Cryptoscopophilia: The urge to secretly look through windows of homes as one passes by.
Steve's cotton t-shirts are big on Bucky, hanging loose around the neck and flapping in the gentle spring breeze as Steve grasps him by the hand and tells him that his ice cream is melting all over his wrist. Bucky smiles, hesitant, before leaning over and licking it off.
Steve has absolutely no idea where Bucky goes in between the times that they see each other, but he is always glad when Bucky comes back, strolling through the Tower and up to Steve's room. JARVIS has learned to recognise him, and lets him through without delay. Sometimes he bursts into Steve's room, his dark eyes confused, conflicted, troubled, and Steve wraps his arms around him and strokes his hair until he calms down. Sometimes he politely knocks, looking shyly in around the corner of the door. And other times, he strides in, confident, the Bucky that Steve remembers, a laugh around the corners of his mouth.
"You remember, we used to play here," Steve says, pointing to the newly crowded streets, filled with honking cars and brightness. "There weren't so many cars then. And we watched movies here," he points to a theater on the outskirts of downtown, at the transition where homes begin to pop up between the storefronts and parking garages. "That was back when movies were only a quarter, and we still went from movie to movie until our heads hurt."
Bucky smiles, nudges Steve in the ribs. "And you hid behind the seat when we were watching Frankenstein. I remember. And you begged me to sleep over because you were scared the monster would come to get you."
Steve laughs, reaching down and lacing Bucky's fingers with his own. "Or maybe you were the one who asked to sleep over because you were scared of the monster."
Bucky laughs freely, and Steve can't help but admire the strong line of his throat, can't help but trace the corners of Bucky's mouth, beautiful and free and unhindered by that awful mask that sits on Steve's dresser back at the tower. Steve's examined it when Bucky is still fast asleep, clinging to Steve's pillow. He can't tell what it's for, why Bucky has to wear it, can't tell who made it or why, and Bucky either doesn't remember or doesn't want to say or both.
"They turned your house into an apartment complex," Bucky says, looking over Steve's shoulder. Steve looks, recognises the street corner where he and Bucky had sat and looked up at the stars, recognises the street their footsteps had crossed to get to each others' houses, hundreds, thousands of times, years and years ago.
Steve shrugs, looks across the street at where Bucky's house still stands. The decades have been relatively kind to it, and the people that have lived there have fixed it up and repainted it so it stands on the street a fresh blue with white trim, cheerful. Two children are playing outside, a boy laughing and pushing his sister on a swing. The curtains are pulled back in the front room, and he can see a woman inside, her hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, fixing lunch. As they watch, the woman walks over to the window, calls through it to the children in the yard.
"It must be scary, having children," Bucky says, looking across also. "I've seen a lot of scary movies where the children are like tiny demons."
Steve grins as he wraps an arm around Bucky's shoulders.
"They're happy tiny demons," he says, pointing to the children inside, who are now eating lunch. "So they can't be all that bad."
Bucky wraps his metal arm around Steve's waist, his hand resting on Steve's left hip, and Steve smiles as he presses a kiss to Bucky's temple and tries to feel his thoughts through his skin.