two
The last year of Bucky Barnes’ life that he’s been awake for and can really remember has been sort of strange, to say the least. Breaking out of the brainwashed complacency he’s been conditioned into as the Soldier was strange enough, but being forced back into that after having been framed for a crime he didn’t commit was something else entirely. Then, there was the matter of Tony Stark trying to kill him, getting his arm ripped off during an attempted murder by the aforementioned man, and having to go back under as a result when he and Steve sought refuge in Wakanda under the kindness of their king.
Yeah, it’s definitely been a bit of a doozy even for someone with a life as crazy as his has been courtesy of Hydra’s capture and cryo chambers. He's getting through it, though, even if it’s taking some time. For once, he has plenty of that to work with.
Growing up, time was as precious of a commodity as most rations were, at least in regards to how hard earned being able to spend it was. Even without Steve being on Death’s door every two weeks, what time Bucky didn’t spend loving or worrying about losing him was mostly spent at work, making sure they made enough money to buy the medicine that helped keep up their ability to continue the former pastime in the first place.
Steve was his fella, though. He was more than glad to do it. Considering Steve is still his fella, Bucky is still just as glad to do it as he was back in the day, even if it’s now a bit more difficult. He’s working with one arm here, and he might have two legs, but they’ve only recently found stable ground. Not to mention Steve is almost never able to physically be here for Bucky to provide for him anyways- but they make it word. They always have. Always will.
Steve had fought the goddamn world for him even when he had a broken brain and a heart that beat but couldn’t feel. When Bucky had seen him- that man on the bridge who knew his name even before Bucky remembered it himself- that had been the first chip in the armor he had quite literally been soldered into. The armor that he’s now impossibly grateful for being given the chance to take off, one piece at a time until the ones he actually wants with him fall back into place. It’s a process that comes with finding his peace.
He thought that he’d found all of that he could have back in Bucharest, but he couldn’t have been more wrong. Sure, the life he’d settled into after the first few rough months wasn’t half bad. He’s still pretty proud of all that he was able to build back there no matter where he is now, but he can admit that all aspects of it weren’t the best. He’d accomplished a lot- learned how to cook a little, how to engage semi-awkwardly with other people without some part of his past erupting, even got pretty good at getting apartments cheap without being cheated.
With all that being said, there definitely were some flaws in his newly free lifestyle as well. He cooked, but wasn’t ever consistent about doing the dishes. He could talk to other people, but the paranoia about being discovered prevented him from doing that more than once every few weeks. He got apartments cheap, alright, but that cheapness almost always showed in the quality.
When Steve found him, he’d been sleeping on a mattress on the floor with dishes and snack food wrappers scattered across the kitchen and on cinder block stacked shelves. He’d had newspapers taped over all the windows boards coming up loose from the floor.
He’d only had about half his memories back at that point, but he knew enough about how fastidious he used to be with their old shared apartment to be slightly embarrassed about Steve finding him living that way. He used to be the one always harping on his ass about keeping their place clean, insisting it was a sign of self worth and showing their home together and their relationship the respect it deserved.
Well. Bucky supposed that back in Bucharest, his self worth had been at somewhat of a low point, so he might not have an excuse, but he does have an explanation. He valued the chance at getting his life back, but that didn’t mean he had to value himself, not when the violence was so fresh and the freedom still so new. He’d been kept from living his life for almost seventy years. It only made sense that he’d need a little time to catch up again.
He’d had almost two years to try and do that after the fateful incident with Steve and their fight on the Helicarrier, but only about five months of that were spent in Bucharest. Five months of setting up his first new attempt at a life only for that to be ruined by a sad man searching for revenge that didn’t even involve him. He knows that if all that hadn’t happened, he wouldn’t be where he is now, but that only helps ease the bitterness a little. Thankfully, being reunited with Steve again has helped to ease it a lot.
It had been a rocky road figuring things out before and after their fight with Stark in Siberia, and seeing as Bucky went into cryo again not a week after it happened, they didn’t exactly have a wide window to work with what weird conditions life had decided to throw them again. If Fate is a person, Bucky doubts they like to throw the dice in their favor.
Seven days together wasn’t enough to catch up on seventy years apart, but it was enough to begin. It was enough to start sorting things out, and by the time Bucky went back under, he knew Steve would still be waiting for him on the other end ready to reunite for real. Bucky hated being the reason that they had to wait for that to happen, but he hated all the words in his head even more. Being a danger to Steve and everyone else was worth what sacrifice he knew Steve would understand he had to make. He didn’t like it, but he understood, same as how Bucky had back in ‘43 when Steve kept lying to try and enlist.
Bucky only ended up going under for about three months in the end. T’Challa’s kid sister is a genius, greater than the likes of Tony Stark (though Bucky could be a little biased about that particular comparison). When he’d woken up in that hut and she told him just how long it had been, he almost hadn’t been able to believe her after she said his trigger words were gone. How could they be? They were the only constant he’d had since his capture. The cruelty of being made to be cruel was what he knew better than almost anyone.
How could that just be… gone?
The words were gone, but the trauma of it all definitely wasn’t. Once Bucky got a grasp on that first part, it was another fucking nightmare getting a handle on the second. A nightmare figuratively and literally, because he hadn’t slept through a single night for those first four weeks without screaming himself awake. Even now, he still wakes up like that sometimes. Part of him is glad Steve isn’t often here to hear it.
