We Were Soldiers

158. My Own Private Catharsis

The Strand's dining room was full once more. Newly arrived servicemen descended on it at breakfast time like a plague of locusts, and Bucky had to glare at several of them to get to the hash browns. But not even the diminished portion sizes could dampen his spirit; tomorrow, Morita was coming home from the hospital, and the team had plans to throw him the grandest welcome back party the Whip & Fiddle had ever seen. With lots to plan out, they convened over breakfast and coffee—or in Monty's case, a respectable pot of tea—to discuss the minutiae.

"I'm going to remake the throne," Dugan said, as he tucked into his fried eggs. "Y'know, the one we rolled out for Barnes' welcome back party after he caught a cold during that mission to Norway?" Bucky stuck his fingers up at him, but he ignored the insult. "Monty, you'll do the banner right?"

"Yes, though I'm not sure about the wording. Do we prefer, 'congratulations on surviving rabies', 'congratulations on surviving vampires', or 'congratulations on surviving death'?"

"How about we just go with Welcome Back Private Morita," said Steve. "Remember, this has to go up in the Fiddle, and we don't want to worry people who read it with a possible rabies scare."

"Or a possible vampire scare," Bucky added. The others just looked at him. "It's a real thing."

"Very well," Monty said. "Standard welcome back it is."

"Gabe, Jacques, you're still good for chaperon duty?" Steve asked them. They were the only two who hadn't been to see Morita yet. Bucky had gone yesterday with Steve, while Dugan and Monty were schedule for today's visit. Gabe and Jacques were allowed to visit tomorrow, and to bring him back home with them.

"Of course," said Gabe. "We'll make sure he gets home safe and sound."

"Good. Mr Stark will drive you all back; he's even going to bring you home in one of his fancy cars."

"Your girl's still bringing the food, right?" asked Dugan.

Steve nodded. He'd finally stopped blushing at the mere thought or mention of Agent Carter, and didn't even get tongue-tied when the team referred to her as his girl. He was definitely getting the hang of the relationship thing now, and it was about damn time.

"Yeah, Peggy's going to bring what she calls 'nibbles'. From what I gather, one of her contacts knows someone who can provide 'American snacks', so I think we can probably expect things like peanuts, beef jerky and Tootsie Rolls. And Lizzie overheard us talking and offered to make PB&J sandwiches. I made sure Peggy explained real clearly that jelly is what they call jam, and not jello."

"I spotted Captain Stone last night and invited him along too," said Monty. "The more the merrier, as they say. He's going to bring a bottle of scotch that he purchased whilst up at RAF Invergordon."

"Great, that leaves the cake." Dugan rubbed his hands gleefully. "Barnes, that's your job."

Bucky almost choked on his toast. "But I can't bake. Why can't I do the PB&J sandwiches, and Lizzie can do the cake?"

"Because you have experience with this sort of thing."

"He does?" Steve asked.

"It's a long story, I'll tell you some other time," Bucky sighed.

"You don't actually have to bake the cake, just get it from a shop or something," Dugan instructed. "Now, as for music, I've instructed Walter to play Morita's favourite song as he enters, so one of you two"—he pointed at Gabe and Jacques—"will need to enter ahead of him as a signal to start."

"Who's Walter?" Bucky asked.

"The guy who plays the piano at the Fiddle. Honestly Barnes, you've been in London for almost a year, and you still don't know the name of the pianist?"

"I did not know his name either," said Jacques. He offered a detached shrug. "In my head, I have been calling him Claude."

"Err, why?" Monty asked.

"I give everyone in England French names." His face said he was a hundred percent serious. "It helps me feel more at home."

"Really? What's my name," Dugan asked.

"Grand singe roux."

"Hmm. Grand-saaange-roo. I like it. Sounds noble."

Bucky smothered his grin behind his coffee up. Dugan had no head for languages, so whilst the rest of the team had become fluent in French thanks to Jacques, and competent at basic German thanks to Monty and Agent Carter, he remained firmly an Anglophone.

"Ahem." Mr Chipperton stepped sideways past a group of milling soldiers and came to a stop at their table. "Sergeant Barnes, you have a letter. The courier who delivered it did not wait around for a response, however. And Sergeant Dugan, the name is particularly apt, in my humble opinion."

