Chapter Text
Bucky Barnes likes to call 2016 “The Year of What the Fuck,” which, of course, generates a variety of responses from his friends.
Tony insists that humor is a healthy coping mechanism (he whispers it, of course, when Pepper’s done giving Bucky a I don’t approve of your glib attitude but I’m too kind-hearted to tell you how upsetting your glib attitude is look), and Clint insists that Bucky isn’t putting enough expletives in the title to begin with - and Steve will look sad around the edges before wrapping Bucky up in a beefy armed hug and kissing the side of his head, murmuring promises that 2017 is going to be a much better year.
And it is better.
The bar is admittedly low, because it’d be pretty damn hard for 2017 to be shittier than 2016, as long as Bucky avoids: being kidnapped by his shitty ex-boyfriend and a coterie of Nazi fuckwads; being experimented on by said ex-boyfriend and Nazi fuckwards; developing unwanted superpowers; breaking up with the love of his life over an unintentional but harrowing betrayal; having his superpowers exposed in a global social media clusterfuck; and, reuniting with the love of his life only to have him be captured and drained of his superpowers and superhealth (albeit temporarily).
Yeah, so, 2017 generally avoids that level of fuckery for the first part of the year. The year is going pretty well, honestly, and Bucky’s more than happy to get his hopes up about the second half of the year. After all, he’s engaged to the love of his life, the love of his life has retired from his exhausting job in the public eye, and they’ve settled down into a life of domesticity that makes friends who shall remain unnamed (but typically respond to the name Hawkeye and the promise of food) mutter under their breath about them being disgustingly sweet in front of his salad.
The first six months of 2017 really knock it out of the park, in terms of a lack of threat to Bucky’s safety and happiness, but then of course, things start happening again.
Bucky really hates things .
It all starts back up again when it begins to rain sideways.
“Babe?” Bucky rubs a hand over his tired eyes and squints out the window. “...Is it raining sideways?”
“Huh?”
There’s a thud behind him, and Bucky turns around, hand already on his hip, to scowl at his fiance.
“I told you to let me help with that!”
Steve doesn’t look the least bit guilty as he pats the back of the mid-century sofa he just hauled into the common area.
“This thing’s built to last, Buck, don’t worry about it.”
“Our floors aren’t as sturdy as the couch!” Bucky fusses, already stooping down to squint at the hardwood.
Sure enough, scuff marks. Bucky doesn’t say a word, just points at them and glowers up at Steve, the power of his glare lost when the corners of his lips quirk up at the expression Steve’s wearing.
It’s just so … soft. Asshole.
“What?” Bucky pulls the sleeve of his sweater over his hand and paws at his chin. “Do I got somethin’ on my face?”
“Yeah.” Steve rests his elbows on the back of the sofa and smiles down at him dreamily. “Whole lotta handsome.”
“Sap.” Bucky shakes his head and stands up straight again, back to frowning. “The floor, Rogers. The floor! We just moved in, and we’re already losing the security deposit.”
Steve squints down at the spot Bucky had indicated and shrugs serenely. “It’ll buff out.”
“It’ll--” Bucky scoffs before Steve comes around the front of the sofa. He frowns at him suspiciously. “What are you doin’, Rogers?”
“Can’t I give my best guy a kiss?” Steve’s already smiling like he won, so of course Bucky takes two steps back.
“Depends on what you do after you give me a kiss.” Bucky really can’t even pretend to frown anymore, and his smile leaks into his scolding tone, softening it into something else entirely. “Last time you just wanted a kiss, you put paint in my hair.”
“You looked cute,” Steve insists, following Bucky across the floor.
Bucky smirks and walks backward until he bumps up against the wall next to the window, the humidity of the day leaking through. He lets Steve stand in front of him, tries not to lean up into Steve’s warmth - he’s like the fucking sun, Bucky swears, even on the dreariest day in June - watches as Steve puts his arm up on the wall over Bucky’s head so he’s leaning down even more into Bucky’s space. He gets lost in Steve’s eyes for an amount of time that could be embarrassing, and would be embarrassing if not for the way Steve’s pupils win out over the blue, if not for the way Steve’s cheeks tint with a bright pink, if not for the way Steve’s so obviously staring at him too.
“Thought you were gonna give me a kiss?” Bucky asks, his voice hoarser than is particularly dignified.
“‘M gettin’ there,” Steve mutters, his eyes trailing a path along Bucky’s face, and then down his body, his expression more than appreciative.
“Yeah?” Bucky doesn’t want to squirm, but he’s sure he does because Steve lets out a laugh that’s all air, and it’s like all the air’s gone from the room in response. “When d’you think you’ll get there?”
“Eventually.” Steve ducks his head down, and Bucky sucks in a breath, but Steve just noses his temple, along his jaw, ending at his neck and pulling away before he puts his lips on heated skin. “Let me take my time with you, babydoll.”
“Steve,” Bucky hisses, and hissing is much tougher than whining, yep, he’s sticking with it.
He can’t excuse the way he tilts his hips forward, or the noise he makes in his throat when Steve uses the hand not propped up on the wall to grip his hip with a dark chuckle, squeezing with a kind of pressure that makes the room even hotter than it was a minute ago.
“Do you think your dastardly plan’s going to make me forget that you banged up our floor?”
“Dastardly?” Bucky can hear Steve’s grin, even as he skims his nose along Bucky’s shoulder with a painful slowness that’s starting to feel damn near cruel. “You think I’m gonna have my wicked way with you?”
“I’m thinking you better,” Bucky grumbles, gripping Steve’s back and trying to pull him in.
Normally, getting Steve to do something is like pulling a stubborn ox with a fear of heights up a mountain, but he steps in easily enough, and Bucky tries to turn his head to entice Steve into giving him that kiss (because it’s been long enough, damnit, and if they’re not going to unpack their shit, they might as well make out).
