Chapter Text
They drive Sam to the airport, Bucky sitting in the passenger seat in silence the whole time.
He stays in the car while Steve drops Sam off, and when he gets back with two coffees in hand, Bucky ignores the one meant for him.
If Steve notices that anything is off, he doesn’t show it. His thumb taps the steering wheel along the cheerful tunes from the radio. His wedding band shines in the sun, and it’s like a slap in Bucky’s face.
“Do you want to take a bath once we get home? Then I was thinking we could get food from that Thai place you like, tonight. How does that sound?”
Bucky doesn’t answer, just makes a small noise at the back of his throat while looking out the window.
Once they reach the penthouse, Steve makes a move for the bathroom, but Bucky stops him in his tracks, kissing him deep and filthy instead.
“Well, someone’s eager,” Steve chuckles when Bucky pushes him against the kitchen countertop. With the metal hand, he rips Steve’s shirt open, sending buttons clattering to the ground. “Ok, slow down, cowboy,” Steve says, but Bucky doesn’t want to slow down.
Instead, he bites at Steve’s bearded jaw to shut him up, and then keeps going down, biting at the soft skin of his neck, where he smells faintly like his body wash and beard oil and, most of all, like Steve.
When Bucky goes to open their flies, Steve raises a hand to his chin, stilling him.
“Baby, you ok? What’s the rush?”
The rush is you’re leaving me, you fucking asshole. I’m in love with you and you’re leaving.
He doesn’t say that. Instead, he sneers,
“I know it’s been a long time since you were young, but not everything has to be some long, emotional conversation. Sometimes, people just need to get laid, grandpa.”
Steve’s eyes go steely as he looks at Bucky. Under the confine of his beard, Bucky can see his jaw clenching, and the hand around Bucky’s chin turns into a firmer grip.
“Is that so?” Steve murmurs, smooth as velvet, in a way Bucky has learned to recognize means that he’s trying to keep his temper in check.
Bucky jerks off Steve’s hold on him and turns his back to him, waging that there is a fifty-fifty chance he gets either screwed on the kitchen counter or told to pack his stuff and leave.
It really isn’t much of a wager, he thinks, as he feels Steve creep up behind him, cornering him against the countertop, barely a hair away from touching him. Even with his back turned, Bucky can feel the sheer unmovable weight of him, like a mountain breathing down his neck.
“How do you want it?” Steve asks, his voice deceptively soft.
Bucky wants to hit him until he bleeds.
“Fast and without talking, preferably. Not sure you can do that, though.”
Steve’s hand shoots up to the back of his neck in a deadly grip and pushes him forward until Bucky’s flat against the countertop.
The surface is cold and hard and pressing against his ribs uncomfortably.
It’s everything he wanted.
He hears Steve open a cabinet with his other hand, but when he tries to look up, his head is immediately pushed down.
“Ouch,” he grumbles when his cheekbone drags against the countertop.
“Quiet.”
Then, Steve finds what he’s looking for and slams the bottle of olive oil next to Bucky’s head.
Oh shit.
Bucky might think of himself as a little kinky, but using cooking ingredients as lube isn't part of his repertoire. A small spike of fear nudges at him and he tries to tamp it down by reminding himself Steve’s probably done it before.
Shit, Bucky hopes he’s done it before.
It all goes much quicker than he expected. Steve has his pants down in a second and pushes a finger up his ass without preamble. It’s weird as fuck, to feel the room-temp oil instead of the cold lube, and Bucky can feel it dripping down his legs.
“Ste–” he tries to say, but Steve throws in another finger without a word, all but cutting Bucky’s respiration.
“Quiet,” he repeats sternly, before moving on to a third. They’ve never gotten through prep this fast, and Bucky has to battle between the fact that he asked for it and the fear that it might actually hurt.
In the end, it doesn’t hurt.
Instead, he gets the pounding of a lifetime.
He’s ruined me for anyone else, he realizes, as Steve snaps his hips inside Bucky’s body, hammering against his prostate mercilessly. Bucky always thought he wasn’t much of an internal stimulation kind of guy, but turns out he’d never found anyone who could fuck him the way he really needed. Not until Steve.
Even though it barely seems possible, Steve actually starts pummeling him harder, and if Bucky was one of those guys that just went fluttering every time their prostate was grazed, he’d be screaming his lungs out by now. He’s not too far from it as it is.
“F-fuck, St-Steve, slow d-down,” he stutters, rocked forward with each thrust like a rag doll, until his head is dangerously close to bumping against the kitchen wall.
Steve fucks like a steam engine, without pause or hesitation, so Bucky can hardly believe it when the rhythm of his hips actually starts to falter. He can feel Steve’s mouth coming to press up against his neck, all warm lips and blunt teeth that still threaten to bite.
“Want me to slow down?” Steve rumbles, and they are pressed so close together, Bucky feels it all the way into his ribcage.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” he gasps, feeling himself throbbing everywhere, from the tip of his toes to his erected nipples, to his pulsating inner walls and his weeping cock.
Steve’s chuckle is both dark and unamused.
“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” he spits before resuming the utter destruction of Bucky’s body.
When Steve comes, it’s with a snarl and an angry hand gripping the back of Bucky’s head, pinning his face against the cold surface of the counter.
**
The sex didn’t help.
If anything, it just made the tension between them even worse. They fucked without a condom and Bucky is pissed that, on top of the oily feeling between his cheeks and down his legs, he has to deal with the unnerving sensation of come leaking out of his ass and into his underwear. Except he can’t go shower because Steve pulled out and zipped up his pants before marching down the hallway and slamming the bedroom door behind him.
Of course, Bucky could use the guest bathroom, but it feels like a surrender, and fuck if he is gonna back down first.
