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Today.
The puppies played at his feet on the barn floor, flopping around and wrestling each other. One stood up on two legs and touched its front paws to Steve’s shins, looking straight up at him. Its paws were so light—the pressure through his jeans not even a whisper—that it stole Steve’s breath for a second.
“You could take one,” Laura Barton said. She was bent over the tractor engine, watching him, a wrench in one hand. “You should take one. I know you’re busy, but.” She lifted a shoulder, went back to her work. “They’re nice to have around.”
Out in the yard, across the vegetable garden, Cooper pushed Lila on the rope swing. Their yells and laughs carried through the wooden barn like birdsong.
The puppies nuzzled and mouthed at each other. Steve squatted down, pulled a knee under himself, and touched the most eager one’s head. As soft as down feathers. Small in his hand.
He said no thanks, and when Barton got back from tending to the baby Steve took his leave.
+
Steve had one apartment he never stayed in and one apartment he hated.
His floor in Avengers Tower was comfortable, huge, sterile.
He was going to start staying at his place in Brooklyn again when the team was stable. When Bucky was cleared for duty. When Fury wasn’t predicting another international incident within the next week.
These markers came and passed and he stayed anyway.
The Avengers were solid, capable, mighty. They had to train each time for something worse than they’d ever seen before, because that was always what they get. Something bigger, more unimaginable. What would come to meet them next?
There was always work to be done. He and Tony were closing in on an organization of adamantium thieves, trying to pick out patterns in worldwide crime statistics: reports of certain alloys and minerals turning up missing that they believed were tied to the production of a superweapon. Training and fighting. Saving people from burning buildings, sometimes. (Fun, but the smell of smoke lingered on his uniform and in his hair.)
And yet there were huge spans of blank hours that Steve couldn’t reckon with.
Shower fast after a hard day, cook dinner, eat in his kitchen, wash the dishes. Stand there poised and blinking. Go to bed at 9pm?
Sometimes Sam was at the Tower and it was easier—not only for Steve, Steve was pretty sure, but for everyone. Sam understood how to navigate a group, how to draw people together. When he was there, sometimes the team ate dinner together at Steve’s or Tony’s.
But Sam maintained a residence in DC, and unfortunately for Steve, had appropriate boundaries between his life in the Avengers and his life outside of it.
Thor was on Asgard for long stretches. Natasha disappeared. Clint had a home, a farm, children. Bruce was at peace with silence. Wanda sometimes slept for days on end.
Tony... Tony really wanted Steve to sell his Brooklyn apartment, actually, but he tried not to crowd Steve around the Tower.
“See? Space. Just as good as living in a roach-infested—In Brooklyn. Make yourself at home, Cap, come on. Everyone else has.”
Bucky had.
Bucky. Back from the dead. A productive member of the team. Unwilling to be in a room with Steve alone. Steve’s dearest, oldest friend. A stranger.
+
Steve stopped by the Barton farm again a few weeks later to drop off some light reading for Clint, in the form of two boxes of files he was meant to read before their next mission.
“You shouldn’t have,” Clint told him, eyeing the boxes with distaste.
“We can’t exactly courier it, no one’s supposed to know about this place.”
Clint shrugged. “Thanks, I guess. Want to stay for dinner?”
“I should get back,” Steve said, because he hated intruding on their home.
“At least take the puppy already, will you?” Clint lifted both of the boxes and made for the stairs, trusting Steve to follow him.
“Wait,” Steve said, and caught up on the landing. “What puppy?”
“The one Laura told you to take before. We can’t keep it, she needs a home. The others, we already gave away.”
“I’m sure you’ll find someone,” Steve said. But he let Clint take him out to the barn and show him the last little dog, a ball of sandy brown fluff dozing in the hay. Curled up so tight it looked like it was guarding something precious tucked in the whorl of its body.
“Still sleeps a lot,” Clint said as they looked down at the dog. Their size was absurd in this context, standing over the small form. Steve felt like a giant, although the pup was twice the size she was the last time Steve was here.
Hand through his hair, tense, considering the little ball of sleeping fur: Steve pictured the puppy sleeping on his couch. “What would I do with a dog?”
“Take the dog, Cap,” Clint said.
And he did.
+
The pup wriggled around in the backseat of the car Steve borrowed from the Stark fleet. It pretended to dig a hole in the corner of the seat and then walked in a tight circle several times before curling up to sleep.
Steve had a kitten once, years ago. Decades ago. It curled up on his pillow and slept, and when his mom discovered it she let it go in the alley while Steve cried. She put out food for it, even though it had already run away. Tried to explain to Steve that the kitten was making him sneeze, giving him hives, but he didn’t quite believe it. It didn’t seem right. He was only five, maybe six. It hurts now to think of being so young and confused, of being mad at his mom for trying to keep him healthy when he made it so hard for her.
Everything from that life hurt in a different way: guilty, or tragic, or so full of love his heart couldn’t hold it.
