Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Bucky Barnes ran out of food, he did it in style. There was literally nothing in his pantry that wasn’t an ingredient (chicken stock or flour or sugar) or a condiment (capers, pimentos, mustard, vinegar) but nothing to make an actual meal with. Even the half empty boxes of pasta were gone, sacrificed to a careful array of timers as he added different sorts of pasta to the pot and dosed the whole thing with butter and grated cheese and called it food.

“Fuck,” he said. He was going to have to give up, put on pants and shoes and go to the fucking store.

The worst thing was, he was actually freaking hungry. Like, stomach crawling out of his throat to go hunt down the wild cup o’ soup, can’t wait for take-out hungry.

He couldn’t possibly go to the grocery like that, he’d end up with fifty boxes of Twinkies and a 20-pack of ramen. And an apple, if he was feeling particularly guilty about his terrible life choices, that he wouldn’t remember he had and would go bad in his fruit bowl.

Oh, wait. Apples.

Bucky bounced up onto his toes and shoved the bag of flour out of the way. He’d had some plans -- he always made plans, and he just never fucking followed through -- of making an apple tart. Which meant-- Aha! Yes! Score! A can of apple-pie filling.

He didn’t have the time or inclination to actually make a pie crust, although he did know how, and he had some butter in the fridge. Maybe next time. He dug around in his utensil drawer and opened the can of pie filling. He was still chasing the overly sugary and cinnamon-spiced fruit around the bottom of the can when the doorbell rang.

Bucky shuffled over to the door. No one ever came to visit and rang the bell; Steve had a key. The UPS driver often did a ring and run, and while Bucky couldn’t remember ordering anything off the internet recently, he had been known to do depression-based insomnia-fueled Amazon Prime therapy sometimes. That was always kinda like Christmas, because Bucky never remembered doing it until the banana slicer or whatever it was actually arrived.

So when he opened the door to a man wearing a three-piece suit, Bucky didn’t quite know what to do.

“Um…”

The man looked him up and down. And then up again. Bucky might… not have been wearing pants. Yeah. Bathrobe with the long sleeves that covered his scarred left arm, tee, boxers, and his stuffed animal shark slippers that his sister gave him as a joke and he wore specifically to piss her off.

Bucky leaned against his doorframe. “Yeah?”

“Look, okay, probably a bad time, but my normal pet-sitter is out of town, and I don’t have anyone else I can ask, and um, I don’t have time to make arrangements for kenneling, and I was wondering -- it really is an emergency -- if you could just feed my cat for a few days while I’m out of town?”

Bucky stared at the guy. He was gorgeous, in an upper crust sort of way, with a fancy-trimmed little goatee and a pair of pale orange sunglasses that should have clashed with the three-piece button up he was wearing and somehow didn’t.

“Do I know you?” That probably wasn’t the best question in the world, because no, of course Bucky didn’t know this guy. Bucky didn’t… do people for the most part.

“Um, probably not?” the guy said. “I’m Tony. Tony Stark. I live in your neighboring unit.” He pointed to the door next to Bucky’s. There were twelve units total in Bucky’s building, but Bucky usually kept his ball cap on and his head down whenever he left the building at all, so he mostly didn’t recognize his neighbors, except by their footwear. Speaking of… he let his gaze drift downward. He didn’t know those shoes, but he’d recognize those legs anywhere. Yep. Next door neighbor. The one with the great ass.

“Bucky Barnes,” he introduced himself, because that’s what you did when someone gave you their name. It was automatic. Instinct.

Shit. Now he’d actually spoken to a neighbor, which meant said neighbor would probably want to talk to him again, and while this particular neighbor didn’t seem too bad -- especially when Bucky could watch him walk away -- that would mean other neighbors might start talking to him and… well, maybe Steve could help him get a new place.

Bucky deliberately didn’t think about the fact that Steve would probably not help him get a new place if he said he wanted to avoid talking to his neighbors. Steve had been adamant that Bucky wasn’t going to leave the city and live somewhere as a hermit out in the middle of nowhere where Steve couldn’t at least ocme drag him out of the house once a week.

