Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Has anyone seen my good pen?"

Steve, next to the cash register, momentarily pauses counting the bills inside to scan the wooden bar near him. A few steps away, Natasha likewise pauses her polishing of the bottles on the back wall shelves to look around.

"No," she says after a beat, and Steve echoes her. Clint sighs and goes back to digging through every nook and cranny behind the bar.

"Knowing my luck, it probably fell behind the cooler. Damn. I really liked that pen."

Now that the early shift silence is broken, though, Steve knows it's only a matter of time until Natasha's attention turns to him.

"You don't have to start," he offers.

"Oh, but I want to. Even though I know not starting is how you've been approaching the whole matter, that strategy doesn't work for everyone."

"Look, I just—I tried online dating, okay? Didn't work out."

"Jenny was nice."

"Jenny was nice," he agrees, "but she wasn't for me and I wasn't what she was looking for. Besides, Jenny was theonly nice one. Do I need to bring up Miranda again?"

Natasha has the decency to shudder. "Yeah, that was…that was my bad. At least we were around to help you escape."

"And witness that entire train wreck," Clint puts in. "Did you ever get that wine stain out of your shirt?"

"No, and thanks for the reminder. I liked that shirt."

"Maybe there's one just like it by my pen."

"Maybe." He refocuses on Natasha. "I'm fine, really. Taking a break."

"A break implies you intend for it to end."

"And I do. Eventually."

"You can't expect to find another Peggy. She's one of a kind."

"Believe me, I know."

Clint gives up on his search and stands, knuckling his back with a groan. "Okay, I tried."

"I'm sure the pen will forgive you."

"Eventually," adds Natasha, her sly little smile earning a performative roll of Steve's eyes.

Clint rolls his shoulder and glances at the racks with their glassware with a critical eye. "Thanks. I'm gonna go grab some extra glasses."

Natasha raises an eyebrow at him. "As long as you don't break them too."

"It was an accident!"

"Tell that to the glass I had to sweep up."

"I'm sensing a lack of trust. Fine. Steve, you mind? Apparently, I'm not trusted to carry glassware anymore."

Steve chuckles and sets aside the stack. "Sure. I just finished here, anyway."

"Trust me enough to check his work, Nat?"

"I'll allow it."

"You're too kind."

Their ribbing follows Steve back into the kitchen, where he exchanges nods with Dugan, Morita, Jones, and Falsworth. The four cooks are, as always, chaotic but effective in their work. Tony's establishment isn't renowned for its food, but no one ever complains about it either. Besides, it's easier to appreciate good music on a full stomach.

He goes to the shelves against the back wall and scans the wire racks until he finds the small box. As he'd suspected, the glasses haven't been cleaned. He sighs, picks up the box, and hauls it over to the dishwashing station.

"Hey," he offers to Scott. "Mind taking care of these?"

The guy straightens up and extracts his hands from what Steve can only assume is some kind of torture device given the amount of steam and how red his skin is above his gloves. But Scott doesn't seem to notice the state of himself and just grins. "Yeah, no problem. I thought we were a little light on glassware at the end of the night yesterday, and I wasn't even grabbing any this time. Clint struck again?"

"Clint struck again."

"Say no more, compadre. If you unpack 'em and set 'em over there, I'll have these ready in no time."

Steve does as asked, claps Scott on the back in appreciation, and wanders back out to the bar. Technically, he's only kind of an employee—he's on the payroll as a consultant solely so Tony doesn't catch flak for letting his friend wander all over the place. There's nothing in his nonexistent job description that requires him to lend a hand to whomever needs it. But he likes helping, and it sure beats sitting awkwardly in the back with a blank sketchbook waiting for the first band to roll in.

Speaking of, there is now a band up with Tony and Pepper by the stage. The sharply dressed owner and manager, respectively, are deep in conversation with the band members, though Tony's professional look is somewhat marred by the fact he's rolled his sleeves up to his elbows. Whatever they're talking about was even enough to distract Tony from tinkering with the machinery that makes the stage's many floor panels move. The band showing up means customers will start rolling in very soon, so Steve picks up the pace. He's gotta claim his usual table in the back before someone else does.

"No glasses?" Nat questions when Steve gets close.

"Scott's washing them now. They were still in the box."

"Aw," Clint groans, "knew there was something I forgot to do. Sorry, Nat. That's on me."

"It's fine, we have time before the rush. Did you track down that extra shaker?"

"Yup. Somehow rolled over there. Inside's still clean, though."

Sensing his role is done, Steve leaves them to their logistics, grabs his backpack from where he'd tucked it under the bar, and finds his table. Settling into a chair angled to give him a good view of the stage, he rifles in his backpack for his sketchbook, pencil, and eraser. Right as he's setting it all on the table in front of him, he sees one of the band members approaching him.

Steve greets the guy with a smile. "Hey, Tony point you to me?"

"You're Steve, right?"

"That's me." He stands and sticks out his hand. The kid—he can't be older than nineteen—takes it and shakes. "Interested in some art for your band?"

"Yeah, Mr. Stark said you give discounts to first-time acts?" It's a statement but he tilts the end like a question. Steve nods.

"I do, depending on the complexity of what you're asking for. Here, let me give you my card. It's got my website on it with more details about the commissioning process—when you're done with your set, talk to Tony and he'll give you the discount code. You can take a look at what I do, and if you like it, reach out to me with that code and we can talk details. How's that sound?"

He's gone digging in his backpack as he talks, and when he ends, he holds out one of his cards. The kid looks a little relieved that he doesn't have to hammer out all the details now and takes the card—a simple black-text-on-white-background affair on one side, but a riot of color on the other—with enthusiasm. "That sounds great, thank you so much!"

"Hey, not a problem. Good luck up there."

"Thanks!"

The kid jogs back to his bandmates, who are wrapping up their setup. Mic checks abound and Tony stays up there to troubleshoot any last-second issues, but Pepper wanders over to join Steve.

"Hello again," she declares, dropping into a chair.

"Hello again," he responds. "Long day?"

"Very long. Sysco is being," she twists her lips and then says diplomatically, "annoying this month. Plus there's the whole business with the safe pickup debacle, as though we control who decides to double-park on a one-way street." She blows out a breath. "That's mostly a problem for tomorrow, though. I'm washing my hands of it for now. How are you?"

"Better than you, it sounds like. Just working through commissions."

"I saw the band sent their singer to chat. Are they interested?"

"Interested, sure. Everyone wants a bit of art. Dunno if they'll follow through, though. I think most of them forget."

"Things come up," Pepper says with a shrug. "Such is life."

"It is what it is. I'll survive."

"Plenty of other commissions on the docket?"

"Honestly, I think I took too many. That's why I've been heading home early the last couple weeks; sorry I haven't been able to stay for the later bands. I just had work."

"No worries at all," she dismisses with a wave of her hand. "We usually put the returning acts later anyway; they know where to find you if they want your services. I think it's been a while since I last said it, so, I hope you know how much Tony and I appreciate you making yourself available like this. You've already done plenty for the venue."

"It's no problem. I really do enjoy commission work, and band logos and promotional art are pretty different than my usual fare. It's a nice change of pace."

She smiles and pats him on the shoulder as she stands. "Still, thank you. Now, I have a truly heinous number of emails waiting in my inbox, so I'll probably be in my office the rest of the night."

"I'll keep an eye on Tony."

"I really do appreciate you."

He grins as she heads for the short hallway in the back leading to the restrooms and, beyond that, the employee-only spaces that make any restaurant tick. Without anything else to do and anyone else asking for his attention, he pops open his sketchbook and starts on some warm-ups to get himself ready for whatever catches his eye tonight.

While he scratches away at the page, patrons trickle in. The bar is the first stop for most—a lot of the time, larger parties of four or more arrive in ones and twos, and the first to arrive hang out by the bar until the rest show up. Slowly but surely, though, the tables start to fill up too. Clint and Natasha are holding down the bar while the servers who are on tonight, Bruce and Thor, are working the tables without any signs of trouble.

Bruce catches Steve looking his way while he's walking back to the server's station next to the bar and waves. Steve waves back, then settles in his seat since Tony is getting back up on stage to greet the restaurant and introduce the first band. It's a routine Steve's observed so many times that he doesn't hear most of it until the band is launching into their first song.

Like most bands that perform here, their sound isn't exactly polished, but it's got heart. It's a good choice for an opener; relatively light, erring on pop, with an energy that'll set up the act to follow nicely. He does a few quick studies of the lead singer posing with the mic, the guitarist sharing that mic for some brief duet verses, and a random couple dressed far and away fancier than any of the other patrons. They must've come from somewhere else, he figures, or they're just the type to enjoy dressing up. Either way, the woman's dress is a nice exercise in keeping a pattern symmetrical at an angle.

As the band is getting toward the end of their set, the next band is getting set up behind them. Tony's engineered the stage so bands with heavier equipment—especially drum kits—can slide out a panel, get their gear set up, and slide that panel back in without interrupting the current act. It works particularly well when bands with kits are going back-to-back, and with Tony right there supervising, it goes smoothly.

Steve's made it through several sketchbook pages and the second band of the night is wrapping up when Sam strolls in. He joins Steve at the back and they nod at each other, waiting to speak until the band is done and Tony has done his post-set thanking routine.

"Hey, sorry I'm late. Had to stay way too long to get ahold of an insurance company."

"What was it this time?"

"Coverage rejection for something they already covered last year. The usual bullshit. We're disputing it, but they're being ridiculous with the paperwork they're demanding."

"Think it'll work out?"

"Yeah, it's just going to be frustrating the whole time, and they'll probably pull the same thing next year. I didn't know what to tell the vet who's dealing with the fallout. We both know it's not gonna get better."

"I'm sorry."

Sam shrugs. "We just do what we can. So," he leans forward and props his elbow on the table. "Sitting here all by yourself, handsome?"

"Don't you start too. Pepper was here."

"Does Tony know?"

"Stop, good lord. You're gonna get me kicked out."

"All right, all right. I kid. How's the music tonight?"

"Pretty good. I liked the first band, and they took my card."

"This band didn't?"

"Probably not interested. They've already got a logo." Steve points with his pencil at the drummer's bass drum, which has some kind of mechanical part as a logo with the band name over it. Sam leans forward and squints.

"What does that…does that say 'Unsecured Lug Nut'?"

"It's a new one, for sure."

"I kinda like it."

"They opened with a Weird Al cover."

"That tracks, and now I'm sad I missed it."

They fall into light chatter. Steve learns about the progress Sam's sister is making on their parents' boat down in Louisiana, Sam's prowess with copy machine repairs, and the usual joys of New York's subway system. All the while the third band is getting set up, and Steve catches a brunette drummer out of the corner of his eye. His breath catches and he looks closer, only for reality to hit. The drummer is, for one, a woman, and for two, wearing a tube top and ankle-length skirt.

When he looks back at Sam, the man is giving him a knowing look. "Peripheral vision is a hell of a drug, huh?"

Steve feels his face getting red and buys himself a second by drinking the water Bruce was kind enough to drop off a while back.

"Look," Sam says, dropping his voice a little, "if me giving you a hard time about your love life is, y'know, overstepping or anything—"

"No, no, it's fine." Steve flips to a clean page. "It's been almost a decade. There was even Peggy in the middle. I should get over it. You and Nat and everyone else are perfectly in the right to poke me about pining after a guy who could be dead for all I know; I'm not gonna get mad."

"Your call. If it makes you feel any better, I think I finally ran out of quips about childhood friend Hallmark movie plots."

"That makes me feel so much better, thanks. Do you think Nat's run out too?"

"Absolutely not. Hey, look, she's even chatting up a guy right now."

Steve looks where Sam's looking and sure enough, Natasha is talking to another brunette at the bar while mixing drinks for other patrons. At least this one's a man. Steve can only see the guy's back from this angle, but those are some broad shoulders under the leather jacket. No wonder Nat's taken a liking to him. Unlike Steve, she's having no trouble attracting attention from interested parties, even though he knows she only does it for the extra tips it gets her. Clint is right there, after all.

That is a high-quality jacket, actually. Steve recognizes the brand; he had been eyeing it to replace the one he's got that's falling apart. He doesn't want to go biking in the New York summer in his heavy winter jacket because he's waited too long to replace his mesh one.

"Like what you see?"

"I recognize the jacket," Steve admits truthfully.

"Uh-huh, sure."

By the time the fourth band is puttering around the stage, Steve's exchanged his water for a beer and has filled another four pages of his sketchbook with drawings, some of which he even likes. A glance at the clock shows him it's getting late; the bands have been consistently running behind in their sets after the third act ran long and someone tripped over a power cable, so now it's almost eight.

He should probably head out now—he promised himself he wouldn't stay past eight and he doesn't want to leave while someone's playing

"Huh, looks like something's wrong."

Steve follows Sam's gaze to where one of the next band's members is talking to Tony, the both of them looking pretty pensive. The band before them wrapped up already, leaving the restaurant soundscape holding just the quiet murmur of conversation and radio music.

"Wonder what."

"Probably a numbers thing. They're down a man—guitarist, bassist, uh, accordion player, but I don't see someone paying any attention to those drums."

Tony gestures, says something, gestures more, and so on until the band member is nodding. Tony claps him on the shoulder, grabs a mic, and hops up onto the stage. He turns it on and taps the end a couple times to get the room's attention.

"Hello, hello, sorry to interrupt your conversations but we have an unexpected opportunity for audience participation tonight. No, this isn't karaoke night, you can save that excitement for Tuesdays. Our friends here usually bring a drummer with them, but thanks to unfortunately urgent personal reasons, they are now without. They have his equipment, as you can see, so if anyone here is a drummer who feels up to performing live…?"

Sam sucks in a breath through his teeth. "Pretty sure I had nightmares about that kind of thing as a kid. Surprise, you're presenting in front of the whole school and you didn't see it coming."

One of the other bandmembers taps Tony's shoulder and whispers something too quiet for the mic to catch. Tony nods.

"Right, they can do popular covers, they say, so you won't be flying completely blind. Well, any takers? C'mon, I recognize some of you. Look at me. Not you, Coulson, I know you don't play."

Nervous laughter, in which Steve participates. Coulson, an older server who got called in about an hour ago when the rush proved heavier than expected for a weekday, offers a self-deprecating shrug and smile. Tony keeps working the crowd, trying to ease the tension to make it less intimidating for any volunteers.

"Zimmer? Nah, we don't need a whole orchestra. They've already got an accordion. Hey, worst-case, I get on that stage and wow all of you with my killer triangle skills. How about cowbell? I do a mean slide whistle."

Nothing but awkward silence answers him. The band members wince.

There's a bit of motion at the bar, a hissed "hey!" Steve looks over to see Natasha raising someone else's arm—one of the patrons, that brunette Steve noticed before. Steve's spot in the rear of the place still isn't conducive to getting a good look at anything other than his back, but he can imagine the surprised and probably annoyed look on his face based on that one hey alone.

"Do we have a taker?" Tony asks, an undertone to his voice when he frowns at Natasha. The band members all perk up. "Please, don't let my second favorite redhead bully you into doing anything you don't want to do. She isn't the one who pays if I get sued."

More scattered laughter and a clear invitation to back down if he wants.

Natasha lets the brunette's hand go and Steve just knows Tony's going to have red pepper flakes dumped into his next drink. That hand stays up for a second more before sinking back down. The brunette himself, though, stands. A grin splits Tony's face.

"Is that a yes?"

"Yeah." The man's voice is rough but smooths out when he clears his throat. "Yeah, I can help out."

Cheers go up. Sam raises his glass with an appreciative hoot that Steve echoes.

"Amazing!" Tony declares. "You, sir, are the savior of this next hour's entertainment. Gentlemen," he turns to the band, "take five to get yourselves introduced and sorted out. The rest of you," he turns that perfectly polished smile on the restaurant, "one free drink from the board on me, should you want it, as an apology for this snafu."

Another even more enthusiastic cheer goes up. Steve eyes "the board"—a blackboard mounted above the bar with the specially discounted drinks for the night. Usually bottom-shelf, Tony keeps things interesting by occasionally including something nicer. Looks like there isn't anything his wallet will actually feel tonight, though.

"Want anything?" Sam asks.

"Nah, I'll stick with my beer."

"C'mon, that stuff is basically water."

"Suits me fine. I still have work I need to get done tonight."

"Right, right, gotta draw sober and all that."

"I'm not working on non-digital commissions drunk," Steve laughs. "I learned my lesson after doing the bathroom."

"I fail to see how that would make you not do that, but fair enough. Be back in a sec."

He refocuses on his sketch of the empty stage. There's enough room left on the page for more of the scene, so he puts in the rough shapes of the band huddled off to one side, the leather-clad brunette awkwardly extending the circle. It's still a bad angle, but at least now Steve can see part of his face. He's got stubble, but Steve's too far away to pick out eye color or much beyond his profile under the hair escaping from its bun. Still, he sketches what he can before the band finishes their prep and scatters to their instruments.

The lights in the restaurant dim a little while those by the stage brighten. Steve's breath catches.

"Something wrong?" Sam asks quietly as he drops back into his seat.

"No, no." There's no possible way he can say the random drummer looks like a grown version of his childhood friend without sounding desperate and lonely. He's just sensitive about it because both Natasha and Sam have been needling him lately and because of that other drummer earlier. Besides, even as a kid, Bucky had been meticulous about his looks. The long hair and stubble aren't his style.

Then again, Steve thinks dryly, it's been a decade. What the hell does he know about Bucky's style anymore? It's not like he dresses the same as he did at fourteen. There's way more plaid now and far fewer sports jerseys…though the latter is probably just because he's no longer getting hand-me-downs from Bucky.

As the band starts on a cover of Pull the Pin by Hydra—he just knows he's going to hear Clint groaning about uninspired choices later, the song's popularity and good odds of being known by random drummers be damned—Steve wonders if the Bucky of today would recognize him. He was a scrawny kid, after all, and if not for that experimental gene therapy to thin out the long list of maladies he enrolled in when he turned eighteen, he'd probably still be scrawny. He's not exactly being hunted for a spot in any weightlifting contests these days, but he's six feet tall and strong. People look at him and think college athlete. Natasha of all people thought he played lacrosse in college, and she'd somehow correctly pegged Sam as a psychology and psychiatry double major and VA counselor after all of five minutes.

So, yeah. Compared to when he risked an asthma attack just going up the stairs, his current existence is a little crazy. It's been a few years since he last got the feeling, but there was a time he struggled to recognize himself. Bucky wouldn't stand a chance.

He's finished the sketch. The empty stage and the huddled band with their new recruit don't fit the current reality; the stage is full of life while the band works through their opening song. They're not the best Steve's ever heard perform here, and they're a little awkward up on stage, but they're solid enough. When they wrap up Pull the Pin, they check on something with the drummer, who nods.

What comes next has to be an original song because Steve's never heard it before and because it prominently features that accordion. Steve raises his eyebrows when the drummer participates with barely a beat of hesitation once the bass kicks in for the intro. He's truly, actually improvising on the spot; after Pull the Pin, Steve had expected more covers. Apparently, that was just the warm-up so they could all get a feel for each other.

Sam lets out a quiet whistle. "He's good."

"Yeah." Steve feels bad—this is supposed to be about the band, not their surprise guest feature—but he can't help watching the drummer. His expression is one of total focus. His eyes occasionally dart up from his kit to check on the rest of the band like a soldier assessing the battlefield so he can adjust his sound accordingly. The singer steps back and breathes deep for a sudden surge; the drummer notices, effortlessly transitions to a fill, and then matches that energy for—

"He's doing a goddamn polyrhythm," Tony complains, dropping into one of the open seats at their table. Steve hadn't even seen him walking over. "Scratch that, multiple polyrhythms and mixing in syncopations too, all on the fly. Look at him. He's barely even trying and he's playing circles around them."

"Kinda rude, isn't it?" asks Sam. "Showing them up like that."

Steve shakes his head, still looking at that expression of pure concentration, at the attention he's paying to the band, the way he's matching nearly their every move and anticipating the rest. He's keeping time perfectly no matter how complicated his playing gets. He's a machine. "I think that's just how he plays. It works for the song." Hell, he thinks to himself, it elevates the damn thing. "Where'd you find this guy, Tony?"

"Me? The bar. Ask Natasha if you want his life story. She was the one chatting him up."

Natasha is still dealing with people taking up Tony's offer of a free drink. Steve will have to ask her later. If the guy is part of his own band, Steve's inclined to offer him a free piece of promo art as thanks for stepping up like this. And maybe, just maybe, Steve wants to know more about the guy who keeps making him think of Bucky. The play style is different—Bucky had always been a bit wild, throwing his arms and sticks around and putting his whole body into his playing with a beaming grin on his face when it all came together, but this guy is perfectly controlled even as he pulls off combinations that would have lesser drummers throwing their sticks in frustration. The one concession Steve can see to reality is the barest of smirks curling his lips. Or maybe he's imagining it, using the distance to the stage to see what isn't there.

As he's watching—not staring—he catches a glint of silver around the man's neck. A necklace? It's tucked under his shirt, and even Steve can't excuse the amount of ogling required to puzzle out the shape of the pendant pressing through the fabric.

The song wraps up and even the band is taking a second to slap their drummer on the back and shoulders, enthusiastically hyping him up while the crowd voices its appreciation. The drummer takes it all with a thin, somewhat strained smile. Steve's fingers twitch with the urge to capture that smile. He wonders what it looks like when he smiles big and wide and true.

He wonders when, exactly, he lost his goddamn mind.

Halfway through the next song, another original the drummer is backing in stride with less technical wizardry than the last, he looks up to do another one of his scans. Only, this time, the singer is positioned so when the drummer looks at the singer, his eyes seem to look straight at Steve. They really seem to catch.

He fumbles his rhythm.

One beat, two, and then he's looking back at his kit and drumming like nothing happened but Steve's heart is pounding in his chest. A glance at Sam shows the other man noticed the stutter too. What was that? He resists the urge to look behind him. Probably just a stumble from looking away from his kit while reaching far for a crash cymbal.

But the drummer's eyes keep going to him throughout the song, and then the next, and the next. Quick and fleeting, and he doesn't stumble again, but Steve sure does. His sketch of the drummer jamming away that he doesn't even remember starting gets even messier. He keeps looking up wondering if he's about to catch his eye again. And he does.

"Dude," Sam says when the band takes a short water break just past the halfway point in their set, "you're staring."

Steve resolutely points his eyes at his sketchbook and not the drummer, who'd been draining a water bottle offered by one of his temporary bandmates. Good thing Tony had to go deal with some issue in the kitchen or this would be unbearably mortifying. "No, I'm not."

"You are." Sam leans forward, a cheeky grin tugging at his lips. "So is he."

Steve doesn't take the bait and look. He doesn't. But he almost does. "Real mature."

"I'm telling the truth! We've finally found one who caught your eye."

"That's not what's going on."

Grin widening, Sam sits back and holds up his phone. The time flashes on screen: eight-thirty-seven. Over half an hour after Steve's self-imposed limit for the night. He should be at home working on commissions right now.

"It's not like that," Steve tries. "I just want to stay to support them. It had to be embarrassing, realizing they didn't have a drummer."

A handful of people had walked out when Tony made that pronouncement. Steve never wants to be that person if he can help it.

"Right, which is why you're doing the very normal thing of packing up and quietly ducking out during a break." Sam stops and pointedly raises an eyebrow at Steve's lack of action. "Admit it: it's like that."

"It's not," Steve insists.

"Yeah? Let's see that sketchbook. C'mon, lemme look. I bet I won't find anything featuring our leather-clad friend."

Steve pointedly flips his sketchbook closed and shoves it into his bag. He drinks his water and just as pointedly ignores Sam's victorious grin.

Steve spends the rest of the set continuing to ignore Sam and trying to be very normal about watching a band play. That's all this is: a band playing. He's witnessed this dozens and dozens of times. This time doesn't have to be special if he doesn't want it to be. So what if the drummer is far and away the most technically gifted drummer to ever hit that stage? So what if he sometimes looks like he's looking right at Steve? With the lights and the whole restaurant between them, he could be looking at the wall for all Steve knows. It doesn't mean anything. It doesn't. He's not that lonely and he's definitely not that desperate.

When the final song wraps up and the applause dies down, Tony strolls up onto the stage to make the transition into some downtime while the next band gets set up.

"All right, all right. Love the enthusiasm. Thank you, Neighbor of the Beast, for that great set! Talk about the devil's luck, huh?" He gets a few strained chuckles for that one. Steve debates throwing his pencil and decides against it; the pencil's too nice. "And a special shoutout to our brave drummer," Tony pauses and glances behind him, but that volunteer doesn't step forward. In fact, he's nowhere to be seen. "Who voluntarily did something that is I'm sure a recurring nightmare for some of us, and did it excellently," Tony recovers smoothly. "Once again, Neighbor of the Beast!"

Applause goes up around the whole place one more time while the band awkwardly mixes salutes and waves and bows. They'll have to work on their endings, Steve muses absently, but his attention roams the whole front end of the room. Where'd the drummer go?

Chapter Text

If Bucky keeps his eyes on the space immediately in front of his knees, he can pretend it's just him and his drums. He can pretend every swish of his sticks and pump of a pedal is isolated to this tiny little world.

But he can't do that. He needs to pay attention. Needs to look up, look around. Needs to know if Rumlow or Zemo or especially Schmidt is about to pull some shit and change the gig. Schmidt already decided to splice together Tundraand Lady Luck in the Chamber with zero warning tonight. No doubt the sound engineers want to kill him as much as Bucky does; the metronome track in their ears had been completely off for a good twenty seconds and it had fallen to Bucky to keep the backbone of the song intact.

It's an ego contest every single time, and while the fans eat it up, it's frankly goddamn exhausting. The drummer's the glue holding the song—songs, sometimes—together, which is great and all right up until the song is trying to pull itself apart and the drummer is starting to think he wasn't cut out to be Atlas.

So he looks up as they go from chorus to bridge and tries to see if Zemo is about to launch into a solo. Even with the black paint around his eyes taking the edge off the glaring stage lights, he has to squint to see the purple-masked man a couple yards away. Past him, a sea of people packed into the stadium reach him only as a mass of shadows sporadically interrupted by flash photography and glowsticks. Their shouts and cheers are a dull roar pressing against his earbuds.

Zemo's not stepping forward. No solo. He breathes out, a sigh no one can see below the black mask that covers the lower half of his face. He should get creative, he knows. Give everyone who came out to watch them live on this last show of their latest tour something to take home. But his hands fall into old and familiar patterns. The version of this song they spent hours recording. The version he's played a thousand times. The version everyone here has already heard.

Rumlow stalks across the stage, allegedly just to do a fancy flip of his bass guitar where he won't hit Schmidt, but in reality it's an excuse for him to turn around to glare at Bucky from behind his Crossbones mask without anyone realizing he's doing it.

"C'mon, Winter Soldier," he seems to hiss, too quiet for any of the mics to pick up. Bucky reads it from his eyes more than anything. He glares back but knows Rumlow has a point. Rumlow already did a solo earlier; if Zemo isn't doing a solo and Schmidt needs to catch his breath, then this should be Bucky's time to shine. Schmidt's ego will carry the rest of the song.

He gives himself two more measures to think of something, time Rumlow uses to wander back to his spot, and then draws himself back into the little world of himself, his sticks, and his drums. He doesn't have to pay attention to the rest of the band for a moment, which would be a relief except for the fact that he has no real plan.

He'd pulled back to half-time when anticipating Zemo's solo. He doubles up and then ratchets it and everything else up to double time, grounding the pattern in the floor tom as he does it.

The noise of the crowd gets so loud he can hear it through his earplugs but it's just a droning in the background of the orchestration in his brain. He's alternating between high-energy grooves, a juggling act, everything up in the air and driving down until the perfect hit sends it soaring again. His left hand's doing something different than his right hand, his left leg different than his right leg, and he's got it all under control as he traverses his kit with pinpoint swings. His hair's flying around his face, there's sweat catching in the line where his mask rests along his cheeks, and his breaths are coming hard and fast, but that's fine. If he's pushing himself then he doesn't have to think about anything except the solo, and this solo is hellish once he adds embellishments. Exactly what he deserves.

Maybe this time he'll fuck it up. Wouldn't that be something? A news story for the ages, a flaming car crash of an exit to a career he'd happily watch go up in smoke. Hydra's machine of a drummer, burning out at their biggest ever show.

But he can't do that. He's too goddamn good. His solo ends with an explosive double hit on the crash cymbals and the stage shakes from the force of the crowd's roar. Schmidt drinks that up with a wide grin visible under his red skull mask, raising his hands like the adoration is all for him, and then he's bringing the mic to his face and Bucky's gone from the spotlight.

The pyrotechnics light up the front row of the crowd. They scream and yell and cheer, but none of their enthusiasm hits him. He plays on autopilot while sweat cools on his skin, watching them, struck by the absurd reality he's living: playing the instrument he loves with a globally famous band at a sold-out show to tens of thousands of people, and feeling…nothing. Yeah. Nothing.

Isn't he supposed to be enjoying this?

"The hell was that, Barnes?"

Rumlow's question breaks the silence when they're shedding their gear after the show. If they want to hit the afterparty, all of Hydra's tactical aesthetic has to go. Can't have the anonymous band members accidentally giving away their identities when they're nice and plastered.

Bucky's laid out on one of the cheap armchairs, all his gear still on. He's not ready to tackle the zippers, belts, and buckles just yet. Rumlow, though, has shed pretty much all of his Crossbones armor. Schmidt and Zemo have already gone, leaving the accoutrements of Red Skull and the Baron behind for the crew to gather up and put away.

"The hell was what?" Bucky asks so Rumlow doesn't repeat himself.

"Take your mask off."

"You can hear me fine. We played the show. The crowd loved it. End of story."

"End of story? You almost didn't play your solo for Insight. Schmidt noticed. What are you gonna tell him, huh?"

Bucky closes his eyes. The numbness is lingering. He simply can't bring himself to care about Rumlow's feelings or Schmidt's prissiness over his plans almost going awry.

It strikes him then that he still thinks of Rumlow as, well, Rumlow. Not Brock. God, they're not even friends, are they? And it's been years. Out of everyone in the band, Rumlow should be the exception. They've gone out drinking how many times? Does Bucky even have a picture for his contact in his phone?

Rumlow snorts. "Fine. Suit yourself. I'm not waiting up for you."

"Knock yourself out."

He knows without having to look that Rumlow is flipping him off. Only when the door shuts and Bucky knows he's alone does he bring himself to sit up. A haphazardly placed full-length mirror greets his dead-eyed gaze. He doesn't recognize the guy staring back at him. Gone is the fresh-faced kid thrilled to be picked for such an elite and experimental music program. Gone is his short hair, his easy smile, his left goddamn arm.

Standing, he steps closer, really looking at himself for the first time in months. The left arm is the big one: segmented and silver and stamped with that red star so tied to his image, the prosthetic is per the doctor who put it on him one of the best on the market, or it would be if it was publicly available and not a completely custom piece. That's the most obvious change. The next is his hair. He kept it short growing up but now it's long, coming down to his shoulders with uneven bangs that would make any self-respecting stylist weep. All for the image, or something. None of the other guys have to rock a bad haircut. All of them got full-face masks.

His mask is just for the lower half of his face. To compensate, or maybe just to obscure a bit more of his features, they have him smear black paint around his eyes for every show. It's supposed to make him look serious and intimidating. Personally, Bucky thinks he looks like a raccoon.

His clothes feel pretty trite in comparison to the thing grafted on his body and the hair that took years to grow out that long, but they still count for something. He's dressed like a soldier, for fuck's sake. Genuine tactical boots and pants, knee pads, sheaths and holsters on his thighs. A strappy leather vest with one sleeve carefully cut out to fully expose his prosthetic arm, and then a harness over that. He's not sure what the harness would do in practicality. Maybe he could put a gun on the back. He doesn't have a gun on stage but there are genuine knives sheathed on his right leg and in his boots and even one up his right sleeve, knives they made him practice with until he was good enough to show off at any fan events.

Turns out playing with knives isn't too different than playing with drumsticks. Just a bit riskier. The drumsticks themselves he can secure onto either leg.

Hydra's whole schtick is their tie-in comic about being supervillains and the Winter Soldier is all about that military supersoldier fantasy. So, naturally, they want him to play the actual soldier in addition to being their drummer, and yeah, maybe he got himself into something a little insane when he signed that contract all those years ago.

Granted, everyone in the band went through that military training course. They can even comfortably argue for more freedom to walk around town since they're all certified in self-defense and usually walk around armed in one way or another, a fact Rumlow took shameless advantage of when he dragged Bucky into whatever town they were in between tour gigs.

Did he have fun then? He honestly can't remember. It's not just the most recent concert that's blurry; they all feel blurry. He kinda feels like a stone that's been skipped across a pond, only processing the time passing under him when he briefly hits water.

Well, now he's hit the water and he's not bouncing again. He's sinking. Maybe he's been sinking for a while.

He reaches up and gingerly pulls the mask off. The expression that greets him is not a smile. It's not anything, because he's not anything. There were almost seventy thousand people crammed into the stadium an hour ago who'd excitedly tell anyone who asked exactly who the Winter Soldier is, but what about the guy beneath? What about Bucky?

There's only one response they'd give to that: who the hell is Bucky?

Well, enough's enough. He's been sticking this out for years thinking it'll get better and now he knows for sure that's not going to happen. He's sick of looking at his drums and thinking about how they're supposed to be fun. He's sick of playing in massive shows while feeling absolutely nothing. He's sick of lying to himself.

It takes a few seconds of fishing around his neck, but eventually his fingers catch on the necklace carefully tucked within his vest. He taps the chain, unwilling to pull out the attached tags, just reminding himself they're still there. After everything, they're still there.

His contract's up for renegotiation at the end of this tour. Hydra's record label is slimy, he's known that for years. He'll have to find a good lawyer to help him get out clean, but he'll get out.

He'll get the fuck out.

Hydra's Drummer Leaves Band

In a stunning press release this morning, preeminent rock band Hydra announced the departure of their drummer, known only by his alias as the Winter Soldier. The official statement names the expiry of his contact as the reason for his abrupt exit, which comes on the heels of the band's most successful tour to date.

Having been with the band from its inception eight years ago, the Winter Soldier—whose real name, like those of his former bandmates, is not known to the public—has been a grounding force in the band's often chaotic concerts. Unsubstantiated rumors paint him as a steadying influence off the stage as well, begging the question of how the band will adapt without him. His exit also calls into question the band's tie-in media, which depicts the members as supervillains often clashing with a colorful lineup of heroes. The Winter Soldier's story is the most popular of all the band's members according to released sales numbers.

Hopes that the Winter Soldier's real identity would be revealed with his departure were dashed when both the band and its eponymous label, Hydra Records, remained tight-lipped despite repeated inquiry. In an email response, band manager Alexander Pierce stated, "Our musicians' anonymity plays a key role in their ability to give their all to their performances and lead rich and uninterrupted personal lives." On the subject of the Winter Soldier, he added, "While we are sorry to see him go, we thank him for his eight years of musical excellence and wish him good luck in his endeavors."

The band and label have not yet given any indication of future plans for their lineup but have promised more information soon. The Winter Soldier was unreachable for comment.

Read the full article and see a list of possible replacement candidates here.

Outside his apartment window, New York looks the same as he remembers. That isn't saying much; he was here only a couple months ago, playing to an obscene crowd in Yankee Stadium. But that was in the Bronx, and now he's in Brooklyn. Or, back in Brooklyn, if he wants to get technical about it. How long has it been? Ten years? Twelve? Yeah, twelve.

Christ, the last time he had roots here, he still lived with his parents. With—

His hand closes around a picture frame at the bottom of the box he's slowly unpacking. A stack of other boxes sits waiting for his attention in the far corner of his studio apartment. If he were a smarter man, he would've bothered to label his shit, or at least pack all the essentials into the same box. Instead, he's been hunting for his goddamn pillow for forty minutes now and getting hopelessly sidetracked along the way. Sidetracked by things like this picture.

It's an old frame and the glass got cracked in the move, but the picture itself is undamaged. It's him when he was a kid, probably nine or ten. He's holding a skateboard up above his head, its scratched-up bottom facing the camera while he beams for all he's worth with a missing front tooth punching a hole in that smile. On the board is a riot of fresh-painted color, a couple of giant monsters attacking each other and their giant beams colliding in the center where the scratches are the worst.

Next to him, way smaller but with a smile just as big, is the artist. Steve. A wave of warm nostalgia washes over him along with the memory of that moment. His mom had chastised them both to stand still so she could get the shot. He and Steve had been way too excited to manage that for more than the instant it took her to get that picture. Right after, he'd picked Steve up and held him aloft like that skateboard, utterly over the moon with joy at what Steve had pulled off on that crappy old thing. That picture had been lost to time.

The warmth sharpens into burning guilt. He sets the picture aside with all the other pictures of him, his family, and Steve. There aren't many; most stayed with his parents when he moved out. All of the ones he took have spent the better part of a decade buried in other boxes much like these, stashed in a storage unit the label paid for along with most of the personal effects he'd had going into the music program.

There's one last thing in the bottom of this box: another, smaller box. An old boot box, flat and worn and taped shut with packing tape so old it's peeling. There are tiny flakes of desiccated adhesive dusting the cardboard. His mouth goes dry. When did he pack this? He doesn't remember—

It must've been right towards the end, when he was scrambling to get everything sorted and the moving van he'd hired was honking from outside his storage unit with the clear message that it was either toss things in the vehicle right now or get left behind. He hadn't been paying attention to what he was throwing in boxes at that point.

Whatever went down to get him in this situation now, he's gotta move it. Can't leave it in the middle of the floor, but he doesn't want to touch the thing. Can't just leave a box in a bigger box. It's a box. He can touch it. He can—he can pick it up and put it somewhere else. Where? Under his bed, yeah. It'll fit there. If he gets it out of this other box.

"Fucking hell," he mutters, shaking out his shoulders and stretching. "Get on with it, Barnes."

It's lighter than he thought it would be, but of course it is. There's nothing inside but envelopes and letters, he doesn't need to look inside to make sure. He leans back to get the right angle and slides it across the floor, where it fits perfectly in the deep shadow under his bed, right up against the wall, where it can quietly and silently turn to dust just like the tape that holds it together.

That's the end of this box. He clicks open his box cutter, cuts it apart, and tosses its flat panels onto the ever-growing pile to his left. Then he gets up, groaning when his knees complain, and drags the next box over. The blade gets to work on the tape. When he flips the flaps open, the Winter Soldier stares up at him.

It's a poster. An old poster, one of the first they did for the comic tie-ins. It depicts him posing with his drumsticks exchanged for knives on some generic torn-up urban battlefield, and he doesn't remember that photoshoot at all.

Suddenly, he's sick of unpacking. His pillow can wait; he's going for a damn walk.

In all, it takes him a month to get everything that matters unpacked and organized. The boxes save for the one he doesn't need to think about again get recycled, the trash gets tossed, and the apartment gets cleaned until there isn't a single speck of bubble wrap to be found. In the end, he's got a painfully spartan setup: the door on one side of the north wall, the kitchen taking up the wall to its right; beyond the small counter, his couch and TV. A window on the south wall, his two impulse-buy cacti soaking up the sun that occasionally comes through. His twin bed tucked into the subsequent corner, raised high enough that he can fit storage containers and the one box below it, his dresser just past that. The bathroom and laundry just barely make it into the remaining space.

One thing takes pride of place in the center. Rather, as close to center as it gets, which translates to the nook by the counter and the couch. His drum kit, which he hasn't touched since setting it up on day three. Just like his Winter Soldier gear, which now lives in a duffel bag buried in the bottom of his closet. He can't look at it without flashing back to that moment post-concert, that moment of looking in the mirror and not recognizing the guy looking back.

In terms of free floor space, his apartment is struggling to rival any of the hotel rooms he's stayed in over the years. But at least it's his. It's not like he had much choice when he was trying to find a place on such short notice. Money might not be an obstacle right now with what he earned on Hydra's payroll, but he's not trying to get fleeced, either.

He'll start looking around for better options in a couple weeks. He only just moved; he's not ready to do it again. Just like he'll start playing as soon as he's properly settled. Which is…well, he'd thought it would be when he was done unpacking, but when he stops in front of his drums, he doesn't feel anything. There's no urge to play. No music in his head. Nothing at all besides the fear that it's always going to feel like this, that a piece inside him is just broken, that he poured his heart and soul into something that never intended to give it back.

Those thoughts are a fast track to screaming into the pillow he unearthed on day four when he found it oh-so-cleverly stuffed into the wardrobe he'd thought was empty. He needs a distraction. Fortunately, New York is full of those.

The Winter Soldier schtick was good for at least one thing: without the makeup and mask and gear, no one recognizes Bucky Barnes. Especially when he puts his hair up in a small bun. Strolling the streets, he doesn't get a second glance. Well, aside from a few appreciative ones he returns with a practiced smile.

In the mornings, he goes for a run or hits the gym. During the day he finds himself mostly wandering. He visits parks, stops to listen to street performers, wanders through shops, peruses the library, and even checks out an arcade before eventually winding up at one of the local bars to waste away his evenings. It's not the most fulfilling daily routine, but once he's completely settled in, he figures he'll start doing a little more.

This particular evening's bar is pretty nice. A little claustrophobic, a little loud—they could put some cloth panels on the walls to really help the harsh acoustics—but erring more towards cozy than suffocating. He's got a stool up by the bar and a slightly overcooked burger to appreciate, which gets pretty hard to do when the radio playing over the speakers starts up the next song.

Suddenly, he can't taste his burger at all. He sets it down and tries a swig of his beer, but it's no use. His appetite's gone. He flags down the bartender.

"Hey, any chance you can change the station?"

"Not a fan?"

"Just kinda sick of 'em. Wishing the radio would play new stuff, y'know?"

The bartender gives him a considering look. "You into the local music scene?"

"Long time ago. I only moved back here recently."

"You should check out Tony's Workshop. Opened a few years back, it's where a lot of up-and-coming bands perform. Place has got a really good vibe. The only time you'll hear the top hits is if someone's doing a cover, and they usually try to be creative about it."

Bucky sips his tasteless beer. "I'll check it out, thanks."

With a name like Tony's Workshop, Bucky half-expects an Italian joint when he visits the place the next night. What he gets is a fairly standard brick affair nestled among the seemingly infinite townhouses and little shops on Sterling. It fits right in; he walks past it twice before realizing the demure building is what he's looking for.

Inside, it's larger than he'd expect, no doubt thanks to walls getting knocked down. There's a raised stage against the far wall that even sports scaffolding in case anyone wants to rig up some lights. There must be some kind of backstage, judging by the door set off to the side. A large bar takes up the right-hand wall, a set of swinging doors next to it that must go to the kitchen. Someone's put up all manner of handwritten chalk signs over the bar, one of which is just a selection of drinks labeled "The List," whatever that means. Booths claim the left-hand wall save for the corner nearest to the entrance, where the entrances to the bathrooms sit.

What catches and holds Bucky's attention, though, are the murals. Brilliant and bold, they flow along the walls as smoothly as any tattoo sleeve he's ever seen. In one spot, a breathtaking night sky; in another, a ship tossed at sea. When he looks closer at the latter, he realizes there's a tiny band getting thrown around the deck, and a second glance at the night sky reveals instruments in the constellations. On and on they go. It's almost dizzying.

Part of his mind breaks away from the wonder to note how they seem like the kinda thing Steve would've made, just a bit more grown up than two monsters battling it out on an old skateboard. He glances behind him, but there's no mural on the back wall; shame. Instead, there's a bunch of posters from actual bands. Famous bands. His stomach sinks in the moment before he catches sight of the Hydra poster mixed in with the rest.

The Winter Soldier stares out at him, eyes icy and murderous over a mask that, these days, looks more like a muzzle. He barely recognizes himself and can't decide whether that's a good thing or not. That mantle felt like a noose by the end, but at least the Winter Soldier could sit down and play the goddamn drums whenever he needed to

He swallows down all of those feelings. Walking out over the poster alone would be childish, he tells himself. He hasn't given this place a fair shot yet.

Even though it's a Wednesday and pretty early in the evening, there's a comfortable crowd. He doesn't see a hostess stand or sign, so he heads for the bar in case he's somehow missed it. A very attractive redhead with straightened shoulder-length hair acting as a shock of color over her black, presumably uniform button-up is chatting with a couple of guys at the far end opposite where Bucky takes an open stool, but the second he sits down she's heading over.

"Haven't seen you here before," she says. "First time?"

"Yeah. Just moved, got pointed to this place."

"Music fan?"

"Sometimes."

"Well, Mr. Sometimes Music Fan, what can I get you?"

