Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I know the Army’s set you up with a place, but I figured Steve would want you to have this,” says Bruce Banner, and slides a big manila envelope across the cafe table.

Bucky doesn’t take the envelope. He just stares at Banner, who’s as incognito as he gets: he’s in his fully human form, just a rumpled, tired-looking guy with a smile that looked preemptively apologetic from the moment he shook Bucky’s hand in greeting a few minutes ago. The cafe in the shadow of Avengers Tower bustles around them, the other customers heedless of their proximity to the Winter Soldier and the Hulk. It’s a struggle not to fidget, and to ignore his brain’s relentless calculation of sight lines and ways to take out Banner or the Hulk, or escape them.

Everything’s fine, Bucky tells himself. He has at least three dozen exit strategies, and two-thirds of them won’t even end up with him dead.

“If he did, he never said anything to me before he left,” says Bucky, and Banner grimaces.

“Oh, uh, I thought you two—I saw you two talking by the lake, before Steve pulled his little disappearing act, so I thought—”

“He didn’t say much. Just that he couldn’t stay long, but that everything was gonna be alright, and that I should take care of myself.”

It had been about five hundred times worse than their first stilted phone and video calls after Bucky got out of cryo in Wakanda.  

Bucky does not mention the other thing that older version of Steve had said: I hope like hell this will all make sense to you eventually. I wish I could tell you more, but we’re already risking a hell of a lot with the timelines.

Okay, Bucky had said, through the numbness and confusion, before he’d summoned up an apparently not-at-all convincing smile and told Steve, I’m glad you got your happy ending. Bucky had meant it; he was glad, and relieved. The way Steve had looked after the battle with Thanos, Bucky had genuinely worried that something in Steve had broken beyond repair. And the way he’d talked about returning the Infinity Stones…well, let’s just say Bucky had realized Steve probably wasn’t coming back. But the older Steve had looked at Bucky in stricken and almost desperate dismay, and then he’d disappeared back to his happily ever after in another timeline.

Which had been a relief, in a way, because it meant Bucky could start planning his exit strategies again. Maybe this time he’d actually bring himself to use one of them.

“Oh,” says Banner, before rallying with another apologetic smile. “Well, I’m sure if he’d had time, he’d have mentioned this.”

Bucky reaches for the envelope. Inside is a set of keys, and a small stack of papers.

“What is all this?”

“Keys to Steve’s place in Brooklyn, and his motorcycle. Some records about his, ah, accounts and things. He—well, he hasn’t been declared officially dead, we can’t, you know, say anything about the time travel, but—”

“He’s not coming back,” says Bucky, before Banner has to try to couch it softly, or spare Bucky’s assumed feelings. It’s a courtesy Bucky doesn’t need. His feelings have seemed very far away since Steve left. “I know.”

“Yeah. So, uh, I figured. Well, there’s no reason for you to wait seven years until he’s declared dead, or to have to fight about inheritances with the courts. God knows they’ll be backed up for years and years dealing with all the fallout of—anyway. I just figured—you should have all this.”

“I’m not homeless,” says Bucky with a frown. “And I have money.”

Bucky’s pardon might have some onerous conditions—therapy is godawful, and his surveillance detail is offensively obvious—but he hasn’t got any complaints about his official—and surprisingly, honorable—discharge from the Army. They set him up with a small apartment in Brooklyn, a bank account that’s full of an incomprehensible amount of backpay, and a modest pension. Compared to his time on the run and even his life in Brooklyn before the war, he’s living in the lap of luxury. He’s sure as hell doing better than a lot of the people who’d come back to life three months ago.

“Yeah, no, of course, do whatever you want with all of it,” stammers Banner. “I just figured all this stuff should go to you. There’s—well, there’s no one else, really.”

There’s Wilson, but then Steve passed along the most important thing to him already.

Bucky frowns. “I feel like it can’t be legal if I, I dunno, sell the place or empty the accounts or whatever.”

“Like I said, do whatever you want,” says Banner with a shrug.

Belatedly, Bucky remembers his manners. “Thank you,” he says, because this is meant to be a kindness.

It’s not Banner’s fault that it feels more like a burden.

After leaving the cafe, Bucky figures he hasn’t really got anything else to do right now, so he might as well go to the address of the apartment Steve had owned: an apartment on the top floor of a well-maintained brownstone, in a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood in what’s Carroll Gardens now, and used to be Red Hook back in Steve and Bucky’s day. 

There are still big swathes of the borough that are in disrepair after five years of abandonment; with half the population gone, people had abandoned some neighborhoods and clustered more closely together in neighborhoods like this one, which is much nicer than it had been back in the 30s. Gentrified, people call it now, Bucky recalls. Bucky’s own neighborhood is one of the more rundown ones that the chaos of recent years has more or less un-gentrified, and he spends a lot of his time helping out with various repair and rebuilding efforts.

Nothing like that is needed here, but Bucky finds himself wishing the neighborhood was a bit more abandoned when one of Steve’s former neighbors stops him on the staircase landing on his way up to the apartment. She’s an elderly woman who looks carved from stone: gray all over and deeply wrinkled, but with a sharp and assessing gaze.

“So is it true? Is Captain Rogers on the moon?” she asks, in a tone that suggests she knows that particular theory is totally bullshit, and a look of bitter, anticipatory grief on her face.

He can’t tell her the truth, such as it is: that Steve went on a mission to return the Infinity Stones, and took a very long detour while he was at it. That’s what he’d called it, when he’d told Bucky about the plan: Buck, I…I might take a detour, once I finish the mission. A long one, back in—well, back in the past. 

“That’s classified,” Bucky tells her, and she snorts.

“Sure,” she says. “You want the spare key? I went in there to clean out the fridge and take out the trash, after I saw the press conference about, well—you know.”

Shit, Bucky hadn’t even thought of that. “Thank you,” he tells her. “And I’ve got a key already. I’m James Barnes.”

“I know who you are,” she says, a sympathetic twist to her mouth. “I’m Frankie Paoletti, I’m in the ground floor unit. You planning on staying here?”

“I don’t know,” says Bucky. “Probably not.”

Frankie hesitates, then asks, “Is Captain Rogers coming back?”

“Probably not,” he says. To his horror, his voice cracks.

It occurs to Bucky that all those emotions that have seemed so muted and distant for weeks now haven’t been far away at all: they’ve been like the seawater that rushes away from shore before a tidal wave, while dumbasses like Bucky go gawk at the newly bare sand, heedless of the inundation that’s coming.

Frankie nods, and accepts the news with a grim resignation Bucky’s seen a lot of, in the folks who lived through what people are now calling the Blip. “Well, I’ll keep an eye out, make sure no one snoops around.”

“That’s kind of you, you don’t need to go to the trouble.”

“It’s no trouble,” she insists.

“Well, uh, let me know if you need anything,” says Bucky awkwardly. “I can give you my number? If, uh, there’s any maintenance needed or problems with St—the apartment, I mean.”

Now Frankie smiles, sweetly dimpled in a way that suggests she was a heartbreaker in her youth. “That’d be great,” she says.

They exchange numbers—Bucky uses his burner phone, of course—and then Frankie says, “I’ll let you head on up now. And—I’m sorry for your loss.”

She’s the first person to say it.

Bucky doesn’t trust his voice, so he just nods and heads up the stairs. 

Bucky’s first impression of the apartment is that it’s spacious and, well, normal. There’s a normal amount of furniture and a normal amount of clutter, with framed prints and photos on the wall and the odd knick-knack or decorative item, all of it just disparate enough to suggest the furnishings and decor are the result of years’ worth of accumulation rather than any staging. The light is good, with the high ceilings and big windows lending the whole place a nice airiness that makes it seem even bigger than it is. 

Next, Bucky spots the easel by the wall of big windows and the other wall lined with bookshelves with something like relief, like these things are proof that Steve really had lived here, had made a proper home here.

Bucky then proceeds to very carefully and very thoroughly toss the place.

It’s partly a precaution, but it’s also pure nosiness, and maybe even a bit of very belated payback for Steve snooping around his place in Bucharest. Bucky determinedly ignores the very small part of him that’s hoping to find a clue, a reason, an explanation—anything to explain why Steve had left, or more hopeless still, anything to suggest he might be coming back after all.

There won’t be anything like that, he’s pretty sure, but if he doesn’t at least look, he’ll always wonder about it.

Bucky checks the apartment for bugs or traps first, and thankfully doesn’t find any. He checks the expected places for go-bags and safes, and finds them, and is pleased to note the safe holds a decent amount of cash and fake IDs along with the expected guns. He hadn’t needed to crack the safe to open it; the safe’s code is his own birthday, Bucky’s second guess after trying Sarah Rogers’ birthday. He tries not to read into that.

Other than the guns, there are a few knives hidden around the place, which isn’t really the kind of thing Bucky thought Steve would do, and suspects that’s Romanoff’s influence. There’s also what he’s pretty sure is a panic button, and the windows are wired with perimeter alarms, so all in all, Bucky grudgingly approves of Steve’s security measures.

His first quick pass through the apartment takes him through the living room, which adjoins the kitchen, separated only by a breakfast bar and a small dining nook, and down a hallway to the sparingly but comfortably furnished guest bedroom, a bathroom, Steve’s bedroom and en suite bathroom, and a hall closet.

When the apartment passes this quick security check, Bucky moves onto taking a closer look at the kitchen. The fridge has been cleared out of anything urgently perishable—thank you, Frankie—and the cabinets are full of the expected pantry staples, though a couple cabinets are full to the brim with MREs, which makes Bucky grimace. Military rations? When basically all the cuisines of the world are within the delivery radius of any given address in Brooklyn? But then maybe Bucky’s underestimating the chaos following the Blip; these could be emergency rations. He’ll probably have to clear out the cabinets at some point, before rats or roaches get at the food. For now, he leaves them alone.

Bucky does a thorough search of the living room, which unearths a lot of dust bunnies and not much else of interest, other than the easel that still has Steve’s last painting in progress on it. Bucky approaches that with all the caution of a wild animal, and he almost wants to avoid looking at it head-on. He doesn’t even know what he does or doesn’t want to see on the canvas. He’s more than familiar with Steve’s art, and most of it was of people and places if it was for himself or for class; otherwise he did illustrations and signage for ads, and on a few notable occasions when they were especially strapped for cash, Tijuana bibles. Either way, none of it’s anything Bucky should feel weird about looking at.

And yet, when he looks at this painting in progress, he does feel weird about looking at it.

He recognizes the view that’s depicted there, and it’s a recognition that’s almost violent with the force of its painful nostalgia: it’s the view from the fire escape of their tenement apartment in Brooklyn. The view is rendered in Steve’s usual exquisite detail, but the figure in front of that view is only sketched in. Is it supposed to be Steve…? No. The shoulders are too broad to be Steve before the serum, and the profile, even lightly sketched as it is, clearly isn’t Steve’s beak of a nose. It’s Bucky himself.

He stumbles away from the unfinished painting as if he’s happened on something too private by far, and turns his attention to the bookshelves. Loving to read is something Bucky and Steve have always had in common, though their taste in books has very little overlap, and that doesn’t seem to have changed. Steve’s shelves are full of nonfiction: history, mostly, and biographies and memoirs, some art books, though there are some comic books too, much nicer than the cheap ones they used to read as kids. Bucky takes a few books out at random and rifles through the pages, not particularly expecting to find anything; all he turns up are a few scraps of paper and receipts, clearly used as bookmarks.

On the rightmost bookshelf, the top row of books catches Bucky’s attention when he spots a familiar title: The Hobbit. An old copy, even—a familiar one. Could it actually be—? Bucky takes the book out carefully, and opens it. There, on the inside cover, in his own neat cursive that he doesn’t bother with anymore: James Buchanan Barnes. He almost drops the book. His own copy, the one he’d left—where had he left it? Their old apartment? His parents’ house?

Where the hell had Steve even gotten this? Why had he never given it back to Bucky? None of the other books on the top shelf are Bucky’s, but they are the kinds of books Bucky loves: more Tolkien, science fiction classics, a few newer books. For a vertiginous moment, Bucky wonders if they’re all his own books, if he’d lived here with Steve and just doesn’t remember, if—

But no, of course not. Other than the old copy of The Hobbit, none of the books are Bucky’s. Bucky doesn’t keep physical books anymore, just gets them from the library, or loads them onto a Kindle, which isn’t the same as a physical book, but it has the benefit of being less awkward to hold and turn the pages with one hand, and it can hold thousands of books to boot. And anyway, some of these books are really nice leather bound editions with gilded titles on the spines and an attached ribbon for a bookmark. He pulls out The Fellowship of the Ring, bound in a rich green leather, and gasps when he sees that the edges of the pages are painted to show a beautiful landscape of Rivendell.

What the hell. Steve never even liked The Hobbit, why would he—

He puts the book back carefully, checks the others in the trilogy, and they all have lovely paintings along the edges too. There’s even a copy of The Silmarillion, and there’s no timeline where Steve would ever have the patience to get through that book. Bucky’s already read it five times, each time lamenting his own lack of a physical copy to make notes in, but he knows Steve would find it impenetrable and boring.

Maybe these books belong to someone else. Maybe Steve had had a girlfriend or boyfriend or something, at least for a little while.

But when Bucky heads into the bedroom, there’s no sign of anyone else ever having lived here, or even any frequent guests. The bedroom looks as if Steve might come back any moment: the bed is made, but the bedspread is slightly wrinkled, as if someone’s just sat on it, and there’s still a water glass on the nightstand, along with a short stack of books, Steve’s usual nonfiction. It’s only the air’s stale stuffiness, and the slight coating of dust, that says no one’s been in this room for months.

Bucky’s search is slower and more careful here as he lingers over every little thing, the last parts of Steve he’ll ever really have. In the nightstand drawer, there’s Steve’s small notebook, full of notes to himself and terms to look up. Bucky pockets that on impulse. On the nightstand and dresser are photos of Wilson and Maximoff, of Romanoff and Barton, of the Howlies and Carter, of Bucky.

To Bucky’s surprise, the photo of him isn’t a photo from the 40s: it’s from Wakanda, a candid shot, and Bucky doesn’t even recognize when Steve could have taken it—until he realizes it’s not a photo, it’s a screenshot from one of their video calls. Steve had managed to catch a snapshot of him laughing. Bucky must have been regaling him with the kids’, both human and goat, antics, the only reliably light-hearted topics of conversation they’d had during those video calls.

Those emotions that had felt so distant before begin to loom large, a rising and inexorable tide.

They’d had exactly five video calls, between the time Bucky got out of cryo and the fight against Thanos. The first one had been short, mostly just to reassure Steve that he was out of cryo and doing alright. The others had all been varying degrees of awkward. It had been good, seeing Steve, but they hadn’t really talked. By the fifth video call, and the eleventh voice call, all of them varying degrees of stilted when one of them didn’t have a funny or reassuring anecdote handy, Bucky had assumed Steve was making them out of a kind of obligation.

But here’s this photo, a screenshot of one of their calls. So maybe Steve had wanted to see Bucky, to talk to him, if he’d saved this—

It doesn’t matter.

Bucky moves on to the closet, which is full of boring clothes that smell of nothing but clean laundry, and a stack of significantly less boring finished paintings: a couple detailed cityscapes, a couple attempts at some abstract arrangement of icy looking shapes, and a landscape of the Wakandan jungle that somehow so deeply unsettling that Bucky can’t look at it for too long.

In the dresser, he finds a sock drawer in absolute chaos with no socks paired together at all—Sarah Rogers must be rolling in her grave—an underwear drawer in only slightly less disarray, and a drawer full of a jumble of rolled up workout clothes, all of which make the bottom drawer’s careful neatness stand out. In the bottom drawer, a few items of clothing are folded carefully, and in tissue paper no less. Bucky lifts away some of the tissue paper and stares in surprise at the familiar shade of red. It’s the shuka he used to cover the stump and port of his left shoulder in Wakanda. He lifts it and sets it aside, and under it is a bright blue fabric: another shuka. And under that, Bucky finds—what the fuck. His own dirty clothes?

He recognizes the grimy shirt and worn pants and scarf, his usual hard-wearing clothes for when he’d put in hours working on the farm to quiet his mind, the ones he’d been wearing when T’Challa had come to fetch him for the fight against Thanos. He’d changed in a hurry and tossed his clothes in the hamper, and Steve must have—what, gone back to his hut? Brought the dirty clothes back with him? Why would he—

A memory returns to Bucky: his mother, giving him briskly devastating instructions on how to help Steve pack away Sarah Rogers’ things after her death, after Steve had to move out of the apartment he could no longer afford without her.

He’s grieving, so he’s not thinking straight, and if I know Steven, he’ll want to do some practical, self-sacrificing nonsense like donating all of his mother’s clothes and selling her jewelry for the money, Bucky’s mother had said as she chopped vegetables for Sunday dinner. So you’ll have to do the thinking for him. Make sure he keeps at least one thing she wore, and a bottle of her perfume, and any recipe books she had. Because in the years that come, he’ll want to hold a scarf or sweater, or smell her perfume, and take a deep breath and it will be as close as he can get to another hug from his ma. The scents will fade in time, of course, and hopefully his grief will have eased too. And then he’ll still have the recipe book of her food to nourish him.

That’s really wise, Ma, Bucky had said, so impressed he’d almost been in awe of all his mother’s sharpness and kindness.

He wishes so much that he still had her wisdom to guide him, her way of taking one long look at a person or situation and figuring them out, getting to the heart of them. She had never once steered Bucky wrong when he’d brought a problem to her or asked her for advice.

So Bucky had followed her advice. He’d kept and hidden away Sarah Rogers’ favorite scarf, the old sweater she’d worn at home, and the small bottle of her perfume, and despite his reservations about Mrs. Rogers’ ambivalent cooking skills, the recipe book, and packed them all away in a corner of one of Steve’s drawers when they’d moved in together. Steve had never said anything about it, but seeing this drawer now, Bucky knows Steve had taken the lesson to heart.

Because he’d kept Bucky’s clothes. He’d packed them carefully away, he hadn’t even washed them, probably the better to preserve the scent, even though it’s not exactly a good scent: sweat and goats and hay, the baked heat of Wakanda and the spices he’d cooked with—

And their dozen or so hugs, maybe, during Steve’s three visits to Bucky.

They hadn’t talked much, not about anything important, but Bucky hadn’t minded that much, not really, because he’d understood so much of what Steve wasn’t saying in those hugs, in their desperate clinginess, in the way neither of them had wanted to let go.

But Steve had let go, in the end. Bucky should’ve known he would, after that last too-quick, too-casual hug before he left to return the Stones. 

Bucky shoves everything back in and slams the drawer closed.

He stands up, and tries to calm his suddenly rapid breathing, blinks away the blurring of his eyes. His right hand is shaking, and he clenches it into a fist until it stops, but his knees are shaky too so he stumbles back until he’s sitting on the bed.

He breathes, or tries to. Finds he’s gasping, and oh, maybe that tidal wave has finally reached him, that inundation of feeling, but he can’t even put a name to what he’s feeling right now, only that it’s too much, that it’s drowning him, and he can’t breathe.

He lets himself tip to the side and curls up there on the bed, and sucks in air, and finds his nose filling with an improbable, faint scent: Steve. He inhales, deep and long, and when he exhales, it comes out in a long and terrible keening and he can’t he can’t he can’t. He flings the pillow across the room and scrambles off the bed, landing on his ass with a thump.

On the bed, where the pillow had been, something glints. 

Bucky thinks it’s the glint of a knife at first, or maybe a gun. But no, it’s…a necklace? He reaches out to take it—with his left hand, which never shakes—and finds that it’s a set of dog tags.

His own dog tags.

The swell of feeling that came before wasn’t the tidal wave. This is, and it washes him away.

When Bucky surfaces, he has one thought, one question: if Steve mourned me this much, why the fuck did he leave me here with nothing?

It’s mostly dark in the apartment when Bucky peels himself off the bedroom floor. His bones ache in a way that’s easy to ignore; the shakiness of his limbs, not so much. He needs to eat something. He loops his dog tags around his neck, and stumbles to the bathroom, splashes some water on his face.

He hasn’t bothered to turn the lights on, which is a mistake, because in the dimness, his reflection looks shadowy and ghostly, the faint gleam of his eyes eerie and almost inhuman. 

That’s all he is here in Steve’s home, Bucky realizes: a ghost. And maybe Steve had preferred that, compared to the revenant who’d come back, this wreckage of the Winter Soldier and whatever’s left of Bucky Barnes. Steve must have preferred the ghost, given that he’d left. Or hell, he went to the past; maybe Steve got the real Bucky back, the less broken one, the one he’d missed and mourned the most.

Bucky has the sudden urge to smash the mirror, to wreck the bed, burn the books and paintings and photos, to tear this place apart. To erase himself from this place and be a ghost in truth, and an unquiet one at that, to destroy things, because that’s what he’s made for, isn’t it—

The thought of Frankie downstairs is the only thing that stops him. It would scare her, and she’d probably end up cleaning up after him. She shouldn’t have to deal with the results of Bucky’s tantrum.

So he puts the bed back to rights, and leaves, stopping only to raid the kitchen for a couple of protein bars that he wolfs down quickly along with some water from the tap.

When Bucky’s at the door, he hesitates for a second, and looks back at the bookshelf, where his own copy of The Hobbit sits, along with those other books that could have been his. He could take them with him. He thinks of his own apartment, bare and mostly empty. He leaves the books.

He does take Steve’s motorcycle though. 

When he leaves Steve’s apartment, he can’t stop thinking about his exit strategies.

His last ones hadn’t really worked out, thanks to Steve and Zemo. Mostly thanks to Steve. Because Steve had taken one look at him with those challenging, pleading baby blues of his, and all of Bucky’s careful exit strategies had gone to shit.  Bucky can concede that it’s not fair of him to put all or even most of it on Steve; once the other Winter Soldiers were on the table, Bucky had to stick it out, had to help.

He’d still tried to salvage an exit strategy, once it was clear the Winter Soldiers were out of the picture: he’d tried to draw Stark’s fire away from Steve, tried to keep Stark focused on Bucky, because maybe if Bucky was safely dead, the whole situation would cool off. Dumb of him; Steve would’ve lost it and killed Stark or something, probably. So that hadn’t been the best-considered exit strategy. 

He admittedly hadn’t been at his best in figuring out the most effective exit strategy in light of the triggers, mostly on account of feeling about as desperate and trapped as an animal caught in a snare, ready and willing to chew or tear off another limb to get away; useless, when the limb stuck in the trap wasn’t a limb at all, but his mind. He’d made what he thought was a very good case for just mercy killing him to T’Challa and Okoye, who’d gotten weird looks on their faces, and T’Challa had said, very gently, that he thought they could find a better option than that, one that didn’t involve Bucky dying.

They’d clearly been trying to be kind. Bucky had felt too awkward about it to tell them that he just didn’t trust anybody who wanted to keep him alive, other than Steve; prior experiences had proven it never went well for him, or anyone else. But he’d accepted cryostasis as a second-best exit strategy, figuring it’d let Steve down easy, that surely as the months and years dragged on with no fix for the trigger words, someone would sit Steve down and tell him that he had to let Bucky go.

But then they had fixed the trigger words, and things were…okay, for a while, peaceful and calm, and maybe he and Steve didn’t talk much but they did spend some time together, and Bucky had started thinking that maybe he could ease off on the exit strategies.

Yeah, no. He’d told Steve it always ended in a fight, and he’d been fucking right, except for the part where it doesn’t actually fucking end.

Bucky has since learned his lesson, and anyway, Steve has let him go now. Left him here. Same difference. So Bucky has a lot of exit strategies, and their degrees of difficulty and permanence vary. A dozen of them are ways to go to ground in New York, another dozen are untraceable routes out of New York entirely. He has half a dozen ways out of the country, and an offer of sanctuary at any Wakandan consulate or outreach center, not that he ever intends on imposing on the Wakandans any more than he already has. He even has a couple tentative and admittedly slightly insane options for getting off the planet entirely.

These aren’t the exit strategies Bucky finds himself thinking of as he gets on Steve’s motorcycle, uncertain of where he intends to go. Bucky is thinking of the permanent exit strategies, the ones he’s planned most thoroughly, the ones he’d considered a last resort, before, thanks to Steve. He is thinking of the guns in the safe in Steve’s apartment; not his preferred method, given the mess they’d leave behind, and the possibility of failure. He is thinking of driving to the Brooklyn Bridge and then off it. Which is dumb and overdramatic. He is thinking of his most foolproof, clean, and tidy exit strategy, the one whose details he contemplates the most when he needs to calm down.

Tonight, just thinking of it isn’t quite working. He needs to be sure. He needs to know it’s still ready to go, just in case—

He’s not planning on doing it, not now, not while he still has things to set right as best he can, loose ends to tie up, but he needs to know it’s still an option, that it’s all ready to go.

So he heads for the port district, and makes his way to a shipping container that’s owned by a series of shell corporations, unnoticed and unseen. The riskiest part of this particular exit strategy is that the shipping container might be moved or loaded onto a ship, but Bucky has redundancies in place for that. He’s relieved not to need them now: the shipping container is exactly where it’s supposed to be. He opens it to check on the supplies inside, and finds them exactly where they should be too.

Bucky has already ended in ice, again and again and again. It might be nice to end in fire. Most importantly, it’ll be permanent and safe, quiet and somewhat tidy. The serum won’t fix it, and neither will the marvels of Wakandan medicine, or even a magic space rock. Bucky still has a way out. He takes a few deep breaths, already feeling better.

The feeling doesn’t last. That’s fine. The numbness is easier to live with anyway.

Dr. Raynor is kind of an overachiever, Bucky has come to realize.

All she’s really tasked to do is to make sure Bucky’s not about to go on a Winter Soldier rampage, and to make sure he’s a reasonably functional member of society. And yet, every session, she presses Bucky on becoming less isolated, on making friends, on connecting to people. She’s pushing especially hard today, and Bucky hasn’t really got it in him to do his usual evasive maneuvers. He’s finding it hard to focus on her words at all today.

“James. James,” she says, like she’s been saying it for a while. “James, are you alright?”

“Hmm? I’m fine,” he says automatically.

“You’re looking pretty tired, are you sure you’re feeling okay?”

He’s always tired. “Yes,” he says, and she narrows her eyes at him.

“You honestly looked like you’d just fallen asleep with your eyes open, a minute ago. Like, you weren’t even blinking.”

He blinks, deliberately. Raynor is not amused. “How about this: if you promise to do some homework for me, we can wrap up early today, and you can go home and rest.”

“I need to know what the homework is, first,” he says.

“I want you to think about what your best possible future looks like. Not what you think is most likely, not what you’ll settle for, not what anyone else thinks: just what would make you happiest.”

He stares at her. “Best and happiest are two different things,” he says.

“Come up with options for both of them, then.”

“What does it matter? Why do you care?”

“Because I’m your therapist,” she says, raising an eyebrow.

“My court-mandated therapist who’s supposed to make sure I don’t go off the deep end, or go on a killing spree.”

“I’m not worried about any of that, you’re not at risk of any of that,” she says with a dismissive wave of her pen. “What I care about is that you have the tools and opportunity to build yourself a reasonably happy and fulfilling life. What I’m worried about is that you won’t fight for that. That you’ve given up on that.”

Bucky laughs, gets up, and leaves.

He does think about it though, his best possible future. All he can come up with is that shipping container, and the end it represents. Telling Raynor that would be a one-way ticket to the loony bin though, and not answering her at all is a fight he hasn’t got the energy for, so at their next session, he gives her part of the answer that was once true: he’s free and safe, and he’s righted every HYDRA wrong he can. He has a garden, maybe a pet or two, because it had been nice, tending the plants and animals on that farm in Wakanda. And that’s it. That’s all he’s got.

“Alright,” says Dr. Raynor softly. “That’s somewhere to start.”

That’s the thing though: Bucky’s long past wanting somewhere to start. He wants somewhere to end.

As he walks back home from therapy—it’s a four-mile walk, but what does he care, he hasn’t got anything else to do—he realizes that he understands better now, why Steve had stayed in the past. When any possible future seems opaque and impossible, the known and knowable past must seem like a much better option. 

Bucky goes to therapy. He has lunch with Yori a couple times a week and tries and fails to figure out how to tell him about his son. He gets texts from Wilson and doesn’t answer them, because it’s probably best not to encourage the guy’s idea that he’s obligated to check on Bucky or whatever. He makes what amends he can, and even mostly follows the rules Raynor set for them.

He does not go back to Steve’s apartment. He does take long drives on Steve’s motorcycle though, and derives some amusement from how annoyed his tails look about the meandering routes he takes.

The weeks pass, and a muffled numbness settles deep in his bones and his heart, and it’s almost the kind of relief cryo had once been.

And then he sees John Walker with the shield, and all that numbness burns away in one white hot searing flash of rage.

Chapter Text

When the fire of Bucky’s anger—at Sam for giving up the shield, at himself, at Walker and Zemo, at the whole damn world—burns itself out, Bucky is well-aware that he’s damned lucky that he isn’t left with the ashes of what passes for his life. Instead, he gets a reality check and the chance to make things right with Ayo and Sam, and he grabs onto both of them and holds on gratefully.

Making things right with Ayo means running Zemo down and throwing him back in the Raft. He has no doubt that Ayo herself could find him easily, and Bucky suspects Zemo never intended to stay on the lam anyway. Bucky tracking him down first will hopefully cool some of Ayo’s temper though, and having busted Zemo out of prison, Bucky knows it’s his job to put Zemo back—which had always been part of his plan anyway—so he chases after Zemo, and unsurprisingly finds the dramatic bastard in Sokovia, at the Memorial.

Zemo talks a lot of bullshit, and tries to fuck with Bucky, as usual. Bucky wonders if the guy can get through a single conversation without trying to manipulate the other person somehow, and suspects not.

“Don’t worry, I’ve decided I’m not going to kill you,” says Zemo.

“Imagine my relief,” Bucky says, and immediately mentally throws out half a dozen exit strategies that had involved Zemo in some way, out of pure contrary spite. 

If Zemo thinks Bucky is going to be grateful for his magnanimity or some shit, he’s going to be sorely disappointed. It’s when Zemo starts going on about how Bucky’s programmed to kill that Bucky realizes what the real play here is, because he recognizes an exit strategy when he sees one, and apparently, he’s Zemo’s. So, what, the asshole wants both the satisfaction of being right about Bucky and to commit suicide-by-super soldier?

Yeah, no, fuck that.

It isn’t like Bucky was ever planning to kill him anyway, but now he intends to make sure this bastard stays alive. With a tap to the kimoyo bead chained with his dog tags, he sends the signal to Ayo; she and the Dora will get here soon enough. In the meantime, he has to endure more of Zemo’s bullshit manipulation.

“We are much the same, I think,” says Zemo. “We are both soldiers who have lost everything: our homes, our families, our friends. Our purpose.”

On instinct, Bucky wants to contradict Zemo. While Zemo’s not wrong about the things they have in common, Bucky suspects they have very different ideas about what Bucky’s purpose is.

So he says, “Sure. But my exit strategies are a hell of a lot more straightforward than yours.” That gets Zemo’s attention. He’s almost certainly going to use this against him at some point, but Bucky figures that’s a knife that cuts both ways, given Zemo’s own far more dramatic attempts at enacting his own. “And they don’t involve nearly as much collateral damage. Deal with your shit or don’t, but don’t make it everyone else’s problem.” 

“So what, you intend to make a quiet and permanent exit at some point? What would your beloved Captain say?”

“Don’t care, he’s not here,” he says, and shit, now that’s giving too much away.

“Ah,” says Zemo, exaggerated understanding dawning on his face. “And so you have no particular reason to stay here either? Believe me, I understand.”

“There’s nothing to understand,” he snaps, but Zemo has dropped some of the sly and cunning act, and the cool calculation and determination behind his eyes have disappeared, leaving only weary grief behind.

“I didn’t realize how many reasons my wife gave me to keep going, until those reasons no longer existed,” says Zemo.

Bucky knows exactly how many reasons Steve had given him to keep going. When the pure animal instinct to flee, to survive, to hole up somewhere safe and wait out the worst of the danger had passed, the thing that had been the Asset had become Bucky again, and it had hurt, it had been agony, he had wanted to end it, to wipe it all away, to freeze again, but he couldn’t; the only way out was death.

Only he hadn’t taken that way out, because he had remembered Steve. Steve had been the reason, whole and entire, when Bucky had not been able to come up with any others. And that had been enough, for a while, even when he couldn’t risk actually letting Steve find him.

He has other reasons now, he realizes. Not only the amends or making sure the shield is where it belongs, or that it at least isn’t in the hands of someone like Walker, but watching Sam’s back—if he’ll have Bucky, and maybe even if he won’t, Bucky can keep watch from afar—and keeping the serum from being used and helping fix the broken world in whatever ways he can. Maybe it’s not the happiest possible future Raynor had wanted him to imagine, but Bucky thinks it’s the best he can hope for. It’s enough. More than.

He’ll still need his exit strategies, of course, because they’re just common sense, and he might still end up needing one of them. But he figures it’s alright if he doesn’t have to use any of them for a good long while.

“You find new reasons, Zemo,” Bucky tells Zemo. “Preferably ones that aren’t just about revenge or killing people.”

“A difficult prospect, for a man who’s become a weapon,” says Zemo mildly, already back to calculating and scheming. Bucky rolls his eyes, and adds ‘to spite Zemo’ to his own collection of reasons.

“I was talking about you, asshole,” he says. “I’ve got my reasons.”

The kimoyo bead strung on the chain with his dog tags buzzes a fraction of a second before Bucky can hear the talon jet approach. A few seconds later, Zemo can hear it too, and he smiles wryly at Bucky, inclining his head in a congratulatory nod, as if Bucky’s some chess opponent who’s managed a particularly good move.

He hands Zemo off to Ayo, relieved to see her and the Dora lead Zemo into the jet. Ayo’s expression is stern, but her eyes have softened and cooled from their earlier fiery fury, and when she calls him White Wolf again, he knows he’s been mostly forgiven, even if the suggestion to steer clear of Wakanda for a while stings far more than it ought to, given that he doesn’t actually have any expectation of ever returning there.

“I’m sorry,” he tells Ayo, before she gets back on the jet. “I put my mission before the—” He fumbles for the right words, and settles on, “—the honor and respect I owe you and Wakanda. I should have tried to find a better way.”

Ayo raises an eyebrow. “Just so,” she says. “You could have at least spoken to me before you attempted your ridiculous plan, you know.”

“I know,” he says. “I just thought, by the time I convinced someone to get a message to you from the Outreach Center…”

“That is what a kimoyo bead is for, did you not—” She stops, and closes her eyes briefly, sucking in a sharp breath. “You did not have yours.”

She’d given him one a few days ago to coordinate this little ambush, but his own kimoyo beads had been lost in the chaos of the battle against Thanos and returning to life. He hadn’t really wanted to bother anyone about it, given the more important things they were all dealing with.

“Is there—I can text you? If that works, between phones and kimoyo beads—”

Ayo shakes her head. “Well you have one now, and I expect you to use it, White Wolf.”

“I’ll try,” he tells her, and knows she’ll understand what he means. 

Because she has seen him when the weight of newly recovered memories made getting out of bed too hard, and yet she had sat with him anyway, and asked him to try, and for her sake, he had, until he was strong enough to try for his own. Her expression takes on that terrible compassion of hers that has always made him feel somehow both very small and very safe, and seeing it now makes him shiver and release more tension than he’d known he was holding.

“I know you always do, White Wolf,” she says. She wrinkles her nose, an expression that he’s always found terribly charming for how young it makes her look. “I’m sorry too. For fighting dirty, in Riga.”

Bucky snorts. “You call that fighting dirty? One time, when I was teaching her how to box, Becca got so frustrated that she kicked me in the nuts.”

Ayo removing his arm had admittedly been considerably more alarming than that, if less physically painful, but he’s kind of glad she knows how to do it. Just in case.

Ayo smiles and says, “Nevertheless, I am sorry. For that, and for not contacting you sooner. I did not want to, ah, bother you, now that you are with your people again.”

What people? he thinks, and it must be clear on his face, because Ayo’s own face falls. “White Wolf,” she says softly, and he shakes his head.

“It’s fine. I’m fine. I’m—I’m working on it,” he says. “It’s just been—hard. Without—” He can’t even fucking say it. He doesn’t want to say it. “It’s been hard. But I really—I’ve been trying.” He clears his throat and changes the subject. “Have you—has everything been alright in Wakanda? You handling the return okay? How’s Aneka?”

“She’s well. And things have been somewhat chaotic, but they are settling down now,” she says. She glances back at the talon jet, where Zemo has been safely stowed away. “Did he truly help your mission?”

“He had his own agenda, and he was an asshole, but…yes,” he says.

She hums thoughtfully, and tilts her head, a distant look of calculation crossing her face. “Perhaps Wakanda can reconsider what justice we demand from Zemo. If he can be put to work…”

“Good luck with that,” says Bucky with a shrug. “All I know is, if it’s punishment you’re after with him, keeping him alive is all you need to do. Justice…that’s up to you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” says Ayo, and returns the full of weight of her attention to him. “You must call, if there is anything you need help with. None of this moping about without any kimoyo beads for months when you could have simply asked. We named you White Wolf, not Lone Wolf, you know.” 

