Chapter Text
Out in the sunshine for the first time in months, Bucky's increasingly healthful glow turns out to have been supported only by artificial lighting, and the golden tan lent by shadow and scruff gives way to a pallor that reminds Steve of his mother's clammy, sallow skin and gaunt features in the final months of her life.
Too long cooped up hasn't done Bucky any favors. Bucky looks around in sweeping arcs as though seeing Manhattan for the first time, which could well be the case. It's so different from how it was in 1943 that even Steve has no idea where anything is, and their arrival had been in the half-dark in an armored truck.
But Natasha drives them out of town in a glossy black Mercedes with tinted windows which looks like it's never been driven in, pilfered from the parking level in the basement. Steve sits in the back because it feels wrong to drive Bucky around like a child, and immediately begins to feel nauseous from the smoothness of the ride.
Natasha attempts a few times to start a conversation, but when neither Steve nor Bucky tow the line, she gives up, and the thrum of an expensive engine is the only soundtrack to the journey.
She drives them out, all the way past White Plains and Bedford Hills, and stops outside of a small, half empty mall with potholes the size of small children filling its ugly parking lot.
“Why did we come so far out?” Bucky asks, climbing gracefully from the car as Steve stumbles and trips in his haste to escape the back seat on his jellied legs. Cars with six-figure suspension systems are not his preferred mode of transport.
“A bit of anonymity is always nice when you've just been exposed in international news coverage,” Natasha shrugs. Her hair still looks faintly ginger when lit by the sun from behind.
Steve just groans, car sick.
“And you're sure I can try things on?” Bucky stares up at the mall's shabby exterior, watching the few people milling around the entrance with trepidation.
A small part of Steve that doesn't want to throw up suddenly swells in jealous resentment: This had been a part of Bucky that was completely and entirely his, he, Steve had been the one to get these things for Bucky in the past, and he had been Bucky's only audience whilst wearing them. Bucky had never bought a lipstick, never paid for nail polish, never even got to choose the colour beyond what was easiest to steal from an aunt or what got thrown out by the more wasteful folks on the rich side of town. And right now, when there's so little of Bucky to go around Steve doesn't feel much like sharing it, not with Natasha and certainly not with a mall full of strangers. For a moment he almost entertains the idea that others will reject Bucky visibly enough to make going out in public infeasible, so that Steve can be there to protect and shelter and own that side of Bucky again.
He shakes the thought off guiltily. Just because a part of Bucky was in his care didn't mean he had any claim of ownership, then or now. The knowledge is not comforting. He can practically feel Dr Grant breathing down his neck.
“It'll be fine,” Natasha confirms. Steve shoots her a worried look, and she twitches back the corner of her jacket to reveal a holstered gun. It's certainly one way to make sure no one makes unnecessary comments.
Along the outside of the mall is a unisex hair salon sandwiched between a key cutter and a store selling cheap electronics. Bucky stops and stares at it until it becomes clear that Steve and Natasha aren't going to say anything, and then goes nervously to the door.
“Hey!” Says a flamboyant man in a black shirt and pants who springs out of nowhere to greet them as it opens. Bucky springs back, bumping into Steve's chest. The man's hair is weird and modern, all shaved and long and layered, and his wrists glitter with bracelets and his hands are perfectly manicured, drawing Bucky's eyes instantly. “Do you have an appointment?”
Bucky stares at him, lost for words. “Uh...”
“No,” Steve feels compelled to end the uncomfortable pause. “But if you have one free, my friend would like to get a cut.”
“Okay, well I have no appointments for the next hour and a half, so I could cut your hair now unless you'd prefer someone else do it,” The man tells them, a redundant choice since none of them have any concept of the relative skill of the man and his colleagues.
Bucky looks to Steve and Natasha, and then back at the man who is now holding a hairdressing gown. “O...Kay.”
“Okay!” The man's enthusiasm makes Bucky jump again. “Let's sit you down over here and we can get started.”
Bucky is still staring at the hairdresser wide eyed, and sits down without resistance. Steve has a brief moment of panic at idea of anyone holding a pair of scissors near Bucky's face, but the time to object has clearly passed.
“How do you want it to look?” The man asks, putting voice to Steve's other fear.
“The usual,” Bucky replies, almost casually, settling into the chair as though in the same barbershop they used to go into as often as they could afford it when they'd lived together before the war.
“You're sure?” Steve asks, surprised.
Bucky gives him a look that says, 'I've been sure since 1934, what's your problem now?' so clearly that Natasha laughs, “Leave it, Rogers.”
