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“Let’s steal a punt,” said Bucky, breaking off the slender branch of a pussy willow and waving it sword-like through the air. “We could be pirates, Steve. Pilfering picnic baskets as we punt along the river.”
Steve struggled to pull together his thoughts. They were on leave, their first leave since New York, the first time Steve had the opportunity to discuss with Bucky the possibility of leaving SHIELD – and he couldn’t get his mouth to cooperate.
Not least because mentioning the possibility of leaving SHIELD would completely spoil Bucky’s good mood. A full English breakfast, spring sunshine and a walk along the riverside, and Skye’s surprise birthday party at Simmons’ parents’ house to look forward to at the end: Bucky was positively ebullient.
He was also growing slightly annoyed with Steve. He gave Steve a little poke with the pussy willow branch. The catkins were soft on Steve’s arm. “Let’s steal a punt,” Bucky repeated.
Steve dragged his thoughts together to reply. “We could rent a punt.”
“That would be boring. Plus we’d have to return it,” Bucky said. A mischievous smile brightened his face. “Simmons said the river passed right below her parents’ house, so we’ll be there in plenty of time for Skye’s party. I bet Skye could use a nice picnic basket. Maybe for a litter box?”
“I can’t believe Coulson okayed the cat plan,” Steve said.
“Three cats and everything,” Bucky said smugly. “They’re for Skye, and Simmons got May on our side, so of course Coulson said yes. Skye never had a pet growing up,” Bucky said, widening his eyes in a way that suggested he felt this was a cruel oppression. “Because SHIELD kept moving her to a new foster home every six months. What a shitty plan to keep her safe.”
Bucky fell silent, brooding. SHIELD’s iniquities seemed a promising thing for him to brood about, so Steve didn’t interrupt.
Steve had spent a lot of the past month brooding about SHIELD and Coulson and paranoia and his own mental health (or lack thereof, as Coulson might have it), and, more than anything, the way that Coulson treated Bucky.
Maybe he was being paranoid. But it seemed to him that Coulson had been trying to intimidate Bucky since the beginning, to keep him off balance and uncertain and on the defensive. Hell, he’d told Steve as much during Bucky’s first interrogation: Steve asked if Coulson wanted to frighten Bucky, and Coulson said yes.
And maybe that, as much as any lingering Hydra trauma, was why it took nearly two years for Bucky to settle in and begin to let his guard down.
“Skye never even had a proper birthday party,” added Bucky. “So there’s going to be an enormous cake this afternoon, and they’re putting together a whole scone buffet too, plain scones and raisin scones – Simmons calls them sultana – and chocolate chip scones, too, and a billion kinds of jam. Strawberry, raspberry, blackberry, gooseberry. Crabapple jelly. And orange marmalade and lime marmalade and lemon curd, and Nutella. Steve. Steve? Steve. Pay attention to me.”
The sentence popped out of Steve like a champagne cork. “I think we should leave SHIELD.”
“Clotted cream,” continued Bucky, as if Steve hadn’t even spoken. “I can’t believe – ” Then Bucky seemed to hear Steve, because he grabbed Steve by the arm and shoved him up against the hedgerow. “Are you fucking insane?” he yelled.
Steve hadn’t meant to say it so abruptly. He had planned to work up to it, to lay out a plan, because he did have a plan and it wasn’t let’s go be fugitives from justice. “We wouldn’t run away,” Steve said hastily. He could feel the hedge branches even through his leather jacket. “We wouldn’t even cut all ties with SHIELD, Bucky. We would help out if there was an alien invasion or another Asgardian incursion or – or – I don’t know, Tony accidentally unleashes a robot army – ”
“We can do that now!” Bucky yelled. His tight grip on Steve’s arm hurt. “By staying with SHIELD! Everything’s going our way finally, why the fuck do you want to mess it up by trying to leave!”
“Because I promised you we would leave SHIELD if they hurt you!” Steve burst out.
Bucky shoved Steve hard against the hedgerow and walked a few paces away. “The fuck are you talking about?” he asked.
