Archive of Our Own ^beta

“I must have flowers, always, and always."

-Claude Monet.

Bucky had never taken much interest in plant life—the time which he and Steve had been born into was not the sort of era that allowed for stopping to smell the roses, after all, what with the Depression and the war. Sure, if there were small, yellow weeds growing between the cracks in the sidewalk, Bucky would pointedly not step on them, but he’d never stop to look at them, to marvel at their small, delicate petals. Never pluck them from the earth to sniff them.

Now, though.

*

In searching for a home, Bucky only had two requests: that it be a place that is easily defended (this was one of Steve’s musts also) and that there was either roof access or a spacious backyard. As a roof was more open to satellite imaging, T’Challa helped them locate a place with a spacious stretch of green yard surrounded by a neatly painted white fence.

If someone had asked Steve two years ago, hell, six years ago, when the Howling Commandos were still alive and he could still name the exact color of Peggy’s lipstick without having to push past the haze of time, he would have snorted at the thought of a white picket fence. But things had changed. The life he had known had collapsed and then collapsed again, and only when he thought he could go no lower, the Accords and Rumlow and that final, vicious brawl with Tony in the cold of Siberia happened.

Captain America had been controlled by faceless puppet masters for too long.

He believed it to be time that Steve Rogers had the run of the mill.

And Steve Rogers wanted nothing more than to shelter his best friend up in a nice house in their old city and damn it if there was a fucking white fence surrounding them, then that was even better.

(There was likely symbolism to be found in that white fence. Steve shook his head: he’d dwelled on it long enough as it was.)

“Why the backyard access, Buck?”

Bucky had lifted his head from where he’d been tapping gently at the keys of Steve’s laptop, their internet coming through a secure router—an early housewarming gift from Natasha. He bit his lip, worrying it for a moment before he let it go. “I want to plant a garden.”

Steve blinked at him.

“Go ahead,” Bucky murmured, without heat. The white screen of the laptop threw his features into slight shadow, highlighting the edge of his jaw, the line of his nose. “You can laugh, if you’d like.”

He shook his head, noting that the coffee maker in their Wakandian suite was blinking at the ready. He crossed the room, poured them both a mug, and placed a cup down into Bucky’s hand. There was a small black paw print on the side of the ceramic dish: Sam’s idea of a joke. “No, no,” Steve said quickly. “I think that’s a great idea. It’d be nice to grow our own produce instead of having to fork over four dollars for one apple.”

That made Bucky’s lip twitch upward. “God damn inflation,” he snarked, causing a bark of a laugh to well up in Steve. In the early morning light, brilliant and golden through the floor-to-ceiling windows, Bucky’s eyes were incredibly, sweetly blue. Something that Steve could not put a name to seized within him. “Actually, I planned on planting flowers. Though produce…,” Bucky tapped a flesh finger thoughtfully to his chin. “Produce is a good idea.”

Steve almost echoed the word flowers, but he saw the little spark that Buck was carefully nursing in his gaze. He’d not seen such an almost-twinkle there in such a long time and he did not want to smother it into nonexistence before it had the chance to catch fire. Steve laid a hand on the back of Bucky’s neck, gently squeezing the skin beneath his palm.

“I think a garden will be really, really nice, Buck.” He flicked a stray strand of hair that fluttered onto Bucky’s forehead away, smiling when it flopped immediately back into place. Bucky smiled, too, a soft, gentle thing. “Produce, or no produce.” 

*

Following a nondescript plane ride out of Wakanda, Steve and Bucky were dropped off in an woody area where the population only consisted of deer and squirrels. There was an equally unremarkable car waiting for them so they could slip into New York as quietly as possible. The drive was little over forty-five minutes and Steve found a great deal of comfort in bickering with Bucky over what to listen to on the radio.

Bucky won with rock and roll over Steve’s choice of the thumping stains of disco.

*

One of the best things to come out of the last few months was, much to Steve’s surprise, T’Challa: the man had apologized only once to Steve and Bucky for the stress he placed the both of them, especially Bucky, under. Grief can drive one to blindness. I think, my friends, it is time I let myself see again. He had gone out of his way to offer the both of them sanctuary in a zone where outsiders were normally turned away with guns pressed to their skulls, extending his hospitality to the so-called Secret Avengers when Steve staged that particular jailbreak, too. His resources were their resources and T’Challa, along with his amazing group of scientists, worked tirelessly for over eight months, carefully extracting the trigger words from the dark corners of Bucky’s mind. With Wanda’s help and the Red Book, recovered by Natasha and sent in quietly via an unmarked drone, Bucky was deemed harmless— well, as harmless as a man with the bloodiest track-record for killing could be deemed.

(Steve cried like a baby that day. Bucky had, too, and had hauled Steve in to clutch at him—they didn’t let each other go for the entirety of that afternoon. “I hate you both,” Sam had said, strained as he let out a quiet sniffle. “God damn white boys getting me emotional. I didn’t sign up for this.”

Wanda, who bore tear tracks on her face and a smile wide enough to rival… something really fucking wide, Steve was compromised, okay? He couldn’t be internally eloquent when compromised, especially when Bucky was at the center of it. But, anyway, Wanda had said, a touch nasal given her own tears: “You joined the Avengers when you had every opportunity to get out. So, technically, you did sign up for this.”

Bucky had said, without lifting his head from Steve’s neck: “Wanda, doll, you’re my favorite.”)

T’Challa, also, had equipped Bucky with a fine new arm made of sleek vibranium. It was lighter and as silent as Buck’s flesh arm, and just as sensitive to touch. Steve had covered Bucky’s metal hand with his own and Bucky nearly flipped out of his chair in surprise.

“I can feel that,” Bucky had whispered.

This had led to Steve tracing his fingers up Bucky’s arm, from wrist to elbow, elbow to shoulder. He had to clear his throat when he got a bit choked up, tipping his head away so Bucky could swipe at tears of his own with some semblance of privacy.

(There had been a lot of crying, those first few weeks.

Steve felt they both deserved to lift the lid off their repressed emotions a little bit, after everything.)

The King of Wakanda had also gifted Bucky with a synthetic skin that adhered to the surface of the vibranium arm, covering the metal, from fingertip to shoulder blade. It offered up the illusion that Bucky had both arms as T’Challa believed: “It would be rather redundant to go about quietly reentering the world only for the wrong person to see an innocent man with a metal arm, no?”

As soon as they stepped foot in their new home, Bucky stripped off the sleeve and carefully laid it on the sleek granite counter. He whistled appreciatively at the tall windows that allowed light to stream across the clean wooden floors, at the walls that had already been painted to Steve and Bucky’s liking, at the stretch of yard that was nearly blindingly emerald and kind of hurt Steve’s eyes to look at for more than a few seconds at a time.  

T'Challa was a great deal like Tony in that, given the amount of money he sat upon, he gave freely and did not worry about the total cost. However, T'Challa did not stick his nose in Steve and Bucky's business once the generous exchange had been made and a final round of apologies were given in that put-together voice: to put it in a nutshell, T'Challa had given them both a black credit card and told them to do with it as they wished, since Steve's private funds were probably being monitored by, approximately, a whole sector of the US government and Bucky's only means of income was the cash he swiped from various Hydra cells. This resulted in Steve and Bucky purchasing all the furniture, rugs, lamps, dishes, cutlery, drapes, electronics and various other things that would come together to make their house an actual home from their common area in Wakanda. A crew had been sent ahead, full of people that the two of them had formerly met and become comfortable with, bearing a rough sketch of things and how Steve and Bucky wished for them to be set up.

Of course, it had been done perfectly.

Another thing T'Challa had pointed out: "I know it may seem excessive, but the less movement in and out of your home for the first few weeks, the better." And Steve agreed with this, too, Bucky nodding along at his side.

“You know,” Bucky said, after half an hour of comfortable quiet between them. “I think I should start shaving again. And maybe cut my hair.”

Steve made a small noise of objection. “I like your hair.”

Bucky kicked him, not hard enough to hurt, but with enough strength that Steve was jostled by it. “Everyone recognizes me like this—,” he gestured with his vibranium hand at the whole ‘scruffy hobo-getup’, Clint’s words, not Steve’s, adorning his features. “—and honestly? I should have ditched it so much sooner.”

“Do you want me to help you?”

“Shave? Nah, I can handle that. My hair? I should be able to get most of it, but I could use a bit of help evening out the back?”

They spent their first night in their new place shaking off the layers they were made to pull on. Steve dropped the pin on a Vera Lynn record, allowing her delicate, optimisim-filled voice to file down the hallway to the bathroom, the second door on the left, where he watched Bucky Barnes emerge from beneath several inches of dark hair and scruff.       

*

They left their brownstone long enough to hit a near-by Home Depot, raiding, specifically, the garden section. Bucky wore his sleeve and a plain tee shirt: Steve donned a cap and a pair of sunglasses that obscured half of his face, walking with a hunch to his shoulders.

It was only after arriving, strolling the outdoor aisles and having his senses invaded by the sharp, poignant scent of fertilizer, that Steve realized just how much was necessary to start a garden. One needed shovels and sheers and gloves and, as previously smelled, fertilizer, and a plethora of other things that left Steve at a loss.

Bucky, though, knew exactly what he was searching for and collected as such, stacking each of his intended purchases on a long-bedded cart.

“Hey, Jim,” Steve said, tugging his ball cap a little lower on his head as the cashier eyed him for the fifth time in as many minutes.

Bucky turned away from the shelf of round, slate-gray stepping stones. “Yeah, Grant?”

Steve jabbed a finger at the sturdy white trellis. “Are roses on your list of things to plant?”

Attention properly seized, Bucky tugged his load of goods over to inspect the structure up close. The trellis was six foot in height and two feet in width, the poles holding it up and the cross-hatching where vines could twist and grow made of painted wood.

“They hadn’t been,” Bucky admitted, tilting his head in consideration. The word endearing came to mind when Bucky squinted, his mouth falling into a pout without his notice. “You know, this would look nice by the kitchen window. When the roses start to come in—alright, yeah, we’re buying the shit out of this.”

An unopened trellis, lacking further ceremony, was loaded onto the cart.

