Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I will come back home, I will wait for you
I will wait for the summer
I will hold out for summer
I will wait, there's a promise land
In every man's heart:
There is a summer.

-from "Summer Home" by Typhoon

“Are you absolutely sure there’s no alien invasion? Because a spaceship definitely crash landed over in Jersey a couple hours ago.”

Bucky eyed the clear sky over New York suspiciously, but no portal or giant spaceship appeared. The streets and sidewalks of Harlem were pretty deserted for this hour of the day though, and of the few people out and about, Bucky wasn’t the only one casting nervous looks at the sky. Maybe he should have stayed at the Wakandan Outreach Center. But no one had seemed all that worried about an alien invasion while he’d been there for a checkup for his arm and his brain—hell, they hadn’t even mentioned it—and Bucky had gotten the news like any other civilian on the street: through panicked newscasts and emergency push alerts to his phone.

It was going to be a pain in the ass to get back to Brooklyn; he’d already passed on two subway stops for being too crowded for his nerves to deal with, and he had yet to see any cabs on the street. Fuck, he should’ve taken his bike here. At this rate, he’d be walking back to Brooklyn.

“No alien invasion,” Sam confirmed over the phone. “Some stuff went down in Fury’s space station, they had to evacuate and one of the escape pods landed in Jersey City, but it’s all been handled.”

“And no one was gonna give me a call?” griped Bucky. “I’m right across the river! I’d like to know if there’s another damn alien invasion—“

“There’s no alien invasion! It was space stuff, and that is not part of our superhero beat unless it becomes a full-blown invasion—“

“Oh, okay, great, so we’ll just sit it out whenever the next alien nut job comes to try to kill us all—“

“We are not the space superheroes, Buck. Other people gotta handle the outer space stuff—“

“The outer space stuff crash landed here!”

“And it’s fine, Fury told me it was handled, everyone from the space station is accounted for—listen, I didn’t call about the spaceship, I called to ask about your checkup!”

“Still a cyborg, still at my baseline level of fucked in the head,” said Bucky, and then when the silence from Sam’s end of the line took on a distinctly disappointed and worried tone, Bucky sighed and added, “My scans are looking better. My brain’s still healing, apparently, so Shuri thinks there’s still a chance I get more memories back.”

“Good,” said Sam, sounding weirdly relieved.

Bucky wasn’t relieved. He was the opposite of relieved, actually. More memories weren’t a good thing, as far as he was concerned.

“And did she give you anything for the headaches?” continued Sam.

Bucky really thought it shouldn’t count as a headache when it was just what his head felt like all the time, more or less. But when it came up during his last visit to Delacroix because he’d felt shitty enough to need to spend a day in bed in a dim room, Sarah had been horrified, and Sam had gotten real serious and worried. And then worst of all, AJ and Cass had looked serious and worried too, and AJ had said aren’t you supposed to go to the doctor when you’re sick or hurting and Mama or Uncle Sam can’t fix it?

Bucky’s immediate mental response had been, well obviously you can and should go to the doctor, the doctor won’t hurt you, doctors only hurt me.

And, okay, Bucky wasn’t a shining example of mental stability, but even he had recognized what a fucked up thing to think that was, and anyway, it wasn’t even true, none of the doctors in Wakanda had ever hurt him, and it wasn’t like he really thought any given doctor was some kind of secret Nazi or mad scientist. Bucky was no kind of role model for impressionable children, but he’d figured he ought to at least try to be well-adjusted and sane about this, so he’d smiled and said, yeah AJ, you’re right.

Plus, Sam had looked so relieved, and also he’d hugged Bucky, and Bucky was pathetically weak for every scrap of physical affection Sam tossed his way. He’d go to dozens of appointments if it meant Sam hugged him for it.

This was probably more pathetic than the hopeless schoolboy crush on Sam that Bucky was alternately nurturing and doing his best to smother. He’d hoped that enough distance and time would let it gracefully fade, just like the dimly remembered crushes of his youth, and, well, that hadn’t worked. Now he was hoping that familiarity would breed at least some contempt, or failing that, that friendship would be an adequate substitute. Success on either front was limited so far.

Anyway, the upshot was that Bucky had to finally tell Shuri about his headaches, and that was why he’d just spent hours getting lectured via hologram on how he had to tell people these things because otherwise how could they help him and didn’t he trust her, while also getting a lot of medical tests and scans and entirely missing a possible alien invasion.

“She has to work on something that’ll work with the serum, she said she should have something for me in a couple weeks or so,” said Bucky. “And she said it’ll probably get better on its own, eventually. It’s already a lot better than it used to be.”

There was a sharp inhale from Sam, and Bucky winced, braced himself for Sam’s frustration, or worse, his gentleness. Thankfully, Sam just said, “You wanna come down to Delacroix while you wait to hear from her? The boys are still a little worried, they’d love to see you.”

The temptation to say yes and immediately head for the airport was strong. And Sam was offering, wasn’t he? But no, Bucky strictly rationed his Delacroix visits. He didn’t need to add any more fuel to the fire of his totally inappropriate and doomed crush on Sam.

“Nah, it’s fine, I—“

Wait, what was that? Bucky stopped in his tracks. He’d heard something, something that didn’t fit with the usual ambient clamor of the city, something that had all his instincts on edge.

“Buck? You there? Hello?”

“Yeah, sorry, I just heard something.”

A whimper? A baby crying? There it was again, a soft and agonizingly pleading little sound that sounded hurt and scared. A quick scan of the street didn’t show any baby strollers or people with baby carriers, so what was making that noise—

“Shit, it’s the aliens,” said Sam. “Buck, be careful—“

“You literally just said there was no alien invasion situation,” said Bucky absently, turning slowly until he could pinpoint the sound better.

There. It was coming from near that parked truck. Sam was ranting about something or another to do with horror movies and aliens and blah blah blah, but Bucky ignored him in favor of following the…mewling? He crouched down to look under the truck and found the source of the noise: a lump of dirty, shivering gray fur meowing pathetically. A cat—or more accurately, a kitten.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Bucky crooned, without quite meaning to. “What happened to you, huh? Where’s your mom?”

“What? What is it, what’d you find?”

Bucky was about to scoop the poor little thing up with his free hand, but then he stopped himself. How much would he like it if some giant picked him up when he was scared without so much as asking or introducing itself? He didn’t want it to bite or scratch him, even if he used his vibranium hand. So he offered his hand for a sniff first, and let the little kitten get the measure of him. Only when it tentatively butted its head against his fingers did he pick it up gently.

“Hi,” he told it softly. “How’d a little guy like you end up here in the gutter?” It mewed with what sounded like nothing so much as righteous indignation, and Bucky couldn’t help but smile. For such a small kitten, it sure had a healthy set of lungs. “Okay, I get it, you are definitely not happy about this situation. So come on, let’s get you warm and cleaned up.”

Given the voluminous if dirty fur, the kitten was denser than he’d expected it to feel, but it was small enough to mostly fit in his hand, and it was already making a bid to climb up his arm. He laughed and let it perch on his shoulder.

“You’re a real climber, huh? Alright, hold on tight then.”

“What is going on with this voice you’re using here, Barnes? What the hell did you find?”

“Relax, I just found a stray kitten,” he told Sam, and looked around for any sign of more kittens, or the mama cat, and didn’t find any.

“Take it to the vet, you don’t know where that thing’s been. It could have fleas! Or rabies!”

“It doesn’t have rabies,” Bucky said as he winced. He was reasonably sure it didn’t have rabies, it didn’t seem ill, but Sam wasn’t wrong about the possibility of fleas, and it made the kitten’s current position on his shoulder, very close to his hair, less than desirable. “But point taken, I should take it to the vet. I’ll call you later, okay?”

“Wait, are you keeping the cat—?”

Bucky ended the call and slid his phone back into his pocket, then gently relocated the kitten from his shoulder to the inside of his leather jacket, pulling the zipper up. After a loud meow of protest and some wiggling, it settled down.

“Much warmer, see?” Bucky murmured to it, then gave its little head a gentle scritch. It started purring more or less immediately, the sound and sensation shockingly strong for such a tiny thing. He could feel the vibration against his own chest. “Geeze, you got a little motorcycle or something hidden away in there? Alright, let’s go get you checked out, sweetie.”

He found an open veterinarian’s office, and since so many of their appointments were canceled or didn’t show up on account of people worrying about an alien invasion, they were able to see him and the kitten without much of a wait. Sam’s texts kept him occupied while he waited, and the kitten curled up peaceably enough inside Bucky’s jacket.

Seriously Buck, you gotta take the cat to a vet or a shelter or something. It hasn’t bitten you or anything has it?

I know! I’m at the vet right now. And no, it didn’t bite me.

Are you keeping it???? asked Sam, and then the vet’s office called his name, so he slid his phone into his pocket, and followed the veterinary technician to the exam room.

“So, uh, I’m guessing there’s no alien invasion?” asked the vet tech nervously, after he gave her his name and she realized he was that James Barnes.

“Not according to Captain America,” Bucky told her. She sighed with relief and led him into an exam room.

The kitten was not happy about being in the vet’s office, hackles up and climbing all over him as it avoided his and the vet’s attempts to get it on the exam table.

“What a climber,” said the vet with a laugh, as the cat clung to Bucky’s shoulder. His left one, thankfully, otherwise it surely would’ve drawn blood with its tiny, sharp claws. “Usually the scared ones try to make a run for it.”

Bucky grabbed the cat by the scruff of its neck with his vibranium hand, and the cat yowled and tried to run right back up his arm to his shoulder again when he set it on the exam table.

“I know, I know it’s scary,” he told it. He put a gentle but firm hand on the cat to keep it on the table. “But I promise we’re not gonna hurt you, okay? We just gotta get you checked out. Please just sit still for a bit, baby.”

The sound of his voice seemed to calm the kitten down at least a bit, as it lowered its hackles and stopped making a frankly kind of alarming hissing noise. But whenever the vet tech or veterinarian reached for it, it opened its small mouth wide, like it had every intention of chomping down on them. And wow, those were some very sharp teeth for such a small animal. Actually, those teeth also seemed larger than seemed right for a cat…? But then Bucky supposed he hadn’t spent much time staring into cat mouths.

“People aren’t for eating, sweetheart,” he said, and the cat narrowed its icy blue eyes and meowed angrily, as if to disagree. The vet tech had brought out some treats in an attempt to sweeten the cat’s disposition, and Bucky used them now, tossing one into its open mouth. “Treats are for eating.”

This did calm the cat down some, but it still snapped at them just about every time the vet tech or veterinarian reached for it, and it was starting to shiver with either fear or exhaustion. Depressingly, Bucky could relate. So Bucky did what the Wakandan doctors always did for him when they were treating him: he told the cat everything the vet tech and veterinarian were doing and why, and offered it a kind touch.

The cat seemed to have some opinions about all this, yowling volubly and at length, but either it got used to the situation or it was just too tired to keep fighting, because it did eventually submit to an exam and a gentle bath.

“See, it’s not so bad, is it?” Bucky asked the cat, and got a furious glare for his trouble, but it did nuzzle against him when he rubbed at its wet head.

“Just gotta make sure you’re not hurt anywhere under all that fur, and get you cleaned up. I know you cats like to keep yourselves clean, but you were in a New York gutter, that’s a whole new level of dirty,” Bucky told the cat, who mrpped sadly as if in agreement.

To Bucky’s relief, it did seem to enjoy the bath enough to start purring as the soap and water revealed that the cat’s long fur was actually a pure, snowy white, not gray. Between that and the blue eyes, it was a pretty little thing, its cuteness at odds with its ferocity.

The cat wouldn’t let the veterinarian or tech dry it off after the bath, but it did submit to Bucky carefully toweling it off until it was just damp rather than sopping.

“You’re pretty good at this,” noted the veterinarian. “Do you have a lot of pets or volunteer with any animal shelters?”

Bucky blinked. “Uh, thanks. No, I don’t have any pets or volunteer or anything.”

“Huh. Well, shelters could probably use a guy like you who doesn’t have to worry so much about getting bit, and who’s got a way with animals,” said the vet. “Think about it.”

“I will, thanks.”

By now, the cat was relaxed enough for the vet to examine it with all the caution of someone attempting to defuse a bomb. The cat still snapped and swiped at the vet with its claws a couple of times—unsuccessfully, thankfully—but a couple more treats made the cat more amenable to the vet’s exam.

“She’s a girl,” said the somewhat harrowed veterinarian, after the exam. “Tough to tell how old she is or what breed though. Maybe a few months, though she’s small for it. Old enough to do okay without her mama, at any rate. No microchip, and I can’t tell if she’s already been spayed. We can do a quick blood test to determine that, and to check for any problems.”

“Yeah, okay,” said Bucky.

As soon as the needles came out for the blood draw, the cat made a run for the inside of Bucky’s jacket before the vet tech caught her again. Honestly, Bucky couldn’t blame her. He wasn’t exactly a big fan of needles either. He was tempted to just suggest skipping the blood draw—he could bring the cat back later, once she was more calm and maybe more trusting of people in general. But what if there really was something wrong with the cat? He’d found her in a gutter for god’s sake, who knew where she’d been and what she’d picked up. No, they were doing this. Even if doing the blood draw involved some protracted negotiations with the cat, to the veterinarian’s bemusement.

“Yeah, needles suck, I don’t blame you,” he told the cat. “But we gotta make sure you’re healthy, okay?”

Of course the cat couldn’t understand him, but the indignant quality of her answering meow nonetheless made Bucky think she was saying, I’m fine!

“I know you think you’re fine, but it’ll make me feel better if we know for sure,” he told the cat, like guilt tripping was gonna work on her, but hey, it usually worked on him, so he might as well try.

“Mr. Barnes, I don’t think you’ll be able to talk her into letting us do a blood draw,” said the vet, clearly running out of patience for this difficult patient. “We can sedate her, and that way we can—”

Bucky’s stomach lurched with nausea. The prick of a needle, the way the world went hazy and heavy, but not quite hazy enough to fully block out the fear—

“No,” he said. “Just give me a minute, okay?”

He scooped the cat up from the exam table, and held her close for a bit as she meowed indignantly and tried to burrow back into his jacket.

“Sweetheart, you gotta let the vet poke you with some needles. It’s to make sure you’re not sick, okay? It won’t hurt much, and I’ll be right here the whole time.”

The cat stared up at him, and wow, she could really give even his supposed staring problem a run for its money. After a long moment where the cat might as well have been staring into his soul, she was apparently convinced of his sincerity, because she stretched up to nuzzle his cheek with her cold little nose, which made one of Bucky’s probably vital internal organs turn to very warm goo, and then she hopped back onto the exam table.

“Thank you,” he told the cat solemnly, and the veterinarian huffed.

“First time I’ve ever seen someone successfully reason with a cat,” she said with a grin. “You’re some kinda miracle worker to get this little hellion through this without sedatives. I’m guessing you wanna keep her?”

Bucky’s first thought was: I can’t be trusted with the well-being of another living creature, are you kidding me.

His second thought was: I can’t abandon her.

“Yeah, I’m gonna keep her.”

“You have any names in mind? We can put her in the system as Kitty Barnes for now, if you want to take some time to think about it.”

Bucky laughed. “I had a cousin named Kitty Barnes, you know. Well, Katherine, but she went by Kitty.” He shook his head. “Yeah, no, it’s too weird, I’ll give her a name now.”

He looked at the cat, finally exhausted enough by now to curl up on the exam table and sleep. Her fur, white as snow, her blue eyes, her proclivity for climbing all over him…she reminded him of the mountains, in a weird way, and he didn’t have much love for them after falling to his supposed death in a snowy mountain ravine, but maybe he could change that association. Dr. Raynor had always been on him to build new, better memories and associations rather than dwelling on old ones.

“Alpine,” he said. “Her name is Alpine. If that’s okay with you, that is,” he asked the cat, who squinted her eyes open and mrrped sweetly, as if in agreement.

“Alright, Alpine Barnes it is,” said the vet.

Bucky had always assumed that cats were pretty low-key pets that didn’t require a lot of special supplies. This assumption was, apparently, incorrect.

Alpine needed a baffling array of things on top of the basics of food and water bowls, litter box, pet food, and the like. The vet had let him borrow a pet carrier to take Alpine home in until he could get to a pet supply store and get his own, and they’d also given him some food and a shopping list of the pet ownership essentials. But at the actual pet store, and later when Bucky was shopping online for those things he’d decided were too bulky to carry home on the train or in a cab, Bucky was overwhelmed by all of the options for pet-related furniture.

“Do you really need more furniture than I do?” he asked Alpine, who was sitting contentedly in his lap, purring away loud enough that Bucky could feel the vibrations.

To be fair, thought Bucky with a wince, there weren’t many other places for her to curl up, so maybe she did need more furniture than he did. She’d already explored the entirety of his apartment, and maybe he was projecting or something, but she’d seemed distinctly disappointed by the place’s admittedly spartan interior.

So okay, she needed a cat bed, and since he’d prefer she not climb all over the kitchen appliances and other places kittens shouldn’t be exploring, she probably did need a cat tree too. Some cat toys were apparently important to keep her from getting bored, so he got a few of those too, and then when he saw the cat caves in a variety of whimsical shapes—one in the shape of a rocket ship, and another like a stone with flowers growing on top of it—he couldn’t resist getting a couple of those for her either. By the time his shopping spree was over, he was pretty sure Alpine owned more things than he did, and he told her as much.

Alpine got up from his lap, stretched, and hopped down to plop herself in a sunbeam on the floor. Bucky looked down at his lap, his black jeans now covered in white fur.

“It would have been much more convenient for me personally if you were a black cat,” he told Alpine, and she blinked slowly at him.

He sighed, and ordered a bunch of lint rollers too.

So what did you do with the cat???

Shit, what with getting home and getting Alpine situated, Bucky had entirely forgotten to update Sam.

He took a photo of Alpine, curled up in an almost perfect circle and napping in a sunbeam. She looked about as angelic as it was possible for a cat to look. Her name is Alpine.

She’s so tiny. It should not be possible for a cat to be so little.

She’ll get bigger, vet said she’s just a few months old.

You better send me regular photos!!!

Huh. Who knew Sam was a cat person. There were about a dozen dumb bird-based jokes Bucky could make here, but he was too busy feeling all weird and soft-hearted about Sam’s excitement over Alpine to make them. It should not have been so endearing that Sam was a cat person.

Of course, Bucky texted back.

Once all of Alpine’s stuff arrived, Bucky’s apartment looked more like a cat shelter that a person happened to live in than an apartment for a real, human person. Bucky could recognize that this was probably less than ideal. Even with Alpine’s cat tree and cat bed and two cat caves, there was still an awful lot of empty space to fill, and Alpine was making more use of his furniture than he was.

He surveyed the living room and the little nook by the kitchen that served as his dining room, and sighed. “Yeah, okay, maybe I could stand to get some more stuff. Another armchair at least.”

He’d always wanted a nice, squashy armchair he could curl up and read in. No reason not to get one now, he supposed. He found one in a second-hand shop that was in almost new condition, albeit in an odd shade of teal, and he bought it and a side table for it with satisfaction. Of course, it didn’t match his current couch at all, so he sold that one and bought another, much more comfortable one in a shade of pale, silvery gray that didn’t quite match the armchair but that he thought contrasted nicely enough, and that wouldn’t show all the fur Alpine shed quite so much.

Just these changes made the apartment’s relative sparseness much more airy and welcoming, and the addition of a plush green rug—so Alpine would slip around on the hardwood floors less often—made the space almost cozy.

You actually redecorated??? Sam texted, after one of Bucky’s photos of Alpine showed the new additions.

Yeah, found some stuff I actually liked, was Bucky’s response, like the problem with what Sam called his depressing-ass, shithole apartment had been his pickiness about interior design and not…well, not caring enough about how he lived.

Looks good! Is that couch a pullout? Because I gotta come visit Alpine. Also I have to be at a GRC meeting next week, but mostly I want to visit Alpine.

Bucky grinned. Now here was an unforeseen and welcome benefit to getting a cat. Can’t believe you’ve never even met her and she’s already got you wrapped around her finger.

Also, yes, the couch is a pullout. Need a ride from the airport?

I have WINGS, Buck. I’m good.

“Guess who’s coming to see you, Alpine?” he said, and Alpine raised her head and stretched out of her loaf position on the cat tree, making that adorable mrpping sound that was her usual I’m listening acknowledgment. “Sam’s gonna come for a visit. Sam’s my—” Coworker? Teammate? Partner? Alpine blinked at him. “—friend,” concluded Bucky. “So we gotta be on our best behavior, okay?”

Alpine’s arrival into his life involved more changes than just interior design and a lot of lint rollers. Whenever Bucky slept on the floor, Alpine seemed very alarmed, coming over to bump him with her tiny head and pat him with her paws, meowing in a tone that Bucky could only classify as worried and anxious. On those nights, Alpine stayed close, sleeping beside him or on his chest, even though her cat bed or cat cave had to be more comfortable.

“Sorry Alpine, I’m kind of a mess,” he murmured to her one night. “You don’t gotta stay with me.”

But she did, and to his surprise, he ended up sleeping better on those nights. He still had the occasional nightmare, but it was easier to break free of the dread and horror when Alpine was there, her rumbling weight on his chest, or her face pressed against his in an immediate demand to be pet. She’d meow, in that tone that sounded like nothing so much as a person’s inquisitive hum, and Bucky would tell her, “Just a nightmare, sweetheart.”

It was odd, having company after his nightmares again. In Wakanda, someone would sit with him on especially bad nights, usually Ayo, and sometimes they’d just sit in silence, and other times, she would gently but firmly demand he tell her what he’d dreamed about. Some wounds must be lanced to let the poison out, White Wolf. And god, the words had sure felt like poison coming out of him, and yet they hadn’t poisoned her. Her luminous eyes had held the same stern compassion as always afterwards, and he’d felt drained, but better.

It was a confession of sorts, he supposed, and if it didn’t help ease the guilt, it did at least help to release it outside of himself rather than let it fester away.

“I call them nightmares, but they’re always memories,” he told Alpine one night. He wasn’t sure if it was more or less crazy to be talking to his cat than it was to be talking to himself, but it was hard to resist Alpine’s inquisitive little meows and chirps. If Alpine was trying her best to talk to him as much as a cat could, then surely he could at least talk back. “And it’d be one thing if they were memories of the awful things they did to me, but it’s—god, it’s worse, that they’re the memories of the awful things they made me do.”

He knew she couldn’t understand him, not really, but the way she nuzzled his cheek after that made him feel better anyway. It didn’t matter to her, after all, what HYDRA had turned him into. All she cared about was that he kept her fed and safe, that he played with her and pet her. She wasn’t scared of his vibranium arm, wasn’t scared he’d hurt her. She trusted him to take care of her.

He even told Dr. Raynor as much after he finally let slip about getting Alpine—it turned out he still needed to go to therapy for at least another couple of years before the government would be willing to declare him officially sane and stable enough to keep his pardon—and earned himself an actual smile from the Dr. Raynor for it. A smile that was somehow simultaneously exasperated and relieved, but a smile.

“That’s part of why we often recommend people recovering from trauma get a companion animal, even if it’s not a full-blown service animal or emotional support animal. You’ll recall I actually suggested it during one of our first sessions.”

“I thought you meant one of those service dogs!”

He’d seen a few of them around the streets of Brooklyn, and he certainly didn’t think there was anything wrong with needing one. He just didn’t think he did.

“Well, that could be helpful too, but as you’re learning, even just a companion animal can be good for your mental health, as long as you’re capable of taking care of it,” she said. “Building a positive, loving relationship with a pet can help you rebuild the confidence to do the same with people.”

“I’m fine with people,” Bucky retorted, and Dr. Raynor raised an eyebrow. “Sam’s visiting me next week!”

“Good,” said Dr. Raynor, and then she smiled at him for real. It made the very old, almost-forgotten part of Bucky that was still a teacher’s pet go all warm and soft with pride before Bucky’s much more sensible and justified authority figure issues viciously smothered the response. “James. I truly do think you’re doing very well, that you work hard on recovery every single day. I’ve said that in just about every single one of my reports.”

“But?”

“But the thing I worry most about for you is how socially isolated you are, how few connections you have with people. I understand how much of that isn’t your choice, how difficult your circumstances are. But it’s not just your cat who can offer you love and friendship and acceptance. There are people who care about you, and you can still build and strengthen relationships with them, and with other people.”

“No shit I’m socially isolated. What happened to me is isolating,” he said, hating the way his voice grated over the words. “Being what I am, that’s isolating.”

“I know,” she said. “You’re right, it is.” To his mortification, the sheer relief of her saying that made tears rise in his eyes. “Though I’m not a big fan of the phrasing that what you are is isolating, because I don’t think that’s entirely true. But set that aside for now. What happened to you is profoundly isolating, yes. It does not have to keep isolating you though. You don’t have to build your own prison out of your experiences.”

“I’m not,” he protested. “I talk to Sam and Sarah, the boys. I visit them pretty often.”

More often than not, Bucky ended up in Delacroix after missions, coaxed there by Sam’s offers of a night’s rest, a proper home-cooked meal, a relaxing trip on the boat, until he’d been there a week and had to make up some excuse to leave because otherwise he never would. It was almost enough to make Bucky look forward to missions if only for what came after them.

Dr. Raynor hummed thoughtfully. “I’m glad. But you still don’t really have anybody here in New York, do you?”

