Eight Invitations

1.

He nearly didn't answer his phone, only there was always the chance that someone was giving a Hitler speech somewhere. Or maybe there were pigs flying across the river. Armed pigs. Flying pigs armed with machine guns, maybe. Stranger things had happened, and only recently.

Still, it was seven o'clock in the goddamned morning on a day that he didn't have to work, which meant that Steve was already up and in the studio to make the most of the day's light, and he could have had this nice warm bed with its pile of wool blankets all to himself , except—

"Look, I understand perfectly well that Rogers was born in a barn, but you at least, apart from the fact of being a stone-cold killer, have always struck me as a guy with manners, plus you owe me a Kandinsky. You could have called—texted me, even. I would have taken a text. Instead, what, I have to get an invitation to this thing through the mail like some rube?"

Bucky closed his eyes and debated just ending the call. He could roll over. Pull the pillow over his head. Instead he mumbled: "An invitation to what?"

"To the show. To the opening. At the Keller."

Oh. "Steve's not going to that," Bucky said.

"What do you mean he's not going? It's the opening of his show, it's a solo show, he's got to go!"

"Steve's not going to that. That's not the kind of thing that Steve goes to. Take a moment and try to imagine Steve going to that. I'll wait," Bucky said, and he must have drifted off to sleep for a couple of seconds there, before Tony's voice brought him back: "Okay, yeah, I can't picture it."

2.

"Just people who buy art like to hobnob with the artist," Tony groused. "It's a see-and-be-seen kind of thing."

"Yeah, we're not so into that. Honestly, I'd like to be seen a lot less. I made Steve grow his hair out a little, change his glasses. Goddamned instagram. They still catch us occasionally—us and a couple of dozen other people. Seriously, the guy down at the pizza shop looks more like Captain America than Steve does." Bucky must have woken up a little, because something Tony'd said filtered into his conscious mind: "You wanna hobnob with Steve, just come over."

"What, now?" and Bucky could hear the savage grin on Tony's face.

"Not now. Christ, I don't even know why the hell you're awake at this ungodly hour," except then Morgan let out a piercing wail and oh, right, yeah, that would be why.

Tony made some soft, kind, shushing noises and then murmured something that sounded like, "Oooh, look, it spins! See how it spins?" before fumbling the phone back to his ear and asking, "What do you people do for Thanksgiving?"

Bucky sat up, rubbing sleep from his eyes with the heel of his hand. "Parade in the morning," he said. "Football and beer after. Roast something with potatoes, I dunno what yet. You're welcome to any or all of it if you want. Natasha and Clint usually come. Sam sometimes."

"Beer is the wrong bottled beverage for our stage in life," Tony said, "but the parade sounds like a thing we could do. Do you watch from the bleachers? I went to brunch somewhere with a view of the route, but I was pretty hung over and I don't remember where. I guess I could have my people get together with Macy's and have them put something together for us."

"Yeah, we just stand in the park," Bucky said.

Tony sounded amused and a little confused. "In the park?"

"Yeah, the park, Central Park, it's a big square park in the middle of the city. We just meet there and watch the parade, make fun of the balloons. Your balloon in particular."

"Okay, wow, I'm definitely coming. I had no idea you guys were so normcore."

Tony disconnected. Bucky stared down at the phone. "...the fuck is he talking about…?"

3.

Bucky pulled on some pajama pants and went into the kitchen to put up the coffee before wandering across the landing to the studio. It was uncharacteristically tidy in there, as most of Steve's completed canvases had been taken off to the Keller. Steve was standing at the easel painting an enormous sign that read Arden Grocery— commercial but beautiful the way Steve was doing it, hand-lettered and with an elaborately drawn border. Steve was working on the sign with intense, obvious enjoyment, the sleeves on his old sweatshirt tugged up his forearms. His hair had grown out long, and his forelock fell into his eyes like it used to.

Steve turned, absently reaching up to brush the hair out of his eyes, and smiled. "Yeah, I like it, too," he said, returning his eyes to the canvas. "Thought you were gonna sleep in."

