Bucky jumped as his eyes opened to see Steve alarmingly close to his face.
"Oh my gods, why would you do that?" Bucky jokingly slapped Steve on the arm, grinning and turning over onto his side.
"Because it's your birthday, and sort of because I felt like it." Bucky groaned and stretched for all of half a second until Steve grabbed his arm and yanked him out of bed.
"It's your birthday, man, and you're not spending it in bed. It's already seven, you slept the day away!" Steve left Bucky no choice but to run behind him so he didn't end up being dragged on the floor.
"Seven? That's late for you?" Bucky ran behind Steve, being dragged chaotically toward the elevator door.
"Yeah. But forget that, we've got bigger things to worry about," Steve said, pressing the button for the kitchen floor.
"Like what? You do realize that I haven't celebrated a birthday in almost ninety years, right?" Steve shrugged and waited for the elevator doors to open.
"I know. I guess we've got a lot to make up for." Bucky knew that Steve had something planned, and normally that was a good thing when they were in a fight or something dangerous.
But Steve planning a birthday party was something entirely different. Especially when he was making up for ninety years worth of them.
"Oh boy."
The doors opened and Steve dragged Bucky out by his right arm, running toward the kitchen. Bucky smelled something that reminded him of sugar and butter cooking in the kitchen as Steve yanked him behind the couch.
"HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BUCKY!" All the Avengers were standing in the kitchen plus Percy, who was occupied with flipping blue pancakes on the stove. Sam, Tony, Clint, Bruce, Thor, and Peter were all standing behind the island with smiles on their faces.
Bucky was excited and all, but he noticed one face that was missing: Nat.
Tony had moved past the incident with his parents, even forgiven Bucky. Even though Tony seemed to be past it, Bucky still couldn't forgive himself.
Howard Stark would've lived to see Tony become Iron Man.
There was a stack of presents all wrapped in blue paper sitting on the island.
Bucky smiled, looking around at all the people that had come together just for him.
Just for him.
Bucky normally didn't enjoy being the center of attention, but he decided that for today he would allow it.
Steve put his arm around Bucky's shoulder. Bucky looked over to the huge stack of blue pancakes that Percy had made, each about the size of a Frisbee.
"Nat's in a meeting with Fury, so she promised me that she would call you later today. She was so mad that she had to miss it, but she wanted you to know that she was going to get you back. For… something," Steve told Bucky; he had missed the prank that Bucky had helped Clint with that ended in Nat getting hit by a Nerf dart.
"How many of those did you make?" Percy glanced at the stack.
"Thirty-six. Counted them myself," he said, adding another to the top of the stack. Bucky actually understood his reference; he had watched the Harry Potter movies upon Sam's insistence.
"Last year I got thirty-seven!" Percy's eyes widened as he realized that Bucky understood his reference.
"I understood that reference," Steve said, pointing at Bucky.
"Good. Now let's eat some freakin' pancakes," Percy replied.
Thor grabbed the most out of anyone; he decided to eat seven. He slathered them all in butter and doused them in syrup, making one huge mega stack of pancakes on his plate.
"Thor, you literally just used half a bottle of syrup and almost a whole stick of butter on seven pancakes. You're going to throw up later," Percy said, and everyone at the table just laughed.
"What? What did I say?" Tony sighed and looked to Percy.
"He'll probably go back for more. One time, he ate an entire box of Pop Tarts in one sitting and then drank an entire pot of coffee. We didn't think he'd ever stop flying off into the air with his hammer." Percy's eyes were the size of saucers as he slowly turned his head towards Thor, who was putting some major work in on the huge stack of pancakes.
"So enough about me and the obscene amount of food I eat. After we eat, I think Bucky should open his presents," Thor replied, trying to take the heat off of himself. Bucky looked down at his pancakes and took another bite.
"Um, you probably should open mine so it doesn't accidentally destroy something," Steve said, and Bucky looked at him with genuine concern.
"What did you get me that can destroy things?" Steve just smirked and shrugged, knowing that Bucky was going to enjoy his present.
"I don't know, you're just going to have to open it and find out." Bucky took another bite of pancake and eyed Steve warily.
"That makes me even more nervous. Is it going to, like, blow up in my face?" Steve laughed and shook his head.
"No, it won't blow up in your face. You'll probably like it." Bucky's eyes slowly drifted to the mini fridge sized box at the bottom of the stack of presents.
"Uh-oh."
A few minutes later, after everyone had cleared their plates and Thor had managed to eat three more pancakes, Bucky's phone rang in his pocket.
His therapist.
He still wasn't used to being able to carry a phone around because before Apple invented the one that blocked the signal that monsters used to track demigods, he was never able to use one. He found it helpful at times but annoying at others like this one, where he became immediately accessible to his therapist 24 hours a day.