The same cashier was still observing them, more like a curious viewer watching animals in the wild than one who may be trying to match where they knew the line of Steve’s jaw from, where they’d seen his slightly crooked nose. While the young woman scanned each item, Steve poked at a stray lump of pale yellow fabric atop the drink machine, as it was a very not Captain America thing to do. Further poking revealed it to be a wide brimmed, floppy sunhat.

He threw it on at the end of the pile, feeling a flush rise in his neck when he caught Bucky watching him, mirth evident in his every pore. The handsome twist of his lips did not seem to be helping the concentration of their clerk one bit.

“You used to get sunburn,” Steve said lamely, training his eyes on his practical sneakers.

He didn’t have to raise his head to know that Bucky was smiling. “I don’t think that’s an issue anymore, bud.”

There was a beat where the only noise was the howl of the air conditioner, the echo of various other employees contacting each other over the handheld radios, and the bleep of the scanner, when—

“Uh, sir?” their cashier asked in an honest to God bemused voice.

“Yes, miss?” Bucky asked, taking the black credit card from between Steve’s fingers after Steve had fished it from his wallet.

“Are you, um, sure you’d like that particular set of gardening tools?”

That particular set happened to be held in a grand case about the size of a small trunk. A small, very pink, trunk.

Bucky just kept up that charming grin, no longer hidden behind his facial hair. It still had the same effect on the ladies as it did in nineteen forty-two, as the young woman ringing them up had hearts in her eyes and stumbled over her have a good day spiel as they left.

They had drove, having rightfully expected that Bucky would somehow go big or actually go home when it came to the amount purchased on T’Challa’s dime. “So,” Steve said, casually. “The pink set?”

Apparently, they'd hit right when there was a huge demand for gardening tools, as the only full set that remained was an eye-searing, hot pink.  

Bucky sighed, though his mouth was twitching. His seatbelt snapped into place the same time Steve’s did. "Pal, I'm plenty comfortable with my masculinity to buy a pink gardening set. Just...," he shot Steve a grimace as Steve twisted the key in the ignition. "Do not let bird brain catch wind of this." 

Steve grinned, starting them toward home. "'Course not, Buck." 

*

"Steve." 

They were halfway back to the house when Bucky spoke, breaking through the middle of Somebody to Love. "Yeah?" 

"Why did we go out today?" 

He may have hit the brakes at the stoplight a little harder than necessary, the seatbelt biting into his shoulder. The lining of his mouth went dry, the Sahara at high-noon. "We went out to get stuff for your garden, Buck," Steve said, trying for normal and coming up with half-strangled. 

A cool hand touched at his chin, turning his face from the stretch of asphalt, from the people hurrying across the walkway before the little timer reached zero and the traffic light flared green, "Pal, I know why we went out today," Bucky said gently and though he clearly saw how the phrasing of his askance made Steve grow cold in a moment of fear, in an instance of doubt, he was holding back a smile. His eyes were dull gray today, like new quarters, with the sun slanting across his profile. "I just realized: we got all this stuff to start a garden, but we forgot the most important thing." 

Vaguely, Steve registered the sound of a car horn blaring. Bucky's fingers were spread along his jaw. He was warm. "What's that?" 

"Seeds,” Bucky said, retracting his hand. "The light's been green for nearly twenty seconds, pal. I think you're starting to piss a line of people off." 

Steve shook himself, trying to get rid of the panicked haze that settled over him, like fog along the shore near Coney Island on an early winter morning. He lowered his foot down to the gas, hammering forward to appease what was quite possibly the most dangerous thing this side of Hydra: impatient New Yorkers in the early morning rush. 

He laughed, startled at their idiocy. "We can go back to Home Depot- I can do a U-turn about a block up." 

"Mmm," Bucky grunted. "You think we could head to a specialty shop, instead? I don't think the stuff Home Depot has to offer would be as good quality as, yanno, an actual place just for plants and flowers." 

Had he not been driving, Steve was sure he would have gotten very emotional about how I'd take you any place you wanted to go so long as I could see you're happy. 

*

On the contrary, when Sam discovered that Bucky was starting up a garden, Sam adopted a soft, thoughtful note to his tone that Steve had always labeled his Therapist Voice. “I’ve known vets before that find gardening very therapeutic and calming. After all the hell he’s been through, I’m glad that asshole is finding something that might help him out.”

“You say the sweetest things, Wilson!” Bucky called, having not heard the conversation, just assuming there was some sort of insult being aimed his way if Sam was on the other line.

“I’ll show him sweet,” Sam grumbled, petulant. “Steve. Steve, stop laughing. It’ll only encourage him!”

*

Over the next few weeks, T'Challa helped Scott quietly find his way home to his daughter, a cute little thing called Cassie that Scott was not at all shy about showing thousands of blurry, happy-faced photos of to anyone who paused long enough; Clint got back to his little farm with Laura and their children to truly try and retire; Wanda found a place a few blocks away from Steve and Bucky—too far to be noticed by anyone that could be watching, but not too far that, if there was an emergency, she couldn't safely get to them via back alleys and side streets; Sam, though, had gone back to Harlem, the place of his roots, and lived in the apartment next to his mom, Darlene. None of them wanted to be a burden to T'Challa longer than they absolutely had to be by staying in Wakanda and, just as he had done to Steve and Bucky, his good, kingly nature had extended funds their way for the foreseeable future.

"As much as I love not having to pay for shit," Sam said, speaking quietly into the phone as his mother was in the other room, "I feel bad spending hard-earned Wakandian dollars on a Milky Way. Like, I feel that's capitalism going too far." 

Steve agreed, but, because the opportunity was too good to ignore, he said: "You do know I was a socialist back in the day, right?"

Sam let out this strangled noise, the sound of a laugh trying to be muffled even when the amusement packed a loud punch anyway. "Well, there's a good old American ideal shattered. Want to have a go at freedom next?"

"You don't want me to get started on freedom," he sighed. Steve hadn't known the meaning of the word for such a long time, not with the revelation SHIELD had been Hydra, not with the immigration crisis and people wanting him to be on their side—the side who told all the poor folk to turn tail and go back to where they came from, or the rise in unnecessary police brutality, not with his friends hiding beneath rocks because they chose to follow him, because if they didn't, they'd all be dragged back to that god-forsaken prison under the sea.

"No," Sam murmured. "No, I suppose I don't." And, in typical Sam fashion, he stepped carefully away from the topic at hand—leaving it open for future discussion, no doubt— and plucked up a new thread of conversation. "Have you heard from Nat, lately? She's been sending me photos of birds and asking if they're related to me."  

*

Bucky developed a new vocabulary. It was full of words like “annuals” and “perennials”, concepts that Steve was only vaguely aware of, but Bucky knew like the back of his hand.

Sometimes, Steve would help Bucky in the garden, as there wasn’t anything actually growing yet. Buck had overturned the soil and dropped seeds into the ground, lovingly smoothing the earth back over the little holes he’d made to seal up the teeny craters. He took the seed and bulb packages and stapled them to skinny, wooden rods, shoving them in the ground so he was always aware of what type of flower was growing in a particular place. Steve, though it was early on in the process, was so worried that he’d think a flower to be a weed and have Bucky either laugh at him or throw a wad of soil in his face, that Bucky learned to put him on drink duty or pass-me-that-slightly smaller-shovel,-Stevie-no-not-that-one-the-other-one duty.

A new angle:

It was hard to believe Bucky had ever been the Winter Soldier, especially when he was up to his elbows with floral-printed gloves, dirt smudges along his cheeks and neck from where he dragged a gloved hand over his face without thinking, and that floppy, yellow hat falling around him.

“What are you smirking at?” Bucky wondered, an eyebrow lifting at Steve from where Steve had gone still in the doorway leading out to the backyard.

You, Steve thought.

“You,” Steve said.

“Well, if you’re just going to stand there watching me work, you should at least bring me the watering can.”

He did as he was asked, plucking up the particular tool from the patio and handing off the obnoxiously neon orange watering can patterned with little red ladybugs to Bucky. He found he was unable to hold back a short burst of laughter, the type that rose from within his gut and left his throat rougher than he likely meant to.

Bucky’s other eyebrow cocked up. “What?”

Steve gently bent to swipe the streak of dirt that ran from Bucky’s temple to his nose, having to execute three smaller brushes of his thumb to clear off the entirety of the brown minerals. “Sometimes it hits me how much I missed your dumb face these last few years.”

Bucky looked away from him, busying his hands with a bloom from a particularly green bush. He came away with a round blossom full of tiny, perfectly formed cobalt blue flowers. “It’s a hydrangea,” Bucky told him, like he was divulging a particularly important secret. He extended the bloom to Steve, who squatted down and cradled the bloom in his hands. “The folks that owned this place before us had been growing them.”

“I’ll go put it in a glass of water,” Steve told him.

Bucky pulled his lower lip between his teeth, chewing it only for a beat, before he released it. He flicked his eyes downward and, despite nothing having been said, Steve couldn’t help but think he’d missed something very important. As he straightened, Steve booped Bucky on the nose with one of his dirty fingers, placing all the dirt he’d just removed on the very tip of his nose.

Mature as ever, Bucky grabbed Steve by the ankle and poured what water remained in the neon orange can all over Steve’s bare feet, cackling like a wild man when Steve squirmed and tried, half-heartedly, to get away.

It escalated to them stirring up mud, flinging the goop at each other by the handful.

Sam, who scheduled to drop by, was less than impressed at the sight of them dripping and gross from head to toe. He practically shrieked when Steve and Bucky shared a glance and descended on him, sandwiching Sam in a muddy, super-soldier embrace.

*

“Steve,” Bucky was saying. There were hands on his arms, shaking him. He’d been dreaming about dark hair and pale eyes and gentle presses of lips and to have the images drawn from him made Steve start, shooting upright and alert in a split-second. Bucky was properly sheepish, still vibrating with excitement. “I’m sorry to wake you.”

“What time is it?” Steve wondered, coughing into his fist to work the crackle out of his voice.

“About four.” It was still dark out. Bucky had discarded a flashlight on the nightstand. “Come outside real quick?”

Steve nodded, hissing when he swung his feet over the side of the bed and his skin made contact with the frigid hardwood. Miraculously, he made it all the way downstairs without swaying too much and bashing his head on a sharp object, following just behind Bucky as Buck led him to the sliding back door and out into the garden. Buck clicked on the flashlight and aimed the beam at—

Oh.

