Chapter Text
John was nervous; he kept fidgeting with his phone and checking that he had the correct address. The building’s stairwell smells faintly of old wood and boiled coffee as he climbs the stairs. He keeps climbing until he reaches his destination. John stands in front of apartment 3B in his civil clothes, his knuckles hovering over the door. For once, his palms feel clammy, and he wonders if a white shirt and a pair of jeans make him seem presentable enough.
He knocks.
The man who answers is smaller than John, wiry with age but not fragile. His cardigan hangs a little loose on his shoulders, and his hands tremble faintly with time. His eyes, though, are sharp. Curious. Guarded. “Yes?” He says.
John clears his throat. “Hi. I’m sorry to come unannounced. I’m here about Rebecca Barnes.” A beat. The man’s face stills.
“I’m. Was her husband,” he says quietly. “Name is Bobby Singer.”
John nods once with a serious face. “I was… I’m an old friend of her brother. James Barnes.”
For a moment, Bobby simply studies him, and John thinks this may be a failure, another one. Maybe Rebecca didn’t talk about her brother, and this man doesn’t know anything… But then the lines in his face shift, not suspicion, but something older. Memory, maybe.
“Well,” Bobby murmurs, “that’s a name I haven’t heard out loud in a very long time.” He steps aside, gently. “Come in, son.”
The apartment is filled with warmth. There are books stacked neatly on side tables, and framed photographs cover the shelves and the walls, some black and white, some color, all worn at the edges from time and affection. A gentle breeze stirs the curtains by the window.
Bobby pours coffee for them both without asking after they sit on the couch, and John takes the cup, though he doesn’t drink it.
“She passed in her sleep,” Bobby says. “Peacefully. It was a good day. Sunny outside. She’d made us pancakes that morning like she would do any day.”
John tries to speak, but his throat’s tight. “I didn’t know,” he manages to say. “Neither did James.”
Bobby nods, no judgment in it—just understanding. John was thinking about how his parents never got to be so old. The conversation flowed without pressure. “She never knew what happened to him. Not really. But she never stopped hoping. Even when the years stretched too long for most people to keep faith, she kept it. Quietly.”
“She… she didn’t mention him in the obituary,” John says then. “The other day James mentioned her, and I looked her up, that’s when I found it.”
“She asked me not to write anything about him,” Bobby replies. “Didn’t want the press picking it up or anything. Said it wasn’t about what the world thought. It was about the part of her that always stayed his sister.”
John swallows. “She kept his name.”
“She did,” Bobby says, a faint smile ghosting across his face. The man told John the story of how they met. She was older than him, an independent woman who wasn't thinking of marrying anyone until she fell in love with him.
“She told me before we got married: ‘I’m Rebecca Barnes. That name is who I am, Bobby. I’m not giving it up, not because I don’t love you, but because it’s the only thing I still have that connects me to my brother and my family.’ And I told her to keep it. It was the only thing to do.” He chuckled. “She was a force that one.”
John’s eyes drift to the album of photos Bobby left on the coffee table. A younger Rebecca, in her late twenties maybe, with kind eyes and a soft smile, in front of what looked like her classroom.
“She taught third grade,” Bobby says. “Had a way with kids. Patience like I’ve never seen. And funny, too. She had this trick where she could make a whole classroom laugh with just a look.” There’s a quiet moment. And John takes a sip of coffee.
“She ever talk about him?” John asks, voice barely audible.
“All the time,” Bobby says. “In the early years, she wrote him letters. She kept them all in a box under the bed that I still have there. Birthdays. Holidays. Random Mondays. She’d tell him about her students, about the books she was reading. About me.”
He paused then, sighed. “She knew they were never going anywhere, but she wrote them anyway. Bucky was her big brother, almost like a father to her. He was her world.”
John lets out a shaky breath. “He thought she might be dead. That if he tried to find her, he’d… find nothing. Or worse, that she would hate him and still be alive.”
