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It's not that the sense of guilty discomfort with ruining Steve's sleep is completely gone; it's just that by now, it runs more or less headlong into the rest of Bucky - the parts that think - going and exactly what the fuck am I supposed to do about it? Stop him? How? Exactly how the fuck are we supposed to win this argument with the stupid stubborn son of a bitch? Chime in any time! And eventually the part that clings onto the guilt twists and turns and throws up its hands and admits it can't, that Bucky can't, that they could have (have had) screaming fights about it and nothing would help and that every argument and avenue of logic has been attempted, exhausted and - by Steve, at least - completely rejected.
That Steve has in fact hit the point of deciding not even to show up to the argument, except possibly to pull the ace of pointedly reminiscing about the day that Bucky informed Steve that Bucky would no longer be showing up to more or less the inverse argument, and then not showing up to the argument about whether or not it's the same thing.
So now Bucky just ignores the twinge of it when he finally gives up on fitful sleep and gets up, pulls a long-sleeve shirt over the tank-top he's sleeping in and goes to put a cup of left-over coffee in the microwave.
Sometimes - like tonight, while he stands in the kitchen staring blankly and leaning against the counter until ninety seconds of humming stops - Bucky takes a minute to appreciate the microwave as an invention. Usually it means he's trying not to think about something else, but that doesn't mean the Platonic microwave doesn't deserve it. Nothing else is going to give him a coffee in ninety seconds or less at this fucking hour of night. Morning. Whatever. Even going out for it takes the time to go out and the time to find a damn 24-Hour place, and then the time to pay a human to get it, and since "go out" and "other human" are already complete fucking deal-breakers and it wouldn't be the right coffee anyway, the microwave wins.
It beeps, he takes out the cup, picks up the tablet on the way past the (new) dining room table and ends up on the futon with the tablet on, the letters of the search-terms a kind of absent second-nature.
The kitten beats Steve out to him, but only just; if the guilt's mostly given up, Bucky still can't keep himself from saying Sorry when he looks up. Steve shakes his head and drops himself on the futon to one side and frowns at the lit-up tablet. "What're you looking at?" he asks, just before he obviously manages to figure it out for himself and gives Bucky the slight head-tilted look that's more of less the most basic and all-encompassing way of asking for some kind of explanation.
Bucky sighs and taps the screen to pause the video. It's black and white: there are a few versions of this and the others floating around that are colourized, but colour, even the approximations that you get when you try to put it back into film that didn't have it before, gets too . . . close. Black and white keeps just barely enough distance. Just barely.
The propaganda film pauses right in the middle of Dum-Dum making the kind of face you get when you stop someone in the middle of talking, and right about where if you're good at lip-reading Japanese you can catch Morita telling Patton to fuck a goat, which is only the start of Jim's opinions on Patton. The video was silent that time, so lipreading Japanese-speakers are the only ones who'd catch it - or how hard Dernier was laughing at it, given he didn't need to know what the words were to know more or less what Jim was saying.
"Apparently, as of this week I get enough functioning brain," Bucky says, matter-of-fact and offhand as he can be, "to actually start fucking understanding the part where everyone's dead." And he smiles a little, sort of, at Steve's wince.
"I'm sorry," is what Steve says. The kitten comes over from visiting the food bowl to make a leap at the futon, claws catching like velcro; Bucky picks her up and puts her on his shoulder, where she grooms his ear. He acknowledges the words with a gesture.
"Yeah, well," he says, gives Steve a sidelong look, "at least my head never thought they were alive yesterday."
It's half a deflection, half an acknowledgement that this's never come up before, and on this one Steve honestly got the far worse deal. Steve winces again, moves over closer, and holds out his hand for the tablet. "Yeah, that wasn't that much fun," he says, emphasis in understatement, as he turns the tablet around in his hands and looks at the screen. He pulls his finger along the progress bar, the video fast-forwarding through its four remaining minutes and then back. "Killed a lot of punching bags that month."
"Never a good sign when an unexpected attack from alien armies turns out to be good for your mental health," Bucky digs slightly, more because it goes between him and the dull constriction behind his ribs than anything. Steve makes a face that's half smile and half grimace.
"Yeah, funny story," he says; when Bucky turns the silent question on him, Steve puts the tablet down on the coffee table and - mostly unconsciously, Bucky thinks - works his arm behind Bucky's back and around him when he sits back. "You, uh, might have gathered Tony and I didn't exactly start off well," he says, and then says, "Yeah, okay," when Bucky gives him a really sardonic look.
"No shit," Bucky says, dry, "you and Stark not hitting it off when you're a miserable bastard doing the worst and shortest martinet impression ever - I am totally fucking shocked, Steve, I could never have seen that coming."