“Well, no offence, darling, but I'm not your usual hair stylist, so you're going to have to tell me what you usually get done to your hair,” The self-confessed stylist tuts, running his hands through Bucky's long, messy hair, trying to find layering where there is none.
Bucky blinks several times at being called darling, and then recites, “Short back, medium sides, long on top,” words practised bimonthly from the day Bucky was old enough to refuse Mrs Barnes' enhanced bowl cuts. Then Bucky looks suspiciously up at the flopping fringe of the stylist and hastily amends, “But not so long as that.”
Steve watches awkwardly from a few feet away while Natasha kicks back in an armchair. “Relax, Steve. Barnes knows what Barnes wants.” Then, as though to console herself. “It'll grow back in a few months anyway, right?”
Dark hair falls to the ground in loose curls, dozens of them, before the clippers come out and begin to buzz away short tufts from the back and sides of Bucky's head. Bucky twitches in the chair, eyes fixed on the razor, but doesn't move.
It only takes thirty minutes (and a heart-stopping $27 for Steve before he remembers inflation), before Bucky emerges from the salon looking remarkably well turned out.
“It looks great, Bucky,” Natasha drawls slightly, forcing out a compliment against her nature.
Bucky gives her half of a small, tight smile.
“How do you feel?” Steve asks, having to restrain himself from reaching out to touch the short hair at the back of Bucky's neck. His heart is jumping a little, squeezing in his chest as the sight of Bucky looking so much like... Bucky.
“...Gunked up,” Bucky tells him, dragging fingers through the gel filled spikes that will no doubt be washed and combed back later, maybe slicked with some Brylcreem if they remember to buy it in.
“Yeah, that's pretty unavoidable these days,” Steve says, although he personally has given in to modern styling gel, and is wearing some right now of his own volition.
Inside the mall is a huge department store with half a floor dedicated to cosmetics, all sold from little counters like some bizarre, ultra clean indoor market.
Steve and Bucky take it in with bulging eyes, overwhelmed by the opulence hidden in such a deceptively shabby looking building. Steve's been in a twenty-first century mall before, but somehow it's not all the technology that throws him into culture shock each time, it's the excessive wealth.
Bucky drifts between the counters for a while, unable to approach any, until Natasha gets bored and takes matters into her own hands. She approaches a woman behind a display containing more different kinds of make-up than Steve knew existed, and more shades of red, pink, and brown than the biggest art supply store could ever hope to match.
“Hi, can I help you?” The woman at the counter asks. Her badge proclaims her to be called Trisha with a great deal more enthusiasm than she actually shows.
“Not me, you can help this one,” Natasha gestures at Bucky, who twitches with anxiety and looks ready to bolt.
The woman's eyes widen in surprise and for a period just short of outright rudeness, she stares at Bucky, but whatever she might think, she's clearly not willing to turn anyone away when they're accompanied by someone with Natasha's forceful smile and a guy who looks remarkably like Captain America.
She talks up an anxious drone of presumably relevant conversation as Bucky pours over the endless colors, ignoring her as best as possible but still getting twitchier by the second.
Then, in a misguided attempt to appear more welcoming than she feels, she tries to get Bucky to sit on a stool, a reddish brown gripped lightly between her fingertips. But Bucky immediately points to a particular shade on the counter beside the mirror. “Ya know, I... I don't really need all this. I want that one...” Bucky's voice trails into silence, unused to being listened to.
Trisha looks surprised again, and smiles tightly in disagreement. “The cherry's very bright and, I would say, childish. A darker color would look more mature on you, maybe a brown.”
Bucky sits through her idle chatter, head nodding at appropriate moments, but ducks out of the way as she tries again, this time with a brownish pink that Steve can't differentiate from Bucky's lips without make-up. Anger buzzes under his skin as she rebuffs Bucky's attempts to ask for the red a second time. “Thanks, we'll take it.”
“You'll take the brown?” Trisha assumes hopefully.
Steve can't help but glare at her even as he takes in Bucky's face, frustrated at Trisha and confused by the interruption. “The immature cherry, please.”
“But--”
“Thanks, here's your money,” Natasha interjects before Trisha can say anything else, holding out a bill that Steve is entirely certain she's just lifted from his person.
“Eighteen dollars?” Bucky can't help but exclaim loudly as the embarrassed make-up artist hands Natasha Steve's change. The increasingly tense atmosphere seems to have passed Bucky by, or perhaps has already been forgotten. “Steve, you remember when it was twenty five cents?”
“Do you?” Steve asks as they walk away, ambling in the vague direction of another counter, trying to steer Bucky clear of their small audience of gaping shoppers.