Booby flipped through the album's pages until he found a copy of an old photo. In it, you could see a little Rebecca, Bucky, and oh… Steve Rogers. Of course. At least this time, seeing him didn't make John’s heart die in his chest.
“She always hoped he wouldn’t try to find her,” Bobby says. “Not because she didn’t want to see him. She would have loved to. But because she was afraid of what that could mean for him.”
John looks up at that. “She was afraid for him?”
“Always,” Bobby nods. “Even after that mess with Romanoff’s intel, when the whole world found out what happened to him, she locked herself in the bathroom for hours. I could hear her crying through the door. She never blamed him. Not for a second. But knowing what he’d been through… it broke something in her. And thinking of him seeing her so old and fragile scared her so much, she didn’t want him to hurt.”
John’s voice is rough when he answers. “He doesn’t know any of this. He…”
“He should,” Bobby says gently, cutting John mid-sentence. “He deserves to.”
A long silence. John stands, slowly, and looks around the room once more. This time being quiet and considerate of the life Rebecca built, at the quiet love that still lives in it.
“Would you mind,” John says, “telling me more? About when they were kids?”
Bobby smiles, old and fond. “Sure. Pull up a chair and maybe actually drink your coffee. I’ll show you the letters, too. She kept them like treasure. Perhaps it’s time they went to their real destination.”
When John leaves the apartment, he has his hands full. Bobby gave him the letters, Rebecca's favourite tea and cookies, which he still buys, albums and albums of photos, some of her CDs, and one of her cardigans. He knows he’s carrying something important, the life of a remarkable woman or what’s left of it.
Days later, John is wearing his favourite sweats and a gray hoodie that matches. He cleaned up and shaved a bit. The morning was calm. Well, as calm as New York can be, and he is checking Google Maps for the fifth time, looking for coffee shops.
After that, with the coffee now secure and a few chocolate protein bars he stole from the Tower’s kitchen in his pocket, he kept walking. The building on the other side of Brooklyn, where he is headed, is older and quieter. John knocks when he is in front of the door, shifting the weight of the heavy box in his arms. His knuckles ache from holding it too tightly.
Nothing.
He knocks again after leaving the box and the coffee on the floor.
Eventually, the door creaks open. Bucky stands there, shirtless, hair a mess. His eyes are still bleary with sleep, but the bags under them indicate otherwise, and the deep line between his brows says the wake-up call wasn’t appreciated. “What the hell are you doing here?” he mutters.
John clears his throat and tries to stay calm, as Yelena had advised. “Just checking on you, it’s been a few weeks.”
“Well, you’ve done it. Goodbye, Walker.” Bucky said bluntly
John knows what he has to do, so he picks up the box and says, “I went to see Rebecca’s husband.”
That wakes the other man up a little more. His jaw tightens. His whole posture changes, and his eyes open up. “What the fuck? Husband? Seriously?”
“I brought you something,” John says.
Bucky eyes the box. “You brought me a box, John. A Box.”
“It’s not a bomb. Can I come in?” A pause. Then a reluctant step back. John finally enters Bucky’s apartment and well…. The place is just bare. Not messy, just empty. No clutter, no warmth. A couch. A few books. At least there is a coffee table with scratches in the wood. The walls are mostly blank, except for three photos: one of Sam and Bucky, one of Steve, and one of the three of them together looking uncomfortable at a press event that makes John chuckle. A bottle of whiskey stands surrounded by others on the kitchen counter, half-finished.
John tries not to stare at anything, but he can’t help trying to learn as much as he can. It’s so different from Bobby and Rebecca’s apartment.
Banres notices. “Don’t expect much, Walker. I’m not trying to impress anyone.”
“Yeah. Got that,” John mutters. “Where should I put this?”
“Wherever.” John sets the box on the table and steps back. Bucky looks at it like it’s radioactive while he puts the coffee on the counter. John finally notices he’s not wearing his metal arm.
