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Bucky heaves himself onto a coal train leaving Minsk - fucking finally - and promptly engages with one of the four cold hamburgers he was saving from the general store by the station. The beauty of the slavs; get your gas and your burgers for eighteen ruble. Want a casserole in a bag? You got it, pal. Here’s a carabiner pack gratis. Too bad the non-passenger trains run on the delightful schedule of when-the-fuck-ever, when Bucky could have been digging into his Polish jerky a hundred miles closer to Odessa at this point. The last five hours were spent waiting for one coal train to pass, slinking between tracks on the end of the platform to avoid drivers on their breaks and the local gopniks.
Not that Bucky has any qualms with gopniks. They get a bad rep if anything. He’s happy to let them bum his cigarettes for some sunflower seeds to nibble on and directions to the best cheap kebab place, spasibo bratan.
However, minus two degrees isn’t agreeable with Bucky’s latest skincare regimen, which was impossible to pack in with his thirty pound gear and Mikado sticks, and he’d rather be well on his way to getting back stateside later this week. He calculates the time until the next pedestrian bridge and pulls down his mask and goggles to stare out at the overcast sky, keenly aware of the cold biting into his stubbled cheeks as he lights a smoke. The train won’t pick up speed until he’s out of the city so the sea of Soviet-built blocks and local superstores lazily rolls by. Syerabranka... Lošyca... Sienica. There's no lockdown imposed so he can distantly hear the normal hum of traffic and shouting as the train meanders through the grittier suburbs. On the exhale he squints at the neighbourhood he was stationed in during the nineties, wonders if sleeper agent Milenka is a babushka there now. It looks all the same
Later, still cruising at a cursed speed of thirty an hour, Bucky slumps against the freight wall and considers the merits of taking Yuri’s old cessna after all. Unlike Steve, Bucky has not yet been granted government-certified human GMO status, no ma’am he will not kill your crops and shoot your uncle. Bucky, likewise, cannot contract or pass viruses but would have to get an identity and papers and go into quarantine instead of taking the route directly to their kingsize bed. That would be another two and a half weeks, he thinks grouchily. Yuri was the least terrible asshole of the Soviets, and probably won’t begrudge him for the solid knockout Bucky gave him after they finished their beers. Especially after Bucky very lightly compromised the contents of Yuri’s bottle as he showed off his thumb trick. Nothing compared to Adrian’s fate, the two-faced prick. Romanov won’t even blame him for doing it. An old cessna is an old cessna, though, and the thing hadn’t been maintained since 2011, according to Yuri’s pilfered log books. A downed blip of an aircraft in the Atlantic is a more cumbersome situation than sitting hours on end on a heap of coal or a ship, Bucky decides, and proceeds onto burger number three as the train slowly creeps out of the city.
After eleven hours and a freight change, flipping off some jerks on a platform bridge who pointed down at his nest of frosted-over wood and kabanosy, the waves of Black Sea gently lap against his boots as he squints into the late sunset on the deserted tourist beach, stretching out. Before the Atlantic and the promise of some good fucking bagels beyond it, though, is a side-trip to the last of prick Adrian’s many residences serving as a healthy Architectural Digest-level property asset. It’s currently rented as a vacation house to a young artsy couple from France, one of which, according to her Instagram account is an influencer currently eating free mussels at the Kotelok bar, which is only taking private reservations at the moment. Bucky scowls as he chews off another piece of his kabanosy, tapping through the rest of the story. Seventeen minutes ago, her undercover Hydra husband gave her a cheeky grin over a wine glass and aperitifs. The house is a thirty minute drive away from the bar, which gives Bucky maybe two hours for a thirty minute job. He takes his airpods out.
Being undercover in market research allowed the Hydra-husband and half a dozen other assholes to bypass Hydragate and hightail it out of western Europe and the States. Three of them even survived the snap and carried on uninterrrupted. Bucky eyes the blueprints of the house, and the personel profiles. Being that bland does not explain heavy security without a few raised brows, or the stolen art either. Sloppy. Greedy. There is an art to playing the role, living from respectable but-not-too-grand villas, pretty wife on the arm and investing in Amazon, not schmoozing oligarchs at art auctions.
