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Four years ago…
Steve walks into the bar, pulls out a stool and sits down.
“Hey,” he says, the grin already pulling at the corners of his mouth.
“Hey,” Bucky says, tossing the the bar towel onto his shoulder and giving Steve his smile back.
The room is dim, and the christmas lights twinkle red and green and gold. They halo behind Steve’s head, catching his fair hair, his broad shoulders, his clean-shaven face. He’s beautiful.
Bucky’s been waiting all day for this.
Well, longer.
“When did you get in?” he asks.
“About two hours ago. Mom hugged me so hard I think she bruised a rib.”
“Well, it’s been a few months.”
“Yeah,” Steve says. His eyes haven’t left Bucky’s, and Bucky feels warm down to his toes about it.
After a six-year slog through undergrad, Steve left for grad school in LA in August. When he left the two of them agreed: Bucky wouldn’t ask Steve to stay, and Steve wouldn’t ask Bucky to wait.
Still, it feels good knowing that the first thing he did after seeing his folks was to stop and see Bucky.
They’d been best friends growing up, and then it turned to love in high school. But Steve has always dreamed of working in animation. Steve has always had Disney dreams.
His move to the West Coast was inevitable.
Bucky’s tried not to think so hard about Steve in the months since he’s been gone.
Bucky’s been learning how to live in the now.
“When do you get off?” Steve asks.
“Not until two.”
“I’m staying at my parent’s house, the apartment over the garage.”
Bucky quirks a brow.
Just then a big party comes in, loud and laughing and Bucky smiles at them all. “Be with you in a sec,” he calls.
“I’ll leave the door unlocked,” Steve says, getting up. “Wake me up.”
Three years ago…
Steve walks into the bar, pulls out a stool and sits down.
“Hey,” he says, his smile like the Fourth of July.
“Hey,” Bucky says, smiling back and showing all his teeth. “Wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow.”
“Got an earlier flight,” Steve replies. “Couldn’t wait.”
“I’m off at two,” Bucky says.
“I’m at the motel off Seventh.”
Bucky raises an eyebrow.
“Mom’s renting out the apartment, and I can’t spend the weekend in the house with Geoff.” Steve’s mother remarried when Steve was nine and he and his step-father have never gotten along. When Steve was fourteen, he moved into the apartment over the garage, and it brought the house, if not into harmony, at least into something peaceable. Steve always said he only tolerated Geoff because he made Sarah so happy. Bucky suspected Geoff felt the same way.
“I’ll leave a key at the front desk,” Steve says. “Wake me up?”
Bucky grins. “Yeah.”
.
Bucky’s catching his breath, his fingertips tracing down Steve’s spine, sinking into the little pool of sweat at the small of his back.
“Jesus Christ I missed this,” he says, and Steve rolls over, grabbing Bucky into his arms.
“Yeah,” Steve says, and presses his face into the crook of Bucky’s neck.
“How long are you here for?”
“I leave Monday.”
“Really?” Bucky asks, trying and failing to hide his disappointment.
“Taking classes during intersession,” Steve answers. And my internship starts on the 3rd, so I can’t stay.”
“Guess I better get it while the getting’s good,” Bucky says, and presses a hungry kiss to Steve’s mouth.
“‘Tis the season,” Steve gasps, and Bucky knows he won’t leave this room for the next two days except to have Christmas dinner with his family.
Two years ago….
Steve walks into the bar, pulls out a stool and sits down.
“Hey,” he says. There’s a little bit of a question in his eyes. When did that get there?
“Hey,” Bucky says. He turns around, uncaps a beer, and sets it in front of Steve. The last time they spoke was June, when Bucky told Steve congratulations, and Steve told Bucky he was staying in LA.
Maybe Bucky should have called him his birthday.
But maybe Steve could have called too.
“I gotta…” Bucky says, and tips his face toward the back. The Bud Light keg just blew, and he knows they’ll be selling pitchers faster than they can fill them by the end of the night. It’s the day before Christmas Eve, and the bar is full of the out-of-towners, the friends catching up for a year-end drink, and the lonely desperate for somewhere to be that isn’t home.
