Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter 1 – The Nerve

“Hey, Muscles!” some smartass shouted from down the block. “Don’t tell me you’re gonna skulk back into your place without even picking up a shovel!”

“We’re expecting at least another foot overnight,” a second wise guy bellowed. “Driveway’s not gonna clear itself!”

“He’s probably one of those gym-holes who won’t break a sweat off a treadmill,” a third member of the peanut gallery opined.

“Probably pays some hardworking schlub to plow for him.” For the love of Pete, how many of them were there? “While he slurps herbal fucking tea and rubs one out to his favorite webcam girl.”

“Nah, he’s into that green juice garbage.”

“Protein shake that’s worse than chugging chalk dust.”

“Got one of those couches look like they’ve never been sat on. In fucking ecru or something.”

“Fake-ass fireplace that don’t give off any heat.”

“Enough minimalist fucking décor to convince you he’s got taste.”

“Home gym that looks like a spaceship puked its guts up.”

“He thumbs his nose at the ‘roiders at Fitness Revolution.”

“Just drives his stupid bike through the pile of snow blocking the goddamned street!”

“The nerve of some people,” Smartass #1 concluded, flipping the bird in his direction before double-fisting his shovel.

Steve stared at his front door, key in hand, as the grumbling he wasn’t meant to hear continued, relentless, the small posse of snow-removal specialists (???) getting ever more crass and colorful with the complaints to distract themselves from the fact that it was cold as Jack Frost’s cojones and literal snowballs pelted down from the sky, with no end in sight.

An unheard-of late-November blizzard—or so JARVIS had warned him before he’d set out from the Tower—the first of the season, if not the year. Steve had been undeterred. He’d promised himself he’d never sleep another night in the out-patient sanitorium the other Avengers called home, and he wasn’t gonna let a little snow change that. Okay, a lot of snow. But his couch was enormous, well-used, and cozy as fuck, thank you very much, peanut gallery. His fireplace was real, and he had a fridge full of leftovers from some charity thing thanks to Pepper, not to mention the pizza he’d had to shove in there when the assemble call went out—

Before Steve could think it all through—not that he tended to do that, ever—he’d grabbed a hat out of his saddlebag, shoved it on his head, and trudged halfway down the block. Eight hours earlier, he’d been hunting giant venomous spider monkeys through the jungles of Honduras, sure, and he’d been looking forward to a shower, a meal, and a snooze, in that order, but he’d moved to this neighborhood to be part of a community, and he’d barely had time to shake anyone’s hand since he’d closed on his brownstone three months ago.

And these surly motherfuckers seemed like his kind of people. True to form, not one of them glanced in his direction when he planted himself at the bottom of the long seniors’ center drive they were clearing, hands on his hips in his best Captain America pose.

“Any of you jerks got an extra shovel, or what?”

Four of them stopped what they were doing and spun around to glare at him; a fifth, far in the back, manned an electric shovel, oblivious to the goings on beyond its buzzsaw growl.

“About goddamn time.” He recognized the voice of Smartass #1, who tossed his shovel at Steve—no shield, but he caught it all the same—and declared, “Cocoa break!”

Smartass #2 let out an ecstatic whoop. “I’ll drink to that.” After throwing his shovel in Steve’s direction, he pulled a flask out of the inside pocket of his puffer jacket.

“Make mine a double,” Smartass #3 chuckled as he wiped snow off his dark-red sunglasses. He dropped one of those wide push-shovels into the bank beside him, then reached out an arm. Smartass #2 jogged over to anchor it around his elbow and—oh. The man was blind.

“Someone get Barnes,” Smartass #4 suggested, before making his way over to Steve to hand him his shovel in person. “Their bark is worse than their bite, pinkie swear. Sam Wilson.” He removed his glove before shaking hands.

“Steve Rogers.”

“Huh.” Wilson smirked, called over his shoulder. “Castle, you owe me 50 bucks!”

“Believe it when I see it,” Smartass #1, aka Castle, retorted between steamy sips from a thermos.

At the far end of the drive, the man with the electric shovel killed the engine, appeared to detach it from his shoulder—what?

“Think that’s your cue, Red, White, and Blue.” Smartass #2 nodded toward the two-thirds of the drive still covered by a knee-deep blanket of snow. A thin layer had already started to accumulate on the section they’d already completed.

The crew would be in for an even longer night if Steve didn’t help out. Sarcasm aside, they seemed like a good group, and he never backed down from a challenge. After testing out which shovel suited him best, Steve got to work. And if he added some super-speed and super-strength into the mix to better show off his abilities, well, never said he was humble.

Steve did a slow strut back over to them once the drive was clear, not above a little smug. He’d postured with the best of them back in the day—he knew their type because he was their type. He wasn’t surprised to find a quartet of smirking faces when he returned, except for the background guy, who wore blackout goggles and a scarf up over his nose. And, ah, a prosthetic arm.

Didn’t take a tactical genius to understand what was going on here. Steve liked them all the more for it, these men who’d banded together to help their community despite personal health issues.

“Where to next?” Steve asked, since he doubted this was their only stop of the night.

“That’s need-to-know.” That Wilson had the devil in his eye. But he handed Steve a thermos all the same. “Think you deserve some of this, after that display.”

“Could use a refuel, yeah.” He fought not to chug the whole thermos in one draught after a first chocolatey sip. Whoever’d made it added a little cinnamon, a hint of spice, and some marshmallows at the top. Steve licked his lips, went in for a second sip, and sighed.

“Long day?” Sunglasses At Night asked.

“You can say that again.”

Smartass #2, a boyish blonde with straw-like hairs poking out of his hat, piped up. “No disrespect, guy, but what the heck is that smell?”

“It’s Steve,” he laughed. “And would you believe giant venomous spider monkey goo?”

“After the attack last year, I’d believe pretty much anything,” Smartass #1 acknowledged. “Frank Castle. I’m over on Knickerbocker and Jefferson.”

“I’m Matt,” Dark Glasses introduced himself, “and this is my partner, Foggy. We’re in the warehouse around the corner.”

“This here’s Barnes.” Foggy gestured at Background Guy, who seemed to click back into the conversation at the mention of his name. “He’s the strong, silent type.”

Despite clearing his throat twice, the man’s voice came out raspy. “Bucky. That’s… You can call me Bucky.”

“Pleasure is mine.” Steve winked, and somehow got the sense that beneath his scarf, Barnes blushed. “You all served?”

“That obvious, huh?” Wilson’s grin was wide and warm.

Steve shrugged. “Takes one to know one.”

“I’m ex-pararescue,” Sam explained. “Castle’s a Marine. Barnes was Special Forces. Matt did a stint in the JAG unit—”

“And I’m in remission,” Foggy cheekily interrupted. “Ewing’s sarcoma.” He knocked on his right hip, which resounded with a metal clang. “But Matty lends me his tags on Halloween.”

“That’s what they’re calling it now?” Castle raised a disbelieving brow.

“All right, semper fi.” Wilson shook his head. “We got eight more houses and the clinic parking lot to clear before we call it a night. You up for it, Steve?”

“With bells on.” In truth, Steve felt bone-weary and battered—those monkeys packed a serious punch—but he wouldn’t miss his chance to get in with these guys for anything in the world. They reminded him so much of the Howling Commandos that Steve almost thought himself in the winter forests of the Ardennes in 1944 instead of Cornelia Street, Bushwick, Brooklyn, in 2014. “Can I take fifteen for a shower and a sandwich? Wash off some of that monkey goo.”

Before Wilson could open his mouth to reply, the four others exclaimed, “Yes!”

That’s when Steve knew they’d get along just fine.

***

Around three a.m., after they dug out the lovely Nurse Temple’s car, who worked in the trauma ward with Frank Castle at NY Presbyterian-Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, the whole crew packed into the burrito place Steve had been wanting to try for weeks now.

“Snow Patrol!” the grill-master shouted in greeting as the owner ushered them over to a long booth at the back. No one seemed to mind when they commandeered a second booth, where they dropped all their layers and gear after they unwrapped.

And, oh, Steve was in trouble. Grateful for the size of the menu, he buried his face between the plasticized folds after shoving in next to Matt, forced himself not to gawk down at the far end of the other side of the table, where Bucky did his best impression of someone who hoped he’d be mistaken for one of the condiments lining the wall. Because even with the next-level hat hair they all sported, goggle creases in his cheeks, and beard burn from a clumsy shave, Bucky was stone-cold gorgeous.

The kind of gorgeous only found in Renaissance statues, Tom Ford-approved supermodels, and remote Scandinavian villages: sky blue eyes, chiseled jaw, petal pink lips, velvety brown locks, buttery skin even in stark November. Aggressively handsome, his features betrayed a softness that undermined their sharp angles, drew you in at your peril. Because there was no mistaking the deep trauma lurking beneath his solemn, romantic visage, the ‘Keep Out’ sign etched in the gentle wrinkle of his brow. Not even the Avengers—some of the most fucked-up people in the history of the universe—wore their wounds so openly, which told Steve that Bucky’s must be soul-deep.

So, so, so much trouble. Wounded blackbirds were exactly his type.

“Snow Patrol?” Steve asked Wilson instead, because his brain did better when it had something innocuous to puzzle out.

Sam shrugged. “What can I say? We got ourselves a bit of a reputation.”

“‘Stealing hearts and running off and never saying sorry,’” Foggy sang obnoxiously.

Steve did not understand that reference. “So this isn’t a one-time thing?”

“Going on three years now,” Matt explained. “We hit all the pain points, make sure people have clear exit routes and access to social services and facilities after a storm.”

“Elderly, mobility-challenged, single moms, that kind of thing,” Castle elaborated.

“Don’t know when being neighborly went out of style,” Sam concluded, “but we’re trying to change that. Build up the community.”

“And it’s good exercise.” Foggy gave Steve the once-over—he had not broken a sweat since his shower. “For some of us.”

“Impressive.” Steve didn’t think it was his imagination that they all straightened in their seats after he said that. They may put on a good game with the crankiness and sarcasm, but, like everyone, they secretly sought his approval. Well, they had it. “Sign me up.”

The entire crew stilled, stared at him. Even Bucky, out of the corner of his eye, looking a little spooked. Steve made a mental note to tread carefully with him.

“Or… not.” He set his menu down, met each pair of eyes directly, except for the silent beauty in the back corner. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to intrude.”

“It’s not that.” Wilson scoffed. “I just don’t think you’re ready for it.” He sat back in his seat and crossed his arms over his chest, gauntlet thrown.

“Is that right?”

“It’s a hell of a commitment,” Castle warned. “Late nights. Weekends. Long hours.”

“Accumulation’s a bitch,” Matt seconded. “Sometimes we go back in for an hour just to head back out.”

“No winter wonderland, that’s for sure,” Foggy added. “Snow, sleet, ice, freezing rain—you name it, we’re out in it.”

“And we hear tell,” Sam came in for the TKO, “you’re not much of a fan of the cold.”

Steve smirked to himself. These assholes. He saw the test for what it was—not even a test, but some sixth-grade, treehouse, ‘What’s the password?’ bullshit. They could dare him and goad him and razz him all they liked. They’d find out who they were dealing with soon enough: one of the most stubborn, shit-disturbing sons of bitches that had ever walked the streets of Brooklyn.

He couldn’t fucking wait to get to know them all better.

“So what you’re saying is…” Steve leaned back in his seat, mirrored Sam’s cross-armed pose. “You don’t think you can keep up.”

“Oh!” the crew exclaimed, though Wilson didn’t flinch.

“It’s on, Rogers,” he shot back instead. “You remember you said that when it’s twenty below and your nose hairs are forming ice crystals.”

“Been there.” Steve snorted. “Thawed out of that.”

“Or when you been scraping ice so long your shoulders spasm and your fingers go numb,” Castle contributed.

“All I hear is whine, whine, whine.” Steve mimicked a mouth yapping with his hand. “Suck it up, Marine.”

“Or when it pounds down so hard you’re breathing in ice pellets.” By the glee on his face, Foggy thought he’d scored the winning touchdown. “You’re soaked and scaly all at once.”

Steve scoffed. Amateurs. “Trying sinking into the black void of the Arctic Ocean, slow-drowning ‘cause your goddamn super-serum never says quit, healing factor kicking in every time hypothermia tries to knock you out, so that you’re watching your body freeze in slow motion, knowing you’re never going to see the sun again. Or anyone you ever loved.”

Only then did he realize the crew had gone deathly silent. Bucky turned his head away in the hopes Steve wouldn’t see how his breaths quickened, how his heartbeat pulsed at the side of his neck.

What happened to you, beautiful, and who do I have to punch to make it right?

“Fuck, Steve.” Matt shifted around to put a hand on his shoulder. “You sure you want to do this? I don’t think—”

“Let the man decide for himself,” Sam counseled.

“Like I said, sign me up,” Steve insisted, to which everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Except for Bucky, who scrubbed his face with his flesh hand and counted back from a hundred under his breath. “Only downside I see is having to deal with you punks on the regular.”

“Likewise, fuckface,” Castle snarked at him, then their regularly scheduled trash talk resumed.

As they ate their collective weight in burritos, empanadas, and tacos, Steve regaled them with the thrilling tale of how the Avengers deep-sixed the giant venomous spider monkeys, well on his way to making friends for life.

***

When the trill of his second-most important alarm echoed through the house, Steve leapt into action. The frigid early December air had been speckled with shimmery, almost invisible flakes when he got back from his run that morning, so he’d anticipated being called out sometime that day. After a thorough shower and a fortifying breakfast, Steve prepped all his gear while watching the weather network’s seasonal forecast, on which a perky brunette anchor predicted “the snowiest winter in the last thirty-five years.”

Music to Steve’s ears.

It turned out to be a lot of hurry up and wait. Having not yet been invited into the group chat, Steve depended on Sam Wilson to send out the call. Wilson guarded the formula of how the Patrol determined when to move out like it was the Colonel’s secret recipe or the technique used to get the caramel in the Caramilk bar—the scowl on his face when Steve dared to ask for a location map! But he understood, he really did. He was still an unknown quantity, and the potential for him to draw some unwanted attention their way was high. In their shoes, with so many recovering vets on the squad, Steve would have been overly cautious as well.

This, of course, only redoubled his determination to prove his worth. The Snow Patrol crew were hella fun, cranky as shit, and devoted to their community, everything Steve longed to be in this second life of his, and more. So, he kept an eagle-eye on the accumulation on his front walk all day. Wore his thermal sweats as he binged documentaries in his never-ending attempt to catch up on the nuances of world history between 1945-2011. Kept his phone within earshot but not within reach—this was key to maintaining his sanity, because there was the very real chance Wilson would not call him at all. That the crew would decide Steve had an unfair advantage on all of them, that Captain America better served them at arm’s length.

But then. Then!

Woodbine and Central, southwest corner, fifteen minutes.

Steve made it in twelve. He’d gone a bit overboard with the gear, in the hopes of seeming as normal and non-threatening as possible: a parka with a fur-lined hood, Black Diamond gloves, non-slip snow boots, and a blue-striped scarf and watch cap from the local knit-wear shop. He’d brought his own super-sized shovel, which he’d nicknamed Bettie Page, and tucked an ice-scraper in his back pocket. Best of all, he was neither the first person nor the last person to arrive. Less ideal—he didn’t see Bucky among the group packed under the short awning of a hardware store, but Steve did spy a newcomer.

“What the fuuuuuuck,” a baby-faced, auburn-haired man drawled as Steve jogged up to the crew. Sat in a tricked-out wheelchair with a shovel attachment over his legs, the guy didn’t take his eyes off Steve as he thwacked Wilson in the arm. “Samuel, what the fuck! You could have warned me that Steve was Captain fucking America!”   

“I did.” Sam’s sigh was long-suffering. “Repeatedly.”

“I thought you were fucking with me!”

“Every night you’ll have me, baby.” Sam gave the guy’s shoulder a pointed squeeze. “But not about this. Steve, meet my better half, Riley.”

“That’s quite the rig you got there.” Steve nodded at the wheelchair as they shook hands. “What kind of speed you get up to?”

“Not as fast as with you on handlebar duty.” Riley not so subtly gave him the once-over. “Whaddya say, Muscles. Wanna team up?”

“That’s some kind of record, even for you, Riles,” Foggy chuckled.

Castle snorted. “Ditched for a superhero in zero-point-five. Payback sure is a bitch, huh, Wilson?”

“I see how it is,” Sam grumbled. “I see that. I clocked it.”

“Hope that couch is cozy,” Matt teased, “and you don’t gotta pee in the night.”

“Worth it,” Riley insisted.

“Motherfucking thrill-seeking serial-flirt I married,” Sam continued to grumble under his breath. But he surrendered the chair’s handlebars with a curt bow and a wink in Steve’s direction. “Let’s get a move on, Traitors ‘R Us.”

Which was how Steve found himself as the engine to a mini-plow. They developed a system where Steve and Riley would blast through a driveway while the others cleaned up the leftover streaks and spills behind them, or took care of the walks. Riley whooped and hollered and shrieked with such glee that Steve noticed a telltale glisten in Sam’s eyes when he thought no one was looking, though Wilson kept up a steady stream of grunts and snorts, play-acting jealousy to rev his husband up even more.

By the time Steve abandoned his post to help once again dig out Nurse Temple’s car, Sam wedged himself onto Riley’s lap, and the two made out shamelessly while the rest of them did all the work.

“Someone’s getting lucky tonight,” Foggy sighed, wistful, “and it sure as heck ain’t me.”

“Shut up.” Matt batted him on the ass with his shovel. “You know damn well it is you. Storm’s tapered off, and we gotta finish that merlot before it turns.” He smirked, shark-like. “Castle, I assume you’ve booty-texted ‘You up?’ to half your contact list.”

“You know it.” It was the first time Steve had ever heard him laugh, deep and wicked. “What about you, Rogers? You got someone keeping the home fires burning, or you still pining after those pretty brown eyes?”

Matt scoffed. “Subtle.”

“That’s S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Carter to you. Put some respect on her name,” Sam berated between kisses. “Ignore him, Steve. His horndogging knows no bounds.”

“He just wants to know if you play for one of his many, many teams,” Foggy explained. “Trust me, you want to ride the bench on this one.”

“Still getting my bearings, I guess,” Steve answered anyway, since he’d always found honesty to be the best policy when you were trying to earn someone’s trust. “Peg and me weren’t ever a thing. That was all…” He shook his head, unsure of how to convey the utter shitshow being Captain America had made of both of their personal lives. “And, yeah. Seems like we’re all on the same team here, more or less.”

That got their attention. Even Sam and Riley paused their game of tonsil honkey to gawk at him.

“Well, ain’t that something.” Castle grinned from ear to ear. Terrifying. “You ever need anyone to help catch you up—”

“I can get by on my own.” Steve cut that pass off at the knees. “Not that I don’t appreciate the offer.”

Castle raised both hands in a gesture of surrender. “Open-ended.”

“Just like you,” Foggy quipped.

“Damn straight.” Castle halted, heard himself. “Well, pansexual.”

A few shovelfuls later, Castle took Nurse Temple’s car for a joyride around the block while the rest of them plowed the whole space, then re-parked it close to the curb. Having finally come up for air, Sam directed them to a basement apartment with a private entrance a couple blocks over, where they scraped the stairs clean and cleared the path to the sidewalk. He knocked on the door while the rest of them ambled toward the road.

Steve, who escorted Matt while Foggy had a tête-a-tête with Riley, forced himself not to eavesdrop, but couldn’t help but ask, “Welfare check?”

“Something like that,” Matt confirmed. “Bucky hasn’t been back all that long. Still has some dark days.”

“Barnes lives here?” Steve surveilled the windows, searching for signs of life, but the blackout curtains had all been drawn. “Should we get him something? Food or—”

“Sam’s an old hand at this,” Matt reassured him. “Runs a veterans’ support group. That’s how we all met.” And Steve must have been distracted, because he walked right into his next comment. “You should come. Tuesdays at seven, civic center at Evergreen and Grove. Worth it for Riley’s baking alone.”

Steve chuckled, mostly so he didn’t choke. “Director Fury’d probably have something to say about me spilling classified intel, cookies or no.”

Matt raised an impervious brow. “Since when d’you ever let that stop you?”

Ain’t that the truth. “I’ll think about it.”

“You do that.” Matt’s smirk rivaled the Cheshire Cat’s. “And while you’re thinking, just so you know, Barnes shows every week, without fail.”

Steve laughed at himself, caught, relieved that Matt couldn’t see his blush. And if Steve came back after they’d all gorged themselves on pizza with an extra pie, some ready meals from the local caterer, several cans of soup, and a tray of Mrs. Dillard’s brownies that he left in a cooler outside the door, well, he figured the crew would only be proud.

He heard the door creak open once he hit the sidewalk, but didn’t dare glance back.

***

The weekend before Christmas, a glass menagerie appeared one morning beyond Steve’s bedroom window. Ice encased every tree, every shrub, every structure, and every power line in the vicinity, crystalline in the weak winter sunlight. Still itchy and windburned from the freak sandstorm that hit Dakhla while they fought an army of scarab-bots the day before, the freezing rain had come as some relief when the quinjet deposited him on his roof in the wee hours of the night.

Now, roused by the rumble of the backup generator kicking in, Steve pressed his forehead to the window and let out a low groan. Even super-soldiers needed a solid eight hours to recover from extreme battle fatigue. But Steve’s phone hadn’t pinged—he’d checked first thing—which meant the Snow Patrol had seen the news and decided to go it alone—not acceptable.

Steve reheated his entire store of high-protein, high-flavor breakfast sandwiches and filled a fleet of thermoses with freshly brewed coffee as he geared up, grateful to his eidetic memory for being able to recreate every crew member’s order (and also that they’d decompressed at Bonnie’s Cafe the week before.) As he packed everything up, Steve’s agile mind turned to strategy—specifically, where the Patrol might be. Wilson still hadn’t shared the map with him, possibly anticipating just this kind of scenario—which touched Steve, it did.

But it was also stupid inconvenient and unnecessarily obnoxious. Who did Wilson think he was dealing with here? He had to know Steve would scour every street in the vicinity, ice-slick or no. He had steel-tipped cleat covers for his boots, for fuck’s sake. Nothing would stop him from catching up with them.

Except: wrong. Twenty minutes later, while Steve half-sneaked, half-skated down the alley behind the family clinic, a black-clad, begoggled figure came out of nowhere to block his path. Steve performed an Olympics-worthy pirouette to avoid colliding with Bucky, skidding to a halt a hairsbreadth from the gloved hand he held up. Like the brat he was, Steve wanted to peck the center of Bucky’s gloved palm.

He didn’t.

“No,” Bucky stated, in a monotone that made Steve’s balls shrivel and tingle at the same time.

“No?” He tried the innocent routine. “I brought breakfast sandwiches. Extra gooey, with tons of bacon.”

Bucky didn’t have enough face exposed to have an expression, but Steve caught the strong stench of disapproval. “Leave the sandwiches, take a powder.”

“Then I don’t get a sandwich,” Steve whined.

“I’ll get Wilson to bring something over.” Was that a hint of exasperation? Steve slurped up these little insights into Bucky’s mood like a strawberry shake. “Go back to bed.”

“I’m not tired.”

“The rings under your eyes have got rings, Rogers.” He definitely heard a huff of breath that time. “And you probably got sand where the sun don’t shine. Have a bath. And a snooze. You’ll get the next one.”

“I’ve got this one.”

“You got butt-rash on your cheeks worse than my baby niece.”

“That’s windburn!”

“Exactly.” To his eternal surprise, Bucky pushed into Steve’s personal space until he could see the faint outline of his eyes—his gorgeous, gorgeous eyes—through the black goggles. Steve hadn’t realized they were nearly the same height. Still didn’t make Bucky any more intimidating. Steve fought supervillains on the regular, after all. “Go. Home.”

Steve stared into the dark, indiscernible pools of Bucky’s eyes for several heartbeats—he didn’t think he imagined the little sparks of tension crackling in the air between them—then smiled. Genuine. It meant a lot that Bucky was looking out for him like this.

