Hello love humans!
I hope you are all well and staying safe out there xx
Please enjoy.
oOoOoOo
Bucky had an honest to goodness second date with Stevie.
A voice that sounded suspiciously like Bekka cackled with glee in his ear. Told you so.
Well- date was maybe a generous term.
Date implied romance.
So, Bucky had a standing hot chocolate session with Steven Grant Rogers.
And if he also liked to stare at his eyes and watch his mouth move and his hands fly about when he talked, then that was no one's business but his own.
"You're floating," Eliza commented over her porridge one morning, smiling around the spoon.
Bucky looked down at his feet- which were very much on the floor.
"I am too heavy to float," he told her, confused.
She scooped another spoonful of sludge into her mouth, smirking knowingly.
When he left the kitchen, Bucky checked his ankles for small wings.
Just in case.
There were none.
[-]
"Eliza thinks I can fly," he remarked to Steve later that afternoon.
They were sitting at their usual table; Steve with his baseball cap and Aiden's sunglasses and Jake keeping a careful eye on the front door for any unwanted cameras lingering outside.
Steve tilted his head. "Can you?"
"Not that I know of," Bucky shrugged and took a sip of his hot chocolate.
Hot. Hot, hot, hot.
"I even checked for wings."
Steve scrunched his eyebrows. "Wha-?" he started, then shook his head. "Never mind. Were there any there?"
Bucky placed his mug back on the table. "No."
Steve laughed.
Bucky liked the sound; thought it sounded like bells and comfort and lemon cookies.
"Can you fly?" he asked.
[-]
It felt like more should have changed.
This choice, to let Steve step in to where Bucky had been trying to keep him out.
He thought it should have altered his world more, should have carved out more space, should have pulled his heart in more than two different directions. He thought it should feel like he did not have enough person to share with himself, let alone with another.
But his routine stayed very much the same.
Breakfast with Eliza, feed Chips, patrol, check video feed, see Steve's house in person because he did not quite trust the video feed, lurk outside the house, cook. Cook some more.
Then there were the New Things.
Debate knocking on the door, walk to Jake's shop, sit down and watch the clock strike 1400 hours, order two hot chocolates, come up with Things-to-Tell-Steve.
Bucky thought he had liked his old routine.
But this one.
This one was even better.
[-]
The door swung open inwards, and Bucky looked up from his perfect placement of his perfect lemon meringue pie to see legs and runners.
"Are you going outside?" he asked Steve, craning his neck backwards.
The runners squeaked against the concrete step as Steve crouched down, looking from the pie to Bucky and back to the pie again. "I was gonna go for a run, yeah," he shrugged. "But now I kind of want pie. This looks amazing."
Bucky felt heat creep up in neck. "It's just pie," he mumbled.
Steve smiled softly, reached out a hand that stopped just short, then seemed to hesitate and pulled it back. It left him feeling a phantom brush of fingers across his cheek.
"Why don't you come inside, and we can eat it together?"
Bucky worried his lip, darting his eyes across the street and to the quiet neighbouring houses. It was time for surveillance. That was the routine.
"I uh-" he stuttered; he looked back down at the concrete beneath his knees. "I can't." He frowned. He knew the pie was delicious. He had made it, of course it was delicious. "I have to run surveillance."
A crease appeared between Steve's eyebrows. "Surveillance?"
Bucky nodded. "Check for reporters," he clarified. "And visit optimal study areas."
Steve looked even more confused. "I didn't know you were studying."
"People. I am studying people. Because I am… a person. Or at least, I would like to be."
Something in Steve's face cracked and fell, his smile wilting and his eyes wide and sad. "Buck," he whispered, swallowed heavily. He seemed to run out of words.
Bucky understood that.
He often ran out of words.
Silence was okay.
He warred between getting caught and swept into Steve's gaze, sad and still, and itching to check the small child's watch on his wrist that told the time to the correct second (it was in the $2 store and had Bruce the shark on it. Eliza had even crocheted the extra length of band it needed to tie all the way around his wrist in a bright sea-green that made him smile every time).
Steve's gaze won.
Bucky looked at him, wondering what he was thinking. He thought maybe he was trying to understand, like Eliza sometimes did, but was not sure of the words.
When Bucky ran out of words, he found that he liked to read them, instead.
It made the silence okay when something less jarring slipped through the cracks like water; gentle and smooth and flowing in, flowing out. Breathing in, breathing out.
He gasped softly as an idea came to him and broke away from Steve's eyes to rummage efficiently through his pack, finding the paperback. He opened the pages in approximately the correct position, running his finger over lines until he found what he wanted and turned it towards Steve, pointing out the line for him.
"Do you know," Peter asked, "why swallows build in the eaves of houses? It is to listen to the stories."
Steve gently took the book from his hands and read it again, eyes flicking between the book and Bucky, brows furrowed a little as he tried to work out what Bucky was trying to say. Then he put a hand in his pocket and pulled out a pencil.
Restless hands, charcoal stains.
Steve flipped the book on its side and hesitated a second before writing along the margin.
Do you like to learn through stories?
Bucky smiled. Yes, he thought. That was a nice way to describe it.
Steve wrote again.
People are like stories, so you watch them?
Bucky nodded again, taking the pencil from his hand, and turning the book back towards himself.
Yes.
Steve laughed softly around a smile. "Okay," he whispered, almost silent. I get it, he wrote next to Bucky's yes.
The low buzz of lazy bees and chirping birds filled the space between them. Bucky's hands mindlessly flicked through the pages. He checked his watch.
He really should go, soon.
But he stayed where he was, wanting to shuffle his knee an inch closer to Steve's, but not daring to move a muscle. Just a second more.
Steve sat all the way down, crossing his legs and leaning his head against the doorway. He looked relaxed there, draped in the yellow light of the day.
"You can say no," Steve started after the air had quietened and stilled, and time had stretched its furthest. "But… could I come with you, if you're not gonna come inside?"
The question surprised Bucky. He had not thought of that.
That would be very outside of routine.
"I do not know," he answered. "What if someone sees you?"
Steve shrugged, knocking his head lightly against the wood. "I make it to Two Hens and a Pig every day without much trouble."
Bucky knew this was true. But he also knew that Steve was Bad at disguises. He had likely only remained undetected because everyone's attention had been focussed two streets over.
(Eliza was still grumpy about it.)
He breathed in and out, sorting through the potential risks, but found none that Steve did not already face every day when he went for a run or caught the train.
Bucky frowned. "Can you be stealthy?" he asked. He did not need Steve sneezing and ruining his cover.
Steve grinned. "I like to think so."
[-]
Steve could not be stealthy.
Bucky huffed from the roof as he watched him scramble up the wall, feet slipping clumsily over the bricks.
He motioned with his hands for him to quiet down, but Steve just looked back, unimpressed and clinging for dear life.
Even Chips had more finesse.
Bucky sighed and lowered himself back halfway down the wall, grabbing Steve under his shoulders and pulling him up with his metal arm. "I thought you were supposed to be a super-soldier," he grumbled.
"Yeah," Steve shot back quietly, looking vaguely embarrassed. "A heavy super-soldier. This is against physics."
Bucky hauled them over the lip of the roof and rolled over, staring up at the unobscured blue sky. Steve breathed heavily beside him, one hand still weakly gripping Bucky's sleeve.
