fic: Brooklyn, Brooklyn, Take Me In (Captain America; Steve/Bucky; pg)
Eep, trying to finish some old wsip before Cap 2 opens in the US! Please bear with me!
Brooklyn, Brooklyn, Take Me In
Captain America; Steve/Bucky; pg; 4,165 words; no Cap 2 spoilers
Bucky finds himself, and then he finds Steve.
Title from the Avett Brothers.
~*~
Brooklyn, Brooklyn, Take Me In
The nothingness surrounding him vibrates, shatters like the glass enclosing him, and then there is light and noise and freezing cold air against his bare skin. He stumbles out of the cryo chamber and cuts his hand and knees and feet as he falls, leaving behind bloody smears along the gray cinderblock walls and floor as he drags himself free.
The base is unfamiliar, nearly deserted, but they all have the same basic layout, so intuitive it can't be forgotten or erased, and it's easy enough to find a locker room in which to dress himself and an armory from which to arm himself. He searches, but there is no one to tell him what the mission is, why he was woken out of the dark and dreamless sleep that has held him in its grasp since--He will find a newspaper, figure out when and where he is, and what work they have for him, what name he is to use.
There are no guards, and dust is as thick inside the facility as the snow is on the ground outside. He finds an old truck abandoned in the garage and coaxes it, sputtering and coughing and smoking, to life. The smell of burning diesel coats the roof of his mouth and his tongue, thick and oily and familiar.
He picks a direction and drives.
*
The first few weeks are the worst. He dreams and wakes and dreams again, body slick with the cold sweat of fear. He doesn't know anything, can't tell what's real and what's not in his own memories, let alone in the world outside. He huddles in an old safe house, eating canned goods that expired years ago without even heating them up. He's always had a cast iron stomach, always eats when there's food, because there so often isn't, and even when there is, he gives up half for Steve.
That brings him up short over his can of cold peas, and he tries to chase the memory. The name means nothing when he says it out loud, but he remembers the scent of sweat and blood and illness, a visceral sensation that there's something missing, someone he needs to find, someone he's lost. Someone he's supposed to look after.
He slips through the nearest town like a ghost, the people speaking a language he understands even if the slang and the clothes are different now. He's used to that. He picks pockets, accrues enough cash to get to another safe house, this one still stocked with a set of papers he can use to hopscotch his way across Europe according to the jagged shards of memory that he's slowly reassembling into something that resembles a life. His life.
He still checks the newspapers every morning, but there are no messages. The Cold War is over and the Soviet Union is gone. Department X is no more, the Red Room has gone underground, and there is no one left to give him orders.
He thinks of seeking them out, of making them pay for what was done to him (and to the others--he knows there were others, even if he can't remember yet who they were). That thirst for vengeance wars with his desire to curl up and hide from them, to make this sweet freedom last for as long as he can, because deep down inside, he still believes it's false, some kind of test or mission he hasn't figured out yet, and he wants it to last as long as possible before they seal him up in cryo and put him back to sleep.
So he goes through the motions, reads the papers looking for orders and makes his presence known in various abandoned safe houses, but nobody appears with a mission or a bullet with his name on it. At least not yet.
Eventually, he picks up a tail in Wrocław. He makes stops in Prague, Vienna, and Bratislava, and there is someone dogging his footsteps the whole way. No attempt at contact is made, so he lets the man follow him, biding his time until he can turn the tables and learn something useful.
It's in Paris that he remembers Natalia, the bright red of her hair and lips, of blood against the white walls of a hotel room and then the heat of her body afterwards, the forbidden fruit he'd never been able to resist. He recalls pride in her skills, at the ice in her veins which melted only for him.
He stands outside the apartment building where they'd shared their first kiss, wondering if he could track her down, if she's still alive, if she could tell him all the things he doesn't know.
His tail breaks cover then, takes a shot at him. It misses. A warning, perhaps. Regardless, it's a mistake. There should be a rule, he thinks with grim amusement, slightly less well-known than not invading Russia in the winter, and that would be not taking a shot at the Winter Soldier--he knows that name now, yes, but no other--unless you shoot to kill.
The game of cat and mouse leads him through the city, until his assailant is dead, two shots to his chest, outside Montparnasse Cemetery. He leaves the body like a calling card. If anyone else is searching for him, he hopes the body will warn them away. It is time to leave Paris and its elusive yet strong memories.
He hides in Rome for a month, and his Italian is American-accented rather than Russian. He eats like a king and studies the world as it is now, all the maps redrawn and the history of the last fifty years at his fingertips in an internet café, endless cups of espresso within easy reach.
The stutter start-stop of his memories increases to a slow trickle, enough that he remembers Brooklyn, the accent coloring his speech as soon as he switches to English now, his vowels flat and nasal and familiar to his ears in a way that speaks of home. A foreign word in all languages, and yet.