"Yeah, well, I was gonna, except Stark had to call at ass o'clock in the morning."

Steve cut his eyes to the side. "Everything all right?"

"Everything's fine. He wants to meet us at the parade tomorrow. I told him he was invited."

Steve made a face. "Okay, yeah," he said, "....only Tony has a way of making himself the center of attention, and I thought we were trying to lower our profile, get off everyone's radar."

"I'm not worried about it," Bucky said. "It's a public goddamned park; if Stark starts swanning around and signing autographs we can be out of there in ten seconds."

Steve put down his brush. "You can," he said, a little despairingly. "Me, I'm not so good at melting into thin air," and that was true, but only because Steve was and had always been the most extraordinary goddamned person. It wasn't that he was beautiful. Steve's face sort of fell apart when you looked at it for too long: nose, mouth, forehead. Bucky knew this because he'd been staring at Steve's face his whole life. It was more like there was a light shining out of him—or a glow from a fire burning somewhere.

Steve's hair had fallen into his face again, and Bucky reached up and brushed it back. "You got paint in your hair," he said, and Steve smiled and gently tangled his fingers in the thick hair that curled up from Bucky's own hairline. Then Steve leaned in to kiss him with a surprising amount of hunger for ass o'clock in the morning, coaxing his mouth open and leaving him breathless. Bucky made fists in the old, loose sweatshirt Steve was wearing and just gave himself over to it.

When they finally broke apart, Bucky was panting a little. "Oh, well, if you're gonna be that way about it," he said, "there's a perfectly good bed back there that nobody's sleeping in."

Steve crooked his old, familiar smile. "Now that's an invitation," he said.

4.

Sometimes Steve got it into his head to do things a certain way and there was just no stopping him. Bucky'd learned this much early on. Sometimes you could get Steve to do what you wanted by preparing the ground right, manipulating the playing field. You could maybe get him to come out with you or go home with you, as necessary. You could get him onto the Wonder Wheel with Connie Frischetta or into bed with Peggy Carter. You could get him to New York, get him into the trunk of your car, even get him into your bed and your life if things broke your way. But other times you just had to deal with a solid brick wall of Steve, because Steve was gonna fight if he was gonna, was gonna stand up if he felt he hadda. So God forbid you got between Steve Rogers and something he wanted, whether that was a broken nose or an ass-kicking or—well, you. Because sometimes the thing Steve wanted was you, and all you could do was get out of the way.

Sometimes, when Steve was in a mood like this, he got fixated on Bucky's shoulder, on the joint between the metal arm and his chest, his side, the ridge of scarred flesh. Steve would push him down onto the bed and pin him there, sucking and kissing his neck and the curve of his shoulder, tonguing and mouthing his way down the scar tissue with unthinking devotion. It had bothered him at first because he was vain, but he'd gotten used to it, now; he liked it, now. Steve didn't discriminate between the metal arm and the rest of him: by loving it, Steve had made it a part of him.

Now Steve's hand slid down his chest and loosely curled around his cock, teasing, then stroking him, then teasing again. "Sonovabitch, Steve. You bastard. Steve. Fuck—" but then Steve was kissing him and taking care of him, bringing him off with such intensity that he saw stars. He lay there, gasping, his dick in Steve's hand and his hips jerking, and felt the hard drag of Steve's cock against his hip. Steve sighed softly and began to rub off against him. Bucky slid his metal hand down Steve's back and let it rest gently on his backside, just above the buttocks, and Steve shuddered and pressed his soft-bearded face into Bucky's neck and came with a groan.

He must really have fallen asleep then, because when his phone rang, it felt like the day was starting over, except this time he was under 200 pounds of snoring, naked Steve.

Don't get it. Get it. Hitler. Bats. Pigs with machine guns. He shoved Steve off him and palmed his phone off the nightstand. "What?"

"What are you doing tonight?" Natasha asked.

5.

"What am I doing tonight?" Bucky repeated, and he'd meant it as a rhetorical question, except Steve opened his eyes and made a small throat-cutting gesture with his fingers, which Bucky had no problem interpreting as a directive not to commit. "Hang on," he told Natasha, and then, to Steve, "What?"

