Chapter Text
After three years of working for Rogers and Barnes, you’ve established a routine. You’ve become the one that people rely on to keep the trains moving. Where did that file go? Oh, it’s off-site, when do you need it by? Who was that one intern with the bangs? That was Cindy, she moved to the next state over. Was the Rumslow case in 2017 or– oh, 2019, you’re right.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but you are the knowledge library, encyclopedia, and archivist for the institutional memory of RB. You’ve only been here for three years of its five-year history, but the previous legal secretary was meticulous in preserving documents and files. You’ve been able to fill in some gaps in your history from his records.
RB has been good to you. No, they’ve been great to you. They pay you a fair salary, with a nice bonus at the end of the year. They give you all the time off you need with no questions asked, not that you usually take much off unless it’s an emergency. You’ve been loyal to them for three years, and they’ve shown their appreciation.
You have no idea that in the same month you’re going to lose one of your best friends, your boyfriend, your job, and your home.
Well, you’ve had a feeling about Nick for a while, to be honest. You two have been dating for the last three years or so, living together for the last two, but the both of you have been slowly drifting apart over the last year. His hobbies and interests have grown away from yours. You’re more focused on your career than he is. There’s nothing wrong with Nick, you don’t dislike him, it’s just been convenient to be with him. Well, it’s more that it would be a logistical nightmare to untangle yourselves from each other, especially with six months left on your shared lease.
But for right now, you’re blissfully unaware.
You pick up the fancy drinks for the two partners from their favorite little local place called Cafe Au Lait. You have their orders memorized: Steve has a doppio (or cold brew if the outside temperature is over 78°F), James has the signature cafe au lait. It’s gotten to the point where the baristas just see you walk in and start making the drinks.
The coffee shop is on the other end of the block where the office sits. It’s a mid-rise building that the partners rent half a floor of, nothing too fancy. Just standard boutique law firm fancy.
You reflexively skip the one step into the building that you found out the hard way has a crack just wide enough for you to get this pair of heels stuck in. You balance the coffee in the caddy Mr. Rogers brought into the office one day because “It’s bad enough I’m a lawyer, I don’t need to kill the planet, too” when he realized how many of those trays end up in the recycling bin at the end of the week.
The caddy is particularly useful for when you fish your badge out of your jacket pocket and pass through the security gate. You say hello to Carson, the head of security, and he greets you with a nod. Ex-military. He doesn’t just show it, his body screams it. You still smile at him every day, pressing the button for floor 9 so precisely you don’t even need to look.
You have everything down to a science. Well, sort of. You add in a five minute buffer in either direction, because sometimes the train is… well, the train, other times one of the other businesses in the building has a bunch of people coming on-site that clogs up the security line, or there’s a busy day at the coffee shop.
Regardless, you typically arrive between 8:04 and 8:17 AM. You’re almost always there before your bosses, and that’s how you like it. Taking a few minutes, alone in the office at the beginning of the day, helps you transition from private life to work life.
Well, the other thing is you really don’t like it when they’ve slept in the office overnight working on a case. After an unfortunate incident with you throwing coffee at Mr. Barnes when he was suddenly behind you unexpectedly after such an incident, they’ve learned to at least leave you a note. At least it was iced coffee.
Technically, you’re only the legal secretary to Mr. Rogers. There are two other legal secretaries that work down the hall from you who handle the remaining eight associates. You’ll cover each other’s lunch or occasionally fill in when sick, but you all know good and well that they can’t fill in for you permanently.
That being said, the other legal secretaries and administrative assistants that Messrs. Rogers or Barnes employ to work directly for them don’t last as long as you do. They keep trying, in an attempt to give you some kind of relief from basically doing enough to fill the job of two people, but it rarely works out. The shortest record is six weeks, the longest record is nine months.
It’s not that they’re bad bosses, not at all. But the work can be intense, complex, and frankly– you kind of don’t have much time to train them. They kind of get thrown in because you only have two hands and eight hours in a day.
Besides, it’s a lot of work to even find someone. You filter through the list of resumes first, interview the ones that seem promising, and then the very small number that actually impress you go through either of your bosses.
You even do this process regarding law students applying for internships at this boutique firm. Mr. Rogers asked you for help one day when he was swamped, and you gradually took the whole process over.
There’s a more informal process when potential associates or paralegals are interviewed. They always ask your thoughts on the candidates afterward and they’ve never hired anyone who was rude to you or you didn’t like.
You’re less picky with the other admins because if you were, you would be the legal secretary for everyone in the company. They tend to leave after about a year, anyways. You can handle Messrs. Rogers and Barnes, but you’d go crazy if you had to handle ten different attorneys.
The interns usually turn out okay. The permanent employees have all been wonderful, at least to you. The ones you try to bring on to help you in particular, though, always seem to forget the details.
