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Bucky is woken by the sound of wheels on the broken branches and long dead leaves that litter the path leading up to the house proper. However, to describe what Bucky does as 'waking' implies a level of sleeping he doesn't truly experience. That can be said regarding much of what Bucky does, though, like how he 'walks' or 'breathes.'
It could be said that, really, only Bucky's name functions as it's meant to in a traditionally human sense, though it wasn't given to him by any kind of parent. No, it had been little Jimmy Buchanan that had done it, whispering to Bucky as Bucky had hidden under his bed while the sun was out and the boy was left to his own devices, the too-large house filled with only a dog that hadn't liked Bucky all that much and no siblings to be entertained by or with.
But then Jimmy Buchanan had grown up and gone to war, and there hadn't been anyone in the manor to whisper a greeting to Bucky. And what was a name if there wasn't another being to call you by it?
When another family had moved in a decade later, after the Buchanan family had gone, leaving Jimmy's things to collect dust for the next batch of humans, Bucky had thought, just maybe, the little girl that had come to take Jimmy's place might give the name purpose again.
She hadn't been as keen to talk with him as Jimmy had. Her bedside was always lit with a lantern, and she never got too close to the dark places in the house, even when night fell, making all the places dark enough for Bucky to shift through. After one too many calls of "Monster" and "Boogeyman!" Bucky stopped trying to tell her,"No, my name's Bucky."
The house fell vacant much faster the second time. Years passed, though it was difficult for Bucky to gauge the sliding slope of time, and no new people came to live there for a while. He marked the passage by the creatures that burrowed beneath the basement floors or the family of owls that roosted in the attic where a storm had blown the window in. Seasons passed by the growing of weeds that swamped and swallowed Mrs. Buchanan's once tidy and neat flower boxes.
Then there were the people who came, old and young, in tattered clothes or shiny, reflective jackets and tall ponytails. Homeless and teenagers, all a little reckless with Buchanan house, sticking around through the night for the shelter or the privacy. Bucky was spotted by them sometimes, from the corner of their eyes, when he’d gotten a bit too curious, a bit too hopeful for the company they might bring.
Instead, it brought others, and Bucky learned not to leave the shadows so readily then.
Sometime in the year the first hole in the ceiling sent splintering, moss-covered shingles into the old study, those different people began returning to Buchanan House. They brought strange devices, rolling up the drive in what Bucky realized after the first few times were cars the style of which he'd never seen, but they never stayed long, and with this new visitation, he wasn't expecting any different.
Still, the slamming car doors tell him that whoever these guests might be, they at least intend to come inside.
Over the years that Bucky has been occupying the quiet, dark spaces that the Buchanan House offers, he's done this song and dance at least a dozen times. Sometimes, the men and women just stay in their vehicles, rolling the windows down to flash lights at the broken facade of the building before leaving, too scared to step on the cracked and washed-out tile that leads toward the porch. But, every once in a while, a few will stick around. They always have the same things, devices Bucky had learned the names of, growing familiar as the short, confusing visits increased. Camera, microphone, thermal reader. The objects seem to get smaller each year, and the people more varied, but some things remain the same.
Mostly, it's the questions. Bucky knows better than to answer them out loud. He'd made that mistake once before, the first time the new strangers had come, and the torch that the man (mid-thirties with a large mustache and pipe stains on his sleeve cuffs) had almost sliced Bucky in two. And even if he was inclined to speak when they walked around, upsetting long-settled dust, how was he meant to answer, "Is anyone dead in here?"
It's a yes and a no, an "It depends" on days Bucky's feeling particularly existential or bored. And... he doesn't want them to leave. If he starts whispering from musty corners and the shadowy places behind cracked doors, there's a good chance they will.
This group seems like the lingering kind from what Bucky can observe as he peaks over the leftmost window on the upper floor, having pulled himself together from the floorboards and keyholes he'd drifted into through his not-sleep. The sun is the color of a ripe orange just at the edge of the treeline, still too bright for Bucky to venture outside and creep into the shade of a bush without risking his form fading, so he satisfies himself by inching just a bit above the mildew crusted sill, stealing glimpses of the four people that begin spreading out on the overgrown, gnarled lawn.
A woman and three men, though, curiously, Bucky almost takes the smallest of the latter for a girl, his body small and slight, even bundled up in what Bucky thinks are two jackets. Only when he turns to face Buchanan House, light eyes squinting behind wireframed spectacles, does Bucky realize his initial mistake. His jaw is too sharp, his chest too flat, broad in comparison to the set of his limbs, and there's a masculine edge to how he plants his feet, as though he's ready to take on whatever specters he's imagining behind the French doors.
As he sometimes does when unexpected faces appear, Bucky grows fascinated the longer the blond man stares. He's focused and intent, not blinking as he sweeps his gaze from shutter to shutter, sizing up Buchanan House. Bucky pretends, just a little, that when the blond man's eyes trail past him, they catch and linger for the briefest of seconds. Then, the largest of the men comes up behind him, and the spell is broken.
"This place looks like a shit-hole," he says, gruff like the dark stubble on his chin, like his attitude is soul-deep instead of worn on his leather-clad shoulders, blown out like the smoke from the cigarette he pulls a drag from, flicking the half-finished stick into the dry brush next to the smaller man's feet.
The blond jumps his scowl deep as he turns, stomping firm and quick on the cherry smoldering dangerously in a bed of forest-wide kindling. Bucky feels the edges of where a smile should go on what is sometimes his face lift as the blond's surprisingly long fingers curl into fists at his sides, and he rounds on the second man. Bucky imagines that if he could see the human's face, it would be sharp and glaring.
"You lookin' to cause a forest fire, Rumlow?" The blond's voice is deep, practically booming in the manor's clearing; Bucky almost leans further up into the window to see better, only to stop when one of the last tendrils of sunlight glances off the top of his amorphous form and makes him tingle uncomfortably.
