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Like his mother before him, Steve Rogers is a witch.
Sarah Rogers was a once-in-a-lifetime talent. She could heal almost any injury, cast just about any spell, whip up potions of immense power, and do it all while working as a nurse and raising her son by herself. She was a curse-breaker, righting the kind of damage a witch who’d given in to the temptation to use their powers for personal gain could leave, righting the wrongs done by fairy tales gone awry. People came from all over the country and beyond to ask for her help, and brought to them if, say, their daughter was stuck spitting toads or gemstones every time she spoke, or their youngest son was being haunted by a vengeful koschei. While she was alive, she taught him so much—not everything she knew, but certainly a great deal of it. Enough for him to call himself a witch too.
Unlike Sarah, Steve is not a terribly good witch. His mother had a talent that was vast in scope. She was good at nearly everything she tried, picking up new skills with ridiculous ease. Steve—Steve is not the same way. Steve is solely good at kitchen magic. The long, complicated potions that his mother had loved to concoct inevitably end up spoiled when he tries to make them, but he can bake healing into apple muffins, find lost items with a tarte tatin, bolster magical protections with a ceviche. He had once cured a werewolf's silver poisoning with a hastily-scrambled egg.
Sarah had told him to lean into his strengths, and not long for something that he didn't have, but he can't help trying. She's gone—lost to a cancer she couldn't heal—and Steve sometimes feels like the only way he'll fill the ache in his chest is by trying to live up to her legacy.
So he's gone and gotten himself a familiar.
(And if his apartment has felt far too big for one person for too long? If there's too much room now that his mother's gone? And if sometimes the silence of not another living soul in the walls but himself makes him want to scream a little bit? He'll say nothing of it. The fact that the familiar will be another presence in these empty rooms is hardly worth noting, and definitely wasn't half the reason he did it anyway.)
His familiar is a compact, incredibly fluffy, silky-furred white cat. Her eyes are blue, like his, although a slightly deeper shade, without a hint of green. He cast the spell as he was supposed to, lit the incense, and then for good measure, (and because he was hopeful) he baked a loaf of sourdough bread with all his hopes and intentions for a loving companion sealed into the crust, and waited. She had come within a day, a soft tap-tapping at his window before he opened it and she sauntered in. He hadn't known what kind of familiar would come to him—no witch ever does when they call them—but if he had allowed himself to hope for anything specific, he would've hoped for a companion like her.
There's just one problem: his new familiar doesn't seem to like him very much. The moment when she had walked into his apartment and acknowledged him had been magical. She'd come in and butted her head against him and magic had flared around him both, and he had felt her warmth and care…
...but then the magic had settled back away from them both, and he had expected—he doesn't know what. Something more.
She's not around the way he thought she would be, for starters. He leaves the window open, of course; she's a familiar, not an ordinary cat, so trapping her in the apartment would be cruel, not responsible pet ownership. She comes and goes, and she seems to have zero interest when he tentatively tries to show her a spell he’s working on. The only time she really seems intrigued is when he's cooking. He wakes up sometimes with her curled next to him on his pillow, but for most of the day, she's gone.
He doesn't know what he's doing wrong. She's his familiar—she chose him. But now that she has him, she doesn't really seem to want to have much to do with him. It's ridiculous to feel sad and rejected because of a cat, even a familiar, and yet—he does.
Where does she go? What's she doing when she's not with him?
It's only been a week, he thinks; maybe it'll be better when they know each other a little better. But how can they get to know each other better if she's never here? She hasn't even told him her name yet.
It's in this dispiriting mood that Steve realizes it's nearly dinner time, and while his familiar hasn't deigned to spend much time with him, she's never missed a meal. He wants to think this is at least in part due to his cooking; he's not feeding her cat food, but cooking for her, and, well, he isn't casting spells on the food he makes for her, but he knows it's likely that a little bit of his wish that she like him has probably seeped into the seared tuna and roasted chicken he's made for her. He slices up the shrimp he's made for both of them into her dish, calls her as best he can a cat with no name, and when she doesn't come to his call, he can feel worry spreading through him like ink blooming in water.
He doesn't know what he's done to upset her, but then the thought strikes him: what if something's happened to her? She's a familiar, yes, but she's shaped like a small and fluffy cat, and the world is often unkind to small and fluffy cats. He tries to tell himself that she's magical, and she has resources that he can't imagine, but he just gets more and more worked up and nervous the more he thinks about the things that could've happened to her as the minutes ticked by and she doesn't show up. The shrimp has been cooling on the counter for fifteen minutes when he can't take it any longer. He tosses on his jacket and runs out the door, scooping up his keys as he runs. He's worried enough that he uses a little tick of magic to open the window, and it doesn't even give him any trouble. If she comes back, she should be able to get in.
Steve's building is a block of old apartments, all of them with wrought-iron fire escapes; it's very cat friendly, and his familiar really could be just about anywhere. He spends an increasingly desperate hour combing through the alleyways around his building, making a stupid catcalling noise —pspspspsps— because she hasn't even told him her name. He feels hurt and miserable, and like a terrible witch, who's let something awful happen to his familiar before she's even been with him a week.
It starts raining, of course.
He wraps his jacket tighter around him and keeps looking for a little bit longer, but it's dark, and he's soaked, and he crosses his fingers and hopes with all his heart that she's curled up next to the radiator, warm and dry and waiting for him.
He starts making his way back to his apartment. The elevator's broken, so he drips his way up the stairwell to the fifth floor. If she's not in his apartment when he gets there, he thinks he might cry. He doesn't want to, but his misery is a hot, heavy knot in his chest, and it has its hooks in his throat.
His hands are shaking with cold as he fishes his key out of his pocket and jams it in the door. The keys on his key ring jingle, and it takes him a couple of tries to line up the key with the lock.
