Chapter 3
It wasn't his. It wasn't anybody's.
Natalia lost the baby four months in. They hadn't had time to get a test, to try and work out who the father was.
It didn't matter. Bucky mourned nonetheless. Natalia retreated into herself. She did nothing but sit in the apartment sipping cold tea.
She had been told years ago that she would never have a child. She hadn't believed it until she lost her.
"Rose," she said to Bucky. "Rose Barnes."
Natalia liked pretending it was Bucky's. It made her happier to act as if their little tryst had an innocent ending, that it had produced something good rather than ruining whatever respect and dignity each of them had left for themselves.
Bucky bought her flowers on a Sunday. The girl in the shop always smiled at him, bright and white. She was blonde, and utterly beautiful, and when she asked chirpily, "For your special someone?" Bucky could only answer with a grimace that she took for humility.
Most people in Moscow had seen him with Natalia at one stage or another. They took their assertions that they were just friends as teasing, or else outright rudeness, that they wouldn't admit what was clear to see. Of course, it wasn't as easy as saying they were together, or that they were apart. There were so many layers to him and Natalia's relationship that he couldn't even begin to explain.
Mostly, they fucked each other because they had no one else. But yet, even when Natalia had Alexei, she had still came home from dates and collapsed into Bucky's arms, took his dick into her hands or her mouth, made him see stars.
She wanted to give him peace, even if it was for a couple minutes. Moving to Russia had been all Bucky and Natalia had wanted for years; now that they were there, there was nothing they wanted to do more than go home again. But going home wasn't an option; neither of them were talking to their true home.
Bucky missed his mother, though. His sisters too, and his father. Winnie never believed him when he said him and Natalia weren't a thing.
"I hope you aren't leading her on, James," his mother said, as if the reverse couldn't possibly be true.
Bucky clutched to whatever Natalia Romanova would give him. He touched her with the care and delicacy he had imagined touching Steve with. If he closed his eyes and pressed a kiss to her waist, he could pretend he had done the same to Steve when the younger boy was smaller, when Bucky could still have lifted him with one arm, when things could've been innocent, just two little boys in love ...
Steve hadn't been innocent for him for a long time. Bucky had always wanted to be touched, had always wanted someone to hurt him while making him feel good. It was why he had slept with Jane, with Susan, with Natasha, with Tony ...
Tony had been a mistake. They didn't talk about it. They had both been very, very drunk; it was Bucky's first time with a man, it was Tony's first time with a man he actually gave a shit about.
It was a pretty fucked up night, by all accounts. Tony’s lips were on his neck when he admitted to Bucky what he had always known.
"God," he had breathed. "I wish I coulda done this with Steve."
"Same here, buddy," Bucky had said.
They both laughed. They didn't come, not for a while. The laughter had made their chests ache.
"Reed, too," Tony had said, as they lay in bed beside each other, very purposefully not looking at each other. He was slurring so much it was difficult to pick up on his meaning, but Bucky got it. Reed had been it for Tony in middle school, in high school, probably long after the other man left for New York in the same way as it turned out Steve had.
Bucky had always had an unnatural ability to remember anything that happened to him, no matter how drunk. Tony did not share that ability. Bucky felt bad that he remembered everything whilst Tony did not, but Tony never asked him what had happened, so he never mentioned it again. In fact, Tony kept up a good show of continuing to flirt with Bucky at inopportune moments so no one picked up on the change.
Bucky's love for Steve had never been innocent.
He had always wanted more than his best friend wanted to give, always wanted to link his fingers with his when they were walking down the corridor, constantly needed to be bumping their shoulders together. There was a part of him that would always remember lying up on the hill, pointing out Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, and how Steve had turned to him that night, how his eyes had somehow seemed even brighter in the darkness, the moon reflecting the bright blue of his irises.
Steve had turned to him, had looked at him for a long moment, and Bucky kidded himself that his gaze dropped to his lips. Then, Steve opened his mouth instead, and Bucky pictured how it would feel to lift his fingers to his lips, to trace out the pink of his cheeks, to taste their tongues together. “You’re so lucky, Buck,” Steve had said. “Your parents love each other so much. You all love each other so much.”