"Ah, shove it, Smokey. Wouldn't be any real loss, huh? Even the rangers don't come out this way." Rumlow is all smug indifference, a tone Bucky is accustomed to hearing from the more arrogant who like to wander the house halls. He'll enjoy sliding across the ceiling over his head; the pigheadedness of men like Rumlow is always the most satisfying to dismantle. A slither here, a huff of breath there, a touch if Bucky's feels really vindictive, and they go running.
"Just get the genny set up, Brock." With red hair tied high on her head and a tactical jacket zipped to her chin, the woman steps up to where the two men are standing. "We're wasting daylight, and Tony doesn't pay any of us for dragging ass."
Rumlow doesn't bother to conceal his contempt for the woman as he rolls his eyes and stomps away, but she doesn't seem concerned, turning instead to face the blond, laying a kind hand on his shoulder as he scoffs and adjusts the almost too large bag slung across his chest.
"Don't listen to him, Steve. He's just grumpy Stark sent him with us instead of Fury."
"As long as he does his job, I can handle him," Steve says, and Bucky makes a trilling, subvocal hum as he thinks of putting the name to the face and maybe remembering it, even when this interesting man will leave before the sun comes up and never return again.
The woman punches him lightly, and Steve makes a show of rubbing the spot as the group's final member, dark-skinned and gap-smiled, calls her back to the car with a "Natasha, come look at this for me?" When she walks away entirely, the humorous way Steve had been rubbing takes on a more serious motion. Bucky snorts before slinking away from the window, heading for the top of the stairs where he can slip between the old balusters and blend in with the shadows to wait.
Bucky doesn't have the internal mechanisms that allow for counting accurately the way he's seen the old clock in the hall do before one too many rainstorms rusted its cogs together, but he thinks it takes less than an hour for the rest of the sunlight to fade and for the four people to hesitantly push open the two front doors, the pressure change drawing in a fresh scattering of brown leaves and dried moss balls.
"What did I say?" Rumlow sneers. He's the first to take a confident step forward, waving the hand not holding a large trunk in front of his face to fan away whatever lingering smell Bucky's become adjusted to. "Shit-hole."
If Bucky were wearing the approximation of a face instead of the blank void needed to blend in, it would be frowning. He knows that Buchanan House isn't in its prime, wasn't when he first moved in either, but it's not that bad if one were to look beyond the peeling wallpaper, the termite damage, the holes in both ceilings, and extensive water exposure.
"It's got personality," Natasha says, shoving past Rumlow to get into the center of the entry room. She's got two lanterns with her. They glow soft and blue, doing more to keep the floor lit than the room and air around their cylindrical bases. Bucky has the strange urge to reach toward them, feeling like he could get closer than any light source he's encountered before. He doesn't, instead choosing to curl like a snake down the stringer where the boards of the stairs offer a tight pool of blackness for him to sink entirely into.
When Natasha begins surveying the area with her hands on her hips, her eyes skirt past Bucky, then return with a curious flick before moving away again. If he needed to breathe, Bucky would have stopped under the intensity of her eagle eye. As it is, he keeps still and waits for the woman to give direction, pointing at the taller men with the most equipment to set their things nearest the walls and watch where weather and time have rotted the wood beneath their feet.
Bucky makes it to the ground and hugs himself to the very edges of the room, slipping close enough to keep the four people in his sights but well out of their periphery. His attention, he'll admit, mostly stays on Steve.
From this close, Bucky can see more, even in the low gloom of the space. His jacket is worn but neat, his plaid shirt tucked into a pair of well-fit, dark-wash denim, and those are tucked into boots. His hair, tousled by a breeze from the still-open door, keeps falling across his forehead. Steve brushes the strands away in routine, mechanical sweeps and doesn't seem to realize that they'll inevitably fall back into his eyes regardless of how many times he pushes his nimble fingers through them. There's something in Steve's ear, a device that Bucky thinks might be plastic, but he's not as familiar with the material or shape, so he has no name for it. The exterior is flesh-colored but just off enough that Bucky can see where it curls over the helix of the man's ear. Bucky wants to crawl up to the other man's shoulder and inspect it closer, but he sticks to the hollow space halfway up the wall that was a possum's home last winter.
Another thing Bucky notices, as Steve unloads his bag and pulls out a camera, smaller but fancier than the last time Bucky has seen one, is that he's well practiced in assembling it, single-minded in his focus as he puts it together and does something on the small rectangle protruding out from the side. It compels Bucky to watch him, the sureness he has, the confidence as he slips a strap around his neck and lets the thing knock against his chest. Bucky's so entranced by watching him that he, like Steve, seems not to have realized Sam (as Bucky notes the last man is called) and Rumlow, in the absence of Natasha, are arguing.
"Send Rogers. Stiff breeze'll knock him on his ass, but the chance he'll fall through the floor is a lot less than sending one of us up."
"You sure that's the reason, or are you just worried the weight of your ego is gonna be a problem?"
"Everything's gotta be a fight with you, Wilson, I swear-" Rumlow takes a half step forward, and Bucky watches, head tilted and peeking just a little out of the wall, as Steve strides across the room without fear of stepping through the boards to get between them.
"Stop. The genny only has six hours in it, and we've got better things to do than fight about who's going where. We still need to set up the motion sensors down here. I can check the upper level in the meantime." He's no-nonsense, even standing a head beneath each man, and Bucky feels something delighted coil around the edges of himself.
"Who put you in charge?" Rumlow bites, and Sam throws his hands in the air.
