Chapter 10- A Part Of You

Steve looked across the desk at Principal Nicholas J. Fury, who was currently staring at him with a stern eye (Fury famously lost an eye but none of the students knew how it happened).

Steve once again glanced down at the piece of paper on the desk in front of him.

And then at Bucky, who was stood next to him, a concerned look on his face.

"Do I want to know what this is?"

A silence lingered hard in the air around all three of them.

Bucky wouldn't look at Steve, lips quivering as though figuring out what to say to Fury next.

A dizzy feeling passed over Steve. But he knew what he had to do.

"It's nothing, sir." He subtly saw Bucky tense up. Good to know Steve still had an effect on him, even when they were potentially in trouble of being caught. He had to try his hardest not to smirk as he locked eyes with Fury once again.

"I like to draw."

Fury raised an eyebrow.

Steve summoned all of his acting skills and turned to Bucky, who had worry written all over his face. "I kinda…this is so embarrassing."

"Go on, Mr. Rogers."

"I've been having a little bit of a crush on Mr. Barnes," Steve rushed out, able to say it convincingly because it had once been true, now it was requited.

"I see," Fury nodded, turning his attention to Mr. Barnes.

"I had no idea."

"You can go," Fury said, and Bucky turned to leave, slyly shooting Steve the most grateful look he had ever seen on someone's face before he did.

Fury retook his seat. "Steve, you're smart enough to know how inappropriate this is."

Steve bowed his head, Fury unaware just how true his words rang. "Yes, sir. I know I can't be entertaining feelings like this."

"Much less draw them and leave them for just anyone to see. Keep your feelings inside you, Steve. Or find someone of your own age group. You're a handsome guy, surely there's someone in the senior class you could date."

Steve shrugged. "I don't know about that. But I'll stop the drawings. And I'll try and see Mr. Barnes as just my teacher."

"See to it that you do. I don't want you in here about this again."

Steve nodded. "Understood, sir."

"Alright, then. Go learn something." Fury dismissed him with the wave of his hand and Steve was more than happy to leave as soon as he could.

Steve joined up with his friends as soon as he left, figuring it was best to ignore Bucky entirely rather than risk Fury's suspicion. Even though he had one less eye than most people, he saw twice as much somehow. Steve suspected he had a student informant of some variety, but he didn't want to dwell on that very much.

"What happened?" Bruce piped up as soon as Steve closed the door to the abandoned classroom they sometimes used for their more discreet conversations.

Steve made sure they were alone and turned to them. "Fury had one of my drawings…of Bucky. I don't know how he got it, but he was quite suspicious of us. I passed it off as a harmless schoolboy crush and he seemed to buy it. I didn't even know I left that drawing lying around."

Natasha looked at him sternly. "You have to be more careful than that, Steve. What if Fury hadn't believed you? Bucky could've been fired."

"I know, Nat, I fucked up. But I'm going to stop drawing him, and we're going to be careful."

Nat leaned her head on his shoulder. "I just worry about you."

Steve kissed the top of her head. "I know it. And I'd be lying if I said I hadn't expected to blow up in our faces one way or another, but it's something I have to risk."

Bruce nodded. "We know, Steve. We're not judging. But we've got your back, and that means letting you know when you go wrong. When you need to be more careful."

Tony shook his head. "What we need to be doing is figuring out who ratted out Steve and Bucky."

"Well, obviously it was Sam," Clint replied swiftly, making a 'duh' face.

"Steve didn't do anything to him," Thor pointed out.

"It doesn't matter. Everyone knows our group dynamic by now. Attack one of us, attack all of us."

Bruce drummed his fingers on the desk he was perched atop of. "Maybe it wasn't anything malicious. Maybe it was just someone seeing something they thought needed to be sent to Fury's attention." At Steve's glare, he held his hands up. "Not like that. I just mean that you see something like that and your first instinct is that it's wrong."

Steve nodded. "I get it. But I don't know how many people would actually do that. Think about it. If you found a picture of Tony and the cleaning lady, for example, on the floor, you wouldn't give it to Fury. What would you do?"

Tony scowled. "Thanks, Steve."

Thor shrugged. "If Tony wasn't one of my best friends? Keep it, throw it away. If I really didn't like him, I'd probably share it around, post it online."

Steve smiled. "Exactly. So someone obviously knew what they were doing and what the picture entailed. Now I know the five of you didn't say anything, so we're looking for someone who might have been in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Nat bit her lip. "You don't think anyone might have been at that restaurant, do you?"

