[Bucky Barnes; R] I'll Be Home For Christmas: Chapter 4 Character/Series: Bucky Barnes, Cast; Marvel Cinematic Universe Rating: R Notes: So Bucky and Sharon are the bestest in-law friends ever. Title: I'll Be Home For Christmas- Chapter 4: The Forgotten Author:yuuo Word Count: 4698 Summary:Bucky honestly expected Sharon to pepper him with questions on the way to the VA.
Bucky honestly expected Sharon to pepper him with questions on the way to the VA. She knew they were going, and that it had to do with charity of some form, but that's all that had been said to her. But she remained silent, navigating traffic through downtown Manhattan, to the VA office on the south end of the island.
"You're not going to ask why the VA?" he finally asked when they were a few streets away according to her GPS.
A faint smile graced her lips. "I'll find out when we get there, won't I?" she said.
"Assuming I let you follow me to Sergeant Lewis's office to discuss this."
She briefly glanced at him, mostly keeping her eyes on the road. "If you don't, then I'll ask. I'm used to having to wait and find out what's going on, I'm a government spook."
"At least you have a good sense of humor about it."
That smile grew bigger. "When you're in the service, you have to, or you might go insane. I doubt you soldiers didn't have similar coping techniques."
Bucky couldn't deny that. "So how long were you waiting to find out when I showed up?"
Her smile turned into a frown that he had a feeling wasn't very heartfelt. "A year and a half, Barnes," she said. "You already knew that."
"Didn't Steve warn you that I'm an asshole?" he asked, wanting to laugh at that scowl.
"He might've said a thing or two," she admitted. She turned one more street, then pulled into a parking lot next to a large, rather nice building with a sign in front proclaiming it to be the Veteran's Affairs office.
Bucky had to admit, Sharon was good at her job. She was keeping a careful eye on things without looking like she was being any more cautious than minimally necessary for a woman to get from her car to the building in the middle of the afternoon when she was accompanied by a guy that looked suitably strong to protect her from assholes. To someone like him, trained to watch for people watching for him, she was painfully obvious, but most people wouldn't notice just how attentive to her surroundings she actually was. He had to mentally applaud her.
He held the door open for her, which made her hesitate a fraction of a second, but she stepped in, watching him over her shoulder, but only out of her peripheral vision. It otherwise looked like she was just looking around the entrance way of the building.
Once he was in, she fell into place next to him, her hand resting on her purse, looking no different than any other woman with a purse that fell down that low on her torso, but Bucky had a sneaky suspicion that her gun was in there. If it wasn't in the purse, it was on her body somewhere close.
He'd accuse her of paranoia, but she was a CIA agent with a difficult protection detail. If she wasn't paranoid, she wasn't doing her job right.
He also declined to let her know that he was also armed and would move faster than she could if trouble started. It'd be nice to have back up if things got that ugly, anyway.
They walked over to the reception desk. The woman behind the counter studied them. "How can I help you folks?"
She eyed him over her glasses, like she was trying to place where she knew his face. "And you are?"
"Sergeant James Barnes," he said.
She no longer looked like she was trying to place his face. She looked mostly surprised, but he wasn't sure if what else he saw was fear or just the awe someone normally got in the presence of a celebrity. "Yes, Sergeant Wilson told us you were coming. Sergeant Lewis's office is down that hallway and to the left. It's marked, you can't miss it."
"Thank you," Bucky said, then turned, waiting for Sharon to fall in step beside him, and headed down the hallway the receptionist had directed them down. They took the left turn, and finally found a door that had the words 'Veteran Homelessness Initiative' on the glass. Bucky knocked on the door, then opened it and peeked in. It wasn't an office inside, not like a single room with a desk sort of office. There were computer stations lining one wall, with some men that looked like they'd seen better days at a few of them. There were some tables, and there were two men at one of them, both hunched over what Bucky guessed were paper applications for benefits of some sort.
The men all looked over when Bucky and Sharon entered, seemingly sizing them up, then dismissed them and went back to their work.
There was a desk near the far wall, with a man that looked like he was a few years older than Bucky would be if he were actually his biological age, instead of being a billion calendar years old. The man raised an eyebrow in their direction, head tilted slightly like he was trying to decide what to make of a decently dressed man accompanied by a well-dressed woman in an office dedicated to resources for homeless vets.
