Chapter Text
SIX MONTHS LATER
Beautiful stranger, here you are in my arms
But I think it's finally, finally, finally, finally, finally safe
For me to fall
Spring had arrived in Brooklyn and alongside it, a feeling of hope.
The F train is just as hot and stuffy as Bucky remembers it being in 1940. Steve is watching him, but not in the same way he’d watched him a year ago when Bucky had dragged him from the Potomac river - like he was a stranger. Not in the same way he’d looked at him as he’d been debilitatingly depressed or in the same way he’d looked at him when he showed up on his doorstep barely able to string two words together.
The way Steve looks at him now feels normal. Right. Their shoulders brushing as they stand on the subway back from Coney Island on a warm spring evening. They catch each other’s eye, grinning, and then looking away again. They stand side by side in companionable silence on the busy train that doesn’t freak Bucky out the way it did when they first arrived in New York two months ago.
When the bad days had started to come less and the good days more, sick of D.C, Steve and Bucky had made the trip back to New York. They spent weeks wandering around brimming with memories, pointing out landmarks of their past to one another. The playground where they first met, the (now heavily refurbished) building they once lived in together. The neighborhood where Bucky’s parents and sisters had lived, the center where the Stark Expo had been held, the club where Bucky used to take girls dancing and Steve would watch with narrowed eyes and a petty sulk. They’d laughed their way past all the plaques depicting Steve and Bucky as best friends that had been dedicated to Steve and the Howling Commandos around the city.
There are good days, and there are bad. Which is how it always will be, they have to remind themselves. On the good days they wander and they talk and they reminisce and they laugh. On the bad days they stay at home and they sleep and they cry and they sit and they eat sweet oranges on the living room floor, the tang on their tongues reminding them of what it was like to savor those treats in the war.
Natasha spends some time at the Stark tower for work and sees them once or twice a week. She and Bucky swear in Russian and laugh with each other and Steve doesn’t even pretend to find it annoying, he’s just so pleased they’re not isolated anymore. Sam spends a particularly memorable weekend with them where it rains heavily. Stuck inside, they play a game of monopoly that goes on between Sam and Bucky for seven hours before Steve has to call time by allowing Alpine to jump on the board and end the game. Steve is realistically hopeful that once they start interacting with more people, he’ll be able to take Bucky to the tower and introduce him to the rest of the team.
The cat settles into her new home with good grace because as Bucky points out, as long as there’s food then she’s happy. They’re in an apartment much bigger than the last, and after four months living there it feels more like home than anywhere else Steve has lived in the 21st century. The last few months have resurfaced so many memories that the sticky notes have been replaced by a notebook where Bucky writes down… a bit of everything, really. There are two bedrooms - the spare one, and theirs. Though there are nights where Bucky doesn’t sleep in the bed because it’s all a little much, it’s still theirs. Shared space that belongs to the both of them, together.
“Hey,” Steve nudges him gently. “This is our stop.”
As they exit the subway and enter back out into the cool spring evening, Bucky observes the way the change in temperature feels on his skin. The way he and Steve’s shoulders brush as they walk side by side the seven minutes home. He observes all of it; the way Steve looks at him, their decision to move home, the way it actually feels like home , the good days, the bad. The walks and the talks and the panic attacks and the way the oranges taste on his tongue. The time he spends with Natasha, with Sam. The way getting on the train doesn’t terrify him anymore, the way walking down the street in New York feels a thousand times easier than it ever did in DC, despite being so much busier. The way their house is warm and comfortable and theirs .
Bucky observes these things the same way he remembers doing a year ago in the last alleyway he ever had to hide in. The day he met Alpine and the day he made the decision to go to Steve’s. He can’t believe there was ever a time where he didn’t think there was anything to live for. There are still days where he’s overwhelmed with guilt and thinks maybe Steve would be better off without him, but they’re much shorter lived than they used to be.
His observations, he’d decided a year ago, were what made him human. He still believes it, even more so than he did back then.
They make it home just as the sun is beginning to set. When they walk into the living room, Alpine jumps up from the couch and shoots across the floor to meet Bucky.
“Yeah, yeah,” he says. “It’s dinnertime, I know.” She follows him into the kitchen excitedly and scrambles for the food as soon as Bucky puts the bowl down on the ground. He walks over to the trash to throw out the tin, when he stops.
Steve is flicking through records in the next room - he can hear the plastic covers rustling. Bucky stands there, hovering over the trash with the empty tin in his hand, waiting to hear what it will be. Steve selects one and Bucky hears him move across the room to put it on. The needle goes down and the sound of Harry James’ orchestra fills their home. Bucky stares down at the tin gripped in his hand, the rolex of memories that grow clearer by the day running through his mind. The last time he heard this song was in a dream - a memory, really. He recalls it as Kitty Kallen’s voice comes to life on the record and, in a moment of perfect clarity, knows exactly what he wants to do. Bucky throws out the tin and enters the living room, where Steve is skimming the newspaper on the couch.
He looks up when Bucky enters the room and he smiles, putting the paper down and standing up to meet him in the center of the living room.
“Is she happy?”
“There’s food on her plate. She’s happy.”
Steve grins and puts his arms around Bucky’s waist, leaning in to kiss him gently, because, well. He can’t help it. He’s happy too.
“Did you want to go out tonight?” Bucky asks. Steve often goes for dinner at the tower on the weekends with the rest of the team.
“No,” Steve says definitively. “I want to stay right here.”
“Here?” Bucky jokes. “In the center of this little house of ours?”
Steve’s smile grows, his eyes flickering with recognition for the memory Bucky is referring to.
“Right here,” Steve says softly.
“Fine,” Bucky smirks, draping his arms around Steve’s shoulders beginning to sway in time to the music. “If we stay, we dance.”
“You know,” Steve says as they revolve slowly on the spot. “I think dancing has grown on me since back then.”
“You haven’t improved much.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Bucky places his head on Steve’s shoulder. They move slowly, arms around each other, and Bucky thinks. He observes. He remembers. He must sigh or something, because after a moment, Steve speaks.
“Hey,” he says gently. “What’s wrong?”
Bucky looks up to meet Steve’s eyes. They are as blue as ever. As recognizable as ever. Parts of Steve have changed since they were last in this position, but his eyes haven’t. And he is still Steve at his core. Still brave and loving and loyal in his soul. Bucky wonders if Steve is thinking the same thing when looks into Bucky’s eyes.
Probably not. He has changed too much, surely. He will never be the person he was before the war.
“I still feel like a stranger sometimes,” he says.
Steve stares at him for a moment, before he leans forward and their lips meet.
“There’s nothing strange about this to me,” Steve says. “In fact, I could have sworn we’ve done this exact same thing a hundred times,” he smiles at Bucky gently.
“It’s not… this,” Bucky says. They don’t stop dancing. “It’s me.”
Steve doesn’t speak for some time.
“You’re not a stranger to me,” he says eventually. His voice is soft, warm, and kind. It never wavers, and Bucky has no choice but to believe him. After all, when has Steve ever failed him?
“You never have been, and you never will be,” Steve continues as they dance to the closing notes of the song. “But even if you were, you’d be the most beautiful stranger I’d ever seen.”
Never thought that you would be
Standing here so close to me
There's so much I feel that I should say
But words can wait until some other day
Kiss me once, then kiss me twice
Then kiss me once again
It’s been a long, long time
Haven't felt like this, my dear
Since I can't remember when
It’s been a long, long time
You'll never know how many dreams
I've dreamed about you
Or just how empty they all seemed without you
So kiss me once, then kiss me twice
Then kiss me once again
It's been a long, long time.