"Thanks for not letting me drop ten stories," he told the sky eventually.
Bucky huffed again, but caught himself smiling a little. Steve would not make a very good pancake.
"You are an idiot," he told him, just in case he did not know.
Steve turned his head to the side, catching Bucky's eye, and grinned innocently, red, and flushed and bright.
Bucky had to bite the inside of his lip to stop his own from mirroring.
Using his hands, Steve pushed himself up to sitting and looked cautiously over the edge of the roofline and down to the street below.
"So, this is your haunting spot, huh?"
Bucky stood and reached out a hand to drag Steve up with him. A jolt of energy ran through him that made him feel a bit like bouncing on his toes.
He wanted to show Steve everything.
"Come with me," he said, pulling on Steve's hand impatiently. "But be quieter."
Steve followed him willingly, keeping his footsteps as light as he could when they passed over the tops of windows and scaled another wall under a balcony, before they reached the nest that overlooked the park, green and grand and sprawling before them.
Bucky busied himself with checking that all his sightlines were still clear, then dropped into a crouch, hidden slightly behind an air vent.
"From here you can see the track where people run," he pointed between the trees. Steve walked over and crouched beside him, shoulders touching.
"Hey, that's my track," he blinked, shocked. "Have you been watching me?"
Bucky did not blush. "Not here," he answered truthfully. "You run at the wrong time of day."
"Huh," Steve murmured.
Bucky pointed to the playground next, where a flock of parents were chatting whilst their children spun themselves dizzy on the equipment.
"Parents like to wear puffer jackets," he informed Steve. "I have not yet bought one. They look comfortable, but I am not a parent."
Steve smiled. "You're sorta Chips' parent?" he offered, raising his eyebrows with a shrug.
Bucky thought about this.
He supposed he was correct.
"I will get a puffer jacket, then," he decided. They did look very warm.
"Do I get a puffer jacket, too?" Steve asked.
Bucky considered him. "You are not a parent."
Steve's laugh was loud, like it took him by surprise, and he slammed his hand over his mouth in a vain attempt to stop it echoing, eyes comically wide in apology.
But Bucky laughed too, feeling it well up inside his chest, and lift, lift, lift towards the sky.
Only, he knew how to laugh silently.
Because he was stealthier than Steve.
[-]
The bristles of Eliza's wooden brush tugged lightly at his hair as he pulled it slowly through the knots.
He sighed a little, smile tugging at his lips as he felt tension unwind between his shoulders. He had found that he liked being clean. Liked apple smelling hair even more.
Most of all, he liked that it was always so soft the next day.
Chips leaned her front paws against his shoulder, stretching on her hind legs. Bucky smiled and moved the brush to lightly run down her back, before brushing again through his own tangles. He felt Chips lean heavier against the back of his shoulder, resting her chin at the nape of his neck.
"Hungry already?" he murmured.
Chips licked the back of his neck, causing a shiver of ticklish sensation to run up into his brain.
Taking the hint, he put the brush down and stood, trailing behind her to the food bowl where he scooped out a generous chunk of tuna and some biscuits.
"If you eat much more, you're going to get bigger than me," he told her seriously. The animal doctor had mentioned something about a diet last time he went with Aiden to get her checked. Bucky thought diet sounded a little too much like Assets do not eat, and Chips was not an Asset (the thought of Chips with HYDRA made something like ice push up his throat), so he was generally bad at enforcing the rule.
But he did suppose it was true that she was mildly chunkier than she had been when he adopted her.
Mildly.
It was mostly just poof.
He was sure of it.
Chips was gobbling food down like it was her first and last meal on earth, and Bucky settled down cross-legged beside her to run his hand gently over her back. He breathed in, held it for four, breathed out. Breathed in again. Felt his bones settle and his jaw relax.
It had been a good week.
A great week.
Bucky did not know that weeks could make him feel light and jumpy and vibrant, like something inside of him was reaching for sunlight.
But this week had.
He thought this might be what Bekka felt when she smiled so bright it looked like her grin could not contain it, or when Eliza hummed and danced around the kitchen after she had had coffee, or when Katherine's eyes lit up with fire as she measured and kneaded and stretched sweet dough and turned it into something delightful; it was something bright and lovely and warm which he could not quite hold, but which seemed to hold him.
Bucky thought it was called happiness.
And he liked it.
Liked it so much and thought it so precious, that surely it could not be true that it was allowed to be his for so long.
Surely, he thought, he would break it.
Because no matter what Trav said, he knew that he was the crow, and he worried that the whale had stopped breathing long ago.
[-]
Steve's shoe was resting gently atop his under the table, tapping every now and then in a burst of restless energy.
Bucky smiled every time it happened, small and secret and warm as his heart thudded.
"And Sam has been sneaking suspicious looks at Natasha," Steve continued his rundown of the day. "And at first, I wasn't super clued in because I'd been… well. Distracted, but now?" Steve shrugged, eyes wide. "It's kinda hard to miss."
Steve's foot tapped an irregular rhythm.
Tap. Tap, tap, tap. Tap.
"How does that make you feel?" Bucky asked. Eliza's favourite question, and Bucky thought it was nice digging through words until the perfect one came to the surface.
Steve did not seem to enjoy words quite so much.
"I dunno," he shrugged again. "It's fine, I guess."
Bucky narrowed his eyes. Steve was a lying liar who lied.
"How do you feel?" he repeated.
Steve held his eyes, grimacing a little. "I hate how you do that," he mumbled finally, dragging a palm down his face.
Bucky jerked back, stung, and instinctively blanked his face, pulling his foot from under Steve's. Wrong. You have done something wrong.
He should not have…
He should not have… what?
Ask, whispered a voice in his head. It sounded like Eliza. Bucky thought Eliza was probably more reasonable than he was.
"What do you hate that I do?" he asked Steve, proud of the way his words did not shake. He twisted his metal fingers in the knee of his jeans.
Steve looked ashen all of a sudden. "No," he shook his head wildly, reaching a hand across the table towards him at the same time as his foot found his again, pressing against it gently, reassuringly. "It's just a phrase," he explained, apologetic. "I'm sorry. I couldn't hate a single thing about you, Buck. You know that."
Bucky did not know that. He thought it was stupid for Steve to believe that he did not hate anything about Bucky. He was an assassin, after all. But his reckless heart sung anyway, tension bleeding from the top of his spine.
"Oh," he mumbled, and pushed a water glass towards Steve. "You should drink this," he instructed. "You are pale."
Steve sighed around a soft laugh, relaxing and leaning his head against his fist. "Thanks, jerk."
Punk, the voice whispered. Bucky kept his mouth shut and just smiled, nudging the water closer.
Steve obediently gulped it down, then placed the glass in the centre of the table. He opened his mouth like he was about to tell a new story, and Bucky loved new stories but-
"How do you feel, Steve?"
-he had not answered the question yet.
Steve sighed loudly, pulling the glass back to his side of the table so he could roll it between his palms. He looked like he wanted to smile in exasperation and evade, evade, evade in equal measures.
"Fine, you win," Steve laughed eventually. He swallowed and looked around the shop, probably sifting through words to find the correct ones. Bucky breathed with him, soothed by the distant screech of the milk frother and the tinkle of the bell as the door opened and shut at irregular intervals.
