Chapter Text
Steve picked up the phone to call Bucky. He was having what his therapist would call an intrusive thought.
Lately, every time he called Bucky he wondered if he was interrupting Bucky and Natasha in bed together. Not having sex, necessarily, but together in bed, together in the way that they were never together when he was present.
“Hey, champ,” Bucky answered. Steve took a mental breath.
“Hey. Brunch?” Bucky didn’t sound out of breath, or as if the call had caught him off guard.
“Yeah, hold on,” the receiver scratched as Bucky no doubt settled his palm over it, though this did less for a modern cell phone than it had in their youth. Steve could clearly hear Bucky asking Natasha if she wanted to meet him for brunch. Her reply was muffled, but not annoyed.
“Nat says we’re in. The place on the corner two blocks from you?”
Steve grimaced, then remembered Bucky couldn’t see him. “No, they posted that sign supporting the blue lives demonstrations, remember?”
“Oh, shit, yeah fuck those guys. What’s the name of that other place we like?” Steve couldn’t tell if the question was directed at him or Natasha, so he stayed quiet. Another half-heard reply from Bucky’s side told Steve he had guessed correctly. “Pietro’s. Feel like French toast, champ?”
“That’s fine. Meet you in thirty?”
“See you there.”
Steve heard him chuckle at something Natasha said before the call disconnected. He was definitely going to have to talk to his therapist about this.
*
Steve hated talking to his therapist about things. It wasn’t the fault of his therapist. She was a lovely woman, older, with many framed degrees in her office and much-praised papers on topics such as “The Long-Term Effects of Loss on Soldiers” and “Relationships in the Queer Community: A Look at the Role Silence Plays in Forming and Keeping Attachments.”
Her office was two subway stops from his place in old Brooklyn. On his way to his first appointment, he had had a panic attack in her elevator.
He often heard her voice in his head, repeating the same things she told him in therapy. Most of her advice ran along the same lines, so he heard the same phrases a lot. He hadn’t been seeing her very long, so he hadn’t yet fixed most of the behaviors he was seeing her for in the first place.
“If you can’t say yes, say no, Steven.” That was her favorite, and his least favorite. It was the advice he found most difficult to follow. Her voice had become a ghost in the attic of his mind, wailing ‘noooooo’ at all hours.
Once, tired beyond all reason, he had asked her why she used his name so often. “So that it sticks in your head when I’m not there to say it. If you can’t say these things for yourself, I will say them to you until you can.”
He so rarely heard his own name.
*
“Punk,” Bucky greeted him. He pulled Steve into a hug right on the sidewalk, tucking Steve’s head to his shoulder with his metal hand before releasing him just as quickly. Steve tried to smile easily back at him. It was Saturday morning; he could be relaxed, he could be easy. Natasha, partially obscured behind Bucky’s shoulders, smiled like she knew all of Steve’s secrets. Steve thought maybe that was her normal smile and he was a paranoid person. She lifted her chin without greeting him, and he bent to press a dry kiss to her offered cheek.
Inside, the bistro was busy but not packed. Sunlight streamed in from the two street-facing walls, more than a few windows open to let in the mild April breeze. The waitress that sat them was Steve's favorite. She acted no differently toward them than any of the other patrons; in fact, he heard her using the same scripted banter on other tables. Bucky and Natasha sat next to each other, facing Steve across the booth. He spent several seconds carefully arranging his legs so as not to accidentally brush either of his friends.
The menu was uninspired French fare, only tangentially related to the meals he and the Howlies had eaten on the western front. The cheese here would taste nothing like the near-painfully rich slices a farmer’s daughter had cut for them from a larger wheel. It wouldn’t even really taste like the food they were making in the nicer restaurants he had been taken to, where younger and younger chefs made and remade the same recipes he had known a hundred years ago. It felt like a heavy weight on his chest, the idea that in a moment he was going have to decide which of these endless dishes he wanted to eat, only to eat something else when he got home, throwing calories into the yawning mouth of his metabolism. But, the waitress asked Bucky first, so he just ordered a second helping of everything Bucky was having. Natasha asked for one order of crepes with blueberries on the side.
Steve observed Natasha observing the other patrons, until Bucky broke the silence with a groan. His arms stretched above his head, metal wrist held by his flesh hand. “Do you still get sore?” he asked Steve.
