Chapter Text
“Just like old times, huh pal?”
It’s a joke. Bucky’s doing that again: cracking jokes. Which is like old times, even if their current surroundings aren’t. The amber liquid in his glass doesn’t have much effect, but seeing Bucky so relaxed has Steve feeling the closest he has to drunk since 1943.
Bucky’s brought him to some sort of…club? He’d called it a dancehall, which is the kind of phrasing Steve knows Bucky only still uses around him, like he needs to be introduced to the future gently and hasn’t been fighting literal aliens and robots since he arrived. There is dancing, though. The kind of dancing that despite his enhanced agility and spatial awareness makes Steve very conscious he is a 100-year-old white guy who could never. But every line in Bucky’s face has gone slack and his eyes are bright with something Steve hopes is joy. It makes him look decades younger.
Steve initially thought Bucky’s time in Wakanda was punitive. A self-imposed exile, in lieu of a government one. But Bucky had introduced Steve to his goats with the same amount of detail and enthusiasm he’d once reserved for the Dodgers’ roster. He could work a grain scythe one handed as proficiently as a sniper rifle. And now he’d brought Steve to a nightclub in the city where he knows the bouncer by name, and navigates the crowd with practiced ease. This is Bucky’s life now. Pastoral and mysteriously therapeutic, congregating with the masses to let loose after a week’s worth of hard labor.
“You wanna dance?” asks Bucky, setting his empty glass on the table.
Steve laughs, “Nope.”
It’s nothing like old times. The lights are lower, the music louder. The way girls used to fall over themselves to get Bucky’s name on their dance card, you’d have thought he was the star at a Hollywood premiere and not some neighborhood kid in a cheaply decorated rec hall. Here, he’s left alone.
Steve knows it’s deliberate. With his one arm and fair skin and international fugitive status, Bucky doesn’t quite enjoy anonymity in Wakanda, but it would seem he’s been granted a fair amount of privacy.
Steve watches Bucky come to a stop at the bar, barely visible in the moving shadows. The last vestiges of the Winter Soldier bleed out of his posture as he slants black to rest his elbow on the counter. Steve tenses instinctively when a towering figure begins approaching, but then Bucky must notice too because Steve can just make out the curl of a smile on his lips.
Surely someone Bucky knows, the way he allows—invites—the man into his space. The way he tilts his head back when the man stoops down to speak into his ear. The way his hand reaches out to toy with the man’s shirt front, then grabs on as he’s pulled to the dancefloor.
The way Steve’s stomach drops right into the floor is dreadfully familiar. At some point in his previous life he’d learned to recognize his jealousy for what it is. When they were kids, Steve had only wanted to be Bucky. A little bigger, a little smarter, a little better at just about everything. Steve wanted a houseful of noisy siblings and to get good marks in math class. He wanted to know what it was like to be picked first for stick ball and have one of the popular girls slip him a note in the schoolyard.
Steve didn’t have much reason for believing in miracles back then and being Bucky Barnes’ best friend had been a fine consolation prize. But, as so often is the case, his teenage years wrought all sorts of havoc on his perception of himself.
The fooling around hadn’t struck Steve as anything out of the ordinary. Wasn’t saintly behavior maybe, but he’d spent too much time in hospital wards and been in too many back-alley scrapes at that point to consider his body truly sacred. They mostly kept their hands to themselves anyway, except the few times Bucky managed to lift some booze from his Pa and the liquor made them bold. Steve figured it wasn't an uncommon favor between close friends. He never could have anticipated the despair of watching Bucky decide to kiss Arlene Ellis in front of everybody at a junior dance competition they’d just won—and being jealous of Arlene.
He hadn’t anticipated feeling any such way tonight. Frankly, they’ve faced more pressing issues in recent years than reexamining their youthful indiscretions, but it suddenly feels like a unforgivable oversight. It’s been 80 years since Steve’s had even the flimsiest excuse to feel possessive over who Bucky gets friendly with. What right does he have to put that on Bucky now that he’s finally found some measure of peace?
Bucky’s down there dancing with a man is the thing. An Asguardian-god sized man with wandering hands and perfect rhythm. The whole pretense of never, ever discussing his feelings with Bucky was that Bucky liked girls. To be fair, so had Steve. But the difference back then was that girls liked Bucky back. Didn’t seem to matter much what went on between them nights his Ma was at work when Bucky would have a new dame to show off by the weekend.
Steve’s too busy cataloguing a half-century worth of unasked questions to notice the music change. Bucky’s back in his seat, flushed and blessedly ignorant of the maelstrom he’s just ignited in Steve’s head.
“Do you want to dance?” blurts Steve, apparently willing to give into his most desperate impulses to keep Bucky’s attention now.
Bucky stares at him blankly, “You said you didn’t want to. Like, three minutes ago.”
Steve shrugs, “I was waiting for a slow song.”
Bucky looks rightly skeptical.
“Please?” Steve can’t explain why he’s pushing this. He can’t dance. Even with the serum and several decades under his belt, that hasn’t changed.
“Fine. Let’s see what you got, Rogers.”
Steve scouts out the darkest corner of the dancefloor, pulling his friend behind him. Leaving room for the Holy Ghost seems to have fallen out of fashion while he was on ice, so Steve crowds into Bucky’s space like he’d seen that other guy do. It immediately feels too aggressive, but Bucky’s biting his lips closed like he’s trying not to laugh.
“Don’t laugh,” warns Steve, which of course sets Bucky off.
“Or what? You gonna step on my toes?”
“I’m gonna do that anyway, jerk,” mumbles Steve.