Bucky briefly thinks about Rudolf Abel as he walks to the van with his gear. That guy was a snore. Alias Emil Goldfus, alias Willie Fischer, alias Andrew Kayotis, greatest admin soldier turned Soviet spy caught and exchanged after fifty years of service. What’d he even do other than plant a few microfilms on park benches? Bucky rolls his eyes, buys an iced-coffee and walks the beach to the cliff under the house, cherry-print backpack with a mic for each room slung on one shoulder. Rudolf Abel never shot down a U2, and generic Hydra-husband certainly didn’t see the Black Widow coming.
All Romanov wants is standard surveillance, and only because Bucky happens to be in the very general area of Europe blowing up the last of fascist strongholds, re-distributing their gold-value and minding his own meltdowns over some pretty amazing pierogi dishes in between. Something also about the States grounding almost all air-travel and deeming all non-essential Avengers, Bucky included, sightings in a world on lockdown as potential political war-fare. Secretly, he’s pretty sure that she just doesn’t want to leave her living room, seeing as in their video call she was wearing a baby pink Adidas suit and drinking kombucha, no doubt tracking down the rest of the sleeper agents on her laptop. It’s an easy op and he owes her a lot more, but the countdown to arrival in New York is postponed by six days.
Which, fair enough, is what happens when a global pandemic shuts down vacation plans in Bali with your boyfriend after he finishes off an op in Peru and you quickly schlep around the old Soviet bloc under a provisional hush-hush deal. All overseen by a freshly pissed-off Steve Rogers still coming down from time-travel and un-fucking the world endorphins, dragging a semi-lucid Tony Stark and scowling Natasha in tow. It’s like Insight again, except this time the government isn’t even bothering to put up a fight about Bucky anymore since they have a couple million returned residents to re-integrate. If anything, they’d thrown their hands up at Steve before he could step on their bullshit. Dark shadows under his eyes or not.
Funny how he spots two more tails anyway. Bureaucracy being what it is and the clusterfuck with Zemo not being a topic many governments want to dredge up right now, or ever, Bucky remains on a lot of international lists. Situation normal. He takes a selfie with his frap, tongue curled around the straw, making sure to obnoxiously frame both of the agents behind him just to see them squirm, and sends it to the group chat.
Birdman 1 @ xoxo people I tolerate, 17:08: how did you even get starbucks? bring back a bag of sumatra and ill never make fun of your bean chair again
Widow @ xoxo people I tolerate, 17:14: webm67582020.rar ukraine/russia CIA roster, tell morris hi
Widow changed the group name to classy, bougie, ratchet.
Steve doesn’t respond until later, which doesn’t surprise Bucky. Steve doesn’t look at his phone much unless one or both of them are deployed somewhere. He considers the time-zone and figures they’re all in the Peru debrief that Steve is leading, tense but with cuts healed and his face relaxed. He’s very good at that, acting on an autopilot - easily rolling out objectives and arguing risk stratification scenarios when the man himself has already checked-out without anyone noticing.
Bucky is finishing up clearing any traces of his presence when his airpods momentarily pause his playlist with an incoming call. Only Natasha and Steve have this burner number so he double taps his left ear.
“Did you know you can get boozy ice-cream a few blocks from the tower?” Steve says as the secure line connects. Bucky can distinctly hear the sounds of keys and the echo of footsteps as Steve walks through what must be a basement car park.
Bucky does know about the place, although Steve’s definition of a few blocks is crossing to downtown Manhattan in three minutes flat on the bike. “I swear to god if you say you want --”
Steve’s lips must twitch, the annoying bastard, because he sounds like he’s smirking. “Vanilla sounds good, yeah.” Bucky’s eyes are already rolling, because you can trust one of the least-vanilla people Bucky’s ever met to want the least adventurous flavour from a booze place that sells cake batter vodka martinis floats as a basic flavour combo.
Bucky doesn’t engage this time, he has ammo for later. He considers his options and says, “Dark chocolate whiskey salted caramel, please.”
“You got it,” Steve says, and sounds like he’s about to say something else. He doesn’t, and Bucky can hear kickstand slamming up. He’s aware that the debrief must have just finished, and it doesn’t sound like Wilson and Natasha are trailing along to decompress together. Sometimes a group op ends up being the kind where everyone just wants to silently slip away and stew for a while, even though the mission objective was achieved. Steve is also very good at this. He’s become much more stony with his communication skills and Bucky usually has to either wait it out until he’s ready or bully him into talking. Bothering Bucky about his terrible dessert choices is a step in the right direction. They stay on the line like that for a while, like they usually do when they’re too far away. Bucky slips out the house and looks at the dark water, gentle waves endlessly stretching to Turkey in the south, and wonders if Steve can hear it on his end.