When Bucky made a point of yanking off his left glove before walking over, exposing his metal hand, the curiosity on the man's face disappeared, and Bucky guessed that either the man was Sergeant Lewis, or Sergeant Lewis had informed other office staff that Bucky was on his way.
"I would ask if you're James Barnes," the man said as Bucky and Sharon approached his desk. "But I suspect that would be a dumb question."
"It'd be one with an obvious answer, anyway," Bucky said, taking off his other glove and sticking them both in his coat pockets. "Are you Sergeant Lewis?"
"If I don't call you 'Sergeant Barnes', will you promise to not call me 'Sergeant Lewis'?" the man asked. "I'm retired, I am 'sergeant' nothing."
Bucky smiled. "Good, we're talking sense. What do you want me to call you?"
"Josh is fine," Josh said. "And what can I call you? You've got a few names floating around."
Bucky was really getting tired of being asked what he wanted to be called, but every time it was asked, it was kind of necessary, so he grit his teeth and went with it. "James is fine," he said. "Call me any variant of 'Jim' and you might find yourself in trouble."
Josh laughed, standing and holding out his hand to Bucky. "You got it, James." Once Bucky had taken Josh's hand and given it a shake, Josh held out his hand to Sharon. "And who's the pretty lady?"
Sharon took his hand. "Sharon Carter. I'm a friend. I was just the cab driver today." She looked at Bucky. "His roommate pays me for my services."
That almost made Bucky laugh. "I'll just bet," he said.
Josh grinned, then motioned to one of the empty tables. "Come on, let's go where we can all take a load off."
They followed Josh to the table, taking seats across from him. Bucky noticed Sharon giving the room a regular sweep with her gaze, assessing possible threats from the vets in the office. She seemed satisfied that the threat level was minimal.
"So Wilson said that you're interested in helping out with our programs for homeless vets," Josh said once they were seated.
"I'm not sure where I'd start, but yes," Bucky said. "I could throw money at you guys, if that's all you need, but I wouldn't mind something more hands on."
Josh chuckled. "Well, we can always use more money, I won't deny that," he said. "Are you looking into helping around here, helping vets sign up for these programs? That'd be most direct, but we're not hurting for help in that area for the most part. There's also the programs themselves, matching vets up with what they qualify for, scheduling them appointments with doctors, psychiatrists, securing housing for them, that kind of thing."
Bucky considered that for a moment. "Are you sure you want me calling around on behalf of all these guys who need help? I don't have a problem working with them or for them, but I don't want to be the one responsible for getting any doors slammed in their faces."
"Think people will hear 'Winter Soldier' instead of 'James Barnes'?" Josh asked.
Bucky shrugged. "More like they'll hear 'Hydra'. I've got a decent rep under the name 'Winter Soldier' as Captain America's partner in crime. It's the part before that that sometimes attracts trouble."
Josh nodded, clearly thinking about that. "Good point. So, working with them directly might be better. These guys get it, they've been out in the field, bad shit happens. You're less likely to get trouble from them than you are from the public."
"Doesn't the VA work with any emergency shelters?" Bucky asked. "Those places require staff. If nothing else, I'd be good on security detail."
Josh sat back with a thoughtful noise. "There's a few emergency shelters around, places that provide meals, especially around this time. Most places here in Manhattan are focused on families, more than anyone else. There's one that's dedicated to vets though. Cohen Mercy Mission. We work with them a lot. I could certainly refer you to them. I doubt they'd turn down the help for security. Most homeless people, including vets, aren't very rambunctious in the shelters. They're more interested in getting food, getting sleep, and staying warm. But there's a big problem with alcoholism among the homeless, and vets are no different. And they tend to be better fighters and cause more problems than the average guy on the streets when they're half a bottle in."
"Can you put me in touch with them?" Bucky asked.
"Yeah, just a second," Josh said, getting back up. He walked over to a table against the wall next to the computers, and grabbed a couple brochures from one of a few piles, and then took them back over to the table. "Here." He set one of the brochures down in front of Bucky. "Their address is in there. They have an application for volunteers, mostly to keep out the trouble makers or people too lazy to actually show up and help. Just tell them you were referred to them by the VA, fill out the application, you should be working within a week."
Bucky studied the brochure, reading about the shelter. It had a hundred and thirty-six beds that were filled every night. They provided dinner and breakfast, and had a shower. It wasn't glamorous, there weren't individual bedrooms or private bathrooms, but they were clean, and the food was held up to Health Department code, temperatures checked and expiration dates followed. For being an emergency shelter, it didn't sound too bad.
