Archive of Our Own

It rained on the one hundredth and forty eighth day. Not that Steve was counting. Not that you could tell, twenty stories beneath the city, in a chamber where they changed the hue of the lights over the course of twenty-four hours so your body could mimic a day’s natural progression.

Still. It had been raining when he arrived. And the last security shift that had changed out around what the lights hinted at being early evening had all had wet hair.

Rain made Steve think of soup, of soft potato chunks and barley and maybe carrots on a good day. Rain made him think of hacking coughs and mud and his mother’s overcoat and newsprint smearing and gray fog.

All of those things were nicer than concrete and glass, which was what Steve saw if he opened his eyes.

Beyond the concrete walkway and the huge glass wall, was an imitation house. It had a couch, a table and chairs, a small kitchenette without a single utensil. Through a large doorway, a bed was visible. Everything was muted colors, plain, undecorated. Nothing in the room appeared to have any life in it whatsoever.

Not even the figure sitting at the table.

Every day, rain or shine, Steve sat outside and waited. And every day, Bucky sat on the couch, at the table, on his bed, and waited.

What Bucky was waiting for, Steve couldn’t guess. He’d tried; maybe a certain day? Maybe a different kind of food? Maybe just time, time enough to heal?

It had been like that for one hundred and forty-eight days. What Steve was waiting for, well, that seemed clear enough.

They kicked him out at midnight. Said sixteen hours was enough and to go sleep. Steve went, for the sake of not pissing anyone off any more than he already had, and also because Bucky deserved some privacy even though he was stuck in a fish tank, and because the stupid environment-mimicking lights did cause headaches after sixteen hours.

He hadn’t thought—he hadn’t thought it would be like this, that was all.

“What did you think it would be like?” Sam asked patiently, stirring his coffee and eyeing Steve with his wide sympathetic gaze. Sometimes Steve hated how wonderful Sam was, how he understood somehow when Steve needed silence and when he needed to be poked at.

Steve’s coffee was cooling off rather rapidly, but he made no attempt to drink it. It was six in the morning of the one hundred and forty ninth day, and he was drinking coffee in an outrageously priced coffee shop. And he wasn’t even enjoying what he’d paid for.

“Can I be honest?”

“Always,” Sam said.

Steve sighed and adjusted his collar. “I thought we’d find each other,” he said, hating how juvenile the words sounded spoken. “I thought he might not remember everything, but he’d have a little. Even just a feeling. And we’d figure out the rest.”

Sam’s gaze is soft and understanding.

“I thought he’d say, I missed you,” Steve said, feeling like the coffee was burning his throat, except he wasn’t drinking the coffee and the coffee was cold. “I thought he’d say, Welcome home.” He huffed a small laugh; wasn’t he a joke? “Well. I guess happy endings only happen in fairy tales, huh.”

“Steve, endings are never really endings until you’re dead,” Sam pointed out. “I think you of all people should know that.”

Steve looked down.

“I can see what you were hoping for,” Sam went on, leaning in. “Your friend, some sort of return to the life you had before. It sounds nice, actually.”

“It does?”

“Sure,” Sam said, smiling. “Maybe the two of you got off your asses and picked out a bachelor’s pad somewhere in the city, with a guest room for me so I could get the hell outta Tony’s tower. Maybe we had movie nights and I took you both out for pho.”

Steve didn’t know what the last word meant, but he liked the picture Sam painted. “Yeah, well…maybe it happened like that in another life, Sam. Not this one.”

“Maybe you never found him in another life,” Sam said tartly. “This life ain’t so bad either, Steve.”

“Well, it’s the only one we’ve got,” Steve snapped, and then felt bad for it. It wasn’t Sam’s fault, none of it. Not Bucky, not Steve, not the fact that he seemed to have terrible taste in both coffeeshops and friends.

It wasn’t Sam’s fault Bucky had turned himself in and not even acknowledged Steve’s existence once since.

There was always a rotating shift of techs manning the equipment and monitoring the glass fish tank down in the sewers of the city. He wondered what kind of briefings they’d been given; five armed soldiers sent to keep watch over an enhanced assassin who could make lunch meat out of them if he ever cared enough to get up.

Was it a punishment, Steve wondered, to be sent down on Bucky-duty?

He knew a few of them by name, now. The 2200 to 0600 crew more than the others, with wiry McIntire fiddling with the cameras, quiet Isaacs, and Marshall, Kumar, and Takahashi.

“Hey, Cap,” McIntire said in greeting every night without fail. He’d shown off pictures of his newborn daughter before, an unbelievable small and wrinkled thing that looked as though she was going to inherit her father’s pale skin and red hair. “How’s the weather up there?”

Steve smiled at him wearily. “You been inside all day, McIntire?”

“Nah,” Kumar cut in, leaning against one side of the console. She was a short and pretty Indian woman, with her hair carefully knotted at the base of her neck. “He went out for a pizza not two hours ago, didn’t you, McIntire.”

Issacs spoke up. “Sure did.”

“Traitor,” McIntire said woundedly, twisting away from his computer. “I gave you some of that, dude.”

Issacs spread his hands wide, as if to say, no pizza here. He reminded Steve of Monty, actually, though he looked nothing like him. Where Monty was slim and pale, Issacs was muscular and dark skinned. Where Monty stood as though a stiff wind could knock him down any minute, Issacs was steady and unmoving. But they had the same silence, broken only by a witty and laconic joke that wouldn’t hit for a few moments, but would be twice as good when it did.

“He’s been the same today,” Takahashi reported in his low voice, when it was obvious no one else was going to.

Steve finally glanced towards the viewing panel.

The living space appeared empty at first glance, but a closer look showed Bucky’s legs poking out from under the table. He’d tucked himself in the only nook where he could have some semblance of privacy, and it was impossible to see the upper half of his body, or what he was doing.

“We have cameras that can catch that angle,” McIntire said quietly. “But other than a check every hour mark, we’ve been giving him his privacy.”

Steve nodded.

“You don’t have to stay,” Kumar reminded him. “We’ll call you the moment something changes.”

“I know,” Steve said for what must’ve been the hundredth time. “But you guys are here anyways. Seems a shame to miss out.”

They chuckled around him, shifting in their large black boots. SHIELD, all of them, vetted by who knew how many layers of security. Steve was still wary of the remnants of SHIELD these days, but since Bucky had walked willingly into their arms, he had no choice but to cooperate.

Marshall had been there, the day it all crashed and burned, Steve knew. He was heavier, with broad features and piercing black eyes and skin only a little lighter than Issacs. There had been an elevator, which was the reason Steve remembered as clearly as he did – he’d had his own elevator of horrors, after all, but even so he wouldn’t trade Marshall. There had been five agents in the elevator when things went south. Two of them were Hydra. Marshall was the only one still alive.

Steve still didn’t know what had happened, but Kumar said Marshall talked about it occasionally. Usually when he was a couple of drinks in.

“Don’t buy him alcohol,” she’d whispered a few weeks ago, sometime around 2am. “He’s a morose drunk. The worst kind.”

Steve was pretty damn morose himself these days. He didn’t fault Marshall.

“How’s life upstairs?” Marshall asked now, shuffling a deck of cards in his large hands. “You still mopping up messes out there?”

“Not physical ones,” Steve said, and the others groaned in commiseration. “And Natasha – Black Widow, I mean – has been handling a lot of the press, but, yeah. There are some messes to sort through still.”

“I saw what they wrote about him recently,” Takahashi said quietly, jutting his chin in the direction of Bucky’s room. “Some awful speculation. Got in a fight with my dad about it.”

Kumar patted Takahashi’s arm, comforting him, a funny sight since he towered over her.

“He doesn’t care that I work here,” Takahashi continued, swiping his straight bangs out of his eyes and exhaling. “Or that there might be any reasons why my opinion might have any weight. Hey, that’s just the way it is though, right?”

The others grumble assent, Kumar shifting her stance, McIntire glancing at the monitors briefly.

“What did they print?” Steve asked, because he hadn’t seen it. Probably because Tony was definitely monitoring what news went in and out of Steve’s apartment hundreds of feet above them, even though Steve had told him not to over and over again. Let’s not get in a fight about how mentally unstable you are right now, Tony was fond of saying. You know I’ll win.

Takahashi crossed his arms, frowning. “Not much. They don’t know anything, and that’s the problem. They’re making shit up, trying to hint that he might have had something to do with a lot of little-discussed political events. War crimes, assassinations, smuggled intelligence. It’s bogus, the whole lot of it.”

“How can you be sure of that?” Isaacs asked.

“Well, for instance,” Takahashi said heatedly, “One of these certain claims would’ve been happening while he was lying dead in a ditch in the alps.”

“Okay, Takahashi,” McIntire said, shooting a look Steve’s way. “That’s enough.”

Steve moved away from them, stepping around the computers to the glass partition between him and Bucky. The glass didn’t make a sound when he put his hand up against it; inside, Bucky didn’t so much as twitch.

Steve wondered, if he really let go and started punching, how long would it take him to knock down the wall?

“Wanna play?” Marshall called, dragging a crate over.

Steve let himself turn, let himself pretend everything was normal. “What are you playing?”

“Crazy eights?” Kumar suggested. “Gin rummy? Um…poker?”

“Oh no, I’m not about to play poker with you,” Takahashi declared. “You are going to take all of my money, dignity, and reputation.”

Kumar rolled her eyes at him. “Just say you’re a coward, Takahashi, and get it over with.”

The two of them had a brief wrestling match so they could decide they were tied – although Takahashi had to be pulling his punches, Steve thought, he was nearly twice as tall as Kumar – and settled back down again. “What do you want to play, Steve?” Takahashi asked kindly.

“I’ll play rummy,” Steve said, and sat on the crate they pointed to. It made an upset groaning noise, and he stood again.

“McIntire can sit there,” Kumar instructed, pointing. “He’s a skinny guy. You, Marshall, Takahashi, Isaacs…we better get you guys real chairs.”

“Takahashi is just as skinny as I am,” McIntire protested. “Maybe even skinnier!”

Isaacs dragged a folding chair away from one row of monitors. “Yeah, but he’s got a whole foot on you, sir.”

Steve took the chair Isaacs offered him, and sat down, enjoying their banter and grunts as they joined him, Kumar on one of the crates, the guys all on chairs, even McIntire. They reminded him of the Howlies, in a way, if you squinted and pretended they all looked extremely different.

Without meaning to, he glanced over at the largest monitor. Bucky’s left leg was still visible, utterly still. Steve waited, but that leg didn’t do anything.

“Here, Rogers,” Takahashi said, pointing to the hands he’d delt. “You go first.”

“Okay,” Steve said, and threw down the two of clubs.

“What the hell are you doing?” Natasha asked him on the one hundredth and fifty sixth day when she came down and found Steve playing cards.

Steve, pretty sure that Kumar was holding on to the cards he needed just to fuck with him, said nothing, concentrating. Besides him, Marshall drew a card, pouted, and threw it back down. Kumar drew from the deck; Steve held his breath.

Calmly, she discarded one from her hand, face down on the discard pile. The group exploded.

“No way,” McIntire complained.

Marshall grabbed her hand and twisted it around so they could all see. Steve threw his hand down in disgust.

“What the hell are you doing?” Natasha said, in case she hadn’t been heard the first time.

“Losing,” Steve said, standing and moving a few steps away for some semblance of privacy.

Natasha shook his head. “No, I mean what are you doing down here? Tony said you didn’t have clearance to visit him.”

Steve pressed his lips together. Tony had told him that too, after Bucky had shown absolutely no interest in Steve whatsoever, some cockamamy bullshit about not understanding what was going to affect Bucky, and Steve being a volatile piece to bring on to the board so early, and other nonsense that Steve would’ve disregarded immediately had those words not come from Pepper Potts, and had Tony not looked so sorry when he said them for her.

“I’ve got the best psychiatrists being vetted as we speak,” he finished up with. “We’ll figure this out, Cap, I promise you. For now…he needs the space.”

“I haven’t tried to see him,” Steve said to Natasha. “Ask McIntire, ask any of them. I’m not trying to get cozy so I can get visiting hours, I swear.”

Natasha squinted at him. “I believe you. Which is why I’m confused. I would’ve thought you’d be trying to get in there as much as possible, and belaying that, I would’ve thought you’d be out there, taking some twisted form of revenge. Quietly sitting bedside, I didn’t plan on.”

“He doesn’t want to see me,” Steve said. “He tolerates the doctors going in and out.”

“So, you’re keeping watch.”

“You could say that,” Steve said.

Natasha cocked her head. “I think you should get clearance.”

“Well, that’d be nice, I guess, but –”

“No, you don’t understand. You’ve just gotten clearance.”

Steve paused. “What?” he said.

Natasha turned to McIntire. “Can you page Stark?” she asked, and when McIntire nodded affirmative, said to Steve, “Either he knows you or he doesn’t. But we’ve got evidence that suggests he does, right? So, you’re going to affect him. So, in the interests of something happening before we all die of old age, I don’t think waiting around is going to gain us anything.”

“And you just decided this?” Steve asked.

“No, Steve,” Natasha said. “I just got back from the world’s most depressing press conference. They want…” here she stopped, something expressionless settling across her face.

Steve felt the beginnings of panic snare his heart. “They want him?” he whispered.

“They want answers,” Natasha said. “We’ve got to get them, one way or another.”

Tony arrived, blustered with Natasha for five minutes, eked out a set of rules, told her that Shield was going to be very unhappy with them, listened while McIntire explained Shield’s official statement again, told McIntire that none of this was his idea but the Black Widow was a tough cookie, and therefore he didn’t see what point opposing her would have.

“And that’s what you tell Nick Fury when he comes knocking,” Tony finished with, jabbing a finger at McIntire, who, to his credit, didn’t flinch. “If he ever comes knocking. God, I wish that guy would pick one, dead or alive, and let me know about it. I can’t keep it all straight.”

