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The thing is, Bucky knows Steve wanted kids. But he’s known Steve for a long time, now, and he’s known just as long that Steve’s resigned himself to the fact that he wouldn’t.
When he was a kid, of course, Bucky (and now the world) has always known, it was his health. Some places, he used to tell Bucky, sitting awake in their tents at night, had laws against it -- charge you a fee, maybe throw you in jail, not even let you get married in the first place. He went and met Agent Carter on the front, and Bucky could see that, could maybe even tolerate it, too: smart-mouth kids with dark hair and blue eyes, Steve’s nose and a strong chin (Bucky never did think about it, too hard beyond that).
And then he threw everything away in a fool-headed move and woke up a damn near century later, and he could have done okay for himself then, too, made the whole wholesome American hero thing work, but he spent years acting like a damn grieving widow, and another chasing down Bucky’s body, and then his mind.
Bucky’s grateful, but you wouldn’t know it.
Because Steve’s done all of that, and Bucky’s still lying here in bed with him now, sweat cooling on his skin and flesh and blood hand dipping between metal-marked cheeks and down his thigh, where he’s still leaking Bucky’s come.
Bucky thinks about a lot of things that Steve is giving up, every time they get on this carousel again, but none more than his imaginary family. It isn’t about biology, either; even for Captain America, adoption while living with the world’s deadliest assassin is not, Bucky imagines, going to ever be a successful enterprise.
”Always thought you wanted a family,” Bucky said once, voice soft and half-asleep, curled around Steve in bed.
“Want you more,” Steve had said, and he’d taken Bucky’s hand and ended the conversation.
Bucky had left, two days later, been gone for five weeks. Steve had been waiting for him, when he got back, and Bucky knows he’s selfish for letting this happen.
Captain America shouldn’t have to keep half of his life in the shadows. And Steve Rogers shouldn’t have to give up this dream, too.
*
“Okay, so explain what the hell we’re doing here, now?” Bucky’s trying not to complain, he’s honestly not, but he’s so close to shore leave he can fucking taste it. He misses gravity, even when it makes his shoulder and back ache; he misses being able to breathe without a goddamn crystal condom. He misses the Avengers, as fucked-up a family as they may or may not be.
God, he misses Steve. Doesn’t have a damn right to, not since he’s the one that left, but he misses him like a physical presence, like the phantom limb he doesn’t have. He misses Steve like a part of him’s torn out, and the dozen static comm calls -- updates on SHIELD cases, too professional to ease the ache -- haven’t done anything but leave Bucky worried, even as the serum’s regenerated and Steve’s youth, if not his strength, for some reason, has returned.
“Friendly mission. We’re in the Kova sector; we’re running supplies from Asgard to the Aedians.”
“Aedians.”
“Little gray men. Or, well, tall. Politically neutral race, inter-telepathic connection among their own people, one-way radio with the rest of us. They’ve developed transmogrification. Their reproductive system is wholly chosen based on the concept of soul-mates, other halves.”
“No ‘oopsies?’ Not bad. Seems picky though.” Bucky looks down through the ship’s window at the landscape outside the tarmac. If he’s truly lucky, they won’t even have to go outside; they’re runners on this mission, there’s no reason to fake diplomacy. He’s shit at it, anyway; if they’d wanted someone to shake hands and kiss babies, they should have asked Steve.
He wonders sometimes how Steve would handle a job like this; he wonders how Steve would handle knowing Bucky’s taken a job like this. Some things, he thinks, are better left mysteries. Besides, he thinks grimly: it won’t be the first time he’s been in the habit of leaving for months on end. “What happens if your ‘other half’ ain’t compatible? Can’t have kids, or the junk don’t match up right?”
Daisy shrugs. “Temporary transmogrification.”
Bucky winces. “Sorry I asked.”
The visual is broken, thankfully, by the bay doors opening, and a large, thin gray being in long, sleek robes that reflect like liquid, raising its arms to them both in what could be an attack, or a hug, Bucky’s half-set on either. Their arms look like he could snap them with a hard head butt, though, so Bucky waits it out; it winds up being an awkward hug, as the alien’s arms don’t seem to have joints, wrapping around them both like some kind of constrictor.
“And now we both know what it feels like to hug Reed Richards.” Bucky shakes himself as subtly as he can manage. “Imagine the sex though?”
“I hate you so much.” Daisy leans over to kick his shin. “Not you, your--um, well, we didn’t get your name, but it’s an honor.”
“I am the Imperial Aedia.” The voice that comes through Bucky’s head could as much be in it as outside of it, and Bucky’s eyes fly to Daisy, trying to determine if she hears it, too. “I am here to thank you personally, for your time and contribution to my people. I was told you are on your way home yourselves, that it has been a while.”
“Yes’m.” Bucky finds himself standing at parade rest; the soldier is instinct, and he knows Daisy will remember this, later. “I have a--someone, I’d like to see. You’ll excuse us if we don’t stay long.”
“A someone,” says the voice again, and there’s nothing moving, no evidence of sound. Bucky’s frozen to the spot, somewhere between fascinated and afraid as the Aedia moves closer, hand outstretched. They touch Bucky’s forehead and their fingers radiates….warm, somehow, and peace. Bucky closes his eyes and leans into it. “I see,” the Aedia echoes through his head. “Your some-one, he is important to you. This One. And yet, you leave him. Is it because you still think he deserves more?”
Bucky’s eyes snap open; he jerks his head back. “Wha--”
The Aedia merely tips their head. “And what about you? Is it what you want?” Long fingers reach out and Bucky tries to back away, is glued to the spot even as his eyes scan the cockpit for Daisy. Bucky feels vaguely sick. The Aedia brushes fingers against his cheek that are probably meant to be soothing. “I'd like to give you something, but only if it is what you desire. For yourself, Agent Barnes, and for that alone. My power has no bearing if it is unwanted.”
Bucky swallows, and this time, he is able to force words through when he asks, “I don’t-- understand--”
A red glow begins to spread out from the Aedia’s hand, and they slide it down, down, over Bucky’s chest and against his stomach, pushing, and oh, God, Bucky feels like he’s being taken apart from the inside. He gasps, and his legs buckle but there’s something else holding him up. He can feel the light encircle him, visible even in the corners of his eyes, where tears are forming and his vision is graying out. He looks up at the Aedia, shivers pulsing through his body, and he doesn’t understand the look in their blacked-out eyes. “This will only hurt for a moment, James.” Bucky gasps and struggles to hold his head up. “You will have one chance, and you will return to the state which is organic to you.”
And then everything stops: the light, the pain, like turning a switch. Bucky expects to collapse, but he finds himself waking, regaining consciousness in the co-pilot’s seat, as Daisy brings the ship online and lifts it into the air.
“What...what happened to me?” Bucky rubs his temple with a metal palm, then unzips the slick kevlar blend of his tactile uniform, revealing the relatively unmarred skin of his chest and stomach.
He expects--burn marks, a hand print, some sort of, something--but the skin is tight and untouched, and he sags back into the chair, not bothering to zip back up until Daisy gives him a look.
“You fell asleep waiting for the go-ahead. The hell? You have a nightmare?”
“I don’t--” Bucky looks around. “That’s it? Nobody else was in here. The Imperial Aedia…”
Daisy laughs. “I don’t know where the hell you heard that name, but no, the sub-planet’s god emperor did not make an appearance.” Daisy huffs. “Jesus, Barnes. Emperors, princesses, international assassins. You think maybe your type’s too picky?”
Bucky tugs his zipper, pulling his suit back together, but not before rubbing his stomach again, the odd ache there he tries to chalk up to his mind. “Fuck off, Johnson. Get us home, would you? Some of us want a paycheck and some fucking sleep. Piss in something that isn’t vaccupacked.”