He had graves here, and tattered, fractured memories, and the ashes of his idiotic and cowardly attempt at friendship with Yori. Which probably wasn’t the kind of answer she was looking for.

“I need to be close to the Wakandan Outreach Center in Harlem,” he said instead. “For my arm, and medical stuff.”

No one in Wakanda had been thrilled about him coming back to Brooklyn alone after the Blip and his pardon. You still have a home here, Shuri had insisted.

I heard my hut got flattened by an alien spaceship, actually, he’d said, and her face had twisted up into a terrible expression caught between tears and exasperation. We will build you a new one!

When Bucky had thanked T’Challa profusely and told him that he didn’t have to deal with sheltering a dubiously stable fugitive anymore, that Bucky could leave and make his own way now, T’Challa had said, that is not what you are to us. You are still welcome here. But Bucky had told Ayo I have to do this, I have to try to make things right, as best I can, instead of hiding, and after a long, searching look, she’d said, I do not think there is anything you need to make right. They were not your crimes. But I understand. I will inform the king.

It had been enough for them to let him go, so long as he’d promised to live within an hour of an Outreach Center, and get regular checkups there, and his lawyer had even managed to sneak that into the terms of his pardon. So someone will know if they try to disappear you, she’d said grimly. Which was a damn good point, and why she was earning the big bucks. He’d dutifully gone to his checkups, and had even managed to fake being okay enough during them that no one had staged an intervention about his sadsack life, and anyway, they’d all been too busy with post-Blip recovery efforts to spare much thought for him.

Then with the whole Zemo thing, he’d figured he’d burned that bridge to ashes, which had felt so inevitable it was almost a relief, the same kind of relief as when his handlers had finally just fucking hit him instead of shouting confusing orders and demands. Painful too of course, but a relief that the natural order of things had reasserted itself, that reality had become predictable and understandable again. The reality of pain was so much easier than the anticipation of it. Bucky could just be alone again, and accept that it was stupid to have ever hoped otherwise.

Except then when he’d missed his next checkup, Ayo had come knocking on his door, and he’d assumed she was here to take the arm for some reason, so he’d offered it to her, and she’d looked so furious and heartbroken and stricken that he hadn’t even known what to do.

Oh, Bast damn it, Aneka was right, she’d said. We are both too dramatic for our own good. I said to make yourself scarce for a little while, not to never speak to any of us ever again!

So anyway, it turned out Ayo didn’t hate him forever or think he’d horribly betrayed Wakanda or whatever, she just thought he was a dumbass who should’ve asked for help or at the very least talked to her before he enacted his “idiotic” plan, because otherwise how was she supposed to know he wasn’t just breaking Zemo out of jail for no reason, and he knew how much she hated Zemo so he could have at least asked her for help or given her a heads up beforehand, and how could he think she’d take his arm.

She didn’t say all that in those exact words, she was far too dignified for that, but that was pretty much the takeaway.

Well, you kind of did once take my arm already, he’d said, and she’d looked even more stricken, and anyway, they’d both apologized to each other and maybe also gotten a bit teary-eyed, and now it was fine.

He still needed to stay close to a Wakandan Outreach Center though, was the point. A fact which Shuri was even more insistent on given the whole headaches thing.

“They’re building an Outreach Center in New Orleans, aren’t they?” said Dr. Raynor.

Bucky blinked. Come to think of it, Shuri had mentioned that during his appointment a couple weeks ago.

“Are you saying I should move to Delacroix to be closer to Sam and Sarah?”

“It’s just a suggestion,” said Dr. Raynor with a too-casual shrug. “I think it’d be good for you, to be closer to your support network.”

“Wouldn’t that be…weird and clingy?” He searched for the correct 21st century lingo. “Uh, boundary crossing?”

And also not at all conducive to getting over his crush on Sam, not that he’d ever admit it to Dr. Raynor. Then again, maybe seeing Sam all the time would inure Bucky to his…everything.

Dr. Raynor raised an eyebrow. “That’s up to Sam and Sarah. Somehow, I don’t think they’d consider it that way. Just think about it, James. And don’t let our sessions be an impediment to moving, we can do remote sessions with the occasional in-person session.”

“I have Alpine to think of too now,” he said, and Dr. Raynor smiled indulgently.

“Well, see how she and Sam get on next week. Also, I cannot believe you haven’t shown me any photos of Alpine, what kind of pet owner are you?”

Bucky snorted, but he pulled out his phone. “She’s the cutest, smartest cat in the entire world,” he said, and showed her a photo, and Dr. Raynor didn’t complain at all about spending the rest of their session looking at photos of Alpine.

Chapter Text

As if repairing a space station wasn’t hard enough, there was paperwork to deal with too, and worse still, two different sets of it thanks to the S.A.B.E.R. Space Station being a joint Skrull-Human operation. Thankfully, one of the benefits of command was that Nick himself didn’t have to do it all himself. Director Nick Fury had underlings for that. Mostly, he just signed off on it and packaged it all neatly and appropriately for the various stakeholders. Skrull and human priorities weren’t entirely the same, and reports that went to Earth had to be finessed differently than the ones that went to the Skrull. In this case though, the reports were identical in one way: Goose’s disruptive pregnancy was relegated to a couple of sentences about how “the Flerken known as Goose gave birth to thirty-one Flerkens during the course of the emergency, and the thirty-one newborn Flerkens were instrumental to the safe evacuation of the space station thanks to their abilities.”

No one needed to know the exact nature of those abilities, and they sure as hell didn’t need to know that those abilities involved the Flerkens eating people aka temporarily relocating them to a pocket dimension, which was, sure, yes, slightly traumatic, but better than explosive decompression, surely—wait. Thirty-one Flerkens? He was pretty sure there were only thirty kittens. He was almost certain, actually, because he’d counted all the kittens himself as he rounded them up after the evacuation. Talia was usually pretty scrupulous in her reports, but maybe she’d just worded it unclearly and meant thirty kittens plus Goose for a total of thirty-one.

He called Talia into his office.

“What’s this about thirty-one Flerkittens in your report?” he demanded.

“Fler…kittens, sir?”

“Goose’s babies! The baby Flerkens! Did you mean thirty plus Goose, or thirty-one kittens? Because I only rounded up thirty of them back on Earth.”

Most of them were already en route to their new homes with the Skrull, since they didn’t need to stay with their mom like real kittens, but there were a few still running around on the space station. Nick was sure they hadn’t lost any along the way.

“Oh. Well, I reviewed the security footage and the readings from before the evacuation, just to be thorough, and I counted thirty-one Flerkens.”

“You’re sure you didn’t double-count one?”

“I cross-referenced against the number of eggs. Our initial count of the eggs had been off by one, so there were thirty-one newborn—newly hatched?—Flerkens.”

“Well, shit.”

After a quick check of the station clock against Earth time zones, Nick initiated a video call with Kamala Khan, and hoped like hell that he wouldn’t regret this.

“I have a mission for you, Ms. Khan.”

Good god, she looked young. Did she somehow look even younger than she had before? It kind of seemed like she did. Maybe it was just that Nick felt older, downright ancient when faced with Kamala’s round cheeks and expressive eyebrows, her face advertising her every thought and emotion as clearly as a billboard.

“It’s Ms. Marvel, actually,” she said, wide-eyed, as her mouth very clearly outran her brain. “I mean, yes, my name is Kamala Khan, so Ms. Khan is technically correct, but obviously, you don’t have to call me Ms. Khan, you can just call me Kamala, except if you have a mission for me, this is official superhero business, right, so you should probably call me Ms. Marvel and—”

“Kamala!”

Her mouth snapped shut for a blissful couple of seconds and then it opened again for a thankfully more brief burst of babble.

“Right, yes, the mission! I can totally do the mission! You can count on me, sir!” she said, and actually attempted a salute. “Uh. What’s the mission?”

“Oh, can I talk now?” he asked, raising his eyebrows, and Kamala’s expression went instantly contrite.

“Yes sir, sorry sir, shutting up now sir.”

“We’ve got a missing Flerken. Looks like we miscounted in all the chaos of the evacuations, and as best as we can tell, one of the Flerkittens escaped after we evacuated to Earth. Your mission is to find that Flerken. We cannot have it wreaking havoc by eating people or injuring them or being an invasive species on Earth or what have you.”

There were other people Nick could have tapped for this mission, other superheroes even. But frankly, Nick did not need the level of nonsense he’d get from them if he tried. Although, Bucky Barnes did kind of owe him one, after the whole attempted assassination thing…but no, Nick wasn’t about to waste that potential favor on tracking down a stray Flerkitten. This wasn’t exactly an emergency. Flerkens could be dangerous, sure, but he doubted one would go on a rampage once it realized it could score a cushy life as a pampered pet instead.

“So my mission is to…find a stray cat?” said Kamala warily.

“Yes.”

“That’s, uh—there are a lot of stray cats in New Jersey. Do you know what it looks like, or where it could’ve gone—”

“Unfortunately, it could be anywhere in the Tristate area by now,” said Fury with a grimace. He sent Kamala a photo from the space station’s security feeds. “But we do know it’s this white Flerkitten.”

“So I just have to find a stray alien that looks like a white cat, that went missing a couple weeks ago, and that could be anywhere in the Tristate area. Cool cool cool! I can totally do this mission!” said Kamala, beaming brightly and unconvincingly.

“Really? Because you’re not sounding too confident.”

“Well, it might take me a while,” she hedged, her smile dimming. “But…I can be methodical! I’ll visit every shelter, and I’ll put up lost kitten signs, and I’ll—check for news reports about weird cats? Or people going missing, maybe?”

Fury was a professional, so he didn’t reveal how relieved he was that Kamala had such a sensible plan.

“I’m sure it’ll be obvious soon enough if the Flerken is a danger to people.”

And if that did happen, then Nick would actually call in that debt with Barnes.

“Because it’ll start eating people, you mean,” she said with a big-eyed frown.

“Uh huh. And scratches from a Flerken are no joke either,” he said, and tapped at his eye patch. Kamala’s eyes went very wide. “So be careful.”

“Got it! Uh, if it ends up at a vet or a shelter, and they do the usual kind of tests and stuff, are they gonna be able to tell it’s an alien cat?”

“Unfortunately, not really,” said Fury with a grimace. “Most of a Flerken’s more, ah, alien traits are kind of…extra-dimensional. A standard veterinary exam isn’t gonna show anything too weird. Goose got regular vet visits before anyone realized what she was.”

“Okay, so that’s…less than ideal,” said Kamala, looking somewhat discouraged now.

“Honestly, if the Flerkitten acts enough like a normal cat that no one notices anything, it’s probably not too urgent a situation. Goose was on Earth for years without anyone the wiser. But we do need to find and account for that Flerken.”

“I’m on it, Nick!” she said with another salute.

“It’s Director Fury, Kamala.”

“I’m on it, Director Fury!”

God, Nick hoped he wouldn’t regret this. But how much trouble could a super-powered teenager get into while searching for a missing alien cat? At the very least, a mission like this could keep her out of any more serious trouble.

“Good luck…Ms. Marvel.”

Chapter Text

Bucky had expected a text or call from Shuri to summon him to the Wakandan Outreach Center for a follow-up appointment. Instead, he got a visit from Ayo.

“You are coming with me to the Outreach Center for your appointment,” she declared the moment he opened his door.

She wasn’t in uniform, instead wearing the kind of civilian clothing that made her look intimidatingly chic rather than dangerous, her spear nowhere in sight, and while this boded well for the lack of an impending disaster or battle, it suggested some dire things about his appointment and his health.

“I didn’t miss my appointment did I?” he asked, baffled. “Because Shuri said she’d tell me when the new meds were ready, or if she needed any more scans, and I didn’t get any messages—”

“You did not miss it, no. I am simply here to accompany you.”

Well, that didn’t seem like good news.

“Jesus, am I dying?” he asked.

Shit, maybe he should’ve done something about the headaches earlier, he thought, his face going cold as the blood drained from it, his stomach flopping queasily. It would fit perfectly with his rotten, painfully ironic luck that when he was finally getting his shit together, finally really living and wanting to live, he’d turn out to be dying or something. Half a year ago, bad news like this would have been a relief. But now…Distantly, he heard Alpine start meowing with demanding alarm.

“What? No!” said Ayo, and looked at him with no small amount of concern. “Why are you suddenly so pale? Are you going to faint?”

“No, I’m not going to—You showed up in Brooklyn to take me to a surprise medical appointment! I assume that means something is very wrong!”

“I dragged you to an appointment not four months ago! And I accompanied you to all of your appointments in Wakanda!” she said defensively.

This was, admittedly, true. “To make sure I wasn’t about to snap and kill anybody! I know I fucked up with the Zemo thing, and going undercover as the Winter Soldier in Madripoor, but I swear, I’m not going to relapse into being an assassin—”

“I am here as your friend, you idiot—”

A small streak of white launched itself in Ayo’s direction, with a very creditable attempt at a roar for something so small.

“Alpine, no!” said Bucky, and caught her midair. Where the hell had she even jumped from? Alpine writhed in his hands, hissing, evidently determined to protect her territory. She was big enough now that it took both hands to keep her secure. “Alpine, sweetie, calm down, this is just Ayo, she’s a friend.”

Ayo, who’d taken on a battle-ready posture, relaxed. “Is that a kitten?” she asked, amused.

“Yeah, I found her a few weeks ago, brought her home with me,” he said, settling a somewhat calmer Alpine into the crook of his arm. “No biting or scratching,” he told her sternly, and when Alpine yowled in protest, Ayo smiled at them.

“She’s a brave little thing, to protect you so,” said Ayo, and carefully offered her hand to Alpine for a sniff.

“No biting,” Bucky reminded Alpine sternly. “Other people than us are allowed in this apartment, you know. You can’t be acting like this when Sam comes to visit.”

Alpine meowed sulkily, but she did take a careful sniff of Ayo’s fingers, and let Ayo give her a scratch under the chin. Thus assured of a detente, Bucky stepped back and let Ayo inside, then let Alpine down from his arms. She immediately bounded towards her cat tree, and with a couple of leaps, took up watch from the tallest perch.

“Um, did you want tea or coffee or anything?” he asked, and Ayo laughed, a rich and musical sound of delight that made him smile automatically. “What?”

“Our White Wolf has a white cat!” she said, her eyes crinkling merrily.

And yeah, okay, he hadn’t thought of that, but it was kind of funny. He grinned back at her, rolling his eyes.

“Seriously though, why the escort to my appointment? Is something wrong?” he asked, but Ayo was busy looking around his apartment with an assessing eye. Bucky was glad the place looked more lived-in than it had before, even if the kind of lived-in was mostly a spoiled cat lives here, and maybe also a reasonably functional human.

“Nothing is wrong. Princess Shuri has formulated a new medication for you, and she—we—thought it best if you had some company when you try it. She wants to monitor you for a few hours, since it is a wholly new formulation.” Ayo paused. On a less elegant, dignified person, Bucky might have called the expression on her face hesitant. “Also, I wanted to come.”

“Oh. Uh. Thank you.”

She huffed out a frustrated sigh. “If I had not come, would you have ever called me?”

“You said to make myself scarce!”

“You did not call before then either, after you left. Not me, and not anyone else in Wakanda. Not until Zemo.”

I didn’t call anyone else, from anywhere else, either, he didn’t say. But then, it wasn’t as if he knew basically anyone outside of Wakanda, other than Sam and now Sam’s family too. There was Yori, but obviously that had been a bad idea from the start and they hadn’t spoken since Bucky told him the truth. Other than that, he didn’t really interact with anyone outside of his appointments. He was polite acquaintances with the people he volunteered with, he supposed.

He was painfully aware this was not good and that the old Bucky would’ve already made friends with most of the neighborhood and everyone he volunteered with, thanks.

“I know I should have called, okay?” he said. “But we didn’t have a lot of time to run down the lead on the serum before the trail went cold, and—”

“Before then too!”

“I—I didn’t want to bother any of you,” said Bucky weakly. “I know you were all busy with the post-Blip recovery, and I’d been enough of a burden already.”

“You aren’t a burden. And it would not have been a burden to hear from a friend. It would have been welcome, even, to receive more than the occasional proof of life message,” she said, gentler by far than she had ever been, which made him suspect he looked pretty fucking pathetic at the moment.

“God, I’m a selfish asshole,” he said, and rubbed at his aching eyes. “I’m sorry I—I should have called.”

“Not selfish,” said Ayo. “Self-centered, perhaps.” He winced, but it was a fair hit. She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes at him. “Why didn’t you call?”

He had plenty of reasons—no, not reasons, excuses: it hadn’t seemed like it’d been that long, he’d been busy with therapy and amends, he’d had no idea what he could possibly say, he’d been worried about all the surveillance he was under as a condition of his pardon. But Ayo deserved more than his excuses. She deserved the truth.

“I, uh, wasn’t doing so well,” he admitted. “Steve was—was gone, and I thought I needed to come back here to Brooklyn, to—to face up to my past, to stop hiding and try to make things right, but—I don’t know. It wasn’t—”

He didn’t know what to say about that long, gray stretch of days, about how quickly his supposed freedom turned into its own kind of prison. How much life itself had begun to feel like a prison he couldn’t escape, not even in death, because death just didn’t seem to fucking stick for him. How the only time he didn’t have nightmares was when he dreamed of turning to dust instead, and how much of a bitter disappointment it had been, every time he’d woken up after those dreams. How the amends had been the only thing that kept him going, and what he’d planned to do after them.

Ayo’s eyes went wide, as if she could guess at some of his thoughts, and he concluded with a weak, “I wasn’t doing well, alone. I’m doing better now.”

And that was the truth, thankfully.

“Alone,” repeated Ayo. “You are alone here.”

“Not now,” said Bucky, and bent to pick up Alpine, who’d come to twine around his legs. “I’ve got Alpine.”

“Why have you been alone here?”

Aside from its astonishing beauty and technological marvels, the thing about Wakanda was that everyone was embedded in a vast and complex web of social and familial relationships. Even if you lost your immediate family, you almost certainly still had some form of extended family, and even if you’d had the misfortune to lose them too, or fallen out with them, there was still your tribe. And even apart from your own tribe, there were ties to the other tribes: through marriage, or affinity, or adoption. There were those who chose to live more isolated lives, and there were War Dogs who went out into the world on long assignments, but even they stayed in touch with their families or tribes. No matter how long the assignment, no matter how harsh the disagreement, a Wakandan could always return to some kind of community. Even the Jabari, who’d stayed in their mountains for centuries, had slipped back into Wakandan life at large when they returned. Not without friction, sure, but still accepted.

To be alone, to have no ties to anyone, to live the way Bucky was living, on his own in an apartment building full of strangers—or not strangers, but neighbors who all just happened to work for various alphabet agencies, how weird—it was inconceivable to a Wakandan. Even as a potentially dangerous foreigner, Bucky had been welcomed into a village and folded into its rhythms, once they were certain the trigger words were gone, and before then, Ayo or Aneka or Shuri had been with him all the time, and Steve and T’Challa and even the Queen Mother had visited.

If Ayo had known he’d be this isolated in Brooklyn, she almost certainly would have kicked up more of a fuss about him leaving.

“I don’t really have anyone, Ayo,” he said quietly, and winced when the usual dull pounding of his head intensified for a moment. Alpine meowed softly in his arms, and stretched up to nuzzle his cheek, as if she could tell. “Not here, not anymore.”

Steve had left for a better timeline than this one, and for all that he’d gone with Bucky’s blessing and encouragement, Steve had still taken Bucky’s last ties to this world and the person Bucky had once been with him.

At least, that was what it had felt like.

Ayo was silent and inscrutable, and Bucky didn’t know how to read the tension in her, whether she was mad at him, or pitied him, or found him too pathetic to stand or what. So he babbled nervously.

“Or, I didn’t have anyone before, but, um, Sam’s coming to visit next week. I—uh, I visit him and his family pretty often now. I see my therapist, I—I stay busy. I, um, I volunteer at the community garden, and the soup kitchen, it—it’s good, reminds me of Wakanda. I’m—I’m doing alright, really.”

He wasn’t just grimly crossing names off his list until he could execute his exit strategy, at any rate.

“Alone,” said Ayo, finally breaking her nerve-racking silence, and this time the word sounded like it was a curse. Bucky supposed that to Wakandans, it was. Their greatest punishment was exile, after all. “This place is deeply uncivilized,” she continued crisply, in Xhosa now, and Alpine meowed as if in agreement.

“Uh, yeah. Maybe. So. Um. How have you been?”

Alpine squirmed so he let her down after dropping a quick kiss to the top of her furry head, and just leaning down that much made his head throb more. He tried to suppress a wince, and rubbed at his forehead. The pain ebbed and flowed, was usually a dull roar, but he worried he was in for another day of agony soon.

“I have been occupied with my duties to the King,” said Ayo. “And with learning of all that I missed, while I was gone. It has been—difficult. I have felt—out of step, I suppose.”

Ayo had been blipped too, and with a pang of shame and guilt, Bucky realized he’d just assumed that she’d been handling that okay. She had, after all, been able to return to her position with the Dora Milaje, and to her wife. But he ought to have known better.

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s like that. No matter how used to losing that much time you are,” he said.

“A great deal has changed of late,” said Ayo. “Not only from the Blip, but before then as well, and…” She grimaced. “I am finding that I’m not so flexible as I would like to be, in accepting all of these changes, or in learning how best to deal with them.”

“Did you want—you could talk about it with me. If—I mean, I know what it’s like, and I—um. We could talk.”

Bucky’s face went hot, and his head throbbed again. He grimaced. God, he used to be good at this. He used to be able to coax and ease his sisters’ worries away, he used to be able to charm a smile out of strangers. He could remember all that, but he couldn’t do it anymore. Pretty much every time he tried, it ended up like this: stilted, awkward.

“We could,” said Ayo, amused and far more indulgent than his ineptitude merited.

“I’m sorry, I’m—I’m really out of practice at—at this friendship thing.”

“So practice,” said Ayo, her voice cool and stern, the tilt of her head as dignified as ever. But in her eyes was the banked flame of tenderness that had led him to trust her with the words that could erase him. For the thousandth time, he was struck by the thought that he had never deserved and would never deserve her grace, or the mercy she always offered so freely.

“I will,” he promised her, and the ache in his head intensified enough to make him squint. Ayo frowned at him.

“But perhaps once you are in less pain,” she said. “Come, Princess Shuri will fix that.”

At the Outreach Center, he got his usual array of tests and scans, and a disconcerting number of medications, which Bucky did not feel great about.

HYDRA had kept him on drugs. A lot of them. And the withdrawal had been—bad. Very bad. Bucky would take living with a headache for the rest of his unnaturally long life to avoid drugs like that. But of course, Shuri wouldn’t do that to him. Shuri, appearing via hologram, walked him through all of the new medications she’d created for him.

“These are all specially formulated for you,” she said. “And rigorously tested via millions of simulations based on your neural map and unique physiology. I have also tested their interactions with many other substances and chemicals you may come in contact with, to ensure there will be no untoward drug interactions, which is why this has taken me so long, sorry.”

“It’s been, like, three weeks since my last appointment,” said Bucky.

Shuri looked at him like he was crazy. “And you have been in pain.”

“Yeah, but that’s…it’s fine. I’m used to it.”

Now Shuri looked like the one who was in pain. “I hope you will not be used to it any longer. Now listen closely, though I will of course also provide you with all of the extensive documentation.”

Bucky did listen closely, and got the rundown on his new regimen: one set of pills to take daily that Shuri said would help with the pain and headaches, and another that weren’t strictly speaking medication nor were they nanobots, but rather a kind of tiny biological robot that would aid in neural regeneration, which Shuri said would help address the cause of his continued pain.

“Memory loss aside, your cognitive and motor function are so good we had assumed there was no reason to interfere with your natural healing process,” said Shuri, wide-eyed and apologetic now. “But if you are in constant pain, then I think it is time to give that healing process a nudge.”

She also gave him drugs to inject, but called those a “Rescue medication. For if a migraine is severe enough that the daily drug cannot prevent it,” and another set of pills that were muscle relaxants to ease tension headaches and the ache around his left shoulder and neck if it got especially bad, which she cautioned him to use sparingly because, “they will probably make you go floppy and kind of high, sorry, there’s no way to moderate those side effects while still making the drug effective.”

“And—if I stop taking any of them, is there—will it—”

“No withdrawal,” said Shuri briskly. “And the biobots are a three month-long course, we will reassess if they or the other medication are still needed after that.”

“Right,” said Bucky, kind of overwhelmed. He rattled another large bottle of pills. “And these?”

“Vitamin D, you are far too pale for my liking, and your levels fluctuate too much.”

“You know I’m more or less supposed to be this color, right?”

She rolled her eyes. “A supplement will be easier than addressing the issue via diet, though you could stand to get more sunshine too. I would also suggest massage therapy, and are you still doing your physical therapy exercises?”

“Yes!”

Shuri gave him a narrow-eyed, assessing stare, and Bucky tried to exude an aura of I will be a good patient, I promise. She nodded briskly. “Okay, so. Try the two daily pills and then stick around the Outreach Center until tomorrow.”

“Wait, overnight? I can’t stay overnight, I can’t leave Alpine that long!” Bucky protested. “And why do I need to stay overnight?”

“Alpine?” asked Shuri.

“Um, my cat. She’s still a kitten.”

“You got a kitten!” said Shuri, her expression alight with glee. “Why have I not seen photos yet!”

“Shuri! Why do I need to stay overnight?”

