You're My Light
They called it Moving Day, but it was more like Moving Week.
At least three times a day, a Quinjet left Avengers Tower, loaded up with furniture, equipment, Tony's strange and wonderful contraptions, and a vast army of cardboard boxes. Three times a day, it came back empty. Steve didn't really start to feel the pinch until the Common Floor was barren, the fridge was empty, and all he and Bucky had on their floor were their beds, a few changes of clothes, and only as many toiletries and necessary belongings as could fit into a duffel bag.
The spot that Tony had picked out for the new Avengers HQ was a lovely riverfront location, perched on the top of a green hill in sight of the Hudson. It used to be just an empty Stark Industries warehouse, but Tony retrofitted it with state-of-the-art holographic training decks, built a whole new building adjacent for domestic and recreational facilities, and installed an underground bullet train between the two for ease and convenience.
You know. As you do.
They actually got to spend some time in the HQ long before Moving Day proper. All the furniture coming in had to be put somewhere, and although the movers did all the heavy lifting, Tony left decoration up to the residents.
Which was why Steve and Bucky were in an empty room in the HQ dormitory, the windows thrown open to let in the sunlight and warm riverside air, as they spent the day sticking their heads and arms in cardboard boxes.
It was an odd experience for Steve. Some of these boxes had gone unopened the whole time they lived in the Tower. Apparently, in the move from the apartment in D.C., he'd neglected to unpack some of his things, and they just sat for a year or two in a storage room somewhere, forgotten.
Under the thin film of dust, one of those boxes was still labeled in Sharpie, Bucky's.
Steve peeled open the interlocked petals of cardboard, holding his breath so he wouldn't get a lungful of dust. Inside the box were a few books, a baseball cap, a mismatched pair of socks, and a wad of crumpled napkins covered with Bucky's hurried scrawl.
Steve couldn't help but smile. Every single one of these things was a sweet memento from the early days; those lazy few months they'd spent in the apartment when Bucky first began to find himself again. Bucky was busy putting the bookshelf back together on the other side of the room—lots of loud banging with a hammer and other such noises—so Steve would have to ask him what he wanted to do with this stuff later.
He pulled out the books and put them in a neat stack, shook the dust out of the baseball cap, and flattened the napkins on his knee. He'd barely got halfway through the box before he noticed something else.
Something rectangular and flat, and wrapped in brown packing paper.
Steve frowned and delicately pulled it out. It felt like a painting canvas, the kind already stretched flat on a wooden frame. He pulled off the ancient scotch tape, unwrapped the paper, and flipped the canvas around.
His eyes widened. Smeared across the canvas in uneven, sometimes blobby strokes was a thick layer of black paint—except for one small spot, where it was left white, and written in pen was one tiny word in the middle.
Steve.
He could already feel the smile breaking across his face, and the warmth flooding his chest and dropping right down to his feet. He knew what this was.
"Hey, Buck," he called over his shoulder.
The banging stopped for a second. "Yeah?"
"Remember this?" Steve flipped it around and held it out to him.
Bucky had the bookshelf laid down sideways, one knee between the shelves, and the hammer and nails scattered everywhere, but he straightened up, immediately laser-focused.
"Oh. Wow." A whole train of emotions flashed through his eyes, but Steve caught slight embarrassment and humility and nostalgia. "God, yeah." He got to his feet and crossed the room to take it from Steve.
"Found it in a box of your things from the apartment." Steve gave it to him and sat back on his ankles with a smile. "It's been a while, hasn't it?"
"Yeah." Bucky was still staring at the painting, but it didn't seem like he was actually seeing it. Both his voice and his expression were somewhere far away.
Steve sighed, low and bittersweet. If he looked closely, he could still see, in Bucky's eyes, the man who'd picked up a brush and made that painting; the quiet awe, wonder, and humble curiosity of someone who'd just been released from a prison of their own mind and was discovering the world all over again.