"You just said you wanted him to-"
"Sam, it's fine," Steve cuts in before turning his sharp eyes onto Rumlow, "just get this stuff done before Natasha decides to add you to the investigation as a missing person." He doesn't wait for a response before pivoting on his heels and, with a clenched jaw, starts for the staircase, only showing a flash of trepidation when his back is fully turned to the other men. He pauses long enough to grab one of the soft blue lanterns before continuing, only halfway to the landing, testing each plank of wood before Bucky decides it's in everyone's best interest if, regardless of the fact Steve looks like he might be about a hundred pounds soaking wet, the small man is supervised.
Bucky goes to do just that, but not before feeling his way across the floor when Sam walks off to his own station. He rises from a pool of darkness between the floorboards to whisper promises of pain in a tongue older than Bucky has the memories for against the shell of Rumlow's ear. He's already at Steve's heel, carefully sliding up the length of shadows provided by cob webbing and broken bottles, when the man lets out a bitten-off cry.
"Watch out for spiders," Sam mutters, uncaring, and Bucky only holds off from laughing because he's close enough to Steve that, depending on where his mouth would materialize to make the sound, he'd be heard.
Even with all the holes peppering the foundations of the house and the general echoing that can't be helped when there's a large void built from rot and ruin, something muffled and insular builds in the atmosphere on the second level. Bucky can hear Steve's close, concentrated steps, the uneven passes of air between his lips as he ascends the stairs. Steve digs his free hand into the inner pocket of his coat, and Bucky watches, curious, as he curses and retrieves nothing.
"Left it in the van," Steve says under his breath, standing for another minute until Bucky can tell there's less of a rattle when he exhales. As he reaches the top of the landing, Steve lifts the lantern to inspect both halls extending on either side of him. He chooses left, and Bucky follows as Steve moves, rising to walk along the wall, stretching as he comes together in a bipedal shape to stalk behind Steve as he inches his way toward the first room. When he suddenly swings around, as if feeling Bucky at his back, Bucky's almost too slow in throwing himself into the shadow of the broken cabinet tipped onto its side, avoiding the soft brush of light from Steve's lantern.
After a beat, the blond seems to shake himself and, without any apprehension, turns and passes through the doorway to his right. There's no door on its ancient hinges, but Bucky knows that of all the upper-level spaces, it and its counterpart in the other hall are the safest to walk, so he doesn't follow, just keeps watch from across the way as Steve inspects the walls, hand outstretched and palm up like he's feeling for something. The extensive line of trees that blanket the rear of Buchanan House extends across all but the rooms at the very ends of the halls, and thus, any rain damage has been mitigated by their blanket of leaves, the snow held back by thick, old branches, keeping the shingles mostly intact.
Bucky trails after Steve for the next few minutes as he moves from place to place, the sounds from below muffled as he keeps himself squeezed into the craggy plaster. By the time the man makes it to the final room, he's left the lantern on the ground a foot away from the entrance and has pulled his camera from around his neck. Of all the rooms in the house, this room is the most unstable, left to the elements, half the roof sagging toward the middle, and the ground beneath where the old, rain-ruined photos have managed to stay up on the walls is... treacherous, to say the least. It makes Bucky nervous.
There's a hole in the back right corner that Bucky, as he slinks closer and closer, worries Steve might be small enough to fall right through. Still, he doesn't want to interfere. He doesn't want to scare Steve into leaving sooner than he might if he keeps hidden, so Bucky stays stuck to the dark places in the room, the very edges of where Steve might perceive his presence, and waits, tensing and relaxing with each step that the man takes, his camera pointed at the odds and ends of the study that haven't completely collapsed from time.
There's a moment where Steve gets close to the hole, but he stops a half foot from its unnoticed mouth, fiddling with his camera, and when Natasha calls from what Bucky thinks might be the stairwell, Steve turns, shifting away from the trap.
"Are you still alive up there?"
"Yeah, just grabbing a little b-roll," Steve shouts back.
Bucky uncoils and lets himself be distracted by the woman's voice because Steve will leave this area, and Bucky won't have to worry much. And, of course, that's the moment that Steve spins back toward the photos on the wall and steps forward.
The shift from two-dimensional to three always leaves Bucky reeling, especially when it's more than just his head or the odd appendage. Still, he shoots up from the cracks of darkness between the floorboards and imagines himself solid, man-shaped, with two fiddly arms and legs that propel him forward. The air pressure adjusts to new mass snapping into existence, and the door, once ajar, slams closed as he curls black-tipped clawed fingers in Steve's jacket collar just as the small man yelps and lists forward, foot and ankle disappearing into the hole and threatening to take the rest of him with it.
Bucky tugs Steve backward, underestimating himself and overestimating Steve's weight. It sends the blond sprawling back, sliding onto the ground, one hand curved protectively around the camera as it almost slips from around his nape, the other scrambling against the ground as he comes to a skidding stop just in front of the now-closed door.
There's a moment, a split-second, where Bucky has enough time to dematerialize and slide back into the in-between space he's come to favor occupying, but it's gone too quickly, and instead, when Steve looks up, wild-eyed, mouth parted in shock or fear, Bucky is frozen.
Steve doesn't blink; he doesn't move, even to scramble further away, and then Bucky realizes, with a tilt of his head, that Steve isn't breathing at just about the same time that Steve does.
When Steve tries to exhale, sitting up and throwing a hand back for the door's handle, what comes out isn't the expected shout. Instead, it's a broken wheeze, followed by a painful, choking cough. The hand holding the camera drops and flies up to his chest, and Bucky watches, a slow, dawning fear slipping over him as the man struggles to breathe.
From behind the door, the knob turning but the slab of bloated wood refusing to budge as it sticks in its now too-small frame, Bucky hears the pounding of footsteps and then the hard thump of a fist slamming into it.
"Steve!" It's the Natasha woman, her voice high with emotion, "Steve, answer me!"