Bucky had smiled then. That expression in particular was one that he prided himself on being convincing with. He had gathered fistfuls of grass, pressed them into his palms to stop him from touching Steve’s face (why would he, if there was dirt in his skin, if he would make something so perfect, so beautiful, a mess just by brushing against him?). “Yeah,” Bucky had said, back then when things were simple. “Yeah, I’m really lucky.”
He still remembered how, in 2005 perhaps, he had walked into his house the day before school started. He had been out with Nat – he had kissed her so hard that she let out a little moan in the back of her throat, and it went down right to his ankle, let him forget that he was picturing someone else. His schoolbag was dropped by the door, and Bucky made his way to the living room. He had called out for his sisters, for his mother, and found that there was a post it note on the wall just before the door informing him that they were out at the movies, and that she loved him. Bucky had plucked the note off the wall, had turned it over in his hand and folded it into his palm.
There had been a smile on his face when he walked into the living room. That was what he remembered the most – not the random woman that was pressed into the couch, how her clothes were strewn over the rug, how all she was wearing was a pair of heels or how his father was kneeled in front of her, frozen in place. The post it note dropped to the ground, and Bucky felt like screaming. He felt like punching something, but he didn’t do anything. He just turned around, tried to will himself not to throw up right then and there, and went up to his bedroom.
The door was locked behind him. There was a part of him, he guessed, that had expected his father to immediately run after him, but that wasn’t the case. Instead, George took his time redressing the woman that he had picked up at the gambler’s table, saying goodbye to her at the door, kissing her before he opened it. They were in the middle of the New England countryside – it was a small town, everybody talked, but there were no neighbours nearby to see how he looked at her, how he watched her hips shifting as she walked. Then, and only then, did Bucky hear the footsteps against the stairs.
His father only had to wait a moment before Bucky relented and allowed him into the room. After all, it was far from the first time, and Bucky had heard the rumours – it was just the first time that it had been that obvious, that Bucky had known exactly what was going on. George had patted Bucky’s shoulder, had moved to sit beside him on the crumpled bedsheets.
“Sometimes,” he had said, voice heavy, a smoker’s voice, “sometimes as men, we make mistakes, son. Sometimes, we do things that we shouldn’t. Sometimes we feel like we have to, that we have no choice. Do you understand?”
Bucky had nodded. He was only fourteen, he told himself in years that went on, he couldn’t have done anything else. He had no choice. George had smiled at him then, but it wasn’t his father’s smile, it was someone else’s, someone twisted.
“Here, son,” George said. He reached down to his wrist, pulled off the watch around it. He pressed it into Bucky’s hand, nodding once when he did so. “In houses like this one, we can get lost. Too many voices, you know? This’ll remind you we have to stick together.”
Bucky had never told his mother about George. He knew now, as an adult, that there was probably no need to, that she had to have known he smelled of someone else, but there was still a guilt there. Bucky had a lot of regrets. He had been born with regrets, it felt like, and now there was no coming back from them.
The only choice he had, after all, was to keep making more – or at least that was what his actions would insinuate.
Tonight, they had decided to do something different. They had both been trying to distract themselves with studying. Natalia was working two waitressing jobs. Bucky had taken up bartending. They were testing each other using flashcards. They read through textbooks, pretending that they weren’t almost falling asleep during them. They sat on the opposite side of the couch, and Natalia didn’t wear dresses anymore. She hid herself away behind large sweaters, the grand majority of them from Bucky’s side of the closet.
Tonight, they had a few vodkas as they studied. That was probably how Natalia ended up throwing the textbook away, advancing forward with a purpose that Bucky had always admired about her, and settling onto his lap. She touched the side of his lips, looked down at him for a long moment, and he had kissed her so hard that their mouths felt bruised.
“One night,” she had whispered as Bucky pulled his pants off, wriggling underneath her because he was damned if he was trying to breathe without her above him anymore. “One night, just give me one night.”
Bucky nodded, his forehead against hers, and caught her lips again before working down her neck. “Oh,” Nat breathed, her voice husky as ever, her body reacting to his hands pressed against her hips. “Clint, please.”
