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We Walk on Water (Don't Let Go)
Chapter 7
When Bucky entered the kitchen at quarter til seven later that morning, he saw Tony was slumped over at the table, but this time with a glass of water in front of him instead of a liquor glass, and Clint was lounging on a loveseat that was too small for him. His legs hung over the side of the furniture.
Clint was also the first to notice him. "Good morning."
"Morning." Bucky replied, as he sat down opposite of Stark in a repeat from the night before.
Tony mumbled something unintelligible.
Steve entered the room a moment later, Natasha behind him. "Found it." She announced as they entered.
"Right where FRIDAY said it would be." Steve added as he set the bottle of aspirin down in front of Tony, then looked at Bucky. "Good morning."
"Good morning." He replied.
Tony groaned and reached for the bottle as Steve went back into the kitchen. "You know, usually I'd still be asleep by now, so this wouldn't be an issue."
"We let you sleep in until 6:30." Natasha noted.
"I was thinking of sleeping in until something a little closer to 10." Tony replied as he swallowed the aspirin dry. Natasha went around the corner into the kitchen, still visible in the gap between the island and the cupboards overhead, and reappeared a moment later with a cup of coffee, which she set in front of Tony.
"Drink up." She said.
Tony took a sip of the coffee, then set his face back on the table.
"Coffee's ready?" Clint asked.
"Yes." Steve told him.
"Good." Clint got his feet, and then noticed something. "So when did you get that done?" He asked, noticing the new design on the assassin's robotic arm.
"Last night."
"Did he do it?" Clint asked, nodding at Tony.
Bucky nodded, and Clint laughed. "Usually, in this day and age, people get tattoos after they get drunk, not get someone else drunk and then make the drunk give them a tattoo."
"Hey, I cured my palladium poisoning drunk," Tony protested, then sat up and pointed at Bucky. "Enough with sentences consisting of two words. I know you can talk, so you can't get away with that anymore."
"How would you know? You can't remember what happened last night." Bucky challenged.
"I remember enough. I don't talk to myself even if I do happen to be drunk when I'm doing the talking." Tony informed him.
Clint moved past them, angling towards the kitchen. "How much longer til breakfast?"
"Twenty minutes." Steve replied, studying the recipe on his tablet once more before he opened the oven door and slid the casserole inside.
"How'd you take up cooking anyway?" Natasha asked.
"Sam told me I needed a hobby."
"I thought you did sketches."
"I do. He thought more than one hobby would keep me busy."
Tony caught Bucky's eye and mouthed three words. Talk to him.
He hesitated. Tony pulled out his phone, typed something on it, and slid it across the table.
You can't tell me you're afraid of this.
Bucky slid the phone back with enough force that Tony had to use both hands to catch it, and stood up and went past him into the kitchen as Clint came out of it with a full cup of coffee.
In the kitchen, Steve was talking to Natasha. "Will you go keep an eye on Tony?"
"He's supposed to be sobering up."
"I know, but keep an eye on him anyway, alright? He can do what he wants after we leave, but drinking doesn't help and we might need him sober before we go."
"I heard that!" Tony called.
Natasha rolled her eyes and briefly glanced at Bucky, who had just entered the kitchen, before heading around the corner and into the dining room.
"Coffee?" Steve offered, looking at his friend.
"Sure. Do you…mind if we go somewhere and talk?"
Steve looked surprised, but he nodded. "Alright. Let's go upstairs."
Back at the table, Natasha watched the two men go. "Should we go after them?" She asked as she looked at Clint.
"Nope." Clint said as he sipped his coffee. "I know what you're thinking, but Steve can handle anything if it comes up, and it won't. Just let them be."
~xXx~
The door to the next floor up opened into another lounge, comfortably and suitably furnished as every other floor in the building was. Tall, floor-to-ceiling windows gave views of the neighboring skyscrapers and the city. There was a diving wall in the middle of the room with a door in it, but neither man paid much attention to it. They knew exactly who was in the building and where they were, and no one else was getting in without bypassing Tony's security and FRIDAY's protocols.
"So, what's up?" Steve asked, looking like he always did: calm, patient, Steve, and Bucky struggled to put words in order and wondered why he was doing this.
"Hot damn, you do talk..."
"I can talk."
"Well you should do it more, especially to Steve, and preferably before you finish giving him a breakdown... Steve's worried about you, and he's trying to guess his way to the right thing to do to help you. But you don't give him many clues. Would it kill you to just talk to the guy?"
"I'm sorry." He finally blurted out.
Steve looked confused. "For what?"
And that was the real question, wasn't it?
"For…everything. For trying to kill you, and your friends, and for …making you worry."
"Bucky, you don't owe me any apologies. I know why you did what you did. And I won't lie, I do worry, but I worried a lot more after the Helicarrier fight when you vanished." Steve told him.
"Tony said you worry about me." Bucky admitted as he sat down on the sofa in the room.
Steve frowned, and muttered something about never talking to Tony about his problems again.
"Who, you or me?" Bucky asked.
"Me. I'm never talking to that guy about my problems again!" And the vehemence and the look on Steve's face made Bucky grin, made him want to laugh, because he knew that look of indignation, had seen it a thousand times before, even though he couldn't remember any specific incidents.
Bucky's grin made Steve smile, and the super soldier went on. "Well, he is right. I do worry. I want to help you, but I don't know how. I talked to Tony and he had FRIDAY put some books and articles about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder on my tablet for me. I've been asking Sam a lot of questions, too."
The grin faded and Bucky said, "Sometimes I don't think I want to remember. It hurts."
