Chapter Text
Steve had, for lack of a better turn of phrase, fucked up.
He didn’t think anything would come of it. Why would it? How would it possibly come to backfire on him in such a colossal and humiliating way? Someone asked him one innocent question once, and he thought his answer was funny. Just a joke; an inside joke with himself.
Steve’s not laughing now. There’s a cold sweat on his neck, and it’s all surrounding his birthday.
At the beginning of his star-studded motivational tour in the 1940’s, dealing with a correctly functioning body and new muscles he barely knew how to work, one of the neverending interviewers had asked when his birthday was. Steve had felt defeatedly spiteful of his situation, feeling like a dancing animal for the amusement of the masses, but he conceded that maybe that’s what America needed. Surrounded by pretty girls, flashing lights, and patriotism patriotism patriotism , Steve smiled thinly and answered what he thought would give the best reaction. What the USA expected from their shiny new golden boy, Captain America.
“Fourth of July, sir,” Steve had grinned, wider with his own amusement. “Fitting, isn’t it?”
Unfortunately for Steve, that fitting little date exploded in popularity, meaning as much to the American people as he himself did. He became to the fourth of July what Santa Claus was to Christmas, what Cupid was to Valentine’s Day. A day to celebrate freedom, and he was the face for it.
However, if he thought it was excessive in the 20th century, he was nothing close to prepared for how it was in the 21st.
There was a massive parade televised nationwide from Brooklyn in his honor, one that grew three times its traditional size once it went public that he had been found in the ice and thawed. Parties thrown, banners everywhere screaming ‘ Happy Birthday Cap!’ in red white and blue.
Steve fucked up. He fucked up royally, because his real birthday was on the far side of the calendar. If anyone found out, it would crush decades of traditions. He would let the nation down, so as far as Steven Grant Rogers would say, act like, and believe , Sarah Rogers had one golden-haired little boy prematurely on the day of the nation’s birthday.
Great news was, no one could prove otherwise. His mother was a poor and low class Irish immigrant. He was born in America but had nothing to prove it. No birth certificate, no hospital records, nothing. It wasn’t a concern at the time in his area; many families didn’t have paperwork. Even journals and diary entries weren’t going to sell him out since he was a nobody that rarely celebrated that day, his mother often working through it to put food in his belly and medicine in his lungs. The only one who really insisted on it was Bucky, who would often sneak in at midnight in the middle of November to slip him something that would have amounted to at least half or more of Sarah’s paycheck.
Bucky’s family had money, and there was no one he’d rather spend his share on than Steve. He meant more to Steve than any paycheck or gift could measure up to.
Bucky, who was alive . He’d suffered so much and had been forced both through and to do terrible things but he had survived, he was alive and it felt like Steve’s heart could finally beat normally again.
Steve spent the better part of a year searching for him from the moment he found out he was alive, though very confused and hurting. Steve called in every favor he had with the Avengers, begging them to help him find his best friend. They had to find him before the remains of HYDRA did first and took Bucky away from Steve again and put an unfeeling machine back in his head.
Steve found him in Romania and brought him home to get help. There was still a looming discussion with Tony, but Bucky was home, he remembered Steve and their life in Brooklyn, and was adjusting to his life with the Avengers in the 21st century.
Bucky was the only piece of Steve’s home that made it to this warped new future world.
Bucky was also the only motherfucking bastard on this goddamn planet that had the knowledge that Steve was a birthday liar, and if Steve ever took him aside to tell him, he’d laugh himself into his actual grave… But not before ratting the Good Ol’ Boy himself right the hell out.
Steve fucked up. He wouldn’t change a thing about having Bucky back with him, but he had no idea what to do about this.
“You looking at plans for your birthday? It’s coming up soon.” Bucky said from over Steve’s shoulder. “What do you normally do anymore?”
Decades of being an assassin’s ghost story had residual effects, one of which was Bucky made next to no noise when he moved. Even with heavy boots, he was so silent that more often than not he startled Steve into flinching when he suddenly appeared next to him. Like now, leaning over the couch and into his best friend’s personal space to see what he was looking at on his opened laptop.