He does his best to look contrite, which isn’t difficult, because he’s feeling pretty damned contrite and guilty right about now. “Alright, alright, I hear you. And, uh, you can call too? If—I mean, I know you probably don’t need it, but if you or Wakanda need any help—”

“We will call,” she says, and then studies him closely through narrowed eyes. “Is there anything else you have been ridiculous about? Any health troubles? Issues with your prosthetic? You must say, if so.”

Shit, he’s really worried her, he thinks even more guiltily. 

“Nothing, I promise,” he says. But something does occur to him. “But, uh, there is one thing. It’s not for me though, it’s for Sam…”

Bucky tries not to have any expectations when he goes to Delacroix to give Sam the gear the Wakandans have made for him. He’s there to make what amends he can to Sam, and to apologize for being an asshole about the shield, and he’s fully prepared to receive a polite, or even not-so-polite, rejection.

Instead, Sam lets him in: into his confidence, his life, his family. His home. It’s beyond Bucky’s wildest expectations, and the sheer relief and surprise of it make him feel lighter than he has in a long time. It helps that Delacroix is free of all memories for him, good or bad, and that the people here have no particular fears or expectations of him. Here, he’s just Sam’s friend who’s helping Sam fix the family boat. Here, he and Sam can actually talk in a way they haven’t managed to until now, honesty and forgiveness and even friendship coming with shocking ease.

And here, Bucky is not one half of SteveandBucky, cut loose and left adrift in a changed Brooklyn.

Bucky can’t help but poke at that raw and healing wound a bit.

“Did Steve ever visit you here?” he asks Sam, and tosses the shield to him with a sharp snap of his arm.

“No,” says Sam with a grimace, catching the shield easily. “I, uh, kinda avoided coming back home for a good long while.”

“Everyone loves you here though,” says Bucky. “You’ve got this huge, supportive community, and your family...”

Bucky had never quite taken his own large family for granted, not with Steve and Mrs. Rogers there to show how tough things could be without a sprawling familial support network. Even so, it’s taken being alone in the future for him to realize just how much steadiness his family had lent his life, how much he’d relied on the rhythms and routines of Sunday dinners and holiday gatherings, quiet evenings with his dad and more raucous ones with his mom and sisters, visits to his grandma and outings with his cousins.

Sam’s lost a lot of his family too, but he still has his sister and nephews, and Delacroix itself, which still remembers him in loving detail, despite his many years away. Bucky hopes Sam doesn’t take any of that for granted. He suspects not, judging by the look of wonder and gratitude Bucky’s caught on his face a few times, as his community rallies around him to help with the boat.

“Lotta expectations too though. And ghosts,” says Sam, solemn as he shifts his grip on the shield. “But I think I’m finally ready to stop running from all of this. I feel like, if I’m gonna have this shield, if I’m gonna be Cap, I gotta have a steady place to stand, you know? A place where I know exactly who I am, where I’m just Sam.”

“Yeah,” says Bucky, through a suddenly aching throat.

He doesn’t think there’s anywhere like that for him, not anymore. He thinks fleetingly of Steve’s apartment, and the spaces left for him there, a flickering film reel of half-imagined possibilities clattering in his mind, and breathes through the spasm of tightness in his chest.

There isn’t room for him, for a life, in that apartment. Just his ghost.

“You’ll find something like that too, Buck,” says Sam with quiet confidence. “But you might have to build it yourself.”

Yeah, that’s what Bucky’s afraid of.

Training with Sam inevitably brings up memories of training with Steve. He shares some of those memories with Sam, because he’s pretty sure Sam could use the morale boost of knowing that Steve had taken a while to really get the hang of how to use the shield as an offensive weapon. The physics of the thing aren’t always intuitive, thanks to the vibranium, and there’s a certain amount of unavoidable trial and error involved, as Sam learns when he accidentally flings the shield into the bayou.

“I am not going to go get that,” says Bucky flatly.

“What, you don’t want a swim?” asks Sam with a winning smile that Bucky absolutely isn’t going to fall for. “It’d be refreshing!”

Bucky crosses his arms and glares. “And lose a limb to a gator? No thanks. Being a single amputee’s enough for me.”

“No one’s been eaten by a gator in Delacroix in thirty years,” says Sam with a roll of his eyes.

“That is not the reassurance you think it is. I’ve done more than my fair share of fishing that big plate outta trees and streams and fields all over Europe, I am not braving a gator-filled swamp for it too.”

“Oh yeah? So Steve’s aim wasn’t perfect from the start?” asks Sam as he taps at some buttons on his gauntlet.

“Definitely not,” says Bucky with a snort.

“Well, that makes me feel better I guess,” says Sam, and peers out at the water, where the shield is sinking. “Redwing can go fetch it. He’s the real MVP of this team.”

“Uh huh, sure.”

Wild shield throws aside, Sam and Bucky work pretty well together. Sam’s skill with the wings is damn near eerie, like he ought to have been born with them, and watching him adapt to using the shield with them is impressive as hell. When he twists effortlessly in the air, when he catches improbable shield rebounds, you can’t even really tell that he’s not a super soldier.

And yet, Bucky finds himself missing Steve.

Not Steve as Cap, but the experience of fighting side by side with him. For all that Bucky and Sam are steadily falling into sync with each other, it’s still taking effort. They have to work at it, the same way they have to work at understanding each other at all. That’s just as it should be, probably. And yet Bucky can’t help but remember, can’t help but miss, how the one thing that had been damn near effortless between him and Steve had been the fight: in Bucky’s apartment in Bucharest, against Stark, against Thanos and his armies.

It had given Bucky an odd kind of hope for a while. That of course he and Steve had changed, of course things would be different between them, but if they still understood each other well enough for the seamless telepathy of the battlefield, if they could fight like they were two halves of a whole, then they couldn’t have grown so far apart, could they?

Yeah, no, not so much. Apparently, they’d grown far enough apart that Steve had needed decades and a whole different timeline between them. So now Bucky can’t help but wonder if that ease was all just the serum at work, and their long history of throwing themselves into fights together. Or maybe that’s just all that was left, after time and the ice and the chair took the rest of it away.

“Barnes. Barnes! Earth to Bucky!” says Sam, and Bucky startles from his unfocused stare out at the horizon, slowly beginning to turn golden as the afternoon stretches ever closer to evening. Sam has the shield on his arm again, Redwing hovering expectantly beside him. “You good?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just woolgathering,” says Bucky with a smile that he really hopes is convincing. His smiles have been coming easier here in Delacroix, and this must be one of those easier smiles, because the furrow in Sam’s brow smoothes out. “Wanna practice that throw again? You were close, you just gotta tweak the angle.”

Bucky leaves Delacroix feeling more hopeful than he has in a long time. He and Sam are officially coworkers/partners/friends, Sam’s family boat is seaworthy again, and the shield is safe with Sam, though Bucky understands better now the ways in which the shield and the national legacy it represents are a burden to Sam—something more worth challenging than honoring—in ways they hadn’t been for Steve. If it surprises and disquiets Bucky that Steve evidently hadn’t considered or discussed any of that with Sam at all, well, that’s for Bucky to deal with.

Whatever Steve’s reasons for passing the shield on to Sam had been though, and despite the harsh realities he’d failed to account for, the fight against the Flag Smashers makes it clear once and for all that Sam is the best person to carry that shield right now. If Bucky can spend the rest of his time in the fight that is his life at Sam’s side, he figures that’ll be a damn good use of the strange third chance he’s been given.

After the fight with the Flag Smashers, Bucky leads an exhausted Sam back to his apartment. The mood between them is an odd mix of buoyant and solemn: they’d saved lives today, a lot of them, but Karli and her Flag Smashers had been killed, and while that doesn’t quite feel like a victory, it doesn’t entirely feel like a failure either; not theirs, anyway, not as far as Bucky is concerned, not when they’re just trying to right the wrongs and clean up the messes of the last five years they’d spent dead.

Judging by the tightness around Sam's eyes, he's taking it harder. Bucky’s going to have his work cut out for him keeping Sam from taking on all the world’s burdens along with the shield. He’s out of practice at that, and anyway, he’d never ended up succeeding at it when it came to Steve. He’s determined to try harder with Sam.

Sam’s evidently not entirely preoccupied with the way the fight had gone though, because when they get to Bucky’s place, he takes one look at the apartment and says, “You live like this?”

This feels uncalled for. Sure, Bucky’s apartment is…sparse, but it’s about twice as big as his and Steve’s old tenement apartment, it has electricity and running water and, most luxurious of all, its own washer and dryer and dishwasher. Also, no matter how shitty Bucky feels, he generally keeps this place tidy, so really, Sam has no call to be looking around with such dismay.

“What, it’s clean!” says Bucky defensively.

“Yeah, because it’s basically empty. Bucky, what the hell. Please tell me you just moved in here or something.”

Bucky’s tempted to lie and say yes, but he suspects that will entangle in him the kind of lies that involve more than a word or two to keep going, and he’s well-aware that he’s very bad at those.

So he goes with the truth and says, “I have everything I need, I don’t see the point in having a lot of stuff besides that.”

He also doesn’t see the point of acquiring more stuff than can fit in a go-bag. It would only be more things to lose.

“I’ve been in homier safe houses,” says Sam. He spots the blanket and pillow sitting neatly on the couch. “Do you even have a bed?”

“Yes!” says Bucky, and when Sam turns back to him with a raised eyebrow, he adds, “I, uh, just don’t use it. Too soft.”

Sam keeps looking around the apartment, and his expression is increasingly grim until it falters into guilt, like Bucky’s sparse living quarters are somehow his fault, and like they’re almost as lamentable and upsetting as Sam being unable to convince Karli to step back from violence.

“I should’ve dragged your ass to Delacroix with me right after Stark’s funeral,” says Sam, then turns to Bucky. “You really haven’t been doing well, have you.”

“I’ve been fine,” says Bucky. “And I can take care of myself, you don’t need to—you didn’t need to—Steve passed the shield on to you, he didn’t pass me onto you. I’m not your responsibility or whatever.”

“Sure, but everyone needs a support network. And people dealing with the kind of trauma you’re dealing with especially need one.”

“I’m fine,” Bucky repeats. “I go to therapy, don’t I?”

“Yeah, and I’ve met your therapist, she kind of sucked.”

Bucky snorts. “Yeah, she kind of does. But, uh, I think she does care. She’s trying. And to be fair, I suck as a patient.”

Sam shakes his head. “The situation sucks. Your therapy being mandated, plus your history with doctors experimenting on you…it’s not a recipe for success. I was only a counselor, and even I can tell that.”

It’s more of a relief than Bucky expects to have that confirmation and agreement from Sam, so he clears his throat and says, “Yeah. But it’s better than nothing.”

Sam looks around the apartment some more and sighs. “You can aim a bit higher than ‘better than nothing’, Buck.”

“If you say so. How about we take a break on psychoanalyzing me so you can get out of that suit and take a shower? Because you stink like the Hudson, Sam.”

“Yeah, yeah,” says Sam with a grimace, and lets Bucky chivvy him into the bathroom with towels and a spare set of sweats.

Bucky’s kind of hoping Sam will drop the psychoanalysis and/or counseling after that—god knows the guy has got to be exhausted—but dinner gives Sam an opportunity to bring it up again.

“You have to let people be your support network,” says Sam after he’s plowed through two whole platters of halal chicken and rice from the cart down the block—the quickest and most filling food option Bucky could think of this late at night.

He remembers, suddenly, something his mother had said: it’s hard sometimes, to let people love you. He’d been fourteen or fifteen maybe, complaining to her about Steve and his prickly ways. Steve had been sick for a couple weeks, and had told Bucky to stop coming around, even though Bucky didn’t mind just hanging out with him in his room. I want to keep him company, why won’t he let me? I know he’s feeling low, but that’s all the more reason he should let me stay!

Ma had smiled at him, her nose crinkling with it—they had the same smile, everyone said—though there’d been some sadness in her eyes. She’d cupped his cheek and said it: it’s hard sometimes, to let people love you. Steve knows you care, it just overwhelms him sometimes. Or maybe he thinks he doesn’t deserve all the care. Either way, give him time. 

“Okay,” Bucky says in a small voice.

“This is me offering, by the way,” says Sam, pointing his fork at Bucky. “I was offering it when I was texting you too, and I knew what I was doing. So accept it already, Barnes. You don’t have to be all alone in the world. I am part of your support network, and you’re part of mine.”

Bucky finds himself blinking in surprise. “Oh,” he says, and shifts his perspective on some things.

He’s been thinking of Raynor’s exhortations to make connections, to find a support network, as things he had to actively do, which had seemed impossible, because who on earth wants to be friends with the dubiously stable ex-assassin who’s all alone in the world? It had seemed like a recipe for being taken advantage of at worst and pitied at best. But maybe instead, he’s supposed to do it like this: live his life out in the world, and accept the offers of help and support and friendship that come along, rather than assuming the worst or ignoring them. He needs to let people love him, whatever form that love takes.

God, Ma really had been right about everything, all the time. It fucking is hard to let people love you.

“Yeah, now you get it,” says Sam, looking satisfied with himself.

“Okay, yeah, I get it,” says Bucky. “I, uh, I’ll let you be part of my support network or whatever. And I’ll be part of yours. Which means you can’t argue when I say you should take the bed tonight.”

“Fine, but we are talking about this bed situation later!”

Riding the momentum of his successes with Ayo and Sam, Bucky decides it’s time to finally make what amends he can to Yori. So he goes to him, and tells him the truth, and it is fucking awful. Of all the amends he’s made or tried to make, this is the hardest and the worst and Bucky has absolutely no one to blame for it but himself, because he’s the self-sabotaging dumbass who decided to befriend Yori.

But he does it, and at least Yori knows now.

And Bucky—he feels light, afterwards, but also untethered. Like he’s dropped a weight, only to find that all that means is that he’s free to float away now, empty and aimless. Maybe not entirely aimless, because when he gets on Steve’s motorcycle out of a vague desire to go for a ride and clear his head, he ends up back at the port district in front of the shipping container that is his most secure and final exit strategy. 

He checks that everything’s still ready; it is. That settles him, a bit, lets him feel the tug of gravity back down to earth.

Why did he come here? He’s not really going to use an exit strategy now, is he? 

Though maybe he should. Not this permanent one, no, but maybe he should get out of Brooklyn. Give Yori enough space to ensure they’ll never run into each other ever again. At the very least, he could move out of the borough—

His phone buzzes in his pocket, and when he pulls it out, there’s a message from Sam, with a time and date, and: we’re having a big cookout (yankee translation: a party, but much cooler and involving a lot more delicious food) and you’re invited! Your attendance is mandatory fyi. 

Bucky snorts, and taps a quick response back: I’ll be there. 

Any exit strategies he decides on can wait.

Bucky accounts for avoiding Yori; he does not account for avoiding Leah.

He’d already apologized to her for the whole terrible date situation, and she’d been kinder to him than he’d deserved about it. Maybe the apology cupcakes from the ludicrously expensive trendy bakery he’d brought her had helped. He supposes he’d assumed that would be the end of it, that he’d avoid her shifts at Izzy’s, and they’d never see each other again.

But a couple weeks later, when he walks past Izzy’s late one night on his way back to his apartment, with takeout from an intriguing Mexican-Korean fusion food truck, Leah runs out of Izzy’s to catch him.

“James! I mean—Bucky, hey!”

He stops, wary, and braces himself for being shouted at. At least it’s late enough that there aren’t many people on the street.

“Hey,” he says cautiously.

“You haven’t come by in a while,” she says.

“Seemed like I should steer clear, given, uh, everything.”

Leah nods slowly. “I get that, but—come inside, have a drink,” she says.

And, well, if she wants to yell at him, she might as well do it without the whole block as an audience, and with the consolation of a drink. He follows her inside. 

It’s late enough that there’s only one person at the bar eating with the focus of someone recently off-shift and starving, and one other table of four people chatting over the dregs of their drinks and food. Leah leads him to the bar, where she pours him a glass of sake, and not the cheap stuff. His eyebrows go up.

“I talked to Yori,” she says.

“And you’re still giving me the good stuff instead of, I dunno, a glass full of bleach or something?”

She pours herself a small measure too. “I also saw you do some real superhero, world-saving stuff with the new Captain America,” she says with a small smile. “Thanks for that, by the way.”

Bucky’s still not used to being thanked. He’s not sure he ever will be. He nods, and takes a sip of the sake.

“Anyway, like I was saying, I talked to Yori,” she says, and then gives him a long, sad look. “You’re not doing anything the easy way, are you.”

Bucky laughs, well-aware it sounds bitter and almost wild. “Not sure I know how to do things the easy way,” he says. “I’m not sure there is one.”

“Sure there is. You could’ve never talked to him. But you did,” says Leah, with a too-gentle smile. “And he wants to talk to you again. He’s still coming by at his usual time.”

“Okay,” says Bucky, and hopes the way his stomach has just dropped to his feet isn’t obvious on his face. Of course Yori has questions, of course he’ll have things to say to the man who murdered his son— “I’ll, uh. Be here.”

Leah nods, evidently satisfied. The customer at the other end of the bar lifts a hand, and Leah goes over to her. Bucky takes another sip of his sake, and wonders what the right thing to do is here. He’s made his amends to Leah, such as they are. He doesn’t actually want to date her, though she’s lovely; the gap between them—in age, in experience, probably in expectations—is just too big. But she’s being kind, far more than she needs to be. Sam had said let people be part of your support network, and while Bucky doubts that’s anything like what Leah’s offering, she’s clearly offering something beyond the bounds of him being a regular customer or casual acquaintance.

When she comes back, he says, “You’re closing up soon, right? Want me to stick around, walk you home?”

“Very chivalrous,” says Leah, a teasing edge to her voice, but there’s some relief in her expression. “That’d be nice though, yeah. The neighborhood is a lot, uh, rougher than I remember it being. That Spiderman dude has already saved me from a mugging once.”

During the walk, Leah tells him more about herself: she’d been Blipped too, and is waitressing to make ends meet while she waits to hear if she can resume her graduate studies in public health.

“I’d been doing research on community-centric addiction recovery programs, and now I think I need to start over with all that research, things have changed so much,” she says with a sigh. “And that’s if I can even get back into my old program. I’m not sure I’ve got it in me to do the whole application process all over again.”

“I hope it works out,” he tells her. 

“Thanks, me too.”

“Uh, in the meantime…the, uh, Wakandan Outreach Centers run seminars and stuff about that kind of thing? Like, community organizing and service and all. Maybe you could…? Or, there are all the shelters and things, they could probably use help?”

He has no idea if this is a good or useful suggestion, but Leah blinks in surprise. “Huh. That’s—yeah, that’s a good idea. At least I can do something in the field while I wait. I’ve been so focused on getting by—” She shakes her head, and looks at him with a smile. “Thanks. That helps.”

Bucky returns her smile, relieved that he’s said the right thing for once.

When they reach her apartment building, Leah says, “I hope it works out with you and Yori. For what it’s worth, I think it will.”

The first thing Yori says when Bucky meets him at Izzy’s a couple days later is, “Took you a good long while to work up to it, huh?”

Yori isn’t looking at him, he’s focused on his bowl of udon. Even so, Bucky’s face goes hot with shame. “Yeah. I, uh—I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to—how to—”

“And while you worked up to it, you were nice to a grumpy old man and kept him company and helped do superhero world-saving stuff with Captain America,” continues Yori, and slurps up a noodle.

Bucky’s not sure where he’s going with this. “I know it’s not—it’s not enough, that it doesn’t make up for—”

Yori puts his chopsticks down, and stares straight ahead. “Nothing will ever make up for it. My son is not coming back. And yet you are here.”

“Yeah,” says Bucky in a shaky whisper. “I am. It’s not fair and it’s not right and I know I shouldn’t be.”

He’s wondered sometimes, if his more permanent exit strategies are the best amends he could ever hope to make. An implicit apology, and a promise: I know I’m not supposed to be here, so I won’t be, and I promise I won’t let anyone use me as a weapon ever again. If Yori asks it of him, if Yori decides those are the only amends he’ll accept, then maybe that’s for the best.

Yori finally turns to look at him, his eyes bright with tears and pain and determination.

“But you are here. You, not—not some nightmare robot assassin with no mind of his own.”

“Cyborg assassin,” Bucky corrects weakly, and from the corner of his eye, spots Leah giving him a seriously? look from further down the bar, where she’s not doing a great job of pretending not to eavesdrop.

“You are here, trying to make right what you can. You’re protecting people,” says Yori. “You could be doing anything else, but you are doing this.”

“I’m trying, yeah,” says Bucky.

“So be here. Stay here. Live, as my son cannot, and keep making right what you can.” It’s an impossible grace that Yori is offering, and yet it hurts more than his anger or hatred ever could. This is a life sentence Yori is handing down, and being faced with it now, Bucky’s abruptly not sure he has the strength to bear it. His face must show it, because Yori’s fierce expression twists into a tearful smile. “You find that difficult?”

“Yes,” rasps Bucky. “It’s—it’s the hardest fucking thing in the world, a lot of the time.”

Sometimes, it’s only the thought of his exit strategies that has kept him going, he doesn’t say.

“Good,” says Yori, stern now. He lifts his chin. “Do it anyway.”

Bucky closes his eyes for a moment, and feels wetness snake down his cheeks. “Okay,” he says, and then, “Thank you.”

Yori sniffs, claps him on the back. “Come on, order your food. Now that I know you are a superhero, I want all the superhero gossip. Have you met that lady who flies, Captain Marvel?”

“Uh, kind of.”

“What do you mean, kind of! You’re not getting any younger, you know, you need to find a nice superhero to settle down with!”

When he tells Raynor about it, she says what Yori’s suggesting is more or less “living amends,” and deems Bucky ready to hear about this thing she’s evidently been working up to telling him about.

“Often when the actions you’ve taken and the moral injury you’ve suffered can’t be assuaged by specific reparative acts, you’re left with living amends, James,” says Raynor. “That’s what Yori is suggesting: that you live in such a way that your actions and your life itself are the amends you are making. Do you understand?”

“Yeah, I think so,” he says.

It sounds a lot like what Sam had said, about being of service. Bucky supposes it’s not all that different from what he’s already doing too. It feels different though, to commit himself to it as a lifelong project. It’s not something he can cross off a list, it’s something he has to keep doing, forever.

“Do you think you can do it? That it will help?” asks Raynor. “It doesn’t have to be the same thing for the rest of your life, you can decide to change how you make your living amends.”

“I’ll try. It’s the least I owe to Yori, right?”

“Sure, but it’s what you owe to yourself too.” Raynor leans forward, a kind of urgency in her eyes. “This is how you can really be at peace, James. It’s an active, ongoing process.”

One he’ll probably never reach the end of, Bucky realizes. The comforting finality of an ending is not, apparently, something Bucky is ever really going to have. At least, not in any way he can choose, not unless he gives up on amends and uses one of his exit strategies instead. It feels simultaneously like freedom and a trap. Maybe that’s just a contradiction he’s going to have to accept.

Things get better after that, more settled. 

Bucky hates to admit it, but maybe Raynor had been right to harp on about how he needed to make connections to people and be less isolated, because he feels so much more real and present with Sam and his family in Delacroix. It’s easy to get some of his old confidence and charm back, to talk and joke and laugh, and not constantly second-guess himself about all of it. It’s easy to be honest with Sam, and to build a friendship with him, and Bucky is pathetically grateful that Sam didn’t write him off after he’d failed to answer so many of Sam’s texts.

Bucky tells Sam as much, after the cookout has wound down with the fading sunset, and it’s just them left on the dock.

“I’m sorry, by the way. For not answering your texts. I was—well, uh, it’s not an excuse, but I wasn’t doing well.”

“I figured as much,” says Sam, almost gentle. “That’s part of why I kept texting. I was kinda pissed, yeah, but I was worried too, man. I didn’t feel good about you just getting your pardon and being left to deal with everything on your own. That’s what I meant when I said I was offering to be your support network.”

“I was handling all that,” says Bucky. “Not, uh, well, but I was handling it.” Sam’s words fully sink in, and Bucky frowns. “What was the other part of why you kept texting?”

Sam smiles—or at least, he seems to try. It’s more of a grim and self-deprecating grimace. “Well, one of my best friends went and lived his life in another timeline, and the other was dead, and my team was pretty much gone after this huge confusing battle and I’d missed five whole years, so I guess I was looking for someone to talk to who’d been through all that too.”

Well now Bucky feels especially shitty for having never answered Sam.

“Shit, I’m sorry, Sam, I—”

“Nah, we’re good now,” says Sam, shaking his head. “I get it, you had enough going on dealing with your own shit, and it’s not like I was in crisis or anything. I had my family, Rhodey checked in with me as often as he could, I reconnected with some old friends here in Delacroix. Just don’t do that shit again.” He puts a hand on Bucky’s shoulder and shakes gently. “We’re in this together now, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, coworkers, I know.”

Sam looks at him, solemn now, but still with a kind of warmth in his eyes, the last of the setting sun’s rays seeming to make them glow.

“Hey, let me be sincere for a sec here, ‘cause I know we joke around a lot and I don’t want you doubting this when shit gets bad in your head: as far as I’m concerned, we’re friends, Buck, and we’re partners in this superhero shit. That means we’re gonna be here for each other, okay? You tell me if you’re having a hard time, I’ll tell you if I am. Deal?”

“Okay. Deal.”

“No more of that self-sabotaging isolating shit, it is not good for a person to basically only talk to their therapist for weeks on end.”

“I’ve talked to other people!” protests Bucky. “Yori—”

“Uh huh, and how’d that go?” asks Sam, not unkindly, and Bucky winces.

“Pretty good, actually? We’re, uh, talking again, meeting up for lunch.”

“No shit?” says Sam with a beaming smile. “That’s great, Buck! So he’s forgiven you?”

Bucky shrugs. “I don’t know about that. He hasn’t said that, exactly. More like he expects me to make right what I can by, uh, living a good life, I guess. Doing good stuff.”

“Living amends,” says Sam, and Bucky nods.

“That’s what Raynor called it, yeah. Anyway, the point is, I talk to people!”

“And I’m proud of you for that. I’m guessing you weren’t doing much of that before the Flag Smashers situation though.”

This is, regrettably, true. His social circle had been Raynor and Yori, pretty much. Except—

“Hey, I talked to Banner before all that!”

Now Sam’s eyebrows go up in surprise. “Really? Are you two friends?”

Okay, so maybe he shouldn’t have brought up this example.

“Uh, no,” Bucky admits. “He asked to see me, we met up so he could give me some documents of Steve’s, and the keys to Steve’s place, and to his motorcycle. It was, uh, nice of Banner to think of it, even if I didn’t need any of it.”

“Wait, Banner was the one who thought of it? Steve didn’t ask him to?” asks Sam with a frown.

“No, Steve didn’t ask him to, exactly,” says Bucky, and feels a pointless little flutter of defensiveness. It’s not like Bucky is stealing anything here. “Banner just said he figured I should have all of it the way Steve would’ve wanted me to, instead of waiting for some kinda official declaration that Steve’s dead or whatever. There’s no protocol for people going off to a different timeline.”

“Hold up,” says Sam, sounding sharp and serious now, and shit, is Sam gonna be mad that it all came to Bucky? Should Bucky have shared it, or given it to Sam? Shit, he totally should have, of course he should have instead of just ignoring almost everything about it— “You’re telling me that Steve left you with nothing, he just—left.”

“Uh, yeah,” says Bucky slowly, eyeing Sam warily. “If you—do you want any of it? There’s money, I guess, but I feel weird touching any of it, and I left his apartment alone, just took my dog tags and that old notebook of his. I use the motorcycle though, you can’t have that.”

“No, I don’t want—! Bucky,” starts Sam, before stopping himself, and he looks upset now. “I thought—shit, I thought Steve had talked to you, that you knew what he was gonna do, you said—I figured he at least musta left you with some kinda—” Sam shakes his head, and takes a deep breath, then asks, “What exactly did y’all talk about before he left with the Infinity Stones?”

“He was kinda all over the place,” says Bucky slowly. “We, uh, hugged for a while, he said he’d missed me. He didn’t tell me anything specific about what he was gonna do, but—he talked about taking a long detour, and he asked me, if I had the chance to go back to the past, would I? And I said, no, because it wouldn’t change anything for me. I—I’d still have to live with—with everything.”

Privately, he’d thought there was only one moment he’d go back to, and one thing he’d do: he’d go back to that snowy ravine, and he’d use a single bullet to free that poor bastard from the future coming for him. That’d cause a paradox or something though, cause a new timeline, and Bucky as he is now would still be left here.

“Wherever you go, there you are,” murmurs Sam, sympathetic.

“Yeah, exactly. I offered to go with Steve on the mission, but he said no, that it was too dangerous, and we argued about that for a bit. Then he talked about retiring, passing the shield on to you, and finally living the kinda life Stark was always telling him he should.”

I think I’m finally ready to try that life Tony was always telling me to get, Steve had said, looking hopeful and exhausted and grief-stricken, and Bucky had known then: Steve was not coming back. He was going home to Peggy Carter, to the life after the war that he’d always deserved, to the whispered dreams around battlefield campfires made, finally, into reality. Maybe Steve would save a less broken version of Bucky from becoming the Winter Soldier, back then. Maybe they’d all live out that whispered dream, the one Bucky had never quite believed in. It all seemed far better than what was waiting for Steve here, in the present.

So Bucky had let Steve go. No arguments, no pleas to stay. Just an I’m gonna miss you to a Steve who’d already seemed to be halfway to a future in a better past.

“And when Old Man Steve came back, what’d he say to you then?” asks Sam.

“Nothing much,” says Bucky, frowning, and recounts the words to Sam, only for Sam to stare at him in something like dawning horror.

“Bucky, why didn’t you say something?”

“What was I supposed to say to him?” snaps Bucky, defensive. 

“Not to Steve! To me, to—to any of us! Steve would’ve never—” Sam cuts himself off, shakes his head. “Speaking as someone who had to listen to that man go on about you all the damn time, there’s no way Steve fucking Rogers would’ve just—just left you like that. I figured he’d set stuff up for you, that he’d made sure you’d have somewhere to go and set the pardon stuff in motion—but you’re seriously telling me that was it. Bucky, that’s not right.”

“I told him I’d be fine! And I was! I am!” says Bucky, and Sam looks incredulous. Bucky shrugs, his face flaring hot with shame. “And, well, he’d given up enough for me as it was, I know I wasn’t worth all that. And, you know, I wasn’t—I’m not exactly the Bucky he really missed. It’s fine, I get it, he’d done enough, more than enough, he didn’t need to—”

“Bucky, that’s not what I—” Sam stops, chafes his head with his hands as he takes a deep breath. “I don’t mean it was a shitty thing to do, though it was, I mean, it’s not right. The Steve I knew, and I like to think I knew him pretty well, would not have left you in that position,” insists Sam. “I can’t even fucking conceive of him doing that. Something’s wrong here, Buck.”

Bucky just stares at Sam. “Yeah. Me. I’m—I’m what’s wrong here. I’m the one who ran from him after Insight crashed and burned, after I tried to kill him, I’m the one who went into cryo, I’m the one with scrambled eggs for brains who doesn’t remember half of our past, I’m the one who was a fucking HYDRA assassin for decades, I’m the one who—who almost killed him and then avoided him and left him and—”

Bucky can tell himself he had good reasons or excuses for all of it, but the truth is that the Bucky Steve had known wouldn’t have done any of that shit. The Bucky Steve had known would’ve goddamn stayed.

“Hey, no—” starts Sam, and then he blurs in Bucky’s vision, and suddenly Sam’s arms are around him. “He loved you like crazy. And I mean that literally, dude was pretty crazy about you. But he didn’t blame you for any of that shit.”

“He was pissed about me going into cryo,” Bucky mumbles into Sam’s shoulder, sniffling.

“He understood though,” says Sam, and Bucky laughs, or maybe sobs, and shakes his head.

Bucky knows for a fact that Steve had not understood at all, otherwise he’d have been goddamn relieved Bucky chose cryo. Because it was cryo and the then-slim hope that the Wakandans would find a way to fix him, or a very careful bullet aimed to sever his spinal cord, an exit strategy that Bucky had taken the time to diagram to be sure of his precision, just in case he should ever need it. 

“He understood all of it, I promise you. He knew a lot of that stuff, he knew you were doing it to protect yourself and everyone else.”

Bucky pulls back from Sam and says, “No he didn’t, Sam. Because it was cryo or killing myself. Those were the two options. You telling me he understood that when he was looking at me like I was disappointing the hell out of him by going into cryo?”

The hand that Sam has kept on Bucky’s shoulder spasms for a second, and Sam looks stricken and sad.

“I think he understood better than you’re giving him credit for. He knew—” Here, Sam pauses, as if considering his words carefully. “He knew it was all or nothing for you when it came to the trigger words, okay? But Bucky, I am telling you, he would not have bailed on you without making sure you’d be looked after. Something weird is going on.”

“Maybe,” Bucky allows. “But it’s not like looking out for me was his responsibility or anything. He had every right to leave all this behind if he had a shot at the life he should’ve had in the first place.” Bucky studies Sam for a moment. “Steve kinda left you in the lurch too. That didn’t get you wondering?”

Because Bucky’s wondering about it now. He probably should have gotten the hell over himself and wondered about it before. Sam looks uncomfortable, even as he smiles, or tries to, at any rate. It looks more like a grimace.

“I wondered, sure. But I—well, I figured it was on me, you know? That I was the one who thought we were close friends, but that maybe all along, he’d thought we were just, y’know. Teammates.”

Bucky’s heart aches. Goddamnit, Steve, you should have actually talked to Sam. 

“Yeah, no, you were friends,” says Bucky, because he’s certain of this. “Steve just isn’t really used to having friends. Back in the day, Steve’s only friends were basically me and my little sisters, plus a couple guys from art school that he wasn’t so much friends with, more like he liked arguing with them.”

Sam snorts. “I guess that makes me feel better. Anyway, there’s Wanda too,” Sam adds. “I haven’t been able to track her down, but I heard some fucked up shit went down, what with what happened to Vision and all. Steve wouldn’t have left her to deal with that on her own, she hasn’t really got anyone else.”

Bucky doesn’t want to let himself wonder, much less hope, but Sam’s starting to make a lot of sense. Shit, maybe something had gone wrong when Steve returned the Stones. Except—

“We saw that older version of Steve though,” he points out. “He talked to us, he gave you the shield. Seems like pretty solid proof of what happened.”

“Maybe,” says Sam, not seeming particularly convinced. “But we should look into it, at least. Something’s up here, clearly.”

“Alright,” Bucky says, grudgingly.

Sam looks energized and excited, already fired up and ready to go on this new mission despite the long day and late hour. Bucky can’t feel anything but uneasy trepidation.

Whatever Steve did, wherever and whenever he’s ended up, Bucky suspects the end result is going to be the same: Bucky here at the end of the line, and Steve on a different track entirely. 

They talk to Banner about their concerns, but there isn’t exactly anything he can do. The time machine has nothing to tell them, and there’s no way to track one person through all of space-time and who knows how many different timelines. Banner asks the sorcerers, but all they can be sure of is that the Infinity Stones were returned, and that their own timeline is intact.

For now, anyway, Dr. Strange says, which sounds ominous. I will monitor the situation closely though.

Sam remains convinced that something’s going on, that Steve must have been up to something on his mission to return the Stones, that the old version of him who came back wasn’t who or what he’d seemed. Bucky’s less sure. Something in Steve had broken, in those five years after Thanos. Or maybe not broken, but faltered. He’d seemed so tired those last times he’d talked to Bucky, like just this once, he wasn’t sure he had it in him to go for another round in the ring. Bucky can believe that for once in his life, Steve had learned how and when to tap out. Or maybe the answer’s as simple as an equipment failure, or a mistake; maybe Steve had ended up stuck in another timeline, only able to come back once the tech caught up with him. There’s some consolation in that possibility at least.

However much Sam insists that Steve wouldn’t have left Bucky in the lurch though, Bucky can’t quite bring himself to believe him, not when it doesn’t change anything here and now.

Here and now, Bucky’s doing okay. He has the tentative beginnings of a support network, he has his freedom, he has his amends, and he even still has those comforting exit strategies, just in case. Whatever’s going on with Steve, whatever he’s done and whenever and wherever he’s ended up, Bucky can’t do a damn thing about it. 

When Steve comes back, almost a year to the day after he left, and Romanoff is with him, Sam’s first words are, “I told you so!”

There’s an odd sense of deja vu, being back here in the woods near Stark’s—now Ms. Potts’—lake house, standing in a clearing with Sam and Banner and now Steve. Only this time, Romanoff is here too, and Steve doesn’t look hollow and sad. Steve looks exhausted and yet still somehow radiant. He has a beard again, Bucky notes vaguely as he stares, and his hair is a floppy mess. Otherwise he looks the same, like it’s only been a few weeks since he stepped onto that platform. A few rough weeks, granted, given how stained and torn his once-pristine white quantum suit had been. 

Meanwhile Steve is looking at Bucky like he’s Steve’s salvation, and Bucky finds that he hasn’t got any words at all.