He’s technically meant to be in Odessa for three more nights, tracing the rent payments to whichever bullshit account controls the other safehouses in the area, and bug those too. It’s basically the equivalent of admin for him, because he’s not "formally cleared" to engage any agents. But Steve still hasn't said anything, meaning he's in his own head again, and that's as just as much an idiotic place to be as this ridiculous house. “I don’t trust you not to eat all of mine. I’m getting the next ride out. ” Morris and his partner can finish up here since they’ve made the effort to keep an eye on Bucky. He mentally flips them off again, and moves to the next house while he has time until his next train.
Bucky doesn’t tend to join the major Avengers ops. He tells Steve that he draws the line at opsec being compromised by whoever pisses off Banner first or whenever there is an eventual security breach at SI but truth be told -
I'm a savage.
He fires four times with a tranq behind him, not bothering to look at the figures hitting the floor as he ghosts through the house. He figures the CIA are worst so they can deal with clean-up duty, too.
- truth be told, Bucky's expertise lies in black-ops and minding his own damn business. He's not interested in any accords and is almost constantly at a very strained stalemate with the governement, which means that his presence at conferences is a little awkward. Although, he’s a lot more press-friendly after his contribution to the alien beatdown of 2023, as well as the paparazzi backside shot of him in compression leggings and a dollar-slice, scowling at the guy behind his blue Lennon glasses (which remains Steve’s homescreen wallpaper to this day).
Steve, 18:04: 🔥💦
He's probably sat down long enough to read his messages. It’s a private reply to the earlier photo, because Steve is the polar opposite of anyone their biological age and prefers to call but has learned a thing or two from Bucky’s furious subtweeting. Bucky grins, thinking ahead to the silk bathrobe in his hotel room.
Sassy, moody, nasty.
Air freight security checks are more anal than usual, and flying commercial is its own kind of hellscape, so Bucky foregoes the airports and heads towards Lisbon’s port with eight hundred euros. The dough is more of an afterthought. If his super sneaking gives way to some kerfuffle or another, he really doesn’t want to shoot someone on a ship. He finds a nook that is mostly obscured from view in the hull, takes a brief nap and on his recon finds a room strewn with random articles of clothing. He gives them a once-over and drops them, a little grossed out, finding a giant parka with fluorescent lines down the sides to don instead. Coupled with a beanie, his boots and leather gloves, he may as well be outside fixing the ship’s light fixtures. Or something. Bucky doesn’t really know what happens on cargo ships. Other than that one ASMR video he watched of a GoPro strapped to the cabin as it made its way to Singapore through monsoons and star-filled nights. He knows he looks like the cutest fisherman sailing from Portugal and snaps a selfie as evidence, knowing that even whatever secure phone he has won’t catch a signal.
He stands in the belly of the freight, three days from American soil and feels a strange sense of longing. He creeps up to the deck and finds that it’s already nightfall, the soft glow of Lisbon probably only perceivable to his eyes. He looks up, fishing his phone out of his battered combats. He wants Steve to see it, or be with him as the endless night sky stretches over them, unlike anything they’d ever see in the entire state of New York. Just two stupid secret romantics that the world thoroughly fucked over. What’s that song -- about blinding lights. The most he ever saw was from the Russian tundra, stars almost a suffocating mass in the unknown. That exhilaration of witnessing a million points in the darkness and colours that go on and on and all you hear is the water passing or whatever happens on a mountain at night. But the camera doesn’t do the Atlantic sky justice, and he pockets it. He hums the song into the dark as he feels the ship rock.
A couple nights on it feels like more of a stretch than the weeks circling Europe, although cargo ship kitchens are definitely an upgrade from vacuum-sealed goulash. Or maybe he misses watching random shit on YouTube, and the way Steve would lightly card his dumb hands through his hair when he dived into a deep binge on hydroponic gardening and then blink at a glass of brown slush and cream waving in front of him, which was Steve’s best homemade attempt at his favourite frappucino. He’s definitely ready to fight about the best way to Stark tower by subway, or why the Yankees won the last game, or where Brooklyn’s old neighbourhood boundaries lay, if only to rile Steve up into pinning him on the couch.