That’s not to say he doesn’t miss the other man when he’s gone. Christ, sometimes when Steve visits, Bucky just wants to sit on him forever, or at least until he can convince him to fucking stay. He doesn’t ever ask him to. He can’t ask that much from him, not again. Besides, it’s not like he never comes home to Bucky- he makes sure to try and visit once every few weeks, but being on the run from almost every organization in the international community doesn’t exactly make that easy, and sometimes it means it doesn’t happen. Presently, it’s April. Steve hasn’t been able to come back to Wakanda since he spent the week here for Bucky’s birthday. According to their Saturday Skype sessions, he just can’t risk it right now.
He’d looked so kicked puppy about telling Bucky why that Bucky hadn’t even had it in himself to be upset at anything but the sad expression on Steve’s face. “I’m sorry for all the space, Buck,” he’d said, quietly. “ButI think I’m gonna have to lay low for a while. Sam wanted to go home to visit his sister and see his nephew, and…” He’d shrugged helplessly. “What kind of friend would I be to say no?”
It sort of sucks, not being able to see his sweetheart in any other way besides through a screen, but that’s just how things go sometimes when you’re both wanted everywhere around the globe. Bucky can’t leave Wakanda yet without running the risk of being captured. Steve’s situation would be the same if not for how goddamn stubborn he is about helping people even when not bearing the shield. He leaves Bucky to his healing, but can’t stop running to consider maybe he should be giving the same treatment to himself.
A self sacrificing idiot. That’s what Steve Rogers still is and always has been. Bucky should be used to it, but sometimes he has to admit that stubborn streak drives him straight up the wall.
Bucky sighs and sits back in the chair he’s currently in. It’s cushier than he’s used to, but cushy shouldn’t be surprising. He’s in the conference room of a goddamn palace. Of course it’s posh. He grew up dirt poor- everything is pretty fancy in comparison to that.
To keep track of the time, he glances down and checks the watch currently adorning his right wrist where it’s resting on his leg. He’s in jeans and a henley today, a far cry from the grimy clothes he usually wears when working out on the farm. The cargo pants are much more comfortable, he thinks, though they do get itchy if he starts to sweat. Sticks to his leg hair. Half the time his t-shirts do the same on his chest.
He has no technical work schedule for the farm- it’s really volunteer work, though the life on Wakanda he’s been given is one he’s thankful enough to do anything for. T’Challa has done him a service. It’s only fitting that Bucky try to do the same.
One of those services is currently sitting attached to his left shoulder. He flexes the fingers of his new prosthetic almost unconsciously, like he’s still trying to test it out in the back of his mind to make sure it’s real. It’s his.He’s allowed to have it, even allowed to use it to do what he wants and not what other people tell him to. Shuri had been the one to design it and oversee the process of putting it om, which might sound a little insane- letting a sixteen year old girl have free reign over his only recently reclaimed body. But she was the one who helped him reclaim it in the first place.
Besides, she’s smart and sharp and quick witted in a way that reminds Bucky exactly of his kid sisters. He always hated letting them down. Turns out, the thought letting Princess Shuri down isn’t much different. Not like he had much to lose anyways. A few loose wires and minor discomfort if the arm didn’t work out wouldn’t kill him. Shuri had been excited to make the arm to begin with, and after Bucky said yes to the reattachment, she’d practically hauled him down to her lab to begin. The walk there was spent with Bucky listening to her spout off information about what this new arm would entail if it worked out and how painless the attachment and detachment processes would be if it didn’t.
That was a high step up from Hydra if he ever heard one. Sixteen years old, and this kid had more discretion and transparency then any other scientist Bucky had previously met. Stark included. Stark especially. She hadn’t lied about anything, either. There were no loopholes. She’d simply told him to sit on the table and asked her technicians to help her put it on.
The new arm (or newer arm since he’s had it for the last two months by now) is a darker color than the previous, a shade somewhere between a bluish black and a grey that glitters when the sun hits it just right. The lines of the plating are gold going all the way down to his fingertips. As metal arms go, he thinks it’s a pretty nice one. Hell, it’s nice just two have two arms in general again. He owes the Udaku siblings more than he can ever say, which is why he chooses not to complain when Shuri walks in almost ten minutes late to what was supposed to be a fifteen minute meeting to check up on how her beloved arm is holding up.
She’s holding two travel coffee cups, one of which she thrusts towards Bucky in what he thinks is a silent apology. It’s Shuri. She doesn’t do much of that out loud. Bucky laughs and lets her collapse into the chair across from him, taking his first sip before speaking. “Tough morning, I take it?”
She scoffs and gives him an over the top sigh, resituating in her seat and taking a sip of her own. “Wouldn’t you like to know.” She points a playful finger at him. “Foreigners don’t get access to Wakandan state secrets.” Then, eyeing him, “Not even ones with some of our most experimental tech attached to their body.”
Bucky raises his left arm up on the table and showcases its dexterity by wiggling his fingers and pointing back. “Experimental, huh?” he says, amused. He doesn’t like the thought of being a human experiment ever again with Azzano and everything that came after, but teasing from a teenager he can handle.
She ignores his tone and switches her to businesslike, the gold ornaments adorning her braids shining in the light above them as she leans closer as if to get a better look. “How does it feel? Good? Bad?” She pokes it with her pen, picked up presumably to scribble down notes on the pad of paper already provided on the table when Bucky came in. “Is it being finicky?”
“It feels fine,” Bucky answers honestly, extending his hand out for her to examine. He sort of wishes he’d shined it up a bit before coming up- he hopes there are no crumbs stuck between the plating, but they’re a real bitch to clean out. “And no. I’ve had no issues with it.” He raises up his other hand when she gives him a suspicious look and lifts three fingers in a mock salute. “Soldier's honor.”