He looked up at Josh. "Do they get regular donations from you guys, or just referrals?"
Josh snorted. "If we had the money to donate to other groups, we wouldn't need other groups," he said. "They send us a lot of vets, help the guys get cleaned up, give them our address. We send people down there week day mornings to talk to the guys, tell them about our programs, hand out brochures with our information. We also give them information on the VSU. The VSU has the same programs, with advocates that work with us. We like to direct the guys from emergency shelters to the short-term shelter that the VSU has in Brooklyn, and they help the vets get from there to long-term housing through HUD-VASH."
Sharon finally spoke up. "What do those abbreviations mean?"
Josh looked over at her. "VSU means 'Veteran Service Unit', it's the brain child of the VA and the city's vet services group. 'HUD-VASH' stands for Department of Housing and Urban Development's Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing. Much easier to just say HUD-VASH."
"Hell of a mouthful," Sharon said.
Josh chuckled. "It's government, and we're military. If we didn't use abbreviations for everything, we'd be talking all day and never get anything done."
"Fair enough," she said. Bucky gave her a sideways look- she was CIA, she had no room to talk about abbreviations. There was probably an abbreviation for her mission to protect him and Steve.
Josh slid the other brochure he'd picked up over to Bucky. "This group's called Robin Hood. They're not an emergency shelter, and they don't have any short term housing or anything. They're more like us. They have programs and advocates that hook vets up with housing, medical care, employment training and opportunities. They work with us to supplement what we have, since we don't have nearly enough on our own to help everyone. Between us and them, it's still not enough. There's over two thousand vets a night out there just in New York. Country-wide, it's a lot worse. That doesn't include those at risk of being homeless that need our support, too."
Bucky frowned, studying the Robin Hood brochure. "Yeah, I've read some of those statistics. Some were higher than that, I think one was lower."
"It's hard to get exact numbers," Josh said. "Homeless people are pretty transient, and most of our best guesses have to come from how many beds are filled up in emergency shelters by vets and how many actually use our services. And some refuse to."
"Why?" Sharon asked. "They can't possibly like it out on the streets."
Josh's forehead knit together slightly in a frown that Bucky guessed meant he was trying to figure out the best explanation. "A lot of those guys have mental illnesses, or addiction problems. When your brain's rebelling against you, it's hard to take the logical way out. 'The few, the proud.' Proud enough to not be able to admit they need help with an invisible injury like PTSD. And it's not just vets that have trouble with that. Too much stigma around mental illness, still. We'll get there, but in the meantime, we need to keep our hands reached out to them."
"It's gotten better since my day," Bucky said a bit off-handedly, making a point of still looking over the brochures he'd been handed. "We still had strait jackets and lobotomies were starting to be popular."
"Took awhile to get past that," Josh said. "That was still in the public view a lot when the Vietnam boys came home. Most of the homeless vets out there are from 'Nam, although the Afghanistan and Iraqi war vets are starting to leave a big footprint."
"Those were all pretty brutal wars from what I've heard," Bucky said. "Especially Vietnam."
"Any war is brutal," Josh said. "But yeah, there's been easier ones to fight than those. I dunno how your war compares. Most vets from your era have passed away by this time."
That made Bucky's mind go temporarily numb and a weight settled on his chest. His generation was almost all gone. Wouldn't be long before only he and Steve remained, only they would remember what the European battlefields were like, what it was like down in those foxholes. History was leaving them behind.
He shook his head, making a faint noise that was supposed to be a derisive laugh. "It wasn't exactly a walk through the park," he said. "But I wasn't around for the others, so I can't compare."
Josh looked like he wanted to ask questions, but refrained, which Bucky was grateful for. Some things just didn't get asked about.
Bucky asked a few more questions, but most of what he needed to know at that point, he'd find out at the shelter. Once satisfied that Bucky knew as much as he'd get from Josh, and having gotten the number to talk to him directly if more questions came up, Bucky and Sharon bid goodbye to Josh and left the VA.
They'd traveled a few blocks before either spoke up, and Bucky wasn't inclined to be the first one to do it. He had things on his mind.
Sharon, on the other hand, decided she had to give voice to what was on her mind. "I have a feeling if I don't ask this question, I'm not going to find out any other way, and my curiosity is getting to me. If you care not to answer, that's fine."
"What?"
"Why homeless vets? There are other services the VA offers, of all of them, why that? Personal reasons, or just a random grab?"