Chapter Text

The explanation for Steve and Romanoff’s return, such as it is, fails to cohere into much sense, which seems to be the norm for time travel. But Banner confirms that this is the real Steve and Romanoff, and Bucky catches the gist of what happened: Steve, the idiot, had used the Infinity Stones in a last-ditch effort to get Romanoff back, and it had worked. It had involved timeline hopping and fighting the Red Skull again, somehow? and also that Loki guy helped for some reason—only it was an alternate timeline, alive version of him, because he’s dead in this timeline, apparently. 

“What about the old guy version of you?” asks Sam. He’s been rapt through Steve and Romanoff’s whole explanation, leaning forward on the couch in Ms. Potts’ living room, Banner beside him in much the same pose. “The one who gave me the shield?”

“Different timeline,” says Steve. “He was, uh, kind of a diversion from what I was up to getting Natasha back. But I did mean it, Sam, passing the shield on to you.”

Sam nods slowly. “It wasn’t the best way to get the shield, but we can talk about that later,” he says. “Man, what took y’all so long, you had a time machine!”

“Loki’s the one who sent us back,” says Romanoff with a grimace and a shrug. “Beggars can’t be choosers, I’m just glad we landed in the right century.”

Steve looks at Bucky from his seat at one of the dining room chairs dragged into the living room. Bucky could’ve perched on the armrest of the armchair Romanoff’s in, or dragged in another chair for himself, but he’s leaning against the wall instead, across the room from Steve. The position lets him see the whole room and the exits, and Bucky tells himself that’s the only reason he picked it.

“I’m sorry we were so late,” says Steve, and he’s still looking at Bucky as he says it. His eyes are shining, a tremulous kind of joy there. “You been doing alright, Buck? What’s been going on this past year, where’s Wanda?”

“I’m fine,” says Bucky, and Steve’s brow furrows.

Which is bullshit, because Bucky is fine, and who’s Steve to disbelieve it? He has no idea how to sum up the past year though, and casts a helpless look in Sam’s direction.

Sam’s lips press together, and he’s clearly unimpressed by Bucky’s reticence, but he does give Steve a quick rundown, and Banner and Ms. Potts chime in with their own additions, all of it amounting to a somewhat-jumbled summary of the last year, and the lurching recovery after an undone apocalypse. Talk eventually turns towards official things like press conferences and meetings with the GRC. Colonel Rhodes shows up, then Clint Barton, who falls on Natasha with wracking sobs, then Okoye in a talon jet. Things start to feel very crowded and loud, and Bucky slips outside, where his breath immediately comes easier, and where there’s enough space for his thoughts to rush in. There’s a brief urge to keep going, to run, to disappear, exit strategies unspooling in his head. Not the permanent ones, but the ones that would get him out of state, out of the country, away.

It’s only an old habit. Bucky doesn’t intend to run. Anyway, Steve and Sam would only follow him, and he’d miss lunch with Yori next week. No, Bucky’s not going anywhere further than that bench over by the lake, a dozen or so yards away from the house.

Steve is back. Bucky turns the new reality over in his head as he walks. Steve had never left Bucky behind, not intentionally, anyway, not permanently. He’d just gone on some dumbfuck solo mission across different timelines, without telling anybody.

If Steve hadn’t left, if Steve had just been on a mission, like he’d said, if he hadn’t left Bucky behind with next to nothing, then that means—

Bucky has no idea what the fuck it means.

Bucky can’t quite sort out how he feels about any of it, other than wrong-footed, and his usual level of pissed off and annoyed about Steve’s dumbass plans. He’d gotten used to the reality of Steve’s absence. Bucky has no idea what to do with the idea of Steve just—being here, now, when neither of them is on the run or about to go into battle.

Yet, anyway. And that puts Bucky on steadier ground. There’ll be another fight, soon enough. Steve will go fight it, or Bucky will, or maybe they’ll go together, but either way, there won’t be much time for anything but some R and R if they’re lucky, a few hugs and pep talks, and the fight.

Bucky reaches the bench near the lake, which is turning briefly golden, glowing by the light of the setting sun. The serendipitous angle of sunlight only lasts for a few minutes, and then the lake turns dark, and the woods take on the cool tones of twilight. It looks nothing like that afternoon when Bucky thought he’d said his last goodbye to Steve.

“Buck?” calls out Steve, sounding faintly anxious. “You okay?”

Bucky turns and sees Steve striding towards him.

“Yeah, just needed some air,” he says. “It was getting crowded in there.”

The last word is scarcely out of Bucky’s mouth before Steve slams into him, engulfing him in a hug that’s practically a tackle. Bucky only barely keeps his feet under him, his arms coming up to wrap around Steve, the back of his mind offering half a dozen ways to shift their momentum and get Steve on the ground—but no, this is just a hug. A crushing, desperate hug that abruptly makes more sense than anything Steve has said so far today, or even since the battle with Thanos.

“I missed you,” says Steve, voice rough and choked.

Bucky thinks of the apartment: the unfinished painting, the photos, Bucky’s old clothes wrapped so carefully, Bucky’s books, Bucky’s dog tags.

“I know,” he says, and hides his face against Steve’s shoulder. His breath rushes out shakily. He should return the sentiment, but the words don’t come.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says. “You musta thought—god, I don’t know what—”

“I thought you left. That you stayed in the past,” Bucky mumbles.

Steve goes stiff and tense in his arms. “What? Like, that I got stuck there?”

“I, uh. I thought that it was your plan from the start. To go to the past and stay there.” 

Somehow, Steve goes even more tense in his arms, like he’s had to brace himself against a blow. He pulls back from Bucky, and Bucky’s half-expecting to see anger on Steve’s face. Instead, he sees shame.

“I—I wanted to. I—god, I—I was thinking of it, when I was talking to you. I saw Peggy, when we went to get the Tesseract, and when I went to return it, I thought—I could go back further. I could—I could have that dance with Peggy, the one I’d promised her, I could go home, I could fix things. I could save you.”

No, you couldn’t, thinks Bucky. Because no matter what, Bucky as he is now is going to exist in this timeline. 

“But you didn’t stay.”

“No,” says Steve, heaving out a long sigh. “I wanted to try to save Natasha more than I wanted any of that. That’s—fuck, that’s what I meant when I said all that stuff to you about taking a detour. I didn’t want anyone to stop me from trying, I just wanted you to know I was gonna try something. But when I went to save Nat, when I had to go up against the Soul Stone—it knew that I’d been tempted. It knew what I—what I wanted. It let me have it, for a little while. As a kind of trap.”

“But you broke out of it,” says Bucky slowly, unsettled by the grimness of Steve’s expression, and the lurking horror in his eyes. 

There is, he suspects, a great deal Steve isn’t saying. And yet he’s saying a lot already, more than Bucky’s accustomed to, and that’s even more unsettling than Steve’s grim expression.

“Yeah. I—I thought of what you would’ve done, or what Sam would’ve, or Natasha. None of you would have stayed.” Steve smiles, hurt and sad. “All of you would’ve known better than to even be goddamn tempted by it.”

“We—I—do want you to be happy, Steve. When I thought you’d stayed—I figured you’d earned that. A real happily ever after.”

Steve’s smile turns bitter for a moment before his face crumples into tears, and Bucky takes him into his arms again, alarmed. He’s never seen Steve cry this easily. He hadn’t even seen Steve cry in the first days and weeks after his ma died, and when Bucky told his own mother about that, she’d looked grim and concerned, and ordered him to get Steve drunk. Those tears he’s holding in will turn to poison if he doesn’t let them out. She’d gone to fetch a bottle of his dad’s good whisky from the liquor cabinet. Give him a good dose of medicinal whisky to draw them out, dearest. It’ll do him good. She’d been right, as always. So he tries not to be too worried about Steve’s tears now. Better out than in.

He worries anyway. For Steve, this is pretty damn close to a breakdown.

We shouldn’t have let him take the Stones back, thinks Bucky. He’s glad Romanoff’s back and all, but fuck, they should not have let Steve be the one to take the Stones back. They should have shipped him off to whatever the hell the modern equivalent is to an aid station and given him enough blue 88s to make even a super soldier pass out and rest for a day or two.

“I’m sorry,” says Steve again, and then, in a small voice, “So you really thought I wasn’t coming back?”

“You said all that stuff about taking a long detour, and would I go back if I could, and how you wanted to really live, the way Stark would’ve wanted you to…and when the old Steve showed up, he didn’t really say anything to me other than that he hoped it’d all make sense eventually and that he wished he could tell me more. So, uh. Yeah.”

“Oh god,” mutters Steve, and he’s pale-faced when he pulls back from Bucky’s embrace. “I meant—I didn’t want to say too much, in case it got people’s hopes up, or someone tried to stop me.”

“You could’ve left a note!” says Bucky, exasperated, and Steve flinches.

“I had a time machine, I was gonna be—I’d planned to be back a few seconds later! A few minutes or hours at most! And if I wasn’t, I didn’t want you guys to know enough to send someone to look for me, it would’ve been too dangerous, but I swear, I didn’t think I’d be a year late!”

Isn’t this just classic fucking Steve, thinks Bucky, and can’t even work up a proper fury over it. It’s just like what this dumbass did when he signed up to become a goddamn super soldier, or when he came after Bucky in Kreischberg. He always asks for forgiveness and not permission, always tries to do the dumbest, most dangerous shit alone. He just usually isn’t quite this careless about it. Reckless, sure, but not careless.

It’s just more proof that Steve hadn’t been in any kind of condition to be on duty, much less to go on a dangerous solo mission. Fresh off the loss of two teammates and a brutal battle, after five years of hell living through what must have felt like the end of the world…Steve had seemed okay enough, but clearly, he hadn’t been. And everyone else, grieving or dealing with their own shit, hadn’t noticed. Bucky hadn’t noticed.

“You really should not have been the one to take the Stones back,” Bucky says grimly. “At the least, you should’ve waited longer.”

“I—I don’t think I was entirely thinking straight,” admits Steve with a grimace. “But we really couldn’t risk waiting any longer to return the Stones, not without putting the stability of our whole timeline in danger, and I was the only one who could return both Thor’s hammer and the Stones.”

Bucky takes a deep breath. “What’s done is done,” he says, unsure whether he’s soothing himself or Steve. “It all turned out okay, it’s fine.”

Steve shakes his head. “Not if you thought—I was always planning on coming back, one way or another,” says Steve, low and desperate and beseeching. “You’ve spent the last year thinking—Bucky, I am so sorry, I should have just told you—I wouldn’t have done that to you, I swear. To the end of the line, remember? I meant it. I still do, I promise.”

Bucky shrugs, his chest going tight, and he takes a step back from Steve, then another. It gets easier to breathe. 

“Yeah, okay,” says Bucky. “It’s alright, Steve, really. Shit happens, missions go FUBAR. Kinda wish that older Steve had given Sam and me a heads up though.”

He shouldn’t have said it. Steve looks as if Bucky has punched him in the gut. But Bucky finds that he wants answers and explanations and reasons, that he’s greedy for every scrap of evidence that Steve hadn’t meant to leave him behind. As if he deserves them, when he should have goddamn noticed that Steve was in no shape to go on a mission.

“He couldn’t, not without risking the timelines, and anyway, we thought we’d be back a few minutes or hours later,” says Steve, now looking wretchedly guilty and miserable, great, this reunion is going so well. “Shit, Buck, how have you been—are you—”

“It’s fine, I’m fine,” Bucky says. He can’t quite make his face smile, knows it has to be set in tense, stern lines. His shoulders are taut and aching with tension, and he tries to relax them. “Got a pardon, a place in Brooklyn. I go to therapy, I talk to Sam. I’ve been alright.”

Belatedly, Bucky realizes that he is fucking this up. He’s supposed to make a joke, a breezy comment, a quick deflection—something that will reassure Steve that everything’s fine. Instead Bucky sounds and feels brittle, frozen, and very far away from the version of Bucky Barnes who could summon up any words of comfort. 

“That’s good,” says Steve, sounding uncertain.

“I—uh. Don’t know what your plans are, but I have the keys to your place, and all your, you know, financial stuff. Um, Banner gave it all to me, he figured I should have it, since—you know. I have your motorcycle too. Drove it here, actually.”

“That’s good, I’m glad. You—uh, you haven’t been staying at my place? You could’ve, I would’ve wanted you to—I mean, I do want—” says Steve, his words tripping over each other.

“I couldn’t,” says Bucky, too abruptly. “I have my own place, like I said.”

“Oh,” Steve says, his eyes big as they search Bucky’s face, then, “You’re mad at me. I get it, you thought I just left you with nothing but a shitty goodbye—”

Bucky shakes his head and says, truthfully, “Hey, no, I’m not mad. I—I’m gonna be honest, Steve, I don’t know what I am. This is—this is a lot. I—I’m glad you’re back, really, I’m just—” Bucky shrugs helplessly, and crosses his arms.

He can’t be that mad, not really, not given the frantic desperation of Steve’s explanations. Steve’s never been close to this apologetic after other ill-advised and almost deadly stunts or missions, and there’s still something brittle about him, a brittleness that’s more fragile than sharp. It worries Bucky more than it pisses him off. But how Bucky really feels other than that…he has no idea. It’s too much to take in, too big a change. He needs a minute. A lot of minutes.

“Yeah, no, you’re right. It’s a lot. It’s a lot for me too,” says Steve. “I’m—well, I’m really glad you’re alive, Buck. That you’re—you seem to be doing well.”

And aw hell, Steve’s lower lip is trembling, and Bucky’s response to that is damn near instinctual. He pulls Steve into another hug, holding Steve close and cupping the back of his neck, and Steve relaxes in Bucky’s arms, almost managing to make himself seem small. He’s making every effort to tuck himself snug and safe against Bucky, and this, at least, Bucky can do. He might not have the right words right now, but he can offer this pure physical comfort, this proof that he’s solid and alive and not turning into dust. This, at least, is easy. This, Bucky can’t fuck up.

“It was a long five years, huh?” murmurs Bucky as he rubs Steve’s back.

Steve laughs, or sobs. Bucky can feel Steve’s hand clenching in the fabric of his jacket. “Yeah. Too long.”

Too long. Bucky wonders if maybe it has been too long for them to rebuild some semblance of the friendship they used to have so many decades ago.

But here Steve is, clinging to Bucky, and here Bucky is, not wanting to let him go. And Steve never left him behind in the first place—at least, no more so than Bucky had left him behind to go to war, or to enter cryo for a chance of fixing his brain. They’ve both had battles to fight and missions to complete, and finally, they’re here, together in one place and time.

For now, anyway.

Bucky pulls back from Steve again, but not far this time, because Steve’s grip shifts to his forearms. There are tear tracks on his face, his eyes still shining, and some of the frozen parts of Bucky thaw, leaving behind something raw and tender and aching with warmth.

“So what’s next?” asks Bucky, and Steve shrugs.

“Uh, a big party, pretty much. For Natasha. Then I guess we gotta have a press conference or something, come up with a cover story that doesn’t mention time travel, talk to the GRC…”

Steve sounds exhausted and a little lost just talking about it. Bucky knows what might cheer him up.

“Hmm, well I’ve got some good news for you there: you know where people think you’ve been this whole time?” asks Bucky, smirking with glee. Now that Steve’s actually back, this is actually funny rather than depressing and/or enraging.

Steve’s eyes narrow warily, even as his mouth tilts up into a grin. “Where?”

“The moon!” says Bucky, and Steve laughs in disbelief.

“What? Seriously?”

“Yeah, seriously.”

“What do they think I was doing up there?”

“Keeping the planet safe, of course,” says Bucky, and the smile falls from Steve’s face. “Personally, I think saving half the universe means you can rest on your laurels for a bit.” Bucky’s own smile falters. “Unless—is there another intergalactic, inter-dimensional fight on the horizon?”

Steve shakes his head, looking oddly stricken. “Not that I know of,” he says.

“Good. We’re probably gonna have plenty of fights right here.”

The party coalesces with startling rapidity—one of the sorcerers evidently deemed it a momentous enough occasion to portal people in from all across the galaxy—and Bucky lurks along its edges when the crowd, big enough that the party swiftly becomes an outdoors one, gets too overwhelming. He sticks close to Sam otherwise, since Steve and Natasha are at the crowded epicenter of the party. He doesn’t actually know many people here beyond having been in a battle together after all, and he’s no longer the kind of charming guy who can be the life of the party.

He does make a point of talking to Carol Danvers though, just so he can tell Yori he did. Her sly grin seems friendly and inviting, like she’s sharing a secret joke with him, and she laughs when he tells her about Yori.

“Trying to set you up on a date from afar, huh?”

“Yeah, Yori does not quit,” says Bucky. “A photo with you might keep him off my back for a while though,” he says hopefully, and Danvers obliges, laughing again.

When he makes his way back to Sam, Sam’s aglow with joy and vindication and possibly also alcohol, and he stays that way for pretty much the whole rest of the night, which only makes Bucky feel like more of a gloomy raincloud over the festivities. He’s glad Romanoff is alive, obviously, it’s just that he doesn’t really know her, so it’s a vague and second-hand kind of gladness, and as for Steve…

“I know I should be happy right now, but I just feel weird,” Bucky admits to Sam over a glass of punch that might actually be strong enough to get him drunk. 

He takes a wary sniff of the drink, and fights not to cough. Jesus, is this jet fuel or punch?

“It’s the shock,” Sam suggests. “You got used to thinking you knew what the story was, but it turns out it was something else all along. Something happier. You just need some time to process.”

“Yeah, I guess,” says Bucky, and Sam smiles. Even though he seems like he’s holding his liquor pretty well, not slurring or swaying or anything, the bright looseness of that smile suggests he’s drunker than he seems. Bucky can’t quite help smiling back, even as he says, “Let’s get you some water, huh? Future Sam will thank us both.”

Sam blows a raspberry at him, but he does drink the water Bucky brings him, and then he slings an arm around Bucky’s shoulders as he looks across the crowded lakeside at Natasha, her red hair gleaming in the light from the hastily set up torches. “Future Sam’s gonna be living in a much brighter future,” he says dreamily.

Bucky snorts. “Uh huh. A much more hungover future too.”

“Future’s a lot brighter for all of us now, I can feel it,” insists Sam.

Bucky’s stomach flops and sinks queasily, like maybe the punch is having an effect. Or maybe it’s just the thought of his own future, hazy and dark with the shadows left behind by all those other bright futures, all his paths leading to an exit strategy or an ending. Not so long ago, he’d wanted that. Now, with his promise of living amends to Yori, and the return of Steve, he’s not so sure. And yet he can’t see any other options.

Steve, beside Natasha and Thor, laughs, head thrown back, hand clutching his chest. Some of the brittle exhaustion has lifted from him amid the giddy relief and delight of the party. A small voice in Bucky says, maybe there’s at least one other option.

The party lurches on until the small hours of the morning, at which point people stagger off to some cabins on the property that apparently also belong to the Stark-Potts family. Bucky more or less carries a half-asleep and fully drunk Sam to one of them, and bunks with him there, along with Steve, Romanoff, Romanoff’s sister, and Barton. He catches a few brief hours of shut-eye in his room’s top bunk bed while Sam snores away on the bottom bunk. 

Almost like sharing a tent with Dum Dum again, thinks Bucky wryly.

Bucky fully intends on sneaking away in the morning, and wakes up early to make his escape. For once, he’s grateful for mandatory therapy, because it makes for an excellent excuse for leaving before he has to do any more socializing with all these people he barely knows, never mind that his appointment is tomorrow. But Steve and Romanoff are awake too, already drinking coffee in the kitchen’s sunny little dining nook, and evidently the agenda for the day is working out what the next iteration of the Avengers will look like.

“How are you two already awake?” demands Bucky.

“Time travel lag,” says Steve with a wince.

“And we’ve got shit to do. It’s not easy getting all these people in one place, I intend to take advantage of it,” says Romanoff, looking determined, and more impressively, only barely hungover. “We need to get the Avengers back up and running.”

Bucky thinks she of all people deserves to take a long vacation on some nice private island somewhere and to leave the world-saving to some other people for a while, given that she literally just sacrificed her life to save half the universe, and he says as much. Romanoff smiles at him, a sweet dimple appearing in her cheek.

“That’s nice of you to say,” she says. “But I can put off the vacation until things are more settled. I at least want to make sure you and Sam have a team in place to handle any alien invasions or whatever.”

“And we should probably figure out how to break the news about me and Nat to the world,” says Steve.

“Or you could stay officially dead and/or missing. That’s got its benefits,” suggests Bucky, thinking of a few of his own more optimistic exit strategies that involve faking his death. “You’ve got a cover story already, you could be on the moon!”

“Tempting,” says Steve with a wry smile. “Don’t think my cover would last very long if I’m still hanging around with you and Sam and everyone else though.”

“Good point,” says Bucky weakly, feeling Romanoff’s eyes on him. When he risks a look, there’s an odd kind of sympathy softening her expression.

It’s a surprise all over again, to be reminded that he and Steve can in fact just…be around each other again, maybe even for longer than a day or two at a time, without risking arrest or execution or a battle. Bucky’s not sure he really believes it yet, actually, and he has no idea what they’ll do if this respite turns out to be real. Will they go back to the way things were between them before the war? Roommates again, just two best friends living together and going on double dates? The prospect feels uncomfortably like trying to squeeze into old clothes that no longer quite fit right anymore.

“So, uh…you’ll stick around for the meeting?” Steve asks.

“Of course,” says Bucky, and wonders why, exactly, Steve looks so relieved about that.

Watching this many hungover superheroes attempt to have a productive, serious meeting honestly proves to be worth sticking around for, if only for sheer comedic value, and thankfully it ends up being a pretty short meeting that’s more a statement of intent than anything else. Seemingly every foot of the spacious lake house’s first floor features some superhero or another, and Bucky takes the best vantage point near Steve that he can. 

This also provides him an excellent vantage point for watching little Morgan Stark sneak around leaving indulgent smiles in her wake—Bucky included, what, the kid is cute—before she’s ‘caught’ by Banner, who settles her on his lap, where she listens as seriously as if she’s another superhero here to make weighty decisions about the future of the Avengers.

Steve gives a speech, of course: stirring, and full of hope and gratitude for his fellow heroes. It does what the best of Steve’s speeches do: makes people straighten their spines, makes them feel like they’re part of a team that can do great things, makes them want to do great, brave, dumbass things themselves. Bucky’s no exception, though the feelings reach him as if from a distance.

“I’m looking forward to helping usher in a new generation of Avengers,” concludes Steve. “But I’ll mostly be working behind the scenes from here on out. Sam’s already the Captain America we need in this new world, and I know he’ll build an amazing new team.”

“So you’re retiring?” asks Barton from across the room.

“From being active in the field, yeah,” says Steve, nodding. He glances over at Bucky for some reason. “I’ll stay available for now while we’re working on getting the Avengers back up and running, but after that, I think it’s time I, uh. Get a life beyond being Captain America, I guess, the way Tony wanted me to.”

Steve meets Bucky’s eyes then, hopeful and determined, and Bucky hopes his expression isn’t screaming bullshit. Because yeah, maybe Steve believes that in this moment, that he’ll be able to retire, but there’s always a goddamn fight, and Steve will always throw himself into it. It’s just a fact of who Steve is. Bucky loves him, has gone in swinging into a lot of those fights and always will when it means having Steve’s back. He just wishes—he doesn’t know what he wishes. He doesn’t know what their lives are going to look like from here.

“You’ve earned that,” Sam tells Steve, and a murmur of agreement goes around the room.

“For sure,” says Lang with a nod. “But, uh, in the meantime…what’s your superhero name now? Old Cap? Ex Cap?”

It’s a good question, actually, and Bucky almost grins at Steve’s carefully hidden exasperation, which probably looks like stern Captain America disapproval to everyone else.

“Haven’t really thought about it,” says Steve, and Lang, undaunted, brightens.

“I have some suggestions! How about—”

Unfortunately, Steve rushes to interrupt Lang before he can share any of his ideas. Too bad. Bucky kind of wants to know what they are.

“Uh, let’s talk about that later, I think Pepper had some stuff she wanted to address—”

Ms. Potts tells them that Stark’s will provides for a trust and endowment that will keep funding the Avengers, including the facility that’s being rebuilt, and maybe more importantly, it’ll pay everyone on the roster too. Sam looks pretty damn relieved about that.

Bucky’s just relieved no one expects him to talk or say anything. He’s no one’s XO here, he’s just Steve’s best friend and Sam’s back up, so he gets to sit there and look serious and nod in agreement when Romanoff and Fury talk about the importance of recruiting a new generation of Avengers for the protection of Earth, which, yeah, seems like a good idea.

The only time Bucky draws any attention at all is when Sam talks about what he has in mind for forming a new team, and mentions Bucky as part of it, which is nice of him to say but which also attracts the kind of attention that makes Bucky want to dive behind the nearest curtains, because he has no idea what his face is doing and it’s probably not anything good. Probably his face is looking like Sharon was right to call him Captain America’s pet psychopath. But the moment passes and no one looks uncomfortable, and Steve even looks kind of proud, so maybe it’s fine.

Thankfully, the meeting begins to draw to a close, and a couple nods, head tilts in Steve’s direction, and head shakes exchanged with Sam serve as a goodbye and a request to let Steve know he’s going back to Brooklyn—Bucky figures it’s a given that Sam’ll give Steve his number and address, and vice versa—so Bucky slips out ahead of the crowd.

Steve manages to catch up to him anyway, jogging towards Bucky just as he reaches the motorcycle.

“Buck? You’re leaving already?” asks Steve.

There’s a faint air of panic surrounding him, a thread of desperation in his voice, and it makes Bucky feel like an asshole. Fuck, he keeps forgetting that from Steve’s perspective, Bucky just got miraculously returned to life after five years of being very thoroughly dead. He keeps forgetting that Steve didn’t leave him behind, and that for once, there’s no reason for them to keep their distance from each other, no reason for Bucky to implement an exit strategy. No one’s on the run, no one’s on their way to a battle, and that still feels…weird. New. Maybe too good to be true.

“Yeah, I’ve got my mandatory therapy session tomorrow, don’t wanna risk missing it. It’s a whole thing, with my pardon,” says Bucky apologetically. “Thought I better slip away and leave you all to the planning, I don’t think there’s much I can contribute to that anyway.”

“Oh,” says Steve with a frown. “Could I—I mean, can I catch a ride back to Brooklyn with you?”

“Don’t you still have Avengers stuff to do here with Romanoff?”

Steve shakes his head. “Rhodey and Pepper are gonna organize a press conference, they’ll let me know when, and Natasha’s going to see the Bartons. We’re gonna have a proper debrief at the Tower in a couple days, and some meetings with the GRC, so I gotta get back to the city anyway. I can lay low in the meantime.”

“Right. Well, uh, I’ve got your keys and stuff back at my apartment,” says Bucky. “We can go pick ‘em up…?”

“Yeah, that’d be great,” says Steve with a smile. “Thanks, Buck. Let me just go let the others know.”

Bucky has a brief and entirely insane urge to just fucking leave without Steve—Raynor has informed him that this kind of thing is an ‘intrusive thought’, or at least, he sure hopes it is—and he decides to distract himself by texting Ayo the news, a much easier prospect now that he has his kimoyo beads back and has hooked them up to his phone. She’s no doubt heard already, so he includes some hilarious and possibly mildly incriminating photos and videos of a drunk Okoye singing with Banner.

Ayo’s response is swift: you are fully forgiven for all Zemo-related offenses. Bucky grins, and is about to send over some more photos when Steve returns.

“Ready to go?” asks Bucky, sticking his phone back in his pocket.

“Yup,” says Steve.

Bucky tosses him the spare helmet, and puts on his own. “Alright, next stop, Brooklyn.”

It’s a nice ride back to the city, with Steve letting him drive and sitting behind him on the motorcycle, clutching him more tightly and closely than their current speed requires. There’s no chance to talk, which is a relief, and Bucky’s almost sad when they reach Brooklyn.

Steve staggers off the bike and tears his helmet off, wild-eyed. “Do we have a tail? Is everything okay?”

Bucky takes off his own helmet to frown at Steve in concern. “No…?” he says. His personal surveillance detail tends to steer clear when Bucky’s with Sam; evidently, they don’t want to get tangled up in any official Cap business, probably so they don’t get mistaken for a hostile. Though they’ve been easing up on the surveillance in general, since the Flag Smashers. “Everything’s fine.”

“Then why were you driving like that?!”

“It’s called defensive driving,” says Bucky.

“That was not defensive driving, that was offensive driving. That was driving like we were on the run from assassins.”

Bucky rolls his eyes, and turns to go into his apartment building. “It was fine, you big baby. And we saved half an hour of sitting in traffic.”

“Yeah, because you squeezed into openings where we had about half an inch of clearance!”

“So? We fit, didn’t we?” He glances back at Steve suspiciously as they reach his door. “And you’re not exactly the safest driver yourself, Mr. Driving Tanks Into Ditches.”

“You remember that?” says Steve, sounding simultaneously delighted and dismayed.

Bucky tries not to be annoyed by the delight, and how the sharp edges of Steve’s hope poke against the sore spot that is the subject of Bucky’s patchwork memory, same as always.

“I remember,” he says shortly. “Here we are, let me go get your stuff.”

“Did you just move in?” asks Steve.

“No, why?” Bucky says absently as he heads for his hall closet.

Steve’s stuff is in his safe, which is hidden behind a false wall in the closet, next to one of his go bags; not exactly the kind of tradecraft that would fool a skilled and diligent operative, but it’s secure enough for most purposes, and it’s convenient for some of his less permanent but more urgent exit strategies.

“It’s just awfully empty,” says Steve, sounding hesitant.

Bucky puts the safe combination in—a totally random number, unlike certain other people who pick significant dates that could be easily guessed, Steve—and pulls out the keys and packet of documents, and comes out of the closet to find Steve looking around his apartment with a concerned frown.

“I have everything I need,” Bucky tells him. “Here, this is everything Banner gave me. I didn’t do much of anything with it other than go to your apartment one time and take your motorcycle.” Bucky pauses, and in the interests of complete honesty, he adds, “I also took that little notebook of yours? The one with your lists? And, uh, my dog tags. I found them—well, I found them, and—that’s it.”

“Oh,” says Steve. “They’re—uh, you can keep them, obviously, they’re yours. I, um. I have some other things too, if you want to come by and pick them up?”

“No, I grabbed everything I needed, thanks.”

“Right.”

A long and awkward silence settles in and lingers, like an unwanted guest, and it brings with it a disorienting realization: outside of the war and the various bizarre and extraordinary circumstances that have brought them to today, this is pretty much the first time in Bucky and Steve’s adult lives that they won’t be living together. What did we even do when we lived together? Bucky wonders in a panic. His brain offers up a succession of snapshots: Bucky listening to the radio with Steve, them reading together, Steve sketching while Bucky fixed up something or another, sharing meals—

There’s an idea. Bucky seizes on it with the delirious relief of a drowning man.

“Uh, wanna order in some lunch?” asks Bucky. “Since you gotta keep a low profile for now and all.”

Steve, it seems, is just as happy for this metaphorical life preserver. “Yeah, that’d be great!” he says, and the exclamation point is definitely audible—and loud—in the stilted air between them. Steve, hearing it, winces, and Bucky does his best to ignore it.

“Any preferences?” asks Bucky, though he’s already planning on ordering something hearty, and a lot of it. Steve’s looking thinner than he ought to be, now that Bucky’s seeing him in civvies.

“Whatever’s your favorite,” says Steve, and Bucky hums dubiously, pulling out his phone and opening a food delivery app.

His favorite just now is the most calorically dense food available for delivery within the next hour. He scrolls through the overwhelming array of options and settles on many cheeseburgers, fries, and a couple milkshakes. Not particularly adventurous, but it ought to get the job done. After a moment of consideration, he adds four slices of pie to the order.

Unfortunately, this now leaves them with an hour of time to fill. Back in Wakanda, when things got too awkward on Steve’s visits or calls, Bucky could always use the goats as an excuse to escape: he had to check on them, one of them had gotten stuck in the fence, it was time for their deworming medication, etc. Bucky is no longer in possession of any goats, and he can’t think of a single safe and casual topic of conversation.

The Dodgers! offers up his useless fuckin’ Swiss cheese brain. We used to talk about the Dodgers a lot!

The Dodgers, which are no longer a Brooklyn team. No thanks. Anyway, while Bucky does in fact have a large store of sports-related small talk available to him—a benefit of using the TV’s sports channels as background noise during bouts of nightmare-induced insomnia—he doubts any of it is of interest to Steve, who’s been off in other timelines for the past year.

“So, uh, you’re painting again?” is what Bucky decides to go with.

“You saw—of course you did,” says Steve. “Yeah. Needed something to fill my time with.”

The edge of despair in the words makes Bucky frown. Steve’s art has never been about despair. Boredom and frustration, sure, those times he’d been bedridden from some illness or another, but never despair. Bucky thinks again of the few paintings he’d seen in Steve’s apartment, and wishes he’d looked at them more closely.

Silence settles over them again for a moment, as Steve eyes the blank and bare walls of Bucky’s apartment. “I could, uh, give you a couple of them? The paintings, I mean. If you want.”

“That’d be a waste,” says Bucky. “They oughta be in museums or something, probably.”

More silence. Fuck. Steve puts his hands in his pockets, and his shoulders are going all scrunched up. Bucky is fucking this up. The old Bucky—the real Bucky—would’ve known what to say or do, would’ve had Steve smiling and laughing. Bucky now has no easy words to offer.

The voice of Bucky’s mother drifts up into his consciousness. You still have manners though, James Buchanan Barnes! Offer your guest a drink!

“Uh, do you want anything to drink?” asks Bucky. “Water, coffee, tea…?”

“Coffee sounds good,” says Steve, sounding relieved.

Coffee requires some puttering around in his tiny kitchen, thank fuck, and by the time it’s ready, Steve’s taken a seat on the couch, where he’s fidgeting with his phone. He waggles it in Bucky’s general direction as Bucky sets the mugs of coffee down on the coffee table.

“Wanted to get your number, before I forget.”

Bucky rattles off the number to his secure burner phone. “That’s linked to my kimoyo beads too,” he says, then pulls out his own phone. “Yours?”

He puts in the number Steve gives him, and tries not to feel like he’s violating op sec. He wonders how the hell he’s supposed to use it, now that they can text and call without risking capture or imprisonment. Send Steve dumb texts, like the ones Sam delights in sending to Bucky? Call Steve at random to complain about something or another, the way Yori does with Bucky? Bucky contemplates this problem while he sends Sam a quick text to let him know he and Steve made it back to the city, and then he realizes he has at least one thing to talk to Steve about.

“You should talk to Sam, by the way,” he says.

Steve’s head, bent over his cup of coffee, snaps up. “About…?”

“The shield, being Cap. I know you didn’t have a ton of options when it came to how you passed the shield on, but it wasn’t good for Sam, the way you did it. Older you. Other timeline you, whatever.”

“Oh,” says Steve, already with that hangdog, guilty expression on his face.

“And maybe also talk to him about not Cap-related stuff, because he’s spent this past year wondering if you two were ever really friends at all, with the way we thought you left.”

“Fuck,” whispers Steve, closing his eyes.

“I’m not trying to make you feel bad,” says Bucky. “You didn’t know you’d be gone so long, and you had a damn good reason to go. Just—it wasn’t easy, for us.”

“I’m sorry,” says Steve, then groans, leaning back on the couch. “Fuck, I really should’ve told you what I was doing.”

He looks so absolutely miserable about it that Bucky has to offer him some kind of consolation.

“Probably, yeah. But if you had told me or Sam, and you were still a year late with us not knowing what had happened to you…we’d probably have been just as upset, only for a different reason.”

“And Wanda’s god knows where, millions of people are displaced…fuck, we fucked everything up,” says Steve, and puts his head in his hands.

Steve always does this, realizes Bucky. He focuses on all the bad shit and beats himself up for somehow not preventing it or fixing it. It’s a noble enough impulse when it comes to unfucking situations, because at least then it leads to action; it’s a shitty one when it comes to people. Bucky ought to know, given that he’s one of the end results that Steve loves to beat himself up about not preventing. He’d gotten a lot of that, on the painful plane ride from Siberia to Wakanda.

It’s an unkind and unfair thought, but fuck it, sometimes Bucky can’t stand being Steve’s tragedy, sometimes he hates being the ghost that’s haunting Steve’s life.

“Half the universe is alive again,” snaps Bucky. “I’m alive again, and so are Sam and Wanda. If you’re gonna beat yourself up just as much about us being alive as us being dead, what’s the fucking point of any of it?”

Steve drops his hands and stares at Bucky. “You’re right,” he says. “Shit, I’m sorry, you’re right.”

Bucky studies him for a long moment, and sees it again, the fragile brittleness, the slump of Steve’s shoulders that says the next fight, the next loss, might make him falter, if not break entirely. Bucky sets his coffee mug down and throws an arm around Steve’s shoulders.

“You need a break,” Bucky declares, ruffling Steve’s hair. Steve makes a protesting noise but doesn’t bother to slap Bucky’s hand away. “And a lot of rest.”

Steve smiles over at him, wry and fond, eyes shining now, before he leans against Bucky, slumping down so he can rest his head against Bucky’s shoulder. He curls in against Bucky like he’s still small and skinny, and Bucky pulls him closer and leans right back against Steve too.