“Kind of you to worry, Buck.” The little gasp at the nickname made everything worth it. “But if my team’s in the shit, then I’m right there with ‘em. Leave no walk unsalted and all that.”

Bucky continued to glare at him for thirty looooong seconds—Steve may have counted—then seemed to deflate more than stand down.

“Fine.” He sounded more than a little pouty. Steve itched to yank his scarf down to find out. “Your funeral.”

Fortunately, Steve got a warmer welcome from the rest of the crew.

“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” Wilson drawled as he refilled the salt dispenser they’d attached to Riley’s chair.

“Don’t think the beauty sleep took, Rogers,” Castle quipped, as he flipped his portable ice-scraper in one hand. “Looks like someone used one of these on your face.”

“Might want to add sunscreen to your go-bag,” Foggy added. “Don’t have the complexion to go dune-surfing. Take it from someone who knows.”

Man, he’d missed these assholes.

“Yeah, yeah, har, har.” Steve dumped his backpack on Riley’s legs, then started distributing the sandwiches. The crew gathered around them like pigs to the trough. “You try moisturizing in the middle of a sandstorm.” He tugged down his scarf to show them the blue lightning streak scarring the side of his neck. “And those fuckers burrowed under the skin.”

“Sure that’s not a widow bite?” Riley leered up at him. “That Red’s got something of a reputation.”

“Yeah, for garroting people with her thighs.” For the strong, silent type, Bucky was unusually loquacious today.

Steve raised a pointed brow in his direction. “You know Natasha?”

He shrugged. “Seen her in action, once.”

Steve let that ball drop when no one from the crew caught it up. He’d learned the rules to their verbal hacky-sack game by now—a whip-smart group with quicksilver instincts, if they failed to volley something back, there was a good reason. Instead, he watched them all devour their sandwiches and down their coffee, feeling strangely grounded among them, despite everything in their neighborhood—and their lives—being so slippery.

Armed with an ice-chopper and full stomach, Steve and the rest of the crew waddled along to the next house while Sam and Riley spread salt on the last driveway. Much to his own dismay, he fell back to the rear beside Foggy, his energy not quite back despite the good company.

“Matt decide to sit this one out?” he asked as they navigated the dips in the sidewalk.

“No, he’s up in Albany.” Foggy’s smile couldn’t be read as anything but fond. “Not his first time arguing in front of the Court of Appeals, but he likes to have his ducks in a row. Our associate is up there with him. Otherwise—”

“You’d have been on the first train up,” Steve guessed.

Foggy chuckled, caught. “He’s got his special cane. And they didn’t lose power up there. He says he’s fine, but…”

“Need to see for yourself.”

“Something like that.” He bit the corner of his lip, probably deciding how much he wanted to share. Steve recognized that he was still something of an unknown quantity. “I’m still on medical leave, getting my strength back. Came real close to…” Foggy swallowed hard, rallied. “No time to waste, and all that.”

Steve nodded. “Don’t gotta tell me.”

“Yeah.” Foggy let out a soft, breathy laugh of realization. “Guess I don’t.”

“You should go up, after this,” he counseled. “See him in action. Not every day you get to argue a case like that, even if he’s done it before.”

That made him smile. “I think I will. Thanks, Steve.” He fell silent as they navigated a tricky turn around an ice-covered pile of snow, then added, “You’re really everything they say you are, huh? The ultimate decent guy.”

“Nah,” Steve dismissed, like he always did. Because what did you say to that? “I’m ninety-five pounds of fury packed in an oversized meat suit. The rest is just propaganda and assumptions.”

Foggy opened his mouth to object, but they’d arrived at the next driveway. Before anyone could start in on the ice, Steve raised a hand to halt them all, then slid over to the center.

“But the powers do come with a few cool party tricks.” Steve raised the chopper, angled it just so, then slammed it down on the ice. Cracks streaked out to the far edges in a spiderweb pattern, the impact forcing some chunks to pop out and slide down to the sidewalk. He arched a brow in Bucky’s direction, unable to stop the smug from overtaking his features. “Still want me to call it a day, Barnes?”

“Punk,” Bucky grumbled under his breath, then set about scraping like his life depended on it.

*

Even with Steve’s souped-up Zamboni routine, the Snow Patrol didn’t crawl back home till after sunset. With the power still out in most of the borough, there’d been tons of people to help: check-ins on their elderly friends, supplies to neighbors with kids or mental health issues, one very pregnant woman to the hospital, a firetruck with a busted tire, teens with the bright idea of surfing the local skate park—one with a busted head, two with broken legs. Castle, who Steve discovered was a paramedic, got called in early for his shift; they escorted Foggy to the train station.

Steve invited everyone else back to his place for burgers, unable to stand the idea of them in dank, frigid apartments when he had the generator, no matter how next-level exhausted he felt. Sam manned the grill and the fryer while Steve chomped his way through a tall plate of hastily assembled sandwiches, desperate to refuel after a long-ass day. After making him promise to hit the hay as soon as they were done with dessert, Riley and Bucky discovered Steve’s mega-deluxe entertainment system. Their ultra-vulgar, increasingly colorful insults filled the air, along with a lot of beep-bop-boop-vroom-screech, as they played something called Gran Turismo. He chuckled to himself between inhaling PB&J triangles and chopping up veggies for the salad.

He hadn’t ever seen Bucky smile before. The sight of his handsome face bright with elation, the adorable way he scrunched his nose when he laughed stirred up something in Steve that he couldn’t quite explain. A deeper appetite, sure, but this was something more.

Instinctive. Protective. Primal.

“What’s his story?” he found himself asking Sam, even though he knew better than to pry. The combined noise of the grill and the video game would block out their conversation, if not Sam’s disapproval.

“Barnes?” To his surprise, Sam did not object, just shot a rueful glance his way. “POW.”

Shit.

“How long?”

“Does it matter?” And with that, Sam drew his line in the sand. He wouldn’t give Steve specifics. “He’s doing the best I’ve ever seen anyone with that kind of trauma do, which means he’s hiding a whole lotta hurt on the days he can leave the house. We’re doing all we can for him, but…"

“Yeah.” Steve understood all too well what an Everest Bucky still had to climb, if he made it at all. “He got family?”

“A sister in Florida.” Sam flipped a few burgers. The smell made Steve’s mouth water despite the ache in his chest—stupid insatiable body. “But she’s got three little ones, can’t make it up here too often. Barnes can’t really do planes. Matt and Foggy drove down with him for a few weeks last September when Foggy’s doc recommended some sunshine, but they said it was rough going.”

Steve scoffed, only too aware of how things might have gone. “Let me guess, she wants him to be better more than she wants to listen to him; he tries too hard when he’s with her, crashes even harder after.”

He smirked. “You got a degree in psychology the history books missed out on?”

“Just an open ear and a lotta charity gigs for veterans’ causes.” Steve mashed another sandwich into his maw. “And a childhood being sick and scrawny and full of spite. My ma was a saint.” He chewed thoughtfully for a moment, made a decision that wasn’t a decision at all. “Leave it to me. I got him.”

“Oh, you do, huh?” Sam snorted. “Two years I spend prying open that shell, and this one thinks he can just tickle under his chin and ask for the pearl.”

Steve chuckled to himself. “Gonna ask real nice, Wilson. No tickling involved.”

“And what if he doesn’t want your ‘help’, hmm?” Sam piled the burger patties onto the plate as he shot an expectant scowl Steve’s way. “Or are you not going to bother getting his consent at all?”

“I’m all about consent,” Steve reassured him. He’d read all of those S.H.I.E.L.D.-approved pamphlets cover-to-cover. He sobered as he added, “He needs a friend. Someone in his corner, no matter what. I’m all over it. Can do it all day.”

“Bold words.” But something he’d said must have impressed Sam, because he leaned over meet Steve eye-to-eye. “Prove it, Spangles, or you answer to me. And I don’t play when it comes to my crew.”

“Neither do I,” Steve insisted through grit teeth. “Got a pretty good track-record, too. Howlies all survived the war to die old and happy in their beds, and Peg’s going on ninety-five.”

That got him to back off, and also a sorrowful frown for Steve’s trouble.

“One day, Rogers, you’re gonna say something that doesn’t break my goddamned heart.” Sam exhaled a blustery breath, slapped him on the back. “I look forward to it.” Before he could reply, Sam shouted to the gamers, “Burgers are up!”

“Thank fuck.” Riley tossed his controller onto the couch in surrender. “Never play someone with his level of hand-eye coordination,” he advised Steve as he rolled over to the table.

“Oh, I think the Cap here could give Barnes a run for his money,” Sam opined, after setting the meat down amidst the starving dogs.

In the rush to claim his share, he almost missed Bucky say, “Captain I Throw a Giant Frisbee Around For Kicks?” His scoff did things to Steve’s insides he wasn’t ready to talk about yet. “I could take him.”

“You definitely could,” Steve conceded. “Clint bought me that thing so he could play whenever he came over. The couple times I tried, I ended up cracking the controller in half.”

Sam put his burger down, tapped a hand over the left side of his chest. “Every damn time, Rogers. Every damn time.”

“Who the hell’s Clint?” Bucky grumbled into his fries.

“You know, Hawkeye,” Riley supplied. “With the bow and arrow.”

“Wood sticks to a gunfight?” Bucky’s grimace made it clear what he thought of Clint’s abilities. “Fuck that guy.”

“Can’t be that bad if he’s a pal of Steve’s,” Riley countered.

“Colleague,” Steve filled in, pleased when that earned him a lopsided smirk from Bucky.

“Barnes here was a sniper before he joined Special Forces,” Sam explained. “Set up shop on the Williamsburg Bridge during the Battle of New York in case any of those ships swung toward Brooklyn.”

“Wish I’d known about that.” Steve attempted to tamp down how impressed he was. “Could’ve used the support.”

“Stupid,” Bucky hastened to object, shaking his head. “Couldn’t figure how to get down afterward. Dropped a perfectly good rifle in the drink.”

“Bet that doesn’t happen with a bow and arrows,” Riley teased. A clank sounded as Bucky kicked his chair under the table.

Steve snorted. “You’d be surprised.” He appreciated Bucky’s soft chuckle as much as the ten o’clock shadow he sported this week, the only lingering sign of his recent depressive episode.

After a bit of pensive mastication, Bucky rasped, “We’ll get you a light gun, Steve. The latest version of Resident Evil. Target practice.”

Steve had no idea what any of that meant, but he smiled all the same. He’d already cleared some invisible hurdle if Bucky made plans for him without any provocation. Super-instincts: one; Sam Wilson, nil.

“But you’ll still kick my ass,” Steve volleyed back, enjoying this game way more than anything virtual.

Bucky glared at him across the table, a faint ember kindling in his eyes. “Duh.”

End of Chapter 1

Chapter Text

Chapter 2 – Shock and Awe

Steve got to witness Bucky’s impressive sniper skills firsthand a week or so later. Over the past while, the weather had gone all “four seasons in one day”, the ice melting into spring-like conditions just in time for Christmas Eve, then chilling down around Boxing Day, and now, on New Year’s Eve-Eve, snow. Of the soft, fluffy, picturesque variety, which had Steve wondering if the Patrol would even deploy. But by late-evening, enough of a cover accumulated that Sam judged it worth doing a first pass, if only to avoid a double-load the next morning, which meant getting up extra early and interrupting his pre-party beauty sleep.

An hour in, and the crew still wouldn’t let up on him about it.

“Sure you shouldn’t be in a balaclava or something, Wilson?” Castle teased, when the snow began to fall in earnest. “Keep those dewy cheeks of yours moisturized.”

“Frost is a heck of an exfoliant, just sayin’.” Foggy tapped his own cheeks in demonstration. “You wish you had pores this size.”

“Tiny and tight, babe.” Matt somehow leered even behind dark glasses. “Just like your ass.”

“You haven’t seen the round brown in all its magnificence.” Riley scoffed. “If you had, you’d know plump and juicy is where it’s at.”

“Preach!” Sam exclaimed.

“Just like America’s ass over there.” Riley mimed squeezing Steve’s posterior.

Steve blushed several shades of crimson.

“Hey!” Sam protested.

“What?” Riley smirked, sly. “I got eyes.”

“Does Steve have a nice ass?” Matt asked Foggy, not-so-sotto voce.

“Steve’s got an exceptional ass.” Castle winked flirtatiously in his direction, still trying to make that happen. “Face ain’t half-bad either. Someone definitely got his beauty sleep.”

“Call me after you’ve taken a seventy-year cat nap,” Steve snarked back, “then we’ll talk.”

“Maybe Barnes could lend you a pair of goggles,” Foggy playfully suggested to Sam. “Sure haven’t hurt him none.”

“I’ll say,” Steve seconded. And, whoop, that just slipped out.

He wasn’t sure whether the crew decided to ignore it or was too preoccupied with nagging Sam to notice, but Steve was grateful either way. Bucky, who worked his arm-blower attachment along Old Mr. Chervinski’s winding front porch, stilled for a second, did a five-point check of his surroundings—a nervous tic of his Steve had noticed before—then continued on.

“Bunch of orphans and introverts trying to tell me my business,” Sam grumbled. “Y’all just don’t know. Me and my boo honey about to get our grooves on. We about to be the lives of the partaaay. And if you learn one thing about me today, it’s that I will do anything, anything to look my best for my man.”

“That’s right, baby,” Riley cooed, lifting his chin for a smooch, which he emphatically received.

Castle rolled his eyes. “Then why you out here, Wilson, instead of catching Zs? We could have covered for you.”

“Because I don’t let my brothers down,” Sam informed him. “Even if you are a bunch of—"

“Not an orphan or an introvert, so don’t start that shit again,” Foggy interrupted. “And the only way to party is Brooklyn Irish-style.”

“Whiskey once the Guinness’s done and someone playing The Rose of Tralee on a fiddle in the corner?” Steve queried.

“Knew you were good people, Steve.”

“Oh, great,” Castle sighed. “Another morose, pale-faced motherfucker to drag me to the dingiest pubs in Bushwick.”

Steve scoffed. “Who said you were invited, pal?”

“Game over.” Matt whistled, long and low. “Three strikes and you’re out, Castle.”

“Fun fact,” Riley quipped, pointing a thumb at Frank, “both loonies and Goonies never say die.”

“And which of our fine escort services will be providing your entertainment for the night, hmm?” Foggy had a tendency to not let things go, Steve noticed.

“That’s his way of asking who’s gonna watch your balls drop tomorrow.” Bucky startled them all by wafting, ghost-like, into the space at Sam’s side.

Steve was only mildly ashamed of the stupid smile that brightened his face at the chance to interact with him again. Since they’d all finished their portions of the drive, they trudged over to the senior’s center in one ramshackle, snow-speckled herd, with Sam and Riley as their guiding shepherds. He attempted to maneuver his way close to Bucky, but needn’t have bothered. Bucky fell in at his side, the shadow to his sparkle.

“Taking my grandma to play the slots in Atlantic City, you fucks,” Castle sneered. “It’s tradition.”

Half of them ‘Aww’d’ and half of them grimaced.

“Stay away from the seafood buffet,” Matt advised.

Castle scoffed. “What, I look like an amateur over here?”

“How about you, Steve?” Riley craned his head around Sam’s torso to meet his eyes. “You tripping the light fantastic at the Stark New Year’s bash?”

“Not that much of a sucker for punishment.” Steve’s smile doubled in wattage at Bucky’s faint snort. “I’m on call.”

He did not anticipate their collective groan, but he didn’t mind it so much, either. They cared. It was kinda sweet.

“What’s that involve?” Sam had his therapist frown firmly in place, damn it. He wouldn’t see out the year without giving Steve another hard-sell about joining their veterans’ group. “You in the Tower all night?”

“In the booth, yeah,” Steve conceded. “Monitoring the satellite feeds and the news wires. Sending out the assemble alarm if something looks like it’s gonna escalate, organizing the first-response unit. Tactical decisions. That sort of stuff.” At Sam’s head shake, he added, “Better me than someone with a family.”

“Don’t remember hearing about any of the Avengers being boo’d up except for Stark,” Sam countered.

“Thor’s got that astrophysicist,” Riley reminded him.

“Word on the experimental treatment campus is that Dr. Betty Ross is back in town,” Foggy sing-songed.

“Is it true that a smokeshow like Romanoff is knocking boots with Clint Barton, of all people?” Castle asked outright.

“Classified.” Steve didn’t like to pull that card, but needs must.

“Goddamn it.”

“And it’s the Avengers support ops team I’m filling in for,” Steve assured them. “Morse and Hill just had a baby. It’s her first New Year.”

“Hope they appreciate Captain fucking America doing them a solid,” Bucky groused, for his ears alone. The rest of the crew just nodded, grumpy but satisfied.

They fanned out to their usual starting lines when they arrived at the center. Steve congratulated himself on choosing the section closest to Bucky’s, which gave him a small travel window for a private conversation.

“The booth is, uh, sound-proof,” he stammered, all his usual confidence evaporating when Bucky turned his glassy goggle eyes in his direction. “If… If you needed somewhere to hide out.”

He desperately wished he could read Bucky’s expression. Doing this now had been a horrible idea.

“Thanks, but…” He pointed a gloved finger down the block. “Claire… Nurse Temple…”

“Ah.” Steve felt gut-shot. It hadn’t even occurred to him that Bucky might be straight, let alone have someone. “Roger that.”

“No, s-she…” he stammered. “It’s called Quiet New Year. Board games and punch and Puerto Rican food. Her husband’s a vet. Basement’s reinforced.”

Steve still couldn’t quite find his smile, though he did feel some relief. “Sounds fun.”

“You’d be welcome, too, but…” Bucky bowed his head, sheepish. “The Tower, all those people… I couldn’t.”

“You’re right.” Unable to help himself, Steve gripped a hand on his shoulder. Bucky startled a bit, then leaned into it. “I didn’t think it through. But I’ll know for next year.”

Bucky nodded, mostly to himself, then murmured, “Next year.”

In the second before they broke apart, a round, icy projectile landed smack-dab between Steve’s shoulder blades. He spun around before any of them could blink, fists up.

“Quit slacking over there!” Castle, that epic shithead, shouted. “This is Snow Patrol, not a sewing circle.”

And that was when Steve decided he needed a little schooling from someone older than his slots-loving grandma. “Big talk from a guy who couldn’t darn a sock to save his life.” After scraping some snow off the side of the center, Steve lobbed a fat, wet one at the back of Castle’s head. The resulting smoosh left the whole back of his hair soaked, uncovered by his newsboy cap.

His shriek of shock was the best, though.

“Unfair!” he bellowed, stabbing his shovel into a nearby bank and digging into the powder. “Unfair advantage. You’re super!”

“Bullshit,” Sam declared. “I bet Steve could’ve taken you any day of the week and twice on New Year’s even when he was knee-high to a grasshopper.”

“Those sound like fighting words, Wilson.” Matt dropped his shovel cold, held out a hand to be armed with one of Foggy’s hastily made snowballs. “You wanna watch that mouth of yours.”

Having scoped out the area, Bucky dragged Steve behind the access ramp and began stockpiling ammunition.

“What I want is a rematch, Murdock,” Sam ominously retorted. “Didn’t end so well for you last time.”

“No faces,” Matt growled. “No icicles. Everything else is fair game.”

“Including this!” Riley wheeled around behind Foggy, jammed a snowball up the back of his jacket.

Foggy squealed. “You dirty, conniving little shit!”

“Battle fucking stations, people!” Castle bellowed, taking refuge behind a hedge. “This is not a drill!”

They broke off into pairs, except for Castle, who decided to go it alone: Sam and Riley, Matt and Foggy, Steve and Bucky. The seniors center grounds and garden became their battlefield, with the benches on the front stoop declared neutral ground for anyone who needed a time-out or who tapped out of the game.

Steve drew Bucky back to a more defensible position behind a tall row of cedars—thrilled a little inside when Bucky vigorously nodded his approval of the space—before the others penetrated the garden. Matt and Foggy went around the far side of the building to set up shop—not the worst idea, tactically, given that Matt’s hearing would be his best asset. Sam and Riley chose the opposite strategy, parking themselves in the gazebo where they could see attackers from all sides. Castle, being Castle, opted for the most aggressive approach, jamming as many snowballs into his pockets and hood as could fit, then preying on each group one by one. In a fit of mad inspiration, he grabbed one of the trash lids to use as a shield.

“Taking a page from your playbook.” Bucky crouched low to the ground to watch their opponents’ movements between the trunks of the trees. “Smart.”

Steve huffed. “Two can play at that game.” He retreated all the way to the back wall, hopped up, then lifted a snowball-armed hand high above his head. “How’s my angle?”

“Tilt thirty-eight degrees northwest.”

“Copy that.” Steve made the adjustment, lobbed the snowball so high in the air, Castle wouldn’t be able to track what direction it came from before it smacked him in the—

“Motherfucker!”

“Impact,” Bucky snickered into his scarf. “Try Wilson, seventeen degrees due south.” He pointed to give Steve a reference. “Think you can thread it through the roof gables?”

Steve snorted. “Who you talking to here?” He listened closely for the whizz of enemy fire as Sam and Riley tussled with Castle. Just when Sam thought they had the advantage, Steve pelted one through the trees.

“America’s Asshole is right!” Sam howled, while Riley collapsed into a fit of giggles.

“Gave away our position,” Bucky grumbled, though Steve could hear the amusement in his tone.

“Meh, inevitable.” Steve stripped off his outer layer, wrapped it around his torso like a baby carrier and filled it with snowballs. “Let’s make this interesting. Direct attack, blitzkrieg-style.”

Bucky shot a dubious look over his shoulder, then moved to join him. “Don’t you mean shock and awe?” He added some of his own artillery to Steve’s stores. He also scowled at the thin sweater Steve now sported. “Thought you hated the cold.”

“Yeah, but I run hot.” Steve hoped he managed to make that sound flirty.

“Of course you do.” He got the sense Bucky rolled his eyes. “On your six.”

Those three small words probably shouldn’t have gone straight to Steve’s cock, but then everything about Bucky Barnes was unprecedented. He presented his fist for a bump. Bucky huffed in mock-annoyance, but knocked knuckles with him all the same. Steve really, really wanted to yank that scarf down for a kiss.

Instead, he prowled over to the far side of the line of cedars. Behind him, Bucky repositioned himself directly across from the gazebo, at optimum height for chest-hits on Riley. Steve couldn’t fault that strategy—Sam would always prioritize Riley’s wellness over his own.

He did so at that very moment, circling around him as he stared out into the midnight gardens while Riley packed balls of snow between his mittens. With both of them well-bundled against the cold, it would take a bombardment to get them damp enough to beg off. Using every last drop of his super-stealth, Steve crept behind the trunk of a sizeable oak, waiting until Sam stepped in his direction, then bolted to the far side.

Sam whirled around, shot wide, unable to keep up his with super-speed—enough distraction for Bucky to hit him twice on the back of the neck, Riley in the shoulder and chest.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!” Riley yelped. “They’re double-teaming us!”

Steve pelted them with loose, slushy balls for maximum soak. Bucky charged in from the other side, going for their legs and arms to stop them shooting back. Sam cursed a blue streak as he struggled to defend his side; Riley whooped and cheered, tickled at being in the fray.

“Why are you always like this?!” Sam growled, when Riley waved the end of his scarf in surrender.

He clicked his tongue and replied in a fond tone, “Samuel, it’s supposed to be fun. When else am I gonna get to see Captain America in action?”

“Oh, you ain’t seen nothing yet,” Steve bragged.

Not having enhanced hearing, the others hadn’t clocked Matt, Foggy, and Castle’s little coalition rounding back to the senior center’s drive to come at them from a blind angle. Which, very crafty—probably Matt’s negotiating skills at work. But Steve had some skills of his own, namely the ability to leap up the side of the building, race across the roof, and drop down behind them before anyone could react to the sound. He nabbed Castle’s trashcan-lid shield off his arm as he somersaulted over them, tossing off a few snowballs before landing in a crouch, protective shield up as the trio let loose.

