"Nothing. Why do you think I'm doing anything? She's the one pushing my buttons," Bucky protests. Although maybe the fact that he refuses to do anything she would consider 'taking this seriously' and 'appreciating second chances' is also pressing her buttons.
"Pretty sure she's regretting being stuck with me." Nobody would willingly choose to work with him, and if they did they're about as crazy as he is. At least, he's convinced himself of that. He doesn't think he's beyond help - he just thinks this whole checkbox exercise is a waste of time and she knows it, too.
"What? Oh. What-- no. Sorry." He's picked up some bad habits, mostly from spending a stretch of time in Wakanda with just the one arm and using his teeth a lot where he needs a little help. Safe to say nobody's batted anything out of his mouth or told him to stop that and use his metal hand like a normal person. Although now she is making him feel a little self-conscious about it...
"I didn't pick you for a beer and a pool table in a shitty bar kind of gal," he teases good-naturedly with a small smile. "Sounds like my kind of night, actually. Maybe I'm just old, want a book and a quiet corner to be by myself. ​Doing too much to unwind doesn't sound like unwinding." Not to mention the effort required to be social.
"You get recognised anywhere or can you still go incognito?" Luckily he's managed to avoid most of the attention - that brief blip Zemo fucked him over aside - but he imagines she's a little more recognisable these days.
Natasha arches a brow pointedly when he insists that the therapist is the one pushing his buttons and that she got stuck with him. It's very 'doth protest too much.' "Therapy can be hard anyway, but it's even more challenging when it's mandated. There is a bit more choice in it on the therapist's side, though. She wouldn't be there if she didn't think it was worth her time."
When he apologizes, one shoulder lifts in a dismissive shrug as she takes another sip of her own drink. "I was just curious."
Her mouth curls in a half smile at the teasing note in his voice. "Nothing wrong with a book and a quiet corner. Shitty bars have the same appeal. The people don't tend to care who you are or what you're doing." Which was more or less the same way she approaches being incognito. "A lot of people's perception depends on context. People are more likely to recognize me if I'm dressed up, or in my tac suit. If I keep it low key, it's a lot easier to blend in."
"Yeah? I guess... yeah." He's not sure Dr. Raynor wanted to be saddled with him, but. Maybe Natasha's right. If she really thought he was a lost cause she'd just pass him along to the next shrink like a hot potato and be done with him. In a way, he hasn't made much of a breakthrough because she feels like just another handler. He's had so many over the years that he's inclined to just follow her instructions instead of putting in the effort to establish this relationship and open up to her. But she's been patient enough to stick with him up to now, so. Maybe he should give her more credit.
The first round of tacos arrive and while Bucky doesn't regret ordering, quite literally, one of everything, there are a lot of tacos on their table. He has to take the hat off the table to fit the last plate and then he's left holding the hat gingerly in his hands.
"Nobody used to care, you know? You would think that nobody cares, these days. There's a lot more people and they're all too busy on their phones or whatever." He can't help that centenarian disdain creeping into his voice. It's annoying to say the least when people are so glued to their screens that they lose their spatial awareness. And then there's the fact that they are surrounded by tables of people using their phones right now - what's the point of even going out together if everyone at the table is on their phones talking to someone else?
"But I can't get in and out of some places without somebody taking a photo. And if you're someone like Steve, forget about it."
The table is absolutely laden with tacos, and Natasha is eying them with a look of mingled dismay and amusement. She's probably good for 4, maybe 6 if she commits herself to laying flat on the sidewalk outside for a while before they make their way over to the ball pit. He's got his work cut out for him. Maybe she'll have to commit herself to trying a bite of each instead of just sticking to one taco.
Her head tips so she can look up at him, thoughtful, as she listens to his admittedly very 'old man yells at cloud' description of what people are doing. "You know, it's interesting - we've pretty much always had portable distractions, right? Newspapers, music. It's just that the invention of the mobile phone lets people be distracted by and from their lives at the same time. So it's not that nobody cares, necessarily. They care a lot. But their own bubbles have become insular so that you have to really stick out to pop it." Her mouth curls in a half smile when he mentions Steve. "Doesn't help that he's completely hopeless trying to blend into a crowd. Where do you usually get recognized?"
"Yeah, well, he's too blond," Bucky scoffs, the way idiot friends tend to mock each other for the dumbest things. "The pizza places we visited when we were kids, old familiar parts of downtown that didn't get wrecked - just the usual haunts." Many parts of New York that were there when they were young. At first Steve had hit up the old spots to help Bucky remember the old times, to help him transition back to some semblance of normalcy, even though sometimes it felt like Steve's normal and not his own. Not that he's complaining - Steve's gone above and beyond when it comes to helping him. But the grumpy old men had been living in a bubble of their own too, even when it did involve Steve showing Bucky how to use a modern phone, and even Steve got progressively worn down as people kept trying to burst it, testing his patience.