“Yes sir.”          

Natasha added, “For the last time, Tony, these orders are coming from Shield.”

“Okay,” Tony said. “Open the gates and whatnot.”

Steve frowned. “It’s kinda late,” he said. “Are you sure –”

“Steve,” Tony said. “Natasha thinks this is the next step. I think it’s the next step. Which you didn’t hear just now,” he said to the rest of the card players, who blinked back up at him. “Do you think it’s the next step, Steve?”

“I,” Steve said. “I’m not sure anymore what the next step should be.”

“Barnes is awake,” Isaacs reported. “He’s in his usual corner.”

“Great,” Tony said. “Come on, Steve.”

Steve stumbled after him. “I’m just not sure he wants to see me –”

“Steve,” Tony said, stopping around the corner where the door was, as thick and as imposing as a bank vault, “If Natasha, myself, and the government agrees about something, don’t you think it’s probably the right choice?”

“Not necessarily,” Steve said.

“God, you’re contrarian,” Tony said, and tapped on the keypad. The door hissed open. Tony stepped through, calling, “I hope it’s not too late to drop in?”

The comment was, Steve thought, unnecessarily rude, considering that it was impossible to tell what time it was down here, only that it wasn’t yet late enough that the lights switched over to the sleep setting.

On the left side of the unit, Bucky had unspooled himself from the floor, graceful, even in his white stiff-looking outfit, even with his left side strangely uneven from his right.

“Tony,” Steve said, horrified, “Where’s his arm?”

Tony turned. “Oh boy,” he said. “I thought this might be a thing. Okay, Steve, so, a long time ago, when your friend fell off the train, he landed sorta badly and –”

“The arm he just had,” Steve said, his hands balling into fists. “The metal one. Where is it?”

“Oh,” Tony said. He looked at Bucky. “Do you want to answer this one, or should I?”

Bucky didn’t say anything.

“Okay,” Tony said, and then, like ripping off a band aid, added, “They took it.”

Steve’s eyes widened and he bit down hard to avoid cursing loudly.

“No weapons allowed in here,” Tony explained, spreading his hands. “Which is kinda ironic, cause that’s like, the simplest classification for what you two are trained as, but anyways – anyways, I said, they took it. They took all of his stuff.”

“You let them?” Steve said to Bucky, disbelieving.

“The conditions of my surrender,” Bucky said tonelessly to the wall behind Steve’s head, “Included removing the arm.”

Had Steve been someone alone where he could’ve thrown the table into the wall, he would’ve. As it was, he tried with the metal force he used to save for praying the Dodgers would make the playoffs, to push his violent anger back down into the pit of his stomach. Be productive, he thought frantically. He was so fucking sick of being productive, but there was no point to doing anything else.

“Tony,” he said. Not Tony, what the fuck is wrong with your head, or even Tony, you ass kissing fuck. “Don’t you think that’s a little heavy handed? If Bucky’s a weapon all by himself, shouldn’t he be allowed, oh, I don’t know, his left arm?”

“Now, hold up a minute,” Tony said, raising a finger. Before them, Bucky looked back and forth like he knew the way a tennis match worked even if he didn’t have much skin in the game. “I don’t like the way you’re construing this, Rogers. I didn’t steal the guy’s prosthetic, not that anyone could’ve if he’d put up a fight, and if he’d asked for it back, I would’ve ensured he got it, one way or the other.”

Steve could not believe this. “One way or the other,” he said. “You would’ve gone up against the government? Is that what I’m supposed to believe? You would’ve stolen it back?”

“I would’ve built him a new one,” Tony all but yelled.

Steve stopped, taken aback. “Well, that’s,” he said, aware they’re standing in front of Bucky and McIntire and the entire gang yelling at each other, which is definitely something they could’ve done on their time off, “That’s generous of you, I guess, but you can’t just bribe people with shiny toys and expect them not to want their own limbs back.”

“His actual limb is frozen somewhere in Austria, so forgive me if I was trying to do a good thing.”

Steve closed his eyes. “Be that as it may, it’s Bucky’s arm, so Bucky should choose if he’d like a prosthetic at all, or if he wants a new one, or if he wants the one he’s had for fucking fifty years already.”

“Why are you here?” Bucky said.

Steve blinked, and wished that didn’t hurt as much as it did. “Did the arm have explosive in it?”

“No,” Tony said when it was clear Bucky wouldn’t.

“Did it contain slow acting poisons? Was it a danger to Bucky if he surrendered here?”

“No.”

“Then you shouldn’t have taken it.” Steve wheeled around and faces the one-way glass. “McIntire,” he called. “Take a note. Next time they kick me out of here I’m going after that arm.”

There wasn’t any answer, but the room was soundproof unless altered, so Steve didn’t wait for one. Tony and Bucky were still standing in the middle of the room, silently watching him. Steve was so unqualified for this; he had no idea what the hell he was supposed to do. Even if it were just him and Bucky on a fire escape without all the extra eyeballs, he wouldn’t know what to do. Everything he’d been certain of in the goddammed world had been taken away from him, inverted, flipped around. He was certain of nothing except the fact that nothing was certain.

“Um,” he said. “I guess Tony will make you a new arm if you want it, Buck.”

Bucky didn’t move, didn’t blink.

“You…comfortable, at least?”

“You’re not him,” Bucky said.

Steve looked at Tony, but Tony’s face didn’t seem anymore understanding that Steve felt.

“You’re not,” Bucky said, his voice rising slightly. “You’re not Steve.”

The air was suddenly thick, and jagged all over, as though small knives were slicing Steve’s lungs to ribbons as they traveled down.

“Get out,” Bucky said, backing up. “Get the fuck out.”

“Steve,” Tony whispered. “I’m thinking we should get the fuck out.”

Of course, they should leave. If Steve could talk, he’d say so. As it was, he tried to move through the pain, following Tony back through the doors, keeping his head down so he wouldn’t have to see that savage accusation in Bucky’s face. It still chased him through dreams all night long.

The following day, Steve walked in the door and sat down at the table. Bucky rolled over on the bed and put his back to him, and didn’t move for the next five hours.

There was a lot Steve blamed himself for.

When he was younger and so foolish he could scream from it now, when he was scared and cocky and made mistakes that would cost him down the line. But he’d never thought it would get this bad. Getting his head punched in until he couldn’t walk again, maybe. Costing his mother more money than they could afford, killing her slowly. Asking Bucky to stay, again and again, taking away his life, his chance at a ride home.

Steve hadn’t asked Bucky to stay only because of his own selfish wants. Those were only part of the problem. The other problem had been Bucky.

“That little guy from Brooklyn, who was too dumb not to run away from a fight,” Bucky joked, and it made Steve so scared down deep in his stomach, because it was all unnatural and wrong, Bucky all sweaty and disheveled, unshaved and unsteady. “I’m following him.”

And Steve wanted, just for a moment. To yank Bucky close, to hold him tight enough that Bucky would feel the vibrations when Steve asked, Bucky, what’s wrong?

“You’re keeping the outfit, right?” Bucky said, smirking lewdly, and Steve could only mirror him back with a meager smile, reply with something stupid.

Bucky was one to talk about outfits, the disgraceful way he was wearing his uniform, like he’d come out of a bath and gotten dressed blind in the dark. Steve opened his mouth to try to prod and poke about it, but before he could, Peggy walked in.

Ignoring all the whistling happening in her wake, she said smartly, “I see your new companions are making the most of their leave.”

Steve kept an eye on Bucky out of the corner of his eye. Was it his brain linking two and two and finding six, or was Bucky’s hand shaking? “Sorry about that,” he said, not too sorry, but still sorry if it bothered Peggy.

“You don’t like music?” Bucky said to the bar, and the swiveled around and held out his – firm and focused as ever – hand to her.

Peggy said something back to him, Steve didn’t hear it. Bucky was definitely propping himself up with his other arm, moving as though he was drunk, but Steve knew he wasn’t. That drunk. Steve had seen him absolutely smackered, and it wasn’t like this. This was closer to the unsteadiness from the factory, the long walk back, the tremors and the shaky, unfocused stare.

“The right partner,” Peggy was saying, which was vaguely familiar to Steve, but he wasn’t sure why. He was sick of this; he was going to demand some answers out of Bucky, he was getting really worried. “Oh-eight-hundred tomorrow, Captain.”

“Roger that,” Steve managed, and then, thank heavens, she had gone.

Bucky slung himself back on to his barstool. It took him two tries. “Steve pal, you moron, you idiot,” he sighed, cupping his glass and shaking his head sluggishly.

“What?”

“Pal, she couldn’t have been more obvious if she’d taken off all her clothes and waved an electric sign overhead.”

Shocked out of his head, Steve looked around furtively, fighting back a blush. “James Buchanan you can’t say those things about a lady.”

“She was flirting with you.” Bucky pointed over his shoulder and swayed a little; Steve reflexively put out an arm to keep him from tumbling off his stool. “You could’ve followed her upstairs and had an easy thing of it.”

“I don’t want an easy thing,” Steve hissed, mortification at least sapping some of his worry away.

Bucky shook his head in mild exasperation. “No, you never do, do you.”

“You tired?” Steve asked, watching him closely. “You wanna call it a night?”

“No,” Bucky said, looking young and uncertain and a little worried himself.

Steve nudged him, and then caught him again so he wouldn’t go far. God, it was all wrong, strong, stalwart Bucky, undone like this. Something was really definitely wrong. “Come on, Buck,” he urged. “Let’s go, we can just sit up for a while if you’re not tired, but don’t you wanna lie down?”

“Don’t wanna go to sleep,” Bucky said, actual fear flashing behind his eyes.

“Okay, then you don’t hafta,” Steve assured him quickly, helping him down. “I promise, you don’t hafta.”

“Stay with me?’

Steve hesitated. They had their own rooms, he knew, a rare privilege for his position, the only kind of reward he wouldn’t turn down, not when the others were so excited about the prospect. Nobody would know or care if he stayed. And frankly, even if they did, Steve wanted it. He had grown up clutching on to Bucky when he was scared, and they deserved a little comfort now, all things considering.

Not for the first time, he thought, God, Bucky, what happened to you? Why won’t you tell me?

He held out his hand out, something in him breaking in relief when Bucky took it. They slipped through a doorway and into the back of the pub, climbing a strangely narrow staircase to the rooms above.

Ignoring his own door, Steve followed Bucky into his and stopped abruptly. Bucky’s boots were tossed into a corner, his spare jacket thrown on a chair. Steve looked from the mess to Bucky’s unruly hair. But you spend hours on your hair, you vain yak. You press your jackets and shine your shoes and care. You care and care, and what the hell is this?

Wordlessly, Bucky sat on the narrow bed.

Steve leaned against the wall. 

Bucky sighed and turned away, drawing his knees up on to the bed.

“You’re not even gonna take your pants off?” Steve blurted. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“Maybe I’m modest,” Bucky snarked.

Up went Steve’s eyebrows. “Well, if you are, I do wish you’d said something before you spent your entire childhood waggling your dick around in front of my face.”

Bucky’s face screwed up angrily, and then he was up again, ripping the buttons open on his shirt, throwing it to the floor. He trousers went next, tossed on top of his jacket. He walked back towards the bed, and Steve didn’t think he was imagining the fact that Bucky had purposely kept from glancing towards the mirror on the wall as he passed.

Jesus Christ. Steve didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what to do, and he could let his fear turn to anger and leave Bucky alone, or he could figure things out tomorrow, and keep his best friend company.

On the bed, Bucky was a formless lump, one leg hiked up, the other dangling off the end. His face wasn’t visible in the rumpled mess of blankets. Steve slowly shucked off his own jacket, his tie. He slipped out of his shoes, left them in a near pair by the chair. Put his socks inside them.

Bucky didn’t move.

Had Steve been small and sure of himself, he would’ve pulled his shirt off and landed right on top of Bucky, using his bony elbows to his advantage until Bucky flipped around and gave him enough room. Steve was neither of those things anymore, and he had the feeling that Bucky would throw him out the window if Steve startled him like that.

He didn’t know what to do. He was mortified to realize that he was trying not to cry.

If Steve’s memory served him – and wasn’t that a joke and a half – he’d ended up hovering with indecision until Bucky squinted one eye open and mumbled, don’t tell me they cured you of your impulsive, irrational decision making, and let Steve climb on top of him to get comfortable. Steve had lied there, half curled around Bucky’s back, his ankle tossed carelessly over Bucky’s legs, and thought Dear God, what if I’d lost this forever?  What if I do lose this forever?

And then he had.

Steve made it back upstairs to his empty apartment on the empty floor and had to sit down before he could even reach the firm, sleek couch. He landed on the carpet by the kitchen doorway, his hands rising up to cover his ears as he tried to keep breathing.

Who the hell is Bucky?

Steve used to flatter himself that he’d been the only person alive that could really answer that question. Him and his stupid fucking hubris. Steve was the only person alive who could answer that question. Even now, Steve was the only person alive who remembered, who knew.

He wanted to scream, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t. He needed to be stronger than this, he needed to keep a lid on it so they continued to let him visit Bucky, so that over time, things would have the chance to change for the better.

His hands were shaking. Abruptly he remembered being ten years old, watching George Barnes go outside after dinner, hands unsteady, and the small snick of the match lighting, the harshly comforting smell drifting through the open window.

“Ma hates it,” Bucky had informed him the first few times Steve had been over to dinner. “But Papa says she’d hate the alternative even worse, whatever that means, but it’s enough to shut my ma up, so it must be pretty bad, huh?”

Steve went through two packs that night after he’d run out to buy them, finding out just another way George Barnes had been right all along – there was something incredibly comforting about the ritual the hands had to follow, and the familiar sounds, the smoke rising upward…well, it sure beat the alternative.