Steve pauses a second later, and Bucky’s about to give him grief when his fiance hums thoughtfully.
“I think it is raining sideways.”
Bucky twists away from the wall to look out the window, and Steve takes half a step backwards to accommodate him; the rain is definitely lashing at the glass sideways, and the people down below look as confused as Bucky feels.
“What do you think that’s about?” Bucky asks, frowning up at Steve.
“No idea.” Steve shrugs and then crowds into Bucky’s space again, his eyes drowsy with something that makes Bucky’s gut tighten. “I got more important questions on my mind.”
“Questions like…?”
“Like, would my gorgeous, wonderful fiance mind it so much if I made love to him on a mattress that doesn’t have sheets on it yet?”
Bucky smirks if only to cover up how very interesting he finds that idea. “Is that a promise?”
Steve’s laughing when he grips Bucky by the back of his thighs and lifts him up; he’s not laughing when Bucky wraps his legs around his waist and kisses him (because he’s waited long enough, damnit) as they stumble backwards for the bedroom.
Bucky doesn’t care when Steve accidentally bumps him into a wall, and he bites Steve’s neck with an admitted lack of gentleness when Steve won’t stop fussing about potential concussions; but, he can’t stop his natural snark from leaking out when they finally make it to the edge of the mattress, which had been dumped unceremoniously onto the floor of the bedroom earlier that day by an exhausted Clint and Sam.
“I swear, Rogers, if you drop me like I’m the fucking sofa, there will be consequences.”
Steve pulls away to look at Bucky with a serious expression that makes Bucky’s throat go dry. “I’d never drop you.”
The promise inside it feels heavier than the moment has so far, but when Steve kisses him a second later, it twists back into a familiar playfulness; Steve lowers Bucky with an exaggerated level of caution, and he presses him into the mattress with a slow roll of his hips that suggests that he might be taking things at a pace that doesn’t involve getting his dick into Bucky with an agreeable speed.
Bucky tugs Steve’s t-shirt free from his jeans, muttering about who tucks their shirt in when it’s ninety fuckin’ degrees, and skates his hands over the firm planes of Steve’s stomach, marveling at the muscles which have returned with Steve’s strength.
Honestly, Bucky would love Steve no matter what his body looked like, and as awful as those months were when Steve was sick again, he can’t help but notice that now Steve believes Bucky when he says as much, when he never had before.
Steve runs his hands through Bucky’s hair, which is down for once, and near-curly in the day’s humidity, and Bucky hums and tilts his hips up appreciatively when Steve’s blunt nails scratch at his scalp.
“Get this off,” Bucky orders, tugging at Steve’s shirt and biting his bottom lip.
If there was any blue left in Steve’s eyes, it’s gone now as Steve growls in response, kneels upright, and yanks his shirt off by the back of his collar; his massive hands move to his belt buckle for good measure and pull it free of the loops in his jeans. Bucky scrambles to sit up to help unbutton his pants, and Steve pulls Bucky’s shirt over his head with only a bit of difficulty when it catches briefly.
They’ve done this hundreds of times, Bucky thinks dizzily as they fall back to the mattress, his fingernails leaving marks that will quickly fade on Steve’s back, hundreds of times, but with Steve’s hands on his body and his insistent kissing, it feels like that first time - and wasn’t it a lifetime ago that Bucky let Steve in, that he let himself fall in love even though it sometimes felt like the beginning of a tragedy, that he let himself trust that he could have this one good thing - and it’s with a trust that’s only grown in the last year and a half that Bucky lifts his hips and lets Steve pull his shorts down, his clever fingers pulling his boxers down in the same movement.
He kicks his pants off before Steve’s on top of him again, his kisses greedy and stealing the breath from Bucky’s lungs, and Bucky gets as close as he can to free of any thoughts or anxiety when Steve’s fingers work him open with the help of the bottle of lube that’s so conveniently in the backpack discarded next to the mattress.
“Did you plan this?” Bucky asks with a laugh, his face a shade of red that Steve insists is beautiful.
“Nah.” Steve’s wearing that ridiculously fond expression again, the one that makes Bucky’s toes curl (and they curl again when Steve pushes inside him and starts to thrust with a determined sort of tenderness). “Nah, just luck.”
Bucky stares at the ceiling for half a beat and then lets his eyes slip shut when Steve buries his face in his neck and whispers, “So fuckin’ lucky, babydoll,” his hips rolling to accent every other word, “So lucky-”
Tears slide hot and unexpected from his eyes, and Bucky’s breath catches in his throat, his hand tangling in Steve’s hair, which is darker and longer than it was when he carried the shield.
“Hey.” Steve kisses the tracks left by the tears, his tongue curling around Bucky’s earlobe to catch the last one, and Bucky’s breath hitches from the intimacy of it. “You okay?”
His thrusts slow to the point of stopping when he asks, and Bucky locks his legs around Steve’s waist, digging his heels into his ass as much as he can while still being moderately polite.
“Don’t stop.” Bucky turns his head for a kiss, opening his eyes to smile up at Steve - whose expression softens even more when Bucky looks at him. His lips slide over Bucky’s as his hips start to roll forward again, this time with his cock striking up against the spot that makes sparks dance behind Bucky’s eyelids; into the kiss, Bucky whispers, “I’m just happy, Stevie. ‘M so happy.”
And a few seconds later, something warm drops onto Bucky’s jaw; when he reaches up, his fingertips brush over the wetness on Steve’s cheeks, the tears that are disappearing into his beard.
“I love you.” Steve doesn’t try to explain why he’s crying, and Bucky knows it’s for the same reason he is, but it carves him open anyway.
“I love you so much,” Bucky answers, tilting his hips up to meet Steve’s thrusts, a rough sound tearing from his throat when the new angle lets Steve in so much deeper.