The sheer amount of tacos doesn't seem to faze Bucky too much - apart from the fact that he doesn't know where to start, and he can't see which one's the cactus. He's probably even looking forward to cake afterwards. It seems to make sense to start chipping away at their order from the tacos closest to him though, so he pops the hat on to free his hands and tugs the closest little basket of tacos towards himself. There's no elegant way to eat tacos unless you're the lady sitting across from him, so he's just going to tilt his head a bit and take a bite without dropping the hat.
"See. I'm wearing the hat." Does he look stupid? He probably looks stupid, but. One could argue that's not too different from what he normally looks like.
Her mouth tics to the side like she's trying not to laugh when he describes Steve as 'too blond.' That kind of teasing humor has a familiar pattern to it. It's no wonder that the three of them don't hang out often. Even though she's pretty sure that Steve kind of likes being roasted, she's not quite as sure that he'd enjoy it coming from two angles at the same time. "That makes sense. I know there's some statues and plaques kicking around those parts of the city." There's one particular statue of Captain America that Natasha loves, tucked away in some little park in Brooklyn. It looks nothing like him and locals keep putting funny hats on it. She's pretty sure it's the only one that doesn't make Steve turn purple with embarrassment when he sees it. Again: the roasting.
Her mouth widens into a grin when she sees him put the hat on, but she lifts a taco and takes a large bite before answering. It effectively shatters any notion he might have about elegantly eating tacos: there's no grace to it. She picks a piece of shredded lettuce off her lower lip and wipes it off on a napkin, seemingly unconcerned by the utter lack of dignity involved in that bite. "It looks good on you. You should consider adding it as an accessory for your tac gear." After all, nothing says 'stealth' like 'festooned birthday hat.'
"Tch, yeah. It might give people something glittery to aim at." Would he wear something ridiculous to a mission? Probably only if it involved infiltrating some kind of themed party and finding a quiet moment alone to shank his target in the toilet, but who's he kidding? The Soldier would have agreed to anything no matter how ludicrous the demand might be.
The taco he did end up eating has some kind of seafood with eggplant relish, which he's enjoying enough to have some relish get on his right hand, but he can't see anything like cactus in there - well he's not expecting a green prickly thing, it's probably skinned and cooked, nor does he know what it would taste like, but he imagines it's still visually distinct enough to be recognisable - so he's just sampling the goods and working his way across the table in a somewhat methodical fashion.
"Hnh - you've got some-- sauce-- yeah," he gestures at the corner of his own lips mirrored from hers, unable to hide the small chuckle she elicits from him. He doesn't have that many friends to begin with, so he can appreciate that there are no formalities or pretences between them and they can just-- talk frankly and be messy around each other.
"You should try this one. It's some... blackened fish with eggplant thing," he offers his basket over. Yes, the Wilsons are training him on cajun cuisine, so he's familiar with those kinds of flavours. Skipping over the one that looks like ground beef purely because he knows it won't be the cactus, he moves onto one basket with fillings he doesn't recognise next.
"So what do you do on your own birthdays? Especially when you don't have to humour grumpy old centenarians?" They're not much of a big deal to him, all the more so when he's missed so many by now. But maybe she does something special for herself. Or maybe Barton's enough of a gentleman to make her have a slightly different day from all the others?
When he gestures to show her where she got the sauce, she uses the pad of her thumb to wipe it off and then licks it off her thumb. Waste not. "Thanks," she says as she takes another bite - of a more reasonable size. Not that it deters her from leaning in with interest when he describes the one that he just bit, and she sets the one she's been working on down to claim one from his basket. "Wouldn't have figured you for a blackened fish guy," she comments as she tries a bite of it, then nods her head as she swallows. "Though I can see why. That's good."
She considers his question about birthdays, taking a sip from her drink to buy herself a moment to think, her eyes skimming his face. It's not that she dislikes her birthday so much as she tries to avoid anyone making a big deal out of it. "Maybe I like humoring grumpy old centenarians. I think after you regularly allow more than one in your life you have to consider the possibility," she points out with a smile. One shoulder lifts in a shrug before she continues. "It depends on the year. Usually a nice dinner. Or I'll wrangle people to do something fun like paintball without telling them why. What are you thinking about doing for your next birthday?"
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no subject
"Pretty sure she's regretting being stuck with me." Nobody would willingly choose to work with him, and if they did they're about as crazy as he is. At least, he's convinced himself of that. He doesn't think he's beyond help - he just thinks this whole checkbox exercise is a waste of time and she knows it, too.
"What? Oh. What-- no. Sorry." He's picked up some bad habits, mostly from spending a stretch of time in Wakanda with just the one arm and using his teeth a lot where he needs a little help. Safe to say nobody's batted anything out of his mouth or told him to stop that and use his metal hand like a normal person. Although now she is making him feel a little self-conscious about it...
"I didn't pick you for a beer and a pool table in a shitty bar kind of gal," he teases good-naturedly with a small smile. "Sounds like my kind of night, actually. Maybe I'm just old, want a book and a quiet corner to be by myself. ​Doing too much to unwind doesn't sound like unwinding." Not to mention the effort required to be social.