Steve grinned, “Yeah, but I have to near kill myself to do it. The day after the fight for Manhattan, I felt like when I used to get jumped by three or four guys.” He glanced at Natasha. A tiny quirk of her lip said that yes, she remembered, and yes, she had felt the same. “Last mission a little rougher than you could handle?”
Bucky guffawed, “Fuck you, pal, you shoulda seen the other guys.” Steve turned his face away to hide his grin. He knew what he had sounded like, back when he was no more than bones under skin, and it was amusing to hear Bucky making the same excuses. “Nah, we handled it okay, other than the building falling down around my goddamn ears.”
Steve raised one eyebrow, but his heart skipped a beat. He took a moment, centered himself, reminded his anxious heart that he could see Bucky, who was obviously safe and mostly whole. Bucky continued: “I think some poor bastard in intelligence got fired when we got back, because we should have known we were walking into a munitions stockpile. We got most of what we needed before they blew it up, though.”
Natasha seemed tuned out, having obviously gotten the story from Bucky the previous evening. Steve wondered if they talked before or after the reunion sex, before or after he kissed her. He wondered if she stayed up to wait for him. Hopefully his blush could be blamed on the shaft of filtered sunlight they were sitting in. His temperature ran hot these days, anyway.
It took three waiters to carry their food out to them. The boys’ meals took up the entire table; Natasha had to fight for space for her single plate and iced latte. Bucky and Steve set in immediately, silently trading toppings back and forth. Natasha carefully doctored her crepes before beginning to eat at a much more sedate pace.
“Mmm, Steve,” Bucky began with a half-chewed mouthful, “are you going to that dinner at Stark’s tomorrow?”
Steve thought guiltily of the unanswered text message that was the single red notification on his cell phone. He deflected, “Are you?”
Bucky glanced at Natasha, who shrugged one shoulder without looking up from her plate. Bucky seemed to interpret a lot of meaning from this. “We might if you go, too.”
Steve liked the childish simplicity of this, teaming up for an unpleasant activity. He chewed some bacon while he thought it over. “I’m in if you’re in,” he said with all the solemnity of a man facing battle.
Bucky’s answering grin was more reserved than it had been, in another life, but it was there. Even Nat had one visible dimple, though she was still avoiding their eyes. Silently – they were both still chewing – Bucky held his right hand out to Steve. Steve took it firmly and shook it once, as he had been taught to do by a long-dead senator. When he looked away from the crinkles around Bucky’s eyes, he found Natasha watching him.
He really wasn’t looking forward to that conversation with his therapist.
*
Maybe in his next life Steve would like the way he looked in a suit.
As an undernourished, underemployed, underweight twenty-something, he had been swimming in almost every piece of clothing he owned. This was because almost every piece of clothing he owned had been handed down from his late father. The rest had been Bucky's. Back then, suits took him from pitiful to skeletal, and he had only donned them for funerals and Christmas mass.
Now, an overgrown, overpaid, over-photographed thirty-something, he hated the way his bespoke jackets drew more eyes to him. Nothing about a perfect tailoring job allowed him to shrink down. He had begged his last tailor to forego shoulder pads and had been laughed out of the shop. He left for Stark Tower feeling like a rectangle on legs.
Taking the subway without at least a ball cap to hide behind was always a bad idea, so he had grudgingly accepted Tony’s offer of a car. The driver greeted him with a quiet, “Captain,” and set off for the Tower. Steve settled in for the long ride across the bridge.
He assumed Bucky and Natasha were driving themselves. Sometimes they offered to pick him up, but they hadn’t this time, so he hadn’t asked. That was mostly ok; his legs didn’t really fit in the backseat of Natasha's furious little sports car, and the music Bucky liked made his ears hurt. But he did love to sit in the relative quiet of Nat’s impenetrable Russian pop and listen to her rib Bucky from the front seat. He had many fond memories of traveling, half-asleep, in the cramped backseat. He arrived to dinner in perfect comfort but with a vague ache in his stomach.
The disembodied voice in the elevator of Stark Tower greeted him with an accented, “Good evening, Captain Rogers.” He had stopped arguing about the inappropriate title, even if it was technically another reason he should have been court martialed long ago.