After silence had stretched and stretched, and Steve's hands had stilled on the glass, he licked his lips. "I feel… like I wish they didn't think they had to keep it from me."
Bucky nodded; eyes carefully trained on Steve's.
"It feels like they think I'm so… fragile at the moment, or something. I don't know. Like knowing they were happy would make me unhappy, or something else crazy."
Bucky let his breath out and reached forward to tap his index finger over Steve's in time with Steve's anxious feet. It made Steve smile and roll his eyes.
"It makes me feel a bit useless that I don't know how to be happy for my friends right now. That the first thing I thought when I noticed wasn't yes! I'm so happy for them, but was more like… Oh. That's a thing."
This was usually the moment that Eliza would squeeze Bucky's hand and say something comforting like I understand, Bucky. But Bucky did not think he did understand. He had never had to watch two of his friends fall in love. He thought it might feel… hard. Maybe a little like they were creating a world that you were not part of anymore.
"I… I do not know what to say," he stuttered, embarrassed.
Steve looked straight at him, endless blue and fierce. "That's okay, Buck. Thanks for making me say it out loud. It… it helps, I think. Helps things make more sense."
Bucky thought that asking how do you feel? was the absolute bare minimum, and that Steve should not thank him for such useless help. But instead, he just took a sip of his hot chocolate when Steve took a sip of his own, and counted the tap, tap, taps, reassuring and real against his foot.
[-]
The hardware store was large.
Quite large.
Bucky stood frozen in the doorway a moment, walls and shelves swirling around him as sounds echoed in his ears from concrete floors and concrete walls and concrete ceilings.
"Buck?" Steve was on his left, hand heavy and grounding on his shoulder. "You okay?"
Bucky forced himself to nod. "Yes."
He was okay.
Just a little overwhelmed.
There were so many things.
He swallowed. "There are a lot of people here," he breathed.
Steve grimaced. "Yeah. I'm sorry; we can leave. We don't have to do this."
"No," Bucky cut him off. "I want to see the lettuces."
Steve looked at him for a moment, eyebrows creased and unconvinced, but Bucky stood his ground, straightened his back, and breathed in for four, held, breathed out. It had been weeks since a crowd had set him trembling and goddammit, it was not going to happen today when he was with Steve.
"I want to see," he repeated firmly.
Steve looked like he wanted to argue, but nodded again, slipping his arm gently around Bucky's to lead him forward.
Bucky was grateful for the warmth of him by his side, and leaned into it a little, letting it soothe his nerves and mute out the echo of feet and machinery and voices and trolleys squealing across the floors.
"I spent probably a little too much time in this store," Steve was saying as he led them through aisles and aisles of shovels and light bulbs and planks of timber. "It was easier to focus on thinking about fixing Sam's garden than to think of everything else, and then the garden kinda looked nice, so I just kept…" he trailed off and Bucky glanced over at him to see red spots high on his cheeks. He wanted to touch them.
He refrained.
Because that would be not Good.
Invading people's personal space was rude.
"Just kept going, I guess," Steve finished with a rueful smile.
Bucky moved his eyes back to the aisle before them. "You planted succulents next to the herbs."
"I… uh. Well. I didn't say I was good at it."
Bucky huffed a breath that could have been a laugh. Steve just shook his head, and it might have been his imagination, but he thought Steve pulled his arm a little closer as they kept walking, Bucky's footsteps silent next to Steve's slight shuffle on the dusty concrete below.
They turned a corner where the floor was running with water and the ceiling stopped being a ceiling and Bucky's first thought was that Steve was correct.
The lettuces were tiny.
Cute and quaint.
He told Steve this.
And Steve laughed.
And laughed.
[-]
The girl that slapped the boy across the cheek with her chalkboard sounded an awful lot like Steve to Bucky.
He liked her immediately.
[-]
Bucky told Steve about the girl with the fire red hair at their next coffee not-date.
Steve smiled widely and took the book from his hands, flicking through it idly.
"I remember this," he laughed. "You owned it, read it more than a few times. I think it was Bekka's."
"I do not remember reading it before."
Steve looked up, eyes soft. "Nothing like reading something great for the first time all over again," he tried to say light-heartedly.
A small smile tugged the corner of Bucky's lips and he shrugged. "Woulda been nice to know I liked the fiery ones," he joked. The words felt a little foreign in his mouth, but also right, like he had not had to carefully form the sentence before it ran away from his mouth.
Steve barked a laugh. "Shoulda known," he handed the book back to Bucky. "I always had more of a crush on Gilbert."
[-]
The best part of Bucky's day was when he visited Steve's house to check on the cameras, and the blinds were drawn, but a small gap would appear with two eyes that would peer towards the street, as though waiting, waiting, waiting.
Stevie, Stevie, his heart would thump, and then he would have to scold in his head: Stevie, put the damn blind back down, because Steve was an idiot with no self-preservation.
The way he slightly swayed towards Bucky when he opened the door for him made him forget the scolding, though.
Next time, he told himself every time, without fail.
He never did remember.
[-]
"You know," Steve told his lettuces, elbow deep in dirt. "I wasn't sure you'd ever want to see me again, after that first meeting."
Bucky looked down to his own lettuce, purple and cute. He carefully placed it in the hole and moved the dirt gently to cover the roots.
"Why did you think that?" he barely whispered.
Steve sighed. "I dunno. I guess you looked like you didn't wanna be there, and then I remembered how I always had a habit of butting my nose in where it's not wanted…" he trailed off, voice lilting to a mumble, and Bucky saw the line of his shoulders droop a little.
"You thought I did not want to know you?" he asked, bewildered. All this time, he had been so afraid of Steve knowing him, he had not considered how it could feel from the other side.
Steve bit his lip and grabbed the watering can, showering water over the seedlings. "I wouldn't have blamed you, Buck, I really wouldn't've. I did kinda just charge in and demand space, and I never asked anything about what you wanted."
Bucky blinked.
"A little bit, I guess," he allowed. Eliza had told him that Steve was driving her up the wall.
He looked miserable.
"But that was not what was wrong, Stevie," he whispered. He took a deep breath, filled his lungs. Reminded himself he could not be punished here. HYDRA was not here. "I was afraid."
Steve crumpled a little further into the dirt below them. "Of me?"
"No, Steve. I knew you were stupid, but not that stupid."
Steve laughed a little, but it sounded small and flat.
"I was afraid that you would find out that I was not Bucky anymore, and then you would not want me." The words were halting and short, stumbling staccato, but clear and simple was what Eliza said helped people to understand. He was trying his best.
Steve looked personally offended, eyebrows drawn down in outrage. "Of course you're-"
"No, Steve. Please, do not say that." He exhaled through his nose and stroked one of the tiny lettuce leaves with his metal hand. "I am Bucky. But I know I am not your Bucky. And I have holes in my head, and nothing can change that."
Steve shut his mouth and looked at him, eyes wide and helpless.
Bucky's heart thudded in his throat.
He thought that Eliza was right, that Steve would not drop him, even if he was not the right Bucky, but the ground suddenly felt so fragile all the same. Do not drop me, Stevie.
Please.
"I…" Steve stuttered. Stopped. Started again. "You're all the Bucky that matters to me right now," his voice was rough, like a lump was blocking it, and his eyes were wet, and he was staring, staring, staring.
