarves, although Bucky tells her again and again that she can get them so much cheaper in Chinatown. He takes her to Broadway and she gets excited about the performers and the dancers and he learns that she's always dreamed of seeing a performance on a Broadway stage.
At one of the sites they visit, Bucky asks Natalia if she'd like him to take her picture in front of it and she declines, but to his surprise, starts unbuckling Stevie from his seat in the stroller and hands him to Bucky.
"Turn around," she says and holds up her cell phone. "We're taking a selfie!" Bucky's not sure what to do when Natalia squeezes into the frame next to him, tilting her head towards his, and he just smiles awkwardly and holds up Stevie and she takes a few shots and saves them.
"You sure you want me in your pictures?" He says incredulously and she just looks up at and smiles at him.
"Why wouldn't I, silly?" She asks and then her smile becomes teasing and she adds, "I gotta get some pictures of the real wonders of New York, right?" He doesn't understand for a moment that she's talking about him and when it finally sinks in as he's buckling Stevie back into the stroller, he's stunned and he's missed his opportunity to flirt back.
You're a real joke at this dating thing, Barnes, he thinks to himself.
They eat in Hell's Kitchen and when Stevie starts to yawn, Natalia suggests they sit down somewhere for a while to let him rest and Bucky almost doesn't hear her because he's staring so deeply into her eyes.
He's beginning to admit to himself that maybe he really likes Natalia.
They sit in Central Park and Bucky cradles Stevie and they listen to guitar music they can hear on the wind from somewhere nearby.
"So," Bucky says awkwardly, half because he's not good at starting conversation and half because he wants to ask her what this is, what they're doing. He wants to gauge her motive for talking to him. "There's no Mr Romanova then?"
"Yes, there is," Natalia says matter of factly and Bucky freezes. "Which is exactly why I'm sitting with you in this park and getting dinners with you and flirting with you. Because there's totally another man." She cracks a smile and Bucky feels relief wash over him. She was kidding. He grins.
"That was a stupid thing to ask," he says of himself and she laughs.
"It really was," she agrees, grinning playfully at him, then she leans back and crosses her legs. "No, there's no one. There hasn't been anyone for a while, actually."
Bucky's dated two girls, both during high school, and his life has been such a trainwreck ever since that he's had no time to try again. He is woefully unprepared for things like flirting and wooing and beautiful women.
"Same here," he says. Natalia's eyes travel down his face and then she's looking at her hands in her lap.
"I was married once," she confides in him. "It ended pretty fast." Bucky doesn't know what to say. There's no remorse in her voice and she sounds as though she's simply stating facts. Should he say something consoling?
"I'm sorry," he says and she looks up. He notices then that her eyes are shining. He swallows.
"Thank you," she says. "But it's alright, really. We rushed into it."
"He wasn't right?" Bucky asks and Natalia looks at him for a minute, as though attempting to gauge how much she can tell him. He thinks he knows because he's done the same thing.
"It was complicated," she finally says. "After the third miscarriage, things just fell apart. I thought we wanted the same things, but I guess our relationship wasn't strong enough. I still don't know sometimes." Bucky still doesn't know what to say. His heart breaks.
"I'm so sorry," he says again. "That sounds really painful." She only nods.
"It was a few years ago," she says and offers him a forced smile. "Old wounds."
"I've never been married," Bucky admits after a second, primarily because he's just not sure what to say next. "Never been in a really solid relationship, either." He realizes too late that this might not be a prudent thing to say. "Pretend I didn't say that," he adds pitifully a second later and she laughs.
"That's cute," she says and he curses himself.
"I feel like I ought to explain," he says. "I joined the army at 18. There hasn't been a lot of time in my life for dating."
"18?" Natalia exclaims.
"The day I graduated high school," he says.
"What ever for?" She cries and he shrugs.
"I wanted to get out of my house," he explains. "My dad… It was a bad situation."
"That's terrible," Natalia says and honestly, Bucky agrees.
"He's gone now," Bucky says and he leans down and kisses Stevie carefully on the nose. "It's fine." Then, "Did you have a good relationship with your parents?" He asks and Natalia looks at him. He can't read her expression and when she finally looks away, she says, "I was raised in an orphanage."
Bucky feels as though this conversation has really taken a dark turn and he wishes he had something lighthearted to say.
