Homecoming

He wakes up on the ground next to the bed. He’s wrapped up messily in the rough blanket from his side of the bed, and when he stems himself up onto one elbow, there’s the thin pillow underneath it. He doesn’t know how he got down here. He remembers falling asleep next to Steve in the bed, after watching his back expand and contract in slow breaths for what felt like hours. He doesn’t feel like he had a nightmare, he doesn’t remember anything, but the damp sleep shirt sticking to his back, rapidly cooling, and his erratic breathing say otherwise.

Looking behind himself, the bed is empty. His dog tags tinkle against each other as he frees himself from his cocoon and gets up from the floor. 

Steve’s side of the bed is made haphazardly, the bed cover still lying at the foot of the bed, untouched. Bucky does the thing that feels right to do, putting his pillow back into place and folding his blanket so it fits perfectly next to Steve’s on their bed, and then pulling the bed cover over everything.

By the time he’s done, his breathing has calmed down again, and he’s freezing a little. He decides to take a quick shower just to rinse off the night, and then joins his family downstairs. Maggie is sitting in Steve’s lap at the dining table, two plates with sandwiches pushed together closely so they can both eat while they watch a kids’ show on a portable device, and Beck next to them in his high chair. He is munching away happily at a colorful puree, probably all kinds of fruits mashed together, that he almost sprays everywhere when he sees Bucky enter and throws his arms up in the air.

“Papa!”

Bucky smiles hesitantly as all eyes in the room turn on him. “G‘morning, sweethearts. Had a good night’s rest? ‘Cuz I sure did,” he throws into the room, and he can’t even look quickly enough before Maggie jumps up from her seat on Steve’s legs and up into his arms.

The whole feat reminds him painfully that she is, in fact, a former super soldier in the making. She is quicker than him by a remarkable margin when he doesn’t pay attention, from one side of the room to the other in the blink of an eye, and jumping up into his arms without him even having to bend down the smallest bit. He’s impressed and a little concerned for a second, but as long as she only uses it to cuddle her parents, so be it. (She is only five years old. Who knows how strong she’ll be later in life?)

Steve turns off the show on the device and lays it to the side, as Maggie starts rambling in quick, slurred russian interspersed with english phrases and grammar. It’s hard to follow her, but she’s telling him about her dreams from last night. He lets her talk while he moves over to the table, settling himself down while holding onto the extra weight on his hip so it doesn’t tip him over. Maggie rearranges herself on Bucky’s lap this time until she’s satisfied, all the while keeping the rambling going strong.

Bucky wants to say this can’t be his child, but he honestly can’t even try to deny it. She’s probably as brash, cheeky and out for blood - in the figurative way - as he is when there’s someone to poke fun at. It’s just fun to rile people up, okay? Especially Steve Rogers - 

Steve Barnes. Steve Barnes.

Goddamnit.

Bucky makes himself a sandwich with the ingredients still out on the table while Maggie blabbers on. Now and then Bucky encourages her with a short, ‘da?’, ‘mhm’, ‘i chto potom?’ or ‘no way!’ but eventually she slows down after the first excitement goes down, and he can actually understand what she’s saying. She went over from talking about her dreams to telling him what they were gonna do today, and that’s something worth paying attention to. So far he only knows the serenity of this house, the little happy bubble they have behind closed doors where no one disturbs them. Not the reality of the outside world just out there in the open, ready to tear up Bucky’s knowledge of the new century once more with the ten years they had on him.

Apparently, though, they are not going to go anywhere, really. Maggie tells him about how ‘Daddy’s gonna do kindergarten with me, and then there’s lunch, - oh Daddy, are we gonna go over to Uncle Clint and Aunt Laura for lunch? Please! - And then after lunch we’ll do training and then play!’ and Bucky is a little impressed. Steve has shouldered all that alone for the past six months. It’s time for him to take some of that responsibility off of him. (It’s not, it’s time for this timeline’s Bucky to come back to his family, it’s time for –)

“Well, I’ll be damned if I don’t see how you’ve improved, Magpie. You better surprise me during training or I’ll eat all the snacks,” Bucky hums meaningfully, taking a big bite of his sandwich while Maggie tries turning in his lap, gasping, appalled. He chews and acts like he doesn’t see her while she pounds her little fists against his chest, whining about the snacks.

Steve looks at him with a raised eyebrow and a small grin from across the table, which Bucky reciprocates as well as he can while eating, only a little laced with pained grimaces here and there when Maggie’s hits are harder than he expected them to be. God, does this little girl have power.