“Hello JARVIS, how are you?”
“Quite well, thank you for asking.”
The elevator opened onto Tony and Pepper’s private rooms. He was neither the first nor the last to arrive. He made a note to thank the driver later. Pepper quickly came over to take his arm and kiss his cheek. Her easy affection and core of steel always reminded him of his mother, and Steve returned her greeting with warmth. He allowed himself to be led toward the recessed seating area where most of the party had gathered.
Barton had brought his dog, who sniffed Steve’s hand before allowing him to pat its head. Bruce, Ms. Foster, and Ms. Foster’s odd friend were having an animated discussion about something a little beyond Steve’s understanding. Bruce and Tony were drinking whiskey in one corner. Bucky and Natasha were notably absent. Despite his protests, Pepper sat him down next to Barton and poured him a drink. The taste of good whiskey was still enjoyable to him, but he felt it was a waste on someone who couldn’t feel its full effect. It still burned going down, but his head stayed as clear as ever.
Barton’s dog settled with its head on one of Steve’s very expensive shoes. A little of his anxiety dissipated. It was hard to feel as though he should be doing something else when he was already acting as a dog bed, and he felt himself relax into the seat cushions.
“Oh Captain, my Captain!” Tony exclaimed. Steve smiled just a little; he understood that reference. The appetizers hadn’t even been served yet but he suspected Tony and Barton had been drinking for some time.
“How are you, Tony? Thank you for the invitation.”
Tony waved away the niceties with the hand holding his empty glass. “Me casa es su casa, and all that. I only wish I could entice you away from Brooklyn more often.”
Steve deflected the remark with another sip of his drink. He loved Brooklyn with a fierceness that was hard to explain; he so rarely left it by his own choice. Besides, he didn't really feel like explaining anything to Tony tonight.
“This is really good, how old is it?” At his urging, the conversation turned easily to the vintage and from there to Howard’s long-neglected liquor collection.
He let his eyes wander the room. Ms. Foster’s odd friend – Darcy, he now remembered – was subtly trying to entice the dog away from Steve’s feet, though from her pout it didn’t seem like the dog was much interested. Steve smiled when he caught her eye. Her answering blush made him blush in return, and just like that he was back to feeling out of his depth.
Mercifully, Natasha and Bucky arrived not long after. Natasha kissed Pepper on both cheeks, Bucky on just one, and they both came to share his couch. Natasha pressed her lips to Steve’s cheek and appropriated his drink all in one motion. Seated just across from them, Barton raised an eyebrow. Steve gave him a one-shouldered shrug. Barton was always easygoing with him, which let Steve be easygoing, too.
“This isn’t half bad, Stark,” Nat commented, leaning forward around Steve. Tony’s scandalized expression made Bucky chuckle.
“Well, if you're just going to – I could have gotten you a glass – have some more, look we just pulled this one out of storage…” Tony continued, and came to perch on the coffee table with the bottle.
Conversation was easy all the way through the appetizers. Nat and Bucky kept Steve close. Bucky showed him a lot of pictures on his phone of two leather jackets with minute design differences that he was considering buying. The prices of both made Steve’s eyes water, but he dutifully weighed in. His opinion almost always factored into Bucky’s fashion choices, even though Steve himself mostly let his friends choose his more complex outfits.
Things began to fall apart at dinner. There was a seating arrangement, as there always were at Pepper’s formal dinners. She had placed Steve at one end, next to Tony at the head with Darcy on his left, which left him far away from Nat and Bucky at the foot.
Steve knew that Tony missed him since he had moved to Brooklyn and formally retired from S.H.I.E.L.D. Sometimes, he missed Tony, too. It was a heady feeling to talk to someone that intelligent. On some level, Steve knew he was one of the few people that could keep up with Tony mentally. No, he didn’t have the technical knowledge Tony had, but his mind moved just as quickly, and he was equally ready to make giant logical leaps when the situation required. After years of working together, he knew how to have a conversation with Tony.
Darcy, though, Steve couldn’t figure out. He glanced at Pepper, seated at the foot of the table, hoping to catch her eye, but she was absorbed in conversation with Dr. Banner. Darcy was so…so young. And she talked so loudly.
