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If you asked Bucky’s mother (or his teachers, or his boss) what his biggest personal flaw was, she would probably tell you that it was his tendency to act without thinking. Now, he would and has on many occasions, argue that this makes him quick on his feet and adaptable. But it does also sometimes lead to situations like this, leaving him hunkered down in a nook inside a subway station, a terrified little girl shielded behind his back as actual goddamn aliens stalked around on the platform in front of them. True, there was a fairly good chance she’d be dead if he hadn’t scooped her into the little crevice with him, but now he found himself at loss for what to do besides act as meat shield and hope that if he got shot by an alien (holy fuck) that he’d at least avoid crushing her. He can feel her hands curled into the back of his jacket, and she’s terrified into silence, but that does nothing to stop her shaking.Through the haze of fear and adrenaline flooding his system, Bucky spares a moment to be grateful that they were underground. He can hear the smashes and feel the concussive power of the whatever’s happening up there reverberating through the earth. He’d been running late to work, stuck on a Q train that couldn’t quite seem to make it out of Brooklyn. When the first wave hit, and the entire earth shook, he’d been halfway out of the station. Now, he was glad he hadn’t made it. He’d watched the girl’s mother get shot in the chest. Then he’d reacted without thinking, picking her up and tucking them away into the nearest confined space he could get too. He watched another of the motherfucking aliens pass in front of their hiding space, and through the ice in his veins and the hammering of his heart, spared a second to wonder why they were being left alone. It was almost like.... once they were quiet and out of the way, they were beneath notice. If he strained a little around the corner, he could see a couple of other groups of people, clustered together on the floor. Like they were being corralled, penned up and kept... for what? For slaughter? Like fucking hell. Better to go down fighting.And any other time, that might have been all the thought Bucky required before acting, doing something brash and stupid. But he could still feel the little girl’s hands clutching his jacket, and what was he gonna do? Rush out to punch a (motherfucking) alien in the face, and leave her sitting here alone? He’d just about made up his mind that sitting tight was still probably the best plan, even though his brain was screaming for action, when the aliens.... collapsed. Like puppets with their strings cut, they just fell to the floor, like whatever was keeping them alive had suddenly be severed. There’s a moment of ringing silence, in which fear and hope exploded inside Bucky’s chest, and the aliens still didn’t move. Cautiously, Bucky starts to scoot out of the alcove a bit, only to hear a whimper and feel a tug on his jacket, trying to pull him back. “Hey,” He says, trying to twist around to look at the scared little girl behind him. “Hey, I think it’s alright, I think they’re all–”Then the world exploded. ___Everything was light, and pain, and a small pair of hands shaking him. He taught maybe he could hear someone crying. Maybe a girl? The world resolved itself a little around him, and he tried to focus. Above him was... his sister? But no, Becca hadn’t been this young in years. And she’d never been covered in ash and streaked with tears, backlit by sunlight streaming in through a hole in the ceiling. There were more sounds, voices, calling out, and vaguely Bucky knew he should call back. Someone should come help this girl. She was crying, maybe she was hurt... He couldn’t tell if he actually managed to make a sound, or if her crying was enough to attract attention, but soon there were other people moving around them.Then someone who looked an awful lot like Captain America kneeled down next to them, Bucky figured consciousness had given up on him at that point, and stopped trying to cling to it.___The next time Bucky manages to claw his way to consciousness, he became aware first of a steady beeping somewhere to his right. Second to that is the warm weight tucked against his right side, small and heavy. Confused, he cracks his eyes open to look down at himself. He’s... in a hospital bed, which explains the beeping, and there’s a little girl tucked into the crook of his right arm, which explains the weight. And there’s.... backlit by the light from the open door, there’s a man sitting in the chair next to his bed, ash and soot covering the bright red, white and blue of his uniform. He’s hunched over, head in his hands, blond hair sticking up in a million directions.“Are you Captain America?” Bucky asks, which is probably no where near the most pressing question he could ask. But if the pleasant numbness he’s feeling is any indication, he’s probably on some good drugs. Like, a lot of them.The man startles, jerking upright and looking over at Bucky. “Yeah, I am.” The response seems automatic, like he hadn’t thought before speaking, and Bucky doesn’t know what to do other than to blink at him. This seems to startle the man– Captain America– out of his surprise. “I’m sorry, you were unconscious and I needed a place to sit down, and this is the only room this hospital that was quiet. They’re doubling people up in rooms, but she wouldn’t let go of you so they’re just leaving you two in here, and– I can go.”“No, it’s fine, you live your life, pal,” Bucky says intelligently, and then passes out again. When he wakes up the next time, Captain America is gone, and Bucky’s mother has taken the vacant chair. The little girl, who’s name is Sasha, is awake and still refusing to leave Bucky’s side. A nurse tries to pry her away, with well meaning but firm words like temporary placement and trying to find a next of kin, and then she starts to shake with silent tears and cling silently to Bucky’s side. He has the visceral sense memory of her pulling him back from the edge of a tunnel seconds away from imminent collapse, and then he’s clinging back, telling the nurse it’s fine if she stays, he wants her there.Then pain overwhelms him again, and he leaves it to his mother to deal with. She’s good at making people see sense.___Sasha’s aunt comes by a couple days into Bucky’s hospital stay. She’s stuck by his side most of the time, not saying much and watching everyone with wide, scared eyes. From what Bucky’s gathered, the aunt is the sister of an absent father no one has heard from in years, not the mother they’d watched fall to a Chitauri weapon. He’s left to watch helplessly as the aunt tries to talk to Sasha, tries to coax her to speak, while she clings to his hand.“Do you want to come live with me?” the aunt- Cici- asks, and Sasha looks back to Bucky, eyes wide and scared looking.“I’m not gonna be in this bed forever, kid,” he says gently, passing his hand briefly over the top of her head. He’d helped her pull her hair into two little brown puffs earlier, and managed to pull a couple of words out of her in the process. Even a smile, once. “I don’t think they’re gonna let you come home with me.”Sasha looks back at her aunt, shy and clingy still, and Cici sighs. “I don’t live that far away, honey. Your friend can come visit you in Queens.” “Yeah, practically next door,” Bucky tries to reassure her, pretending that he hasn’t gotten used to her presence. You can’t take care of a kid, Barnes, he reminds himself. You’re only 26, you’re barely feeding yourself, and you have roommates. It doesn’t do much in the face of the hurt look on Sasha’s face, or the way she clings to him even tighter. She still doesn’t speak, and the aunt sighs, straightening up. “The doctors said that she can talk, she’s just choosing not too,” Cici says, sounding frustrated. “They recommended we take her to a therapist, but it seems like she’s just being stubborn.”“She can hear you,” Bucky says cooly, squeezing Sasha’s hand gently. She squeezes back, just a little, and he feels a flare of protectiveness in his chest. “And she can talk, but she watched her mother die, and the world fall apart around her. What do you say after that?”Cici’s mouth gave an unhappy twist, but she did at least look a bit chagrined. “I wasn’t expect this– but then, where any of us expecting aliens?” She sighs again, passing her hand over her eyes wearily. “You can stay with your friend for now, okay honey? We’ll figure something out.”Sasha just nods, resting her head on the side of Bucky’s shoulder, and he smiles weakly at Cici as she leaves. “Do you know her very well, kid?” he asks, and it’s no surprise when she shakes her head. “How do you feel about going to stay with her?”“Scared,” Sasha says quietly, and Bucky frowns.“Of her?” At the shake of Sasha’s head, he sighs. “Of everything else, right?” She nods, and he hugs her close. “I think she means well. I think she’ll try to do right by you. But I’ll be just a phone call away. We can hang out and everything. S’what friends are for.”“Friends,” she says softly, poking his side, and he laughs, ignoring the ache in his chest.___Bucky doesn’t see Captain America again before he leaves the hospital. This isn’t exactly surprising, given that he’s Captain America. Bucky suspects he wasn’t really supposed to see him the first time, helmetless and tired and slumped in the darkness of Bucky’s hospital room. If the stuff Bucky’s been reading on the internet is to believed, the guy had been awake for about two weeks before the Chitauri descended from the sky. Bucky can’t blame him for trying to steal a moment of peace, but he also really thinks Cap would have prefered that moment to go unobserved. So Bucky kind of expects he’ll never see the guy again.It really should have occurred to him that he worked at Stark Industries. If he’d thought about it, it would have been pretty obvious that the newly-dubbed ‘Avengers’ would probably be in and around Stark Tower, even as it started reconstruction. So he really, really should have been prepared to run into a tall blonde with a recognizably heroic jaw in the 87th floor coffee bar. Somehow, he wasn’t even a little prepared for it. He’d been in the lab since 6am, helping his supervisor and the rest of his team clear through the wreckage that had been left of their projects, figuring out what was salvageable and what would have to be started again from the ground up. He was probably covered in dust and grease, and his attention is focused on his phone. (He’s supposed to pick Sasha up after school, which was why he’d come in so early, and hang out with her until her aunt got out of work at 8pm, but apparently she’d skipped school again.)Preoccupied with the coffee orders from his team, and worry about his new surrogate-niece, he nearly walked right into the man standing at the end of the line. “Shit, I’m sorry–” he started, glancing up and cutting himself off. “Hey!” He said in delighted recognition, then realized that maybe one half-drugged up exchange with someone hiding in his hospital room maybe didn’t brook that level of familiarity.Cap looked surprised, which okay- fair, but smiled nonetheless and held out his hand to shake. “Hello, Mr.–” he starts, formal and old fashion, and Bucky can’t help find it a little endearing. “Barnes, Bucky Barnes. You can just call me Bucky, though, since I think you pulled part of Park Avenue off me.”Cap’s face shutters a little, and he says “Right,” in a oddly firm kind of voice that makes Bucky think he probably doesn’t remember that. Which is probably also fair, since he had to have saved literally thousands of civilians that day. On top of the whole... Fighting aliens thing. “You also saw me in a paper dress,” Bucky whispers under his breath, leaning in conspiratorially. “I think that puts us on a first name basis, don’t you?” A little chuckle, and Cap inclines his head a bit. “Maybe so. I guess you can call me, Steve.”“Hiya, Steve,” Bucky says with a grin, and they move forward in line a couple paces. He searches for something else to say, is about to comment on the weather to keep from doing something completely rude like asking Steve if he likes the future. The dude just got attacked by aliens. Bucky can probably fill the answer in for that by himself.Steve saves him the trouble of asking, “So, uh, did Stark get his relief effort off the ground?”“Huh?” Bucky asks, completely wrong footed. Relief effort? What would definitely be a project for the legal or financial team, not Bucky’s tiny corner of RnD.“Stark, he’d mentioned bringing in some of the survivors from ground zero of the battle to maybe look at setting up a relief trust...” Steve trailed off, presumably in response to the blank look on Bucky’s face. “That’s not why you’re here,” he hedged, and Bucky shook his head.“I work here,” Bucky replies, tugging his SI ID from where it’s tucked into his pocket. The ID tags were mostly a formality since as far as Bucky knew Stark’s AI was built right into the tower and could probably get a read on if anyone who wasn’t supposed to be here had come into the building. “I mean, I’m a research assistant in the bioengineering department. I’ve only worked here for about a year, since I finished grad-school, but. You know. Authorized personnel.” He finished lamely.“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed,” Steve starts, and he sounds awkward, and Jesus. Way to go Buck, making the poor guy feel bad.“Nah, it’s like seeing teachers at the grocery store, right? We form associations about people and only expect to see them in certain contexts.” He shrugs, and they move up a bit more in line. “I was late for work that day, got stuck on the subway outta Brooklyn, or I woulda already been in the tower when the attack started.” “You’re from Brooklyn?” Steve asked, lighting up little bit. “I grew up there.”And okay, yeah. Bucky knew that. Pretty much every kid who had come up in Brooklyn knew that, had known of Captain America as a hometown folk hero. Hell, Bucky remembers when the old statue of Cap used to stand on the edge of Atlantic Avenue, before they moved it to start development of the Barclays Center. But the thing is, the guy in front of him didn’t seem like the legend Bucky had grown up hearing about. No, he seemed more like a lonely guy desperately grabbing onto something familiar.