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“That’s a cat,” Steve says, as soon as Bucky walks through the door.
Bucky drops the animal in question on the table beside the door, freeing his arms up to shrug out of his jacket. For a single, hilarious moment, both he and the animal shake in an effort to rid themselves of the water covering them.
“Yep,” Bucky agrees, and he picks up the, frankly, hideous creature and disappears into the kitchen.
Steve stares after him for a moment, then jumps off the sofa and follows him.
“Why is there a cat?” he asks, and he flails for a moment, as if unsure what to do with his hands.
Bucky shrugs, holding the creature with his left arm while he searches the cupboards for a plastic bowl, but doesn’t answer.
Steve stares.
Bucky finds a bowl and fills it with water, and sets it on the ground. He then heads for the fridge, pulls out the leftovers from last night’s roast and sets the plate on the ground, too.
Then he puts the cat down right in front of them, straightens up, and leans against the sink. He crosses his arms, staring at the creature for a moment before turning his gaze to Steve.
“It looked sad,” he says, after a moment.
For a moment, the only sound is the – the monster,chowing down on what was originally going to be Steve’s afternoon snack, and then –
“It looked sad?” Steve blurts. “Bucky, that’s a – it’s a –”
“Cat, Steve. Not a demon.”
Steve narrows his eyes, unable to form a coherent response.
“Besides,” Bucky continues, and he leans down to scratch behind the offending creature’s ears. “He’s cute.”
Steve stares down at the ginger monstrosity, taking in the matted fur, the damaged ear, the fact that it’s missing an eye, and he sighs.
“Bucky, we can’t take care of a cat.”
“Sure we can,” Bucky says, purposefully not looking up at him. “We’ve done it before.”
Steve rolls his eyes, but he leans against the doorframe so as not to appearing threatening – Bucky still goes on the defensive, sometimes, when Steve tries to use his size to his advantage; most of his memories are from before the war, when Steve was still… small.
“Buck,” he says. “That was a mouser, not a pet. I don’t think it counts.”
“Hey,” Bucky complains. “He used to sleep on my bunk, and I distinctly recall someone sharing their rations when it got colder.”
“He would have starved!”
Bucky laughs, but he nods. “Yeah, you keep telling yourself that, Rogers.”
They stand in silence for a moment, both of them staring at the cat, and then Steve sighs.
“We can’t keep him, Buck.”
When Bucky turns to him, his face is reminiscent of his Winter Soldier days – broken and confused and everything Steve wants to forget.
“As soon as the storm passes,” he continues. “You’re taking him to a shelter.”
Bucky smiles, and it lights up Steve’s world.
The cat hates Steve.
It perches on the arm of the sofa when Bucky is out of the house, which thankfully isn’t often, given the storm, and every time Steve walks past, it hisses and scratches at him.
It curls up in Bucky’s lap, sometimes, too, when they’re watching movies, and if Steve even attempts to lean against Bucky’s side, it yowls and complains and digs its claws into Steve’s thigh.
“Alright, seriously,” Steve says, two days after the storm has ended and Bucky is still finding excuses to keep it. “Last night I went to the kitchen and he was just waiting on the counter to attack me. You have got to take him to the shelter, Buck.”
“You’re just mad because he’s a bigger cock-block than the job.”
“Of course I’m mad!” Steve starts. “You’d be mad, too, if a – a ginger menace tried to claw at your dick!”
Bucky snorts from his position on the sofa, his entertainment made worse by the fact that he’s got the cat in his lap and it’s purring contentedly as he strokes it.
“‘Ginger menace’,” he echoes breathily, and pauses. “That’s a good name for him.”
“No,” Steve says. Then, pointing a finger at Bucky, “no, Buck.”
“Too late,” Bucky says, and he pushes the cat until he’s on his back, facing up at him. “You like that name?” he asks it, scratching gently at the animal’s stomach. “Huh? Are you our little Menace?”
The cat, the little shit, meows happily and starts to play with Bucky’s fingers.
“I give up,” Steve says, throwing his hands in the air, and he heads for the door.
“Oh, hey, Steve, come on!” Bucky calls after him. “I’m only joking!”
Steve makes a vague noise, and pulls the door shut gently behind him.
He calls Natasha first, but all she does is tell him ‘suck it up, Rogers’ and laugh until he hangs up on her.
Neither Tony nor Bruce answer their phones, and when Clint picks up, all Steve hears is a muffled groan and a snore.
He calls Sam, and he answers on the third ring.
“Hey, Cap,” he says. “I hear you got yourself a cat.”
“It’s a demon,” Steve answers immediately.
Sam laughs, but he agrees to meet somewhere for coffee.
“So what you’re telling me,” Sam starts, half an hour later, when they’re settled in the corner booth at an out-of-the-way coffee shop. “Is that Bucky did what you guys always do – saved some poor thing – and you’re just mad because you haven’t had sex in three days.”
“Yes!” Steve says, and then, “wait, no!” but Sam is already laughing.
“Why’s it such a big deal?” Sam asks.
Steve wants to shrug, but he knows the Sam won’t accept it as an answer.
“I don’t know,” he says, and isn’t surprised at the face he gets for his trouble. “I don’t want him to get attached.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s a – he’s – we’re superheroes. We don’t have time to look after a-” he stumbles, then corrects himself, “a cat.”
Sam stares at him, eyebrows raised, and says nothing for a few moments.
“You know a cat isn’t a kid, right?”
Steve opens his mouth, but doesn’t say anything for a second. “Of course,” he says quickly. “It’s a – it’s completely different.”
Sam stares at him again, his lips twitching as he tries to hold back a smile, but eventually he gives in.