+
The parking garage under Stark Tower echoed with the sound of the car engine when Steve pulled into the space. “Okay,” Steve said, craned around in the driver’s seat to look at the puppy. She panted happily at him. “You want to go see your new home?”
He reached back and plucked the little animal from the seat. It weighed nothing, honestly nothing. Set it down on the passenger seat and clipped the leash Barton gave him around its neck while it squirmed.
Steve got out, holding the leash, and the puppy scrambled over the seats and out the door after him, jumping clumsily down. So excited. The puppy sniffed everything it could reach and peed against a cement pillar.
Steve let it explore as much as it wanted, and then lead it toward the elevator. “Come on, buddy.” He’d have to name it. Clint hadn’t said if they called it anything.
It sniffed around the elevator floor. Would it pee in here too? It wasn’t trained at all, so Steve scooped the puppy up and held it to his chest. It squirmed and stilled. He could feel its tiny ribs, its fluttering heart, the sharp bones of its legs. “Hey, hey,” he said to it, even though it was calm.
The elevator beeped and the doors slid open on the ground floor. To get to the residential floors you had to take the West elevator, after you crossed behind the security desks. No one questioned him about the puppy. In fact the guard, Marco, said, “Hey little guy,” and scratched the dog’s head.
Good, because Steve hadn’t given any thought to how permissible pets were here. But mostly Tony made the place as welcoming as possible, and Steve doubted he would mind this. Anyway, Steve could always move back to Brooklyn, finally, if it was a problem...
Steve rounded the corner to find a familiar form standing in the elevator bay. Bucky was wearing one of his daytime incognito outfits, a flannel and a baseball cap, nondescript to anyone who didn’t know what they were looking for.
He shifted out of his casual posture and stood up straighter when he saw Steve. And when he saw what Steve was holding, his nod of greeting was interrupted by his eyes going wide. “What is that?” he asked Steve.
Steve bent down and placed the puppy on its feet, where it pulled at the leash, trying to get to Bucky. “Barton gave her to me,” Steve said, defiant without meaning to be.
Bucky lowered his eyebrows with visible effort. “Did he,” he said, a little sarcastic, like he was talking to a child. But then he knelt down, and Steve moved forward so the dog could reach Bucky. It wagged its tail so much its whole body shook. Bucky obliged, leaned over and pet it, and the dog wiggled with joy under his hands, straining upwards to try to lick his face.
Bucky’s face was hidden under the brim of his cap. Steve thought of the first time he’d seen Clint with his kids, bent down to listen to Lila. “Your dog peed on my boot,” Bucky told him, straightening up.
Steve’s cheek twitched into half a smile that he quickly schooled back to neutral. The puppy flounced back over to Steve, tail still going. Stood up and touched her paws to Steve’s shins, then back to four legs. She pulled off to the side, trying to get to the corner to sniff, straining at the very end of the leash.
“Sorry,” Steve said unconvincingly (the dog may have peed a tiny bit, out of excitement), and before he could stop himself he added: “What are you up to?”
Bucky’s shoulder lifted in a shrug. He stepped into the waiting elevator and held the door open with an arm thrust in front of the sensor as Steve and the puppy joined him. “Meeting Stark in a bit. Going over the arm schematics again.”
Bucky never told Steve anything about his life outside the Tower. What he did when he left, or even how he spent his time when he was here but not working. He wasn’t unfriendly, but he was a firmly closed book. Steve knew to expect it, knew he had to be fine with it, and yet it still left him wrong-footed and wanting every time.
“I’m getting pizza tonight if you want to come by,” Steve said. He had no such plans, but he could.
Bucky looked over. “Don’t think I can. See you in the morning, though.” For their scheduled briefing with Fury.
Steve nodded. “Sounds good. See you.”
Steve’s floor was first, and he had to hold a hand in front of the elevator doors so they stayed open and didn’t trap the puppy inside. She was still nosing at Bucky’s shoes, looking hopefully up at him. Like, didn’t he want to keep playing with her?
Bucky gave the dog a stern look, but it was with a soft voice that he said, “Go on.”
The pup trotted out and looked up at Steve, mouth open and tongue lolling in what had to be a dog smile. Steve smiled back at it, and when he looked up to say goodbye to Bucky he still had the grin on his face. Something passed between them: how strange it was for him to be grinning at Bucky. They both looked away.
+
Three months ago.
Bucky slept for a day and a half after he turned himself over to the Avengers. He'd lost a lot of blood, nearly died when a fight with a Hydra cell went bad. His ribcage was knocked inward on his right side, his lung collapsed, and the surgeon told Steve that most people wouldn't have survived it.
But Bucky woke up the day after surgery and when Steve arrived he was dozing, looking like he might've got punched in both eyes, but very much alive.
Fury spoke to him first, before anyone called Steve, for which Steve held a grudge. But finally, finally, when Steve was allowed in, he took a seat and prepared to wait as long as it took for his oldest friend to wake up.