When you receive a call from a particular number whose caller ID reads as M. Carter, you know it’s his wife, and to forward it straight to Mr. Rogers. You can spot a legal courier on sight and usually guess which files for which case they’ll be handing over. When Mr. Barnes is frustrated, you know he paces the main hallways through the practice, right past your desk, and you know not to bother him.
These are just small examples of how you’re engrained in this office, and trying to bring someone else in sort of throws everything else off.
You hold a lot of power in this office, in your own way. You make preliminary hiring decisions with interns and permanent employees alike, you keep the partners (and everyone else, when you have time) fed and watered and happy, you make sure they have everything they need professionally, you make sure they know when they’re going to court, and you provide the right documents and the right answers at the right times.
You love your job.
The computer makes a familiar sound when you boot it up. You move through the office, opening up blinds, turning on the printer, turning lights on, and by the time you return to your desk, your computer is ready for you.
You’re reviewing the emails– only about fifty this morning, fantastic– in the general inbox and referring to calendars when you hear the door open.
“Good morning, Mr. Rogers,” you say before you look up.
“Close.”
You’re a bit startled when you look up and there’s Mr. Barnes, looking amused. Usually it’s Mr. Rogers who arrives first, especially this early.
But Mr. Barnes is there, and he’s ambling toward you leisurely. Once in front of your desk, he picks up the coffee cup with his name on it. You always have them in the same spots, names facing outward, but he still looks every time.
“Oh– I’m sorry, Mr. Barnes, usually it’s–”
“No problem.” He’s looking at you with a slightly cocked head and a faint smile on his face. “I’m not usually the early riser compared to Steve.”
You recognize the suit he’s wearing as a meeting clients but not going to court suit, and your eyes flicker to his calendar to confirm that.
Odd. He doesn’t have any in-person client meetings today.
“Thanks for the coffee. Do they know you by name at Cafe Au Lait by now?” he asks, bringing the cup to his lips.
“On sight,” you admit with a little embarrassed smile. “I went there to meet a friend last Saturday, and the baristas just started making your drinks. I had to rush up to them and tell them it's just me today.”
Mr. Barnes chuckles a little, a rumbling sound.
“You know… it’s been three years, hasn’t it?” he asks, frowning like he’s trying to work out a way to spin a bad development in one of his cases. “You don’t need to call me Mr. Barnes. You can call me Bucky. Or James, if you prefer.”
You smile, trying to keep the shyness and the embarrassment out of it. You’ve had multiple variations on this conversation with both the partners and the associates over the last three years. You’ve never been able to give yourself permission; it’s a professional boundary you don’t want to cross. Occasionally you’ll refer to your bosses in your own mind by their first names, but mostly around their coffee orders or if you pick something up for them.
“I appreciate that, but if I start calling you by your first name, I’ll accidentally refer to you by your first name on the phone. It seems unprofessional to do that.”
You regularly use this excuse, because saying I want to keep it professional and continue to call you by your last name tends to put people off. You’ve dealt with a similar response enough through their clients; it hasn’t happened often, but you’ve been hit on a few times, and polite professionalism usually gets them to back off.
Mr. Barnes gives you a look that, if you didn’t know any better, you would think is a pleading sort of puppy-like look.
“You’ve been saying that for three years. Aren’t you sick of calling me Mr. Barnes? It makes me feel like an old man, and I’m not that much older than you.”
“You’re not an old man to me,” you say reassuringly. “I’ll make sure to schedule your next skydiving lesson after your next ping-pong tournament.”
That gets another chuckle out of Mr. Barnes.
“So that was your weekend?” he asks, having another sip of his cafe au lait.
“That’s every weekend,” you joke.
Mr. Barnes is about to respond when the front door opens and in strides Mr. Rogers. You smile warmly.
“Good morning, Mr. Rogers.”
“Morning. Oh, hey, Buck.” Mr. Rogers picks up his coffee and looks at Mr. Barnes, a little surprised. You’re not sure where the nickname Bucky came from, but it’s one that Mr. Rogers uses nearly exclusively.
You can already tell he's in a bad mood just from his body language.
“Hey, Steve. Just talking to the patron saint of Rogers and Barnes.” He nods a little to you. “We were talking about how she goes skydiving and ping-ponging all weekend.”
Mr. Rogers raises his eyebrows.
“It’s a joke,” you say, feeling your cheeks heat up. “But, um, speaking of the weekend, we have an email here from Mr. Fury that came in early Sunday morning about the hearing tomorrow for Mr. Pierce.”
Steve sighs and takes a big gulp of his coffee. Judging by the coffee stain on his pocket square, this is his second of the day. It’s barely 8:30. He’s already stressed.
“Alright. Could you clear my calendar for this morning, please? I have to draft some papers.”
“Yes, sir,” you nod, looking up at him as you take your pen and make a single line through the hourly planner you always have open next to you, scrawling an S beside it. “And what level are we talking about for interruption, sir?”
