Chapter 2
2.
Bucky Barnes was not the man he used to be, and sure as hell wasn’t the man anyone wanted him to be. Not by a long shot.
(“Work on finding your own identity,” his therapist, Neil, had told him. “Figure out who were are, not who you were,” he said, leaning forward in his stupid orthopedic chair, steepling his fingers.
Bucky, stretched out on the ridiculously large Boca do Lobo sofa, had snapped his mouth shut and stayed quiet for the rest of the session, as he usually did.)
After he moved into the Tower on both Steve and Stark’s insisting, he mostly holed himself up in him and Steve’s joint rooms, only leaving when Steve became too...hover-y. He loved that man, he seriously did, but sometimes he seemed like an overgrown mother hen trying to protect its baby chickens.
(And goddammit, Bucky could protect himself, not like skinny Steve Rogers in the back alleys of Brooklyn running his mouth. Bucky suspected he wasn’t trying to protect him from others, but rather him from himself, but whatever.)
His memories were still a big blur and jumbled up from playing HYDRAs pet assassin for seventy years, he was getting them back. Slowly.
Sometimes he would bolt upright in bed in the dead of night and remember. Becca was his sister. His mom was called Winnifred. His dad was called George. His mother had a special mac and cheese recipe she made on birthdays and special occasions.
Sometimes, he would remember things about Steve. About his friends who were surely long gone by now. Steve could draw. He drew people, animals. Anything.
He had drawn Bucky a lot. Half asleep, head lolling on the couch. Smiling, eyes crinkling, as he laughed at a joke. Doing his homework at the kitchen table with his mother, Sarah Rogers, cooking a hot meal in the background.
“Why don’t you draw anymore?” Bucky had tried to ask Steve one night, after an awkward dinner with the rest of the “team” (Barton, Thor, Stark, Banner, Steve, and Sam, who he supposedly kicked off a Helicarrier and who kept on shooting him wary glances. Bucky didn’t blame him.)
Steve had given him that sad, kicked puppy look, and shrugged, retreating into his room.
☆
One day, Bucky found a cartoony sketch of him sitting at the dinner table leaning innocently outside his door, leaning on the door. He picked it up, smiling at the details put into his face and newly-cut hair, and carefully placed it on his nightstand.
He found a second sketch a couple of days later, one of him and Steve, squeezed under his shield like it was an umbrella. He laughed quietly, placing it next to the first.
Pictures kept pouring in, some of him, some of Steve, some very detailed close-ups of his metal arm, all the ridges in the right place. He was sure it wasn’t Steve, Steve never drew anymore, but never bothered to figure it out. He liked getting mystery drawings, not at all unsettled that someone was ogling him across the dinner table (should he have been?).
He was afraid finding out who it was would make them stop. He didn’t want them to stop, because he liked feeling like someone cared for him or bothered to give him gifts. Stupid, after seventy years belonging to someone else being gifted something would make him feel so much better.
☆
One night, Bucky stumbled into the communal kitchen, tired of not being able to fall asleep, and beelined towards the coffee maker in one corner of the kitchen.
(It had taken him ages to master, with its fuckton of buttons and settings, but now that he knew how to use it, it was his favorite thing in the whole damn Tower.)
“Hey man,” a voice sounded from the couch, and Bucky whirled around to see Clint Barton, lounging on the sofa, with what seems to be twenty pieces of paper and pencils spread out around him, and a muted television screen playing some TV show that looked like it was set in a police precinct.
Bucky jerks, suddenly all too aware of his mussed hair and stubble covering his chin. “Hey,” he says tentatively back.
Clint Barton is someone he never could read. He had figured out the rest of the Avengers pretty well, hell, even Natasha, but Barton, was a jigsaw puzzle that Bucky didn’t know how to put together.
He was always in the Tower, but often disappeared for long periods of time, doing who knows what. “He’s in the vents,” he had overheard Romanov tell Banner once, when he had quietly asked where Barton was once.
He was always laughing loudly in the kitchen, enthusiastic at dinner times, always ribbing Sam or Natasha or Tony. To any normal person, he would look like any enthusiastic lad, ones that probably got thrown out of bars for being too loud or getting into bar fights protecting some young lady from getting heckled by drunk asses.