Steve brushed leaves and twigs off his leather jacket. “The way Coulson treats you,” he said. “Like when he barged in while you were taking a bath at Stark Tower.”
“You’re fucking kidding me.” Bucky sounded incredulous. “That’s not even – it’s not like that hurt, and – anyway, that was a month ago, Steve. And if anyone behaved badly that day, it was you! You attacked him!” Bucky suddenly laughed. “You should have seen his face when you dragged him out of the bathroom, he looked fucking terrified. I bet he thought maybe you were going to throw him off the tower, like you and Natasha did Sitwell.”
“Oh my God,” said Steve. In his mind’s eye he saw again the bruises on Coulson’s arm, and he felt ill.
“And you’re so sanctimonious about Coulson’s interrogation tactics,” Bucky said. “You were born to be a SHIELD agent, Steve. You think everything’s okay when you do it.”
“I don’t – ”
“Yes,” said Bucky. “You think you’re so much better than everyone else, you can’t stand getting your hands dirty on anyone else’s say-so.” He gave Steve a not-quite-friendly thwack with his pussy willow branch. “That’s what this is really about, isn’t it? Not about me at all, that’s just an excuse. You want to leave SHIELD because you can’t stand taking orders from anyone. Seeing Stark’s vigilante set-up made you jealous.”
Steve gaped. That was just completely out of left field. “No.”
“No? Then tell me. Who’s so much purer than SHIELD that you’d rather fight for them?”
“Who says we’d be fighting for anyone after leaving SHIELD?”
Bucky rolled his eyes. “Of course we’ll be fighting for someone.”
“We’d get discharged, the way soldiers do. Like Sam. His Falcon training is tremendously valuable, but the army let him leave anyway, and no one’s swooped down to kidnap him.”
“That’s completely different,” Bucky snapped. “He’s worthless without the wings.”
“He is not – ” Steve began heatedly; but of course that was just what Bucky wanted, to change the course of discussion completely. “We’re not talking about that right now! We’re talking about easing out of our involvement with SHIELD.”
“You’re talking about that. You’ve decided we should talk about that. Why the fuck are you even thinking about this, Steve? Why now?”
“Like I said. Coulson – ”
“Coulson’s never trusted me. You never cared before.”
Bucky didn’t even mean it as a dig, just a statement of fact. “I’m sorry,” Steve said again. “I was wrong.”
Bucky stroked the fuzzy catkins on the pussy willow branch. “Why now?” he asked again. “Everything’s going well for us finally. We’re getting along, and we have friends, and we’re doing good work – we’ve settled in, and now you want to throw it away – fuck, Steve. At least don’t pretend you’re doing this for me.”
“We don’t have to leave,” said Steve. “I just – I’m sorry, I guess I presented it all wrong. I just wanted you to know that we could. If you wanted. You don’t want to ride around on the Bus forever, do you?”
“I like the Bus,” Bucky snapped. “What do you want to do, go back to your apartment so you can sit around hating me all the time again?”
“No,” said Steve. “I never hated you, Bucky. I just – I want you to be happy and safe – ”
Bucky’s voice overlapped Steve’s, bitterly mocking. “Happy and safe and blah blah blah,” he said. “And you’re so messed up in the head that you think that we’d be either of those things if we left SHIELD.”
“You think SHIELD will come after us.”
They reached a stone bridge over the stream. Bucky stopped at the apex, leaning over the side to look at the long grass trailing in the muddy water. He tore a catkin off his pussy willow branch and tossed it into the water. “Maybe not SHIELD. Someone. Hydra. The CIA. Al-Qaeda.”
“No, but listen, Bucky. I’m not thinking we’d cut all ties with SHIELD. We’d still be affiliated with them, still fight with them during emergencies. It would be like the Avengers Initiative, where the heroes come together to fight and then go their separate ways. Coulson died for that program, or almost died.” Steve still wasn’t clear on the details. “It will have emotional resonance for him. Make him more likely to agree.”
