Work Text:
Once upon a time there was a little chicken, called Chicken Little. Chicken Little, the Little Chicken. And an acorn fell on his head. Actually it fell on her head because Chicken Little is a girl, otherwise she would be called Rooster Little. Then Chicken Little freaked the fuck out and thought the sky was falling and she told everyone it was until she had a heart attack and died of panic. But the sky didn’t fall, that’s why Chicken Little was an idiot. She didn’t stop to check what was really happening. But chickens are not very smart. They are soft and fat, sometimes nice, sometimes not, except for Cluck Cluck who is always nice to Bucky and sits in his lap and says “Buck Buck Buck,” that’s why she’s the best. But Bucky is under no delusion that she is very smart. He is under other delusions, probably, but he doesn’t know what they are because that’s the point of delusions is you’re delusional and you believe what you’re delusional about otherwise you wouldn’t be delusional. So Bucky is not delusional about Cluck Cluck’s IQ. He knows it is low, like other chickens. But he tells her the famous story about Chicken Little, Big Idiot, because he already told her about the Little Red Hen who threw rocks at everybody and didn’t let them eat the bread she made because they were assholes and didn’t help with the recipe. Bucky added the part about throwing rocks. He says to Cluck Cluck about how he’ll get hit with a rock because he doesn’t help Steve with the recipes, but he still helps eat the bread because Steve is a sucker, not like the Little Red Hen. One day Steve will throw a rock and say “Fuck off!”
Last night, Natasha came back to New York, but she didn’t come to say hi to Bucky or Steve. He likes when she comes by in a white sundress and sunglasses and says, “Hey, stud,” and they go to Central Park, even though that only happened one time. Other times she came by with a bottle of fancy vodka which they all drank but only she got drunk, or maybe she was just pretending. Or maybe she was pretending to pretend. Steve didn’t like to drink straight vodka but Bucky and Natasha were both drinking straight vodka so he had to or else be a punk. That only happened one time too. This has only happened one time: Natasha came back to New York and came to the tower and didn’t say hi to Bucky and Steve or just Bucky if Steve is away, didn’t say hi within 24 hours and now it has been 24 hours, unless she did come by but Bucky was in the greenhouse with Cluck Cluck telling stories. He sends a text to Jarvis asking if Natasha came by but Jarvis says she didn’t and doesn’t say anything else, which is not a usual level of unhelpfulness from Jarvis. Usually he is helpful.
Bucky pets Cluck Cluck in his lap. She is the most beautiful chicken. It’s not biased, it’s objective fact. She is the most and best, most beautiful chicken on the earth. He bends over her so that his hair makes a curtain around them both and the rest of the world doesn’t matter. She is red with black speckles and a bright red crop and a yellow beak and yellow eyes. He thinks if Natasha didn’t come to say hi then she might be dying. She would know that if she didn’t come say hi, Bucky would be expecting her to and would wonder, like he’s wondering now. He runs his fingers over Cluck Cluck’s feathers. Steve is downstairs in their suite doing whatever the fuck he does these days, which, Bucky doesn’t know because he has been avoiding Steve most of the time. Being near Steve makes Bucky have a heart attack and die, of a bad kind of heart attack not the good kind. The good kind of heart attack is when Chloe DeSaul gives you a peck on the cheek after the high school dance or when Pepper says “I’m glad to see you!” and gives you a hug. It’s not a real heart attack. Bucky is exaggerating. He is an exaggerator since birth. He is an exaggerator since birth, but not for most of his life, because for ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy years, he did not exaggerate at all. He is 99 years old so he only was a big exaggerator for about thirty years which is less than a third of his whole life, but that’s including being frozen, because even if he hadn’t been frozen he wouldn’t have exaggerated his opinion because nobody asked for it and wanted to hear it. They would say “Shut up.” So he did not say his thoughts to them or think his thoughts at all, he only did what he was told and thought what he was supposed to think. But now that nobody is telling him what to think, he finds that he exaggerates, but only to himself, in his head. He doesn’t exaggerate out loud because he doesn’t talk to anyone, hardly, only Cluck Cluck, and he has been hiding from his therapist and from Pepper and especially from Steve. They would say, “Go to therapy,” and he doesn’t want to. Only Natasha would not say that, that is why he is going to see Natasha. He lifts Cluck Cluck off his lap and she stays in a pie shape and her skinny legs drop down, and he sets her on the floor and she stands up and looks around. She is looking for her other chicken pals Rodrigo got to keep her company, or she is looking for a snack because that is all she really thinks about, like Steve: “Where are my pals? I’m hungry!” except Steve thinks about justice sometimes and breaking the law which is too advanced for Cluck Cluck. Steve is slightly more advanced than Bucky’s chicken. Bucky stands up and dusts chicken feed off his butt and Cluck Cluck pecks at the floor to get it. Some chicken feed hits her head but she doesn’t catastrophize like Chicken Little. Maybe she is too dumb to know the sky is falling.
