You´re the only place that feels like home

After the first time Tony cooked for Bucky, shared meals turned into a common occurrence.

Dinner became a less formal affair as they moved from the dining table to the couch, Tony trying to balance his plate on his baby bump as they watch bad Sci-Fi movies or re-runs of old sitcoms. They quickly learnt that they shared a love for horrible special effects and a distaste for laugh tracks.
Whenever Bucky had to go into work for a night shift, they shared lunch instead - with Peter happily chatting between them as he munched on carrot sticks and cheese cubes.

Bucky had to admit he liked coming back from work to a home cooked meal, but he liked it just as much - if not more - when it was his turn to cook.

In the Barnes family the kitchen had been the center of the home after the living room had been converted into an additional bedroom when the twins were born. The huge table that dominated the room was where Bucky and his sisters did their homework, where their Alpha mother would sit down to sort the clean laundry and look for anything that needed mending, where their Omega father would balance spread sheets, pay bills and write the weekly grocery list. It was where family arguments were settled, where game nights took place - and where the Barnes children learnt important life skills. Bucky´s parents were both very practical people and firm believers in teaching their children everything they needed to know, regardless of their primary or secondary gender. So, Bucky and his alpha sister spent just as much time learning how to cook, doing dishes and other household chores as their two beta and one omega sister.

After he´d left the army Bucky had mostly survived on cereal and sandwiches, as cooking for just oneself wasn´t really fun. But now, with Tony slurping his Ciorba - a recipe from Bucky´s Romanian grandmother - declaring that the sour flavor was exactly what he´d been craving, Bucky rediscovered how good it felt to prepare food for somebody.

From the shared meals it was a quick jump to sharing groceries, as Tony and Bucky both agreed that there wasn´t much point to having two open bottles of milk next to two open tubs of butter in the fridge.

And this was how Bucky found himself in the supermarket on his day off, pushing a cart through the aisles in an attempt to follow Tony who was blazing his way through the shop. Peter was sitting in the little kiddie seat in the cart, happily munching his way through a snack pack of animal cookies - "Relax, Buckaroo, I´m gonna pay for them. Unless he manages to finish them before we get to the cashiers...I´m kidding" - holding each one up to Bucky, so that the Alpha could tell him what animal it was.

"Aren´t you just the sweetest thing?" A high pitch voice came way to sudden and from way to close and Bucky had to fight the instinct to pull Peter from the cart so he could use it to defend himself and the pup. But the little old lady didn´t seem to notice his panic as she refocused his attention on him. "And it´s so nice to see an Alpha taking care of his pups. It´s all about shared responsibility if you want to make a relationship work. You see…"

As she kept on sharing her unsolicited wisdom Bucky was looking over her shoulder at Tony. The Omega had been looking at laundry detergents – no doubt trying to find one with a scent that would not sent him running straight for the toilet - but had noticed the newcomer and was now smirking at the pleading look Bucky sent him.

"Hey babe, do you have any strong feelings about ocean breezes? " He asked as he finally – finally – made his way over, dumping a bottle in the cart.

"Oh my, it´s a family outing." The old woman reacted to Tony. "I hope you don´t think me rude, I was just telling your Alpha here what an adorable pup he has."

"Thank you." Tony said, brushing a hand over Peter´s head. "I grew him myself."

This startled a snort out of Bucky, but the lady didn´t seem to find it particularly funny. Instead she now zeroed in on Tony´s belly. "And another one on the way, I see. Good choice, you don´t want them to be too far apart in age…"

And this time Bucky didn´t stop himself. The moment she reached her hand out, he twirled the cart around, so it served as a barrier between her and them. A low grumbling growl came from somewhere and it actually took Bucky a second to realize that it was him making the noise.

"Oh, I´m so sorry…I didn´t mean no harm..." The lady´s expression was somewhere between embarrassed and scared and she quickly excused herself and hurried away.

Bucky followed her with his gaze as she gathered her own cart and the Alpha didn´t relax until she was around the corner. And only then did he realize what he´d done.
"God, I´m so sorry Tony. That was so out of line…"

To Bucky´s surprise the Omega shook his head. "Not at all. If anyone was out of line it was Miss Grabby-Hands. Honestly, if you hadn´t put on this very impressive display of Alpha-ness, I would have slapped her hand away and then I would have been the rude Omega, that doesn´t know his place. But you going all grr on her seemed to do the trick."