He's got nowhere to be and nothing to prove, so he orders an old fashioned. She has a couple other drinks to prepare before his, but it's still less than a minute before he's got a glass in hand. The first sip burns on the way down, but after that it smooths out and pools warmly in his stomach. While he drinks, he takes in the full spread of what's on the shelves behind the bar and finds his eyebrows climbing higher when he catches a glimpse of the top-shelf labels. Either this place does really well or it's in impressive amounts of debt.

A glance over his shoulder at the many round tables dotting the floor shows a wide spread of clientele, from high school kids to college kids to young couples to old couples, all dressed in varying levels of formality. At least one couple is very clearly here on a date and dressed to the nines for it, for some reason. Hey, whatever makes 'em happy. The woman catches him looking and he raises his glass at her with an easy smile, which she politely returns before refocusing on her partner.

The rest of his drink goes down easy while he appreciates the murals some more, and by the time he's turning around to ask for a second, the bartender is already back like she'd seen it coming.

"More of the same?" she asks.

"Depends if you've got recommendations."

"That depends if you have preferences."

He spares another appreciative look at the bottles on offer. There's stuff he hasn't seen anywhere else, including—

"I haven't seen that since that place in Yekaterinburg," he mutters without thinking. The bartender looks where he's looking and her eyebrows shoot for her hairline.

"Yekaterinburg, Russia?" she asks.

"You know it?"

"I'm surprised you do."

"I moved here from Russia."

A coy smile plays on her lips and, when she next speaks, she does it in fluent Russian. "That place, was it called Churchill?"

He grins and sits up a little straighter on his stool. Her voice, smooth and cultured in English, is even more enticing in Russian. He replies in kind, ignoring the brief, confused glances of nearby patrons. "Yes. Have you been?"

"When a place in Russia makes a name for itself on whiskey instead of vodka, it's worth investigating. The Kizlyarka caught your eye? Want to try?"

"No trying, I know I like it. Pour away." He can't stop the smile on his face. Sure, New York is a melting pot, but a Russian-speaking bartender who's a ten by every measure he's got, and who works at a live show spot to boot? He's gotta know more. Really, he's gotta keep her talking. He could listen to her talk all night. "When were you in Russia?"

"I grew up there." She pulls down the amber-colored bottle with the visage of presumably famous guy staring over the white label. "You can thank me for this bottle being here. I take it you're not a fan of vodka?"

"I'm partial to grappa," he admits. "Vodka is for when I'm worried I might be close to feeling an emotion."

She laughs and pours a generous measure into a new glass, then pushes it close to him. "Well, I hope to see you enjoying the most renowned fruits of our country before the end of the night."

His grin widens. "Keep this up and I just might make it there."

God, when she walks away to help another customer, it's all he can to do avoid staring. Instead, he stares at his glass until he's sure he's got himself under control.

He takes a sip. It's hardly the fanciest liquor he's ever had, but it's familiar, a balanced drink that had seen him through many asinine nights when the band was being particularly stupid. Even with that baggage behind it, he can't help enjoying the familiar vanilla undertone. The bullshit had nothing to do with the drink; the drink was, and is, innocent.

Because the universe hates him, though, a rush comes through and the bartender doesn't have time to spare for another conversation. She keeps returning his smiles and refilling his drink, though, and he's content enough with that. He does manage to catch her name: Natasha. He wonders if that's her actual name, or if it's Americanized. Natalia would suit her just as well. He can't decide if it's rude to ask, but he's also at the end of his drink, which is an excuse to get her attention again.

But first, as his body is keen to inform him, bathroom. He stands and makes his way across the floor to the restrooms, thanking his ability to hold his alcohol all the while because he saw another guy take a tumble over a chair a few minutes earlier. The door to the men's restroom turns on surprisingly quiet hinges when he pushes his way inside, but when he takes in what lay beyond, he stops dead and wonders if the alcohol hit him harder than he thought.

After a moment of blinking and staring—thank god he's alone in here—he decides that what he's seeing is real. For whatever reason, the men's bathroom has a truly mind-bending mural taking up one wall that is almost reminiscent of some poor sod throwing up his guts. There's enough abstract colorful nonsense going on for plausible deniability. It barely feels like the same artist as the rest of the place, but Bucky feels in his unvomited gut that it is, in fact, the same dude.

In all, it's the most artistic rendition of someone puking he's ever seen. So of course he asks about it when he gets back to the bar.

"Oh, that?" Natasha shrugs while she pours him a refill. "Yeah, the owner—Tony, that guy with the goatee over by the stage—paid a local artist to do it, and generously enough that we now basically have an artist-in-residence. He hangs out here all the time. Why, like what you see?"

"The murals out here are amazing," Bucky confirms. "The one in there…" he tries to hunt for the right word in Russian and comes up short, landing on a wholly inadequate, "unique."

She chuckles to herself. "That's one way to describe it."

He jerks a thumb at the back wall. "Why nothing there? Why the posters?" Why Hydra? He doesn't ask that last part aloud, but maybe it bleeds into his voice a little.

"Maybe we ran out of money to commission the artist for that last wall," she jokes.

"Right, gotta prioritize the bathroom first."

"It was actually the manager's idea. The back wall, not the bathroom. A bit of inspiration for the performers." She shrugs. "Personally, I think it came down to it being odd for a place like this to not have band posters somewhere in it."

"Fair enough. By the way," he can see someone else flagging her down and so speaks quickly, "your name, I think I heard someone say it—is it Natasha, or Natalia?"

"For you?" Her eyes glitter and yeah, maybe New York isn't so bad after all. "Natalia."

He raises his glass in a toast as she turns away and doesn't feel his grin fade until well after the band on stage is through their set and the next one starts setting up shop. It's easy to ride that high through the next performances, and he even finds himself enjoying the show and some of the music. A number of the acts are using drum machines, but he can see a drum kit waiting in the wings for an upcoming band. He ignores the flare of jealousy that tries to sour the alcohol in his stomach and sips the water he's using to pace himself between drinks.

Despite trying to keep fidgeting to a minimum, he finds himself tapping his glass or the bar, or bouncing his leg, or nodding his head to the beat. Here he'd thought he'd kicked the habit, but apparently all it took was a handful of songs for it to come roaring back.

"Restless?" Natalia asks when she next comes by and catches him tapping the bar next to his coaster as the band finishes their final song. He curls his fingers in, embarrassed at getting caught, and glances down the bar. She notices. "Rush is mostly over. Why, eager to get rid of me?"

"No," he denies, and then switches to Russian for that little bit of privacy. "I don't want to make your job harder."

"Let me worry about that."

He raises his hands in surrender. "Understood."

"You know, you have my name, I don't have yours."

"James." He'd offer "Bucky" instead, but that's a bit much for a first conversation. He doesn't want to come off as overly familiar even if they've clearly got enough chemistry to set something on fire.

"So, James." She leans against the bar and he keeps his eyes firmly on her face, which isn't helping much because her face is fit to be framed and hung in a museum. The smirk on her lips tells him she knows exactly what she's doing, and damn, he's always been weak for the confident ones. "Why so restless?"

He clears his throat and wishes he could feel a bit more of the water's chill through his gloves. "I'm…or, I used to be…" get it together, "I was a drummer. Burned out. I'm kinda hoping being in New York will bring some inspiration."

Natalia glances at something over his shoulder. "Have you performed live before?"

He thinks about that last show. About Yankee Stadium. "A few times."

"Well, that's convenient."

Before he realizes what she's doing, she's grabbed his wrist and hauled his right hand up into the air.

"Hey!" he hisses, but she's unrepentant.

"Their drummer didn't show," she says, nodding at the on-deck band currently off to the side of the stage. He stares at that, then at her, speechless only because there are too many things fighting to be said.

Tony beats him to the punch, and his voice comes out of every speaker in the place, and he's looking straight at Bucky. "Do we have a taker?" Something in Bucky's face must show the disbelief he's feeling, because Tony looks at Natalia while he keeps talking. "Please, don't let my second favorite redhead bully you into doing anything you don't want to do. She isn't the one who pays if I get sued."

He gets some laughs for that. Bucky recognizes the offer: it's a way out. Natalia lets his hand go with a quiet, "The eyes are afraid but the hands still move."

His refusal sits ready on his tongue but that Russian saying holds it fast. His eyes catch on the band. They're looking at him with unabashed hope and fuck, he can't just walk away from that. He's not gonna fuck up someone else's night just because he's got some shit to figure out. He's a stranger in a strange bar; no one's got any expectations of him at all. Even numb, he can trot out a groove or two and get these guys through their set.

He lets his hand fall. And he stands up.

"Is that a yes?"

"Yeah." He clears his throat. "Yeah, I can help out."

He walks up to the stage amid a roar of approval. Several people raise their drinks in a toast as he passes. He nods and plasters an easygoing smile on his face while Tony promises the entire bar a drink. He's starting to see why this place is so popular…and how it can afford those top-shelf brands.

"Dude, thank you so much," says the singer the second Bucky gets close. They all shake hands and introduce themselves. Bucky'll be playing with two Jacks and a Tammy, the last of whom is the proud owner of the accordion that had caught his eye on approach. Chalk that up as a first for him; he's never backed an accordion before. Maybe if he and Rumlow got Zemo drunk enough…

Anyway, they're all college kids. Nice enough, too nice to even comment on his single gloved hand. Clearly nervous, though, so he tries to set their minds at ease.

"It's no problem, been looking for a chance to play anyway." He realizes it's true as he says it, covers that unintentional admission with a casual, "So, got a plan?"

"Uh, yeah," says singer Jack. "Um. Do you have any songs you know really well? We do a lot of covers, there's probably something we both know."

Does he have any songs he knows very well. Does he. His gaze drifts towards the far wall before he yanks it back. Does he? Hard to say. Out loud.

Tammy pipes up. "Are you more of a rock guy or a funk guy? You look like a rock guy."

"We know both," says guitarist Jack.

"Rock."

"Okay, cool. How about Hydra?"

He almost says no on pure reflex but bites his tongue. Yeah, he knows Hydra. In fact, the way he shut the world away the last few years, they're most of what he knows.

Dammit. I did this to myself.

"Any song in particular?" he asks. "I know a few."

"Sick, that's great. Pull the Pin is probably the best one to warm up with, know that one?"

"Yeah."

"Cool, cool. We'll start with that. Then—"

"Listen," Bucky cuts in, "if you want—if you want—we can do what you originally planned for your set after that. I'll be fine after a warmup if you're okay with me improvising. I did a lot of that with my band."

They exchange looks. He gets their hesitation. For all they know, he could royally suck. But god, he does not want to play a full set of his own songs. The very thought leaves a sour taste in his mouth. That's not why he's here. That's not why he left. That's not—

That's not what he wants.

"Let's play the one," singer Jack decides as he picks up a bass guitar. Not just a singer, then. "We'll make the call after."

Bucky nods. "Sounds good."

They'll make the call, all right. He'll make damn sure of it. Right after he figures out how they're incorporating an accordion into Pull the Pin's rather precise equation.

He takes his place at the drum kit, adjusting the stool a little before examining what he'll be working with. It's got about half of what he's used to, no double base, just the one crash cymbal, a high-hat that sticks a little bit when he lifts his foot off the pedal, and a loose washer on the snare. Whoever their drummer is, he needs to take better care of his kit so it can take care of him.

Playing Pull the Pin with a reduced kit isn't ideal, but neither is playing Pull the Pin at all. At least this way his obscene familiarity with the song won't be as obvious or suspicious. He takes up the sticks in hand and gives them a few experimental twirls. That's easy, familiar. These particular drums are not, and honestly, that's helping.

Guitarist Jack launches into the opening riff. Bucky joins in right as singer-and-bassist Jack launches into the vocals. The song flows easily from Bucky's brain to his limbs, then gets a little tangled when those limbs complain about the lack of options. He adapts, scaling things back and leaning on the accordion for the flare his part now lacks.

Color him impressed: they make the accordion work. They're not bad, overall. But other than the novelty factor, he's not hearing anything that asks him to sit up and listen. There isn't anything about their cover that raises the banner of who they are, and when the song ends, Bucky's pretty sure the applause is just polite.

God, when did he get this insufferable? Lay off, he tells himself. It's not like he sprang out of the womb with fully-fledged skills and the confidence to match.

The band's closed in around him while he was lost in thought.

"That felt pretty good," singer Jack says.

"Really good," confirms Tammy.

Bucky eyes singer Jack. "It's your call."

"You're really okay with doing it on the spot?"

Bucky nods, singer Jack smiles, and that's the decision made. After a spin of the sticks to settle them in his hands, Bucky holds himself ready while the band kicks off their original song. He supposes he could've asked them for literally any details about it—the name, maybe, or the beat—but he's pretty sure he's got the beat after the first few measures. Once the bass comes in, he's sure he's got it, and it's easy enough to join in.

Like their cover performance, there's nothing about this song that's going to turn ears and get stuck in heads, but nor is it going to offend the casual listener. Both Jacks and Tammy are predictable and easy to keep track of on stage; no surprises to watch out for, there, but he still keeps an eye on them to get a feel for their energy so he can match it.

And it's a good thing he does that, too, because he catches singer Jack bracing himself. He switches to a fill and, when singer Jack launches into the chaotic chorus, transitions to grooves that feed the chaos. His muscles try to fall into old, tired grooves, but Tammy with her accordion keeps snapping him out of those lapses. Despite himself, he finds a smirk tugging at his lips.

All too soon, the song ends. It catches Bucky a little by surprise, so the ending is awkward, but no one seems to notice. The band is too busy swarming him, clapping him on the back, and basically hyping him up for the next song. Their enthusiasm is a little suffocating and he hopes they don't notice that his smile is a bit forced. He tries to share in their happiness rather than think about how he hasn't felt that same feeling in years.

They kick off the next song and it's similar enough to the one before it that Bucky doesn't even have to wait for the bass to start up the drums. Mindful of this song's more orderly sound, he keeps things a little simpler. He's pretty sure this kit is liable to fall apart if he tries going that hard again, anyway.

As he's checking in on singer Jack, the man steps in the path of a light just enough that Bucky can actually see the crowd. There's a guy way in the back staring straight at him; not at either Jack or Tammy, but him. Blond hair, strong jaw, eyes that he just knows are blue—

His left hand twitches and he damn near snaps the drumstick before he can relax his fingers. His groove falls apart for that split second and he picks it up with a cold sweat breaking out all over him. No way. No fucking way.

Play, he tells himself. Just play. You're in your head, you've been drinking. Ignore that you've only had water for the last hour. You're just seeing things. Get it together and play the goddamn drums.

He can't stop himself from looking, though, even if the lights make it impossible to see details. Even when they're on the third song, and then the fourth, and the fifth.

When the last song ends, Bucky's cold sweat has turned into a heat that's left him shaking, his heart is pounding double-time in his chest, and the dull roar of applause scatters his thoughts like bowling pins. While Tony strides up on stage, Bucky abandons the sticks and slips out the nearest exit door.

Being volunteered to play drums, doing too much—he knew it was too much but it just felt so good to play again—and then that guy in the crowd who his brain kept calling Steve even though there was no way that six-foot American dream could be the pint-sized punk he abandoned—

Too much. Way too much, and no fucking shot he was going to stay on that stage and let the whole place witness his breakdown.

He saves that performance for after he's ducked out the back door, which leads not to a backstage but into the alley behind the bar. There, he can slam his shoulders against the graffitied brick wall and tip his head back and let the shudders take all his strength away until he's sliding down to the ground and managing something between a sob and a laugh at how pathetic he is without anyone the wiser. He's played to stadiums of tens of thousands of people, and he's like this after one amateur set at a random bar in Brooklyn?

"Jesus," he tells himself in a voice that shakes to match his body, "get it together."

That doesn't really help, of course. But once the delicate scents of New York's back alleys start filtering through his nose, his turning stomach gives him the motivation to haul himself to his feet.

If he goes inside, he doesn't doubt the bar owner—Tony, maybe—is going to make a big deal out of it. He doesn't want to be a big deal. He's not worried about people connecting some random good drummer to the band whose drummer just up and vanished on the other side of the world a few weeks ago, but he's not not worried about that either. Besides, people might start asking questions, and he's in no state of mind to be graceful about answering. He just played the drums and enjoyed it for the first time in…in…Christ, he can't even remember. He's gonna be a little selfish and enjoy that fact on his own. Without an audience.

He's suddenly very grateful he opted for water as his most recent drinks. He'll have to ask Natalia for some vodka another night.

Wiping his eyes, he leaves his wallowing spot and follows the alley out to the street, where he can collect his bike, shove on his helmet's protective layer of anonymity, and head home to the drum kit he missed like a lost limb for that entire set.

Chapter Text

When Bucky gets home from the surprise gig, he barely bothers locking his door before he tosses his helmet onto his couch, peels off his gloves, and drops onto the stool that didn't have quite enough time to get rid of the ass-print he's pressed into it over the years.

When his sticks are in hand, though, he plays only a couple notes before stopping. His left hand. Idiot, he chastises himself.

Ignoring the full glove he wore to the bar, he digs up that buried duffel and rifles through it until he finds one of the fingerless gloves that became a signature of the Winter Soldier.

Before they were his, they were Bucky's. A pure metal hand doesn't exactly have grip along the palm. He could wear a full-hand one, and had tried for a while, but the plates on his fingers are just too prone to chewing through any fabric he puts over them. The gloves he was wearing earlier are already worryingly creased in a few new spots after just one (long) set.

The fingerless gloves are heavy-duty. Not only for the tactical look Hydra loves so much but also to withstand his hand's appetite for destruction. He slides one on, pulls the Velcro on the wrist tight, and flexes his fingers with satisfaction. Yeah, that feels right.

It feels even more right with a drumstick resting against it.

When he settles back onto his stool, he's worried for a second that he's not gonna know what to play. It's been so long, after all. But once he's settled, once he's resting his feet on the bass pedals and hovering his sticks over the snare, once he thinks about Steve in his audience watching him play with those blue eyes as deep and wide as the sky, that floodgate in his mind opens like it was never stuck closed at all.

He barely spares a minute for a warmup before he's tearing across the kit. The floor tom puts out a steady beat bolstered by double bass until his sticks snap out to the other toms, and then they're flying up to the crash and high-hat cymbals, then back down, bringing it all over to the snare and ride cymbal for a slow burn and burn and burn until it explodes back to life in a crescendo that dies abruptly and leaves him sweating, hair sticking on his forehead and a breathless smile on his lips.

He checks the clock. One in the morning. He's supposed to start job hunting tomorrow, for fuck's sake. But his heart's still pounding. There's still a beat in his veins that he's gotta get out.

Hell with it. He went for a building with thick walls for a reason.

Two days after Steve had his heart neatly pulled out of his chest for the first time in years, Steve is touching up a mural that's suffered enough spilled drinks to be noticeably affected. It's relatively early in the morning, meaning the restaurant is closed to the public and he has all the space he needs to set about repairing what was damaged.

Steve's early start also prompted his two roommates into action, meaning that Sam and Tony are also around. They've been troubleshooting the new POS system behind the bar. Rather, Tony is troubleshooting it, and Sam has given up trying to offer any advice because Tony is far too stubborn about his own genius to listen to anyone else.

Steve's phone, tucked into his back pocket, buzzes. He carefully sets aside his brush, wipes his hands on a towel that's as much paint stains as it is fabric at this point, and checks his messages. His heart sinks.

Last night, after he got home and before starting on commissions, he'd texted Mrs. Barnes to ask if she'd heard anything from Bucky lately. He couldn't help himself; the drummer had put his old friend in the forefront of his mind, and maybe, just maybe, he was holding out that tiny bit of hope.

Mrs. Barnes saying no, she hadn't heard from Bucky, why does he ask, dashes that hope. He sighs. Really, it's his own fault for getting his hopes up.

Just saw something that reminded me of him, he texts back. Are we still good for family brunch this Sunday?

That earns him an affirmative, which soothes some of the ache in his chest. "Family" is a strong descriptor for the brunch plan; Rebecca's back at school now, same with Louisa and Charlie, and Mr. Barnes is most likely going to get called in to the office thanks to a recent client being, in his words, absolutely and incurably obtuse about their own finances.

He slides his phone back into his pocket and recovers his brush.

"Still no word, huh?" asks Sam from where he's straightening out and taping down the tarp Steve put down to catch errant paint. Evidently, with Tony being Tony, that desire to help had been redirected to Steve.

"No, and thanks."

"Don't mention it."

"Honestly, I wasn't expecting any news. I feel bad—she didn't need the reminder."

"Hey, no, not your fault. It didn't hurt to check, and I bet she's grateful you're still thinking about him."

"Thanks, Sam."

Steve returns his attention to the mural but his focus doesn't last long before Tony blurts out,

"What if he's the Winter Soldier?"

Steve cocks an eyebrow. "The Winter Soldier. Really. Playing here."

"The guy dropped off the face of the earth after Hydra's tour ended two months ago. There's no reason he couldn'tbe here!"

"I know your ego's big, man," Sam says, "but I think that's a stretch."

Natasha hefts a bin full of silverware, then reconsiders and starts collecting other cracked and dirty dishware scattered around the bar.

"Oh, come on! Put him in a mask and makeup and he's a dead ringer."

"Put any white dude with long brown hair in that mask and that makeup and he'll be a dead ringer," Sam shoots back. "It's easy to look like him when most of his face is a mystery. People are still debating what color his eyes are."

Tony frowns. "Okay, fine, but the eye color thing is just because they kept changing it in posters and in the comics to fuck with people. What about his left arm?"

"What about it?"

"He was wearing gloves," Steve recalls. "On both hands," he tacks on before Tony can get too victorious about it.

"Still, that's not normal, is it?"

Sam shrugs. "Maybe he's just got poor circulation. My cousin's got it so bad he needs special compression socks. Compression gloves aren't a huge stretch. Or maybe his fingers just get cold. Don't some drummers wear gloves for, like, carpal tunnel?"

"Megadeth's drummer wears gloves," Natasha tosses in on her way back to the kitchen.

Tony frowns. "Which one?"

"Dirk for sure, I don't know about the rest."

"Look, how about we don't harass the guy who did a huge favor to complete strangers for nothing about whether he's actually a celebrity who's way out of this place's league," Steve proposes while he moves his step stool so he can touch up the next section.

"Hey, I did him the favor of comp'ing his bill for his services," Tony says. "The guy left so fast he didn't even pay."

"Maybe he got freaked out. The way you're talking about him—do you want to scare him away?"

"I know you don't."

Steve glares at Sam but it's too late—Tony picked up on his tone. "Oh?" He starts to grin. "Is that so? Steve Rogers, finally stepping into the ring. Good for you. His name is James. At least, that's what he told Nat and the band. If I were the Winter Soldier, I'd be giving out fake—"

"You're not, and he's not, and why are you telling me his name?" James, though, he thinks in the privacy of his own head. What are the odds?

"Why, to keep you in the loop! How else can you dramatically call out to him across the room for your fateful meetup right before he has to leave on a long tour you're just desperate to—"

"Stop, god, stop. Ugh. First, I've dated before. It's just been a while. Second, this isn't a Hallmark movie, and I didn't tell any of you about Bucky just for you to make those jokes. Third, an anonymous drummer doesn't need to give out a fake name. And last, I can learn a date's name the old-fashioned way, I don't need a whole spy team passing me info about them."

When he breaks from his painting to glare at Tony, he's disheartened to see an even bigger smile than before.

"Date, huh?"

"It's a hypothetical. There's not going to be any dramatic name-calling or airport chase scenes, so quit it. If he comes back while I'm here, I'll talk to him. Simple as that."

"I could ask Nat to get his number if he ends up at the bar again. They were really hitting it off."

"Again, no spy team. If he gives her his number it's because he wants her to have it, Tony."

"You're no fun. What happened to teamwork making the dream work?"

"That was for when we were getting this place off the ground. Not for when you're sticking your nose into my love life. Take a page from Sam's book and let me do my own thing."

Sam holds up his hands defensively when Tony looks at him. "Hey, I just say what sounds good in the moment, and sometimes that thing is nothing. I'm not about to piss off the guy who volunteered to help me at the VA this afternoon."

"If we're done planning a sting operation on a stranger," Steve says, "I'm done here and could use a hand moving this stuff to the men's bathroom."

"What? Why there?" Realization dawns and Tony shakes his head. "No, nope, owner's veto. You're not touching that masterpiece."

"It's the price for your prying. You've already paid."

"James?"

He heads to the pickup counter, thanks the barista who hands him his coffee, and promptly burns his tongue when he takes a sip. Wincing, he shuffles out of the way of the other people crowding the Starbucks and debates between finding somewhere to sit and hitting the streets. If he sits down before he finishes his drink, there's a distinct probability that he'll fall asleep wherever he ends up.

The streets it is. A little misery is what he deserves for staying up practically all night playing when he knew he was supposed to start job hunting today. His coffee being without his usual cream and sugar is one more little punishment.

Cool autumn air laced with the fine smells of diesel and bird poop hits him the moment he steps outside. He picks a direction and walks.

Okay, he doesn't need to inflict this much misery on himself. Most people would be fine doing nothing for the rest of their lives with what he's got in the bank. And sure, he's technically rich, especially after the payout of that last tour, but he needs some kind of income if he doesn't want to be another poster boy for destitute former rockstars in ten years.

He manages to avoid burning himself on the second sip and considers his options. He spent the morning checking out all the local—and even some less-than-local—music stores, but none of them are hiring. He would frankly prefer the poster boy for destitute former rockstars fate than work customer service again; the summer after he turned sixteen had been awful. But it's not like he's sporting a wide variety of marketable skills. Technically, he doesn't even have a college degree, since his music program was a little too unique for that.

There's only one place in the whole city where he's built up any kind of goodwill, and that's a long shot. There's gotta be something else. How can he show up to that place with Natalia and that one absolute hunk and ask for a job? He should only go back there for two reasons: either for the music or for a date.

There's gotta be somewhere else he can find work.

By afternoon the next day, he has to admit the truth: there's nowhere else he can find work. Music stores? Nope. Drum tutor? Nope, there are hundreds in the area. Any of a dozen other positions? Not hiring, not desirable, or frankly just not anything he's qualified for. He's debating risking his hands—hand—for a job as a mechanic when he realizes where his feet have carried him.

He stares up at the unassuming building sitting on its unassuming street and heaves a sigh. He really is desperate, isn't he?

"How's that?"

"Little to the left."

"Now?"

"Little to the right. No, left. Right."

Steve glares over his shoulder.

"I'm not messing with you, I swear. You're moving it too much. Just—like, half an inch to the right. Yep, there. Perfect."

Sam clambers up onto an adjacent bookshelf to the one currently supporting Steve's weight and reaches over Steve's arm to mark the edges of the poster that Steve is pressing flat against the wall.

"Done," he says when he's hopped down to the ground. Steve takes the poster in hand and hops down too.

"So, what's the plan?" he asks.

"Easy: measuring tape."

"Why not lead with that?"

"This is faster."

"Is it?"

Sam finds the midpoint between the two marks and then carefully follows a line down about a third of the way of the poster's length. There, he once again uses the pencil to make a faint mark. Then he erases his earlier marks and hops back down.

"Where'd I put the thing?"

"Here." Steve lugs the picture frame out from behind the front desk, which gets easier when the secretary slides his chair out of the way. Together, Steve and Sam make short work of getting the poster in the frame and getting the frame mounted on the wall. Examining their handiwork, Steve crosses his arms.

"Don't say it," Sam warns.

"It's crooked."

"It is not."

"It is."

The secretary wordlessly holds out a level pulled from the case of tools Sam left open on the desk. Sam scowls and snatches it. "It's not crooked."

Steve raises an eyebrow and waits while Sam clambers up to rest the level on the top of the frame. After a quiet second, he catches a quiet curse and grins. "Crooked?"

"Shut up. Shut that grin up, too, I can hear it from here."

After they get the poster straightened out, Steve sticks around to help Sam set up one of the larger rooms for a group counseling session. It's a lot of taking chairs from the racks on the wall and moving them into a circle and toying with the cantankerous coffee machine until it finally admits defeat and starts cooperating.

"Every time," Sam mutters, staring at it with justified suspicion as though it's going to stop the second he takes his eyes off it. "Steve, you mind being the one to grab the bagels from the shop this time? Got a few other things to handle here. My pamphlets are MIA for what I'll bet are broken copy machine reasons."

"I'm on it. Wilson the name on the order?"

"Yep. Paid in advance. If they ask for ID—"

"They know me, they won't, but I'll call if something comes up."

"Appreciate it."

"Good luck finding your pamphlets."

He snorts. "Won't be the first time I've fought this fight."

Steve leaves him to his battle and heads for the bagel shop. Outside, it's a cool and cloudy September day, and he hunches his shoulders and debates zipping his bomber jacket while he falls into step with the light foot traffic on the sidewalk. Right as he resolves to prove this little chill isn't enough to get to him, his phone buzzes.

It's Natasha, confirming she's a go for karaoke the next Tuesday. Clint agreed to pull a double to let her do it, but in return, he's demanding that Steve, Sam, and Tony host the next movie night.

It's only fair, Steve texts back. Tony and Sam won't have any problem with it, though Tony might complain if they don't agree to do at least one drinking game.

Resolving that whole thread—after roping in Sam and Tony to confirm they don't, in fact, have any problems with this—gets him all the way to the bagel shop. The warmth of freshly-made bagels seeping out of the paper bag in his arms helps him fight off the cold while he makes the return trip. His phone buzzes, then keeps buzzing with a phone call, but his hands are full and it's chilly enough that he doesn't want to stop to answer it. Whoever's calling can wait a few minutes.

What he doesn't count on is the person calling him continuously for the entire journey. His left ass cheek is feeling a little numb by the time he drops the bagels on the table Sam set up for the snacks and beverages.

"Jesus, Tony," Steve mutters when he finally has his hands free to see what's on fire.

"Something wrong?" asks Sam, now preoccupied with arranging the bagels.

"He called me fourteen times. Did he call you?" If he called Sam, then there's a chance this is a genuine emergency.

"No. Did he leave a message?"

"Uh, yeah. One." Steve puts it on speaker. Tony's tinny voice blasts through:

"Call me back, dammit. No one's dying but this is important."

That's the whole message. Sam chuckles and shakes his head. "Well, call the man back. I can handle the rest of this, don't worry." Sam waves him off. Steve ducks into the hallway and dials before Tony can hit him with a fifteenth call.

"Hey, Tony. You called?"

"Damn right I did. Fourteen times. What were you doing?"

"I had my hands full. What's so important?"

"Guess who asked if we're hiring?"

Steve's stomach does a flip. "Are we?"

"First, riddle me this: was he wearing gloves?

"You're the one who talked to this guy, how should I know?"

"Humor me."

"Okay, fine." Based on Tony's triumphant tone—the guy had zero talent for holding a poker face—he tries, "Yes?"

"Bzzt. Kind of. He was only wearing one. Care to guess which hand?"

"Left."

"Bingo!"

"Tony, you're being ridiculous. He could be wearing that glove for any number of reasons and not every guy who may or may not have a prosthetic hand is the Winter Soldier. Stop making assumptions. And do not tell me his full name, I don't wanna hear it from anyone but him."

Tony exhales with exaggerated effect, no doubt having been about to do exactly that. "You're still no fun."

"What job did he want?"

"Anything we had, according to him. Lucky for him, I've been on the lookout for a third bartender."

"You mean you've asked Pepper to find one."

"Natasha's good, but even she was struggling the last two nights."

"I'm sure she loved your free drink offers."

Tony chuckles in a decidedly nervous fashion. "There may have been…ultimatums. Anyway, he seems to know his stuff. Licensed in New York and everything."

"So you're hiring him?"

"Pepper is, in her words, strongly considering it. I want to have Clint and Natasha get a measure of him first, make sure he isn't lying and doesn't gum up their gears."

"Fair enough. This is why you called?"

"Well, you not wanting the details put a damper on it, but yes. Oh, and to let you know I moved one of the posters and the tape took some paint with it, so if you could stop by tomorrow to fix that up that'd be great."

"I'm hanging up."

"Not if I do fir—"

Steve hangs up.

Tony's Workshop doesn't look any more impressive from the outside in the morning. Bucky polishes off the last of his coffee, tosses the cup in a nearby trashcan, and ducks inside, where he's struck by how much emptier it feels with the chairs stacked on the tables and no constant murmur of conversation or music. It really is the kind of place that needs people in it.

The only person he sees is Natalia, and frankly, that's enough to chase away the headache the caffeine couldn't dampen. She's wiping down the bar but stops when she notices him.

"Welcome back, Clint's in the kitchen but he'll be out soon enough."

"I was, uh, told to come back to 'meet the other bartenders.' So, I guess my job is in your hands."

"And Clint's."

"He's the other bartender?"

"Yes, I am." The voice precedes a man maybe a couple years older than Bucky shouldering his way out of the kitchen with a case of bottles in hand. He's sporting close-cropped blond hair, the same black pseudo-uniform clothing as Natasha, and a black eye. Naturally he notices Bucky staring before he can get his surprise under control. "Had a fight with a shelf I'm trying to mount. Lost. You must be the new guy." He heaves the case onto the counter inside the bar and sticks a hand over the top. "Clint."

"James."

They shake. Clint's got a firm-but-not-too-firm grip; neither of them are trying to prove anything, which is nice with Natalia right there.

"I heard from Nat that you're from Russia," Clint says conversationally while gesturing for Bucky to come around and help him restock the back of the bar. "About time we found someone who can let everyone else know when she's insulting us in Russian."

"He speaks Russian too," Natalia tells Bucky with a roll of her eyes. "He just pretends not to because it's supposed to be a surprise for my birthday."

That's a lot to take in. Bucky focuses on finding spots for the bottles Clint hands him, trying to recall how the bar looked when it was fully stocked two nights ago and, minus one mix-up, succeeding. "Happy birthday, I think?"

She laughs. "Not for a while."

"Nat, I can't keep pretending it's a surprise when you say things like that."

Seeing the way they interact, Bucky's stomach sinks somewhere around his feet but he keeps any sign of that from his face and hopes his voice doesn't betray him. "You two are dating?"

"Two years and counting," Clint confirms. "If we're all on shift and you ever feel like a third wheel, feel free to tell me to knock it off. Don't tell her, though. She might kill you."

Bucky lets out a nervous laugh. "Uh, okay?"

"Nat is also the unofficial bouncer," Clint explains, seeing his confusion. "I'm pretty sure she knows at least ten ways to kill a guy with a cocktail umbrella."

"Twenty-three, actually," Natalia says, smiling at Bucky when she catches him giving her a fresh appraisal. The black makes it hard to tell, but now that he's looking, he's realizing some of the lines of her body aren't just excess fabric or shadow; they're muscle.

"Do I even wanna know if you've got a knife on you somewhere?" he asks, pulling his eyes back to her face.

"Depends if you want me to ask about the one you've got in your boot."

He can't hide how impressed he is. "What gave that away?"

"The way the leather moves when you bend your ankle. You should mount it a little lower, put it on the tongue so the laces hold it better, or strap it to your leg instead of the boot itself."

"I'll keep that in mind."

"Great," Clint says, "now there are two terrifying people in my orbit."

Bucky eyes him and then eyes his arms, particularly his right. They're both muscled, the latter a bit more, and his hands are coated in callouses.

"Clint does archery," Natalia says. "He can pretend he's not scary all he wants, but at least with our knives we have to get close." There's nothing but fondness in her voice and Bucky resolves to never, ever start trouble in this place. Not that he'd been planning on it, but now the consequences are pretty damn clear.

"So," Bucky says, hoping to draw conversation away from relationships and the fact he'd been strongly considering trying to spark something with Natalia, "is there anything in particular you want me to do? I should warn you I'm not great at pop quizzes."

"Lucky for you, we left our scantron sheets at home. The test is going to be way easier than that. At least, if you weren't lying to Tony about your mixology experience."

"I wasn't."

"You've already passed the vibe check," Clint offers while Natalia finishes restocking and dusts off her hands. "If that helps."

"We're just going to run you through some drinks," Natalia says before Bucky can relax too much. She nods at his gloved hand. "That might get spilled on."

He follows her gaze and then holds up that hand, a little surprised at himself for basically forgetting about it. "Right."

He definitely doesn't want the nice leather stained with alcohol. When he peels it off to reveal the shining silver beneath, Clint whistles and Natalia raises her eyebrows. An even more peculiar expression crosses her face but it's gone before Bucky can make sense of it.

"I lost it in a car accident when I was a teenager," he explains before they can do the inevitable and ask about it. "It won't scratch the glassware."

"Getting wet won't hurt it?" Clint asks curiously.

"No."

"Handy. Also, you should know you're even scarier now."

Bucky frowns. He would've expected learning he's down an arm would have the opposite effect. "Why?"

"Dude. You have a metal hand. You could probably use that to stop an arrow. Do you use that hand instead of an oven mitt?"

"Clint," Natalia sighs, "stop. We have a test to proctor."

"Right, right. Sorry." He looks at Bucky pleadingly. Bucky nods to answer his question, and Clint lights up with a grin. "Nice."

"Your first task," declares Natalia, "is a White Russian."

Bucky thinks he really should've seen that coming.

While they run him through a gauntlet of drinks, some of which he's positive have never been ordered in this place, they keep up a constant stream of chatter. Most of that comes from Clint, but Bucky's fine with reciprocating. It's nice to just have an easy conversation again.

At least, it is until the subject turns back to Bucky.

"So," Clint says while Bucky pours out the last of a whiskey sour, the ice in the glass clinking while the liquid gushes down, "where'd you learn to mix so well? I haven't seen you fuck up yet."

"I've always had a good memory. It's mostly memorization, and I'm good with my hands." He can't very well tell the truth: that while on tour, he took an online mixology course, and then made it a bit of a game to get licensed in every American state they toured. He got plenty of practice when more than one afterparty ended with him behind the bar. They were, of course, always incognito at those parties, so he'd end up as a bartender with a godawful black wig. But it meant he could mingle freely, so he never complained. He'd even managed to date a bartender for a while between tours, and that experience had been plenty educational in and out of the bedroom.

Clint's not done asking questions, though. "Aren't you from Russia? You moved here recently, right? When'd you get licensed?"

"Oh, I visited the States a lot. Grew up here, too." There. That oughtta rule out any Winter Soldier connection; he's pretty sure Natalia had started to suspect at least something in that direction.

"Shit, really? Where?"

"Brooklyn."

"Manhattan," says Natalia, ready with his next assignment. "The drink."

He nods and reaches for a fresh mixing glass. "Brooklyn, the place. That's where I'm from. I moved when I was fourteen."

"And you moved all the way to Russia? Must've been a hell of a change."

"Yeah, took a lot of getting used to. The hardest part was leaving my family and my best friend behind. I was going to take part in a program"

"Damn. Alone in a foreign country. That's pretty intense. Must've picked up the language pretty quick, huh?"

His lips twitch toward a smile. "I had to pick up everything pretty quick."

"You're back now, though."

"Yep."

"Is that why you're in Brooklyn—seeing those people again?"

He hesitates, nearly fucking up and straining the Manhattan into the spot next to the martini glass instead of into the glass itself. Seeing those people. His family. Steve. He…maybe he'd thought about that a little, kinda tried to leave that door open, but that wasn't why he ended up in that studio apartment. "Uh, yeah. Just missed home, I guess. Nowhere else felt right."

"Nowhere else like New York?" Natalia offers.

"Yeah." He slides the Manhattan over for her inspection. She takes a small sip and nods in approval. Checking that off her mental list, she cocks her head and says, "Sidecar."

He raises his eyebrows. "Going for the classics now?"

"I want to see how you handle a sugar-coated rim."

"All right, all right. See away."

He tries to focus on that task but it's too easy for his mind to wander back to Steve. Is he even still in Brooklyn? He was the kind of kid who could take on the whole world and come out the other side still standing—even if he'd get beat to hell in just about every back alley that world had to offer first. New York was big, sure, but was it big enough to hold Steve?

Even if Steve was still here, it's not like he'd want to see Bucky, and it's definitely not like Bucky deserves to see him. Bucky ghosted the guy for a decade. In Steve's shoes, he'd be furious.

Despite one attempt by Clint to trip Bucky up by making up a drink on the spot and the disruptive arrival of Tony, Bucky passes their little test with flying colors. He spends the rest of his unofficial interview helping clean up the mess he made.

"Clint tells me that prosthetic of yours handles water pretty well," Tony says. He's taken up one of the barstools while he types away at some accounting website. At least, that's what he's doing about a quarter of the time Bucky looks his way; the rest of the time, he seems to be messing around with some kind of modeling program.

"Yeah, it's waterproof. Drips all over the place if I don't take the time to dry it, though. Lots of little cracks."

"Mind if I take a look at it sometime? I do a lot of engineering, and something advanced enough to make drinks with is right up my alley."

"Maybe another time," Bucky deflects. The last thing he wants is the owner of a place with a Hydra poster on the back wall getting a proper look at his arm. The hand, while similar, can be explained away. If Tony realizes it's the whole arm and the arm has a star on the shoulder to boot, well, Bucky can't explain that away. He's not that good.

As he's mopping up a bit of water from accumulated condensation that spilled onto the floor outside the bar, he catches a glimpse of a part of the mural he would never have seen if he wasn't on his knees with his shoulder knocking against a stool. It's a flourish of silver, a curvy bit that devolves into a couple sharp edges that double back on themselves before flying out again. The artist's signature. A very familiar signature.

Goosebumps prickle his arm. His mouth goes dry and he nearly cracks his head on the bar top when he straightens. "Hey, Natalia?"

"What's up?"

"The local artist that did these murals. Who was it?"

"Steve."

"Rogers?"

"Yeah." She cocks her head, but Tony beats her to the question.

"You know him?"

Somehow, his mouth goes from Sahara Desert to Death Valley. Natalia's words from that first night echo: he hangs out here all the time.

He sets his rag on the bar and backs up a few steps, trying to figure out an exit that won't make him look like a complete asshole for wasting their time. "Maybe I'm not a good fit for this place after all, I'll just—"

The door opens. He knows, he knows the universe is fucking with him, just like it did at that goddamn intersection, before he looks to confirm what his gut already knows while Tony prods him for an explanation.

For a second, he thinks his gut is lying to him. The guy walking in is six-foot-beautiful, built like an Olympian who's never heard of asthma and would bench at least four of the boy Bucky grew up with. It's the same guy he saw when he was drumming. The guy he'd known at first glance wasn't Steve, couldn't be.

But now, without a whole crowd and the glare of stage lights between them, that face is unmistakable. Bucky catches the paint-stained duffel in his hand with the brushes poking out and he knows he's fucked.

He's so fucked.

"Hey, Nat, Clint, Tony," Steve calls, and his familiar voice is the final nail in Bucky's coffin. Bucky feels the air starting to get thin. "I'm here to repaint the…" He notices Bucky. He blinks, and for a second, Bucky thinks Steve won't recognize him and he's in the clear. But then a little frown starts to weigh on Steve's lips.

"Steve," Natalia says, the final straw, "meet our new bartender, James Barnes."

The duffel hits the floor along with Bucky's heart. Shit, shit, shit.

Steve's eyes get huge, his whole body filling to bursting with recognition and it's too late to run, it's far too late to run, because Steve's speaking and his voice is cracking a little: "Bucky?"

Bucky turns and runs anyway.

Chapter Text

Steve's taken two hesitant steps to follow the guy who's gotta be Bucky out the back door before his brain kicks in. He spins and breaks into a run for the front door. He ignores Tony's shouted, "Airport!"

Out on the street he looks to the right just in time to see—

No one. Bucky must've gone down the alley instead of circling around. He's gone.

Steve swallows. He's gone.

Again.

When he walks back into the bar alone, he finds his friends having some kind of meeting. They break apart upon noticing he's back. Tony strolls up to him with an expectant smile.

"Well, how'd it go?"

"It, uh. It didn't. He went the other way."

Tony deflates. "Aw, there goes my Hallmark moment. So you two know each other?"

"We did, a long time ago."

"He's that friend you always talk about when you get hammered, right?" asks Clint. "Unless there's two people in your life named Bucky."

"Yeah."

"He said his name was James."

"Bucky's just a nickname."

"Oh?" Natasha has an odd little smile on her face when she leans her elbow on the bar. "Why'd he run?"

"How should I know?" As if that's not the same question that's been pounding in his head with every beat of his heart. Why'd you run, pal? "Is he gonna start working here? I can ask him about it."

"Er," Clint shrugs. "You might have spooked him, big guy. That's what we were talking about. Well, that and the Hallmark potential of it all."

"What?"

Tony waves all that away. "I'll call him in a bit. You, my friend, have a wall to repaint before the customers start rolling in. This way, please."

Still feeling a bit in shock, Steve lets himself be led over to that wall. He sets up his tarp and paints on autopilot while he replays those scant seconds in his head. His friends seem to pick up on his distracted state of mind and leave him to it, which is great, because Steve's barely got enough focus to do a simple patch job, much less hold a conversation.