Not to mention the fact that wanting to move just so he didn’t have to talk to the neighbor -- the incredibly hot, exactly Bucky’s type neighbor -- was just pathetic.

Bucky wasn’t quite willing to admit, even to Steve, that he’d moved all the way from bad-coping mechanisms to pathetic.

“So, can you? I mean, feed the cat?”

“You’re gonna let a perfect stranger into your house,” Bucky commented idly. “What if I turn out to be a psycho?”

“First, you are a perfect stranger,” Tony said, and Bucky was left blinking trying to figure out what that meant. “Second, if you were a psycho, you probably wouldn’t have brought it up. Third, and maybe you missed this part, but I know where you live.”

“Well, yeah,” Bucky said, reasonably. “And there’s probably not enough stuff in your place to make it worth the effort of robbing you and then moving out.” Wasn’t he just thinking about moving out, though, because he was talking to the neighbor? Except there was something kinda nice about talking to this guy. Not quite like talking to Steve, but nice. Not nerve-wracking, weirdly enough.

Tony checked his watch, then grinned. “Just the fact that you’ve already thought of that should worry me.”

You shouldn’t be worried. Bucky didn’t say that. “Okay, so what do you want me to do?”

“Come on, come over,” Tony said. He reached out and grabbed Bucky’s wrist, which under most normal circumstances would have had Bucky yanking backward to retreat into his unit. He might even have pushed the desk in front of the front door for a while; forget food, retreat into his sanctum and shudder.

But Tony didn’t set off all those alarms in his head, and just the fact that it didn’t made Bucky’s breath come a little faster.

Bucky got the fastest tour of Tony’s place imaginable. “Here’s the kitchen, there’s the food, here’s feeding instructions. Don’t worry about the litter, I have an automated scooper, a total piece of shit, ha ha, that was a pun, but I did some upgrades to it and now it’s quite efficient and doesn’t scare her.”

“Does she need company?” Bucky asked. He didn’t know much about cats, but Steve’s boyfriend had a dog, and the dog got lonely enough during the day that Clint had eventually had to get a pet-walker to come by the apartment twice a day while the two of them were at work, and on date night, Clint took the dog to a doggy day-care.

“Well, U won’t mind. She’s a lap kitty, but if you don’t want to get covered in orange fur, she’ll be okay for a few days on her own.”

“You named your cat… You?”

“U, like the letter. I dunno, when she was a kitten, I just called her Hey You while I was waiting for something to occur to me. She’s got an official name on her vet records and stuff -- Butterfingers -- but I just still call her U most of the time, so… eh, what can I say?”

“Fair enough,” Bucky said.

“Anyway, here’s a copy of the key, here’s my cell phone number. Text me or something right away so I have your number. Not sure when I’m going to be back, business can be tricky sometimes, but it shouldn’t be more than a week, okay? Okay. Thank you very much.”

***

Tony had said the cat was orange, but what Bucky was expecting and what he got were two entirely different things.

Bucky was expecting an orange tabby, what his Ma had called marmalade, like Garfield was, theoretically.

What he got was a plush, red Abyssinian cat with huge green eyes and fur the color of the edge of sunset, dark orange, almost red, with black tips. The cat pounced on him almost immediately when he entered the house by himself, grabbing hold of his calf with fat, soft paws, claws absolutely nowhere in evidence and a throaty, rusty sort of meow.

“Hello,” Bucky said to the cat. “Hungry?”

The cat gave an answering meow, which seemed like a good enough answer, so Bucky went in the kitchen and attempted to figure out the food. There were a lot of instructions written down on a sheet of paper, which Bucky read slowly. U did not appreciate the delay at all, batting at the end of Bucky’s bathrobe and yowing piteously at the delay.

