Chapter Text
2011.
*
They went to see Peggy on a balmy Tuesday two weeks after the attack on New York, just over twelve days since the gala and their miraculous reunion. Bucky drove his truck, the old, reliable thing, and Steve settled close to him in the cab, their legs pressed together. Steve’s hand covered Bucky’s thigh, thumb swirling aimless shapes into Bucky’s skin. When traffic allowed, Bucky tipped his face and caught Steve’s mouth in a kiss— sometimes tender and chaste, others long and not-so-chaste.
More than once they broke apart at the sound of a furious car horn blaring from their flank and the both of them dissolved into laughter every time.
(The dissonance between where Bucky had been all of a month ago and the wonderful place he’d wound up at the present struck him dumb in the odd moments. It swiped out at him when he could hear Steve humming in the shower, when he’d trip over Steve’s shoes at the foot of their bed like it was nineteen thirty-six, when Steve would smile, always such a soft, dopey smile when he caught Bucky watching him. He’d give up everything to ensure he never had to go without Steve again, to know that he wouldn’t have to reacquaint himself with the hollowness of living without half his soul.)
For a weekday morning, DC was fairly mild. There was, of course, more tour buses than Bucky could count and the commuters here were an entirely different breed, close cousins of those in New York. There were a multitude of runners on practically every sidewalk or stretch of pavement available, monuments rising up from all sides.
“They have one for Captain America, you know,” Bucky admitted as they wound around the Potomac, Arlington cemetery at their left in all it’s white stones and green, sloping hills.
Steve hadn’t missed the significance of his wording. “Oh?”
“S’near the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The President came to the opening, made a speech and all that,” he claimed, flicking on his turn signal to get them on the road outside Peggy’s subdivision. His gaze briefly caught Steve’s, those stupidly, beautiful blue eyes like a punch to the sternum and the sweetest embrace all at once. “It wasn’t for you. It was for a figurehead. I’d lost you. Didn’t really give a shit about the shield.”
It was sheer luck, the traffic light before them flaring yellow then quickly turning red. Steve used this to their advantage, palming the side of Bucky’s neck and tugging him in for a gentle, reaffirming press of mouths. Their noses bumped together, Bucky’s eyes closing briefly as Steve mouthed along Bucky’s cheek, his jaw.
“It’s a green light,” Steve murmured.
Neither of them would admit that his breath left him on a shaking note. “So?”
“Buck,” was the wry reply.
“So?”
Steve, the rounds of his cheeks coloring a delicious pink, sighed. Bucky couldn’t miss the little smirk playing around his lips, though.
He rolled to a stop at the security booth just outside the iron gate, manually cranking down his window and shooting the woman on duty a smile. Her name was Lisa. Used to the procedure, he handed her his ID without being prompted, offering her a polite greeting.
“Morning, Mr. Barnes,” Lisa said, tapping at her computer screen and passing back his ID. It was small thing, the way her hand faltered as she spotted a second figure in the cab with him. She, quite abruptly, looked on the verge of tears. “You tell Mrs. Sousa I said to have a good day, alright?”
His smile softened. “Yeah. I will. You take it easy, okay?”
Lisa smiled, pressing two fingers to the switch that had the gate whining open. She leaned around Bucky, all big eyes and sniffles. “Welcome back, Mr. Rogers.”
It was the first time someone hadn’t called him Captain America or Cap or some iteration. Their surprise probably made it look as though they’d both been struck over the backs of their heads with a tire iron, but Bucky recovered enough to shoot Lisa a have a good one, honey and to lower his foot down on the gas to ease them onward.
“Nice area,” Steve murmured in regards to Peg’s neighborhood. It was the type of place that probably landed at the top of the list for safest communities on the east coast, that screamed of the sort of suburbia Bucky never particularly cared for. It was too quiet— too far away from the noise of the city: no matter how far he went, he’d always be able to sleep better with some sort of noise. Slept the best with a combination of Steve and city-street noise, but that was a given.
“I think one of her grandkids picked it out. I know Junior offered to equip her place with top of the line security measures, but you and I both know despite her age, Peggy’s the bigger threat no matter who she might go toe to toe with.”
That earned him a laugh of agreement. “You remember when she shot at me and the shield, point blank?”