"Actually I'm pretty sure whatever Loki's staff was, it was making us all even worse than we'd be already," Steve says, the wince having moved into his voice, "and I think it had the most to work on with me, so it was maybe even worse than you're seeing. Metaphorically seeing." At Bucky's raised eyebrows he makes a face and says, "I might've, maybe started - well, to start with," he says, tone turning a little defensive, "Thor and Tony went and knocked each other around and knocked down half a fucking forest for a while, and that was Tony being a dick, but after that I might maybe've taken his attitude more personally than was useful - "
Bucky's pretty sure he sees the shape of what Steve's waffling his way around saying, and covers his face with his right hand, starting to laugh. "You fucking picked a fight with him," he says, and knows he's right when Steve winces and looks away, "Jesus Christ you started fucking name-calling didn't you," and Steve sighs and covers his face with one hand briefly.
"Maybe," he says, hand moving to rub at the back of his neck, which means yes. And it's a bit mean, honestly, but Bucky can't not laugh at him.
"So you manage to get so nobody can fucking kick your ass in an alley," Bucky says, while Steve looks sheepish, "so you start picking fucking sniping and insult fights with Tony fucking Stark. Steve," he adds, while Steve looks guilty, "that's like attacking a fucking tank, you couldn't even come up with any kind of shit he hasn't already said to himself, even when you're trying you're not that much of an asshole."
"Hey," Steve says, with a relatively good-humoured stab at mock-dignity, "I did attack tanks. And won. And really at that point we were sort of working our way towards hitting each other anyway. Fortunately," he goes on, clearing his throat and pretending to ignore the look Bucky's giving him, "at that point Clint - mind-controlled Clint, I mean," Steve amends, "blew the helicarrier engine."
Bucky ends up laughing again, kind of helplessly, because fortunately and someone blew the helicarrier engine shouldn't actually ever fucking go together, at least not when it's your helicarrier; Steve waits a second and then says, over his laughter, "But actually, that's not the funny story."
"Jesus," Bucky repeats himself, and Steve reaches over with his free hand to scratch behind the kitten's ears (well, rub, really, considering his fingers are a huge compared to her head) before he goes on.
"The funny part," he says, wry, "is how we started getting along just about the second people were shooting at us."
Bucky'd been pretty sure that was going to be the punchline, but he still shakes his head a little. Reaches up with his left hand to mess Steve's hair up, trying not to keep laughing at him, because it's only funny in a kind of fucking horrible way. "That's fucked up, Steve," he says in a bad impression of solemnity. "Just in case you needed an outside opinion."
"I actually figured that out at the time," Steve says, wryly. "Even then I was pretty sure my head wasn't supposed to clear like that, and I wasn't supposed to feel better about the world because people were trying to kill me."
"See," Bucky says, "I knew you liked getting punched." Then he laughs softly when Steve digs the knuckles of one hand into his thigh, and leans over to kiss the side of Steve's head. "Hell, it's almost like you made most of your best friends when people were shooting at you."
"Or punching me," Steve counters, "yeah."
Which brings them back to where this started and after a second's weight on his chest Bucky sighs and asks, "What'd they end up doing?"
Steve settles back against the futon cushion, closer and so the arm around Bucky ends up a little more so. "Gabe made general, eventually, got married, had a few kids," he says. "Jim worked the trade-over from SSR to SHIELD and then resigned and got married and had a ridiculous number of kids, worked in construction. Dugen went home and had kids and then came back and worked for SHIELD." He ruffles the fur on the kitten's head again, goes on, "Dernier drifted, disowned France over Algeria, wound up camped at Monty's till he had a heart attack, and Monty ran the London arm of SHIELD."
"Fuck, poor Jaques," Bucky muses. "De Gaulle ends up president, and then fucking Vietnam, Algiers - "
"Apparently if you could get him to do anything but rant about it," Steve says, "he'd tell you he thought the Devil'd get kicked out of France with the Nazis, but the rot was in too deep." The last bit has the cadence of being as near a quote to make no difference. Bucky rests the back of his head against the futon and looks at the ceiling.
"Like some fucking demonic see-saw," he says, "we're dead, they're alive, we're alive, they're dead. If we have to go another round," he adds, giving Steve a serious look, "I am dropping fucking everything else in favour of finding God and punching Him in the face. Fair warning."
Steve actually gets halfway through crossing himself on reflex and says, "Christ, don't even joke, Buck."
Bucky gives him a sidelong look. "What, about decking the Asshole Almighty?" because it's not like that hasn't been a standard threat for a long time, albeit with a pretty big hiatus in the middle.
"No," Steve says, mostly serious, "about going another round. Just - let's not, okay? I am vetoing this idea. I think it's a bad idea."
Laughing, Bucky says, "Okay, okay. Forget I said it."
"Said what?" Steve asks, looking innocent, and ducks the hair-muss this time, catching Bucky's hand instead and interlacing their fingers. He leans his forehead against the side of Bucky's head, and they sit like that for a while, the kitten on Bucky's shoulder between them.
Eventually Bucky sighs. "Okay," he says. "Fuck it. Maybe I can sleep now."