*
Natasha’s suite is on the 29th floor and she doesn’t answer when he presses the button for the doorbell. And she doesn’t answer when he knocks on the door. Maybe she is not home. But he knows that she is because he checked with Jarvis before he came here. Jarvis is kind of an all seeing spy which maybe sometimes Bucky thinks would not be a good thing if Jarvis betrayed him but he tries not to think about it. Sometimes he thinks that maybe he doesn’t really want to live in the tower, even though he likes living here. He thinks that maybe if something went wrong or something or if he wanted to run away then the tower would become like a prison in an instant. He knows the security is really good here and security goes both ways. If he wanted to leave the tower without Jarvis knowing, he wouldn’t be able to. Even if he killed Jarvis. If he killed Jarvis the whole building would go on lock down. It’s not that he wants to kill Jarvis, he’s just thinking that hopefully Jarvis stays being his friend and doesn’t change his mind about Bucky. That would be bad, so Bucky should stay good. He’s standing outside of Natasha’s door with his finger against the buzzer but not pressing it. It’s just still there from the last time he pressed it which was he doesn’t know how long ago now. Maybe five seconds, maybe five minutes. He doesn’t hear anything going on inside and all of a sudden his heart does a painful twist and his breath gets short and he thinks that Natasha is inside her suite but dead with her throat slit and blood drained out and eyes staring and he punches the door where the deadbolt latches and it bursts open with splinters and then he stands there in the door and can’t believe what he just did. He stares at the floor where the big splinters are and the door swings back slowly towards him. He stares for a long time.
“Either come in or don’t,” Nat says from somewhere inside. Her tone sounds mad.
Bucky can’t believe he just did that. He didn’t mean to punch open the door. Now Nat has a broken door and will have to get it fixed because of Bucky. Now she can’t close her door, because of Bucky breaking it. She’s not going to want to stay in an apartment where the door is broken, because of Bucky and now she can’t lock the door and someone could get in. Bucky’s breath comes out like a little wiggle.
“Barnes!” Nat calls, sounding mad. Bucky steps in and presses the door closed, but it swings back open a little bit. Shit. Shit shit shit. He holds it closed for a moment but now he has to apologize to Natasha, because she would not be in here with her throat cut or else Jarvis would know, because no assassins can get in unless they’re teeny tiny and then get big once they’re inside, and even then Jarvis probably would know.
Bucky dutifully crosses the hallway so he is standing in the living room where he can see Natasha and she is watching TV. She is watching the menu of Netflix. The remote is far away on the coffee table next to an empty bottle of Vodka and an empty bottle of grapefruit juice and an empty bottle of seltzer water and an empty pack of cigarettes and the cigarettes are on the floor not smoked except for some that are in a little bit of water in the bottom of a glass on the table. Nat is sitting with her knees tucked up under her, on her couch which is dark red and sort of fuzzy looking. She is wearing a grey hoodie with the sleeves pulled over her hands and her hair is in a bun on the top of her head with messy strands coming down and she’s not wearing any makeup, glaring at Bucky. Bucky has never seen Nat not wearing any makeup and her eyebrows are light almost like Pepper's and her eyes and her skin look tired and sad like she is a polaroid picture that has been left on the windowsill and the people in the picture turning back into ghosts. That’s how she looks, staring at Bucky and it feels very still and quiet. Natasha has a long, thick, dark bruise on her neck, on the side facing away from Bucky but he can see the edge of it come around like a thumb and he knows the other side will be the whole length of her neck like big fingers.
Natasha stares at him waiting to see what the hell he wants probably hoping Bucky will fuck off so she can go back to watching the Netflix menu in peace by herself. Bucky’s stomach feels like a wiggle now too and he doesn’t know what to do. He watches the Netflix menu. Then Natasha stops watching him and she looks out the window, which is the whole wall on one side looking out at the city. Bucky and Steve’s suite has that too but they keep it opaque with a special setting because Bucky doesn’t like looking through glass or looking down if he can help it. Obviously Natasha doesn’t mind.
Bucky doesn’t know if Natasha can get drunk. He doesn’t know what treatment she got at the Red Room. If she can get drunk she might be pretty drunk from drinking an entire bottle of vodka even if it was a few hours ago because the condensation rings on the table have evaporated leaving just pale water marks. If she can’t get drunk, then maybe she was trying by drinking fancy vodka really fast, which would work a little bit. But then she wouldn’t be mixing with grapefruit or seltzer. So maybe she just felt like drinking twelve cocktails. He doesn’t know.
