Homecoming

The quinjet brings them home far into the night. They make their way over to the front of the house in each other’s arms, holding each other up and pulling the other closer when they teeter away to the side while walking, giggling and poking fun tipsily. The Asgardian mead Thor had brought along plenty of just for the superhumans among the Avengers had been a godsend for the two of them. (As well as that kid Bucky remembers fighting in that german airport, even though last time he saw him he was, what? Fifteen? It almost evoked a by now very dad like anger in him, seeing that kid drunk. He hadn’t left him out of his line of sight the whole evening.)

Bucky can’t remember the last time he had felt an inkling of the softly swimming feeling of alcohol in his system, much less remember Steve ever being in a good mood while drunk. Whenever he made him drink back in the day there was only a short period for good times before Steve’s scrawny ass was outside on the curb or in an alleyway spewing it all out again, and most of the time Bucky had already been too drunk himself to take advantage of that short period of time in between.

Now though, the situation is a lot more carefree.

Steve’s giggling, and rambling, and slurring like Bucky has never seen before as he tries to get the keys into the door lock. Bucky keeps him from bumping head first into the door at least twice while he complains about the lock not cooperating out of spite, “‘S doin’ it on purpose, I swear to God!” and laughs at him the whole time through. He tries keeping Steve as steady as humanly possible in his own state of mind, holding onto his shoulder with his left and onto the back of his shirt collar with his right, and only when he tries taking over Steve’s feeble attempts of unlocking the door and consecutively stumbles into him himself as he tries to grab for the keys, does the key finally slip in.

Both of them groan appreciatively when they finally make their way into the warm house, laughing at themselves as the door closes behind them.

“God, we’re too old for this shit,” Bucky laments softly, not really meaning it at all, and watches Steve turn to him with this big dopey smile on his face after dropping the keys onto the shoe rack. They look at each other for a few moments, just smiling at each other like the two idiots they are, and yeah, maybe they are a little too old for this, a little too drunk and a little too in love, but for these few seconds Bucky completely forgets about everything else but Steve.

“Mhm, maybe. But maybe we also deserve it a lil’, huh? Don’tcha think,” Steve hums, stepping back into Bucky’s space, snaking his arms around his waist while crowding him against the door, and for a moment Bucky forgets to breathe, “that maybe, maybe, after we’ve been robbed of ‘is kind of evening for like, the good part of a century, we deserve to cut some slack?”

Even if Steve expected an answer from him, expected him to continue the banter or even just laugh a little, Bucky wouldn’t have remembered to do any of it. Not when Steve’s right there, up against him, his voice slurring but soft and low, so low and a little raspy, as he lulls back into his Brooklyn dialect that has been so carefully trained out of him back in the day. Not when Steve’s so close, so warm against him, his nose almost touching Bucky’s and his arms tightening around his back, pulling them even closer together. Not when Bucky’s so far gone for this man, and all he can do in his state is lean forward and kiss him for all he’s worth.

Their kiss is alcohol-sloppy and a little out of practice on Bucky’s side, but it’s perfect nonetheless. Bucky’s hands find leverage in Steve’s hair, pulling him ever closer even though there’s no more space left between them, and Steve goes willingly. Their beards scratch against each other in a way that would probably bother anyone else and give them beard burn, but for them, there’s nothing better in the world. When Steve’s hands move from Bucky’s back under the hem of his shirt, one up to trace his spine and one down to stroke his skin just barely disappearing into the line of his jeans, Bucky gasps against his mouth, taking advantage of the action and slipping his tongue into Steve’s mouth.

With every second, memories of kissing just like this come back to Bucky, memories he hadn’t ever had the chance (the reason?) to unearth before, and with it comes the muscle memory, the skill, the urge. Flashes of dames he went on dates with, went steady with, kissed like this behind dance halls and in front of fence gates and next to their school, but most importantly, Steve. Steve, who he kissed on his fourteenth birthday while drunk and watching the fireworks, just once and then blamed it on the alcohol the next day, Steve, who he kissed again the night before he was shipped out to England, and that time he didn’t take it back. Steve, who kissed him again and again that night, until they made love as quiet and slow as possible to commit each other to memory, and then fell asleep in the same bed but not in each other’s arms, just so that Steve wouldn’t wake up when he left.

It feels unreal in Bucky’s mind, like his wishful thinking and half dead memory conjured up whatever he desired the most, but the feeling of Steve’s tongue against his seems too familiar.

“The night before I shipped out,” he has to ask, he needs to know it was real, so he gasps into the space between their lips, their tongues barely separated, “Was it real? Or ‘m I goin’ crazy?”