Bucky accepted the envelope Mr Chipperton held out to him and felt a tiny rush of excitement when he spotted the familiar script spelling out his name on the front. He still had no idea how to reach Wells, and although he'd been back to the Kettle yesterday to see if his friend had left any correspondence for him, Gladys said only that Wells had read the letter and taken it with him. He'd probably been on night-shifts again; his schedule was awkward like that.

He opened it up and smiled at the contents. There was just one word: Lunch? And underneath it, a street name that he wasn't familiar with. That was it. A glance at the clock showed it was only just past nine, far too early for lunch… on the other hand, maybe he could get a little payback for all that reconnaissance Wells had done on him during his first couple of weeks in London. If he left now, that should be ample time to find a cake shop, purchase some baked goods, and then scope out whatever café Wells had picked for lunch. Perhaps lie in waiting and find some way to scare him in recompense for all the stalking.

"Thanks for the delivery, Mr C." he said, and slurped down the last of his coffee. "S'cuse me guys, I've gotta go."

"But we're not done planning," Dugan objected. "Where exactly are you going?"

"Like you said; to get a cake."

: - - - — — — - - - : - - - — — — - - - : - - - — — — - - - :

London, it turned out, was a small city, but a big place. What the locals called London was just the central bit, where all the business and politics and money happened. They had names for all the little places on the outskirts, what would've been suburbs back home. Kensington, Islington, Chelsea and Hackney, Brixton and Peckham and Greenwich and Camberwell, and those were to name only a few.

Finding Watney Street turned out to be harder than expected. He'd asked a few guards along the way, but none of them knew where it was. A local man had told him I think it's near Hackney, but he'd wandered around that suburb for a good hour and found no sign of the street he needed. And no sign of a cake store either, which was worrying. Eventually, he'd managed to find a police officer who directed him to a suburb called Shadwell, and he'd found Watney Street right around the corner from an Overground stop.

It wasn't the posh London that he'd seen so far. This place was less Times Square, more Lower East Side. An open-air market had been set up in the small green space, and half the shops were shut and boarded up. What shops were open were largely thrift stores and grocers; not a café in sight.

Still, the smell of food permeated the air, coaxing a hungry growl from his stomach. He'd only had seconds of breakfast, and was starting to feel those familiar pangs that told him he'd need to eat something soon or get that horrible light-headed feeling. So, he followed the smell. It was a familiar smell. Warm and comforting. He found it opposite the market; a man had set up a baked potato oven, and had a dozen potatoes cooking over the small flames. It seemed such a simple and plain food, but the locals were queuing almost all the way to the market for them. As a pair of women approached, the man behind the cart took two potatoes out of the heat, placed them on a piece of newspaper, sliced them open to release a cloud of steam, then added a generous dollop of butter and a portion of baked beans. He handed the newspapers and their contents over to the women with those tiny little wooden forks the English liked using so much, and took their coins in return.

"You have to admire the ingenuity of it," said a familiar voice behind him. "First you read it, then you eat out of it. Why waste time with a plate when a newspaper will suffice?"

So much for payback. He turned to his friend, putting thoughts of food aside for a moment. "You know, this place was really hard to find."

"That was the whole point," said Wells, a knowing look in his eyes. "A man who doesn't know where he's going is hard to follow."

"Why would anyone want to follow me?"

"You tell me." He reached into his pocket and pulled out the letter Bucky had left for him, pointing to the last line. "I mean, what the hell, Barnes? Be careful? Underlined three time? What exactly am I supposed to be careful of? You know that I'm extremely paranoid, right? You can't just say be careful to a guy who's paranoid and then not elaborate. I have about ten novels' worth of horror stories in my head all because of this."

"Oh, right. Sorry. I ran out of time and couldn't say any more. Can I fill you in while we eat? I get kinda dizzy if I skip meals, and I only had two breakfasts today."

Wells snorted. "Yeah, I can see you're positively wasting away. But sure, join the queue!"

"We're eating here?"

"Yep. You'll thank me for it later. This is the best baked potato stand in the whole of England, or so one of the British guys I work with claims."