Finally, directions interpreted, Bucky gave the cat her half can of food, plus two treats and a shake of “food seasoning and vitamins” on top. “You eat better than I do,” Bucky commented, putting the bowl down. The cat was soon eating noisily, but when Bucky turned to leave the kitchen, she cried and chased after him, following him all the way back to the door.

“What? I fed you,” Bucky protested.

“Yow!”

Bucky took a picture of the cat and texted it to Tony. Your cat doesn’t want to eat.

U got between Bucky and the door, stropping against Bucky’s legs and nipping at his ankle whenever he tried to open the door.

New Text from Tony:

She’s a social eater. Go keep her company while she eats, if you have time. Otherwise, she’ll eat when she gets hungry.

“You want me to sit with you while you eat? Seriously?”

“Yowwwwww.”

Fine, whatever. Bucky trudged back into Tony’s neat little kitchen and pulled out a chair. Satisfied, the cat went back to her bowl and started eating, making little pleased, purring noises.

Your cat is weird.

New text from Tony:

Like owner, like pet, I imagine.

You’re a social eater? Bucky texted back.

New text from Tony:

I eat with my cat almost every night, so yeah, I guess? Pepper says it’s good for me, I wasn’t eating much before I got the cat. Therapy, I guess.

Bucky looked around Tony’s kitchen, then curiosity got the better of him and he found himself peeking in the cabinets and fridge. You could learn a lot about people by what they kept in their kitchens and medicine cabinets.

Unlike Bucky, Tony was stocked for some unknown zombie outbreak. Tony had tinned varieties of just about everything, including tinned chicken and tuna, peaches, pears, and jars of chunked pineapple, canned sliced potatoes, jars of pickles, a veritable mountain of jarred spagetti sauces, plastic containers of individual servings of pudding (chocolate and butterscotch), multiple packages of bread-maker breads, individual microwavable mug-cakes, four flats of bottled water.

Okay, I know I’m being nosy, but what the hell? Are you expecting a shortage in tinned tuna?

New text from Tony:

I have anxiety. Buying food seems to help. There’s some leftover pizza in the fridge, if you want it. It’ll probably go stale before I’m home.

Well, so there was. Bucky grinned, delighted.

You eat pineapple on pizza.

New text from Tony:

Yeah, I’m a heathen, I know.

You’re my new best friend and I love you. He probably shouldn’t send that, so Bucky contented himself with, Nah, I like it. My favorite.

Bucky helped himself to the rest of the pizza while U finished her dinner. Then washed her paws and face. Then jumped in Bucky’s lap and turned around a few times, eventually falling asleep with her head on Bucky’s knee.

He took another picture and texted it to Tony. Help. I’m trapped.

New text from Tony:

Ask her if there’s a squirrel at the window.

“Um U,” Bucky said, hesitant. “Tony wants to know if there’s a squirrel at the window.”

The cat was up and out of his lap the instant the word squirrel came out of his mouth. She raced across the kitchen and over to the double-window in the living room, making a little chut-chut sort of noise, tail lashing.

Huh. Neat trick.

New text from Tony:

You should see it when there’s actually a squirrel there.

Chapter Text

“Steve, I’m doomed,” Bucky said. U was in his lap while he sat on Tony’s sofa, purring madly and nudging at Bucky’s hand every time he stopped moving his fingers.

“Why are you doomed this time?” Steve was heartless.

“The new book is shit. It’s total and utter shit. My career is over, I am going to starve to death on the streets,” Bucky said.

“Does that mean I actually get to read the new book now?” Remarkably unconcerned at the prospect of Bucky starving to death. Some best friend Steve was.

“Mrrrp?” U stuck in her opinion, but Bucky wasn’t sure how to interpret it. The cat got up and stuck a cold nose in Bucky’s ear, which was kinda sweet and a little distracting. Bucky stroked down her back a little more firmly, which got her to settle back into his lap.

“No,” Bucky exclaimed. “Why would I let you read it, it’s complete shit.”