“Show off,” Bucky deadpanned, on his six as promised. He pressed in so close Steve could feel his hot exhalations on the back of his neck, waited until Steve lowered the shield a smidge, then threw fierce. Even one-armed and with sub-optimal ammo, Bucky never missed—and softballs Steve attributed to Bucky’s kindness, like when he clipped Matt on the shoulder instead of the chest, though he had the ‘kill’ shot.

Since they were a bunch of stubborn fuckers who knew no quit, the fight soon descended into a wild free-for-all, which petered out when Riley begged Steve to backflip off the roof again. He obliged, mostly to let everyone surrender with their dignity intact. He continued to perform any and all requested ‘stupid Steve tricks’ all the way to the Vietnamese restaurant, where they slurped steaming bowls of pho and relived every moment of their epic, glorious battle.

That Bucky shoved into his side of the tiny booth unprompted and took it upon himself to doctor up Steve’s pho with ‘the correct’ mix of sriracha and lime he considered the real win of the night.

***

Sometimes the Avengers saved the day. Sometimes they turned an impossible situation into a workable one. And sometimes they ate a triple-portion of humble pie because the massacre happened before they could get boots on the ground.

It had been a bad one. For Steve, the worst so far in this century, comparable to the one concentration camp liberation he’d participated in during the war. He’d have done another seventy years of hibernation instead of bearing witness to the atrocities committed in the name of power and control—and it was always, always power and control, no matter what territory rights or religious privilege or righteous vengeance the evildoers claimed to excuse mass starvation and bloodshed.

He couldn’t shake it off. Not after two weeks in the field. Not after the cleanup he, Wanda, and Natasha had stuck around for. Steve drove Clint nuts on the flight home, asking for weather reports, begging the gods for snow. He needed trash talk and filthy innuendos and competitive streaks a mile wide. He needed his crew.

By the time he pulled the bike up to his brownstone, Steve’s shivers had the shivers. Since they’d already debriefed on site the week before, Steve took off the second his feet hit the tarmac, without bothering to change into his winter leathers, thinking the arctic windchill and sub-zero temps would revive him somehow. Jump-start his aching heart.

The sight of his driveway cleaned and salted, same as his walk, in the snow-removal version of military corners, just about broke him. He marched up to the front door anyway, like the good soldier he was, waiting until he kicked through two weeks’ worth of flyers and a note from Sam—You better text me the second you’re back, jackass—to scream his lungs out. Then he pounded three protein shakes in a row, because the field rations Bruce designed for their enhanced metabolisms were bullshit.

Only then did Steve notice the time: Tuesday, 6:30 PM.

Fuck.

He took the time to shower and change because no one deserved to smell him like this, friend or no, and the uniform would be an advertisement all its own. Steve bundled up for the walk over to the civic center, hoping he could slip in anonymously at the back. He just needed to see them, he told himself. He didn’t want any pity, or to unload—just to remember there were good, selfless people in the world. The fact that they were all collected in one place? Bonus.

Sam clocked him the second he entered, his chair angled so he could monitor the door. They sat in a circle—of fucking course—but there were people enough that they added a second row behind the inner circle, which was only half-full. He spotted various crew members immediately: Riley beside Sam, Matt and Foggy together a few seats down, Castle across from them. Steve almost collapsed in gratitude when Sam didn’t make a fuss, just ushered him toward an empty section with the jut of his chin while he continued to give his full attention to the woman who shared her story.

Not a word of which penetrated Steve’s relief bubble. He let his mind go blank, let his shoulders sag, let his breaths even out. His gaze flickered from friend to friend—Sam, Riley, Castle, Foggy, Matt; Castle, Matt, Foggy, Sam, Riley—their sage faces a Mount Rushmore of compassion, concern, care. He watched them, and the images of gore and grief receded from his mind. He watched them and felt the blood pump through his veins with new vigor, reminding him how lucky he was to be alive.

A rustle at his eight o’clock woke him from this trance. Steve angled his head, peered out of the corner of his eye. Cursed himself when he realized he hadn’t even noticed Bucky lurking in a shadowy alcove beside the snack table, half-hidden by a stack of chairs, hood drawn so far over his head that only the flints of his eyes glinted through. The others, Steve assumed, knew Bucky’s ways and let him be.

But, as established, Steve was a selfish son of a bitch, and right now he wanted nothing more than for Bucky Barnes to linger inside his perimeter.

The woman’s testimony segued into snarky discussion, anything to cheer a fellow vet up. Steve used this distraction to move his left hand over the seat beside him, the one closest to the aisle. He gave it a soft pat, waited.

Nothing, damn it.

He tried again when Sam redirected the conversation with a few bits of advice for the group, hoping their collective concentration would do the trick.

Bingo.

Bucky somehow managed to slide into place in the millisecond Sam’s attention was directed to the far side of the circle. Bucky knocked their knees together in acknowledgement of Steve’s presence, then—to Steve’s never-ending surprise—kept up with the manspreading so that their legs pressed together, mid-thigh to mid-calf. As far as grounding methods went, Steve preferred this one to anything else he’d ever experienced. He shut his eyes, lost himself in that touch, in that connection, until Sam invited someone else to share.

Steve didn’t pay any more attention to this second testimonial—he was here, really here, with Bucky Barnes as his anchor to the moment—until Bucky’s heartbeat kicked up. Steve felt like the worst, the nastiest, crustiest piece of shit frozen into an otherwise pristine lawn, because now Bucky couldn’t retreat without everyone seeing him. As the story went on, Steve tuning in enough to hear words that iced his veins like “captive,” “hunger strike,” “black hood,” and “scythe,” Bucky began to pant. Inaudibly at first, for Steve’s ears only, then wide enough for Riley to glance over and grab Sam’s hand.

You will not fail him, too, Steve inwardly scolded himself. You will not make this worse for him. You will not let him fall.

Steve saw, as if in slow-motion, Sam’s eyes shift toward Bucky, widen imperceptibly. He caught the moment Sam decided to interrupt the session to suggest Bucky leave, thereby drawing unwanted attention to him. Sam was experienced and savvy—he’d find a way not to embarrass Bucky, to make it a teachable moment. But he had to know that the fact that it would happen at all would be enough to discourage Bucky from coming back, maybe for good. And as much as Steve needed the crew today, Bucky needed them a hundred times more.

He'd promised Sam he’d have Bucky’s six, now and always. Time to earn his stripes.

Steve rested a hand in the center of Bucky’s back. His breaths stopped; he went rigid. Slowly, carefully, Steve started to rub circles into the plush fabric of his hoodie until Bucky’s muscles unclenched, until his shoulders sagged down a few necessary inches. He inhaled, long and deep, held, then breathed out in that familiar therapeutic rhythm. Steve found himself matching it as his touch moved higher and higher. When the speaker got to the most horrific details of his time as a POW, Steve gripped around the base of Bucky’s neck and ground his fingers into the ring of knots there.

Bucky hissed out a quiet little… squeak? Grunt? Moan? Whatever, as soon as conversation picked up, he tore the hood off so Steve could really get his fingers in there. He worried that he might be too strong for Bucky, that he was using this as a form of self-punishment rather than relief, except Bucky leaned further and further into Steve’s touch, until he almost slouched against Steve’s side. While Sam gave his wrap-up spiel, Bucky turned to stare longingly at Steve’s shoulder as if he wanted nothing more than to flop his heavy head there.

Instead, he caught Steve’s eyes, gave a weak nod of gratitude. Made a beeline for the snacks—hood up—before anyone else could rise out of their seats.

Steve soon discovered why. Riley’s carrot cake, chocolate cheesecake, and strawberry-lemon squares were fucking heaven on a plate. He got about half a bite in before the crew collected around him, a pack of wolves protecting one of their own.

Foggy got in the first lick, quick and early. “Would it have killed ya to send a text? A guy’s only recovering from cancer.”

“Radio silence, dumbass,” Castle scolded. Steve must look like hell if ‘The Punisher’—Castle’s old football nickname—defended him. He crossed his arms as he eyeballed Steve. “You good?”

“Still breathing.”

Castle grunted. He canted his head toward Bucky, who hadn’t joined the group. “That one’s been doing his lost puppy routine since you shipped out.”

“Might want to reconsider a group ‘catch you later’ text,” Matt added. He gripped a hand around Steve’s forearm, as if to prove to himself he was really there.

Steve didn’t know what to do about any of it. He’d wanted people—these people, specifically—but also hated this kind of attention.

“Or we could all learn to deal.” Riley, as always, the voice of deadpan sarcasm. “Steve didn’t come here for us to go all mushy on him. He came for my double-fudge brownies.”

“There’s brownies?” Steve scoffed. “If I’d have known that, I’d have fueled up and split.”

“Please.” Sam broke away from a side conversation to rejoin the group. “He came for the gossip. Castle’s living dangerously by shacking up with the hospital director’s daughter.”

Castle groaned. “What don’t you get about letting her crash at my place, Wilson? Elektra’s—"

“Five-car alarm hot,” Matt insisted. “I’m blind and gay as fuck, and even I can see that.”

“She could have gone to Claire’s,” Foggy pointed out. “She went to you.”

“Yeah, ‘cause I got a spare room!”

As the three of them continued to bicker at full volume, Sam fell in beside him.

“Scale of one to five, how you coping with all this?” he asked, sotto voce.

“Probably a negative three.” Steve shoved another square in his maw to keep from screaming. “But this cheesecake’s hitting the spot.”

“You keep that up, Riley’s gonna commandeer your freezer.”

“No complaints here.”

“I don’t know, man, wall-to-wall Tupperware gives me the heebie jeebies sometimes.” Sam shook his head. “By the way, you’re coming over for dinner.”

“You sure your food budget’s able to stretch that far?”

“Riley’s pension’s pretty decent, yeah.” He frowned. “He went down behind enemy lines and was left for dead. His lawyer had a lot of leverage.”

Double fuck. Steve blew out a gusty breath before snarking, “Thought you were trying to cheer me up.”

“I’m trying to build up enough trust for you to confide in me. The not-classified parts, I mean,” Sam insisted. “How’m I doing so far?”

Steve shrugged. “What’s for dinner?”

“Tonight, Italian spot with the crew. They got this hundred-layer lasagna that’ll clog even your arteries. Tomorrow, our place, N’Orleans special: gumbo, etouffee, po boys, beignets, the works.” Sam licked his lips, already anticipating the feast. “And before you ask, yeah, your boy’s invited.”

“So, like, a double date?” Hope sprung eternal even in Steve’s desiccated heart.

“That part’s up to you, Romeo.” But Sam grinned wide at the implication. “Between you, me, and the dessert spread, Barnes could use a little spice in his life. But you’re not gonna get there that easy.”

“I know,” Steve conceded, because he did. Bucky would balk at any leaps and bounds in that direction. As impatient as he was, baby steps were the way to go.

“Take the victories when they come, no matter how small,” Sam counseled, somehow intuiting what Steve needed to hear without being read in on all the details of his recent FUBAR mission. “He’s never sat in the circle before.”

That lifted an unexpected stone off Steve’s chest. “Really?”

“Nope. Two years of trying.” Sam stole a strawberry-lemon square off his plate, sauntered off with a, “You did that.”

And Steve somehow, impossibly, found it in him to smile.

***

A crown of black branches framed the midnight blue sky. Steve gazed up through the tinted glass ceiling of Sam and Riley’s heated, covered patio as he digested the de-fucking-licious Creole dinner Sam had made, enough to fill even his bottomless pit. As soon as they heard Sam was cooking, the rest of the crew invited themselves along—all except for Castle, who worked the late shift. The rest of them rubbed their aching stomachs as they lounged around on the collection of reupholstered antique chairs and sofas Riley salvaged from curbs around the borough, another man’s trash his treasure. The patio had a Manhattan Gilded Age meets California boho vibe that somehow felt comfortable and homey, all this on the bottom floor of a red-brick townhouse Steve might have wondered how they could afford were it not for Sam’s little story about Riley’s pension.

And plants. There were a fuckton of plants, including some medical marijuana growing under soft purple lights along the back wall. Between the fuchsia aura and the tinted gels on the lanterns, the space felt like the inside of a lava lamp. None of the guests partook of the wacky tobacky, afraid they’d pass out in a food coma if they got the munchies and ate more. But when Bucky asked for permission to smoke a couple of cigarettes, Steve saw his opportunity to tighten the tentative bonds of their friendship by bumming one off of him. This also gave him a reason to sit close-ish, in a wide club chair next to the chaise-longue Bucky laid out on.

To his surprise, Bucky lit a cigarette, took a couple drags, then passed it over to Steve. They’d shared two this way so far, back and forth all casual like as the discussion meandered through a variety of topics. Steve, mind entirely focused on the electric jolt every time their fingers brushed, on calculating how long he could let his touch linger against the silken skin of Bucky’s hand, on whether this was Bucky’s introverted version of flirting, had missed most of it, lost in a haze of smoke and gentle arousal. Steve couldn’t keep his gaze from drifting Bucky’s way—the amber tone of the embers cast the angles of Bucky’s face in beguiling chiaroscuro each time he inhaled. If they continued like this, they’d end up smoking the whole pack.

A lull in the conversation drew him out, into the heady silence, a cat glutted on cream.

“All right, Rogers, obnoxious question time.” It wasn’t enough for Foggy to break the silence; as usual, he took a hammer to it. By the flush of his cheeks, he’d had one too many glasses of Sam’s bourbon, perhaps loosening his never-that-tight-to-begin-with inhibitions.

“There’s a specific time for that?” Steve quipped, pleased when Bucky let out a soft huff of amusement. “Coulda fooled me.”

“Don’t give him the satisfaction of answering, Steve,” Matt insisted.

“Whose side are you on here, Murdock?” Foggy flushed an even deeper shade of scarlet.

“Yours.” Matt, curled up beside him on a love seat, patted his thigh. “You’ll see that in the morning.”

Steve dismissed his concerns with a wave. Something had to distract him from the way Bucky’s pink lips puckered around the latest cigarette. “Shoot, Nelson.”

“Thank you.” He pretended to take a thoughtful sip before blurting, “Top five best and worst things about the twenty-first century, unfiltered. Go.”

While Riley and Bucky snickered, Sam groaned, “Come on, man. Drunk assholes in the Independence Day parade ask him that bullshit.”

“Not to mention every reporter in every press conference he’s ever given,” Matt seconded. “Seriously, babe, that’s some Journalism 101 bullshit.”

“Excuse you, babe, I said unfiltered,” Foggy protested. “As in no-holds-barred, not-for-public-consumption, straight-up controversial opinions. Whaddya say, Steve? You game?”

“I’m game.” Although he realized the jerk had read him like a book and knew he never backed down from a challenge, Steve caved. He maybe had some things to get off his chest, and there would be no safer environment that with his crew. “You sure you’re ready for the hard truths?”

“That’s how we like ‘em,” Sam confirmed, perhaps clueing in to the therapeutic benefits of the exercise.

“Bring it on, Steve.” Riley thrust a fist in the air from his reclined position, head on Sam’s lap. “Burn it alllll down!”

Bucky snorted, passed the cig over to Steve so he could take a fortifying drag. Steve sucked a long one, then sent it back, letting his goddamn fingers linger this time. The real question was, did he have enough balls to rate Bucky Barnes top of the list in front of the whole crew?

“Worst.” Steve led with the negative, the easiest to conjure up. “That it’s seventy years on, and the fight’s more brutal than ever. Aliens, supervillains, dictators, classified shit I can’t tell you about.” HYDRA. Active fucking HYDRA cells in Siberia, Praetoria, Antarctica, and the Australian Outback. “Feels like it was all for nothing.”

“It wasn’t.” Riley pushed up onto his arms as if he meant to crawl over to him. “Steve, it wasn’t. I wouldn’t be here. None of us would.”

In a strange bid to salvage the mood, Sam interjected, “Speak for yourself, boo honey. My people woulda survived that shit with bells on.”

“Same.” Was that a wink Bucky aimed in his direction? “My folks are from Indiana.”

“Da hadn’t come over from Ireland yet, so…” Matt shrugged. “Honestly, might have been for the best. I could have ended up well-adjusted.”

Foggy smirked at him. “Or a peat farmer.”

“Or that.”

“Second-worst.” Steve found himself warming up to the topic. “The subway.” Everyone hummed in agreement. “Take a rat-infested hellhole, add about a thousand layers of piss and grime, and so many trains that no one can organize them worth a damn, and then make it a hundred times more expensive. The future, ladies and gentleman.”

By the end of his little speech, everyone applauded.

“Go off, Steve!” Foggy cheered.

“Third.” He blew out a long, smoky breath. “Listen, I know I sound like an old man screaming into the wind, but courtesy. Common courtesy. I grew up in the roughest neighborhood in Brooklyn, and even the guys who shook down the butcher, or pinched purses, or got dragged out of every bar in the borough by their bloody collars, under the right circumstance, every second word out of their mouth was ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am.’ Still the hardest thing to get used to—the goddamn disrespect of most people.” Fired up, he added, “And someone who may or may not be named Tony Stark.”

Matt scoffed, “A rude billionaire playboy asshole. Who would have thunk it?”

Sam nodded vigorously. “Preaching to the choir.”

“The choir being his momma at dinner every Sunday,” Riley teased, which earned him a pinch.

“Fourth,” Steve pressed on, to steer himself away from a full-on rant. “Soda pop. Don’t know what happened there, but—nothing good.”

Bucky raised an eyebrow in his direction. “You liked it better with cocaine?”

“I liked it better with flavor.” Steve mock-retched. “What I wouldn’t give for a Dad’s Old Fashioned, original recipe. Ma used to get me one every year on my birthday.”

“Every damn time.” Sam pressed a hand to his heart. “You’re a menace, you know that, Rogers.”

“Well, you’re gonna like number five even less, then,” Steve warned. He’d already alluded to it, but he couldn’t let it go. Couldn’t let them go, no matter how many years went by. “Everyone’s gone.” He reclined his head back to gaze up at the night sky, the dark branches, the endless nowhere above them. “Everyone.” He swallowed hard, blinked away the tears before they could fall. “Even Phillips, who used to ride my ass. Even Brandt, who treated me like a circus monkey. Even Sister Connolly, who probably would have brought that ruler of hers to the ticker-tape parade in my honor and rapped my knuckles in front of the goddamned mayor if I’d made it home.”

No one laughed. A mournful silence hung over them, with a susurrating undercurrent of anguish. They understood because they’d been there, emotionally. They ached with him because they cared for him—maybe not like his ma, or Arnie, or Peggy had cared for him, but it was a start, a new start.

But it was a small, tender gesture from Bucky that brought Steve back. He smothered the lit end of the cigarette between two fingers, dropped it on a side table. Reached over and took Steve’s hand.

A tether. An anchor. A lifeline.

Squeezing tight into that patient grip, Steve found it in himself to say, “Best.” He straightened in his seat, scanned across the crew’s solemn faces. “Sam. Riley. Foggy. Matt.” He caught Bucky’s eyes before they flicked down, bashful. “And Bucky makes five.”

The silence stretched on, deepened into a reverent quiet. Even these wise-asses couldn’t bring themselves to make fun of such open sincerity.

For a minute or two.

“Sap,” Bucky declared, a hint of a smirk twitching the corner of his lip up. He gave Steve’s hand a final squeeze, then pulled his away. “You gonna get that embroidered on a pillow or some shit, Rogers? Sheesh.”

Steve barked out a laugh. It helped unclog his throat.

“What about Castle, huh?” Foggy demanded.

“Ah, fuck that guy,” Steve dismissed, which got him a cackle.

“What I wanna know,” Riley drawled, “is what the Avengers did to get left off the list.”

“We said top five,” Matt cautioned in his lawyerly way. “The terms were clear.”

“Yeah, they’re probably, like, ten or something,” Sam suggested. Off the roll of Steve’s eyes, he amended his guess to, “Twenty-five?”

“Mid-thirties,” Steve joked. “Gotta remember, lotta things are a whole lot better nowadays.”

“Beds,” Riley reminded his love. “Oh, and just like, hot water and heating in general.”

“Food!” Foggy exclaimed. “Most of the food’s gotta be better, right?”

“Technology’s probably a whole sub-category,” Matt assumed.

“Porn.” The curl of Bucky’s lip had turned into a full-on smirk. “Maybe not better, but more available.”

Steve arched a brow in his direction. “You’d be surprised.” He tried on a smirk of his own. Was he really gonna tell them? Ah, why the fuck not? “Used to illustrate a few blue books and pulps myself, back in the day.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, what?!” Riley sat up, swung his whole body around to face Steve.

Sam shook his head. “Castle’s gonna be sore he missed the good shit. Again.”

“You draw, Steve?” Matt asked, politeness personified.

“Really?” Foggy did a double-take in his direction. “That’s what you took from it?”

Matt shrugged. “Figured that was better than reminding everyone, Steve included, how history straight-washed his image and how every right-wing blowhard in the country is perverting Captain America’s legacy in their own dumbass, cowardly way.”

“Would love to watch their heads explode in real time if they found this out,” Sam added. “Just sayin’.”

“The Smithsonian must be sitting on the motherlode,” Riley gasped out. “I knew that exhibit was 90% bullshit.”

“If you ever need a lawyer to get your stuff back.” Matt pointed a thumb at himself.

“Thanks.” Steve threw him a sloppy salute. “Pepper Potts made a point of it after we met. She’d be, like, number eight on the list.”

“Points deducted for dating Stark?” Foggy guessed. Rightly.

Riley shuddered. “Please explain how that works.”

“Would if I could,” Steve chuckled.

“Proof.” Bucky playfully stretched that one syllable into at least two words. He peered over at Steve with a slyness that went straight to his dick. “Or it didn’t happen.”

“Didn’t exactly keep that stuff lying around for the cops to find, Buck.” Steve gave the nickname he’d made of his nickname some extra sauce. ‘Or the military police.”

“Shame,” Bucky murmured.

While the other debated how big a scandal the discovery of Captain America’s erotic drawings from the 1930s-40s might become, Bucky shook another cigarette out of the pack, hung it between his lips, and lit it with a flick of his lighter. He took a short drag, blew it out in a perfect ‘O’, then offered the cigarette to Steve.

Temptation burned bright within him, sparked by the glimmer of interest, of challenge, of mystery in Bucky’s cool blue eyes.

He latched three loose fingers around Bucky’s wrist, lifted his hand to his mouth, and sucked at the end of the cigarette—casual like, as if too lazy to take the damn thing from Bucky. At the last minute, Steve moved his mouth so that his bottom lip brushed across Bucky’s fingertips. A tremor shook through his hand as it withdrew. Bucky’s eyes, wide and wonderstruck, went indigo in the lantern light.

Steve leaned back into the chair cushion and exhaled a long plume of smoke, satisfied.

End of Chapter 2

Chapter Text

Chapter 3 – Special Fucking Delivery

No missions. No meetings. No hobbies. No sunshine. No snow. Not even any goddamn charity events.

What did a super-soldier have to do to get some action around here?

Steve contemplated that very question as he munched through his second breakfast, a bagel and fruit platter he’d picked up from the deli on the corner on the way back from his morning run. Dry as Satan’s left tit and cold as a cryogenic tube, the weather had been no help in that regard, dipping to temperatures unlikely to inspire snowfall. All his neighborhood pals had jobs and shit to do during the day. He’d moved out of the Tower to avoid the kind of downtime shenanigans the Avengers got up to when idle. None of the dozen or so projects he’d started around the house—painting the guest bedroom, refurbishing the basement into an at-home office and command center, hanging the prints he’d splurged on when he last visited the Met gift shop—called to him. Even the stack of library books on the far end of the couch felt like homework.

Now that he had friends he preferred to spend time with, whose company he actually craved, living alone had never felt so… well, lonely. Especially on a random Tuesday in the middle of February.

