Work Text:
Steve leaves one life behind in Washington and starts another when he steps back into Brooklyn.
The building he lived in decades ago is now a repurposed restaurant, complete with a plaque by the door that speaks of the place’s history.
Steve finds it strange. The only reason it's famous is because of him. Such an idea settles thickly in his gut.
Steve — or, really, Natasha — scours the city for a new apartment. Words are said about sight lines and safe houses, but Steve ignores them and gives control to people who know best about those things.
He doesn’t want his new life warped by his old one. But his ghosts, Steve knows, will haunt him here as they have everywhere else.
Steve moves into his new apartment at the corner of Lealand and 6th on an overcast afternoon. It’s the middle of June, and the heat sears into his skin as he lugs his furniture up the stairs to his place. The living room is bare with cream-colored walls and finished hardwood floors that don’t even creak under his weight.
He sets down box by the kitchen counter and leans against the marbled finish.
For a second, an image flickers across his vision. It’s of scratched iron, rickety wood, and broken window shutters. There is a musty smell that matches the clouded windows, and tucked into the corner of a small bedroom, Steve can see a bottle of cologne knocked to its side.
Steve can even remember how it had smelled on Bucky’s skin.
The memory passes, slow and cold through his veins like ice, and a tremor clenches his jaw.
Chest pushed out, Steve walks onto his balcony and breathes in polluted air. It’s a comfort, he thinks. The air still drags into his throat and clogs his lungs.
The only difference now is that Steve doesn’t choke on it
He closes his eyes and ignores Sam’s voice when it calls out to him from the front door, asking about what kind of pizza he wants for dinner.
This, he knows, is not home.
_______
He doesn’t notice it at first.
His neighbors are friendly folks — something of a rarity in this part of town — so Steve does as he once did. He makes rounds, introducing himself to couples and children and well-off business men who keep a bluetooth pressed to their ear.
Steve smiles at that. He remembers how confused he had been when he first saw Tony talking to himself. And then he remembers the embarrassment that followed when Pepper had to explain to him yet another invention of the modern age.
It becomes easier as the months pass. His thoughts orbit around Bucky, swinging widely as he brushes over his friend’s file and fights the urge to ask Natasha how her surveillance is going.
Bucky is his own person, painting a bloody streak of revenge against the very people who stole his life.
It’s something that Steve thinks they might have in common. His new body hadn’t given him the freedom to live the life of a good man. Steve had to fight for that himself.
The only thing it had ensured was Steve’s promise of being a great soldier.
He knows that is why Erskine had sat him down all those years ago over a drink. Steve is thankful for that now.
He distracts himself with the block parties held every other week by all his neighbors. The first he attends is for Melanie’s fifth birthday, and when he makes his way down the hall with a casserole dish (from Sam, of course) and a neatly wrapped gift, Steve first hears the little girl’s shriek of delight before he feels her grappling at his legs.
He gives her a lopsided grin before hefting her into his arms. Her parents look at him from the living room, surrounded by friends, and they pull at hidden grins when Melanie begins to tug at Steve’s collar.
“Fly, Mr. Rogers! Let’s play!”
A whole hoard of kids are circled around him now, and with a nod, Steve arranges the girl in his arms so that she’s flat on her belly between them. With a sputter of his lips, he begins to dip her in the air — up and down, up and down — until her face is flushed with laughter. He sets her down, careful to make sure she doesn’t fall, but then she is running towards her parents to ask about her cake.
Steve stands empty handed until a rough hand grips his shoulder. He turns to see his landlord at his side, beard trimmed close, and waits.
The older man huffs in laughter. “You sure do good with them kids, Steve. You ever thought of having your own?”
Steve stills and doesn’t answer. He’s not sure how he would have anyway. Instead, he surveys the room, watching children as they clamor towards each other and their parents as they talk in low tones along the walls.
He blinks when Melanie is suddenly on the couch, waving her short arms in circles like she wants to teeter off the edge of the seat. A group of boys are huddled around the couch, hands clawed and lips snickering at their game.
“Oh no! Who’s going to save me?”
Melanie is looking at Steve with doe eyes, and he takes a step forward.
That’s his cue.
_______
The first hint he gets is a big one.
It makes Steve’s stomach bottom out in fear.
He is heading home from a run, sweats loose around his waist, when an earsplitting squeal comes from behind him. Steve moves and hugs himself to the building beside him.
There is a crater in the middle of the street, smoldering from whatever hit it.
He looks further down the street and flexes his jaw. He can tell that the black SUV revving straight for him isn’t friendly. It’s not going to stop.
