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Natasha and Steve play truth or dare all the way across Europe.

Sitwell had slid a file across the desk, hidden under a copy of the morning papers and then left the room, claiming an emergency. Steve, predictably, had been the first to crack. Natasha had sat back in her chair, looking impossibly comfortable in the horrible wire-mesh monstrosities, and used a paperclip to clean under her nails. Steve had managed three minutes of tapping his foot, impatiently, and glancing around the room before he’d swung, fake-uncaring, around in his chair so the security camera would get the back of his head, and picked the papers up.

“Oh, look, there’s a new diner opening in Midtown called ‘Thorsday’,” he said, flicking the paper out, so Natasha could see it. The file slid down, and onto his lap. Natasha leaned over, shielding it from the survey-rig, and narrowed her eyes at the paper.

“Better than AvengeFast, I suppose,” she said, and Steve snorted. “Though, that is what Thor does to his breakfast. At least the neologism isn’t inaccurate.”

Steve flashed her a grin and folded the paper over the file. He bundled them under his arm, and stood up. “I need coffee.”

“I could drink coffee,” Natasha said.

They fly to Lisbon, don’t bother trying to get permission to use a SHIELD jet, and book themselves on a transatlantic flight under false identities. Natasha turns up at the airport wearing a long brown skirt, the comfiest looking jumper in the world and, of all things, a wedding ring. She slips Steve a box, as he watches the boarding information screens and raises an eyebrow. “Come on Mr. Rutherford, we have a plane to catch.”

He stands stock still for a moment, and then shakes himself into action, sliding the ring onto his finger as he catches up with her.

She sleeps for most of the flight, her head tucked neatly onto his shoulder, and a book splayed on her lap. Steve is too tall to really be comfortable even in the exit seats, and he spends the flight reading Moby Dick.

It’s raining in Lisbon when they leave the airport, and Natasha twists her mouth to one side. “It rained the last time I was here,” she says. The tone is so offhand and casual that Steve knows there is something behind it. He hasn’t worked out how to push for information from her yet, not completely, so he shrugs. “I hear it rains a lot in Europe.”

Natasha cuts off a small laugh, and twists the ring on her finger.

The rain follows them across Portugal, into Spain and through to Austria. It isn’t until Belarus that they get any sunshine. It glints off Natasha’s hair and Steve’s fingers twitch to draw her as she tips her head back, letting the sun hit her face. Her shoulders drop infinitesimally and she almost purrs when they spend a week soaking in the sun. Belarus is a dead end. The file didn’t imply it would be anything else, but Steve can’t even be annoyed at the waste of time. He’s spent long enough waiting for this. An extra week can’t hurt.

Natasha takes him dancing on their last night. She’s coiled tight and Steve can read the worry in her bones. “Come on, Cap. It’ll be fun.”

“You say that, and then it isn’t.” Steve says wryly. The music is loud, and there are a lot of bodies in a small space. Natasha hands him a glass of something, and toasts him with her matching glass.

“It’s just kvass. Alcohol content of about 1 percent.” She drains her glass, and slips off the stool. “Dance with me?”

Steve wrinkles his eyebrows together and reminds himself he has fought Nazis and alien invaders and a truly disgusting squid thing. He can manage a dance.

“You’re the first woman I’ve ever danced with, properly.” Steve whispers into Natasha’s ear as she puts her hands on his hips and rolls her shoulders with the beat of the music.

They’ve travelled undercover, but semi-legally thus far. Steve makes the mistake of saying he’s never dodged a fare on the train before as they wait at Minsk Passazhirsky for a train, and Natasha smiles, bright and wide.

“I cannot believe you,” Steve says, under his breath, and then smiles softly. Natasha is sat on the sink, marking up a map, and he doesn’t think he’s ever seen her look so comfortable.

“If they catch us, we’ll pay.” She says, graciously. “Of course, if they catch us I think we both need to hand our resignations in.”

Steve holds back a laugh at that. “I’m still not trying this on the subway.”

They get off the train at Irkutsk, the rain is back and falling as snow. It catches in Natasha’s curls and eyelashes.

“This is where Clint first got sent to take me down,” Natasha says as they walk down Lermontova, heading for the university. “I was undercover as a student.”

Steve raises an eyebrow, encouragingly. “And?”

Natasha nods to an elderly lady, “Dobrỳĭ vecher,” she says and then turns to Steve. “Not here. Later.”

“Okay,” Steve says and then offers a truth of his own. “I had to dress up as a woman once.”

It startles a laugh out of Natasha. “As skinny Steve, or serum Steve?”

“Serum Steve,” he says. “We were in Kolne and we needed to talk to someone. Turns out, taking a vote on who gets to dress up as a woman isn’t the brightest idea.”

The trail takes them to Arkhangelsk and a deserted warehouse. Natasha slips in through the roof, and then opens a door, and Steve imagines her as a cat burglar. The warehouse is full of old technology and a pool of blood on the floor.

They travel through the night to Murmansk. Natasha stays rigidly awake all the way, looking out of the window at the dark. “I have memories of Murmansk,” she whispers, facing away from him, and Steve pretends not to have heard.

She leads them, entirely on instinct and something in her bones, to the harbor, and a shipyard, and then by cunning and a well-placed series of bribes and threats to Severomorsk.

There is something thrumming through Steve’s bones, and he recognizes it as hope.

“Truth.” Natasha says as they stand inside the doorway of the makeshift laboratory.

“I’m scared.” Steve says. He wishes he had his shield with him.

“Dare.” Natasha says.

Steve swallows and hits the light switch. “Truth,” he says as the bulb flickers to life, and the body on the table is revealed.

They ring Sitwell from a payphone in Novosibirsk. Steve lost the coin toss, and makes the call. Natasha sits, her eyes never leaving James, and sends Clint a text message from a burner phone, and Steve braces himself for Sitwell’s anger. He “hmmms” his way through the conversation and tells Sitwell they’ll be back at some point in the near future. All he can really hear is Bucky’s laboured breathing, and the rain falling onto the sidewalk.

“They’ll be waiting,” he says when he sits back down, next to Bucky who says nothing. Who has said nothing since Steve flicked that light switch and Natasha removed the IV. Who has hidden a limp, pretended not to cradle his arm, and slept sitting with his back to the corner of the room, waking every five minutes to watch the door.

Natasha nods, and then sends another text message. Her hair is windblown, and she has circles under her eyes. Once, Steve would have thought she was texting Clint with necessary information and now he thinks she’s doing it to keep herself connected to the world she inhabits these days.

There doesn’t seem to be much point in playing hide and seek across Europe in reverse. They take the train to Moscow and then catch a flight back to New York. There had been a passport in Bucky’s back pocket, under the name Taras Baryatinsky, which had made Natasha snort slightly in amusement.

“They never were subtle,” she’d said when Steve had looked at her questioningly. “Taras means mutineer, or rebel. This was a punishment mission.”

Steve watches Natasha throughout the flight. She is keeping her eyes on James, sitting completely upright. Her entire posture screams trouble is coming, and that tell is scaring Steve more than the thought of anything SHIELD can throw at him or at Bucky.

Sitwell meets them at the airport, supposedly alone. Steve can see the snipers, and he knows Natasha caught them as well. Probably before he did. All he can do is hope that Bucky lets them take him out of the airport without a struggle, that there isn’t an activation key for this hidden in his brain. Natasha is keeping herself between Bucky and civilians as much as she can, and Steve lets himself breathe a little more easily when they make it to the car.