It’s good that they train them.

“C‘mon, eat up, princess. Your brother is almost done and then it’s time for kindergarten,” Steve puts on the dad voice, which sounds suspiciously close to the Captain America voice, and Bucky berates him for it with his eyes. Steve just shrugs, pushing the last bite of his sandwich into his mouth as he slides Maggie’s plate over to their side of the table. “Last one done has to draw the winner a picture.”

Bucky grimaces as Maggie rights herself on his lap once more and gulps down her food in big bites. She mumbles something that is entirely unintelligible through her stuffed cheeks.

“Hey, talking usually only works when nothing’s obstructing that mouth part of the vocal process, y’know. Both of you should know,” Bucky throws a lifted eyebrow at Steve, “Geez, there you are gone for once, and the manners in this house really go down the gutter, huh? I really need to straighten things back up around here!”

Maggie squeals as Bucky grips her around her thigh and her armpit, pulling her up in the air as he stands. She hangs there between his arms, laughing and thrashing, but he pays her no mind as he carries her over into the living room like a wet sack of potatoes. He hears Steve laugh in the room next door, and then a chair scraping.

“So, little miss, what do you say in your defense?”

“Mne zhal, mne zhal, papa!”

Bucky swings her around like he wants to throw her. “Ohoho, playing dirty with the russian, I see. And for what?”

“Ack, for speaking with my mouth full!”

Bucky swings her around once more, grinning over both ears. “That’s right. But you can’t escape the punishment either way, so get ready for dispatch in three, two, one –“

With an exhilarated scream, Bucky lets go of her and Maggie lands on the couch with a groan of the cushions, immediately breaking out in uncontrollable laughter. Bucky claps his hands together as if he’s trying to get imaginary dust off of them. “My work here is done. Agent Barnes, I wanna see spotless work next time. No more mishaps.”

Maggie can barely get any words out through her giggles, “Yuh, yessir!”

And with that, Steve steps up next to him with Beck on his hip, wordlessly handing him over to Bucky for the first time since he’d been here. Beck props himself up with his small hands against Bucky’s chest, looking up at him with big eyes, before smiling wide and cuddling up against him, head in the crook of Bucky’s shoulder and collarbone.

Bucky’s chest warms as he hugs his son to himself.

“So, kindergarten time! Y’know what to do, princess, get your stuff from the cupboard and let’s sit down. Sunroom or patio?”

Steve gives him pointers on what to do with Beck while Maggie is gathering up her kindergarten supplies. Preschool, completely in russian. It’s what they did with Maggie too, back then. He has a ‘lesson plan’ hanging in his room, as well as his supplies. Today should be finger painting, Steve remembers with a small hum, and then gives both Beck and him a small kiss on the cheek before following Maggie out onto the patio. Bucky is stunned for a second by the casual intimacy, then leaves the room for upstairs.

Bucky sits Beck down on a rounded plastic chair next to an equally rounded plastic table and starts talking in russian to him, even though he still feels kind of disconnected whenever he does it around the kids. There are no images accompanying it, no lack of feeling or thinking waiting around the corner ready to ambush him, but it’s the memories of what once was that won’t let him go. The fear of fearing it again. Of having to fear that again.

He distracts himself by blabbering about Beck’s lesson plan, today’s class, complaining about finding the finger paints and pots and paper towels and the right painting papers. Beck helps him with short hints, in very cute, childlike slurred russian. There, behind, down, no, yes. Bucky can hear how he hasn’t had the chance to speak much russian in the last six months. Six months is a long time for a three year old.

After he found everything and prepared the finger paints, he spreads everything on the round table. He sits down with Beck on one of the other chairs, and slides a paper in front of him with one column thickly outlined numbers and dotted repetitions of the same numbers in the rows next to them. He tasks him with coloring in the thick numbers and then tracing the dotted numbers row for row, saying the number aloud whenever he’s done with one. Beck listens to him with wide eyes staring up at him, then nods. Bucky helps him a little at the beginning, getting some paint on his fingers and lightly coloring the first number while explaining again, a little slower this time. Beck gets it then, and goes to town. Bucky praises him, and feels a warm proudness settle in his heart.

Bucky doesn’t want to look like he’s just supervising and sitting around like an idiot, so he paints his own piece of paper. Whenever Beck is done with a number, he calls it out, or Bucky helps him remember the number. Then he reexplains the task for the next number, dotted or outlined, to help commit the russian into Beck’s memory, make it easier to understand. It helps, every time he repeats himself Beck repeats it with him, while starting on the painting quicker.