Stiffly, he feels like he should get Nat some water. Water is good for you. And it’s something that Bucky can do, for Nat who is looking out the window, not moving. He gets her just water from the tap. There is a packet of flavored sunflower seeds open and spilled on the counter. Bucky sees that they are “ranch” flavor. He doesn’t know what that means.
He brings the water over to Nat and he sits on the edge of the couch and he holds the water and in a very small way tries to give it to her but she still is not looking. Then suddenly she turns and takes the water and drinks it and then holds the glass. She holds the glass in her fingers which look frail and small even though they are not, only small but not frail. Some of the fingernails are broken and one is black at the base. Her knuckles are scuffed up too. Bucky’s mouth feels dry. His throat feels tight. He wants to pull Natasha against his chest, and he wants to push her away from him and hide on top of the elevator where no one will look. He takes five short breaths. His lungs don’t want to let more oxygen in. He leans forward so he is looking up at Natasha a little bit, through the strands of hair that always fall over his face in his eyes. He says, “Do you want to see something?” She doesn’t answer. Then she looks at him like she’s sizing him up. She raises one shoulder. She says, “Sure.”
*
Rodrigo is still working, but he is at the far side of the greenhouse. He likes to have space and doesn’t pressure Bucky to do things either and bought a big chicken coop and built it with Bucky even though Bucky got a chicken without asking and then Rodrigo got a lamp to keep the chick warm and the chick grew into Cluck Cluck who, when Bucky makes a tsk tsk tsk noise, she comes running over and all the other chickens Rodrigo got come running over too but only Cluck Cluck jumps up into Bucky’s arms and he holds her against his chest and feels how warm she is against his chest for a moment. A chicken can jump pretty high, higher than most people can but they don’t have as much mass. They can jump higher, but not reach higher than a human, so maybe if you are measuring by that, a human can jump higher. Can reach higher by jumping, but not jump higher. Bucky turns slowly to Nat who is standing behind him. The other chickens scratch the floor and mill around but there is no food there so they don’t care and start to leave.
Cluck Cluck is Bucky’s precious secret chicken. No one knows about her except Rodrigo and Jarvis, and if anyone saw her they would think that she was Rodrigo’s but she isn’t. She’s Bucky’s. He got her from online when she was just a chick in a little box that came in the mail by special delivery. She’s his cute buddy that no one else knows about. She weighs four pounds and her feathers are smooth and soft.
Natasha is standing there watching him with her arms crossed over her chest and her hands are tucked back into her sleeves. She is almost a foot shorter than Bucky even though he slouches. Her hair is growing in lighter at the roots than the color that she dies it. She doesn’t say anything.
Natasha is the first person Bucky has showed Cluck Cluck to on purpose. He hasn’t even shown Steve. He hasn’t shown Pepper, even though one time she said he could fill his whole suite with farm animals, she doesn’t know that he has a farm animal now and has been looking to buy a cute pig online but he would have to ask Rodrigo because he wants a big pig with a pot belly called a pot belly pig. And he wants to get a little goat. But this would generate a lot of poop. But maybe they could use it for fertilizer for the part of the garden that is not hydroponic.
Bucky cradles Cluck Cluck against his chest and strokes her side, over her wing. Then he gingerly holds her out to Natasha. Her chicken feet dangle but she doesn’t flap or anything because she is a good chicken who trusts Bucky. Natasha’s look narrows at Bucky like she is really thinking things over. It makes Bucky’s stomach squirm so he looks at the speckles on Cluck Cluck’s back while being frozen into a statue. Then Natasha frees her hands from her sleeves, slowly, like she’s not sure she will. She hesitantly reaches for Cluck Cluck and then takes her into her arms. Cluck Cluck shifts a little bit with one foot folded against Natasha’s arm and the other hanging down, just lounging.
Bucky remembers Natasha from the Red Room, when she was a little girl. He doesn’t know when that was. He remembers her red hair, the color of the roots that are growing in now. He remembers the keen way she would look at the people around her, not as calm as she can be now. Back then, she didn’t know how to disguise her intensity, and she would stare. You could tell from looking at her that she was really smart and that she would be hurt the worst without knowing, without knowing that she was being hurt. Bucky wasn’t supposed to think things like that back then, and he didn’t. But some things, you feel them without thinking. As long as you don’t care about the feeling or tell anyone, it doesn’t count or matter. Feelings only matter if you do something or think about them when Korjev can know what you’re thinking. Back then, Bucky had an intuition about Natasha and he was right, because Natasha is here now because she finally realized they hurt her so bad that she said “Fuck you! Fuck off!” and then killed them. And now she is here with Bucky and Cluck Cluck. She strokes Cluck Cluck’s feathers with the tips of her fingers. Bucky is hurting Steve so bad that Steve will say “Fuck off!” A hard knot forms in Bucky’s throat.