“Fury said you were a charmer.” Daisy hits the throttle.
*
This time -- for the first time in over seven months -- Bucky’s there, when Steve wakes up.
The sudden spike in the heart monitor scares the shit out of him, at first, kneeling on the ground with his head pillowed half on the mattress, half on Steve’s hand. He’s been drowsing in and out himself for the better part of the afternoon, relying on his history and the gleam of his arm to keep the apparently live-in caretakers from asking what he’s doing in Captain Rogers’ room. Steve’s been recovering from pneumonia for three weeks now, Bucky knows, because he was hooked in via intercom through the worst of it. And there was certainly a ‘worst of it,’ nights when Sam would sit at Steve’s bedside with a tablet, letting Bucky speak even though Steve barely recognized the voice, couldn’t understand why Bucky wouldn’t hold his hand. Bucky had cried the rest of the night after, and Daisy had found him red-faced, hours later, crushing a pommel horse in the ship’s lowest rooms.
“B-Bucky?”
Bucky shoots up fast, crawling onto the bed, mindful of Steve’s still-slender body, young again with a combination of regeneration and time, but still weak in ways, Pepper admits in the quiet hallway, that there may not be enough serum to fix.
-- if we can just get through to Tony, Bucky....
-- I'm not trying to be harsh, Pepper, but from what I know we can't really wait around for that option
Bringing himself into a crouch across Steve’s now-narrow thighs, Bucky looks him up and down, taking it in. He’s….pretty, like this, Bucky wants to say -- would have said, once, just to see what reaction it got him. That easy flirting doesn’t seem to even exist in the same lifetime as this one, though; what they have left is something harder and edged, fractured like a diamond shard. His hands come up Steve’s sides, skimming all the way until he’s got Steve’s hands pinned above his head, and Steve looks up at him, all warming eyes and relief to see him.
“Yeah, Steve, I’m here.”
Steve closes his eyes, briefly, and Bucky’s struck again by how young he looks like this, now that his skin’s smoothed out and his body’s restored to its original form. “I was kinda hoping we’d get this fixed before you showed back up,” he says, finally, with a self-effacing laugh. “Not really the best circumstance, is it.”
Bucky leans down and kisses him, as careful and soft as he remembers how. “Just missed you.” He rocks down gently, and huffs when Steve’s erection hits his leg. “Don’t think Nurse Ratched likes me too much already.” He’s rubbing himself against Steve, though, savoring the feeling of the thick cockhead rubbing against his ass through fabric. The rest of Steve may have changed, but apparently, the goods were just the same before -- and god, there’s a thought, Steve like this, packin’ like Captain America. He punctuates by reaching back and squeezing Steve’s cock.
“Meagan is a nice girl, Buck.” Steve grips Bucky’s thighs and rolls his hips up. “And she doesn’t come back until seven tomorrow morning. I’m not helpless. And Stark’s AI--”
“Likes to watch, yeah, figured.” Bucky leans over and turns off the heart monitor. Steve looks vaguely annoyed but doesn’t bother to argue. “Got any slick?”
Steve reaches, clumsy, over to the dresser, comes out with a bottle of thick hand lotion. It’s terrible, but Bucky’s desperate. He’d probably re-think going for it dry, if Steve hadn’t had a solution.
“Oh thank fuck.” Bucky snatches it away from Steve. It’s only once he’s got it that he realizes he’s still wearing a hell of a lot of inconvenient clothes and that there’s still a scratchy wool blanket between his crotch and Steve’s dick, besides. He groans, and slides off of Steve long enough to get at the drawstring of his sweatpants before turning back to Steve. “How likely we gonna get caught at this, or you gonna pop off and have a heart attack on me?”
Steve rolls his eyes. “Just strip, soldier.”
Bucky’s clothes are on the floor immediately, shirt catching on the headboard and hanging. He’s swinging back up and over Steve again, slicking his own fingers and pushing inside, clearly impatient to get himself open.
“Slow down Bucky, I wanna watch you.”
Bucky groans, but obliges, leaning back and circling his hips, knowing how he looks right now, cock leaking on his own stomach and lotion sliding, itchy-slow, down his hand as he works in and out of his body. “This is fucking weird,” he tells Steve, even as Steve’s hand, lotion-slick now, wraps around Bucky’s dick. “Feel like I’m cheating on you, with you.” Steve chuffs, and Bucky bats his hand away, getting the blanket down and Steve’s gown hitched up, slicking Steve’s still damn impressive cock. His thighs shake with the effort of taking it slow when he pushes onto Steve: he wants to shove down, wants to feel it, make it hurt, but even like this he knows Steve would just shove him off, won’t let Bucky use his body to punish himself.
Bucky shivers as he slides lower, sweat breaking out across his forehead. It hurts, almost like the first time they did this, back during the war and a lot like this, Bucky pushing Steve onto his back and sweet-talking and kissing out all of his objections. Bucky adjusts himself and tries another angle, and Steve reaches out and grips his knee, the best he can do, in the state he’s in. Bucky takes a breath, and takes Steve further.
They’re both breathing hard, when Steve bottoms out, and Bucky rocks forward to twin groans, both shivering and unsure. Bucky lies his head on Steve’s chest (thinner, but the heart still beats the same) and takes a breath. “Dunno if it’s just cuz it’s been a while but is it--”
Steve nods. Swallows. “Yeah. God, yeah.” He strokes Bucky’s back. “I missed you.”
Bucky buries his face in Steve’s chest, because it’s less embarrassing that way, to take a deep breath and respond. “Always miss you, Cap. Love you.”
His heart’s pounding, because he doesn’t know if he’s ever said it, but Steve just leans up to kiss his head. He feels eighteen again, like they really have just done this, like he’s young and dumb enough to need reassurance. “Always have, Buck.” Steve scratches his scalp. “You good to move?”
Bucky pushes up onto his arms, and undulates his hips. It’s like sparks of pressure, along his spine, and he moans like he’s desperate for it and rocks against Steve, angling so his cock catches Bucky’s prostate with every arch of his spine. “Mmm,” he hums, leaning down to kiss Steve again, a lazy slide of tongues and teeth. “Didn’t tell me you were good at this before they dosed you up.”
“Wouldn’t have had a clue what I was doing, before they ‘dosed me up.’” Steve clutches Bucky’s hip and twists his own, jerking; he doesn’t have much of his strength back yet, but it still sends a shock through Bucky, and he takes the hint, sliding off of Steve with an annoyed groan and rolling onto his back, jostling for space on the narrow bed. Steve pushes Bucky’s legs back damn well into his chest and shoves back into him, using his own thighs as leverage to piston his hips against Bucky’s ass, making him whine and maybe drool, a little, out of the side of his mouth. “Come on, Buck, show me how pretty you take it.”
And holy fucking hell Bucky shoots off like a goddamn teenager, he can’t help it: Steve’s got his dick in Bucky’s ass, and his hand on Bucky’s cock, and he’s whispering into his ear like a damn porn star, except he means it, every word of it, somehow he always has. Bucky feels himself clenching around Steve’s fat cock and somehow that just sets him off all over again, mostly-clear fluid leaking from his spent cock and making him whimper, oversensitive and tired. He wriggles and thrashes, tightening his body in hopes of pulling Steve over with him, and Steve buries his face in Bucky’s neck and keeps pounding.
“God, Bucky, m’trying--used to take longer before...you know you were--oh, the first person I did any of this with, I don’t think I ever--did I even--fuck…”
Bucky feels the odd swell of heat inside him as Steve comes, panting and chest heaving as he drops against him, strangely light. His eyelashes flutter with sweat and maybe tears, and Bucky rubs his back and ignores the aching in his hips and knees as he thinks about what Steve just said. Because he didn’t know, because Steve never told him, because for some reason Steve’s been hanging onto that one for the better part of a century and just never thought it was important.