Little bits of green were poking their faces through the soil. Most didn’t even have a single leaf on them yet, but Bucky was looking at them so damn proudly that Steve reached out and held the round of his shoulder.

“Few more weeks and we can open the Barnes Botanical… um, I can’t think of another B-word that would make sense.”

Bucky blinked at him, the only prelude leading up to a startled snort. “I forgot how loopy you are when you first wake up.” A sudden shadow fell across Bucky’s face, dimming his utter joy—an eclipse of emotion. “Fuck, I didn’t mean to drag you outta bed…”

Steve squeezed Bucky’s shoulder, holding his stare. He was entirely awake, now, perfectly steady. “No, no, don’t do that. I’m glad you woke me. I’m glad you decided to share this with me.”

The moon shifted out of Bucky’s light and allowed for his joy to reach its full-exposure once more. Steve basked in the earnestness of it, documenting just how much teeth Bucky flashed and what the precise angle of the tilt to his lips was.

They ate breakfast at a little after five and ended up sleeping till noon.

*

The nightmares were still a Thing.

Despite Bucky being labeled one-hundred percent his own man again, being the gun in Hydra’s hand did not simply fade off into the sunset. This was not a movie, where things wrapped up perfectly, tied off with neat bows and the excess strings were cut off at the neck.

Sometimes, Steve’s eyes snapped open out of a dead sleep to hear blood-curdling screams coming from the room across the hall.

Sometimes, Steve was drawn out of sleep to hear the sound of the bathroom door slamming shut and knees hitting the linoleum and vicious, sick noises echoing in the toilet bowl.

Sometimes, it was just to the soft sound of sheets rustling that hauled Steve out of bed and he’d find Bucky thrashing, twisting to get away from the memory of a threat, biting his mouth raw to keep from crying out.

Sometimes, on nights like the one of current, Bucky accepted the offer Steve had extended several months ago and knocked, world-weary, on Steve’s bedroom at three in the morning. He didn’t even open his eyes as he tugged back the corner of his sheets, shifting over from the center of the bed to the left, the side that served as less of a vantage point, silently welcoming Bucky into his too-big bed. Bare feet padded across the hardwood and loitered, for just over ten and a half seconds.

“You standing there like a jerk isn’t going to help either of us,” Steve murmured, peeling back an eyelid.

The bed dipped, Bucky curling his body up beside Steve’s. He’d moved close, Bucky had, close enough that their kneecaps bumped and when he allowed his right foot to roam, Steve had no problem pressing his toes to the round of Bucky’s ankle.

“Jesus,” Bucky muttered, a shudder rolling down his back. “I thought your bad circulation was cured with the serum.”

Steve opened both eyes so he could take a better look at Bucky’s face: he was pale, paler than normal, and almost haggard. It took a moment of stillness, but Steve realized that shudder hadn’t been a one-time occurrence—Bucky was actively shaking hard enough to send shock waves rippling along Steve’s chest and legs. The strongest, however, reached right through his breastbone and snared at his heart.

He projected his movement as he sealed what distance lay between them and though it was no more than half a foot, it felt like he was crossing mountains, leaping over streams, and traveling to a different planet altogether when his arms landed around Bucky’s middle, a hand raising to gently card though Bucky’s hair.

(There was once a time when Steve dreamed of his mother, cold and the color of newspaper and lacking a heartbeat and he’d wake in the middle of the night, jerking straight up in bed. Their apartment had been a tenth of the size of the one they shared in the present: they had one mattress, huddling together for heat in the winter, throwing off all the blankets and dozing in white undershirts and boxers in the blazing summer. Bucky had held him, back then. It had helped. Steve didn’t think Bucky knew how much it helped, given Steve’s pride would never have allowed him to admit such a thing.)

“There was a kid,” Bucky said, hollow as a raided tomb. “Her father was some real popular Russian during the nuclear arms race in the eighties. She wasn’t supposed to be there when I…I… had no control. The mission parameters said to eliminate all witnesses, if any at all and I just…”

Steve did not say that wasn’t you, nor did he say there was nothing you could have done, Buck. He gripped the man in his arms tighter, curling his still-frigid toes against Bucky’s opposing calf and cracked a small, small smile when Bucky huffed.

“I wish I could climb inside your head and take it all away,” he confessed softly.

“I wish there was a way I could let you,” Bucky replied, just as soft. Each of his inhales was a little longer, his exhales less sharp against Steve’s collar.  

They laid cocooned in their small space of warmth until well after four. Steve did not bother with an alarm, knowing his built-in body clock would have him stirring at six o’clock on the dot anyway. He let all other senses fall away save his hearing, and that he allowed to hone in on the steady beat of Bucky’s heart, the soothing thumpa-thumpa-thump of it. The rhythm was so calm, Steve had believed himself to be the only one awake.

“I never thought I’d have this,” Bucky said quietly, pointedly proving Steve wrong as he so often did. “During the war—our first war—I knew I wasn’t coming out on the other side. I had always hoped you’d live, though, and you’d take Carter to Upstate New York, get a dog, maybe. Pop out a couple of kids.”

He’d long-since come to terms with what he lost when it came to Peggy. It was a silvery wound. Old and tough. “S’real nice thought, Buck: she was happy, in the end. I think our problem was that we were never meant for war.” That was yet another thing he’d come to terms with, because if a war meant loosing Bucky, loosing things that Steve was most certainly not prepared to let slip through his fingers… “Sometimes I wish I’d taken your advice and just collected scrap metal in a little red wagon.”

Bucky smiled one of those precious, heartbreaking smiles. “You’d have chewed off your arm if you had to stick around doing something like that.” 

Steve said: “Was that supposed to be a joke?”

Bucky huffed again, pressing his forehead against Steve’s clavicle as he shook with laughter, this time, rather than the reverberations of fear. “You’re still a dense, hard-headed thing. I’m glad that’s not changed.”

“I resent that.”

“I know you do, bud.” There was another one of their stretches of silence, where they simply breathed and marveled that the year was two-thousand and sixteen and they were still alive. “I’m glad, out of everyone in the world that could be here with me, that it was you.”

His throat felt strangely tight. Having the bed shift a bit as Bucky got comfortable, wedging a leg between both of Steve’s, pressing his nose to Steve’s jaw, though. “Me, too,” Steve whispered.

When he thought about it, the feeling wasn't strange at all.

*

A simple fact:

Bucky adored Wanda like she was his baby sister, doting on her and aiming to make her laugh like he’d done with Rebecca, Grace, and Alice way back when. Seeing the pair of them together, Wanda giggling at some adventure of Steve and Bucky during the war or when they were both still simply kids from Brooklyn (she was not at all picky), and Bucky chatting animatedly made Steve smile uncontrollably.

“Any time you want to cut in, Stevie, you can,” Bucky said, straying off track long enough to extend the offer to Steve.

He shook his head, fond as hell. “Nah, Buck. You’ve always been a better story teller than me. I prefer to listen, anyway.”

Steve was not so foolish as to think that Pietro’s loss did not still affect Wanda. He had seen the hollow look in her eyes those first months at the Avengers compound in Upstate New York, the way she’d laugh at something and turn to her left, mouth moving to murmur a private joke only to be struck by the realization she was the only one left that was in on the punch-line. Pietro had been her everything in a place where all else was stolen and Steve understood how such a blow could upset a delicate balance. He’d tried his best to help her adjust, offering her a hand to hold if she so needed. Like most of the women in Steve’s life, Wanda was strong—it was almost as though she was made of star-stuff, as the more she burned with sorrow, the brighter she became.

Bucky took her out to the garden, Steve remaining inside as to offer them a moment to speak amongst themselves without him lingering at their elbows. Though he didn’t hear what Wanda’s actual response was at seeing the first buds reaching up towards the sun, whatever she said made Bucky beam—a complete face-splitting, eye-crinkling, flush rising in his cheeks beam. Steve’s legs went a bit wobbly.

The next time he looked out the window, he saw Wanda had plucked one of the hydrangea blooms from the bush and the magic that had earned her the name Scarlet Witch unfurled from her fingertips to gently pluck each petal from the deep blue bloom. The petals hung in the air between her and Bucky, dancing across the space and settling in the shape of a crown around Bucky’s head.

Steve was so damn proud of her, of all the progress she’d made.

He was glad that she and Bucky had one another, to fill in the gaps.

*

Steve didn’t mention Tony, if he could help it.

Neither did Bucky.

It was easier to ignore the guilt, that way.

*

“Did you know that flowers have their own language?” Bucky prompted in the middle of dinner.

This sent Steve’s eyebrows rising slowly. “Like, they can communicate?”

Bucky snorted, expertly catapulting a pea from his plate to hit Steve’s cheekbone. The small green projectile bounced off Steve and landed on the floor somewhere. “No, dummy,” Bucky said, patiently. “Wanda brought me this book a few days ago—called the Language of Flowers dictionary. Before our time in the Victorian years, people apparently decided to give flowers their own meanings. Actually, the whole floriography thing was renewed during the Victorian era and it became really important to people. Each flower has its own secret code, Steve. Say I were to give someone a red rose: the underlying message is ‘hey, I care about you a great deal. I love you.’”

Steve rolled his eyes. “I doubt roses would help your case, not with that ugly mug.” Another pea made contact with Steve’s face. “Everyone knows red roses mean love, Buck.”

“Ah,” Bucky said, “but did you know orange roses signify passion? Or that water lilies stand for purity of heart? I could have given you a red germanium and it may be pretty, but I’d actually be telling you that you're a real dumb ass with whatever it was you got up to." Bucky slanted a smirk at Steve, his nose scrunching up as he tried to keep a straight-face. "Given all the stupid things you do, I'd probably have to raid all the flower shops in Brooklyn to make myself clear."

He glowered at Bucky, the twitch of his mouth a dead giveaway. "You think you're so funny," Steve grumbled. "What else did the flowers tell you?"

That same entity that Steve had seen rise to the surface in Bucky's face more times than he could count in the last few weeks made an appearance once more. It made his cheeks color a baby pink, soft as cotton candy and just as sweet; what remained of the frost in Bucky's irises faded away as spring finally settled in his bones; a small, small, barely-there smile serving as the cherry to top off such an amazing sight. "Nothing I don't already know."

Steve wasn't sure what he was supposed to make of that.  