As he washed down the last bagel with half a strawberry protein shake, a flash of movement outside caught his eye. From his vantage at the breakfast nook on the open side of his kitchen, if Steve angled his head just so, he could see out the bay window at the far side of the living room, out over his small expanse of lawn and the bottom half of his walk.

A hunched, hooded figure stood at the end of the walk, hands in his pockets, scarf masking almost his entire face, with a carrier bag strung across his chest and another hooked around one of his forearms. Despite the gray blah of the day, the stranger peered up at (presumably) Steve’s house through a pair of blackout sunglasses, his toque shoved down so low that—Bucky, it was Bucky.

Steve pressed a napkin to his mouth as if in slow-motion, afraid the slightest movement would startle Bucky away. Just when he’d convinced himself he was being ridiculous, Bucky took a tentative step onto Steve’s walk, then hopped back, as if burned. His slouch deepened. He started to pace, back and forth, in front of Steve’s house. Two more times he attempted to sneak down the walk, only to backtrack when halfway to the porch.

It was beyond adorable.

He wondered if he should give Bucky a sign that he was home, whether that would make things better or worse. Steve had enough self-awareness to understand that his usual bull-in-a-china-shop routine wouldn’t cut it here. The last thing he wanted was for Bucky to abort whatever mission he’d set himself or feel like he’d been trapped in a foxhole. But Steve also saw a potential solution to his boredom. Nothing would be more entertaining than spending a whole afternoon with Bucky Barnes.

Steve set his dishes down in the sink, then tiptoed into the living room. Thank goodness he’d let Natasha talk him into one-way windows. Steve knelt on the loveseat, rested his crossed arms on the back and his head on his arms, stared moonily out at his friend having a full-on crisis of confidence on the sidewalk. Bucky curled in on himself as much as someone standing could, by the rhythmic nod of his head in the middle of a self-scold, though none of his jerking movements brought him any closer to the door.

Steve really, really wanted to jog out there and give him a hug. He told himself to store it up for next time.

Finally, finally, Bucky kicked himself in the shin, charged down the walk. He heard the hard stomp of his boots on the front steps. Steve waited, waited, waited for the bell, but it never rang. He leapt, all stealth-like, over the love seat, inched forward until he had a full view of Bucky, who stood before the door, arm wrapped around his middle, head bowed.

Or, no—Bucky was minus a package, which he must have deposited on Steve’s porch. In the time it took for Steve to decide whether to take action, Bucky reached his hand out toward the buzzer, pulled it back, lifted it to knock, tucked it down again, rinse, repeat three times. Steve felt his last drop of patience—not a deep reservoir to begin with—evaporate into mist when Bucky leaned over to snatch the package back.

This would not stand. Steve abandoned his post, well-aware that all could be lost by the time he zipped into the entrance hall and wrenched open the front door…

Bucky froze mid-motion, attempting to unhook the bag from his prosthetic arm. Steve couldn’t see much of his face, but his eyebrows shot up, his body tensed, and the outline of his open mouth was just visible against the ribbing of his scarf. Steve slouched against the door frame, smiled, anxious to appear as unthreatening as possible.

“Lemme guess,” he teased, gentle, gentle, “you were just in the neighborhood?”

Bucky ripped the bag off his prosthetic, shoved it at Steve’s chest. Steve didn’t miss how his breaths had kicked up—for all his brusqueness, he was nervous.

“Special fucking delivery.”

“From you?” He didn’t know what his face was doing, but it was probably something embarrassing.

“You see someone else freezing their nuts off out here?”

Advantage, Rogers. “Well, you better come in then.”

Steve didn’t give him the choice—dirty pool, but Bucky looked half-popsicle—leaving the door wide open as he meandered back into the house. He heard an indignant huff, the suction of the door sinking back into its frame. A few quiet beats passed in silence, then Bucky shucked his boots off. Steve almost doubled over in relief. He’d only flipped down his hood, pulled down his scarf, and notched his sunglasses onto his toque by the time he made it into the living room, every inch of him blaring “imminent retreat.”

Challenge accepted.

“There’s bagels, if you’re hungry.” Steve gestured toward the mostly empty platter. “Or, well, a bagel, but I’m told that’s what normal people consider a reasonable portion.” Only then did he glance in Bucky’s direction. He frowned at the rug as if it had offended him. “Coffee?”

Bucky swallowed one, twice. A shiver snaked through him.

“Shit, you must be freezing.” Steve moved in closer, slow, slow. He set a hand on the back of Bucky’s neck, hoping the sense memory might calm him. He glanced up, gasped at finding Steve so close. But he didn’t back away. “Take all that gear off. I’ll get you a sweater.”

Steve busied himself with the details to avoid figuring out the particular shade of blue of Bucky’s eyes, the perfect tint of rose on his frigid cheeks: putting a pot of coffee on, fetching Bucky a plate and knife, amping up the thermostat, jamming his coziest sweater in the dryer for two minutes. When he brought it out, toasty warm, Bucky’d already devoured half his bagel and poured them both a coffee. Steve didn’t miss the little contented hum he let out once snug in the sweater. Then, a sobering thought occurred to him.

“Does your prosthetic get cold in the winter?” He added some Captain America concern to his tone.

Bucky shook his head. “It’s not too bad, most of the time. But days like this…”

“Don’t feel like you gotta wear it on my account.”

“Thanks, but…” The faintest trace of a smile curled his lips. “Gonna need it for the ass-kicking.”

Steve barked out a laugh. When Bucky pointed to the bag he’d brought with him, Steve wasted no time. He tore into it, finding two laser-gun like controllers and a small stack of video games: Resident Evil, Gangster Town, Vampire Night, and Judge Dredd. He felt like a kid in a candy store. He wanted to prostrate himself on the floor in gratitude.

Instead, he channeled his inner smartass. “Hope you know how to hook these up, otherwise we’re just gonna end up flinging them at each other.”

“What do I look like, amateur hour?” Bucky scoffed. “No gun in this world or the next I don’t know how to operate.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Steve put just a little spice on that comment, enough to make Bucky choke on his bagel. “Pick what we play first. I’ll call for reinforcements.”

“Reinforcements?” He didn’t miss the slight note of disappointment in Bucky’s voice.

Steve fist-pumped internally. “Yeah, cupboard’s kinda bare, unless you’re into protein shakes or nutrient-dense ready meals.”

“Um.” Bucky scrunched his nose in the most adorable way. The man was a whole problem that Steve’s libido was raring to fix. “Yuck.”

“Exactly,” Steve confirmed, as he placed the most ridiculous Postmates order known to man. “Gonna get a bunch of stuff from that bakery Riley works at, plus chips, popcorn, edamame… you thinking tacos and burritos or maybe just a big selection from the Thai place on Flushing Ave? Pizza? Hoagies?”

“T-Thai sounds good.” Bucky seemed to nod to himself more than Steve. He picked a couple of seeds off the last bite of bagel, then stammered, “Y-You don’t mind me— I wouldn’t wanna—”

“Interfere with me ignoring all my half-started home projects? Please.” Steve nudged his knee under the table. “‘Sides, this is my chance to learn from the master, right?”

“Right.” Bucky laid on the sarcasm thicker than the cream cheese. He shoved the last bite of bagel into his mouth, stood. “Better get set up. Mind if I move some of the furniture out of the way?”

“Go for it.” Steve couldn’t help it. He unleashed the smile—the one his ma had called his sunshine smile; the one that made even the indomitable Peggy Carter crack.

Because he was happy, goddamn it. Steve was beyond thrilled. He was gonna spend the afternoon pretending to get his ass handed to him by Bucky fucking Barnes and loving every minute of it. And maybe, just maybe, if he didn’t scare the guy out of his wits, Bucky might deign to come back and do it again sometime.

Except Steve had already gone and ruined it, because Bucky gaped at him, deer in the headlights, from across the table. His flesh hand white-knuckled the edge of the chair he’d just risen from, his prosthetic arm flapped limply at his side, swathed in the too-large sleeve of Steve’s sweater, which hung off Bucky like an oversized downy tunic. Steve barely refrained himself from folding him up and kissing him senseless.

Only a light flush on Bucky’s cheeks gave away that he was the good kind of distressed. He cleared his throat, repeatedly, then scampered off to reconfigure both Steve’s furniture and his video game system.

*

“I clipped him!” Steve protested, three hours and seven levels of Resident Evil 6 later.

Bucky scoffed. “You did not.”

“I blew his ear clear off!” He blasted through more of the undead spilling out of the laboratory door, fortunately in the same direction as his previous non-kill. “This game is defective.”

Bucky rolled his eyes. “You mean your aim, Captain Tightpants.”

“My aim is perfect, enhanced by—”

“The finest scientific mind the world has ever known,” Bucky parroted. “I got it the first 500 times.” He took out a whole row of zombies by snapping his laser gun to the side and dragging the blast through them.

“That! What was that?!” Steve demanded.

“It’s called expertise, Rogers,” Bucky bragged. “I can spell it if it’s too big a word for you. E-X-P—”

“C-H-E-A-T-I-N-G, you mean,” Steve accused. “Show me how to do it.”

He snorted. “You’re not ready.”

“Like hell I’m not!”

“Beat me at one round,” Bucky challenged. “One round, and I’ll demonstrate.”

“You’re going down, Barnes!”

“Yeah, yeah, famous last words.”

*

Turned out, no so much with the pretending.

Bucky was an exceptional sharpshooter. If there was a number higher than exceptional, multiply that by a hundred—that was him. Granted, they played a state-of-the-art game that in no way replicated a real-life combat zone, if that combat zone was infested with zombies (Steve wasn’t ruling anything out at this point, given the strange course his life had taken.) But there was no mistaking talent like that.

Steve had enhanced senses and top-tier munitions training, and Bucky made him look like a four-year-old with a water gun. Once he established that Bucky was going to win every round of every game handily, Steve directed his tactical mind to upping the degree of difficulty in ever more ridiculous ways.

It was a hell of a good time. He moved the screen to greater and greater distances to test Bucky’s skills. Threw up obstacles in front of him. Shifted the couch beneath him as he played. Pinged him with pieces of popcorn. Bucky never missed a shot. Steve forced him to go back to a regular controller just to even the odds, and still Bucky tripled his score. He was gifted as hell, a true marvel. Steve suspected that somewhere in his basement apartment, probably burrowed into the cement under his closet floor, Bucky had a stash of military hardware—medals, sashes, pins, stars, bars. He must resemble a knight in shining armor when he wore his dress blues.

But best of all, the thing that really got Steve’s heart pumping, not to mention naughtier places, was that Bucky lorded it over him all afternoon. Never for a second let Steve forget what a poor showing he was putting in. The shit talk was epic. The swagger, breathtaking. Steve’s greatest achievement during those seven blissful hours was in not giving in to the impulse to slam Bucky back on the couch and shove his tongue down his throat. Strip him with painstaking care and lick him from head to toe.

Goddamn baby steps, Rogers. Behave, for fuck’s sake.

“Seventy-one.” Bang! “Seventy-two.” Bull’s-eye. “Seventy-three, four, five.” Headshots all around. “Rogers, you nodding off on me here?” Bucky raised a pointed brow in his direction as he decimated the latest zombie horde while shooting with the laser-gun angled behind his back. With his prosthetic. His flesh hand, armed with a pair of chopsticks, dug the last of the khao pad out of a white delivery container. “Don’t tell me you’ve lapsed into a food coma.”

Steve scoffed. “Take more than some tom yum goon and pad see ew to knock me out.”

“And pad thai, pad kra po, larb, khao na phet, khao niew moo yang…”

“It’s kinda mesmerizing.” Steve waved a hand at the screen. “How their heads go pop, pop, pop.”

“You better not be having a flashback,” Bucky grumbled. “I’m no Wilson.”

“Nah, you’re much deadlier.” Steve smirked around his imperial roll. “In so many ways. Lethal, you might say.”

“Can’t argue with that.” Bucky also had a gold medal in side-stepping Steve’s increasingly desperate attempts at flirtation. He plugged his one-hundredth zombie in the neck, just for variety, then tossed the controller onto the couch cushions as the game noisily celebrated his latest win. “You wanna watch a movie or something? I got no more appetite for the slaughter of virtual undead.”

“How about this coconut custard thing they comped us?”

“Fuck yeah, pass it over.”    

Best, best, best thing of all, after his first bout of skittishness, Bucky kept finding reasons to stick around. He may, perhaps, it could be intuited, appeared to enjoy Steve’s company, which boded very well for future zombie-slaughtering sessions and other fun stuff. Bucky’s also lowered a few key defenses, such as proximity and protective armor. He’d discarded both Steve’s sweater and his hoodie as he built up a sweat. He’d let his long swathes of dark hair fall loose out of their meticulous bun. After he black-screened the gaming system, Bucky flopped down onto the couch at Steve’s side, bumping his shoulder with his flesh arm as they enjoyed their creamy coconut treats. In a companionable silence, they admired the chaos of Steve’s living room, proud of their handiwork.

Evidence of a day well-spent.

“What kind of movies you like?” Seven hours ago, Bucky wouldn’t have dared ask him such a direct question. The progress they’d made was staggering.

Steve shrugged. “Still got a lotta catching up to do. Why don’t you show me one of your favorites?”

“Got a lotta those myself.” He shined a soft, private smile down into his custard. “Would help to know… you know, what you’re into.”

For a hot second, Steve wondered if they were still talking about movies. He leaned a bit of his weight in Bucky’s direction, so that their sides pressed together from shoulder to knee.

“Don’t really like spy or action stuff.” Steve canted his head toward Bucky, as if confiding a secret. “Get enough of that in the day job.”

Bucky nodded, thoughtful. “Must seem fake to you.”

“Oh, it all seems fake,” Steve chuckled. “Real life almost doesn’t feel like real life most of the time, you know?”

“Yeah,” Bucky sighed. “You’re… You’re trapped in the looking glass, and...”

Bucky seemed primed to wade back into the darker waters of his mind. Steve scrambled for a way to pull him out of his impending funk, of throwing him a life-preserver.

“Oh!” Steve exclaimed. “Animated movies. Big fan. Aardman Studios. Miyazaki. Cartoon Saloon. Laika.”

For the first time since Steve’d met him, Bucky’s whole face lit up.

“Have you seen Nimona?”

“Nope.” Steve matched his grin, watt for watt.

“You got Netflix?”

“Duh.” He scanned around the coffee and side tables, evaluating their food situation. Not that he was in any hurry to move away from Bucky. “We need more reinforcements?”

Bucky scowled. “You got an extra stomach I don’t know about?”

“Getting your ass kicked at Resident Evil really takes it out of a guy.”

“A likely story.” And there was that adorable nose-scrunch again. “Actually, you got a spare toothbrush?”

Steve arched a brow in his direction. “Why, you spending the night?”

Worth it to watch Bucky flush scarlet. “A guy likes to maintain his oral hygiene.”

“All I heard out of that was ‘oral’,” Steve teased. With incredible reluctance, he stood and offered Bucky his hand.

Bucky’s disbelieving gaze flicked from Steve’s hand to his face and back to his hand, then he reached out, twined their fingers, let Steve hoist him to his feet. Nearly stumbled into him, they were so close.

“You got a one-track mind, you know that, Rogers?” Bucky murmured. He couldn’t quite raised his eyes to meet Steve’s since they appeared transfixed by his mouth.

Huh.

“But you gotta admit, it’s a hell of a track.”

Bucky huffed, low and nervy. Bowed his head as Steve escorted him up the stairs, to the washroom off the master bedroom. Bucky didn’t tremble, didn’t protest, didn’t pull away. Instead, he hovered close, glanced around with subtle curiosity at the framed sketches that lined the stairwell, the row of paint cans outside the guest bedroom, the prints propped up on the walls where they’d eventually hang. His jaw dropped when Steve flicked on the bathroom lights—with his Starkified shower and tub, it was indeed a sight to behold.

His perfect, pouty lips twisted into something like a smile when Steve handed him a paste-loaded toothbrush. They leaned against the counter, ignoring the mirrors in favor of each other, grinning like fools as they brushed, in silent competition to see who could lather up the most froth. After they rinsed, spit, and swished a shot of mouthwash, Steve offered Bucky some of the fancy moisturizing lip balm Natasha gave him as a stocking stuffer last Christmas.

“Really?” Bucky snorted, but scooped some out of the little tub.

Steve lost a few seconds to watching him smooth it over his pink lips. “This is a full-service establishment.”

“What’s next, you gonna polish my boots for me?” Bucky raised a sardonic eyebrow of his own. “Press my T-shirt? Foot massage?”

“If you want,” Steve drawled, playful. He slipped his hand back into Bucky’s, moved a half-step closer. “Or… we could make out for a bit.”

Bucky let out a soft gasp. Shut his eyes, shuddered. Maybe started to tremble. “You can’t want that.”

“You’re not the boss of me.” Steve dragged his thumb in lazy circles around Bucky’s wrist in an attempt to soothe him. “But please tell me to back off if I got the wrong—”

“You didn’t.” He swallowed hard. “I want to. Just…” Some of the thickness coated his voice when he added, “I haven’t been with anyone since…”

“Makes two of us,” Steve reassured him.

That got him to open his eyes. “Yeah?”

“Nobody.” Steve cupped his face with his free hand, caressed along the sharp ridge of his cheekbone. “Until one night this gang of self-righteous assholes tricked me into doing all their shoveling for ‘em. We ended up going out for Mexican after, and when they stripped off their gear, one of ‘em, the mysterious one at the back, who was quiet and solemn and carried a weight that might crush freaking Atlas, turned out he was stone-cold gorgeous. Sweet, shy, snarky—the trifecta. A badass for the ages. And the more I get to know him, the more I want to kiss the breath out of his lungs.” Bucky shuddered again. Not out of fear this time, Steve thought. “Whaddya say, Buck?”

“Please.” They were so close now, Bucky’s breath ghosted over his face. “Please.”

Steve brushed their lips together, a prelude, an overture. He recognized how vulnerable Bucky felt in this moment, still trembling like a skittish rabbit under his hands, his eyelashes fluttering, delicate as butterfly wings.

“Where you gonna be most comfortable, doll?” The endearment slipped out before Steve could stop himself. “Couch or bed?”

“Bed.”

He sipped two near-kisses from the corners of Bucky’s mouth, wrapped a whole arm around him as he led him into the bedroom. Relished how Bucky sagged into him, full of trust. And maybe full of hunger. When they came to a stop at the base of the bed, he nipped at Steve’s jaw, his neck. He followed that up with a few random pecks—the ‘V’ of Steve’s collar, his Adam’s apple, his chin, the bump in his nose. They lingered awhile, fingers exploring above clothes, touching, learning, foreheads pressed together, gazes devouring. When Steve skirted the edge of Bucky’s prosthetic, he came back to himself.

“Shit.” He shoved his hand under his shirt, wriggled his shoulders. “Let me…” Steve bit his tongue so he didn’t ask if he needed help. Once unfastened, Bucky glanced around. “Where should I…?”

“Whatever feels safest.”

That earned him a tender look. “Thanks.” Bucky passed it over to Steve, gestured toward a nearby dresser. He settled it atop a pile of sweatshirts fresh from the laundry basket. “I have, um… kind of a strange request.”

Steve hurried back to him, hoping his expression conveyed, Your wish is my command.

“Would you…” Bucky biting his bottom lip was not encouraging Steve’s patience. “Your sweater.”

“You want it?”

Bucky nodded.

In his not-so-humble opinion, Steve had never put his super-speed to such good use. He returned to find Bucky sitting on the edge of the bed, holding his T-shirt to his bare chest. Steve delivered the sweater, then turned his back. He didn’t miss Bucky’s sigh of relief, or the second breathy, contented sound he made once swathed in the oversized sweater.

“If you don’t get over here and lay one on me, Stevie, this whole make out deal’s off.”

Steve chuckled as he turned around to find Bucky lying on his bed, handsome as a prince who’d been sleeping off a hundred-year spell. He crawled up, slotted in beside him, careful not to intimidate with his bulk. That, Bucky could explore for himself as they grew more intimate, decide just where and when he wanted Steve.

For now, everything was perfect and nothing hurt, with their legs tangled and Steve’s arm wrapped around Bucky’s waist, with their heavy breaths mingling and their noses inches apart. Bucky’s fingers traced the shell of his ear. Their gazes locked in ardent appreciation for a long minute before Steve canted his head and kissed him.

And kissed and kissed and kissed him. That first press of lips ignited a chain reaction, a thousand beacons of pleasure firing bright, a thousand honeypots pouring over with golden syrup, a thousand balloons soaring up into the sky, exploding with giddy pop-pop-pops when they hit the stratosphere. He’d missed this. He’d forgotten this—or never really had it, the thrill of the chase without the bone-deep fear of being caught. But no one would raid this club, no one would go to jail for licking into another man’s mouth, no one would beat the tar out of him for sucking on Bucky’s delectable tongue.

The future, ladies and enbys and gents. Come as you are.

“Take this off,” Bucky broke away to ask, hand already halfway up Steve’s T-shirt.

Steve couldn’t tear his eyes away from Bucky’s red, red mouth long enough to formulate a response. The lip balm had been an inspired idea, his cherry lips still silky soft after close to an hour of Steve’s supplication at that luscious, sensuous altar. Steve dove back in, passionate, reverent, his fingers twined in Bucky’s velvet locks, his cheeks scratched up with stubble-burn, his leg clenched between Bucky’s meaty thighs lest he take things too far.

“Stevie,” Bucky panted, between long draughts on his lips. “Stevie, Stevie, come on, off.”

He stripped off his shirt, threw it—somewhere. Immediately worth it when Bucky pinned him back, sucked on his neck as his fingers roved over the taut planes of Steve’s chest. Sublimely relaxed and semi-delirious, Steve watched with half-lidded eyes as Bucky’s satin lips set out in hot pursuit of his skin, little sparks of sensation lighting up Steve’s collar, sternum, pecs, biceps, abs as they swiped past. He petted Bucky’s head, neck, shoulders while he performed this intoxicating work, drinking in Bucky’s purrs and rumbles of approval as he floated on the ultimate contact high.

He was hard—of course he was. Bucky too, but that wasn’t what this was about. They’d set a boundary at the waistline. A cock stand-off, if you would, two gunslingers toying with each other at point-blank range. Steve wouldn’t be the one to blink first, especially given how lucky he felt to be tangling with Bucky at all. He’d taken his shot when he suggested all this. Any more would be up to Bucky, who didn’t seem like he’d be done worshipping Steve’s chest anytime soon.

Except, oops, there Bucky was, hovering over Steve, looking wrecked and blissed-out and beautiful, staring covetously at his lips. What could Steve do, really, but arch up and kiss him, slow and deep and toe-curling, until Bucky sank back into the mattress in conditional surrender and let Steve resume command of his senses. Steve kept things respectful, only kissing the life out of him, only ravishing his tongue, lapping up every single one of his moans until—

“Fuck, fuck, Stevie, I don’t—” Bucky keened into his ear. “I can’t— I’m gonna—”

“Whaddya need, doll?” Steve impressed himself with the steadiness of his voice despite the painful throb of his cock.

“Touch me, please, please.” Bucky fumbled with the buttons on his fly, writhing as his pleasure mounted.

Steve gave Bucky’s hand a squeeze before setting it on his ass, where it belonged, then making quick work of shoving down Bucky’s jeans. He swallowed hard at the sight of Bucky’s thick-swollen cock tenting his boxer-briefs, his length and girth even more impressive when Steve peeled those down and palmed him in a massive hand.

Bucky moaned with full throat, thrust with full body at Steve’s first, tentative stroke.

“Close,” he gasped, pulling Steve down for a messy, sexy kiss as he fucked into his fist. A stutter to his hips and a low choking sound were all the warning Steve got before Bucky came in long, scorching stripes across his chest.