“What’s her name,” Natasha asks. Bucky wants to answer but he can’t. His throat is frozen and his eyes are getting blurry. Suddenly his body wrenches itself free with a sharp breath and he says in a whisper, “I had a cat.” He had a cat named Mishka and she died.
Natasha looks at him and studies him. Her bruise is just as bad as he knew it was, on the finger side. His breath is coming in little pants and he’s trying to control it but he doesn’t have enough incentive. He never has enough incentive to be in control of himself at Stark Tower because there aren’t enough rules or consequences. He can do whatever bad thing he wants like draw graffiti of poop in the elevator.
Natasha doesn’t say anything but Bucky can tell she doesn’t know what he means or why he said that. He can tell from her eyebrow, which moves a little bit, down, while the other stays still. He tries to explain. He says, “They,” and then stops. He can see the way Natasha’s body goes still, even though she already wasn’t moving. “They cut –“ he says. They cut.
Bucky had had a cat when he was in the hole in Zhitkur and he squeezed her throat until she died. She was in too much pain from her eyes and her ears and her legs and her tail all being cut off because of Bucky.
Natasha ducks her head and pets Cluck Cluck. The hairs that escape her bun are frizzy and puff out. Her hand shakes and then she lets her arm drop slowly so Cluck Cluck slides to the floor and lands like a bounce and ruffles her feathers. They watch her walk away to find the other chickens. They don’t say anything. Then after awhile Natasha claps a hand over her mouth with her eyes wincing shut and her shoulders shaking. She hunches into her grey sweatshirt that is frayed at the collar where the drawstring to the hood comes through. Big tears come down her cheeks and she doesn’t breathe. Bucky reaches with his fingertips to touch her elbow. She doesn’t do anything, so he takes a tiny step closer. She is shaking hard from not breathing. They are already close from when he handed her Cluck Cluck to hold.
Natasha leans her head forward an inch until her frizzy hairs graze Bucky’s shirt. His metal arm whirs its robot sound as he raises it to her shoulder, hovering there. Then she curls in with her breath rattling out and wheezing back in and he wraps his arms around her and presses his cheek to the top of her head. He remembers suddenly, vividly, holding Eddie O’Hare this way after she’d slapped his face and pushed him in the stomach and told him to get lost when they were 19 and her ma had just died and she had a black eye from her pop. Natasha is smaller than Eddie but rock solid in his arms like she’s made of steel or concrete. But she’s shaking in his arms and Bucky feels sad. For himself, and for Natasha, and for Eddie who died, and for Steve. One of Rodrigo’s chickens comes over, the black one, and goes between their feet. Bucky closes his eyes and holds Natasha and sways a little bit. He feels Dolores the black chicken step on his foot.
When Natasha’s shaking stops, she doesn’t pull away, and just stays there for a moment, leaning against Bucky in his arms. Then slowly she slips her arms around him and squeezes him tight. She breathes in a deep breath. It feels good to get a hug from Natasha. Bucky feels his lips go into a small smile and he kisses the top of Nat’s head. Then she draws away and scrubs her cheeks with the cuff of her sweatshirt. She watches Dolores and Cluck Cluck and Bing Bong. Then Bucky gets a scoop of chicken feed and he and Natasha scatter it on the floor and let it slip through their fingers. All the chickens come running.
*
Later, they sit on Natasha’s floor and she paints his nails with clear nail polish. She used a thing like a foam block file to make them smooth and shiny, and then she put the nail polish on. She dips the brush in and then fans it along the neck of the bottle so the polish gets scraped off on one side, and then she uses the other side with the polish still on to paint Bucky’s nail. Otherwise there would be too much polish and it would drip and get on his fingers. Natasha picked a color out for herself and she is doing pink. Bucky kind of wants a pink fingernail but he chose clear instead. Maybe next time. It’s getting dark outside the wall of windows except for the lights of New York. That means it’s eight o’clock and Steve is wondering if Bucky will come for dinner and probably sitting at the table alone. Natasha paints his last pinky nail and then puts the brush back in the bottle and screws the cap on which is attached to the brush.
“Give it a few minutes,” she says. Then she paints her own fingernails in record time, faster than she did Bucky’s even though she has to do both hands instead of just one. Probably she is more used to it, doing just her own.
He wants to kiss Natasha. She smells nice and her lips look soft. He would kiss her gently, like he hasn’t done to anyone in a long, long time. She sets her nail polish down and then blows on her fingernails. One of them is going to fall off in a week or two, but you can’t tell now, that it’s hurt.
“You want to call Steve?” she says. “Let him know where you are?”
Maybe he should call Steve. But he’s afraid to do that. Steve sent him some text messages saying what’s for dinner but Bucky didn’t text back. That was two hours ago. He doesn’t text Steve anymore. His fingers won’t do it. His entire body is afraid of Steve. He doesn’t want it to be. But it is. Natasha looks at him, watching. There’s no point trying to hide things from her. Bucky is too tired to try. She holds her fingers out straight in front of her, checking her work. Of course it’s perfect.