He takes a guess: Hydra
His fingers inch towards his back and freeze when they meet air. He’s left his shield at home, tarped in a canvas backpack, and Steve edges towards the street. People are lining the sidewalk to watch their hometown hero go head-to-head with his arch nemesis.
Steve wants to scream at them to run, to leave. This isn’t like the comics. This isn't like the movies. They could die here today.
He thinks quickly. They must think he won’t fight with so many civilians under threat. Hydra doesn’t boldly attack like this — not since Project Insight at least. Maybe not even since Schmidt and their damn cosmic cube. But Steve has to do something, so he braces his back and prepares to roll out of the car’s way on his count.
Three.
Two.
He doesn’t make it to one.
A loud crash from above startles him, but Steve doesn’t move. A whistle sounds through the air as the bullet makes contact with the SUV’s tire, and the car careens out of control. Only then do the people move from the sidewalk as they get out of the way. The car wraps itself around a wall just feet away from Steve, and he blinks.
He looks up to see where the shot came from and expects to see Bucky’s shadow jumping across the rooftop to get away from the scene.
It’s wishful thinking on his part.
All he sees is his landlord standing behind a broken window with a pump-action rifle in hand. The gun looks nearly as old as Steve is, and it makes Steve stare in wonder. His landlord shrugs the rifle across his back before fingering a salute towards Steve.
A week later, the window is replaced.
_______
His apartment isn’t home, not quite.
Steve thinks it’s getting there though.
A year has passed since he came to Brooklyn — back to the home he’d once lost — and his walls are no longer bare.
Pollock prints and rough sketches are tacked to the wall. Bruce sent him a small gardening kit, and now there is a row of potted herbs that line the windowsill in the kitchen. There is even an out-of-print Captain America canvas nailed in the front hall from Tony, and Steve hadn’t even found it in himself to be mad when he pulled the package from his mailbox a month ago.
He has started attending classes at the local recreation center, and Steve finds that he fits in better with the elderly ladies at knitting night than he does the veterans at his self-defense classes. He knits and pearls, weaving wonky scarves with calloused fingers, and laughs loudly when Mildred tells tales of her time as a burlesque dancer in Madrid.
Steve’s chest floods with warmth when they share their lives with him. He regrets that he doesn't do the same.
He’s also started going by schools and hospitals and children’s homes across the city. With a cap pressed tightly to his head, Steve makes the rounds and speaks to wide-eyed children about what it means to be a hero.
Steve doesn’t think he’s qualified for the job, but he then remembers the way Bucky and the rest of the Howling Commandos looked at him during the war. It wasn’t for his bulging muscles and sculpted chin. Steve’s not vain, but he knows the serum made him easier to look at. It made him look every inch of how a hero should.
But it was his spirit they followed. They marched into the jaws of death, first, for Captain America. It didn’t take them long to learn that following Steve Rogers — just another boy from Brooklyn — was the right thing to do.
It was soon after that that people started calling him a hero.
Steve found it was easier to let them believe the lie.
He almost believes it himself when he walks around pediatric wards, carrying children on his shoulder as they parade him around the room. Steve catches himself thinking as much when he volunteers at the local soup kitchens, ladling food and bread into the stomachs of the needy.
He remembers his mom waiting in lines for hours to get rations during the Depression. Steve can still taste the stale crunch of the crackers she would get, and he would wipe the crumbs on his patched slacks.
Nothing is more uncomfortable to look at then poverty. It turns away stares, but Steve keeps his gaze focused.
Poverty is familiar. It’s something that he can’t help but see when he walks down the street.
He drops coins in stripped tin cans, and during that winter, he even shrugged off the shirt from his back to give to a man living by a dumpster near the local laundromat.
One day, he finds himself running again at the park, chest heaving for air when he slows to a stop. He bends to his knees and breathes deep. When he stands, he stops at the sight of the concrete wall across the road.
There is a mural up against the rough cement of bright, dripping paint. There are reds and blues and whites twisted together and staining the wall with Steve’s shield. His eyes shine when he reads the stenciled words below.
THANK YOU, CAP. BROOKLYN LOVES YOU!
He tips his head to the side and pulls out his phone, snapping a picture of the mural.
When he asks Clint later that week how to change his background, he doesn’t tell anybody why.
This secret isn’t one they need to know.
_______
Captain America is an icon. A celebrity. A goddamn national treasure that the country feels entitled to.
Steve Rogers isn’t.
It’s a shame that he gets caught up in it all.
There are interviews and press conferences and late-night TV hosts who clamber for his attention. Magazines print his picture every other month, gossiping about his latest love tryst or favorite kind of coffee.
