Archive of Our Own ^beta

Bucky always left the windows open at night. The briny tang of the ocean was like nowhere else he’d ever lived, a signature that overwrote his sense memory. His room was small, a full size bed that he slept on diagonally with the kitschy seashell comforter in a muddle over his legs. In the morning, he made coffee and scrambled eggs over a hotplate. It was technically a bed and breakfast, but Melanie and her wife were kind and had allowed his seemingly endless stay so easily that he tried not to impinge on their hospitality more than he had to.

Anyway, he got up too early for their muffins and french toast. Just before dawn, he was in the Jeep that he’d bought off one of Sam’s friends for a song and then he was on US 1 watching the sun paint the sky and water an entirely new palette. The gates technically didn’t open until 8, but the university had a deal worked out and he had his own little turnkey that let him in. He parked and headed out towards the water.

The rest of his day was the tidepools. Specifically, squatting down next to them with his supposedly waterproof tablet and taking counts of specific residents. It was tedious, slow and hot. He wasn’t even allowed to add in his personal observations to the official form, although he could say whatever he wanted in the volunteer Slack group which was generally full of anthropomorphizing of starfish, complaints about tourists, and impenetrable chatter from the grad students.

It was Bucky’s favorite job ever.

“You're serious?” Sam had laughed over the phone line when Bucky told him eagerly about a day of watching vicious coral-eating worms and picking up bits of trash.

“Yeah,” he sat in one of the wicker chairs on the porch, looking out at the waves. “The only thing that dies are fish and who gives a fuck about them?”

“Apparently you.”

Bucky doesn’t know what Steve thinks about it. He hadn’t asked and Steve wasn’t offering. It was like he had accidentally detonated a bomb in their pseudo-industrial horrible apartment when he announced he was leaving. Like Steve hadn’t already been half-moved into Sharon’s apartment and mostly sticking around out of mopey conviction that Bucky couldn’t live a day on his own.

He didn’t have to actually say any of that out loud to Sam to imagine his eyebrows winging up and a deadpan “Wow” coming out of his mouth at that observation.

At least Natasha thought his job was cool. Or she didn’t make fun of it which was nearly as good.

“You do what you need to do,” she’d poked him hard in the center of his forehead. If he’d had a third eye that would’ve been a hell of an afternoon. “I’ll visit.”

He only got the job because of Steve in the first place. Steve was thrilled to take advantage of the free college ride after he got out. When Bucky finally stumbled free of the military’s grasp, he had just trailed helplessly after him. Literally at first, but he was terrible at art and it was too confusing in the early days to follow the art history lectures.

He just started sitting in on various large lectures, hoping no one would ask why the too old guy was sitting quietly in the back when he hadn’t been there before. The first thing he sat in that didn’t make his head hurt or his heart ache was a lecture given by a jubilant professor with hair dyed a brilliant orange that stood up in an impressive mantle on their head.

They waxed romantically about marine invertebrates, slide after slide of boneless jelly animals that Bucky had vaguely known about before and some he’d never seen. They talked about bioluminescence and neurotoxins and and and

“Next week, we will get into sponges!” they grinned off-kilter at the classroom. A hundred students blinked blurrily at them.

“Cool,” Bucky said softly and it carried through the silence more than he’d expected. The professor nailed him with an interested look.

“Extremely cool,” they agreed.

By the third lecture, Bucky had migrated to the front and actually enrolled. He took careful notes, and at night when he couldn’t sleep, took to watching snorkeling videos until he fell into watery dreams.

“Mr. Barnes,” Professor Zebrowski approached him on the last day of class. “I hope to see you next semester.”

“Uh, yeah,” he forced himself to look up. Make eye contact. Zebrowski was about as threatening as one of their favorite tiny fish. “I’d like that.”

“I expect you to put a little more effort into your exams.”

“Oh,” he considered that. “That’s probably not going to happen. Sorry.”

“But you enjoy the class, don’t you?”

“Definitely,” he said more firmly. “Uh. But you should’ve gotten a copy of my...” he made a vague gesture at...what? His head? His arm? His entire self? “Accommodations?”

