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I know you're dying to meet meEight hours and forty-one minutes.
But I can just tell you this
Baby, as soon as you meet me
You'll wish that you never did.
That's how long Steve has been in police custody. Seven hours, twenty-three minutes since he’d been left in the interrogation room, a cup of cold, black coffee and a nearly untouched muffin on the table across from him. Interpol had allowed him handcuffs that gave him enough mobility to reach for each item should he choose.
How kind.
Ten hours and thirty-three minutes since he'd been bending down to press a kiss to James' mouth. It had been Wanda's eighteenth birthday, and he'd just finished twirling her around the dance floor, hugging her close, and as he'd kissed James, the lights had gone out and gunfire and James was gone and someone had Wanda and his mother, oh god, his mother --
The entire operation reeked of a mole, Steve knew that. The fact that the informant, though, was the one person in Rogers Manor he trusted, the one he opened up to, the one he fucking fell into bed with, felt like a cruel, sick joke.
James Buchanan, or, well, Agent James Barnes, apparently. The redhead called him James, but the blonde outside called him Bucky. He answered to both, and looked different, henleys and jeans forgotten and replaced with clean slacks and button-downs. Hardly recognizable.
He’d give it to the bureaucracy this time. Just thinking about it makes him angry, makes him want to slam his fists onto the table. But he’d already gotten his instantaneous frustration out on the wall behind him, bloodied knuckles now wrapped up.
Steve still doesn't know where Wanda is, where his mother is - and goddammit, nobody will tell him, not unless he talks, which he sure as hell isn't gonna do unless Murdoch shows up, and comes through for them again. Which he will. He'll come, and he'll get Steve out, and they'll find Wanda and make sure she's safe (god, he's all she has, after her brother's murder he's all she has) and they better pray to god he doesn't get his hands on Barnes.
It looked like nobody was brave enough to enter the room, though. He sees another agent - Wilson, he thinks, the one that had handed him the coffee and muffin, peer through the small window in the heavy iron door. But nobody comes in.
It's 7:30 AM, Sunday morning, and Steve Rogers is sitting at his kitchen island, coffee in one hand, paper in the other. It had been a fairly productive morning, by Steve's standards. Ever the morning person, he'd rolled himself out of bed at 6 AM and gone for a run.
It's all strangely domestic - when he's back, he flutters about the house quietly, picking up some abandoned books and DVD cases, the bracelet Nat had left two nights ago, until he deems it an appropriate time to start the coffee maker and rouse Bucky awake, and hop in the shower. It's calm, it's normal, it's welcoming - and it's nice. Steve knows they both appreciate this kind of routine, only adjusted occasionally by the promise of pancakes at the diner down the street (Bucky really likes it there - Steve gets it, the place has been passed down through the family and while it's been well-taken care of, it's retained its distinctly 40s decor and delicious breakfast).
What makes it even better is that he's no longer worried of waking up and finding Bucky gone. It's a recurring nightmare he hasn't told the other man about.
He realizes, in between sips of coffee while he scans the sports section, that despite everything that's happened in the last year, year and half, he wouldn't change it for the world. Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky. And maybe that sentiment had never been more clear than when Bucky had needed him most. There's decades of dull ache in Steve's heart, but Bucky being back soothes a little bit of that. A lot of it, actually.
It's been a while since the incident with the Asgardian liquor, but Steve hasn't quite been able to get the image of disheveled and marked-up Bucky out of his head. In fact, things have probably gotten worse since then - he'll find himself watching his best friend do something as simple as slice an apple, or dig around the pantry for a granola bar and wonder what it'd be like to slide his arms around Bucky from behind, tuck his face into his neck, or maybe hold his hand, and, fuck, maybe press his mouth against Buck's, watch it curl up into that grin he hadn't realized he'd missed so much it made him ache.
Yeah, he's in a little deep.
It's all strangely domestic - when he's back, he flutters about the house quietly, picking up some abandoned books and DVD cases, the bracelet Nat had left two nights ago, until he deems it an appropriate time to start the coffee maker and rouse Bucky awake, and hop in the shower. It's calm, it's normal, it's welcoming - and it's nice. Steve knows they both appreciate this kind of routine, only adjusted occasionally by the promise of pancakes at the diner down the street (Bucky really likes it there - Steve gets it, the place has been passed down through the family and while it's been well-taken care of, it's retained its distinctly 40s decor and delicious breakfast).
What makes it even better is that he's no longer worried of waking up and finding Bucky gone. It's a recurring nightmare he hasn't told the other man about.
He realizes, in between sips of coffee while he scans the sports section, that despite everything that's happened in the last year, year and half, he wouldn't change it for the world. Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky. And maybe that sentiment had never been more clear than when Bucky had needed him most. There's decades of dull ache in Steve's heart, but Bucky being back soothes a little bit of that. A lot of it, actually.
It's been a while since the incident with the Asgardian liquor, but Steve hasn't quite been able to get the image of disheveled and marked-up Bucky out of his head. In fact, things have probably gotten worse since then - he'll find himself watching his best friend do something as simple as slice an apple, or dig around the pantry for a granola bar and wonder what it'd be like to slide his arms around Bucky from behind, tuck his face into his neck, or maybe hold his hand, and, fuck, maybe press his mouth against Buck's, watch it curl up into that grin he hadn't realized he'd missed so much it made him ache.
Yeah, he's in a little deep.