On the helicarrier, the Winter Soldier was larger than life, all hulking strength. In the hospital bed Bucky was too small.
He roused at Steve’s presence, shifting in bed, eyes squeezing shut. And then his eyes fluttered open and found Steve. "What—" he rasped, lifting up off the bed, brow going puzzled. Steve stood up.
Bucky’s eyes searched Steve’s face, and there was breathless awe in his voice when he said: “Steve?” Emotions flashed across his face too rapidly to catalogue: realization, pain, fear. And then all at once his face went wet, crumbled and dissolved and he was reaching for Steve, who leaned over him desperate to console him.
“It’s okay, you’re okay,” Steve said. The front of his shirt was gripped in Bucky’s fists and wet, where he was leaning over Bucky and Bucky was sobbing into it. His fingers slid into Bucky’s hair, cradling the back of his skull between it and the pillow. Bucky couldn’t lift far up off the bed so Steve was mostly leaning over him to hug him.
They stayed like that for awhile after Bucky got quiet.
Finally Steve peeled himself away from Bucky little by little, standing up stiffly. Bucky’s hands fell out of their grip on his shirt and onto the blanket.
His hair was tucked behind his ears. Older than in the Alps, but, like Steve, not nearly as old as he should’ve been. Lines around his eyes. “I thought you were dead for so long,” Steve said. “I can’t believe you’re here. I’m so glad you’re here.”
Bucky’s mouth pulled to the side. He said something low that Steve couldn’t make out; his voice was a wreck.
Steve touched his wrist. “What?”
“Should’ve been,” Bucky said again. “When I fell. I’ve done things you—” He shook his head. “I’ve been... waking up... for awhile. Since the helicarrier. It’s getting clear.” A vague gesture to his head. “Most of it, I remember.”
Steve’s fingers tightened around Bucky’s arm.
“I’ve been trying to make it right,” Bucky went on. His voice was getting stronger, and he gave Steve a significant look. And... there was something important behind Bucky’s words that Steve was missing. He knew the way Bucky was looking at him: an old expression, weary of how thick Steve was being.
The door to the room opened and Steve turned to the doctor. “Just a minute.”
“Captain Rogers, Sergeant Barnes is scheduled for the operating room, there are bone shards in his abdomen that we have to remove soon or we risk—”
“I’m ready,” Bucky said, as Steve said, “Yes, of course, but just let me—”
The doctor crossed to the machines next to Bucky’s bed and took note of some of the readouts, before wheeling the heart rate monitor forward.
“I’ll be here when you get out of surgery,” Steve said firmly.
“I won’t get to finish it,” Bucky said, continuing the earlier thread of conversation as though they hadn’t been interrupted. “I’m sorry. You have to try to forgive me. Promise.”
“Bucky,” Steve implored him, and how could he leave him if that was what he thought? “You don’t need forgiveness. And it’s just follow-up surgery, you’re okay, you’ll be awake in a few hours.”
But it was happening very quickly. A second doctor came in, a woman this time. She was field-trained too, like the man was. Obvious in her gait and musculature. She nodded at Bucky and Steve and took Bucky’s left hand in hers, then tested the bend in his wrist. “Any more phantom pain?” she asked Bucky.
“The pressure sensors are too sensitive,” Bucky answered. “I don’t need this much variability. It’s distracting.”
“I understand,” she said. “We will try to adjust.”
The sound of the first doctor clearing his throat was unnaturally loud in the small room. “Captain Rogers, if you’ll just come—?” He held out an arm toward the door, hoping to usher Steve through it.
“I’ll see you when you’re out,” he told Bucky, and allowed himself to be led out. In the doorway he looked back at Bucky, who was watching him silently and waiting. Steve felt stupid doing it, but he knew what Bucky wanted to hear and so he looked at his friend and nodded, once. Bucky relaxed back against his pillow, eyes slipping shut.
+
Below the Tower’s hospital floor there was a chapel. A windowless room with row of pews and bibles at every seat. Steve was alone for the several hours he spent there. The room radiated stillness, like it wasn’t used to having people in it. It looked new, but then everything in Stark Tower always looked new. Steve took a seat in the middle left row, although he could’ve gone anywhere. When he and his mom went to church, they sat halfway down the aisle on the left, so it seemed right to take that place again to pray for someone he used to pray for as a child.
He kneeled and clasped his hands and bowed his head.
When he stood some time later, he touched his face and was surprised when his hand came away wet. He hadn’t noticed himself crying.
+
When Bucky woke up, again, Steve gripped his hand. “Hey. You’re okay. Here.” He put a straw to Bucky’s lips and let him drink.
“You’re alive,” Bucky said slowly. His eyelids were heavy and he had a couple days’ stubble on his face. When his teeth flashed as he spoke, Steve had the strangest sense of familiarity. He hadn’t known he knew exactly what Bucky’s teeth looked like, the shape and lines of them, but of course he did.
