Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was April when Steve first saw him.

Steve was sketching absently on a piece of hotel stationary, idly listening to InkMaster reruns when the building shivered slightly, a distant and yet still ear splitting noise from outside and far away startling his pencil across the page. He leapt out of his seat, running to the window, and gripped the sill as he caught a glow of fire in the distance. Sirens screamed in the distance as people called up and down the hallway of the hotel, and his phone started shrieking alerts at him in nearly the same moment.

A quick glance at the screen told him there was some kind of attack happening at the Triskelion. Quickly, he texted the groupchat of his friends that were here with him- they were all in town for an equal rights rally. Surely this had nothing to do with the rally and that meant that no one should be anywhere near the building at the moment, but… he wanted to make sure his people were safe.

We’re okay, Foggy texted him back.

Stay indoors, Matt directed almost in tandem, the constant worrier and Dad Friend of the group.

Don’t get yourself arrested, Claire added after a few beats.

Something was going on with the Avengers and SHIELD, and over the next thirty minutes the situation escalated rapidly from ‘something’ to ‘a terror threat that shut down the entire capitol’ as the Triskelion exploded. Air vehicles went crashing into the SHIELD headquarters as news outlets tried to report from a safe distance away, police and emergency vehicles running all over. It was pure, undiluted mayhem.

The hotel was a fair ways away from Roosevelt Island where the Triskelion had begun its crumble inward… but all New Yorkers remembered the horror of having your city burn. It was innate now, a part of them, and Steve was stuck halfway between his television and his windows as he watched the chaos unfold, feeling the familiar anxiety about the people around him rise.

He wanted to go and help, to ensure that people were safe, but there were officers a few streets down, calling for people to be calm and go back inside their homes and they were letting no one past. Steve could still see the thick smoke on the horizon, choking out the sky, and he stayed out on his balcony with the small sketchbook and set of charcoals and pencils he took traveling with him, trying to capture the chaos on the skyline whilst simultaneously keeping an eye on the mayhem and an ear on the news reporting in the other room.

He remembered what it had been like in 2001, racing through the streets and trying to help people up off the ground, trying to help them breathe. He remembered, too, what it had been like when the Chitauri hit. He kept some of his attention on the road, waiting and watching for anyone who might need a helping hand.

He stayed out past nightfall, far past when the news reported that there was no active terror threat to watch for and that the Avengers had managed to control the situation. His fingers were nearly black with graphite and he was trying to use the last of the fading evening light to record the brief glimpse he’d gotten of the Hulk leaping through the sky from a plane to go join the fight. He was busy, focused on his task, no longer looking for anyone who needed help, when he found that someone did, in fact.

If he hadn’t glanced up to check on the position of the slanted building in the far east, he might not have even noticed the figure staggering down the street. The man was limping down the sidewalk, taking stumbling steps down the darkened street with a clear effort. He fell twice as Steve rose to a stand in concern, but managed to push himself back up both times.

Steve leaned over the balcony quickly, waving a hand to get his attention. “Hey,” he called in alarm, but the man didn’t lift his head. Steve raised his voice. Time had passed since the attacks on New York, but Steve remembered too vividly how people just kept walking and walking away from the wreckage of their houses, workplaces or cars, too traumatized by what they had just gone through to stop and get help. “Hey, sir! Are you alright?”

The tall figure tilted sideways, seeming to try to move more toward the shadows of the wall beside him, but it wasn’t very effective as he immediately toppled over onto his hands and knees again.

Shit, shit, shit. Steve launched through his room and down through the hallways. He tore down the stairs, lungs aching by the time he got to the bottom, and stumbled out into the street to crouch down beside the stranger. “Hey,” Steve said, reaching out for the injured man. “Hey, you’re okay. Do you need a hospital? How bad are you hurt?”

He swiped at him, giving a feeble shove with a gleaming silver hand, but Steve didn’t have time to process the full what the hell of that before he focused on the blood dripping onto the sidewalk from the man’s dark clothing, creating spatter patterns on the cement. The man dropped onto his elbows, panting hard, and Steve tried to catch him. The guy was heavy. Incredibly heavy- maybe it was the prosthetic?

Steve shouldered him, drawing his non-prosthetic arm across his back. “Come with me,” he said firmly. “I’ll take you inside and I can call an ambulance, you’re losing a lot of freaking blood.” He’d left his phone upstairs like an idiot, so he would have to talk to the front desk. “C’mon, it’s not far, you’re going to be okay.”

Silver fingers flexed slowly in Steve’s when Steve grabbed his other hand to keep him balanced, and they smeared with graphite and felt like metal, but he lost the thread of thought about that when dark eyes peered up at him through a sheet of dark hair. Steve couldn’t see features well in these shadows, but he could see the intensity of those eyes, could see his bone structure, could see that he had sharp cheekbones and a shockingly muscular frame.

Jesus, but he was incredible. Steve was locked into place for a moment as they looked at each other, the intensity of that stare burning into him. He couldn’t exactly tell the color of the other man’s eyes, couldn’t clearly see his features, but it was fascinating to look at him.

The man didn’t move for a moment, holding eye contact, and then he lurched forward and up, shaking back onto his feet without pulling his hand or arm free of Steve’s. He swayed and Steve moved forward quickly, fitting himself more securely beneath the man’s arm and shoulder, shoving away the sheer beauty of him. He was hurt- his beauty or lack thereof didn’t matter in the slightest right now.

“Okay, so we’re just going to get you into the lobby,” Steve said. “And then I’ll have the front desk call an ambulance, okay?”

“No.” He dug his feet in, tensing, and Steve almost tripped. The man withdrew his arm, wavering slightly on his feet, and turned to head back to the alley.

“No, stop!” Steve ducked beneath his arm, blocking him. “You’re going to bleed out, you need to go to a hospital.” he glared up at the other man. “Do you want to die in some dirty alley?”

“No hospital.” His eyes had gone flat and glazed, and each ragged breath made him sway back and forth.

Steve searched his face, then took in a deep breath. “Alright,” he said after an internal battle. “Okay, fine. I’m just up one flight.” He wedged himself beneath the man’s arm again and found him slightly more resistant this time. “Come on, let’s go, before you pass out. I’m not strong enough to carry you up.”

The man was motionless for a moment as he seemed to think, then gave a heavy nod and stumbled forward one step at a time. Steve fumbled with the hotel door and the stranger staggered inside, sinking heavily into the delicate wooden chair that stood by the desk. His head fell back, exhausted and bruised face illuminated by the lamplight.

Steve was left breathless for a moment at this unspeakably beautiful man, covered in blood and bruises, who had appeared out of the dark and into Steve’s life. He was the stuff of a thousand paintings, someone that Steve knew right now would haunt his work for weeks to come.

“D’n’t call any’ne,” he slurred, and Steve, who had been positive that the man had passed out, nearly jumped out of his skin and dropped his phone in the process.

“Why not?” Steve searched his face. His fingers almost burned to grab pencils and paper and sketch out the beautiful man in front of him, every line and gorgeous shape, the way the light hugged his bones and smoothed along the hollows in his face. Steve shook himself. “You’re hurt really badly. What the hell happened to you? Were you at the attack?”

His eyes cracked open, hazy blue eyes tracking Steve hazily. “Maint’nance needed,” he mumbled, silver hand snaking out to catch loosely at the hem of Steve’s flannel.

Why was it that ‘maintenance needed’ sounded so much like ‘help’ when he said it like that?

“Okay.” Steve curled a hand around his arm gently, searching his face. He didn’t know why the man didn’t want him to take him to a hospital, but the fact was that he needed help. “I’m going to check on your wounds and try to stop the bleeding.”

He gave a slow shift, extending his legs out in front of him, and Steve couldn’t help but stare at his long form for a moment before he understood that the man was giving Steve better access to him. His metal hand released Steve’s flannel and raised, slowly unclipping the straps of his vest one at a time until the heavy leather, one-sleeved, armor-like covering fell off his torso. He slid his right arm out of the sleeve with obvious difficulty and dropped his head back against the wall again, panting as his eyes found Steve’s again.

It was unreal, the way the world slowed down with that eye contact, like it was an anchor dragging the clock down.

Steve moved forward, slowly stepping between the man’s legs to check him over, being as gentle as he could. There were bruises all over, cuts and wounds skating across the darkening skin like strokes in an abstract painting. He had to be in so much pain. “Where hurts the most?” Steve asked in a low voice, trying not to stare at the places where blood was starting to rise and spill across that bruisework tapestry, marring the echo of the night sky with sunset.

The stranger let out a shallow breath, his eyes sinking shut as Steve’s hands carefully skimmed down the bruises and hovered over the cuts. What would even injure someone like this? Had he been hit by a car? Was he SHIELD? Maybe he’d been in or near the Triskelion. He certainly had a body like someone who might work with the Avengers.

“Bullet in lef’ thigh,” he slurred. “‘Nother one by my stomach.”

Steve stared down at the wounds, feeling a tiny shock at that reality. He had been shot. Why had he been shot? Was he a security person? Was he… no, his mind skated away from the possibility of him being a terrorist. A terrorist wouldn’t have let Steve take him anywhere, wouldn’t be so submissive and calm. He’d be forcing Steve to help him. “I- I can’t do anything for a bullet wound, we need to get you to a hospital. Right now, we need to get that bullet out of you, we need to take care of it or it’ll get infected, get toxic.” Hadn’t he seen something like that on House once?

“Told you. No hospital.” He shook his head and forced himself to sit up, starting to pull on his armor again as he pushed to his feet. The movement brought him pressed flush against Steve, who had been standing slightly too close, and his human hand caught Steve’s shoulder for balance for a moment.

“No, stop!” Steve caught him. “Sit back down, sit down, dammit. You’re going to fall, stay here. Let me figure out how to help you, just stay here.” He needed to figure out some way to help him before the man fell down and hurt himself.

“Not goin’ hospital.” He dropped to the chair again heavily and Steve glanced down to find his own shirt soaked in his stranger’s blood. He swallowed past the wave of nausea that tried to rise. “You. Main’nence.” He mumbled, watching Steve through low-lidded eyes.

Me, do maintenance? Steve stared at him, then shook his head, pulling himself together. “Alright. Alright, fine. Yeah.” He moved quickly to his bag, grabbing the first-aid kit he always brought along to these rallies, and grabbed his phone, dialing Foggy and Matt’s room. “Hey,” he said when his friend picked up. “I know it’s stupid-late, but I need Claire to come down to my room, there’s a guy here who’s hurt and if we don’t get him sewn up we’re going to have problems.”

“What?” Foggy sounded half-asleep still. “What guy?”

“I don’t know, some guy. He’s bleeding a lot and he won’t come to the hospital. Tell Claire I’ll buy her a whole new set of boots.”

“You know nurses don’t just bring surgical thread with them, right?” he still sounded groggy, but at least he seemed somewhat more awake now. “Matt. Matty.” A thump. “Steve wants Claire.”

“Why does Steve want Claire?” Matt inquired sleepily.

“Because someone is bleeding out on my floor!” Steve pulled off his hoodie and pressed it hard against the man’s stomach, gritting his teeth. “I need Claire, he won’t go to the hospital and he’s hurt.”

“What?” Matt asked sharply, and Foggy hung up with a clatter. The man sagged forward against Steve’s hands, his metal one fluttering up to curve around the back of Steve’s neck.

“No ‘ne else,” he disagreed, forehead pressing against Steve’s clumsily. “Not alloweda…”

“I can’t sew you up.” Steve pressed his other hand against the man’s, trying to impart comfort and keep him up at the same time. “I don’t have any medical training, I can’t help you with wounds this big. I need her to help stabilize you. My name’s Steve, what’s your name? Talk to me, tell me what happened.”

The man mumbled something incomprehensible, and Steve started to wonder if his right arm was broken as he still hadn’t used it in any real motion, but the thought was disrupted when there was a hard knock on the door.

Steve leaned the man back carefully, pushing his hair back, and ran to the door. “Hey,” he greeted them in relief.

“Hey.” Foggy was a disheveled mess in sweatpants and an I AM NOT DAREDEVIL t-shirt. Matt was behind him, glasses in place, a hoodie haphazardly being pulled over his head. Claire pushed them both out of the way to get to Steve.

“What the hell is going on?”

“He needs help, I don’t know what happened but he’s hurt.” Steve moved back quickly to help steady the man, pressing gently on his shoulders in an effort to keep him sitting when he immediately started to get up again at the entrance of new people. “He’s got a bullet wound in his leg and one in his stomach, he needs help. I think he was attacked.”

“Jesus,” Foggy breathed, and Claire was already in the bathroom, running water and gathering towels.

“Why do I find these people,” she muttered under her breath, and Matt came closer. The man under Steve’s hands stiffened, his metal arm whirring hard, the plates fluttering and locking down again as he tracked Matt’s movements with dark eyes.

“We need to call the police,” Matt said to Foggy, who pulled his phone out immediately. The injured man was on his feet in an instant, Foggy’s phone crushed to pieces between metal fingers, and Matt yanked Foggy backwards. Steve darted between them and pressed one hand against Foggy's shoulder to push him into Matt and the other back against the other man’s chest to keep him back.

“These are my friends,” Steve said sharply. “You’re not going to do that to them. They’re here to help patch you up. Why are you so worried about-”

He broke off as he realized that the man wasn’t trying to fight to stay on his feet, but instead trying to pull Steve backwards. Steve blinked up at him in confusion and eased his stance, and immediately found himself moved to the other side of the chair, closer to the door and now positioned so the man was between him and the other two. His arm whirred again, stretching backwards slightly as if to keep Steve back, and his right hand raised shakily to brace himself against the wall. His fingers dug through it like it was soft plaster.

“No,” he slurred out, shaking his head hard as blood dripped onto the ground from his soaked shirt. His left leg trembled slightly and his skin was covered in a thin sheen of sweat, but he stayed on his feet. “No, the’ll-” he mumbled something then, though it was chaotic and clustered all into a rush of syllables Steve couldn’t quite decipher. Matt’s eyebrows drew together, his face setting hard, and the man’s metal hand curled unsteadily into Steve’s shirt to keep him in place.

This man was trying to protect Steve. He wasn’t trying to hurt the others, he was trying to protect Steve. Steve looked up at him, resting his hand on the man’s arm. “Hey,” he soothed, keeping his gaze. “Sit down. Sit down, they’re not going to hurt me. They’re my best friends, they’re not going to hurt me. And this is Claire, she’s a nurse and she’s going to help you, but you’ve got to lay down. Please.” Steve tugged at him and he turned slightly, dark eyes finding Steve’s. The world dragged slower for a beat again as they looked at each other, and he let out an unsteady breath. Steve gave him a smile, squeezing his sleeve gently. “Lay down. Matt, relax and keep Foggy over there.”

The man watched him a moment longer, then all but crumpled into the chair, allowing Claire to cautiously approach and start cleaning off his skin. His eyes found Matt and Foggy, then Steve again, then, “They don’ want witnesses,” he rasped. “No calls.” And then Claire’s towels brushed his leg and he was going rigid, eyes rolling back before he passed out entirely.

“Shit!” Steve leapt forward to try and catch him, to steady him quickly. “Claire?!”

“He’s lost a lot of blood and people pass out from less pain than this every day.” She was taking his pulse with one hand, eyes on the wall as she counted. She nodded when she was done and started stripping the man of his clothes. “Help me with his clothes.”

“Hang on.” Foggy held up his hands. “Are we sure we should be stripping the cyborg with the murder-eyes?”

“He’s hurt and we’re not calling the cops, so… yeah. We are.” Claire pulled tweezers from the first-aid kit as Steve helped take off the man’s boots and tugged at his jacket.

“I’m still not on board with not calling the cops!” Foggy protested.

“He said they’d kill us if they knew we’d seen him.” Matt was motionless, hands tight fists at his sides. “I don’t like this, Steve.”

“Then we won’t tell anyone we saw him.” Steve glanced at him. He understood the ridiculousness of all of this, but the solution was clear right now. “Help me with this, Foggy. We’re going to help this guy get to his feet and it’ll be fine, Matt. If he was going to hurt me, he would have. He didn’t actually hurt any of you, either. He’s not a bad person.”

“Are you kidding? You aren’t worried about who he’s tangled up with that got him like this? That would kill if word got out that he’s been seen? That’s some Wilson Fisk-level insanity.” Foggy stared at him and Claire twisted around.

“Matthew. Help me put pressure on this. Now.” She stared at him for a hard moment and he moved forward, kneeling beside her and pressing down where she guided his hands. She looked at Foggy. “Ice,” she ordered, and then started instructing Steve on how to tape up the broken fingers on the man’s right hand as she worked on fishing out the bullet in his thigh with the plastic tweezers in the first aid kit.

It took almost two hours to finish cleaning, sewing, treating, and bandaging it all. Claire, Matt, and Foggy helped Steve drag the man onto the spare bed and laid him on top of the last of the clean towels in case he bled through his bandages… although Steve was sure that he wasn’t getting any deposits back on this hotel what with how thoroughly they had ruined the chair and other towels at this point, not to mention the hole in the wall where he had dug his fingers in. The bedsheets might not make that much of a difference.

The guys refused to leave. Claire and Matt argued in an undertone for nearly five minutes in the corner before she bade them goodnight (a little sharply) and vanished to their room to shower off the blood and tension and go to sleep. Foggy took pillows and blankets from their room and stretched out on the floor, and Matt took the non-bloody chair while Foggy and Steve worked to clean as much of the blood off it as they could. Matt fell asleep sitting in his chair as Steve sat on his bed, staring over at the man who had sent his night crashing to pieces so brutally.

He didn’t even know what to think. The man had said so few words, had explained almost nothing, and yet there was something about him that pulled Steve to him even now, while the man was unconscious and wrapped up in places like a mummy.

Thank god Claire had been here. Steve knew plenty about binding up smaller wounds and had a pretty decent knowledge of basic first aid- he had had his share of injuries that he’d self-treated- but this had been much more extreme and life-threatening. And thank god Claire was used to insanity. She hadn’t really asked questions and had simply accepted that they weren’t calling the police, and she had gotten to sewing this stranger up simply because it was the right thing to do.

Steve pulled one knee against his chest, watching the other man’s chest rise and fall. He was so beautiful. Even like this, he was so beautiful. It was a shame Steve couldn’t see his eyes, because those really were incredible, but even without, he was just… gorgeous. Steve thought back to the moment where the man had pulled him back, trying to protect him, and felt a tiny little squeeze in his stomach.

People tried to protect him. Or, they used to, anyway. Back when he was sicker, when he’d been smaller and hadn’t decorated himself with tattoos and piercings, black leather and heavy combat boots to prove that he could take care of himself. Back before he had truly learned what an attitude could do and how projecting an air of complete confidence would keep people from thinking he was pathetic.

He replayed the way the man had curled a hand around the back of Steve’s neck, how their heads had rested together, how the man had pulled him back again and again to keep him ‘safe,’ how his eyes had kept finding Steve, as if he were checking on him.

Steve didn’t like being protected, usually. He didn’t need to be protected- he wasn’t strong, but he was fast and smart and he could get himself out of most issues easily enough. Usually when people tried to protect him it was a reflection of the way they saw him, that he was weak enough to need protecting, and it usually irritated him.

Somehow, this total stranger trying to take care of him didn’t rankle the way that Steve would have anticipated that it would. Somehow, it was different, and Steve couldn’t quite put a finger on why, exactly, that was.

He traced the other man’s profile with his gaze, studying the way that light loved his face, and gave up the fight that he’d started since he had seen the other man’s face in the alley. He pulled out his sketchbook and pencils and started working, carefully immortalizing just how lovely this stranger was as he slept in Steve’s room.

He didn’t know what had happened, why the man was hurt and why he’d let them help him, but Steve would ask in the morning, and they would figure it out.

He woke to soft noise, and opened his eyes with the hazy knowledge that it was still early in the morning, the world fuzzy in the way it only was at two or three am. The man was shifting himself slowly off the bed and to his feet, his metal hand reaching out to reclaim his clothes. Foggy was still faintly snoring on the ground and Matt still slumbered in the chair, his head lightly resting against the cane he carried with him always.

Steve tumbled out of bed as gracefully as he could, reaching out for the man. “Hey,” he said in alarm, attempting to keep his voice low. “You need to be sleeping. You need to be resting. Stay here, sit down. What do you need?”

“I need to leave,” he rumbled, voice low and somewhat rasping. He caught Steve’s shoulder very briefly to help balance himself, then removed his hand just as quickly.

“You need to stay here and heal,” Steve corrected sharply. “Stay here. You need to rest and eat something, you were bleeding all over the place and you’re still badly hurt. Relax. Why do you need to leave right now?”

The man studied him for a long moment, fingers hovering by Steve’s ear for a shivering beat as if he was going to try to touch the industrial that lanced through the cartilage there. “Pochemu ty chuvstvuyesh' sebya pokhozhim na dom?” he murmured, the foreign words sleek in the air.

Steve searched his face, turning his head slightly so the industrial was more on display there. He didn’t know this man, but it was clear he wasn’t a threat to Steve. He would have hurt him if he’d wanted to already.

And Steve liked it when people liked his body modifications.

“I don’t speak that language,” he admitted after a beat. “It’s beautiful.”

Something that might have been confusion or maybe amusement flickered so briefly over the man’s face that Steve couldn’t decipher it. Then he dropped his hand and pulled his armored vest on, hiding the majority of bandages from view as he started strapping it tightly over himself.

There was something about the design of the armor that screamed restraint. Something about the way the straps lay brought to mind straight jackets and caged animals, leashes and containment. It was odd and distinctly unsettling, by itself and especially when combined with the blood dried across it.

“Can’t stay here,” the man repeated, his eyes on his hands as they flew over the buckles and straps. He paused, perhaps noticing that Foggy and Matt had removed the sleek gun they’d found tucked into a holster, but he didn’t ask for it, just continued his work. “You should go, too. Somewhere away.”

“Why?” Steve frowned hard at him. “We’ve been fine here all night, you’ll be fine to stay until we can get you an Uber or something back to your place, but you shouldn’t just go. Why do you think we’re not safe here? What’s going on?” He took a step forward. “How did you get hurt? What happened to you?”

“You ask a lot of questions.” He pulled his pants on without looking at Steve.

“I’ve been told it’s one of my more annoying traits.” Steve moved to block the door, lifting his chin. “Tell me something, then. You can’t come in here and bleed everywhere and then leave and tell us we need to leave and we’re in danger without telling us anything.”

The man blinked down at him slowly, something alert and more focused flashing through those flat-dark eyes, and his silver fingers flicked outwards, finding the back of Steve’s wrist and skimming across it briefly. “Thank you,” he said, and then Steve realized that he’d touched him just to get to the doorknob, which he was now opening.

“Hell no.” Steve pushed the door shut again. He could be stubborn. He could not be swayed by the most beautiful man he had ever seen in his entire life. “Are you in danger? We have a car. We can take you somewh-”

“No.” A simple refusal, and his eyes were flat and distant again. He didn’t push Steve away from the door, though he could have with ease- but he didn’t release it either. His eyes flicked to Foggy, then to Matt, and lingered there for a moment. Assessing. They returned to Steve. “I have to leave,” he repeated quietly, seriously, stepping closer into Steve’s space. “You have to stay.”

Steve looked up at him, caught by that strange pull again, sucked down into the whirlpool of his eyes. He didn’t belong to this man, and they had no relationship. He had no right to keep him, to order him around, even if it was for his own damn good. Steve picked up a marker and turned the man’s human hand over, scribbling his number across the calloused palm. “If you ever need help again, you can call me,” he said. “But I’m not from here- I live in New York.”

“New York,” the stranger repeated quietly, his eyes falling to the ink that stained across his skin. He closed his fingers, then opened them again, looking at his hand as if expecting the numbers to have vanished. “Pochemu ty chuvstvuyesh' sebya pokhozhim na dom?” he mumbled to his hand, distant and softly bewildered. A cart sounded from somewhere down the hall and he went flat again, his face hardening into an indifferent cast. His hand closed hard into a fist to hide the numbers from view and he looked down at Steve for a beat.

Then he opened the door and left, striding down the hall in a prowl that showed no signs of pain from the bullet wounds that had to still be agonizing.

Steve watched until the leather-clad back vanished at the stairs, then slowly closed the door and stared at the wood for a long moment, trying to process what had just happened, what he had just been a part of.

He was certain the man wasn’t a terrorist. He would have acted differently, would have responded to things differently.

He wished that the man wouldn’t just disappear now. That he wouldn’t spend the rest of his life tugging at this mystery.