So instead, he washes in the kitchen sink as best as he can before he goes to sit on the couch, stewing in Steve’s come and his own anger, until Steve deigns coming out of the bedroom.
Before Bucky can say a word, Steve growls,
“What the fuck was that about?”
Motherfucker, you’re so on, Bucky thinks furiously.
“I’ve got a better question for you, asshole. When the fuck were you planning on telling me you’re leaving?”
Instead of appearing repentant or ashamed like Bucky expected, Steve looks at him straight in the eye, unapologetic.
“Tonight. I had a whole evening planned once Sam was gone, a nice evening, but I guess we might as well do it your way instead.”
Bucky could just combust on the spot from rage.
“Fuck your evening! You’re leaving! You’re fucking leaving for almost two years and you didn’t think it might be a good idea to warn me in advance?”
“I was always gonna leave, Bucky! This project has been in the works before I even bought the house! Don’t act like I’m scheming behind your back. What do you think I’ve been doing with Natasha for the past month? I’ve been on call with the Wakandan ambassador almost every day. Hell, my travel itinerary is on the tablet you use every single night!”
“So what? I was supposed to snoop on your business?”
“No, Bucky,” Steve grits, exasperated. “You were supposed to ask me questions so I could answer them. Except you never did, because you refuse to get involved in this relationship!”
Bucky scoffs, like he’s choking on Steve’s hypocrisy.
“Are you fucking kidding? I moved in with you!”
“After I dragged you here kicking and screaming! Be honest, if I hadn’t asked you to move in with me, how long would you have kept up this charade of coming here, getting fucked, and then leaving again, just to convince yourself we weren’t serious? Bucky, you –” Steve stops himself at the last second. He pinches the bridge of his nose and takes a deep breath. When he speaks again, he isn’t screaming anymore. “I know this is all new to you, okay? You’ve never been in a relationship, you don’t know what you’re doing. And I knew that. I knew it and I don’t blame you for it. But Bucky you gotta believe me when I tell you that this,” he gestures to the space between the two of them, “this isn’t how you do it. I’m not supposed to make all the decisions for you. You’re supposed to want this too. You’re supposed to want to get involved and make important decisions with me as a team. And you’re supposed to ask me questions. Questions about my job, about my friends, about my plans for the future. But you never do. Instead, you just wait around until I’m the one who has to call the shots, because if I didn’t, we wouldn’t be going anywhere.”
It stings, because Bucky knows he’s right, but he’s too proud and too angry to admit it.
“Well, how the hell am I supposed to know that? It’s what you did with Peggy! She told you to move in with her. She did everything for you!”
“Exactly!” Steve shouts. “Exactly, she did everything for me and I don’t want to have to go through this again, Bucky! I’ve been where you are now and I refuse to do to you what she did to me.”
This time, Bucky’s so confused, he’s the one who lowers his voice.
“I thought you loved her?”
Steve sighs, like Bucky is missing his point on purpose.
“I did. With everything I had. And if I had to do it all over again, I’d do it in a heartbeat. But you’re not me, Buck. You’re better, and you deserve better. What Peggy and I had, it’s not something you’re supposed to look up to. We were – we were fucked-up people in a fucked-up relationship. But we were both lonely, and hurt, so we didn’t care and we made it work. But, Bucky,” Steve exhales, “it took us over twenty years to make it work, and we messed up so many times. I don’t want you to have to go through that, to spend half your life trying to turn something broken into something healthy. It’s too much, Buck. It’s too much and you’ve got so much more to look forward to. Me, I enlisted at eighteen. I thought I was part of the greatest army in the world. I thought I was going to bring freedom to oppressed people. Instead, I terrorized innocent families who were just living their life half a world away because some asshole in power wanted to extend his empire over the Gulf.”
Steve’s expression is bitter, like the very words taste sour in his mouth.
“So when Peggy found me and told me she could get me out, I clung onto her because she was the only one who thought I was worth more than just being cannon fodder.”
Steve looks at him and he seems desperate to make himself heard, to make Bucky understand what he’s saying.
“I didn’t have anyone else, Buck. I didn’t have a sister, or an aunt, or any friends. I wasn’t bright like you are. I didn’t have any hope of getting into college, I barely even got through high school. If I died in that desert, nobody would cry for me. But then Peggy arrived and she saved me. She took my hand and she showed me all that the world had to offer. She took me to museums and concerts, she enrolled me in art classes and architecture courses. She paid for everything: the night classes, my rent, my books, my food, my clothes. She got me my honorable discharge and gave me a loan to build NOMAD. And finally, I… I started thinking there was more to do than fight an unjust war and hope to make it back in one piece. So you see, Buck, you and I, we are nothing alike. I know you think we are because you’ve been through so much, but trust me, from someone who had nothing, you have a whole future in front of you. An exciting future. If only you just stopped licking your wounds and took charge of your life.”
“Fuck you,” Bucky whispers and he can feel his eyes prickling with tears, at Steve for being an asshole, but also at all the pain Steve went through when he was younger. “It’s not that simple.”
“It really is, Buck. I see the way you talk to your sister about her college applications. You spent hours looking at the Caltech and MIT websites for her. And last night, at the party, I saw the look on your face when Scott and Hope talked about their jobs. It’s obvious you want to be an engineer, so go for it! MIT knows what you’ve been through, they’ll take you back in a heartbeat. Or do you want to spend your entire life building houses with Clint?”
This whole conversation feels like crawling through barbed wires, so Bucky does what he always does.
He retreats, but only after leaving nothing but scorched earth behind him.
“Who do you think you are, telling me how to live my life? You think you have all the answers because you’re older, but you’re the one who needs to fuck twenty-year old twinks just to feel alive. So go fuck yourself, Steve Rogers. I don’t need advice from you.”