And maybe Bucky just needs a minute to think. He wasn’t sure Steve was going to show.
He stands in the back room for a moment, catching the wind that Steve knocked out of him with just a smile.
It’s only a minute and he hears footsteps, and then Steve is there, wrapping him up from behind, pressing his face into the crook of Bucky’s neck.
“Bucky,” Steve says against Bucky’s skin, and fuck it.
He wants this.
Turning, his fingers dig at Steve’s shirt, tugging it out of his belt, his mouth already opening for the perfect kiss that Steve’s been holding for him.
“Jesus Christ,” he says, as Steve bites at Bucky’s collarbone, and Bucky gets his hands on Steve’s skin.
“I’m staying at my parent’s place,” Steve says, and then presses his whole body against Bucky’s, fingertips in Bucky’s hair, his mouth, his mouth, his mouth….
“I don’t get off until two,” Bucky says, nipping at Steve’s bottom lip, just the way he likes it.
“Wake me up?”
“Yeah,” Bucky breathes. “Leave the door unlocked.”
“Yeah,” Steve answers.
Last year…
Steve walks into the bar, pulls out a stool and sits down.
“Hey,” he says, his face open and hopeful.
“Hey,” Bucky says, knowing his own is closed and wary. “Just get in?”
Steve shrugs. “I…”
Bucky shrugs back at him. “Want a beer?”
“Jamie and Ginger?” Steve asks, and Bucky blinks. That’s new.
Steve’s hair is a little long on top, and he’s rocking a scruffy beard, and fuck him for looking so goddamned good.
It isn’t fair, Bucky thinks, mixing the drink. It isn’t fair that he looks so fucking good, that he looks exhausted and stressed out and kind of sad, and he’s still the best thing Bucky’s ever seen.
It isn’t fair tha Steve shows up every year at Christmas and it is Christmas, it’s a fucking gift and Bucky looks forward to it all damn year, but this year there was a little dread too because every year it takes him a little longer to let go.
Bucky serves the drink and goes to the far end of the bar to take an order. Steve sits, pensive, staring into his glass.
He wants to say, are you staying at your parent’s place?
He bites his tongue instead.
An hour later Bucky’s carrying three bottles out of the back, and Steve’s on drink number three.
What the hell is going on with him?
“Heard you were seeing Shelly Michaels,” Steve says, apropos of nothing.
“Saw you were dating Peggy Carter,” Bucky counters, because he had to walk past the movie theatre with a picture of Steve in a tux at his premier, the gorgeous brunette on his arm, for three fucking months.
The most surprising thing was how angry Bucky was over it.
They’d never made any promises.
Steve shrugs. “Not anymore.”
Like that, his anger dissipates. “Same,” he offers.
And then because he’s an adult who makes bad choices, he says, “I get off at eleven.”
Steve raises his eyebrows, but there’s a smile creeping up at the corners of his mouth and Bucky’s stupid heart howls at the sight.
“I’m at the Holiday Inn over on Sunrise. By the Methodist and--”
“Our old school,” Bucky finishes with a smile.
“Yeah. I can wait up?”
“Yeah,” Bucky says, and he smiles.
“What are you doing the rest of the week?” Steve asks. There’s a sheet pooled around his waist and that tension around his eyes isn’t as bold as it was.
Bucky shrugs. “It’s Christmas,” he says. “I got a few days off from the bar. I gotta help mom with Dinner. You know Becca can’t cook, and Nana isn’t, uh. She’s not doing great.”
Steve looks at Bucky, eyes full of concern. “Is she gonna be okay?”
“Got pneumonia in the spring and it just kinda slowed her down.”
“I’m sorry,” Steve says. Bucky has always been close to his Nana. She’s in her eighties, and Bucky knows the time is going to come, but….
He’s not ready.
Steve pulls Bucky close, tucks Bucky’s head under his chin, and holds him like he’s something precious. Someone important.
