Chapter Text
Bucky stood at the front door and stared down the hallway. All at once he could see the ghost of all the junk and dust that had cluttered up the entire house the first time he’d set foot inside, which now had been replaced with fresh paintwork, revitalised floors, and empty rooms. Bright sunshine poured in through every window, devoid of grime or curtains or stacks of stuff to block out the light.
It hadn’t taken long to pack all his things, even with his new collection of vinyl records and the record player Darcy had gifted him. Steve’s stuff had taken even less time, fitting into a couple of plastic bags. Even Darcy’s kit had already been packed away into their travel cases before they’d painted the office and only the system that generated the Hex had remained. All of it was stowed in the truck’s flatbed, waiting for them to lock up the house one last time.
They had already made tearful goodbyes to their neighbours, with Jill fawning over all three of them and packing them each lunch. Little did she know that only two of those would be going back to Brooklyn and the other was going on a more than three thousand mile journey across the country.
Darcy had made up her mind to drive all the way back to California. Rather than pay out the nose for all her equipment to fly home, she was going to pay for a cross-country run’s worth of gas and motels instead. And Bucky just had to watch her go.
She came down the stairs in comfy clothes, carrying the last of her bags, and looking just a little bit teary as she looked over their handiwork.
“This is it, huh? Goodbye, house. Look after the next family, okay?” she said, gazing at the clean, empty spaces around her. She sniffled and then walked out the front door, squeezing past Bucky, standing by his side and placing her hand on his back.
He draped his left arm - safely disguised in his hoodie and glove - around her shoulder, holding her tightly.
“Couldn’t have done it without you, Barnes. Literally,” she said.
Bucky chuckled. “Yeah, I don’t think I would’ve wanted to do it without you, Doc.”
He leaned down and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. Then they both sighed wistfully, and Bucky reached out and pulled the front door shut. Darcy put the key in the lock and, with her lip wobbling, turned it. The firm click felt final; they would never set foot in this house again.
“C’mon.” Bucky steered her away from the door, down the porch steps, and into the bring summer sunshine in the driveway.
Steve was waiting for them, leaning against the truck. He stepped over and took Darcy’s last bag from her and placed it in the flatbed alongside the rest of their things, then pulled the cover over all of it.
Darcy took some deep breaths and then climbed into the driver’s seat. She grumbled half-heartedly about how far back the seat was after having Bucky do pretty much all the driving until now. She took one last look at the house in the mirror and then started the engine and headed off down the track.
At the end of the drive they spotted Jill and Terry standing on the other side of the road, with Lori, Maya and Noah in tow, as if they were all just going for a picnic by the river. They all stood and waved as Darcy pulled the truck out onto the road and turned towards town. Bucky waved back, hearing them call out his name - his real name - and wishing them safe travels. They waited and waved until Bucky could no longer see them in the mirror when they went around the bend.
It felt strange not having to stop and fiddle with the Hex remote, even more so now that Bucky was in the passenger seat.
The river valley and the woodlands surrounding them were beautiful, lush and green, with clear blue skies overhead. It felt a little too late to appreciate them properly, now that they were leaving.
They drove through town, meeting little traffic, and Bucky gazed out the window as they passed all the places that now held memories and friends instead of strangers; the church where Father Guy had taken Uncle Phil’s clothes, the noisy restaurant they’d chickened out of eating in, the pizza place where Bucky had cleared the biggest plate possible. They passed a USPS van parked by the sidewalk, but Jeremy was nowhere in sight.
The town, of course, hadn’t grown any in the relatively short space of time they’d been there so they passed all the way out the other side in what felt like the blink of an eye.
They stopped in the next town over and dropped off the keys to Aunt Edie’s house at a realtor’s office, and then trundled over to the railway station that would take Steve and Bucky back to New York.
They pulled into the nearly empty parking lot and stopped, hopping out to dig through the flatbed for the few bags that weren’t Darcy’s.
Steve busied himself replacing the cover while Bucky and Darcy stood in front of each other, both looking like their hearts were about to be broken and neither wanting to utter the first word. Tears built up in Darcy’s eyes and she wiped them away, with the glinting gold ring still on her finger.