They had no loyalty to each other. There was no reason he’d stay, no reason he’d call, and no reason that he’d expect to see the man ever again. But there was something about him that made Steve wish that he would come back, that this wasn’t the end of their odd connection that had been strung between them.

Steve slowly walked back to his bed and laid back down, watching the shadows shifting on the ceiling as he tried to go back to sleep. There was no use in sitting here and thinking about it.

“You okay?” Matt asked, his voice a steady break in the silence of the dark room.

Steve jumped and looked around at his friend. He really shouldn’t have been surprised- Matt was a light sleeper at the best of times. It was always hard to know though, since Matt didn’t open his eyes and look around when he woke up like everyone else. He hadn’t even lifted his head from his cane and still looked like he was sleeping for all intents and purposes. Matt was funny like that- sometimes Steve worried about the kind of life he’d lived. “Yeah,” Steve agreed quietly, keeping his voice low. “Yeah, I’m okay. Thanks for staying, Matt.”

“Hey, without business from bailing you out of trouble, Nelson and Murdock could go under,” he reflected, and Steve muffled a laugh in his pillow as he rolled over. He fell asleep then, replaying a few times the memory of soft foreign words and dark eyes that were almost unreadable.

The Soldier kept moving.

Each step made him more aware of the stitches in his side, of the bullet wounds being stretched and pinched with every movement. He tightened the straps of his vest, keeping his eyes forward and his steps in the shadows of the building beside him. Sirens whirred and screeched in the street beside his. Did they call someone?

You will leave no witnesses.

An order, a protocol, an irrefutable and unbreakable rule.

He saw the blonde man in his mind’s eye and shied away from the thought.

Pochemu ty chuvstvuyesh' sebya pokhozhim na dom?

Why do you feel like home?

The Soldier had no home.

He could picture blue eyes and ink-stained fingers that didn’t shy away from his blood, a fragile frame that didn’t hesitate to support his weight.

Why do you feel like home?

The Asset does not have a past.

He stopped in the darkness of an alley and pressed his back against the wall as he listened to the sirens and the sounds of traffic in the street. The streets weren’t as busy as they should be. They’d shut some of them down, put blocks up, told everyone to get inside. That would make him stand out that much more.

He exhaled, fingers nimbly checking and confirming that his weapons had been taken.

You will never allow yourself to be disarmed. Your handler is the sole exception.

Unarguable and absolute.

Blue eyes and hair soft like sunshine.

The Soldier rolled his shoulder back as his arm whirred. He was never truly disarmed, anyway. This was fine. He needed to find an agent and report in.

You will leave no witnesses.

The blind man who had nonetheless watched the Soldier so closely, the woman who had moved to administer medical attention without pause, the man who had moved to protect them, the man who had moved to protect him.

You are the fist of Hydra.

I need to help you.

Leave no witnesses.

My name’s Steve, what’s your name?

Dogs don’t need names.

The Soldier’s hands were in his hair, trying to rip the locks out before he realized it. It was an aberration. He was malfunctioning. He needed to report in and submit himself for maintenance.

He released his hair and turned to the street, focusing on the ink scrawled across his palm for a moment.

The sirens whirled louder and the Soldier straightened, gritting his teeth together across the buzz of pain he had been ignoring throughout his walk.

He needed to find an agent and report-

What is your name?

He needed to report-

Why do you feel like home?

He needed-

You need to rest and eat something,

The sirens screamed and he took in a sharp breath, then started walking again, quickening his pace as he headed west.

He needed space. He needed quiet.

He needed to rest and eat something.

Chapter Text

Steve headed up the stairs, still careful, regardless of how he had mostly grown out of his asthma, not to overdo it. He knocked on the door with the rather impressive Nelson and Murdock plaque, smoothing his hair back and fixing his sketchbook more closely beneath one arm. Matt had asked him to come by, saying that there was a person here who could use his help, and Steve had hustled over.

He liked being helpful to them, liked assisting when there were crimes that needed someone a little less frightening to some victims than a policeman. Regardless of the training, some people were just not comfortable with authorities. Those people typically felt comfortable with Steve, considering how he was the exact opposite in almost any way that counted from an authority figure.

“Hey,” Karen greeted him with a smile at the door. “Thanks for coming by. They’re in Foggy’s office.” She gestured to it and he thanked her as he headed into the other room.

Foggy gave a sunny smile from where he was seated next to Matt at the desk when Steve walked through the door. “And here he is. Elsie, Ms. Kaarov, this is Steve Rogers, he’s a friend of ours and our resident sketch artist.”

The woman seated at the other side of the table gave a small wave of two fingers, her other arm wrapped around the shoulders of a small blonde girl. “Hello, Steve,” she said, and the girl waved exuberantly.

“Hi.”

“Hi, Elsie.” Steve crouched beside her seat, giving her a warm smile. He was always glad when it was kids that he was used to changing out some things when he did these jobs for Matt and Foggy- he took out most of his piercings, covered his arms, tried to look as professional and unthreatening as possible. He never knew what kind of trauma these people had been through and while some kids liked his tattoos and piercings, some felt intimidated by it, depending on their upbringing. If their parents had tattoos, Steve often rolled up his sleeves, otherwise he left them down. He didn’t see any ink on her mother, so he was going to play it safe for now. “My name is Steve. I’m here to help draw you something. Do you like drawing?”

“Sometimes I draw mermaids,” she told him, leaning back against her mother, who smoothed her hair down.

“Elsie’s very creative.”

“I like drawing mermaids too.” Steve gave her one of his sketchbooks that he only kept pictures of animals in and flipped to a clean page. “Do you want to draw while we talk? I hate just sitting still in one place.” He’d found very quickly that having a child talk without having anything to do with their hands didn’t work. This was the best option. He pulled out some pencils, resting them on top of the notebook, and she took one carefully to roll it between her fingers.

She started drawing, focusing carefully on her work, and her mother gave Steve a small smile. “Elsie has a very active imagination, Mr. Rogers.”

“Does she?” Steve settled in the chair at the end of the table, near Elsie and next to Matt. “That’s a good thing, sometimes. That’s the only way I make money.” He passed Elsie some markers and focused on her mother. “What can we do for you today, ma’am?”

“I saw a ghost,” Elsie announced without looking up. Her mother pressed her lips together.

“It’s an imaginary friend.”

“It’s a ghost,” Elsie pressed, looking up to scowl at her mother. “I know a ghost when I see one!”

“Okay.” Steve cleared his throat. The mother clearly was going to be an issue when it came to getting the story, so he definitely needed to talk around a few things, get the girl to open up. “What did this visitor look like, Elsie?” He pulled out his own pencils and flipped to a clean page. “Let’s start with what they looked like. Is it a man or a woman or neither?”

“A man,” she reported, starting to color in her mermaid’s tail.

“The police have agreed that it’s nothing,” Ms. Kaarov interjected. “But her father is overseas for the Air Force, and he insisted that we file a report in case it- wasn’t a ghost.” Her eyes flickered briefly over her daughter before returning to Steve.

“Angela’s sister was a friend of ours in college, and she asked us to be here to make sure everything got looked into properly,” Matt said with a small smile.

Steve inclined his head, putting things together quickly. Matt, Foggy, and the father were apparently concerned that this ‘ghost’ was actually an intruder of some kind, while the mother and police thought it was an imaginary friend. “Well okay,” he said easily. “We can at least draw a picture. I heard once that if you draw a ghost, they get happy because they know someone saw them.” He shifted in his head. “So this ghost, Elsie. Why do you think it was a ghost, and not a person?”

“Because… he’s there and then he’s not,” Elsie said, frowning as she focused on scribbling a cloud of hair for the mermaid on her paper and avoiding eye contact with him.

So this person was fast. Steve drew a head on his paper. “Well, let’s figure out who it might be, then. Ghosts used to be people, right? So is there something that he looks like, specifically? Like a great big nose like a witch? Or a really little mouth?”

She laughed at him. “No,” she said with a grin. “Just a normal mouth.”

“Okay.” He smiled at her. “Was he smiling? Like this?” He sketched Matt’s mouth just for fun, the way the lawyer’s lips quirked up and to the side when he was amused. Foggy chuckled and Elsie smiled at the lips, then shook her head quickly.

“He looked confused,” she disagreed.

“Okay, let me see something.” Steve picked up the book he’d picked up a few years ago, flipping through it. With kids, having pictures worked best. He turned to the faces section. “Do you see a mouth there that kinda looked like his?”

“Yeah.” She chewed on her thumb, then tapped one carefully, the lips tight and frowning at the corners.

“Okay.” Steve quickly transferred it. “What about the nose? Did he have a witch nose?” He gave her a grin. “With a great big wart?”

“No.” She giggled again and perused the book with a frown before pointing at another nose. “Kinda like that, but nicer,” she said before turning her attention back to her drawing.

“Okay, well there we go.” Steve added that nose and eyed it for a moment, then focused back on Elsie. “What about the eyes?”

“Scared.” She doodled a shape by the mermaid that was either a trash can or a dolphin.

“Scared?” Foggy repeated in surprise.

“He was scared?” Steve searched her face. “How was he scared? Why was he scared, do you know?”

She shook her head and considered for a moment, then looked up at Steve. “Do you think they think we’re the ghosts? And we’re scary?”

“Maybe.” Steve gave her a small smile. “What about his hair? Was it light like yours and mine? Or was it darker, like Mr. Murdock’s?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted, glancing at her mother, who looked weary of the entire thing. “I think darker.”

“Is this really necessary?” She asked, running a hand through her daughter’s hair. “She’s going to scare herself.”

“I wasn’t scared!” Elsie turned around to frown at her again, looking indignant at the assumption. “He just looks around and leaves!”

Steve stopped, exchanging a look with Foggy. That particular wording was a bit worrisome. “Looks?” He repeated. “You mean he comes back?”

Elsie didn’t move for a minute, then scowled sharply. “No.”

“Oh, for the love- he isn’t real,” her mother said, exasperated as she stood. “The locks are always locked, we’re four floors up, and no one has any reason to enter our home anyway. She is a child with an active imagination and that is all. Thank you for your time, but I don’t think a sketch is really of any relevance. Elsie.” She held out her hand and her daughter took it, getting up somewhat grumpily.

“Can I keep my picture?” She asked Steve, looking at the mermaid.

He gave her a smile, heart aching a little. He’d been lucky in that his family had supported his art, but he had known plenty who hadn’t. “Of course you can. It’s very good, you could be an artist one of these days.” He held out a fist for her to bump.

“Thanks!” She bumped her knuckles against his, took the page he offered, and scampered along with her mother out the door. Matt sighed when it closed, leaning back in his chair, and Steve looked around at him with a concerned frown.

“What do you think? Mom’s in denial? You’d think with superheroes and villains running around, people would be a little more careful about what their kids ‘see’ and don’t see.” Steve crossed his arms over his chest.

“I don’t know.” Foggy blew out a breath. “I mean… she’s an only child, her dad’s outta the country, maybe she is making him up for company.”

“You’d think if that were the case, she would imagine him talking and playing with her,” Matt pointed out, folding his hands over his cane. “She’s not saying he’s doing any of that.”

Steve ran a hand through his hair, thinking this over. “She said he’s confused, that he’s upset, and he keeps coming back. She said he doesn’t talk to her or anything, so it doesn’t make sense that it was just her imagination. A lonely kid creates a companion for themselves.”

Matt thumbed the top of his cane and Foggy ran a hand through his hair. “Okay. I’ll give Val a call and get her to convince her sister to put home cameras up. Just for the added security. It can’t hurt.”

“That’s a good idea,” Matt agreed, relaxing slightly. “But if he tries to hurt them-”

“If he exists, he isn’t being threatening at the moment. If we catch that he’s breaking in, we’ll get the police to escalate from there. But without proof, we can’t do anything,” Foggy pointed out. “We don’t even know how frequently this happens or if it’s happening at all.”

Steve hesitated, thinking back to the sweet, cute little girl. “Definitely double-check about the cameras,” he agreed.

“I’ll text her now,” he promised. “For now, just keep that sketch?” He glanced at the lips and nose that Steve had started sketching out.

Steve looked down at it as well, frowning a little. “Could be anyone, it’s not particularly specific. But yeah, I’ll keep it for now.” He nodded and closed it. “Anything else we need right now?”

“Nah, man, that was it. Thanks for making the trip.” Foggy smiled at him apologetically.

Steve shrugged at them with a smile. “It’s never a problem,” he assured them both. “Karen working on a case? She’s usually in here taking notes for us.” He could somewhat see her through the little window in the door, leaned over a laptop and typing carefully.

“She’s neck-deep in a freelance case today,” Foggy agreed with a smile. “A shame, she’s great with kids. But you are, too.”

Steve smiled. “I like kids,” he admitted. “Always figured I’d have little monsters one of these days, if I can ever stop getting arrested.” He laughed, getting up and stretching high above his head. “Thanks for calling, guys. I like helping with these.”

“Hey, you’re doing us a favor,” Matt pointed out as he leaned back more comfortably in his chair. “How’ve things been lately, Steve? Feels like it’s been a while since we’ve seen you.”

Steve smiled and closed his book as he reached out to collect his pencils. “Yeah, I know it has, I’m sorry about that. It’s been fine- I’ve been working really hard on some new commissions and things, trying to help where I can at the shelter. What about you guys? Anything interesting other than this?”

“Work. All day, every day.” Foggy grinned at him. “Living the dream.”

Matt laughed. “The dream?” He asked. “Is that what this is?”

“It’s a glorious life,” Steve informed him. “How could it be any less than incredible? We get called to do sketches for ghosts, we save the world one family at a time.”

“And get paid in fruit baskets,” Matt agreed with a chuckle. “We are indeed living the dream.”

“Speaking of.” Foggy stood, starting to clear papers off his desk. “Steve, how’d that date on Tuesday go?”

Steve shrugged. “Fine, really. He was kind of pushy about a second date, so I told him to take a hike.” He waved a hand. “That kind of assumptiveness is what gets people in trouble, so.”

“Was he pushy about wanting one, or did he just want one?” Foggy’s eyebrows raised at him.

“You do have a habit of pushing potential boyfriends out of the way,” Matt reflected. “Remember Pierre?”

“Pierre was a whole asshole, don’t start with that.” Steve shook his head. “It’s not that I don’t want a boyfriend, I’d like a boyfriend. They’re just not right, and I’m not going to settle. I’ll find someone who feels right eventually.”

“And what will your… uh… mystery… prince be like?” Foggy asked somewhat whimsically, smiling from ear to ear as he set his stack of papers aside.

“Mystery prince.” Steve blanched. “That’s a terrible phrase. I don’t want a prince. I just…” he blew out a breath. “Want somebody who likes me and doesn’t think I’m weak, who lets me be me. Who likes animals and art and science sometimes, and the same kinds of music. Somebody I can make laugh. I don’t know. I’ll just know. It’ll click.”

“Steven, how am I ever going to be a cool uncle if you don’t start giving me nephews?” Foggy asked patiently, eyes crinkling up when Matt burst into laughter. “You need to settle down, young man,” he insisted over his friend’s chuckles. “We need a kid around to help liven up the mood around here.”

Steve bumped his shoulder with a gentle fist, shaking his head. “You should give me nephews,” he informed him. “You and Matt work on that and I’ll let you know how it goes with me. Deal?”

“Somehow I feel like you’re getting off on the easier end of that deal,” Foggy informed him. “Karen! Are you going to give us nephews?” He called out to the lobby.

Karen’s laugh bubbled into the room. “I’m not exactly in a stable relationship right now so I hope not,” she called back.

“Foiled again,” Foggy sighed, and Matt laughed.

“Why do you want nephews?”

“Being an uncle is all the benefits of parenthood with none of the drawback. The kids come over, they’re cute, and then they leave. You get the fun with none of the sleepless nights.” Foggy waved a hand. “And since my parents didn’t see fit to push perfection by having another kid after me, you three are all I got.”

Steve smiled at him, feeling a fierce wash of affection rush through him, and Karen came in, putting down coffee cups in front of Matt and Foggy, dropping a kiss on each of their heads. “We love you too,” she said, ruffling his hair and handing Steve his coffee.

“Thank you, Karen. And anyway, Fog, why nephews? Why not nieces?” Steve sipped at his coffee as Karen settled between her boys, sorting out paperwork.

“Because teenagers go to their ‘fun uncles’ for dating advice and I can’t handle it with girls,” Foggy replied frankly. “How am I supposed to share my smooth moves with the girls?”

Steve laughed, unable to really argue with that, and shook his head as he watched Karen explain to Matt what paperwork she was handing him, the Braille sheets carefully stacked.

Bucky once-Barnes sat back against the wall, swallowing over and over as he looked at his handiwork. Light did its best to flood faintly into the room, illuminating the newsprint he had taped over the window. It made the papers glow with a backlit, phantom quality that was strangely beautiful if he looked at it long enough. No one would be able to see in, he reassured himself, but at least he could still take in the benefit of the light.

The wind buffeted the building, making the paper crease and puff like a sail, and he found himself caught by it, lost in a hurricane of moments.

Coughing hard while the dockmen laughed. The nearest reached out and plucked the cigarette from his small fingers before he could try it again.

“We keep our chins up, James,” a woman’s gentle voice admonished as they walked past the pier. “No matter how thin our wallets get.”

“Useda be, my family got on boats for fun. Sailboats.” Pinky ran a hand over his lips, eyes shadowed as he stared at the article about the broken warships. “Now look at us.”

“My Bonnie lies over the ocean!” Bucky shouted with a laugh, voice joining in with the rest of those singing from his troop.

It was just so quiet. Deafeningly so, suffocatingly so. In all of those memories, even the dark ones, there were others there. People talking, laughing, arguing, living. Now, in this unceasing silence, it felt like he was drowning in the lack of sound.

There was a cat that haunted the abandoned building as much as he did. A pretty thing, scrawny and white, but her footsteps were utterly silent and she seemed to have no interest in interacting with him beyond watching him from the doorway when she wandered past. She caught his gaze now as she hovered in the doorway, green eyes watching him.

“Come on, kitty-kitty,” Lorrie cooed, crouching beside Becca and holding out a can of sardines to the one-eared stray.

“You know Ma’s allergic,” Bucky pointed out dryly, but he lowered himself beside her to make himself less threatening as the tabby crept forward.

“We can still be friends,” Becca pointed out hotly, and Bucky laughed.

The voices haunted him as much as the memories did, as much as the white cat did.

He hadn’t spoken to anyone in days.

The last time had been when he bumped a woman on the street below and she had reprimanded him fiercely for not watching while he was going. He couldn’t explain to her that he was trying to find a building that had been demolished decades ago, that sometimes he couldn’t even find his way home. That even when he did, his home didn’t exist anymore, was filled with strange walls and foreign objects.

He had thought about trying to say something, had thought about saying nothing. She had left, bothered when he stared for too long.

He could remember some of Hydra’s soldiers saying he had a staring problem.

Others had been angry when he didn’t make eye contact.

He couldn’t remember which one he was supposed to do anymore. What was normal?

He didn’t even remember the last time he had spoken.

He could feel the silence like sandpaper on his skin.

“Your orders were to remain silent!” the agent snarled, his baton crunching into the Soldier’s ribcage. A second swing caught him in the jaw, audibly cracking as pain exploded across his face, but he held his feet, forcing himself not to stagger or fall as a third swing came arcing down toward his cheek.

He ripped open his backpack with fumbling fingers, fighting down the sharp rise of nausea and grabbing a pen. He found the first open page and started recording as many fragmented details as he could of the six memories he’d recalled. His grip on the pen nearly tore the paper with the last, but he wrote it down, too.

There was no running from what had happened to him, no more than there was from who he had become. He could hide from Hydra and the world, but not from himself.

Finished with his work, he set the book down and stretched out on his side, holding the journal above his face as he started turning through the pages the way he did at least twice a day. He was reminding himself of wisps of memory that had drifted away again. Confirming the fragments he still held. Working, over and over, on knowing who he was and who he had been. It was a constant effort, a mantra to memorize every word and story he had written.

Sometimes it made him feel better to find the proof that he had once been human.

Sometimes, like this time, it just made him feel so much more isolated. From people, from all he had known, from home. He had no direction. He had no purpose. He had memories and silence and home was a distant, tattered dream of a thing.

Home. The Soldier didn’t have a home.

I’m not the Soldier.

Did Barnes have a home? Not anymore. The people, the place, they were all gone. Becca and Lorrie and Ma, Gabe Jones and Pinky and Logan Howlett, they were all gone.

Laughter and hands on his shoulders, hugs that pressed him close, his name in bright, warm tones full of welcome.

He couldn’t remember the last time that he felt like he-

Pochemu ty chuvstvuyesh' sebya pokhozhim na dom?

Barnes didn’t move. He didn’t breathe.

He sat up sharply, flipping through the pages of the book with rushing and adept fingers. He found the number written in minute and encrypted script, hidden by the seam of the pages so that he had to bend the cover backwards in order to see the miniscule numbers he had written down.

His mind wandered to blue eyes and pink lips, to determination and fire trapped in a slender frame, to greeting and warmth, and he pressed unsteady fingers to the writing. The silence weighed in on him, pressing like stones on his back, and he took in a slow breath.

Could he?

Chapter Text

Steve’s phone gave a soft chirrup from the table and he glanced over to see a missed call from a number he didn’t recognize. No doubt someone had typed a number in wrong and aborted the call after they’d realized their mistake. He ignored it. He had learned his lesson from answering numbers he didn’t know a while back, so he always just waited now. If they needed him, they’d call back or leave a message.

They did neither, and he moved on with making dinner.

The next twenty-four hours passed and he didn’t spare another thought to the theoretical telemarketer. Steve progressed along in his usual pattern of things- texting his friends, spending Friday night at a club, and spending the majority of Saturday catching up on the advertisements he was freelancing on that he’d been ignoring in favor of his commissions lately. It was just past eleven in the evening while Steve was setting his now-clean paintbrushes out to dry when his phone started buzzing, lighting up on the counter with the same unknown number that had graced the screen the day before. He yawned, eyeing it, and picked it up. “Hello?” he asked, spinning a brush between the fingers of the other hand as he turned to lean back against his counter. “Rogers here.”

Complete silence on the other end of the line. Steve pulled his phone back to check and confirmed that the call was still connected. He frowned, eyeing the screen, and pressed it against his ear again. “Hello? Is anyone there? If this is a prank, I’ll have you know that I will star-sixty-nine your ass.”

The silence drew out, then, “What… does that do?” A low voice asked quietly, slightly raspy at the edges and entirely uncertain.

Steve straightened. He knew that voice. It had haunted his dreams for nearly a month after the incident in DC. “Hey, you,” he said, fingers flexing around the phone. “Star sixty-nine? It makes it so it calls back even if someone blocks their number from you.”

“Oh.” Softly said, and then quiet drew out between them.

Steve cast around quickly, casting around for anything he could say to create conversation. “It’s been a while,” he said after a few moments, the awkwardness pulling at him. He had to make an effort, though. Who knew why he was calling, what he needed or how badly. “How are you? What are you doing these days?”

He laughed, and Steve couldn’t ever have imagined the sound, not for any amount of money. Sure, it was a short chuckle more than a full laugh- an exhaling chuff more than anything else, but it was sweet and warm and present all the same. Steve’s stomach clenched and he moved forward a little, as if he was getting closer to the man by such a futile motion. “What am I doing these days?” he repeated, that same sweet amusement lacing through his words.

He had such a pretty laugh. Steve closed his eyes to listen better, focusing. “Well, yeah. Isn’t that a normal thing people ask? What do you do? I feel like that’s a normal thing. I mean, last time I saw you, I had just dug bullets out of you. So hopefully you’re doing better than that.”

“Some days,” he agreed, chuffing out his little breath-laugh again. Steve gave a small smile. Some days. What was he doing the other days? “Not… every day. What are- what are you doing these days?” The other man asked it very carefully, forming each word precisely as if he wasn’t sure he was saying it right or naturally.

He was clearly trying so hard.

Steve set his brush down and crossing to lay down on the couch. “Well, I’m glad you’re not full of bullets every day. I’m doing pretty much the same thing I do most days. I go to work, I come home and paint and draw, I go out and yell at people being assholes. Sometimes I patch up strays outside.”

He didn’t earn another laugh, but there was a smile in his voice when the man spoke. “You paint and draw? What do you make?”