So they joined the queue, because the English had perfected the art of queuing, and to jump a queue was to be murdered violently with no witnesses despite how many people might be standing around watching. Maybe even helping, in the case of queue-jumpers. And while they were waiting, Bucky got his friend up to speed on the reason for the warning.

"Jeez, poor girl," Wells said at last. "Have they caught the guy who tried to mug her?"

He shook his head. "I saw Carter yesterday and she said the police are still investigating. Antje's still pretty shaken up, but she's not in any pain, and the doctors don't think the scar will be very big or noticeable."

"She was lucky she wasn't more badly injured. I'm not surprised she fought back, though. I've only met her once, but she comes across as a fighter to me."

"Yeah. She is. I think she's had to be."

At that moment, their spot in the queue arrived at the potato stand. Wells paid for lunch, because he claimed he was better-paid than Bucky now, and they ate as they walked at a slow amble, taking in the sights of the market stalls. None of the stalls had any cakes, and after a few minutes of walking, they stopped to sit on a bench conveniently shaded beneath a leafy tree.

"How'd you know I was back from the mission?" he remembered to ask at last. "You're not still stalking me, are you? Oh wait, I mean 'doing recon'."

Wells offered a dismissive wave of his tiny wooden fork. "Nah. Don't need to do that anymore. I hire kids to stalk you for me, now." He laughed out loud at Bucky's expression. "Relax, it's not as bad as it sounds. Captain America is a local celebrity, and the boys who play courier always know when he's back. So I just asked them to let me know when you all returned."

"They weren't very quick on the uptake, then; we've been back for three days."

"I know, but I had work on your first day back, then two nights shifts. I finished this morning, so I only managed to grab a couple of hours after sending you that message." He yawned as evidence of how tired he was. "Anyway, how did your mission go? It was something to do with that U-boat, right?"

He shot Wells a suspicious glance. "How did you hear about the U-boat?"

"All over the news, pal. In fact, if you move half your baked potato a little to the left, you might even be able to read about it in your plate. Plus, it's not rocket science. The morning a U-boat turns up off the coast of England, you and your fellow sidekicks disappear on some brand new emergency Captain America mission. This has Phillips written all over it."

Wells always had been too sharp for his own good. "It's a bit classified," he said lamely.

"That's fine, you don't have to tell me about it, I was just makin' polite conversation. I don't even care about missions anymore. All that being shot at and sneaking around and carrying heavy stuff, that's in the past. You're all back, so that means the mission went fine, and that's the only thing that matters, right?"

Right. Only… it wasn't right. It had been a hard mission. He stabbed at his baked potato. Almost losing Morita, almost losing Steve. When he failed to skewer the bit of potato he wanted, he stabbed it again. The newspapers never talked about the hard parts. The losses. The sacrifices. The men who'd died to ensure everyone else could be free. Why wasn't the damn fork working? He stabbed the potato again, with more effort, but this time the tiny piece of wood splintered in two. All he could do was stare down at the pieces, and think, why does everything I touch seem to break?

Wells reached over to take the broken fork from his fingers and replaced it with his own. "Don't worry, it's just a fork. It's not the end of the world."

Tears stung Bucky's eyes. He couldn't do it anymore. He couldn't keep pretending everything was okay when the people he cared about came so close to death. If he let himself dwell on it, if he let himself think about how Morita had almost died, how Steve had almost been drowned by the underwater vortex of a sinking U-boat… God, he needed a drink. But he didn't have one, and there wasn't a pub in sight.

"You ever get that feeling of helplessness?" Wells asked quietly. "When someone you care about is in pain, and you don't know how to help them?"

He did. All the time. And he couldn't inflict that on a friend. Taking a deep breath, he squared his shoulders, and said, "It's okay. I'm f—"

"Don't." The glare Wells gave him was heated. "I promised that I'd never lie to you, so I won't stand for you lying to yourself. So either tell me what's really wrong, or talk about some unimportant bullshit like the weather or the price of bread. Because if talking to me puts you in a position where you feel you have to lie, then I'll just leave."

His friend was a hundred percent serious. He really would leave, and right now Bucky didn't wanna be alone. So he nodded, and forced his mouth to say the words that made it all real. "We almost lost Morita. And there was absolutely nothing I could do to help him."

