12 Understanding
Later that day, Bucky asked about Steve's art for the first time in months, calling him on the phone with the sole intent of wanting to see it and Steve felt touched.
"I was thinking I hadn't seen you draw anything in a while," Bucky said. "The star reminded me and I was wondering if you'd done anything new." Steve looked over to his closet full of scrapped paintings and packed notebooks and remembered a time when they were kids and all Steve wanted to do was show Bucky his work, but he didn't feel like that now, not anymore, because nothing he had done lately was particularly good or worthy of praise.
"Yeah, yeah, I have," Steve replied truthfully and looked away from the closet where painting after painting was covered again in white and many of them were painted over with cliched, generic scenes that Steve felt no connection to whatsoever. "Nothing good, though," he said.
"Can I see?" Bucky asked and Steve rubbed the back of his hair with his hand and let out a breath, weighing the pros and cons. He knew logically that whatever he showed Bucky, Bucky would be delighted with. He had always been like that. But it wasn't just that, it was the fact that his heart wasn't in what he was working on anymore and he had no motivation to show it off.
But this was Bucky reaching out to Steve. This was Bucky most likely trying to get Steve to talk, because he knew Steve's art was so personal, and Steve was touched that Bucky would try and he couldn't say no.
"Sure," Steve said. "But you have to promise to teach me more in Russian while you're over here, cause all I really remember is how to say 'yes' and 'hello' and 'Captain America' and that's really not going to get me anywhere." Bucky laughed a little on the other line and promised and he was over soon, letting himself in as Steve picked out the best canvases from his storage closet, stacking them somewhat haphazardly against the wall. "They aren't great," Steve said by way of greeting as Bucky shut the door behind him. "Nothing special, at least."
"Don't sell yourself short," Bucky said and sat on the ground where Steve was lining the canvases, inspecting them carefully. Steve looked over at him and watched him study each painting and thought he ought to say something about Sharon. But what would he say?
Sharon doesn't like you. He couldn't say that.
Sharon wants to meet you. Well, that wasn't quite true, was it?
Step lightly around Sharon-she carries guns. Steve pressed his mouth together and let a breath out through his nose because he felt as though it had to be brought up, Bucky had to know that Sharon didn't trust him because he'd meet her soon enough and Steve was worried about how the encounter might play out, he wanted to warn Bucky, but he just didn't know what to say.
He supposed, in the end, it was because he wasn't entirely sure what he was trying to communicate. He just knew he wanted to discuss it, he wanted to talk about it, but he didn't know how.
"хорошо," Bucky said and Steve blinked, jarred from his thoughts, confused.
"Huh?" He said and Bucky repeated himself slowly and Steve tried to say it back. "Had-ra-sho?" he asked. "That was 'good', right?"
"Da," Bucky said with a smile, and that was a sound, a word that Steve recognized better as 'yes', and they carried on like that, Bucky trying to speak slowly and use his hands and point to parts of Steve's paintings and Steve repeating after him and trying to remember the new vocabulary.
It wasn't that Steve cared so much for learning another language, of course. Russian was a very nice language, but ordinarily, Steve would have not been so adamant to learn. But it was about Bucky, and it was for Bucky that he struggled through the pronunciation and muddled in the vocabulary. Not only did Steve have the desire to understand Bucky always, especially when he was panicking and only the one language registered in the traumatized portions of his mind, but this was a tool to get closer to Bucky as they had both changed over the years and Steve saw no reason not to change more, to grow further towards Bucky like they had when they were kids, when they became like puzzle pieces.
It was the way Bucky wanted to see Steve's art. It was the way Steve would repeat pronunciations until he had it perfect. They insisted on understanding each other, even if and when Steve refused to speak about the things that hurt.