InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "4 minutes to save the world"

Steve Rogers (captainhandsome) wrote in snapthread,
@ 2019-05-09 14:00:00

Entry tags:

bucky barnes (mcu), steve rogers (mcu)

Who: Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes
What: A Talk.
When: Evening
Where: Bucky's
Rating: Look. I don't know what's happening up in here, hold onto your butts.

It could never be said that Steve Rogers was a fool. He was good at people, he was quick to understand them. But with the people he knew? Well Steve might have been an expert. He spoke fluent Natasha and could speak Bucky's facial expressions near flawlessly. Tony was- well that was more complicated. But he knew when something was happening with his makeshift wayward family and he knew when there was something he wasn't being told. It wasn't anyone's responsibility to fill him in, mind you, people were entitled to their lives and their secrets. But Bucky was. Well. Bucky was different and he was Steve's business.

Natasha's arrival had rocked them all. But what he hadn't expected was for it to rock Bucky. Because they didn't know each other that well. Or so he'd thought. But Steve was wrong, she'd called him James and thought he hadn't noticed. Steve always noticed. Maybe not having a life made you more aware of everyone elses, or something.

That night in the bar he'd watched Tony and Bucky argue and he'd let it go, let them figure it out for themselves and in time, well they'd talk in time. Steve had been telling himself that since they were fourteen years old. Because it was easy, it meant keeping him and them as it was and it meant not losing him, not any part of him.

You couldnm't lose something that wasn't yours.

It was dark when Steve finished his run, because he was at the point where he was running three times a day to burn off all that nervous energy. He showered quick and then changed, his feet already carrying him before his head caught up. Steve knocked on Bucky's doorframe, leaning against it as he crossed his arms. "Hey you."

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Always preaching not to be numb, but it's how he thrives

sgt_barnesjb
2019-05-09 02:19 pm UTC (link)

Bucky wasn't stupid. It was off and that was something that had been bothering him for most of the time he'd been there. He and Steve, when they were together, they were able to fall back into that comfort zone of just focusing on the moment and enjoying the hell out of each other. They'd mastered that art back in the early 1900's, a whole lifetime ago. It worked; it kept them safe and it prevented them from losing anything important. But it was bound to catch up with them sometime. Bucky suspected that had they not been frozen and presumed dead for so long that that talk would've happened decades ago and with a lot less of the complications that they faced now.

It wasn't like this was shocking. They'd just done so well to avoid it that Bucky thought maybe they had more time. They'd always had more time; wasn't that the exact problem? Wasn't that why this had gotten so hard? They should've nipped this when they were teenagers but now they were over a hundred and it was still there.

After sitting beside Steve, just close enough to feel the heat coming from his best friend's side, Bucky knew he had to respond. Steve wasted no time diving right into what he didn't want to talk about first. There wasn't even the option of narrowly avoiding all of this by just having it out a little about the bar fight. That would've been an easy out. It was what they would've reverted to before, but not now.

He looked down at his feet, trying to find the words he wanted to say. It was easy to banter with Natasha when it was just them. It wasn't easy when he let himself think about what it might mean, what it might do to Steve and he felt like a total shithead for that even if he really hadn't done anything wrong. "It's a lot," he said, because it was. And he couldn't downplay it the way he could've the bar fight, made it into not as big of a deal. He wouldn't do that to Natasha, or what they had. That wasn't fair, no matter how much it hurt to talk to Steve about it.

"When I was the Winter Soldier, there was a period of time they loaned me to the KGB," he said. "They were training girls to become the Black Widow. And one of them was Natalia Romanova." He remembered her; red hair and fiery, different from everyone else. She had traits he'd been programmed to notice, to eliminate because they made her stand out instead of fall in line. "I trained her. I helped her learn English." Telling the story made it that much more real; more real that it'd happened, and more real that he was actually having the conversation with Steve.

"She found out my name when I didn't even know I had one," he said. "Leave it to her, right? But the records she found didn't show 'Bucky' as my name, so she knew me as James. I didn't even know about Bucky until you said it on the bridge." He was deviating, coming back to himself and Steve, because Steve was right next to him and the feelings were there, too. Focus, he told himself silently. You owe him this.

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