Chapter Eleven
"No!" Tony hollered. "No pets. There are no pets in the Tower."
"Aw, come on." Clint stooped down next to Lucky and pretended to pout. "We'll behave. I swear we will."
"Don't listen to a word he says." Sam called as he brought a few of his boxes upstairs. "He's full of shit. Maybe he should find a place of his own."
"Watch it, Sam the hands." Tony snapped, glancing up in Sam's general direction. "If I had my way, you wouldn't be here, either."
"After all that I did for you? I brought you back from the dead, Stark!"
"Actually, that was me." Bruce proclaimed from the kitchen.
"Have the groceries been thus purchased? I'm hungry enough to eat a bilgesnipe." Thor complained, racing down the stairs in the direction of the kitchen.
"Don't you have a brother to worry about?" Tony demanded in an exasperated tone. "Shouldn't you be in Asgard dealing with him instead of here, raiding my kitchen?"
"Loki is under the care of my father, now." Thor answered from over his shoulder. "You will be graced with my presence until Odin demands my presence once more. I think that I would like the large bedroom adjacent to Sam's."
"That's my bedroom." Tony said.
"Then I suppose that I should not have moved my things into it." Thor smirked.
"Damn it, Thor! Tonight we're ordering thick-crust!" Tony shouted, stomping up the stairs in the direction of his - or possibly Thor's - bedroom.
While all of the commotion was unfolding throughout the Tower, Steve was unpacking his bags in his new bedroom. Natasha poked her head in the doorway in the midst of Tony and Thor's argument.
"I think we might have to save New York from those two pretty soon."
Steve chuckled and shook his head. "I hope not. I'd hate to take sides."
"I think I'll side with Tony." Natasha supposed, leaning against the doorway.
"You decided that pretty fast," Steve remarked, quirking an eyebrow with a smile. "Got something against Thor?"
"Not really. I just don't want to get kicked out of the Tower. The Wi-Fi is so fast here."
"You young'uns. Always worried about your internet connection." Steve teased.
"Uh-huh. I seem to remember you complaining about your Netflix buffering too much just last week."
"That was different."
"Oh?"
"I had to find out how House of Cards ended."
"Uh-huh." Natasha smirked, standing up straight and walking into the room. She closed the door behind her, effectively muffling Thor and Tony's argument. Their voices were growing louder as Tony grew angrier. Natasha walked over and sat on Steve's bed, watching him unpack. "How's the unpacking going?"
"Good. I think. I don't really have that much stuff." Steve replied with a shrug. "I just hope that Tony lets me stay here next semester. I don't want to move back into the dorms again."
"I would wait a little while before asking Tony for anything else," Natasha suggested as Tony's voice reached an unprecedented decibel. "Bucky, how are you getting along?"
She looked up at where Bucky was sitting atop his own bed.
Before moving into the Tower, Bucky had asked Steve if they could share a room. Steve had agreed without a second thought. It would be just like old times. Besides that, Bucky's presence would be reassuring. It would be a tie to the past.
"It's easy to unpack when you don't own anything." Bucky answered, smiling down at his shoes sheepishly. Every day he became a little bit more like his old self, but he still wasn't fully recovered. Steve didn't know if he ever would be. He seemed to be warming up to Natasha more than the rest of the gang, though.
"We're going to Walmart to get him a few things once I'm done here." Steve chimed in.
"Have you made a list?" Natasha asked Bucky. Bucky glanced at Steve before nodding his head at length.
"Then why don't you let me take you? Steve could take hours and he doesn't even have a car. You don't want to walk down the street with an arm full of shopping bags, trust me. Clint tried it once...he's never really been the same since." She suggested, twirling her car keys around her index finger and grinning at Bucky in that terrifyingly coy way of hers.
Steve smiled at Bucky sympathetically. No one could possibly survive Natasha's charms with their sense of confidence intact.
"I don't…" Bucky turned to look at Steve for reassurance. Steve nodded his head enthusiastically. If anyone else was going to be able to get through to Bucky, it was Natasha.
"Come on." Natasha wasn't really leaving him room to deny her anymore. "I won't bite."
"Might as well go, Buck." Steve chuckled. "She's not going to take no for an answer."
"Okay." Bucky sighed. He was very obviously not eager to go anywhere with Natasha. "Can I...uh...borrow your…?"
Bucky didn't have money. He had been something of a slave to Hydra, and had therefore not required much of a salary at all. He relied entirely on Hydra to supply him with food and clothing. Now that he had left them, he had nothing. Steve fished around his pockets for his wallet.
"Don't worry about it." Natasha waved off Steve's efforts at handing over his wallet. "I've got Stark's credit card. I think we'll be able to make it to Walmart and back before he notices. He seems...preoccupied."
"God damn it Thor, that is my bed! You can't just put your fucked up alien pet in my bed!" Tony's voice practically shook the Tower.