They love each other - and isn’t that the biggest goddamned miracle of all, that they found each other, and love each other, and are allowed to have this. It’s overwhelming and humbling at the same time, and Bucky makes himself keep his eyes open so he can look at Steve while he fucks into him.
He strokes his hands over Steve’s face, smiling at the juxtaposing textures, the softness of his skin, the scratchy hairs of his beard, the slippery hot tears that still escape from his eyes now and then; Steve catches him by the left hand, the hand that wears a silver ring, and presses a kiss into the thin skin inside his wrist before letting go and reaching between their bodies to wrap his large, hot hand around Bucky’s cock.
“Nah.” Bucky swats at his hand affectionately and shakes his head. “Just wanna feel you.”
“I’m close,” Steve says with a laugh that’s sweetly embarrassed, his eyes red-rimmed and cheeks flushed. “Real close.”
“Don’t care.” Bucky leans up to kiss him, and Steve lets him go, but continues thrusting. “This is enough.”
Steve nods and ducks his head down, lowering himself onto Bucky as his thrusts pick up. Bucky keeps on hand on Steve’s shoulder and the other tangled in his hair, his legs splayed out now as dizzying pressure builds at the base of his spine as Steve’s thrusts grow desperate.
“I love you,” Steve chokes out, pressing his face into Bucky’s neck again. Bucky kisses Steve’s head, tries to kiss his shoulder, probably misses but doesn’t care because there isn’t anything in the world but Steve, Steve above him and inside him - “I love - Buck -”
There’s a longer pause than normal as Steve stays close to Bucky, his face pressed into his neck, breathing shaky. Bucky doesn’t care, just appreciates the way Steve feels inside him, and he pulls his hands through Steve’s hair some more, contentment winning out over his need for a release of his own.
With a groan, Steve pushes himself up and kisses Bucky senseless before sliding back on his knees, his cock slipping out of Bucky more than half-hard and still leaking - and after he drops down to press kisses into Bucky’s upper thighs, he wraps a hand around Bucky’s cock and looks up expectantly.
“May I?”
“Y-yeah,” Bucky exhales and then groans as Steve swallows him down, moving expertly, his hand covering what his mouth can’t, and it’s a very quick amount of time later that Bucky’s back is arching as he hisses something in a combination of Romanian and English.
“That sounded promising,” Steve drawls, wiping his mouth clean and leaving his head on Bucky’s hip. “Care to translate?”
“It means my fiance is trying to kill me, ” Bucky mutters, and Steve smiles up at him, his lips swollen and his fingers already stroking up and down his side playfully.
“That was only round one,” Steve muses.
“Nope.” Bucky grips Steve’s hand as it makes another pass below his waistline. “Not until we finish unpacking.”
“I accept that challenge.” Steve kisses the sharp ridge of Bucky’s hipbone firmly and leaps up from the mattress - he staggers to the side for a second before righting himself, and Bucky snorts a laugh at the sight of a naked Steve Rogers trying to walk on sex legs.
“That good, huh?” Bucky props his head up on his hand to smirk at him.
“The best,” Steve winks over his shoulder before ducking into the living room. “I’ll have this unpacked in less than an hour - time me!”
(Bucky does time him; and it takes him 64 minutes, something Bucky doesn’t let him forget, even when he’s collapsed on Steve’s chest, panting wildly after riding him for nearly half as long)
Every summer, Bucky tells himself that he’s going to get all his shit together for the school year and do it in style while also making time for improving his mental health, working on his summer bod, and killing it on social media. Every summer he tells himself this. Every. Summer.
So, it comes as no surprise that a random Thursday in June finds him lying with his head pointing towards the ground, feet up on the back of his sofa, trying to watch a Friends episode upside down while accepting a large bite of Rocky Road from Clint, who’s sprawled out on the floor next to him.
“Fuck.” Bucky splutters as he curls upright, his feet hooked hard on the back of the sofa, his abs barely feeling the strain as he hauls himself up.
“Can’t swallow upside down,” Clint declare with an annoying amount of I told you so built in.
He doesn’t even look away from the screen to tell Bucky this, and Bucky rolls his eyes as he coughs through a vicious brainfreeze.
“No, I cannot.” Bucky flattens himself down on the cushions, swinging his legs down to tuck under the tasteful throw pillows he bought from a Homegoods with Steve a few months ago. “You might want to sound less full of yourself.”
Clint offers him a one-shouldered shrug. “I tried to warn you.”
“Did you?” Bucky sits up enough to snag the carton of ice cream from Clint, ignoring his grunt of protest. “ Did you try to warn me?”
“I might have forgotten to…”
“Forgotten to what, buddy?”
“Forgotten to … say it out loud.” Clint shrugs again and tilts his head back onto the cushions, his mouth wide open.
Bucky shovels an appropriately disgusting amount of ice cream into his friend’s waiting mouth.
“Love ya, babe,” Clint says through a mouthful of dairy product.
Lucky hops up on the couch next to Bucky, and he has no choice but to offer a bite of ice cream to the big-eyed mutt.
“Your dog needs to stop eating human shit.” Bucky prods Clint on the back of the head and repeats the statement when Clint frowns, clearly having missed what he said.
“You fed my dog shit?”
“Never-ugh.” Bucky shakes his head and glances out the window. His frown turns thoughtful. “Do you think it’s ever going to stop raining?”
“I think, meteorologically speaking, it has to,” Clint offers, returning his attention to Ross and Rachel fighting on screen.
“Yeah, but it’s still raining wrong.” Bucky drops his head back down and huffs grumpily. “And I want to go to the beach.”
“We can go to the beach.”
“It’s raining, Clint.”
