The Musehaus
Zemo had insisted the gallery was “just around the corner,” a little-known pop-up that featured rotating installations from untraceable artists. His kind of secretive, slightly pretentious haven. Bucky, trailing behind with two coffees and a slightly amused expression, had agreed to come because he’d rather follow Zemo to the edge of the Earth than sit through another afternoon of crime documentaries alone.
But this corner didn’t have a gallery. It had a stairwell.
A twisting, ivy-covered fire escape that shouldn't have been there, half-tucked behind a bookstore that smelled like cloves and forgotten ink. The air shimmered around it. Not enough to scream magic, but enough to make Bucky’s metal hand buzz faintly with curiosity. Zemo, of course, was already halfway up it, his coat fluttering like drama itself.
At the top, they stepped through a rusted door and into the kind of space that felt like memory.
The room was massive, full of sunlight that filtered through stained-glass windows that hadn’t been there a moment ago. One wall was mirrors, another chalkboards, a third layered with soundproofing foam and dangling fairy lights. There were couches made of velvet, hammocks, easels, piles of books, incense drifting lazily, a guitar humming softly by itself.
And the people, if they were people, moved like ideas through the space.
A dancer spun past them, their form shifting mid-motion. High-top sneakers became bare feet, short hair became braids, a silk dress became a hoodie and then a suit jacket as they twirled by.
Another figure, lounging upside-down on a ceiling beam, winked at Bucky and offered him a brush dipped in glowing paint.
Zemo was enthralled. His expression was caught somewhere between academic fascination and childlike awe, eyes trailing every shape and colour like it was music.
“This place,” he said softly, almost reverently, “is impossible.”
From behind a pillar of books and vines, a voice answered. “All inspiration is.”
The voice belonged to someone tall, fluid, resplendent in colour. They held a tablet glowing with motion sketches, their clothes flickering between decades like candlelight.
Zemo tilted his head. “Are you artists?”
A soft laugh. “We are the ones who remind artists what they already know.”
Bucky blinked. “Muses?”
“Exactly.”
And just like that, the walls reshaped. A long table stretched before them, covered in paints and sheet music and battered notebooks. One Muse handed Bucky a cup of something that smelled like memory and tasted like safety. Another offered Zemo a pen that wrote in disappearing ink. “For the thoughts you don’t want to keep, but need to say.”
They stayed longer than they meant to. Hours? Days? It didn’t matter.
*
Zemo was the first to wake the next day. Or rather, he was the first to realise he wasn’t dreaming.
The couch he’d fallen asleep on had shifted into a wide divan, upholstered in deep plum velvet and nested between a wall of stained glass and a stack of sheet music that fluttered softly, as if breathing. The sunlight was soft and syrupy, like it had been filtered through honey and nostalgia.
He looked over. Bucky was curled into the cushions nearby, hair in his face, one arm draped protectively over a sketchbook he didn’t remember picking up. His metal hand twitched slightly, fingers moving like he was composing something in his sleep.
Zemo smiled, quiet and warm. The kind of smile that felt like it could stay.
“Morning,” came a voice, low and melodic.
It was Calliope today. Or at least, the being currently exuding Calliope energy: fierce, sharp-eyed, dressed in a perfectly tailored suit made of actual stanzas. Their tie shifted subtly, scrolling through lines from epic poems both ancient and yet-to-be-written.
“Your boyfriend is dreaming in colour,” they said, gazing at Bucky like one might study an unfinished sonnet. “You dream in structure.”
Zemo raised an eyebrow. “You mean control.”
Calliope smiled, not unkindly. “Yes. But we don’t think that’s a bad thing.”
From behind a curtain of glass beads, Euterpe emerged, barefoot, their glasses reflecting entire universes of pigment. They were humming, not a tune, but a visual motif, something that rippled in the air in brushstroke form. Their fingers trailed along the edge of the table, leaving colour behind like smoke.
They paused beside Bucky, crouching lightly. “He’s a sketch waiting to be inked,” Euterpe said, their voice deep and velvet. “Still shifting.”
