Work Text:
“Ah, you wish to consult with Madame Mirabelle?”
The stunning redhead lounging outside the tent draped with exotic fabrics smirks at Bucky, her arms crossed.
He smirks back. “Zdravstvi, Natalya. Is that who’s inside?”
She raises her eyebrows in that patented Natasha-Romanova-thinks-you’re-a-complete-idiot manner, then glances pointedly at the prominent poster board on the other side of the tent entrance, which says in large, fancy letters
MADAME MIRABELLE
Commune with the spirits
Find out your future
“Ah,” says Bucky. And then thinks, why not? He’s having a much better time than he thought he would at tonight’s charity fun fair on the football field. He’s already gone through the fun house, tested his strength on the high striker, at which he was embarrassingly mediocre, unlike his jacked friend Thor, and tried the shooting range to hit some ducks, at which he was excellent. He won a stuffed bear and gave it to his friend Wanda.
It wasn’t quite as big as the bear Clint won at the same game, but still.
“<Of course I want to consult with the great Madame,>” he goes on in Russian.
Now she rolls her eyes at his lazy accent; she knows he’s fluent and that his mother’s family defected from Voronezh when she was a girl.
“<Two dollars, дурак,>” Nat says, testy, and holds out her hand.
Bucky grins. The minor annoyances he foists on his friend are small but real joys in his life. He hands over the money and sidles into the tent.
It’s dark and a little stuffy, and the musky smell inside is a combination of incense and lightly sweating human. Which isn’t unpleasant, not at all; in fact, Bucky briefly but weirdly imagines burying his nose in the person’s neck and reveling in that scent.
Controlling himself like a civilized person, he takes a few steps forward.
“Ah my child, welcome,” says the person across the table from him. There’s a light on the table, but it’s dim and they’re in shadow. The accent is some ludicrous combination of Dracula and Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins, but the voice is deliciously deep and resonant. Bucky thinks he could drown in it.
He also thinks the fortune teller’s name should be Monsieur Mirabeau, but who is he to judge? He’s gonna go with it.
“Hello, Madame,” he says, flashing the shadowed figure a lazy smile.
Madame clears ‘her’ throat. “Please sit down, my child. You’re here for your fortune, yes? You want to know what the spirits tell you about your future?”
Bucky sits. “Yes please, Madame. I want to know everything that’s going to happen to me. Will I go on a long journey? Will I meet a handsome stranger? Will I pass my Organic Chem test next Thursday?”
The fortune teller shakes her head and makes a disappointed but attractive tsking noise.
“Be careful, young man,” she says. “The spirits become displeased when doubt or mock them.”
“Sorry, Madame. Sorry, spirits,” Bucky says, faux-chastened. “I’ll behave.”
“Good,” says Madame. “Now then.” She leans forward into the light and Bucky catches a glimpse of ocean-blue eyes between a headscarf and a veil covering the bottom half of her face. He thinks he’s seen those eyes before, but he has no time to consider them before Madame pulls a black cloth off a crystal ball with a flourish.
“Spirits, can you hear me?” Those blue eyes close. Surprisingly large, bony hands make dramatic gestures around the ball.
It’s all very cheesy, and yet Bucky is startled when, ten seconds later, pinpricks of colored light gleam from the center of the crystal.
“Spirits! Tell us what you see in this gorgeous young man’s future.” The lights dance around impressively inside the ball, as if communicating something. “What’s that?” Madame says, leaning closer. “Ah, I see.”
“What?” The word is forced out of Bucky’s mouth. Of course this is all bullshit, and yet he really wants to know what Madame will say.
“You will go on a journey later this spring, somewhere across the ocean,” the fortune teller pronounces, eyes glittering in the lights.
Bucky shrugs. It happens to be true; he’s going to visit his cousins in Paris at the end of the semester before he starts his internship at Stark Industries. But anyone could guess that. Lots of people travel all the time.
“Yeah?” he says.
“And you will pass that Organic Chemistry test next week,” Madame goes on. “But the spirits tell me you should beware of easy questions.”
Now Bucky’s grinning. Dr. Banner is a great professor, but he does tend to sprinkle his exams with deceptively simple “gotcha” problems just to make sure his students are paying attention.
“Good to know,” he replies.
“As for whether you will meet a handsome stranger…” Madame waves her hands over the crystal again, but the lights dim and go out. “Ah, I see,” she says. “We must find this out a different way.”
Madame holds out her large paw. There’s some dried cobalt blue paint on a couple of fingernails. “Give me your hand,” she insists. Bucky hesitates, but extends his left hand onto the table, under the lamp. She grabs it, spreads his fingers wide, leans forward further to examine his palm.
“Good news,” Madame says after ten or fifteen seconds. “The love line is strong and true. The spirits tell me you have met this handsome stranger already. You will go on a date with him very soon.”
She traces the line on his palm. Bucky’s breath catches a little in his throat.
“I will, huh?” he says, a little breathless. “How will I know how to get in touch with him to set up this date?”
“You will receive a sign.” Madame stops tracing, runs her fingers over Bucky’s, curls Bucky’s hand into hers. Her hand is warm and dry, with slight calluses on the fingers and palm.
Bucky closes his eyes for a moment. When he opens them, Madame is staring at him intently. “The spirits tell me this sign will be very obvious,” she says, leaning forward a little more. “You will not have to look for it.”
Her accent wavers even further, and Bucky can hear the Brooklyn in it. In the light of the lamp, Madame’s veil has gone translucent, and he can just see the outline of a slightly crooked nose and full pink lips.
Now the face looks even more familiar. Where has he seen it? His mind flashes back to an Art History class he took for his Gen Ed requirements last semester, mooning from across the lecture hall at that face and an unruly mop of blond hair on top of a small, wiry body and those lips, frowning as the owner asked a question.
But he can’t remember his name. Something normal. Tom? Scott? Jason?
Before he can say anything else, he feels another hand clasp over his, something small slipped into his palm. He closes his fist and Madame squeezes it.
“The spirits have spoken and now they have departed,” she pronounces. Now it’s Brooklyn mixed with the Count from Sesame Street. “The session is over.”
She lets go of his hand and leans back, her face once more in shadow.
“Thank you, Madame,” says Bucky softly, with no hint of teasing. He stands up and quickly leaves the tent.
“How was it?” Natasha asks lightly as he’s adjusting his eyes to the bright lights of the field. “Didja get a good fortune?”
Bucky smiles, casual, even as his heart is beating faster than usual. “Yeah, it was pretty good,” he answers. “Gonna pass that chem test next week.”
“That’s boring,” Nat huffs. “Anything else?”
“Nah.” He gives her a sloppy salute and heads off behind the ring toss before he dares to open his hand. There, folded over a few times, is a small note, written in beautiful cursive.
Steve Rogers
718/555-0704