“You can go back to your apartment to fetch her, but it is my genius, professional opinion that your sleep should be monitored tonight. I need readings to ensure the biobots are not unduly interfering with your sleep patterns.” She narrowed her eyes at him again. “Also, I must make sure you don’t have a bad reaction to these medications. I don’t want you to end up bleeding from the eyes and not telling me about it until your brain is dribbling out of your ears while you say, ‘oh I thought that was a normal side effect, it’s fine, I’ve had worse.’”

“Is that a possible side effect?” he asked, more curious than horrified.

Shuri crossed her arms and glared at him. “No! Just stay at the Center for the night until we can be certain you’re responding well to the medication!”

There was a very slight waver in her voice, and a barely there wobble as she pressed her lips together, and that more than anything else had him nodding and saying, “Yes, Princess,” meekly.

“Don’t ‘yes princess’ me! Just—take proper care of yourself and ask for help! Months you are under our care and you don’t even think to mention that you’re in pain, and then you run off to Brooklyn of all places, where you don’t have anyone, it’s not right, it’s inhumane—”

With a pang, Bucky wondered just how much stress she was dealing with and how much he was adding to it. There wasn’t much he could do to ease a princess’s burdens, but he could at least be a model patient. And maybe he could send her frequent cute photos and videos of Alpine too.

“Shuri. I’ll stay here for the night, okay?”

“And you will tell me if the medication does not work! Or if the side effects are too bad! Your most likely side effects are drowsiness or mild lightheadedness according to my simulations, but review the documentation, it breaks it all down.”

“Okay,” he said. “Um. If this is going to help with neural regeneration, does that mean—am I going to get more memories back?”

Shuri smiled at him. “Yes!” she said brightly, and then she frowned at whatever look was on his face right now. “Is that—do you not want that?”

“Definitely don’t need or want more HYDRA memories,” he said, feeling sick now, and Shuri shook her head.

“This will almost certainly be more of your prewar memories, Bucky. Those are the areas that were most damaged, most often.”

So he was going to be trading one pain for another, then. He would get back more memories, and they’d only tell him more of what he’d lost. He bit his lip, unsure now if it was worth it…but the icepick of pain that was quickly settling behind his left eye decided him.

He was so sick of being in pain. If anyone could make it better, if he could trust anyone to help, it was Shuri.

“Okay.” He took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “Yeah, okay. I’ll try the meds.”

Shuri nodded curtly. “Good. Now go, bring your cat then call me back, I want to meet her,” was Shuri’s final demand, and then she ended the holo-call.

So he made another trip between his apartment and the Outreach Center, this time returning with Alpine and everything she’d need for an overnight stay. Alpine was much fussed over by every single person in the Outreach Center, of course, because they all found an excuse to swing by the lab to see them, and every single person laughed or grinned at the sight of them together.

“White Wolf and his White Cat!” everyone said, beaming.

Bucky was starting to think he was missing some bit of cultural context or wordplay here, but whatever. It was a funny little coincidence, and once Bucky told Alpine all of the Wakandans were friends, Alpine accepted all the cooing and petting as if it was her due, purring happily. She stayed perched on his shoulder once he took the meds and settled in on a couch in the corner of the lab to read through Shuri’s extensive documentation.

It wasn’t long before the pounding in his head eased, and he got through about half of the explanation of his new headache medication’s mode of action before he fell asleep.

He woke up a couple hours later to Alpine kneading his chest, and Ayo looking down at him, simultaneously amused and concerned. He blinked blearily up at her.

“Are you well, James?”

He took stock for a moment: Alpine was warm on his chest, and someone had draped a blanket over him at some point. The tablet he’d been reading on had fallen to the floor, and he felt—fine. A bit of the usual ache in his left shoulder, but his head was—his head didn’t hurt.

He sat up, dislodging a protesting Alpine, and okay, yeah, there was that lightheadedness side effect. Even so, holy shit, his head didn’t hurt.

“Yeah. Yeah, I feel great,” he told her.

The night passed uneventfully, Ayo in the room next to his in the Outreach Center’s guest quarters, her kimoyo beads linked to his in case of emergency. If any of the new meds impacted Bucky’s sleep, he couldn’t tell; he got the usual five hours that he considered an okay night, only waking once after a memory/dream of the war that wasn’t great, but also wasn’t actively upsetting. He had some of the same lightheadedness as the day before when he got up, though it passed quickly enough that it wasn’t really a problem.

More importantly, his head didn’t hurt. No dull pounding, no vise-like squeeze around his temples, no radiating tension from his neck up to his head, no sharp ice pick stabbing behind one of his eyes. He sobbed once, short and choked down, out of pure, incredulous relief, and Alpine—who’d spent all night with him as far as he could tell—butted him with her tiny head and meowed with inquisitive worry.

“I’m okay,” he told her, petting her between the ears. “I—fuck, I feel really good, actually.”

He reported as much to Shuri when she checked on him in the morning, and after he endured a great deal of cooing and teasing over the photos of Alpine sleeping on him—because of course everyone had taken pictures—and over Alpine herself, perched on his shoulder again, he assured Shuri he wasn’t hiding any terrible side effects, and Shuri declared him free to go.

“Alright, keep your kimoyo beads on so I can tell if something goes wrong, but if you don’t have any significant issues with the medications, we can have your next appointment here in a month,” said Shuri.

“Okay, thanks,” he said, then hesitated.

“Any other concerns?” prompted Shuri.

“Um. I heard you’re opening an Outreach Center in New Orleans? I was thinking—well, Sam and his family are in Delacroix, not far from there. I’ve been thinking of moving down there, now that, uh. Now that there’s going to be a local Outreach Center. It’d be good to be closer to Sam, for, you know. Training and stuff. So maybe I could have my next appointment there?”

“Oh, thank Bast,” said Shuri prayerfully, and beamed at him. “Yes! Please, for the love of Bast, move, everything about your tragic life here is stressing me out.”

Once Shuri’s hologram blinked out, it was just Ayo and Bucky and Alpine left in the lab. For all that Bucky and Ayo’s shared silences were a familiar thing, it still took effort not to fidget under her scrutiny.

“You are looking much better,” she said eventually, a smile of both approval and satisfaction lingering around her eyes, before she gave him a stern look. “You should have told us you were in pain earlier.”

“I know, I’m sorry,” he said. “So, uh, have you had breakfast yet?”

“No, not yet.”

Bucky shifted from foot to foot, feeling far more awkward than this simple invitation warranted. “There’s a deli that does great bagels not far from here, wanna come with me?”

“Bagels,” said Ayo, as if it was a foreign word, and he supposed that to her it was. “They are something of a delicacy here, yes?”

Bucky snorted. “There’s nothing delicate about a bagel, but yeah. You’ve never had one?”

“No.”

“Then you gotta let me buy you a bagel for breakfast. C’mon,” he said, and lifted Alpine up to tuck her into his jacket for the trip. Not a muscle moved on Ayo’s face, and yet she somehow gave the impression of glowing with a smile anyway.

“Alright,” said Ayo, with a regal tilt of her head. “If you insist.”

There was no particularly delicate or dignified way to eat a bagel—at least, not one with the appropriate number and variety of toppings on it—and Bucky watched Ayo make the attempt with some amusement. She noticed and glared at him, and he just grinned back at her.

“So? What’s the verdict?” he asked.

“Rather bland,” she said, which wasn’t a surprise coming from someone who regularly ate Aneka’s cooking. “But satisfying, thank you.”

“You, uh, got any plans for the rest of the day?”

“Nothing of note,” said Ayo. “I had planned to return to Wakanda tomorrow.”

“We could—I mean, would you want—I can show you around?” stuttered Bucky, and winced at his own awkwardness. Sometimes he really missed being charming and good with people. Past Bucky really hadn’t appreciated that for the useful skill it was. “You shared Wakanda with me, showed me around there, so I’d like to—I know Brooklyn isn’t nearly as amazing or impressive, but—”

“James,” interrupted Ayo, merciful as ever. “I would like that.”

They made a quick stop at Bucky’s apartment to drop Alpine off, which Alpine accepted more readily than Bucky had been expecting. But apparently she had a rigorous napping schedule, and tagging along with Bucky would really cut into it. Alpine responded to being dropped off with only a bit of indignant meowing, calming down when Bucky pressed a kiss to her soft head. She even accepted some petting from Ayo before she trotted off to one of her favored napping spots.

“I am glad you have her,” said Ayo.

“Me too,” said Bucky. “So, any sightseeing requests?”

“No, I leave the itinerary in your hands.”

That sent a tingle of both apprehension and excitement zinging down his spine. “Alright, let’s go.”

Bucky loved Brooklyn and all, even as changed as it was from what he’d known, but he was fully aware that it didn’t exactly hold a candle to Wakanda. Ayo graciously didn’t give any indication of this though, instead gamely and attentively accompanying him to various sights and landmarks like the Brooklyn Bridge and Prospect Park, and even places that were more personal landmarks than anything else: the places that were characterized by what they no longer were, and by the wake left by time and change—places like what had once been the Barnes family’s brownstone, or the new building on the spot where his and Steve’s shitty tenement apartment had been.

“The past is always with you here,” remarked Ayo, when he took her by what had been Ebbets Field, and what was now an apartment building. “But more in absence than in presence.”

“Sure, I figure it’s like that for anybody. Me more than most, but—everyone’s hometown changes on them. Everyone loses something, misses something, when they leave home and then come back.”

In a way, coming back to Brooklyn after the Blip had been easier than returning before it would have been. At least this way, Bucky wasn’t the only one returning to a city that had changed in his absence. He heard snippets of dozens if not hundreds of conversations and complaints about it when he walked the streets as he attempted to relearn them: my favorite coffee shop went under during the Blip, the whole block where my folks used to live got condemned, I got lost in Prospect Park the other day, can you believe it, I used to run there every single day and I got lost!

“We are less accustomed to change in Wakanda, I think,” said Ayo ruefully. “I’ve found it—difficult. Reconciling the changes. Every time, my stomach sinks as if I’ve missed a step on a staircase.”

“Yeah, that—that still happens to me too,” admitted Bucky. “What changes are the hardest or the weirdest for you?”

“It’s difficult to say, I suppose. The rhythms of the Golden City have changed, as have palace procedures, though they are at least mostly physically unchanged. And even before, things had changed so much with T’Chaka’s death, and the usurper’s war, and T’Challa’s reign. Some good things, but…”

“Still a lot of change.”

“Yes.” Ayo paused, uncharacteristically uncertain. “But I think—it is most galling not to know what my sisters in the Dora Milaje endured, in those five years. What Aneka endured. No matter how many reports I read, or stories they tell me, it isn’t the same as knowing. And I know they haven’t told me everything.”

“Yeah, they probably never will,” said Bucky, trying for gentleness.

No one seemed to like to talk about those five years. Bucky couldn’t blame them. But even apart from that, Bucky knew what it was like, to have missed so much of your loved ones’ lives, and to know there was no catching up. Steve had barely told Bucky a damn thing about his years in the 21st century. In retrospect, that was a hell of a red flag.

“I hate it,” said Ayo. “I hate not knowing. And I hate this feeling of—falling behind.”

Of course she did, he thought fondly. Ayo, who prided herself on control, on being prepared, on knowing everything it was important to know, both as a matter of professional pride and out of personal commitment. Of course she’d hate this five year gap in her perception of the world. Bucky was used to much greater swathes of time slipping through his fingers and his awareness, but he doubted she needed to hear that right now.

“Not sure there’s much good in you chasing after all that stuff you don’t know,” he said. “Seems like most people just want to move on.”

Ayo shook her head with an incredulous scoff. “That seems like such madness to me. And yet I know you’re right. It still feels as if I must—solve it, though. Those missing five years.”

“There’s nothing to solve. The time passed, and we weren’t here for it. All we can do is learn the new lay of the land. It’s pretty different, but a lot of the landmarks are the same.”

Ayo frowned at him. “Are you speaking metaphorically or literally now, I can’t tell.”

“Both?” said Bucky. “Uh, I mean—I can get lost in Brooklyn, because it’s changed so much. But a lot of the landmarks are still there: the Brooklyn Bridge, the Navy Yard, the library. If I see them, I know where I am. So you—you have landmarks too. Aneka, Shuri, the Queen Mother. They’re not so different, are they?”

“I suppose not,” said Ayo. She knocked her shoulder against his companionably. “Thank you for the wisdom, elder,” she teased, and Bucky snorted.

“So, um. Anything else you want to talk about? Or get off your chest, or—you know.” Bucky floundered, then finished lamely. “Just—talk.”

Ayo stopped in her tracks to stare at him, unimpressed. He smiled sheepishly at her. “This is me practicing,” he said apologetically. “The—you know. Friendship thing.”

She rolled her eyes, but her lips were twitching upwards. “You were doing just fine before,” she said. And then, with generous mercy, she added, “But I appreciate the effort.”

They spent the whole day walking around Brooklyn, talking sometimes, comfortably silent other times. They’d done much the same thing back in Wakanda. At first, Bucky had spent his time in his little hut, too miserable to come out, drowning under the tide of memory and grief and guilt. And Ayo had let him, for a while. Then she’d dragged him out, and they’d walked and walked, until Bucky’s spirit finally struggled up into the light and air, and took in the world around him, too urgently beautiful to ignore.

He thought maybe this walk did something similar for Ayo, because as block after block passed under their steady stride, the tension that had furrowed her brow eased, and she began to look around with interest and appreciation rather than the watchful eye of a warrior. If all the day did was distract her from her worries for a while, Bucky would consider it a success. He thought he could maybe do a little bit better than that though.

So for lunch, he didn’t take Ayo to one place; instead, they stopped at many: the halal chicken cart at first, then a quick stop at a tapas place for a bite of cheese and olives and a drink of wine, and then an Indian restaurant for lassis to sip on as they walked, and then when they were done with those, a little cafe that also sold Mexican paletas, rich with fruit and herbs and spices. A tour of the world in this one borough, and some of the changes and new things he’d found in it and loved.

They kept walking as the afternoon stretched on, and he made sure to stop at a small shop that sold handmade ceramics, some whimsical and others beautifully simple, because that was the kind of art Aneka liked to fill her and Ayo’s home with, and that, surely, wouldn’t have changed. Ayo gave him an unimpressed look, but she did buy something for Aneka: a graceful little cat figurine. The next stop was a shop that only sold artisanal hot sauces—ridiculous, but Shuri liked her food shockingly spicy, and she’d get a kick out of the ridiculous labels and names—where Ayo bought a couple of the most lurid bottles. Then, after a detour to show Ayo the community garden he volunteered at, they stopped at a tea shop whose blends may or may not have been fit for royalty, but were at the least inventive and unexpected. Ayo spent more time here, and bought enough that she asked for it to be delivered to the outreach center rather than carry it with them.

As the last gold of the late afternoon filled the sky, he took Ayo to the mural that served as an impromptu memorial for the neighborhood: a memorial not for the Blipped who were returned, but for the people lost in the chaos afterwards, who were beyond the possibility of any miraculous resurrections. Some things couldn’t be undone, not even with unimaginable power. Some things couldn’t be forgotten or made small by too-glib words like the Blip or the Snap. Ayo murmured a prayer to Bast as she took in the mural—vivid flowers blooming from gray dust, an image of vibrant solemnity—along with the neatly kept detritus of grief surrounding it: flowers and candles and photos, letters and stuffed animals.

If Ayo asked him to put into words what their stops for the day meant, Bucky wasn’t sure he could have given them to her. But that was alright: they did their best talking when they didn’t talk at all. She understood what he meant, by taking her to these places and showing her these things, the same way he’d known what she’d meant, when she’d shown him Wakanda’s waterfalls and taken him to meet the elephants in the jungle and given him goats to look after.

“And will you take your own advice?” asked Ayo, as if he really had spoken it all aloud.

“I’m trying,” he told her, because wasn’t that what all this was? Ayo wasn’t the only one who occasionally needed to be reminded that the changed world they’d ended up in was worth enjoying, that whatever else had changed, they could still care for their friends, that some changes could only be grieved and accepted.

“I’ve never once doubted that,” she said, and they walked together in silence for a while, until she said, “If I had known you would be so alone here, I would not have let you come. It has not been good for you.”

“I know,” he said, and then, “I needed to try it though.”

Ayo tilted her head in acknowledgment. “Perhaps. You do seem to insist on learning all your lessons the hard way.”

“Yeah, I guess,” he said with a rueful snort. “I think—when the way things are changing is really hard, I think sometimes that means you’re the one who has to make a change. Being in Brooklyn on my own…maybe that wasn’t the right change to make. So, uh, I’m gonna move down to Louisiana, close to Sam and his family. Now that there’s gonna be an Outreach Center in New Orleans and all.”

“Good,” said Ayo, and let him see how pleased and relieved she was.

When he got back to his apartment, Alpine trotted over to him right away, meowing in greeting, and Bucky smiled. He was about to bend down to pet her hello, but she beat him to it, and launched herself at him to climb up to his shoulder as he laughed.

“Alpine! That’s gonna be a lot less cute and a lot more painful when you get bigger,” he said, but he pet her anyway as she meowed and butted her head against his. “Sorry I was gone all day, baby. Let’s get you your dinner, huh?”

Once they were both fed—Alpine had taken to refusing to eat her dinner unless Bucky ate his too—he surveyed his apartment. A month ago, if he’d intended to move, he wouldn’t have taken anything but a duffel full of clothes and notebooks with him. Now, he was going to need a truck.

“What do you think of moving down to Louisiana, Alpine?” he asked. She chirped and went over to the armchair, apparently anticipating Bucky’s usual routine of sitting there and reading. “I’ll take that as a yes. Guess it’s time to find somewhere to stay in Louisiana that isn’t Sarah’s couch.”

Chapter Text

“What on earth are you looking at that’s putting that look on your face, Samuel?” said Sarah, and Sam instinctively turned his phone’s screen dark just before Sarah swooped in and snatched it.

“Sarah, give that back! I could be looking at important, classified Captain America shit!” 

He lunged to grab his phone back, almost upsetting the laundry basket full of freshly dried and folded clothes in front of him. Because Sam was Captain America and thus very fit and flexible, thank you very much, he managed to get his phone, and keep the basket from toppling over, while still returning to his seat on the couch.

“Okay, but were you looking at important, classified Captain America shit? Because I don’t think that would put whatever the hell look that was on your face.”

“I don’t know what look you’re talking about,” grumbled Sam. He hadn’t been paying attention to what his face was doing, too distracted by the photo Bucky had sent. “It was just a photo of Alpine.”

“Aww, let me see!” she said, and flopped down next to him on the couch. “We need to start a whole new family group chat for Alpine photos, I don’t like that you’re monopolizing all of them.”

Sam snorted. “Maybe we should get Bucky to start a pet Instagram,” he said, and then begrudgingly unlocked his phone to show Sarah the photo.

It was, in fact, a photo of Alpine; even when Bucky didn’t have much to say in response to Sam’s texts, he now received at least one photo of Alpine a day, which went a long way towards reassuring Sam that Bucky was doing alright up in Brooklyn. This wasn’t only a photo of Alpine though, it was also a selfie of Bucky: Bucky with his increasingly shaggy hair in artful disarray, smiling into the camera, with Alpine perched on his shoulder, apparently napping. She was already getting bigger, and soon enough, she’d be big enough to drape fully around Bucky’s shoulders, like a furry, blue-eyed scarf. 

Sam could admit though that Alpine’s cuteness wasn’t what had most caught his attention about this photo. No, that distinction went to Bucky’s smile: a little shy, and maybe wry too, and unbearably soft and sweet. Bucky smiled a hell of a lot more often now then he had when they’d first met, and even back when they first decided to try out the whole coworkers/partners/teammates/friends thing, but it still caught Sam by surprise a bit every single time to see just how much a smile transformed Bucky’s face. It felt both oddly precious and obscurely intimate to have one of Bucky’s rare smiles immortalized on his phone like this.

“Oh, okay, I get why your face was doing that now,” said Sarah, a certain softness lingering in her expression, because she had a heart and anyone with a heart would get at least a little bit soft over Bucky and Alpine.

“My face wasn’t doing anything,” Sam insisted.

“It was a whole entire face journey, though I guess that journey is only headed to De Nile. Get it, because—”

“I am not in denial about anything!”

Sam was a grown-ass man, he did not have crushes. It was just that he liked Bucky more and more, now that he was finally getting to know the guy for real, because it turned out that all of Steve’s starry-eyed praise and adoration for his best pal Bucky wasn’t entirely down to grief and nostalgia, and that version of Bucky wasn’t dead and gone, buried under the Winter Soldier and decades of trauma. No, multiple visits to Delacroix had revealed that Bucky really was fun and funny and charming, quick-witted and clever, and shockingly earnest and sweet sometimes. And while Steve had never particularly dwelled on this part, Bucky was in fact very handsome, especially when he was relaxed. He was just also a moody asshole, infuriatingly stubborn, and a grim bastard with a sometimes touchy temper. These were all perfectly objective observations that Sam was not in denial about.

Yeah, and how do you feel about these objective observations? asked Sam’s internal counselor voice. I feel totally normal about them, Sam thought firmly.

Sarah sighed. “Whatever. But Sam, why is Bucky still in Brooklyn? It’s not convenient for y’all’s work, he’s all alone up there, and if you two went in on a house together, you could afford the old Landry place and you’d have someone to help you fix it up. You’ve had your eye on that place for going on two decades now. And Bucky loves it here, and everyone loves him. He could have a home here. You both could.”

Sam had always figured that he’d come back to Delacroix for good some day, that he’d buy the Landry property once Mr. Landry finally put it up for sale, or just plain make an offer on it himself, and settle down here in a home of his own. For a long time, it was just a story he told himself, a way to feel like he wasn’t running away, he was just waiting: he was busy with the Air Force, he had healing and grieving and work to do in DC, Steve needed him, Bucky needed to be found, Sam was a fugitive on the run, but he’d get it all sorted out and he’d come back to Delacroix, he’d help Sarah with the business—

And now he was finally here again, finally ready and willing to stay, to make this his home in between missions, and instead he was still living in his childhood bedroom and training in the yard.

“It’s just—it’s a big ask,” he said. “Living together on top of working together? That’s a lot. And I don’t wanna spook him into running.”

“Well, you keep waiting and procrastinating, and someone else is gonna buy the Landry property. Probably they’ll turn it into an Airbnb too, start gentrifying the whole damn island. Racist-ass white people will start having plantation-style weddings there, and—”

“Okay, okay, simmer down now, the Landry property ain’t even a plantation.”

It was awfully picturesque though: not too big—four bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms—but on a big lot with its own dock and enough room for a small runway, and a decently sized old barn that Sam figured could be converted into a great gym/training space. It had weathered the years pretty well, old Mr. Landry had made sure to keep it in decent repair even though he’d long since moved out to California to live near his kids and grandkids, since the whole family had still come out to visit every couple years or so. But Mr. Landry was finally selling the place, and if Sam didn’t buy it now, he’d probably lose his shot. And yet Sam was still coming up with reasons to keep waiting.

“Sam,” said Sarah, more seriously now. “You will always have a place in this home, you know that. And Bucky will always have a place here too. But I know you want to make a home of your own, and this is your chance. So what are you waiting for?”

Sam had no idea. He just knew the thought of doing it made panic flutter in his chest and down his spine, the cold certainty that something would go wrong, that he wasn’t ready yet.

“I’ll—I’ll bring it up with Bucky when I go visit him, alright?” he said.

“You better. Bucky needs to move down here no matter what you end up doing,” said Sarah. “It’s not right, him being up in Brooklyn all alone.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m on it: Operation Get Bucky to Move to Louisiana is a go,” he said.

Photos really did not prepare Sam for the deadly level of cuteness that was Alpine and Bucky. When Sam arrived at Bucky’s place, he was greeted by Bucky—looking slouchy and comfortable in jeans, a sweater, and sock feet—and Alpine sitting perched on his shoulder, her fluffy tail curling into a friendly and curious question mark, her eyes just as bright and blue as Bucky’s.

“Well hello there, Miss Alpine,” Sam cooed, and Alpine actually meowed in response, sweet and polite as anything.

“Hello to you too, Sam,” said Bucky wryly, and stepped aside to let Sam inside. “Alpine, this is Sam. He’s a friend, so be polite.”

“Buck, she is so cute,” marveled Sam.

“I’m aware,” he said, and scooped her off his shoulder to set her on the ground, and then grabbed Sam’s bag for him, and headed towards the bedroom. “You can have the bed, I’ll take the couch.”

“Wait, hang on, there’s something in there I gotta grab,” said Sam, and pulled out the little bag of treats and the cat toy he’d gotten for Alpine. “I got presents for Alpine.”

He sat down on the floor and presented the toy to Alpine, who mrrped curiously and came to sniff at Sam’s hand and the toy, a small stuffed shrimp with a bunch of sparkly stuff on the tail. Sam grinned when Alpine tilted her head and batted at the toy’s colorful fabric.

“You brought presents for Alpine?” said Bucky, and when Sam looked up, he was glad that he was already sitting down, because Bucky’s smile surely would’ve made his knees go weak with how bright and wide and sweet it was. 

Bucky was a handsome guy in general, sure, but when he smiled? He was beautiful. Which was a totally normal, objective observation. Sam’s stomach fluttered in a way that was neither normal nor objective.

Okay, so, no, it wasn’t a totally normal and objective observation, but whatever. It didn’t have to be a big deal. Sam was used to being friends with beautiful people.  

“Trying to bribe your way into her affections, I see,” continued Bucky, and they watched Alpine pounce on the toy.