“And you don’t?” says Steve. “You’ve had a rough time of it lately too.”

“Yeah, well, I need to do something with myself or I’ll lose it,” Bucky says flatly. He doesn’t feel like getting into the whole living amends thing, so he goes with, “It’s therapeutic, my therapist says so.”

Steve hums, not quite dubious, and they just sit there like that for a while. Steve is warm against Bucky’s side, and Bucky finds himself stroking Steve’s hair absently. He almost stops, when he realizes, but Steve goes tense again when he does, so he keeps it up. Even if there’s no real peace on offer for either of them, not quite yet, this will do for now, Bucky thinks. This is enough for now.

He’s almost dropped off into a doze when his phone buzzes in his pocket, startling both of them, and he pulls it out to see the notification that their food is a couple minutes away. 

“The food’s almost here,” he says, and disentangles himself from Steve. He almost shivers from the sudden chill at the lack of Steve’s body heat. “I’ll be back in a sec. Bathroom’s down the hall to the left if you wanna wash up.”

They eat together in the comfortable silence of the hungry, only broken by the occasional comment about the food, and a scuffle over the milkshakes when Steve declares he’d prefer the chocolate one today, actually, and leaves Bucky with the vanilla. They share the slices of pie, and by the time they’re finished eating, some of Steve’s brittleness has eased into well-fed and drowsy contentment.

Bucky’s tempted to let Steve nap off his incipient food coma on the couch, but then he gets a text from Yori: a photo of a moving truck full of boxes and furniture. Come put your superpowers to good use, my new neighbors could use some help. Bucky huffs, grinning and probably far more cheerful than he ought to be about being drafted as a mover. Be there in about an hour, gotta drop a friend off first, he texts back.

“I gotta go help a friend out with something,” he says. “I can drop you off at your place on the way, if you want?”

For a second, Steve looks like he’s going to protest this plan, then he smiles, something rueful in it. “Yeah, that’d be great. Thanks, Buck.”

It’s a short ride to Steve’s place. When they arrive, Steve keeps clinging to Bucky’s back on the motorcycle for so long that Bucky thinks he’s fallen asleep at first, or that maybe that last lane change had been too much for Steve’s nerves. 

But when he pats Steve’s thigh and says, “We’re here,” Steve lets go and stands.

“Thanks for the ride,” he says, and stows the spare helmet in its saddle bag. Bucky flips his own helmet’s visor up to peer at Steve in concern. “I’ll, uh…see you later?”

“Sure,” says Bucky, though the ease with which he can say it feels surreal the moment the word comes out of his mouth. But it will be easy, of course. It won’t be a matter of clandestine coordination and furtive border crossings and quick, constrained calls. “I can bring some lunch over, after my therapy session? And if you need anything else you can text me.”

Steve looks relieved by the offer. “Yeah, sounds good.” 

“Promise me you’ll get some rest, Steve,” says Bucky, frowning at him. “Please.”

“I will, Buck. I promise.”

Helping Yori’s neighbors move in is the kind of thing that Bucky actually really enjoys using his strength for, and with his help, they’re done before it gets dark. He eats dinner with them when they insist on feeding him as thanks for his help, and no one seems to mind that he’s quiet for most of it. 

“See, this is what your super muscles are good for,” says Yori as Bucky heads out, and Bucky smiles at him.

“Yeah, I guess so,” he says. “Thank you for asking me to come.”

Yori’s face twists into a smile that manages to be both sad and happy. “You don’t need to thank me for saddling you with chores.”

“Yes, I do,” says Bucky, and leaves Yori with another smile, feeling pleasantly tired and satisfied on the drive back to his apartment.

Sam texts him just as he’s taking off his boots: Steve settle in okay? He didn’t answer my texts. Nat finally passed out from the time travel lag, I’m hoping she’ll sleep for at least 12 hrs. 

Not in the mood to type out a whole explanation, and wanting to talk to Sam anyway, Bucky just sprawls out on the couch and calls him.

“Hey,” says Bucky once Sam picks up. “I dropped Steve off at his place a few hours ago, told him to get some rest. That’s probably why he didn’t answer you.”

“Yeah, I figured. How’d things go with him? You think he’s doing alright?”

“I think so,” says Bucky slowly. “I mean, he’s okay, all things considered, just—he needs some rest. Some time and space to decompress too. Dunno how anyone’s gonna convince him to take it.”

Sam sighs gustily. “Natasha too. She’s planning on going to the Bartons’ place though, and Yelena’s tagging along, hopefully between all of ‘em they’ll get Nat to relax for a while.”

“And we’re on Steve duty?”

“Pretty much, yeah. I was thinking we should drag him to Delacroix as soon as we can manage it.”

“Yeah, that could work,” says Bucky, relieved to have something approaching a plan. But there’s one other thing he needs to talk to Sam about. “Hey, so, I know I got no right to ask this, but—when you have that talk with Steve that you gotta have? The one about, you know, the shield and all, and his leaving? Could you go easy on him?”

Sam’s silent for a long few seconds. “It’s not like I was gonna yell at him or something,” he says, a tightness in his voice that makes Bucky wince.

“Yeah, no, I know—”

“And sorry if I’m not super excited about sparing a white man’s feelings when it comes to racism—”

“You don’t have to!” Bucky rushes to assure him. “Not about the Cap stuff! Honestly, some arguing with him about that kinda thing’ll probably do him some good. I mean—the personal stuff, I guess. He’s kinda—fragile, maybe? Or, uh, brittle, I guess. Like one wrong hit and he’s gonna shatter. I think—I think the last five years really fucked him up, Sam.”

Sam lets out a long breath, only just audible over the phone line. “Yeah, okay, I hear you. I’ll be gentle with him. Were you?”

“I tried,” says Bucky, and decides he is not going to mention the cuddling. “He seemed more settled by the time he left, at any rate.”

“I’m kinda surprised he didn’t stay over, or that you didn’t. I didn’t get the impression he wanted to let you outta his sight.”

“He didn’t, really. But, uh. I’m not ready for that.”

“That’s alright,” says Sam, warm and easy. “Take your time, Buck. It’s been a wild couple of days. We could all use some downtime to deal with it.”

“Even you? You, uh, doing okay?”

“Yeah, just—need to wrap my head around it all, I guess. That me and Steve and Nat aren’t on the run anymore, that they’re back, how much everything’s changed…” Sam huffs a rueful laugh. “I need a minute, man. But I’m excited, you know? I’m hopeful. Feels like things are finally turning around for the better.”

“Yeah, I hope so,” murmurs Bucky, and shivers with an all-over twitch of anxious unease. 

“Me and Nat talked some stuff out too, and it was—it was good. Really good,” says Sam, and there’s something low and pleased and private in Sam’s voice. Before Bucky can tease him about it, Sam asks, “Did you and Steve talk?”

“Yeah, a bit,” says Bucky vaguely. “So how much of that downtime do you think we’re gonna get?”

“Two or three days, I think, and at least we’re looking at a lot of meetings and briefings and press conferences instead of dealing with any of the big three, hopefully.”

“Don’t jinx it,” says Bucky with a groan. 

That little downtime isn’t ideal, but it’ll have to do, even if pretending Steve’s still on the moon is an increasingly tempting idea.

Sam and Bucky talk a bit more about tentative plans for what’s coming when Steve and Natasha make their return public, and how to get Steve to Delacroix, which descends into some comforting bickering over just how they should convince Steve to relax, and Bucky ends the call feeling almost cheerful. Maybe he can risk being at least a little bit excited and hopeful too.

Of course, Bucky’s goddamn nightmares take that as their cue to prove him wrong just a few hours later.

Most of the time, Bucky’s nightmares are memories. This is actually preferable to the nightmares that aren’t. 

Bucky wakes up. His heart is pounding and his head is aching and his lungs are heaving, and he dreamed—he remembered? Please god let it not have been remembered—

He dreamed he was at the lake house, Pepper Potts’ house, with all the Avengers, only it wasn’t him, was it, it was the Winter Soldier, because he’d—he’d killed them all, he’d—had he killed Sam? He’d dreamed of catching the shield, of throwing it back so hard that it had—and Sam had—he’d—or had it been Steve? No, Steve was gone, he’d left, except—he’d come back, right?

My name is James Buchanan Barnes, I am no longer the Winter Soldier, and the date is—I’m in— 

It was just a dream, it has to have just been a dream, a nightmare, one of the ones that isn’t a memory, only—he always hopes he hasn’t just dreamed a memory but it’s always real, it always happened, those are always his hands killing and he can never stop it, he can only remember it—

Nothing makes sense through the panic. When and where he is, what he did yesterday, none of it’s cohering into a reality he can trust. Places and years slide together, Bucharest and Brooklyn and the Western front and the base in Siberia and his hut in Wakanda and he doesn’t know—he can’t—he can’t breathe—

He sits up—he’s on the floor, and not a bed, so that means he’s in Brooklyn, right? After the Blip?—and fumbles for his phone, knocking it off the coffee table beside him, but when he picks it up in a shaking hand, the date and time it shows him might as well be meaningless. What does it fucking matter that it’s 2:36 a.m. on Monday November 4, what fucking year is it, where is he, is Sam—is Steve—did Bucky—

Memory reasserts itself, and time shudders into a kind of order. Brooklyn. He’s in Brooklyn, because yesterday, he drove back from the lake house upstate with—with Steve…? Because Steve is back. Steve came back, the young Steve, Bucky’s Steve, he’d come back with Romanoff, who Steve had saved. Right?

Except suddenly that seems insane, too good to be true, absolutely delusional. Steve coming back, Romanoff being alive, that party—there’d been a party, right?—all that feels like the hazy dream, a hallucination, and the nightmare, that terrible nightmare, that seems all too real, and all too likely to be a memory and a reality.

Bucky can’t fucking breathe for the terror of it. Little Morgan Stark had been there, in the dream. And he’d—

No no no no no—

He’d gotten Steve’s number, he remembers. He can just—just check his phone, see if it’s there, but given his current inability to tell what the fuck even really happened the last couple days, he can’t rule out that any number in there is fake or part of some delusion. And if he calls the number and no one answers—or worse, if someone else answers—

He’s shaking too much to work the fucking touch screen that much anyway. It’s voice activated too though, so he says, “Call Sam,” through chattering teeth, and almost sobs in relief when Sam answers after three endless rings.

“Buck? Is everything okay?” asks Sam, sounding groggy. “Don’t tell me we’ve got a mission or something—”

“Sam,” is all Bucky can manage to say, fuck, why can’t he just breathe— “Sam, I—”

“Bucky? Hey, you’re not sounding too good,” says Sam, much more awake now. “Bucky, are you hurt? Where are you?”

“N—no. Brooklyn? I, Sam, I can’t—I dreamed, and I don’t know if—”

“Okay, hey, you gotta breathe, Buck. You gotta slow down your breathing, it sounds like you’re hyperventilating.”

“I’m—trying—” gasps Bucky.

“Okay, okay, breathe with me then, alright? In for five, hold, out for five. Just like that, there you go. And let’s try to find five things you can see…”

Bucky’s familiar with the exercise, and for all that it seems ridiculous, by the time they’re onto things Bucky can feel, he’s managed to get his breathing more under control, and Sam moves on to a soothing recitation of some of the facts that Bucky’s panicking mind hadn’t been able to keep proper hold of.

“Your name is James Buchanan Barnes and you’re free, you’re in Brooklyn. It’s November third—shit, no, it’s after midnight, it’s November fourth, 2024…”

The worst of the terror ebbs with Sam’s steady voice, his measured breathing. But reality still feels too uncertain, too malleable. Bucky can’t trust his own memories, tangled up as they are between dream and nightmare and truth.

Bucky interrupts Sam mid-sentence to ask, “Sam, is it—is Steve really back?”

If Sam says no, then it is fucking past time for Bucky to enact one of his more permanent exit strategies, immediately, because Bucky’s mind is clearly broken beyond all repair. If Bucky has only imagined that Steve has returned, if he’s having full-on delusions now rather than only occasionally losing time, then he needs to put himself down before he loses it entirely. He presses his face against his knees and shakes and shudders, he can’t seem to stop shaking, and he tries to keep his breathing calm.

“Yeah, Buck,” says Sam gently. “He came back a couple days ago, with Natasha, after getting up to all kinds of time travel bullshit. Same Steve as he was when he first left with the Infinity Stones.”

Bucky can’t help the sob of relief that comes out, and hopes it’s too muffled for Sam to hear.

“And we—there was a party. At the lake house?” he asks, turning his face towards his phone.

“Yeah, there was,” says Sam, still so gentle. “Are you having trouble remembering the past couple days?”

“I—no, I—remember? But—I had a nightmare, and I couldn’t tell, I didn’t know—so many of them are memories, but sometimes they’re not, and I can’t—sometimes I can’t tell, and when I woke up, I didn’t know, I couldn’t be sure, I—” he babbles, probably not making a lot of sense.

“Hey hey hey, Buck, slow down, breathe.”

He breathes and shakes and breathes.

Bucky manages to ask the important questions: “Steve’s back? And you’re fine, and I—I didn’t hurt anybody?”

“Steve’s back, yeah. You had lunch with him yesterday, took him back to his place. And I’m fine, we’re all fine. You didn’t hurt anybody, I promise,” Sam assures him. “Hey, kinda sounds like your teeth are chattering, are you cold? Can you go put on a sweater or something for me, Buck? Maybe have some hot tea?”

“Can’t, shaking too much,” says Bucky. He believes Sam, he does, but he has to be sure. “We—we were all at the lake house up state, and—and nothing happened? I didn’t—?”

“Nothing happened,” Sam confirms again. “Nothing but a pretty great party and everyone getting way too drunk and being hungover at the meeting the next morning. Hey, how about we call Steve? That way you’ll know for sure he’s okay, that he’s back.”

“No!” says Bucky, his head snapping up. “No, I—I can’t, I don’t—I don’t wanna bother him with my crazy bullshit—”

“Bucky, he’d want you to call,” says Sam, low and pleading.

“No, no way, he’s got enough to deal with, and he needs to be resting, not worrying about me having a nervous breakdown. I’m—I’m fine now, really.”

Bucky wipes at his wet face and takes a deep breath. He fumbles for the thin blanket he’d tossed aside while in the grip of his nightmare, and pulls it around his shoulders.

Sam sighs, but thankfully, he doesn’t push. “Alright,” he says. “But how about I send you some photos of Steve from the other night, so you’ve got some proof? Just something to interrupt that anxiety spiral if it gets started up again.”

“Yeah, okay, that’s—that’s a good idea,” says Bucky, slumping in relief. “Thanks, Sam. And I’m sorry, I—”

“Nope, no apologies,” says Sam firmly. “I don’t care what time it is, if you feel the way you were feeling earlier, you call me. Support network, remember? There, I sent you some pictures.”

The photos come through: Steve, laughing with Natasha and Thor, Steve and Bucky, their arms around each other, smiling, a couple loops of video of the party in full swing, Steve and Natasha at its center. Bucky lets out a long, shuddering sigh of relief. All the photos are welcome corroboration that he’s not irretrievably insane.

“I remember,” says Bucky. “I called, didn’t I?”

“I’m really glad you did,” says Sam, and then, “Does this kinda thing happen often?”

“It’s not this bad, usually,” says Bucky, honestly enough. 

He can almost always calm himself down, and his non-memory nightmares are usually more obviously surreal, enough so that he can be more sure they didn’t actually happen. And hey, at least he isn’t losing hours and hours of time anymore, the way he did when he first broke free of HYDRA. 

“So what was different this time?”

“It was just—the thing with Steve, it didn’t feel real. Made me, uh. Kinda confused about everything else.”

“Can’t blame you for that, all this shit is pretty wild,” says Sam, so wry and sympathetic that Bucky can’t be too mortified. “You okay to get back to sleep now?”

“I’m not risking it,” says Bucky, and when Sam sucks in a sharp and protesting breath, Bucky rushes to assure him, “It’s fine, I’ll read or something, make some hot chocolate. I’m alright now, I swear.”

His heart rate and breathing have slowed to something more normal, and his shakes have subsided into the occasional shiver. He’s past the worst of it, the rest is nothing some hot chocolate and a distraction won’t fix. As much as it can be fixed, anyway.

“Okay,” says Sam. “But I’mma call you in the morning to check in, and you better answer.”

“I will,” Bucky promises.

“And Buck—maybe give Steve a chance to be a real part of your support network too? You two can’t help each other, and you can’t be good friends to each other, if you’re both keeping this kind of shit to yourselves all the time.”

On the contrary, Bucky is pretty sure that keeping his crazy to himself is a requirement for him and Steve continuing to be friends at all. If Steve knew all the ways Bucky is a wreck and a shell of the Bucky Barnes Steve had so loved and admired, Steve would probably run far away. He still might.

But Bucky doesn’t say any of that, just thanks Sam again and tells him goodnight, then stares at one of the photos Sam sent: Steve and Bucky smiling at each other, arms around each other’s shoulders. It doesn’t look so dissimilar from the bit of old film reel footage of them in the Smithsonian. They look older and more tired, sure, but happy. For that one moment, anyway. 

When Bucky shows up at Steve’s place with lunch and some groceries the next afternoon, Steve welcomes him with a smile and a quick, back-slapping hug rather than a long and clingy one. Steve’s hands linger though: not much, just an extra second or so’s grip on Bucky’s shoulders, and then he’s taking some of the bags out of Bucky’s hands.

“Thanks for all this, Buck,” he says.

“No problem,” says Bucky, and studies Steve for any signs that he has not, in fact, been resting like he should have been. 

He doesn’t see any. Steve looks lighter, more relaxed, with none of the brittle tension of yesterday. The exhausted, almost defeated slump of his shoulders from yesterday is no longer in evidence. Bucky feels damn near worn and bedraggled in comparison, the shadow to Steve’s light, though he knows he only looks a bit tired after the mostly sleepless night. He sets the takeout bags with their lunch on the kitchen table while Steve puts the groceries away. The domesticity of it all is briefly dizzying in its long-absent familiarity. Don’t get used to it, Bucky tells himself.

“You’re looking better, did you get enough rest?” he asks Steve, blinks past the moment of deja vu from the question, which had once been frequent if for much different reasons, and looks around the apartment for any signs that Steve hadn’t rested as ordered. But the place looks almost the exact same as the last time Bucky had been here, apart from the little things that reveal someone’s living here again: shoes by the door, curtains and windows opened to let in fresh air, keys on the hook in the hallway.

There’s one big difference though: the painting in progress is gone, the easel empty.

“Yeah, slept almost 20 hours straight,” says Steve, and Bucky whistles. That’s a lot for a super soldier who’s ostensibly uninjured.

“Wow, you must’ve needed it.”

“I did, I was running on empty,” says Steve, rueful. “I’m feeling a lot better now.”

“Damn, they didn’t give us any utensils,” mutters Bucky, unpacking the food. “Can you bring some forks and spoons over? And whatever you wanna drink.”

Once the table’s set, they sit down to eat, and unease creeps over Bucky. He doesn’t know why. The apartment’s secure, there’s no looming threat, and Steve is fine, things are normal—

They’re too normal, maybe. Steve seems too normal. Like all he needs to bounce back from the five years of the Blip is a few hugs with his returned friends and twenty hours of uninterrupted sleep. Like all the grief that had so obviously filled this apartment has already been forgotten with the return of the Blipped. Bucky wonders, somewhat morbidly, if Steve is going to get rid of Bucky’s old clothes, hidden away in that drawer, now that he has the real thing back, more or less.

“Uh, how was your therapy?” asks Steve.

“Fine,” says Bucky, and he actually means it.

He’d told Raynor that he’d gotten some really good news, and also that he’d had a pretty bad nightmare, figuring that on balance, it was better to admit to it and to the fact that he’d leaned on his support network. That way Raynor could report that he was making progress or whatever, and in fact, she’d seemed pleased, and actually had some helpful things to say about why his non-memory nightmares are so disorienting. 

“Is it, uh, helping?”

Bucky shrugs. “Kinda. Whether or not it helps, it’s mandatory,” he says, and Steve’s jaw clenches. Yeah, no, Bucky is not in the mood for any ranting from Steve about the injustice of this, so he asks, “You do anything like that during the Blip?”

“Some,” says Steve, and looks down at his food. “And I, uh, ran some support groups, but…not sure I was very good at it.”

“I dunno about that, you’re pretty good at pep talks and moving speeches,” says Bucky.

“Doesn’t matter anyway, I guess,” says Steve with a smile that’s a bit too close to the Captain America smile for comfort. “We don’t really need the support groups anymore.”

Bucky stares at him. “Guess not,” he says slowly. “People need a whole different kind of support group now. One for people returning to life and finding that everything’s changed on ‘em. And you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you.”

Steve looks briefly chastened before his jaw takes on that familiar stubborn angle. And then he smiles again, slightly strained this time. “Not sure I’ve got a lot of useful tips for people about that, seventy years is a lot different than five. Figure I can do more good elsewhere anyway.”

“Sure,” says Bucky, and feels it again, that unease. 

He applies himself more diligently to his food, and tries to come up with a safe topic of conversation. Then he remembers his and Sam’s tentative drag-Steve-to-Delacroix plan, and decides to start laying the groundwork. 

“So you’re probably gonna have some free time once all the meetings and briefings are over, right? You got any plans?”

“Uh, not really…me and Nat want to try to track Wanda down, but I think maybe that’s a job for her and Clint.” Steve smiles without much mirth at all. “I haven’t exactly got the best track record when it comes to finding people who don’t want to be found.”

Bucky takes that hit squarely; he deserves it. “That was on me, not you,” he says, and Steve’s face falls, dismayed.

“I didn’t mean—”

“Whatever, it’s fine. Water under the bridge, right? Anyway, I was gonna head down to Delacroix to train with Sam. You should come with me. Thanksgiving’s coming up too, you can come down early for that.”

“Sure, sounds good,” says Steve. “I’m glad you and Sam had each other, while I was gone.”

“Yeah,” says Bucky. “We’ve, uh, stayed in touch. Worked together. I’ve visited him in Delacroix a few times.”

These are all true statements. Not the whole truth, but Steve doesn’t need to know that.

“So, uh, you two have been alright, this past year…? I know you said it wasn’t easy, but other than that…?”

Bucky thinks of his exit strategies, and how they’ve multiplied. He thinks of his amends and his nightmares and his fuck ups. He thinks of all that, and of Steve’s neat, lived-in apartment, his support group meetings, his art. He looks at Steve, sitting in front of him, well-rested and clear-eyed and smiling, already moving past five years of hell and the terrible battle against Thanos and the desperate mission to save Natasha. He thinks of last night, of nearly having a goddamn nervous breakdown because he couldn’t believe that Steve had really come back.

Has he been alright.

He has the sudden urge to upend the table, to laugh and laugh and scream. Intrusive thoughts, he thinks distantly. 

“I don’t wanna speak for Sam, but yeah, Steve. We’ve been alright, all things considered,” says Bucky, and hopes like hell his smile is convincing.

Steve smiles back, so obviously relieved. Bucky wishes he hadn’t eaten so much for lunch. It all roils queasily in his stomach, and his chest burns as if with indigestion.

“How about you, you sure you’re alright?” asks Bucky. “It’s just, yesterday, you, uh, seemed pretty…upset still.”

“Yeah, I’m—I’m sorry about that,” says Steve, his smile faltering for a brief moment. “I’m feeling a lot steadier now, really.”

“What, all you needed was a good night’s sleep?” presses Bucky, skeptical. He doesn’t intend to miss it again, if Steve’s in a bad way.

“Sure, that and having you and Sam and Nat back, and undoing what Thanos did. I won’t say no to some more R&R, but I can handle some meetings.”

That all sounds sensible enough, Bucky supposes. He’ll just have to make sure Steve doesn’t run himself into the ground. Getting Steve to Delacroix for at least a couple weeks ought to help with that. So Bucky brings the conversation back to Delacroix as they finish up with lunch and then clear the table before settling on the couch in the living room. He extolls the small island’s virtues and beauties, he waxes rhapsodic about the food and the people, and Steve listens closely, warm affection writ large across his face. 

When his smile grows particularly wide, even though Bucky’s not saying anything especially funny, Bucky goes, “What? What’s that look for?”

“Nothing! Really, nothing, just—I missed hearing your chatter, is all. You’ve been so quiet, since—it’s nice, is all.”

This is enough to make Bucky want to shut up, unsettled. He supposes he did used to talk more. It used to be easy to talk. It isn’t, anymore. The ghost of the old Bucky Barnes suddenly feels very present, as if the Bucky of now has let that ghost inhabit him for a little while, an unknowing possession, only for the ghost to make an abrupt exit, leaving behind the hollow wreckage of whoever he is now.

In the interests of not having to talk more himself, Bucky asks Steve, “So I’ve been wondering…that older Steve, the one who came back to give Sam the shield: when was he from?”

Steve seems slightly taken aback by the sudden change of subject. “A different timeline. We weren't supposed to create new timelines again by returning the Infinity Stones, not when we'd already fucked up by creating some new timelines when we took them in the first place, that could’ve caused a paradox, or a whole bunch of branching timelines that would make everything unstable. But when I went back for Natasha, saving her did create a new timeline. There’s an, uh, organization that really doesn’t like that kind of thing.”

Bucky recalls what Steve had said earlier, about the older Steve being a diversion, and one of Steve’s favored tactics, during the war: to draw the enemy’s attention where he wanted it to be, rather than where it should have been. “You needed a diversion, so you created more new timelines.”

“Just a couple,” says Steve with a nod. “And they branched out from the visits to the past we’d already made. Loki said that’d be the most stable, the least risk to the multiverse. One branch was—was with Peggy.” Steve smiles, soft and wistful. “I went back to have one last dance with her, after putting the Tesseract back, and I told her where to find me. The me in the ice, I mean. And I told her where to find you.”

“What,” whispers Bucky.

“And after I put the Mind Stone back—I’d fought with myself for it, earlier. That Steve, he thought I was Loki. I’d told that Steve you were alive, just to, uh, distract him for a second. Long enough to take the scepter from him. But when I went back to return it, I told him more. Told him about HYDRA and where to find you, how to save you.”

“Steve—”

“That older Steve, he was—he was from the branch with Peggy. They found you, got you back from HYDRA in that timeline.”

“Oh,” says Bucky blankly.

“I had to try,” says Steve with a sad smile and a shrug. “It was selfish, probably. I could’ve chosen other changes to make, but—if I had the chance to save you, I had to try.”

It wasn’t me though, thinks Bucky. I’m still right here where you left me. Bucky is vaguely aware that he should feel something about this, and he has no idea what the correct feeling is. Gratitude? Relief?

Disappointment? God, no, that’s shitty, he’s shitty, he can’t be here right now.

“Thanks,” he says, and then, abruptly, “I should get going.” Steve’s smile falls as Bucky gets up, already moving towards the door. “Let you rest up some more.”

“You, uh. You could stay here with me, you know,” says Steve, and tries for another smile, following him. “I can pull out the couch cushions, put ‘em on the floor, it’ll be just like—”

It’s still the goddamn 1930s, just like Bucky is still the best and most whole version of himself, or even like he’s one of those other Buckys Steve had saved, the less fucked up ones. Maybe Steve didn’t stay in the past, but it sure as hell seems like he intends to drag it into the present with them, no matter what.

“No, I’m good,” says Bucky. “I—have stuff to do. Therapy homework. I’ll see you later, okay?”

“Bucky—“

“Let me know if you need anything, I’ll—I’ll text you later,” Bucky promises recklessly, and instantly regrets it. Text him? About what? 

“Yeah, no, sure. Of course,” says Steve. “Just—hang on a second.” Steve goes to the key hook in the hallway, and pulls a couple of keys off one of the rings. He holds it out to Bucky. “Here: spare keys to my place. The silver one is for the door downstairs.”

“I know,” says Bucky, and takes the keys numbly. 

“You don’t actually have to sleep on the couch cushions,” says Steve. “I, uh. Have a spare room. In case you ever—well. I just wanted you to have them.”

“Thanks,” says Bucky.

This seems like the kind of gesture that ought to be reciprocated. It’s not even the kind of thing that needs to be a big deal; it can just be a matter of convenience, especially for two people who might end up traveling a lot. Can you grab my mail, can you water my plants. Normal stuff. And yet when Bucky thinks of giving Steve a spare key to his place, the idea seems somehow laughable, ridiculous. Steve doesn’t fit in that bare, mostly blank space. There’s nothing for Steve there, other than Bucky. And Bucky doesn’t fit here, not with all the ghostly echoes of other, better versions of him. 

So instead of saying anything else, he only chokes out a repeated, “Thanks, Steve, really,” and flees.

Chapter Text

“I really thought you were kidding about people thinking I was on the moon,” says Steve,  sounding harrowed and annoyed, and looking rather hunted.

There’s no need. There are no journalists or onlookers here at the back service entrance of the GRC building, and with helmets on, they’ll make a clean getaway on the motorcycle, finally free to head to Delacroix now that the press conferences and briefings about Steve and Natasha’s return are over, thank fuck. It’s been a long couple of weeks of standing at Steve and Sam’s sides while cameras flash and assorted bureaucrats ask questions and make demands of the nascent new Avengers Initiative, long enough that Bucky had started wishing for another alien invasion. 

Okay, maybe not another alien invasion, but a couple Flag Smashers at least.

Bucky grins at Steve. “Now why would I kid about a thing like that?” He tosses a helmet to Steve. “C’mon, if we miss our nice, cushy Quinjet flight, we’ll have to fly commercial.”

“Literally no one believes I wasn’t on the moon!” complains Steve as he climbs on behind Bucky. “Even the GRC kept asking me serious questions about establishing a lunar base!”

Steve’s griping is music to Bucky’s ears: things haven’t been entirely stilted between them these past couple weeks, but they’ve both been walking on eggshells, carefully avoiding saying anything that strays from the superficial or Avengers-related. Hearing some good old-fashioned complaining from Steve is an outright relief in comparison, not least because it’s an undeniably Steve thing to do, rather than the stern composure and poise of Captain Rogers.

“That’s probably for the best,” says Bucky. “Otherwise you’d be fielding a lot of tough questions about time travel. And hey, are you saying you don’t want to go to the moon? Because I wouldn’t turn down a trip to the moon.”

“I’d like to stick close to home for a while,” says Steve, and presses a bit closer to Bucky, resting his chin over Bucky’s shoulder. He leaves it there, for almost the whole drive to the airfield.

There’s one surprising consolation for how awkward their conversations have been lately: Steve’s awfully touchy-feely now. 

Bucky used to be the one who was always throwing an arm around Steve’s shoulders and dragging him into hugs and leaning against him, and Steve used to tolerate it with all the grace of a standoffish cat. During the war though, physical affection had been one of the few human comforts left to them, so even the once-reserved Steve had taken to sprawling all over Bucky and his teammates, and engaging in the kind of roughhousing that would end with a guy in your arms for a platonic cuddle. 

That ease wasn’t really in evidence when they’d reunited in the 21^st century. Steve would hug him, sure, but only in greeting or parting, and other than that he’d stuck with manful shoulder pats. Bucky hadn’t hated the shoulder pats or anything, they’d just seemed to have a certain buck up, soldier (no pun intended) subtext that had kind of pissed him off.

Now, Steve’s the one constantly reeling Bucky into hugs and knocking elbows and knees with him and pressing close when they’re sitting together. He’ll keep a hand on Bucky’s back when they’re standing together, or lean in against him when Bucky puts his arm around Steve’s shoulders, or hook his chin over Bucky’s shoulder if he wants a look at something Bucky’s doing. The buck up, soldier shoulder pats have become something more lingering: Steve will rub Bucky’s upper arm or shoulder absently, as if in comfort—and not, Bucky suspects, his own, but rather Steve’s—or he’ll settle a light grip at the juncture of Bucky’s neck and shoulder, and the brush of his thumb against the nape of Bucky’s neck will linger in a way that Bucky can only describe as tender. 

Bucky’s not the only one on the other end of Steve’s new cuddliness—Sam gets plenty of it too—but Bucky’s on the receiving end of most of it.

He doesn’t mind. 

In Delacroix, Bucky more or less throws Steve in Sam’s general direction, and makes himself as indispensable to Sarah as possible. Sarah accepts her new sous-chef with raised eyebrows.

“Not that I don’t appreciate your knife skills when I’ve got this many Thanksgiving sides to make for the community kitchen, but I thought you and Steve would be joined at the hip,” she says, and nods him towards the big sack of potatoes sitting by the cupboards.

Peeling potatoes is an old skill, and he’s pleased to find he’s even faster at it now. Look at me now, Ma, he thinks, and wonders if Steve’s having as good luck with fishing on the Paul & Darlene with Sam.

“Sam and Steve need to talk some stuff out,” Bucky tells Sarah. “And this is their best chance for that before Sam and Natasha go on their Avengers recruitment trip.”

Sam and Natasha will be looking for Maximoff too while they’re at it. Meanwhile Steve and Bucky will be staying in New York: Steve so that he’ll be on hand to keep an eye on the reconstruction of the Avengers compound upstate and all the administrative stuff, and Bucky to work on a training program for new recruits. 

“Y’all are really hitting the ground running with that, huh,” says Sarah.

“Yup,” Bucky says.

“Well, I’m glad,” she says. “Sam seems a lot happier and more relaxed about this Cap thing now that Natasha and Steve are back.”

Sarah’s not wrong. Sam comes back with Steve later that afternoon, and there’s damn near a glow to him, a resolve that’s more joyful than solemn, like the burden of the shield has grown lighter. Steve looks a bit melancholy in comparison, but happy and relieved too. AJ and Cass ambush Steve with demands to know how he did at fishing, and Bucky takes the opportunity to pull Sam aside to the kitchen so he can check in with him.

“Seems like things went alright?” asks Bucky.

“Well, we didn’t catch many fish,” says Sam, grinning, and Bucky rolls his eyes. “But yeah, we had a really good talk. I didn’t realize how much the way that Steve—that other old Steve, I mean—passed on the shield to me had been weighing on me. Like, he was my coworker who was retiring without notice and leaving me with a mess of a job that I never even asked for, instead of one of my best friends.”

“But now?”

“Now I know he’s sticking around to have my back, that he knows being Cap is a whole different ballgame for me.” Sam laughs with something like rueful wonder. “And now I know he’s still one of my best friends.”

“Good,” says Bucky, relieved that he won’t have to yell at Steve for being an asshole to Sam.

“Alright, so where are we at with Thanksgiving prep? Where’s Sarah?”

“We finished up the platters for the community kitchen, she went to go deliver them. Turkey’s brined and thawing and the pie crusts are made, I think we’re set for everything Sarah wanted to get done before tomorrow.”

“I’ll get started on dinner then,” says Sam.

“Need any help?”

“Nah, you’ve put in enough time as the Wilson family sous chef for the day, go make sure the boys aren’t bugging Steve too much.”

So Bucky leaves him a clap on the shoulder, and goes to join Steve in the living room, where he’s apparently being interrogated by AJ and Cass about what flying in outer space is like.

“Kids, you’re wasting these questions on Steve, he barely paid attention to anything important when he was on a spaceship. Didn’t go check out a black hole or anything,” says Bucky, shaking his head in exaggerated disappointment. “Didn’t even take any pictures!”

“Forgot my phone,” says Steve, deadpan, his eyes sparkling, and the boys groan.

“Okay, but were you really on the moon?” asks Cass.

Steve winks and says, “That’s classified.”

Bucky approves of the op sec, but the boys evidently decide this makes Steve boring and that it’ll be more fun to continue with Bucky’s pop culture education in the form of watching yet another of the seemingly dozens of—movies? TV shows? Bucky doesn’t even know—Star Wars-related things. Bucky doesn’t mind, even if he doesn’t love it with quite the fervor that AJ does; it’s cute how excited AJ always is to share the things he loves with people, and the part of Bucky that still remembers being a kid who loved comic books and pulp novels enjoys all the Star Wars stuff anyway, even if the adult Bucky likes what he’s seen of Star Trek better. 

“Uncle Bucky, you gotta watch, there’s the coolest lightsaber battle—” gushes AJ.

“Do you like Star Wars, Mr. Steve?” asks Cass.

“Haven’t really seen much of it,” says Steve, which makes AJ actually gasp and drag both Steve and Bucky over to the living room for another Star Wars lesson.

Steve and Bucky settle together on the couch, Steve sitting close enough for their thighs to touch, and to put an arm around Bucky’s shoulders, while AJ and Cass take their usual positions sprawled on the floor with a couple pillows.

“Uncle Bucky?” murmurs Steve into Bucky’s ear, and when Bucky glances at him, he looks more teary than teasing, a tremulous smile on his lips.

“You can get a promotion to uncle too if you stick around for a bit,” Bucky mutters back, his face heating.

Steve does end up putting an arm around Bucky’s shoulders, and Bucky doesn’t move away. After a while, he even lets his head rest of Steve’s shoulder.

After dinner, Steve insists on doing the dishes, and chats easily with Sarah about Delacroix in the meantime, full of well-deserved praise for her role in the community. Bucky is amused and happy to see that Sarah’s not immune to Steve’s wholesome charm; she lights up with the attention and recognition, and seems to fill the whole house with her brightness. Sam observes them with clear fondness and satisfaction for a moment before he grabs a couple beers and looks at Bucky, tipping his head in the direction of the the porch in a silent question. Bucky nods, taking one of the beers, and follows Sam out into the fall night.