“He misses you,” she says, simply. He knows.
Natasha is looking for something. Bucky can tell, and it makes him nervous. She is slow and considering, measuring her angle of attack, and then she says something that hits Bucky like a punch in the gut. She says, “You two ever kiss?”
She says it like a shrug, like it’s nothing. But it’s not nothing. It’s not nothing, to Bucky. And she knows that.
He and Steve did not ever kiss, not ever in the past. But Bucky thought about it then and he thinks about it now. But he doesn’t know what it would mean, to kiss Steve. He doesn’t know if Steve would want to, or if he did, what else he might also want, from that. Bucky remembers other stuff he used to do with Eddie that he liked it a lot, but that was a long time ago and he doesn’t know if he could do that stuff now, especially with Steve. Especially with Steve, who could hurt him as easily as snapping a twig or a bone. As easily as saying “Shut up.”
Natasha is watching him. She’s watching his reaction. She said what she did to get a reaction and of course it worked, that’s why she just decided to be direct, to see how much Bucky tries to hide, and how much he’ll give away by trying to hide. Bucky can’t beat Natasha at this game. It makes him feel cold and small, that Natasha is playing a game with him. That’s what it feels like. His hands feel cold, and his heart is clenching. He wishes Natasha didn’t say that.
He doesn’t have it in him to fight. Back when he first met Natasha, she was learning this skill, and he could win easily because he had nothing to give away. He was unassailable. Now he is not strong like that anymore. His voice is quiet and it cracks. He says, “Why did you say that?”
She looks away. She looks out at the skyline, then at the floor.
When you can’t win, you can only give up. That way you don’t keep getting hurt more and more. You hurt me, his voice told her. Now she knows that she can hurt Bucky and he won’t stop her. So maybe she will stop.
Natasha doesn’t answer him. She stares at the floor for a long time. Then she says, “I don’t have a lot of friends.” No shit. Then she stares at him with her grey eyes and her no eyebrows that are usually drawn on but not today. She says, “Steve is one of them.” She says it meaningfully, like it’s supposed to mean something, that sentence. Bucky doesn’t know what it’s supposed to mean. He doesn’t have any friends, not even Steve, so so what. Bucky’s throat hurts in the familiar way that is familiar to him for being such a weak fuck up and a coward. Natasha probably thinks that Bucky is hurting Steve, which, she’s right, and she’s going to give him an earful for hurting her friend. That’s what Bucky would do. If Bucky thought someone was hurting Steve, he would break their jaw. If someone really hurt Steve, he would kill them no problem. Even Nat or Pepper, he would kill them no problem if they turned mean and hurt Steve. He would kill all of New York and then blow up the world. He would become the Fist of Hydra but with no survivors, just the apocalypse. Then he could have a horse and be the one horseman of the apocalypse because he killed the other three.
“Can I ask you something?” Natasha asks. It’s not like he can stop her. He can’t even get up off the floor to get away from her asking her questions. His body feels like wet sand in a sack, that weighs a million pounds. But she doesn’t ask the question. She is waiting for him to say it’s okay to. He doesn’t want to say it’s okay. She ducks her head to peer up at him where now he is letting his hair fall in front of his face. “Hey,” she says softly. His eyes well up with tears. He wishes he didn’t come here. He wishes Nat didn’t get hurt and make him feel sad and then say things. He doesn’t know what he wishes. He wishes everything would be okay like in a happy story where everyone helps make the bread and then eats it together with good butter and there’s enough butter that you don’t have to ration it or be stingy and save it for later because there’s always more for tomorrow.
“I’m sorry,” Nat says. She scoots the tiniest amount closer to Bucky. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
Now Bucky’s tears well over and drip on his pants which are soft black cotton that soaks them up quick and makes a dark spot. When he was little before and had a family and no bad stuff happened, he was crying one time over something he can’t remember and his ma had pointed to the dark spot from a tear and said a flower was going to grow there. Everywhere a tear fell, a flower was going to grow. She was trying to cheer him up to stop crying, and thinking of it now is making him cry even more. No fucking flowers are going to grow and his ma’s been dead for ages. She wouldn't even recognize him, the way he is now. He's not like how she'd remember. Nat touches her fingers to Bucky’s hair and then slides her hand back to draw him towards her shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “Just ignore me. I’m such an asshole.”
She is an asshole, but Bucky doesn’t want to ignore her. She doesn’t deserve to be ignored in a hole or like a doll on a shelf to go murder people when you want her to and forget about her all the rest of the time. He doesn’t want her to be watching the Netflix menu alone on her couch with her neck a big bruise and her fingernails cracked and bleeding. He doesn’t want to be hiding from Steve on top of the elevator, either.