Steve just rolls his eyes, like he expected nothing more.
“Is this really how you want to end things? I’m not leaving until the end of the month, Buck. I wanted us to have a good time, talk about how things can be. I – I have things I wanted to go over with you.”
“Go over? What is this, a board-meeting? It’s a break-up, you moron! There is nothing to ‘go over’!”
“For God’s sake, would you just stop insulting me for two minutes so I can give you this?”
Bucky has never really broken up with anyone before, but he’s pretty sure there isn’t supposed to be parting gifts involved. And yet, Steve ruffles through his pocket and gives him a key.
With a sinking feeling in his stomach, Bucky extends his metal hand. Upon further inspection, it really is what he feared.
It’s the key to the house in Westview.
“What is this? What are you playing at?”
“I’m not playing at anything, Buck. I want you to have it. I have to let go of the penthouse when I leave for Wakanda, so I want you to have someplace to go.”
“I have a place. In Brooklyn. You’ve been paying the rent for it.”
“And I’ll keep paying for as long as you allow me to, but that’s not a home, Buck. This is,” he says, gesturing to the key in Bucky’s hand.
Against all odds, the most naïve hope starts to blossom in Bucky’s chest. Surely it must mean something, for Steve to give him a key to the house that means so much for him, for him to want Bucky to move in the dream home he spent so long imagining.
“Can’t you ask someone else to go to Wakanda?
Steve is a straight-shooter. He doesn’t wear gloves or coddles or bullshits, something Bucky always appreciated about him.
Except right now.
“I could.”
Bucky realizes what he’s saying.
“But you won’t.”
And suddenly, he’s so fucking pissed he can feel his blood boiling inside of him.
“What the fuck is this for, then?”
“It’s just a house, Buck. Everything Peggy and I planned for it, it’s not going to happen. But I can’t sell it or rent it. I can’t bring myself to have strangers live in it. So I want it to go to someone who needs it, someone I –” he licks his lips and Bucky knows what’s coming, and fuck Steve for choosing this moment to tell him. “Someone I love,” he says quietly.
They stay silent for a moment, Steve’s words hanging like a dropped grenade between the two of them. When Steve speaks again, his voice is soft.
“All the paperwork has been taken care of, I put you down as tenant so you have legal security. You can move in right now. Anything you want, or need, just tell Natasha and she’ll make it happen.”
“What kind of fucked-up, delusional world do you live in to think I’m gonna move into your house by myself? The house you built for someone else?”
It’s said with as much vitriol as Bucky can muster but Steve doesn’t take the bait. Instead, he confesses,
“I didn’t build all of it for someone else. I know you love the room in the turret. I kept it empty for you, so you can move in there while I’m gone.”
It’s the kindest, most tender thing anyone has ever done for Bucky.
It cuts his heart open like a knife and leaves him bleeding.
“Just stay,” he implores, and it takes him by surprise. He’s not used to begging, but once the words escape his lips, it’s like the floodgates have been opened. “Please, just stay. I’ll do better, okay? I’ll – I’ll get more involved. I’ll be more mature about this, about us. Please, just don’t go.”
“Buck, you’re so young, you don’t even realize – “
“No!” Bucky shouts. “It’s you who don’t –“
He takes a shaky inhale.
If he can just convince Steve not to go, they’ll make it. He’s sure of it.
When he tells Steve all he’s ever thought but never had the courage to say, it feels like prying open his mangled heart with a crowbar.
“Steve, you’re the love of my life," and it hurts so much that Bucky has been feeling it for so long but was too afraid to say it out loud until now. "But me… I thought I was just a footnote in yours. Some inconsequential epilogue no one bothers to read because the story, your story with Peggy, was already over. But I know that’s not true now, so please, please just stay.”
Steve is silent for a long time.
“I know what it feels like to love someone older, Buck. And I know what it feels like to lose them. Peggy and I… I wouldn’t change a single thing about our story, not one minute of it. But you have to believe me when I say you don’t want to go through the same thing I did. I won’t let you, alright? I know first-hand what it’s like, to have someone take you by the hand and show you all there is instead of letting you discover it by yourself. It feels safe to have someone make all the decisions for you, but in the end, it starts chipping at you. Until your life isn’t your life anymore. And I don’t want to do that to you, Buck. You deserve so much better. Please, just think about it. You could go back to MIT and stay in the house over break. You could even bring in your sister, if you ever decide to tell her about me. And... Bucky, I really hope you and I can stay in touch while I'm in Wakanda...”
Bucky laughs and it feels like he’s crying.
“So that’s it, uh? You've got it all planned out. And you already made the decision all by yourself.”
“Yeah, baby, I did.”
The worst thing is, Steve sounds truly saddened by that. The asshole is leaving Bucky and is sad about it.
“Fuck you. Fuck you for thinking you can choose for me.”
Steve sighs, but the stubborn clench of his jaw tells Bucky all he needs to know.
“You’re right. I can’t choose for you. But I can choose for me and I won’t do it, Buck. I’m sorry.”
Bucky’s eyes sting with the pinpricks of tears.
“So I guess that’s it, uh? Just like that?”
When Steve fails to answer, Bucky shakes his head.
“Fuck you,” he repeats, weakly, because he’s got no strength left in him.
He leaves, the key in his pocket feeling like a thousand-pound weight he can’t seem to shake.
**
The last thing Bucky wants right now is to be alone in his old apartment, so he goes to the twins’ place in Brighton Beach. Wanda makes him chicken paprika and Pietro pours him a shot of rum every time he starts complaining.
He’s out like a light on their couch before the sun sets.
Unfortunately, drowning your sorrow in alcohol doesn’t make for a restful night. Bucky wakes up several times to throw up in the bathroom and swallow gallons of water. In the morning, he looks up at his phone blearily and his heart jumps in his throat when he sees he has a text.
