Work Text:
He’s come a long way from ‘run, fight, kill, asset’. A lot of that has to do with Steve. If he stops lying to himself, it’s always come down to Steve to save him. The world thinks he spent his teenage years chasing after Steve and saving his ass from back alley fights and it’s true – the little punk never could walk away from a fight – but he thinks people don’t realize that in sticking up for Steve, he was becoming something more than he was.
What Steve doesn’t realize is that he’s had everything he became torn from him and stomped on for 70 years. What Steve doesn’t realize is that he’s relearning how to be the kind of man his Mama would be proud of and he doesn’t want to spend every waking moment thinking about what it was like to be the complete opposite. He needs a certain amount of distance from it to grow out of his past. He doesn’t need Steve’s constant concern and empathy and careful discussions of trauma.
He needs…normalcy.
Nat gets it, he thinks. She knows what it means to be vulnerable and have that twisted, taken apart, and reassembled into something that bears no resemblance to your former self. She’s been there, in the Red Room, she’s been destroyed and remade over and over. She’s got a decade of independent strength under skin that belongs to her and her alone. He craves that.
She teaches him.
He thinks it will be like a mission, learning to set his past on the sidelines and live his life as the man he wants to be. It isn’t, a fact for which he is eternally grateful. It’s more like submitting to her experience, watching and learning, as she teaches him what it means to be human again. He joins her for lunches at diners, doing laundry in the basement of her apartment, listening to soft music and letting it relax his spine after a stressful day.
It’s surprisingly pleasant to be a person, he learns. He’s got so many things to look forward to – pizza and beer on a Friday night in Steve’s living room, the greatest love story of the week at the theatre down the street, the smell of Central Park after it rains (which isn’t necessarily a nice smell, but it’s one of rebirth). He learns to be excited for Saturdays because it means breakfast with Sam, Nat, and Steve in Sam’s tiny kitchen. He learns to look forward to the sun coming up because Nat likes to join him to watch it with a mug of hot coffee. He learns that it’s so much better to reach for a phone after a nightmare than a gun.
He learns all of these things because Nat took the time to teach instead of tell. He doesn’t think he’ll ever make it up to her.
He learns that’s not true when Nat swings in through his window at 3am on a Tuesday, covered in blood and flickering in and out of awareness like a candle in a hurricane. She saved him from himself, but he’s been doing the same for her. He wonders if she knows how much she’s improved his life – he certainly didn’t see how his presence changed hers.
So he strokes her hair until she falls asleep on his chest and makes sure to keep watch until she wakes. She trusts him with this, so he can’t let his guard down. She trusts him, so he stands guard until dawn.
Things change after that, because their eyes are open to what they need and how they feel and whom they trust with their lives; who they rely on to see them through the darkest of tunnels and out the other side.
He meets a tiny wisp of fire and gasoline who calls herself Skye. He thinks that’s possibly the most accurate thing ever – she’s brighter than the sun and quickly becomes the presence that encompasses his entire, small world. She ignores him when he asks who keeps eating his leftovers out of the fridge and pretends not to hear him when he asks her again. She blushes when he walks around in just sweats and tells him to cover up his old man boobs. She flicks him on the forehead when he tries to make his password the same as his email the time she forces him to set one up.
She treats him like any other guy in her life and he revels in it. He’s not scary or traumatized or dangerous to her. He’s Bucky Barnes, that idiot who can’t remember how to turn of the ALLCAPS setting on his phone. He can, of course, he’s been using technology since it started to exist and he was a weapon at the hands of the KGB. He just likes to see her roll her eyes and call him Grandpa Numbskull and treat him like a person.
He also likes when she comes over to watch movies with him on Wednesday evenings whenever she’s in town with Coulson’s crew. She wears her hair in a bun and no makeup save some lip balm or the occasional swipe of mascara. There is popcorn, oversized t-shirts, and yoga pants that remind him of what it’s like to want.
And, God, does he want. He sees her in heels and a sleek black dress on her way to infiltrate a government benefit and his hearts beats double time. He sees her in jeans, boots, and a sweater as they head to breakfast in the late fall and he’s grateful for the sharp breeze that hides his blush. He sees her in his boxers and t-shirt after a night of too many movies on his couch, hair a mess and makeup smeared around her eyes and he has to excuse himself to the bathroom for a good twenty minutes.
She’s a goddess and she treats him like an equal. It makes him feel like a king. It makes him feel like he’s worth it.
He likes feeling like he’s worth it.
The first time she’s witness to one of his panic attacks, she freezes with terror for half a second and proceeds to take charge of the situation with such grace he feels his heart squeeze. She sits across the hall from him and talks about the last movie they saw, how the boy thought he was everything until his beautiful face was taken from him, how he felt worthless and ugly and had nothing to offer, how a girl taught him to believe that he was more than what he’d lost. She tells him they are both that boy and they are both that girl.
He breathes easy for the first time in days and for the first time in this century, he reaches out for someone first.
He knows what Skye is after that day – he knows she’s the love of his life and he knows what she can do. He knows she can heal people who refuse to be broken.
He knows whom he needs to bring to her.
Skye and Nat get along like a house on fire. Nat is broken in ways she refuses to admit, but Skye’s powers of healing run deeper than skin. Bucky has seen Nat’s pain, buried though it is under a decade of blank expressions and tight lips. He doesn’t know how he never introduced them before, because he and Nat have lived together for two months and Skye is almost always around when she’s not off with Coulson. All he knows it that they are a trio now and he has never been so happy or felt so safe.
He watches Nat blossom into something he’s never seen her as before. She’s vibrant and beautiful and her smiles last for days on end. He knew that Skye could be for her what she was for him. Still, there’s nothing quite like watching someone you love open up like a flower beneath gentle hands.
Skye is absent on a mission for almost a month. Bucky and Nat spend the whole time curled up on the couch and waiting for her to return. Bucky strokes Nat’s hair and they watch an endless supply of X-Files. They talk about Skye and her place between them and how she’s become the sun around which they orbit. Nat talks about her soft skin and gentle smiles and Bucky reveals how her hair tickles him when they cuddle on the couch and makes his skin tingle with delight.
They love her. She’s the most important thing.
Two nights after their talk, there’s a key in the lock of their apartment’s front door. When Skye walks through with two armfuls of gear and bags and drops them on the floor to look at them both on the couch, eyes lighting up like the fourth of July, they know. She’s exhausted and drained and probably more than a little bit hurt emotionally from her mission, but she comes to life at the sight of them. It’s enough for them to know.
Bucky hauls his ass off the couch and out of Nat’s arms, flies across the room and into Skye’s welcoming embrace. He feels the warmth of her soft skin on his cheek and the gentle tickle of her hair on his chest. He breathes her in and his mouth waters with want. Her lips are so soft and so sweet against his and this moment is the purest thing he’s ever felt. She moans against his teeth and his head is so empty of blood he feels woozy and loopy with love.
Nat’s chest is pressing softly against his arm and the warmth is inviting but also insistent. He pulls away from Skye’s lips just enough for Nat to hold her chin and turn their lips together. He watches and feels and experiences as Nat kisses their girl for the first time and it’s the most beautiful of sights.
It’s been so long since the last time any one of them felt whole, but today is the last day they feel like they’re missing a piece.