Zemo studied him. “He’s more than a sketch.”
Euterpe’s smile deepened. “Oh, we know.”
*
Later, Bucky woke to the scent of warm ink and the faint pressure of someone having laid a blanket across his lap. Zemo was across the room, standing at a massive table with a Muse, Urania, maybe, who was drawing star maps that bled into circuit diagrams. They spoke in murmurs and mathematical metaphors.
Bucky blinked sleep from his eyes and sat up slowly. There, waiting for him, was a journal. Black leather. Crisp pages. On the first one, written in a hand not his own: “Here, you are allowed to be unfinished.”
He didn’t know whether to cry or laugh. So he did both, softly, while flipping through the blank pages.
Thalia plopped down next to him, currently appearing as a short-haired woman in a hoodie with blinking emojis across the back.
“Hey, cyborg softie,” she grinned, handing him a pen shaped like a microphone. “Wanna write down the dumb things he says when he’s trying to flirt with star charts over there?”
Bucky looked up, and across the room, Zemo glanced over his shoulder and winked.
“Absolutely,” Bucky said.
*
Zemo was reading. Or pretending to. The book in his lap was a philosophy text that reshaped its thesis every few pages. He’d lost track of the argument around the third paradox, but he kept turning the pages anyway, out of habit.
The quiet was pleasant. The kind of hush that hums when people are near, but no one’s talking. Somewhere in the distance, Bucky’s laugh rolled low and easy. He was playing chess with Terpsichore, who’d invented a new rule every few turns just to keep him guessing.
“Love is inconvenient, isn’t it?” The voice came from beside him. Faint, curious, intimately amused.
He turned. Erato stood there, hands behind their back, posture relaxed and devastatingly self-assured. Their form shimmered gently. Today they were all curves and warmth and soft, unflinching eyes. Like a poem you didn’t realise had been written about you until the last line.
“I beg your pardon?” Zemo asked, smoothing his expression into aristocratic neutrality.
Erato tilted their head. “You heard me. You, with your walls of irony and silk and distant academia. Who, I might add, is currently pretending to read a book about disconnection while watching your soulmate flirt with a Muse who can moonwalk on ceilings.”
Zemo scoffed, but it was weak. Paper-thin.
Erato sat gracefully beside him, not asking permission. “You burn for him.”
Zemo didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer.
“You think,” Erato continued, softly now, “that if you name it. If you call it love. It will shatter. Or worse, that you will.”
Silence. Zemo closed the book. “That’s cruel,” he said, almost gently.
“I’m honest,” Erato corrected. “And I only show you what’s already inside you.”
They reached into the folds of their coat, woven from heartbeats and whispered confessions, and pulled out a small, flat object. A photograph.
Except, it was moving. Not like a video. Like a memory. Zemo saw himself. Sitting on the fire escape of their apartment, shirt rumpled, hair unstyled for once. A mug in his hand. Bucky beside him, dozing lightly, head on Zemo’s shoulder. The light was golden. The air was still. Zemo was looking down at Bucky with an expression so soft, so terrified, so deeply in love that he felt something in his chest fracture.
Erato handed it to him. “You don’t have to say it. But you should know that it’s already true.”
Zemo stared down at the image. He said nothing.
But later, when Bucky returned to him, smelling like wind and laughter and victory over Muse-chess, Zemo reached out and squeezed his hand. And Bucky squeezed back.
And Erato, across the room, smiled like a line of poetry landing just right.
*
The Musehaus didn’t operate on regular hours. Its light shifted more with emotion than time. And tonight, the air had gone syrupy-gold, like a summer evening remembered through nostalgia and wine.
Zemo was sipping something floral and faintly glowing, standing at one of the arched windows that hadn’t been there an hour ago. He was quiet, but not tense. Just thoughtful.
Behind him, Bucky stepped barefoot onto the polished floor, arms crossed loosely, watching him. “Penny for your thoughts?” Bucky asked.
Zemo turned slightly, lips curved. “Inflation’s driven that price up, I’m afraid.”
Bucky smirked, soft. “Fine. I’ll trade you a dance.”