"I want to take you somewhere later," Steve said.

"Oh yeah? Where?"

"It's a surprise," Steve said.

"O-kay," Bucky said, and then said, to Natasha, "I got plans. What's going on?"

"I was hoping you'd come out for a drink. I want to get your advice about something."

"You should talk to Steve," Bucky said. "Steve's your moral compass type. I give crap advice."

"I don't want a moral compass. I gotta make a choice between a bad decision and a worse one."

"Well, I'm your guy, then," Bucky said. "But I can't today, how about tomorrow? Is it urgent?"

"Not that urgent. Brewing," Natasha said darkly. "But there's time."

Bucky looked over at Steve, who was lying there with a frown on his face, aware that there were depths to the conversation. He gave Bucky a look, and Bucky nodded at him and said, to Natasha, "Because look, if it's urgent—"

"It's all right. I'll see you tomorrow, we'll make a plan for later in the week," and before he could ask, she added: "I don't want to ruin Thanksgiving. We'll talk about it later—in a soundproof bunker with a case of vodka and zakuski. It'll be fun," she said, and hung up.

Natasha's idea of fun always worried him. "What was that about?" Steve asked.

Bucky threw up his hands. " I don't know," he said. "She wanted to go out for a drink later."

"That's funny," Steve said. "Because so do I."

6.

Steve surprised him by putting on a tie and a suit jacket and an actual decent pair of shoes, so Bucky went into the bedroom and put on some decent clothes himself. He wondered if they were going to take the car wherever they were going, but Steve bypassed it and headed straight for the door, which meant the subway, probably. It was already dark - only ten goddamned minutes of daylight this time of year - but it was warm for the season and so actually a pretty nice night. He and Steve walked past the big old Queen Anne-style houses with their wraparound porches and turrets, this perfectly preserved piece of the past right around the corner from Coney Island Avenue's gas stations and auto supply stores.

They got onto the train toward the city, and Bucky sprawled into a seat and lost himself in the familiar rhythm of it. "You gonna give me a hint as to where it is we're going?" Bucky asked.

Steve's smile was impish. "Nope," he said. "You'll see when we get there."

The way there seemed to lead them through Grand Central, and Steve slowed as they headed into the Grand Concourse, and stopped when they were near the information booth and the clock. They looked up - impossible not to look up - at the turquoise ceiling with its field of stars and elaborately-figured constellations. Bucky put his hands in his pockets and leaned back, relaxing: there was just something so right about the place. It was somehow just as it had been and totally of the now at the same time. It soothed something that was more or less perpetually irritated in his brain, and it was beautiful when so many things were ugly. He supposed that other people might have gotten this feeling looking up at the ceiling of a cathedral, or looking at the real night sky. But there were no stars in the sky for a hundred miles around New York City, not even when he was a kid. These were the stars they had, these right here.

Beside him, Steve murmured, "I love this place," and Bucky grinned and popped his hands and said, "Wait, I got it—the Oyster Bar?"

"No," Steve said, absently. He was still gazing up at the ceiling.

"We're not going to that horrible nouvelle—neuvo—minimalist—whatever it's called—in Stark Tower, are we?" Bucky asked, a little nervously.

That got Steve's attention. "No," Steve said, smiling. "Something much better," and then he led Bucky out and around and down to a couple of elevators—old ones, back from their time. These were delightful too, with their dials that moved to show you what floor the elevator was on. The dial showed seven floors, plus also "B" and "U" and "P" - P was for Platform, Bucky knew.

The elevator arrived and they got in. "Okay, so spill," Bucky said, but he didn't have to wait long: they only went up a floor before Steve got out and led him around the corner to a short, red-carpeted staircase. "Oh, wow," Bucky said softly, because he had an idea what this was but he didn't realize it was a place you could go now. They walked up the staircase to a dimly-lit foyer, where a pretty girl was standing by a wood podium. Bucky had no eyes for her - his attention had already been fully grabbed by the room beyond.