The memories are still there when he wakes, and they don't seem false, don't seem at all like the things Department X implanted. There's a quality of wistfulness, a low and constant yearning to them that feels real, unlike the happy family he supposedly left behind in Leningrad when he began to work for his masters.
He blinks and sees flashes of blond hair and clear blue eyes, has impressions of soft kisses and furtive touches and a smile as bright as the sun, but he doesn't know if those are memories or fantasies, and in them all his desire is edged with desperation and fear.
He still has the synthetic skin that covers his metal arm, and he has a card from a non-existent doctor explaining that his left shoulder was replaced by an experimental titanium joint. He has his clean papers and enough money to buy a plane ticket. He offers to show the woman at the airport his scar when he sets off the metal detectors, but she ducks her head and blushes and waves him through. He doesn't like having to remove his shoes, but he doesn't want to get pulled out of line, so he complies grumpily. The teenager behind him admires his boots and gives him a thumbs up before he walks away. He can't remember ever being so young or careless.
He sleeps until the pilot announces that the island of Manhattan is visible from the left side of the plane. He watches the skyline come into view as the sun sets over it, and the sight of the Empire State Building makes his chest tighten and then ease.
He's found something of home, and he lets himself relax into it.
*
At first, he lives under the false name on his passport. It's the only name he has, and it won't hide him if Department X comes looking, but it serves him well enough in America. He rents a room in Brighton Beach from an older woman who believes he served with her son in Chechnya. He feels terrible about lying to her, though he means her no harm. He pays on time every week and patiently listens to her bittersweet reminiscing about the old country; it's in those moments that he most misses the clarity of the mission, where feelings rarely impinged on his actions and his conscience slept the sleep of the dead.
One night, he dreams of trains and of the so-mysterious Steve. He dreams of falling, the wind whistling loud and harsh in his ears, drowning out the sound of his name. He jolts awake before he hits the ground and every bone in his body aches for a brief, stunning moment (even the bones he no longer has). He shivers and pulls the blankets up tight around his ears, trying to drown out the wailing of a siren and the smell of cabbage that lingers in the room long after the meal has been finished.
And it's then that he remembers. "James," he says, but it feels wrong in his mouth and in his ears. It's not what he heard in his dream, nor inside his own head. "Bucky," he says, and it rings through him like a bell.
He discovers that James Buchanan Barnes is dead, and has been since 1945. That makes things slightly more difficult, but he is still, in large part, the Winter Soldier, though his programming is now being sloughed off like so much dead skin, and he knows how to craft an identity, how to cobble together the truth with a lie to make it seem real to all but the most discerning eyes.
He keeps himself away from anyone who might be that discerning. He gets a job as a cab driver for a livery service, gets paid in cash off the books at first, and moves into his own place, away from the familiarity and dangers of Little Odessa, as soon as he can.
His apartment in Fort Greene is a small fourth-floor walk-up, but it's his name on the lease (he's his own grandson these days, and he'd laugh if he had anyone to tell; he has to laugh to keep from crying), and his hard-earned money that pays for it.
When he discovers what happened to Steve, he gets stinking drunk and starts a brawl that gets him banned from the bar around the corner. He's been spending too much time there anyway, drinking away his meager paycheck and scaring off the locals. He walks out of the fight just before the cops arrive, without a scratch on him. He curls up in bed alone and cries.
*
The world moves on. He sees Stark's son on the news, flying around in his metal suit, and thinks of calling him, of showing up on the doorstep of his ugly new tower, of saying, "Hey, I knew your dad in the war. We should catch up." But he doesn't. He and Howard weren't close, but thinking of him makes Bucky nostalgic for those days. It makes him nostalgic for Steve, which just makes him feel worse, because there's no way he should have survived when Steve hadn't, and that's never going to sit right with him. So he leaves it be.
Right up until the day aliens attack New York. When he turns on the TV, not only does he see Stark flying around above Manhattan in his shiny metal suit, he sees Natalia on the ground fighting beside a man dressed as Captain America.
Sure, he's angry that they're being attacked by aliens (seriously, though, aliens, what the hell? It's like something out of one of Steve's comics), but he's incandescent with rage that they've apparently convinced some lunkhead to put on Steve's uniform. Then the guy falls out a window and when he gets up, his helmet is gone and Bucky can see his face, can see that he's really and truly Steve. His breath catches in his throat and he starts yelling at the television that they better win this fucking battle, because he didn't make it all the way back home to find Steve just to have the world end before he could actually see him.
He can't get into the city--no one can, what with the whole alien invasion going on--but he's got the internet and he's got some skills, so he starts trying to figure out where Steve is when he's not being Captain America. But there are too many people named Steve Rogers in the city, and SHIELD is good at covering their tracks.
As soon as normal subway service resumes, he treks into Manhattan, scopes out relief efforts and volunteer gathering sites until he finds the one to which Steve is lending his hands, if not his famous name, and follows him home.