Bucky smirked. “You were being an ass.”
“I was being an ass,” Steve agreed easily. “And I have no idea how anyone could doubt just how strong she is.”
“She was a woman,” Bucky murmured. He could remember the hard line of Peggy’s spine, the way her mouth would thin, but she never complained about the way her colleagues treated her. Not once. He knew, then, and he knew it now: had Steve been around, he would have put more than one sexist shithead in their place. “And meatheads back then liked to think just because she wore lipstick and a skirt that she couldn’t kick their asses to Timbuktu. I mean, she ran an op back in forty-six and took out a guy with a stapler, Steve. A fucking stapler.”
“You say that like you’re surprised.”
“I’m not surprised— I’m impressed.”
He didn’t look at Steve, but he felt too-bright blue eyes on the side of his face anyway. “I’m so glad you had each other,” he said quietly.
Bucky rolled up to a stop sign, let a jogger cross in front of the truck before he took another left. “So am I.”
It had helped, even if he had tried to avoid her when the wounds were still open and everything was still so fresh and raw on his mind. Peggy had known Steve before the serum, had loved him dearly— more than that, she knew how much Bucky loved him, too. He cleared his throat, already prepared for an emotional day ahead of them.
“She and Daniel bought a place in Los Angeles back in forty-seven. Lived in the same house until he passed away back in eighty-nine. Peggy was going to sell it when she moved out here a few years back, but Tony convinced her not to. He maintains it, uses it for a safe house, I think. Kid’s more sentimental than you’d believe.”
“Oh gee,” Steve deadpanned, eyes flicking over the houses, at the spots of color that arose in the forms of a discarded bike at the curb or thick snatches of bushes overrun with spring flowers. “I wonder where he got that from.”
“Am I supposed to take offense to that?” Bucky huffed, lowering his foot down on the break and easing his truck up to the curb with practiced ease. Someone had repainted the mailbox teal and white.
“Oh, no, you weren’t. You and I both are stupidly sentimental people, Buck. That’s old news.”
Bucky didn’t bother to snark back, not when it was a statement of complete fact.
He put the truck in park, undid his seatbelt, and looked to Steve. “You ready?”
Steve slipped his fingers through Bucky’s, gave them a squeeze as he leaned in for a last press of lips, pulling back just enough to ghost a kiss over Bucky’s cheek, too. “Yeah.”
They slipped out the same side of the truck, immediately met with the early summer humidity.
Steve and Peggy had spoken over the phone for nearly three hours the afternoon following his and Bucky’s first night back together. Tony had apparently been sending her updates, hour by hour, and she sent Bucky a message, herself, hoping things were going as swimmingly as our darling Anthony is describing them to be.
Steve had taken one look at the message, glanced quickly at Bucky, who’d nodded, already guessing what he was going to do, as he’d fumbled for the call button. There had been anticipation as he waited for the line to connect— it was nothing compared to standing on her front stoop, with the flower boxes in the front windows and the bird feeder on the left side of the house.
Bucky touched two fingers to the doorbell, heard the sound echo through her home.
A beat of nothing, then—
“Just a moment!” came her voice from inside and he squeezed Steve’s fingers, the other man practically vibrating in his boots.
The lock and chain were undone swiftly, the door swinging open. She wore a a burgundy blouse tucked neatly into a pair of black cigarette pants, equally dark kitten heals in place on her feet. Her hair had gone completely silver before the turn of the century and she hadn’t worn her signature red lipstick since the fall of the Berlin Wall, but her eyes in all their brown depths, their expressiveness and their profound kindness, had not changed in the slightest. She’d turned ninety all a month and a half previous and she was still one of the most stunning people Bucky had ever met.
Her hand came up to cover her mouth at the sight of them both, eyes wide and round and immediately filling with tears. “Oh,” she whispered, head tipping a few degrees to the left. “Oh, Steve.”
They reached for one another at the same time, Steve cradling Peggy close to him, pressing his face into her hair, her hands curled to his shoulder blades. Daniel had been gone for twenty years, now, and the gold wedding band he’d gave her in forty-nine was still settled on her finger, catching the morning light.
“Hey,” Steve said just as quiet, sniffling against her temple. “Heya, Peg.”
