Chapter 5: Miss Me


"Man, one of these days you're gonna tell me who this second drink is for."

Bucky takes both coffees with a grin. "That'll be the day you give me a discount."

Luis shakes his head. "Nah, even if you're friends with Scott, no way. I gotta make a living! An honest living."

"Right, and I gotta keep my secrets."

"That's how you stay interesting, huh?"

Bucky steps away from the food truck window so Luis can start helping the next in line. How the guy makes some of the best coffee in New York in a food truck, Bucky doesn't know, but he's grateful—especially since Luis is often operating on Bucky's route to work, meaning Bucky can hit him up whenever he's not running late. And these days, he's never running late. "Take care, Luis."

Sipping his coffee and savoring the warmth every time the late September breeze washes down the street, Bucky walks with a spring in his step all the way to Tony's. He bumps the door open with his hip and swings inside with a wide grin ready and waiting for the guy who's already claimed one of the barstools.

"Steve!"

Steve turns in his seat and the smile he gives Bucky chases away every lingering trace of the autumn chill. "Hey, Buck."

"For you." Bucky hands off the coffee and then heads behind the bar to start prepping for his shift. He's on his own tonight; it's a slow night, no events or anything. Coulson's got the main floor. Bucky's more than confident in his own ability to handle just the bar. And he's maybe just a little pleased he's so trusted after just three days of work.

"You know," Steve says between appreciative sips, "most people don't usually indulge in a coffee at three in the afternoon."

"Most people don't have an amazing friend hand-delivering them a delicious coffee at three in the afternoon."

"Where do you even get this stuff?"

Scott, who's helping Coulson set up all the tables, catches Bucky's eye. He grins and taps the side of his nose.

"Trade secret," Bucky says sagely. "Now, what're you drawing?"

Steve tells him about his warmup sketch—a quick study of the back of the bar—and then launches into his commission work. Bucky listens while he continues prepping the bar, occasionally interjecting to offer his opinions. He's particularly happy to do so when Steve explains how one of his commissioners is asking for a fifth round of revisions.

"I mean, you're past the coloring stage, right? And you said normally you don't do major revisions once you hit rendering."

"Yeah, but they've been really nice, and they are apologizing and agreeing to pay extra for the extra rounds."

"C'mon, pal, nice doesn't mean they're not being an inconvenience. At some point you gotta put your foot down."

"I have the time."

"Okay, I mean, it's your choice. Have you done commissions for them before?"

"No, they're a first timer. I checked with a few friends of mine and it's not like they have a reputation in the artist community or anything."

"Maybe they just don't understand the etiquette. They had another three revisions during the sketch phase, right?"

"Four, actually."

"Jesus, Steve."

"Hey, sketch revisions are easy."

"I know, I know. You've said that. But c'mon, they're walking all over you. You're past sketching now. The extra money they're paying can't be the same rate you'd be making if you were starting on a new commission, right? And I bet you're getting a little sick of that piece."

Steve scratches the back of his neck. "Er, maybe."

Bucky points with the pen he's been using to jot down inventory for reference later that night. "Cut 'em off, pal. One more round." He sees Steve waffling and softens his stance. "Or, if you're so dead set on being nice, just don't take another commission from them and warn that artist mafia of yours."

"It's not a mafia—"

"Tomato, tomahto. The Steve Rogers I knew would not let himself get pushed around like this, no matter how much the person doing the pushing apologized."

Steve thinks about that for a minute. Bucky uses most of that time to put his hair up so it will stop falling into his eyes, and when he looks back at Steve, the guy has thought about it so hard his face is red.

"I'll give him one more round after this one," Steve says to his sketchbook.

Bucky considers that a victory. And since he's started his winning streak, he decides to shoot for one more: "Say, you wanna stay late tonight?"

"Tonight? I, uh—no, I usually leave early to get work done."

"I know, but how about you make an exception? Just this once, for me." He leans on the bar and offers his most roguish smile. "Revisions guy can wait another night."

Steve still hesitates. Bucky leans closer, feeling his necklace press against his shirt from the angle. "C'mon."

Steve swallows and raises his hands in defeat. "Okay, okay, fine. I've actually made good progress on everything the last few days. I…Yeah, I should be okay if I take a night off."

"You sure you don't have to clear it with your manager?"

"Good point, one sec." Steve makes a show of assuming a thinking pose and nodding to himself. "Right, just checked. He says it's fine."

"Tell your manager I appreciate his style."

"I'll let him know."


By the end of the night, Bucky's pulled in a healthy amount of tips, Steve's given his card to the only band that was scheduled to play, and Coulson has wrapped up his end-of-shift duties so fast that he's out the door while Bucky's still counting the cash drawer.

"How long has that guy worked here?" Bucky asks no one in particular.

"Since it opened, pretty much," Steve answers. When Bucky had finished wiping down the bar, Steve had relocated from his table back to his stool—and Bucky is absolutely thinking of that particular stool as his. "Any trick in the book, he knows it. Including how to do some of his closing routine while there are still customers around."

"Maybe I'll ask Natalia for some tips. She seems like she has things together. More than Clint, anyway."

"I've been meaning to ask, why do you call her Natalia?"

"Why? It's her name, isn't it?" Bucky pauses his counting and peers at Steve, a small bit of horror threatening to bloom in his gut. "She didn't give me a fake name, did she? No, wait. You call her Nat."

"Nat, or Tasha, very rarely Natasha," Steve confirms.

"Nat," Bucky repeats, and then frowns at the sound coming off his tongue. "Yeah, no. She told me Natalia, so I'm calling her Natalia. I'm worried she'll take off some of my skin if I try to take anything off her name."

"Maybe when you're better friends, Buck."