Zemo raised an eyebrow. “You don’t dance.”
“I do,” Bucky said, stepping closer, “when the room starts playing a song I like.”
And just like that, because the Musehaus listens, a tune began to play.
Low and slow, dreamy jazz with a synth undercurrent, like old vinyl met future daydreams. There was no band. No speakers. Just music. Appearing like a shared thought.
Zemo turned fully now, eyes crinkling. “You’re serious.”
Bucky held out a hand, palm up. “Always am.”
Zemo hesitated. But only for a moment. Then he set down his cup, took Bucky’s hand, and stepped into him like a prayer.
Their bodies fit easily. Naturally. Zemo’s hand found Bucky’s waist. Bucky’s arm slid around Zemo’s back. They didn’t lead, not really. They just moved, in a gentle orbit around each other. As if they’d done this a hundred times before, and would do it again in a hundred quiet lifetimes.
They didn’t speak. Didn’t need to.
Bucky’s eyes fluttered closed against Zemo’s shoulder. Zemo let his cheek rest against Bucky’s hair. His heartbeat slowed. His breath synced with the music. With Bucky.
The Musehaus dimmed the lights, save for one quiet moonbeam through the stained glass, casting them in violet and gold and pale rose.
It was the kind of moment that asked nothing. Demanded nothing. Just offered peace.
Zemo sighed, just under his breath, “I hope this is real.”
Bucky pressed closer. “It feels real.”
And the Musehaus, in its strange benevolence, shifted a mural on the far wall to show two silhouettes dancing under a violet sky. Just so it wouldn’t be forgotten.
*
It was late. Or early. That odd, unplaceable hour where everything feels suspended. Where even time seems to hold its breath.
Bucky had slipped away from the main space, not out of discomfort, but because sometimes he needed quiet to understand what he was feeling.
He found himself in a long candlelit hallway, and papered in old sheet music and half-formed poems. Some of the lyrics shimmered as he passed, rearranging themselves based on the cadence of his footsteps.
At the far end, was a room. It wasn’t grand. Just a small, high-ceilinged space with a single skylight, a few floor cushions, and soft, impossibly distant music playing, like a song heard through water.
And sitting cross-legged in the middle, surrounded by blank journals and a glowing fountain pen, was Polyhymnia. They looked up as Bucky entered.
They were gentle today. Long braids woven with star-thread, loose robes that flickered between colours like northern lights. Their presence wasn’t flashy. It was settling. Like the silence after a storm.
“I was hoping you’d come,” Polyhymnia said, as if this were a place Bucky had always been meant to find.
Bucky sat, slowly. His shoulders relaxed without him telling them to.
They didn’t speak right away. Eventually, Polyhymnia asked, “What do you hold back when you love someone?”
Bucky blinked. He hadn’t expected a question. Not like that. “I…” He swallowed. “A lot.”
“Like what?”
He tried to laugh, but it came out like a sigh. “Like how scared I am of needing him. Of letting myself believe that I could be loved back, and not just tolerated.”
Polyhymnia nodded. No judgment. No surprise.
Bucky looked at his hands. “I pretend I’m fine. That I’m just happy to be near him. That I don’t want more than that. That I don’t dream about a life where we grow old together. Where we have a damn routine.”
His voice cracked. “I want Sunday mornings and stupid arguments about groceries and, hell, I want to know what he looks like when he falls asleep reading. I want him to ask me what I want, and I want to be brave enough to answer.”
Polyhymnia looked at him first a long moment. Letting the words settle. Then they reached over, picked up a slip of paper from the floor, and handed it to him. He unfolded it. It read, in simple, flowing handwriting: You are already writing your love story.
Bucky stared at it. Then at Polyhymnia. “I didn’t say all of that out loud.”
They smiled serenely. “You didn’t have to.”
Later, Bucky returned to the central studio, where Zemo had fallen asleep beneath a patchwork of notes and dreams.
Bucky curled beside him. Not cautiously. Not like a soldier. Like a man who had decided.