Bucky didn't answer at first, glancing at her, then back out his window. "Because I was homeless for awhile."
There was a pause, and Bucky looked over at her to see confusion and surprise mingling on her face. "When was this? Steve said your family did okay during the Depression."
He made a rude noise. "Wasn't during the Depression," he said. "After the helicarriers went down, before I decided to give everyone around me a heart attack by sneaking into Steve's apartment, I didn't have anywhere to go. It was only a month, but it's not exactly a lot of fun."
Sharon didn't say anything, but made a noise that sounded like a sympathetic agreement, the kind that can only come from someone who can guess, but not know, what an experience was like. He'd heard that off and on over the last year and some odd months from Steve on the odd occasion he'd managed to pry something specific out of Bucky. Steve had gotten good at getting Bucky to talk about things bothering him, but very few details had come up between them, and Bucky preferred it that way.
When nothing else was forthcoming, Bucky decided it was his turn to ask a question. "You're going to tell Steve, aren't you?"
"Should I not?" she asked, and Bucky had a feeling that if he said 'no', she'd honor that and not tell Steve.
But honestly, it didn't matter that much. It'd just never come up. "I don't care," he said, watching out the windshield.
After a few seconds in which Sharon fought through some particularly bad traffic, she said "I think it'd be best if you told him."
"It hasn't come up in almost two years, why would it now?"
"For the same reason it came up with me?" she asked. "If I wondered why that particular crusade, why wouldn't he?"
Bucky frowned, just a subtle creasing of his forehead. "He asked if I'd known someone. I didn't precisely count myself as knowing someone."
"So in other words, you avoided telling him." Sharon spared a glance at him. "Why tell me, then?"
"In other words, you didn't volunteer information. Is that military conditioning, Hydra conditioning, or just the way you are?"
If it wasn't for the fact that he was growing fond of her, and that Steve was even more fond of her, Bucky might be tempted to sour relations completely with a jackass reply. "Mostly Hydra," he said. "Volunteer anything not strictly related to the mission... well, it ends badly."
"The mindwipes?"
He forgot she'd read the file, and he wasn't sure if he was upset that she'd known, or relieved that he didn't have to explain it. "They weren't pleasant."
She smiled. "I have a feeling that's an understatement."
He couldn't help an amused smile. "You caught that?"
"It was hard to miss." She hit her breaks, coming to an abrupt stop behind a taxi that had decided to not pull over to the curb to let its passengers off. "I think you should tell him."
"Why? And how? That's not exactly good dinner conversation. 'Oh, by the way, while you were looking for me, I was homeless in the streets. Just thought you should know.'"
She laughed. "I never said tell him that way. That's just looking to purposely upset him."
Bucky sighed. "The subject's going to upset him no matter how it comes up. He tends to not take it very well whenever these things come up. He tries not to show it, but I can tell. He's a terrible liar, and even when he's able to spit out the right words, I know him too well." He paused, thinking. "It's in his eyes. You can see how it hurts him. And I hate seeing that look, so I don't bring it up."
"Which also upsets him," she pointed out as the cab moved and she was able to continue down the streets. "At least when he's told what's wrong, he can try to figure out how to make it hurt less."
Bucky slouched in his seat slightly. "Now you're sounding like Pepper," he said, sounding grumpier than he actually was.
"It's basic human psychology, Bucky," she said. "Talking to friends helps ease how hard it is to carry, and it helps your friends hurt less, because they feel they're doing something to help you. Talk to him. I don't know what to tell you about how to bring it up, but if nothing else, if he asks again, tell him the truth. Don't skirt by on a technicality."
He tapped a metal finger on his leg, a bit of a nervous habit. He usually tapped it on the table or another convenient surface, but with the door on his right and the gear stick on his left and Sharon needing unfettered access to said gear stick, he was stuck with his thigh. He also quickly realized how annoying that habit was. "If it comes up."
Sharon didn't say anything in response, pulling into the underground garage where Stark Tower employees and residents parked, driving through the turns to her reserved spot. Once she'd parked and turned off the car, she looked at him. "Do you want me to tell him? You seem a bit agitated by the idea of doing it yourself."
He stared at her. "What do you mean?"
She motioned to his hand. "Steve's told me that when you get nervous, you do that."
Bucky occupied his hand with unbuckling, sending it a mental glare of betrayal. "Why did he tell you that? Don't you two have better things to talk about than me?"