He hears the door next to his open. Great. His extremely hot neighbor moved in just over a month ago, and Steve had only seen him one time since, but he'd made quite an impression. He's taller than Steve, but then again, just about everyone is. He's bulkier than Steve, too, but again, that's hardly an accomplishment in most cases. It is in his—Steve's hot neighbor looks like he spends all day, every day at the gym. His muscles have muscles, and he's built like the proverbial brick shithouse. Which, now that Steve comes to think about it, is not a very sexy comparison, but Steve's neighbor—Steve's neighbor is extremely sexy. As established, he's tall and built, but that doesn't even begin to touch on how square his jaw is, or how blue his eyes are, or the height of his cheekbones, or the fullness of his lips. All his features are extremely attractive, but then put together, they’re somehow even more attractive, like some Voltron of sexiness out to completely destroy Steve. And those muscles aren't just gym bro muscles—Steve had watched him move most of his furniture in by himself, and the word functional strength was made for this man.
When Steve's seen him, he's seemed quietly competent and devastatingly handsome, and now, when Steve is cold and wet and feeling like complete shit, here he is.
And, Steve notices, with a hot feeling like betrayal catching in his throat, he's holding Steve's cat.
"Oh, hey," hot neighbor says. Steve's familiar is cuddled up in the crook of his elbow, purring loudly. "Is this your cat? She came into my window. She must've been exploring the fire escape." He bends down to look at the cat, stroking a gentle finger along the line of her jaw. She purrs louder, the traitor. On the other hand, if hot neighbor was petting his chin, Steve would probably purr too.
He clears his throat. "Thanks for bringing her to me. I started to get worried when she missed dinner."
"Are you hungry? Are you a hungry girl?" Hot neighbor croons to the cat. The cat shoots Steve a look as if to say, yes. Yes, I am a hungry girl. Steve is not a hungry girl, but he could certainly make a convincing argument for his thirst right about now.
"Do you want to come in?" Steve asks cautiously. "I was just making dinner—there's enough for all three of us, if you want it. I'm Steve, by the way."
"Bucky." Hot neighbor blushes red, and looks down at the hand holding the cat. "Ah, no, I couldn't. Thank you though." He hands the cat back to Steve with obvious reluctance, not seeming to care about the fine patina of little white hairs left over his dark green sweater.
Steve takes her, and she doesn't stop purring, but all four sets of the tiny knives she calls claws dig into his chest. She gives him a quick, intense look that he can't interpret.
"Are you sure you can't come in for a drink, at least?" Steve asks. "I was losing my mind with worry. I'm really grateful.
"If you're sure." Bucky jams his hands in his pockets, and there's such an aura of uncertainty coming off of him that Steve would think he's never been invited to someone's apartment before. Maybe he's afraid that Steve's some kind of serial killer or something, but he's got at least half a foot and fifty pounds on Steve, and he's not wet and shivering, so Steve's pretty sure he could take him if he's worried.
He gets the door unlocked finally with the cat still digging her feet into his sternum, and invites his hot neighbor in. The apartment smells like shrimp and butter and garlic, and the batard Steve just pulled out of the oven to cool before he left to go look for his cat.
The shrimp is now unavoidably cold, but the bread won't suffer from being room temperature. The cat jumps out of Steve's arms, and winds around his legs, purring aggressively. His heart melts, despite his earlier irritation. Maybe she's coming around.
"What can I get you to drink?" Steve asks.
"Do you have any tea?" Bucky runs his right hand through his hair, and Steve turns away to hide how hopelessly charmed he is.
Steve rummages in his cupboards and pulls out an assortment of practically every kind of tea one could want: green tea, black tea, herbal tisanes, caf and decaf and nearly any flavor one could possibly want. It's possible he has a bit of a tea problem.
Bucky's eyes go wide, and he smiles as he roots through the teabags until he finds one he wants. Steve doesn't even feel embarrassed; having the right kind of tea to go with his food is very important. He hasn't even broken out the loose leaf.
And in fact, he does have some coffee cake he made a few days prior. He cuts them both a slice, ignoring Bucky's weak and half-hearted protest. The cat stops trying to trip him and goes to her bowl, unbothered by the cold shrimp.
Steve gets the kettle going, only cheating to speed the water along the tiniest little bit. Before too long, they both have hot tea and a thick slice of buttery, cinnamon-y coffee cake in front of them.
"This is delicious," Bucky says, his eyebrows rising up. "Where did you get it?"
Steve can feel the blush running up his face. "I made it," he says, keeping his gaze on his plate.
"That's incredible," Bucky says, grabbing another forkful. "Where'd you learn to bake like that?"
"Oh, you know. I picked it up," Steve says. And then he swallows hard. "Mostly, my mom taught me."
Maybe his voice catches in his throat, or maybe Bucky sees something on his face. Either way, he takes another bite, and then says, "So… What's your cat's name?"
Steve laughs, relieved to accept the subject change. "I don't know," he says.
"You don't know?" Bucky sounds just a little incredulous, though not enough to be rude, and Steve knows it's weird.
"I've only had her a week," Steve says. It's possible he sounds defensive. He takes a quick sip of tea. "She hasn't told me what her name is yet."
He knows it must sound stupid to someone who's not a witch. But when he looks up, Bucky's smiling at him, and he looks just as charmed as Steve felt a moment ago.
"Well, when she tells you, let me know," Bucky says. "I'd love to see her again."
He looks up, and for a long moment, their eyes meet, and Steve's heart beats in his throat. Does Bucky only want to see the cat again? Does he...want to see Steve again?
Whether or not he does, it seems like Steve's cat wants him to; she keeps showing up in Bucky's apartment—in Bucky's arms. She doesn't ever disappear for that long again, luckily for Steve's heart rate, but he comes home more than once and Bucky's door opens, as though he was waiting for Steve, and he comes out with the cat curled up in the crook of his elbow.
Steve doesn't know what to do about it. The cat seems to be happy, but she still hasn't told Steve her name, and he can't help but think that she likes Bucky a lot better than she likes him. Maybe that's the only reason she picked him—because he has an excellent neighbor. Maybe she never really wanted him at all.
"I wish I knew what I was doing wrong," he tells her, the third day in a row that he's retrieved her from Bucky's arms.
"Mrrrrp," she says, headbutting his elbow as he chops up chicken into tiny minced pieces for her.
He sighs heavily.
