Scenes From A Marriage: Captain America At Home

"Seriously, I think we should take a second look at Chicago," Bucky muttered, and Steve turned away from the counter where he was making sandwiches to stare at him. Bucky was sprawled at the million dollar table staring down at his phone, the glossy flyer from the Brooklyn Historical Society beside his coffee cup. Steve stretched over to look and saw that Bucky was frowning down at the exhibition's website, watching some black and white film footage that was playing over and over.

"I don't see why it bugs you so much." Steve turned back to finish the sandwiches: roast beef and cheddar with spicy mustard. "I certainly don't see anything to go running to Chicago over. It's really cold in Chicago, Buck. Besides," he added, turning with a plate in each hand, "the way the Cubs played this year? I'm just not up for rewarding that kind of behavior.“

Bucky tossed his phone onto the table. "Be serious," he said.

"I am serious." Steve yanked out a chair, sat down, and took an enormous bite of his sandwich. "What is this, the fourth Captain America show? The fifth?" he asked, still chewing. "The first thing they did was put together a Captain America show, starring me and forty chorus girls, and I had to stand there wearing the outfit. At least now there's a dummy wearing the outfit."

Bucky leaned back in his chair, arms crossed. "Some other dummy, you mean."

"Yeah, that's just what I mean: some other dummy." Steve rolled his eyes. "I'm glad I've got you around. I was in danger of getting a fat head from all these honors and exhibitions."

"Your fat head's exhibition-proof," Bucky said. "But me, I'm not used to all this attention."

"You were in the last show," Steve pointed out. "Best friend, Howling Commando, blah blah."

"Yeah, but this is different," Bucky said. "I was in the background before, but now it's—front and center." He made to reach for his phone, then changed his mind and pushed it away. "It looks like they've pulled up photos of me as a kid, my parents, the old house. And then also…" and something about the scrape of Bucky's voice put Steve immediately on high alert, "they've got some Hydra stuff, artifacts, I don't even know what the fuck they have."

Steve put down his sandwich. Bucky stared down at his hands, flexed his metal fingers.

"Me in a glass case, in a glass case, in a glass case..." Bucky murmured, and then, abruptly shoving that mood away: "Not to mention pictures of me in the outfit, that whole disaster of a couple of years ago, the newspapers, and—well, at least we're pissing off all the historians."

"Are you kidding? They love us," Steve said slowly. "We're a boon to the textbook industry. They've had to rewrite 5th grade social studies like ten times. I had a kid come up to thank me when I was with the Avengers. Apparently I personally ruined the 2011 History Regents," and now Bucky's mouth was curving into a smile—good, that was good. Anything to chase the flickers of sadness from Bucky's face. It was an old, familiar helplessness Steve was grappling with, wanting to help Bucky Barnes and never quite knowing how.

He was still trying to think what to say when Bucky's phone rang and Bucky sighed and picked it up. "Yeah?" Bucky listened, and then glanced at his watch and said, "Little early to start drinking, ain't it?"

Natasha. That was good, too: that would be a distraction, but Bucky's expression was sharpening as he listened to whatever it was she was saying. "Okay," Bucky said warily. "Okay. If you say," and then he hung up and said, to Steve: "She wants to meet." Steve nodded cautiously at this. "She wants to talk. But she wants me to come out suited and armed—really armed, guns and everything." Bucky sighed and idly scratched at his thick, dark hair. "So what the hell kind of conversation is that supposed to be?"

Steve frowned. "Any idea what she's on about?"

"No idea," Bucky said. "But I guess I'm going to find out," and Steve would have told him to be careful, but it wasn't necessary: Bucky was always a hell of a lot more careful than he was.

Natasha was driving a sportscar with black windows. Bucky immediately saw that she was armed and ready for action: all suited up in her widow's weeds with a gun on each hip. She didn't say where they were going and he didn't ask, just settled back in the low leather seat.

"Did you see, they're doing a big exhibition at the museum downtown," Bucky said.

Natasha weaved in and out of traffic. "Yeah, I heard about it. Steve must be proud."

"I don't know, not really. He's got a lot of distance from it, I guess." Bucky looked out the window; she was heading for the tunnel into the city. "Not that Steve was ever one to give a damn what people think of him," he mused. "Which is the good and the bad of him, I guess."

"Yeah, I've been on the receiving end of that," Natasha said. "But it's a good quality for an artist," and Bucky frowned and turned to her and replayed their conversation in his head.

"No, I don't mean that, I mean the other thing," Bucky said, groaning. "The Captain America thing, at the history museum. The other thing's at an art gallery, that's in Chelsea."

"Oh, I thought you meant the art thing," Natasha said, speeding into the tunnel.