The heated glare quickly disappeared. "What happened?"

"I'll tell you," he agreed. "But I don't think you'll believe it."

So he told Wells about getting woken up at stupid o'clock, and shipped off to the coast for the underwater recon mission. Told him about the rebreather, and how amazing it felt to see what it was really like under the sea.

"I get that," Wells said. "I mean, who wouldn't want to be Captain Nemo, even for a day?"

He carried on with the tale, describing the body they'd found and how they'd all split up to explore. He tried to downplay how hot and dark and cramped it had been in there, because the last thing he wanted was to remind Wells of all the things he hated. Instead, he focused on the bullshit stuff he knew his friend would like, such as the upside-down-ness of it all. When he described how they'd been attacked, and how quickly Morita had turned into a blood-craving madman, Wells punched him on the arm. Hard.

"Ow, what the hell!?" he demanded.

"That is for making me sound like a complete lunatic to the 107th's chaplain back in France with all that holy water bullshit, when it turns out vampires are actually real and one of them is your friend!"

He rubbed his arm and returned the scowl. "He's not actually a vampire. It was just a virus, like rabies, except it affected the iron in his body and made him crave it. The crew of that U-boat tore each other apart, bled each other dry."

Wells nodded. "Vampires. You should'a took some garlic with you. They don't like that. Unless they're French vampires, I guess. You'd be done for in that case."

"Noted." He continued with his recounting of the mission, pausing for dramatic effect at the point when he met Howaldt, and what the man had said about there being no such crew member as 'Wagner' aboard. Wells used the opportunity to take their empty newspapers to the nearest trash can, then asked, "Why didn't you just check the crew manifest, if you had it from the start?"

"Because we're idiots, obviously," he shot back. "Seriously though, he was really convincing. And I guess… well, he told me the story I wanted to hear." Wells smiled at that. "I wanted there to be an evil Hydra scientist to get my hands on. I wanted a villain to fight, and to blame the destruction on. I just never thought it would be someone barely old enough to be serving."

"Maybe there's a lesson in that. If it sounds too good to be true, or too realistic, or too plausible, it probably is. Beware of Greeks bearing gifts. But what happened with Wagner?"

"He escaped. We took our eyes off him for a second and he rabbited with one of our rebreathers then locked the sub door from the outside. We were trapped, and the sub was sinking. No way out. I thought we were done for. Then Howaldt came up with a plan to help us escape through the torpedo launch tubes, and I hauled Morita up to the surface and handed him over to Stark. But we were one rebreather short by that point, so Steve went without. Said he could hold his breath for long enough."

"Did he?"

"Kind of. Can we walk a bit? I'm bored of sitting."

Plus it was easier to not get weighed down by the guilt when he was moving around. Once they were walking, he picked up where he'd left off, describing how he'd gone back down for Steve and managed to get him safely to the surface. Then the waiting game they'd played while Stark tried to cure Morita. "I'm not even sure how he did it, in the end, but he managed to cure him of the virus. He looks like he's gone ten rounds with the grim reaper, but he'll live."

Wells was silent for a moment as he took everything in. When he spoke again, he asked, "Remember how we used to stea—um, borrow—Stark's radios and tell each other stories while on foxhole duty?"

"Sure."

"And the horror stories Tipper tried to tell?"

"Yeah, they were a bit dire."

Wells nodded. "This is the sort of story that should never be told in a foxhole. Or in the dark. Or even in the light. I mean… vampires is bad enough. Being sealed in an underwater death-container with an entire crew of vampires and an infected teammate is just… I don't think I would've come out of that with my sanity."

"You have sanity?" Wells flipped him the Vs. "Maybe you're right. I didn't feel it as much during the mission because… well, I guess I was just trying to survive. Trying to help the team get through it. I couldn't afford to stop and dwell on it. But now that I've stopped fighting, when I look back at what went wrong, and how the mistakes we made almost cost two of our team their lives…"

"You know, you're quick to look back at your faults and mistakes, and to blame yourself for not being able to save people who died." Wells stopped and waited until Bucky had turned to face him. "But you never look back with pride at all the lives you've saved."

