This is the beginning to several stories about AFTER.
The story of how Steve Rogers went after his long-lost friend, the story of how Bucky Barnes reclaimed himself and came to terms with his life as the Winter Soldier, the story of how two boys from Brooklyn finally came back from their war and found their way back home - these are the stories that will be told and retold over and over again.
But this is one of the stories about what happens After, because while it's easy to say And they lived happily ever after at the end, there's still room for more.
And it must be admitted that it's really awesome, now that the Avengers have two nonagenarians trying to figure out the 21st century together.
Bucky is slightly better than Steve at this because he has been awake for at least a couple of years or so every decade, although understandably, the memories are a mess due to all the brainwashing shenanigans. But still - it is, as Tony Stark claims, “Dracula leading the Count all the way to Sesame Street.”
Bucky loves Sesame Street. He has a soft spot for Kermit, who reminds him very much of one Steven Grant Rogers. These are the old-school episodes, thank you, with the occasionally frightening animated sequences of patterns and pictures and numbers and the Hulk is perfectly happy to sit next to Bucky when they have Sesame Street on, though the Hulk is not too fond of Elmo.
Steve has a soft spot for Ernie and Bert and Bucky rolls his eyes at him and says, “Yeah, you would, Ernie.” And Natasha sits on Clint to prevent him from talking about Bert and Ernie slash, because no, some things need to remain clear of Rule 34.
Thor says that Oscar reminds him of his brother. Tony confirms the resemblance and has threatened, on occasion, to send a trash can of the right look and size to Asgard.
Fine, Steve and Bucky cried when Mr. Hooper died.
And after that, Bucky discovers slash because no Star Trek marathon is complete without Tony talking about Jim/Spock while Clint ships Jim/Bones like a motherfucker and Natasha has called dibs on the Jim/Spock/Bones OT3.
There’s an argument on how they’re going to watch the Star Wars trilogy (Tony stubbornly acknowledges the existence of only ONE trilogy and says that there is not enough booze in the world to drown out the memory of the prequels) and Steve gets confused because, hey, isn’t it obvious - the movies have the numbers - watch episodes 1 to 6 and Tony says no no no, that’s not how it works, it’s going to suck, it’s going to suck balls and no you can’t have a Star Wars experience like that.
Finally Bruce tells them about the perfect Star Wars Formula which is Episode IV, V, I, II, III and VI and that makes sense, that makes brilliant, perfect sense, because yeah, of course you need to know about Darth Vader after the reveal in Empire.
And nobody says anything about the way Steve, copying a move that he learned from Bucky in the way back when, nonchalantly slides an arm over Bucky’s shoulders during the part where Luke is pleading for his cyborg father to come back to them and Bucky slants him a grin that says “I’m on to you, punk” but leans into the embrace because. Yeah. Because.
Bucky is slightly better at doing the social media thing but he prefers Tumblr to Twitter because there’s more things to do and the first time he posts a picture of Steve in the kitchen, shirtless, sleepy, bedhead Steve, with pyjama pants that are just a thread away from falling off his hips because Steve likes to be comfortable, Bucky breaks Tumblr.
Bucky posts the picture with the recipes for Steve’s Breakfast, which is a foodgasm of pancakes, bacon, eggs and hash browns and yeah, it’s a change, that is, from rations and scrounging and making the food budget stretch a little more.
But yeah, he posts the picture of sleepy bedhead Steve and his breakfasts and he’ll post other pictures of Brooklyn and what used to be old haunts they remembered but it’s just that, a memory and the two of them are moving on, together.