Hill catches Steve’s eye as they walk down the corridor. He follows her into one of the empty offices and shrugs. “Ma’am,” he says and she raises her eyebrow incredulously.

“Really, you’re going with ma’am, Captain Rogers?” She has her hands on her hips, and she reminds him intensely of Peggy at that moment.

“I’m not sorry,” Steve says, a little more tersely than he intended.

“I don’t want a fucking apology, Captain.” Hill folds her arms, “I wanted to warn you that this isn’t going to be pretty.”

Steve laughs, mirthlessly. “I know that. I read the file on Natasha’s deprogramming.”

“Yeah,” Hill says. “That’s not even the full account.”

Steve knows he’s standing at attention, and the kind smile she throws him catches him off guard.

They leave Bucky under the care of Hill and Sitwell and take a walk. They end up in Abingdon Square Park. The sky is heavy and no one else seems to want to stand and stay still. The city is full of people dashing about, and Steve thinks he could no more join in than he could turn into a flamingo.

“Thank you,” he says to Natasha.

“I didn’t do it for you,” she says.

Steve pushes his hands into his pockets, and leans back on the railing. “I know.”

Darcy blocks their way when they get back to SHIELD. “I could have sworn I heard Hill tell you to go home,” she says.

“Technically she told us to take a walk,” Natasha says, sounding more human than she has in two days.

Darcy laughs, and it rings round the empty corridor weirdly. “He’s in the holding cell,” she says finally. “You can’t see him. I was given very specific instructions about that.”

Steve looks at her, trying for pleading. She isn’t giving an inch though, and he and Natasha go and sit in the mess, cradling cups of terrible coffee and half-heartedly doing the crossword. Darcy comes and joins them, a couple of hours later. “Nineteen down is concatenation,” she says before sliding a file across the table. “Fury wants to see you,” she says to Natasha.

Natasha nods, and pauses before standing up. “It was snowing when Clint brought me in,” she says.

Steve sleeps at SHIELD that night. He can’t quite face the quiet of his apartment, or the noise of the Tower. There is nothing in his quarters at SHIELD, just an uncomfortable bed and the whirring of the filtration system. Darcy had stayed to eat dinner with him, asked his opinion on the dress she’d changed into for a date that night, and then left. He’d seen Hill, gesturing emphatically at Fury, and then ducked around the corner. She wouldn’t tell him anything anyway, and he doesn’t want to risk letting some of the anger seep through his cracks.
Natasha joins him at breakfast. The coffee is a bit better at this time of day, and she has her sparring clothes on.

They’re both breathing heavily by the time they’re done. Steve didn’t hold back as much as he usually does.

“This is going to be a shitshow,” Natasha says as she unfolds from the floor.

Steve stays where he is, staring at the ceiling. “Where angels fear to tread,” he offers.

“Was James ever an angel?” Natasha pretends to ask, bleak amusement coloring her voice. “The Winter Soldier certainly wasn’t.”

“An angel of avenging mercy,” Steve swallows. “We can get him through this.”

Natasha stands over him, feet on either side of his hips. “But we can’t do it from the floor of the gym. Get dressed, Captain.”

“Steve,” he reminds her, sitting up.

“You need to be Captain today.” Natasha turns abruptly, and throws his towel at him. “Command chains are hard to break.”

Steve had imagined that SHIELD would keep its prisoners underground, somewhere in the underbelly of the building, but Bucky is seven stories up, looking out of the window, at a city Steve is relearning.

“Captain,” Hill nods at him. She looks tired, there’s worry playing across her face, and she’s dropping her right shoulder.

“Agent Hill,” Steve says. He doesn’t have time for anything that isn’t Bucky, right now. He can’t be comforting for Hill. He has no words.

“There is no quick fix,” Hill says, as she faces the security interface. “I’m sure Agent Romanoff has told you that.”

“Yes,” Steve says, keeping his eyes open for the retina scan. “On the train. I think we were in Ekaterinburg.”

Hill startles slightly at the place name, and Steve shoves his idle curiosity about it to the back of his mind. The door has opened, and his breath catches at the sight of Bucky sitting on the edge of the bed. There’s a vicious scar across his knee, and no emotion on his face. There’s a medic calmly collecting scattered bits of equipment from the floor, and an agent Steve thinks he should know standing in the corner, holding a gun. Bucky’s metal arm glints, dully, in the dim light of the room. It should look scary, but right now it feels, to Steve, like a reminder of everything Bucky has lost.

“You have ten minutes, Captain.” Hill says, crossing the room to take the place of the agent.

Steve spends ten minutes trying to make small talk at Bucky. He’s never been much good at chitchat, but he’s trying. He has it in the back of his mind to avoid things that might be triggers, but he knows that could be nearly anything. In the end he recites baseball stats and tells Bucky the plot of the last movie he watched. Bucky hadn’t shown any emotion all across Russia, and he doesn’t give in now either.

He lapses into silence, tracking Bucky’s gaze out the window. “I take back all the times I told you to shut up, when we were younger.”

“Clint read Natasha the whole of The Count of Monte Cristo,” Hill says as they walk down the corridor. “She didn’t say one word.”

“How long?” Steve stops in front of the door to the stairwell. “How long until Natasha was Natasha?”

“Most of Natasha is a construct,” Hill says severely, “but, about six months before we got to the construct she’d made.”

Steve nods, thinking ahead six months, plotting them out in his mind. “Early summer,” he says, “that always was Bucky’s favorite time of year.”

“It’s not a guaranteed timetable,” Hill warns.

“I know.” Steve says steadily. “But it’s better than this freefall.”

It takes two months before Bucky speaks. Two months where Steve calls him Bucky, Natasha calls him James and Fury calls him dangerous. Steve takes that comment out on a punchbag, sending it flying across the room.

“Fury called me the same.” Natasha says, later, watching him unbind his hands. “He still calls me it. He doesn’t mean it as a slur. It’s what we were made to be.”

Steve turns around, slowly, until he’s facing her. “Doesn’t it hurt?”

Natasha raises an eyebrow, “Should it?” She jumps down from the top of the pile of mats in the corner, opening her arms wide. “Steve, I’m built to be lethal. I know ways to kill painlessly, I can torture people with words or with knives or with my body. I killed thirty people before I got my first period, and I kill in the service of SHIELD. There is no glory in it, but there is truth and painfully won certainty.”

Steve watches her, looking for the Natasha he danced with in Belarus, sees her in every blink of an eyelid, and breathes out. He closes his eyes for a long second, and when he opens them again, the gym is empty.

“So,” he says to Bucky, that afternoon, “you’re dangerous.” Steve has taken to seeing a movie just so he can recap the plot, buying a copy of the morning paper so he can read the Op Eds aloud, and bludgeoning thoughts of Bucky as a child to the back of his mind.

“I always was.” Bucky says it flatly, no inflection, and no warning. He’s stood looking out of the window, arms down by his sides. The sky is grey and it’s been raining for a week. Steve stood next to him, last night, watching the light glisten in all the water, imagining the smell of rain on wet leaves.

“We all are,” Steve manages to reply. His voice cracks halfway through, and he forces himself to stay standing where he is. To not rush to Bucky’s side and make a fool of himself. He sends Natasha a message and walks slowly to the window.

It’s as if time speeds up after that, the months flying by. Bucky doesn’t speak much, is a shadow of his former self, but he occasionally scoffs at the paper, and holds conversations in an undertone with Natasha. Steve knows that Bucky must talk more when he’s in the company of SHIELD’s experts, and that sometimes it hurts more to speak to someone you know.