Bucky. Bucky. Aged ten years, so different than the teen Steve's all but immortalized in his mind, but the bones of him are the same: same dimpled chin, same brown hair, same blue-grey eyes. Even if, now, Bucky's got long hair, a five o'clock shadow, and—if Steve's eyes hadn't been playing tricks on him—a silver hand. It's like something out of a comic book: the long-lost friend coming back from his quest irrevocably changed.

But…is he? Irrevocably changed, that is.

"Nat?"

"It was silver."

"What?"

"His hand. That's what you were going to ask about, right?"

"Er, no, but—well, I was going to, but—"

"I take it he didn't have that when you knew him?"

"No, he didn't." His stomach twists thinking about what Bucky could've gone through that would've taken his hand. "You talked to him, right? You and Clint?"

"And the guy who initially interviewed him is chopped liver," Tony calls from where he's messing with one of the speakers by the stage. "Don't mind me, just setting events in motion, nothing to write home about."

As requested, Steve doesn't mind him.

"Don't you have a phone call to make?" Natasha asks, and with a grumble Tony abandons his tinkering for the office.

"What was he like?" Steve asks her.

Nat leans on the bar and taps it absently with a single immaculately painted nail. She's done hourglass patterns this time, crimson on black. "Charming. He spent most of his time hitting on me."

"Huh, I thought he was being pretty familiar." Clint doesn't sound bothered as he pokes his head out of the kitchen. "Why'd you let him?"

She shrugs. "No harm in it. He wasn't pushy. Besides, he cooled off when he realized we were a thing. If he hadn't, then I would've had a problem."

"Same. Uh, yeah, I agree with her, by the way. Charming guy. Seems to have his shit together to an irritating degree with that confidence level, but he's got the mixing skills to back it up."

With that, Clint disappears back into the kitchen to keep aiding the Howlies with whatever prep they need an extra hand for.

"You should ask him about his bike."

"What?" Steve's starting to feel like a broken record.

Nat pulls at her lapel. "That jacket? Between that, the boots, and the creases in his hair that first night, he definitely rides. You two can reconnect over that."

"Seems like he'd sooner use it to get away from me."

"He just panicked."

"Right, and you know him so well."

Her nails stop tapping. "Is that jealousy, Steven?"

"No, I'm—sorry. I don't really know how to handle all this. It's not really what I expected when Tony called me in today."

"Fair enough. My dramatic childhood reunions always schedule themselves on my days off."

"Oh, screw you."

Three days pass with zero sign of Bucky. Steve sees him in every brunette he passes on the street, but after the first awkward grab of a stranger's shoulder, he learns his lesson and doesn't try his luck again. Not seeing him doesn't change the truth, though. Bucky's here. In New York. Somewhere.

It doesn't feel real. After so many years of silence, so many years of Bucky's lingering presence in the knickknacks and old sketches and still-not-deleted texts slowly fading away, Steve had begun to feel he'd more dreamed Bucky than known him. Some days he'd forgotten about Bucky entirely; some days it had taken him helping Bucky's mom with an errand or chore to remember that Bucky was real.

Now he's back. And for some reason, he'd run away.

As a bit of a joke at his desk on the third night, Steve finds himself "finishing" a digital portrait commission by altering the features slightly to be this new Bucky. It's fitting, the unfamiliar features overwriting those he thought he knew so well. He indulges himself for about ten minutes before he succumbs to his job, deletes all those layers, and gets back to proper work.

When the afternoon of the fourth day rolls around, Steve rolls up his supplies into his backpack, slings that backpack over his shoulder, and heads for Tony's. He makes it three steps inside the door before he realizes the bartender chatting with Natasha is not Clint. Steve's gaze snaps over to Tony, who's looking at him from where he's working on a lighting rig with an expression that can only be described as cheeky.

Figuring that Bucky's busy and not wanting to interrupt that conversation—and, just as much, not wanting Bucky to see the heat coloring Steve's face or hear Steve stutter through a hello—Steve angles for Tony.

"What did you do?" Steve asks without preamble when he gets close.

"Wow, assume much? That hurts. I didn't do anything. He came crawling to me after a couple days because it turns out I pay better than no job at all. In fact I pay better than most jobs your average bartender will find in this city, so—"

"Tony."

"I'm being honest, Rogers. He is here of his own free will. Ask him, if you're so worried. And no, I did not press him about his Winter Soldier past."

"Tony," Steve says, considerably more exasperated this time. "Bucky's not the Winter Soldier."

"He moved here from Russia, he speaks Russian, he plays the drums, he has a silver hand. What more do you want?"

"Did he tell you he's the Winter Soldier?"

"No. He denied it."

"Case closed."

"You're too trusting." He points with his screwdriver. "Every good act knows the value of a lie."

"Tony, how many people in the world have brown hair?"

"Globally? It's about twenty percent of the population."

"How many people live in Russia?"

"About 150 million. I see where you're going with this, by the way."

"How many people can play the drums?"

"About one percent of the U.S. population," Tony sighs, "which, combined with your other helpful question, lands us at a conservative three hundred thousand Russian drummers of varying quality. And before you ask about prosthetics, I get the point, no need for more math. You won't convince me he can't be until the real one shows up somewhere else, though."

"This isn't a Bruce Wayne and Batman situation."

"Yes, it absolutely is."

Steve heaves a sigh. "Look. If you won't trust the numbers, then trust me. The Bucky Barnes I knew, if he became a globe-trotting rockstar, would've told me. The first time he could play a song all the way through, he tracked me down in the hospital and made me listen to the recording on his iPod six times."

Tony scrutinizes him for a second before waving him off. "I get it. Now go, go talk to your long-lost friend and quit bothering me. I have a light to fix."

Leaving the man to his machines, Steve ambles toward the bar and tries to ignore how his heart rate picks up with every step he takes. Bucky's conversation with Natasha breaks off when Natasha notices him walking over, and then she's finding some excuse to head into the kitchen so it's just Steve and Bucky.

By the time Steve slots himself onto a stool, Bucky's wiping off a glass so robotically that for a second Steve wonders if the fingers of his left hand even move.

"Uh, hi," Steve tries. "Long time no see."

Bucky snorts and then looks surprised he did it. "I do a dramatic exit after ten years and that's what you open with?"

Just like that, Steve feels the worries he's been nursing for days slip away. This is still Bucky. "Sue me, I'm still reeling from seeing you with long hair. What, did they not have barbers in the motherland?"

"Says the guy rocking practically the same haircut he's had since he was eight. At least I tried something new." Bucky chews his lip. It's a little adorable. "Look, I'm…I'm sorry about that whole dramatic exit thing. I panicked."

"I noticed. Don't worry about it; it'll make for a good story. Best friends, reunited until one of them sprinted out the door like a spooked deer."

Bucky chuckles, and he's definitely blushing under that curtain of hair. Steve grins. "Tony didn't say anything about airports to you, did he?"

"Airports?"

"Never mind. I'm sorry if he asked you about the whole Winter Soldier thing, too. He's been obsessed ever since you performed."

"I'm not the Winter Soldier."

"Yeah, like I said, obsessed. Any brunette drummer from Russia would catch his eye."

Licking his lips, Bucky casts a guarded look at Tony. "Maybe I should tell him it's a wig. I've got an awful black one somewhere in the crap I brought with me. Think he'd buy that that's the real one?"

"Honestly? He might. The better question is if you want to deal with wearing that thing every night or Tony trying to get you to prove which one is the real hair color."

"Good point. I think I'd rather be bald."

Steve laughs at that mental image. "Maybe wait a few more decades for that."

"Roger that, Rogers." Bucky's pleased smirk is something Steve could stare at all day. "What are you up to? I saw you parked in the back with a sketchbook, is that your job? Artist-in-residence?"

"More like a volunteer position. I'm a freelance artist, most of my work is commissioned."

"Like the murals here?"

"Yeah, exactly. Those were pretty fun to do. Took forever, though."

"I bet. How long did you spend on the one in the bathroom?"

Steve can't help glancing in that direction. "You saw it?"

"Really hard to miss, pal."

"God. I keep trying to get Tony to let me repaint it. I almost managed it the other day."

"Aw, don't like it? I think it's got character."

"I was piss drunk when I made it."

"I couldn't tell." Bucky says it with a straight face and Steve has to actively fight the urge to reach across the bar and flick his forehead.

"Normally," Steve says instead, "I do my drawing sober and at home. I'm lucky enough to be able to choose my clients these days, and most of the people I work with are great."

"How's it pay? You looked much more like the starving artist type when we were kids, but you've put on a pound or two."

"I was in a rough spot for a few years, but rooming with Sam and Tony helped me save up. Once I got a platform going, things got easier. I could probably find a place without roommates if I wanted, but I like the company, and it's better for my savings."

Bucky draws breath, probably to push more on Steve's transformation, but he stops himself when a group of people wander in. "Customers," he says with distinct disappointment that has Steve chuckling.

"I'll leave you to your job," Steve says, sliding off his stool.

"Don't be a stranger!" Bucky calls after him while Steve claims his usual table.

Unfortunately, Steve does have to leave before Bucky's shift ends to finish sketches for his latest round of commissions and get those drafts out to their respective clients on-schedule. Still, he blazes through those sketches faster than he has in years and even fully colors—though doesn't get to rendering—another from a different round.

Looking at the result, he can't help feeling it's symbolic. Bucky's back, and now Steve's world is in color again.

Chapter Text

"Man, one of these days you're gonna tell me who this second drink is for."

Bucky takes both coffees with a grin. "That'll be the day you give me a discount."

Luis shakes his head. "Nah, even if you're friends with Scott, no way. I gotta make a living! An honest living."

"Right, and I gotta keep my secrets."

"That's how you stay interesting, huh?"

Bucky steps away from the food truck window so Luis can start helping the next in line. How the guy makes some of the best coffee in New York in a food truck, Bucky doesn't know, but he's grateful—especially since Luis is often operating on Bucky's route to work, meaning Bucky can hit him up whenever he's not running late. And these days, he's never running late. "Take care, Luis."

Sipping his coffee and savoring the warmth every time the late September breeze washes down the street, Bucky walks with a spring in his step all the way to Tony's. He bumps the door open with his hip and swings inside with a wide grin ready and waiting for the guy who's already claimed one of the barstools.

"Steve!"

Steve turns in his seat and the smile he gives Bucky chases away every lingering trace of the autumn chill. "Hey, Buck."

"For you." Bucky hands off the coffee and then heads behind the bar to start prepping for his shift. He's on his own tonight; it's a slow night, no events or anything. Coulson's got the main floor. Bucky's more than confident in his own ability to handle just the bar. And he's maybe just a little pleased he's so trusted after just three days of work.

"You know," Steve says between appreciative sips, "most people don't usually indulge in a coffee at three in the afternoon."

"Most people don't have an amazing friend hand-delivering them a delicious coffee at three in the afternoon."

"Where do you even get this stuff?"

Scott, who's helping Coulson set up all the tables, catches Bucky's eye. He grins and taps the side of his nose.

"Trade secret," Bucky says sagely. "Now, what're you drawing?"

Steve tells him about his warmup sketch—a quick study of the back of the bar—and then launches into his commission work. Bucky listens while he continues prepping the bar, occasionally interjecting to offer his opinions. He's particularly happy to do so when Steve explains how one of his commissioners is asking for a fifth round of revisions.

"I mean, you're past the coloring stage, right? And you said normally you don't do major revisions once you hit rendering."

"Yeah, but they've been really nice, and they are apologizing and agreeing to pay extra for the extra rounds."

"C'mon, pal, nice doesn't mean they're not being an inconvenience. At some point you gotta put your foot down."

"I have the time."

"Okay, I mean, it's your choice. Have you done commissions for them before?"

"No, they're a first timer. I checked with a few friends of mine and it's not like they have a reputation in the artist community or anything."

"Maybe they just don't understand the etiquette. They had another three revisions during the sketch phase, right?"

"Four, actually."

"Jesus, Steve."

"Hey, sketch revisions are easy."

"I know, I know. You've said that. But c'mon, they're walking all over you. You're past sketching now. The extra money they're paying can't be the same rate you'd be making if you were starting on a new commission, right? And I bet you're getting a little sick of that piece."

Steve scratches the back of his neck. "Er, maybe."

Bucky points with the pen he's been using to jot down inventory for reference later that night. "Cut 'em off, pal. One more round." He sees Steve waffling and softens his stance. "Or, if you're so dead set on being nice, just don't take another commission from them and warn that artist mafia of yours."

"It's not a mafia—"

"Tomato, tomahto. The Steve Rogers I knew would not let himself get pushed around like this, no matter how much the person doing the pushing apologized."

Steve thinks about that for a minute. Bucky uses most of that time to put his hair up so it will stop falling into his eyes, and when he looks back at Steve, the guy has thought about it so hard his face is red.

"I'll give him one more round after this one," Steve says to his sketchbook.

Bucky considers that a victory. And since he's started his winning streak, he decides to shoot for one more: "Say, you wanna stay late tonight?"

"Tonight? I, uh—no, I usually leave early to get work done."

"I know, but how about you make an exception? Just this once, for me." He leans on the bar and offers his most roguish smile. "Revisions guy can wait another night."

Steve still hesitates. Bucky leans closer, feeling his necklace press against his shirt from the angle. "C'mon."

Steve swallows and raises his hands in defeat. "Okay, okay, fine. I've actually made good progress on everything the last few days. I…Yeah, I should be okay if I take a night off."

"You sure you don't have to clear it with your manager?"

"Good point, one sec." Steve makes a show of assuming a thinking pose and nodding to himself. "Right, just checked. He says it's fine."

"Tell your manager I appreciate his style."

"I'll let him know."

By the end of the night, Bucky's pulled in a healthy amount of tips, Steve's given his card to the only band that was scheduled to play, and Coulson has wrapped up his end-of-shift duties so fast that he's out the door while Bucky's still counting the cash drawer.

"How long has that guy worked here?" Bucky asks no one in particular.

"Since it opened, pretty much," Steve answers. When Bucky had finished wiping down the bar, Steve had relocated from his table back to his stool—and Bucky is absolutely thinking of that particular stool as his. "Any trick in the book, he knows it. Including how to do some of his closing routine while there are still customers around."

"Maybe I'll ask Natalia for some tips. She seems like she has things together. More than Clint, anyway."

"I've been meaning to ask, why do you call her Natalia?"

"Why? It's her name, isn't it?" Bucky pauses his counting and peers at Steve, a small bit of horror threatening to bloom in his gut. "She didn't give me a fake name, did she? No, wait. You call her Nat."

"Nat, or Tasha, very rarely Natasha," Steve confirms.

"Nat," Bucky repeats, and then frowns at the sound coming off his tongue. "Yeah, no. She told me Natalia, so I'm calling her Natalia. I'm worried she'll take off some of my skin if I try to take anything off her name."

"Maybe when you're better friends, Buck."

"You're the only one who gets to call me that. Everyone else has to make do with Bucky or James."

He finishes counting, sticks the excess in an envelope, and heads into the back to deposit it in the safe. Dugan waves from where he's mopping the floor, a task that Bucky swiftly bumps down lower on his to-do list since there's only one mop and bucket.

As though reading his mind, Dugan calls when Bucky's heading back out to the bar: "Want me to roll this thing out to you when I'm done?"

"That'd be great, actually. 'Preciate it."

Dugan tips his bowler hat and gets back to mopping. Bucky leaves him to it and rejoins Steve at the bar. What's he got left to do? Mop, obviously. But before that…trash, vacuum…yeah, that should be it.

"Hey, can I get a look at your hand?"

Bucky pauses halfway to undoing the bag of the bar's under-the-counter trash bin. "My hand?"

"Your left." Seeing Bucky's hesitation, Steve gets nervous. "If that's okay? I've been trying to draw it."

Intrigued, Bucky leaves the trash alone for the moment and peers at Steve's upside-down sketch. Steve takes pity on him craning his neck and spins his sketchbook around so Bucky can get a better look. What greets him is a two-page spread full of hand studies. Some are just regular hands—albeit rendered with so much life and character they seem to gesture themselves right off the page—but others are undeniably Bucky's left hand. Steve must've been stealing looks at it every chance he got, to get the panel placements so accurate.

"Not bad," Bucky acknowledges. He uses his left hand to spin the sketchbook to face Steve again and then rests that hand on the bar. "You've got twenty seconds before I gotta get back to taking out the trash."

Steve sketches like a man possessed on one of the hands that didn't previously sport any signs of being robotic. After a few lines, Bucky realizes Steve isn't being perfectly accurate; he's mapping out all the plates, joints, and seams.

"You're pretty quick, huh?"

"I do a lot of speed drawings as warm-ups," Steve confesses while he continues sketching, his eyes flitting between Bucky's hand on the countertop and the page. "Can you turn your hand over?"

Bucky does and Steve pivots to another blank hand, this one palm-up. They sail clean past the twenty-second mark but Bucky keeps his mouth shut; the look of concentration on Steve's face is adorable.

Eventually though, he has to take his hand back. The last thing he wants is for Dum Dum to show up ready to hand off the mop only to find Bucky hasn't even vacuumed yet. Dugan does show up to bestow the mop and bucket right as Bucky's finishing up vacuuming, and Steve's kind enough to put away the vacuum so Bucky can get right to finishing his closing routine.

Whenever his mopping takes him near Steve, Bucky gives himself a break and lets Steve study his hand some more.

"It really is difficult to get it right," Steve muses while he erases and redraws a few lines of his latest sketch. "The palm in particular." He reaches out and gently angles Bucky's hand, chewing on his own lip and then looking back at his sketchbook. "No fingerprints."

"Good for thieving," Bucky manages, and if his voice comes out weird, Steve's too polite to say anything. It's a good thing Steve's totally focused on that because Bucky's pretty sure his face is on fire.

Steve touching his hand like it's no big deal. Steve staring at him relentlessly for almost an hour at this point. Steve drawing him—his hand—over and over and over again. If Bucky lets himself think about any of those things too deeply, he's going to get lightheaded.

"Can't say I've had the pleasure of trying to draw it, honestly," he finally adds when the silence drags. So Steve doesn't see his burning face, Bucky recovers his hand and gets back to mopping, which conveniently turns him away from Steve.

"Well, take my word for it. But it's a fun challenge. Thanks for letting me, by the way. Draw it. You didn't have to."

"It's no problem." The only downside is that Steve's touch is so painfully muted through the hand's sensors compared to how it would feel if he grabbed Bucky's right hand. But there's no way to ask him to do that without making things very, very weird.

Once Bucky's finished mopping, wrung the mop and washed both it and the bucket, it's time to head home. Steve trails after Bucky to the employee lockers in the back while Bucky collects his things.

"Is it cold?"

Bucky shoulders his backpack, grins to himself, and swiftly lays his palm across Steve's forehead before Steve can react.

"Ah!" Steve flinches out from under the cold metal and Bucky laughs.

"That enough of an answer?"

"Jerk, you coulda just said so."

"Aw, where's the fun in that?" He taps by his shoulder. "It's got some heating where it's close to my body so I don't get frostbite or anything, but yeah, it gets really fucking cold sometimes and I have to be careful about what I'm touching until it heats up again. Another reason I wear gloves with it so much. Plus, I once burned myself pretty badly because I forgot I was using it to handle some stuff on the stove."

"Buck…"

"I only did it once! Besides, you can barely see the scar anymore."

"It scarred?"

"Yeah, here." Bucky pulls back his sleeve so Steve can see the sliver of rougher, hairless flesh in a thin line alone his forearm. "Some grease splattered and I tried to wipe it off. Not my best decision. Speaking of stupid decisions, I haven't given you my new number yet, have I? Way past time I fixed that."

Steve blinks. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah. Why wouldn't I be?"

"You're the one who stopped texting me. I thought, I dunno. I thought there must've been a reason."

Too late, Bucky recognizes the bear trap that's now snapping at his neck. He swallows and tries to play it off by gesturing for Steve's phone. "There's no reason for me not to give it to you now."

Steve hands it over and Bucky plugs in his contact, fires off a text, then hands it back. From his own phone, he confirms that the "test" text came through. And he sends one in return: Miss me?

It's just a silly little text, but when Steve gets it and reads it, his whole expression shutters. Bucky lowers his phone, smile slipping from his face. "Something wrong?"

"No. No, it's nothing." Steve takes a deep breath and pockets his phone. "I should go—I need to run some errands tomorrow morning."

Chapter Text

It's stupid. Steve knows it's stupid. He knows it's stupid and yet he can't stop thinking about it even though it's the next day and he's out in the cloudy weather running errands and by all rights has every reason to forget that happened.

Except Bucky's little miss me? text stares at him every time he looks at his phone. It's not fair to put so…so much on so little, he knows that, he knows doing that is stupid. Bucky was just being his usual flippant self, but…God, Steve had missed him. Missed him like a limb. A shining silver limb whose hand panels he still can't get right even after hours spent—

He just missed him.

"Hey, watch it," someone chides, and Steve hastily apologizes for nearly stepping on their toes. Distracted on the sidewalk while carrying groceries isn't a good look, but he's thankfully at his destination. He doesn't even have to look down to half-jog up the worn stone steps he's trod a hundred times. That also means his mind is free to spiral right back down the same path it's already paced a rut through.

That stupid text and Bucky's stupid smile had yanked all those long-buried feelings right out of the grave. Now Steve's left watching them dance around his head, powerless to shove them back where they'd been, powerless to lay them to rest. Time's supposed to heal all wounds, but ten years since Bucky left and eight since he left and the grief and anger feel as raw as the day he realized Bucky was never going to write him back.

His hand is shaking when he raises it to knock. He squeezes his fingers into a tight fist a couple of times until it's steady and then raps his knuckles against the wood. "Winnie? It's Steve."

"One moment!"

He collects the bag he'd set on the stoop to knock just in time for Winnie to open the door and take it from him. Bucky's mom looks much the same as she did last week when Steve was helping her replace the bulb in her microwave: same wispy brown hair shot through with gray, same deep smile lines, same dimpled smile.

"Thank you so much, dear. I swear, one of these days I will find the time to do it myself."

"It's no trouble," Steve says, following her inside to the kitchen to start putting things away. With all the volunteering, running of neighborhood associations, and general life-wrangling Winnie's responsible for, it's no surprise groceries tend to slip on her list of priorities. "Besides, I like carrying things now a lot more than I used to."

"You make yourself rather hard to argue against."

"I try."

"Can you leave out the pasta and tomatoes? I'll be using those for dinner."

"Sure, I'll put them over here."

"Perfect, thank you. Have you heard back from Peggy?"

"Her plans fell through; she won't be making it for Christmas."

"Oh, that's a shame."

"She wanted me to tell you how distraught she is that she won't be able to sample more of your cooking, and that—if they aren't family secrets—she'd love to have some of the recipes so she can gift them to her mother. Apparently Mrs. Carter has been going a bit stir-crazy of late."

"That's a lovely idea! I'll pen her a few when I have a chance. A shame she can't come down."

"She is in London, and the Security Service doesn't exactly pay a luxury salary."

"I suppose we'll all have to wait until she's made director."

Steve laughs. "So, the way she puts her mind to things, a year or two."

Winnie smiles. "Oh, she'll make it."

"I know. Believe me, if anyone can reach that high, it's Peg."

Talking about Peggy brings a fond smile to his face that doesn't leave as he helps put away the groceries. Though their relationship was short—just a couple of years while Steve was over there for an international art program—it was nevertheless strong, and remains so even as a friendship years later.

"Oh, it's a good thing George is still at work. I'll have to hide these." Winnie holds up the fun-size KitKats Steve bought on a whim with a wink.

"I was thinking you could put them out in a bowl," Steve admits.

"I'll do that, just a little at a time. I swear, he has fingers built for thieving. I never catch him in the act but anything I put in that bowl," she nods at the one in the center of the island, "goes missing just like that, not a sound to warn me."

Her comment about thieving fingers sparks Steve's memory. "Funny you should say that, the other night Bucky said—"

"Bucky?"

"Yeah, Bucky." He looks at her, sees the shocked look on her face, and knows what it means. His stomach sinks under the weight of an anger he hasn't let himself feel in years but has never once faded away. "You…He hasn't visited?"

"He's back?"

That's answer enough. Steve swallows around a sudden lump in his throat. That anger is thick enough to choke on and it takes real effort to set the small bag of apples down rather than squeeze the soon-to-be-pie ingredients into paste. "I'm sorry, I thought he'd already stopped by."

Bucky hasn't even gone to see his own mother. Bucky, who'd practically believed his parents hung the stars in the sky, whose absence and radio silence left his whole family in pieces for years, hasn't visited.

"I didn't even know he was in Brooklyn," Winnie whispers, tears gathering in her eyes. "How is he? Is he eating? You know how the housing market is here, does he have somewhere to stay?"

"He's fine," Steve says without thinking, and then wishes he could've lied. Could've told her that Bucky was not okay and that was why he hadn't come to see his family, apparently hadn't even reached out to tell them he was stateside. "Eating and employed and everything. I haven't seen his place but he does have one."

"That's good, that's…" Winnie leans against the back of the living room couch and wipes at her eyes. It takes her a few seconds of quiet sniffling to manage, "I'm glad."

Steve grabs a tissue box from the kitchen counter and offers it. She takes three and doesn't seem to notice Steve's hand is shaking or that he's gripping the box hard enough to dent the cardboard.

"Thank you. When you see him, can you ask him to stop by? George and I would love to see him again."

"Of course," Steve says, smiling through the urge to put a hole in the wall. "You don't even have to ask."

When he leaves Winnie's, he has to pause in the narrow alley right next to it, brace himself on the brick, and just breathe until he can pry one hand out of a fist and fish out his phone. There's a moment when he's not sure he can hold his phone without chucking it as hard as he can, but a steadying breath muffles that urge. He takes three times longer than he should to get his message typed.

You at work today?

He stares down at the screen but there's no response even after the message is labeled as delivered. Exhaling, he scrubs a hand through his hair and then drops it down. Maybe he'll hit the gym. Better that than fucking up his tablet or pen because he's pressing down too hard, and the way he's feeling, he will absolutely press down too hard.

His phone buzzes and his heart shoots into his throat.

Shift doesn't start until four, reads Bucky's first message. Steve checks the time—just after one. Another message comes through while Steve's composing a response: What's up?

Innocuous. Oblivious. Infuriating. Steve breathes in deep and fires off a simple question: What's your address?

Bucky's typing dots come and go a few times, but eventually he gives it. He follows it up with a warning: It's no mansion.

As if Steve cares about the size of Bucky's home. All he cares about is how long it's going to take him to get there.

Bucky's building is a five-story apartment complex that looks like it was built in the 1930s, crumbling at the corners and with doors that creak loudly enough to make Steve wince. He buzzes Bucky's place on the third floor and waits until the inner door unlocks. A crackle from the speaker gives him pause.

"Don't bother with the elevator," Bucky advises, his voice coming through so full of interference it's barely recognizable. "Been broken for days. Stairs are to the right when you walk in."

That's gotta be some kind of housing violation but Steve's not here for that. He takes the stairs two at a time and pauses on the third-floor landing to catch his breath. Far under the anger pounding through his head like a second heartbeat, there's still the echoes of wonder that he's able to do things like that without hurting himself. Far, far below, because his anger feels as deep and massive as the ocean.

Bucky's in unit 310, a unit whose front door is indistinguishable from any other on the floor save for the number plate next to it. Steve pounds on it hard enough to make it shake.

"Bucky? Bucky!"

There are soft footsteps from the other side and then Bucky's pulling the door open. It catches on the chain. He's in the middle of a massive yawn but manages a barely intelligible "One sec." He closes the door slightly, undoes the latch, and then pulls the door open wide enough to give Steve a good look at him while battling a second yawn.

"Sorry," he offers when he's got his mouth under control, "late night."

He's wearing nothing but running shorts and a baggy sweatshirt with some Russian company's slogan on it—an outfit he must've just thrown on. His hair isn't brushed, either.

"Did I wake you up?"

Bucky's bleary blinks are marred with a touch of confusion in response to Steve's caustic tone, which is far sharper than what marks their usual banter. "No, I mean, kinda. Don't worry about it; I should've been awake a while ago. What brings you here? Wanna come in?" He opens the door a bit wider, and what little Steve can see of the space beyond is impressively cramped. With the curtains still drawn, the place is impressively dark, too. The bedsheets are all rumpled, speaking to Bucky's recent escape from their embrace, probably when Steve buzzed his apartment.

When Steve makes no move to come inside, Bucky's confusion grows. "Or…not, I guess. Did you need something? If you left anything at the bar, I didn't take it."

"That's not why I'm here."

Bucky waits, one eyebrow ticking up in expectation. Steve wrestles with all the things he wants to say and gives up trying to be tactful about this because there is nothing in him now that wants tact. "I saw your mom today."

Bucky's expression shuts down.

"Apparently," Steve continues, and his voice is shaking with the anger he's never been good at holding back when Bucky doesn't immediately offer a reason, "she didn't even know you were back."

Bucky's still silent.

"She was worried about you. She asked me if you were okay. If you were eating. If you had a roof over your head. I wanted to lie to her, Buck. To tell her you weren't okay and that's why you hadn't called your own mom."

"Did you?"

"No. I told her the truth because that's what she deserved to hear."

"Okay."

"Is that it?"

"I don't know what you want me to say."

"Seems like it should be obvious."

"I'm not a mind reader, Steve, and I haven't had any coffee yet. Show a little mercy."

"I'm not playing, Buck. You hurt her. Her and your dad."

"He was there too, huh?"

"No. But he'll hear about it if she hasn't already told him. Why didn't you go see them? Why not even call? It's the same number and the same address."

Bucky sighs and leans against the door frame. "Right, and how was I supposed to know they still lived in the same place and had the same numbers?"

"I dunno, ask? Look at any of the return addresses from the letters they sent?" Bucky's gaze cuts down and to the left for an instant before it snaps up to Steve. "Hell," Steve continues, "you could've asked me! I could've told you!"

"Well, apparently I didn't even have to do that. You came here and told me all on your own. Thanks for your service, pal. Five stars."

"Have you even texted Becca? Charlie? Liz?"

Bucky flinches minutely with each of his younger siblings' names. "I'm going to."

"So you haven't."

"Fine, you caught me, officer. No, I haven't. Guilty as charged. Is that what you want to hear? I'm gonna do all of that eventually."

"Just like you were gonna see me eventually, right?" Steve snarls, incensed by his flippancy. "If I hadn't walked in, if you hadn't gotten that job, would I have ever seen you again?"

Color flushes Bucky's cheeks, the first concession to anger he's made besides the bite in his voice. "Don't be so dramatic."

"That's not an answer."

"Christ, Steve, yes! Yes, you would've seen me again. I don't know where, I don't know when, but yes."

"That's just perfect. Don't know where, don't know when. That's just like you. No plan. No commitment. No follow-through. I'd tell you to promise to call your mother but I know that wouldn't make a lick of difference."

Bucky's nostrils flare. "Did you come here just to start a fight? What the fuck is your problem?"

"Yeah, I did, and I don't know how to make my point more obvious."

"I get your point but not your stupid problem. And, hey, you know what? You're such a hypocrite, too. You of all people don't get to lecture me about plans. My mom this, my mom that. Go see my mom? Go see yours."

An axe cleaves Steve in two. Bucky's doubled in front of him, the hallway spins, and then it all snaps back together so crystal sharp that it hurts. He spins on his heel so Bucky won't see the look on his face and holds himself together long enough to stalk down the hall, pausing with a hand on the stairwell door to snap, "Call your mother, for god's sake."

He slams the door behind him.

Chapter Text

Bucky's arms hurt. Mostly his right arm. His left doesn't feel pain but the anchor points in his chest ache something fierce, and all the connective tissue near the join is burning and itching from chafing. His head hurts, too, from the noise that's been crashing into it for hours. His back hurts from holding tension and his ankles from slamming the pedals and his throat is raw like he's been screaming but he hasn't, he hasn't, because his neighbors can forgive muffled drumming but they'll hear the screaming. So he hasn't, even though that feels like the only thing that'll get this goddamn buzzing out of his body because the drums aren't working. He's played Through The Fire And Flames twice and it's still not enough.

The next song cues up through his headphones and he can almost swear someone heard him begging for something more because of all the songs he's got, it's this one. Ravine. Easily the most drums-heavy song of Hydra's entire repertoire and over six minutes to boot. Perfect for pushing himself from exhausted to completely spent, which is the only reason it's got the dubious honor of being one of the four Hydra songs he actually keeps in his playlists.

Right now, he's not hearing the lyrics over his own playing, but he's heard and performed this one enough that they slide into his brain anyway, and tragically they arrive in Schmidt's voice. Maybe he should try listening to more cover bands.

The lyrics themselves don't bother him as much as the man singing them. Fans got a little bothered when the song first dropped; it's long and the lyrics are far more meta than their usual fare, so opinions were divided. Which, fair enough. When you listen to a band for songs about crises of identity, raging against the system, and burning shit down to feel alive, one that's all about a disembodied singer lamenting a woman's life falling apart because of everyone in her life failing her is going to hit different.

Bucky's always liked the song, though. Mostly for the drums, but also for the lyrics. The woman's never named, but sometimes he likes to put himself in her shoes. She starts off ready to face the world, only for that world to fall out from under her, tear her up, and then pour salt in the wounds. All the while, the singer, apparently the only person who's on her side, is just stuck watching the tragedy unfold from a perch he can't leave. A narrator stuck up there just to watch her fall. The more he laments her situation, the worse it gets. By the end of the song, the woman's lost her grip and the singer's crying out about what could've and should've been were it not for the penny that launched her off the rails.

With each hit of the chorus, the drums get louder and louder. The whole song is full of double-bass pounding and cymbal crashes between floor tom grooves, a grueling marathon that leaves Bucky sweating as his sticks fly across his kit. Hit after hit, the singer wailing about the life he couldn't save right up until the final crash that slams closed the coffin lid.

Panting, bent over with his stick threatening to slip out of his right hand, sweat-soaked hair sticking to his neck and hanging around his face, ears ringing in the sudden silence, Bucky stares at and through the floor. Bitterness claws up his throat.

"Then why the fuck even watch?"

The next song starts drifting through his headphones. He fumbles for his headphone cord until he finds the pause button. Sure, he appreciates Linkin Park, but a glance at his phone reminds him Pepper won't appreciate him being late for his shift. He tosses his sticks aside and gets to his feet, only to stumble when the room spins. Right. Between the late night and Steve—Steve being Steve, he didn't get any food. Probably should've at least had some water before parking his ass on that stool for hours.

Squinting through the pounding in his head that thankfully fades quickly, Bucky downs a couple glasses of water and a cereal bar before heading to his bathroom. A quick shower, change of clothes, and he'll make it on time.

He pauses in the middle of spreading shampoo through his hair, water beading on his eyelashes. Steve's probably gonna be there. He's there more often than he's not when it's Bucky's shift, and right now, Bucky really doesn't want to deal with any pre-shift chit-chat, especially if Steve tries to start another fight about something that's not at all his problem.

Customers usually don't start rolling in with any regularity until around 4:30, and Clint's on shift today too. Bucky can afford to be a little late.

Some soap joins the water, burning his eyes.

"Ah, fuck!"

"Bucky, got a Manhattan for the person at the end over there, the one in red. You mind? I got a flow going over here and that doesn't fit."

Bucky bites back a sigh. "Yeah, I got it."

If he said no, Clint would pull the card he's been using all night to have Bucky take on the more arduous tasks behind the bar: namely, the card of Bucky was late. That started the moment Clint finished giving him shit for being late and it didn't help that Bucky's excuse was just a lame trotting out of "I lost track of time."

He would've come up with something better if he hadn't been working so hard to ignore the looks Steve'd been throwing his way from that table of his. No doubt the guy knew that Bucky hadn't, in fact, called his mom. Not even after Steve texted him her number and Bucky's dad's number in case Bucky didn't have them anymore.

Honestly, Bucky not texting or calling them at this point is entirely steve's fault. Steven's the one who got Bucky angry and he's not about to have his family reunion go down while he's still steaming from an argument he didn't even start.

"Hey," Clint asks quietly when there's a lull in the orders. His voice barely carries over the sound of the performing band. "What's going on? I thought you two were thick as thieves again."

"It's nothing. Steve's being Steve."

"Uh-huh. I know Steve, and him being himself isn't usually a bad thing."

Bucky snorts. "When he decides what's right and sees something wrong, he wants to right that wrong no matter what. Seems to be forgetting I'm not living the same life I was at fourteen."

Clint looks between them. "Right," he says, drawing out the word. "So the Facebook status is…it's complicated?"

"Let's go with that."

By the end of the night, Bucky's more than ready to just go home, closing duties be damned. His headache's still going, his body aches, and his shoulder in particular aches so bad he's favoring his right arm. But he can't ditch Clint after he made Clint do the opening duties alone, so Bucky's stuck cleaning up after the last customers finally trickle out.

All save Steve, who's decided to toss out his usual schedule of leaving at eight to presumably make Bucky's life even more miserable.

When Steve approaches the bar, Bucky braces for the worst.

"I wanted to apologize."

Well, that's…not what he was expecting. "What?"

"I shouldn't'a blown up on you like that today. It's your life, not mine, and I don't get to tell you how you should live it. We're both adults now, at least most of the time. I'm sorry."

There's nothing but pure sincerity in Steve's face and voice. Of course there is; it's Steve. He doesn't have a duplicitous bone in his body. So Bucky manages a crooked smile and accepts the olive branch. "All's forgiven, pal. We all have bad days."

"Still no reason to take it out on you."

"Nah, I probably deserved it. Like I said: forgiven. Water under the bridge."

With Bucky splitting his attention between chores and conversation, it's easy to fall back into old habits. Before long, they're joking around like they used to, and Bucky makes the mistake of thinking everything's going to be okay. Until he's using his phone as a flashlight to check a cranny by the sink for where he dropped a pen, drops his phone, and adds a crack to the screen.

"Fuck," he mutters quietly, running a finger over it. It's not bad, but combined with the other crack already there, it's not good, either.

"Still alive?" Steve asks, peering at the damage. Bucky checks that he can still turn it on, though the flashlight still shining is a good sign.

"Yep, still kicking." He goes back to searching for his pen and ends up finding two.

"When'd you get that phone, anyway?" Steve asks while Bucky keeps working.

"This one? Couple years ago, maybe."

"Oh. What about the one before that?"

"Had that one since I was sixteen. It was really struggling to keep up by the end of its life, honestly."

Too late, Bucky realizes the can of worms he just opened. Steve is looking at him, looking looking, and right here is Bucky's last chance to deflect and find a safer topic.

But he can't find the words. Even if he could, his mouth has gone dry and he's not sure he could force them out of his throat.

Steve, though. Steve can find his own words. And he asks them, still looking straight at Bucky.

"Why didn't you text?"

It's not accusatory, it's not angry, it's just…confused. Steve doesn't know why Bucky didn't text. He's probably hoping for a decent answer. Some logical explanation to make it all make sense.

Bucky swallows, licks his lips, and opts for the only thing he's got: truth. "I was in an accident. Kinda lost chunks of my memory. Phone was destroyed. Things like phone numbers…they came back, but most of the time I had no idea who they belonged to. So my contact list is a bit skinnier than it used to be. Think Jane from fifth grade will forgive me for losing her number?"

Steve doesn't reciprocate his smile, so Bucky lets it drop.

"That's the truth, pal. Swear it."

Pursing his lips, Steve nods and taps the bar. He's still got a furrow in his brow.

"Hey," Bucky says, trying to keep his voice soft. "You're kinda giving me mixed signals. Sometimes I make a joke and you seem to like it, other times you get all inside your head about it."

"Guess I'll get in my head about this too," Steve mutters. Bucky bites his tongue and waits while Steve gathers his thoughts. "I…Listen, I get that your whole life changed when you went to that program," he says slowly. "And then you had that…that accident, whatever it was. Your whole life changed. But the rest of the world didn't stop turning just because you weren't in it anymore. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't pause my life for you. You were gone, Bucky. You didn't text. You didn't call. You didn't even," he stops, sucks in a breath, and finishes in a more measured tone, "you didn't even write."

"Write? This isn't the 1940s, pal. Yeah, I probably should've texted or called, I mean, some way somehow I could've gotten your number again, but by then it'd been months and I didn't want to be weird about it. C'mon, don't make this weird. We're having a good time, right?"

If anything, his confusion makes Steve's frustration grow. He closes his eyes and breathes deep. "Buck."

"What? Seriously, I'm doing my best to understand but you're not making it easy on me."

Steve's fraying patience snaps. "You are such an asshole."

Bucky stares. What the hell did he do now? But Steve doesn't elaborate, so he prods, "Do I get an explanation, or is this a guessing game? We're going to be here a while if I have to play the game."

A muscle in Steve's jaw feathers from how hard he's clenching his teeth and Bucky realizes from a distance that he's looking at the expression Steve makes right before he punches some jerk. But Bucky's not some jerk, and seriously, what did he do wrong? Should he not have admitted he should've called, or at least texted? But that's what Steve had been saying, wasn't it?

"You don't get to come back into my life and expect things to be the way they were," Steve bites out. "You don't get to talk to me like our last real conversation was earlier today instead of a decade ago. You don't get to 'hey Stevie' me with that stupid smile and expect anything in return."

Bucky scowls. "Jesus, anything else you want to throw on that list? Maybe ban me from looking at you, or breathing in the same room? I'm trying my best, okay? I don't know what I get to do, I'm figuring it out. I said I was sorry but I'm not gonna beg for you."

"Good. I didn't ask you to."

Steve gets up. Bucky catches his wrist. "Hey, c'mon. I'm trying. Talk to me, meet me halfway. End of the line, right?"

Steve rips his hand free and Bucky freezes at the fury in his eyes. "You don't get to say that either."

He leaves without another word and Bucky stares after him, speechless from confusion and indignation both. Steve just set his own olive branch on fire. Ten minutes ago they'd been smiling and laughing and reminiscing, so what changed? Replaying the conversation, he tries to pinpoint the moment things went sour. He'd been so happy just hearing Steve's voice so he'd kept him talking. Steve had been happy to talk, he thought. And then…Bucky made a joke, like any of the jokes he used to make, and Steve got weird about it. Yeah. He got weird.

Bucky blows out a breath and stares up at the sky, imagining the smoke from the burning branch curling up into the clouds overhead.

Fuck.

Chapter Text

Since Steve's determined to get mad at Bucky every time they talk, Bucky does his damndest to make sure they never exchange a word. Gone are the coffee deliveries, the pre-shift chats, the all-day text chains. Instead, it's brief eye contact from across a room and frosty silence.

Good.

He can grit his teeth through a shift. Long enough, and he can even forget Steve's there, can lose himself in orders and directionless flirting and the satisfaction of a cash tip pressed into his hand. That's all he's gotta do: his job. Even if he keeps glancing at Steve's table. Even if those glances sometimes mean a messed-up drink or a drink going to the wrong person.

"Get it together," Natalia mutters the next time they pass each other. He doesn't bother responding; he's fine. Steve's the problem. He's just lucky enough that his whole job is sitting in one spot so no one can tell if he's fucking up.

He gets through that shift. Gets through the next one, too. And the third, and so on, but with each passing day it feels like his balance on the tightrope is getting shakier. Every night he dreams of that fucking crash. That recurring nightmare hasn't haunted him in months, but of course it chooses the worst time to rear up again. So he's five days in without five nights' worth of sleep and it's starting to show.

It gets bad enough that, in the middle of the busiest time of the shift, Natalia tells him to get out.

"Just stop," she says, taking the glass from his hand. "I will handle this. You will sit over there and wait for the song to end, and then you'll go home and sort out whatever's got you so twisted up. You're better than this, James."

Embarrassed and ashamed and angry above all, Bucky abandons his post behind the bar, dumps his ass on one of the only open stools at the end of the bar by the server station, and glares at the whorls in the wooden counter hard enough to set them on fire.

"Excuse me, I hope you don't mind. I, um, I wanted to say hello."

He turns to find an attractive woman about his age with platinum blonde hair and rich brown eyes standing next to him, clearly asking for his attention since no one else is sitting nearby. Something about her face tickles his memory, but his brain doesn't offer anything more useful than that feeling.

Still, he might be having a shitty night, but that's no reason to be rude to a stranger.

"Do I know you?" he asks, softening the question with a smile. "You look a little familiar, is all, but I can't place you."

"Oh, I don't expect you to," she says, and gestures at the spot next to him. He nods and she slides onto the stool. "My name is Claire."

"James."

"I was here a few weeks ago with my ex, um. Okay, this is going to make me sound a little crazy, but—look, we were probably the nicest-dressed people here that night, it was a whole thing of his to have one fancy night a month but the place we were going to go to canceled our reservation and we—well, that's not important."

"Doesn't ring a bell," he says apologetically.

"No, that's fine. We ended up here and he ended up having some very different views on kids and marriage responsibilities than I did. We broke up a few days later."