*

By spending so much time outside, Bucky developed a warm, golden tan. His hair become glossier and a touch lighter, too, and that made his eyes looked bluer, his smile even whiter. His hands suddenly itched for a canvas and some paint, to lay down the image of Bucky in shades of pure gold with dustings of white and black to suggest features and shadows. 

Steve wondered if this was how Icarus felt, looking into the sun—blinded by a beauty that cannot simply be grasped, knowing he’s about to fall and doing absolutely nothing to keep it from happening.

“What’s with that face?” Bucky wondered, pausing in his pruning to send Steve a funny look.

The gears that had been spinning so fluidly abruptly came to a standstill in Steve’s head. He was forced to work double-time to wipe the deer-in-the-headlights expression away, quick to put up a sorry-I-was-daydreaming one instead.

“I haven’t seen you so relaxed since nineteen thirty-nine,” he blurted, and that was no falsity.

Bucky smiled, tugging a tiny, yellow weed from his bed of petunias. “Yeah, well,” and he left it at that.

*

One day, there were simply a multitude of little green buds rising from the earth.

The next, a warm Sunday in the middle of May, their yard was flushed with thousands of colorful blooms. Spots of red, blue, periwinkle, marigold, cream, pink, burgundy, violet, lavender: the list of hues just rolled on and on, and they flooded the garden. Large rose heads, the deep, bloody red sort, were blooming along the trellis much to Bucky’s delight, and the ivy that Buck had carefully planted around the belly of the solitary tree in the corner of their yard was starting to flush with spade-shaped leaves.

It was something out of a Monet painting, the pastel sweetness of the scene. Steve’s fingers itched to bolt to a crafts store, to buy a sketchbook for the first time in a long while just so he could properly record Bucky’s look of soul-crushing relief.

“Buck?” Steve asked softly when Bucky had not spoken for well over ten minutes. These stretches of silence were not uncommon, nor were they unexpected, but in the face of such a glorious scene, Steve found Bucky’s silence concerning.

Bucky jerked, as though he just realized Steve was standing in his vicinity. There were drying tear trails on his face, disappearing into his three-day old stubble. “I did this,” Bucky whispered, those big blue eyes flicking from Steve to the flowers and back again.

“You did,” Steve agreed softly. “They’re beautiful.”

But Bucky shook his head as though Steve wasn’t grasping the severity of the situation in the least. He wagered a step closer and felt a spoonful of tension shake off of him when Bucky didn’t move away. “I’ve brought about so much death in this world,” his oldest friend said quietly, “and this…” Bucky swallowed, loud enough to cover up the sound of Steve moving in three paces. He caught Steve’s gaze and cradled it, ever gentle, ever open and raw. “This proves that I can bring life, too.”

Oh, Buck, Steve thought. He could actively feel his lungs contract, like he’d been stabbed there and he was fighting back against both the pneumonia and asthma ghosts of his past to try and regulate his breathing. Steve’s heart was being held by a tight, unforgiving hand. He searched his mind for something clever to say, something that was not “it wasn’t your fault”, as that had been uttered a million times before, both aloud and through silent actions.

He did the one thing he’d been weary to do for a long while: Steve surged in and wrapped Bucky in a hug. Both of his arms slid around the other man, a hand going into the hair at the nape of Bucky’s neck, the other settling at the line where Bucky’s shoulder shifted from skin to metal.

There was a moment of stillness, where the wind fell away and the faces of the flowers stopped their whimsical wavering and Bucky seemed to stop breathing. Steve counted to five in his head, using the Mississippi method, making to pull away as a warm hand pressed firmly to the middle of Steve’s back, another holding the back of Steve’s neck. He clutched Bucky tighter, taking the return of the embrace as permission to do so.

He found the words that he’d been grasping for: “I’m so proud of you.”

Steve was not sure if he imagined the light brush of lips against the side of his neck. Upon later examination, he debunked it as the wisps of Bucky’s stubble tickling his skin.

*

“Steve?” Bucky wondered softly, eyes aimed at his shoes. He hated to see such conflicting emotions on Bucky’s face, hated to see him in the midst of shifting through his mind to determine what was memory and what was the ghost of a Hydra implant.

“Yeah?”

“You used to draw, right? On… napkins and boxes and that sort of thing?”

He nodded, smiling encouragingly. “When I couldn’t afford a decent sketchbook, I did.” Then, knowing nothing that could fill the silence better, Steve added: “I wasn’t built like you or any of the other boys on our block. I couldn’t run well or pace myself, no matter how hard I tried. So, to keep me from having dying of boredom, heart failure or an asthma attack, my Ma convinced me to doodle.”

“I remember,” Bucky murmured. “You sketched our street.”

“I did.”

“Your Ma wanted to frame it, but it had accidentally got thrown out.”

“I don’t think I can count the number of paychecks you blew on pencils and nice paper for me,” Steve admitted. “I stopped asking you not to do it because I saw how much you liked to make me happy.”

Bucky ran his fingers through his hair, gaze sticking on the countertop. He was relaxed, though, so the lack of eye-contact did not worry Steve. “After your Ma passed, that was one of my main goals—keep a steady job, keep us fed, keep you happy. I didn’t do too bad, no?”

“Nah,” Steve said, honestly. “Not bad at all.”  

*

For his first birthday out of the ice, Bruce had bought him a large, glossy volume brimming with sleek photos and information on the age of art, post nineteen forty five. Steve had looked through it, trying to put rhyme with reason as to what half of the pieces meant. Most of them were either wild splashes of paint across canvas or so simple, things that children could have done in under a minute. He had always been for artistic expression and the like, but he found it a bit ridiculous, especially this color palette piece composed of individual square canvases: just a lemon yellow square, followed by a deep green square, all the way through the spectrum up to a marigold block, a shade darker than the lemon.

He hadn’t had much an interest in art, not when the world seemed so bleak and lacking in color.

Without the distraction of being Captain America twenty-four seven, thus without missions, fighting and a trip to the medical bay or eight from retaining an injury during said assignments, Steve itched for something to fill his timetable. Being with Bucky was wonderful, a glorious dream, actually, but he didn’t want to shadow Buck too hard, knowing that being a human blanket could get stifling even if they had once lived in each other’s pockets.

So, thinking of no better solution, Steve called to Bucky while Buck was wrist-deep in the midst of tugging up weeds, spotting the little suckers where Steve wouldn’t have in a million years. “I’m gonna go to a craft store. Want me to pick up lunch on the way back?”

At the words craft store, Bucky’s head whipped around, an elated shine radiating around him. “Really?” he breathed.

Steve glowered at him, teasing: “Don’t act so surprised, green thumb.”

“I’m not surprised,” Bucky retorted, still clearly surprised by Steve’s declaration. “I’m happy you’re picking up with your art again. You’re damn good at it and you always have been.”

He ignored the prickle of a blush unspooling in his neck and patted down his hair where the wind rustled it. “Thank you, Buck.”

“Go get your shit,” was the encouragement Bucky shot his way. “The sun’s the best around three and if you hurry, you might be able to sit with me and sketch.”  

The real problem of this day and age was over-consumption. Steve, ball cap and sunglasses firmly in place, stared at the huge display of sketchbooks, completely at loss with which one he would need. Some of the pages had pulp in them, some were cream and some were white and some were colored, some were specially made for acrylics or water color, and some were heavy and bound in leather. Those were the most expensive.

He settled on a tablet that was bound by metal spirals, the paper soft off-white and thick enough that if he pressed down too hard, his pencil wouldn’t break the surface.

Pencils, though.

Steve nearly had an aneurism at how many pencils there were.

In the end, he bought the pack that looked the simplest and came with a free pencil sharpener.

By the time he got back to the brownstone, the sun had already sank too low to serve as a good source of light and Steve took up his chair in the kitchen. He cracked open the pencils and flipped the sketchbook open to the first page, experimenting with shading and lines, heavy and thin, trying to awaken the miniscule muscles in his thumb, forefinger, and wrist.

He doodled an eye that looked a bit too like Bucky’s for Steve to comfortably keep using the same page for fear Bucky would enter and poke fun at him for it. The pencil moved to line out the shape of Redwing, a little cartoon speech bubble near its beak saying, ‘On your right!’ An hour glass with a spider perched atop it was followed by a huge, lightly shaded fist, a bow and arrow, an ant, a web for that Spider-kid, a hammer complete with Nordic sigils Steve did not know the meanings behind. He even formed the shape of the Iron Man helmet, whole and unbroken.

Steve didn’t realize he’d sketched out the shield and the star at its center until there was a soft inhale at his left. When had Bucky joined him? How much time had rolled by without Steve noticing? He turned the pencil so the eraser was against the paper. Making to scrub the image out of existence, Steve began to move the eraser back and forth, startling when Bucky’s hand stopped him, wrapping loosely around his wrist.

Neither of them moved.

“Do you regret it?” Bucky asked eventually. He didn’t have to clarify what exactly it was that could possibly be regretted.

“No,” Steve said, zero hesitation. “No, I don’t. When I woke up out of the ice, I kept fighting and when I began to work for SHIELD, doing missions and the like, I just locked into this real ugly mindset where all I was good for was throwing my fists and beating a bad guy’s teeth in. Then SHIELD turned out to be Hydra and… and you turned out to have been alive the entire time, and I went through a thing, Buck. I thought I had been fighting the good fight, but I saw what they’d done to you and something splintered in me.

“You know how I got when I was looking for you. I was getting back on track when the whole shit-show with Ultron happened. And I got thrown a set of new recruits to train. I hoped by taking strong people and making them stronger that I’d be able to start mending the wrongs I’d help create. You know the rest—the Accords, the other Winter Soldiers, Zemo.” Steve swallowed, feeling thorns well up in his throat. “Tony.

“But though it all,” he concluded softly, lifting his eyes to catch Bucky’s. His best friend was already looking back, a touch pale. There was something unreadable in his expression and Steve sort of wanted to climb inside him to see exactly what it was. “There was never a moment where I stopped and looked back in shame. No, Buck, I don’t regret dropping the shield. Captain America is a weight that I’ve carried long enough and I really don’t care to pick it back up. I just want to be Steve Rogers again.”

Bucky stood long enough to tug his chair closer to Steve’s plopping down so their knees bonked. A grin, dazzling white and wide, broke over Bucky’s face. “You don’t know how long I’ve waited to hear that, punk.”

