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It has been a long, busy day; the moon is high now, and T’Challa has retreated to his workshop to wear something more comfortable than a suit, sit on the floor, and breathe long and slow in solitude. The speakers are streaming from a tiny microphone buried in the depths of the jungle two hundred kilometers away, and he can hear the night birds call, and he’s tinkering, and trying to settle his heart.
Bucky’s doing well, with Dr. Maathai’s treatment. It’s not like flipping a switch, of course. Always harder to fix something than to break it. But the theory is sound, and he’s out of his cryo-chamber, and perhaps, from the set of his shoulders when they speak, breathing a little easier. He’s down an arm, Wakandan security is tight, and he finally seems to believe that they won’t let him hurt anybody.
There’s a stir from the watchman outside—he’s not to be rung at the moment unless it’s a national emergency or a purely social visit from the short list of those he felt like talking to right now—and then a chime. T’Challa stiffens, alert. Rogers’ tall frame filling the tinted glass door isn’t entirely reassuring, given the work he does, but the man doesn’t seem tense.
T’Challa dims his monitors with a wave of his hand and unlocks the door with a second—the motion-control in his workshop is top-notch—and Rogers strolls in, calm and relaxed, and looks about the place with raised eyebrows.
“I had no idea you were an engineer yourself.”
“Be careful, Captain Rogers. Investigating Wakandan labs is a dangerous hobby.” T’Challa keeps his voice light, mild, and Rogers just laughs and ducks his head a little. He’s a remarkably teasable man, he’s noticed. All his friends do it.
Then Rogers takes in the bits and pieces of metal scattered around T’Challa’s knees, the skeleton of a hand that T’Challa’s holding as he lazily fiddles with a knuckle joint, and the grin fades into something softer.
“Is that for Bucky?”
T’Challa shrugs, lays the hand across his lap. “Perhaps someday. I admit it’s…something I’m fiddling with to settle my heart, more than anything. Making things is good.”
Rogers gives a may-I wave of his hand, and T’Challa nods, and he sits on the floor opposite him, big legs tucked under his elbows. “Have you told him?”
“No.” Rogers’ eyebrows are just a touch raised, so T’Challa goes on. “He hasn’t asked for a new arm yet, and I’m not going to offer him an idle glimmer. Not without proof of concept.”
“Fair enough.” Rogers relaxes an inch further.
“So what brings you here so late? I trust from your mood that it’s not an emergency.”
“No, nothing like that. I just couldn’t find you all day.”
“There is much I must do. But you would not chase me down here without a reason.”
“Ah…no. Bucky mentioned…” He stirs, one long and uneasy breath, waves a big hand. “Bucky told me about what’s going on with you.”
T’Challa very firmly resists the urge to fidget with the metal hand, and instead keeps his face mild, raises his eyebrows. “Are you here to judge me, Captain?”
“God, no.” Rogers seems almost taken aback. “You’re a good man. An extraordinary man. And Bucky deserves whatever he wants. Whatever makes him happy.”
T’Challa relaxes just a touch, a little taken aback himself by the man’s easy warmth. “I am glad you think so. I’d gotten the impression Americans were rather uptight about such things.”
That startles a laugh out of him. “God, no, not these days. Well, some assholes.” He shrugs. “I grew up in the queerest neighborhood in Brooklyn and I don’t like bullies.”
“I see.” More or less. Brooklyn meant nothing. But—something else was falling into place. T’Challa feels his eyebrows knot, concern a dull weight in his gut. “Captain Rogers,” he asks slowly. “…Steve.” There’s no protest against the familiarity. “Is there something between you two? I’ve no wish to disrupt…”
He trails off as Steve lets out something between a laugh and a sigh and runs his hand over his face. “You’re not disrupting. Like I said. Whatever he wants. We’re…complicated.”
“Please. Tell me. I cannot bear the thought of blundering with him.” It’s one of those things that T’Challa doesn’t quite realize until it’s out of his mouth. He feels—off balance. More raw than he’d ever expected to be with him. Either Steve doesn’t notice or he’s allowing him the dignity of not calling attention to it.
“We were…lovers, back in the day.” Steve’s answer comes slow, measured, and T’Challa has little doubt that it’s painful, and—a little belatedly—he flicks a fingertip towards the teakettle to start it heating.