"I'm sorry," he offers, still trying to figure out how he slots into this. He can't recall Claire specifically but he can't deny that he does recognize her in some capacity. "How long were you together?"

"Two years." She gestures to Natalia behind the bar only to find a shot of vodka placed in front of her. "Um, I didn't—"

"On the house," Natalia says, because of course she was listening. "What can I get you for the follow-up?"

Claire blinks in surprise and then orders a martini. When Natasha leaves to make it, Claire looks at James and laughs nervously. "I didn't know they did pity vodka here."

"Don't think of it as pity," he advises. "Try…fortifying."

She smiles and downs the shot with practiced ease that falters when it burns more than she expects on the way down.

"So," he says when she's set the glass down on the bar, "I don't want to make assumptions about why you're over here with me, but…"

"Oh, whatever you're assuming, it's absolutely right." She takes a deep breath. "It's been two weeks and it's time I put myself back out there. Here I am, putting myself out in front of the hot guy I saw here that one time who did an amazing job covering for a band's missing drummer. I mean, us being here at the same time again feels like a sign."

Natalia returns with the martini. When she sets it down by Claire, though, her eyes are only on Bucky. There's a warning in them, and he frowns.

Natalia cuts her gaze to Claire. "Do you speak Russian?" she asks, posing the question in Russian. Claire pauses with her glass halfway to her glossy lips, confusion furrowing her brow.

"I'm sorry, I don't speak…was that Russian?"

"Never mind," Natalia tells her in English. Flipping back to Russian, she looks at Bucky. "Don't do this. You know Steve is here tonight."

Bucky feels his hackles rise and doesn't bother pretending he doesn't understand. "I'm not hanging around here right now to see him and I'm just holding a conversation. How he takes that is his problem."

Claire, who'd been watching them with growing incomprehension and worry, shifts awkwardly on her stool. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize you two—"

"We're not," Natalia tells her. "James is my coworker. I'm reminding him not to forget the important work he has to do around here."

She leaves without another word. Bucky shakes his head and dispels the tension with an easy smile. "Hey, don't worry about it. Natalia really is just a coworker of mine. We both spent time in Russia and she was reminding me I've got a shift tomorrow, that's all. I forgot once because of a date and she hasn't let me forget it since."

"O-oh. Okay."

"Really, I'm sorry about that. Let me make it up to you—I'll buy your next drink. Why don't you tell me about yourself? 'Claire' and 'recently broke up' can't be everything."

She blushes. "Definitely not. And definitely not my best opener."

"Nah, it's fine. I've heard worse. You're two years out of practice, after all. How about this? Fresh start." He sticks out his hand. "James Barnes, recently moved here from Russia and still finding my footing."

She takes his hand and gives it a firm shake. "Claire Stultz, lived here for four years and never been to Russia. What's it like?"

"Not as cold as everyone seems to think, at least where I was. Turns out there are four seasons there just like here. The winter can be pretty brutal, though."

"Just like here."

"Exactly."

"Is there any part of it you miss?"

"It's hard not to miss something about a place you lived for years," he admits. "I've been trying to find a place here that makes borscht the way I like it, but no luck so far. What about you? Where did you come from?"

"California—nowhere you've heard of, I promise. Small town near the coast."

"Must've been quite the shock, coming here from that."

"Not too bad, minus the winters. God, can you believe I didn't even own a heavy coat before I came here? Layering only does so much. And my poor boots—I never knew road salt could do so much damage." She does a performative shiver. "Anyway, I visited LA a lot, I had family there, so it's not like I'd never been to a big city before. New York's definitely a different kind of big, though."

"Good big or bad big?"

"You know, my opinion keeps changing." She smiles coyly at him. "It depends on the company."

He grins. "I feel the same way."

Their conversation flows easily until Claire finishes her second drink, at which point Bucky pays for both. Rather, he tries to; she slaps down enough cash to cover the martini before he can stop her and Natalia's swept it up before he can grab it. Admitting defeat, he pays for just the one as promised and she invites him to her place.

Bucky does think twice—until he catches Steve sketching away, eyes on the band, not paying Bucky any mind at all. Then, he's done thinking.

Claire's two-bedroom apartment is nice, albeit cramped, with a rustic style to it offset by the IKEA furniture and general mess.

"Sorry," Claire says when he steps around an empty Amazon box. "I haven't really been up to cleaning lately. Honestly, I didn't expect I'd have company over again so soon."

He sees a couple empty Ben & Jerry's ice cream containers sitting on the counter. Between the mess and the noticeable empty picture frames, he'd have guessed recent breakup or other personal tragedy even if she hadn't already shared the story. "Hey, no worries. My own place is still a mess from the move, so I can't judge." Which is a lie, but a white lie, and it helps ease the awkwardness. He gestures to a closed door he guesses leads to the second bedroom. "Do you have a roommate?"

"She's out right now, won't be back until much later. Is that okay?"

"Yeah, completely fine by me."

She deposits her bag on the kitchen table, kicks off her shoes, and sinks onto the couch, fishing under a couple takeout containers for the TV remote. "So, I remember you saying you've never seen John Wick. I happen to already have it bought."

He lowers himself onto the couch next to her. "Oh? Gonna educate me on this classic?"

She laughs. "Classic, maybe not, but absolutely I'll educate you. C'mon, settle in. Or, wait, do you want a drink? I have some box wine I've been working through and I don't think I can finish it alone."

"I'm happy to help. Hey, if we're gonna watch a movie—don't suppose you've got popcorn around here somewhere?"

"You're full of great ideas, aren't you? Guess I was too quick to get comfortable." She stands. Within a few minutes they've got drinks and a big bowl of buttery popcorn between them on the couch. Claire gets the movie playing and he pretends he's not smiling because of her frequent glances over to him to gauge his reaction.

He bristles when they kill the dog while Claire's eyes get shiny. She seeks out his hand by the popcorn and he lets her take it even though that means no more popcorn. He's not about to get butter on his glove or, god forbid, play the prosthetic card this early.

"That gets me every time," she whispers. He squeezes her fingers and watches Wick take a sledgehammer to his basement floor.

"Something tells me he gets them back for it."

She laughs. As the movie keeps going, he finds himself enjoying it even more than he thought he would. Claire is nice, perfectly willing to laugh at his jokes and make some of her own even during tense scenes, and she's not being pushy at all.

"You know," she says when Wick is taking down a series of bad guys in a club, "I practiced that takedown he does right there. It just looked so cool I couldn't help myself."

If that isn't an invitation, he doesn't know what is. "Care to demonstrate?"

She goes for more popcorn and realizes they're down to the unpopped kernels. "Well," she taps a nail against the plastic bowl, "I don't think I want to try it on a hard floor."

He grins and toys with her fingers, tugging meaningfully while he can't take his eyes off where a combination of butter and gloss have left her lips invitingly shiny. "Would a bed work better?"

"Yet another great idea."

The movie keeps playing without them. He lets her pull him to her bedroom, which—although messy—is tastefully decorated with a wide array of posters and even a couple woven blankets hung up on the walls.

"Stand here," she says, guiding him to the side of the bed, which has a couple plush animals scattered by the pillow. "Have you ever done martial arts before?"

"A little. I know to just roll with whatever you're doing, don't worry about me."

"Right." She takes a couple steps back. "Okay, ready?"

His heart beats an answer in his chest. "Hit me."

She does, in a whirl of platinum blonde. He lets himself get taken down without a fight and they end up sprawled on the bed, her arms around his neck in a blood choke—but she's not applying any pressure, and as soon as they're finished falling, she lets go.

"Wow," she breathes, "I wasn't sure that would work."

He laughs and rolls off her, but stays on his side to stare at her. "It's a good thing you were all confidence before or I might've been worried."

"I just haven't actually done it outside the dojo before, except on my roommate, and she's a lot smaller than you."

"Well, I think you did great. John Wick would be jealous."

Her eyes gleam. Her lips twist into that coy smile that has his heart flip. There's still butter making them shine, or maybe that's just gloss. "Flatterer."

"You're welcome to shut me up."

"That so?" She rolls so she's on top of him, her hair cascading down to tickle his cheeks. She presses a kiss to his lips but pulls back when he starts to reciprocate. "How was that?"

He licks his lips. Butter. "Tease."

"You're welcome to try for more."

"That so?" He reaches up and rests a hand on the back of her neck. He pulls her down—not so hard she couldn't resist if she wanted—and she goes willingly until they're locking lips once more. This time, there's no pulling back.

They explore each other, lips and teeth and tongues, hands washing up and down their heads, backs, and teasing lower still.

"Yes," she moans into his lips when his fingers start toying with the buttons of her shirt. "God, yes."

So caught up in the moment, Bucky's confused when she stops. His brain skips over what they've been doing, trying to find the moment the song came apart, but nothing jumps out. Getting her shirt off, her bra off, her easing him out of his coat and then his—

Oh.

"Sorry," she stammers when the silence goes on for too long. "I, I just wasn't expecting that." Before he can speak, she adds: "So…you like Hydra?"

His words die on his tongue and their corpses meld into a flabbergasted, "What?"

She tucks her hair behind her ear, sits back on the twisted-up sheets, and gestures to his shoulder. "The star. Um, that's what the drummer has, right? Is it, like, inspiration?"

For a second, his mouth moves but nothing comes out. Stuck with the phantom sensations of her lips on his and her teeth nipping at his skin, he's really struggling to get his thoughts in line. "It's—yeah. Yeah, I had a phase. A while ago. After I—just someone to look up to. I got the star mostly so people would ask that instead of how I lost the arm. Is it—is this okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, totally! Sorry, I just didn't expect it." She looks him up and down, some renewed fire flaring in her eyes. "Metal arm or not, I can definitely still take you down."

Welcome heat stirs in his veins. "Try me."

There's something warm on his face. Frowning, Bucky tries to close his eyes tighter and block out the red light blooming over his eyelids, but that doesn't work. Giving in to the inevitable, he still has enough presence of mind to roll away from the blinding light before opening his eyes.

He sees blond hair and his first thought isn't Claire. All the warmth he feels curdles into something sour and cold, and he rolls onto his other side so, if she wakes, she won't see his scowl. The flare of sunlight slipping through the blinds that scorches his retinas is deserved.

For a few minutes, he tries to fall back asleep. This is the first night in a week he's been able to sleep uninterrupted. If he dreamed at all, he doesn't remember it. Really, the only downside is that his chest aches like hell.

That's what ibuprofen's for.

He's not about to go digging through Claire's cabinets looking for some, nor is he going to wake her up for it like some needy kid. While he waits, he can at least sit up and do some stretches to try to ease some of the pain.

Halfway through a routine adapted for both silence and lack of a lacrosse ball to dig into the knots in his muscles, Bucky hears Claire stirring.

"Rise and shine," he offers from where he's sitting with his back to her on his side of the bed. "Hope you weren't expecting to wake up to an empty bed."

She blinks at him through a jaw-cracking yawn and then rubs the sleep from her eyes. "I appreciate not getting ghosted. What time is it?"

"Uh," he glances at the nightstand, where he vaguely remembers there being an alarm clock, but there's no sign of a clock now. "Hold on, my phone's around here somewhere."

Claire follows his gaze and freezes. "Oh, god, did we knock that over?" She reaches down and drags the clock out from where it had fallen between the nightstand and the bed. "The plug came out. I hate loose outlets."

"Ten to nine," Bucky declares, having discovered his phone buried under his discarded coat. He starts scrolling through his notifications—there aren't many—but he abandons that when Claire jumps to her feet.

"Eight-fifty? Seriously?"

"Yeah." He shows her his phone. "Why?"

"Oh, shit. Shit, shit—I'm so stupid, Juno's out seeing family, of course she wouldn't be back to wake me up. I gotta get ready for work."

"I'll clean up," Bucky offers. "Mind if I use your shower?"

"Mind if I go first?"

"Not at all."

She yanks a change of clothes from her closet and hurries into the bathroom. Bucky hears the muffled sound of the shower from behind the closed door. While she's taking care of herself, he gathers up his discarded clothes and—with his pants on for decency—pads into the kitchen. A half-empty bag of bagels catches his eye. He pops one into the toaster and digs out some strawberry cream cheese from the refrigerator.

When Claire rushes into the kitchen with her hair up in a towel and her blouse buttons misaligned, Bucky holds out the plated bagel.

"Here. Hope you don't mind me going through your stuff a little."

"For me?"

"Yeah. Gotta eat the most important meal of the day, right?"

"That's," she takes the plate, "wow. Thank you, really."

"I'll make my shower quick, I promise. Don't want to keep you here."

"I left a spare towel on the rack. Feel free to use my shampoo and things."

"Roger that."

As promised, he makes it quick. Really just a rinse, and he's toweled off, dressed, and heading into the kitchen right as Claire is setting her empty plate next to the sink. In the space of a few words, they're out the door, on the street, and then Bucky's still digesting her apology-filled goodbye while she's all but running for the subway.

When that settles, a realization takes its place: he never even got her number.

Because Bucky's life has a way of balancing its karma that can only be equated to getting brained by the pendulum as it swings, his sleep goes right back to getting interrupted just a couple nights later. He's fucking up a little less on shift, though. And he and Steve still aren't on speaking terms, but that's not gonna change without a seismic event. Steve's stubborn like that.

All these facts make Steve showing up with a steaming cup of coffee in a cup Bucky recognizes all the more aggravating. Slapping his rag down and leaving the minor spill he's been cleaning up for later, Bucky spins on his heel and marches into the kitchen. Ignoring Gabe's curious look, he heads straight for Scott.

"You told him where I got the coffee?" He can't hide the accusatory edge to his words, an edge that's sharp enough to make Scott's smile falter.

"Uh, Steve? Yeah, I mean, he asked. I saw you weren't bringing it anymore so I figured it was done being a secret…?"

"It wasn't your secret to tell," Bucky bites out. Scott's smile falls fully into a frown.

"Hey man, you don't own Louis's business. If you're not sharing the miracle that is his coffee anymore, you can't blame me for making sure one friend makes money and another friend gets good coffee."

Scott has a point and that just pisses off Bucky even more. "Fuck you. Some friend you are, going behind my back like that."

"Whatever's going on with you today, don't take it out on me." When Bucky scowls, Scott reaches for the sink. "I'm two seconds from hitting you with the hose to cool you off, man. Give me some space, maybe go outside for a minute."

"Something wrong?"

Bucky glances over his shoulder to see Tony, presumably on his way to one of the storage rooms connected to the kitchen, stopped and eyeing them. He shakes his head and backs away from Scott. "No. Nothing."

He's got enough shame to avoid doing what his stupid brain wants—which is bumping into Tony on his way back to the bar—and that same shame keeps him from meeting Tony's eye or anyone else's for that matter, even though all of the Howlies are staring at him. Judging him. Probably queuing up some lectures for the next time he has to wander into the kitchen.

Well, fuck that. Bucky's not coming to this job to get lectured. He's—

"Bucky?"

A familiar face framed by platinum blonde stares at him from across the bar. He wipes the scowl from his face and replaces it with a smile he hopes isn't coming out strained. "Claire, good to see you again."

"I'm so sorry about running out on you like that. It was an awful way to end what I promise was a really nice night."

"Hey, no worries. Can't always get that movie-perfect breakfast."

"I, um, also realized I never even gave you my number." There's a distinct scarlet tinge to her cheeks. "If you want it, I mean."

It's about time something went right. "I'd really like that."

Her relief is palpable while they exchange information and, as Bucky pulls her into casual conversation, the blush gradually fades from her face. It's not long before she's looking like she's got something important to say, though.

"Listen," she says, "before this—not to say there's a, a this, yet—before it gets anywhere, I want to make sure you know I'm not—I'm not looking for a relationship, or anything serious."

Pure force of will keeps Bucky's eyes on her face instead of letting them slide to the table visible over her shoulder. "It's only been a couple weeks, right?"

"Yeah. That's it exactly. I…I'm really sorry, if you wanted more. That night was great, for what it's worth. It's not every first meeting a guy lets me tackle him."

"It's not every first meeting a girl offers to tackle me." He leans on the bar. "If you want a fun fling to get yourself back out there, then I've got some great news: that's exactly what I'm looking for too. Some fun with no strings attached."

"No strings attached," Claire confirms. "I should—"

"James!" Natalia's icy yell from across the bar promises retribution for abandoning his post. He winces.

"I should get back to work," he says apologetically. "See you around, okay?"

"I'll text you."

They part with mutual smiles. Bucky's lasts right up until he sees the look in Natalia's eyes. "What?"

"You are shameless," she says coldly, shoving a shaker into his hands. "We've got a backup. Get mixing. And don't screw up this time."

Chapter Text

Steve goes to flip the page of his sketchbook only to realize the inevitable has come to pass: he's run out of pages. He's seen it coming for a while, of course; hard to miss the block of paper expanding toward the front and shrinking toward the back. But every time he reached what he thought was the end, there had been one more page hiding behind the last.

Not anymore, it seemed. Sighing, he closes the sketchbook and starts rifling through his bag for the spare he took to carrying once he'd seen the end approaching.

"Lost another pencil?" Tony asks as he drops into an open chair at Steve's table. Pepper, who's been there for several minutes already and is busy typing away on her laptop, accepts the bowl of pretzels he brings without a word.

"No, just finished a sketchbook. I'm not Clint, I can keep track of my things."

"Sure you can." Tony eyes him as Steve sets up with his new sketchbook, and his focus is so disconcerting that Steve can't put pencil to page.

"What? Is there something on my face?"

"You two had a falling out."

"Uh. Me and Bucky?"

"Who else have you been drawing in that book of yours?"

"I haven't—"

"Then I'll just—"

Steve hooks his foot around his backpack and yanks it well out of Tony's reach, cheeks flushing red. "Your point?"

Tony's tactful enough to not crow about his victory but not so tactful that he doesn't puff up a little at the concession. "My point is that your brooding not-boyfriend is ruining the feng shui lately." He accentuates his words with a pointed crunch of a pretzel.

Steve doesn't look at the bar. He already knows what he'd see: Bucky, doing his job with a varying degree of competency. Sometimes, when Steve can't stop himself from looking, he'll catch Bucky fumbling the cherry he's trying to impale on a toothpick, or accidentally adding sugar way too far down from the rim of the glass, or—once—outright spilling some drink out of a shaker because he wasn't holding the lid properly. He's not messing up all the time, but he's doing it often. And any time Bucky catches Steve looking, he scowls and makes a point of breaking eye contact first.

It would be easy to blame the deep shadows under Bucky's eyes on the overhead lights. But his hair—obviously disheveled even when pulled into a bun—is harder to justify, as is the wrinkled state of his black bartender's outfit. Maybe it's a trick of those same lights, but his hand doesn't gleam the way Steve remembers.

He's spiraling.

"I have to agree," Pepper says as she lifts her gaze and her fingers from her laptop, and Steve momentarily wonders how she read his thoughts only to realize she's responding to Tony. "For a brief few days, he was pulling in the highest card tips of anyone."

"Even Natasha?" Tony asks, eyebrows shooting up.

"Even Natasha."

"Honestly, makes sense. Kid's fucking magic with alcohol and has the steadiest hands known to man. Throw in the whole pinch-hit drumstick schtick and he's a dream employee. Then you wake up and see him throwing that all down the drain. I can't keep a guy on payroll who's gonna show up late, chat up women mid-shift, and fuck up orders." He pauses and eyes Steve. "Not gonna defend him?"

"It's his life," Steve says stiffly. "They're his mistakes to make."

"Yeah. They are." Tony stares at Bucky for a few seconds while he taps the table with his index finger. Finally, he says, "But that doesn't mean I have to sit around and watch him do it."

Pepper goes back to typing. "I'll have next month's schedule sent out shortly." She adds, rather pointedly, "They may be his mistakes to make, Steve, but if he keeps this up, I don't see a reason for us to give him a place to make them."

Steve focuses on his sketchbook. All the practice he's done of Bucky's hand, the urge to keep practicing, to get it just right, feels like it's been closed up and stuffed away like the sketchbook he worked so hard to fill. The only thing he's managed to put on the page this entire conversation is a small blizzard of errant marks.

"By the way," Tony says into the awkward silence, "I won't be making movie night tonight."

Steve's head shoots up. "What?"

"I'm sorry for stealing him," Pepper offers. "My mother has come to town and insists on dinner. Insists."

"Pep did try to reschedule, honest. But you know her mother."

"I don't, actually."

"She's a real batt—er, battery. Battery of a human being. Lights up every room. Pure delight. Lovely."

Pepper smiles and closes her laptop. "Not your best recovery, but not bad."

"So, yeah, not making it to movie night. Sorry."

"Hey, no worries. Gotta please the parents, right? I'll let Sam know."

"Thanks." Catching Pepper gathering her things, presumably so she and Tony can talk about more sensitive business matters in one of their offices, Tony stands. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Not coming back tonight?"

Tony grins at Pepper, who rolls her eyes but can't help her smile. "I think I'll find somewhere else to rest my head."

Frankly, Steve thinks it's odd that Tony hasn't already moved in with Pepper, but that couple has been taking things very slow. Maybe because Pepper's cautious by nature, or maybe because Tony's determined not to screw this one up, or maybe some combination of both. It's not Steve's business, though, and Tony's made it clear that when he moves out, he'll still pay his portion of the lease until Steve and Sam can find a new place to live, so it's really not Steve's business.

Alone at his table once more, Steve can't help sneaking another look at Bucky. The reward for his failing self-control is the sight of Bucky chatting up a pretty blonde woman who's been hanging around most nights.

Steve swallows around a lump in his throat. Even though the band on stage just started up another song, he jams his sketchbook into his backpack and heads for the door. It's movie night; he needs to head home early so he can get his work done beforehand.

The movie they settle on ends up being Pacific Rim. Tony's gonna be upset when he hears they watched that one without him, but in Sam's words, that's what he gets for ditching them. Steve and Sam set up on the couch with drinks, snacks, and the most important snack of all: their own personal bowls of popcorn. Sam likes his with butter, Steve doesn't. Tony's the one who prefers caramel popcorn, and after one too many nights spent bickering over whose preference would win, they opted for the personal-pan-pizza approach.

The curtains are drawn, the lights down, the absurdly large TV lit up. and the speakers blaring. It's practically a movie theater, complete with the most comfortable couch Steve has ever had the pleasure of planting his ass on.

Tony's also the one who tends to talk during the movie. Without him, Steve and Sam are pretty quiet except for the odd ooooh and holy shit when the action ramps up. Giant robots punching giant monsters; it's an incredible formula.

As the movie progresses, Steve can't help thinking about how he and Bucky—when they were kids—absolutely would've been drift-compatible. In a jaeger, they would've been unstoppable. Now, Steve's pretty sure either one of them would end up chasing the rabbit and never coming back. That's what Bucky almost did; he chased music and, if not for some twist of fate, Steve never would've seen him again.

It's not fair, how quickly Bucky can crash back into Steve's life and uproot it so thoroughly. He has no idea at all how goddamn devastating it'll be when he leaves again.

When, not if. The way he's acting lately, that's how it's gonna be.

A popcorn kernel bounces off his temple and clatters into his empty bowl.

"Damn," says Sam, "I was aiming for that canyon in your forehead."

Steve frowns and, realizing that'll only dig the furrow deeper, does his utmost to smooth it away. At some point, Sam paused the movie. Steve hadn't even noticed.

Sam shifts in his seat. "C'mon dude, something's been eating you up for days now."

He's tactful enough to leave it vague, but they both know exactly what's been nagging at him. So Steve doesn't bother beating around the bush. "Bucky found a girl."

"…right," Sam says after a beat, encouraging Steve to keep going.

"He hasn't talked to his family. Or even told them he's in town. But he's already going out with someone."

"Okay, this feels closer to the real problem."

"He should've!" Steve explodes. "And I told Tony Bucky's free to make his own mistakes, but God, I don't want to just sit and watch him fuck up his own life."

"The family thing, sure, that's avoidant behavior to a T but, uh. The girl thing? Is she, like, secretly a cannibal? Or an alien from another dimension bent on the destruction of humanity who has to be fought off with robots?"

"No, I mean, I haven't really talked to her. Natasha said she seemed nice. And too good for him."

Sam's smile flashes white in the dim light from the TV. "Ah. You're jealous."

"No."

"Yes, you are."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes."

"No."

"Yes." This one is complete with a grin and an eyebrow wiggle, at which point Steve gives up arguing. After basking in his victory a moment, Sam reaches for the remote. "Look, I know we've got Sunday brunch with the Barneses tomorrow, the ones we like, but after that—you wanna visit your mom? It's been a while, hasn't it? I could use the chance to say hi to Riley anyway."

Steve swallows. He should tell his mom that Bucky's back and fill her in on the last couple months. She deserves to know just like Winnie did. "I'd like that."

"Great. Now, back to those robots."

Brunch the next day is, in a word, awkward. Even with Sam there doing his utmost to keep the silence from lasting too long and Steve doing what he can to keep conversation on the here and now, the specter of Bucky hangs over them all.

They make it almost to the end before Winnie blurts out: "Did he say why?"

"Win," murmurs George, but it's too late. The question's been asked.

Steve swallows. The answer is simple. One word. No. Or, if Steve wants to make things worse, he can add that it was no surrounded by a whole thicket's worth of prickly thorns. Not only had Bucky not given a reason, he'd been annoyed that Steve even had the gall to bring it up.

There's no tactful way to say any of that and Steve can't stand the thought of leaving this brunch on such a sour note. His plate's empty, he's got no orange juice left; there's no excuse to stay quiet.

"Bucky's what, twenty-seven this year?" Sam's voice steals the show. He's calm, composed, the perfect opposite of how Steve feels.

"Twenty-six," George corrects. "He'll turn twenty-seven next March."

"Twenty-six, then. I think we can all agree someone who's twenty-six is an adult, right?" Nods all around. "Right. I don't want to imply it's wrong to worry about him, but he's been on his own for a while now. He can handle himself. As for why he's not here with us, if we knew the answer to that, he would be here. You know how Steve can get when he puts his mind to something."

Steve manages a strained smile. In his head, Bucky's voice echoes: Go see my mom? Go see yours.

God, that pissed him off.

George reaches out to rub circles in Winnie's back. "It's not a fair question to ask, honey. You know Bucky. He'll come when he's ready."

"I did know him," she whispers. "I just wish I could talk to him again."

Her husband's expression cracks a little. "I know."

"I'll clean up," Sam announces, standing and beginning to collect plates.

"I'll help," Steve says, quickly following his example.

Cleanup doesn't take long, but by the time they're finished rinsing plates and loading the dishwasher, Winnie and George have collected themselves.

"I'm sorry for springing that on you both," Winnie says. "These brunches aren't the right place for that kind of thing."

"Don't worry about it," Sam says, while Steve says,

"It's nothing."

Winnie smiles and pulls them both into a brief hug. "Thanks for coming."

"Thanks," Steve says to Sam when they're outside and zipping up their jackets to ward off the chill. "You didn't have to cover for me, but I really appreciate that you did."

"It's not a problem. That wasn't covering for you, it was just making sure that the right person got the blame. It's not your fault Bucky's not seeing his folks and it's not their fault either. He's an adult. He can make his own mistakes, right?"

"Right." Steve takes a deep breath and squares his shoulders. "Mind if we stop for flowers on the way?"

"You read my mind."

Chapter Text

The murals in Tony's place really are something to look at. Especially when the place is empty and the only other person around is a guy giving a lecture about responsibility and attitude and a whole bunch of other things Bucky couldn't care less about.

"Honestly, at this point, I'm starting to wonder if you even want to keep this job."

Bucky stiffens and drags his eyes from the wall to Tony.

Tony starts tallying up strikes on his fingers. "Show up late, leave early, take unannounced breaks, mix up orders, be rude to customers who don't deserve it, be rude to coworkers who definitely don't deserve it, and antagonize our resident artist—if I was any kind of fair umpire, you'd be long gone from my batter's box."

"You don't even play baseball," Bucky points out, and it flies about as well as one of Tony's pitches probably would.

"And you, my friend, are this close to not even bartending. I'm only saying this because Pepper's too busy, and because I'm the one who hired you. If this was her show, you'd already be out the door."

Bucky's face burns. He's fucked up, he's been fucking up, he knows that, but—but he hasn't been trying to fuck up. "It won't happen again."

"See, you say that, but missing in those four words is a reason to believe them. What's the next thing that'll gunk up your gears, hm? I need people working here I can trust. We've got a good community and good communities take work to maintain. If you're not willing to put in that work, I need to find someone who is."

The burn gets hotter. Bucky knows his face is red now. If Steve were here, he'd have already made a comment about it, or at least shot Bucky a knowing look. Ten-year-old Steve, anyway. This new Steve…God only knows. Bucky can't read him at all; it's like every signal is inverted and everything Bucky thinks is right is wrong and everything he knows is wrong is still wrong. Wrong-wrong, lose-lose. Every conversation a song whose meter he can't grasp.

Tony crosses his arms and sighs. "Look. When you're here, I mean here here, you're great. Attentive, quick, and by all accounts almost as charismatic as me. Having a bartender who can be a pinch drummer doesn't hurt either. That's just not enough to balance out the headaches you've caused. I'll give you a week to sort it out. No shifts. I don't care what you do," he pauses meaningfully, "or who you do it with, but use that time to get your head on straight and I'll welcome you back with open arms."

He gets back to his place at around noon and decides to go for a run. Not because he needs to—he already worked out that morning, and normally he only runs on days he doesn't work out—but because if he sits in his apartment he's going to drive himself nuts. He'd play the drums, but he'd learned the hard way that trying to exhaust himself like that after an upper body workout day is a recipe for agony in his left side.

So, running. He swaps into running clothes, including a long-sleeve sweat-wicking shirt and thin glove for his left hand, and heads out the door, dead set on using exhaustion to suffocate all the frustration that's been swirling in his head nonstop since Tony unceremoniously kicked him out of his job.

He can say it's temporary. He can say he's giving Bucky time to breathe. But Bucky knows the truth: Tony's just giving himself plausible deniability for when he fires one of Steve's old friends. Look, he'll say, I gave the guy a chance, didn't I?

Snarling, Bucky pushes himself harder, feet pounding the sidewalk while he dodges the odd pedestrian. Clearly he's not running fast enough if his brain's still got room to think of that bullshit.

A little over two miles into his run and he's breathing hard, his lungs are burning, and he's deviated so far from his normal course in an effort to challenge himself that he's pretty sure he just spent the last eight minutes running in one convoluted circle. Grids and intersections, this shouldn't be so hard. So focused on trying to read the street sign ahead, he barely dodges another pedestrian, this one taking up most of the sidewalk with all his grocery bags. This city is a goddamn obstacle course when it wants to be.

He reaches the light and slows to a stop. As he does, he wrangles his breathing into something measured and controlled. He's got—he glances to his left at the other crossing to check the timer—twenty seconds before the light's going to change. Traffic's too heavy to jaywalk, too. Wonderful.

If he's going to be stopped this long, might as well start cooling down. He knows where he is, now, and though it's a long walk back to his place, it'll be perfect for keeping his thoughts nice and slow and tired.

He does some light stretching while he waits, and once again nearly knocks into the groceries guy. "Hey, watch—"

His voice dies. Groceries guy is Steve. Steve is staring at him.

"Never mind," Bucky mumbles, facing the street again. When the light changes, they cross, and then they keep walking in the same direction. Bucky's face is on fire and he hopes anyone looking can chalk it up to exercise. Did Tony already call Steve? Does Steve know? And how badly does the world hate Bucky for this random running route to take him on Steve's goddamn grocery route?

This is awful. Horrific. He should run awa—run. He should just run, it wouldn't hurt to do another mile.

Or, it would, because his legs feel like they'd rather fall off than do more running, but no pain no gain, right? So what if he's already started his cooldown? So what if it would look absolutely pathetic?

That's when he hears it: a slight tearing of paper. He glances behind him. Steve's got three reusable bags, but—probably because he got a little more than he was expecting to—one paper bag. He's also got wired earbuds in, meaning he probably doesn't hear the impending disaster.

Bucky might be a jerk sometimes, but he's not an asshole.

"Hey," he says, and Steve glances at him. "I think your bag is—"

With one final papery protest, one of the handles rips off the bag. The second, unable to take all of the weight that's suddenly transferred to it at a far more extreme angle than it's built for, follows suit immediately. Steve doesn't stand a chance; his groceries go tumbling across the sidewalk and he very nearly swings another bag straight into the concrete in his effort to try to save them.

Bucky stops a rolling can with his foot, then bends down to pick it up and the two others nearby. Between him and the other person who stops to help, they get Steve's groceries collected in short order. All the things in the paper bag had been packaged and relatively robust; the greatest damage was to a cereal box, and that was just dented. Good on Steve for being smart enough to put the more delicate things in the sturdier bags.

"Thanks," Steve says when they've got the back re-packed. The stranger takes his leave. Bucky hangs back. Steve's got three other bags; with the last now devoid of handles, he'll have to carry that one in his arms. Strong as he might be now, there's an instinct in Bucky that demands he not let Steve do that to himself.

So, even though he knows the smart thing would be to make his exit just like the other guy, he finds himself picking up the paper bag and tucking it against his body, held in place by his left arm.

"You don't need to do that."

"I know."

After another few seconds of tense silence, Steve sighs and starts walking again. "This way."

As if Bucky had any reason to expect Steve to start moving in a different direction than the one he'd been going. For a block, the silence between them is about as awkward and tense as it's ever been. Finally, Bucky can't take it anymore.

"Gettin' colder," he notes.

Steve's eyes flick toward him for a second. "Yeah."

"You still walk when it's winter?"

"Yeah. I dress warmer."

Work with me, pal, Bucky thinks to himself. He spies a familiar corner store and offers aloud, "Hey, that's McDunn's. Didn't realize they were still in business. Remember when I accidentally shoplifted from there?"

"I remember you proudly showing me the candy bar and bragging about how you did it on purpose. And I remember telling you to put it back."

"Weird, because I remember you eating half of it."

Steve's lips twitch toward a smile. "Maybe I did."

Buoyed by Steve's reciprocity, Bucky manages to keep the conversation going for the next couple of blocks. He's careful, though, sticking to light and easy topics. He learns that Steve's planning on making pierogies for dinner and that the dented Cinnamon Toast Crunch is for Tony. In return he shares that his place's stove only has one working burner and the handle came off his go-to skillet the other day.

At the next light, Bucky shifts the bag in his arms. "I'm guessing you're continuing on this way?"

"A couple more blocks. You're already pretty far out of your way, aren't you?"

"I went off-route for my run."

Steve adjusts his bags, the handles of which have gotta be cutting off circulation at this point, and gestures for the one Bucky's carrying. "I can carry it from here."

Bucky hesitates. "You sure?"

"Yes, Buck, I'm sure."

It's not just memories of small and frail Steve making Bucky reticent to hand over the groceries that aren't his. Maybe, just maybe, he doesn't want to let the first amicable conversation they've had in over a week end so abruptly. Plus,Tony's words are on his mind, now lacking the caustic edge since his mind is too tired to paint that on. So he shifts the bag.

"It's just a couple more blocks, I can go a little more out of my way."

Now it's Steve's turn to ask: "You sure?"

"Yeah, Steve, I'm sure."

The light turns and they start walking. Tony's words keep playing in Bucky's head. He's not trying to antagonize the resident artist, it just keeps happening. Maybe that's a little on Bucky; he's the one trying to stick to lighter topics, deflecting Steve's questions about what he's been doing for the last near-decade, and not prying too deeply into Steve's life in return. If he wants that friendship back, he can't just keep skimming the surface. He's gotta dive deeper.

After mulling it over for another block, he decides on a question that he's pretty sure toes the line of safe after the way Steve blew up on him about not talking to his family. Bucky'll ask, Steve'll answer, and then Bucky will say he's really planning to talk to his family soon, because he…is. Soon. Ish. Probably. It's not a complete lie if the intent is there, right?

He clears his throat while they're waiting at the next crossing. "How's your mom?"

Steve sucks in a sharp breath and he glances at Bucky in raw disbelief that has Bucky's stomach dropping to somewhere in his boots. He knows what Steve's going to say before he says it, he knows, and he wants to yank his own words from where they hang in the air and choke them out of existence.

But it's too late.

"She passed away," Steve says, "seven years ago."

Even expected, those words land so heavily that they knock the ground right out from under Bucky's feet, and his stomach goes with it. Unbalanced, a little nauseous, a little desperate to believe this is some kind of sick joke, he opens his mouth but nothing comes out. It's not a joke, he can see that much in Steve's face. Steve's Mom. Mrs. Rogers. Sarah. Dead. Seven years ago.

The paper bag crinkles and he shifts his grip before he crushes it by accident.

Sarah Rogers, who made the best apple pie this side of anywhere, who patched Bucky and Steve up every time they got into trouble and only chided them after the bandages were applied, who once taught Bucky how to sew so he could mend his favorite shirt, and who was the undisputed origin of Steve's sunrise smile.

Sarah Rogers, dead.

Seven years. Steve was only eighteen.

"I'm sorry," he says, inadequately. "I'm so sorry, Steve, she was—"

"She was," Steve cuts in, eyes like ice and voice just as cold, and Bucky fumbles to a stop. Steve gestures for the bag in Bucky's grip and Bucky, struck dumb, hands it over mindlessly. "I have a commission I need to finish tonight. I'll see you around."

Not see you later or see you tomorrow, but see you around. Like Bucky's just some guy in the neighborhood Steve might stumble across in some unhappy coincidence. Like a stranger that picks up his groceries and then walks away without a word. Maybe that would be better. Maybe being just some guy would've stopped him from plunging a knife into Steve's chest and twisting.

By the time he thinks to say his own goodbye, maybe try to salvage his fuck up, Steve is gone and there's a street's worth of traffic between them.

Nausea swirls in his stomach and mixes with disbelief that'll turn into shame the second he can properly understand the magnitude of what just happened. What happened eight years ago. What's been happening ever since.

Sarah Rogers, dead. Steve Rogers, orphaned. Bucky Barnes, oblivious.

His stomach shoots for his throat and he stumbles in the direction of his apartment, hoping he can make it there before he throws up or, with the way his life is going, God sees fit to smite him right here on this miserable stretch of sidewalk.

The one unopened box he refused to unpack mocks him from its dusty place under the bed when he shoulders his apartment door open. That box mocks him when he kicks the door closed and locks it, it mocks him when he dumps his groceries on the counter, and it mocks him when he tosses his keys in the direction of the bowl by the door. Not bothering to take off his shoes, Bucky crosses the floor to his bed and pulls out the damn thing, realizing too late he should've hung onto his keys to cut the tape.

He damn near slices through his fingers after he finds a pair of scissors and his left arm will not shut up, its tiny servos and gears whirring as though that's at all fucking helpful right now.

Open, the box greets him with a disorganized pile of envelopes. Each one is stamped over the postage with the date—not anything he did, but the action of some Hydra secretary tasked with sorting through mail to the band members.

Seven years ago.

He flips through the envelopes, tossing away the ones that are too recent or too old until he finds the right year. At that point, he focuses just on the ones from Steve. There are only two: the first is just a happy birthday letter. Steve heard his old phone broke and he doesn't have any of the apps they were using to talk anymore, so he's also asking for new contact info. Or just for Bucky to write back. Anything, really.

Swallowing around a lump in his throat, Bucky sets that letter aside.

The second letter, though. The second. It's dated a few months later.

Dear Bucky,

I hope you get this. I don't know if you've gotten anything else I've written after my texts stopped going through. If you've written back, I haven't gotten any of those. I hope you're well and that you're learning all kinds of grooves and fills to keep your neighbors up at night now that I'm too far away to steal your sticks before I go to bed.

My mom passed away yesterday. In case you didn't see my earlier letter, she caught an infection from a patient she was treating and there was nothing anyone could do. She was gone within a month. All I could do was watch. I wish you'd been there because you deserved a chance to say goodbye. I know there's no forgiving me for it, but I'm sorry I couldn't find a way to get in touch before she passed.

Please write back if you can. You're probably busy and I don't mean to bother, but I miss you.

Your best pal,

Steve

There are several lines improperly erased and crossed out after that last "I miss you," and if Bucky holds up the letter to the light and squints, he can make out the fragments: "It's so lonely quiet empty without I really miss."

His eyes are burning, his throat is burning, and his lungs are burning. It's all he can do not to crumple the paper.

"You don't mean to bother," he repeats in disbelief, his voice catching. Steve's mom is dead and he doesn't mean to bother. His mom is dead and he's writing a letter to the guy who can come closest to sharing his grief because that fucking guy never gave him another way to get in touch and he doesn't mean to bother.

And he didn't. Bother, that is. Because Bucky never saw it. Never wrote back. Just buried his head in the sand while Steve dealt with his grief alone.

Bucky sits back, trying to breathe, his ankles complaining with a painful ache at being stretched so far. He doesn't adjust; pain is what he deserves. The paper crinkles in his hands. The date stares at him. The words, though. The words don't need to do anything except exist. They're all the sentencing he needs.

He bows his head, eyes and throat burning, shame and grief twisting twin screws through his heart.

"Barnes, you idiot," he whispers as tears hit the page. "You selfish asshole. You…you fucking moron."

He keeps going, dragging out insults and truth and sharpening the dagger of the latter with the former until he's repeating himself, but it's fine, he deserves it, so he goes ahead and repeats himself. He says all the things Steve is too nice to say but need to be said.

No other letters in the box from that period that he can bring himself to read pack the same punch—except the one from his own mother, begging him to write to Steve, to help him out of "the dark place he's in," and that drags a sob out of Bucky because he wasn't there.

Even the ones without those gut punches are still nails in his coffin. Each one is one more thing he ignored because he thought he could, or—not even that. One more thing he didn't even think about, didn't even think about thinking about. He left and let the world slip out of his hands because he stupidly thought that world would stand still until he figured his shit out and he could waltz back in right on beat. But the song kept playing, the song changed, and now the whole performance is tumbling out of sync.

By the time the last letter of that year flutters out of his fingers and comes to rest on the floor, he's got a headache so severe his whole skull throbs with his heartbeat, a dozen paper cuts on his fingers, and drying tears and snot making his face itch. The paper trail of his failure rests around him in a haphazard circle amid the corpses of its envelopes.

The sun isn't coming through the window anymore. A bleary glance over his shoulder at the microwave clock tells him it's past eight. Paltry hours he's spent going through all these letters. A handful of hours for a year of incomparable grief. That's not fair. Everyone else had to live it, but he just gets to breeze through the highs and lows? A handful of hours when there were three weeks between Steve's last letter and his mother's desperate plea for him to write?

February. That year, he was…he would've been performing in some small venues around Moscow. Trying out Hydra's sound, building up confidence with his new arm. Back then, he'd been learning to enjoy playing again. He'd been pretty sure he could—enjoy playing, that is. He'd been putting his new life back together while Steve's was falling apart, and other than a stray guilty thought, he hadn't thought about his friend at all.

He sits there in the salt circle of his failures and wonders when he became someone he hates. The day he heard about the music program and seriously considered it instead of immediately saying hell no, I'm not leaving my friend? The day he agreed to leave? The day he left? The day he saw a text from Steve and didn't text back, the day he saw a call and a voicemail and didn't even listen to the latter, the day—

The day he got a new one and never redownloaded any of his apps?

The day he decided not to tell Steve his new number?

The day he told the program to redirect all his mail so he never had to look at it?

Or the day he came crawling back to Brooklyn like he could find the kid he used to be and ask him who he's supposed to be now?

Well, that kid's not here. He left. Bucky's here and alone and so filled up with hatred and anger that he can't sit still anymore. He starts trying to gather the letters only to see the blood on his hand and abandons that task for the sink, his overstretched ankles on fire for the first several limping steps. He hisses through his teeth when the soapy water works into the cuts, the pain fanning the flames in his head until he's pacing the cramped length of his apartment trying to work it off. He should go outside, go to the gym, go for a run, do something.

His eyes land on the drum set. Isn't that what he always does when he gets this feeling? Sit on that stool with those sticks and whale on the kit until his anger turns into something worth listening to? That's what he's good for, after all. Put a mask on him, put him by some drums, and call that generosity.

His sticks are too light in his hands. The drums he's played on a thousand times don't sound right; he tries tuning them and the sound gets worse. Every groove he tries falls apart after a few measures and he can't hold a beat. He goes to hit a cymbal and fucking misses like he hasn't since he first started playing,since the accident, since he was a goddamnamateur. The stick hits empty air and the rest of the groove screeches to a discordant halt while he stares at that stick. All at once the buzzing in his ears is deafening and his muscles are bands pulled taut that need to snap.

He hurls his drumsticks with a shout. They smack into the far wall and clatter to the floor, rolling under the couch because of fucking course they do. He doesn't bother trying to fish them out; this whole night is a wash. If he goes out he's as likely to burn off his energy as he is to get hit by another car.

Maybe that's what he deserves.

