4. Punk
And then, some days are better. Steve comes back to the apartment a couple of weeks later. He can't stand having left on a failure. So he goes and the building manager is telling him that your friend will return soon, you can wait for him upstairs.
He knows where Bucky hides his spare key when he leaves and gets inside, and takes a seat by the kitchen table. He waits, anxious hands playing with random stuff on the table - a pen, an empty bottle, an outdated shopping list that quickly becomes a paper plane - cause he doesn't know which Bucky he's about to meet and he's not ready to fight again. He's tired of being forced to fight his best friend.
But the door creaks about half an hour after Steve's arrived, and Bucky is entering the apartment backwards, hands full with shopping bags. He kicks the door shut with his foot and turns around and when he noticed Steve, there's barely any reaction.
« Hey. » comes as a soft greeting as Bucky steps around the table and starts putting away the things he just bought.
« Hey, Buck. » is Steve's unoriginal answer but he's too relieved to think about anything else. The way Bucky's moving around the apartment, walking past and around Steve as he gets the shopping bags empty, it feels like Steve's presence here is completely natural. Like he's gotten used to it.
There's a plastic bag full of fruits that Steve knows Bucky loves to buy from an adorable old lady at the local market - she used to live in Poland with her husband and they were in the Resistance back in the 1940s - and there's a tiny notebook lost in the middle of the blueberries. Steve takes it out of the bag, eyeing curiously at Bucky - it's unlike him to be so careless about his notebooks and just carry them in some random fruit bags.
Bucky shrugs as an answer.
A few minutes later, he adds « That's just cause I remembered something at the market and I had to write it down y'know. »
Steve nods. He's glad Bucky's doing that, seems like it's really helped him so far.
« You can read it if you want, I mean, half of the things I write in those are about you so... »
« What's the other half about ? » Steve smiles as he starts flipping the slightly crumpled pages until he finds the last one Bucky's written into.
« Hydra. » is Bucky's answer. Steve's smile falls instantly and he knows he should've thought his question twice before just asking it away. He tries to keep his eyes on the page because he can't look at Bucky right now - it's too much it's too much it's too much.
- Ma' made the best blueberry pie in Brooklyn
- Receipe is Try to remember receipe
- Steve nearly choked on a blueberry once (was after Ma' died and you bought him a pie for his birthday cause you suck at cooking)
It's only when Bucky's next to him, a flesh finger following the thin line of the cut on his cheekbone that's not fully healed yet, that Steve looks up again.
« You shouldn't keep coming here. » Bucky whispers, and Steve knows they won't talk about what happened - why bother ? - but Bucky's still processing and probably blaming himself and it wasn't you dammit.
« I'll always come back for you Buck. » Steve answers as if it's something so absurdly normal that he shouldn't even have to voice it out loud.
« Of course you will, you're a punk. » Bucky drops his hand and takes a seat next to Steve. The blonde is searching for something witty to retort when he realizes Bucky's strugling to talk again. He has this very specific frown, Steve's noticed, when there's something he has to say but doesn't know how to say it. It was already there back in the 30's, it's even more noticeable now. « You know... Sometimes I wake up and I don't remember anything, so on the good days I take one of these... » He points at the notebook. « And I usually come across that lousy picture of you they were giving to visitors, a postcard or whatever. »
Yeah. Steve's seen this picture in one of the notebooks. Some sort of promotionnal poster from the Captain America tour back during the war.
« The thing is... That picture doesn't really mean anything to me. » Bucky continues, and it's Steve that's frowning now. « I don't really get... What you're trying to tell me here Buck. » A low chuckle escapes Bucky's throat but there's no real joy in it.
« Yeah, me neither I guess... It's just... They changed you. Haven't they ? I mean, sometimes I remember things and I'm not even sure it's true, or if I just imagined them cause you're just so different. I know you weren't always like that. » Bucky's eyes are staring at everything they can - the table, his metal joints, the blueberrys, a crack in the window across the room - so they don't have to meet Steve's, because Steve, on the other hand, is staring at him intensely enough that he could actually see through his skull.
« I just... They shouldn't have done that. You shouldn't have to carry all this. I know you... I think. I know you and I know you weren't made to be someone like Captain America, that's not who you are and somehow that's makes me angry. » There's a pause and that seems too awkward for him not to add anything. « I'm not sure why. »
Steve smiles and his hand reaches across the table to give Bucky a gentle nudge on the shoulder. « What am I supposed to be if I'm not Captain America ? »
Bucky remains silent for a while. Rethinking his answer thoroughly it seems. « I don't know... The you I remember was not Captain America and you still meant everything to me, so I guess that's not what defines you. »
Steve is staring at him again but he doesn't know why nor what to think anymore. Everything feels so blurry right now. Having Bucky back was already a lot to process ; having Bucky back and brainwashed was... Well, that's not something he wants to have to deal with ever again. But having Bucky back and saying those kind of things... It makes him wish to come back to Brooklyn and be small and freil again and he wouldn't mind being sick all the time cause Bucky would be there. That's how things have always been. That's how things should've stayed.
« Sorry, I'm talking too much for pretty much nothing. » Steve can catch a small glance and a shy, tiny smile from under Bucky's bangs, and there's this strange, familiar feeling that he completely forgot about, that makes his heart squeeze a little and pound in his ears. « It's okay man, you usually barely say anything at all. That's a nice change. »
And he means it. It's a nice change for Bucky, to be able to say what he thinks out loud now, to be able to think by himself at all. And it's a nice change for Steve to see him getting better. It's a crazy thing how a five minute talk with Bucky can make him feel lighter than all those years he's spend Natasha or Tony, or those last few months with Sam. It's nothing like it. There's really something, with Bucky, no matter how much Bucky remembers him, that will always make him feel home.
(Of course, you can count on one hand the number of times Steve's come to the apartment to find Bucky in such a good shape, when he can talk and smile and feel safe around Steve, and feel safe with himself. Steve wishes it'd happen more often.)