Even now, Steve wasn’t sure what alternatives Mr. Barnes had been facing at the time. It was easy enough to remember the other men living in their neighborhood, struggling to work long hours, breaking under the stressful remnants of the Great War, unhappily coming home after a long day to a house full of crying and complaining. To the eyes of a boy, Bucky’s father had always seemed calm, in control, kind.

Steve knew a little more about appearances now, about propaganda and performing, and the sort of stage makeup actors employed. He wished, his heart contracting in his chest, that he could talk to Bucky about it.

“Hey,” Sam said to him the following morning in the Chinese restaurant, not his usual hey-man-good-to-lay-eyes-on-you, but more of a hey-I-know-you’re-going-through-it-and-I’m-here.

Possibly because of that quiet tone, Steve couldn’t quite keep his lip from wobbling, and Sam pushed his chair back, heedless of the fact that they were some of the only non-Asian people in the joint, and not very inconspicuous either, and wrapped his arms around Steve tightly.

Steve willed himself not to cry, clutching at Sam and smelling some strange but not unpleasant smell of his shampoo, and also garlic and oil and something floral from the small arrangement of flowers on their table.

Sam pulled back, let Steve sit, poured him tea. The waitress bustled over, took a look at Steve’s face, and did an about face.

“I hear it’s been slow going,” Sam said.

Steve lifted his shoulders and let them fall again – they were heavy. He didn’t see much point in talking about it. Bucky was alive, in a lot of ways. He was dead in a lot of others.

Thinking that made Steve want to smack himself. He’s alive, he’s alive, and you should be grateful, you should be grateful knowing the horrors he went through to get him here, you should be glad if you never get more than this, why can’t you be glad?

“Hey,” Sam said sharply. “I don’t think you need to beat yourself up over this, Steve. Sometimes there’s nothing anyone can do.”

The waitress reappeared, a bowl of soup in hand. She set it down in front of Steve, and said in accented English, “You look like you need this. Are you ready to order?”

Sam talked to the waitress while Steve investigated the soup. It seemed to consist mostly of rice, but the flavors drifting upward in the steam held a lot more promise than plain rice. Green onions scattered over the surface enticingly, and the large ceramic spoon on the side fit nicely into Steve’s clumsy hand.

He tried a sip, and found that he liked it very much.

“…And, a bowl of that for me too,” Sam said, gazing over at Steve briefly. “It looks good.”

The waitress smiled. “Very warming,” she agreed, tapping her pen on her pad in a way that seemed approving. “You want pork jook, like him, or fish?”

“Jook,” Sam said, trying out the word.

“Congee,” the waitress amended. “In English, it’s congee.”

“I’ll try the fish,” Sam told her. “The fish jook.”

She beamed at his attempt, and strode away, taking the menus with her.

“You ever have this before?” Sam asked.

Steve shook his head, and handed over his spoon so Sam could try.

“Oh man,” Sam said, which was pretty much Steve’s thought too. “Hey, Steve, if you share half of this with me now, I promise to share half of the fish one with you.”

“Deal,” Steve said, and took the spoon back.

Steve returned that evening to the basement containment level, feeling, if not better in the heart, at least full and happy in the stomach. Sam hadn’t pressed him to share, so they’d spent the day in a Bucky-less mood, appreciating the good weather, complaining about Sam’s sister, trying all kinds of incredible noodles and dumplings and dumplings that looked like long noodles, but were actually dumplings.

It was day number one hundred and sixty. Takahashi was on the monitors, Issacs stood quietly in the corner.

Kumar leaned on the desktop beside Steve. “I think they’re going to give us fewer hours down here,” she told Steve quietly. “Finally deciding he’s not going to break out the moment he gets ahold of a hairpin.”

“Well, that should be nice for you, shouldn’t it?” Steve said. “Being cooped up in here for so long can’t be a fun assignment.”

Kumar’s mouth twisted. “I don’t trust anyone else to do it,” she said seriously. “And it’s not worse than being cooped up in there.”

Steve did not look where she was pointing. He knew what she was pointing at.

“If they’d just wait a little longer,” Takahashi muttered, “They could let us all go at the same time. We can go upstairs, keep an eye on his apartment. I mean, he doesn’t need it, but I’d do it gladly if they’d let him out.”

“They’re not gonna let him out,” Isaacs said from the corner with the pain of someone who’s said that before and been ignored.

Takahashi ran his hands through his wiry black hair. “He’s not going to go on a killing rampage,” he complained. “All that’s going to happen is he’s going to wither away in that cell.”

Steve looked. It was as involuntary as breathing.

Bucky was sitting in plain sight of the large window tonight, taking up both chairs at the small table along the wall. One leg was touching the floor, the other stretched across to the second chair. His right arm lay on the table. He seemed deep in thought, or perhaps like he was counting the grain in the wooden tabletop.

“He’s moved around a lot today,” Kumar said before Steve could ask. “Restless. Or – despairing, according to Takahashi.”

“I’m just saying,” Takahashi said, miserably, unhelpfully, “There are plenty of ways to kill yourself without a single weapon.”

“Takahashi,” Kumar said pleasantly. “Have you considered the scenario where I kill you?”

“It’s alright,” Steve said, eyes still on Bucky. “Who’s he spoken to today?”

Kumar accessed the digital logbook. Or, at least, that was what Steve was pretty sure she was looking at. “Dr. Alvarado,” she said. “Isaacs, when he brought in lunch.”

Steve rounded on Isaacs, who shrugged. “Said hi, Cap,” he said. “Didn’t think it was worth getting your hopes up about.”

“He said, specifically, hi, thank you,” Kumar corrected. “But yeah. That’s not much.”

“Tony hasn’t been here?”

Kumar shook her head. “I guess he took Barnes’s request seriously.”

Don’t tell me they cured you of your impulsive, irrational decision making, Steve thought suddenly. “May I go in?” he asked.

Kumar’s eyes turned rounder with worry. “If you think that’s a good idea,” she said slowly. “I know it’s already late – maybe tomorrow morning, when you’re both fresh is better?”

Steve shook his head. Takahashi typed a command on the monitor, and gestured with his head for Steve to walk around the corner to the door. As Steve approached, it slid open.

Only Bucky’s eyes moved, looking up from the table to see who’d disturbed him, and then drifting back down quick enough that if counting was what he was doing, he’d likely kept his place with no trouble.

His metal arm was attached to his side – Steve hadn’t been able to see it from the other angle. Gladness welled down in the bottom of his heart, the only place he had any gladness left. It felt right to see Bucky with two arms again, no matter what two arms they were.

“Hi,” he said like a fool. He slid the pack of cigarettes across the table towards Bucky. “You think they’d let you smoke in here, or would all the alarms go off? I guess they won’t let you have matches, huh.”

Bucky didn’t acknowledge him.

Steve tried not to react to the hurt. “I was thinking about your dad recently. He was a pretty swell guy – looking at him was like seeing where you’d be twenty-five, thirty years down the line, and he never said an unkind word about anybody. I don’t know where he got the energy to play with us kids after work each day, but he never told us he was too tired. Not even when – when Becca would ask him to pick her up and make her fly.”

Steve spared a single thought to wondering what Takahashi, Kumar, and Isaacs thought of his one-sided conversation, and then decided he didn’t give two fucks about it.

“I wish I could ask him a few things now,” Steve said, sticking his hands into his pockets. “I know he was your dad, but he was sorta mine too, in a few ways. Taught me to shave, I remember, not that I had to very often, and how to knot my tie properly. Used to try and surprise him as he’d walk by: if you have a drawer full of blue and brown socks, how many socks do you need to grab in the morning to ensure you’d have a matching set when you turned on the light?  I miss him.”

Bucky’s metal arm whirred. Steve didn’t know if that was a good whir or a bad.

“I’d ask him what the hell I’m supposed to do,” Steve said, looking down. “I’d ask him how to keep going. I’d ask him if he wanted a cigarette.”

Steve took the lighter out of his pocket and flicked it. He studied the flame briefly.

“Anyways,” Steve said. “Let’s test their fire alarms.”

He took the box back from the table, flicked out a cigarette and lit it. He inhaled once, exhaled the worst of it out, and Bucky pushed the table into the opposite wall.

“You want some?” Steve asked, holding it out in Bucky’s direction.

“What do you know?” Bucky hissed, turning towards him, eyes dark under his hair. “What do you know about him?”

“I know he’s your dad,” Steve said. “I know I miss him.”

Bucky’s face contorted. “You’re not Steve, you don’t know anything, you’re not Steve, you’re not, you’re not –”

“I don’t know why you keep sayin’ that,” Steve argued, and let Bucky push him into the wall, let the cigarette fall, smoking, to the floor, where it probably would start a fire. The speaker overhead crackled on.

“Stand down, soldier,” Kumar ordered.

Bucky’s hand closed around Steve’s throat. Steve had less than a minute. “Bucky,” he croaked. “Don’t make them hurt you, come on.”

Tightening his hand until Steve couldn’t talk anymore, Bucky said, “Will you just fucking shut up for one goddammed minute?”

Steve started laughing, which was really hard without any air in his windpipe. The sprinkler system kicked on overhead, showering them with water, which was good, because the rug was starting to smoke under the dropped cigarette.

Feeling it when the grip around his throat lessened slightly, Steve tipped his head back and let the freezing water hit him in the face. It reminded him of dying.

“Jesus fuck, Bucky,” he said. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

The door opened, admitting Kumar and Isaacs in full gear, stun guns raised. “Drop him,” Kumar ordered.

Bucky did, as though Steve was a piece of old history that disgusted him. Steve was, if you thought about it. Steve grabbed the box of cigarettes before Kumar pushed him out of the room; he’d paid good money for those, thank you.

He didn’t wait around to hear a scolding, just stomped into the elevator and smashed the button for his floor, stripping his wet shirt off in the process.

“ – Don’t tell me the elevator’s occupied, do I look like I care?” Tony said, as the doors opened on the floor that definitely wasn’t Steve’s. “Oh. Um. You do look…why are you dripping wet and shirtless, Steve?”

Steve stepped back to let Tony and Tony’s…steel alarm clock in, feeling like a caged tiger. “I’m dripping wet because of your sprinkler system, Tony, and I’m shirtless because I’m dripping wet. Why the fuck do you have an alarm clock built out of titanium?”

“This?” Tony said. “This isn’t an alarm clock, old buddy. Why’d you set off the sprinklers?”

“To fuck with you,” Steve lied.

The doors opened, and he stepped out thankfully, leaving Tony with his mouth open and his precious not-alarm clock cradled in his arms.

Steve threw his shirt at the wall, appreciating the incredible thwap as it made contact, and then stalked into the bathroom to take a shower.

Hey, George, he imagined saying. What’s the whole goddammed point of it all?

To add insult to injury, the following morning – at 5:48am no less – McIntire greeted Steve with a smile, a cup of coffee, and the casual news that he and Bucky had just chatted for eight minutes. McIntire calmly ended that statement by hitting a switch so Steve’s dumbfounded silence wouldn’t be transmitted into Bucky’s room.

Through the glass, Bucky looked over from his supine position on the bed, no doubt hearing the sound system vanish, and rolled his eyes.

Steve was holding the coffee cup too tightly; he was made aware of this fact because hot coffee started to leak down the side of his hand.

“Shit –” McIntire was yelling, and Marshall was there, and also Takahashi, and also Sam Wilson for some reason, because the universe just had to kick a fellow while he was down, and the next thing Steve knew he was sitting in a neighboring room in one of the chairs that always seemed to be in doctor’s offices and conference rooms, and nothing else. Steve had seen them on tv – he’d actually never been in a real 21^st Century doctor’s office, and there were no weird, ugly chairs in the Tower’s medical wing – but he had his share of conference rooms, and now he felt like he was sitting in one, gearing up for some terrible meeting about the world ending or something, except for the fact that Sam was holding a wet paper towel to Steve’s hand and squatting in front of him.

“Hi,” Sam said when Steve focused on him.

“Hi,” Steve croaked in return, because common decency deemed he must.

Sam gently tucked the wet paper towel around Steve’s hand more securely, and put one knee on the floor, settling in. “Came to visit you here. Bad timing, huh?”

“Or good, depending on who you ask?”

“Yeah, I bet I know what way your hand would answer,” Sam teased.

Steve flexed his hand experimentally, and pulled it out of Sam’s grasp. Sam made a noise of protest, but Steve had already pulled the soggy paper away to reveal blistering skin puckered over and itching as it healed.

“Ouch,” Sam said.

“Whatever,” Steve replied. “Sorry we’re having a visit in a room about a mile beneath the streets, Sam.”

Sam looked as though he wanted to offer the vaguely cool towel again, but restrained himself. “Hey, Steve, it’s a visit with you, that’s what matters. How are you doin’?”

“Oh, me?” Steve said, and he realized his voice was a little higher than usual. “Just fine, Sam, totally great, absolutely snazzy, as the kids say these days.”

“Man, nobody says that.”

Steve pulled out a cigarette, stuck it between his teeth, and was rooting around for the lighter before he remembered: don’t smoke inside. There were a whole lot of other don’ts as well, one being don’t presume your companions won’t notice if you smoke, but since they were most definitely inside, Steve just let that one be the end. He put the cigarette away.

Sam watched him, mild revulsion spread across his handsome face. “You know those things –”

“Cause cancer? Yeah,” Steve said tonelessly.

“Why don’t you try again,” Sam said, a note of steel entering his voice, maybe due to that cavalier brush off of cancer. “How are you doing?”

Steve pushed out his chair and started pacing, seven steps to one end of the room, seven steps back. Only four if he went the other way.

Sam rotated slightly, still on his haunches.

“I’m great, Sam,” Steve spat. “Everything’s peachy. My best friend tried strangulation as a new way to explain he doesn’t want to see me, and he’s chatting it up with his nightwatchmen behind my back. He’s probably telling Marshall right now how he prefers sunny side up eggs to scrambled, and how he still can’t get over the fact that the Yankees won the world series for the fourth time in a row in 1939 –”

“Strangulation?” Sam asked.