"I haven't really—"

Wells held his hands up to stall his objection, and began ticking points off on his fingers. "You saved me from going overboard during my stupid tea-party on the Monty. You saved a baby from dying of dehydration while we took her back to camp. You saved me from gettin' court-martialled for spiking Dancing's chocolate with laxatives. You saved Gusty and Hawkins when Dancing got shot on our first mission and left his team leaderless. You saved me and Carrot when the jeep we were in went over a cliff, and almost lost your own life doing it. You saved Stoller, when he was shot in the leg. And did I mention you saved me? And those are just a handful of the missions I care to recall. You'd better start remembering things more honestly, or I'm going to have to beat you to death with your own good deeds until you accept them."

Maybe Wells was right. He'd saved some lives. Not enough to outweigh those he'd lost, but there were definitely a few people alive now who wouldn't have been if he hadn't been there. And maybe Morita was one of them after all.

"Thanks, pal. I needed that reminder." Before Wells could object, he stepped forward and pulled his friend into a tight hug.

"Sure," Wells said, returning the hug somewhat tensely. "Just this morning I was thinking that my life does not have enough hugs in it." A moment later, he said, "You're breaking the three-second rule."

"I don't give a shit about the three-second rule, Wells. There were several times on the last mission that I thought I was gonna die in a tin-can beneath the ocean, and during those moments, all I could think was that I wished I'd hugged my mom and dad for longer before leaving home. That I'd told my friends and family how much I appreciated each and every one of them. You were dead. I thought I'd lost you forever. And now you're back, so you get your entire quota of missed hugs in one back-payment. And if anyone gives you stick about the three-second rule, just tell them that your overly sentimental friend with no concept of personal space is just glad to have you back."

Wells relaxed a little at that. It was less like hugging a wall, and more like hugging a slightly softer wall. "Alright," he said. "But don't forget to account for missed birthday hugs. They're worth ten of a regular hug."

"Right." He breathed deeply and then sniffed when a strange herbal scent tickled his nose. "Why do you smell like camphor?"

"My land-lady uses it to cover up the smell of decay from all the people she murders in the hotel."

He chuckled. "I've missed your bullshit."

"And I've missed— oh, hey Agent Carter, sorry but this is a private catharsis, if you want a hug you'll have to wait until the meter runs out."

Bucky rolled his eyes. "Yeah right, like I'm gonna fall for—"

"By all means, don't let me interrupt your very public private catharsis," came the very Agent-Carter-like reply. Shit. There was no law against hugging your pal, so Bucky very pointedly did not jump out of his skin and turn with any sort of guilt to address the woman planted before them and all but tapping her foot as she waited for a response.

"How did you even manage to follow me?" he asked. "I mean, I wandered Hackney for an hour looking for a cake shop before I came here."

"I didn't follow you, Sergeant Barnes. Believe it or not, I have better things to do than follow you around London. I'm here because I have a contact working here on Watney Market who imports and supplies a variety of different American… well, let's say 'delicacies', to servicemen. I am in charge of nibbles, after all."

"Who's nibbles?" Wells asked.

Carter ignored the question. Instead, she took out a small notepad and pencil from the inside of her jacket pocket and scribbled something down. She tore the paper off and held it out to Bucky, but pulled it slightly away before he could grab it. "London is a small city, Sergeant Barnes. You can't hide forever."

She handed him the paper and strode off towards the market stalls, and was quickly out of sight. Much as he hated to admit it, she was right. Twice now she'd bumped into them, and this latest time she hadn't even been looking for him. London was a small city. What if next time it was Steve that they encountered, or worse—Dugan? For a brief time, meeting with Wells had been an escape from the same old daily routine, like a breath of fresh spring air after a long, dull winter. But he couldn't keep doing this. He couldn't keep these two parts of his life separate anymore. He couldn't keep… if not exactly lying, then at least dodging the truth about his whereabouts to Steve and the rest of his teammates. And it wasn't fair to Wells, either. A lot of Bucky's time went on missions. Then it went on the team. The time he had for Wells was what was left over, the dregs of his time, and that wasn't any way to prioritise a friendship. Besides, this wasn't any different than when he'd spent time away from the team with Miles, or Captain Stone. And Steve had been fine with that.