Steve smiled at him. “So are you.”
“Mostly,” Bucky agreed ruefully. He lifted his metal arm, turned the hand over experimentally and watched the fingers splay. “God, it’s like... I keep waking up.” He shook his head. “Do you know when they’ll move me from the hospital?”
“They said you’ll be cleared tomorrow if you get some rest tonight. The surgery went well. You should come stay at my place with me, if you want. It’s right upstairs. Or Stark’s already said he has an apartment waiting for you.”
But Bucky was giving him a puzzled look. Maybe he hadn’t been as well briefed as Fury had made it sound like.
Steve shook his head. “They told you where you are, right? This is Stark’s place. Tony Stark,” Steve backtracked again. There was a lot to catch up on.
“Yeah, they told me,” Bucky said.
“Oh. Right, good.” Steve was getting worried. Had whatever drugs they’d used to put Bucky under for surgery been too strong? Again, he had the feeling he’d missed something.
Bucky was trying to work something out. It was like he didn’t quite believe what Steve was saying. “And you live here?” Bucky said eventually.
“Yeah. I mean, I have an apartment in Brooklyn, too. But I’ve been staying here, with everything going on.”
“Hm,” Bucky said. Not satisfied, but letting it go. “And you’re alright?”
“Me?” Steve lifted his hands as if to say, look at me. Look at you, here. “Sure, Bucky, I’m great.”
“Good,” Bucky said seriously. “That’s good.”
They sat together until a doctor said Steve had to leave.
+
And then for a week Steve was gone, off chasing an adamantium thief around the globe with the team, Stark at the controls of the quinjet. When they returned to the tower, Steve asked Jarvis where Bucky was, wanting to see for himself that he was still breathing, still alive, still a miracle.
The voice from the elevator walls told Steve: “He’s in the 18th floor apartment, Captain Rogers.”
“Thanks,” Steve said, already more at ease, and pushed the button for 18. Tony said he’d left instructions to offer Bucky the place once he was out of Medical. (“He decimated Hydra singlehandedly. Of course he’s on the team.”)
But the button didn’t light up. Jarvis’s voice rang out again: “Captain Rogers, Sergeant Barnes is not accepting guests at this time.”
“Oh, of course,” Steve said. “Sorry.” He didn’t know if he was apologizing to Bucky or to Jarvis. “I guess, if I could just leave him a message. I’m back and would like to see him, whenever he’s free.”
“Certainly, sir,” Jarvis agreed.
And so Steve went home to his own apartment and showered blood out of his hair and slept for eighteen hours. When he woke there was red on the pillow, just a smudge: perhaps it had been in the curve of his ear and he hadn’t showered thoroughly enough.
“Sir,” Jarvis said when Steve was making breakfast. “Sergeant Barnes says he’ll see you in the gym at 9am today.”
It was seven thirty by the kitchen clock. And it was... Wednesday? Yes, Wednesday, so the whole team had weekly sparring practice. It was understood that if they’d just returned from a longer mission, some of them wouldn’t show up for training this soon. So Natasha wouldn’t be there. She’d return by the end of the week, clear eyed and ready for action.
By the time he dressed and went running to throw off some of his energy and shake the last traces of sleep from his limbs, it was time to meet up. He found half the team down there already, and a double surprise: Bucky already sparring, with Nat, who’d come after all. Steve felt a fierce love for her grip him as he watched them flip and smack against the mat. She’d come to support Bucky during his first team training session at the expense of the private time she valued so highly.
When they broke for lunch, Steve caught up with Bucky in the hall. His t-shirt clung to the sweat on his skin. He drank from a water bottle and he had no visibly scars from surgery. “Hey, you seem like you’re healing up okay.”
Bucky glanced at him. “Yeah, not bad.”
“Listen, I’m sorry I missed your first few days out of the hospital. I know it’s strange here.”
“No, it’s fine. It’s good.” His face was careful, closed. “When Stark took me up to the room I thought I was dreaming. I thought for sure I’d be, you know, in a jail cell. Trust me, this is paradise.”
Something went still in Steve. Was it possible that he’d failed Bucky in such a serious sense? “You didn’t really think you were going to be locked up?”
Bucky shrugged, face impassive.
Steve touched his arm, but Bucky moved out of the touch by raising his water bottle to his mouth. “I’m so sorry,” Steve said, voice thick with emotion. He had to make Bucky understand. “I had no idea. I... look, let’s get out of here for a bit.” Steve gestured back toward the gym. “This’ll wait.”
But Bucky shook his head. “No, let’s train. I want to work.” He looked a little sorry, even, that it had to be this way. That he couldn’t offer Steve any more. But he spoke with a finality and a decisiveness that left little room for convincing. Steve was wary of trying to push him, so they left it at that.
+
Today.