Steve laughs against him, against his mouth and against his body, as softly as he kisses him once more.

“It was, it was real, just like the time after I found you and we did it again and again and again, and every other time after that.”

It’s a lie. It’s a lie, it has to be, because Bucky doesn’t remember any of it, only remembers distance and resentment after Steve found him and they formed the Howling Commandos and Peggy was in the picture. It has to be, because this isn’t his Steve, this isn’t his timeline, and things are different here than they are for him. It has to be a lie, because their memories are mingling between them and neither of them is in the right mind to separate them, but he finds himself accepting that it doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter because he hasn’t been able to keep the lines from blurring since Day One.

He kisses Steve once again.

Waking up the next morning is languid and slow like molasses. No kids to wake them and to take care of early on, no responsibilities except each other, no hurry to get up unless for toilet breaks, no need to be productive. Just warmth, skin on skin, dull soreness in their muscles and mouth shaped bruises slowly fading and a faint light sensitivity from their drunkenness. They stay in bed as long as their bodies let them, huddling together under one blanket, sharing their breath and Steve’s pillow, entwining hands and legs whenever they feel like it, like it’s the most natural thing to do.

And for Bucky, it becomes the most natural thing to do more and more, with every time they go back to it. It’s easy like this, to forget about the lines, to forego the strain of remembering where he comes from and replacing it with the here and now. The easy way out. 

Because the easy way out means a happiness he has never thought to be possible for him, a happiness he has not once allowed himself to long for, and the easy way out is right there, in front of him, looking up at him with those ocean eyes he has known all his life, with so much love and gentleness in all his touches, with such easy affection bleeding into the space between them and into every kiss they share.

Because sometimes the path of least resistance is the right path to take.

And he’s tired of resisting.

All his life he’d been resisting in some kind of way, first the upbringing and education of his parents, the urge to fall head over heels into the storm that was Steve Rogers as a kid, the cruel judgement of their peers and parents for only ever being focused on him. And then later on, the gravitational pull that Steve Rogers grew into over the years, the need to stay by his side and take care of him however humanly possible, keeping him from killing himself one way or the other. Then, the burning want to flee the impending doom that was the war, to be a coward and just run away with Steve.

All his life he’d been resisting, because it’s what being Steve’s best pal had taught him to do. It hadn’t been right for him to indulge and relent, it hadn’t been right when all Steve had done his whole life was resisting as well, standing up for himself and getting into fights and coming out bloody and bruised just to do it all over again in the blink of an eye, getting close to death in winters and surviving against all odds. And whatever Steve did, Bucky did as well.

It’s the endless circle of their intertwined lives. Unrelenting and unwaveringly tied together.

So this new reality he had been granted to be a part of, where the only thing he has to resist is to fall back asleep after being in bed the whole day and kissing Steve every other second just because he can, is a nice change. It has unfurled a coil of restraint and resistance that he has been carrying with him all his life without noticing and that only Steve Rogers could ever have touched upon.

It’s only fair that the one who strung him together in the first place is the one to take him apart at the end.

“What’re ya thinkin’ ‘bout?” Steve’s voice is quiet in the space between them, pulling him out of his thoughts like a wave sloshing lazily against the warm shore. Unhurried, but always retreating back to the ocean just to do it all over again, inevitable. Bucky smiles.

“You.”

It’s the only answer he can give, and for once, it’s enough.

Steve laughs softly, his hands tangling in Bucky’s long hair, his forehead thumping gently against his own. They share another kiss, open-mouthed and sweet, before Steve sighs.

“Of course you’d say that, ya big sap. Ever the charmer.”

Bucky can’t bring himself to laugh, or put on a show, or bring up any energy for poking fun back at Steve. He can’t remember a time where he didn’t have to do either of those things to lessen the blow of a jab like that, so he shamelessly exploits it. It’s nice. To not have to put up a front.

“Yeah. Of course I’d say that. ‘Cuz I love ya.”

Steve lets the words hang in between them for a few moments, seemingly basking in the afterglow of the implications for as long as he can, before pushing Bucky onto his back with only a fingertip to his shoulder, that’s how much power this man has over him. He straddles him sluggishly, in no rush whatsoever, and Bucky’s hands find Steve’s naked thighs easily. He’s warm and soft underneath his palms, both under his flesh and vibranium hand, the metal not having cooled off of their body heat since they got into bed last night.

Steve leans down easily, body enveloping Bucky’s like the best blanket there is, and breathes into their space once again.

“Yeah. There’s no way around it, huh? Wherever you and me end up, we always end up in love as well.”

Before Steve can kiss him once more, suck more blooming bruises into his body that will have faded by dinner, and have more lazy sunday morning sex with him, Bucky sighs, “We sure do.”