“You told me not to call you Seargant when we first met, so I’m not sure I see you as being a military man,” Shuri says absentmindedly, scribbling something on her pad Bucky can't read upside down. “You’re sure there have been no incidents? Nothing you would like improved?”
Bucky shakes his head and uses her lowered head as an opportunity to check his watch again. He’s going to be cutting it close today. “Not that I can think of, your Majesty.”
“I don’t call you Seargant, you don’t call me that,” she informs him, still not looking up. She clicks her pen shut a second later and then gives him an unimpressed stare. “You’re sure you can’t think of something? Or are you just trying to kick me out?” She sounds knowing.
In all fairness, she should know what the answer to that question is. He takes his calls with Steve almost every week up here, or if he’s staying the day at the lab for some reason, in his unofficial chambers on the lower level. The reception down at the farm is terrible, and he’s going to take every chance to talk to Steve he can get. Today is no different.
He’s just been caught in the act. But if Shuri really wants to know… “I haven’t been able to see him in weeks, you know. Just don’t want to waste what time with him I am able to have.” He takes his hand back now that she’s done with it and sets it back on his thigh, tapping his metal fingers to drum against the coarse fabric of his jeans. According to his watch, he has about five more minutes left before Steve’s face should fill the screen of the tablet propped up on the table next to him in preparation.
Shuri seems to take the hint, but still rolls her eyes as she begins to shove the pad of paper in her bag and sips again from her coffee cup. “You and your Skype calls,” she says, but her inflection is light. “Someday you should ask me about the wonders of group FaceTime. I sort of miss that boyfriend of yours.”
If Steve were here, Bucky knows he would blush at being referred to as that, but Bucky settles for an eye roll of his own. Steve had visited Bucky on occasions even when he was still under in the cryo chamber, and as a result, had gotten to know Shuri quite a bit. She likes him. Thinks how stiff he is sometimes can be is funny, especially now that she’s seen him with his friends and knows how far from that he actually is when under softer circumstances. Steve may have been an only child, but he’s always had a way with kids. Bucky’s little sisters had loved him.
He might have to take her up on that offer at another time, but for now, he wants them to be alone. He hasn’t heard his baby’s voice in too long, and the sound of it is likely to leave him saying something so sappy it’s stupid. She’d make fun of him forever for it and they both know it. So, he presses his lips into a thin line and raises his eyebrows to give her a look.
“I’m sure you gave more important things to do than spy on two old men, your Majesty,” he says. The usage of the disliked name is intentional. She gives him a dry side eye at it after scooting her chair back to stand and start to walk out. “I’ll tell Steve you say hello.” She flips him the bird over her shoulder while exiting through the door. “Close that, would you?” he calls.
She does, but only after sticking her head in as she does to give him an overly sweet smile and a sarcastic “Try not to use up all the bandwidth.” With that, she slams the door shut and leaves Bucky to laugh by himself. Like that’s even possible with the sort of electronics systems they have in the palace.
The picture, per usual, is crystal clear when he and Steve’s signals finally connect. Bucky can practically feel his entire perk up at the first sight of Steve’s smiling face. “Hey, Stevie,” Bucky says softly. Steve yawns, and slips into another smile after while he rubs at his eyes. He looks tired, Bucky notes, but still damn good. His gorgeous guy.
“Hi, Buck,” Steve responds, voice kept low. Bucky wonders where he is that has him being so quiet, but he doesn’t have to wonder long when he sees Sam walk by in the background to a blanketed lump Bucky presumes must be Natasha crashed on the couch of whatever safehouse they’re staying at. Sam must be back from the states. Bucky wonders what that means for how long Steve will have to wait to see him.
He doesn’t ask that in mixed company that he might accidentally make guiltly. Instead, he opts for a different question. “How have you been?” Good, he hopes. But he knows how rough being on the run is, and good has almost always been a relative term to them.
Steve said he had been good after getting beaten black and blue three times a week back in the forties. Bucky said he was good while still opening the orders he knew would send him off to war. Steve also claimed he was good before Bucky was back with him- but according to everyone who had been him before then, that’s a lie. Bucky doesn’t like to often think about why.
Steve sighs and scratches at his jawline where the skin has gone stubbly. He must be in a position where he can’t shave again, because normally, he hates having facial hair. Says it itches. Bucky always likes to tease him about what that means in terms of the thick skin shtick Steve likes to play up in the field- Steve might be stronger than anyone Bucky has ever met, but he can be sensitive too.
“I’ve been better,” the blonde finally answers, and Bucky’s brow furrows in wonder about what could have possibly happened to make Steve admit that to him so easily.
“You okay?” Bucky asks, trying not to sound like the worried boyfriend he knows he’s being. But because he is Steve’s boyfriend, he’s also allowed to worry. “All of you, I mean,” he adds on, because he does worry about Sam and Natasha too. The might be better friends with Steve than they are with Bucky (which considering their current history is fair) but he’s thankful for them regardless. He’s glad that if Steve has to be on the run, at least it’s not alone. Sam and Natasha are good friends. Steve has always needed at least a few of those.
Steve nods quickly, apparently more worried about worrying Bucky than he is about being worried for himself. He’s an idiot like that. Bucky wishes he were here to he could smack the side of his head with his hand (and then, because he’s missed him, maybe a kiss). “We’re all okay. It’s just been….” He blows out a breath and rakes his hand through shaggy golden hair that’s gotten far too long for his usual style. “It’s been a stressful week.”
Bucky hums and puts his hand on the screen, flesh bicep flexing up so Steve can see even from the other side. It’s a small, silly comfort, but it’s the only one he can offer in any way besides word. Bucky makes sure to still offer the words up too. “Hope you can all stay safe,” he says, wishing more than anything he could be there or Steve could be here so Bucky could stay safe with him, so Bucky could keep him safe on his own.