They ate breakfast for dinner with their feet overlapping between them, occasionally glancing at each other and smiling to themselves, satisfied. The eggs were a bit runny and the bacon was burnt at the edges.

It was the best meal Steve had ever eaten.

*

Steve was not quite sure when he had fallen in love with Bucky.

Love is a tricky thing, as it is. He loved Peggy, and he loved his mother, and he loved Sam and Natasha and Wanda, and he even loved Tony, but all were different sorts of love. Bucky, though.

The man of the moment was kneeling amongst the second row of daisies he planned to pick and settle in a vase on the kitchen table. There was a little pile of them to Bucky’s right, carefully set aside as to not squish one another. With the sun shining through the tree limbs, there was a golden glow around Bucky’s head, making him look absolutely ethereal and holy and in that moment, Steve had never wanted to sin so much in all his life.

Bucky was unique because Steve had always loved him—as a brother, as a friend, as a fellow soldier, as a caregiver. They knew each other so well, could wind each other up quicker than anyone else given they knew exactly which buttons to press and which wires to uncross when they wished to tug each other off their high horses. He would give his life to see Bucky happy—Bucky had once done the very same for Steve.

And he wanted Bucky, desired him in the most primal of ways. Wished to touch him and be touched by him, to go to sleep at his side and wake up with his face buried in Bucky’s neck as to be nearly smothered by the smell of him, to know, after everything, that Bucky was not some elaborate dream.

Honestly, the discovery that Steve wished to add as a lover to the ways he adored Bucky Barnes should not have been as ground-breaking as it was.

He’d always felt the warmth that spread behind his ribs when Bucky was around, it had just taken him a while to put a name to it.

(When he called Sam that night, sneaking out of his room once Bucky had headed off to bed and creeping downstairs to talk outside on the patio with a lowered chance of being heard, he told Sam of his epiphany. Sam, the unhelpful little shit, had just laughed and laughed and laughed. “Oh man,” he wheezed, taking a great lungful of air only to start cracking up again.

“Really?” Steve asked, sharp and weary all at once.

That only served to start Sam up once more. 

Steve hung up on him.)

*

When Steve rolled over, the spot beside him still warm, but rapidly losing the body heat Bucky had released, he found a vase filled with flowers at his bedside. There were tall purple flowers with individual little bells hanging onto the stem, royal purple and carrying only a faint scent. The arrangement was made fuller by the sunny faces of what he was very sure were miniature sunflowers, their dark eyes only just beginning to brown in as well as five blooms that were mostly white with splatters of pink that grew darker the further away from the center and, though Steve had to carefully search for it, a deep pink rose. Just the one, nearly the same shade as Bucky's gardening tools. 

He touched the petals gently, pulling away when he recalled his mother's voice, always gentle with the lilt of an Irishwoman in her every undertone, telling him to never get the oils from his skin on the petals. It would kill them quicker. Steve never knew if this was true or not, but Sarah had always tried to be frank with him, even when he was a child.

There was a note, placed under the edge of the vase. The letters were small and cramped, written in a heavy hand. Steve smiled at the familiar script:

According to the flower dictionary, this combination of flowers basically says what I can't— you're the center of my life and I am thankful for everything you do for me. Always have been, always will be. 

Steve reached out to pick up the note, carefully folding it up and creasing it once then twice. He brought it briefly to his nose to smell the black ink Bucky had used, standing so he could dip his head into the faces of the flowers to properly clear his nostrils. He indulged in a moment to, quite literally, stop and smell the roses (well, the one rose, but who was there to point out technicalities?) before crossing to his closet where he tucked the piece of notebook paper between one of the latter pages of his sketchbook where he had no doubt he'd take it out and reread it on a bad day.

And Steve had no doubt that there would be bad days ahead of them. Peace, like war, did not last forever. He and Bucky were soldiers, after all, even if they tried not to be anymore.

He found Bucky sitting cross-legged on the patio, a simple slab of concrete before it dropped off and gave way to green grass and Bucky's thriving creation. Bees and butterflies were having a field day, flittering and buzzing between the blooms. Steve sat down beside him, on his left side, letting his temple rest against the sun-warmed vibranium as they watched life move around them, all the while remaining as still as a grounded structure.

"You're the center of my life, too, you know."

Bucky nodded, his eyes never straying from the monarch fluttering its marigold and black wings. Steve, for so long, had forgotten that such small beauties were still in existence and was so damn happy to have a reminder. "I know. It's just... You've given up so much for me—"

"Don't," Steve said, lifting his head. "We've had this conversation before." Not in those exact words, not precisely. I don't know if I'm worth all this, Steve. The hushed moments on the stolen Quinjet. 

"Let me speak," Bucky said, quiet and stern. There was no heat in his request. "You had your friends in that high Tower: you had your charity events and your trips to children's hospitals and your moments where you verbally pummeled politicians on morning talk shows—"

"I think Maria is still pissed at the stunt I pulled on Fox News," Steve confessed, not sounding the least bit apologetic. 

"—and when I resurfaced, though you'll never fully understand how goddamn glad I am you found me, you put your life on hold. Don't think I've not asked Wilson about what you've been up to and I've had a fair few conversations with Natasha, too." Steve hadn't spoken to Nat since he sprung the rest of his team out of the Raft where she'd told him not to do anything too dangerous, especially when she was too far away to assist him. "You went on the run and you lost half of your team... What I'm trying to say is that you had a good thing going for you. So many good things and there's nowhere else I'd rather be than right here with you, back in Brooklyn and free from Hydra, but I just got to put it in the air, if just to put my mind at ease— and you can slug me one if you've got to: if there is any point you want to leave because you're not happy here, do it. Don't put your happiness aside for me, Steve." 

"You've always been the best thing in my life," Steve whispered, trying to keep the hot prickling behind his eyes at bay. His gut had fallen lower and lower until he was sure it had sank right through the soles of his feet and into the earth, halfway to China with the speed it had adopted. "For so long, you were the only constant and then you were gone and my... equilibrium was thrown off. I didn't know how to function. I was a machine without you. If Fury pointed at a country on the map and told me to go, I ran there. I did everything in my power to never have downtime to actually process what I'd lost and that came back to bite me, in the end.

"I'm so selfish when it comes to you," he pressed, forcing his eyes to meet Bucky's. Somewhere in Steve's peripheral, the butterfly was still minding its own business, still acting as an innocent specimen of grace. "I've always been selfish. Dragging Peggy and Howard into Austria at night to parachute into enemy territory with the one in a million chance of you still being alive; hauling Sam around the world trying to find the slightest hint of your shadow; begging Clint and Scott to leave their families and for Wanda to step out of the one place of sanctuary she'd found to help me defend you. It goes on, Buck. Having you around makes me feel so happy that there are days when I could just burst at the molecule. To steal a handful of your words: there's no where else I'd rather be than right here with you." 

"You're not selfish," Bucky mumbled. "It's your face. You're so damn sincere all the time, it makes people do crazy things for you." 

If they both hugged for a while and pulled back with damp cheeks, well. They'd brought it on themselves. 

Steve felt lighter than he had in decades. 

*

Wanda was the first to catch sight of the garden through the kitchen window, her mouth falling open into an O of pleasant surprise. “Bucky, it gets more and more vibrant each time I visit.”

"Miracle Grow is a thing to marvel at," Bucky joked, pressing a light kiss to her temple and grinning with a hint of teeth when Wanda smiled widely up at him. 

Sam was the next to join them, falling in at Bucky's right and Steve's left. He whistled lowly, impressed. "Alright, beefcake, did you like, raid Martha Stewart's backyard?" 

Bucky wriggled his fingers at Sam, smirking when Sam narrowed his eyes in the manner of a cat being taunted by a laser pointer. (They'd watched a lot of YouTube, in the quiet moments.) "Nuh uh, bird brain. You're not taking this moment of glory from me. I did this all by myself." 

"He's right, Sam," Steve said at the same time Clint chimed from the doorway: 

"Woah. Okay. I keep forgetting there's another team member with a bird-themed name." 

Sam rolled his eyes. "How could we?" 

Clint grinned, his eyes crinkling at the corners. He wore a band t-shirt and a loose flannel, a pair of jeans with gashes in the knees. One of his sneakers had a hole in it, right over his big toe. "Nat spamming you with birds from around the world, too?"

"And tweets from that one account." 

"Birds rights activist?" 

"Yup." 

"You can't feed the trolls, man," Clint said cryptically. He then paused, his eyes finding Steve and Bucky's coffee maker, and he broke out into a look of the upmost consideration. "You can't ignore Tasha, though. I'm pretty sure she's part cat: the less you pay attention to her, the more memes she blows up your phone with." 

Steve spoke up: "She used to send the Life Alert one to me at all hours if I didn't respond to her texts right away." 

"Erm," Wanda began. "What is Life Alert?" 

That launched an entire discussion that Steve never believed he'd have to sit through. For the first few months he'd spent at the Avengers Tower, he kept up a streak of pretending he knew little to nothing about technology. Cell phone? Computer? Toaster? He was but a simply old man who used to make contact through sending up smoke flares, write letters with hopes the Pony Express would come within a hundred miles of his street, and if he wanted anything cooked, he'd make a fire and get to roasting. He played up the 'Actual Old Man Rogers' for half a year, as it was another distraction that was, in the very least, a bit enjoyable. Natasha, of course, had found out and spotted him tapping through his emails with ease. 

The moment Nat was in on his act, she became giddy in the reserved way of hers and helped him keep up the charade until that Christmas. 

After Clint grabbed a cup of coffee— Bucky would not allow him to drink right out of the pot, no matter how inventively Clint whined— they all headed out to further inspect the garden, each with either a glass of ice water or a can of soda in hand. 

It was rather amusing, watching Clint and Sam and Wanda step near the flower beds without actually touching, as though they didn't wish to soil the small slice of paradise settled in a tiny corner of Brooklyn. None of them reached out, none of them touched, but they did a fine job of observing. 

"You did a good thing, Barnes," Clint said, looking over his shoulder to exchange brief nods with Bucky. "For you to have sprung this up in such a condensed amount of time? Ha. Think you could pop down to my farm? The cabbages are being real assholes this year." 