“Um, because I’m your agent, in addition to being your best friend, and you’re contractually obligated to let me read it once you finish a draft.” That had been Steve, putting it into the contract, otherwise Bucky might sit on most of his novels forever. It had been a distinct possibility before Not Without You was ever published, and then, despite becoming a New York Times bestseller practically overnight, Bucky had sat on the second book, End of the Line, for almost eight months before submitting it.

After that, Steve had forced the contractual obligation; Bucky had to let Steve read the draft as soon as it was finished.

Five books later, and Bucky still didn’t feel like a real writer.

He wondered sometimes if this was a problem other people had. Did insurance claims adjusters wonder if they were real claims adjusters? Did real estate agents get concerned as to whether or not they’d arrived?

“It’s shit,” Bucky insisted. “I don’t know why you want to read shit.”

“Because, Jaime Buchanan,” Steve said, using Bucky’s pen name as a particularly harsh epithet, “what you call shit, most people call a fifty-thousand dollar advance. One of these days, I’ll get you to write something that’s not shit and we can all retire to Tahiti.”

“I hear it’s a magical place,” Bucky said. U batted at his hand again and issued a meowing complaint.

“Did… did you get a cat, Buck?”

“No, this is Tony’s cat,” Bucky said, cheerfully. He’d much rather talk about Tony’s cat than his shitty excuse for a novel any day of the week. “Say hi to my horrible agent, U.” He held the cellphone out to the cat, who mewed as if on command and then rubbed her chin against the corner.

“Who’s Tony?” Steve sounded suspicious.

“Neighbor,” Bucky said, trying to sound casual. He hadn’t mentioned it, but cat-sitting for Tony had become one of the highlights of his life. This was the fourth time; Tony kept getting called out of town for business and, as he said, “you’re right here, so I don’t have to ask Pepper to come all the way from Midtown, so you know, as long as you don’t mind…”

Bucky didn’t mind.

After realizing that Bucky would eat leftovers, Tony left the fridge full of stuff in neatly labeled tupperware and Bucky stopped looking like a refugee from a crash diet camp. When Bucky had attempted to protest, Tony explained that while he always packed the leftovers, he rarely ate them, and besides, it made him feel better about imposing so often.

“You have a neighbor?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I think there are eleven units aside from mine in the building,” Bucky said. “I’m not entirely sure how many--”

“All hail Lord Pedantic,” Steve said, so dry he could qualify for desert-in-training. “You have a neighbor that you talk to. That you know his name. Bucky… you haven’t spoken to anyone new that you didn’t have to…”

“Can we not talk about that, Steve? Look, Tony’s nice. He has a nice cat. And he asks me to look after her once in a while. So, it’s okay. Let’s… just not make a big deal out of it? Right now it’s not a big deal, and I don’t want it to be a big deal.”

“Tell you what,” Steve said. “You let me come over tonight and give me your manuscript, and I won’t say another word about your neighbor or his cat, okay?”

“Deal,” Bucky said. He was not an idiot, no matter what Steve thought sometimes, and he heard the sharp inhalation that Steve made. Never, ever in their history of Steve being Bucky’s agent (they were best friends first, and Steve was really only Bucky’s agent out of sheer necessity) had Bucky ever turned over a first draft without several weeks worth of begging, pleading, and threatening.

“Maybe you should think about getting a cat,” was all that Steve had to say. And then he hung up. He was probably going to come over in a few hours, and Bucky might want to take a shower and try to clean up a little bit before that happened. Not that he was having as much trouble with the pretending to be human thing. The thought that Tony might knock at any moment and want to bring Bucky a casserole, or ask for cat-sitting, or just to say hi, had kept Bucky mostly clean, occasionally dressed, and less distracted than he’d been in years.

“Don’t be silly,” Bucky told the phone. And the cat in his lap. “There’s nobody quite like U, right U?”

U agreed with that assessment.    

***

“Hey,” Bucky said. He was shaking so hard that he had to stuff his hands deep into the pockets of his hoodie to keep himself steady.