He shakes his head like a dog and strips out of his clothes with enough force that he rips the seam of his t-shirt. He snarls at it and tosses it aside, then hits the lights and throws himself into his bed in a way that makes the frame creak ominously. Ignoring that, he drags the covers over himself and curls up under them. Between the comforter and his own closed eyes, he can find truly suffocating darkness.

He sleeps and dreams of Sarah Rogers dying in a car accident.

Chapter Text

"Hey."

Steve looks up from the coffee mug he'd been staring at for…a while, judging by the fact it's not steaming anymore. Sam, still dressed in the old t-shirt and shorts he uses for pajamas, is looking down at him in mild concern. "Hey."

"You doing alright?"

"I'm fine." He takes a sip of his coffee to prove it, managing to hide his frown when he discovers it's already cooled to lukewarm.

"Right," drawls Sam while he drags out a chair and takes a seat opposite Steve. "I'm guessing you heard from Tony."

"He told me before he went out this morning."

"How'd that make you feel?"

"Same as before. It's his life, he can do what he wants with it."

"He can. And you can stare at your coffee like it holds the meaning of life while it loses all its heat, and I can see that and wonder if you're, in fact, lying straight to my pretty face. C'mon, man. He's clearly still on your mind."

Steve works his jaw. "When he was at Tony's," he finally says, "I could at least keep an eye on him."

"Do you want to be his keeper?"

"That used to be his job. He looked out for me." He sighs and looks back down at his coffee, trying to untangle the knots that have corded around his heart ever tighter with each memory of Bucky that comes sliding through his mind. It feels like they never stop. "I dreamed about him last night, the times we were kids and his family took me to a cabin on a lake they used to rent. He taught me how to swim."

"You've got a lot of memories together, I'm sure. Comes with the childhood best friend territory. Doesn't change that he's been kind of a dick to you now."

"You should've seen his face, Sam. He had no idea. None." Bitterness wells up in Steve. "I called, I texted, I wrote. I did everything short of flying to Russia myself and none of it mattered to him at all."

Sam lets him stew in his anger for a minute. "What do you want to do?"

"I don't know."

"What do you want him to do?"

"I don't know. Go back in time?"

"Let's take that one off the table."

Working his jaw, Steve wades through the rot of a decade-old wound and lands on: "Explain. I want him to explain."

"You want him to explain in a way that justifies everything," Sam clarifies gently. "So you don't have to sit here and stare at your coffee all mad and sad about it."

"I'm not—"

"Cold coffee doesn't lie, my friend. C'mon, get up. You're helping me clean this place."

"What? Why?"

"Because you sulking at this table is going to completely ruin my focus, because if I do it alone all of my day off is gonna be nothing but chores, and because you're too good of a person to say no, that's why. And maybe, by the end of it, you might be able to face the fact there's nothing he can say that'll erase ten years of hurt."

Bucky wakes up with a headache and a taste like something died in his mouth. For a while he marinates in that discomfort, unwilling to get up. Yesterday was a shitty day and he knows today is going to be worse. What he refuses to do is think about exactly why. Instead, he rolls over, drags his covers back over his head, and tries to fall back asleep. His shoulder protests every movement he makes, but that's fine. A little pain never stopped him from sleeping before, why now?

He deserves it, anyway.

In the relative silence of the early morning—because of course his body wouldn't let him get a full night of sleep—an odd sound breaks through the usual city background noise: mewling.

He thinks he's imagining it for the first minute, but when it persists, he realizes he's not going to be able to mope effectively until he figures out what the hell is making that noise. It's the kind of pathetic sound that demands investigation.

Grimacing, he rolls out of bed and goes to the window. On the way he trips over a bundle of cloth—his ripped t-shirt—and sprawls over the floor with a thud he knows his downstairs neighbor won't appreciate. Even with a discarded pair of pants acting as a cushion, his own shoulder didn't appreciate it; the prosthetic took the brunt and most of that force got transferred to its anchors, and now the already-exacerbated morning ache has sharpened into something fierce. Doesn't help that he forgot to set himself up with the pillow correctly last night.

"Great start," he mutters and pushes himself to his feet.

When he peers through the blinds, squinting at the cloud-diffused light that comes through, he doesn't see an immediate answer. When he looks lower, though, he does.

He lets the blinds snap closed and chews his lip. A glance behind him at the state of his apartment doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

The mewling comes again, much louder now that he's right near the source.

"Ugh," he groans, scrubbing his hand over his face. Another mew. "Fine."

He fumbles the cord to open up the blinds properly. Light floods his apartment and his headache surges. Squinting through the pain, he undoes the locking latch and heaves the window open. It slides up with only a faint screech of complaint. Cold air brings a wave of city noise with it and goose bumps prickle his skin.

The screen isn't fastened in place; it's easy to wiggle it free and dump it on the floor behind him. Thus is his access to the fire escape, and the small white cat mewling its tiny little head off on it, unimpeded.

Either this cat has no sense of self-preservation or it's too scared to move when Bucky reaches out, grabs the back of its neck, and pulls it inside. Depositing the cat on the floor, he puts the screen back, closes the window, and stands there for a second with his eyes squeezed shut until the pain in his head fades to something more manageable.

When he looks down, the cat's crawled under his couch.

"Goddammit."

He spends thirty-six fruitless minutes trying to coax the thing out. In the end, he's forced to give up; all he's done is recover one of his drumsticks and convince the cat that the drumstick is something that must be attacked at all costs. The cat will come out when it wants to come out, he figures. In the meantime, he should at least make sure there's no easy way for it to get itself into more trouble.

This results in him actually kind of cleaning his apartment for the first time in days. When that's done, he tries again to get the cat out. It's no more successful than the first attempt. He's got no food or toys or anything to bribe it with.

He's got no food for it.

"If I leave," he tells the cat, "you're going to stay out of trouble, right?"

It just stares at him, two reflective blue circles floating in the dark.

"Right."

He's got enough presence of mind to brush his teeth, splash some water on his face, and brush his hair. Then he puts on clothes that are close to clean, jams a hat on to hide most of his greasy hair, and heads out the door.

"Have you had a cat before?" asks the cashier at the pet store.

"I've taken care of some," Bucky says, which isn't entirely false. One of his flings a few years back had two kittens. And he's not an idiot; most of the time he spent wandering around the store, he spent with his phone in hand, looking up the things he needed. "Why, am I missing anything?"

The cashier shakes her head. "No, I was just curious. You're all set to go."

"Thanks."

He takes his haul over to where his bike is parked. He'd had the foresight to put on the studded saddlebags he usually goes without, but even with them and his backpack, it's a tight fit. It's not often he wishes he had a car, particularly in the city, but it does happen.

This is his second stop; the first had been to get some of the larger supplies, and he'd taken a taxi for that. Hopefully the cat isn't causing too much trouble with the plastic storage tub he'd gotten to function as a litterbox. The litter is currently in one of the saddlebags, heavy enough to make his bike list if he's not careful.

The cat is not, in fact, causing trouble. Bucky's sure it bolted back under the couch the instant it heard him coming up the stairs. Sweating and sore and still nursing his headache, Bucky sets to unpacking and getting things set up. One scratching pad gets taped to a leg of his bed; another to his couch. The bed goes near his drums. The litter, most of it, gets dumped into the tub, which is itself shoved into a narrow gap by the wall. The water bowl goes in the kitchen in a spot he hopefully won't accidentally trip over. The food bowl goes on the opposite side of the kitchen since apparently cats don't like those things to be near each other.

"Sorry," Bucky says to the couch. "Not really enough room for them to be far apart."

When he's got things more or less set up, he sits in front of the couch again.

"Are you coming out now? I've got food."

The rustling of the bag of treats doesn't entice the cat. Nor does opening it and trying to waft the smell in the cat's general direction. He sighs.

"Fine."

Putting the treats on the kitchen counter, he heads to his bathroom to shower. He never did after his run and being out in public made it real clear that he's smelling ripe.

He gets out of the shower, looks into the mirror, and isn't at all surprised by the redness of or bags under his eyes. The cold water he splashes on his face is enough to shock him out of the miasmic urge to mope. Bucky Barnes doesn't mope. Bucky Barnes is a doer, goddammit, always has been. See the drums? Learn the drums. Lose the arm? Learn the new one. Find a cat? Adopt the cat. Abandon your best friend when he needs you most and throw his dead mom in his face? Eat humble pie until you choke.

He towels off and brushes his hair so he can pull it into a bun out of his eyes. Stray strands fall around his face but he can't be bothered to take it down and do it over again. There are more important things on the agenda.

Clothed in shorts and a comfy old band t-shirt that's so faded he can't even make out the Hydra logo anymore, he pauses by the couch. "How about now?"

No response.

It's just him against the rest of the contents of the box, then. It's his imagination, he knows, but staring down at it he can't help seeing a kind of ominous haze hanging over it. He raises his eyes to the ceiling and drags in a deep breath.

"Come on. It's not that bad."

In the end, it isn't. It's pretty easy to sit down next to it and once more go through its contents, this time looking at everything, not just the letters from seven years ago from his mom and Steve.

It's not as brutal as that first salvo, but it's not easy, either. More than once he has to set a letter down, bury his face in his hands, and just breathe like that until the urge to put his fist through the nearest wall—or a mirror—passes.

He was such an idiot.

Probably still is.

He's so engrossed in the last batch of letters that he doesn't register the small white blur in the corner of his vision until the cat is gingerly sniffing at the edge of his circle of shame. He freezes. The cat freezes. They stare at each other.

He blinks slowly, remembering that from one article or another. The cat doesn't return the gesture—rude—but goes back to sniffing and pawing at the letters. Moving oh-so-slowly, Bucky reaches for the bag of treats he snagged before sitting down. The cat skitters back a little at the sound of the bag opening but doesn't run back for the couch. Its ears are back, its tail twitching, but when Bucky doesn't do anything besides set a treat as far away from himself as he can manage, it slowly relaxes.

In the span of about ten minutes, Bucky goes through roughly twenty treats and gets the cat from nervous and scared to purring like a motorboat in his lap.

"You're a sweet thing, huh?" he murmurs as he runs his right hand down its fur. "I'm sorry I couldn't find your family. I looked." The alley below his window had been empty. Bucky had thought maybe someone had dumped the cat, a cardboard box situation, but no. He'd stood there, hands in his coat pockets, and realized: I have a cat now.

"I'll still have to take you in and get you checked for a chip or something, I think. You won't like that."

For now, the cat likes him well enough, judging by all the purring. He tries to earn a bit more goodwill with ear scratches and then picks it up for a bath. He knows cats usually bathe themselves, but he realized over the course of petting that the darker patches in the fur weren't natural coloring. This is a white cat, not a tabby, and clearly something's stuck on it that won't come out the easy way.

He gets the sink running warm but not hot. To his surprise, the cat takes to the bath remarkably well. There's an initial attempt to escape, but after some soothing and soap, there aren't any more. He realizes during the bath that the cat's a she. Her ear is clipped, too, so she must've been fixed by a shelter at some point. He has no idea how old she is; she's not a kitten, he's sure of that, but other than guessing she's not geriatric, he's got nothing.

When the cat's clean and toweled off, he sets her in front of the food bowl, where he's put some dry kibble. He didn't know what type to buy—indoor kitten, indoor young cat, indoor adult cat, indoor old cat? So he'd gone with a small bag of indoor adult. But the treats earlier seem to have filled her up pretty well. She eats only a few bites before wandering over to the water bowl. That doesn't hold her attention for very long either. Now that she's comfortable, she seems content to explore. Bucky leaves her to it; he's got an appointment to schedule.

The vet visit—somehow, he'd been able to snag a same-day appointment because someone else canceled at the last second—is uneventful. The cat takes the new environment and exams well. She comes back with a clean bill of health and an age estimated at around three to six years old. No chip, so no one looking for her. The moment the veterinarian is done poking and prodding, she flees the flat exam countertop and climbs Bucky like a tree, her claws digging straight through his denim jeans. Thankfully, his leather jacket saves his stomach from the same pain.

Bucky pays for the immunizations she needs and spends a while filling out paperwork and answering questions at the front desk while the cat does her best to wiggle out of where he's got her trapped in his zipped-up coat. Once she pops her head out by his collar, she seems content to stay like that.

"Have you picked out a name for her?" the man behind the desk asks.

"Don't you just schedule with my name?"

He gets a patient smile for that. "Yes, but many people like to have their pet's name included, especially if they have multiple."

Bucky's cheeks tinge red. Right. Naming a pet is perfectly normal, but to be honest, it had completely slipped his mind in the haze of dealing with the life he abandoned and the rush of figuring out how to take care of this new responsibility. He unzips his coat a little and takes the cat out to look at her.

With fur and eyes like that, she reminds him of a tundra on a crisp winter day. No, more like a mountain, the way she likes to climb.

"Alpine," he decides, staring at her. "Her name is Alpine."

She blinks at him slowly.

Back at his apartment, Alpine proves she doesn't need to be litterbox-trained, much to Bucky's relief. She's also very clingy, living up to her name by climbing all over him. Eventually, she drapes herself over his shoulder, taking vague interest in whatever he's doing with his hands. He favors her with scratches whenever his hand is free.

He's gotten through the letters, all of them. He sorted them, too, by date and sender, before tucking them back in the box. He also managed to do some laundry and various cleaning he's been putting off. Between that and taking care of Alpine, the entire day has passed him by.

But he's got amends to make, so he makes a plan.

Tomorrow, he makes things right.

Chapter Text

If he had any plans of staying in bed past sunrise, Alpine disabuses him of them immediately. He opens bleary eyes to the sight of her staring down at him, her paws pressing uncomfortably on his throat.

"Are you threatening me?" he croaks.

She meows.

Thus he's awake and feeding her—he'd thankfully picked the right food—before seven in the morning. Crouched next to her food bowl while she crunches away, he goes over the plan he set last night. Sure, he hadn't planned on this early of a start, but starting early won't hurt.

Leaving Alpine to her work, he brushes his teeth, showers, and then spends a while cleaning his arm. It's been a while since he properly polished it and the metal is starting to dull. By the time that's done, his stomach is growling and Alpine has curled up on his drum stool where a stray beam of sunlight filters perfectly through the rest of the kit.

Breakfast is quick and filling; he's not going to let hunger distract him on his next errand. From his closet he pulls out clothes he cleaned and—in the case of the things that were already clean and just wrinkled—ironed yesterday: a full suit and tie. It wasn't often Hydra's members had to dress up out of costume, but when they did, they did it right. Impressions matter.

Suited up, he goes over to Alpine. "Wanna come with?"

She mrrps when he scratches under her chin but seems content to stay where she is. At least, she pretends to be until he's grabbing his keys and going for the door, at which point she hustles over to him and starts bonking her body against his shins.

"Okay, okay, got it."

He gets the harness and leash he purchased yesterday. He'd spent some time letting Alpine investigate them and left them out all night, and he's hoping she'll be as relaxed with them as she's been with everything else.

Fortunately, she is, and after some initial complaining and flopping over with the harness, she figures out that she can still walk in it. Bucky deposits her on his shoulder, winds the excess leash loosely around his wrist, and heads out.

It's a nice day, nicer than the day before. Just barely warm enough that Bucky isn't cold in his formal clothes and partly cloudy so there's intermittent relief from the glaring sun. He sets off at an easy pace once the subway's gotten him close enough to make the walk reasonable, and within a block on the sidewalk he's realizing that he's attracting a lot of attention.

For a second, fear clenches his stomach. But only for a second. People aren't looking at him, they're looking at Alpine, who's still sunning herself on his shoulder, slowly depositing a layer of long white hairs on his jacket.

"Aw," says a group of teenage girls passing by.

"That is adorable," says an old woman.

"I like your style," says a guy a little younger than Bucky.

He gets a lot more comments, and twice, people ask if they can pet her. Alpine seems to be okay with it so long as Bucky is, so he lets that happen. All of that serves to slow him down so that he reaches his destination about when he'd planned to before Alpine's early alarm moved up his morning.

"Still feeling okay?" he asks Alpine. She doesn't answer, but when he turns his head he gets a wet and cold nose to his chin. "Oof, okay, you're cold."

It takes some doing, but he manages to get her situated inside his suit jacket. The cat hairs will be hell to get out later, but he'll burn that bridge when he gets to it. Situated, he walks into the cemetery and starts his search.

After ten minutes, Alpine is apparently warm enough and bored enough that she wants out, so she trots along next to him on the gravel path while he searches for the right headstone. He's pretty sure he remembers where the headstone was, but the years since he visited have done a number on his memory.

Finally, he finds it, tucked in the middle of a row: Joseph Rogers. And next to him, paying off his hunch, is Sarah Rogers.

Steve's parents.

He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. Doubt, kept at bay by the clarity of having this plan, claws its way to the forefront of his mind now that he's reached his destination. What can he say? Does he even deserve to say anything? How can he stand in front of either of them and ask forgiveness when he—

Alpine darts forward to tackle a scarlet leaf caught in the breeze. She proceeds to tear it to shreds and then target another, and another, and before he knows it, Bucky's got a small smile on his face watching her play by those headstones. The doubt's receded.

He unwinds more of the leash from his wrist to give Alpine more room to menace the autumn leaves. Then he draws in one more breath to steel himself.

"Hi," he tells the headstones, the people resting under them, and particularly Sarah because neither he nor Steve ever knew Joseph. "It's been a while." He glances at Joseph. "I used to come here with Steve when we were kids. I don't know if you remember." He licks his lips and then crouches down, ignoring the way his knees audibly crack. "Mrs. Rogers, you remember that music program? Well, some things happened while I was doing it, and I did something really stupid. Really cruel. When you passed, I wasn't there for your son, and I should've been. I'm sorry."

A young couple passes by a few rows ahead, stopping at a grave of their own almost at the end of that row. The breeze carries their voices but not their words; Bucky lowers his own just in case there's anyone behind him who doesn't want to hear his rambling when they came for their own loved ones.

And rambling it is: his plan only went as far as getting here and apologizing. He has no list of things he wants to say. He describes the music program's early days and his accident in vague terms, then goes a little more into learning how to use his arm and thinking, thinking that—

"I wasn't whole, anymore," he admits, eyes prickling with tears. Alpine, cold once more, is nestled in his jacket is purring in a way that seems to bounce around his chest and shake loose all the grief that built up over the years like so much dust. "I wasn't the guy Steve knew. I couldn't be everything he thought I was anymore, I—I couldn't face that. I couldn't face him. I was afraid."

Alpine turns over in his coat and he spares a second to scratch under her chin. She rewards him by kneading his stomach, meaning he gets ten dull claws pressing against his skin. He's very thankful the vet offered to cut them yesterday.

"I'm still afraid," he admits. "I'm terrified. I don't even know if Steve's gonna give me another chance. He's got every right not to. But I…I gotta try, right? That's what you'd want? I know you never wanted him to be alone."

Another breeze rustles the graveyard and Bucky shivers when it pierces right through his jacket.

"Yeah, he shouldn't be alone. I mean, he's got friends. He's probably told you about them. They're nice. They stick up for him. He's a lucky guy. It's not like," Bucky gets a lump in his throat that takes a second to swallow down, "it's not like he needs me. But I—I'd really like to have him back in my life, if I can. I missed him. I missed him more than anything."

His voice breaks under the weight of a realization that refused to crystallize until just now. He missed Steve. He's still missing Steve.

He pulls himself together and manages a slightly less rambling goodbye, then makes his exit with a sleeping Alpine bundled in his arms. He's not stopped as many times on the way home with her so obviously conked out, but there are still plenty of people stealing glances and, in several cases, cooing. Bucky supposes it's a decent thing to pay attention to on a subway: a man dressed to the nines with a cat slowly covering his black suit in white.

As good as it feels to get that conversation with Sarah and Joseph off his chest, though, there's still a lot of work left to do. He exchanges his formal wear for more comfortable sweats once he's home, gives Alpine a treat for her help, and then settles on his couch. Instagram, Snapchat, even Facebook—he dropped them all when he joined the music program. He didn't want to see the life he'd left behind, and after the accident, he didn't want reminders of all the things he'd never be able to participate in again.

Now, he redownloads them all, plus several of the messaging apps he'd been using while international. There's no point trying to remember his passwords; they're long gone. He still has access to the email he used to create them, though, so a few rounds of account recovery later and he's back in his old accounts.

The next few hours pass in a blur of catching up on social media, messages, and anything else he can find. Anything from before his accident was lost with his old phone, but he can dig up just about everything else. The longer he spends trawling the past, the more obvious it becomes just how deeply he screwed up. Steve would've been well within his rights to sock Bucky on the jaw during their first meeting.

Alongside the guilt comes the burning need to make it right. A new plan takes shape, one that begins with three long overdue phone calls. It takes some digging to find the numbers, but find them he does.

He selects the first contact, puts his phone to his hear, and waits.

When Louisa picks up on the second ring, Bucky experiences the heady rush of simultaneous relief and spiking anxiety. He's starting with the youngest of the Barnes clan, the last to arrive of the four siblings. When he last saw Louisa, she was seven years old and crying on the sidewalk as his taxi pull away. Now she's nineteen.

He's barely started sounding out the word hey when she starts talking.

"Look, I gave you my number last night because you asked in front of all your friends, but I'm not interested. Maybe lose the number, okay?"

"Louisa, wait, wait! It's Bucky, your brother. It's Bucky, okay? Don't hang up." Please, he adds silently, please don't hang up.

God, if she thinks he's some loser who pressured her into giving up her phone number at a party, she'll block him and this will get way harder. The universe has to be fucking with him, to have that scenario overlap like this.

She's…not hanging up. Or speaking.

"Louisa?" he tries.

"Bucky?"

"Yeah. Yeah, it's me."

"Prove it."

"Uh…You used to demand that I carry you up the stairs when it was bedtime because 'princesses don't climb stairs.'"

A surprised laugh carries across the line. "Oh my god, it really is you. What are—why are—why?"

"I'm back in the States and I figured I was overdue for some family time."

"Overdue. You were gone for, for—I was seven when you left, you asshole! And now you just call out of the blue on some random day? Jesus, I'm not—you can't just drop that on someone. Fuck!"

He can't help his laughter. "Yeah, I don't remember you talking like that before."

"Seven. Se-ven." She drags in a breath he can hear through the phone. "So you're back. Really back?"

"Really back. I'm in New York—Brooklyn."

"Are you living with Mom and Dad?"

"Nah, got my own place. What about you?"

"I'm living in the dorms at Tufts."

"Tufts?"

"University, by Boston."

He perks up, recalling the name from some of her posts. "How do you like it there?"

"It's alright, took some adjusting to get used to. It's kinda nice to have people around again. The house was getting empty."

He lets the pointed comment pass without remark and instead focuses on more questions about her school and life in general. Social media is all well and good, but it's only by talking to her that he feels like he's truly reconnecting with his sister and not some adult stranger with her name. The way she talks—minus the cussing—is the same, especially her dramatic sighs whenever he pretends to be oblivious to whatever point she's trying to make.

They can't talk forever, though, and soon enough he can sense she's looking to end the conversation.

"I gotta go," he says before she feels pressured to come up with some lame excuse, "but I hope you don't mind if I keep texting and calling."

"I don't."

"Glad to hear it. Are you planning to come up for Thanksgiving?"

"Yeah, I wouldn't miss Mom's cooking for the world."

"I'll see you in November, then."

"You'd better have some serious gifts to make up for a decade of missed birthdays."

He chuckles. "We'll see. And Louisa? Thanks for not hanging up."

"You're welcome. Bye, Bucky."

"Bye."

The silence in his apartment is deafening. Setting his phone aside, he brings his hands to his face and just breathes for a minute until his heart stops racing. On the other side he finds not calm but giddiness, a surge of fist-pumping glee in the wake of all that fear being unfounded. She answered, she talked to him, she wants to see him again.

But he can't get ahead of himself. She's not the only one he let down.

So, with a straightening of his shoulders, he makes his next call.

"Who's this?"

Charlie's voice is so deep. That's the first thought that strikes Bucky. Of course it's deep compared to Bucky's memories; he's remembering an eight-year-old boy yelling after him to send him a cool Russian souvenir in the mail, after all, and not a twenty-year-old man answering a call from an unknown number.

"Charlie, right?"

"Who's asking?"

"Bucky."

"Is this a joke? Did Louisa put you up to this?"

A pang goes through Bucky's chest. "No, not a joke. Ask me whatever you want. Just—don't ask for a souvenir, I…I forgot."

"Souve—right, I wanted one. 'Cause you were going to Russia. And I was eight. Why are you calling, again?"

Even though he expected the hostility and it's entirely deserved, it still hurts. "I'm back in Brooklyn now and wanted to catch up."

"Cool, you wanna get caught up on the last twelve years of my life? I'm touched. Really. You always knew how to make a guy feel special. Go fuck yourself."

He hangs up, leaving Bucky reeling. Bucky almost taps his contact again but stops himself. Why would he expect another call to go differently? Instead, he spends several minutes typing out a text explaining where he is, that he's sorry for disappearing and it won't happen again, and he's hoping they can reconnect.

The text goes through. Charlie's typing bubble appears and then disappears several times over the next couple of minutes before it goes away and doesn't return. Bucky breathes out and bows his head.

"I can't blame him," he tells Alpine, who's come to investigate his distress by going up on her hind legs, putting her paws on his knee, and tickling her whiskers and cold nose against his face. Smiling, he scratches under her chin for a moment. She takes that as reason enough to hop up onto the couch and onto his lap. After a couple dangerous paw placements near his groin, she curls up into a ball and starts to purr.

"Got tired of playing with my drumsticks?" he asks. She's made a game of hiding his drumsticks under the couch, meaning he's constantly fishing them out. He can't bring himself to be mad at her for it.

Once he's got his third and final call ringing, he transfers his phone to his left hand so he can pet her with his right.

The dial tone stops. "Hello?"

"Hey, is this Becca?"

"Who is this?"

"It's Bucky."

"Look, I get that Louisa gets off on messing with me and Charlie, but that doesn't mean you get a free pass for going along with this."

When did Louisa become a troublemaker? Bucky makes a mental note to get more details from Louisa on exactly how she's been 'messing with' her siblings using Bucky's name and then shelves that task for later. "No, it's—it's really me, Becca, promise. Ask me anything."

There's a long pause that has him so anxious he stops petting Alpine, a mistake for which she rewards him with a clawed paw to the back of the hand as she tries to drag his hand back to her head.

"Why'd you disappear?"

Oh. Like Alpine, she went straight for the throat. "I was scared."

"Shit, it's really you, isn't it? God. Bucky."

"Yeah."

He can hear her shaky breaths through the phone. "Give me a second, I'm—no, I'm fine, just an unexpected call. Can you finish preparing the pot roast? Yeah, it's all on the counter, I left the recipe by the fridge. I don't know how long this'll take, but just toss it in the oven if I'm not back. Yeah, that'll be fine. You're the best." She must be talking to her roommate. Sophia, if Bucky remembers the last Instagram post she was tagged in correctly. There's another brief interlude as Becca relocates to somewhere more private than a kitchen, at which point she asks, "Why now?"

"I don't have a good reason."

She laughs. "You think I'm expecting a good reason? You ghosted your entire family. There are no good reasons. Just the truth. And you'd better give me the truth or I'm hanging up."

"I was the Winter Soldier."

Deafening silence greets that confession, which he takes as indicating she knows what that means.

"Before that," he continues, his voice refusing to steady, "when I was sixteen, I was in a car accident that took my arm and nearly took my life. I was so scared, Becca. So goddamn scared."

"Mom and Dad would've come. I would've—"

"I know. You would've found a shell of me. We both know we didn't have the money for that kind of travel, either. I couldn't—I couldn't ask them to do that. By the time I had money, it…I felt like it was too late."

"So you ghosted us for a decade to become a rockstar."

"I'm sorry."

Alpine meows plaintively; he's stopped petting her again. He swaps his phone to his right hand and lets her play with his left since she finds the metal limb oddly fascinating. He chalks it up to her being able to see her warped reflection in its panels and the way he can move it like a toy without fear of getting clawed. Watching her, he can almost forget how long it's been since Becca spoke.

"Was it worth it?"

"No," he whispers. "God no." He learned a lot, made stupid amounts of money, but he was never happy. His best days with Hydra pale in comparison to the handful of good days with Steve he had after coming back to Brooklyn.

It's paltry reassurance that Becca's voice is shaking as much as his. "None of that explains why now."

"You saw the news. I quit the band."

"Yeah, I saw. That was months ago. So why now? Why come back to Brooklyn? Why reach out at all?"

"I had some things to sort out."

"Wow. Things."

"I was still scared, okay? God, Becca, I'm terrified right now. I ran into Steve and I—I said something really stupid." She waits and he realizes she's gonna make him say it. He watches Alpine's claws slip off his left index finger while she tries to get a grip with her paws. "I never read any of the texts or letters. I wasn't on social media." He bites his lip. Say it, asshole. "I asked about his mom."

Rebecca sucks in a breath.

"Yeah. It didn't go well. Hearing she passed—I realized how stupid I'd been. I couldn't keep running away. Before you, I called Louisa, and I called Charlie, and now I'm calling you."

"How'd that go?"

"Louisa probably won't slap me at Thanksgiving. Charlie wants nothing to do with me."

"What did he say?"

"He told me to fuck off and hung up."

"That sounds like him. He…He went through a lot in middle school, more in high school. He's doing better now, especially now that he's out at BU. I'm pretty sure Mom was relieved he and Louisa wouldn't be completely alone in Massachusetts. Can you believe she tried to convince me to move there instead of California?"

"Absolutely. Good job holding firm."

"You know me: stubborn to the bone."

"Steve's a bad influence."

"Like you were any better." She sighs. "I can't make any promises. Think about it: he's spent most of his life getting compared to his big brother who did everything right. Then you went and left, so you weren't a person anymore, you were just a, just a grade he could never measure up to."

"I never wanted that to happen."

"And Mom and Dad and everyone else didn't either. Doesn't change that you left and it did. But I'll still talk to him."

"I really appreciate that. I'll understand if he says doesn't want to hear anything from me."

"Believe me, he might say exactly that. Are you gonna visit Mom and Dad? Before Thanksgiving, I mean."

"Yeah, that's next on my list. Listen, can you—can you not tell them I'm coming?"

"You're doing it today?"

"Yeah."

"Then I guess I can hold off. But if you don't go see them today, I'll never let you live it down, understand? I'll make sure Louisa and Charlie and I make your Thanksgiving absolute hell."

He can practically see her aiming the finger gun at him, eyes narrowed in promise. "I'm gonna see them, I promise. No threats required."

"Good." She hesitates a moment, probably biting her lip in that way she always does when she's thinking something over. "I really missed you, Bucky. Don't ever disappear on us like that again."

"I won't. I'll call every week."

"You better. Tell Mom and Dad I said hi."

"I will. One more thing—the Winter Soldier stuff."

"Keep it secret?"

"Please."

"Like you never said a word."

God, he loves her. "Bye, Becca."

"Bye, Bucky."

He hangs up and lowers his phone into his lap, heart simultaneously racing and so full it feels like it might burst. His hand is shaking. Alpine promptly attacks his phone for daring to brush against her stomach.

Since she's riled up after so long resting and getting petted, Bucky works off his anxiety by playing with her until she's exhausted. At that point, he changes into nicer clothes, stops in the bathroom to clean up, and heads one more time for the door.

He's got a promise to keep.

There's an old saying that no plan survives first contact with the enemy. Bucky's not sure if he's managed to be an exception yet because he's gotten through almost all of his plan without a major hitch. Charlie's a setback, for sure, and the day's not over yet. Still, he can't help hoping for the best. Praying for it, really.

"No, if he's not in, I'll call back later. Thanks for checking. Yeah. Have a good one. Bye."

He hangs up and breathes out. That call to his dad's office confirmed that he's working from home this afternoon. Judging by his mom's Facebook post about crocheting a scarf from about twenty minutes ago, she's also at home.

And Bucky? Well, Bucky's right outside their door. What was once his door, a long time ago. It looks the same, though they got the doorbell button replaced at some point since he left. And maybe the trees in the tiny bit of grass between the building and sidewalk are bigger than he remembers. Otherwise, it looks the same.

It looks the same.

He's built up a sweat from the walk over so he unzips his jacket before raising his hand to the doorbell. He hesitates one last time. A thousand ghosts of his younger self, oblivious to his hesitation, hop up the stairs. Some are calling out to Rebecca, or Charlie, or Louisa, or Steve. Several smack into the door because they're not looking. Not a single one of them gives second thought to shoving the door open or—if that fails—fumbling the key from their pockets. Echoes of his own voice fill his ears:

"I'm home!"

Some days Mom answered, some days Dad, some days no one. But every single time he crossed that threshold, he was able to relax, because he was home.

Bucky breaks from the ghosts and pushes the button for the doorbell. A muffled ding-dong sounds from inside.

He shifts his weight and stifles the urge to glance around like he's going to get caught doing something wrong. His left arm is helpfully shifting its plates around as though to remind him of the nerves he's trying desperately to ignore lest they send him fleeing down the street from this thing he has to do. If Alpine were here, he could use her as a distraction. But she's back in his apartment, tucked safely away because, really, he shouldn't hide behind her for this. Besides, there's always the chance she reacts badly to strangers no matter how well she's handled it so far.

When he hears footsteps approaching the door, his mouth goes dry. The latch clicks, the old handle protests, and then the hinges groan at being forced to swing.

And there on the other side stands his mom, looking at him in polite confusion.

She doesn't recognize me, he thinks with a touch of hysteria. Makes sense; he's got his hair down and he's got twelve years on the kid she remembers. It still hurts a little.

"Hi, mom," he says to jog her memory. That polite confusion melts into shock and then something far more vulnerable.

"Oh, my god. Bucky?"

She gives him no time to respond; all but throwing herself at him, she wraps her arms around him and squeezes so hard he has to gasp for air. Her head barely reaches his shoulders now, he realizes distantly. Old reflexes have him returning the hug. A dull pain radiates from his back where her fingers are digging in, and oh, she's crying.

"Hey, it's okay," he says, a little helplessly. "I'm here. I'm right here, Ma."

She's shaking in his arms and he's losing the fight against the waterworks threatening to escape his eyes. His platitudes come out shaky with the effort of speaking around the lump in his throat.

She's so much smaller than he remembers. There's so much more gray in her hair. It's—

"Bucky?"

He lifts his eyes over his mom to see his dad stopped dead in the front hall. He must've been coming to see what was keeping her at the door; he's still got a pair of reading glasses perched on the end of his nose. He hadn't needed those when Bucky left.

"Dad."

He crosses the distance between them in just a few swift strides and folds both Bucky and his mom in a crushing hug.

"I knew it," his mom says through sniffles. "I told you. I told you he'd come."

"You were right. You were right."

Bucky's losing fight becomes a lost one. Tears streak down his cheeks and he ducks his head against his dad's chest, knowing they can both feel him shaking and not able to do anything about it. He's twenty-six and crying and sorry; he's fourteen and scared and craning his neck to catch one last glimpse of his family through the taxi's back window; he's twelve and getting lectured on not starting fights while holding a towel to Steve's bleeding nose; he's nine and tapping on their door and confessing to a nightmare; he's six and looking in wonder at the presents piled under the tree behind them.

"I'm sorry," he manages. "I'm so, so sorry. I never should've gone. Never should've left. I'm so sorry."

"No, no," murmurs his dad.

"You're back," his mom adds. "That's all that matters. You're back. You're home."

After a truly embarrassing amount of crying, sniffling, and general incoherent babbling, his dad has enough presence of mind to suggest they take their emotional reunion inside to stop giving the neighbors a show. Bucky ends up on the old L-couch in the living room with a glass of water his mom all but forces into his hands.

"I have snacks," she says, hovering. "Do you want anything? Crackers?"

"I'm okay. The water's fine. Sit down, Ma, you're giving me a crick in my neck."

His dad nods from his spot on his—and, in Bucky's mind, it's always just been his—armchair. "Listen to the man, Win, you're fretting."

"I am—I'm not fretting." But she sits down next to Bucky…on the edge of the cushion, perched and ready to get up at the slightest provocation.

Naturally, his dad is the one to break the awkward silence. "Never should've left, huh?" he asks, keeping his tone gentle like Bucky might break if he says the wrong thing, which only makes Bucky feel worse. "Was the program that bad?"

Bucky focuses on the water swirling in his glass. Was it? "I mean," he tries, "I did learn to play the drums."

Obviously, that's not enough. He sighs, sets his water on the coffee table, and tugs off his glove. His mom sucks in a breath and his dad sits forward in his chair.

"There might've been…other things, too."

He explains it all as best he can: the anxiety and excitement of his first days, the overwhelming stress that bore down on him not long after when the program kicked into gear, the two-odd years of decently enjoyable time spent learning Russian, learning the drums, making friends, and—above all—missing home.

"Every time I called you guys, or I texted Steve, it was just another reminder of everything I was missing," he confesses. "It felt like you were moving on without me. Like I was holding everyone back and didn't have anything to show for it besides a little skill on the drums."

"Oh, honey—"

"Let him finish, Win."

Bucky nods at his dad in appreciation. If he stops, he's not sure he'll be able to start again. "I know better now, but back then…back then, I didn't. And then I lost my arm." He shrugs off his coat and both his parents' eyes go wide when they realize it's more than just his hand, that the shining silver goes all the way up through his shoulder. His mom brings her hands to her mouth and his dad does the same with just one, the other flexing in sympathy.

"What happened?"

"It was a car accident. A drunk driver on a back road." He closes his eyes, which is a mistake: flashes of the accident sear the backs of his eyelids and he snaps them open, heart racing and a cold sweat breaking out on his skin. He licks his lips and talks through it. "It was messy and the ambulance took a while to reach me. By the time I got to the hospital, they had to amputate."

Something brushes against his right hand and he glances down to see his mom offering to hold it. He lets her, she squeezes, and he tries to draw comfort from that to keep talking.

"I was in a bad place. My phone got destroyed in the crash and my memory was screwed up for a while, but even when I could remember phone numbers, I didn't want anyone seeing me like that, least of all you or Steve."

His mom is squeezing his fingers hard enough to hurt.

"For what it's worth," his dad says, voice hoarse, "we wouldn't have judged you, son. Not for a moment. We're your parents."

"I know, I—I even knew it then, I just…I couldn't believe it." He releases a shaky breath. "After a while, the man who ran the program, Alexander Pierce," his parents nod in recognition of the name, "pulled some strings and got me this." He flexes his left arm. "In return, I had to relearn the drums, graduate the program, and become a founding member of Hydra. Because Pierce wanted anonymity for the band members for marketing, I couldn't talk to the friends I'd made while there. He also warned me about telling anyone else. Including you. It was another excuse for me to stay away, and I used it."

"You…toured here," his dad realizes. "Multiple times."

Bucky can't say anything to that. His shame wears itself openly on his face.

"But you're here now," tries his mom. "You came back."

"What changed?"

"I don't know," Bucky confesses. "I don't. I…I was playing at a concert, and I just—I realized I wasn't having fun. That I hadn't been having fun…maybe ever. And it wasn't gonna change if I stayed. I don't know why I chose Brooklyn. Maybe I wasn't ready for another new city. Maybe I wanted to see a familiar face. I don't know, I really don't."

"No matter what brought you to Brooklyn," his mom says, "we're very glad you're here."

He tries to smile at her but it comes out thin and fraying at the edges. "I ran into Steve pretty quick, but even after he told me to visit you guys, I…I couldn't make myself do it. Until I heard Mrs. Rogers passed away."

"Oh. You didn't…?"

"I cut myself off. I didn't know. I should've and I didn't." He takes a deep breath. "So here I am, trying to make amends."

His parents spend a minute processing that, which is convenient because Bucky's throat is in desperate need of some water.

Finally, his dad speaks. "That Mr. Pierce, encouraging you to isolate yourself from your friends, from us. I'd have words with him."

"Mr. Fury already did," Bucky assures him. "My lawyer, I mean."

"Are you still in contact with him?"

"Fury or Pierce?"

"Either."

"Fury, a little. There are still some things he's working through with the legal agreements I had to sign and the workarounds he found to get me out of them. I haven't spoken to Pierce. Even if Fury hadn't warned me not to, I wouldn't."

"You didn't like him?"

"He's…I don't know how to explain it. The way he talks, once you pick up on what he's doing, it gets under your skin."

"What about the rest of the band? You weren't close?"

Bucky thinks of Brock, the only one of the group who texted after Bucky quit. After demanding an explanation, the bassist had thrown Bucky's reasoning back in his face and hit him with a message reading: don't come crying to me when you fall apart without us.

Bucky'd blocked him for that and then the rest of the band for good measure. He didn't need that shit in his life anymore. The band could burn for all he cared.

"No. No, we weren't. I'm not expecting to hear anything else from them or Pierce. Fury made sure I got out clean. I could even reveal the identity of the Winter Soldier if I wanted." Though, he tacks on mentally, that's only because Fury successfully argued how difficult to hide his identity would be given the giant silver flag on his person. "Not that I want to."

"Had enough of fame?"

He snorts. "It's overrated."

"There really wasn't anything you enjoyed?" His mom sounds almost sad about that. Bucky realizes how much it probably hurts her to hear the program she and his dad spent so much on and even encouraged Bucky to try brought nothing but misery.

"I guess it wasn't all bad. I did get good at the drums, really good. And traveling all over the world was cool even if I didn't like the people I was doing it with. I would've preferred keeping both arms, but having a metal arm can be pretty handy sometimes, especially for cooking." He splays his fingers and manages an actual grin this time. "No oven mitt required."

He gets a laugh from his mom for that and a chuckle from his dad. One last bit of ice in his chest thaws and he finally lets himself believe that things could be okay again.

He spends three hours talking to his parents after his dad calls into his workplace to say he's going to be out of office for the afternoon. His mom wants him to stay for dinner, but Bucky gently declines; his day isn't over yet. But he promises to visit regularly and gives them his current address, phone number, and even email so they can get in touch if they want.

By the time he leaves, he feels mentally exhausted and his jacket is probably creased from how much his mom was hugging him. His dad was putting on a brave face by comparison, but Bucky wasn't fooled. He's willing to bet they're going to have a long conversation of their own now that he's gone.

On the sidewalk outside, he pulls out his phone and fires off a text to Claire asking to talk. Before he's made it ten steps, she hits him with a text back that she's at a coffee shop with friends for an evening hangout.

She follows that up with a message that has a bit of guilt stirring in his stomach: I think I can guess what this is about.

I'm not the kind of guy who can do it over text, he responds.

Fair, she answers. See you in a bit.

"A bit" translates to about twenty minutes; he'd taken his bike to his parents' place and the coffee shop Claire's at is too far to reasonably walk and not by any subway stops. The place she's in isn't a chain and Bucky doesn't recognize the name, but that's not saying much. At fourteen, he didn't really have a reason to be in this part of Brooklyn.

Walking inside the cozy, rather hipster place, he scans the tables and couches for Claire. She's at one of the middle circular tables, her and her friends taking up all six of the pastel green chairs that look like they're straight from Ikea. One of those friends, catching sight of Bucky, nudges Claire. She turns, sees him, and stands.

"I'll be right back," she tells her friends, then gestures for Bucky to join her at a corner booth that offers a little bit of privacy. "So," she says when he sits across from her, "did I guess right?"

"Yeah. I was using you to run from something and that's not fair to either of us, fling or not."

She taps her perfectly manicured nails—she must've gotten that done since their last hookup, because he remembers them being blue and not purple—on the table. "I said nothing serious, no strings attached. I meant it." She exhales. "Yeah. This was always how this was going to end. Thanks for being up front about it."

"I'm sorry."

"Nothing to apologize for. One of us was going to end it eventually, you just got there before I did." She pulls her hair over one shoulder to stop it falling in front of her face.

"For what it's worth, you were great. Your ex is an idiot."

She grins wryly at that. "You weren't so bad yourself. I'll see you around, Bucky. And hey, if I ever end up wanting to visit Russia, I know who I'll reach out to for travel advice."

"Take care of yourself, Claire."

"You too."

He's certainly going to try. He's got four full days until Tony's deadline. He's gonna use them.

Leaning against his bike outside, he dials in one last phone call to end the day.

"Hey. I know I have no right to ask this of you, but…I need your help."

Chapter Text

For a few days, Steve sees nothing of Bucky. Per Tony, Bucky still hasn't "gotten his head out of his ass," and is thus not welcome at the bar. Steve has to admit, it takes the stress out of drawing at the venue when he doesn't have to keep catching glimpses of Bucky hitting on other people out of the corner of his eye. At the same time, he's unable to stop himself from wondering if Bucky is taking care of himself.

On the fourth day, the karmic pendulum must realize it's supposed to swing the other way, because Bucky is suddenly everywhere.

