So I play softball and my brother plays baseball. My dad coached a high school baseball team when I was little. Basically I've grown up with baseball. Yesterday there was a Reds/Dodgers game on TV and I came up with the idea for this chapter while watching it kinda because of the hints to Steve watching baseball at the end of the First Avenger. And because baseball's a spring sport that I can write.

I got a great idea in a review that I'm going to be working on pretty soon, but it may be in a few chapters as I've already started one. Thank you to WildMan98 for the new idea!!!

"Buck. Buck. Buck. Buck. Buck."

Bucky woke to the monotonous sound of his name being repeated over and over again. There's only one person that was allowed to call him that.

"WHAT?!" Bucky opened his eyes and slapped Steve on the shoulder.

"Wow. Didn't expect that."

"So are you just going to wake me up and leave for no reason?"

"Heck no. We've got baseball practice in an hour," Steve explained. Bucky's mind almost didn't register what Steve had said.

"We? You mean you?"

Steve grinned and shook his head.

"Nope. You're on my team now. We're leaving in an hour," Steve replied.

"Dude, I don't have a glove, or-" Bucky stopped as he almost tripped over the sheets tangled around his feet. Steve bit back a laugh as Bucky stood back up.

"Yes you do. It's in the closet, along with a bat, batting gloves, and a helmet."

Bucky couldn't argue now. He felt like a kid being forced by his parents to engage in something physical.

"Well… I don't have a jersey."

Steve laughed and shook his head.

"You'll have one in about…" he checked his watch, "fifty-seven minutes. Besides. It'll be fun." Bucky set his jaw and cocked his head at Steve. "Fun," Bucky scoffed.

"Yep. Meet you downstairs."

Bucky sighed and walked into the closet, where he found a bright red bag full of everything he'd need. He had both a left-handed glove and a right-handed glove to use, which could only mean one thing:

Steve was going to volunteer him to pitch.

"Great," Bucky spat, grabbing a pair of shorts and one of his high school baseball spring training t-shirts. He grabbed a Yankees hat that he had bought when he had finally gotten back into the world after the Winter Soldier. It matched with the navy blue and white color scheme of his high school.

He grabbed a pair of sunglasses and shoved them into his pocket, grabbing the bag full of his equipment. He took the elevator downstairs and found Steve blending a protein shake at the countertop.

"Well aren't you just a ray of sunshine," Steve said, acknowledging Bucky's cutting glare as he dropped the bat bag next to the couch.

"Hey. I would be if I weren't going to be around ten guys that I've never met before for however long we're going to be there. I don't even know what I'm doing!"

"Are you kidding me?! You were the best on the high school team. Don't even go there," Steve retorted. Bucky scoffed at him and looked for something in the fridge to eat for breakfast. He emerged with one of Morgan's pink cupcakes and a leftover slice of pepperoni pizza.

"Yeah right," Bucky replied through a mouthful of pizza.

"You're seriously eating cold pizza and a cupcake for breakfast," Steve said, not even asking it in disbelief. He stated it like a fact, because, frankly, the notion didn't surprise him.

"Yep. You got a problem?"

Steve grinned and shook his head.

"I'm not going to give you the 'breakfast is the most important meal of the day' speech. You're a big boy, and you're going to put your big boy pants on and make your own choices no matter what I say."

Bucky scoffed at Steve and finished off the pizza.

"Come on, grandpa spangles. Drink faster." Steve shot him a sideways glare as he put the blender away.

"Did you just say what I think you said?"

Bucky shrugged. "What did I say?"

"I'll remember that," Steve jabbed. "By the way, here you go." Steve hurled a pair of red Nike cleats at Bucky.

"Was that necessary?" Bucky caught them easily.

"Yes."

"Sure," Bucky replied, drawing the u out to add sarcasm.

•••

"So what am I supposed to do?" Bucky walked with Steve to the diamond, the two friends carrying their bat bags on their backs and blowing bubbles with bubble gum.

"Play baseball."

"You moron. I know. That's what you're dragging me here for. But like, am I gonna be an outfield scrub since I'm ancient, or do I play somewhere in the infield?"

Steve grinned.

"Infield. You're too good for the outfield."

Bucky grinned. At least someone was confident in him.

"Where do you play? I can't imagine you on a baseball field after what you were like last time I played."

Steve shoved him and opened the gate to the dugout.

"I catch."

Bucky scoffed. "You, Steven Grant Rogers, catch? Last time I was on a baseball diamond the ball was as big around as your leg." Bucky set his bag next to Steve's on the edge of the dugout closest to the first baseline. The dugout had a cement floor and a wooden bench, a metal wall with foam padding between the dugout and the baseline. There was a step up where the roof over the dugout ended and the small strip of concrete between the wall and the step started.