“Hey, Bucky,” Tony said. His whole face lit up with a smile, his eyes did that wonderful crinkle thing that Bucky just loved. “What are you… it’s good to see you!”

First time for everything. Tony hadn’t been out of town in weeks and while he dropped in from time to time to bring Bucky a coffee cake, and one time a whole batch of homemade strawberry jam, Bucky hadn’t gotten to see him much. So, he’d taken some initiative and knocked on Tony’s door.

“I… uh…” Bucky started, feeling a blush creep up his neck. God, he used to be smooth, he used to be a flirt, and it had been forever since he’d talked to anyone but Steve, and sometimes Steve’s boyfriend, Clint. “I was…”

“Yrrrple!” U came trotting toward the front door and Bucky was already twisting into a squat to catch up the cat and cuddle her against his chest before he knew what he was doing.

“You wanna come in and have dinner? We could watch a movie and hang on the sofa or something? I think someone’s been missing U.”

“Was that a pun?” Bucky squinched up his eyes at Tony.

“Only if you think it was funny,” Tony said. “Come on, come in. I cooked more than I can eat, anyway.”

“You always do,” Bucky pointed out.

Tony had been making vegetable primavera, the garlic sauteed vegetables were just the right amount of tender, the noodles firm, the wine and basil sauce sharp and delicious. Tony scooped up two bowls and they sat on his couch and watched a movie. Bucky wasn’t even sure what the movie was; about halfway through, U climbed into Bucky’s lap and stretched out and Tony was absently petting her until she fell asleep. And then his hand just… lingered there. Resting on the cat, which was resting on Bucky’s thighs.

Which should not have been getting Bucky aroused.

Except for all the ways that it was.

Shit.

***

“OMGSTEVE!”

“Are you even serious, right now?” Steve asked. “It’s three in the morning.”

“U is gone, Steve, ohmigod, what am I supposed to do?”

“Bucky, what?”

Bucky stared at the hole in the window screen, barely big enough for the cat to slide out, but apparently she had, because she was absolutely nowhere in Tony’s apartment. He’d taken his laptop over while he sat with the cat in the kitchen. Tony’s left a note, some pot pie, and some homemade baklava, and Bucky had eaten dinner. Then, rather than leave, he’d sat on the sofa and worked on the new book -- a minor miracle in and of itself, because Bucky never worked on a new book before the old book had gone through at least three of its minimal five revisions before he’d let Steve actually send it to the publisher -- and talked to the cat in between paragraphs.

It was hot in the condo, but nice outside. Nicer outside than inside, really, so Bucky had opened the window a bit. Seemed silly to turn the air conditioning on, and even if it wasn’t, Bucky wasn’t sure if Tony would approve of that, so he didn’t.

And he’d fallen asleep.

Which apparently had been the signal for U to do something she’d never done before.

Exit the building.

Bucky had already been outside for over an hour, looking for the cat, calling her softly, because he didn’t want to wake up the neighbors.

“Just put food in her dish, she’ll come back when she gets hungry. It’s just a cat, Bucky, Jesus, I thought somebody died.”

Bucky nearly dropped the phone, pulling it away from his ear and staring at it. “U is not just a cat, Steve,” he said, firmly. Then punched the disconnect button because obviously Steve was not going to be of any help whatsoever.

Steve called back and Bucky did something he almost never did. He clicked Steve over to voicemail.

And looked for the cat.

He did not find the cat.

Steve called back four times and left voicemail.

Chapter Text

Part Three

On the plus side, Bucky had taken an awful fucking lot of pictures of the damn cat. Between just the adorable things that U did, and wanting to show them to Tony -- wanting to share them with Tony -- he had a plethora of photos to chose from for the reward posters.

He did, apparently, own a few pairs of pants, so he pulled one pair on and actually talked to the neighbors. Hung signs around the neighborhood. Combed the streets. Whined at Steve until Steve came over and drove him around the block a few times.