Bucky leaned his elbows on the stone rail. He twisted his pussy willow branch almost into a circle, then let it spring out straight again. “So let’s say your plan works. He lets us go, but we’re still under SHIELD protection. What then? You’d go batshit from boredom after about six months as a civilian.” Steve opened his mouth to argue, but Bucky barreled on.” You love excitement, you love fights, you always have. Even when everyone was three times your size and you always got your ass kicked. Hell, remember the time we stole that cop’s horse?”
Steve tried not to smile and failed. “We were borrowing it,” he protested.
“They should have put that in that stupid Smithsonian exhibit.” Bucky tossed a stick into the stream. “And called the whole thing Steve Rogers, Career Criminal. ‘First arrested at the age of ten for horse theft – ’”
“We weren’t arrested, Bucky, he gave us a stern warning.”
“Only because he knew every other copper in the city would laugh at him if he tried to book us. ‘Rogers continued his life of crime by committing at least five felony counts of fraud – ’”
“I was trying to join the army!” Steve was laughing, and it was making Bucky smile, although he was trying to bite it back so he could continue with his solemn Smithsonian wall-text voice.
“Sure, punk. ‘He wanted to fight Nazis so badly that he signed up for a top secret supersoldier experiment with a fifty percent chance of killing him on the spot – ’”
“Now wait – ” Steve protested.
“Oh, sorry, was it higher than that? ‘It came as no surprise when Rogers nearly got himself court-martialed for high treason within months of joining the army, after undertaking an unauthorized suicide mission – ’”
“Stop!” said Steve, laughing. “So I like excitement, fine. I’ll take up skydiving or something.”
Bucky tore another catkin off the branch and tossed it into the stream. “But it’s not just excitement you want,” he said. “You didn’t just walk around picking fights with everyone who looked like they could snap you in half. You wanted to fight the bad guys, the bullies. That’s why you rejoined SHIELD, isn’t it?”
Steve sighed. He leaned his back against the bridge railing. “That makes it sound a lot more noble than it was,” he said, and rubbed his face. “When I rejoined SHIELD, it was months since I’d last seen you. I was starting to think I’d never find you – that maybe Hydra had caught up with you and shot you or…” He couldn’t look at Bucky’s face. “And no one was fighting Hydra. No one even wanted to admit Hydra existed. I gave a press conference…” His cheeks heated at the memory.
“I saw it.”
Steve glanced at him. “Yeah?”
“On TV. A lady threw the tomato at you.”
“Yeah. Her son died when the helicarriers hit the Triskelion. I guess she needed someone to throw things at.” Steve sighed, crossing his arms over his chest. “I thought I could convince them to go after Hydra. The military or the CIA or someone. But no one was interested. Except SHIELD.”
A couple of days after the press conference, Coulson had showed up at Steve’s apartment. Steve hadn’t even known that Coulson was alive. Yet there he was when Steve arrived home at 4 a.m. after yet another unsuccessful search for Bucky: sitting at Steve’s kitchen table, drinking orange juice and paging idly through one of Steve’s mostly-untouched cookbooks. “Captain,” Coulson said, closing the book and standing. “Do you want to help us save the world from Hydra?”
That was an unbeatable opening line. Steve had asked a lot of questions – where had Coulson been, why the hell did Coulson think restarting SHIELD was a good idea – but of course in the end he said yes.
And put Bucky right into their hands.
Steve felt abruptly very tired. “If the devil had risen out of Hell and offered – not even that he could bring you back – but that he could help me destroy Hydra. I would have said yes.”
“You’re so fucking melodramatic,” Bucky said. “SHIELD’s not perfect, fine. The US wasn’t such a paradise in 1942 either, and that never made you think twice about fighting Nazis.”
Steve rubbed his face. “But you’re not safe with SHIELD.”
Bucky groaned and rolled his eyes and kicked his toe against the bridge rail.
“No, hear me out, Buck. He threatened to send you to the Playground if you’re not doing ‘better,’ whatever that means to him, and – when I was talking to him, after New York, he said to me – ”
“I’m doing fine! And if I need to do better then I can, Steve, so don’t worry about it.”
Steve wondered if Bucky really believed that. If it was really true, and Bucky just hadn’t bothered to try before.
“I can,” Bucky insisted.
Or Bucky was just lying through his teeth.
