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Bucky doesn’t know the place they end up at. Which is saying...absolutely nothing, because in the long stretch of months that Bucky’s been in DC, he has been to approximately zero bars.
Thing is, he’s got much better company at home. And a friend-cum-acquaintance-cum-pain-in-the-ass billionaire footing his rent, and hiding a stash of booze that’s kind of obscene.
And really poorly inventoried.
“Whatcha drinking?” Phil asks, and goddamn, Director Coulson himself. Bucky tries to reconcile the casual quirk of an eyebrow in his direction with the plastered flush of the man when he’d been dead weight up the stairs of that fucking flea-trap on the continent. “A higher shelf of whiskey than they manage in Minsk?”
Bucky tries, fails; shakes his head.
Not a second goes by, these days, where Bucky doesn’t marvel at the way things have shaken down, but this?
Well, hell. It’s like The Gambler or some other clichéd country-western bullshit, where the random stranger drinks all the whiskey and shows him when to count his money, when to walk away.
Or drinks two fingers of fucking whiskey before he starts to faceplant, while still showing Bucky how to run toward the only thing worth finding, the only place worth reaching in the world.
Bucky shakes his head, at the implausibility of it; also, to the drink.
“Another day,” Bucky rolls his bottom lip between his teeth as he scans the bottles lining the back wall. Phil’s brow goes higher, in askance.
Bucky full on bites at the corner of his mouth before he grins, a little rueful, a little shy, and Jesus, Jesus.
He’s come a long fucking way.
“You gonna laugh at me?” he asks, and they’re light years away from that bar in Belarus; Bucky thinks that maybe it was different taste buds that wrestled down that shitty bourbon, except that he remembers the sour sting of it, every time.
He remembers.
And that’s still such a fucking novelty.
“You have to ask?” Phil pulls him back to the here, the now: the better, and Phil’s smirking at him, half a challenge, nearly playful, and Bucky lets himself relish the little spark of familiarity that’s been dancing along his nerve endings more and more, these days: camaraderie. Friendship. What it means to share a drink, to eat a peck of salt, to be. With people.
And to give a shit.
“If you have to ask, then yeah,” Phil shrugs, leaning into the back of the stool, crossing his arms and breathing in deep, out slow: “Probably.”
Bucky grins, full out, and they’re lightyears away, man.
But they’re here.
“The flavors,” Bucky admits, gesturing to the colorful array of every kind of alcohol ever. “Like, how the hell did that happen?”
And he’d learned to expect that in the supermarket, he had; but the liquor store, seriously, just…
Wow.
“The vodka?” Phil asked, amusement curling his mouth at the ends.
“The everything,” Bucky shakes his head, still wondering at the world around him, just a little, just because he can. “But yeah, particularly the vodka.” He follows Phil’s lead and leans back into the chair, lets his body mold to him, reminds himself to relax. Relax.
It doesn’t take so much reminding, anymore; his muscles are beginning to grasp the idea without coercion.
“My sense of direction is impeccable,” Bucky adds, idly, as Phil gestures toward the bartender. “I got fucking lost in the vodka section at that Schneider’s place.”
Phil winces, and so misses Bucky’s half-blush at the utter shame in his confession.
Awesome.
“Overpriced,” Phil clucks his tongue.
“Everything is fucking overpriced,” Bucky counters, which, whole other can of worms, and he’s damned grateful he doesn’t foot the bill for his own existence in this cockeyed future where milk costs four bucks a gallon—well.
He’s grateful for that, until Tony opens his mouth, usually, and then Bucky mostly feels like it’s an even trade. Stark’s money for Bucky’s exercise of restraint in not crushing Tony’s voice box.
Fair’s fair, really.
“But I mean, seriously,” Bucky’s running down each line of spirits, pointing: “Fluffed marshmallow, iced cake. Whipped cream! Is it a fucking bar or a bakery? Or hell, an ice cream shoppe! Sorbets,” he follows down the line, gesturing broadly. “Root beer float!” And maybe it’s too wild, maybe it’s over the top for the matter at hand. Maybe.