"No way," Steve retorted, "that place was a hole-in-the-wall an hour outside the city, there's no way anyone I know would've been there. I don't suppose Loki's been acting strange at all?" Steve looked at Thor, who gaped.

"Loki?"

Steve shrugged. "He's always hated me, I wouldn't put it past him."

Thor shook his head. "He doesn't hate you, he's just…antisocial. I don't think he cares enough to do something like that."

Tony clicked his fingers. "I know exactly how to find this out. But I'll need Bruce."

Bruce nodded. "I'm in. Unless it involves arson."

"Why would it involve arson?"

Bruce raised his eyebrow. "Tony. It's you, this plan could involve anything."

"Well, I'm not setting fire to anything."

Thor leaned in. "What's the plan?"

Bruce quickly opened the door to Melinda May's office. Melinda May was Principal Fury's secretary, although she was really the mastermind behind every authoritative decision Fury had ever made. She probably should've been the Principal, if Bruce was honest. May loved her job, and she loved schools, and the kids who went there. Most of them anyway. And because Bruce had spent his entire freshman year, before he met his fellow Avengers, hanging out in May's office he had a rapport with her.

"Hi, Miss May," Bruce smiled sweetly as he stepped forward. May looked up from her desk.

"Oh, Bruce, hello. I haven't seen you in a while. How've you been?"

"Good, senior year is busy, but I'm handling it. I came because there's something going on in the library. And Mr. Shelvig is out sick and Vice Principal Coulson is in a meeting. I didn't want to disturb Principal Fury with this so I thought I'd come to you about it."

May tilted her head. "What exactly is the problem?"

Bruce had gone over this in his head, changing the story slightly from Tony's original plan. "Students are…fraternising in there. People are trying to study and it's very loud."

May stood up at once. "That will not be tolerated. Show me." She crossed the room in a few strides and followed Bruce out of the door.

At the door swung closed, Tony shot out from around the corner and stuck his foot in the gap. Wincing he slipped inside and locked the door.

Tony dashed over to the desk, where Miss May kept her computer and her record books. She was so fastidious that he she kept a log of every time someone had a meeting with Fury, official or otherwise. Tony flicked to the last page and saw Steve and Bucky's names in the last column. Brushing his finger up the page, Tony stopped when he saw a familiar name.

He quickly fished out his phone and took a snapshot of the page for proof. He placed the book back where it belonged and slipped out of the room again, as though he had never been there at all.

As Tony walked down the hallway, pocketing his phone, he heard Bruce voice faintly in the background.

"They must have gone, I guess they realised that what they were doing was wrong."

Tony smiled to himself as Bruce parted ways with Miss May and flitted down the hallway to join him.

"You get it?"

Tony nodded. "I texted the group thread. Classroom's occupied, so we're meeting under the bleachers."

"What, are we having an orgy?"

Tony smirked. "Sometimes I wonder why we haven't."

"We could do worse, I suppose."

As they walked, Tony probably planning ways to convince them all to have an orgy, they didn't notice the shadow following them, keeping their distance.

When they got there, Steve, Nat, Clint, and Thor were already assembled under the bleachers. Clint was laying on Nat and she had her hands tangled in his hair. Tony liked the sight of them together, it made sense. They were probably the closest in the group outside Steve and Nat, and maybe Tony and Bruce, but them dating made all the sense in the world.

"So? Did you get it?"

"What? No, 'Hey Tony, nice to see you after breaking school rules to help me out, thank you for that, by the way'?"

Steve rolled his eyes. "You break school rules more than you follow them."

"Touché." He appraised the group. "Clint was right. Sam took a meeting with Fury yesterday after school, he was the last person to see him."

Clint smiled smugly. "This is why you guys should listen to me more."

Nat tugged on his hair firmly. "That's not the point. That's the second time that Sam Wilson has openly gone after one of us. We need to make sure he knows not to do it again."

Steve pouted. "I'm not disagreeing, I'm just saying that if we provoke him, he has leverage. I'm not about to let Bucky go down for this. I'm going to handle this myself."

Steve stood up and, somehow, the others knew not to follow.

"I hope he knows what he's doing," Bruce said as Steve went inside the building.

Clint sat up, fixing his hair. "He does. He has a lot of sense, even if he is dating his teacher."