Bucky watches as Steve tries to turn to the door, struggling to get his feet planted and his hands on the knob to yank with all his might as he gasps and shakes. If he doesn't manage a breath soon, Bucky thinks he'll pass out, and that thought makes worry twinge across his body like a cramp. Bucky doesn't want this man to pass out or die, and he doesn't want him trapped in this unstable room with Bucky, probably scared out of his head. So, Bucky does what he knows will help and slides across the ground, less walking and more rolling across the uneven floorboards, placing his hand above where Steve is still fruitlessly tugging at the door handle, the hiccup of his non-breathing a horrible stiletto rhythm Bucky thinks could match a pulse he doesn't have.
He feels Steve go still, even as his chest tries and fails to rise and fall without skipping around, and Bucky chances a look at the man's face, wondering what his strikingly blue eyes are seeing before he sticks his claws into the minuscule space between door and frame and lets his form dissipate one section at a time, dragging himself into the shadow that brackets the cramped edges. He concentrates, drips himself like dark liquid around the corners and into the cracks, and then expands.
The door gives with a splintering kind of groan and clatters at the hinges with a force that Bucky, as he crawls up to the ceiling to hide, worries it might hit Steve as it swings open.
Natasha falls forward but doesn't let the surprise of the door banging open slow her down. She hurries into the room, and Bucky watches, curling a piece of himself around the casing, as she goes to her knees where Steve has fallen again and puts her hand flat on his chest before digging into her pocket and pulling out a small square of tin and plastic that she shoves not very kindly between the blond man's lips, pressing down on the canister and holding it there until Steve, who had caught her wrist, squeezes once and manages a steadyish inhale.
When his breathing levels out entirely and he's wiped the panicked tears from his eyes, Natasha shakes Steve's shoulders, her expression tight.
"What the hell just happened?"
Steve turns his eyes to the room, to the threshold where Bucky shrinks away just a little, even as he's hidden from human sight.
"I don't- there was-" Steve turns his still wild gaze toward the corner of the room where Bucky had grabbed him before he could fall through the hole in the floor, then he cranes his head toward the hall again, squinting as he unsteadily gets to his feet.
"There was?" Natasha prompts, putting what Bucky has determined is some kind of breathing apparatus into the inner pocket Steve had rummaged in earlier.
Steve swallows thick enough that Bucky can see it even as he twists himself tighter into his thread of darkness. He's waiting for the inevitable and isn't looking forward to sequestering himself into the smallest, most out-of-the-way thatch of shadows for however long this group remains in the manor as they look for the 'monster.'
"...There was a hole," Steve says, his shoulders straightening as he adjusts the camera to lay flat on his chest and meets Natasha's eyes. "Almost stepped through the floor and overcompensated going backward. The door got stuck, and I overreacted." There is a moment where Natasha looks at Steve like she's searching for a half-truth. If she doesn't believe him, she doesn't push, only heaving a sigh before urging him out of the room with gentle shoves at his back.
If not for the fact that Bucky sees Steve look over his shoulder in his general direction, he'd have assumed the man had been so scared he'd convinced himself that Bucky hadn't been there at all. But those eyes, searching around the fringes of the doorway for a trace of Bucky, belayed the truth.
They don't leave like he assumes they will, but Steve is tucked close to Natasha's or Sam's side for the rest of their stay in Buchanan House. None of them, even cocksure Rumlow, go toward the last room down the left hallway.
When they do depart, all except Steve, who carries tension in his small frame, seem disappointed that nothing had answered their questions or moved things upon request. Bucky watches them from the same window he'd watched them arrive as they load their equipment into the car and wonders if he's tricking himself into believing Steve looks up and picks him out of the darkness he blends into before driving away.
Bucky's not expecting much to change after the group leaves. They tend not to return when Bucky doesn't indulge them, and though, sometimes, he imagines indulging them, leaving himself to keep them around, he never does; too nervous about the lights they carry and the fear he sees so often in human eyes. And yet, the following day, closer to early evening than sundown, a vehicle chugging up the forest path to the front of the house stirs Bucky from his drift.
The engine of this car rattles more than the one from the day before, and though it's more irritating with the bright light, Bucky finds a shaded owl hole to squeeze himself into so he can watch as the car comes to a squealing stop a foot or so away from the front stairs of the manor. It's small, blue, and half-rusted across the hood, and when Steve steps out, no camera and no friends with him, something determined pulling his mouth into a flat line, Bucky finds himself both charmed that the car seems to match its owner so perfectly and a bit scared. They never come back, not so soon, and not alone. But Steve had seen him, felt him, and now he's back.
For a moment, Bucky considers materializing downstairs and keeping the doors from opening, but it's too bright, and he doesn't have the energy to move so quickly. And... he's curious, Steve is curious.
It's only too easy to make his way down to the ground level, using the sparse pockets of darkness he feels comfortable in. It's more challenging in the daytime, but he manages to avoid the places where holes in the ceiling and upper portion of the house floor flood the dim crevices Bucky typically uses. He reaches the bottom of the stairwell by the time Steve has made his way inside, not moving further into the house past the foot he'd needed to clear to close the front doors.
For a long beat, nothing happens. Each second slipping past makes the atmosphere uncomfortable as Steve seems to be gathering his courage to speak. When he finally does, Bucky almost gives himself away with a laugh over the cliche.
"Uh, hello. Is- is anyone here?"
Bucky doesn't answer, though he does draw closer. Steve is dressed similarly to the day before, though the plaid of his shirt is blue instead of red, and it makes his eyes brighter where a slanting ray of sunlight cuts across his face, fracturing the pop of cornflower blue through the frames of his glasses. Rather than grow less assured the longer he goes unanswered, Bucky watches with rapt curiosity as Steve's gaze goes steely.