It’s almost enough to make him ask, why he never knew, before. But Steve’s let his legs down, curling around him from the side, and sleep beckons, heavier.
*
Three and a half weeks later, Steve is making dinner in their kitchen when Bucky’s phone vibrates. He swipes the screen with his flesh and bone hand -- that alone making it an inferior product, according to Tony, who was and remains offended that Bucky refuses his offers of all technology.
-- like it went over real good with that Parker kid--
-- Stop that. You know he doesn’t remember…
? So what’s his excuse gonna be this time, then
Daisy’s name appears on his screen, text below it in irritating contrast.
wait how did u know about the imperial aedia???
Bucky sighs and twists on the couch, trying, and failing, to find a comfortable position.
“I think that means you’re getting old,” says Steve sympathetically, bringing him a dish of pasta. And fuck, Steve, at least, has never looked better: still not field-ready, but close, the nanobots from Extremis 3.0 (once Stark did, in fact, come through and submit to a reversal spell and scan) rebuilding tissue and muscle, essentially recreating the function of Project Rebirth.
Bucky looks at the span of Steve’s back through his thin t-shirt and thinks even Howard Stark would be grudgingly impressed, however much of a bastard he was. He looks down at his phone and taps out a reply to Daisy, in between watching Steve set down garlic bread and salad on the coffee table in front of him. know i had a freaky dream. alien thing wanted to talk about my sex life.
Bucky grabs up a piece of bread and reaches out with his left hand for Steve as he sits down on the couch beside him, twining their fingers and feeling ridiculous, over the top and dizzy with it in a way he hadn't quite, before. Different, maybe, when there isn’t a war on, but that’s the thing about war isn’t it -- it’s always happening, somewhere.
Bucky’s phone buzzes and he drops his food to pick it up. watch it barnes. said they gave u a gift?
Bucky looks down at himself, then back at the phone. all parts present and accounted for. thnx. He lets the phone skitter to the table before he can think about it any further.
“You okay, Bucky?”
Bucky blinks, empty, then shakes his head. “Wh--oh, yeah. I just…..yeah. Fucking weird mission, is all. Some alien race that likes to mess around with people’s….transmogrification?” He grabs his plate and pushes himself up the couch until his head’s in Steve’s lap. It makes getting at his food a challenge, but he finds he isn’t in a particular hurry to move. “You wanna hand me some more bread?”
Steve complies, but he’s still looking down at him, expression concerned. “The Aedian, right? Richards helped them out a while ago, they offered to change Ben back.” He’s chewing his bottom lip, eyes scanning Bucky. Bucky raises his left arm, waving it lazily in front of them both.
“Everything in working order.”
Steve looks down at his plate. “Sue thinks the Imperial Aedia is how Franklin was born. They weren’t trying for kids, she always thought Richards....” He trails off. “She swears she saw them while she was in Kova. Astral projection.”
Bucky looks down at his food. “What else can they do with--all that?”
“Hmm?” Steve brushes his hair back from his face. “Whatever they wanted, I guess. The Aedian don’t really get involved unless it’s something they think you already want. Sue always wanted kids. Guess somewhere in there Richards did too.” He smiles, a little, then. “What would you have wanted?”
Bucky looks up at Steve, and he pointedly doesn’t touch his stomach, feeling instantly and thoroughly absurd. Still, it’s hard not to think about it, what Steve would be like -- if they’d even be able to pull it off, a family together. If Steve would even want to; if Bucky even has the first clue.
Stupid. Completely stupid. Bucky hands Steve his plate, still half-full, and rolls onto his side, against Steve’s thigh. “Can we talk about something else?”
*
Two weeks later, they’re called out again. An assassination in Quadrant 3; a minor revolutionary, foretold by the Unseen to be an ultra-powerful, intergalactic dictator, someday.
“Awful convenient, how all our orders involve bringing good old democracy to the people and keeping our hands clean for diplomacy?” Bucky disassembles his favorite gun.
Daisy shrugs. “What do you expect? Everyone’s filthy.”
“Whole damn universe and it’s all the same. Is that supposed to be comforting?” Bucky scowls and looks out the window. Beside him, there’s a rapid skritching, and the Sacred Reznor is on his shoulder, nosing into his neck. He reaches up with his free hand and rubs under its chin. “Thanks for watching him for me.”
Daisy shrugs. “He tried to eat my couch. And then mate with it. Do we know what these things do?”
“Do they have to do anything?”
“Just checking. Why couldn’t you bring him with you again?”
Bucky leans against the window. “Didn’t know if Steve was doing any better.”
“St--Rogers? Captain America?” Now Daisy looks interested. “Is that where you were? What happened to him?”
“Long story. He’s okay now.” Bucky groans, and the Reznor hops off his shoulder and onto his lap as he lets the chair down until he’s all but lying backward on it. “Christ, my back hurts.”
“Great, now you’re out of commission. What did you do, Barnes?”
“Hell if I know.” He picks up the Reznor, and sets him back down on the floor. Just because he can, he looks up at the ceiling and adds, “not like we even did anything weird. ‘No strenuous activity for six weeks,’ doc's orders. Know what it’s like to look at that and not touch it--or, well, most of the time.”
Daisy makes a face. “I think most of us try to not think about our national icons having sex. Bucky.”
Bucky grins and closes his eyes. “Missing out, Johnson.” His back twinges, and he grimaces. “Fuck.”
“We got another ten hours ETA, you want a couple shots of morphine?” Daisy’s already sliding out of her chair, and Bucky’s all ready to follow her before the Reznor squeaks below his chair. He stops, thinking, for some reason, of the Imperial Aedia again.
“Yeah, yeah, just...hey, we’ve got a body scanner in here, right?” The Reznor makes a high-pitched noise that sounds a lot like satisfaction, and Bucky frowns, looking down at it before it scurries back up his leg, apparently undeterred by the slick compression suit to come to a stop on his shoulder.
“We’ve got the med bay, yeah but--what do you need it for? Do you think something’s wrong?” Bucky keeps his hands at his side, and doesn’t touch his middle, doesn’t gesture to anywhere the Aedia touched.
“No, nah, nothing like that. I just wanna check on something before we go ahead with the drugs.”
Daisy doesn’t look convinced, but she nods. “Come on. Scanner’s in the back.” The Sacred Reznor squeaks, and buries itself in Bucky’s hair.
*
Thirty-five minutes later, Daisy is pacing the walls of the medical unit. Bucky is staring up at a holographic replica of his own internal structures, pale, he’s sure, and mouth open in-- Not surprise, and maybe that’s the part he should be ashamed of.
At his feet, the Reznor chews on a wrench.
“You told me you didn’t know what they did.” Daisy rounds on him, eyes wide. “That’s a pretty goddamn big I don’t fucking know, Barnes.”
“I didn’t…” He swallows. There’s nothing missing, everything’s in better shape than it should be, really, all things considered. He’s less two bullets that never came out; scarring from a shrapnel wound he got when he was sixteen. And the Aedia appears to have actually fused his bones to the reinforcements for his arm that once hooked clumsily across them; Bucky rubs his shoulder joint and realizes it’s been weeks since he’s had any pulls or tears, that he’s been too wrapped up in Steve to notice. Steve…
There’s a--an organ, of some kind, tucked below his stomach, still small but clear in what it is. Neither he nor Daisy has a damn clue what they’re doing, but the presence of the clearly fetus-shaped object inside of it is pretty helpful: Bucky finally gives in and indulges his ongoing desire to clutch his own stomach.
“What did you ask for,” Daisy hisses.