Hill catches Steve in the mess. “He’s not doing badly,” she says, and puts a report down in front of him. “A little bit worse than Natasha at this point, but not much.”

Steve grins. “I’ll make sure Natasha knows.”

Hill laughs, “I’m sure it will liven up her mission.” She sits down across the table from him, unwraps her sandwich and opens her computer. Steve watches her type for a few seconds, and then sends Natasha a message.

Of course I’m winning, comes her reply, a few minutes later. He never was a patch on me. And yes, you can tell him that.

Steve passes the phone across the table to show Hill, who just rolls her eyes and mutters, “It’s always a fucking competition with her.” She sounds affectionate rather than annoyed, and Steve texts Natasha her response.

What can I say? Natasha replies. She made me American. I like to win.

Hill grabs the phone out of Steve’s hand when he shows her Natasha’s reply, and pushes her computer to one side. I think the delinquent archer you hang out with has something to do with it, she sends, and then doesn’t give Steve his phone back.

He goes to see Bucky rather than trying to get it back, tells him about the conversation and takes a mental picture of the smile it gets him. He can’t get out of the habit of collecting them.

Natasha comes back from her mission, sporting a wonderful black eye, a dazzling grin and very short platinum blonde hair. She refuses to let him hold back in the gym, and gets a fit of the giggles lying on the floor. She’s been gone three weeks, and it’s been empty in Bucky’s suite of rooms without her.

Steve watches her, warily, as he packs his stuff away, and answers an e-mail from Tony.

“Sorry,” she says when she’s stopped laughing. “I’d forgotten how much fun industrial espionage is.” She stands up and stretches her back out. “Who knew fighting robots and aliens would get old?” Her face when Sitwell had assigned her this mission had been a thing of glory. Clint had spent two days complaining about never being allowed on missions anymore, before getting sent to Ho Chi Minh City. He’d sent a series of messages complaining about the humidity and then a bad pun for the board in the kitchen.

Steve laughs. He’d been complaining about the same thing to Bucky the morning before, and had got one of his epic eye-rolls. He says as much to Natasha and she smiles fondly. “James always did have eye-rolling down to an art form.”

It’s April before they let Bucky out of the holding wing. He’s recovered his own words and sometimes he sounds like the Bucky that Steve remembers. Natasha walks behind his right shoulder, all the way to the mess, and Steve hovers awkwardly somewhere in their vicinity. Clint had trapped him in the kitchen the night before, tried to explain why this is so important for Natasha. What the sight of Bucky walking out of the wing, and into one of the public spaces of SHIELD means for her. Steve is tamping down a brief, vicious, outbreak of jealousy at the half-smile Bucky gave her, and he misses Darcy’s low whistle of appreciation as they walk through the door, the noise catching up with him a few seconds later.

“What?” Darcy says when he turns to face her. “It’s like a Vogue cover-shoot came to life on my lunch break.” She’s got one hip cocked onto the table, and a hand on her hip, the top button of her cardigan undone, and Steve thinks about drawing her.

“Rogers, stop ogling the ladies,” Bucky drawls from his side, and Steve punches him lightly on instinct, just like he would have done when they were younger. There’s a shift of weight from the agents in the room, a gathering of strength and ability, but Bucky just laughs and slings his arm over Steve’s shoulder before smiling ingratiatingly at Darcy. “Hi, I’m James Buchanan Barnes, and it is a pleasure to meet you.”

“You are wearing a disappointing number of clothes,” Darcy says, and then holds out her hand. “I’m Darcy.”

Bucky shakes her hand, and then sits down. “Tell me, Darcy, what do you do in this fine organization?”

“I wrangle things.” Darcy says and rolls her eyes over Bucky’s shoulder, catching Natasha’s fond expression. “And I am going to be late for a lovely afternoon of wrangling Barton’s expense claims, so, you’ll have to excuse me.” She nods at Natasha as she passes, and Steve gets a text a few minutes later. Seriously, way too many clothes. I heard things from Li!

“So, she wrangles things, huh,” Bucky says. “She wrangling anyone in particular, right now?”

Natasha leans across the table and flicks his ear. “I think you have more important things to concentrate on right now, James. Besides, Darcy wouldn’t put up with half of your crap.”

Steve laughs at the incongruity of this moment. He could be back in Europe, sixty years ago, not in the messhall with everyone trying not to gawk too obviously.

They eat something optimistically labelled Caesar salad, and Steve wishes he’d gone out and bought them Reubens from the deli a few blocks away. SHIELD’s food offerings tend towards nutritious and filling, designed to keep agents alive and awake in the aftermath of endless days and weeks, but they aren’t exciting. Bucky is picking at his salad, looking unconvinced and occasionally looking at Natasha as she eats all of hers methodically.

“This is the worst salad I have ever eaten,” Bucky says eventually. “And I’m including that salad you made in Zagreb.”

Natasha spears her last piece of chicken and tilts her head. “It was food, and it kept us alive. I have never claimed to be a Michelin starred chef.”

“Please tell me you’ve improved,” Bucky says, horror in his voice, and Steve bursts out laughing, thinking of the risotto she’d attempted last week. They’d thrown the pan in the end, resigned to never getting it clean and Clint had spun Natasha out of the kitchen, laughing so hard he’d got hiccups.

“Not so much,” Natasha admits. “I prefer it when people cook for me.” She picks up her coffee cup, wrinkles her nose at it, and finishes it grimly. “I have an appointment with Sitwell.” She stands, and ruffles Bucky’s hair. “Don’t cause disaster while I’m gone, James.”

“Such low expectations of me,” Bucky calls across the room, “it hurts!”

Natasha pauses in the doorway, turns to face them, and lets a smile break across her face. “I live to hurt you, you know that.”

“Damn, but she’s a firecracker,” Bucky says admiringly, lounging back in his seat, all long lines and the pretence of easy grace. Steve can see the effort in every sinew of Bucky’s body, trying to keep it together.

“You’re not wrong,” Steve says, getting up and collecting their trays. “Come on, we have a sparring slot with Okadigbo. If you want to meet a real firecracker, I’ll introduce you to Carol.”

Bucky is still hesitant in the gym, not trusting his mind. Steve tells him to throw everything he has at him, hits back as hard as he can, and feels hope blossom in his chest one day in May when Bucky finally lets go. They’re dancing around each other, throwing false punches, and grinning like fools when they hear slow clapping. Clint and Natasha are stood at the side of the ring, Hill and Fury in the doorway.

“Congratulations, Sergeant Barnes,” Fury says, walking towards them. “I thought you’d never show us what you’re made of.”

“Slugs and snails are shy, apparently,” Bucky drawls, and then stands to attention. “Colonel.”

“At ease, soldier,” Fury nods and turns on his heel, “Romanoff, Hill, my office please.”

Bucky waits for him to leave the room, and lets out a low whistle. “He is no less terrifying when I’m not being interrogated.”

Steve can’t think what to say in reply, is overtaken by a feeling of immense sorrow for everything Bucky has gone through. He pretends to be busy unwrapping his hands, and lets out a sigh of relief when Clint picks up the conversational ball.

“You should see him at the holiday party,” Clint says. “A column of glaring anger standing in the corner, guarding the punch.”

Steve chuckles at that, and picks his bag up. “Come on, Marquez has this booked after us. And she doesn’t like being kept waiting.”