Bucky and Steve were the first to get there, so they grabbed their gloves and a baseball to throw in the grass outfield. After a second of debate, Bucky grabbed his right handed glove.

After all, he was right handed. He slid the glove over his metal hand and squeezed it as hard as he could, breaking it in instantly because of all the pressure he could apply with his metal hand.

"You're set free from here at ten," Steve said. Bucky threw the baseball to him and checked his watch.

"That's two hours!"

Steve grinned and threw the ball back to Bucky.

"I'm sure you'll make it somehow."

Bucky shrugged and caught the ball cleanly. "I made it through eighty years, two hours'll be easy enough."

Two more of the guys dropped their bags in the dugout, running out to the field to throw next to Steve and Bucky.

"Stevie Wonder, who'd you bring?" Steve turned to the guy who had asked.

"I thought we had established that Stevie Wonder was done."

"I mean, I don't think we can really get rid of it."

"Fine. It's not the worst thing I've ever been called," Steve said, eyeing Bucky.

"But seriously, who's the stud?"

Bucky hid his smile.

"This is my best friend." Steve grinned at Bucky.

"No way. You recruited the man. The big papi of baseball?" Bucky grinned and then gave Steve a confused look.

"You called me the big papi of baseball?"

Steve shrugged. "Uh… maybe. But let's be honest, compared to what you call me, that's not too bad."

The two guys looked back and forth between Steve and Bucky.

"I've got a whole list of nicknames for you guys if you ever get bored with Stevie Wonder."

"No! I mean, I guess I forgot to introduce you guys…" Steve said, trying to steer the conversation away from the nicknames Bucky had given him. "Buck, Ryan and Brady." Bucky smiled and held his right hand out for the guys to shake.

"Are we supposed to call you Buck? He's called you Bucky, Buck, James, Barnes, tin man, metal man, white boy, and pretty much anything else you can think of."

Bucky shoved Steve on the arm, though not hard enough to knock him over. "Anything to do with my actual name," Bucky replied, shooting a glare at Steve.

"Cool, cool. So hit us with some of that list," Ryan said. He was the taller of the two, with sandy blond hair and a muscular build. He had bright green eyes and a friendly smile.

"No! Absolutely not. You can't ruin me like that," Steve pleaded.

"Yes I can. So far, I've got Grandpa Spangles, goody two shoes, Super Patriot, Capsicle, beanpole, wheezer, Dorito, ballerina, Stars and Stripes. There's probably a few more that I'll think of later."

The guys looked at Steve and slowly started to crack, and then finally started laughing after they couldn't hold themselves back anymore.

"So I've gotta ask where some of those came from because I'm kind of confused. Capsicle, beanpole, wheezer, Dorito, and ballerina. What are those about?" Bucky looked at Steve and remembered him when he was much, much smaller.

"Did he ever tell you guys how small he used to be?" The guys looked at Steve and shook their heads with excited grins.

"No," Brady replied.

"I've gotta go get the picture," Bucky said, laughing as he jogged to the dugout. He pulled the small picture out from behind his phone case of he and Steve from the forties. Bucky was in his Sargent's uniform and Steve was standing beside him in a leather jacket, their arms around each other.

"No. You don't have to show them that," Steve said as Bucky jogged back to the guys.

"Why? It's a good picture." Bucky turned the small picture to the guys to see.

"No way! So that's why he's beanpole!" The guys started laughing hysterically at Steve, occasionally pointing their fingers at him but unable to say anything because of their laughter.

"He's wheezer because he had really bad asthma when he was a kid, ballerina because he wears spangly tights, and Dorito because his body is built exactly like a Dorito."

•••

The rest of the guys got to the practice and took the field, Ryan up to bat first. Their pitcher was a guy named Zach, whose average pitch clocked in at about 65 miles an hour.

"Dude, throw me a strike!" Mike complained from behind the plate.

"Who else do you want to pitch?!"

"Buck!" Bucky snapped out of his fixed gaze at the dirt at shortstop.

"What?" Bucky replied timidly.

"Come throw me a few! Zach can't pitch to save his life!" After a brief moment of indecision, Bucky walked the few steps toward the pitcher's mound from shortstop.

"Are you sure you want me to do this? Today's the first time I've even thrown a baseball in ninety years, let alone pitch one."

Ryan snickered. "I trust you. Warm up for a few." Bucky shrugged, and then realized that Ryan was a left-handed batter.

"Hey, little guy! Grab me my other glove!" Bucky still affectionately referred to Steve as "little guy" on occasion, just to keep old tradition alive.

"What does he mean, 'other glove'?! Does he throw both?!" Tom, their right fielder, yelled.

"I didn't use to. But I could probably hurl something with my left," Bucky replied as he turned his metal hand over and shrugged.