Swallowed down several huge gulps of fear and called the various pet shelters, animal control, the police department. He didn’t know if Tony had his cat chipped, but he’d heard things about chipping companies and how they went out of business and didn’t sell their databases to anyone, so there was no way to get in touch with the pet’s owner if a chipped pet was discovered.

“What the hell are you doing over here?” Steve demanded, pushing past the chocked-open door into Tony’s apartment.

“Don’t remember inviting you in,” Bucky protested, looking up from his spot on the sofa. It was still hot as hell in Tony’s condo, but especially now that Bucky had the windows and the door open, he didn’t want to turn on the AC. Bad enough that he’d probably have to pay to get the space treated for bugs.

“You’re just over here asking to be murdered, with the door open, the way you get all tangled up in your writing and aren’t paying attention to what’s going on around here,” Steve scolded him,

“Heard you coming,” Bucky retorted, ignoring the fact that his heart was racing. Because Steve was a hundred percent correct. The only reason he had heard Steve at all was because Bucky knew the door was unlocked and open, and that he was too on edge to get himself as lost in words as he usually did.

“Have you been productive?” Steve demanded, turning the whole thing around.

“Strangely, yes,” Bucky said, furrowing his eyebrows a little. “Bit stuck here, though -- take a look, see if you can give me some ideas to get myself out of this corner I’ve painted Grant into.”

Steve blinked, then put his hand on Bucky’s forehead. “Are you feelin’ okay-- did you get a haircut?”

“Steve, can we not make this a big deal, okay?” Bucky asked, plaintive.

“No, actually, I don’t think we can,” Steve said. He didn’t sound angry, so, maybe that was good. He didn’t sound a lot of the things he normally sounded whenever the subject of Bucky being a hermit came up. Bucky was used to wheedling, or pleading, or indifferent-seeming suggestions that Bucky find some help, this wasn’t good for him. He needed to get out more. Those things were all the furthest from Steve’s voice. Instead, Steve sounded almost… wondering. Surprised. Happy. “You’ve been running around like someone with the Check Engine light on and hoping if you ignore it hard enough, your car won’t break down. I think maybe we need to talk about the fact that you’re not doing that anymore, pal.”

“Look, Steve,” Bucky started, that familiar panic crawling up his throat again. He did not want to talk about his PTSD. He really did not. He was coping. Hell, he was a New York Times famous author, what the hell more did people want? He’d survived a train crash that had taken his entire family from him, pinned in the wreckage for eighteen hours, nearly buried among the dead bodies and pieces of dead bodies before he and three other survivors had been found.

Bucky lived. He lived and eventually he got about seventy-percent use back from his mangled left arm back. He’d done all the Physical Therapy, he’d gone to a shrink, but when all that was over, he’d retreated. He didn’t want people close to him. He didn’t want to take the risk of getting close to people again. Threw himself into writing because he could do that. But goddamnit, he did not want to talk about it.

Because he knew. He knew what he was doing wasn’t normal. It wasn’t coping. It certainly wasn’t living.

And being reminded of that didn’t make it any easier to change any of it.

It just made it worse.

So they didn’t talk about it, and now Steve was violating the shit out of their unspoken agreement that said we do not talk about this and we can stay friends.

“I’m not criticizing, pal,” Steve said. His voice was actually shaking. “I’m just looking at what you’ve done recently, and thinking maybe you need to acknowledge that you’ve taken some significant steps recently.”

“Okay,” Bucky said, holding up his hand, trying to ignore the way he could suddenly feel the scars and the muscles in his left arm, the way the scar tissue pulled when he stretched. He was good at ignoring that, except when he wasn’t, and those days that he drowned in pain medication and sometimes booze, but he wouldn’t admit that, because admitting that would mean knowing that the problems weren’t getting better, that they might never get better, that this level of pain was something he might be dealing with his entire life, and even at thirty, the rest of his life seemed a long damn time to be dealing with the pain.