“Red. Unless there’s a natural disaster or a police raid, I don’t want to be disturbed.”
“Yes, sir.” You nod politely. Steve lifts his coffee a little in a cheers motion, then turns and disappears down the hall. The door to his office shuts firmly, and you frown, looking at where he just left.
“Oh, don’t worry about him. He’s just having a rough time with Peggy.”
Mr. Barnes gets a particular sort of look on his face when he says Mrs. Rogers’ name. It’s not a look of dislike. It’s also not your business to interpret those looks.
“Of course, Mr. Barnes. Is there anything pressing I can help with now, or anything else you need from me today?” you ask, picking your pen up and waiting.
Mr. Barnes gets another odd look on his face but he shakes his head slightly and has another sip of his coffee.
“No… no. That’s alright. Thanks.” He nods once, a bit brusquely. “Have a good morning.”
Bucky is in a bit of a bad mood when he shuts the door to his office.
It’s just a few small things. He woke up this morning to Alpine screeching like he’s in heat, even though he’s a male cat who’s definitely fixed. Because he couldn’t get back to sleep, Bucky ended up just going down to his basement and getting a workout in.
But he had a bad workout this morning, punching the bag at a weird angle that ended up hurting his knuckles to the point where he’s babying his left hand, wondering if he has time today to go to an urgent care center.
Nah. He has too much shit to do.
Then the drive in somehow took longer, but he ended up at the office earlier. That’s even with having to drive three floors higher in the parking garage than usual, because nothing makes sense when he’s awoken so early.
Bucky can do long nights, a few hours of sleep, and early mornings just fine. It’s when all three of them work in tandem with one another that he gets grumpy.
Then throw in the fact that his best friend and practice partner has been slowly turning into a wreck over the last year as his marriage to Peggy really started crumbling. It’s been showing up at his work in subtle ways but ways that still concern Bucky.
Then there’s you.
He feels like he’s been treading water for the last three years. At first he thought he could make little bits of progress here and there, slowly chip away at your walls to win your affection. He thought it would be easy at first; you were initially only Steve’s secretary, since Peter was his legal secretary until he decided to go to law school. The plan was to hire two people, one for both him and Steve, but that backfired.
You had been working there for a week when Peter had some family issues– his uncle, who raised him, died– and took a lot of time off the summer before he started law school. You two might have only spent about ten or so days physically in the office together before Peter became consumed by NYU’s School of Law.
It’s then that you really blew them away.
God, how did you even make sense of Peter’s harebrained filing system? He was a great legal secretary but the kid was a little rough around the edges, especially near the end, being so distracted. He did everything pretty well, excellent in a few things, and was mediocre in just two: figuring out when to let someone speak with them on short notice, and filing things in a way that could make sense to anyone else.
But you? You were seamless. You smoothed out the rough edges left behind by Peter within weeks. Things ran so smoothly that Bucky found himself with a whole extra hour in the day on his hands. He was amazed by how much time you freed up for him by not having to talk to Peter about something, or run around looking for something else.
It’s about at month three that he started really becoming interested in you. There’s something about a pretty, competent woman… especially one he spends eight hours a day sitting only a hall and a room away from. He thought you were pretty and pleasant when he met you, but that’s where that ended.
Now, though…
If Bucky moves his chair about six inches to the right, he can get a glimpse of you if his door is open. Well, when you’re sitting at the desk, anyways. You keep the landline within arms reach as you bustle about the office, and he hears your cheerful voice greeting Hello, you’ve reached the law office of Rogers and Barnes, how can I help you today? periodically.
He hears you water the plants. He hears you tidying the kitchen. He hears you putting in work orders with the building. He watches as you pass his door with a file in your arm. You always politely keep your eyes forward as you pass his office.
Oh, he gets real work done, too, of course… but there are times when Bucky’s so stressed out he has to find you. He doesn’t necessarily talk to you, but he takes walks through the halls. You call it pacing, but you know not to bother him. If he needs you, he’ll say something.
God damn, you are a good secretary.
It is the sole reason that Bucky hasn’t made a move on you yet, because heaven knows he wants to. He seriously considered it somewhere around month six– but then he overheard you mentioning moving in with your partner, and that put a damper on things.
Well, for a while. He tried, at least. His attraction to you has been really growing over the last year. Maybe he’s just getting older and looking to settle down (dating is terrible and he’s too busy anyways) and find someone to take care of.
Bucky’s always wanted the nuclear family. Wife, kids, white picket fence and all. Well, maybe not the fence. Bucky is a Brooklyn boy, born and bred, and his Greystone in Cobble Hill is big enough for a family. There’s even a yard big enough for a dog to run around, not that Alpine would ever approve of another furry creature in the house.
So Bucky’s been seriously considering making it a little more obvious he’s flirting with you.
He’ll have his chance shortly.