And Bucky felt his heart fall, but not to the ground below.
It fell, tumbling and useless, into Steve's hands, covered in dirt and water and callouses from fighting fights he did not know how to stop. And it made him want Steve to know that here, with a floppy hat and dirt across his nose and small lettuces cradled in his hands amongst the mismatched garden he had planted, he was as much Steve as he had ever been. That he was allowed to be this Steve.
And then he thought maybe he understood, a little.
"You are all the Steve that matters to me right now, too."
Steve's smile was wobbly and wet and marred with mud, but Bucky did not think he had ever seen anything so bright.
[-]
Steve was sitting so close to him.
Bucky was getting a cramp in his left knee, but he dared not move, eyes glued to the screen ahead.
Steve's shoulder shifted against his when he leaned further back into the couch and Bucky stopped breathing. The TV was playing Finding Nemo because Bucky had been so excited to show him Bruce and the animation and the beautiful colours and the music that felt like it wrapped around his soul and squeezed, and he was correct.
Steve was enthralled.
But Steve was also pressed right against him.
He slowly let his breath out before sucking it back in as quietly as he could. His spine felt like a rod, and it was causing an ache in his lower back where the couch cushions were too soft.
But Steve smelt like earth and hot chocolate and boring shampoo and Bucky never wanted to move ever again.
"Fish are friends," murmured Steve, his voice startingly close to his cheek. He laughed quietly, almost to himself. "Why is it always Bruces who are so misunderstood?"
Bucky was not sure of any other misunderstood Bruces in the world, but he could barely focus on Steve's words save for the soft breath of air they sent skittering across his neck. He froze in place until Steve tilted his head back into the cushion behind him, drawing up his knees and hooking his elbows around them.
The motion tilted him a little further into Bucky's space and he tensed, tensed, tensed, then felt the warmth shoving at his heart, making space there, and rising to his cheek. He took a breath and tilted himself, slightly, slightly, carefully to the side.
He could feel Steve's smile, broad and sweet against his hair; and the blue stretched endless across open waters, and turtles, and sharks and searching family.
[-]
Bucky noticed that Steve did not seem to talk to anyone but him and Sam and the Widow.
He was polite to Jake, and always smiled at Sarah, but he was stilted and awkward and looked far too large for his body and like he did not quite know what to do with his hands.
Bucky thought maybe he was lonely.
He liked to think that he took away some of that aloneness, but he knew it was not something that one person could do. Especially a person who was only hanging on to being a person by a thread.
But he did know someone who was very good at taking away aloneness.
"I want you to meet Katherine," Bucky declared as they wandered through the park, Steve still breathing slightly heavy after running a few laps of the trail. Bucky also felt tired in that way that let him know all his muscles had been stretched, but training was bone deep and would not ever allow him to change the rhythm of his breaths.
"Who's Katherine?" Steve panted.
"My friend. She is a very good cook, and she is good at being friends."
Steve nudged his arm against Bucky's. "I'm glad you've found so many friends, Buck. It makes me real happy."
Bucky frowned. "It makes me happy, too. But I want her to be your friend."
"Huh?" Steve's face twisted in confusion.
"You need more friends," Bucky told him. Clear and simple.
Steve's smile grew slowly, amusement dancing across his face like he had not properly expected it to take hold. "I have plenty of friends," he laughed.
Bucky narrowed his eyes. "You have three."
"What? No, I have more than that…"
"Name them."
Steve looked vaguely cornered. He grinned sheepishly. "Uhh… Natasha, Sam, you, Eliza… uh. Bruce! Thor… Barton…" he winced a little. "Tony, I guess."
He was talking about the colourful superheroes, Bucky realised. "They are your team. It is different."
"I can be friends with my team," Steve argued.
Bucky nodded. "Yes. But you still need friends."
Steve huffed, but he was smiling, and he shook his head fondly before taking off at a slow jog. "Which way is her house?" he called back to Bucky.
"You stink," Bucky informed him. "You are not showing up to Katherine's smelling bad."
Steve snorted and started jogging backwards. "You're one to talk."
Bucky grinned at the thought of a hot bath. "I fully intent to wash my hair with the apple shampoo."
Steve's eyes widened momentarily. "That's what that smell is."
Bucky jogged a bit faster to close the distance between them.
"Do you like it?"
Steve flushed the same red as the stop signs, but it could have been from the exercise or the sun. Steve was always sunburnt these days.
"It smells nice," was all he mumbled before turning back around and racing Bucky properly.
Bucky made a mental note to buy more apple smelling shampoo.
He never wanted to run out.
[-]
Miles was staring from the staircase.
"Mom?" he called uncertainly, eyes landing on Katherine in the living room. "Why is Captain America sitting in our living room?"
"Miles!" Katherine greeted, shifting over on the couch and patting the spot next to her. "Come meet Steve."
"You mean, Captain America," Miles said, eyeing his mother like he thought something had loosened in her brain.
"Steve," Bucky supplied. "Just Steve."
Steve blushed but stood when Miles walked down the last few steps and came into the room.
"Good to meet you, Miles," Steve said in a voice that was suddenly grander and more poised. Bucky tilted his head. Katherine hid a smile behind her hand.
Miles shook Steve's hand slowly, shooting glances over to Katherine that looked a lot like what the hell, mom?
"Would you like to help us make apple pie?" Bucky asked Miles. He knew Miles had a very soft spot for apples. And so did Bucky.
Miles looked uncertainly between all the adults crowding his living room. "I, uh…" his eyes landed on Bucky's, and Bucky tried to smile reassuringly.
"Uh… Yeah. Okay," he decided. Bucky noticed he stood a little taller whenever he glanced towards Steve.
Katherine clapped her hands in delight and rose from the couch, commenting happily about the benefits of Granny Smiths over Pink Ladies when stewing.
"You are making Miles nervous," Bucky whispered in Steve's ear as they all filed into the sunny kitchen.
"I don't know how to stop doing that," Steve winced at himself.
Bucky caught his eye and smiled right at him. "Just be Steve."
[-]
Just Steve was maybe Bucky's favourite person in all the world.
Flour had somehow made it onto his eyelashes, and that could not be comfortable. It was also streaked across his forehead in a way that reminded him of the movie with the lions.
"Simba," Miles said seriously, reaching up to spread the flour further with his thumb, apparently before thinking it all the way through.
His eyes widened in shock when he caught what his hand was doing. "I am so sorry, Mr. Captain America. Ohmygods. Sorry. Sorry!" He yanked away his hand and backed away a few steps, looking down at his thumb in absolute betrayal.
But Bucky snuck behind Steve and lifted him up from under his arms. Steve was taller than him, so he only managed to get him to his tiptoes, but the effect was all the same as Miles peeled with laughter, clutching his stomach, and Steve pouted stubbornly, his silent huffs of amusement only given away by the way his chest spasmed under Bucky's hands every now and then.
Katherine stirred the apples, sending wafts of cinnamon into the air, and shared a commiserative look with Steve, and Bucky felt something inside him grow and grow, and he knew that this was Good.
It was Good.
[-]
"How's the boyfriend?" Eliza asked as she breezed through the front door after work one afternoon.
Bucky spared a moment to be glad that Steve was not in the house with him and had therefore not heard that comment, before crossing his arms and glaring at her. "He is not my boyfriend."