Steve barely suppressed whatever noise would have been torn from his throat from the scare, slamming the computer shut hard enough to wince at. “Nothing! Nothing, just-just checking the news. Nothing happens for my birthday, just another work day.”
Lying to the man that (unwillingly) helped form the Red Room ballerinas into Black Widows was never a good idea, but Steve (a notoriously bad liar as it was) had no choice. He had time to deal with this, but first he had to… plan how.
As expected, Bucky looked at him like Steve had grown a second head but was trying to be polite and not mention the new addition. “...Right. Not gonna try that one again?”
Steve kept his unblinking eye contact, eyes a little too wide and lips a little too pursed. “...Nope.”
Bucky just hummed, using his hand to push himself upright and off the back of the couch. His left arm had been removed a few weeks prior, the titanium monstrosity causing him a constant baseline of pain from the nerve feedback as well as the sheer weight of the thing. Despite his complicated feelings on the subject, Stark was never one to back down from a technical challenge and was making one that would leave HYDRA’s scientists in the dust where they belong.
“Okay, I’ll leave you be, you nut. But what do you wanna do for your birthday, then?”
Steve opened his mouth, and Bucky cut him off.
“--And don’t say ‘ nothing ’ like you always do! Give me something to work with, yeah?”
Steve shut his mouth again with a click, taking the moment to really think about it. The first thing that came to mind not only bought him a little more time while appeasing Bucky but was also something he really, really would love to do.
“Maybe something just you and me? A day in, favorite foods, catching up on movies?” Steve leaned his head back on the couch cushion, giving Bucky a winning smile that he knew the other man was weak for. His lifelong instinct to give Steve what made him happy never left, despite it all.
“That’s it?” Bucky huffed, though he didn’t say no. “We do that all the time anyway. We’re halfway done with that ‘Century’s Best’ list that Sam made.”
“I like doing it,” Steve flushed a bit, rubbing the back of his neck the way he often does when opening up about something personal. Anything to do with Bucky felt deeply personal. “I love those nights, it feels like it did back when we were kids. Well, not exactly ,” Steve amended quickly before the amused look on Bucky’s face could result in a sassy remark about how he didn’t remember eating Vietnamese takeout and watching Die Hard on a 70” flatscreen television while they were nine in the 20s.
“It feels like it did when we didn’t have to worry about the war, or HYDRA, or even what our next paychecks would look like,” Steve continued, his expression shifting to something more vulnerable, nostalgic. “When it was just the two of us, jiving and having a gas.”
Bucky’s face remained neutrally passive, though his eyes softened. He didn’t always like thinking back that far, but clearly the memories were valued to him as well. It was often all they had with each other of that past life.
Bucky wouldn’t be Bucky without some theatrics, though, choosing to sigh heavily and put-upon. “Fine, fine, if that’s all you wanna do, you granddad ,” Bucky grinned, pushing back off the couch entirely to avoid Steve’s lazy cuff aimed at him.
“If I’m a Granddad, what does that make you?” Steve matched his grin. “Last I checked, you were still born in 1917, a whole year before me.”
Bucky made a show of thinking about it, raising his finger to his lips. “...A great granddad, in multiple definitions.”
“Get over yourself,” Steve waved him off, turning his back completely on him.
“Haven’t been able to yet, probably never will,” Bucky laughed, stepping away. The only reason Steve could hear it is because Bucky was trying to remember to make noise when doing so.
“But I’m still getting you a present, you dust ‘n bones!” He called over his shoulder as he left down the hallway, probably to do his own research.
Steve rolled his eyes affectionately, opening up his laptop again. No cracks in the surprisingly fragile screen from his rough treatment, luckily. He still had no plan on how to approach this whole birthday situation, but he could find one. And even if it made him ill to think about, he’d rather face the nation’s disappointment every day and every year forward rather than spend a second less with Bucky.
…Still, no need to resort to that until he had to. He’d make it work. He always did.
He was the legendary Star-Spangled Man With A Plan after all.