He had completely forgotten about his session today, and he should have been there at eight; almost an hour ago.
"I forgot," he said after he answered the phone. "But I'm kind of in the middle of a party right now, so can I come maybe around eleven?" He waited for the reply on the other end, and it was exactly what he expected her to say.
"Yes, doc, I do have people to have a party with. Did you forget what today is?" Everyone busied themselves with washing dishes and rearranging things that didn't need to be rearranged in order to seem preoccupied while Bucky talked.
"Oh, you did? I thought you had all my stuff on your calendar." Steve tried not to laugh from the corner of the kitchen, because he knew exactly who Bucky was talking to, but apparently no one else did. Steve had never heard him talk to someone about keeping tabs on him. For all he knew, Bucky hated it when people involved themselves in his personal life.
"Yeah, see? I have a legit reason to party." Bucky rolled his eyes and sighed.
"No, I'm having a tea party with all of my little Barbies. Yes, they're real people!" Steve had a sip of coffee in his mouth at this particular moment, and after Bucky had explained to his therapist that he was actually having a party with real people, he spit it all over the wall in laughter. Bucky gave him a stern look and then a grin.
"You're a terrible friend," Bucky replied to something that his therapist had said. Steve thought that it was better at this point that he stop drinking coffee during Bucky's conversation with his therapist, because he didn't want to have to wipe it off the counter and wall again.
"Yeah, whatever. I'll be there. Just give me, like, an hour." Bucky hung up and looked at Steve, and the look on Steve's face as he tried to hold back his laughter was enough to send Bucky over the edge. As the two friends looked at each other, their ability to prevent themselves from laughing slowly broke down. They started laughing so hard, Steve started to get tears in his eyes and Bucky's stomach began to hurt. The rest of the Avengers looked between Steve and Bucky with smiles on their faces, watching the two friends laugh like they had back in the forties before everything in their lives went sideways.
"So your therapist thinks that we're Barbies now?" Steve barely got the question out of his mouth before he and Bucky started laughing again.
"I guess so. I think I've got an hour before she's going to come to the tower and drag me out by my hair."
"Okay, you've gotta open my present first. Tony would kill me if it got into his kitchen." Bucky cautiously eyed the large box that was labeled to him from Steve. He grabbed the boxes that were on top of that one and set them on the countertop beside him. "I'm not going to lie, this is kind of making me nervous." He peeled the wrapping paper away to find a wire cage beneath it.
"Steve, I don't like this." Steve grinned as Bucky took the last pieces of the paper off, seeing the cat staring back at him with curious eyes.
"It looks just like him!" Steve grinned as Bucky's eyes lit up when he looked at the cat. "How did you know?" Steve smiled as he watched Bucky take the cat out of the carrier.
"Okay. Since when does tin man like cats?" Bucky and Steve looked to Sam, the cat stepping onto Bucky's shoulder.
"Alpine used to do that," Bucky said, remembering his cat from the '90s. Steve grinned as Bucky cradled the cat in his arms.
"Umm… since like 1990."
•••
Bucky opened the rest of his presents, getting a package of magnetic letters from Sam. Apparently they were for his arm, but jokes on Sam; Bucky was able to rub in his face that vibranium isn't magnetic.
He got a car from Tony; a blue Ferrari identical to Steve's red one.
"Tony, that's too much-" Tony shook his head.
"You deserve it, Bucky."
He got a bottle of Asgardian champagne from Thor, which he was going to be especially careful with.
"It was fermented for five thousand years in my father's godly cellar."
Five thousand years.
Percy gave him a small waterfall that looked just like the one in the Poseidon cabin that held the drachma.
"Is this a replica of the one in the cabin?" Percy grinned and nodded, and then he slid the bottom platform out to reveal a small handful of drachma.
"You even put the drachma in there?! That's awesome!" Bucky put them into the bottom of the waterfall, smiling as Percy rubbed the new cat's head.
"What are you going to name him?" Bucky thought for a second and looked at the cat as it drank its water.
"What do you think?" Percy turned from Bucky to the cat.
"What about Apollo?" Bucky turned the name over in his mind a few times.
"Apollo. I like it."
Peter had made a colored pencil drawing of Bucky and Steve on the Cyclone at Coney Island, laughing as the roller coaster raced down the hill.
"You even drew little Steve!" Peter had drawn Steve considerably smaller than Bucky, about the size he was as a kid.
"I had to borrow some pictures of you guys from Mr. Stark to draw that, because Mr. Steve looked so different." Steve looked at Peter with a grin.