“I’d forgotten how tall you were,” Peggy croaked, lifting her head from his shoulder and touching lightly at his chin. Tears made silent tracks down her face, her lower lip quivering even as she was grinning widely. “How golden your hair was.”
Steve said something so soft that Bucky couldn’t hear it but whatever it was made Peggy smile impossibly wider. He teetered back a step, allowing them their well-deserved moment of privacy. There were a couple of older women power-walking in bright jogging suits, a man in shorts mowing the lawn in even stripes. A cat was balanced on a wooden fence between yards, tail flicking and swaying, soaking up the sun and watching the reunion with minor interest. It, if he were honest, vaguely reminded him of Natasha.
A hand curled to his bicep, startling out of his thoughts. “Oh, come here, James,” Peggy said, her nose stuffy with emotion and Steve let out a damp laugh of his own. She tugged him in by his collar, hand moving and tightening in the back of his jacket, Steve’s arm curling around Bucky’s middle and sealing them in a warm embrace.
They ended up in the sitting room, out of the view of the front window on the off-chance any nosy neighbors tried to sneak a peak.
“How was your drive in?” Peggy asked, settling in on her plush chaise and patting the seat next to her for Steve to take. Bucky settled in on the recliner to Peg’s right, near enough to take her hand across the end table.
“Not too bad,” Steve said, flicking his eyes to Bucky with a grin. “Buck threatened to run this little Bug off the road for going five under the speed limit on 95, but other than that, no international incidents.”
“Hey,” Bucky groused. “That asshat had it coming to him. Driving in the left lane and going under the speed limit? That ought to be a capital offense.”
“My god, I forgot how dramatic the both of you can be,” Peggy said, touching the tips of her fingers to her lips to hide a smile. “Well, if it’s any consolation, I’m glad you two could come in. Steve, darling, I have to ask— how are you after the attack on New York?”
Though the years had spread thin between the three of them and time hadn’t been nearly as kind as they wished it might, they talked as though no time had passed at all. It was so easy, their words blooming organically— if it hadn’t been for all the modern tech around them and Peggy’s clear signs of aging, they could have been in the canteen, yucking it up about something Dum Dum had done or how Peggy was going to empty the cartridge of her handgun at the nearest moving object if Phillips sent her on another useless solo mission.
Peggy gave them the names of a couple restaurants that were pretty low-key if they wished to have a quiet dinner out on the town that night, told them how her grand-niece was in the process of becoming a junior agent at SHIELD. Bucky updated her on Tony, how he was holding up after his trip through the wormhole over Manhattan.
“He clams up and waves me down each time I try to get him to talk about it,” Bucky admitted, eyes finding the photo of Tony, the day of his graduation from MIT surrounded by those who loved him most— Peggy, Daniel, Edwin, Bucky, and, in a rare sight, his mother, Maria, who’s dainty hand curled to his shoulder, her smile reserved, but proud. “You know how he gets.”
“Mmm,” Peggy allowed, flicking her eyes to the ceiling, long suffering. “Indeed I do. It does no good to press him, you know. I tried to do the same and he just prattled on about the new suit he was making.” She sighed. “I love that boy like he were my own son, James, but he never fails to frustrate me. He and Howard have that in common, unfortunately.”
“Unfortunately,” he agreed on a sigh. “All any of us can do is just be patent with him and let him know we care. And a little light badgering here and there, a couple calls to Pepper, sure, but that’s only if we want to play hard ball.” Bucky slid off the end of the recliner to stand, stooping to brush a kiss to Steve’s temple, to kiss Peg’s forehead. “You watered your plants yet today?”
“Oh, James, you don’t have to worry yourself with that,” she insisted, but he shook his head and gave her a smile.
“I’m happy to do it. You two kick your feet up, catch up,” Bucky suggested.
“Buck…”
“Now, I know their ain’t much we haven’t said to one another through the years, but you two deserve your privacy, alright? I can’t be much more transparent about trying to extract myself to give that to you if I hired a skywriter.”
“Not even then,” Peggy said, dry, her mouth a wry line. “Depending on the wind letters might fade and vanish, you know.”
“Peg.”
“Alright,” she allowed, shooing him away with a little flutter of the hand not cradled between both of Steve’s. “Alright. Steve and I can gossip. I won’t hold back, you know.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Bucky smiled, throwing her a jaunty salute that made her call after him:
“You’d give Phillips an aneurism!”