Then it immediately sinks down when he sees it’s from Clint, telling him that Steve doesn’t need them to furnish the last room and that they’re officially done with the house in Westview.
Just like that.
The best six months in Bucky’s life since the accident, and it’s over.
He knows the key to the house is still in his pocket and he considers throwing it down the twins’ garbage disposal.
Instead, he goes to wake up Pietro so they can get breakfast and more alcohol.
He stays at the twins’ for three days. They eat Wanda's food, drink Pietro's liquor, and watch a Sokovia soap opera cuddled up together on the couch. Once it’s clear that his liver might be in terminal danger, he goes back to his dingy apartment in Crown Heights.
The idea of being alone, with nothing but silence and moldy walls around him, fills him with more dread every step he takes up the stairs of his building.
The first thing he notices when he pushes the door open is his laptop sitting on the overturned crates that act as a coffee table. The laptop he left at Steve’s place.
Natasha’s good at picking locks, Steve told him once.
In the bedroom, his clothes have been put back in his dresser, and his books are neatly stacked against the bed, where he kept them before moving in with Steve.
Bucky doesn’t know if he’s apprehensive or hopeful as he tours his apartment, looking for other signs of Steve’s – or more likely Natasha’s – presence. In the bathroom, his toothbrush is back, but everything else is the same as when he left, down to the half-empty bottle of shampoo in the shower. In the kitchen, however, the fridge and cupboards have been fully restocked and are now almost overflowing with fresh produce and meat. When Bucky opens the tiny freezer compartment, he finds a bottle of expensive-looking vodka.
Somehow, he knows it’s from Natasha.
It makes him smile for a second, before he remembers that she knew very well that Steve was leaving for Wakanda for two years and didn’t say shit to him. Scowling, he slams the freezer compartment shut.
He’s about to give up on his dignity and beg the twins to come to his place so they can feast on Steve’s dime, when he notices the cactus gifted by Laura Barton near the kitchen sink. Underneath, he can spot a white slip of paper and his heart immediately starts pounding in his chest.
With a trembling hand, he reaches for it, and feels unexpectedly emotional when he recognizes Steve’s neat handwriting.
I leave on the 23 rd . Come by anytime before that. I don’t want us to end things like this.
Honestly, Bucky isn’t sure what he expected.
He knows what he hoped for. An apology. Steve’s promise to stay in New York. A second plane ticket to Wakanda for Bucky to follow him.
It’s a ridiculous thought, and Bucky immediately hates himself for it. Life isn’t a romantic comedy, and Bucky isn’t about to uproot everything just to run after Steve in a crowded airport.
Before he can think better of it, he crumples the note and throws it in the trash.
A few hours later, his phone rings, and Bucky's heart somersaults up and down his throat before he realizes it’s only Clint asking him if he’s interested in helping with the new project, the brownstone in Bushwick.
For the first time in three years, Bucky tells him he’s fine and doesn’t need work for now. Steve has been paying his rent for the past few months, as well every single one of Bucky's outings. He's got money in the bank. He can take a few days for himself. He probably deserves it.
After that, things get really dark, really fast.
He doesn’t sleep. Whenever he does, he dreams of Steve. Whether they’re ugly-fighting or blissfully happy, it makes him wake up in a cold sweat.
Without any work to structure his day around, his eating schedule goes down the drain. He rotates between binge-eating sessions that leave him nauseous and entire days when the mere thought of swallowing food makes him feel sick.
He tries to get back on Grindr, but he can’t muster the strength to shower, let alone go partying. Instead, he spends his days in bed, in the same pair of sweatpants, watching the rest of the Sokovian soap opera he started with Wanda and Pietro. It’s twenty-five seasons long. Bucky watches all of them and yet couldn’t explain anything that happened in it.
Bucky knows what depression is like, and he knows he’s in pretty deep right now. He spent months in a similar state after his accident, except that, back then, he was in Indiana with his aunts who would keep careful watch over him. Now, with no one around to shake him, he spirals.
He eats the last of the food bought by Steve, and can’t be bothered to buy more. Instead, he orders a family-size pack of instant ramen and makes his way through it whenever he’s hungry.
He finishes Natasha’s vodka bottle far too quickly.
He pretends to have a sore throat to avoid talking with Becca on the phone and only answers Pietro’s texts when he threatens to storm Bucky’s apartment with all of their friends from the club. For the first time in a week, Bucky takes a shower and goes outside. He gets shit-faced drunk, flirts with every guy he talks to, including Pietro, but doesn’t go any further than kissing with any of them.
They don’t kiss as well as Steve anyway.
The next morning, he collapses in bed, clicks on another Sokovian soap opera, and it starts all over again.
He thinks that if he can just make it to the 23rd, he’ll be fine. Surely, Steve will call him before he leaves to get his flight. Or at least text. Maybe he’ll even drop by, Bucky thinks, and just imagining it makes his heart beat like crazy.
Because he doesn’t want Steve to see his current state of despair, Bucky starts cleaning his apartment, only to realize halfway through that it’s been over ten days and Steve hasn’t made a single move to get in touch, whether by call or by text, and the chance of him actually stopping by unannounced is non-existent.
Frustrated, Bucky takes his phone, ready to call Clint and ask if he’s got any job for him. If he sees Clint, then maybe he can casually mention Steve and find out what he’s been up to. Except that, then, Bucky will actually have to show up to work and won’t be able to just stay in bed all day.
With a growl, he puts his phone back down. Then he turns it off for good measures.
With his curtains closed all day, his sleep schedule gets so wacky, Bucky doesn’t even know when it’s daytime or night. All he cares about is making it to the 23rd, so he can finally hear from Steve again.
