Archive of Our Own

The groan slips out before he can stop it. Small, controlled, mostly dignified — he'll give himself that much.

It's a nice day. Objectively. Mid-March, bright and clean, the kind of morning that makes people in New York remember they live in New York on purpose. Ten degrees and a light wind and Bucky feels like he was hit by a bus that backed up intentionally and ran him over again. The universe must be out to get him or something. 

He emerges from the Escalade with all the grace of a man twice his age, Sam materializing on his left and Thor on his right, both of them doing the thing where they're everywhere and completely useless at the same time. Hands loose at their sides. Ready for anything. Anything except this. He has known these two for eleven years. He would trust them with his life. He loves them. He cannot stress enough how useless to him they are right now.

Natasha comes around from the other side and says nothing, staring at him while clacking her red pointy fake nails onto the screen. It kind of scares him how she does that. Typing without seeing seems like a strange superpower. 

Bucky eyes Thor — closest, largest, basically a wall with a security clearance — and makes a reasonable calculation. He’s tempted. He reaches.

Sam gives him a look.

Bucky ignores it.

Natasha tsks.

"Come on, Nat—"

She doesn't even bother responding. She just stares at him.

Bucky is Frustrated with a capital F. Who knew walking was so difficult. Bloody bureaucratic absurdity of high level security meeting a completely mundane physical problem.

All this apparatus, all these protocols, and nobody can help him walk. This is too much. Two stupidly strong beefcakes in front of him that could just carry his ass up these steps to the brownstone, yet they were just standing there as he hobbled like an old man that lost his walker. Who said that bodyguards needed their hands free at all times. Who wrote this up in the contract. Why did he sign it. Why the heck was the clinic in a brownstone.  Screw these fancy heritage doctors. Did they think they were some apothecary from the 1800s that operated out of a fancy town house. Bloody hell his foot was throbbing. Okay wait he takes that back, Dr Erskine has always been nice and sweet, and the doctor that took over his practice seems kind of okay. But this is not the issue. The issue is his leg and it’s killingggggg him but he’s not going to be dramatic so just hobbles along. 

Thor stares at a fixed point somewhere above Bucky's head. Bucky is sure that Sam is giving him the side eye. 

Nat looks like she’s about to proffer a hand, but catches Bucky’s eye and thinks twice. Her hesitance tells him all he needs about how she feels. She probably feels bad, guilty, something. Bucky ends up rolling his eyes at himself. Way to stop being a baby. Let’s just see the doctor. Hopefully it’ll be a quick sprain and he’ll be up and running in no time. 

He catches Sam's face. It's a professional blank.

Bucky hobbles inside unaided. 

The clinic smells like mahogany wood and something faintly herbal, the kind of smell that costs money to maintain. Dark panels line the walls, deep brown and warm, the kind of place that has opinions about its own furniture. Heavy curtains. A Vanderbilt Mughal Millefleurs Star-Lattice Persian rug graces the entryway that looks like it’s been there since before Bucky was born. He's always liked it here. It feels less like a medical office and more like someone's grandfather's study, which is more or less how he feels about Dr. Erskine anyway.

It settles something in him, walking in. Marginally. His foot is still throbbing. He’s also starving. The foot takes precedence right now. 

Natasha falls into step beside him in the corridor, slowing her pace. Bucky would burst out loud at how stupid this scenario looks right now. Natasha Romanova, forced to slow down her pace to suit him. He has performed in front of ninety thousand people. He has done things with his body on a stage that defy reasonable explanation for a man his age. He is currently shuffling along a corridor like a very tired tortoise and she is pretending not to notice, which is its own kind of kindness.

Ugh, he just knows she's about to say something he doesn't want to hear. she’s babying him and he hates it. He’s a 36 year old adult. He can take whatever she throws his way like a man. A real man.

"The footage is already circulating." Measured. Precise. The voice she reserves for when she's angry enough to be careful about it. "We're managing it. But the perimeter gap is a separate conversation and we're having it today."

"Okay."

"It's not okay."

"I know it's not okay. I said okay like, okay, I'm receiving this information."

She looks at him sideways. Says nothing for a moment.

"Bucky."

"I heard you. Perimeter gap. Today."

Another beat. Longer this time, before she continues. 

“I’m sorry.  I can’t believe I overlooked this—” 

Bucky’s head goes wild. Natasha. Apologising? That can’t be right. It’s just not in her nature to ever apologise.

“Hey it’s not your fault” cuts in Bucky. “No one expected it.” 

"I'm just—"

"I know." Bucky says. She's the greatest agent, and he knows how much she cares — it's one of approximately four hundred reasons he would do anything she says, has done anything she says, across seventeen years and three continents and more sold-out nights than he can count without a spreadsheet. He's never told her this and he doesn't intend to. He still wants to live, thank you very much. But she resembles, in these moments, a screaming pterodactyl who has briefly landed and folded its wings and is trying very hard to be a person. He finds this, against all reason, one of the truest things about her.

He’s brought out of his head as Natasha continues, "Doctor first. Then we need to talk about the perimeter gap.”

Not it'll be fine. Just: order of operations. Natasha has never once offered him a comfort she wasn't sure she could deliver. Ugh.

He nods. They walk.

Behind them, Sam and Thor maintain formation. Hands free. Ready for anything.

Dr. Rogers is already in the room when they enter.

He's standing by the window. Not doing anything, just standing, the way people stand when they're comfortable with stillness. He looks up when they come in. Takes in the full situation in approximately one second. Bucky hobbling. Natasha, half step behind. The general atmosphere of a morning that has not gone well.

"Mr. Barnes," he says. "Have a seat."

That's it. No how are you, no I heard what happened, no careful managed warmth calibrated to make Bucky feel at ease. Dr Rogers might just be a simulation projected by some sort of high-tech audio visual apparatus. The last two times he was here, he said the exact same thing. Bucky doesn’t not like the guy. It’s just that there isn’t much of the guy to like. Or wait, there are some things about the guy that’s noticeable, of course. Like his perfect face, sans the nose that might have been broken more than once. Or his perfect jawline. Or his– so the thing is that, there’s just not much of Dr Rogers to know for Bucky to assess whether he likes the guy or not. He misses Dr Erskine. His foot is still throbbing and he has no idea how to relate to this doctor. It’s not said in disdain, it’s not. Dr Rogers just feels like a robot trying to be human. Okay that was unkind. He’s just in a mood.

Okay back to the issue. Just: have a seat. Like this is a normal appointment on a normal Tuesday, which Bucky supposes, from Steve's perspective, it more or less is. It wouldn’t kill Dr Roger’s to be nicer. Okay, Bucky is just being a baby. Maybe he’s in more pain than he thought. 

Bucky sits, or he tries to sit. He angles his body to a somewhat normal seating position, but the angle feels off, and half of his bum makes it to the chair and he just slithers down the backrest. Dignity would have to come later. He can just feel Sam laughing, but he might be projecting. He wants to laugh. This is all so stupid. Twelve hours ago he was dancing all his moves to his latest album as he crooned to the audience and now he can’t even sit down like a normal human being. He wants to snort at the idiocy of the situation. But something about Dr Roger’s presence makes him feel ill at ease. 

Steve looks at the ankle with the focused attention of someone who is about to have opinions about it. "Which one."

“Left.”