“Been there, done that!”
He left the living room warmed by the sound of laughter in his wake. He ducked his head, hiding his smile.
Bucky went ahead and watered the line of plants she kept in her bright kitchen, all of them settled in the window to drink in the most sunlight. He dipped out back and used the water hose to give her azalea bushes a nice spray, too, and he wiped down the kitchen counters and washed the single bowl, spoon, and mug from Peggy’s breakfast prior to their arrival. He held the mug for a moment, the blue, chipped thing— Daniel’s favorite.
He gave it a gentle squeeze with his flesh hand, making a note to visit Daniel’s the moment they were vaguely near the west coast.
Bucky poked around for anything that looked like it needed to be done. He checked the laundry machine and found a damp load in the washer, brow furrowing. Half of what she’d thrown in looked to be the types of things you didn’t want to leave sitting for too long, lest they wrinkle and have to be throughly ironed out. He plucked everything out, carefully checking the tags for drying instructions.
He thought of what he and Tony had talked about a month ago, before Steve, before the aliens, before the Avengers: “Buck… I think Aunt Peg is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. It’s not obvious unless you really pay attention, but when we talked the other day, she called me Howard. Twice. She realized her slip, of course, but she’s never done that before. Never. She knows how much I hate when people compare me and Dad. I just,” and Tony had let out a shuddering breath, had pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know what I’ll do if I have to watch her slip away like that. I don’t know if I can stomach that.”
He hadn’t noticed any slips, so far. Bucky wouldn’t worry Steve with it unless Steve brought it up first, not unless he saw evidence of such himself.
Just like Tony, he didn’t know what he’d do if the hunch was correct. It had been bad enough when Daniel passed so suddenly, but such a slow deterioration… Bucky shook himself to clear the parasitic thought from his head. Today was a good day. No rain to stifle the sun.
He prepared a cup of tea for Peggy, coffee for he and Steve. A little bit of poking around in the cabinets and he produced a tin of biscuits— the kind dipped in a light coat of chocolate that Peggy kept for her great-grandkids. Everything was loaded up on a tea tray he found under the counter.
Bucky entered in the middle of what seemed to be Peggy’s recollection of the day Daniel asked her to marry him. “—and he dropped the ring, his hands were shaking so badly. He’d chosen to propose at sunset to get the best view, bless him, but the ring fell right through the cracks in the boardwalk and it was so dark it was near impossible to see. We ruined our clothes searching the water. It took the better part of an hour to find it and that’s only because I stepped on it.”
“He sounds real swell, Peg,” Steve said quietly, so earnest Bucky’s teeth ached. “I wish I could have met him.”
“Oh, you would have liked him,” she murmured. “He was a good man. The best I’ve ever met.”
“You have no idea how glad I am you found someone like Daniel.”
Bucky tightened his grip on the handles of the tray, stepping into the siting room with a half-smile. “You two would have gotten along well. He wanted to clock every asshole who ever acted like you were nothing but a secretary, Peg. Could you imagine the two of them together? The trouble they’d have caused?”
The idea sent Peggy bursting with laughter. “Sorry. I’m sorry,” Peggy said, shaking her head and addressing mostly Steve. “It’s just, I remembered my earlier years with the SSR. After the war, I moved to Brooklyn, you know. Took a post at the Manhattan office and I was the only female agent on staff, so more often than not my only purpose was to prepare coffee or take everyone’s lunch orders.”
Steve looked as though he wanted to go back in time simply to call out every sexist yahoo that had dared downplay Peggy’s worth in such a manner. Bucky hoped he’d never find out that many had placed the label Cap’s Girl above the rest of Peggy’s accomplishments in those days, how she had to work that much harder in Steve’s shadow. He’d shown up to the SSR office a time or two, glowering at anyone who talked down to her, smirking when Peggy would call them out on it.
“You should tell him about the time you stapled that guy in the face on a mission.”
Peggy shot Bucky a smirk, plucking up her mug with an appreciative nod. “Why that’s still one of your favorite stories after all these years, James, I have no idea.”