"Look." Steve starts again, something telling Bucky if he weren't worried about punching a hole in the ground with the action, he'd have stomped his foot for effect, "I know you're here. I didn't just imagine you. So come out."
He shouldn't. Bucky knows he shouldn't. People don't react all that well when he does, and as alone or as bored as he gets, he's comfortable in Buchanan House. It's safe and filled with a thousand places to curl up during the day without the risk of dispelling. But... but maybe he's been left to his own devices for too long, and really, there's only a hint of hesitance clinging to the blond man in his assertion of Bucky's existence.
"Kinda rude, making demands in someone's house, doncha think?"
To Steve's credit, he doesn't jump or scream, but that could just be because he hasn't spotted Bucky yet, taller now that he's let himself lift from where the moulding and the floor connect into the darkest corner of the front room, still mostly one with the inky space that lives there. Still, there's no mistaking his hard swallow or the way his shoulders start creeping up toward his ears, the way his back foot lifts just an inch off the ground in preparation to hightail it out of the house.
"Uh- right. I, well, I'm sorry about that."
Bucky thinks he might actually be, just a little, beneath the spike of fear that's choking his words.
"Don't worry about it," Bucky shrugs even though he's sure Steve can't see it.
They lapse into silence, and even Bucky can tell it's awkward. Steve's eyes are still darting around the general area of where Bucky's voice had come from but unable to pick his edges out from all the gloom. He thinks about reaching out a tendril, risking the lancing little pickets of sunlight to brush up against Steve's hand, just to see what he'll do, but then he opens his mouth and speaks again, and Bucky feels a bit too stunned to try.
"I, uh, I wanted to say thank you for yesterday." Steve clearly gives up on locating Bucky because he starts to talk to the open air, a rosy hue blooming across the tops of his sharp cheekbones. "I probably woulda gotten pretty hurt if you hadn't pulled me away from that hole, and then opening that door..." he trails off and clears his throat before his gaze slides back to Bucky's corner. "It was you that opened the door, right?"
"My fault it got that way in the first place." Though, Bucky supposes that if they were to trace the fault of the door back to its source it would point to Steve. He doesn't say as much, but something about the way the blond's eyebrows come together in a furrow and his mouth pulls down lets Bucky know he's doing the mental backtrack, too. "So that's all you come back for? To say thanks?"
Steve scuffs his boot across the ground, his gaze moving away, and it's a display of bashfulness that almost draws Bucky entirely from his hiding place, the way his cheeks go pink with color, the same flush splashing across the tops of his ears and yet, there's still that determined, strong-jawed look on his face in total dichotomy to the where his hand has landed on the back of his neck to scratch.
"You're not a ghost," Steve declares after a moment, the embarrassment slipping away. He straightens himself, his shoulders leveling out and his hand falling back to his side. He sounds sure, and Bucky supposes that makes sense. The kind of people who come to the manor now are the ones who hunt ghosts, after all.
Back in the sixties, it had taken a few times for Bucky to realize that's what the new visitors were doing. Each time he heard wheels up the drive, the distant sound of voices, sometimes even of children's laughter, Bucky would grow excited, eager that perhaps this time, the new residents of Buchanan House would stay, that if there were a friend to be made in a teenager or bored kid he might have the opportunity for company. But they were always groups of four or five, mismatched in a way that would tell Bucky there was no relation between them, even if they weren't laden with equipment and workers' clothes.
“What makes you so sure,” Bucky can’t help himself from asking. He’s never gotten the chance to question those other visitors. He knows why they think Buchanan House is haunted, but to say he’s not curious about what brings them specifically to its halls would be a lie.
Steve goes still, but it’s not the rigidness of fear or anger. Carefully, he lifts a hand to his chest, resting almost over his heart. The closer Bucky looks, however, he sees the faint outline of a circular shape between the cotton of his shirt.
“I’ve seen ghosts,” Steve says, voice low, distant though he’s only a handful of feet away. Then he shakes himself and tries to meet Bucky’s eyes. “I know the difference.”
There’s a new kind of tension, a seriousness that Bucky hadn’t expected and doesn’t want around, worried it might grow too heavy and send Steve back into the light of day where he can’t follow.
"Is that why you didn't bring your friends along?" Bucky hums, trying to break the pressure, change the subject.
Steve shakes his head, then, brow still furrowed, nods, then shrugs, some of the sharpness leaving as he works through Bucky’s question.
"Not a ghost, not their problem." Steve reasons once he settles, and Bucky holds back a snort. "And..." the blond continues, keeping Bucky's attention and stealing his amusement as those blue eyes slide back toward Bucky's general direction, "I didn't think you'd want them coming back and bothering you."
"And you're not?" Bucky realizes it's the wrong thing to tease because Steve's expression closes, his shoulders climbing back toward his ears.
"You're right, I shouldn't have- I should go. Sorry." Steve bites out the apology, like he wants to keep it trapped behind his teeth but was raised with a little too much politeness not to at least pretend. Without thinking, as Steve takes a step backward toward the front door, Bucky reaches forward, his arm shooting out from the shadowy corner he's still mostly tucked in.
Steve freezes. Bucky freezes. When neither of them seems like they're going to move, Bucky decides, well, the other hasn't gone running for the hills just yet.
Peeling himself away from the shadows of the drawing room is hard. The sunlight is an ever-present entity just outside, feeling like something pushing against the back of Bucky's eyes when he materializes them. It's a threat and a promise that there would be consequences if he weren't careful. Still, he does it, side-stepping into a faintly lit space against the wall, the breath he doesn't need held as his 'skin' adjusts to being in something other than darkness.
"Oh," Steve says once Bucky stops and meets his gaze. He hasn't moved any closer toward the exit, but a part of his stance has gone slack with shock, like his brain is using all of its strength to make sense of what he's seeing instead of preparing his body to take flight against danger. "You're..." he trails off, and Bucky tries not to shift uncomfortably, shrugging instead to keep up the pretense of nonchalance.