Steve pulls up a chair across from him and a plush leather ottoman. It looks like it costs ten thousands of dollars, one where Roosevelt’s famed scottish terrier, Big Boy, would snooze in. Why does Bucky even know this information? 

He’s so far in his head he’s sure that he’s spacing out. He’s stops zoning out when Steve asks, “Can you lift your foot up here?”

Bucky blows out a long breath and lifts up his food gingerly. It’s not as bad as it seems. There’s no issue bringing his foot up at all. He’s perfectly fine. Probably a mild sprain or something. There’s a chance he’s forgetting he’s not actually using any part of his foot to lift up the foot per se, and it’s his thighs that are doing all the work, but eh, semantics. 

He nods once. "Can you take the shoe off or do you need help."

"I can—" Bucky starts to bend towards his foot but any kind of pressure does not seem to be on the agenda for the day. To give himself credit, he tries, and then — "help would be good actually."

Steve does it without comment. No wince of sympathy, no sharp intake of breath at the swelling, no performance of concern. He just looks at it with the same focused attention, turns it slightly, asks Bucky where it hurts and in what way, and listens to the answers like they're data points, which Bucky supposes they are.

It is, Bucky thinks distantly, extremely professional. Rare, even for a doctor. He’s seen people fangirl over him, or offer pretentious conversations like they’re just like him. After more than 17 years as a “musician for the ages” ™, “pop music icon of the century”© or “legendary soulful musician” as dubbed by the constantly critical paparazzi site, TMZ, Bucky finds this awfully refreshing. 

Natasha speaks from somewhere behind him. "He was pushed from the stage by an overzealous fan."

Steve glances up at her briefly. Back down. "Pushed or fell." 

Bucky can’t help thinking, does it even matter? He wants to roll his eyes so badly.

"Both, I imagine." Natasha replies. 

"Mm." He presses something that makes Bucky's vision go briefly white and he grips the side of the chair. “Sorry”

This doctor doesn't sound particularly sorry. He sounds like someone who needed to press that and did. He’s prodding at Bucky’s foot and Bucky is trying to hold it all together. 

Steve sits back slightly. Not far. Just enough to indicate he's finished the immediate assessment and is now going to pronounce Bucky’s death sentence. 

"I'm going to send you for imaging before we confirm anything. There's a radiologist two doors down." Steve is already writing the referral. "Shouldn't take long."

It doesn't. Twenty minutes later Bucky is back in the same chair, same ottoman, same window light. Steve pulls up the imaging on his laptop, looks at it for approximately forty-five seconds, and nods once.

"Grade two. As suspected." He says it the way people say things they've said many times before. Factual. No cushioning. "Partial tear of the anterior talofibular ligament. No fracture."

"Okay," Bucky says. "So. Mild."

Steve looks at him. "No."

"Moderately mild." Bucky might be overreaching here, but he’s not keen for this to be anything other than mild. 

"Also no." He folds his hands across his chest, as if he’s about to lecture a four year old caught dipping their hands in a tub of chocolate ice cream. "Four to six weeks before you return to any running. Aggressive physio, no shortcuts, and that timeline assumes you're diligent about the rehab protocol." Dr Rogers stares Bucky down, as if he would try to negotiate down his rehab time. 

Four to six weeks. Bucky does the math he's been avoiding since last night. He does it quickly, and then does it again because the first answer wasn't acceptable.

The thing is, and he knows this is not the room for it, knows it doesn't make sense to anyone who isn't him, running is the one thing. Not a thing. It is the one thing. Ever since. All the ever sinces. He can't even list them right now, they're just piling up somewhere behind his sternum in a way that isn't dignified and isn't useful and is happening anyway. He scratches the back of his head. Harder than he has to.

Natasha is staring at him. Mouth terse. Jaw tight. He must be doing something with his face.

"I have a race in ten weeks," he says. He can hear that it comes out slightly wrong. He sounds too emotional to be dignified, or maybe too flat. He's not sure which. It's not aimed at Dr. Rogers specifically. Maybe it’s targeted at the entire room. He’s getting upset. 

The room is quiet for a moment.

Steve looks up from his notes. Not with sympathy. Not with carefully managed concern. Just a recalibration. Like Bucky has introduced a new variable and he's running it.

"What kind of race."

"Marathon."

A beat.

"How long have you been training?"

"Two years. This is my second." Bucky pauses. He doesn't know why he added that. It felt relevant. "I have a time goal."

Steve nods once. The nod of someone filing information rather than responding to it. "What's your current weekly mileage?"

Bucky is hesitant to reply. This is the thing he has that the public doesn’t know, it’s private. It’s his. He doesn’t know Dr Rogers. He doesn’t know if he can be trusted. How if he sells him out and it gets to the paparazzi and they’ll be waiting in line at every mile to shoot photos of him looking bedraggled and dehydrated, covering tabloids the next day with the headlines “Bucky Barnes sucks at running.” Well, he doesn’t really have a choice now does he. His choice is whether to lie, to not share, to keep it to himself, to just have this thing that’s his. And he skips the marathon which he’s been training so hard for, and Bucky makes the decision. 

“Sixty miles. I was supposed to hit sixty-five this week.” He groans, deflated and annoyed all in one breath.

And just like that they're talking about running. Not about Bucky Barnes, not about the stage, not about the footage circulating somewhere on the internet right now. Not about how Bucky felt when that crazed fan rushed up on stage and he felt his privacy completely violated and he was actually scared.

Steve asks about mileage and Bucky answers, and Steve asks about his long run schedule and Bucky answers that too, and at no point does Steve's expression shift into anything that resembles recognition of what he's actually being handed here. The information. The private, careful, two-years-of-early-mornings information that Bucky has not given to a single journalist, a single fan site, a single person outside of this small and trusted circle. 

Steve just writes it down.

Like it's data. Like it's just a training load, a timeline, a set of variables to factor into a rehab plan.

Bucky doesn't know what he expected. Some version of oh, interesting. Or the particular brightness people get in their eyes when they think they've learned something about him they weren't supposed to know. He's seen that look enough times to recognize it from across a room.

Steve doesn't have that look. Steve has the look of someone doing maths.

It is, Bucky thinks, the most privacy he has felt in a very long time. Which is a strange thing to feel in a doctor's office while being asked about his weekly mileage. He files this away somewhere he hasn't named yet.

He can feel Natasha behind him, very still, not saying anything. She knows what this costs him, the telling of it. He’s not upset at her. He’s just upset at the entire situation. There is still a possibility that he won’t be able to run the marathon, but damn does he want to try anyway. 

He answers every question Dr Rogers asks.

The physio is a woman named Dr. Cho who has absolutely no interest in who Bucky Barnes is and a great deal of interest in the integrity of his anterior talofibular ligament. He respects this about her immediately.

She gives him a protocol. He follows it. This is not complicated. He is, it turns out, an excellent patient, which surprises no one who knows him and would probably surprise everyone who doesn't. The public version of Bucky Barnes does not read as someone who does his homework. The actual Bucky Barnes has never once not done his homework.

The first week is ice and elevation and trying not to think about the fact that he is not running. He is not running. He is sitting in his very nice apartment in Park Slope and not running. He reorganizes his vinyl collection. He reorganizes it again by a different system: chronological, then by label, then by a third system that makes sense only to him and which he will defend if asked. Chet Baker next to Alice Coltrane next to Nat King Cole, which is technically incorrect and exactly right. He learns that he owns four copies of the same Dave Brubeck record, which is either a sign of great taste or a symptom of something Dr. Maria would have opinions about. Eh, he keeps them all anyway. He really does love that Time Out album.