"Let's get out of here." Natasha said, just barely holding back a smile. "Before Stark really blows a fuse."
They were late.
They were late, they were late, they were late.
"Calm down." Sam told Steve for what must have been the hundredth time. "They're probably just running late. Maybe Natasha couldn't find a parking spot. It is New York."
Steve chewed at his thumb nail and continued to pace. Sam was probably right. They probably got caught up in traffic. Bucky's list was long - maybe they were still looking around for everything. Maybe they had to go to multiple stores to buy everything on the list. Maybe Natasha had a few things that she needed to buy, too.
But maybe Sam wasn't right.
Natasha had expressed her distrust of Bucky multiple times, after all. She could have offered to take him shopping as a false pretense. Right now, she could be doing something to him. She could be dropping him off in the middle of nowhere. She could have been bringing him back to Hydra. She could have been…
"Lucy!" Natasha's voice rang through the Tower. Steve let out a huge sigh of relief. "We're home!"
"Where the hell have you been?" He demanded, rushing down the stairs and looking Bucky over critically. There wasn't a scratch on him, nor was there a single hair on his head out of place. Steve had never been so relieved.
"We stopped for Taco Bell. Bucky wanted to try it. Did you miss us?" Natasha teased.
"No, I just -"
"I thought that he was going to start a search party soon." Sam complained from the living room. Steve turned around to glare at him, but couldn't help the sheepish look that crossed his face.
"Alright, I was worried." He admitted.
"Uh-huh. Glad to hear that you trust me, Rogers." Natasha rolled her eyes as she walked past Steve in the direction of the kitchen.
"That's not going to go away any time soon, is it?" Steve cast Bucky a small smile. Bucky smiled back at him apologetically. "So, did you get everything?"
Bucky nodded.
"Did you see the prices?"
Bucky's eyes widened. A smile that looked almost familiar crossed his face. "You noticed them too? I thought that Natasha was playing a prank on me at first. Do you know that it cost over two hundred dollars to get everything? And Natasha! She said that it was cheap! She expected me to spend more than two hundred dollars on everything. How much money does Stark have?"
"From what I've figured out, two hundred dollars isn't that much anymore."
"You can't be serious."
"Dead serious." Steve shook his head and ran a hand through his hair. "I don't know what the hell happened to the economy while we were gone. These kids have just gone and messed everything up."
Bucky smiled at Steve. Steve raised an eyebrow back at him.
"What?"
"You sound like your dad."
"You remember my dad?"
"Yeah." Bucky's smile was fond. "He always got us fireworks on the fourth of July. Even after he lost his job."
Steve smiled and sat down on Tony's $60,000 couch. He ran a hand through his hair. "He was a good man."
"You're just like him, you know." Bucky was looking Steve over like he was seeing him for the first time. "You don't really look like him - you look more like your mom - but you act exactly like him. You're a good man, too. He'd be really proud of you. I don't think that my parents would be very proud of me."
"Of course they would, Buck." Steve cocked his head to the side, trying to understand how Bucky could be so hard on himself. "You're a good man, too."
Bucky snorted. "You don't know that."
"Yes I do. I know that you saved me from being beaten to a pulp at least a hundred times when I was just a little guy. I know that you followed me all throughout Europe trying to save the world."
"I've killed people, Steve. Lots of people. Good people."
"That wasn't you. That was Hydra." Steve was not going to let Bucky go on thinking that he was a bad guy.
"But it was me." Bucky protested.
"You want to know how I know that's not true?" Steve's question was rhetorical.
Still, Bucky folded his arms across his chest and sat down on the other side of the couch. "How?"
"You're here."
"I don't get it."
"Buck, if you were the cold-blooded killer that you think you are, you wouldn't have agreed to any of this. You wouldn't have helped us save New York from the aliens. You wouldn't have agreed to move into Tony's big ugly building. You'd have gotten away during the battle and kept on killing people. You'd have tried to kill me at least eight times by now. You were always a good person, Buck. You were just put into a bad situation."
"I don't know, Steve, I -"
"What the fuck?" Tony's voice interrupted the entire conversation. Both Steve and Bucky looked up reflexively. "Who the fuck put Hello Kitty stickers on my suits?"
One more chapter and we're finally done. It's about time, isn't it? School has settled down, everyone is moved into the Tower, Steve and Bucky are getting along...it's nice.
ALSO. Before I set out on the Jane Austen AU quest that I have already promised, I was wondering if anyone out there wants to be my beta reader. I've already started a few variations of a rough draft and struggling through them might be easier with some opinions throughout the process. I'd appreciate literally anyone's help and you can choose what you want to beta (i.e. only Stucky AUs, only Stony AUs, etc.). It could be fun. We could share headcanons and cry over angst together. Plus I'd be happy to beta read right back.
Anyhow, let's try to survive for one more chapter, shall we?