"Grant," Steve said, distantly in the background. "I have a reservation," and that was good, because reservation or not, Bucky was going into this room. It was like a goddamned palace in here—two stories high, with an elaborately carved Italian ceiling and an enormous leaded glass window all along one side. The place was dimly lit with art-deco sconces, but the walls seemed to be made of stone, and there was a huge fireplace at the back. There was a long mahogany bar in front of the leaded glass window, and it was crowded: elsewhere people sat together in black leather banquettes or club chairs pulled up around round oak tables. Bucky felt a nudge, then trailed Steve, who was following the hostess across the long room to a table right near the fireplace. Steve thanked her, which was good: Bucky'd totally lost sight of his manners.

They sat down. "The Campbell office?" Bucky said in a low voice, hunching forward.

Steve leaned in to meet him. "Yeah," he said. "They turned it into a bar, can you believe?"

"It's amazing," Bucky agreed. "I've heard of this place," the private office of John W. Campbell, head of the New York Central Railroad, "but I never thought I'd get to see it."

"Truth be told, I feel that way about a lot of things," Steve said.

7.

They drank a bunch of cocktails and then tumbled into a cab and let it take them back over the Brooklyn bridge. Bucky slouched back against Steve on the back seat, a little drunk and really fucking happy. It had been a good time, and now they were going home to the dogs and the cat and a life they liked, and tomorrow was Thanksgiving, and he actually had loads to be thankful for. It was about as perfect a day as he'd ever had in his life...

….right up until the time that he thought to get the day's mail out of the lockbox on their way in. He flipped through it, (bill, bill, client payment, hardware catalog) as he strolled through the garage, then did a double-take and stared at the flyer from the Brooklyn Historical Society.

"What is it?" Steve asked.

Bucky wordlessly handed him the flyer.

"Holy shit, is that our old apartment?" Steve asked.

8.

Thanksgiving morning dawned bright and clear and not cold. Bucky, in a foul mood, wore sunglasses and a bulky coat with a hat jammed down over his head. "What the hell happened to you?" Natasha said in greeting when she and Clint finally arrived at their preferred spot on the parade route: the giant boulder from which they could watch the parade through the trees.

"Life happened to me," Bucky told her. "Life is still goddamned happening to me."

Natasha nodded grimly, as if this was no more than she had expected. "I've got vodka," she said, fishing around in her leather satchel. "I brought it for later but we can break into it now if you want."

"You're a good friend," Bucky said, but Steve interpolated himself between them and said, gently, "We'll have it later." Natasha smirked and reached up to put her arms around him.

Steve had brought a thermos of hot chocolate, and they all settled in to watch the balloons and the floats—Smokey the Bear, Pikachu, Snoopy. Despite himself, Bucky felt his spirits lifting: it was impossible, really, to be glum when a decent marching band was playing, and when you were confronted with a giant squirrel in a hat, which who the fuck knew what that was?

Then there it was, a glimpse of yellow through the trees. "Spongebob!" they all shouted, and then turned as one, all four of them sensing more than seeing the raised cell phone camera.

But it was just Tony, who'd materialized from out of nowhere in a black hoodie and sunglasses and with Morgan Stark strapped to his chest in some kind of contraption. "Right, so that's blackmail material on all of you," Tony said, and then he turned and lifted the camera so that he and Morgan were in the picture too, now. "Okay, now—selfie! Everyone smile!"

Bucky scowled. Clint gave him him the finger. Natasha tilted her head. Steve smiled.

Bucky shot a pleading look at Natasha—Stark was taking pictures, didn't he know better than to take pictures? Were concepts of secrecy and privacy totally foreign to him? It was an invitation to disaster. Natasha's eyeroll and little shoulder shrug were equally eloquent: he was Tony Stark, he defied nature and common sense. Couldn't be helped.

"Did we miss anything?" Tony asked. "I hope we didn't miss anything import—oh, no, we didn't, here we go. Listen. Do you hear that?" and yeah, they could all hear that: the first brassy notes of the Iron Man theme. "Oh and here I come! Here comes Daddy, Munchkin! Daddy's a giant balloon!" and just then, the giant red and gold Iron Man appeared, bobbling, through the trees.