Steve should know he's there, should know someone's tailing him, but he just stumbles home to an apartment in Red Hook, not too different from the one they lived in after they'd aged out of the orphanage, or the one Bucky lives in now.
And that's where his nerve, his legendary cool, fails him. He stalks Steve for three days, watches him go out for his morning run and pick up his morning coffee before he heads into the city to help with the recovery. Bucky even volunteers himself when the guilt gets to be too much, though this is one disaster he had no hand in, for once. He wears a baseball cap and sunglasses, as much camouflage as he can manage, and stays as far away from Steve as possible while still keeping him in sight at all times. It's achingly familiar--he did the same thing for the first week Steve worked at Frankel's Shoes, and he's oddly comforted to discover that Steve needs looking after as much as ever.
On the night of the third day, he watches Steve park his motorcycle and stumble up the front steps of the apartment building, his hands shoved into his pockets and his shoulders up around his ears, looking more like the ninety pound skinny malink Bucky remembers best than Captain America. He watches through the window as Steve takes the carton of eggs out of the fridge and sets it on the counter, and then leans over and buries his face in his hands.
Bucky can't stand it any longer; he makes his way down off the roof he's camped out on, crosses the street, and rings the bell.
Still, he's not ready for Steve's voice through the static of the intercom. "Yeah?"
He panics and says, "Package for Mr. Rogers? Needs a signature."
Steve doesn't buzz him in. "I'll be right down."
Bucky runs a hand through his hair and then shoves both hands in his pockets to keep from fidgeting, and waits the thirty seconds it takes Steve to come downstairs.
"I'm not really expecting," Steve is saying as he pushes open the door, and then his jaw drops. He stares for a few seconds, speechless.
Bucky knows how that goes. "Hi," he says, and the smile on his face feels a little wobbly. "Surprise?"
Steve continues to stare at him. "Is this some kind of sick joke?"
"On me, maybe," Bucky answers, shrugging his good shoulder.
"I thought you were dead."
Bucky grins wildly, uncontrollably, even as his eyes well with tears. "I thought you were smaller."
Steve stares at him for another endless moment, and then pulls him into a rough hug. They cling to each other for a long time, and Bucky breathes him in, the scent of sweat and soap and Steve, solid and real as anything is in a world with aliens and giant green rage monsters. He clings to Steve, fingers digging into the tight material of his t-shirt where it pulls over his impossibly broad shoulders, feeling the same familiar spark in his gut as always. Steve nuzzles at his temple, cries into his hair, and drags him into the building and up the stairs without letting go of his arm. His left arm, and Bucky knows there are explanations and confessions coming, but for the moment, he follows Steve into his apartment the way he'd followed him everywhere for years.
"What? How?" Steve says once they're sitting at his little Formica kitchen table.
"If the crying and hugging are done, I'll tell you."
Steve dashes a hand across his eyes, lashes dark and clumped with tears, but his mouth is still curved in a wide, bright smile. "I'm not the only one crying here, punk."
"I got allergies," Bucky answers, wearing a smile just as wide. "Jerk."
Steve sniffs skeptically but doesn't dispute it.
They stare at each other for a little while, cataloguing the changes, and then Steve says, "You want a drink or something? Dinner? I was gonna make some eggs."
Bucky shrugs again. "I could eat."
"There's silverware in the drawer and plates in the cabinet," Steve says, so Bucky sets the table while Steve makes ham and cheese omelets, and for a second Bucky can believe it's 1942 again, and nothing has changed. Bucky allows them both a few minutes of pretending that's true.
"It's a long story," he finally says. "And you probably want to sit down for it."
"Stay where you are, Steve." Natalia flips through the open kitchen window, guns out and aimed at Bucky. "You, on your knees, hands behind your head."
For once, Bucky does what he's told. "Widow," he says, giving her a brief nod and a tight smile. "A pleasure, as always."
Steve turns off the burner and tries to put himself between them; both Natalia and Bucky say, "Steve, don't."
Bucky lets his admiration for her show on his face. She's still the best he ever trained, and maybe it's fucked up that he's proud of that, but he is. "Still in sync after all these years." She ignores him.
"Natasha, stand down." There's Steve's Captain America voice, and even on his knees, Bucky finds himself straightening his shoulders.
"I'll explain later, Steve." She's not gentle as she cuffs Bucky. He doesn't fight it. He's pretty sure he can break the cuffs and they both know it. "You, be quiet."
"Natasha, what the hell?" Steve pushes in between them now, blocking Bucky's body with his own.
"He's a Soviet-trained assassin, code name: Winter Soldier," she says. "We think he's been sent to kill you."
"His name is Bucky Barnes and he's an American hero," Steve replies.
"If I wanted him dead, he'd be dead," Bucky says, peeking around Steve's hip to look up at Natalia. "Where were you three days ago when I set up surveillance on a roof across the street? Not like you to be so behind, Natalia. Lost a step recently?"
Her answering look is venomous.