Time flies by faster than Bucky expected it to when they sat down for preschool initially. When Beck is done with all the rows on his sheet, it’s ten thirty and time for a break. He cleans up his own fingers and then Beck’s with paper towels as best as he can, before bringing him over to the bathroom and washing their hands free of the rest of it clinging to the folds of their skin and under their nails.

They meet Steve and Maggie downstairs, opening the screen door and leaning into the doorframe out onto the patio. Bucky grins, readjusting Beck on his hip. “Hey, you lil’ punks. The clock says snack break.”

Steve looks up from the riddle he’s been doing next to Maggie, and then looks at his watch. Maggie is so immersed in her worksheet that she doesn’t look up at first, only after Steve taps his fingertips against the edge of the paper. “Time for a break, darling.”

“Only if I can have banana chips.”

Bucky snorts, already turning back into the house, “Not if I get to them first!”

Steve calls in with the Bartons shortly before twelve, while the kids are finishing up their work together on the patio and they’re watching them through the kitchen window. Creative work, to relax and engage them after learning so hard and using up all their focus. Bucky only listens with half an ear to the smalltalk Steve’s having with, uh, Clint's wife, he presumes, rather paying attention to the adorable way both of the kids’ brows furrow and their tongues poke out while they draw or write.

He does start paying more attention when the conversation steers over to him.

“.. yeah, yeah, Maggie asked because it’s a special occasion. Bucky’s back and that – yeah! Oh, he’s perfectly fine, don’t worry – no, nono, save it for your own husband, believe me, he got his fair share of an earful from me already,” Steve laughs into the landline, and Bucky leans over into his line of sight to show him his scandalized expression. Such an easy liar, when did that happen? Bucky can’t believe it.

Steve waves him away with a grin, and keeps humming into the receiver as Laura talks. Bucky keeps watching him, curious of what other kind of lies will leave Steve’s lips, down and dirty, but before that can happen Steve’s face softens again, and Bucky has to turn back to the kitchen window to not get knocked down to his knees.

“Yeah, I can’t even begin to explain how much I missed him. Sure, I was angry at first, but at the end of the day I’m just glad to have him back. Sleeping in the bed next to me. You know the feeling, huh? Yeah, exactly.”

Bucky’s had his fair share of torture and near death experiences in his life time. Getting stabbed and shot, beat to a pulp, getting bullets and other weapons taken out of his flesh while he was wide awake and watching, not to mention getting experimented on during the war and consequently falling from a train and watching his ripped off, mangled arm slowly bleed him out in the Swiss Alps. Everything blanches in comparison to the pain in Steve’s voice, the pain he has caused.

He’s always wanted to make amends, if he ever got the chance to in the future. But he doesn’t think he can, not if this is his biggest mistake.

Clint immediately knows he’s not the right Bucky. He plays the role, for their families’ sake, gives him a brotherly hug and a slap on the shoulder, but the atmosphere between them is stilted. While Steve and Laura busy the kids, Clint calls him over to the barbecue grill, hands him the tongs and leans his ass against the bar stool standing next to them.

“So this is where you were during the blip.”

Bucky frowns, turning the browning veggies and sliding the chicken pieces over to the side, out of the direct heat. He keeps staring at the food and into the coals, trying to make sense of Clint’s words. 

“The blip?”

“Oh, yeah, right, it’s still happening in your time,” he hums, and when Bucky looks over to check if Clint didn’t go batshit, he’s stroking his hand over his mouth thoughtfully. “Lila told me about it. Not a lot of people have memories of the time during the blip. She’s the only one I know of, or at least the only one who told me about it. She was in the future too, in a timeline where she was Hawkeye.”

Bucky wants to officially peg Clint as cuckoo, but he really can’t judge when he’s ten years in the future right this instance.

“Not gonna lie, I still don’t know if I’m proud or scared of a future where she’s Hawkeye.”

“So, uh,” Bucky starts, not really knowing where to go from that, “you just wanna tell me some relatable anecdotes of your kids or what is the point you trying to make here, pal?”

Clint hums again, and slaps a hand down on Bucky‘s shoulder once more, though this time softer, and he lets it linger.

“I’m just saying, enjoy your time here, bud. God knows it’s limited.”

Bucky doesn’t know what to do with that answer, but he somehow knows he should take it to heart.

The drive home is almost serene.

