5. life together

                                    

                                          
She liked everything about Bucky's house, the way the light hit the windows and the wooden floor. The cozy couch in the living room, the big counter in the kitchen, the spacious bedroom she now had decorated with some of her posters and pictures. She loved how Alpine would crawl onto her bed in the morning and snuggle on her legs. 
The strong perfume of the lilies in the front garden, following her from the moment she stepped outside and accompanying her throughout the days spent at the pet shop. 
The job was exactly what she expected it to be, hard, long hours and underpaid. But she didn't really care, it was enough to pay her share of the rent and to help out with the shopping. 
She would spend all her breaks either playing with Goose or some of the other animals in the shop, occasionally with Maria, on the days she'd come in to help. 
Maria would tell Natalie about her friends, her plans for after graduation and her life. She won a scholarship at MIT for Aerospace Engineering and only occasionally came back to New York to help out and see her dad. She was a nerd, and Natalie absolutely loved it. She was so cool and clever and she had thousands of stories to tell. She had this amazing ability of hypnotizing people. Every time a client would come and speak to her, Natalie could literally see them zone out of reality while listening to her, almost in a trance. Maria would also tell Natalie about her dad and Bucky. 
He wasn't at all what she expected when she first saw him on that bus. Maria said he worked as a military advisor, a sort of consultant the army would call to help in delicate or complicated missions. His work as a combat advisor also included occasionally supervising and helping with military training. 
Probably why he works out so much. 
There was an entire room in the house dedicated to weights and all sorts of gym equipment. He would mostly work out early in the morning or very late in the evening, when Natalie had already gone to bed and she couldn't hear the weights hitting the floor. 
The job explained the very expensive car and the nice flat, but it didn't quite match with the rough look he had. You wouldn't picture a soldier, much less a Sergeant, with a constant stubble on his chin and long often messy hair. 
The first few weeks of living together were... unreal. The days went by as smoothly as silk, calm and peaceful. To Natalie it felt so strange and unfamiliar being able to have something like this, good and serene. It was almost healing, and to her joy and deepest sadness, she missed her home a bit less every day. Of course, not counting her mom. She still missed her mom every day. 
They learned each other's routines and got used to the other's presence pretty easily. Bucky woke up every morning around six o'clock. Like a damn sociopath.
He went downstairs and worked out, he then would take a shower and find Natalie in the kitchen making breakfast. They would eat together, play with Alpine and chat about their plans for the day, Natalie would then go to take a shower and dress up for work. 
In the first week Bucky offered to give her a lift to work every single day and she declined every single day, determined to take the bus instead. After that first week he gave up. He figured there was no point in pushing it, with how stubborn she was he could have asked her every day for months and she still would have said no every time. 
Not that it mattered to him if she took the bus or not, he just really wanted to be seen around with her. Or actually, he wanted people to see her with him. Dropping to work a babe like that was kind of a big flex. 
Their respective days would go on, Bucky sometimes worked from home or sometimes had to sprint out unexpectedly, he had to be always ready to leave the house in case they needed him. In the evening they would meet again for dinner at the house. To Natalie's surprise, Bucky not only loved cooking but was actually a really good cook. He loved anything European, from French cuisine to eastern dishes. His favorite part of the meal was the dessert though. Anything with fruit in it. When he didn't cook or was the last to come home, Natalie would whip something up or get take out.