Attachment Theory - Bucky BarnesxOC

Part 25: just know that if you hide, it doesn't go away

The rest of dinner goes by without any really big hiccups. She and Steve seem to get back on good terms, for everyone's sake. She wants to like him. Alice wants to like everybody. It's her one big weakness, because some people don't deserve to be liked. But she knows Steve was Bucky's best friend, and she knows he's trying. So far, she thinks she's doing an okay job accepting all of this. She's trying to lean into it. Dating a super soldier-slash former brainwashed assassin and having pizza with Captain America and a guy who can literally fly. They start to relax around each other more and more. Steve laughs at a few of her jokes and doesn't bring up her occupation. Bucky eats in silence, mostly staring at Alice and holding her hand, watching her talk and tell jokes. He grins at a few of them and listens intently when she speaks.

"Where'd you grow up?" Steve asks her.

"Vegas. Lived there my whole life."

"I always wondered what that would be like to be a kid there," Sam says. "Was it just total chaos all the time?"

She shrugs.

"It was mostly boring. You can't really do anything on the strip. You just kind of get used to the fact that once you turn 21, the place kind of sucks. We made our own fun, though."

"Oh yeah?" Sam asks with a smirk.

She giggles.

"Yeah. When I was a teenager, this guy I used to date did drag racing, so I'd go to this track just outside of town and watch him race."

"Did he win much?" Steve asks.

"No, he sucked," Alice replies.

Steve laughs loudly, throwing his head back and Alice beams.

"Are your folks still there?" He asks.

She shakes her head. She really doesn't like to talk about her parents. The divorce was so messy and they were so unhappy for so long. The house was mostly chaos before they finally decided to call it quits. It's nice to finally see her mom free and living the life she's always wanted to live.

"My mom moved to Santa Cruz a couple of months ago. She still hasn't sold the house in Vegas so she flies back and forth, and my dad lives in Sicily, with his twenty-year-old wife. I doubt that's gonna last long, but my dad's always been ambitious in the age gap department. He and my mom are 15 years apart. They got married when she was 20 and he was 35."

Sam chokes on his beer while Steve looks around, confused.

"That was pretty normal when Buck and I were growing up. You settled down young." He takes a deep breath and looks slightly uncomfortable. "Too young sometimes."

"That may be so," Alice replies. "But see how weird you just got about it? Things have changed. Those are huge power dynamics."

Sam and Steve nod in agreement. Sam points at Alice with his beer bottle.

"She's right."

Bucky looks at her, his brow knit together the same way it is when he's trying to work something out.

"But we're..."

Alice puts her hand on his shoulder and leans into him.

"That's a little different," she laughs. 

She's fully aware of the irony of that statement considering she's a 27-year-old dating a 97-year-old man. But physically, he's in his late twenties or early thirties, and she's a fully grown adult.

And Bucky's not a creep. Besides, where's he supposed to look for romantic companionship? A nursing home? Everyone would ask him why he was there and when he said he was born in 1917, they'd have him committed. Immediately.