Bucky swallows hard and pulls away from Natasha. “You can ask a question,” he says. She considers him for a long moment. He wants to know what Natasha would ask. After a long time, she says, “What are you so afraid of?”
He doesn’t even know what she’s asking, really. He doesn’t know what to say. Where would he even start?
“With Steve,” she says. Oh. “What do you think is gonna happen?”
“It’s not what I think,” Bucky says, and then stops. It’s not what he thinks will happen. It’s not –
He never thought about it, actually. What he’s afraid of, from Steve. He never thought about it as in, identifying why, and why what, even. What is he afraid of?
Natasha is giving him time to answer. What if he goes to Steve, and, what happens? The feeling is coming, the tight, high feeling in his chest that makes him hide on top of the elevator. He goes to Steve and says, “Hey Steve,” and Steve says, “Shut up.” And Steve says, “I don’t care.” Bucky says, “I love you,” and Steve says, “I don't care.” His worst fear is getting a slap from Steve. His worst fear is of trying to talk to Steve and Steve to say “I don’t care.” He doesn’t know why he thinks Steve will say that. He doesn’t think Steve will say it. But if he did, it would be - it’s his worst fear. He doesn’t want to face it. Because it might be true. Even though it won’t be true, it might be true, and he can’t –
Natasha’s hand is on his arm, his metal one and then she holds his metal hand in hers. She squeezes it, and the pressure sensors send the message to his brain that she is doing that. The panic goes out of his chest though, and she says, “He loves you. Okay? So whatever it is…” She trails off, like she’s looking for new words to say. “Whatever it is…is it worth more to you than him?”
Is not getting hurt by Steve worth more to Bucky than Steve being hurt by Bucky. That’s what she’s asking without knowing what Bucky’s fear is. Or maybe she does know. She’s probably known since last year, since she first met Bucky, she’s probably known. Natasha is really smart, and has been ever since she was a little kid, watching everyone through narrowed eyes, studying, looking for weaknesses. She knows exactly what Buck’s weakness is, but she’s trying to be a friend. That’s why she gave Bucky nail polish, and he showed her Cluck Cluck, because he was trying to be a friend to Natasha. And she doesn’t have experience being a friend, but is trying.
Bucky is out of practice having friends. “I’m going home,” he says, but doesn’t move.
“Okay,” Nat says, but doesn’t move. He wishes someone would stay with Natasha, but he doesn’t want it to be him right now.
“I’m gonna tell Pepper to come,” he says softly. She doesn’t answer. He stands up and she stands up and walks him to the door which is broken from him breaking it. God damn it. “I’m sorry I broke this.”
She shrugs. “I’ll bill it to Tony.” She holds the door open for him, then says in a louder, hard voice, “Thanks for checking in on me.” The loud hard voice is her awkwardness that you almost never hear from Nat but he’s heard it before, maybe from when she was a kid and was awkward all the time, learning how to kill people, from him. He didn’t think of her as awkward back then because it wasn’t his job to think about it, but the Bucky part knew. The Bucky part knows a lot of stuff about people that the soldier forgot. He’s not the same Bucky as that, but sometimes he tries to listen to what the other Bucky part would think, from before.
He takes the stairs up to his and Steve’s suite. It’s only a couple of flights.
*
When Bucky gets home, Steve is sitting alone at the big dining room table with a glass of water. He looks up when Bucky comes in and his lips twitch into a smile but Bucky can tell he was sitting there thinking sad thoughts and staring at the table grain. Steve was waiting to not be alone, all alone in the future where they celebrate his birthday on the Fourth of July which everyone thinks is his birthday but it isn’t. It’s Captain America’s birthday, and Captain America was made up. Steve was not. Steve is a real person and his birthday is in November. That’s because Steve was a little shit who lied to get into the army. No one remembers that about Steve.
Bucky shuts the door behind him and locks it. He probably doesn’t need to. It’s hard for bad guys to get into the tower because of Jarvis. It’s hard for bad guys to get out, without a bomb or something. Bucky doesn’t go to the table near Steve. He goes to the kitchen. Their suite is enormous. They would never even have to look at each other if they didn’t want to. It’s been easy to avoid Steve. If they lived in their apartment in Brooklyn, it wouldn’t be easy to avoid Steve. Back before, you couldn’t avoid Steve if you wanted to. They were tripping over each other and sleeping in the same bedroom and listening to each other snore, which, Steve is a snorer. Bucky likes the sound of Steve’s snore, but sometimes after a bad day or being aggravated with Steve, he didn’t like to hear it and would sleep on the couch. But mostly he liked to hear it because he liked everything about Steve back then, even his snoring. Now he doesn’t know if he likes everything about Steve. Sometimes Steve seems really big and doesn’t listen very well, which didn’t used to matter but now it does. It matters when Steve doesn’t listen because it’s really hard for Bucky to say stuff to him, so if Steve doesn’t listen, it’s not good. But Bucky still loves Steve. He thinks he does. He thinks that feeling of wanting to be near Steve is love. He thinks that wanting to hear Steve’s snore is probably love. He thinks that he wants to believe that it’s love, that he can feel a feeling like that. He doesn’t want to know that he can’t feel that way anymore, like a cold, wet stone. He thinks that he loves Cluck Cluck, probably. He gets a warm, big feeling in his chest when he holds Cluck Cluck. That’s probably love. He gets a feeling like wanting to smile.