And it’s...God. It’s how Steve smells, using the same damned bar soap since high school, and he smells like Steve and like everything safe and good. He smells like the world before Bucky’d ever heard of FICA and the Toyota Finance Corporation, and Sunrise Senior Living centers. He smells like home, and Bucky swallows against the tears that want to come, and then lets them come anyway.
Steve holds him through it.
In the morning, he feels better. He knows it’s a long-term problem, but for right now, on Christmas Eve, he’s got Steve Rogers in his bed, his Nana coming to supervise making the cookies, and the next five days off from work.
“I took the week,” Steve tells him over coffee.
“Yeah?” Bucky asks.
“I…” Steve shrugs. “I need the break.”
“Okay,” Bucky says, because what’s he supposed to say? He can’t ask Steve to stay, and Steve won’t ask him to wait.
Still.
Five days later Bucky wakes up and makes coffee at the shitty motel coffee maker. They’d hit up the front desk for more filter packets on their way in last night, and between that and the Ziplock of cookies that he’d smuggled out of his Mom’s house, Bucky’s feeling pretty good.
Nah, fuck that. Bucky feels amazing.
He feels better than he has in a really long time, and when he looks over his shoulder, he sees Steve watching him with a pleased look.
“Yes, highness,” Bucky says. “I’m working on it.”
“Good,” Steve says, then grins. “Then come back to bed.”
“You telling me that in five days you haven’t had enough of this ass?” Bucky shoots back.
He’s stirring cream into the coffee so he doesn’t see Steve’s face.
“No,” Steve answers. There’s something off in his voice and when Bucky turns to look at him, he can’t quite read Steve’s face.
“Okay?” Bucky finally asks.
“Yeah. Hey, remember when we used to drive out into the country and chase the roads to see where they went?”
Bucky smiles. “Yeah. There was that one off Route Seventeen, with that old house, remember?”
“The one we always said we were gonna buy some day,” Steve says. “You wanna go get lost later?”
“Yeah?” Bucky asks. They use drive out to nowhere, play the radio loud and sing along. They’d find a place to park and make out, shaky fingers exploring for the first time, mouths full of eager intent.
“Yeah,” Steve says. “Maybe let’s go see what happened to that old house.”
“Alright,” Bucky says, and with the sleety snow they’ve had the last few days, Bucky’s glad he drives a truck.
It’s twilight when they get out there. Coffee’d turned into sex, and that turned into naps and then Joey Manning’s kid Laurie was delivering Uber Eats to their room with pink cheeks.
Bucky tipped generously.
Still, he can’t help but feel some kind of way as he takes the turn down the old dirt road. It’s slushy and muddy and the car has that winter heater smell, but Steve is loose and relaxed beside him, and the Lumineers are on the radio singing about sweethearts.
It’s everything Bucky’s ever wanted.
They round the curve and Bucky starts to feel excited. How many times did they promise each other they’d buy this place when they grew up? It was old and broken down, abandoned for all Bucky knew, and they used to daydream about fixing it up.
“Just me and you,” Steve said. “And we’ll have two dogs and I can have a studio in the back where the light is good, and you’ll have all the time in the world to write your novel. It’ll be awesome.”
How could Bucky not buy-in?
After a few minutes, Bucky looks at Steve.
“Did I miss a turn?”
“I don’t think so,” Steve says, his brow wrinkling. “Wasn’t it on this road?”
“I thought so…”
Bucky finds a turn out and turns around. “Okay, I know it was this road,” he says. “We used to make out in that turnout.”
“Yeah,” Steve says, pulling out his phone. “Maybe it’s the light. It’s getting dark.”
“Maybe.”
Bucky drives another half mile.
“It should be right here,” he says. “That’s the fence.” He angles the truck and high beams shine on an old wooden fence.
“Look,” Steve says, pointing.
In the distance there’s a chain link fence and a big Keep Out sign hanging from it. Beyond it though, there’s nothing more than snow and a pile of brick and rebar.
“They tore it down?” Bucky asks, feeling gutted.
“But…” Steve starts, then stops himself.