"I'm the one that asked," she said, unlocking the doors for them to get out. "You're important to Steve. I know as well as anyone that you two are a package deal; if I can't accept you and all your quirks, then Steve's going to give our relationship the boot. And I'd like to be your friend. So yes, I've asked about things to watch for to read you better so I don't go stepping on toes."
He gave her a frustrated look for one point seven seconds, then got out of the car. "You spy types frustrate me," he said once she was out and could hear him clearly.
She clicked 'lock' on her key fob, then moved around the car to join him and looped her arm around his again, unmindful of the fact that it was his left arm that she'd chosen to cozy up to. "This wasn't a spy mission," she said. "This was a person wanting to make a friend and finding out the best way to do it."
Bucky studied her, hitting the button on the elevator, debating how to answer. He used to be friends with a lot of people, back before Hydra, and sometimes he felt on shaky ground trying to make friends now that he was away from Hydra, but if he could become good enough friends with Tony Stark to get Tony to seemingly set aside a grudge for him, then he wasn't too rusty at the art of human interaction. "Has Steve invited you over for dinner yet?"
Sharon looked taken off-guard by that question. "Not yet, no. Why?"
"Then as your friend, I'm inviting you over for dinner tonight, if you're not busy. And I'm cooking. Knowing him, he'll try to impress you with one of his mother's recipes, and the Irish's idea of cooking is mixing mushy apples with mushy potatoes."
She wrinkled her nose in disgust. "That sounds awful."
He smiled. "It's not as bad as it sounds, but in the name of saving you for awhile longer from his bonny lad side, I'll cook. You'll get subjected to it sooner or later."
"I'll have to do some research, find a recipe that doesn't sound appalling, then try to subtly steer him towards that rather than something more creative."
"Subtly? All you'll have to do is bat your pretty brown eyes at him."
She laughed, all but dragging him into the elevator when it dinged and the doors opened. "Okay, maybe not so subtle."
"Subtle isn't always Steve's strong suit," Bucky said. "He can be when the situation calls for it, but when it comes to personal relationships, he's about as subtle as a hand grenade in a barrel of oatmeal."
She stared at him. "That's an oddly farm country saying for a Brooklyn boy."
He grinned. "I was quoting Warner Brothers. I've been catching up on a few decades of pop culture."
For a second, Sharon's expression didn't change, then a light bulb clicked on. "Oh, Foghorn Leghorn?"
"Do people still watch those cartoons?" he asked. "I thought Bugs Bunny had gone out of style in the last decade."
She shrugged. "I don't watch a lot of TV these days, too much work. But at least when I was a kid, they were still all on TV. I grew up on him."
"At least there's one more generation that has good taste," he said. "I know I'm showing my age, but some of the stuff on for kids now is garbage."
She patted his arm, which he only knew about because he happened to be looking at her when she did. "Don't worry, that doesn't make you sound any older than me."
Bucky glanced up at the numbers ticking by on the elevator. He found it odd that it hadn't stopped on another floor between the garage and their floor yet. He had a sneaky suspicion that JARVIS might've had something to do with that. "Oh good, then I'm not completely out of touch. Although speaking of sounding old, how many of the old silver screen movies have you seen?"
"A few. Aunt Peggy would always let me know when one of her favorites was playing on one of the classic movies channels. Why?"
He had to mentally set aside her use of the word 'aunt' with Peggy's name; sometimes it still kicked him in the gut, the strange time lapse, having known Peggy as a woman far too young to have a niece Sharon's age. "Ever see Arsenic and Old Lace?"
Sharon tilted her head, blinking a couple times before shaking her head. "I don't think so. Who stars in it?"
"Cary Grant," Bucky said. "It came out in '44. My brother told me I have to watch it. I saw it once, but we were in Europe at the time, and I was tired, so I slept through about half of it and don't really remember much, except that one of the characters thought he was Teddy Roosevelt."
That made her burst into laughter. "It sounds like my sort of movie. I like Cary Grant, he's a good actor."
"Good. I'll have JARVIS queue it up for after dinner, then. I don't think Steve approved of my idea of making it date night, maybe he'll be more open to watching it with you around."
Sharon smiled, a wide and dazzling grin that made him see how closely related she was to Peggy. "So how old is that joke?"
"Way too old," Bucky said. "And I doubt it'll stop just because you two are dating now."
She shifted her weight against him in a nudge. "I don't mind being the other woman."