After a few kittenish licks to Steve’s tongue, Bucky collapsed back, flush and tipsy and utterly gorgeous. With what seemed like the last of his strength, he hiked the sweater up to his armpits, exposing a tightly muscled strip of abdomen, a hint of dusky nipple, and a constellation of scars down his left side. Somehow, those pushed Steve closer to his own end, evidence of what Bucky had survived to be here with him, how hard he had fought for this moment.

“Show me how you like it,” Bucky rasped, gaze swimming down to Steve’s aching cock. Then, when confronted by Steve’s desperate, savage jerks, whispered, “Be good to yourself, Stevie. Like you were good to me.”

Steve crooned into Bucky’s neck as he came, that sweet little whisper suffusing him with shimmery, lustrous sensation, with a warmth deeper than ecstasy. After, entranced, they traded lazy kisses, beguiling looks until Steve burrowed them under the covers, Bucky nestled into his side, and they fell into a heavy, dreamless sleep.

***

Instinct shoved Steve awake. He jolted up in bed, body alert, brain on the back foot, super-senses scanning for…

Nothing. The same four walls, the same empty bed, the same—

Pause. Assess.

A slow drip from the showerhead in the bathroom. The lemongrass scent of his body wash and, under that, musky sheets. A rustle from downstairs got Steve on his feet before he could stumble toward any conclusions, then he almost tripped over his own discarded shirt—

Shit. Bucky.

Steve grabbed the robe that had served for mostly decorative purposes until that morning, dragged his fingers through his ruffled chicken feather hair as he padded down the stairs with what he hoped was enough sound to warn Bucky and enough speed to catch him before he slipped out of the house. He found him at the table, fully dressed and showered, double-checking all the pockets of his carrier bag. He’d retrieved his coat, hat, and scarf from the rack beside the front door, folded over the back of the nearest chair.

Fuck.

Steve didn’t know how he’d fucked up, but he knew it was bad. In the seconds before Bucky walked out, maybe forever, Steve cycled through anything and everything he could say to prevent this, from the ridiculous to the pathetic, as he attempted to swallow the large boulder lodged in his throat.

What eventually came out was, “Nightmare?” Because he was never very good at thinking things through, and that seemed to be the least objectionable comment available to his woozy mind.

“Hmm?” At least one of them was situationally aware. Bucky zipped up the final pocket on his bag, clicked the flap into place, then turned around to face him. “Nah, I slept great.” He gazed over at Steve through his long, long lashes, a bashful smile shading his features. “You’re real cozy. As a person.”

Smiling. He was smiling.

Until he read the tension in Steve’s expression. And who knew what else haunted his features, the ghosts of bad hookups past.

Then, he frowned. “You thought I was sneaking out.”

“I was… assessing the, uh…”

“Mr. Super-Senses slept through the alarm.” A smirk crept back onto his lips. “Wait till the crew hears about this one.”

“Alarm?”

Bucky pointed to the window. The weather had been busy while they were all cuddled up. A generous coat of snow whitewashed everything in view and frost dappled the edges of the frame, though only a light sprinkling fell outside, whisks of wind showering the pane with fresh powder from the banks on the lawn.

“Call time’s six-thirty.” Bucky’s smirk stretched back into a full-on smile. “You can grab a shower if you hurry. I put coffee on and got breakfast sandwiches in the oven. Should be ready by the time you get out.”

“You’re… That’s…” Steve shook his head to clear it—bad idea. “Kiss?”

Bucky chuckled low in his throat, shuffled over to him. “You always this spacy the morning after?”

“Didn’t wake up in an alley after a raid, or the barracks supply closet,” Steve attempted to joke, but only ended up depressing himself. “Threw me off.”

Lucky for him, Bucky performed some very compelling mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. When Steve wove his arms around him, he brushed against a layer of sweater beneath Bucky’s hoodie. His sweater, and wasn’t that a thrill?

“No nightmares,” Bucky reassured him. “Slept better than I have in a long time. But I need to swing by my place to get my gear.” Steve hated the shadow that fell across his face when he confessed, “I’m not… The crew doesn’t need to know about this, do they? If Wilson gives me that smirk, I’m gonna have to punch his stupid mouth.”

Steve snorted. “Hear you on that.” He cupped Bucky’s face, assessing. “You really okay with all this?”

“Yeah.” He felt the faint heat of Bucky’s blush. “If you are.”

“Pretty sure I suggested it,” Steve reminded him. “Pretty sure you got me off like a rocket, so we’re square.”

Bucky barked out a laugh, his smile brightening into a full-on sunbeam. “You, uh, up for a rematch sometime?”

“Only if you promise to be nicer to my ass,” Steve successfully quipped, brain almost completely back online. “Not really into all that kicking. A little grope, a little squeeze…”

Bucky rolled his eyes—affectionate. “Go get cleaned up, wise-ass. I’ll see you out there.”

“Yeah, you will.”

Despite their flirty conversation, Steve kissed him like it was the last time they’d ever see each other, because he’d learned the hard way to be grateful for every single day, every single moment. Bucky seemed to sense it, hugging in tight for long minutes they didn’t have, until the twin chirps of their Snow Patrol fifteen-minute warning saw them dashing off to prepare.

End of Chapter 3

Chapter Text

Chapter 4 – Lemongrass

The Good Ol’ Days Diner was technically in Bed-Stuy, out of their jurisdiction and a pain in the ass to get to, especially in the middle of a snowstorm. But Castle brought his truck out, and the diner had arcade games and a jukebox, and the crew would never miss the chance to rag on Steve for being, as Foggy put it, “one-third throwback, two-thirds grumpy old man,” so it ended up being perfect. Sam delivered on the promise of pancakes as big as your head, which Steve appreciated after such an active night and busy morning. He’d already plowed his way through three of those monstrosities and an entire can of real maple syrup, which was more than any of them could say about the snow removal squad in Bed-Stuy.

With Sarah Vaughn crooning out the speakers and the aroma of crisping bacon in the air, Steve felt right at home. He, Sam, Matt, and Foggy sprawled out in their booth, sipping from their bottomless coffee cups and chewing the fat, while at the back Castle and Bucky bogarted the pinball machine. With the sidewalks impassable, Riley had elected to get an early start at the bakery; Sam had dropped him off before sending out the second alarm. Outside, a bitter wind blew cottony billows of snow around. They’d do a second pass once they digested—or after Bucky beat the snot out of Castle at Asteroids.

By the indignant squawks already echoing out from the back, Castle hadn’t expected to have his ass handed to him quite so thoroughly by a one-armed man.

Mistake.

“That ornery motherfucker never learns.” Matt shook his head, more in disbelief than in sympathy.

“Pride comes before the fall,” Foggy concurred. “Don’t get me wrong, I’d watch that shit all day and twice on Sunday. But it’d be great if just once the dude—”

“Learned a thing,” Sam finished for him.

“Thank you.” Foggy finger-gunned in his direction. “Exactly.”

Sam added another swirl of sugar into his coffee. “Anyone gonna school him but good, it’s Barnes.”

And look damn good doing it, Steve thought to himself, but didn’t dare say. Now that they were inside and unburdened of their winter gear, he could barely keep his eyes off Bucky in his tight black thermals and his even tighter hair bun, his clean-shaven face all sharp angles and voluptuous curves—

“Man, what is with you today?”

He snapped his gaze back to find Sam with his brows raised, expectant.

“Hmm?” Steve a bit too obviously tuned back into the conversation.

“You’re all glowy and shit.” Sam waved a spoon in his direction.

“Like a human sunbeam,” Foggy seconded.

“You haven’t complained once,” Matt thirded. “About anything.”

“The butter tasted wrong?” Steve suggested.

Sam snorted. “That’s ‘cause it’s margarine.”

“You get some action there, Steve-o?” Foggy grinned like the cat who’d got the cream. “Someone add a little spit to your polish? A little grease to your wheels? Give your gears a good grind?”

Steve scoffed. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

This was about the time Steve wished he had a better poker face. What had he been thinking, promising Bucky he could keep their night together to himself? Steve had never been able to lie worth a damn, especially to these shrewd bastards. He also tended to flush crimson when cornered, especially about something romantic.

Which this very much was. It was all Steve could do not to shoot hearts out of his eyes every time Bucky so much as wandered into his field of vision.

What he needed was a deflection strategy. What he had was a brain that rode the Tunnels of Love at Coney Island on a swoony, lovey-dovey loop.

And Matt Murdock, attorney at law, was having none of it.

“Lemongrass,” Matt stated, decisive.

Steve’s stomach dropped. Of course Matt had noticed the smell of Steve’s favorite body wash.

On Bucky.

“You want some tea, babe?” Foggy craned his head around in search of the waitress. “Don’t think they have that flavor, but—”

“I’m good with coffee.” Matt folded his arms over the table, craned forward. For a guy who couldn’t see, he had a heck of a hard-eyed glare. “Steve?”

“Haven’t had that swill since the war.”

“I’ll bet.”

“What the fuck is going on?” Sam scowled, having gotten up on the wrong side of the proverbial bed. “Why you asking him about hot beverages?”

“I’m asking him about shower gel.”

“Lemongrass.” Sam’s scowl deepened, then realization struck. He gaped at Steve. “You did not!”

If you get stuck, give them as much of the truth as they need and nothing more. Sometimes, Steve had to admit, it wasn’t so bad working with spies.

“Video games,” Steve hissed, half-admonishment to keep their voices down, half-scold for bringing the subject up to begin with. “Buck brought me over that controller. We played all day, then watched a movie.”

“What movie?” Foggy demanded, sly.

“Nimona.”

The three of them cooed as if Steve was a baby bird.

Sam did his proud parent thing. “What’d you think of it?”

“Don’t know. Two minutes in, and I was out like a light.”

“And Bucky stayed over?” Matt had his give-him-enough-rope-to-hang-himself-with face on. “Bucky Barnes?”

“Didn’t have much of a choice. He was out before I was.”

Behind them, the pinball machine trilled and twinkled like it auditioned to be a disco ball, and Castle growled, “I want a fucking rematch, stat.” The four of them glanced over. Bucky winked at them, smug. They returned to their conversation.

“Steve, that’s huge.” Foggy almost came over the table in his excitement.

“That’s what he said,” Matt muttered to himself. Steve got the sense that he wasn’t fooled for a second, but had decided to keep quiet about it.

“When we drove him down to Florida,” Foggy continued, “he wouldn’t even share a room. Said it was for our safety.”

“Wouldn’t let us in, even after the screaming died down.” Matt did nothing to mask the protectiveness in his tone. “Did anything happen?”

Steve shrugged. “He borrowed a sweater, said he was cold.”

“Ah.” Matt canted his head as if to say, touché. “Lemongrass.”

“That code for something I don’t know about?” Sam grumbled. His gaze softened when it hit Steve. “Someone get this man a gold star. That’s good progress, Rogers. Gave you a gift, asked to spend time with you, was comfortable enough to spend the night.”

“Served me my ass on a silver platter for most of the afternoon,” Steve quipped.

“That’s what the kids are calling it these days,” Foggy volleyed back.

“Really good progress,” Sam complimented. “Six months ago, aka the Florida Project, we were not here.”

Matt scoffed. “Feel like Bucky deserves some credit.”

“No doubt,” Sam readily agreed. “But sometimes all it takes is the right person.”

“That’s him saying, ‘Don’t fuck it up,’” Foggy translated, with a shit-eating grin.

“I told you.” Despite his own concerns, Steve, forever the King of Stubborn, dug in. “I got him.”

Sam served up his cockiest smile. “And turns out that’s a good thing.”

A guttural curse drew their collective attention back to the pinball machine. Castle hopped on one foot, having hurt himself when he kicked the side in frustration. Bucky doubled over, howling with laughter. The four of them threw their napkins at Castle, calling him for everything under the sun. Bucky cackled, gleeful, then shoved Castle aside to take his turn.

“Seriously, man.” Sam’s cocoa brown eyes had gone day-old coffee black. “Do not mess this up for him. Or we’ll—”

“I know, I know, mess me up.” Steve scrubbed his face with his hands. “You think I want to? You think I don’t see—”

“Like recognizes like, Rogers,” Matt pointed out, incisive as always.

Sam absorbed this, nodded. “Well said.” After downing the last of his coffee, he leaned back in his seat, shouted, “Barnes, you about done wiping the floor with him? We need to get back out there.”

“Rode hard.” Bucky jabbed the flipper buttons, yanked the plunger, rocked the machine back and forth, and it erupted anew. “And put away wet.”

“More like disco inferno,” Foggy snarked.

Castle, for his part, blew a long, fat raspberry when Bucky offered to fist-bump.

“Sore losers never prosper,” Matt counselled, as they all grappled back into their gear.

Bucky caught Steve’s arm as the rest of them waddled over to the cash to settle up. “You up for a rematch, maybe? After.”

“Wouldn’t mind a nap first.” Steve felt like the inferno was in his pants. “Someone kept me up half the night.” Off Bucky’s hesitant expression, he added, “Definitely in the mood for company. Extra hand moving the couch back and all.”

That earned him a snort. “Place could use some redecorating, if you ask me.”

“Good thing I didn’t.”

“How you feel about Ethiopian?” And the hesitation was back with a vengeance.

“That it’s delicious.” Steve turned his back on the crew, amped his smile to full wattage. “Think it’ll improve my aim any?”

Bucky rolled his eyes, tight-wrapped his scarf around his face to hide his blush. “Hope springs eternal around these parts, Stevie.”

“Don’t it just.”

Steve gave him a wink of his own before he spun around. Bucky groped his ass before jumping in front of him to cover both their bills. He was, Steve discovered, a gentleman like that.

***

Two weeks later, Bucky was a lot less courteous as he snuck into the house after Steve, slammed the front door shut, and shoved Steve against it, ripping his clothes off as he sucked feverishly at his mouth.

“Shorts?!” Bucky exclaimed between decadent twists of his tongue. “Shorts!” He cupped Steve’s ass, indeed clad in the offensive pair of red, white, and blue shorts, and ground their hips together.

“You of all people should know I run hot, Buck,” Steve leered as he dove in for another kiss.

“What I know is you’re a goddamn menace, Stevie Rogers.” Bucky pretended to be annoyed, but Steve wasn’t fooled for a second.

Temps hovered just over the freezing mark, which meant buckets of slushy, grimy snow got dumped on their neighborhood, followed by a glorious sunlit morning. Not quite mild enough for a summer wardrobe, but he couldn’t back down from Riley’s dare because, well. He was Steve.

“What?” Steve was impressed with the amount of innocence he managed to pack into his tone while being dry-fucked in his entrance hall. “You don’t think they suit me?”

“Suit you?!” Bucky’s voice near broke on the last syllable. “You’re lucky I didn’t split the seam ramming my cock—”

“Is that on the menu?” Steve batted his eyelashes, because after two weeks of dealing with each other, he had Bucky’s number. “For tonight, I mean.”

Bucky tensed up, not in the good way.

Damn it.

“Don’t change the subject,” he rasped. Bucky pressed their foreheads together, but didn’t resume kissing Steve.

Steve wove his arms around him, cinched him close. “I’m asking, not pushing.”

“I know.” He nipped in for a soft kiss. “I appreciate it.” He fought not to frown. “Not yet.”

“That’s the spirit.” Steve heaped on a little extra cheese, got the smirk he sought. “Now can I interest you in divesting me of a pair of shorts?”

“Change of plan.” He recognized a diversion tactic when he heard one, relieved Bucky took the time to regroup. Still didn’t dull the devil in his eyes when he peeled off of Steve and pointed to the stairs. “On your feet, soldier. Slow march to the bedroom. Strip as you go. Show off that sweet ass for me.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” Steve purred, right in Bucky’s ear as he swaggered past.

“I mean it.” The heat of Bucky’s gaze on his backside just about burned him through. “Slow.”

It had been snowing for fourteen days straight, a record for Bushwick and the patrol. Steve and Bucky had spent fourteen straight nights together, sometimes sexually, sometimes shoveling, sometimes neither, but always, always close. Video game tournaments and movie marathons. Quiet afternoons reading on opposite sides of the couch, legs tangled in the middle. Midnights stirring up homemade pots of mac and cheese. Mutual masturbation sessions that left them too dizzy to stand. Long post-coital soaks in Steve’s ginormous bath. Grappling for the phone whenever Bucky attempted to write something obscene on Steve’s behalf in the group chat.

Falling for each other, hard and fast.

Too fast, probably, but Steve had always had poor impulse control, and when it came to protecting Bucky Barnes from whatever torturous nightmares lurked inside his pretty, pretty head? Well, they’d given Steve a shield for a reason.

Not that there hadn’t been a few stumbles along the way. Bucky was a minefield of hard noes and conditional yeses, especially when it came to sex, with no map for Steve to follow. He’d had to feel his way, light on his feet, never afraid to change tactics or back down from a particular decision. That last one tested his stubborn something fierce. But a funny thing happened whenever Bucky put up an emotional roadblock. (Steve had learned to read micro-expressions like a champ.)

Steve course-corrected. Pivoted. Diverted. He came to see Bucky’s shutdowns like mini-sparring sessions. Unlike the heat of battle, the point wasn’t to defeat your opponent; it was to help them learn how to handle themselves whenever the situation came up again. When Bucky pushed back or avoided something, or mentally timed-out for a bit to regroup, Steve took a beat himself. Searched for the trigger and disabled it, so they could move on, no explosions necessary.

The other miraculous thing was, each small incident brought them closer. Strengthened the bonds of trust between them, though Steve still didn’t know more than the bare outline of Bucky’s story. But without ever saying anything outright or sharing specific details, Bucky’s boundaries gave Steve the shape and structure of what had happened to him—and it affected him deeply. Irrevocably. If Steve ever encountered his captors in the wild, he would have no compunction about lopping their heads off with one fearsome spin of his shield.

“’M sorry.”

They’d made a holy wreck of the bed, as usual. Sheets ripped, clothes thrown anywhere and everywhere, not to mention the generous proliferation of fluids. Their sex had only gotten more energetic as they shed their inhibitions: play-wrestling for dominance, enthusiastic thrusting, testing out Steve’s endurance in ever-more-gymnastic positions, wild thrashing around because it really was that good between them.

Volcanic, even though all they ever did was hand stuff. Some frotting. A fevered grind if they were feeling extra frisky.

They lay in a weird ‘T’ formation, Steve upside down on the left-most edge with his feet propped atop the headboard, Bucky sprawled perpendicular to him with his head on Steve’s chest. Steve’s arm latched across Bucky’s sweatshirt-clad chest, anchoring him in. Sheets clung to their clammy limbs like seaweed, like they’d just shipwrecked on a blue sand beach on some distant planet. Bucky’s gaze swam around the tide pool pattern of the streetlights on the ceiling. Steve couldn’t tear his eyes away from Bucky, slack-lipped and sated, dark tendrils of hair curling into the grooves between Steve’s defined muscles.

“You should be,” Steve teased, feather-light. “Edging me that extra minute was a dick move.”

Bucky chuckled throatily, shit-eating grin in full effect. Steve had taught him well. “You loved it.”

“Still a dick move.”

“Can’t blame a guy for wanting just a little bit more of…” Bucky craned his head around, gnawed at Steve’s biceps.

“You coulda waited that minute after I blew,” Steve insisted. “You know I’m good for a second round.”

“Third.”

“Whatever.”

“My arm was getting tired.”

“So? I like to put on a show.”

“There a point to all this?”

“Yeah.” Steve lowered his voice to a rumble, which he knew stoked Bucky’s fires. “I’m fucking crazy for you, doll.”

Bucky barked out a laugh, but it turned a bit wet at the end. He sucked in a breath like he struggled for air, leaned his face away from Steve, who scrambled to get his shit together. The shift in Bucky’s mood hung heavily around them, like an oncoming storm.

“Why are you so good to me?” The ache in his voice just about broke Steve’s heart.

Steve waited several beats to see if there was more, answered, “We’re good to each other. Don’t need a reason.”

“I’m a mess, Steve.” He seemed to swallow down the tearful thickness in his throat, but his eyes still glistened in the moonlight. “I’m a broken, anti-social shut-in whose issues have issues. I can’t even…” He slammed an impotent fist into the mattress. “I want to, I want to so bad, but—”

“Hey.” Steve used the Captain America tone sparingly with Bucky, but sometimes it helped to refocus him. “Breathe a bit, for me.”

Bucky wheezed through a few breaths while Steve rubbed circles into his chest. Throughout, he shook his head from side to side, as if arguing with himself.

“I never even had it as bad as some of the others,” he blurted all of a sudden. “But I still hear their screams. At night, sometimes, it’s like I’m back there, even when I’m with you.”

“You all had it bad, Buck.”

“But they never—”

“You all had it bad.”

Bucky blew out a long breath, deflated a bit. “What did Sam tell you about me?”

“Just that you were a POW.”

He nodded. “I asked him to. I don’t… I still don’t know how to talk about it.”

Here, Old Steve might have pushed. Pressed. Nudged. But caring for Bucky had taught him how golden a prolonged silence could be.

“They used to force-feed me,” Bucky whispered. “Three guards with masks. No faces. No eyes. Didn’t say a word. Just grabbed me and… Dislocated my jaw a couple times, holding it open. They’d leave it that way for days, to make it easier. Only reset it when they wanted me to talk.” He tugged on Steve’s arm until it wrapped tight around him again. “That’s why I can’t… I can’t stand anything down my throat.”

Suddenly, Steve didn’t trust himself to speak. But he had to reassure Bucky in some way, so he found the words.

“No one’s ever going to hurt you like that again.” Steve crunched his shoulders up so he could kiss him on the forehead, over and over and over, until Bucky’s trembling stopped.

“But then you won’t—”

“Buck, I got no complaints,” Steve murmured into his temple. “This is the happiest I have been in almost a hundred goddamn years, and I could not give less of a shit if I never get a blowjob again.” Steve pressed another, longer kiss to the corner of his mouth. Caught sight of Bucky’s glistening blues as he pulled away. “Kissing still okay?”

“Yeah, I…” He took a fortifying sip off Steve’s lips. “It’s not the same.”

“Baby doll, you don’t wanna do something, we don’t do it.” Steve underlined his firmness with gentility. He needed Bucky to understand, but he also didn’t want to upset him more. “Something we’ve done a hundred times hits you the wrong way, you tell me, we stop. This whole thing stops being good for you, then I’m still gonna be your friend and support you no matter what.” Steve debated with himself, but had to add, “Don’t get me wrong, I’m in this for as long as you’ll have me, however you’ll have me. You got choices, is all.”

Steve could have cheered when Bucky’s laugh came out a wee bit giddy, a teensy bit unhinged.

“I don’t know about that, Stevie,” he chuckled wetly. “Since the day I met you, all this has felt… inevitable, somehow.”

That settled something in Steve he hadn’t even known was worried. He felt so relieved, so solid in how he’d navigated the conversation thus far, that he did something unprecedented. He decided to give Bucky a delicate little push.

After flopping back down and raking his fingers through the swathes of Bucky’s dark hair for a couple minutes. “What else you got?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m here for you, you know,” Steve reminded him. “Whatever you wanna share, or not, I’m here.”

To his surprise, Bucky shifted onto his side so that, if Steve angled his head a certain way, they could see each other’s faces.

“Can you do my neck?” Bucky let out a soft moan when Steve dug into the knots at the base of his nape. Though his eyelids drifted to half-mast, his features took on a pinched quality as he murmured, “The penetration thing. It’s not about anything that happened to me over there.” Not where Steve thought he would go with this, but he was curious to see where they landed. “It’s kinda embarrassing. I’m kinda… maybe… making a big deal about nothing.”

“Pretty big deal to me.” Steve couldn’t hold back his smile. “I’ve seen what you’re packing.”

Bucky’s eyes rolled beneath his lids. “You’re impossible.”

“They broke the mold when they made me,” Steve agreed. “Literally. It exploded.”

“That’s because of the HYDRA agent.”

“Meh, if I’m honest, it was a little creaky before that.” Steve paused his massage to do a ‘half-and-half’ wave. “Don’t think they got the dimensions right.”