They look at the scene, the snow just starting to come down, the bricks on the ground, the headlights on steel. The silence stretches out and it feels like bile tastes: acidic, stripping away everything in its path.
“We should get ahead of the snow,” Bucky finally says, and shifts the truck back into drive.
They’re somber the rest of the way back, and that night when Steve makes love to Bucky there’s something there between them, something hard and maybe desperate and it’s up under Bucky’s ribs, sucking away his breath. It hits him then, the full force of what he’s done this week with Steve, how far he’s let himself fall for a man that will be gone in less than twenty four hours.
“Bucky,” Steve gasps. “Buck, I--”
“Yeah,” Bucky says, and kisses away the words before Steve can say them. He digs his heels into Steve’s ass and arches up, bringing their mouths together again and again.
“Oh, God,” Steve says, coming with a sob, and then he’s got his hand on Bucky, and three strokes later, Bucky’s there with him.
They lay in the mess until they’re almost asleep, then Steve cleans them up with a damp cloth.
“When’s your flight?” Bucky asks.
“Not until noon,” Steve replies, and they both hear the goodbye.
This year…
Steve walks into the bar, pulls out a stool and sits down.
“Hey,” he says, his expression careful and closed.
“Hi Steve,” Bucky replies, his own expression the same. “Get you something?”
The bar is quiet, it’s two in the afternoon, two days before Christmas. In another hour, it’’ll start filling up and he knows he won’t get home until three, maybe four in the morning, but right now, he appreciates the lull.
“Jamie and Ginger,” Steve answers, and Bucky turns to make the drink.
“I heard you bought this place,” Steve says, and God, he sounds so stilted.
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry about your Nana. I couldn’t get away for the funeral.”
“We got the flowers,” Bucky says, and what he wants to do is scream, because his grandmother died and he got all this stupid money and all he wanted was her back. All he wanted was Steve to hold him again like he’d done that night, so that Bucky could cry it out and know that Steve had his back.
He wants to scream because in the course of that one week, he let himself fall recklessly, stupidly, in love with Steve all over again, and he’s spent the last year getting used to waking up alone.
He wants to scream fuck you and get out and why do I let you do this to me every year?
Instead, he says: “Jim was ready to retire. “It’s a good investment.”
“Oh.”
Bucky helps the couple at the end of the bar, closing them out. Now it’s just him and Steve and Dale, a regular who drinks as much as he can afford. It breaks Bucky’s heart.
“I’m staying at my parent’s house,” Steve says. “The apartment over the garage.”
“I figured,” Bucky says.
“Do you--would you want…?”
Bucky wants to say yes. He wants to say “I’ll be off at three.” He wants to say fuck it, it’s just a couple of days. Merry Christmas now let’s get tangled up like Christmas lights. ‘Tis the damn season.
But instead he says, “You show up every Christmas and I can’t say stay, and you don’t say wait. We’re gonna be thirty, Steve. Is this a life?”
“Buck,” Steve says, and he looks gutted.
He looks like shit, is what he looks like: tired, his hair needs a cut, and whatever the fuck is on his face is supposed to be a beard but it looks like neglect. He looks pale. Paler.
“You know it’s time to stop drinking when you can’t handle the hangovers anymore. That last one was a doozy. I think I’m good.”
A group walks into the bar, all bright eyes and smiling faces, gift wrapped packages in their arms.
“Be right there,” Bucky calls. “It’s on the house,” he says to Steve, gesturing to the drink. “Merry Christmas.”
Bucky takes a deep breath and greets his customers, making drinks, bringing out snacks, and the bar fills up and he doesn’t see when Steve leaves, but the drink sits on the bar, untouched, for most of the night.
.
New Year’s Eve...
When Bucky bought the bar, it came with an apartment on top. It’s pretty good, he thinks. It’s cozy and, hey, you can’t beat the commute.
He pulls a beer from the fridge and sets it on the desk. He never drinks when he’s writing, but he’s got one sentence left and then it’s done.
His baby is done.