“So? You’re gonna get in the water anyway, aren’t you?” Clint throws his hands up affably, and what little light comes through the window catches on his wedding band, which he’s finally wearing regularly after two years of marriage (Nat, conversely, never wears hers, but she does wear an arrow necklace that speaks for itself).
“What about lightning?” Bucky asks, just to be contrary because he’s grumpy and stuck inside and he should be planning a wedding on top of all the other stuff he’s supposed to be doing on summer break, but instead he’s eating his weight in ice cream and watching sitcoms.
“We can ask Thor to turn that off.” Clint sounds much more confident than Bucky would expect, and it throws him slightly.
“...Thor can do that?”
“No harm in asking.”
“Huh.”
Bucky’s spared the potentially mortifying experience of calling Thor (does Thor even have a phone? He can’t remember) to ask him not to let him or Clint get smited on the beach when he hears the lock to the front door turn.
“Hey, babe!” Clint calls out, not even turning his head.
Bucky shoves his shoulder playfully. “That’s my line, jackass.”
“I got there first,” Clint says as Steve walks into the living room, arms full of paper bags from the farmers’ market, his hair and leather jacket wet from the rain, a sight good enough to make Bucky’s mouth go dry. “He’s my fiance now.”
“As if!” Bucky smiles up at Steve, who looks down at the two of them, sprawled out and thoroughly enjoying the laziness of a summer Thursday afternoon. “Stevie, tell him he’s wrong.”
“...Clint, what are your thoughts on The Bachelor?” Steve asks instead, ignoring the ferocious scowl he gets from Bucky.
“Don’t watch it. Never had the urge to watch it.” Clint shrugs.
“Alright.” Steve shifts a bag in his arms and grins down at Bucky, the smile making his eyes all crinkly - the effect of which is annoyingly adorable so Bucky can’t even get mad. “I’ll call the coordinator and let ‘em know that we gotta change all the invitations to say Steve Grant Rogers and Clinton Danger Barton will be getting married this December.”
“You think my middle name is Danger ?” Clint asks, hopping up on his knees with a delighted smile.
“You’re going to leave me for Clint ?” Bucky asks with slightly less enthusiasm and a lot more irritation.
“You told me it was?” Steve smiles politely at Clint, and Bucky really can’t tell if Steve is shitting them or not. “And, he doesn’t watch the Bachelor, you heard the man. It’s your one flaw, Buck. I can’t ever sit through another Nick. I can’t do it. Not again. I’m not … strong enough.”
“But Lindsay is a phenomenal Bachelorette!” Bucky splutters, for a moment legitimately insulted despite Steve’s attempt at using the Mr. Incredibles meme. “I caught you going through her twitter last night!”
“I am in the middle of a fight I don’t want to be in.” Clint lies back down on the floor and pats his stomach until Lucky jumps down on top of him. “I just want to get married and become Clint Danger Barton-Rogers.”
“Don’t you mean Clint Danger Barton-Rogers-Romanov?” Steve dumps a bag on the small end table and begins digging through it.
“Fair enough.” Clint waves an airy hand, seeming unbothered by the technicality.
“I’ll call the coordinator and let them know of the switch,” Bucky declares, pulling his Stark Tech phone out of his pocket and scrolling through his contacts. “I’m sure they’ll be delighted to hear it.”
“No!” Steve freezes, hand in the grocery bag, eyes wide with panic, and Bucky grins at him, phone already next to his ear. “No, that really can’t go well-”
“Pietro?” Bucky smiles evilly at Steve. “Pietro, dear, Steve is leaving me for Clint. Mhm. Yep. Wedding is still on - yes, that’s correct. Oh! And Clint says he really doesn’t like the color swatches you picked out--”
There’s a banging on the door which effectively cuts Bucky off; he lowers the phone while maintaining eye contact with Steve.
“I think that’s for you,” Bucky says cheerfully.
On the floor, Clint tugs a pillow towards him and covers his face with it.
“STEVEN GRANT ROGERS. OPEN THIS DOOR RIGHT NOW!”
“In a second, Pietro!” Steve calls over his shoulder. With a scowl that doesn’t match the fondness in his eyes, Steve pulls a small cardboard carton out of the paper bag. “I got your plums, jerk.”
“Thanks, punk.” Bucky sits up to take the carton and kisses Steve sweetly. “I think you better let Pietro in.”
There’s a loud rapping on the window behind him, and he and Steve turn to look at it at the same time; Pietro Maximoff is standing there in the pouring (sideways, still sideways, what the fuck) rain, platinum hair plastered to his head, a scowl sharp enough to cut glass on his face.
“STEVEN!”
“Hey, Pietro.” Steve walks over to the window and unlatches it with the barest hint of reluctance. “Come on in.”
With the barest sensation of a breeze, Pietro’s already standing next to the couch, dripping water down onto a suddenly squawking Clint.
“The interloper himself!” Pietro declares, seventeen years old and the picture of righteous fury. “I should have known!”
“No. Pietro. Wait. It’s a misunderstanding,” Clint deadpans, not removing the pillow from his face.
“They have true love!” Pietro nudges Clint with his foot when he doesn’t respond. “True! Love!’
“Pietro, Steve was only kidding when he said he was going to leave me.” Bucky pulls a plum out of the carton and examines it before taking a bite. “Don’t worry, the Rogers-Barnes wedding will continue as planned.”
“Oh.” Pietro visibly deflates and then smiles brightly; it’s like the sun comes out from behind the clouds for the first time in two weeks. “Oh, that is good.”
“Yes, it is.” Steve sits down on the sofa next to Bucky, his eyes soft and shining with something powerful. “Say it again?”
“Uh....which part?”
“The part about our names.” Steve takes Bucky’s hand and laces their fingers together.
“Rogers-Barnes?” Bucky smiles when Steve does, and they take a solid moment to just look at each other.