They eventually pull themselves out of bed around lunch time, when neither of them can ignore their hunger and rumbling stomachs any longer, and take a quick shower together. It should be weird, doing these things with Steve for the first time, from his standpoint, but it isn’t. Instead it feels like they’ve been doing it for years, and at this point Bucky doesn’t see the point in questioning it anymore. They clean themselves of the evidence from their earlier activities efficiently, safe from one short derailing into another make out, and then make their way down to get started on lunch. The house is warm enough to stay in shorts and thin shirts, and while Steve gets their self-written cookbook out, Bucky throws open the front door and a few windows to get some fresh air and sunlight in.

“So, about the cookout,” Steve starts as Bucky joins him back in the kitchen, hooking his chin over Steve’s shoulder to be able to look into the book together with him, and Bucky realizes that the pages they have flipped open aren’t in Steve’s neat handwriting. Not even in his own squiggly one. They’re in a soft cursive he can’t quite place, not knowing anyone that writes like that. But the recipes are carefully written out, an ingredients list on top, separated into bullet points, and a step by step guide for cooking on the bottom.

The pages radiate love and care. They radiate a familiarity that Bucky can’t remember how he knows, and that hurts.

“Who wrote that?” He makes himself ask, because not remembering is just as bad as getting told his own history by others, but he’d take one over the other in a heartbeat. He’s too old and too tired to let his own pride get in the way of knowing about himself and the people around him.

There’s only so many memories the smartest person on earth, the most advanced technology and a superhuman healing factor can restore after seventy years of getting them zapped out of your brain.

“Becca,” Steve supplies gently, Bucky can hear the fondness in his voice, but his blood runs cold nonetheless. He feels helpless – he remembers the mole and stupid tooth gap of Eddie Johnson, the boy from sixth grade who always picked on Steve when they were younger, but he doesn’t remember his own sister’s handwriting. “She gave it to me a few months after I came out of the ice.”

Bucky removes himself from Steve’s back, stepping back to lean against the kitchen counter behind them. His mind is running a mile a minute, his stomach lurching, because –

“She was still alive?”

He doesn’t even remember when she was born. How old he was when he got to be a big brother once again. How old his other sisters were when Becca came into the world. He doesn’t even remember his other sisters.

“Mhm, sure was. Her and Peggy kept me going those first few years. Even as an old little grandma she was still as much of a mischievous little punk as you were, and she was so happy whenever I visited. She was eighty-four when I first came around, and made it to eighty-eight. I was,” Steve pauses then, and it doesn’t sound like he’s reminiscing in fond memories like he sometimes does, but rather like he’s deciding on sharing a piece of his mind. Bucky feels like he can’t breathe right.

“I was able to tell her about you. After Project Insight went down.”

Steve might as well just have punched right through his rib cage and ripped out his heart with bare hands.

“That you didn't die in vain back in the war, that you were alive just as I was. You should’ve seen her face. She was so happy. She missed you so much. She died before I was able to find you and bring you home.”

Bucky has to focus on his left arm to breathe right, letting the sensations of the plates moving, recalibrating and resetting themselves wash over him. He focuses on that and that only, because he can’t let himself think about the fact that there was a period of time where part of his family was still alive, at the same time as him, and their paths never crossed because he was a coward. He would have known, he would have been able to see his baby sister if he hadn’t run away from Steve and his memories. He would have been able to say goodbye.

He would have. But she died before Steve found him in Romania.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” His voice is breaking, and there’s so many other questions that he’d rather have asked, but anything else would probably break him beyond repair. So he doesn’t.

Steve turns to him then, and he smiles, but it’s tight and full of pain. He knows what he’s going to say, he already knows the answer, because he knows Steve. And he knows it was an asshole thing to ask, but it’s the only thing keeping him from losing it in that moment.

“There was never an opportunity to. There was always a fight that took priority, always something way bigger than us going on. Zemo, Tony, Thanos,” Steve sighs, and it’s not often that Bucky remembers Steve ever look so burdened. The look dissipates quickly enough, Steve squaring his shoulders and putting on a brave face, and Bucky doesn’t call him out on it. Instead, he swallows down the lump in his throat, entirely unsatisfied with the answer, but not having expected anything else. It’s true, he knows, there truly never was an opportunity. The universe just likes to see them suffer.

Steve grabs the cookbook again, holding it up and forcing a smile. “I did tell you eventually though, after Thanos, when we did finally have an opportunity to just - talk. We actually had this same conversation. We both just never change, do we?”