“Have you two had any big developments lately? Other than the whole ‘we’ve been in love for seventy years’ thing, I mean.”
“No,” Steve says, and he smiles, just slightly, when he remembers how big of a help Sam had been when they’d been trying to come to terms with their feelings. “But…”
“Something’s coming, right?”
Steve nods, looking down at his hands, curled around his coffee cup. “Yeah,” he says. “I think Buck is – I think he wants to get out.”
“Of where?”
“The job,” Steve says, and he looks up. “I think he’s done being a hero.”
Sam doesn’t say anything for a moment, but then he nods. “Are you?”
Steve – doesn’t have an answer for that, and he says as much. “I want to give Bucky the chance to do what he wants,” he says, after. “And if that means letting him – I don’t know, move to the country and start a family, then so be it.”
“So you won’t go with him?”
“What?”
“If he wants to move to the country and start a family. Will you go with him, if he asks?”
“If he asks, sure, but we’re not-”
“Talking about that, I know. We’re talking about the fact that Bucky brought home a cat, and you think it means that he wants to start a family.”
Steve stares at Sam for a minute, not entirely sure what’s just come out of his mouth.
“I know,” Sam says. “Weird, right?”
Steve looks down at his hands again, searching his coffee for answers, but finds nothing. “I should talk to him,” he decides, and looks up again.
“Yeah,” Sam agrees, and the smile he gives is nothing but reassuring. “I think that’d be best.”
When Steve gets home, both Bucky and the cat are missing.
“Buck?” he calls, searching every room to no avail.
He’s just about to go into a panic and call someone when he hears the front door open.
When he steps into the hall, Bucky is there, shrugging out of his jacket and pulling his single glove from his left hand.
“Everything alright?” he asks, stepping forward, but not close enough to touch.
Bucky shrugs, and he looks up. “Yeah,” he says, though his voice is quiet.
“Where’s Menace?” Steve asks.
“I took him to the shelter,” Bucky replies, but there’s no emotion in it, and he steps past Steve and heads for the kitchen. “Thought I should do it, before I got too attached.”
Steve follows, watching as Bucky kneels down to clean up the food and water he’d set out that morning.
“Are you – sure?” he asks, his heart doing funny things when he sees how dejected Bucky looks.
“Yeah,” Bucky says, not at all convincingly. “You didn’t like him, and he was a stray, anyway, so-”
“Do you want kids?” Steve says suddenly, interrupting.
Bucky stills, halfway to standing, and slowly turns to stare at Steve.
After a few, tense moments, he exhales slowly. “What?”
“Do you… want kids?” Steve asks again.
“You’re not… pregnant, are you, Steve?” Bucky asks, and he straightens up. “Because, you know, you should probably have mentioned that was possible before we started-”
“No!” Steve shouts, and he can feel the blush forming on his cheeks. “No, I just meant – you brought home a cat, and I thought-”
“You thought me bringing home a cat meant that I wanted to have your superbabies?” Bucky asks, eyes wide. “Steve, listen, you’ve got to stop reading all that-”
“I’m serious, Bucky!” Steve interrupts, again, and he only feels a little guilty for raising his voice. “I just,” he starts, quieter this time. “I want to know what you – what you want. If you want to – to stay here, or if you want to move, somewhere, or if you want-”
“Kids?” Bucky finishes, and he turns to set the bowls in his hands on the counter.
“Yeah,” Steve whispers. The floor suddenly becomes very interesting.
Steve hears, more than sees, Bucky step forward, and he looks up in surprise when a cold hand touches his cheek.
“I want to be with you,” Bucky says quietly. “Whether we stay here or we move somewhere, I want to be with you.”
Steve’s heart jumps, landing somewhere near his throat, and he can’t speak for fear of crying.
“And I do want kids,” he continues. “Not right now, but – one day. Maybe. If you want them, too, and you promise that neither of us is going to have to go through childbirth. Or carry a toddler to an alternate dimension.”
Bucky laughs, then, making Steve snort a little disgustingly, and he brushes a thumb under Steve’s eye when a tear falls to his cheek.
“Whatever you want is what I want, Steve,” Bucky tells him, and when Steve meets his gaze there is so much emotion there that he feels like he can’t breathe. “Because I love you, and I want to be with you, kids or no kids. And cat or no cat.”
Steve leans forward before he even thinks, pressing his lips to Bucky’s and holding on to him for dear life. His fingers curl at Bucky’s waist, pulling them as close together as they can possibly be, and he sighs into Bucky’s mouth when he feels fingers twist in his hair.
“I love you, too, Buck,” he whispers, when they stop for air.
Bucky laughs gently, smoothing down Steve’s hair, and smiles. “Does this mean I can keep the cat?” he asks.
“I thought you took him to the shelter?”
Bucky’s expression goes sheepish, for a moment, and he doesn’t meet Steve’s gaze. “Well… Natasha’s house has shelter, so… yes? Technically?”
Steve steps out of Bucky’s arms and slaps him on the shoulder, but he’s smiling. “Jerk.”
“Punk,” Bucky replies immediately. “But can you blame me?”
Steve rolls his eyes, and walks out of the kitchen.
“Hey!” Bucky calls after him. He leans out of the kitchen, watching Steve pull on his jacket with a concerned expression. “Where are you going?”
“You really want to leave Natasha in charge of babysitting?” Steve asks, and he already has Bucky’s jacket in hand when he reaches for it. “That’s what I thought.”
“You’re really going to let me keep him?” Bucky asks, and he sounds as excited as a three year old.
“On one condition.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“No cats in the bedroom.”
Bucky laughs, pulling the door shut behind him, and nudges Steve in the shoulder.
“Alright, Rogers,” he says. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”