“Didn’t know you wanted my name,” Steve mutters, his ears pink. He looks like he’s fighting the urge to glance down, almost sheepish in his happiness.
“‘Course I do.” Bucky tilts his head, suddenly sheepish himself. “Unless you don’t want me to take-”
“No!” Steve shakes his head quickly, eyes wide. “No, I definitely - I do, I mean-”
“Well, that’s good,” Bucky mutters, laughing softly. Steve laughs too, and they look down at their entwined hands.
“Awwww.” Pietro coos at them from his place on the floor next to Clint.
“Are they being cute?” Clint lifts the pillow away from his face at last and squints up at Bucky and Steve. “Ugh. Knew it.” He covers his face back up and gives them a thumbs up. “You two should get married or something.”
About a week later it’s still raining, and Clint and Bucky have dragged themselves to the upstate training center for a change in scenery and to escape their increasing cabin fever.
They’re supposed to be working on Bucky’s defensive maneuvers on the (probably very likely) chance that Hydra or AIM attacks Bucky during an inopportune moment (for instance, during an AP Exam, which is not an experience Bucky wants to live out again), and while they certainly did work on Bucky’s flexibility and a few moves earlier in the day, their time has devolved into watching Nat complete increasingly ludicrous tasks in the simulator.
“Do it again, but this time with more ballet!” Clint shouts into the intercom.
Nat flicks the camera off but complies, launching herself at her digitally constructed foe with a deadly grace Bucky can’t help but admire with envy.
“Am I ever going to look that good fighting?” Bucky asks, propping his feet up on the control board as he watches Nat vault over a flaming car.
“You mean you don’t know?” Clint whoops appreciatively before Bucky can answer, and he shouts into the mic, “That’s my wife!”
“I’m fighting you next,” Nat shouts, flipping her braid over her shoulder before kicking through the face of an approaching enemy.
“I’m counting on it!” Clint settles back in his chair with a dopey, lovestruck smile. “She’s gonna kick my ass.”
“She really is,” Bucky agrees, but he flicks Clint on the shoulder, wanting to return to their earlier point. “What did you mean by you don’t know ? What don’t I know?”
“Dude.” Clint smirks at him. “You’re stupidly sexy when you fight.”
“I--” Bucky splutters in disbelief. “I - I am not. My hair gets in my eyes.”
“Sexy,” Clint says with a nod.
“My pants were too tight when we were in DC, I thought I was going to rip right through them when we were fighting those robots-”
“Sexy,” Clint repeats, his eyes widening with a look of this is obvious, dumbass. “Tight pants are how you get your murder strut.”
“My - murder- guh - And - and I’ve never really trained in how to fight, all I do is punch things really hard until they fall over-”
“ -very sexy-”
“And I guess I’m a good shot?”
“You guess you’re a good shot.” Clint snorts and rolls his eyes, grabbing his to-go cup of coffee from the console. He drains it in one gulp before pointing at Bucky with a glare. “You fuckin’ single handedly wiped all my high-scores from the Tower’s training module when you hadn’t held a gun in almost a decade. ” He shakes his head and glares, throwing his empty cup at Bucky, who catches it with the tips of his fingers. “Good shot. God. Some of us worked to get our aim that good.”
“Your aim is better than mine,” Bucky insists.
“Thanks, babe, but it’s really not.” Clint sighs, and a few seconds later, Nat walks through the door into the main control room, not a drop of sweat on her lovely face.
“What are you two yapping about? You missed my grand finale.” She hops up on the console and reaches behind it, pulling out another coffee cup.
“Oh! Coffee!” Clint reaches for it with grabby hands.
“This is my secret coffee,” Nat informs him, crossing her legs and holding the cup out of reach. “It’s why I hid it from you.”
“Aw, coffee,” Clint pouts, but Nat sips her drink and ignores him.
“We were talking about how Clint thinks I’m sexy when I fight,” Bucky explains, beyond the point of worrying if the Black Widow thinks he’s weird.
They’ve had their ups and downs in the time they’ve known each other, but they’re certainly friends now; and, friends can tell other friends when their husbands think their fighting is sexy. He’s also comfortable enough around Clint and Nat to wear a tank top that does absolutely nothing to hide the tangle of scars on his left shoulder from the car accident that took his family eleven years ago - this time last year, he probably would have reached for a sweatshirt when Nat walked in the room, but now he doesn’t even bring one with him when he knows it’ll be one of the Avengers with him.
They’re Steve’s family after all - and maybe, just maybe, they might think of Bucky as family one day, too. Wanda and Pietro already do, that was a given, but somehow Clint and Nat, and Sam, and Tony, and Pepper, and even Thor (who still giggles about how everyone bought that he didn’t know it was impolite to give out Asgardian condoms as a gift) have worked their way into Bucky’s heart, into the framework of his life.
He’s stirred from his soft thoughts by Nat’s probing gaze and the tail end of her and Clint’s conversation:
“...I don’t think he’d mind, really.”
“You don’t think who would mind what?” Bucky asks, blinking himself back to the present.
“We were talking about how pretty your hair was.” Clint props his chin up on his hand and smiles at Bucky, who shifts uncomfortably.
It’s not that he minds the attention, it’s just that … well, sometimes it’s hard to hear compliment after compliment heaped up like this, and he knows Clint is at least partly kidding, but the serene comments about how attractive he is still settle under his skin and feel warm and itchy, like things that don’t belong inside of him.
Still, Bucky offers him a tight smile. “Thanks. Grew it myself.”
“And, we were talking about how Clint used to do everyone’s hair and makeup in the circus,” Nat continues, her dainty feet swinging back and forth on the console.
“What haven’t you done?” Bucky asks Clint with a more genuine smile.
“Are you asking, or the FBI?”
Both Nat and Bucky snort, but then Nat’s smile turns particularly sharkish.
“So, we were wondering … if you’d let Clint cut your hair.”