But Bucky doesn’t register about the way the fluorescents in the beer-signs catch a shine off his knuckles as anything more than an afterthought, so.
He’s pretty sure he’ll rant about goddamned vodka flavors until the fucking cows come home, if that’s what he gets in exchange.
“And don’t get me started on the breakfast liqueurs,” Bucky groans, but he can feel the excitement buzzing hot between his ribs and he knows that his eyes are giving him away but he doesn’t fight it. “Maple bacon, dude? Glazed fucking donut?”
He doesn’t fight it anymore.
“We’ve got the blueberry pancake, but none of the others,” the bartender approaches, cutting in apologetically. “Sorry.”
Bucky waves off the remorse and points, straight and distinct, a line to a single bottle.
“Smoked salmon.” Seriously. Smoked salmon vodka.
No shit.
“In my professional opinion?” the bartender—just a kid, probably a Colonial looking to cover books for next semester—the bartender kind of shudders as he eyes the pinkish liquid in the bottle labeled with a fish. “Yeah. Don’t.”
Bucky cackles, loud and unfettered, and Phil’s watching him, and Bucky knows he’s going on like a kid in a candy store but when you make the treats just as colorful and a hundred times more exciting, by virtue of intoxication, well, damn: that’s a recipe for the adult version, Bucky’s sure of it.
And hell, anyway: he’s ninety-eight years young.
Which is probably why the fancy-looking bottle that’s just a little bit slimmer, a little bit taller, a little bit more awesome: he’s ninety-eight years young and that’s probably why he can feel his eyes stretching wide when he sees it.
“Oh my god,” he says, slow; deliberate. “Make me a thing with that one.”
He grins at the bartender, who follows the line of his gaze, only to match his smile and nod as he grabs the bottle: Vincent Van Gogh PB&J.
“With the banana,” Bucky adds. “And the fluffed marshmallow,” because, well, yeah. “And like, something…” he trails off, ponders, but then inspiration strikes, and it’s golden.
“Chocolatey,” he says, a little dreamy, a little too enamoured, but they never had this, he never got this, and Sam said it was important—life experiences, living it up, indulging the freedom to chose and to be. So.
“Yeah,” he says it, more decisive now, the smile on him just a little bit more broad. “Chocolatey.”
The bartender lifts a bottle up. “Godiva?”
“Oh,” Bucky hums, nodding in approval. He turns to Phil, licking his lips as he loses himself in his head for a second, in foxholes with blood in his hair and a single corner of a bar of honest-to-god chocolate that Dernier sweet-talked off some Dutch dame who was too busy swooning over Stevie to notice that Frenchie just wanted her sweets. “I remember Godiva.”
He wishes he remembered Godiva like it tasted on Steve’s lips, but then he realizes.
He can learn.
“I wouldn’t recognize you.” The words startle Bucky back into the moment, and he takes in Phil’s face: relaxed, amused, fond, a little bit in awe, and Bucky cocks his head; confused, a touch uncertain as Phil takes a sip from a tumbler of whiskey—top shelf, Bucky figures—that must have arrived while Bucky’d been thinking of Stevie’s chocolate-stained teeth under his tongue.
And there’s Bucky going again, exercising his freedom to prioritize where his attention gets allocated. Goddamn, but Sam’d be real proud.
“If I hadn’t figured it out that morning,” Phil swirls his glass, watching as the ice clacks. “After the hangover started to fade,” he adds, self-deprecating; “If I hadn’t figured out who you were, then, I wouldn’t know you now.” Phil drinks, and leans in.
“I wouldn’t be able to take the soldier in that bar, and fit him to the man in front of me now. Not a chance in hell.”
And Bucky doesn’t say anything, doesn’t know how to say anything other than I know, I look in the mirror every morning and sometimes all I can see is the metal but more times, all I can see are the eyes because the eyes are watching Steve where he’s wrapped around me from behind, where he’s nipping the lobe of my ear, where he’s making warm all the still-cold places, and I know that there are so many parts, so many versions of me but fuck if I can recognize one in the other, fuck if I can make sense of them as anything but a whole, like the stews we used to put together of all the shittiest vegetables that no one wanted but it was all we could afford and Steve needed something for nutrients, anything, so it was half-rotted tubers and the hard butts of celery and potatoes with better eyes than Steve’d ever had but it managed, it managed as a whole when you wouldn’t touch the single parts alone, goddamnit—
Bucky doesn’t say anything; doesn’t know how to say anything.