Steve threw open the door. He could hear Marshall talking down the hall. Furious, he stormed down, back into the room, where Marshall stopped talking abruptly at the sight of Steve. “Can I go in?” Steve said, remembering last minute not to punch the buttons and blinky-dinks himself until something happened.

“Sure,” Marshall said, and opened the door for him.

Bucky had the nerve to sit up when Steve walked in, blank patience on his face. The sight of him was nearly enough to punch the steam from Steve’s spine – he was still recovering, he was fragile, he couldn’t take Steve yelling at him, and he certainly didn’t deserve it –

“Hi, Buck,” Steve said. Sam was probably going to chew him out after this. Sam was probably watching right now. “How’d you sleep?”

Bucky’s face was definitely shifting over to wary.

“Me?” Steve said. “Me, I slept fine, I guess. I know I’m here pretty damn early, and it looks bad, but I swear it isn’t. I even stopped for a bagel on the way over. My onion breath should prove me right.”

He didn’t know what the hell he was saying.

“You miss bagels, Bucky? I’ll have to bring you one tomorrow.”

Bucky didn’t move. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Steve said, all the fight gone out of him. “Okay then. I’ll uh, let you get back to Marshall.”

The sound of the door automatically sliding shut behind him was like a coffin lid closing.

“Sorry,” he said automatically to poor Marshall, who was only doing his job. “I think I’m losing my mind.”

“Who wouldn’t, spending so much time down here?” Marshall said kindly. “Go get some sunlight, Cap.”

Steve shook his head.

“You know, Steve, you never got to drink that coffee,” Sam cajoled.

“I’m sorry,” Steve said very quickly. “But I just don’t care about coffee. I’m sorry, but I’m fucking alone in the future and I don’t know anything or anyone and I can’t go back and my best friend is alive and won’t talk to me but loves shooting the breeze with anyone else he can get and I think I’m losing my goddamned mind but I can’t tell anyone about it, because they’d admit me to the loony bin, because that’s what you do with someone who’s lost their mind, and maybe I should just walk myself in there, but that would be giving up, Sam, and I might be stupider than a goose and angrier than one too, but they’re gonna have to drag me kickin’ and screaming, or shoot me up with an elephant tranquilizer, because I won’t do it, I just won’t, Sam.”

He didn’t even know what he was protesting anymore by the time he ran out of oxygen. The very fabric of the universe? If there was one thing Steve could do, it was protest. Protest this awful future and the terrible basement they’d locked Bucky into, and Bucky himself.

“You know what?” Steve added on: the postscript. “Fuck Bucky Barnes. I’m sick to death of him. I’m sick to death of waiting around like some drooping bride who just won’t believe the war department when they tell her he bit it three months ago. Fuck him, and fuck me too, for being this fucking out to lunch.”

There was a noise from the containment room, the noise of a metal hand being pressed to a glass wall.

Steve stopped talking, and looked over at Marshall, who was standing there, shellshocked from hearing such disgustingly unpatriotic and unnoble words come out of Captain America’s mouth. Marshall spared one, quick, panicked look at the console, and that’s how Steve realized the speakers must still be on.

On the other side of the reenforced glass wall, Bucky was standing, his hand up, his body still, like he was about to take a shot. “Steve,” he said, his voice scratchy over the speakers in the ceiling.

“What the hell do you want now,” Steve bit out before he could catch himself.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky said. “Steve.”

Steve wrapped his arms around himself, wishing to God he were dead. Or passed out, maybe. Or just anywhere else where he didn’t feel like a piece of wet laundry that had gone through the wringer, been thrown out the window, and trampled by a passing automobile.

“I thought you weren’t –” Bucky said, some small measure of urgency in his voice. “And then I couldn’t be sure.”

“Sure of what?”

“That you were real,” Bucky said, and if Steve weren’t so damn pissed, he’d be sorrow-filled, and maybe horrified. “That you weren’t a trick. You were…so different from how I remembered.”

“Well, an amnesiac shouldn’t rely on his spotty memory,” Steve snapped, and heard Sam’s startled squeak.

Bucky’s eyes narrowed. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re an asshole?”

A sob wrenched its way out of Steve’s throat. He wished desperately that the glass wall was gone, that he could walk right up to Bucky and deck him across the face. He wished Sam and Marshall and whoever else it was frozen right inside the door were gone. He wished Bucky had said something weeks ago.

“You’re an asshole,” Bucky said, sounding relieved. “You’re Steve.”

Steve stayed rooted to the floor. The glass wall could’ve vanished into thin air and he probably would’ve stayed there. It wasn’t clear anything but an act of God could force him to move, to breathe, to face everything in front of him.

He guessed he should’ve lost his shit earlier.

But you know what? That was Bucky’s fault too. Steve jabbed a finger in the window’s direction. “Is this thing off? Can you see me?”

Marshall hit another button. Bucky blinked, squinted, and focused on them, his gaze traveling from Marshall, to Sam, to Steve. As soon as Steve had it, he took off, like a sprinter with the baton finally in hand.

“I hope you’re happy, Buck,” he snapped. “Walking into this mousetrap like you’re dumb as houses and twice as crazy. They’re gonna study your brains for decades now, and all they’re going to find out is how much of an idiot you are.”

“Steve…” Sam said, because Sam was a nice guy who occasionally tried to help people from saying things they’d regret later.

“I’ve had it about up to here with you,” Steve added before Sam could get ideas about shutting him up for good. “You’re lucky your mother’s dead – the sorry sight of you would probably finish her off.”

“Hey,” Bucky said, but his face didn’t match his words; an incandescent light had suffused it. “Low blow, Rogers, bringing my mother into this. That’s how you repay the woman who half raised you?”

“Thank the lord it was only half,” Steve said, although he was losing steam. “Look what you turned out to be.”

Marshall made a noise. Sam looked torn between throwing his hands up and leaving, and telling Marshall to turn it all off.

Bucky made an impatient noise. He pressed at the glass wall experimentally. “Hey, Marshall,” he said. “You’re Marshall, right? Nice to put a face to the name. I don’t suppose you could, uh, you know, let me outta here?”

“Sorry, Barnes,” Marshall said, and he did sound sorry, to his credit. “You really want that? The way you were just talking…sounds like the inside of your head ain’t a fun place to be right now.”

Bucky made a shrugging motion, and then stopped himself. “What do you know,” he said lowly. “Letting this shmuck chew me out seems to help.”

“Don’t give me that crap,” Steve said.

“Marshall,” Bucky said, his voice shifting, turning a little raw, “Help me out here.”

Marshall looked a little torn. Then he turned, glancing from over Steve’s shoulder to Kumar, and then back to Steve. “You can go back in there, if you want, Cap,” he began, “But I’m not sure I’d advise –”

“I’m not going back in there,” Steve said, even though he didn’t even care that much. Honor just demanded he say it. “Haven’t I said I’ve had enough?”

Bucky smacked the glass, irritated. “Fuck, Steve, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, okay? But maybe you could deflate your fat head for one minute and try to see it from my side; I didn’t know anything, I couldn’t trust anyone, not even myself, and at least in here I could know I wouldn’t hurt anyone or starve to death before I could make some sense of things.”

“What the hell is going on in here?” came a ringing voice that could only belong to someone at the very top of the food chain.

Marshall and Steve both sucked in fortifying breaths and turned around. Kumar had already done so, her spine straight and stiff. Nick Fury glared back at them, Natasha at his heels.

“What is this, visiting hour for a soap opera performance?”

Whatever else happened, no one needed to get in trouble for Steve’s bullshit. “Nick,” he began, but Fury didn’t let him get another word out.

“Since when has he been talking?” An aggrieved finger in Bucky’s direction. “Since when have we been letting him eavesdrop and spy on every damn thing in this room?” An accusing point toward Marshall.

“Didn’t your mother teach you any manners?” Bucky called.

“I liked it better when you were mute,” Fury snapped. “What the hell happened? Kumar!”

Kumar didn’t jump; that was probably why she’d gotten this job, Steve figured. “Yes, sir,” she said, seeming to understand what he wanted from her. “Barnes has been speaking in fits and pieces for the last two days, to whomever was on duty down here. Today…”

Steve decided he owed it to everyone to come clean about his own involvement, even if it’d had positive effects in the end. “Today I came down here and lost my shit,” he chimed in. “And apparently that’s what Bucky’s been waiting for.”

Fury’s gaze sharpened. “Well, no point in trying to put the horse back in the stables, but why the hell weren’t you thrown out?”

“It wasn’t their fault,” Steve said. “And Sam –”

Fury seemed to notice Sam. “Well. It looks like someone with a brain was present. Didn’t I offer you a job?”

“Yes sir,” Sam replied.

“And did you accept?”

“Not yet,” Sam said, shifting his weight slightly. “I’m…deciding still.”

Fury made a harumphing noise, and stomped back through the door, shooting a dark look at Natasha as he did. She waited until he’d passed before rolling her eyes at them and following.

The room was quiet after they’d left. Sam and Kumar traded blank stares, and Marshall looked at Steve like he was awaiting orders, or possibly trying to will his own death. Steve didn’t know what he looked like, but it was probably just as shellshocked.

“Can you all go away so I can talk to Steve?” Bucky said quietly.

Steve sighed. “I’ll go in,” he told Marshall.

“I’ll give you what privacy I can,” Marshall said, and sure enough, when Steve stepped through the doors into the unit, the lights dimmed, and the one way glass was off, and Bucky was standing in the middle of the floor, thrumming with tension.

Steve didn’t – he stayed where he was, uncertain, unmoored, and scared. He didn’t know which one of them would be the first to speak. He wasn’t sure which one of them should. Maybe they could get away without a word between them; the way they’d spent many an evening, only a kick or slanted browns communicating perfectly for them.

They’d changed too much for that secret code. Steve had no idea what Bucky was thinking.

“All I can remember,” Bucky said quietly, “Is the feeling of my finger on a trigger, what wet socks feel like, and you.”

Steve inhaled, wondering why it hurt so much to do so.

“And now my mother,” Bucky added with a small, wet laugh. “Because you just –” his right hand made an aborted gesture. “You reminded me.”

His gaze was searching.

“If I could only remember those three sensations,” Bucky continued, “How could I reference them against anything? How can I know if they’re even real? You were – you are a riot of colors and sounds in my head, and things in my head…they’re not good things. And then you went and…were strange, and quiet, and not what I thought you were. I was scared, Steve.”

Steve gripped his opposite wrist. The bones beneath the skin felt fragile, crushable. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, Bucky.”

“You have nothing to be –” Bucky broke off, frustrated. He ran his hands through his hair, ruffling it. “It’s not –”

He stopped. Steve felt, strangely enough, like crying. “We’ve never been good at talking,” he explained. “We were…we were shockingly bad at it.”

Bucky gritted his teeth together and advanced. Steve’s reflexes moved without his permission, tightening and straining, but Bucky didn’t throw a punch or deploy his deadly strength. His arms came around Steve’s shoulders and squeezed, his head falling on to Steve’s shoulder saying all the things he couldn’t.

Steve hugged him back. It was as though every part of him that Bucky held was healing, like the burn on his hand, blistered skin peeling and revealing something new and soft beneath, and it didn’t hurt anymore. He’d never thought Bucky would ever touch him like this again.

“Did we communicate like this?” Bucky whispered. “When we couldn’t talk?”

Steve thought of the slammed doors and the breaking hearts and the way he’d known some things had to be left alone between them: Bucky’s relationship with his sisters, Steve’s relationship with God, Bucky dropping out of college, Steve’s likeminded art school friends, Bucky’s many girlfriends, Steve’s ache of affection with only one target in mind and nowhere else to go.

“It was more yelling and stony silences,” he said truthfully, because he will never try to distort whatever pieces of memory Bucky had. “But this is nice. I wish it had been like this.”

Bucky held him tighter, and Steve felt the apologies pressed into his spine, the relief in Bucky’s hand on the back of his head. He tried to send his own guilt and grief into his hands, grasping at the back of Bucky’s shirt, poured his hope and worry and love into Bucky’s shoulder along with the few tears falling there.

“How did we end up here, Steve?” Bucky wondered.

“Well, Hitler was partly responsible,” Steve ventured. “And Karpov, that fucking backstabbing Hydra fuck.”

Bucky twitched. “He’s dead,” he said, his voice sturdy with surety.

“Good,” Steve muttered. “I mean, that’s good for him, because if he wasn’t I would’ve found out how loud he could scream with all his limbs chopped off and piled on top of the rest of him.”

Bucky pulled away, something disturbed but not disgusted in his face. “Something is definitely wrong with you,” he decided.

“Hey,” Steve said defensively. “Like there’s nothin’ wrong with you? Okay, pot, kettle.”

Bucky scrubbed his hands across his face. “I gotta get outta here, Steve,” he said, quiet enough that only Steve’s ears could pick it up, and hopefully not the overhead speaker system. “I can’t figure anything out in here.”

“What do you need to figure out?”

Bucky’s eyes turned a little despairing. “Everything,” he confessed. “When you say things – my mother, Karpov – I remember them. But I need more, I need…I need some solid ground under my feet.”

“Well, I think you should get out of here too,” Steve said. “Hell, I want to get out of here.”

“They don’t – you don’t have a cell down here too, do you?”

Steve shook his head. “No, Bucky. My cell’s a hundred floors above yours, and they tell me I can come and go, but…”

Bucky nodded. “Let’s get out of here, Steve.”

Because Bucky would rather do it right than break out and flee, it took days. Steve could admit he saw the pros of Bucky’s plan, that if they could swing it, they wouldn’t have to go on the run, keep a low profile, but sometimes he just wanted to smash a door down and go, so they wouldn’t have to be part of any more meetings.