Bucky looks back and forth between them. “Did you lure me out here so you could peer pressure me into a haircut? Because I like my hair long.”
“Just a trim!” Nat insists, hands up.
“Yeah, I just wanna practice on someone with nice hair,” Clint says, his eyes already studying Bucky’s hairline.
Bucky’s hand goes to his hair almost defensively. “Nat has nice hair.”
“Thank you, Bucky.” Nat smiles at him prettily, and it manages to be all teeth.
“Nat does have nice hair,” Clint agrees, “And she’s also a lot more likely to stab me if it goes poorly.”
“Like I wouldn’t stab you?” Bucky asks, eyebrows raised.
Nat and Clint stare back at him, their own eyebrows raised.
“Fine,” Bucky relents, “I probably wouldn’t stab you … unless it went really poorly.”
“So is that a yes?” Clint asks, bouncing up onto his feet.
Bucky sighs, feeling highly put upon; he rubs his temples for a second before nodding. “Just a trim,” he reminds Clint, who’s already bounding off down the hallway towards the common area of the training center.
“Just a trim,” Nat echoes, hopping down from the console and patting him on the shoulder before disappearing down the hallway after Clint; she tosses a smile over her shoulder before she turns the corner.
“I already regret this decision,” Bucky says out loud to no one in particular before he picks himself up off his chair and follows Clint and Nat down to the common area.
The windows that line the hallway reveal the nasty weather outside; meterologists are baffled by the endless sideways rain, but it doesn’t seem to be causing any trouble past soil erosion and some issues with airplanes, and it’s limited to a three hundred mile radius that centers around New York City (because what shitstorm doesn’t do exactly that?).
Bucky turns into the lounge area, and heads to where Clint is already setting up a chair that faces the windows - he’s got a full barber’s kit laid out on the counter next to him, and Bucky frowns, suddenly suspicious.
“Did you assume I’d say yes?’
“Of course not.” Natasha vaults over the back of the nearest couch, a bowl of popcorn in her hands. “We wanted to give you the dignity of your choice.”
“Ha. Ha.” Bucky collapses in the chair and scowls out the windows into the tempest outside. “Get it over with.”
“Yes sir!” Clint swings a sheet over his shoulders, and Bucky has yet another moment of outright hesitation and pre-regret.
“Just a trim,” Bucky reminds him, glancing over his shoulder at Clint, who has a very shiny, very sharp razor in his hand. He squints at it then up at Clint. “Shouldn’t you wash my hair first?”
“I guess I probably should,” Clint agrees, flipping the razor back and forth in his hand. Nat gets up from the couch and comes over to investigate, standing next to Clint and running her fingers through Bucky’s thick hair with an appreciative expression. “Do you want a shave, too?”
“I’m good shaving myself, thanks,” Buck says, snorting and turning away.
“I think if you cut about this much off,” Nat says, pulling his hair away from his face, and pointing at something unseen.
Bucky shakes his head and sighs, and Clint hums in agreement, his hand (not the razor hand, Bucky hopes), sifting through the waves.
Right around that moment, there’s an almighty crack of lightning unlike anything Bucky’s ever seen: the courtyard outside the windows illuminates in an unnatural, bright blue light that throws everything into sharp relief for almost ten seconds as the light dazzles between sky and ground - the power goes down immediately with a crackle of sound, and less than a second after the light show ends, a crash of thunder shakes everything that isn’t cemented into the ground.
There’s so much to take in, but Bucky’s enhanced senses do allow him to hear the telltale slice over his shoulder, and there’s suddenly a lot more breeze on the side of his neck.
“Uh…” Clint bends down and picks something up. “I can fix this.”
“He can totally fix this,” Nat says, “But what the fuck was that?”
“No idea.” Bucky raises his hand up to his neck, his eyes still fixed on the raging storm outside; the rain has only picked up in the aftermath of the lightning. His hand makes contact with bare skin, and when he drags his fingers up to his ear, he still can’t feel any hair. “And what the fuck did you do to my hair?”
He swivels to see Clint standing there with about seven inches of dark, wavy hair in his hand, a look of panic wild in his eyes.
“I can fix this?” Clint says, and Bucky lets out a long, tired breath.
“Yeah.” He stands up slowly, fixing Clint with the look his students call Murder Eyes Barnes. “...I’m gonna stab you.”
“Eep!”
Clint starts to run, and Bucky’s hot on his heels a millisecond later.
“Get back here and fix this, Barton!”
“Are you sure you do not mind standing out here in this?” Wanda wrinkles her nose and glares up at the sky, and Steve swears he can see the cogs turning in her head.
She’s been quiet - paler than usual, her eyes grave, expression drawn - since that terrifying lightning strike a half an hour before. Steve’s ears are still ringing, and his heart still pounding from the gigantic, almighty crash of thunder that had followed it.
“Yeah.” Steve hunches over further, his rain slicker pulled up over his head to block out some of the rain. “Thor swears he won’t let the lightning hit us.”
“Do you think he actually controls that?” Wanda shoots him an amused look, and Steve feels that old bubble of fondness in his chest. “This is...unlikely. I think Thor is playing a bad prank, and we are left to be wet in the rain - and get hit by lightning.”
Again, her eyes drift to the sky, as though waiting for another horrific, drawn-out flash.
“That might be true,” Steve agrees, tugging the front of his slicker more closed. “But I’d like to think it isn’t.”
“Oh, Steven,” Wanda sighs dramatically. She pats his arm with a sympathetic smile. “You are too trusting, I think.”
She’s basically his kid sister, but he swears sometimes she sounds older than he feels.
“Where’s your brother anyway?”
Steve shields his eyes with his hand and squints into the darkness between the trees - Pietro had zipped off in one direction five minutes ago, and Steve’s legitimately concerned he might be in Jersey (or Canada, like that one time they sort of knocked over fifteen Mounties and a moose during one of Pietro’s ‘warm-ups’) by now.