Sam pulled out a treat, and offered it to Alpine. “Absolutely,” he said, and grinned when Bucky laughed.

“Now remember, be gentle, Alpine,” said Bucky, which briefly gave Sam some concern about her tiny, sharp kitten teeth, but Alpine was indeed delicate and gentle as she took the treat from his hand.

And then, because bribes totally worked—at least, they did when it came to small children and animals—she purred and butted her head against his hand, and let him pet her head.

“What a little sweetheart,” said Sam, delighted.

“She’s the best,” agreed Bucky, his smile gone soft and adoring for a moment before his eyes crinkled up with mischief. “No presents for me though?”

“My presence is your present,” said Sam, and Bucky snorted. “But AJ asked me to bring you something.”

Sam got up and reached for his bag again, and Bucky held it out to him so he could rummage around in it.

“Here,” said Sam, and gave him AJ’s drawing of Bucky and Alpine. “AJ drew you and Alpine.”

AJ was definitely more of an enthusiastic artist than a skilled one, but Bucky’s eyes went as wide and awed as if he was beholding a masterpiece.

“It’s amazing,” said Bucky, and he actually sounded a little choked up about it. “I’m gonna frame it.”

Sam laughed, his whole body going as warm as if he was being filled with sunshine. “The traditional place for kids’ drawings is putting them up on the fridge,” he said, and Bucky nodded as seriously as if he’d been given a mission.

“The fridge it is then,” he said, and stuck the drawing onto the fridge with a magnet. A New Orleans souvenir magnet, Sam couldn’t help but note. Bucky must’ve gotten it from the airport on one of his visits. “You got time for brunch before your meeting? There’s this place nearby that does all egg-based stuff and it’s amazing, and their coffee is pretty great too.”

“Oh, you’re the kinda guy who does brunch now, huh?” teased Sam, and Bucky rolled his eyes. “But yeah, I can make some time for brunch.”

After an excellent—and surprisingly fun—brunch, they went back to Bucky’s place so Sam could get ready for his meeting with the GRC. He’d considered wearing his dress blues or the Cap suit, but in the end, went with a regular suit. He didn’t really want to set a precedent that he only deserved to be taken seriously if he was in full Cap uniform. 

He was still taking the suit and shield with him though, just in case he needed to pull a Clark Kent. That was just good sense.

“How do I look?” asked Sam, stepping out of Bucky’s bedroom once he was dressed and ready. He did a twirl, and when he turned back to Bucky, there was an odd expression on his face that quickly cleared.

“Sharp suit,” said Bucky. “But your tie’s still a little crooked. C’mere.”

Bucky stepped close and adjusted Sam’s tie, while Sam stood very still and tried to figure out where to look that wasn’t the thick fan of Bucky’s eyelashes or his mouth, set in a more relaxed and tender line than usual, or his hands, nimble and clever at Sam’s throat. He considered holding his breath, the better to avoid the scent of whatever fancy hair product or aftershave Bucky used that smelled expensive and good enough to make him want to lean in even closer.

“Thanks,” said Sam when Bucky stepped away, and Bucky nodded.

“Um, I got you something too. Or, uh, made you something, I guess. Hang on.”

Bucky slipped past him and into his bedroom, and came back out holding what looked like nothing so much as a ring box. Is he going to propose? Sam wondered wildly, which was, wow, a totally inappropriate and weird thing to think, what the hell—

Bucky tossed the box to him, and Sam opened it to see what looked like a pin in the shape of the Captain America shield, a little smaller than the tip of his thumb.

“If you push down on it for five seconds, it’ll summon your wings or Redwing to you, whichever’s closest. That’s bio-locked to you. And if you push it three times in a row, it’ll activate a distress beacon. That’ll work for anyone in an emergency. I, um, made it in the Outreach Center’s lab.”

“Buck, this is—shit, this is amazing. Thank you.”

Bucky just shrugged, his cheeks going pink. “It’s just for security, and Wakandan tech makes it easy,” he mumbled. “Um, here, I can put it on for you.”

He pinned it to Sam’s lapel with the same care he’d adjusted Sam’s tie with, and Sam caught Bucky’s hands in his own and gave them a squeeze.

“Seriously, Buck. Thank you,” he said, more touched than the words could possibly express.

Bucky smiled, tentative and sweet, and stepped away. Sam almost didn’t want to let him go. “You’re welcome,” said Bucky softly, and then, in his normal volume, “Have fun yelling at the GRC.”

And you know what: Sam did have fun.

If Sam had known a cat would lead to such dramatic improvements in Bucky’s life, he’d have dragged Bucky to an animal shelter months ago. 

Bucky’s apartment actually looked lived in now. There was cozy furniture, and if there was slightly more cozy furniture for the apartment’s feline inhabitant than its human one, well, it was still a significant improvement. There was some actual comfortable clutter—books on the coffee table, one of Bucky’s jackets thrown over the back of the armchair, a couple boxes of cookies and a bowl of fruit on the kitchen table—rather than the whole place looking like someone had just moved out and left some of their furniture behind. Bucky had even put a few photos and prints up, the walls no longer bare: there was a photo of Bucky with Steve and the Howlies, one of Bucky, Ayo, and Shuri, and to Sam’s delight, one of Bucky with Sam and his family.

The change in Bucky was more subtle than his apartment’s glow-up, and it took the better part of Sam’s visit for him to pinpoint it. Bucky looked better in some indefinable way. Less tired for sure, and more relaxed—and that was it. That was the difference. The almost ever-present tension that thrummed in Bucky’s lean and graceful frame was mostly gone, and the stony sternness of his face had softened to reveal even more of his expressiveness. It was closer to the ease Bucky had in Delacroix, and while Sam was a little put out that a cat had achieved all that so quickly, he was still relieved and happy to see it. 

“You’re looking good, Buck. Cat ownership clearly agrees with you,” said Sam when they were chilling on the couch at the end of the day.

There was a soccer game playing on the TV, but it was mostly just there for the background noise and occasional distraction. Most of Sam’s focus was on Bucky, and Alpine, who was happily purring away in Bucky’s lap as he absent-mindedly stroked her thick white fur, and with his vibranium hand no less. She was still small enough that Bucky’s hand almost dwarfed her, and the sight of Bucky using his powerful prosthetic to do something so gentle made Sam feel far more tender than the sight of a cute cat could entirely account for.

Bucky just shrugged, a smile tugging up the corner of his mouth. “Yeah, I guess. I’ve been feeling better, that’s for sure.”

“Yeah? No more headaches?”

“No more headaches. The meds Shuri gave me are working.”

“Good,” said Sam with a gusty sigh of relief. “I’m glad, Buck.”

Sam had been worried as hell when a headache had laid Bucky out for a whole day on his last visit to Delacroix. If it had been anyone else, if it had been a normal, fragile, un-enhanced person, Sam wouldn’t have been nearly as worried. Everyone was entitled to the occasional sick day, when a migraine or just plain feeling under the weather made staying in bed all day the best option. 

But Steve, a super soldier, had walked off all but the most grievous injuries. And Bucky was a super soldier too. Bucky could jump out of a plane without a parachute, and stagger back up none the worse for wear. Bucky could take a brutal beating from another super soldier and get electrocuted to boot, and still be able to walk away from the fight. Bucky could playact as the brainwashed assassin version of himself and mostly keep his shit together. Bucky could do all that with gritted teeth and a grimace, little more than the occasional groan or curse betraying the pain he was in. Bucky could do all that, and yet he’d had a headache bad enough to have him curled up in bed for an entire day, when he hadn’t even tried to assure Sam that he was fine. The best Bucky had managed had been that it hurt, and that it would pass.

So yeah, Sam had been worried. He’d been really fucking worried, and he’d come this close to hauling Bucky to a hospital, wild fears of strokes and aneurysms spinning in his head. He’d settled for putting Redwing in stealth mode and having it hover outside the bedroom window to keep an eye on Bucky’s vitals while he rested there.

“There are some side effects, but they’re bearable so far. Just some drowsiness and lightheadedness,” said Bucky. His brow furrowed, and he looked down at Alpine, who flopped over to reveal her belly, which Bucky obligingly rubbed. “One of the meds is supposed to help my brain finish healing up faster. So, uh, I’ll probably getting more memories back.”

Sam was about to congratulate Bucky on that, but that frown and his quiet voice made Sam think maybe this wasn’t something to celebrate.

“Isn’t that a good thing?” ventured Sam.

Bucky shrugged with one shoulder. “I guess…I’m just, uh. Nervous about it.”

“Worried you’ll get more bad memories than good ones back?” asked Sam, and Bucky nodded, keeping his eyes on Alpine.

“It’ll hurt either way,” he said, very quietly. “Either it’ll be the fucked up stuff, or it’ll be the—the good stuff, and that’s just—more things I’ve lost.”

“Shit, I’m sorry, Buck,” said Sam. 

As much as the forgetting must have hurt Bucky, it was horribly unfair that remembering would hurt him too.

Bucky shrugged again, his lips quirking upward in a crooked, weary smile. “It’s worth it to finally not have a headache. Been sleeping better too.”

“Wait, what do you mean finally not have a headache?”

“Used to have a headache all the time. Usually it was bearable, only got really bad sometimes. Less and less often, since—anyway. Uh, I told Shuri, and she got mad at me for never mentioning it before, so you can skip getting mad at me, I already got the lecture.”

“God, you’re infuriating,” said Sam. “Just—please tell me you’re not gonna pull that macho bullshit again.”

Bucky finally looked at him with a tilt of his head, frowning. “What do you mean, macho bullshit?”

“I mean that manly, stoic nonsense where you act like you’re fine and tough when you’re actually in pain. You gotta unlearn that shit, it’s toxic and it hurts you so much in the long run.”

“I’m not—trying to be manly and stoic. I’m just used to hurting,” said Bucky plainly. “And it never really mattered before.”

“It matters,” said Sam, at a loss for where the hell to even start with what Bucky had just said. “It has always mattered.”

“No, it hasn’t,” said Bucky, unbothered. “Anyway, you don’t need to worry, I’ve got these kimoyo beads, they’ll let Shuri know if something goes wrong with me or my meds or whatever.”

“Okay, great,” said Sam, and decided that the timetable for Operation Get Bucky to Move to Louisiana—not a catchy name, but a straightforward one—needed to be moved up, ASAP. 

Sam had been worried about Bucky’s social isolation and the toll it was taking on him, but clearly, he should have been worrying just as much about Bucky’s health. Maybe if he enlisted AJ and Cass—it had pretty much been AJ who’d convinced Bucky to see Shuri about his headaches anyway, maybe he could work his little kid, cute, guilt-inducing magic again, only this time to convince Bucky to move…

“Um, the Wakandans are opening up an outreach center in New Orleans,” said Bucky.

“Yeah, I know, I got an invite to the grand opening,” said Sam absently, still considering the most effective way to convince Bucky to move. What if he got Sarah, AJ, and Cass to do a whole subtle text campaign for it, gently nudging Bucky towards the conclusion that he needed to be closer…or what if he made it about how it was what was best for Alpine? She clearly had Bucky wrapped around her tiny paw, he’d do anything for her, surely, and he could sell it as always having trustworthy cat sitters available for when they went on missions…

“So, since there’s gonna be an outreach center there, where I can, um, have my appointments and all, I was thinking—”

It was probably unethical and terrible to fake some kind of threat to Sarah and the boys, right? But god, that would for sure work, Bucky would immediately offer to stay indefinitely to help keep them safe…

“—that I could move down to Delacroix? Or, I mean, nearby, I don’t mean to, um, invade your space…or be weird. I just—I like it there, and I haven’t got much keeping me here in Brooklyn, so—”

Sam’s plotting came to an abrupt halt as his brain rewound the last few seconds. “Wait, what?”

“I was thinking of moving to Delacroix,” said Bucky, more slowly now, looking wide-eyed and wary.

“Well that’s convenient, because I was thinking of buying a house there,” blurted out Sam. “Wanna buy it with me, fix it up?”

It felt a little bit like that first time he’d flown with the EXO Falcon wings: terrifying and exhilarating, his head screaming that he’d just made a deadly mistake while his heart soared.

“Yes,” said Bucky immediately, and they stared at each other in surprise for a moment, and then they started grinning.

Operation Get Bucky to Move to Louisiana: Mission Accomplished.

With the decision made, Sam and Bucky both moved fast: within a couple of weeks, Sam closed on the old Landry house and Bucky (and Alpine) moved in with him.

Sam was glad to have the help in fixing the old place up, and even more glad to be able to keep an eye on Bucky, because Bucky sure as hell needed it. Not in any obvious way—Bucky was more than capable of taking care of both himself and Alpine. But living with him meant Sam saw that Bucky was still deep in the difficult work of recovery, little though Bucky seemed to notice or acknowledge it beyond continuing to have his therapy appointments, and having check-ins at the Outreach Center. 

Bucky kept himself busy—they both did. They had the repair and renovation projects for the house, and Bucky took to helping out around town too, evidently determined to make himself part of the community, and succeeding at it. They had training and the occasional short mission too. But the moment Bucky didn’t have something else to focus on, when they were just hanging out at home, he was spacey and absent-minded. Sometimes he’d forget to eat, until Sam (or, somewhat surprisingly, Alpine) reminded him, though he diligently took his meds. He went quiet for long stretches of the week, and fell asleep on the couch if he spent more than ten minutes on it. 

Sam always left him to it, no matter how much work there was still left to do; Sam figured the more sleep Bucky got, the better, even if it was just a side effect of his meds, and anyway, it was cute as hell how Alpine would always go curl up on top of him for a nap of her own. (Sam maybe, possibly took many pictures every time this happened.) Bucky would always grumble and complain, all Sam, you shoulda woken me up and this stupid drowsiness side effect, but he looked better for the naps, so Sam was unrepentant.

To Sam’s surprise, he had a dedicated partner in looking out for Bucky: Alpine. She seemed to be growing by the day, and she was keenly attuned to Bucky’s mood and presence, so much so that Sam wondered if she’d been trained as some kind of therapy cat. She was too young for it though, so it must have just been natural inclination that had her bullying and cajoling Bucky into keeping routines right along with her. If Alpine was eating, Bucky needed to be eating too. If Alpine was turning in for the night after a round of the evening zoomies, then it was time for Bucky to go to sleep too, and only his own bed would do. And she was clingy, perching on Bucky’s shoulders or curling up in his lap as often as she could get away with it. It seemed to keep Bucky more present, less likely to get lost in his head.

“I’d say you shouldn’t let the cat boss you around so much, but honestly, it seems like she’s really good for you,” Sam told Bucky, after Alpine all but herded Bucky to the kitchen table for dinner, and Bucky shrugged, grinning sheepishly.

“Yeah, it’s nice to have someone to look after, I guess,” he said, as if he wasn’t looking after Sam too. 

Items on Sam’s to-do list were constantly being mysteriously finished before Sam could get to them, the fridge and pantry never seemed to go bare, and Bucky was a hard ass in training, diligent and meticulous about ensuring Sam was as prepared as it was possible to be. And that wasn’t even mentioning missions, where Bucky had Sam’s six.

“And what exactly do you think you’re doing with me?” asked Sam, unable to hide the fondness in his voice.

Bucky’s brow furrowed. “Being your partner,” he said. “It’s different.” Bucky’s furrowed brow turned anxious, and he glanced down at Alpine, who was perched in his lap staring hopefully in the direction of Bucky’s dinner. “I—I’m doing okay at it, right? Taking care of Alpine?”

Sam’s heart practically flopped around in his chest, caught between breaking over how Bucky could ever doubt that, and melting over his earnest concern.

“That cat adores you and she’s got to be the most spoiled cat in the country. She’s taking pretty good care of you too, though,” said Sam, and Alpine meowed sweetly from her perch on Bucky’s lap, before tapping Bucky’s forearm with her tiny paw and meowing again. Bucky immediately went all soft and dewy-eyed at the impossibly adorable gesture. Sam maybe did too, if not quite for the same reasons as Bucky. 

“Or maybe she has an ulterior motive,” Sam added dryly, looking at the grilled fish on Bucky’s plate.

Bucky laughed, and fed Alpine a morsel of fish. “It can be both,” he said, then gave Alpine a quick scratch under her chin. “Thank you for asking politely, but remember you can’t eat a lot of people food, I don’t want you to get sick,” he told Alpine, in pretty much the same tone he used with AJ and Cass, steady and calm.

“Should I be offended that you’re not wondering if you’re doing okay at being my partner and roommate?” asked Sam.

Bucky raised a sardonic eyebrow. “I’m sure you’d tell me if I was fucking it up,” he said. “Am I?”

“Nah,” said Sam. “You’re doing pretty great, actually.”

“No need to sound so surprised,” said Bucky, but he looked pleased, and kind of shy about it, before his smile turned sly. “You though…you’ve got some room for improvement.”

“Oh yeah? How so?”

“Really doesn’t take super-hearing to hear those shower concerts of yours, and let’s just say you did not miss your calling as a singer,” said Bucky, and Sam laughed.

“I take requests,” he said with a wink, and Bucky rolled his eyes, but his cheeks went pink too.

Shit, what was Sam doing, flirting with his roommate and partner? And what was Bucky doing, blushing about it? It probably didn’t mean anything, it was just—habit or something, for both of them. Their usual bickering shading into something friendlier and warmer. And yet a small and wistful voice in Sam’s head said, but what if…?

Should’ve thought of that before buying real estate with the man, Sam told that voice sternly. Sam was not about to jeopardize their home with some reckless flirting.

While Alpine’s favorite person was undeniably Bucky, after a couple weeks, she warmed up to Sam too, enough so that sometimes she’d curl up next to him and let him pet her. She even seemed to consider Sam a partner in looking after her human, because she’d come scratching and meowing at his door when Bucky had an especially bad nightmare. Which was good, because otherwise Bucky wouldn’t make a sound, or say anything, or ask for help: it was only when Alpine led Sam to Bucky’s room that he’d see a wide-eyed Bucky, sitting up in bed shaking and practically hyperventilating in the wake of a nightmare. He’d calm down enough to try going back to sleep if Sam sat at his bedside and just talked for a while, and though he wouldn’t let Sam touch him, he would at least let Alpine curl up close and purr away with frankly impressive volume for such a small cat.

After the fifth time Alpine fetched Sam in the middle of the night, the next morning, Bucky said, “Sorry Alpine keeps waking you up. I don’t even know how she keeps getting out, I close my bedroom door at night.”

“It’s okay,” Sam said. “I’m glad she does. You shouldn’t be alone after nightmares that bad.”

Bucky grimaced, wan and miserable. “You don’t have to get up and sit with me.”

“I don’t mind, Buck,” Sam told him, and meant it. “Seems like your nightmares have been getting worse though. You wanna talk about it?”

“It’s the meds,” Bucky said, and rubbed at his reddened eyes. “More memories coming back means more nightmares.”

It meant more grief too, when more of Bucky’s better memories came back. Because remembering more of his family meant missing them, and it became all too common for Bucky to just straight up disappear for a few hours a day, and return home with puffy, red-rimmed eyes. 

It was an unwelcome reminder of the last time Sam had lived in Delacroix, before the Blip, when he’d been grappling with his own griefs: his dad, Riley. Sam had shut himself up in the house then, barely acknowledging Sarah and his mom, too busy drowning in grief and struggling to stay afloat. But they’d kept throwing him line after line, and they’d waited, and eventually he’d let them haul him in and he’d dried out, no longer so weighed down and waterlogged by his grief.

His mom passed the next year, followed by his Titi: heart attack and stroke, and after that, he couldn’t stand to stay in Delacroix, haunted by so many ghosts. He’d run to DC, glad of the excuse of a job at the VA there, and then he’d run off with Steve, glad of the excuse for some thrills and adrenaline, and it had stopped feeling like running for a while, because he wasn’t running, he was chasing, he was searching for Bucky. It wasn’t reckless thrill-seeking if he was doing it for the good cause of fighting HYDRA, for Steve, for Bucky. And now, finally, Sam had caught him, and they were both here in Delacroix. 

That had to mean something, right? For both of them. Because they’d both stopped running and decided to make a home here. Because the raw edges of Sam’s grief had mostly softened back into love and a bearable, gentle sorrow, and maybe the same would happen for Bucky, eventually. But it was a brutal few weeks as Bucky was battered between his memories and his nightmares, and Sam started to wonder if Bucky wasn’t better off with the headaches.

Sam felt enormously guilty for even having thought that when Bucky got a breakthrough migraine, but thank fuck, his rescue meds worked, though they also had the side effect of making Bucky sleep like the dead for like twelve hours straight, which made Sam panic a bit and call Shuri.

“His kimoyo beads would tell me if he was in any danger,” she said. “He’s fine, let him sleep. It’s the best thing for him.”

“Alright,” said Sam, relieved.

“Breakthrough migraine aside, is he doing well?” asked Shuri. “He sends me plenty of photos of Alpine but he never says much about himself.”

Yeah, that sounded like Bucky.

“Getting more memories back has been hard on him,” said Sam, and Shuri went quiet for a long moment.

“Is he recovering more traumatic memories? Perhaps I should tweak the biobots…”

“Some nightmares, yeah, but no, they’re good memories, I think. Or maybe normal memories. It’s just—a lot to grieve.”

“Oh,” said Shuri.

“It’s all part of the process, it just sucks to watch him go through it. But he’ll be fine, Shuri. He’s doing the work, and he’s not alone.”

Shuri sighed gustily. “Thank Bast. We call him White Wolf, not Lone Wolf, you know. It was ridiculous how alone he was in Brooklyn.”

“Well, alone is one thing he is not here,” said Sam, though he suspected it would take more time for Bucky to fully believe and accept that.

It wasn’t all nightmares and grief and renovations in the Barnes-Wilson household. For Sam, it was also frequently his own personal episode of the Cat Whisperer, starring Bucky Barnes. 

Sam could not get over how Bucky talked to Alpine like she could fully understand him, and like a cat could be reasoned with. And to be fair, maybe she could be, if Bucky was doing the reasoning: all manner of Alpine’s kitten misbehavior seemed to be gently curtailed with no more than a patient talking to, and a bit of training. Also a lot of meowing and yowling. Alpine was a real chatty cat. You could almost think you were having a reasoned conversation with her. Before long, Sam caught the habit of talking to her like she was their third roommate too.

“Alpine, buddy, could you please stop stealing my socks,” Sam pleaded with her after wrestling away the fifth pair of his socks that Alpine had absconded with, direct from the laundry basket. “What are you even doing with them?”

Alpine meowed indignantly, then bossed Sam into following her to one of her cat caves, which was, yep, full of socks, both his and Bucky’s

“Why?” Sam asked her—rhetorically, because she was a cat, and even as chatty as she was, she didn’t meow in English—only for Bucky to wander into the living room and answer.

“I think she likes having stuff that smells like us? I think it makes her feel more at home.”

And okay, Sam could actually relate to that, weirdly enough. Only not with stolen socks, or stuff that smelled like Bucky: Sam was tentatively doing his own share of nesting, and it ached like using an underused muscle. He was out of practice at this, after years on the run.

Sam had walked away from his place in DC—his nice condo, with the mattress that was firm enough he could sleep on it most nights, and his record collection, and his old baseball trophies, and his decorative bowl of wine corks that Sarah had scoffed at as the most ridiculous bougie bullshit—and it had been an easy call. A condo and a steady if underpaid job as a counselor, or jet-setting around the world with Captain America and the Black Widow, on the hunt for the Winter Soldier? No contest. But he hadn’t quite counted on that decision being so permanent, and it probably hadn’t been a good thing, that he’d found it such an easy decision to make. Just like it had been easy to go to DC, rather than stay in Delacroix and face his griefs.

But now Sam was back home in Delacroix, in a home of his own rather than his childhood bedroom, and making it his home—his and Bucky’s home—was a whole process that Sam wasn’t sure he knew how to deal with. There was the easy stuff: the new bed with the fancy sheets (a totally necessary luxury after so much time in indifferently furnished safe-houses), equipping the kitchen, arguing with Bucky over paint colors and floor rugs. The hard stuff was what hurt, far more than it should have. And worse still, it made something in Sam want to run again, even though he was out of any good reasons for it.

“You wanna put some photos up?” asked Bucky, surveying the blank walls after they’d painted the living room a long argued over shade of pale blue. “I feel like we need something on the walls. If, uh—if it’s okay, I’d like to put some of my own photos up.”

“Yeah, no, of course,” said Sam, and Bucky smiled in thanks.

“I’ll leave space for you to put yours up too,” said Bucky, and over the next couple of days, frames appeared on the walls of the living room and staircase: the photos that had been up on the walls of Bucky’s apartment, a black and white photo of Bucky’s family, another of a young Bucky and Steve from before Steve got the serum, a photo of Steve and Bucky in Wakanda, and somewhat surprisingly, one of Bucky and Ayo in front of a stunning waterfall, both of them looking like they were just humoring whoever was taking the photo. Bucky chose to put up a photo from the cookout too, one with him and Sam and Sam’s family, all of them smiling, and Sam had stared at it for awhile, after Bucky put it up.

“Sorry,” said Bucky. “Is it weird that I—? I just—Sarah sent it to me a while back, and—”

“No, it’s fine. It’s a good photo, I—I’m glad you put it up.”

Sam was glad to see all the photos on the walls, and gladder still at how they were a quiet promise that Bucky planned to stick around. Somehow, the photos were more convincing on that front than even how Bucky’s name was on the deed right alongside Sam’s. 

