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Based on a Tumblr post - ask for a link if you're curious.

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By the time the two of them managed to calm down enough to look around, everyone but Steve had gone (Sam was a good guy, he'd seen how uncomfortable Steve was getting, and Tony certainly wasn't helping matters, he hadn't even needed Steve to ask him to shoo everyone out). There was a silence, the sort that tended to sound big.

Phil was sitting at one end of the coffee table. He had a rare, furious burning in his eyes, his cheeks pinked and his hair ruffled from running his hands through it. Comic books and trading cards were spread across the table, and he was shuffling through them absently, too annoyed to worry about scratching them by this point.

Bucky, on the other hand, was smirking at Phil from the other end, doing his best to look cool and unaffected. Steve could see the tension in his posture, the darting glances, and he knew that Bucky was much more bothered than he was willing to let on.

Steve…well, he sat to one side, hands clenched in his lap, embarrassed and angry and having no idea what to do about it. Because…well, it was Phil and Bucky. Phil was…was…he was Phil, always so put together, somehow kind and stern at once. Phil, who had idolized Steve since he was a kid, but somehow still managed to treat Steve like a person, rather than a hero. And Bucky, Steve's best friend, who Steve would have and had gone to the ends of the earth for. Bucky, who had chosen this, this to be the first thing he raised his voice over since Steve had found him again.

What the hell?

"Captain Rogers," Phil said softly, voice quivering with the barest hint of humiliation, which Steve knew meant he was definitely feeling it ten times worse. "I apologize. I…lost my head."

"Not yet," Bucky muttered, tapping his metallic fingers against the tabletop like a warning.

Cards slipped from Phil's fingers as he pursed his lips, narrowing his eyes at Bucky, and christ, of course they were gonna start this again. Neither of them was known for being malleable and easily-swayed.

Why, why did Steve always fall in with the stubborn ones?

"Okay, stop," he snapped, refusing to let Phil's shame-faced expression or Bucky's inability to look him in the eye sway him from his irritation. "I don't know what you two've snapped your caps about - and I mean what's really goin' on, because it's sure as hell not my ass - but I'm not gonna sit here and listen to it. You two straighten this out, or you can get used to not seeing much of me until you do."

Gathering up his sketchbook and pencils, he stood, pausing to loom over them as disapprovingly as he could (he had it on good authority from Stark that he could do guilt tripping better than anyone else in history, which sounded terrible, but it could come in handy, for sure). "Work it out," he said with as much finality as he could muster. "You…you…jerks."

Phil watched as Steve stormed off, radiating an almost parental disappointment. It was something he strove to master himself, and he'd always thought he was pretty good at it, but Rogers really took the cake.

"You're the jerk," Barnes groused, picking up one of Phil's rarest cards and gazing at it pensively. "You're the one who-"

"Yes," Phil cut him off, flustered. "I…apologize. For my unprofessional behavior."

Barnes snorted. "Right. Unprofessional."

Phil shifted where he knelt, carefully picking up each card and inspecting it for any damage his momentary loss of temper might have caused. he'd been such an idiot, raising his voice to Bucky goddamn Barnes, of all people. Bucky, who Phil had grown up knowing through highly-fictionalized comics and history books and museum exhibits. Bucky, who Phil had idolized nearly as much as he had Steve Rogers.

Bucky, who Phil had wanted to be.

Lifting his eyes to take in the sullen ex-assassin, Phil felt another small part of his childhood die.

Barnes was not Bucky. Not Phil's Bucky, anyway. He was entirely unlike what Phil had expected, even leaving out the obvious stylization of his comic book personality. Everything Phil had learned about him had said that Barnes had been a loyal, tough protector. And Phil supposed that he'd formed certain expectations based off of that, and off of what he knew of Steve Rogers. He'd expected…

Not this. Not this obnoxious person with the superior attitude. This…this jackass who treated Steve Rogers like an irritation, who took all the kindness and patience Rogers showed him and threw it back in his face, and then had the nerve to stay, to ask for more. And from the moment he'd met Phil, he'd acted as though he couldn't stand the sight of him.