It’s been too many years since he has been looked at. He has a faint idea of what Steve is seeing. A body that's not a body, blackness in the shape of limbs that should look more like a trick of the imagination instead of anything tangible, wisps of what could be hair, chin length, if the protrusion around where a chin might be could be called that. It's the eyes he's probably most startled by. Bucky has seen himself in a mirror occasionally, but as a being with an amorphous shape, most of the time, he hadn't cared much about what he saw looking back at him. There hadn't been anyone to worry about seeing him anyway. Still, when there are, he knows it's always the eyes that startle. Jimmy Buchanan had been scared the first time, too, though he'd quickly brushed it off; a brave kid, probably until the very end if Bucky had to guess.
'They look like they're just floatin' there Buck! Two people eyes!'
They're a grey-blue, striking and bright from where they rest in Bucky's sometimes not-face.
"I thought," Steve says, some of the surprise falling off him as he gathers his nerve again, like it's something second nature to pull his spine straight and give himself an extra inch of height, "Well, I guess I thought maybe it was just so dark yesterday I was making things up. But you're really, uh, I mean-" He cuts himself off, and Bucky can't help smiling but quickly stops, aware that the teeth, straight and white, might be more unsettling than the eyes. It’s nice that Steve seems to take care in not offending Bucky by pointing out his strangeness.
"Regret not bringin' your camera?" It's easy, Bucky realizes, standing solid in front of another person in what might be close to fifty years, to tease Steve, to break the tension with words that make the blond man's mouth purse in a flash of indignation.
"No." It's a firm reply, sure and steady. Bucky wants to smile again; instead, he sits on the ground, folding his legs and stretching out a hand, gesturing for Steve to do the same, only half expecting him to accept the invitation to hang around. If a small part of himself is scared Steve won't, Bucky ignores it. He's gotten used to the solitude of Buchanan House, and having expectations for more is... unreasonable. When Steve does sit a foot closer even, Bucky ignores the thrill of that, too.
"I'm Steve, by the way," Steve says, and Bucky nods like he hadn't known that before, though he thinks by the way Steve squints at him, he might not be able to make out the movement so easily while staring at Bucky head on, so Bucky gives his own name in return and watches as Steve's brows furrow, his lips silently working the word around like it confuses him.
"It's old," Bucky offers.
"How old?" Steve asks, what little hesitance finally shucked off. He props his elbow on his knee and rests his chin on his open palm, almost relaxed in Bucky's dilapidated home. The attention from him is like a blanket over Bucky's shoulder, and he fights the urge to slink a bit closer, aware that he could tip the careful balance they're held in at any moment.
"Not as old as me.”
A curious light goes off behind Steve's eyes, softening his expression and making him lean toward Bucky, unthinking. It's the first time in so long that someone has done so in his presence that it settles in Bucky's stomach, a simmering coal to warm him through.
When Steve asks Bucky, "Okay... and how old is that? " Bucky answers. He answers the question that comes after as well, and the one after that, and so on until he realizes the pressure of the omnipresent sun is no longer pressing against him in odd, sharp ways, dusk settling outside and filling him with energy.
Though Steve doesn't have the same extra-sensory issues, Bucky is sure, he seems to realize that it's getting dark around the same time Bucky does and turns his head toward the front doors.
"I didn't realize how late it was getting," he mutters more than anything, saying it to himself before his attention slips back toward Bucky. "I uh... the road up here is pretty hard to navigate in the dark."
Steve has to leave. Bucky knew he would, that he'd have to. Even if Buchanan House had once been fit for inhabitants, it hasn't seen those same luxuries in so long, and there's nothing there to keep a person as thin as Steve comfortable once the night chill really settles in. Those rationalities don't ease the pang of disappointment, though, or the frantic whisper of 'Don't let him leave' from rearing up in his head.
In the briefest of moments, Bucky considers how nice it would be to keep Steve here in the house. Steve is beautiful and interesting, a brightness to him that could rival the sun but gentle enough for Bucky to withstand. They’ve spoken for hours, and it’s been so long since Bucky had spoken to anyone, drugging up words and memories he hadn’t realized he’d forgotten, because there’s no point in remembering if there’s no one to share them with.
It wouldn’t be hard. Bucky knows the safe spaces, the hidden spaces where Steve could be kept, and while Bucky has a limit to how much of him there is, Steve is small, and it wouldn’t take much to get him to a part of the house he couldn’t leave.
If Bucky had a stomach it would roll. He gets a little bit of company for the first time in years and suddenly he’s having nasty thoughts. Disgusted with himself, Bucky fights to keep a subvocalation of displeasure held down. He might look like a monster at first glance, but he isn’t.
"You should go," Bucky says, forcing his smile, though with the room only growing dimmer, he knows Steve is unable to read the unease in the expression any better than he'd been when he could see. "Before it gets too bad."
He follows Steve to the door, the same distance they've been the whole time, careful not to appear looming as he starts to melt into the new creases of black coming to life in the house and stops short when the other man turns around and looks at Bucky with the increasingly familiar determination he's starting to think might just be default Steve.
"Can I come back tomorrow?" It’s a question, but Steve asks it like a formality because it’s rude to invite oneself back to a home that isn’t theirs. Steve wants to return, wants to see Bucky again, and it would take the air out of Bucky’s lungs if he had them.
"Yes." Bucky tries not to be eager about it, though he's unsure if he succeeds, following up with a "Just leave the cameras at home" and the closest thing to a wink he can do to try and mask it. Steve's face pinches, unimpressed, as he gets a hand around the front door's rusting handle.
"Obviously, Buck." Then he smiles, bright, a flash of sunshine that Bucky's worried might incinerate him before leaving, letting the door close behind him with a soft click and taking the sunlight with him.