He hasn’t decided what he will actually do once Steve contacts him. Maybe pretend that everything is fine, just to prove to him that he doesn’t need him. He could even push it further and send him a pic of him in the club, surrounded by other guys. Or maybe Bucky won’t even answer him, leaving him on read instead. That would certainly be a small payback for the hell he’s putting Bucky through.
He spends hours fantasizing about it. About what will happen on the 23rd. In Bucky’s wildest daydreams, Steve has a change of heart, realizes what a moron he’s been, and begs Bucky to take him back. Bucky keeps him on his toes for a few days but he eventually throws himself in Steve’s arms and they move together in Winter Lane.
It’s ridiculous. Absurd.
Bucky wants it so much, it makes him want to cry.
He couldn’t say how much time passes as he goes from fantasy to fantasy, each of them leaving him both hopeful and nauseous, like bittersweet candies he can’t stop eating.
All he knows is that one day, Bucky is about to unpause his episode after a quick ramen break, when he looks down at the date displayed at the bottom of the screen.
It’s the 24th.
Steve has already left.
And he hasn’t reached out to Bucky.
Frantically, Bucky checks his phone and his emails, sure that he must have missed it somehow. He even asks Wanda to send him a text to make sure that his phone is working properly. When her message arrives a few seconds later, Bucky actually considers whether life is worth living.
It’s a split-second thought, nothing else.
It scares the hell out of him anyway.
Sprinting out of his bedroom like it’s on fire, he does something he hasn't done in years. He calls Dr. Raynor and paces the living room anxiously, feeling more and more panicked with every dial tone.
When she answers, he almost chokes from relief.
“Bucky,” she says, her voice croaky from years of trying and failing to quit smoking. “It’s been a long time. How are you?”
“I need an appointment.”
It’s a testament to Raynor’s professionalism that she doesn’t even hesitate,
“I have an opening next week. Is it an emergency?”
Bucky looks around his living room, where the blinds are closed. He doesn’t even know what time it is. In his small kitchen area, most of the floor space has been taken over by garbage bags Bucky keeps telling himself he’ll throw out tomorrow.
“Yes.”
“Come by tonight. My last patient leaves at eight. Do I need to put you on watch?”
Bucky’s never been put on watch before, but he knows what it means. Raynor will text him every hour, and if he doesn’t answer in under fifteen minutes, she’ll call 911.
“No. I – I think I’m good. I just,” he looks down at his phone, and sees it’s almost four. “Yeah, I’m good. I’ll see you tonight.”
“Call me again if you change your mind about being on watch,” she says.
Raynor isn’t the cuddly-feely type, but she waits until Bucky hangs up first, like she always does.
She was his Stark Industires-appointed psychiatrist when he first moved to New York to get the arm. Before her, he’d been seeing a young doctor in Indiana, near his aunt’s place, who smiled softly at him and asked him questions like “how does that make you feel?” and “how can we frame this under a different light?”
Then he’d met Raynor, who gave zero shit and expected zero bullshit in return. Bucky knew she usually worked with vets, not civilians, and that she’d taken on his case at Stark’s demand. At first, Bucky had thought she was bitter about that, until he’d understood that was just Raynor’s therapeutic style to call Bucky out on his lies and deflections. After six sessions spent doing nothing but arguing and sitting in stubborn silence – and one, he isn’t proud to admit, when he called her a bitch in a fit of sleep-deprived anger – they’d finally come to terms with each other. She’s the one who pulled Bucky out of his depression the first time around, and they’d work together while he got used to having a bionic metal arm. Then, when Bucky had finally gotten out of Rumlow’s crew and into Clint’s, they’d both agreed he was well enough to stop his therapy.
Until now.
Bucky gets into the shower and devises a plan for the next four hours: get clean, get dressed, open the windows, take out the trash, and go buy some real food. Except that for the first time in the past three weeks, he actually looks around and sees the state of his bathroom and bedroom, and he sidesteps the whole plan in favor of a deep clean. He’s halfway through clearing out the empty ramen cups in his room when he sees that he’s going to be late.
Cursing under his breath, he rushes out the door, the garbage bags still inside and his hair smelling like the bleach he used on the shower tiles.
When he arrives in Raynor’s office, he almost runs into a delivery man.
“Come in, Bucky,” she calls, her lips pinched in a perpetual state of annoyance. “It’s late and I haven’t had lunch. I hope you like orange chicken and egg rolls.”
Bucky had been rehearsing what he wanted to say to Raynor – his meeting with Steve, how it only started as a casual fuck before things got out of control and he moved in with him, how Steve kept conveniently omitting important details about his life, like the fact that he was moving to Wakanda for two years – but he hasn’t had anything other than instant noodles for days and the smell of real food makes him ravenous.
He eats six egg rolls, one container of orange chicken and two plates of rice, before finally talking about why he’s here.
Once he’s done, Raynor is as infuriatingly impassive as ever.
“So you’ve had your first heartbreak. Mazel tov.”
Bucky rolls his eyes but he’s too full to do anything other than recline on her sofa. It’s a strange comfort to be reunited with the trees painted on Raynor’s wall.
“It’s not just a regular break-up,” he complains. “I’m severely depressed and–”
Raynor, unhinged as she is, interrupts him.
“Of course it’s not a regular break-up. It can’t be, since you weren’t in a regular relationship.”
“Look, I know the age difference–”
“Oh, I’m not talking about the age difference. Let’s review the facts, shall we?”
She opens the notebook she had closed halfway through Bucky’s monologue and he can feel his blood pressure rise up as she starts tapping her pen against the pages.
God, but he fucking hates that notebook.