“Because you’re a badass, Peg,” he was quick to explain, plucking up a biscuit and popping it back in one bite. “And I’ve never met another person who would think to take out a guy with office supplies. Plus, you always tell it so much better than I ever could…”
*
They stayed till the sun had sank low on the sky and the world was draped in a cloak of gold to the west. Peggy had been on the verge of dozing off for well over an hour, jerking herself from the edge of sleep with a sheepish little smile.
“Do come back and visit,” Peggy said, walking them both to the door. She’d toed off her shoes hours ago, padding barefoot across the hardwood.
“Of course,” Steve assured her, a hand at the middle of her back. Bucky slipped into the mild evening, allowing Steve to snag the first hug. Peggy pulled away, though not before she kissed Steve’s jaw and touched lightly at his chin.
“I know this is a lot for you,” she said softly. “Seventy years thrown in your face all at once, but we’re here to guide you through it. All you have to do is ask, you stubborn man.”
“I know,” he mumbled, slanting a beautiful, crooked grin her way. She narrowed her eyes at the sight of it, no less fooled by it in the now then she’d been in forty-three. “I can’t thank you enough for it.”
Peggy held out her other hand for Bucky to take, looking between the two of them with damp eyes. “Bloody buggering Christ,” she said, laughing wetly. “I’m just so happy for the two of you.” Her gaze settled on Bucky, going soft. “You used to be so withdrawn, James. So absent even when you were in the same room. You’ve come so far, even if you don’t see it yourself. My heart is so full, for the both of you.”
Steve swallowed thickly, bringing Peggy’s hand to his mouth and giving her knuckles a firm kiss. He wrapped his other hand around hers, cradling it. “We’ll come back soon.”
“You’d better,” she said, sniffling. “Don’t think I forgot your birthday is coming up in a few weeks, Steve.”
Bucky tipped in to kiss her temple. “Thank you for today,” he whispered, pecking her on the cheek when she nodded.
“Do tell Anthony to drop in, too,” Peggy said. “I haven’t had one of my appliances catch fire in quite sometime and I’m getting rather bored of the smoke alarm being so quiet.”
A bark of laughter ripped from Bucky’s throat, a chuckle from Steve’s. “Will do. You take care.”
They hadn’t even made it a mile out of DC when Bucky shifted slightly in his seat, looking to Steve for as long as he could before the move became unsafe given he was going seventy-three miles an hour on the interstate.
“Hey,” Bucky said, mouth moving before his brain could fully catch up. “Do you want to go back to New York?”
“Uh,” Steve blinked, thrown by his askance. “Eventually…?”
Bucky snuck in to steal a kiss, flicking his turn signal on to take the next exit. “Alright, I’ll take that.”
*
They drove west, taking highways and scenic routes Bucky had once traveled alone. He listened to music, now, working their way through his digital library of songs on his phone and adding the ones Steve liked the most to a special playlist. Where he’d once dipped in and out of gas stations, grabbing nothing more than a protein bar or a bottle of water, he got a cherry Slurpee and Steve went wild for candy, getting a massive bag of new treats for them to test.
Twizzlers and Mound were out. Cookies N’ Creme Hershey’s, Milky Way and Kit Kat were in, as was a minor stomach ache for Steve. Bucky liked the particularly sweet taste the chocolate left on Steve’s lips and was more than a little encouraging on that front. They didn’t bother stopping off for a tent or even kindling for a fire, but they did hit a store for an inflatable mattress, a couple of thick blankets, and pair of pillows to throw in the truck bed.
He wanted Steve to see the stars.
The Grand Canyon hadn’t changed, not physically. Bucky wasn’t exactly sure why he’d expected it to have become a completely different landmark in the time that had passed since his last trip. Tony would have made a joke about Bucky being the national treasure that changed, and he’d be absolutely right, but seeing the faded orange rock and the seemingly endless formations that have been weathered and shaped for millions of years settled something in him.
Christ, he’d been so tired the last time. That bone-deep exhaustion nearly made him do something stupid and— and the thought— if he’d actually gone and… He didn’t get within ten feet from the lip of the canyon, his sights trained on Steve’s back as his beloved took a long look at the grasping chasm that reached out it’s arms in every direction as far as their eyes could see.
“How far down does it go, you think?”
“Hundreds of feet,” Bucky said. “Thousands, maybe.”
Too far. He didn’t want to know.