Bucky tries not to have too much faith that Steve will keep his word and come back; people are fickle, and accidents happen. Jimmy had said he'd come back, too. But still, he can't help himself and spends until the first fingers of dawn start to creep across the ground floor window sills preparing for the man's return. It's hard work, mainly because Bucky has to remind himself of what humans feel like, what his sometimes too-long limbs are meant to resemble when confined to the facade of a person. Still, he manages an approximation by the time midday passes, and the sound of Steve's clunker comes from the front yard.
The look of surprise on Steve's face when he first lays eyes on Bucky is hilarious. The way he reaches for the breathing device in his jacket and takes two puffs, skin alternating between much too pale and much too pink, is not. Bucky almost makes the mistake of leaving the darkest part of the room to check on him but remembers just as he unfolds his now ashen-colored legs, turning the movement into something resembling stretching instead.
"You-" Steve says, still blinking owlishly from where he's lingering in the house's entryway. "You've got skin."
"In a manner of speaking," Bucky says. "It's kinda like camouflage. S'not really skin. Just like this," he lifts the edge of the shirt he's fashioned for himself, short in the sleeves, "isn't really cloth."
Steve, seeming to rebound faster than the day prior, nods and finally closes the door, taking easy steps toward Bucky before lowering himself down a little closer than he was when they'd been sitting before.
"So what is it made from?"
"Me."
Bucky has to stifle a laugh when Steve visibly blanches, but Bucky heads off Steve’s curiosity.
"Tell me about yourself."
They'd spent almost all their talking yesterday focused on Bucky, and now he thinks it's his turn to learn, to listen. Still, the request pulls Steve up short, his eyebrows coming together momentarily before leveling out.
"I'm not that interesting," he mutters, scratching at the back of his neck as his skin flushes. Bucky wants to reach across the distance between them to feel the heat of it.
"You're probably more interesting than the rats in the walls," Bucky offers, as if the assurance is a gift, and smiles when Steve rolls his eyes, cottoning on to the light jab.
"Gee, thanks," the blond huffs, settling even more on the ground before taking a breath and starting to speak. "So, I grew up in Brooklyn..."
Two more days pass in the same way.
Steve arrives, he sits (closer and closer as the hours slide by until they're almost knee to knee, Bucky shaping himself more easily into the likeness of a man, his skin losing the gray pallor, his hair brown and soft instead of inky and clumped as though wet), and they talk. They share stories and anecdotes, even dreams when the sun dips lower, and the forest around the manor grows hushed with the lack of birdsong.
Bucky learns that Steve is an only child, that he'd been sickly all his life, but he'd made the best of it. He’d had a mother that had loved him fiercely, and then… he didn’t. It's what led him, Bucky had been told, to SHIELD media, holding a camera, and spending nights in damp, creepy houses in the middle of the woods where ghosts were supposed to roam with his two best friends and sometimes Brock Rumlow. It’s why he has a locket under his shirt, held close and precious to his heart, a photo he shared with Bucky, hands trembling faintly as he passes over the jewelry for Bucky to see better.
"Aren't you ever worried?" Bucky had asked, handing back the locket, understanding the reverence the object represented, the love.
"About what?"
"Meeting a real ghost one day?"
Steve had looked at Bucky for a long moment, lashline wet with unshed tears, and then he’d smiled, small and secretive and soft, his eyes becoming half crescents as he shook his head, huffing laughter into the open thermos he'd been sipping from.
"No, Buck. I've never been all that scared."
A part of Bucky had wondered if Steve might also have been saying something like, 'And I'm not scared of you either.'
When Steve has visited Bucky every day for nearly a week, Bucky is expecting the pattern to hold. He shouldn't, he knows he shouldn't. But hope that Steve will keep coming to the house with his lunch bag and something interesting to show Bucky on the small black brick he'd explained was a telephone, but also so much more, is too addictive to set aside where it's safer. So, really, it shouldn't be a surprise that instead, on the eve of their seventh meeting, Steve is slow to come out of his car, hesitant in a way he hasn't been since that first afternoon, seeking Bucky out. He doesn't so much as walk up the stairs with an eager skip in his step as he trudges, and though it irritates his form, a coil of darkness leeched away by a shaft of sunlight, Bucky leaves the safety of his far wall to meet Steve toward the middle of the front room when he finally makes his entrance.
Steve, eyes downtrodden, almost immediately snaps to attention at Bucky's closeness, and for the first time, he moves quickly, hands outstretched to push Bucky back into the safety of the shadowy spaces of the room.
"Are you insane?" Steve is upset, and not just about Bucky foolishly putting himself closer to daylight than he'd needed. He doesn't bother answering Steve's question. It had probably been rhetorical anyway.
"What's wrong?"
He knows. He knows what it is already. Doesn't need Steve to say it. But that damned hope wraps around him, and he wants Steve to say it's nothing at all, a lie if nothing else.
Steve stops trying to shove Bucky just around the time he seems to realize he's touching Bucky and moves back in a hurry, almost sending himself to his ass by half-tripping over a warped floorboard, only just catching himself as his gaze shifts away, the back of his neck pink. Still, even when he's recentered himself, Bucky safe in the semi-darkness, Steve doesn't speak for a long, tense moment, and when he does, it's what Bucky had known was coming.
"The team's leaving Indiana tonight."
Steve is leaving Indiana tonight. And isn't it odd that while Bucky isn't surprised that Steve is going (because they all leave, they always leave), he hasn't known the name of the place he was in until now? It feels wrong, almost, to be caught on that instead of the truth of the matter. Steve isn’t here to continue his tale about being forced onto a rollercoaster by his friends so many times he’d thrown up and the revenge he’d taken. He’s here to say goodbye.