It’s pleasantly chilly out, and the air is crisp and cool, carrying a hint of the ocean’s salt. Bucky leans against the porch railing beside Sam and breathes it in with satisfaction, and he and Sam share a minute of comfortable silence as they sip their beers.

“Seems like Delacroix is working its magic on Steve,” Bucky says eventually.

“Sure does,” says Sam with satisfaction. He casts a sidelong glance at Bucky. “So, Steve thinks you’re avoiding him.”

“What?” says Bucky, blinking in disbelief. “I’ve seen him basically every day for the past two weeks!”

“Steve thinks you’re avoiding actually talking to him,” amends Sam.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” is Bucky’s reflexive response, and that probably deserves the raised eyebrow from Sam. “I mean—we already talked about his leaving and coming back and everything, we’re good.”

“Sure,” says Sam, sounding mildly dubious. “But Steve thinks you’re not talking to him about much of anything at all. This is the one time I’m gonna be a go-between about this kinda shit between you two, by the way. You two are besties, act like it.”

“Yeah, okay,” says Bucky with a glum sigh. “Talking to him has just been so—awkward. I don’t even know what to talk to him about, and even if I did, it’s not like I’m any good at it anymore. It’s been like this since he visited me in Wakanda.”

“You’re just fine at talking, Buck,” says Sam. “Maybe you have to let go of being self-conscious about it, or second-guessing yourself. Talk about whatever’s on your mind, I see that brain working overtime behind those steel blue eyes of yours. Share with the class a bit.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “It’s not always stuff that’s fit for company,” he says, and Sam scoffs.

“Steve’s your best friend, not company you gotta be on your best behavior for.”

“I don’t—I’m not sure I know how to be friends with Steve anymore,” Bucky admits quietly. “Everything’s so different, we’re so different, and it’s not like I want things to go back to the way they were—it’s not like they even could, but—”

“It’s hard,” Sam finishes for him.

“Yeah.”

“That’s pretty normal, man. Like, that happens to folks when they move away from their hometown, or spend a long time apart ‘cause of college or whatever. Or because of the Blip now, I guess,” says Sam with a quick grimace. “Anyway, sure, some best friends grow apart as their lives change, but it’s not like you can’t do anything about it. You just have to make an effort.”

It actually does kind of help to be reminded that other people have to deal with this kind of thing too in terms of the end result, in normal and mundane ways that nonetheless aren’t so terribly different from the strange and improbable path Bucky and Steve have taken to get here. People do just grow apart sometimes. And they can reconnect too, he supposes.

“Yeah, okay,” says Bucky, and stares out into the deep darkness of a Delacroix night, lit only by the circle of light from the Wilson house, and a few streetlights.

“That is…if you still want to be friends with Steve…?” says Sam, sounding uncertain.

“I do! Fuck, of course I do, I—I missed him so fucking much.”

“I know,” says Sam kindly. “Maybe you need to make sure Steve knows it too.”

Bucky wonders sometimes though if it’s the Steve from before the war and the serum that he misses most of all. Maybe Steve’s not the only one who’s always seeing the ghost of who his friend used to be. But then, it’s not as if Bucky’s spent much time with the Steve of the 21st century, he reminds himself. Learn patience, my darling boy, his Ma used to say all the time, about little things like treats and presents, and bigger ones like frustration and anger and grief. Time heals and changes so much, if you only wait and let it.

Time has changed plenty for him, and for Steve, and not always for the better. They haven’t exactly had much of a chance to let it do much healing. What would Ma say now? She’d probably say they ought to have more patience with each other, and with himself. But then his mother’s patience had been a graceful thing, open and inviting. Bucky’s patience mostly happens behind the scope of a rifle. Maybe—hopefully—it’s not too late to learn some of his mother’s patience.

“Maybe we just need more time,” says Bucky. “Time together, I mean.” 

“That’s what I told Steve, for the record,” says Sam, and Bucky gives him a grateful smile. “Anyway, there’s gotta be something you want to talk to him about. I’m not even talking about anything serious, just any old dumb shit. Start there.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Bucky says. He looks over at Sam, who’s lit up under the porch light’s kindly glow. He bumps a shoulder against Sam’s. “Thanks. Maybe I’ll start out by talking to him about whatever’s going on with you spending all that time with Romanoff.”

“That is Avengers business,” says Sam primly, but his lips twitch into a secretive kind of smile.

“Uh huh, sure.”

They sip their beers in silence for a while, until Sam says, “She’s different now. We weren’t ever—you know.” Sam waggles his eyebrows. “I mean, there was a possibility, I guess. But it always felt like there was…some kinda wall there. And now there isn’t. Nat’s—she’s wide open now, not holding anything back.”

“That a good thing?” asks Bucky.

“It’s a new thing. And yeah, maybe a good thing. I’m, uh. Not sure how I feel about it yet.”

Bucky sighs. “Yeah, well, you know I know what that’s like. It’ll just take time, right?”

“Guess so,” says Sam. 

Even though Sarah has made up a bed in the office, Bucky stakes his claim on sleeping on the couch.

“Are you sure?” Steve asks as everyone winds down for bed. “I can take the couch, it’s fine—”

“Nah, I like the couch. I sleep great on this couch,” Bucky says.

“We could share the bed though—” says Steve, and Sarah snorts as she gives Bucky an armful of linens.

“Steve, honey, that air mattress cannot hold up to the two of you sleeping on it,” she says. “I’m praying it’ll hold up to you sleeping on it, you might have to run the air pump in the middle of the night if it starts going flat.”

Thankfully, this distracts Steve into reassuring Sarah that he’s sure the air mattress will be fine as she shows him to his bed in the office. Bucky makes up his own couch bed, assures Sarah that he has enough blankets when she comes back through the living room, and falls asleep within minutes of closing his eyes.

He always sleeps pretty well in Delacroix. He suspects there’s some kind of subconscious comfort in sleeping in a family home, some assurance of safety that’s older and deeper than any Winter Soldier conditioning or war trauma. Even when something wakes him up, like someone coming downstairs into the kitchen for some water or creaking floorboards from upstairs, it doesn’t startle him, and he falls back asleep again easily, soothed by the sounds of the Wilsons’ breathing and heartbeats. (And yeah, okay, also by the extensive and hidden Starktech security system Rhodes had provided to the Wilsons, that also does a lot for his nerves.)

Tonight though, when he wakes suddenly, he’s not sure what’s woken him at first. Just as he has the split-second realization that he can sense another person near him—too fucking near, they’re sitting right on the floor by the couch, by his feet, and Bucky can hear them breathing, can feel their heat—he realizes it’s Steve.

At almost the same moment, Steve murmurs, “It’s just me, Buck, sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you.” Bucky opens his eyes to find Steve sitting on the floor at the other end of the couch, his knees drawn up with his arms loosely draped around them. After a moment of hesitation, Steve adds, “It’s Thanksgiving. 2024. We’re at Sam’s house.”

“I know,” says Bucky, and sits up. “Everything okay? Did your air mattress run outta air or something?”

“Yeah, no, it’s fine. Go back to sleep.”

Like that’s happening. It’s not pitch black down here, and the ambient light from the porch light and a night light by the stairs is enough for Bucky’s super soldier eyes to be able to make out Steve’s expression: he has his bravely enduring through some kind of distress face on. A nightmare then, probably.

“Sure, but what are you gonna be doing while I go back to sleep? Don’t tell me you’re gonna be staring at me the whole time.”

Steve goes wide-eyed and sheepish, and oh no, is that Steve’s plan here? If it is, maybe that’s proof that Bucky’s not the only one who’s woken from a dream or nightmare, terrified that he’d only imagined his best friend’s return.

“No, I’m just, uh. Gonna sit here for a bit,” says Steve. “Didn’t wanna be alone. Really, don’t mind me, Buck. I’ll go back to bed in a bit.”

“We could, uh, talk if that’ll help…?” offers Bucky.

“I don’t want to keep you up, I’m fine, I promise,” says Steve. It’s not particularly convincing. “Go back to sleep.”

It’s too damn late at night for Bucky to keep trying to pry a real answer out of Steve. So he says, “Alright,” and lies back down. 

The couch more or less immediately works its magic spell of drowsiness, even with Steve’s unexpected presence. If there was any hope of them both managing to fit on here, Bucky would pull Steve up onto the couch with him. Instead, on instinct, Bucky reaches his hand out to Steve, and waggles his fingers.

Steve blinks in surprise before he reaches back tentatively. Bucky keeps his grip loose and undemanding, and he isn’t expecting the way Steve’s grip turns desperate, like Bucky’s hand is Steve’s only hope of rescue. Steve tilts his face away from Bucky, so Bucky can’t quite make out his expression in the night’s darkness.

In one flash of insight brighter than if the whole room were illuminated, Bucky finds that he doesn’t need to see Steve’s face to know what he’s thinking, to know why he crept out into the living room to sit with a sleeping Bucky and why he’s clutching Bucky’s hand so tightly now: Steve needs reassurance that Bucky is alive. And not only that, he needs tangible proof that Bucky is here and solid and not turning to dust.

Steve says nothing like that of course. He sniffs a couple times, and there’s a very faint glimmer that could be wetness in his eyes or on his cheeks, but he doesn’t talk. Bucky doesn’t press him about it, just keeps holding Steve’s hand in silent reassurance: I’m alive again, I’m real and solid and here. He keeps his breathing slow and even, and tries and fails to stay awake so he can make sure Steve goes back to sleep. 

Just before he falls asleep again, he could swear he feels something warm press against the back of his hand, and the warmth lingers there, following Bucky into sleep.

The next few days of the Thanksgiving holiday are the closest thing to life in the Barnes household that Bucky has experienced here in the twenty-first century. The house is full, there’s always something delicious cooking in the kitchen, kids are cheerfully underfoot, and someone’s always in and out to visit or run an errand for Sarah. Townspeople who swing by blink in surprise at the sight of Steve, but they offer him the same easy welcome they’ve offered Bucky, and Steve looks so immensely relieved and grateful for this consideration that Bucky knows bringing Steve here was the right choice.

Returning to Brooklyn after all that warm and loving hustle and bustle is honestly enough to put Bucky in a pretty glum mood. Raynor notices, and because she’s awful, she rolls her eyes at him.

“Social connection and interaction are available to you here too,” she says. “Hang out with Yori and Leah, go do some volunteer work. And Steve’s here too, isn’t he? Aren’t you spending time together outside of Avengers’ business?”

They are, actually: they’ve taken to going on runs together, and just walking around Brooklyn. Bucky has even taken Steve to Izzy’s, an event which visibly caused the kitchen to ignite with flash-fire gossip, and led to a whole lot of texts from Leah about the supposed “vibes” between Bucky and Steve. 

You mean the intense awkwardness of us trying to be friends again after spending years apart what with all the torture and freezing and dying etc

…no. I meant the way he looks at you like he wants to eat you (sexily) but also like he wants to cuddle you forever.

Not seeing it.

YOU WOULDN’T

What’s that supposed to mean?! he asks, but Leah only sends back a bunch of emojis that might as well be hieroglyphics for all that he can decipher them. Eggplants? Water drops? The monkey covering its eyes? Yeah, Bucky’s not even gonna try to figure that one out.

With Sam’s words in mind, Bucky has tried to talk to Steve about stuff. So far, this has resulted in: a lot of mutual ranting about the post-Blip sociopolitical landscape, some admittedly good-natured arguments about food, exchanges of book and movie recommendations, and gossip about their fellow Avengers and associates, mostly about Sam and Natasha, because Bucky really hadn’t been kidding about that being a topic of conversation. They’re attempting to triangulate what is going on with those two during their combination recruitment and looking-for-Maximoff tour, via Sam’s texts to Bucky, Natasha’s texts to Steve, Sam’s texts to Steve, the group chat that Sam started between all four of them, and the occasional assist from Sarah.

“They’re sharing beds in these hotel rooms, Buck, that’s not a just friends thing!” Steve claims, after they’ve both dissected the latest round of texts over some ludicrously expensive but also delicious coffee in the park.

Bucky raises an eyebrow at Steve. “We’ve shared beds a lot,” he points out, and Steve goes red-faced and starts sputtering something nonsensical about how it’s different in a hotel room. “Anyway, Sarah says Sam always takes forever to make a move and that Natasha’s gonna have to try harder to get through his thick head.”

“I can sympathize,” mutters Steve with a grimace, and before Bucky can ask him what that’s supposed to mean, Steve says, “We need to get Yelena to give us intel on them, Barton was useless—”

With Sam and Natasha away, and Bucky as the closest Avenger who’s ostensibly on-call rather than mostly retired or one of New York’s many unofficial vigilantes, Bucky is the one who gets the call from Rhodes about John Walker going on some kind of rampage at the Pentagon.

“I think he’s having some kind of breakdown,” Rhodes says. “He wasn’t making much sense, just tossing MPs around and screaming about how he’s the real Captain America and that all the press conferences have been, uh, fake news?”

Fake news, what the hell? Bucky has never been particularly impressed by Walker’s mental stability, but he’d seemed steady enough in the fight against the Flag Smashers. Not the kind of guy Bucky would ever pick to be on his team, not after what he tried to do to Sam, but at least not the kind of guy who Bucky would punch first and ask questions later. He wonders what’s changed with Walker to send him off the deep end. Maybe it’s just the serum at work in Walker, magnifying and spreading the cracks in his psyche. If he’s too far gone, they might have to put him down.

“Has he killed anyone?” asks Bucky.

“No, he couldn’t get any guns through security. He did plenty of damage all on his own though, and he managed to overpower the MPs and get away. He’s holed up in the Cap exhibit at the Smithsonian, demanding to talk to the real Steve Rogers. We managed to get the museum evacuated, but there are still some employees stuck in there, and the hostage negotiators aren’t having any luck.”

“Alright, if he wants to talk to Steve, let him talk to Steve,” says Bucky grimly. “We’ll go handle it, Rhodes.”

“So, negotiation’s a bust,” says Steve, frustrated, after round four of attempting to reason with or cajole Walker to come out of the Smithsonian via phone call and megaphone. Pleas from Walker’s wife hadn’t worked either. “He’s delusional, there’s no talking sense into him.”

“A delusional super soldier is a dangerous thing,” says Bucky. “He tried to kill me and Sam the last time he lost it. We either have to draw him out, or go in after him, Steve.”

They were both prepared for the possibility before they flew out here: Bucky’s in uniform, and Steve’s in generic dark blue tactical gear with the Avengers logo on it, though of course he doesn’t have the Cap shield, only the two black and gold arm shields given to him by T’Challa for the first fight against Thanos. Bucky can’t help but notice that between those shields and Bucky’s prosthetic, and how both of them are in dark blue, they match as if they’d planned it.

“I don’t feel great about fighting a guy who’s clearly mentally unwell,” says Steve with a grimace.

And yeah, Bucky doesn’t exactly feel great about it either. It seems like Steve’s reappearance and unconditional support of Sam as Captain America have broken something in Walker, or maybe it was Steve’s vocal disapproval of the Pentagon anointing Walker as Cap. Hell, maybe the version of the serum he got was unstable in some way. Bucky has his suspicions about that, actually, given Karli’s death; Bucky and Steve had both survived worse gunshot wounds than the one that had killed Karli. Whatever the reason, Walker’s a danger to himself and others, and he needs to be stopped.

“I don’t feel great about it either,” says Bucky. “But we gotta subdue him and then hopefully he can get some help.”

Steve nods, then gives Bucky an assessing once-over. “No guns?”

“No,” says Bucky shortly. “I don’t want to kill anybody.”

He’s not unarmed: he has knives and a taser, not that the taser will do much good against a super soldier, and his prosthetic arm of course. But unless he’s walking into a firefight or an all-out battle against aliens—and there’s no sign that Walker has a gun—then Bucky isn’t going in with a gun or rifle. Maybe it’s not much of a line, but it’s his.

He wonders, with sudden queasiness, if that disappoints Steve, if he’s missing Sergeant Barnes, the steady sniper.

“Alright,” says Steve. “We’ll go in, I’ll keep Walker distracted and talking while you get the hostages to safety, then we’ll corner and subdue Walker together.”

“I don’t like the idea of leaving you alone with him,” says Bucky with a frown. “He’s unstable, unpredictable, there’s every chance he’ll do his best to kill you. He sure as hell tried to kill me and Sam.”

“The SWAT team is right behind us, I’ll call them in if I need backup, I promise,” says Steve, and Bucky narrows his eyes at him, trying to gauge if this is Steve’s usual bullshit or if he’s going to be sensible for once. Steve’s voice goes low and intense, and he steps close to pull their foreheads together, his hand on the back of Bucky’s neck. “I promise, Buck. I’m not going out easy now that we’re both finally back home.”

“Okay,” says Bucky faintly. 

Steve’s grip on the back of his neck is firm, and the way his thumb strokes the sensitive skin of Bucky’s neck is tender. The contrast is turning Bucky oddly weak-kneed, and he has to resist the sudden urge to lean into Steve, to hide his face against Steve’s shoulder and block out the world. He steps away swiftly before he can give into the desire.

“I’m still gonna call SWAT in for you the second I think you might be in trouble,” says Bucky.

“Fine by me,” says Steve with a smile.

Walker’s not particularly focused on his hostages, and seems to be more interested in ransacking and wrecking the Captain America exhibit than that the hostages have barricaded themselves in one of the Smithsonian’s labs, so Bucky’s job is fairly simple. He sneaks out the eight staff members who couldn’t evacuate in time, while Steve tries yet again to talk some kind of sense into Walker.

“I think he’s too far gone,” Steve mutters into the comms. “He’s stuffed himself in my old Cap suit, the one from the USO show.”

In the background, Bucky can hear Walker raving, some nonsense about how he deserves to be Captain America.

“Aww, those cute little shorts and tights? I liked those,” says Bucky, and then immediately winces. What. Talk about inappropriate.

“Yeah? Well, Walker hasn’t got the ass for ‘em,” Steve says, and Bucky grins wildly, because it’s such a classically judgey, Steve thing to say. “Underrated qualification for being Cap: you gotta have America’s ass.”

“Uh huh, you and Sam are definitely America’s asses…in more ways than one,” says Bucky, grinning, and Steve snorts. In the background, Walker shrieks something about Steve not even paying any attention to him.

“Sergeant Barnes, can you please stop flirting and get back to rescuing,” hisses one of the hostages.

He mutes his comms and hisses back, “I am not flirting!” The hostage does not look convinced. “Okay, c’mon, we’re almost out, let’s go.”

He shepherds the hostages to safety, then runs back to the Cap exhibit, just in time to see Walker lunge at Steve with a shield. From a distance, the shield could pass for the real thing, if you haven’t got the best vision; up close, it’s clear that it’s a homemade effort, and not a particularly good one at that. Bucky’s pretty sure he’s seen better, if less sturdy ones, from the guys who dress up as superheroes in Times Square. Steve dodges Walker’s lunge with ease, and moves so that Walker’s between him and Bucky, both of them covering one exit route.

Walker definitely doesn’t look well: his hair is messy and wild, the whites of his eyes are showing, bloodshot, and there’s something trapped and frantic in the hectic sheen there. The old USO Cap uniform isn’t doing Walker any favors. He looks like someone who dressed up as Cap and then went on a long and harrowing bender. 

“John, you’re not looking so hot,” Bucky calls out. “Your wife is worried, how about you put that shield down and we get you some help?”

Walker whirls towards him, and lets the fake shield loose with one wild throw. Bucky catches it easily with his vibranium hand; it’s heavier than the real shield, and nowhere near as well-balanced. Or as strong. Bucky tears it in two with his bare hands, and tosses the pieces aside, well out of Walker’s reach. He doesn’t want even this subpar weapon in Walker’s hands. 

“No!” Walker screams, enraged, and charges. “I don’t need help! I need to get back what’s mine!”

He moves like the other Winter Soldiers, only wilder, and with a nothing-left-to-lose abandon that makes him just as dangerous as they’d been, even if he isn’t quite as fast or strong. Bucky holds up under Walker’s furious assault, blocking and dodging blows, and moving just in time to—there. He drops and rolls away, and Steve moves into the space Bucky has left.

Even in back alley fights before either of them could fight for shit, Bucky and Steve had always worked well together. Bucky had always just known what Steve would do, how he’d fight, where he’d be, because he knows Steve. And Steve knows him: has watched his boxing matches, has seen him fight dirty and clean, has watched him on baseball diamonds and on dance floors. Steve knows how Bucky moves, even if he doesn’t know he knows it. Bucky knows how Steve moves too: he knows the brutal and efficient haymakers Steve picked up from Peggy, knows what he’s picked up from Bucky himself, and even sees the echo of a Black Widow’s training, likely picked up from Romanoff.

Bucky hadn’t exactly expected to still be so in sync with Steve after so long apart. But they had been in Bucharest, and in the fight against Stark. Fighting together with Steve seems to be instinctive: as simple as walking, as automatic as breathing, operating on some level of his mind that’s beyond conscious thought. Five years and another death and resurrection haven’t changed that.

It’s fucking thrilling.

It shouldn’t be, probably. Bucky hasn’t actually much enjoyed fighting like this since his YMCA boxing days. But he’s enjoying this, maybe more than he should be, because he’s doing it with Steve. Because Steve is moving with him like this is a dance, not a fight, and Bucky hasn’t danced in decades.

God, he’s missed this.

They keep Walker off-balance, re-directing the fury of his attacks and getting in hard hits of their own—Steve with his shields, Bucky with his left arm—until Walker begins to falter. Like a cornered animal, that only makes Walker fight more fiercely. He manages to get Bucky in a hold for long enough to toss him into a display case that shatters and sends new alarms wailing, and then he turns to Steve with a burst of surprising speed and lands a vicious kick to one of Steve’s knees. Steve shouts with pain and falls to the ground, and when Walker moves in to kick Steve while he’s down, Bucky decides this has to end, now.

There are more than a dozen ways Bucky could kill Walker with his bare hands, because not carrying a gun doesn’t make Bucky any less deadly. Bucky doesn’t need weapons when he’s the weapon. But Bucky has held back in every fight against a human, super soldier or not, since freeing himself from HYDRA, and he doesn’t intend to stop now. He won’t kill again, not if he can help it, and he can still help it.

And anyway, he’s been finishing Steve’s fights since he was eight years old. He’s still got the knack. Plus, Walker’s making the mistake that at least a dozen guys have made and regretted: he’s focused on kicking Steve while he’s down, instead of remembering that Bucky’s still here.

In one smooth, silent move, Bucky rolls out of the wreckage of the display and launches himself at Walker to get his left arm around Walker’s throat. This hold causes unconsciousness in seconds in an unenhanced human. With Walker, it takes longer, and he flails and thrashes the whole time. But Bucky is using his tireless vibranium arm, and he grounds his weight low and steady, so Walker’s struggles go weak before he eventually passes out. Bucky gives it an extra twenty seconds just to be sure, and then releases Walker to collapse to the ground in a limp heap.

Bucky crouches to check Walker’s pulse—still alive—and put some super-soldier grade restraints on him.

“Feels like that wasn’t really a fair fight,” remarks Steve as he stands slowly. He winces when he puts weight on his injured knee, but he’s flushed and grinning, boyish and sly, a lock of his hair flopping over onto his forehead.

Bucky’s whole body is still thrumming and alive to the thrill of the fight, without the usual tense edge of stress and adrenaline, for once. Instead, he feels like he’s just gotten off the dance floor after dancing to his favorite song, with a partner who’d anticipated his every move. And Steve—Steve looks alive, fully himself and present, without the mask and burden of Captain America or Captain Rogers, free of guilt and grief for at least this one moment.

The sight of Steve looking like this might as well be a match struck against Bucky’s heart, flaring hot and fast into a flame of desire.

It’s not the first time. 

Usually one or both of them has blown that match right back out, extinguishing the flame before it can burn down their friendship. So what if Bucky has looked at Steve and wanted sometimes? So what if there have been a few times when Steve’s eyes have lingered on Bucky’s lips, so what if they’ve both looked just a little too long at each others’ bare chests, so what if they’ve leaned in closer than they should, so what if they’ve teased in ways that could easily be mistaken for flirting. It’s never gone anywhere, each moment a lit match of want that’s snuffed out and discarded. It’s never mattered much, when set against their friendship. Lust is fleeting, and they’ve promised each other to the end of the line, and they might even get to keep that promise now. 

For a few heated seconds though, Bucky isn’t willing to blow out that flaring flame of desire. Just this once, he meets Steve’s eyes, bright and triumphant and alive, and lets the match keep burning.

It’ll fizzle out out just like always, won’t it?

Steve visibly swallows and looks away, the flush on his face deepening. And Bucky does not stop wanting. 

Well, shit, he thinks, and dumps a mental bucket of water over himself. This isn’t the time or the place. 

Bucky clears his throat to dispel the odd tension of the moment and says, “Don’t worry, Walker deserved the beatdown.” He goes over to Steve and puts an arm around his shoulders, grunting as the movement makes his ribs twinge and throb. That doesn’t do as much as it should to cool the new heat still racing through his veins. “C’mon, keep your weight off that knee for now. Let’s get out of here.”

There’s no hope of a quick or stealthy exit with the gaggle of press waiting outside just beyond the police cordon around the museum. The best Bucky can do is insist that Steve see a medic about his knee, which Steve declares is unnecessary as he pops his own knee back into place while everyone looks on in horror. He then proceeds to give a particularly good example of a Steve Rogers Is Disappointed in You speech that covers such topics as: mental health support for veterans—name-checking Sam’s own efforts on that front, to Bucky’s satisfaction—the Pentagon’s failures and shortsightedness re the Captain America mantle, and media complicity in stirring up and amplifying the anger and grievances of privileged white men who can’t handle not having everything handed to them on a platter. He even manages to fit in a back in my day, we earned our positions, we didn’t throw violent tantrums for them. 

To Bucky’s dismay, it’s all very sexy. He’s always loved watching Steve go on a passionate tear against injustice: he gets all intense and focused, and just now, it seems he’s either forgotten or shed some of the careful restraint he’d learned as Cap, because his whole body is eloquent with his passion. He’s leaning forward and gesturing with his hands, making no attempt to seem smaller and more harmless. He looks larger than life, and nothing like Captain America

It’s almost, but not quite, the way he used to look when he was arguing about art and politics with his art school classmates, or when he was yelling at assholes. Only now he’s taller and bigger and has a beard, which is, well, approximately as distracting to Bucky as a smaller and equally fierce Steve had been. 

But also, Steve’s knee is clearly still bothering him, and they’re both a bit battered from that fight. They need to eat some food, sleep, and let the serum do its job. So Bucky slips away, begs a couple ice packs and bandages off of the medic, and then goes to drag Steve away from the press gaggle.

“I think you’ve all got enough soundbites,” says Bucky. “You can all go ask the Pentagon why they cut Walker loose without any followup.” He leans in towards Steve and starts to pull him away from the crowd of reporters. “C’mon, our ride’s waiting.”

Bucky’s favorite Avengers perk might just be the access to Quinjets. Thanks to the jet, they have a short flight back to New York and the temporary Avengers HQ at Stark Tower, where Bucky insists on Steve getting his knee scanned at the medical suite, and Steve insists on Bucky getting checked out too. They both get the all clear and instructions to take it easy until they finish healing, which they respond to with equal skepticism.

“I’ve been worse off after sparring with Thor,” says Steve on their way out of the med suite.

Bucky has also been significantly worse off after ‘sparring’ with the other Winter Soldiers, but he figures that sharing that would be a real downer, so instead he frowns and says, “Pretty sure Walker’s version of the serum is breaking down or something, he was way stronger when me and Sam went up against him.”

“Put it in your report, I guess,” says Steve, and Bucky groans at the reminder of paperwork. “Hey, you wanna just stay here for the night? It’ll be a pain getting back to Brooklyn at this hour, even with the way you drive that motorcycle.”

“There’s nothing wrong with the way I drive!” protests Bucky. “But yeah, I’d prefer to avoid rush hour. And I could use a shower.”

“The showers here are the only thing that ever tempted me to actually live in the Tower. That and the laundry service,” says Steve. 

“Steven, there are whole laundry machines that do your laundry for you in this glorious future,” says Bucky, rolling his eyes.

“Yeah, yeah,” says Steve, then smiles sadly as they get in the elevator. “You know, Tony always wanted the whole team to live here. Made up an apartment for me and everything.”

“You never took him up on it?”

Steve shakes his head. “No. I stayed here a few times when it was convenient, but it was all—it didn’t feel like home.” 

The elevator stops, and opens out into a featureless hallway that nonetheless gives the impression of quiet wealth. Yeah, Bucky can see why it wouldn’t feel like home. 

“Anyway, the old Avengers floors got converted into housing for Stark employees during the Blip, but there are still a couple suites free for any Avenger who comes by. That includes you now, you know.”

Bucky doesn’t really intend to use that particular perk very often if he can help it. It feels odd and vaguely guilt-inducing being in Tony Stark’s tower, even if he’s no longer here, and the whole place is too damn slick and fancy. The Avengers suite is no exception, and the apparently all-seeing AI that runs the whole tower doesn’t help matters even with cozy touches like big and comfortable looking couches. It is awfully convenient to ask FRIDAY to order them some dinner though, and the part of Bucky that’s still a kid who loves pulp novels is thrilled about a talking house.

“FRIDAY doesn’t record video or anything in the living quarters,” Steve assures him when he spots Bucky looking around the suite. “And the Tower security is top-notch.”

Bucky does a full check anyway, and finds a luxuriously and tastefully appointed two-bedroom apartment, stocked with everything a person could possibly need. Only the presence of a few dog-eared science journals and books, and some opened boxes of food in the pantries, reveal that anyone has ever used this place for its intended purpose. It’s certainly the nicest safe house Bucky has ever been in.

Steve, who’s waited patiently in the living room through this process, just smiles fondly when Bucky’s finished. “All clear?” he asks.

“All clear,” Bucky confirms.

There are two downright palatial bathrooms, and probably no risk of running out of hot water, so they both take their showers at the same time, and good god, Steve is right about this shower. Maybe Bucky will move into Stark Tower, and just spend hours in the shower every day, because holy shit, there are so many jets and the water pressure is perfect and so is the temperature. Also every single one of these bath products smells amazing without smelling at all like overpowering chemicals. The water’s spray is simultaneously like being washed clean by a rainstorm and being gently, soothingly pummeled by water in exactly the places he needs it. 

He could live in this shower, right? There’s even a little seat built into the shower wall. He sits on it, feeling like some kind of decadent, pampered king. His muscles all relax in a way they haven’t since his return to life, and Bucky actually groans out loud with the relief of it. 

Even his dick takes an interest in these proceedings, like maybe it’s developed a thing for showers, which Bucky can’t blame it for given this particular shower, but he ignores the reflexive arousal like he usually does. He tries to, anyway. Memories of Steve from earlier in the day rise, unbidden—Steve in uniform, fighting; Steve alight with conviction and life as he talks to the press, Steve’s countless touches— and something else rises too, until Bucky turns the water from hot to cold. There’s absolutely no point in encouraging that brand of fantasy; Bucky had learned that lesson a long, long time ago.

To his mingled awe and annoyance, with this shower, even ice-cold water feels like a refreshing dip under a glacier-fed waterfall rather than being blasted with hoses in an underground base in Siberia.

He towels off—and unsurprisingly, the towels are amazing too, like drying with a kid’s idea of what clouds feel like—then rummages around in the drawers and closet of the bedroom for some clothes, eventually finding a pair of sweats that look like they’ll fit. The t-shirt is a bit tight, and they’re Avengers-branded, but whatever.

“Buck, dinner’s here!” calls out Steve.

Bucky goes out to join him, attempting to finger comb his hair into some semblance of order on the way. It’s a losing battle at this length; he’ll need to let it grow out longer to have any hope of getting it to be something other than a mess of cowlicks. 

“God, you were right about that shower, that was amazing,” he tells Steve.

“Told you so,” says Steve with a grin, not looking up from where he’s setting out the food. 

When Steve does look up, he goes so suddenly still that Bucky stops in his tracks. There’s an expression on Steve’s face that’s so new and surprising that it makes Bucky’s stomach clench, because Steve looks—is looking at him—with a shockingly focused, ravening desire. The expression is there and gone in a second—less even—replaced with something agonized, but it’s too late: Bucky has seen it, and understood it, and this time, their desire is not a match one or both of them hastily blows out or pinches to extinguish. This time, it’s steel and flint crashing against each other, and sending sparks scattering all over decades’ worth of kindling.

Because Steve’s white shirt is skintight, his pecs and nipples straining against it, and his face is still the stuff of angelic sculptures, even with the beard, and fuck, even his eyelashes are gorgeous and Bucky wants him. He wants all of Steve, in every way, and maybe always has, and in this moment, there’s no hiding that from each other.

There’s no putting this fire out, or ignoring it: Bucky can already feel the flames.

But maybe he’s imagining things, maybe he’s lost the knack of reading Steve’s face—

“Steve?”

Steve makes a terrible, gutted sound, and comes over to Bucky in a few impossibly fast strides. He takes Bucky’s face with shaking hands, a wild desperation in his eyes, and fuck, okay, Bucky needs to avoid ever saying Steve in that specific way ever again, probably. Some very bad memories there, what with how the last time Bucky said Steve’s name that way—questioning, a little scared—he then crumbled into dust. He reaches up to grip Steve’s wrists, and holds on tightly enough to ground Steve, and himself.

“I’m here,” he says. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Steve nods, his hands steadying now, thumbs stroking across Bucky’s cheekbones with a reverent tenderness that makes Bucky shiver, overwhelmed, his eyes fluttering closed for a second without his volition. They’re close enough to share breath, and when Steve rests his forehead against Bucky’s, they’re closer still, and then—

Then Steve kisses Bucky.

Not on the forehead, and not on the cheek: this is no benediction. No, Steve kisses Bucky on the mouth, with all the frantic desperation and need of a resuscitation, or maybe a resurrection, and whether it’s his or Bucky’s gasping return to life, Bucky’s not sure. He just hangs on and kisses back.

He kisses Steve, and lets each kiss say I’m here, I’m alive. He moves Steve’s hands from his face, and guides them to his neck and shoulders, to his waist and hips, and lets that say, feel me, I’m real and solid and not dust in your hands. Steve’s touches leave heat in their wake, and an aching, frantic need for more, for skin against skin, for—fuck, Bucky is hard, he’s actually hard, and as Steve presses close against him, he can feel that Steve’s hard too.

This is all happening very fast, thinks Bucky vaguely, shivering as Steve’s beard rubs against the sensitive skin of his neck, a spine-tingling contrast to the pressure and softness of his lips pressing kisses there too. Or maybe it’s not fast at all, maybe all those ignored sparks and smothered flames have been embers all these years, only waiting for the right conditions to catch fire.

“Do you know how many nights I stayed awake thinking of all the times I should have done this while you were alive,” says Steve, rough and agonized, as his hands slip under Bucky’s shirt, under the waistband of his sweats.

“I’m alive now,” says Bucky, and moans when Steve’s hips move against his with stuttering desperation.

Years without anything like this, and now Bucky feels wild with need, too overwhelmed to settle on any one thing, only wanting more: more touch, more friction, more pressure, more kisses.

“All the things I should have said, the things I should have given you—”

Bucky kisses under Steve’s jaw, hard and rough, grips him tightly: a reminder. “I’m right here, Steve. Say it now, give it to me now.”

For a moment, Steve stops, pressing his forehead against Bucky’s again as they both pant for breath. “I’m trying,” he says. “God Buck, I’m trying, but there’s—there’s so much, and I can’t—”

Steve’s weight sags heavily against him, and Bucky has enough sense left in him to remember, “Oh shit, your knee, Steve—”

Steve swallows the words with another devouring kiss, which is very nice but not helpful, so Bucky gets his arms around Steve and lifts him up. Steve makes a helpless noise into Bucky’s mouth and wraps his legs around Bucky’s waist, short-circuiting what’s left of Bucky’s reasoning abilities. Who gives a fuck about talking about this or slowing down when he has Steve wrapped around him, kissing him with the desperation of a dying man. 

Bucky walks them both to one of the bedrooms, and they tumble onto the bed. It’s a scramble to pull each other’s clothes off, and it’s a good thing the bed is so damn big, because there’s some wrestling as they each try to be the one to get access to the other’s bare chest. Bucky wins, briefly, and his prize is the way Steve cries out and arches up under him when he grazes one of Steve’s nipples with his teeth. Then Steve gets the upper hand when he reduces Bucky’s brain to jelly by holding Bucky down and laying a trail of kisses down along Bucky’s hip bones—an apparently very sensitive area, which is news to Bucky—while Bucky writhes and moans and clenches a fist in Steve’s hair and tries not to hump his damn face.

“Steve, please,” pants Bucky. “You gotta—I’m gonna—”

Steve, the asshole, just gently bites down on Bucky’s hip, and Bucky nearly comes then and there, his eyes rolling back in his head as the sensation sparks and shivers up and down his spine.