“I received no such thing,” Zebrowski sighed. “All right, let’s get some bureaucracy unraveled together, shall we?”

After the long, sometimes loud, conversation they had on speaker phone with the Office of Accessibility, Bucky upgraded Zebrowski’s danger level a few notches.

“Sorry. Again,” Bucky frowned. “I don’t want to take up a space in your class if it’s going to be a nuisance.”

“Nonsense,” Zebrowski said sharply. “You ask good questions, you’re engaged and you try. That’s all anyone can ask for in a student.”

Bucky took all of Zebrowski’s classes after that. They did all his tests orally during office hours and after nearly a year and a half of that, Zebrowski shoved a stack of papers in his hand, “Here’s the answer key, just grade these with me.”

Which was how Bucky found out about T.A.s and fell into that too. Reluctantly, he took classes with other biology professors. Somehow, Zebrowski got to them though and he never had accommodation issues again. In the end, he wound up in a weird robe, holding a piece of paper while Steve solemnly handed him flowers, eyes welled up in tears.

“You made it, Buck.”

To where? He thought as he looked at the photo Sharon had taken of the moment. What was he supposed to do now?

“Let’s get a drink.” Zebrowski cropped up before they could leave campus. Their hair was purple at the moment.

Bucky had resigned himself to some crowded student bar, but apparently Zebrowski had been holding out on him and had a very nice, very big bottle of vodka in their office.

“This shot glass is swearing at me,” Bucky picked it up and stared at the calligraphy ‘Fuck You’ on it.

“Isn’t it great?” Zebrowski held up a matching one, “Congratulations!”

They both downed a scarily smooth shot.

“Huh,” Bucky set down the glass carefully.

“I noticed you didn’t apply to the grad program like I recommended.”

“Uh uh.”

“I don’t blame you. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t either. But look, I had an idea for you.”

“Okay,” he eyed the bottle suspiciously. If Zebrowski tried to get him drunk, that was going to damage some of the good trusting feelings he’d formed.

“I have a colleague who’s doing a long term study on the effects of global warming on marine life in the Florida Keys. I know she’s understaffed and underfunded. I think she’d want a volunteer like you.”

Neither of them mentioned money. These days anyone could google Bucky and take a good guess that a lot of people had stuffed his pockets with the hope that he’d disappear into a life of sin or at least, silence.

“What would I be doing?”

Zebrowski poured themselves another shot and didn’t offer the bottle to Bucky, “Getting one with nature and statistics mostly.”

Bucky left a week later, leaving behind one stunned lifelong best friend, half of an apartment that he hadn’t picked, and the brutal slushy chill of New York in March. He only missed one of those things and it damn sure wasn’t the cold.

Steve called every Thursday night like clockwork. Neither of them like video calls much, so they stuck to voice only and Bucky wasn’t sure if it made the missing better or worse. On the phone, Steve’s voice wound its way through his brain, down his throat and lodged in his chest.

“I got an actual contract,” Steve told him not long after Bucky left. “Can you believe it?”

“Yeah, you’re good, of course you did,” he was sitting on a beach chair, feet in the sand and eyes on the stars.

“I applied using that pseudonym Nat talked me into.”

“Good Ole’ Phil Nomad. I can’t believe anyone believes that’s a real name.”

“Uh huh, you still putting Bucky down as your legal name?”

“Prove that it’s not.”

“I literally can,” Steve blew a raspberry at him and Bucky laughed despite himself. He thought Steve would stay mad. Had envisioned a tremendous silence blanketing over their friendship. But he should’ve known better. “Anyway, so I know they’re really interested in the work that way.”

“So what’re you doing?”

“It’s a small comic press. I don’t have the scripts yet,” a shifting sound, Steve sitting maybe. He talked on the phone standing a lot, pacing around like he was still attached to the wall by a cord.

“I want to see ‘em when you’re done.”

“Sure. What about you?”

“Just counting coral, man.”

They talked about things that didn’t matter much on Thursdays and kept that connection alive.