“I’m an artist,” Steve agreed. The awkwardness of that statement was something he had thought he had lost a long time ago, but it was here again in the face of this gorgeous man. “I make advertisements for a local newspaper usually, but at home, I do portraits mostly, some abstract stuff when I’m in the mood. I’m working on a seascape right now, it’s on commission.”

“Do you like the sea?” Quiet curiosity there.

“I like the idea of it. I’ve actually never been aside from just the Atlantic here against the city,” Steve admitted. “When I was little I got sick from almost everything, so my parents never took me anywhere. Now I’m an artist, so I’m broke as hell and can’t afford it.” He laughed. “What about you?”

“I like the Pacific Ocean,” he admitted. “But my favorite is the Red Sea. I… like the warmth of it.” He cleared his throat. “I don’t- I don’t like cold. I don’t like cold water.”

“That makes sense.” Steve watched his ceiling, considering. “Have you ever been down toward the equator? Where the water’s blue and green and warm all the time, no matter what time of year? It’s beautiful, apparently. The photos are amazing.”

“It’s beautiful,” he agreed. “The water’s almost the same color as your eyes if you go near Puerto Rico. The water near the Greek Mediterranean is darker, and the Red Sea is more of a light color.”

You remember the color of my eyes?

Steve fought down a smile, pushing that thought away. He couldn’t ask, he couldn’t get into it right now. Keep things casual, Rogers, you don’t know anything. Just keep him talking. “That sounds cool. Someday I’d like to go out there and see it. One of these days I’ll have a decent savings and I’ll go and see everything I can. Do you travel a lot, then? Where do you like to go?”

“I don’t travel anymore, I…” His words seemed to dry up and there was silence for a beat, then, “I… used to. I was…” He seemed to struggle with the concept for a moment, his breath going shallow over the line. “I was a soldier,” he said, the words forced out like stones, falling into the air and dropping mutedly into Steve’s ears. “I should go.”

“No, don’t go.” Steve felt stupid for saying it so quickly, felt stupid for asking. The man didn’t even know him, they were strangers to each other. He had no reason to stay and listen to what Steve had to say. Jesus, Rogers. “I mean- you were a soldier. You don’t have to talk about it, I know that can be difficult. What’s your name?”

He gave a little echo of his huffing laugh, though it sounded less amused than the first few. He was silent for a long time, long enough that Steve checked the screen again to make sure the call hadn’t dropped. Finally, he spoke. “They used to, uh.” He cleared his throat. “Some guys useda call me Bucky.”

“Bucky.” The name felt right somehow, normal in his mouth. It was shockingly mundane, startlingly casual for the soldier of muscle, metal, and blood that Steve had met in DC. This made him feel more like a man rather than an image. “Hello, Bucky. So tell me, what’re you doing right now? Anything interesting? I’m just laying on my couch.”

“I’m laying on my mattress. I can see the sky through the roof, and I’m looking at Orion. I don’t remember the story, though.” He sounded tired suddenly, nearly exhausted. “I think I used to know it. I can remember knowin’ it.”

“I could tell you the story.” Steve watched a shadow cross over his ceiling as a car on the street went by. Why can you see the sky through the roof, Bucky? Why are you laying on a mattress and not a bed? Where are you? “Do you want me to tell you? I loved mythology when I was little.”

He was silent for a long beat, then, “You would do that?”

Steve felt a grin cross his face. When was the last time he had told someone a bedtime story? Bucky was lonely, he suspected- isolated, maybe. He needed something and he had called Steve for it. He’d kept his number all this time, he had called him, he remembered the color of his eyes. “Sure. Course I would, I love those stories. Do you want to start with Orion?”

“Yes, please,” he said softly, gratitude washing through his voice, and Steve smiled and settled in as he found his place, reaching far back into his memory to the stories he had devoured as a child.

He detailed the story of Orion, describing the hunting prowess of the hero, carefully leaving out the details of the incident with Merope as he didn’t know what could trigger or upset Bucky. Instead he merely left it at Orion quarreling with Oenopion, the trials and tribulations in healing his sight, the joys of hunting alongside Artemis, and finally, the ending where the hero had been killed by Apollo and taken to the heavens to be stars by Artemis.

He moved on to the Nemean Lion from there, and by the time he reached the end, Bucky had stopped responding, and soft breathing filled the other end of the line. Steve laid there for a long time as he listened to the quiet, feeling a soft sort of peace filling him. He missed living with another person, missed the sound of another near him like that. It was something very different than anything in his normal life, considering his less-than-stellar track record with keeping a partner for any substantial length of time.

He fell asleep with the phone at his ear, discovering that he was unable to either hang up or wake the exhausted soldier.

The call was over by the time he woke, though when he checked the call log, he found that it had lasted until five in the morning. Did Bucky wake up that early or had their connection timed out? Steve wasn’t sure and he didn’t want to call and ask- that was too weird when they had only had one real conversation between them.

He thought about Bucky a lot through the rest of the day, caught himself replaying the relief in the man’s voice when Steve offered to tell him stories, thought about the careful way he had offered his name, the tightness at the soldier admission. He couldn’t stop himself from glancing at his phone throughout the day to make sure that he didn’t miss any calls. He saved Bucky’s name and contact information to his phone.

He worked on his seascape half-heartedly, but there was no denying that he was overly distracted. He was continuously checking in on his phone and when he wasn’t, he found that he was studying the landscape and wondering to himself if the water looked too cold. I don’t like the cold, Bucky had said, and he’d sounded so haunted by the admission.

Steve changed it. He added warmer blues to the sky and the sea, softening the colors until it looked almost like a bubble bath, a fantastical sea with pinks and purples dancing through it. It was whimsical and becoming somewhat abstract, but it looked warm and inviting all the same. Whether that was what the client wanted was an entirely different issue, and he penciled in a note to himself to meet with the buyer and update on his progress to see how they felt about it all.

That night he found himself making excuses to stay up, keeping his phone right next to his hand, and moving around restlessly to keep himself awake. He fell asleep eventually and woke to find no missed calls. He stupidly felt a little let down by that, regardless of the fact that he had no reason to think Bucky would call.

The next day was more of the same. So was the third day. By the fourth, Steve was resigning himself to another three or four months or longer still before he had any contact with the soldier if indeed there ever was more contact. After all, he didn’t know why Bucky had called. He didn’t know why he’d kept the number. It could have been anything at all, and he may not need that connection again.

Steve tried to force himself to stop staring at his phone and wishing for a call and made himself stop thinking about it. He buried himself in work and other things, tasks that kept him busy. Regardless of these efforts, he still found himself all but launching over the back of his couch when his phone rang from the coffee table at the end of the fourth night.

He swiped to pick up the call and put it to his ear immediately, realizing too late that this could seem a little desperate. “Hello,” he said with a little laugh. “Hey, Bucky.”

There was a soft exhale that almost sounded like it might have been relief. “Hey,” Bucky said quietly, his voice low and tired. “What are you doing these days?” And was that a joke? There was definitely a curve to his voice that might have been an attempt at playfulness, though he seemed to be ill at-ease with joking.

Steve laughed a little, reaching out and pulling a blanket down over himself. “Well, pretty much the same thing. I don’t do many things different from day to day- go to work, come home, paint and draw, eat something, go to sleep, meet with friends, get in fights. Rinse and repeat, just in different order.”

“Get in fights?” A thread of sharpness in his voice, though it stayed even. “With who?”

“Eh.” Steve sighed. “I don’t know. Assholes, mostly. Men who think they own the world, racists, homophobes, transphobes, senators, congressmen, police. I nearly punched a reverend once.”

“A reverend?” The sharpness softened to amusement. “Why would you punch a reverend? Was it an order or an impulse?” He asked it as an A or B question, with no opening for an alternate explanation.

An order? Well, he was a soldier. That made sense. He’d clearly been through a lot, and the violence he was used to were probably easily categorized in those two ways, rather than being a reaction to having violence to yourself or others. Poor guy. Steve shrugged, cataloging that strangeness away. “I suppose an impulse- he was telling a group of baby gays that they were going to hell for being themselves and I may or may not have grabbed my friend’s pride flag and thrown it like a javelin. I missed. On purpose, obviously, my hand-eye coordination is fine.” He had missed knocking the guy’s hateful sign out of his hands and been bitterly disappointed by his failure, but Bucky didn’t need to know the details of how pathetically unathletic Steve was. “And then he got even shittier and I thought about punching him but he ended up leaving before I could decide about the morality of it all.”

Bucky laughed, and this sound was a little louder than the one he’d given last time. “Like a javelin?” he echoed, and Steve could picture him raising his eyebrows. He wondered what Bucky’s eyes looked like when he smiled, when he laughed. Did they crinkle? Did they sparkle? Did they lose that edge of flatness that had haunted them during their first meeting? What happened to his face when he was happy and not just battered by pain and stress?

Steve wanted to chase that thought, to pursue that image of him. He wanted to follow that laughter and coax more of it out. “Like a javelin. It was beautiful, Buck. you would have been amazed. Just this asshole preaching all this hate and me throwing a flag through the air, rainbow flying out behind it. It was great. You’d be amazed if you had seen it.”

He laughed again and Steve smiled in immense self-satisfaction, tucking himself more firmly into the back of the couch. “A rainbow flag,” he echoed, and Steve wondered if he was shaking his head. How responsive was he? How animated? He could remember vividly how hard he had been to read in person, how he had fought himself and flattened out his expressions whenever he had shown Steve too much interest. Was that how he always was? Or was that a reaction to the pain and to Steve being a stranger?

Why had he kept Steve’s number for three months?

“How is your painting going? You had a- a commission.” It was carefully said, as if he wasn’t entirely sure if he was remembering right and was trying hard to figure it out. “About the sea?”

“My seascape commission, yeah. It’s going in a different direction than before, but my client doesn’t mind.” He shrugged a little, smiling to himself. Luckily the fantasy ocean had been up their alley. “I do commissions when I can. I’ve got a few right now- a memorial piece and one for a vet’s office, which is really fun to do, I like painting animals. What are you doing right now?”

“Sitting on the roof. I like to watch the lights go out. Like to count them. There’s something about it that’s kind of…” An exhale. “I don’t know.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.” Steve himself liked sitting up on the roof and watching the lights come on or go out as well. “There’s something about it that’s nice, makes the world feel a little less lonely. Where are you right now? Can you say? I forgot until just now- but you’re not necessarily here.”

“I don’t know.” Quietly admitted. “Haven’t checked, just came up here because it felt right in the moment.”

He didn’t know where he was? Steve ran a hand through his hair slowly, considering. “I see. Well, is it nice where you are? The temperature, I mean. You said you don’t like the cold.”

“It’s nice out,” he agreed. “Most people are just wearing jackets.” So Northern-Hemisphere, at least, Steve guessed. It could be East Coast, or nearly anywhere in America right now as long as it wasn’t too north or south. “It’s starting to get cold at night, though,” Bucky added. “Are you wearing coats when you go out?”

“I do,” Steve agreed with a grin. “Coats and scarves both- the cold bothers my chest when I don’t bundle up, but I'm fine as long as I cover up. I like it better when it’s summer, but I do like Christmastime. People are a little nicer, mostly, and Thanksgiving is always fun. Halloween is cool too, so fall is always a good season. It’s too bad those things aren’t in the summer, then it would really be perfect.”

“Would you tell me about them?” Bucky asked, voice rough and uncertain, and Steve closed his eyes with a smile, feeling warmth and happiness running through him heavily.

“About the holidays? Or do you want the stars again? I’m happy to talk about either.”

“Whatever you want. I just…” he cleared his throat. “I like your voice. It feels…” Bucky’s breathing went uncertain and shallow again, like it had before he’d offered to get off the phone the last time, and Steve reached out before he could stop himself, as if the other man was there before him and he could keep Bucky here.

“I like your voice too,” he said, curling his fingers into his palm. “I can talk, I don’t mind. I’m glad it makes you feel better.” He hadn’t said that in so many words, but that was the general idea, and when he said it, Bucky’s breathing quieted down again. “Okay. So let’s see, we talked about Orion and the lion… oh, okay. Here, do you know about Remus and Romulus?”

“Something about wolves,” Bucky ventured, “But I don’t remember what.”

“Okay.” Steve settled in with a smile. “So they were twins, and they were born in Rome. Their mom…”

He talked and talked, going over their lives and moving on to Poseidon and Theseus. He railed for a long time about Medusa’s treatment, the idea of her monstrousness and curse always having irritated him. Bucky was a good listener, making attentive noises here and there and asking questions, and time slid away.

He didn’t fall asleep this time, but Steve did. One minute he was rambling on about Ariadne, and the next he was blinking awake, wrapped in his quilt on the couch and entirely fuzzy on the concept of what time it was. He rubbed his eyes with fingers spattered with dried paint, gave a rueful thought to the brushes that must be utterly ruined by now, and peered down at his phone. The call was over, but it had only been disconnected for four hours. They’d stayed on until three am.

How long of that had Steve spent asleep?

He switched over to texts and found one waiting for him-- Sorry I kept you up so late from Bucky.

Steve ran his thumb gently over the words, then, You’re welcome to keep me up whenever you want to talk, he shot back. He chewed his lower lip and added- I’m an artist after all, not like I have a real-real job. I like telling you stories.

Way to keep it casual. Yikes.

He scrubbed a hand over his face, then got up off the couch and stretched before going to work on doing his damndest to salvage his paintbrushes. He turned on the news to fill up the silence and cast a glance at it as he cautiously massaged warm water and paint thinner through the once-soft bristles of his brushes.

“-more mayhem in Hell’s Kitchen last night,” the reporter onscreen was saying somberly. “Officers have stated that they’re uncertain of the Devil’s involvement in this latest crime but suspect he may have been a factor.”

Daredevil? Steve frowned, turning up the volume slightly and turning a little to focus more clearly. Daredevil was someone who Steve had actually seen here and there from a distance on his way to visit Matt or Foggy. He had never gotten the impression that the vigilante was a bad guy, which made this accusation a problem… although not necessarily a surprise. It seemed like there was always some kind of chaos going on in Hell’s Kitchen anymore.

Matt and Foggy both told Steve that the red-suited vigilante was someone who tried to do good rather than the alternative-- even though the admission was given sometimes bitterly (by Foggy) or reluctantly (by Matt). Steve had asked Karen once, and she was adamant and much more positive than the other two about his goodness and the fact that his heart was in the right place.

A warehouse by the docks had been blown up, Steve discovered as the news program continued, leaning forward to watch. There were casualties north of sixteen men, all of whom were unidentified at this time. Steve hesitated, reaching for his phone, then relented and texted Foggy, Matt, Karen, and Claire to ask if they were okay.

Foggy confirmed fairly quickly that they were; the explosion had been closer to Brooklyn than the Kitchen and that none of them had been hurt. Steve relaxed and half-listened to the rest of the broadcast as he finished cleaning his brushes and started on a new commission. He glanced up when they reported that SHIELD had taken over jurisdiction over the warehouse explosion, but no other information was available aside from the fact that an Avenger had reportedly been on the scene. Steve frowned a little at the fact that an Avenger had been involved with such a relatively small issue, but relaxed at the idea that the Avengers were there.

He wanted to be part of them, sometimes. To fight and protect people, to help people when they struggled with something. To protect the country and the world was an aspiration he had never been able to shake, no matter how many times the military had refused him. But SHIELD was government-run, even if they didn’t always act like it, and they weren’t going to take someone like Steve Rogers.

He crossed to the bookcase and searched, through sketchbook upon sketchbook until he finally found the one he had taken to DC those months ago. He found the sketch of the smoke and the airborne Avengers, the SHIELD vehicles, and then of Bucky.

He traced the shape of Bucky, thinking about the way the other man had quietly asked for Steve to talk to him, how he was so desperately lonely. He was so strangely beautiful.

Had he been involved with the destruction of the Triskelion?

Had he been involved with the warehouse explosion?

Steve dismissed the latter thought immediately. They had been on the phone all night, there wouldn’t be time or reason for him to do that. But… Steve had wondered back in DC if Bucky was an agent. Of either side.

He had admitted to being a soldier, to seeing action, what else?

Steve searched the face of the man there. Could he have been involved with these things? It seemed strange, seemed borderline impossible in fact. The man who was quiet, hesitant, almost needy, craving some form of company, seemed so far from someone who could be involved in those kinds of violence.

It was so difficult to imagine.

What did Bucky look like now? Was it the same flat and impenetrable expression that he wore every day? Or, unharmed and rested, did he show more of that soft curiosity and tentativity toward emotions?

He wanted to see those emotions play through those pretty eyes, wanted to hear his voice and see warmth filter across his face.

Would Bucky meet if Steve asked? Or would it scare him off?

Steve considered this as he slowly continued cleaning his brushes. Would he come and meet if Steve asked? Bucky didn’t even seem to always 100% know where he was. But if he was in New York…

He needed to take this slow. He needed to talk to him more.

Bucky Barnes settled against the wall, leaning his shoulder into the cold cement, and took in a slow breath. The silence was pressing in on him again, was weighing down on him like stone. He ran his fingers down the metal slats of his arm, taking in another sharp breath.

When it was too quiet, he could hear orders thrumming through the background of his mind. No witnesses. Do not speak. Kill quickly. You are a ghost. You are the fist of-

A text came through, his phone lighting, and the words in his head fractured like glass in true cold. Bucky looked down and found a picture of what looked like a sea, though it was none he had ever seen. Strange purples and greens threaded through the water, the foam on the white shore a soft and bubbling pink. Finished my painting. Is it anything like a real ocean?

Steve. He didn’t send texts very often, but did seem to reach out once every few days, usually small things like this. Unthreatening, soft little pieces of brightness from his life.

Each was a buoy, thrown to keep him from drowning.

Bucky’s metal fingers, not for the first time, betrayed him. They flashed across the screen, pressing the call button before he could stop himself, before he could second-guess his own action.

Steve answered the phone laughing, the sound bright and amused, spilling out of him like sunlight. “Oh my god, is it so bad you have to deliver the news personally? If you’re gonna break my heart, I would actually rather you do it over text.”

You’re laughing. Bucky stared at the wall, transfixed by the sound, trying in a moment of raw desperation to memorize it. Bucky didn’t often make Steve laugh, and he hadn’t expected it in this moment, so it hit him full-force, stunning him like a baton to the face.

Steve wound down into chuckles. “So what did you think?” he asked, and Bucky realized he still hadn’t spoken.

“It’s beautiful,” he said, resting his head back against the wall and letting his eyes wander the room. He didn’t know if he was talking about the laugh or the painting, and tried not to think about that too much. He looked at the little white cat perched in the doorway instead. She watched him as she cleaned her ears. Such a pretty cat. “Doesn’t look like any sea I’ve ever seen, but I wouldn’t mind goin’ there. Looks warm.”

Steve sighed. “Yeah, I got a little carried away with the other colors, I know that’s not what a sea looks like. Is it still recognizable?”

Bucky pulled the phone away from his ear and looked back at the picture, at the warm hues of the water, the bubbles, the playful waves and soft, almost purple-tinted shores. It looked like a fairyland, like someplace his ma would have told him stories about when he was little.

“It’s gorgeous, doll,” Bucky told him quietly when he returned the phone to where it belonged at his cheek. “You’re damn talented.”

Since when do I call men doll?

He couldn’t remember if he had done that before, his memories slippery and elusive today. The cat crept forward, catching his attention once more as she walked to sit inside the room for once. It was oddly pleasant to see her sitting there, and he had to fight down a sudden smile.

“Well. Thanks.” Steve’s voice smiled. “I promise I didn’t just send it to brag, I did want to know what you thought. Does it need anything?”

Bucky ran a hair through the tangles in his hair, trying to work them out. “There’s these little birds,” he said cautiously, probing in his mind as a fragment of a memory flickered across a skin like sunlight. It was always easier when he let them come on their own rather than trying to recall something specific. “By the sea, they chase the waves. They might- I don’t know, punk, you’re the creative one.” He shifted his weight, a little defensive despite himself, suddenly intensely aware of how loud his voice was, how easy it would be for anyone to hear him, sure that he was going to scare the cat away or get himself found.

“Little birds?” Steve sounded interested, and Bucky could hear typing. His voice warmed, his next words almost like a physical touch. Bucky tried to suppress the shiver that ran through him. “I like that you call me nicknames, by the way. But don’t be so cynical, jerk, you’ve got some creative in you. Everyone does, you just have to find it. Little birds that chase the wa- oh, sandpipers. Oh, they’re so small. Can you imaging touching one?”

The fragment was turning to a wisp, was drifting out of his reach, and he mentally snatched after it.

He was in full gear, was standing in the darkness of a beach, waiting for the lights in the big house to go out, his gun resting heavily in the crook of his shoulder, he was focused, he was ready-

The ocean was like rough and broken obsidian, white crests on sleek blackness on the shore, and tiny birds were chasing the water as it fled them, their small legs whipping back and forth to propel them-

He shouldn’t be distracted, but there was something about those birds that almost felt soft-

“Bucky?” Steve, gently, sounding as if this weren’t his first time asking, and Bucky had to blink four times to remind himself that he was in the room he had rented, his back pressed to cold cement and his fingers tangled in the strings of his hoodie. He took in a slow breath.

“I don’t think I’ve ever touched them,” he replied slowly, because Steve deserved a response even if his voice came out uneven. “I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

Washing blood from metal fingers in salt wat-

“That’s okay,” and Steve’s voice banished the haunting image effortlessly this time. “They’re really cute. I like birds, I wouldn’t mind petting one of these things.” Quiet sounds from the other side of the line, then, “Do you want me to tell you stories? I looked some more up- I know about the bears and Cassiopeia now.”

Because Steve was kind, almost unbearably so, and he had looked up more stories to tell him. Did he know how important they were? That they defied the passing of time like Bucky did, but had never been forgotten like Bucky had been? That they anchored him to this present and this world, that they quieted the impulses and voices and dark memories in favor of Steve’s own voice? Did he have any concept of the ways that this was important to Bucky?

Or did he think they were just a way to pass the time?

“Tell me something about you first?” He requested, curling his fingers around his metal bicep as he focused on the white ghost of a cat who was walking over to clean her tail at the doorway. “I want… I’d like to know about you.”

Steve hesitated, then seemed to settle in, and started talking.

Steven Grant Rogers had lived a straightforward life.

That wasn’t to say that it was an uncomplicated life or one devoid of challenges. His health had always been something he fought against, but life had always moved forward at a steady and predictable rate nonetheless. He battled frailty and sickness in his youth, and thus as an adult shunned all visible forms of weakness. He cluttered his ears with piercings, donned leather jackets that accentuated his shoulders, wore combat boots that had every step heavy and determined. He fell in love with art early in his youth and dedicated not only his life to it, but his home and his body as well, covering his apartment as well as his skin in works by talented indie artists that included his own hand. He went to art school, dropped out, and then took to painting and selling commissions to earn a living.

He was young, healthy enough to stand on his own two legs, and lived in Brooklyn. He said that he was aware of how lucky he was- lucky that his health had gotten somewhat under control (even if he still had a tendency to get sick more often than others, to struggle more than other people did), lucky to make enough from his commissions to survive, lucky to have been born when he had. Had he been born eighty years earlier, his life would have been drastically different, and Steve seemed determined to enjoy the freedom afforded to him by living in the modern age.

So he went to parties and clubs, picked up a tattoo internship, learned to bartend, made close friendships, sold his work online and at fairs. His life was steady and bright, and it was one that he loved in all of its vivid color despite its predictability. He didn’t mention dating anyone, but didn’t seem to be disturbed or bothered by that.

Of course, maybe he went out with dames four times a week and just didn’t feel the need to share that with Bucky.

“What about your family?” Bucky asked curiously rather than pursuing that angle, because the thought of Steve out dancing with girls made Bucky feel oddly uneasy.

“My dad was military, like you. He died in Afghanistan. Carried a picture I drew him until the day he died. My mom was a nurse. She busted her ass to help me- I was really sick all the time when I was little and she had to keep an eye on me all the time because I acted like I wasn’t sick.” He laughed.

Bucky considered for a moment. “Is your mom still around?”

“No.” Steve didn’t sound upset- just quiet and resigned. It must have been a while ago. “No, she died when I was in college. Car accident. Drunk driver, it was dark. She was a good lady. Helped a lot of people- she was funny and smart.”

“My ma was funny.” Bucky rested his elbow on his knees. “She wasn’t always…”

He was six and was clustered close to his mother’s chest. The closet smelled stale and musty, like their winter coats, and his momma’s hand was soft and flour-stained where it pressed over his mouth to keep him quiet.