“Yup,” Bucky says, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet. “Grew up near Sheepshead. My mom’s family was part of the big Russian migration there, and she wanted to stick around Little Odessa. Live in Crown Heights now though.” “I lived in Vinegar Hill, down by the Navy Yards?” Steve supplied, and Bucky nodded to show he knew the place. “Lotsa Brooklyn Irish there, once upon a time,” Bucky says knowingly, and Steve gives a bashful little smile. It’s frankly way more adorable than it should be on the paragon of virtue and moral fiber. “Yeah, used to be,” Steve agrees, and then there conversation gets cut off because it’s suddenly Steve’s turn to order coffee. Bucky takes the excuse to check his phone. Sasha hadn’t answered his text in words, but she’d sent him a picture of a pile of pillows and blankets, which presumably meant she was still at her aunt’s house. Then it’s Bucky’s turn to order, and he rattles off the 6 orders for the rest of his team and his own large chai with a shot. He half expected Steve to be gone, but he’s hovering around by the condiment bar, and Bucky takes this as an invitation to continue their conversation. He strolls over to wait for his drinks and gives Steve a smile. “So you know I work here. Do you work here?”Steve looks started by the question, and then makes a thoughtful face. “I don’t really know,” he admits. “I come here and listen to a lot of other people talk about what can be done to fix the world. I’m not sure if that really counts as work, or if I’m doing much of it.”“You still living in Brooklyn?” Bucky asks, curious, because, okay, he was in the hospital for over a week but he thinks he’d probably have heard about it if Brooklyn’s favorite son had come home.“No, I. They got me an apartment in Manhattan.” Steve’s voice has gone flat again, and Bucky doesn’t know who ‘they’ are in this instance but Steve doesn’t seem happy about it.“That’s gotta be weird, for a kid who grew up in Brooklyn,” Bucky comments, watching passively as the barista starts making his supervisor’s latte. “Growing up, people who lived in Manhattan were like a different species. Like, it’s weird even working here sometimes.”“God, you have no idea,” Steve says, with a laugh that sounds like it hurt. “Everyone seemed to remember I’m from New York, but. Brooklyn was its own city then, mostly. I think I could count on my fingers and toes how many times I really went into Manhattan, before.”“Plenty of places to live in Brooklyn now,” Bucky says mildly, watching Steve out of the corner of his eye. “Even though it’s a pain to take the Q in here everyday. It gets stuck near the tunnel a lot, and sometimes aliens attack you when you get to 5th avenue.”This gets him a smile, and Bucky has to bite his lip to ward off a giggle. Because he’s twelve. “Well, if the meeting I just escaped is to be believe, where the aliens are is pretty much where I should be.”“That sounds like no fun at all,” Bucky says emphatically, which earns him another little smile. The barista hands back the last of his drinks, and Bucky starts stacking them into two cardboard carrying trays.“You need help with that?” Steve asks, and Bucky’s about to say he can manage it, but he glances up in time to see the hopeful look on Steve’s face.“Sure,” he agrees, because hey. Why not? He’s had a rough couple days. He deserves to have a pretty boy carry his books, metaphorically speaking. “Maybe I can show you around my neighborhood sometime?” he ventures tentatively. “I can see that it might be a bit overwhelming to go somewhere that’s like... Just a little bit wrong? But maybe it’ll help if it’s just like ‘oh here’s a Thai place I like let’s get some khao phat and dumplings’, or ‘this place has the best ice cream.’ That kind of shit.”“I’ve never had thai food,” Steve admits. “I’ve never had a lot of food people seem to eat a lot. I had shawarma the other day?” He volunteers hopefully, and Bucky laughs. “From the halal place down the street? I think I must have eaten there like three times a week my first month here.” They keep up the chatter as the make their way back to Bucky’s lab, and by the time they get there Bucky’s got a warm feeling in his stomach that’s a lot less like meeting a childhood hero and a lot more like talking to a really attractive man who listens to him intensely for about half an hour. Bucky’s team tries very, very hard to keep their chill as Steve helps him pass out their coffees and it about half works.Then Steve’s shrugging self-deprecatingly and saying he should probably let Bucky get back to work. “I kept you for a while,” he says, and fuck he looks... almost shy? That’s too fucking much.“I don’t mind being kept,” Bucky replies, and he can actually hear Jillian snort her drink, which means Steve definitely can. “You know where to find me if you want that city tour.”“I do,” Steve agrees, and smiles a little awkwardly at the rest of the team before beating a hasty retreat. At which point the rest of Bucky’s coworkers descend on him, squealing and flapping and asking questions. He’s never going to live this down, but somehow he’s okay with that.____Sasha cuts school again on Thursday, which Bucky knows because she fucking turns up at his work. Or as close as she can get, since security really isn’t going to let her out of the lobby and up into an R&D lab without any kind of warning or notice. They’ve finally got all their shit sorted for the most part. Almost three weeks after The Battle of New York, and they’re finally almost ready to start their actual work again. So when Bucky’s supervisor gets a call asking if he can please come down to the lobby, he’s in the clean room, scrubbed up and working on the subcutaneous transmitters they’re adapting from Stark’s work on the Iron Man suits. His brain is well and thoroughly involved in electrical transmission and implant integration, and he’s distracted enough that he barely registers where he’s being sent or why.He comes out of his own head when he makes it down to the security desk to find Sasha sitting on a couch in front of it, swinging her feet with her backpack on the seat next to her. “Sash?” he asks, startled, pulling up to a stop, and she looks up at him, smiling weakly.She looks– well, she looks like shit, honestly. She’s got circles under her eyes, and she’s thinner than she should be, and even though he saw her three days ago it’s obvious she’s not sleeping or eating well. “Hey, kid,” he starts, and maybe he should be angry with her, but he’s not her fucking parent and she’s here for a reason. She waves, still silent, and he sighs, glancing at the time read-out on his Starkphone. If he takes lunch now and stays late, he can probably spend enough time with her to figure out what’s going on. “Can I take her up to the cafe on 87th?” he asks the guard behind the desk.“As long as she wears a visitor's badge and stays with you,” the guard replies, and then gives him a warning look. “Thanks,” he says gratefully, and motions for her to follow him into the elevator. “87th floor,” he says, and the doors swish shut silently. Sasha tucks herself into his side, looking around curiously, and Bucky wraps his arm around her. He points at the sliver of space between the panels in corner of the elevator, where if you look closely enough you can see the strip of visual and audio pick-ups. “That’s JARVIS. He’s an AI built by Mr. Stark, and he runs the building, including the elevators. Know what an AI is?”Sasha nods, biting her lip, then guesses, “Robot?”“Pretty much,” he agrees, smoothing her curly hair under his hand. “Like the brain and personality of the robot. He doesn’t have a body, really, he lives in the building, and in Mr. Stark’s suits.”“Cool,” she replies, looking closer at the corner of the elevator. She waves, and the lights flicker in response. Bucky laughs, delighted, and squeezes her shoulder.“Hey, he likes you! He doesn’t usually talk to people who aren’t Mr. Stark.”“Talking’s hard,” Sasha says to the wall, and that’s enough to deflate the bubble of childish excitement of actual fucking robots building in Bucky’s chest. She still barely spoke to him, and didn’t talk at all to her aunt or her teachers, from what he’d been told.“Indeed it is, Ms,” came the reply from everywhere and nowhere as the doors swished open. “Have a nice day.”“Thanks, JARVIS,” Bucky replies, offering his hand for Sasha to take, which she does with a smile and a parting wave to the elevator. He bites back a grin, and doesn’t tell her that JARVIS will be able to see them no matter where they go in the tower. Instead, he leads her by the hand to the cafe.Once they’re settled in the corner of the room, him with a salad and some chips, her with the sandwich she’d pointed too, that he really lets himself think about what’s going on. “You know I’m always happy to see you, right?” he asks, and she nods, giving him a close-lipped smile as she picks at her food. “And you know I’m smart enough to know you’re supposed to be in school right now?” Now she looks a little guilty, but nods down at her sandwich nonetheless. “So what gives, kid? What’re you doing here?” She shrugs, picking at her sandwich, and he sighs, switching tactics. “How’d you get here, hon?”“Bus,” she replies, and he puts it together, the timing it would take to get on the bus like she’s going to school, and then catch buses from Queens to Park Avenue instead. Seemed about right. He feels frustratingly out of his depth, all of a sudden. It was easy to throw himself between her and aliens. How can he help protect her from her own mind?“You’re not eating or sleeping much, are you?” He guesses, and when she shakes her head, his stomach sinks. “Your aunt’s giving you stuff to eat, right?”Sasha nods, then looks up at him. “Not really hungry,” she admits, and Bucky’s sure her therapist would notice this, even if she doesn’t tell her. Right?“Tell you what,” he says, making a decision without thinking because of who he is as a person. “You finish that sandwich and I’ll talk to Cici and my roommates and see if you can stay with me this weekend, okay?” Sasha grins and takes a big bite of her sandwich, which makes Bucky roll his eyes. “Okay, okay, don’t make yourself sick. Eat it slowly, I’m not in a hurry.” Bucky’s pretty used to carrying most of the conversation when he hangs out with Sasha, used to her one word replies. He’s gotten pretty good at framing questions that she can answer without talking much, this or that replies. It keeps her active and engaged, and he may not know the exact psychology of selective muteness, but he figures if she’s willing to engage with him at all that’s gotta be better than nothing.By the time her sandwich is gone, he’s been away from work for an hour and a half, and he knows he either needs to get back or take the rest of the day off. “I’m not gonna be able to get you to go back to school, am I?” he asks, and she shrugs, looking down. Right. Goal for the weekend: figure out what the deal is with school.“Alright, I’m gonna call you an Uber back to your Aunt’s, and I want you to text me the whole ride, and send me a picture when you get home so I know you’re safe, okay? And I’ll call your aunt tonight to work out something about this weekend. Deal?”“Deal,” she agrees, and they shake on it. She holds his hand the whole way down to the lobby, and clings to him when he hugs her goodbye. It makes his heart ache, being able to feel her fear so palpably. “It’s gonna be okay, kid,” he promises, hugging her close. “I’ll see you soon.”He doesn’t go back into the clean room until he gets her picture, proof she’s home safe and sound.––––Bucky hadn’t actually expected Steve to show up in his lab again.In truth, he hadn’t really expected to see Steve again at all, but that didn’t stop him from loitering at the 87th floor coffee bar for about 20 minutes Friday morning. Eventually, though, he was forced to admit that he was being ridiculous, and being any later to work would mean he’d end up having to stay late. As it was, he’s already going to have to endure a bunch of ribbings from his coworkers about his super soldier thirst.Which he deserved. Totally. He was judging himself enough already.He got away with only mild teasing, partially because Hannah was already in the clean room, and Jillian was better at letting things go when it was just her. Work was absorbing, and any free moment Bucky had went to texting with Sasha (actually in school today, and unhappy about it), so by the time lunch rolled around, pretty blondes with blue eyes and shy smiles were far from Bucky’s mind. Honestly, he probably would have ended up working through lunch if door to the lab hadn’t swung open. His supervisor greets whoever it is, and people swing in and out of R&D enough that Bucky doesn’t pay it much mind. That is, until Hannah coughs and kicks him hard in the shins from her station across the table. Confused and annoyed, Bucky looks up, then at her insistent eyebrow wiggling, glances over his shoulder.Steve’s standing by the front door of their lab, hands stuffed in his pockets and a sheepish smile on his face as he meets Bucky’s glance. Startled, Bucky raises a hand in an awkward wave. Across from him, Hannah groans. “Moron,” she mutters under her breath, and kicks him again. “Go talk to him.”Which, what the hell. Bucky’s never been one to shy away from an opportunity, especially one dressed in tight khakis and a fitted button down. “Hey,” Steve greats him, and he still look a little shy, little awkward, like he’s unsure if his presence is entirely welcome. “I was just coming down to see if you’d had lunch yet, but if you’re still working–”“He’s not,” Bucky’s supervisor cuts in, because everyone he works with is a medling busybody, apparently. “Barnes, if you don’t take a lunch I’m going to make you scrub down the filtration system in the clean room.”“We literally have a robot to do that,” Bucky protests, indignant, and beside him Steve snorts. “Better take your lunch then, can’t put hardworking machines out of business,” Steve says mildly, but there’s a twinkle in his eye. Shit, he’s cute. Shit. “Can’t have that,” Bucky mutters, shaking his head. “Alright, I just gotta scrub up, then we can go.”Which is how Bucky ends up at the sandwich shop on the 23rd floor, eating panini’s with Steve fucking Rogers. “I didn’t even know this place was here,” Bucky marvels, glancing around the sandwich shop. “Really?” Steve asks, curious, and Bucky shrugs.“Honestly, there’s a enough cafes and shit on the R&D floors that I pretty much never wander too far away from there on the days I don’t work through lunch.”“Do you do that often?” “More now than I did before,” Bucky admits, and at Steve’s curious expression, Bucky sighs. How do you explain to the cute guy who insisted on buying your lunch that you’ve accidentally adopted a surrogate niece who keeps skipping school. That seems outside the realm of casual small talk. But then again, Steve had pulled both Bucky and Sasha out of the remnants of the park avenue subway station. Nothing about the last two weeks had been normal.“Do you remember the little girl who was in the hospital with me?” he asks, and Steve squints, thinking.“Vaguely.” He gives a sheepish laugh, and brushes his bangs off his forehead with the practiced easy of a nervous tick. “To tell you the truth, I’d been awake for about 48 hours straight at that point, I was lucky to not be actively hallucinating.” “Shit,” Bucky says emphatically, because, well. Shit.