“I don’t know where this change of heart came from,” Fury complained. He’d seemed to have made up his mind on disliking Bucky, which was unfortunate for him. “You know you have to talk, right, if you’re going to play at being a real person.”

“I can talk, Fury, I just choose to only participate with people who give me an ounce of respect,” Bucky fired back.

“Respect is earned,” Fury said, like he might say case closed.

“Yeah, well, you ain’t exactly earned mine,” Bucky replied, getting the last word in there like he was so fond of doing. “You know, back in the war, we didn’t go even through all this legal mamby-pamby. People disregarded their superiors with pride, back then.”

“Let me guess,” Fury said witheringly. “You and George Washington were real pals.”

Bucky kept his face entirely straight. “I don’t know who that youngster is, but I shot more dinosaurs in that war than any other single man.”

“Enough,” Natasha said, like she’d grown weary of listening. It was too bad she’d cut in before Steve could back up that dinosaur comment with some alarming reminiscing, but oh well. Maybe they’d get out of there before another seventy years had passed. “Fury, he can keep up with you, he’s fine.”

Fury shot her a hard stare.

“Even if he’s not a real person,” Natasha said. “He’s proven he can act like one. You let me get by on less.”

“This isn’t about you,” Fury told her.

“It feels like it is,” Natasha said.

“I cannot just let the Winter Soldier go walking out to play dress up house, Romanoff,” he barked. “Do you hear how ludicrous that sounds?”

Natasha shrugged. “So, put him on the payroll. Send him out to play dress up. Call him in if the world needs saving.”

Fury sat back in his chair. “Both of you get out,” he said to Bucky and Steve. “I’m sick of looking at you.”

They made it into the elevator. Bucky looked at Steve. “When he said get out,” he started.

“He meant out,” Steve supplied helpfully, pressing the button for the lobby repeatedly, as though it would get them there faster.

“I’m wearing loony house pajamas,” Bucky said ruefully, looking down at his matching set of gray.

Steve unzipped his sweatshirt and pulled his own t-shirt over his head. Bucky gave him a screwy eyeball. Steve shook his head impatiently and gestured, c’mon, fork it over, and Bucky stripped and traded his stiff gray top for Steve’s shirt. He looked alright, so Steve put the sweatshirt back on, figuring better Bucky look a little odd than both of them have matching outfits.

The elevator doors opened.

Steve nearly muttered be casual, but then caught himself. With his own shoulders squared, his steps even, Bucky steady at his back, they could be in the French countryside, in an Italian village, in the Swiss alps. Steve imagined the weight at his back, the straps that always tore up his shoulders, and realized. He was going to leave the shield behind when he walked through those glass doors and out into the city.

All right, he couldn’t help but think, giddy at the thought. I wonder what that will be like.

Nobody looked up. No alarms went off. Steve pushed through the doors, held one open for Bucky to slink through behind him. It was raining, because of course it was.

They set off down the sidewalk before something could go wrong, and it wasn’t until they’d crossed the street and gone two blocks that they got stuck, waiting amongst a sea of umbrellas. Steve turned to Bucky. “Where to, Buck?”

Bucky’s face was apprehensive, but then he tilted his head. A raindrop slid down the familiar and well-loved bridge of his nose. “The future,” he said, and laughed a little.

PART 2 

Natasha found them on the thirteenth day. She stepped through the window into the living room, and made a face.

On the lone couch and reading chair, Steve and Bucky looked back at her inquiringly.

“I let you have nearly two weeks,” she declared despairingly. “And in that time, you boys acquired exactly two pieces of furniture.”

“Just one,” Steve said. “The chair came with the place.”

“You don’t even want a rug?”

Bucky looked from Steve to Natasha. “You know, when we were young…they hadn’t invented rugs yet.”

Natasha blinked. She was nearly too smart for such games, but Steve had learned it threw people to hear when we were young. More than when I was young even. No one was used to coming face to face with a relic, not even the few that faced off against Steve every day. It took Natasha about ten seconds before her face settled back into its usual blankness, and she said, “Haha.”

“My hand to God,” Bucky swore, laying it on a little thick. “Only the wealthy got ‘em after a while, cause they could afford carpet cleaners, you know the beaters that you had to employ a maid to wallop, because the dust got everywhere, you know? Cleaner just to have the bare floors.”

“Which is the philosophy you’re employing here,” Natasha said, surveying the living room. Her thick boots made small noises on the wooden boards. “Not even a picture frame? A houseplant?”

“What would we do with a houseplant,” Steve said, exasperated, closing his book. “What the hell do you want, anyways?”

Natasha stared at him owlishly. “Not even a bookcase? Where are you storing those books?”

“These books that you see,” Steve said, lifting his and pointing to Bucky’s and the stack by the armchair, “Are all that I own. I think they’re doing just fine without your expertise, Natasha.”

“Jesus,” Natasha said, folding her arms across her chest. “This is incredibly dire. This is worse than anything I would’ve guessed. We thought you two were going to go – I don’t know, to IKEA at least? We thought you’d love this, that you’d furnish some cozy little apartment and become cat dads –”

“Who’s we?” Steve interrupted.

“Cat dads?” Bucky questioned.

Natasha looks heavenward, as though asking for patience, as though she wasn’t the one who’d broken and entered and was insisting on this twisted game of twenty questions. “Sam and I,” she said. “Were not expecting this. Tell me one of you knows how to cook?”

“Look, Natasha,” Steve said, throwing his book aside and getting to his feet, “I’ll have you know a lot of people survive just fine without your interventions, and as long as we’re paying rent and not bein’ stupid, what the fuck do you even want?”

Natasha ignored him, dodged around him, and made for the kitchen, where she threw open the icebox door before Steve could stop her.

“What,” she said, “the fuck.”

“Do you even have a reason for all this?” Steve demanded, getting pissed now.

Natasha turned away from the nearly empty shelves – alright, they were due a trip to the corner store, so what – and stared at him as though he was an alien about to teleport back to the mothership. “Is that fucking vodka,” she asked, like she already knew the answer, so Steve didn’t bother speak up. “And exactly four cans of Pabst? And a glock?”

“Do I tell you what you can and can’t put in your fridge?” Steve roared at her.

He felt Bucky’s hand on his back before Bucky started speaking, felt the warm comforting presence of him before he was actually being calmed. “Let’s all just take a few minutes,” Bucky said lowly, like Steve was a piece of agitated livestock.

Natasha put her head in her hands, but went blessedly silent. Bucky’s hand traveled up and down the lower half of Steve’s spine, and screw Steve, but what did you know, the motion had ingrained in him before he’d grown any adult teeth that things were going to be okay and he’d be able to breathe, and he found his anger slipping through his fingertips.

“Sorry,” he said, looking at Natasha. She was wearing all black, he noticed for the first time, except that that golden chain with the arrow on it around her neck. “I guess I was a little tense. Did Fury pitch a fit?”

“He’s going to,” she answers him, lifting her head to look him in the eye as well as she can when she’s quite short. “If he finds out how you two live.”

“Good thing he ain’t gonna,” Steve said. “Right?”

Natasha’s eyes flashed. “Are you trying to threaten me?”

Steve said, “Would it work?”

“Okay,” Bucky said, interrupting again before things could go south. “Can we figure this out like grownups? I’d like to take a nap soon.”

Natasha stared at him. Her mouth opened the slightest bit, but no words came out. It reminded Steve of the time Dugan had dropped Falsworth’s razor in the mud – the last sharp razor they had – Falsworth’s mouth had hung open just like that.

“I came to see how you were holding up,” she answered very slowly, like her temper was being tested, “But I can come back, if I’m disturbing your nap.”

“Well, I can answer that one all right,” Steve said, pushing Bucky away. “We don’t gotta keep Buck.”

“I’ll hear you if you start screaming again,” Bucky warned, but went back into the living room.

Steve crossed his arms. “We’re fine.”

Natasha’s eyes narrowed.

“We are,” Steve said. “Both alive, both eating well, both paying rent on time, and occasionally we even have some fun. Bucky takes a lot of naps because he’s up half the night throwing up, but you know. Situation normal.” He does not tack on the rest of the phrase. Natasha lifts exactly one eyebrow.

“Throwing up?”

“He has stomach issues,” Steve said tiredly. “Nausea. He…remembers stuff.”

Steve couldn’t tell her the finer details on that regard, because Steve didn’t know them. Bucky still kept a lot of cards close to his chest, and some days it itched under Steve’s skin, the amount of years under Bucky’s belt that he knew next to nothing about where it had used to be only a few hours each day he wasn’t a part of, but other days he felt like it was a fair situation if Bucky didn’t want to share than he didn’t have to. Steve sure as hell wasn’t about to force him.

Bucky was here. He was here and breathing and putting on weight and still somehow tolerating Steve’s presence and status as best friend. Steve didn’t need anything else.

“Are you happy?” Natasha asked doubtfully.

Luckily, Steve knew the answer to that one. “It’s 2015, Natasha,” he said, throwing his hands up and shrugging. “Who even is anymore?”

“Good try,” she said. “I’m being serious with you, can’t you at least return the favor? Is this what you want? Is…he what you want?”

That, Steve could answer in a heartbeat. “Yes,” he said quietly. “How about you, Natasha? What do you want?”

The question seemed to throw her. As though no one had bothered ask it in a long time. Steve felt saddened to think that, but waited patiently while a million battles were waged in the tightening of her jaw.

“I want you to stop being obstinate. I want you to come back. I want my friends to stop shacking up with weird guys.”

Steve frowned. “Bucky is not just a weird guy. Secondly, this happens to you on the regular?”

“Whatever,” Natasha said, and turned to go.

“Wait,” Steve said, wrongfooted by the other things she’d said she wanted. He’d never been good at feelings, let alone talking about them, even before he’d gone to war and been frozen for much longer than was advisable. “Wanna get coffee sometime?”

She stopped in the doorway and just looked at him. “How about you buy some damn groceries first. Then we’ll talk.”

She left via the front door, shutting it behind her awfully quiet for someone who just so recently was breaking and entering.

“She reminds me of my mother,” Bucky said from the couch. “Eat, eat, eat, you’re too thin.”

“You are too thin.”

“You can only tell because of my dumb arm,” Bucky complained. “If not for that, you’d say I was cheekily slender.”

Steve rolled his eyes and slumped back down into the armchair. “I can tell because I know you, you big grouse. They weren’t feeding you enough in that place.”

“Ain’t ever been a place that was feeding me enough, Steve, not since I left my mama’s home.”

“I know,” Steve said. “Wanna go grocery shopping?”

Bucky settled back into the couch further. “Yeah. After a couple of hours go by. I want to think about Romanoff angrily waiting.”

Because he was the kind of sick in the head that enjoyed the sort of things the sicko Bucky Barnes did, Steve said, “Okay,” and picked up his book again.

“You know what would be really funny,” Bucky said five hours later, pushing the cart around the store and hopping up on the back to catch a ride like a dumb kid, “If she comes back for some reason – we could invite her, I suppose, but it’d be funnier if she came back of her own accord –”

“What,” Steve said impatiently from the apples section. A whole section devoted to apples, now really. How on earth was he supposed to pick the right ones?

Bucky steered over. “If she comes back and the place is done up like that one girl’s apartment, Milly, or Tilly, or something?”

“Unlike you, Buck, I didn’t see the inside of every girl in Brooklyn’s apartment –”

“No, you know this one,” Bucky said. “At least, I thought – you know, Milly or Tilly and her little –” he made a motion with his wrist, a sort of twirl, and like a lightbulb had been switched on, Steve remembered.

“Oh my god,” he said, revolted. “Was she the one who –”

“Yes.”

“When we –”

“Yes!” Bucky said, face alight. “Yes, she was. You remember all those little cushions? And the rug so deep you nearly drowned in it? And all the little embroidered sayings she had on the wall…a fella could get lost in all that shit.”

Steve shook his head. He’d had a paper route as a kid, and sometimes Bucky would tag along, and they’d been invited into some pretty strange places to wait for the five cents they were owed, but this one sure did stand out.

“What was a young dame like that doin’ with so much frills?” Bucky asked the apples wonderingly. “I mean, don’t old women with cats go for that stuff more?”

“I dunno. But it was frightening.”

“I’ll say.” Bucky picks up an apple with his metal hand, gently turns it around, and smells it. “Let’s get these ones.”

“Okay,” Steve says, and picks out a few of his own.

It’s the thirty-seventh day before anything out of the ordinary happens again. Anything out of the ordinary takes the shape of large ants that appear out of the sewers and start messing with a farmer’s market.

Steve and Bucky hadn’t been at the farmer’s market – they didn’t do that gentrified crap – but they sure paid attention to the sounds of screaming, tents collapsing, and insect feet louder than all the surrounding traffic.

“Am I hallucinating?” Bucky asked wildly, skidding to a halt in his sneakers, staring at a pair of antennae poking through a white tent emblazoned with the words Farm Fresh Goat Products!

“If you were, wouldn’t you know what I was thinking?” Steve answered absently, wondering what of the few objects within reach would make the best flying projectiles. “So, guess.”

“You’re thinking about…” Bucky shot him a sideways look. “About that girl we met in Europe, the one with the curves that always –”

“Nope,” Steve said cheerfully, hauling up a manhole cover and whipping it through the air to crash through the top of the goat products tent.

Bucky sighed. “Alrighty then,” he said, and charged forward to shepherd women in aprons and families with strollers out of the way of the destruction. Steve chased the destruction.

It wasn’t long before they had company – about three more humongous ants appeared, stepping gingerly around a spraying, broken fountain, rolling trash bins, and the remains of several picnic tables, and also Tony Stark, Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton, and Takahashi, Kumar, and Marshall, along with a battalion of Shield agents in all black.

“Any luck killing these things?” Tony’s suit inquired politely as it flew past Steve and knocked an ant down.