“Which I’m guessing you let Howard Stark know about.”

“Still complain to Tony about it,” Steve snickered. “It really gets him going.”

“Menace,” Bucky grumbled, betrayed by his fond smile. “It’s, uh… It’s about the arm.” His smile turned into a wince. “I still feel kinda shy about it.”

Steve doubled his massage efforts. “Shy how?”

“It’s not pretty,” Bucky confessed in a hush. “When I was over there… They experimented on me. Drugs. Procedures. Medical stuff.” He shuddered. “I could barely stand to be in the hospital, so the thought of any surgery…” Steve clamped his hand around the back of Bucky’s neck, steadying, steadying. “They coulda cleaned it up a bit, the Plastics guys, but I wouldn’t let them.”

“Aw, baby doll,” Steve cooed. He scratched his nails into Bucky’s scalp, who drooped like an exhausted kitten. “You gotta know I don’t care about that.”

“That’s the embarrassing part.”

Something in his tone had Steve doubting that was the whole truth. “What else?”

“Whaddya mean, ‘What else?’”

“That’s the embarrassing part? You’re shy about your arm because you were so traumatized when you were held captive for months that you can’t stand the thought of more surgery?” Steve shook his head, playful. “Nuh-uh. Nope. Doesn’t track. You knew that wouldn’t bother me.”

“I didn’t!”

“You did, Buck, or you would never have gone to bed with me in the first place.”

“This is what I get for spilling my guts to you?” Bucky demanded. But, oh, he blushed deeper with every blustering word. He was lying through his teeth. “Bullshit accusations and, and…”

“Come on.” Steve gave his shoulder a gentle shake. “Out with it.”

“I’m the victim here!”

“You’re the survivor.” Steve gave him the full ‘Captain America is disappointed in you’ face for that. “Spill it, doll.”

“For fuck’s sake,” was Bucky’s final, feeble protest, then he full-on drama queen collapsed onto Steve’s chest. “I’m not sure how to balance anymore.”

Steve raised a curious brow. “Balance?”

“You know, if I… topped.” Bucky’s blush intensified to a sort of reddish purple. “You could ride me, I guess, but even then, I’d like to hold you. Touch you. Hold and touch you at the same time.”

He nodded, nodded, all teasing set aside to confront the problem, greatest tactical mind, yadda, yadda. Figured before they went any further, he should ask the obvious. “I take it you’re not comfortable wearing your prosthetic?”

“You wouldn’t mind?”

“Why would I mind? It’s part of you.”

The blush ventured into the ultraviolet range. Good thing Steve had super-special vision.

“Haven’t really been giving you enough credit here, have I?” Bucky mused, somewhat to himself.

“We both got a lotta stuff we’re carrying around.” Steve thought it safe to resume his ministrations, stroking a tender touch over Bucky’s head, shoulders, and back. “And we just started. Came in hot. Now that some of the steam’s burnt off… just need to talk about it.”

“Promise to do more of that,” Bucky vowed, solemn.

“Me too.” He snagged a lock of Bucky’s hair, twisted it around his finger. “Balance problem’s just that: a problem. We can try some things out. They don’t work, we try other stuff.” He shrugged, mock-innocent. “Could be fun.”

Bucky scoffed, his blush still a five-car alarm. “Why do I feel like a sorcerer who’s called up some demon or something?”

“A lust demon, or like a demon-demon?” Steve flirted shamelessly. “If it’s the second, I object.”

“Noted.” Bucky wriggled around so he could buss a kiss to Steve’s pec. “Sorry. You’re not a demon. Even a lust one. More like…”

Steve batted his eyelashes. “An angel?”

“I was gonna say a satyr.” Bucky frowned. “Those are the ones with the horns, right?”

“I think you mean a Loki.”

“A what?”

“Never mind.” Steve let a little wickedness curl into his smirk, a little drawl into his voice, since he was a satyr and all. “How you feel about bottoming, baby doll?”

“Oh, big fan.” Bucky’s laugher bubbled up, as fizzy and intoxicating as champagne. “Huge, you might say.”

Steve’s turn to flush as he contemplated the possibilities there. They ended up flirting and teasing and sharing long into the night, until the first flickers of dawn bathed the bedroom in golden tones, and they cuddled in to sleep.

***

Steve hadn’t forgotten, exactly. He still went into the Tower for security meetings three times a week. Still appeared at the occasional charity event. Still monitored the feeds for an hour or two each day from his basement office. Still spent an afternoon here and there tracking patterns of activity in regions with a history of HYDRA occupation. Even in the thrall of a new… romance? Relationship? Whatever. Steve could never be accused of letting down the side.

But for the past month and a half, it was as if all the megalomaniacs and evildoers made a collective decision to hibernate for the winter, along with the skunks and groundhogs and bears. There hadn’t been an incident worth calling the Avengers out for in seven weeks, a period of time that unfortunately coincided with Steve sinking in deeper and deeper with one Bucky Barnes.

It had been a lot, being with Bucky, but the best kind of ‘a lot’ Steve had ever known. Though they often parted ways during the day, they still spent every night together. They didn’t date so much as exist in concordance, Steve a planet forever orbiting Bucky’s sun. As the snow melted and the patrol met less often, they found other shared activities: morning runs, library visits, midday check-ins with vulnerable people around the neighborhood, odd jobs that Bucky picked up at the family clinic or the seniors’ center, pitching in at the soup kitchen. Steve discovered that Bucky had a whole volunteer schedule to keep his mind clear, with more responsibilities come summer.

Though Bucky claimed this was all part of his recovery process, a way to keep those non-lust demons at bay, Steve thought it was something more.

“Look to the helpers,” his ma had always counselled him, back when Steve’s version of improving the community was to get beat down by a gang of bullies, “and be one yourself. A bloody nose isn’t going to make anyone’s life better, my sunshine. But helping will.”

After following Bucky around for the better part of seven weeks, Steve finally started to understand what she meant. Bucky had suffered and lost more than the average person—more than Steve, when he thought about it, since he had no super powers—but he still gave back however he could. Steve found himself not just falling for Bucky, but admiring the hell out of him.

Between learning about his… boyfriend? Were they boyfriends now? Bucky’s many achievements and navigating his trauma, not to mention experiencing this kind of devotion for the first time, Steve could be forgiven for being a wee bit distracted as regarded the other half of his life.

Except Bucky paid the price for it, and that was unforgivable.

Friday nights at Matt and Foggy’s became a thing. Being lawyers who did a bunch of pro-bono work with various illnesses/disabilities, they lived in a drafty warehouse space that Steve would bet money wasn’t in a residential zone and was maybe, perhaps a squat. Every Friday on their way over, he and Bucky came up with ever-more outlandish theories, like Matt had tricked some slumlord into letting them live rent-free so long as they kept the building clear of ‘undesirables’ or a mob kingpin owed Foggy some kind of favor.

Or worse. Steve honestly didn’t like to think about it too much. (He’d asked Pepper to quietly look into buying the place to give Matt and Foggy more long-term stability.)

Other than the shoddy insulation and oddly located windows, Matt and Foggy had made the place their own, full of cozy secondhand furniture, more beanbag chairs than sense, a well-stocked bar, a pool table, a piano, a ball pit (!!), a half basketball court, and an industrial-sized kitchen. (Bucky’s latest theory: an abandoned headquarters for the Tracksuit Mafia, who’d been run out of the borough by none other than Clint Barton after some kind of gang war the previous year the crew had long heard rumors about. Steve knew the whole sordid tale, but couldn’t share without dissolving into a giggle fit that left him unable to form words. Bucky remained unimpressed, but also dead curious.)

Beers, banter, and barbecue became the tradition, since the kitchen had a full, Sam-approved grill with a working fan and the building still got regular Guinness deliveries from an unknown source. (Steve’s latest theory: Matt’s storied Da was Sinn Fein, forced to immigrate to America after some bad business back home, but the lads showed their appreciation for his sacrifice by maintaining his stock of stout. The fact that Bucky couldn’t dismiss it outright scored him extra points.)

Eight o’clock that particular Friday saw them in their usual corners: Sam, Matt, and Foggy arguing politics over the last of the barbecue feast; Riley and Steve playing HORSE; Bucky hustling Castle at pool; Marvin Gaye’s Trouble Man on the record player; fresh-out-of-the-oven pecan-bourbon pies cooling on the bar counter. Steve inwardly musing on how much his friends had picked up regarding the intimate nature of Steve and Bucky’s relationship as he shot stealth looks over at his maybe boyfriend, definitely lover whenever he made Castle curse a blue streak. Bucky sneaking a peek at Steve’s abs whenever he jumped to sink a basket—something he’d confessed to when they got ready that second Friday after they’d screwed most of the afternoon, insisting that Steve wear a T-shirt rather than a button-down under his cardigan.

A cardigan that Bucky proceeded to steal from him as soon as they got to the warehouse, after shivering up a storm on the walk over.

Yeah, their friends knew about them.

Bucky had squirreled away so many of Steve’s comfy clothes at this point that he wore them more often than not whenever they went out together. Such as tonight, when Bucky modeled an off-white cable-knit Aran sweater the Galway County Cathaoirleach gifted Steve for guiding that kraken back into the open ocean a few years back. Under that, one of Steve’s henleys, which Bucky’d had for so long that he’d doctored the left sleeve to fold a certain way depending on if he wore his prosthetic or not. Steve, of course, didn’t mind in the least. He got a weird sort of pride out of the whole thing, even if it meant Natasha kept pestering him to go shopping since he ignored “all of the clothes we bought last time.”

Maybe it was the mere thought of Natasha that brought it on. (Steve didn’t doubt that she was always listening, somehow, even to his thoughts.) Or that they’d just celebrated the spring equinox. Or yet another example of Steve’s bullshit luck. No matter.

Everyone freaked out when the assemble alarm went off. Steve himself stared at his phone like it had grown tentacles after he pulled it out of his pocket. But it was Bucky’s quiet “No” that cut through everyone’s overreactions and straight to Steve’s heart.

Steve raised a tempering hand to silence them all, because it genuinely could be nothing. A development on a long-term case, a request from the President of India for an audience, Tony needing some attention after breaking up with Pepper for the umpteenth time. Steve had argued many times for limiting the control of the assemble alarm to himself, Fury, Hill, and Natasha, but he had been overruled as usual by Tony Stark’s massive ego.

Or.

Or it could be something serious. And he would do no one any good by contributing to the general air of worry and panic.

“Somewhere I can take this?” Steve asked Matt, always the most level-headed in any situation.

“Bedroom.” He pointed to the room directly behind Bucky, which Steve was beyond grateful for.

He was less enamored with how everyone watched him go in dead fucking silence. Steve expected more from them—they were his friends, his crew. Who did they think they were dealing with all this time?

He gripped the back of Bucky’s neck as he passed, attempting to ground him, but saw by the glass in his eyes that he already retreated from the world. After leaning in to press their heads together, whispering soft encouragements in Bucky’s ear, Steve glared at the rest of them, all but ordering them to care for Bucky in his absence. He wasn’t beyond pulling a Captain America move, not when it came to Bucky. Letting go of him in that moment was one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do, but the shrill ring of the phone was doing no one any favors, and Steve could at least get that to stop.

“Captain Rogers,” he barked into the receiver as soon as he was ensconced in the bedroom.

“About time,” Natasha’s usual drawl had a bit of bite to it. “You schedule a mani-pedi you didn’t warn us about?”

“Get to the point.”

“Level three event.” He appreciated how quickly she turned to business. “One of the apprentice sorcerers at Kamar-Taj went rogue again, is trying to resurrect Budhahang, a Nepalese king who can stop the movement of the sun. Allegedly.”

“Sounds like a problem for Stephen Strange.”

“Did I mention the army of possessed yeti?”

“So we’re backup on this.” Which meant maybe, maybe Steve could get out of it, if he could somehow convince Natasha he wasn’t needed without setting off every one of her spy instincts. Sigh. “Thor on planet?”

“Regaling Clint and Bruce with tales of tangling with frost giants as we speak.”

“Tony’s available?”

“And sober, for a change.” She let that hang in the air for a while—never a good sign. Steve knew better than to give her whip-smart brain time to do its thing, but he’d also never been the best at asking for what he wanted. Like, ever. “Rogers, do me a favor and tell me why it sounds like you wanna sit this one out?”

Steve braced himself for impact. “You know how I feel about the cold.”

“Pull the other one,” Natasha retorted. “You’ve been building snow forts with your second stringers for weeks now. What’s this about?”

“There’s a situation here.” Steve didn’t think honesty would save him, but he had nothing else.

“Emergency?”

“Not our kind, but...” He did a thing, then, that he knew would cost him: he all but asked for a favor. “But if you saw a way that I could stay on the bench for this one. Advise from my home office. Something else I’m not thinking of. I’d appreciate it.”

She was silent so long Steve thought the line had gone dead. “You’re serious about this?”

“I think you know me well enough by now to know I wouldn’t ask without a good reason.”

“I do,” Natasha sighed. “That’s what’s got me curious.”

Steve shut his eyes, imagined all the ways he was gonna pay for this, in teasing, in nosiness, in never letting him live it down. Then he thought of Bucky, gone near catatonic at the sound of an alarm. Worth it.

Just when he thought it was home free, the shouting started.

“What the fuck do you mean he’s taking a personal day?!” Nick Fury and his temper overtook the line. “Rogers, we are ten minutes out on a detour we can’t afford to pick your sorry ass up. If I don’t see you on that roof, there’s a court-martial in your future. Understood?”

He blew out a sharp breath. “I had to try.”

“And inevitably you failed to succeed,” he growled. “Fury out.”

Steve came very close to crushing the phone in his hand as he took a moment he didn’t have to regroup. Though the call, the mission, the situation shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone, he still reeled from the whole thing—which wouldn’t do anyone any good, especially Bucky. Steve whirled around to return to the main room…

…and found Bucky framed by the open doorway, having listened to the whole damn conversation. He held himself together with herculean effort, vibrating with an emotion Steve couldn’t quite get a read on. Behind him, the crew milled around aimlessly, a pretense of privacy. Steve couldn’t bring himself to mind.

Bucky would need them in the days to come. And more than anything, he needed to know Bucky would be okay.

“Baby doll.” Steve opened his arms wide, beyond relieved when Bucky rushed into them, buried his face in Steve’s neck. “I’m so sorry. I don’t have much time.”

“They need you.” Bucky didn’t linger long in the hug, straightening up until they were eye-to-eye, ever the resilient, battle-ready soldier. “I-I… This was gonna happen eventually. I know who you are, Steve.”

“Still feels too soon,” Steve admitted. “It rips me up that you’re gonna have a bad day tomorrow because of me.”

He huffed. “Been through worse.” And wasn’t that the understatement of the century. “Always some evil motherfucker somewhere trying to be a god. Same as it ever was.”

“Good thing I got a literal god on my side,” Steve reassured him.

“Yeah.” Somehow that did nothing to turn Bucky’s frown upside down. “Sock this one right in the jaw, from me.”

“I will.”

Bucky inhaled shakily, aimed his baby blues point-blank at Steve.

“Come back to me.” That telltale thickness coated his voice. “Promise.”

 “Got too much left to do together, Buck,” Steve vowed. “Don’t wanna miss a thing.”

He cupped his face, sealed his pledge with a kiss—tender, passionate, a ‘see you soon’, not a goodbye. Felt a tickle of amusement at the gasp that drew out of Castle. He may or may not have heard the sound of money exchanging hands. Speaking of…

Steve slipped his keys and the alarm codes into Bucky’s back pocket. “Stay at the house while I’m gone.”

“What?” Bucky glanced up at him, bewildered. “That’s—"

“Fridge is stocked,” Steve insisted. “You got books and games for days. Fresh sheets on the bed. Use the bath as much as you want. Half your stuff’s already there, doll. I just think you’ll be more comfortable, even if you’re not doing great.”

“Stevie—”

“Please.” Steve wasn’t above begging. “Let me do what I can.”

Bucky nodded to himself, breathing deep, summoning his calm. “I’ll think about it.”

Then, he threw himself into Steve’s arms, all but strangling him in a hug. Steve lingered there as long as he could, until the distant sound of the quinjet approaching told him to steal a final kiss as he eased Bucky away.

Into the waiting arms of the crew, who’d gathered in the room with them.

“We got him, Cap,” Sam reassured him, as everyone fell in around Bucky. “Go do your thing.”

“Thanks, guys.” Steve locked eyes with each of them in turn, an acknowledgement, a personal moment. Bucky last, longest. Not a goodbye. “Be home soon.”

End of Chapter 5

Chapter Text

Chapter 5 – Pillow Princess

Interlude: Bucky

Why me?

Bucky asked himself that question, over and over, in the aftermath of Latveria. On a cot in a military cargo plane, on a mattress almost as thin as the one in his cell in a private room at Walter Reed, on the floor beside the bed he should ostensibly be sleeping in, on his therapist’s couch, in the corner of his closet in the aftermath of a panic attack—why me? Why me? Why me?

Why did he survive when the rest of his team—

Why him out of the dozen others being held captive by the—

And later, louder, blaring, deafening: What the fuck do I do now?

The answer had come more gradually, once he’d recovered some. When he’d gone to the memorial services, when he’d written letters to the families of the fallen, when he’d stopped glaring at Dr. Mohan for 45 minutes straight three times a week, when he’d managed to leave his apartment for the first time in a month to find Claire Temple struggling to get her ancient, dyspeptic station wagon started. He’d stared at the Tupperware full of chocolate chip cookies she’d left on his doorstep as a thank you for so long that he’d had to steal them back from an enterprising raccoon.

The cookies had led to coffee, to mowing her lawn, to painting her front door, to Sunday afternoons at the soup kitchen, to meeting more of his neighbors, like Sam and Riley. To real progress with Dr. Mohan. To helping out at the seniors’ center and the family clinic. To the snow patrol. To the support group. To a way through the darkness.

Deserve it.

Bucky’s mantra, his ethos, his raison d’être. Every day, do something to justify your existence. Show gratitude to the universe that guided you toward survival. Celebrate the small victories when you’re blessed with them. Some days Bucky was lost in the black forest of despair. But most days, almost every day now, Bucky proved to the powers that be—and most importantly to himself—that they had chosen wisely. That he drew breath for a reason, and that reason was to give back.

He'd even begun to think that he was done with all the Why me’s. He had his proof of concept. He’d road-tested his resolve. It was, as Dan Savage was so fond of saying, getting better.

Then, he met Steve Rogers.

A whole new level of Why me? opened up that first night they spent in bed together.

Why the fuck is he into in someone like me? What did I do to deserve this kind of attention from a motherfucking superhero of all people? What the hell am I gonna do now?

And, lately…

What am I gonna do when he finally realizes I’m not worth it?

Except the weeks kept going by, and Steve didn’t flinch, didn’t back down, didn’t say “when.” Instead, Steve doubled down. Steve dismantled every one of Bucky’s carefully constructed defenses. Steve stitched himself so seamlessly into the wound that was Bucky’s life, there wouldn’t even be a scar. Bucky stopped asking Why me? and threw himself into sharing a life with Steve.

Until that Friday. Until the alarm. Until he realized what it meant to care for someone who belonged to the whole wide world.

Bucky tried—he really did—to hide out in his basement cubbyhole. Castle, of all people, had insisted on walking him home after Friday night at Matt and Foggy’s. Bucky didn’t remember much of their conversation, just that Castle nudged him toward Steve’s townhouse when they got to the corner of Cornelia Street, but Bucky forced himself to walk the three remaining blocks to his place on Woodbine.

He woke up in the closet the next morning, feeling as if the whole building had collapsed on top of him. He hadn’t cleaned the damn blanket he left in there for emergencies after last time, and he’d forgotten his water bottle, and it was dank and musty and uncomfortable. He couldn’t stop thinking about Steve’s bed—about the extra-fluffy goose-down duvet from Germany, and the mattress with the perfect squish-to-firm ratio, and the pillows that smelled like Steve, and the fleece sheets for the coldest nights. About soaking in Steve’s enormous tub until he turned half-prune. About bingeing Schitt’s Creek while working his way through a vat of New York Super Fudge Chunk. About burrowing into the couch under the hundreds of quilts the loved ones of soldiers and civilians Steve had saved sent to him as a thank you.

Seriously, Steve had a whole quilt vault in his basement—another location far cozier than Bucky’s dusty, water-damaged hidey hole.

Spoiler alert: he got his shit together and went to Steve’s.

But after three days of deluxe PTSD accommodations, Why me? returned with a vengeance. Why did he get to bask in the lemongrass-scented luxury of Steve’s bedroom? What had he done to deserve three whole baskets of assorted bath bombs, an entire shelf of unopened lotions, and a robe fit for a king? (Or gifted to Steve by one—Bucky blanked on the details. To be fair, Steve had been two-fingers deep at the time.) No amount of flirting disguised as shit talk and sexual prowess could make someone worthy of the exclusive use of all these fucking quilts.

Bucky started to get itchy. Not in a ‘break out the calamine’ or ‘you should probably get tested’ way, but spiritually. Fundamentally. Even after all the trauma, he’d never lost the lowercase ‘a’ part of his personality. His closet of shame may need a little spring cleaning, but you could eat off the chipped tile of his basement apartment floors. Or any other surface outside the closet, including the ceiling.

As soon as there was no super-hunk to draw all the focus in the space, Bucky saw the loneliness for the trees. Steve resided in some of the rooms, but he didn’t live here yet. A half-dozen abandoned design projects were scattered around the house like discarded toys, as if a toddler had been left to his own devices for far, far too long.

Bucky empathized. Getting your shit together after a life-altering traumatic event was a whole-ass process, one he’d barely come out of unscathed. Or less scathed than he’d been to begin with. More scathed? Whatever. Anyone with half a brain could understand that Steve searched for a purpose beyond being Captain America, though only Steve failed to see that that purpose was not interior design.

But, excitingly, this was an area where Bucky could make a difference. Could demonstrate how much he cared. Could stave off boredom and his own deep-seated melancholy. Could give back to someone who had gifted him with so much more than access to an overabundance of quilts and a series of spine-searing orgasms. Not that Bucky was anything less than deeply satisfied with both of those things.

Now that he had a project, Bucky was better able to avoid the gaping Steve-sized hole in his life. He organized a few trips out for supplies, swaddled in layers of Steve-wear. He attended puzzle night at the seniors’ center. He tagged along on Claire’s monthly trip to the big box stores. By the end of the first week, Bucky had enough energy to go for their usual early morning run around Evergreen Cemetery.

But still way, way, way too much time to think. About things he’d never dared contemplate since his rescue, like the future. What he might want out of this new, unexpected version of his life. Who he might spend it with, and what shape that might take, given that person’s—Steve, it was Steve—work commitments and responsibilities. Whether Bucky could hack the not-knowing, the risks, the absences, the anxieties long-term. Whether he could be the partner Steve needed in his life. Whether that was even on the table.

(Part of Bucky suspected it had been set in stone from the second they’d laid eyes on each other.)

For the first time in a long time, Bucky needed advice. Romantic advice. He held his breath under the surface of the bathwater for three minutes when it occurred to him. He couldn’t go to Claire with this—that would make it too real. Dr. Mohan would have improvement plans and coping strategies, fucking homework—he couldn’t deal with all that right now. Bucky needed someone who had been there. Who had fought the same kind of internal wars. Who saw the same specters every time they so much as glanced in the mirror. Who understood they lived on borrowed time.

The irony was not lost on Bucky that normally, lately, that person would be Steve.

When his phone warned him it was Tuesday, Bucky spent three hours in the quilt vault, absorbing all the good vibes he could before… well, before he consumed a bland as fuck dinner to discourage vomiting and skulked through the back alleys to the civic center. Decked in full snow patrol armor—full-body thermals, leather gloves, calf-high boots, blackout scarf and goggles, what he nicknamed his BDSM jacket because of all the buckles and straps, and Steve’s softest sweater—Bucky scared a few squirrels back to their trees.

But the crows were his people.

