Bucky was sitting against the side of the house, arm wrapped over a splayed knee, the other leg stretched out all the way down to bare, sand-dusted toes. He gave Steve a slow smile as he closed the gate behind him.
"Ain't you just a sight for sore eyes doll." Bucky called, over-exaggerating a wink and a whistle as Steve approached. Steve knocked him with his knapsack as he hefted it against the house.
"Ain't I just, jerk. This seat taken?" Steve nudged the bag across the packed soil to serve as a back rest.
"You see a name on it?"
"You always got something to say, hm?" Steve returned, smiling wryly as he eased down to the ground. Bucky shrugged and reached across his body, pulling a tree tomato out of the woven bowl beside him.
"Had to keep up with your mouth running. Guess I'm back in practice." He pressed the fruit to Steve's chest. Steve took it into his right hand, and when he reached back out, Bucky's pocket knife, body-warm, was already meeting his palm.
Steve flicked open a blade and carved the fruit in half. He offered one to Bucky, but he declined with a shake of his head.
"Dinner'll be ready in a bit. I'm good."
Steve hummed in response and leaned back, their gazes falling parallel as they watched the afternoon's storm clouds pressing away towards the horizon. He scraped the inside of the fruit out with his teeth, enjoying the tartness. Bucky's thumb pushed a line of sand back and forth in the space between them.
"You 'member we used to do this on the fire escape, summertime back in Brooklyn?"
"Yeah. And sometime there'd be another round of storms, and I'd insist on staying outside in the rain and watching the lightning when it got dark." Steve recalled. Bucky bristled slightly.
"You did. You were just enough of an idiot to stay out on a metal fire escape in the middle of a lightning storm. Didn't have a lick of sense to come inside same as me, soon as it flashed."
"You were just scared of storms, as I recall." Steve needled. Bucky punched him in the thigh, sending him a disapproving frown.
"Scared and common sense are two different animals, Rogers. You still wouldn't know common sense if it socked you in the nose."
"Was what I kept you around for." Steve returned, punching back at Bucky's leg.
Bucky glanced back out at the skyline for a moment before he turned his subdued gaze on Steve.
"An' anyone been keeping you in your place while I was gone?" Bucky murmured, side eyeing Steve thoroughly.
"One time Clint called me an "apple pie son of a bitch."" Steve recalled with excessive cheer, snorting at the memory. He had been caught eating all the leftover pizza in the fridge after a mission while Clint was stuck in med getting stitched up. He had snorted then too, and inhaled a piece of pepperoni into his sinuses.
Bucky huffed his own laugh out, shaking the hair back from his face.
"Get the feeling I'd like that guy." He muttered, and nudged his cheek along his shoulder, pushing it against the knot of his wrap, trying to get it caught behind his ear.
"Here," Steve shifted onto his hip, and wiped his hand on his knee. His fingers reached out to fix the strands, grazing against the line of his hair and the tuck of Bucky's jaw as he withdrew.
Bucky's eyes snapped sharply to him, and in a moment he had moved his chin, trapping Steve's hand firmly against his collarbone. Steve's thumb stuttered over the line of the bone. He let a rushed breath out through his nose.
Bucky's mouth twitched for a moment, hesitant to speak, or unsure of the words that were trying to emerge.
Steve bit his tongue, literally and harder than he intended, forcing the close silence to percolate.
"Thank you." Bucky's voice was low and steady when it did emerge. "I'm not sure I deserve any this. But thank you." He shifted slightly, digging his chin into the back of Steve's hand, into a valley between bone and tendons.
Steve turned his hand over and used it to pull Bucky in by his neck. He pressed his forehead hard against the newly familiar lines that marked Bucky's own. Steve took a few measured breaths, rocking slightly with the mismatched rhythm of Bucky's own.
"I really fucking missed you Buck."