"You're the only one who gets to call me that. Everyone else has to make do with Bucky or James."

He finishes counting, sticks the excess in an envelope, and heads into the back to deposit it in the safe. Dugan waves from where he's mopping the floor, a task that Bucky swiftly bumps down lower on his to-do list since there's only one mop and bucket.

As though reading his mind, Dugan calls when Bucky's heading back out to the bar: "Want me to roll this thing out to you when I'm done?"

"That'd be great, actually. 'Preciate it."

Dugan tips his bowler hat and gets back to mopping. Bucky leaves him to it and rejoins Steve at the bar. What's he got left to do? Mop, obviously. But before that…trash, vacuum…yeah, that should be it.

"Hey, can I get a look at your hand?"

Bucky pauses halfway to undoing the bag of the bar's under-the-counter trash bin. "My hand?"

"Your left." Seeing Bucky's hesitation, Steve gets nervous. "If that's okay? I've been trying to draw it."

Intrigued, Bucky leaves the trash alone for the moment and peers at Steve's upside-down sketch. Steve takes pity on him craning his neck and spins his sketchbook around so Bucky can get a better look. What greets him is a two-page spread full of hand studies. Some are just regular hands—albeit rendered with so much life and character they seem to gesture themselves right off the page—but others are undeniably Bucky's left hand. Steve must've been stealing looks at it every chance he got, to get the panel placements so accurate.

"Not bad," Bucky acknowledges. He uses his left hand to spin the sketchbook to face Steve again and then rests that hand on the bar. "You've got twenty seconds before I gotta get back to taking out the trash."

Steve sketches like a man possessed on one of the hands that didn't previously sport any signs of being robotic. After a few lines, Bucky realizes Steve isn't being perfectly accurate; he's mapping out all the plates, joints, and seams.

"You're pretty quick, huh?"

"I do a lot of speed drawings as warm-ups," Steve confesses while he continues sketching, his eyes flitting between Bucky's hand on the countertop and the page. "Can you turn your hand over?"

Bucky does and Steve pivots to another blank hand, this one palm-up. They sail clean past the twenty-second mark but Bucky keeps his mouth shut; the look of concentration on Steve's face is adorable.

Eventually though, he has to take his hand back. The last thing he wants is for Dum Dum to show up ready to hand off the mop only to find Bucky hasn't even vacuumed yet. Dugan does show up to bestow the mop and bucket right as Bucky's finishing up vacuuming, and Steve's kind enough to put away the vacuum so Bucky can get right to finishing his closing routine.

Whenever his mopping takes him near Steve, Bucky gives himself a break and lets Steve study his hand some more.

"It really is difficult to get it right," Steve muses while he erases and redraws a few lines of his latest sketch. "The palm in particular." He reaches out and gently angles Bucky's hand, chewing on his own lip and then looking back at his sketchbook. "No fingerprints."

"Good for thieving," Bucky manages, and if his voice comes out weird, Steve's too polite to say anything. It's a good thing Steve's totally focused on that because Bucky's pretty sure his face is on fire.

Steve touching his hand like it's no big deal. Steve staring at him relentlessly for almost an hour at this point. Steve drawing him—his hand—over and over and over again. If Bucky lets himself think about any of those things too deeply, he's going to get lightheaded.

"Can't say I've had the pleasure of trying to draw it, honestly," he finally adds when the silence drags. So Steve doesn't see his burning face, Bucky recovers his hand and gets back to mopping, which conveniently turns him away from Steve.

"Well, take my word for it. But it's a fun challenge. Thanks for letting me, by the way. Draw it. You didn't have to."

"It's no problem." The only downside is that Steve's touch is so painfully muted through the hand's sensors compared to how it would feel if he grabbed Bucky's right hand. But there's no way to ask him to do that without making things very, very weird.

Once Bucky's finished mopping, wrung the mop and washed both it and the bucket, it's time to head home. Steve trails after Bucky to the employee lockers in the back while Bucky collects his things.

"Is it cold?"

Bucky shoulders his backpack, grins to himself, and swiftly lays his palm across Steve's forehead before Steve can react.

"Ah!" Steve flinches out from under the cold metal and Bucky laughs.

"That enough of an answer?"

"Jerk, you coulda just said so."

"Aw, where's the fun in that?" He taps by his shoulder. "It's got some heating where it's close to my body so I don't get frostbite or anything, but yeah, it gets really fucking cold sometimes and I have to be careful about what I'm touching until it heats up again. Another reason I wear gloves with it so much. Plus, I once burned myself pretty badly because I forgot I was using it to handle some stuff on the stove."

"Buck…"

"I only did it once! Besides, you can barely see the scar anymore."

"It scarred?"

"Yeah, here." Bucky pulls back his sleeve so Steve can see the sliver of rougher, hairless flesh in a thin line alone his forearm. "Some grease splattered and I tried to wipe it off. Not my best decision. Speaking of stupid decisions, I haven't given you my new number yet, have I? Way past time I fixed that."

Steve blinks. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah. Why wouldn't I be?"

"You're the one who stopped texting me. I thought, I dunno. I thought there must've been a reason."

Too late, Bucky recognizes the bear trap that's now snapping at his neck. He swallows and tries to play it off by gesturing for Steve's phone. "There's no reason for me not to give it to you now."

Steve hands it over and Bucky plugs in his contact, fires off a text, then hands it back. From his own phone, he confirms that the "test" text came through. And he sends one in return: Miss me?

It's just a silly little text, but when Steve gets it and reads it, his whole expression shutters. Bucky lowers his phone, smile slipping from his face. "Something wrong?"

"No. No, it's nothing." Steve takes a deep breath and pockets his phone. "I should go—I need to run some errands tomorrow morning."