“I didn’t, I swear I didn’t ask for anything.” Bucky stares up at the scan and his heart pounds, but he can’t help but think that this is Steve’s, too; if he can pull this off, if he doesn’t find a way to destroy this, too, he’ll be able to finally--give Steve something, instead of taking. He won’t be the reason Steve settles for less. He swallows. “They--they touched my stomach. Said something about my...One, I think. Everything turned red and just sorta, burned.”
“Your One. And that’s Cap.”
Bucky gives her a withering look. “Can we focus here? What the hell’s going on?”
“Hell if I know, we’re both out of our depth. You got something in there that doesn’t belong.”
“Gee, thanks.” Bucky flops back on the examining table. “Got any idea how long it’s been that way?”
“AI says three months. How long were you on leave?”
“Six weeks.” Bucky thinks back to that first time, Steve underneath him still fine-boned and delicate, both clutching and vision sparking in shock. He wonders, now, if it really had been time and distance. “That’s not long enough for it to look like that.” He points at the scan, accusing.
Daisy shrugs. “Tracker’s showing Stephen Strange in this quadrant; I sent out a request for audience, told him it was urgent. But nobody’s got a baseline to go off here, Bucky. You’re both so pumped up on that serum shit, it’s changed you on a cellular level.” She shrugs. “Franklin Richards. Look at him.”
Bucky digs his fingernails into the fabric above his stomach and tries not to think about Sue Storm and the Imperial Aedia. Steve deserves a family that he doesn’t have to worry about, not like that.
“Can we not suggest me and Steve’s theoretical kid is gonna somehow blow up the universe?” Bucky wasn’t feeling nauseous before, but damned if he is now. “How far out is Strange?”
Daisy looks down at the transmitter she’s holding. “Two hours. Out of our way though.”
Bucky’s hyper-aware of himself, still clutching his own stomach, and he shakes his head and lets his hand drop. “Change route. If we don’t hear from him, guess he’s in for a surprise.”
Daisy sighs, put out, but stands, heading back to the cockpit. “Actually you’d be surprised how often this happens,” she calls behind her, as she leaves. “The Captain America part is new though.”
Bucky groans and stays where he is, staring at the ceiling and not especially wanting to move. He needs to find a communicator. He needs to talk to Strange, first.
An annoyed grunt and the thud of something hitting the table he’s resting on knock him out of his own drama. He looks down to find the Reznor, looking up at him expectantly.
“I need,” he says out loud. “To feed the fucking space-pig.”
*
Bucky well and truly distrusts magic.
He’s sure there’s some hole in his memory, somewhere, some vacant space that, if filled, would explain the way his spine crawls when Strange apparates into the hull of the ship; the way his whole body tenses, fight or flight, at his drawn countenance and the way he speaks, just west of normal. It seems worse than usual somehow and Bucky tells himself it’s because he’s never been confronted with Strange in his world, before.
“Have you told Captain America?” Daisy sits beside him, looking genuinely curious. He looks at her and tries to size her up: Early, mid-20s, at most. Probably had grandparents Steve’s age, his own. Might’ve seen the tv shows, definitely the movies. Teen Sidekick Bucky Barnes. Probably wondered why he wasn’t wearing hot pants and leggings the first time she met him. Even after the inevitable Winter Soldier briefing, Bucky’s learned some things just don’t really go away.
“Out of range.” It’s probably not a lie, because Daisy nods, and doesn’t speak again, but Bucky hasn’t tried. He doesn’t even know where he’d start -- hell, he doesn’t even know what they are, even, when he leaves like this yet again. Bucky pinches the bridge of his nose.
“James Barnes. Daisy Johnson. I’d ask to what I owe the pleasure, but.” He looks at Bucky, and it’s like being frozen from inside -- Bucky knows, because he’s been there. He stiffens, and sits up straight. “James. How’s Captain Rogers?”
“Why are you asking me? Don’t you have a crystal ball you can peer into?”
He swears, Strange just smirks. “I could, I suppose, but I was being polite. I’m happy to hear he’s doing better. A peculiar thing, what happened. But not your fault, you know.”
Bucky grits his teeth. This is a conversation he wants to save for a later day, with someone he enjoys having uncomfortable conversations with. No one, and never, preferably.
Strange doesn’t push the point. “I’ll admit I wouldn’t have expected you here. Not for any failure on your part, James, don’t take this the wrong way. Captain Rogers is--I often wonder if he knows what he wants. And so much of the Aedian’s abilities are centered on will.” He shrugs, sitting down. “I wouldn’t have thought him capable of a bond of that nature. But, then, I admit I don’t always pay enough attention.” Bucky’s left confused, but even more, when Strange waves at him, at the scan above him and the monitors that surround them, and manages to look bored by what he’s seeing. “You’re carrying a child. How long has it been?”
To the side, Bucky hears Daisy whistle. Holy hell. He ignores her, thinking back. “I--six weeks? Maybe?”
Strange frowns. “You shouldn’t be this far from Earth. You, Johnson, both of you need to return to Terran immediately. If I could sense it anyone can, most from much farther away than here. You’ve made yourself a moving target. A still target, now.” He gestures at Bucky. “And this is incredibly reckless.”
“Hey, slow down pal.” Bucky raises a hand. “Even ignoring the part where how the hell was I supposed to know: did you miss the part where I said weeks? Not months? Don’t know how you got through doctor school without getting your basic numbers down right but I got a while.”
“Hmm.” Strange nods toward the scan again. “Then why is the fetus so clearly developed? At six weeks it should barely be more than a cluster.” He stands. “Your child has the combined DNA of two genetically modified humans, made effectively immortal by enhanced cellular reproduction.” Strange looks Bucky up and down, unnervingly serious. “The fetus is growing at an accelerated pace. And you’ll need to make preparations for surgical removal.”
Bucky winces. It’s been a long time since his last surgery, and like most things, it’s a blur of pain and faded images; he remembers a clamp used to hold him open, and bleeding, remembers being kept conscious through it to test his body’s response. He shudders, and swallows down nausea.
Fear rises up in his throat, thick and shameful, like it hasn’t since he was still a kid. Back in the barracks and breathing humiliating tears into a rough pillow until the nightmares had him exhausted with it, sent him staggering to Steve’s tent, embarrassed and desperate.
He thinks of Steve, now, and that same need washes over him, sending him to the communications room before he even knows what he’s doing.
“I gotta…” Bucky stands up, legs wobbling, and staggers to the door. “I gotta try the comm again. I’m sorry, I’ll be right….” Another wave of memories, sharp like they haven’t been in months, and Bucky winces. “I gotta go.”
*
Steve answers on the second ring, a small, lagging image that’s still the best thing Bucky’s ever seen. He finds tears welling and he swears and rubs at his face, pressing his earbuds in.
“Hey, Bucky--everything okay there? I mean, it’s great to hear from you but you don’t usually…” Steve’s face is worried, unassuming, but Bucky can’t help the pang of guilt, because it’s true -- he doesn’t call, will go weeks and sometimes months without getting back in contact.
Steve had no reason to think this would have been different; Bucky’s got no reason to believe that if this hadn’t happened, he would have been wrong. But he leans in closer to the screen and misses Steve anyway, and Steve smiles and looks at him like he’s made of spun glass.
“I, um.” Bucky looks down at his stomach, still visibly muscled, and at his feet, where the Reznor is scratching at his shoes, trying to get up onto his lap again. He imagines trying to explain everything that’s happened to Steve -- trying to explain anything that’s happened, to Steve, from taking Fury’s job, to the Aedian and the dream, to the idea of soul-mates and the idea that they chose this; that none of this could have happened if they both didn’t, somehow, want a version of it.