"Wait, what?" Steve turns to look at Bucky, bewilderment clear on his face.
"That's the long story I wanted to tell you," Bucky says, sighing and letting his shoulders slump. It eases the pinch of the cuffs, as well. "The reason I'm not dead is because the Soviets found me."
"You fell. I saw you fall."
Bucky nods. "Yeah, and by the way, not your fault, okay, Steve?" He holds Steve gaze for a long moment, trying to impress it on him, but Steve's always been one to shoulder the blame for things he can't control. "Whatever Zola did to me in that prison camp saved me."
"Bucky, I--" Steve's tone is exasperated and as familiar as breathing. It makes something in Bucky's throat tighten. Steve shakes his head and turns back to Natalia. "Uncuff him. I'll take full responsibility."
"I can't let you do that."
"You can't stop me."
"Steve, don't be an idiot." Bucky gives him a beseeching look. "Though I wouldn't mind a seat. This tile is hell on the knees."
Natalia glances between them, and he can tell she's wavering. They used to have the same effect on the nuns in the orphanage. And he's never made that connection before, but now the resemblance is a little unnerving. "I don't think that's a good idea."
"It's not, but do it anyway," Bucky urges her. "I'll keep the cuffs on. You and I both know you couldn't keep me here if I really wanted to leave, and I think we both want to make this as easy on Steve as possible."
"Fine," she says, "but if you so much as twitch in his direction, I'm putting a bullet right between your eyes."
"Fair enough." Bucky eases himself up onto one of the kitchen chairs, and then gives Steve a pained smile. "Like I said, you probably want to sit down for this."
*
Halfway through his story, Natalia uncuffs him and pulls up another chair at the table. She still puts herself between him and Steve though, and she doesn't put down her guns.
By the time he's done, Steve looks like he's been sucker punched.
"You okay there, buddy?" He glances at Natalia. "Can you get him a glass of water? Or maybe something stronger? He looks like he could use it."
She glares at him but goes to the fridge and comes back with a bottle of water. She doesn't get one for him.
Steve takes the bottle and twists the lid off but doesn't drink. "I--You--Bucky, I'm so sorry."
"I already told you, it's not your fault."
"I let you fall. If it hadn't been for me--You were always doing dumb things to protect me."
Bucky gives him a cajoling half-smile. "Couldn't let you do dumb things all by yourself, now, could I?"
Steve sets the water bottle down on the table and reaches out to grab Bucky's hand. "I can't believe you're real. I keep thinking I'm going to wake up and discover this whole thing has been a dream."
"I know the feeling," Bucky answers, squeezing Steve's hand gently. "But it's real. If you can accept aliens and Stark's kid in a flying tin can, you can accept this."
"As touching as this reunion has been," Natalia says, "I still have to take you in."
"I know."
"No," Steve says at the same time. "Not yet, Natasha. Please." He gives her the earnest wide-eyed look that probably still gets him his way nine out of ten times, and she sighs in resignation.
"In the morning, you'll bring him to SHIELD," she says.
"Bright and early," Steve promises with an ingratiating smile. "We'll do it all right by the book."
"Fine," she says grudgingly. Bucky always knew she was smarter than him, smart enough to give in to Steve's wheedling because arguing with him was always a waste of time when he got like this. "But if you end up dead, it's all your fault."
"Agreed," Steve says, still smiling. "Now, Natasha, allow me to introduce you to my best friend in the world, James Buchanan Barnes."
"Hello, Natalia," he says, holding out a hand and hoping she'll take it.
"James," she says coolly, but she shakes his hand without trying to kill him, so he'll chalk it up as a win. "It's Natasha now."
"Okay, Natasha. You can call me Bucky."
"James," she repeats, "and Steve. I'll see you in the morning." She climbs out the window as gracefully as she dived in, and then turns to look at them over her shoulder. "It's good to finally meet the real you," she says, and then she's gone.
"Whew," Bucky says, slumping back in his chair. "I don't know about you, but I could use a drink right now." He gets up and starts rummaging through Steve's cabinets. "Seriously, don't you have anything stronger than water in this place?" He turns and Steve is crowding him up against the counter.
"Got a better idea," Steve says, and kisses him.
It's headier and sweeter than any liquor could ever be, and Bucky curls his fingers in Steve's shirt and kisses him back.
"So," he says when he can bring himself to move his lips away from Steve's, "not just fantasies, huh?"
Steve pulls back, concern in his eyes. "You don't remember?"
"Flashes, feelings." Bucky shakes his head and shrugs a shoulder. "I wanted this. I still want it." He clutches Steve's biceps, hard enough to bruise, but Steve doesn't flinch. "They took so much, and some of it I'll never get back, but I still want this. You."
"You'll always have me," Steve murmurs against his mouth. "You're home now, and we'll make some new memories, even better than before."
