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Bucky tells Steve he’s recovering. He tells himself he’s recovering. He tells Arnim Zola he’s recovering, when the man sits on his bed while he gets dressed in the morning. He tells Vasily Karpov he’s recovering when the man sits next to Tony in the lab while Tony works on Bucky’s arm. He tells Alexander Pierce he’s recovering when the man sips coffee while Bucky’s in the kitchen after a nightmare.
He used to panic seeing the old leaders of the Winter Soldier program sitting in the compound, milling about as if they owned the place. He used to wonder if one billionaire was part of Hydra that perhaps Tony was too. Maybe Tony had rescued him only to give him back, maybe Steve had known.
Bucky should’ve known better than to doubt his friend, he should’ve known better than to doubt Steve, Steve would never.
There was no 100% correct way to react to seeing your worst enemies coexisting with your… friends. Bucky’s way was to ignore it, if he didn’t acknowledge this strange new environment he found himself in, then nothing else could happen with it. No one could take him away, or worse send him away.
This turned out to be the right answer… sort of. It took Bucky a long time to figure out that no one else could see them, but he did, eventually. It was in how Karpov had to move around Tony, but Tony never had to move around him. How Steve would come in to say good morning to Bucky but never asked Zola why he was in Bucky’s room. How Pierce’s coffee mug never ended up in the sink, and how he always had coffee but there was never any in the pot.
Of course, it was also in the fact that all three of the men were dead. Bucky didn't know that right away, but decades of time did lend itself to dying, as did drowning, and getting shot. So really Bucky should've known better.
But ignoring them worked, moving around them like any other residents in the tower, even if it did get him some weird looks from Natasha, it worked. Until it didn’t because of course, it couldn’t last forever.
He’d had an okay day, honestly, maybe even a good one. Waking up to see Zola sitting on the edge of his bed was never a pleasant way to come to, but it no longer was terrible, just vaguely uncomfortable. He’d seen Karpov in the elevator, the man followed him to where Steve was finishing up with a press conference and then took a seat in the front row, empty chair. Karpov stayed as the press filtered out, he watched as Steve slipped out, no longer dressed as Captain America, and pressed a kiss to Bucky’s forehead before the two headed out.
It had been a good day with Steve, walking their old haunts, laughing as they reminisced Steve’s fights in every single alley. They’d gotten home late, Steve had dropped Bucky off at his door, like one of those old cheesy romance movies, with a kiss on the lips, and Bucky had gone to bed with Zola sitting at his desk.
But then he’d woken up because a day that perfect could never happen. Adrenaline pulsing through his body, echoes of gunshots and screams from his nightmares, so he went to the kitchen, tea helped, hot chocolate sometimes, walked around Pierce and boiled the tea, but then Pierce talked. They didn’t do that, Zola, Karpov, Pierce they didn’t talk, they stayed silent, sometimes Bucky thought he heard them laughing, but they didn’t talk, ever, especially not to him.
“Bad night, I figure? We really did a number on you didn’t we?” He smirked, pleased with himself, and Bucky dropped the mug he was holding.
They didn’t talk, if they talked, if Pierce was talking to him… “Are you real?” He couldn’t be, he was dead, he couldn’t be real, he couldn’t hurt him anymore.
“Oh, I’m plenty real, as real as your arm.” Pierce grinned. “I could say the words and you’d murder everyone in this building: Stark, Maximoff, Rogers.”
“Shut up!” Bucky yelled, throwing a different mug at Pierce’s face. “It won’t work anymore!”
"Are you so sure? I mean… Shuri’s a child, are you sure she did a good enough job to stop me? To stop Hydra? To stop us?”
“There’s no fucking us.”
“You’ve killed for Hydra, Barnes, you’re part of the us.”
“I didn’t want to.”
“Like that counts for shit.”
“Will you just shut up and leave me alone! Go back to staring!” Bucky picked up another mug.
Pierce laughed. “But this is so much more-“
“Bucky?” Steve was standing there, in his pajamaed glory, staring at Bucky brandishing a mug at thin air, standing in a broken pile of pottery. “Put the mug down.”
“Oh, isn’t this just wonderful, wonder what Rogers will say when he learns his love is down a few wires. Maybe he’ll leave, oh wouldn’t that be wonderful, this being the thing that pushes him over the edge.”
“Shut up! He won’t leave!” Bucky said it out of anger, he just wanted to prove Pierce wrong, but what was keeping Steve with him? Guilt maybe? Steve had so much he could be doing.
“Yeah, I won’t leave.” Steve agreed.
“You can see him?” Bucky shrieked.
Steve shook his head. “No, no, Bucky, I can’t see… him, but I won’t leave you, Buck. Put the mug down.”
“He’s right there.”
“He can’t hurt you.” Steve made his way over the broken mugs and reached for Bucky’s hand, slowly, giving Bucky time to move away.
Instead, Bucky pushed the mug into Steve’s hand, let Steve take it. Steve who was so warm and there and looking at Bucky like he wasn’t going crazy.
“Stevie, I can see dead people. Pierce, Zola, Karpov. They’re all there.”
“Oh, Buck, it’s alright.” Steve wrapped his arms around Bucky and guided him away from the kitchen, onto the couch. Pierce came too.
“Leave me alone!” Bucky snapped.
“Buck?”
“Not you, Pierce.”
Pierce grinned and put his hand on Bucky’s shoulder. It felt real.
Bucky flinched away. “No, no, no, no.”
“I think this might be all in your head, Bucky, you, me, Stevie, you never left Hydra.”
“No, no, no.”
“Bucky? What’s going on? I promise you, you’re okay?”
“No, no, no-“
“Bucky.”
“How do I know you’re real?” Bucky asked. “How do I know you’re not in my head?”
“Oh, Bucky.” Steve pulled Bucky into his chest. “Hear my heart? I’m real.”
“He can touch too.”
“I have a pulse!” Pierce said.
“Alright.”
“Steve, what if I’m still at Hydra? I don’t want to go back.”
“No one’s taking you back,” Steve promised. “I’m real.”
Bucky grabbed Steve’s shirt as if the fabric could convince him of Steve’s existence. Steve was real, he had to be real, because what was Bucky going to do if he wasn’t?
“I was going to propose to you,” Steve said, suddenly. “That’s how you know I’m real. Before you left, for the war, I was going to propose. Not marriage, well yes, but you know the times, but propose life partnership to you. Roommates for life, the ones that all the women with their pearls suspect, but no one really knows.”
“You were?” Bucky asked, forgetting his questions of reality for a moment.
“Yeah, Buck I was. And when you’re ready, I’ll do it again.”
“That’s stupid, Stevie, I’m going crazy.”
“You’re not going crazy.”
“I see dead people Steve, it’s pretty crazy.”
“I am pretty crazy,” Pierce agreed.
“You’ve been through so much, Buck, it happens.”
“It does?”
“It does. It doesn’t make me love you any less, it doesn’t make you crazy, it just makes it another thing that we’ll work through, together.”
Together, that sounded nice, and maybe when Bucky was feeling up to it he’d take Wanda and the two would go out ring shopping, so he could pop Steve the question before Stevie could pop it to him, just to annoy the punk.