“Basically,” Steve agrees with a little laugh and a tip of his head. “I remember that your room was quiet, and mostly empty because she wouldn’t leave your side. Is she your step-sister?”Which was a pretty reasonable guess, given how they looked nothing alike. Still, Bucky shakes his head, and explains pulling Sasha into the alcove, hiding her. “I guess she kind of imprinted on me? Anyway, she’s been sent to live with her aunt, but she keeps skipping school. I’m the only person she’ll speak to at all, and she hardly speaks to me. So anyway, long story short, I’m tryin’a be done work earlier so I can be around if she needs me.”Steve gives a thoughtful nod. “That’s very kind of you.”From anyone else it might have seemed sarcastic but Steve has a very genuine look on his face, and it almost makes Bucky blush. “Well, you know. She’s hasn’t got a lot of people in her corner right now. And if I can help, shouldn’t I? ‘Takes a village’ or whatever.”“Oh, you don’t have to tell me. I was raised by a single working mother.”“I just wish I could get her to talk to me,” Bucky admits, and he hates saying it out loud, doesn’t want to give voice to the frustration that’s been slowly mounting. “Sometimes I can get her to answer a question with a single word or so, but. It’s hard to figure out how to help her if she won’t talk.”“Have you tried signing with her?” Steve asks, making some kind of gesture with his hands.“Signing, like... sign language?” Bucky asks, confused. “She can hear, though.”Steve smiles, and Bucky gets the distinct impression he’s being humored, however good-naturedly. “But she doesn’t want to speak. So don’t make her? Help her find another way to communicate.”“That’s... that might be worth trying,” Bucky admits, wrinkling his nose. “I’ll have to learn, but i’m sure there’s stuff online.”“Seems to me you can find anything you want to learn online,” Steve agrees. “I’ll have to check it out,” Bucky murmurs, mind already skipping three steps ahead, thinking about how he can approach it with Sasha, how they can learn it together. “Thank you, Steve.”“You’re welcome, Bucky,” Steve replies, an oddly formal turn of phrase, and for the first time in a few minutes Bucky is reminded of the differences in their life experiences. “Anyway, sorry for rambling about that. It’s just on my mind,” he says dismissively, because shit, if he wastes a whole lunch date with Steve Rogers just worrying Sasha he’s going to be kicking himself. And his coworkers would also kick him.“No problem,” Steve says with a shrug and smile. “I feel like I know you better now.”Bucky’s gonna start fucking blushing again if Steve doesn’t stop being so sincere. “So have you been stuck in the tower since the last time we talked?”It’s enough to change the subject, and Steve tells Bucky about the fancy restaurant he got dragged to. “I’ve been trying to find time to get to the Met, but I just haven’t been able to get away.”“Have you been to the Brooklyn Museum? Near Prospect Park?” Bucky asks, curious, and Steve shakes his head.“I know it exists, but I haven’t been.”“It’s a great place,” Bucky jumps in with a smile. “My little sister is really into art, I’ve gone with her a bunch of times. They really focus on trying to give a platform to local artists in Brooklyn, and also changing the way we like. Approach art? Last time I went the entire ground floor was curated around the color blue. Instead of being divided by country or time period, it was all focused on the color. You had chinese vases next to impressionist paintings next to modern pieces.”“That sounds amazing,” Steve says, eyes bright, and he looks more genuinely excited than Bucky’s seen him.“Brooklyn’s pretty cool,” Bucky says casually, but he softens it with a wink.Steve laughs in response. “Well, I met this guy who offered to give me a tour. Maybe I can convince him to take me this weekend.”“He’s probably free Sunday,” Bucky plays along, trying to ignore the way his heart is thudding in his chest. “Saturday he’ll probably trying to find a free ASL class for a 11 year old, but Sunday. Sunday should be free.”Steve’s grin followed him all the way back to his lab, a happy bubble expanding inside his chest. ––Saturday morning found Bucky standing awkwardly outside a community center, watching as a bunch of kids climbed all over each other on the playground outside. A quick google search at turned up some scheduled ASL classes provided as part of the community programing at this center, and he had decided to come down and talk to someone about signing Sasha up.However, standing outside the center he finds himself a little at a loss. How did you even explain this kind of situation to a stranger? She wasn’t his daughter, or sister, or niece. Who was he to be making these kinds of choices for her?Help her find another way to communicate, Steve had said. If Bucky could be brave enough to stare down a laser gun, and brave enough to ask Captain America on a date, he could be brave enough to walk into a community center.The sounds of laughter and children’s voices echoed through the halls as he stepped through the front door, giving the place a bright, living feel. A quick look around revealed a room which appeared to be an office off to the left, and Bucky knocks on the door, flashing a smile at the woman who looked up to greet him. “Hey, I was hoping to talk someone about the ASL class offered here?”“I can help you with that,” she says with a smile, tossing her long dark bread over her shoulder as she stood. “I’m Nina Alvarez, I run weekend programing here.”“Bucky Barnes,” he offers back, holding out his hand out to shake hers. She took it, and then gestured him to sit in the chair in front of her desk.“So you’re interested in the ASL group? It’s less of a class in the structured sense, and more of an opportunity to expose the kids who come here to signing and help them get familiar with some basic signs. I should warn you, it’s not really structured for hard of hearing kids,” Nina explained, folding her hands in front of her on the desk.“That’s alright,” Bucky agrees, nodding. “My... friend, the kid I’d want to come with- she can hear. She just doesn’t speak much.” Nina gave him a curious look, assessing. “We don’t usually open the classes up to adults.”“I figured,” Bucky admits, sheepish. “But to be frank, I don’t think she’d come if I couldn’t come with her, and I think she needs this. She was caught in the Incident a few weeks ago, and hasn’t really spoken since. I just want to maybe give her some new tools, that’s all.”The clouded look on Nina’s face cleared. “I understand. I’ll speak to the instructor today, and hopefully we can get you set up to come in next weekend.”“Thank you,” Bucky breathed, relieved. He gave Nina his contact information, already running through the ways to hype this up for Sasha. “I have some materials I can give you, if you want to get a jumpstart,” Nina offers, rising from her desk and going around to a wall of printed papers.“That’d be great,” Bucky agrees, surprised, accepting a handful of leaflets detailing some basic signs.Sasha turns up around 2pm, texting Bucky when she gets off the bus near his place. He heads down to meet her, plans already turning in his head. “Hey kid,” he greets her, giving her a one-armed hug. He gets a smile and a hug in return, and he leaves his arm over her shoulder, guiding her down the street. “How about we get some pizza, huh? Then we can head back and play Mario Kart.”“Fun,” she agrees, voice small and quiet, but the grin on her face is bright. They grab slices of pizza and cans of coke, sitting at a table on the sidewalk outside the little pizza parlor. She’s quiet but seems happy, and Bucky’s content to fill the silence or let it rest, enjoying the sun and the food together. Bucky has two missions as they settle into his couch, controllers in hand: a) figure out what the deal is with school and b) bring up the ASL classes. His own years of teenage awkwardness and (milder) emotional upheaval taught him that sometimes it’s easier to have hard talks when you don’t have to make eye contact. Short of directly copying his father and locking Sasha in a car on a long drive to visit family in Indiana, this seemed like a pretty good substitute.At least the consequences weren’t as severe if he got distracted and took his eyes off the road. Or track. Or sand-and-water-and-wood corse. He let them get through the first race, reminding himself constantly to dial it back a little bit so he didn’t completely eviscerate an 11-year-old. Sasha was pretty good at the game, but she had nothing on Bucky’s friends, who could practically run the track blind-folded. Or at least blindingly drunk.As they queued up for their second race, Bucky glanced sideways over his shoulder at Sasha. Her hair was pulled up into a poof at the back her of head, and she had a hoodie on with the sleeves pulled down over her hands. She looked healthy, well groomed, even if she still wasn’t eating super well. But then, if she wasn’t hungry most of the time, he supposed that wasn’t too surprising.“You know,” he starts, revving the wheels on his little digital car. “I bet Mr. Stark as a bunch of really awesome racing cars.”Sasha grinned over at him, eyes bright, and she nodded. “Sometimes when we’re at work, we can see him fly by in the Iron Man suit. Everyone acts like they’re bored with it now, but I think it’s still pretty cool,” Bucky admits, conspiratorially, and Sasha nods, enthusiastic. “You know JARVIS, who talked to you in the elevator? He runs the Iron Man suits.”“Really?” Sasha asks, wide-eyed, taking her eyes off the course long enough to miss a ramp and bonk into the side of the track.“Yeah,” Bucky grins, nudging her and nodding back to the TV. “You’re about to get shelled by Bowser kid, look out.”They finished the rest of the track, Bucky letting up the lead in the last second to let Sasha pull ahead. When she whooped and grinned at him, he held his hand out for the high five. “You weren’t really supposed to meet JARVIS, though, he doesn’t usually talk to visitors,” Bucky admits, as Sasha settles back into the couch. “Maybe he likes you... Or maybe he could tell you were upset.”Sasha makes a face at him. Even without speaking, she has an amazing “don’t patronize me” look and communicates the concept perfectly. Bucky’s impressed. “Okay, okay,” he says, holding his left hand up in defeat, controller still held in the right. “You surprised me turning up at my work, is all. Especially when you’re supposed to be in school. Did you just walk out of the building in the middle of the day?”“Lunch,” Sasha says with a shrug, like that explained it. Maybe it did, Bucky couldn’t pretend to know enough about middle school anymore to know if kids were allowed off campus. “Why’d you decide to cut class, kid? Not that I am not awesome and totally worth coming to hang out with, because I totally am, but you know.” He made a grandiose gesture, which succeeded in making Sasha snort. “You having problems with other kids?”Sasha sighed, and shook her head. She looked down at the controller in her hand, fiddling with it. He could practically see the gears turning in her brain, could practically feel them getting stuck behind her lips. Not for the first time he found himself wishing he could just pull the words from her brain for her, so she didn’t have to fight to give them form.“Okay, not other kids. Are you having a hard time concentrating in class?” This time she screwed up her face, then gave a half shrug. “Little bit,” she muttered under her breath, then gave him a wry smile. “Pretty normal.” Four whole words, and two whole concepts communicated. It was the most Bucky’d been able to get out of her so far. “That’s fair,” he agreed, trying not to seem overly excited or affected by the fact that she was talking to him. “I remember being in middle school, even if it was like a billion years ago. There were definitely more interesting things to think about than class.” This earned him and eye roll and an elbow in the ribs, which genuinely felt like progress. So not other kids, and not classes. “Are you having a problem with a teacher?”He knew he’d hit the nail on the head the moment the words were out of his mouth. Sasha froze, eyes trained fixedly on the revolving display of a Mario Kart on the screen. She looked like a deer in the headlights, and Bucky sighed, setting his controller down to turn on the couch and face her completely. “You know I’m on your side, kid. Right?” It took her a couple minutes to unwind, and he made himself wait patiently, until she dared to shoot a glance at him. “I’m on your side,” he promised sincerely, and she gave a little nod. “Okay,” she agreed, voice baby bird fragile.“Okay,” he echoed, then gave a decisive nod. “Alright, so. What trouble are you having? No wait, I can do better than that, we can make this ‘yes or no.’ Is it... about something your learning?” Sasha shook her head.“Okay. Is it... something you did?” Sasha squints, and then holds up her hand in a kinda gesture. “Okay, okay. Something you did... or didn’t do?”Frustration seems to crest over Sasha's face, and she balls her hands into fists before saying abruptly, “Talking.”Talking... oh. Oh. “You have a teacher giving you crap for not talking.” Sasha nods and then holds up two fingers. “Two teachers? That’s ridiculous, they should be helping you, not giving you a hard time for it. Does your aunt know?”Sasha shrugs, and Bucky winced internally. No, of course she wouldn’t. She’s feeding and clothing the kid, but seemed completely unaware how to handle anything else. She had at least gotten Sasha into therapy, though it didn’t seem to be having a lot of effect from what Bucky could see. Still, the barriers of communication between Sasha and her aunt seemed uncermounted to Bucky’s outsider perspective. “I might have an idea about that,” Bucky starts, and he’ll admit to himself he’s nervous about bringing this up. “You seem alright nodding and doing other kind of gestures. Have you ever learned any sign language?”Sasha tilted her head to the side curiously, then grinned and flipped him off.“Wow, okay,” he breathed out, laughing. “You might be from New York, but you’re still 11, so you know... don’t do that.” She stuck her tongue out, and he let the tension bleed out of him with a laugh. “Well, I found a community center that teaches sign language classes, and I thought maybe we could take them together.”There’s a long moment where Sasha looks at him, and he can see the gears going in her brain. Please agree, he can’t help but thing to himself. Please let me get this chance to actually talk with you.“Deal,” she says, offering out her hand, and Bucky grins, taking it with a shake.“Deal!”___He gets a text from Steve that night, after he’s packed Sasha off back to Cici’s.