Bucky only lets Steve flounder a moment more before bringing his hand to the back of Steve’s neck. They’re pressed so close Steve isn’t sure how they’ll be able to move, but he feels Bucky pulling gently to the right and tries to relax enough to be swayed along.
“Sorry,” Steve whispers without a clear idea of who or what he’s apologizing for. Too many things have gone wrong for this to feel as right as it does.
“Let’s just dance, Steve.”
He’s not sure whatever they’re doing is really dancing—even under modern definitions—but it’s nice to have a reason to hold on to Bucky, who’s a little sweaty and smelling exactly like he did 80 years ago. It’s nice to feel safe, not just embracing a man in public, but existing as themselves in the respite Wakanda so steadfastly provides. Steve should let the rest go. Enjoy a nice evening out, and avoid complicating a friendship that has already faced an epic share of challenges.
Steve keeps his resolve until they make it back out to the farm in the darkest hours of the night. Bucky had offered to drop Steve off at the palace where a perfectly adequate guest suite awaits, and Steve had pretended not to be horrified as he declined. In fairness, the hut where Bucky stays is hardly big enough for one super soldier let alone two, but they’ve made camp in worse conditions.
“The quiet never gets to you?” asks Steve, listening to the crickets chirp. Tony had once gifted him a ridiculous noise machine after Steve inquired about the excessive soundproofing at Stark Tower. Hours of looped city sounds, played back from a tinny lo-fi speaker while Midtown Manhattan bustled on in silence.
“I kinda like it,” says Bucky, shucking his shirt. He’s leaned out a bit since Steve found him in Romania. Without the cybernetic arm, he’s less imposing than the Winter Soldier, but no less impressive. “Gonna go rinse off,” he adds, disappearing toward the lake.
The night is moonless, offering little in the way of ambient light so Steve relies on the soft sounds of motion in the water to follow his friend.
“Are there crocs in here?”
“Definitely,” says Bucky from where he’s crouched down at the bank.
Steve supposes between the two of them, they could probably take a crocodile, though it’s not exactly how he was hoping to cap off the night.
“Do you get to go out like that often?” asks Steve, removing his shoes.
“Been trying to. As a part of my—my therapy? Rehab? Whatever you want to call it.”
Steve’s been told frustratingly little of Bucky’s progress. Shuri had only casually mentioned he was out of cryo six months ago when Sam needed a bone set after an emergency evac from Dakar. Communication has been sparse since, visits more so, and Bucky hasn’t revealed much about the process. Steve takes some comfort in knowing the techniques have been personalized, and are at least occasionally pleasurable.
“You looked good out there. Dancing’s changed since our day. I don’t know how you manage to keep up.”
“It’s the music that changes. Dancing’s just dancing.”
“I guess,” shrugs Steve, doubtful that’s true for anyone but Bucky, “Thanks for not letting me make a fool out of myself, anyway.”
“Aw, Stevie, even I ain’t that good,” says Bucky with a shit-eating grin Steve can hear if not see.
No one’s called him Stevie since he was 90 pounds wet. Used to piss him off, the way any perceived slight did back then, but right now he wants to lick the name straight out of Bucky’s mouth.
He splashes his face with a handful of tepid water instead, and gets to removing the rest of his clothes.
“You know you can tell me things, Buck,” he says after a while.
Bucky’s silent, wading out into the deeper water, further from Steve.
“I’m not trying to hide anything from you,” Bucky says finally.
Steve knows that’s probably true. Neither of them have ever been willing to risk their friendship by asking the hard questions, and Steve’s offered up little vulnerability of his own.
“You know, I—” Steve starts, grateful for the shield of darkness, “I got a little jealous watching you dance with that other guy tonight. Not for the first time, but I guess it’s been a while. I’d forgotten how good you are. I’d forgotten what it was like to watch you and to—to want.”
Steve can’t hear the crickets anymore over his own heartbeat.
“I’m out of reasons to hide it, Buck. Nothing’s like it was eighty years ago—”
“Eighty years ago?” Bucky interrupts.
“Oh, at least,” admits Steve.
They both go quiet after that. Steve’s heart is pounding and his head is buzzing, but he won’t let himself regret baring this bit of his soul just yet, even as he’s beginning to regret standing naked in crocodile infested waters to do it.
He completes his cursory wipe down, hyperaware of where Bucky remains in the water, eerily still.
“Steve?”
“Yeah?” He tries and fails to tamp down the hope in his voice.
“I’m still pretty messed up, you know?”
“Bucky…”
“I don’t know how much is left of that guy from eighty-years-ago.”
“Christ, Buck, that’s not—not what I’m after.”
“What are you after?”
Steve’s not immune to nostalgia. His memories of Bucky remain the highlight of a childhood marred by poverty, chronic illness and tragedy. Tonight he’d been reminded of the past, but it was only because it’d been that long since he’d seen Bucky so unburdened.
“It gets lonely. The fight. The future. I know I’m lucky to be here, and I’ve met some real good people along the way, but I still feel alone in it sometimes, and—I don’t know—I don’t feel it as much around you. Doesn’t have to be more than it is. You deserve to be happy too, Buck. Whatever that looks like.”
“Not sure I do, Steve,” murmurs Bucky.
“You do,” commands Steve, because if there’s one thing he’s sure of in this—or any—universe it’s that Bucky Barnes deserves a lot better than he fucking got.
When Bucky speaks again he’s surprisingly close, having returned to the shore in masterful silence.
“Eighty years ago, a night like tonight would have—it would have been the best night of my short stupid life,” he says gruffly.
Steve lets that statement rattle through frenetic thoughts, breaking his heart and blossoming hope. But before he can unravel the full implications, Bucky’s climbing up the bank and walking away in the obscuring night.