"No, the Captain America thing. It's an exhibition: Captain America at Home, it's called."

"Didn't they just do a Captain America exhibition?" Natasha asked.

"Yeah, feels like it," Bucky said, "except this time it's not just Steve, it's Sam and it's me. "

Natasha shot him a quick, perceptive glance. "Oh," she said, "you must hate that," and that was a relief, for her to just say it straight out like that.

"I do!" Bucky exclaimed. "I really fucking hate it, having my face plastered all over a goddamned flyer that's in everyone's mailbox. And putting my parents up on a wall, and— and—" He couldn't get it out to her: Hydra, the Winter Soldier, it wasn't a thing he could talk about. "—other things."

Natasha grimaced. "Yeah, well, most people who are in history are dead, " she said. "You and Steve are kind of unique that way: they got used to treating you as history and now they can't stop themselves. I'll bet the exhibition is more respectful to Sam," she mused, "because he's a real person, a living figure: the current Captain America. But you and Steve are dead men."

"You know, you're not cheering me up any," Bucky said.

"Oh yeah?" Natasha turned into a narrow drive and pulled up in front of a guardhouse: the surrounding area was fenced with barbed wire. "You just wait, I haven't even started not cheering you up," and when the gate lifted Natasha drove onto what seemed like a small military base on the Hudson. Everywhere Bucky looked he saw soldiers, machine guns slung across their chests. They drove toward the water and stopped before a small, idling Quinjet. "You up for a ride?" she asked.

Bucky fixed his goggles into place over his eyes. "Let's go," he said.

It wasn't a long flight, because the Quinjet was fast as hell. Natasha flew north and landed on a snowy crag overlooking the ocean. They outfitted themselves with white parkas, gloves, and hats from the Quinjet's supply closets. And just to be safe, Bucky helped himself to an M249 Paratrooper machine gun before following Natasha down the Quinjet's ramp and into the cold.

"Nice spot for a picnic," Bucky said wryly, which it was: cold, clear and quite beautiful, ice over gray stone and the ocean beyond. Natasha stared out over the choppy gray sea, then turned to him and said, in a surprisingly conversational tone: "Were you awake for much of the '90s?"

He didn't like this line of questioning, not at all, but he knew that she wouldn't be asking him for no reason. "No," Bucky said. "Not really. Those were the years after the Wall fell, so there was enough chaos in the world. They didn't need me to wreak havoc; havoc was everywhere."

Natasha seemed to like that answer. "Right," Natasha said. "Well, that's when I cut my teeth: in the years after the Wall fell. And it was chaos, you're right. The collapse of the USSR, of communism, the planned economy—all of that. Everything was supposed to get better."

He was getting her drift now. "Yeah, but it didn't. The gangsters came out—"

She was nodding solemnly. "Yes. The vory , the black marketeers. Gambling and murder..."

"—because there was a vacuum of power. Then Hydra came back to bring order. And woke me up."

"Right," Natasha said. A chime went off on her chronograph, and she produced a pair of binoculars from the pocket of her parka. She stared out at the sea for a long moment, and then offered them to Bucky, who raised them to his eyes—focused them and then focused again.

There were two ships out there; neither of them official military, Bucky thought. But the smaller craft was heavily armed, and making distinctly hostile moves on the larger ship. He dropped the binoculars and looked at Natasha. She stared back unblinkingly, then relented and shrugged.

"The big boat's Ukrainian arms dealers," Natasha said. "Disruptive technology—smart missiles, anti-tank missiles, that sort of thing. The small boat's owned by a group that calls themselves Victory & Liberation. They're new on the scene: fresh faces based out of Greece but funded by a lot of the usual suspects, rich warlords from all around the Mediterranean."

Bucky raised the binoculars to his eyes again: the smaller craft was approaching the larger one, and fast. "So what's the mission?"

Natasha surprised him by saying, "There is no mission." Bucky lowered the binoculars and glared at her. "We're off the clock, just a couple of civilians."

"So we shouldn't intercept them?" Bucky pressed.

She shrugged. "We could intercept them. If we don't intercept them, the missiles end up in—I don't know, Egypt, maybe, or Tripoli, in the civil war there. If we do intercept them, my guess is that they end up on the other side of the Black Sea: in the Donbass or the Crimea."

Bucky narrowed his eyes: was this the decision she'd been worried about? Tripoli vs. the Donbass, Libya vs. Luhansk? No. That wasn't it, the problem was bigger than that. The problem was the—

"Power vacuum," Bucky muttered, "So what, nobody's paying attention to this?"

"They sure don't seem to be. Nobody seems to be paying attention to anything going on out there in the world. Whole place full of incompetents," Natasha said with surprising vehemence. "For which I blame you, by the way."