Eliza's eyebrows raised. "Oh. I'm sorry, what're we calling it these days? Talking? Hanging out? Vibing?"
Bucky was confused. "We are talking." That was accurate.
Eliza laughed and shook her head. "Never mind, old man. Tell Steve he's welcome for dinner if he ever wants. I'm not used to you being out of the house so much."
Bucky chewed on his lip guiltily. He had been spending a lot of time with Steve.
"Hey, nope. I know that look," Eliza put her hands on her hips, staring him down sternly. "No guilt in this household, mister. You don't have to be in this house all the time. I'm glad you're getting out. I'm proud of you."
It seemed an unreasonably small thing for Bucky's eyes to burn over, but burn and burn they were.
I'm proud of you.
"I will tell Steve he can come for dinner," he said, sniffing a little.
Eliza stepped closer and wrapped him in a hug that smelt like daisies and coffee. "Please do."
[-]
Steve was holding flowers.
Steve was holding flowers.
Bucky halted mid-greeting, hand frozen on the doorknob.
"Hey, Buck," Steve waved a little awkwardly with the hand not death-gripping the yellow blossoms.
"You have flowers," Bucky stated dumbly. Steve had flowers.
Steve blushed a brilliant red and ran a hand over the back of his head. "Yeah… uh. Sam said it was… um. They're for you." He thrust them forward with the grace of a bull.
Bucky now had a handful of yellow blossoms, stems slightly crushed from Steve's fingers.
He swallowed.
His heart felt too big.
He thought that probably was not healthy, so he shoved it back down to normal size. "Thank you. I like flowers."
Steve smiled, a little wobbly and a little jittery, and Bucky remembered he was supposed to let him through the door, not leave him floundering on the front porch.
"Come in, sorry." He pulled the door open wider and stepped aside, smelling boring shampoo as Steve moved past him and into the hallway.
He perused his eyes over every wall, and Bucky watched him with his heart high in his throat. He did not know what was so different about having Steve in this house, when he had seen Steve in his own house so many times.
But different it clearly was.
"Dinner will be ready in…" Bucky checked his watch. "Fourteen minutes."
Steve smiled, cheeks still red. "Sounds great."
They stood there, foot-to-foot in the cramped hallway, a little too close, for two beats too long before Bucky turned and briskly walked towards the kitchen, motioning Steve to follow.
Steve settled himself on a kitchen stool and placed his elbows on the bench, chin in his hands. He spun a little side to side on the chair, the same way that Eliza always did when she was nervous. Bucky forced himself to look back at the stove and stir his stew.
"It smells amazing," Steve hummed from behind him.
"It is just stew," he frowned, stirring the ladle through the meat to break it off the bones a little.
Steve laughed, quiet and soft. "You always say that."
Bucky raised an eyebrow and glanced back over his shoulder. "It is always true."
Steve pressed his lips together, but his eyes were bright, and Bucky turned back around before he could let his perfect stew burn.
It was perfect.
But it was rude to gloat.
A familiar set of footsteps announced Aiden waltzing in from the living room and Bucky tensed, darting his eyes to the side to catch his entrance.
"Steve, this is Aiden," he said, probably a little too loudly, before Aiden could say anything incriminating. "Aiden, this is Steve."
Aiden grinned, wide and easy, and offered his hand for Steve to shake. "I've heard a lot about you," he chuckled.
Steve looked to Bucky and then back to Aiden, wariness creasing his brow. "Really?"
Bucky glared at Aiden over the top of Steve's head, but he ignored him and stifled another laugh. "Oh, he never shuts up-"
"-Dinner will be ready in eleven minutes for anyone who wants to eat," Bucky interrupted, calling loudly. (So that Eliza would hear him as well. That was the reason. The only reason.)
Eliza clomped down the stairs in a colourful rush, rainbow scarf trailing from her shoulders and her hair pulled back into a frizzy bun.
"Mr. Grant!" she exclaimed. "So good to see you!"
Bucky was confused. "But your middle name is Grant," he told Steve.
"Hello Eliza," Steve smiled, warm and exasperated. "Good to see you, too. Thanks for having me."
"Oh, anytime, Mr. Grant. I will always have time for Bucky's significant other."
"But your middle name is Grant," Bucky repeated.
Steve had turned into a beetroot. Bucky thought, vaguely distracted, that it looked quite charming.
Then Eliza's words caught up with him.
"What is a significant other?"
Steve's ears looked like they might be hot to the touch. Bucky hoped they did not hurt.
Eliza smiled smugly. "It means best friend," she winked.
Bucky frowned, eyes darting across all his favourite people in the one room. "I have many best friends," he mumbled. "I do not think it is kind to pick only one."
Eliza swiped a spoonful of broth before settling into the stool beside Steve. "Please never change, Bucky," she grinned at him fondly and took a sip from the spoon. "Oh my gosh, this is good."
It made Bucky's heart warm, but he still was not sure what they were talking about. "I will not," he promised weakly.
He turned his attention back to the stew, giving it all the care and devotion that it deserved in its final minutes. When it was ready, he ladled it into two small bowls and two very large bowls and carried them over to the table.
There was water, there were glasses, there were spoons.
Bucky ran back to the bench and picked up Steve's flowers, putting them in a tall jar and filling it with water. It went in the middle of the table. Spring brought inside; bright sunshine transformed into tiny petals.
That was better.
He grinned proudly at his observers and gestured to the table. "Food is ready."
[-]
"If I never move again, it'll be too soon," Aiden groaned, leant back with a hand over his stomach.
Bucky smirked, smug and content.
He had been right.
It was perfect.
"The best damn stew I've ever eaten," Steve agreed, still busy shovelling his second bowl-full into his mouth. "You gotta teach me one day, Buck."
The voice whispered a flash of skinny wrists, bland stew, pinch of salt'll make it better, and Steve was big and small and sharp and broad all at once.
He blinked; once, twice, and Steve morphed back to normal.
"Salt is the trick," he said, voice quiet like he had not quite given permission for the words to fall from his lips.
Steve looked up at Bucky, mouth halted mid-chew and eyes wide, a little stunned.
"Yeah, that's the bit I never learn," was all Steve said, pushing it from his throat in a croak after he swallowed his mouthful.
Bucky thought that this was something he already knew. Steve is a bad cook.
But he would teach him, if Steve would let him.
Over and over.
[-]
The day's heat had permeated the walls of the shed, making the air heavy and muggy.
Bucky cracked the single window open and pressed his nose against the cooling breeze, letting it play with his hair and whisper up to the dark skies.
Steve had left late, after dessert and tea and five rounds of scrabble (Bucky lost every game, but it was worth it to see Steve laugh triumphantly, eyes bright and smile so big it crinkled his nose right between his eyes).
When the night had weened to early morning, Bucky had walked Steve to the front gate and stood there, quiet and watching, as he disappeared under the silver moon, framed with trees covered in new leaves like grey snow drops in the pale light. And he had breathed in the honey scent and listened to the owls' song and felt his heart thud, thud, thud.
He had felt light.
Like maybe he really did have small wings on his ankles.
He turned away from the window and looked down at his rug. Chips was already sprawled out and snoring. He crouched down and ran a gentle hand over her head, laughing softly as she twitched in her sleep, feet scurrying, catching rabbits. He carefully dislodged one of the blankets from under her and wrapped it around his shoulders, more for the weight than for the warmth and settled with his back against the bed.
