Therapy

Bucky doesn’t expect the knock on the door and he’s tempted to ignore it but it could be Sharon and sometimes she made him food. He wasn’t a fool, free food is the best kind of food, so he goes to the door and pulls it open. The last thing he expects to find is a harassed looking Steve, “uh, hello?” he asks more than says.

“Oh thank god. I fucked up; I know I fucked up and not just with you. Please let me in?” he asks. He looks about ready to panic so as tempted as Bucky was to turn him away this was still Steve, his best friend, his closest friend, and he didn’t look so good.

So he lets Steve in, “I better get an apology out of this,” he says, stepping aside so Steve could stop standing in the hallway like an idiot.

“I am so sorry, seriously. I was being a selfish asshole and I was pretending it was to help you and it wasn’t, I just wanted to help myself and I betrayed your trust to do it,” Steve says. It sounds rehearsed, but that’s probably because Steve has been stewing in his own shit for the better part of the last four months. They’ve hardly spoken and if Bucky was honest he has been far too busy to notice the absence between Wade’s shit, Tony’s shit, his job, and Phil’s shit too. Since when did he start playing therapist? He should charge for his services. But with Steve standing in front of him he realized how much he had missed him, even if he didn’t notice it until now.

That didn’t mean he was all set to forgive Steve, “yeah, you did and I’m still not happy about it.”

Steve looks at the ground, “yeah… not my proudest moment,” he says quietly. He felt terrible, Bucky could tell, but he mostly felt that way because he got caught and that didn’t much sit comfortably with him. Or he wasn’t giving Steve enough credit; he did have a bad habit of ignoring the hell out of things when he didn’t like them. It was more than possible that he just ignored his own guilt until he couldn’t anymore; Bucky had a bad habit of just avoiding uncomfortable things until he couldn’t too.

“It shouldn’t be,” Bucky says, “but you came here for a reason, what’s up?” he asks in a softer tone, inviting Steve to talk about whatever it was he came here for.

Instead of giving an answer right away Steve pinches the bridge of his nose and lets out a prolonged groan. “Oh god. Remember Sharon?” he asks, clearly unaware that they regularly got together.

“‘Course I do. She’s way too good at Mario Cart, she needs to be eradicated,” Bucky says, ever the sore loser.

That earns him a snort from Steve, and a small smile, but it doesn’t last long. “Right, so you remember her aunt Peggy, right?” he asks and Bucky nods, wondering where the hell this was going. “Well, I figured I’ve been spending a fair amount of time with Sharon, we like each other, so she invited me to lunch with her aunt Peggy. It’s Peggy, Buck. My Peggy.”

Bucky frowns, “Peggy… Carter?” he asks in an attempt to clear the confusion, “how is that possible?” If Peggy was Sharon’s aunt shouldn’t she be way older, or Sharon should be way younger…

“They have a weird family, I don’t fucking know, I wasn’t sticking around to figure out that out. I basically kissed my niece, Bucky, I need to be put in prison!” Steve throws his hands up in the air, looking horrified with this whole thing.

“So… you discovered that the Peggy you both love is the same Peggy and did… what? Suffered through a very awkward lunch?” he asks, deciding just how hard he should laugh at Steve for this.

“Hell no, I ran like hell and thought to myself, shit, where the hell do I go? Phil would kinkshame the shit out of me for this, Clint would laugh his ass off, and I am not letting this story reach any other friend I have. Could you imagine what Dum Dum would do with this information? You were all I had left and in that moment I realized how badly I fucked this all up. You’re my best friend, you never judge me, even when you should, and you’re so supportive and caring and I went screwed all that up because I was being a selfish asshole but… I couldn’t just keep this to myself. So I came here to apologize and tell you about this horrible thing that just happened,” Steve says, finishing that rant with a look on his fact that suggested that he’s seen some shit.

Bucky, because he was an asshole of epic proportions, bursts out laughing. At first Steve looks surprised, and then offended, “you ran off from Sharon,” he says between fits of giggles, “but the place you ran to is across the hall from hers!” Steve lifts his hands to his hair and runs them halfway through, gripping the strands in the top of his head and looking off into the distance with a look of true horror on his face.

“I did not think this through,” he whispers. Bucky continues laughing harder than strictly necessary because Steve deserved it and also his misfortune was funny.