“It’s funny, I don’t remember being this popular before I got a dog,” Steve said to Tony over a beer as they watched Clint rolling around on Steve’s living room carpet with the pup. Nat, Sam, Pepper, and Bruce were arranged around the living room, too.
“No?” Tony asked. “Well, maybe you should’ve tried licking Clint’s ear. It’s working for the dog, at least. Anyway,” Tony said after a beat, “you’re plenty popular. Dogs just make people... approachable. Literally, you must get approached in the street all the time now.”
“Is that why you don’t have any pets? You’ve got mystery to maintain?”
“Sure. That and, a robotics lab is no place for something clumsy that doesn’t know its own strength—except Bruce, of course—so I’d have nowhere safe to keep one.”
“I guess a boardroom isn’t the place either,” Steve said, watching Pepper laughing with Sam across the room. And then abruptly he realized they weren’t talking only about dogs, and also realized what he’d said, and saw Stark’s face go thoughtful. “I’m sorry,” he said, but Stark was already waving it away.
“Hey, did you know that with Jarvis I can analyze data over time about my movements and heart rate and all that if I want to? I could have Apple Watches so beat if I wasn’t busy saving the world.”
Steve supposed that meant he knew exactly where he was at, thanks very much.
+
Bucky didn’t show that night, but after two more meetings with the dog—now named Ranger, thanks to Sam—in the elevator, he came over the next time the team was having a group puppy play date. A bottle of beer dangled artfully from his metal fingertips as he leaned back against the counter with Steve. If they talked quietly here, they were out of earshot of the others.
Steve had joined Bucky over here to be companionable—he’d been standing alone—but when they didn’t talk beyond greetings Steve thought maybe he was just intruding. It was a feeling he had often around Bucky lately.
And then Bucky asked him, “D’you remember my grandma’s dog?”
“Don’t know if I remember your grandma,” Steve admitted.
Bucky nodded, eyes on the dog in the living room, straight ahead of them. “She died when I was pretty young. I think you met her a couple times. But that dog had to come stay with my parents once when my grandma was traveling, for weeks, and it was a nightmare. Always barking.”
“I do remember,” Steve realized, touched. “You and Becca shared a room then, and the dog had to stay in there because it was the only room that didn’t have any walls in common with your neighbors.”
A smile played across Bucky’s face. “Becca went to sleep on the couch, but I felt bad for the dog, all alone in there, so I stayed. Didn’t sleep for two weeks.”
“We’d go play with those strays behind the deli,” Steve offered. “Every chance we got after school. You said your parents wouldn’t let you keep one after your grandma’s dog got everybody sore at them.”
“They had the right idea,” Bucky said. “After we played with them, I’d come home covered in flea bites and you’d be sneezing so much you couldn’t see to walk.” The beer bottle clanked onto the counter as Bucky set it down and walked away, into the living room to take a seat on the couch.
Steve watched him clink beer bottles with Nat and start talking with her in low voices.
Bucky dropped these little details from before the war sometimes, held them out like gifts and then seemed surprised when Steve treated them like they were precious. If there were rules at all to what Bucky did and didn’t want to talk about, they were impossible to keep up with. He was so different from the person in the hospital bed just a few months back. So distant as to be immaterial. It wasn’t fair to take it personally, but it was hard not to when Bucky developed an easy rapport with Nat, with Sam. He even played chess every day with Bruce, Steve heard from Bruce.
Steve spent the rest of the night helping Sam teach Ranger to shake hands and play dead.
At one point, Ranger chased after a ball that had landed near Bucky’s feet, and pressed it against Bucky’s shoes, asking him to throw it. He leaned down obligingly and messed the fur on the dog’s back with one hand, finagling the ball out of Ranger’s sharp teeth with the other. He let her get ready and then tossed it in a neat arc, so she caught it squarely in her mouth. She returned it at once, and Bucky played with her as long as she asked him to. He even let her scamper up on his lap to try and get the ball out of his hands when she wanted to.
It took Bucky, too: the way the presence of a happy dog made everyone’s guard come down. You couldn’t help it, you had to rub Ranger’s belly and laugh when she made a pathetic sound because she really, really wanted you to throw the ball again. Steve hadn’t meant the dog to be a team-building tool, but he was smart enough to know a good thing when he had it.
Steve made up his mind when he watched Bucky scoop Ranger up at one point and press her to him, to rub her head and take the ball back from her. It was so sweet that it took Steve’s voice for a minute and he had to leave for the bathroom to save face.
When everyone was leaving, Steve called Bucky back into the apartment. “Wait a minute, I still have your binder,” he said. Something flickered across Bucky’s face, but he waited and said goodbye to Sam, last out, while Steve rummaged in the desk.
Steve came up with a dossier on extraterrestrial weaponry—unnecessary, as Bucky had already been briefed on the relevant parts—and handed it to Bucky. The silence of the apartment echoed. Even Ranger was still, sleeping on the couch.