“She’d get scared sometimes,” Bucky said, forcing himself back to the present- because Steve was waiting for him there. “Of nothing. She’d be sure someone was there and was waiting, and she’d get so scared we all had to hide with her. But she was funny when she wasn’t all... She’d make our rolls into little animals to make us laugh, and then she’d be surprised every time when the ears burned or the neck fell off.”

This memory was sweeter than the last- laughing as small fingers pressed warm bread to his mouth, crunching through the singed thinner bits to the still-doughy center.

Steve gave a laugh. “I could never make any of that stuff work either. Cooking and baking aren’t my things, I burn everything. Do you like to bake? Did your mom pass that on?”

Bucky cast a glance at his metal fingers and opened them, then closed them again. “No,” he said finally, “I don’t think I’m good at it. I haven’t tried since…” he tried to search for yet another flash of memory, but came up with nothing this time. Stop trying to push them, stop trying to remember, he chastised himself sharply. His voice in his mind didn’t sound like his, though. It sounded like Brock Rumlow’s, caustic and sneering. Bucky’s left arm whirred and he took in a slow breath as he buried his hand in his hair “I don’t know,” he admitted quietly, forcing the words out to chase away the memory of Hydra voices. “Maybe never.”

Steve hmmed. “Where are you right now? I’m in Brooklyn. You anywhere near?”

Bucky turned his head, looking out the paper-wrapped window to catch a dulled glimpse of the city lights all around him. They hadn’t gone out yet tonight. “Not far,” he agreed cautiously. “I’m… near New York.”

“Really?” Steve perked up audibly, and Bucky felt a smile twitch his lips. Steve always shouted his feelings, his emotions on display for everyone all the time. “Are you close-close? How close? We could get some pizza, if you want.”

“You want to get pizza with me?” Bucky blinked at the wall, curling his fingers around the phone more securely as his other hand slid out of his hair.

“Course.” Steve sounded so confident, as if there was no reason why he wouldn’t. “I haven’t seen you in person in a while and we talk all the time.”

“Haven’t seen me in person for a while.” Bucky let out a laugh. His head fell back to the wall as he remembered blood and scraped breaths. Everything had been so chaotic then, his memories a dark void and his orders violent in their clarity.

“Well I haven’t.” Steve laughed again, warm and sweet. “But yeah, if you’re close, we could go get pizza, or I could attempt to cook you something in the apartment.”

Steve trusted him in his house.

Bucky’s stomach clenched and he swallowed. “I’ve killed people, Steve. People who didn’t deserve it, just because I was given orders. You don’t want that kind of blood in your home.”

Steve was quiet for a moment, then, “Did you want to hurt those people? Did you enjoy it? Did you like causing pain?”

“No.” The admission was low and bare like a bone when it escaped his lips. “But I was told to and I did it. How I feel about it doesn’t take away what these hands did.”

Steve let out a sigh. “My dad did things. I found out later some of the things but most of them he never mentioned and the army wouldn’t ever say. It doesn’t make him a bad person. It doesn’t make you a bad person, Bucky. You’re a soldier. You follow orders. It’s painful but it’s true. What you’ve done in the past doesn’t matter to me, not that way. It’s not your fault.”

Bucky shut his eyes. “I’d like to meet you,” he agreed quietly.

“Really?” Steve’s voice brightened. “Okay. When will you have time?”

“I’m not sure yet.” It was all too much suddenly, the small bit of normalcy they’d created a little too unsteady now, with the shift of meeting. He couldn’t risk losing this, couldn’t risk this small oasis of safety, this connection to reality and human connection. “What were you going to tell me about the bears?”

“Whenever you have time is fine,” Steve assured him, voice soft and gentle, because so much about Steve was soft and gentle, regardless of what he decorated himself with. The blonde cleared his throat. “Okay, so you know that the big and little dippers are the bears. Well, the big bear was named Celeste, it’s the little dipper’s mom.” He smiled, and started explaining all about the bears and their relationship to Orion.

Bucky listened, feeling the tension of it all unwind from his lungs slowly as he listened to Steve’s voice breaking apart the silence with his stories and watched the cat stretch out against the far wall.

Chapter Text

Steve moved quickly around the apartment, putting away bottles of paint, paintbrushes that were still out drying, and various other things that he hadn’t bothered to pick up before now. Steve Rogers was not precisely a tidy person- he was rather the opposite in almost every way, and it tended to cause issues when people came over.

“At least Matt’s blind,” he muttered to himself as he morosely scraped at a large paint splotch on the couch, then moved on. Foggy didn’t have much room to talk- he tended to be rather messy as well… although he never left anything on the floor, only on surfaces that never moved. This quirk definitely came from being best friends with someone who couldn’t see for years and years- the amount of clutter on surfaces wouldn’t be a danger to Matt, but shoes and clothing on the floor would be, and shifts in surroundings could throw Matt off entirely. Foggy was, in fact, incredibly observant of these things and Steve had seen him subtly rearranging things as he went when he came over.

Steve was just about finished at least getting everything off the floor and into their respective bins. He had moved on to loading the dishwasher when his phone rang from across the room, the specific trill he’d given to Bucky singing through the air, and he leapt across the room with a grin to swipe a finger across it quickly.

“Hey,” he said cheerfully as the call connected. “How are you?”

Silence, then a soft chuckle. “You’re in a good mood,” Bucky reflected, low voice warm. “Are you always so happy?”

“Not always. I’m frequently pissed off.” Steve grinned, perching on the back of the couch as warmth flowed through him at the chuckle. Bucky really did have the most beautiful voice. “I like talking to you, though, so that puts me in a good mood. In fact, I’m attempting to clean so my friends don’t think I’m a total mess.”

“Which you are?” Bucky inquired, a note of humor threading through his words.

Steve wrinkled his nose. “Not a total mess,” he protested. “Just a little bit, it’s not that bad.”

Bucky laughed. “When we met, your hands were covered in lead,” he pointed out. “You had streaks of graphite on your face where you’d rubbed at your cheek.”

Steve sighed. “I’d been drawing, Buck. I can’t be held responsible for what happens when I draw or paint, it’s not my fault.”

“You looked…” he trailed off, and there was silence for a long moment, long enough that Steve found himself leaning forward. He’d lost the conversation again.

“Buck?” Steve asked gently. “Hey, you there?”

Bucky cleared his throat. “What were you drawing that day?” He asked, voice slightly distant.

Steve blew out breath, thinking back. “The Triskelion, the way the fire lit up the clouds, the way the ash was falling and how the river looked, I think. Some of the Avengers. Thor, Ironman. Hulk.” He glanced over at the other side of the room, where his books sat. “Mostly landscapes with them.”

“Is that what you like most? Landscapes?”

Steve thought about it. “No, not really. I like landscapes, but I like people better. I like… memorializing things. People, animals, buildings when the sun hits it, moments. Things that are beautiful.” The way light splashed across Bucky’s face had been particularly haunting. “So many beautiful things don’t last long and I like drawing them in that moment.”

“Did you draw the Widow?” Bucky asked after a moment, voice soft and relaxed in a way Steve didn’t often catch it.

“I have, before, when I saw her. I didn’t see her this time. She’s fun to draw. Watching her fight is like…” he paused for a moment as he thought about it. “Like watching someone dance. It’s amazing.”

“She was a ballerina once,” Bucky said, voice slightly more absent. “It’s not surprising that her fighting style evolved into something that reflects that background.” Slightly more focus now as he continued, “Do you like drawing the heroes, or do you prefer civilians?”

How did he know that about her? Was he part of the Avengers? A SHIELD agent could have access to those details… Steve rested his feet up on the edge of the windowsill. “I like drawing all of them. There’s something fun about the heroes; they’re big and flashy, and they’re powerful. There’s something to that.” he shrugged a little. “But there’s something really interesting about normal people. People who don’t have power, who’re just normal people, and they still try and do the kind of thing that the heroes do. You know, soldiers, firefighters, police. Freedom fighters.”

“Is that what you are?” He inquired curiously.

Steve blinked at the wall. “Me? No. I’m just an activist. I help people when I can, that’s all.”

“Help people be free,” he pointed out, smiling faintly. “It sort of fits.”

Steve laughed, a little warm bubble in his chest growing wider. “I mean… I don’t free people. I do charity and stuff, go to rallies. That’s all I do. I wanted to do more, but my health crap put a stop to that.” Red Cross, the military, everywhere he could think of, he’d applied and everyone had denied him.

“If your health wasn’t a factor, what would you have done?”

Steve flopped back to the couch, watching the play of lights from the cars below on the ceiling. “I’d… I dunno. I always thought I could travel. Go to places where people need help- build houses and bring ‘em water and shit. Make people feel safe. Everybody deserves a place with food and clean water, somewhere warm and safe. It’s bullshit that there’s empty fucking houses and food we throw away and there’s starving and homeless people out in the cold.”

“All you want out of this life is to help people. Jesus, punk.” He let out a rough laugh. “You’re tryin’ to kill me.”

Steve grinned a little. “And you’re a soldier with a pretty voice who likes star stories, myths and fairy tales. You’re not exactly easy to ignore, jerk.”

“Were you trying to?” He asked with a soft chuckle as there was a knock at the door.

“No.” Steve tumbled off the couch quickly. “I’ve never wanted to ignore you, Buck. You’re one of the coolest people I know.”

“Oh, yeah. I am the most cool,” Bucky drawled, and Steve laughed as he opened the door, finding Matt and Foggy waiting there.

“What are you smiling like that about?” Foggy eyed Steve. “You can’t see his face, Matt, but he looks like he’s got a stash of pies hidden around here and he’s just waiting for us to leave so he can eat them.”

“Maybe I do have a stash of pies hidden somewhere and I’m waiting for you to leave so I can eat them.” Steve grinned, shaking his head, and stepped back so they could come in. “You don’t know. I like pies. Hey, I’ve gotta go, B. Can I call you later?”

“Be safe. Have fun.” Bucky hung up and Steve smiled at the phone as his friends crossed to the couch. Be safe. Have fun. How…domestic was that? How like being in a relationship, how like being together that was.

“B?” Matt asked, eyebrows raising.

“Yeah, B.” Steve perched on the arm of the couch. “I’ve been talking to somebody, I told you that I’ve been kind of dating.”

“Dating?” Foggy pointed at him. “You never said dating.”

“Not once,” Matt agreed. “Who?”

“I don’t kiss and tell,” Steve informed him loftily.

“You always tell us when you’re seeing somebody!” Foggy burst out laughing. “Because it’s so unlikely and short-lived!”

It was true. Steve was very aware of how lucky he’d been to be born in the modern age, where his sexuality didn’t hold him back. He lived his life openly and proudly accordingly, and Matt and Foggy were always aware when he had a new partner. He always introduced any potentially long-term partners to his friends- Matt had an uncanny ability to suss out the bad eggs, and it meant it was easy to rag on the failed relationship with his friends afterwards.

Steve smiled at them, warm with affection for them both. “Yeah, I do. But we’re not actually dating, anyway, we’re just talking. We’re not even seeing each other, I haven’t actually seen him since we started talking.”

“But you like them?” Matt leaned back in his chair, smiling. “Enough that it’s not nothing, anyway, enough that you’d use the ‘relationship’ word.”

Steve got up and walked over to where he’d started dinner, stirring the soup. “I like him,” he admitted. “He’s been through a lot- he’s a soldier and his life hasn’t been easy, but he’s a good person beneath all of that. He’s sweet and kind, and he’s funny.”

“Do you want the same things?” Foggy asked, studying him curiously.

“I’m not sure.” Steve smiled back at them. They were like bloodhounds, scenting the slightest bit of problem, and they were protective. “It’s not super serious right now, we’re just getting to know each other. We haven’t gotten to the serious talk.” And he and Bucky weren’t exactly romantic, anyway. They were… strangely somewhere in the middle. But Bucky felt different than anyone Steve had ever even tried to be with, somehow more settled in a way that was difficult to explain. There was just a click there.

They were something beyond friends and something beyond dating, something in between and further than that. Bucky was odd and sick as well as funny and warm. There were moments where Steve felt like he was the only thing anchoring the veteran to land, and that was a heady feeling, a powerful responsibility.

“You’ll like him when you meet him, I think,” Steve concluded after a moment.

“Just be careful,” Matt cautioned, the way he always did, before moving on to discuss the plans he was making with Foggy and Steve to celebrate Karen’s birthday.

Another week passed before Steve confronted the topic of meeting with Bucky himself. During that week, he and Bucky progressed to speaking daily. Steve fell asleep to soft chuckles and a low voice in his ear, and quickly found that it was the best possible way to fall asleep. He ran out of constellations and moved on to myths. He ran out of Greek myths and moved onto Norse ones. Bucky listened to everything with the same intensity he always did, rarely outright asking for more but clearly craving it all the same.

Sometimes Steve braved more personal topics. He gave up stories of his own life- stories about being an artist when he was young, stories about his parents. Stories about the causes he’d joined, stories about Matt and Foggy and Karen, stories about his school experience (although those were carefully edited). Stories about his art and the first show he’d ever done, the feeling of walking down a hallway filled with things that he had created.

Bucky haltingly returned the favor. He talked about an ice cream shop he had loved when he was a kid, and how he could still vividly remember the window display even though he’d forgotten so much else. He talked about his sisters and how different but smart they each were, and the underlying devotion and untouched grief were painfully clear in the carefully-chosen words. He talked about his day, sometimes- finding funny pigeons or the cat in his building or any kind of small bright things to try to share with Steve.

He didn’t talk about what had happened in his time at war. He didn’t talk about that day with the Triskelion. He didn’t mention the Widow again. And Steve didn’t ask, didn’t push. He didn’t want to make this harder on him, and accepted the little bit of information that he’d gained.

Sometimes in the source of the conversation, he seemed to get lost or confused. He’d lose the thread of conversation while he was talking and he would begin to panic. Twice he actually became disoriented or upset enough that he hung up, and Steve pursued him then, calling back in order to immediately launch into a new myth or story.

Bucky always calmed down, then, breathing more quietly as he listened to Steve speak.

On the ninth day of every day calls, Steve had just finished explaining how he had met Karen the first time when he finally broached the subject he had been dying to ask but had been smart enough not to. He didn’t know if it would push Bucky or if it would be a dealbreaker, and the thought of the latter was deeply terrifying.

“So,” he said, carefully casually, picking every word with the utmost delicacy. “I was thinking of going out and getting pizza sometime next week.” Give him time, let him get used to the idea. “Would you want to join me? I can’t eat a whole one by myself.”

Bucky was quiet for a long beat, and Steve listened closely. It didn’t sound like his breathing was harsh. He didn’t think he was panicking. “I don’t always do great with big places,” Bucky said finally, and Steve relaxed. “It’ll have to be a smaller joint. Somewhere old-fashioned and brick, maybe.”

“That’s fine,” Steve assured him, probably a little too quickly. “I can find a little hole in the wall place, not a big deal.”

Quiet again, then, “Alright, punk.” There was a bit of a smile to his voice. “That sounds like something I could swing to.”

“Really?” Steve’s grin felt huge and ridiculous on his face, and he was sort of glad that Bucky couldn’t see his expression. “I’ll find someplace, there’s lots of good small places here around town. You allergic to anything?”

For some reason, this made Bucky laugh. “No,” he said once his chuckles had subsided. “I’ll be fine.”

“Okay, cool.” Steve kicked up his feet over his head, resting them on the wall. He almost felt like he was going to float right off the couch, like Peter Pan given pixie dust and enough joy to make him weightless.

“You’re sure you want this?”

“Yeah.” Steve was positive, in fact. He had never, in fact, been so sure of anything as he was that he wanted to meet him again, see him in person now that he knew the kind of man he was. “I want to get food with you and see you in person. Just chilling at a pizza place and talking sounds cool.”

“Alright,” Bucky repeated after a long beat. “Tuesday after next work?”

“Tuesday after next’s perfect.” Steve wiggled his feet above his head, grinning at his scuffed-up boots with blue paint on the soles. “Around… six-thirty? I’ll send you a few options and you can pick which one you like best, if that helps.” He might need to know all of that before he could feel safe, might need to go to the places and look around.

“Yeah, that might be a good idea.” Bucky’s voice gentled. “You got any other Norway stories for me?”

“Course.” Steve settled into the pillows. “So I’ve got a really good one. So this one time, a giant stole Thor’s hammer. So he and Loki dressed up as girls…”

Steve scoped out several places to give Bucky to choose from. He was honestly amazed that the soldier had agreed to meeting with Steve at all, and it was important for him to have as much freedom and control as possible. He wandered Brooklyn and chose a few different restaurants, making sure that none of them were too open or enclosed and had the brick that Bucky had requested.

He felt a thrill of excitement every time he thought about it- he was going to see Bucky. They were going on a date.

Of course, it wasn’t a date-date. Bucky hadn’t asked him out and who knew if Bucky was even interested in men that way. Possibly not. So it wasn’t a date. It was a meeting. They were just having dinner.

He found several places and sent them all to Bucky. Go ahead and check these out, he texted. Feel free to choose whichever one you like! They’re all good.

He was on the subway when he got the text from Karen- Matt’s in the hospital.

The train around him spun as he gripped the bar in his hands, calling her immediately. His heart pounded, making everything spin worse, and he sank into a seat. Matt was in the hospital? What had happened? Was he going to be okay?

Matt, sweet and soft and always worried about everyone, protective and kind and funny Matt? God, Foggy must be losing his shit. Karen wouldn’t be much better.

“Hey.” Karen cleared her throat, voice thick, and Steve let out a breath. Shit.

“Hey. Hey, it’s okay. Talk to me, what happened? Is he okay?”

“Yeah, uh.” She cleared her throat. “The doctor says he’ll heal, he’s just- he’s got a lot of burns. There was another one of those explosions that’s been going on. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Shit. Which hospital?” Steve looked up at the map quickly. “Are you guys there? How’s Foggy?”

“He’s fine.” Her voice was a little clipped and he noted that somewhere in his mind as odd. “Worried. We’re at Metro General, they’re about to move him to a room. Claire’s already seen him.”

“Okay. Okay, are you okay?” He got up as the subway pulled into the stop. “I’m getting into a taxi right now, I’ll be there soon.”

“I’m fine.” She took in a deep breath. “Just… scared.’

“It’s going to be fine.” Steve ran a hand down his face. “It’ll be okay, I’ll be there as soon as I can and I’ll help you. He’s in the hospital, they’ll take care of him, and we’ll make sure that they do. Claire works there, she won’t let them mistreat him.”

“Right.” She cleared her throat with difficulty. “Be careful. I’ll see you soon.”

“Just take care of Foggy and Matt.” Steve hung up, gripping his phone.

Matt was hurt. Matt was hurt. He felt sick, stomach rolling beneath him.

When he arrived at the hospital, Karen met him at the lobby. “Hey,” she said, catching his arm. “He’s okay right now, he’s stable.”

“So what the hell happened?” Steve curled his hands around hers, relaxing at the assertion that Matt was at least stable. “Where was he, what was blown up? I never saw anything, I haven’t heard about anything being blown up for over a week.”

“Yeah, it happened late last night.” She squeezed his arms. “Apparently Foggy found him.” Her voice soured slightly. “I only found out this morning. Matt was out last night and he tried to help someone in the building when it caught fire.”

That was why she was angry- she thought Foggy should have told her earlier. Fair. Steve squeezed her hands. “Okay. Well, they’re both okay for now, so let’s go upstairs and see them. How bad are the burns?”

She blinked and turned away, hiding shining eyes. “They’re all bandaged right now,” she said thickly, and led him up to Matt’s room.

Steve kept her hand, watching the people around them running back and forth. He never liked hospitals. They reminded him of gasping for breath, his mother crying, his father pale and quiet. He had spent so much of his time here when he was young, and so much of it with his body shutting down, sometimes it brought things back.

He found it harder to breathe the further they walked, the memories rising up to choke him, and he gripped his phone in his free hand, letting the edges dig into his palm to keep him focused. He tried to keep from crushing Karen’s hand, watching her back instead as he fought back the waves of anxiety crashing over him.

Matt was here. Connected to tubes and monitors, hurting, struggling to breathe.

Steve could land back here so easily.

All he could smell was antiseptic.

Everything was so white.

He tried to take in a deep breath, gripping his phone, and felt his lungs catch. Was this the beginning of an anxiety attack? He gritted his teeth. Absolutely fucking ridiculous. He couldn’t not go and see Matt. His best friend was hurt, and Foggy and Karen needed to be worrying about him, not about Steve. God.

“Steve?” Karen slowed, turning to look back at him.

He shook his head a little, dragging in a breath. “I’m fine,” he assured her. “I’m fine, it’s okay. We need to go see Matt. I’m okay.”

“Do you need a minute?” She searched his face. “I can let them know you’re on your way in.”

“No, I’m fine.” He shook his head a little more firmly. “I’m fine. Is he on oxygen?”

“Yeah.” She watched him carefully.

Matt was on oxygen. Steve could feel the cannula in his nose, could feel the rough sheets against his skin, and he cleared his throat. “Okay.” Better that he know now than be surprised by it. “Let’s go. I’m fine.”

“Steve, you’re shaking.” She put both her hands on his, eyebrows pulling together. “Hey, sit.” She guided him toward one of the waiting lounges. “Sit, what’s happening?”

He squeezed his eyes closed as he forced himself to breathe. “I don’t know. It’s just being here. Being here, it reminds me of when I was a kid. I was here all the time, I was always sick. I almost didn’t make it a few times, and it was always my lungs.” He gritted his teeth. “It’s not an excuse not to go see him. I want to go see him. My brain’s being stupid.”

“What do you mean, ‘make him comfortable?’” Steve’s father stared at the doctor.

Steve shook his head fast. “I’m fine.”

“Hey.” Karen caught his gaze seriously. “There is no shame in that. You stay here. Breathe for a few minutes. I’m going to put my purse down and I’ll be right back, okay?”

“I want to be there for Matt,” Steve disagreed, gripping his phone. “He’s hurt, I want to be there for him and for you and Foggy.”

“Steve. He’s not going anywhere, and you’re only going to worry him if you’re struggling in there.” She squeezed his shoulder. “What do you need? Water? Foggy? Do you need me to call someone for you?”

Karen was so good. Steve leaned forward a little, resting his head against hers. “I don’t know. I’m fine, I’m sorry, I just don’t come to the hospital much. I don’t have anyone other than you guys.”

“Okay.” She rubbed his back slowly, soothingly, and he leaned into her hands, trying not to feel absolutely pathetic. He had forgotten what it felt like, to be here surrounded by people who were sick and tending to the sick, to have that anxiety burrow into your chest that you would be the next on a gurney, to smell the antiseptic and see the white everywhere.

But he had been wrong, he realized after a moment, as Karen pointed out a painting behind them she especially liked. He didn’t have no one but them. Bucky was there, too, somewhere. Someone who was kind and warm, someone who listened when Steve talked and was interested about his life.

And right now, that beautiful, steady voice sounded like the best thing Steve could imagine.

After a few minutes, when he was calmed down a little, he pulled away from Karen. “I’m going to call someone really quick,” he told her. “And then I’ll be in there. What’s his room number?”

“Two seven six.” She squeezed his shoulder. “I’ll let them know you’re going to be in.”

“Thanks.” He tried to give her the best smile he could and waited until she was gone to pick up his phone.

He hesitated. He didn’t want Bucky to worry about him. That was in fact the last thing he wanted.

His indecision was solved when a nurse came down the hallway, the cart in her hands rattling like a death knell, and his fingers traitorously tapped frantically on Bucky’s name as his chest tightened hard.

“Steve?” Bucky asked when he picked up, low voice an immediate balm to Steve’s frayed senses.

Steve drew his knees up, resting his head on them. “Hey,” he said, and was shocked at how unsteady his voice was. He tried to clear his throat. “Hey, hi Bucky. I’m sorry, are you doing something?”

He always sounded so strong, so present, so safe. Everything good in the world in one person.

“No. You alright, doll?” Intense and immediate focus, all for Steve.

Steve burrowed a little closer into his own knees. Doll. He loved it when Bucky called him that.“I just- no. Not really.” He couldn’t lie, and he didn’t want to. He wanted to feel better. If Bucky thought he was pathetic after that, there was nothing Steve could do, so the truth rushed out of him. “My friend’s in the hospital and I’m losing it. I’m worried about him, and I used to be here when I was a kid, and when I was here back then it was really bad. I just don’t like hospitals anymore because it makes me think of that and I feel like a shit being upset about it because Matt’s hurt.”