“But not now?” he prompts, after a silence.
“No.” Steve breaks his glance, scans the upper walls of the room with a distant smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Not that I wouldn’t—he’ll never not be important to me. But it’s on him, and…he hasn’t.” He draws a breath, and there’s a firmness in his voice now. “The Bucky I remember isn’t the man he is now. It just doesn’t work that way. He remembers, some, but not everything, and I’ve no right to try to drag him into the past. I’m not gonna pretend that was easy to realize, hell, Sam pretty much had to beat it into me, but. It is what it is.”
T’Challa takes that in with a long, slow breath, and nods. “I am sorry it is so difficult for you both.”
“Mm.”
“If that changes, if what is between me and Bucky must change, you must tell me. I’ve no wish to come between you.” It feels bittersweet, to think of an end before it had barely begun—but everything about this situation requires grace. An outsider, a wanted man. There is no space for expectations.
“You think I want to come between you either? You think I could possibly say no if he winds up wanting to…” Steve makes some vague wave of his hand between them.
“What? Be shared? You really are open-minded for an American.”
Steve’s laughter is easy as anything, and after it settles down, he looks up at T’Challa with a touch of brightness in his eyes that he hadn’t seen before. “Thank you. For everything. Just…do me one favor?”
T’Challa inclines his head.
“He’s…he’s more than what’s been done to him. Just remember that, please.”
They say their good-nights, and Steve is gone, and the teakettle is still bubbling in the corner, forgotten. T’Challa slides his fingers between lifeless, skeletal metal ones, and turns Steve’s words over and over in his mind, until they sink into his gut like a thin chill, until he finally remembers to turn the kettle off before it boils dry.
Bucky’s flopped side to side with Steve in one of the courtyards, each of them sucking down a head-sized bottle of water. Sparring in Wakanda is like sparring in a hothouse, even Steve’s a sweaty mess, but honestly, Bucky likes it. First time in forever he hasn’t felt cold. His muscles are loose, his movements feel more free, when he’s not fighting bone-jarring chill. Not dragging the weight of the arm is a bonus. Sure, he’d be a sitting duck in a real fight, and Steve’s a sap so he’s going easy on him, but this is nice.
Relatively simple, as far as their time together goes. Steve’s at his side, chatting about nothing of consequence in between pants and gulps of water. He rarely brings up the past these days unless Bucky does first; he’ll confirm, he’ll fill in details, but he doesn’t push. It feels like kid gloves, and pisses him off sometimes, but Bucky’s—probably glad for it, inasmuch as he can get a handle on it. He likes remembering stuff on his own, discovering those little bits and pieces, turning them over before he throws them at Steve to make sure they’re real.
It’s easy to tell when T’Challa goes anywhere here because there’s a stir; people part for him, people acknowledge him, there’s usually an entourage, even if it’s just some discrete guard or some official he’s walking-and-talking with. Bucky doesn’t even need to look over his shoulder to know it’s him, and sure enough, he pads into view eventually after a few gusts of conversation he can’t follow, and Bucky draws an easy breath and straightens a little. His chest feels looser when T’Challa’s around. It’s…good.
T’Challa’s particularly casual today, in loose trousers and a sleeveless shirt, with the fang pendant on its leather cord, and he surveys them with his usual composure. “Tired out already?”
“Me?” Steve stretches. “Hell no. Is this usually where you train?”
“At times.” T’Challa pauses as if considering something, then looks to Bucky. “Good morning. Are you well?”
Bucky finds something like a smile without even much difficulty. “Sure. You two wanna go a round, you go right ahead. I can tell you’re champing at the bit.”
T’Challa gives one of those tiny, slightly unguarded smiles, and Bucky’s heart warms. “Captain?”
Steve gives the aw shucks grin and starts rolling to his feet, and Bucky’s heart keeps going. “I’d be honored.”
“As embarrassing as it is to make the request, not in the face. I have meetings.”
“Totally fair.”
