Stranger Who Knows All My Secrets [A Marvel FanFic]

Chapter 19: Romgers Versus Barnestantin

There is nothing more disheartening than finding yourself stuck in a soul-crushing routine when you thought you had finally found something to make life seem less monotonous and yet that was exactly how Bucky was feeling by mid-September. Assignment, debrief, then two or three nights out, back to the compound, workout, train, assignment, and on and on it went in a never-ending cycle that made life feel more than a little stale. Sure, the nights out were now a nice way to break things up but the pestering about everyone's sex lives and relationships, the many drunken breakdowns, the club music, and overall drama had all grown very old, very quickly and Bucky was ready to slip back into his old habits of hiding from everyone and staying home alone. At least he wasn't the only one who seemed to feel that way, Elena had more than once stood the team up and the night Natasha convinced them into doing speed dating, Elena became so fed up with the event that she walked out and never came back.

Admittedly, Bucky wanted to do the same. Steve however convinced him to stay the full night despite the pounding migraine he had developed after listening to more than a few women describe themselves as free spirits and one in particular who spent their entire mini-date talking about how the holocaust was a hoax. Bucky was at a loss for words, not knowing at all how to respond to the woman's insane conspiracy and revisionist history. If only she had known he had been in Europe during the Second World War. If only she had known that he had helped take out several HYDRA bases that were experimenting on unwilling concentration camp prisoners and that he had actually seen the numerous atrocities committed by the Nazis. When the timer went off, she actually smiled at him and told him to give her a call sometime, writing her number on his napkin. Bucky couldn't help himself, he flat out said no, crumbled up the napkin, and told her to pick up an actual history book before walking away from her to find his next date.

Bucky would have very much appreciated it if everyone stopped trying to get him back out in the world because that speed-dating event left a bad taste in his mouth that he couldn't get rid of. It only made him realize how painfully disconnected he was from the 21-40-year-old demographic because holy shit, he had no idea what cryptocurrency, Game of Thrones, Twitter, anime, Jägerbombs, or a Kardashian was. Natasha actually spat her margarita across the table when he reached the one she had been stationed at and he asked what a daddy dom was and why someone would call him that. She spent the whole five minutes of their date laughing hysterically at the look that spread across his face when she finally explained it to him, the whole bar kept looking over at them because she couldn't stop laughing long enough to breathe properly all while wiping tears from her eyes. Sam wanted to know what the hell they had been talking about when they all met back up afterward but Bucky refused to say and Natasha couldn't keep a straight face long enough to even try poking fun at him.

There was one particular night out at the end of the summer, just before the official start of fall, that wasn't too bad. They had stayed out way too late before their next round of missions and Sam, Natasha, and Elena were all drunk beyond belief so naturally, the three of them decided that climbing the bars inside the subway car was a perfectly normal thing to do at one in the morning. Natasha must have been a Cirque du Soleil acrobat in a past life, while Elena had probably been a crash test dummy because that damn woman couldn't do anything without busting her ass or hitting her head. Sam had possibly been a stripper because he was weirdly good at working the poles, spinning around them with ease and a showmanship that had Elena doing that ridiculous laugh of hers, the one that you could hear from the other side of the universe and which everyone tried to replicate because of how silly it was.

Not more than thirty minutes after the shenanigans on the train they were in Grand Central where Natasha ripped off her shoes and began running across the smooth, freshly waxed marble floors in her stockings, stopping short so she could slide gracefully like an ice skater across the mostly empty terminal. Sam of course followed her lead, not giving a damn about the hole in his right sock or that his feet smelled terribly that night, just wanting to dance across the slippery floor with Natasha while the last few stragglers heading north after a long night out watched them. Elena would have done it too if it wasn't for the fact that she had slip-on canvas sneakers with no-show socks that kept rolling down much to her annoyance, but that didn't stop her from trying to find a way to join them.