Bucky was quiet for a beat, then, “It’s okay to be afraid of what was done to you, Steve. It’s a part of you, you can’t pretend like it isn’t. It’s your history and it changes your life in the present, too.” A soft shuffle on his end of the line. “What can I do to help?”

He didn’t think Steve was stupid, or pathetic, or weak. Steve gave a small laugh, hugging his legs in profound relief as a tiny bit of tension escaped. “Can you… I don’t know. Distract me for a second? Tell me a story?”

He had thrown it out like a life buoy, unsure if it was even a good idea to throw that on Bucky, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself.

“Me?” Surprise in Bucky’s voice, and he was quiet again, for long enough that Steve started to wonder if he’d overstepped, then, “Yeah. Uh. One time, there was a man who loved New York.” He cleared his throat. “He loved everything about it, but he loved the people most. The way they were as much a part of the city as the buildings. You couldn’t have one without the other. The owner of the deli on the corner, the waitress who worked the diner he’d gone to since he was eight, the dock workers who offered him his first cigarette. They were the best people he knew, and they-“ he paused and cleared his throat again. “They loved him as much as he loved them.”

Steve closed his eyes, nodding a little. Was this a personal story? Was this Bucky’s story? “I like that,” he said quietly.

“Yeah.” Bucky’s voice warmed a little. “Me too. The man didn’t have any big dreams. He didn’t know what to do with his life, but he knew he loved reading. As much as he was devoted to his city, he was crazy about the adventures that books could offer. He decided that he wanted to own a bookstore. Just a little hole in the wall in Brooklyn. A place that’d never get popular, but might have a neighborhood it took care of, with regulars who came on paydays and kids who came by after school.”

A bookstore? Steve thought quickly- he should bring Bucky a few books when they went on their not-date.

And good god. He wanted to just take care of his neighborhood and the kids there? That’s what he wanted from life? Good god. Steve’s chest clenched.

“He didn’t tell anyone what he wanted to do. He didn’t want to jinx himself. His mama was real superstitious.” He chuckled a little. “But he started workin’ extra. Picking up shifts, tucking money back here and there for a down payment on a shop. He couldn’t put much back, he was paying rent on his family’s apartment, but he managed to get enough after a couple years.” A beat of quiet, and Steve’s smile died as he actually thought about it.

The ending of this story, if it was indeed Bucky’s, was painfully clear. He hadn’t gotten his shop. He’d enlisted instead, and something horrific had happened then. Something that led to him skirting around the topic of being a soldier, of going abroad, of the Triskelion, of the Avengers.

“It’s not the best story,” Bucky admitted. “But when the man realized that he wasn’t going to be able to get his shop, he realized the money could be used for something better. He took off work and did repairs to his apartment. He took his sisters to Coney Island for a whole two days, and somehow they both won goldfish.” A grin in his voice. “They tried to badger him into gettin’ them kittens, but he told them no. He got them coats instead.”

Steve wrapped an arm around himself, affection almost painful in his chest. “I bet they liked that,” he said. “Kittens are definitely more fun than coats, though.” He laughed a little as Bucky chuckled. “Sounds like he was a really good brother and son. Sounds like they were lucky to have him.”

“Maybe so,” Bucky agreed with a smile. “The man didn’t recognize the city he came back to. It was bigger. Sharper. The people weren’t interested in each other anymore. It was all so much brighter and louder, and the man- he could drown in all that with all the stuff goin’ on in his head. But it’s not all bad, right? In the end, he ended up back in New York, even if it wasn’t the same city he left. And the people were still his favorite part of it.” His voice quieted a little. “The person, anyway,” he amended, so quietly Steve could barely catch it. “Who helps him turn down the noise, and who doesn’t get impatient when things get… blurry.”

Oh, Buck. Steve rested his cheek on his knees. “Why would he get impatient?” He asked gently. “The man is a good man who takes care of people, who protects people. The person wouldn’t worry about a few moments where the man wasn’t steady. Sometimes the person isn’t either.”

You might be surprised how much you mean to me, too.

“Maybe,” Bucky agreed with a touch of a smile. “It’s okay if you’re scared of seein’ your nightmares up close again, Stevie. I would be.” His voice went slightly flat there, but he forged forward. “But you’re safe. You’re not there for you. You’re not sick. And maybe it means you know what will help him feel better and what will make him feel worse, yeah?”

“Yeah.” It was true- there were some things he could do to help. “Thank you, Buck. I just felt crazy and I just needed to call you. You have the best voice.”

“I’m here as long as you need me,” he promised after a moment, voice warm. “Anytime. I’ll call you tonight and see how you’re doing?”

“Yeah.” Steve rested his feet on the floor. “Yeah, call me tonight. Thank you, Bucky.” He hesitated, then, “Maybe text me a book you’d like me to read. If you like reading.”

Bucky hummed. “Will do,” he agreed. “Remember to breathe, punk.” And he hung up.

Steve lowered his phone and looked at the screen for a long moment, tracing the edge of the glass.

Somewhere along the line, Bucky had become very important. Steve couldn’t even put a finger on when, but it was undeniable at this point.

He stood, putting his phone in his pocket, and took in a few deep, steadying breaths. He helped Bucky turn down the noise. Now he needed to help Matt.

Bucky was a mess, and he was irritating the cat.

Why she didn’t just leave him to his pacing and stress, he didn’t know. Instead she watched him, tail twitching and ears back, as he spun his phone around and around his fingers. He couldn’t help it, he informed her. He wasn’t used to feeling helpless, he didn’t say.

Helpless anger, yes. Sometimes he felt so frightened or so full of rage and memories that it threatened to suffocate him. It was like being buried alive and feeling the dirt accumulate in his lungs. Hydra wasn’t exactly around for him to hunt down and vent that pain and anger out on, though sometimes the thought crossed his mind.

He could find them. He could make them pay for what they had done to him. To his family. He could make them pay for what they had made him do. He was a weapon they had created, and it would be sharply fitting to turn that weapon back on him.

But at the same time… the Avengers were aware of Hydra’s existence. They had taken down so many of them in the fall of the Triskelion. They would handle the last of them.

Natalia would handle the last of them.

He had trained her well enough for that.

Red hair bound in a ponytail spinning as the little Widow lashed out a leg to kick him.

Brown hair twirling out as the little girl spun on tiptoes in a lopsided pirouette.

Dark hair shot with grey tumbling under his fingers as he combed out tangled locks gently.

He didn’t know how much time he lost then, drowning in a sea of touch memories and colors, of people who had meant something once upon a time. His head didn’t clear until he found himself out on the street.

The cat watched him from the slats in the newsprint he’d hung at the windows. She meowed down at him and he dragged his fingers through his hair, then tangled it back into a bun and started walking.

He didn’t want to hunt down Hydra.

Well. The parts of him that were still Bucky Barnes didn’t want to hunt down Hydra. What was left of that battered soul craved stability and constancy, craved rest and light. That part of him didn’t want to go back looking for a fight… not if someone else was able to handle it with ease and a stunningly lethal capability.

But the other part of him, the part that had been carved and thawed from the ice of the Soldier, wanted nothing more than to find those who still bore the idealisms and insignia of the organization that had choked out his life and used the smoke to suffocate so many others. That part wanted revenge that was equal to what had been taken, that part wouldn’t be satisfied until his boots left prints of blood across concrete floors-

The blood was slightly tacky and it squelched slightly when he walked

The barrel of the gun was smoking faintly

His arm was whirring with a low and violent hum

He was several blocks from his building, and he couldn’t fully remember walking that far. He stopped, coaxing a breath in through his lungs. He didn’t want to be the Soldier. He just wanted to breathe. He just wanted…

The Soldier didn’t and couldn’t deserve being anywhere near Steve Rogers.

Bucky Barnes might be able to deserve that.

As long as Steve didn’t know they were one in the same, Bucky could keep moving forward. He could keep learning to tread water. He could figure out what forward looked like.

So he had to choose sunlight over blood, and bury the icy parts left of him. It was the only choice. He had to ignore the sounds of explosions and fighting when they rang out across the city. He had to keep his eyes on his cat and his phone.

He had to choose peace.

Hadn’t he earned peace?

Sobbing out ragged breaths on the table as needles plunged into his arm.

Did he deserve peace?

The body dropped from his hands with a dull thud and he stepped over the man on his way to the witness frantically trying to open his door.

He didn’t know.

But right now, Steve was scared. Steve had turned to him. Steve had asked for stories. And Bucky couldn’t shake the haunting fear that was the sound of Steve’s voice frightened.

Bucky moved more quickly now, pushing through the press of memories and voices, ignoring the paranoia that wanted to flicker to life at the glances by the crowd on the streets. His arm was covered. He was nothing to them.

He was just Bucky Barnes and nothing more.

He climbed up onto the fire escape he was looking for, checking the notes scrawled in encrypted Arabic on the inside of his right wrist. This was the right spot, he confirmed, looking up-

And the chaos, the paranoia, the memories, the fear, all faded along with the tightness in his chest as he caught sight of a pale blonde figure crossing the living room through the windows across the street.

Bucky let out a breath, resting his forehead forward against the steel of the fire escape for a moment. Steve was okay. He wasn’t scared. He was home and he was safe. He shut his eyes to drink this in, then took one more beat to watch Steve rifle through his fridge.

Bucky had only done this twice. Both times when he could barely breathe worrying about Steve in this world. Both times only for a minute long enough to verify he was well.

He turned, climbing back down the fire escape, and pulled his phone from his pocket as he started back toward his hideout.

“Hey,” he greeted when Steve picked up. “How’s your friend?”

“Hey.” Steve’s voice was warm, relieved. Relieved to hear from Bucky, which was still such a strange thing. “He’s… okay. Badly hurt, he’s on oxygen.” His voice tightened at that, a small echo of the fear in his voice when he’d called earlier. “But they said he’s going to be fine. It could have been so much worse, he got lucky. He woke up when I got there and talked to me, so that’s good. They’ve got him on oxygen to help with the smoke inhalation. I gave him some exercises to help. My lungs were always messed up when I was a kid, so I did breathing exercises all the time.”

“Yeah?” Bucky tilted his head back, glancing at the stars beginning to wink down at him through the thick cloud cover. “When did you start growing out of all the health stuff?”

A breath blew out on the other line, along with a clink of what sounded like a glass on his counter. “Well, when I hit puberty that helped. I got taller and my spine straightened out a little bit, the meds we got were better.” His voice quieted slightly. “My dad died, and the life insurance money helped with a few procedures, and that helped. We moved out of our apartment and into a different one. It was just a bunch of things, I think, but me just getting older and the surgeries helped a lot. All the hormones helped reorganize some stuff. I’ve still got some things, but it’s mostly fine as long as I take my meds and don’t try to run marathons.” He snorted.

“Do you want to run marathons?” Bucky inquired absently, studying a small grocery shop set into the wall beside him.

“I mean… maybe?” Steve’s voice grinned a little. “Might be cool to say I’ve done one. Help raise money for causes and things. Sometimes I pay for registration so the money gets there anyway and I just don’t run, or I walk it.”

“I could carry you,” Bucky offered, lips curving at the whimsical image. “I’ve run with way heavier.”

Steve burst into laughter, bright and delighted. “I’m going to draw that now,” he managed between chuckles. “You running and me piggy-back, holding your water bottle. That’s a really good image, Buck. I like it.”

Buck. Bucky curled his hand into his pockets, shutting his eyes with a smile. “We aim to please,” he remarked lightly. “Tell me something good about your day?”

Silence for a beat, then, “You told me a story to calm me down when I was freaking out,” he said, voice soft and quiet. “No one’s done that for me in a really long time. I also got to pet a really cute cat.”

Bucky had to stop walking for a moment, lowering his phone from his ear as he fought down a smile. No matter how many days in a row it happened, being wanted in any capacity by Steven Rogers never ceased to shake his foundations.

He put the phone back to his ear. “I have a cat,” he told him, and Steve made a bright noise of interest.

“A cat? What does your cat look like? What’s its name? Is it soft?”

“I haven’t named her,” Bucky admitted. “But I like her.” And, hesitating for only a beat, he went into a story about when the cat had somehow found and dragged an entire rotisserie chicken into the room, just to elicit that laughter again.

Chapter Text

Steve leaned back, adjusting his bag over one shoulder as he studied the Starbucks around him. He honestly preferred indie places. He liked supporting the personal and local efforts rather than the big chains, but making the client comfortable for a pick-up was more important than his mild hipster ideals… or the fact that it felt like he was cheating on Beans and Things by ordering at a Starbucks.

He’d swing by Beans on his way home and buy a latte, he thought somewhat guiltily as he took a drink from the venti cup in his right hand.

Delivering the seascape to my client, he texted to Bucky. What are you up to?

He replied with a photo of a white blur against a gray wall. Trying to feed the damn cat, he had sent with it. Hope you’ve get a better outcome than me.

Steve laughed, shaking his head. Bucky had yet to be able to take a photo of the cat, although he had tried.

It made Steve better to see the wall, the floor. Bucky had a place to live, somewhere out of the elements. Even if it weren’t somewhere nice- was that a concrete floor?- at least it was somewhere indoors and safe.

Good luck in your endeavor, he shot back. Hope the cat warms up to you soon! Street cats are like that.

Don’t bet on it, Bucky replied grimly. But I’m stubborn.

“Mr. Rogers?” a woman asked, and Steve glanced up to find a woman with long, dark red hair and large sunglasses standing beside him. She smiled, gesturing to the portfolio bag. “Educated guess.”

“Good morning, ma’am.” Steve put out a hand. “I’m Steve, yeah. Would you like to have a seat, or are you in a hurry?”

“I’ll sit,” she agreed, and settled in the chair across from him. “How was your commute?”

“Fine.” He gently set the case beside him. “The subway’s not so bad as long as you use your brain to figure out routes ahead of time. Did you get here okay?”

“I did,” she agreed, and pushed her glasses on top of her head like a hairband. She was beautiful, Steve confirmed with an absent thought to how fun it would be to highlight her cheekbones onto a page with pastels. She looked somewhat familiar, really, but he couldn’t quite place the resemblance. She looked around the shop, then out the window at the street beyond. “Can I tell you a secret?”

“Sure.” He gave a laugh, fingers twitching slightly in the way they’d have to sketch out her eyebrows. She was so striking, so unbelievably lovely. He could use her as inspiration.

“New York isn’t what I expected.” She fluttered a wink at him. “No matter how many times I come back, I always romanticize it a little in my head while I’m gone.”

He laughed and looked around. “There are places where that’s true,” he agreed easily. “I get it. New York can be a lot. But it’s also powerful and complex and it’s filled with people who are strong and brilliant. It’s not so bad.”

She watched him for a moment. “It would be easy for someone to get in over his head in New York,” she remarked as she took a sip of her drink. “City as dark as this could swallow someone whole.”

He nodded. “I’ve seen it. But there’s good people here. It’s like anywhere else- it’s the people you surround yourself with. There are people here who fight for others, who support others, who give people who need it homes and food and clothes.” He looked out at the street. “New Yorkers are known for just walking past problems, but that’s not true. This city has been through hell, torn up and destroyed, attacked by aliens and planes and terrorists, and we keep going and taking care of each other. It’s a good place, as long as you don’t bury yourself in the dark.”

“Hm.” She took another drink, then nodded to the bag. “Can I see it?”

“Of course.” He carefully unzipped it, positioning it on the table for her. “If there’s anything you don’t like, let me know and I’ll take it back and change it.”

She studied the pink-and-blue seascape, turning her head with a smile. “I expected something more realistic from you,” she reflected, eyes wandering across the shore and the little sandpipers Steve had added from Bucky. “Stroke of inspiration?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He gave a laugh. “I definitely started with more realism and it sort of went sideways. I know you initially okayed it, but if you don’t like it in person we can talk about options.” He wouldn’t have an issue selling this- he could do another in a more realistic style without much of a loss.

“What led to the change?” She reached out a fingertip to trace one of the bubbles dancing above the sea’s edge. “You said in the text it felt too cold?”

“Yeah.” He studied the painting. “It just felt… I don’t know. A friend was talking about cold water and how it made him feel and this just looked too cold, so I thought adding some color would be good. He suggested the birds too.” Steve smiled at the memory of Bucky’s tentative suggestion. There are little birds who chase the waves.

“A friend?” Her eyebrows raised as she grinned around the rim of her cup at Steve’s smile.

He grinned back, burying his smile in his own cup. It really wasn’t nearly as good as Beans. He might need that latte. “Yes ma’am, a friend,” he said, clearing his throat. “He’s actually been to the ocean.”

“Mm.” Her eyes crinkled a little as she watched him. “It’s beautiful,” she said finally, turning her attention back to the canvas. “I like the added light. Your friend’s right, we’ve all had too much cold recently.”

“I’m glad you like it, Ms. Rushmore.” He carefully put it in a plastic carrying bag. “It was fun to paint, I appreciate the opportunity to mess around with some color and technique. Is there anything else I can do?”

“No, I think that’s all I need from you for now.” She studied him for a moment, then tapped at her phone. His lit up with the corresponding payment owed. “Plus tip,” she added as she stood and picked up her bag.

“You didn’t have to do that.” He gave a laugh and shook his head. “It’s more fun than I’ve had doing a commission in a while, thank you. If you ever need another let me know?”

“Will do.” She winked at him and headed for the door. “Take good care of your friend,” she cast over her shoulder, and he watched her go with a smile, sipping at his coffee, then picked up his phone. He needed to transfer that payment and make some bills go away.

Then when he got home, maybe he’d work on a painting for Bucky.

“Hey,” Steve said, out of breath as he jogged into the Nelson and Murdock offices. Matt wasn’t there, instead recuperating at home with Claire checking in on him, but Foggy and Karen were both sitting at Foggy’s desk, frowning down at a laptop with nearly identical expressions of concern.

“Hey.” Foggy sat back, offering a brief smile that didn’t touch his worried eyes, and Steve felt a flicker of concern rock through him as well.

“You okay?”

“Hi, Steve.” Karen moved forward and hugged him, then glanced back at Foggy. “How long until she’s here?”

“Another ten, depending on if she took a cab or the subway.” He looked at Steve. “Angela’s camera caught something.”

“Shit.” He moved to stand beside him. “What did it get?”

“Someone’s there.” Foggy rewound the video and pressed play.

It took a moment for Steve to catch his breath again when the man there came into view. Tall, broad-shouldered, with muscles rolling beneath his shirt. Long dark hair was swept up into a messy bun, a few locks falling forward to frame a face so familiar to Steve from constant drawing and redrawing that it almost hurt.

Bucky. It was Bucky.

Bucky was in Elsie’s house.

Steve’s brain stuttered, clearly struggling from the same oxygen deprivation that his lungs were suffering from as Bucky stood in the doorway for a moment, expression utterly perplexed as he looked at the apartment in front of him. He shut the door slowly and stepped inside, turning in place as he studied the room. His expression tightened and he shook his head a little as he took in a visible breath. Steve had heard that sound over and over on the other end of the line- it was Bucky’s calming sound, the sound that meant he was trying to think.

Gloved fingers reached out and pressed against the nearest wall, the confusion on Bucky’s face increasing. His lips moved slowly, and the word when it escaped was low and barely audible. “Becca?” He asked, turning to look down the hall. He walked down it, peering into the rooms, and the confusion turned to panic, to fear written plainly on his face. “Lorrie?” He called a little louder.

Steve stared, opening and closing his mouth.

“So you had two sisters.” Steve drew a long line that would end up being a bird of some kind. “Becca and Lorrie, right? Tell me a story about them.”

Shit. Shit. Steve balled his hands into fists, working through this fast. Bucky struggled with so much sometimes- he lost track of their conversations, on occasion let on that he got confused at the simplest things. He’d admitted once or twice to having memory and processing problems, although he never let Steve linger on the topic for more than a beat.

It was possible, then, that he was reverting somehow to a past that wasn’t there anymore. To when he and his family lived in a similar apartment, to a life that had been safer. Bucky’s voice changed so strongly when he talked about his sisters, about the life he had lived once. PTSD could do that sometimes; the mind sometimes returned to a place and time that was safe, and his life with Becca and Lorrie was his safety. So maybe there was something about this building that reminded him strongly enough of the place he had lived that he almost thought this was his place.

Bucky pulled back sharply as a sound rang through the speakers, freezing in place as the doorknob jiggled with a key turning. And then he was gone, across the room in a flash and out the window without pause.

“He’s so fast.” Steve stared down at the screen, unable to think of anything else to say in the face of this unbelievably intense speed, and Karen sat down slowly in her chair, replaying the video again.

“He looks so upset,” she said, blue eyes filling with compassion. Steve leaned forward to watch the video again, to examine the way that Bucky moved, the confusion in his face. “Like he’s… I don’t know. Lost?”

Steve glanced at Foggy. Did he remember who this was? Bucky had been bloody, it had been dark, and they had all been focused more on his injuries and stopping him bleeding than anything. The metal arm was covered in this video, Bucky’s hair was up, maybe Foggy wouldn’t even-

Foggy frowned, leaning in closer to watch the video again. “Does he look familiar?” He asked.

Steve worked his jaw slightly. Shit. “Not really.”

It wasn’t like he had half a book of sketches of the man, like he spent hours of every day talking to him and most of the rest of the day thinking about him. It wasn’t like Bucky’s calls had quickly become the best part of Steve’s day, that he was going out on a not-date with him in a few days, that he was painting a scene of a fluffy white cat sleeping on a bookcase for the man to hang in his house.

“Huh.” Foggy watched the video a minute longer, then leaned back. “He’s not stealing anything. Maybe he’s just got some mental issues… but if he turns violent, it could get messy. We need to send this to the police and Angela needs to change her locks.”

“If he’s suffering from some kind of mental condition, just getting him help is enough,” Steve said swiftly, heart squeezing at the idea of Bucky faced with police, frightened and confused. No, that wasn’t going to happen. He would do whatever it took to keep that from happening. Bucky wasn’t a danger, that should be clear enough.

“The police may not understand,” Karen agreed firmly, and Steve blessed her silently. He could always trust in Karen to be as much of a bleeding-heart as he was accused of being. “They’re not always the greatest with people who have trauma.”

“Our priority isn’t to help the intruder, it’s to keep our clients safe!” Foggy stared at them. “I know we’re soft, but come on, we have to be logical. How would we even get him help? You saw how fast he is.”

I can wait for him. We know where he goes. Steve shook his head. There was no possible way that he was going to allow Bucky to be cornered by police and locked up when it wasn’t his fault that he was confused. Bucky had come back to Elsie’s house a few times, so Steve could wait close by and watch, if he had to. Anything to keep him from being caught and captured. “We can help them both, Fog.”

“It’s not up to us, it’s up to- Angela, hey.” He stood and waved, and Steve turned to see Elsie’s mother walk in.

“You saw the video?” She asked, adjusting her purse anxiously on her shoulder.

“We did,” Karen agreed, moving around to give her a place to sit and headed to close the door after her. “Have a seat, ma’am.”

“Can we get you anything?” Steve glanced around. They usually had water bottles or coffee, something to offer people that they had here as witnesses or clients.

“Water would be nice.” She sat on the edge of the nearest chair and blew a breath out, then pressed her hands to her face. “I told her it was crazy. That she was making it all up.”

“You couldn’t have known.” Karen touched her shoulder as Steve grabbed a bottle of water from the box they kept it in, exchanging a look with Foggy. “It’s hard to believe how fast he moves. Anyone would think she was dreaming.”

“I don’t know what to do.” Angela took a deep breath. “I called our landlord and he’s changing the locks, but the guy went out the window and the locks weren’t broken in the first place. Did he pick it? Steal a key? How did he get down? What if he comes in that way next time?”

Steve glanced at Karen, who gave an unsure smile. “We can help you find window sensors,” he said, thinking quickly to an option that didn’t include getting the police involved. Bucky didn’t deserve that. “Alarms that go off if the field is disturbed.”

“I’ll look them up now,” Foggy volunteered, drawing up a quick smile when Angela looked around. “We’ve got this, Mrs. Kaarov. We’re going to help make sure you stay safe.”

“You don’t recognize him at all?” Steve settled on the edge of the desk, hoping his smile was comforting, that his anxiety about Bucky didn’t bleed through. “Not even a little?”

“No,” she maintained, staring at the laptop screen. “I knew we shouldn’t have moved into this apartment, I knew it was a bad idea, it was Nathan who wanted us to live here and he’s not even home.”