“No,” Steve said, looking for his next weapon. He found a tent leg and hefted it, but it didn’t pack much of a punch.

“Hmm,” Tony said, and wheeled around. “Be right back.”

“Oh, sure,” Steve huffed. “Take your time. No rush.”

Natasha ran past. “Hey!” she hollered at two ants who turned and gave chase. Arrows flew towards them, embedding in their carapaces, slowing them only a brief moment.

“Cap,” Kumar said, jogging over. “Thought you might need this.” She was holding a round black case.

Steve looked down at her, her black hair parted sharply in the middle and braided tightly, her curved brown nose and straight spine. “Thank you,” he said.

She flashed a smile. “Anytime,” she called, and then he was off, running, unzipping the case as he went, the thought occurring to him that she could definitely be fucking with him, but then his hand was inside the case and it recognized the textures and shape and memories, and he yanked the shield out and flung it skyward.

It rebounded off a nearby tree, a lamppost, and into the side of an ant poised to crush one of the few tents left standing. The ant crumpled with an indignant twitching.

“Jesus,” Bucky said, jogging past. He clambered around the ant, lifted one of its legs to let a middle aged woman scramble away, and picked up the shield. His expression was funny.

Steve held out a hand. And Bucky, still wearing the look like he’s tasted something bizarre, threw it perfectly for Steve to snatch it from the air without breaking any of his fingers.

Tony returned with a sort of gas canister, so they corralled the ants with arrows and hits and chased until they were surrounded and away from the nearby crowd. Tony opened the can and drenched them in blue smoke, and when it cleared, the ants were horizontal, twitching, and incapacitated.

“What kind of concoction is that?” Natasha asked, going through her remaining widow bites while behind her, Clint collected used arrows.

“It’s simple chemistry,” Tony said. “Their molecules are operating at a frequency designed to –”

“Yeah, never mind,” she said, studying the ants. She was about half the size of them, maybe a little more if you didn’t count leg. “Where’d they come from?”

Tony’s faceplate flipped up. “Oh, that’s easy to guess. Some nutjob playing around with science in the sewers. I’ll take a team down there, do cleanup. Hey, uh, you?”

“Yes?” Takahashi answered.

“Who’s available for some sewage science?”

Takahashi looked as though he wished he wasn’t, but had no excuse. “Blue team,” he called, and led them away. Tony waved cheekily and followed, throwing up a peace sign to the rubbernecking traffic as he passed.

The remainder stuck around for cleanup. Steve craned his head around, but didn’t spot Bucky. When he looked back, Natasha and Clint were staring at him.

“Guess you’ll want this back?” he asked, offering the shield to them.

“No,” Clint said quickly. “What I am supposed to do with that, eat spaghetti out of it?”

“Keep it,” Natasha said.

Steve nodded. “Thanks,” he said.

“Wanna get sushi?” she questioned, tilting her head. “There’s a great place off of – what was that cross street, Barton?”

“Who knows,” Clint replied. He pointed. “It’s that way. They have ramen too, if that makes up your mind, Steve.”

It all sounded good to Steve. “Yeah,” he said. “Let me just find Bucky, and we’ll come with you.”

“Cool,” Clint said. Natasha didn’t say anything.

Steve rounded on her.

“It’s nothing,” she remarked, holding her hands up. “He’s just…you know.”

Steve narrowed his eyes at her because he knew no such thing.

“He’s weird,” Natasha said. “Isn’t he weird?”

She looked at Clint, who said, “Leave me out of this, I don’t even know the guy.”

“He’s not weird,” Steve argued.

“He’s a little weird,” Natasha said under her breath, and then jerked her chin to the left. “Case in point.”

Steve turned and found Bucky hanging upside down off of a bent lamppost, trying to untangle an electrical cord. Below him, a small Asian woman in a visor wrung her hands together, calling instructions up in what sounded like Cantonese.

“He’s an acrobat,” Clint said, sounding slightly impressed.

“He’s a weirdo,” Natasha disagreed.

“He’s normal,” Steve complained, walking away. “He’s a normal guy and he’s helping that woman, and if you don’t want us coming to sushi, well, that’s fine.”

“No,” Natasha called, sounding defeated. “You’re both invited, come on, don’t be stupid.”

As soon as they’d settled into their booth and placed their admittedly large order, Clint put his menu aside and gazed at Bucky from across the table.

“So,” he said excitedly. “It’s really nice to finally meet you for real, dude. I’m a big fan, a big fan.”

Bucky looked sideways at Steve, and then back. “You’re Hawkeye,” he said.

“He knows me!” Clint said, delighted. Beside him, Natasha puts her head in her hand. “You know me, that’s so great. It’s a goddamned honor, you know, me being me, and you being…such a good shot, actually. And on top of your sniping abilities, I saw you getting that lamppost untangled earlier – you’re an acrobat too, aren’t you.”

Bucky started playing with his napkin, unfolding it from the majestic triangular position it was in. “You’re the one workin’ on this juiced up team without anything other than your own skills. That seems more impressive to me.”

Clint started to say something and then cut himself off, beaming widely. “Why thank you,” he said. “I should mention that Nat here is also just a regular and talented woman amongst superpowered crazies too, but it’s okay, I don’t mind taking all the glory. We should have a shooting match sometime.”

“No, you shouldn’t,” Natasha and Steve said at the same time.

“Why?”

Bucky’s eyes said the same thing, although a little less loudly. Steve could tell he was wondering if Steve didn’t trust him, if Steve was worried that with a gun, Steve thought something bad would happen, something being Bucky, and bad being Winter Soldier.

“No,” Steve said quietly, touching Bucky’s wrist beneath the table. “That’s not it at all. You don’t know Clint the way I do…he’s going to cheat, likely, and you’ll end up covered in bruises and smelling like one of his fart arrows.”

“Then I’ll just cheat too,” Bucky said, his expression clearing a little bit. “It’s only a fair competition if both participants are using everything to their advantage.”

“This guy and I are like…twins,” Clint announced. “We’re gonna get along swell.”

Natasha met Steve’s gaze over the table. The look in her eye was so full of regret and commiseration that Steve laughed a little, raising his own brows in reply.

Luckily, before Clint and Bucky could get to know each other intimately, the sushi arrived.

A few days after that, Sam invited them to IKEA. He probably heard from Natasha that there was a furniture shortage in the Barnes/Rogers household, and was trying to salvage their sorry lives while he could. Steve tried to see the amusing sides of such busybody-ness, but in the end, it was Bucky who said they ought to go.

“Might be nice to have a bedframe to sleep on,” he said, and that was that. Steve would have bought him eight bedframes if he said the word. A trip down to Red Hook, that was much less work.

Sam greeted them with a large shopping cart, a hug for Steve, and a handshake for Bucky. “Alright, where should we start?” he asked them.

“I’m lookin’ for a bedframe,” Bucky told him. “Something that can take our weight.”

“Okay,” Sam said, making note. “What else?”

“That’s it,” Bucky said.

Steve hid his smile in his hand.

Sam blinked. “Oh,” he said slowly. “Oh, okay.”

They slowly walked around the bed section. Steve was somewhat intrigued by all the life sized bedroom display rooms – people had so many different styles to choose from nowadays with all their money – but Bucky glanced at the first two, and said to himself, not like that, then, and was content to stay in the showroom, covertly picking up the corner of the frame and dropping it on the floor to see how sturdy it really was.

Before long, they made a game out of it. Sam kept lookout and score with the shopping cart – why he was still hauling that around it wasn’t clear – and Steve and Bucky racked up points against themselves for every bed that creaked or groaned, or once in Bucky’s case, actually fell apart a little.

“We gotta fix it,” Bucky said, horrified.

“Leave it, leave it,” Steve insisted, breathless with laughter at the look on Bucky’s face.

“It’s a safety hazard, what if someone gets hurt?”

Steve grabbed him, yanked him away from the crime scene. “It’s two screws, Buck, I think it’ll be okay if some couple tries sitting on it.”

Bucky glowered, but let it go, and then won the whole game by finding the perfect bedframe. It was called IDANÄS for some bizarre reason, and it was a whole hundred bucks cheaper if you got the white one, so Bucky decided they’d paint themselves if they cared about what it looked like so much, and then Sam showed them the way down to the warehouse where they could pick out the box themselves, and then the reason for the cart became obvious.

“Only one?” Sam asked. “Or do we need two?”

“At this price?” Bucky said. “Are you crazy?”

“People these days are much more spoiled,” Steve told Bucky. “Can’t share a room, let alone a bed.”

Sam raised his eyebrows but didn’t say anything beyond, “Well, then, before we leave, you two better promise you’ll try the meatballs.”

Steve and Bucky looked at each other. Bucky’s eyes said what is he talking about? And Steve’s eyes replied, don’t look at me, I have no fucking clue.

“IKEA meatballs,” Sam said, like some benevolent teacher of wisdom, “Are the strangest, most delicious thing, and I’m not leaving without my fix.”

Later, when they were facing a pile of parts and an instruction guide partially written in Swedish, Steve asked, “So, did you like the meatballs?”

“Promise you won’t tell Sam?” Bucky asked, flipping the instructions upside down, trying to find a language he could read. “I fucking loved the meatballs.”

“Yeah, they were pretty alright,” Steve said with a small laugh at Bucky’s fervor. “Not bad for the future.”

“How many meatballs did you even eat growin’ up?”

Steve had to think that one through. “Your aunt brought them one year, didn’t she?”

“My aunt? Which one, Aunt Mimi?”

“No, the Italian one,” Steve said, exasperated without thinking about it. Only later would it occur to him that Bucky had remembered his Aunt Mimi, that Bucky had volunteered her name out of the blue. “Aunt…Rosa, was it? Rosalie? Rosalind?”

Bucky didn’t answer, only squinted at him.

“She had a pot of ‘em,” Steve said. “Brought them over for thanksgiving or something.”

“Were IKEA’s better?”

Steve put his hand on his heart. “Of course not, Buck. But they’re close.”

Bucky smirked and went back to the instructions. “Oh hey, here’s French. We can read French well enough between the two of us.”

“German’s easier, if they have it,” Steve said.

“Shut up, Steve,” Bucky said, and then, “Fixez les longerons…principaux aux composants de la tête et du pied du lit.”

“What the hell is tête et du pied du lit,” Steve asked.

Bucky glared at him. “I don’t know, Steve, too bad the French Resistance wasn’t talking about bedframe assembly back in the day.”

“Try German,” Steve advised. “I’m serious, try German.”

“Were the nazis instructing you on the finer details of bedframe assembly, Steve? Because they sure as hell weren’t sharing any of those secrets with me!”

Steve threw a bag of screws at him. Bucky swatted them aside into the wall, and hunkered down with the booklet. Steve went to get a beer.

In the end, they finished three cans between them – “Good thing we don’t get drunk,” Bucky said, “Because it’s hard enough reading this sober.” “Maybe you’d do better if you were drunk,” Steve offered, and then dodged a smack – and the bedframe not only looked like the picture, it also held up to having a mattress thrown on its slats, followed by the two of them. Steve climbed aboard gingerly, but Bucky vaulted on, claiming he’d done his research in the store, and if he’d built it defectively, he’d rather know now than in the middle of the night.

“In fact,” Bucky said, lying flat on his back and staring up at their ceiling. “We really should put the thing through several tests, if we want the study to be complete.”

“It’s a bedframe,” Steve said, growing drowsy now that he was horizontal and comfortable. “What kind of tests does it even need?”

Bucky pushed himself up on one arm. “I can think of a few off the top of my head, numbskull.”

Steve looked up at him. “Are you saying someone needs to have some enthusiastic sex on this bedframe in the name of science?”

Bucky was definitely blushing, but Steve felt he could be the bigger man and let it slide.

“Do you want to throw it against the wall?” he said, enjoying Bucky’s ire building. “In case one of us feels compelled to do so in the thralls of a nightmare? Should you tie me to it, in case we ever have a hostage situation here, or maybe we should chop it up and burn it, in case the heat ever goes out for too long during the winter –”

“Alright, smartass, that’s enough,” Bucky said. “You’re sleeping on the couch tonight.”

Steve didn’t want to move, but Bucky didn’t know that. “Fine. Keep all your weird experiments quiet then, won’tcha, so I can get some real sleep?”

Bucky let Steve go through the pretense of getting up, swinging his feet over the side of the bed, and even pressing down to push off before crawling over and throwing his arms around Steve’s waist.

“I didn’t mean it,” he said, dragging Steve back, both of his arms like vice grips. “I didn’t mean it, stay, come on, stay. You built half of it, you get to enjoy it.”

“I did not,” Steve said, letting himself be hauled on. “I did more than half and you know it.”

Bucky grinned into Steve’s shoulder. “If that’s true it’s only because I was struggling with the instructions for so long. It’s still half the work, counting the reading work.”

“You need to get your eyes examined.”

“So sorry I didn’t know the French word for screwdriver, Steve,” Bucky retorted, not letting go, but keeping Steve firmly held in his arms.

“In German, it’s schraubendreher,” Steve said pointedly.

Bucky kicked him, hard. “Get up. Go tell Sam we need another bed.”

“You wouldn’t fork over the funds,” Steve said, not moving.

Bucky didn’t say anything. After some time, his right arm snaked back over Steve’s waist.

Steve wasn’t totally sure, but he thought that perhaps this was the first time the two of them had shared a bed actually intended for two people. The weeks on the mattress on the floor didn’t count, that was sleepover stuff, but this…this was a real bed for grownup, real people.

It was good to know that he was still going to have Bucky plastered to his side, regardless.

Steve felt it when Bucky thrashed awake in the middle of the night. Bucky’s skin, when Steve reached out to touch, felt clammy and hot, and the hand that gripped his back was chilled through, despite being made of flesh and bone.

“Sorry,” Bucky croaked in the dark. “Nightmare.”

