Secretive - Bucky Barnes

16 || Bucky

[Nova]
I feel smaller than usual walking next to Steve, and I kind of seem like a chick walking behind his duck-mother. Or, next to it.

»You looked at me driving into the garage?« I raise an eyebrow in disbelief, causing him to grin quietly.

»We all did.«

Now, my eyes grow bid, like plates in the upper part of my face. »You all did?«

»Sure. We wanted to see who comes to watch our every move.« He pushes open a plain black door in the sideway we had entered a few seconds ago.

Inside, there is a small kitchen, all black and white and grey, and a suiting round table with six chairs on it. The window in the middle of the opposite wall throws in white light from outside. Next to a black microwave, I can make out a coffee maker. Steve walks towards it, getting two cups with sayings I cannot read from where I am standing out of a high shelf.

»Well, I hope you are not disappointed I got no sunglasses or black suit or clipboard.« I lean against the bar, the star warm in the hole between my two collarbones.

»Why would you need that?« he smiles amused, pushing one of the numerous buttons on the machine and facing me after. He now leans on the opposite bar.

»Isn't that what you were expecting? Someone cool and secretive and professional, like a profiler of the CIA or something?«

»We got someone like that. Your professor is intimidating.«

»I'd rather call it a little bitterness with personal problems.«

At that, Steve raises an eyebrow, but I bite my tongue to not explain my theory further. Namely, Misses Scott being that awful to everyone and everything due to her lack of time in bed with her husband. Dissatisfaction drives people mad.

»What got you into psychology?«

Happy about the change of subject, I respond immediately. »I'm fascinated in people and their way of living. What circumstances cause a human being to result in the one he is? Could one, perhaps, create stereotypes out of it or not influence it at all, perhaps in cause of a character developing from genes, not from environment? I started with questions like this, but the more time passed, the further I got into the psyche of criminals. Why would someone hurt, abuse, rape or even kill another person? How does the brain work, process this? Are there any stereotypes?«

He takes his time to answer, handing me the steaming hot chocolate in the meantime. »I, personally, think it is both. People can have bad genes, like narcissism, and be susceptible for becoming like their ancestor. But I do think as well that it is the environment that causes the biggest impact.«

I hold up the cup in a quick but cautious move, giving him my thanks non-verbally. »That is exactly what I am thinking, but how to prove it? And how to prove others wrong? I'm only in the studies since spring, but it still amazes me.«

»That's how it should be.« He got himself a hot drink, and now walks towards the door, followed by me.

»What about you? What did you want to become, or do you want to become, if it wasn't for all that hero stuff?«

He chuckles quietly about the curious questions of mine. »Is this part of the evaluating already?«

»Depends on what's incoming, I'd say.«

Walking along the long corridor again, now along the curve it takes, he looks up at the ceiling before answering. »I don't know, I guess. I actually started to study fine arts, writing and drawing comic books. Perhaps I would have become an artist, as a drawer or an author, in one way or the other.«