They circle. There’s a stir of attention that Bucky feels like a press on his spine, and he scopes the courtyard in three glances without deciding to. Wakandan woman who carries herself like a steel girder, watching unblinking: bodyguard. A small handful of men who’d been orbiting T’Challa break off their conversation in a mix of curiosity and concern. There are people in the hallway overlooking the courtyard too; four of them look dangerous. Watching their king go at it seems to be very distracting, and he can’t tell how much of it is worry and how much is excitement.
Bucky can’t exactly blame them. At least for the second part.
It starts light, exploratory. Almost more like a dance. Then again, it’s them. Never stops being a dance. True to his word, Steve’s holding his hard punches, sticking to grapples, throws, the sort of shit that looks like he picked it up from Natasha and that’s devastating with his body weight. T’Challa’s like smoke in the air around Steve’s sallies, and Bucky has a lot more time to appreciate it now that he’s not trying to kill him. The bare arms are nice too. Steve speeds up, pushes, when he can’t make anything stick. Gets T’Challa by the shirt, bodily off the ground in one hand, and throws him an easy ten feet, and there’s a whoosh as the breath leaves most of their audience—and T’Challa twists like a cat in midair and sticks the landing in a perfect, elastic crouch, rolling all the momentum of the throw back at Steve with a flying kick right to his face, and from there, it’s just gorgeous. Bucky feels something low in his gut knotting up, only it doesn’t feel bad in the least, and it takes him most of the rest of the fight to realize he’s turned on.
Huh.
Bucky sips water and nurses an obscure craving for popcorn and is pretty sure he has a shit-eating grin on his face, and this is all very okay. There’s an ease between Steve and T’Challa that seems new, like they’re a notch closer than they were a few days ago, and that’s also okay. Neither of them’s pushing it hard, and it ends in a perfectly civil draw—with T’Challa brute-force prying himself out of Steve’s no-choke arm across his collarbones and flipping them both over to jam his heel into his throat in answer, and some part of Bucky wonders how the hell T’Challa does all this anyway, but he’s pretty sure the answer is going to be the Wakanda-keeps-her-secrets spiel, so whatever. He…trusts him.
He trusts him, bare brown heel a twitch from cracking Steve’s adam’s apple, and this is also okay.
There’s hands up and towels and exchanges of post-fight niceties, and everyone watching melts back into the hallways at a particular wave of T’Challa’s hand, and then they’re alone, and now it’s the three of them sitting in the grass. There’s idle chatter that mostly passes over Bucky, until T’Challa draws a breath that suddenly focuses all Bucky’s attention on him. He’s not sure how he does that. Maybe it’s a king thing.
“Bucky.”
“Highness.” It’s droll. Bucky’s feeling pretty good right now. Still kind of wants popcorn.
“I…do not know if I owe you an apology, but I wish to offer.”
Bucky feels his eyebrows draw down, and he’s abruptly lost. Steve stirs, and he almost knows, without looking at him, the concerned face he’s wearing—not as surprised as he could be, cautious, letting this play out but watching keenly. It’s that, more than anything, which makes him believe this is a conversation that’s happening, and that is probably going to be okay, and not some shitty dream where T’Challa turns out to be exactly the kind of asshole who will win his trust and apologize before longing—
Steve’s hand is warm on his shoulder, and Bucky’s just being goddamn paranoid, and he hates it, hates the way this shit bubbles up. And T’Challa is still talking. “I feel an almost overwhelming sympathy for you. And I would think far less of myself if I did not. It is not the only reason I’ve, ah, taken an interest, but it was a large part, especially at first. I hope that I have not been…condescending, towards you.”
Bucky seems to be expected to say something, and he’s not sure what, so eventually, after a moment, he comes up with, “You know I’m not helpless.”
“Oh, very well.” T’Challa pauses, as though rummaging for words, and it occurs to Bucky for literally the first time that he’s working over a language barrier. “I would like to think that I am acting out of genuine, personal affection. But your friend has made me realize that I do not wish to treat you as…a project.”
Bucky stares at him. He feels like he’s skidding low over—sharp crags, but it’s not—it’s not really like that, is it? A project, no, he’s not going to be a project again, an asset, he doesn’t want that—
“So I have made you feel that way, I must—”
“Oh shut the hell up,” Bucky says, and lunges, and kisses him.
