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“My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.”
Andrew Marvell
It was the smallest change.
Steve didn’t notice it at first, focused on making sure that dinner wasn’t about to burn, that everything made it to the plate in a relatively edible condition. He dug through the lasagna—recipe found on Pinterest—cutting away the burned bits at the top to get at the steaming, gooey mess below. He gave Bucky the neatest piece, of course, arranging it just so in the middle of the plate, wiping away the dribbled sauce with a napkin before setting it on the table in front of him.
“There ya go, Buck,” he said, turning away to grab his own plate.
That’s when he saw it.
Bucky’s hand—his right hand—was on the table. Relaxed. Not clenched tightly in his lap the way it usually was.
Steve forced himself to look away, to keep bustling around, grabbing his own plate and the salad bowl, not looking over his shoulder to see if the hand was still there. He casually put everything on the table and sat down, only then glancing to see if the hand was still there.
It was.
Schooling his face into blandness (he knew he was probably failing miserably, but Bucky was staring at his plate, hair covering his eyes, so he could only hope that he hadn’t noticed Steve’s elation), Steve picked up the salad tongs and gave himself a heaping bowlful of wilted lettuce and Caesar dressing.
“Salad, Buck?”
Bucky grunted, which Steve had learned by now was a “yes,” so he filled Bucky’s bowl, too.
“Dig in,” he urged. Bucky never started eating until Steve did. Still on some level afraid he wasn’t allowed to. Bucky’s right hand—the one that had been resting, relaxed, on the table, clenched for a moment and then picked up the fork. Bucky dug into the salad, and Steve began his usual dinnertime babbling. Bucky ate in silence.
The next night, since Bucky had actually finished his lasagna, Steve decided to try another pasta dish, this one with a lemon-butter sauce. As he cooked, Bucky sat on the couch, reading some battered paperback he’d picked up somewhere. Probably the Little Free Library down on Carroll since as far as Steve could tell—and he had been paying very close attention—Bucky had yet to set foot in a store in the months he’d been back. Home. Whatever.
“ ‘s about ready, Buck,” he called as he drained the angel hair and tossed it into the saucepan. He listened as Bucky threw the book onto the couch, shuffled to the table, and plopped down heavily. The silverware clinked softly as he slid the napkin out from under the utensils to put in his lap. He’d not forgotten his table manners, anyway. Even if he had forgotten just about everything else.
Steve held his breath as he dished out the noodles, sprinkling some Parmesan on top like he’d seen the chefs on TV do. He turned around, both plates in his hand, and dared look up at the table.
The hand was there.
Elated, he put Bucky’s plate in front of him with a flourish. “There ya go, Buck. Lemon-butter angel hair.” Bucky grunted.
Undeterred, Steve sat down, put his own napkin in his lap, and picked up his fork.
“Dig in, Buck. Hope it’s good.”
Steve twirled the pasta on the fork and shoved a huge bite in his mouth. He started to chew and then suddenly—stopped. Sour. So sour, like he’d bitten into a lemon, like the essence of lemon itself had invaded his mouth and attached its lemony suckers to his poor, helpless tongue. His lips puckered and he almost spit it out, but he chewed furiously, trying to get the foul stuff down his throat as quickly as possible.
“Buck,” he said, mouth still full, “Don’t—it’s—”
As he grabbed his water, gulping frantically, he saw that Bucky had a fork in his hand. An empty fork.
Swallowing, Steve looked at Bucky’s face. His eyes were looking at Steve. He was looking at Steve.
Steve’s heart thumped—it had been days since he’d seen Bucky’s eyes, and that only when Steve had startled Bucky by coming home early from his run (sometimes a guy had to use the facilities and didn’t want to do so in a public restroom, thank you very much). Bucky had been on the couch, reading, but at the unexpected intrusion, he’d looked up just as Steve stumbled his sweaty way into the apartment. His gray eyes were surprised, wary—but not, thankfully, frightened, the way they’d been all those months ago when he’d come home. Back. Whatever.
Now, his eyes were startled, and—was that a smile? Steve glanced at Bucky’s lips, glistening with the sauce and also clearly hiding a giant mouthful of the most lemony lemon sauce anyone had ever managed to cook, surely in this century anyway.
“Buck,” gulped Steve, the burn still on his tongue. “God—it’s awful. Spit it out, I don’t care. I’m so sorry—I must’ve misread the recipe.”
Bucky just stared at him, chewing slowly. Almost rhythmically. “Buck, I’m serious,” said Steve, reaching out instinctively toward Bucky’s hand, which was still holding the fork in mid-air. “It’s gross.” He realized his hand was only a couple of inches from Bucky’s and he awkwardly pulled it back to his side of the table.
Bucky finished chewing and swallowed. He was still looking at Steve. “That—“ he said, voice rough and gravelly.