“He’s coming, he’s coming.” Wanda lifts one shoulder and drops it, a small, teasing smile on her face. “You’re such a worrywart.”
The mannerism is so Bucky that Steve’s breath catches in his throat; as close as he is with the twins, it’s nothing compared to what’s grown between the twins and his fiance. Wanda and Pietro had so little good in their lives for so long, and Steve thanks God and anybody listening every day that Bucky and the Maximoffs found each other, that they’ve been able to build up a family in the face of everything the universe has thrown at them, despite all of the family the universe had insisted on taking away from them.
“Worrywart, huh?” Steve bumps Wanda with his shoulder. “I’ve never been accused of that before.”
“To your face,” Wanda mutters, and Steve’s mid-snort when the branches in the clearing bend back in a rush of wind. Wanda rises from her seat and gestures at her brother, who isn’t even out of breath. “See? I told you he’d be back.”
“Steve!” Pietro bounces up and down on his heels. “Guess where I went!”
“You went to-” Wanda begins, but Pietro cuts her off with a roll of his eyes.
“Of course you know where I went.” (It’s another point in Tony’s ‘pretty sure your little ducklings are telepathically linked, Cap’ category). “I asked Steve!”
“Philadelphia?” Steve guesses half-heartedly, the rain smacking him in the face every three seconds and making it hard to muster more enthusiasm.
“Nope!” Pietro’s still bouncing, and his hair is still oddly dry despite the weather. “Further - try again?”
“Cincinnati?”
“Why would I go to Cin-cin-at-i?” Pietro sounds out the city name with caution and disdain in equal measure.
“Not sure,” Steve wipes some water out of his eyes and shrugs. “Gonna tell me where you went, pal?”
“Atlanta!” Pietro digs around in his pocket and comes back with a little Falcons keychain. “I got this for Sam!”
“I’m sure he’ll love it,” Steve says, not wanting to include the fact that as someone who was born outside of Georgia, Sam Wilson probably was not a Falcons fan, despite his codename.
“Did you get me anything?” Wanda asks, and Pietro shifts his feet guiltily.
“Well. Not exactly.”
“You never get me anything.” She bops her brother on the arm with a flat hand. “The disrespect!”
“Hey, guys,” Steve says, laughing, standing up from the bench to try and separate the two. “No fighting on my watch.”
“Yeah, guys,” a new voice says, and all three of them startle - Wanda’s hands immediately flare with the telltale red light, and Pietro’s between his sister and the newcomer in less than a blink of an eye. “You should really listen to your elders.”
“Fury.” Steve turns and greets his former director with a tense nod. “Funny seeing you here in the middle of a goddamn thunderstorm.”
“That’s the thing, Captain Rogers.” Fury’s eye doesn’t blink at all as he regards Steve with a scrutiny that makes his toes curl in his sodden boots. “It’s always thunderstorming these days; wouldn’t you agree?”
“Do you need us for a mission?” Pietro asks warily, and Steve tenses further.
The twins hadn’t been on active duty the last time he checked - they were on the third roster for the Avengers, only called in for behind the scenes work. But, then again, he hasn’t been Captain America for over half a year, and things were bound to change (even if it meant putting minors in danger, apparently).
“No, Mr. Maximoff, I do not. You and your sister can relax.” Fury barely acknowledges Pietro before returning his intense gaze to Steve; neither Pietro nor Wanda take Fury’s suggestion to heart, judging by the way the wisps of red intensify around Wanda’s small fists. “You look well, Captain.”
“Retirement agrees with me,” Steve says shortly, his patience already gone. This had been a major reason it was so easy to hand the shield to Sam; the inability of Fury and anyone from SHIELD to give him a straight answer or to be up front. “What is it you want, then, if you aren’t carting kids off to fight your war?”
“Easy now, Captain.” Fury should look mildly ridiculous in his rain poncho, but he manages to pull off his usual aura of being vaguely threatening pretty well. “As I recall, you were once a kid eager to go to war.”
“What is it you want?” Steve repeats stubbornly. “Because if you don’t have anything to say, I don’t see why you should be here.”
“Two super-powered, volatile teenagers hanging out with a civilian?” Fury lifts his one eyebrow impressively, and Steve grits his teeth. “I’d say I might need to be here for some oversight. From an outsider’s perspective, I’m sure you can see what I mean.”
“He needs you,” Wanda breaks in suddenly, tilting her head and frowning at Fury, her eyes slightly distant. With the shimmering crimson light flickering around her hands and eyes, it’s an eerie effect. “He doesn’t want to say it. He needs your help.”
“That might be true.” Fury levels Wanda with a gaze that’s far too assessing. “I do need your help.”
“I’m not Captain America anymore,” Steve says firmly. Part of him still twinges to say it, but the life he’s built with Bucky is too happy to be endangered by whatever the hell it is Fury wants him to take part in.
Short of a Doomsday situation, Steve isn’t ever getting back in that uniform; the world’s topsy-turvy now, institutions he’d once been proud to defend, corrupted beyond recognition, his government determined to undermine everything his generation had fought for. No, he’s fine letting go of the shield because as far as he’s concerned, he’s a man who fights for people, not for a country that’s forgotten what it is. He doesn’t need a shield to fight for the defenseless, and he certainly doesn’t need SHIELD itself. He won’t be a puppet anymore.
So, he holds his head high and stares Nicholas J. Fury down.
“Unless the world is ending, you don’t need me.”
He swears Wanda shoots him a small, proud smile.
“It’s not precisely a ‘world is ending’ situation, Captain.” Fury doesn’t seem at all perturbed by his declaration. “....Not exactly . But it is something that you are uniquely equipped to handle, even without...your powers.”