Except… except he hadn’t been, recently, had he?

It’s not like his arm didn’t hurt; it always hurt. Sometimes he could forget about it, when he was writing. But it was always there, like a fifty pound bag of shit that someone said, “here, you have to carry this for the rest of your life.” It never went away, but sometimes he could forget about it.

Had he even taken a pill, in the last few days? Even walking around the neighborhood, looking for the cat. Knocking on doors? Hanging up signs?

He tried to trace it back.

The last time he’d reached for that orange and white bottle was… almost a month ago, when that bad thunderstorm had rolled through and the air pressure had sizzled against his nerves, giving him muscle cramps and his bones had ached all the way to the core and his joints had felt compressed, somehow.

Huh.

“That’s a hell of a cat, Buck, is all I’m saying,” Steve said.

***

Bucky woke up with a warm, heavy weight on his lower back. The light was all wrong in the room and he blinked several times, trying to figure out where he was. Without bothering the cat -- CAT!

“U,” he said, sleepily, reaching around to feel at the weight on his back.

“Mppprrr?”

“Oh, thank god,” Bucky said. He didn’t really want to bother the cat, not right now, and his stomach returned to its former unknotted stage, heat spreading in his blood. Thank god. “Where have you been, honey?”

Suddenly, the cat shifted, uttered a contented chripping sound, and thudded to the floor, trotting across the room. Bucky sat up and reached for the bedside lamp. Which wasn’t where he expected it to be. He groped around for a moment and then the room flooded with light.

“I must say,” Tony said, eyebrow up, “while I’ve entertained fantasies of you being mostly naked in my bed, I was usually in my bed at the time.” He had one of the Missing Cat posters in his hand.

“Oh, god, Tony,” Bucky said. He flushed, dragged the blankets over himself, realized they were Tony’s blankets, and blushed harder. “I’m so, so sorry. U got out, and I wanted to make sure that if she came back, that someone was here, so she didn’t wander off again, and, oh, god, you’re home, I forgot you were coming back today, oh, Jesus, I am talking too much here, I’m…”

How the hell was he supposed to ever look Tony in the eyes again? He’d let the man’s cat get away, he’d been sleeping in the man’s bed, and while, yes, he had intended to do the laundry before Tony got back…

“I was wondering what was going on, actually,” Tony said, sitting down on the bed. U uttered a completely content chirp and jumped into Tony’s lap, snuggling up to his chin and making biscuits on Tony’s thighs. “You haven’t texted me all week.”

“I’m sorry,” Bucky said. He eyed the heap of his clothing on the floor, halfway across the room, wondering if there was any possible way to get to it without… without Tony seeing everything. “I didn’t want you to worry.”

“Well, I admit that less worries were probably better than being frantic,” Tony said, cuddling with his cat. “It was a hell of a presentation, and I didn’t need to be distracted. But… I’d appreciate it if you tell me the truth next time.”

Next time? “Next time?”

“Well, yeah,” Tony said. “Are you kidding me? Do you know how many people would have just let U be missing? You went through a lot of effort to try to find her, well above and beyond what I might have expected. And, well, U likes you. I know when you’re here, you take good care of her. You love her.”

Bucky was almost in tears. He didn’t feel worthy of that sort of praise at all. After all, if he hadn’t been careless, the cat wouldn’t have gotten out in the first place. He opened his mouth to express any (or all!) of this to Tony.

“Hey,” Tony said, putting an arm around Bucky’s shoulders, which should have been weird, right? Because Bucky didn’t have a shirt on and his arm and its ugly scars were on full display, and -- “She’s gotten out before, I didn’t think to warn you. And she came home, that’s the important thing, right? What… I can’t believe what you did for us, I’m really grateful.”

Bucky let himself be drawn into Tony’s embrace. It wasn’t until U stretched out across both of their laps that Bucky realized that he was mostly naked in Tony’s bed, with Tony’s arm around his shoulder. “Oh, god,” he managed. He nearly knocked the cat onto the floor, scrambling for his clothing and yanking his pants on hurriedly. “I am aso, so sorry, I’ll just… get out of your -- and I should close the windows!”

