A/N: This is a little over a thousand words of pure, barely edited self-indulgence, but I figured I'd put it out there.
And to the guest reviewer: Bucky could totally make serious bank if he started selling his pastries, but there's good odds Steve would eat all his inventory before he had a chance. ;)
FIVE MONTHS POST-RECALIBRATION
"What'd you do to your nails, Buck?"
"Painted them."
"I can see that. Was this the girls' doing?"
"Confirm. Hill possesses a vast collection of polish."
.
35 bottles of it, to be exact. Plus the glittery stuff Potts brought in. They spent a nice afternoon berating trashy reality TV and doing each others' nails in Romanoff's living room.
"I can't believe the camera crew doesn't spend the entire time cringing," Potts says as a group of famous sisters throw wine glasses at each other.
"They do," Hill replies, dragging a pita chip through a tub of hummus. "You just can't see them."
Natasha puts her feet, toenails now a dainty pink, in his lap and crosses her ankles. He shoves them off.
"Gross."
She sticks her tongue out at him and rests them on the glass coffee table instead, far enough away from the food that Barnes deems it somewhat sanitary. Nice to know the woman does have a few manners.
"Most of this stuff is scripted, anyways," she says. "They drag it out. It's not their fault they're so tacky."
Barnes agrees. "They would run out of money," he says. "If they didn't. Not many people would voluntarily sign up for this."
"I w'ldn't be s' sure, Barnes," Hill says through a mouthful of cracker. "'Ave you seen The B'chl'r?"
The Bachelor turns out to be a show about a bunch of women trying to get a douchey guy to want to have sex with them. The words "true" and "love" are thrown around a lot, but Barnes identifies: blech. All that touching makes his head spin. Those poor women.
"Isn't it awful?" Potts asks. She's smiling, somehow painting her right hand with her nondominant one perfectly without even looking. "I always feel bad for the genuinely nice ones."
Hill is staring at the TV screen like she's watching a knife fight, grinning. She is enjoying this.
"Hill."
"Hm?" she doesn't break her gaze from the screen.
"You...like this?"
Her smile manages to get even scarier. "Call me an idiot, but watching the drama unravel when it doesn't concern me is hilarious."
Maybe she's right, but Barnes still thinks the genre is stupid.
Painting one's nails is a lot trickier than it looks. Polish is messy, and smudges, and is very, very spillable.
"Hey-hey, Barnes."
He doesn't look up from his spot kneeling on the floor, a shattered bottle in front of him that seeps electric blue into the plush white carpeting. Why did he have to knock it over.
A hand touches his shoulder and he reels away. Touch means restraint, restraint means punishment. He broke the bottle, and breaking things without direct orders is qualification for punishment, but still. It's a shame; they were having such a nice day, but of course he had to go and ruin it.
"It's okay, Barnes. No one's mad."
That's Romanoff's voice. He knows she isn't a liar-at least, not to him, so he looks up. She's crouched in front of him, far enough away that he doesn't feel like he's suffocating, and behind her Hill is watching him closely. Her eyes are scrutinizing, but not unkind.
"I'll pay for it. Everything." he rasps.
"Accidents happen," Romanoff shrugs, just as Potts comes into view with a cup full of sugar. Are they...baking? But Potts just kneels down and sets the overturned bottle upright, pouring the sugar over the still puddling stain.
"It helps the polish clump together," she says. "Makes the clean-up easier."
They cover the area with an overturned laundry basket and continue on as though nothing had happened. "I'll clean it for good later," Romanoff says. "Right now my hands are still drying."
.
And so the pleasant afternoon is saved. Barnes spends another three minutes on the floor before his metal arm stops whirring, and the following ten refusing to touch another bottle. They look too delicate now, easily crushable, so he waits for long enough that Romanoff takes notice.
"What color do you want?"
He pulls his gaze from the TV, where a group of contestants is trying and failing to survive on a desert island. (Stupid. The trees they just passed could easily be tapped for water.)
"What?"
Romanoff gestures to the lineup of dainty bottles. "Pick, I'll do them for you."
Oh. Okay, then.
He has her paint each nail on his right hand a different color. Dark blue, black (of course), red, a teal color Hill chose for him ("It compliments your eyes"), and a glittering purple that shimmers when he tilts his hand in the light. Potts even adds little gems to his ring finger to match hers.
They wait for the polish to dry (a process that is both time-consuming and tricky to estimate-Barnes keeps having to stop himself from messing it up) and order takeout from an Indian place, eating hot curry and laughing at his comments on how the angry contestants could build adequate shelters and find food without killing themselves in the process.
Hill stares at him for a moment before saying, casually: "Ugh, this gel will not set. Hey Barnes, want to do my other hand for me while I wait?"
His brow furrows. Why not have one of the other women do it? They're both much more experienced.
"Come on, it'll be fun. I don't care if you get polish all over my cuticles."
In that case.
He holds the brush gingerly between the fingers of his metal arm and swipes a few times experimentally on a napkin. His fine motor control is better than he thought. Gingerly, he leans over to where Hill has her hand splayed out over a swath of newspapers and paints. It goes better than he expected-he only has to wipe it off and try again on her pinkie twice, and she doesn't seem to mind when he does, inevitably, get smudges around the outer edges of the nail.
"Don't worry, it'll come off."
He nods and caps the mossy green bottle. Potts is looking at the both of them with a strange mixture of fascination and pure delight.
"Oh, Barnes, you did such a nice job! Me next?"
If only to return the favor of them helping him out, he does. After a while he does get the hang of it, and while he's not one for pedicures, the extra practice is nice. They even paint the nails of the metal arm before he leaves. Barnes likes it-it makes it seem 45% less threatening. Not to mention it's hilarious to see a HYDRA weapon of mass destruction with a manicure.
Rogers does not share his enthusiasm.
"No, Buck, you can't paint my nails the colors of the American flag!"
"Why not." A grin tugs at Barnes' lips and he tilts his head. He knows why, but it's a lot more fun to hear Steve say it.
"Because-it's just-I-" Rogers stutters, looking like he hopes the right words will somehow pop out of his mouth. "It's fine, I mean, I'm glad you like it, but…"
"Do you not think it looks good on me."
Rogers flaps his arms. "No, Buck, it looks good! That's not...I mean…"
"Because I'll have you know I feel very secure in my masculinity."
"Of course-! Nail polish doesn't mean you're not-" Steve stops, takes in Bucky's smirk, and shakes his head in disbelief, mouth pressing into his dammit, Bucky smile. "You're an asshole, you know that?"
"I just like watching you squirm."
Stark, of course, has an endless stream of words.
"Murderbot painted his metal arm?" he near-squawks at breakfast the next morning. "The actual effing Winter Soldier painted the nails on his-you know what, yeah. Why is that surprising. Why would I even be surprised." He sends Barnes a scathing look that holds no real anger and guzzles his coffee.
"Actually," Barnes says, peeling a banana, "Pepper painted them. With Hill, and Romanoff."
"Don't they look nice?" Romanoff says, from her place sitting on the kitchen island. "I think the orange really pops."
Funny. Stark makes the same aneurism-face Steve does under pressure.
A/N: Tony's definitely not gonna let Rhodey tell Barnes about his eyeliner-MCR-black nail polish-wristbands phase, it's all good.
(As always, reviews make my day! Thank you for reading.)
