Chapter Text
“Why didn't you wake me up,” Bucky says, stuffing a piece of toast in his mouth. “I can't be late today. Got a promotion to look forward to.”
“I did,” Steve replies, amusedly. “You told me to eat shit.”
“Well, I don't remember that. Where's Mark?”
“He's already gone. Got a call.”
“I don’t understand how you both even find time to see each other,” Bucky says as he pours himself a glass of milk. “But thank you for letting me crash here last night.”
“Of course. That room has your name on it.” And after a pause, “Shouldn’t you head out?”
“Yeah, thanks Stevie! We’ll go out and get drunk tonight, celebrate my promotion etc etc.”
“You know it,” Steve says, throwing an apple at him.
“Hey, look who’s back,” exclaims Sharon. “I thought you were going to join tomorrow!”
“Yeah, but we came back a day earlier.”
“Did you get me anything?”
“I have a bottle of vodka which you can have.”
“How magnanimous of you. Oh, Bishop wanted to see you.”
“She did? I just came back. Do you know what it’s about,” Bucky asks surprised.
“Yeah she told me yesterday to send you into her office as soon as you entered the building,” Sharon says, chewing her lips.
“What? What’s the matter?
“I think you should meet her,” Sharon says, glancing towards the elevator behind him.
“Great thanks,” Bucky quips.
“What do you mean someone else got the job,” Bucky shouts. He knows it’s unprofessional but he can’t bring himself to care right now. “You told me you’d wait. That I was due a promotion!”
“James, please sit down and let me explain,” replied Bishop evenly.
Sharon Bishop. Objectively, she was a good Captain. Bucky knew that and admired her. She was a good head of the precinct. In her fifties, a good head on her shoulders and undeterringly firm but kind. Bucky respected her. Certainly more than their last head of precinct who played Angry Birds on his work laptop.
“Please explain,” says Bucky. He flops down on the chair in front of her desk. “Because I am having trouble understanding how someone who isn’t even in our precinct got the job I was supposed to be a shoo in for.”
“I understand your frustrations, James,”
“Do you, Captain?”
She raises an eyebrow. “I do believe that as a Black woman in the force, I have an understanding.”
Bucky feels his ears heat up, “I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking,” he mutters.
“I know. And that’s a problem James. You are too impulsive, sometimes. The person who is getting the job is Samuel Wilson. He is a good Detective and an even better man. He has a lot of experience, was incharge of the Newsome murders. I personally know him. If you give him a chance, you will come to like him. That I can promise you.”
“Are you kidding me? When does he start,” Bucky asks. A feeling of dread creeping up at him.
Bishop stares at him, her face expressionless and Bucky remembers not for the first time why she is a Captain.
“Last week,” Bishop says.
He lives in a small town. It is the type of town where there is a single convenience store and people can cycle around without being afraid of the speeding trucks and lorries. It’s the type of town where everyone knows each other and you have to greet everyone you see on the street.
Bucky didn’t grow up here. Nor did Steve. They grew up in the scruffy outskirts of Brooklyn, fighting and scrapping for survival. Steve moved here to go to college, get an Art degree and Bucky moved here because he got admission in the same college as Steve.
Of course, eighteen year old Bucky and Steve couldn’t have foreseen the kind of safe space this town would become for them. But it did. This small town, with its handful of people. People who opened their doors for each other, helped whenever possible.
People - or maybe it was just that one particular person who was the catalyst - who Steve would fall in love with while Majoring in English and Minoring in Art because, “I won’t be able to get rich with my art, Buck.”
Steve had met Mark in their second year. A paramedic and a journalist, college sweethearts who married as soon as they could, complete with white picket fences.
It’s a good day.
Or it was supposed to be, at least.