Beck is sleeping in his booster seat, preponing the afternoon nap into the car, not a care in the world for the wobbly movement of sandy paths they’re driving along, the radio or the car noises, not to mention his excited sister next to him. Maggie is teetering from side to side in her seat, sometimes humming along with the radio, sometimes murmuring to herself, sometimes breathing against the window and drawing onto the fogged glass. Bucky tries to be as inconspicuous as possible while watching her, but she is an enhanced human like him, so he can’t really watch her in peace before she realizes.

He can’t keep his eyes off of her either way. There’s something curious, magnetic about watching her. Like it’s going to offer up the last puzzle piece of the bigger picture to him if he just stares and analyzes long enough. It never comes, but his daughter’s eyes catching his and her accompanying, beaming smile feels about as accomplishing.

(She isn’t his daughter.) The nagging reminders come less frequently, quieter every time. They don’t throw him off anymore.

“So,” Steve announces when he turns the car in front of their open garage, putting his arm behind Bucky’s seat to look back while he parks, and fuck, that’s sexy, “what are we gonna do for training today, miss Margret? Anything special to mark the occasion?”

Bucky is only stupefied by the use of the full name for about a second, before Maggie squeals out oh, oh, oh! Hand to hand combat with papa, please! and yeah, of course. Both Steve’s and the asset’s his own specialty, counting out weaponry. It’s only natural it’s also hers. He wonders if they’re already training her in other combat and skill fields; knife wielding, marksmanship, stealth, long and short distance, tactics. It might be a little too early for the whole parade, but who knows. She ain’t no regular child, and they ain’t no regular parents, after all.

“You really wanna fight against your papa after he’s been able to, y’know, refresh his memory of combat for the past few months?” Steve snorts, putting the gear stick into neutral and turning off the motor. Bucky gasps theatrically, putting on a hurt expression while Steve gets out of the car.

“How dare you imply I need to refresh the memory of my combat skills, Steven Grant. I know my combat skills. I am my combat skills.”

“Oh yes, of course, mister gunslinger,” Steve hums drily while unstrapping Beck from his seat and gently lifting him up and out of the car. “I bet Maggie’s got you beat after training with me for the last six months, pal.”

Maggie ‘uh-huh’s proudly at that, and Bucky huffs. He won’t believe that until he sees it firsthand.

Well, so, Bucky knows how he was back in his youth with Steve, pre-war, pre-torture, pre-everything. Cocky little shit, is what he was. And he hasn’t been able to experience that kind of peace and tranquillity in a long time, to relax and forget enough to remember and rebuild whoever he was those seventy, eighty years ago. So in this timeline, it just comes easier for some reason. Being cocky again, being a little shit, poking fun at Steve Rogers and being too quick witted and loose-tongued for his own sake sometimes.

Thing is, since he’s a cocky little shit by nature, his children are also cocky little shits by nature. Which means, when he loudly proclaims his exceptionally honed combat skills, his daughter sees it as a fun challenge instead of a hindrance. Just like Bucky himself when he took on three high school bullies with his own scrawny thirteen year old ass trying to save even scrawnier twelve year old Steve Rogers, and came out mostly unscathed.

So, yeah.

In conclusion, he rightfully got his ass handed to him by his five year old girl.

Which doesn’t mean he didn’t try his hardest. It was a long fight, yeah? Plus, they didn’t just fight, they also went over tactics and revised moves and analyzed her first attempt of fighting him, which, mind you, was unsuccessful. 

But yeah, after that she did have him beat.

“So. Margret.”

Steve doesn’t look up from his seat in the sunroom. Dusk is hot on their heels and the last rays of the orange sun are shining directly into their eyes from where she stands across the lake. Bucky has just brought Maggie to bed and now joined Steve for the evening, leaning himself into the open doorway with the cup of tea that had been awaiting him in the kitchen.

Steve hums in confirmation. “After Peggy.”

Bucky snorts, rubbing the seam of his long-sleeve between his fingers. He tries smiling it off, like he did back then in the bar, after Steve had rescued them and they’d been celebrating and getting drunk (trying to) and Peggy Carter had paid a visit and suddenly he was invisible next to her. He tries smiling it off, tries searching for a witty comment to make like back then, but he’s too old for it now. He’s not who he was back then, barely remembers half of who he was. He doesn’t have his head in the clouds anymore like back then, putting off the important things until the next day, because hey, we just survived the worst part of the war, I survived the worst experience of my life. Enjoy life a little, the important things can wait a day or two.