Bucky sighed and pulled off the chain around his neck, then removed the ring he’d borrowed and held it out for Darcy to take.
“Oh. I forgot about that,” she mumbled.
“It’s still good as new, I promise.”
She took the ring, gazing down at it for a few moments, and then slid it onto her thumb which was probably the only finger the larger ring would fit. More tears overwhelmed her and she screwed up her face, then she darted forward to wrap Bucky in a desperate hug. He bundled her up, with both arms around her, and kissed the top of her head and rocked her gently.
He didn’t need to see or hear Steve to know he was waiting off to one side, watching them reluctantly part. Bucky reached up to wipe the tears from Darcy’s cheek, struggling to hold back his own.
“Don’t be a stranger, okay? You know where to find us,” he said.
Darcy nodded, unable to speak while trying to steady her breath, and patted her pocket where there was a scrap of paper with his Brooklyn address and phone number on it.
“Text me whenever you stop, and when you get home,” Bucky instructed.
“You too,” Darcy whispered.
Behind them, they heard the heavy hissing of their train pulling into the station so they finally let go of each other. Darcy gave Steve a quick hug too, telling him to take care of himself and of Bucky, then climbed back into the truck with the most miserably sad expression Bucky had ever seen.
“Drive safe, Doll,” he said.
She rolled down the window and Bucky leaned in for one last parting kiss. He tried to put all his feelings, everything too complicated to express, into the kiss but it just wasn’t enough and when they parted the words just came tumbling out of his mouth.
“I love you.”
Darcy’s jaw dropped and her eyes widened, but she said nothing.
Bucky heard Steve urging him to hurry up before they missed the train, so he wrenched himself away from the truck. He strode forward, picking up his bags, and marched purposefully towards the platform, forcing himself to look straight ahead and not turn back.
Steve tried to put one comforting hand on his shoulder but Bucky waved him off, knowing that he’d break at the slightest amount of pressure.
He never did hear the sound of Darcy driving away over the noise and bustle of the train, and when he finally allowed himself to look out of the train window she was gone.
Darcy walked along the rocky shore, between the rugged Scandinavian landscape and the churning sea.
She could see Jane’s memorial already, a bright silver stone standing high above the waves.
As she got closer, Darcy could see wind-swept flowers lying at the base of the plinth. The statue was a short walk outside of New Asgard, far enough out to be an exposed place of quiet contemplation but close enough to be visited regularly. For Thor, it was practically in his back garden, but to Darcy it felt like a pilgrimage and one that she’d been long remiss in going on.
She’d successfully handed over Aunt Edie’s things - the family tree, the menorah, the rusty and weathered old truck - to her grandmother, who’d been ecstatic with them and with the work Darcy had done on the house. She’d shown her photos carefully taken to show nothing but paint work, re-sanded floors, and an invitingly neat garden, and most definitely not to show the two supersoldiers who’d done the lion’s share of the work.
The truck had been sold on, and the house had sold too shortly after to a nice young family with a pair of new playmates for Maya and Noah living next door. Then Darcy’s grandmother had dropped the bombshell that all of the money, the profit, from the sale of the house would be Darcy’s to do with as she pleased. Darcy had been too stunned to react much at all, just staring at her grandmother and subsequently her bank balance in disbelief. Grandma Bess surely expected her granddaughter to settle down and buy a place of her own, but such a windfall opened up a possibility that Darcy had thought out of the question, one which tempted her to upend everything.
She stepped out onto the outcrop of rock and huddled herself deeper into her coat. The sea breeze cut right through her and the sun was already heading towards the horizon. It was fall and Darcy’s Californian constitution wasn’t used to what that meant this far north.
The figure of Jane, all dressed up as the God of Thunder, towered above her and gave Darcy an unflattering few of the underside of Jane’s chin. The light grey stone was speckled darker as the sea sprayed it with water and foam, and a gull stood on the depiction of Mjölnr and screeched its little heart out.
Darcy climbed up and sat down on the base of the statue, scooting herself backwards to rest against Jane’s leg.