But honestly, he doesn’t think any previous iteration of himself would have known the words for that, either, so it’s not so bad.
Phil seems to understand, either way.
“Steve’s a different person, now,” Phil changes tactics, and Bucky maybe would have started at the abruptness, the about-turn; Bucky maybe would have worried that Steve’s different in a bad way, that Bucky’s been too much of a strain on Stevie, that Bucky’s asked too much without words, and with words, and with the shaking in the middle of the night and the way his eyes were red in the morning for so long, too long.
Part of Bucky still worries, about that.
But Phil’s smiling at him, soft-like so that it matches the curve of his glass, and Bucky’s chest isn’t tight like it might be, like it should be if this was bad, and he’s come to trust that; and Steve’s said it himself: You’re the goddamned fucking world, James Buchanan Barnes. You’re the only thing that makes waking up something to look forward to.
Bucky’d smacked him across the chest and called him a sap, but he’d kept his hand there, firm against Steve’s sternum as he’d kissed him, long and hard until Steve’d missed his morning run and Bucky’d memorized that particular look on him, flushed and smiling wider than his face, even now, could hope to contain.
“You’d know, right?” Bucky shoots back, snarks to lighten the weight of Phil’s words, the meaning they spark just under, just inside Bucky’s ribs. “Had a thing for him, I hear,” he lifts a knowing eyebrow and smirk at Phil. “Watched him sleep?”
Bucky’s respect for Phil Coulson ratchets up about twelve notches when the man does not so much as blush.
“Who was your childhood hero, Barnes?” he asks with a shrug. “Imagine yourself in my shoes.”
Bucky notices his drink on the counter, just then, and spares a nod to the bartender as he moves to take a sip, that turns into a long draw on the fucking godlike nectar that’s pouring down his throat, loosening the tightness that’s gathered there as he thinks about how to say, how not to say, how to answer that question while imagining himself in Phil’s shoes, imagining.
Remember.
The truth, then.
“My childhood hero,” Bucky licks his lips thoughtfully, doesn’t dwell on the fact that his drink is suddenly more than half gone as he puts it down, leans back, breathes out slow. “Sorry, Coulson,” he smiles, but it feels tight when as he gives the facts a voice:
“Same as yours, m’afraid.”
Phil’s watching him, but Bucky’s not looking up; he’s tracing the lip of his glass with a fingertip and staring at the last few swallows inside with a concentration that’s meant for elsewhere, meant for other things.
“I used to watch him sleep all the time,” Bucky breathes out. “Still do, just,” he blinks; he blinks again as he remembers watching Steve’s chest, timing his breaths, praying for a miracle on the worst of the nights when he could fucking see Steve’s heartbeat skipping on the sides of his Skinny little neck; in the center of his skinny little chest. “For different reasons.”
He gulps in air, wills himself to settle, grasps at straws until one feels like it’ll hold all this weight.
“Well,” he tries to smile. “Some. Others were,” he bites a laugh that’s not quite a laugh, but it does try. “Others are just about the same.”
And he inhales, exhales through the wash of different memories, the shame and longing that used to fill him up when Steve was shirtless in the long summers, sweetened now, turned into something Bucky wants to wrap himself in forever, for always, something that’s made of Steve’s arms around his body and Steve’s lips on the center of his hands, both hands, and the way that Bucky can watch Steve sleep now and he can’t see Steve’s heartbeat all that long after they’re both sated and spent, and that’s good, that is so good that Bucky can barely damn well stand it.
“You’re good for him,” Phil yanks him back to the now again. “He’s good for you.”
Bucky ducks his head, grabs for his drink but doesn’t lift it to his lips. “I don’t know about the former,” he says. “The latter, though. That’s always been true.” Bucky smiles to himself.
