Okay so I know I said last week's late update was because I had a crazy day. I promise today was just as hectic. Or I forgot.
14
Bucky spends the next two days lounging and growing more comfortable with leaving his apartment to perform simple tasks. He goes grocery shopping, gets more food. Healthier food, at James's urging. He video chats with Steve while preparing an omelet based on Internet instructions, and Steve smiles and laughs when Bucky over-flips and the eggs splatters on the floor. Bucky flips him off. Steve has to hang up because of a mission.
He does more patrols of the building, of course. He's comfortable, but he's not stupid.
The man with the peanut butter is playing Adele and muttering odd phrases under his breath. Bucky decides that he is not going to investigate further unless the man proves to be a threat.
Nightmares still plague him at night, but most of the time he can fall back into a fitful sleep. He always wakes up tired, but breakfast and morning exercise help.
His left arm has begun functioning oddly, so Bucky takes a trip to a local hardware store—and there is a bad moment there, a flashback that has him shaking and sweating—but he hides in a back aisle until he can breathe again and then gets the tools he needs.
They taught him how to do maintenance on his arm. It was necessary, in case it got damaged before a mission was complete. So Bucky takes the tools, sits at the kitchen table, pops open the necessary panels, and begins basic tuning of the internal structures.
He's finishing up when he hears someone approaching the door. The knocks comes a moment later.
"Mr. Buchanan? It's Lacy!"
He could act as though he isn't here. But that would be rude, and he has no reason to. Lacy is not a threat and Bucky hasn't talked to her enough to really form an opinion on whether he enjoys talking to her or not.
"One minute," he calls. He puts the panels back in place, sets his tools in a kitchen drawer, and then slips on a long-sleeve shirt and a glove to cover his hand.
In his head, he thanks Romanoff.
"She did say you could call her Natasha," James points out while Bucky goes to the door.
He's thanking Natasha, then.
Bucky opens the door and raises an eyebrow at the young girl standing there.
"Hello," Lacy greets. For some reason, she has green paint on her brown skin. "My dads and I were wondering if you wanted to come over for dinner at six tonight. Y'know, as a neighborly welcoming party. We're in the room down 'round the corner—first one on the left." She smiles. "No pressure, though!"
Bucky had been expecting something like this. He sees no reason to say no; he has grown more confident in this place, and the prospect of eating with company does not make his skin crawl. He will just have to flesh out his backstory and keep his head when he goes.
Besides, he does not feel like making his own dinner tonight.
He smiles—and thanks to Natasha's advice from their shopping trip, he knows it does not look as forced as before—and looks into Lacy's vibrant brown eyes.
"I'd be happy to. Tell your fathers that I appreciate the invitation."
It's only after he closes the door that he registers the "dads" and "fathers."
"Pretty sure someone mentioned this at some point," James says. "Things really are different in the future."
"Yeah," Bucky mutters. "Guess they are."
Manners from long past tell him that he should bring some kind of dessert to this dinner. He scours the Internet for a simple recipe and finds one for brownies that he can make with the ingredients he already has. And since he has almost five hours until the dinner, he doesn't feel rushed.
He calls Steve again and talks to him while he bakes, the phone tucked between his ear and shoulder.
"Yeah, I got invited to dinner. They seem nice enough—two fathers, a young girl named Lacy."
"Buck, that's great."
"Their cat met me first."
"Cat?"
"Turns out they're good for more than just mice-control," Bucky says. "They named it Oreo."
"I almost feel bad for it. Black and white?"
"Yes. Cute, though. Apparently it used to hang out in this apartment when it had no occupant. Lacy found it after I went into the hallway to figure out what it was."
"That had to be a surprise, huh."
"Little bit."
There is a lull in the conversation before Steve picks up the slack.
"Say, do you want to grab a meal sometime? I know I've been busy with missions lately but—"
Bucky laughs. He's in a good mood and he can't help it. "Steve, of course you can. We're pals—you don't need to ask like this is some kind of dinner date. You can come over tomorrow afternoon if you want."
"I—yeah, of—that—that would be great."
They chat for a few more minutes about nothing in particular before Steve has to go. Bucky stares at the dark screen for a while. Steve had sounded so relieved at Bucky's invitation.
"You have been avoiding seeing him in person since he first dropped you off here," James points out. "The big lug probably misses you."
A pang of guilt shoots through Bucky. He misses Steve too; but with everything going on and trying to get his new situation sorted, he had shoved that feeling to one side because it wasn't necessary or helpful.
"Suppression is not the answer, pal," James says.
"He's coming tomorrow," Bucky says as a reply. He returns his attention to the brownies.