Their was a challenge in Bucky’s calm gaze. Electricity just under the surface, obvious when you looked into his eyes. “Thanks,” he said, just as Steve said, “Bucky.”
Bucky raised his eyebrows. Tucked the folder under his arm. “Yeah.”
“Talk to me,” Steve said, and opened his hands. He felt adrift, and it hurt to feel that way with Bucky. “I don’t—look, are you okay? I’m glad you’re here, we need you on the team, but in the hospital room—”
“Could we just forget about that already? I was drugged; I was confused; I thought I was dying.”
Steve lowered his brow and started to speak, but Bucky cut him off.
“I want to work. I’m here to finish what I started.” At his side his metal fist flexed and relaxed: the smallest sound of clicking metal.
What about me? Steve wanted to ask. You were my favorite friend and I thought you were dead for so long, and by some miracle we’re both here and you’ll barely speak to me. But none of this was about him. And if Bucky said he was fine and if he was showing up for training and working hard like everyone else, that was that.
+
Ranger slept in Steve’s bed at his feet. When she wanted something, she rested her chin on his hand and looked at him balefully until he gave it to her. She escorted him on leisurely runs around the city. She grew and grew, and when Steve came home after an absence of minutes or weeks, she stood up and licked his face and was generally the happiest anybody whose life Steve wasn’t currently saving had ever been to see him.
When he traveled, Steve let Jarvis take care of her and schedule her days. Volunteers would come and pick her up and she’d visit hospitals and cheer up kids; she’d sleep at the feet of various Stark interns to calm them as they went about their work. The other Avengers had a calendar worked up of who got to keep her at night when Steve was out, but from what Tony said, Bucky wasn’t on it.
She thawed something in Bucky’s heart, though. Steve knew it. When they ran into each other in the building Ranger was always thrilled, pressing the top of her head into Bucky’s thigh asking to be petted. And he’d kneel down as soon as he saw her: hold her head between his hands and rub the side of her face with his knuckles so she panted, and rolled over onto her back to have her belly rubbed. Bucky obliged, with a rare laugh, even when they were outside the briefing room. (Steve had taken to keeping her with him in the building after missions, although she was previously confined to his apartment if they were both at the Tower. No one seemed to mind.) Afterward Bucky would stand up and give Steve an embarrassed little shrug. “She’s hard to say no to.”
“Tell me about it,” Steve agreed.
Something along those lines. It was the whole extent of their friendship.
+
Steve had a team that was a family to him, a home, freedom for the most part, and a dog that loved him.
His loneliness was a permanent ache in his hands.
A few months after he adopted Ranger, he went home with a poet. The man had golden red hair, like Pepper’s almost, and the bearing of a Greek statue. Steve saw him read some of his work at the dedication of a new city park Steve attended in a non-official capacity. After the ceremony, he went up to the man and asked him about some of the sources he’d used to research the history of the local land, which had featured prominently in his poem.
The man knew who he was and never brought it up, and that was partially why Steve wanted to go home with him. Another reason was that the man asked him. No one had asked him in a way that wasn’t at least half a joke in a long time.
He couldn’t take the poet to his apartment because it would be inappropriate, somehow, in Avengers Tower. He didn’t know what the security protocol was. Also because if he had, Ranger would’ve sniffed at the man and wagged her tail and decided something about him, and Steve didn’t want to have to know what that thing was. Whether she approved of the stranger or not.
Steve touched the spines of books piled on the poet’s kitchen table as the poet made them a drink. He was quieter here in his own apartment than he’d been at the event. Made shy by Steve’s presence among his things. His cat, an orange tabby, twined around Steve’s ankles. “I’ve got a dog,” Steve offered.
“Yeah?” the poet asked. He set a drink in front of Steve and sat down next to him. “He’ll be alright if you’re out for awhile?”
“Oh, sure,” Steve said. “She’s pretty independent.”
Steve spent the night because he was curious what it would be like to wake up next to a person, instead of with Ranger at his feet. It wasn’t the same. He missed his dog.
+
Bucky came back from an op with Nat looking worn. Black still smudged under his eyes, as though he hadn’t been able to scrub it all off. The report they gave matched the dispatches they’d been sending in: long, cold, and they’d found evidence of things that shook both of them.
In the little hallway outside the briefing room, while Fury’s coat disappeared around a corner after him, Bucky knelt and stroked Ranger’s fur. His movements were slow. She burrowed into his chest, delighted to see him but sensing his discomfort.
Nat stood in front of Steve. She looked like a puppet whose strings were pulled too tight: there was huge effort in her straight posture. “I might be a week,” she said quietly.
“Of course,” Steve said. “I’ll be here.”
Half her mouth pulled up in a smile. “I know you will,” she said. She watched Bucky for a moment, touched Steve’s arm, and left.
Bucky was almost never willingly alone with Steve like this—even with Steve plus Ranger—and maybe that was why Steve did it. “Hey, could you watch her for the next couple days?” he said.