Sam kept meaning to put some of his own photos up, he did, it just seemed low priority compared to other stuff on the home improvement to-do list, like fixing all the leaky faucets and replacing rotten boards on the porch. Plus, he’d have to go looking for photos to put up, and he was too busy to make the time for that, what with training and missions and all the other work on the house.

Days passed, then weeks, and Sam still didn’t put any photos up, didn’t even really try to look for any. He knew where a few of the photos he might like to put up were: a few loose photos and on a flash drive in the old footlocker where he kept stuff from his Air Force days, and still stored on some secure, private cloud service Natasha had set up for him, and probably a couple from the family albums Sarah had meticulously digitized. 

The thing was though, pretty much everyone in those photos Sam was thinking about? They were dead or gone.

When Sarah came over one day, she eyed the still bare spots on the walls with disapproval.

“How is that not driving you crazy? All those blank spots on the wall make everything look so unbalanced.”

“Yeah, Bucky left me the room for my photos, and I keep meaning to put some up, I just…haven’t gotten around to it.”

“What, like it takes so much time to stick some photos in some frames and put ‘em up on the wall?” said Sarah, sounding just like their mama.

Sam winced. “Yeah, no, it’s more like I don’t have time to go digging around old photos and picking some to put up.”

Though maybe it was more accurate to say that Sam didn’t have time for the ensuing wallow in grief and depression.

The excuse seemed to assuage Sarah though, and she hummed in acknowledgment. “I’ll try to find that photo of Mama and Daddy and us as little kids posing in front of the P&D. That’s definitely one you should put up. And I’ll bring you a couple photo albums to look through. I’ve got digital copies of all of them, so it won’t be any trouble to print copies.”

“Thanks, Sarah.”

Eventually, Bucky ran out of patience for the glaring blank spots, and put up more photos of his own. Which Sam honestly would’ve been fine with—hell, it would’ve been a relief—but because Bucky was an asshole, all the photos he put up were of Alpine, or various unflattering shots of Sam.

“Seriously, Buck?” demanded Sam, hands on his hips, in front of an admittedly artfully composed photo of Alpine lifting her leg to lick at her butt. It was right underneath a photo of Sam napping on the porch, mouth open in a snore.

“They’re just placeholders,” said Bucky, all wide-eyed innocence. “Until you pick what photos you want.”

“Uh huh, I see how it is,” Sam muttered, but hell, it did give Sam enough of a kick in the ass that he put up the family photo Sarah had dug up, along with one of him and Riley.

“Who’s this?” asked Bucky, looking at the photo of Riley, and it gave Sam an actual, physical jolt when he realized that Bucky didn’t know.

Of course Bucky didn’t know. Sam had never told him a single thing about Riley. And yet, it was somehow a surprise that Bucky had no idea who Riley was. Maybe because Bucky had slid into Sam’s life in Delacroix so easily, or because it felt like he’d known Bucky for years and years. But really, Sam had only known of Bucky for most of those years, and while that counted for a lot when most of that knowing was through Steve’s starry and adoring eyes, Sam and Bucky hadn’t actually gotten to know each other until after Steve left, and they’d never talked much about their respective wars.

“That’s Riley. He, uh—he was my wingman, in the EXO Falcon program. My partner. Killed in action.”

Bucky turned back to Sam, his brow furrowed in sympathetic sorrow. “I’m sorry,” he said, then returned his attention to the photo. “You never talk about him.”

“It’s been a long time since he died.” Sam cleared his throat and continued, “Anyway, I’ll find some more photos to put up, I swear, it’s just—going through them to find ones I wanna put up is kind of a pain in the ass.”

Sam could have just meant that digging through poorly organized digital and physical photo albums was annoying. He didn’t only mean that, but he could have. It was probably what most people would’ve assumed. Somehow, Bucky heard what he wasn’t saying.

“I’ll bet,” said Bucky softly. “I—uh, I went through old photos when I was still trying to remember everything, and—it was hard. Really hard. Steve went through them with me though, and that helped. Do you—I could do that with you, if you want?”

“Yeah, okay,” said Sam, because what the hell, why not. Maybe that would make the whole thing less depressing.

So one night, after dinner, instead of watching a movie, Sam pulled out the photo albums Sarah had brought by, and connected his tablet to the TV, and took a trip down memory lane with Bucky. Bucky was delighted by the older photos of kid and teenaged Sam, and not just to tease Sam, though he did plenty of that.

“You should go back to this flat top look, Sam, it looks real futuristic,” said Bucky, grinning down at a photo of a twelve year old Sam trying to look tough and cool in a family vacation photo.

“Yeah, no, twelve year old Sam should not have been trusted with the power to ask the barber for what he wanted instead of getting the usual,” said Sam wryly.

“Seems like you had a pretty happy childhood,” said Bucky, as they paged through photos of Sam and Sarah through the years, their parents often in the photos smiling right along with them: at cookouts and on vacations, opening Christmas presents, fishing on the Paul & Darlene, at school awards ceremonies. “Though your dad’s not in a lot of the photos?”

“He was the one taking them, usually,” said Sam. “But yeah, it was a good childhood.”

There’d been hardships, sure, and young Sam had often chafed against the boundaries of his small community, but he’d never been truly unhappy, only restless, eager to break free of his parents’ legacies and make his own way.

The unhappiness had come later, along with all the loss.

But looking at these photos now, Sam remembered the good times more than the grief. That was time at work, he supposed, healing all wounds just like it was supposed to. It would be nice to put some of these photos up, to have them as silent witnesses to this new life he was building.

They turned another couple pages, another couple of years, to Sam’s high school graduation. Definitely not a photo he wanted to put up. His past self looked so damn young, almost swamped by his cap and gown. He was still skinny and gawky from his last growth spurt then; it took ROTC for him to grow into his body properly.

“You wanted to get out and see the world, live a bigger life,” said Bucky, looking down at the photo with more focus than the photo surely required.

Sam blinked, surprised. “I—yeah. How can you tell?”

Bucky traced the line of teenaged Sam’s jaw in the photo, the tilt of his chin, and Sam’s own skin almost prickled with the motion, a phantom touch. Bucky tapped the two-dimensional teenaged Sam on the chin. “Here,” he murmured, and then his fingers crossed to the next page, to a photo of Sam in his first set of dress blues, young enough that he still had some baby fat on his cheeks. Bucky tapped Sam’s face in that photo, the serious expression. “And here. It’s in your eyes.”

“I did, yeah,” said Sam, his voice hoarse and his heart pounding for some reason. “I loved Delacroix, but I wanted out.”

“Wanted to stretch your wings,” said Bucky, a smile gathering in the lines around his eyes.

“Yeah. And now I’m back here.”

Back here in Delacroix, not ten minutes from his childhood home. He wondered what 18 year old Sam would have thought of that, or 20 year old Sam, or 24 year old Sam, or even 34 year old Sam. All those Sams who’d found reason after reason to stay away. None of those Sams would have believed the whole Captain America thing, that was for damn certain, and they especially wouldn’t have believed that Sam could be Cap and have his home here in Delacroix too. Sam as he was now knew that he couldn’t be Cap at all without this home in Delacroix, that he needed to know he had this family and community to come back to. It seemed all too possible to lose himself to the shield, otherwise.

Bucky looked over at him, and Christ, it was hard to bear up under that searching focus. If Bucky could see teenage Sam’s desires in a couple of photos, he wondered uneasily what Bucky could see in him now.

“You’ve got that bigger life now though,” said Bucky. “And you’ve got your home too. Best of both worlds.”

“Guess so,” said Sam.

He picked out a couple of photos from these albums to put up: one of a big Wilson family cookout that had included a bunch of his aunts and uncles and cousins, and another of his Titi with Sarah and their mom. There were other family photo albums that Sarah still had back at the house, but the ones she’d given him to look through stopped at around his first deployment, so they moved to the digital photos next.

He didn’t have a ton of photos from his deployments—the EXO Falcon program had been top secret for awhile, no personal photos allowed—but his squad mate Vargas had been pretty diligent about keeping and digitizing those photos op sec allowed them to take, and he’d sent them all around to everybody a few years after the EXO Falcon program was dissolved. The photos were nothing remarkable, mostly candids or posed shots of their squad goofing around against the ever-present backdrop of eye-achingly blue skies and desert sands and dusty mountains, or from during their training when they had leave to go off-base.

“Fuck, it’s been almost twenty years,” he realized. “Feels like that Sam was a whole different person.”

“Yeah, I know what that’s like,” said Bucky, looking at a photo of Sam and Riley with a shocking amount of sadness, and an odd anger too. “You two were so young. They were all—we were all so young, and they sent us out there to—”

Sam thought of the photo he’d seen of a young Sergeant Bucky Barnes: bright-eyed, round-cheeked. Sweet and happy. And yeah, so fucking young.

“Yeah,” said Sam, his throat thick, and swiped through to the next photo, which was—fuck, shit, Christ almighty he’d forgotten they’d been this young and stupid—him and Riley in bed, laughing, Riley’s arm stretched up to take the photo. It wasn’t anything indecent, but they were both shirtless, tags on display, and unmistakably in bed together.

“We were dumb as hell to have taken that photo,” said Sam, through the roaring in his ears. “Would’ve gotten us kicked out of the Air Force if anyone had seen it.”

“So…he was more than just your buddy,” said Bucky softly, not making it a question.

That was a World War II thing, Sam remembered. Steve had explained it once, the complex yet simple relationship of two guys at war who were friends and who looked out for each other, who were each other’s only solace, all distilled down to the deceptively breezy buddy.

“Though I guess it was more than just buddies for plenty of guys back in my day too,” added Bucky.

“Yeah. He was more than just my buddy.” Sam stared at the photo, and couldn’t bring himself to swipe on to the next one. God, how had Sam forgotten those freckles on Riley’s chest? How could he not have thought about kissing them every single day?

“You should get that one printed, Sam,” said Bucky quietly.

Sam laughed, and wiped at his wet cheek. “Not exactly the kind of thing that’s fit for company to see.”

“For your room,” said Bucky. Sam looked over at him, and saw that he was looking at the screen with a wistful smile. “You should have that memory of how much he loved you.”

“How can you tell? I mean—how can you tell he—”

Bucky raised an eyebrow. “How can you not? He took the photo, even though it wasn’t safe. He looks like he thinks he’s the luckiest guy in the world.”

Sam looked back at the photo, at the way Riley’s entire face was crinkled up into a smile, at the joy brimming in his eyes.

“Yeah,” said Sam, and then wondered: did Bucky have that? Some tangible proof of how much someone had loved him, once? “I was the lucky one though.”

The next batch of photos offered something of a reprieve: Sam’s world tour while searching for Bucky.

“Yeah, this is the on the hunt for Bucky Barnes world tour,” said Sam. “Squeezed in some sightseeing while chasing after your ass.”

Bucky watched the succession of photos with a frown.

“Barcelona? Berlin? Zurich? I was never anywhere near those cities!”

“I know that now,” groused Sam.

When the photos got to Tallinn, Bucky said, “Oh, you got close there. I was actually in Tallinn for a while. Left before winter though.”

Sam, naturally, had suffered through a week of snow and sleet poking around possible HYDRA bases in Tallinn, looking for any lead on Bucky.

“I hate you,” said Sam, and Bucky grinned and bumped him with his shoulder.

“Aww, but you got such a nice European vacation out of looking for me!”

Sam was tempted to stop the slideshow before getting to the photos that featured Steve, Natasha, and Wanda, he wasn’t sure if he had the emotional fortitude to keep going, but fuck it. He wanted to get this over with.

There weren’t all that many of them. Steve wasn’t a fan of having his photo taken, and neither was Natasha. Bucky laughed when Sam swiped through the fifth photo of Steve with an awkward or sour look on his face.

“God, he never did like having his photo taken,” said Bucky fondly.

“I had to catch him in candids. Nat too,” said Sam, and skipped ahead to one such photo: Steve and Natasha on a couch together, her feet in Steve’s lap, both of them laughing. And yeah, no, Sam couldn’t do this anymore. “This one. I’ll put this one up,” he said, then turned the tablet’s screen off and threw it on the coffee table, and put his head in his hands.

Bucky’s hand rested on his back, and rubbed up and down gently.

“I keep forgetting they’re gone,” Sam admitted from behind his hands. “I keep thinking they’re just on a long mission but they’ll be back any day now. There wasn’t—there wasn’t a funeral, and I know Steve’s not dead, but—”

“He could be, in that other timeline,” said Bucky, his voice distant. “But at least he got his happily ever after. That—that helps. Kind of.”

“Nat didn’t.”

“No, she didn’t. But she chose to go, to save all of us.”

Sam lifted his head from his hands, and looked up at the photo that was still on the TV screen. He startled at a small weight on his lap: Alpine, meowing inquisitively, and peering up at him with her sweet blue eyes.

“Hey sweetie,” said Sam, and pet her silky fur as she pressed her head up against his hand.

“Clearly she thinks you need a bit of looking after tonight,” said Bucky, and his smile was so tender it hurt to look at, even if it was all for Alpine.

Sam bent down and kissed Alpine’s small, soft forehead. “Thanks, Alpine. And thanks to you too, Buck.”

“No problem,” said Bucky. He turned his smile on Sam, and maybe some of the tenderness there was for him too.

They put the photos up a couple days later. To Sam’s surprise, he found his jaw clenching and his throat tightening as he put up the photos of Steve and Nat, an odd fury sweeping through him and leaving desolation and shaky hands in its wake. He looked at the photos on the walls: his parents, his Titi, Riley, Steve, Natasha. So many people who should’ve been here, and weren’t. So many people Sam had wanted to build a home with, to make part of his home, and now the only way they could be part of it was in photos and memories.

Why bother to come home, to make a new home, when the people you most wanted to be there couldn’t be a part of it?

Which, fuck, okay, yeah. Sam got it now, why he’d been putting this off for so long. And he didn’t mean just putting up the photos, but getting settled in his own place in Delacroix in the first place. Would he have even done it at all if not for Operation Get Bucky to Move to Louisiana? With a sinking feeling, Sam suspected that he wouldn’t have. He’d have put off buying the Landry place until someone else bought it and the choice was made for him. He’d have signed a lease on a place in New York, or DC, and split his time between there and Delacroix, and told himself and Sarah that it was just what was most convenient. A fresh start, of sorts, keeping his history and his griefs safely limited to Delacroix’s borders, a home he visited rather than a home he made.

Sometimes Sam really hated the self-awareness being a counselor had given him, that internal, unsparing counselor that could see himself as just another client.

“Frame’s crooked,” said Bucky, and pushed it back into alignment with a push of his steady fingers. He looked at Sam and frowned. “Hey, you okay?”

“I wanted them to be here,” said Sam, staring blindly at the photo of Steve and Nat. “I wanted—I thought, if I ever had a home of my own, that they’d be a part of it, one way or another. Riley, Steve, Nat. But they’re gone and—”

It was worse, somehow, that Steve and Natasha had chosen it. Natasha had chosen to save them, and Sam was grateful, of course he was, but she was still gone. And Steve—Steve had just left. In search of a happy ending he deserved, sure, but he’d left. Losing someone was hard enough; being left was an even harder, more difficult to grapple with thing, grief and anger winding together. Steve deserved his happy ending, sure, but it was a bitter truth to know he and Bucky—this Bucky rather than some past version of him—weren’t part of it.

Bucky pulled him into a hug. “It’s not fair,” he finished for Sam softly, and Sam nodded into Bucky’s shoulder, sniffling. “They can still be part of this home though, you know. You can—talk about them? If you want? I’ll listen.”

“Same goes for you, Buck. You don’t have to keep running away and hiding somewhere to be sad.”

“I’m not hiding,” grumbled Bucky and let go of Sam after giving him a quick squeeze, which Sam felt around both his body and his heart, helplessly fond of these little gestures of artless enthusiasm in Bucky’s physical affection: the quick squeezes, the way he’d hook his chin over Sam’s shoulder, the reflexive, easy leans against him, all of the gestures coming more often and more easily now. “I’m just going for a walk. I—I used to do that all the time with Ayo, in Wakanda, when I was—upset, or whatever.”

“And now you go alone, all broody and dramatic?” said Sam, raising an exasperated eyebrow. “Do you stare out at the ocean, letting out one manly tear?”

Bucky rolled his eyes, but his face relaxed into the suggestion of a smile too, his grumpiness not at all convincing. 

“No! And I’m not always alone, I end up at the dock sometimes, I sit with Tommy or Carlos, or I call Ayo,” he said. 

“Good,” said Sam, somewhat mollified. “But I can go with you too. To talk, or just as company. I know it’s hard, getting more memories back. You don’t have to be alone with it.”

“Yeah, okay,” said Bucky. “Thanks, Sam.”

It was going to take a long time to convince Bucky that he wasn’t alone, Sam suspected. It’d take a while to convince himself too, Sam acknowledged wryly. He intended to stick around long enough to manage it though. They had a home together now. There was time.

Chapter Text

Living with Sam and Alpine in Delacroix was good for Bucky—and for Sam too, hopefully—in a lot of different ways. In fact, after a couple months, Bucky was reasonably sure it was the best decision he’d made in this century, apart from trusting the Wakandans to help him.

Unfortunately, it was also the worst decision he’d made since being thawed out, even with the stiff competition of such less-than-great plans like breaking Zemo out of jail to track down the Flag Smashers’ super soldier serum, and agreeing to go undercover as the Winter Soldier in Madripoor. 

No, this was the worst decision of them all, because Bucky was an idiot and a fool, and living with a person you had a crush on was a one-way ticket to whatever the step beyond having a crush was. Bucky wasn’t sure what that step was, if he was being honest, because he’d never actually gotten that far before. At least, not that he remembered. It was probably whatever the actual adult version of a schoolboy crush was, right?

Is that not just being in love? said a voice in Bucky’s head that sounded a lot like Ayo’s wryest tones. Bucky determinedly ignored it. He wasn’t in love. That was ridiculous. That couldn’t possibly be the step after having an embarrassing schoolboy crush.

His feelings about Sam’s arms and shoulders and ass were certainly very adult though. Adult and private and kind of embarrassingly swoony. But probably anyone would feel that way, right? Sam was very handsome, and he was such a good, kind person, and while Bucky would never willingly admit it, he was also funny and goofy in a charming way. An annoying way, yes, but an annoyingly charming way. Or charmingly annoying. One of those, anyway. And as if that wasn’t enough, he was also incredibly competent, at basically everything, and competence was always attractive. Training with Sam was more of an exercise in self control and focus for Bucky than anything else, because otherwise it’d be all too easy to spend the whole time staring at Sam. So probably Bucky’s feelings were natural, an inevitable and automatic response to the available stimulus, just like how sunflowers turned towards the sun.

Sam wasn’t perfect: he was surprisingly guarded, a reckless adrenaline junkie and yet somehow also weirdly fussy, and his ability to annoy Bucky and get under his skin was unparalleled. He was stubborn, and sometimes his determined lightheartedness tipped over into being thoughtless and blithe. But his flaws certainly weren’t enough to take the edge off Bucky’s crush, which stayed as keen and sharp as Bucky’s knives, and possibly just as dangerous. Even the mundane, unattractive realities of living together failed to help Bucky get over whatever the hell this was.

Like, Sam drank milk and juice direct from the bottle and then put it right back in the refrigerator, even if there was only a couple of mouthfuls of liquid left, and Bucky’s crush didn’t waver, and also he didn’t kill Sam in a fit of fury, so clearly Bucky had a real problem here.

Bucky said as much to Alpine one day while she kept him company as he refinished an old bookcase he’d found at a yard sale, a sturdy and elegant oak cabinet that just needed some work to return to its former glory. Sam was out on the boat with Sarah, which meant Bucky could do the work in peace without Sam making more dumb jokes about the antique working on the antique. As dumb as the jokes were, Sam had looked so genuinely pleased with himself that it had been a struggle for Bucky to maintain his frown, especially in the face of Sam’s too-cute smile with the slight gap in his teeth that Bucky found more and more charming by the day.

“I should probably ask someone who has actual experience with relationships this century about this whole Sam situation. But I haven’t exactly got many options,” he told Alpine, sanding the cabinet’s wood contemplatively. “Can’t ask Sarah, she’s Sam’s sister. I would actually rather die before ever mentioning this to Raynor. And Ayo and Shuri would tease me way too much.”

This pretty much exhausted his list of people he could ask about this kind of thing, sadly. He was getting to know more people in Delacroix, but not well enough to risk the gossip that would surely ensue if he were to ask Tommy or Carlos or Mrs. Cooper at the grocery store or Ms. Wallace at the library.

Bucky had never been the kind of guy who had a lot of close friends. He’d been closest to Steve, and his sisters and cousins, plus a couple guys from school and the gym that he was close enough with to be drinking buddies with. Then during the war, he’d had the Howlies, which wasn’t exactly the usual sort of friendship, battle-born as it was. All of them were people he’d had something in common with, even if all he had in common with them was shared blood or shared circumstances; they were people who’d fit into the rhythms of his life, who’d made it feel full and lively. He was getting some of that back now, here in Delacroix, but he probably needed to find some friends who weren’t Wilsons.  

He sighed. “I need more friends,” he said. “How do people even do that without bonding over life-threatening situations or whatever?”

Alpine meowed, an almost commiserating tone to it, and Bucky grinned down at her. “You’re right, I should just talk to you, huh? You’re definitely my friend, and you’re a good listener.”

Alpine positively preened, purring with pleasure, and Bucky laughed. “Don’t get a big head about it,” he teased. 

But he did talk to her, because there was something attentive about Alpine. People always said cats were standoffish and just as inclined to ignore their owners as they were to cuddle with them. While Alpine spent plenty of time napping or bird watching through the windows, she seemed happy to spend most of her time with him and Sam when they were home. Sarah said Alpine usually stuck close to the boys when they were cat-sitting too, and not only to play with them, but just to hang out while they did their homework or chores. Whenever he and Sam were away on a mission, Sarah sent them short videos of Cass chatting to Alpine while he did his math homework, or AJ reading to Alpine from his books.

Alpine was just a friendly, clever cat who liked people, it seemed. Bucky had really lucked out in finding her. Maybe his atrocious luck was finally changing for the better.

“I think being here is good for both of us,” mused Bucky. “If we were still back at my apartment, you wouldn’t have nearly so many friends, Alpine.”

Alpine meowed in agreement, and padded over to curl up in a sunbeam. 

“And it’s probably better for you to be around more nature. Even if you’re not allowed out in it because you’ll be a one-kitten bird murder squad.”

Alpine’s next meow was considerably more sulky, and she curled her tail over her nose, apparently ready to take a nap.

“Tempting,” muttered Bucky, thinking of a nap of his own, but no. He was not giving into the dumb drowsiness side effect of his meds again, he intended to finish this cabinet by the time Sam came back home.

“I’ll get over this thing for Sam, right?” he mused out loud. “It’ll fade or whatever once I…get used to him.” Bucky could hear the dubious edge to his own voice. He sanded at a particularly tricky spot of the cabinet’s detailing. “Or I could ignore it. Or try to meet other people? …Date other people?” The prospect of doing that again made him shudder. “Yeah, no, the dating apps sucked.”

And anyway, he’d only used them in the first place to determinedly get over the hurdle of having sex again for the first time since—well, everything. It hadn’t been a disaster, but it hadn’t really been worth the ordeal of navigating the apps either. 

Alpine’s eyes slitted open, and she made a funny little grumbling noise. Apparently, she disapproved.

“Well, you’re a kitten, you haven’t exactly got much experience either,” he said, and she meowed with something that could only be affront. “Excuse me, a young cat,” he corrected with a grin. “Either way, you don’t exactly know more about romance than I do.”

In retrospect, the considering tone of Alpine’s answering mrow really ought to have made more of an impression on Bucky. But then, in retrospect, a lot of things Alpine did ought to have made more of an impression on Bucky, and Sam too.

Back in Bucky’s day, cats had pretty much roamed around at will, inside and outside. Nowadays, a pet cat being allowed outside was increasingly anathema in the States. Apparently, it was very bad for local wildlife, since cats were tiny and adorable little murder machines who killed birds and small rodents by the dozens, to say nothing of the dangers of being hit by a car or killed by some bigger predator. So Alpine was strictly an indoor cat, only allowed out on the patio under strict supervision, lest she go on a murder spree or get eaten by an alligator. 

But despite multiple, patient lectures about this, along with diligently closed doors and screened windows, she still succeeded in the occasional escape attempt, and most of the time, Bucky and Sam didn’t even realize she’d gotten out at all. This was usually okay, because they’d find her on the porch, yowling to be let back inside, none the worse for wear. On this occasion though, she actually darted out of the back door the moment Bucky opened it to take some food scraps to their compost pile. This in and of itself wasn’t entirely unusual; sometimes Alpine would trot outside with Sam or Bucky, sticking close to them, sniffing everything curiously before following them back inside. This time though, she made a run for it out into the grasses and trees that surrounded the house, a too-fast streak of white amid the greenery.

“Alpine, no!” Bucky called out, dismayed and not a little terrified of the many ways a tiny and helpless cat could get hurt in the big wide world: eaten by alligators! Eaten by hawks! Run over by a car! He dropped the composting and ran after her.