“But I’m not sure I can,” Steve said, and his voice cracked a little at the end.
Bucky went still. Then, slowly, he drew his hand along the pussy willow branch, running his fingers over the furry catkins. “What do you mean?” Bucky asked.
“I’m not sure I can do better. I was talking to Coulson – right after we left New York – did he ever apologize to you?” Steve had wondered about that, agonized about whether Coulson might be lying when he claimed he had apologized.
“Of course,” Bucky replied crisply, and Steve wished he had any idea whether Bucky was telling the truth. “What the fuck did he say, Steve?”
“He said he was worried about me.” Steve cleared his throat, trying to speak a little louder. “He thought I seemed increasingly unstable – ”
Bucky’s posture shifted. He didn’t speak.
“He thought I haven’t been sleeping well or eating enough, and he suggested - I’m not even sure he did suggest it, maybe I’m just being paranoid, I can’t even tell any more, Buck – but I thought he was suggesting.” Steve had to clear his throat again. He couldn’t look at Bucky. “That he might separate us. If it didn’t – if I didn’t improve.”
Bucky reached out, put his fingers on Steve’s shoulder, just for a second before he drew it away. “He won’t go through with it, Steve,” Bucky said. “He needs us too much. Don’t take him seriously when he says shit like that, he’s just trying to keep you on your toes.”
“You really think so?”
“’Course,” Bucky said. He was silent, thoughtful. The stream murmured under the bridge. Then Bucky said, “This is what you’re really worried about, isn’t it? The rest of that shit was just a blind. Listen, Steve, this is no problem. Sleeping well and eating enough, those dumb psychology books you used to leave lying around talked a lot about how important that is. I bet if we get that straightened out it’ll make a lot of other stuff better for you. C’mon, let me help.”
Steve’s brain seemed to cave in. It had never occurred to him that Bucky would help, that Bucky would want to help. That it was even possible to ask for help. “How?” he asked. “What would you do?”
“First off, you wake me up when you have nightmares.”
“I can’t ask you to get up every night – ”
“Is it every night?” Bucky’s eyes dilated. “I thought it was only a couple of times a week.”
Steve’s stomach curdled. If Bucky could keep count, Steve must be waking up the whole damn plane. “I was exaggerating. It’s just two or three times a week.” Or three or four. It wasn’t like he counted. “But really, Bucky, you don’t need to – ”
“It’s not a problem. After the gulag when Grisha had nightmares, we’d play cards and do shots till he was drunk enough to fall asleep. It’s no trouble.”
“I can’t get drunk,” Steve said.
“Sure you can. Chug a whole bottle of vodka, you’ll get as smashed as anyone,” Bucky said. Steve’s expression must not have been encouraging, because Bucky added, “It doesn’t have to be vodka and cards. I could read to you. Like we used to. Just the reading, not the other stuff.”
“The cuddling, you mean?” Steve asked, to clarify.
Bucky made a face, like he couldn’t believe Steve had the bad taste to actually say that out loud. “And we’d get a midnight snack. That would help with the food thing, too. Yeah? How about I just bring you something every time I get a snack. We could do some more cooking, like when I was suspended. Wouldn’t that help, Steve?”
Steve was staring down at the water passing beneath the bridge. His cheeks felt very red. He couldn’t raise his eyes to look at Bucky.
Bucky slung an arm around Steve’s shoulder. The angle was different, and the grip was lighter than it would have been in Brooklyn: Bucky never worried about hurting Steve then, even though Steve had been so much smaller. “Come on, Steve. Let me look after you a little,” he said.
“I can look after myself,” Steve mumbled. His face heated as he spoke. It was so patently untrue.
“Yeah, sure,” Bucky said. Humoring him. He squeezed a little – his grip was still far too light – and let go. “But let me help. It’ll make me happy.”
“Well…”
“That’s what you’re always telling me you want, isn’t it?” Bucky pressed.
“Yeah,” said Steve. Bucky gave him another little thwack with the pussy willow branch, trailing the fuzzy catkins over Steve’s neck, and Steve shivered and tried to smile. “Okay.”