“I don’t know who I am without the big lug,” he whispers. “Hell,” he barks out a laugh, humorless, as the dark corners of himself start going cold again, start needing Steve as they always do, always: “I let those fuckers take me and make me into,” he starts, but he falters, he’s always faltered somewhere, without, without; “without him.”
Phil’s eyes don’t soften, don’t pity, and Bucky thinks maybe, just maybe, that’s what made him let the man talk to him, sit with him at his worst, all those months ago.
“I’m not going to tell you that none of that was your fault. I imagine Cap’s got that down to a science by now, and if it hasn’t sunk in, then I’m not going to make a dent,” Phil says, flat, plain, no cushion to it, no coddling. Bucky likes that about him.
“What I will say,” Phil continues around another healthy swallow of his whiskey, “is that you’re a good man.”
And Bucky—Bucky doesn’t say anything, not yet, but Phil must read the protest in the lines of his body, the movement of his throat in preparation to call bullshit, because he lifts and hand and presses onward before Bucky can get a word in.
“And if you cannot believe that of yourself, in your own right,” Phil says the word, each of them deliberate, each of them paired with his keen eyes on Bucky, unwavering, taking in everything, making Bucky feel exposed, but oddly, strangely—impossibly, really, outside of a room where there’s Bucky and there’s Steve: unbelievable, it’s not really a bad thing, here and now; like this.
“If you can’t believe it for yourself, then think about what you feel for Steve,” Phil tells him, states it plain and doesn’t falter, doesn’t shift at all when Bucky’s breath comes in quicker, sharper, like it always does when he thinks about the unnameable, palpable, incomprehensible thing that he feels, has always felt for Steve.
“The esteem you hold him in,” Phil says, and even Bucky knows the word “esteem” is meant to signal other things, is said because Phil understands with it means when there aren’t any words. “Think about that. And think about what he feels for you.”
Which is just as breathless of a thing, really, that gets caught in Bucky’s lungs and the blood in his heart when he really does think about it, because goddamn, Bucky can marvel at it, wonder at it, doubt whether it’s wise all he wants, but the fact is undeniable: Steve loves him.
Good God.
“And then ask yourself,” Phil says, softer now, but his eyes are still intent. “If you love him, if you know him and you trust him, can you argue with something he knows that strong?” Phil tilts his head, drive it home: “That deep?”
Bucky swallows, and his pulse is shaking real heavy in his chest, but he thinks that’s a good thing. Thinks this more than deserves that kind of weight.
“I get the feeling you’ve had this conversation before,” Bucky manages to rasp out, a little wry, a little overwhelmed.
Phil snorts.
“Whatever gave you that idea,” he deadpans, and Bucky can see it; thinks of Barton, and he wonders how the world had to spin off-kilter to make them the way they are, the same somehow, twisted up and mangled in the same place; wonders how the world had to tilt just so for two men to find two men; for two parts of the same whole to find each other, twice over.
Hell, three times.
“Steve was worried, today,” Bucky says aloud once he thinks he can, once the silence is too long—not uncomfortable, but still. “About you calling me in. I told him you couldn’t be so bad, if you’d shacked up with the Hawk,” Bucky shrugs, just as he grins. “Fucking crazy, but.”
“Never denied that,” Phil shakes his head, but his smile’s different now. Fond in a faraway kind of fashion—thinking of someone else, somewhere else. “But I mean, I always cleared my psych evals.”
Bucky’s real glad he swallowed the last of his delicious peanut butter and jelly and banana and marshmallow and chocolate slice of heaven; he’s real glad he finishes it before Phil says that, because he’s gotta snort at it. He’s just gotta.
And fuck, but he will not suffer any of this masterful confection to be wasted in the process. So it’s a good thing it’s gone, first.
“Coulson,” Bucky says, lays it down straight: “I cleared your psych evals.”
“Only within the last month,” Phil tries to defend it. “And in the last month, you’ve cleared them consistently.” Phil’s demeanor shifts toward the serious, then, just a little. “You’ve made impressive progress.”