“I didn’t take everything,” John says. “But Bobby, her husband... He wanted you to have this. He said she kept all the letters she wrote you. Mostly the ones she never sent.”
Bucky frowns, looking at the brown box with renewed interest, but says nothing.
“There’s albums of photos. Her favorite tea. Music she liked and CDs. Bobby still buys some lemon cookies, even though she’s gone. Her cardigan’s in there too.”
For a second, Bucky doesn’t move. He looks briefly at John with big, open eyes. Then, with slow hands, he steps toward the box and lifts the lid. Right on top is the cardigan. It smells like their home did, and it brings John memories of the other day, soft wool, pale blue. Bucky stares at it. His breath catches. He doesn’t touch it yet, just looks and looks… Almost for an uncomfortably long moment.
Then he pulls it out gently with the one hand he has, beneath it, letters tied in twine, yellowed at the edges. His name was written in her hand, over and over again. James. He flips through them. One envelope dated 1952. Another: 1978. The most recent is from just two years ago.
He opens one while John watches him, and Bucky skims the first lines.
Dear Jamie, I’m not sure where this letter will end up. Probably nowhere as all the others. But I saw a man in the market today who looked like you, and it made me hope… Stevie is back, you know? I just wish you were, too.
That’s all he reads from that letter. He folds the letter back up and drops it. Then another. And another. His breathing went ragged. John has never seen him like this, with all these emotions on his face and every move of his body revealing those feelings. It amazes John and scares him at the same time. It’s beautiful.
When Bucky opens the photo album and sees her as a middle-aged woman, grinning in the sunlight, standing in front of Central Park, something breaks. His knees hit the floor. His hand covers his face. And then he’s sobbing. Not quiet. Not polite. It’s hoarse, guttural, ripped from somewhere deep he never lets anyone see.
John doesn’t speak. He just lowers himself slowly to the floor, sitting beside him, close but not touching. He doesn’t know what to do, and he doesn’t want to scare Bucky. He just wants him to know that he’s not alone now.
“I thought… I thought she’d forgotten me,” Bucky gasps between breaths. “I thought maybe that’d be better.”
“She didn’t,” John says quietly, trying to reassure him.
“I wasn’t there. All those years, she was alive, John and I didn’t even know.”
“She knew you loved her,” John says then. “That’s why she wrote the letters, Bucky.”
Bucky’s voice splinters as he cries. “I didn’t want her to see what I became. What they turned me into.”
“You didn’t become anything. You survived,” answers John. But Bucky laughs, bitter and broken. John doesn’t say anything after that. There’s nothing to say that would make this right.
Eventually, Bucky pulls in a shaky breath and sits upright. He wipes at his face with his hand, eyes swollen and red. The letters are still scattered around him. “Thanks,” he mutters.
Then, without meeting John’s eyes, “You can go now.” But John doesn’t move.
“I’ll go tomorrow.” He says. And Bucky scowls at that. “What?”
“I’m staying. Just for today, Bucky.” John says, smiling.
“I don’t need a fucking babysitter.” Bucky said with a fair bit of incredulity in his tone.
“I know,” John laughs. “But I’m staying anyway.”
Bucky opens his mouth like he wants to argue that, but the fight’s gone from his body today. He just nods once, barely, and they continue looking through the box.
The sun sets outside without either of them noticing. The box remains open on the floor, Bucky’s coffee untouched. The room is dim, filled with the low hum of silence. They are sitting on the couch now, side by side, and waiting for a pizza delivery. The photo album rests on Bucky’s lap, closed again. His shoulders have stopped shaking, but he hasn’t spoken in a while.
John doesn’t push him. He knows pain and loss. He knows Bucky needs time with it.