“Oh...” Bucky blushes, ashamed to admit, “No. But... I'm sure it was, once. I mean... I looked it up, on the internet, I tried to find the kind I liked and I couldn't remember what it was but I saw a load of pictures and a lot of them were twenty five cents, some even less...” Bucky trails off again into a barely-spoken anecdote about an internet search and Steve feels compelled to at least look like he's listening until Bucky's done talking, even if he can't hear it.
“Well, you're not wrong there, Buck, they did used to be cheaper. You used to have the Cutex brand, but they don't make those anymore. Still, I reckon a place as big as this can out-do the convenience store I used to work in.” Steve turns round to flash a grin, but Bucky is gone, standing at another display, the half-memories of affordable goods seemingly forgotten.
They don't try and consult a stylist again, but Bucky doesn't need one. Assured that money is no object, Bucky is happy to buy some of nearly everything to try it all out on ever more sparse patches of bare skin.
By the time the after-work rush is beginning to fill the mall, they’ve bought eyeliner in three colors and another half dozen lipsticks, some in shades so similar that Steve would not have been able to distinguish them before the serum, eye shadows, foundations, blush and nail polish in an endless array of colors and shades.
Only once does Bucky seem to come back to the realization that the twenty first century is abominably expensive – wants to know if Steve is sure they can definitely afford two nail polishes for $20. “Is there going to be enough left for rent?”
“We don't pay rent,” Steve repeats. “And even if we did, your back pay could probably buy this mall and everything in it.”
They wander around for a little longer, but it's hitting 6pm and people are streaming in through the doors thick and fast.
“What about clothes?” Steve asks. “Do you want any… Skirts or anything?”
Bucky considers it, gaze sweeping over the busying mall uncomfortably. “I… No, no…”
“Okay,” Steve says. People are watching them now, staring at Bucky’s face heavily made up with a patchwork of different make-up on every available inch of skin with obvious interest, and occasionally, disapproval. “We can get them some other time, if you change your mind. Somewhere with less people.”
Bucky’s chest heaves in panic, eyes bulging slightly, lips moving in a half-whispered monologue that's entirely drowned out by the babble of those around them.
“You're okay, Barnes,” Natasha tries to be reassuring, but there's a degree of urgency in her voice that isn't exactly relaxing. “They’re just looking at you because you’re so pretty.”
Bucky looks unconvinced and hurries them towards the exit, twitching and ducking into stores to avoid large groups of people.
By the time they reach the car, Bucky seems to be having some kind of meltdown, trembling and hyperventilating, but has accrued enough make-up to conceal almost anything.
“I’m – I'm - it's allowed, why are they watching me?” Bucky asks as they bundle the shopping into the trunk as quickly as they can, trying to slide in the odd shaped boxes next to each other.
“It's okay, Buck.” He isn't sure why Bucky needed new “men's” shoes, or a special machine to apply gel nail polish, or why, after spending twenty minutes lurking anxiously outside of Victoria's Secret, Bucky decided to soothe the nerves by having Steve buy something called a jewellery tree, even though between them they have a locket from Steve's mother, a watch that had belonged to Bucky's father and had been sent to Steve by someone who had noticed the engraving at a thrift store, and two sets of spare dog tags. He tries not to be too affected by the near terror on Bucky’s face. “You don’t need their permission, remember?”
Bucky nods almost violently, looking no less disturbed for the reminder, and opens the car door with so much force that the vehicle lurches to the right, groaning under the stress and its excess contents.
Bucky remains jittery and alert throughout most of the return journey, and Steve can see it putting Natasha's teeth on edge.
They hit traffic coming the other way out of Manhattan and have to slow down because of an accident on Broadway Bridge, and Steve tries to distract Bucky by dragging what makeup he can out of the tightly packed trunk and suggesting that now might be the time to try some of it out.
Bucky does, scrubbing off the layers upon layers of foundation and eye shadow with a wipe that goes the color of pale skin with bruises of browns and blues across it, and then penciling in the highly arched eyebrows, going over eye lids with kohl and eventually settling on a lipstick that would've pleased Trisha far more than the cherry red.
In spite of the bizarrely styled hair, Steve's stomach does a flip of recognition as they step out of the car in the basement of the Tower.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” Someone says behind them in Stark's usual melodramatic tone, as Natasha lifts the hood on the trunk. “Imagine my surprise when the facial recognition software picked up a discrepancy with the ankle monitor location."
Tony swaggers up to them looking exasperated.