Natasha and Sam both work wonders, but they also both lived at some point with Steve and Bucky being myths to them rather than men. They know better than that now because they know Steve better than anyone save for Bucky, but there are still ways that they can sometimes still fall short. It’s not their fault, though. Steve is the one intentionally standing to keep himself out of complete reach. It’s not really his fault either- that’s just how Steve Rogers has always been, even before the serum. Selfless to a fault. Shitty about letting himself be taken care of when he in a place to need it and even worse when he goes about business believing that he’s not.
Steve swallows and his shoulders slump as he nods, eyes darting to the side like he’s searching for something. Something, Bucky finds out a moment later, is privacy. From his own end of the call, he sees Steve’s camera start to shake and can hear mumbling in the background when he starts to move. “Gonna go to my room.” That must be a statement meant for Sam, because that’s who responds.
“Try to keep it down in there before we fall asleep, Romeo.” Then, louder, “Hello, Bucky-borg.” There’s a sound of skin hitting skin when Steve apparently slaps his arm for the joke.
Bucky snorts. He won’t admit Sam’s joke is funny, but he will admit it’s cute when Steve’s face is still red when he comes back on screen, now in a smaller room with a dimmer light and less noise. Bucky smiles at him again and lets his voice come out even softer with his second greeting, the one he didn’t want to say with someone else around. He’s not ashamed of what they share at all, but with Steve… some things they like to save just for themselves. “Hey, sweetheart. I’ve missed you this week.”
And the last one. And the one before that. Then the one before before that, and the one before even that- it’s a pretty easy point to make. Bucky misses him every second he’s not here.
Steve hums and sets his tablet to lean against what Bucky thinks is a pillow based off of the view he gets with Steve snuggling into his temporary bed a second later. It must be later where they are. In Wakanda, it’s barely noon. “I’ve missed you too,” he whispers, head now sideways against the second pillow popped under his head. His hair is fanned out far enough for it to look like a lion’s mane.
Bucky chuckles a little at the sight and tucks a strand of his own hair behind his ear. It’s not long enough to put up into a bun, but he hasn’t quite managed to figure out how he’s meant to get it all to stay on top of his bead for longer than fifteen minutes without it falling down. It’s frustrating dealing with it sometimes, but he kind of likes the look on himself. Ruggedly handsome, Steve has called it. “You look like you’re about to fall asleep on me any second, there, Steve-o. You sure you still wanna stay on the call?”
Bucky wants him to stay for more than just the call, but he can’t say that with Steve as cuddled up and relaxed as he is right now. He’s had a rough week. Bucky isn’t going to make it worse, especially when Steve deserves some rest and Bucky knows bow much it sucks not being able to sleep. He’s not the only one with nightmares, though Steve’s are more sparse than his at this point, which is something he’s grateful for. He’s woken up more than a few too many times to the sound of chattering teeth.
Steve yawns again, but nods best he can with his face smushed half into the pillowcase. “Wanna talk to you,” he insists, but even then it’s sleepy. “You trying to ditch me or something?”
“Never.” Bucky curls his palm under his chin to prop himself up more easily, bristly hair of his beard catching against the well earned callouses he’s accumulated these past few months from working with the land. He’d gotten different ones when he was working with guns. He likes to feel the difference. “I’ll stay on with you even if you drift off. Don’t worry.”
Steve makes a face, his own burgeoning beard a shadow against the bottom of his face. “You saying you like to watch me when I sleep? Sounds kinda creepy, Buck.”
“I stalked you for three weeks after the Potomac,” Bucky informs him, tone light so Steve won’t shy away from him poking fun at sensitive subject matter. “I think taking a screenshot of you sleeping on a Skype call is slightly less menacing.”
Steve makes a face at him like he wasn’t already aware of this information. Bucky just makes one back so that Steve’s scowl cracks into a laugh. Christ. Bucky has missed the sound of that so much. “What, are you making a folder of them or something?” He purses his lips and looks pointedly to the side like he’s pretending to try and think. “Now what would you want pictures of me in bed for…”
Bucky huffs and has to glance back to make sure the conference room door is still shut before lowering his voice to answer. He drops his timbre just to see how the rap of it makes Steve’s ear not planted on the pillow turn red. “Well… I do get lonely,” he drawls, immediately dropping the act to laugh at the undignified little sound Steve lets slip free at the suggestion. “I’m kidding. C’mon, sweet cheeks, lighten up.”
Steve scrunches up his nose. “It’s dark out where I am.”
Bucky doesn’t bother asking where exactly that is. There’s not much of a risk to be ran in terms of their talks getting intercepted, but it’s better to play it safe than sorry. Bucky already has enough to be sorry for. Besides, if it really came down to it, he bets Shuri could somehow manage to track Steve with the goddamn vibranium magnets in his suit. She’s a genius, after all. She’d been chattering to him about measuring the decay of organic material just last week.
Steve looks a little too tired to process all that, though, so Bucky sticks to a simpler conversation. “One of my neighbors down at the farm has been trying to pawn off goats to me for the last week,” he starts, hoping his voice will soothe Steve into a lull. “I guess his nanny gave birth to some babies and he’s too busy to play nursemaid.”
Steve’s eyes are niw shut, but he’s still awake to snort and shift so he’s laying more comfortably, broad shoulders and back curled beneath a blanket. “What, he wants you to be a father figure?”
“Hey,” Bucky complains good naturedly. “What’s so funny about that, huh, big guy?”