It had been disconcerting, seeing Bucky like that, at first. His cocky, headstrong best friend being reduced to a quiet, twitchy shell was upsetting, and sometimes downright creepy. But Steve had grown a fondness for that version of Bucky, especially when his humor and sarcasm started to peek through again.
(Sometimes, he even missed that guy. Too many scoldings and scathing put-downs for not using a goddamn parachute again, you think you're immortal or what, I'll bet you'll jump on an atomic bomb next you damn concussed bonehead would eventually make Steve yearn for the days Bucky didn't talk so much.)
But most of the time, he just looked back on that stage of their lives as exactly what it was: a bittersweet season. Happy that it happened, happy that so much good came out of it, and somehow just as happy that it was gone.
Apparently, he'd been reminiscing for too long, because Bucky looked his way, raised an eyebrow, and smirked. "What?"
"Nothin'." He shrugged one shoulder. "We've come a long way, that's all."
"Yeah, we have." Bucky gave back the painting, thought a moment with his hands in his pockets, and then swung around on his heel to go back to the bookshelf. "Still true, by the way," he said over his shoulder.
Steve was unpacking the rest of the box, but he stopped and smiled. "What, the painting?"
"Yeah."
Steve leaned his elbow on the cardboard box and looked over his shoulder. He put on his most annoyingly wheedling voice and drawled, "Y'know, I don't think you ever did tell me what it really means..."
"Well, put'cherself in my shoes, Steve." Bucky scooped a heavy box into his arms with a grunt to move it out of the way. "I'd just spent seventy years gettin' my brain fried six ways to Sunday by a handful a' Nazi freaks. Didn't know my head from my hind end back then. Findin' my way was like a blind man stumblin' around with his feet cut off."
He let the box fall to the floor in the corner with a THUMP, and Steve snorted. Leave it to Bucky to come up with a colorful mental image like that.
"In more ways 'n one, I was stumbling around in the dark." Bucky stood up, dusting off his flesh hand and the metal one on his jeans, but when he looked at Steve, the twinkle in his eye was as bright and happy as only love could make it.
"An' you're my light."
He shrugged, like it was the simplest thing in the world, but Steve felt like his chest was going to explode. He could feel pressure at the backs of his eyes, and then something welling up on his eyelids.
Bucky frowned. "Geez, are you gonna get this sentimental about every single thing you—?"
"No!" Steve turned away and hid his face, but he couldn't stop smiling. "No, I'm not, it's just—"
"'Cause if you're gonna get all weepy on me, I'm gonna go help Barton instead."
"I'm not!" Steve laughed, rubbing his eye with the heel of his palm. "I'm not crying."
"You are!" Bucky exploded. "You literally are right now!"
Steve threw back his head and laughed, and just let the tears happen. Bucky scoffed, but Steve caught the smile on his face before he turned away.
"Geez, you're a sap," muttered Bucky as he bent over the bookshelf again.
Steve chuckled as he wiped his face. "Stupid."
"Blockhead."
"Moron."
"Punk."
"Jerk."
"I love you."
Steve's head immediately whipped around.
"Oops." Bucky picked up the hammer and didn't sound at all sincere. "That one slipped out."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever." Steve shook his head, leaned on the box again, and sighed, a warm smile on his face. "I love you too."
—fin
A/N: The insults-devolving-into-"I love you" may or may not be entirely inspired by Griselda Banks. Sorry, not sorry, the way you write the boys is beautiful and I need it in my life!
Cross-posting the AU to AO3 in chronological order has gotten me nostalgic for the apartment days of the AU. So I gave Steve and Bucky a chance to get all nostalgic with me! Obviously this is a sequel-ish to Tales from the Apartment, chapter seven, "Painting", but I'd like to think it stands on its own even if you haven't read that.
I'm still working on my promised projects in the background, but since they're all big multi-chapter shebangs, work is going slow. I'm not dead, though, I promise! Just slowed down.
Reviews are cardboard boxes.