Bucky's a really, really nice guy. He never seems to mind that Steve's cat is constantly invading his space, and he never seems to mind bringing her home. Steve is grateful. Grateful, and developing an unfortunate crush. A crush would've been fine when Bucky was just his mysterious hot neighbor, because then he just could've looked at his broad shoulders and pretty face and told himself that he was being shallow, objectifying his neighbor like that, and it would've been fine. But as it is, he's getting to know Bucky over brief conversations that sometimes turn into longer conversations, and the fact is, the more he finds out about him, the more he likes him.
Steve doesn't know what Bucky likes to eat—not yet. He knows that he seemed to enjoy coffee cake just fine, but not everybody has a sweet tooth. Steve decides to make a nice beer bread for him. Beer bread's easy, not quite the commitment that baking him something fancier would be, but it's also delicious and crumbly, and makes an incredible grilled cheese sandwich. With these things in mind, Steve starts making the bread, whisking together the ingredients and breathing in the yeasty smell. He's not casting a spell—he's not. But even when he doesn't mean to, some of what he's thinking about seeps into the food as he's making it, and he knows that there is probably a little too much of the flavor of his crush on Bucky, making the bread a little sweeter, a little more savory than it otherwise might be. He considers just keeping it for himself, because God, it would be so embarrassing if Bucky picked up on what Steve was thinking while he was making it, but as he's dithering about making something else—maybe the easiest peanut butter cookies he knows; they're so quick to make that surely not too much of his feelings could get in—there's a knock on his door. Steve moves away from the wire rack where the bread is cooling and answers the door.
As if his thoughts had summoned him, Bucky is standing there. His right hand is cupped around the cat's hindquarters, and she's slumped over his opposite shoulder like a baby. She looks absolutely unrepentant, as she turns her head to look at him.
"I had a visitor just now," Bucky says.
"So I see," Steve says. He can't help but laugh at how satisfied the cat looks. "You're just shameless, aren't you," he croons, scratching along the line of her chin. She purrs and turns her head to give him better access, blue eyes slitting not quite all the way closed. And as he pulled his hand away, it brushes Bucky's shoulder. Steve has a moment of processing the fact that it feels harder than he would've expected, and Bucky stiffens up a little, his expression going from indulgent to wary.
"I was just finishing up some baking," Steve says, hoping to drive away that expression from his face. "Do you want to come in?"
"Sure," Bucky says, his shoulders relaxing a little.
The beer bread is still cooling, but Steve has some snickerdoodles he made the day before, and he puts some on a plate, asks Bucky if he wants some tea, and is moving to get the flavor Bucky's chosen on previous occasions almost before Bucky finishes saying yes.
As Bucky sits down on the couch, Steve can't help but notice that he has a glove on his left hand and not his right, and he can't help but wonder if it's anything to do with the solid feel of his shoulder under his shirt. It's not Steve's business. Steve's curious anyway. Especially when Bucky cups his gloved hand around his teacup, and Steve notices that there are tiny sigils sewn into the leather cuff of the glove.
It's entirely possible that Bucky is a member of the non-magical population; anyone can buy a pair of charmed gloves (or only one,) just the same way that anyone can buy a healing potion, or a lucky apple muffin. You don't have to be a practitioner to use enchanted items, and Steve's never picked up even the slightest feel of any magic off of Bucky. It would probably be rude to ask, Steve thinks; but he tries to quickly memorize the sigils, since they are not ones that he's familiar with. He can look them up later, he soothes his guilty conscience, and yes, it will still be nosy, but it won't be as rude as asking outright.
"So, what do you do?" Steve asks, and then flushes. "I mean, when you're not taking in wayward cats."
Bucky smiles at that, then glances down at his gloved hand, so quickly that Steve might not have noticed if he weren't looking at Bucky so intently, not for any specific reaction, but just because he likes looking at him. "Well, for work, it's kind of… Classified? I'm part of a program." He grimaces. "I can't really talk about it yet."
"Well, what do you do for fun?" Steve smiles at him. "I feel like you've already picked up on the fact that I like to cook and bake."
"Fair enough," Bucky says, laughing a little bit. He cups his right hand around his mug full of tea. Steve doesn't think he has a pair of teacups that match; but he has a collection of mugs with dumb slogans. This one says paint me like one of your french cows, with a cartoon cow spread out like an odalisque. "I love to read, and I like building things."
"What kind of books, and what kind of things?" Steve asks immediately.
"Science fiction and mysteries, mostly, but also just about any romance set in the bookstore," Bucky replies. "I'll give you my goodreads. As to the building…" He shoots Steve a sly smile. "I've made a lot of bookshelves, but also spice racks, and I'm teaching myself how to build speakers. The wiring as well as the cabinets."
"Wow," Steve says. "I'm not that handy, outside of the kitchen."
"If you've got the right tools, it makes a lot easier." Bucky raises an eyebrow, almost shyly. "I could show you sometime, if you want."
"I'd love that," Steve replies immediately. "I should do something about my cookbooks." He looks at the haphazard stacks of them on the counter, the table, and the floor a little guiltily. Most of them are just ordinary cookbooks, not magical cookbooks at all, but he still feels like he should treat them with a little more respect than he does. On second glance, some of his actual spell books are mixed in there, too. Whoops.
Bucky looks at them, and his eyes go a little soft, though, as though the mess is somehow appealing. His gaze catches on the sticky notes, and the written-on pages of the open books that Steve had been going through. "You really use those books, don't you? They're not just for show."
"Well, of course not," Steve says, surprised. "It's like what you said about the right tools, kind of—doing my recipe research makes cooking whatever it is a lot easier."
The conversation goes from there to Bucky's experiments in home repair, to Steve's reading material besides cookbooks—mostly nonfiction and poetry, but also comic books, about which Bucky has several recommendations—to Steve's occasional forays into watercolor. They end up talking for long enough for the cookies to disappear and the tea to be refilled after it's drunk the first time. The cat walks between them, stopping to bestow head butts and purrs on the both of them. It feels friendly, almost domestic, and Bucky jumps when his phone rings.
"It’s my sister. She worries if I don’t answer. I've got to run," he says apologetically, as though they didn't just spend nearly an hour talking. He leans down to pet the cat. "I'm sure I'll see you both soon."
"Oh wait," Steve says, jumping up. He hastily slides the beer bread into a brown paper bag. "This is for you." He holds the bread out to Bucky. "As a, um, thank you for looking out for my cat."