Bucky was taken aback. "Me?"

"You. You and him," Natasha said, and she didn't have to say who he was. "You guys tore down SHIELD and HYDRA between you, and I played my part in that, too, I guess. But ever since the Triskelion, there's been a—"

"Power vacuum," Bucky muttered again.

"Yeah," Natasha said grimly. "The three-letter agencies are in an all-out turf war with the S.H.I.E.L.D. regional offices. Meanwhile the gangsters, politicians, and CEOs are doing their business, stealing with both hands and getting away with murder. Leo Cooper, " Natasha said in a voice dripping with scorn. "Lena McHabe. Michael Hodge. Nick Fury's left shoe had more intelligence-savvy than the three of them put together. Meanwhile you guys are just hanging out in Brooklyn, making art and fixing cars—"

"Hey, don't you put this on me. " He was suddenly furious in a way that terrified him, violence tingling in his hands, making his fingers twitch. He hadn't known that lever was still there to be pulled, but there it was, and she'd pulled it. "Or on him —he's served his time, he's given every fucking thing he had and more and I told you, Tasha, years ago : you take this from him and I'll—"

She scoffed, which stopped him the way a straightforward denial wouldn't have. "I just meant that you guys may have started this but you're not the ones who can stop it. You can't because— " She blew out a gust of white air and waved her gloved hand at him: because he was the goddamned Winter Soldier, that was why. "And he can't because he'll only fight in a just war. Which is not exactly the typical situation. This is the typical situation," she said, and gestured out toward the water, the ships. "Stupid and greedy, with every player a bad actor. And with civilians bound to be hurt either way. There are no heroes here. No Steves. However this goes down, there'll be shame and blame. So do you do something? Or do you do nothing? What do you say, Barnes?"

"I don't know," Bucky said. "What do you think?" but she was already reaching into her pocket and pulling out a small remote. She turned toward the sea with her arm stretched out, and Bucky instantly lifted his binoculars to watch. He heard the soft click and saw a flash of orange fire from the smaller craft's hull a moment before he heard the boom of the explosion. And then there were shouts, and people running around the deck. The boat slowed and began to billow black smoke.

"I think these Victory & Liberation guys are assholes," Natasha said.

The call came late in the afternoon, with Steve knee-deep in wet, muddy dog. "Hi, what?" he said, and then, before Bucky could answer, "Believe me, you're glad you're not here, you're not gonna believe what these dogs—Hey, c'mon, guys, no!" George and Gracie were leaping up to play with him, pawing him with muddy feet. "Down! Come on! "

Bucky sounded a million miles away. "Well, there's no point arguing with them."

"I'm not arguing, just I've got to get 'em washed and they're not—Guys, stop it! Now! So I took my sign over to the Arlen Grocery—they loved it, by the way. They were over the moon for it, and they paid cash—and then I figured I'd take these guys out for a walk, but the park was a mud puddle from end to end. Not that they minded," and the phrase pigs-in-shit came to mind as Steve watched the dogs happily cavorting in a blur of tongues and wagging tails. "But I've got to get 'em cleaned up before they destroy the place, and they're not having it—do you remember that time in France, where we all were holed up in that—whatever it was, speakeasy— "

"Brothel," Bucky said.

"—and Dernier went out and came back with that truck and we couldn't get Dum Dum to leave, he was just blind drunk and he wouldn't get in the truck no matter how hard we shoved at him?" Gracie was twitching and going around in circles, her tongue hanging out in a familiar way. "I'm reliving that moment right now," Steve said with a grin. "I can almost hear the chansons. "

"Well, pour me a glass of wine and wait up," Bucky said. "I'm on my way but I'm gonna be late."

"Did you and Natasha have a good conversation?" Steve asked.

"Kind of. We were mostly fighting pirates."

"Pirates?" Steve had to play that over in his mind a couple of times. "Like— Yo ho ho pirates?"

"Yeah, no, we were lied to," Bucky said. "It turns out pirates aren't actually that much fun. Listen, you gotta take a firmer hand with those dogs, pal. They mess with you because they know you're not serious. You've got to feel it and believe it, Steve—in your heart. This behavior is not cute. It is goddamned unacceptable and it will not be tolerated—you got it? Repeat after me."

Steve glared at Gracie and George and said, "This is not cute, you guys! This is unacceptable, and it will not be tolerated—" and George totally ignored him but Gracie flopped down on her belly, filthy paws outstretched and leaving skid marks on the garage floor, and looked up at him with anxious, adoring eyes. Steve groaned and muttered, "Oh, God, you're such a sweet girl."

"What?" Bucky demanded, tinny and far away.