For someone like Phil, it was like being run through.

Again.

"You don't know him," Barnes said quietly, still staring down at the card, brow knit angrily. "You don't know him better than I do."

Phil blinked.

"I'm sorry?"

Sighing through his nose, Barnes tossed the card down the table. Phil cringed.

"You act like you're some kind of authority on Steve Rogers. Like you know him. But this is what you know," he snapped, waving at the comics and cards. "This is who you think Steve is. You don't know anything."

Regarding Barnes silently, Phil looked down at the cards in his hands. Replacements, because Fury had been an absolute asshole and ruined the set he'd spent so long collecting. Cards that had meant more to him than just Cap paraphernalia. Captain America smiled up at him, saluting jauntily.

"I know what matters," Phil replied, spreading out the cards again. He plucked one up. "This was…well, the one I used to have was the first Cap card I owned. My mother gave it to me the day I came home with a split lip." He let his eyes flick up to Barnes briefly. "My first day of school. And pretty much every day after that."

Picking up another, he showed it to Bucky. "This one was from my uncle. He gave it to me when he found me hiding at the back of my closet at my mother's wake. He told me that Steve Rogers had been an orphan, and it didn't make me any less sad."

Another card. "This one was from my best friend. I served with him in the Army. He gave it to me after I saved his life. Two days later, he died saving mine. I remember him every time I look at it."

Another. "A gift to myself for surviving the Army." Another. "From my own handler when I joined SHIELD." Another. "From a woman who meant quite a lot to me, who I have lost."

Barnes' eyes were sharp as they followed the movement of Phil's hands, but his brow had smoothed out, and his fists had unclenched.

"What I know, Sergeant Barnes, is that Steve Rogers was a good man. And this?" He gestured to the cards much as Barnes had done. "This isn't about knowing him. It's about knowing myself. And…knowing who I want to be. It just seems to me that you, of all people, would understand that."

Barnes huffed a bitter laugh. "Yeah, well…that was a long time ago."

"Was it really?"

They sat in silence, Bucky leaning over the table to help gather up the cards. He gave more care this time, looking over each one as Phil had done.

"I suppose I just don't know what you have against me," Phil ventured as the tension left the room. "You seem to really hate me."

"I don't," Barnes said shortly. He held up a card for Phil to see. "I hate him."

For a moment, Phil thought he meant Steve. Then he saw which card it was - one of the few that depicted the childhood friends together.

Oh.

Oh.

"No one expects you to be him," Phil said (a lie, of sorts, and he thought back on his previous disappointment with some shame).

Barnes hummed softly, turning the card to inspect it again.

"No one is the same person they were yesterday," he continued. "Much less decades ago. I know I've changed, and I haven't had as long a time in which to do so as you have. And no one understands that better than Captain Rogers. He's not disappointed in you, Barnes. He just wants to help."

Rolling his eyes, Barnes handed the card to Phil. "Sure."

"I'd like to help, too."

Pausing, Barnes looked down at his hands. He clenched them a couple of times, seeming on the verge of speaking, before he sighed. "What if I can't be helped?"

"That's up to you," Phil pointed out. "But if there's anything I know about Steve Rogers, it's that he's not the kind of man who gives up. Especially not on his friends."

Standing, Phil gathered up the stacks of cards and comics. Barnes watched him, expression pensive. Taking a deep breath, Phil held out one of the cards for Barnes to take - the one with Bucky and Steve on the front.

"I didn't have a friend like you growing up," he said. "But I had Cap. And I had you. And that meant I was never really alone. No matter what else you've done in your life…you gave a lonely, scrawny, sickly kid that. More than once. So I'm not going to give up on you, any more than Cap is. So quit trying to make him."

"He will, eventually," Barnes argued quietly as Phil walked away, not sounding in the least bit like he believed it.

Phil laughed, not turning around. "Come on, Barnes. You know him better than that."