“I’m sorry.” Karen patted her hand. “We’re going to help you, okay? Foggy is looking up some alarms for your windows right now, and Matt will help when he comes back. Do you need Elsie picked up or anything?”

“No, Nathan’s father is picking her up.” She took in a deep breath. “I’m sorry. No one said anything about a problem like this when we inherited the apartment.”

“Inherited it?” Steve watched her. Inherited it? If Bucky came from a place similar, was it around there somewhere? “We checked police reports and there weren’t any from that apartment, so it doesn’t seem like it’s a common occurrence there.”

“It’s an old building.” Angela shook her head as she wiped her eyes. “Nathan’s family has lived in that same unit since the twenties, they just keep passing it around. He wanted Elsie to grow up there and now-” she pressed her lips together, folding her hands tightly in her lap.

“She still can,” Steve assured her, shoving away his own thoughts on the situation. It didn’t matter right now that Bucky wouldn’t be a danger, it mattered that Angela felt that he was a danger. “You don’t have to move out, we can do something and help you feel better about all of this. It’ll be alright.”

“We can help you feel safe again,” Karen assured her, giving her a warm smile. “We think maybe he’s confused, he’s having some problems. We’re going to do what we can to get him help, and protect you guys.”

“I don’t want him anywhere near my daughter,” Angela said firmly, hands tightening around her purse strap. “I’m going to file a police report.”

Steve let out a breath. This was going to spiral out of control if he didn’t do something about it. He couldn’t let this happen to Bucky, couldn’t let him struggle like this. “Ma’am, we think maybe he’s mentally unwell, that maybe he’s been through something,” he said. “He doesn’t deserve to go to jail, although I absolutely understand being worried about your daughter. We can stop him and get him help.”

“I’m filing a police report, Mr. Rogers,” she informed him, and Foggy squeezed Steve’s shoulder as his stomach dropped out.

“Whatever makes you feel safer, ma’am,” the lawyer agreed. “Here, let me show you where to go, I have a map pulled up…”

Steve kept a smile on his face, but felt panic burn through him as he desperately ran through the options left to him.

He couldn’t let Bucky go to jail. He couldn’t. It wasn’t Bucky’s fault, he wasn’t well. Steve had known that for a long time, but here was even more evidence of the situation. Steve had to stop Bucky from going back to Elsie’s house, and needed to keep him from getting arrested. He had been through hell, from what Steve could tell, and it wasn’t the soldier’s fault that he struggled with things sometimes.

After a long few beats of deliberation, Steve texted Bucky.

Call me if you can?

“Come on,” Bucky muttered, nudging the can closer with a stick. “Come on, you know you’re hungry.” The cat looked at him and then the can, ears twitching. It took a step closer and he grinned. “There we go,” he agreed, moving backwards cautiously. “There you go. You can go ahead and eat it, it’s okay. It-”

He broke off when his phone buzzed. Normally this meant Steve and was thus the highlight of his day. This time it came at the cost of the cat, who turned and darted back down the abandoned hallway. He sighed, sitting back on the thin mattress, and stretched his legs out as he looked at the text.

Call me if you can?

Steve had never requested a call like this. He had never asked for help of any kind aside from the time he was panicking.

He frowned, feeling his eyebrows knit together as he automatically dialed Steve’s number. “Are you alright?” He asked as soon as he picked up, ignoring the sound and sensation of his metal arm whirring. He was well accustomed to the shifting of the plates, the design preparing for impact. “What do you need?”

“Hey.” Steve’s voice, worried. “It’s good to hear from you. Hey guys, I’ll be right back.”

Answering affirmatives from other voices- two female and one male. The male was familiar, he identified immediately, and categorized him after a moment as one of those who had been in the hotel room when he first met Steve.

He was with his friends, and though he sounded worried, he didn’t sound hurt.

The noises on the other end stopped and Steve spoke again, his voice echoing slightly. Clearly, he had moved somewhere else- a stairwell, an empty room, a hallway, something like that. “Hey, Buck. How’re you feeling? You alright?”

“Yeah.” Bucky leaned back against the wall. “What’s wrong? You’ve never called me when you’re around other people.” Had hung up when they arrived, in fact. But he didn’t mind that. Steve had called him B the last time they had been interrupted by his friends, and the memory of this effort at stealth had never yet failed to amuse him.

Until now, anyways.

Steve cleared his throat. “I know. Are you free tonight? I’m starving for pizza, I think tonight’s definitely the night for pizza. We shouldn’t wait until Tuesday. Do you want to come out?”

“Tonight?” Bucky hesitated, a flicker of anxiety warring with the flash of anticipation in his chest. “I…”

This was so much sooner than he had anticipated and-

“Come on, Barnes,” Gabe laughed, pulling Bucky to his feet. “Just ask one to dance!”

“You’ve barely looked at me all night.” The brunette’s lips pursed in a pout.

“Fuck,” Bucky breathed against soft lips, anguish and fire burning across his skin in a race he had no hope of surviving.

“They’ll never look at you the same once they know what you are,” James Barnes Senior said coldly.

“-ey. Buck? Hey, it’s okay.” Steve said quickly as Bucky gulped in breaths, his skin suddenly cold and clammy and covered in sweat. “I’m just- shit. It’s okay, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to spring it on you, it’s okay. You’re safe, okay? Don’t worry about it. We can maybe try next week. Okay?”

“What?” Bucky sounded strange and young. “Steve?”

“You’re okay.” Even over the phone he sounded warm, and it made the cold panic freezing over Bucky’s bones start to recede somewhat. “You’re okay, Bucky. I’m not going to make you do anything. It’s going to be fine.”

“Sorry.” Bucky took in a slow breath, raising his fingers to his lips and brushing them together lightly. Who had he kissed? Why had his father known who he would become? “You wanted to see me?”

“Yeah, but it’s okay. I understand sometimes things are a lot.” Steve’s voice was soft and gentle. “It’s alright. You okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, sorry. Sometimes I just…” Bucky trailed off, watching as the cat crept back into the room and started cautiously approaching the can. “Lose track of things.”

“I know. It’s okay. I feel like you’ve had a rough go of it. My dad was like that too. Don’t worry about it, ‘kay?”

Bucky watched as the cat crept in cautiously, lowering to a slow crouch to start lapping at the can of cat food. “I want to see you,” he admitted, the words bare and low. “It’s not that I don’t want to see you. I’m going to see you on Tuesday, that was the plan and I meant it. I just…”

“It’s okay, Bucky.” Steve smiled a little. “I want to see you, too. It’s alright if we have to wait for Tuesday.” He let out a breath, hesitating for a moment. “Hey, uh… where are you from, Buck?”

“Brooklyn,” Bucky replied, and this answer came easily for once. “I grew up there.”

Steve was quiet, then, “Is the house still there?”

“I lived in an apartment. We couldn’t afford a house.” Bucky could remember the apartment, could feel the phantom of brick lines under his left hand. He was sure the bricks were as nonexistent as that same hand now. He could almost picture the wall, plastered over and smooth like so many modern apartments nowadays. “The window used to look out toward the harbor if you were tall enough,” he reflected slowly as he pictured Becca, laughing as he lifted her up to look out at the water with Lorrie seated on his shoulders.

Steve was quiet, then, “Subtlety isn’t my speciality,” he admitted. “I don’t know how to start this, I just… god. Okay. So I saw a video of you today.”

“What?” The Soldier’s insides were numb and frozen, and he couldn’t quite feel the short, measured breaths he was taking in. A video. Steve had seen a video of him.

What had he done? What had Steve seen?

Steve had seen him.

Steve knew what he had done.

The phone was crushed in the Soldier’s hand before he was aware of it, metal and glass crunching into his palm as it was pulverized between titanium fingers, and he backed up, shoving himself into the corner as the cat raced to the safety of the hallway.

Steve knew.

Steve knew.

Steve knew.

Golden hair and blue eyes, warm voice and unhesitating fingers, he knew that the soldier was a monster, was an asset, was a weapon.

You are the fist of Hydra and nothing more. Nothing less.

No one is going to want you when they know what you are.

Steve knew what he was.

Steve knew what he was.

And there was no going back from there. No more calm, no more stability, no more stories, no more Steve. Steve knew who he was and what he was, and he would never be able to forgive or forget what he had learned. There was no going back to anything except silence and an overwhelming onslaught of memories.

No more Steve. No more home.

Nothing but silence.

The soldier thought there was a chance that he might have been screaming as his hands fisted at his ears and his world crashed down around him in a shower of glass and metal pieces.

Chapter Text

“Oh my god.” Steve paced around the room, feeling like he was going to throw up. “Oh my god, oh my god, I fucked up. I fucked up, I fucked up.” He shouldn’t have told him that, not that way. Bucky had hung up and all of Steve’s calls had been automatically disregarded. He had fucked up so royally, and he had known better.

He had known better than to just spring things on him and he had done so anyway.

“How did you fuck up, Steve?” Claire sighed onscreen, pouring herself a cup of coffee and looking up at the camera with raised eyebrows. “Use full sentences.”

“I’m- okay, Claire, can you not tell Matt something, or is it one of those ‘we’re dating and so Matt knows everything I know’ things?”

“Matt and I are on another break.” Her lips pursed briefly. “So you’re fine to tell me as much as you want.”

“You’re on a break again?” He stopped pacing, both surprised by this and considering the reasoning behind dumping a blind man who had had to go to the hospital in the last week for fairly serious burns, then continued moving again. “You guys are good together. Look- do you remember that guy we helped a few months ago? We were in DC for an equal-rights rally and I called you, had you help me sew him up? He had bullet wounds and didn’t want us to call the police?”

“Yeah. I usually don’t forget my hotel patch-jobs,” she informed him archly. “Foggy calls him the Terminator. Matt said he was Fisk-level bad news.” She watched him as she lowered her mug. “Why?”

He pointed at the phone. “He isn’t Fisk-level bad news. He’s a good man, he’s just been through a lot. I’ve been talking to him for a while now. He’s… he’s a good person, Claire, and I pushed him too far and he won’t answer my calls now or anything, he’s running and I can’t tell him I’m sorry because he’s not talking to me.” He had texted, he’d left voicemails, no response.

“…Okay,” she said after a long pause, sighing and setting her mug down. “It’s not the weirdest thing I’ve heard this week. Look, you like him and you made a mistake?”

“Yes.” He didn’t bother fighting it. He did like him. He liked Bucky; liked his voice, liked the way he asked for stories, liked the quiet companionship they’d had for so long now. He felt undeniably protective of the damaged soldier and he was very aware of just how far that protectiveness and affection was edging- less of a I like him and closer to something far more real. “I like him so much and I fucked it up and now he’s just running, and I have no idea where he is or if he’s okay.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “He loses time sometimes, Claire. He forgets where and when he is, and it’s terrible. He’s so lost and he won’t let me meet him again, so I can’t help him.”

“And you have no idea where he is or where he’d go?” She searched his face. “Steve, it sounds like he needs professional help.”

“He does.” Steve stared at her. “He needs professional help, but he’s not going to go there himself, and I want to help him and I can’t because he’s running. I don’t know where he is or where he’d go because I’m just- we don’t meet up in person.”

“Nothing you’re saying gives me any confidence in this,” she informed him dryly.

He pressed his hands to the table to force himself to calm down and focus. “He’s a good person,” he told her. “He’s not a bad person, he’s just got issues and he’s been setting boundaries that I’ve been respecting. But now I fucked up and I don’t know if he’s okay and I’m losing my shit because it’s my fault that he’s hurt like this right now.”

“Okay. Hey, it’s going to be okay.” She set her mug down. “Does he have any friends? Does he have any family you could talk to?”

Steve gave a half-laugh. “Me. That’s all I know. His family’s… well, pretty much they’re just gone, and he’s never mentioned any other friends. So I’m at a loss. He has a cat, that’s it. I don’t know where he lives or anything.”

“Well, how did you get in contact with him the first time? Have you tried looking up his name and address?”

“I-” he stopped. He had thought about waiting at Elsie’s house, and it wasn’t a horrible idea. It had happened enough that they had reported it. There might be police there now, but Steve might be able to be quicker, and could work smarter now that he knew what was happening and who was involved. “He’s been visiting a specific apartment,” he said after a moment. “Well, he’s been sort of breaking in, but it’s because he thinks they’re still there. I could go there and wait for him, watch for him. I could do that.”

“Side-stepping the obvious illegal activity,” she said after a beat, “Couldn’t you just contact whatever’s left of his family, or wherever they used to live? They might have left a forwarding address for mail with the new tenants.”

Steve shook his head. “They’re all gone, they’re just-” he paused, Angela’s voice ringing back to him. His family has been handing it down since the twenties. He frowned slowly. He hadn’t thought about it, but potentially Bucky’s family had actually been there in that particular apartment at one point. It was worth a call. “I guess… the woman who lives there might be a distant relation.”

Or rather, her partner might be. Nathan was overseas, but his dad was around, he’d picked Elsie up from daycare. Maybe they were Bucky’s cousins.

“There you go. Ask her where he might be.” She waved a hand.

“She doesn’t know him, though. The dad… maybe.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Okay. Yeah, thanks, Claire.”

“Seriously though- is there anything I can do to help?” She searched his face.

He gave her a smile, leaning back against the back of his couch. “No, I don’t think so. Take care of yourself, Claire. Call Matt if you’re not too pissed.”

She laughed. “I’m always pissed at him,” she said with a grin. “And I’m always talking to him anyway. Be careful, Steve. Sometimes guys like that… it’s a lot more to get involved with than you think. Trust me on that. Be careful.”

He nodded. “I know. But there’s always a problem with everyone. You may as well just enjoy the people you have.”

She took a deep breath and nodded. “Just be careful,” she repeated, and hung up.

Steve looked down at his phone, dialing Bucky again just to see what happened. It rung through to voicemail and he hung up, then got up. Maybe he could talk to him, find him before Bucky walked into the apartment and got in trouble with the police.

He pressed his hands to his counter for a minute, then turned and retrieved his laptop from where he kept it under his couch. He rarely used it aside from art references and social media, and it felt more than a little funny to be typing Angela Kaarov into the search engine like he was some kind of internet stalker.

After only a few minutes of social media stalking, he found that she was in a long-term relationship with Nathan Barnes, who was indeed Elsie Barnes’ father. Nathan’s dad was Winston Barnes, who had no other relatives listed aside from his mother, Lorelai Barnes. Steve considered, looking at the screen for a long moment, before he clicked message on Winston Barnes’ Facebook page.

It was stupid. This definitely wasn’t Bucky’s family, but there had to be a reason the soldier kept returning to their apartment over and over. Hi, he wrote. My name is Steve Rogers and I’m a friend of Angela Kaarov’s. I’m doing a project on familial homes. Could I ask you a question?

Of course, it could be a long time before the man saw this, but it could be fairly quick, as well. It just depended on what Winston did with his days. Did he spend his days playing games on the computer? Did he work? Steve didn’t know. But he would at least try this and see what happened.

His computer beeped at him half an hour later and he ran to it in excitement. Sure, Winston had replied, But I’m not on Facebook much, and had attached his number.

Thank god. Steve dialed Winston’s number, pacing around the room anxiously as he listened to the ringing. Pick up pick up, come on.

“Ye-llo?” the man asked, drawing the greeting into a color. “Winston Barnes speaking.”

Steve paused, then grinned a little. Reminded him of his father. “Hello, Mr. Barnes, my name is Steve Rogers. I wrote to you to ask about an apartment you’ve been passing down in your family? I’ve been working with your daughter Angela.”

“Angie? Nah, she’s Nate’s girlfriend. She’d be my daughter in-law if he’d ever get his ass in gear and propose the right way, but-” he broke off, voice muffled for a moment. “Yeah, Ma, that sounds good. Whatever you and Elsie want.” He came back on. “Sorry. Anyway, how can I help you, Stevie? You said your project’s on family homes?”

“Yeah, it is.” Steve gave the screen a smile. “Angela said that this house was passed along your family for a long time, since the twenties. I was trying to get information about how that worked, sort of how it was passed down. I think I might know one of your relatives, actually.”

Subtlety was not his strong suit. He had no idea how to do this.

“Oh, yeah? One of my cousins, probably?” Steve was positive that he could hear Elsie in the background, a young voice shouting cheerfully for her grandma. “My gran owned the place, and my mom and her siblings all grew up there. Aunt Becca kept the place after Grandma died, and then when she passed away a few years back, Nate said that it was important to keep it in the family.”

Steve opened his mouth, then paused, staring at the wall. “Becca?” he said slowly. Lorelei was the name of the other sister, the name of Winston’s mother.

My sisters? Becca was nineteen, Lorrie was just fourteen when I left.

No. it wasn’t possible, that didn’t make sense. Bucky had talked so much about his sisters, talked so much about how happy they had made him and how close they’d all been, Steve couldn’t possibly be wrong about the names. “Sir, does your mother go by Lorrie?” Steve found himself asking, voice sounding distant even to himself.

“Yeah.” Fondness in his voice. “Can you hear Elsie yelling for her in the background?”

“I can, yeah.” Steve ran a hand over his face, mind spinning.

Elsie’s great-grandmother’s name was Lorelai, or Lorrie. The home had been in the family since the twenties, since Lorelai was a child. Bucky went to that same apartment over and over, asking for Becca and Lorrie.

“Sir,” Steve said, trying to think of how the hell he could even start asking this. “Do you know of a man named Bucky? That- that name came up.”

“I-yeah.” He sounded quieter now, and there was a click. The background chattering of Elsie faded away. “Yeah, he was my mom’s brother. His name was James, but Ma always called him Bucky. She said that’s what he signed all his letters with, what all his friends called him.”

Steve gripped his phone, feeling like he was going to tip right over. He made himself sit down and focused on his breathing, keeping himself as calm as possible. How was this possible? What the fuck was this? “You said was. Did he pass away?”

Surely Bucky, Steve’s Bucky, wasn’t a ghost. Claire had sewn him up, they’d seen his blood, felt his warmth and heard his voice. Steve called him. Bucky called him back, Bucky texted him. He wasn’t a ghost, and there was no way this was a huge joke… right? What purpose would that serve? Ghosts couldn’t dial a phone and no one would have a reason to play this as a joke, especially for this long.

“He died in World War II,” he agreed. “He was drafted and never came home. Ma gets emotional about it still. Aunt Becca was always just angry. She thought it was-” he stopped himself. “I’m sorry, you’re asking about the apartment, not our family story.” He gave a small laugh. “My uncle stayed in the apartment for a long time to help my grandma pay for it. Grandpa spent a lot of money on the bars, so Uncle Bucky was apparently sort of the man of the house while he was around.”

Steve opened and closed his mouth for a long moment. Bucky seemed exactly the kind of person who would take care of his family like that. He needed to figure out a way to keep talking about this. “I mean… the story could have a lot about your family in general. What did Becca think it was? Did you ever get to bury him, get him home?”

“Well, things were different back then. They’d be buried where they died, mostly, and it wasn’t until a long time after the war ended when bodies finally started being exhumed and sent home. He never was, he was always MIA. My aunt, uh.” He cleared his throat stiffly as Steve stared at the opposite wall, unable to move as things kept falling into place. “She said that she didn’t think they tried very hard to find him. Said Bucky was homosexual and the military had probably turned on him for it. My grandpa got drunk one time and got in this big fight with them at Thanksgiving, apparently.”

Steve stood, pacing around the room. “Well, shit,” he said after a moment, clearing his throat. “I’m sorry, that’s… that’s terrible. That’s an awful thing to have to live with, that someone you cared about could have that happen to them.” He worked his jaw, trying to think. “How is your mother? She’s probably…” he did the math. “Ninety?”

“Ninety this June,” he confirmed, “But still sprightly for an old lady.” His voice smiled. “She wanted the apartment, but we didn’t want her trying to climb all those stairs every day.” He laughed. “Nate’s a good boy, he brings her over whenever he comes home so she can still see the place.”

So… what? Bucky was a WWII soldier who had gone missing, who had somehow come home again, to a world who didn’t know him? Was that why he lost time, lost his place in the world? Because he wasn’t from this time?

No. no, that was insane. Steve cleared his throat. “I’m glad to hear she’s doing well, sir. Did she ever say why she wanted the apartment so badly? Just because she grew up in it? Did she ever think…” That he might come back?

“She’s getting older, Steve. Her parents are gone, and her siblings too. That apartment and me and Nate, we’re all she’s got.” He sighed. “Uh… you need a tour of the place or something? I guess you’re Angie’s friend though, so she’s probably already offered. She’s a good girl.”

“She’s a good lady.” Steve massaged his chest. He needed to think through this, process it. “For now, that’s all I need, I think. Thank you so much for your time. I’ll call you again if I need anything else.”

“Anytime.” He hung up and Steve dropped his phone and pressed a hand to his face, trying to process this.

Bucky was… Elsie’s great granduncle. Somehow. Unless he was a crazy man who thought he was Bucky- was his name Bucky Barnes? That was perfect for him- which was… unlikely. It was potentially true, but somehow Steve didn’t think that made sense, exactly.

There were things that made sense about this new idea, but it was completely insane.

As insane as aliens exploding from the sky? As insane as a billionaire becoming a superhero in a suit that could fly, or a Norse god from Asgard who could command lightning?

He pressed his hands together briefly, thinking.

What about this made any sense?

Bucky had admitted to being a soldier, that fit. His sisters had been Becca and Lorrie, who were the Barnes sisters. He went to their same apartment looking for them and couldn’t find them there. He had been around the Triskelion explosion, which was a SHIELD facility.

Maybe the military had turned on him. Maybe they had experimented on him. Exposed him to radioactivity or something, like the Hulk. Maybe he had developed some sort of longevity that had lengthened his life. Maybe SHIELD had saved him- or maybe they had been part of it, either way. That made sense in a lot of ways.

The Steve Rogers of only four years ago wouldn’t have been able to understand it, but then there had been Loki, and the Chiatauri, and the Avengers. No, this was a new world.

And what mattered right now was the kind of man that he was, the kind person that Bucky had proven so far to be.

Steve dragged a hand through his hair. He needed to go and wait near the apartment. He needed to find Bucky, to talk to him and understand how the hell this was possible, what exactly happened with all of this and what had happened to him.

He glanced at his phone and took a deep breath. He’d give Bucky one last night to answer Steve’s messages before he staked out the apartment. He was always lonely at night, always more likely to call.

And Steve so wanted him to call, so wanted to explain to him what was happening, ask him if he understood.

He fell asleep on the couch, his phone clutched in his hand, and woke in the middle of the night at small, uneven and staccato knocks against the door. He thought for a moment he had dreamt it, scrubbing at his eyes as he rolled onto his side to squint at his phone. Two-fifty-three. No missed calls. He rolled over, burrowing his face against his pillows with a sigh, and settled back in to sleep. There was another knock on the verge of Steve’s dreams and he cracked his eyes open again, frowning.

“Hello?” he called groggily, pushing himself to his feet and stumbling that way. Who in the hell could be here at this time of night? Was someone hurt, frightened, needed somewhere safe? Sometimes people crashed on Steve’s couch because they had nowhere else to go. “Hello?” he asked again, leaning up to look through the hole in the door. He froze.

Bucky was standing there.

Bucky was standing there, soaked to the bone and holding a dirty white cat in one hand. He didn’t look up, just stared at the bottom of Steve’s door, his hair plastered to his cheeks and so dark it almost looked black.

“Bucky,” Steve breathed, tearing at the chains holding the door locked. He unlocked it with difficulty and yanked it open, staring at him. The cat gave a pitiful meow and Steve reached out, brushing his hand against the bedraggled white head, not looking away from Bucky’s face. “Bucky,” he repeated, awash with relief and pain for the expression on the other man’s face. “It’s so good to see you.”

“Please.” The word was small and Bucky didn’t seem to dare look up at Steve, just shuddered. “Please don’t go. You can do what you want with me, just- don’t go.” He sank to his knees, resting his forehead heavily against Steve’s side.

Steve stared down at him in shock, then knelt, resting his hands on Bucky’s shoulders. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said, moving close as his fingers traced up through his soaked hair, trying to be as comforting as possible. “I’m not going anywhere away from you. Here, get up. Get up from the floor, let’s get you warm, okay?” He stroked through Bucky’s hair. “Stand up, let’s get to the couch. You’re okay, you’re safe.”

Bucky shuddered, pressing into his hands, then took unsteady steps back to his feet and moved inside obediently. The cat wriggled free of his hands and darted away, vanishing down Steve’s hallway and into the bedroom, and Steve had a moment of amusement that Bucky had managed to catch her.