He knew his role. He knew what he had to do, knew that there was enough alcohol in his system for Natalia’s words to go right over his head, for him to focus instead of the curves of her body and pretend that they were harder. Her muscles were less defined now – she hadn’t gone to the gym in several weeks, maybe even six months, since the doctors told her to take things easy.
His mouth moved from gasping against the curve of her neck up to just below her ear. He pushed back her hair, and she moved to take it from him, holding it back so that her neck was bare. “Steve,” he whispered. It seemed sacred, the name that escaped his lips, and he hoped to God that Natalia wouldn’t hear it, even if he knew the drink would’ve made him louder, that the neighbours would hear, that they had done this before. He knew his role, after all, they both did. “Steve, Iloveyou, please, feel so good…”
They woke up the next morning tangled in the sheets rather than each other. Nat sat up first. She pushed her hair off her face – it had been sticking to the sweat on her cheeks. “We can’t keep doing this,” she said, voice even lower than normal. The back of her throat was sore, Bucky knew, just like his back was scratched to all hell. “We need to go home.”
Bucky swallowed thickly, looking up at the swirls on the ceiling. “I can’t,” he said. “I can’t face them, Nat, I can’t do it.”
Natalia paused then. She shuffled until she was lying down in bed again, and her green eyes looked at him for a long, searching moment. “Your mom doesn’t care, you know.”
“Dad does.”
“You don’t need your dad’s approval, James. You never have.”
He always had. He knew it, Natalia knew it. Still, she was one hell of a liar. He almost believed her, or would have, if he wasn’t one himself.
“The year’s almost up, anyway,” Bucky muttered.
“Doesn’t mean we need to stay for the extra three months,” Nat said. “We already have the credits. I wouldn’t mind being seen by Dad’s doctor, either.”
Bucky reached out, took her hand in his. It was small, but there were scars over the skin there, remnants of the burns that she had carried from the orphanage. The one thing about herself that she couldn’t change, the one thing that she had never attempted to. “I know,” he said. “It’s hard, Talia.”
There were people in this world that were soulmates. Winnie Barnes had always believed that, and so had Sarah. Bucky told himself he didn’t, but there were times with Steve when he had wondered. There was a year when they had barely spoken, a year when nothing other than a stupid disagreement had kept them apart, but they had found their way back together. He had kept hoping that would happen this time, that Steve would get bored of New York, or at the very least that it wouldn’t be the note of finality that they had alluded to in that coffee shop just after graduation, that one day Bucky would get a letter in the mail and it would have a picture of Steve in military garb and he would feel his heart bursting out of his chest all over again.
He used to think that was the worst feeling, what he had around Steve. The feeling of being so close, but far from close enough. The feeling of having it all and still wanting more, the feeling of being so selfishly desperate, of always wanting to have Steve by his body, in his heart, in his hand. Now, though, he would’ve died to have that feeling one more time. He had tried, with Natalia. He had tried with so many other women and men in Leavenworth and Moscow alike, and he had found nothing. He had found nothing.
Even with Natalia, the one person that had always brought a wildfire into his chest, he couldn’t find what he had with Steve. There was something that bonded them together, something that brought them back to this place again and again, and Bucky couldn’t, wouldn’t, pretend that it was anything other than soulmates. Now, though, it was over. He had to focus on those he did have.
Maybe Natalia wasn’t his romantic soulmate, but she was definitely something. She was proving that now, had proven it when after the initial shock had worn off and the anger at what they had done together had dissipated, Bucky had actually been excited to have a kid with her. He had been looking forward to it, had touched against her stomach, had loved the idea of it in a way he hadn’t envisioned. Like so many other things, that had fallen apart. He needed to accept that. He needed to move on.
“Fine,” he said, hours later when they were on opposite sides of the couch again and Natalia was wearing a dress. There were bruises on her upper arms, the shape of Bucky’s hands, and he had bite marks on his neck, red and vicious. “We’ll go back.”
“And we’ll never do this again,” Natalia said. The fact that she said ‘this’ was something that caused him pause – surely it should’ve been ‘that’ – but then she was reaching forward, grabbing him by the front of his shirt and pulling him down to meet her lips. This time, she didn’t say Clint, and he didn’t say Steve. He wasn’t sure whether it felt better, or worse.