Sleep.
He knew, logically, that sleep, the way Eliza and Aiden and Sarah used it, was not Sleep. But just knowing that had never been enough to stop the tremors, to stop the sirens blaring loud in the back of his skull. Danger. Danger. Danger.
But tonight, he felt light.
The sirens were as quiet as the stars, and the bed was soft against his back.
He tilted his chin up, running the back of his head back and forth across the fabric. Then he held his breath and launched himself onto the mattress in one smooth motion, too fast to change his mind.
He sunk, sunk, sunk, but then it caught him, and cradled him, and his back stretched out and his feet did not dangle off the edge like they did on the couch and…
Oh.
He sighed deeply, feeling his shoulders melt into the blankets beneath him.
Rest would be alright, here.
His eyes slipped closed, cornflower blue and sunburnt skin blurry behind his eyelids.
[-]
His hand did not tremble on the gun, heavy and familiar in his grasp. Ice blew through his jacket, down to his bones, but still he did not tremble.
The night was pierced through with headlights, turned upside down and shining haphazardly across the asphalt.
The Asset walked with measured steps, never slowing, never speeding up, until he came to the smoking car. Windows smashed; door crumpled.
He crouched, smelt the tang of leaking petrol.
Two bodies lay inside the car. One man. One woman.
One target. One collateral.
His hand did not tremble.
The man stirred, cracked open groggy eyes. Blood dripped down his face. He turned to look, furrowed his brow.
"Sergeant Ba-?"
The gun fired.
[-]
Bucky woke with a gasp, tangled and sweaty and drowning, his heart thundering.
He fought against the mattress below him, tearing himself from the twist of blankets and tumbling onto the floor, shivery and cold and hot and cold. His breathing was too fast.
Control it.
Control. It.
The rug was rough under his cheek, and he pressed his face further into it, eyes squeezed shut against the stream of tears, relentless and burning.
He felt something warm touch his face, like sandpaper, and it took him a startled moment to realise it was Chips, mewing and licking at his cheek, paw tapping at his hair.
He drew in a breath.
Hold for four.
Let it out.
He could not move his face from the rug, could not make his arms stop shaking enough to lift himself up, but he tilted his face towards Chips slightly, whispering her name soundlessly.
I am okay, he tried to say.
I am-
She licked and licked and nudged at his nose with her own, the sensation the only thing tethering him here, here, here.
James Buchanan Barnes.
James. Buchanan. Barnes.
Howard Stark.
[-]
The sun always rose.
It greeted Bucky with sweeping tendrils of light, dust floating through its grasp.
Bucky blinked, face still against the rug, rubbed raw.
He stayed.
As still as the wood of the walls.
[-]
"Bucky?" A knock on the door. "It's getting late. Everything alright in there?"
Chips mewed and knocked her head against his nose. He closed his eyes and breathed her in, felt her warmth, felt her softness.
"Bucky?" Eliza's voice was getting louder, her knocking more insistent. "I swear, if you snuck off to be with Steve last night, I'm gonna tease you forever and then I'm gonna kill you for scaring me."
Bucky opened his mouth. Nothing fell out.
The sun streamed through the window.
"Bucky?"
The door rattled as a key slotted into place, and then more sun was shining through, Eliza a dark silhouette in its embrace.
"Bucky," she breathed, rushing over and falling to her knees next to where he was sprawled. He flinched when she reached out to touch his hair and she drew her hand back, fluttering over him like she was not sure what to do.
"What happened?" she asked softly.
Bucky just rubbed his raw cheek against the rug in a parody of a shrug.
Eliza sighed, worried and heavy. "It's gonna be okay, hun. Just sit tight. I'll call Steve."
She pulled her phone from her pocket and stood to her feet and Bucky thought, no, please, but she was already speaking, tone serious and hushed, and Bucky let himself drift back into the halo of light.
[-]
"What happened to him?"
The voice filtered through the white noise in his head.
Stevie.
"Bad day. I don't know what triggered it."
"Can I touch him? Or will he freak out?"
"He flinched last time, but maybe try again. We've gotta move him, he can't stay like that."
Fingers, light like feathers, swept hair from his cheek.
Bucky opened his eyes, battling against them like they were weights. A jean clad knee was straight in his line of vision, and he reached out a weak hand to nudge against it.
Stevie.
"Hey," a whisper. "Hey Buck." Fingers stroked through his hair again. "I'm gonna lift you up, okay? Is that alright?"
Bucky exhaled, used all his strength to stroke one finger against the knee.
Arms wound under his knees and around his shoulders. "On three," Steve whispered close to his ear. "One, two… three."
He was heaved into the air, and Bucky instinctively curled into Steve's shirt, soft and cotton. He was jostled slightly with each step, snatching glimpses of the sun's face until a ceiling replaced it, and the familiar give of the couch cushions were beneath him, and the wool smell of his blanket was wrapped around him, close and tight.
He blinked and felt more tears well up when Chips was dropped gently into his lap, where she curled up under his chin and snuggled into his neck. He stroked her in jerky movements, hands heavy and trembling.
Eliza sat next to him and gently guided his head into her lap, surrounding him in daisies and coffee.
"You're okay," she whispered, brushing through his hair with her fingertips.
Bucky curled himself around her and let the tears fall from numb eyes.
"You're okay."
[-]
Eliza had to go to work eventually, but Aiden replaced her on the couch, hands reassuring against his shoulders.
Snow White was playing on the TV, but Bucky was watching it more from memory than from looking. He could not bring himself to open his eyes for longer than a minute at a time.
He could not bring himself to close them, either.
Steve was sprawled in a chair next to the couch, awkward and too big for its frame. He kept an even gaze on both the movie and Bucky, but he did not come any closer. Had not touched him at all since depositing him on the couch, other than to press a warm mug of hot chocolate into his shaking hands.
Bucky both wanted him to move to where Bucky could sink into him and never let go, and wanted him to stay away, away, away.
He could not feel his breath. Could not feel anything.
Snow White sung to the birds, and the birds outside answered her call.
[-]
It was quiet in the house when Bucky's limbs started to come back to life.
His toes tingled, his fingertips twitched and his eyes blinked, seeing the flittering cartoons across the screen, sound turned right down to mute.
Aiden had left, and the room felt still, Steve a statue hunched in his chair.
Bucky licked his lips. They tasted like flour.
"Steve," he whispered. His voice was hoarse, like he had been screaming.
Steve's head shot towards him. "Buck? Hey. How you feeling?"
Bucky wiggled his toes. "Like a brick."
Steve laughed a little and scooched his chair marginally closer across the floorboards. "Had me worried there, for a minute, bud."
Bucky did not say that he had worried himself, too.
"I am okay."
Steve bit his lip anxiously, eyes glancing over his whole body like he could find what hurt and fix it with sheer will power. "It's good to hear your voice."
Bucky tilted his lips, a smile trying to breach the surface. "I like your voice better."
Steve rolled his eyes, but he was smiling more genuinely now. "Jerk."
Bucky reached out a hand, dangling it off the edge of the couch and into the space between them. Steve looked at it for a moment, something tense crossing his face before he forced a smile and grabbed it, squeezing it warmly.