Bucky takes the bag with the bread inside and looks up at Steve, eyes wide. "You made this for me? But you already gave me cookies and cake and—"
"I already had those around." Steve waves a hand dismissively, hoping that the fact that he's blushing isn't completely obvious. "I made this for you."
"Oh," Bucky says. He takes the bag in his right hand and curls his fingers around it, smiling. "Thanks, Steve. I can't wait to try it."
"You're welcome," Steve says, now in full blush mode. "See you around."
The cat goes missing around lunchtime the next day, and Steve starts to get out her food, then stops and lets out a sigh. No point in putting it out until he finds her, he guesses. No point in wandering around alleys, either; he goes straight down the hall to Bucky's door and knocks.
"Oh, hi," Bucky says. "I'm guessing you're looking for your cat?"
"Yeah," Steve says. "Have you seen her?"
"Only nearly every day," Bucky replies. He starts to open the door, then very obviously has a realization and shuts it behind him. "I'll, um. I'll go get her."
Steve watches the door shut again with a lifted eyebrow. This is extremely suspicious behavior, but he guesses there's nothing he can do about it besides wonder what Bucky's up to. Bucky reemerges with the cat purring loudly against his chest.
Steve leans forward to take her, then diverts to trace one hand over Bucky's left sideburn, not quite touching. "You've got a little something here," he murmurs. There's a distinctive woody, almost pine-y smell. "Is that sawdust?"
"Ha ha, it couldn't be," Bucky says, already shutting the door. "See you."
"I know you're making something in there," Steve calls through the door.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Bucky yells back.
Steve shrugs and takes the cat into his apartment to get her lunch.
🐈
That night, Steve decides that maybe what's keeping him and his familiar from clicking the way they should be is the fact that he hasn't done much magic besides kitchen magic. Maybe she was expecting something more impressive. Maybe she wants him to make more of an effort to try other kinds of magic. Maybe she was expecting someone like his mother, a curse-breaker; a witch who could do just about anything she turned her mind to.
Steve tries not to think about that, though. He doesn't want to dwell on all the ways he might be disappointing his familiar. She hasn't told him any differently, and he doesn't want to automatically assume that he's somehow less than, even though that's how he's feeling right now.
He thinks he'll try something a little different. Something more like what his familiar might've been expecting him to do. It's not a difficult spell, and it's one he's done before, many times, but he doesn't think that will be an issue. And if his familiar is hoping that he'll do something a little bit more traditionally witchy, well…scrying is one of the classics.
He gets out a bowl of water, a bottle of ink, and a candle. You can get fancy with silver and mirrors, silk ribbons, and pure beeswax candles, if you like, but Sarah had always told him that it was a witch's intention that counted more than their accoutrements, and that a determined practitioner could make do with a reflective tile and fluorescent light, if they needed to. But ink and water appeals to Steve. He likes the way the color spreads, and he likes the way the light looks reflected back to him on the water's surface. He's got an old blue bakelite bowl that he remembers making some of his first cookies with Sarah in, mixing the dough until it was just right, and scooping out dollops of it onto a baking sheet. He still uses it to bake, in fact; the last thing he made in it was the sourdough loaf he made before he called his familiar, still wrapped up in the freezer to be taken out and eaten in celebration when she tells him her name. The fact that he uses it for kitchen magic certainly doesn't hurt when he wants to use it for other types of spells. Magic accretes in objects, and the more they're used for spells, the easier it is to use them.
He kind of wants to scry for the cat's name, but that would be cheating. He figures they can do something easy, something happy. Steve has easily scryed for past, present, and future, many times, without help from a familiar, so he figures this will be a walk in the park. He's just going to show the cat a moment when he was happy. A moment when he and his mother were doing witchcraft together. He thinks he can use the bowl both as a vessel for the spell, and also as a focus for it.
He sets up the spell, the ritual soothing and calming. He pours water in the bowl and let's it get still. The cat walks in a widdershins circle on the wooden table, sniffing at the bowl. She looks at him and gives a prrt? s ound that seems both pleased and curious. Steve takes the ink, a deep, rich black that he's used before both for scrying and for art projects, and lets several drops fall into the water. The ink disperses, unrolling like smoke, coiling through the water until the water, too, is black. Steve lights the candle with a long match. It wouldn't matter if he used a lighter, but he likes the faintly sulfurous smell of the match as he lets it burn out on the plate he's got the candle on.
He waits a few seconds longer, making sure that the water has gone perfectly still, and that he's left no ripple by hitting the table. The cat sits at attention next to him.
"I'm going to show you my mother," Steve says softly. “She was a good witch, and a good person, and I wish you could've met her."
Steve sits still for a moment and focuses. Magic is half ritual and half intuition, and he's done this innumerable times before. There's no incantation, no words or gesture that will make this work, just the focus that he brings to bear on what he's thinking about, and the willpower to pit himself against reality, and have reality be the one that bends. He lets himself sink into a meditative headspace, focusing less on thoughts or memories of his mother, and more on how he had felt around her. Happy. Loved. He sinks back into that feeling, letting it spread throughout his chest the way the ink spread into the water. And he loves the cat too already—he can't help it; she's very lovable—even though he's not sure she even likes him, not yet. But he doesn't let that draw him down into a negative place. He just lets the thought drift through his mind and float away, to be addressed later, if it needs to be, and goes back to thinking about happiness and love.
He gets a strange, quick thought about the sourdough he'd made in this very bowl, but he lets that thought glance off him to, and then he opens his eyes. Vague fragments of images are swirling on top of the inky water, like a reflection of something that isn't actually there. The cat and he both lean forward to get a better look.
An image starts to form of Steve's childhood kitchen. He can see the formica countertops, the yellow paint, the truly unfortunate 1970s-era linoleum, the scratched stovetop and the dinged-up oven, but most of all he can see Sarah Rogers and a younger, smaller version of himself bent over the countertop, laughing. He can see the old wooden spoon that he still has tucked away in his kitchen drawer, stirring the dough to get it just right, while Sarah told him how much sugar to put in, why the butter needed to be room temperature instead of melted or cold, which kind of whisk to use—all the things he'd need and want to know to bake on his own. And she'd taught him how to use magic, as well—how to whip a spell into a meringue as well as how to conjure more seriously. The image holds for a moment, and the cat purrs and butts her head up against his elbow, rubbing her chin along his bicep.