He swooped in just as the stragglers ambled over to the circle. Not to his usual fortress of extra chairs, but to the front row, positioning himself—strategically—just outside of Sam’s peripheral vision. He shucked off his outer layer before he could think twice about it, then curled into himself and glared at the floor. Concentrated on the fact that the stupid puke green tiles could use a polish as he breathed, breathed, breathed.

His inner monologue, as usual, did its “death by a thousand cuts” routine.

Talk. Fucking talk, dumbass. If you don’t, you lose him. You’ll screw it up. You’ll fuck him up worse than he already is. He doesn’t deserve that shit. He doesn’t deserve a regurgitated piece of gristle like you, but there’s no accounting for taste. Or stubborn. So borrow some from him and goddamn talk to them, asshole.

Halfway through Sam’s opening spiel, something slid into his field of vision: the butt of Matt’s cane. Bucky followed it as it slithered closer, closer, till it wedged itself against the edge of Bucky’s boot. He glanced over at Matt’s legs. One of his hands hung, loose, waiting, just beneath where Bucky’s elbow would be. Grateful, so grateful he almost teared up, Bucky shifted his prosthetic into Matt’s waiting hand. He felt a soft tug when Matt caught hold, just about all the close contact he could bear at the moment.

Across the circle, someone else spoke up, shared their story in response to Sam’s welcome. Bucky couldn’t focus on the words, but the ache in the person’s voice got through to him. Resonated. He lifted his head a bit, noticed the meeting was poorly attended, only the crew and a few others in the seats around him. Bucky settled into that sensation of relief, clung to it as the minutes ticked by, as he waited for the next available gap. He kept the thought of Steve alive in his heart: the coy smirk on his lips when he’d asked to make out, the simmer in his eyes when he stripped off his clothes, the sunshine smile whenever they woke up next to each other. The gentleness with which he’d peeled back Bucky’s defenses, exposing the tarnished but vulnerable soul within.

“I think I’m in love with someone, and I don’t know what the hell to do about it.”

It took Bucky a couple minutes to realize the words had been said out loud, and he’d been the one to say them. He felt their eyes on him, the curiosity, the shock, the scrutiny—

“Go on,” Sam encouraged, in his Sam way.

Matt knocked their knees together, kept his pressed into Bucky—the silent support he needed to continue.

Bucky breathed, breathed, breathed. Then, “I didn’t expect it. I guess you never do. I’m just trying to get through, you know?” Others murmured in agreement. He swallowed back a surge of nausea, forced out, “I didn’t think anyone would want someone so…” Broken. Shattered. Fucked up beyond all recognition. “Or that I could even feel a thing like…” He shook his head. Dr. Mohan would not be proud of him. “I don’t even know how to…”

“You do.” He recognized Riley’s voice, but couldn’t bring himself to look his way. “Of course you do. You’re already doing it.”

“But I’m not even trying!” The words exploded out of him before he could stop them. “It just happened, somehow it happened, and now there’s this thing, and all these expectations, and feelings that I don’t even fucking want! I was good. I was getting by. I was… healing, I guess. The spinning stopped. I was steady, maybe… maybe even strong. And now it’s like… he leaves for a week, and I can’t get out of bed.”

Bucky’s throat cinched so tight he could barely get the last word out. All the bleak emotions he’d expunged hang like storm clouds in the air around them, swelling and sparking, threatening a downpour. He strangled the urge to flee with everything he had.

“But you did.” Castle, the jerk, stated the obvious in a bid for attention.

“What?” Bucky shot a glare in his direction, surprised by the seriousness of his expression.

“You got out of bed,” Castle pointed out, simple, direct. “A-plus on the coping mechanisms, Barnes. You got yourself to a place where you could talk it out, and you stepped up.”

Bucky did a whole guppy routine in his direction, even his trauma stunned into silence.

“First time Matty went on a work trip after my diagnosis,” Foggy recalled, “I made a blanket fort in the middle of the ball pit and went on a whole scrapbooking spree. Decided our relationship should be, I don’t know, documented or something, to prove it had happened once I was—”

“He did all the captions in braille,” Matt contributed, to spare his husband the grief. “His ma sobbed for three hours when he showed it to her.”

That got a warm smile from Sam. “I’d love to see them, next time we’re over. If you’re okay with that.”

“More than,” Foggy confirmed. “Since I’m here to show them to you.”

Riley leaned over the arm of his chair to confide, “I had to lose these before Samuel admitted he had feelings for me.” He gestured at his legs. “We were the ‘Will they or won’t they?’ of the 212th Pararescue Squadron, and every unit before that, all the way back to Basic.”

“I white-knuckled the ‘Don’t Tell’ part of DADT,” Sam confessed. “Not a lot of queer icons in rural Louisiana when I was coming up. All I wanted was to be able to afford college and to make my parents proud. Falling in love with a white boy from Williamsburg was not part of the plan.”

“Until you came face-to-face with what it would be like to live without him,” Castle interjected.

“Got it in one.” Sam angled his chair to get a better view of Bucky, who still couldn’t quite meet his eyes. “That life-or-death stuff sure brings you a lot of clarity. I’m not surprised Steve being away triggered you.”

All of Bucky’s fears surged up his throat, pushing and shoving and elbowing to get out. “W-What if it’s like this every time? What if I can’t hack being with someone like him? What if he gets hurt or captured or worse? And I’m just… stuck. Just lying there like a pea under a mountain of quilts.”

Leave it to these fucking assholes he called friends to cherry pick the least important part of what he said to comment on.

“Funny,” Castle quipped. “Always thought you’d be the pillow princess, not the pea.”

“Excuse you,” Riley countered. “Bucky is a sharpshooter, aka a stone-top.”

“You think Captain Beefcake takes it up the ass?” Castle snorted. “Think again. He didn’t give it up for America, he ain’t doing it for the likes of Barnes.”

Bucky practiced his resting bitch face when they both turned to him with raised brows.

“Why quilts?” Matt asked, a grateful distraction.

“Weirdly specific,” Foggy agreed.

“Crafty ladies,” Sam answered for him. “Grandmas, stay-at-home moms, 2SLGBTQIA+ sewing circles, they love Steve’s whole deal. Saving the world, speaking up for vets, standing up for the little people. A dude with ‘old-fashioned values’ who fights the power? It’s their catnip.”

“Also cat people,” Riley supplied.

“Steve’s values are about as old-fashioned as Instagram,” Matt opined.

“Bet they don’t know he curses bluer than a whole squad of Navy SEALs,” Castle grumbled.

“Or likes to take it up the ass,” Bucky mumbled, because fuck that guy.

“Anyway, they send him stuff.” Sam attempted to steer the conversation back to the topic at hand. Ish. “Hats, scarves, sweaters, framed needlepoint portraits—if it’s crafty, he gets it. Asked me for somewhere in the neighborhood he could donate some of it. There’s so much, they have to spread the wealth, you know?”

“Apparently it’s one person’s entire actual job just to send ‘thank you’ notes for all the gifts,” Riley added. “I told Steve if they ever quit to call me. Sounds like heaven.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “The quilts are the only thing he feels bad about giving away, especially if there’s something personal on there, like a loved one’s picture or part of a uniform. So he’s got a whole room full of them in his basement.”

Foggy’s jaw dropped. “No shit.”

“Can we, um…” Matt cleared his throat, shifted in his seat. It was such an uncharacteristic move that it drew Bucky’s attention. “Can we go there?”

That, of all things, helped Bucky find his smirk. “You want in on the quilt room, huh?”

Matt shrugged, sheepish, but Foggy dove right in.

“Hell yeah we do,” he enthused. “What the fuck, Barnes? Holding out on us like that. We welcome you into our home every week, and we gotta hear about the quilt room from Wilson?”

Bucky sighed. “I’ve only known about it for, like, a month.”

“That’s thirty days longer than most of us,” Castle insisted. “You should be ashamed.”

“As if I’d invite the likes of you in there.” Bucky flipped him off with his flesh hand. “You’re a goddamn animal!”

“Yeah, you’d get your cooties all over the quilts.” He could always count on Riley for anti-Castle support. “It’s disrespectful.”

“You and Steve ever…” He startled to discover Matt right at his ear. “You know. On a quilt?”

“Only the one from the Boston Queer Fiber Arts group.” And what a memorable night that had been. “Each panel is a different sex position. We figured we owed it to them to try them all.”

Foggy laughed. “That sounds like the best game of Twister ever!”

Bucky fought his rising blush with everything in him. “It had its moments.”

“Back to the matter at hand.” Sam demonstrated his firm but gentle hold on the group’s reins. “What’s the one thing we know about life?”

“There are no guarantees,” the group chorused.

Sam shined his patented compassionate gaze Bucky’s way. “Does he make you happy?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“Are you talking things through when you need to?”

Bucky frowned. “Sometimes.”

“Work on that,” Sam advised. “Is anything about the situation threatening or impeding your recovery?”

“Fuck no.”

“Good.” Sam reached over for a fist-bump. Bucky scowled, but complied. “We’re here whenever you need us. Proud of you for sharing like you did.”

That, more than anything, made Bucky want to curl into a ball behind a few of the extra chair towers.

“Thanks,” he croaked out instead.

End of Chapter 5

Chapter Text

Chapter 6 – Closet Romantic

Steve stood at the corner of Cornelia and Central Ave for a long, long time, trying to decide if the faint glow only his super-senses could perceive behind his blackout bay window meant someone was home.

Or, he’d left more lights on than he remembered.

Another Friday night, two weeks exactly from the night he’d been called away. The quinjet deposited him in the local high school’s football field since his bike was still parked in the back shed. He’d debated whether to chance going directly to Matt and Foggy’s or Bucky’s apartment to check for signs of life. He’d been through the ringer physically, mentally, spiritually—working with sorcerers really took it out of him—and he wanted nothing more than to bask in Bucky’s presence for the next 24 to 48 hours.

Or, you know, the rest of his natural life.

Steve was, however, deeply conscious of the fact that Bucky might not welcome him with open arm. This was the first real test of their ill-defined whatever, and Steve might have been disqualified on a technicality before even getting in the game, no matter what Bucky had said before they parted. Being in the thick of it with a superhero was a lot before all of Bucky’s trauma and circumstances were added in. Steve wouldn’t blame him if he decided to bolt.

He also really, really wanted to smell Bucky’s hair.

It poured buckets. April showers and all that. Steve let it soak him to the bone, through the same flimsy T-shirt, bomber jacket, and jeans he’d had on two Fridays ago. Only a few brave souls rushed down the street, hoods up over their giant headphones, hunched into their threadbare jackets. Back in the day, they would have raised folded newspapers over their heads. But nobody except Steve read a paper copy of The New York Times anymore—

The paper. On impulse, Steve dashed across the street, up his front steps, over to the small box the delivery guy slotted his newspaper into each morning. (The thing had a security code and a built-in explosive detector because that was somehow Steve’s life.)

Empty. Steve blew out a breath of relief. His ears pricked up—chatter inside, boisterous, multiple voices. Suddenly, he couldn’t get indoors fast enough.

Bucky tackled him as soon as he shut the door. The locomotive impact made Steve stagger back, but he caught him, crushed his arms around him, buried his face in his neck and breathed deep. Bucky swung his legs up, cinched them around Steve’s waist. They held there for long minutes, hearts pounding out of their chests until they found that calming, concordant rhythm. Only then did they dare glance up at each other.

“Ew.” Bucky didn’t pull away but he did wrinkle his nose adorably. “Did you wrestle the Swamp Thing or something?”

“Got some biblical rain going on out there.” It was so damn good to see his face that Steve got a little choked up. “Think I stepped on a few frogs on my way over.”

“They drop you off at the warehouse?”

“Football field at Bushwick High.” His eyes. Steve had somehow forgotten how intense his eyes could be at close range. “Okay if I kiss you?”

“You fucking better.”

Everything after that was lush and slow and oh so sweet, a stop-the-world-and-melt-with-you kind of welcome, Bucky letting out little sighs and moans every time—

“Barnes, there’s gonna be hell to pay if you’re spitting on my rapini and sausage,” an all-too-familiar voice bellowed from down the hall.

Bucky broke away to shout, “Yeah, yeah, keep your shirt on,” then went right back to kissing Steve breathless.

Until the actual pizza delivery person rang the bell. Bucky gave him a final smooch on the schnoz before easing out of their embrace.

“The crew’s all here,” he explained, after handing the stack of pizza boxes to Steve and giving the kid a generous tip. “You want me to tell ‘em to scram, keep the pies for ourselves?”

Steve shook his head. “Wouldn’t mind the company. Kinda need to touch grass after…”

“Was it a bad one?” And now he’d gone and made Bucky frown.

“No, just… fucking sorcerers.”

Bucky snorted. “I’ll take your word for it.”

“You staying over, after?”

“Hate to break it to you, pal.” That got a real smile out of him, wide and sly and all kinds of sexy. “But I basically live here now.”

Before he could scramble his brain toward a coherent reply, Bucky scampered off into the house, which… was Steve’s mind playing tricks on him, or had the entrance hall been an entirely different shade of green before he left? To his great amusement, Bucky had rearranged the furniture once again, moving the dining room table between the kitchen and the couches, though Steve would have bet serious money the chandelier with lights that resembled fancy engraved glass plates had not been there before. He found the crew assembled around the table, where some sort of multi-pronged battle waged across an elaborate, foldable map of the world.

“Special delivery,” Steve declared, because he was corny like that.

“Hey!” they cheered in unison, then, to his even greater surprise, crowded him into a group hug after Bucky divested him of both the pizzas and his bomber jacket.

Steve struggled to keep his head above water, his emotions in check, as the crew squeezed him tight. He found Bucky’s fond gaze from across the room—it steadied him.

“I leave for two weeks, and you all decide to take over the world, huh?” Steve gestured at the map, as everyone heaped pizza on their plates and grabbed another round of beers. Bucky even jogged upstairs to get him a towel. “Who we invading this time?”

“Each other, mostly.” Foggy packed those three words full of innuendo. “The game is called Risk, after all. And we all know no risk—”

“We haven’t been playing for long, Steve, if you want to join in.” Riley patted the seat next to his wheelchair as everyone settled around the table. It was, conveniently, right beside Bucky’s chair.

“Oh, no, no, no.” Castle wasted no time nipping Riley in the bud. “Greatest tactical mind of his generation is not getting in the way of my inevitable victory.”

“But think of the bragging rights, man.” By Sam’s wicked grin, he knew exactly what he was doing, setting Castle up for the mega fall.

“I hate to make that driver go back out in this weather,” Matt commented to Bucky, after he’d wrapped a towel around Steve’s shoulders and grabbed them a plate to share, “but I feel like we need at least five more pizzas now that there’s a super-appetite in the mix.”

Bucky winked in his direction. “You hungry, Stevie?”

“That’s a rhetorical question, doll.” Steve gestured for him to add a few more pieces to the pile. Then, to the group, “And this beautiful mind has had enough strategy to last him till next year. I’ll be moral support.”

“And master of cuddles.” Once settled, Bucky angled their chairs so he could slouch back against Steve as they played. Steve wasted no time weaving an arm around him, stitching him in tight. “Gonna need all the cuddles I can get if I’m gonna smoke you all.” 

Sam shook his head. “Always knew you had a little tyrant in you, Barnes.”

“It’s the black fetish wear,” Riley teased. “Very Mapplethorpe.”

“Very ninja,” Foggy amended. “If it were Mapplethorpe, he’d have his cock out and his thermal pants would be assless.”

“The sub-zero shrinkage would be epic,” Castle piled on.

“I dunno…” Steve strung that last syllable out into a purr. “Buck’s got a lot to work with.”

“Wow.” Matt was the first one to break through the ensuing silence, as everyone attempted to lift their jaws off the table. “That’s a thing now, huh, the flirting?”

“Babe, Bucky’s practically in his lap,” Foggy supplied.

“Zero to sixty.” Sam grinned wide. “I respect it.”

Bucky scoffed. “Don’t tell me we offend your delicate sensibilities.”

“Spent half the first time I met you with your tongue down Riley’s throat, Wilson,” Steve added.

“Oh, we are not complaining.” Riley leered in their direction. “Just enjoying the show, Captain Wet T-Shirt Contest.”

“They grow up so fast,” Sam mock-sniffled.

“Yeah, well, I’d like a refund,” Castle grumbled.

“Oh, get over yourself, you hedonistic fuckbag.” Foggy lobbed a piece of pizza crust, hit Castle square in the chest. “You’re just mad we didn’t invite you to the orgy.”

Castle snorted like a bull. “You wish I’d ride your pale sorry ass.”

“Been there,” Matt deadpanned. “Regretted it. Moved on to sexier pastures.” He brought Foggy’s palm to his mouth, bit into the fleshy bit under his thumb.

“Meow,” Foggy murmured, gone a little pink in the cheeks.

Bucky chuckled low in his throat as the crew continued to give each other ever-more-graphic levels of shit, then foisted his shrewd gaze on Steve, who attempted to towel himself off one-handed, not quite ready to let go of Bucky yet, no matter the puddle seeping into the carpet beneath his chair.

“You about ready to slither back into the black lagoon there, amphibian man?” Bucky watched as Steve poorly concealed a yawn.

“Not on your life,” Steve protested.

Bucky’s concerned scowl returned with a vengeance. “You must be beat after two weeks on mission.”

“Yeah,” Steve exhaled, unable to deny it. “But I can’t tell you how much I missed this.” He glanced around to make sure the crew’s attention was focused elsewhere, then stole a kiss off Bucky’s soft, ready lips. “Like Dorothy says, there’s no place like home.”

Before he could sneak a second kiss, a too-familiar, too-obnoxious voice interjected, “Who’d have thunk the Great and Terrible Barnes would fall for all that wholesome shit.” Castle’s grin had fangs. “If I’d known you liked apple pie so much, I’d have set you up with my grandma.”

Bucky grinned, shark-like. “Stevie and me do like to play the slots. Have her give us a call. We’ll take her for a walk on the wild side of the boardwalk.”

While Castle turned the color of a Flaming Hot Cheeto, the rest of them guffawed at his expense.

“Oh, he smoked you there!” Sam exclaimed.

“Boarded up your windows, sandbagged your garage, and hit that remote-start on your truck!” Riley seconded.

“Just in time for Steve to come to your rescue,” Foggy added. “‘Cause he’s heroic like that.”

Steve shook his head, since he’d shoved a whole slice of pizza in his maw. “Too busy with his grandma. Helluva dame.” That made Bucky snicker into his shoulder.

“Fuck, it feels good to have the band back together.” Matt raised his beer high enough for the others to clink. “You better not make a habit of this Avengers thing, Steve.”

“Just saying,” Foggy concurred, “if anyone deserves a desk job, it’s you.”

Even though they were half-joking, the barbed other half pricked Steve where it hurt. Between Tony’s ego, Natasha’s evasiveness, Fury’s machinations, and Hill’s lack of bedside manner, he’d felt a bit like a rabbit in a briar patch lately—the more he fought, the deeper he became ensnared.

Castle scoffed. “The last thing we need is another paper-pusher full of hot air and campaign promises. Say what you will about the Avengers, but they go where the fight is.”

“But whose fight?” Riley quietly pointed out. “And with what agenda?” He cast a guilty glance in Steve’s direction. “No offense, big guy.”

“None taken.” Steve chewed thoughtfully on a pizza crust. “Been asking myself the same question for a while now. Part of why I moved back here—get some perspective.”

Sam raised a pointed brow in his direction. “You thinking of giving up the shield?”

“More like…” He chose his words with care. “…aiming it in a different direction. Back in the war, I knew what I was defending. Who to protect. Wore the red, white, and blue with pride. Now…”

He couldn’t resist a glance over at Bucky, who bowed his head and frowned at the table, flesh hand clenched into a fist. White-knuckling hope with all his might.

Don’t give up on me, doll. Not yet.

“Lost my compass there, for a while.” Steve snugged his arm around Bucky tight, affectionately pinched his side. His frown crinkled into an almost-smile. “But the last few months, I finally got my bearings straight. Not sure where I’m headed, but can’t be worse than seventy years in the ice.”

A fulsome silence passed, each member of the crew absorbing not just his words, but the sentiment behind them. Steve felt infinitely grateful that they didn’t jump in with observations or suggestions—just let him say his piece, constant in their support.

Then came the smart-ass remarks.

“For real, Rogers, you gotta quit it with that,” Sam groused. “You keep tugging on the old heart strings, I’m gonna need a pacemaker.”

“Gonna get you a T-shirt that says ‘Beware: Incoming Tragic Backstory,’” Castle snarked.

“As long as it’s wet, I don’t think anyone would mind,” Riley contributed.

“Seriously, how have you not been on the cover of Sports Illustrated in a speedo?” Foggy facetiously demanded.

“Because he’d cause a worldwide sexual orientation crisis,” Matt quipped. “Straight white dudes everywhere would be writing deranged op-eds about how popping a boner for a super-soldier was the ultimate expression of masculinity.”

“No word of a lie,” Sam sighed. “And when they figure out Steve’s queer…”

“Pass the frigging popcorn.” Riley rubbed his hands together, gleeful.

“That can be your parting gift to society,” Matt enthused. “Single-handedly imploding the Republican party.”

Bucky snorted. “Don’t tempt him.”

“That’s your job,” Steve whispered in his ear. Then, to the group, “The real miracle is that I put up with you assholes. Not five minutes back from a mission, and you’re already whoring me out to some new political agenda.”

“Had enough of bending over and taking it from the Man in your USO days, huh?” Foggy leered.

“And the stagehands. The chorus girls. Soldiers. Typists. Couple a photographers.” Steve couldn’t lie worth a damn, but then he didn’t have to exaggerate the truth. “Rita Hayworth this one time. Gene Kelly, now there was a looker.” He grinned in the face of their collective shock, winked in Bucky’s direction. “But none of them hold a candle to ol’ Dollface here. Best part of the twenty-first century, bar none.”

Bucky blushed the color of ripe cherries. The rest of them wolf-whistled and catcalled and performed vulgar gestured that needed no interpretation. Maybe he’d even try a few of them out on Bucky later, if he was still speaking to him after this stunt.

“Captain America: Closet Romantic,” Riley all but swooned. “You got yourself a good one here, Barnes.”

“I’m the lucky one,” Steve insisted, dropping a kiss into the crown of Bucky’s hair. “Finally found a reason to come home.”

***

A Van Gogh sunflower sunset swirled around the distant, twilight-dark buildings that surrounded McCarren Park. A picnic quilt spread across the sparse spring grass, strewn with mini-lanterns and mason jar margaritas and takeout boxes from three local restaurants—Indian, Mexican, and Nigerian—played host to their First Official Date^TM, though Riley kept calling it the Long Way Round to Pound Town while helping Steve with the preparations. To which Steve had repeatedly replied, “Been there, done that, in positions approved by the Boston Queer Fiber Arts group.”

Still, he’d been nervous. Up till then, their version of romance consisted of Steve letting Bucky finger-fuck him on the couch after trouncing him at Judge Dredd and eating their weight in gochujang-dredged burgers from the Korean fusion place up the block. Mind-blowing, but not exactly the type of thing one found artistically rendered on a Valentine’s Day card. Riley had encouraged Steve not to stray too far from their ‘thing’—hence the takeout picnic—and to take Bucky’s boundaries into account—hence the outdoor setting—while stepping his game up a notch.

The point of the whole exercise, Steve reminded himself for the umpteenth time that week, was to show Bucky he was in this deep. That they could be something real, something solid, something dependable. That Steve didn’t feel commitment was a four-letter word, as Castle had put it in his stupid Castle way.

Bucky’s expression had been complicated, when Steve suggested going out together. He’d fussed over whether they’d dressed warm enough. (Steve was always warm enough, now that the snow had melted.) He’d insisted on loitering outside the restaurants while Steve went in to order. He hadn’t said a goddamned word beyond the essential since they’d sat down on the quilt, only taking a couple of bites from his taco and a cursory sip of his strawberry-basil margarita.