"Are you okay?" Bucky asked.
Steve nodded, still looking at their hands. "Yeah. Of course. I'm the one supposed to be asking you that."
"How do you feel?" Bucky changed his question.
Steve laughed weakly and brought their hands to his chest, leaning forward in his chair. "I feel grateful that you're here with me," he said, his blue eyes earnest but sad, like there were words clambering behind his tongue that he would not let go of.
Bucky stroked his thumb softly along Steve's. "Punk," he murmured.
He pretended that he did not see the tear that Steve tried to hide by turning his head back towards the TV.
"Snow White, huh?" he cleared his throat, trying and failing to hide a sniffle, and Bucky's heart tried to flip weakly in his chest. "I loved this movie."
Bucky followed his gaze. "Yeah," he whispered. "Me, too."
[-]
Bucky stalked past the bench.
Once.
Twice.
Four more times.
Trav was reading a newspaper, head bowed as sunlight dappled through the leaves above him.
On the ninth time he walked past, Trav called, "Bucky," though he did not look up.
Bucky paused.
"Could you bring me a hot dog, please?"
Bucky shoved a hand in his pocket to check for loose change and heard the tell-tale jingle of coins.
Buy a hot dog.
Simple steps had been getting him through all morning.
Stand up. Pour cereal. Feed Chips.
He joined the line at the vendor, the buzzing in his mind fading as he forced his feet to stop, and his ears to tune into the conversations around him.
A mother was bargaining with her child over how many toppings he was allowed on his hot dog.
A man was complaining that his coffee was burnt.
Two kids were counting their spare change to see how many lollies they could afford between them.
Women and men in suits with briefcases talked on headsets to schedule me in for nine-thirty; have it to me by the end of the day, strides never faltering, the clip, clip, clip of their shoes sharp against the pavement.
The person in front of him moved to the side and then the cashier was smiling at him. Bucky feigned a smile back.
"Hello, sir. What can I get you?"
Simple steps.
"One hot dog, please."
The man tapped something into the till. "Three dollars, thanks."
Bucky handed over the money, nose tingling at the smell of mustard and pickles, and then took the hot dog and turned back towards the bench.
"Hot dog," he announced, somewhat arbitrarily, but Trav looked up from his newspaper and gave him a bright smile.
"Thank you, Bucky," he folded the newspaper and took the hot dog from Bucky's outstretched hand. "Please, sit."
Bucky sat obediently.
They sat in silence as Trav munched away, ketchup falling onto the front of his shirt.
"How did you know I was there?" Bucky asked eventually.
Trav grinned around a mouthful. "Not as stealthy as you think you are."
Bucky huffed. He was plenty stealthy. "I am a professional."
Trav just shrugged and licked his fingers of the last of the crumbs. "Bad day yesterday?"
Bucky snapped his head towards him. His magic man act never got any less disconcerting. "It was," he said, wary.
"I'm sorry to hear." Trav flicked his newspaper back open. He paused, eyes flittering over the headlines, then coughed, clearing his throat. "There are things that need to breathe," he stated, as though they were picking up from the middle of another conversation that Bucky should know about.
He did not know what it was about.
"I need to breathe?" he tried, confused. He was a thing that needed to breathe. That was a correct observation.
"You, yes," Trav nodded, eyes still perusing the page. "You need to breathe, your head needs to breath, all one in the same, really."
Bucky frowned further. "I am confused."
Trav raised a single brow and glanced at him from the corner of his eye. "That's a good place to start. Most of us start there."
That did not make anything make any more sense.
He tried a different question. Simple and clear. Yes. No.
"Have I not been breathing?"
"Not correctly," Trav murmured, clucking his tongue at some article he had seen. "Disgraceful, really. Look at this nonsense."
"How is one supposed to breathe?" Bucky tried to pick up the trails of the conversation. In. Out. Was that not everything?
"Space in your head, son, space in your head. It's all cluttered at the moment."
To Bucky, it mainly felt like a leftover buzzing from the numbness yesterday.
Empty.
That was not quite cluttered, last he checked.
"How can it be cluttered if I do not remember anything?"
"Therein lies the problem," Trav nodded seriously to the newspaper, like Bucky had answered his own question.
He had not. At least, he did not think he had.
"And breathing will help me?"
"Space will help you, Bucky. Space. Breathing makes space."
Bucky was not following, but it hardly mattered, because in the next moment, Trav turned to him, his eyes solemn and locked on Bucky's for the first time that day.
"Things need to breathe," he said quietly, a repetition of earlier. "But you must hold tight to your soul in the process."
Bucky swallowed. He was not sure he had one of those. Or if he did, it was surely not recognisable anymore.
"Pfft, don't be daft, boy," Trav scoffed. "Of course you have a soul. It's keeping it alive from here, that's the trick."
Of course he…
"If my… soul… survived-" he broke himself off. Started again. Trav already seemed to know everything about him, anyway. "If my soul survived HYDRA, why would it not survive now?"
"A wise question," Trav hummed, "with no happy answer, I'm afraid."
Bucky did not dare look away.
He did not like sadness, but sadness was surely better than dying souls.
"Giving things space, where space for them didn't exist before, is difficult business."
"Why?"
"Because it requires a conscience. And consciences are pesky, heavy things."
He thought of the guilt that had crushed his throat when Steve sat across from him in the coffeeshop; the weight on his chest when he woke with Howard Stark's face behind his eyelids.
Sergeant Ba-?
"They are," he agreed.
"But the problem is just so: if you do not let it breathe, it will stay cluttered. Nothing and no one can keep it down forever."
Memory, the voice whispered. Darker and far less sweet than its usual lilting timbre.
Bucky was starting to get the feeling that he knew what Trav was talking about.
And he did not like it.
Not one bit.
[-]
He bought himself a bag of lollies from the vendor for the walk home, because dammit all if he did not deserve something sweet to make up for the anticipatory bitterness coating the back of his tongue.
His footsteps echoed in his ears as he chewed angrily, for once not silent as a shadow.
Click, click, click.
[-]
"We should go to the space museum!" Aiden exclaimed, finger pointing to something in a magazine.
Bucky thought maybe the universe was conspiring against him.
Space, space, space.
"Space, like rockets?" he checked, just to be sure.
"Yes, old man. Like rockets. Only the coolest things ever."
Bucky thought of the second star to the right and little prince and the pilot.
That kind of space was nice, he supposed.
"Can Steve come?"
[-]
Steve was bouncing on his toes like a golden retriever whilst Eliza lined up in the queue for tickets.
"Space is so cool, Bucky, you would not believe how far everything has come," he was chattering, craning his head as though he could see over the walls and into the exhibit. "Like something out of one of your sci-fi books."
Bucky laughed, Steve's giddiness contagious despite himself.
He did like sci-fi.
"You used to be able to name all the constellations, Northern and Southern Hemispheres. I was so jealous."
Bucky wondered if he would remember that one day. Wondered if it would happen before, or after everything else.
He shook his head, dislodging the thought. Today was for fun.
He could do fun.
[-]
Once they had made it into the exhibition hall, it did not take Bucky long to become completely engrossed. Pictures of astronauts, photos of disasters, snapshots of the earth from outside and models of rockets and aeroplanes filled spaces between crowds.