Then that image fragments, swirling into little pieces and reforming. Steve can feel the magic slipping out of his control. It's nothing that's ever happened to him before, and he's—horrified? Embarrassed? A little bit of both, maybe, because he doesn't want his familiar to think that he's incompetent. But the image starts to reform, into strong arms next to a circular saw, to hands bracing a piece of wood, one hand he'd expect to see on anybody, and one encased in the glove that he recognizes all too quickly. A face starts to form, long dark hair curling around a square jaw, and Steve curses and jars the bowl so that ripples dispel the image before it can fully form.
The cat makes a small, disappointed sound, but then she rubs her head up against him and purrs. Steve feels absolutely humiliated, but he'll take the comfort that she's offering. He just doesn't understand how he could have fucked up such a basic spell. A spell he's done hundreds of times! And the fact that the cat can tell how badly he messed it up, the fact that she's trying to comfort him… Well, it's sweet, that's for sure, but she certainly shouldn't need to be doing it. He curls up on the sofa with a mug of tea, trying to figure out what it is that he did wrong. He can't figure it out. The spell's the same spell that it's always been, and he did exactly what he should've done: he thought about love and happiness, and at first it worked, but then it didn't.
He pulls out the notebook in which he keeps track of the spells he does. To the truly old-fashioned practitioner, it would probably be called a grimoire, but to Steve, it's just his magic journal. He writes down the scrying spell, and what went wrong, and as he's halfway through writing it down, a soft, warm presence climbs up into his lap, and the cat curls into a tiny ball against his rib cage and purrs like a motorboat engine.
Well, maybe he didn't fuck it up too badly, after all.
🐈
When Steve hears a knock on his door a couple of days later, he's not expecting it to be Bucky, because his cat is curled up on the couch next to him, aggressively napping. He almost doesn't get up to answer the door, because cat, but she opens one eye and flicks her ears, and when the knock comes again, she hops up off his lap and saunters over to the door, circling around it in a very clear, well, are you going to get this or not?
He levers himself up, brushing ineffectually at the smattering of white hairs across his black jeans, and when he opens the door, he's actually really startled to see Bucky standing there, a package held awkwardly in one hand. He has it—whatever it is—wrapped in a loose length of cloth, black with tiny rainbows all over it. The pattern makes Steve smile even before he looks up and sees the bashful smile on Bucky's face.
"Hi," Bucky says.
"Hi," Steve says back, and the cat paces back and forth, purring wildly.
"This is for you." Bucky thrusts out the package, cheeks turning pink.
"Thanks," Steve says. "What is it?"
Bucky puts a hand to his face and laughs helplessly. "You have to open it to find out. That's, like, baseline Gift 101. The whole point of wrapping something is for the recipient to unwrap it."
"Okay, okay," Steve grumbles.
The fabric is held together with a shiny black ribbon, and Steve carefully unpicks the bow. The cat gets interested in the proceedings, of course, and hops up on her hind legs to bat at the dangling ends of the ribbon. Steve pulls the ribbon across the hardwood floor boards a couple of times for her just to watch her pounce, and then he can't stand it any longer, so he unfolds the fabric carefully. Bucky watches all of this impatiently, his bottom lip pulled between his teeth.
Steve finally gets the fabric undone and hung over the crook of his elbow, and when he does, what he has is an absolutely beautiful little—well, he's not quite sure how to describe it. It's like a tiny chest of drawers that could hold index cards, perhaps, or something a little smaller, even. The wood is stained a dark color, and the top of it is inlaid with different colors of wood, and the drawer pulls are tiny brass knobs in the shape of leaves. Steve is immediately, overwhelmingly charmed by it.
"You made this, didn't you?" he asks Bucky, some knot of feeling getting caught in his throat as he speaks. "It's beautiful."
"Thank you," says Bucky. His cheeks are an even deeper pink than they were before. He clears his throat. "It's a tea cabinet. For your tea. So you, um, don't have to rummage around in your pantry, if you don't want to. You could keep paperclips or something in it, instead, if you wanted. It doesn't have to be for tea—"
"Bucky," Steve and wraps. "Thank you. It's perfect for my tea. It's beautiful."
"You said that already," Bucky says, with a smile.
Steve gives the statement the attention that it deserves, which is to say: none, and traces over the inlaid pattern on top. “These are leaves," he murmurs.
"Tea leaves," Bucky says. "I, um. It was a good challenge for me. Most of what I make is, uh, more functional than decorative, so this was a learning experience. I watched a bunch of YouTube tutorials." Bucky runs a hand through his hair, clearly a little embarrassed, and Steve is struck with the sudden, undeniable realization that he doesn't just like his hot neighbor, he really likes his hot neighbor. Right now, at this moment, his fingers rubbing along the edge of the cabinet that Bucky built for him, what he wants to do most in the whole world is lean over and kiss him.
"Well, can I get you a cup of tea?" he asks instead. Yes, Bucky made him this beautiful thing, which clearly took a lot of time and effort, but maybe he's just being friendly. Steve decides to set this kissing revelation aside until he can deal with it, and pulls all his tea out of the pantry and he and Bucky sit and chat as he makes them tea, then sorts through his teabags, loading them into the cabinet. It's perfect, and he sets it on the counter next to the kettle. The cat jumps up and noses it gently, then rubs her chin across the edge.
"Guess she approves," Bucky says softly.
It isn't until he's gone that Steve realizes this is the first time he's come over just to come over, no cat involved.
🐈
There keep being more reasons for the two of them to get together, the cat notwithstanding. She still seems to want to visit Bucky every couple of days, but Steve no longer waits for her to go over there as an excuse to knock on his door. Sometimes he makes an excuse—sometimes he makes a too-big batch of cookies and has to bring the extras over, or knocks on Bucky's door because he wants him to try his deconstructed eggplant parmesan—but some of the time, he just shows up because he wants company, and of all the possible company in the world, Bucky's is the one that he wants.
