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It’s not the most scraggly stray cat that Sam has ever seen. He or she is a long-haired breed, with slightly matted and dingy white fur, but not so skinny the ribs are sticking out. And while it takes some effort to coax the little thing out from under the porch, Sam doesn’t get his face clawed off, so he feeds the ravenous little beast and then puts some old towels in a cardboard carton, pokes some holes in the lid, and takes Kitty to the vet.
**
“You’re really gonna do me that way?”
Kitty, now cleaned up and treated for any parasite she could have acquired, merely stares at Sam out of large blue eyes as she lounges on the hardwood floor, three feet from the cat bed and scratching post that Sam had purchased approximately seventeen minutes after the vet’s office had confirmed that she had no microchip.
“Fine, I get it, it’s cooler on the floor, or something.” Sam sighs and kneels down, offering his hand for her to sniff.
Kitty continues to stare, before beginning to bathe herself. Her ears twitch as Sam gently scratches between them.
**
The cat can’t possibly be a stray. It’s too clean, too well-fed, and too casually friendly. “Go home,” Bucky says, and makes a shooing motion.
The cat gives him a withering look out of amber eyes and turns and saunters off.
The cat returns on a daily basis, winding around Bucky’s legs, waiting at the door, not being loud, exactly, but always mewing, almost chattering.
But the cat can’t possibly be a stray. It’s too clean, too well-fed. So Bucky doesn’t feed it, except for a few occasional bites from his sandwich.
It’s on one such day when the little mooch is enjoying at least a third of the turkey from Bucky’s club sandwich that a tall blond with a Dorito-shaped top half and a million-dollar smile comes jogging up to the steps. “There you are Oreo. Sorry, she’s kind of an escape artist. Hope she hasn’t been too much of a pest.”
Bucky peers up at the guy and continues chewing his bite.
“I’m Evan,” the guy extends his hand, then quickly lets it drop once he realizes that Bucky is eating a proper sandwich that requires two hands. Bucky thanks all the gods or powers that be or whatever that the guy’s name doesn’t start with S.
The cat, whose name is apparently Oreo, takes a flying leap into Evan’s arms. Bucky is not jealous.
“She’s clean, up to date on all her shots, doesn’t bite, only eats insects and kibble and deli meats, and not, you know, people. So she’s safe. Which you probably have figured out. But if she bothers you too much, uh, let me know, but you know how cats are, they do their own thing…”
“Yeah, no, she’s fine.” Bucky crumples the wax paper and stands, reaching to scratch the purring Oreo between her ears. “She’s a good hang. Glad to see she’s got a home. Figured she wasn’t a stray, just friendly.”
Evan grins. “Yeah, she’s a good girl.” He strokes her with his free hand, her eyes narrowing as her purring increases in intensity and volume.
**
“So is that the name you finally settled on?”
“What?” Sam looks up from where his arm is currently being engulfed by white furry legs. The cat is apparently part Venus flytrap.
“Princess,” Sarah peers over her glass of iced tea, smiling. “That’s a new one, far as I know. It’s always Pretty Girl, or Kitty, or Sweetie.”
Sam wrinkles his nose. “Princess isn’t a name, it’s just a term of endearment. She needs a better name than Princess.”
“Aphrodite? Snowflake? Sugar?”
“What?” Sam frowns.
Sarah shrugs. “When people name cats, they usually go with mythology, food, or physical characteristics. She’s pretty, white like snow or sugar.”
Sam looks down at the cat, at her long white fur. “Maybe the goddess route. Maybe. Not food though. What else is white besides snow?”
“Clouds…” Sarah furrows her brow. “Not much interesting. Seafoam, I guess. Some flowers, like calla lilies.”
“Calla…” Sam tests it out. “What do you think Calla?”
The cat rolls over and stands, jumping to the floor and sauntering off.
“Okay, not that one. Lily?”
The cat merely flops down and yawns, not bothering to look at Sam as she begins to bathe herself.
“I think she’s chosen the goddess route,” Sarah laughs.
“Athena. Or maybe Artemis or Diana, seeing as she likes to kill things.” Sam shudders at the memories of the rats she’s brought to him.
“Nothing wrong with a good girl who keeps the vermin population down.” Sarah turns her glass slowly in her hands, letting the ice rattle. “Isn’t that right Diana?”
The cat merely wanders over to a patch of sunlight and stretches out.
“Guess we’ll keep working on,” Sam sighs.
**
“I have all kinds of stuff for her. Cat trees and beds and toys. Food and a carrier too, and a harness and leash.”
Bucky resists the urge to roll his eyes. For such a conscientious cat parent, Evan is rather ready to re-home his cat so he can move in with his allergy-afflicted girlfriend. Doesn’t he know there are shots for that now? Bucky knows and he’s the centenarian here.