Bucky sighs a pained, dry laugh, trying to accept the reality of what could have been and looking forward to what will be instead. There’s no point in crying over spilled milk, after all.

“Never change a winning team, pal. Now, let’s take a look at those amazing Barnes recipes from a hundred years ago and whip up some lunch, my stomach’s digesting itself already.”

They do whip up lunch, and then some. It gives them both enough time to process the emotional conversation they had, and brings back normalcy and warmth with it. Most of the dishes they prepared for the cookout later, when the kids and Sam would come back after the weekend, need to marinate, rest or slow cook for a few hours, so in the meantime they flow from one leisure activity to the next; they spend some time in the afternoon sun behind the house, working on fixing the Willy MB parked just far enough out so they didn’t need lamps to look into the engine box, and it’s almost therapeutic for Bucky to be able to use his hands like this once again. He can’t remember a time he worked as a handyman, but the muscle memory and knowledge comes back as easy as breathing.

When the sun starts rounding to the front of the house and throws them into shade, they call it quits and move inside. The house is still warm but noticeably fresher with the open windows and doors, so Steve closes most of them except for the front door while Bucky decides to lounge in the sunroom. He sits in one of the round wicker chairs for a bit, where the sun is shining onto him but not directly into his face, though he gets restless fairly quickly with nothing to occupy his mind with. He gets up and searches for something to do, finding himself in front of the bookshelf, skimming the spines with his fingertips but not taking in what kind of books they are.

They feel lively. Lived in. They give Bucky a feeling of home that feels different to the feeling of home Steve or the kids give him. He tries not focusing on the cause, not questioning the origin of the feeling, but instead letting it wash over him like warm water, or embracing an old friend. And as he does so, as he lets his finger feel over paperbacks and hardcovers and lets his nose breathe in the scent of well-loved pages, the memories come back to him as if they were always there.

His sisters around him, loud in the lounge room where usually quietness dominates, strewn about the place to read or draw or sit in front of the piano without playing. Bucky, foul mouthed as always, cussing out Ruth and Beth for bickering while he pulls out a slim, glossed paperback from the shelf and walks over to the piano, flipping it open on the stand and joining Becca on the bench. He barks out another curse filled threat before it’s quiet enough to start playing together with Becca. The other two seem to lapse into pleased silence behind them, listening to their big brother and littlest sister playing while doing whatever it was they were doing.

The emotions wash over him the same slow, calm way the memories did, and he smiles as the tears roll hot down his cheeks, a welcome change to the usual shock or pain he goes through when he remembers such vital moments of himself, of his childhood, of his life before the war. He sobs out a small laugh, thumbing away the tears softly, unhurried, and then finally grabs one of the books from the shelf that grabs his attention. The cover looks familiar when he turns it to the front, and the longer he looks at the blue of the sky and the white birds and the white-clad lady on it, the more he remembers the fun he had reading this book to Steve one winter when he was sick but still well enough to laugh with him.

He only gets a few paragraphs of reading in, too caught up in replaying the memories and feelings that had been unearthed by the last few moments, before music from the living room catches his attention instead. It echoes softly into the sunroom, off of the windowed walls and ceiling and the warm tiles, the scratch of the phonograph dulled by the lousy quality of the record. He doesn’t remember the particular song playing, but he remembers the feeling of listening to it, once upon a time.

Steve appears in the doorway, looking as beautiful as the sun shining in and sounding as soft as the music as he asks if Bucky cares for a dance. Bucky laughs lightly, easily, putting the book down and following Steve into the living room. It’s remarkably darker in that room with the sun dipping down more and more, but not any less cozy than the sunroom. Steve turns back to him in the middle of the room, and Bucky goes on muscle memory alone to take one of Steve’s hands in his own and put the other one on his waist.

“Oh, so we’re leading?” Steve teases immediately, a small grin spreading over his face that he doesn’t try to suppress. Bucky snorts.

“I gave up teaching ya how to lead back in the forties. S’ not worth getting stepped on every other move.”

Steve follows him easily enough, putting his own free hand on Bucky’s shoulder and moving with him through the room. Even if it’s not the most elaborate dance he’s ever done - Bucky remembers spinning over the dance floor and hurting arms and sweating and swinging, billowing skirts - it’s enough for the two of them. It reminds him of calm evenings in their stupid dingy apartment, nothing better to do than smoking on the fire escape or letting Steve draw him or unsuccessfully teaching him how to dance.

“I’ve gotten better over the years. Wouldn’tcha say?”

Bucky hums, leading them into a sharp turn, and immediately gets stepped on by a fumbling Steve trying to follow. Steve complains loudly. Bucky snickers. They find back into their rhythm soon enough, and for a few minutes it’s quiet between them.