“Captain,” Darcy greeted him, passing a large bowl of potatoes. She didn’t say his title with the formal weight that other people put behind it. In fact, most of what she said came out jokingly sarcastic.
“Steve, please,” he replied. Same as the last time, she dropped her eyes and her cheeks colored. He turned quickly to Tony and inquired after his latest projects.
The food was excellent. Steve ate as much as he pleased, grateful not to be the only supersoldier at the table. He could hear Barton flirting with Darcy throughout the meal. Darcy flirted back just as obnoxiously, which only encouraged Barton further. Their humor was well-matched, and as the wine bottles multiplied he caught nearly enough cursing to equal Bucky on a good day. These meals usually broke off into smaller conversational groups, and Steve was relieved to be left out of it. But in the lull between the main course and dessert, Darcy turned to Steve. “How’s that old brownstone you bought holding up?”
He considered her. The question seemed genuine, and she could hardly make fun of him for being a homeowner. “It’s good. I just had some local guys replace one of the front steps. I can’t decide if I should powerwash the front myself or pay one of the kids down the block to do it.”
“Oh, please,” Darcy laughed, “give some kid the opportunity to say Captain America paid for his lunch money.” He smiled at her, picturing what a story that would have made with his own friends growing up.
She continued, “I just had to move last month. They found, like, alien radiation in my old building and just condemned the whole thing rather than pay to figure out if it was giving us brain cancer. I’m in a shitty month-to-month hovel in Tremont right now until I can find something better.” She eyed him over her wine glass, “Got a spare room at your place?” then a leer, “I’m a great roommate, if you know what I mean.”
“Haha, no, not really looking for tenants at the moment, but I’ll let you know.” His laugh was poorly faked, but Darcy’s grin said she couldn’t tell through the wine.
Under the table, her hand landed on his knee. They were so close that her chest brushed his arm when she took a breath. She wasn’t slurring yet, but her gaze was shaky when he met her eyes. “I’d invite you over to mine, but I’d be afraid my six roommates would steal you out from under me…or above me, I’m not picky.”
Adrenaline hit him and just as quickly washed away, leaving him nauseous and coated in sweat. Pretty girls were always saying uncomfortable things to him. The day he made a Twitter, his inbox had been flooded with so many explicit messages that he had just as quickly deleted the account and turned his entire social media presence over to Stark Industries’ PR team.
He had been mobbed in the street, once, shortly after he moved to Brooklyn. Insomnia had sent him on a midnight run. Stupid from sleep deprivation and lured into a false sense of security by his old stomping grounds, he had thrown on an old Avengers fundraising tee and just started running. He hadn't had a full sense of the neighborhood back then, and unknowingly found himself in the middle of several bars and nightclubs. One selfie with a fan had turned into fifteen. When he tried to take a step back from the fray, he found more young people behind him. He was tall, but he wasn’t the tallest person in the crowd. Drunk men were yelling, hands were on his elbows, someone had grabbed his ass, hard.
He got out without hurting anyone, but the incident quickly became a scandal, which became a public apology, that then sparked a wider debate about the private lives of celebrities. Months later, he was still working through it in therapy.
Darcy’s comments didn’t spark a full-on flashback, but it was something close. He tried not to gasp for breath. He reminded himself where he was, who he was speaking to. Barton’s dog licked the hand that was clenching his thigh and Steve jumped.
Darcy looked concerned. “Steve?” she asked, reaching for his arm with her free hand. He quickly stood and backed away from the table, drawing the eyes of the rest of the party.
His indrawn breath was loud in the silence. “Ms. Potts, Tony, I’m so sorry, but may I be excused?”
Poor Pepper looked mortified. As if she had been the reason for his panic attack at a boring family dinner. “Of course, Steve. Is everything alright?”
“Yes, I’m fine, I’m so sorry,” as if repentance would make anything about this easier.
Bucky and Nat were up before he had finished apologizing. With authority, Nat announced, “We’re his ride home. Pepper, it was lovely, thank you for the meal.” Her offer cut Tony off before he could speak, no doubt ready to offer the same driver who had picked Steve up.