“Hey,” Darcy whispered. “It’s been a while, huh?”
Of course, the only answer was the crashing of waves along the shore and the cries of birds.
“Nice place you got here,” she said, pausing and waiting as she might have if there had been a response. “I’m doing okay. I started working on miniaturising the ERB-teleporting-thingies. Still need to come up with a better name, though.”
Out in the distance, a dolphin jumped for joy, little more than a white speck out in the sea.
“But that’s not what I came here to talk to you about.”
The wind dropped, only ruffling Darcy’s hair a little instead of swirling it around wildly, but the temperature seemed to plummet with every second she spent outside. The sky was turning a bright pinkish orange, and if she were to turn around and look back over the land she would see it already becoming an inky blue.
“I met somebody. Like a ‘rest of your life’ kind of somebody. Maybe.”
She shifted uncomfortably on the cold stone. “I know this wasn’t exactly your area of expertise but it’s not mine either, so I think we’re stuck.”
“My Aunt Edie died and I met him when I went to clear out her stuff. I don’t know… I thought it was just going to be something until I left and then both of us would just get on with our lives. But now? I keep looking over my shoulder for him, looking at the time and wondering what he’s up to.”
She and Bucky had texted a couple of times but Bucky seemed to use texts the same way as a telegraph, with short and to-the-point sentences and certainly no smiley faces or love hearts, so that had fizzled out.
“He told me he loved me. I know, wild, right?” she said, tipping her head backwards to look up at Jane. “I guess I’m just afraid to find out if that’s still true, or if he’s given up waiting on me. What do you think I should do?”
The statue didn’t move but the setting sun cast a golden glow over Jane’s face and Darcy swore she could hear her voice in her head.
“Are you crazy? Fucking do it, Darcy!”
“What if I’m too late?”
“Then you slink back here with your tail between your legs and we eat this entire town out of chocolate and ice cream!”
“I’d need to move to New York and stay there. Maybe forever, and that’s a really big thing to do.”
“You’ll take an internship that’s not your field just for six stupid credits, then switch your entire degree to keep working with me, but moving across the country for love is too much?”
Darcy smiled, imagining the exasperated face Jane would make and the gesticulating hands and the flyaway hair. “Okay, fine. But when I come back all mopey and rejected, don’t say you weren’t warned, Janey.”
The spectre of Jane - with red rain boots and a men’s shirt three sizes too big - stuck her tongue out, so Darcy did the same. The wind picked up one of the scattered flowers and smacked Darcy in the face with it, leaving it tangled in her hair.
“Alright, already. You win,” Darcy complained, with a bittersweet smile. She missed Jane terribly; every time she cracked open a project or some research, every time she got up in the night to eat ice cream. On several occasions she’d even found herself sticking two spoons into the tub out of long established habit. She was beginning to accept that Jane’s absence would pain her forever, the only thing that would change would be Darcy’s reaction to it.
She sat on the plinth a while longer, watching the sun set until there was only a sliver of orange where the sea met the sky. Her face was going numb in the cold and the wind, which was only going to get worse the longer she stayed outside, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to move yet.
She heard footsteps making their way along the shore just as she had done earlier, approaching the statue. Erik Selvig stuck his head around Jane’s stone cape - forever billowing whether the wind blew or not - and smiled.
“Thought I might find you here,” he said, coming around to sit on the base next to her. “And that you might need a guiding light back.”
He held up a large, hefty flashlight which was probably older than Darcy and would knock her phone’s feeble light into a cocked hat.
Erik didn’t look nearly as scruffy as he had back when he’d made an impromptu appearance on British television, running around Stonehenge like a lunatic. He still wore shorts, in all seasons, and had grown out a long, very Asgardian looking beard. He wasn’t shivering or clasping his hands together to keep them warm like Darcy found herself doing.
“I miss her too,” he said, kindly. He reached out and patted Darcy on the shoulder, urging her to come back to town and out of the weather.
Darcy nodded and scooted off the stone base, her ass having long gone numb from sitting there. She looked up at Jane and her immovable skyward stare up to the stars.