There was no planning for Sam or Natasha. Sometimes one or the other or worse, both, would get on the phone to fill his night with their rival laughter and stories and gossip.

“Put Sarah on the phone,” he’d ask when Sam was busting his chops the hardest.

“No fucking way. Stop asking out my sister.”

And then Sam would hand Sarah the phone if she was around, so she could update him about the boat and the kids. Sometimes Sarah had spotted something interesting in the marina or out at sea and she was the only person that really got his obsession so their conversations were long and meandering. It was just an added bonus that it made Sam huff and puff at him.

He wasn’t surprised exactly when they came down together to visit him, two boys loaded up into the backseat and a pitstop at Disney understood to be part of the endeavor.

“Hey, man,” Sam hugged him and Sam’s hugs were good hugs, so Bucky just let himself be held in a way that would’ve been unfathomable not long ago.

He took the kids down the beach, Sam and Sarah following more slowly behind. They were strong swimmers and took to the water with a rambunctious carelessness that put Bucky’s heart in his throat, even as he obediently tossed them into the waves.

When he finally was released in favor of sand castles, he sat down on the edge of the towels, trying not to drip on Sarah’s legs.

“Not bad out here,” Sam wore sunglasses and reclined on his elbows. “I can see why you like it.”

“You can come out to the park tomorrow, if you think the kids’ll be interested,” he offered.

“I want to see it,” Sarah grinned. “Sam can take them mini-golfing or something if they don’t want to come.”

They all came. Apparently the whole family was used to getting up at the crack of dawn and they happily ate all of the breakfast pastries before driving out to the park. It was different coming with a group. Bucky was more distracted, unable to fall into the hypnotic state that usually came over him while he worked. But the boys were curious and mostly listened as he pointed to the different kinds of wildlife to be found. Sarah sat close by, asking questions when the boys ran around and Sam got in a morning run further out where the ground was a little more even.

In the afternoon, they all went mini-golfing. Bucky chose the most obnoxious pink ball he could find and coughed loudly every time Sam started a swing. They tied anyway, and Sarah beat them both.

“She’s a deadshot with a rifle too,” Sam muttered.

“I’ll bet,” Bucky handed her the little scorecard. “Trophy for the victor.”

When they went home a few days later, it left a hole in the atmosphere, draining away some of the color from the world. Everything shrank a little too and he looked around at a loss at how small his life had become.

But then there was a storm and all the tidepools changed size too. He ran between them the day after the rain and recorded like mad. He rarely got communications from the project lead, but his entries must’ve pinged something because an email coasted in at night, Great work, Barnes.

He went out into the water after that. Lay out on his back and let the waves carry him to and from under the moon’s watchful eye. It was a foolish thing to do, dangerous to be out alone and in the dark. But it felt good too. To pick his own dangers and take his own risks. No one got to choose what his body did anymore, except him.

A few weeks after that, he was wrapping up for the day. Mostly that meant he was zoning out, watching a crab trundle from one pool to the next when a shadow fell over him.

“You missed the storm,” he told her.

Natasha folded down next to him, “Good.”

“Where are you coming from?”

“Trouble,” she laughed quietly. “And I’m on my way to Chaos. Okay if I take a breather here?”

“Of course.”

They shared his bed without touching, a feat that made his neck ache the next morning, but was lovely in the moment. Natasha always smelled like somewhere else, other countries’ air caught her clothes and hair. She slept with one hand around a knife, and her breathing shallow.

“Let’s go for a walk,” she suggested in the morning. It was technically his day off, so he didn’t put up a fight. They walked along the ocean, their shoes in their hands.

“Is everything okay?” he asked after a long silence.

“No,” she flashed him a tight smile. “I’m tired.”

“You could retire with me. Count fish.”

“Tempting,” she bumped her shoulder against his arm. “You don’t know how much.”

“Your life is worth something too, you know.”

“I know.”

He wasn’t sure she really did, but there wasn’t anything else he could do, except bump her back and let her keep her silence.

She left while he was sleeping, the only mark she’d even been there was his missing hoodie. It had been a good hoodie. He had a moment of silence for it as he picked another out of his drawer.