He reads. He has three books going simultaneously, which is normal: a biography of Duke Ellington, something dense about the Art in the Italian Renaissance that he's been meaning to finish for eight months, and a paperback history of the Byzantine Empire that he picked up at a stall in Brooklyn and which turns out to be genuinely gripping. He finishes the Byzantine one in two days and feels briefly bereft.

He watches six episodes of Rick Steves' Europe in a single sitting. Rick Steves is in the Dordogne. Rick Steves is very enthusiastic about a cave painting. Bucky finds this deeply comforting in a way he cannot and will not explain to anyone. He loves Rick Steves. 

The second week he is allowed to walk normally, which he does, with great seriousness, up and down the staircase of his brownstone at six in the morning because his body still wakes up at six in the morning regardless of what he's allowed to do with it. Thor, who stays over when Bucky's schedule is disrupted, finds him on the third morning doing this and says nothing, which is the correct response.

The third week Dr. Cho introduces resistance bands and he nearly kowtows to her out of gratitude. 

He doesn't. He does the resistance bands. He does them correctly and then does them again.

The check-ins with Dr. Rogers are on Thursdays.

They are, structurally, unremarkable. Steve reviews Dr. Cho's notes. He asks Bucky a series of questions. Bucky answers them. Steve writes things down. Sometimes he adjusts something, the load, the timeline, a specific exercise, and explains why in the same factual register he uses for everything, which is the register of someone who assumes you can handle accurate information and doesn't need it softened.

Bucky finds this, on reflection, extremely respectful.

He does not say this. He answers the questions.

The second check-in Steve asks how the sleep is. Bucky says fine, which is mostly true. Steve looks at him for a moment in a way that isn't quite skepticism and isn't quite nothing.

"Running's probably been regulating your sleep cycle," he says. "The disruption is normal. It'll settle."

"I know," Bucky says. Then: "I didn't know that specifically. But okay."

Steve nods. Writes something down. He has a flashback to therapy. He hates it when doctors do that. Maybe they just do that for fun to unnerve you.

Bucky files this away somewhere he hasn't named yet. The fact that Steve offered the explanation without being asked. The fact that it was the right explanation. Small things. He is collecting small things and he does not know what he is building.

By week four he is cleared for the pool. He swims like a man with a grievance, which is to say, very fast and with great focus and absolutely no joy. It is not running. It is wet and chlorinated and the lane lines are the wrong color and it is not running. He does it every morning anyway. Cherry Bomb comes on his waterproof headphones at the turn and he goes faster. 

Week five, Dr. Cho clears him for light jogging. Ten minutes. Then twelve. Then fifteen.

He does not push it. He knows what is at stake.

He texts Natasha: still on track.

She replies: I know.

He doesn't know how she knows. He's stopped asking.

It's just past five-thirty when he gets to Prospect Park and the light is doing that thing it does in early April, low and gold and not quite committed to being morning yet. The park is empty in the way that feels personal, like it's his specifically, which he knows is not true and enjoys anyway.

He stops at the entrance and does a proper warm-up because he doesn’t want to disappoint Dr. Cho. Hm. Maybe Maria would have something to say about wanting to please your physical therapist. Or is he also pleasing himself? Or is it just because he’s surrounded by scary women and he doesn’t want to piss them off. Eh. Not important. Probably. 

The Alphafly 3s are laced exactly right. He spent an embarrassing amount of time on this when he first got them. There are videos, apparently, about lacing racing shoes, and he watched several of them at midnight like a normal person. The carbon plate sits under his foot like a promise. He's run in a lot of shoes. These are correct.

The Satisfy shirt is the dark tie-dye Merino MothTech, ink-bloom pattern, deep navy bleeding into black bleeding into something almost purple at the hem. It weighs essentially nothing. The first time he put it on he stood in his kitchen and held his arm up to the light just to watch it change colour. He bought two. 

The Tracksmith shorts are the Van Cortlandts, navy, the ones with the brief liner and the back pocket just large enough for a gel. He has opinions about pockets. He has had to develop opinions about pockets because running, it turns out, requires you to have opinions about pockets, which is one of approximately six hundred things nobody tells you before you start. Completely unnecessary. He loves it. 

The District Vision glasses are the Junya Racer in Powder Rose, which he bought because he saw them and knew he needed them and that was the entire decision-making process. They are, objectively, a little fashion-forward for a Tuesday morning in Prospect Park with no one watching. He does not care. He likes the color. Nobody is here.

He starts his watch. He runs.

By mile eight his head has gone quiet in the way it only when he runs.

Not empty exactly. More like everything has been filed correctly and there's nothing left requiring immediate attention. He is also, objectively, running beautifully. He knows this. The Alphafly 3s are doing exactly what carbon plate shoes are supposed to do and his form is good and his cadence is good and if anyone were watching — which no one is, which is the point, which he loves — they would see a man moving through Prospect Park like something elegant and inevitable.

He imagines himself as a gazelle. Specifically: a gazelle in Powder Rose glasses and a Satisfy shirt, mile eight of a twenty-mile training run through Prospect Park, Brooklyn, moving through the early morning light with the effortless economy of something that was built for exactly this. The savanna stretches in every direction. His cadence is perfect. His anterior talofibular ligament is, frankly, exceptional. Somewhere, Dr. Cho is crying. She doesn't know why. She will figure it out later.

He allows himself this. Nobody is here.

Mostly what's in there after the gazelle thing settles is Rick Steves

He watched three episodes last night. Rick Steves in the French countryside, Rick Steves standing outside a Romanesque church in Conques looking like a man who has just been handed everything he ever wanted and cannot believe his luck. The thing about Rick Steves, Bucky has decided, is that he means it. Every single time. He's standing in front of an eleventh century tympanum and he is genuinely moved and he needs you to understand why and he will take as long as it requires. No irony. No performance of enthusiasm. Just a man and his profound feelings about medieval stonework, sharing them with the camera like a gift.

Bucky finds this, without apology, deeply affecting. There is something about watching a person be completely unguarded about the things they love. He doesn't encounter it very often.

He comes around the curve near the Boathouse and that's when he sees him.

Dr. Rogers is running.

Of course he is. He's in the park at five-thirty in the morning, which means he is either also a person who runs seriously or he is here for some other reason that Bucky cannot currently imagine. He is running seriously. The form is immediately legible as someone who has done this many times, relaxed shoulders, good economy, the particular quality of unhurried speed that comes from knowing exactly what you're doing.

He's in a grey t-shirt that has been washed into near-transparency and shorts that have no strong opinions about themselves. The shoes are New Balance SC Elite, which Bucky recognizes because he considered them before the Alphaflys and they are an excellent and serious shoe. And then the glasses. District Vision, the Junya Racer, Iris and D+ Blue Gradient, the lens semi-transparent and catching the early light. It’s the one Bucky was thinking of getting before he got his powder rose. Bucky can see Dr Roger’s eyes through them. They are, in fact, very blue. 

Steve sees him at roughly the same moment. There's a beat, recognition, recalibration, the same one-second assessment Bucky remembers from the clinic. Then he nods. Once. The nod of someone who has seen a person they know in a context that requires no particular response.