Important things like telling Steve Rogers to not look at Peggy Carter as if she hung the stars in the sky, like telling Steve Rogers there’s more important shit to do than to flirt with a work colleague, like telling Steve Rogers that he’s only reacting so sourly because he loves him. Like telling Steve Rogers that all they went through just really drove home the point that Steve was it for Bucky.

He tries smiling it off, but not even eighty years since the last time make the sting in his chest any less of a burden.

“Of course –“

“You suggested it.”

Steve looks up from his place then, turning his head to the side, but not quite being able to look at Bucky with his seat orientated away from the door. Bucky can only stare blankly at Steve’s side profile while he processes.

Well, darn him.

Steve looks back down into his lap, and when Bucky steps closer, sees that he’s working on a drawing. A swell of emotions so big overcomes him then, that the hairs on Bucky’s arm stand up. He hasn’t seen Steve draw since the forties. One of the last things he remembers Steve drawing is a picture of him, for his siblings. A pretty little coal thing. Bucky has no clue about drawing, but for the fact that it was drawn with coal it was so very clean and clearly Bucky. His sisters had adored it.

He’s a little overwhelmed with every little detail he remembers.

“You were in charge of her name, it just came natural for some reason – and in turn I was in charge of his name. Beck. After Rebecca.”

Bucky sits down next to Steve in the loveseat gingerly, trying to simultaneously process what’s being said, what kind of memories it pulls up, and not get completely lost in his own mind. He ends up staring at Steve as a result, at the concentrated furrow of his brows, at the small upturn of his lips because he’s reliving fond memories, at the way his shoulders and arms flex dragging his drawing medium over the paper in quick strokes.

Steve sighs out a small laugh, “It’s not short for anything, if you’re asking yourself that. S’just Beck. He does have a second name though, to keep the Barnes family tradition upright. Beck Wilfred Barnes, after your Ma.”

Bucky feels like his breath is going too shallow. “And Maggie?”

“Margret Josephine Barnes. After my Pa.”

Bucky’s stormy mind calms down. The only sound between them for a few moments that feel like minutes is the scratch of pen on paper and the last birds singing their goodnight songs.

“Hey, I know you don’t –“

“I wanted to tell you.”

Steve looks up from his paper, perplexed and a little confused at Bucky’s interruption. But instead of judging him for it, he just waits, like Steve Rogers always does. Patient, warm, with open eyes. Bucky can’t take him.

“Back in the bar. With Dum Dum, and, and Morita, and Dernier. I wanted to tell you. I,” he stops, stammers, and he has to look away because he can’t take Steve Rogers’ soft expression, his unprejudiced eyes and encouraging smile when it’s the opposite of what he deserves. He can’t take the understanding dawning on Steve Rogers’ face when all it has caused was seventy years of pain.

“I, I wanted to pull you out back and get my Irish up, complain about the way I suddenly became invisible next to Peggy goddamn Carter. And in my mind I already heard you ask ‘Buck, Buck, what are you getting so worked up over?’ and I just – I wanted to kiss the living daylights out of you instead of admitting out loud that I love you. That was my plan, because even back then, I knew I was being a coward about it.”

Steve hums, and for once in his life he isn’t staring straight ahead.

“And then I didn’t.”

Bucky sinks back into the seat cushions, rubbing at the skin between his eyebrows.

“Even then, with all things considered, I didn’t. Even though it was the war, and fate had given me about a dozen second chances with you, and every day after that could’ve been our last, I didn’t. And that’s one of my biggest regrets in life.”

Steve takes his time putting away his medium in a tin box lying against his thigh and then leans the picture he’d worked on against the side of the loveseat. He relaxes back into his seat afterwards, and Bucky only doesn’t flinch at Steve’s touch because he’s too caught up in his own guilt. Steve touches the side of his thigh first, before snaking his hand into Bucky’s metal one.

“Makes two of us, pal. But hey, eventually we got our heads outta our asses, and now you don’t have to be a coward anymore about how to declare your undying love for me.”

Bucky snorts and turns to Steve, pulling a knee onto the loveseat between them and pulling their joined hands onto the backrest.

“Well, I, for one, really liked that initial plan. Was quite on brand if you ask me. Why, y’got something against it, punk?”

“I feel like t’was a little unsteady on the success rate,” Steve hums, leaning back against the armrest and pulling Bucky along by their hands, “but that oughta clear up by a simple demonstration of execution.”

Bucky holds himself up with his free hand against the armrest, right above Steve’s shoulder, next to his face. He doesn’t know if he should laugh or cry, so close and carefree with Steve for the first time since 1937, when life was still good. Just good.

“Sir, yessir.”