"Hey, tin man! Catch!" Steve tossed Bucky's left-handed glove from the dugout.

"It's actually a vibranium-gold alloy," Bucky muttered under his breath.

"What?" Steve yelled to Bucky as he slipped the glove over his right hand.

"What? Oh. Just saying that it's a vibranium-gold-" Bucky threw a left-handed pitch as hard as he could into Steve's glove. "Alloy. Eat it, Mr. Rogers." Bucky had done some pop culture research after being thrown back into the modern world and had found out that there actually had been a man named Mr. Rogers who had a TV show for children.

"Someone read the gun on that thing!" Cameron in left field exclaimed.

Tony had put a speed gun in Steve's catcher's glove to measure the speed of every pitch. All he had to do was pull on one of the leather pieces on the outside of the glove to get the speed of the most recent pitch.

"Holy- crap!" Steve said, catching himself. He wasn't going to let Bucky hold the fact that he had cursed over him forever.

Plus, he'd have to put a dollar in his own Swear Jar.

"You'll never guess how fast that was."

Bucky shrugged and squeezed his glove a few times. "Don't know. Sixty?"

Steve threw the helmet off and stood up.

"That's all you think it was? You undersell yourself, cyborg."

"How fast?" Tim in center field asked.

"Too bad Tim and Tom in right and center aren't brothers that repeat each other, because then we could call them Timmy and Tommy Timmons."

"You watched The Sandlot?"

Bucky grinned. "'Course I did."

"Anyway. You just threw a ninety-five point six." Bucky gave Steve a sarcastic look.

"You're a bad liar, Spangles."

Steve threw his hands up. "I'm drop-dead serious."

Bucky shrugged. "Strike?"

"Dead-center."

Bucky turned his head to the dirt and gave a small smile. He threw a few more pitches to make sure he wouldn't hit Ryan with what everyone else called "The VG Destroyer", named after his vibranium and gold left arm.

"I'm gettin' in the box!" Ryan stepped into the batter's box and positioned himself to swing the bat.

"I'm gonna give you my heater!" Bucky said, quoting The Sandlot.

"Don't you dare! You're gonna decapitate me!" Ryan joked.

"I won't decapitate you," Bucky whispered to himself, remembering his time as the Winter Soldier where he was sure he had decapitated people on a few different occasions.

He began his windup facing the first base dugout, bringing his glove to his chest and looking directly into Steve's glove over the top of his own. He took a step back toward third base and moved his metal arm behind his body, throwing the ball into the strike zone exactly as he had done multiple times before. Ryan swung for the ball and made contact, sending it between Tim and Cameron.

"YEAH! LET'S GO!" Ryan made a circle motion toward the sky as he sprinted the bases, making it to second before the ball came back into the infield.

"I guess you're not exactly afraid of the ball," Bucky said, looking at Ryan on second base with a grin.

"Nope. Not when I got a good pitcher to throw it to me," Ryan answered with a grin. "You should get in the box."

Bucky scoffed. "You think I can hit? My average in high school was like, a one ninety-five."

"If you ever think that you suck at the plate, just remember that Jordan hit two oh two."

"Randy, can it. Yeah, I know who Jordan is. Basically, you're telling me that baseball was his second sport and he's still better than me," Bucky jokingly shot back at the second baseman. Randy grinned back.

•••

At the end of practice, the team met at the pitcher's mound to have a few words at the end of practice.

"Alright, game tomorrow." Bucky slapped Steve on the shoulder.

"What do you mean, game tomorrow?!" Steve looked at Bucky.

"We play tomorrow."

"When were you gonna tell me?!"

Steve grinned and shook his head. "This is exactly why I didn't tell you."

"Who says I'm going to play?" Bucky knew that he was going to, but he just wanted to push Steve's buttons because he found enjoyment in doing so.

"So you're not going to play?"

"No. I'm going to play," Bucky replied. "But what if I would've had something going tomorrow?"

Steve scoffed. "I know you well enough to know that you're doing absolutely nothing."

The rest of the guys look back and forth between Bucky and Steve.

"You guys hash this out, we're just gonna head out." The team walked away, laughing.

"Fine. I'll play. And I won't complain. I like baseball anyway," Bucky relented. He felt like an unwilling child arguing with his parents.

"Like I said. I knew you'd do it," Steve said with a grin.

"Whatever. Jerk," Bucky jabbed. Steve laughed and put his arm around Bucky's shoulders.

"Punk."

Bucky got a text, and he was surprised to see Tony's name.

Can you go get Morgan from kindergarten at eleven? They had a half day today for teacher meetings.

"Uh, Steve, I gotta get home. I've got somewhere to be."

Steve gave him an odd look. "Right. Where could you possibly need to be at ten-fifteen on a Monday morning?"