“Now, interrupt me if I’m wrong, but from what I understand, you decided to invest yourself in a man who never hid the fact that he was emotionally unavailable because he was still very much in love with his dead wife, yes?”
“I – Yes. But look…”
Raynor doesn’t wait for him to elaborate.
“Not only that, but from the moment you met him, you started isolating yourself from your friends and family, by not disclosing to any of them that you were in a relationship?”
“So what? You’re saying it’s my fault he broke up with me?”
Raynor waves a hand.
“It’s not my job to lay blame or decide who’s the bad guy in your break-up, Bucky. My job is to show you when you’re engaging in unhealthy coping mechanisms so we can work them out together. And your relationship with Steve is definitely another one of those coping mechanisms.”
“It wasn’t,” Bucky scoffs, offended to see his time with Steve reduced to a neurosis.
“Alright, then let me ask you this: in the past six months you’ve been with Steve, who else have you spent time with outside of work?”
“Clint,” Bucky says, feeling rather proud of himself until Raynor scoffs.
“Your boss isn’t your friend, Bucky. Especially when he is Steve’s friend first. Who else?”
“I – Natasha.”
Raynor looks down at her notebook and Bucky knows that one is a miss.
“That would be Steve’s secretary, yes?”
“…Yes.”
“Let me rephrase,” Raynor says like she’s talking to a very dim-witted child, “anyone who isn’t linked to Steve in a personal or professional manner.”
To Bucky’s own surprise, he can’t think of anyone else. He can hardly believe it himself. He’s used to being surrounded by people. Not just his coworkers, but guys he met on Grindr, some of them he sometimes became friendly acquaintances with.
“Pietro!” he finally exclaims, shooting up into a sitting position. “Pietro and Wanda.”
“Ah, progress,” Raynor says, picking up her pen, getting ready to write something down. “Where was that?”
Fuck.
“… At Steve’s penthouse. During his party.”
The look Raynor sends him is thoroughly unimpressed. With no small amount of attitude, she puts her pen back inside her notebook.
“Are you starting to see the problem here, Bucky?”
He knows what she’s getting at, but he’s suddenly panicked at the idea of having turned into one of those pathetic saps that don’t hang with anyone except their partner and don’t have a life outside of their relationship.
“Look, I – I wasn’t doing it on purpose.”
“Weren’t you?”
“No! Of course not!”
Raynor flips a page in her notebook and Bucky wishes he could whack her over the head with it. Except that Raynor might be old, but she is still fit like a soldier. She would probably put Bucky in a headlock, arm or no arm.
Hell, she probably fantasized about it a few times herself.
“Bucky,” she tells him, sternly. “Answer me this: why did you never tell your sister about Steve?”
“Because… Because it’s my private life. And I knew she would give me shit for the age difference, and I didn’t want to deal with that.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes,” Bucky snaps, because he hates rhetorical questions. “That’s all.”
“So it’s not because you thought she would disapprove of the fast pace of your relationship? From what you’ve told me, you and Steve had barely started acknowledging that your relationship was more than casual before you moved in with him. Do you think Becca might have been critical of you moving in with someone even though you were clearly not ready for that type of commitment?”
Fuck.
“Maybe.”
Raynor is like a shark, and when she smells that she’s on to something, she doesn’t stop swimming forward until she goes in for the kill.
“So, would you say you deliberately kept Becca in the dark because she was the only person you knew who would warn you of the dangerous level of codependence you were displaying in your relationship? Was it easier for you to dive head-first into your relationship with Steve regardless of your own emotional instability if your sister didn’t know about it?”
Fuck.
When he says it out loud, Raynor smiles. She flips her notebook to a blank page and clicks her pen in an irritating display of smugness.
“Good, we’re making progress. So now that you’re aware of the unhealthy dynamic that you shared with Steve – who, might I add, never once stopped being surrounded by his own inner circle during your relationship – how does that make you feel?”
“Like a moron.”
Raynor nods approvingly.
“Yes, love tends to make us feel that way. But all hope is not lost. Setting healthy boundaries is something we can work on together. Now, since the last time I saw you, did you give any thoughts on going back to school, like we talked about?”
Raynor’s words echo Steve’s in a way Bucky isn’t comfortable with.
“No. I’ve been busy with my job.”
“A job that was supposed to be temporary until you reached financial and mental stability. We’re going to work on the latter, but from what you told me, the former is more than enough for you to consider student loans.”
“I have a job, I can’t just quit.”
“Of course you can. You’re twenty-four-year-old. You have no spouse, no children, no mortgage. What’s stopping you from applying to MIT again? You were a brilliant student, and you loved your field of research.”
“That was when I wanted to work for Stark Industries,” he grits out but this time, it’s Raynor who rolls her eyes.
“Didn’t you tell me you met two engineers from Pym Tech recently? Surely they must need unpaid interns to boss around just like SI does.”
Bucky shakes his head, but deep down, he’s dangerously close to hoping that Raynor might be right.
“I can’t do that. I – I dropped out. They won’t just let me back in after all those years.”
Raynor raises a dubious eyebrow.
“Well, if only you and I both knew an eccentric billionaire known for his close ties to his alma mater. One who you recently saw under a new light which might help you consider asking him for help.”
… Fuck.
Raynor takes pity on him and claps her hands together.
“Great, well, it’s nine pm, and I have to tuck my daughter in bed. So I’ll see you next week during my regular office hours. In the meantime, I’m giving you homework: go out, have fun, talk to new people. And maybe start thinking about whether working for a man who constantly reminds you of your ex is truly the best way to make a living. Do you sleep?” she asks and when Bucky shakes his head, she whips out a prescription pad: “Let’s deal with that then. No broken heart was ever mended by lack of sleep. It’s pretty much the opposite, in fact.”
**
As much as Bucky hates to admit it, Raynor is right, as usual.