Steve waited idly outside Bucky's classroom, trying not to draw attention to himself as the class spilled out of it, giving him a quick glance before moving on with their days. Steve was thinking about what Bucky had said to him the day before about people desiring him, and being intimidated by him. He didn't necessarily believe that was true, but he vowed to pay more attention to his surroundings if Bucky was claiming to notice things like that.

As the class emptied, Steve lightly knocked on the door. Bucky looked up and smiled softly, nodding.

Steve slipped inside the room and ambled over to the desk. "Hi."

"Hi, yourself. I'm going to assume you don't have a homework question."

Steve gave him a questioning glare. "You'd assume right. I just wanted to talk."

"Me first," Bucky put down his red grading pen. "I wanted to thank you for earlier, Steve. You stuck your neck out to protect me and I won't ever forget it."

Steve shrugged. "Of course I was going to do that. You're my…boyfriend, and I didn't want you getting caught up in something that was my mistake."

"Mistake?"

"You misunderstand. I was talking about the drawing, Buck. Sa-someone found it and gave it to Fury, but I'm the one who left it lying around in the first place. And that's not the first time that's happened. It's how we got together, remember?"

Bucky levelled his gaze. "Steve, you shouldn't give yourself a hard time about this. Yes, we were in a precarious situation, but it's fixed. This was the wake-up call we needed to be more careful. No more talking during classes, or after class. Delete our texts and emails at the end of every day. What am I in your phone?"

Steve blushed.

"Steve…"

"Well, you were Darcy, but I had to change it because I didn't want to confuse you with Darcy Lewis."

"Of course you'd pick a Jane Austen reference. What am I now?"

"…Rochester."

Bucky chuckled. "Of course. So you're with me? About taking more precautions."

Steve nodded. "I'm just sorry this mess happened, but I'm going to fix it."

"I have a feeling you know who found the picture."

Steve was blank. "I have a feeling you know, too. I'm handling it. We won't have to worry about this anymore."

The hopeful look on Bucky's face was enough to propel Steve out of the classroom and down the various hallways until he got where he needed to be. Steve rarely ever walked at such a quick speed, so people were paying attention. Now that Steve himself was paying attention, he could gauge how people were looking at him.

He found Sam Wilson at his locker, chatting with Maria Hill and Peter Quill. Sam turned when he saw him and smirked. "Posse not here this time? Was one black eye not enough?"

Steve took a very deep breathe through his noise and fixed his jaw. "We can either do this with your friends here or you can save some dignity and talk with me in private."

Sam grimaced. "If you're coming onto me, Rogers…"

"Oh, please," Steve snapped. "I'd be better off alone than with you." He looked to Maria. "Surely, this isn't the best you can do."

Maria hid her smirk, but Sam was furious. Peter held his gaze at Steve.

"I don't know what you think is going on here, Rogers, but this isn't going to end well for you."

Steve leaned closer to Sam. "I don't think you've though this, through. Peter isn't going to beat me up, I tutor him in Spanish. Maria works at my cousin Matt's restaurant, so she's not going to get involved. Which leaves just you, and I'm pretty sure I could take you if it came to that."

Sam shoved Steve away firmly.

"I didn't come here to fight."

"Then what?"

"How are you passing your classes? You were a real dick to Nat, and seeing that black eye might be enough for her, but it's certainly not enough for me. And let's not pretend we both don't know the other thing that's going on here."

Sam grinned. "Isn't this the part where you beg me not to tell anyone? I don't think threatening me is going to buy my silence."

Steve chuckled. "You might know the information, but you made a mistake. You gave away your proof. Now it's gone and all that's left is your word. It's a fairly unbelievable story, don't you think? And let's not pretend there isn't stuff about you that I know that I'm sure you'd much rather keep hidden."

Sam frowned, genuinely confused. "What, like what?"

"I'm a very connected person, Wilson. Carol Danvers is my next door neighbour. She's best friends with…Hope van Dyne. I know you know her."

Sam winced.

"Right," Steve smiled thinly. "So unless you want that getting out, you'll stay quiet."

Sam grimaced. "It's not me. I mean, I talked to Fury but I didn't find it. Someone gave it to me."

Steve tended to know when people were lying, and Sam genuinely looked like he was telling the truth. "Who?"

What Sam said next didn't necessarily surprise Steve, but he knew that there was definitely more to the story, something that he would have to find out immediately. That made another person who knew about him and Bucky and that was more people than he thought.

"Well this was lovely," Steve quipped and turned on his heel, shooting off a quick text.

I need to talk to you.