“Yeah, I’ll take her,” he says instead. The cat practically lives at his place these days anyway.
It’s a done deal not 24 hours later. Bucky looks at his new charge cured up on his lap, at the way her black markings cover her ears and the little smudge on her nose. “Oreo is a dumb name. You look like Figaro to me. From the Pinocchio film.”
Figaro purrs and blinks slowly at him.
“Is that a yes? Is Figaro your real name?”
Figaro nudges her head at his arm as she purrs.
“So it is.” He strokes her slowly. “Welcome home, Figaro.”
**
Sam Wilson, war veteran, Avenger, Captain America, cum laude graduate from LSU, is walking around outside in pajamas shaking a dish of food and saying “here kitty kitty.”
He can’t even call his cat properly because he can’t figure out a name for her.
Sam, Captain America, veteran of an elite military unit, cum laude graduate, highly regarded former counselor, can’t even keep his damn cat from leaving him. He sits on the front steps and sets the dish of cat food next to him and buries his face in his hands. He’ll get up and go inside in a minute, definitely.
“Mmrff.”
Sam looks up just in time to see his cat drop a mouse at his feet, sit on her haunches and stare at him expectantly.
“You’re an asshole,” he says even as he reaches to scratch between her ears. If you love something, let it go. Right.
**
Figaro comes and goes as she pleases, yet she still paces around Bucky’s place as if she’s looking for something. Bucky assumes at first that she’s looking for Evan, but there’s something about the way she walks around the place that suggests a mix of curiosity and reproach.
His therapist would say he’s projecting, Bucky knows.
**
“Whatcha got there?”
Sam hasn’t looked at him with this level of suspicion since Bucky broke Zemo out of prison.
“Flowers. Um, I figured you still liked yellow roses.” Bucky resists the impulse to hold them more tightly, lest he crush the stems. Bucky has it fixed in his memory, the moment he learned that Sam liked yellow roses. ”Why are you asking me what my favorite flower is anyway?” Sam didn’t look away from the storefront that they’d been staring at for three hours.
“Because we’re on a stakeout and it’s boring,” Bucky replied.
If Sam was suspicious at the choice of Bucky’s pass-the-time question, he didn’t let on. “Yellow roses,” Sam said. “They really brighten up a place.”
“You know those are for friendship, right? If you’re interested in someone and you give them yellow roses you’ll be telling them you want to be friends with them.”
“I do want to be friends with the person I’m in love with.” Sam kept his eyes straight ahead. After a pause, he added. “I’ve always been friends with every person I’ve dated before we started dating.”
Bucky wasn’t sure whose heartbeat he could hear accelerating in that moment, but not two weeks later, he had gifted Sam the first bouquet of yellow roses, had marveled at the way Sam’s smile outshone them. Eventually he moved on to red roses, but had never had the chance to gift Sam white ones.
“I mean your other hand,” Sam says, not making a move to accept the flowers.
Bucky follows his gaze to the cat carrier that he’s holding in his right hand. “Oh, yeah, this is Figaro.”
“You’re giving me a cat?” Sam crosses his arms over his chest.
Bucky feels a trickle of sweat between his shoulder blades. “I didn’t want to leave her at home.”
“So you’re planning to stay a while. You come walking in here with friendship flowers and a cute cat and a fresh cut and you think you get to stay.”
Bucky had rehearsed what he wanted to say to Sam during the entire drive, but now he feels as if Figaro has had a swipe at his tongue.
“Mrrr…”
Bucky’s eyes are drawn to a long-haired white cat padding across the floor. “You have a cat too,” he manages to rasp.
“Showed up a few weeks ago. Likes to disappear on me when it suits her, come back when she pleases.” Sam is suddenly closer, taking the roses from Bucky and walking to the kitchen. From her carrier, Figaro chips and mews, and the white cat sniffs at the wire door.
Bucky sets the carrier down, watching as the two
cats sniff one another between the wires, listens to the sound of water running in the kitchen.
“What’s her name?” He asks as Sam returns with two glasses of water. “Thanks,” he says as he accepts one of them.
“She doesn’t have one. Every time I try one out she turns up her nose at it.”
“You must not be calling her the right name. What have you tried?”
Sam takes a drink of water. “Daisy, Calla, Lily, Athena, Artemis, Diana.”
Bucky looks at the cat, sitting on her haunches, looking at them expectantly. “None of those are right.”
“Okay, Buchanan, you got any ideas?”
“Alpine,” Bucky says, “her name is Alpine.” She’s beautiful, like snow-covered mountains, something to marvel at in the midst of fear.