“Well, I just figured if you were ever a father, these days you’d want it to be with me.” There’s no way Steve doesn’t mostly mean that as a joke, not with how unstable their lives currently have to be, but Bucky’s heard still drops to what feels like his stomach’s pit and then soars right back up.
Jesus. Steve can’t just spring saying shit like that on him out of nowhere. Especially not now that men like them can get married. Not now that men like them can have kids. Steve has gone very quiet on the other end, apparently realizing the implications of what he’s just said.
Bucky breaks the silence before it settles down too deep. “I wanted it even before,” he says, hushed even though there’s no one around to hear them. Something about the moment seems like it demands him to be gentle before he messes it up and can no longer see where this goes in the future, the one they’ll be able to face together this time around. “You should know that, Steve.” He gives him a small smile and smacks the screen to substitute for what he’d do if Steve weren’t god knows where on the other side of the world. “But maybe next time you visit I’ll same one so you can name it. Or I’ll just make one your namesake.”
His attempt at easing the mood works, Steve blinking both eyes open again so they crinkle up the edges when he smiles. “Yeah? Steven Junior does have a nice ring to it.”
Bucky huffs. “Now who said I’d name anyone Steven Junior? I was thinking more along the lines of Stevie.” Then, squinting to survey Steve’s half-slackened features, “Or maybe Little Shit.”
The camera shakes as Steve positions himself to lay on his stomach and have both arms crossed so that he’s hugging his pillow to his face. “Hey,” he complains. “Aren’t you supposed to be all lovey-dovey? Thought you missed me.” He’s not being whiny, but he is being dramatic.
Bucky doesn’t call him out on it, choosing to smile and roll his eyes instead. “I love you,” he croons, playing up the dramatics himself to help match the mood. “And I miss you. But a guy’s gotta calls ‘em how he sees ‘em, sweetheart. Don’t you want to make an honest man out of me?”
Steve groans and buries his face in his pillow. “I love you too but I hope that’s not a marriage proposal, because I’m not accepting that sort of thing through a screen.”
“Come see me soon in person and we’ll try it again proper,” Bucky fires back. Like Steve and the father remark, he’s mostly joking. But that isn’t meant to suggest he doesn’t mean it. He would marry have married his punk of a sweetheart back in the summer of ‘39 in circumstances had allowed it.
Circumstances in the States will allow otherwise, but unfortunately he nor Steve are in a place to put a ring around their finger. The wars they’ve both been in may have been won, but their fights are far from over.
For now, Bucky doesn’t bring that burden up. He has better things to do, like focus on the sight of his fella practically asleep to the sound of his voice on the screen in front of him. Steve looks so tired. There are bags under his eyes and shadows that cross his face even past the alight beard that’s been growing in. His hair is tangled from more than just the fluff of being in bed, and Bucky can tell that he’s decided to go to bed tonight without brushing his teeth.
Despite all that though, he looks pretty. More importantly, he looks more at peace than Bucky has been able to see him for the past three weeks. He’s gotten glimspes of Steve in just about every state someone can be in- sick, bloody, brooding, broken, disheveled, dirty, at every level of upset- but every single one is still just as heart stopping to Bucky as the previous. He’s been looking at Steve for what feels like his entire life, and he knows that his heart stopped truly beatinf the moment he was no longer in it.
Steve Avenges Bucky. Bucky looks after Steve. Time, body, and place- it doesn’t matter. That won’t change the fact that Bucky takes care of him. None of those things can tear them apart.
He keeps the prior promise he made to Steve and stays on the line even after the blonde drifts off into slumber, the only sign he’s about yo do so being a low, sighed out “Love you, Buck. Talk to you next week.”
“Love you back, Stevie,” Bucky murmurs back, flesh fingertips pressed to the screen and over top Steve’s sleeping face. “I’ll talk you you soon.”
A silence settles over the conference room soon after the words are spoken, but it’s comfortable. Bucky is content to stay sat in this chair and keep watching Steve curl up into what he hopes is a good dream on the other side for as long as the damn battery life on this thing allows. There’s even an outlet nearby is Bucky leans to the side. He could spend the whole day holed up in here to make sure Steve can spent his whole night sleeping.
He could. He could, but really he knows he shouldn’t. Time might be easier to spend nowadays, but he knows better than anyone that it’s still something precious, and Bucky has an entire day of things that can be done out in front of him. The choice of what should be made of it is now his again to make.
He makes sure to mute himself before tapping out of the Skype session just to make extra sure Steve isn’t woken up, but before he goes, does something so stupidly sappy that he’s almost glad Steve isn’t awake to see. He kisses the fingertips of his flesh hand and presses them to the screen once again. It’s not like the touch can transfer through- even Wakandan tech isn’t yet that advanced- but it settles something inside him to carry out the impulse. He can’t kiss Steve while they’re on opposite sides of the world. He might as well steal what little moments they can have to put in his heart to keep.
He’s still holding the memory of it close when he begins the climb down the palace steps, taking them towards the path that goes through the garden gates and to the hills that hold the land he farms between the bumped up peaks. It’s the route that’s more familiar by this point, and definitely more scenic than taking the streets. He sort of likes the quiet that comes over him when he walks by himself.
He spends today’s walk thinking over what he might have for dinner tonight. He doesn’t quite have the kind of kitchen in his hut that he was able to have back even in his shitty Bucharest apartment, but he does have the basics. A small fridge, a cooler, a convection oven, a fire and pot in place of a stove- it’s not much, but it’s enough to work with. It’s enough to make do.
