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Clint watches Bucky angle his phone towards his cup of coffee, tongue caught between his teeth in concentration. His brow furrows, and he adjusts the angle slightly.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
Bucky glances up. “What does it look like?” he snarks, looking back at the screen.
“You’re taking a photo?” Clint asks. Bucky hums distractedly. “For instagram?”
“For what now?” Bucky sets his phone down, apparently satisfied with his photo.
“…instagram?” Clint tries again. At Bucky’s blank look he pulls his own phone out and pulls up the app to show him what he’s talking about.
*
Fifteen minutes later, Bucky has his own account set up (@sgtbbarnes1916 because every variation of his name that he and Clint could come up with had apparently already been taken) and has followed @hawkguy, which is apparently something that Clint’s pretty bitter about (“I just can’t believe she won’t give me the @hawkeye handle, it’s just not fair” he had grumbled, oblivious to Bucky’s confusion).
After a few halting attempts, he’s also posted his first photo. He and Clint had mulled over his photos of his coffee before agreeing on the final one. Bucky picks a ‘filter’ that reminds him of old movies that he and Steve snuck into the theatre to watch, much to Clint’s disgust (filters are apparently not ‘cool’, but whatever, Bucky likes it so it’s staying). He adds the caption “This was a nice coffee” because it was, and he was only taking the photo in the first place to remember that. Then, on Clint’s insistence, he goes back and adds a comment with “#coffee” for reasons that he doesn’t quite catch.
By the time he gets back to the floor he shares with Steve, @hawkguy has followed him, and liked his picture.
*
Bucky doesn’t think any more about instagram until he hears it mentioned on a daytime TV show a few days later. A couple of cursory searches later, and he’s followed everyone else who lives in the tower. He spends a while just looking at pictures and reading the captions. He finds he can like them, and spends a while longer liking every picture that makes him smile.
He clicks around on the app, and finds a section that makes recommendations. Sam’s at the top of the list so he follows him, and then starts scrolling through the rest of the recommendations. He follows a few accounts that seem interesting, including one of a nice young lady with a blue tick next to her name – he thinks it might mean she’s famous? – who seems to post a lot of pictures of cats. Bucky likes cats; they make him think of hot summers, lying stretched across fire escapes desperately seeking a non-existent breeze, only to be lulled to sleep by the warmth. He thinks Steve used to feed one once, maybe.
(Tony would later curse this moment as the point in time at which everything started to devolve into madness, but at that point, Bucky really did just appreciate the pictures of cats).
*
Bucky likes to read. Anything and everything he can get his hands on, but particularly sci-fi. He reads it curled up against the wall next to the big floor-to-ceiling window that looks out over the city. Sometimes the view feels like home, but sometimes it makes him think of the wild versions of the future he used to read about back before everything changed. Sometimes the view makes him feel homesick, and uneasy.
But it grounds him, in a way, reminds him of where he is and how far he’s come, and besides, it’s warm when the sun slants across the glass just so. He wraps himself in the fluffy blanket that lives on the back of the sofa, and presses his bare toes against the fabric. It tickles.
He feels warm with the sun on his legs and swaddled in the blanket, and oddly comforted. He feels like maybe he could be safe here.
He posts a picture of his toes dug into the blanket, the New York skyline stretched across the background, to instagram.
@blackwidow likes it.
*
Sam is the only one Bucky will let come with him to see his therapist, and even that’s not a frequent occurrence. Bucky is well aware that he needs these visits but it doesn’t mean he wants someone breathing down his neck, even if it does suck.
But amnesia’s a tricky beast, and the specialists at the hospital really can’t help him if they don’t know what’s going on in his head. And that means an MRI. (And boy was that a worry until they realised that Tony had, for once, had the foresight to use a non-magnetic alloy when he upgraded Bucky’s arm).