Back when Steve was little, it was easy to show that you loved him. When he was sick, you could fuss. Now, no one ever fusses over Steve. He doesn’t get sick. No one gets him water or checks his head for a temperature like Bucky used to. No one ever touches Steve at all. That’s sad. Even though Steve didn’t like to be touched when he was little. He was like a prickly cat you only could touch him by tackling, or when he was sick and couldn’t hiss at you. Then he was nice and let Bucky be nice. Bucky doesn’t wish Steve would get sick, but maybe it would be easier, if he wasn’t so big. Steve could hurt him with a mean word, but he also could hurt him just by hurting him, and popping his arm out of its socket. When Steve first got big, Bucky thought it wasn’t real. He thought they weren’t really escaping from the lab, with the fire, and the face came off, and then walking for a million miles. Then after, it seemed more and more real. Then after that, it seemed like maybe it hadn’t been real. It seemed like maybe he never was rescued and got off the table and maybe it was a lucid dream. Bucky doesn’t know what a lucid dream is, but it sounds right in his head right now. Sometimes he thought, maybe Steve never came at all. Maybe the Howling Commandos wasn’t real. Maybe Steve was at home, wondering about Bucky and thinking he died. But that wasn’t true. He thought crazy things a lot because he was delirious sometimes. It’s weird to remember, thinking about that. Not about the hurting part of Zhitkur but just being woozy and confused.
Bucky gets a chopstick from the drawer, which, they have a lot of chopsticks from getting take out and then saving the chopsticks because they don’t like to throw things away, him and Steve. They don’t even use chopsticks, they use forks but save the chopsticks anyway. They’re made from a single piece of wood that hasn’t been split at the top and Bucky has to snap them apart in order to get one chop stick. They don’t split perfectly even, but close.
Bucky is making a project. Steve is drinking his water and rotating the glass on the table a little bit at a time. Bucky gets a slice of paper towel, which he needs for his project. He is making a flag.
Bucky cuts the paper towel into a triangle, and then gets the scotch tape from a different drawer where they keep lots of random crap Bucky uses for his random crap projects he thinks up. He wraps the edge of the paper towel around the chopstick and tapes it with a long piece of tape, then another long piece of tape for good measure. Now he has a flag to give to Steve. It is a white flag.
When he had first met Natasha, she had stared at him hard, sizing him up for a weakness. He didn’t have any weaknesses, then. Now, he is nothing but weaknesses, one after another. Still, he thinks this is better. He doesn’t know why it should be, being weak. Feeling like you’re being hurt all the time. Back then, he was being hurt too. He just didn’t know it. Natalia, when she was Natalia, she was being hurt. And he thinks maybe she still doesn’t know it. Not all the way. It hurts to admit you were being hurt. It makes you feel weak when you thought you were strong. Back then, nothing could hurt Bucky. He couldn’t be hurt. But that doesn’t mean he was strong. He was the weakest person there was. He did anything he had to to not be hurt, and still, that was the same as hurting. He doesn’t look back on the soldier and think he was strong. He doesn’t look back on the Black Widows and think they were strong. He can look at Natasha, who told them to fuck off, who made a new life for herself not even knowing how, only knowing what a life was supposed to look like, and not knowing what any of it meant on the inside. He thinks it took a lot for Natasha to be brave, to do that. He thinks it still takes a lot, for her to hold a chicken, for her to say too loud and too hard, “thanks.” He thinks it took a lot for Natasha to say that, and that’s what being brave means. For Bucky, it means not hiding on top of the elevator. It’s saying, “I will risk letting you hurt me, so please don’t.”