Their goodbyes were quick, and the elevator doors opened just as they reached them, saving them that small awkwardness. Steve couldn’t stand to meet the eyes of his friends. He should have known that they knew him better than that. Bucky grabbed the small hairs at the back of Steve’s head in his flesh hand and tucked his head down into his shoulder. Steve pressed his face heavily into the navy-blue of Bucky’s suit jacket, hating himself. Natasha kept her distance, but he felt her presence like a marble pillar.
Bucky had to release him for the walk through Tony’s private garage. He opened the back door of Nat’s cherry red monstrosity and pressed Steve in ahead of him. They were halfway out of Manhattan before she broke the silence. “Debrief?”
Steve sighed. He ought to know by now: they would rescue him but they wouldn't let him simmer alone. “You remember when I got mobbed in Brooklyn?”
Bucky blew out a quick breath and squeezed Steve’s knee. Natasha only answered, “Yes,” with no inflection.
“Jane’s friend Darcy made a joke about moving into my place and had her hand on my leg and it just sent me back to all those people saying things and grabbing me. I think she also made a sex joke? I know she was just flirting like she flirts with Barton, but it just felt bad.” His explanation came out all in a rush. The city spun in the window as his eyes filled up.
Now Natasha sounded angry, “I know Darcy was brought in to help with the fallout on that. Why would she…” She trailed off into furious silence.
“Nat-” Bucky warned.
“Nat, please don’t say anything to her. She didn’t mean it. I’m sure she feels just as bad as I do.” The non-stop buzzing of his cell phone since their departure could only confirm his suspicions. "And I feel fucking awful."
Natasha didn’t reply, but her breathing was too carefully controlled for Steve’s peace of mind.
It only got worse the further from the Tower they drove. The delicious food he’d enjoyed so much felt now like he’d swallowed acid. He wanted to beg Natasha to pull over so he could throw it up, feel the acid on his throat and tongue, so he could have a tangible excuse for feeling like this. What the fuck was wrong with him?
“What the fuck is wrong with me?”
Bucky’s metal hand hit him, hard, across the back of his head. It was a wonder his forehead didn’t bounce off his own knees.
“What the fuck was that for?!” he rounded on Bucky.
“For asking dumb fucking questions. What isn’t wrong with you, dumbass? You got fucking trauma, is what, same as all of us. Stop feeling sorry for yourself just because you ain’t got it all fucking worked out. You got a fucking a fairy godmother, huh?”
When Steve didn’t respond to his rhetorical question, Bucky shook him a little. “You got a fucking magic wand, pal? Answer me.”
He shoved Bucky as far away from him as he could in the backseat. “Fuck you, no I don’t have a magic fucking wand.”
Bucky hadn’t moved very far, so he easily grabbed Steve around the shoulders and dragged him in close. “No you fucking don’t. None of us do. So stop fucking eating yourself up because you aren’t magically over all the fucked up shit that’s happened to you.”
Pissed off as a wet cat, Steve struggled for a good few moments to free himself, but Bucky wasn’t impressed by the elbow in his gut or the heel on his instep. “Go ahead and tire yourself out there, bud, ain’t going nowhere in the three square feet we got back here.”
“Would you like me to call Terry?” Nat asked. Terry was his therapist.
“No, fuck, no I don’t want you to call Terry. Why do you even have her number?”
Bucky ignored him. “It’d be real easy, Nat’s got Bluetooth in the car and Terry’s number on speed dial.”
Steve renewed his efforts to kill Bucky, but with a lot less real anger behind it. His friends were assholes, but it did help to remember that he wasn’t the only one going through shit. How many times had he sat with Nat or Bucky on their bad days? And, god, nothing was ever going to be as bad as watching Bucky get intubated when he had stopped eating for a couple weeks. He hadn’t ever judged Bucky for that, and never would. He knew Bucky extended the same courtesy to him.
After some wrestling, and multiple threats by Nat to “pull this car over, so help me,” Steve rested with his head on Bucky’s shoulder and Bucky’s metal arm rubbing circles on his back.
“Do you want to stay at ours tonight?” Bucky offered.
“Do you mind?” The question was directed at the front seat. The mean little voice in the back of his head waited for rejection. Steve still thought about why she laughed when he wasn't around. He hadn’t ever watched Nat have a panic attack.
Without taking her eyes off the road, Natasha slipped her left hand between the car door and her seat to take Steve’s. They didn’t say another word about it.