"I'm sorry."
"It isn't your fault."
The look on Steve's face said it was, that he should have known, should have done something to stop it, to save him before it came to this. Bucky knew that look was there, so he opted to look at the floor and not Steve's face.
How can it be his fault when he never knew it was happening?
Then Steve spoke again. "When we were…during the whole time of the battle with Ultron, Wanda, the Scarlet Witch, give us all delusions, and made us live our fears. This was before she became an Avenger. My fear was that the world had no place for me, and that I would be useless outside a fight. Maybe I understood that vision wrong. Maybe I'm not afraid of a world at peace. Maybe I'm afraid that after I failed the two people closest to me, I would fail everyone, and that's why I want to keep fighting. I couldn't go that the dance with Peggy, and I couldn't save you from HYDRA."
I was with them on the train where Zola was captured, and I saw what happened. Rogers was reaching out for Barnes, but, he couldn't get there in time, and Barnes fell."
"It's still not your fault." Bucky said quietly.
There was a long moment of silence.
And then Steve sat beside him and spoke again. "I'm really glad you're alive. When you fell, I thought, well…and …there was nothing I could do. And later, after the Avengers, I thought once, just once, what if Tony had been there with his suit, or Thor with his hammer? But they weren't, and …I watched you fall. I'm just…really glad you're alive."
For a while after that, silence reigned. Then Steve noticed something. "When did you get that done?" He asked, noting that what had once been a red star on the other man's left shoulder now looked like Steve's shield.
"I had Tony do it last night."
"He's pretty good for someone who was half drunk when I left him."
"He was fully drunk when I talked to him. But he manages it well."
"Buck, don't tell him that. It'll just encourage him."
"Don't worry, I don't plan too.
The two men sat there in silence some more, then Bucky spoke again. "I don't mind talking to Sam. But I don't like the VA Hospital. I don't like being there."
Steve looked at the assassin. "So do you want to meet with Sam somewhere else? I'm sure that can be arranged."
"That's fine."
Steve nodded. "I'll call Sam when we get back."
There was silence a little longer, and Steve spoke. "We should probably get back to the kitchen. The casserole might be done, and I don't trust Tony to make sure it gets out of the oven."
"You don't think your friends can handle it."
Steve snorted. "Tony's hungover, Natasha's supposed to be watching him, and Clint's watching them both. I can't even imagine how that's going."
"You don't trust your friends?" Bucky asked as the pair headed back to the elevator.
"Sometimes, no."
~xXx~
When they entered the kitchen, Clint was checking the casserole, while Natasha was pouring a cup of coffee. "For Tony." She said as she took it around the corner.
"I've had enough coffee Agent Romanov." Tony called.
"One cup is hardly enough."
Bucky shot Steve a knowing glance, to say that he had been right and the others were fine. The super soldier just shook his head. The assassin poured himself a cup of coffee and fixed it with cream and sugar before retreating to the table and leaving Steve to take over cooking duties again.
"The first time I came here you mentioned owning a jet." Bucky told Tony as he sat down across from the other man, again. "You also suggested I take a trip last night."
"I did?" Tony asked, then looked at the ceiling. "FRIDAY, did I suggest that?"
"Not in overt terms sir, however, you did make the recommendation." The A.I. reported.
Tony nodded, considering it. "Huh. Uh…ask Pepper. Her flight got moved up, she'll be back in two hours," Tony said, looking pleased as he looked at the message on his phone, "And if she doesn't need the jet for awhile, you can borrow it. But since I don't know when the last time you flew was or how up to date your pilot's license is, you have to take Steve with you."
"Where are we going?" Steve asked, coming in long enough to drop a pot holder on the table. Clint followed with a stack of breakfast plates and silverware.
"I want to go to California." Bucky announced.
Steve gave Tony a questioning look, which the other man ignored. "And you have to go with him, Spangles, because someone with a valid license is going to be at least co-piloting the jet. The house out there isn't quite done with reconstruction yet, otherwise I'd give you a key to the place and tell you to swing by."
"Taking a little long to construct your new workshop?" Natasha asked.
"Yeah, that and I thought I'd put in some extra bedrooms. You know, in case any of my friends came by to visit."
"I can fly a jet." Bucky told him.
"Oh yeah? When was the last time you did that?" Tony asked as Steve vanished back into the kitchen.
Bucky went very still, and stared at the other man.
"Okay fine I get it! No asking about the last time the Winter Soldier flew a jet. I'm not sober enough to care anyway!" Tony conceded and Bucky shifted ever so slightly.
Natasha looked appalled. Clint looked like he wanted to laugh and was doing a bad job of hiding it.
"What did I miss?" Steve asked, setting the casserole down on the table.
And that was when Clit did laugh. "Sit down, and we'll tell you." He said between chuckles.
[A/N:] If I were naming chapters, I would have named this one after Good Night Gravity by Falling Up just because it's a more upbeat song that I think would fit the theme here. I don't know, I just feel like things will be better and Steve and Bucky clear the air, and here they do.
As an aside, I was in a local library the other day and had the opportunity to read the Original Sin comic compilation, and I did because it had Captain America in it. Turns out, Bucky's in it, too. It was kind of a cool Marvel crossover. Bucky was the first one to figure out who done it and he did a great job of explaining, which is to say, he didn't explain anything to anyone which is why they thought he killed Nick Fury no reason. The Fury plot was crazy, actually. It was a cool CSI-type story, except any time it involved Fury.
Anyway, thank you to everyone who has read, reviewed, followed, and faved so far! Please review, and I'll see you next time!