"You don't have to call me mister, Peter. Steve's fine." Peter shrugged.
"Okay."
"Peter, I love this. It's going in my room, right above my bed." Peter smiled proudly, excited that Bucky liked what he made.
"Thanks, Mr. Bucky!" Bucky grinned at how polite Peter was to everyone.
"Peter, I love the respect. But you can just call me Bucky." Peter smiled and nodded.
"Okay! This is literally so cool!" Everyone around the table grinned at his excitement.
Bruce got Bucky the lava lamp that he always talked about; he made sure to get it in blue because it was Bucky's favorite color.
"There are a lot of things in the world that confuse me, but these things have got to be top five." Everyone laughed, even though it wasn't a rare occurrence for Bucky to be confused by something in the modern world.
Clint got Bucky a rapid fire Nerf gun, which had bright green, blue, and orange bullets.
"Now you're in on my pranks. Use the fort anytime," Clint told Bucky as he unwrapped the gift.
"Awesome! I can definitely get with that program."
•••
After Bucky had opened all of his presents and completely forgotten about the first call from his therapist, his phone rang in his pocket.
"Crap! Sorry guys, I gotta go this time. It hopefully shouldn't be too long." As he said his goodbyes, he began to look for the keys to his new car when he remembered that Tony had explained the whole fingerprint thing to him. If he put his thumb on the button where the ignition normally was, it started the car with his fingerprint.
He still couldn't believe that such a thing existed, but leave it to Tony Stark to figure it out.
Tony put it in his personal garage to hide it since no one else was ever in there.
Bucky drove off to his therapy session in a brand-new car, so he rolled the window down and put his arm out, not even caring that it was his metal one.
He walked inside to where his therapist was expecting him and sat on the gray chair across from her.
"So, a party?" Bucky took a deep breath and rolled his eyes.
"Yes, and it was my party." It technically was his.
Even though he had nothing to do with planning it.
"Interesting. So who was there?" Bucky sighed.
"Are we really gonna do this?" His therapist eyed him carefully, reaching beside her and grabbing the notebook and pen.
"Oh- come on, is this gonna really happen?" His therapist shrugged.
"You don't talk, I write." Bucky sighed and folded his hands over his lap.
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
"Come on. There couldn't have been that many people there." Bucky shrugged.
"It's not that there were a lot of them, it's just their social status." His therapist scoffed.
"Who in God's green creation could you have had at your birthday party that was so high on the social totem pole that you can't tell me who they are?" Bucky knowingly grinned.
"You really want to know?" His therapist eyed him skeptically.
"Yes. If I wasn't serious about finding out, why would I still be trying to pry it out of you?"
"Fine. Don't laugh at me," Bucky replied with a sigh. "Tony Stark, and Steve, Sam Wilson, Peter Parker, Clint Barton, Thor, and Bruce Banner. And my brother." His therapist put the notebook in front of her face, trying to hide her smile from Bucky.
She didn't believe him as far as she could throw him.
"Who is your brother?"
"I thought we'd been over this before. Remember Percy, when I talked about him from Wakanda?" She nodded and pretended to write something, but he saw right through it and looked over the top of the book at her.
"Hey, doc, you do realize that I know you're trying not to laugh, right?" She tossed the book onto the table between them and then the pen after it.
"Fine, fine. I'll just say it: I don't believe you. I mean, I believe the part about your brother, and Steve, but Tony Stark? Right." Bucky looked at her, eyeing her and trying to figure out what he could do to prove it to her. He realized that he hadn't been here since he moved into the tower, even though it was yesterday.
"Are you serious? I finally got with a group of people that are nice enough to throw me a birthday party when I fought against some of them in a war, and now you're saying that you don't believe me?" Now that the words, "fought against some of them in a war" were leaving his mouth, he realized that she actually had a good reason to not believe him.
And they were worldwide legends.
She raised an eyebrow at Bucky, and he leaned his head back on the chair for a moment. His phone vibrated in his pocket, and he really hoped that she didn't hear it.
"Who is that?" Bucky looked at her and shrugged, fishing his phone out of the back pocket of his jeans.
"Answer it and put it on speaker," she said. He looked at the number on his iPhone screen, the new model that was safe for demigods to use. Somehow Apple had figured out how to block the signal that monsters could use to find demigods anywhere.
"For all I know, it could be someone calling to tell me that they have a long range ballistic missile aimed right at my bedroom. With my past, it wouldn't really surprise me." Dr. Raynor shrugged.
"That's fine. Pick it up before you miss it." Bucky cautiously swiped right to answer the call and pressed the speaker button.
"Hello?" He set his phone on the table beside the notebook and pen.
