Chapter Text
It's been a week and five days since Bucky has last seen Matt.
When Steve asks, Bucky just says it's been a while, because it's not like he's counting. It's just hard not to feel the stark contrast between having Matt tumble through his window almost every night and the absolute radio silence he's getting now. Nights where Matt would visit always seemed to go by in a blink of an eye -- one moment he would be flopping on the couch next to Bucky or shaking him awake, the next moment the sun would be just about to rise and Bucky would hastily shove a cup of coffee into Matt's hands and laugh while he chugs it before running back to his apartment to get ready for work. And now Bucky's nights no longer flash by but stretch themselves out, taking up time and space that shouldn't even exist, and he has no choice but to wonder if this is what his life was like before he met Matt and he's only noticing it now that he's gone, or if Matt Murdock really changed his life that much.
He's really not sure which would be worse.
Because the thing is, Bucky misses Matt, and he really shouldn't. At least not this much. It's one thing to be worried, he tells himself, or even to miss having someone around that often. But it's a completely different thing to be missing Matt's smile, or the timbre of his laugh, or the way he almost always keeps a point of contact between them by leaning into Bucky when he's stitching him up or even when they're just relaxing on the couch.
Because the other thing is, all those things he's missing are the exact things he's been trying to ignore for the few months, and Bucky's not really sure what to do with that. If he misses Matt's laugh that means he misses the feeling he gets in his chest when he hears it, and he's not allowed to miss that. He barely even allows himself to feel it in the first place, and that's only because he hopes it'll run its course and he'll get over it soon -- not just the way he feels when Matt laughs, but all of it, all the different ways his being lights up when Matt enters his orbit.
Bucky refuses to call it a crush. He's a super-soldier that's something like a hundred years old and has killed more people than he can count. He doesn't get crushes.
But he can't help it. He misses Matt.
He is also worried, though. Matt's gone a few days without dropping by before, but he gave Bucky his phone number a month and a half ago for that reason -- "So I can let you know I'm not dead in a ditch, like I do with Foggy" he'd said. Bucky had laughed at the time, but Matt had apparently been serious, because he'd started texting Bucky on the nights he didn't come over. The texts were always short, always a variation on the same theme -- "Home safe," or "Made it back," or "In for the night" -- and so routine Bucky even didn't notice the way he'd started checking for them until they stopped coming. He feels uneasy in their absence.
When Bucky finally tells Steve about it, a week after Matt stops visiting, Steve frowns. "Why don't you just text him and ask if he's alright?"
"It doesn't work like that," is Bucky's response, because it's true. At first, Bucky had let Matt take the lead in their friendship because he'd reminded him of the stray cats that lived in the alley behind his apartment before he befriended them -- skittish and ready to bolt at any wrong move -- but then it had just become the norm. Matt was the one who texted first, or came to visit Bucky, or dragged Bucky back to Matt's apartment to get stitched up on the nights they've run into each other on patrol, or on the rarer ones, the ones where Matt asks Bucky to come with him. He can count the nights he's gone over to Matt's apartment on his own initiative on one hand and he wouldn't even use all his fingers. Matt's always seemed genuinely pleased to see him when he shows up, always ushers him inside and tells him to make himself at home, but Bucky has never quite been able to shake the feeling that no, this is wrong, this isn't how it's supposed to be.
After Bucky explains all of that, Steve gives him another one of his looks, and because Bucky knows Steve better than he knows himself, he knows that it roughly translates to 'I think you're being stupid, but I can tell if I press this right now you're going to get mad, so I won't, but I really need you to know I think you're stupid.' Which is annoying, but it's also fair.
And true to his unvocalized word, Steve doesn't mention anything about Matt for the rest of the night. They finally finish Return of the King around two in the morning and crash into Bucky's bed to get a few hours of sleep before Steve goes to meet Sam for their run and inevitably wakes Bucky up with his early-morning bumbling around the kitchen. How Steve survived all their stealth raids on HYDRA during the war is something Bucky will never be able to figure out.
Steve settles down his side with Bucky curled around him from behind, one arm slung across his waist. It's not unusual for them to end up like this after one of their pop-culture-catch-up marathons, but every time it reminds Bucky of the nights they would spend on his living room floor, when they would use the couch cushions as mattresses because his actual mattress was too small to fit them both, when Steve was a whole lot smaller and they were both a whole lot younger. Bucky doesn't really miss anything the era they grew up in except the friends he left behind, and he's gotten pretty good at moving on, but these nights still bring him an almost unspeakable amount of comfort in the knowledge that some things, at least, will never change.
Bucky tucks his face into the back of Steve's neck and lets their breathing sync up as it becomes so slow and deep that he thinks Steve must have fallen asleep, until he gently grabs Bucky's hand and whispers, "I still think you should text him. He cares about you. I doubt he wants you to worry like this."
Bucky sighs and squeezes his hand back. "Go to sleep, Steve."
"Mm. Goodnight, Buck."
"G'night."