That got a grin out of Bucky, real and solid. Steve hadn't seen one those for a while. "I don't know a thing about fruits and vegetables, man. If I did, I'd be there in a second." 

“I always liked daisies,” Sam confessed to keep the ball for conversation rolling, only after Clint admitted he had a fond admiration for lavender and Wanda said she loved baby’s breath.

“I’m growing those,” Bucky told Sam, pleased.

Sam took a long sip of his drink, face smoothing over. “I’m deathly allergic.”

Bucky shrugged a suit yourself shrug and squatted momentarily, plucking up deep purple, star-shaped bloom. He offered it to Steve, who took it and cradled it in his palms as Bucky flittered away to check on the roses. He'd planted pink, wine-red and white ones, all of which were opening their large heads to expose themselves in the presence of their caretaker. 

“Uh,” Clint drawled, breaking Steve out of his reverie and speaking lowly enough not to be overheard by a certain metal armed ex-assassin. “Am I the only one who thinks it’s weird that Cap is being loaded down with fresh flowers? Yes? No? Maybe so?”

"Hush," Wanda said flatly. "It's sweet." 

“Shut up, Barton,” Sam lightly chided. “Barnes! Barnes, get your ass over here and give this asshole a flower. Make it two.” Sam jabbed a finger at Clint, playful in all his seriousness. Steve knew that Sam was secretly pleased in the progress Bucky had made, as proud as Steve was that Bucky had developed both a hobby and a healthy coping mechanism as an outlet to the profound stress he was put under these last few months alone.

It didn’t take Bucky very long to come forth with a handful of blooms, offering them to Clint with a little smile. There was, Steve noticed, lavender in the bunch. "The lavender means calmness and grace; white jasmine for your amiability; the pink rose for appreciation." 

Huh, so that's what the deep pink flower symbolized. Steve should have guessed. 

Clint looked as though he were at a loss for words, as he quietly cleared his throat and bopped his head a few times. "Thanks, man. They're real nice." 

"Before you head back, I can give you an arrangement specially for Laura if you'd like? And small ones for the kids?" 

Steve caught Wanda's eye just as she was tipping her face to catch his. They shared a secret smile. They'd both seen Bucky at his worst first-hand: to stand in the warmth of summer with things flourishing all around them with the brightest figure being Bucky himself, was just such a contrast from the shell of a man who asked to be put into cryo-sleep, hidden away in the jungles of Wakanda. 

"Nah," Clint said, softly. "You don't have to do that. Hell, Nathaniel would probably try to eat them..." 

Bucky said: "For Laura, then." 

Visibly touched, Clint nodded. "Yeah, alright." There was a soft noise, almost-but-not-quite a sniffle. "That's enough emotions for this month. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to find something to punch in the face." 

"You're not," Wanda pointed out. 

Clint slung an arm around her shoulders, squeezing her to him fondly. "I'm not." He winked at Steve and Sam. "Yet."

The flowers that Bucky had picked for Sam during their few minutes of quiet, comfortable chatter all fell in with the primary colors— gorgeous shades of red, yellow and blue. Though they were not the same shape, didn't exactly go together in their structures, when Bucky held them out to Sam, the other man seemed to be holding back a comment like the one Clint had made, praising Bucky for the lovely job he'd done. 

Instead:

"Aren't these daffodils?" Sam asked, pointing at the yellow flower with the protruding, orange head. 

"Their proper name is Narcissus." 

Suspiciously, Sam's eyes narrowed. There was a twitch in his cheek. “What do mine mean?” Sam wondered slowly.

Bucky flicked his eyes over the other man’s face, gauging his expression. “Stupidity and egotism,” he deadpanned. "But the bluebells are a symbol of consistency, so." 

Steve could not repress a snort and began to laugh when Sam swiped at an invisible tear, turning the motion into a smooth segue before he gave Bucky the finger. “I love you, too, man.”

“What about me?” Wanda asked when their bickering stopped. She appeared to not want to push Bucky into giving her blooms from his private Eden, all the while looking like she was about to seize the sheers herself and gather up all the flowers.

Bucky moved to the far corner of the garden, the point furthest away from the house, and knelt for all of twelve seconds. He stood with four white blooms, crossing to a thick patch of blue, with their round heads and their solid, dark eyes, where he drew up several of these, too. There was a final stop at the freesia, where a few healthy stalks of these were gently cut. Bucky nodded at Steve to come forth, to serve as a surrogate vase as Bucky arranged the blooms to his liking.

He presented the gift to Wanda almost shyly, lowering the flowers into her arms as though delivering a baby. “These are white zinnia’s,” Bucky said to her. “And they stand for goodness. The blue ones are called anemone—those mean fragility.” A little smile upturned the corners of Bucky’s mouth. It was a sad, understanding one that Wanda reflected back at Bucky, her warm brown eyes glittering with unshed tears. “The freesia, though—that means spirited.”

“Thank you, Bucky,” Wanda murmured, pressing her lips into a shaky line for a long moment before she hooked an arm around his neck and pulled him to her for a brief hug. Bucky gently patted her back, careful of the flowers between their chests.

“It’s no problem, doll,” he said, just as quiet.

*

When Sarah Rogers lay dying in a quarantined tuberculosis ward, Steve had not been allowed to go in: you’ve got a weak immune system, doctors said, frowning over their wire-rimmed glasses and shooting him weary looks. You step in there, kid, and you won’t be stepping out.

Bucky, of course, had taken it upon himself to go in for Steve, something that Steve was outwardly irked by, but secretly glad of. Bucky being Bucky knew this, and used a week’s salary to buy to nicest bunch of flowers for Sarah that he could find. They’d been pure and white with delicate petals that bloomed and curled at the tips—lilies.

They arrived after visiting hours, much to Steve’s upset, and were shooed away. Steve had brought along a framed photo of Joseph Rogers for Bucky to sit at Sarah’s bedside, and Bucky had brought the lilies in a nice vase his own Ma had allowed him to borrow.

“Come on, Buck,” Steve muttered, dejectedly. “We can come back tomorrow.”

But Bucky, being Bucky, shook his head. “If the train hadn’t been delayed twenty minutes, we’d not be having this problem. You and I paid our fare with the intention of getting in to see Sarah and damn it, money don’t grow on trees.”

Steve knew that. He knew that better than most given that each time he caught a bad bought of some sort of illness, he was laid up for a week and had lost whatever job he’d been able to secure by the time he could stand again. “Buck, they said we have to come back tomorrow.”

He was studied for over a minute, just Bucky’s eyes sweeping over his face and lingering at the hard line of Steve’s jaw, the sad creases in his forehead, his gold hair that was floppier and oilier than normal given his neglect of it.

“And I said no.” Bucky snatched the framed photo of Steve’s father, plowing around the corner towards the TB wing. Steve let out an irked sound, wanting nothing more than for the floor to swallow him up whole. Actually, that was a lie: all he wanted in the world was for his Ma to make a miraculous recovery and come home so he could hear her sweet laugh and listen to her hum old Irish hymns from her emerald homeland, but since he could not have that,  Steve wanted to go home and sleep till noon. Only, he’d not sleep till noon. He had to go out and search for a job first thing in the morning. Again.

“Buck, come on,” Steve grit, wrapping a hand around Bucky’s elbow and giving him a tug backward. “I want to leave.”

“These flowers won’t look as good tomorrow,” Bucky said lowly. “I’m getting them to her while they’re fresh.”   

“You’re a child,” Steve snapped.

“Takes one to know one, sport,” Bucky snarked back, bumping Steve in the ribs with the butt of his elbow.

Suddenly, as though fate had been tuning into Bucky’s thoughts, the door to the ward swung open and a pair of doctors came striding out, stripping off their gloves and the masks covering the lower halves of their faces. Bucky, sly as a fox and just as light-footed, slipped right behind them and into the depths of the TB wing—not before he fired off a little salute Steve’s way.

“Asshole,” Steve could not help but huff, even though he was well aware Bucky had not heard him.

Bucky was inside for well over twenty minutes, a stretch of time that Steve spent pacing in one of the adjacent hallways. He saw one of his mom’s old co-workers, Delores, who had known Steve since he was a baby, and got a firm squeeze out of her and a tender: “Everything will be alright, honey. You’ve just got to have faith.” After she left, Bucky exited about half a minute later. He had his head down, his hair falling into his face from where he’d worked the product out of it with his anxious fingers.

He had his head down to hide his tears, the clear streams of which Steve could still see drying on his cheeks. “How was she?” Steve wondered.

Bucky appeared to only just realize he was there, blinking, startled, at Steve. “Good,” he said gruffly. “She made that face when I told her you’d gotten into three fights. You know the one—,” and though Steve did, indeed, have an idea of which expression his mother had worn, Bucky demonstrated. He raised his eyebrows, pursed his lips, and still managed to look fondly exasperated at the same time. Something in Steve’s chest panged. “—but, she was real happy to have the photo of your Da, Stevie. Good call.”

“Did she like your flowers?”

Bucky slung an arm around Steve’s slim shoulders, tugging him to his side. They’d long since perfected the move; they never stumbled, never stepped on each other’s toes, never bonked heads, either. “Yeah, pal. She did. I told her I’d treat her to that uppity botanical garden once she got out of here, too.”

Steve’s smile was strained at the corners. He briefly curled an arm around Bucky’s waist just so he could flatten a hand along Buck’s ribs and give him a squeeze. “She’ll like that.”

(Sarah Rogers died two weeks later on the first day of spring. The lilies at her bedside still looked brand new when the nurse returned the few belongings Steve and Bucky had brought her. Steve was able to hold back tears until he had gone home and suddenly, he could not stand the faint, sweet smell the lilies let off. He flung the vase at the nearest wall with all his might, feeling his heart break along with it. The flowers crumpled under his shoes as he stamped on them furiously, so angry that they had bloomed further while his Ma—his kind, selfless Ma—had withered away.

It was only after he’d crumpled to the ground in the midst of glass shards and ripped petals and dirty water did he remember the vase belonged to Winnie Barnes and he dissolved into sobs all over again.

Buck found him that way.)

* 

“Hey, Steve!”

He poked his head into the living room. “Yeah?”

“Kitchen Nightmares is on. Two minutes in and Ramsey is dragging this guy.”

“Cool. I’ll be there is a second.”