Except that Miles and Captain Stone aren't the closest thing to a best friend you had other than your best friend himself, a tiny voice in his head pointed out. Do you really want Steve to think you replaced him with another best friend as soon as you got in the army? That you moved on and left him behind in your mind, as well as in reality?

Whilst he was wrestlin' with his conscience, Wells slipped the paper from his grasp and read it. "Occasions. Redcar Street, Camberwell. Sounds swanky." When Bucky didn't reply, Wells poked him on the elbow and said, "Are you over-thinkin' things again?"

"I don't over-think."

"Uh-huh, sure. Come on, this way." He set off walking, and Bucky was forced to follow or be left behind.

"Do you even know where you're going?"

"Anywhere away from Agent Nosy," Wells said. "She's definitely following you, pal. First the Kettle & Drum, now here? I don't trust coincidences like that. And let's face it, you're not a hard guy to follow, so long as you avoid big reflective windows."

They walked for a few minutes, putting the market firmly behind them. Bucky avoided looking over his shoulder as he walked. It was a coincidence. It had to be. As Carter said, she had much better things to do with her time than follow him. Like Steve. Now that the two of them were firmly into kissing territory, meeting her parents and getting that all-important fatherly approval was a step closer.

When they found themselves at the Whitechapel entrance to the Underground with a little café right next to it, Wells bought them each a coffee to go, and they found a bench in the Tube where they could sit and watch the trains go rushing to and from the station. It felt good to just sit and watch and do nothing as the rest of the world passed by. The day's commuters barely even glanced at the two soldiers as they hurried on to their destinations.

"So," Wells prompted at last. "Now that you've had ten minutes of pensive silence, what are you not over-thinking about at the moment?"

To buy himself time before sounding like a complete crazy person, he countered the questions with a question. "Are you okay to be here?" When his friend failed to understand, he gestured at the underground station around them. "Dark, kinda cramped."

Wells waved off the concern easily. "Yeah, I'm fine. Do you feel that?"

"Feel what?"

"Close your eyes."

So he did. The flicker of electric lighting died away, plunging his vision entirely into darkness. He could hear the sound of another train approaching in the distance, and the chatter of men conversing at the steps of the lobby above. The scent of coffee was strong enough to overwhelm the trace of camphor that had transferred to his own jacket during their hug… and there was something else. A faint whistle that changed pitched. As soon as he detected it, a gust of cool air brushed across his face.

"The air?" he asked, opening his eyes.

"Yeah. If I can feel the air moving, I can breathe. Like on the deck of the Monty. When I was up there, away from the 'tween deck, I could close my eyes, feel the wind rushing past me, and pretend that I was flying. I think flying is probably the most free a guy can ever get."

His words jogged something loose in his memory, something that he'd listened to but hadn't really understood before now. "I remember back in the early days with the SSR last year," he said, "when me and Tipper were on foxhole duty with you and Gusty. And we were talking about what super-powers we'd have, if we could give ourselves one. You said you'd have the power of flight. I never truly understood until now how much that freedom meant to you. Even after you told me about the claustrophobia, it didn't click."

Of course, he could see it from Wells' perspective now. Being tortured by your enemy wasn't quite the same as being tortured by the people who were supposed to protect you, but now that he'd been forced to live in a small, dark space of his own, he could appreciate the allure of freedom that flying brought with it. It was the same freedom that he'd sought when he'd grabbed one of the Hydra guards' guns and pulled the trigger against his own head.

Don't think about that.

"Steve has been my best friend since we were kids," he said, groping for the last thing he'd been thinking about before Krausberg.

It took Wells a minute to adjust to the new conversation, but when he did, he said, "Are you worried he might not approve of you hanging out with me, even though I am a swell guy who never encouraged any bullshit or got involved in any sort of crazy shenanigans?"

"I guess," he admitted, even though not a single part of what Wells had just said was even remotely true. He sighed. "If Dugan were here he'd probably call me a princess name and tell me to stop acting like a ten year old girl. I just… I don't want Steve to feel excluded. When I joined the army, I left him behind, and now that he's here, I don't want him to feel like I'm leaving him behind again. Does that make sense? Or is Dugan right?"