Bucky nods back.

They pass each other.

That's it. Steve's pace doesn't change. Bucky's pace doesn't change. The park absorbs them both back into its early morning quiet like nothing happened.

Bucky runs another two miles before he thinks about it again. Then he thinks about it for approximately the rest of the run.

It happens again the following Tuesday. And the Tuesday after that.

The nod becomes a thing. Not a big thing. Just a thing. Bucky nods, Steve nods, they run in opposite directions or the same direction at different speeds, which given Steve's pace is quickly apparent. He is faster. Significantly. Stupid. Where is he even running too anyway? It’s not like he’s doing a marathon. Bucky is not jealous. He’s just happy he can run at all. 

The third Tuesday Steve is coming in as Bucky is finishing his cool-down stretch by the Boathouse and he says, "Good pace today," without breaking stride, which Bucky only processes approximately four seconds after Steve has already passed him. He stands there for a moment with one hand on the Boathouse railing thinking about that. Good pace today. Factual. Observational. The register of someone who noticed without making it mean anything.

He does not think about it for the rest of the day. He thinks about it for most of the rest of the day.

By the fifth week the nod has become a small raise of the chin, which is technically the same gesture but feels different, and Bucky is aware that he is cataloguing the difference between a nod and a chin raise like a person with extremely good things to do with their time.

He has a lot of good things to do with his time. He thinks about the chin raise anyway.

The thing he doesn't ask, across all of it, across every Tuesday and every chin raise and every Thursday check-in where Steve reviews Dr. Cho's notes and asks about mileage and writes things down: whether Steve does marathons. The shoes say yes. The pace says yes. The form says yes. Everything says yes and Bucky keeps not asking and Steve keeps not saying and that gap sits there between them, unremarked, which is fine. It's completely fine. Bucky is just a person who is curious about things. He is curious about many things. The Byzantine Empire, for instance. Rick Steves' feelings about Romanesque architecture. Whether Dr. Rogers has ever run a marathon.

He keeps it to himself.

The cafe opens at six-forty-five and Bucky is through the door at six-forty-six because he has a system and the system works. Hat pulled down, Powder Rose glasses on, the particular body language of a person who is present but would prefer not to be perceived. The girl behind the counter doesn't look up from the till, which he appreciates enormously. He orders a coffee and a croissant to go and steps to the side to wait.

He hears the door open behind him. He doesn't turn around.

The croissant arrives in a paper bag and he can smell the butter through it immediately, warm and serious, the kind of smell that makes promises. He takes it with both hands and is just beginning to have feelings about it when his own voice comes out of the speakers.

He knows it immediately, which is its own specific humiliation, the way you always recognize your own voice on a recording even when you wish you didn't. It's the old one. The one from before, bright and overproduced and engineered for inescapability, the version of him that someone else built and polished and sent out into the world. He hasn't listened to it in years. He didn't choose to listen to it now. Ugh. The day was shaping up so nicely. Granted that he just woke up, but that’s not the point. He ran well. He ran hard. It was going to be good day. Yet, no one ever needs to be reminded of the crappy music that turned you into a chart topper in your tween years. He’s at peace with what he used to be. How he was used. He’s fine with it. He’s done the work. He just doesn’t want to be reminded of it when he was about to take a bite of his glorious buttery, flakery croissant. 

He goes very still. The song keeps going, bright and inevitable, and he is briefly somewhere he doesn't particularly want to be.

"I know this song"

It’s Dr Rogers voice. Behind him. Factual. Just a man registering information out loud, the same register he uses for everything.

Bucky turns around. 

Steve is looking away. It doesn’t seem like he was talking to anyone but himself. 

Bucky stands there with his bag and his coffee and his own voice coming out of the speakers and the specific unhelpful feeling of having been handed something he doesn't know what to do with. That was weird. 

He goes outside. He eats the croissant on the street, standing up, because he is not going to let this ruin the croissant. It's still warm. It's still transcendent. The world is not basically fine.

But the croissant is still good.

He's twenty minutes early, which is his own fault, and the waiting room is exactly as he left it. Persian rug. Roosevelt's ottoman. The painting of something that isn't anything. He settles into the chair nearest the window and does not take out his phone because he is a person with discipline and good habits and he has somewhere to be in his head that isn't the internet.

The receptionist, a pleasant woman named Agnes who has worked here since the Erskine era and treats Bucky with the magnificent indifference of someone who has seen everything, glances up from her desk.

"Dr. Steve Rogers is just finishing up at the VA," she says. "He'll be with you in ten."

She goes back to her computer.

Bucky looks at the painting of something that isn't anything.

Steve. His name is Steve. Dr. Steve Rogers, which Bucky knew, it was on the paperwork, he just never… it never became a name. It was always Dr. Rogers, which is a title and a surname and a professional relationship, and now it is also Steve, which is a person, and Bucky is sitting with that in a waiting room on a Thursday morning with nowhere to put it.

Also the VA.

He does not take out his phone. He looks at the ottoman. He thinks about Roosevelt's scottish terrier, which was named Fala, he remembers this now, not Big Boy, he has been thinking the wrong name this entire time. Fala. He feels obscurely that this is important information and also that it is completely irrelevant to anything currently happening in his life.

He does not google Steve Rogers.

He waits.

Steve arrives eight minutes later with the punctuality of someone who was never going to be late, shrugs off his jacket, and is already pulling up Bucky's file before he's fully through the door.

"How's the ankle feeling."

"Good," Bucky says. "Really good actually."

Steve nods. Sets the file down. "Let's have a look."

The appointment is, structurally, unremarkable. Steve checks the range of motion, asks about any residual stiffness, reviews Dr. Cho's final notes. His hands are careful and certain and Bucky notices, not for the first time, the particular quality of how Steve handles things. Like someone who knows exactly how much force is required and uses precisely that amount. Not more.

There is a scar on his forearm that Bucky hasn't noticed before, or noticed and not registered. Long and pale and old. The kind of scar that has a story Bucky is not going to ask about.

He looks away.

"You're cleared," Steve says. He says it the way he says everything. Factual. No cushioning. "Race day protocol — start conservative, don't go out too fast, trust your training. The ankle will tell you if something's wrong. Listen to it."

"Okay."

"Good luck." A beat. "You've done the work."

Bucky blinks. It's possibly the most personal thing Steve has ever said to him in a professional context. He files it somewhere he hasn't named yet, which is getting crowded.

He thanks Steve. He leaves.

He makes it home first. This is important. He makes it all the way home, changes out of his jacket, puts the kettle on, sits down at the kitchen counter like a normal person living a normal life, and then opens his laptop.

He closes it.

He opens it again.

The thing is, he knows better. He knows exactly what it feels like to be googled, the particular violation of someone deciding they're entitled to a version of you that you didn't hand them, and he has spent seventeen years developing extremely strong feelings about this. He is not a hypocrite. He is a person with principles. He is a person who respects privacy because he knows what it costs when people don't.

He types Steve Rogers into the search bar.

He closes the laptop.

He opens it.

"This is insane," he says, to no one. Thor is not here today. Nobody is here. He is talking to his kitchen.