Steve has never surprised Bucky; he’d be an amazing parent -- was, for a short time, though Bucky knows to never ask. It’s Bucky, who’s terrified.
He jerks out of it at Steve’s voice calling his name, sounding amused. “Hey Buck? What is that?”
Bucky gets a long, thin tongue in his face, and then the Reznor’s paw-like hooves are on his cheeks, then off again, sniffing the rest of him. Bucky groans and wipes at his face.
“That,” Bucky says, not bothering for apologetic and dumping the Sacred Reznor onto the ground. “Is a Sacred Reznor. The Sacred Reznor?” He looks down at it. “Hell if I know. Wound up with it on Syro, whatever’s left of Syro. Asshole tribunal wanted to stick my brain in it. I killed them.” Bucky shrugs. “Mostly it just eats everything.”
Steve blinks. “I don’t know what part of that sentence I should start with. Are you safe now, Buck?”
“What? Oh, yeah; just heading to Xandar for a pit-stop. Shouldn’t take too long.”
“Bucky…” Even through the choppy video Bucky can see Steve’s unimpressed. “You’re a really bad liar.”
“I’m an assassin, I’m a professional liar.” Bucky leans back in his chair. “You’re just something else.” He hears a heavy inhale from the other end, and Steve ducks his head. Feeling brave, Bucky presses on. “You gonna be there when I get back, right?”
“Of course, where else would I be?”
Bucky feels silly, but shrugs. He knows he should tell him -- knows it, his brain is screaming at him, with it -- but he can’t get the words out, they just won’t come. He feels the Reznor headbutt his calf and he frowns and looks down at his knees instead of the fuzzy video of Steve’s face. “Hey, you ever think about you’d want? If you could have anything?”
When he glances up Steve seems like he’s thinking, chewing the inside of his mouth. “Gotta think about it. What about you?”
“Dunno. Nothing to ask for.”
Steve frowns. “I think,” he says, finally. “I’d want to slow down. Do the whole civilian thing.”
“Two-point-five kids and a dog?” The Reznor chews on his shoe; he pushes it away.
“I’d settle for an apartment and a space pig, if that’s what you’re offering.” Bucky’s stomach flips, and he feels like he’s going to cry, again, but he returns Steve’s ridiculous smile and bites down against the things he wants desperately to blurt. “Look, it’s pretty late here, I gotta get going. Whatever’s happening...take care of yourself, alright?”
Bucky nods, biting his lip and fixing his eyes on Steve, on the tiny screen.
“I’ll be here within a couple days, if I’m not here when you get home. I love you, Buck.” He says the last bit awkward, like he’s expecting Bucky to laugh, or hang up, like he isn’t stating the obvious at all. Bucky hates himself all over again right now, for a whole host of new reasons.
He kisses metal fingertips and taps the screen, and he only feels slightly ridiculous once he’s turned it off, having failed entirely to tell Steve the truth, but feeling shaken and upside-down anyway.
“So that was something.”
Bucky jerks his head up to see Daisy at the door, holding the Reznor. “Daisy--damn it, did you fucking watch that whole thing--”
“Cool your heels. Overheard the last bit. You didn’t tell him, did you?”
Bucky glances at the Reznor; he swears, it’s looking at him and judging. “Couldn’t quite get around to it.” He leans back in his chair. “How the fuck do you start that conversation? ‘Hey Cap, I know we’ve never talked about what the hell we’re doing here but--”
“You’ve never--” Daisy cuts him off before she claps a hand over her mouth. “Christ, Barnes. You’re fucking Captain America and you won’t take him to dinner first?”
“It’s not that easy, don’t act like it isn’t.”
Daisy rolls her eyes, and sets down the Reznor. “Well, Strange wants to talk to you at any rate. He wanted candles; there’s probably some sort of laying of hands incoming.”
“Great.” Bucky pulls himself out of the chair.
*
There is no touching of any body part, thank God -- but Strange does have candles lit at the corners of a circle, motioning for Bucky to lie in the center of it. He freezes at the edge, suspicious. “This isn’t gonna hurt anything, is it?”
“Given your history I assume you’re referring to your child, but no, neither of you will suffer negative effects.” Strange looks up, holding a round orb. Fucking crystal ball; Bucky called it. “I’m going to give you more information, if I can.”
Bucky sighs and steps over the dust-drawn line, lying down at the center and fixing his eyes on the ceiling. “Okay. Inform away.”
The candles flare across the lines Strange has drawn; Bucky keeps himself focused on the ceiling and taps the floor anxiously, hoping Daisy gets the memo. He catches movement in the corner of his vision, and then she’s kneeling, on the other side of the fire line.
“Have you thought about what you’re going to do, once we get back?” Daisy leans in to look at him. “It’s pretty easy for me to disappear; you’re sort of married to Captain America.”
“Dating. F-friends.” Bucky’s eyes drift back to the ceiling as he says it. “Steve's my friend.”
“You’re dude-pregnant with an alien soul-mate baby. You’ve either got a real broad definition of friend, or I’m starting to see why you say you don’t have any.”
Bucky scowls. “I really hate you.”
“You love me. I’m distracting you.”
“You know the point of a distraction isn’t to remind the person you’re distracting what’s happening.”
“I’m improvising.” Daisy turns her head briefly. “And, there.” The fire goes out as if it’s been dosed, and Bucky sits up gingerly, feeling strangely...tender, somehow, around the middle.
Strange stands, shaking off his cape. Bucky thought there’d be some sort of wind for that or something. “They’re healthy, but I was right. I usually am. They’ve inherited the serum’s advanced mutations. Your child will effectively be a naturally-borne meta-human.”
Shit. “So they’ve got a target on their back.”
“They’re already being born with a shield there, aren’t they?” Strange comes forward. “I can tell you the sex though, if you’d like.” He says it with a wrinkled nose, as though he’s reciting something he’s heard other people say. Bucky wonders if they get Grey’s Anatomy out here.
“Yeah, sure.” His eyes dart back toward the hall, to the empty cockpit and its communications console. “Go for it.”
“You’ll be having a little girl, Agent Barnes. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to be late to an appointment.” He waves his hand dismissively and the lines and wax on the floor vanish, as clean as though they were never there. “He’ll let you choose the name, of course. May I recommend Margaret, perhaps, somewhere in the middle?”
Strange is gone before Bucky can process that, fully, and he freezes, heart pounding. By the time he’s gotten close to normal, Daisy’s led him to a chair.
“You want me to get hold of Cap again?”
Bucky shakes his head. There’s nothing Steve can do from Earth, and they’re out of range of Stark’s quantum vehicles. A holo-projection, but all that does is make a conversation easier (and occasionally, if Bucky’s honest, take the edge off a long-distance trip) -- Bucky feels balled up inside himself and touch-starved, and there isn’t much he can do about that in a galactic tin can.
Daisy seems to get that, too, reaches out with an awkward hand. “Do you, uh. Want a hug?” Bucky opens his mouth to shoot back a comment, but stops before he can make an ass out of himself. Instead he lets her take hold of his wrist and nods as she pulls him in. Her arm is warm around his shoulders, and he leans into her, exhaling heavily and closing his eyes.
“I should never have left in the first place,” he breathes. “We just...always did.”
To her credit, Daisy doesn’t ask for an explanation -- though Bucky knows her by now, knows how badly it kills her not to press for details. Instead she rubs his shoulder, the one he can feel, and sighs. “Looks like you’ve both got some stuff to talk about.”
Bucky’s left hand slides up, over his stomach, and he leans into Daisy and lets himself be still.
*
Three weeks into quadrant two, Bucky finds himself grumbling, bent backward across a tool bench, and trying to zip himself into his compression suit.