Alpine’s ears perk up and she stands, trotting over to Bucky, purring as she winds around his legs.
“Unbelievable,” Sam says. “Alpine, you’re a traitor.”
Alpine pads over to Sam and flops herself down elegantly on his feet, looking up at him and purring.
“You two speak the same language? You’re both from the Stare-a-lot Clan?”
“Is that the best you can do? No wonder you couldn’t figure out your cat’s name.” But Bucky can’t keep the smile from pulling at the corners of his mouth, just like he never could pretend he doesn’t love the sound of Sam’s voice.
Sam sets his glass on a nearby stand and picks up the purring Alpine. She stretches, her eyes closing halfway as Sam scratches under her chin. “Let Figaro out and bring her over here,” he says as he walks to the sofa.
**
The cats perch on Sam and Bucky’s respective laps and sniffone another before settling, apparently content to nap.
Bucky looks at the cats, then around the living room at the furniture and curtains he helped pick out. “So, uh, is it okay that Figaro and I stay a while?”
“The house is half your’s. We never exactly got around to changing the mortgage.”
It’s not exactly what Bucky wants to hear, but it’s also not the scathing reply he expected either.
“The flowers are a nice start. And Figaro is cute. It’s good to see your head’s in the game.” Sam glances at Bucky over the rim of his glass as he takes a sip of water.
Bucky’s mouth goes dry and he quickly sips his own water. Hope is a thing with feathers, or a vibranium set of wings, the most gorgeous set of brown eyes in the history of humanity, an incredible smile, a body that Bucky is pretty sure has been described as “bangin” on the Twitter.
“Figaro should get a lot of the credit, actually. She uh, she wanted a change of scenery.”
“She’ll be good for Alpine.” Sam lets his fingers rest in the cat’s long fur. “She’s a little shit who likes to just disappear on me.”
“But she comes back, right?” It’s a dangerous game of chess they’re playing, but damn if Bucky doesn’t kind of love that Sam’s employing it.
“She does. Guess I shouldn’t worry so much. I just never know if she’s gonna come back.”
“Maybe she’s still figuring out that this is her home. Some uh, cats don’t catch on quick how good they have it.”
“Yeah?” Sam nods at the cat in Bucky’s lap. “What about Figaro? What’s her deal?”
“She liked to roam around the neighborhood. Kept coming to see me. Always went back to her owner though. He gave her to me because he was moving to another city with his girlfriend and the girlfriend is allergic to cats.”
“One of those huh? So did you adopt her or did she adopt you?”
“I’d like to think we adopted each other.”
“Right. So why are the two of you here, exactly?”
Bucky had planned approximately 37 different speeches for this moment, but they all dissipate at the look that Sam is giving him, the naked plea for honesty. “I miss you. I miss you and I wish I had listened to you and I really hope it’s not too late to listen to you.” He looks down at Figaro. “And I really didn’t want to leave her in a kennel or something. She’s also kind of my moral support. And…this is what I want. You and me and a couple of cats, relaxing at the end of a day.”
When he looks up, Sam’s expression is inscrutable. Bucky listens, and it’s definitely his own heartbeat he’s hearing among the silence, save for the barely discernible breathing of the sleeping felines.
“If you’re willing to try, I’m willing to try.” Sam smiles, not his full, brilliant smile, but the half smile, the one that’s cautious, but willing. “And we have plenty of time to talk right now, at least until the cats wake up and decide to move, seeing as it’s against federal law to disturb a cat.”
Bucky bites his bottom lip, but it doesn’t stop the grin. “Okay, but what if there’s something that requires Captain America’s attention?”
“If it’s something intergalactic or whatnot, then there’s an exception, but otherwise, I’m all your’s, at least until Alpine wakes up.” There’s a warmth in Sam’s tone, but in his eyes there’s both a plea and a warning of sorts. Bucky thinks it’s more than fair. “Cool.”
“Mm hmm.” Sam takes another sip of water, looking at Bucky over his glass. “You packed up your whole place, came down here with everything, didn’t you?”
“Maybe.” At Sam’s look, Bucky caves. “Okay, yeah.” He reaches a hand for Sam, heart beating a little faster.
Sam takes it, gives it a squeeze. “It’s a good thing you’re cute.” He smiles. “You’re not sleeping on the bed though.” He doesn’t let go of Bucky’s hand.
“I bet you said that to Alpine when she first got here too.”
“Alpine brings me rats and mice. Trying to provide, pull her own.”
“I bet I can do better than mice and rats,” Bucky smiles, warmth building in his chest.
“I look forward to your efforts.” Sam smiles. Not one of his half-smiles, but the kind that makes Bucky feel like he’s home.