Clint laughs, “She is fucking terrifying,” he says appreciatively. “Not Tasha levels of terrifying, but she’s close.” He’d asked Marquez to dance one year, at the holiday party, and she’d cut him off abruptly. It still ranks as one of the best moments of his SHIELD career, and he’s including Natasha in the snow in Irkutsk. He tells Bucky that and watches Steve’s shoulders relax as Bucky howls with laughter. There’s still too much effort in the laughter, but less than there was.

It’s the end of May by the time they let Bucky leave the SHIELD building. Natasha and Steve flank him as they step outside, and Bucky lifts his nose to the air, inhaling the smell of exhaust fumes and throws his arm out, spinning around. Tony has his metal arm, sitting on a workbench. Bucky had complained it wasn’t responding right, something low and subtle in the machinery not obeying his command, and Tony had hmm’d, before gesturing to it. “Mind taking it off for me, just for a day or so. I can’t do much while you’re wearing it. It resists me.” Bucky had grimaced, and then let it click loose. Steve thinks about letting people mess with the shield and winces inwardly. Who knew they’d both become so attached to pieces of metal.

Carol is stood lounging against the corner of the building. She’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and she still looks dangerous. She’s got one eye on Bucky, and one on Janet, who is busy haranguing Sitwell about something. “So, they let your boy out then,” she says when Steve walks up to her. He doesn’t even bother correcting her about Bucky not being his boy. No one is going to believe him. He ran off to Russia for him, again, after all.

Bucky joins them, his head ducked and his eyes wary. “Steve says you’re a firecracker,” he says with no preamble. Steve would blame the years of being the Winter Soldier, but Bucky had never been one for unnecessary formalities.

Carol smiles, raising an eyebrow at Steve. “I’m also a Captain, but I guess he isn’t wrong.”

Bucky laughs then, and it sounds more real than it has so far. Steve can take being made fun of, especially for this cause.

Darcy lets them know that Fury okayed letting Bucky out of the SHIELD building for more than an hour at a time, and Steve tries to think about what he should show him. Then thinks he should just take Bucky somewhere Steve calls home, and feels it like a two-punch that he can’t think of anywhere. Thinks about taking him to the apartment in Brooklyn, and then realises there’s no point. Steve has spent barely any time there, himself, since Tony harangued everyone into moving into the tower. It’s a few rooms, and a collection of dusty things. Steve had moved all the important things into his rooms in the tower. There hadn’t been many of them.

In the end they take a SHIELD car to the tower, get a cup of coffee, and Bucky flirts gently and aimlessly with everyone because he can, and then Tony shows up to let them in. Natasha’s hair is beginning to grow out from her pixie cut, and she stands behind Stark looking amused.

“He remembered you were coming,” she says as the tower scans Bucky’s retina and registers him. “I didn’t have to chase him out of his lab.”

“It was a terrible blow for her,” Clint winks from where he’s lounging against the wall. “She’d been looking forward to it all day.”

Natasha rolls her eyes, and Bucky laughs. His eyes keep flicking between Natasha and Clint, and Steve hopes he asks Natasha not him to explain their friendship. Steve doesn’t really have the words; they’re all tied up in Bucky.

“Okay,” Steve says, “if the house starts talking, don’t worry. It’s just JARVIS. Umm … Tony’s robot butler? Kind of? He lives in the walls. Anyway, he’s y’know, not hostile.”

Bucky turns to face Steve, and pointedly pokes him in the chest with a metal finger. “I’m a Russian science experiment, Steve. I can cope with a sentient house.”

Steve swallows, hard. He sees Bucky’s arm, is reminded of that, every single day and he still doesn’t really know how to cope with it. He can hear Natasha snickering behind him.

It turns out, when they get out of the elevator, that everyone is there to welcome Bucky into the house of madness. Thor is on Earth for a while, and he’s been playing competitive Halo with Clint for the last week while Darcy hangs around because she misses Thor when he’s not on Earth. Bruce is making something in the kitchen that smells delicious, and will probably taste very healthy, and Steve can hear Pepper tapping away on her StarkTab in the living room. She’s probably updating the Halo stats site that Clint and Thor had discovered the other day. Steve has his hand on Bucky’s back, steering him from the elevator to the living room, and he feels him clock the sheer number of people and tense a bit. “Hey. If it gets to be too much, let me know. We’ll escape to the roof.”

Bucky smiles tightly, and then grins wide, lets it cover his face, and strides into the living room. “Well, if it isn’t the stunner who should come with a health warning,” he greets Darcy who rolls her eyes affectionately, and then punches him in the arm. “What was that for?” Bucky protests, pretending it hurt.

Darcy grins, “I’m sure you will do or say something objectionable while I’m here. I didn’t want to miss my chance to punish you for it.”

“Oh, you can punish me any time Lewis,” Bucky drawls and Darcy collapses with a fit of the giggles onto the sofa.

“That used to work better on the dames,” Bucky says to Steve. “Is this what it was like to be you?”

Steve looks over his shoulder at Darcy weakly flapping her hand, and laughing on Clint’s shoulder. “Pretty much, yeah,” he says flatly, and then laughs himself at the aghast look on Bucky’s face.

“So, I’m your boy, huh?” Bucky says a week later, against the ropes of the boxing ring.

Steve throws a towel at Bucky, “Stop dripping on the mat. Also, stop talking to Danvers.”

Bucky laughs, muffled through the towel, and then throws it back so it hits Steve right in the face. “And Clint, and Natasha, and Darcy and even Sitwell?”

“Okay,” Steve says agreeably. “If that’s what it takes.” He hops out of the ring, and picks his bag up. “I’ll see you later.”

Bucky watches the doors swing back and forth after Steve leaves, and grins.

“Barnes, Rogers.” Fury stops them in the corridor. Hill is stood to the side of him, tapping away on her phone, and she rolls her eyes at Bucky’s salute. “My office, please.”

Bucky turns to Steve as they follow Fury, “Did we do something wrong? He sounds like Sister Bernadette.”

Steve blinks rapidly because his brain has just given him a picture of Fury in a nun’s habit, and it’s a bit disturbing. “I definitely haven’t done anything wrong, recently. I don’t know about you.”

Bucky tips his head to the side, “I snuck up to watch the jets leave with Clint the other day, but I have been disgustingly good otherwise.” He sounds a bit disappointed in himself. “Unless flirting with that Lewis dame counts.”

“That doesn’t count, Barnes.” Fury says, and throws a file across the room for Bucky to catch. “She hasn’t filed a harassment report.” He pauses and then adds, “Yet.”

Steve smothers the urge to laugh, and thinks about Darcy shooting Bucky down fairly epically in the mess the day before. “Can we help you, Director?”

“Yes,” Fury says and turns a screen round so they can see it. “We need to decide what to do with you, Barnes.” The screen is full of pictures of the Howling Commandos, of Bucky in the hospital wing, of Bucky scowling at his physio, and of Natasha throwing him to the ground in the gym. “I don’t think the world could cope with another Avenger. I can’t cope with another Avenger.”

Steve watches Bucky fight the urge to shuffle his feet, and wants to jump in with a defence of his team, of Bucky, and of the world. He hasn’t felt sure of his place in months, and this is no different. He doesn’t know who to be when he’s Captain America, with Bucky around.

Hill clears her throat. “This doesn’t mean you can’t be a part of SHIELD, if you want to be.” She looks Bucky directly in the eyes. “We can always find a place for people with useful skillsets.”