And in the corner of the room, Polyhymnia added a line to the poem-in-progress on the wall: He loved in the way only the broken can: carefully, endlessly, with hands he once thought too ruined to hold anything soft.
*
The Musehaus had decided on morning. It wasn’t actually morning. Time still worked funny here. But the air had that golden, yawning stillness, the kind that smells like warm bread and fresh ink and new beginnings.
Bucky was curled on a window seat made of cushions and soft linen, a coffee cup between his palms, steam curling gently upward like a sigh. He was dressed in clothes that hadn’t existed yesterday, simple, lovely, loose-fitting. The kind of outfit you wear when you finally believe you deserve comfort.
Zemo sat nearby, sketching something in a journal borrowed from Melpomene, who had insisted that "tragedy and beauty share a pulse."
Outside the window, birds that didn’t exist in the real world flitted through shifting clouds. One looked like it was made of folded music. Another left streaks of watercolour in the sky behind its wings.
Neither of them spoke. Not because there was nothing to say, just because they didn’t need to say it yet.
Eventually, Clio strolled in, wearing denim overalls covered in post-it notes and ancient prophecies. She handed them both a small object: a key. Ornate, old-fashioned. The kind that opens doors that don’t stay in one place. “For when you need to come back,” she said, already halfway through the next room.
Zemo turned it over in his hand. “Does this unlock anything specific?”
“Just the next part,” Clio called. “You’ll know when.” Then she was gone again.
Bucky looked down at his key. “You think we’re supposed to leave soon?”
Zemo hesitated. “No. But I think the house wants us to know it won’t keep us any longer than necessary.”
A little while later, Thalia wandered by, juggling croissants and singing softly in French. She tossed one to Bucky, winked, and vanished behind a paper curtain labeled ‘Do Not Disturb Unless You’re Bringing Snacks or Chaos.’
Zemo raised his eyebrows.
Bucky bit into the croissant. “I love it here.”
Zemo smiled, slow. “I think it loves you back.”
The Musehaus shifted slightly. Like a stretch. Like a contented sigh.
And a small inscription appeared beneath the window seat, in fine golden script: You are safe here. Not because the world is unkind, but because you have found your way to each other.
Bucky read it, then leaned his head on Zemo’s shoulder. Zemo leaned back.
And the house, sensing no need to be anything else right now, just let them be.
*
When they left, Bucky had a notebook full of dreams he’d never dared write down. Zemo had a sketch of a man laughing, really laughing, that looked suspiciously like himself.
And somewhere in the Musehaus, a new painting hung: two men on a balcony, coffee in hand, foreheads pressed together in soft, domestic peace.
They never saw who painted it.
***
The apartment felt the same, mostly. Same creaky floorboards. Same window with the weird latch. Same ever-growing collection of used books and jackets that neither of them could remember actually buying.
But every now and then, something flickered. A phrase in a book that hadn’t been there before. A scrap of music humming from the radiator. A small paper key tucked into a coat pocket that hadn’t been worn in weeks.
Bucky noticed it first, with his coffee. The mug was the same one he always used, sturdy, chipped at the rim. But that morning, when he took his first sip, the steam rose in curling shapes. Not quite letters. Not quite symbols. Just something familiar.
Zemo had made it for him. He always did. But today it tasted like warmth. Like violet light. Like home.
Zemo found a recipe one afternoon, scrawled in his own handwriting, labeled "for when he needs comfort." He didn’t remember writing it. He made it anyway.
Bucky cried a little while eating it. Didn’t say why. Didn’t need to. Zemo just reached across the table, took his hand, and squeezed.
*
Sometimes, when the world got loud, when headlines screamed and shoulders tensed and everything felt too heavy, Bucky would close his eyes and remember the Musehaus.
Not the layout. Not the sounds. The feeling. Softness. Permission. Wonder. Safety.
Zemo would come home to find him sketching on the floor, music playing low, and he’d sit beside him, just quietly.
Sometimes they’d kiss. Sometimes they’d read. Sometimes they’d just sit in the silence, holding keys they never needed to turn, because they’d already unlocked each other.
***