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Bucky glanced over at his phone as he heard it rattle around just out of arm's reach, saw Steve’s name stretched across the bright display and rolled his eyes.
He should have expected the phone call and planned better — or preemptively called Steve earlier. He couldn’t answer the phone from where he sat on the floor, baby goat cradled between his crossed legs. Cyrus had just started this bottle and would take at least fifteen minutes to get through it. He was still getting used to not having his mother to feed from.
Bucky fondled the silky white ears and hoped Steve didn’t panic in the time it would take him to return the missed call.
Five years had passed since his suicide attempt, since Wanda had managed to get him a solid week of good sleep and he’d clawed himself out of the hole he’d been in.
He had left the tower to set up his animal rescue just under three years ago, and Steve had been religious about calling once a week ever since. Steve believed a consistent routine was what Bucky needed and was religious about calling at the same time each week — and if a mission messed with that timeline JARVIS had a protocol to follow that notified Bucky.
Bucky always fondly rolled his eyes when that happened. It didn’t bother him if the weekly call was late, he more than able to handle himself without the frequent check-ins. But he knew it made Steve feel better, so he didn’t say anything.
It wasn’t time for the normal call, but Bucky had seen the calendar that morning — he knew it was the anniversary of Clint’s death. Knew that Steve was agitated he was planning on spending it alone.
But he’d just taken Cyrus in the previous week, and he hadn’t wanted to bring someone out to watch the veritable menagerie he was currently housing.
There were two cows, abandoned when they quit producing milk; three hens and one mean-ass rooster; four dogs; a momma cat, and her six kittens. And now Cyrus, who was still eating every four hours. Bucky was just starting to add a six hour stretch overnight, and the extra sleep was incredible.
All that was too much to teach someone for just a day. Steve had argued that he could come for a longer visit, make it worth hiring a temp, but he declined. Bucky loved his friends, he did. But he couldn’t imagine anything he wanted less than spending a week with them.
He sighed and refocused on the goat in his lap, who was chewing the nipple on the side of his mouth again.
“You gotta suck on it,” he murmured and repositioned the bottle.
Steve called twice more before Bucky was ready to take the call.
“What?” he demanded as soon as he answered, not feeling nearly as irritable as he pretended to sound.
“That’s a fine way to greet your best friend.”
“Best friend attention whore. Fuck’s sake, Stevie, give me a damn minute before you call back. I was busy.”
“I hope you ain’t using that kinda language in front of the baby.”
“Just tucked him away in his bed.”
Bucky had blocked off one corner of his kitchen and thrown a crib mattress down. It seemed to suit Cyrus just fine, and was plenty warm enough for him while he got a little bigger. Bucky figured he’d be able to transition him to the barn in another few weeks, it wasn’t too drafty, but it was incredibly inconvenient for the frequent meal times.
“Who’d a’thought you’d have a kid,” Steve teased. Bucky rolled his eyes even though he knew Steve couldn’t see it.”
“Something you wanted, punk?”
“Just checking in.”
“I’m fine.”
“It’s okay if you’re not.”
“I know. But I am. Keeping busy helps.”
“You sure you don’t want me to send a jet so you can visit the grave site? You’d be there and back in no time.”
“I don’t want to leave the farm alone.” It wasn’t really a farm anymore, though it had been previously. Bucky didn’t need to harvest crops or sell milk and eggs to make ends meet — he had plenty of money to get him through the next several decades, and that was even without Stark’s generous donation of the property — so he didn’t waste his energy outside of a small vegetable garden for his own table.
Bucky had almost been too proud to let Tony buy the place for him, before he realized that Tony was still feeling guilty and blamed himself over his role in Clint’s death, and was offering to bankroll the rescue set up in Clint’s name in absolution of that.
Regardless of who had paid for what, this place was more a memorial to Clint than any grave marker would ever be, and once Bucky told Steve that, he quit his cajoling attempts to get Bucky to go.
“You want me to tell him anything when I take Natasha up there?”
Bucky had been a little surprised the first year Natasha had gone to the cemetery with Steve, until he realized she wasn’t doing it for herself.
Bucky had gone exactly one time. The fresh flowers had looked so at odds with the emotions still churned up inside of him that it had been disorienting and he hadn’t gone back.
He really didn’t need to, though. He had his rescue, steeped in memory of what Clint had been at his core, and felt close to Clint every day. He took in human strays who needed a short break, just as frequently as he took in abandoned or orphaned animals from the county.
They stayed long enough to get their bearings, and the whole time Bucky would remember how Clint had been a safe haven for himself, and the twins, and any number of other people who just needed compassion and rest.
Some people came more than once, Kate was his most frequent flyer, with Wanda coming in a close second, and many of the other visitors had also known Clint. They shared memories and anecdotes, laughed more than they cried, and over the years Bucky’s grief, well, it hadn’t gotten smaller, but life had gotten bigger again and he was content.
“No,” he told Steve. “I’m good.”
And he was.