There were giant planets suspended from the ceiling, floating bursts of colour and light, and Bucky wandered underneath them, neck craned back as far as it could go.
He stopped at a wall covered floor to ceiling in pictures of stars. The plaque said Hubble and Webb and Bucky stepped closer, close enough that it felt like the stars were all around him. Above and below and all there ever would be, on and on.
The writing on the wall said they were photographs taken by telescopes. Made by engineers and studied by astrophysicists.
The science of the cosmos! the wall boasted.
Bucky's lips twitched, his heart racing just a little faster than its normal tempo.
It felt something like excitement.
He eventually tore his eyes away to the next display, which was a model with a large net and a bowling ball dropped into the middle of it.
Gravity, the plaque read.
Bucky read the rest of the information on the plaque; then the next, and the next. Black holes and relativity and dark matter and something called cosmology and quantum mechanics (and that one made no sense). He felt as though there was no possible way people had found out so much in the time he had been the Asset.
It did not seem real.
And yet, it seemed so wonderful. And simultaneously so inescapably sad.
Because he had missed it.
Because he was not supposed to have seen this at all.
He was supposed to have died in 1945. That was what the museum said.
But over there (impossibly, here), draped in the blue light of the exhibition hall, was Steve; brows furrowed as he squinted at a model of a satellite. His arms folded close to his body as though to take up less space as children knee height skidded passed him and around him, frazzled parents on their heels. His face was shaded by the brim of a baseball cap, soft blonde sneaking out the edges. Bucky knew it smelt like boring shampoo.
Neither of them belonged here.
Not really.
And they had both missed… everything.
Everything but this.
And starting now; he thought that of all the here's in the universe, this one was probably a pretty good place to be.
And so, he walked around, feeling slightly dazed, the crowds bumping up against him not even enough to tear his thoughts away from the fizz in his blood and the wonder pulling at his edges of his mind and pushing him further, further because there was so much to find.
His heart was thrumming in his chest. And he thought he might be smiling.
This, the voice whispered, soft and sweet. This.
"This," Bucky could only agree.
[-]
"Steve, Steve!" he tugged urgently at Steve's sleeve, dragging him over to a robot display. "Look at them!"
The robots were building something, welding and coding and screwing pieces into place with incredible precision. Bucky thought the person who had created it must have been wonderful.
He wondered if he could ever learn such a thing.
"I want one," Bucky said, meaning, he thought, I want to make one.
"Chips would get jealous."
Bucky frowned at Steve. "They would get along," he defended.
Steve just raised an eyebrow.
And damn him. He was right. Chips did not even like Steve taking too much of Bucky's attention- always jumped up onto Steve's head and mewed loudly over anything he tried to say.
The thought of Chips trying to outshine a robot made his lips twitch silently. "I should not do that to her; you are right."
"I'm always right," Steve grinned, already dragging Bucky over to another corner of the exhibition.
Bucky just rolled his eyes and let himself be dragged along. This place was huge.
And he thought he might not ever want to leave.
[-]
"Why does he look like a rabbit lizard?"
"He's Gungan."
"That makes everything clearer, Steve. Thank you."
Steve shoved him and he toppled off the couch, laughing.
"You're the one that said you wanted to watch them."
"I thought they were about stars."
"They are about… well. I guess not-"
"Sam says you have Discovery Channel. I have never seen Discovery Channel. Do they have movies about stars?"
Steve huffed and crossed his arms, but a smile was playing around his lips, and he rolled his eyes as Bucky plonked back onto the couch beside him.
"Lots of them," Steve replied. "But none of them as good as this. Come on, Bucky. These are classics."
"You watched them for the first time three months ago. I do not think that you are allowed to call them classi-"
A pillow slammed into his face.
"Shut up and the watch the damn movie, Buck."
Bucky pulled the pillow from his face and slid a little closer to Steve, knee touching lightly against his. He closed his mouth.
Even if the movie was not about stars, Bucky supposed it was not terrible.
(The next one made him lean in a little further, and the one after that made him hold his breath.)
(By the fifth movie, Bucky was on the edge of his seat and Steve was laughing at him, wrapped in blankets, looking soft and warm and lovely, and Bucky could not even bring himself to care that Steve had been right.)
These movies were classics.
[-]
The call came on a Friday.
Steve had to go to New York.
He would not say what for.
Bucky paced back and forth in the living room as Sam and Steve tossed clothes into suitcases. The Widow had already been there for two days.
"Is it a mission?" he asked again.
"It's not dangerous, Bucky. I promise," Steve said, his Captain America voice leaking through already. "Don't worry."
Bucky was worried.
When they were all packed and the car was ready to go, Steve turned to him and hesitated, eyes soft and mouth slightly downturned. "Don't miss me too much," he smirked weakly.
"I would not dream of it." Bucky felt a little untethered, like he was watching something leave that was not supposed to go.
"Bye, Bucky," Sam called from the driver's side. "Stay outta trouble, yeah?"
"Bye, Sam," Bucky replied, eyes still locked with Steve's.
Steve bit his lip and stepped a little closer. Stepped back. Forward. His hands twitched at his sides and Bucky thought he was stupid, so he stepped forward and wrapped him up in a hug instead of waiting for Steve to do it.
Steve was warm and solid beneath his hands, and Bucky tucked his nose into his neck, smelling boring shampoo and rosemary. It sunk into his bones and unravelled the tension in his shoulders just a margin. Steve clutched him back, hands twisted in his shirt.
"Stay safe, okay?" he whispered into Bucky's neck.
"That is my line."
He felt Steve chest jerk with a laugh. "I'll be fine. I promise. I'll be back as soon as I can be."
Bucky pulled back, holding Steve by his shoulders. He nodded.
Steve nodded back.
Bucky thought about moving, but could not quite make his feet move.
Stay here, Stevie.
Eventually, Sam not-so-subtly shoved open the passenger door, and Steve startled, stepping back from Bucky's arms.
"Right. Gotta go. I'm going. Going. Now." His face was red as he fumbled with the doorhandle behind him, still facing Bucky.
Bucky breathed in deep, feeling impossibly fond of the stupidly ginormous blonde man-child, and somehow feeling the absence of the space he took up, already.
He breathed in deep. "Bye, Steve," he whispered.
Steve's eyes were blue like the sky.
"Bye."
Steve fell back into the seat of the car, and something welled up inside Bucky, fierce and strong and sweet, and he found himself surging forward to place an awkward kiss on his cheek, missing the mark and landing somewhere near his eye instead. All he noticed was warm skin and a shocked gasp before he had pulled back, face burning.
He spun around, heart pounding in his ears, without looking at Steve's reaction and perched himself on the front steps. He wrapped his arms around his legs and stared resolutely at the concrete step in front of his feet until he heard the door shut, the engine start, and the crunch of tires leaving the driveway.
Steve had his window wound down when Bucky finally looked back up, his head all the way out and wind whipping through his hair as he looked back to where Bucky was sitting. He looked stunned. And more than a little red.
But his smile was also the sun.
Bright and alive and blue, blue, blue like the sky.
Bucky tucked his own smile, secret and warm and safe, into the collar of his shirt.
oOoOoOo
The wise have learnt
the cracks are
the way forward
Going down
into the narrows
where seeds fall
Tending to a garden
once lost
in the shadows
-David Tensen, 'Cracks'