The thing is, and this is the argument he's been losing for the past forty minutes, it's public information. If it's on the internet it's public information, that's the entire premise, that's how the internet works, he's not hacking into anything, he's not paying a private investigator, he's just. Looking. The way anyone could look. The way Agnes from reception probably looked once out of mild professional curiosity and thought nothing of it.

He is not Agnes. He knows that. He knows that this is different and that the difference is the point and that the reason he wants to look is exactly the reason he probably shouldn't.

He types Steve Rogers doctor Brooklyn into the search bar and hits enter before he can stop himself.

The results are not particularly illuminating, which serves him right. There are several Steve Rogers in Brooklyn. There is a Steve Rogers who does something in finance. There is a Steve Rogers who coaches little league. He scrolls.

He adds veteran and the results reorganize themselves.

There's not much. A mention in a regimental newsletter from years ago. A citation, the details classified or redacted or just not public. A photograph from some kind of veterans' benefit, slightly blurry, Steve in a suit looking like he'd rather be somewhere else, which Bucky finds, against his will, completely legible.

He stares at the photograph for longer than is strictly necessary.

He closes the laptop.

He sits there for a moment with his tea going cold and the particular feeling of someone who went looking for an answer and found instead three more questions and a blurry photograph of a man in a suit who would rather be somewhere else.

He knows that feeling. He's had it himself. In photographs, at events, in rooms full of people who think they know him.

He files this away somewhere he hasn't named yet. The folder is getting very full. He's going to have to name it eventually.

He drinks his cold tea. Outside, Brooklyn goes about its business. In six days he has a marathon to run.

The corrals are chaos in the best way, twenty thousand bodies and the specific electric hum of people who have been awake since four-thirty and have committed to something large. Bucky is in his corral, hat down, glasses on, anonymous in the way that only works at races because everyone is too inside their own heads to look at anyone else's face. He loves this about races. He loves this about running. Everyone here has a private thing they're chasing and nobody has time to chase anyone else's.

Natasha texted at five-fifteen. Just: go.

He doesn’t bother to text back.

Sam and Thor are somewhere in the course. He doesn't know exactly where and that's by design. He trusts them to do their job and they trust him to do his and that's the arrangement and it works.

The gun goes.

He runs.

The first ten miles are controlled, which is the hardest thing, harder than the miles that come after, because everything in him wants to go and he doesn't let it. He knows this course now, knows where it opens up and where it tightens, knows the bridges and the inclines and the particular cruelty of mile twenty. He runs his race. Not anyone else's.

The ankle holds. He checks in with it at every mile the way Steve told him to, a brief internal audit, and every mile it reports back fine, which he receives with something close to gratitude.

Mile eighteen his head goes quiet. Not empty. Just quiet. The Byzantine Empire is not in there. Rick Steves is not in there. The "I know this one" is not in there. There is just the road and his breathing and the number he is chasing and the fact that his body, his actual body that he has fed and rested and rehabbed and dragged out of bed at five-thirty for two years, is doing exactly what he asked it to do.

Cherry Bomb comes on at mile twenty. He goes faster.

He crosses the finish line at three hours, ten minutes, and forty-three seconds.

He knows before he looks at his watch. He can feel it in the split, in the last two miles, in the way his legs gave everything and had something left anyway. He stops his watch and stands there with his hands on his knees and his lungs doing their thing and the number sitting in his chest like something solid.

3:10:43.

His second marathon. Coming off a grade two sprain. With a five week gap in training that he clawed back mile by mile in a pool that smelled like chlorine and wasn't running.

He straightens up. Someone puts a mylar blanket around his shoulders. He takes it. He is, at this precise moment, not Bucky Barnes. He is just a person who ran 26.2 miles and has the time to prove it and needs a moment to be that person before he has to be anything else.

He checks his watch again. Just to see it again. 3:10:43.

He looks up.

Steve is standing about fifteen feet away.

He almost doesn't clock him. His eyes are doing that post-race thing where everything is slightly too bright and the crowd is just texture, a wash of mylar and volunteers and people crying happy into each other's shoulders. He's looking for Natasha, probably, or just looking at nothing, still inside the number.

And then Steve resolves out of the background the way things do when you weren't looking for them.

He's in his finisher's medal and a mylar blanket of his own, standing to the side of the chute with a water bottle and the particular stillness Bucky has come to recognize as just how Steve stands. Not waiting for anything. Just present. He's been here a while, Bucky can tell. The blanket is already half off one shoulder. He finished a while ago.

Their eyes meet.

Steve raises his chin. The chin raise. Then, after a beat, something that isn't quite a smile but is adjacent to one. Brief. Genuine. The expression of a person who is glad about something and sees no reason to perform the gladness.

Bucky stares at him for a second.

"You ran this," he says. It comes out slightly flat because his lungs are still recalibrating and also because he is experiencing several things at once and his voice is the last thing getting resources right now.

"Yeah," Steve says.

That's it. Just: yeah. Like of course. Like this is a thing he does and he didn't mention it because why would he, it wasn't relevant, which is so symmetrically infuriating and also so completely Steve that Bucky doesn't even have the energy to be annoyed about it. He files it. The folder has given up trying to stay organized.

"Good race," Steve says.

"You too," Bucky says. Then, because he cannot help himself: "What did you run."

Steve looks at him for a moment. "Fast enough."

He says it without ego, which is almost worse. Just a fact about himself that he has no particular need to expand on.

Bucky stands there in his mylar blanket with his 3:10:43 and his extremely full unnamed folder and the specific feeling of a person who has just been handed another thing he doesn't know what to do with.

"Good job, Barnes," Steve says. Quietly. And then he nods once more and moves off into the crowd, mylar half off his shoulder, water bottle in hand, disappearing the way he always does, like he was never trying to be found in the first place.

Bucky watches him go.

Natasha appears. She says nothing. She just hands him a water bottle and stands there.

He can feel her smirking without looking.

"Whatever," he says.

She says nothing. She is definitely smirking.

He drinks the water. Around him the finish line keeps going, people crossing, people crying, people finding each other in the crowd. He stands in the middle of it and thinks about a man who knew he was there and didn't say anything until he crossed the line and then said good job like it was simple and walked away.

It is not simple. None of this is simple. He has a very full folder and no name for it and a finishing time of 3:10:43 and Natasha smirking beside him and approximately zero idea what he is going to do next.

He finishes the water.

He has some ideas about what he is going to do next.

And then he hears it. The particular sound of it, the shutter click and the jostle, and Sam is already moving, closing the distance, and Thor materializes on his other side like a very large weather event, and just like that the apparatus is back. Cameras angling for the shot. Someone calling his name, the professional call of someone who wants his face turned toward a lens. Bucky Barnes, finisher's medal, mylar blanket, 26.2 miles on his legs and a private thing he just did that is already becoming a story someone else will tell.

He pulls the hat down. He lets Sam and Thor do their job. He keeps his face neutral in the way he has been keeping his face neutral for seventeen years.

But underneath the mylar blanket, his watch still reads 3:10:43. They don't get that. That one is his.

The post-race checkup is scheduled for the following Thursday and Bucky is, privately, enormously relieved about this.

Not because of his ankle, which is fine. Genuinely fine. Dr. Cho already signed off, the race went well, he iced it that evening as instructed and woke up the next morning with the specific full-body heaviness of someone who ran 26.2 miles and an ankle that had absolutely nothing to complain about. The ankle is not the issue.