Bucky gave him a smirk in response. "I have to go pick someone up."

"Uh-huh." Steve clearly didn't believe him, so Bucky took his phone and shoved the text into Steve's face until his screen hit the tip of Steve's nose.

"See?!"

Steve pulled his face away from the screen. "Maybe I could if you hadn't shoved it in my face!"

Steve took Bucky's phone and held it at an acceptable distance to read something.

"Oh. You have fun, I've done that before. You've gotta go into the office and check in and all this, then you go back to her classroom and take her out. It's kind of an ordeal," Steve said with a grin.

"I'm sure I'll manage," Bucky said with a grin. He and Steve got back into the car to go back to the tower.

"You'll do great, substitute dad."

•••

Bucky changed out of his baseball pants and t-shirt and into a pair of black jeans and a white t-shirt. He glanced up at the gray jacket in his closet and back to his metal arm, then grabbed the jacket off of the hanger. He picked up a pair of black Nike shoes and put them on quickly, then threw the jacket over his shoulders and checked his watch; 10:35, exactly when he needed to leave to be on time.

"I'm out, little guy!" Bucky said to Steve as he walked out.

"I'm not a little guy, jerk!"

"Punk!" Bucky jokingly replied as he walked out the door. He walked out to his car and drove off in the direction of the address Tony had given for Morgan's school.

He had seemed as if the process of going into an elementary school and giving them his name was something he was okay with, when in reality it terrified him.

If they had to run a background check, he was done for.

They wouldn't let him past the front door.

Instead of thinking about all the possible ways they could throw him out of a school, he thought about what he could do with Morgan today. Bucky definitely knew that she would ask Tony to come to the game tomorrow.

He parked in a spot in a parking lot, his birthday present from Tony looking grotesquely out of place. He opened the door and walked inside, taking a deep breath and going to face the secretary.

"Hi, can I help you?" The secretary hadn't looked up to meet Bucky's eyes until after she said this, and to his relief there was no immediate recognition.

"Yeah, I'm here to pick up a kindergartener." Bucky was nervous and fidgeting with the zipper on the left side of his jacket, sliding it up and down an inch.

"Okay, who are you here for?"

"Morgan Stark."

There was a change in her eyes after she said this that Bucky couldn't help but notice.

"And what is your name?"

Bucky's inner monologue came to a screeching halt.

Oh no.

When his mind finally started working again, he had the debate with himself over whether to call himself James or Bucky.

"James Barnes," he somehow choked out. The secretary gave him a warm smile that Bucky assumed was hiding all the internal screams of terror.

Because that was what he was used to when he even mentioned his name anymore.

Terror.

Confusion.

Sometimes anger.

But he was cleared to walk down the hallway to Morgan's kindergarten classroom.

It hadn't even occurred to him that there would be other people waiting to pick up their kids, but when he found the hallway teeming with parents the notion hit him like a brick wall.

Great.

More people to ask about the skeletons in his closet.

He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and walked to the back of the line that had formed at the door of the kindergarten room.

"I've never seen you here before. Who are you here for?"

Bucky looked to one of the dads who had asked, a guy a little shorter than him who looked like he had come straight from the White House himself.

Bucky smiled and acted natural. "Morgan."

"Morgan Andersen, right? Her mom said that she was having someone else pick her up today."

And Bucky froze.

"No," he barely choked out. "Morgan Stark."

The man's face stopped, frozen in time.

And then a look of panic crossed over it.

"Tony made a list of people that were cleared to come get her, since, you know, he's an Avenger and all and she's at a high risk of getting picked up by the wrong person, if you know what I mean. That list had two people on it; him and his wife."

Bucky knew only one thing: he was about to be accused of kidnapping.

"I'm a friend of Tony's," Bucky replied, not really knowing what else would save him at this point.

"Who are you?"

Bucky's timidness had crossed over into frustration, and when he was frustrated he threw his name around like a weapon.

"James Barnes."

The entire group of parents waiting outside fell silent at the mention of Bucky's name.

All eyes turned around to see Bucky standing with his hands shoved into his pockets, a look on his face that had to resemble a deer in the headlights. His anger had boiled down at all the public recognition and turned back into timidness.

"What about Howard and Maria?"

Bucky shut his eyes and sucked in a breath.

"Please don't go there. Stop."

"JFK."

"I asked you to stop."

"Longing."

"No."

"Rusted. Seventeen. Daybreak. Furnace."

"Doesn't work anymore. I won't turn."

"Nine. Benign. Homecoming. One. Freight car."

"Told you. I'm still here," Bucky said, his fist clenched tight in his pocket.

"Hail HYDRA," the man whispered as he walked past Bucky and down the hallway toward the front door.