Bucky looked up from where his face was tucked close to Ranger’s.
“I’m out until at least Friday,” Steve explained.
Bucky stood, but Ranger stayed close to him. Good girl. “So do whatever you usually do with her. Let Stark and them time-share her.”
“She’ll be happier with you,” Steve said. It was cheating—even cruel, maybe—to use this tone on someone when they were fragile.
Bucky’s lip pulled between his teeth and Steve knew he’d won. “Jarvis will have her food and everything brought over,” he said. An apology in his voice now, because he could see that Bucky wanted to argue and couldn’t, because they both knew he wanted the thing he’d be arguing against.
+
So Steve came home to an empty apartment for the first time in a long time. He dropped his bag right inside the door and let it sit where it thudded on the ground. He was beat up from having a motorcycle thrown on him the day before. (Not his motorcycle, luckily.) Falling asleep was easy.
The lonely part was waking up. In the few seconds between unconsciousness and consciousness, he expected to see Ranger at the foot of his bed. His heart tugged when he didn’t feel her and remembered she wasn’t there.
But she was with Bucky, so it would have to be okay.
Nat had texted him a picture while he was gone: Sam and Bucky on Bucky’s balcony, Ranger chewing a bone contentedly between them.
It was the first time, as far as Steve knew, that any of them had hung out at Bucky’s place. Almost certainly the first time more than one person had been over at once. And so he took it as a sign that he was making the right decision.
+
“Hello?” Steve said as he picked up his phone that afternoon, one hand still stirring the pot he had on the stove.
“What is your dog doing in my apartment?” Bucky asked.
“You’ll have to tell me, since I can’t actually see her at the moment.”
A silence Steve felt safe in interpreting as angry. “I’m not keeping your dog, Rogers. Tell Jarvis to unlock your floor so I can bring her back.”
“I have to ride out to Brooklyn,” Steve lied. “She won’t fit on the bike. Besides, she’s never stayed in that place before. I don’t know if she’d like it; it’s so small compared to here.”
“Are you insane?” Bucky said. He hadn’t planned it, but hearing Bucky so fired up like this was kind of... nice. Before, he was always frustrated with Steve over one thing or another. It was comforting, honestly. “Come get your dog,” he said in a dangerous voice, and hung up.
+
But Steve didn’t.
The next morning in the gym, Bucky pinned Steve again and again as they sparred. “You’re a bad liar,” Bucky informed him, jaw tense and locks of hair coming untucked from behind his ears.
Steve made a sound of effort and flipped them over. His knees barely touched the mat before Bucky had an elbow in his spine and took back the upper hand. “I’m trying to do the right thing,” Steve said into the mat. He shifted and felt out his next move, but two of his ribs were still knitting together. It wasn’t worth cracking them again. “I’m tapping out,” he said. “Just switch to my right side, if you want, and we can keep going.”
Bucky rocked back on his heels, letting Steve up. Steve turned over and sat up, breathing hard. “You’re hurt,” Bucky said. His mouth twisted to the side. “You’re supposed to say up front, not in the middle of a workout, Christ, Steve.” Bucky stood. “I’m going to get some water,” he said, and stalked off without waiting for an answer.
Steve sat on the mat, just breathing. The sounds of the others knocking into each other, hitting the mat, grunting. Peals of laughter rang out sometimes. After awhile he heard the rhythmic strikes of Bucky’s knife against the wooden dummy, snapping back and forth across the surface at close range.
Steve felt strange, light, as though he’d set down a weight he’d been carrying for a long time.
+
Steve turned down an invitation to potluck dinner at Tony’s. He should set a better example for the team, but. You couldn’t always be good. He was lonely without Ranger and it made him want to be alone, bizarrely.
Later he heard that Bucky attended, and even made a pretty good chili for the occasion.
+
“You got babysitting duty tonight?” Steve asked as he waved Natasha into his apartment.
“Nice to see you, too,” she said, and dropped two full paper bags on the kitchen table.
“I have food already,” Steve told her. But they put the groceries away together anyway.
The others had worked out a rotation, Steve deduced, so that someone was with Steve more often than not. Tonight Nat showed up at his door unannounced, last night Sam, the night before Tony. For the past two weeks he’d barely been alone.
It was getting old.
“You know I didn’t mean for you to give him your dog, right?” Natasha asked later, her legs tucked under her across the couch from him. Jimmy Fallon was on and Steve had just muted a commercial for a vacuum cleaner. The light from the TV cast her in eerie greens and blues because they’d switched off the room lights. She was examining her nails, hands in her lap. “I just thought you’d like the picture.”
“I did like it,” Steve said. He wanted her to understand. “Tell me he’s not happier since having Ranger. You’ve seen him, he’s easier with everyone. She’s good for him.”
“The point is it’s too much to accept. He’d leave that dog to wander around the Tower until you came to your senses and let her back in, if he wasn’t worried you were so stubborn you would just leave her alone.”