The issue is that he has a folder with no name and a man who said fast enough with no ego and walked away into a crowd and Bucky has been turning it over for six days like a problem he can't file correctly. He needs more data. This is a data problem. He is a person who solves data problems by gathering data, which is a completely reasonable and not at all embarrassing way to approach the situation.

He was, if he is being honest with himself, already composing pretexts. A twinge. A mild stiffness. Something vague enough to warrant a follow-up but not so dramatic as to be implausible. He had three options ranked by credibility and he was going to deploy the best one and he was not going to feel bad about it.

And then Agnes called to schedule the post-race checkup and Bucky said yes with the dignity of a man who did not just get handed a lifeline by the universe.

He arrives, as always, slightly early.

The appointment starts the way all the appointments start. Steve reviews the notes. Asks about the ankle. Bucky reports back: fine, genuinely fine, no stiffness, full range of motion, Dr. Cho's protocol worked. Steve nods. Writes something down. Bucky has made his peace with the note writing. Probably.

"How'd the race go." Not quite a question. The register of someone who already has a sense of the answer and is giving Bucky the floor.

"Three ten forty three."

Steve nods once. The filing nod. "Good. For a second marathon coming off that injury, that's a serious result."

"I know," Bucky says. Then: "Thank you."

Steve looks at him briefly. Nods again. Goes back to his notes.

Bucky watches him write something down and decides, quietly, that he is done waiting.

"I saw you," he says. "At the finish line."

Steve looks up.

"You were already done." Bucky keeps his voice even. Curious. The voice of someone conducting a reasonable inquiry. "You'd been there a while."

"Yeah," Steve says. "I saw you cross."

"You didn't say anything. Until I looked up."

"No."

Bucky waits.

Steve sets his pen down. Considers for a moment, the way he considers things, without performance, without filling the silence just to fill it.

"Isn't the race your private time?" he says. "You don't want to be recognized out there. I wouldn't want to take that away from you. Even at the finish."

Bucky looks at him.

Bucky opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again.

"You didn't tell me you were running it."

It comes out softer than he intended. Before he could catch it, before he could file it or reframe it or make it sound like something other than what it is. It just lands there between them, small and unguarded, and Bucky cannot take it back and is not sure he wants to.

Steve looks at him. Really looks at him, for a moment, in the way he rarely does in this room.

"No," he says. Quiet. "I didn't."

A beat.

"I didn't want you to feel like I'd followed you into it," Steve says. "It's yours. I didn't want to make it complicated."

He has been looked at his entire adult life. He has been perceived and misread and managed and photographed and written about and he has, over seventeen years, developed an extremely comprehensive catalog of the things people say and do and mean and don't mean. He is very good at finding the angle.

There is no angle.

Just a person who saw what he needed and left it alone. Who ran the same race and said nothing because it was Bucky's thing and he didn't want to take that away from him.

Bucky doesn't have a comeback. He is a person who always has a comeback and he has nothing.

"Oh," he says finally. Quietly. "Okay."

Steve holds his gaze for a moment longer. Then he picks up his pen.

"Ankle's good," he says. "Keep up the maintenance work with Dr. Cho."

"Right," Bucky says.

He sits there a beat longer than he needs to. The folder has a name now. He's not going to say it out loud. Not yet. But he knows what it is.

He picks up his jacket. He stands.

He's going to have to do something about this.

Bucky sets out earlier than usual. Six miles, easy pace, done by seven. That's the plan. The plan has other components but that's the running part of it and he is focusing on the running part of it for now because the other parts are fine, he's fine, this is fine.

He is, objectively, a little bit terrified.

Not the performing kind. Not the kind he puts on for red carpets when someone asks him something he doesn't want to answer and he does the thing with his face. The actual kind. The quiet, specific, sitting-behind-his-sternum kind that he has learned, over many years and one very good therapist, to treat as information rather than instruction.

He is terrified and he is going to do it anyway. He decided. The deciding is done. He is now in the execution phase.

Mile two. His legs are good. The morning is cool and clear and Prospect Park is doing its thing, the light coming through the trees at the low angle he has come to think of as his specifically, which he knows is not true and enjoys anyway. He is a gazelle. He is a gazelle who is terrified and has a plan and is executing the plan.

Mile three. His phone shuffles.

John Mayer. Gravity.

He almost laughs out loud. He does not laugh out loud because he is alone in a park at six in the morning and that would be a lot. But he feels it, the laugh, sitting right there.

Keep me where the light is, John Mayer says, directly into his ears, with feeling.

Bucky runs.

The thing is, he knows what this is. He has done enough work, sat in enough of Dr. Maria's chairs, to know what it looks like when you want something and you're afraid of it and you're going to try anyway. He knows the difference between the want that comes from scarcity and the want that comes from genuine okayness, from a person who built something good and is choosing, deliberately, to let someone in. Not because he has to. Because he wants to.

He wants to.

Gravity is working against me, John Mayer says.

"Yeah," Bucky says, under his breath. To no one. To John Mayer. To himself.

Maria would be so proud of him. He is, quietly, so proud of himself. Not for how it's going to go. He has kept his expectations low and realistic and that is its own kind of wisdom,. but for this. For being here. For deciding. For the fact that he is alive and trying and that has always been, underneath everything, enough.

He finishes the next mile. He picks up the pace.

He has somewhere to be.

He finds Steve near the Boathouse at six fifty-three, cooling down, water bottle in hand, the grey t-shirt, the gradient lenses catching the morning light. Same as always. Completely himself.

Bucky slows to a stop. He is slightly out of breath, which was not part of the plan, but he is a person who adapts.

Steve looks up. The chin raise. "Barnes."

"Hey," Bucky says. He takes one breath. Two. 

He can do this. He is a grown man with over 20 chart topping hits to his name. He is probably worth over hundred million dollars. He could buy ten islands. No, those things do not help him at all. He doesn’t care about any of those things, and he bets Steve doesn’t either. He said he can do this because his mother loves him and she said he is cool and sweet and a very nice boy. So he can do this. 

“I want to take you to dinner," Bucky says. A beat. "Or lunch. Whatever. A date." A pause. "That's what I'm asking." He feels so stupid. He hasn’t felt like this since prom when he was sixteen and he asked Melinda May to go as his date, which she refused because he wore braces and braces were uncool. Why is he thinking back to that moment now. He wishes the ground would swallow him up, or not, because he really wants to hear what Steve has to say. So that he can either be giddy with excitement or buy a bucket of ben & jerry’s ice cream and sit in front of the tv for the rest of the day. 

Steve looks at him. The bewilderment is genuine, just a man who has been caught completely off guard. His mouth hangs open. Like the idea of being the thing someone chose, deliberately, after looking at everything else available to them, is not a category he had prepared for.

"Me," Steve says. Obviously bewildered. Not quite a question. Almost. He points at himself. It looks comical, but the situation is not quite comical. It’s life and death, Bucky thinks. Come on.

"You," Bucky says, staring intently at Steve’s blue eyes. 

Steve is quiet for a moment. Really quiet, the considering kind, looking at Bucky with an expression he can't fully read, which is still new, which is still terrifying, which is still fine. He is not running. He is standing here and waiting and that is what he came to do.

Then something in Steve's face settles. Not the almost-smile. Something quieter than that. Something that looks, Bucky thinks, a little like relief.