"Oh," Bucky replies because what else is there for him to say? It's already enough of an effort not to let himself melt into the cracks between the floorboards. He doesn't need to add talking into the mix.
Steve looks contrite, his face all pinched up and wrong, but Bucky doesn't know what to say to make it stop being that way, just like how he doesn't know how to tell Steve he doesn't want to be left alone in this house anymore.
"It didn't feel right," Steve continues after it's clear that Bucky doesn't have a means to fill the silence, "leaving and not saying anything. I didn't want- you shouldn't have to..." he doesn't finish the thought. The fourth night Steve returned, Bucky had told him about the others- when the blond had stayed past sundown and eaten a wrapped sandwich, half of which he'd offered to Bucky. He'd told Steve about little Jimmy Buchanan, the Mayhues who'd come after, and the infrequent visitors.
He hadn’t mentioned the pain of realizing Jimmy wasn’t coming back when Mrs. and Mr. Buchanan had received a letter and useless condolences from the officer delivering it. Hadn’t told him about the shock when the little girl sometime after, Suzy, had cried and screamed at him to go away when he’d tried to speak to her, how he’d kept to the attic until the family had gone. Hadn’t said how all those strangers barging into this house in search of a monster started to make Bucky question if he really was one.
Bucky hadn’t told Steve any of this, but it’s clear now from the way Steve holds himself, staring up at Bucky with sorrow and regret in his eyes that he’d figured Bucky out all the same.
"Thank you," Bucky manages after a beat, his voice tight, hands balled into fists at his sides so that Steve doesn't have to see how the tips of his fingers have started going black where his slipping state of mind has begun manifesting.
Steve nods once, eyes trained on Bucky, then again, but with his head toward the floor, unable to meet his stare any longer. Somehow, the line of Steve's shoulders goes even more taut.
"I should go. I- They'll need me to help pack up the cars."
Bucky is glad Steve can't look at him while he says it. It doesn't make it easier to watch Steve go. It was nice, having something close to a… friend? Companion? Whatever they grew into, Bucky doesn’t want it to end, but Steve isn’t looking at him, and that gives Bucky enough mind to keep quiet long enough to allow Steve to walk out the door. The echo of it closing rings through the house, the silence that follows oppressive and heavy in Steve’s absence. Bucky can't believe there'd been a time when he hadn't felt the quiet's weight so acutely.
He's just slinking backward toward the wall, debating on what would be the more appropriate hole to hide in, rat or owl, when there's a pounding up the front steps, each one thumping with an ominous creak that makes Bucky's eyes widen with worry each time it happens until the door is flung open and slamming behind Steve who stalks forward, tense as he'd been when he'd left less than a handful of minutes before.
Bucky's almost glad he's against the wall, half sunk into it already, because Steve doesn't stop his approach until they're practically chest to chest, the small man's chin tipped upward, his mouth a pink gash of firm resolve.
"Come with me."
Bucky blinks, and when Steven reaches a hand forward, brushing the shirt that isn't a shirt, the blond's expression softens. He shakes his head and takes a breath; there is a rattle in it that Bucky ignores.
"Come with me," Steve repeats, fainter, less like he's on the front lines of a war. It helps Bucky find his voice through the shock, but not by much.
"I- what?"
Steve's hand presses down on Bucky's chest, strong and intentional and so warm that Bucky is starting to realize like he had with the silence, that he's been cold for a very long time.
"I want you to come with me." Something unsure flashes across Steve's expression, but before Bucky can try to parse the potential spinning out in front of him to help ease it away, Steve continues, his fingers curling into Bucky's not-shirt. "You're alone here. You're alone here, and I don't want you to be. But I can't stay, and you can leave, so... so come with me. I'm not saying it'll be easy. SHIELD has me on the road more often than I'm home, but..." Steve's cornflower eyes are practically glowing, the light from outside simmering into a burnished yellow, making them stark in the encroaching twilight. "I don't want to leave you here. So come with me."
Even with Steve clutching him, looking at him straight on, a part of Bucky doesn't believe what he's hearing, that this opportunity, this extended hand, can't be real. But Bucky blinks again, and Steve is still there. He lifts his hand to touch Steve's wrist, the first contact with another living thing that hasn't tried to bite first, and he doesn’t disappear.
Bucky opens his mouth and says a shuddering "Okay," and Steve doesn't move away; he doesn't take it back or tell him that it was a joke. Steve smiles and turns his hand to take Bucky's, their fingers sliding together into a secure lattice. He pulls Bucky toward the door, beaming, walking backward, uncaring as his feet catch snags and floorboard lips, barely managing to stay upright. It's only when Steve reaches for the door handle that Bucky pulls them to a stop, feeling only a little bad when Steve's expression drops, the thrill dying in a sharp, cold slap. He opens his mouth, but Bucky smiles and tips his head toward the light that's only just starting to flag enough for Bucky to come closer to the splashing pools that hit the floor.
"It's too bright. You need to get me something to crawl into."
“No, yeah, no, I remember just,” he turns sheepish, the color Bucky likes best blotting his cheeks, “got a little caught up in the moment, I guess.” Then, still keeping his one hand tangled with Bucky’s, he reaches the other under his shirt collar and pulls the locket out, eyes darting from Bucky’s face to the smooth round surface of the prized possession. “Do you think you’d fit into this?”
Bucky thinks if he had the ability to do so, he might cry. He nods and waits only one more second, just to confirm that Steve is sure, before folding himself down and through the openings of the clasp. It's snug but comfortable; the scent of fading photo paper and metal, cool and safe, surrounds him. He feels it as Steve lifts the locket, preparing to return it to its resting place under his clothes and against his heart, and thrums as the blond whispers softly to him.
“I’ve got you, pal.”
‘Pal.’ Bucky likes the sound of that.