“So he’s just as bad as me, you’re saying,” Steve asked. The show came back on but he didn’t turn on the sound.
“No,” Nat said, and then unfolded her legs and stood. “I’m saying I love you and I wish you would make better choices for yourself.”
She left without saying goodbye. There was a lot of that going around.
+
Steve dragged a towel across his chin the next morning, wiping away the last of the shaving cream. He examined himself in the mirror: it was hard to decide if you were changing when you saw yourself every day.
“Jarvis,” he said. “You can let Sergeant Barnes access my floor again.”
“Done, Captain Rogers.”
“Thanks,” Steve said, and stepped into the shower.
+
When he came out of his room twenty minutes later, dressed for a run, he was greeted by something waist high pelting at him. Ranger threw herself at his legs and whined in a way he hadn’t heard before. She was wiggling so much it was like her whole body was wagging along with her tail, as Steve leaned over her to pet her. He tucked an arm around her middle and buried his face in her fur. “I missed you too, buddy,” he told her. He sat back on the carpet and let her climb into his lap and lick his face.
“You’re an idiot,” came Bucky’s voice from the end of the hallway. He joined them from where he’d been presumably waiting in the living room and sat a few feet down the hall from them, leaning against the wall.
Ranger loved when anybody sat on the floor—it always meant playing—and she left Steve to go and nudge Bucky and see if he wanted to wrestle her. He gave her a few pats on the head, just to keep her from feeling rejected. When he didn’t give in, she trotted back over to Steve, who was being much more fun at the moment and letting her crawl all over him. He’d missed her.
“I’m not keeping you dog,” Bucky said.
“She helps, though,” Steve said. “You’re making this harder than it has to be.”
“I’m—!” Bucky gaped at him. “You barred your own dog from your apartment.”
“Because you would’ve brought her back and left her here like it was nothing, and I know it wasn’t.”
“You don’t get to know something like that about somebody else, Rogers.” Bucky tilted his head back against the wall. “Even you don’t.”
Not about somebody else, just about you, Steve didn’t say. “But I’m right,” he answered.
Ranger sat next to Steve, panting contentedly as he pet her.
“Doesn’t matter,” Bucky said, and shrugged. “Sorry.”
“I saw you when you and Nat came back,” Steve said.
“And I see you every morning,” Bucky snapped at once.
Ranger stood up, poised between them, tense and fearful and wagging her tail. She barked once, high pitched and loud in the hallway, so they both turned to her. She grumbled and sunk her front legs and chest to the carpet in a play bow.
“Why is it so hard for you to be around me?” Steve asked quietly.
Bucky lifted his shoulders a little, helplessly, and Steve thought that was his answer. And then Bucky said, “Because you know me. You know that I know I did...” He pressed his lips together and shook his head. “Unforgivable things. I thought you were dead for so long. I remember they kept telling me that you were dead. If I’d known they were lying... But it was so hard to think, and I couldn’t, and I didn’t know.”
“No, of course you didn’t, Bucky, you—Is this because I said I forgive you? You didn’t do anything wrong, least of all to me. I’m so sorry I made you think that. Bucky. It’s been so long for you, I know, you lived all this time—but it’s yesterday to me. I’m so sorry I let them take you.”
”Don’t be stupid—”
“We were just on Zola’s train. And I missed you so much afterward, and then you came back, again, and you knew me, and then you didn’t. I missed you so much, I don’t know what to do with it.” Steve was breathless; he hadn’t meant to spill quite that much, hadn’t even known some of it was true until he said it.
Bucky was quiet, some inner struggle playing out on his face. Steve stopped petting Ranger and she went to Bucky’s side at once. She lay down in front of him on her side and rested her head on his thigh, looking up at him. He touched the side of her head and let his hand rest there, in the soft fur under her ear.
“I don’t know if I’m the person you remember, though,” Bucky said eventually, very quietly. He watched his hand on Ranger’s head. “I don’t want to find out if I’m not. I just want to... try to even things out, you know?”
Steve nodded. He took his time answering. “Maybe you could just keep her some of the time. She’s nice to have around, right?”
“Yeah,” Bucky admitted, something unsteady in his voice that made Steve’s throat fill up.
The words tumbled out of Steve’s mouth: “You don’t have to be the same. Not for me.” He reached out put a hand on Bucky’s ankle, the closest part of him. He squeezed his leg once through his jeans and then sat back.
Bucky looked up at him, chewing on his lip. “I guess if you really don’t mind.” Ranger stood up from his leg, dislodging Bucky’s hand, and shook herself. She panted for a second and then pushed her head into Bucky’s face and started licking his cheek. He shoved her away gently so he could keep talking. “We could... share her.”
“I wouldn’t mind at all,” Steve said, and hid how huge his smile was by scrunching up his face and letting Ranger lick his chin and cheek, his hands in her fur.