Well, technically it’s an fMRI this time (and yes, Bucky knows the difference thank you very much, he’s not going near any machines he doesn’t fully understand), but it’s still big and loud and too like cryo for his comfort.
So he phones Sam and mumbles something about hospitals and scans and Sam promises that he’ll be over as soon as he can and Bucky feels like he can breathe. Because there’s no way he going with anyone else; Steve frets too much, and Natasha understands too much and that’s even worse. He thinks he might be okay with Clint, but he’d ask too many questions, and really he just wants Sam to come.
The thing is, Sam gets it. He manages to walk the fine line between avoiding the subject and dwelling on it, but he’s firm enough that Bucky knows he won’t let him back out of it. And when they get to the hospital, Sam makes stupid jokes that Bucky thinks he might have learnt from Steve, and makes Bucky promise not to break the machine because “I’m pretty sure the Avengers’ insurance won’t cover it” even though they both know it will.
And Bucky has his scan. It’s not painless, but it’s better than last time, and he feels slightly vindicated when he posts a picture of the machine to instagram with the caption “fucking mri”.
They get coffee at the hospital café, and cake because it’s been a tough day, and Bucky’s therapist says he needs to reward himself when he does something difficult.
Sam posts a picture of Bucky with icing on his nose to his instagram.
*
After that, the followers start to trickle in.
*
Bucky’s sitting on the kitchen surface, swinging his legs idly as he scrolls through his feed. He comes across a picture Steve had posted yesterday, one of himself beaming next to a kid who can’t be older than six who looks like all his dreams had come true. Bucky can identify with that kid, so he gives the picture a hearty like.
“Hey Steve.” He pokes Steve’s shoulder with his toe, just for good measure, even though Steve is already looking at him. “How come your instagram is @captainamerica?”
Steve frowns slightly. “I didn’t know you had instagram.”
“Yeah, Clint showed me, but that’s not the point,” Bucky sighs. “How come you got captainamerica and I got sgtbarnes-something-or-other?”
“Uh,” Steve says eloquently, and Bucky swears to god he could smack the guy sometimes, how hard is it to give a straight answer. “S.H.I.E.L.D. set it up. They set one up for all of the Avengers. Said it was good for publicity. I don’t really use it that much.”
“That much is obvious,” Bucky scoffs. There’s a pause as Steve chews on his toast thoughtfully.
“I guess you could ask Maria?” he suggests.
Bucky hums, and pulls up a new email.
*
“So,” Maria Hill’s voice comes down the phone three days later. “It’s not really in my job description, but I was owed a few favours. I’m afraid there’s no getting hold of @thewintersoldier, but @buckybarnes is available if you’re interested?”
It takes Bucky a moment to catch up, mainly because it takes him a moment to realise who it is speaking. Before he can open his mouth, she continues.
“I really don’t have all day Barnes, so you need to make a decision if you want it.”
“@buckybarnes is fine,” he manages weakly – he wouldn’t take @thewintersoldier if you paid him - before the line goes dead. He’ll really never get used to the abruptness of some people in this century.
*
The trickle of followers increases to something of a tidal wave. He stops paying attention to the numbers.
*
He goes to a baseball game with Steve, and sits in the nosebleed seats, just for the nostalgia of it all. He posts a picture of a half-eaten hot dog with the caption “tastes like home”.
*
Bucky and Natasha take to whispering conspiratorially in random corners of the tower. For weeks the entire building is on tenterhooks, and the pairs’ standing gym appointment is avoided with greater strictness than usual.
It comes to a head when Tony turns up to team movie night with wilder eyes than usual, takes one look at where Bucky and Natasha are sitting next to one another, and promptly flees the room.
The first selfie Bucky posts to instagram is of Natasha and he huddled together in what appears to be a cupboard, hands clamped over their mouths.
What the photo doesn’t show is Tony’s look of horror as he trawls through database after database looking for something that they both know isn’t there.
Bucky captions it “a prank well played”.