“I saw Nat,” he told Steve the next time he called.

“How is she?”

Bucky considered lying. He’d lied to Steve before. Small things a long time ago like who had finished the milk and not replaced it. Bigger things the last few years. How he felt. What he was doing. But he wasn’t in the mood for lies. Something about being down here, pickling in the briny air had made his already slow to move tongue trip over anything that smacked of deceit.

“Not great, I think.”

“Yeah,” Steve said softly.

Maybe he just wanted Steve to fix it, he realized. Steve fixed things. When they were kids and now too. He was good at it. Never made you feel bad at needing help. But when Bucky got back, it was all too big and too much for Steve to fix. Maybe that’s where things had gone wrong.

“I want to help,” Bucky said numbly.

“Just be a soft space for her to land,” Steve said after a beat. “What else can anyone do? It’s her life.”

“It’s not though. Or it doesn’t have to be.”

“Not for us to decide.”

Bucky closed his eyes, “Is that why you never tried to stop me leaving?”

He can hear Steve breath out, a stuttering sigh. Outside the waves crash on the beach. The two sounds have a lot in common.

“You hated the city.”

“Yes,” he agreed tiredly. “I guess I did.”

The conversation sputtered and died there.

The waves rolled in and the waves went out.

Bucky found a tiny crab lost and wandering in circles not far from where it belonged. He wasn’t supposed to interfere. He watched it circle and circle, then leaned down to pick it up and settled it a few inches from it’s home. There was no one here to tell on him anyway.

Itchy, he added a morning workout to his routine. Nothing that would get his heartbeat up really. Just a jog down the coast and a couple of sit-ups on the floor of his room. On his day off, he went to the movies for the first time in years. He sat in the frigid air, in the dark and waited for the walls to press in. But he was okay. He followed the plot and the dialogue, enough to recount it to Sam later on the phone.

“Did you like it?” Sam asked. There were car noises in the background, the sound of Sam’s breath beating into the phone. He was walking to work, maybe.

“Yeah,” he decided. “It was okay.”

“Ringing endorsement.”

“Shut your face,” Bucky smiled down at his hands.

On a Tuesday, Melanie knocked on his door and asked for his help. Two mattresses had been delivered a day early and her wife was out of town. He hefted them up the stairs, letting her keep a hand on them to ‘help’. Afterwards, she insisted on making him lunch.

“You know, you’re welcome to join our book club,” she told him over tuna sandwiches and a plate of thick cut pickles that he demolished as politely as possible.

“Not much of a reader.”

“Oh, neither am I. I do audiobooks.”

Bucky liked audiobooks. She taught him how to check them out from the local library on his phone and he started to listen to them on his jogs and drives. The tidepools stayed a quiet place, but the return of noise to others was fine.

“So how was the book club?” Steve asked, entirely without irony or teasing because that was Steve sometimes.

“We barely talked about the book,” he complained. “They just talked about things in their lives mostly. And drank a lot of wine.”

“So you loved it?”

“....it was pretty okay.”

Steve was right. He had liked the casual chatter of the group. They spoke breezily about children and partners and their smaller, more attainable dreams. He got caught up in a debate about whether or not a kitchen should be redone in neutral colors or jewel tones. He hadn’t even finished the book, so it had been a relief to only be asked a few things before the conversation went elsewhere.

His internal calendar picked up new markers. Weeks were measured in tidepool reporting, of course, but months were in book club sessions now. He got invited to other things too and sometimes showed up with a bouquet of flowers because he’d been raised with good manners.

“You should invite your Steve down here,” Camilla, who wore her hair down to her waist and had the chunkiest silver jewelry he’d ever seen, advised.

“He knows he can come whenever.”

“Does he?” She raised her eyebrows.

“Leave him alone, Camilla,” Melanie swatted vaguely at her, “He’s got to come to it in his own time. “

Bucky frowned, but let the conversation wash over him until it was swept to the back of his mind.

Though maybe not too far back because the next time Steve called, he blurted out,

“You too busy to come visit me or what, Rogers?”