Steve's out walking? What a coincidence, Bucky's trying a new running route that makes them cross paths. Steve's running errands? How odd, Bucky's checking out at the same stores. Steve's just trying to sit at his table in Tony's Workshop? Bucky's talking with Scott or Nat or, multiple times, filling in for various bands' drummers. Steve half-expects to wake up and see Bucky tapping at his window, giving him a heart attack like he did when Steve was home sick from school that one day in the fifth grade.

"He put his name in as a freelancer for any acts playing this week," Clint says when Steve brings up Bucky's renewed presence at the venue. "Shocker, I know, but people were quick to take him up on it after his last performance. Tony can't exactly ban the guy without inconveniencing a lot of bands and making people ask questions."

Steve eyes Bucky while Bucky eyes the drum kit this particular band has got him using. "He's everywhere, Clint. I feel like I'm losing my mind."

"I think you lost your mind a while ago." Clint pours some ice into his shaker. "What exactly happened between you two?"

It's a conversation Steve's already had with Sam, but of course Sam's too good of a person to spread it around. Steve braces himself to repeat it. "Remember how he stopped talking to me when I was fifteen?"

"Yeah."

"That whole time, he never bothered to read anything I sent him. Not a single thing. No texts, no letters, nothing." Clint isn't getting it, so Steve sets his jaw and spells it out. "He asked me how my mom is."

"Oh. Oh, shit."

"Yeah."

"Okay, well, if he's decided to stick to you like gum on a shoe…maybe he's trying to apologize?"

"By stalking me?"

"Maybe he's trying to find the right time. You did block his number."

That had been a spur-of-the-moment decision the moment he had his hands free after that awful conversation. He didn't want to hear any apologies, not then. He'd been one more word from punching Bucky in his stupid, ignorant, oblivious mouth. "Maybe I don't want to hear what he has to say."

Clint pauses very deliberately between shakes before continuing. "Maybe that too."

Steve stews for a moment, sneaking another look at Bucky while he does. Bucky's at the other end of the bar telling some kind of story to Natasha, who laughs—laughs!—in response. Something ugly shoots through Steve's chest.

"It's not like I like being mad at him," he grumbles.

"You had years of that already."

"Yeah. I was just—him being back, it was like finally seeing a hole filled I didn't even know was there."

"It sounds like maybe you do want to hear what he has to say." Clint raises his empty palm in surrender when Steve glowers at him. "Hey, your choice, man. I'm just saying what I'm seeing."

Clint, Steve thinks, could stand to see a little less. Steve would love to see a little less of Bucky, a thought he can't help thinking later on when he runs into Bucky at the grocery store for the third time in as many days.

"You sure come here a lot," Bucky notes when they end up in the checkout line together.

So do you all of a sudden, bites Steve silently. Aloud, he says, "These aren't for me."

"You're right, they're too healthy."

Steve purses his lips. He's gotta get rid of Bucky; this is getting ridiculous. "Well," he says after paying and grabbing his bags, "I gotta take these groceries to Winnie." Bucky is unphased. "Your mom." Bucky's still unphased. Steve sighs and starts walking. Naturally—after paying for his single container of store-bought cupcakes from the bakery—Bucky follows.

Setting his jaw, Steve refuses to acknowledge him. If Bucky wants to see his parents, that's his business. It's what Steve wanted him to do days ago, but late is better than never. Steve's just not sure he has it in him to handle playing third wheel to a big reunion. Besides, he's got somewhere to be soon, so he can't hang around.

Maybe he can leave the groceries at the door.

As Steve had hoped—feared—Bucky sticks with him all the way to his old family home. Before Steve can even think of adjusting his groceries to ring the doorbell or just leave the bag on the front stoop, Bucky's striding up the stairs and pressing the button. Then, as though thinking twice, he goes for the door and finds it open.

"Ma, it's me!" he calls as he opens it. "Steve brought your groceries! I got you those cupcakes you were talking about, too."

Winnie comes out from the living room with a big smile. She wraps Bucky in a hug, mindful of his cupcakes, and then takes the sweets off his hands. "Thank you, dear. Your father is going to be sorry he missed those, he just went into the office for some meeting. Steven, come in, come in! It's cold outside, you'll catch a chill."

After collecting his jaw from the floor, Steve musters what little composure he has left, closes the front door, and follows the Barneses into the kitchen. Inside, though, his mind is whirling. Bucky talked to his mom? His dad? When? Why?

He tunes in just in time to catch Bucky saying he'll catch up with his dad when he comes by for dinner, if that's okay, which sets Steve spinning again. Bucky's got regular dinner plans now?

Winnie is absolutely beaming. "More than okay, and I plan to have cracked their cupcake recipe by then. Steven, do you want to join us?"

"I, uh, I have plans," he stammers. He doesn't, at least not at dinner time. Right after this he's heading out to help Sam move a friend's couch, but dinner? Nothing. Sam is going out with that friend and other buddies of his and Tony is once again enjoying Pepper's company. The only thing on Steve's docket is reheating some leftovers and, if he's feeling particularly adventurous, working on commissions.

"That's a shame," Winnie says.

"Yeah," Bucky agrees, eyeing Steve in a way that makes it clear he doesn't buy an ounce of Steve's bullshit. "I'm sure Steve can swing by some other time."

"Well, how about brunch this Sunday?"

"Is that a thing you do?"

"Oh yes, every week, schedules permitting."

"I'd love to join."

Steve's protest lodges somewhere in his throat and stays there for the entire time it takes Bucky to get invited to that tradition. Once again, Steve finds himself grappling with a feeling that it's good Bucky's doing these things but it's…it's not bad, but it's something, that Bucky's so quickly inserting himself into all these spaces. And to do it when the last thing he asked Steve was how's your mom—it just leaves him with a sour taste in his mouth.

"You'll join this Sunday, right?"

Steve blinks and focuses on Winnie. "I'm not sure, Tony mentioned maybe needing help with a project that morning. You know how he can get with his work." Another lie. It might not be third-wheeling a reunion, but Steve's not enthused at the prospect of sharing a meal with a guy who ignored him for a decade.

"Well, let me know." Winnie has taken one of the cupcakes out of the packaging, cut it in half, and is now poking through its corpse with a fork and knife. "Bucky, where did you put the chocolate chips?"

"Oh, the pantry, did you want those out? I'll grab 'em."

Steve finishes putting groceries away on autopilot, which works fine except for the fact his autopilot isn't used to Bucky being there. The longer he spends marveling at the whole scene, the less he understands. All of a week ago, Bucky had bristled at the mere request to see his family. Now he's popping by with cupcakes and promises of more visits later.

It boggles the mind.

"You good, pal?" Bucky asks, passing the chocolate chips to his mom. "You look like you're in space."

"I'm fine," Steve says automatically. "I—I have somewhere to be, actually." And for once, that isn't a lie.

"Don't let me keep you, dear. And thank you, as always, for going out of your way."

"It's no trouble, really. Bye, Winnie."

"Goodbye."

For a moment, Steve thinks he's gotten rid of Bucky. But halfway down the block, Bucky catches up and falls into step just behind Steve. Steve hides a sigh. Surely Bucky won't follow him all the way across town, right?

With the way Bucky's all but breathing down his neck, it's obvious when Bucky stops. Steve glances back, wondering if something's wrong, suspecting he's about to hear Bucky curse and say he left something in his mom's place, at which point he can easily justify leaving Bucky behind. Instead, he finds Bucky looking straight at him with enough intensity that Steve stops in his tracks.

"Steve, there's something I gotta say. I owe you an apology."

Steve's mouth goes dry. His first thought is, we're doing this here? His second thought is, we're doing this now?

And his final thought is, a little shamefully, I'm going to miss the train.

"Buck, I don't think now's the time. Can this wait?"

Bucky's eyes pinch. "Seriously?"

"I'm gonna miss the train."

Genuine hurt flashes across Bucky's face before his expression closes off. "Yeah, okay. Sure."

Feeling like an ass and entirely unsure what to do with himself, Steve lets Bucky pass him on the sidewalk and starts trailing after him. Is this why Bucky's been following him all over the place? Working up the nerve to apologize?

And the moment he did, Steve brushed him off. With each square of concrete passing under his feet, watching Bucky lead the way, he feels worse and worse until he can't take it anymore.

Hey, he texts Sam. Gonna be late.

Don't sweat it, Sam fires back immediately. Nat warned me you might get held up

Steve pockets both that tidbit to ask about later and his phone. "Buck," he calls. "Hey, stop for a sec."

"Thought you were gonna be late," Bucky says without slowing. Steve hustles to catch up and grabs his shoulder, bringing him to a halt.

"I am, and that's fine. You had something important to say and I shouldn't have brushed you off like that. Say what you need to say."

Bucky searches his face a moment and, apparently satisfied, nods minutely. His throat bobs when he swallows, and when he speaks, he pitches his voice low so it won't carry all the way to anyone on the block.

"Like I said, I need to apologize to you. I fucked up, talking about your mom like that." Seeing Steve bristle, he raises his hands. "Please, let me finish. The second you said she was dead, I wanted to fall back on the excuse that I didn't know. I wanted the excuse of not knowing so bad. Yeah, I didn't know, but that's not good enough. I didn't know because I chose not to. You gave me every opportunity you could and I ignored all of them. That was the worst thing I could've done to you, and I did it over and over again for years even when I could've, should've, reached out. The second I got back here, the second I saw you again, I should've looked through every letter I had. I didn't." His eyes are growing shiny with unshed tears and there's a sympathetic burn growing in the back of Steve's throat even through the residual anger trying to drown it.

"There's no excuse," Bucky continues. "I hurt you in a way no one else could when you were going through hell. I was an awful friend—an awful person. There's no going back and making that right. I just want to say right now that I'm sorry. If you're willing to let me back into your life, I promise it won't happen again. I'll do better, be better. I'll be with you to the end of the line." He swallows thickly and offers, "And if you aren't, that's your choice and I'll respect it."

Liar, Steve thinks. The brittle glass behind Bucky's eyes is liable to shatter if a rejection gets tossed his way. But even if that happened, Bucky's the type to suck it up and walk away as promised.

Bucky's not done, though. He was just collecting himself. "I know I said there's no excuse, so this isn't that. I just think you deserve to know what happened when I dropped off the map."

Confused, Steve follows him down a narrow alley and around the corner behind the building. It's a secluded spot, and watching Bucky unzip his jacket and shrug it off, gloves too, Steve's brain goes somewhere near the gutter. Underneath, Bucky's only wearing a tank top. A tank top that shows his left arm, and the breath leaves Steve in a quiet gasp as he realizes the real reason why Bucky wanted privacy.

It's not a prosthetic hand. It's a prosthetic arm. All the way up through his shoulder and even into part of his chest, with scar tissue radiating out from the seam of metal and flesh.

Bucky swallows. He's got a white-knuckled grip on his coat. "When I was sixteen, I was in a car accident. I don't remember much of it, but I lost my arm. I was in a coma for weeks and even after I woke up, it took months for me to recover. My body was fucked up, my memory was fucked up—everything was fucked up. Even when I was getting better, I didn't want anyone to know what had happened to me, that I was…less." He flexes his arm, the silver plates catching the fluorescent lights. "Things happened, obviously. By then it just felt…I was scared. It was easier to throw myself into music." He bites his lip. "Hydra's music."

Steve processes the red star on the shoulder for the first time. It's true. Tony was right. Tony was right.

"I was the Winter Soldier," Bucky admits like it hurts. "And I know that makes it worse, because I was here, I had money and everything. I could've, if I just, if I'd just—" he cuts himself off and takes a deep breath while he pulls his coat back on. "I'm sorry, Steve. I really don't have an excuse."

Stunned speechless and feeling untethered like he hasn't since he rode the Cyclone, maybe even since he first started Dr. Erskine's program, Steve can't find the words he knows he should say. Bucky's waiting, Bucky's waiting for him, and Steve—

Steve's leaning on the wall next to him just to stay on his feet because his legs suddenly aren't feeling so steady anymore. Every time he goes to speak, the words pile up in his throat and get stuck.

Bucky nods. "That's all I wanted to say. Good seeing you again, Steve."

"Buck—" Steve stops himself, realizing he's got nothing else behind it. His best friend is the Winter Soldier. His best friend lost his whole arm in a car accident. His best friend—

He still thinks of him as his best friend.

"Are you working tomorrow?" he asks instead, and after a confused beat Bucky shakes his head.

"That's my last day of probation, so no."

"Come to my place," he blurts before he can think better of it. "Sam and Tony are out in the afternoon. We can," he has no idea what they're gonna do, but god, his mouth is still moving, "we can put the couch cushions on the floor like when we were kids."

For a second, the only look on Bucky's face is one of complete and total disbelief. Then a smile splits his lips and just keeps going, fueled by goofy hope that lights up his eyes too, and Steve's going to be using the mental image of that expression as an art reference probably forever.

Chapter Text

Steve's building is nice. Like, nice nice. Bucky's feeling pretty underdressed when he steps into the lobby—how many buildings in this part of Brooklyn have lobbies?—and takes in the spotless interior, front desk that actually has someone behind it, and various locked doors leading to amenities. He spots a gym, a pool, and a sign that says saunabefore he reminds himself to focus.

"Hi," he greets the front desk worker, a woman about Bucky's age who eyes Bucky with unjustified suspicion. Sure, the beat-up leather jacket, helmet-mussed hair, and jeans that have really seen better days don't exactly scream ritzy but he hardly looks like he's here to rob the place. "I'm here to see someone. Steve Rogers? He's expecting me."

She ticks an eyebrow. "Steve Rogers?"

"Yeah."

"Which unit?"

Oh, she absolutely knows which unit. She's testing him. "He didn't give me the unit."

"If he lives here, I can't give out his room number or let you roam the building unaccompanied. It's policy."

"Seriously?" Bucky leans against the counter, having to set his helmet on it to free up his hands. He doesn't want to have to bother Steve about not being let up; that ruins the fun of showing up right at his door like he used to do when they were kids. "Look, I know he lives here, the punk just forgot to give me the unit. I'm a friend of his."

"I'm afraid I can't do that."

In the background, the elevator dings and the doors rumble open.

"Fine. I'll call him and we can get this cleared up."

"Feel free."

Side-eyeing the employee, Bucky gets his phone out. He doesn't even have time to get to his contacts before movement out of the corner of his eye catches his attention. Tony and Sam both pause in their trek across the lobby.

Sam grins. "Oh, now I get it."

"Good," Tony declares with a nod.

Bucky furrows his brows but neither of them elaborates, they just keep walking.

"He's good, Maria!" Tony calls over his shoulder with a wave. He spins on a heel for a couple strides to finger-gun at Bucky. "I'll have Pep update your schedule tonight. Consider yourself reinstated."

Then he's out the door and Bucky's left staring. He'd expected to have to do more to get his job back, but…okay?

"Well," he says to Maria, "can you send me up now?"

She doesn't look thrilled about it, but she nevertheless tells him Steve's unit number.

Bucky's pleased smile drops when he reaches the elevators, which need a keycard to function.

"Sorry," Maria calls, sounding not sorry at all. "Looks like you'll have to take the stairs. I can unlock that door from here."

"Not the elevators?"

"Unfortunately not."

He plasters on a smile and resolves to find a way through her guard. Her choosing to dislike him for no reason, well, that's her choice, but he'll change her mind. He'll find a way somehow. Just…not right now, since she seems liable to sic security on him if he looks at her funny. Maybe she is the security.

True to her word, she unlocks the stairwell door when he gets close. Then it's just a climb up to the fifth floor, a journey that definitely doesn't leave him pausing on the last landing to catch his breath.

Yeah. He really needs to make a good second impression.

Once he's pretty sure Steve won't be able to tell he's still a little winded, Bucky locates Steve's door and gives three solid knocks. Then he's spending the seconds he has before the door opens straightening his jacket, running fingers through his hair to try to detangle it, and shifting his stance into something a little more casual, all so when the door does open he can look Steve in his pretty blue eyes and say—

"Hey."

"Hey," Steve breathes, before hitting him with a smile so full of sunshine that it warms Bucky from head to toe. "Come on in."

He follows Steve inside, stepping around a backpack leaned up against the shoe rack, and takes in the interior. He can't help releasing a low whistle. Just like the building, Steve's actual apartment is nice. A seventy-something inch flatscreen over an entertainment cabinet packed with hardware, a luxurious curved couch facing it, a kitchen that would put some restaurants to shame and an actual, honest-to-God dining room table mark it as somewhere with time and money put into the décor. A couple of closed doors indicate bedrooms. There are, by Bucky's count, at least three, plus the loft overhead.

"Sorry about the mess," Steve says while he gets them both glasses of water.

"Mess?" Bucky repeats. Does Steve think the jackets tossed haphazardly on the backs of the dining room chairs or the handful of loose papers scattered around counts as mess? Bucky's studio would give the man a heart attack. Because he likes causing problems, Bucky sheds his jacket and tosses it on the nearest chair not yet claimed. "I guess I'll forgive it."

Steve hits him with another sunshine smile while passing off the water. Dazzled, it takes Bucky a second to recover his train of thought—a train that had stopped at the realization that, in stopping by Steve's door, he'd failed to process that there were no other doors in that hallway, meaning that this apartment takes up the entire top floor of the building.

"How the hell did you land a place this swanky?" Bucky asks, and he truly doesn't mean for it to come out as bewildered as it does. Thankfully, Steve doesn't take it as an insult. In fact, it draws a small chuckle from him.

"It's Tony's. I couldn't afford this place on my own."

"Yeah, no offense, I kinda figured that. How…?" He flashes back to the lobby. "You're all roommates. Roommates and…Tony's also your landlord and boss?" As he speaks, Bucky contextualizes that weird interaction with those two. If he had to squint through the blinding light radiating off Steve all morning, he'd be curious about the reason behind it too.

"I'll admit it's a weird situation."

"I'm pretty sure ironclad friendships have burnt to the ground over less."

"We get along well. Sam is a good mediator when we don't."

Bucky trails after Steve to the couch. "How'd all this happen, anyway? Did you go to school together?"

"No, we met later." Rather than sit, though, Steve starts taking the cushions out. Bucky's confused for a second until he remembers what Steve offered the previous day. Grinning, he follows Steve's example.

"So you moved in with a couple'a guys you barely knew."

"Give me some credit."

"Give me a reason to."

"I met Sam when I was out running. We had the same route."

"Uh-huh."

"A little while later, I got commissioned by Pepper for murals in a new venue that was opening up nearby. Tony, Sam, and I hung out a lot while I was doing that work. Tony heard about our living situations—don't give me that look, I wasn't homeless—"

"Were you living in a pillow fort?" Bucky taps the dining room chair he's co-opted for structural support. Steve, in the middle of spreading out a blanket for the roof, rolls his eyes.

"No, I was not."

"Were Tony and Pepper already dating? Kinda weird for him to move in with two guys at that point."

"They were still figuring things out, I think. Anyway, after we'd gotten to know each other, Tony proposed—"

"Proposed, did he?"

"Shut up. Tony offered up this place and Sam and I took him up on it to save on costs for a while."

"Wow. That almost makes it sound like you didn't move in with two guys you barely knew."

Steve chucks a pillow at him, which Bucky catches and adds to the stack he's using to brace a broomstick acting as a tent pole to keep the blanket-roof from collapsing. As their fort-building expands and they start having to work from the interior, a thought strikes Bucky.

"I, uh. I don't think Maria likes me. The lady at the front desk, I mean."

Steve pokes his head out from behind one of the couch cushions acting as an inner wall. Their fort's up to three small rooms, though Bucky's about to suggest an open concept plan for ease of shenaniganry. "Really?"

"She made me take the stairs."

"Oh. Uh." Steve scratches the back of his neck. "She may have heard about how we fell out."

"May have?"

"And I might've forgotten to clear things up."

"Might've?"

"I'll talk to her. She's good friends with Pepper, she'd hear about it eventually."

"You're not inspiring a lotta confidence right now, pal."

"I'll fix it."

"Just like you can fix that wall you just bumped outta place."

"Did I? Damn."

They keep working. Inside the fort, with its blanketed floor and ceiling and its soft pillow and cushion walls, all sound is slightly muted for lack of echoes, and it's warm. Cozy. Bucky declares his work on the main space done and flops into a small nest of blankets Steve pulled out of the closet a little while earlier.

"Done already?" Steve asks.

"It's important to take breaks. C'mere, it's comfortable. What's the point of a pillow fort if you're not relaxing in it?"

"I'm pretty sure we used to pretend we were fighting off alien invasions."

"Well, lucky for you, there are no aliens. Hydra had that whole team-up issue with their nemeses to fight off the common enemy."

"You read the tie-in comics?"

"Yeah, they were way cooler than the actual shit going on with the band. Plus the art was just good."

"Did they tell you what they're going to do with the Winter Soldier?"

"They can't really do anything." Bucky raises his left arm and brushes the blanket above with his fingertips. He can't feel any contact that gentle, but he can see that he is making contact by how the blanket moves. "Hard to find another guy with this kind of arm. Or one who's willing to lose an arm to get this one. Lotta copycats have come out of the woodwork, though."

"You heard about the one in Florida."

Snorting, Bucky lets his hand drop. The blankets help to muffle the thunk of the metal against the floor. "Yeah, I heard. Of all the places, they thought the Winter Soldier would go to Florida? I'm almost offended. That guy deserved to get unmasked as a fake as fast as he did." He purses his lips. "It's weird to think about. People liking that character so much they want to be him. I wish I could tell them it's not worth it." He feels Steve's eyes on him and realizes he does not at all want to retread this ground while trying to enjoy the comfortable atmosphere of the blanket fort. "Anyway, they can do what they want, I'm not gonna stop 'em, and I'm definitely not gonna let the paparazzi find me by outing myself."

"Won't your arm give the game away?"

"The last person to see it thought it was just a tribute to the band."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah. Then she got a little, uh," Bucky's face is on fire, "distracted."

Steve's silence is painfully drawn out. "Distracted. Is this the woman you've been talking to at the bar?"

"It was, she was, I—her name's Claire."

"She seems nice."

"She is." Was he too quick to say that? Maybe. "That was temporary, though. Just a fling. We, uh. We were kinda using each other."

Steve rolls over to look at Bucky, frowning.

"Hey, we're adults," Bucky protests. "We knew what we were doing."

"And what were you doing?" Steve asks, eyes intent, and Bucky's mouth goes dry.

Making a mistake, he wants to say, but that's not gonna be helpful. Instead, he says, "Wasting time."

"So are you still…flinging?"

Bucky can't stifle his laugh in time. "No, Steve, we're not still 'flinging.' What are you, seven?"

Steve rolls over to put his back to Bucky. "Shut up, I've never had to ask anyone that before."

"I can hear your blush."

Steve's answer is to kick Bucky's leg. Bucky kicks him back, only to feel his calf bump into something when he finishes the motion.

Something that moves. Something like the broomstick holding up the ceiling.

"Oh, shi—"

The whole fort collapses on them. First the blanket, and then from its weight all the cushions forming the walls thud down. Bucky shields his head as the fort tumbles down. When things begin to settle, a noise and accompanying vibrations makes its way through the many muffling layers around Bucky: laughter.

"Like you've never done that," Bucky says dryly. Steve just keeps laughing.

Once they manage to extricate themselves from the ruins, they give up on the fort and move to another old haunt: the fire escape. This is a different building than the ones they grew up in, sure, but the size is the same and the idea of not burning to death is also the same.

Bucky does spare a second's attention to glance at Steve's desk on the way to the window. There's a cheap plastic ghost keychain hanging from the lamp. Glow in the dark, Bucky remembers. That had cost extra tickets. He smiles.

New building or not, he feels right as home the second he crawls out the window after Steve and finds a seat next to him with his feet dangling over the drop to the alley below. Even the way the metal rattles under their weight brings comfort.

For a little while, they talk about nothing in particular. It's nice to just bask in the old routine. The fire escape has changed, they've changed, even the city has changed—but in this small way, it's all still the same.

"Hey," Steve eventually says, in a tone that tells Bucky he's probably not gonna like what comes next. "What you said, about it not being worth it…"

"Don't worry about it."

"I mean, I'm gonna worry, Buck. Did you like any of your songs with them? I mean, it's not like you have to like any, but…there's gotta be something you enjoyed."

He trails off at the end almost like it's a question and Bucky can tell Steve wants him to have an answer. Steve wants to know Bucky wasn't miserable the entire time. And hell, Bucky would like to know that too.

"Hm." Bucky rolls the question around in his head. "If I had to choose, Partial Recall. They gave me the most freedom on that one and the rest of the guys didn't pull their usual bullshit when we performed it." Even if they never played it again after the first handful of shows. It didn't fit with the rest of the band's sound as much, so it got buried in the depths of their discography.

"Usual bullshit?"

He waves a hand. "Surprise solos, abrupt transitions to other songs, tempo changes, there was even the time they decided to do an acoustic version on the spot." He chuckles lowly. "That stunt was early on. I wasn't the only one who hated them for that—whole crowd and the sound engineers had a bone to pick. A whole skeleton, really. God, I thought they were gonna start throwing things."

"I'll have to give it a listen."

"Here." Bucky pulls out his phone and starts scrolling through his music library. He catches Steve peering at the screen and grins crookedly. "I didn't have a ton of interest in listening to my own music, but I wasn't cutting myself off. We had some really good opening acts. Besides, like you said, there were some things I enjoyed."

He finds Partial Recall amid the grand collection of four Hydra songs he has on his phone and starts playing it, setting his phone on the landing between them so he doesn't have to keep holding it. The lonely bass drum, a solitary beating heart, escapes the speakers. Bucky closes his eyes, remembering the time he spent testing out different intros. He'd started with big, grand statements. A flooding through of memory, something violent, something painful. In the end, he'd decided to start slow. The recall was just a distraction right up until those violent bits he cannily recycled for the chorus came crashing down and made it impossible to ignore.

Steve didn't say anything until the song's outro—that same heartbeat, slowing to silence—faded out.

"It's a good song."

Bucky chuckled. "You don't need to be nice to me, my ego can take it. I know it's not your style."

"Right. It's yours. I like your style."

Well, didn't that make a guy feel good. "You're gonna make me blush, pal, sayin' all these nice things." He said it lightly but there was heat in his cheeks threatening to become a real blush. "Did you ever listen to their songs?"

"I did when I was working on a commission a while back, you know, to get into the right headspace."

"Anything stand out?"

"Uh. Honestly, not sure I remember their titles. There was one—something about a bridge?"

Bucky brightens and starts poking at his phone again. "Hey, yeah! A Man on A Bridge. That's a good one, I can see why you'd like it."

"Is that another one of the—how many do you like, actually? Your face made me think it wasn't many."

"Like? Four. Partial Recall, A Man on A Bridge, Ravine, and Insight. Those last two I only really like because they're real workouts on the drums."

"Angry songs?" Steve guesses.

"Exactly. Plus, Insight is over 170 beats per minute, at least until the outro. Ah, here it is."

They lean in close over Bucky's phone again and Bucky is painfully aware of Steve's proximity the entire time. He hopes the music drowns out his pounding heart. If he breathes too deep, he gets a lungful of Steve's ocean-scented deodorant, and that's just patently unfair to a guy trying to maintain his composure.

As the song plays, Bucky watches Steve bob his head to the beat while Bucky swings his legs. There's a minute of perplexed and focused brow-furrowing until it hits the chorus and Steve smiles in recognition.

"Yeah, this is it. I remember getting confused by that line."

"Confused?"

"I mean, the song is all about meeting a guy on a bridge, right? But that—'there is no me'—I dunno, it just made me wonder if there was even a second guy at all."

Bucky laughs. "Congratulations, you stumbled on one of the biggest debates Hydra's music ever caused."

"What, how many people were on the bridge?"

"You know how it's a song all about finding some source of stability in a time of transition?"

"Uh, sure." They pause to listen to the next verse, and Steve nods. "Okay, yeah. A bridge, I get it."

"Right. And if you listen, there are lines that could go either way—whether there's just one guy on this bridge or two. 'I knew him' and 'he didn't even know me' but it really sounds like they're being spoken by the same guy, right?"

"I…yeah, I can see that."

The song plays in its entirety and Bucky scoops his phone back up. "Still like it?"

"Yeah. I'm glad I know the title now." Steve smiles in a way that makes Bucky's heart flip. "The drumming was nice."

Bucky snorts. "Flatterer. The drumming was always nice."

"So what's the answer?"

"To what?"

"The debate. How many people are on the bridge? You were in the band, you were there when it was written."

"I was," Bucky confirms, "and I'm not telling you a damn thing. That ruins the whole point of the song."

"You wanted a debate?"

"Yeah, this whole album—Project Insight—was all about making our audience think. That was the idea, at least. Didn't really turn out that way." The titular track was more about not thinking because of all the chaos. Schmidt had been so proud of himself for that subversion of expectations. "Anyway, the answer is whatever you need it to be, not whatever the band says. Maybe you're the only stability you need. Maybe you're more stable than you think. Maybe you really do need a helping hand reaching out. Meaning is in the ear of the listener and all that."

"That's not how the saying goes. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. You can't just plug words into popular sayings."

"Watch me. And while you're doing that, beholder, why don't you tell me what you see?" He grins when a bit of color hits Steve's cheeks, then decides to take pity on the guy. They didn't decide to hang out to have deep philosophical lectures. "Enough about me and mine. What have you been up to all these years? How'd you get," he gestures at all of Steve, "that?"

Steve goes fully red and rubs the back of his neck. "Guess I was pretty small, last you saw me."

"Well, you were thirteen, so you had an excuse. What, did puberty hit you like a train or something?"

"Or something. There was a, uh, experimental trial. A kind of gene therapy. Don't ask me how I ended up on the list of patients, I don't understand it either—maybe they looked at my chart and thought they couldn't possibly make it worse."

Bucky snorts.

"It took a couple years and more needles than I care to count, but the end result is," he gestures at all of himself, "this."

"This," Bucky declares, "is pretty nice. That night of my surprise gig at Tony's, I saw you but I didn't even recognize you. But you looked familiar. It was driving me nuts."

"If it makes you feel any better, I was feeling the same thing."

"So, what was it like? Did you just," he mimes raising a hand higher, "shoot up, fill out? Because you look fresh off a lacrosse field these days."

"Now who's gonna make who blush? It happened pretty fast, honestly. Remember when you had that growth spurt when you were twelve?"

"How can I forget? I couldn't wear my favorite pants or my favorite neon shoes anymore. It was devastating."

"Right, it was the same for me. Didn't have to endure every awful part of puberty again, but it wasn't pleasant. God, you know the worst part?"

"Hit me."

"I had to learn to draw all over again. All my muscle memory was off, I was in physical therapy for months. For a while I thought I'd never be able to draw again."

Goosebumps prickle Bucky's arms as echoes of that same fear but for drumming lap at his thoughts like waves on a beach. He leans forward to rest his shoulders on the railing supports. His face dangles over the drop. "I had to learn to play again." He waggles his left hand, trying to keep the worst of his melancholy out of his voice. "Took 'em almost a year to get it calibrated to the point it felt like a part of me. Broke a lot of sticks. And it was too big at first, until I grew into it. Hurt like hell." He doesn't miss those spine-tearing nights when pain dragged him awake, what little sleep he did manage to get plagued by nightmares of the crash and the horrifying split-second he spent witnessing his own arm getting torn off before he lost consciousness.

"Jesus, Buck."

"Hey, don't look like that. I'm fine now. Works like a dream and the whole goddamn world can attest to my playing getting back up to par. I didn't—I'm just trying to say I get it, y'know? Been there, done that."

Steve purses his lips. Bucky flicks his forehead. "Hey. What is it?"

"Nothing."

Bucky flicks him again. "Keep lying and I'll use the hand made outta metal."

"Ow, okay, okay. I just—I had a choice. You didn't. Doesn't feel right to pretend it's the same."

"You and your guilt. If I say it's fine, it's fine. I give you permission to empathize with me, Steven. Does that help?"

"Jerk."

"Punk. Stop sulking and tell me what you're using all that drawing practice for these days. It can't just be dive bar murals and my hand."

"It's not a dive bar."

"Hole in the wall."

"You're breaking Tony's heart," Steve says with a grin as he pulls out his phone.

"He's my boss. I'm legally obligated to give him a hard time."

"Technically, Pepper's your boss."

"She's my manager."

"And?"

"Big difference between boss and manager."

Steve pauses his search through his phone's apps to stare, so Bucky elaborates.

"Managers can be bosses and bosses can be managers, but not all bosses are managers and vice versa. A boss is the person you complain about to all your friends and coworkers, the person who comes in and might make things better for other people but always makes them worse for you. A boss is all big picture, trees for the forest type.

"A manager, on the other hand, is all about the trees. They've got that balance between boots on the ground and eyes in the sky. They're there to get you what you need when you need it so everything runs smoothly. They're the ones who try to stop any bosses from throwing a wrench in the gears. You got a problem, you go to the manager."

"All that nonsense to mean, you're not giving Pepper a hard time because you like her more than Tony."

Bucky leans close to stare at Steve's phone. "So, that art."

Shaking his head, Steve just hands the phone over. It's an Instagram account, with other social media linked in the profile. "Take a look."

Bucky starts scrolling through the photos on reflex before he processes the follower number. He stares. "Jesus Christ, Steve."

"What?"

"That's an m."

"Uh." Steve goes a little pink. "Yeah, I guess it is. I mean, compared to the Winter Soldier—"

"Shut up. If we're being fair, we're comparing it to James Buchanan Barnes, who has a whopping zero. Over a million, jeez." He starts scrolling again. There's a huge variety of works, but lifelike pencil and paper seems to be the most frequent. Every few posts there's some glorious full-color piece whose subject ranges from a dragon to a famous character to—

He stops scrolling. The Winter Soldier sits on the screen, whaling away on a set of drums, the impact of his sticks sending out a spray of color. Noticing his pause, Steve leans over.

"That one—all those with that transparent watermark in the middle—those are commissions. It's not official art or anything, this guy just really liked the Winter Soldier and wanted a poster design."

"Did you…Do you listen to them? Hydra?"

"A little, but they're not really my taste." He rubs the back of his neck, going even redder. "Always liked the drummer, though."

Bucky leans closer. "Really. Because of his talent, right?"

Steve leans away. "Maybe he was good-looking, too."

Laughing, Bucky gives him space. "Good looking? You couldn't see anything!"

"I'm an artist. I could fill in the gaps."

Bucky grins sharply. "How'd your artist's imagination do?"

"Didn't do it justice."

"Did you ever draw it?"

"Yeah, and you're never seeing it."

"Oh, fuck that." Bucky scrambles to his feet and ducks into Steve's bedroom, ignoring Steve's squawk of protest when he slams the window shut to buy time.

He's not completely unfair; he doesn't lock it. Steve catches up to him in the front hall, where Bucky's rapidly flipping through the sketchbook he dug from the backpack Steve drags with him everywhere. Steve tries to rip the thing out of his hands but Bucky's faster, ducking and sidestepping and then half-dancing out of his reach while continuing to flip pages.

Steve's efforts get more and more insistent. Bucky responds in kind, a challenging smirk twisting his lips when Steve attempts a particularly tricky feint-and-grab.

"Ooh," Bucky says, finding sketches of the first night he was in the dive bar while he circles the couch he's using as a barrier. "Not bad."

Steve's face is approximately the color of a tomato. He starts throwing pillows helpfully scattered around from their efforts to build a fort. One catches Bucky in the face, and he uses his left arm to whip it back twice as hard at Steve's feet. Steve, protecting his head, doesn't see that coming and accidentally steps on it, causing him to tip sideways onto the couch.

This notebook isn't the one he's looking for; the sketches are too recent. Must be an older one. Bucky tosses it on top of Steve and thinks. If he were Steve, where would he keep old sketchbooks? Tony and Sam's rooms are right out, as is the kitchen area.

His eyes land on the doorway to Steve's bedroom. The stack of books on the nightstand.

"Finally done?" Steve asks, holding his sketchbook to his chest like Bucky's gonna take it away again.

Instead, Bucky runs for the nightstand.

"Hey, no!"

Heavy footsteps come after him. The bed's in the way; Bucky goes for efficiency and dives across it, landing on his stomach with his outstretched arm grabbing the first notebook he can reach. It's from the middle of the pile and the rest tumble down. Before he can even think to maybe pick them up, a body crashes down on top of him and drives the air from his lungs in a wheeze.

Steve straddles him, knees on either side of his middle, and presses Bucky's arms down onto the bed so he can't even flip open the notebook he's holding.

"Drop it," he orders.

Bucky gets very, very hot all of a sudden. To distract himself and stop Steve from noticing, he pulls out a few tricks he learned as the Winter Soldier to throw Steve off and send him crashing to the floor. By the time Steve's recovered, Bucky's found what he was looking for: a whole two-page spread full of exploratory sketches of the Winter Soldier's face.

Some are even in color.

Recognizing his defeat, Steve sits heavily on the bed next to him while Bucky sits up and crosses his legs.

"I was close," Steve says petulantly.

"You made my eyes blue. How'd you know?"

"I didn't. I just wanted them to be."

"Did you ever think…?"

"Once or twice." Steve can't look him in the eye. "I thought, if you'd made it that big, you'd tell me. Or I'd just know for sure, I guess, recognize you. I didn't, so I…talked myself out of it being possible."

Guilt settles back on Bucky's shoulders like it had never left. "I should've. Told you, I mean."

"You already explained it, you don't need to—I get it. Things were complicated."

Bucky sets his jaw. "Yeah. Still should've. I'm sorry."

"It's not like I told you about my art career taking off."

"It's not like I asked."

The air hangs heavy and awkward. Bucky swallows and looks back down at the paper, the drummer who is and is not him. The nose is too straight—Bucky's is slightly crooked thanks to his childhood misadventures—and he doesn't have the right lips, and the chin is off, but put this guy in the same room as him and they could be brothers. "These aren't bad. But now that you've got the real thing to reference whenever you want, I expect perfect accuracy."

"Whenever I want, huh?"

Bucky tosses the notebook aside and tips up his chin. "Yeah. Whenever you want." He pauses. "Unless I need to work the bar."

"You should wear your Winter Soldier outfit on shift. Tony would lose his mind."

"He wouldn't be the only one." Bucky lets himself fall back onto the mattress to stare at the ceiling. He can see it: the whole bar mobbing the Winter Soldier. Asking questions. Wanting answers. One slip of the mask away from his anonymity disappearing forever. He's seen enough of that chaos when a copycat crops up and he wants no part of it. "You should use that artist's imagination you're so proud of to draw the look on his face."

He flicks his gaze to Steve and just as quickly has to look away. His whole body is still buzzing and looking at the guy makes it sing.

Even though he's not looking, he can tell Steve is still staring at him. "Like what you see, Rogers?"

There's a long pause. Long enough that Bucky looks at him and catches the flare of stubborn light in his eyes. "Maybe I do."

Bucky's stomach drops. He forces an easy grin and teases, "You'll have to get in line, especially if I wear the outfit."

Steve doesn't reciprocate. His expression is tight and so very focused on Bucky's face. Bucky swallows and sits up. He can't mean that. He can't. Bucky's just…desperate. Yeah. Desperate and selfish, wanting to hear things he knows he doesn't deserve. "Keep looking at me like that and I'll get ideas, pal."

And yeah, that pal holds a lot of desperation. This close, he's fighting to keep his focus on Steve's blue, blue eyes and not his parting lips below.

"Buck?"

"Yeah?"

"I've already got my own ideas."

When Steve's hand comes up to rest on the back of Bucky's neck, Bucky's beleaguered brain finally short-circuits. When Steve pulls him close, he loses the fight against the urge to look down at his lips.

When Steve kisses him, a jolt of lightning down his spine forces a system reset. He brings his own hands up to yank Steve closer, but Steve's not ready for that and they tip over onto the bed. Bucky rolls with it and straddles Steve like Steve had done to him earlier, only Steve's on his back where Bucky had been on his stomach.

Plus, Bucky's got his face two inches from Steve's, his hair falling around like a curtain that cuts them off from the rest of the world.

"Ideas, huh?" he breathes. Steve's face is flushed but his eyes are bright, his lips reddened and begging for more.

"Only if you want," he manages.

"If I want," Bucky repeats, and it comes out a little hysterical. "I've wanted this since before I even knew what it was. Fuck, Steve." He expresses the rest of what he can't say by leaning down and biting at Steve's lip. Steve arches under him, sending Bucky's pounding heart fluttering in a way that leaves him lightheaded.

Steve bites back. Bucky grins into the next kiss. That's more like it.

And because the world hates them both, his phone buzzes. They part with quiet gasps and Bucky fumbles the thing from his back pocket. "Sorry, could be important."

Steve makes a halfhearted attempt to shove him off. "You're still sitting on me, how important can it be?"

Bucky lets himself be pushed and smoothly rolls off the edge of the bed, landing in a crouch on the floor. He stands while Steve rolls his eyes and mutters, "Show off."

The buzz was a text from Natalia, just a simple "call me."

"Something wrong?"

"Nat's asking me to call, so the building might be on fire. One sec." He taps her contact, brings his phone up to his ear, and leans against the wall while it rings. He tries to pretend like he's not still shaking from what almost just happened, like he's not looking anywhere but at Steve.

He wasn't delusional. He was absolutely desperate, but he wasn't delusional.

"James, hey. I heard you're back in Tony's and Pepper's good graces, which is convenient. I've got a bit of an emergency."

He straightens. "What's wrong?"

"Last-second large party courtesy of Tony, who's now in my bad graces. We don't have any servers on shift because it was supposed to be slow and Clint's out at the vet with his dog. I'm good, but I'm not handle-the-whole-place-plus-twenty-drunk-bachelorettes good. I heard from Clint who heard from Sam that you're off the no-fly list, so care to lend a hand?"

He waves off Steve's concerned look. "I'm on my way."

"I owe you. We can work on ways to make Tony regret this once you get here."

"Sounds like a plan." He hangs up. "Natalia needs a hand at the bar. I don't mean to bail on you—"

"No, not at all, it's fine." Steve's face is still a little red, and getting redder the longer Bucky stares. "We can pick this up later. Uh. Talk. About this. Us. Yeah."

Snorting and badly hiding a smile, Bucky pushes off the wall and goes to grab his jacket and helmet. "If you're gonna be that tongue-tied when I get back, I have a better suggestion than talking."

He probably deserves the pillow that thuds into his back.

The thoroughly intoxicated bachelorettes stagger through the door in groups of threes and fours. Natalia sees them out with perfect hospitality while Bucky hangs around outside to make sure they all get into the right rides. Once the last is packed away into their Lyft, he heads back inside to help Natalia clean up. They don't have a dishwasher tonight; Scott's out sick and the other guy who usually covers is out of town. Another reason Natalia had been so pissed at Tony for the party.

The five tables pulled together to accommodate that party are a mess. Not anything egregious—they'd been about as polite and painless as a large group can be—but still a lot to take care of. Bucky starts stacking plates while Natalia fetches a couple of tubs from the kitchen.

"So," she says while they're clearing the table.

"So?"

"What did I pull you away from?"

"Not much, really."

She taps just under her bottom lip. "It was still red when you walked in."

He goes to touch without thinking. Okay, maybe it still feels a little tender. "Might've been something in progress, but at the time, wasn't much."

"Steve does like to take his time with things."

Bucky damn near drops a wine glass. "What?"

"Oh, come on. You called me and asked me for help in tracking Steve. You may be an idiot, James, but I'd like to think you're not so stupid you'd do that and then go to someone else."

"Any other secrets of my private life you wanna puzzle out while I'm here?"

She smiles at his grumbling in a way that sends a chill down his spine. Does she…?

"Not really."

He deflates. "Well, great. Yes, I was with Steve. Happy?"

"I'm Russian. I'm never happy."

He side-eyes her and says in Russian, "You find the joy of life in the little things."

She chuckles and waves off the proverb. "Fair enough. Not having to deal with the two of you dancing around each other might be enough to warm my cold dead heart." She catches the way he shifts his weight. "Oh, come on. What now?"

"It's normal to be nervous," he says defensively. "We've got a lot of history. I don't want to hurt him again." He bites his lip and stares down at his mostly-full tub. "I never wanted to hurt him at all."

"Do you think you will?"

"I don't know. If you haven't noticed, I can be a bit of a selfish asshole sometimes."

"I've noticed."

"Thanks." Frankly, he's surprised she accepted his apology during that phone call so easily. Maybe she saw he was worth more than his dumbass decisions, or maybe she's just a little more forgiving than she puts on. Maybe—most likely—he's reading too much into it.

"Do you want my honest opinion?"

"Sure, as long as it doesn't involve any of those knives."

Smirking, she slides the knives she stacked on one plate into a smaller tub and hefts it, now full, onto her hip. "The second you two actually had an adult conversation and were honest with each other, you got through it. The next time you think you're about to put your foot in it, slow down and have another one of those magic conversations. It's blindingly obvious you both want each other to be happy, and you're both happy when you stop getting in your own way."

"Don't go to bed angry?"