*
He chews on his lip as he looks at Sam’s latest post, a photo of a younger version of himself and another man, both fresh faced and hopeful. The caption reads “#tbt Miss you man” and Bucky thinks that this might the person Sam avoids talking about, the one he lost. His finger hovers over the like button, before he changes his mind, and opens a message to Sam instead.
What does #tbt mean? he types.
Later, he posts a still from that video at the Smithsonian, the one where Steve’s really smiling. He captions it “#tbt to simpler times”. His therapist said it was good to try and acknowledge his past. He feels better for it.
But because this is the real world, the post gets picked up a by a couple of blogs, and phrases like “disrespecting the horror of war” and “forgetting the hardships of early twentieth century America” get thrown around and, really, Bucky is too old for any of this shit.
But his ma raised him to be honest, so he opens up instagram and types up a comment on his post: “To clarify, by ‘simpler times’ I mean ‘not-a-brainwashed-Soviet-assassin times”.
(He’s sure someone in legal somewhere, because someone must be watching his account by now, is probably having an aneurism at that one, but he’s spent far too long being someone acting on someone else’s instructions to give a shit about any of that now.)
*
“What did you want to do this evening?” Steve asks, his hands moving steadily across the sketchpad.
Bucky wiggles the foot he’s got wedged under Steve’s ass in an attempt to alleviate the pins and needles that are already forming, and shrugs. “Dunno,” he murmurs, pulling the TV guide up on the screen. “I’m quite happy here really.” It’s quiet, comfortable, just the two of them. With them both crammed onto the sofa, the TV turned down low in the background, and Steve bent over his sketchbook, they could almost be back in their old apartment before the war. He chances a glance at Steve, and finds him watching him silently. He feels braver than he has in weeks. “Kind of feels like home.”
A smile tugs at the corner of Steve’s mouth that threatens to be blinding, but he turns back to his sketchbook without saying anything. Bucky takes a photo of his hands, but he doesn’t post it to instagram.
*
Bucky posts a blurry photo of a gig to instagram, with him in one corner and a tiny Taylor Swift in the other. He tags her in it. When she likes it, his heart flip-flops in a manner not befitting a former assassin.
*
Bucky comes back from his therapy session and coffee with Kate to find Steve passed out on the sofa. He’s drooling on the arm, and his face is all squashed where he’s leaning, and Bucky has never been more in love in his life. He posts a picture and doesn’t caption it for fear of saying too much.
He puts his phone away, and pokes Steve in the chest, waking him up just enough to slide in next to him. Steve’s arm settles around his waist, and he presses his face into the crook of Steve’s neck. It wasn’t comfortable when they used to do this as kids, two small bodies wrapped around one another for comfort, and it’s certainly not comfortable now. But Bucky can sleep anywhere, and wrapped in Steve’s arms is hardly the worst place he’s slept.
It occurs to him that home might not always be a place.
*
“…and then I said to Billy,” Kate says, arms spread wide, big smile plastered across her face as she recounts the latest round of shenanigans with her friends.
Bucky smiles - her enthusiasm is infectious, a side effect of youth he supposes - and takes a picture of her. He posts it to instagram with the caption “best barista in NYC” and tags it @hawkeye because he knows it’ll piss her off. It wouldn’t do to have her labouring under false impressions of him.
She pauses her story to glance at her notification, and when she brings her gaze up to glare at him, he takes a picture of that too.
He posts it later with the caption “she’s not a bad private investigator/hero for hire either” because he may be a shit, but he likes Kate, and he doesn’t want her to spit in his coffee or anything next week (he wouldn’t put it past her either).
A while later, she responds by posting a selfie she took of them a couple of weeks back, so he supposes he’s forgiven. She captions it “love this loser #practicallyavengers #coffeebros” and Bucky likes it immediately, even if she has cut off part of his face, and she has cocoa spread across one cheek.