What Bucky usually winds up making are meals made for one save for the occasions where Steve is here and Sam sometimes chooses to stay for dinner. Those occasions don’t get to happen as often as Bucky would like, but it’s not as if he’s letting himself go hungry between them. Supper for a single super soldier is just a lot smaller than it is for serving two. Bucky saves making most big meals for when he has Steve able to be back with him, able to cuddle up by the fire beside him while they eat in the hut and then collapse together in a pile on the bed, stuffed full and feeling content.
Steve hasn’t come home to Bucky’s hut for so long that the mere sight of his stuff lying around lately has had Bucky feeling sentimental, Christ, the two of them. Seventy years apart and less than two months has Bucky breaking?
Or not breaking, really. Bucky’s more whole now than he has been in a long while, but being whole doesn’t mean he can’t be bothered or miss having his heart’s biggest piece by his side. The last time Steve was here, he left behind one of his sketchbooks and a few shirts that Bucky doesn’t mind admitting have spent the night on the pillow next to him. It’s silly, but it had helped him sleep better at the time, and his therapist is always saying that sometimes the small things that may seem stupid are part of what helps a person heal the most.
Bucky’s not sure he’s one of those people, but a night without nightmares had been nice. He’d woken up from those rests more refreshed than he has at any other point in the past few weeks. Men not like him might like to think they can lead completely normal lives, but for himself- he’s learned otherwise, a lesson that has come to helo him accept that that fact is okay. He’s not like other men. He’s one of only two of a kind in existence when it comes to the serum, and one half to a whole when it comes to the only other man with it rushing through his veins.
Blood of his blood. Vein of his veins. Bone of his bone. Some of those can be taken more literally than others.
When Steve was about ten years old, Bucky accidentally broke his nose by bringing an elbow down to his face. In his defense, even back then Steve had been short in comparison to most of the other children they attended classes with. It had been an easy target to hit. Bucky hadn’t even meant to take aim. It was the first time that particular injury ever happened to Steve, and Bucky’s pretty sure it’s still the only one that hadn’t been brought on by a fight.
Bucky had felt so bad about it after it happened that when he finally had gotten Steve home after, he’d practically run straight into Sarah’s apron strings and cried, Steve trailing in with Bucky’s now stained hanky over his swollen nose, still sticking by his side despite the fact Bucky had hit him. Bucky had hurt him.
Steve hadn’t been nearly as torn up with it as Bucky was at that moment, merely clutching the cloth closee and looking up at Sarah, blue eyes burning stubbornly with insistence. “I’m fine, Mama. It doesn’t even hurt that much.”
That had only made Bucky want to bawl even harder- he had never wanted to hurt Steve at all. Hours later after Bucky’s own tears had finally subsisted was when Steve’s finally decided to start. He’s always been an easy crier in select situations. Apparently worries about his physical appearance were more important than physical pain.
“I don’t want to have an ugly nose,” he’d sobbed, clutching skinny knees to an equally skinny chest while Bucky set down the comic he had been reading beside him. “My ma said that at the hospital she has to tell ‘em it’ll probably heal crooked.”
In truth, Steve’s nose was already nothing to shy at- not in an ugly way. His features were just striking, something that even at a young age Bucky could see starting to form as Steve’s face matured before his body.
But also even at a young age, Bucky knew how to have tact even when teasing. He’d poked Steve with his foot and given him a grin he hoped didn’t come across as too guilty. “We’ll tell everyone it’s a battle scar,” he had suggested, half joking, half serious. At ten and eleven, that was the sort of thing they could still do and it would be considered cute. “Say you broke it fighting some bad guys or something.”
Steve’d just sniffed and stared at him, eyes wide and nose still puffed up at the bridge, a bruise forming under his eye where Sarah had helped set it before supper. “You’d still wanna be my friend even if I have a crooked nose?” His voice had been nothing but a hoarse, high pitched croak.
Bucky almost had wanted to smack him again at that- where did this kid get off saying something so stupid? But, he’d sworn an oath to himself earlier while curled up on the Rogers’ couch as he heard Steve scream and then cry from the kitchen where Sarah was trying to straighten things up. He was never going to hurt Steve again, accidentally or otherwise.
That had been part of the reason it took him so long to agree to teach the younger man how to box. Steve got into enough fights without Bucky’s help with anything besides getting out of them. Teaching Steve how to properly fight felt like he was giving his pride and open invitation to go overboard with what he’d learned in a body where his mind matched his spirit but not his skin. He’d given in eventually, though. If by some miracle Steve passed the physical and managed to enlist, he’d need to know how to handle himself. Even if they both shipped out at the same time, there would have been no certainty of whether they’d be stationed together so Bucky could keep his bony butt safe.
It had almost been a funny twist of fate when Bucky got stationed to the same unit Steve’s dad once was in. That’s what he got for always teasing about being Steve’s old man.
Steve’s nose had ended up healing with a bump after the break, but no matter how much guilt Bucky felt when first seeing it, he actually grew to love it just as much as he loved the rest of Steve. No matter what body he was in. Before the serum, Bucky had been sort of a smug bastard about being the one behind such a prominent part of Steve’s face. The bump has always suited him, Bucky thinks. Shows he’s breakable, but still strong.
It also shows that he belongs to Bucky down to his very bone. Bucky had left his mark on him. It meant more than he’s ever been able to say when that was the one flaw the serum decided to leave alone.
The first time Bucky had seen him in the daylight after Azzano, he’d been stunned silent by the perfect specimen that his best friend- his sweetheart- had become. Almost everything was different, but that damn bump on the bridge of his nose… the bump had remained. His bond with Bucky has always persevered the same way.