“I dunno, Buck,” Steve said cheerfully, “Nat says you’re strictly one bed only down there.”

“You forget how to share or something?”

“I remember,” Steve laughed. “How does the end of the month sound? I’ve got to crank out some pages for a deadline, but then I’m free for a bit.”

“Sounds good to me.”

It did sound good, actually. Scary and big and good. Unlike with Sam or Nat, Bucky felt compelled to get Steve from the airport. The rest of their friends could take care of themselves, but disasters just seemed to find Steve wherever he went and this visit wasn’t going to end before it started.

It also meant that Bucky got a good look at Steve before Steve saw him. He studied the blond hair cropped short and the pale, strong arms exposed to the sun for the first time in months most likely. He looked so young somehow, until he turned to face oncoming traffic and Bucky could read the years in his face.

Bucky pulled the car up to the sidewalk, rolling down the window,

“Hey mister, you seen a scrawny punk, ankle high, trying to throw a punch at a meter maid?”

“Fuck off,” Steve laughed, the exhaustion lifting away as if it had never been. He lifted a fat full duffel bag and tossed it into the back, before sliding into the passenger seat. “Damn, Buck. You’ve got a hell of a tan. You’re using sunblock, right?”

“By the gallon, Ma. I promise.” he rolled his eyes.

“I brought another gallon with me,” Steve fished in his pocket and pulled out a pair of aviator sunglasses slotting them onto his face.

“Those make you look like a douchey tourist.”

“I am a douchey tourist,” Steve leaned back, stretching one arm behind his head. His starched baby blue polo shifted over his torso with it.

Bucky turned his eyes to the road.

“Not if I have anything to say about it.”

They kept the windows down, the wind drowning out conversation. Steve let out a whistle as they left Key West and US 1 arched over the water. It was a great view, the ocean cooperatively calm. Steve’s hair grew progressively more ruffled with every passing second.

The drive took less than an hour, but Bucky could swear it had lifted years away from them. When they got out to settle Steve in Bucky’s room, they were shoving at each other and teasing like they were in high school again.

“You two going to cause a disturbance?” Melanie emerged from the kitchen, watching them go.

“Sorry,” Bucky smiled at her. “This is Steve.”

“This is Steve?” She raised her eyebrows. “Hello then. Welcome. I’m Melanie, co-owner.”

“It’s a lovely place, m’am,” Steve said sheepishly at the perceived scolding.

“Thank you,” she looked between them, and Bucky braced himself for her to offer another room. He knew one was available. “I know you know all the local spots, Bucky, but you might want to take him to that oyster place with the blue canopy? They got a new owner last month and it’s great now.”

“Thanks,” he said, relieved. “We’ll definitely hit it up.”

Steve didn’t comment when he saw the bed, just dropped his duffel near the left side of the bed and turned to the open windows.

“I can see why you like it here,” he offered.

“It’s pretty great,” Bucky agreed, turning to face the view.

They watched the waves roll in under a pretty pink sunset, close enough that Bucky could smell Steve’s cheap aftershave. He could afford whatever he wanted, but he’d never stopped using the kind that Bucky had given him as a seventeenth birthday gift. By then Steve had started to grow into himself a little and been over the moon at his few wispy chin hairs.

“Well, take me to your oyster place,” Steve demanded.

“It’s not my oyster place,” he contended, but out they went.

They ordered a metric ton of food and left talking behind to plow through plates of shellfish to their waiter’s obvious amusement. The ocean was a block or so away, but they could hear it’s steady pulse.

“I can’t believe how many stars you can see out here,” Steve marveled. “It reminds me of the desert.”

They’d only been to one desert together, not a place of good memories, but the stars had been spectacular and unmarred by the bloody past.

“Me too. Few less here, we get some light pollution, but it sure beats the city.”

“I guess it does,” Steve frowned down at his empty plate.

Claiming travel fatigue, Steve went to sleep after a few hands of cards. He must’ve been trying to curl up and leave some room, but he wound up sprawled over the bulk of the bed. When Bucky had reached his limit of pretending he had other things to do, he crawled in carefully, slotting himself in the empty places around Steve’s body.