There’s a cheer from down the street, revelers getting their revel on. Bucky’d closed the bar because his staff deserve to have the night off too, and in January they’ll be closing for a few weeks while he reno’s the kitchenette into something that can serve some real food. Just burgers, he figures, but he’s wanted to diversify and get away from the day drinking crowd and attract more of the office/after work crowd.
Becca invited him to a party tonight, but he’s good. He doesn’t want to be out with people right now. He knows he’s no good in a crowd. Not now.
He very carefully does not think about Steve.
He has been very carefully not thinking about Steve for most of the year, but especially ever since Steve showed up last week.
Truth be told, he’s proud of himself. He hasn’t even driven past Steve’s parent’s house, looking for the light in the window above the garage.
It’s progress, he thinks. Either way, at least he’s not waiting anymore.
He types out ‘The’ and there’s a banging on the door.
Did he order food and forget?
Confused, Bucky goes to the door and takes a full step back when he sees it’s Steve.
“What are you…?”
“I’m sorry,” Steve says. “I just...oh god. My flight’s in ten minutes,” he says, his voice high and a little manic.
“What are you doing?”
“I don’t know. Can I--please let me in?”
Bucky clenches his jaw, but then takes a step back and Steve comes in, taking off his heavy jacket as he goes, hanging it on the peg next to the door, right on top of Bucky’s.
“This is...I like this,” Steve says, looking around. Bucky tries to see it the way Steve might, like a stranger. The book posters on the walls, pictures of his family, bookshelves overfull.
“It’s home,” Bucky says. “You want a beer?”
“Okay.” Steve stands with his hands at his sides.
“Sit.”
In the kitchen, Bucky takes a deep breath and then another and then one more.
He was so close to getting away clean.
“I hate my job,” Steve says, when Bucky walks back into the room and hands him a beer. “I hate it. When Peggy was there it was better but the new guy is awful and the schedule is endless and if you don’t come in on Saturday don’t even think about showing up on Sunday.”
“Ouch,” Bucky says, sitting down in the armchair opposite the couch. “So what are you going to do? Wait it out?”
Steve throws his hands up, and shrugs, then throws his hands up again. “I don’t know, I just--I think all year long ‘just make it to Christmas break, that’s all you have to do is get to Christmas break’ but I did and, and…”
Bucky snorts. “It’s not my job to be your cheer-up fuck,” he says. It’s maybe a little mean.
He only kind of means it.
“No,” Steve says, agreeing. “No, it’s--God I fucked this up. I had a plan.” He takes a long drink from his beer and then looks at Bucky. “If you tell me to stay, I’ll stay. I’ll--”
“Oh come on,” Bucky says. “Steve, Jesus. I’m not the answer to your problems. I mean, when we were kids, what we had...that was--it was beautiful,” he says. “But we’re grown up now, and this thing, this vacation holidays thing, it’s not real.”
“What?” Steve says, and Bucky watches that manic energy drain right out of Steve. There’s a calm there now, like when they were kids and someone told Steve no, and Steve made up his mind to make it a yes.
“Bucky, this is…” He reaches out and takes Bucky’s hand. “I don’t know what you think, because we don’t talk, and that’s probably on me. But this is real. And I’m going to show you.”
Steve lifts Bucky’s hand to his lips and presses a long kiss there. “I want you to wait,” Steve says. “I don’t know if you will, and I don’t know exactly what it will look like, but I’m not spending another year without you. You’re the only thing I think about, all year long.”
He lets go of Bucky’s hand and stands, shoulders squared off and looking so much like Steve “fight me” Rogers that it makes Bucky’s breath catch, because isn’t that the kid he fell in love with?
Steve pauses at the door and puts on his coat, before turning to Bucky once more. “I know you don’t want to hear it, so I won’t say it, but I still do. I always have.”
Then Steve opens the door, walks through, and closes it.
Bucky blinks, looking around his living room.
What the fuck was that?
.
March is a slushy month; the winter snow sliding into spring, rains making soupy mud. Bucky looks around the bar and smiles. At night, it’s still pretty much a bar. But during the day? It’s workers and families, people eating and smiling, warming themselves with simple fare.