T’Challa jolts against him with one startled breath—surprise, maybe offense, whatever—but it fades fast as it came, and he kisses back, so that’s okay too. One strong warm hand on Bucky’s shoulder to steady him where he’d—pretty much crawled into his lap, okay, it was the only way to reach the target. Still decorous, no tongue—Steve’s stupid ass is right there, after all—but Bucky feels light, like his chest has been in a vise literally the entire day until this moment, and now he’s breathing. He can’t possibly be a project if he’s breathing. There’s some tiny hitch in Steve’s throat behind him, but he’ll deal with that later, right now he’s kissing his friend the king and things are good.
“You’re fine,” he says when he’s done, and T’Challa takes a breath and his tongue darts over his lips for the tiniest moment and his hand slides on Bucky’s arm and there’s almost, maybe, a ragged crack in his dignity, and Bucky wonders dimly if it’s okay to like seeing that.
“Thank you.”
“And you,” Bucky says, narrowing his eyes at Steve over his shoulder. Steve doesn’t look upset at all, or worried; he looks happy. Probably because Bucky’s breathing. “Did you give the king of Wakanda a shovel talk, punk?”
Steve cracks one of those hapless, utterly genuine little smiles. “No. Only a little. You’re the one who told him to shut up, you can’t talk to me about the proper treatment of royalty.”
“There was no shovel,” T’Challa says, slightly behind.
Steve. Hell and damnation. Steve’s an open wound somewhere in his chest, and he’s going to have to stitch it up someday, probably with Steve’s outsized fingers on his scarred skin. But T’Challa’s hand on his arm feels like light and peace. It’s simple, it’s warm and makes Bucky feel like he can walk without worrying about where he steps and be without worrying about who he’s being, and he doesn’t get why the guy has his head up his butt about it. If anything, Bucky’s the one taking advantage. Taking what’s given when he should be given nothing. He’s just done with second-guessing himself. And if he puts off being happy until he’s less fucked up, it’s never gonna happen.
“I don’t deserve this,” he says, apropos of little else, more as a general observation than a specific complaint.
“Shut the hell up,” says T’Challa, and Steve, more or less in unison.
Bucky’s face cracks into a grin that feels awkward and unfamiliar and entirely natural, and he’s pretty sure the wheezing noise he’s just made is laughter, even if it feels a little more like he’s been punched by two enhanced warriors in stereo. Which is, pretty much, true. “Okay. Warned ya.”
Steve’s hand lands on his shoulder again, and this time it’s with a light nudge. Towards T’Challa. It feels like he’s handing him off, for fuck’s sake, and that’s a waterfall in Bucky’s chest, the sort of rushing flood that crack-a-booms down the streams in spring when four feet of snow melts, he remembers thrashing through it in CQC a hundred klicks out of Vladivostok, but this isn’t cold at all. Steve’s hand disappears, because he’s getting up and leaving. Just like that, and he looks—completely comfortable. The dorkiest smile.
“You’re gonna pay for this later, Rogers,” Bucky tosses over his shoulder, voice a little thick, and he isn’t even sure what he means by that.
“Sure, sure, I’m dreading it.” He waves. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“Like hell I won’t. Unless you have something about T’Challa that you need to share with the class.”
Steve laughs and disappears inside, and Bucky looks back to T’Challa, and all the water clears out, and he breathes.
“So…what. You’re worried that you like me just because I’m fucked up and you want to help me?”
“A little,” T’Challa admits, and it feels less deliberate than usual. “Your friend told me something that…made me wonder how much I truly knew you, beyond what you have suffered.”
Bucky sighs. “Yeah, well. Steve’s a dirty cheater. He knows who I was better than I do. But…he doesn’t…he doesn’t really know who I am now.” He feels his throat tighten, fights past it, because it’s true. “You don’t either. I don’t. Can’t blame you for not knowing what there isn’t to know.” He shrugs. “But I don’t want you to stop. Being around you feels better than being anywhere else right now. Okay?”
That’s…probably the brightest smile he’s ever seen on T’Challa’s face, and when he brings his hand up to lightly frame Bucky’s face, heavy ring warm against his cheek from the heat of his body, something in Bucky’s brain bottoms out somehow in the best way, and he feels like he’s floating.
“Okay.”
The kissing definitely doesn’t make things less floaty.