The sleep medicine helps him get back on a regular schedule, and he feels less like an exhausted wreck. He cleans up the rest of his apartment, takes out the trash that accumulated over the weeks, and goes grocery shopping for real food.
None of it makes him feel better, but at least he doesn’t feel like he’s free-falling down a dark mine shaft anymore.
He spends hours looking at the financial aid documents and admission pages of MIT before he decides to do the adult thing and call Gretchen Green in Stark’s office. He expects to be told to call back later or, at best, to be given an appointment sometimes in the next three months.
Instead, Gretchen tells him that Mr. Stark has an opening the next morning and asks if Bucky needs a car to get to the Tower.
It’s too much, too fast, but he can hardly back down now. Especially since he feels that if he doesn’t take the leap now, he’ll never find the courage to do it again.
So, instead of getting shit-faced with Pietro like his fight-or-flight-but-mainly-flight instinct is telling him to, he goes to meet Wanda at the end of her cooking classes, eats the leftovers from the class with her, and then he goes back home to take his sleeping pills at a reasonable hour.
It’s torture, the way the road to recovery always is.
The next morning, he takes the train to Stark Tower and gets sent down to the lab, without a high-heeled escort this time.
Stark is at the center of the room, like he always is, except that he’s covered in what looks like the content of a fire extinguisher that's lying sideways at his feet. In a corner of the room, one of his robots is wearing a dunce cap and facing the wall like a child that’s been put on time out.
When the pneumatic door slides open, Stark turns to face him, frowning.
“Alright, Astro Boy, what’s the problem? Wrist? Fingers? Shit. Was it the shoulder? I thought the new programming would make cooling down easier, but there is always a small chance of short-circuit or overheating. Can you move it partially or is everything a dead weight?”
Bucky blinks, confused, until he gets the misunderstanding.
“The arm’s fine. It’s you I wanted to see.”
“Oh.”
Stark looks taken aback before his eyes dart to the pneumatic door, like he’s considering whether to make a quick exit.
“It won’t take long,” Bucky adds, and Stark visibly deflates, turning back to fidget with something on his work station.
“Alright, let’s have at it. Is it about the party? I told Cap it was a bad idea. I said I could just fly Pep to the Bahamas, explain our absence, but he insisted. I’m only a man, and when he aims those baby blues at me, I can’t –”
“Steve and I broke up,” Bucky interrupts because he’d rather not have to listen to a diatribe about the compelling power of Steve’s eyes.
Stark’s head turns toward him so fast he must get whiplash.
“You did?”
“Yeah…”
Stark gapes for a few seconds, blinking wordlessly, until he all but falls down on his work stool.
“Oh, thank fuck!”
What.
“What?” Bucky says out loud, barely hiding his outrage.
Stark flaps his hands in a pacifying gesture.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, kid. I’m not happy you’re single. It’s just – I’ve known Cap for so long, I basically got the front row seat to the ‘Steve & Peggy’ show for the past twenty years. I’m just glad I won’t have to see the sequel.”
In front of Bucky’s obvious bafflement, Stark elaborates, settling more comfortably against the station.
“You know what made Steve and Peggy so… Steve and Peggy? They were the same. The actual same. I’m not pulling your leg here, they were the same in everything: same taste in music, same taste in art, same sense of humor, neither of them could cook for shit or express their feelings in anything other than grand, moving, honestly embarrassing speeches… And most of all, they were both stubborn like a couple of pack mules. Seriously, watching them fight was like watching a tornado and a tsunami clash over which one could do the most damage. They wouldn’t budge an inch. You know she even shot him once? Well, shot at him, more accurately, though dad never gave me the whole story… Anyway, I digress, my point is, even that didn’t scare him off because he was just as bull-headed as she was.”
Bucky grits his teeth. He already knows the whole ‘Steve & Peggy: greatest love story of modern times’.
“So they were soulmates, I already know that.”
Tony looks at him piercingly, actually looks him in the eye for a second, and it shocks Bucky into speechlessness.
“Were they?”
Bucky blinks.
“What?”
“Soulmates. I mean, maybe they were, sure, whatever. But not at first. Peggy didn’t just stumble onto the perfect man for her, especially not a twenty-something kid from Brooklyn stranded in Iraq. He became what she wanted because Steve was so young when he met Peggy he just… molded himself in her image. Trust me, as someone who basically became his dad, I know a bit about the subject.”
Bucky mulls this over. It sure checked out with what Sam had told him – what Steve himself had admitted.
“So what? You think the same thing was gonna happen to me? I’d just ‘mold myself in his image,’ whatever the fuck that means?”
Tony chuckles and, though he doesn’t face Bucky directly, the smile he sends toward the ground is definitely fond.
“‘Course not. You’re not Cap, and I mean it as a serious compliment. You know who you are and you won’t let anyone change that, not even some good-looking asshole with perfect teeth and hair. By the way, I need to ask, does he actually wake up like that? Actually, if he does, don’t tell me. It’s just gonna piss me off even more.”
Tony’s expression grows more serious as he gets back to the matter at hand,
“Look, you can think that everything I’m telling you is bullshit and, fair enough. But I’m guessing Steve would agree with me when I say he’s giving you the one thing Peggy could never bring herself to give him.”
Bucky had trouble following before, but now he’s downright confused.
“A breakup?”
Tony looks at him pityingly.