It’s the vision he’d always had for this place, made real. It’s satisfying.
He’s slicing lemons, getting ready for the evening rush, when he hears someone come in.
“Be with you in a minute,” Bucky calls, then wipes his hands on a clean towel. He turns to see--
Steve walks into the bar, pulls out a stool and sits down.
“Hey,” he says, and he’s smiling.
“Hey,” Bucky says, tossing the the bar towel onto his shoulder and giving Steve a curious smile back. “What are you doing here? It’s not Christmas.”
Steve’s grin widens and it’s so infectious that Bucky can’t help but smile back. Steve is the last person he ever thought he’d see again. After he’d left Bucky’s on New Year’s Eve, Bucky thought he might hear from Steve, but he didn’t. He thought about reaching out, trying to see if Steve was okay, but he didn’t. He figured his mom would tell him if Steve had a nervous breakdown. Their moms are still close.
“I wanted you to have this,” Steve says, and he slides a key across the bartop.
“What is it?” Bucky asks, curiosity piqued.
“It’s a house key. Happy Birthday.”
“What?” Bucky laughs. His birthday is in two days and he has no idea what’s going on.
“I mean, it will be,” Steve says, smiling wide.
Bucky really looks at him then, takes in the big smile and bright eyes, and God, does Steve look good. The part of Bucky that will always love him is glad. He’d hated seeing Steve looking so...used up.
“Right now, you know, it just goes to a lock in a box in my mom’s garage, but by summer it’s--I bought the house.”
“Oh, hey, congratulations,” Bucky says. “You bought a house in LA?”
“I bought The House,” he repeats. “Or at least the land it was on. And I hired a construction company to build a house on it. It should be done this summer.”
“Steve…” Bucky says, head swimming. “You bought that old place? Jesus, you can afford that old place?”
“Well no,” Steve says. “I mean, I got a good deal, and first time buyer and all, but I had to cash out my 401k, and I sold every collectible I think I’ve ever owned, and I’ll probably be working until I’m ninety-two. But, yeah.”
“I--I don’t know what to say,” Bucky says. He can’t--he can’t--let himself think about what this might mean.
He can’t.
“I know it’s a drive,” Steve says. “And I’m not making assumptions. I know that we don’t--. We don’t know each other like we used to.
But Bucky Barnes, you’re the love of my life. And even when all of my dreams came true, they didn’t feel real, because they weren’t with you.”
“But Steve,” Bucky says, finally getting his bearings. “Your career.”
“Oh! Yeah. So Peggy Carter? She’s opening her own studio,” Steve says. “I’ll have to fly out for meetings now and then, but she’s been working with Stark Industries on collaboration tools. I got to test some last week and it’s like you’re actually all in the same room together. It’s incredible. But, that means I can do my job anywhere, and she’s offered me assistant head animator. Ken, the guy in charge, he’s retiring in a couple of years, and...she wants me to take over.”
“Steve, that’s--”
“That’s our dream,” Steve says. “Me and you, a house in the country, we can even adopt a couple of dogs.”
“I…” Bucky doesn’t even know where to start.
“Hey,” Steve says, and he takes Bucky’s hand. “I’m not saying move in with me today. I’m saying that I’m back to stay, and I’m saying my future is here, and I’m saying that I hope my future is with you.”
“You’re staying,” Bucky says, feeling dazed, even as his heart gallops in his chest.
“I’m staying.”
Bucky smiles, squeezes the hand that Steve’s holding. “God it’s about damned time.”
The two of them smile at each other, getting lost in the moment and grinning like fools, until the bell above the front door rings.
“Just a minute,” Bucky calls. “I gotta…” he says to Steve.
“Yeah,” Steve says.
“I can be out of here by nine,” Bucky says.
“I’m staying at my parent’s house,” Steve says, grinning. “The apartment over the garage.”
“Will you wait up?”
“I’ll stay up.”
“Then I’ll see you,” Bucky says, biting his bottom lip.
“Yeah,” Steve says, smiling wide. “I’ll see you.”
.