The world changed a lot in the last decades, thinks Bucky Barnes and watches his room-mate fighting with the bread knife.
He's not sure if he likes it yet, so he stays quiet and observes.
As good of an artists he is, Steve was always a bit clumsy when it came to things like this. You can't heal clumsiness with super serum.
They don't trust Bucky with the knife yet and Bucky doesn't like using knives with his flesh hand.
The metal hand had hurt, but he's still missing it for practical reasons.
Bucky can't help Steve.
Bruce Banner does.
He takes the knife from the blonde's hand and turns the bread around, then he cuts a perfect slice of bread while holding the bread with his right hand.
The world sure had changed a lot, thinks Bucky Barnes.
He can see it in the way the people are dressed.
The colors of the clothing are so intense that they seem almost unreal.
And they're so revealing. Bucky has difficulties at first, not to comment on the tiny skirts some of the ladies were. Back then he wouldn't have allowed his sisters to leave the house like that, but it seems perfectly normal now.
Women wearing pants that are so tight they could be painted on their skin.
It is really weird to see women wearing pants. Yes he'd seen some ladies in pants back then, but they were always actors or singers, not the kind of proper ladies that were considered good marriage material according to his mamele.
Perhaps he likes that the girls can wear what they want now, he thinks trying to balance a hot dog in his flesh hand and enjoying how carefree and relaxed the young lady seems.
The world changed so much that Bucky Barnes can barely take it, when he sees a black man and a white woman walking down the street.
There are golden rings on their fingers and they kiss each other without shame.
Bucky can feel his cheek getting hot and his eyes growing big and he observes the people around the stark tower closer the next days. There tons of couples of mixed heritage and cute little kids that look like their parents came from a different ethnical background.
Back then his tate had always expected him to marry a nice Ashkenazi girl.
He could play around and dance with the girls in the neighbourhood, but a non-jewish bride was out of question and if Bucky had even thought of trying to marry a black girl, his tate would have lost it completely.
He's pretty sure he likes it and he can't help but smile in the paper cup full of coffee awkwardly stuffed in his right hand while he watches the passers-by.
Bucky Barnes is a bit scared until he noticed how much the world changed.
When he sees two men kiss each other in the open, more than brotherly and no one seems to mind, he carefully looks out if there's police.
It's illegal for to men to be like that.
Back then people like that had to hide in unofficial little bars in living rooms, basements or dingy ware houses at the docks.
They'd nicked you in when you'd been seen kissing another man like that.
Steve puts a hand on his shoulder and quietly tells him that it is not illegal anymore. In this time men can lie with men and women with women, as long as they are of age and everything is consensual.
Bucky breaths shakily and rubs his face with his fleshy hand to calm himself down.
Perhaps he likes the future, he thinks and leans against Steve's shoulder with a smile.
Bucky Barnes is amazed how much things changed, but he likes to see that people still use paper and pen to figure stuff out.
He watches Tony and Bruce sitting next to each other, sketching the blueprint of his new arm.
It leaves him in awe to see them work, with smudged hands and coffee mug in their right hands.
They've got different foci, Tony wants the design to be flashy, while Bruce wants it as usable and as unobstrusive as possible.
They make a great team.
Bucky had always liked engineering and machines.
He looks down on the half-finished drawings.
On Tony's and Bruce' hands there are identical bumps. On the right side of the middle finger, where the pencil is placed.
The finger is slightly crooked from pushing letters with force on the paper for years, slanted to the wrong side and pointy.
When they were children no one tied their hand on their back to prevent them from using the "evil" hand.
No one hit their left hand with cane or ruler every time they wrote with their left.
He's a bit envious, Bucky thinks.
It's a good change, he decides and scribbles a few suggestions on extra paper. He's a bit embarrassed by his uneven, child-like letters. He never liked his writing. Steve is better at this.
Bucky Barnes thinks the future is great, when he clicks his new prosthetic into place for the first time and it doesn't hurt. It almost looks like real skin, soft and sensitive. This is not a weapon! It's like a real arm. Hecan't stop touching and marveling how it feels when his right hand id stroking his arm, pinching the fake skin and he can feel the surface of the table under his fingertips.
Like a child with an exceptional Hanukkah gift, he melts in the loneliness of a corner of the room and revels in the opportunity to write scribble in his note book with his left again. Slanted letters, they're slightly smudged by the back of his hand. How it had been back then, when he didn't know the war yet.
He decides that he definitively loves the future, that can give him an arm that almost as functional as the one he was born with.
It's a good future if he can kiss Steve without getting arrested even though he's Christian and a fella.
It's an awesome future where people are not allowed to hit their children for loving someone with dark skin, wearing short skirts and tiny shirts or using their left hand to draw a picture.
And maybe he is a bit smug when he notices that the Stark Tower is not made for right-handed people.
That the icons on Stark pads are on the left side of the display, that the blades of all knives are sharpened at the right side of the edge and all the scissors and can-opener, all machines, even the way the toilet paper is installed in the bath rooms is made to fit a left-handed person' needs. Tony's.
He turns the bread around and takes the bread knife from Steve's hand and cuts a perfect slice of bread and maybe it makes him perhaps like the Stark son a little more, even though he's still annoying as hell.