"But I could have hurt Peter…" Bucky still wasn´t convinced, but when he actually looked the pup seemed mostly concerned with his snacks. The only indicator that he might have picked up on the things going on around him was that he held out the box asking "Bucky want Hippomus?"

"Yes, Bucky would love a Hippopotamus and can I have a kangaroo, please?" Tony chimed in, handing one of the cookies to the Alpha before taking the other one his son held out for him. "And now we better pick up the pace, we still need to get toilet paper."

Bucky woke with a start - the sound of explosions and people yelling ringing in his ears, the acrid smell of burning rubber, burning hair, burning flesh lingering in his nose – and it took him a moment to realize that he was lying on soft cotton sheets and not on coarse desert sand.

He stayed still, forcing his tense muscles to relax and the adrenaline to fade before he stumbled out of bed. He needed a glass of water if he wanted to have any chance of getting back to sleep.

The second he stepped out of his room, he noticed that the TV was running and he feared that he might have woken up Tony with his nightmare. But the Omega gave him a surprised look over the back of the sofa before raising the tub of Stracciatella gelato and suggesting "Grab a spoon, I´m willing to share."

Bucky could have easily declined the offer, taken his glass of water and retreated back to his own room. But the thought of lying there in the darkness, dreading he return of his memories as soon a he closed his eyes, sounded way less appealing than midnight ice-cream with Tony.
True to his word, the Omega handed the tub over as soon as Bucky had sat down. "So, what brings you to this part of town at ass O´clock at night?" he asked, the teasing tone not completely hiding an underlying level of concern.

Bucky shrugged his shoulder and immediately regretted it, as the motion caused a sharp pain to travel through his left-arm. "Nightmares…" he replied, hoping that the dim, flickering light from the TV was enough to hide his flinch. "You?" he then asked back, eager to change the topic.

"Nothing so dramatic." Tony said, taking the tub of ice cream back. "Baby just decided that right now is the perfect time to practice his roundhouse kicks on my kidneys…"

This time Bucky didn´t bother to hide his flinch. "That sounds painful…and again so, so very weird."

Tony shrugged. "It´s not all bad, at least I get an excuse for eating ice cream in the middle of the night." Suddenly, the Omegas face shifted and he quickly sat up from his slouched position. "Oh, he knows we´re talking about him." With an excited giggle Tony reached for Bucky´s hand and placed it on his bump.

For a second Bucky felt nothing but warm, taunt skin through a worn-soft T-Shirt but then there was a tap against his hand. Barely noticeable at first, but the second and third one were stronger. "Wow!" Bucky couldn´t help but stare at his and Tony´s hands, intertwined over the place where Tony´s baby was.

"I think he´s trying to High-Five you." Tony said, laughter still in his voice as he moved Bucky´s hand around to meet the taps, showing no concern for the scars on the back of Bucky´s hand.

And that thought brought Bucky out of the happy little bubble they had created. Carefully he pulled his hand out of Tony´s grasp, making sure it didn´t seem like a rejection.

For a second the Omega seemed confused, but then his gaze landed on the mangled skin of Bucky´s left arm and he seemed to understand.

"You never asked about it." Bucky stated. He knew that Tony had noticed the scars, they were hard to miss, especially when Bucky wore short sleeves, but unlike other people who would stare, Tony´s gaze never seemed to linger (That first day Bucky had looked after Peter the pup had noticed them as well, running his small hands carefully over Bucky´s arm and commenting "Bumpy" before something else had caught his attention.)

"You never seemed particularly interested in talking about it." Tony did have a point there. "Look, we all have scars and since not all of us are walking disasters like Clint who has a fun story to go along with everyone of them, it´s perfectly all right to not want to talk about how you got them." He picked up the discarded tub of gelato, taking a huge scoop before holding it out to Bucky. "But hey, if you want to talk about it, there´s another one of those in the freezer."

"Not…maybe not now…" Bucky took the ice cream and leaned back, trying to relax again. "But I´ll keep it in mind."