In turn, Bucky comes over just because he wants to see Steve, or he'll invite Steve to keep him company while he's working on a project. He shows Steve how to use the tools that he has, first by letting Steve watch him, and then by directing him to help with some of the pieces he's making.
Steve's nervous at first that he's going to cut off a finger or something, but Bucky says confidently, "Don't worry. You're careful, and I won't let you do anything to hurt yourself,” and Steve finds that he believes him. They go to the hardware store together and purchase some wood, and within a week, Steve has a bookshelf for his kitchen, built entirely by him (under Bucky's direction) and stained a dark, rich walnut color that matches his tea cabinet.
Steve notices, of course, that Bucky's eyes have bags under them more often than not, and he's tired a lot of the time, so he knows he has trouble sleeping. Steve can't help but notice also that even as the weather gets warmer, Bucky always wears long sleeves, and his glove never comes off, even if sometimes he changes it, it always has those sigils stitched along the cuff.
Steve doesn't ask. He figures Bucky will bring it up to him when he's ready, and if he never is, Steve's okay with that too. It's just part of Bucky, and he likes everything about Bucky.
He's come to accept that his relationship with his familiar might never be the usual one, either. He still thinks she likes Bucky better, but she does spend more time with him, and she's always nosing around when he casts spells, whether in a ritual circle or in the kitchen, even if she doesn't participate the way he imagined she would, back before he called her. She is who she is, and he is who he is and if he's never a witch like his mother was, maybe that's all right.
Life falls into a comfortable routine, and Steve thinks—a little bit to his own surprise—that he's happy.
One night, though, Steve wakes up with his heart pounding, unable to figure out what exactly it was that woke him up. It wasn't a noise; the apartment is quiet, everything in it undisturbed. It wasn't a light; his room is dark and just as he left it when he went to sleep. But his cat is next to him, back tense, ears perked up, white fur standing on end, a line like a mohawk down her back where her hackles are raised.
"What is it?" Steve asks, not that he expects her to answer. But she jumps up and runs out of the bedroom to the door. Steve jams his feet in some sneakers, not bothering to find socks or brush his teeth, because whatever it is that he's feeling has him worried, and his familiar clearly feels it too, which means it's more likely to be a spell gone wrong then someone trying to break into his building.
By the time he gets to the door, she's mewing frantically, and his sense of urgency intensifies. He opens the door and follows her as she slips out, and his stomach turns when she runs to Bucky's door.
It's locked, of course, but when he presses his ear to the door, he hears a faint moan. It sounds like Bucky's in pain, and a dozen scenarios, each more worrying than the last, immediately leap into Steve's brain. He takes a moment to curse himself: why haven't he and Bucky exchanged keys? He should've suggested it ages ago. There's no one in the building—hell, there's no one in all of New York—that Steve trusts more than Bucky in an emergency, and he flatters himself to think that Bucky might feel the same way.
There is a muffled thump behind the apartment door, and Steve mutters, "Fuck it." He doesn't know a spell for this, and he's not that kind of witch anyway, but he puts his hand against the door and thinks that he really, really needs to be inside that apartment. His mother had told him long ago that desperation to make a spell work won't get you very far if you don't know the spell, but maybe there was something she didn't know about magic, because as Steve lays both hands on the door, his cat weaves around his feet, her fur faintly glowing under the hall lights and her eyes shining bright, bright blue.
The metal isn't living, not the way flour and yeast are, not even in the way that a slice of bacon or a sautéed onion might be. But it's not entirely unlike living things either, if only in that it moves and interacts with things around it, so Steve lets himself dwell on the similarities instead of the differences. He extends his senses into the lock, and immediately it's overwhelming in its strangeness. He falters—
—but he can't falter. Bucky needs him.
He swallows back his fear for Bucky, his fear that he won't be good enough to help him, and suddenly the cat—Alpine! He knows her name all of a sudden, as though he’s always known it—is there, sending her senses into his, letting the cool smooth moonglow of her magic intertwine with the warm oven fire of his own, and together they turned the tumblers in the lock.
To the outside, they must just look like a short, slight man with his hands on a door, head bowed, and a cat twined around his feet, her fur gently lifting off her like she's touching a Van de Graaf generator. But to Steve, to the magical senses that extend around him into the world, it feels like they are a circuit completing, two halves finally snapping into place.
The lock turns. There's a safety chain, too, and Steve's so impatient to get to Bucky that when he tries to slide the latch loose, instead the chain just snaps. He'll get a new one for Bucky, he'll help him replace it—he'll do whatever he needs to, as long as Bucky's all right.
He opens the door, and Alpine darts in before he can even get his foot in. Both of them run across the living room where they've sat so many times into Bucky's bedroom.
Steve's never been in Bucky's bedroom. Not that he hasn't thought about it, but there's been no reason. Bucky's never been in his bedroom either. But whatever he imagined, whatever daydreams he might have constructed about the circumstances that might get him here, it wasn't like this.
Bucky is thrashing on the bed, strands of hair stuck to his forehead with sweat. He's shirtless, which in a different situation Steve might be inclined to stop and admire, but at the moment, all he can see are the terrible scars jutting out from his left shoulder across his chest. His left shoulder is metal, Steve observes with some small part of his brain, a series of black metal plates, interlocking into each other and threaded through with strands of magic in purple and gold—healing magic, if Steve were to guess.
But even whatever magic is in his mechanical arm is no match for the malignant red and black magic threaded through the scars on his shoulder. Steve doesn't know what to make of it; he's never seen anything like it, and he's glad of that. The only thing he can think of is that Bucky needs help against it.
Steve reaches down to shake his uninjured shoulder, but he has to pull his hand back from a shock like a spark of electricity. Alpine jumps up on the bed, and when she looks at Bucky's shoulder, she pins her ears flat back.
Steve lets himself fall back into the circuit he and Alpine created at the door. It's easy as anything now that they've done it once. With her mind touching his, he knows with absolute certainty that what he's seeing is a curse. Steve's never run into one before, but Alpine clearly has, and even though she knows what it is, he's pretty sure that neither one of them are exactly sure what they need to do to break it.
But he can't let himself second guess too much or he'll lose his nerve, and Bucky needs him. It's self explanatory enough, anyway—the red and black threads emanating from whatever happened to his shoulder are bad, and he and Alpine can try to disperse them.