Are you still interested in going to the Brooklyn Museum tomorrow? –S
Bucky grins down at his phone, leaning his hip against the counter in his kitchen where he’d stopped mid cleanup. The phrasing of the message was kind of delightfully old fashioned, but also nowhere near as clunky as he would half expect from someone who had never seen a cell phone until few months ago.
Sure am. Do you wanna meet up there, or somewhere else first? There’s a couple really nice coffee shops in that area around Prospect Park.
He sets the phone aside, humming to himself as he sticks his hands back into the soapy water in the sink. He hadn’t been on a real, proper date in a while, and though they hadn’t actually 100% confirm that this was a real, proper date, Bucky was pretty sure it was. Sure Steve didn’t chase people down to their workplaces and offer them sincere advice about their personal lives and make plans to go out with them on weeks all the time.Surely.He was just toweling off his hands when his phone buzzed again on the counter. He reached for it, the pleasant flutter excited nerves taking up residence in his stomach again.
We have a pretty good track record with coffee, maybe we should start there. :)
Bucky had to grin, both that the inclusion of the emoji, and the fact that Steve who seemed to be picking up cues from him, had not signed the text this time. Pretty smart, this Cap guy, pretty quick on the draw. Flicking open a search on his phone, Bucky quickly located a likely spot.
There’s a cafe called Lincoln Station right near the museum. Let’s meet there around 10?
Determined not to end up looking like a teenager, constantly staring at his phone while he waited for the cute boy to text him back, Bucky set about pulling together something nice to wear tomorrow. He can feel the phone buzz in his pocket as he stands comparing two different henleys, and nearly drops them to pull it out.
Lincoln Station sounds good to me. See you tomorrow, Bucky.
If Bucky squeaks and jumps around a little bit, absolutely no one has know about it.___Sunday dawned crisp and sunny, just enough of a breeze blowing through to stave off the last hints of summer heat. Bucky wakes to a text from Sasha’s aunt, enquiring about the ASL class. She’s open to the idea, and apparently had done some research on the center after Sasha gave her the pamphlets Bucky’d given her to pass along. Still, she didn’t have the time to go with Sasha, and was hoping Bucky’d be able to take her instead.He texts back that he’s happy to do that, and promises to send along any resources they get so she can learn too. Privately, Bucky thinks that there’s really only any point to this if Cici’s willing to make the effort to communicate with Sasha in turn as well, but that seems like a battle for another day.Today: date. Date with Steve.Bucky grins, rolling out of bed with a flutter of excitement taking up residence in his stomach. He’d picked out his clothes yesterday, a light-blue-almost-white henley and a nice pair of pants. All that was left was to throw himself into the shower and make his hair behave.That process alone took about half an hour of blow-drying and pomading and spot-touching. It was distracting, which was probably a good thing. The last thing he wanted was a chance to dwell on this and lose his nerve. Their last couple encounters had been almost entirely by chance, or at least not expected on Bucky’s part, which meant he didn’t exactly have time to overthink.He definitely had time to overthink now.By the time he was waiting in line at the coffee shop, he’d almost entirely convinced himself that this wasn’t a date, and that Steve would probably think he was an idiot once he got to know him anyway. Which, you know, wasn’t entirely wrong. While he was pretty smart in the area of circuits and mathematics and neron links, he was also the kind of person who tended to act without thinking. Which, you know, sometimes led you to accidentally adopting a surrogate niece and meeting Captain America. But sometimes it also lead to you putting your foot well and truly in your mouth.Pretty idiotic, if you ask him.The bell tinkled over the door into the coffee shop, and Bucky looks up, broken from his trance of self-recrimination. There in the door stands Steve Rogers, just as gorgeous as you’d expect. He’s wearing a blue button down, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and dark blue jeans. It’s just trendy enough to look stylish instead of old fashioned, but Bucky can easily see the echoes of the clothes Steve’s probably most comfortable in, blending into this modern look.Not for the first time, Bucky’s struck by exactly how out of place Steve must feel. He’s so clearly in a moment of transition in his life, and Bucky finds himself fascinated by the melding of old and new. He’s also kind of fascinated by Steve’s arms, and has to physically shake himself out of just... staring at them.Instead, he makes himself stand up and head over to greet Steve with a hug. “Have any trouble getting in from Manhattan?” he asks, as they take their space in line. “Nope,” Steve says happily, tucking his hands into his pockets. “I took my motorbike, which isn’t too hard to park. The one time I tried to park at car this century did not, uh... go well.”Raising his eyebrows, Bucky grins. “Did you crash one of Stark’s fancy cars?”“‘Crash’ is a really strong word,” Steve accuses playfully, “It was more of a tap, really.” At Bucky’s incredulous laugh, Steve gives him a sly grin. “What? I learned how to drive in combat situations and that still doesn’t prepare you for driving in a 21st century city.” “You know, I believe that,” Bucky agreed, moving up in line. They place their orders, and Bucky briefly tries to convince Steve to let him pay. He gets shut down very promptly, though kindly, by Steve’s insistence that he’s got so much back-pay filtering in right now he feels he should buy coffee for everyone in New York out of guilt. The sun is still shining brightly down, fluffy clouds dotting the sky intermittently, and they take their coffees outside to a little table, enjoying the breeze and the smell of the trees blowing in from the park.
A few moments chatting about work is enough to establish both that Steve doesn’t have enough contact with anyone outside the PR team to really know anyone Bucky works with, and also has a way better grasp of the basic tenets of robotics than anyone would give him credit for.“I grew up reading a lot of comics and pulp scifi,” Steve admits, and there’s a little blush to his cheeks. Bucky marvels at it. Captain America was a fucking nerd. Who knew?“Read a lot of H. G. Wells?” Bucky asked, making a guess, and was delighted when Steve lit up in recognition. “I read The Shape of Things to Come when I was a teenager. Never thought I’d actually live to see the turn of the millennium at all. It seemed so far away at the time,”“Did you ever read The Sleeper Awakes?” Bucky asks thoughtfully, tapping a finger on the edge of his cup. “I don’t think I did, no. Should I?”“You know, on second thought, maybe not. Might hit a little too close to home. Kind of a Rip Van Winkle story.” “Ah,” Steve says, forcing a chuckle that immediately makes Bucky regret bringing it up. “Maybe not then.”Way to fucking go, Barnes.“Oh, I found an ASL class for Sasha,” Bucky says, plowing through the momentary awkward silence before it can pick up any steam. “Thanks for suggesting it, she’s pretty excited.”“Oh!” Steve says, startled, but the grin is back on his face. “Good, I’m glad. I hope it’s helpful. Did you figure out why she’s skipping school?”“She’s getting crap from her teachers for not talking,” Bucky says with a sigh. “I told her to tell her therapist, maybe they can help her, give her a note or something. She’d have to actually, you know.... Tell them, though, so who knows. I’m not sure she really talks to anyone but me. Or well. Let’s anyone but me pester her with questions until they figure it out.”He gives a self-conscious laugh, glancing down at his cup again. But not before he catches the look in Steve’s eye, which is almost... fond? Affectionate? Fuck, Bucky doesn’t know.“Maybe she’ll communicate with you because you try,” Steve offers, and his voice is sort of soft. It makes Bucky feel squirmy in a wholly interesting way.They chat until their coffees are done, bouncing back to books then onwards to movies. Bucky spends at least at least ten solid minutes informing Steve that if he doesn’t read or at least watch Harry Potter, he will be missing a massive cultural touchstone for the 21st century. Steve’s at least kind enough not to laugh at him.When they’ve been sitting with empty cups for a period of time, Bucky suggests they head their way to the museum. It’s not far from the cafe, though they do get a bit side tracked when Steve decides he has to climb the massive rock in the park behind the museum. Bucky’s not complaining. It affords him a truly spectacular view of Steve’s ass, which is worth show up for, if you ask him. It becomes very apparent very quickly that Steve knows a lot more about art than Bucky does as soon as they get in the museum. Bucky finds himself fascinated, listening to Steve speak. Even the art that came after Steve’s time, he seems to grasp quickly and with deep intrigue. They walk around the dark reflective room which houses The Dinner Party, each representative place setting crafted in intricate hand-made glory, and Steve stops to read each one.“I missed this,” he says softly, so much so that Bucky almost didn’t hear him. “I can’t believe I missed this. I missed the second wave of feminism and the civil rights movement... I missed so much.”“There’s still a lot to fight for,” Bucky says after a moment. “It’s twenty-twelve and same sex marriage still doesn’t exist in a lot of the country. It only became legal here last year.”Steve looks up at him, something dazed and delighted in his face. “I can’t believe it did. I’m glad it did. I can’t believe it’s not everywhere,” he swallows heavily, then laughs, sheepish. “It’s a lot to process.”“I can only imagine,” Bucky agrees, and bumps his shoulder against Steve’s companionably. Steve smiles back at him, and after a moment’s hesitation, takes his hand, twining their fingers together. Bucky’s stomach swoops.Definitely a date then. They wind their way through the rest of the museum, stopping to study pieces at catch either of their attention. It’s mostly Steve, if Bucky’s being honest he’s way too caught up watching Steve to really be paying much attention to the art. The other man is so thoughtful, intelligent and empathetic, Bucky’s a little blown away by it. He’d known Steve wasn’t a meat-head or the good-old-boy Fox News tried to paint him as, could tell that from the interactions they’d had together up until this point. Still, it was something else to watch Steve walk through exhibits depicting the struggles of minorities and get it. Really get it. It made a feeling of fondness expand in Bucky’s chest, helped along by the way Steve kept taking his hand, shyly at first, and then almost as an afterthought.The sun was setting by the time they left the museum, painting the brick builds of Park Slope a vibrant, fiery orange. “You were right, this place is amazing,” Steve says as they stroll through the park hand in hand. “I wouldn’t have come here on my own, and I would have been missing out. Thank you, Bucky.”For some reason, this leaves Bucky feeling oddly flustered. How do you accept thanks for just knowing a places exists? Nevertheless, he returns Steve’s smile and squeezes his hand. “Hey, any time. I love Brooklyn, I’m happy to take you to all the best spots.”