“You have a problem with that lately,” Bucky says when he finally gets himself sort of under control.

“Please tell me you have a bathroom window I could crawl out of,” Steve asks, looking at the ground in shame. Bucky examines Steve’s wide shoulders, objectively attractive, but not really when he considered the whole. Plus they definitely would not fit out his bathroom window and he tells Steve so. “I wish I was skinny again,” he mumbles.

“Don’t let fifteen year old you hear that, you’d kick your own ass for saying that. You hated being skinny,” Bucky points out. He never did see why Steve had a problem with it, the health issues sure, they were horrible, but his physical size? There was no problem with that and he really didn’t get all those assholes who questioned his ability to be a Dom. How the hell that correlated with size he had no clue, plus any idiot with a half a brain cell could tell by looking at Steve that he was Dom material. Even when he was skinny. Especially when he was skinny, he used to wear the orientation like a shield then, always jealous of Bucky’s ‘easy’ confidence and ability to charm people. More like faking the hell out of everything well enough that he even managed to fool himself for awhile.

“I hated not getting as much attention as you and I never did believe you when you said it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Sometimes a guy just jog without being hit on every three feet, you know? Now I never want to be hit on again, being skinny again would do that,” Steve says.

“Would not, people weren’t interested in you because you had zero confidence, not because you were skinny. People were plenty interested when you actually acted sure of yourself, look at all those people who used to hit on you after protests. Apparently you didn’t notice that, but you never notice when people hit on you, as if you’re seriously complaining about this right now. That one guy had to all but shove his hand down your pants to get the damn point across,” Bucky points out. Back before Clint came along he and Phil used to make bets on how many people could blatantly hit on Steve before he noticed. The answer was usually in the double digits and Phil almost always won, probably because he used to be a goddamn spy so he like… knew things.

“I do so notice when people hit on me!” Steve protests.

“Do not, remember that one time Gabe actually had to out and out tell you that you were being hit on? And Morita has done it too, and Dernier, you can’t deny it. Usually they give up in you and move on to me, at least before the arm thing…” he says, trailing off. After… well after people didn’t have much of an interest in someone that flinched when they were touched.

“And then Brock,” Steve murmurs.

“Yeah, thanks for reminding me of that, buddy. But still, it’s true, and then Brock. Didn’t I’d recover from that,” he says. He still wasn’t sure about that, honestly. It wasn’t that he thought he’d never be able to move on from it, he did that a long time ago, but to actually recover from it? That was debatable given that he felt the effects of that fucking relationship still and it was years later.

“You seem to be doing fine now, Sharon mentioned some fancy boyfriend but I think she might have been talking about Phil.” Subtle, Bucky thinks, and he’d at least give Steve credit for managing to snake that into a conversation so smoothly.

“Just because I’m currently dating someone doesn’t mean I’m magically healed from all the problems Brock created for me. I still feel them all the time, more than I’d like really, and no relationship is going to change that for me,” he says bluntly. He wished his life were more like some stupid romance movie in which some new Dom taught him how to trust again but that wasn’t exactly the problem. He knew all to well how to trust, he had a problem with trusting the wrong damn people. Brock, for one, and Steve to a far lesser extent given that he at least realized he was a problem and Bucky knew he’d fix it.

And Tony… he was a whole new situation all together. It was weird because the thing that Bucky was the most self-conscious about, his biological orientation, was something Tony openly rejected in his own life because he had the same problem. And trusting the wrong people, his business partner ended up being a terrorist that hired a therapist specifically to fuck with Tony’s head. No one else in Bucky’s life has ever had issues like his own, and a lot of people questioned why he ever put up with Brock in particular, let alone all the rest. But Tony didn’t really do that, even if he didn’t know much, but what he did know earned Bucky a sympathetic look. Like he knew what it felt like to be in that kind of relationship, or that he knew how to sympathize. It was nice to have someone around that actually struggled with stuff because no one else in his life seemed to, and for a long time he thought he was fucked up somehow because of it. But his relationship with Tony did little to heal the wounds; he only reminded Bucky that he wasn’t the only one who had them.

Steve regards him for a moment but ultimately he looks away, unsure of what to say to someone who has been through so much more than he even knew.