In the wee hours of the morning, Bucky woke aware that his leg had fallen asleep. Steve had tossed half his body across him. He rolled only enough to get the pressure off and if that brought him closer, well who was to know?

When his alarm went off, he could hear the shower going. Steve was always an early riser.

“I’m going to head to the tidepools soon,” he said to the shower curtain when he ambled into pee. “You coming?”

“Yes. Just give me five?”

“You can have ten.”

It seemed the entire ecosystem wanted to impress Steve that day. Life had surged in the pools, brimming as Bucky dutifully took his census and tested the water. The sky tried to out blue Steve’s eyes and the few clouds were puffy perfect marshmallows. An hour in, a pod of dolphins started to play in the waters close enough to see their leaps and hear their calls over the waves.

“This is amazing!” Steve squatted down beside Bucky, “You get to see all of this every day?”

“Not the dolphins,” he admitted. “But yeah, it’s pretty great.”

“Is that a starfish?”

“Call them sea stars now. Less confusing since they aren’t fish,” Bucky explained. “But yeah, this one’s a Bahama. See how it’s clinging there? Those suction cups can open up clams and things. Then it throws up it’s own stomach, packages up the food and sucks it back in.”

“Gross,” Steve deemed with a grin.

“Not any grosser than what we do if you think about it too long.”

“Going to have to disagree with you there.”

Steve had brought along his sketchbook and seemed happy enough to draw as Bucky’s work went along. It was the same quiet companionship that Nat offered, but the quality of their silence was different. There was texture to it, a knowledge that synched their breathing and had them moving in tandem. When Bucky rose, Steve went with him, all at once and without discussion, resettling beside him.

When there was no more work that Bucky could plausibly do, he tucked his tablet back into his bag and sat down beside Steve.

“So,” he looked out over the water, “how’s the girlfriend?”

“What girlfriend?” Steve erased a line, his hand carefully gathering the pink bits of eraser and tucking them in his pocket. Trying not to litter in extremis.

“C’mon. Things were heating up with Sharon when I left. I thought once I was gone, you’d move in together.”

“And I just never mentioned it?”

Bucky picked up a rock, smoothed from the waves and ran his thumb over it.

“Buck,” Steve set down his pencil. “She’s a nice girl. We had a good time, but it wasn’t love or anything.”

“You broke up?”

“You have to be together to do that. We were just having some fun, keeping each other company.”

“Is that what they’re calling it these days?” He teased, but it felt flat. “You were over there all the time.”

“Sure, she was organizing that march, remember? I kept trying to get you to come to meetings.”

“You tried to get me to do a lot of stuff,” he protested.

“Yeah, I know. I, uh, it’s been pointed out to me that maybe I was a little pushy.”

Bucky turned to him, fake look of surprise painted on.

“Shut up,” Steve laughed. “I know. But I was worried. Anyway, it wasn't some secret hookup plan with Sharon. It was an actual protest.”

“Oh. But you talked about her a lot.”

“I guess I did. I did like her. Do. Just not enough.”

A flock of gulls flew overhead, calling out noisily to each other. Bucky dropped the rock to lift his hand to his eyes, following their progress. He knew he wasn’t supposed to, but sometimes he shooed them away from some of the pools if there was a specimen he was particularly fond of in them.

“Did you move down here because you thought I was serious with Sharon?” Steve asked between the shrill calls.

“No,” Bucky kept his eyes to the sky. “I had to do some things on my own. Figure some stuff out.”

“And you couldn’t do that around me?”

“No.”

“Oh,” Steve said stiffly.

“I love you,” he had held the words in so long that he could barely believe they could be said out loud. “More than anyone else in the world. I wanted you to be proud of me and I couldn’t become that just bobbing around behind you on a string.”

“Buck,” Steve reached for him, tugging Bucky’s hand down to hold in between his. “I’m always proud of you.”

“Maybe I wanted to be proud of me,” he amended. “You sentimental jerk.”