"Dugan is never right," Wells replied immediately. "Even when he's right, he's wrong." He eyed Bucky up for a moment and asked, "You're the oldest, right? Out of your siblings, I mean." Bucky nodded. "And your sister that has the crush on me… Mary-Ann… she's next?"

"Yeah."

"And you're close to your siblings?"

"Very," he agreed.

"Which one came next?"

"Charlie. I was about seven when he was born; Mary-Ann was nearly five."

"So you loved your sister first because she was born first. And when Charlie came along, did you love Mary-Ann any less?"

He shifted on his bench. He could see where this was going and it was just far too obvious and sensible. "No," he admitted.

"And when your next sister was born, did you love Charlie any less?"

"Please stop making sense. I feel like an idiot."

"You're not an idiot. You just over-think more than any other human being I have ever met, and that includes me." He held up his half-empty coffee cup and said, "This coffee is a finite thing. Once I drink it, it's gone. Now, maybe I drink it for myself, or maybe I share it with you, or maybe I give a little to every poor orphan kid I see while I'm walking back to the hotel. And because it's a finite resource, I have to be careful what I do with it. But love isn't like that. If you give some to your sister, it doesn't leave less for your brother. It's a constant amount that never runs out, an infinite resource that you don't have to worry about sharing because there will always be more of it."

"Who are you and what have you done with Wells?" he asked, only half joking. He'd claimed he was a different person now, but Bucky hadn't truly believed it. The old Wells never would've said anything so sentimental. Or if he did, he would've added some macabre twist to it, something to disguise his discomfort.

Wells merely pulled a face of disgust. "Rosa, the lady who nursed me back to health, forced me to read the Bible. It reaffirmed my belief that I'm definitely a sinner and going to hell when I die, but it did also give me a few nuggets of wisdom. Like putting other peoples' well-being before your own, how long you should keep slaves for, and how many camels you should trade for women." There was the macabre twist he'd been waiting for. "Anyway," Wells continued, "that's my take on it. I do think you have a habit of making things waaaay more complicated than they need to be. Between the over-complicating and the over-thinking, no wonder your nerves are shot. Have you even had a moment of fun since getting to London?"

Had he? Of course he had. Lots of them. "Sure. I played a really neat April Fool's joke on the team."

A nefarious smile crept across Wells' lips. "Oh? Sounds promising. What'd you do?"

"Why don't I let the team tell you themselves?" he said, before he could talk himself out of it. Wells was right. He was over-complicating things and over-thinking things, and Steve would understand that Bucky wanted to spend time with other people. He didn't need the same level of moral support these days, and besides, he had Carter. He was confiding in her more and more, and telling Bucky less and less. Like the whole Antje thing. Now that the training wheels were off, he didn't need Bucky hovering around like a protective mother-hen. "What are you doing tomorrow night?"

"I dunno yet. A few of the guys from my office were talking about getting a poker game going, but I don't think it's been confirmed yet."

"If you're not busy, do you wanna come to the Fiddle? We're having a welcome-back party for Morita."

Wells was suddenly all hesitation. "I dunno pal, I don't wanna crash your friend's welcome-back party. That sounds like kinda personal stuff—won't me being alive kinda overshadow it?"

"It's not all that personal. The team will be there, and so will Agent Carter, and Stark, along with Captain Stone, and Freddie."

"Ahh, supporting characters in the story of my life that I haven't met yet," he mused. "I suppose it would be useful to meet everyone. That way, when I sell my script to Hollywood, I'll have a good idea of which actors might be suitable to play which parts. But… are you sure? I mean, I know you've been struggling with stuff. Stuff in your head, from back when we ran missions for Phillips."

Was he sure? No. But it was only a matter of time before his old world and new world collided, and at least this way, he could control the playing field. Besides, it would be nice not to have to make up excuses anymore.

"I'm sure," he said. "I want you to come to the party."

"Then I'll be there."

"Great. Anyway, I've gotta source a cake now. What was the name of that place Agent Carter wrote down?"

"Occasions." Wells handed him back the slip of paper. "I think you can probably get there on the Underground."

"Thanks. Wanna come help me pick out a cake?"

Wells grinned like a kid in a candy store. "Of course I do. It'll give you chance to tell me all about which suspicious French cheeses I need to avoid."