"Can I ask why?" Steve says. 

"Can I tell you on our date?” Bucky replies. Maybe he’s smoother than he gives himself credit for. He wants to give himself a pat on the back.

"Yeah. Okay."

Bucky nods. Steve nods. They stand there by the Boathouse for a moment in the early morning light, two people with good shoes and a thing that just became something else entirely.

"Okay," Bucky says.

Bucky puts his earphones back in. John Mayer is still playing. It’s Rosie, one of his favourites. He turns around and runs the rest of his miles with the specific, unfamiliar, slightly overwhelming feeling of a person who showed up for himself and it worked.

He doesn't know what to do with that yet.

He'll figure it out.

He's a mile out when it hits him.

He doesn't have Steve's number.

He slows. He stops. A jogger passes him on the left and gives him an irritated look and he ignores it because he is having a realization. He asked Steve Rogers out. Steve Rogers said yes. And then Bucky put his earphones in and ran away like a person who had completed a transaction and not like a person who needs to follow up on the transaction in any meaningful way. What was the end goal again? Idiocy? He’s reached it. 

He has no number. He has no way to contact Steve outside of booking an appointment through Agnes, which— no. Absolutely not. He will not be calling Agnes.

He stands in the middle of the path for approximately fifteen seconds.

He turns around.

Thankfully, Steve is still by the Boathouse. Of course he is. He's in the same spot, water bottle in hand, looking out at the water, which means he has been standing there since Bucky left, which you know, was just a mile back, so give or take 6-7 minutes.

He hears Bucky coming. Turns around.

Bucky stops in front of him, slightly out of breath, for the second time that morning.

Steve looks at him. Then down at Bucky's running watch. Then back up. Something in his expression shifts, just slightly, at the corners. Not quite the almost-smile. Something warmer than that, and more human, the expression of a person who has just watched someone run for miles to say something they forgot to say and finds this, quietly, very funny.

He doesn't say anything. He just waits.

"I don't have your number," Bucky says.

"No," Steve agrees. Gravely. Like this is a very serious observation that he is taking seriously. His eyes are doing something though. They are definitely doing something.

Bucky stares at him. "Are you laughing at me."

"No," Steve says. Still grave. Still with the eyes.

"You're laughing at me."

"I'm not laughing," Steve says, which is technically true. He produces his phone from his pocket and holds it out to Bucky without further comment.

Bucky takes it. Types in his number. Hands it back.

Steve looks at the screen for a moment. Nods once. Pockets the phone.

"I'll text you," he says.

"Okay," Bucky says.

He puts his earphones back in. He turns around. He runs the remaining two miles home with the feeling of a person who has just done something embarrassing and doesn't mind at all.

John Mayer is still playing. It’s New Light. Upbeat enough, also strangely appropriate.

He'll figure the rest out.

Two Years Later

The Jamie Cullum record has been on for forty minutes and Bucky is, by any reasonable measure, a person who has his life together.

The apartment smells like garlic and white wine. The kitchen is clean except for the cooking mess, which is the acceptable kind. There is a person who loves him who will be home in twenty minutes and Bucky is making dinner and this is just Tuesday. This is what Tuesday is now.

He stirs. Jamie Cullum does something nimble with a piano line. He stirs according to the jazzy little tune and sways accordingly. No one is here to see him be a dork.

He hears the door.

"In here," he calls.

Footsteps. The particular cadence of them, which Bucky could pick out of a crowd without thinking. Steve appears in the kitchen doorway, still in his jacket, and crosses to Bucky at the stove without preamble. Hugs him from behind. Chin coming down toward his shoulder.

"Mmm." A beat. "Smells good." Closer. "What are you making, Buck?"

"Porcini risotto," Bucky says. "Go change, it needs another twenty minutes."

Steve doesn't move. He stays where he is, which is not unusual. Steve in motion is decisive and efficient. Steve at rest has no particular interest in being anywhere other than where he is. Bucky has learned to work around this. He stirs.

"Hard day?" he asks.

"No." A beat. "Long."

"VA or clinic."

"Clinic." Steve's chin shifts slightly against his shoulder. "You had a good day."

It isn't a question. Bucky doesn't ask how he knows. He's stopped asking.

"Recording went well," he says. "We got the second track."

Steve makes a humming sound that means good, I'm glad, tell me later, all at once. Bucky has a whole internal dictionary of Steve's sounds by now. He is not going to tell anyone this. He stirs the risotto.

They stay like that for a moment. Jamie Cullum moves into something slower. The garlic is doing exactly what it's supposed to do.

"Go change," Bucky says again. "Twenty minutes."

Steve straightens. Presses a brief kiss to the side of Bucky's head, the particular economy of it, not more than is needed, exactly what is. Then he's gone, footsteps down the hall, the familiar sounds of a person making themselves at home in a place that is theirs.

Bucky stirs the risotto.

He is, he thinks, extremely okay.

Dinner is on the table by the time Steve comes back, grey t-shirt, different grey t-shirt, Bucky has genuinely stopped being able to tell. He sits down across from Bucky and looks at the risotto with the expression he reserves for things Bucky makes that he likes.

"You didn't have to," Steve says.

"I know," Bucky says. "I wanted to."

This is a thing he has gotten better at saying. I wanted to. Not I didn't mind, not it was nothing, not any of the other deflections he spent years perfecting. Just: I wanted to. Dr. Maria would be extremely smug about this if she knew. 

Steve picks up his fork. Tries it. Hums in contentment. 

They eat. Jamie Cullum has shuffled to something else, something with a brushed snare and a walking bassline, easy and undemanding. Outside the window Brooklyn does its thing. Bucky tops up Steve's wine without asking and Steve lets him, which is its own kind of conversation.

"The second track," Steve says eventually. "The one you've been stuck on."

"Yeah."

"What unlocked it?"

Bucky considers. "Stopped trying to force it, I guess. It came naturally after."

"sounds about right," Steve says. Bucky drinks his wine.

They do the dishes together, which was not a negotiation so much as a thing that happened and then kept happening. Steve washes. Bucky dries. This is the arrangement. Bucky has opinions about this arrangement, specifically that it is inefficient and that the dishwasher exists for a reason, and he has expressed these opinions exactly once and Steve looked at him with the expression of a man who was not going to be moved on this particular point and Bucky has not raised it since. It's fine. He doesn't actually mind. It’s actually a sweet thing that they do together. 

He's drying a wine glass when the record shuffles. Something older this time, something Bucky put on the playlist months ago and forgot about. And then his own voice comes out of the speakers.

The old one. Bright and overproduced and engineered for inescapability.

He goes still for just a second. Old reflex. He's done the work on this, he knows exactly where he stands with who he used to be, but the body remembers things the mind has filed correctly and his hands stop moving for just a moment before he starts drying again.

Steve has gone still too.

Bucky glances at him. Steve is looking at the speakers with an expression Bucky can't quite read. He goes back to that moment in that cafe. That weird moment from so long ago. 

"You know this one," Bucky says.

It comes out quiet. Not an accusation. Just a thing he has always known and never asked about directly, the same way Steve never asked about the marathon until Bucky brought it up himself.

Steve is quiet for a moment. Still looking at the speakers.

"Yeah," he says. "I do."

Bucky waits.