When he knocks on the door, an older man with darker skin and some white showing in his brown hair answers. He smiles when he sees Bucky. The lines around his eyes bunch up when he does that.
"Nice to meet you, Mr. Buchanan," he says, opening the door wider and stepping back so that Bucky can enter. "My name is Manuel Gomez. Lacy has talked a lot about you." He notices the small plate of brownies in Bucky's hands. "Oh, is that for—here, let me take it. Thank you for bringing dessert—you didn't have to. Ah, Keno will be here in a moment, he's just finishing up the sauce."
Manuel shows Bucky to their living room—their apartment layout is the same as his, and Bucky takes a seat while Manuel bustles over to the kitchen to drop off the brownies. If he had noticed the fact that Bucky wears a glove on his left hand, he doesn't give any indication.
Lacy bounces into the room.
"Where's your cat?" Bucky asks to start up some conversation.
"Oh, we put him in my room," Lacy explains. "We didn't want him causing any trouble. We always do it when there are guests over; if we don't, he sometimes panics and then things get bad."
Bucky nods and Lacy shifts back and forth on her feet. "D'you want anything to drink? Water?"
"Water would be great," Bucky says.
When Lacy returns with the water, she brings Manuel and a man Bucky assumes to be Keno in tow. Keno is taller than Manuel by several inches, with black skin and hair done up in dreadlocks. Bucky stands to greet him.
He has a bright smile, and when he shakes Bucky's hand, his grip is firm and warm.
"It's good to meet you, Mr. Buchanan," he says. "I'm Keno."
"Likewise," Bucky responds. "And you can call me James." He glances over at Manuel to include him in the invitation. They both smile.
Bucky doesn't know where his words come from—echoes of the man he was, maybe, or maybe he just listened to enough conversations to rebuild some semblance of how to talk to other people—but when he speaks he does so with easy confidence.
"So I've heard that Lacy has been talking about me. I hope she didn't accuse me of trying to steal your cat."
It takes them a moment to understand that he's joking. From there, conversation heads to safe, small-talk type areas while the Gomez family finishes preparing dinner. By the time Bucky sits at the table, his nerves have stopped fizzling and he doesn't feel as though he is forcing himself to talk anymore. Keno and Manuel are clever and their banter fills any empty spaces in the conversation. Lacy always pitches in; she seems to have a special interest in the arts, which would explain the paint from earlier. Bucky guesses that, if he were to look around, he would find a canvas or something with paints set up in one of the rooms.
Keno is a fantastic cook; Bucky doesn't recognize half the ingredients in the pasta dish but they come together beautifully. No one speaks until they're finishing up.
"So, Mr. Buchanan," Manuel begins. "What brought you to this place?"
"Not to pry or anything," Keno adds with a raised eyebrow at his husband.
Bucky smiles at them. "No worries." He'd prepped for this. "Some of my buddies helped set me up here. I couldn't afford much else with just odd jobs around the neighborhood, so." He shrugs, the guesture perfectly calculated to be self-deprecating but not to elicit pity.
Manuel and Keno exchange a look. "We know what that feels like."
Keno gives him an earnest look. "If you need jobs, I own a tattoo parlor. I wouldn't mind hiring another janitor, or something of the sort."
Manuel puts a hand on Keno's shoulder and directs sympathetic eyes to Bucky. "We'd have to do a little more talking first, of course."
"Of course," Bucky says. "I will let you know if I need the help. Thank you for offering it to your new, strange neighbor."
"You're not strange!" Lacy says immediately. "I mean, the glove is weird but—"
"Lacy," Keno reprimands. Manuel just sighs.
"Sorry," Lacy mutters.
"It's okay," Bucky says. "Well. A little personal for a first meeting."
Nervous laughter.
"I, um. I was a soldier. And." Deep breath. "There was an explosion, and my left arm. Got." He works his jaw as though searching for a word that can convey what he means properly and coming up short. "It got burned. Hence the glove."
And he feels—bad, in a detached way, about killing the dinner conversation. And lying. But he has to make it clear to these guys that he isn't going to be a happy-go-lucky neighbor, and this way he can explain the need to cover up his metal arm and his PTSD and other trauma-related illnesses. It's just slapping a new story on the same problems and cutting off any curiosity before it can get dangerous.
Manuel and Keno look shocked and lost, while Lacy is staring with wide eyes and her lips slightly parted as though guilt hasn't had time to set in yet.
Bucky holds up a hand—his right hand—before anyone can get out any apologies. "I'm getting used to it," he says. "But let's talk about something else, if that's all right."
"Y-yeah, of course," Manuel says. "Does the heating in your apartment work? With winter coming—and sometimes it doesn't work, like—uh, Jim's apartment a few weeks back."