Natasha is with Hill in the mess, inhaling a sandwich and occasionally pausing to complain about the new paperwork for signing weaponry out of the armory. Steve stands in the doorway, watching them for a minute, and then gets shoved unceremoniously out of the way by Lopez and Wysocanszki. It’s lasagne day, and everyone tries to get there early, so they don’t have to eat the dried out second half. Everyone that is, but Clint, who thinks that’s the best part, and Natasha who just doesn’t care. “Food’s food,” she’d said to Steve once when he was trying to work out how SHIELD turns perfectly good ingredients into something verging on inedible. Hill had rolled her eyes, and then handed Steve half a homemade sandwich.

“Hey, Cap,” Clint says, behind him, and he turns to see Clint and Darcy sat with plates of lasagne in front of them. Darcy is picking at hers, looking at it dubiously, and she slides it across the table to Clint as Steve sits down. “Not joining the line for food?”

“It’s not food, Clint,” Darcy says, watching in horror as Clint takes a huge mouthful of lasagne. “Well, okay, it’s food in the sense of fuel, but you can’t actually want to eat it.”

“Phil liked this lasagne,” Clint says when he’s finished swallowing. “Said it reminded him of the army.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, “that’s why I don’t like it. I mean, seriously, you wake up in the 21st century and the food is as bad as England in the 40s? What next, spotted dick every Thursday?”

Darcy laughs loudly, and reaches into her bag for a package of gingerbread. “There’s way too much butter in this for the 40s to have even thought of it.”

Steve’s eyes light up, and he smiles when he sees she’s packed a piece separately, with a label reading ‘FAO: Winter Soldier, ONLY’. “Thank you, Darcy,” he says, “want me to give it to him?”

“Nah,’ she says through a mouthful, “I’ll take it to him later. We’ve got paperwork to go through. This might ease the process slightly.”

“Only if you’ve laced it with something,” Clint says, and then looks at his piece more closely. “You haven’t laced it, have you? I know I owe you, like, three weeks worth of expenses, or whatever, but I’ve got to train the juniors on safe grenade practice at three.”

“It’s not laced,” Darcy says, her tone clearly conveying you giant idiot. “Right, I have to go and work through a fuckton of HR paperwork with everyone’s favourite ex-Soviet metal-armed assassin.”

“Good luck!” Clint says, eating the last of his piece of gingerbread. “Have fun! Don’t break him!”

“I’ll break who I want, Clint,” Darcy says, and puts a little extra swing into her hips as she walks away.

“Ask her out,” Steve says after watching Clint watch Darcy walk away.

“What?” Clint says, “No, I can’t do that.” He tips his chair back on two legs, and throws his napkin into the bin behind him.

“Why?” Steve looks around the room, sees Hill and Natasha jabbing at the screen of a tablet, increasingly emphatically, and Okadigbo sitting between Mitchelson and Ferrara rolling her eyes gently at the conversation they’re having across her.

“Well, she’s gone on everyone’s favorite recently returned from the cold assassin, remember?” Clint is trying not to sound petulant, Steve can tell, and he laughs despite himself.

“Did you know I’m everyone’s favorite ex-Soviet metal-armed assassin,” Bucky says when Steve puts down the beers.

“I heard that. Clint told me.” Steve takes a handful of peanuts, and sucks the salt off one before flicking it in between the salt and pepper pots.

“Well, as long as I’m everybody’s favorite,” Bucky says, with a laugh, and steals a peanut.

“Sister Patricia would be so proud,” Steve adjusts the pots, before flicking another peanut in between them.

“Hah,” Bucky laughs. He slides back on his stool, so his back is against the wall, and looks out of the window. “Natasha’s watching us.”

“I know,” Steve says, “I invited her, but she said she had stuff to do.” He waves at the fourth floor window where he knows Natasha is, and sees the flicker of a light in response.

“Huh, I know for a fact Hill went home at five on the dot,” Bucky says and flips Natasha the middle finger through the window. The light flickers three times for that and he laughs to himself.

“I don’t think they’re joined at the hip,” Steve says before draining the rest of his beer. “Another?”

“Nah, ‘Tash is on her way down, she can buy them.” Bucky grins. “She owes me a drink from way back.”

They send Bucky off on a milk run mission, at the end of September, and Steve frets the whole time. There isn’t even a convenient alien invasion to fight, so he spends a lot of time gladhanding at various events, and trying not to think about everything that could be going wrong in Madrid. Natasha drags him to the ring, makes him fight, and then punches him in the face when they’re done. “Stop moping. I’m sure it’s unpatriotic.”

He watches her leave the gym, and sits down on the mat and laughs so hard he thinks he might crack a rib.

Bucky comes back, with a smile in his eyes, and Steve feels awful for wishing he’d never been sent, wishing he wasn’t useful to SHIELD, and tries too hard to make it up to Bucky.

“Steve, it’s not that I don’t appreciate the beer,” Bucky says, over his third glass of Red Rooster, “but, and I gotta ask, why are you buying it for me?”

Natasha rolls her eyes so hard Steve thinks it might have actually hurt her, and folds her beer mat into a swan. “He missed you, for some reason.”

Bucky grins, and runs a hand through his hair. “I’m missable.”

“Yeah,” Natasha drawls, and finishes her drink. “I’ll leave you two to it, I have a date.”

Bucky watches her leave, fondness in his eyes and then turns to Steve. “I’m going to get more beer, and don’t think you’re squirreling out of an explanation when I get back.”

Steve slumps on his stool, and sends a text to Clint. Natasha is evil.

Clint just laughs when Steve tells him about his inarticulate attempt to explain why he’d been plying Bucky with beer. “Oh, man,” he wheezes when Steve is as red as a beet and looking like a kicked puppy. “You are not the greatest at this.”

“It’s not like I have that much practice,” Steve says and then shrugs. “I should be happy he’s got a purpose, right? I mean, I am happy.”

“You sound it,” Darcy says from the doorway. “Just tell him you want to throw him down on the nearest flat surface and practice dancing with him.”

Clint gives up at that point, and slides down to the floor so he can laugh properly. “Darcy Lewis, ladies and gentleman,” he says fondly, and Steve kicks him in the shin.

Bucky corners him in Wellington. They’re on the top of the Majestic Centre, waiting for a signal from Sitwell. “You’re squirreling again,” he says, looking down the sight of his rifle. “Carol told me to make you deal with it.” He sounds distinctly unimpressed at the idea.

“I am not squirreling,” Steve says, peering over the edge of the building. “And you really think this is the best place for this conversation?”

“Well, you can’t escape,” Bucky says, rolling a shoulder. “Which means I won’t get back from the bar to find an empty table and an apologetic llama drawn on a napkin.”

Steve clenches his jaw, and shuffles back from the edge of the building as quietly as he can. He runs his finger around the rim of his shield, and exhales heavily. “I worry about you,” he says quietly and Bucky just glances across from his rifle. “I worry that you’re working for SHIELD because you have to, and not because you want to, and that we’re turning you into another science experiment.”

“Take the sight,” Bucky says, his voice pinched. When Steve is settled, looking at the same expanse of roofs and nothing else that Bucky has been watching for the past four hours, he socks him in the shoulder. “I like working for SHIELD,” Bucky says and then takes a swig of water. “What? They ask me if I mind taking a job, ask me for my opinion on how best to carry it out, and no one reprograms my mind at the end of the day. ‘Sides what else am I going to do? Flip burgers on a foodtruck? Make pancakes in a diner?”

“You could do anything you wanted to,” Steve says, knowing as he says it that it couldn’t be further from the truth.