That oath Bucky made to himself when Steve was ten only made it that much more painful when the Winter Soldier delivered a world of hurt and more to Steve up on the Helicarrier. By the time the Soldier had left him on the riverbank, Steve was only half breathing, but logically the Soldier knew Sam wouldn’t be far behind. So he had left.
It had taken another six months of relearning the man that he once was for Bucky to finally remember the oath and how badly it had been broken. All he could do was allow himself to break down with it.
Now that they’re back to a point where they can be together again, Bucky always makes extra sure to kiss Steve’s nose every night, half to make him smile and half to make some of the lingering guilt about the second round of hurting he made Steve feel go away. Part of him thinks it never will completely, but that’s okay, as long as he’s got Steve and his crooked nose still here to help him deal with it. Hell, sometimes Bucky’s path to healing is half as bent.
He’s still taking the literal path down to the farm right now, silently thanking whatever deity watches over this place that he’d still chosen to wear his boots today rather than something more casual to match the rest of his clothes. He’s going to have to change out of them as soon as he gets to his hut- there’s no way in hell he’s going to work outside in this heat still wearing jeans.
Said jeans are starting to stick to his legs same as his cargo pants do when it’s particularly hot. He grimaces and shoulders the pack he has slung over his back containing his tablet. He doesn’t know how the Dora Milaje handle walking about in all that armor all day. He doesn’t envy them, even if he does admire them. Ayo is one of the best sparring partners he’s ever had, even if she does delight a little too much in managing to kick his ass.
She’s the first person in this century that Bucky has met who has a relationship with someone like his and Steve’s. Or, not someone- a woman. He knows that Wakanda and the States have few similarities, but it still blows his mind that he can be with Steve so openly. Tony Stark may not have known what Bucky is to Steve, but T’Challa does. Sam does. Natasha does. Bucky’s pretty sure that even Sharon does.
He’s my friend, Steve had told Stark in Siberia, kneeled in front of Bucky’s body practically begging for their lives so he didn’t have to hurt anyone, so Stark wouldn’t try to keep hurting them.
So was I. Bucky was only half conscious to hear that line, but he feels a sense of irony about it now. Before going back under, he hadn’t had much of a chance to talk to Steve about how things were for him when they were apart, but he has now. And he knows exactly how much of an asshole Tony was to him when they first met, when Steve had barely been out from under the ice for a goddamn year.
He was still all alone at that point, and Tony sure as shit wasn’t trying to be his friend then. If he had been, maybe things for Steve wouldn’t have been as bad. Bucky might bicker with Sam sometimes, but he’s beyond grateful that he and Natasha stumbled into Steve’s life and decided to stay. They helped take care of Steve before Bucky was back around to pick up the job. They still help out now- that’s what friends do.
He wonders sometimes that if Tony had known back in Siberia or before, would things have been better or worse?
He’s so caught up in thinking about that that his foot catches on the same goddamn rock it always does, right by the gate to what is currently his home. He curses and is glad that he now has another arm to help balance himself out- formerly, that same rock had caused more than a few flat out falls where Bucky only had one hand to try and catch himself before he crashed. In the beginning he had shown up to his weekly Skype session with Steve in pants streaked with dirt and dust at least a dozen times. Shuri had made fun of him, then told him he had to put a towel down so as to not sully the seat. Bucky’s thankful for his new arm for more than a few reasons, but the cut back in falling off balance is definitely one of them.
He looks a lot different now than he thought he ever would growing up, he thinks, entering his hut and immediately setting about starting to change. He catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror leaned up in the corner, making eye contact with himself and starting to muse about his appearance instead. Not self consciously. Just… contemplating. Studying.
With his shirt still on, the most obvious difference is his hair, now taken out of its bun with wayward strands falling down to his shoulders and catching in the scruff of the beard also adorning his face. Before the war, he’d been fastidious about his self grooming- short hair slicked back, face constantly clean shaven. During, he’d started skipping opportunities to shave the same way Steve does now, and after… the Soldier didn’t get to keep much hair anywhere but his head, let alone behind the muzzle. It’s the sort of contrast he likes to take advantage of now, hence how he’s growing out all the hair on his body he can.
Steve says it makes him look like a bear. With how long his hair currently is, Bucky likes to say he looks like a lion.
With his shirt stripped off, the most notable change is obvious: the arm, and all the scarring surrounding where the first one was attached. He’s past the point of thinking it’s ugly, for the most part. Steve has shown him that he loves every new part of him every chance he gets. He’s sweet that way. Soft even to the parts of Bucky that are comparably harsh to handle, adoring to the ones that Bucky finds hard to love. The rest of his body is whole, but it’s still not the same as it once was when Steve saw him last before he fell. He was lean back then from too little food and too much movement, all wiry muscle and barely any meat. Now, he’s sort of the opposite. Still just as muscular, but bulked up with the more frequent opportunities to eat and the security in knowing he’s no longer going to have to pick up and leave.
The Soldier and Sergeant Barnes had had the habit of always standing on edge- heavy hitting in a fight, but poised for flight just in case immediately after. Now, Bucky is no longer on the tips of his toes. He can put all the weight he wants into resting flat on his feet, literally with how much muscle working the farm has added to his form even after what he’d put on during the window of time before Bucharest. That’s another contrast he likes to keep. It’s his body now. He can do with it what he wants.
What he wants to do with it right now is go out and fix the fence post that had fallen during a rainstorm last week. He puts his hair back into a ponytail this time, pulling on a pair of clean cargo pants and a black tank with a cutoff work shirt thrown over top. Not exactly the same as what he used to wear down at the docks, but it’ll do.