“Alright, Jane. Don’t party too hard in space Valhalla or whatever, and say hi to Thor’s mom for me, okay? I promise to visit sooner next time.”
Darcy reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a pebble, a flat grey one she’d found on the edge of town, and placed it on the spot she’d been sitting in. “Later.”
Erik offered Darcy his arm, which she took, and turned on his flashlight, then they slowly picked their way back to the twinkling lights of New Asgard as the last light finally slipped below the horizon.
“C’mon, Buck! It’s time to go!” Steve hollered through their apartment.
Bucky grumbled indistinctly as he pulled on his thick, woollen coat as well as gloves and a scarf. It was fucking freezing outside, with a good foot of snow already lying on the sidewalks, and Steve didn’t seem to feel it at all.
Bucky longed to laze in the sun in Aunt Edie’s backyard again, even with the nosey neighbours or Dale Hunt still hanging around. He’d not heard from anyone, neither Jill and Terry nor the cops, about their little spat with the guy, so he hoped that no news was good news and that Lori was being left in peace to build herself a new life.
Every room in their apartment had been refurbished, trying to fill the gap left behind by Darcy but Bucky was still a grumpy old badger without her. He heard from her every now and then; she’d told him when their house had sold, and sent him a picture of her in a torchlit hall in front of a huge spread of food alongside Dr Selvig and Thor. The sight of it had churned his gut with unreasonable jealousy.
Bucky dragged himself to the front door, with a face like thunder, where Steve was practically bouncing up and down with anticipation.
“Remind me why I agreed to this?” Bucky growled.
“Because it will be fun, Buck. It’s dancing, you used to love dancing.”
Bucky made an unhappy noise.
“It’s vintage-themed, so at least you’ll be able to criticise all the stuff they got wrong. You can yell at some hipster who hadn’t shined his buttons right to drop and give you twenty, just like the old days.”
“Oh, like you? Captain Hipster, himself,” Bucky teased, looking emphatically up and down at Steve’s clothes.
Steve had leaned into the more Bohemian aspects of twenty-first century aesthetics, having kept the beard and let his hair grow out even more to the point where he could tie it up in a ‘man bun.’ His jeans were rolled up past his ankle, even though they fit just fine, and under the brown leather jacket he wore a cream knitted sweater.
In comparison, Bucky looked bland and boring as shit. Everything he owned was either black, grey or navy blue, and he mostly didn’t care if any of it went together. Steve had initially attempted to get him to buy a more interesting shirt, or some new boots, but had quickly realised that was a non-starter and focused more on just getting Bucky out the door.
They locked up the apartment and headed out into the miserably cold street. Bucky huddled himself deeper into his coat, and the hoodie underneath, and pulled his scarf further up over his grumpy face. At times like this, he wondered if he, too, might travel back in time and tell himself to follow Darcy to California rather than freeze half to death in Brooklyn.
They were headed to a hole-in-the-wall kind of place which the LGBT+ social group that Steve joined had booked for a vintage New Year’s party. Sam was going to meet them there, so at least Bucky would have someone to commiserate with about the frigid weather.
What he was most definitely not looking forward to was the part where either Steve or Sam tried to ‘introduce’ him to somebody. They never framed it as romantic, only trying to get him to socialise more, but there was always some kind of undertone of urging him to get over Darcy. Neither of them had ever said that, but he could just tell. And frankly he didn’t appreciate it. If he’d missed his chance with Darcy, he wanted to wallow in it properly.
They found Sam practically frozen solid, waiting at the top of a set of stairs to a basement bar. He was also bundled up against the cold, with a slightly panicked looking expression that he might succumb to hypothermia before Steve and Bucky arrived.
With a couple of quick hugs and slaps on the back, Sam hurried them down the stairs and into the bar. It was a tiny place, even by New York standards, fitting in a bar and a stereo system and a few cramped tables and chairs around a miniscule dance floor. The brick walls were dotted with stolen street signs as well as artwork by Steve himself.
He hadn’t exactly made a name for himself as an artist - which was precisely how he wanted it - but he sold black and white line drawings of New York cityscapes for a pittance, which greatly suited hipster-targeting bars like this one.