(Steve lived for these tiny moments of domesticity. They typically ended with he and Bucky seated close, thigh-to-thigh, shoulder-to-shoulder, in each other’s spaces with no tension winding their spines up tightly. Sometimes Bucky stretched an arm over Steve’s shoulders, gently resting on the back of Steve’s neck. They tipped into one another, closed parenthesis.)

*

The bouquet Bucky presented him with this time was less put-together than the last few had been (there had been over five in total), more a hodge-podge of blooms than soft things that complimented each other. Round, red-faced flowers with layers upon layers of petals around the tiny center were partnered with tiny, deep blue blooms a quarter of the first's size, and these sharp-looking things that were brown and measured the length of Steve's hand, palm to fingertip: there was also violets and tulips, which were a duo that even Steve could identify. 

"Hey, Buck, the tulips mean friendship, right?" 

Bucky's expression crumpled at the edges, lasting so briefly Steve didn't think he'd seen it fall at all. His mouth parted, a noise like he was going to speak and thought better of it leaving him. Ducking his head so a few strands of hair fluttered onto his forehead, Bucky drudged up a smile and sent it Steve's way. "Yeah, pal," he said softly. "Friendship." 

Steve drew the bouquet up to his nose, inhaling at the face of the red bloom. It was tentatively sweet, like it didn't know if it was alright to release such light scents into the world. 

"What about the rest of them? What type of flower are they, I mean." 

Bucky drew a deep breath and let it out in one long beat. "They're chrysanthemums, forget-me-nots, Melianthus, violets and, like you said, yellow tulips." 

And, when Steve turned his back to put the bundle in a vase with water, he twisted around to ask Bucky what he wanted for dinner and found he'd been speaking to no one. 

*

Steve heard Bucky cry out, a high, painful thing, at two thirty-nine in the morning. 

He waited, eyes closed, still, for the inevitable padding of feet as Bucky shuffled in and slid under the sheets beside Steve. 

They never came. 

*

He woke the next morning to a note on his pillow: Went to Wanda's. Be back later. 

Steve knew when he was not wanted, though he did not understand why. 

*

After four and a half days of Bucky toeing around Steve like Steve was a rabies-filled beast and Bucky was the poor bastard that had to tranquilize Steve without losing another limb, Steve, for lack of better word, snapped. Bucky would not touch him, would not meet his eyes, hell, would barely stay in the same room as Steve for more than five minutes before he invented an excuse to get up and go. Steve had gone over the last conversations he and Bucky had exchanged at least a hundred times and, at the end of each investigation, found absolutely nothing that could account for the cold shoulder Bucky was giving him. 

He'd cooked beef stew by means of a peace-offering, as Winifred Barnes had made the particular dish whenever she and George could find the money to buy the good stuff and Bucky was a sucker for it, every time. 

Tonight, though, Bucky had sucked up his serving quicker than any vacuum Steve had ever seen. He washed his dish quickly and put it in the drainer to drip-dry. 

They never went to bed angry with each other and, though Steve wasn't exactly sure if Bucky was angry with him, he wanted to clear the air to prevent another morning of fiddling around in his room trying to work up the nerve to face Bucky. 

"Wait!" Steve yelped, seizing Bucky's vibranium wrist as he made to slip past and haul-tail for the stairs. 

Bucky went still and though he was only holding him by the wrist, Steve had no trouble detecting the thrumming tension running its course through the rest of Bucky's body, pulling him tight as a bow string. He let go. 

"Did I do something?" he blurted. "Because you've barely spoken to me and when you have, you one word me or you just grunt and I don't know what I did, but I'd like you to tell me if it is me you're upset with-"

Bucky sighed. "No," he told Steve. "No, pal, you didn't do anything. It's me. It's all me. Just... be patient with me? It'll take me a few days to get over it." 

Steve's shoulders sank, glad to have confirmation that it was not anything he'd done that sent Bucky receding into himself, stiffening, too, when it hit him Bucky was hurting over something. "Do... you want to talk about it?" 

Bucky was shaking his head before Steve had even gotten the entirety of the question out. 

"Like I said: it's all me. I've got to work through it on my own." His jaw ticked, just once, to the right. "Try to get some sleep, Stevie." 

He was gone, immediately after this, slipping away as silent as smoke.

*

It took four days, before Bucky started to sit close to Steve again. 

It took seven days, before Bucky laughed at one of Steve's terrible jokes. 

It took eight days, before Bucky finally came into Steve's room after a nightmare, practically melting into Steve's embrace.

Steve, though he put up a front of being so, was not calmed.

*

Bucky, like he so often did, fell asleep on the couch with the Language of Flowers dictionary cracked open across his chest. All the lines of worry ebbed from his features when he slept and, if Steve let the darkest of his memories fall away, he could manage to lie to himself for a few minutes. He could stand silently watching Bucky and tell himself that Buck had gotten home from the docks after a long, hard day, but the day was over and he'd come back to Steve and ate dinner with a huge, beaming smile and they cracked jokes and they kicked playfully at each other under the table through dinner.

A car backfired down the street and served as the piercing knife needed to cut through Steve's daydream.  

He gingerly eased the book out of Bucky's limp grasp, slipping his fingers in the page that Bucky had dozed off reading so he could grab a sticky note out of the kitchen and mark the page. Steve, on light feet, padded mutely into the kitchen and riffled around for the pack of unopened stickies that one of the moving crew had assumed they'd need at one point or another. Smoothing the neon yellow square onto the proper page, or at least the page across from the proper page, Steve made to close the book before his eye was caught by a definition halfway down the right page: Tulip, yellow.

Hopeless love. 

Steve almost fucking fumbled the book as he plowed over the sink to shove the flower dictionary under the light. Of course, in the point seven seconds since he'd torn his eyes away from the text, it hadn't changed. Beneath the bare bulbs, though, it only seemed to become more defined, darker against the stark white of the page. 

It was a vicious need to know that drew him to search for the other flowers that Bucky had mentioned. 

Chrysanthemums, red: I love you. 

Forget-me-nots: True love.

Melianthus: Sweet love. 

Violets: Faithful love. 

Steve had not vomited since he'd gotten struck by typhoid fever in the winter of forty-one, but standing stock-still in the quiet of their brownstone, Steve believed the chances of him doing so were higher than not. This was no coincidence: Bucky had learned the Victorian meanings behind each flower in his garden, had memorized a great deal of those he was not growing or had not yet had the chance to grow, too. He had been precise when he presented Clint and Wanda and Sam with their bundles of flowers and Steve felt quite foolish for having thought he'd be any different.   

Out of shocked curiosity and because he knew nothing better to do in that instant, Steve thumbed to the glossary, scanning the F section until he located friendship and the list of flowers listed below it and the only one similar to what Steve had originally thought to be correct was the yellow Rose, which stood for affection and, if he strained, could also stand for friendship. It was an honest mistake to make, confusing roses with tulips, especially since Steve knew little to nothing about flowers besides what Bucky told him. Even then, Steve, guiltily, sometimes zoned out through the technical talk and just concentrated on Bucky's little happy hand gestures or how he was so relaxed when he was speaking of his new-found passion, completely in his element. It was an honest mistake to make, but that did not stop Steve from feeling as though he'd had one of the tasers the Strike Team had used on him shoved into his belly, turned on the highest voltage to properly fry his insides. 

He should have seen the carefully hidden hurt in Bucky's expression. He should have called him out on how he started to correct Steve only to force a smile and nod at what Steve had said. 

Bucky had, in his own way of communication, tried to confess his love to Steve. His romantic love. To Steve. 

Steve doubled over at the middle, resting his forehead against the cool granite countertops as the wave of nausea passed, his hands planted on the side of the sink.

He wondered if it was possible for the serum to fail after so many years, if his asthma could make a sharp, sudden return. 

It took him well over ten minutes to get his shit together, straightening up slowly as to not get a head rush, and he winced when he found slight indentions of his fingers in the metal lining of the sink. He hoped Bucky wouldn't notice, or, as Steve had no doubt Bucky would note the damage as soon as he came into the kitchen the following morning, that, in the very least, he'd not mention it.  

He set about getting his erratic breathing under-control before he went and woke Bucky due to a panic attack, ducking his head under the kitchen faucet to lap up several, shaking mouthfuls of water. As to not lose what few grains of courage he'd managed to preserve, Steve turned on his heel, the Language of Flowers dictionary in his- thankfully- not-shaking hand as he returned to the living room. Buck hadn't moved, his hands still curled around empty air. 

"Hey," Steve said softly, settling a tender hand on the side of Bucky's face as he patted his cheek to wake him. Shit. He sounded far too soft and to fix that, he cleared his throat. "Bucky." 

At the sound of his name, Bucky snapped awake, blinking blearily at Steve. "S'everythin' okay?" he mumbled. 

(There had been a time where Steve woke Bucky and had a gun aimed between his eyes or a knife at his throat, or a flesh hand around his windpipe to replace the space of a stronger, broken limb. There was a time when Bucky woke up fully alert and ready to launch off into battle, all warmth picked up in sleep flying away, no better than birds at the start of autumn. The contrast was jarring and it was so fantastic. Steve's heart raced.)

"Yeah," he murmured, trying with all his might to keep his face from giving him away. "It's just, the last time you fell asleep on the couch, you got a crick in your neck and I had to pull weeds while you sat back and supervised."

Bucky smiled, fuzzy with one foot still standing in the realm of dreams. "You loved it."

"I did," Steve nodded, responding far too quickly. Natasha was right: he would make a terrible spy. 

It was a testament to how tired Bucky was, that he did not narrow his eyes in suspicion at Steve's fast reply. All he did was push himself into an upward position and sling his arm around Steve's neck. Steve took this as the cue to guide them upstairs to their bedrooms. Bucky did not shrug away from Steve when they reached his bedroom. Instead, much to Steve's delight and his horror, Bucky followed Steve to his room, slipping into the sheets on the left side of the bed. By the time Steve had brushed his teeth and splashed several palms of cold, cold water on his face, Bucky was asleep once more. 