"Okay," Bucky says. He closes his eyes and rests his forehead against Steve's cheek for a moment, letting Steve's words sink in. In the morning, he'll turn himself in and hope for the best, but for now he's found Steve. He's found home.
end
~*~
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~*~
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Brooklyn, Brooklyn, Take Me In
Captain America; Steve/Bucky; pg; 4,165 words; no Cap 2 spoilers
Bucky finds himself, and then he finds Steve.
Title from the Avett Brothers.
~*~
Brooklyn, Brooklyn, Take Me In
The nothingness surrounding him vibrates, shatters like the glass enclosing him, and then there is light and noise and freezing cold air against his bare skin. He stumbles out of the cryo chamber and cuts his hand and knees and feet as he falls, leaving behind bloody smears along the gray cinderblock walls and floor as he drags himself free.
The base is unfamiliar, nearly deserted, but they all have the same basic layout, so intuitive it can't be forgotten or erased, and it's easy enough to find a locker room in which to dress himself and an armory from which to arm himself. He searches, but there is no one to tell him what the mission is, why he was woken out of the dark and dreamless sleep that has held him in its grasp since--He will find a newspaper, figure out when and where he is, and what work they have for him, what name he is to use.
There are no guards, and dust is as thick inside the facility as the snow is on the ground outside. He finds an old truck abandoned in the garage and coaxes it, sputtering and coughing and smoking, to life. The smell of burning diesel coats the roof of his mouth and his tongue, thick and oily and familiar.
He picks a direction and drives.
*
The first few weeks are the worst. He dreams and wakes and dreams again, body slick with the cold sweat of fear. He doesn't know anything, can't tell what's real and what's not in his own memories, let alone in the world outside. He huddles in an old safe house, eating canned goods that expired years ago without even heating them up. He's always had a cast iron stomach, always eats when there's food, because there so often isn't, and even when there is, he gives up half for Steve.
That brings him up short over his can of cold peas, and he tries to chase the memory. The name means nothing when he says it out loud, but he remembers the scent of sweat and blood and illness, a visceral sensation that there's something missing, someone he needs to find, someone he's lost. Someone he's supposed to look after.
He slips through the nearest town like a ghost, the people speaking a language he understands even if the slang and the clothes are different now. He's used to that. He picks pockets, accrues enough cash to get to another safe house, this one still stocked with a set of papers he can use to hopscotch his way across Europe according to the jagged shards of memory that he's slowly reassembling into something that resembles a life. His life.
He still checks the newspapers every morning, but there are no messages. The Cold War is over and the Soviet Union is gone. Department X is no more, the Red Room has gone underground, and there is no one left to give him orders.
He thinks of seeking them out, of making them pay for what was done to him (and to the others--he knows there were others, even if he can't remember yet who they were). That thirst for vengeance wars with his desire to curl up and hide from them, to make this sweet freedom last for as long as he can, because deep down inside, he still believes it's false, some kind of test or mission he hasn't figured out yet, and he wants it to last as long as possible before they seal him up in cryo and put him back to sleep.
So he goes through the motions, reads the papers looking for orders and makes his presence known in various abandoned safe houses, but nobody appears with a mission or a bullet with his name on it. At least not yet.
Eventually, he picks up a tail in Wrocław. He makes stops in Prague, Vienna, and Bratislava, and there is someone dogging his footsteps the whole way. No attempt at contact is made, so he lets the man follow him, biding his time until he can turn the tables and learn something useful.
It's in Paris that he remembers Natalia, the bright red of her hair and lips, of blood against the white walls of a hotel room and then the heat of her body afterwards, the forbidden fruit he'd never been able to resist. He recalls pride in her skills, at the ice in her veins which melted only for him.
He stands outside the apartment building where they'd shared their first kiss, wondering if he could track her down, if she's still alive, if she could tell him all the things he doesn't know.
His tail breaks cover then, takes a shot at him. It misses. A warning, perhaps. Regardless, it's a mistake. There should be a rule, he thinks with grim amusement, slightly less well-known than not invading Russia in the winter, and that would be not taking a shot at the Winter Soldier--he knows that name now, yes, but no other--unless you shoot to kill.
The game of cat and mouse leads him through the city, until his assailant is dead, two shots to his chest, outside Montparnasse Cemetery. He leaves the body like a calling card. If anyone else is searching for him, he hopes the body will warn them away. It is time to leave Paris and its elusive yet strong memories.
He hides in Rome for a month, and his Italian is American-accented rather than Russian. He eats like a king and studies the world as it is now, all the maps redrawn and the history of the last fifty years at his fingertips in an internet café, endless cups of espresso within easy reach.
The stutter start-stop of his memories increases to a slow trickle, enough that he remembers Brooklyn, the accent coloring his speech as soon as he switches to English now, his vowels flat and nasal and familiar to his ears in a way that speaks of home. A foreign word in all languages, and yet.
The memories are still there when he wakes, and they don't seem false, don't seem at all like the things Department X implanted. There's a quality of wistfulness, a low and constant yearning to them that feels real, unlike the happy family he supposedly left behind in Leningrad when he began to work for his masters.