He wouldn’t have thought a small house cat could outrun a super soldier, but Alpine somehow managed it. Bucky actually lost sight of her for a while in the little wooded area that ran up to the road that went past the house, only able to follow her at all thanks to his tracking skills and the occasional sound of movement in the undergrowth. In the few minutes it took to catch up with her and find her, Bucky was already spinning up plans to call the neighbors and the local shelter and pretty much anyone and everyone, asking them to keep an eye out for Alpine, or hell, get together a search party. Or maybe the damned Redwings could be useful and go out looking for her…? Somehow, she’d already gone fast enough and far enough to be outside the house’s security perimeter.

Bucky was just about to call Sam and tell him to turn around and come back from his trip to the hardware store when he caught up to Alpine, sauntering towards him as if she hadn’t lit out of the house like a bat out of hell and scared years off his overlong life.

“Alpine, what the hell!” he demanded. In answer, she just chirped happily, and leapt into his arms, purring up a storm. “Sweetie, you can’t just run off like that, you could get lost, or hurt!”

He checked her mouth and paws for signs that she’d eaten or hunted some hapless small animal, but her fur was pristine, and her paws only had a bit of dirt on them. Maybe she’d seen some bird but hadn’t managed to catch it?

He sighed. “You know, I’ve seen some things online about making a little cat enclosure on a patio. Maybe I can make you one of those. But only if you promise not to run off again!”

Alpine meowed sweetly and stretched up to butt her head against Bucky’s chin. “I’ll take that as an ‘I promise,’” said Bucky with as much sternness as he could manage, and pressed a kiss to her head.

And people said cats were low-maintenance pets. Yeah, right.

The domestic realities of living with another person—and living with Sam specifically—were far more comforting than they had any right to be. They had plenty of dumb arguments over such hot button issues as: washing dishes by hand versus loading the dishwasher (if you have to pretty much pre-wash the dishes to put them in the dishwasher, why even bother using it?), cheap versus expensive toilet paper (Bucky didn’t die—twice!—to use subpar, cheap toilet paper, thank you very much, let him have this petty luxury), and whether they really had to separate the whites from the darks in the washing machine (they washed most everything in cold water anyway for the sake of energy efficiency, so Bucky didn’t see the point). It was also odd and sometimes frustrating to get used to another person’s habits and idiosyncrasies: Sam’s habit of singing in the shower, how finicky he was about vacuuming the entire house on a weekly basis no matter what, his frankly excessive level of attention to the thermostat settings and which settings would optimize energy usage…

But all of this was also prosaically, mundanely, beautifully human and normal, the kind of thing he’d figured wouldn’t be possible for him anymore. It was so much easier to feel like a real and normal person when Bucky lived with another real and normal person who shared breakfast with him and asked him to do a load of laundry for the towels and talked to him and traded off chores with him. As lovely and peaceful as Wakanda had been, he’d still kind of felt like a wild and dangerous animal who was being rehabilitated there: treated kindly and with dignity, sure, but with caution too, and the understanding that Ayo would and could put him down if he proved too dangerous. That had helped him feel safe, then. 

But now, it was a relief and a wonder to be folded into the quotidian routines of a normal life, to be responsible for more than just a haphazard and half-hearted attempt to keep himself going when it was a daily struggle to remind himself he was more person than broken weapon. Here, he could share meals and chores and errands, could have someone notice if he was or wasn’t feeling well, could have someone to talk to or share easy silence with, could have someone to look out for in turn, and not just here at home with Sam, but with Sarah and the boys, and increasingly, with the rest of Delacroix too.

That’s called a support network, James, Dr. Raynor had said, when he let some of these thoughts slip. Seems like living with Sam is good for you.

And there was no arguing with that.

Tonight’s blessed normality was being in charge of their dinner, which meant Sam was handling Alpine’s. Sam insisted on Bucky improving his cooking skills beyond his perfectly acceptable repertoire of various sandwiches, soups, and breakfast foods, because apparently Bucky couldn’t keep subsisting off of sad 40s bachelor food and takeout and you don’t have to boil everything. This was actually one of the few downsides of living in Delacroix: there weren’t three dozen takeout places within a three block radius, which meant Bucky ended up cooking a lot more so-called sad bachelor food, so maybe Sam had a point, not that Bucky would admit it. 

In a fit of stubborn contrariness, Bucky had decided that he’d stick to sandwiches, soups, and breakfast foods, but make it so that Sam couldn’t deny that Bucky’s cooking skills were nevertheless improving. In practice, this meant that Bucky served up increasingly elaborate sandwiches and labor-intensive stews when it was his turn on dinner duty, like tonight’s bouillabaisse. 

“Buck, did you feed Alpine already? She’s barely eaten her dinner,” said Sam that evening.

“No, I didn’t feed her,” said Bucky, alarmed, looking up from the steamy soup pot that was just about ready to serve. “Do you think she’s sick? Should we take her to the vet?”

“She seems fine,” said Sam, and Alpine did seem to be in good spirits, already trotting over to the kitchen table to supervise her humans’ dinner, her tail swishing back and forth with leisurely ease.

“She managed to get out earlier today, and it took me a few minutes to catch her. I didn’t think she actually ate a rat or bird or anything, it was only a few minutes, but maybe she did?”

“Alpine,” Sam chided. “No being a cat-shaped ecological disaster! Why did you even make a break for it, huh?”

Alpine had no answer for this, but did allow herself to be scooped up into Sam’s arms and rocked like a baby. Bucky ignored the little twinge of jealousy—of Sam, or Alpine? Bucky was not going to think about it—and the way his eyes wanted to linger on the taut and ample curve of Sam’s biceps, and refocused on the soup.

“I was thinking we should make her a little space on the patio where she can hang out outside,” said Bucky. “Maybe that’ll be enough of the outdoors for her.”

“A catio!” exclaimed Sam, and Bucky’s mouth twitched with a smile he determinedly repressed. If he gave an inch now, they’d be calling it a catio forever. “Good idea, Buck.”

“Alright, soup’s up,” said Bucky, and turned off the stove’s burner. “Unless you think this is depressing bachelor chow?”

Sam let Alpine down and sat at the kitchen table, his eyebrow raised in an unamused expression that wasn’t quite successful given the irrepressible lift of his lips.

“Yeah, I see what you’re doing here, but joke’s on you, because it still ends up with both of us eating delicious, nutritious food,” he said. “I’m really enjoying this French cuisine kick you’re on, by the way. Is beef bourguignon next?”

“Maybe,” said Bucky, and privately decided cassoulet was next. It was good to keep Sam guessing. 

A support network wasn’t the only reason why living in Delacroix was so good for Bucky: he was also finally free of his various nosy alphabet agency neighbors.

When Sam had come to Brooklyn to help Bucky pack up his apartment, Bucky had idly wondered just how said neighbors intended to follow him to Delacroix, given the relative lack of convenient places to spy on him from. The house he and Sam had bought was on a pretty big lot, wooded on one side and by the water on the other, set back from the road, and their nearest neighbors were only barely within the house’s sight lines, not to mention those other houses were already occupied by longtime Delacroix residents. Sam had looked up from the box he was taping up and stared at Bucky. He’d gone tight around the mouth, and when he’d said what, his voice had been dangerously flat.

Yeah, so, apparently Bucky’s nosy neighbors weren’t, strictly speaking, supposed to be there, and it wasn’t entirely legal and definitely not a condition of his pardon and a violation of his civil rights blah blah blah. The upshot was that, thanks to Sam raising some hell, and Bucky’s lawyer and Colonel Rhodes busting some heads via paperwork and icy, furious emails, Bucky was now officially as surveillance free as the rest of his fellow citizens.

Which was to say, his phone was still tracking his every move, but mostly only for advertising purposes, and the NSA was spying on everybody more or less equally, so that was alright, supposedly.

“You were seriously cool with just being spied on?” Sam had demanded after Colonel Rhodes had told them it was all handled, and Bucky had shrugged.

“Figured it was obvious they’d want to keep an eye on the Winter Soldier. I kinda appreciated that they weren’t really trying to hide it.”

“Well, the only alphabet agency agent around here is Agent Hawkins,” Sam had said. “Rhodey’s vetted the guy, he’s just here to keep an eye out for anyone coming after me or Sarah and the boys.”

Bucky had since met Agent Hawkins—and done some vetting of his own—and it was a relief to have the guy around, a stolid and no-nonsense middle-aged man who fit into Delacroix so well that Bucky honestly wouldn’t have guessed he was there on guard duty. Between Hawkins and some other security measures that Bucky himself had put up, along with the high-tech Stark Tech gadgets provided by Rhodes and Pepper Potts, the Wilson family—and incidentally, Bucky—were reasonably safe from supervillains and random nut jobs who might come after the new Captain America.

Hawkins usually maintained a friendly distance though, keeping watch from afar, so it was a surprise when he knocked on their door that evening after dinner, his posture tense and alert, his sidearm’s holster visible along with his badge.

“Captain, Sergeant,” he greeted. 

“Hey Agent Hawkins, everything alright? Is Sarah—” asked Sam, while Bucky was already moving towards his closest weapon stash.

“Your sister and nephews are fine, Cap,” said Hawkins. “But there’s been some online chatter about neo-Nazis taking a swing at you here, and I found one of their vehicles down the road from you. No one in it though. Have you two noticed anything odd today, any breaches to your security perimeter?”

Sam audibly sighed in relief, and stepped aside to let Hawkins inside. Bucky stayed close to his weapons stash, but didn’t move to get any of them just yet.

“Only breach to the perimeter was Alpine getting out earlier today,” said Bucky. “I went after her, didn’t notice anyone lurking around.”

“And I went out a couple times, didn’t notice any tails or anything else suspicious,” added Sam.

Hawkins narrowed his eyes, but nodded. “Well, maybe they chickened out. I’ll keep an eye out, let you know if I find ‘em or if we hear anything new.”

“Thanks, Agent Hawkins,” said Sam. “You had dinner yet? Buck made bouillabaisse, we’ve got plenty of leftovers if you wanna take some with you.”

Hawkins cast Bucky an assessing look, as if attempting to judge how good a cook he was, even as his nose twitched taking in the lingering aroma of Bucky’s really fucking delicious bouillabaisse, thank you very much. Bucky answered with his most impassive Winter Soldier stare, though the effect was probably kind of ruined with the way Alpine was perched on his shoulder.

“Yeah, alright, thanks, Cap, Sarge.” He accepted the tupperware Sam gave him with a smile, then joked, “Alpine ran off today, you said? Maybe think about getting a guard dog, Alpine there doesn’t seem to be pulling her weight.”

To Bucky’s surprise, Alpine let out a new sound at that, a deep purr, or no—an eerie, hissing growl. The sound resonated oddly, as if coming from a much bigger throat. Probably because Alpine was so close to Bucky’s ear. Bucky reached up to pet her, even more surprised to find her hackles up, and he hushed her absently.

“We’ve got our hands full with Alpine,” said Sam. 

“She’s a great guard cat,” said Bucky, a statement with absolutely no factual basis that nevertheless felt true, and this seemed to soothe Alpine, because she settled down.

Hawkins grinned and shook his head, the expression taking almost twenty years off his craggy face. “That cat is spoiled as hell,” he said. “Well, y’all keep an eye out, I’ll let you know if I hear anything more.”

“Sarah and—” started Sam, and Agent Hawkins’ smile turned understanding.

“I’ll keep watch over there tonight,” he said, and this was why Sam and Bucky liked the guy so much. He knew what the priority was. Sam and Bucky could, after all, look after themselves.

“Thanks, Hawkins,” said Sam. “I’ll have Redwing fly a patrol tonight too.”

But neither Redwing nor Hawkins spotted anything more suspicious than Delacroix’s usual nighttime wildlife, and no one ever came back for that car Hawkins had found.

“Maybe an alligator ate him,” suggested Bucky a few days later.

“That really doesn’t happen as often as you seem to think it does,” said Sam, exasperated.

“It ever happening at all is more than enough!”

“The gators do normal alligator stuff here! It’s fine!”

The familiar by now argument carried them through the morning’s training, and they both put the whole thing out of mind, figuring the threat had, thankfully, been a false alarm. The potential attacker probably got scared off by Hawkins, or Sam and Bucky themselves, and bailed on their mission.

Alpine’s appetite took a couple days to fully recover from her outdoor adventure though, so she must have managed to eat something when she ran off. Bucky called the veterinarian to see if they should take her in, and the vet assured him that if she wasn’t vomiting, and was using her litter box like normal and not behaving oddly, that she was probably fine. It remained a mystery just what the hell she’d managed to eat, but she did get a catio out of it.

“Was that your nefarious plan all along, sweetie?” asked Bucky as Alpine stretched luxuriously into her new preferred napping spot on the catio. Her smug and satisfied slow blink seemed like a resounding yes.

Bucky had been somewhat dreading the grand opening of the Wakandan Outreach Center in New Orleans, wary and anxious about it being some flashy event that would involve way too much press and attention, but to his relief, it wasn’t some big fancy gala. Instead it was a cheerful, festival-like affair, not unlike cookouts in Delacroix, or a fair, or even a little bit like the Stark Expo with some of the impressive tech on display. Bucky had already been to the center a couple of times before its grand opening for his appointments, and he and Sam came early today to squeeze in another appointment before the official festivities began, so the building itself was familiar by now. 

The Center was a surprisingly graceful blend of New Orleans’ own French Colonial inspired buildings, and the more organic and futuristic style of Wakanda’s Golden City, the whole building and grounds lush with carefully tended plant life. Greenery spilled out of and over the Center’s balconies, the usual wrought iron of the railings replaced with something that Bucky could have mistaken for actual living tree branches. It almost looked as if the Outreach Center had been grown, rather than built. It was, to Bucky’s mind, as close as he’d ever get to walking into Middle Earth’s Rivendell. 

Outside the Center, in the courtyard and all along the closed-off street, colorful awnings and tables were being set up, and delicious aromas were already wafting on the air as the braais were fired up. There were multiple stands for fresh fruit and desserts too, vendors both local and Wakandan filling the displays with colorful and delicious food, alongside stands that would offer pamphlets and books and demonstrations of the kinds of classes and services the Outreach Center would provide to and with the community.

“I know there’s important outreach and community building happening here, but goddamn, I am here for the food,” said Sam, his eyes on the braais.

“Oh yeah? I thought you were here as moral support for me?” said Bucky wryly.

Because Sam could’ve come with Sarah and the boys later, which Bucky himself had suggested. This was, after all, a pretty routine appointment, though Shuri was here in person for once. She was just going to be running scans and checking to see if Bucky could complete his course of the biobots and adjust his meds accordingly, plus do a tuneup on his prosthetic.

Sam threw an arm around Bucky’s shoulders, and Bucky leaned in, wishing he’d been the one to offer the easy affection first. He would have, once. The Bucky he’d once been would have done it without a second thought. Now, initiating physical affection was too often like a fatally delayed reflex, like reaching for a handhold long after he’d already fallen. Then again, maybe it was for the best; if he fed that hunger, what else would it want?

“You get five minutes of moral support, then I’m abandoning you for barbecue,” said Sam, and Bucky rolled his eyes, stifling a grin.

“They call it braai in Wakanda, you know.”

Though it was hours yet before the grand opening would officially begin, there were plenty of onlookers already there, all of them peering around curiously, and the press was there too: a couple of local news vans, and a few other journalist and photographer looking types wandering around with notebooks and cameras. When they spotted Sam, they all made a beeline towards him, and Sam heaved a sigh as he let go of Bucky.

“Forget moral support or barbecue, duty calls,” said Sam, and Bucky patted Sam on the back before making his escape.

“Better you than me,” he said, and headed into the Center mostly unnoticed, a wave of his kimoyo beads opening the doors to him.

The halls were full of people bustling around, putting the final touches on the preparations for the grand opening, and Bucky offered quick greetings and compliments on his way to the labs, the path familiar even though the halls had gained a lot of new decoration and polish since his last visit. The lab though was the same, having been one of the first parts of the Outreach Center to be finished in deference to the Princess, and on account of the apparently “fascinating” energy readings that lurked underneath the city.

This time, Shuri was actually here in person, along with Ayo, and she greeted him with a long and tight hug. When she pulled away from him, she narrowed her eyes and studied him closely, and Bucky withstood the scrutiny patiently, sharing an amused glance with Ayo, whose own greeting to him was one of her warmest and loveliest smiles, and a nod of her head.

“You’re looking well,” Shuri concluded, pleased. She turned towards Ayo. “He’s looking well, isn’t he, Ayo?”

“He is,” agreed Ayo.

“Well, if both of you think so…” said Bucky, and grinned when Shuri glared at him. “I’m feeling pretty good, yeah,” 

And yeah, he was feeling good. It turned out that a constant headache wasn’t good for a guy’s mood, to say nothing of his health. And it also turned out that trading his headaches for freshly remembered grief and new nightmares was a fucking bargain, especially if he wasn’t going to be bearing that grief alone. 

It had only taken five whole therapy sessions to get to that revelation, along with the accompanying embarrassing yet somewhat reassuring realization that this was something he’d been struggling with even before all the horrible trauma, that he’d been struggling with it for his whole life, maybe: that he’d always held his pain close and private, that he’d pretty much never been willing or able to bear sharing it, not even with Steve.

Seems like you two were so busy trying to be strong for each other, that neither of you ever really let yourselves be open and vulnerable with each other. That’s a vicious cycle, James, Dr. Raynor had said. Is that the kind of friendship you want with Sam?

Thankfully, Raynor hadn’t followed up on that particular question. It was enough of a bomb all on its own, and Bucky was still clearing out the rubble of its aftermath. 

Shuri studied Bucky as if assessing the truth of his words, before nodding, apparently satisfied.

“Good,” she said. “Now come, I need to look at your brain.”

He dutifully followed her to the scanner, and sat very still as it did its work. Then it was time for a blood draw, and a quick trip to the bathroom to pee into a cup, and a few quick cognitive tests. These were mostly a formality by now, but Shuri was always meticulous about checking that kind of thing and keeping track of the data, because Bucky’s situation was, luckily for everyone else and regrettably for him, unique, and that meant he was a medical curiosity. He didn’t mind that so much when he was specifically Shuri’s medical curiosity. 

“How have the side effects been? The same, better, worse?” she asked as she flicked through all the holographic data at baffling speed.

“Better,” said Bucky. “The lightheadedness is mostly gone.”

Shuri hummed in acknowledgment, then looked over at Sam, who was just coming into the lab now. “Do you concur, Captain Wilson?”

“What—why are you asking him!” demanded Bucky, and Shuri just raised her eyebrows mildly.

“Because he will tell me whatever symptoms or side effects you think ‘aren’t a big deal,’” she said, and Sam laughed.

“She’s got your number, Buck,” said Sam, and Bucky glowered at him.

“Sam wouldn’t even know if I was—I don’t know, seeing double or something!”

“Are you?” asked Shuri, her tone suspicious.

“No!”

“No side effects I’ve noticed other than the drowsiness,” said Sam, still grinning, before his face grew more solemn. “And, uh—”

“She knows about the nightmares,” interrupted Bucky.

It seemed like everyone knew about the goddamn nightmares: Sam, Alpine, his therapist, Sarah, the boys, probably all of Delacroix…

“And? Are they better, or worse?” asked Shuri.

“They’re—different. They’re—they’re not all memories, anymore. And I’m having what I’m told are ‘normal’ dreams.”

Intellectually, Bucky knew that ‘normal’ dreams for most people were odd and surreal, largely meaningless blends of their lives or days, or maybe oddly translated expressions of their anxieties. Personally, Bucky hadn’t experienced a dream like that in decades, as far as he knew. Either he didn’t dream at all, or he only dreamed memories. Until recently, anyway.

It had been—disquieting, to have ‘normal’ dreams again. He had maybe freaked out at Sam about it. Sam, to his credit, had been patient and kind once he’d realized Bucky was genuinely freaked out.

Shuri stopped in her tracks, sucking in a sharp breath.

“Is that—a bad thing?” asked Bucky.

“No…no, I don’t think it is. I think it’s possibly a very good thing, actually,” she said slowly, then pulled up his brain scans, a smile slowly growing on her face. “It is definitely a good thing! The biobots and your healing factor have done their work, your brain is healed! Well, as healed as it is going to get, I’m pretty sure.”

“Wait, really?” said Bucky, blinking in surprise. “But I—I mean, I feel like there’s still a lot I don’t remember.”

“You and everyone else,” said Shuri. “Most people don’t remember everything, Bucky. Watch: Captain Wilson, do you remember your tenth birthday party?”

Sam blinked. “Uh…I think it was at a mini golf course? Or no, at a park. Or at our house? I—I’m not sure. I don’t know, I can’t remember.”

“And how about…hmm, how about the floor plan of the second place you lived in after you moved away from your parents’ home?”

“It had one bedroom…?”

Shuri turned back to Bucky. “Plenty of people forget plenty of things. Or require some context or memory aid to pin down a specific memory. A couple of photos, or more specific prompts, would likely jog Captain Wilson’s memory better. I imagine it’s much the same for you, except you need to fire up a lot more neural connections again. The memories are there, you simply need to find them.”

“How?”

“I recommend journaling. Find a list of prompts like the ones I just gave Captain Wilson—perhaps your therapist can assist—and write about whatever memories come to mind.”

“And that’s it? I’m—I’m good, no more headaches, or meds?”

It wasn’t like this was sudden; Bucky had been taking his meds and coming to appointments for months. And yet, it still felt sudden, and he still didn’t actually feel—well, he still didn’t feel like the old Bucky Barnes. Which he supposed was a dumb thing to have expected in the first place. Memories or no memories, that guy was gone.

“Well, I suspect you will always have the occasional migraine and tension headache,” said Shuri, apologetic. “But you can likely stop taking the meds, yes. We will try it at any rate, and see how it goes. Track any headaches you do have, use the rescue meds for any migraines, and check in with me again next month.”

“I—thanks. Thank you. For this, and—and everything else,” he said, and this time, the instinct towards affection came easily and immediately, and he stepped forward to hug Shuri.

Even Ayo allowed a hug, patiently tolerant of Bucky’s fumbling and grateful affection, an island of calm joy as she rested her forehead against his.

“See where one step has led you?” she said, eyes sparkling with her smile, and Bucky laughed.

Back in his first days out of cryo in Wakanda, he’d had every miserable intention of staying in his hut feeling sorry for himself and drowning in guilt and grief. But Ayo hadn’t let him, and she’d insisted he get up, get out. Just one step outside, she’d said. And that’s supposed to help? he’d demanded. One step is going to fix me? And she’d said, you’d be surprised. As snarling and ungrateful as he’d been, that one step had led to another, then another, a path out of the dark, and it seemed Ayo had been right, because those steps had, after all, led him here. Eventually, anyway.

Sam hugged him next, and it was a long and tight hug, Sam’s joy for him nearly palpable through the tight squeeze of his arms. Sam didn’t even seem to mind when Bucky’s breath went a bit shaky, or when Bucky had to sniffle and hold back tears of relief, and some other emotion too tinged with bittersweet sorrow to be only joy. Sam only held him tighter then, and rubbed his back firmly, the pressure of it grounding, before settling his hand in its habitual place on the back of Bucky’s neck, a gesture that always made some deep part of Bucky go utterly calm and content.

“Thanks,” said Bucky when they pulled away from each other, and Sam smiled at him, so honestly happy for him and bright as the sun, that Bucky flushed.

“Now we’ve gotta celebrate,” said Sam, and clapped Bucky on the shoulder. “C’mon, there was a food stand out there making fresh beignets, I think you’ve earned a bag.”

There was still an official ribbon-cutting, grand opening ceremony to get through, and Bucky lurked around the periphery of that, trying to avoid the notice of any reporters and happily eating his delicious beignets. It wasn’t exactly easy—he was pretty much one of the only white guys here and that made him stand out—but his hard-earned Winter Soldier skills stood him in good stead. Also, standing in the general vicinity of Ayo in full Dora Milaje uniform generally meant no one was going to be paying much attention to him, even if he was wearing nicer clothes than usual in deference to the event. Ayo gave him a wry look that said she knew exactly what he was doing. Her pursed lips were more in the way of a suppressed smile than an expression of disapproval though, and she didn’t shoo him away.

Sam wasn’t so lucky when it came to blending in and avoiding attention, and he got roped into giving a few more sound bites to the press and assorted public officials. Bucky marveled at just how good Sam was at it, at how he was friendly and charming and funny, how he invited people into his joy and excitement even as he drew attention to the important things the Outreach Center would be offering and the ways local government could do better by its underserved members. Even the old Bucky at his most charming wouldn’t have been able to hold attention like that, in such light and steady hands.

Eventually Sam managed to shake both his admirers and his questioners, and he rejoined Bucky, his for-the-public smile shifting to something brighter and more private.

“How do you always manage to avoid the press and the crowds?” asked Sam. “Hell, even I lost track of you for a bit!”

“I’m a very stealthy ex-assassin, Sam,” said Bucky, deadpan and straight-faced. 

“Uh huh. A very stealthy ex-assassin who really enjoyed a lot of beignets I see,” he said, casting an amused look at Bucky’s shirt, which, shit, had a bunch of powdered sugar all over it, bright white and obvious against the dark blue floral pattern of his button-up shirt.

Sam stepped close and brushed the sugar off, and it was only thanks to long experience staying still that Bucky’s skin and muscles didn’t jump and shiver at the touch, his body caught between tension and the urge to get closer.

“Um, thanks,” said Bucky.

“Damn, what’ve you got, steel under here?” teased Sam, and poked lightly at Bucky’s stomach. The simple touch took Bucky’s breath away as if it had been a punch to the solar plexus. “These rock hard abs of yours are totally unnecessary.”