Bucky snorts. “Or your evals are useless.”
“Six of one,” Phil shrugs. “Gotta be a little crazy, I think,” he drinks again: “to do what we do.”
Bucky thinks a second, before he decides that, yeah, there’s something hiding in the way that was phrased.
“‘We’?”
Phil grins just a little, like Bucky passed some kind of test, and Bucky doesn’t know how he feels about the fact that that expression doesn’t disturb him nearly as much as it should.
As it would have, not that long ago.
“I have to admit,” Phil caves, spreads his arms openly out so that his whiskey sloshes. “I might have had a motive for calling you in this afternoon, out of all the afternoons.” Phil's mouth straightens out a bit, just enough to make the hint of a grin seems thoughtful, maybe sad.
“You didn’t tell Rogers that you cleared the eval.”
“Didn’t seem relevant,” Bucky says, licks the inside of his glass to get the coating of goodness off the glass, and it’s the kind of distraction he likes: serves its purpose, plus the bonus of deliciousness. Like kissing Steve’s mouth. Steve’s skin. Steve’s everywhere.
“If anyone’s going to be the judge of my sanity, of my…” Bucky rolls his eyes, and hopes that makes his point. “It’s him.” And that’s true. If anyone gets a vote, if anyone could ever know enough, to get a vote, it’s Steve. “And he seems to think I’m alright.” Also true. Which, well: “Idiot.”
And damn if Bucky doesn’t fucking love him for it.
Phil, though; Phil’s not leaving it at that.
“You’ve been down to the shooting range.”
“Didn’t realize that was newsworthy.”
“Your proficiency with,” Phil huffs a bit; “everything we have, really,” he shakes his head, disbelieving; encouraging, too, somehow. “It’s off the charts, Barnes.”
Bucky can feel it, the way his muscles tighten, the way his smile grows thin, worn. “Serum’ll do that to ya.”
Phil’s not having it, though. “Rogers doesn’t have a damn thing on your scores.”
“Life as an assassin will do that to you.”
And another thing, Bucky thinks, that made their conversation in Minsk really stick, really stand out as something that could get through to the man Bucky was in that moment, at that time, strong enough to echo even now: Phil’s a stubborn son of a bitch, and he doesn’t back down from a fight.
Admittedly, Bucky’s got kinda a soft spot for that sort of thing.
“Do you know that you were the benchmark?” Phil’s musing, kind of nostalgic all of a sudden. “At the Academy,” he clarifies with a nod. “For every single agent who ever picked up a goddamned firearm.”
Bucky just kind of stares, at that. He knows about the Academy, not just from the files and the recon he’d done as their enemy, but from Fitz, and from Simmons; from May and Coulson and Fury, for fuck’s sake—from Clint and Nat, for all that they deem it secondary to “life experience” and “learning on the job.”
“Not Captain America,” Phil leans in, and he knows what he’s doing—knows that if he keeps talking, what he says will underscore Bucky’s rapid thoughts, will color his knowledge, will sink into the spaces between concepts and memories.
Phil knows it. He also knows that it works.
Bastard.
“Not the Winter Soldier,” Phil says. “Not the Asset. James Buchanan Barnes of the 107th,” he smiles, and half laughs out: “Hit it like JBB.”
Bucky’s head snaps up at that, and he stares at Phil, incredulous.
“No, seriously,” Phil nods, smirks hard, now, with his full face. “S’what they use to say. Well,” he bounces his head back and forth, considering. “They used to say other things,” he adds ruefully. “The name ‘Bucky’ has some unfortunate rhymes, you realize.”
And Bucky, for all that this is fucking madness: Bucky laughs at that, clean and full because this is absolutely unbelieveable, goddamn.
“You say unfortunate,” Bucky waggles his eyebrows in a way that feels practiced, every time he does it, like it’s written in his bones. “I...would not.”
Which gets him an equally full chuckle from Phil as the man shakes his head, but it’s a gesture full of something like grudging respect. “You really are as much of smooth-talker as they’ve always said.”
“Clint’s jealous,” Bucky shoots back cheekily, and Phil scowls, but with very little heat.