The sun is beating down hard enough for him to be breaking a sweat almost as soon as he steps out of his doorway and heads to where the wooden post is lying flat on the ground. He’s lucky he doesn’t have any livestock in that particular pen right now. He doesn’t want to know what Shuri would say if she caught wind he had accidentally let any animals out. Something about useless city boys, he would wager. She’s not wrong. He likes it here, but that’s always what he’ll be at heart. Steve is the same way.
It’s fairly easy to pull the broken part of the fence back up with his prosthetic, but Bucky knows he could have done it with his flesh hand as well if he wanted. He worked to maintain this place for months without it, after all. It was definitely harder, but he had done it- tossing hay bales into wagons with one arm was not a feat to shy at, but even half off balance, he’d picked up the skill. He’s still sort of proud of that now.
The first time Steve had visited him, he had sat perched on a rock nearby while watching Bucky work through his morning chores. About twenty feet away, the local kids had climbed up in a tree to do the same, the same they did almost every day. Bucky can’t blame them. He’s an outsider, not to mention someone with super strength. He can’t blame them for wanting to investigate- and like he said, he always hated disappointing his little sisters. What kind of asshole would he be if he didn’t offer them something to see?
He’s taken to tossing the hay bales one handed even now that he has two arms again. Even when he only had one, when Steve had seen him do it, he’d laughed and told Bucky to quit showing off. Like he wasn’t as delighted by the sight as much as the kids were. His face had grown red from more than just a sunburn.
Bucky had just thrown him the most dazzling smile he could while still covered in dirt and dust from the hay, some of which he was pretty sure he had sticking out of his hair. “You know, you could help me out here, pal.”
Steve, per usual, tried to look innocent. “I’m supposed to be taking time off, Buck. Not working.” Then, when Bucky gave him an unimpressed look, he’d grinned, laying back over the rock and stretching so languidly that Bucky started thinking that the lion comparison was becoming literal.
Not that he’d minded then or minds it now. Steve deserves to take time off- he deserves to let Bucky take care of him, the stubborn bastard. Steve’s still hurting from what happened with Stark more than he’d like to admit, and Bucky wishes he could show him that hurting is okay. Steve gets so caught up in his head with some stuff that not even Bucky can pull him out. He’s objective with almost everything except when it comes to himself, always trying to help people work through their problems and emotions but never wanting to handle his own in the way they deserve.
Over half their lives spent together, and Bucky doesn’t know how to get it through his thick skull that not every weight of the world needs to rest on his shoulders and not every burden needs to be borne alone. Steve sucks at being alone. There’s been entire studies done on his choice with the Valkyrie that have proven that point, though Bucky doesn’t think Steve knows that they exist on record. Hell, he only knows they exist because he’d done all the research he could on Captain America before he remembered who Steve even was. It’s something they don’t talk about much outside of the first time Steve had opened up after Bucky woke up and wanted to get to know him again- yet another thing Steve wants to stay bottled up. Sometimes Bucky wants to squeeze him too tight when he holds him in hopes that the cork will pop out.
But Steve’s not here to hold right now. Bucky sighs and wipes the sweat from his brow, pushing the post back into the ground and hammering it down with his metal fist clenched into a ball. He probably should have grabbed his actual hammer from the toolbox, but it’s not like vibranium is easily dented or scratched. Shuri’s always saying she wants to test the durability anyways, and for the fence, it seems to get the job done. Bucky bends down, holding the post up with his prosthetic just in case, and sets about scooping some dirt to pack back down around the base. Hopefully it’ll stay up better than it did the last time.
Now that the post is up, he moves on to making sure the wooden slats that connect it to the next are put back into place as well. Tomorrow he might have to see about getting some wire just to reinforce it, but for now, he thinks this will do. If he ends up getting those goats he told Steve about, he may have to make up a different plan, though- from what his neighbor has said, the animals are a damn nuisance when it comes to how often they escape. Bucky can handle a few nuisances, though. Lord knows he’s had enough practice with chasing Steve around when they were kids themselves.
Both of them are thirty something years old, and Bucky is still chasing him around. Figuratively, for now.
Once he’s finished with the fence, Bucky heads back to the hut to wash off his hands under the spigot out back. He doesn’t have a proper shower down here so much as a hose that he drapes over a tree branch with a bucket full of holes attached to the bottom, but the spigot is pretty good at helping get the job done. It’s a sink and a shower all at once. Bucky at least has a more proper bathroom out back in the form of a shed, though, which he’s glad for. After the war, he’s had enough squatting in the woods for a lifetime. He knows some of his neighbors have better appliances for these kinds of things installed, but when T’Challa offered him the farm, he’d not wanted to bother them with the details.
There’s actually a path behind his place that leads to a partially hidden waterfall and pool, the trail well worn but not one he’s ever seen anyone else walk on. Bucky half wonders if that’s why T’Challa chose to put him up in this particular hut in the first place. He spends a lot of his alone time there, submerged under the warm water and soaking the silence in. It’s something about this space he’s been given that he only shares with Steve.
Bucky thinks about going there now to wash off for a while before he sets about eating a late lunch, but right as he’s finishing rinsing off his hands and heading back towards the hut to grab a towel and some of his toiletries, something very unexpected happens. Not even very unexpected- something so totally bizarre that Bucky doesn’t think he ever could have expected it at all even with how many weird things he’s seen in this life.
There’s a flash of white and then somehow, a circle that glows gold expanding around its center, where as Bucky watches in fascination, a man that looks almost exactly like the Steve Bucky lost sight of back in the Alps stumbles out and collapses on the ground in a heap.