“They tell you the figure’s the first to go.” He winces as the slick fabric zips, tight around his stomach. It’s still invisible once he puts on his uniform, but like this, there’s a bulge -- a normal person would probably go to eaten a big lunch, but Bucky still scowls, looking down self-consciously.
“That can’t be good for her.” Daisy turns and tosses him the rest of his gear. “Any of this, honestly, you should’ve tapped out as soon as Strange told you.”
“Can’t quit my job, Johnson. Still gotta do what we can.”
“Strange called you a target; this is supposed to be a stealth mission. You’re making this worse for the outpost. The Nova Corps would string us up.”
Bucky snorts, snapping himself in and grabbing up his helmet. “Have you seen my record? The Nova Corps is gonna shoot first, talk later no matter what I do.” He hits the vaccuseal, breathes against the suck of sudden, stale air that always accompanies the oxygen generator. “Hell, maybe getting myself knocked up with Captain America’s kid will get us a word in between reloads.”
Daisy’s still scowling at him as he grabs his gun, hitting the airlock to let them both off the ship.
*
“Okay, so what do we call these guys?” Bucky dips down to ask Daisy, as they close in on the nearest official-looking building.
“The Axi-Tung. Be nice. They’re allies of the Kree. God knows how, they’re superstitious as hell. You’d think they’d be terrified of bringing some kind of plague on themselves with--hello, sir, it’s a privilege.” Daisy gives a small bow and extends her hand to a gray, humanoid-looking figure with a long white beard, eyebrows jutting up well onto his forehead. “My name’s Daisy Johnson, this is James Barnes. We’ve brought you the shipment from Xandar, praxis crystals?”
“Yes, very good, thank you, thank you. It’s lovely to meet you, Mistress Daisy, Master Barnes. I understand you must be on your way, I saw it you see, last night before you arrived I knew you’d be in a hurry, I could see it. And I wondered, well what are those young folks so rushed on about?”
Bucky hangs back, letting either the ruler, or butler of Tung lead Daisy farther into the corridors. Looking around, it’s like the walls themselves echo, built with brick that seems to shimmer from inside, a sort of mineral Bucky can’t seem to focus his eyes on for very long. He sits on the ship’s ramp and looks down at his communicator, thinks of calling Steve and realizes just how needy that would be. Scowls, and looks down at his own hands -- left one cloaked, the way it usually is, on diplomacy missions. No reason to scare the kids, or the somewhat-elected officials.
Bucky blinks, slow, and the cloak shimmers and disappears. He flexes his fingers, dull glint in two blue and red suns. Closes his eyes and feels the device slip black in place. Slides his hand over his stomach and lies down on his back.
James Buchanan Barnes has been legally dead in the United States for almost two years, now. Even with the evidence Natasha and Sharon accumulated, he doesn’t know if there’s a way for that to ever be undone; doesn’t know if he has any special desire to do it. Girl-Name-Here Margaret Rogers sounds as good as anything.
A snort and a squeak alert him to the Reznor’s presence before it appears, upside-down, in Bucky’s vision. He picks it up and sits up with a groan, only slightly encumbered by the lump in his stomach. “This is gonna suck really hard in a month at the rate I’m going.” He crosses his legs and sets the Reznor in his lap. “It’d be better for everybody if nobody knew.” He doesn’t know why he feels like he’s defending himself to a pig; maybe because the pig looks so damn discontent. “She can’t come out the daughter of a dead guy.” The pig doesn’t seem moved by his argument. “Like I know a damn thing about being a dad, best thing I had was a bunch of assholes in uniforms.” And Steve. But Bucky will stick his head right back in that Soviet frying pan if it means he never has to have that thought again.
“Fucking judgmental, s’what you are,” he says to the Reznor, with finality. “And after I shared dessert with you last night, you little traitor.”
“Lotta malice to put on the little guy.” Daisy comes back up, holding a package. “This is yours, by the way. They could tell as soon as we entered the galaxy, apparently you light up like a Christmas tree, Barnes.” She looks like she just can’t help the grin. “Must be that pregnancy glow.”
He reaches out with his left hand, meaning to trip her; she steps away and past him easily, and he scrambles, awkward, to get back on his feet. Fuck, but he’s going to be useless by the time they get back to Earth. He won’t even have to tell Steve. He can’t decide if the thought is better or worse.
*
“So what’s in the box?” He sits down in the co-pilot’s chair, next to Daisy. The ship’s on autopilot, but Bucky likes the glass, the wide and open space. The enormity of it is comforting, somehow.
“Tea, I think. Didn’t get the details. The King’s adviser told you to drink it, to mask the….whatever.” She waves her hand.
“You want to put some alien weed in me and just assume it’s gonna work out?”
“They’re pacifists, Barnes. They don’t want to hurt you. Besides, I told you, they’re superstitious as hell. There’s at least a dozen charms in there. They’re convinced this kid’s some kind of next-level superman.”
Bucky’s stomach roils. “They got that part wrong, that’s fucking sure.”
“My point is they want you back on earth, safe, and they could smell you coming, Clarice. Just fucking drink it.”
Bucky crosses his arms, and bunches himself in his seat, but he takes the finished tea, when Daisy finally shoves it into the coffeemaker with a put-upon sigh.
Bucky drinks all of it, and falls asleep with his head pressed to the window, looking out at colors he’s never seen before.
*
Bucky dreams.
There’s a field of flowers and he’s standing in the center of them, and in front of him, there’s a beautiful girl. And a girl she must be - still no more than twenty; no older than Bucky was when he died. There’s something about her that makes his heart clench, and she turns and he’s dizzy with it, inverse colors swirling.
The girl that stands in front of him wears robes and fabrics he doesn’t recognize, but the eyes that look back at him might as well be his own. They stare out from under Steve’s brow, his yellow hair; she bites her lip, and the nervousness is pure Steve Rogers. Bucky can’t tell who she’s been raised by. They’ve taken on so many of each others’ habits, by now.
He knows he’s asleep, knows this is an effect of the tea at once. He’s got a thousand questions, but the first that comes out is, “why are you out here?” He’s going back to Terran now so she’s not born in this world; he’ll kill everyone, friend or foe, to keep her anchored to solid land.
“Someone has to watch.” Bucky rears back like he’s been hit, and she smiles, reaching out for his left hand and grabbing hold. She’s strong enough to pull him in, and he’s surprised before he remembers she’s both of them, he and Steve. She may be stronger than either. “You didn’t react any better when I told you in my timeline.” She grins. “I like it. I’m not alone. I come home more often than you and dad probably want.” She shrugs. “It keeps what I...can do... I’m not dangerous, out here.”
Bucky feels a tug in the back of his head; he knows he’s waking up, and wishes, just once, to be a heavier sleeper. “What you do? What do you do? I haven’t even gotten--what’s your name? Who takes care of you?”
She seems more amused than anything else, at this point. “You’re still so young. I always forget you and dad were this clueless.” She ducks her head. “You both do. You sorta...you’re really bad at no. Rebecca, everyone’s always called me Maggie. And I don’t-- It’s nothing bad, it’s not. I don’t want you to worry. We get through it, okay?”
Very much not okay, but the tug in Bucky’s head is getting stronger, more insistent, and Bucky links his metal hand with Maggie’s slender flesh one and squeezes, desperate because he doesn’t know if this is real, if this will ever be. There are fingers between his, and then he’s awake and there aren’t, and he shoots back up seated, looking around like he’s seen a ghost.
His hand clutches his stomach. He swears, it’s gotten bigger. The zipper on his suit is straining, now, and he’s on the tail edge of giving up, wonders if Daisy’s sweatpants will fit him. Not like she doesn’t deserve it...somehow. He’ll figure out a reason later.