"Jim?" Bucky repeats, and Keno groans quietly. Bucky's curiosity grows and he lifts an eyebrow.
"He's the weirdo!" Lacy declares, having recovered from her earlier surprise. She seems determined to forcibly inject energy into the conversation to make up for the lull. Upon realizing that Keno and Manuel were giving each other exasperated looks, Lacy backtracked. "Okay, he's the strange guy. He is strange," she adds, jutting out her bottom lip.
"I'm a little lost," Bucky admits, something in his head stirring at Lacy's stubborn expression. But James isn't around to elaborate on the memory, if the faint familiarity can even be called that. "Who is…Jim?"
"He lives in room 203," Manuel explains. "Only a couple of us have actually laid eyes on him. He's…different."
Bucky runs the room number though what he recalls from his nightly patrols and comes up with the man who was slurping peanut butter. Pretending not to know anything will get him more information, though, so he feigns confusion.
"Different?"
"How do I explain this," Keno mutters. "Okay, well. I've moved around a lot, and I've noticed a pattern in—well, almost every apartment building."
"Which is what?" Manuel prods.
"It's…y'know. There's always one or two people in a building that behave oddly. And not for any reason besides to weird people out. Like their identity is to be the opposite of what people expect." Keno glances at Manuel, somewhat at a loss for words. "Do you get it?"
Manuel shrugs. "Sounds like Jim. Did you know that when I first saw him, he threw a piece of bread at me?"
"You never told that story," Lacy says.
"Well, it was a baguette. I have no idea where he got it—the closest bakery is too far to be reasonable, and the bread was still warm."
A strange person in every apartment building. For some reason, Bucky can't stop thinking about those words. He and Steve used to live in apartments, didn't they? Separately, and then…what? Together?
"Mrs. Grothan," James says, and Bucky hadn't noticed him appear but now he's leaning against the wall behind Keno. "She lived on the first floor. We could never figure her out. Not even Steve, and he tried. She just didn't like people an' didn't care what she did to make them go away."
Oh.
But he has to participate in this conversation before he can dive into his memories.
"A baguette?" Bucky repeats. "That's…odd."
"That's Jim in a nutshell," Manuel replies. "We have collectively decided to leave him alone."
"Reasonable," Bucky says. "I suppose I'll do the same. Any other warnings I should keep in mind?"
Manuel sucks on his lip and glances at Keno. "I dunno. The college student on the first floor mostly keeps to herself. She appreciates leftovers, though. So if you ever more than you can eat before it goes bad, she'll take it. There's the couple—also on the first floor, what were their names?"
"I think Jane and Dorian," Keno supplies.
"Thanks. Yeah, they're very kind. Love cartoons, though, so if you go over you'll have to be careful not to get sucked into their weekend marathons."
"I'll keep that in mind," Bucky says.
"What else…oh, there's another resident on the second floor. Ananda, I think it was. She just got a job, so she's pretty busy. She makes fantastic coffee, though."
"I got her recipe," Keno declares. "It's heavenly."
"You won't let me drink it," Lacy says.
"That's because you have enough energy already. Wouldn't want you vibrating through the walls, would we?"
"That would be so. Cool!"
Keno playfully argues with Lacy while Manuel goes back to thinking.
"There was one more thing. There have been some groups of young men harassing people around this neighborhood."
"Young men?" Bucky repeats, thinking of the mugger. Manuel nods.
"From what I've heard, some privileged boys—"
"Privileged white boys," Keno corrects, momentarily breaking away from his staring contest against Lacy.
"Right. There aren't as many cops around here. They come down and mess with people."
"No one has done anything?" Bucky asks with a raised eyebrow. He knows from his memories that Brooklyn had been a tough neighborhood, but he had gotten the impression that a lot of that behavior was treated harshly now throughout the city.
"They're just being boys," Manuel says, and the way he says just being boys is filled with so much disgust that even Lacy looks at him with concern. Manuel smiles, apologetic. "Sorry. You should be careful when walking around, just in case, though the worst thing I've heard of them doing is nearly forcing themselves on a young woman. Fortunately she got away."
"Assholes," James mutters.
Bucky agrees. But he's a veteran at a dinner party with his new neighbors now, so he just voices some disapproving comments and lets the conversation carry into lighter topics about accommodations and interesting places around the city.
Soon the sunlight is entirely gone from the windows and Bucky is saying his goodbyes, holding a small container with pie in it that he has promised to return to them as soon as possible.
Lacy is the last to wave before they shut the door and Bucky walks back to his apartment, silent and contemplative and alone.
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