Steve does not like the way Fury pauses around the mention of his ‘lost’ powers, and he has zero doubts in that moment that Fury understands a lot more about his status as enhanced than Steve wants.
“He doesn’t have to do your thing,” Pietro insists, still vibrating with anxiety as he scowls at Fury - Steve’s heart twinges at the sight of the reedy teenager standing between them.
The Maximoffs had come to the United States under the shakiest of legal circumstances after the Avengers had found them in that Hydra facility - the last thing Steve wants is for Pietro or Wanda to get in trouble because of him.
“It’s not a Captain America thing.” Fury’s gaze is far too intense as he looks at Steve again. “It’s a Steve Rogers thing.”
Steve lets out a breath, preparing to tell Fury where to stick it, when Fury says the words that could get his attention anywhere, anytime.
“...A Steve Rogers and James Barnes thing.”
He feels as though the air has left his body, and the world tilts slightly; the rain comes down harder than ever, and he feels every single drop as it digs into his skin, driven by the wind to be particularly brutal.
Steve stares at Fury, unsure of what he means, unsure that he wants to know.
“What about James?” Wanda asks, breaking the silence for them.
“Let’s go to Stark Tower so I can explain it more there,” Fury suggests, gesturing over his shoulder.
A black SUV pulls up on the path behind him.
“Is he safe?” Steve demands, something in him snapping at Fury’s reluctance to explain here and now. “I’m not fucking going anywhere until you tell me he’s okay and what the fuck it is you want from us.”
“I need your help on a cosmic issue that you’re somehow at the center of,” Fury says, hands raised as though in surrender. “I can assure you, Mr. Barnes is only involved because of the nature of your involvement. As far as I know, Mr. Barnes is safe at the Avengers headquarters as we speak, but he will be invited to join us at the Tower. It will be perfectly voluntary, of course,” he adds when Steve’s scowl doesn’t relent.
“If you’re lying,” Steve begins, hands tightening into fists before he remembers he’s not exactly supposed to be in the sort of shape that would let him punch his way out of this. “... I don’t trust you, Fury,” he says instead, throat tight with anxiety.
“Good.” Fury turns and walks towards the SUV, his voice almost lost in the tumult of the rainfall. “I was beginning to think you’d never learn.”
Wanda and Steve exchange a long look before walking towards the waiting car; Pietro nudges past them with a muttered I’ll check it out, boss, before he disappears from view, ostensibly to get to the Tower before them.
As he climbs into the warm, dry interior of the unmarked SUV, Steve can’t shake the feeling that he should have encouraged Bucky to stay in bed this morning; they could still be there, wrapped around each other, far away from the rain and Fury’s drama, far away from anything that could threaten each and every one of their mornings in the future.
When they climb on the elevator in the lobby of Stark Tower, after the most tense car ride in the history of automotives, Steve’s left with a single, burning question that he can’t quell even as they rise up silently to the common area floor of the tower.
“Fury?” He addresses the control panel of the elevator (and God, it’s been three years and he still fucking hates elevators), his shoulders tight and spine rigid.
“Captain?” Fury answers.
Wanda’s leaning against the wall nearest to Steve, her eyes locked on the director; Pietro hadn’t greeted them in the lobby when they arrived, and something feels off about how wary Wanda looks, as though she’s picking something up strange from her twin but isn’t sure what it is.
“How am I at the center of a cosmic issue?” Steve shakes his head, jaw clenched. “It’s not like I’m Thor; I’m just a guy.”
“Just a guy who sells art on Etsy,” Fury agrees, his head tilting to the side. Steve stares at him, the blood drained from his face in surprise, and he swears he sees Fury crack a smile. “Goose6096.”
“You -- you bought that cat portrait?” Steve asks, his mind whirring in confusion. “That was you ?”
“What can I say?” Fury shrugs and his smile, if anything, grows. “You really captured that rascal’s personality.”
Wanda’s staring at him in shock too, now, and Steve could almost laugh if he weren’t so anxious.
“Still though,” Steve continues, still feeling poleaxed but determined to get answers before the doors slide open on the common area, “How could this have anything to do with me?”
“See for yourself,” Fury says, frustratingly enigmatic as ever. The elevator stops, and Steve swallows hard before the doors slide open.
When neither he nor Wanda make any effort to move, Fury sighs and walks out in front of them, leaving his back exposed. It’s the first time Steve can really recall seeing Fury’s back, and it surprises him enough to start walking too, Wanda a step behind him.
He doesn’t know what he expects - the Red Skull, George Tarleton, the Hulk mid-crisis, Thor’s greasy-haired, slightly diabolical brother - but nothing he could come up with prepares him for what’s waiting in the middle of the common area - or should he say who.
There are four people waiting for them, grouped around the couches in various stages of forced calm.
“Hey, Steve,” Bruce says weakly, sitting on a couch, rubbing his temples and staring at the ground. “We - uh - we gotta talk about something.”
Even Thor is subdued as he offers a tight smile to Steve from his perch on a reinforced counter, Mjolnir balanced on his knee. Maria Hill doesn’t look any happier, but Steve can barely manage a glance in anyone’s direction, not when his attention is squarely focused on the massive, mildly terrifying elephant in the room.
“Hello.” The fourth person stands from his seat and folds his hands behind his back, standing at attention, sharp blue eyes fixed on Steve with unnerving focus. “There’s something we need to talk about.”
Steve Rogers stares at an exhausted, older version of himself, a Steve Rogers who carries his grief around his eyes, plain as day, whose shoulders are still rugged and broad, but clearly weighed down by something big and terrible, which instinctively scares Steve .
Steve Rogers stares at himself and then nods slowly, lips pursed as he considers the situation; he eventually comes to a conclusion, one that he can’t help but share with the group.
“Well, shit.”