It's another situation where Steve can't think about it very hard, or it will overwhelm him. He can feel Alpine's wariness of their foe, and he's only a kitchen witch, really. But if they don't do anything, he doesn't know what will happen to Bucky, and that's all he needs to motivate him.
Alpine is a steadying presence at his side. He lets their powers intermingle and reaches out for Bucky again, this time sliding to the side of the curse, sneaking in where it doesn't expect him so he can touch Bucky. Once his hands are on Bucky's skin, it seems easier.
The thing is, this is a big, grand sort of magic, and maybe if Steve were trying to fight it with a big, grand magic of his own, it would be more difficult. But he's not the kind of person who has any sort of grand magic at all, and where the curse seems ready to fight a direct attack, Steve sneaks around it. His magic isn't used for big, grand things, and he wouldn't know what to do with it if he tried to use it that way. Instead, he and Alpine coax the edges, sneaking their way in past the curse's defenses, not so much trying to destroy the curse itself, but to slide by its edges so they can find Bucky. Steve's not trying to destroy the curse, he's trying to lend Bucky his strength.
And it works, is the thing. He can feel Bucky, and once he can feel Bucky, he can feel what the purple and gold magic is trying to do, and lend his strength to that. So that's exactly what he does.
Steve and Alpine blend in the heat of the oven and the cool of the moon to the spell worked into Bucky's arm, and Steve can feel the curse retreating, but not fleeing. It's frustrating, and the more he tries to fight it harder, the further it retreats, sneaking into the scar tissue around Bucky's chest. The curse retreating is better than nothing, and Steve suspects that's what Bucky's been living with for as long as he's known him, but Steve is nothing if not stubborn.
So instead of pushing harder, he makes his magic warmer, pushing deeper into the pockets where the curse is trying to hide from him—from where it will strike again later, he somehow knows.
He slides his magic into it recklessly, pushing energy that he's not sure that he has in him to fight it. But Alpine will never let him fail. When he falters, she's there to bolster him. When he's afraid he's going to fade, she supports him. Steve and the curse are at an impasse.
He opens his eyes and sees that Bucky is awake, face sweaty, bare chest heaving, looking at him with a combination of relief and fear, or something like it. Pulsing red and black lines have retreated back into his chest, and the arm isn't glowing to ordinary sight anymore, but Alpine is still at his side like the warrior, and it's not fair that Bucky, of all people, is cursed—Bucky is kind to strangers and their cats, even kinder to friends, and he doesn't deserve this.
Looking at him, Steve has an idea. It's either a great idea, or a terrible one. He takes the heat of the kitchen fire of his magic, let's it surround Bucky where the curse has its claws in him. Alpine is at his side making it stronger, making it better. When the curse is isolated as best he is able, the bulk of his magic is wrapped around Bucky like a blanket. He tries to put everything he loves about Bucky into the magic: his kindness, his patience, the way he makes Steve laugh, the way he's become the person that Steve always wants to turn to when he has something to say.
With all of that in his heart, he kisses Bucky, and after a long moment in which he’s utterly terrified he’sfucked this up, Bucky kisses him back.
He feels the curse dissolve, its energy trying to redirect to hook back into Bucky, but turned away at every point by the hearth fire of Steve's magic, and the cool glow of Alpine's. The curse falls away, and Steve pulls back from Bucky's lips with a gasp.
"I'm sorry," he says, and Bucky's expression immediately changes, going guarded. "I mean—I should've asked you first."
Bucky smiles at that. "You broke the curse," he says. His voice is rough with sleep, and his hair is a tangle where it's not plastered to his sweaty face, and Steve has never seen anyone so beautiful.
Steve runs his hand through his own hair, feeling abashed. "I'm glad, but…that's not the only reason I wanted to kiss you."
"Yeah, I figured that out." Bucky smiles. "I don't think it would have worked if you hadn't meant it. Thank you."
“So that was okay?” Steve asks, needing to be sure.
“For the record, that was more than okay. I—” Bucky takes a deep breath. “I feel the same way.”
Steve takes Bucky's hands, relieved and happy, but then something occurs to him. "Are you okay? I mean, it looks pretty bad when we got in here."
Bucky takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. "I'm okay now. It was bad. It's nothing that hasn't happened before, but—-"
The phone rings, and both of them jump. "I've got to take this," Bucky says, before he even looks at the screen. But he doesn't answer it, not just yet. "Do you mind waiting?"
"There's nowhere I'd rather be," Steve assures him. He settles back on the bed, and Alpine jumps up onto him, purring aggressively while he strokes her soft fur and murmurs his thanks to her. Bucky takes a breath, picks up his phone, and answers it.
"Shuri?" There's a pause, and Bucky laughs. "Yeah, I'm not surprised you felt it. The curse is broken."
A question from the other side of the line, and then Bucky says, "My neighbor."
There's a burst of conversation that Steve can hear, if not make sense of. Bucky's voice drops low, almost to a whisper. "Yeah, the cute one," he says, blushing as his eyes dart to Steve.
Steve settles back, Alpine rumbling against his chest. He's content to wait.
🐈
Maybe twenty minutes later they get off the phone. They, because Steve talks to Shuri too. She has a lot of questions about how he broke the curse, and he ends up telling her about Alpine, and the way the curse (and her magic, because Bucky tells him that Shuri made the arm and the spell that kept the curse from consuming him) looked to him as he tried to affect it.
By the time Steve passes the phone back to Bucky, he finds he's agreed to meet with Shuri the next day to talk about it in person. It never occurred to him to say anything like no, and Bucky's smirking at him by the time they hang up.
"She's a force of nature, huh?" Steve comments.
"Yeah." Bucky sits back down on the bed and runs his hand through his hair. "You should've seen her when she was fixing up my arm." He looks down at the metal plates, still full of the healing spell, even if it's settled down some now that the threat is gone.
"You don't have to tell me about it," Steve says, also looking at the arm. He lets the other half of the question lie, just lifts up one eyebrow.
"Kind of think you've earned it," Bucky says. He sighs, and looks down at his mismatched hands. "You ever heard about the fairy tale of the six swans?"