He docks stateside without incident, and blearily slips out in crew uniform with a coffee swiped from the kitchen. When he’s looping around Queens and down Long Island to Brooklyn, his phone buzzes.
Steve, 06:23: Starbucks or Joe's Juice?
Bucky narrows his eyes. Because Steve is the worst and knows exactly how addicted Bucky is to both overpriced establishments but refuses to admit it. As all army grunts will shorten every sentence possible, preferably to acronyms, the one with eidetic memory infuriatingly calls it Joe's Juice because What’s the difference, Buck? It’s a long name for fruit juice. He doesn’t even understand the palettes. He says beetroot juice is hipster borscht, although he damn well remembers the moms of the Polish kids from their old block hunting for it in winter if they couldn't make it from scratch. He’d once handed Bucky a strawberry, orange and peanut butter smoothie, pressing a kiss to Bucky’s cheek and stepping back with something that looked too much like a challenge to be genuine doting.
Steve also pretends he isn’t fluent in four languages, so he can passive-aggressively catch out smartasses at UN summits, or sling his arm around Bucky so they can secretly make fun of Manhattan transplants when they sometimes brave Central Park. He hardly checks his messages unless his phone’s screaming or Bucky wants a poke bowl lunch, and when he responds to the group chat it’s almost always to ask how to swipe a metrocard or anything equally banal to make Wilson will throw a fit. Yet, to everyone’s surprise he easily accepted his fate as back-up dancer to Bucky and Natasha’s Blinding Lights tiktok, straight-faced through the entire ninety-second choreography with Sam and an over-caffeinated Clint in the background. Steve Rogers is the ultimate human shit-poster, and Bucky loves him.
Bucky knows Steve’s fucking with him. Just because he downed that first homemade frappuccino, coffee grit grinding mixing with semi-cold watery milk, while Steve looked on with a straight face as Bucky refused to allow even the slightest wince. Mind games. But that’s okay because Steve claims to eat anything - food is food, what would your Ma think, Barnes? - so Bucky took it upon himself to bring back a couple of tasteful souvenirs from Belarus and Poland because, gosh, he sure does know how much a supersoldier’s gotta eat. He’ll even pat Steve's belly and present it all cutesy with a glass of OJ.
Bucky, 06:31: how do you feel about pickled eels for breakfast
Because Steve is a liar and absolutely refuses to eat or be near any food that came from water. Not even Natasha or Wilson know this because Steve only eats the sushi they sometimes bring for lunch because he knows Bucky is staring into the very essence of his soul from his (amazing) teal beanie chair from Anthropologie.
Steve, 06:35: We’ll eat it on the beanie bag.
Shots fucking fired.
When Bucky scales down the roof and climbs through their bedroom window, swinging the bag with the eel jar in first to immediately serve inside the shield, he pauses. Alpine, their latest security investment doesn’t immediately come yowling at him before his feet even hit the ground. Which likely means-
Steve is curled up on the couch in the living room, the mid-morning sun streaming in through the half-open blinds. His phone and a half empty glass of water are on the table, and the TV is off. There’s a small stack of reports slightly disturbed by the breeze. Alpine is curled around Steve’s neck and awake, sniffing and blinking owlishly at Bucky in the way that means she’s about to change her mind about the distance strictly required between her and the food bowl now that there’s an awake human around. He rubs her cheek and murmurs, “Hey, koshechka,” and then even more quietly, “Steve.” His brow twitches and he stirs a little. Bucky silently shucks off the rest of his gear and heads toward the bathroom cabinet. They don’t have much past a first aid kit and tylenol for guests. Everything that has any effect on them is helpfully labelled, a variation of “SUPERPILLS NORMAL PEOPLE NEED NOT INGEST” with too many stickers of red exclamation points in triangles above the actual name of the medication.
Bucky comes back with a half-full bottle of Dr Banner’s “SUPERSOLDIER ASPIRIN BASICALLY” that Bucky occasionally takes. A soft, “Buck?” whispers from the couch, and Bucky lightly brushes Steve’s hair, longer from waiting for Bucky to return and trim it, from his face before going to re-fill the glass. Their suitcases are still standing in the hallway. Bucky gives them a longing look, thinking about a far away place with no debriefs, politians or swamp monsters in the jungle.