There’s no finesse when they finally get their cocks involved in things, but everything about this is as legible to Bucky as a fight, as effortless and simple as fighting at Steve’s side has always been, and just about as savage, because they’re rutting against each other, skin against skin, and it feels far better than it has any right to. And yet every time Steve’s cock rubs against Bucky’s feels better than the last, and the feeling gets all tangled up with how good Steve’s hands feel on him, with the perfect heat of their kisses, with Steve’s sweat-slick skin under his hands. Every touch and kiss says Steve wants him—wants him, not just sex or release, but him, here and now—and Bucky can believe it, when it’s said like this.

He hopes Steve can believe it too, can believe that Bucky is here with him, that it’s this version of Bucky here with him, and not the one he wanted years and two deaths ago. If he needs reminding, Bucky using his spit-slick left thumb to circle around one of Steve’s nipples ought to do the job. It sure does the job of making Steve shiver and moan, open-mouthed and red-cheeked and dewy with sweat, eyes glazed over, gorgeous and obscene. Steve’s mouth is red and swollen from their kisses, his lower lip so temptingly plush that Bucky can’t help but lean in and take it between his teeth, gently, before kissing him again, deep and long. At the same time, he flicks and presses against Steve’s nipple, and the motion of Steve’s hips goes wild as he comes all over both of them with a strangled sound that could be a sob or a moan or some combination of both.

Coming himself after that is almost an afterthought; he strokes himself a couple times, his eyes fixed on Steve—his heaving chest, his red parted lips, the come on his stomach and his half-lidded eyes, those gorgeous eyelashes and the dampness clinging to them—and comes with a long satisfying shudder, and a feeling like he’s sinking down to somewhere deep and safe.

Despite the sticky mess and the general disaster that is the bed, they don’t make any move to clean up, or separate. The flash fire heat of their need has settled down into something that burns steadier, and they kiss and touch with more measured care. Bucky marvels at how easy it is, how there’s no awkwardness in it. A look from Steve and the way he runs his hand through Bucky’s hair can be a question—was that alright? Are we good?—and Bucky can kiss Steve with gentle gratitude in answer and feel Steve sigh in relief and satisfaction.

It makes it easier to finally tell Steve, “I missed you.” He stops the I’m sorry on Steve’s lips with a kiss. “Don’t. Just—I missed you. This past year. And—before. The—the whole time, before.”

Steve takes Bucky’s face in his hands and just looks at him, solemn and bright-eyed and yet still joyful. “I know,” he says. “I’m here to stay though, Buck. I promise.”

There’s more Bucky could say—more he should say: about the years he stayed away and why, about their past and their future. There’s more that both of them could and should say. But here in bed together, it’s easier to kiss instead, to set aside imperfect words and awkward silences they’ll both struggle with in favor of the pure physical reassurance of kissing and touching and holding each other. Bucky can tell Steve this is real and I’m here and I won’t leave you and I know I’m not the same and we’re not the same but this is good too, isn’t it? And when Steve starts to harden again, his breath coming faster, Bucky can slide down his body and take Steve’s cock in his mouth, can begin to make up for years of silence and distance between them with a different kind of eloquence, one that comes much more easily to him now.

Bucky’s long past the days of doing this kind of thing often, but he remembers how to do it all the same, and with Steve’s taste heavy on his tongue, he remembers anew how much he likes it, and realizes now how much better it is to do it for Steve. Not just because of Steve’s cock, gorgeous and thick as it is, but because it’s a new and good thing he can give Steve, because he can use his lips and his tongue to make Steve’s thighs tremble, to make him sigh and moan, to give him uncomplicated pleasure. As frantic as their pace had been before, Bucky’s at leisure to go slow now, and that feels just as good as the rush had before, his own cock stiffening again, a pulse of need going through him with every quiet sound from Steve.

Someday, I’m going to make him get loud, Bucky resolves, and takes Steve deeper, deep enough to make Steve swear as his hips jerk up.

“Buck—oh god, I’m gonna—”

Bucky does not pull off, just looks up at Steve and swallows as Steve comes, reveling in the sight of Steve coming undone: his face going slack, his eyes not quite closed, his still-red lips. The second he does pull off, Steve tugs him up for a kiss, filthy and deep, chasing his own taste in Bucky’s mouth, and it’s—god, it’s nothing Bucky would have ever expected, and he’s suddenly so turned on that it hurts.

Before he can do anything about that, Steve takes Bucky’s cock in his hand and takes care of it for him, stroking him with spine-melting firmness and speed, his grip slick from Bucky’s own precome.

“There you go,” says Steve, low and rapt. “That good?”

“Yeah, fuck, don’t stop—”

Steve swallows Bucky’s moans and pleas with more kisses, and keeps stroking him and crooning encouragements, until Bucky comes, shaking, hard enough that seemingly every single one of his muscles tightens and then relaxes in one rush, leaving him a loose-limbed pile of bliss.

It’s a rare feeling—a singular feeling, maybe—and Bucky pants for breath and basks in it for as long as he can, safe in Steve’s arms. 

He’s just starting to doze, lulled by the warmth and the sound of Steve’s breathing, heedless of the rapidly drying, sticky mess all over both of them, when a long, low grumble erupts from the general direction of Steve’s stomach. And it is a really long grumble. When it finally subsides, they both burst into laughter.

“Good god, Steve, what’ve you got in that stomach of yours, an engine?” asks Bucky between laughs.

“We skipped dinner, I’m hungry!” protests Steve, laughing too.

“Apparently!” says Bucky, still laughing, as helplessly and simply happy as he’s been in longer than he can remember. He disentangles himself from Steve’s arms and gets up. “C’mon, let’s clean up and have some dinner.”

After a shower and dinner, they tumble back into bed together, though they’re both too tired to go for another round of anything but some sleepy kisses. To Bucky’s surprise, he falls asleep before he can work up much worry over nightmares or insomnia, and whether that’s because of the very firm mattress or Steve’s arms around him, he doesn’t know. All he knows is that he falls asleep as deeply and comfortably as he does on Sarah Wilson’s couch, and when he wakes up the next morning, it’s after a long and dreamless sleep. 

Of course, he also wakes up to a few seconds of intense confusion and terror, every muscle going tense with the need to flee, because he’s in a bed and there’s someone with him and they’re holding him and he’s not entirely sure where he is—until Steve says, “It’s just me, Buck. It’s Steve. It’s December 12, 2024, and we’re in Stark Tower.”

Bucky relaxes with a relieved sigh. Steve nuzzles the back of his neck and mouths a kiss into the skin there, and Bucky tangles his fingers with Steve’s, bringing his hand up for a quick kiss of thanks.

And then immediately tenses up again. “Wait, what day is it?” he rasps.

There’s a moment of concerned stillness from Steve. “December 12, 2024. Buck, are you—”

“No, I mean—” Bucky squirms around in Steve’s arms and tries to sit up, looking for his phone. “Is it Thursday? It’s Thursday, right, shit, I gotta—what time is it, I’m gonna be late for therapy—”

“Yeah, it’s Thursday—”

And it’s 9:20 a.m., and his appointment is at 10, and he’s in goddamn Midtown, fuck fuck fuck.

He scrambles out of bed, looks around for his clothes, doesn’t find them, remembers that he was in uniform before and that Steve said the Tower Staff would launder it. It’s going to be weirdly embarrassing to show up to his therapist’s office in Avengers-branded athletic gear, but oh well.

“Go wash up, Buck, I’ll find you some clothes,” says Steve.

Bucky’s few minutes alone in the bathroom is just enough time to have the dizzying, nausea-inducing realization that he and Steve have now fucked—more than once, even—and that he has no idea what that means for their friendship or their future. 

Maybe that’s why you never risked it before, you horny dumbass, thinks Bucky, staring at himself in the bathroom mirror in wide-eyed panic.

Have they ruined everything? Have they let the fire of their want and need burn down the foundations of their friendship? Does Bucky want to know if they have, or should he just enjoy the flames while they last?

Whatever the answer is, there’s no time to figure it out this morning. He rushes through getting ready, puts on the clothes Steve has set out for him, and grabs his go-bag, ready to run out the door. Only—it suddenly feels too much like implementing an exit strategy, one of the ones that’s more about escape than an ending, like Bucky’s about to run out of here and head for Alaska or something. And Steve—Steve has that brave expression on his face like he’s trying not to look worried, like maybe he thinks Bucky could go on the run too.

But Bucky isn’t going to run, he isn’t. He just needs to prove that to both of them.

He rummages around in his go-bag until he finds his keys, and he pulls the key to his apartment from the ring, and presses it into Steve’s hand. He’ll use the spare he has stashed on the neighboring building’s rooftop to get back into his place.

“Key to my place,” he tells Steve. “The code for the building is 05368. You can come over whenever you want. If you want.” Steve smiles, relief obvious in his expression. Bucky pulls Steve close and kisses him, long and deep, a reassurance and an apology. “I’ll see you later, okay?”

“Yeah, okay,” says Steve, and smiles down at the key in his hand.

When Bucky gets back to his place later that afternoon, he does not find Steve.

Instead, he finds his once-blank apartment walls adorned with framed paintings, unmistakably Steve’s work, and a new thick, soft green blanket on his couch. There’s also a bouquet of cheerful red, yellow, and orange daisies in a vase on his kitchen table, a surprisingly welcome burst of sunshine amidst the deepening winter. With the sight of the flowers, a memory returns to Bucky, only not in the way of something forgotten, more like something he just hasn’t thought about in a long time: his mother, always making sure there were fresh flowers in the house, no matter how tough times were. You always need a spot of beauty to make a house a home, she’d say, and his dad would kiss her cheek and tell her, nonsense, you’re all the beauty this home needs. 

He stares at the daisies, and despite himself, he smiles, even through the sting of tears.

He pulls out his phone to text Steve. Christmas is two weeks from now, what’s with the visit from Santa? 

All Steve sends back is 😇.

Bucky begins to suspect that giving Steve a key to his place has started something, just as much as what they did last night did, but he has no idea what.

Chapter Text

Of all the possible consequences to having sex with Steve, Bucky had never imagined that Steve comes to my apartment, puts up some paintings and leaves some presents like some kind of weird Santa would be one of them. And yet here Bucky is, staring at his newly decorated walls where two paintings hang in the living room. There’s another painting in the bedroom Bucky never actually sleeps in too.

If there’s a message in the choice of paintings, Bucky can’t quite figure it out. One of the living room paintings is of the Brooklyn Bridge during the golden hour, the bridge’s arches rendered somehow holy by the light and the angle. Under Steve’s artistic eye and careful brushstrokes, the bridge has the look of a cathedral, and the whole landscape is timeless, eternal. Something about it makes Bucky feel steady and anchored, and he wonders if it’s the same for Steve.

The painting on the opposite wall is something of a departure from what Bucky thinks of as Steve’s usual style. It’s looser, more impressionistic: a straight and open road through a desert landscape, with the starry and clear night sky and the hazy spill of the Milky Way above it. There’s a sense of speed and freedom and quiet, and looking at its cool blue tones, Bucky could almost imagine he’s driving down that road himself.

As nice as the paintings in the living room are, they’re not personal, not at first glance. The painting Steve has hung up in Bucky’s bedroom is undeniably personal. 

In the bedroom, Steve has hung up a painting of Wakanda across from Bucky’s bed, a lovingly detailed landscape of the little cottage Bucky had stayed in there, complete with the small field and its goats and the lake, all of it lit in what Bucky recognizes as the bright yet gentle light of sunrise. Seeing it hits Bucky with a wave of homesickness so strong that he finds himself sitting on the bed, his chest tight with longing for the first safe place he’d known in almost eighty years.

He pulls out his phone, and texts Steve again: thank you for the paintings. They’re beautiful. Then he snaps a photo of the painting of Wakanda and sends it to Ayo. Steve’s response comes in a second later: you’re welcome.

Seriously though, are we doing Christmas early? Is this some kinda advent thing?? It’s late for that, if so, but it’s the only explanation Bucky can come up with.

Nah, replies Steve. Just wanted to give them to you.

And the blanket?

Thought you could use it, with winter setting in.

Bucky doesn’t know what they’re doing. Are they ignoring last night? Should they? Maybe they should. Maybe it should just be a good memory, and a comfort for both of them, but nothing they’ll ever repeat. Maybe that’s the exit strategy for this, the failsafe: we tried it, it was good, but it’s a complication we don’t need.

It hadn’t felt complicated though, is the thing. It had felt so fucking easy, easier than almost anything else between them has in the 21st century.

Steve’s side of the text conversation shows the … that means he’s typing. Bucky stares at it, and waits, and wonders if he should just ask: what are we doing? Where do we go from here? That’s probably not the kind of conversation they should have over text messages. Though Bucky’s not entirely sure he wants to have the conversation at all.

A text from Ayo offers him a brief reprieve: it’s beautiful. Did Steve paint it for you?

Yeah, how did you know? That it’s for me, I mean?

Why else would he paint it, if not for you?

Bucky’s eyes sting, and he shuts them tightly. When his phone buzzes in his hand, he has to blink away blurriness to see the latest message from Steve: come over for dinner tonight? Before Bucky can answer, another text follows: or I can come to yours, whatever you want.

I’ll come over, Bucky says, and he can’t tell if it’s relief or dread making his stomach flop around. They exchange a few more texts about dinner and the paperwork about Walker, and then Bucky distracts himself by writing up a report about the fight with Walker and then reviewing the plans for the Avengers compound’s training facilities. It doesn’t entirely work. By the time he heads over to Steve’s, he’s halfway convinced himself that last night was just about Steve making up for an old regret, and he’s this close to pre-empting an agonizing conversation to that effect by blurting out it’s fine if last night was a one-time thing.

Except Steve ambushes him with a desperate kiss more or less the moment Bucky walks in the door, and it is not at all a last night was a one-time thing kind of kiss. It’s an I have spent every second we’ve been apart wanting you kind of kiss, unrestrained and unselfconscious. Bucky goes practically limp with relief, almost all of the anxiety he’d worked up disappearing, and he throws himself into the kiss, matching Steve’s passion.

And it is undeniably passion. Bucky can second-guess his memories and Steve’s words and Steve’s silences and their past and their future, but he can’t second-guess this: the hunger and need and adoration in the way Steve kisses him, in the way they kiss each other.

“Sorry, sorry, I just—” Steve gasps, and pulls back from Bucky. “Just, uh. That’s what I wanted to do this morning. Or, uh, all the time, really.”

“All the time sounds good,” says Bucky, dazed, and leans in for another kiss, slow and thorough, until Steve groans, and then Bucky pulls away, though he keeps his arms around Steve. “Sorry I had to rush out, I just don’t wanna give anyone any excuses to fuck with the conditions of my pardon.”

“It, uh, went okay though, right? You weren’t too late?”

“I was fifteen minutes late and she raised her eyebrow at me like she knew why, but she didn’t say anything until I was leaving,” grumbles Bucky.

“What’d she say?”

“That I looked like I was in a good mood and that I should keep doing whatever I was doing because it was obviously working.”

And the look on his face had very obviously told her just what he had been doing, because it turns out Bucky can’t actually avoid blushing through sheer force of will.

“Oh no,” groans Steve, blushing much like Bucky himself had at the time.

“Yeah, it was mortifying. She literally cackled when I basically ran out of there,” he says, and Steve drops his head to Bucky’s shoulder as he laughs. Bucky grins and reaches up to stroke his hair. “Don’t laugh, I don’t know how I’m gonna look her in the face next week!”

Steve lifts his head and takes a shaky breath. “Uh…are you though? Gonna keep doing what you’ve—what we’ve—been doing?”

“That depends on what you think we’ve been doing,” says Bucky, his smile fading, and Steve makes a face at him, unimpressed by the deflection.

He lets Bucky have the dodge though, and firms his jaw as he meets Bucky’s eyes. “I think you’re it for me, Buck,” he says quietly. “I think I never want to spend another second regretting all the things we never did. I think I want you with me for the rest of our lives.”

“The rest of our lives, huh?” says Bucky, unable to stop his voice from shaking.

None of his exit strategies have ever accounted for anything like that. Not even before Steve found him in Bucharest, not even in his best case scenarios then. He’d gotten close to maybe hoping for it, in Wakanda, after the trigger words were gone, and then—

“Yeah. Is that—do you—it’s okay if that’s not—” Steve stutters, wide-eyed.

“I think I want that too,” says Bucky. He cups Steve’s face in his hands and kisses him, a quick reassurance. “But—Steve, I don’t know what that looks like. I—something always happens, you know? There’s always another fight, or—” I die, or worse, he doesn’t say. Steve maybe hears that anyway, judging by his stricken expression. Instead, Bucky says, “Something always seems to keep us apart.”

“Not this time,” says Steve, quiet and sure.

“You can’t know that. I can’t know that.”

“So what, we don’t even try? Buck, that’s no way to live.”

“That’s not what I’m saying, I just—I can’t look too far past now, okay? Let’s—let’s have what we have, while we can have it.”

Steve smiles then, and it’s his terribly sad smile, tender and painful. “You can’t hope for better? You used to have such big dreams,” he says, and his wistfulness hits Bucky like falling into ice-cold water.

Bucky shakes his head and steps out of Steve’s embrace. As if it hasn’t been a near-impossible exercise of hope and sheer stubbornness to even get this far. As if those old dreams aren’t dead and buried, along with the version of Bucky who’d dreamed them.

Maybe the something that will keep them apart this time will be the ghost of who Bucky used to be.

“It’s just nightmares and memories now,” he says. “Here, now, this is the best I can hope for. And it’s already better than anything I expected, after—well, after everything. If that’s not enough—”

“It’s enough,” says Steve, and reaches out to Bucky again, hesitant, and Bucky lets himself be pulled back into Steve’s arms. “God knows I was short on hope, during the Blip.”

There’s a bleak edge of despair there in Steve’s voice, in his eyes, that Bucky’s never seen before in him, and it unsettles him enough to pull Steve even closer, to offer whatever small measure of comfort his body can provide. Steve falls on that comfort like a starving man, and Bucky lets him have his fill of kisses and touches. This is something Bucky can give him, always: Steve can have what he needs from Bucky’s hands and lips, from his body, from the ways they reach for each other. Bucky can give him all of that, and never have it diminish so long as there’s breath in his lungs.

“It’s enough, Buck,” murmurs Steve between kisses. “Let’s just—let’s keep making up for lost time, alright?”

The heat between them kindles more slowly than it did last night, but it burns just as hot. They don’t make it to Steve’s bedroom though; they stumble towards the couch, and while Bucky would honestly be perfectly happy to neck and get deliciously worked up for hours—he’d made time with more than a few lovely ladies that way when he was young, to everyone’s mutual satisfaction—it seems Steve has other ideas. He undoes Bucky’s fly and sinks down onto the floor, between Bucky’s legs.

“I wanted to do this earlier,” he says, and Bucky swallows hard, spreads his legs. “Then make you breakfast. Be a gentleman, you know?”

Bucky laughs, breathy with the way his heart’s already starting to race with anticipation. He lifts his hips to help Steve tug his pants and briefs down. “You don’t gotta be a gentleman with me, Rogers. I like you better when you’re just that little shit from Brooklyn.”

“Oh yeah?” says Steve, and brushes the lightest of kisses over the head of Bucky’s cock, making him suck in a sharp breath. There’s an odd twist to the smile on Steve’s lips as he asks, almost pleading, “Am I still that little shit from Brooklyn?”

Bucky reaches down to cup Steve’s cheek. “Always, sweetheart,” he says, and can’t help his awe-struck smile when Steve looks up at him through his ridiculously pretty lashes. “I know it even if no one else does.”

Steve’s eyes flutter closed, and he turns to press a kiss to Bucky’s palm. “Good,” he says, and then he lowers his head to take Bucky’s cock in his mouth.

Unsurprisingly, their dinner goes cold again.

Bucky is slumped happily in Steve’s lap on the couch, sated in more ways than one after dinner and that long, luxurious round of necking and grinding Bucky had wanted, when Steve asks, “Would you—could you stay the night?”

The lulling strokes of Steve’s hand across Bucky’s back turn tentative, and Bucky kisses Steve’s neck while he considers his answer.

Bucky hadn’t actually been planning on staying over—or maybe more accurately, he hadn’t let himself think of the possibility—but he’s not opposed to it. Not in theory, anyway. He’s worried about whether he’s tempting fate and his shitty, scrambled brain with the possibility of having a bad night while Steve’s there to see it though, and almost tells Steve no. Except Steve is asking. Steve, who hasn’t often asked for anything that could be considered comfort or care, who used to insist he could get by on his own, even while he was literally or metaphorically gasping for breath.

“I don’t want to keep you up, if I have trouble sleeping…” says Bucky, shifting so he can see Steve’s face.

“I don’t mind, I’ll stay up with you if you can’t sleep.”

Bucky glares at Steve without much heat, and gets a wide-eyed pleading look in response, and goddammit, he has literally never been able to say no to Steve’s big blue eyes, even though he knows that angelic puppy dog expression is Steve fighting dirty.

“Fine,” Bucky says. “But don’t try to wake me up if I’m having a nightmare, okay? And if your bed is too soft, then I’m sleeping on the floor.”

“I won’t try to wake you up,” Steve agrees with a quick kiss. “And I promise my bed isn’t too soft.”

Bucky doesn’t know if it’s the fooling around or the not at all soft bed or maybe just having Steve in his arms, but he does actually sleep pretty well. When he wakes a few times, unused to the ambient sounds of Steve’s apartment, Steve’s presence soothes the unfamiliarity, and whatever dreams or memories are conjured up by Bucky’s sleeping brain, they dissipate like wispy fog under sunshine, leaving no trace. In the morning, he wakes up before Steve, and gets to have the novel experience of lazing around in bed, warm from spooning Steve and still pleasantly drowsy, his morning arousal feeling good for once rather than an inconvenience to be ignored. Maybe he’ll just go back to sleep, he thinks, and buries his face against the back of Steve’s neck, filling his nose with the comforting scent of Steve.

Maybe when Steve wakes up, they can fool around some more. That seems like a better use of their time than breakfast, though also, he’s kinda hungry and a big breakfast would be nice. Bucky drifts between sleep and waking, luxuriating in half-formed desires of fucking and being fucked, and also thinking of pancakes. That’s going to require some actual preparation and a bit of planning—the fucking, that is—so it’s probably not going to happen this morning, but it’s nice to think about anyway. Nice to know they can. Also, fuck, Bucky really wants pancakes. He’ll get up and make some for them in just a minute…

When he wakes again, it’s because Steve’s breathing has changed. Steve isn’t awake, not yet, but he’s struggling up towards it, his breath coming faster, his heart rate going up too much for it to be only waking up. He’s caught in a dream, then, or a nightmare. Bucky’s still holding him, and disentangling himself is probably about as likely to end up in getting an elbow to the face as not, so he keeps holding Steve, rubbing a hand over his chest with firm, gentle pressure.

Steve wakes with a full-body spasm and a gasp, and Bucky holds him more tightly on instinct.

“It’s me, it’s Bucky, you’re alright, you’re fine,” he says, keeping his voice low.

He’s surprised when Steve moans, “No. No no no no—”

Maybe he’s not all the way awake yet? “Steve, wake up for me, you’re okay, we’re alright.”

“This isn’t real, you’re not real,” mumbles Steve, shaking his head with slow, jerky motions. “Bucky’s not here, he’s gone, he’s dead again—”

Shit. Is he still asleep? Is he sleep talking? Bucky can’t tell. “I’m right here, Steve, I’m alive. See, you can feel me, can’t you? Here, turn around, c’mon—”

Steve curls up, and doesn’t turn to face him. “No, I can’t—if this isn’t real, I can’t—don’t make me—”

Bucky presses his face against the back of Steve’s neck, his eyes burning with sudden tears. It seems that Steve has had the opposite problem from Bucky: Bucky has woken from dreams, desperate to believe they were only that and not reality. Steve has woken from dreams, desperate to believe they were real, and to return to them.

He wonders what, exactly, Steve has been dreaming about these last five years.

“Steve, sweetheart, this is real, you’re awake. I’m here, I’m right here,” he says, and wraps his arms more tightly around Steve. “Feel that? Feel me? I’m here, sweetheart. Just turn around and look at me.”

“You’ll disappear,” says Steve, almost frantic. “Turn to dust—that’s what always happens, don’t—don’t—”

Is he even fully awake yet? Fuck it, Bucky decides. He’ll take the elbow to the face or the punch or whatever, he just needs Steve to stop sounding like this, so lost and despairing and terrified. He pinches Steve’s nipple, hard, through the thin shirt he’d worn to bed, and Steve flails a bit, makes a strangled noise. If this doesn’t work, Bucky’s gonna have to escalate to a wet willie—

“Steve, I’m right here,” he says, low and firm, right into Steve’s ear, and Steve goes very still and tense, then shivers and relaxes.

“...Bucky?”

“Yeah, sweetheart. You awake now?”

“Yeah. Fuck, I’m sorry—I—” His voice is thick with tears, and Bucky can’t have that.

“Shh, it’s alright. You aren’t exactly the only one with—” He’s about to say nightmares, or bad dreams, but he supposes they aren’t that, exactly. Not for Steve. “Weird dreams.”

“I was gonna—I wanted to make this a real good morning for you, Buck,” says Steve, sounding miserable.

“Who says it can’t be?” asks Bucky, and rubs at Steve’s chest more gently now, soothing whatever hurt is left there. “‘Cause sweetheart, I was having such a good morning. I don’t—I don’t have a lot of those, you know? But I woke up with you in my arms, nice and warm. Got to nap a little longer, thinking about what we’d do when we were both up.” He moves his hand downward, and presses his hips closer to Steve’s ass. “Was gonna make us some breakfast, ‘cause I’m craving pancakes, if you’ve got the ingredients—”

“You and pancakes,” mutters Steve, fond. “Course I’ve got stuff for pancakes—”

“But first I wanted to…” he reaches down, slips his hand inside Steve’s underwear, and takes Steve’s cock in his hand. Steve is only half-hard, probably just from lingering morning wood, but some loving attention ought to get him worked up again. “Wanted to try something like this. Wanted to make sure you have a good morning too. So tell me, sweetheart—tell me how to make it a good morning.”

“This—this is good,” says Steve, and starts squirming. “But, ah—the lube—”

Steve reaches over to the nightstand on his side of the bed and fumbles for the lube they left there last night.

“You usually get plenty wet without it,” Bucky says into Steve’s ear, delighted to have enough basis for that knowledge after only a couple days of doing this. “But, yeah, alright, get your cock nice and slick for me, then.”

The added slickness lets Bucky stroke Steve faster, his own cock hardening at the sensation, and he can’t quite help the movement of his hips against Steve’s ass. Steve squirms around again, his hand reaching back to fumble and pat at Bucky’s thigh, and Bucky gets the message: he throws a leg over Steve’s, pressing them even closer together. They could fuck like this, when they’re better prepared, but for now, it feels amazing enough to move together, to rut against Steve’s perfect ass while he works Steve’s cock.

“Yeah, okay, this is a—a pretty good morning,” says Steve, panting already as he matches the rhythm of Bucky’s hips. “Next time though—ah, oh fuck—use your left hand, Buck.”

Bucky’s rhythm stutters, his brain damn near short-circuiting at the thought. He wouldn’t have trusted his old prosthetic with that, not with the more limited touch sensors, but this new vibranium arm…?

Bucky grins, and brings his lips to Steve’s ear, pressing a kiss there before saying, “You got it, sweetheart.” Then he takes Steve’s earlobe between his teeth and bites down—not hard, more of a nibble—and twists his wrist just right—

Steve shudders and jerks in his grip, crying out, and comes. Bucky holds him through the aftershocks, idly kissing his neck, until Steve wriggles free of his grip and turns around to look at Bucky, wide-eyed and far more adoring than he could ever deserve.

“See? I’m still here,” says Bucky with a smile. “Still having a pretty good morning.”

“Sometimes this just feels too good to be true,” says Steve, still a little wide-eyed as he reaches down for Bucky’s cock, and Bucky thrusts eagerly up into his grip. “I wanted it for so long—since we were just kids, pretty much.”

Fuck, if Bucky has to share their bed with ghosts too—

“All the way up to—to visiting you in Wakanda. I’d—fuck, I’d watch you sleeping, and—and think of all these things I wanted to do, but I—I kept telling myself, ‘not now, not yet’ because we were on the run, and you were still healing—”

“You wanted me then? A one-armed wreck of a goat farmer—”

Even through the haze of need and desire, that surprises Bucky. Had he noticed that in Steve, back then? He’d noticed Steve’s attention, sure, but it had so often been stricken or hesitant or careful—

“Yes, god yes—the things I wanted, Buck, I can’t even begin to—”

“Tell me, Steve, tell me—”

Between kisses and strokes of Bucky’s cock, Steve tells him in one fervent rush, like Steve has to outpace the avalanche of words and he doesn’t think he’ll manage it: I wanted to hold you and never let you go and every time we were at the lake watching the sunset I wanted to kiss you and I wanted to make you feel good, I wanted to touch you and you’d go for a swim and come out of the water looking like—like—and I wanted to pull you down to the ground and get you dirty again, wanted to fuck you under the open sky—

And Bucky wants to be able to say you should have, why didn’t you, we could have had so much more, so much sooner—

But the truth jitters under his skin as inexorably as his building orgasm: if they’d let the spark between them kindle then, it would have only found ashes and a bare, tentative scaffolding in the shape of a person inside Bucky. Maybe he’s fooling himself to think there’s more there now, maybe the fire will still burn out. But for now, it’s still burning in Bucky, stoked by every touch and kiss and word from Steve.

“I wanted you then, and I want you now. I’ve wanted every version of you, Bucky,” rasps Steve, still working his big hand on Bucky’s cock, somehow already perfect at it, at knowing what Bucky’s body needs, and Bucky finally comes.

As they breathe together in the afterglow, Bucky can’t help but notice—hates himself for noticing—that the words I wanted to stay with you had not made it to that litany of Steve’s desires.

Over the dregs of breakfast, Bucky finds himself staring at Steve’s bookshelf. Specifically, at that top shelf of books, the shelf with the lovely, leather bound copies of Tolkien and the other books that Steve would never read or love but that Bucky would.

Steve catches him looking and smiles. It’s a complicated smile, hopeful and sad and wry, and the look in his eyes is almost pleading.

“They’re yours, you know. The books up there.”

Bucky swallows down one last mouthful of coffee and the words I know. Instead, he says, “I never had books as nice as that.”

He’d gotten library books, or cheap paperbacks and later armed services editions that he’d passed along rather than kept. Nowadays, he mostly sticks with ebooks.

“I know, I mean—I, uh, got them for you,” says Steve.

Bucky hadn’t given it much thought when he’d first come to Steve’s apartment, before Steve’s return, so Bucky has to do some mental math now, trying to figure out when Steve could have gotten these books. The battle with Thanos had been in October, so it would have been too late for a birthday gift, and anyway, Steve had given him scans of some old family photos for that birthday. He supposes they could have been Christmas gifts acquired early…

“For, uh, that Christmas…?”

“No,” says Steve, and looks down at his plate, empty of anything but some smears of syrup. “I—um, I got them for you after that.”

“What, when I was dead?” asks Bucky, immediately wincing at the accurate but probably insensitive word choice. Most people go with Blipped nowadays. “Why?”

And there’s that complicated smile again. “Did it in one of my more hopeful moments. Or during the denial stage of grief. Depends on your perspective,” says Steve. “Anyway, they’re yours. You can have them now…if you want.”

Bucky knows what the correct response is: to smile and thank Steve, to kiss him, to be excited about the books, to take the gift, to cherish it and everything it means.

Bucky’s actual response is to think of his exit strategies. Not the permanent ones, but the dozens of them that are about escape and extraction. 

He’d made a lot of adjustments to those exit strategies, after Bucharest. Adjustments like the contents of his go bags. It had been stupid to include personal things like journals in a go bag; they give away too much. There’s no room for sentiment in the kind of exit strategies Bucky has to have: they have to be clean and impersonal, he can’t leave anything behind that means anything, that could be a clue, and he sure as hell can’t leave behind anything so telling as a journal. Not in a safe house, and not in a go bag that could be lost, or seized by the authorities. If he has something, he has to be willing and able to lose it. He has learned that he can lose most things, and keep going. They’re just things.

And there’s no limit to the things a person can lose, or have taken from them.

But if he had these books, he would—he couldn’t—

So Bucky looks at those beautiful, thoughtful books, objects of beauty and care, proof of Steve’s hope and his grief and his love, full of stories Bucky has always loved, and he doesn’t feel gratitude or love or anything fucking normal. He just panics.

He can’t have anything like that. He can’t keep anything like that. 

“I’m more of an ebook guy now,” says Bucky, and he hears his own voice as if from a distance. James Buchanan Barnes, manners, hisses his mother’s voice in his mind. “I—thank you though. I have to—I gotta go,” he says, and gets up, pulse pounding with the need to run.

“Wait, Buck, are you—?”

“It’s fine, I just—I gotta go, okay? I’ll be—I’ll see you at the Tower, there’s that briefing, right?” He darts in to press a quick kiss to Steve’s lips, there and gone before Steve can reach for him. “Thanks for breakfast, see you later, bye!”

He gets on the motorcycle—his, Steve’s, who even knows anymore—and goes. He almost heads towards the port district, to the shipping container with his most final exit strategy, out of some instinct that frightens him, and the fear is paradoxically enough to calm him down a bit. He doesn’t want to enact that particular exit strategy, he doesn’t, he’s—he’s fine, he’s happy, he just had a really good morning and his life is good and there’s nothing that demands that kind of exit.

But as he heads back to his apartment, he still thinks about it, and all the other exit strategies.

The thing about Bucky’s current exit strategies is: none of them account for Steve.

Bucky sits on the floor of his apartment and stares at the painting in his living room, the one of the desert road and the vast starry sky above it. There’s no exit strategy that accounts for this painting, or the other two. No possible way to take them with him. They’re not small paintings, and even if he takes them out of their frames, they can’t be rolled up.

It’s fine, he decides. So what, the next tenant can have them, or the landlord can sell them, along with the couch and bed and TV, and all the other stuff. No one would know the paintings are Steve’s work, he’s only signed them SGR. They’re just things, as mute and unobjectionable as the appliances and furniture, and they reveal nothing about Bucky himself beyond the bare basics.

And as for Steve—

Would he find Bucky again, if he had to run? Would he bother to look? How many times can Bucky leave, one way or another, and expect Steve to still be waiting on the other side?

If Steve is pissed or hurt by Bucky’s abrupt exit, he doesn’t show it. They see each other at the briefing about Walker, then have a meeting with Hill, Sam and Romanoff conferencing in, about the latest updates on the Compound’s construction and the search for Maximoff. Bucky goes back to Steve’s place, they watch a movie and fool around and have dinner, and Bucky stays over, then leaves in the morning to meet with Barton’s protege, the new Hawkeye. 

Bucky has no idea why a young woman like her—pretty and upbeat, charming in a slightly awkward way and seemingly normal, no notably tragic past or background as a child assassin or anything—would want to be a superhero, but Bucky evaluates her anyway in the Tower’s gym, then spends a few hours in a spare office drafting up a report and a training plan. Her archery skill is all well and good, but she needs to learn more marksmanship with a rifle too, and she definitely needs a lot more training in hand-to-hand combat. Bucky’s got his own work to do too though, to know how best to train her, and makes a note to review footage of Barton in action. He sends a text to what Romanoff has named the the Team Cap Squared group chat, asking if any of them have suggestions, then heads back to his place. He’s just walking in the door, rolling his eyes and grinning at the Legolas gif Sam has sent in response to his request, when he realizes that apparently Steve isn’t done with his advent calendar of gifts or Santa act or whatever the hell it is he’s doing. Because there’s a new record player in Bucky’s apartment, along with a couple crates of records.

Steve wtf, he texts.

Just thought you’d like it! I didn’t see a radio or anything at your place.

Bucky half expects the records themselves to be some kind of prank, like that they’ll all be ridiculous stuff he’ll hate, but no: it’s a mix of classical and music from the 30s and 40s, and some modern stuff too, because vinyl has apparently made a comeback. The presence of the classical records makes Bucky’s throat go tight: only Steve would know that Chopin and Bach are—were—Winifred Barnes’ favorites.

You are setting unreasonable expectations for Christmas, he texts back, instead of acknowledging the secret intimacy of this particular gift. Thank you though.

It becomes a routine: they work, they get together and fool around, and even expand their sexual repertoire to fucking—clumsy and careful at first, gaining confidence after a couple tries—and Bucky gets the occasional gift or home improvement in his apartment, left there as if by Santa or fairies or a magical handyman or something. 

One day, it’s houseplants, complete with handwritten care instructions that include a little doodle of a cartoon Bucky watering the plants. Bucky puts that up on the fridge. The plants aren’t exactly his garden in Wakanda, but they’re a welcome bit of greenery all the same, and they seem to be pretty simple to keep alive. He wouldn’t have gotten them for himself, but, well, now he’s responsible for them, so he’ll take care of them, he guesses.

Another day, it’s a big new rug in the living room, plush and soft and almost the same shade of green as the houseplants, placed right where Bucky usually ends up sleeping when he can’t handle the bed or the couch. Between the rug and the blanket Steve had given him, sleeping on the floor is almost comfortable. And then a few days before they leave for Christmas in Delacroix, Bucky returns from Christmas present shopping to find an over-stuffed, pleasantly worn-in armchair placed by the living room window, and also finds that all his lightbulbs have been changed to have a warmer hue rather than the ubiquitous energy-efficient, bright LEDs that he kind of hates but hasn’t bothered to do anything about.