He blinks and sees flashes of blond hair and clear blue eyes, has impressions of soft kisses and furtive touches and a smile as bright as the sun, but he doesn't know if those are memories or fantasies, and in them all his desire is edged with desperation and fear.
He still has the synthetic skin that covers his metal arm, and he has a card from a non-existent doctor explaining that his left shoulder was replaced by an experimental titanium joint. He has his clean papers and enough money to buy a plane ticket. He offers to show the woman at the airport his scar when he sets off the metal detectors, but she ducks her head and blushes and waves him through. He doesn't like having to remove his shoes, but he doesn't want to get pulled out of line, so he complies grumpily. The teenager behind him admires his boots and gives him a thumbs up before he walks away. He can't remember ever being so young or careless.
He sleeps until the pilot announces that the island of Manhattan is visible from the left side of the plane. He watches the skyline come into view as the sun sets over it, and the sight of the Empire State Building makes his chest tighten and then ease.
He's found something of home, and he lets himself relax into it.
*
At first, he lives under the false name on his passport. It's the only name he has, and it won't hide him if Department X comes looking, but it serves him well enough in America. He rents a room in Brighton Beach from an older woman who believes he served with her son in Chechnya. He feels terrible about lying to her, though he means her no harm. He pays on time every week and patiently listens to her bittersweet reminiscing about the old country; it's in those moments that he most misses the clarity of the mission, where feelings rarely impinged on his actions and his conscience slept the sleep of the dead.
One night, he dreams of trains and of the so-mysterious Steve. He dreams of falling, the wind whistling loud and harsh in his ears, drowning out the sound of his name. He jolts awake before he hits the ground and every bone in his body aches for a brief, stunning moment (even the bones he no longer has). He shivers and pulls the blankets up tight around his ears, trying to drown out the wailing of a siren and the smell of cabbage that lingers in the room long after the meal has been finished.
And it's then that he remembers. "James," he says, but it feels wrong in his mouth and in his ears. It's not what he heard in his dream, nor inside his own head. "Bucky," he says, and it rings through him like a bell.
He discovers that James Buchanan Barnes is dead, and has been since 1945. That makes things slightly more difficult, but he is still, in large part, the Winter Soldier, though his programming is now being sloughed off like so much dead skin, and he knows how to craft an identity, how to cobble together the truth with a lie to make it seem real to all but the most discerning eyes.
He keeps himself away from anyone who might be that discerning. He gets a job as a cab driver for a livery service, gets paid in cash off the books at first, and moves into his own place, away from the familiarity and dangers of Little Odessa, as soon as he can.
His apartment in Fort Greene is a small fourth-floor walk-up, but it's his name on the lease (he's his own grandson these days, and he'd laugh if he had anyone to tell; he has to laugh to keep from crying), and his hard-earned money that pays for it.
When he discovers what happened to Steve, he gets stinking drunk and starts a brawl that gets him banned from the bar around the corner. He's been spending too much time there anyway, drinking away his meager paycheck and scaring off the locals. He walks out of the fight just before the cops arrive, without a scratch on him. He curls up in bed alone and cries.
*
The world moves on. He sees Stark's son on the news, flying around in his metal suit, and thinks of calling him, of showing up on the doorstep of his ugly new tower, of saying, "Hey, I knew your dad in the war. We should catch up." But he doesn't. He and Howard weren't close, but thinking of him makes Bucky nostalgic for those days. It makes him nostalgic for Steve, which just makes him feel worse, because there's no way he should have survived when Steve hadn't, and that's never going to sit right with him. So he leaves it be.
Right up until the day aliens attack New York. When he turns on the TV, not only does he see Stark flying around above Manhattan in his shiny metal suit, he sees Natalia on the ground fighting beside a man dressed as Captain America.
Sure, he's angry that they're being attacked by aliens (seriously, though, aliens, what the hell? It's like something out of one of Steve's comics), but he's incandescent with rage that they've apparently convinced some lunkhead to put on Steve's uniform. Then the guy falls out a window and when he gets up, his helmet is gone and Bucky can see his face, can see that he's really and truly Steve. His breath catches in his throat and he starts yelling at the television that they better win this fucking battle, because he didn't make it all the way back home to find Steve just to have the world end before he could actually see him.
He can't get into the city--no one can, what with the whole alien invasion going on--but he's got the internet and he's got some skills, so he starts trying to figure out where Steve is when he's not being Captain America. But there are too many people named Steve Rogers in the city, and SHIELD is good at covering their tracks.
As soon as normal subway service resumes, he treks into Manhattan, scopes out relief efforts and volunteer gathering sites until he finds the one to which Steve is lending his hands, if not his famous name, and follows him home.
Steve should know he's there, should know someone's tailing him, but he just stumbles home to an apartment in Red Hook, not too different from the one they lived in after they'd aged out of the orphanage, or the one Bucky lives in now.