He will be flipping through the TV and stumble upon a documentary of his life. If they are talking about him before the serum, Steve will immediately recognize himself in the scrawny man on the screen. If it’s after, well, Steve isn’t ashamed to admit he’s still not used to his body.
It normally will take him a few minutes to recognize what he’s watching.
He knows that the paparazzi follows him, lingering around corners with photo lenses that can count his every hair, every pore, every line.
It’s after a battle in midtown that Steve leaves his apartment one morning, gingerly moving around his fractured wrist, and finds himself browsing a second-hand bookshop a few blocks from his apartment.
It’s one of his favorite places. They carry books of all kinds, but Steve tends to stay towards the back of the stop where the historical nonfictions are. There are books about himself, of course, but he keeps away from them with ease. It’s the books about his friends — about Peggy and Dum-Dum and Jim and Phillips — that leave with him and pile themselves on his bookshelf.
He’s thumbing through a biography on Gabe when a noise outside catches his ear. Steve turns his head to find a photographer standing just outside the shop’s window with a camera pressed to his face. His finger hovers above the release, ready to snap photos at will.
Steve pivots and turns his back.
It’s because he does this that he doesn’t see a woman on the sidewalk bump her hip into the photographer’s side. He stumbles, hands tight against his camera, and she fixes him with a stare that bleeds the colors from her lips.
“Not here,” she murmurs.
Steve misses the photographer when he looks around, seeing the street filled with locals with their narrowed eyes on him. He doesn’t know that the photographer turns on his heel and walks briskly away from the shop with trembling fingers.
Steve is blind to it all as he curls his shoulders into himself, reading under the dim light of the shop.
When he gets ready to leave, the streets are nearly empty save for a woman browsing outside the shop at a fruit stand. He gets home and sits on his couch, legs propped against the coffee table in front of him, and continues reading about his friend’s life after the war.
The shop owner had given him the book for free with a crisp nod and shooing hands.
_______
Eighteen months.
That is how long is takes for Bucky to show up at Steve’s apartment. Dressed in a threadbare henley and jeans, Steve returns to his place after knitting one night to find his best friend sitting at his dinner table.
His face is shadowed, and when Steve turns of his lights, Bucky doesn’t flinch.
Steve stands, lowering his eyes to his feet before looking back to his friend. “Welcome home.”
Bucky’s nostrils flare, and his chest expands with a tight breath. When he doesn’t move, Steve walks over and takes a seat across from Bucky, talking lightly about the past and the present.
He doesn’t dare speak of the future. It would be like he’s tempting fate.
Bucky never says a word, and when Steve goes to shower later that night, he returns to find Bucky asleep on his couch.
It’s the first step they take towards starting over.
_______
The paparazzi doesn’t stay away for long. Steve really wouldn’t have minded normally, but when one of them manages to snap a picture of Bucky and sell it for god knows how much, Steve snaps at the anger simmering in his chest.
Bucky doesn’t care. At least, Steve doesn’t think so. It’s hard to read his friend these days.
They are eating dinner together — a simple dish of cooked rice and chicken that agrees with Bucky’s stomach — when the radio in the kitchen catches their attention.
“…a menace! What is the government going to do about this? A war hero, sure, he might have been once. I will give Sergeant Barnes that much, but now? Now, he’s nothing more than a killer. A murderer. Do we really want this guy on out streets? Seems like he should be taken out back if you know what I mean.”
The jockey’s voice is gruff, and it makes Steve’s fist clench. Bucky’s head is hung low with his hair covering his face.
Steve, however, knows Bucky well enough now to know when he’s upset. Right now, he can see it in the slump of his friend's shoulders.
He is standing before he realizes it. Long steps take him to the kitchen, and his hand is stretched to shut off the radio with a solid flick of a switch.
“Let’s turn to our callers now and see what they have to say.”
There is a moment of static until a new voice stops Steve.
“I’m calling in to ask a question? Is that alright?”
The jockey hums. “Go right ahead.”
The other voice pauses before starting back up. “Good, I just wanted to ask if you liked having front teeth. If you do, I kindly suggest you shut up before you bring all of Brooklyn to your studio. God, what a moron. Your mama must’ve never taught you manners. How dare you talk about our boy like that! You don’t know him or his life, so you ain’t got no business to speak like you do.”
“Well, now, listen-"
"Keeping talking like you are, and we're going to have problems. You get that? And don't you ever think of stepping foot-"
The radio cuts off to the jockey's shaking voice. "That's enough of that. How about we try another caller?"
Steve blushes at the next caller's rant, hearing six kind of swears filtering from his radio before the station can cut the irate tirade.