He shut the door and led Bucky to sit on the couch, pulling blankets out of the ottoman to wrap around him. He covered the soldier up carefully, then ran to put on water to heat up for hot chocolate. When that was started, he came back, giving Bucky another blanket. “I don’t have any clothes that’ll fit you,” he said apologetically. “Has the cat eaten?” He could cut up some lunch meat or something.

“I don’t know. She just came by and I grabbed her. I didn’t want to leave her.” Another tremor rippled through him and he watched Steve’s feet. “I’m sorry,” he added in an undertone. “For whatever you know. Whatever you saw.”

“We’ll talk about that later.” Steve crouched into his sightline, resting a hand on Bucky’s knee as his heart hurt. He was clearly upset, confused, unsure about what was happening here. “Hey. Hey, can you look at me?” Bucky raised his eyes to look at Steve, the irises dull and flat, and Steve rested his hand on Bucky’s wrist. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said firmly, not looking away. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you all day. I was going to go out and wait for you.”

Confusion flickered through the dark blue of his eyes like a flame and he hesitated, fingers flexing slightly beneath Steve’s. “Why?”

Steve’s fingers brushed his. “Because,” he said gently, “I like you. You make me laugh, you keep me company. You’re kind. I like you.”

I’m falling in love with you.

Too soon for that, to push that kind of connection on him. Bucky was too fragmented right now, too unsteady. He needed support and somewhere solid to be, not Steve to make a move on him or spill out what he thought he might feel.

Bucky’s hand turned over, opening for Steve’s in a gesture that seemed to be pure reflex and without any thought as he studied Steve’s face. “You look exactly the same,” he reflected quietly, a look of relief and exhaustion sweeping across his face. He dropped his forehead forward, letting it rest against Steve’s shoulder. “Punk,” he added, the nickname in a tone almost approaching normal.

Steve gave a small laugh, leaning back into him and curling their fingers together. “Jerk,” he shot back, feeling a smile cross his face. “Of course I look the same. I never change. I’m still small and angry and tatted and pierced. You look a little the worse for wear.” One hand lifted, touching Bucky’s soaked hair and stroking gently, trying to impart comfort. “I’ll find you some clothes, you take a shower in my bathroom. Sleep, eat, rest. You look like you haven’t rested.” He ducked his head and looked up at him, foreheads resting together. “I’ll help feed the cat.”

“She doesn’t like eating in front of me very much,” Bucky admitted, his eyes sinking shut for a moment. “I never know how much she eats.” He stayed there for a few quick beats of Steve’s pounding heart, then staggered to his feet again, Steve likewise rising to stay even with him. He followed Steve quietly to the bathroom and watched Steve demonstrate how to change the settings on the shower. Steve left him with a towel and washcloth and shut the door behind him, then stopped in the hallway, taking in deep breaths.

He had come to Steve. Bucky was clearly struggling, clearly having issues, and here he was, seeking comfort in Steve’s presence, seeking what safety he could. He had come to him, even though his anxiety was clearly tearing him up and making all of this harder.

The fact that he somehow knew where Steve lived was an entirely separate problem.

Steve shook himself, taking out some lunchmeat and putting it on a plate, tucking the plate on the floor near the end of the counter where the cat could get it, and went into his bedroom, quickly flicking through the cast-offs he had from times friends had stayed, one-night stands, times he had traveled in a group and left the hotel with clothing that wasn’t his. There were a few pants that were passable, and a hoodie that would probably be far too large, but Bucky couldn’t keep those freezing and soaked pieces of clothing on.

He left them in a pile outside the door rather than opening it or knocking, too aware of how jumpy Bucky likely was at the moment to try anything more. When he turned again, he found the cat sniffing the air. She darted under the bed when she saw Steve looking and he fought a smile, returning to sit on the couch.

Bucky was here. He was shaken, clearly scared and lost, but here and safe.

Steve needed to figure out what to do, how to keep him calm. He opened Spotify on his television, putting on a soothing mix he used whenever he wanted to calm down and mellow out, and hesitated before sitting back down. He wasn’t sure when Bucky had eaten, but he wasn’t sure what he ate.

Or if he ate.

There was still that issue of not knowing how the hell Bucky Barnes was supposedly from the forties when he was young and alive right now. They would figure it out, but there was always that particular problem.

Bucky emerged from the shower nearly half an hour later, warm steam emanating from the bathroom as he stepped out in Foggy’s old hoodie and the sweatpants Steve had left for him. He looked odd and soft in this, rumpled and domestic in a way he never had before, and Steve felt a sharp tug in his gut at just how beautiful the other man was. Bucky gave him a sheepish smile, rubbing the towel across his hair. “Thank you,” he said, hesitating in the hallway.

“No problem.” Steve smiled back at him. “Are you hungry? I figured I could make food for you when you got out- you could pick what you want to eat. I don’t know what you like and don’t like.” He scooted over on the couch a little as the song continued, soft and pretty. “Or we could order something to eat, if you want.”

Bucky moved forward, glancing back at the bedroom as he walked. “Have you seen the cat? Is she okay?”

“She came out and sniffed the meat.” Steve grinned. “And when she saw me looking, she ran off. If we order something I could do DashMart too, get her some actual cat food. Some cats will only eat actual cat food.”

“I got her a can once. I don’t remember how much she ate, though.” He hovered in place, then sat on the edge of the couch. “Did I wake you up?”

“I wasn’t really sleeping.” Sleep had only come after a fight, and it had been restless at best. “I’m glad you came, Buck. So are you hungry?” Steve searched his face. “I know sometimes it’s hard for you to remember things like eating.” Bucky had alluded to that once or twice, how time and needs got away from him entirely. Now that he was here, Steve was going to make damn sure that he was okay. “I’m a little hungry. I was thinking of making some food.”

“You want to make me food?” There was that confusion again, his eyebrows knitting together as he searched Steve’s face. “You said you saw a video, Steve. How are you okay with me being here?”

Steve stretched out his legs, resting his feet against Bucky’s thigh. “I saw a video of you,” he agreed, mind racing through what Bucky might be afraid that Steve had seen, what would create this kind of reaction. “A video of you going to your old apartment, where you and your family lived.” He watched him carefully. “You looked… lost. I think you didn’t know where you were, or when you were. You thought they still lived there. The woman who lives there now, she’s frightened of a stranger coming into her house.”

Bucky stared at him for a moment, then let out a breath. “Of course she ist,” he said, swallowing. “Shit. I’m-” he ran a hand through his hair, fingers catching and tightening in the dark locks. “Sometimes I get confused,” he admitted quietly, voice low. “I know they don’t live there anymore. Sometimes things don’t make sense, my memories just get… loud.”

“I know.” Steve gently bumped the other man’s leg with his feet. “And that’s okay. You struggle with where it is and when it is sometimes, and I already knew that. The woman who lives there, she has a little girl and she’s nervous. She called the police, Buck.” Steve took in a deep breath. How the hell would he even start this? “I don’t know if you’ve met them- her name is Angela. Her partner is Nathan, Nathan Barnes.”

Bucky’s head, already shaking, stopped. “Barnes?” He repeated, meeting Steve’s eyes in surprise, his own fully focused suddenly.

“Yeah.” Steve didn’t look away. “Apparently, someone from the Barnes family has been living in that same apartment since the twenties. Elsie is the youngest, then her father Nathan, and his father Winston, and Winston’s mother, Lorelei.” Steve watched him carefully. “I called Winston today. He and Lorelai were watching Elsie today- they were laughing and playing when I called.”

Bucky didn’t move, didn’t even seem to breathe as he stared at Steve. “Lorelei’s still alive?” he whispered, something very young and vulnerable breaking across his face like paint across a canvas.

Steve gave him a warm smile, his chest aching with the simple beauty of the other man’s expression. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like, to feel however Bucky was feeling right now. “I heard her voice today,” he agreed. “She’s still very alive. Ninety years old, but alive, and well enough to talk to her granddaughter and play a little.”

Bucky’s hand fell to Steve’s ankle, curling around it seemingly for support as he processed this. “I- it’s been so long. I was sure she’d be…” he rubbed his free hand over his mouth, the metal of his fingers hidden by the same glove he’d been wearing in the video. “She’s alive,” he repeated, a smile starting behind the shelter of his fingers.

Steve watched him, feeling tension flow out of him. He had never seen Bucky smile. He had had no idea just how breathtaking it would be, how it warmed his eyes and crinkled the corners. Beautiful. “She’s alive,” he promised. “And she still misses her brother.”

Bucky focused on Steve again, that gorgeous smile faltering. “You know I’m her brother,” he processed cautiously.

“I put it together,” Steve agreed, trying to keep it cool. So he’d been right. He had absolutely been right and that was completely insane that Bucky was a WWII veteran somehow, some way. “Military, the names of your sisters, calling for them when you came in, how it passed from family line down. The memory loss, how you lose time.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t easy, but I figured it out.”

“And that doesn’t bother you?” His eyebrows raised in disbelief.

“I had my freak out earlier.” Steve grinned. “It was a whole thing, don’t worry. I’m not crazy. I’m a little freaked that I was right, but I was pretty sure I was, so.” He wiggled his feet against Bucky’s leg. Time to attempt to make him laugh, so he could see it in person. “So are you a vampire?”

It would explain the absolute enthrallment he seemed to have Steve in.

It worked. Bucky laughed, his face softening as his fingers stroked the inside of Steve’s ankle. His shoulders shook a little when he laughed, Steve discovered in delight, and his eyes looked almost more brown than blue with the way they crinkled and sparkled. Steve had never seen anything more worthy of capturing in art- painting, drawing, sculpture, he deserved to be immortalized in every medium.

“No,” he assured Steve when he had broken off into chuckles.

Steve’s grin almost hurt his face. “Can’t blame a guy for asking. You should be old and wrinkly and instead you’re young and gorgeous. Such a shame, you’d be a very cool vampire.” He realized he was leaning forward a little, foot moving slightly closer into Bucky’s touch.

Bucky hadn’t released him either, instead his grip even more secure around Steve’s ankle. Like a lifeline, Steve thought as he shifted slightly closer. Or an anchor.

And, judging from their conversations and Bucky’s own behavior tonight, that thought wasn’t far off from the truth. He had said himself, when he had told the story that rang very true now, that there was someone who made him feel normal, who quieted the noise of his life.

“Do you know any stories about vampires?” Bucky asked after a moment, thumb stroking a small path against Steve’s skin, and it hit him how exhausted the soldier was. It wasn’t overly evident in his face, but there was an odd stiffness to the set of his shoulders, to the raise of his chin, to the tightness at the corners of his eyes. He was holding himself up rather than relaxing, despite clearly feeling safe enough to sit and touch Steve. He was tired, and he didn’t want to show it, and was instead asking for another bedtime story the way he always had.

Steve reached out, tucking a lock of hair behind Bucky’s ear as his chest ached. The man just wanted normalcy, safety. “I do, actually,” he agreed, trying not to react to the way Bucky’s breathing shifted when Steve’s fingers left his face and instead settling a little closer. “Lay back, I’ll tell you about them. Do you like scary vampires or funny vampires?”

He gave a small laugh, leaning back into the couch finally as he watched Steve. “Can’t say I’ve had much experience with either,” he admitted.

“Okay.” Steve tugged a blanket over them both, yawning as he rested his feet fully in Bucky’s lap. The man clearly hadn’t been touched enough and needed more normal contact. “Okay, so there was this hotel once, in Transylvania, for monsters. Dracula lived there with his daughter…”

Bucky woke to warmth, which in itself was desperately unusual and deeply comforting at the same time. He opened his eyes to find the cat curled up on one of his knees, tucked in on herself and sleeping as if she did this all the time. He shot her a frown for this falsehood and briefly considered trying to pet her ears, but decided not to push his luck. He turned his attention to the second and equally baffling blessing- Steve was asleep on him.

Bucky wasn’t sure how or when he had moved, as any shift in their surroundings should have woken the instincts beaten into him, but move he had. Steve was laying down fully, his entire lower half stretched across Bucky’s lap and his hands tangled together under his chin on the pillow on the other end of the couch. Unaware that he slept on an instrument of Hydra, unconcerned that he was touching someone he knew had been born in a different century.

And so beautiful that it made Bucky’s lungs struggle for breath.

“Come on, Barnes,” Gabe laughed, pulling Bucky to his feet. “Just ask one to dance!” He waved a hand at the small group of men chattering warmly and familiarly to each other.

“You’ve barely looked at me all night.” The brunette’s lips pursed in a pout. She didn’t ask the question- ‘is it me or is it you?’ But the thought was clearly there.

“Fuck,” Bucky breathed against soft lips, anguish and fire burning across his skin in a race he had no hope of surviving. He pulled back to look at the other boy, taking in a slow breath as his fingers brushed across just-starting stubble.

“They’ll never look at you the same once they know what you are,” James Barnes Senior said coldly.

He had always been like this, Bucky realized now, the memories clicking into place. Had always liked men.

Steve let out a sigh, turning his head as his hands shifted slightly in sleep. He moved a little closer to Bucky, legs sprawling further over him. He was so comfortable, so soft and warm and unconcerned being here.

He’s going to let me stay near him.

For now, anyway. Once he knew the full truth he might re-evaluate, but… as of now, he was willing to let him be near.

“Steve,” he murmured, leaning down to rest a hand on his shoulder.

Steve shifted again with a grumble and opened his eyes, sea-blue irises focusing on Bucky. He blinked, then smiled, a warm, affectionate expression that brought to mind sun-soaked landscapes Bucky only half-recalled. “Hey,” he slurred sleepily, resting a hand on Bucky’s arm. “G'morning.”

He didn’t even fully wake up when someone touched him. He would be a terrible asset. An absolute liability in the field.

“Hey,” Bucky said, and he couldn’t remember ever sounding that soft. “You should sleep in the bed, doll.”

Steve yawned widely, shifting a little closer. The cat got off Bucky, shooting him a Look, and clawed her way up to stretch out on the back of the couch. “I’m comfy,” Steve grumbled, snuggling closer. “I like when you call me doll. ‘S cute.”

Bucky’s eyes wandered across the tattoos that spilled across the smaller man’s skin, studying the rainbow rooster on the inside of his forearm and the star high up on his shoulder. It almost mirrored Bucky’s own, though it was in beautiful stained glass shards of blue and white.

“Cute,” Bucky echoed in distant bemusement. Had the Winter Soldier ever been called cute? “You’re gonna get sore laying like that,” he told him, scooping him up easily.

His thoughts and movements stalled for a moment, thrown wildly off-course by the slight, delicate warmth in his arms, and he had to fight to control his breathing.

Steve rested his head against Bucky’s neck, curling his fingers into Bucky’s shirt as he relaxed fully, his weight comfortably sprawled. The unyielding fit of the metal arm supporting him didn’t seem to bother him at all. “I’ve slept in worse positions,” he yawned. “You’re comfy.”

“You’re better than that,” Bucky told him, glancing at a clock as he walked back through the hallway. It was eight in the morning. He hadn’t thought he would sleep so heavily, nor for so long.

The cat followed them, trotting at Bucky’s heels, and raced under the bed once they were close enough. Steve smiled after her. “I like your cat. I thought I would. Did you name her yet?”

“I didn’t think she’d stick around this long,” Bucky admitted, laying him down on the bed. “Should I name her?”

“You should! It’s important for things to have names.” Steve smiled up at him. “It needs to be a good name. Like- Bucky Barnes. That’s a good name.” Steve’s voice curled around Bucky’s name warmly, like it was precious, and his fingers didn’t uncurl from Bucky’s shirt. “Are you leaving? Can you stay?”

“Stay?” Bucky echoed, lowering slightly closer so Steve could lay back.

Steve’s warm, sleepy smile didn’t waver in the slightest. “Yeah,” he agreed. “You need to sleep and eat and be safe. You can be safe here. I’ll take care of you.”

Bucky reached out, fingers hesitating, and then stroked them through golden locks, brushing them back slowly. “I don’t know if I deserve to be taken care of,” he told him quietly, metal hand pressing briefly against a soft cheekbone. “I did a lot of horrible things when I was a soldier, Steve. I didn’t have control, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t do it.”

Steve watched him, looking a bit more awake now. “Soldiers do terrible things sometimes,” he said quietly. “It’s war, and it’s painful and bloody and horrific. I’m sorry.” His fingers traced Bucky’s jaw, soft skin soothing and warm. “It doesn’t make it right, what happened to you, but it also doesn’t mean I think less of you. You’re okay here, Bucky. You’re safe here. I’m not going to turn on you because of what happened in the past, because of what you were made to do.”

Bucky let out an unsteady breath and caught his hand, holding it there for a moment. Do whatever you want with me. Just don’t send me away. I’ll do anything you ask me to if you just keep me here. He turned his head, lips hovering just a hair away from Steve’s palm, and took in a deep breath. “You don’t know everything I’ve done.”

“I don’t.” Steve’s fingers stroked along Bucky’s face, not moving from his hold. “I don’t care. You’re not who you’re afraid of being. You wouldn’t hurt me.”

“No,” Bucky agreed immediately. “Never.” Not for anything in the world. Not for any amount of conditioning. He wouldn’t let it happen again, he wouldn’t let anything get that far.

Steve smiled. “I know.” He leaned up, pressing his lips to Bucky’s palm gently. “Lay down. Stay with me. You look like you need rest.”

“Pochemu ty chuvstvuyesh' sebya moim domom?” Bucky asked, sinking down to sit beside him on the bed. I’m not even supposed to have a home. Why should you feel like it? Steve smiled up at him and Bucky sank down to stretch out beside him, resting his head on the pillow beside Steve’s. “I’ll stay,” he agreed softly. “Anything you want, Stevie.”

Steve’s smile softened and warmed as he wiggled a little closer. “I like that you call me Stevie,” he murmured, resting a hand on Bucky’s arm. “‘s okay that I touch you like this?”

“Anything you want,” he agreed, hesitating for a moment before laying his human arm across Steve’s waist. He had never been able to lay with a man like this, he remembered as he rested his forehead against the top of Steve’s hair. Everything in the thirties and forties had been rushed touches, everything focused on timing and the fear of discovery.

It was amazing how coherent the memories were when he remembered them around Steve. They didn’t rush forward to sweep him under, they just… settled. Everything was so settled.

He tucked Steve closer, shutting his eyes and letting out a soft breath against his hair. This is what home always felt like.

Chapter Text

Steve opened his eyes and laid for a moment, soaking in the warmth and comfort he was wrapped up in like the soft blankets around him. He frowned a little after a moment, realizing that he wasn’t as warm or comfortable as he had been when he fell asleep and looked around, reaching out for Bucky… and found emptiness. He startled, sitting up, and tugged on a sweatshirt from his dresser as he moved quickly to the hallway.

Surely Bucky hadn’t just left… no, surely he hadn’t done that, not without telling Steve. He wouldn’t just leave without saying goodbye, that didn’t make any sense. His warmth, his softness and comfort last night spoke to more than that.

He stepped out of his room and down the hall, then froze in place at the scene before him, feeling like he’d had the wind knocked out of him. Bucky was there, crouched in the kitchen and holding out a shred of turkey to the white cat, who was eyeing him suspiciously. Bucky’s hair was tied back into a little half-bun, leaving his eyes bright and focused on the cat. “C’mon,” he murmured, stretching metal fingers out a little further as he smiled. “You can do it.”

Steve let out a small chuckle as the cat stretched out and took the turkey, and Bucky’s dark eyes swept across the room before settling on Steve. They crinkled very slightly as Bucky looked him over slowly. “Hey, doll,” he greeted him, voice low and warm.

God. He was more beautiful than Steve remembered, more beautiful than even his more ridiculous sketches had made him. Steve had never seen him dry and comfortable, rested and feeling safe. It took him a minute to remember how to breathe, and he realized as he moved forward that he was grinning like a fool.

“Hi.” Steve brushed his fingers along Bucky’s arm lightly. Bucky hadn’t seemed to mind the light touches yesterday, so Steve would keep that up. “I like the bun.” Like wasn’t a proper word for what that little bun did to him, but it would suffice for now.

“Just needed it out of my eyes,” Bucky admitted, glancing down to watch the little cat drag her turkey away and behind the couch. “Come on, Alps, I thought we were making progress,” he protested as he stood. “Little opportunist ghost,” he muttered darkly under his breath before turning his attention to Steve.

“Alps?” Steve laughed, enjoying seeing the flare of humor in the other man. “Is that her name? Like the mountain?” He let his fingers brush along the tiny bun, then cleared his throat when he caught Bucky’s eyes, which were dark and utterly focused on him.

“I like the Alpine countries,” Bucky agreed, his voice low and somewhat raspy as they studied Steve’s lips, then rose to his eyes again.

Do you want to kiss me? Steve felt himself sway forward slightly, moving forward a little, and let his fingers trace the edge of Bucky’s ear as heat flickered through him. He wasn’t ready for that, Bucky was still a little too jumpy for any of that. “Alpine is a good name,” he found himself saying.

Bucky took in a slow breath, eyes dark and almost a physical weight against Steve’s skin as they traced his hand. He swallowed, hands flexing open and closed. He had clearly lost the thread of conversation the way he did sometimes over the phone, but this felt like it was in a much more heady way than usual.

Steve smiled slowly, fingers following Bucky’s jaw. This particular loss of a conversational thread was somewhat of a good thing. “You… are so pretty,” he murmured, feeling ridiculous. Steve had always been smooth when it came to flirting, had always almost effortlessly succeeded when that was required of him. But this was strange, uneven, and he wasn’t sure how to do this. He’d never felt so unsure about flirtation before in his life. “I’ve drawn you. A lot.”

“You’ve drawn me?” A smile broke across Bucky’s face as he leaned into Steve’s touch. “Why?”

Steve traced along his cheekbone. How could he even ask that question? “Because you’re beautiful. I couldn’t get you out of my head.”

“Yeah, I’m beautiful,” Bucky scoffed. “You coulda just used a mirror if that’s all you were after, punk.” His hands found Steve’s hips, curving around the edge of his sweatpants.

Bucky thought he was beautiful. Steve smiled, resting his hands on the other man’s shoulders, tracing along the edge of the metal plating with his thumb as he hmmed. “I like the way you touch me,” he said quietly. “I like the way you smile.”

“Yeah?” Bucky’s hand threaded slowly through Steve’s hair. “I don’t know if I remember how to do all this,” he admitted quietly. “I don’t know if I ever knew how to do it right. But I know you’re important to me, Steve. You’re the only thing that makes sense.”

Steve leaned up and rested their foreheads together. “That’s okay,” he soothed, feeling a little ache. Bucky wanted so badly to try, to make this work. It was sweet, almost painfully endearing. “We can figure it out. You like me.” He hid a grin as he leaned in slightly. “I like you. The rest we can figure out later.”

“Because it’s that easy,” Bucky chuckled, and then he was leaning down, lips finding Steve’s as he pulled him up slightly for a kiss.

Steve pressed up into the taller man, his skin electric and on fire in turns as his fingers flexed and gripped where they were anchored. Bucky kissed like this was his home, where he belonged- he kissed like they’d been together forever and this was just the way it was.

They both sank into the kiss, Steve’s fingers curling into Bucky’s hair and collar, and when they pulled apart, Steve looked up at him, feeling flushed and breathless. “I like the way you kiss,” he said with a little unsteady laugh.

“Fuck, Stevie,” Bucky breathed on a laugh of his own, pulling him closer and pressing a smaller, more chaste kiss against his temple. He held him there for a moment, then released him. “You need to eat,” he directed, pointing at the fridge. “You’re skinny.”

“Rude.” Steve laughed and pushed at him, not offended in the slightest and struggling instead to focus directly. “I’m slight. I’m lean, you jerk.” He headed into the kitchen, bouncing on air as he moved, almost tripping over a bottle of paint as he went. “What do you eat?”

Bucky caught him, pulling him back and up again for a third, longer kiss. He let him go, looking dazzlingly happy, and nudged one of Steve’s earrings with a fingertip. “Whatever you want,” he said, pulling away and going to sit at the table.

Steve grinned after him, feeling like he was truly walking on air as he headed to the cabinet to scrounge up something and attempted not to run into anything in the meantime.

“So tell me,” Steve said as he leaned down to kiss Bucky, taking his soup bowl from him, “If you could have any wild animal as a pet, what would you have?”

Bucky blinked at him, thrown for a moment and clearly struggling to find his focus again. Steve grinned down at him, pleased with this development. He found himself constantly wanting to kiss him. “A wild animal? I… a kookaburra.”