"You get recognised anywhere or can you still go incognito?" Luckily he's managed to avoid most of the attention - that brief blip Zemo fucked him over aside - but he imagines she's a little more recognisable these days.
no subject
When he apologizes, one shoulder lifts in a dismissive shrug as she takes another sip of her own drink. "I was just curious."
Her mouth curls in a half smile at the teasing note in his voice. "Nothing wrong with a book and a quiet corner. Shitty bars have the same appeal. The people don't tend to care who you are or what you're doing." Which was more or less the same way she approaches being incognito. "A lot of people's perception depends on context. People are more likely to recognize me if I'm dressed up, or in my tac suit. If I keep it low key, it's a lot easier to blend in."
no subject
The first round of tacos arrive and while Bucky doesn't regret ordering, quite literally, one of everything, there are a lot of tacos on their table. He has to take the hat off the table to fit the last plate and then he's left holding the hat gingerly in his hands.
"Nobody used to care, you know? You would think that nobody cares, these days. There's a lot more people and they're all too busy on their phones or whatever." He can't help that centenarian disdain creeping into his voice. It's annoying to say the least when people are so glued to their screens that they lose their spatial awareness. And then there's the fact that they are surrounded by tables of people using their phones right now - what's the point of even going out together if everyone at the table is on their phones talking to someone else?
"But I can't get in and out of some places without somebody taking a photo. And if you're someone like Steve, forget about it."
no subject
Her head tips so she can look up at him, thoughtful, as she listens to his admittedly very 'old man yells at cloud' description of what people are doing. "You know, it's interesting - we've pretty much always had portable distractions, right? Newspapers, music. It's just that the invention of the mobile phone lets people be distracted by and from their lives at the same time. So it's not that nobody cares, necessarily. They care a lot. But their own bubbles have become insular so that you have to really stick out to pop it." Her mouth curls in a half smile when he mentions Steve. "Doesn't help that he's completely hopeless trying to blend into a crowd. Where do you usually get recognized?"
sorry I've had a crazy month
The sheer amount of tacos doesn't seem to faze Bucky too much - apart from the fact that he doesn't know where to start, and he can't see which one's the cactus. He's probably even looking forward to cake afterwards. It seems to make sense to start chipping away at their order from the tacos closest to him though, so he pops the hat on to free his hands and tugs the closest little basket of tacos towards himself. There's no elegant way to eat tacos unless you're the lady sitting across from him, so he's just going to tilt his head a bit and take a bite without dropping the hat.
"See. I'm wearing the hat." Does he look stupid? He probably looks stupid, but. One could argue that's not too different from what he normally looks like.
no worries! i've totally been there
Her mouth widens into a grin when she sees him put the hat on, but she lifts a taco and takes a large bite before answering. It effectively shatters any notion he might have about elegantly eating tacos: there's no grace to it. She picks a piece of shredded lettuce off her lower lip and wipes it off on a napkin, seemingly unconcerned by the utter lack of dignity involved in that bite. "It looks good on you. You should consider adding it as an accessory for your tac gear." After all, nothing says 'stealth' like 'festooned birthday hat.'
no subject
The taco he did end up eating has some kind of seafood with eggplant relish, which he's enjoying enough to have some relish get on his right hand, but he can't see anything like cactus in there - well he's not expecting a green prickly thing, it's probably skinned and cooked, nor does he know what it would taste like, but he imagines it's still visually distinct enough to be recognisable - so he's just sampling the goods and working his way across the table in a somewhat methodical fashion.
"Hnh - you've got some-- sauce-- yeah," he gestures at the corner of his own lips mirrored from hers, unable to hide the small chuckle she elicits from him. He doesn't have that many friends to begin with, so he can appreciate that there are no formalities or pretences between them and they can just-- talk frankly and be messy around each other.
"You should try this one. It's some... blackened fish with eggplant thing," he offers his basket over. Yes, the Wilsons are training him on cajun cuisine, so he's familiar with those kinds of flavours. Skipping over the one that looks like ground beef purely because he knows it won't be the cactus, he moves onto one basket with fillings he doesn't recognise next.
"So what do you do on your own birthdays? Especially when you don't have to humour grumpy old centenarians?" They're not much of a big deal to him, all the more so when he's missed so many by now. But maybe she does something special for herself. Or maybe Barton's enough of a gentleman to make her have a slightly different day from all the others?
no subject
She considers his question about birthdays, taking a sip from her drink to buy herself a moment to think, her eyes skimming his face. It's not that she dislikes her birthday so much as she tries to avoid anyone making a big deal out of it. "Maybe I like humoring grumpy old centenarians. I think after you regularly allow more than one in your life you have to consider the possibility," she points out with a smile. One shoulder lifts in a shrug before she continues. "It depends on the year. Usually a nice dinner. Or I'll wrangle people to do something fun like paintball without telling them why. What are you thinking about doing for your next birthday?"