Steve could be forgiven for wondering if the whole thing had been a mistake. He just couldn’t figure out if it was the date part or the him part Bucky objected to. In the two months they’d been together, he hadn’t once gotten the impression that this was just a fling for Bucky—but maybe two weeks of absence had changed that. Maybe, now that they’d had their big reunion, Bucky realized he didn’t want to be an Avenger’s plus-one. Maybe Steve would end up standing on a boombox outside Bucky’s basement apartment, blasting Chappell Roan’s “Casual.” 

It's hard being casual

When you repaint my house when I’m on a mission

But then why had Bucky tended to all of Steve’s neglected projects in his absence? Read Steve’s mind and completed things he hadn’t even gotten to yet? Why did it feel like Bucky had scent-marked every inch of his house, from his tea towels to his duvet to the cushions of that one awkward armchair Steve used as an extra coat rack? (Except the shower. Bucky never took a shower. Steve didn’t pry about it.)

Boredom didn’t cut it as an explanation. Neither did friendship. Also, lovers who wanted to keep things on the sexual tip didn’t camp out at your house.

“Sorry,” Bucky rasped, before Steve could spiral out even further. “I don’t…” He shook his head as if annoyed with himself. “This is real nice, Stevie.”

“Yeah?”

“I just…” He let out a morose half-chuckle. “I suck at small talk.”

Steve almost drowned in a puddle of relief. Shyness, insecurity, that he could deal with. Knew no quit.

“Then tell me something big,” he teased, only half-joking.

Bucky glared at him from under his eyelashes, scoffed, then took a giant bite of his taco to give himself some time.

Steve pushed a little more. “You could talk about your cock. Kinda my favorite topic of conversation.”

“You and your one-track mind,” Bucky grumbled. A hint of a smile curled his lips in between bites. “Don’t know why I was worried.”

“Me neither.” Steve clicked the heels of their boots together. “You know what gets me hot under the collar. All you gotta say is ‘Brooklyn Dodgers’ or ‘performance art’ or ‘Tony Stark is a humanitarian’, and I’m good for a three-hour rant.”

“Yeah, but I heard all those already.”

“Oh, you want something new, huh?” Steve couldn’t keep the shit-eating out of his grin.

Bucky licked the sauce off his fingers after he polished off the last of his taco. “Sure, Stevie.” But before Steve could wind up for the pitch, Bucky held his hand up to stop him. “Nah, it’s not…” He firmed his mouth, frustrated. “You don’t gotta…” He huffed out a breath. “I’m in, okay? I don’t need candles and flowers and sunsets and fucking chicken korma on fancy plates.”

“Styrofoam ain’t fancy in my book, doll.”

“You know what I mean,” Bucky grumbled, doing his best impression of a cat that had just been fished out of the river. “You got me. We’re good. You don’t gotta tear a page out of every Harlequin romance you sneak from the library when you think I’m not looking to show me a good time.”

“Not sneaking, just don’t want you to steal it from me,” Steve insisted, petulant. “You think I missed the fact that you’ve already burned through their whole romantasy collection, think again.”

Bucky scowled. “I don’t read the straight stuff.”

“You absolutely do read the straight stuff.” Steve pointed an accusatory finger at him. “You just download a .pdf and get your magic little program to queer-wash it.”

Bucky squawked, scandalized. “How do you know about that?”

“Because a security AI sweeps my house on the regular.” Feeling mulish, Steve ripped the top off his chicken korma—smelled so delicious—and chowed down. “Had the time of my life explaining that one to Maria Hill. The things I do for you, babydoll.” Steve found the grace to laugh at himself. “She made a copy of your whole collection. Thinks I didn’t notice.”

“At least she’s got taste.” Diffusing the situation with book talk didn’t stop Bucky from snorting like an ornery dragon. “What the fuck is this margarita, Stevie? Why would you ruin a boozy strawberry slushy with this bay leaf bullshit?”

“Basil.”

“Gesundheit.”

“I know you heard of herbs, Buck.”

“Say that ten times fast in that accent.”

“No.” Steve set down his food, reached his hand out. Bucky, still grumpy, plunked the hook of his prosthetic in his palm. Not that Steve had an issue with that, but it was a sign he wanted to avoid intimate contact, and that saddened him. Because Steve had a stubborn streak a mile wide, and he’d just been told by his probably-boyfriend that they didn’t deserve any romance in their relationship, he decided to lob a grenade at their evening. One he wouldn’t jump on this time. “Heard you spoke at group.”

Bucky nearly choked on his jollof rice. He reached for his margarita, but Steve tossed over a bottle of water instead. Bucky stared at it as if it really was a grenade, then over at him for a beat, then at the sunset he apparently didn’t need. He glugged down a couple draughts of the water, sighed.

“Supposed to be anonymous.”

“We’re literally friends with half the members.”

“Traitors,” Bucky muttered. “They tell you what I said?”

“No, just that you spoke.” Something of a white lie, but Steve didn’t want to derail an important conversation. “Wanted me to know how brave you were.”

“Desperate,” Bucky harshly corrected. “I was desperate.” He inhaled a shaky breath. “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing here, Steve, except ruining it.”

“You’re not ruining it.” Steve shoved their food aside, got into his space. Twined their flesh hands, reforged that indelible connection. Bucky gaped at him, stunned, but also a little eye-rolly at the brazen gesture. “You could never ruin it. You could piss on the slide in the kids’ park and expose yourself to the players at the chess tables, and I still wouldn’t call the cops on you.”

“Citizen’s arrest,” Bucky countered. “Also, you are the cops.”

“Chucklefucks in the NYPD beg to differ on that one.”

“You’d use it as an excuse to get kinky in bed.”

Steve shook his head. “I told you, restraints are  a deal-breaker.”

He got the full eyeroll that time. “You’re impossible.”

“I’m in love with you,” Steve murmured with the reverence of a vow. Bucky went completely still, except for his grip, which crushed the bones of Steve’s fingers. “I’m not trying to show off or impress you with all this. I want to take care of you. Treat you right. No, not even right—special. I care about you so much, Buck. I wanna give you the world.”

Bucky took so long to respond Steve began to wonder if he’d even heard him. He stared down at their joined hands and breathed, breathed, breathed, tremulous but patient, as if his only chance to find the serenity he sought was to remain tethered to Steve.

“Did you mean it when you said you might quit the Avengers?” he asked, solemn.

“I did.” Steve surprised himself with his answer, but as soon as he said the words, they felt right. He was done. He’d been done for a while. “There’s a group we’ve been fighting, a global syndicate. We’ve got ‘em on the ropes. Once they’re gone, so am I.”

“How long?”

“Six months, if all goes well.” Steve swallowed back the terror that Bucky was gonna hold him to his estimate or, worse, back off from their relationship till Steve was free. “A year, tops.” Then, because he lived to poke the bear. “Was it rough for you while I was gone?”

“Wasn’t easy,” Bucky snarked, then appeared to scold himself. “That’s a me problem. But I won’t be an army wife, Steve, beyond a couple of years. I won’t watch those vampires suck you dry.”

Steve nodded. “Understood.”

“And I’m no good at… at all this.” Bucky gestured to their picnic date. “You need a hedge trimmed or your tires rotated or a room painted, I’m your guy. But this schmaltzy stuff, I don’t—”

“Bullshit.”

Bucky’s jaw dropped. “Excuse me?”

“That’s bullshit, Buck.” Steve steeled himself for their First Official Fight^TM. “You think I got an advanced degree in wooing or something? I been bugging Riley about this all week. Sweating every detail. And now that we’re here, you’re miserable, so I wouldn’t go advertising my services just yet.”

“I’m not—” He would have bet serious money that Bucky replayed the evening’s events in his mind, if his grimace was anything to go by. “Stevie, I—”

He yanked Steve’s hand up to his mouth, planted a kiss deep into his palm. And another. And another. And another. Pecked over both knuckles on each finger, then sucked a little bruise into the soft of his wrist. It was the most ridiculous and the most adorable thing Steve had ever seen.

“I never had anything like this before,” Bucky confessed. “A person, all my own. Just takes some getting used to, is all.”

Steve shifted his grip so that his thumb stroked the back of Bucky’s hand.

“And I am having a good time.” Bucky smiled, bashful. “Company’s not bad either.”

“Oh, yeah?” Any charm Steve had, he poured into that eyebrow raise.

“Yeah.” Bucky gave his palm a final smooch, then passed Steve the box of spicy grilled chicken after selecting a couple pieces for himself. “You like waterparks?”

Steve blinked at the non-sequitur. “I only ever been on the flume at Coney Island.”

“That must have been something back in the day,” Bucky enthused. “There are a few good ones upstate, but my favorite is Runaway Rapids. Which, Jersey. But worth it for the Atomic Molecule Scrambler.”

“The what now?”

“The Cyclone would be fun, too.” Bucky bit the corner of his lip, lost to his daredevil plans. “We could go on a quiet day, maybe. Or Six Flags, if we felt like a road trip. Lake Compounce. Knoebels. Seabreeze. How would you feel about sky-diving?”

“All for it.” Steve clamped his jaw shut to keep from cackling. He wondered how Bucky felt about parachutes. He was also starting to get the idea that his babydoll was a bit of an adrenaline junkie. “But you haven’t really lived till you’ve hitched a ride on Thor’s hammer.”

Bucky’s eyes bugged out. “I could do that?”

Steve shrugged. “Can’t hurt to ask.”

He saw it all come together in Bucky’s expressive eyes, the unexpected fringe benefits to dating an Avenger. “Do you think Stark—”

“No.”

“Damn it.” He nodded, accepting. “I mean, your bike’s pretty sweet…”

Steve smiled ear to ear. “You wanna take her out sometime?”

“Do I ever.” Bucky wiped the grease off his mouth with the back of his hand. “We can do cheesy stuff too. Not made of stone over here.”

“What, like bungee jumping hand-in-hand?”

“Now you’re talking.”

The embers of sunset reflected off a nearby water fountain, burnished Bucky in golden tones. Lit from without and within, his entire attitude transformed from earlier, now betraying ease, excitement, a beguiling giddiness. Steve couldn’t get enough.

“So those assholes totally ratted me out, huh?” Bucky smirked, playful. “About group.”

“Ratted you out? Please.” Steve scoffed. “They gave me the shovel talk.”

That surprised him. “No kidding.”

“They were worried about you.” Another knock to his boot. “So was I.”

“Me too,” Bucky conceded. “‘S why I hung out at the townhouse. You made a good call, giving me the keys. I needed somewhere safe. My place…” He swallowed hard against some gristly emotion. “Too many ghosts, sometimes.”

“Did you live there before you shipped out?”

“Nah, my parents were still around back then.” He forked through his rice without scooping any up. “I enlisted at eighteen. Recruited to Special Forces at twenty-two. Thought I would be career military until…” Bucky shook his head as if to ward away the bad spirits. “Spent most of my recovery in my current apartment. All that pain and grief soaked into the walls. Sometimes…” He sighed. “Sometimes I feel like I’m stewing in it. They’ll probably need to burn a whole sage bush when I leave.”

And here it came, the big swing. The one Steve knew was classic him: too soon, too much, too extra. But Bucky had shown him a bit of who he was tonight, and Steve could only return the favor in his own inimitable way.

“Maybe it’s time for a fresh start,” Steve suggested, delicate, so delicate.

“My pension’s stretched pretty thin as it is,” Bucky admitted. “Got a bit from my parents’ insurance. Charity stuff keeps me honest, but under the table ain’t a living wage. Still not sure what I would do, even if I could handle a job.”

“Waterpark lifeguard?”

“You’re cute.” Bucky chuckled to himself. “Seriously, you’re real easy on the eyes, Stevie. It’s distracting.”

Now or never. Freefall, no parachute. Wouldn’t have it any other way.

Buckle up, Rogers, you’re in for a bumpy ride.

“Move in with me.” Steve met his astonished stare with determination. “You said it yourself. Your place is more coffin than sanctuary. You don’t feel safe there anymore. You’re at the next stage of your healing, but you got limited options.” Before Bucky could object, he added, “You’re gonna be over all the time anyway. And I kinda like having you around.”

Their gazes locked, Bucky’s deep-ocean blues almost indigo in the twilight. His exacting eyes mapped every line and angle on Steve’s face, dogged in their search for a hint or a tell or a quirk, anything that would give the lie to what he just said. All this bought Bucky some time to breathe and breathe and breathe, which he did in long, quavering gasps, the only outward sign of his distress.

“I really wanna say yes.” Bucky winced at his own admission. “But I can already hear Sam’s lecture. Castle muttering ‘Recipe for disaster’ under his breath. Becca being all Becca about it, half cheerleading squad, half overprotective mom.”

“Becca?”

“My sis.”

Steve nodded, considering. “Say yes.”

Bucky barked out an incredulous laugh.

“Yeah, yes, okay.” He glanced up at the sky as if to say, can you believe this? “Why the fuck not? What could go wrong?” He laughed and laughed and laughed, his nose crinkling in that inimitable way, then grabbed Steve’s arm again and did dirty things to his palm.

After, long after, once they’d polished off their dessert samplers and disposed of the empty containers so they could lay out under the stars, Bucky brought Steve’s much-mauled, much-worshipped hand to his lips anew.

“I’m in love with you, too, Stevie.” Bucky curled into his side, pressed their faces together until his breath steamed Steve’s cheek. “Don’t know what I did to catch your eye, but I’m grateful. I’m so fucking grateful.”

“Back at you, babydoll.” Steve sighed, fulsome, replete, and stole a kiss off his silken lips. “What you did is you saw me. Whole crew did. Treated me like a man, not a propaganda machine. You remind me of my old crew—loyal to a fault, foul-mouthed, and horny as goats.”

Bucky snorted. “Accurate.”

“You’re the hot one,” Steve teased. “Where else was I gonna plant my flag?”

“Punk.” Bucky thwacked him on the chest with the full force of his flesh arm.

“Am I wrong?”

“You’re fucking impossible is what you are.”

“And you’re like if Bette Davis, Clark Gable, Marlene Dietrich, and Alain Delon gang-banged a baby into existence.”

Bucky’s eyelashes fluttered against Steve’s temple when he rolled his eyes. “I don’t know who any of those people are, but have you looked in the mirror lately? Not exactly a charity case in the looks department.”

“You saying you love me for my body, Buck?”

“What I’m doing is reconsidering all my life choices up until now.” He gave the lie to that statement by twisting their limbs even tighter together. “You really expect me to put up with a smart-ass like you on the regular?”

“Takes one to know one.”

“That it does.” He sipped a long, heady draught off Steve’s lips. “Thanks for showing me a good time, Stevie. Good luck figuring out what to do on our next date. Not sure how you’re gonna top this.”

“Zero-gravity proposal?”

“Wouldn’t put it past you.”

End of Chapter 6

Chapter Text

Epilogue – Flop Sweat

“Hey, Pornstache!” A too-familiar voice bellowed as soon as they stepped out of the truck. “You better not think that drive-by honking bullshit passes muster in these parts.”

“All that sun probably friend their brains,” a second griped.

“Or Barnes finally fucked the smart right out of him,” a third chimed in. “Nothing else to do out on the open road and all.”

“Bet those are spray-tans,” jerkface number four scoffed. “Bet they holed up in a Holiday Inn in Hoboken for a couple a weeks, throw us off the scent.”

“Only scent I’m picking up is flop sweat,” Bucky barked in their direction. “First snow of the season, and you all look like you need to be put on ventilators or something.”

Not two minutes back in the state from their Thanksgiving road trip down to Lakeland, Florida, to visit Bucky’s family, and the snow started to bucket down. By the time they turned onto Cornelia Street, a solid foot blanketed the neighborhood, so of course the crew was out en force for the first official cleanup of the season. That they happened to be doing their neighbor Mrs. Culpepper’s drive as Steve and Bucky arrived home was probably not a coincidence. Steve highly suspected that Sam had dropped an air tag under the driver’s seat for ease of rescue had things gone south as they were, well, going south.

Joke was on him—it had been an amazing trip. They’d camped out each night on the road, since Bucky proved to be more outdoorsy than an upbringing in Brooklyn led Steve to believe, eschewing the no-tell motels that squicked Bucky out (and gave him nightmares.) Bucky’s nieces wore Steve out in the best way: Disney World, Gatorland, the Zoo and Botanical Gardens, the beach. Add in a Thanksgiving feast for the record books, and Steve found himself wanting to extend their stay.

So, they had, though this moved their return into December. They’d had to brave a few hotels after all, and now the winter weather.

“You stop by KFC and stick Rogers in the deep-frier?” Castle abandoned his shovel and sidled up the drive, cantankerous as ever. “I didn’t know humans came in that color.”

Steve glared at him over the roof of the truck. “One more crack about my appearance, and I’m keeping all the rum cake to myself.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, you brought back Becca’s rum cake?” Foggy peeked up from behind Riley’s wheelchair, where he’d bent to refill the salt tank. “Well, welcome home, weary travelers!”

“And some of us actually mean that.” Matt tapped Foggy’s shoulder, so he could lead both Matt and Riley over to Steve and Bucky’s drive.

“Gotta say, I don’t hate the beard,” Sam observed, opening his arms wide for a hug. “Must help with the incognito.”

“Not as much as you’d think,” Bucky grumbled while he waited for his turn. “Especially when you do the Heimlich on a choking Disney scion in the middle of the Mexican Pavillion at Epcot Center.”

“But they comped our stay, so quit it with the grousing, doll face.” Steve performed a tricksy maneuver so that he ended up hugging Bucky after they’d all said their hellos.

To his surprise, Bucky didn’t pinch or complain, just sank into his arms for a generous second, then smooched him on the nose.

“Just as puke-inducingly in love as ever, I see.” Riley sounded almost wistful. “Told you assholes the trip would only make them stronger. Now pay up.” He tugged the glove off, then reached out expectantly.

The others growled and groaned, but dropped a series of twenties onto his hand.

“Be nice if we saw some of that action,” Bucky teased.

“Yeah, well, some of us had to vamp for an extra week so the Venga Twinks didn’t lose their shit and fire our asses, so.”

“Point.” Bucky winced. “Appreciate it, partner.”

“You better.”

“We brought you a whole rum cake.”

“Forgiven.”

A funny thing happened when Riley posted pictures of Bucky’s top-to-bottom renovation of Steve’s townhouse to his Instagram under the hashtag #designgoals. Half the Bushwick gayborhood not only liked and shared the post, but hunted Riley down to demand the name of the designer. In a matter of weeks, Bucky had a whole home renovation business, specializing in the kind of “dopamine décor” beloved in queer spaces. Riley quit the bakery and signed on to be the interior guru/CFO/networking genius, focusing on furniture and knickknacks, while Bucky tackled the work itself, along with mood lighting and color schemes. After their second effort, word of mouth spread like wildfire; they were booked out for the next three years. Steve pitched in on the pro-bono work they fit in between jobs, never wanting to ignore their charity roots for long.

“This catching up on your sex life has been great and all,” Castle groused, per usual. “But some of us got walks to clear.”

“Yeah, yeah, keep your pants on.” Steve checked in with Bucky before committing them to patrol duty. Got an eyeroll for his trouble. “Give us ten to get the bags inside and gear up?”

“You got five,” Foggy insisted, with a suspicious squint in their direction. “No quickies in the laundry room this time.”

“That’s our move,” Matt quipped, which earned him a wink. “But feel free to make out against every available surface as we do the rounds, aka the Sam and Riley way.”

“What can I say?” Sam shrugged, unrepentant. “The man is en fuego twenty-four-seven.”

“Is that Cajun for fondue?” Steve raised a curious brow. “Did a little fondue-ing myself back in the day.”

“And this morning,” Bucky added.

“Yesterday,” Matt offered.

“Day before,” Foggy continued.

“A whole goddamn fuck around and find out regimen,” Castle concluded. “‘Cept Barnes is the only one who finds out.”

“I don’t know,” Bucky drawled. “We’ll see come Friday’s pool tournament who’s really gonna find out, Frank.”

“You motherfucker—”

Before Castle could say something he’d most definitely regret come Friday, or possibly before, Steve scooped Bucky up in a bridal carry, much to his consternation and the crew’s amusement.

“I knew it!” Foggy exclaimed. “I fucking knew you two would get hitched the second our back was turned.”

“You went to Reno, right?” Sam inquired, sly. “That what the extra week was for?”

“Hope you didn’t wear white,” Matt sighed. “That ship sailed so far, it fell off the edge of the Earth.”

“There better be pictures, or I’m gonna riot,” Riley threatened.

“Keep your shirt on,” Steve playfully scolded, to the crew and Bucky both. Then, because he was the biggest shit to ever disturb the peace, he declared, “Group trip, next year. Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Red Rock, Death Valley, Sequoia National Park. You degenerates fly home in Fresno. Me and Buck’ll continue on to honeymoon in California.” Steve shot a scapegrace grin in their direction as he carried Bucky up the front walk. “Think about it.”

Shouts and cheers erupted behind them as they broke into the house. Steve transported Bucky all the way into the living room before he dared glance at his face. They hadn’t spoken a word of engagement or marriage or long-term commitment since their first date a year and a half ago—they’d been too busy being happier than pigs in shit together. Bucky had advanced into the latter stages of his recovery. Steve had retired from the Avengers and was waiting to hear whether he’d been accepted for a dual fine arts/social work degree at NYU.

They could probably stand to wait a few years, till some of their new ventures bore fruit, till they’d strengthened ties with Bucky’s family even more, till they both felt on more solid ground after all the trauma they’d suffered.

But fuck that.

As soon as they were out of earshot of their friends, Bucky scratched and writhed his way out of his arms with the determination of a feral cat. Once free, he shoved hard at Steve’s chest. Steve took at step back so as not to enrage him further.

“You fucking asshole!” Bucky hissed, wary of being overhead. “What the fuck was that, Stevie, huh? That’s how you propose?! A goddamn boast those fuckwits goaded you into?! Were they right, did all that sun melt the last of your brains?”

“Buck—”

“Are we already at the stage where you take me for granted?” he raged on. “Too much of a sure thing? Didn’t feel that way when I was railing you over a—”

“Babydoll.” Steve raised a pair of tempering hands. “Sweetheart. Love of my life. Did I ask you anything?”

Bucky defaulted into resting bitch face, but admitted, “No.”

“Did you agree to anything?” Steve knew he was playing invisible chess here, but he wasn’t the greatest strategist the world had ever seen for nothing. “Did you answer the question I ain’t even asked yet? You see a ring anywhere here?”

He sighed so long out his nose, steam almost came out. “Your point.” 

Steve shrugged, a parody of innocence. “Figure we got till about Valentine’s Day to make it official. Gotta admit, kinda curious who’ll ask first. Who’ll make a bigger deal of the whole thing. Who’ll come out on top in the romance department. Your rivalry with Castle’s made you soft, Buck. What say you take on a real challenge for a change?”

Bucky gasped out a laugh of disbelief, glared at him for way too many heartbeats for Steve’s liking. Finally, he cracked a smile.

“You’re the worst,” he mock-seethed.

Steve raised his right hand. “Guilty.”

“The biggest pain in the ass this side of the twenty-first century.”

“My wartime record might have something to say about that,” Steve playfully objected, “but who’s counting?”

“Don’t know what I was thinking, letting you woo me into this non-stop bullshit-a-thon you call a life.”

“Pretty sure you went willingly.” Steve swaggered in closer to him, but didn’t dare reach out. Not yet. “And remember the fringe benefits.”

Bucky scoffed. “You’re the most stubborn, impulsive, careless, shit-disturbing punk I ever met.”

“No argument here,” Steve murmured, hovering close, so close.

“I love you so fucking much.” Bucky leapt into his arms, kissed the breath out of his lungs. Rested their brows together in the aftermath as their hearts beat as one. Whispered “Marry me?” against Steve’s lips, a plea, a promise of forever.

“I will, love.” Steve crowned the moment with another reverent kiss. “I will.”

The End