A laugh broke from Steve, loud and bright as he stared down at him at the quickness and firmness of the answer given. “A kookaburra. I mean, they’re very cool, but why would you want one?”

“There was a fair when I was a kid, and a guy had one.” Bucky shrugged, looking mildly embarrassed but smiling all the same. “It laughed for him and walked around on his shoulders.” His gaze went slightly distant as he thought. “My sisters and I thought it was the coolest thing.”

“They’re pretty amazing,” Steve agreed, his own thoughts spinning off to painting a kookaburra for Bucky, how to get the softness of the feathers and the humor of the bird captured properly. He settled into the curve at Bucky’s side, thinking for a few minutes, then looked up at his new lover. “Lorelei is still alive,” he said, searching his face. “Do you want to see her?”

“I don’t know.” Bucky’s arm looped around Steve’s side. “It’s… I miss them so much. They were a lot of my life. But Lorrie’s built her own life now. She’s grieved for me and moved on. It’s just not as easy as seeing her.”

Steve settled into Bucky’s hug, resting his head on the taller man’s shoulder as he thought about this. Bucky loved his family so deeply, but he was forcing himself to stay away, to try and stay away from them to protect them. That had to be so difficult. “What were they like?”

“They were both smarter and prettier than me by a mile. They were nine and eleven years younger than me, so I helped raise them in a lot of ways.” He considered. “Becca was sweet when she wasn’t being mouthy, but she was more mouthy than anything else.” Bucky snorted, a smile playing on his lips. Steve watched him, warming. His smile was so lovely. “Lorrie was just constantly getting herself into trouble. Didn’t matter what kind of ruckus was going on, she’d find a way to get in the middle of it.”

Steve grinned. “Girl after my own heart,” he teased, and Bucky laughed.

“You’d have gotten along with both of them,” he assured him. “They’d have loved you. You don’t have any siblings?”

“Nah.” He had always wondered if his parents had wanted more, though. “My mom struggled with me. It was a lot of work to keep me healthy- I don’t think she thought she’d have time. And my dad was gone, so.” He shrugged.

“You would have been good for a sibling,” Bucky reflected, watching him.

“Is that what you wish I was?” Steve couldn’t resist the urge to tease, grinning, and Bucky looked at him, horrified.

“Steve, this is not what a brother does,” he began to assure him, arm loosening around him quickly.

Steve laughed and leaned up, kissing him slowly. “And I am so glad you aren’t my brother,” he murmured against his lips. “I don’t have any siblings but I do have best friends; you’ve met them. Foggy and Matt, they’re awesome. They’re each other’s best friend, though. So it’s different. I think I would’ve liked having siblings, but I was too much for my parents to try again. Mom was always scared their other kids would turn out like me too, I think.”

“What a crime.” Bucky said on a burst of laughter that had Steve grinning back at him.

“People tell me one Steve Rogers in the world is enough.”

“No one’s ever said that,” Bucky denied easily, warm eyes roving across Steve’s face.

“Matt and Foggy have.” Steve disagreed, leaning up on his knees a little. “We were talking about twins and they were concerned about the amount of legal debt two of me would rack up. I tend to get arrested.”

“For what?” Amusement had Bucky’s eyebrows raising. “Throwing flags at reverends?”

“Yeah.” Steve grinned, secretly pleased that he had remembered that particular incident. “Among other things. I don’t deal well when people are assholes about other people, so I tend to get into fights, or accidentally spray-painting something, or whistleblowing on some asshole, or breaking in somewhere and busting animals free.”

Bucky shook his head with a smile, pressing his hands briefly to Steve’s waist. “Your phone is ringing,” he informed him as he pulled back, and Steve looked around in surprise to find his phone vibrating quietly on the counter.

“Oh, yeah it is.” Steve jogged over to it, swiping to pick up the phone. “Hello?” he asked, putting it to his ear.

“Hey, Steve.” Claire greeted him. “I’m just checking in to see how it’s going with Mr. Tall, Dark, and Sinister.” She chuckled.

He grinned a little. Claire wasn’t around nearly enough. They needed to have her around more, if the ER would ever stop killing her with fifteen-hour shifts and if she and Matt would ever stop fighting. “It’s been good, but I wouldn’t call him sinister. He’s actually ridiculously sweet.”

“Uh-huh. So you tracked him down?” She hummed. “Undid your royal fuck-up?”

“Yes.” Steve turned his grin back to Bucky, who was washing dishes in the sink. He was so damn gorgeous, it was honestly absolutely ridiculous. “I did. Things are fine now, thank you.”

“All that panic and that’s all I get? For shame, Steve. Foggy says you haven’t been answering the groupchat for almost two days. Matthew’s worried you’ve been arrested at some protest or another and not called for bail.”

Steve laughed. “No, I’m not in jail this time. I’m at home. I have a visitor.” He could feel his voice warming as he watched Bucky scrubbing at a pan. His muscles were just unnecessary. “Sorry, I’ve been distracted. I’ll respond to them, thanks for letting me know they were worried. Sorry for freaking you guys out.”

“Just be careful,” she cautioned again. “This Avengers-level stuff? SHIELD-level people? It’s a whole different ballgame, Steve. Keep in contact with your friends. Let us know what’s going on and ask for help if you need it.”

“Yes ma’am.” Steve smiled. He really did love his friends. “I’ll keep in contact. I’m safe, there’s nothing wrong. Matt just worries all the time and I think he’s wildly overreacting about the danger.”

“He doesn’t often do that,” she told him seriously, and Steve smiled a little. Bucky could potentially be dangerous, yes. But he wasn’t dangerous to Steve “Alright. My second shift is starting, I just wanted to make sure you hadn’t gotten yourself killed. I’ll talk to you later, alright?”

“Alright.” He smiled. “Thanks, Claire. I’m very alive, I appreciate you checking.” They hung up and he looked around at Bucky. “You’ve been distracting me, Buck.” He kissed the back of Bucky’s shoulder, shooting off a text to Matt and Foggy to assure them that he wasn’t dead and had just been busy with work.

“Buck,” he echoed, eyes warm as he studied Steve, then, “Oh, wait.” His eyes widened slightly. “I have been. Do you need to go to work? Or work on your commissions? I can go somewhere else so you can focus.”

Steve smiled up at him. “I can paint with you here,” he assured him. “You’re more than welcome to stay and watch me work. I’ve got some new commissions, would you like to sit and watch me paint?”

“Yes.” A smile broke across his face, and Steve leaned up, kissing him again slowly before forcing himself to break away and then to organize his things.

The man was too damn beautiful for his own good, he reflected with a smile as he gathered pencils into his hands.

The days that followed were… effortless.

The moments that filled them were warm and beautiful, different from anything Steve had experienced before with any other partner. Bucky was always awake when he woke, and the soldier always offered to clean, to cook, to help with anything Steve needed. He was unbelievably strong, demonstrating this with a laugh by lifting the couch over his head to let Steve clean beneath.

They were like two planets circling each other in tandem. It shouldn’t have been so easy to be together- it should have been uncomfortable, awkward. They didn’t know each other, really. Talking over the phone was different than being together in person, but it was still just that simple. Steve turned to hand Bucky something and he was there. He needed help and Bucky was already helping. Bucky started to panic, and Steve was already walking into the room. When one struggled, the other was ready to catch them.

The physical aspect fell into place like it had always been there. Touching Bucky was the most natural thing in the world. Being touched by Bucky was electric. They kept the contact from going any further than a notable makeout one afternoon, but even that was more breathtaking than anything Steve had experienced with anyone else. And to look at Bucky after, seeing him with dazed eyes and flushed cheeks, sent Steve’s heart thundering in his chest.

There were moments of difficulty, of course. Being together in person was different. When Bucky panicked or lost the thread of the present, his expression went flat and his eyes were almost lifeless, and his eyes looked straight through Steve. It took several attempts to regain his attention, and it was more frightening than it was over the phone. He had habits he clearly refused to break, and one of them was adjusting all of the locks on the windows and doors. Steve didn’t even know where he got the locks- he just woke up and Bucky had them one morning.

He chose not to ask if they were stolen, but considering he’d never seen Bucky use any money and the veteran clearly had no job… It was something he decided he’d address later, but didn’t interrupt in the moment, as Bucky looked so at peace as he changed every lock.

Steve found himself more highly aware now of how messy he was, and he was sure that was inconvenient. He realized he couldn’t leave dishes around the way he always had, couldn’t leave paint supplies on every surface, couldn’t leave clothes tossed over the bedposts to be gathered up later.

Alpine was a constant and warm presence. She cleaned herself and proved to be a beautiful fluffy cat with thick white fur once she was prevented from getting into trash every day. By the end of the week, she had calmed down and stopped inhaling her food. She started sleeping beside Bucky’s head and on occasion woke them up by meowing loudly, and she was frequently found winding between Steve’s legs as he sat at his desk and worked.

Steve quietly started making space for Bucky’s things. He cleared out some of his dresser, moved his things in the bathroom. He bought shampoo for longer hair, started cooking things that he knew Bucky liked. He tossed some of the movies that he suspected would be triggering, rearranged his playlists to include some older music that Bucky might recognize.

He wanted Bucky to stay. It was insane, it was ridiculous, because he didn’t know him very well, but it was true. Something about them worked without a problem, worked seamlessly together, and they both felt it. They could make this work… but Steve was more than hesitant to actually mention it. Springing things on Bucky hadn’t ever worked for them, but letting things flow on their own seemed to pan out.

Steve wasn’t certain where the future was going to take them, wasn’t certain that Bucky wanted to stay long-term, but Steve wanted this to work as long as it could, and he wouldn’t let anything shift him away. Bucky was worth whatever came.

As long as he would stay, Steve would make room for him.

Bucky turned his cap over in his hands, watching the brim bend under metal and flesh fingers alike. Now, out of Hydra and in the world, he could comprehend how skilled Hydra’s engineers and surgeons had been. No one had a prosthetic like him. The rest of the world was unable to use two hands as effortlessly as he did if they lost one.

Of course, he had also paid the extensive price for that ability.

He turned his head, watching Steve sleep sprawled out in the bed. His fingers were still reached out for Bucky, his head ducked in to fit under Bucky’s chin.

He looked back at his cap, flexing it back and forth slowly, then down at Alpine as she came into the room. She was looking cleaner than he’d ever seen her, and seemed to be getting more than simply accustomed to living in the apartment. She stopped in front of him and he let out a breath.

“I want to stay here,” he confessed quietly. The past week had been an incredible one.

It had been effortless. All this time with Steve had his memories quietly curated. Nothing seemed as overwhelming. He didn’t drown in them. He didn’t sink into them without hope of surfacing again for hours. He didn’t have to strain to hear over the sound of phantom voices. He didn’t live alone. He didn’t wrap himself in blankets upon blankets in bids to stay warm.

Because Steve was there.

When Bucky started to drown, Steve pulled him back up. When he started to sink, Steve caught him. He was always there with smiles and warmth, with overwhelming compassion and a fierce core of strength that never wavered no matter how his lungs might strain or his muscles might fail him. Steve fit him effortlessly.

“I want to stay here,” he repeated quietly. “But…” He could picture his father, then Pierce, for a moment and he pressed his lips together, shutting his eyes. He pressed his forehead against his cap. Is it okay for me to stay here? To want this? To keep it? Is it possible that I could be happy like this?

He had spilled so much blood. How could he deserve this kind of life?

He got up silently, crossing the room and opening the window. He climbed onto the frame and glanced back, studying Steve’s slumbering figure for a long moment, then jumped out. He landed hard onto the pavement below and waited for a moment, then straightened and started quickly across the road to head to the address he’d looked up hours ago.

Bucky slipped through the home, walking on silent feet as he looked around. The little house was one floor, he noted, and the neighborhood was decent. This was her son’s house, not hers, and it was a sweet little place. It smelled like sugar and cotton, and he wondered as he ran his fingers across the back of the worn suede couch if Lorrie still liked baking.

He paused in the living room for a beat and studied the picture frames lining the walls. So many of the faces therein were foreign to him, men and women he’d never seen. He could see a hint of his mother in Winston’s face, and the grandson, Nathan, looked distinctly like Becca. Becca and Lorrie were in a lot of the photos, most of them with the girls in their fifties, then sixties, then seventies. Growing smaller and softer, their hair going streaked with silver, then white entirely.

And then Becca wasn’t in any more of the pictures, and a tiny baby appeared with Lorrie instead. She grew up throughout the photos, her life scattered in bright colors across the images to a little blonde girl with a bright smile and pigtails.

“Hello.” The little girl blinked at him, opening her mouth and then shutting it again. “You’re…” her eyes widened slightly. “You’re a ghost,” she said, and he ducked out the window when she turned to look behind her.

I’ve seen you, he thought to her. Had she recognized him? He had been so confused and turned around every time he tried to go to the apartment to find anything left of his life. Had she known he was a ghost from seeing a photo of him? Or had it been her imagination?

He turned his attention to a photo of Becca and Lorrie, surely in their twenties, a black-and-white photo where Becca was laughing in a nurse’s uniform and hugging Lorrie close to her. He hesitated, fingers hovering over it, and he closed his hand again. He couldn’t deprive Lorrie of such a beautiful memory… but god, what a beautiful memory.

He wished he could have seen it.

He looked through the photos a second time, more slowly, and found more and more memories that should have been his. There was Becca’s wedding. Her children showed up- two girls, growing and laughing alongside Winston. Lorrie’s partner never did appear. She never seemed to have gotten married and instead seemed to have raised her son alongside Becca and her family. Winston did get married, and then came Lorrie’s grandson and great-granddaughter.

His sisters had built such a beautiful life.

He found a photos of himself as well. There at the corner was one where he had Lorrie up on his shoulder and Becca leaning against his side, he himself no older than eighteen and both girls quite small. He pressed his hand to the photo, letting his gaze wander until it found a photo of himself in his soldier’s uniform. Becca had taken it the day before he shipped out, right before he took them to the Stark Expo.

He looked so blissfully ignorant of what was ahead, burdened only by the anxiety of leaving his family, smiling through it nonetheless with a crooked grin because Lorrie had been teasing him on the other side of the camera.

There was a snore from down the hall and he moved back, walking with slow, careful steps down the hall. Winston was sleeping heavily in his room, his hair shot through with silver. Bucky reached out, taking the door and shutting it silently, then continued down the hall and stepped into the room at the end.

He couldn’t breathe.

She was just so small, her skin so soft and wrinkled, her hair was long and white and curled around her shoulders. She was sleeping under a comforter, and atop it was a extremely worn, battered quilt he had watched his sisters make at their mother’s side when they were tiny. He let out a shaky breath, leaning back against the door as he watched her sleep.

She was still so beautiful. Her eyelashes were still long, the freckles that danced across her cheeks still warm and lively. He hadn’t seen her since she was fourteen. Short and loud and warm, brunette and bright with her education and her life stretched out endlessly in front of her.

He had never dreamed in all his life that she would still be alive. That someone from his life would still exist. That she could ever still be breathing and smiling and still be so bright.

Lorrie, am I allowed to be happy? Even though I couldn’t take care of you? Even though it would be with a man? Even despite what I’ve done?

Do you resent me for leaving?

Was it hard after I went?

Do you know how much I wanted to be here for you?

Am I allowed to have peace when I couldn’t give it to you?

His hands trembled and he pressed them together, then stood, moving forward slowly. “Lorrie?” He asked, his voice coming out uncertain and dangerously young. He tugged his gloves on more firmly, checking his sleeves to make sure that his arms were covered, and then he reached out with his right one to rest it on her shoulder. “Lors?” he whispered, squeezing her gently.

Her eyelashes fluttered and she opened her eyes, looking up at him sleepily. She gave a half-awake smile, reaching up to touch his face. “Bucky,” she said warmly. Her voice creaked a little, older and rougher than he had ever heard, but it was her voice. She pressed a hand to his cheek, searching him in a wondering sort of sleepy way, and he offered her an unsteady smile.

“Hey, little lady,” he greeted her, catching her hand and giving it the most delicate squeeze he could. “How’s my favorite youngest sister?”

She tried to sit up, then stopped, looking down at herself. “Am I… I’m old.” She looked up at him, catching his wrist as she slowly levered herself up, irritation flashing across her face as she gripped him. She moved closer, obviously trying to keep contact, but her age was hindering her from actually getting up properly. Bucky’s throat closed up. “Why am I old in a dream?”

“You tell me, gorgeous.” He wrapped his human arm around her back, helping her sit up carefully. “It’s your dream.”

Because that was the best way for this to go, the best way to not infringe upon this beautiful life and family she had built for herself with her own hands and willpower. He didn’t belong in her waking life. It would only bring confusion and stress for her… and she was so delicate like this. He didn’t know if she could bear stress like that.

Lorrie wrapped her arms around him tightly, burying her face in his shoulder. “I missed you so much,” she said into his shirt, and he wrapped his arms around her, rocking her a little. She was just so tiny, her skin delicate over fragile bones that still tried to hug him with all the ferocity of a much younger woman. “So much, Buck. I love you so much, I miss you every single day, all the time. Where did you go? What happened to you?”

“What did you think happened?” His fingers curled in her soft white hair, the question escaping rather than an answer. “You didn’t think I’d ever left you on purpose, did you?”

“No.” It was firm and angry, not an ounce of wavering from that belief in it, and Bucky felt a smile break his face. “Never. People said you escaped the war and didn’t come home and we told them to leap off a bridge. You wouldn’t have ever left us. Never.” She pulled away very slightly to look up at him, pressing age-curved hands to his face. He caught one of them, cradled it to his cheek like the precious thing it was. “No. Becca always said… she always said you were hurt. They knew you were gay and they hurt you.” Her eyes were brighter with tears, hands shivering slightly. “Did they hurt you? Did you die somewhere sad and cold and alone, Bucky?”

“I’m not cold or alone now,” he pointed out quietly, catching both hands now and pressing a kiss to each palm. He took in a slow breath. “I don’t know why it happened. I think I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, Lors.” It was hard to swallow, but he forced himself to. “Did you… You two knew that I was…” He cleared his throat. “How did you know?”

Her smile was wobbly, but affectionate, and she leaned into his side to rest her head on his shoulder, hands squeezing his. “You never liked your girls, James Buchanan. I never forgot the way you looked at the boy across the street, or how much you liked Cary Grant, or any number of other things. We knew. We didn’t care. You’re my brother, Bucky. There was nothing that could have made me stop loving you.” She gave a tiny burbling laugh. “Becca actually slapped someone who tried to say you deserved being gone because you liked men. It was amazing. I dropped coffee on him.”

Bucky ducked his head, hiding his face in her hair as he hugged her a little closer against him. “I love you so much, Lorrie. I loved Becca too. I’m so sorry I didn’t stay to help you. That I wasn’t there for you and Becca or the kids. I’m so proud of you. You’ve done so much for yourself.”

She tucked her head beneath his chin, hugging him back. “Becca loved you ‘til she died. I told the kids about you, and my grandbaby, and my great-grandbaby. I wish you could have met them. Are you happy? Are things okay now?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted, rocking her closer. “I don’t know, Lorrie. I- when I was overseas, when I was gone…” The thought of telling her the truth of what he had become was impossible. “The wrong people got me. And pointed me to do the wrong things. I hurt people. People who didn’t deserve it. I don’t know if I’m allowed to move on from that. From what I did. From what I was. From not being there for you girls. For being gay. I don’t know if I’m allowed to be happy after all that, Lor.”

“Hey.” She pulled back, glaring up at him, and she suddenly looked very like Becca. “You listen to me, James Buchanan Barnes. You are a good man, a man who loved his family and protected his country, a man who every single person who actually knew you missed and praised when you were gone. You are a good man and deserved a good life. You deserve to be happy.” She pointed at him with all the authority of a great-grandmother who had raised four generations on her own. “Don’t you ever, ever think you deserve less. You left us to protect us. You loved men. What you did in war wasn’t your fault. You are a good man who has never deserved anything but happiness. Are you listening to me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he agreed as a smile broke across his face. “Of course I’m listening.”

“Good.” She smacked his head, the blow gentle with her age and lack of muscle mass. “I love you. You should have grown old with me and should have been with me when Winston was born and Nathan was born. You weren’t, but you would have been, and I thought about you all the time. There’s nothing about you I would change, I just wish you had been able to come home.” She curled her hands around his after a moment, her wrinkled face softening back into a small smile. “I wish you could have met them. That Becca could have seen you. We missed you so much.”

Bucky reached out, brushing her hair back from her face slowly. “Do you want me to come back again?”

She lit up at him, the years falling away with the expression, and she reached out to hug him tightly. “Yes,” she whispered against his chest. “You’re my brother. I’ve grieved you every day since you left. I was so young when you left, I never got to ask you things about our family, about you. Come home to me whenever you can.”

“Okay,” he agreed, burying the word into her hair as he kissed the top of her head. He shifted to sit alongside her, laying her back and adjusting her blankets around her carefully. “Do you want to hear a story? I know some about the stars, you know.” He combed his fingers through her hair the way he had throughout their entire lives together. “Or I could tell you something else if you wanted.”

She smiled up at him. Her hair was softer, thinner and white now, her skin was creased with wrinkles, her eyes were slightly hazy with age… but she still looked like his little sister. “Tell me a story about the stars,” she said happily. “I missed your stories. You always loved books. You were the best at getting us to sleep with your stories.”

It’s just a way to know you aren’t alone. Bucky stroked his thumb across her cheekbone gently and kissed her forehead. “So there was a garden that Gaia had filled with golden apples,” he began, and continued in that vein until she had fallen asleep. He fell quiet then, stroking her hair slowly as he watched her.

You deserve to be happy.

“I’ll come back,” he promised, leaning down and kissing her forehead. “I promise, Lors.”

He went back to Steve’s apartment and managed not to get lost. His mind was oddly quiet as he walked through the darkened streets, the phantom voices in his head almost utterly silent. No memories plagued him as he crossed Brooklyn and up the street. Alpine watched him from Steve’s window and he waved at her as he went into the apartment building and then up to the apartment itself.

Steve himself was still in bed, and he didn’t wake up when Bucky climbed into bed beside him. It wasn’t until Bucky’s arm slid across his waist that Steve shifted a little in his sleep, then rolled over, garbling Bucky’s name, and buried his face in Bucky’s chest as his fingers curled into Bucky’s shirt.

Alpine hopped up and took the warm spot Steve had just vacated, cleaning her tail.

Bucky let his human fingers roam slowly through Steve’s hair, then cautiously let his metal ones rest across Steve’s back. He laid back slowly, shutting his eyes and soaking in the warmth around him.

After so long, he was home.

This time, he was going to keep it.

He’d build a life here, if Steve would let him. He’d get Alpine a collar and toys. He’d visit Lorrie some nights, and make sure her family did well from afar. He’d take care of them and keep them safe.

He’d build a life with Steve, if he was willing. He’d figure out how to date and how to do it right, how to be sweet and thoughtful. He’d figure out how to plan dates and be romantic the way he’d never been able to in his life in the forties. He’d do anything it took to make this man smile, and laugh, and he’d spend the rest of his life being in awe of that ability.

“It won’t be easy, doll,” Bucky murmured into his hair as he ran his fingers down Steve’s back.

He was still messed up from Hydra, and Steve couldn’t always keep the memories at bay. He’d still get lost in them, and no doubt there would come a day when Steve understood fully who Bucky had been and what he’d done. What would happen then?

The cynical part of him wanted to think Steve would have the good sense to run and leave Bucky alone and adrift again… but the cynical part of him also never would have dreamed that Lorrie was alive. The other part, the part that was more Bucky Barnes than Soldier, thought that someone like Steve might be willing to work around it.

Bucky would let time take its course as it always had, but this time he wasn’t going to let it be stolen from him. Lorrie thought he deserved to be happy. Steve wanted to be happy with him.

And damn, if this didn’t feel a hell of a lot like happy.

“I don’t know what this is or how to do it yet,” Bucky admitted quietly into Steve’s hair. “I’ve never had anything like it. I don’t know what I’m doing, and I still… I get lost a lot of the time.” He exhaled softly. “But you… you make sense. And things make sense when I’m with you. It’s better when I’m with you. I think I’m better, too. So if I could stay and try…” he blew out a breath, utterly useless at everything he was attempting with this even despite Steve sleeping through the words. “If I could give you a safe and happy life,” he said finally to the man in his arms, “I think that would do the world enough good to make up for what I did. Because you’re the best this place’s gonna get.”

And with that story of a good future ahead, he shut his eyes and fell asleep, warm and buoyant like he was floating in the sea.