Eventually, Bucky shifts slightly. Leans. His shoulder brushes John’s. Then settles there, fully, his weight resting just enough to say don’t leave. John doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe. Just let it happen. It’s not a kiss. But it’s enough. After dinner, he puts his arm around Bucky's shoulders, and he falls asleep like that.
John woke the morning and found he’d slept on the couch. But has a big black blanket draped over him. Bucky was still asleep next to him on the floor, also with a blanket. John smiles to himself.
A few days later, they were back in the training room.
John wasn’t sure why he agreed, maybe because it felt normal after all of these strange weeks. Or maybe because normal didn’t exist anymore, and this was the closest he could get. Bucky hadn’t said much since the day in his apartment, but his silence felt different now. Quieter. Less like distance and more like trust. John had been wanting to spar since they went back to the Tower, and today was finally the day.
They circled each other slowly, both of them already sweating from the warmup. It was too hot in the room, the air thick with heat and tension. They hadn’t even thrown the first punch yet, and John’s shirt was already clinging to his back, so he took it off.
“You sure you’re up for this?” John asked, trying to keep it light.
Bucky tilted his head. “You’re the one who looks like he hasn’t slept.”
“Didn’t,” John admitted. “Dreams suck.”
Bucky didn’t reply. He just stepped forward, and the spar began.
It was brutal. Not elegant. It never was, just fists and instinct and too many unsaid things. John moved on adrenaline and need, throwing punches he barely aimed, blocking with the kind of desperation that came from needing something you couldn’t get.
They slammed into each other with more force than necessary. Bodies crashing, arms locking, legs tangling. Bucky’s shoulder hit John’s chest, and the sound of it echoed like a drumbeat in the empty room. The world narrowed to sweat and breathing and muscle and pressure, and John’s burned skin from the accident felt on fire.
John grabbed Bucky’s waist to throw him off-balance, but Bucky twisted instead and shoved him against the wall, hard. Their bodies hit with a dull thud, and for a second, neither of them moved. Bucky’s breath was hot on his neck. John didn’t push back. Didn’t move.
And Bucky didn’t pull away.
John could feel the heat radiating off him, the weight of his body pinning him to the wall. His chest was heaving. He was already half-hard, and it was humiliating, but he couldn’t do anything to stop it. His skin was boiling, and he wanted to get out, yet he couldn’t bring himself to move.
Bucky’s eyes searched his face, flicking to his mouth, then back up. “Say something,” Bucky said, voice low.
John didn’t. He fucking couldn’t. His mouth was dry, and his pulse was hammering. He just looked at Bucky, heart in his throat, hope clawing at his ribs.
Bucky kissed him. It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t careful. It was desperate and brutal, more teeth than lips, a clash of want and fear and all the tension they’d been dragging behind them for weeks. John’s hands gripped Bucky’s back as he whimpered like he was afraid he’d fall through the floor without him.
Bucky shoved him harder into the wall and kissed him deeper, like he could bury something inside him and never let it out—two men staring at each other, drowning in the other. John could feel Bucky, like really feel him getting hard. He moaned at that by accident, quietly but raw, and then suddenly the door opened.
“Oh my God,” Yelena’s voice rang out.
They broke apart like they’d been electrocuted. John stumbled back, wide-eyed, flushed, mouth swollen. Bucky looked like someone had hit pause on a horror film. Yelena stood in the doorway holding a water bottle, eyebrows halfway to her hairline.
“Do not stop on my account,” she said, perfectly deadpan.
“Yelena,” Bucky growled with a fucking funny voice. John thought it sounded angry yet full of shame and lust.
She held up her hand. “Nope. I don’t want to know. I am leaving. This never happened.” She waved her hand vaguely above her head.
And just like that, she turned and walked out, muttering something in Russian under her breath. The silence that followed was unbearable, and John knew he had to say something.
John looked at Bucky. “So… What now… James?”
Bucky didn’t answer. He just leaned forward again, forehead resting lightly against John’s. And for once, John didn’t need him to say anything.