Steve didn’t ask. Bucky would talk when he was ready, or he wouldn’t, and that would be okay too.

“Sometimes I dream…” Bucky said, “that you’re sick, really sick, and this time it’s for real, and it’s only a matter of time, and the sounds your breathing makes in your chest –”

Of all the things Bucky could possibly have nightmares about, Steve was not expecting to hear that.

“Wish my brain wasn’t so good at healing,” Bucky muttered. “Coulda done without remembering the smell of my own fear mixing with the stench of your medicines.”

Steve squeezed his hand. He leaned over and gently knocked his forehead into Bucky’s metal shoulder.

“I’m okay,” Bucky whispered. “Just…gotta calm down a minute.”

“Okay,” Steve replied under his breath, sad and sorry that Bucky had to carry around remnants of those days like shackles on his ankles.

Maybe because of the nightmare, or maybe independent of it, Bucky woke up again a second time around dawn, his entire body tensing. Steve counted to four hundred and eight before Bucky started breathing deep and slow and forcing himself to relax. Not long after that, Bucky slipped out from under the covers and disappeared through the door.

After waiting what he thought was an appropriate time to insinuate that he’d woken of his own accord, Steve found him in the kitchen, a cigarette in his mouth, a towel over one shoulder, and bagels in the toaster.

Steve leaned against the countertop. Maybe they should go hunting around for some bar stools – someone on their block was bound to be getting rid of some older ones.

“Do you know that people don’t smoke indoors anymore?”

Bucky frowned and spat out his smoke. “I used to not smoke indoors, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, cause of my asthma. But that’s gone now, I don’t care.” Steve crossed one ankle over the other. “But I guess cause everyone knows how bad those things can be for you, they don’t let you just smoke anywhere. You can even get sick from bein’ near someone else smoking. So, you gotta be outside, and sometimes in special places outside.”

Bucky looked mortified. “You shoulda said something to me sooner.”

“I told you, I don’t care. Something’s gotta kill us one day, don’t it?”

Bucky looked at him flatly. “Not funny, Steve.”

Steve leaned over and held out his hand, waited for Bucky to fork over the cigarette. He took a drag, aware of Bucky’s eyes on him. “The smell reminds me of better times,” he said.

“And worse times.”

“And worse times,” Steve acknowledged, years of mud and canned spam and men crying hanging between them.

Bucky sighed and took the bagels out of the toaster.

“It reminds me of your dad,” Steve said quietly.

Bucky abandoned the bagels and put his forehead on Steve’s shoulder.

“One time I got in a fight when I was about twelve,” Steve said. “My mom wasn’t home, and I knew your mom would give me an earful, so I went to find him.”

“At work,” Bucky said slowly, as though pulling the words out. “At the shop, right? And he used mechanic tape for your face and then my mama really did give you both an earful.”

Steve was so fucking glad, that he was here now with the only person in the world who truly knew him, that he and Bucky were together, that Bucky somehow, miraculously remembered. He stubbed out the cigarette on a plate and closed his eyes against the swamp of emotion welling up inside him.

It was the forty second day. They were alive.

Sam took them out to lunch. They tried banh mi and pho and all sorts of other things that Steve couldn’t pronounce, and afterwards, Sam took them to an animal shelter.

Steve figured there was something going on, but all Sam did was watch them carefully as they toured around, pausing occasionally to peer into a crate.

“People do a lot of good work here, volunteering and housing the animals,” Sam murmured. “You ever have a pet, Barnes?”

Bucky snorted. “On my paycheck? That’s funny.”

“Not even a stray cat or two?”

Bucky’s eyes flicked over to Steve and then away again.

“Bucky’s sisters fed some cats for a time,” Steve said, filling the silence. “I think they hoped their mother would soften her heart and let them keep one, but it was no good. That woman had a spine of steel.”

“And a heart of stone,” Bucky said, but not like he meant it.

Sam put his hand out for a dark gray cat to sniff, poking her nose through the bars of her enclosure. “What about now? Might be nice to have something soft and furry around the house.”

“Oh, are you shopping, Sam?” Bucky asked.

Sam looked over his shoulder at the two of them. “Maybe I’m browsing. I dunno if I’ve got the time right now to care for one properly.”

“Who does, who does,” Bucky said in commiseration.

“Um, you two do,” Sam replied, apparently done beating around the bush. “What do you think?”

Bucky looked at Steve. Steve said cautiously, “I mean…it’d need to be fed.”

“And walked, or watered, or cleaned up after,” Bucky agreed.

“And loved,” Sam put in, confusion pressing his brows together. “And it’ll love you too.”

Steve made a face at Bucky. “I guess it’s up to you, Buck.”

“You’re kind, Sam,” Bucky said generously, “But I don’t think we’re kittens and sunshine kinda guys.”

“Are you sure?”

“Hell,” Bucky said. “Don’t question me, Sam, I just got my sense of self repurposed and returned. If I know what kinda guy I am, that’s a good day in my books.”

“You’re just shitting me, aren’t you,” Sam accused. “Both of you are.”

Steve held his hands up. “I barely said anything!”

“Oh, can it,” Sam said, abandoning the gray cat. “I don’t know why I bother hanging out with either of you.”

Steve bought him ice cream, and after half a cone, Sam was ready to forgive and forget.

“If Natasha asks,” he said upon their parting, “You guys weren’t ready for the responsibility.”

“Sure weren’t,” Steve said, hand on his heart. “Thanks for everything, Sam.”

“What else,” Bucky asked a few days later at the shooting range, “Are people expecting me and Steve to be doing?”

Steve barely looked up from his perch on the side with his sketchbook – the question wasn’t aimed at him, and beside, the harsh overhead light was casting strange shadows that gave him trouble and needed further attention.

Beside Bucky, Clint set down the handgun he’d been relaoding. “Hmm,” he said, listing off on his fingers. “We got furniture shopping, pet shopping, and grocery shopping, what am I missing?”

“Steve and I do grocery shop,” Bucky said sullenly. “That one doesn’t count.”

“Fine,” Clint said. “Well, I can’t speak for Natasha but –”

“You tell me you don’t know what she’s thinking?”

Clint made a wounded sound. “She and Sam have little talks without inviting me!”

“You’re a spy, aren’t you?”

“Touche,” Clint said. “Well, my intel reports that the rest of the list contains, to paraphrase, involved in charity work, petting dogs in the park, enjoying a selection of shampoos, picking up knitting, and fucking loudly. Or was it tenderly? I can’t remember.”

Steve did look up now. “I beg your goddamn pardon?”

“Shut up, Steve,” Bucky said. “Okay. Have you ever seen me chasing dogs in the park?”

“This isn’t my list,” Clint said, but his words fell on deaf ears, which was saying something, where Clint was concerned.

“I enjoy shampoo as much as any fella, which is to say not at all,” Bucky continued on like a freight train. “I enjoy clean hair, thank you very much. I don’t knit, I have never knit, and I don’t even want to comprehend a world where I go down that dark path. Steve can handle the knitting.”

“The charity work actually does seem worthwhile,” Steve tacked on. “I should look into that.”

“Yes, you do that,” Bucky said, with the tone that suggested Steve could go tire himself out and when he’d landed on the best course of action, only then would Bucky bother getting himself invested.

“Really?” Clint said, picking up the gun again. “We’re not going to talk about the last one? You guys aren’t passionately rekindling your romance in a world where gay men can get married?”

“I read about that,” Steve said. “Shame on you all for waiting around so long. It was only a few years ago it became legal, Buck.”

“Tsk,” Bucky said, and fired at the bullseye, tearing up the target right in the center where it was dyed black.

Clint’s mouth dropped open a little bit. “Are you even gonna deny the accusation? Or can I take this to mean that the two of you are –”

“No romance to rekindle,” Steve said. “Unless you count that time Bucky got knocked on the head by a baseball and stared into my eyes like he was seeing stars.”

“I was seeing stars, and I notice you neglect to mention it was you who threw it –”

“Hmm,” Clint said. He held up his gun, taking aim. “Okay.”

And he left them alone about it. It was one of the nicest things about Clint Barton.

The one thing Clint did do, and if this was on the List, then Steve supposed Natasha and Sam could finally have a win, was take Steve and Bucky to a ballgame. The stadium was different, and the seats were different, and the teams were different, but it smelled mostly the same, and the concentration in Bucky’s eyes was the same, and Steve forgot himself in his hotdog and his shouting, and felt all of fifteen again.

“Man, this team sucks,” Clint said appreciatively somewhere in the fifth inning.

“It’s this team or the Giants, right?”

“No, they’re San Francisco now. It’s this team or the Yankees.”

“Say no more,” Bucky said.

The Mets lost, which half the stadium seemed depressed about but not surprised by, which felt familiar, and when Steve went to get another hotdog he found out that they were charging eight dollars for it and nearly blew a blood vessel – he consoled himself by really getting the bang for his buck with the condiments – and Bucky strolled home with his hands in his pockets and acknowledged that yes, it’d been a fun time and he’d liked it okay, as though he hadn’t been screaming in outrage at the umpires not an hour before.

“You wanna go again sometime?” Clint asked, grinning.

“If you’d like to,” Bucky said charitably. “It was alright.”

Steve grinned and scuffed his shoe on the pavement. The next day, Clint sent them a Mets ballcap that Bucky denied wanting and promptly didn’t take off until he was forced to get in the shower that night.

“There’s a Pride event not too far away next week,” Natasha said on the sixtieth day, or maybe it was the sixty-first? Steve had to pause and count for a moment. “Anyone want to go?”

“What day of the week?” Sam asked.

Steve handed Bucky a well-earned corner piece of the 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle that stretched across the coffee table that they’d hauled in two days ago. Natasha had actually applauded them for the coffee table, which Steve chose to interpret as due respect for their scavenger skills. She didn’t know it came out of a dumpster five blocks over, and Steve wasn’t offering up the information.

“Saturday. Ooh, there’s going to be a big bubble fight.”

“Ooh,” Clint said. “I’ll go.”

“What the fuck is a bubble fight?” Bucky demanded, pressing the corner into place, which immediately cleared up another four pieces that had been dancing around each other, waiting for the right partners.

“I don’t know,” Clint said, sprawled on the couch. “But it sounds awesome, doesn’t it?”

Natasha sniffed. “They’re going to have bubble bottles and bubble machines and everyone gets to blast everyone in the face with bubbles.”

“See? Awesome.”

“Man, in the face?” Sam said. “That’s cruel. I guess I ate one too many soapy mouthfuls as a kid, because I do not want to be participating.”

“Did they say they were only blasting participating individuals, Sam?” Steve asked, grinning into his elbow. He handed Bucky another edge piece.

Natasha smirked. “So, coming or not, Sam?”

“Yeah, I guess, if you promise to defend me from any and all bubble attacks. Aw, man,” he complained, louder, as he approached the coffee table, “I don’t know why I bother bringing these things around; you two complete them way too fast.”

Steve and Bucky looked up at him together.

“It’s supposed to take hours,” Sam encouraged. “You spread it out and render the table useless for the whole day, sometimes two days. You walk past and attempt one piece, and then get sucked in, and then let it simmer again for some time. You don’t just…plunge through it like you’re fighting a war against time.”

“We’re fighting a war and we’re winning,” Steve said, and triumphantly pressed another piece into its rightful place.

“It’s a jigsaw puzzle,” Sam said, gesturing wildly.

Bucky rolled his left shoulder. “And we’re about to beat our record with this one, Sam, so be quiet so we can concentrate.”

“I don’t think it’s fair they have enhanced brains and stuff,” Clint said. “I don’t want to be friends with them anymore.”

“Oh, grow up,” Bucky said, which made the apartment explode with indignation and shouted insults and Steve realized he’d been staring at a piece upside down and when he righted it, well, its place in the pattern was obvious. He only got the one piece done before Sam hit him in the head with a pillow and the room dissolved into chaos.

Steve dreamed of explosions and shrapnel and ice water closing over his head and woke up disoriented and panicked, and found himself in the closet, with Bucky crouched at the door, trying to make himself smaller.

“What the hell,” Steve tried to say, only the words wouldn’t come out and Bucky wouldn’t come closer, and Steve couldn’t breathe.

“It’s okay,” Bucky said miserably. “You’re okay, Steve, can you hear me?”

It was the sixty-third day. It was the sixty-fourth day? Steve couldn’t remember. Why couldn’t he remember? If he didn’t know how long it’d been, how could he predict how long they had left? And if he couldn’t predict that, it would hurt so much more when it was all ripped out from under his feet. He didn’t know if he could recover from a wound like that, he didn’t know if he was strong enough after everything.

Slowly his heartbeat slowed and he realized his hands were shaking, so he stopped himself. At this point, Bucky must have seen something because he crawled into the closet to join Steve, their knees knocking in the tight space.

“Sucks, huh,” Bucky whispered. “Our enhanced brains. Think Clint would trade?”

Steve closed his eyes against the onslaught of perfectly rendered visions besieging him. Bucky in handcuffs, shoved into a van and taken away. Steve sinking into the sea again, ice closing over his head, water punching into his lungs.

“Wanna get some more sleep?” Bucky asked. “If not, you need to dress warmer. You’re shaking still.”

“I’m fine,” Steve croaked. When he opened his eyes, Bucky’s stare was frank and sarcastic.

“Yeah, okay,” Bucky said. “And I’m Clark Gable, sweetheart.”

Steve glared at him. Bucky’s smile was like the sunrise.

“Come on,” he said. “Back to bed or more clothing.” And he held out his hand.

Steve gritted his teeth together and took it. A phantom ache curled around his spine as he stood, his bones creaking. But his bones were just bones now, and not one of them was crooked or wrong. He followed Bucky back towards the bed, resting on that frame they’d painstakingly built themselves, cussing the whole way in French.