Bucky was too much of a gentleman to ever countenance saying anything about other parts of him that would like to be rock hard, but fuck, he did think it.

“They’re just—like that,” said Bucky, uselessly, his voice embarrassingly breathy, and Sam rolled his eyes and muttered something about stupid super soldiers and their effortless metabolisms.

“You missed a spot here too,” said Sam, and brought his hand up to Bucky’s chin. 

He used his thumb to brush away some sugar from the divot there, which was both the worst and best thing that stupidly distinguishing facial feature had ever given him. Was Bucky imagining things or did Sam’s eyes linger in the general direction of his chin…or his mouth?

“Thanks,” Bucky said again faintly, then, desperate for distraction or really anything to calm down his racing heart, he licked his lips and said, “Are Sarah and the boys here yet?”

Sam blinked. “Uh, I don’t know, let me see if Sarah’s texted,” he said, and pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Sarah’s just parking now, looks like.”

So they went to find Sarah and the boys, and when they found them, Sam shared Bucky’s good news right away, which meant hugs from Sarah, Cass, and AJ that made Bucky get kind of misty-eyed and overwhelmed, shy and surprised by his astonishing good fortune, that so many people would so genuinely care about his wellbeing like this. Thankfully Sam noticed that the attention was bit too much for Bucky, and he quickly directed Sarah and the boys’ focus to the Outreach Center and the festival that had sprung up around it. Sam and Bucky gave them what Sam called the VIP tour of the Center, and introduced them to Shuri and Ayo too—Cass got hilariously shy around Shuri—before heading back out into the increasingly crowded throngs outside. Bucky stuck it out with them for a while, but eventually he hit his limit for dealing with crowds, and retreated to a quiet corner of the garden courtyard with Ayo when she took a break from her guard duties.

It was times like this when Bucky missed smoking the most. Not so much for the cigarettes themselves, but for the way they offered a ready excuse for some quiet, companionable socializing, and gave him something to do with his hands. The cups of coffee he and Ayo were nursing were an okay substitute though, especially since it was Wakandan coffee. Bucky sighed happily after a sip, then studied Ayo. She was alert in the relaxed way of a soldier who was briefly at leisure, an unworried looseness to her posture that reminded Bucky of a lioness after a hunt. And she was, to his relief, happy. Whatever sense of being out of place that she’d had, it seemed like it had passed, a smile resting easily in her eyes even when her face was still and calm.

“So has Yama finally gotten together with that War Dog of hers? I thought I saw them both together earlier, and I’m invested after what you told me the last time we talked,” said Bucky, and Ayo’s smile spread to her lips, her eyes sparking with satisfaction at bringing him up to speed on some juicy gossip.

“There has been a twist in that saga!” said Ayo. “It turns out they have been together for weeks, and have only been waiting for his reassignment to go through…”

Ayo caught him up on the latest twists and turns of Dora Milaje gossip, and on how Aneka was doing, and the latest argument between Shuri and the Queen Mother, which T’Challa was apparently staying well out of, even though that made Shuri mad at him too.

“I know how that goes,” said Bucky wryly, remembering the battles of will between his own sisters and his mother. “It’ll blow over eventually.”

“Only if one of them concedes defeat, and I would not bet on who is more stubborn there,” said Ayo with a grimace. 

“I could try talking to Shuri about it?”

“If you get the chance, I would be grateful,” said Ayo. “The atmosphere at family dinners has been as icy as Jabariland.”

“Yeah, I can imagine,” said Bucky, before tilting his head and grinning at Ayo. “Seems like you’ve caught up with folks, that you’re back in the swing of things now.”

Ayo’s answering smile was both wry and glowing. “Yes, it seems so. Though people are still unwilling to speak much about the years of the Blip. Aneka says there is still much healing to be done.”

“She’s not wrong.”

They sipped their coffee in comfortable silence, and ambled deeper into the garden, until they reached a bench in front of a clever and lovely water fountain that was also irrigation for a set of plant beds that were home to herbs and vegetables. They sat, setting their coffees aside, and Bucky stretched his legs out in front of him, content in a way that was becoming more and more common lately.

After a while, Ayo said, “So…you and Sam?” and Bucky had a sudden keen sympathy for just why gazelles froze when faced with a lioness.

“Me and Sam…?”

“Seem quite adorably smitten,” she said, merriment and mischief twinkling in her dark eyes. 

“What? No! I’m not—we’re friends! And roommates! And—and coworkers, even, it’s—I’m not—why would you even say that!” sputtered Bucky.

“James,” said Ayo with intimidating and amused patience. “Are you under the impression that anything about your face is at all difficult to read, ever? You did not need to say anything, I simply observed you two today.”

“I have a great poker face!” he protested, and gave her his best, most expressionless face, only for her to laugh.

“Your eyes always give you away,” she said, and patted his cheek fondly. “A good effort though. Perhaps it could fool people who don’t know you well.”

Bucky groaned and slumped down on the bench. “Am I really that obvious?”

Ayo laughed and raised an eyebrow. “Yes, you both are.”

“Wait, what?”

“Your ‘coworker’ is just as smitten, James.”

“Sam’s like that with everybody,” said Bucky. “He’s—you know, friendly, flirty.”

“Oh, and he holds everybody the way he held you?” asked Ayo. “Because that embrace earlier…he was holding you as if he cherished you a great deal.”

Bucky’s traitorous face flared hot. “It’s—we’re—not like that. It’s just a—a dumb thing, I’ll get over it.”

Ayo hummed, dubious. “I do not think you will have to,” she said. “And why would you want to?” Bucky’s expression must have done something especially pathetic, because Ayo softened. “You are free now, James. Free to live, free to love. You have fought too hard for that freedom to deny it now.”

Bucky swallowed hard, and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. “Not sure I’ve handled that freedom all that well so far,” he said shakily.

“And yet it persists,” said Ayo with serene certainty. “This is simply another step, James. Much like that first one you took outside of your hut. Take it when you are ready.”

Bucky laughed, comforted and terrified in equal measure, a soothingly familiar contradiction by now. “Yeah, okay,” he said.

“Don’t take too long though,” warned Ayo, a sly tilt to her eyes and smile.

“Yeah, yeah, you’ll drag me out on a date with Sam if you have to,” he said, and she hummed.

“Yes, or you will find that circumstances push you, in rather embarrassing ways,” said Ayo with a rueful laugh, almost certainly thinking of her own courtship with Aneka, which was still the stuff of legend among the Dora Milaje, who’d arranged Ayo and Aneka’s first date as a mission once they got sick of all the pining. 

Yeah, maybe Bucky shouldn’t have been expecting the most helpful romantic advice from Ayo.

Of course, neither of them could have ever guessed that the circumstances Ayo had warned of would end up being Alpine.

Chapter Text

“I don’t think I’m enjoying Alpine’s terrible teen phase,” said Sam with what he really thought was admirable calm after nearly diving headfirst onto the kitchen counter, thanks to Alpine weaving and prancing between his legs.

Alpine was now on the counter—a forbidden place for her and she knew it—while Sam was in Bucky’s arms. At any other time, Sam would have marveled at just how fast Bucky had moved: Sam hadn’t even had time to finish thinking aw, shit and then there Bucky was, catching Sam before he could split his head open on the kitchen counter or floor, when half a second ago, Bucky had been all the way over by the pantry fetching some ingredient or another for dinner. 

Instead of marveling at his partner’s super soldier speed, Sam’s heart was still racing from the near miss, and from Bucky’s sudden nearness. His arms were around Sam, strong and secure, which was a familiar feeling from their hugs. But their hugs didn’t usually involve so much face-to-face closeness, a vantage point that gave Sam a close-up of Bucky’s thick lashes and, oh god, were those very faint freckles on the bridge of his nose? They were, though they were swiftly disappearing behind a spreading flush of pink across Bucky’s cheeks. After a few months in Delacroix, he’d developed a healthy tan, aglow with it in a way that suggested beach vacations more than home renovations and missions, and the freckles were somehow the most devastatingly lovely evidence of Bucky’s time in both the literal and metaphorical sunshine.

While Sam was busy having way too many feelings about Bucky’s freckles, Bucky carefully made sure Sam was steady on his feet again, and let go of him.

“Hey now, don’t blame Alpine for your clumsiness,” said Bucky with a grin, and Alpine yowled.

“Baby girl, if I trip and die, you are not gonna get your dinner any faster,” Sam told Alpine. He picked her up off the counter, a move she allowed with a sulky kind of limpness to her limbs, though she also let out a damn aria’s worth of protesting meows. “And you know you’re not allowed on the counter!”

He set her down and spooned her food into her bowl, and while her tail was sticking straight up in affront, she did eat her dinner. Bucky face wavered between concern and amusement at the sight, and he knelt down to stroke Alpine’s back.

“You gotta be careful, baby. We’ve only got two legs, it’s a lot easier to trip us up,” he said.

“And that’ll be an even more dangerous move when you’re bigger,” said Sam. Alpine was already in that lanky stage in between being a kitten and being full-grown, where her legs and paws seemed too big for her body. “Thanks for the save, Buck.”

“No problem,” said Bucky, grinning up at him. “Makes for a nice change, catching you for once.”

Sam wasn’t the only one who fell victim to Alpine’s new habit of turning their home into an obstacle course. A couple days after Sam’s near-miss, not even super soldier grace and reflexes spared Bucky from toppling over, and taking Sam with him. Sam wasn’t even sure how it had happened; all he saw was a streak of white zooming past them in the entryway as they came in from a training session cut short by a sudden downpour. Between Alpine tripping him up and the water dripping on the hardwood floor, Bucky lost his balance, Sam reached out to steady him only to lose his balance too, and then they were both on the floor, Bucky turning to take the brunt of the fall on his back.

With the chill of the rain and the cool of the house, Sam should have felt cold, but cold was the furthest thing from his mind when he was pressed up against Bucky like this. This wasn’t a thing like their roll in the fields together, back during the Flag Smashers mess. Then, there’d been two layers of body armor between them, and a whole lot of belligerence. Now, the only thing between them was their wet workout gear.

Sam had the wild urge to press in closer, to use his lips and tongue to trace the path of the drops of water dripping down Bucky’s neck and hair and pooling in the hollows of his neck and collarbone. This close up, Sam could even smell him, sweat and his fancy hair stuff and aftershave, a combination that was somehow mouthwatering. There was water that was caught sparkling in Bucky’s eyelashes too, his eyes wide and horizon-blue, and it was all just—Christ, it was the stuff of wet dreams, and Sam very nearly started humping Bucky right there, like some kind of horny, puberty-addled teen. 

Sam was, however, an adult, goddamnit, and a gentleman, and also Bucky was his roommate and partner, what the fuck, so he swiftly rolled off of Bucky before he embarrassed himself, and got to his feet with more speed than grace. He offered Bucky a hand up, inappropriately tempted to pull him into a quick kiss. 

“Thanks,” said Bucky, sounding breathy enough that Sam must have knocked the wind out of him in the fall, and shit, Bucky was looking a bit dazed.

“Think I should be the one thanking you, since you took that fall. You okay? You didn’t hit your head or anything did you?” asked Sam.

“Uh—no. No, I’m fine. I’m just gonna go—towel off and get dry.”

“Me too,” said Sam.

Alpine hissed, and they both startled and looked over at her. Shit, did one of them step on her tail—?

“None of that now, Alpine,” chided Bucky. “If you’re gonna be a nuisance like that, you’re gonna get wet.”

She just hissed again, but her hackles weren’t up so she was probably fine, and then she darted off. Bucky shook his head, fond, though his brow was furrowed too.

“You’re okay too, right? You didn’t hurt your wrists breaking your fall or anything?” asked Bucky, as he headed for the stairs, and Sam followed.

“Nah, I’m fine,” he said.

Shit, he should’ve taken the stairs first. There was no safe place to put his eyes: Bucky’s cute ass, outlined all too clearly in the wet sweatpants, or the strong and powerful muscles of Bucky’s broad back and shoulders, the wet shirt clinging to them lovingly. Thankfully, it was a short flight of stairs before they were both at their respective rooms.

“I really hope Alpine isn’t going to make a habit of that kind of thing, someday we might accidentally step on her and really hurt her,” said Bucky.

“Or ourselves,” added Sam wryly. “Let’s hope it’s just her terrible teens phase.”

Safely in his room, and without the sight of Bucky to distract him, Sam had to admit to himself that nothing about his reactions to Bucky just now had been objective, or normal roommate feelings. But hell, who could blame him? Bucky was hot, and Sam was a guy with a functioning albeit not super active libido. Of course having Bucky plastered all over him while they were both soaking wet was going to inspire some sexy thoughts. It didn’t have to mean anything.

It could mean something though.

But no, that’d be dumb and dangerous, and could lead to the kind of messy drama that was more for young twenty-somethings than grown-ass superheroes with a mortgage. Sam was too damn old and tired to be thinking with his dick, he reminded himself firmly, and aimed a glare down at the appendage in question, which had gotten pretty excited earlier.

Do not mess this up for us, he told it—and himself—firmly.

Alpine’s terrible teens phase wasn’t limited to her treating them as any given room’s obstacle course. She also became awfully clingy and demanding, with both of them. The weird thing was, she wasn’t clingy and demanding with them individually—or at least, she was about as clingy with Bucky as usual. No, now Alpine was clingy and demanding with both of them at once, at the same time.

In the evenings after dinner, Sam and Bucky would often hang out in the living room together, watching something on TV, or Bucky would read while Sam messed around on the internet and texted friends. They’d talk sometimes, just shooting the shit, or they’d share comfortable silence and relax. Alpine was usually with them, most often somewhere on or near Bucky’s person, though sometimes she’d favor Sam with her presence and/or demand attention and petting from him too.

Lately though, it wasn’t enough for Alpine’s two humans to be in the same room with her. No, Alpine had apparently decided that the only thing better than being cozy in Bucky or Sam’s lap, getting scritches and pets on demand while she purred happily, was being in both Bucky and Sam’s laps at once. That this required Sam and Bucky to sit so close together on the couch that their thighs were pressed up together and their knees knocked against each other’s didn’t seem to matter to Alpine, who stretched herself to her full length to sprawl across their laps with languid satisfaction.

“You give an inch, she takes a mile,” said Sam, amused, because they’d started out the evening with him and Bucky on their own sides of the couch, a decorous and comfortable half-foot of space in between them as they watched a cooking competition show. But Alpine, apparently dissatisfied with that state of affairs, had slowly stretched from Bucky’s lap to Sam’s, and made many sad and plaintive meows until Sam and Bucky sat close enough together that she could comfortably sprawl across both of them.

Bucky frowned thoughtfully down at Alpine. “I know cats like to be around their people, and they definitely do a lot of cuddling with each other…maybe she needs us both to be close? Like the way a group of cats would be?”

“Yeah, maybe,” said Sam.

“But if you don’t want to be, uh, all up close and personal like this, you can go sit on the armchair,” said Bucky, looking up with a sheepish smile. “Alpine doesn’t have to get her way all the time.”

Alpine did not agree with this, judging by the way her eyes slitted open and she unsheathed her claws enough that the faintest sting of sensation prickled against Sam’s skin.

“Just most of the time,” joked Sam, and grinned when that earned him a brief laugh from Bucky. He continued, “Nah, I don’t mind.” He rested his arm along the back of the couch, almost but not quite touching Bucky’s shoulders, only realizing too late what a cliche move it was. “It’s nice. Cozy. Probably good for us, physical touch is a key component of mental health.”

“Well, if it’s good for our mental health…” said Bucky, lips tilting up into a smile that was somehow both sly and shy as he settled back onto the couch, leaning ever so slightly but undeniably against Sam.

And shit, Sam had kind of just been running his mouth, but as days stretched into weeks of Alpine insisting on sprawling across them, he had to concede that it was good for him, good for both of them. It was comforting, curling up together like that, and no matter difficult the day had been, that time on the couch together helped Sam relax. On days when he and Bucky butted heads and argued more than usual, couch time served as a ceasefire, a time for silent apologies offered up in the form of  side hugs and trusting leans against each other. And of course, there was Alpine too, purring away on their laps, sneaking the occasional peek at them or nuzzling them as she asked to be pet.

“This was a pretty good idea, baby girl,” Sam murmured to her one night after Bucky sleepily shuffled off to bed.

Sam scooped her up off the couch and smooched her forehead, and grinned when she let out a gusty kitten sigh. “What, what’s so hard about the kitten life of getting pets and cuddles on demand?”

Alpine mrowed, a long sound that rose and fell and sounded…chastising? Frustrated? Sam blinked at her in surprise, and when she wriggled in a demand to be put down, he let her go. She trotted off after Bucky, an unmistakably annoyed twitch to her tail.

Sam shook his head at himself. God, he was anthropomorphizing that cat way too much. He put it down to being sleepy, and followed her up the stairs.

Sam generally appreciated when Alpine gave him a heads up that Bucky was having a rough night. Bucky was doing better, yeah, but he still never asked for help after his nightmares, not even the really bad ones. Sam didn’t exactly blame him for it; after all, Sam had nightmares too, and in those dark and harrowing hours, he usually toughed it out on his own. He saved the comfort-seeking for the daytime, when it was easier to bear, and the hurt wasn’t so keen.

Maybe it was hypocritical of Sam to expect Bucky to ask for some company or support after his nightmares, or maybe this was just Sam having double standards. He didn’t care. Bucky’s nightmares were a hell of a lot worse than Sam’s, and they hit him a lot harder. Sam didn’t want him suffering in silence, or for his mental health to go on a downward spiral, when he got all caught up in his head thanks to  his latest nightmare. Plus, now that Bucky was having “normal” dreams too, he was sometimes kind of confused and spacey when he woke up, and Sam being there to offer him an almost immediate reality check helped a lot.

So Sam didn’t think anything of it when he woke up to Alpine meowing and patting him gently on the cheek with her paw. It was—ugh, just past one a.m., so he’d only managed a couple hours of sleep so far, but whatever.

“Is Bucky having a nightmare?” Sam whispered to Alpine, already getting up, and she meowed as if to say yes. 

He followed her down the hall to Bucky’s room, where the door was cracked open—and seriously, they really needed to figure out how the hell Alpine was opening doors—and Sam tapped on the door so gently it was barely audible.

“Buck?” he called out, and slipped into Bucky’s room.

Bucky kept things pretty simple in here, thankfully, so there was no clutter to trip over in the dark, and the light of the nearly full moon was enough to see by, enough to see that Bucky was…fine? He was stirring now, but he wasn’t making any of the quiet, terrible noises that meant he was stuck in a nightmare, and his body wasn’t held with rigid, almost paralyzed tension. He was breathing easy, at least until he realized Sam was in his room, and then he shot up into wakefulness, clearly ready to jump into action.

“Sam? What—are you okay, is—”

“I’m fine, are you? Alpine came to get me.”

Alpine leapt daintily onto the bed, and meowed. She practically glowed in the moonlight, the very picture of an angelic little cat.

Bucky blinked blearily at her. 

“What? Why? Baby, I’m fine,” he said, and the flush of heat that went through Sam at the word baby was totally inappropriate. That endearment was for Alpine, not him, and why would he even want—

“Were you maybe about to have a nightmare?” suggested Sam, confused now. 

Alpine had never been wrong before, and while they sometimes heard the pitter patter of her little feet as she ran down the halls with her late-night zoomies, she didn’t actually tend to bother them while they were sleeping. 

Bucky screwed his face up. “…no? I really am fine. Were you having a nightmare?”

“No, I’m fine, I was asleep when she came in.” Well now this was awkward. “So, uh, I’ll just—”

But as Sam moved to go, Alpine yowled, and Sam had a terrible suspicion.

“You know…” he said slowly. “Maybe we shouldn’t have let her cuddle up to both of us at once. Maybe she wants us all together at bedtime too.”

“Alpine,” said Bucky, exasperated. “You don’t get to have your way all the time, you know. Go back to sleep, Sam, I’m fine.”

So Sam went back to his room, and went back to sleep. At least, he tried to. Falling back asleep proved difficult when Alpine would not. shut. up. 

Alpine meowed. Alpine yowled. Alpine, appropriately enough, caterwauled. 

She was just as loud as any shrieking and crying baby, and like a baby with colic, she was seemingly inexhaustible, and deaf to her caretakers’ earnest pleas. Sam could hear the faint murmur of Bucky’s increasingly strained and desperate voice as he tried to talk Alpine down. But for once, Bucky proved unable to reason with Alpine. Every few minutes, Sam would think, surely she’ll stop soon. 

She did not stop.

Around two thirty a.m. Sam gave up. Maybe Bucky was made of sterner stuff than he was, what with having survived all that hideous and horrifying HYDRA torture and all, but Sam needed his beauty sleep, damn it, and anyway, it couldn’t be good for Alpine to keep making such a heartbreaking racket.

Sam went back to Bucky’s room, and found him looking pale and stressed, and, hilariously and adorably, pacing and rocking Alpine in his one arm like she really was a baby.

“Is that working?” asked Sam, grinning despite himself.

“No,” admitted Bucky. He sighed and sat back down on his bed. “So, your bed or mine? I hope to god she’ll shut up if we share a bed.”

“Yours is fine,” said Sam.

Bucky let Alpine down onto the bed, and then he and Sam got under the covers. Alpine immediately stopped making her godawful racket, and curled up beside Bucky’s head as if nothing had happened.

“You bossy, ridiculous little demon,” said Bucky, sounding almost impressed.

“No one can know that a tiny cat is the real boss of this household,” said Sam, kind of joking but also really not.

“I’m sorry, Sam. I’ll figure out how to convince her to let you stay in your own bed,” said Bucky. “Maybe if we got a second cat she’d settle down…?” Alpine grumbled warningly, and Bucky huffed. “We are having a long talk about this later, young lady,” he said.

Sam grinned helplessly into the pillow, and then took a deep breath there, already relaxed by the absence of Alpine’s yelling, the comforting smell of home and Bucky’s fancy hair care products, and the warmth of the bed. There was just something about sharing with someone else, someone you trusted, that felt safe and warm beyond any perception of temperature or the coziness of the blankets.

“‘S alright,” Sam mumbled. “Just don’t kick me in your sleep.”

Bucky didn’t kick, and Sam didn’t either, and they both slept until well past dawn. Apparently, Alpine felt at least a little bit bad about her nighttime antics, or else she just got the zoomies, because when Sam and Bucky woke, she wasn’t there. Which meant they had nothing to distract them from the newness of waking up with each other.

“That wasn’t so bad,” said Bucky, sounding surprised, and Sam raised his eyebrows.

“Should I be offended that you sound so surprised?”

“No, I didn’t mean—I just meant—I didn’t think I could still share a bed with someone. But that was—that went okay. I slept well and everything,” said Bucky.

Which was good, because despite multiple lectures and bribes, Alpine did not let up. If they weren’t sharing a bed, Alpine gave them no peace. But the second Sam got in Bucky’s bed—or Bucky in Sam’s, Alpine wasn’t picky—she became a perfect angel.

Maybe they should have tried harder to train Alpine out of that behavior. But she really was mostly well-behaved otherwise, and just as attentive as ever to Bucky. And anyway, sharing a bed wasn’t the worst thing. Bucky had a king size bed, there was plenty of room, even if with every night that passed they seemed to shift closer and closer together. And it was convenient, for when either of them had nightmares. No need to go across the hall or anything. Though it seemed that Bucky’s nightmares were coming less frequently.

When Sam tentatively brought it up, Bucky frowned thoughtfully.

“No…I still have nightmares,” he said slowly. “But they…linger less? If that makes sense? I wake up, and—uh, you’re there. And Alpine is. And it—helps. Don’t even need to wake you up, I just—seeing you—uh, both of you—hearing you, it helps anchor me.”

“Good,” said Sam. “I’m glad.”

Sam didn’t mind sharing a bed either, even if it did give him certain—thoughts. Thoughts he shouldn’t have been entertaining about his roommate and partner. Thoughts that seemed pretty urgent when he woke up with morning wood, with Bucky in arm’s reach.

The lines between them were blurring too much, they were too many things to each other: friends and roommates and partners, together at work and at home, awake and asleep. That the line and whatever it was keeping them from crossing it would disappear entirely started to seem inevitable.

Sam had the awful fear that letting that line disappear would strand them both in a no man’s land worse than those months of radio silence after the Blip, ruining the good and steady thing they already had, wrecking their home. 

“What the hell am I doing?” Sam whispered one morning, after Bucky had already gotten up to go shower. Alpine was curled up in the warm spot Bucky left behind, staring unblinkingly at Sam, and she mrowed at him as if in answer to his rhetorical question, and damn, how did a cat manage to sound as judgey as his sister did? Sam snorted. “Don’t give me that, you are not helping matters any.”

Alpine huffed—actually huffed! like a fussy auntie!—and narrowed her eyes into icy slits.

And maybe Sam was going crazy, but he was pretty sure Alpine’s revenge came when Bucky returned from the bathroom in only a towel, absolute acres of gleaming, smooth skin and muscles on display. This was a not infrequent sight, neither of them bothered to be shy about that kind of thing, long since used to the boring intimacies of close quarters with a team. What was infrequent was Alpine daintily hopping off the bed before proceeding to leap up and snag the towel in her claws, pulling it down before Bucky could grab it. 

Bucky yelped, Sam squeaked, and the towel fell to the ground. In the split-second before Sam slammed his eyes shut, he saw—well, he saw a lot more of Bucky than he ever had before, and it was not helping the morning wood situation at all. 