"Hi, Bucky! Happy birthday, sorry I missed you!" Nat's voice came through the receiver, and Bucky's therapist raised an eyebrow at him.
"Hey, thanks! How'd your meeting go?" He gave his therapist a look, shaking his head and looking down to his phone.
"It was good, but it wasn't really a business meeting like he said it would be. It was more to just catch up and see what was happening around the tower and everything. So how has your big day been? Most people don't make it as far as you have," Nat joked, taking a stab at Bucky for being old just as Sam loved to do so often.
"I guess it's kind of weird. I mean, a hundred and seven. Crazy, because the only person left in the tower that's older than me is Thor, and he doesn't really count." Nat laughed on the other end of the line, making Bucky chuckle a little. His therapist raised her eyebrows at the sight of him laughing, because it was something that she'd never seen before.
"I can kind of see how that's weird. I guess the only person that has any situation similar to you is Steve, and even he's younger than you." Bucky's mouth fell open and he scoffed.
"Did you just call me old?" As his therapist watched him have this conversation with Nat, even going as far as laughing and taking stabs at each other, she smiled and felt like she had done her job well.
"What? No, never," Nat replied, sarcasm thick in her voice.
"That's not very nice, Nat. I go from 'a god is the only person older than me' and then you just come out of the gate with 'you're old'!" Nat giggled.
"Bucky Barnes, you are impossible." He snickered and looked down to his phone.
"Thank you," he said happily, being completely sarcastic.
"You're absolutely welcome," Nat replied. "Hey, I'm back at the tower now, so I'll let you go. I just wanted to call and say happy birthday!" Bucky smiled and laughed.
"Thanks, Nat! Bye!" Bucky picked up his phone from the table, prepared to hang up after Nat replied.
"Bye, Bucky!" He hung up and shoved his phone back into his pocket.
"See, it wasn't someone trying to fire a ballistic missile at your bedroom! But I am curious to know who it was." Bucky sighed and rolled his eyes. "She sounded special." She raised an eyebrow at him and he looked out the window and then back to her.
"No, not like that. I guess she's a…" Bucky trailed off, looking for the word to describe Nat. "Friend," he finally decided. His therapist shrugged, studying him to see if he was being honest with her.
"That's fair. But is she a good friend?" Bucky smiled, looking down at his hands folded in his lap.
"Yeah. Yeah, she is. Better than you."
"Good, good. So how'd you meet her?" Bucky's eyes darkened as he thought back to the Red Room when he was the Winter Soldier.
"Doesn't matter," he replied coldly. She put her hand on the notebook between them, threatening to pick it up.
"We're not doing this again." She shrugged. "We are if you won't tell me." Bucky sighed and put his hands up in surrender.
"Fine, fine. The Red Room. I was one of the people-" he was cut off by the doctor's disapproving glare.
He wasn't supposed to refer to the Winter Soldier with "I".
"The other guy was one of the people that trained her in Russia."
"And you think that isn't important for me to know?" Bucky shrugged and frowned.
"No, not particularly."
"James, she was right." He gave her an "are you serious?" look and angled his head sideways.
"She's right about a lot of things."
"You are impossible."
Bucky shook his head and put his right ankle on his left knee, taking his black Nike shoe off of the floor.
"Thanks. You know, good friends don't call other people 'impossible', whatever that means." His phone dinged in his pocket, a text from someone coming through.
"Your phone must be party city today. Who is it?" Bucky looked at her and dug his phone out of his pocket once again.
"Do you think that my phone is, like, bluetoothed to my brain? I don't know," he said, looking at the screen to find out.
It was Percy.
"Read it to me." Bucky scrunched his nose at her.
"That totally violates the bro code."
"What's the bro code?" Bucky scoffed and tapped on the text, going to answer it.
"It's kind of like the unwritten rules between guys." She shook her head and gave him a sarcastic look.
"Well, duh. I know that. But how does telling me what someone texted you violate whatever the 'bro code' says?"
"Because it's kind of a thing that you don't tell other people about conversations with your bros."
"Because it'll expose you?" Bucky read the text and looked confused.
"No, it won't expose me, because I don't even know what it means."
"What does it say, James?"
"'When you get back, I'll be waiting on the curb for you'."
"From who?"
"My brother." She raised her eyebrows and shrugged.
"What could it be for?"
"I don't know. I just asked him."
"What did he say back?"
"He said that we're going... home."
I feel like this chapter was kind of bittersweet, because they got to have fun celebrating Bucky's 107th bday, but also had some insight into his therapy sessions. I watched Falcon and the Winter Soldier and saw the way that Bucky seemed to have a banter with his therapist so I decided to carry some of that over in this story, because it could be kind of funny at times.
But serious question:
Where is home?