He lay down and stared up at the ceiling, wondering how on earth he was supposed to get through the night, and why were things so hard when they shouldn’t have been?

Bucky’s hand curled around his wrist, warm and pulsing. His breathing accompanied the thumping of Steve’s heart all night.

As soon as sunlight filtered through the drapes and lit the room enough that it could be called morning, Steve got up. He left Bucky snoring quietly, shutting the door behind him almost all the way. He paused in the kitchen and looked at the paper calendar hanging on one of the cabinets.

Lifting up the current month, he flipped backwards. There, the day he and Bucky had run out into the rain, the day the counter had started over. There, the day Bucky had started talking again. There, the day Bucky had first turned himself in.

Numbers and dates mixed around in his head pointlessly. Sighing, Steve dropped the calendar and went rooting around for their latest pack of cigarettes.

He was out back when he first heard Bucky’s feet moving around the place. Below, the streets had awakened, first spotted with pedestrians and cars, and now heavily speckled. From up here, Steve could see two separate dogwalkers, a mailman, a teenager with a backpack, and a mother with a doublewide stroller.

From up here, with the familiar taste of smoke on his tongue and the wind in his hair, Steve could almost pretend everything was normal and good.

Bucky left him alone for much of the day, pausing to hand Steve a sandwich in the late morning, which Steve ate because he knew he had to, not because it tasted good. He could hear on occasion, the sound of Bucky moving around, normal living sounds, accompanied by the bustle of hundreds of people living all around them.

It got colder throughout the day, which was the best way to tell time was passing. Steve watched kids skip home from school, men and women in suits and nice jackets march up the street and unlock their doors. Windows started to light up in anticipation of the evening.

“Hey,” Bucky said, appearing in the doorway.

Steve exhaled a puff of smoke and managed the energy to lift his head enough to look at him. He wondered what he looked like right now, eyes red, mouth crooked with melancholy, smoking on the balcony like someone’s lowlife father who only showed up for mealtimes and bed.

He wondered if Bucky could feel the ghost of George Barnes beside them. He wondered if he was losing his mind.

Bucky didn’t say anymore, just came closer and looked pained, like he wanted to help but he didn’t know how. Well, that went for both of them then.

With a soft thump, Bucky’s head landed on Steve’s shoulder. Steve let it stay, not particularly unhappy with the added warmth. The sound of Bucky’s breathing slowed his own heartbeats. He knew if their roles were reversed – and their roles reversed back and forth all the damn time like two kids on a seesaw – he’d recognize the feelings of helplessness and heartsick that Bucky must be feeling.  

Bucky twisted and glanced up at him. Steve looked back, and tried to summon up a damp smile. Bucky’s left hand came up, shining in the last dregs of the sunset, and took the cigarette from Steve’s lips. He replaced it with his own mouth, soft and sweet.

Steve didn’t move. He felt somewhat like he was a mountain and everything around him was just happening whether he wished it would or it wouldn’t; mountains didn’t have a say in matters, so they didn’t form opinions. Bucky pressed against him gently, kissing, and after another beat, Steve experimented; he kissed back.

Bucky tasted good, so much better than the cigarette, and a lot more addicting too. His right hand slid up past Steve’s ear, cupping through Steve’s hair, and Steve let himself be moved, adjusted, the angle deepening. Warmth curled through his stomach, moving lower.

The sun dropped lower. Bucky’s tongue swept across Steve’s bottom lip. He stepped back, his eyes unreadable, and carefully returned the cigarette to Steve’s mouth. His silver finger brushed against where his tongue was a moment ago, and then smoke blurred the other sensations away.

Steve watched him disappear back through the door.

Clint’s birthday happened not long after that, and they celebrated by having a barbeque on the rooftop of his building, followed by a truly incredible ice cream buffet back inside. Steve hadn’t even known they manufactured that many types of bottles, let alone stuff to fill them.

“It’s the ideal birthday buffet,” Clint said happily. “Everyone brings one topping. It’s like stone soup!”

Steve picked up one bottle. Chocolate sauce, it read. The next said hot fudge. The third said chocolate chip syrup. There was a container that looked suspiciously like mayonnaise, but revealed itself to be labeled marshmallow fluff sauce.

“You gotta try this shit,” Natasha said, coming up beside him and shaking out a pile of broken up caramel-colored pieces on one side of Steve’s ice cream. “Heath bar toffee.”

Steve took a cautious bite. “Oh man,” he said.

“Yeah,” Natasha said. “Yeah, I know.”

She sprayed whip cream atop her bowl, and handed him the can. Steve garnished accordingly, and took his bowl back to the couch where Bucky was perched.

Bucky took the spoon and peered at the ice cream in Steve’s hands. “Hmm,” he said approvingly. “Didn’t bring me the cherry on top?”

“They didn’t have any,” Steve said thankfully. He’d been giving Bucky his maraschino cherries since before Clint was born, but tonight was free of the horrors. Just thinking about the gooey consistency and the artificial flavor was enough to make him wince. He leaned in close and stole the mouthful of ice cream on Bucky’s spoon.

Bucky shoved at him halfheartedly, which only made them settle closer on the couch, which suited Steve fine, because he had the ice cream and Bucky had the spoon, and partnerships like these were for the ages.

“You know we have enough bowls if you want your own,” Clint said from the reading chair, looking fascinated as he spooned in his own dessert. “It’s not the Great Depression anymore.”

“You can take a fella out of the Depression,” Bucky began, amused.

“But you can’t take the Depression out of him,” Steve finished, enjoying Bucky’s feet in his lap and his own tucked up beneath Bucky’s warmth. They were as tangled up as the pair of dog leashes hanging by Clint’s door, and he was so comfortable and stuffed full of ice cream that he was starting to entertain ideas of dozing off.

“Weirdos,” Clint said, but fondly.

Natasha came over and perched on the reading chair’s armrest. “So, are you guys coming tomorrow?”

“What’s tomorrow?” Bucky asked.

“The bubble fight, the Pride event?” Natasha said. “It’s going to be in the park, and they’ll have free food.”

Bucky wrinkled his nose. “Free food,” he mused. “Might be worth it.”

“Might not be,” Steve warned. “It’ll be noisy, and crowded, and…”

“Don’t tell me you’re homophobic,” Natasha said in a bored tone. Steve squinted at her, pretty sure she was baiting them, or at least tensely waiting on the answer.

Bucky laughed. “Oh, the whole of the 30s would’ve been a lot easier if Steve was a little more homophobic.”

Steve elbowed him. “You knew just as well as me that none of our neighbors deserved any of the hell they got, you idiot –”

“Helped you out enough, didn’t I?” Bucky said, flicking his eyes over at Steve. “Calm down, sister.”

Placated, Steve sat back. Bucky tossed a leg over Steve’s lap and yanked him in closer. Steve sighed the sigh of the ice-cream-contented, and closed his eyes blissfully.

“So, you don’t want to come why?” Natasha asked. “Don’t tell me you can’t do crowds or noise, I know you guys go to the place that gives out free bagels on Fridays.”

“Those are bagels,” Bucky said.

Steve exhaled. “Look, Nat, it’s just not our thing. Maybe we can come for a little bit, but…”

“I don’t care if you don’t come,” Natasha said. “I just thought…well…it seemed like an issue that could be sort of personal for you. Some progress you might be glad to see.”

“I’m glad to see it,” Steve said. “I prefer to see it from the balcony, or from the tv.”

“Is this another of those ideas you have about what kinda fellas we are?” Bucky asked bluntly. “Can’t you take a goddamned hint?”

“I’m sorry,” Natasha said, her voice growing dangerously brittle. “Perhaps you’d prefer me to drop the pretenses. Aren’t you two fucking already?”

Steve sat up. “What on earth gave you that impression.”

Clint looked back and forth between them, scooping up more ice cream.

Natasha pointed at them with her spoon. “Um…you sit like that? All the time? You don’t shut up about each other whenever you’re apart, sometimes when you’re together. You live together. You had the whole…went to war for each other thing.”

“I did not go to war for Steve,” Bucky said, holding up a hand. “Let’s be clear. I was drafted. I wouldn’t have gone to war for Babe Ruth. Okay, maybe for Babe Ruth,” he amended. “But no one else.”

“I didn’t go to war for him either,” Steve complained. “He just happened to be over there too. A bonus.”

“You get my point!” Natasha threw her hands in the air. “You’re ridiculously codependent. You’re probably in love, gonna get married, the whole nine yards.”

Bucky looked at Steve and the edge of his mouth twitched. Steve burst out laughing. “No,” he managed through his gasps, “I don’t think so, Natasha.”

“Gross,” Bucky agreed. “But I promise, Natasha, you’ll get the first invitation to the big day if pigs fly.”

Natasha sighed defeat. “Fine. Don’t come, just be grandpas who refuse to leave the house all day.”

“It’s Saturday tomorrow,” Bucky said. “Normal people call that a weekend, Natasha, it means relaxing and doing all the chores you didn’t get to during the week.”

“What exactly didn’t you get to during the week? All you did was go out and buy bagels.”

Bucky threw his spoon at her. “What did you do? Outer Space didn’t invade, last time I looked.”

“Hey,” Clint said. “Enough bickering, it’s my birthday.”

“And a very happy birthday to you,” Steve said, wrapping his arms around Bucky more securely and deciding it was most certainly naptime.

Later, when Clint and Natasha were saying goodbye to the last guests at the door, and Steve and Bucky were alone on the couch, Bucky nudged Steve out of his latest dozing, and reached over with his metal hand, warm from where it’d been tucked under Steve’s leg.

Bucky’s eyes were crinkled at the edges, dark in the low light. His hand fit alongside Steve’s cheek like they built it with exact measurements. He leaned in slowly, and their mouths fit together too.

“You taste like chocolate,” Steve whispered.

Bucky smiled and tilted his head for a second turn. Heat curled in Steve’s gut, and there wasn’t much closer they could be but he grabbed a handful of Bucky’s hair just in case, and that made Bucky’s head tilt just a little more and whoa, that was the stuff.

Steve gasped loudly. They broke apart again.

“Shush,” Bucky said, looking mildly irate. “You wanna call Natasha over here, give her a field day?”

“Sorry,” Steve said. “Sorry.”

Bucky winked. “That good, huh?”

Steve tried very hard not to blush. Steve failed.

“God,” Bucky said. “The things I could do to you…”

“What’s stoppin’ you?”

Bucky squeezed his eyes shut. Steve traced Bucky’s open mouth with his fingers. He thought about sticking them inside, but then decided he didn’t want to take that privilege away from his tongue. He grabbed Bucky’s jaw and kissed him again, thoroughly.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Bucky moaned quietly, pushing away. He brushed Steve’s hair back into place, fussed with the collar of his shirt. “We’re in public still, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“Sorry,” Steve said. “Won’t happen again.”

“You’re full of shit,” Bucky said fondly, his eyes bright and happy. “I’m leaving you right now for that tank again if they’ll have me.”

“I’m that bad, huh.”

Bucky’s hands moved around roughly, from the sides of Steve’s face, to his neck and shoulders, back up into his hair. “You’re somethin’,” he said. “You’re somethin’ alright.”

“Hey,” Clint said, coming back into the room. “You guys wanna watch a movie?”

“Sure,” Bucky said, and put his arms back around Steve’s waist. “Don’t even think about getting up to use the bathroom,” he muttered. “I’m very warm right now and I plan on stayin’ that way.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Buck,” Steve said, and meant every word.

A couple of weeks later, Bucky came into the living room with the mail, tossing a couple of envelopes down on the coffee table. “Hey,” he said. “How’d Kumar get our address?”

Steve looked up from his book. “She’s Kumar,” he said. “What the hell did she send us?”

“It’s an invitation,” Bucky said, sounding perplexed. “To the surprise party they’re throwing for…Takahashi.”

“He was the tall one,” Steve explained. “Dark hair, pretty quiet –”

“Japanese,” Bucky interrupted. “Yeah, I figured, Steve.”

Steve tilted his head. “We should go,” he said. “I know you didn’t know them as well as me, but they were good guys. And they cared about you too. They’d probably like to see how you’re doing.”

“You mean more than the last time I ran past them chasing giant ants?”

“More than that,” Steve agreed. “They’re good guys. We should try to go.”

Bucky sat beside him. “Okay,” he said. “It’s not too far from here.”

The day of the party found them in a small but clean apartment that McIntire and his family had kindly offered up, McIntire handling all the hosting with his tiny daughter perched in the crook of his arm. His smiling wife immediately offered Steve and Bucky drinks and snacks, and not long after, Kumar brought Takahashi in and he nearly fell over with how shocked he was at the surprise.

“I guess if anyone could pull of a real surprise party it’d be you,” he said ruefully to Kumar, who had her arms around his waist in excitement. “Cap, Barnes, I can’t believe you made it.”

“Eh,” Bucky said, holding up his can of beer, “We heard free drinks, and the rest was history.”

Takahashi actually smiled, which transformed his face into something handsome, and then he was dragged away by Kumar, Mrs. McIntire, and Marshall. A few of Takahashi’s friends came up and introduced themselves, explaining they hadn’t believed him about the whole working-with-Captain-America story, but now they had to. At one point, Bucky acquired the baby, which made him somewhat solemn and choked up, and Steve guessed a room full of the people who’d been making sure he didn’t break out and murder anyone trusting him with a baby now was a pretty good reason.

The baby only sat happily and quietly in Bucky’s capable arms until her father fetched her for a snack.

It was the…Steve didn’t know what day it was. He debated trying to count, his brain already sifting through the weeks, the months, the years. For what? What would be the point of it all anyways?

Steve didn’t need to keep track anymore. The days were all beginning to blur, filled with painting and bagels and friends and kisses. There was nothing to wait for, nothing to fear; it was simply time to live. He squeezed Bucky’s hand covertly, took the plates of cake offered to him, and began passing them out. It was Spring. They were going to be alright.