“I know,” he drawls. “I have to hear about it. Constantly.”
Bucky shakes his head, and curls his best sympathetic smirk. “Only one I ever really had eyes for, though,” he says, and ain’t that the God’s honest truth. “Then to now.”
Phil eyes him, gauging something that Bucky—not the man, nor the soldier, or the Soldier in him—can’t quite figure.
“Another one of his frou-frou drinks,” Phil says to the bartender. “Man’s earned it.”
Bucky’s face scrunches. “How d’ya figure?”
“Well,” Phil mocks at considering. “Pulled my head out of my ass in Eastern Europe, for one.”
“I scratched your back, you scratched mine, man,” Bucky counters, then sobers quicker than he can blink—it comes over him in a wave, and he can’t, won’t hold it at bay.
“I can’t,” Bucky falters; clears his throat. Shakes his head. “You don’t understand, I—”
An Phil’s hand’s on his arm, then, and it’s a comfort, and Bucky’s still not over being surprised, and a little giddy, when human touch register in him as a good thing.
“I understand,” is all Phil says. And it’s all Bucky needs.
Bucky drinks deep from the frou-frou awesomeness when another of its kind appears, and Phil waits until he settles in it before picking back up.
“You passed your psych eval, and you decimated even your own records in marksmanship,” he states simply, and when Bucky makes to argue, because of course he did, now, Phil just holds up a hand to quiet him. “Even with adjusting for the serum’s effects. Simmons and Banner have been aggregating the data, they’ve got a pretty damned good model mocked up.”
Right. So that’s what Jemma’s fascination with Stark’s scans of his arm has been all about.
“You made it back to the man you love, a man who loves you,” Phil adds, lower, but not gentler, not as if it’s separate, not like there’s any division between the shooter and the killer and the man who’d die for the love of his life before even he could manage to pull a fucking trigger. “You made it make, through, Jesus.”
Phil’s eyes are wide and he’s rocking his head back and forth again. “I can’t even wrap my head around that, Barnes. And you have to realize,” Phil takes another sip of his whiskey. “I’ve built my life around things that don’t easily wrap around the head. So yeah,” Phil nods to the now half-empty glass in Bucky’s hand. “Another frou-frou drink.”
And Bucky nods at that, because, okay.
Okay.
Plus the drink really is out of this world. Like, he’d gladly have another fifty of them.
“I want,” Phil starts, but pauses, changes tactics, Bucky can see it happen behind his eyes.
“I would like to...invite you,” Phil rephrases, carefully. “If you’re interested. To join the team.”
Bucky lets himself sit in the silence, after that statement—after that ludicrous fucking statement; Bucky lets himself lick the sweetness off of his own lips as he allows the words to settle, the meaning to sink in, before he says what he was always going to say to that, what those words were always going to spur from his mouth:
“Not much of a joiner, really.”
He can’t say he was expecting the cackle of amusement that bursts from Phil, in response, but hey.
Whatever works.
“Fuck,” Phil gasps, “you have to promise me that you’ll say that kind of shit in front of Stark, sometime.”
And Bucky grins, because, oh. Anthony Stark.
On his good days, Bucky can forget about what happened with Howard, after.
On his good days, Bucky can appreciate just how much Tony reminds him of the man with the flying cars and the melted cheese who grated Bucky’s nerves as much as he made him snort with laughter.
On his good days.
There are more of those, now.
“Everyone loves you,” Phil says in earnest. “I mean, hell, they can’t teach your kind of charisma, Barnes.”
“Wilson,” Bucky counters, because Sam’s been great, really, but to say that he loves Bucky, particularly after the incident with his wings, which intellectually Sam’s totally put behind him, but otherwise—
“Name drops you like it’s his job,” Phil returns. “Apparently you make a...potato cake?”
Bucky grins, at that, a little dumbfounded. “Chocolate potato cake.” It’s Sarah Rogers’ recipe.
That’s the only reason Bucky knows it.
“I’ve heard it’s, and I quote, ‘goddamned orgasmic,’” Phil even makes the little air quotes with his fingers between the rolling of his eyes. “And that estimation was from Romanoff, actually. So.”
