Chapter Text
“Hi Steve.”
“Bucky? How—?” Steve’s grip tightened on his phone and he had to consciously relax his hand. Idiot, it doesn’t matter how he got the number. Just be glad he has it. “Where are you?”
“Right now? In Prospect Park. Near the bridge. Remember?”
Steve felt the knot in his gut that he’d been carrying around since he found out Bucky was alive loosen a little. He was in New York. In Brooklyn. Bucky had finally come home. “How could I forget? We drank our first beer there….”
He heard a rusty sounding laugh from Bucky.
“Your first beer, Rogers. Mine, not so much.”
“I’m on my way, Buck. You’re going to stay put, right? You’ll be there when I get there?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m glad you’re home, Bucky. Really glad.”
“See you soon.”
The amount of time it took to get there was excruciating. Traffic never seemed to move slower—thirty-eight minutes to get to the park and another ten to get to the bridge.
Bucky was still there.
Thank God.
He was wearing an overcoat that was a little too warm looking for the temperature of the day, a leather glove on his metal hand, and a cap pulled down low to obscure his face. Shaggy hair stuck out from under the cap and he looked like he hadn’t shaved for a few days, but it was Bucky, right here in New York.
Finally….
Steve put down the bag he was carrying. “It’s about time.”
He threw an arm around Bucky’s shoulder and pulled him into a hug, clapping him on the back with the other. “I’ve been worried about you, jerk. When you showed up at that fight in London, I figured….”
He could feel the tension in Bucky’s stance, but he didn’t pull away.
“Yeah…. I wasn’t ready. Sorry.”
Steve let go and looked Bucky in the eye. “That’s ok, Buck. I’m just glad you’re here now.”
He grinned and reached into the bag on the grass and pulled out a six pack. “I brought beer.”
That got a slight smile from Bucky. “Captain America drinking in the park? Wait’ll the papers get a load of that.”
Tossing Bucky a can, he said, “We didn’t get caught when we were kids. We can handle it now. Besides, people don’t recognise me much without the uniform.”
They sat down on the bank, the bag of beer between them, drinking in silence for a while. Steve couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this happy.
After a bit, Bucky said, “You find a way to make beer work for ya, or is this still basically water?”
“Water, but that’s not the point.”
Bucky nodded.
“You got your arm fixed.”
“Fury. He’s how I got back here, too, but that’s hush-hush.” Bucky took a sip of his beer and looked out across the stream in front of them.
“Fury? But he’s in hiding.”
“Didn’t stop him from leaving me a way to contact him at a dead drop about six months ago, or from bringing back here when I called him after I saw you last. He may be in hiding, but he’s got his fingers in everybody’s pie.”
Steve took a sip of his own beer. It might not do anything for him, but he still liked the taste and sitting in the park drinking with Bucky like they’d done when they were kids…he liked that even more.
He wasn’t as sure where Bucky’s head was at. “So…I know what you were In London to do. You helped me out, instead, and got your arm mangled doing it, but…that was a crappy plan, Buck, going in alone with the odds so against you getting out again. You didn’t plan on walking away from it, did you?”
“You know about that, huh?” Bucky stared at his beer can for a while before saying, “I didn’t think I’d make it out, no, but taking out Hydra’s leadership in one move…it seemed worth it.”
Steve punched him in the shoulder hard enough to knock him sideways and make him slosh beer on himself. “Not to me, it doesn’t.”
Bucky tried to wipe the beer off his coat. “Damn it, Rogers, now I’m going to smell like a bum.”
“Goes with the look you got going. You get allergic to barbers or something?”
Smiling slightly, Bucky said “That hasn’t been a priority and good thing, too. Might not have been there to pull your punk ass out of the fire, otherwise.”
He took a drink. “Speaking of which…when did men start going to beauty parlors? Haven’t seen a proper barber anywhere.”
“I dunno. Weird, huh? I found one though. It’s a good shop. I’ll give you the address.”
“Okay, thanks.”
They drank for a while longer and just…being there.
Steve was thinking about how great it was to see Bucky–here and alive, thinking about how strange the world had been for him at first and how damn separate from it he’d felt.
He looked at Bucky and said, “Bucky… This is a hard world to get used to. Come stay with me for a while, huh?”
Bucky shook his head. “That’s not a good idea, Steve. Besides, I got some stuff I need to do. Fury didn’t bring me back here to sit on my ass and I owe him. Fixing this arm didn’t come cheap.”
“You sure you want to do that? You don’t have to.”
“Yeah, I do. I pay my debts and there’s nothing he can want me to do that’ll be worse than what I was doing before. Besides, what am I gonna do, take up lawn bowling? Get a job in some office?”
“You could join the Avengers. Fight beside me again.”
Bucky gave a laugh that was tinged with bitterness. “Yeah, that’d work out great, Steve. Even if your buddies were ok with you adding a mass murderer to the team, it’s too risky. The press would figure it out. I didn’t exactly keep a low profile when I came after you.”
Damn it. “You’re not a mass murderer, Bucky. That wasn’t you.”
“Those people died because of me, Steve. It doesn’t matter how I got there. It’s still on me.”
“No, it’s on Hydra. It’s not your fault.”
Bucky scowled, drank the last of his beer and tossed the can in the bag. “It doesn’t matter whose fault it is. The blood’s still on my hands.” He took another beer out of the bag and opened it. “I’m not as good a man as you think I am, Steve. I never was. Maybe Fury can give me a chance to be a better one.”
Steve frowned at Bucky. “I know who you are. I know who you still are. I know you, Bucky. I know you’re going to beat yourself up and if you can’t do that enough, you’ll bite off more than you can chew and let the bad guys do it for you.”
Bucky’s lips tightened, then he said, “I’m fine. Give it a rest.”
“Ok, then. Prove it. Come stay with me for a few weeks and show me how fine you are.”
His brow furrowing, Bucky said, “You’re not going to let this go, are you, ya stubborn bastard?”
“Nope. Learned it from you.”
Bucky let out a sigh. “Ok. I have something I have to do first, but I’ll see you in a couple weeks.” His mouth pulled to one side in a wry smile. “That works out ok, actually. Fury’s getting me a place, but I have to wait until next month.”
“And I’m the stubborn bastard? You could have just said that and saved us ten minutes of bullshit.”
“Just open a beer. I’m drinking alone here.”
Steve opened another can.