“I’m okay. How bad?” Bucky says as he balances himself on the couch edge, unscrewing the bottle cap and tilting it. Steve looks at it and scrunches his face, “Steve.” He looks pale and tired. There's a fading scratch along his neck. A couple of world-saving rounds, specifically those with repetitive short-range cosmic blasts near hypersensitive retinas, and decades of time-travel will take a toll on a guy, even on Steve it’s-just-a-headache Rogers. Which is incorrect because all the fancy tests Banner and Cho came up with pointed to acute migraines, and there’s a major difference no matter what Steve tries to tell everyone. Nothing that can’t be managed with rest and supersoldier-titrated metoclopramide, except that “managed” and “rest” aren’t on Steve’s usual daily repertoire unless he’s physically crashing. At least he’s on the couch this time, lips curving as he squints up at Bucky.
“Missed you." Charmer. "You look terrible, babe.”
Bucky stares him down. “You’re not fooling anyone, pal. Just one?” He wriggles the bottle with a raised brow, and it’s a pretty good testament to how bad it is when Steve sighs, sits up and reluctantly takes it. He swallows all of the water down before Bucky starts on him with a hydration rant again and is smiling happily at Bucky when he finishes, like he knew the lecture was coming, as if the pill did its job in the three seconds after Steve took it. He absentmindedly smoothes a hand around Bucky's flank. Bucky, keenly aware he’s more than a little gross and sweaty in the clothes he arrived in the country in, looks down at his boots instead because it’s been two weeks. Ukraine is mostly muddy-ice, he hasn’t slept more than three hours at a time and illegal ship-surfing is really not a joy ride when all you think about is star-gazing with this idiot --
“Hey.” And then Steve is threading his hand with Bucky’s and gently tugging him close. Bucky sighs theatrically and lets himself be pulled into the familiar warmth, closing his eyes. He dangles his arm to pat an apology to the displaced Alpine, his position a little awkward fully slumped against Steve.
“Ukrainian starbucks is worse than yours.” Bucky informs him. Steve doesn’t miss a beat.
“They don’t do iced cloud macchiatos?” And Bucky whips his head up to glare at him again because yes, Ukrainian starbucks is lacking in their range and that’s been an experience all over semi-locked down Europe but Steve has no business in knowing that. Alpine yeowls. Steve just grins and presses an awkward kiss on the corner of his mouth, almost all traces of the migraine gone but the slight squint when things are a little too bright. “I’m really glad you’re home, Buck.” And Bucky swallows because he’s ready to wrap himself this man like a baby sloth for fifteen hours straight but first, priorities. He twists so he's half-straddling Steve, careful not to brush his shoes on the cushions.
“Game plan. You’re going to give Alpine her snacks while I put these clothes in the burn pile,” he tells him as he unties his hair. He then adds, licking his lips and looking pointedly at Steve, “and you and I are going to take a really long, relaxing shower.”
He can feel Steve’s reaction but he breathes out a soft "yeah" anyway, eyes darkened. The hands on his waist smooth down to his ass as Steve nuzzles his head, lips tracing lightly under his ear. His beard very lightly brushes against Bucky's jaw. He smells like coffee and laundry powder.
He quickly gets stripping.
Bucky’s sleep pattern is thoroughly fucked when he wakes up in the evening. Steve, more exhausted than he let on despite the two solid rounds they had after the shower, has matched him and only lightly protests when Bucky wriggles out from under him and finds a fresh pair of Calvin Kleins. He pads out to the kitchen to refill their horrible glitter pug-life matching sports bottles, courtesy of Natasha, and pauses at the empty eel jar on the floor.
He stares at the splattered trail of fish juice, dimly recalling where the boho rugs Steve found at a market are placed around the apartment. Alpine stares at Bucky expectantly for a second, leg up in the air, in middle of her post-meal cleaning regime. One discarded eel slips off the meticulously kept cotton of the bean chair. She ignores him in favour of her butt, her purring revving up a couple notches. Bucky's eye twitches, vaguely imagining the universe - or rather, three specific individuals, one of them snoring in the bedroom - cackling at him.
He does a risk assessment. Alpine’s fine, and the compromised beanie cover is to be burned. He mentally notes the etsy page with a promo on the neon pink sets.
The vinegary smell from the container is highly unacceptable, though. Bucky neatly covers the jar with the shield to prevent Alpine getting to it, but really so Steve can pick it up later, and digs out the flaczki jar.
He pairs it with artichoke beer.
.