"Oh," he finally says awkwardly. She shifts her shoulders and he wonders if she's scooting further from him on purpose.
"It wasn't terrible," she says. "Orphanages in the movies, they're always awful and bleak and horrible and they have little girls scrubbing floors with toothbrushes." She chuckles a little. "That's not quite the reality of it. It wasn't ideal, but I never scrubbed anything with my toothbrush except for my teeth." Bucky thinks he can laugh now and he tries.
"That's good to hear," he says and she offers him a smile.
"I always used to dream of having a mother, though," she says. "I don't know what happened to my parents." Then, "is this strange to say?" She asks. "I feel as though I'm telling you deep, dark secrets and we've only recently met."
"Are they deep, dark secrets?" Bucky asks and she looks into his eyes and shakes her head a little.
"I guess not anymore," she says.
There's a quiet moment where they both sit and contemplate this and Stevie snores quietly, cuddled up in the crook of Bucky's arm.
"If it helps," he finally says. "I've told you a few deep, dark secrets."
"You have?" Natalia asks and he nods.
"Well," he adds. "I guess it's not necessarily a secret, but I don't exactly go around introducing myself as a former POW." He gives her a crooked, self-deprecating smile that he hopes will make her feel a little better about sharing, and luckily, he sees her face relax a little.
"No," she says with a bit of a laugh. "I suppose you wouldn't."
At the end of the day, they take the bus back to the neighborhood and Natalia walks Bucky and Stevie home in order to retrieve her car from their driveway. She leans against her car and puts her hands into her jacket pockets and looks at him. Stevie is asleep on Bucky's shoulder and Bucky looks back at her. He feels as though they do this often, just look at each other. For a brief moment, he wonders if she takes the time to admire his features as often as he does her, but he dismisses the thought immediately. It's ridiculous.
"Thank you for today," she says to him finally.
"It was my pleasure," Bucky says, and he thinks the moment might hold more tension if he didn't have a thirteen month old drooling onto his shirt collar, but Natalia's eyes are still locked onto his. He watches her stand from where she'd been leaning against her car and approach him, and once she's close enough that he thinks she might kiss him, her eyes shift from him and down to Stevie and she rests a hand on his head and kisses his tiny, round cheek.
"Bye-bye, baby," she whispers, and then she looks back up at Bucky and her blue eyes are like nothing he's ever seen before.
He doesn't see it coming when she grabs his collar and yanks him down to her and presses her mouth against his. He holds onto Stevie tighter and wishes he had a second arm to wrap around her waist, but these thoughts come second to the firework of emotion in his head.
Her lips are soft and fierce and she kisses passionately. Bucky feels dizzy, being kissed like this, and prays he's not a bad kisser when he starts to retaliate. She slings her arm around his neck, the side that doesn't have a tiny baby, and wraps the other around his waist and drags him closer.
When she pulls away, Bucky is left spinning. He straightens up little by little and her hand is resting on his chest as she looks up at him.
"What was that for," he says dizzily and a smile spreads across her face.
"That was because I wanted to," she says.
"Oh," Bucky breathes and she studies his face.
"Is that a good oh or a bad oh," she asks and it's his turn to smile.
"That was a really good oh," he says. "But possibly a confused oh."
"Confused?" Natalia asks.
"Why are you bothering with me?" Bucky asks. "I'm a loser. You could do so much better."
"What?" Natalia says, surprised. "Do you really think that?" Bucky scoffs.
"I'm not going to lie to myself," he says. "Yeah, I really think that. If I've learned anything in the two years I've been back, it's that women don't go for guys with one arm and a baby." Natalia frowns and she looks down. When she looks back up, she's still frowning.
"I like you, Bucky," she says. "There's no conspiracies back here, no one's paying me off to make out with you." Bucky doesn't know what to say.
"I like you, too," he says quietly. She starts to smile a little warmly.
"Then can I see you tomorrow?" She asks and he nods quietly. She rests her hand on his shoulder again and steps closer and leans up on her tiptoes to kiss him again on the mouth, gently this time, longingly this time, and pulls back slowly. "Alright," she says and starts to walk to her car again. "Call me!"
"I will," Bucky says and she leaves him on the front step of his house with Stevie snoring quietly on his collar and the streetlight flickering in the corner.