Bucky laughs, gently. “No, I couldn’t, and you know it. I’m a Soviet science experiment, Steve. My options are severely limited.”

It rattled around Steve’s brain for the next three weeks that Bucky still thinks of himself as a science experiment, until he turns the pages of his sketchbook and sees drawing after drawing of the serum chamber, and Dr Erksine, and the wind leaves his sails abruptly.

The look on his face is enough to get Hill to send him to Natasha. She pats him gently on the arm, “Steve, I wish I could help, but you need to talk to Natasha about this.”

He winces slightly at the idea, and Hill grins. “You can do it, soldier.”

He finds Natasha on the deck, watching the jets land and take off. She has a stopwatch in her hand, and she spots one jet at the end of the runway doing landing spins, and remembers that Clint lost his bet. “Hey, Cap,” she says.

“Natasha,” he nods, and waits for her to click the stopwatch, and Clint to climb out of the jet looking a little bit green and a lot proud of himself. “Is it punishment if he enjoys it?”

Natasha raises an eyebrow, and smiles slowly. “It can be,” she drawls, and Steve flushes red. Natasha snickers, “Clint thinks he’s won, but Darcy is busy rearranging his quarters right now.”

“Oh,” Steve says. “Umm. Hill sent me to talk to you.” He looks down at his shoes and wishes, just for a second, that he was in his uniform and could pretend to fuss with the shield or a bootstrap.

Natasha rolls her eyes, and waves Clint across. “I’m busy now, but I can do eight in the mess.” She walks off without checking that’s okay, and Steve wishes he had enough in his calendar that he’d have to rearrange things.

Steve gets there early, despite trying his hardest to arrive on time. He hovers outside the door for a few minutes, checking his text messages and e-mail. He’s somehow been included in the marathon movie-quoting contest going on between Pepper, Rhodey and Clint. Every now and then he recognises one, and sends back a quote from an old movie he saw before the war. Pepper always gets those ones, and he can’t work out how she has time to watch classic movies.

“Steve, stop loitering.” Natasha pokes her head around the door, and gestures him in with what Steve thinks is what she thinks a comforting hand wave is.

He lets the door slide open, and sits on a chair that doesn’t block Natasha’s view of the spare exit. She’s sitting on the edge of the table, a brown report file by her side and a mug of tea steaming in her hands.

“Okay. Talk.” Natasha puts the mug of tea down, and folds her hands in her lap.

“Right,” Steve hesitates, and twists his fingers together. “I wanted to ask you, if it’s not too intrusive or going to bother you …” he trails off, and looks at the floor, “… I, just, it’s about Bucky.”

Natasha laughs. “Of course it is. Look, I’ll talk. You nod, or shake your head, or attempt to vocalise an answer. Okay?”

“Okay,” Steve says and feels a little abashed by the amount of relief in his voice.

“You are glad Bucky is back, yes?” Natasha pauses and looks at Steve, who nods. “And you worry that he still sees himself as an experiment?” Steve nods again, more emphatically this time. “And you are unsure about how you feel about SHIELD using him as an agent when he has always been wielded as a weapon?” Steve nods, small and ashamed this time.

Natasha stands up, and opens her arms. “You remember when I told you that Fury calls me dangerous, and it’s true? It is true and real and everything I have ever been made to be.” She stops Steve from speaking with a raised hand. “James and I were made to serve a purpose, and we don’t have many other options. I could open a secondhand bookstore and I would still know eighteen different ways to kill someone in their sleep. He could write erotic romance novels, and he would still be able to spot a target from a rooftop and calculate the exact angle for a shot in his head, without thinking about it.” She tips her head to the side, “We were made to work, and we need to work, and you will not help him if you try and wrap him in tissue paper.”

Steve chews on the inside of his cheek for a moment. “I know that. I do,” he insists off Natasha’s disbelieving look. “I was made for a purpose as well. But, I worry that this is all there is in Bucky’s life. That he doesn’t do anything else. He flies around the world and he eliminates people and then he comes home and practices on the range.”

“What else do you do, Steve?” Natasha asks, before picking up her file and mug. “I am not saying we can’t act as if we aren’t science experiments, but it takes time and practice, and it is terrifying.”

Steve watches as she walks out the door, and then sits with his head in his hands, thinking.

“I’ll have the mac and cheese please,” Bucky says to the waitress, “and he’ll have the pulled pork sandwich.”

Steve takes a swallow of his beer and smiles at the waitress. “Ordering for me now?”

Bucky smiles. “It’s easy, you always get the same thing. Clint recommended the celeriac gratin, but I don’t think I trust him.”

“It’s good,” Steve says, “not sure I think it's as great as Darcy does though.”

“Her taste is clearly compromised,” Bucky says, gesturing to himself. “I mean, she picked arrow boy over me.”

“You’re still her favorite metal-armed ex-Soviet assassin,” Steve says reassuringly.

“I am everyone’s favorite one of those,” Bucky says. “Especially Tony’s. Though, I think he likes the arm more than me.”

Steve grins. “You don’t have to keep letting him mess with it. He’ll find a new project.”

“Awww,” Bucky says, “is the shield feeling jealous?”

“Yes,” Steve says gravely, “The shield is feeling very left out of the fun.”

“I don’t really mind,” Bucky says, glancing hopefully at their waitress as she carries food across the room, and then pouting a little when she delivers it to someone else. “He’s got it working better than anyone else ever managed. Still can’t convince him it doesn’t need a laser pointer though.”

“But everything is better with a laser pointer,” Steve says in a passable impersonation of Tony’s wounded tone of voice. He shrugs and then leans back to let the waitress put the cutlery on the table. “Thank you.”

“No problem,” she says, sounding amused. “Food’ll be with you in a few minutes.”

Bucky waits for the food to arrive, and for Steve to have taken a massive bite of his sandwich before setting his fork down, and leaning seriously across the table. “Look, Steve, if there’s something wrong you need to tell me.”

Steve chokes a little as he swallows, “No, no, there’s nothing wrong. Is something wrong? Are you okay?”

Bucky shakes his head. “No, I’m fine you fucking idiot. But that’s the problem. You keep treating me like I’m gonna break. I thought we’d established that I like my job.”

“We have.” Steve finishes his beer, and looks up at the ceiling. “Natasha was less help than she thinks she was,” he says under his breath. “Listen, Bucky,” he continues, looking right at him, “I’m sorry for trying to mother you and protect you from the world. I, just … I just got you back, and you’re being sent everywhere and putting yourself in harm’s way.” He holds up a hand, as Bucky starts to speak. “No, let me. And I know I do the same thing every time we get invaded or attacked by something, but I wasn’t … I didn’t … I haven’t had my brain made and remade and I just didn’t want you to feel like you were being forced into something.” Steve drops his gaze, and twists his napkin, trying to be careful about the strength he exerts on it.

“Hey, Steve,” Bucky says, soft and gentle and it reminds Steve of being a kid when Bucky would talk him through an asthma attack or cajole Sister Beatrice into not putting them in detention. “I wasn’t lying when I said I liked my job. I’m good at it, and they appreciate my work. Is it what I dreamed my life would be when we were kids? Fuck no. But I joined up, and I served my country or whatthefuckever, and then I woke up in 2012 and everything was different. At least I’m useful.”

Steve looks up, and sees Bucky, eyes half-open, like they always are when he’s telling the truth, and he smiles wryly. “Natasha thinks we need hobbies,” he says abruptly and then tries not to laugh too hard when Bucky swallows his beer the wrong way.

