Apr. 30th, 2021 at 7:25 PM
OPEN POST ▪ PIC PROMPTS ✔ ▪ BODY HEAT/SNOWED IN ✔ ▪
HURT/COMFORT ✔ ▪ WORD ASSOCIATION ✔ ▪ SMUT ✔ ▪
TEXTING ✔ ▪
RANDOM STARTERS ✔ ▪
BLUE SHIRT APPRECIATION ✔
BUCKETHEAD.
March 2023
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Even though he knew he looked incredibly unwashed and very unlike himself, he had to believe that he had what it took to be on the cover of a magazine. Back in the day, when he had a nice healthy ego and self-esteem, he would've been someone who would want to be on a cover. Now… it wasn't something he ever wanted.
He rubbed his chest, feigning that she'd poked him too hard.
"Which magazine? I was on the cover of Old Man Lost in Time. Very niche yet respected magazine."
She'd been exploited for all of the attributes that made her physically appealing as a woman and those had made her sometimes more high profiles than she wished to be. Thankfully there were more ways to subtly disguise oneself than even she could count. So her covergirl and centerfold history at least would not be coming back to bite her in the ass.
What a choice of words.
"Have you done undercover relationship status before? I've done it a few times. When I was a kid actually was my first."
Bucky would much prefer to continue talking about being on a cover of a magazine. Although he had no experience whatsoever, it was easier to joke around. Less relied upon him being a top model.
Inhaling heavily, he released it and felt his shoulders sag. "Not really." It wasn't useful to lie, even if he wished to save face—make himself look useful. The last thing he wanted was for Natasha to call this off because he wasn't experienced enough.
"Never needed to do that spy work for the army and the Soldier wasn't inconspicuous enough."
She'd been on long term insertion assignments so she had to get used to becoming someone else, which brought the next question. "So, who would you want to be. If you could be anyone? What's something that would be ideal for you?"
She tipped back her drink and wondered what a man like him would want. Would he want to be a thinker or a man of action or perhaps someone funny? Just who was he under it all?
Bucky smiled, although it was out of amusement at his own expense. He used to have an answer for that. He wanted to be someone who survived the war and provided for his family. But that wasn't the answer that Natasha was looking for.
She was looking for some fantasy that he could live up to, something that he wanted that he'd be happy to pretend to be for a little while.
Biting his bottom lip, he shrugged. "I guess someone who was good with his hands and who was happy." Not damaged, not a killing machine, not lost and misplaced. "I think I'd be a good mechanic. Maybe even a renovator."
Looking down at his left hand, he flicked his wrist. "Bit hard to sell with this."
"I think that would suit you, and prosthesis are more and more common all the time. Especially in fields that work with power tools. But your saving grace will be photostatic veil tech. Same stuff I've used for masking, it'll make your arm look completely normal. It won't change how it feels but it'll look like the real thing."
She was still a little shaken she would have to find a way to bring it up with Yelena later and make sure she hadn't mentioned it to Bucky. But it was so uncanny, it really did seem like a perfectly suited thing for him. Enough that she half jokingly tossed out the other portion of the story. "I guess I should be a teacher or something low profile like that."
Looking down at his arm, he turned his hand over to face his palm upward. While he wore long sleeves, he acted as though he could see through the fabric. "You think you'd have enough of that stuff for my arm?"
He'd need to mask from fingertip to his shoulder. Bucky knew she had better use for that veil technology and it wasn't his arm.
She doubted he'd be too inclined to let that happen, at least not easily. "So no strip poker nights, that's gonna be off the table." She decided to slip the joke out there to take any of the weight off him that the mention of the topic might have triggered.
At the stripping or the poker, he chose to leave that completely to the imagination.
He knew what she was doing. Pretending to be someone else was her forte, not his. Killing people, being switched on and off… that was more his. But he appreciated it all the same. This was just another thing on his plate that was very fresh and new to him.
Bucky regarded her with a smile. "You want to be married to a worker like that?"
Nat smiled, it was perfectly convincing. But behind it was something else, she never thought about marriage because she'd never thought about long-term plans. Agents don't make those because long-term wasn't an expectation. You had a finite usefulness expectation. Eventually, you get hurt or fail, or even if you are good you get old enough that you slip up. You can't expect to retire gracefully from what she was, that wasn't how it worked. No children, no split allegiance, no complications.
Well, she'd fucked all that right up, hadn't she?
"Yeah, I think that would be just about right."
"How many of these fake marriage covers have you done?"
Someone of Natasha's skillset must've been a fake wife a handful of times. Either that, or she finds it all too easy to slip into the skin she needs. It's something he's envious of. Sometimes, he wishes he could be someone else.
"So you're working with a pro here. It's really all about the familiarity people have with each other when they've been together. Which is why it's almost always easier to pull it off as a newer relationship." She nodded and gestured to the way that Alexi had gone. "Mom and dad," she said it in the tone of it was just easier to call them that. "Had to work on their cover, they did it a lot. Played games of it so we would too. I got used to being Natalie, she became as much me as my real self."
"I do have one friend, we could pull it off. We could pretty convincingly be married. We have that great ability to be best friends and still annoy the shit out of each other. When you get someone who knows you that well, someone you can actually be vulnerable with that's why you have a good partnership." And those were, in her mind, very rare indeed.
"But kissing him was like kissing a brother, so that kept us both very well aware of what we were being tapped to do." She looked at Bucky, canted her head to the side somewhat thoughtfully. "You don't look like a brother."