“It doesn’t feel like Brooklyn,” Steve says, and the tone of his voice is quiet and serious. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s a cool place to visit, I think I could come to love it too. But it’s not Brooklyn to me. It’s too... too rich, too polished. My Brooklyn was where the people who had nowhere else to go went.”Bucky nods in understanding. “It’s pretty hipster now. I get that. I mean hey... I live here.” Steve laughs along with him, which seems to release some of the tension hanging over them. “I mean, I grew up here, but you wouldn’t know it.”They wander back to where Steve had his bike parked eventually, and damn, won’t the image of Steve straddling that bike be burned into Bucky’s brain for the next 10 fucking years. He finds himself reluctant to say goodbye, and so they’re left chatting for a while, Steve half sitting on his bike, Bucky hovering near it.“Thank you again for today,” Steve says, eyes bright and twinkling, “Am I supposed to avoid you at work now, pretend like this never happened.”Bucky snorts, twining his fingers with Steve’s. “Please, my coworkers would literally kill me and skin me if they found out I was trying to hide this. And they would find out. For a bunch of work-obsessed research nerds, they’re very invested in my love life.”Steve grins, and fuck, his smile is so lovely. Bucky’s got butterflies, Jesus, will Steve ever stop making him feel like he’s 12 years old with his first crush. “Good,” Steve admits. “I like seeing you at work. It brightens up my day.”“Who, little old me?” Bucky asks, playing coy, but Steve nods, eyes twinkling but sincere. “Little old you,” Steve agrees, swinging their linked hands a little. “Can I kiss you goodbye, Bucky?”“Oh,” Bucky breathes out, startled by the directness of the question, his stomach swooping a little in response. “I mean, sure, if you wanna.”“I wanna,” Steve agrees, laughter in his voice, and Bucky might get the impression Steve was teasing him if he could think about anything at all other than the way Steve’s broad hand was cupping the side of his face, guiding him down for a kiss.It was sweet and warm and soft, and far, far to brief. For a brief moment, Bucky fought the urge to just climb on to Steve’s lap on the motorcycle and hold on for the ride, but when Steve pulled away Bucky let him go. The dazed way Steve watched him lick his lips afterwards was pretty fucking satisfying, if Bucky did say so himself.“Now you really have to say hi to me at work,” Bucky murmurs. “Can’t have anyone saying Steve Rogers kisses and quits.”Steve snorts, clearly taking this for a common expression rather than Bucky being a punch drunk moron. Bucky’s willing to hide behind the misconception in this situation. He presses another kiss to the side of Bucky’s mouth, briefly there and then gone, and then withdraws. “Let me know how ASL with Sasha goes?”Bucky nods, stepping away onto the sidewalk and trying to compose himself. “I’ll text you.”“Sounds good. Goodnight Bucky.”“G’night,” Bucky calls back, watching as Steve reves up the bike, smiles at him again, and drives away.He maybe floats the rest of the way home. He’s not entirely sure.___Sasha’s waiting outside the community center for him the next morning. Seated on the steps, she’s toeing a skateboard back and forth on the ground in front of her as he walks up, her hair pulled into a puff at the back of her head and headphones on. She grins when she sees him, tugging one ear free and waving. “Hiya kiddo,” he greets her, holding a hand out to pull her up from sitting. “Have a good Saturday?”She shrugs, avoiding his gaze a little. He waits to see if there’ll be a word or too to follow that, but doesn’t seem like she’s got anything to say. She pops the skateboard up with her foot, catching it and tucking it into her side.“Cici working?” He asks, and gets a nod in response. He sighs and slings an arm around her shoulder. He doesn’t blame her aunt, inheretting the burden of financially supporting a child with no warning wasn’t easy, but Bucky can’t help but think Sasha might be struggling less if she felt less isolated. “Well, we’ll learn some cool stuff and then go grab lunch. Sound good?”Sasha grins up at him, and he smiles back. She really is a pretty fucking cool kid, even with everything she’s gone through. Maybe more so, considering it.They make their way into the community center, following the flow of people down the hallway. The place is hopping on a Sunday morning, lots of different programs being offered for kids who needed a safe place to spend their weekend. They walk past something that looks like an art class, and another room where a bunch of elementary age kids are running around in costumes. Towards the back of the building is an open door with a sign reading “ASL” taped to it, and Bucky nudges Sasha, gesturing her into the room.The room is furnished kind of like a classroom, except their are no desks. Instead, a series of plastic-y covered cushions littered the floor, and a stack of them lean against the back wall. As he had expected, Bucky is the only adult in the room besides the woman at the front, who is presumably the instructor. This earns him a couple curious looks from the kids, but he ignores it, turning to Sasha.“Wanna go grab us a couple cushions?” he asks, jerking his head towards the stack at the back. “I wanna go say hi to the instructor.”Sasha nods, unhooking herself from his side, and he turns, making his way up to greet the woman at the front. She looks up as he approaches, and he grins, holding out his hand to shake. “Hi, I’m Bucky Barnes, I spoke to Nina about attending this class with one of the kids?”“Oh, yes,” the woman says with a smile, shaking his hand. “Nina did mention that. I’m Elena, nice to meet you Mr. Barnes.”“Bucky, please,” Bucky says, tucking his hands self-consciously into his back pockets. “I just wanted to let you know that Sasha, she doesn’t speak, really but she can hear.”“Yes, Nina mentioned,” Elena says with a smile. “We don’t have many Deaf or Hard of Hearing students at the center, and the couple that are here aren’t really in this class. Frankly, it’s too basic for them. Most of the kids here are taking it to learn how to talk to their friends.”“That’s good to know,” Bucky says, glancing around the room. Sasha’s set up two cushions by the side of the wall near the windows, and she has her headphones back on, arms folded and staring at her sneakers. “It’s also worth noting that this isn’t a traditional class. We don’t expect students to attend every session. So we start each week by reviewing the alphabet, numbers, and our names, and then we rotate through some phrases and other words. If the kids want to learn something specific, we’ll do that the following week, but otherwise there’s not a lot of tie-in from week to week.”“So if she misses a week, she can come back the next and it’s not big deal,” Bucky fills in, privately thinking that might be a good thing to take the pressure off. “Exactly,” Elena confirms, and Bucky smiles. A couple more kids filter in, greeting Elena, and Bucky takes it as an excuse to disengage, making his way back over to where Sasha’s sitting, removed from the crowd, hunched in on herself. He doesn’t comment on it, just settles next to her on the weird plastic cushion. Once the steady trickle of kids has stopped, Elena shuts the door and turns to greet them all. “Welcome back, everybody! And hello to our new faces, I hope we’ll get to know you all soon.” Her hands fly in front of her as she speaks, forming patterns that mean nothing to Bucky but look pretty fucking cool. True to her word, Elena starts the lesson off by leading them through the alphabet. This was one of the things that had been in the pamphlets Bucky brought home, and also very easy to find online. However, the little cartoon illustrations of hands really didn’t to as good a job illustrating what the shape of each hand should look like as an actual human being did. Go figure.The first time through, Bucky does the best he can to follow along, trying to match the shapes of his hands to what Elena’s showing. Sasha just watches, hands folded in her lap, though she had at least taken her headphones off. Elena pauses to correct the hand positioning of a boy in the front row, and Bucky takes the opportunity to nudge Sasha with his elbow. “Come on, don’t leave me here looking like an idiot on my own. We both gotta embrace this learning curve together.”Sasha rolls her eyes at him, but she smiles nonetheless, and on the next pass through she’s trying to signing a long. By the time they move on to spelling out their names, she’s sitting forward, grinning as she moves through the forward-and-back rhythm of spelling out S-A-S-H-A, laughing silently at him as he stumbles his way the transition from C to K. He sticks his tongue out at her, but it’s nice to see her smiling, nice to see her engaging like this. Elena explains that people who use sign language usually pick out a sign to represent their names, and then has a couple of the kids who’ve picked out name signs demonstrate theirs. She coaches them through a couple different common methods, and then suggest they take some time to think about what sign they’d like to represent themselves. Sasha’s watching with wrapped attention, repeating the motion for spelling her name over and over again. By the time they’re learning to sign “pet your dog”, Bucky thinks he really should buy Steve flowers for suggesting this.___Bucky texts Steve as soon as he and Sasha part ways that afternoon. It’s all he can do to make himself wait that long, to be honest. He wants to share this breakthrough with Steve immediately, but also doesn’t want Sasha to feel like he’s ignoring her.
you’re a GENIUS, Rogers. we barely finished learning the alphabet, and she’s already SO excited about it!
He’s not sure if he’s expecting Steve answer right away, but his phone buzzes in his pocket as soon as he gets in the door. He pulls it out, in the process of toeing off his shoes and nearly falls over as he over-balances.
Good. I’m glad to hear it. I hope it helps her talk to you.
Bucky grins at the phone, and flops down on the couch. Steve was getting better at texting, but sometimes it was still hard to read his tone. Surely Steve wasn’t meaning to sound clipped or short with him. Surely.Thinking, Bucky tapped the side of his phone with his index finger, then did the mental equivalent of the shrug emoji and began to type back. If Steve wanted to end the conversation, he would, and Bucky should give him the benefit of the doubt.
I really think it will! We went and got snacks after and she kept trying to spell things for me. neither of use are great at calling things yet, but she’s so excited :D it’s so nice.

You’ll have to show me what you’ve learned sometime.

oh I definitely will. maybe we’ll run into each other for coffee again soon.

I think that can be arranged. ;)

Bucky grinned down at his phone like an idiot, his stomach flipping on itself.

How about you, what did you do today?

Not much to do. I didn’t have meetings or anything since it’s Sunday.

i meant for FUN, steve.

I went to the boxing gym. That was fun?

We have different concepts of fun, maybe.