Steve, watching the rise-fall-rise of the sheets over Bucky's stomach, reached a conclusion: (1) he had spent precious time stepping around Peggy when he could have acted on his feelings and that had only earned him a single kiss and a painful goodbye. (2) Bucky had, by some act of a cruel god or a very twisted deity of kindness, survived that fall from the train and decades of abuse from Hydra. He had not found much faith in the Lord these last few years, but from everything that he'd learned in those long, boring masses every Sunday with his Ma, for every agonizing toil, there was a divine reward for being able to endure such horrors. Steve couldn't ignore that. He refused, which led to- (3) Bucky tried to speak through small acts in the hopes that the simplicity of them would be easy to understand. Coming from such a beautiful mind, though, of course the simplicity of the sentiment had been twisted into a gift with a deeper meaning that Steve could have hoped to understand. So, Steve had to go big and actually stick to simple. 

This was going to be harder than he thought. 

He didn't sleep that night.

*

Natasha, thankfully, had just gotten back to New York from some conference with the European Union just when Steve desperately needed her help. She came through, as she always did, collecting Bucky at exactly noon. “Come on, Barnes,” she said, and there was a glint in her eye that Steve had missed so very, very much. He wanted to hug her, the type of hug that swept her off her feet, but refrained. “You, Wanda, and I need a bit of girl time, don’tcha think?”

“You’ve barely said a word to Steve,” Bucky pointed out suspiciously. Glancing between the two of them and their twin smiles of innocence only made his eyebrows rise higher. He jabbed a finger into Steve’s chest and it was the first sort of physical contact that Bucky had initiated in over a week. “If I come back and find my shit on the front lawn, Rogers, I swear…”

Though he knew damn well Buck meant it as a joke, Steve did not miss the hurt laying just beneath the surface of his voice. Steve, for that matter, felt like he’d been hit right in the sternum. He caught Bucky’s hand, squeezing his knuckles with enough strength that Bucky looked up. “I’d never do that to you. I’d never leave you again.”

Bucky smiled, soft and real. “I was just kicking your walker, Steve.”

“Wow,” Natasha said in a dry deadpan.  “You really should have called sooner.”

And, before Bucky had a chance of asking what that meant, Natasha slid her arm through his vibranium one and hauled him out of the brownstone.

All at once, Steve went loose, like a balloon with all of the air let out of it, and tense, as though he’d just had rapidly drying cement dumped over his head and would be made to forever stand in the position of which he found himself right then. He had a very strict schedule lined out in his head, neatly scratched out on a piece of sketchbook paper, too, just to be sure that no mistakes had been made and that nothing had been unaccounted for.  

He grabbed the keys to the car T’Challa had loaned them when they first returned to the city of their births and took off, paper in hand and heart in his throat.

*

It had taken some digging to find a place that made a decent roll of rugelach. When Steve and Bucky had been children, rugelach had always served as a favorite dish of Bucky’s, given Winifred made them for Passover every year and also on Bucky’s birthday, as she knew of his fondness for them. Steve liked them well enough, too, given they were a Jewish delicacy, when made correctly, of chocolate, hazel nuts, and apricot jam gently folded up in an envelope of cream-cheese dough. He’d called ahead and ordered two dozen, having a very good idea of just how much two super-soldiers could put away.

They were not Winnie Barnes’ homemade delights, but if Steve didn’t strain his sense of taste, the rugelach reached a level of acceptability.

He just hoped that Bucky didn’t think Steve was trying to force him into the shoes of a boy long since gone.

Steve cleared his throat, shooting a small smile at the older fellow behind the cash register, watching as he scanned his items and bagged them up: a full, hot-and-ready deli chicken that was searing to the touch and a pouch of red potatoes (to be boiled and smeared with butter), as well as a few plums and a half dozen chocolate bars, the latter two of which were just Steve being indulgent.

Already, he’d swung by a home goods store and located a fine, white linen table cloth and a silver candelabra, and, before this, to a wine shop for a bottle of something smooth and sweet.

It was just after one.

Right on schedule.

*

It was somewhere between the seventh flower shop and home that Steve began to have a minor meltdown. What if Bucky didn’t reciprocate his feelings? What if Steve was just reading far too much into a bunch of flower arrangements and they were simply that? Just flower arrangements?

He thought back to how Sam had laughed at him and the tone Natasha used with him and Bucky that morning, about how hurt Bucky had been after Steve didn't say anything after being presented with that last bouquet—

Steve gripped the steering wheel hard enough to permanently bend the leather and the hard plastic beneath it, pressing his forehead to the space between his hands. He did a few calming circuits with his breathing, trying his damndest to get himself under control.

Slowly, very slowly, he straightened up and met his own eyes in the mirror over the dash. “You’ve never walked away from a fight before,” he declared, slightly accusing, staring himself down for a very long minute. He pushed out the car with a huff, nearly stumbling in his haste as he’d forgotten to undo his seatbelt.  

It occurred to him, once he’d made three trips from the house to the car, that this thing between he and Bucky was not violent—it was not a war.

*

Steve made up two dishes of equal proportions, hiding the rugelach in the breadbox and shoving the bread in the refrigerator. The potatoes were soft and glazed with butter, the real sort that was so easy to find nowadays, and the chicken had been carved. Wine was poured into shiny glasses. He had bolted upstairs and showered, scrubbing at his skin until he was rosy all over and smelled of soap. Dressed and ready, he took the stairs at a collected pace, lighting the candles settled atop the candelabra. He had to strike six different matches his hands were trembling so badly. 

The digital clock built into the stove declared that it was four-fifty seven.

Three minutes before everything changed.

*

The main part of the plan was this:

Steve, once the cooking was done and the candles were settled properly, filled the kitchen with roses, the large-faced, deep red sort. Blooms in vases were to cover every flat surface and when Steve began to run out of containers to place them in, he’d start to artfully lay them out on the counters, on the ground, plucking a dozen heads apart to settle rose petals leading up to the dinner table. God, this would be so fucking embarrassing if Bucky didn’t return his feelings. He didn’t allow that thought to linger very long, instead, he submerged his senses in the sweet smell of the flowers as his vision tipped out of his mind and became a reality.

When five o’clock rolled around, Steve killed the lights in the living room, carefully toeing around his creation to stand near the counter. He knew Bucky would be drawn to the glow, that he’d pick up on the scent of flowers an instant later.

“Steve?” Bucky called just after he pushed open the door.

It was more natural instinct than nervousness, Steve’s eyes fluttering shut at such a mundane thing: Bucky arriving home. Steve didn’t think he’d ever overcome the sheer relief of a day passing and having Bucky shrug off his coat and toe off his shoes, having survived another span of hours away from Steve only to return to their place of safety.

“In here,” Steve said, a touch faint.

“Today was weird,” Bucky declared, followed by the sound of shoes being gently settled on the floor near the door. “Natasha didn’t invite herself in to casually snoop through our things and eat our food—,” he had the air of one ticking off things on his fingers. Just the sound of his voice made Steve’s heart race a little faster. “—she and Wanda smirked at me pretty much the entire time we were together, which is totally a Natasha thing and Wanda's been known to do the same, but today, though, it was amped up to such a high—”

He faltered mid-sentence, eyes going wide in a spurt of pure surprise. It was, most definitely, the most endearing expression Steve had ever seen on his face.

Steve could feel the back of his neck and his ears going red with nerves, how the tips of his fingers shook lightly as he ran them through his hair, carefully patted down with a bit of product. He wore the pale, cornflower blue button-up Nat said made his eyes stand out, his khakis pressed and just a little tight in all the proper places, his loafers shiny and tied neatly. Feeling like he was no more than eight years old and standing in front of his entire congregation after he’d spilled the wine at the Christmas ceremony, he mumbled the line he’d been practicing all day in preparation for this very moment:

“Come on, Buck. Tell me what they mean.”

Bucky’s eyes had carefully shifted from the candlelit dinner to catch Steve’s gaze. “Red roses,” he said, automatic. “The flower of love.”

“It’s more than that,” Steve pressed, pushing off the counter and wagering a few steps closer.

“You love me,” Bucky whispered, not a question.  

He bopped his head in a series of anxious little nods. “It's more than that, too,” Steve murmured.

A pause, immediately followed by a small, hopeful smile. It reminded him of that moment just before Bucky had been put into cryo-sleep back in T’Challa’s lab, that perfect mouth twisting. Steve wanted to hold him. “You’re…in love with me.”

Steve met him at his post in the middle of the kitchen, moving close enough to curl a hand to the hinge of Bucky’s jaw. Up close, he could see that Bucky was blushing and he used his free hand to cup the side of Bucky's head, thumb loitering at the shell of his ear. “Got it in one,” Steve told him, a shy grin upturning the corners of his mouth as he ducked his head a bit.

This seemed to be the very signal that Bucky was waiting for, as the other man wasted no time in wrapping his arms around Steve’s neck and hauling him in to press their lips together. He wasn’t sure why he’d expected the kiss to be something fierce and almost clinical in the way it was presented, but Steve was quite happy to be absolutely wrong. Bucky kissed him with the tenderness of which he cared for his flowers, with gentle nips of Steve’s lower lip, warm slides of their tongues greeting the interiors of each other’s mouths. He let out a little moan when Bucky’s metal hand curled to the short hairs at the back of Steve’s neck, tugging at the strands as a perfect contrast against the sweet movements of their lips.

“Fuck,” Bucky whispered when they broke apart to breathe. He tasted like too-sweet coffee. It was Steve's new favorite flavor. “I’m so gone on you."

"Get back here and kiss me some more," Steve sighed, breaking out into a blinding grin when Bucky did just that.  

They had a lot of time to make up for.

*

It was later, much later—god, it was so late the sun was rising and their meal had been hauled upstairs and devoured cold—that Steve blinked awake to Bucky looking down on him with suspiciously narrowed eyes.

“What?”

“If I go outside, are my roses going to be gone?”

Steve snorted. “I raided every flower shop in Brooklyn. Probably looked like a crazy person going through stop lights with our car fitting to burst from all arrangements.”

Bucky’s entire expression melted, his flesh hand reaching up to stroke along Steve’s abdomen. He craned his neck lazily to meet Bucky halfway, smiling into the press of lips despite the horrid morning breath they were sporting. “You’re such a fucking sap.”

“Hmm,” Steve hummed, spanning Bucky’s hips with his hands, rolling his thumbs over the juts of bone under his fingers. He tipped in close enough to smell the lingering musk of sweat and sex on Bucky’s skin, felt Bucky mirror his smile. “It takes one to know one, sport.”