Run (A Bucky Barnes Recovery Story)

20 Spaghetti

Bucky didn’t know if Fury was expecting him to report back. The first target was down and Bucky was pretty positive that he was capable in getting the rest on the list by himself, but he had more information now. Russia. Russia was a big place, Hydra could be anywhere. And he could have guessed that information, he really hadn’t learned much. He needed to find his loud-mouthed coward target soon.

In the meantime, however, Bucky’s mind was on spaghetti. Despite what he’d told Steve, he really did want to try it. He couldn’t remember having it before, he wanted to see if he still enjoyed it. So, he got his nerves settled and called Natasha.

He left a voicemail.

“Hey, Natasha, this is, uh, this is Bucky,” Bucky said, trying to bring forth the part of him that Steve had told him didn’t have trouble talking to people. “Steve told me I like spaghetti and I don’t remember having it, so I was going to go try some soon? And I was wondering if you knew any good places and if you’d want to come with me? I cross my heart and promise I won’t shoot you, kay?” And he hung up, caught between berating himself for sounding stupid and praising himself for being able to come up with something relatively funny and normal on the fly.

The thing was that he didn’t want to go with Steve. There was still too much pressure there. But he was beginning to break from the loneliness, he had to do something, and Natasha had been so kind to him the other day.

She called back an hour later and he picked up.

“Hey, I got your voicemail,” she said. “Spaghetti’s cool, I know there’s an Olive Garden around here somewhere. Those places are cheap-ish, want to meet me at that outlet mall by the highway at five?”

“Yeah, that’d be, uh, that’d be great,” Bucky said.

“Okay, I’ll see you there!” Natasha said and before she hung up, Bucky stopped her.

“Natasha,” he said. “Thanks.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said.

Bucky was at the outlet mall at exactly five. There was something in the arriving and the waiting that struck a chord deep inside him and he sat on the corner and began to write, drawing his feelings out of the dark place that he still couldn’t see. It felt familiar and for only a brief moment, he could just see the world change around him, back to the forties, back to flirty half-smiles and spinning dresses on dance floors. He saw himself a completely different person, with confidence and style, friendly and flirty, delighted to be escorting a date and when he came back around, pen in hand, staring into space, he couldn’t believe just how far he’d fallen.

I have no idea who I am, Bucky scribbled incredulously into his journal. No idea at all.

“Mr. Barnes, are you here waiting for me?” Natasha said.

Bucky looked up into Natasha’s face, her shadow falling around him, and the smile he couldn’t hold back surprised even him. It was the confident grin from the forties, it was the happy smile upon seeing a friend, it was the relief in the company he’d been needing for a while.

“You didn’t have me waiting for long,” he assured her and slipped his journal back into his jacket. Natasha had surely seen it, but she said nothing. He stood and instinct told him to offer her his arm, but frankly, he wasn’t sure if people still did that anymore or if it would make Natasha uncomfortable and he realized as well that the arm he had nearly offered her was a metal killing machine and finally, as all these thoughts flashed through his head, Bucky crammed his hands into his pockets and settled on smiling at her.

“So, spaghetti, eh?” Natasha said, looking around the outlet mall. Bucky shrugged.

“That’s what Steve said,” Bucky replied with a small shrug. Natasha looked over at him.

“And in the past seventy years, you can’t remember having spaghetti even once?” Natasha asked. Bucky shrugged again.

“I don’t think Hydra was particularly concerned in making sure I got my favorite foods on a regular basis,” he said.

“All the more reason to tear ‘em down piece by piece,” Natasha replied and Bucky agreed. It wasn’t light-hearted, the way they talked about his past, but it was with a certain air of understanding. Bucky came to realize, standing there on the pavement, that he hadn’t spoken about it so openly before now. In fact, he hadn’t really spoke about it out loud at all. It made him ache inside, like ripping open old wounds, but those old wounds never healed right in the first place, had hardly closed at all, and maybe it was for the best, tearing them open again, if only to let them heal properly this time around. Maybe he needed to talk about it.

“So you said something about an Olive Garden earlier?” Bucky said, changing the subject. He would talk about it, he would, just not right this minute. Not when they were both supposed to be having fun.

“Yeah, I see it, right over there,” Natasha pointed across the outlet mall to a small restaurant and he let her lead him there.

They sat inside the restaurant and Bucky again got the distinct feeling of being another him in another time, but tried to shake it off since he was finally out and smiling and having a happy time, a normal time, and he didn’t need Bucky 1.0 impressions from the darkened parts of his head ruining that for him. He could go a row with the tangled memories later. Today, he was going to concentrate on the way Natasha took his long silences in stride and how she still smiled at him even though he knew he looked like he had just re-lived World War 2 all over again in a second.

The waiter came and took their orders and Bucky ordered meatballs on the side, just in case, he explained to Natasha, and she got some sort of complicated-sounding soup and encouraged him to try the breadsticks. He did and he loved them.

“Do you have a favorite food?” Bucky asked her in-between devouring the breadsticks.

“Wine,” she said after some thought. “And strawberries.”

“Together?” Bucky asked and she laughed.

“No, separately. As two different things,” she said.

“Well, you can’t pick two,” Bucky teased her, stepping carefully, watching himself, unsure in the area of being friendly. “You have to pick one, that’s the point of a favorite.”

“Yeah, you say that now, but when your spaghetti comes, you’re going to be hard-pressed to pick spaghetti over those breadsticks,” Natasha joked and he laughed. He laughed. The Winter Soldier laughed and it stunned him so much that he actually stopped laughing for a moment and sat there for a moment with a shocked expression on his face. Natasha looked concerned.

“Are you okay?” She asked. He nodded slowly.

“Just, uh, just haven’t laughed in around seventy years or so,” he admitted. Natasha looked down at her plate, then glanced back up at him.

“Things are gonna get better,” she said to him quietly. He wanted to say ‘I know’, but he couldn’t get the words out and instead he just nodded.

Their dishes were brought to the table and Natasha had been right. Bucky had a difficult time choosing spaghetti or breadsticks because the spaghetti was like nothing he could remember having before and it was great and it was fun to eat and he even loved the meatballs.

“I have a theory,” Natasha said.

“What’s that,” Bucky asked through a mouthful of pasta.

“You just like carbs,” Natasha replied with her teasing grin. He grinned back and slurped another noodle loudly in her face.