*

“I can’t believe these people think that I think that I’m a special snowflake because of this whole orientation thing,” Tony says, snickering. “Mostly because I thought I was a special snowflake long before this shit. Seriously, I’m great,” he says with more confidence than he probably feels.

“‘Course you are, baby, now can we have pizza? I’m starving,” Bucky says, grinning.

“I second the pizza!” Rhodey yells from the kitchen.

“It better have pineapple!” Natasha yells shortly there after. That quickly evolves into a question of whether or not liking pineapple on pizza means you’re a bad person or not, which Bucky didn’t understand because pineapple on pizza is great.

“I’m not putting pineapple on pizza, I’m not a fucking monster. Pepperoni ok?” Tony asks, offending Bucky’s delicate sensibilities. “You like pineapple on pizza, don’t you? well you know what, I’m just telling the truth, your mother dropped you on your head as a child,” he says in a matter-of-fact tone.

“My mother did not drop me on my head as a child! Yours dropped you on your head as a child!” Bucky protests.

“Please, I had nannies, not a mother, and they were paid not to drop me thank you,” Tony says, nose in the air.

“Didn’t mean they did their job right considering you came out a barbarian who doesn’t like pineapple on pizza. Clearly something went wrong,” Bucky says.

“He likes pineapple on pizza? Dump him,” Rhodey says, offending Bucky all over again, “I’m just saying, he’s clearly not right if he likes pineapple on pizza.”

“Don’t you fucking dare, Stark, Bucky is the best thing that’s ever happened to you. That’s a lie, Pepper is the best thing to have ever happened to you but Bucky is up there, you’re the one with the problem because pineapple on pizza is the best,” Natasha says, jumping into the argument.

“That’s pretty true in regards to Pepper…” Tony says, earning a scandalized look from Rhodey.

“Screw you, I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to you, asshole!”

“Do you make sure his dry cleaning comes in on time? No? Than you aren’t the best thing that’s ever happened to him, imagine if he had to do his own laundry, it would be Armageddon,” Natasha says dramatically.

Rhodey considers this and nods, “you’re probably right about that, honestly. But I taught him about poverty so I feel like I win, he had a lot of misconceptions.”

“Oh give me a break, Rhodes, I was the son of a millionaire. Forgive me for thinking being poor meant you could only afford to pay your bills, I didn’t think squalor was legal,” Tony says, giving Rhodey an irritated look.

“What the hell did you think homelessness was?” Bucky asks, frowning at Tony’s logic.

“I was twelve, I didn’t know they didn’t have homes, I thought that was their job or something,” he says.

“Okay, maybe you win because what the fuck,” Natasha says, frowning at Tony.

“Told you. Now order the pizza Stark, you know what I like,” Rhodey tells him, grinning.

“Screw you and what you like, I’m getting what I like,” Tony says boldly, at least until Natasha gave him a look. “I won’t get something you hate,” Tony compromises, picking up his phone to order the food.

They’re all bickering about the most ridiculous things Tony has ever said and so far Rhodey was in the lead, Bucky taking second with their first date and the hellbeast thing, when the pizza gets there. He felt personally proud that he managed to almost outdo someone who has known Tony for longer than he hasn’t. Tony, however, looks horrified at Rhodey having acquired this knowledge and Bucky watches Natasha file that away for later. In order to save himself he all but flings himself out of his seat to collect the pizza, jostling Bucky, who had been leaning into Tony far more than he thought. Tony might have spared him some if not for the hellbeast thing but Bucky couldn’t help how ridiculous that was. He blamed Tony of that.

“I’m pissed he hasn’t gone on more dates now because that was gold. Keep me updated on any embarrassing additions, yeah?” Rhodey asks.

“Oh, if you want embarrassing dates have I got a doozy,” he says, grinning hard. Payback’s a bitch, Steve. Rhodey leans forward in interest, Natasha leaning with him as Tony returned with the pizza.

“What do we look so interested in?” Tony asks, setting the pizza on the coffee table and dropping back into his seat.

“Bucky’s got an embarrassing date story,” Rhodey tells his as he and Natasha attack the boxes of pizza. Bucky goes to fetch himself a slice before Rhodey and Natasha eat everything and Tony gently pushes him back.