Bucky tries not to wince before the words sneak out, unfiltered, unintended:
“She’s over the bikini thing, then?”
Bucky doesn’t even try not to wince, once he hears the sentence echo.
“Barnes.”
And Phil’s voice is hard, then; brooks no argument. Demands attention.
Bucky gives it.
“That was another life.” And somehow, somehow that Bucky cannot possibly hope to identify or define: somehow, the way Phil says that makes it feel almost true.
Almost like it matters. Like it might one day take away a little of the sting.
“It was another life,” Phil says it again, means it again. “Take what you need from it, leave the rest where it belongs.”
Bucky swallows, and it’s a tight thing to manage, but he does.
He nods.
Leave the rest.
He regroups, and tries again where Wilson—and Romanoff, apparently—were duds.
“Thor—”
“Did you not see his face, when you mentioned the profile you’d read on his brother?” Phil gapes at him a little.
“Umm, no?”
Phil smirks. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a god look so moved as when you said that Hydra wouldn’t touch Loki, because he was too ‘prone to familial sentiment’ to be a viable ally.”
And Bucky almost wishes he’d been looking, because Thor, Thor seems like a good guy, and even Bucky can read what the whole Loki thing does to him, how it weighs.
“Seen a lot of gods, have you?” Bucky quips, tries to throw off Phil’s momentum against his arguments against the “everyone loves you” nonsense.
“More than you’d think,” Phil tosses right back. Fuck.
“Stark,” Bucky goes with, because, well, like he’d said. The nerve-grating isn’t one-sided.
“Has drawn up more specs for that arm of yours than he’s run Marks through the arms,” Phil points out. “Which is both an indication of his esteem—”
“His morbid curiosity and total lack of boundaries, you mean,” Bucky interjects, but it doesn’t have any real effect.
“As well as a check in your column with everyone else he knows, because distracting Tony?” Phil quirks a brow. “Worth more than a few brownie points.”
Well. Shit.
Bucky takes the coward’s out; sips at what’s left of his drink.
“I’d been thinking about it since Belarus,” Phil carries on; admittedly, gracious in victory. “But I didn’t start shifting the parameters of your mandatory evals from civilian to agent until every single one of them had eventually brought it up. Unprompted. Uncoerced.”
Bucky looks up. He’d sworn those fucking tests had changed, but Banner had insisted that that would be counterintuitive to evaluating longitudinal results, and then sat his ass down for some breathing exercises for when the nightmares kept him up too long.
“They want you on their team,” Phil tells him, eyes making it real, somehow, making it true when it really can’t be true. “So the only question left is whether you want to be there.”
Bucky swallows, and tries to think about what feels wrong in his gut about this, aside from the obvious, aside from the way that a gun in his hand still feels more natural and more unnatural than anything else, all at once.
“Steve never asked you,” Bucky says, and it comes out small and sad when he hadn’t meant for it to, even if that’s exactly what it is at the center of him, at his core.
Steve never asked.
“About you joining the Avengers? No,” Phil says, like it’s superfluous, like it’s a matter of course, like that doesn’t mean everything.
“No,” Phil’s eyes narrow a little, his words gaining a sharper kind of point. “Steve’s too wrapped up in the idea that he’s living on borrowed time with you, that me, or S.H.I.E.L.D., or the government, or some enemy, is going to take you from him and he won’t have anything left, because we’re a team, James,” he catches Bucky’s eyes, makes sure that he’s listening. “We are a team, and we’re more than that, even, we’re a...family, of sorts, if you want to call it that.”
“But up against you?” Phil shakes his head and smiles, though it’s not a warm sort thing; more a weary thing, an inevitable thing. “We’re not a goddamned speck on Steve Rogers’ radar.”
Bucky swallows hard, around that. Swallows hard, but cannot deny the lightness, the selfish fucking swell in his chest, to hear it said, to see it known, like that.
Steve loves him the most.