The jockey doesn't come back on air. It's a small victory.
When he turns around, he sees Bucky staring at the radio with glassy eyes. Steve shakes his head and walks just past Bucky before dropping a careful hand to his back.
"I feel the same. We all do."
Bucky shifts. "I don't see why."
"You will one day," Steve replies.
_______
Bucky spends his days with Steve, and things get better bit by bit.
There are bad days — days filled with metal and gun-smoke and screaming that bites sharply at Steve's nerves. Then there are the good days that find them curled in the living room, watching whole seasons of shows on netflix with popcorn shared between them.
They come and go like the tide, ebbing away as each day passes. Steve falls into a rhythm of anticipating the next day and what it might bring.
He's not done so for a long time. It makes him think that maybe talking of the future — thinking of it, even — might not be so horrible after all.
It's a good day when Steve's landlord knocks on his door, holding a brown package under his arm as if he's about to drop it.
And he does.
Steve bends to his knees quickly and saves it from knocking against the floor. His landlord shouts in surprise before it trails into laughter.
"Son, you just saved my marriage. The old lady wouldn't have been happy with me if I broke her dishes, and I don't got the patience for a divorce. Not with how much I love that girl."
Steve nudges his toe against the floor and hands the package back. "It's no problem. Is there something you needed?"
The landlord nods his head. "Your lease is coming to an end, Rogers. I just wanted to know if you planned on renewing," he confesses casually.
There is a breath between them before Steve answers.
"Can I let you know?"
He tries not to feel bad when the landlord's face falls. "Sure thing, son. You just let me know within the week."
When Steve returns to the couch, his stomach is twisted and stiff in his gut. Bucky is flopped against the cushions, halfway in his seat and on the floor, and tilts his head back to see Steve standing behind the couch.
"You already know the answer,"
Steve stops. "Huh?"
Bucky quirks an eyebrow. "Real articulate, Steve. Glad to see that serum didn't make you any smarter."
Steve rolls his eyes. "Ha-ha."
"I mean it. If it had, you would've gone ahead and answered the old man. You already know the answer."
"Do I?"
Bucky's eyes soften. "You know you do."
Steve sits back down on the couch, fisting some popcorn in his hand before tossing piece after piece into his mouth. The show they're watching is awful and cheesy, but it makes Bucky laugh, so Steve puts up with it.
It's the next morning when Steve finally heads down to his landlord's place and knocks on the door. When it opens, Steve tilts his head and rubs at the back of his neck.
"Still willing to let me stay? I think I'd like to renew that lease if you don't mind."
His landlord smiles.
"Wouldn't want anyone else there, Steve. You and James both. We got your back, you know? The whole of Brooklyn that is. You ain't leaving us again so easily."
_______
The ink hasn't even dried on his new lease when Steve grabs Bucky from the apartment and takes them to a diner.
They drink milkshakes and knock knees under the table. If Steve tries hard enough, he can almost makes himself believe that nothing has changed between them since 1943.
But then he will see the twinge in Bucky's face when a car honks outside or the bulk of his holster against his thigh.
Steve knows that things are different. Things have changed. It's just how life goes.
When they get ready to leave, Steve pulls out his wallet to pay only to have Bucky beat him to it. There's a swagger in his step when he reaches the cashier — a boy barely out of high school with braces and freckled skin — and hands over a crumpled $20 bill.
The boy refuses to take it.
"It's been taken care of. Don't worry about it."
Bucky smiles and sticks his money in the tip jar before turning back to Steve. The rest of the restaurant goes about their business as they leave, but Steve has figured it out by now.
It might have taken him some time, but he sees the way the city takes care of them. The way that his neighbors leave him boxed treats outside his door and how the locals watch over him like he believes his mom does in heaven.
It's not just Bucky watching his six anymore. It's not just Steve taking care of Bucky.
They walk home slowly, swapping memories and stories with their hands shoved into their pockets. The climb to the apartment turns into a race that nearly makes Steve face-plant at a landing when Bucky sticks out his foot.
His friend's laughter echoes through the stairwell.
Bucky falls asleep on Steve's bed that night — like usual — and curls into Steve's side like he belongs there. Putting down the book he's been reading, Steve turns off his lamp and slides down into the bed. The covers ruck against his shirt, and he stops moving when he feels Bucky's head against his beating breast.
A breath in. A breath out.
It's another rhythm Steve has come to love.
He cards his fingers through Bucky's long hair, and Bucky groans into the touch. Steve knows he will fall asleep like this and feels a smile tug at his lips.
This, he knows, is home.