(Clint Barton reminded Bucky of Steve Rogers. Not Captain America, Steve Rogers. Before the weight of the world had been thrust upon him, Steve Rogers. The skinny young kid who couldn’t keep his mouth shut for more than five seconds at a time, the one who got thrown out of movie theatres for telling a guy to shut up during the introductions.)
But Bucky was a sniper, for fucks sake. So he noticed everything.
He noticed how Barton’s eyes darted around the room every time someone new entered, the small flinch every single time someone clapped him on the back without warning, the way he shied away from group hugs and avoided touching anyone when they were all squished on the couch during “Avengers Game/Movie Night”. The way his eyes were too bright, too alert, for someone that young.
“--up?” Bucky jerked out of his thoughts, and noticed Clint staring at him, twirling a pencil. “What’s up?” he repeated, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “You okay there? You kinda blanked out for a moment.”
“Yeah, I’m..yeah.” he turned around and jabbed at a few buttons on the coffee maker, the machine beeping, sliding a cup under the nozzle.
He felt Clint’s eyes on his back, and decidedly didn't turn around for the one minute and thirty-two seconds it took for the coffee to be done. When it was, he turned and got ready to head back to his room, cursing that he had to run into someone at this time of the night.
“Hey. Uh. Barnes,” Clint said haltingly, as Bucky spun around, almost spilling his coffee. “You can stay if you want, you’re obviously not going to be sleeping judging by the coffee in your hand, I’m not g’na talk or anything, you can just--” he abruptly cut himself off, rubbing the back of his neck embarrassed.
Bucky blinked. Sucking in a deep breath, and went over and sat on the couch diagonal from Clint, who shifted some of his paper to make space for him. (Steve would be proud of him, making friends!)
For the first five minutes, Bucky determinedly stared at the screen of the TV, occasionally sipping at his coffee, as the police comedy played on the large screen, and all was quiet, except for the scratching of Clint’s pencil across the paper.
(The police comedy followed someone named Jake, probably a detective, as he ran around New York, being the absolute best and worst cop at the same time. Bucky was half interested and half worried for the fate of New York if there was someone like that running around outside.)
Giving in to his curiosity, he glanced around, to see full size sketches of all the members in action. Natasha flipping over a car, Sam soaring in the sky, Iron Man blasting at an unfortunate alien. And. And him, holding a gun in his metal hand, firing off rounds at something.
“You’re the one who left the drawings outside my door,” he suddenly blurted, coming to the realization.
Clint startled, pencil skittering onto the floor. As he bent to pick it up, his face flushed, he nodded.
“Yeah. Y’know, just wanted to make you feel welcome, or whatever, yeah I’ll shut up before I say something dumb.” Clint looked at him. “Sorry if you don’t like them, I’m not that good,” he said, turning back to his current portrait, one of the team, all of them wearing Santa hats on a Christmas tree (Christmas was coming up soon).
Bucky blinked twice. “They’re great, thanks,” he said quietly, and as Clint hummed a noise that was neither agreement or disagreement, they turned back to their respective tasks.
Bucky grabbed the remote and unmuted the television, and he and Clint watched quietly, until the sun rose.
He couldn’t help feel disappointed when Clint picked up his stuff and left Bucky alone in the living room, staring at the screen.
Bucky had left a few minutes later, feeling like an intruder in his own home.
☆
(And Bucky pretended to ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ over his drawing when Christmas came around like the rest of the team, amazed that Clint could draw. He clutched his own, a cartoon style of him sitting on the couch, clutching his mug, and one of him shooting, the one he saw that first night, now in full color, and tried to stomp down the bubble of happiness making its way up his throat.
His mood couldn’t even be dampered by Tony calling him Robocop, whatever that meant, and pretended not to notice when Clint unwrapped his gift, a t-shirt that had a pineapple wearing a thong. “I love it,” he had declared, wriggling into it immediately, wearing it for the rest of the day, over his SHIELD tank top.
“Man, it’s just like Captain Holt’s, from Brooklyn 99, how’d you even know I watch that show?” Clint had asked, while Bucky shook his head, smile tugging at his lips. And he pretended not to notice every time Clint stumbled out of his bedroom, wearing that neon yellow t-shirt proudly.)