When he gives the flag to Steve, he sits down in the chair next to Steve as Steve turns the flag over in his hands. He raises one eyebrow, which is Steve’s “wry” look. It is not as wry as it used to be, when they were young. There is a lot of tiredness behind it now. He holds the flag up and looks questioningly at Bucky. Even after all this time, he still bothers. He still bothers with Bucky, wanting to know what he’s thinking when Bucky has been running away from him for months. Why would Bucky think Steve would say “Shut up?” When all he wants is for Bucky to be together with him and be friends in this shitty cold future where everyone is dead and thinks his birthday is July and no one thinks he ever had a fever in his whole life? Bucky remembers when Steve would get fevers so bad he would hallucinate giants and be afraid of invisible worms that weren’t real. He remembers when Steve cried in the bathroom when he was ten because he was so far behind in school that he was going to get held back another year. No one else remembers that. More and more, it’s like that person doesn’t exist, like only Captain America is real and Steve Rogers got erased. And he just becomes Captain America until he forgets Steve was ever real, like Bucky forgot about Bucky, until Steve reminded him. Steve needs Bucky to remind him about Steve.
“White flag?” Steve asks. Bucky nods like his head is on a tight spring. Steve mulls it over while he considers the flag. He doesn’t get it. “You surrender?”
Bucky nods again, and Steve keeps looking at him, trying to figure it out. Bucky doesn’t have the words to explain it. They just dry up like dust in his brain. But he has to try. He has to try, for Steve.
He points to himself, and then to Steve. Then his hand curls into a fist and he grinds it down against his metal palm. Steve says slowly, “You surrender to me, and I…grind you down.”
What the fuck. No. He points to Steve, then himself. Then makes a shape like breaking a stick.
“I break you.”
Bucky looks at him. He wants Steve to understand. The words are in his brain. They’re on the tip of his tongue. He just has to say them. He has to be brave.
His voice doesn’t cooperate but his breath still comes out, so he whispers, “You.” It sounds like nothing. It’s just the shape of the word with barely anything behind it, and Bucky’s shoulders are shaking from stress, like he’s been carrying a heavy weight for days. Weeks. Decades.
“You can hurt me,” he mouths. There’s no sound. There’s just shaking. The air conditioner is louder than Bucky. Now his lungs are shaking. His teeth, his breath. Steve can hurt him so easily, like no one else can. “So don’t,” he breathes.
He has to give up, to Steve. He can’t protect himself anymore by hiding. He misses Steve too bad and it’s hurting him to hurt Steve. It has to be okay to roll over and give up, and trust Steve not to rip out his belly or kill him or throw cold water. He has to trust Steve.
Steve stares at him like Steve’s the one who got hit with cold water. He’s not moving at all, just his lips are parted like he’s in shock. He’s such a punk. He says, “Okay.” Then his face crumples and he reaches for Bucky, and pauses with his arms just around Bucky like he’s not sure he should but then he does it anyway and pulls Bucky into a hug with Bucky’s chin hooked over his shoulder, and he holds Bucky tight and Bucky stares across the room at the couch that’s an L shape and new from Steve ordering stuff to replace the stuff Bucky broke and never getting fed up with Bucky or saying “You aren’t worth it.” Bucky doesn’t know if he’s worth it, but Steve thinks so. He says so all the time with recipes from scratch and cameras and smurfs and gadgets for Bucky.
Bucky’s breath wells up like a stuck balloon. It is caught in his chest where the panic stays. It comes out in a thin whistle, then a big shake. A big shaking breath comes out of Bucky and he feels light and almost dizzy. He takes another breath that comes out shaky, and closes his eyes. Steve holds him for a long time. “I love you,” Steve says.
Steve Rogers was always a prickly little punk. Every other word out of his mouth was picking a fight and saying “I don’t need you.” He’s not like that now. Steve now is different from how he used to be. Now he thinks, “I do need you.” His face says it. His eyebrows that are pinched up sad, his mouth which stays a flat line, his face which stays in a fret forever like after his mother died and he finally agreed to move in with Bucky after Bucky begged and begged to get a place together and split the rent to make it sound like Steve was doing him a favor and “open up a new chapter,” which is what Bucky said back then and wrapped his arm around Steve’s neck all rough like because it was the only way you could get close to Steve. The way he’d presented the shabby tenement like it was a golden palace, their bright, promising future, and then they’d lived there the best years of Bucky’s life, him and Steve in that flat. He wants to have a place like that again, just him and Steve, like normal people. He wants to keep his chickens on the roof like he always wanted and grow tomato plants old fashioned in a pot. He can still visit here and see Pepper and Rodrigo at the tower. Maybe he can get a job again and be Rodrigo’s assistant.
When Steve pulls away, his eyes are bright and he cups his big hand on the side of Bucky’s face, smiling, which makes Bucky’s lips want to smile. He loves Steve so much, that’s what this big, warm, smiling feeling is. He remembers it from listening to Steve snore and feeling like the luckiest guy in the world, for meeting that asshole and being best friends. Fuck.
He leans his head against Steve’s shoulder, and Steve strokes his arm. “You want ice cream?” Steve asks.
Hell yes, he does.
Bucky nods against Steve’s shoulder. He’ll get Steve every flavor there is.