People hollered and cheered at Steve as he entered, offering him hugs and fist bumps as they made their way across to the bar. Many were dressed in 40s and 50s style clothing, with a few opting for even older fashions that Bucky remembered his grandparents wearing.
Bucky leaned on the bar and ordered some beers for the three of them, while Sam and Steve waved at folks that said hello and chatted about nothing. Or at least nothing Bucky was interested in listening to. He forced himself to sip his beer at a normal pace, rather than chugging it down instantly, and stared hard at the stained and dented surface of the bar.
His phone chirped at him and when he looked at the message, desperate for any kind of distraction, his heart went on a rollercoaster ride from joy to utter devastation. The text was from Darcy but what it said made him want to drink himself into a stupor.
‘So I’m at this bar and I’ve been trying to make eyes at this guy since he walked in, but he’s not picking it up. Should I go over and whack him over the head with something?’
He wanted to be sick. He wanted to reach through the phone and throttle whatever schmuck wouldn’t give his girl the time of day. Wherever Darcy was, she’d moved on and he’d missed his shot. And worse, she was telling him all about it instead of leaving him blissfully ignorant.
Bucky took a big gulp of his beer, unsure what to even say in reply. While he was chewing over something along the lines of ‘if he’s not into you, that’s his loss’, he felt a soft thud on the back of his head as someone gently tapped him with the flat side of a book.
He spun around, ready to be a total jackass, but froze as he found Darcy smirking at him and wielding a copy of ‘The Foster Theory.’
“Darcy?!” he exclaimed, immediately scooping her up in a hug. As he pulled back his first desire was to kiss the hell out of her but he hesitated, unsure if that was still on the table after several months apart and now with no need to convince anyone they were a couple.
“What are you doing here?”
She shrugged. “I was in town.”
“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine. That kind of thing?”
Darcy pointed her thumb at Steve, who was still nonchalantly leaning on the bar and watching their reunion. “He invited me.”
Bucky turned around to scowl at him but in truth his heart wasn’t in it, not with Darcy lighting up his life again. Even if it was just for one night.
Darcy’s hair had been done up in something that might be approaching victory rolls and her make-up looked decidedly nineteen-forties, but she hadn’t gone so far as to dress up vintage; instead she was wearing a pink cable-knit sweater dress and brown boots.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she warned. “I was gonna do the old-timey cosplay thing, then I realised how cold a New York winter was and, frankly, fuck that.
Bucky laughed, and hugged her again. “You’re telling me. C’mon, let me buy you a drink.”
“Actually…” Darcy paused, biting her lip and unsubtly eyeing the dance floor. “I was kinda hoping for another one of those dance lessons, Sergeant.”
“You got it, Doll.”
Bucky shrugged off his coat, dropping it in Steve’s lap, but kept his gloves and hoodie. It was winter, no-one was going to care if he was still bundled up. Then he took Darcy’s hand and abandoned Steve and Sam and his grumpy attitude at the bar.
The music was a mix of actual forties music and modern tracks re-recorded in an older style, and the people already out on the floor danced accordingly, with some attempting old moves and plenty just doing it in their familiar twenty-first century ways. Bucky could admit to being a little self-conscious at first but soon enough he let himself get carried away, spinning Darcy around, and never mind who was looking.
“I think you’ve been practising,” he tried to say over the din of music and chatter around them.
“A little,” she replied.
They stayed out there for several songs in succession, enough for Bucky to feel far too warm underneath his hoodie. He stripped it off, pulling it over his head, to a wave of whistles and shouts from both Darcy and complete strangers. The gloves went too, being shoved into the hoodie’s pocket before he bundled it up and threw it at the table Steve had migrated to. He was rifling through the book Darcy had brought, having lost Bucky and Sam to the dance floor.
It said something about the changes in Steve that he no longer seemed to care about being the wallflower. Asexuality had been freeing for Steve, having released him from the old white picket fence expectations. Plus, his new look fit right in with this motley amalgamation of dyed hair, all over tattoos, and an inability to sit properly in a chair.