They keep going for a while, texting on and off throughout the rest of the evening as Bucky makes himself dinner and does a somewhat half-hearted clean of his apartment. Steve tries to be cheerful enough, but Bucky can’t seem to shake the feeling that Steve must be really lonely. Already his brain’s starting to turn, figuring out something he can take Steve to the next weekend, so he doesn’t spend ANOTHER weekend not leaving the house.One evening of texting turns into two, turns into three. As in many other areas of living in the future, Steve seems to be adapting to texting pretty quickly. He starts to mimic some of the methods by which Bucky creates tone in texts, which at first has some hilarious results, but Bucky doesn’t mind. He’s happy to be the sounding board Steve uses to figure his shit out.He leaves work early again on Tuesday to hang out with Sasha after school, and he actively makes an effort to not touch his fucking phone while he’s with her. He’s distracted anyway, can’t help himself, which does result in him stumbling rather hilariously on the boardwalk as they walk through DUMBO, but hey. He didn’t break anything! Small victories.Sasha’s laughing at him, too, which, you know. At least he can make her happy with his suffering. “You’re weird,” She tells him, and then sign-spells W-H-Y“Why am I weird? I dunno, baby girl, I was just born this way.”This earns him another eye-roll and then she’s painstaking spelling out W-E-I-R-D-E-R T-H-A-N N-O-R-M-A-L.He sighs, and decides to level with her. “I had a date last weekend, and I’ve been texting the guy a lot and I’m just a little distracted. I’m sorry.”Far from looking being annoyed, Sasha’s eyes light up and she fumbles to spell D-E-E-T-S. Bucky laughs, hooking his arm around her shoulders. “I dunno, it was one date. I like him, he’s really sweet. Kind of old-fashioned, but in a nice way.” He smiles privately to himself. Steve was becoming less and less old-fashioned by the day, which was fascinating to watch. Last night he’d been telling Bucky he was going to start making a list of movies and TV shows he needed to watch, which Bucky had some ideas about.He only realized he’d started spacing out again when Sasha elbowed him hard in the ribs. Grunting in pain he looks back at her, and she rolls her eyes, then points to the bench he was about to walk into. He grins sheepishly.“Like I said. I’m a little distracted.” She throws a balled up paper towel at him in response. But a second near-brush with broken limbs is enough to pull his head out of his ass for the rest of the afternoon. The next day, Steve goes radio silent. He does at least have the opportunity to let Bucky know, with a quick /Getting sent out into the field, gonna be going quiet for a couple days/ that arrives at 3am while Bucky’s still asleep. Which is nice, you know... no one likes being ghosted. It does really serve to emphasis just HOW MUCH they’ve been talking though, when Bucky feels the absence like an ache. He keeps absently picking up his phone, thumbing through app after app in order to fill the time. His coworkers notice, but working in Stark tower means being unusually aware of the weirdness of SHIELD life, so once they know what’s going on they stop bothering him.Jillian even brings him a muffin on the second day, which he has to stand in the hall outside the lab to eat, but hey. He’ll make that sacrifice for corn-bready goodness. By the end of the day on Friday, Bucky’s starting to get a little worried. He’s been keeping an eye on the news, it doesn’t SEEM like there’s any world-ending scenarios popping up anywhere. But that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, it could be being hushed up, whatever it is.He ends up staying late at work, finishing a cell integration test well past the time his shift should have ended. It’s dark by the time he’s stepping into the elevator, and he feels rung out emotionally and physically. The elevator is fast and soundless, and in no time he’s stepping out into the lobby of Stark tower. It’s much more empty than it would be on a normal day, and he smiles at the security guard at the desk by the elevator, a young woman his age with a wreath of dark braids piled on her head. His footsteps echo a bit as he steps into the lobby, pulling out his phone out of habit to see if he’s gotten a message.“Bucky!”The voice rings loudly in the deserted lobby, and he can’t help but jump looking around wildly, heart in his throat. For a moment he has a flash of collapsing subway station and alien screaming, but then it’s gone and he’s standing like an idiot in the middle of the lobby, looking around as Steve comes jogging out of a side room. “Oh! Hi,” Bucky calls back, a huge smile splitting his face as Steve approaches him.“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” Steve mutters sheepishly, pausing a few feet away from Bucky, hands out like he wants to go for a hug but isn’t sure if it’s welcome.“Oh, no worries, I’m just really tired and out of it,” Bucky says, stepping forward deliberately and wrapping Steve up in a hug. There’s a heartbeat’s pause and then Steve is hugging him back, arms warm and tight around him. Steve is so solid, so warm and strong, Bucky could honestly fucking stay like this for the rest of the night. Just fall asleep right here. “I missed you.”“I missed you too, Buck,” Steve mutters, and Bucky’s stomach flips pleasantly at the nickname.With what he considers a great act of willpower, Bucky pulls back from Steve’s embrace, stepping back far enough to take stock of the other man. He seems whole and un-hurt, if a little tired. The black tack-pants and grey athletic shirt do amazing things for the lines of his body, but nothing seems to be scuffed up or out of place.“I’m glad you’re alright, I was a little worried,” Bucky admits, and Steve looks a bit guilty.“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you worry. I just got pulled out into something with no notice, but it wasn’t life-threatening. I can’t... talk about it, I don’t think,” He mutters, shooting a look off towards the room he’d just come out of. “Or at least I shouldn’t talk about it where people can find out I’m talking about it.”Bucky laughs, shaking his head. “Better to ask forgiveness than permission?”“Something like that.” Steve’s eyes twinkle brightly, his smile small and private but no less warm, and if Bucky wasn’t dead on his feet he’d drag Steve out to dinner right now. But.... he was.“Do you want to do something tomorrow? I know you’re probably tired and have to wrap up your debrief and whatever, but I have class with Sasha on Sunday and.... I missed you,” he finishes kind of lamely.Steve doesn’t seem to mind, though. He reaches out, warm palm cupping the side of Bucky’s neck. “I’d love to do something. I’ll probably be tied up most of the morning, but let’s do something after that.”“Okay, cool. I’ll find something to do when I get home and text you,” Bucky ventures, trying not to be too distracted by the hand on his skin or Steve’s bright smile.“I don’t have my phone back yet, or I’d have let you know I was back in town. But message me anyway and I’ll respond when I can.”“Okay,” Bucky agrees, and practically melts when Steve steps forward and presses a warm kiss to the side of his mouth, then steps away with a whispered “I’ll see you later.”He practically floats home.__Steve meets him outside a bar in Greenpoint the next night at sundown. He’s leaning against his bike as Bucky approaches, hands stuffed into the pockets of his leather jacket and looking curiously up at the building. He looks, quite frankly, unfairly good, the sunset casting an orange glow on his skin and catching in his hair, making him seem otherworldly and beautiful.“Hey stranger,” Bucky calls out as he approaches, and it makes his heart wiggle a bit how Steve immediately brightens when he sees Bucky, straightening up from where he’d be hunkered down, like he was trying not to take up space.“Hey yourself,” Steve returns, tucking Bucky into a tight hug.Bucky pulls back, looking Steve up and down almost reflexively, appreciating the way his jeans cling to his legs, the way the tight t-shirt hugs his waist. “You look... really good,” Bucky murmurs, probably sounding a little stunned, but goddamn. That just wasn’t fucking fair. He tugs on the lapel of Steve’s leather jacket for emphasis, and Steve grins.“Well, normally I’d dress up more for the theater, but this didn’t seem like that kind of vibe.”Bucky laughs, and nods in agreement. “Yeah, not exactly a black tie event.”The floaty feeling of seeing Steve again had last until Bucky got home last night, and then he’d immediately been hit with the panic of having to find an appropriate second date location that was both interesting and also available last minute. Luckily he lived in the 21st century, and google was a thing, and at least his internet browser wasn’t going to judge him. Much.“So it’s Shakespeare... but drunk?” Steve asks as they step away from the curb and into the entrance of the bar.The interior of the building was dark, all classic wood and leather, with elaborate filament light bulbs exposed and lending the room a warm, retro glow. It was absolutely the kind of hipster shit you expected to find in Brooklyn, and Bucky loved it.“Basically? One of the actors is drunk and then they do a short version of the play. It sounds like a dubious concept, I know, but I went once a couple years ago with some people from work, it is hilarious. I think I actually cried laughing,” Bucky enthuses, guiding Steve over towards the host stand with a hand on his elbow. The host looks at their tickets on Bucky’s phone and then directs them to a staircase tucked away at the back of the bar. “I figured we could maybe grab dinner upstairs after the show and you can not-tell-me all about your week,” Bucky explains as they make their way down into the hallway that leads to the basement theaterSteve laughs, nudging Bucky with his elbow, but he’s smiling nonetheless. “Sounds good to me.”“Piece of advice: drinks in the theater are way over price and tiny. Best to skip it.”“Noted,” Steve agrees, and then gives Bucky a bit of a sheepish look. “I can’t actually get drunk anyway, so.”“Oh,” Bucky says intelligently. “Well then, definitely save your money. Is that because of the-” he gestures vaguely at Steve’s whole body, which makes Steve roll his eyes, but does bring his smile back.“Yes, because of the serum. But honestly before that I didn’t really have the money for more than a drink here or there.”“I used to drink more than I do now,” Bucky admits, and then grins. “College, you know?”“I’m not actually sure that I do,” Steve teases, and Bucky feels a bit like he’d put his foot in his mouth. Of course college would have been different when Steve was younger. If he even went to college, oh god. Steve must have noticed the blank look on his face, because as they walked entered the theater he explained “I got an art degree but I took years to get it, and it wasn’t at a fancy private college. Just took classes when I could afford them.”Bucky, who definitely had gone to a fancy private college, began regalling Steve with tales of the antics he and his friend had gotten up to in college as they took their seats. As with every time they talked, Bucky’s struck again by how good a listener Steve is. He is incredibly easy to talk to, open and attentive. Steve, who hadn’t gone to college but had served in the army, follows up some of Bucky’s stories with the antics of his old unit, which honestly put drunken 20 year old shenanigans to shame.The little theater fills up around them as they chat, and very soon the house lights are going down. The show is as funny as Bucky remembered, all bawdy humor and drunken silliness. When he’d first had the idea to go to Shitfaced Shakespeare, Bucky wasn’t sure if Steve would like it. But if nothing else had been come clear in the past couple weeks, it was that Steve Rogers and the clean-cut, apple pie image of Captain America were not the same person. So Bucky had taken a chance.And it looks like he’d been right, because Steve is laughing as hard as anyone else in the audience. In fact, by the time the show ends, he’s grinning brighter than Bucky has seen him yet. “Oh, I don’t think I’ve laughed that hard this century,” Steve says as they stand up. “What a wild idea, how do you even come up with a concept like this?“I don’t know, but it’s even more impressive that it works.”“You’re not wrong,” Steve agrees, following as Bucky leads them back up the stairsThe restaurant itself welcomes them with the warm glow of the incandescent bulbs as they make their way to the host stand. Night had fallen outside while they were hidden in the basement, but all it did was give the restaurant a feel of being a bubble of warmth in the darkness. “I can’t believe he came out without his codpiece, and someone had to bring it out to him,” Steve chuckles as they took their seats. “Hey I mean... if it’s not attached and you’re that drunk...” Bucky says, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively, which sent Steve into another fit of laughter.They continue to discuss the play over their meal, Bucky with steak and smashed potatoes and a glass of red wine, and Steve opting instead for barbeque pork and whiskey. Eventually the conversation starts to drift, from Bucky’s week to Steve’s, which he still can’t talk about much.“There was some issue in the midwest,” Steve admits furtively, glancing around the bar to see if they have anyone else’s attention. There’s a level of chatter and laughter that seems to permeate the space, and Steve must decide it’s enough cover because he continues. “I guess some tech they couldn’t identify turned up in the wrong hands. I think it was more a test for me than anything else. I’m sure SHIELD could have handled it themselves, but... I guess they need to figure out what to do with me at some point.”“What do you mean ‘with you’?” Bucky echos, the words leaving a bad taste in his mouth. “You’re not a spare pistol, Steve, you’re a person. Don’t you get some say in what happens next for you?”Steve laughs, and there’s a bitter edge to his voice that Bucky hadn’t heard yet that night. “You know, I’m not entirely sure about that. I might have signed over the rights to my body in 1945.... I didn’t exactly have a lawyer reading the documents, and I pretty much expected to die in the experiment anyway. Or if I lived through that.... Figured I’d die in the war after. And hey, I wasn’t wrong! Just didn’t really... bet on the fact that the dying wouldn’t stick.”“Steve,” Bucky murmurs, mildly horrified, reaching his hand out to take Steve’s. “You deserve the right to decide what you want to do with your life.”Steve looked up at him, his normally bright blue eyes cast into a grey light by the orange glow of the restaurant. He looked serious, solemn but not sad, and he flipped his hand over to hold Bucky’s on the table. “I know, Buck. Thank you.”A little put off, Bucky nods, squeezing Steve’s hand in return. “Do you know what your options are? What are you thinking about?”