“I’ll get your portion,” he says and Bucky sulks, forgetting that part of their arrangement. Tony leans forward and hands him a slice of pizza, causing further sulking, “don’t look at me like that, be lucky you’re getting any, you’re supposed to be on a diet.”

“Pizza’s got most of the food groups on it,” he protests. There was like dairy, meat, and wheat or whatever. And you could add a vegetable, it was basically healthy.

“Enjoy your last hurrah before you’re stuck with veggies,” Tony tells him, grinning when Bucky pouts more. He probably shouldn’t complain that he didn’t actually have to buy groceries anymore thanks to Tony being worried that he didn’t eat right (he didn’t) but he was still going to miss the hell out of pizza. Broccoli was fine but pizza was life.

“If there was pineapple on it I could count it as a fruit,” Bucky points out, earning a disgusted look from Tony.

“Amen,” Natasha says, earning the same look of disgust Tony had on his face but from Rhodey instead.

“Enjoy what you’ve got and eat your junk food before you don’t have any anymore. And weren’t you supposed to tell some embarrassing date story?” he asks, trying and failing to distract Bucky from his measly pizza slice.

“I don’t get treats?” he asks, pouting.

“Oh my god that’s adorable,” Rhodey says, all but cooing at him. Natasha clearly shared the opinion because she lets out a soft ‘aww’.

“Not if you keep whining at me,” Tony says, not letting up at all. Bucky blinks a few times, making his eyes wider and more puppy like. This earns a couple small squeals out of Natasha and Rhodey, who were all but clinging to each other now.

“I’m not whining,” he says in a voice he had to admit was pretty whiney, but it was also small and cute.

Natasha and Rhodey were puddles but Tony didn’t even melt, “are so. Eat you pizza and tell your story,” Tony tells him.

“I can’t believe you denied him. You have like… and iron will,” Natasha tells him, looking tempted to give him more pizza herself.

“The story,” Tony prompts when Bucky looks too hopeful. Bucky sighs and accepts his fate but settles for embarrassing the hell out of future Steve when he inevitable met Tony and learned that Tony knew all about Sharon and that misadventure. Plus he now had a lovely flipside story starring Sharon freaking out over somehow dating the same guy her aunt Peggy was with for almost two years. She was almost more horrified than Steve had been and Bucky makes sure to play that up too. He was going for maximum shame here.

The others find the situation hilarious and just a little gross, which was far better than how the actual participants in the weird could-have-been-incest-even-if-it-was-just-by-marriage kiss. The two of them were determined to never speak to Peggy again and poor Sharon had to make it through a Lunch of Shame with the woman. Bucky so wished he had been there to see just how Peggy had taken that. Probably not well even if she would have handled it far better than her niece, who all but crawled under the table in shame while her would-be boyfriend literally ran in the opposite direction. He tops the tale off with Steve’s managing to somehow squeeze himself out of Bucky’s bathroom window in an effort to avoid seeing Sharon ever again only to be interrupted by Sharon knocking on the door to share her own horrifying tale.

“So,” he says when he’s finished with all of that, “I feel like I’ve earned another slice of pizza.” He grins at Tony, giving him a hopeful look only to be met with Tony’s own grin, signaling that he wasn’t getting anywhere. Bucky pouts and gives the last slice of pizza a mournful look of longing, silently promising to eat its brethren.

“Oh don’t look so upset,” Tony tells him, “you get fancy grapes.” He wraps his arm around Bucky and he’s tempted to pout some more so he could snag that last slice but he’s weak so he melt into Tony’s touch instead, curling into his side. “See, there you go,” Tony says softly, gently running his fingers down Bucky’s side. He presses his lips to the top of Bucky’s head and he sighs in contentment, even if he didn’t get that last pizza slice.

“Get a room,” Natasha says, interrupting the moment by tossing a pepperoni at Tony. It lands on his cheek with a wet smack, surprising Tony. Before he can react Bucky snatches the piece of meat and sticks in in his mouth, leaning up to lick Tony’s cheek free of food remnants.

“You’re testing you limits,” Tony tells him but he blinks innocently enough that Tony finally melts a little, “that face is very cute, stop making it.” Bucky makes sure to look extra cute and he finally earns that last slice of pizza. Ha, Tony zero, Bucky one, pizza none.