“And Cap, well, he’s got a funny way of crashing himself into large bodies of water when he thinks he’s lost you, Sergeant,” Phil adds, a little sardonic, a little stern. “So I don’t think it’s ever been a question that Steve wants you wherever he is, however he can have you,” Phil purses his lips a bit, for emphasis as he stares Bucky down: “For however long he gets.”
“Always,” Bucky croaks out. “He gets always, if he’s stupid enough to want it.”
And then some, if there’s anything more to give, to offer. Steve gets always and then some.
Phil’s smile, now, goes back to soft; goes back to warm.
“Ball’s in your court,” he leans back, casual now, demanding nothing. “And I won’t push it either way,” he promises, and Bucky believes it, coming from Phil.
“But if you’re in the market for the kind of rag-tag bunch that drinks as hard as they fight, and laughs as quick as they shoot, well,” Phil smirks. “I’ll engrave you an invitation, if you want something official,” he reaches for his drink, and Bucky makes to do the same, only to find that his own’s long gone.
Damn.
“Door’s open, either way,” Phil nods to himself, to Bucky, his approval to the point, and Bucky’s mostly just staring, trying to digest it all, to make sense of any of it, because here’s the thing: Bucky’s only ever been asked to be a part of something once. He’d made himself a part of Steve’s life, threw himself into the maelstrom that was Steven Grant without looking back; the government decided he was going to be a Sergeant. It was Steve who asked him to join the Commandos, and maybe that counted, maybe that didn’t: Bucky was already tied to that skinny kid from Brooklyn, so to ask him to follow was a bit like asking him to breathe: obvious. Necessary.
But this, what Coulson’s asking…
Phil’s smiling at him, wait, no, not at, above him, somewhere beyond him, and Bucky’s only half-turned by the time he sees their bartender approaching with a glass in hand.
“Ah, more frou-frou,” Phil slips the man a bill that looks larger than it rightly should be as the guy swaps out Bucky’s empty drink for a full one. “You should know,” Phil says as Bucky doesn’t hesitate to start enjoying the refill, “that this tab is going to set me farther back than even their best whiskey would have, with all the shit you’ve got crammed into that thing.”
Bucky grins a little, and nods down at the whiskey that Phil’s still nursing, and yeah, it started out with more fingers than Bucky thinks is probably standard, but even so.
“Where’s yours?”
Phil gives him a pointed look. “Did you not get the memo that I’m a terrible lightweight?”
Bucky laughs, remembering how much he put down for that room at the pub. “Point. Right. So,” he shrugs and extends his arm.
“Cheers,” he murmurs. “Here’s to…” And they’d said they needed new toasts, but in something like contentment, something close to hope, Bucky doesn’t know what to toast to, doesn’t know which piece of this improbable joy in him to celebrate, to raise to the universe and fucking say thank you for first.
“The future?” Phil proposes, and Bucky freezes, and Phil reads it wrong, or else; maybe Phil reads it exactly right.
“Without any agenda, Barnes,” he clarifies. “Just, a future that we might not have had “without a fateful night in Minsk.”
And that—yeah.
That is the best thing to thank the universe for.
“The future,” Bucky agrees, clinks their glasses. “Full of promise,” his grin turns sly, nostalgic: “and gravitic reverters for everyone.”
And they drink. And it’s good. It feels good.
It feels warm.
“I’d have to find a new codename,” Bucky comments idly, smacking his lips around the sugary residue left behind, and that, saying that, it’s not good, yet.
But it’s warm, too.
“Not unless you want to,” Phil shakes his head. “The Widow’s stuck.”
And Bucky’s quiet, Bucky’s struck a little dumb, and he thinks Phil sees it; thinks Phil wouldn’t say what he does next unless he knew what was running through Bucky’s head:
“Besides,” Phil tacks on; “our Patriot’s made of iron, not sunshine.” He smiles, and it’s an encouraging thing, it’s a little bit of the sunshine that Rhodes apparently forgoes.
“No one wants a summer soldier, Barnes,” Phil tells him, all undertone and real feeling. “Not with stakes like these.”
And maybe, Bucky thinks. Maybe.
Just maybe, he’s got a point.