And every time, there’s a fresh bouquet of flowers in bright, cheerful colors.

You really don’t have to do any of this, Bucky texts Steve. I don’t need presents, and I damn sure don’t need courting.

What do you need then? asks Steve.

Nothing I don’t already have.

Christmas in Delacroix is crowded and loud and perfect. The house is even more full than it had been for Thanksgiving, with Sam bringing Natasha and her sister along, but it seems like Sarah likes it best that way, and honestly, Bucky does too. They cobble together a mishmash of everyone’s traditions, all their different foods and songs and rituals, and the ungainly and joyful blend seems to have them all feeling young and giddy.

Bucky and Steve don’t make what’s changed between them obvious, and they definitely don’t make any kind of announcement. Neither of them wants to keep it a secret, it just feels weird to actually tell anyone, and anyway, they’re not sure what to even say.

“I cannot call you my boyfriend,” Steve had said on the flight over. “We’re a hundred years old, it sounds ridiculous. You’re just my—” Steve had floundered for a word before settling on, “—my Bucky.”

And, well, Bucky doesn’t disagree. But there’s no hope of hiding their changed relationship or even letting it pass under the radar in a house filled with spies and Wilsons. Sarah had taken one look at him and figured it out, Natasha had taken one look at Steve and figured it out, and Sam had only needed to see them together. But no one says anything, until Sam gets Bucky alone.

“So that’s the way it is with y’all, huh,” says Sam, raising an unimpressed eyebrow at Bucky as they load up the truck with donated Christmas presents to take to the local gift drive. “You couldn’t have given me a heads up?”

“It’s not a big deal,” Bucky mumbles. “It’s just, you know. Whatever. Don’t make it weird.”

“Uh huh. Because ‘not a big deal’ describes literally a single thing you two have got going on with each other,” scoffs Sam. His teasing demeanor sharpens into something more hesitant. “Seriously though, are you two…?” Sam trails off with a questioning expression.

“I don’t know what we are, but it’s working for now, so I’m not gonna question it,” says Bucky. Sam gives him a long and incredulous look. Bucky goes on the attack. “At least we made a move, what’s you and Romanoff’s excuse?”

Sam glares. “Some of us don’t rush into things, Barnes.”

“I don’t think waiting eighty years could ever count as rushing,” says Bucky, and Sam’s eyebrows fly up.

“Well, some things make a lot more sense now,” he says.

Given their exchange of Christmas presents—a fancy new color e-ink ebook reader and tickets to a special day-long marathon of the Lord of the Rings movies for Bucky, and a set of various different art classes and season tickets for the Mets for Steve—Bucky expects the surprise stealthy gifts and home improvement visits to stop.

They don’t.

As winter stretches on, Bucky is the recipient of: new shelves in the small closet that houses his washer and dryer, so he can fit more stuff in there; little potted succulents to join the other houseplants; a fancy new lamp that’s apparently meant to mimic sunlight, placed by the armchair; digital photo frames that rotate through photos of Bucky’s family, of the Wilsons, of Steve and him; and a growing collection of novelty superhero-themed coffee mugs.

Bucky keeps trying and failing to translate these gestures and gifts; there’s no precedent for them. He supposes that could just be down to circumstance. Maybe Steve had always wanted to do this kind of thing, but hadn’t had the money or opportunity for it. Maybe this is just Steve’s new hobby. Bucky’s pretty sure he’d stop, if Bucky kicked up a fuss or really seriously asked him to.

He should ask Steve to stop. Bucky doesn’t need any of this stuff, and anyway, he won’t be able to keep it when—if—

But he supposes that doesn’t matter. He has it now. He can sit on the squashy armchair on a snowy day, warm under the blanket Steve got him, and turn the sunlight lamp on and drink some coffee from the garish Captain America mug while he reads a book on this fancy new e-reader. He can enjoy all that right here, right now. If it all goes away, if Bucky loses it all again, it will have still happened, even if Bucky doesn’t remember it. Is that what Steve is trying to tell him? Or is this Steve fussing over him the only way he thinks Bucky will let him?

Bucky turns those questions over in his mind as he stretches his arm up to take a selfie to send to Steve. Even though Steve doesn’t seem to expect or want anything in return, Bucky can at least give him this: some small proof that these gifts are serving their purpose, and that Bucky’s here, enjoying them. Steve’s response comes swiftly in the form of a series of heart emojis. Before he can second-guess himself, Bucky texts come over. Steve’s omw is near-immediate. 

“You really don’t have to keep getting me things,” Bucky tells Steve when he arrives, after their requisite hello kisses.

“I know,” says Steve, smiling. He reaches up to put his thumb in the divot of Bucky’s chin, and leans in for another kiss. “I want to anyway.”

Bucky doesn’t have much to give Steve in return for all that baffling generosity other than his body and his time, and he offers those to Steve without reservation. It doesn’t seem like enough, to laze around together during free afternoons and evenings, talking about nothing in particular, to share meals and laughter, to take Steve to his rarely-used bed and fuck him.

Neither of them have much experience on that score, but Bucky’s a quick learner when it comes to matters of the body, and it turns out he can read Steve just as easily when they’re fucking as he can when they’re fighting together. They’ve settled into the rhythm of the thing by now after some clumsy awkwardness during their first few attempts, and Bucky is hungry to figure out every last detail of Steve’s pleasure and his own, to learn all the ways their bodies can do this new and thrilling thing.

It’s not a surprise that Steve likes it rough, that he always urges Bucky to go harder, to hold him down, to make him feel it, to skimp on the prep and just fuck him, fill him up. Steve wants proof, Bucky thinks: he wants the ache and the sting, the bruises, the mess. He wants to be sure it happened, after. He wants to carry Bucky on his skin and under it. It drives Bucky fucking wild, wakes up something in him that wants and wants and wants, hungrier and hotter than a forest fire, a flame too big and fast to escape. 

Lucky for him, Steve wants to burn.

“Harder—I can take it—” pants Steve, on his knees with his head bowed and his hands gripping the wrought iron bed frame as Bucky thrusts into the tight heat of him, grabbing Steve’s hips close and hard. He digs his fingers in a little more, a carefully calculated expression of force strong enough to bruise, and Steve arches his back and moans.

“Yeah, I know you can,” says Bucky. “But can—fuck—can this bed take it?”

Steve looks back at him, flushed and grinning and gorgeous, the light of a dare, or maybe a battle, in his eyes. “Who cares, I’ll just get you a new one,” he says, and when Bucky picks up the pace, Steve groans and reaches for his cock.

If there’s one unreservedly good thing about the serum it’s this: that they can both go again after coming once. Bucky can come, and Steve can follow him over the edge right after, both of them flopping onto the bed, briefly spent, and then after a few minutes, Bucky can manhandle Steve into a new position and go at it again, just as hard, because the second round leads to a beautifully undone Steve.

“You good, sweetheart?” Bucky asks, solicitous but a little mean with it, and Steve’s legs tighten around him, an answer or a goad or both.

“Oh yeah, I can do this all day,” says Steve. His flush has spread down to his chest, and his eyes are bright with joy and the same hunger burning in Bucky.

It takes a little bit longer to fuck the sass out of Steve, and Bucky’s good for it, hell, Bucky’s starving for it, fucking him at a relentless pace until Steve is oversensitive and reduced to making helpless little ah ah ah noises with each snap of Bucky’s hips. If Bucky had it his way, they’d stay suspended in this moment forever, an eternity of chasing the perfect release that feels almost as good as actually coming. Steve comes before he does, moaning brokenly, and it’s only when Steve pulls him into a clumsy, sloppy kiss that Bucky comes again, shaking from the exertion and the intensity.

Anyway, the bed survives their admittedly vigorous fucking, and Steve lets Bucky be sweet with him in the loose-limbed afterglow, lets him ease over the roughness and manhandling with murmured praise, with softer touches and light kisses across the expanse of Steve’s smooth skin, lets Bucky get him off one more time by taking his soft cock in his mouth and teasing him to hardness, sweet and easy, until he comes in Bucky’s mouth and falls deeply asleep pretty much immediately after.

Which Bucky doesn’t mind, honestly. He likes these close and quiet nighttime moments when he can fetch some damp washcloths and clean up a sleeping Steve, wiping away the sweat and come with gentle strokes, likes lingering over the bruises and bite marks that Steve seems to crave as incontrovertible evidence of what they are to each other now. He likes falling asleep with Steve warm and safe in his arms, likes having the sometimes grating ambient noises of the city overwritten by the lulling and steady sounds of Steve’s breathing, his heartbeat.

He thought he’d found the closest thing to peace that he ever could in Wakanda; it turns out he was wrong. This is the best and safest peace he has ever known, even if it only lives in these fleeting, hushed moments.

Unfortunately, not even the sex and Steve’s presence in the bed can keep Bucky from jerking awake from dreams of falling. It’s a normal enough dream or nightmare, Bucky is given to understand. But most other people don’t know what it’s like to hit the ground. He eases out of bed carefully, so as not to wake Steve, and goes to the living room to pass the rest of the night on the floor. He’ll sneak back into bed before Steve gets up.

Judging by the fact that a new, very firm mattress is on his bed a few days later, Bucky figures he didn’t actually manage to fool Steve. There’s also a stuffed Bucky Bear—very funny, Steve—and a plush pillow in the shape of Cap’s shield. Bucky almost refuses to try sleeping on the bed out of sheer contrariness, well-aware that the impulse is childish. He’s going to have to sleep it on it eventually though, if only when Steve stays over, so he gets over himself and actually tries sleeping in the bed on his own. To his annoyance and relief, he manages to sleep through the night for once. He lets Steve know via a bleary-eyed but well-rested morning selfie from bed.

Bucky kind of assumes that Steve will take this as the unquestionable victory of his strange gift-giving campaign, and ease off into just leaving Bucky flowers and treats like a normal—Bucky’s mind stutters at the prospect of calling Steve his boyfriend. Partner? Significant other? None of the words feel right. Whatever, the point is, Bucky really thinks that’ll be the end of it.

It’s not.

His kitchen acquires a fancy temperature controlled electric kettle, admittedly a very nice convenience for making cups of tea during bouts of insomnia. He becomes the recipient of a few small, framed watercolor paintings: delicate and lovely cityscapes of Brooklyn and Birnin Zana hung up all in a row in the hallway. And when Bucky’s away for a couple days to be a convenient white guy for an undercover vibranium artifact recovery op of Ayo’s, he returns to an entirely repainted apartment, the walls now a creamier, warmer shade of off-white that shouldn’t make such a big difference but really does.

“What the hell,” he mutters. Nothing is even out of place, how the hell…?

What the fuck, Steven, he texts.

Do you like the color? If there’s something else you’d prefer, just pick it out and I’ll handle it. 

It’s nice, but I repeat: what the fuck. 

Steve just sends heart emojis in response. Baffled and defeated, and reluctantly fond, he sends back heart emojis too.

What does it mean that Steve keeps getting me gifts and fixing up my apartment? Bucky texts Leah. As the most normal person he knows, he figures she’s the best person to ask, and also, if he asks Sam, he’ll literally never hear the end of it, and if he asks Yori or Ayo, he would literally die of mortification.

Congrats, you’ve got a sugar daddy, says Leah.

Bucky almost drops his phone. Surely that can’t be it. Oh my god, what if it is. No!!! He texts back, only for Leah to respond do you need a 21^st century primer on not kink shaming?? 

Well, there’s nothing for it but to ask Steve. The next time Steve comes over—after having installed a coat rack on the wall by the front door, a lovely antique looking thing made of wrought iron shaped like vines—Bucky confronts him with a blunt, “Is this a kink thing? The getting me all this stuff thing, I mean. Do you wanna be my sugar daddy or something?” Bucky firms his jaw and gathers up his courage. “Do you…want me to call you daddy?”

If Steve wants that, if he needs it, well…Bucky might have to work himself up to it, but he could do it, for Steve.

Probably. 

Steve blanches. “What—no! Why would I—? No! This is not a—a sugar daddy thing!”

“Then what is it!” A very unwelcome possibility occurs to Bucky. “Is this a guilt thing? Because if it is, I swear to god—”

The deer in the headlights look on Steve’s face suggests that he’s maybe wishing he’d just said it is in fact some kind of sex thing. “No! It’s—I don’t know, I just want—I wanna be good to you, Buck. Good for you. In every way I can.”

Bucky’s never had a defense against the pure sunshine of Steve’s earnest sincerity, so of course he goddamn melts. “Sweetheart, you don’t need to give me a damn thing to be good for me,” he says.

Steve pulls him into an embrace then, and Bucky lets himself be distracted by the touch of Steve’s hands and lips in all their sweet reverence. It’s only later that Bucky suspects Steve had only given him part of the answer to his question.

In February, Bucky gets called out on a mission with Sam and Torres to investigate what the DoD thinks is an AIM cell masquerading as a normal defense subcontractor in Colorado. As far as Bucky’s concerned, defense subcontractors doing sketchy things doesn’t seem deserving of superhero attention, since it seems more like the military-industrial complex working as intended. But apparently AIM has megalomaniacal ambitions, and there might be deadly robots involved, thereby making this one of the big three, I told you it’s always aliens, androids or wizards, according to Sam, so whatever.

The mission is fine. It’s blessedly straightforward: surveillance, some infiltration, all culminating in fighting glitchy robots. It’s nice to spend some time with Sam, and it turns out that Torres isn’t that annoying. But it’s the longest amount of time Bucky and Steve have spent apart since Steve’s return, and they’re on comms blackout.

It’s much harder than Bucky had expected it to be.

All it takes is two weeks away from Steve for Bucky to begin thinking he may have miscalculated in starting this new…thing with Steve. Because now he’s afflicted with a whole new kind of missing Steve, a kind of missing that’s almost an addiction with the strength of its physical longing. Bucky has missed Steve with his heart before his mind had entirely known who he was missing, and he has missed Steve with his mind before he’d put together all the jagged shards of his memory, and now he misses Steve with his body, an ache like hunger or thirst or the desperation to take a breath of clean air.

When they’ve finally wrapped the whole thing up—with only one explosion involved and what Bucky thinks is a more or less negligible amount of property damage—they all fly back to New York together, briefings galore awaiting them. The comms blackout is lifted by now, but Bucky doesn’t call Steve, just sends him a text with his ETA, which is unfortunately around midnight. He considers what else he can even say, and settles on: everyone’s fine, mission went well. I missed you. 

Steve’s answer comes in seconds: missed you too. Meet you at your place? 

Can’t wait. 

“Oh, you got it bad,” says Sam, from the seat across from Bucky, his gaze warm and amused despite his slightly mocking tone.

Bucky’s not sure what gives him away, his face or his fidgeting, but either way, there’s not much use in denying who he’s been texting and who he’s thinking of.

“It’s been two weeks!” protests Bucky. “I miss Steve a normal amount for being apart for two weeks.”

Torres casts a cheerfully condescending aww, buddy look back at him from the cockpit, and Bucky glowers at him. So Torres is definitely still extremely annoying.

“What’s two weeks after eighty-some years?” asks Sam, a gentle tease.

But it makes Bucky realize something: “That just makes it harder,” he says. “To—to be apart now.”

Sam’s face softens. “I guess it does.”

It seems that Steve agrees, because when Bucky gets to his apartment, Steve greets him like Bucky has just been away at war for years rather than away for two weeks on a mostly boring mission. They crash into each other and cling with near-bruising fervor, not even making it past the hallway. Only then does Bucky’s exhaustion hit him, making him slump under the weight of two weeks’ worth of shitty sleep and the hyper vigilance of a mission. He’s gotten soft, he thinks vaguely, unquiet Winter Soldier memories drifting up and away in his mind. Steve, heedless, takes the weight easily.

“You’re exhausted,” he murmurs, rubbing Bucky’s back as he presses kisses to the top of Bucky’s head, to his temple. 

“Didn’t sleep much,” Bucky says. 

He pulls back to kiss Steve, apologetic at first, then tries to kindle the kiss into something hotter, only to be stymied by his own exhaustion and the gentle way Steve holds his face and the pliant sweetness of his lips. Their kisses turn slow and deep, steady embers rather than burning flames.

“C’mon, let’s just go to bed,” says Steve when they pull apart, and guides Bucky towards the bedroom.

“Lemme take a shower first,” says Bucky, and course corrects.

“Uh, about that—”

Bucky stops short when he gets to the bathroom. For one wild moment, he thinks he’s in someone else’s bathroom entirely, because his uninspiring but functional bathroom—toilet, sink, small shower—has been entirely transformed: linoleum floor replaced with stone-colored tile, walls painted a cool and calm sage green, a new sink with elegant lines more befitting a sculpture than a sink and a correspondingly sleek toilet, cabinets of dark wood, and a much bigger shower that looks like a smaller version of the luxurious shower in Stark Tower.

So, this is probably in violation of my lease, thinks Bucky.

“Steve, what the fuck.”

“I, uh—well, you liked the shower in Stark Tower, and I figured, with you gone for a couple weeks, I could—”

Bucky turns to stare at Steve, who’s wide-eyed and sheepish, classic Steve asking for forgiveness rather than permission—except, no. There’s strain in the lines around his mouth, and a very faintly bruised look around his eyes that suggests sleeplessness. Bucky looks back at the bathroom: spotless, entirely renovated, beautiful in an unshowy way that speaks of either money or very good taste or both. A space for respite and calm, rather than something purely functional.

The kind of involved, difficult project a guy takes on because he really needs to stay busy and distracted.

Bucky could make a joke about Steve’s burgeoning interior design skills. He could tease Steve about how he’s clearly ready for a career change, or what a retirement cliché he’s being. But—two weeks, and Steve did all this. There’s a kind of desperation there, and something else Bucky is too tired to get a grasp on just now.

“Sweetheart—” he starts, and reaches for Steve, only for Steve to look down and away, to sidestep as he pulls Bucky full into the bathroom.

“Let me show you how everything works,” says Steve, and he does, telling Bucky about the fixtures and tiles as he undresses Bucky, and then himself. 

He steps into the shower with Bucky—they can both fit now—and explains that the shower’s new glass enclosure is made out of some special, ultra strong glass as the hot water washes over them with the perfect pressure, and as Steve runs a washcloth over Bucky’s body, as Steve washes Bucky’s hair and massages his scalp, as if they’ve always done this. Steve’s voice remains steady as he talks about the plumbing and the steam shower setting, but there’s a very faintly perceptible tremor in his hands as he touches Bucky, and Bucky watches him through the water, trying to chase down its source. Desperation? Need? Relief? Steve’s beloved blue eyes offer clues that Bucky can’t fit together into a coherent whole, a look in them somewhere between reverence and adoration and agony. He looks like an angel, or a saint, shining and golden, and Bucky feels improbably holy under his touch.

Well, holy and turned on. Both their cocks have filled and hardened by now, but neither of them do anything about it, not yet.

Bucky interrupts Steve’s rambling about having replaced the bathroom fan with a kiss. Everything is wet and hot and slick, liquid and easy, the heat around them matched and exceeded by the heat between them, and he makes a luxurious exploration of Steve’s mouth, staking his irrevocable claim there with a firm declaration of I’m here and we have all the time in the world. Steve makes a small and desperate noise into Bucky’s mouth, and Bucky thinks, how hard am I going to have to fuck you tonight, to convince you I’m really here?

But Steve, it seems, has other ideas. 

Where Bucky tries to rush them to bed, still damp from the shower, Steve slows them down. He takes his time drying Bucky off, is careful with the towel over Bucky’s hair. Bucky can only blink at him in surprise, lulled to a kind of docility by all the care and attention, his thoughts slowing.

“It’s getting long again,” murmurs Steve, combing through the tousled mess of it with his fingers, careful not to snag in any small tangles.

When Bucky tries to manhandle Steve—he has tentative plans to attempt fucking him against a wall—Steve shifts their momentum with inexorable gentleness, and bears Bucky to bed in his arms, setting him down there with such assiduous care that he must think Bucky is fragile.

Bucky holds him close, kisses him, says, “Steve, hey, it’s okay. I’m fine. The mission was fine, I’m just tired, and I missed you.”

“I know,” Steve says. “Just let me—”

Steve doesn’t finish the sentence, only presses his forehead against Bucky’s. He wants to be sure, maybe. “Alright,” says Bucky, and lets him.

Steve takes his time about it. He lavishes Bucky’s body with kisses until all of Bucky feels tingling, oversensitive, like he’s only truly feeling his skin now, like it’s only ever been meant for this, to come alive at the touch of Steve’s lips. Steve, the beautiful bastard, pays special attention to the ludicrously sensitive and responsive skin in the hollows of Bucky’s hipbones, stroking and kissing and licking there until Bucky is squirming and pleading, he doesn’t even know for what, his hands twisted in the sheets.

“Shh,” Steve soothes. “I got you, Buck, I got you.”

He has Bucky lay on his side and fingers him open, kissing him the whole time, shushing Bucky’s pleas to just fuck him already. Even when Bucky is relaxed and ready for him, Steve doesn’t relent: he sucks Bucky’s achingly hard cock instead, heedless when Bucky tells him he’s going to come—he just swallows it down, and fucks him afterwards, slow and steady, almost brutal with his tenderness, his eyes fixed on Bucky with all the fervor and awe of someone who’s witnessing a miracle. Bucky can’t take it, can’t take any of it, but he’s getting hard again anyway, and when Steve tells him to touch himself, he does, fisting his cock dreamily then desperately the more Steve lights him up with each thrust, still at a far too measured pace.

“Please please please,” he babbles, and Steve hushes him, pressing forward for a kiss that Bucky can only pant and moan into.

“Shh, relax, just take it. I’m gonna make you feel good, Buck, just like this.”

Bucky had worried that the fire of want and need between them would rage and leave only ashes and wreckage behind. Maybe he should have been more concerned with what it would feel like to burn, what it would transform. Because it’s not that fire destroys, or not only that—it changes. And here, with Steve fucking into him, with Bucky coming again in a blaze of heat, all of him burning up and alight with need and want and love, with Steve filling him up, he realizes they’ve become something new together.

After, Steve cleans them up with diligent care, makes Bucky drink a glass of water, and all but tucks him in, all while Bucky drifts in between sleep and waking, safe and warm and sated. He has found, he realizes with the almost drunken-clarity of the mostly asleep, the opposite of cryostasis. It’s not, it turns out, his most permanent and obliterative exit strategy, the one that ends in ashes in an anonymous shipping container. No, this is the opposite of cryo: Steve’s arms around him, both of them close and warm together, in the peace between wars.

The next morning, Bucky wakes with a jolt, and the usual confusion of coming out of cryo or waking up in a different place after traveling.

Someone—Steve?—nuzzles the top of his head and rubs his chest. “It’s February 26, 2025, you’re home in Brooklyn, Buck.”

Steve always does that for him, he realizes, waking more fully. Bucky’s never asked him to, has never told him he wakes up disoriented a lot, but Steve somehow knew anyway, and just does it, tells him when and where he is like it’s normal.

Bucky thinks: I can’t lose this. I can lose everything else, but I can’t lose Steve.

This realization does not fit into any of his exit strategies. It is, in fact, fundamentally incompatible with them.

The panic he’d felt looking at the beautiful books Steve had gotten him creeps in again, cold and terrible, like icy floodwaters rising.

He can’t lose this, but he can’t keep it either. It’s a paradox he’s not sure how to live with.

“Bucky?” says Steve, sounding concerned. He must be able to hear or feel Bucky’s heart rate speeding up. “You okay, you awake?”

“Yeah,” rasps Bucky. He turns to Steve, and tries to burn the fear out with the heat of Steve’s giving mouth, the comfort of his hands.

It works for a little while, at least, the icy waters ebbing away. It’s just Bucky’s luck that they come back with a vengeance on his birthday a couple weeks later.

Chapter Text

Bucky makes it clear to Steve that he absolutely does not want a fuss made over his birthday. Steve looks very hangdog about it and attempts to wheedle him into can we at least have friends over for dinner. Just something casual! But Bucky stands firm: he doesn’t want a party or anything at all party-adjacent. But I can still get you cake and a present, right? Steve tries, and Bucky just rolls his eyes and says, could I even stop you? 

Given the twisted up, ice-riddled mess of his personal timeline, birthdays seem both meaningless and pointless. Bucky does not actually want the reminder of how many years have passed between his birth and the present, and he definitely does not want to think about how many of those years he’s actually lived, and how many may or may not remain. 

He won’t say no to cake though. He likes cake.

Steve seems to have disseminated Bucky’s anti-birthday stance among their friends and colleagues though, or maybe Sam has, because in the run up to his birthday he gets totally casual and incidental and not at all birthday-related texts and visits and gifts. Leah gives him a cupcake when he has lunch with Yori that week, smiling blandly when he narrows his eyes at her. Yori ignores the cupcake, but lets Bucky have the crossword from the newspaper and actually helps him do it and then gives him a pat on the shoulder when they leave. 

At an arm check up appointment at the Wakandan Outreach Center, he gets a “care package” from Wakanda full of his favorite teas and snacks, along with a media kimoyo bead and a demand to call Ayo to watch what’s on it with her, which turns out to be the latest season of a Wakandan soap opera that he and Ayo got obsessed with while they were working on fixing the trigger words.

Sarah sends him a pie recipe and then calls him on Facetime to walk him through making it, with the boys jostling into the frame to ‘help’ and tell him about all the things they deem ‘super important’ like their latest feats in Minecraft and the super cool Star Wars Lego set they put together. Bucky ends that call with a pie in the oven, a smile on his face, and a promise to visit Delacroix over the boys’ spring break.

Sam just shows up at Bucky’s apartment unannounced and declares, “We’re hanging out.”

“Hello to you too,” says Bucky dryly, but he accepts the hug from Sam and lets him inside.

Sam stops short, blinking in surprise at Bucky’s apartment for a long moment before he turns a beaming smile on Bucky. “You actually decorated! Now it looks like a real person lives here!” He claps Bucky on the shoulder enthusiastically. “Man, this looks great, Buck.”

Bucky tries to look at the apartment through Sam’s eyes: it’s a clean and uncluttered space, but comfortable and maybe even kind of inviting, with good light. The bright pops of green in the room from the rug, armchair, and the plants contrast nicely with the creams and grays of everything else, and the paintings and photos help make the space look lived in.

“Yeah, uh, it’s nice. It’s all Steve though,” says Bucky. “Want some coffee or tea or anything?”

Sam nods. “Yeah, sure, I’ll take some coffee, thanks. What do you mean it’s all Steve?”

“He just kinda shows up and leaves me something or does some DIY while I’m out or on a mission. It’s kinda like being haunted by the ghost of a nice interior designer or something.”

Sam, who’d been studying Steve’s painting of the Brooklyn Bridge, turns to stare at Bucky. “Wait, what?”

Bucky shrugs. “Yeah, I don’t know what that’s about. He says he just wants to be good to me, but I dunno,” says Bucky as he heads to the kitchen and starts up the coffee machine. “It’s not really what I was expecting when I gave him a key. Like, he painted the whole apartment when I was gone for a couple days.”

“Did you…ask him to do any of that? Wait, has he moved in?”

“No, and no, he hasn’t moved in,” says Bucky, and when he turns back to Sam, Sam’s eyebrows are raised in consternation. “I don’t mind any of it, I guess. I figure Steve’s getting bored with retirement or whatever, and there’s worse things he could be doing to stay busy.”

“Okay,” says Sam slowly.

Sam frowns at him. “Is that…weird?” asks Bucky.

Leah doesn’t seem to think it’s weird, and Leah is a totally normal person, so he figures that means it isn’t weird. Sure, she insists on calling Steve his sugar daddy, despite all his denials of it being a sex thing, but surely if it was really weird, she’d say something.

Sam hums, which isn’t an answer. “It’s not what I was expecting, I guess. Didn’t realize he had a passion for home improvement projects.”

“He’s pretty good at it, actually. You should check out the bathroom.”

Sam does, and when Bucky hears his muttered holy shit from the kitchen, he grins. He pours some coffee for Sam in a Captain America mug, and hands it to him when he returns to the living room. At Sam’s flat look, he just says, “Steve got me the mug too.”

“When the hell did he have enough time to fix up your bathroom like that without you noticing?” asks Sam as he takes a seat on the couch. “That shit looks real fancy and professional. A contractor would’ve charged y’all 75k for that, easy.”

“When we were on that mission in Colorado,” says Bucky, taking what’s become his habitual seat in the armchair Steve got him. “Steve says he did it all himself, other than calling Barton a few times for plumbing tips.”

“Jesus Christ, Steve,” mutters Sam before taking a sip of coffee. He gives Bucky a stern look over the rim of his mug. “Y’all need to use your actual words. Do I even wanna know what weird, extra shit you’re doing for your man instead of communicating like an adult?”

“I’m not doing anything weird!” Bucky protests. “It’s—we’re fine! Everything’s fine.” Sam takes an eloquent and silent sip of his coffee. “Do you think…I mean, should I be worried? I don’t wanna be clueless about it if Steve’s having a hard time.”

“Sounds like something you should be asking him,” says Sam unhelpfully.

“Maybe I should ask him to move in with me?”

They spend enough time at each other’s places that it’d certainly make things more convenient. But the thought of actually living together brings that icy feeling back, tingling along Bucky’s spine and fingertips. It just—it doesn’t seem safe, somehow. There’s a risk there that Bucky can’t fully calculate.

“Do you want him to?”

“I don’t know,” says Bucky.

Though maybe it’d be more honest to say that he wants to want to move in with Steve, or have Steve move in with him. He wants it to be that easy. He wants to be fucking sane about it, and instead the moment he thinks about living with Steve, he is also thinking about two dozen different exit strategies and how Steve doesn’t, can’t, factor into a single one of them, because Steve is not a go bag Bucky can manage without, or an acceptable loss, or a calculated risk. So mostly he’s just been trying not to think about it.

“It’d probably help Steve,” continues Bucky. “I mean, he’s doing alright, as far as I can tell, but he’s always kinda…clingy now. I don’t really mind, I’m just—not sure it’s good for him.”

“It isn’t,” says Sam with a sigh. “You want my opinion, I think it’s a good thing that you two didn’t move in together right away. That coulda turned real codependent, real fast. Y’all need to get used to having each other back now that things are more settled.”

Bucky studies Sam, and notices that pinched look around his mouth, the one that says he’s kind of stressed and worried. Cap stuff has been going well, the new Avengers are coming along nicely, and Sarah and the boys are fine, so that leaves…

“You and Natasha used to it yet?” he asks.

Sam gives him a you think you’re real smart look, and Bucky just looks back like am I wrong? Sam breaks the mini staring contest and takes a long sip of coffee, which means Bucky is right, ha. 

“Me and Natasha don’t know what settled would even look like for us,” Sam admits quietly. “And until I know, I can’t—shit.” Sam sets his coffee down and rubs a hand over his close-shorn head and his face.

“It’s hard, to—to plan for the future. To think about it,” ventures Bucky.

Because Sam seems like he has his shit together, but he is also the kind of person who straps on a jetpack and a pair of wings, and maybe that’s not the kind of thing a man who thinks about the future a lot does.

“Definitely not with the kinds of present we’ve been dealing with,” says Sam wryly.

“Settled doesn’t have to look normal, you know,” Bucky says, feeling clumsy, and like he’s not quite saying it right. “I mean—you and Natasha, you can be whatever you are to each other, and it doesn’t have to look anything like what anyone else expects. Settled for you two can be—something new, you know?”

He’s not sure what the sticking point is for Sam, what futures he can or can’t imagine, but Bucky can at least hazard a guess at what it is for Natasha: a ‘normal’ life is always going to feel like a cover for a Black Widow. And Sam, so keenly attuned to the people around him, so set on being true to himself and his values, wouldn’t be able to stand that. The only solution is to not have a normal life at all.

Sam nods slowly, a thoughtful furrow in his brow. “Yeah, alright. That’s—that’s actually a good point, Buck. Thanks. I’ll—I’ll think about that.”

“You don’t have to look so surprised that I’m very old and wise,” says Bucky, and Sam laughs. 

He settles back on the couch, relaxed now, and grins at Bucky. “Okay, heart-to-heart time is over: entertain me, Barnes, a staring contest doesn’t count as a hang out.”

“Well, there’s this Wakandan soap opera thing Ayo sent me and I’m kinda obsessed with it, wanna watch with me?”

“Yeah okay, I gotta know what a Wakandan soap opera looks like,” says Sam with raised eyebrows.

Within two episodes, Sam’s hooked, and they stay up way too late watching. It’s honestly about ten times more fun than a party.

Maybe birthdays in the 21^st century aren’t all that bad.

Bucky’s half-expecting and half-dreading some big birthday gesture from Steve, but Steve is shockingly normal on Bucky’s actual birthday. It helps that it’s a Monday, and they both have work to do: Bucky’s training with Sam since he’s in town, and Steve’s got GRC meetings, so Steve sees Bucky off for the day with some spectacular morning sex, a nice breakfast, and a promise of cake and gifts at dinner later that evening.

“Unless that counts as too much fuss? The gifts aren’t anything fancy, I swear,” says Steve when they’re both on their way out the door of Steve’s apartment.

“I’ll allow it,” says Bucky.

Steve nods seriously. “So that’s a go on me popping out of an enormous cake while naked, got it.”

Bucky laughs, delighted by the mental image. “We gotta discuss these kinks of yours in advance, sweetheart,” he says, and leans in for a kiss. “See you at my place tonight.”

Bucky had meant for it to be a quick kiss, but Steve has other ideas, and as always, the spark between them catches readily into a flame. Bucky melts into the warmth, and starts thinking that actually, maybe he should have taken the day off. It’s his birthday after all, and surely that’s as good an excuse as any to spend the day in bed with Steve.

When Steve pulls away, Bucky makes a protesting noise, and Steve cups his face in his hands. Bucky blinks, surprised by Steve’s suddenly solemn expression, and the way his jaw is clenching as if he’s about to do something dumb and brave.

“I love you,” he says. “I always think about saying it, and I never do. Doesn’t seem like enough, I guess. Or—or I worry that you’ll hear something else when I say it, like—like goodbye. But I don’t. I just mean that I love you.” Steve laughs to himself, a little giddy. “Fuck, it ain’t a big enough word, Buck. But it’s all I got.”

Bucky can only stare at him for a long moment, his heart pounding fast. He feels both very warm and very light, like he’s shining bright and hot as a candle, which is dumb, because Steve isn’t telling him anything he doesn’t already know. He knows Steve loves him. Of course he knows it.

Steve wipes at Bucky’s suddenly wet cheeks with his thumbs, soft and tender. “I shoulda said it sooner, huh?” he says, shakily. “Should’ve been telling you all the time. I’ll do better, I promise.” 

“No, I—I knew. I know. I—you’re right, it’s not a big enough word,” says Bucky. 

He understands the impulse to poetry, to music, to art, when he thinks of what he feels for Steve. Bucky has none of that skill though, only knows that the word love is a meager vessel for what’s between them. Making love together is a better one, but then Steve knows that. They showed each other that this morning.

So Bucky gives him a truth instead.

“There was—there was a lot I had to learn all over again, remember all over again, after—after HYDRA. When I remembered love again—it was because of you. It was for you. I—I don’t know if I would have otherwise.”

Steve closes his eyes, as if this truth is too bright to look at directly. Bucky leans in and kisses him with trembling lips, and Steve kisses back, tremulous at first, then ravenous, a hunger that Bucky matches, and their kisses are proof that want and need and love are all synonyms at heart, each inextricable from the other. 

Steve walks him back so that the wall supports him, as Steve’s hands, shaking, fumble with the fly of Bucky’s jeans. He drops to his knees, pulls Bucky’s jeans and underwear down enough to free Bucky’s rapidly hardening cock. He doesn’t take it in his mouth though, not yet. He looks up at Bucky, and—Bucky can’t possibly deserve that look, that light and adoration in Steve’s eyes, he can’t bear the reverent tenderness in his lips as Steve feathers kisses on the vee of Bucky’s hips and under his navel. He can only grab hold of Steve’s hair and shake and pant as Steve takes him in his mouth, can only let praise to match Steve’s adoring attention fall from his lips: sweetheart, you’re so good to me, you make me feel so good, you take it so pretty, touch yourself too, sweetheart, I wanna see it, I wanna see you feel good, I always want you to feel good, I wanna make you half as happy as you make me.

Unsurprisingly, Bucky is late for training with Sam.

“I’mma let this one pass, birthday boy,” says Sam, pointing at him sternly. “But don’t make a habit of it!”

“I won’t,” Bucky promises.

Sam fixes him with a very serious Captain America look, and it’s effective enough that Bucky almost has the urge to salute, though mostly he just ends up grinning at Sam like an idiot. He’s in too damn good a mood to even attempt a staring contest, he’d lose immediately.

“Yeah, alright, looks like you’re having a good birthday so far, Mr. Sunshine,” says Sam, indulgent, and tugs him into a quick hug. “Look at that smile, huh?”

“Yeah, it’s been good so far,” he says.

The key words there are, unfortunately, so far.