If anyone noticed Bucky’s metal arm, and surely the gold glinted enough to catch someone’s eye, nobody said a thing. And if there were any stares or pointing and whispering, Bucky took no notice. He only had eyes for Darcy.
He lost track of how many songs they’d danced to, unable to let go of each other, but eventually Darcy called for time out and they sank down into the mismatched seats at the little table next to Steve.
Bucky scooted his chair closer and put his left arm over Darcy’s shoulder as she caught her breath.
Sam reappeared a few moments later, with a tray of drinks and a couple bags of pretzels and popcorn.
“It’s tough keeping up with him, huh? Even at his age,” Sam asked Darcy.
“You have no idea,” she said, causing both Sam and Steve to pull a face of mock disgust.
“So what’ve you been up to, Doll? I know you didn’t come all the way out here just to see me,” Bucky said. He hadn’t heard from her since she’d sent him that photo of her at whatever Asgardian feast she’d been to.
“So what if I did?” she said, but Bucky could tell by her expression that that wasn’t the reason, not exactly. Steve, too, kept trying to hide a smirk every time he looked at the pair of them and since he’d been the one to invite Darcy to this thing, they were obviously in cahoots about something.
“Okay, so the house got sold, right?” she said, to which Bucky nodded. “So my grandma decided that she didn’t really need the money, she and my grandpa are set up already, so she thought I could use it to buy a place of my own. And I’m not stupid enough to look that big of a gift horse in the mouth, because buying a house is not something I thought I’d be able to do ever.”
“Holy shit, Doll. That’s great,” Bucky said.
“And I’m pretty sure my grandma wanted me to pick somewhere near them, like at least in the same state, because it’s a hefty chunk of change and it could get me some pretty decent square footage in Cali but…” she bit her bottom lip, “... I was thinking I could spend it on a broom closet in New York instead?”
Something in Bucky’s brain short-circuited. “Wait, what? You want to move here?”
Darcy looked nervous. “Yeah, I mean…
“To be with me? I’m not reading this totally wrong, am I?” Bucky clarified, struggling to believe that everything he’d ever wanted was about to be handed to him on a silver platter.
“Yes. I mean… I love you too, you know?” she confessed. “I’m just sorry that it took me so long to figure that out. Is this still something you want or…”
Instead of answering, Bucky turned his whole body to face her, taking his arm off her shoulder and then cupping her jaw with both hands. Then he leaned down and kissed her, holding nothing back.
She let out a little squeak before returning his kiss just as deeply. When they parted they were both grinning like idiots.
“You mean it, Doc?” he asked.
“I sure do, Barnes,” she replied. “I even kept these, just in case.”
She reached down the neckline of her dress and pulled out a chain around her neck on which she’d strung the pair of gold rings they’d used to fake being married. They were still plain, uncomplicated, and in need of a little polish but Bucky couldn’t imagine wanting to wear anything else.
He wanted to get up and jump around, crow and shout about how lucky he was, but he settled for wrapping his arm back around her, pulling her in tight and leaning down for another searing kiss. Both of them were smiling and giggling, unable to contain their bright happiness.
“I think I need to get a dog,” Steve said.
“Yeah, one that needs long walks,” Sam added.
But Bucky and Darcy ignored their teasing, focusing on kissing each other enough to make up for all the time spent more than a few feet apart. Eventually they parted, settling into each other’s arms to cuddle and grin ecstatically at each other while finishing their drinks and snacks.
“Hey, Darcy?” Sam said. “Troubleman soundtrack? Yes or Yes?”
Darcy scrunched up her face in confusion. “You mean Marvin Gaye? Never heard it, I don’t think. Kinda before my time. Before your time too.”
Sam dramatically flung his head back in exaggerated despair and disgust.
“Pfft. Y'all are made for each other,” Sam said, waving at the pair of them dismissively. Steve laughed and patted Sam on the shoulder in commiseration, while Darcy and Bucky descended into yet more giggling and kissing. Even when they stopped for breath, Bucky wore the biggest, most smug and proud smile on his face.
He couldn’t help it; for the first time in probably eighty years Bucky felt like things were finally going his way.