“A chance to take a breather, figure out what you want to do with your life and come back to him of your own volition. Steve never had that. Peggy never gave him that. Those two never spent more than a week apart in all the years I’ve known them. And I get it. Steve was a mess back then, trust me I know, I saw it. He had no friends, no family, and he was slowly realizing that the war he had signed up for wasn’t what it said on paper and that the good ol’ US of A wasn’t the good guy he’d thought. He was lost and angry and was basically the human equivalent of a tiny cactus. And Peggy wasn’t much better. She’d lost her brother and her first husband, had no home or family left aside from the good ol’ Starks, and we’re not exactly the best company to keep around. I’m guessing Peggy thought he couldn’t manage without her and she probably loved him too much to let him figure it out himself. So, instead of letting him fly on his own, she grabbed him tight and never let him go. I know that instinct well,” Tony says, and here he glances wistfully at his work station, where there is a picture of Pepper making a goofy expression for the camera.
“So you see, Steve never had to choose Peggy, because she chose him first. And from that moment on, they could never be apart. She decided everything for him: where they would live, what Steve would do with his life after the army, what kind of art he would make, who his friends would be... And I’m not throwing stones here, she made the right choices. She was always the best at seeing Steve’s potential and helping him achieve it,” Stark admits.
“But you and I, we both lost our parents young and it taught us to stand on our own two feet and make mistakes, screw up, learn from it. It’s how we discovered who we were. Steve never got that. And I’m guessing he doesn’t want to take that away from you, which is why he’s not repeating Peggy’s mistake.”
Bucky realizes that if what Tony says is true, then Steve didn’t leave him forever.
He suddenly remembers Steve's words, the plan he'd made for them and that Bucky had dismissed so easily in the middle of their fight.
You could go back to MIT and stay in the house over break. You could even bring in your sister, if you ever decide to tell her about me. And... Bucky, I really hope you and I can stay in touch while I'm in Wakanda...
That was Steve trying to keep the door open. To salvage the bond between them when Bucky had tried to cut his losses and run.
Maybe once Steve gets back from Wakanda, they could still give it another try.
It’s a dangerous type of hope. The same kind that drove him here, to Stark.
“That’s – It’s actually why I came here. Sort of. I wanted to…”
He takes a deep breath, and the servos in his arm grind down and lock up as he balls his hands into fists.
“I’m thinking of going back to MIT, and I wanted to know if you’d be willing to look at my application.”
Stark cocks his head, looking Bucky intently before… looking extremely bored.
“Don’t need to,” he says, turning back to type on the holographic keyboard on his work station. Before Bucky’s heart can fall down his stomach, he adds, “I already did before.”
“What? When?”
Bucky’s suddenly faced with the very real, very absurd possibility that he’s been hacked by Tony Stark.
The man just shrugs.
“The first time around, when you applied in your senior year. Your parents asked me to look over your application.”
“I – They did?”
Bucky never knew that.
“Of course. What’s the point of working for the most advanced tech company in the world if it doesn’t open doors for your kids? Also, two of my best engineers get together and have a baby who wants to go to MIT? You think I wouldn’t want to see if they bred some kind of genius who will build a rival company and put me out of business? That’s how every villain’s origin story starts,” Tony wags his eyebrows. “But more seriously, plenty of my employees send me applications for MIT, Caltech, internships, jobs… Depending on what I think of the file, I give it a more or less forceful nudge in the right direction. And your file? I basically saved you a spot as an intern back when you were still in high school. Really,” he insists in front of Bucky’s disbelieving expression. “I’ve just been keeping it warm for you all those years. I would have pushed you into it before, but Pepper told me bullying grieving kids who've lost an arm is sort of bad taste so, you know…”
Bucky blinks, and blinks again, and finally realizes that it’s tears that are fogging up his eyes. Stark is decent enough to pretend he can’t see it, though one of his robots wheels in closer with a dirty rag in its claw. Stark looks at it in alarm.
“Don’t touch that unless you’re up to date with all your shots.”
Bucky laughs, even though he feels more like crying.
“Shit, I don’t know what to say,” he mutters.
“Pssh,” Tony waves him off. “I’ll just give them a call and you’ll be in just in time for next semester. I’m guessing you’ll need financial aid? Or do you still have enough left from what your parents gave you? Actually, you know what, nevermind that. I’ll give a call to financial services anyway, and they’ll work something out.”
Bucky exhales, slowly. It’s like a five-year old weight has been lifted off his chest and he can finally breathe right for the first time.
“Thank you.”
Stark just waves him off again.
“My people will be in touch with your people. Or… with you. Whatever. If your arm doesn’t need a once-over, I’m gonna kindly ask you to go elsewhere, because I’m running very late on this and Pepper will get mad if I make her miss this gallery opening tonight. Of course, I can always buy the gallery for her, but strangely enough, she doesn’t like it when I do that.”
Stark keeps babbling, either at Bucky or at his robots, Bucky isn’t sure, so he just quietly exits the lab.
Once he gets out of the Tower, it’s like he’s seeing the world differently. Everything seems brighter and louder, but also lighter, like they’ve switched to another atmosphere. Bucky all but skips to the train station, feeling more excited than he has in years.
It’s happening.
It’s really happening.
Of course, he still has a long way to go. He needs to call Clint, first of all, and tell him he won’t have time to work for him anymore. Somehow, he doesn’t think he’ll mind losing Bucky too much, no matter how good of a worker he was. He should also call his sister, and finally tell her what he's been hiding from her for the last six months. And the twins, he still hasn't thanked them properly for keeping him upright the past few weeks.
While waiting for the train, Bucky’s phone vibrates and, when he takes it out, he sees that there is a text waiting.
A text from Steve.
Raynor used to tell him that good things attract each other and that it’s only when Bucky starts confronting his problems that more solutions will present themselves. The old goat is right, once again.
He opens the message, and a picture pops up. It’s a golden sunrise, its colors more vibrant than anything Bucky has ever seen in the States. It bathes the green jungle underneath in warm light.
His phone buzzes in his hand again as another text arrives.
It’s a single line.
I’m thinking of you.
The end.