“Well,” Steve says, pausing for a moment to think. “I know that SHIELD wants me to go to DC, to work as a team leader for them from the Triskelion. Fury’s really pushing that option. Stark’s happy to have my stay here, be the east coast heart of the Avengers while he heads back to his place in Malibu. Other than that... I don’t know. I don’t really know what other options exist, beyond that.”“What did you want to do before?” Bucky asks, resting his chin on his hand. “You couldn’t have been expecting to be a science experiment your whole life. What did little Steve Rogers want to be when he grew up.”Steve snorts, and the smile comes back to his face, small though it may be. “I wanted to be a painter. Or a baseball player, but that was kind of out of the cards for me.”“I mean, hey. I’m sure you’d be great at it now,” Bucky jokes, gesturing in such a way as to encompass everything about Steve. “Home runs every time.”“Doesn’t quite seem fair, does it?”“Hmmmm, maybe not. Painter, though. Painter’s doable?” Steve huffs out a breath, and then squints up at Bucky. “Doesn’t it seem like a waste, though? Doing what I can... Shouldn’t I be using it to make the world a better place?”“That’s a lot to put on yourself, Stevie,” Bucky says, gravely. “And there’s lots of ways to make the world a better place. The ASL teacher who volunteers her time at a community center on Sundays, she’s making a whole world of difference for one little girl.”“One little girl who’d be dead if I didn’t do what I do,” Steve points out, and well fuck. Bucky can’t exactly argue with that.“Maybe there’s a middle ground?” He suggests. “I mean, it’s not like Tony Stark is going wherever SHIELD tells him to on a daily basis. Most of his energy is still focused on.... Well, being Tony Stark, I suppose. Maybe you can make a situation where most of your energy is still focused on being Steve Rogers. And you can be Captain America when you need to be.”“Maybe,” Steve agrees, but he sounds doubtful. “Well, if you moved to DC I’d miss you,” Bucky says, and he’d been aiming for casual, but even to his own ears it sounded far from it. “But do want you think is right, of course.”It does make Steve smile, though, and Bucky could swear there was a slight blush on his cheeks. It was hard to tell for sure in the light, but he could swear it was there. “Well, DC isn’t TOO far away by train,” but he didn’t sounds convinced, more a token protest than anything else. Darkness had descended fully by the time they wrapped up their meal, and Steve looks over at Bucky thoughtfully. “You don’t live around here, do you?”“Not super close,” Bucky admits, pulling out his phone to check the time. “But i can walk to the subway or take an uber, it’s no big deal.”“Or I could drop you off,” Steve suggests, nodding towards where his bike is parked, resting near the curb. And, well. Fuck. Bucky had always been the type to act without thinking. “Or that, let’s do that, yes. Sure. Yes.”Riding through Brooklyn at night on the back of a motorcycle was a surreal experience unlike anything Bucky had known. He’s never actually BEEN on a motorcycle before, but he takes direction well, and Steve coaches him through leaning into turns and holding on. Mostly he just gets to sit tucked behind Steve, holding the perfect fucking curve of the other man’s waist in his hands and feel the thrum of the engine between his legs.It’s uh.... It’s an experience.Bucky himself is nearly vibrating by the time Steve pulls onto his street, rows and rows of brownstones stretching on either side of them. “I believe this is your stop,” he says teasingly, then laughs a bit at what must be the stunned expression on Bucky’s face. “Is it? Oh yes, so it is. Right,” Bucky says jokingly, giving Steve’s waist one final squeeze before letting go. “Thanks for driving me home.”“Any time,” Steve says, smiling, and climbs off the bike when Bucky does. He moves to lean against the seat instead, and like this he’s a handful of inches shorter than Bucky, disarmed and open looking. And but fuck, does Bucky want to kiss him. Something in the twinkle in Steve’s eye says he knows, that he’d welcome it. And well... Bucky always was kind of impulsive.It’s a deeper kiss than the last one they’d shared, hungrier. The miles spent pressed so close to Steve, with the rumble of the engine between them had been enough to crank up Bucky’s desire, and he’s hot with it, licking into Steve’s mouth as he sinks a hand into Steve’s soft blonde hair.Steve, for his part, gives as good as he gets, wrapping one strong arm around Bucky’s back and hauling him in close. He sucks lightly at Bucky’s tongue and it’s all Bucky can do not to moan right there in the middle of the street.“Fuck,” he breathes, breaking away from the kiss, a little shiver chasing down his spine. “I’m sorry, I totally just jumped you.”“I’m not complaining,” Steve teases. One of his hands comes up to cup Bucky’s cheek, thumb brushing against his cheekbone. He guides Bucky down for another kiss, and another, slow sweet sucking things that Bucky feels all the way down to his toes. But then Steve’s drawing back, gently pushing Bucky away. Bucky makes a soft noise of protest on instinct, than shakes himself out of it, meeting Steve’s eyes. “I should go,” Steve says softly. “I have an early morning tomorrow, and you have to meet Sasha.”“Right,” Bucky agrees, swallowing, because Steve is right. As much as he’d like to spend another hour straddling Steve on his motorcycle... now maybe isn’t the time. But... maybe soon... “Thanks for taking me out, Buck. It was a really fun night.” “It was,” Bucky agrees. He’s maybe nuzzling a little into Steve’s palm, but Steve’s nice enough not to comment on it. “I’ll see you soon?”“Count on it,” Steve agrees, and presses one final kiss to Bucky’s lips.He lingers on the street in front of Bucky’s building until Bucky’s inside, and then departs with a smile and a wave. Bucky watches him disappear into the night, and can’t help but think he’d be devastated if Steve moved to away. Bucky sighs to himself, cursing himself and his stupid reckless heart, and heads up the stairs towards his place.___ ASL class the next day followed the same pattern as the first they’d attended together. Elena kicked off the class by walking them through the alphabet, and encouraging all of the students to sign their names. The biggest difference that Bucky could see was in Sasha. She still picked cushions for them towards the back of the crowd, but no longer seemed determined to be completely removed from the other students in the class. She signed along eagerly, grinning with pride when Elena commented on how much she seemed to have retained in the last week.After the alphabet and names were out of the way, Elena asked the students what they’d like to learn this week. Settling on food, she walked them through the process of learning the signs for water, pizza, cookie and cheese. Sasha was practically bouncing with excitement as they made their way out of the community center, her hands repeatedly forming the motions of the signs they’d learned this week. She turned to Bucky, tugging his sleeve until he was looking at her and then carefully signed: C-A-N W-E G-E-T [PIZZA]? “Hey!” Bucky exclaims, holding his hand out for a high five, which she gave him happily. “We always get pizza, don’t you want to get something else?”She shrugged. I L-I-K-E [PIZZA]Bucky snorts. “No kidding. Okay, as long as Cici isn’t expecting to eat dinner with you..?”Sasha shakes her head, looping her arm through his, and Bucky grins at her. Pizza it is.Once they’re settled into their usual spot, Bucky took a deep breath, and resolved to broach the subject he’d been debating bringing up all morning. “Hey, maybe Cici could come with you to ASL class some week?”Sasha stared at him for a beat, then too, then shook her head. “Why not? It might help you too to settle in together if you have a way to talk to each other.”Sasha looked down at her pizzas, picking at it. Her face was pinched, unhappy, and eventually she huffed out a sigh and signed S-H-E-S B-U-S-Y. Bucky frowned, but it was hard to argue with that. The couple of times he’d mentioned it to her himself, she had been working. All the same... “Have you asked her?” Sasha shook her head, still not meeting his eye, and Bucky got the distinct impression there was more going on. “Then why do you think she would be too busy to come with you.”Another huff and Sasha begins to spell out S-H-E T-H-I before aborting part way through with a wave of her hands. Clearly frustrated at her own inability to communicate her thoughts via limited sign language, her hands smack back down on the table, knuckles white.“Why don’t you text it to me?” Bucky suggests, trying to stay calm in the face of her frustration, and she nods, picking up her phone.
she thinks i’m being stubborn, she thinks i should just talk like everyone else. she doesn’t get that i CAN’T just talk. my therapist says its fine if i don’t talk but EVERYONE else thinks i have to.
“I don’t think you have to,” Bucky promises, looking back up at her. She waves her hand in an i know that kind of way. “But maybe doing this with her will help her understand?”Sasha frowns, glaring down at her hands, then back up at him. I-T-S O-U-R-SBucky’s heart sank as clarity came to him. “It can still be ours. I’m not trying to get rid of yu, kiddo. You should be able to talk to more people than just me.” There’s a moment of stillness, Sasha’s fingers picking absently at the crust of her pizza, then she glances up at him. Her hands over in the air for a moment, trying to figure out how to give life to her thoughts, then she seems to give up, reaching for her phone again instead.
what if I invite her and she says no?
Bucky sighs, heart aching for the girl in front of him. “Then nothing. We keep going together and nothing changes. But for sure nothing will if you don’t open the door.” Privately, he thinks to himself that if Cici says no yet again he’s gonna have some fucking words for her, but he keeps that to himself. A nod and a sheepish smile, and then Sasha’s holding her hands up again, fingerspelling out: I-L-L A-S-K. I-T-S S-C-A-R-Y.“I know. But I’ll tell you a secret,” he leans in conspiratorially close, and Sasha leans in too. “You’re the bravest person I know. And I know Captain America.” Sasha giggles at that, and the sound of it is a bright, bubbling thing in the late afternoon air.___Of course, he’d never actually told her that the guy he was all stupid over was Captain America, and Sasha was perceptive enough to pick up on the slip and harass him about it over the course of the next week. Having an inquisitive 11 year old drill you for details of your dating life via text message is a new experience for Bucky, and one he thinks he probably could have happily gone without.Especially since things with Steve felt so tenuous at the moment. Coffee breaks and text messages aside, two dates and a handful of kisses didn’t seem like much in the face of the yawning possibility of a future stretching out before Steve. It certainly didn’t feel like enough for Bucky to ask Steve to stay in a city which made him feel like ghost. If he was being honest, Bucky half felt he should encourage Steve to go. The idea made his chest ache like a physical pain, but he found himself dwelling again and again on the memory of Steve the first time he’d ever laid eyes on the other man. Hunched over and exhausted, covered in dust in a hospital room..... Should he be encouraging Steve to find somewhere he might be able to start again? Where he wouldn’t be haunted by the life he lost?All of that was too much to explain to Sasha, when he could barely process it himself. Still, it didn’t do much to ebb her curiosity, and by Thursday she was asking to meet Steve herself. Which, talk about a big ask for someone you’re maybe just starting to date, and who is maybe walking out of your life soon. Still, she was insistent, and if he’s being honest, any excuse to spend time with Steve was something Bucky could get on board with.Eventually he agreed to ask Steve to have brunch with them, if Sasha would agree to ask Cici to go to ASL class with them. Might as well kill two birds with one stone, right?Honestly, he’s not sure which surprises him more, that Steve agreed happily to brunch, or that Cici agreed to ASL class. Probably the latter.Sasha looks happier than he’s ever seen her when he meets her at the subway stop on Saturday morning, hair pulled back into braids on either side of her head. She waves and signs a greeting at him, which he returns, slinging an arm around her shoulders. “Are you gonna embarrass me?” He teases, snorting when she signs [yes] back, grin on her face.It doesn’t last long, though. Every step they take closer to the diner Sasha seems to disappear into her shell a little more. The attack of shyness is almost surprising to him, but he knows it really shouldn’t be. If connecting with people was easy for her, the last couple months would have gone very differently.“Hey,” Bucky says gently, halting her outside the door of the restaurant. “Are you sure you want to do this? We can go if you need too.”[I] D-O-N-T [talk] Bucky blinks, then sighs. Well fuck. “You don’t have too. You can sign, or you can type things up, or we can just do the yes-or-no game like we used too. Steve knows your deal, kiddo, I talk about you a lot. He knows what he’s in store for.”Another moment of trepidation, the pause hanging heavy in the air, then: O-K.The bell above the door let out a soft chime as they walked into the place Bucky had selected for brunch. It was busy, crowded as every place in Brooklyn be on a weekend day, but warm and inviting nonetheless. Laminate countertops and vinyl booths welcomed them into the retro style dinner, and Bucky caught a glimpse of a familiar blonde head in a booth towards the back.Maybe someday the sight of Steve wouldn’t make his fucking heart swoop, but today was not that day. “C’mon,” he whispers to Sasha, nudging her towards the booth.Steve glanced up as they approached, his face brightening into a wide smile as he caught sight of them. “Hey!” he called out, making to stand but Bucky waved him down. The diner was too crowded for that anyway. “Hey yourself,” Bucky teased, nudging Sasha into the booth opposite Steve and then scooting in next to her. “I see you survived crossing the river again.”“Yes, the bridge is still standing any everything. Manhattan continues to be an escapable island,” Steve quipped back, his eyes twinkling. “Steve, this is Sasha,” Bucky says, carefully signing out S-A-S-H-A as he introduces her.