Bucky stumbles to his feet, unzipping the top of the suit and letting it drape around his hips. Looking down at his stomach, he swears he can see the swell of it, just beginning to push muscle apart. He digs through a pile of disorganized clothes and comes out with a pair of sweatpants, and what he’s sure is his own shirt, only fumbling a little as he changes, despite his trembling hands. And his mind is still caught up in that field -- Rebecca; Maggie; Steve’s daughter, theirs. He wishes he knew what she’d been doing, out there, but he knows he wouldn’t have answered, either.
She couldn’t have been more than twenty. Bucky sits down on the floor, surrounded by rumpled clothes.
He just wants his family to stay in one place.
*
Daisy finds him when the quadrant’s first sun rises, helping him off the floor and into his cot without a word, even at his stuck red eyes. He curls in on himself and holds his stomach, imagining what it will be like when there’s something there to wrap around. “I saw her,” he says quietly. “She was out here. I don’t want her out here, Daisy. I don’t want her to have to do this.”
Daisy stares at him for a moment, like she’s at a loss, and sighs, sitting down at the edge of the hard mattress beside him. “Potential isn’t the same as telling the future. You should see what they said about me.” She touches his hair. “Why don’t we cut the tea with something next time, okay?”
Bucky makes a face, because he’d been under the impression hallucinations were not one of the expected results of whatever he’d had crammed in his face, but it’s not enough to make him argue. And he feels lighter, he can’t argue with that: drugged, almost certainly, but he trusts Daisy enough not to hurt him, or Steve’s baby.
His baby. He’s having a baby.
Bucky giggles, feeling vaguely hysterical.
“Yeah, definitely watering it down next time.” Daisy’s smiling, now. “Or I’m getting in on this. It’s like a middle school house party.” She turns to one of the universal clocks, hanging from the far wall. “You know... It’s a little past seven in New York. I could call Cap for you.”
And oh, how Bucky wants to say yes, but he shakes his head, anyway. “No, no, you’re just--just gonna scare him.” His voice tapers into a yawn. “Can’t do anything for me from there, right? Just kinda thirsty. Sorta horny.”
“Yeah, that last part’s between you and Uncle Sam, buddy.”
Bucky rolls onto his back, stares up at Daisy. “I just want him to be happy, Daisy. That’s all I want.”
It seems so obvious, because what else would he want; he doesn’t understand why Daisy tilts her head, looking at him for a heavy second like she’s putting together a puzzle. “Is that what you think you asked for,” she asks, finally. “You asked to make Steve happy?”
Bucky looks down at his stomach again, swell visible under his stacked hands, and frowns. She isn’t wrong, but it’s not right, somehow -- he thinks about his own sister, in a nursing home but still somehow his Becca; he thinks about being maybe too young to be trading suck jobs for cigarettes, the first time Steve found him and tried to make him quit both.
He shakes his head. His eyes and limbs feel heavy, and he’s grateful when he feels a dense wool blanket dropped over him.
“Will it bother you if you never know?”
“Hnn?” Bucky blinks to find Daisy, blurry, in front of him.
“Why it happened; what you wanted. Does it matter, that much?”
“Oh.” Bucky closes his eyes again, feeling the tug of empty sleep in the back of his consciousness. “Guess I just want to know what I was thinking.” He yawns and shifts, flesh and blood hands cradling the slight curve of his stomach, digging into the skin there through the fabric. “Didn’t think I’d really want to keep this clusterfuck going.”
He opens his eyes one more time to see Daisy, looking dissatisfied with the answer he’s given. He can’t figure out why, though, and he’s too tired to try, besides. She’s got the whole -- night? Day. Whatever the hell, space-time -- to work it over, though, and Bucky lets himself slip back into sleep.
He doesn’t go anywhere else.
*
“Hey, I’m picking up a job in Quadrant 1, nine hours from here, they need a shipment transferred to Ego--”
“Bucky, are you stalling?”
Daisy takes off her headset and turns her chair to look at him, lying on a cot and holding a tablet, the Reznor at his shoulder.
“We’re twenty hours off Earth.”
Bucky doesn’t look up from the screen; he knows his weak points; knows when he’ll just give himself away. “You know me. Always helpful.”
“Always up for a smuggling job? Maybe. Helpful, fifty-fifty.”
“Sixty-forty.”
“Pushing it.”
Bucky sighs and sits up, wincing as he does so. His stomach is visibly swollen, now: he can hide it under baggy clothes, and bind it when he needs to, but he’s already sure how well that would go, with Steve, and he can’t find anything that hides it and doesn’t look immediately absurd. “I’m not going to be able to hide this, am I?”
“If you mean from Rogers, I don’t even know where to start.”
Bucky shoots her a glare. “Was sorta hoping to talk to him first. This thing kinda speaks for itself.” He scrubs at his hair. “Fuck, I still don’t fucking know how this happened. 'Sorry Cap, guess I just really thought you wanted a fucked-up killer’s baby. Have fun with that.'”
“Can it, Barnes. You’re not going anywhere.” She waits an awkward beat and pulls a thermos from the pack she’s carrying. Bucky knows what it is before she even gets up to hand it over: that awful tea again, watered down enough to lessen the effects from meanwhile, in the seventies, to mildly sedating. He takes the bottle obediently but glares as he sucks the liquid down, feeling lethargy settle in his muscles even as the familiar tingling that accompanies whatever charms have been cloaking him begin to kick in. He feels at ease, and he almost misses Daisy, speaking softly as she takes his arm, gently pushing him onto his back. “There’s nothing wrong with you, whatever you’ve got in your head. You’re kind of a jerk, sure, but honestly you even suck at that. I hate to tell you this, but you’re not even the most fucked up thing I’ve seen this morning.” She shrugs. “The Reznor pooped in the fridge.”
Bucky makes a face.
“You’re a good person, Barnes. I know you hate it. I’ll leave you with the horrible news.” She squeezes his shoulder and gets up off the cot, scowling at the (Bucky assumes, now-clean) refrigerator in the corner. To be honest, Bucky isn’t even sure how the Reznor got in there. He’s too impressed to be mad.
“You’ve got nineteen hours and we’re in Yuma County. A quinjet’s picking us up.”
Bucky’s heart pounds, and he rubs across his stomach, the oddly-shaped bulge. It fights back, now every so often -- not kicks, yet, but strange undulations, ripples from inside of him proof of a foreign body. He finds himself poking back, getting occasional pointed resistance. Sometimes, it’s painful, and he’s reminded that the baby has their genetics combined, is effectively metahuman. Thinks of Maggie, in the field, and wonders what that’s going to mean.
*
He drifts.
Wherever he is now, he isn’t.
He’s somewhere very different, this time. Time has taught him to get used to floating, and he hits light and sound with a practiced roll, knowing whatever’s happening is only in his head. It’s harder, though, when what he sees is bright lights and Steve in his uniform -- adapted, for some reason, to intergalactic work, and fuck, why is he on Xandar in the first place?
The landscape is different, here: subtle but still unnerving, everything just left of center, off and vaguely tilted. Nothing’s the same except Steve, he thinks: Steve, who’s indoors now, in a small, off-white room that could belong to anyone, because Steve never let himself get used to having things. Too many attacks; too many losses. Steve put everything he had into people.
Look where that got him.
The room’s empty but for a few photographs on the bedside table: a woman in her thirties, with blonde hair and blue eyes, tall enough to give Bucky a fight; Steve’s daughter, he guesses, and he wonders with who. A photo of Sharon and Sam, grey hair and wrinkles in the corners of their eyes when they smile for the camera, now. The photo’s a little old; he tries not to think about it. And a picture of himself, just him, laughing and holding his respirator mask, but otherwise in full combat gear. Too young to be recent, and the photo is creased, faded in one corner where, at some point, it saw too much sun. Bucky wonders how long it’s been since he’s seen this Steve; he wonders how he wound up leaving Steve alone.