*
They’ve spread the couch cushions on the floor like they used to when they were kids, and Bucky’s wrapped in his reading blanket. He’s hugging one of the squishy cushions from the armchair to his chest as he tries to take a photo that captures the extent of their cushion palace when Steve comes back with the popcorn.
“Put your phone away,” he grumbles as he sets up the next film on his welcome-to-the-twenty-first-century list.
“Yeah, yeah,” Bucky mumbles distractedly as he finishes up posting his chosen picture. “In a minute.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Steve snaps. Bucky’s gaze snaps up immediately, because Steve never snaps at him. “Do you always have to be taking pictures?! Can’t it ever just be the two of us, or do you have to share every waking moment with the entire world?”
“Yes, actually,” Bucky snarls, seeing red. “I do.”
He pulls himself to his feet, and throws the blanket off his shoulders. Stomping out of the room, he pauses with his hand on the door and then slams that shut behind him for dramatic effect. Fuck you, Steven.
*
He finds himself on the roof, like he normally does when he wants to get away. He stands right on the ledge and posts a picture of his view to instagram. He captions it “I could make 27 kill shots from here without moving” and it’s a bit of an exaggeration but he feels it makes his point quite succinctly.
He turns his back on his view and hops off the ledge. Putting his phone down, he sinks down to lean against the low wall, and drops his head onto his knees. A couple of minutes later, the door to the roof opens - that funny almost-silent he recognises as someone who doesn’t make noise attempting to announce their arrival - and then what can only be Natasha leans her head on his shoulder.
“I snapped at Steve,” he whispers to his knees.
“Hmm.”
“I should apologise.”
“In a bit,” she murmurs. He lifts his head to look at her. “Clint’s with him at the moment.”
Bucky tips his head back against the wall and watches the clouds skate across the sky. They’re both silent for a while, and he focuses on breathing.
“I thought he’d understand. With his sketchbook and all.”
Natasha lifts her head and watches him for a moment, head cocked slightly like she’s studying him for cues. She sighs, and sinks lower against the wall.
“I think it’s different for him,” she begins, speaking slowly. “I think he draws to remember how he saw that moment. I think,” she falters for a moment, searching for the right words. “I think he doesn’t worry about losing details, so long as he remembers how he felt.”
Bucky looks at her dubiously because they both know what she’s studiously avoiding saying. She looks at him, and sighs again, like he’s a particularly trying toddler.
“He doesn’t know what it’s like to have gaps he can’t fill,” he finishes for her.
“Yeah,” she agrees, and Bucky finds himself reminded once again of just how much she understands him.
*
She leaves, after a while, when neither of them say anything more.
Bucky scrolls through the thousands of photos he has on his phone, everything from last night’s dinner, to a weirdly shaped leaf he saw in the park, to a blurry photo of a wall that he remembers was an attempt to photograph how the light reflected off his left arm. And that’s the thing. It’s just a thousand different times he wanted to remember, that he wants to cling onto. He wants proof that this miraculous second life existed if anyone ever tries to take it from him again.
He doesn’t have any photos from before the war, not like this, couldn’t have dreamed that one day he’d be able to have so many. But he knows sure as day that he’d have had as many photos of Steve then as he does now.
He thinks about what Natasha had said, how she understands, and wonders for the first time how she managed to break free from her conditioning. He thinks about those first few desperate weeks, when all he knew for certain was a face cast in shadows, and a half whispered name, and wonders how Natasha managed to keep going without someone like Steve to cling onto.
He can’t ever imagine being so alone.
Bucky opens up instagram, and scrolls through his phone’s pictures until he finds the one of Steve’s hands. He stops for a moment, looks out towards the skyline to where the building they used to live in once was, and selects the picture.
If Natasha's right, that Steve draws to capture how he felt at that particular moment in time, then maybe this will work for him. His own hands were never made to create art - not then and certainly not after when they had been remade for destruction - but he can point and click well enough. And right now, he wants to feel brave, for once.