“You're breaking the law, you, Cap, are breaking American law. That's theft, right there. And breaking a confinement order, and, arguably, I would say, kidnap.” He crosses his arms tightly and glares, trying to lean around Steve to get a glance of Bucky.
Natasha shoves a large bag onto his chest. “Then you'd better get us inside quick before you become an accessory, since we all know you are the perfect law abiding citizen.”
Bucky pulls Steve by the back of his shirt towards the trunk, as though their day's haul might be about to be sequestered by police as Tony begins to say that he doesn't like being handed things.
“That wasn't allowed,” Bucky murmurs with a note of fear.
“It's fine.” But Steve can't bear to see such alien uncertainty in such a familiar face, and he looks away, taking bags and handing them to Bucky. His brain stops and starts at the idea of a frightened Bucky in a world of absolute rules and punishment. “Stark doesn't care, he's just making a fuss because he likes to be the center of attention. I used to break the law all the time,” Steve says, as though Bucky might find this impressive.
Bucky fumbles with the bags, the crinkling plastic mostly drowning out the “now that is unfair,” in the background, and makes no comments on Steve's past life of crime.
Steve takes Bucky into the elevator with as much as they can carry, leaving Natasha to intimidate Tony into submission.
“Let's get ready for bed,” He says, although it's barely 9:30. He feels exhausted, right down to his bones.
“Okay,” Bucky says, and then stops in the bedroom door way off the main living room. “It's not very clean in here.”
“We can sort that in the morning,” Steve promises, although he's sure that even if Bucky agrees now, he probably won't be allowed in when tomorrow morning comes around.
When he comes out of his own room, Natasha has somehow let herself in, having managed to get all of the rest of their shopping into the elevator on her own.
Steve blushes at his own laziness, and even more when he realises that Natasha is dressed, perhaps literally, to kill, whilst he is in pyjamas with alternating cats and dogs on them. “Thank you,” He says, throat a little tight.
“That's alright,” Natasha replies, trying to look as though she removes electronic bracelets from super-soldiers and then drives them two hours out of town to a back-end mall for a shopping spree on a regular basis. “That's what friends are for.”
She looks away from him, and Steve follows her gaze to where Bucky is standing in plain pyjamas, still made up in that way that instantly makes the hair stand up on the back of Steve's neck.
Somehow, Bucky has managed to tame the spiked hair in the last ten minutes, wet it and slicked it back with a comb.
Steve stares, trying to block out the modern apartment and the metal fingers glinting at Bucky's side, until he can almost see it, Bucky standing there just inside their old-new apartment, nineteen and made up so modestly that strangers who didn't want to know could write it off as natural good looks. Maybe off for the night without Steve, to dance with some girl, or to go to one of the shadier bars around their neighbourhood, to be the girl who came home at three in the morning smelling of some guy's cigarette smoke, some guy's perfume, or maybe just dressing up for dressing up's sake.
The old charm is there, too, and pajamas or no, Bucky slips across the hallway to Natasha and plants a kiss on her cheek that Steve certainly would not have dared attempt. There's no stinging slap though, only Natasha's subversive grin, and a faint but perfectly formed imprint of Bucky's lips on her skin.
“Thanks,” Is all Bucky says, before the door to the dark, stale bedroom shuts with a clunk, leaving Steve feeling strangely hollow, as though Bucky took his insides into the room and left Steve locked outside.
It must show on his face, because Natasha's grin falters into something more serious. “No need to look so glum, Rogers. Just... Things take time, you know? It isn't easy, taking yourself back from them.”
“Yeah,” He says, and he knows, but it doesn't seem to make it any easier. “Thanks, Natasha,” He repeats, before realizing he's quoting what Bucky has just said, and then, “Do you want a drink?”
“No,” She raises a skeptical eyebrow at him. “You're already wearing your kitten jammies, I'd hate to keep you up any longer.”
“Okay.”
“G'night, Steve.” Natasha smiles at him again, piling their shopping up against one wall, and steps back out of the door towards the elevator.
“Night,” he says weakly, staring at the mark of Bucky's kiss as she disappears. Its absence from his own is almost painful.
He goes to bed, but can't regain the feeling of progress he'd had on the journey back. Instead, he fixates on why he'd bought Bucky lipstick that very first time, on what he'd wanted, needed. Some tangible proof that he still had some kind of rock, that somebody was still there to love him, that he wasn't on his own for the first time in his life. He'd been so desperate to get that back, ever since he'd woken up in this strange new world, and the need had only gotten stronger since he'd first glimpsed that face from the past all those months ago.
His tears are bitter and selfish, and he can't stop them, pinching at his own cheek until it's bruised before he finally falls asleep.