Steve’s breath caught in his throat. It was almost too much. Bucky was talking. He was talking. The only words he’d said in the past four months were on the night he’d come back. Home. He’d been sitting in the apartment then, huddled in the dark corner. Steve had finally listened to Sam only about six weeks before...they had decided to take a “hiatus,” as Sam put it, from their search for the Winter Soldier. That night, Steve had returned from some stupid task force meeting, talking heads endlessly bickering about what to do now that SHIELD had collapsed, who was going to fill the vacuum, whether or not to prosecute...Steve, still feeling like he ought to be out there, somewhere, looking for Bucky, tuned out halfway through. He was there only because Nat had asked him to go. “They need some kind of continuity, Steve. If you’re there, it shows that whatever mess comes out of it is still somehow on the side of good.” He hadn’t been back since, of course. More important things had come up.
Bucky had been huddled in the corner, arms around his knees, hair in his face. Steve had turned on the light and screamed several octaves higher than he ought to have—the old Bucky would’ve given him hell about that, too—but as it was, this new Bucky had just looked at him with those wide eyes and half-whispered, “I’m done running now.”
Steve had gawped at him for a moment, unable to process. Bucky was here. Now. Home. Back from killing Hydra goons or hiding in the shadows or whatever it was he’d been doing. (A bit of both, he found out much later.) And that was it. Four months since then, and the only sounds Bucky had made were grunts whenever Steve spoke to him directly. Well, and screams on those nights when he managed to sleep. But those didn’t count since they weren’t voluntary.
Now, as Steve stared at his mouth, still wet and saucy, Bucky spoke.
“That was maybe the worst thing I’ve ever tasted.” His voice was wrecked, broken from the regular screaming and (according to the Winter Soldier files) the permanent scarring he’d endured from having tubes shoved down his throat for over half a century. The serum couldn’t heal that much damage, apparently—the shitty version Hydra had given him, anyway. Steve tried to hold it together, though he could feel tears threatening to make an appearance. Bucky was talking!
“Yeah?” Steve countered, desperately aiming for a light tone. “Well, maybe next time you should do the cooking.”
Bucky huffed and looked back down at his plate. “Yeah, maybe,” he rumbled. He licked his lips and only then seemed to realize that he was still holding his fork, so he put it down on the plate. Steve watched to see what he’d do with his hand. His heart dropped as Bucky started to draw it down into his lap, fingers closing into a tight clench...but then he seemed to think better of it. He brought it back up and onto the table, fingers slowly relaxing.
Steve had first noticed the clenching a few days after Bucky had returned. Any time Steve was near him, he held his hand by his thigh, hard in a fist. When Steve sat too near him on the couch, or when he brushed by him in the hallway, the fist would slowly tighten until Bucky’s knuckles were white with tension.
That had broken him for a while—two days spent in his room, alternately crying and sticking his head out to check on Bucky, to make sure he hadn’t decided to bolt. “He doesn’t even want to be near me,” he’d wailed to Sam one night on the phone after Bucky had gone into his room. He figured he had a couple of hours before the nightmares started and he would hover helplessly outside Bucky’s door until the whimpering stopped.
“He hasn’t been near anybody in 70 years, Steve. Not anyone who didn’t mean him harm. It’s only been a few days. And you don’t even know how much he remembers about you.” Steve had tried to take that to heart, to not feel rejected every time he got too close and the fist would make an appearance. He had to take it slowly, he knew. Don’t expect too much.
Sam had warned him that this was going to be the most difficult part of Bucky’s recovery—learning to trust someone. (“Honestly, man, he belongs in therapy. Like, intense, in-patient therapy, but that’s not gonna fly for obvious reasons. So looks like you’re it. His conduit back to something like a normal life. You sure you’re up for that? ‘Cause we’re talking maybe years here until he is walking and talking like your average non-brainwashed assassin, if it’s even possible.” Steve had taken a while to process that but of course was all in, no matter how hard it would be. It was Bucky.)
Now, thinking back to Sam’s warning, he realized that Sam had been right (of course). Bucky would make progress, but it was going to be painfully slow. Steve just had to have patience. This was not a quality he was known to possess in great quantities. But for Bucky—whoever he was now, whatever Steve might one day mean to him—he would work to make sure that patience was his biggest virtue.
Now, with a forced chuckle, he tried to keep the mood going. “Sorry, Buck. It said a cup of lemon juice. Or I guess I thought it did. What an idiot, huh?” Without thinking, Steve reached his hand out. It hovered over Bucky’s for a moment, almost asking permission. Bucky’s hand flinched but then slowly relaxed again. Steve carefully, so carefully, touched Bucky’s fingers, holding them briefly before releasing them. So warm.
“Yeah,” muttered Bucky, eyes peeking through the curtain of hair to look Steve straight in the eye. One corner of his mouth moved into a tiny smirk. “A real jerk.”
Steve’s tears could wait no more; a few escaped and made their way down his face. He grabbed his napkin and made a show of wiping his mouth, his face, desperately hoping that Bucky wouldn’t notice. He glanced up to see Bucky still staring at him, though, hand still on the table. His gray eyes darted to his hand, then back at Steve. Steve raised his eyebrows at Bucky and then, slowly, reached his hand back out. His fingers brushed Bucky’s before resting gently on his palm. So warm.
Bucky’s fingers twitched over Steve’s palm. It was everything.
They held hands until the pizza arrived.