“Alpine! What are you—” said Bucky, sounding mortified, but Alpine only chirped cheerfully, and then Sam heard the patter of her little paws across the floor, and the opening of a drawer. “I don’t know what is getting into her lately! Uh, you can look now.”

Sam opened his eyes, and very nearly slammed them shut again. Because yeah, Sam could look, because Bucky was at least wearing underwear now. But it wasn’t as if Bucky’s boxer briefs so tight they might as well be booty shorts situation was much better than him being naked. God, Bucky had such long legs, it was ridiculous. He needed to wear booty shorts all the time—

Sam rolled out of bed, on the side facing away from Bucky. Yeah, no, it was past time he got his ass up, rest day or no rest day.

“I’m just gonna, uh—shower.”

And if it was a longer shower than usual, well—Bucky didn’t say anything about it.

“Maybe I need to be Captain Infrastructure instead of Captain America,” groaned Sam as he and Bucky shuffled into the house. “Just go around inspecting bridges and yelling at politicians about funding repairs. Anything to avoid any more bridges collapsing like that.”

It had been a brutal day of search and rescue after the collapse of a bridge over in Lake Charles, right in the middle of rush hour, and given how close they were, Sam and Bucky had rushed over there to help. They’d managed to rescue dozens of people from the water or from the precarious positions their cars were trapped in on the bridge; between Sam’s wings and Bucky’s strength, they could rescue people quickly without the need for any more equipment or back up. It was exactly the kind of thing Sam wanted to do as Cap, to come to the rescue, but good god was it infuriating when a disaster was the result of government inaction. He’d made sure to say as much to the press, when he and Bucky left the scene.

“People have been saying that bridge should be replaced for years,” Sam kept ranting. “Decades, even! It was rated structurally deficient!”

“Seems like the kind of thing people might listen to Captain America about,” said Bucky mildly.

“I did talk to some press at the scene,” said Sam. “But it was local press. Maybe if I could get on the big morning shows tomorrow, video conference in so this gets national attention…”

Sam pulled out his phone to start sending emails and make calls. He had a publicist now, courtesy of Pepper Potts, and while she mostly just kept an eye on his social media and fielded press inquiries, maybe Sam could ask her to help him with something more proactive.

Before Sam knew it, there was food in front of him on the kitchen table, and he ate it in between emails and calls, and it was only when he got the confirmation that he’d be on one of the morning shows tomorrow that he looked up, blinking, and realized it had been at least a couple hours. He stretched, wincing at how much he’d stiffened up. Bucky watched him with amusement in his eyes, along with something softer that Sam couldn’t name.

“You all set for tomorrow morning?”

“Yeah, I just need to pull out a nice shirt to wear for the video call.”

Bucky nodded, and cleared the plates from the table. “Go take a shower, you’re getting pretty ripe, and I am not sharing a bed with you if you still reek like lake water, I don’t care how much Alpine yells about it.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay, I’m going, I’m going,” said Sam.

By the time Sam got out of the shower, Bucky was already in bed, asleep, Alpine curled up into a perfect circle by his head, and Sam didn’t give it a second thought as he slid into bed with them, relaxing into their shared warmth, his tired muscles more eased by this than by the steaming hot shower.

Sam had to get up early to be on time for his morning interview, even if it was over Zoom, which both Bucky and Alpine protested. Bucky stayed in bed—Sam was going to assume the mumbled grumbling meant something like you’ll do great or knock ‘em dead—but Alpine joined him downstairs once he’d gotten everything set up in his office: a nice view out of the window, visible in frame, check; nothing embarrassing or messy visible in frame, check; his coffee mug sufficiently far away from the laptop to avoid disaster if it spilled, while his bullet point list of notes were right beside him, also check. He squinted at his face as reflected by the laptop’s camera: looking damn fine, his beard sharp, his edges neat, final check.

Of course, he realized what he’d failed to account for once the interview started: Alpine. 

Earlier, she’d been eating her breakfast and lounging in her usual spot in the catio, enjoying the early morning bird visitors. A few minutes into the interview, Sam hit his groove talking about how while there were plenty of unforeseeable or impossible to prevent disasters, things like a bridge collapse were preventable or simple to mitigate, if only their governments would invest in critical infrastructure repairs. The news anchor listened to him with grave focus, her brow furrowed as she nodded along with him.

Then her face changed, her brown eyes widening and eyebrows going up in the universal expression of awwww, something adorable is happening! as a smile grew on her lips.

Sam quickly realized two things:

1. He had not closed his office door, because he pretty much never closed his office door. Why would he bother? Super hearing meant Bucky would hear him no matter what, and Alpine didn’t exactly go around eating paper.

2. Something had just jumped up onto his office chair, and that something was Alpine, and now she was peering curiously into the laptop screen.

“And who is this?” cooed the news anchor.

Sam sighed, and tried to twist around to grab Alpine, but she eeled away out of his grasp to perch on his other shoulder.

“This is Alpine, Bucky’s cat,” said Sam, making some rapid mental calculations.

On the one hand, this was a distraction from the important issues he was talking about. On the other hand, this was almost certainly going to go viral, which might just lead to a lot of people seeing this one specific clip, but it might also lead to more people watching the whole interview, which would draw even more attention to the issues.

So he continued, “It seems like she also has some thoughts to share about the importance of reinvesting in our national infrastructure.”

Alpine, bless her, meowed sweetly as if in agreement, and the news anchor laughed, delighted.

“It seems she does!” she said, beaming, before getting back to business like a professional, thank fuck. “I doubt many people would disagree with you about the importance of maintaining critical infrastructure like our roads and bridges, but do you really think it’s at the top of the list of urgent issues impacting us today? And is it, pardon the expression, really in your lane as Captain America?”

“I do,” said Sam. “My predecessor, Steve Rogers, first served at a time when a world-wide war was the most pressing issue of the time. But we’re not embroiled in any such wars now, and in fact, we’re rebuilding after an enormous disaster in the form of the Blip. What we need to do is rebuild things equitably, and part of that has to be addressing some of these long-deferred repairs and maintenance before they become superhero business…”

Alpine stayed perched politely and daintily on Sam’s shoulder, perfectly in frame, as if she knew how to get her best angle, and the rest of the interview went smoothly. 

“Well, thank you so much for your time, Captain Wilson,” said the news anchor with a smile that seemed genuine. “We have just a bit of time left, would you mind telling us a bit about your feline guest there? She’s adorable! That white fur, those blue eyes!”

Sam chuckled, and gave Alpine a quick scritch.

“This is Alpine, my partner Bucky’s cat,” he said. “He found her on the street the day of the space station evacuation. He was in New York and I was on the phone with him like, ‘hey, heads up about the space ship over in Jersey, everything’s fine,’ but all he was paying attention to was getting this little one checked out at the vet. Good thing there wasn’t an alien invasion that day!”

“Aww, so she’s a rescue!”

“Yup,” said Sam, and slipped in one more PSA, because hell, might as well. “Support your local animal shelters, folks! Adopt a pet!”

“You heard it from Captain America, everyone. Contact your representatives about infrastructure, and adopt a cat!”

“Thanks for having me on!” said Sam, and signed off. He looked at Alpine, and shook his head, chuckling. “You’re probably about to become famous, baby girl.”

Alpine preened, then rubbed her head against him affectionately. As reasons for going viral went, Sam figured an adorable cat was a good one.

Kamala had held it all in during their weekend family lunch, smiling and getting away with not saying much because Aamir and Tyesha and her parents were going on about boring house buying stuff and mortgage rates and Aamir’s new job and the importance of a comprehensive property insurance policy—it must cover alien invasions! said her dad, which, yeah, fair enough. But now, after Kamala dutifully served tea to everyone in the living room, Tyesha very kindly asked about her mission to find the missing Flerken, and Kamala couldn’t take it anymore. 

“I haven’t found it! I haven’t found the Flerken! I can’t fail the first real mission Nick Fury gave me!” wailed Kamala.

“No news is good news though, no?” said her dad with an encouraging waggle of his eyebrows. “At least you know the cat is not going around eating people.”

“Yes, how important a mission can it be if the little alien cat is not dangerous?” said her mom breezily. “It’s been almost half a year, the poor thing has probably died—”

Kamala flopped back on the couch, throwing her arm over her eyes and moaning miserably. There were some scuffling noises and hastily hissed and whispered Urdu in her general vicinity.

“—or it’s someone’s spoiled and beloved pet now!” said Aamir brightly.

“It probably is dead!” groaned Kamala. “And I’m going to be looking forever just in case it’s not and the shame is going to follow me for the rest of my life! I’m a failure of a superhero! This is my villain origin story!”

“You literally just stopped those weird mutant jellyfish from killing a bunch of people on the Jersey Shore the other week,” pointed out Aamir. “That’s definitely a superhero success.”

“And I bet Carol doesn’t think you’re a failure,” said her mom. “I talked to her just last week, and she said you’re being very smart and diligent about your mission.”

Kamala straightened up. “She did?”

“She did,” confirmed her mom with an encouraging smile.

Kamala had been texting with Carol too, and keeping her up to date, and Carol had told her she was doing everything she reasonably could have been doing to find the Flerken. Also, she said, if Nick needed this done urgently, he’d have had someone else tap in, no offense, kid. 

Which was probably true, but Kamala really was doing everything she could possibly do to find the Flerken. She’d roped in basically her whole family, her friends, the mosque…everyone knew to be on the lookout for a white kitten—well, cat now, since it had been months and Flerkens grew a bit faster than Earth kittens. It was probably adult cat-sized by now. And the collective network of people represented by the mosque, her family, and friends was no joke. It stretched across the entire tristate area, with plenty of people who had some useful connection or another: assorted cousins of cousins who worked in vet’s offices, fellow students who volunteered at animal shelters, any number of immensely nosy aunties who’d be the first to hear about mysterious missing persons or tales of man-eating cats…

And Kamala wasn’t only leaving the search to gossip and her far-flung network. She and Bruno had set up a program to scrape the websites that listed pets for adoption, to deliver them a digest of results for white cats. There was a whole separate program for scraping the Nextdoors of basically the whole tristate area for reports of missing or found white cats. Whenever either of these came up with a good possible match, Aamir or Bruno or someone would drive Kamala over to inspect the cat for signs of being a secret alien. No luck so far though. 

Also, it was getting really hard to resist adopting all of the cats. They were all so cute and they needed homes and Kamala really and fully understood the whole crazy cat lady thing now. She kind of wanted to be a crazy cat lady when she grew up.

Anyway, Kamala had a bunch of Google alerts for any news stories about cats or animal attacks or missing people too. Which was, honestly, pretty depressing. Most of the missing people had nothing to do with Flerken attacks, and Kamala usually couldn’t even help find them. (Though she had helped find a couple of them: one lost older lady with dementia, and a woman who was just trying to get away from her abusive ex. Her, Kamala had let stay ‘missing’.)

Logically, Kamala knew there really wasn’t much else she could have been doing, not without fully dropping out of school and dedicating herself to the Flerken hunt 24-7. But with every day that passed, it became less and less likely they’d ever find the missing Flerken at all.

“I just don’t want to let anyone down,” said Kamala with a sigh.

“You aren’t,” her dad assured her. “I’m sure someone has adopted that alien cat, and that it’s living happily as someone’s spoiled pet without any need to go around…eating people with its tentacles.”

Other than run over by a car, this was in fact the most likely option, which Kamala tried to remind herself of often. 

“They don’t really eat people, I’m pretty sure,” said Kamala uncertainly. “They just kinda transport them to some kind of pocket dimension? Or maybe sometimes they eat them, and sometimes it’s a pocket dimension. I’m not really clear on that. But you’re right.”

By then it was time to serve another round of tea, and after that the conversation turned to the latest hot gossip divulged by Tyesha’s aunties. Kamala didn’t have much to contribute there, and she wasn’t interested either, so she muttered something about checking on the Flerken search and pulled out her phone.

And she did check on her Google alerts and search programs first, but there wasn’t much new since she’d checked that morning, and it didn’t take her that long. So she switched to checking her social media, and it didn’t take much scrolling at all before she saw it: a new Captain America interview from the day before, where he’d been interrupted by a small white cat.

She’d have written this off as a weird coincidence, but then she saw the captions on the silent video: This is Alpine, my partner Bucky’s cat. He found her on the street the day of the space station evacuation…

The noise that came out of Kamala was not unlike the sound of their teakettle reaching a boil.

“What?” asked her mom, alarmed. “Kamala, what is it?”

“Is it aliens again?!” asked her dad, sounding alarmingly excited about the prospect.

She stabbed at her phone’s screen with shaking fingers and the sound turned on. She waved the phone at her mom and shouted, “Captain America and the Winter Soldier have the Flerken!” She paused as the video started replaying. “Also I think maybe Captain America and the Winter Soldier are, like, boyfriends?”

People you never wanted to see waiting on your porch: Nick Fury and Captain Marvel aka Carol Danvers. There was also a young woman Sam didn’t recognize there, but really, Sam was focused on Nick Fury and Captain Marvel, and how their presence probably meant that the world was about to end again or something.

Bucky, Sam thought distantly, was going to be really annoyed at having his day ruined. He was out fishing with Tommy and Carlos, and then Sam and Bucky had plans to take Cass and AJ to the movies, so Sarah could go out with her own friends. Sam was pretty annoyed too, because his plan for the next couple of hours had been to chill out doing absolutely nothing but catching up on some TV. 

Goddammit, it would’ve been a really good day.  

Maybe Sam needed to be optimistic: maybe Fury and Danvers were here to recruit him and Bucky into whatever the new form of the Avengers ended up being. Maybe this was just a…friendly visit?

“So what’s the world-ending threat this time?” asked Sam once he reached them. “Androids, aliens, or wizards?”

“We’re not here about an apocalypse, thankfully,” said Fury, his lips twitching. “But seriously? That’s how you categorize your disasters?”

Sam shrugged. “Seems like it’s usually one of ‘em.”

“He’s not wrong,” said Danvers with a grin. “I don’t think we ever met properly, I’m Carol Danvers.”

“And I’m Kamala Khan! I mean—Ms. Marvel!” said the young woman—teenager, surely— who was practically vibrating with excitement.

“We’re here about your cat,” said Fury.

Of all the things Sam expected Fury to want to talk about, Bucky’s cat was somewhere close to last on the list.

“...What?”

“Let’s talk about it inside,” suggested Fury.

They talked about it inside.

On the plus side, the world wasn’t ending, and no other disasters were imminent.

On the downside…

“...the cat is an alien?” said Sam faintly, glad he was sitting down for this conversation.

He devoutly hoped this was the weirdest and most surreal conversation that would ever take place in this living room, because Sam did not want to know how things could get weirder than this.

“Yup,” said Danvers.

“But she—Alpine, she—she does normal cat stuff! She’s been a—a normal cat!” protested Sam. Then he thought for a second and added, “Mostly. She’s mostly been a normal cat.”

Danvers shrugged. “Sure. Flerkens are pretty much indistinguishable from a normal Earth cat. Their alien parts are kinda…extradimensional. They’re pretty smart though, they’re just not all that interested in doing much other than normal cat things.”

“But they can be very dangerous,” said Fury seriously. “You must’ve been lucky so far, but their scratches are pretty damn toxic to humans, and they’ve got tentacles—”

“Where?” asked Sam, baffled, because he was pretty damn sure he and Bucky would’ve noticed tentacles on a cat Alpine’s size. Where the hell would she even have room to put them? 

“Flerkens are bigger on the inside,” said Kamala helpfully. “Like a TARDIS.”

“A what now?”

“The tentacles are…inside. And when a Flerken eats something, it can transport it to a kind of…pocket dimension,” said Fury. “Helpful when you’re trying to evacuate a whole space station with limited emergency shuttles. Dangerous when a Flerken goes around eating people willy nilly. But I suppose you or Barnes would’ve noticed that.”

“Yeah, no, we definitely would’ve noticed that. Man, my sister and nephews cat sit Alpine!”

“There’s a chance it’s just a normal cat,” said Danvers, not sounding particularly convinced. “Where is Alpine anyway?”

“Let me see if I can find her,” said Sam. It wasn’t like her to hide, but maybe three new people was just too many new people at once.

Of course, the moment he said that, Alpine came creeping into the living room, hackles up and hissing, her tail straight up and her fur spiky.

Well, that was alarming.

“Alpine, baby girl, these are my…uh, colleagues. You wanna come say hi?”

Alpine did not want to say hi. Alpine wanted to open a maw of what looked like multiple nested mouths that released a cluster of waving tentacles. Kamala squeaked and brought up some kind of brightly colored shield out of nowhere, and the tentacles slammed into it.

“Yep, that’s a Flerken,” said Danvers mildly.

“Alpine! No eating people!” said Sam, dismayed.

The tentacles disappeared, and she was just a sweet little white cat again, her hackles slowly lowering. He walked toward her carefully, and was somewhat surprised when she leapt into his arms.

“She’s been well-behaved then?” asked Fury. “No behavior problems, no eating people?”

Sam abruptly recalled the missing neo-Nazi Agent Hawkins had been looking for. Had Alpine…? Well, Sam certainly wasn’t about to narc on her if so.

“No, she’s been a perfect angel,” he lied, as a mental slideshow of all of Alpine’s many mischiefs played back in his head.

Fury raised his eyebrows and gave Sam a skeptical look. “There isn’t a cat alive that’s a perfect angel,” he said. 

“She gets up to the normal amount of cat mischief,” Sam conceded. “You know, stealing socks, yelling a lot, knocking things over.”

Fury hummed, and stared at Alpine with narrow-eyed consideration.

“You can’t take her from us,” Sam blurted out. “Bucky adores this cat. Like, seriously, he loves her so much. And she’s so good for him! They—they really take care of each other, you know? Like, she makes sure he eats, and cheers him up when he’s sad, and helps Buck stick to a routine, and he’s so good with her, always talks to her like she can understand—I, uh, guess she actually can?” Danvers nodded, and Sam continued, “She’s practically a therapy animal!” Alpine meowed piteously in agreement.

“Wilson—” Fury tried to interrupt, but Sam kept going, like he was a mediocre lawyer whose client’s freedom hinged on his slapdash closing statement.

“And seriously, if you take away Bucky’s cat, he will go full John Wick. I am not even kidding. He will go on a rampage for this cat, he will make the HYDRA assassin stuff look like a warmup,” Sam said wildly. “And that would—god, that would be—such a setback.” To Sam’s horror, his voice actually cracked. “He’s been doing so well, you know? He’s healing, he’s recovering, he’s so much happier now. He smiles every day! He laughs too! Multiple times a day! And he has a really cute laugh! Everyone in town loves him!”

Kamala’s eyes had gone very big by now, but Danvers’ expression was blank and stony, while Fury just looked exasperated and annoyed. This was clearly not going well. Sam shared a wild-eyed glance with Alpine, who chirped encouragingly.

So Sam barreled on, “Alpine has helped Bucky trust himself!” He used one arm to gesture around the living room. “He’s actually decorated the house! Do you understand how major that is? He wants things for himself, he’s been making friends, he—he feels safe enough to make a home here! And if he loses Alpine, after he’s already lost so much—” And oh god, Sam was choking up now, he was getting actually teary-eyed, and yet he couldn’t make himself stop. “He’s lost everything already, you can’t take away his cat, he’ll be so sad. I love him so much, and if—”

Wait, he should not have said that last thing.

Shit, it was true though wasn’t it, Sam was in love with Bucky—

Not important right now. Sam needed to make a plan. They both had go bags ready, they could take Alpine and run—

“Wilson! We are not taking away the cat!” barked Fury.

“You what?” said—oh shit, Bucky.

Sam whipped around to face the front door, and found Bucky there, slack-jawed and wide-eyed. Sam clutched Alpine to his chest, and he and Bucky just stared at each other for a long moment.

“Um, so. Alpine is an alien cat. Apparently,” said Sam haltingly. “I thought Fury was here to take her, but—”

“She seems to be happy and well-behaved, so you two can keep her,” said Fury with a shrug.

“Okay,” said Bucky, his eyes still fixed on Sam. Then, bafflingly, he said, “God, Ayo was right. I, uh—I love you too?”

Now it was Sam’s turn to be slack-jawed and flabbergasted. Bucky lurched towards Sam, and Sam moved towards him too, Alpine hopping down from his arms as he went, and then they were in each other’s arms. They didn’t kiss though, not quite yet: they rested their foreheads together and breathed for a moment, and then, completely in sync, they leaned in and kissed, sweet and easy and simple as opening the door to come back home.

It was a reverent and gentle kind of first kiss, and every last bit of uncertainty Sam had felt about this thing between them fell away. It was as if he’d shed weight that had been keeping him earthbound, and now he could float and fly away off into the clouds. Judging by the soft and blissful expression on Bucky’s face, he felt the same way.

“This is the most romantic thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” said Kamala in a hushed tone, beaming with joy and awe, and Sam and Bucky startled simultaneously as they remembered they weren’t alone.

Danvers’ blank expression finally broke into a surprisingly mischievous and cheerful sidelong grin when she said, “Same.”

Alpine meowed too, musical and happy. In yet another bizarre and surreal moment in a day already too full of them, when Sam looked over, Fury was crouched down petting her. 

“Aww, you’re a sweetheart, aren’t you?” said Fury in, good god, actual baby talk? And he was actually smiling? Wow.

After one final nuzzle against Fury’s hand, Alpine trotted over to Bucky, and jumped and climbed up him to perch in her habitual position on his shoulder.

Bucky cleared his throat, his cheeks flushed adorably pink. “So Alpine is an…alien cat?”

“Yep, a Flerken,” said Danvers. “Her mom, Goose, lives with me.”

“Do we have to—I mean, is she like, uh, that talking raccoon guy…?” stammered Bucky, clearly reaching his limit for weirdness for the day.

“She can’t talk, if that’s what you mean,” said Fury dryly. “But she’s pretty smart, and can mostly look after herself. Seems like she’s happy to stay with you two though, and that’s fine by me. Just make sure she doesn’t go around eating people.”

Danvers grinned at them, her eyes sparkling. “I kinda live in the neighborhood actually, so call me, we can go over the care and feeding of Flerkens some time.” She turned to Kamala, still grinning. “Kamala, looks like your mission has been accomplished. Wanna celebrate with some ice cream?”

“And a debrief,” added Fury, his voice stern but his lips twitching with a smile. 

“Yeah, okay!” said Kamala, and Danvers, Fury, and Kamala made their exit. On their way out, Kamala turned back around to beam at them some more, and Sam couldn’t help but smile back when she said, “Congratulations on inventing love!”

Bucky actually laughed, and slung an arm around Sam’s waist. “Inventing love, huh? I kinda don’t mind the sound of that.”

Sam laughed too, and turned to press a quick kiss to Bucky’s stubbly cheek, delighted that that was the kind of thing he could do now. Alpine meowed as if to join in and nuzzled her cheek against Bucky’s, then she hopped over to Sam’s shoulder and did the same to him, chirping happily. Or more like…smugly. She jumped back down to the ground and trotted off, her tail swishing with downright jaunty satisfaction.

With the new knowledge that Alpine was not, in fact, a normal cat, her recent “terrible teen phase” took on a whole different context.

“Buck, do you think—if Alpine’s some kind of smart alien cat, do you think she’s been matchmaking us?!”

Bucky groaned. “Fuck, she has, she totally has,” he said. “And it actually worked! Sam, we’ll never live it down!”

“You know what, I do not care,” said Sam. “We have been literally sleeping together for weeks, time to actually sleep with each other, and Alpine is not invited.”

“Yeah, okay,” said Bucky quickly. He licked his lips and his eyes darkened, and suddenly all the sweetness of their confessions and first kiss turned into something devastatingly sexy. This time when they kissed, it was with the hungry delight of two people finally getting the meal they’d been craving for months.

They kissed and kissed, and were nowhere near getting their fill. Sam took Bucky by the hand and led him upstairs, shuddering as Bucky was unable to bear even that much distance, kissing the back of Sam’s neck as they went.

Of course, Alpine was waiting for them by Bucky’s—their?—bedroom, sitting primly at the door, her tail curled decorously around her. Sam really hoped she didn’t intend to be their chaperone. Oh god, did they need to give her a sex talk?

“Alpine,” said Bucky, exasperated. “Thanks for the help sweetheart, but could you maybe give your daddies some alone time now?”

Her daddies. To Sam’s embarrassment, this identification delighted and touched him far more than it had any right to.

“Yeah, thanks baby girl, but we can take it from here,” he told Alpine.

Alpine accepted these thanks as her due with a regal inclination of her head, and then she meowed graciously and trotted away, satisfied. 

“We did this all out of order,” said Sam ruefully as they undressed each other on the way to the bed. “Fought each other, met each other, fought with each other, work partners, moved in together, shared a bed, and now we’re finally getting together…”

Sam expected Bucky to crack some dry joke or another, but instead, Bucky cupped his hands around Sam’s face.

“We needed to make a home together first,” he said, and then let out a long and shuddering breath, and rested his forehead against Sam’s. “Thank you for making a home with me.”

“No, thank you,” said Sam shakily. “And Buck, whatever else happens, however this works out—promise me we’ll keep the home we’ve made.”

Sam didn’t even mean this house, specifically. It could blow down around their ears in the next storm, and they’d still have a home. But if this new thing between them went wrong, if this was a miscalculation—

“I promise,” said Bucky, and when they fell into bed together, this time to do anything but sleep, they finally found a wholly new and lovely kind of home in each other’s bodies.