"Or have sex about it. I'm not a therapist."

He chokes. Laughing quietly to herself, she heads for the kitchen. He follows her a minute later to empty his own tub.

"I know even someone as dense as Tony has probably picked up on it by now," Bucky says while they work to set up the dishwasher, "but you mind not telling him about…any of this?"

She snorts. "After what he pulled? He'll be lucky if I speak to him again. Your secret's safe with me."

That reminds him: "Which plan do you want to do?"

"It's still not easy to pick only one."

"Why not two?"

"I knew I liked you."

Chapter Text

Ever since Bucky had come over the week before, Steve's life has been—in a word—fantastic. Sure, there are the little inconveniences. He stubbed his toe twice the other day, he broke a yolk he was trying to separate while making breakfast, and his favorite mug somehow developed a chip in it in the dishwasher, but overall? Overall, things are fantastic.

The highlights are every moment he spends with Bucky, and he's making sure he's doing that as much as he can. He's not neglecting anything else, of course, but it turns out Steve's always had a rather empty schedule that he used to fill by hanging out at Tony's a lot more than he is now. Tony's not offended by Steve neglecting him, to Steve's surprise. When asked, Tony had snorted and said, "You've got a pretty face, Rogers, but that doesn't mean I like seeing it from doors open to closing time. I didn't want to tell you, but Pepper was getting suspicious."

He knows that was a joke, but still, he feels a little embarrassed in retrospect. No wonder Natasha had been trying so hard to set him up with someone; they had all noticed how quietly lonely he was. All of them except himself.

Well, now he's compensating. And right now, he's compensating by making a phone call.

Bucky picks up on the fifth ring, right when Steve is wondering if he's going to pick up at all.

"Barnes."

"Hey, Buck, it's me."

"Oh, hey. Sorry, couldn't see the caller I.D."

"You sound pretty crackly."

"Well that would be because I'm on," there's a clatter, "fuck, speaker."

"What are you doing?"

"Right now, dropping my tools. Whaddaya need?"

"Are you building something?"

"Fixing up my bike. Maintenance. Y'know, that thing people do for their bikes. Which is a lot easier when you don't have a hand that has the grip factor of a sheet of aluminum. Seriously, why are you calling? Not that I mind hearing your voice, but I didn't think we had plans today. We didn't, did we?"

"We don't, but I—I was wondering if we could make some."

"I do have work tonight."

"Before then? I could come over."

Bucky hums while he considers that. "My apartment is a shithole, pal, but you're welcome to hang out with me while I work outside. You can meet Alpine."

"Alpine?"

"My cat. You'll love her."

Steve's heart lifts at the fondness in Bucky's voice. "I'll be there in twenty."

"See ya then."

When Bucky said "outside," Steve had pictured a convenient lot next to his building. There are, in fact, two convenient lots near Bucky's building, and Bucky is in neither of them. After an awkward pace up and down the block, Steve finally notices the alleyway almost entirely blocked off by dumpsters. There is, he figures, just enough room for an enterprising individual to navigate a bike through there if they are very, very careful.

Feeling rather like he's trespassing, Steve heads down the alley and is rewarded with the sight of a very small lot behind Bucky's building. The asphalt is cracked, the plants on its edges are overgrowing the interior, and the storage shed taking up most of it looks like no one's tried to clean it in the last couple of decades, but Bucky is there in the middle.

"Nice bike," Steve calls on approach, in part to announce that he's here and in part because it's true. Bucky's got a heritage softail done up in black and chrome, the latter of which he must've just cleaned with the way it's gleaming in the unseasonably warm sun. He's got the bike raised up so the back tire is in the air, presumably because he's doing some kind of more involved work beyond just cleaning the thing.

"Thanks," Bucky says, grabbing a rag that's already black with grime to wipe off his left hand. Which, Steve notes, is ungloved. A glance around shows no real spots for anyone to spy, though, unless they're staring out their back window—which Bucky would be bound to notice, since most of the windows' blinds are drawn. Bucky must not be worried about someone catching a glimpse of his hand, and that jacket of his covers the rest. "You've got one too, right?"

Steve almost misses the question. Bucky's got oil and grease and any number of things all over him, including an improbable smear under one eye he must've tried to wipe away at some point. It almost looks like war paint. He clears his throat and focuses on Bucky's face. "Heritage classic, actually."

"Really? Similar, though. What's the color?"

"Chrome trim with blue paint."

"Didn't know it came in blue."

"It doesn't, but I didn't like the green as much."

"Custom paint, Steven? Look at you."

"Look at my bike, more like."

"Fair enough."

Bucky's right hand has a dirty nitrile glove on it, smeared with any combination of the various cleaning products scattered around him. Steve picks out the white S100 bottle instantly. A twin of it sits in his room, ready for the next day he's got the time and energy to polish up his bike.

"Say," Steve says before he can get too distracted, "what do you think of that jacket?" Bucky glances down at what he's wearing. "I've been thinking about getting one."

Bucky blinks. "It's good. A little tight in the shoulders—but most of my clothes are like that—and I wish the pockets were just a bit bigger, but overall I've had no issues. You should get it." He grins. "You'd wear it well, but you're welcome to try mine on if you want to see how it fits."

Steve blushes. "Maybe when you're not covered in oil." Before Bucky can make some innuendo out of that, Steve forges on: "Honestly, I almost didn't find you back here. I was about to call you again. You're pretty tucked away."

"Yeah, I gave the owner some extra cash so I could park my bike in this lot rather than out front. Lessen the risk of stealing a little, and the odds of it getting dinged by an idiot driver a lot. Plus, there's a little more privacy."

"Smart."

"I like to think so."

"So where's this Alpine?"

Bucky blinks and then makes a quiet noise of understanding. He spins and gestures to the zipper of his jacket. "Unzip it."

"What?"

"My hands are filthy."

"All right, all right." Steve crouches close—focus, Rogers, he tells himself—and carefully works the zipper about halfway down Bucky's chest. His eyes keep straying to Bucky's neck, where a bit of silver peeks out from the collar of his shirt. That mysterious necklace, he's sure.

When the zipper gets low enough, the lump he'd thought was just the stiff leather folding over itself moves. A fluffy white head pokes out above the zipper and Steve freezes to avoid catching any of that fur in the teeth. Bright blue eyes stare up at him.

"Alpine," Bucky says, "meet Steve."

Apparently intrigued by the stranger, Alpine works her way out of Bucky's jacket and starts sniffing at Steve's shoes. Steve notes the harness around her chest and the leash connected from it to—presumably—Bucky's belt.

"She's very cute," he offers.

"She's very loud," Bucky corrects.

Ticking an eyebrow, Steve settles onto a clear spot on the ground and watches Alpine climb into his lap. "She seems quiet enough."

"That's because I fed her before coming out here. Give it a couple hours."

Steve looks down into those guileless blue eyes and decides that Alpine can't do anything wrong, ever.

"What're you doing to your bike, exactly?" he asks while giving Alpine the attention she deserves. "Besides dropping the tools you're trying to use on it."

Bucky chuckles. "Doing to it? You make it sound like I'm gonna cause damage. You missed the exciting part—cleaning. Now I just gotta lube up the chain again. Though," he chews his lip, scrutinizing his bike.

"Something wrong?" Steve prompts while trying valiantly to drag his focus away from that lip.

"Not wrong, but…well, I think I should probably get the rear sprocket replaced soon. Teeth are starting to wear." He taps another part of the bike. "The one on the transmission still looks good, though, but it might be smarter to just replace them at the same time. Ah, I dunno."

"I definitely don't know."

"You never done that on your bike?"

"Can't say that I have."

"What about your chain? Ever greased that?"

More red dusts Steve's cheeks. He feels, in a way, chastised. "Uh, no, don't think so." He shifts closer to Bucky. "Why don't you show me how it works?"

He'd meant it as a gamble to avoid more admonishment, but this close, Bucky—and the bike—smell so strongly of oil and cleaning solution that it makes Steve's head spin.

Nevertheless, it works as a way to head off more pointed questions from Bucky, at least for a little while. Bucky walks Steve through what he did, what he's doing, and why he's doing it. From an oil change to a chain cleaning to an engine cleanup to chain lubrication, Bucky might as well have built his bike for all Steve cares. He could listen to Bucky talk about his passions all day, and in the back of his mind is a warmup sketch he'll flesh out later tonight of a boy and his bike.

"This thing's been all over the world with me," Bucky says fondly, going to pat the seat and then thinking better of it when he catches a glimpse of his hand. "Took forever to get any mileage on her. Feels good to ride her regularly again. Even if that means more maintenance."

"I ride mine pretty regularly too, but it's been a while since I brought it in to have it looked at."

Bucky side-eyes him while he continues turning the back wheel to rotate the chain a few links at a time. With each rotation, he carefully applies a fresh coat of lubricant to the newly exposed links. "Fifteen thousand miles while, or two months while?"

"Uh," Steve scratches the back of his neck, "I don't think I've ever done it and my bike's got at least twenty k on it." That motion transferred a bit of cat hair, which proceeds to itch until he brushes it away.

"Your poor bike," Bucky laments theatrically. "I can take a look, if you want."

"I don't want to impose."

"I'm just about done here anyway and it's a simple job. I like working on bikes. And I can't stand to see yours suffer."

"I'd really appreciate that." Steve watches him finish up his work in silence for a minute, then says, "So, you're a mechanic too? Bartender, drummer, mechanic, is there anything you can't do?"

"I probably can't do a handstand," Bucky admits easily. "Haven't tried lately, though. When I was still in the school side of the program, I'd hang out at a local garage a lot of the time. You know I've always had a good head for mechanical stuff, and it was a pretty good incentive to learn the language so I could follow all the repairs they were doing. It was mostly cars, but a few bikes rolled through. They even let me work on one that was donated as beyond recovery. They were gonna scrap it for parts. I mean, they probably did in the end anyway 'cause I couldn't get it to work, but it was a fun project for a few months."

"You really are a jack of all trades, huh?"

"Do my best. So, what's the plan? We going to your place?"

"Fine by me."

"Alright, well, first I gotta take Alpine back upstairs. After that, we could walk, but…I mean, my bike's right here."

Steve chews his lip. It's a long walk and there aren't any subway stops that make it shorter. "You got a spare bucket?"

"Uh," Bucky glances around, "no, actually."

After thinking for a moment, Steve is struck by an idea. "When's your shift start?"

"Four, same as always."

"Cool. We'll walk to my place, but bring your helmet."

Bemused but willing to play along, Bucky cleans up the mess he made. "You can wait for me out front—elevator's still out." He tosses some supplies in a canvas duffel, throws a tarp over his bike, and snags his helmet.

He's still got the smudge under his eye, though.

"Hey, wait a sec."

Bucky stops just inside the doorway leading into his building and glances back at the sound of Steve's voice, raising an eyebrow that's swiftly joined by its twin when Steve cups his face in his hands. "Steve, what—"

Steve wipes at the grease with his thumb until it's mostly gone. "Got it."

Heedless of Bucky staring after him with his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat, Steve starts to whistle on his way to wait by the front doors.

This really is a fantastic day.

"Don't say it."

"I haven't said anything."

"Else. You haven't said anything else."

"Right, I've said all that needs to be said. But if you want me to repeat myself—"

"Please don't."

Smiling a winner's smile, Bucky keeps poking at Steve's bike. He shed his jacket about twenty minutes earlier before starting the oil change, claiming that he was too hot after walking all this way. Even out of the sun in the underground lot below Tony's building, it's still rather warm. His short sleeves cover the star on his shoulder, but anyone who saw him and knew about the Winter Soldier would find the evidence rather damning. Still, it's not like there's anyone else wandering around the small parking garage right now.

Since no one else is staring, Steve takes it upon himself to do so. Bucky's arm is fascinating; or, more accurately, mesmerizing. The way the plates move and shift around to permit a full range of motion is something that has to be seen to be believed. It's incredible how naturally it mimics an organic limb. When under layers of clothing, it's impossible to pick up as a prosthetic from shape or movement alone.

At the moment, Bucky's using his left hand to carefully pull the chain away from the rear wheel sprocket. As he explained it, he's verifying that he can't pull it too far. The more worn the chain, the greater the slack. He catches Steve looking as he puts the chain back in place.

"Like what you see?"

Steve's lips twitch into a smile. He feels a bit embarrassed about staring at the prosthetic, though, so he fibs just a little. "Your necklace. I was wondering what it is."

"It's nothing fancy." Bucky spares a relatively clean pinkie to hook the silver chain and pull out the necklace.

"Dog tags?"

"Yep. Haven't you seen 'em in the Winter Soldier posters?"

"I've also seen knives and guns in those posters, so."

"I could be armed right now."

"Are you?"

"Point being, I got them originally for that. But his are always a little obscured in whatever clever way they can think of so the text isn't readable. Can't let the guy have too much personality, y'know? People might think he's not cool."

"Don't worry," Steve assures him, "I already think you're not cool."

"And I think you're a terrible liar," Bucky replies breezily.

"What's on your tags?" He can see there's actual lettering.

"Oh. Um." Bucky's cheeks tinge pink and Steve raises his eyebrows. "This one," he taps the upper one, "is me. Just my name and some nonsense numbers. It's not how actual dog tags work, but I didn't really care about that. The other one is," his face is properly red now, "you."

"Me?"

"Look, I got these made when I was, like, sixteen and kinda going through it."

"No, no, I'm touched, I think." Sixteen. Not long after his accident. Had he been feeling lonely? "You were wearing those when you first played at Tony's."

"I wear them almost all the time. Keeps me grounded, I guess. Sentimental value or something." He peers at Steve. "Now tell me what you were actually looking at."

Deciding to have mercy, Steve admits that he was looking at Bucky's arm. "I've never seen anything like it before."

"Everyone's seen it," Bucky says dismissively. "Winter Soldier marketing and all that."

"Sure, but this isn't a stage or a music video. No one else has ever seen the Winter Soldier working on their motorcycle."

"Guess you have a point. Look all you want." He flexes it a little, and to Steve's amazement, the plates on his forearm seem to lock down.

"What's that do?"

"When I'm holding it still? Nothing other than look interesting and limit range of motion. If I'm applying force, though, it's a multiplier."

"How much force?"

The plates loosen and he shrugs. "I once punched through concrete."

Steve coughs. "What?"

"We were filming in an old factory, rusted through and through. They wanted a cool shot for a promo and told me to fake punching a pillar. Rum—I mean, one of the crew dared me to actually go for it, though, so I did." He pantomimes something blowing up. "They didn't end up using the shot because the camera guy was so surprised he flinched, though."

"Did it…hurt?"

"My arm? No. But I felt it in my chest for days 'cause of the way it's anchored. I guess my fingers got a little dented." Steve looks, but his fingers don't seem to be warped. Bucky shakes his head. "This actually isn't the first model they gave me. I mean, it's the same core—they can't exactly swap that out—but they made a few upgrades as I got older, my body changed, and the tech got better. Or, I guess, as they found more stuff they wanted to test on me."

"It does look pretty futuristic."

"Yeah, I mean, it is. Never got the full story, but the head of Hydra Records had some kind of 'in' with a prosthetics R&D lab. Some doctor named Zola had a prosthetic he couldn't get official approval to attach to a human and Pierce—the head—figured he could use it for marketing this fun new band concept he was coming up with. Zola got his test subject, Pierce got his marketing tool. That's why the Winter Soldier was the first member of Hydra to be revealed, by the way. If it didn't work, well. No one in Russia would miss Bucky Barnes."

"Jesus Christ, Buck, that's dark."

Bucky shrugs. "The nerve connections could've been botched and I'd've been in agony until I died, but that didn't happen, so it's fine."

"Is it?"

"I'm here, aren't I?"

"Did you know the risks?" Steve can't voice what he wants to say: would you have been fine with never seeing me again? And, just as loud in his head: I would've missed Bucky Barnes.

Another shrug, but this one is distinctly uncomfortable. "It didn't really matter."

"What do you mean?"

"I was just—okay, this is going to sound bad, but it wasn't really. They pulled me in for what I thought was a routine checkup a few weeks after they started me on a new physical therapy routine. They got all worried, told me they needed to operate because something wasn't healing right, and next thing I knew I was waking up with something silver where what was left of my arm used to be."

Horror churns Steve's stomach. "Did you even want a prosthetic?"

"Fuck, Steve, I dunno. Maybe. I was sixteen and scared, what the hell did I know?"

"Can you take it off?"

"No."

Staring, Steve tries to figure out how something that sounds that bad somehow isn't. But looking at Bucky, at the forced nonchalance in the way he's turning back to the bike, at the tension in his shoulders and the way his left arm's plates aren't staying still, he starts to see the truth. It doesn't make the horror go away.

"Well," he finally manages. "For the record, it's fucked up you didn't have a choice."

Bucky hunches his shoulders. Steve can't see his face, but he can see Bucky flexing his left hand.

"For the record," Bucky eventually agrees, "yeah, it was. But it let me keep drumming, and it's far better than anything else on the market. Just a bit more…permanent."

"Could you have it removed? Not trying to say you should or anything."

"No. The nerve connections—it wouldn't end well. I asked, when I was leaving the band. Zola would've ripped it off me himself otherwise; he hated the thought of one of his creations 'getting away' from him." His sarcastic air quotes deepen Steve's frown.

"He sounds nice."

Bucky snorts and refocuses on the bike. "The main problem with it is sleeping, honestly. Can't take it off and it's a bit more solid than the standard squishy version, so I had to get a custom pillow to actually get some sleep at night. Then there's a whole roller routine in the morning to work out the knots."

"Sounds pretty rough."

"Pros and cons. Pros," he flexes his hand, "I get a cool cybernetic arm that can punch through concrete. Cons," he shrugs his shoulders and winces, "I'm a little sore all the time, and if I roll in my sleep, I'll be a lot sore. Oh, and airport security sucks—I mean, the one time they let me take a normal flight. Ever since, private jets."

Steve whistles. "Living the high life?"

"Honestly? Yeah. Too bad the company sucked." He shoots Steve a grin that makes Steve's stomach do a flip. "It's better now."

"Worth giving up your private jets?"

Catching the sly tone, Bucky's grin turns a shade wicked. "Depends on your ability to perform."

Heat flares in Steve's cheeks.

"Music, of course," Bucky tacks on blithely. "Since that's what we're talking about. Music."

"Oh, fuck you, Barnes."

"That's the idea, Rogers." He caps the lube and stands, stretching with a groan that spreads heat all throughout Steve's body. Steve wonders if that roller routine could be a two-person activity. "Your chain is a little tight—not bad, but you should keep an eye on it. And get both sprockets replaced in the next few hundred miles or so or you're gonna start noticing a hit on the acceleration when the chain slips on the teeth."

"I'll, uh. I'll take your word for it. If I get the parts—"

"I can install 'em, sure. I know this model pretty well and you haven't done anything stupid to it."

"Stupid how?"

"Well, it's not this model because the swingarm isn't one big surface area, but one time I came across a guy who decided to mount his muffler to the swingarm."

"The…swing arm?"

"Swingarm. On this bike, this thing." He taps the metal piece extending from the chassis to the rear wheel with his boot. At first glance and from this angle, it looks like two unrelated chrome pipes. "Does what it sounds like: it swings as the shocks compress and expand. Now, imagine instead of it being a frame like this, it's more connected."

Understanding dawns. "He didn't."

"Oh, he did. He was real proud of himself, too, until the shop owner ripped him a new one about totaling a perfectly good bike. Little Bucky learned a lesson that day: don't mount something that should stay still to something whose whole job is to move. It's a lesson I think we can all take to heart."

"For sure. Muffler to the swingarm…wow. Thanks for taking a look at my bike, by the way."

"No problem. What's the plan now? Putting this to use?" He lifts his helmet.

"You got it in one," Steve admits. "Want to come with me while I grab mine? You can clean up if you want."

Bucky glances down at himself, the myriad stains decorating his person, and nods. "Probably a good idea."

While they ride the elevator up from the garage, a thought strikes Steve. "Wait."

"What?"

"Way back when, you said you weren't the Winter Soldier."

"I wasn't," Bucky confirms, before adding slyly, "at the time."

Steve groans.

"You drive like a maniac," Bucky declares, hopping off Steve's bike like it'll bite him if he stays close. "Jesus Christ, am I even still alive?" He runs his hands over himself to check nothing got shaved off while Steve kicks out the stand and dismounts.

"It wasn't that bad."

Bucky eyes him balefully, a look that translates even through his tinted visor. Laughing, Steve pulls off his own helmet and leaves it by his bike.

"C'mon, it's just this way."

Leaving his helmet by Steve's, Bucky follows him down the dirt path. "This feels familiar," Bucky admits as the trees close in around them.

"It should. We came here when we were kids."

Bucky's sharp breath of realization brings a smile to Steve's face. "Holy shit, you're right. Kids kids, we were, what, eight? Didn't we rent a cabin or something?"

"Your family rented a camper van for a weekend. You're the one who always insisted on dragging me along."

"Dragging," Bucky repeats dryly. "Yeah, 'cause you were so unwilling."

The trail opens up to reveal the small lake nestled in the woods. A few cabins—more than were there when they were kids—ring the water, but it's still a secluded spot. This trail takes them right to a pebbly beach blocked off on either side by large boulders.

"How'd you find this?" Bucky wonders, the ground crunching under his boots.

"I come up this way a lot when I need some air. It's good inspiration, too."

"I bet." Bucky takes in the view for a moment longer and then eyes the rocks. With a few jumps and grunts of effort, he hauls himself up them until he's able to lie on his back on the tallest, sunning himself like a cat. Steve grins; that's exactly what he likes to do here too. He follows Bucky's example, nudging him when he gets to the top so Bucky will scoot over and make space. He does, albeit with some grumbling.

If Steve takes off his jacket and balls it up under his head, the position is almost comfortable. Bucky's opted to pillow his head on his stacked hands, with his left up against the rock to take the worst of the discomfort. That position also means his shirt and jacket are pulled up to reveal a strip of his stomach, a fact Steve had taken immediate and consistent notice of while settling down.

"This isn't bad," Bucky murmurs after a while. He's got his eyes closed and looks a few degrees away from dozing. "I don't think I appreciated it enough when I was eight."

"I mean, you were eight. The water was more exciting."

"Maybe." He takes a deep breath. "Can't even hear traffic."

"Sometimes the families that live around here will be making noise or boating, but I figured today would be quiet. Workday and colder, you know?"

"Colder?" Bucky huffs. "I'm sweating."

He sits up, stretches—Steve's eyes stray but he gets a handle on himself before Bucky can notice—and then stands. "Looking a little sunburned, Rogers."

"I'll be fine."

"If you say so." He hops down to the beach, sheds his jacket, kicks off his boots, peels off his socks, and finally rolls up his pants. His phone is the last item to go on the small pile of his belongings. Steve, having rolled onto his stomach to watch Bucky, continues to watch as Bucky wades into the shallows. He's got a furrow in his brow as the clear water laps at his shins. His arm glitters in the light thrown off the water.

"Looking out for sharks?" Steve asks with a grin, remembering when they went to the community pool as kids and the both of them were utterly convinced there was a shark hiding somewhere in the water.

"Nah," Bucky says. "Fishing."

"You catch a fish barehanded one time—"

"Spoken like someone who doesn't understand the rush."

"You were eight—"

"And who can't do it himself."

He freezes and then lunges, only for his target to slip through his fingers. Cursing, Bucky shakes his head to shed some of the water that splashed up into his face and hair. Steve is reminded of a shaggy dog and hides a grin as he leaves his seat. He sheds everything he doesn't want getting wet on the way.

Bucky's had no luck by the time Steve's wading out to join him. On approach, Steve makes a show of looking at the water intently, though with all the silt Bucky's kicked up, there's nothing to see but swirling brown.

"What are you doing?" Bucky asks when Steve draws level with him. "This is my fishing spot, you know."

"I know," Steve says innocently, so much so that Bucky's instantly suspicious. Before he can act on that suspicion, Steve tackles him. Bucky shouts in surprise as they both tumble into the water with a great splash.

"You—you jerk!" Bucky splutters while they wrestle. Steve spits water out of his mouth and does his best to shove Bucky out into a deeper bit of the lake while using that push to get himself toward the shallows, only for Bucky's left hand to fasten around his wrist like a vice.

Steve yelps but there's nothing he can do to stop himself from getting yanked down. Bucky dunks him once, twice, before Steve finds purchase on the slippery ground and manages to wrestle Bucky into being the one getting dunked. They're both soaking wet and choking on laughter as much as water, the heat they'd built up absolutely drowned out by the pond's chill.

"You—mother—fucker," Bucky gasps between dunks. He fights his way free and staggers several steps away, nearly slipping. "Do you have any idea how long—"

Steve interrupts by hitting him dead in the face with a massive splash of water. Bucky coughs and chokes, drawing in air to speak right as Steve hits him again. He gags, then glares through water-darkened strands of hair.

"You've done it now," he growls, dodging the next splash and winding up to return fire.

By the time their energy runs out and they've both dragged themselves, dripping and panting for air, back to shore, it's getting dangerously close to the start of Bucky's shift.

"In payment for that sneak attack," Bucky says while he schleps over to his things and fishes out his phone, "youhave to call Pepper and explain why I'm gonna be late and smelling a little like dead fish."

Steve hurriedly wipes his hands on his pants for all the good that does and catches the phone tossed his way. It takes a few taps for the thing to actually register Steve's damp touch, but soon he's holding the phone a little ways from his ear.

"James?" Pepper asks when she picks up on the second ring.

"Uh, not exactly."

"Has something happened?"

"He tried to drown me!" Bucky yells.

"I tried to drown him," repeats Steve with a roll of his eyes in case Pepper somehow missed that declaration. "He's fine, just running late. Is it okay if he runs even later so he can clean himself up?"

"As though you didn't do this to me," Bucky grumbles. He's wringing out his hair while water cascades in glittering rivulets down his left arm.

"Yes, of course," Pepper says, and Steve barely hears her. "Please try not to get him into bad habits again. You only just fixed him."

Steve coughs out a "Yes, ma'am," while his face burns. It's a real good thing Bucky didn't hear that part, too busy shedding his pants so he can wring them out too and Steve is not staring at his legs, no sir.

Clearing his throat, Steve hangs up and asks, "You planning to strip completely?"

"Course not, there are houses right there. I'd just rather not be sopping wet on the back of your bike."

He has a point. Steve hadn't really been thinking of consequences when he initiated that fight, and looking down at himself, he realizes he's dripped a solid puddle all around his feet. And the feeling of wet denim on his legs…

"Not my brightest idea."

"No. And the worst payment for fixing a bike I've ever received. But," he offers a crooked grin, "probably the most fun. Minus the sunburns. And the dead fish smell. And the wet denim. And the being late for work. And—"

"I get it, I get it! C'mon, get dressed. The sooner we're on the bike the sooner the wind can start drying us off."

"Oh, now you're in a hurry."

Chapter Text

As a kid, Steve had been a bit of a menace at the arcade. Not intentionally, of course; he wasn't trying to exploit the machines or anything. It was just that, by some miracle, his hand-eye coordination was some level of spectacular. He was, as Bucky had breathlessly declared the first day they went together and after watching him seize the high score, a "pinball wizard."

Thus, Bucky had dragged Steve back to that same arcade time and again. Unlike Steve, Bucky was more than willing to bend the rules a bit in the name of more prize tickets. And also unlike Steve, Bucky properly excelled at any and all of the physical games. Skee ball, hoops, throwing a ball to knock down things on shelves—he nailed them all. Between him and Steve, they could easily blow tens of dollars in a couple hours, collect an obscene number of tickets, and laugh all the way home over their cheap plastic prizes.

Sam, Tony, and Natasha aren't quite the forces of nature that Steve and Bucky had been. Sam is decent at just about everything, but decent doesn't take the top prize. Tony is a fiend at any game of probability where a bit of math lets him manipulate the odds, but those games aren't exactly fun for anyone else, and even manipulated odds aren't always a guarantee. And though Natasha is properly terrifying with the axe throw and anything involving pinpoint reactions, she's quick to point out how forcing her to play those games for tickets is basically making her work, and at that point, she'd prefer her compensation in cash.

Watching her and Sam bicker about whether Dance Dance Revolution should count as work in front of the large machine, Steve leans against a nearby game cabinet and sighs.

"Missing your boyfriend?" Tony asks with a knowing grin. He's wearing their accumulated tickets like a scarf. Steve rolls his eyes.

"He's not my boyfriend, and I'm not missing him. He's right next door." Their group of four had originally been a group of six, but Clint and Bucky had split off to patronize the indoor archery range one building over. God, why oh why had Bucky needed to beat Clint at a game of darts?

"That look on your face makes me think you don't think he's got a chance."

"The only reason Clint isn't in the Olympics is because he doesn't like the rigid structure to that kind of shooting," Steve says flatly.

"I didn't hear you warning your boyfriend about that."

Choosing not to correct Tony this time because he can see the impish grin the man is failing to hide, Steve runs a hand through his hair to collect a few rogue strands. "Bucky can make his own mistakes."

"So you always say. Well, I look forward to Clint returning with his honor restored. Does Bucky even know archery?"

"Unless he did some kind of training I don't know about, no. And before you ask why he accepted the challenge, just…don't."

"Ask?" Tony snorts. "I don't need to do that. I already know the answer." Steve raises an eyebrow in silent question. "What man hasn't dreamed of dominating a competition in something he's never done before?"

"Clint is going to kick his ass."

"Maybe. But imagine if he doesn't. The bragging rights alone! And if he loses? No skin off his nose—he's never done it before, or he's not a professional like Clint, and so on and so forth. Low risk, high reward. You'd be a fool not to do it."

"I'll keep that in mind," Steve says dryly. Then, purely to change the subject: "Any news on that dishwasher of yours?"

Tony huffs. "Work talk in an arcade? You should be ashamed. I'm still waiting on the replacement to get shipped in, so your boyfriend"—he steadfastly ignores Steve's glower—"will probably get tomorrow off if they don't invent teleportation in time. You, however, still owe me posters for the bash."

"I'm almost done."

"Monday almost, or next week almost?"

"Tuesday at the latest if you respond to my email about those revisions."

"You emailed?"

"Twice."

"Damn." He pulls out his phone and fires off a text to Pepper. "She'll get that sorted out."

I'm sure she will, thinks Steve.

Movement catches his eye: Sam and Natasha assuming positions on the DDR stages. Exchanging a look, Steve and Tony drift closer.

"What's this? You're actually accepting a challenge?" asks Tony. Natasha finishes tying up her hair in a ponytail.

"One must occasionally remind her inferiors of the state of things," she replies airily.

"Right up until that state of things gets tossed on its head," counters Sam. "Let's get this on, hardest difficulty."

Steve leans his forearms on the guardrail behind Sam's stage while Natasha queues up the song. "You sure about this?"

"Yeah, man, you've seen me practicing."

"I've seen you drunk and falling all over the mat from 2007 Tony dug out of storage."

"Terrifying," Natasha puts in. Sam ignores her.

"Practice is practice. You'll see."

The song starts and Steve backs up to give Sam space to work.

"Odds?" Tony asks.

"I'm not betting against my friend."

"Spoilsport. I'm texting Clint."

That text takes only a second, at which point Tony switches to taking video just in time for the first arrows to flow down from the top of Sam and Natasha's respective screens. They've got slightly different dance routines, it seems, but they're both absurdly demanding. Steve gets dizzy just looking at all the arrows coming down and neither Nat nor Sam have even started moving yet.

When they do start moving, it's an explosion of motion that leaves their respective stages shaking from the force. Steve expects them both to stay more or less vertical, but both Sam and Natasha swiftly start using their hands and anything else to hit the right tile while maintaining the flow between stances.

"Breakdancing," Tony notes, stepping back so he can get more on video. "Very nice."

Steve can't help staring at Sam, who's busting out moves Steve's never seen before at a speed and with a precision he's only ever demonstrated with the parkour skills picked up when he was a teenager that he occasionally shows off. "He wasn't that coordinated when he was drunk."

"Obviously!" Sam grunts while using the bar to haul himself up for the next wave of arrows. For her part, Natasha isn't wasting breath or focus on Steve and Tony's antics. Her arrows get hit with pinpoint precision that's shooting her score up into the stratosphere. A glance confirms to Steve what he suspected from the start: Sam, though putting up a fight, can't keep up.

Steve feels tired just watching those two fly around their stages, and the song goes on for almost four grueling minutes. He tries to cheer for them both, he does, but he's a champion of the underdog at heart so Sam gets most of his attention. When the song ends, though, the result is undeniable: Natasha sets a new high score on the machine, beating her previous high score, and Sam is flat on his back and gasping for breath.

"Good fight," Nat tells him.

"Ugh," he replies. "Steve, avenge me. I'm still weighed down from brunch."

"I was at the same brunch," Steve points out, "and I don't dance."

"Set to easy mode, man, even you can handle that. Please. For my honor."

"Right, your honor"—he reaches out a hand, waits for Sam to clasp his arm, and then hauls Sam to his feet—"isn't coming back, I think."

"Et tu?"

"I think you should give it a shot," Tony says.

"Scared of a little competition, Rogers?" Nat prods.

"You're the one who usually doesn't want to do this," he protests. "We all know how this ends."

Tony crosses his arms. "I, for one, favor the scientific method. My hypothesis is that Natasha will win. It must be tested."

Steve caves with an explosive sigh. "Fine." He eyes Sam. "My honor is going to end up in the same state as yours."

"Probably worse," Sam says cheerfully, clapping him on the back. "Have at it."

Things start off badly when Natasha has to walk him through setting the difficulty and they don't get better from there. Even at the easiest difficulty, when there are never more than four arrows on screen to consider at a time, Steve finds his coordination woefully inadequate. It was bad when he was a kid and shooting up in size as an adult did nothing to help. His hand-eye coordination, his hand dexterity, those are excellent thanks to hours upon hours of practicing his craft. Everything else?

"Wrong foot!" Sam calls.

Not so much.

Halfway through the song, a new voice joins Sam and Tony's. "Keep it up, Steve!"

"Bucky?" He nearly trips over himself trying to look over his shoulder, and only a last second grab of the bar keeps him from taking a tumble. Meanwhile, Natasha executes a perfect three-step that has Sam whooping in appreciation.

Laughing, Bucky gestures him back toward the machine. "Focus, man, you're almost done!"

But the damage is done, and Steve's already-shaky routine falls to pieces no matter how much—or because of how much—Bucky cheers him on.

Clint whistles when the song ends. "Ouch."

Steve doesn't look at his score or Natasha's. He knows what it'll look like and he would like to maintain the scraps of his dignity, if not his honor. Him being sweaty and no doubt blushing like mad isn't helping his dignity, though.

Bucky is uncaring of the sweat when he pounds Steve on the back in congratulations. "Well done not falling over, I really thought you were gonna a few times."

"I've gotten a little better," Steve says defensively.

"Falling to almost falling is a very big improvement. I'm proud of you."

"Did I mention I once offered to teach him how to dance?" Natasha leans on the support railing of her stage. Steve takes a little comfort from seeing that she's shiny with sweat and breathing hard. "It's true," she continues. "He turned me down, though. Claimed he would break my feet by accident."

"He stepped on mine all the time when we were kids," Bucky says. "With those stompers he's got now, I wouldn't be surprised if he came close."

"Anyway," Steve cuts in before his awful dance skills can dominate the conversation, "how'd the archery go? I thought you'd be gone for longer."

Bucky winces and rubs at his shoulder. "I, uh."

"He lost!" Clint crows.

"I hit the target!"

"Barely. And you broke two bows!"

"It's not my fault they're so easy to crush!"

"Easy? Easy?"

"Anyway," Bucky says, and Steve can't help his grin when Bucky copies his intonation exactly, "we called it when Tony texted that Natalia was dancing. Apparently that's rare for her."

"It's going to get rarer if you keep making a big deal out of it," Natasha notes. "Now, can I get off this stage, or are you satisfied? Tony?"

The man raises his hands in surrender.

"Nope, I know when to leave the queen alone."

"Are you sure?"

"Very. Clint, you go. She's tired now, you have a chance."

"What? No. She'd kick my ass and I only just got it un-kicked."

"We can play darts again," Bucky offers.

"No, you can't." Steve shoves Bucky toward the dance floor. "Because it's your turn."

"Hey!"

"Cute, but I need a break," declares Natasha. "Sam, you're up again."

"Hell yeah. I need to beat someone."

Bucky's protests die in his throat and a fire ignites in his eyes as Sam steps up onto the dance floor next to his own. "Hey, who do you think you're gonna be walking all over, exactly? I'll dance circles around you."

"Put your feet where your mouth is and prove it."

Natasha sidles up to Steve while Sam and Bucky bicker. "They get along well," she notes.

"Sam gets along with everyone."

She ticks an eyebrow. "Do you naturally see the best in people, or is that something you have to practice?"

"Bit of both."

"Charming." They watch as the two bicker their way into agreeing on a song and—naturally—they both select the highest difficulty. "Can he dance?"

"He's better than me, at least. He just seems to know things, too. Did you know he's a mechanic?"

"I guessed. He came in smelling like S100 a couple of times and I've seen his motorcycle. There are parts that aren't stock on it and he didn't ask any of us—or you—for help finding a local shop."

"Do you naturally pick up on that stuff, or is that something you practice?"

She smiles at him and doesn't answer.

In some part of his mind, Bucky had been hoping Alpine's purring would be some kind of miracle cure for the soreness forever lurking in and around his shoulder. Alas, Alpine's only cured his habit of sleeping in, and her purring—while lovely—doesn't seem to have any magical properties. A full three days after his archery contest with Clint and subsequent dance showdown with Sam, and every muscle in Bucky's back feels as though its strands could be plucked like guitar strings.

The archery contest? A mistake, but now he knows better. If he could just get Clint to stop beaming every time they see each other, that would be great, because Bucky's eyes are starting to hurt from being rolled so often.

The dancing? Less of a mistake, he just should've known better than to attempt any moves that put most of his weight on his left arm after straining it so much. At least Sam is a bit less of a sore winner after because he was so thoroughly humbled by Natalia.

And, one major perk: going back with Steve that night meant Steve offered a massage, and turns out, Steve is really good with his hands. Even if the pain still found Bucky eventually, the memory of being sprawled out on Steve's bed with Steve digging his palms into the worst of the knots takes the edge off it.

That memory's got him smiling now as he wipes his damp hands on his pants—he always thinks he can get away with just one paper towel and he's always wrong—and strolls past the Halloween bash posters Tony's put up along the hallway leading to the restrooms. There are more along the back wall and on the front entrance, all of them designed by Steve. They look nice, appropriately spooky, and though there's a tragic lack of artistic renditions of a dude vomiting, they've got that little bit of Steve's magic touch to draw the eye.

What holds the eye is the promise of half-price drinks for everyone in costume, "in costume" defined at the staff's discretion. Everyone's gonna be dressed up and Bucky's not about to be the one schmuck who isn't. What to dress as, though?

He pauses. Idiot. There's only one answer.

"He does the bash every year, right?" Bucky asks when he rejoins Natalia at the bar.

"Every year," she confirms. "Can you take some orders? There's a bit of a backup."

"Did he—"

"Yep."

Bucky sighs. Naturally Tony offers up a round while Bucky's in the bathroom, leaving only Natalia to deal with the surge. He works his way up and down the bar as fast as he reasonably can and then ends up at the POS terminal, tapping away at the touch screen to put everything into the system.

"Odd," Natalia mutters when she next walks by him.

"What?"

"The band's still playing."

Bucky glances at the stage, then at the clock. "Their set ended five minutes ago, didn't it?"

"It should've."

Bucky shifts his gaze to the spot next to the stage where a displeased group of guys is standing, most of them with their arms crossed and scowls on their faces. "Next band isn't happy about the delay. Does this happen a lot?"

"Delays? Yes. A band deliberately playing over time? No. We don't do encores outside of special performances. Tony's probably going to—"

Rather abruptly, the band's mics cut out and their song stumbles to a stop in confusion.

"—cut their mics," Natalia finishes. "And there he is."

Tony hops up on the stage with a mic of his own. "Sorry to interrupt your playing, gentlemen, but I do have a schedule to keep. Everyone, that was Bedazzled Jacket!"

Applause goes up around the place but Bucky's eyes stay on the stage. The scowls are still there and it looks like a couple of them are having words with the band on stage. Natalia is stuck mixing drinks, but he sees agreement in her eyes, so he puts the order entry on pause and swiftly heads from the bar to the stage.

One of the irritated band members steps up onto the stage. Bucky catches someone telling that guy to get fucked, which doesn't go over well.

Bucky breaks out into a jog but he's still got a few tables between himself and the stage when that guy tips over part of the other band's drum kit. The cymbals clatter horribly when they hit the floor and Tony winces, about to intervene, but words aren't going to stop what Bucky can see brewing in the drummer's eyes.

He gets there just in time to catch the thrown punch. The drummer's fist smacks into Bucky's outstretched left hand and Bucky makes no effort to soften the impact. The guy recoils, cradling his hand and staring in disbelief.

"He tipped my drums, dude!"

Unimpressed, Bucky lets his hand fall. Catching that punch had made his whole back clench and it had taken everything in him not to squeeze his hands into fists on reflex, which would've crushed the guy's fingers like so many matchsticks. Unable to stifle the pain completely, he lets his right hand tense up until the pain ebbs.

Tony claps him on his shoulder—gently, Bucky's thankful to feel—and turns a disapproving stare on the two bands.

"Big difference between tipping instruments and assaulting someone. I get that being delayed is annoying, but really? Property damage?"

There's much shuffling of feet and refusal to make eye contact. Eventually, though, Tony pries out some of the story: the bands, both of which consist of high schoolers or recent high school graduates, know each other, and there's been bad blood for a while. Tony's expression gets more and more annoyed with each word of explanation he hears.

"Okay," he interrupts, "that's enough. All of you, pack your gear and get out."

"What?" demands the nearest guy. "But we—"

"I don't care. Really, I don't. Six month bans all around, and trust me, I have an excellent memory. Go play at Hammer's club if you're so eager to offer cheap entertainment. Go on, start packing."

"You can't just—"

Tony's expression hardens and his tone turns decidedly dangerous. "Oh, but I can."

Behind him, Bucky pointedly crosses his arms and glares.

They swallow their protests and set to packing, keeping their hissed insults to each other low enough that Tony doesn't bother taking action again.

"What's the plan now?" asks Bucky.

"I'll play."

"You play?"

"My band will play," Tony amends while he pulls out his phone. He keeps going, forestalling Bucky's follow up question about his band. "I'll be singing, and doing a damn good job of it. Fortunately, Happy, Rhodey, and Pepper are already here tonight, and I keep spare gear in the back for exactly this situation."

"That's…" expensive, Bucky finishes mentally. Aloud, he opts for, "well thought out."

"I try. I saw you used your left hand earlier."

"I wanted it to hurt." Too bad it also hurt him, but he'll get over it.

"Can I look at it?"

"Still no."

"Spoilsport."

"Don't you have a band to get together?"

"Everything okay?"

Bucky glances over to see Steve stepping onto the stage, his eye lingering on the two bands that are almost done packing up their gear. Steve's wearing a bomber jacket that fits his shoulders perfectly and a t-shirt he's gotta know is a size too small. "Better now."

By the set of Steve's jaw as he watches the bands slink out the back door, Bucky can guess that his response would've gone a little farther than just catching the punch. There would've been a lecture in there somewhere, namely toward the bullies. Bucky can't imagine Steve faulting the targeted band for fighting back.

Tony gets Steve up to speed, adding in: "They've both played here a couple times and Nat picked up on the tension, but this was a new and unwelcome escalation."

"Did you have to kick them both out?" asks Steve.

Sighing, Tony shrugs. "Maybe not. But frankly it's not my job to referee teenagers or play judge to their disputes. I don't get paid enough for that."

Bucky cocks his head. "Do you get paid?"

"Go back to the bar or my check is coming out of yours. My band is here."

Steeve walks with Bucky most of the way. "Nice job catching that punch."

"Cool enough for you?"

"Maybe. Shoulder okay?"

"Didn't like it, but I'll survive. Especially if you offer another massage."

"I can give you one at the end of your shift."

"Say less."

Tony's band is decent enough. This is clearly something they all do as a side hobby, especially Happy, the drummer. His kit's pretty basic—which is fine, a skilled drummer can do a lot with a little—but he's not getting creative with it. Bucky keeps his criticisms to himself, though, because there's an idea starting to form in his brain.

While doing his end-of-shift duties, he delays his massage and leaves Steve by the bar so he can track down Tony in the back.

He raps on the doorframe. "Hey, Tony."

Tony glances up from his tablet. "James. Here to give me another heartfelt apology?"

"Sorry, you only get the one."

"I heard Scott got two."

"I like Scott more than you."

"Well, now that you've buttered me up: what do you need?"

He steps fully inside the office and closes the door. "I've got an idea for the Bash, but I'm gonna need your help. And there's one catch: you can't tell Steve."