Steve sets down the dish he's washing. Turns off the tap. Turns to look at Bucky with the particular quality of attention that has never once felt like anything other than being genuinely seen.

"They played it," he says. "When I was captured. On repeat." A beat. "For a long time."

The kitchen is very quiet.

Bucky looks at him. The scar on his forearm. The practice he took over from Erskine. The VA on Tuesday mornings.

He doesn't say anything for a moment. Then: "Steve."

"I'm okay," Steve says. Factual. The register of someone who has done the work on something and knows exactly where they stand with it. "It was a long time ago. I just—" He pauses. "I never connected it. To you. Not consciously. Not then. Not until the cafe."

The cafe. Six forty-five in the morning, a croissant in a paper bag, his own voice coming out of the speakers. I know this song.

"Why didn't you say anything," Bucky says.

Steve looks at him. "It wasn't yours to carry."

Bucky puts the wine glass down. Very carefully. On the counter.

He looks at Steve for a long moment. The grey t-shirt. The forearm. The expression of a person who has just handed something over and is not performing the handing over, just doing it, because they are close enough now that keeping it felt stranger than saying it.

"Come here," Bucky says.

Steve comes here. This is the thing about Steve, once he decides, he doesn't hedge. He crosses the kitchen and Bucky gets both hands in the front of his t-shirt and just holds on for a moment, forehead dropping to Steve's shoulder, and Steve puts his arms around him without comment, without making it mean more than it is, which is just two people standing in a kitchen on a Tuesday.

They stay like that for a while. The record keeps going. Bucky's old voice, bright and overproduced, doing its thing.

"I'm glad it was that one," Bucky says into Steve's shoulder. "Of all of them."

He feels Steve's breath shift. Not quite a laugh. "Why."

"Because it's not the worst one." A beat. "The worst one was 2009. I will not be elaborating."

Steve does laugh then, quiet and real, the one that lives in his chest and doesn't make much noise. Bucky has been collecting this laugh for two years. He has a very complete catalog.

He pulls back enough to look at Steve's face. Close. The blue eyes, the nose that has been broken more than once, the expression of a person who is exactly where he wants to be and has no particular feelings about admitting that.

"Hey," Bucky says.

"Hey," Steve says.

Bucky kisses him.

It starts slow, the way things start when you have time and you know you have time, when there's no performance and no audience and nowhere else either of you has to be. Steve's hands settle at his waist. Bucky's hands are still in his t-shirt. The record keeps going and neither of them moves to change it.

Then Steve pulls back just slightly. Looks at him.

"The risotto was very good," he says.

Bucky stares at him. "Are you serious."

"I'm just saying."

"Steven."

"It was genuinely excellent risotto."

"I will end this conversation right now," Bucky says, and kisses him again before Steve can say anything else about the risotto.

They make it as far as the couch, which was not the plan, except Bucky didn't really have a plan beyond Steve and the kissing and the general direction of the bedroom, and Steve has a hand in his hair and is walking him backwards with the particular decisiveness of a man who has made up his mind about something, so the couch it is.

Bucky goes down onto it and pulls Steve with him and Steve comes, bracing himself, not quite his full weight but enough. Enough to feel real and deliberate and like a choice being made in real time.

"Hi," Bucky says, looking up at him.

"Hi," Steve says.

He looks, Bucky thinks, extremely good from this angle. He has thought this before. He will think it again. He keeps the observation to himself on the grounds that Steve's ego does not need the assistance, which is not true, Steve has no particular ego about his appearance, but Bucky has principles.

Steve kisses him again, slower this time, with the quality of attention he brings to everything, like Bucky is something worth doing correctly and he has no intention of rushing it. His hands are careful and certain, the same way they were in the clinic two years ago, exactly the right amount of force, not more. Bucky had thought about those hands for an embarrassing amount of time before he did anything about it. He has done something about it. He has no regrets.

"Bedroom," Bucky says, when he can.

"Mm." Steve doesn't move.

"Steve."

"You said bedroom."

"I did."

"You don't sound like you want to move."

Bucky opens his mouth. Closes it. "That's not the point."

Steve looks at him with the almost-smile, the real one, the one that has been Bucky's since approximately the Boathouse and which he has never once taken for granted.

"Bedroom," Steve agrees, and gets up, and pulls Bucky with him in one easy motion, and Bucky's dignity would like to register that he does not make a sound about that, which is a complete lie, but Steve has the decency not to comment.

The bedroom is dark except for the light coming in from the street, the particular amber of Brooklyn at night that Bucky has lived with long enough to find settling. Steve clicks the lamp on, low, and turns back to Bucky with the expression of a man with a plan and no intention of being rushed about it.

Bucky sits on the edge of the bed and looks up at him. "You're still dressed."

"So are you."

"I'm sitting down. I have an excuse."

Steve pulls his t-shirt off. Bucky's argument evaporates entirely. This happens. He has made his peace with it.

He reaches up and gets his hands on Steve's waist and pulls him closer, pressing his mouth to his sternum, just below the collarbone. Steve's hand comes into his hair again, not directing, just resting. Bucky can feel his breathing.

"Bucky," Steve says. Low.

"Mm."

"You're still dressed," Steve says, which is fair.

Bucky lets Steve pull him up and gets his shirt off and then Steve's hands are on him, careful and deliberate, mapping things he already knows by heart, and Bucky tips his head back and lets him. This is also a thing he has gotten better at. Being looked at by someone who is actually seeing him. Not the version he decided to hand over. Just him.

It still catches him sometimes. In a good way. In the way of something that hasn't worn ordinary yet and he doesn't think it will.

Steve walks him back onto the bed and Bucky goes, pulling him down, and they move together with the ease of two years of knowing each other, knowing what works, knowing when to slow down and when not to. No performance. No audience. Just this.

"Hey," Bucky says quietly, at some point. Steve is looking at him in the amber light with the expression that has no name Bucky has ever found for it, the one that is just Steve, completely himself, not trying to be anything else.

"Hey," Steve says.

"Just checking," Bucky says.

Steve kisses him instead of answering, which is an answer, and Bucky pulls him closer and stops thinking about anything for a while.

It's slow. That's the thing about Steve — once he decides, he's not in a hurry. He takes his time with Bucky like Bucky is something worth taking time with, which Bucky has had two years to get used to and has not entirely managed.

"Steve," Bucky says.

"Mm."

"I would like you to—"

"I know," Steve says. Still not hurrying.

He is not patient about this. He has never once been patient about this. Steve looks up at him with the almost-smile and Bucky says "please" quietly, meaning it, and something in Steve's face shifts and then they find each other slowly and Bucky exhales a long breath into his shoulder and stays there a moment. Settling.

Steve presses his mouth to his temple. Waits.

"Okay," Bucky says.

It builds the way it builds when you're not rushing it, quietly and inevitably, and when it crests it's Steve's name in his mouth and Steve's hands steady on him and the particular feeling of being somewhere he chose to be.

Afterward, Steve's hand moves slowly up and down his back. The record has ended. Brooklyn is quiet.

"The 2009 song," Steve says, eventually.

Bucky closes his eyes. "Don't."

"I know your full discography"

"Steven, I will leave this bed."

"The bridge was—"

"I'm leaving," Bucky says, and doesn't move at all, and Steve's chest shifts under him with the quiet laugh, the real one.

Outside it's just quiet. The good kind.

He built something good. He let someone in anyway.