“When you get there, will you come home?”

Bucky finally looked at Steve. It was devastating, the open vulnerability and that damnable earnestness all aimed at him.

“I like it here. It’s never cold. And even if the grant money runs out, there’s lots of other jobs that I could do. People that I know now.”

“So you’re not coming back to New York.” Steve’s grip only tightened.

“No. But maybe home will come to me?” He squeezed Steve’s hand back. “It’s not the city, but it has a few things going for it, don’t you think?”

Steve didn’t answer. Instead he surged forward, pressed his lips to Bucky’s so sweetly and without demand that Bucky half-thought he was dreaming. That didn’t stop him from kissing back, of course.

They didn’t talk much on the way back. Didn’t say a word when Steve closed the door to Bucky’s room firmly. Even as the heat outside climbed and they dissolved into a sweating tangle on the bed, Steve below him, Bucky’s hair curtaining off the light as they moved together. All the nights Bucky had laid out on the same bed, listening to Steve’s voice in the dark seemed to coalesce into this.

It was only in the aftermath, only barely touching in deference to the heat that Bucky had to ask,

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Getting my phone, hold on.”

“Why?”

Steve typed quickly, pulling up a site and then scooting closer. “Real estate listings. This place is nice, but I think we’re going to need some privacy.”

“The prices down here are ridiculous.”

“So we’ll get something small.”

It was impossible to argue with Steve sometimes. Maybe Bucky didn’t try too hard.

They found a place on the corner of a street. It was blue with lime green shutters and the one bathroom had a shower head that hit them both mid-chest. The lawn was white gravel where there wasn’t lush greenery and had enough shade trees to make the outside inviting most hours of the day. The kitchen was so tiny that if they both got in there at the same time, things got racy.

They threw a housewarming party and it was a little overwhelming how many people showed up. It was strange to see Nat and Sam mixed in with Melanie and the book club ladies. There were even a few people Steve had met at the local V.A. and some of the other volunteers. Bucky tried to talk to all of them, but after an hour or so he burnt out. An hour or so in, he snuck back into the house, hoping for a quiet recuperative moment in the bedroom. Instead of his empty bed, he discovered Nat. He couldn’t pinpoint when she might have slipped away, but now she was here sitting at the end of their bed.

“You okay?” He sat down beside her.

“Are you?”

“Yeah. Just needed a break. Sarah mixed a pitcher of something strong and it’s getting rowdy.”

They listened to the noises of the party for a bit as they filtered in through the open window. Maybe next year, Bucky would make a flower box and they could have sweet smells to mix with the sea breeze.

“What will you do with the second bedroom?” She asked eventually.

“Steve’ll use it as a studio most of the time. Guest room the rest of the time. It’ll be a tight fit, but we can get a decent size bed in there along with his desk.”

“That sounds nice.”

“You can stay, you know,” he offered, leaning to just touch his shoulder to hers. “Whenever you want. However long you want.”

“That’s quite an invitation. Don’t you know that house guests and fish start to stink after three days?”

“I spend a lot of time with fish. Barely notice the smell now.”

“I was thinking of a vacation,” she leaned back. “Maybe a long one.”

There was a knock at the door, “Do the wallflowers want some key lime pie?”

“C’mon in,” Bucky laughed and Steve arrived tin in one hand, forks in the other. He even had a can of whip cream tucked in his back pocket.

“Aw, our own butler,” Nat clapped her hands together.

“Just say thank you,” Steve scolded as he handed out slices and sat unceremoniously on the floor.

“You’re all pie thieves,” Sam accused, arriving not long after Steve. He took his own fork and took a generous scoop. “And bad hosts.”

“We’re great hosts,” Bucky contended. “Every good party has a VIP room.”

“You guys don’t even have an end table in here,” Sam pointed out. “The lamp is on the floor.”

“It’ll come together,” Steve said, unconcerned. He scooped up the last big bite of pie and after a moment’s thought, offered it to Bucky.

“Yeah,” Bucky took it and then talked right through the mouthful. “It’s gonna be great.”