“Oh, God,” Bucky coughs. “Jesus, be careful.” He breathes slowly a couple of times and then sips at his beer. “Hobbies? Like what?”

“She didn’t specify.” Steve shrugs. “I don’t think drawing counts. I think she meant the sort of hobby where you develop a new skill and meet people unconnected to your job.”

Bucky looks slightly horrified at that and takes another mouthful of his mac and cheese. “But, what?” he asks, slightly desperately. “What hobby does she have?”

“Apparently she and Hill do yoga on Thursdays at some place in Brooklyn, she’s thinking of taking an intro to trapeze class on Tuesdays and she joined a SHIELD book group last month?” Steve frowns. “I think the trapeze class is cheating.”

Bucky still looks aghast. “Could we pretend we took up a hobby, and not?”

“How well can you lie to Natasha?” Steve asks. “I’m honestly curious.”

“Huh.” Bucky sighs. “We need another plan.”

They don’t have time to come up with a hobby for the next month or so. Bucky gets sent to London, comes home for two days and then gets sent out again. Steve spends three days trying to think of a hobby and then robots that look like oversized hornets attack Manhattan. By the time Bucky’s back, Steve is in Denmark for a week, and then Bucky’s on his way to Kenya.

“Oh, hey. I remember you, I think.” Bucky says when he walks into the mess and sees Steve. “Captain Tightpants? No, that’s not right.” He pulls up a chair, and slumps into it. “There is not enough coffee in the whole of New York right now. And speaking of New York, what did you do to Tribeca?”

Steve rolls his eyes. “Doom decided he wanted it. Why were you in Tribeca?”

“There was a thing,” Bucky grins. “How was Copenhagen?”

“Cold,” Steve grouses. “Darcy asked me to tell you she needs to see you ASAP.”

Bucky groans, and leans forward to rest his head on his arms. “Fucking expense claims,” he mutters into his forearms. “I should just steal things.”

“I heard that,” Darcy says from behind him. “Don’t steal things. Stealing is bad. You should requisition them instead.”

Bucky sits up and turns around, “I’m allowed to do that?”

“If it means you don’t put a grand a half on your credit card, yes. What the fuck did you spend a grand and a half on in Kenya, anyway?” Darcy’s got a hand on her hip, and an expression on her face that Steve knows is her ‘someone is going to try and bullshit me, and it’s not going to work’ one. Bucky takes one look at it, and seems to see the same thing as Steve.

“It’s all in the report. It wasn’t blow and hookers, don’t worry.” He tries to grin, but gets overtaken by a yawn. “I am gonna go crash in my quarters here. I don’t think I’ll make it back to the tower. We still on for the range tomorrow?”

Steve starts to say that he doesn’t remember making a range booking, and then realises it was directed at Darcy.

“Sure thing, metal boy,” Darcy says. “I have a feeling I’m going to need it after I sit through the meeting on your mission.”

“Hah,” Bucky says, slightly tonelessly, and Steve frowns. “Night all.”

“Night, Bucky,” Steve nods and gestures at the chair, for Darcy. “Sit down if you want. I’m not the best company though.”

“Eh,” Darcy shrugs. “You’re probably better than Clint right now. He’s still pissed he lost another bet with Bruce.”

Steve very carefully doesn’t ask Bucky what happened in Kenya. He can tell it’s something serious. There’s been no more mention of excessive expense claims, and Bucky hasn’t told any outrageous stories about what happened. There’s something hiding under his skin, and behind his eyes, and Steve is reminded of when he and Natasha had first brought Bucky back. Instead he spars with him, and they take walks through the city, and sit and watch old movies.

Steve took Bucky back to the Brooklyn apartment, sometime in September, thinking he might like it more than the Tower. There’s still nothing there, particularly. A change of clothes, some bread in the refrigerator, and a pile of history books. Bucky had leaned against the doorframe, raised an eyebrow and gestured around him. “I’ve seen safehouses with more character, Rogers.”

“I’m not here much,” Steve shrugs. He’s got a couch, a coffee table, and a bed. He can’t bring himself to furnish it beyond that.

Bucky had half-nodded, and sat on one of the kitchen sides. They’d eaten takeout, and drunk beer, and never moved from the kitchen. Since then he’s brought bits and pieces to the apartment every time he visits, so now Steve owns a framed subway map, two bookends and a teapot. Steve has no idea where Bucky gets these things, or why they make him think of Steve, but he finds a place for them and tries to remember to dust them.

It’s been a long month, of piecemeal missions, and another attempt by Doom to take over Manhattan, and Bucky flying around the world, coming back sharp-eyed and alternately grinning gleefully and looking haunted. Steve gets an e-mail from Darcy that Bravo Two are going to be in town, and thinks about telling Bucky, asking him to come. He doesn’t. It feels wrong and mean of him, but there is too much happening in Steve’s chest and brain and body, and he doesn’t think he can spend the evening watching Bucky out of the corner of his eye. Natasha’s there, doing shots with Darcy and Steve catches Nate’s eye over the crowd, gives him a thumbs up and then proceeds to lose himself in the crush of the crowd, and the music lifting him up. The opener isn’t bad, some band from South Carolina, and Steve tries to work out where he can stand and dance without hurting someone. Natasha comes and stands beside him, as the bands switch over and the lights are up. “See, a hobby,” she says and smiles at him before Darcy joins them and they throw themselves into the opening chords of “Tell It To The Marines”, and Steve feels something burst a little bit inside him. Natasha and Darcy are beside him, arms above their heads, necks tipped back and they are surrounded by people having fun, enjoying themselves, getting some form of release and help and community from it.

Steve is happy, but he wishes Bucky were there. Could feel this. Realises he’s never talked about music with Bucky since they got him back. Hasn’t told him about this newfound love of punk and crowds and keeping people safe with no more power than being tall, and muscled, and careful. He doesn’t even know why he hasn’t told Bucky, in any of their conversations about hobbies. Natasha catches his eye, shakes her head, breaks the spell and he hears the rolling riff of “We Must March” and he and Natasha punch their fists together at “get your weapons in order”, smiling like they can light the world.

Steve goes to the gym the next morning, still full of that bright hopeful feeling, and sees Bucky staring at the wall, stood in the ring. He’s flexing his shoulder, and Steve watches the metal ripple and move and clears his throat. “You okay?”

“What?” Bucky turns, and starts to wrap his hands. “Yeah, fine.”

“Okay,” Steve says and dumps his bag, wraps his hands and gets in the ring. Bucky is harsh and quick and fast, and Steve finds himself on the floor, gasping slightly. For all he’s a supersoldier now, Bucky is efficient and trained, and Steve is still a bit of a brawler. Natasha’s trying to break him of it, but he can’t seem to not feel like everything is a bar brawl or a prizefight. Bucky and Natasha treat it like a dance, intricate footwork and clever jabs right in the heart and the eyes and Steve is just an overenthusiastic amateur with too much muscle.

“What the fuck, Rogers?” Bucky says, standing over him. “Am I getting boring? Too much fucking Soviet damage for you?”

“What?” Steve says, blinking up. Bucky is stood over his chest, his t-shirt clinging to him, and Steve is blindsided for a moment. “Never.”

“Don’t want to take me dancing though.” Bucky says tightly, and wheels round. Steve gets to his feet, and clasps Bucky’s wrist, gently, so gently.

“What’s going on, Buck’?” Steve tugs so Bucky has to half-face him, and tips his head to the side. “What’s eating you?”