Bucky turned himself around in a complete panic to find Tony with both hands across his mouth.

“Okay, okay,” Tony said, smile stretching out his cheeks, “I’m not laughing at you…”

Bucky wasn’t sure why that made everything all right, except it kinda did. He stopped moving, holding his shirt in one hand with his pants still unzipped.

“You’re totally laughing at me,” Bucky pointed out.

“Okay, I kinda am,” Tony said, “but usually when someone’s scrambling to get out of my bed--”

Bucky felt the blush creeping up his throat. “I really should go.”

“If you want,” Tony said, leaning back a little on his bed. “Do you want to go? Or, you know, I could put on coffee and make us some breakfast.”

Bucky blinked. “Um?”

“Oh, come on, Bucky, surely someone’s hit on you before in your life?”

“Um… not in a while, no,” Bucky said. His shirt slid out of his fingers and ended up on the floor again. And he knew if he bent over to get it, his pants were going to fall down. “Do I look like someone who’s got their life together enough to have a lover?”

Then it was Tony’s turn to blink. “Well, I gotta say, you’ve looked worse,” he said. Was Tony leering at him? Bucky thought he probably couldn’t turn any redder without qualifying as a supernova.

“I… uh…” Bucky zipped his jeans, scrambled for the rest of his clothes. “I should go.”

“Okay,” Tony said, a little wistful. “If that’s what you want.”

Bucky got most of the way to the door before his brain really kicked all the way in. “Wait, wait, wait a minute,” he said, turning around. “Were you --” and there he was talking to no one but the cat, who’d followed him out of the bedroom. Tony… had not. Bucky backed up a few steps and turned around. “Are you seriously hitting on me?”

Tony was sprawled out on the bed, his arms wrapped around the pillow that Bucky had been using. “I thought you were leaving,” Tony said, pushing the pillow aside hastily as if he hadn’t been cuddling with it, breathing in whatever remained of Bucky’s scent on the sheets.

“You were.” Bucky’s voice came out soft, almost inaudible.

“Was I not clear enough when I said I’d thought about you undressed in my bed, except that I was supposed to be in it?”

“I’m not at my best before coffee,” Bucky offered, hesitantly. “You--”

“Want me to put on some coffee?” Tony scrambled out of his bed. “I can make coffee. I’ll make pancakes, waffles, hashbrowns, bacon, whatever you want, just… stay, okay?”

“Yeah, okay,” Bucky said. “But you know, I’m only staying for you.”

Tony stopped moving, then turned around, scowling. “Are you making a pun about my cat?”

“Only if you think it’s funny.”

***

“Hey, babe,” Tony said, pushing in the front door. Bucky looked up from his desk, tapped the keys a few more times. Tony wheeled his suitcase in, dodging cat paws as Jarvis scrambled to try to escape. “Not you. Kitties do not go outside.” He gave Jarvis a little toss onto the sofa as U pounced on his shoe laces.

“You’re never gonna let me forget that, are you?” Bucky asked, leaning back in his chair. Dummy stretched in his lap, claws digging into his jeans.

“Never,” Tony said. He crossed the room to give Bucky a kiss. “After all, if you hadn’t been sleeping with the door open, hoping my cat would come back, we wouldn’t be together now.”

Bucky slid his hand into Tony’s hair, letting the kiss linger. “Oh, hey,” he said, “while you were gone --” He grabbed the book off his desk and handed it to Tony.

“Is this your new best seller, babe?”

“Well, it’s not a best-seller, yet,” Bucky cautioned. “But yeah, it’s the new one.” He hadn’t changed that much. Tony wasn’t allowed to see the manuscript until the editors had a couple go-rounds and the whole thing was in print.

Tony flipped the cover and glanced down at the dedication page.

To my cat
Nothing would be the same without U