The place Steve lived in was haunted. He, of course, only found this out after he had damn near paid it off completely.
The ghost haunting the place was usually pretty nice and sweet, even, but he had days where he was angry, pushing things over and slamming doors and projecting his own death on loop for hours - on those days, Steve told him he was acting like a poltergeist and could he please do that in rooms that Steve wasn't in.
His usual response was a grunt or scowl and a big show of him fading out like some emotional teenager.
The ghost had two names - Bucky and James. When he was having a bad day, he was James. When he was having a good day, he was Bucky. Steve called him Bucky and Buck and James and Jay and Jamie and his very own Dead Roomie.
Bucky didn't get why that was so funny to Steve - Steve didn't either, sometimes, but he could attribute it to his sense of humor. Bucky, it seemed, didn't have one, or if he did, it was made up of jokes only funny to him, which would make more sense than him not having one.
Bucky was from the 1930's on his good days, and 1940's on his bad days. Bucky had told him that was like that because in the 30's, he'd been a happy teenager then young adult who only worried about his next date and in the 40's, he'd been a sniper that had a lot of blood on his hands. Steve didn't ask Bucky for his full name, or when he'd been born and killed. And yeah, killed.
Bucky had told him early on, when he'd still been trying to get Steve to leave and never come back, that he'd been experimented on and died at the hands of a man he called Glasses. From what Steve knew of Glasses, he was evil, working for the Nazi's and German. That was it - but Steve wasn't one to pry. He was especially not one to pry when the whole thing just upset him.
The thing that upset him was, at least a little bit, how Bucky had a smile and all his limbs accounted for, while James had a scowl and only an arm and a half. Sometimes, the scene of Bucky/James losing his arm would play out, for whatever unearthly reason, and Steve would bare witness to something that plagued his nightmares and effectively made horror movies about as scary as kiddie stories that had angry dogs in them.
Sometimes, there were blood trails going down his hallways, and sometimes, Steve could hear, plain as day, "please, just kill me. I want you to kill me!"
Steve's friends were scared of Bucky and James and of the things they both shared with Steve. Tony, in particular, was so scared he pretended Bucky/James wasn't real. Thor, though, he was extremely interested in his roomie, and Natasha treated him like she would a puppy. Bucky stuck his tongue out at Tony a lot, and showed Thor memories of Brooklyn alleyways that held fistfights even more often.
But Bucky's real favorite, even when he was James, was Steve himself - he went so far as to call Steve Stevie and clean the dishes when Steve felt sick.
Bucky was really considerate in those moments, following him around like the puppy Nat sometimes went so far as to compare him to in every sense. And that sweet personality and helpful/eager way about him, of course, was a problem.
Steve was actually falling for a dead man...
Bucky's being in his twenties when he died made it, well, not really okay, but better, right?