Steve thinks for a minute. He's only had a basic education in curses and fairytales, because he never expected to be a curse breaker but, he realizes, faintly surprised, he supposes he is one now, more or less. His mother had broken a curse or two in her day, but he doesn't think that it was ever by way of kissing. Not that she told him, anyway. "All I remember is something about a sister weaving shirts out of nettles, and not finishing the shirt for the youngest brother."
"Yeah," Bucky agrees. "It's a repeating theme in that kind of story, and God, I wish it were different. She finished all of my shirt except for the sleeve, and when she threw it on me, I lost my arm."
"Bucky I'm sorry," Steve says, even though it seems terribly inadequate.
"It could've been worse," Bucky says. He's smiling, and Steve doesn't think it's a fake smile. "I could've been stuck as a swan forever."
"So how did the curse end up in your shoulder?" Bucky scratches at the scars absently. Steve is trying to look respectfully, but he can't help but notice how broad Bucky's chest is.
"It happens sometimes with people who get stuck in fairytales," Bucky says. "The story doesn't get told quite the way it wants to be—in this case, my sister Becca wasn't silent for six years making shirts out of nettles, she found a specialty store that sold the right kind of fabric and whipped them up at her sewing machine in under a month. We thought she was gonna be able to break the curse and get me back whole, but…" He shrugs. "The story wants what the story wants. The curse started rebounding when there was just the sleeve left, and it was lose my arm or lose all of us."
"That's awful," Steve says, and that too feels inadequate. "I don't know what to say, except I'm sorry that happened to you."
"It could've been worse," Bucky says philosophically. "The curse was trying to eat what's left of my arm, and it might've killed me if I hadn't found Shuri."
A piece of the puzzle falls into place for Steve. "Shuri—Shuri's the princess of Wakanda," he realizes out loud.
"Yeah," Bucky says, grinning. Then he sobers. "I'm really lucky they helped me. They've got a program to help people like me. But not everybody finds the help they need."
Steve thinks that he's really grateful that they were able to help Bucky, too. The thought of him not being here to meet Steve is unbearable. "What exactly did they do?"
"Shuri made me the arm," Bucky says, "and loaded it with the spells that kept the curse from destroying me." He darts a glance at Steve. "My sister made my gloves. They kept anyone from noticing my metal arm, and from noticing how powerful the spells on it were."
"Well, it worked," Steve says. "I couldn't even tell you have any magic at all."
"I don't, really," Bucky says. He shoots Steve an abashed look. "Not like you."
Steve laughs. "Bucky, I'm a terrible witch. Really, what I'm good at is kitchen magic."
"Well, you could've fooled me," Bucky says stubbornly. "Look what you did today. Tonight," he adds, looking at the dark outside the window.
Steve looks down. "I only managed that because Alpine helped me. I wouldn't even have known it was a curse if she hadn't been with me."
"Steve." Bucky sits up straight on the bed. "She told you her name?"
"Oh," Steve says. He scratches right behind her ears, and she purrs a little louder. "I guess she did. We were so focused on getting to you that I didn't give it the proper attention that I should've." He scratches her chin a little more and croons to her. "How about something special when we get back home?"
"I've got some salmon you could make her," Bucky offers. "If we're celebrating."
It's the middle of the night, but Steve knows he's not going back to sleep anytime soon. Between breaking the curse, and learning Alpine's name, and kissing Bucky—his adrenaline is still running high, and he's happy as he could be. "We're definitely celebrating." Then something occurs to him. "Oh! I still have the bread I made to help summon Alpine when I was hoping for a familiar. Let's go over to my place, and we can share it."
Bucky agrees, and pulls on a shirt, somewhat to Steve's regret, and follows him out into the hall and into next door, shaking his head when Steve says he owes him a safety chain. Steve preheats the oven and pulls the bread out of the freezer, using a little bit of his magic to thaw it. He cooks the salmon for Alpine while Bucky makes them both some tea, and once the bread is warm, cuts three slices and butters them. Alpine's unlikely to eat bread, but she can lick the butter off, and she should be part of eating it. The whole time he cooks, he and Bucky chat about inconsequential things, and Steve knows that they should probably talk about that kiss, but it's so easy between them, and he feels effervescent with joy, so he decides it can wait just a little.
Steve sets out plates with the buttered bread in front of each of them. Bucky takes a slice of bread and holds it out in a cheers sort of motion, so Steve toasts him—literally toasts him with toast, which makes him chuckle to himself like a nerd—and then they all three take a bite, or a lick, in Alpine's case.
To Steve, the bread tastes a little salty, like tears; he can taste the sadness and loneliness that he hadn't let himself admit even to himself when he cast the spell to call Alpine to him. Bucky, though—Bucky takes a bite and smiles.
"Steve, this is delicious," he says.
"Not too much salt?" Steve murmurs.
"The perfect amount of salt," Bucky counters. He blushes a faint pink. "This sounds dumb, but it tastes… Hopeful."
"Oh yeah?" Steve takes another bite. "What are you hoping for?"
"You know," Bucky says, very seriously, "I'm hoping I can find a special someone. Someone who's understanding and not weird about the arm. Someone who already knows about magic—a witch, maybe. Someone who can bake. Someone who's friendly to people he just met, someone I'm already friends with… Someone who has a cat, definitely."
"Well, he sounds great," Steve says. "I hope you find him too."
"Someone who's kind of a jerk," Bucky says loudly, but he's smiling.
"I hope that someone's me," Steve says, and then he leans in over the table to kiss Bucky again. This time there's no curse, no magic. This time there's just the feel of Bucky's lips against his, the scratch of his stubble, the taste of butter and bread on his mouth, and the feel of his fingers threading through Steve's hair as they kiss. This time, it's absolutely perfect.
Steve could stay that way forever, he thinks; and he does, until Alpine walks between them, her silky tail brushing up under their chins. They break apart, laughing, and Alpine sits down between them and lifts her paw to groom it, tilting her head in a very self-satisfied way.
"You know," Bucky says, "I think she came into my apartment on purpose. I think she was trying to get us together."
Alpine curls up into a tiny ball and purrs loudly. She might still like Bucky better, Steve thinks, as he leans in to kiss him again, but he thinks she likes them together best of all.
Who could argue with that? He does, too.
🐈