Chapter Text

"So I get Natalia to get me out in a way he doesn't notice, and I'm pretty sure he won't put two and two together in time for it to matter."

"He's going to notice that Happy isn't on drums."

Pacing in the small space between Tony's desk and the door leading out of his office in the back of the venue, Bucky waves off Tony's point. "He will, but he won't think much of it. By the time he sees Happy setting up to play bass, I'll be heading out."

Tony rubs his goatee, eyeing the rough plan Bucky sketched out during their quick meeting before Bucky's shift starts. Outside Tony's office, there's a general bit of commotion as the restaurant gets ready for business. "All right, it might work. You're sure he's never seen your drums?"

It really is a godsend that Steve never made it into his apartment, Bucky reflects. "He's seen the Winter Soldier's drums, I mean, everyone and their dog has, but I've taken off the logos. I'll just say Happy got a new kit. It'll hold. And if it doesn't, well, credit to Steve for figuring it out early."

"Hm." Tony leans back in his chair. "Okay, I like a good surprise. Let's do it. I'll send a guy to get your drums after your shift and you can get them set up at the place we usually do rehearsals."

Relief at his plan coming together takes a weight from Bucky's shoulders. "Thanks, Tony."

"Mhm. You'll just have to bring that cat of yours to every session; Pepper insists. Now get out there and do what I actually pay you for."

Bucky mock-salutes and heads out of Tony's office, mind still firing on all cylinders while he irons out his plan's next steps. As though summoned by the conversation about him, Steve is waiting at the bar, chatting with Clint.

"Welcome back," greets Clint with a wave. "I was just telling Steve here about how you've refused to try your hand at archery again. It's the craziest thing, I really don't—"

"I'll do it," Bucky interrupts, and then continues before Clint can look too surprised, "if you let me use your bow."

Clint flinches at the very thought, remembering as well as Bucky does the crunch of the bows Bucky had crushed by accident with his left hand.

"Or," Bucky continues, "we can play another round of darts, and start this whole thing over again. Right now, we're even. I'm happy to change that." He flashes a winning smile, confident he'll finally find peace from Clint's bragging. Judging by his frown, Clint is also reaching the conclusion that there's no good way out of this.

He sighs and raises his hands in surrender. "All right, you got me. We're tied. For now."

"For now," Bucky agrees. He leans on the bar by Steve while Clint continues prepping. For his part, Bucky's already finished what he needs to do—Tony wouldn't have spoken to him otherwise. "So, what brings a handsome guy like you to a place like this, huh?"

Steve goes red, widening Bucky's smile. It's so fun to make him blush; he makes it so easy, too. "I could ask you the same question."

"Oh, that's easy." Bucky lets it hang just long enough that Steve opens his mouth again, then finishes with: "Money."

Rolling his eyes, Steve leans back in his chair. "Well, I was going to ask if we could hang out at your place after your shift, but now I'm reconsidering."

As if Bucky is going to let Steve anywhere near his door when he's still got incriminating evidence sitting in plain sight. "Reconsider away, pal. I've got plans with Tony tonight. You'll have to get your Alpine fix another day."

Steve deflates and Bucky can't help feeling a little guilty at letting him down. "Oh."

"C'mon, don't be like that. Jealousy's a bad look on you, Steven."

"I'm not jealous!"

"And James is too smart to get on Pepper's bad side again," Clint tosses in on his way to the kitchen, an extraneous tablecloth bundled in his arms.

"That too. Point is, tonight's not gonna work, but we can do…hm, well, tomorrow's no good either. We can hang out this weekend, though."

"I just feel like you're trying to keep me out of your home," Steve confesses. Bucky can't help another stab of guilt; it's kind of true. Initially because his place is, truly, a shithole, and now because of the aforementioned incriminating evidence. "And I do want to see your place, y'know? If my boyfriend really is living in a shithole, maybe I want to see if I can do anything to make it a little less of a shithole. Put up some art, or—why are you looking at me like that?"

He didn't even notice what he did. Bucky tries to subdue his goofy smile and utterly fails; there's no force on this Earth that could hold back the radiant warmth pouring out of his chest. "You called me your boyfriend."

Steve's ears go bright red and then his face follows suit, but he tries to play it off. "Yeah, of course I did. That's what we are, you weirdo." Buried in that insult is a quiet, nervous question: we are boyfriends, right?

"Well, boyfriend," Bucky says, leaning in close and enjoying Steve's embarrassment entirely too much, "I promise things will get better next month. I'll even have more time to see you. I've just got a lot of stuff to take care of this month."

"Anything I can help with?"

"Nah. If there was, I'd let you, I promise. But this is shit I've been putting off ever since leaving the band. Emails, legal paperwork, all that stuff." As lies go, it's not bad, and he's grateful to Natalia for helping him workshop it. He's not an awful liar but he's not the best when it comes to improvisation. "This weekend, though. What do you want to do?"

"Well, I haven't put together my costume yet. I was hoping for a second set of eyes to make sure I do it right this year."

"What, was last year a horror story?"

"I didn't make a very good Mona Lisa."

"Please tell me there are pictures of that."

"Yup!" Clint puts in from the other end of the bar. "I'll send 'em."

"I regret saying that," Steve mutters, pointedly ignoring Bucky's grateful wave. "Anyway, care to help me out? They're setting up a Spirit Halloween nearby, and between that and a few thrift stores I think I can whip up something halfway decent."

"An offer like that, how can I refuse?"

Steve's kitchen smells like garlic. To be more precise, it smells primarily of garlic. Below that sits a stew of other mouthwatering scents: onion, paprika, parmesan, too many other spices to name, and the special herb blend Sam's mother swears by.

For the third time in ten minutes, Steve's stomach growls. Next to him at the stove, Sam chuckles. "Forget to eat lunch?"

"I had that video interview that went long, and then I kind of…forgot." His stomach growls again.

"Seems your stomach didn't. Or it smells that good. How'd the interview go?"

"Good, they're interested in moving forward with it."

Sam bumps him. "A whole animated movie poster series. Pretty sick."

"I'm excited. And so anxious I don't think I'll sleep tonight."

"C'mon, with this in your stomach," he gives the alfredo-soaked pasta a pointed stir, "you'll be out the second you're horizontal, I promise. Are you done babying the chicken yet?"

"I'm not—yes, fine." He carefully dumps the chicken into the pasta and Sam sets to stirring it all together. While he puts the finishing touches on their dinner, Steve fetches plates from the cupboard. Only two, though. Because Tony's gone. Like he's been gone every night this week.

Bucky's claimed he's doing paperwork. Tony's claimed he's working late on projects of his, and Pepper's corroborated his story. Even Natasha and Clint haven't poked holes in anything.

But the timing is too damn convenient.

"Sam?"

In the middle of scooping the pasta into a large bowl, Sam glances over his shoulder in expectation of a question.

"What's Tony actually doing right now?"

Sam refocuses on his pasta pouring. "I dunno, man. You know how he is. Probably one of his projects or some band rehearsal. He's gotta practice before the bash."

Steve is a bad liar. He knows this. Sam is a good liar, provided he's not caught by surprise. Unfortunately for him, Steve knows all his tells. And refusal to make eye contact is a big one. Maybe some of what he said is true, but not all of it. Which means, whatever Tony's doing, Sam is in on it.

"Does Nat know? Does Clint?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Sam brings the bowl over to the table and sits across from Steve while serving himself a generous portion.

"Does everyone know besides me?"

"I'm starting to think you're not hearing what I'm saying."

Steve rolls his eyes. "I'm starting to think you're not saying what you're thinking."

"Ouch, the sass hurts."

"I just…I keep telling myself he's not, but it really feels like he's avoiding me. I haven't even been to his place."

"Well, it's—"

"A shithole, I know. And he is letting me visit this weekend." He sighs. "If it was anything bad, I know you guys wouldn't still be hanging out with him but it's, I don't know."

"It just sucks to be out of the loop," Sam surmises.

"Yeah."

"Well, I think he'll be okay with me telling you it won't be for much longer. He's almost got it all taken care of."

"And 'it' is…?"

"His secret to tell."

"Course it is. Fine, I get it. I'll let it go."

"Well now, Steven Grant Rogers, letting something go. Let me write this down—"

Steve laughs. "Asshole. Pass the spoon."

After so long spent begging off Steve coming over on the excuse that his place is a shithole, Bucky being so willing to let Steve come over that weekend ahead of costume shopping leaves Steve at a bit of a loss.

"They fixed the elevator!" Bucky tells him cheerfully when Steve buzzes his apartment.

One shaky, loud, and lurching elevator ride later, Steve is both resolved to only ever take the stairs and knocking on Bucky's door.

"I thought you didn't want me here," he confesses when Bucky answers. "After that elevator, I'm sure you don't."

Bucky laughs. "Well, you did start a fight the last time. I was trying to have mercy on my neighbors."

"You're a drummer."

"And you'll notice," Bucky steps aside to let Steve in, "a distinct lack of drums in casa Barnes."

"Wow. This is…"

"A shithole?"

"A studio," Steve amends diplomatically. "And who's this?" Alpine comes trotting out from where she'd been menacing a toy felt mouse under the couch and proceeds to bonk her head against Steve's outstretched hand. "I guess you remember me. You're far too cute for him, you know that, right?"

Alpine meows in his face and he rewards her with scratches. Bucky scoffs and flops down onto his couch. "You spoil her."

Ignoring that, Steve picks Alpine up and moves to join Bucky on the couch. He pauses partway there, his eyes catching on a framed photo nestled between two cacti on the windowsill. The glass is cracked but Steve can still make out him and Bucky as kids. Bucky is absolutely beaming as he holds out a painted skateboard for the camera and Steve's got his own—shyer, but no less proud—smile on display. It's very similar to a photo that, like many that have Bucky in them, has been buried in the bottom of Steve's desk drawer for years. Maybe it's time for him to dig them out; looking at them won't hurt anymore.

Alpine shifts in Steve's arms, reminding him to move. He drops down next to Bucky. "So where are your drums? Did you get to keep them?"

"Yeah, they were mine, just had to get rid of the band logo on the bass drums."

"Bass drums?"

"Double bass, Steve. You've listened to the songs, that's not something you can do without either two bass drums or a specific kind of pedal."

Steve shakes some of Alpine's loose fur off his hand. It drifts slowly to the floor as a clump of white. "I don't think I've ever paid that much attention to the drumming."

"I'm hurt. Point being, yes I have my drums, no they're not here. I couldn't fit them and all of the stuff I had to buy for princess purr over there."

"Who's spoiling her now?"

"You, clearly."

Rolling his eyes, Steve asks, "Do you miss them? Your drums, I mean. You used to play all the time." Especially, he adds silently, at night when you couldn't sleep, which drove me nuts when I slept over.

"I still get to play whenever someone asks at Tony's," Bucky deflects. "I'll get them out soon, anyway."

"Are you moving?"

"What? No. Well," he backtracks, "maybe. Depends."

Steve lets his raised eyebrows speak for him and Bucky blows out a sigh.

"I've been eyeing a few places, nothing's for certain. But we're absolutely not talking about my real estate problems right now, got it? I'm in too good of a mood watching you play with her."

"I think she likes me more than you."

"Bull. I feed her."

"Yeah? I'll stop petting her, we'll see where she goes."

"By all means." Bucky makes a gesture for him to get on with it, so Steve does. He stops petting Alpine, picks her up, and sets her down in the tiny sliver of cushion space between his thigh and Bucky's. For a second, Alpine simply stands there, befuddled by the sudden banishment from Steve's lap. Bucky and Steve both stare at her, neither making a sound or gesture because they would instantly accuse the other of cheating if they did.

After a few seconds remarked upon only by someone's sharp laugh from the sidewalk carrying up through Bucky's window, Alpine turns and clambers up onto Bucky's lap with a plaintive meow. Triumph pours into Bucky's expression like molten gold from a ladle.

"It's only because you probably smell like food," Steve says.

"I took a shower since I last fed her."

"Then it's because I picked her up. She figured I didn't want to pet her anymore."

Bucky lifts Alpine and lets her boop her nose against his. "Sounds like an excuse to me."

Steve's willingness to argue falls apart in the face of that adorable scene. "Fine, you win. She might—might—like you more than she likes me. But that doesn't mean she always will."

"Are you going to steal my cat?"

"Pepper might."

Bucky chuckles. "Yeah, she's been," he pauses, "asking to see her a lot. Can't really bring her to work, though, food prep and Tony's place not allowing pets and all." Alpine starts batting at his metal fingers and he indulges her with a soft smile that sends butterflies through Steve's stomach. "Kinda feel bad leaving her home alone, though."

They both watch her try and fail to slay the metal digits waving in the air around her. Steve shifts closer and throws an arm across the back of Bucky's couch so he can lean in and keep petting Alpine. Bucky leans into him.

"So," Bucky says after a while, "costumes."

"Costumes," Steve agrees as though all thoughts of Halloween hadn't completely fled his mind in the face of Bucky's proximity.

"Got any ideas?"

"A few. I usually try for something art-based, like a famous painting or sculpture."

Bucky gives him a considering look. "You'd make a good David." His cheeky grin immediately after speaking lets Steve know what kind of accuracy he's expecting of the costume, so Steve rolls his eyes.

"I'd rather not get arrested for public indecency, thanks. What are you planning? The emperor's new clothes?"

"If you want us to match, sure. But no, I'm not looking to have this," he raises his left hand, dragging Alpine—who has her paws around his wrist while she tries to bite his pinkie—along with it, "in the spotlight."

"Uh-huh."

"What's that look?"

"You're not going as the Winter Soldier?"

Bucky laughs. "C'mon, that would be way too predictable. No. I'm thinking mobster. I look damn good in a suit, you know. I just need the right clothes."

"What are those, exactly?"

"Well, the classic black and white old-timey shoes. A red collared shirt, probably. Pinstripe suit. A tie, a pocket watch with a chain. I'm thinking suspenders and a fedora, too. And the piece de resistance: a tommy gun."

"Quite a list."

"I like authenticity."

"Not sure how well an authentic tommy gun will fly."

"A toy gun, you punk. I had to leave most of mine in Russia anyway." He glances at the clock while Steve trips over the most. "If I'm gonna get through that list, we should probably start shopping now. The things I've already got are the shirt, pants, jacket, and watch, courtesy of my dad's inability to throw away his dad's things."

"That's a good amount."

"But not enough. C'mon, up."

Standing, Steve realizes the problem immediately: with all the attention he was giving to Alpine, she was paying him back—in the form of dozens upon dozens of long white hairs now dusting his legs, forearms, and stomach, some in clumps that could be mistaken for cotton balls. He tries to brush some of them off with little effect.

Bucky, enduring the same, doesn't bother trying to brush it off. "I've got a lint roller or three around here somewhere. Learned that lesson real quick."

While he goes hunting, Steve looks down at Alpine, who stares back with eyes begging for more affection and a body that holds many, many more loose hairs.

Well, Steve reasons, a little more before the lint rollers appear can't hurt.

Perusing the cramped shelves of the Spirit Halloween, Bucky lets out a thrilled yes under his breath when he spots the contents of the next aisle. Hustling over, he picks up the cardboard container and looks in wonder at the cheap plastic gun encased in zip ties and warnings about choking hazards.

"Fine something?" Steve asks, catching up with him.

"Look!"

"A tommy gun. You actually found one."

"You bet your ass I did. This is perfect, I've got everything."

"I really thought you'd go for the Winter Soldier," Steve admits. Bucky hides a smile; he'd been noticing Steve lingering by every Winter-Soldier-adjacent item on the shelves, throwing glances Bucky's way as though he'd catch Bucky in the act of slipping something into the cart when Steve wasn't looking.

"C'mon, you think I'm gonna go with the thing you'd guess first? I keep telling you, I can't be that predictable."

"Yes, you can. Don't try to lie to me, you're awful at it."

"I'll have you know I can be a great liar when I want to be." Or when he's actually practiced, he adds in the privacy of his own head. He's spared from Steve pressing him on that front by the buzzing of his phone—a text from Natalia.

"What is it?" asks Steve.

"Winter Soldier spotting," Bucky answers distractedly while he scrolls through the news story she sent. "In some small underground venue with shitty lighting in…Portland?"

"I didn't know you unlocked the ability to teleport," Steve says, peering over Bucky's shoulder at the photos on screen. Bucky snorts.

"Yeah, no. Not even with the fanciest private jet I could charter on such short notice. His kit's also way simpler than mine. I am curious about that arm, though. Did they get a better picture?"

He scrolls through the article, finds a shaky phone video linked from Instagram, and pauses it when the lighting is something approaching decent.

"Well?" Steve asks. "How'd they do it? That looks accurate to me."

"It's silver and it's got the star for sure," Bucky agrees. He zooms in, biting his lip when the blown-up pixels don't offer more clarity. "Actually, no, look. His left arm is bulkier than his right."

"Is it? Oh, yeah. It is."

"Most likely, it's not a prosthetic. My money's on a cover of some kind. Yeah, look—his elbow. Even pixelated, it's too smooth. That's either body paint or a sleeve under the shell."

"Mr. Holmes, you outdo yourself."

"Can it, Watson. I know my arm's one of a kind. Anyone trying to replicate it is gonna have to use a workaround. There were some cosplayers a few times at our concerts, and honestly, it was pretty interesting to see how they tried to make it work. There was actually one guy who had an amputation below the elbow, and he used some 3D printed pieces above the joint and some modifications to his prosthetic to get really damn close. This guy, though. He must've spent days on this. No wonder it's got everyone wondering if I moved to Oregon."

"How long do you think it'll hold?"

"Not long. If anyone was really claiming to be the Winter Soldier—instead of cosplaying and letting the crowd draw conclusions—they'd have Hydra's lawyers so far up their ass they'd choke on the legal filings. But it's cool. Kinda wish someone had done it sooner."

"Why?"

"Would've thrown Tony off my scent."

"For a little while. He's a Holmes of his own when something's piqued his interest. He figured you out?"

"Uh, yeah. Yeah, he did. Maybe those could be our costumes, the detective duo. I could always do the mobster next year." As they'd been talking, they'd continued wandering the shelves, and now Bucky stops next to a couple bagged costumes.

"Detective and assistant detective," Steve reads. "Wow. How…generic."

"Drummers in Portland aren't the only ones trying to avoid a lawsuit. But yeah, these aren't great."

"I actually had an idea for my costume before you…"

"Miraculously returned?" Bucky offers.

"Before you turned up."

"Ouch. What's the art? Is it a two-person job?"

"It's not really a couple costume."

"Quit being secretive and just spit it out already."

"I don't want to spoil it, but I think I'm going to want some of that green face paint over there. Do you want any of the black paint for your eyes?"

"You really want me to dress as the Winter Soldier, huh?"

Steve smiles. "Maybe you're just a mobster who's very low on sleep."

"Sure," Bucky drawls, thoroughly unconvinced by that shit-eating grin. In retaliation, he decides to aim low. "You do remember that I gave up a million-dollar career, the place I called home for a decade, and all of the people I knew just to get out of that, right?"

Steve flushes and backpedals. "I didn't—I mean, you could wear whatever you want. Mobster, or," Steve blindly grabs a nearby bag and shoves it at Bucky, "this too, or anything else in here."

Bucky's eyebrows shoot for the ceiling as he takes the bag. What, exactly, is Steve trying to tell him with this? Very deliberately not looking up at Steve, he slowly reads the costume label: "Sexy firefighter. Axe not included. Oh, it even has an inflatable oxygen tank you can strap across your incredibly exposed chest. You know, I don't think this would do very well in a fi—"

Face bright red, Steve snatches the costume out of Bucky's hands and shoves it back on the shelf, nearly upsetting the skeleton draped suggestively over the top rack. "Never mind."

"Are you saying I wouldn't look good? Because I would."

"Forget I said anything."

"If you want me to wear less when we're out on the town, just say the word." He bumps Steve as they resume their perusal of the aisles. "I draw the line at naked. If we're taking layers away, though, I might have to stick close to you to stay warm. Just to be safe."

Steve groans and scrubs his hands over his face. "Have a little mercy, Buck," he says into his palms. Bucky grins, pulls his hands away, and presses a quick kiss to his lips before Steve can react.

"Not a chance."

Chapter Text

"How do I look?"

Peggy taps her chin, lips pursed while she takes in the full extent of Steve's costume. "You would be hard-pressed to fail in making a suit look good. Though, I admit, the apple does throw a spanner in the works."

"It's the main part of the painting!" Steve protests.

"Yes, yes, 'The Son of Man,' I'm familiar. You do paint a rather nice apple. Though you made this one off-center."

"I was going to hang one in front of my face from the hat, but I think I'd prefer to be able to see. So: your rating, ma'am?"

"As a relative score, seven out of ten."

"Relative to…?"

"Last year."

"Please let me live that down."

"Absolutely not." Peggy's eyes twinkle even through the screen. "Who helped with the makeup?"

"Natasha. She had to leave a little while ago for her shift."

"I'm sorry I missed her."

"I'm sure you'll get pictures and the like from her soon enough. I heard a rumor Clint's going as Cupid again."

Peggy's eyebrows lift. "I thought that was banned after the incident two years ago."

Steve shrugs.

"Well, I suppose you'll have to verify." Someone calls something to Peggy and Peggy's focus shifts off screen for a moment. "Yes, I'm—oh, fine." She sighs. "The night beckons."

"I don't want to keep you from your own Halloween celebrations." A glance at the clock shows it's nearly ten where Peggy is. He's definitely keeping her from the party at this point.

"Truly, I wish my area took it as seriously as yours did."

"Your costume would be the highlight either way," Steve says honestly, earning a smile. Peggy's dressed as Joan of Arc, complete with chainmail she claims has been in her family for generations, but Steve is willing to bet she sourced it from her seemingly endless list of contacts. That armor glitters in the lights of her bedroom with every breath she takes, and she is, still, even across the ocean and on a tiny screen, breathtaking.

"Try not to have too much fun," she says.

"Same to you. Bye, Pegs."

"Goodbye, Steve."

Feeling a little more reassured in his choice of costume, Steve collects his phone from where he'd set it up so Peggy could get a good look at him and straightens out his jacket one last time. Tony spent the night with Pepper and Sam has been spending the morning doing some last-minute work at the VA, meaning Steve hasn't seen either of their costumes and neither of them were around to help him with his.

On his way out he stops by the mirror and confirms the apple painted on his face with a healthy amount of makeup is still intact. Natasha made it so large that it completely covers one of his eyes. Though Steve had wanted the fruit centered as it is in the painting, Natasha had convinced him to put it off to one side.

"To avoid another Mona Lisa," she'd stated when he tried to protest, and really, he couldn't argue against that. Or her subsequent point about him ruining it the moment he sneezed.

After one last tightening of his tie, he nods at his reflection and heads for the door.

Bucky adjusts his tie and steps back from the bathroom mirror. That doesn't help much; with how tiny his bathroom is, he can still only see himself from a little below the waist up. Is the costume high enough effort? It's gotta be. He's got the toy tommy gun and everything, and after three hours of shopping with Steve the other day, he's certain Steve bought the whole idea.

Plus, Bucky hadn't been lying: he does look damn good in a suit. Maybe he should consider pinstripes more often, so long as they're tailored to the modern style and not the tent-adjacent cut his dad's family heirlooms are sporting.

If he were going for full authenticity, he'd get his hair cut and slick it back, but that's not the play if he wants to play the game right. Instead, he binds his hair up in a bun and neatly hides it under his fedora. After a moment's scrutiny, he carefully repositions the hat so it rests at a jaunty angle. Then he spends a minute smoothing out every crease in his jacket, ensuring his shirt is properly tucked in, adjusting his tie for the fourth time, and generally just tidying up.

He can almost hear Becca pounding on the door and yelling at him to get a move on so she can get in and do her morning routine. With a deep breath, he gives his outfit one last once-over. Staring at himself, he can almost believe that this'll work.

Winking at his reflection for a boost of confidence, he grabs his phone from where he'd balanced it on the edge of the sink and goes to collect his things. He's meeting Steve in front of Tony's and, because he's not messing up his look with a bike helmet, he's gonna have to walk fast to make up the extra time he spent putting on the final touches.

Alpine meows at him from beside her food bowl. Right—that other thing he's gotta do before he heads out.

"Lucky you," he says, bypassing the dry food for a can of fancy wet food, "today's a special day."

Special because it's Halloween, special because of what he has planned, special because Becca said Charlie's agreed to come to Thanksgiving and probably doesn't plan to punch Bucky on sight—Alpine can take her pick of the reasons. Not that she cares about the why, of course. She all but shoves her face into the can the second he peels off the lid. He gently pushes her back—he doesn't want her whiskers catching on any possible sharp edges—and pours the can's contents into her food bowl. She instantly loses interest in him and sets to devouring her early dinner.

"Yeah, yeah, I'll miss you too," he chuckles. He tried fitting her with a tiny little witch's costume, then with just the hat, but she'd been absolutely devious in her methods of shedding any piece of fabric he tried to attach to her. It seems she draws the line at the harness and leash. He can't fault her for it. Even so, he's going to enjoy the handful of pictures he got of her before she escaped the costumes. Some of them even managed to avoid being blurry.

After rinsing the can and chucking it into the tiny recycling bin crammed next to his garbage can, he snags his toy tommy gun and leaves.

Outside, the streets are filled for the most part by normal pedestrians. For every ten of those, though, there's someone in costume, sometimes alone but usually in a group. Bucky gets a handful of compliments on his ensemble and makes sure to dish out some of his own in return.

There's a group dressed as Hydra, which, wow. All the outfits are clearly homemade but they have serious effort behind them. Rumlow, the jackass, would be flattered by how much detail they put into his mask; Schmidt would nitpick the hell out of that skull; and Zemo would say something enigmatically insulting about the entire group. Personally, Bucky wants to compliment the Winter Soldier. He's not going to—no need to draw attention to himself—but he can appreciate the work that went into that arm. He'd put money on it being foam glued over some kind of tape cast, then the whole lot spray-painted silver and polished to a shine.

By the time he makes it to Tony's, he's worked up a decent sweat that makes him grateful for the cold breeze working its way under his jacket. It's a cloudy day, too; the perfect weather for staying inside.

Steve never did end up telling him exactly what his costume was gonna be, so Bucky's not sure what he should be looking for when he reaches the sidewalk in front of Tony's. He knows to expect a suit and some kind of green paint, but that's it. There are a number of people milling around, more groups waiting for their final members. Fortunately, Bucky's taller than most, and Steve is taller still, so that narrows Bucky's options considerably.

God, if someone told him twelve years ago that Steve would end up being taller than him, Bucky would've laughed in their face.

Speaking of faces, there's a rather familiar one hovering uncertainly under a nearby tree. Passing out excuse mes and coming throughs like candy, Bucky eases his way through the crowd, careful not to step on any costume bits trailing along the ground, and greets Steve with a punch to the shoulder.

"Hey, punk. Anyone tell you you've got something on your face yet?"

Steve grins and socks him back. "Just you, so far. Looking good in that suit."

"I could say the same." Bucky gives him a very pointed once-over, letting his eyes linger where the fabric of Steve's black suit is stretched tight. Between the suit, the white collared shirt, the red tie, the black bowler hat, and the green apple painted on his face, Bucky's pretty sure he knows what the costume is. "You're that famous painting, right? I don't know the name, but the guy with the apple in front of his face."

"The Son of Man," Steve confirms. "Putting an actual apple there didn't seem like a good idea if I'm going to be walking around in crowded spaces, so this was the compromise."

"Works for me. Should we head in?"

"Lead the way."

Bucky does lead the way, using his tommy gun to gently nudge people out of the way a couple times when they don't respond to requests to move. Once, and only once, someone tries to elbow him in revenge. Unfortunately for them, they hit Bucky's left arm. Bucky can't help a small smirk when he hears them curse.

Tony's Workshop is crowded and loud inside. Almost everyone is in some kind of costume and the tables are filling up fast now that it's open for business. Up on stage, Bucky spies his drums and can't help the way his heart skips a beat at the sight. His drums. His stage. His show.

And with Steve right there watching.

Letting the thrill of excitement put a bounce in his step, he grabs Steve by the wrist and tugs him forward.

While Steve's still taking in the chaos in front of him, Bucky seems determined to plow right on through. He takes Steve's wrist and pulls.

"C'mon, we're sitting at the front."

"What? Why?"

"It's the Halloween Bash, pal. I'm not sitting in the back at a party, you know that's not my style."

Steve rolls his eyes but lets himself be pulled through the maze of tables. As they get closer to the stage, he realizes there's something off about the equipment that's set up there. Specifically, the drums.

"Huh," he says.

"What's up?"

"Happy must've gotten new drums."

Bucky peers at the stage. "Hell of a kit."

"Yeah. It looks professional. Not to say he didn't have decent gear, I just…" He cranes a little to get a better look at the two bass drums, which are blank. "Huh. He hasn't gotten the band logo on them yet." Plus, double bass isn't exactly Tony's band's style. Maybe they're going in a new direction. Something else about the drums tickles his memory, but he can't place it, and he figures Bucky would say something if there was anything particularly special about them. That's more his area than Steve's.

"Very new drums," Bucky says sagely.

"Is that some kind of secret drummer joke?"

"Aw, sad you don't get it?" Steve elbows him. "Ow. Still not explaining. Also, that was way more of a deterrent when you had super bony elbows."

He drops into his chair before Steve can demonstrate how increased strength compensates for a lack of bony limbs. Steve contents himself with "accidentally" kicking Bucky's shin under the table while he gets situated in his own chair. From the smirk and kick he gets in return, Bucky isn't fooled.

"No footsie until I've had at least three drinks," announces Sam when he joins them.

"What," Bucky starts, before breaking into laughter. Sam glowers at him.

"You look nice," Steve manages, but his straight face collapses when Sam turns to him, and then both Steve and Bucky are going to pieces while Sam grumbles and orders a beer from Thor, who's walking by. And who also, Steve notes between gasps for air, can't hide his smile.

Thor's laugh, when it breaks free, can only be described as booming. "Truly without equal," he declares, and Sam draws himself up to his full height.

"When your sister's kids put their hearts and souls into making you a costume," he says archly, "you wear it with pride."

"Mhm," Bucky manages, before losing it again. Determined to be more mature than that, Steve sucks in a breath and tries to get some kind of hold on himself.

"You make a very nice turkey."

"I'm a falcon, asshole."

Bucky pounds the table with one hand, holding up the other in surrender while laughter continues to shake his shoulders.

"Keep that up and I'm dumping my water on your head," Sam threatens.

Both hands go up. His smile stays. "My sincerest apologies, your majestic falcon-ness."

"Damn straight." Sam drops into his seat and concedes a little by pulling down the hood of his costume; it appears most of his top half is a modified hoodie. There must be cotton balls or something stuffed inside it to get it to puff out the way it is. "What are you even supposed to be, the Godfather?"

"Mobster, so, yeah."

"And here I was hoping you'd break out your old outfit."

Bucky offers a slanted grin. "I refuse to be predictable."

"You buying this?" Sam asks Steve.

"Not a bit."

"Oh, come on," complains Bucky. "Is this costume not good enough for you?"

Steve does have to admit that Bucky cuts a very nice figure. But it's a figure not featured on any of the posters on the back wall. "It's nice enough. But it could be better."

Shaking his head, Bucky takes a drink and reclines in his chair. "How long until Tony gets this thing started?"

"Hard to say," Steve admits, "I haven't even seen him yet."

"You should compliment his costume when you do."

"Why? What's he dressed as?"

"You haven't seen it?"

"He stayed with Pepper last night, he said he had his costume there."

"He's Thomas Edison."

Steve and Sam raise their eyebrows.

"He hates that guy," says Sam.

"Yes," agrees Bucky, "yes he does. Which is precisely why Natalia worked with Pepper to swap out his costume this morning. Remember that bachelorette party a few weeks back?"

Steve nods in understanding. Sam, who isn't as familiar with the specific event but considers it entirely plausible, also nods.

"Some revenge was in order. Round one was taking the laces out of all of his shoes and boots. This is round two."

Sam makes a quiet noise of understanding and Steve almost does the same. They'd both been wondering what happened to all of Tony's footwear; the guy had been exclusively wearing slip-ons for nearly a week at one point.

"I'll be sure to comment on it," Steve says. "Did he prohibit pictures?"

"Yeah, but Clint's already got some."

"Don't count me out." Sam has his phone ready in hand. "Since you two got this fine table, I'll get some good ones when he's on stage."

Bucky grins and draws breath for another comment, only to pause when a shadow falls over him. He cranes his head back to see Natasha standing behind him, a towel thrown over her shoulder and her lips pursed to hold back a frown. Steve saw her costume earlier when she was helping him with his, but it's as stunning now at it was then: a form-fitting black bodysuit with a golden belt, a red hourglass on the buckle, and golden wrist wraps reminiscent of miniature gun barrels. In her words, "If James isn't dressing as the Winter Soldier, I can at least dress as one of his onetime allies."

Which was how Steve had discovered that Natasha read those comics. Had Clint not been committed to his recurring costume, Steve's sure he also would've found some character from the comics.

In the present moment, though, her focus isn't on the Winter Soldier but the man behind the mask. "James, I need a hand."

"Now?" he asks, a little plaintively. Nat nods, and she almost looks apologetic when she glances at Steve.

"Now. I'm hoping it'll be quick."

Steve can't help the way his stomach sinks a little. Even though the night is only just getting started and there is plenty of time to have fun later, it doesn't feel great to have Bucky taken away so soon.

Bucky, ever willing to help, sighs and stands. "It never is."

Steve sits up. "Do you want me to come with? Maybe I could—"

Bucky's already waving him off. "Nah, stay out here, enjoy yourself. Don't leave the turkey sitting alone."

Sam dips his hand in his water glass and flicks his fingers at Bucky, who laughs as he trails after Nat. Steve sinks lower into his seat, trying not to make it obvious that he's watching.

"Hate to watch him go, love to watch him leave?" Sam asks knowingly, and Steve flicks water at him.

"How are your nephews, anyway?" he asks while he wipes his hand dry.

"They're good, they're good. Love everything about the third grade. They're studying types of clouds right now, no clue why, but my sister's apparently getting an education of her own on the matter when they get home. One of their in-class projects was making a type of cloud with cotton balls, which sparked their whole interest in arts and crafts."

"Which led to," Steve gestures at the costume.

"Yeah. I can see you thinking about sketching, by the way. Don't."

"You know Clint's taken at least a dozen pictures by now."

Sam throws a glare toward the bar, where a Cupid-dressed Clint—dressed enough to avoid a workplace violation, at least—is chatting up a group of angels and devils while preparing their drinks. The glare doesn't land and he gives up with a sigh.

Tony and the rest of his band are approaching the stage. Steve and Sam offer waves, which get returned.

"Nice costume!" Steve calls over the general hubbub, earning a scowl from Tony.

"You know," muses Sam, "he doesn't look bad in a three-piece suit."

"I think the white wig and bowtie suits him."

"Yeah, but the clean-shaven look does not. Wow." The phone goes up and Tony flips them off, which nets Sam a rather nice picture that he turns his phone to show Steve. "Beautiful. This is gonna be one to remember. The light bulb in the breast pocket is a nice touch. Might even top the Mona Lisa."

"Don't be ridiculous," Rhodey comments as he walks by, having detoured to the bar for a water. "Nothing's topping that."

"For god's sake," complains Steve, for all the good that'll do.

Sam clears his throat and continues as though the interruption didn't happen. "Point being, Clint taking pictures doesn't mean I need to sit here and watch you record this majesty. At least a picture's quick."

"Then, in the interest of reference material." Steve snaps a photo, grinning at Sam's scowl. "C'mon, I'll send one sketch back to the kids. Gimme a smile."

With a roll of his eyes, Sam complies.

"Shameless, using the kids like that."

"Yup."

"I hate you."

"I know."

As they chat and the minutes tick by, Steve finds himself glancing at the kitchen more and more often. What could they need Bucky in particular for? And for this long?

"Maybe I should go check on them," he says.

Tony, adjusting his mic a few yards away, scoffs. "To do what, get in the way? You know how cramped it is back there and you're not exactly the pipsqueak you used to be."

"You never even knew me then!"

"Bucky showed me pictures."

"Oh, god. When? Why?"

"It was a down payment on our friendship, which I accepted, because I'm gracious like that." He glances behind him and gets nods from the rest of his band. Happy, Steve notes, isn't on the drums. No one is. "Well, almost time to get this party started." He taps the now-live mic a couple times, clears his throat. "Uh, testing, testing, one-two. How's the sound in the back?" A couple people raise thumbs-ups. "Great, thank you for actually responding, I hate repeating myself."

Steve's trying to get the ice in his drink arranged such that it's not gonna choke him the next time he takes a sip when he sees Sam sit bolt upright next to him out of the corner of his eye, a "Holy shit," falling from his lips a second later.

"What?" Steve looks where he's looking and promptly sits straight too, because the Winter fucking Soldier just walked onto the stage. Tony and the rest of his band are entirely unbothered, continuing to get set up like everything's normal, but Steve barely hears Sam's quiet, amazed, "He actually did it."

Jesus. Steve's seen the Winter Soldier before—in posters, videos, pictures, even the damn comics—but in person and this close he's so much more. All gleaming silver and sharp edges and black leather and icy eyes that cut through everything in his path. He moves less like a man expecting the world to move for him and more like someone who'll carve his way through anything that doesn't.

Conversation around the entire restaurant stutters and quiets in waves as more and more people take notice. The Soldier—Bucky, Steve thinks hysterically, it's Bucky—drops down behind the drums because of course those aren't Happy's drums and draws his drumsticks from the holster on his leg like knives. Then he flips and spins them.

"Showoff," Sam says, but he's staring and his fingers twitch like he wants to try it too.

Steve's fingers twitch for an entirely different reason. His sketchbook all but teleports from his bag to his lap, and wow, he's already got a pencil in hand, how about that?

"Is that really him?" someone nearby asks their tablemates, echoing similar conversations happening all around them. Anyone unfamiliar with Hydra is getting a swift crash-course. There are many hands gesturing towards the poster in the back.

"It's Halloween, dude."

"He might pull that costume off better than the real thing."

"Sure, if he can play."

Steve wants to laugh.

The Soldier's eyes scan the restaurant and Steve can't help a shiver when they find his. There's a wink, so fast Steve's not sure if he imagines it, and then the lights are dimming. The speakers come to life with a witch's cackle that travels around the room before fading out. Tony grabs his mic.

"Ladies, gentlemen, both, and neither: welcome to the Workshop's annual Halloween Bash!"

Cheers, which Steve joins in on a second late because he's too busy trying to get the shape of the Soldier's mask across Bucky's nose just right.

"I've got a spectacular and seasonally spooky night in store for all you delinquents, especially anyone who showed up in costume. You, my friends, get half off anything under twenty dollars!"

An even louder wave of cheers, and Sam's are particularly enthused.

"Just remember, I'm not liable for any flying broom accidents outside these doors, so drink responsibly. Now, some of you might be thinking I'm generous, so let me set you straight: the only person who's good enough to open at one of my parties is me!"

On the last word, the Soldier blurs into motion. The drums and simultaneous guitar chord catch everyone by surprise and more than a few people jump as Tony launches into his band's most popular song, Arc Reactor.

Anyone questioning whether the guy dressed as the Soldier is really a drummer gets the proof pounded into their eardrums. Steve, when he's able to tear his eyes away from Bucky, can see the delighted disbelief in their eyes. Backing vocals of is that really and there's no way play beneath Tony's singing.

And Steve? Steve's got a smile so big he's sure it's about to split his face in two. He leaves the pictures and video to Sam and everyone else around; there's no telling if he'll ever get another chance like this, so he draws like a man possessed. And maybe, just maybe, he spends more time staring at the Soldier than he strictly needs to.

Each song ends to thunderous applause and shouting.

"Is that really him?"

"Did you make him that arm?"

"Who is he?"

Tony smiles away all those questions and just keeps the set going. By the end, the whole place feels one missed chord away from storming the stage. For his part, Bucky is perfectly in character for the one encore song and final bow. The second he steps off the stage, though, he gets mobbed despite Tony's best efforts to act as a breakwater. Steve loses Bucky in the throng and he doesn't need Sam kicking him under the table to stand and go to help his boyfriend.

By the time he makes it to where he last saw Bucky, though, there's no sign of him. The crowd is milling in confused disappointment, but Tony manages to regain control by announcing a round of drinks from the board on his dime. And tonight, there is actually some good-quality alcohol on offer.

"Where'd he go?" Steve quietly asks Tony once the fans have drifted toward the bar.

"Happy managed to smuggle him into the back. Speak of the devil," Tony nods to the beleaguered man approaching them, "welcome back to the party."

"That was way crazier than you said it would be," Happy says. His forehead is dotted with sweat. "I got elbowed three times. Someone stepped on my shoe!"

Tony pats his shoulder sympathetically. "I'll buy you a drink. C'mon." He glances at Steve with a fiery grin. "Go get 'em, tiger."

"Don't," Steve starts, but Tony's already walking away. Rolling his eyes, Steve heads for the door to the kitchen.

He finds Bucky in the small locker room. He's still in full gear and sprawled out on his back on the single bench in the center, legs spread on either side and arms hanging down in a way that has to be straining his shoulders.

Since his eyes are on the ceiling and he isn't acknowledging Steve in the doorway, Steve shamelessly takes advantage of the moment to drink in the view. Part of him had believed, watching Bucky tear up the drums, that the Winter Soldier would lose some of his magic when removed from the stage. Now he knows better. Even lying down on a bench in a glorified storage closet, he is still really, really hot.

Bucky's gaze finally leaves the ceiling and his eyes crinkle in a way that tells Steve he's smiling beneath the mask. "Like what you see?"

"I might," Steve admits, walking closer. "You're making a guy feel special, breaking character like this. Unless the Winter Soldier's softer than he looks."

Bucky's hidden smile turns decidedly more dangerous. He swings himself up and over to stand, and in a mere moment he's crowding Steve against the wall. He's got a drumstick held in a reverse grip like a knife to Steve's throat and he's leaned in so close that their faces are inches apart.

Bucky growls something low and full of warning in Russian. Steve shivers and wishes he could speak the language; for all he knows, Bucky just ordered a cheese omelet.

This close, it's impossible to ignore the light coating of sweat on Bucky's face that's turning his face just a little shiny in the light.

Rather than try to fake his way through a response, he ignores the stick at his throat and reaches up. Bucky doesn't try to stop him when he carefully pulls the mask away to reveal lips arranged in a perfect poker face.

Another shiver hits Steve. He's good at this, he thinks, and then he smirks, because he's pretty sure he knows how to break that well-practiced composure.

Mask dangling from one hand, he leans off the wall and presses his lips to Bucky's. Bucky makes a choked little sound in the back of his throat and the light pressure on Steve's neck vanishes completely.

Smiling into the kiss, Steve tosses the mask, hip-checks Bucky to get him off balance, and then spins them both to put Bucky against the wall with a metallic bang of protest from the lockers. The drumstick had come back up to Steve's neck with the move but it's held loosely; Bucky's melting in Steve's grip. A second later and he's tossing it aside like Steve had tossed the mask so he can grab Steve's face in his hands.

"Normally," he murmurs, "kissing the guy holding a weapon to your throat gets you killed."

"You wouldn't kill me," Steve returns while he hooks his fingers under the harness across Bucky's chest to pull him even closer.

"The Winter Soldier would."

"Good thing the Winter Soldier is also James Buchanan Barnes."

Bucky's laugh is a balm on Steve's soul and his lips are a balm on the rest. Before they can get anywhere, though, Steve realizes the problem: Bucky's gear isn't exactly conducive to being stripped off.

"I guess there's no getting you out of that quickly," he says ruefully, pulling away. Bucky looks down at himself just as ruefully.

"Sorry, pal. It's a process." He glances at the clock over the door. "One I should probably start; we stay in here much longer and people might start getting suspicious. And I'm positive Tony and everyone else wouldn't want us making a mess in here."

"Want a hand?"

The grin he gets for that is sharp with promise. "How could I say no?"

Some seven minutes later, Bucky's back in his impeccable suit, his hat tipped perfectly askew but still working to hide the hair pulled up into a bun beneath it. His makeup is scrubbed off, his gear is packed nearly into a duffel stashed in one of the lockers, and his infectious smile is one hundred percent Bucky Barnes. He's even got one arm thrown around Steve's shoulders while they wind their way back to the table where Sam has been graciously holding down the fort.

A few people throw glances their way. Most, Steve knows, are just drawn to the motion of someone walking nearby. But a couple are a bit sharper than that. A bit more suspicious.

He leans up and kisses Bucky. Though surprised, Bucky returns the brief kiss before pulling away and raising a questioning eyebrow.

"Now they think they know why we were gone," Steve explains.

Bucky smiles, bright and true, and kisses him again.