“Darcy told me about the nice little dancing threesome you had going on last night,” Bucky says, trying to shrug it, and Steve, off. “Sounds fun.”

Steve goes to shrug, and then thinks better of it. Tightens his grip on Bucky’s wrist a little more and catches his eye. “It is fun. But it’s a lot of people, and a lot of noise and a lot of contact.” Thinks back to when he’d first been in a tiny bar, like that, with all those people, three months out of the ice and terrified. Thinks about Bucky, and how he still flinches in the line at the coffee shop if someone brushes him too hard, and then thinks that it might be just what he needs. “They’re playing again on Thursday.”

Bucky raises an eyebrow, lets his weight shift and Steve realises he’s going to have to work harder than this. “You should come. You won’t even need all the musical education I got.”

Bucky shrugs and Steve lets his grip loosen. “I’ll think about it.”

“I think you broke Barnes,” Darcy says as she slides into her seat in the briefing room. She’s sleepy-eyed, and Steve thinks about her loose-limbed, heading for the subway and pushes his coffee towards her. She sniffs it, “Hazelnut syrup latte, really?”

Steve shrugs, he’s working his way through the available options at the coffee shop across the corner. “You look like you need the sugar.”

Darcy nods, tiredly, and wakes up her tablet. “You still broke Barnes. He was almost genial this morning when I was reaming him out for his expense claims.”

Steve smiles, thinks of Bucky standing with his back to the bar, watching everyone throw their weight around, trying to learn the moves, commit them to memory and then pushing off the bar, grabbing Steve’s arm and dragging him into the fray. “Your Heart is a Weapon” is playing, and Steve rolls his eyes at the ceiling, briefly, before letting himself go. Ray had quirked an eyebrow at him, over the crowd, and then elbowed Brad who just nodded at them, before dragging his eyes and up and down Bucky. “Nice,” Brad had mouthed over the crowd, and Steve had hidden a burst of laughter in his sleeve.

Darcy had come tumbling in, mid-set, as Bravo were taking a break, dragging Clint behind her. “Barnes!” she’d yelled across the bar, “look what the cat dragged in.” gesturing towards Clint who had rolled his eyes and fistbumped Bucky. Darcy headed for the side of the stage, high-fived Nate and got handed a shot by Walt. Clint had smiled and ordered beer.

“She came to see a blues band with me the other week,” he said when Steve looked at him curiously. “Turn about is fair play, right?”

Bravo took the stage again, Ray toasting Darcy with his beer, and then launching into the fierce opening of “Gadaffi, You’re A Motherfucker”. Clint tips his head to one side, “they may not be my thing, but they’re not fucking wrong.”

Bucky looks at Steve and signals attack forward with his right hand. Sends them into the fray where they catch up with Darcy, who is screaming along with the lyrics, and Steve watches as Bucky bumps into people, and gets bumped into, and doesn’t see that flash of murder in his eyes.

They straggle out of the bar, Clint’s arm slung over Darcy’s shoulder, and Bucky turning every now and then to look Steve right in the eyes, and Steve can’t breathe for how perfect it is.

Steve goes back to the apartment, feeling like he’s going to climb out of his own skin if he has to spend time in the Tower that evening. It’s been a long day of meetings, and trying to co-ordinate Tony’s schedule and mission reviews and intel gathering. Tony is snappish, and Natasha is angrily silent, and Clint and Darcy are just smiling at each other, and Steve thinks wistfully of being able to get drunk. He’s going to sit on the sofa and watch Dog Cops and when he wakes up tomorrow morning everything will be better. When he gets back to the apartment, he can smell cooking and hear The Loved Ones playing, and nothing in his life has prepared him for the sight of Bucky stirring sauce and twisting his hips, low down and so dirty, as he sings along to “Johnny 99”.

“Picked the lock,” Bucky says when he catches sight of Steve. “Your security is shit.”

“I gave you a key,” Steve frowns and then his brain scrambles back into gear. “So you decided to see if you could get in through the roof access. Which I didn’t give you a key to.”

“Maybe,” Bucky says, grinning wide like he only does when feeling exceptionally pleased with himself. “I am cooking you dinner though, so maybe don’t tell my handler.”

“I am 100% certain that Alagakkonara doesn’t care.” Steve calls from the bedroom, where he’s staring at the mirror and trying to convince himself everything is fine.

“No, but he did tell me to stay out of trouble for the weekend, because he’s in Seattle.” Bucky shrugs.

“I’m sure you can manage a weekend, Buck.” Steve says, wryly. “What’re you cooking?”

“Tomato sauce, for tomorrow night. I’m gonna make eggplant parmigiana.” Bucky tastes the sauce and then holds the spoon out to Steve. “More pepper?”

“Mmm,” Steve says thoughtfully, “maybe a pinch?” He scratches the back of his neck and gets two bottles of beer out of the fridge. “So, tonight’s up to me?”

“No, tonight is beer and burgers at that place down the street.” Bucky turns the heat down, “Hill and Tasha are gonna be there, and so are Clint and Darcy.”

Steve scowls, slightly, and takes a mouthful of beer. “I don’t know, it’s been a long day. I was thinking Dog Cops and takeout.”

“Yeah, that’s nice,” Bucky says, “but it’s not gonna happen. Darcy told me you were squirreling. So, beer, burgers, relaxation.”

Steve sees the look on Bucky’s face that means he isn’t going to take no for an answer, and thinks about all the nights of beer and burgers that they missed out on and goes to get changed.

Steve gets his Dog Cops marathon in the end. Clint complains he’s missed a few episodes because of events, and Bucky rolls his eyes, fills the fridge with beer and orders pizza. Natasha brings a hazelnut and pear tart that Bucky looks at, askance, until she rolls her eyes. “Dean and Deluca, you loser.”

“Thank fuck for that.” Bucky smiles and hands her a beer, before she sits on the back of the sofa, pretending not to care when Officer Setter gets into a tricky situation in an alleyway.

Bucky is watching from the kitchen, leaning on the side. Steve nudges his shoulder when he comes through for another beer. “Thanks,” he says, gesturing at Clint who is waving his arms in horror at the screen, and Darcy who is tucked into his shoulder laughing fit to burst. “It’s nice.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says roughly. “It is.” He leans forward, slightly, and Steve can see his eyes, the little flecks of green and grey, and he tries to remember to breathe. Bucky is right there, right in front of him, and Steve can’t think of anything but how beautiful he looks like this, his lips slightly parted, and his heart rate higher than usual. He should move, should get that beer or slide to the side, but all he can see and think about is how easy it would be to lean forward, just an inch, and kiss Bucky. And then he doesn’t have to think anymore, because Bucky is leaning in, and brushing his lips against Steve’s and it feels like coming home, like everything is going to be okay.

Steve pushes off the side, slightly, and feels Bucky’s weight shift backwards, grabs him by the wrist and keeps him exactly where he was. And then he leans forward again, slides his other hand into Bucky’s hair and kisses him, like he’s wanted to since he was sixteen, since he saw Bucky in Zola’s lab, since he turned the light on in Murmansk, and like he has wanted to every day since. He dimly hears Darcy, in the background, saying “fucking finally, oh my God” and Natasha’s low laugh.

“I told you he was your boy,” Carol says the next morning when he sees her on the landing strip. She’s leaning on a jet, waiting for Ahlgren to finish with the junior agents.

Steve smiles and looks across at Bucky, who is waiting out the final briefing points with Okonebe as patiently as he knows how, which just means he isn’t rolling his eyes too much, and smiles. “Yeah, I guess you did.”