![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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.