The lack of infliction in his tone made Steve turn, stirring up a more than a little dust as he moved to Bucky’s side. “Hey,” he said, tender as anything. “What is it?”
In the time after Steve pulled him off that lab table in Italy, Bucky’d developed the habit of wearing a mask not even Steve could breach, always fronting, always putting forth the illusion he was alright when he was anything but. Worse than that, Bucky knew they didn’t communicate as well during the war. If Bucky had a problem, he stamped down on it, tried to smother it away and shove it in a box that Steve could not see. He didn’t do that anymore, not if he could help it, not with Steve. If he did or caught himself on the verge of doing so, Tony’s voice would sound from the back of his head, calling him a hypocrite after all the times Bucky had sat Junior down to get him to use his words instead all the booze money could buy.
“I came here by myself, once,” Bucky admitted, sights trained off to the right of the sun, at the beginnings of twilight settling over the world in cuts of bronze. “Back in the late eighties. I’d… I’d been going through a bit of a rough patch and I almost did something stupid.” He didn’t clarify what that stupid something was, didn’t have to if the way Steve’s expression crumpled was any indication. Bucky stamped down on the rush of nausea that came at remembering the way his feet had scuffed sharply along the lip of the canyon, the bounce of pebbles knocking down the sides and vanishing into the abyss below. Steve clenched his jaw, like he could see directly into Bucky’s memory, like he’d been there to observe it and was just as pained by it as Bucky. “I went all around the country and it took me over forty years to come here, because if I did and you weren’t with me…”
“I’m here now,” Steve whispered, nodding once as though to assure himself of it, to assure Bucky. His hands were warm when they held Bucky’s face, thumbs stroking along the cut of Bucky’s cheekbones. “I don’t intend to leave ever again.”
“I know,” Bucky said, nodding. He felt a bit like a bobble head with such jerky motions. “That’s why I brought you here— to make a new memory, a better one, a sweeter one to counteract the bad. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”
“Good thing you don’t have to,” Steve said. “S’good that we don’t owe this world a god damn thing.”
Not anymore. They’d given enough, done enough, endured enough for several lifetimes over.
They arranged their makeshift bed the for the evening, blowing up the air mattress and covering it with the half a dozen blankets they’d piled into a cart when they’d taken a detour through Albuquerque.The pillows were arranged so they could sit up comfortably, their shoulders bumping as Bucky laid his head on Steve’s shoulder.
He’d smuggled a sketchbook and a couple of nice pens in with their haul. He reached through the back window into the cab to give it to Steve, smiling at the expression of genuine surprise on the other man’s face.
“When’s the last time you drew something, hmm?”
“I did a decent sketch of the Tower, couple days before the attack,” Steve murmured, touching at the butter-smooth pages. The paper was thick and heavy, something Bucky had believed might help Steve— he’d been so careful with his other sketchbooks after the serum, so ginger in the way he pressed a nub of pencil to the pages. And the pens were better than anything they’d had before or after the Depression, their ink black and saturated.
He drew the canyon, first, as a test. To measure the depths of the shadows the slanting sun cast upon the land. Light strokes for the places still exposed, hatch marks for the dry grass and the cracks in the sun-baked land along the edge.
Bucky indulged in a brief doze, the hours of driving, of endless highway and desert having made his eyes more than a little heavy. He shifted off to Steve’s arm to give him more wiggle room, hooking his left leg under Steve’s right to keep him close.
He only woke when Steve gave him a little nudge. It was properly dark, now, without even the hints of violet along the horizon.
Steve kept the pages spread with his thumb and forefinger, flashing the page Bucky’s way with a smile. It was Bucky’s face in profile, his eyes closed. Steve had drawn him while he was on the cusp of falling asleep, head tipped back against the truck, arms folded loosely over his chest with the blanket pulled up to his bellybutton. His hair hung across his forehead, the hold of his pomade loosening as the day wore on.
“You still got it,” Bucky murmured appreciatively, running a delicate thumb over the precise, dark lines of Steve’s drawing.
Steve’s hand rose to cup his cheek, mouth quirked in a smile that could only mean something heartfelt and sappy was going to fall from his lips: “I do. I still got you.”
Above their heads, the heavens cracked open to spill diamonds across the sky.