Bucky closes his eyes and lets himself be pulled away, as the scene blurs, and shifts; his last thought before the set changes is to hope he’s dead, wherever this Steve is. There’s no other reason for him to have left.
Mer’ce has two sunsets, and gets most of its light from the moon. It’s a horrible place to live, like Antarctica, or Seattle, and Bucky shivers even through the wall of fantasy and watches Steve pull an ancient, by now motorcycle out of his garage. The jacket he’s wearing isn’t thick enough, and Bucky wonders what world this is, if any of it’s real at all. Where the hell there’s a world where he left Steve Rogers to kill himself slowly, over stupid things like the weather.
Watching speed from a dream is a moments’ tunnel vision; Bucky blinks, and it’s gone, and he and Steve are both standing on a hill. Steve can’t see him, of course, and he pushes his hands into his pockets and looks up at a perpetually-gray sky, the low, gas clouds that will always block out a view of the stars.
Bucky’s never seen Cap like this before, but he recognizes the expression because he sees it in the mirror, feels it on his own face every time he looks at Steve.
He takes a step closer, watching Steve sit alone and wishing, God, that he could somehow make it better.
*
Weight. There’s weight on top of him. Bucky can’t get up.
Bucky wakes up disoriented: by the weight on his stomach, by whatever the hell space hangover he has, and by the Reznor, squealing with alarm on top of his chest and nudging at his face repeatedly. He levers himself sitting and swings off the cot, pushes over to a window and is greeted with yellow sunlight, an expanse of unnaturally smooth sand and pointed, succulent trees pushing out from it like Dr. Seuss cartoons. Bucky lets the Reznor scramble up his left arm to get a better look at the landscape.
“Welcome to fucking Yuma.” He sighs, unimpressed, and sets the Reznor at his feet. “Really hope Daisy packed your shit. You got a litter box or something?”
Even the Reznor seems to look disappointed in him.
There’s a communication panel on the jet, and Daisy looks at him curiously as soon as he sits in front of it. Hill’s in the pilot’s chair, trying to avoid looking at either of them, and Bucky frowns down at the dark monitor.
“You think he’ll pick up?” Bucky’s flesh and bone hand hovers over the call button.
“I don’t think you really need the answer.” She picks up the Reznor, still squeaking on Bucky’s shoes. “We’ll be up front.”
Bucky takes a deep breath, and calls Steve.
*
He answers on the second ring. From some sort of hold, not all that different from Bucky’s, which means he’s coming back from a mission, or heading to one, and Bucky must have the question all over his face because Steve’s expression goes soft as soon as he sees him and he glances behind him apologetically. “Just heading back from an AIM raid in Vilnius; we’ll be in New York by the hour, outta quarantine in four or five.” He looks around, and his voice gets quiet. “How you holding up?”
Somewhere behind Steve, Bucky hears Hank, off-screen. “Is that Barnes? I thought Barton was shitting us, Jesus. I didn’t know they were still a thing.” He’s cut off quickly by another voice, Janet: “shut up Hank, it’s no one’s business. Steve, there’s some space in cargo. It’s not great, but it’s a little more, uh…”
“Private?” Steve ducks his head; even over the video, Bucky can make out the pink in his cheeks. “Thanks, Jan.” A shuffle of noise, and the screen is dark for a moment before Steve comes back into a view, dimmer and grainier, but without an audience. “Where are you?”
“Couple hours out. Gonna beat you there if they’re putting you in quarantine.”
“Yeah.” Steve sighs. “Explosion in an old R&D facility. Nothing sticks to me but...security protocol.”
“Fucking protocol.” Bucky scowls, leaning himself awkwardly back against the chair before realizing he’s letting the camera slip lower. “Nothing after that though.”
Steve looks at him with something like surprise, but he shakes his head, obedient. “At least two weeks. Are you sure everything’s okay, Buck?”
“Yeah, Cap, I’m.” His voice breaks, and he chuffs, feeling idiotic. Three hours out. Tops. The plane’s already in the air. “Look, I gotta go. We’re gonna lose connection. I just, I miss you.”
Steve looks like he’s taken a metal fist to the stomach, how quietly he says, “me, too.”
*
Quarantine, Bucky decides as soon as the jet hits the tarmac, can fuck itself.
There are ultimately benefits to being the century’s deadliest assassin -- and if Bucky’s honest with himself, likely benefits to being strangely swollen around the middle, the fatigues and black sweater he’s wearing not enough to hide the protrusion underneath. He doesn’t really give a shit; it keeps the guards confused long enough for him to grab the butts of their guns, and the electromagnetic pulse in his arm sends them crumpling to the ground, unharmed, but unconscious for at least a good three minutes. Long enough to make it to the end of the row of stalls, where Steve’s shield paints himself a target like it always does, red, white and blue hung against stock scrubs and a towel, a pair of plastic shoes. Bucky sees the top of Steve’s head, too tall for the stall to fully obscure, and he doesn’t give himself a chance to think before he pushes in beneath the curtain, pressing his cheek to Steve’s back and letting the water soak his hair and the front of his shirt.
He knows they’re going to catch hell for this, eventually; knows Steve hates this kind of attention. But he also knows Steve won’t push him out, won’t even complain -- will do anything, for Bucky, because Bucky’s hung the moon and stars for him since 1941, and all Bucky’s wanted since then is his approval, and yeah, both of those things are a little bit fucked, but they love each other enough that it’s going to be okay.
The fact that he really believes that makes him feel a little hysterical.
The water from the shower slicks Bucky’s clothes to his skin and there’s no real way to hide it, the way his stomach swells in the middle. He holds Steve’s shoulders and Steve stays still, and he kisses the nape of Steve’s neck and says, belated, “hey.”
“Hey, Buck.” Steve plants his hands on the tile in front of him, bracing against his weight and Bucky’s own.
“I get it, Cap. I figured it out.”
“Oh?”
Bucky’s hands skim across Steve’s broad chest. He’d be lying, to say it hasn’t changed since they met: there’s a scar across his breastbone, now, a gunshot wound that will fade in time but Bucky still traces to keep it clear in his memory; he’s gotten sharper, leaner, more jagged at the edges, in punishment to who, Bucky still doesn’t know. He’s not the same as a person, either: he doesn’t laugh as easily, and he clings more tightly; he’s so hard to talk to, sometimes, because he just won’t stay angry.
And Bucky loves him. Loves every version. He drops his forehead to Steve’s spine. “This was always real, wasn’t it. You and me. Even when we weren’t...”
“Even when you were lost,” Steve says quietly. “It didn’t change.”
Bucky swallows. “What if that thing I wanted...what if I wanted to stay?”
Steve’s shoulders jerk, under Bucky’s hands; it’s a credit to him, that he doesn’t move, but for his toes curling against the tile. “Bucky."
It doesn’t sound reproachful, but maybe Bucky’s feeling guilty. “You left, too,” he says, pressed into Steve’s back, like it could hold a candle. It’s a pathetic argument, but Bucky’s feeling a little pathetic. Fortunately, Steve doesn’t seem to take it that way; he reaches up and touches Bucky’s hand.
“I never wanted to.” And Steve’s still focused on his face when he turns around, shock-pale even in the press of hot water to look him in the eye. “I don’t want to.”
And Bucky...he has no answer, to this. Nothing to say at all, except that he knows, now, as clear as gunfire and the smell of ash, what it was that he wanted.
He’s still got Steve’s eyes caught on his own when he pushes himself forward, hooking his arms around Steve’s neck and letting the bulge of his stomach press against Steve’s flat one when he tells him, “good.”