“You know,” Steve starts back up eventually, and his voice is thin but not strained, like he thought about speaking up but hadn’t fully formed the decision yet. Bucky perks up carefully, trying not to read too much into it, and keeps them swaying in the middle of the room to shift his focus back. “You, my Bucky, your future self. He never told me much about this. About you being with me for a while. He only told me enough to be prepared for it whenever it would happen. Probably didn’t want me to, dunno, change the past or the future or whatever. Never really got it after what I did to undo the Snap, but now I’m kinda grateful he never told me much.”

Bucky doesn’t really follow, doesn’t understand what Steve’s getting at. He prompts as much, but he only gets an amused chuckle and a quick head shake in answer. A chaste kiss and then, their foreheads touching.

“If I’d known beforehand that I would lose him only to have you for five days before you’re gone again, I would’ve done everything in my power to prevent it all. I’m glad I couldn’t.”

Steve is in the kitchen taking care of the last steps for all their cookout dishes, while Bucky is carrying down the patio furniture onto the side of the house that the sun still shines on and will shine on until she dips behind the lake, when his hearing picks up the sound of a quinjet approaching. He notices it a lot earlier than yesterday, being outside and having no background noise distracting him this time, so it takes a few seconds of looking into the sky before the aircraft even comes into view. He follows its descent and landing procedure behind the house with his eyes, and when it hovers over the expanse of backyard there to lower itself down, Bucky drops the chairs in his arms and walks over slowly.

By the time he comes to halt at about the same spot as yesterday, Steve has found his way to them as well, probably from the other side of the house or through the garage. They watch, sides brushing against each other, as the quinjet powers down, takes a moment to settle, and then lowers its ramp onto the sunburnt grass. Bucky sees Sam grabbing onto their children’s wrists before the ramp is even fully down, the exasperation visible even from the distance, and Bucky tries hiding his amused smirk as the kids are finally allowed to rush out of the quinjet and into their arms.

Bucky kneels down to catch Beck, as Maggie jumps up onto Steve’s front and clings to him like a koala.

Bucky stands back up with Beck in his arms, hugging him against himself as hard as he allows himself and breathing in his scent. As much as he enjoyed the alone time with Steve, nothing will ever come close to reuniting with their children.

“Privyet, papa,” Maggie greets him over Steve’s shoulder, smile so unbelievably bright that Bucky feels almost blinded. Beck repeats after her adorably, and Bucky greets them both back respectively, leaning over to give each of them a kiss on the cheek. Meanwhile, Sam has made his way over to them as well, watching the family reunion with a bright smile of his own.

“Hey, thanks again for taking the kids. Hope they weren’t too much trouble,” Steve turns to Sam, though not without a fierce eye squint at Maggie at the last part, who just giggles at her dad at the same time that Sam waves him off, looking decidedly tired of this conversation that he probably has with Steve every time he takes the kids.

“Y’all raised these kids, you should know they never set a foot outta line,” Sam jokes, but then quickly adds, “No, they were perfect. The boys were nice to them and I taught Maggie how to knot an anchor hitch. We also went to pull up the haul earlier today and she hefted out a whole ass shrimp cage by herself, say, what do you feed these kids?”

Steve downright gawks out a laugh at that, while Bucky absolutely loses it. “Chto ty sdelal?”

Maggie squeals, eyes wide, before she hides her face against Steve’s neck, on the other side this time so Bucky can’t see her anymore, begging ‘daddy, please protect me!’

Bucky squints his eyes at her, and Steve laughs silently right in his face, so much mirth in his eyes that Bucky almost wants to punch him for it. “Foul play, hiding behind your daddy like that, Mag. This ain’t over yet.”

Sam snorts then, as well, and Bucky lets her off the hook for now. He turns back to Sam instead, who looks about as tired as Bucky would imagine someone looking, after they spent two days on open waters with his two nephews and two godchildren, teaching them about boating and fishing, and then even flew them back home afterwards. He probably wants to get back to his own home as quickly as possible. Bucky wouldn’t blame him.

Steve asks him if he wants to stay for the cookout anyway, telling him about all the dishes and desserts they’d prepared the whole afternoon. Sam looks very much tempted for a few seconds there, and even more pained when he reminds them (and himself, probably) that his sister Sarah had planned to cook family dinner tonight. Steve acquiesces easily enough, waving him off and thanking him once more for babysitting before bidding goodbye.

Bucky follows suit, and the four of them watch Sam reboard the jet and soar up in the air a few seconds later. They wave until the aircraft is pretty much gone from their view, and then make their way back around the house.

“So, who helps me bring out all these delicious dishes?”