[Hi] S-A-S-H-A, Steve signs back and then says “I’m Steve,” while making the motion of an ‘S’ sign near his forehead like you would sign ‘boy’ as he says his name. “Do you have a name sign, or do you prefer to spell your name out?”Sasha glanced over at Bucky, clearly surprised, and Bucky can’t help but grin back, his heart hammering with affection for both of them as he nods encouragingly at her. She looks back at to Steve, then shy moves her hand to her jaw, making the motion for “pretty” with her hand held in the ‘s’ shape. Steve repeats the motion, a clear question in his eyes, and grins when she nods. [Thank you] he signs back, then [Hi Sasha].[Hi Steve] she returns, and Bucky can practically feel the tension bleeding out of her as she relaxes next to him. “Steve was the person who suggested sign language to me,” Bucky tells her, tapping Steve’s foot under the table with his conspiratorially. “He knows ASL.”“I know some,” Steve says differentially, signing along as best he can. “When I was a kid my hearing was bad, and my mom knew some people who used to sign. We learned a bit, but I stopped using it a lot.”[You’re good] Sasha signs, and then makes a face, and adds [I’m not]. “You’re learning,” Bucky points out, bumping his shoulder into hers. “You’re doing really well.”“I’ve also been brushing up,” Steve whisper conspiratorially, catching Bucky’s eye and giving him a wink. Bucky’s heart flipped.If Bucky had been worried things would be awkward with Steve, he needn't have been. True, it was clear that Steve wasn’t used to spending a lot of time around kids, but earnestness and a commitment to try could get you far in life, and Bucky was learning Steve had that in spades. Sasha still struggled a bit, caught between her shyness and all the words she didn’t know how to sign yet, but by the time they got their food, they’d struck a good rhythm.Steve was kind with her. He was so incredibly kind with her it made Bucky’s heart ache, watching Steve wait patiently for Sasha to get her thoughts out, never rushing her or trying to speak for her. He seemed to be able to pick up on when she was hitting the limit of her ability to deal with having the attention focused on her, but continued to sign the best he could even as the conversation shifted away. His foot also stayed tucked against Bucky’s under the table, which was really fucking distracting, thank you very much. It also didn’t help that Steve looked incredibly attractive in his tight t-shirt and navy blue jacket, bright blue eyes twinkling every time they met Bucky’s, like he could just tell Bucky was struggling more and more with the desire to jump him. He probably fucking could.Sasha was visibly waning on energy by the time they’d finished their meal, her contributions to the conversation getting smaller and smaller as she sank into herself a bit. Bucky, who was attuned to the subtleties of her body language at this point, could tell she’d just about hit the limit to how far she could push herself for the day. “You heading back home after this?” He askes her quietly once they’ve settled their bill, and she nods. “Subway or do you want me to call you an uber?” She shrugs, and signs back S-U-B. “Do you mind hanging around while I walk her to the subway station?” he asks Steve.“Of course, not at all. It was nice to meet you Sasha.”She gives Steve a small smile and nods in agreement. [You] T-O-O.“Thanks for doing this with me,” Bucky says to her as they walk back to the station. Sasha’s got her hands stuffed in her pockets, a clear sign that she’s Done Talking, but she smiles at him nonetheless. “I mean, I know it was your idea, but I know it was also kind of scary. So thanks.”H-E-S N-I-C-E, she replies, and Bucky laughs. “He really is. I really like him,” Bucky admits, thinking of Steve’s smile, his patience, his good, good heart. “I really like him.” Sasha gives him a pointed look, her whole face saying ‘obviously’, and Bucky rolls his eyes, giving her a small shove. “Okay, okay, I know I’m not subtle.” [You’re not] “Yeah, yeah, whatever. I’m allowed to be happy, alright,” he teases, and gets an eye-roll in return. They say goodbye at the turnstyle for the subway, and he lets her go with a promise to text him when she gets home. His mind’s racing a mile a minute on the quick walk back from the subway to the dinner, replaying the whole meal. Steve had been so kind and patient, so willing to meet Sasha exactly where she was rather than try to drag her forward to a place she wasn’t ready to be. That kind of understanding was rare. Men like Steve were fucking rare in the world, in ways that had nothing at all to do with a super soldier serum. Bucky’s racing mind ground to a halt as he looked up and caught sight of Steve, perched on his motorcycle, looking at Bucky approach with a soft smile on his face. “Hey,” he greeted as Bucky walked up, and Bucky had to kiss him, had to taste that soft smile for himself. Steve made a pleasantly surprised noise, his hand falling to Bucky’s neck as he returned the kiss. “Hey yourself,” Bucky replied as they broke the kiss, a little breathless, and goddamn Steve looked so pretty freshly kissed. “Thank you for today. Thanks for being so good with her.”Steve shrugs, a bit of a pink flush taking his cheeks, but he doesn’t look away from Bucky’s gaze. “It was my pleasure. She’s a sweet kid. And you know... any excuse to spend time with you.”“Flatterer,” Bucky accuses, but he would absolutely be lying if he said it didn’t make his heart race a little. Steve’s lips were still a little pink from there early kiss, and his attention hung on Bucky like a physical touch, making his skin buzz a little. His heart’s race, but hey, what the hell. He never thought things through anyway. “Wanna take me home?”When, if not now, was the time to be brave?The weeks of time spent with Steve has been enough to teach Bucky that he’s not nearly as repressed and old fashioned as the media would like to make him out to be. He didn’t for a second seem to misunderstand what Bucky was offering, if the deepening pink flush of his cheeks was anything to go by. That didn’t, however, mean he wasn’t still kind of awkward and shy. He absolutely was and it was absolutely adorable. The ride back to Bucky’s place is both very pleasant and far too long. Again he finds himself wrapped around Steve from the back, the powerfully rev of the motorcycle between his legs only serving to key him up a bit more as they wind their way through the streets of Brooklyn.If life was a movie, they would have an elevator to eagerly make out in on the way up to Bucky’s place, leaving them to throw themselves into the heat of passion the moment they were in the front door. However, life was not a movie, and Bucky’s building does not have an elevator. Instead, he has a 3 floor walk-up to leave him slightly winded and slightly self-conscious about how not-winded Steve is. It also didn’t help that Bucky hadn’t exactly planned on bringing Steve back to his place, which meant it wasn’t exactly as clean as it might have been. Oh, it could have been worse, but there were definitely a bunch of collected junk on most of the surfaces and hoodies thrown mindlessly onto the couch. That didn’t exactly leave it an inviting place for a guest to sit. Steve looked around with polient interest as Bucky toed off his shoes by the front door, and went to make a half-hearted attempt at cleaning.“Sorry, I should clean more often, but I live with roommates, well. I can only do so much.” He’s aware that he’s rambling, and he can see the amused look on Steve’s face as he approaches, stilling Bucky with a welcome hand on cheek.“I promise you, Bucky, I am not offended by the sight of a dirty dish.” Bucky lets out a self-conscious laugh, letting the sweater he’d been folding drop from his hands as he reaches up instead to cup Steve’s waist. “I guess I’m a little nervous,” he admits, and Steve lets out a chuckle. “I mean, I’m not expecting- well, maybe I am, but we don’t have to do anything you’re not comfortable with?”“I’m a little nervous too,” Steve agrees, and okay, maybe that does make Bucky feel a little better. “It has been 70 years, after all.”“Oh, har har,” intones Bucky, rolling his eyes, and Steve catches him mid-laugh with a kiss. One kiss turns into two, turns into Bucky tugging Steve by his belt-loops backwards into his bedroom. They’re both a little awkward, at little shy, but there’s sunlight streaming into the room and nowhere to really hide, and eventually Bucky stops trying. He’s much more interested in putting his mouth on every bit of Steve he can get at anyway. The awkwardness bleeds away into laughter as they get their bearings, and by the time they’re naked and grinding together, Bucky’s too lost in the way Steve kisses him to feel worried about much else.They lay in a tangle of limbs afterway, sweat cooling on their skin as their breath comes back to them. Bucky’s got his head resting on Steve’s chest, ear over the steady beat of his heart. He traces a finger absentmindedly over the smooth skin on Steve’s chest, occasionally passing over a nipple just to make Steve twitch and grunt at him. It makes him laugh every time.“Do you wax or are you just like this?” he asks, earning himself a snort from Steve.“Just like this,” Steve says lazily, and Bucky smiles, kissing the smooth skin on Steve’s chest fondly. “I don’t hate it,” Bucky says magnanimously, tracing his thumb over the curve of Steve’s pec.“Oh, be still my heart. ‘I don’t hate it,’ exactly what you always want to hear from the fella who just got you naked.” Bucky propped his chin up on his hand, resting on Steve’s chest, so they could make eye contact. “Would you like me to wax poetically about your titties, Steve? Because I can do that if that’s what you want.”“Jesus,” was Steve’s only response, bringing a hand up to his eyes, blushing red all the way down to the tops of his shoulders. Hm, that was something to note for later.Except, Bucky had been staunchly avoiding thinking about later. The smile slid off his face as he remembered the very real possibility that their time together was on a ticking clock. His gaze fell to the middle distance as a wave of melancholy threatened to overwhelm him. Fuck he would miss Steve so much. Not even just this new found intimacy, though the idea of having a taste of what it could be like and losing it wasn’t exactly fair, he would miss the coffee dates and the exploring together. He would miss talking to Steve about work and Sasha and stupid TV shows. Sure they could text and talk on the phone over the distance, but it wouldn’t be the same.“Hey, you okay?” Steve’s voice cut through Bucky’s wandering thoughts, Steve’s hand rubbing his back and drawing him back to the present. “I’m fine,” he promised, but even he could hear the note of sadness in his voice. “Just thinking how much I’ll miss you if you go to DC.”Steve’s face goes soft, and his hand comes up to brush back a stray lock of Bucky’s hair. “I’m not going to DC, Buck.”“You’re not?” Steve shakes his head. “Since when?” “I told SHEILD at my last meeting that I wanted to stay in New York, but I think I’ve had my mind made up for a while. What you said, the other day, about being a person who can make choices about my life... I don’t think I’d get to do that, if I went to DC. I’d be stuck in a pattern of following orders and... that’s not me. It never has been.”“You’ve never followed a goddamn order in your life” Bucky teases, smile breaking across his face so big he can barely contain it.“You’re not wrong,” Steve agrees, and he’s grinning too. “Plus there’s this guy here in New York who’d probably let me run roughshod all over his heart, but I really aim not to do that. And running away on him seems like a step in the wrong direction.”“Lucky guy,” Bucky replies, breathless and heart hammering in his chest. “You’re really staying?”“I’m really staying,” Steve agrees, and Bucky just has to kiss him again, he just has too. Steve kisses back through his own smile, and it sends warm sparkes of electricity down Bucky’s spine, sending shivers of warmth between his legs. Maybe they’ll have a round two, but who knows. There’s no rush.They’ve got time.___Epilogue:Fall was coming to New York City.The air held that crisp, sharp note of chill as Bucky made his way towards the community center. Leaves crunched under his feet, scattered across the paved sidewalk, and he found himself grateful that he’d opted to walk rather than accepting Steve’s offer of a ride on the motorcycle. There would be other times to get rides from Steve, days and weeks stretching out before him full of joyous possibility. For now, he was content to walk.The sounds of children laughing and scrambling on climbing equipment could be heard before he even rounded the corner to the community center. It always made him smile, now, the walk up to this building. Coming here was more fun than he’d ever anticipated, and had been more helpful than anyone could have guessed, even Steve and his too-big heart. Sasha was waiting on the steps to the community center, dressed for the fall in a sweater and the new boots she was so proud of. She looked up as he approached, smiling and waving eagerly. Her smiles came easier, now, though the darkness she’d lived through had yet to leave her entirely. But his brave little friend, she was a fighter and she fought still.Beside her, Cici noticed Sasha waving and looked over to catch his eye, greeting him with a smile and a wave of her own. [Hi] B-U-C-K Sasha signed, her hands moving rapidly through the patterns that were coming easier to her than to him or Cici. Oh to be young again, and easily retain new information. Soon, he thought privately, soon she’s gonna outgrow this free class and they’re gonna have to figure out a way for her to keep growing. “Hey, hey,” he replied, opening his arms for a hug as Sasha stood up, stepping into his side. “How’s it going?”[We got bagels] Sashas signed, grinning and gesturing to herself and Cici. [Movies after class still?]“I’m down if you are,” Bucky agrees, ruffling her hair and raising his eyebrow at Cici. “What are we seeing?”“Something with singing? I’m not entirely sure,” Cici admits, following as they walk into the center. “Whatever it is, all the girls in her class are obsessed with one of the actors.”[he’s hot] Sasha signs at them, and Bucky laughs. “Sounds like fun. Steve says hi, by the way.”[he’s hot too] Sasha replies, and Bucky groans.“I mean, yeah, he is, but I’m pretty sure you’re not allowed to say that about my boyfriend. There should be a rule about that.” He makes a face, and Cici chuckles, while Sasha rolls her eyes. “We’d better go in or we’re going to be late,” Cici points out, glancing at her phone for the time. “Can’t have that,” Bucky agrees. He squeezes his arm around Sasha’s shoulder one more time, and then let’s her go, following as she leads them up the stairs and into the center. He and Cici share a brief smile as he holds the door open, and then lets it fall shut behind him.