And that's where his nerve, his legendary cool, fails him. He stalks Steve for three days, watches him go out for his morning run and pick up his morning coffee before he heads into the city to help with the recovery. Bucky even volunteers himself when the guilt gets to be too much, though this is one disaster he had no hand in, for once. He wears a baseball cap and sunglasses, as much camouflage as he can manage, and stays as far away from Steve as possible while still keeping him in sight at all times. It's achingly familiar--he did the same thing for the first week Steve worked at Frankel's Shoes, and he's oddly comforted to discover that Steve needs looking after as much as ever.
On the night of the third day, he watches Steve park his motorcycle and stumble up the front steps of the apartment building, his hands shoved into his pockets and his shoulders up around his ears, looking more like the ninety pound skinny malink Bucky remembers best than Captain America. He watches through the window as Steve takes the carton of eggs out of the fridge and sets it on the counter, and then leans over and buries his face in his hands.
Bucky can't stand it any longer; he makes his way down off the roof he's camped out on, crosses the street, and rings the bell.
Still, he's not ready for Steve's voice through the static of the intercom. "Yeah?"
He panics and says, "Package for Mr. Rogers? Needs a signature."
Steve doesn't buzz him in. "I'll be right down."
Bucky runs a hand through his hair and then shoves both hands in his pockets to keep from fidgeting, and waits the thirty seconds it takes Steve to come downstairs.
"I'm not really expecting," Steve is saying as he pushes open the door, and then his jaw drops. He stares for a few seconds, speechless.
Bucky knows how that goes. "Hi," he says, and the smile on his face feels a little wobbly. "Surprise?"
Steve continues to stare at him. "Is this some kind of sick joke?"
"On me, maybe," Bucky answers, shrugging his good shoulder.
"I thought you were dead."
Bucky grins wildly, uncontrollably, even as his eyes well with tears. "I thought you were smaller."
Steve stares at him for another endless moment, and then pulls him into a rough hug. They cling to each other for a long time, and Bucky breathes him in, the scent of sweat and soap and Steve, solid and real as anything is in a world with aliens and giant green rage monsters. He clings to Steve, fingers digging into the tight material of his t-shirt where it pulls over his impossibly broad shoulders, feeling the same familiar spark in his gut as always. Steve nuzzles at his temple, cries into his hair, and drags him into the building and up the stairs without letting go of his arm. His left arm, and Bucky knows there are explanations and confessions coming, but for the moment, he follows Steve into his apartment the way he'd followed him everywhere for years.
"What? How?" Steve says once they're sitting at his little Formica kitchen table.
"If the crying and hugging are done, I'll tell you."
Steve dashes a hand across his eyes, lashes dark and clumped with tears, but his mouth is still curved in a wide, bright smile. "I'm not the only one crying here, punk."
"I got allergies," Bucky answers, wearing a smile just as wide. "Jerk."
Steve sniffs skeptically but doesn't dispute it.
They stare at each other for a little while, cataloguing the changes, and then Steve says, "You want a drink or something? Dinner? I was gonna make some eggs."
Bucky shrugs again. "I could eat."
"There's silverware in the drawer and plates in the cabinet," Steve says, so Bucky sets the table while Steve makes ham and cheese omelets, and for a second Bucky can believe it's 1942 again, and nothing has changed. Bucky allows them both a few minutes of pretending that's true.
"It's a long story," he finally says. "And you probably want to sit down for it."
"Stay where you are, Steve." Natalia flips through the open kitchen window, guns out and aimed at Bucky. "You, on your knees, hands behind your head."
For once, Bucky does what he's told. "Widow," he says, giving her a brief nod and a tight smile. "A pleasure, as always."
Steve turns off the burner and tries to put himself between them; both Natalia and Bucky say, "Steve, don't."
Bucky lets his admiration for her show on his face. She's still the best he ever trained, and maybe it's fucked up that he's proud of that, but he is. "Still in sync after all these years." She ignores him.
"Natasha, stand down." There's Steve's Captain America voice, and even on his knees, Bucky finds himself straightening his shoulders.
"I'll explain later, Steve." She's not gentle as she cuffs Bucky. He doesn't fight it. He's pretty sure he can break the cuffs and they both know it. "You, be quiet."
"Natasha, what the hell?" Steve pushes in between them now, blocking Bucky's body with his own.
"He's a Soviet-trained assassin, code name: Winter Soldier," she says. "We think he's been sent to kill you."
"His name is Bucky Barnes and he's an American hero," Steve replies.
"If I wanted him dead, he'd be dead," Bucky says, peeking around Steve's hip to look up at Natalia. "Where were you three days ago when I set up surveillance on a roof across the street? Not like you to be so behind, Natalia. Lost a step recently?"
Her answering look is venomous.
"Wait, what?" Steve turns to look at Bucky, bewilderment clear on his face.