Bucky’s birthday goes great until Steve gives him his gift. Steve actually dresses up a bit, the dork, they have a nice dinner, the fancy chocolate cake is one of the most delicious things Bucky has ever put in his mouth, and all in all, it might just be the most date-like thing he and Steve have ever done, and it’s definitely the best birthday Bucky has had in decades.

And then he opens his exquisitely wrapped gift to reveal a set of finely made leather-bound notebooks. Also tucked into the box are some pens and fine-tipped markers, post-its, and—some very tiny, or maybe just very distant, part of him is amused to note—superhero-themed stickers.

“I, uh, thought you might wanna start keeping a journal again, the way you used to,” says Steve, sounding anxious. “Didn’t notice any notebooks around, so I figured I could get you new ones. Nice ones.”

Bucky stares down at the notebooks, and opens one of them to reveal a blank lined page, the paper smooth and creamy.

“There’s a reason for that,” says Bucky. His own voice sounds flat and strange to his ears.

“What?”

“There’s a reason you haven’t seen any notebooks around.”

Bucky used to have thirteen notebooks. He’d fill one up, put it in his go-bag, then start a new one. He’d scribbled out what scrambled, shattered memories he’d been able to scrape together, had pulled together fragments of intel and scraps of himself scrounged up from the razed wreckage HYDRA and history had left of him, and he’d put it all in those fucking notebooks. At the time, the whole mess of it had seemed safer on those pages than in his fractured mind.

The notebooks had been captured with him, after Steve found him in Bucharest. He’d been too sentimental about them. He should have destroyed them the second he had to implement an exit strategy. Though he supposes it doesn’t matter. He’d lost them either way.

If he thinks too hard about people touching his notebooks, looking through them and reading them, dissecting them and poking around like they already have in Bucky’s mind and in his body, he’ll be sick, so he doesn’t think about it.

He can’t do it again. He can’t do any of this again.

Bucky has lost most things: his life and his death, his mind and his memories, his name his family his innocence his freedom his home his arm his faith decades of time his arm again Steve—

But hey, he’s learned his lesson. The only notebook he’s had since then is Steve’s old one, and he’d only ever written some names in that. When you lose enough things, you just learn to do without them. Even when you think you can’t. 

“Bucky, what—what do you mean? Bucky? It’s—I’m sorry, I should’ve gotten you something else, I just thought—”

“Security risk. They compromise my exit strategies,” says Bucky.

The blank page in front of him blurs into a smear of white. He lets the notebook flip closed, blinks until his vision clears. His exit strategies. At least he can’t lose those. Not all of them, anyway. That’s the whole fucking point of them.

“I’m not sure what that means, Buck. Bucky, can you look at me, please? Buck, hey, you’re breathing too fast, can you—”

Suddenly, the weight of all the things Steve has given him—the paintings, the records, the photos, the plants, the home improvements, the bed—his love—it all presses down on Bucky with the crushing certainty that he won’t be able to keep any of it. They’re all just things for him to lose, to have taken from him, and it’s like he’s only now realized he’s been sinking down and down into the depths of an ocean this whole time, and the pressure is too much for him to take.

He has to get out. He has to—he needs an exit strategy, he doesn’t know which one, he just has to go, leave—

So he gets up, grabs his go-bag, and runs.

The single encouraging sign for Bucky’s continued if tenuous grasp on sanity is that he does not end up at the shipping container. Also that he’s alive, he supposes.

Otherwise, things are not looking good, because he comes back to himself to the sound of his phone buzzing, and only a vague idea of how he got to wherever the fuck he is now. He feels insubstantial, ghostly, like he’s directing his body from very far away when he fumbles to grab the phone that’s buzzing on the table in front of him. A table, he thinks vaguely. That’s good, probably, he’s inside somewhere, at least.

“Bucky! What the hell, where the fuck are you?” demands Sam. He sounds pretty pissed.

“I don’t know,” says Bucky, and his tongue feels thick and strange in his mouth, the words coming out hoarse.

Sam’s tone immediately shifts to concern. “Buck, are you somewhere safe? Are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” he says again. Something breaks through the haze, and that something is panic. “Sam? I—I lost time, didn’t I,” he realizes, horrified. “What day is it?”

“Wednesday, it’s been a couple days since you pulled a runner, Bucky—fuck, Bucky, breathe for me, man, slow down—you’re alright, it’s okay—”

“Steve, is he—did I—”

“Steve is fine, just worried sick. We all are. Tell me where you are and I’ll come get you.”

He rests his head on the table and tries to breathe. The last couple days come back to him in a rush, and thankfully they do not involve any murder, just dissociated fleeing to a safe house in Vermont, a ramshackle, off the grid hunting cabin. This kind of thing hasn’t happened since before he got the trigger words removed, and the backslide scares him enough that he doesn’t protest Sam coming to get him, just gives Sam the coordinates.

“Alright, I’m coming to you,” says Sam. “What happened, man? What set you off? Steve just said you said something about notebooks and lit out of there faster than he could follow.”

“He—he got me new notebooks, for my birthday.”

“Okay,” says Sam slowly. “Well, not liking a present isn’t usually grounds for fleeing the state...”

Bucky laughs, the sound more than a little hysterical. “Yeah, no, that’s not—that’s not why. I had notebooks before. I wrote in them, about my—my memories and stuff. They, uh. They took them from me, when they arrested me for the bombing in Vienna. I can’t—I can’t do it again, Sam.”

“What, get arrested? That’s not gonna happen—”

“No, I can’t—I can’t lose it all again. I can’t—”

“Who says you’re gonna?” asks Sam, and Bucky laughs, or maybe sobs, through the tightness in his chest. “Hey, slow down that breathing for me, Buck, follow my lead. Yeah, there you go. Okay, we are gonna discuss this when I get there, just—just sit tight, okay? Drink some water, eat something. I’ll be there in a few hours.”

“Are you bringing Steve with you?” asks Bucky, dreading the answer.

“And risk you panicking and rabbiting again, or being y’all’s couples counselor? Nah,” scoffs Sam, and Bucky winces. More gently, Sam says, “Anyway, I’m guessing you could probably use some time to get your shit together before you see him?”

“Yeah,” says Bucky, and wipes at his streaming eyes and nose. “I’m sorry, Sam. I’m a fucking mess, you shouldn’t have to—”

“Support network, remember? I’ll be there soon with the Quinjet. Maybe shoot Steve a text in the meantime,” says Sam, and it’s more an order than a suggestion.

“Yeah, alright,” says Bucky. “See you soon.”

When he ends the call with Sam, he sees that his phone is awash in missed call and voicemail and text notifications. He can’t face the voicemails right now—might, in fact, delete them without listening—but he has to open up his texts with Steve. What he sees there makes him feel like an absolute piece of shit, because Steve’s apologizing to him, like any of this is his fault, Steve’s begging him to tell him what he did wrong, to come back, to give him another chance, to just let him know he’s okay. The words blur, and Bucky can’t keep reading them, can’t look at the evidence of how much he’s hurt Steve.

He can’t help but see the last text from Steve though: I love you. Please come home. I swear I’ll fix this.

The absolute least he owes Steve right now is a fucking text.

I’m sorry, I’m okay. Sam’s coming to get me. Me freaking out and being crazy over nothing is not your fault, Steve. I love you. I’m sorry. Fixing my fucked up brain isn’t on you.

Steve’s response is near-immediate. You got nothing to be sorry for, Buck, I’m just glad you’re okay. Just come home and we’ll figure this out. I love you, and I’m still with you til the end of the line.

Me too, texts Bucky, and hopes it isn’t a lie. He tries for a joke, because maybe he can at least put a smile on Steve’s face: Do I even wanna know what kind of home improvement I’m gonna come back to?

You’re gonna come home to something better than that, I promise, is Steve’s answer.

The sheer relief on Sam’s face when he arrives makes Bucky feel downright ashamed.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “Fuck, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

Sam just strides forward and wraps him up in a hug. “You don’t have to apologize for having a bit of a nervous breakdown, Buck. I just wish you’d said something before you got to the breaking point.”

“Breaking point kinda caught me by surprise,” Bucky mutters.

Sam pulls back. “Yeah, how’s that? C’mon, let’s talk a bit before we get up in the air.” Sam shivers and rubs at his arms. “Inside, preferably, damn, it’s cold. Aren’t you cold?”

“I hadn’t really noticed,” says Bucky, though there’s still snow on the ground and the sun’s dipping below the trees, and he’s only in long sleeves. “But yeah, alright.”

There’s not much inside the cabin: just a table, a couple rickety chairs, and an army-style cot, all sharing space with a tiny kitchenette. Sam sits on one of the chairs gingerly, like he expects it to fall to pieces under him. Bucky putters around in the kitchenette and makes them some tea to help Sam warm up, and to put off this undoubtedly excruciating conversation.

“So. Steve gets you some notebooks, you freak out and disappear into the woods for a couple days. Wanna explain that to me?”

“No,” says Bucky honestly. Sam presses his lips together and gives him a stern, unimpressed look.

“Bucky, I swear to god—”

Bucky would like nothing more than to act like this whole thing isn’t a big deal and that he freaked out over nothing and that everything’s fine now. Unfortunately, he’s well aware that he cannot do that after very obviously losing his shit and going AWOL for two days, and that any denials now will only make him seem more crazy. Fuck.

“I don’t want to explain it to you, but I guess I’ll try,” he says. 

Sam visibly gathers his patience. “Thank you,” he says, and Bucky almost smiles at Sam’s obvious gritted teeth.

“So, uh. Like I said. I had notebooks before. I was trying to—to make sense of everything, keep track of my memories and all. They were—important to me.”

“And when you got arrested for the Zemo shit, they got confiscated,” says Sam.

“Yeah. When Steve got me new notebooks for my birthday, it just, uh. Reminded me of that.”

“Lotta traumatic stuff happened around then, huh,” says Sam, a thoughtful frown on his face now.

“Yeah, but that’s not—it’s just—Steve’s given me all this stuff, he—he loves me—and I can’t—I can’t keep any of that,” he babbles, and he can’t quite catch his breath, not with how tight his chest feels. “I’m just—I’m just gonna lose all of it all over again, and I can’t—I can’t do it again, I can’t live like that—”

There’s no running away from that truth. An exit strategy is little more than a preemptive strike against it, when what he should have done from the start is not have anything he isn’t willing and able to lose.

“Hey, it’s okay, breathe for a sec, okay? What makes you think you can’t keep any of it? Why do you think you’re gonna lose it all?” asks Sam. 

Bucky stares at Sam. “Experience. Literally the entire last eighty years,” he says and Sam grimaces apologetically.

“Okay, yeah, that’s, uh. That’s maybe fair.” Sam reaches across the table to grip Bucky’s forearm. “But Buck, you’re free now. Sure, shit happens, an asteroid could take us all out tomorrow—”

“What?” says Bucky, aghast. That does not figure into any of his worst case scenarios.

“ —but you gotta live the life you have now. And it’s a pretty good life, right? You’ve got a home, you’ve got Steve, you’ve got friends. You’re free from the triggers, you’re working on your mental health shit. You’ve got good work with the Avengers. So why run?”

“I don’t know,” says Bucky miserably. “It was just—instinct.” 

Maybe he should tell Sam about his exit strategies. He doesn’t.

“Self-sabotage, more like,” says Sam, casting a gimlet eye at him.

Bucky buries his face in his hands. “I can’t lose him again, Sam. I can’t start over, I’m not gonna survive that.”

“You keep running like this, you’re gonna lose him anyway.”

“I shouldn’t have—fuck, I shouldn’t have started this with Steve in the first place. We shoulda just—just stayed friends—”

When he lowers his hands, Sam looks oddly stricken for a moment, before he smiles, too bitter to sit comfortably on his usually kind and friendly face.

“Yeah, well, take it from me, Buck, that’s no way to live either,” he says. “And it doesn’t make it any easier, either. To lose them.”

“Shit, you and Natasha,” realizes Bucky, and Sam nods wearily.

“I lost my last partner, you know. Riley.”

“You never really talk about him,” says Bucky.

“No, I don’t,” says Sam with a sigh. “Old habit, I guess. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was still a thing when we were together, and losing him…I didn’t handle it well. And I’m—it doesn’t come easy to me, the whole romance and relationships thing, so I figured—that’s it. I’m done. I can’t do this again, I can’t lose someone like that again. It was bad enough when I thought Natasha was dead, before we’d ever even done anything. And I’m still not sure I can try again, risk that kinda loss again. So I get it, I guess.”

“Well, you’re not having nervous breakdowns and running off to the woods about it, so you’re handling it better than I am,” says Bucky, and Sam snorts a laugh.

“Yeah, I can’t beat you for drama,” he says. “Maybe we just gotta be brave, Buck. I know you’ve had to be braver than anyone should ever have to be, for a long, long time. But I think this life you’ve got—this life we’ve got—is worth being brave for.”

Bucky’s eyes sting, and he has to clear his throat to get out the word, “Maybe.”

Sam stands and holds a hand out to Bucky. “C’mon. If you have an actual honest-to-god talk about your feelings with Steve instead of either of you doing some whole over-the-top gesture about it, I promise I’ll actually take the leap with Natasha.”

Bucky takes Sam’s hand. “Alright, you got a deal.”

It’s late by the time they get back to Brooklyn, and Sam takes him straight to Steve’s.

“I don’t need an escort,” Bucky grumbles, and Sam just gives him a look that says many silent yet judgmental things about Bucky’s poor, fleeing-to-the-woods related decisions. Which is fair enough.

When they get to Steve’s place though, Steve’s not there, and Bucky kind of feels like he’s turning to dust again and also like his grip on sanity is really much more tenuous than he’d like it to be. Sam takes one look at Bucky’s face and pulls out his phone to call Steve.

“Maybe he’s at your place,” says Sam. “Buck, do not spiral on me right now.”

“I’m not spiraling,” Bucky lies. He staggers over to the couch and puts his head between his knees and tries to breathe.

Oh god, Steve’s not coming back, is he, Bucky fucked this up too badly, Steve’s given up on him—

Steve answers the phone and Sam barks, “Rogers, I just went and dragged your man out of the woods for you, you better have a damn good reason for not being at your apartment right now. Hang on, I’m putting you on speaker.”

“Bucky’s back?” says Steve. “Buck, you there?”

“Yeah,” wheezes Bucky. “Where—you’re not here?”

“I’ll be back tomorrow!” says Steve, sounding kind of frantic. “Just had to, uh, run a quick errand! It’s taking a bit longer than expected. I love you, I will be back tomorrow, I promise!”

Bucky thinks but does not say, you said five seconds last time and then you were gone for a year.

“Okay,” he says weakly, then, “I’m sorry. I love you.”

“Nothing to be sorry for, Buck. I’ll be back by the time you’re out of therapy tomorrow, okay?”

Aww, fuck, he does have therapy tomorrow. He supposes he can’t deny that he needs it at this point, but it’s going to suck.

“Great, awesome, but over the top gestures are not a substitute for actual communication!” says Sam, glaring at his phone in exasperation.

“Yeah, I told him that, but he didn’t listen,” comes Natasha’s voice, and okay, that’s kind of a relief. At least Steve isn’t alone.

“Well, if you have adult supervision, I guess that’s alright,” says Bucky, his voice only slightly shaky. “See you tomorrow. I, uh, won’t run for the woods again, I promise.”

“I’ll get him back to you safe and sound, Barnes,” says Natasha, and Sam’s entire face softens at the sound of her voice. Wow, he’s got it bad.

“I gotta go, but we’ll talk when I get back, okay?” says Steve.

“Yeah, alright,” says Bucky, and wonders what the hell errand Steve is even running.

As he tries to fall asleep in a bed that smells like Steve but that’s empty of him, Bucky finds himself thinking of the first time he almost lost Steve. He’d been eleven, and Steve had been ten, and Steve had gotten sick enough that Bucky’s ma began gently preparing Bucky for the worst. Steve had pulled through, of course, but the fear of losing him had lingered in Bucky, the first time a young and innocent Bucky had truly understood that he could lose the people he loved. He’d asked his ma, how do I stop being scared that Steve’s gonna die?

For the first time, she hadn’t had much comfort to offer him: darling, I’m afraid you never stop being afraid of losing the ones you love. So Bucky had asked his dad next, and he’d said: same as any other fear, Jamie. You accept it, and keep going anyway. 

He spills (almost) the whole sorry story to Dr. Raynor at therapy the next day, resigning himself to receiving a much more diligent surveillance detail and a lot of lecturing, if not worse. Instead, she snorts and says, “Congratulations on joining the ranks of men who flee the scene the second they have to face the realities of a committed relationship.”

Bucky gapes at her. “What? No! I love Steve, I’m committed to him! That’s not—were you even listening to me?”

She raises an unimpressed eyebrow. “Oh, I was,” she says. “It’s understandable that commitment would cause you anxiety—”

“No! That’s not—I can’t stand the thought of losing him. Of losing the life I have now. But it always happens, I always lose everything, and I don’t know how to live, knowing that. That’s—that’s what’s ‘causing me anxiety,’ fuck.”

Dr. Raynor smiles and says, “Thank you for sharing that, James.”

Fuck, he’s been played. He narrows his eyes at her and scowls. “I see what you did there, and it’s annoying.”

“I just thought a bit of reverse psychology would save time,” says Dr. Raynor innocently, before her lined face softens into an approximation of kindness. “As for your anxiety, welcome to the human condition, James. We are all going to lose the things and people we love, that’s the price of living and loving.”

“So man up and deal with it, yeah, okay, I got it,” he mutters, crossing his arms and slumping into the couch. Christ, therapy is useless.

“I’m not trying to minimize your losses or your pain,” says Raynor. “I know you’ve lost a great deal, and I know those losses have left deep wounds in you. But you’ve fought so hard to get so much of what you’ve lost back. Don’t let fear take any of it from you before time does. We’ve talked a bit about mindfulness before, and I think it’s time to revisit it…”

Ugh, mindfulness. He pays attention though. If there’s even the smallest chance of it helping, he owes it to Steve to try, and to Sam too.

What he keeps coming back to though is welcome to the human condition, James. His fears are maybe of a different kind and intensity than everyone else’s, but Raynor isn’t wrong about the price of living and loving. There are only two exit strategies for those particular debts: dying, and never loving at all. Bucky doesn’t particularly want to die, not anymore, and he couldn’t stop loving Steve even if he tried, so maybe there are some exit strategies Bucky is never going to be able to take, not willingly.

When Bucky gets back to Steve’s apartment, it takes a few minutes before he can bring himself to open the door. If he doesn’t open the door, he doesn’t have to know if Steve is really back or not. If he doesn’t open the door, he won’t have to face how much he’s hurt Steve with all the times he’s left him, willingly or unwillingly. But Bucky promised Sam, so he takes a deep breath and opens the door.

Steve is there, thankfully, and they crash into each other with super soldier speed within seconds, which kind of hurts, but Bucky doesn’t care.

“Steve, I’m sorry, fuck, I’m so sorry, I—”

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” says Steve, holding him tightly. “All that matters is that you came back, okay? Thank you for coming back.”

“Always,” Bucky promises recklessly. “I’m always gonna come back, okay?”

“You better,” says Steve, and kisses him, a kiss like Bucky is the air Steve needs to breathe, and yes, this Bucky can do, this he can give to Steve—

“Wait wait wait,” gasps Steve, pulling back. “We—we gotta actually talk, I promised Nat and Sam we’d actually talk about this—”

“Okay, but we could fuck about it too,” says Bucky, dragging Steve back in, and Steve laughs. Bucky lets him go after one more kiss though, sweeter and softer this time, like kissing away a hurt, before he sighs and admits, “I promised Sam too. So what was this mysterious errand of yours?”

“I, uh, got you something,” says Steve, and guides him to the couch. There’s a box on the coffee table, and Bucky winces, ashamed at the reminder of the innocuous birthday present that kicked off this whole mess.

“You didn’t have to get me a new birthday present or anything. You don’t have to keep getting me stuff at all, I don’t actually need any of it.”

“This is something that was yours in the first place,” says Steve as they sit down. He sticks close to Bucky, wrapping an arm around him as he presses a kiss to his temple. “Open it up and see.”

Bucky opens the box to find notebooks. Not new ones this time, but his own notebooks, the ones he’d had in Bucharest, looking exactly like the last time he’d seen them. He lifts one out of the box, his right hand shaking. Even all the sticky notes are intact.

“I didn’t read them or look in them,” says Steve. “Just checked to make sure they were yours. And Natasha erased all records of them from any systems.”

“Steve, what—was your errand seriously stealing my notebooks back for me?”

Bucky doesn’t care what Sam says, over the top gestures can absolutely be a substitute for communication when they’re gestures like this. 

Steve is rubbing Bucky’s arm and peering at him anxiously. “Yeah. Is that—is that okay?”

Bucky laughs, or cries, or both, and wipes at his eyes before any tears can fall. “Yeah, sweetheart. It’s okay. I mean, I kinda wish you weren’t doing crimes for me—”

“Isn’t the first time, probably won’t be the last—”

“—But thank you. Really. I—I didn’t think I’d ever see these again.”

After he’d lost these notebooks, he hadn’t written down anything of importance, anything that mattered to him, other than the names for his amends, and he’d regretted even that much when Zemo had snatched the notebook from him. Now though, a faint hope flickers that he could maybe try again, that maybe he can make use of those blank notebooks Steve had gotten him. It had been easier to remember, to really think about things, when he could make them tangible by writing them down. 

“Should’ve gotten them back for you a long time ago,” says Steve. He takes a shuddering breath, and looks away. “I know I can’t—I can’t undo what happened to you.” He huffs, and shakes his head. “Not even with a goddamn time machine. I can’t—I can’t fix any of it, I can’t take away your guilt, or your pain. But I could do this, I could get these back for you. And I can try to make you a little happier, a little more comfortable.”

“By getting me a new bed, and a fancy new shower, and all that other stuff,” realizes Bucky, all of Steve’s gifts and home improvements making a new kind of sense. 

Steve smiles ruefully. “Yeah. And, I don’t know, Buck. I saw your apartment, how—how empty it was. How much it felt like a safe house, like you were ready to leave it any minute now, and I just—I guess I thought that I could help make it a home for you.”

“So I’d stay,” says Bucky, and Steve’s smile turns sad and bittersweet.

“Pretty much. I just—I can’t lose you again, Buck. I can’t do it, no matter how many times the world keeps trying to teach me the lesson that I can’t save you, that I can’t keep you.” 

“Steve, I don’t need all that stuff to want to stay with you,” Bucky tells him.

“But?” prompts Steve, a painful kind of knowing in the tilt of his head and the resignation in his eyes. “Why’d you run, Buck? What did you mean when you said the notebooks compromised your exit strategy?”

“I want to stay,” Bucky repeats. “I—I want this life, with you.” 

He could leave it at that. He could act like this gesture of Steve’s has fixed it all, he could distract Steve from asking any questions by fucking him good and long and slow. He could do his best to stop thinking about his exit strategies, could try to ‘mindfulness’ his way through this and hope the panic and need to flee won’t strike again.

But Steve deserves his honesty. He deserves to know how fucked up Bucky really is.

So he says, “But I think about leaving all the time. I—I have so many exit strategies, Steve. For when it all goes to shit, or they come for me again—HYDRA or the government or whoever—for when I—I lose everything again. Ways to get out of the city, the state, the country, places to go off the grid, ways to disappear.”

Steve frowns, thoughtful. “Alright,” he says slowly. “Buck, that’s—I mean, it’s not normal, I guess, but it’s normal for people like us. I’ve got plans like that too.”

Bucky takes a deep breath. “Some of those exit strategies are permanent,” he says quietly, and Steve goes still and tense beside him.

“What? What do you mean, permanent?”

“I mean that if it comes down to it, I’d rather die than be the Winter Soldier again. That when—when you were gone, and I thought I had nothing but making amends and a whole lotta empty years ahead of me, I figured I’d make right what I could and get the hell out of here, for good. That when I think about—about losing any of this again, losing you, I can’t—I can’t fucking stand it, and I don’t—I don’t know how to live, knowing I can lose all of it all over again. I know it makes me fucking crazy, but those exit strategies, they’re the one thing I have that I’ve got any hope of keeping.”

The rush of words leaves him exhausted, as if it’s blood he’s let out rather than a confession. He can’t bring himself to look at Steve. He just stares at his notebooks and whispers, “I don’t think there’s any fixing any of that, Steve. I’m trying to be brave and—and hang on to what I’ve got while I’ve got it, but—fuck, I’m a mess, and you shouldn’t have to—”

“You didn’t look in the attic, did you,” interrupts Steve.

The change of subject is enough to make Bucky look at Steve in surprise. “What?”

Steve’s expression is strange, a mix of fear and wildness and an odd kind of hilarity, and he even laughs, though it’s mirthless.

“I guess I should be glad that I’m holding it together enough that you haven’t—” He stops himself, shakes his head. “When you first came by my place and you looked around, you didn’t check the attic?”

“No,” says Bucky slowly. “Didn’t know there was one.”

Steve takes his hand and stands. “C’mon.”

He leads Bucky to the hallway closet, and pulls down on the cord dangling from the ceiling there to reveal an attic ladder. They climb up into a low-ceilinged, long space, dimly lit by the sunlight filtering through a couple of small skylights, dust motes glowing and dancing in the light. The attic is full of sheet-covered objects—old furniture, Bucky would have assumed—but when Steve turns on the lights and begins flinging the sheets off, Bucky sees that they’re paintings. Dozens and dozens of paintings that fill almost the whole attic. 

And most of them are paintings of Bucky.

Bucky in his early twenties, still a bit gangly and babyfaced, Bucky in his army uniform, Bucky as a Howling Commando, Bucky in Wakanda, Bucky as the Winter Soldier…

The paintings are all in different styles: some classic, realistic portraits and landscapes, others more abstract or impressionistic. The paintings of the Winter Soldier, for example, eschew fine detail and are all in black instead, all thick, elegant brushstrokes that convey brutal movement, while the paintings of Bucky in Wakanda are soaked in golden sunlight and almost hyperreal. There’s even a painting of him falling from the train, already small and receding amid all the snowy white, and he can’t look at that one for too long. 

It’s dizzying, almost like being in a mirrored funhouse. Everywhere Bucky looks is like another shard of mirror showing him some other part of himself, each one sharp enough to hurt.

“It was a long five years after the Snap, Buck, and I—I didn’t exactly handle it well,” says Steve. “After we killed Thanos—this universe’s Thanos—and after I helped out wherever I could with the—the recovery…there wasn’t really anything left for me to do. There was no fight that was gonna bring any of you back, being Cap felt like—like a joke, and I…”

Steve trails off and gestures around the attic.

“Became a crazy, reclusive artist?” finishes Bucky, and Steve barks a laugh.

“Pretty much,” he says. “Buck, you think you’re a mess? I spent most of the Blip painting you over and over again and thinking of all my regrets and mistakes, of everything I shoulda said to you or done for you. So I’m trying not to make the same mistakes again, but some part of me is always panicking when we’re apart, thinking I’m gonna lose you again, that I’m gonna fuck everything up again.”

Bucky walks around and looks at all the paintings, and yeah, he sees it, the jagged edges of Steve’s bitter regrets: in the painting of Bucky falling; in the sun-drenched paintings of him in Wakanda and how Bucky is positioned in the middle distance, as if observed from afar; in the paintings of him in their old apartment in Brooklyn, Bucky in his shirtsleeves or some other state of undress, more intimate but with something almost furtive about that intimacy; in the frankly uncomfortable portrait of Bucky as a Howling Commando, looking straight out of the frame at the viewer, his eyes bleak and haunted even as his posture is upright and his hands are ready on his rifle.

Bucky doesn’t need to ask what regrets and mistakes Steve is talking about: his art speaks more clearly than words ever could. And Bucky doesn’t know what to say in response. What could he say in response to this outpouring of everything Steve has kept locked up inside for years, for decades? What answer is there to all this grief and love and pain that’s mirrored between them? Bucky doesn’t have any words.

He knows what to do though.

He takes Steve in his arms and holds him. He kisses Steve, long and slow and steady, meeting Steve’s desperation with patience and love, he strokes Steve’s back until his tension eases. Bucky kisses him and kisses him, stoking the fire between them into something steady as a hearth fire, forgiveness of what doesn’t need to be forgiven in each kiss, until they’re breathing in sync, until Steve is soothed and pliant under his touch. Then he leads Steve out of the attic and into the bedroom, and undresses him with care, lets Steve undress him, lets Steve touch him and look at him.

Under that adoring, fervently reverent touch, Bucky knows Steve would paint him differently now: no more of that yearning, furtive distance, no more of that keen and agonized regret—only closeness instead, all of Bucky laid bare and open and loving, a way to try to immortalize what both of them so fear losing.

They tumble onto the bed, and Bucky fetches the lube and guides Steve’s hand to his ass, murmurs, “Get me ready for you, sweetheart,” and catches Steve’s answering moan with another kiss.

Bucky usually rushes Steve along a bit for this, impatient with how much care Steve takes, like he thinks Bucky’s ass is delicate, but now he lets Steve take his time, and takes his own time too, getting Steve’s cock slick with lube and jerking him off with his left hand until Steve is arched on the bed, gasping, driven wild as always by the smoothness and the speed, and after Steve comes, Bucky takes him in his mouth and licks and sucks until he’s hard again and begging, and only then does he straddle Steve and sink down on his cock, and god, it feels good, it feels right, it’s such a relief to finally have Steve inside him like this that he almost sobs.

“Oh, Buck,” breathes Steve, looking up at him with all the desperate love he’d poured into those paintings, and Bucky just—doesn’t move, for a bit, just sighs and lets himself feel it, strokes his own hard cock nice and easy as he takes in the sight of Steve, so gorgeously undone: his messy hair and reddened, swollen lips, his shining eyes burning with need and love, his heaving chest shining with sweat. 

Steve grips Bucky’s hips hard, like he wants to be even closer than they are, and Bucky takes that as his cue to move, riding Steve slow and steady, stroking himself, and all the while, meeting Steve’s bright and heavy gaze.

It’s almost awkward, all that eye contact and all the daylight filling the room, no shadows for either of them to hide anything in. But then, it’s not as if they haven’t laid themselves bare to each other already, in much deeper and more raw ways. And after seeing all those paintings, Bucky knows how truly and clearly Steve sees him and always has. He can see Steve in return here, like this, every part of him offered up to Bucky: his need and his love, his hunger, his awe and his care.

“I wanna see you come, Bucky,” says Steve, watching him with absolute, rapt focus. “Show me, give it to me.”

Steve thrusts up against him, matches his rhythm like the rise and fall of waves, Steve’s cock hitting home faster and faster now as Steve babbles praise and encouragement.

“You don’t know how gorgeous you are like this, when you let go,” he says.

“Yeah? You gonna paint me like this?” asks Bucky.

Loving and here and alive, no more regrets—that version of them deserves to come to life under Steve’s brush too.

“You gonna let me? You wanna see that, how I see you, how you look for me?”

“Yeah, please, show me, tell me you see it, how much I—” Bucky falters then, but fuck, can’t he be brave enough for this? “—how much I love you.”

“I see it, Buck, I do, I know,” says Steve, rubbing tender circles over the skin of Bucky’s hips with his thumbs, soft against the strength of his grip, and Bucky shudders, feels his orgasm building, the heat of it rising. “C’mon, let go for me, Buck, let me see it, let me see you come on me—”

He comes with a cry, and has just enough presence of mind to keep riding Steve through it and after it, until Steve comes too. When Bucky collapses beside Steve, shaking from the effort and the aftermath, Steve takes him in his arms, holds him close, and Bucky burrows in even closer, heedless of the sweat and mess. Even the barrier of their skin seems like too much distance right now.

Steve’s still looking at him, his attention almost as tangible as his touch.

“Did you mean it?” he asks quietly.

“Mean what?” asks Bucky, and Steve’s sex-flushed cheeks flush a bit darker.

“That I could, uh, paint you like this.”

“Yeah, Steve. I meant it,” he says, and knows Steve understands everything he means by the offer when he kisses him.

When Steve pulls back, he looks sheepish. “So, uh, is it okay if I go grab my sketchbook…?”

Bucky bursts into laughter, and Steve laughs too, even as Bucky peppers his face with laughing kisses. “God, I love you. Yeah, sweetheart. Go grab your sketchbook while you’re feeling inspired.”

They get cleaned up, and then Bucky drifts and dozes, tucked up close against Steve’s hip while he sketches with one hand and lets Bucky hold onto the other.

“I’ve got my own exit strategies too, you know,” says Steve quietly, still sketching. “And I’ve got one up on you, Buck: I actually used mine.”

Bucky is instantly very awake. “What?”

“After you fell, when I had to bring the Valkyrie down in the Arctic…” Steve keeps sketching, doesn’t look up. “I coulda found a way to bring her down safe enough and bail out. I didn’t have the exact coordinates with the instruments not working, but I remembered the readout from when they were. Howard could’ve worked out the rest with some math. But I didn’t.”

“Steve, what are you—”

“Because you were gone, and I just—couldn’t see a future without you. Didn’t wanna try. So I took the out.”

Bucky looks up at Steve, wide-eyed, but Steve just swallows hard, his throat visibly working, and keeps sketching.

“And on the helicarrier, when we were fighting? When I dropped my shield?” continues Steve.

“An absolute dumbass move,” rasps Bucky. “Just—so stupid—”

“That was an exit strategy too, Buck. Because I figured I’d rather die than kill you.”

“Like that wouldn’t have killed me too,” says Bucky, and sits up. “Steve—“

Steve puts his sketchbook aside and faces Bucky, fierce and focused. “I don’t begrudge you your exit strategies, Buck, whether they’re permanent or not. I understand why you need them. But you gotta make me part of them,” he pleads. “Whatever we do, we do it together, okay? Because we’ve tried being apart, and it’s—it’s been fucking awful every time, Buck. We’re bad at it.”

“Steve, you got no idea what you’re offering,” whispers Bucky, horrified.

“Yeah, I do. I fucking do, Buck. I’m offering what you offered me, back in that burning factory in Kreischberg, me on one side of a gap and you on the other. Whole place was burning down all around us, and you were in bad shape but you had a way out, and what did you do when I told you to go without me?” Steve grips the back of Bucky’s neck, tugs him closer so their foreheads rest together. “Tell me, Buck, I know you remember.”

“Not without you,” says Bucky, and he can almost feel the flames again, his throat tight and burning with remembered smoke. He closes his eyes, feels a tear snake down his cheek. “I said ‘not without you.’ And I meant it.”

Bucky would have burned in that factory rather than leave Steve behind there. There’s no timeline where Bucky would have left without him. And he knows the same is true for Steve.

“There you go,” says Steve, his voice rough. “That’s the way it still is, Buck. Whatever the exit strategy is? Whatever you gotta do? You’re not doing it without me, okay?”

“Okay,” says Bucky, and opens his eyes to the blue of Steve’s gaze, bright as the heart of a flame.

“Promise me, Buck. Please.”

“I promise, Steve. Not without you.”

Steve sags in relief against him, and Bucky kisses him, rough and needy, needing the reassurance that he’s here, alive, that none of Steve’s exit strategies worked, and neither did Bucky’s.

He kisses Steve, and thinks of the shipping container. That’s not a place for Steve. That’s not an exit Bucky would ever, ever ask Steve to take with him, even if they could have burned together, once, so many decades ago. The fire between them isn’t an ending, it hasn’t burned their friendship away. It’s been a crucible, maybe, forging them into something new. Or maybe it’s settled into a hearth fire, the steady warm proof of the home they’re making together.

So okay. Bucky needs some new exit strategies, ones that include Steve. He’ll have to get rid of the shipping container, or at least repurpose it. Leaving the country via cargo ship isn’t a fun time by any means, but it could come in handy some day. In the meantime, there’s the best possible future he hadn’t been able to bring himself to fully imagine, the one he’d only told part of to Dr. Raynor, so many months ago.

“Hey Steve?” he asks, when their kisses have subsided into soft slowness.

“Yeah?”

“You still got the urge to give me home improvements and shit?”

Steve smiles, bright and wide, and so, so happy. “Always, Buck.”

“Then can I—can I ask for one? It, uh, might involve us finding a new place. Together.”

“Of course you can ask,” says Steve, tremulous. “Of course we can find a new place, I’ll move anywhere with you, give you any kinda home improvement you want.”

“A garden,” says Bucky. “Nothing big, just—a place with a garden.”

“You got it,” says Steve, and kisses him, or tries to, anyway. They’re both smiling too much to manage it all that well. “Any other requests?”

“Um, a cat. And a dog,” he says, and Steve beams at him, clearly thrilled. Bucky adds, “And you, of course.”

“Well, you’ve always got that,” says Steve.

Because that’s it, that’s Bucky’s best possible future. Maybe he won’t be able to keep it, maybe it’ll all get taken away again, but he can at least be brave enough to ask for it. He can try to trust that he and Steve will do everything they can to keep it.

The sketchbook gets tossed aside, and Steve rolls on top of him, the heat between them building again, joyful and crackling.

“I’ve already got some decorating plans in mind,” says Steve, in between kisses to Bucky’s clavicle.

“Oh yeah? Me too,” pants Bucky. “Like, I was thinking, a lot of naked paintings of me on the walls—”

“Well then, you better get to work giving me inspiration for ‘em,” says Steve, laughing, and that’s a home improvement project Bucky is more than happy to help with.