"That's the long story I wanted to tell you," Bucky says, sighing and letting his shoulders slump. It eases the pinch of the cuffs, as well. "The reason I'm not dead is because the Soviets found me."
"You fell. I saw you fall."
Bucky nods. "Yeah, and by the way, not your fault, okay, Steve?" He holds Steve gaze for a long moment, trying to impress it on him, but Steve's always been one to shoulder the blame for things he can't control. "Whatever Zola did to me in that prison camp saved me."
"Bucky, I--" Steve's tone is exasperated and as familiar as breathing. It makes something in Bucky's throat tighten. Steve shakes his head and turns back to Natalia. "Uncuff him. I'll take full responsibility."
"I can't let you do that."
"You can't stop me."
"Steve, don't be an idiot." Bucky gives him a beseeching look. "Though I wouldn't mind a seat. This tile is hell on the knees."
Natalia glances between them, and he can tell she's wavering. They used to have the same effect on the nuns in the orphanage. And he's never made that connection before, but now the resemblance is a little unnerving. "I don't think that's a good idea."
"It's not, but do it anyway," Bucky urges her. "I'll keep the cuffs on. You and I both know you couldn't keep me here if I really wanted to leave, and I think we both want to make this as easy on Steve as possible."
"Fine," she says, "but if you so much as twitch in his direction, I'm putting a bullet right between your eyes."
"Fair enough." Bucky eases himself up onto one of the kitchen chairs, and then gives Steve a pained smile. "Like I said, you probably want to sit down for this."
*
Halfway through his story, Natalia uncuffs him and pulls up another chair at the table. She still puts herself between him and Steve though, and she doesn't put down her guns.
By the time he's done, Steve looks like he's been sucker punched.
"You okay there, buddy?" He glances at Natalia. "Can you get him a glass of water? Or maybe something stronger? He looks like he could use it."
She glares at him but goes to the fridge and comes back with a bottle of water. She doesn't get one for him.
Steve takes the bottle and twists the lid off but doesn't drink. "I--You--Bucky, I'm so sorry."
"I already told you, it's not your fault."
"I let you fall. If it hadn't been for me--You were always doing dumb things to protect me."
Bucky gives him a cajoling half-smile. "Couldn't let you do dumb things all by yourself, now, could I?"
Steve sets the water bottle down on the table and reaches out to grab Bucky's hand. "I can't believe you're real. I keep thinking I'm going to wake up and discover this whole thing has been a dream."
"I know the feeling," Bucky answers, squeezing Steve's hand gently. "But it's real. If you can accept aliens and Stark's kid in a flying tin can, you can accept this."
"As touching as this reunion has been," Natalia says, "I still have to take you in."
"I know."
"No," Steve says at the same time. "Not yet, Natasha. Please." He gives her the earnest wide-eyed look that probably still gets him his way nine out of ten times, and she sighs in resignation.
"In the morning, you'll bring him to SHIELD," she says.
"Bright and early," Steve promises with an ingratiating smile. "We'll do it all right by the book."
"Fine," she says grudgingly. Bucky always knew she was smarter than him, smart enough to give in to Steve's wheedling because arguing with him was always a waste of time when he got like this. "But if you end up dead, it's all your fault."
"Agreed," Steve says, still smiling. "Now, Natasha, allow me to introduce you to my best friend in the world, James Buchanan Barnes."
"Hello, Natalia," he says, holding out a hand and hoping she'll take it.
"James," she says coolly, but she shakes his hand without trying to kill him, so he'll chalk it up as a win. "It's Natasha now."
"Okay, Natasha. You can call me Bucky."
"James," she repeats, "and Steve. I'll see you in the morning." She climbs out the window as gracefully as she dived in, and then turns to look at them over her shoulder. "It's good to finally meet the real you," she says, and then she's gone.
"Whew," Bucky says, slumping back in his chair. "I don't know about you, but I could use a drink right now." He gets up and starts rummaging through Steve's cabinets. "Seriously, don't you have anything stronger than water in this place?" He turns and Steve is crowding him up against the counter.
"Got a better idea," Steve says, and kisses him.
It's headier and sweeter than any liquor could ever be, and Bucky curls his fingers in Steve's shirt and kisses him back.
"So," he says when he can bring himself to move his lips away from Steve's, "not just fantasies, huh?"
Steve pulls back, concern in his eyes. "You don't remember?"
"Flashes, feelings." Bucky shakes his head and shrugs a shoulder. "I wanted this. I still want it." He clutches Steve's biceps, hard enough to bruise, but Steve doesn't flinch. "They took so much, and some of it I'll never get back, but I still want this. You."
"You'll always have me," Steve murmurs against his mouth. "You're home now, and we'll make some new memories, even better than before."
"Okay," Bucky says. He closes his eyes and rests his forehead against Steve's cheek for a moment, letting Steve's words sink in. In the morning, he'll turn himself in and hope for the best, but for now he's found Steve. He's found home.
end
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