"Nothing," Steve said. "Thanks, Buck, that really helped," and he couldn't stop himself: he bent when Gracie bounded over so she could kiss his face, aware that Shop Cat was watching from where she was sitting on the scarred wood countertop, eyes narrowed in judgement of them all.

Steve eventually got both dogs washed, with the result that he himself ended up wet and filthy, and so he decided to soothe his aching muscles in a hot bath. He debated taking a book, then impulsively grabbed for his tablet so that he could check out the Brooklyn Historical Society's website. He wanted to see what was there so that he wouldn't be ambushed by it—and more importantly, so that Bucky wouldn't be ambushed by it. Steve didn't know how to get Bucky to understand that the stories they told, the shows and the history—you just couldn't take it seriously. It didn't mean anything, not anything real anyway. Captain America had been the hero of a comic book and three movies shot at the Kaufman Studios in Astoria before Steve Rogers had even left the tri-state area. His face had been put on posters and trading cards and he'd been brought out on stage to punch Hitler personally, like he was someone important—but the truth was that he'd been nobody, then: a performing monkey straight out of basic training. You couldn't buy your own press. Later, of course, he'd actually done some things he was proud of. Though, of course—and Steve couldn't suppress his grin—mostly everything he'd ever done had been done against orders. Mostly in violation of direct orders. He sank down happily into the hot bath.

The main BHS website declared that the exhibition, Captain America at Home, would tell "The stories behind the three Captains America: Steve Rogers, James Buchanan Barnes, and Samuel Wilson." Another bit of footage played in a loop at the top: wartime images of him and Bucky and the Howling Commandos; familiar stuff. But the images that played when you clicked on the smaller windows was more upsetting.

"America Discovers that Bucky Barnes is Captain America," read the caption beneath one, and this window featured a series of images of him hauling Bucky out of S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters in New York. It was supposed to be a secure facility, no cameras, but everyone had taken pictures and videos of them on their cell phones, and those photos and videos had been leaked to the press and posted to social media: Twitter, YouTube. Now the Brooklyn Historical Society had gathered them all in a loop—and Christ, Bucky looked awful, so pale and sick. But some good had come out of it, Steve supposed. The loop of film ended with newspaper headlines heralding Bucky's return to life and lauding his service as Captain America. There were pictures from the Thanksgiving parade that year—had they gone to the parade that year? Steve supposed they had missed that year—with people holding up pictures of Bucky's face, and that was something, wasn't it? That was a goddamned wonderful thing.

The other small window featured images of Sam Wilson over the caption,"Sam Wilson flies high as Captain America." There were pictures of a small, grinning boy wearing a school uniform with a crest on the pocket, and then of a radical-looking high-school student in a denim jacket carrying a sign at some sort of demonstration. Then there was Sam Wilson the young Air Force recruit, then in Sam his paratrooper uniform. Candid shots with his buddies and—Steve winced as he recognized Riley, and he wondered if Sam would feel ambushed by all this the way Bucky had. Sam wasn't used to this sort of attention either. The loop closed out with some images of Sam in his Falcon uniform and as Captain America. standing in solidarity with other veterans and flying high in the sky, shield in hand.

Steve poked around to see what else was on the website. He landed on a page called "Podcasts," and podcasts were like radio, right? The Brooklyn Historical Society's podcast was called "Flatbush + Main," and the latest episodes were about the Captain America exhibit.

Steve clicked.

Host 1: Hello and welcome to Flatbush and Main, a podcast from the Brooklyn Historical Society. Where we make history the Brooklyn way. 

Host 2: Today, we continue our look into the lives of the three men who have served our country as Captain America: Steven Rogers, James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes, and Samuel Wilson. The Brooklyn Historical Society's exhibition on Captain America’s long history with the city of Brooklyn, Captain America at Home, runs December 1st through March 30th.

Host 1: Previously we looked at Captain America, the symbol --a figure represented on posters, placards, comic books and playing cards. This week, we turn to the men behind the mask. 

Host 2: Any discussion of Captain America has to start with Steve Rogers... 

Host 1: Right, right. 

Host 2: ... who has inspired millions of people around the globe. Born July 4, 1918, Rogers was a sickly youth. He was in and out of hospitals throughout his younger years fighting conditions ranging from scarlet fever to rheumatic fever to high blood pressure to asthma and a number of other chronic conditions. 

Host 1: Yikes, not fun!

Host 2: No, let's hear it for antibiotics and vaccines! 

Host 1: Yeah.

Host 2: Anyway, his father, Private Joseph Rogers, died in one of the German Spring Offensives during World War I, three months before his son was born. Steve Rogers was raised by his mother, Sarah, who worked as a nurse in a tuberculosis ward. She herself tragically contracted and succumbed to the disease in 1938, leaving Steve Rogers entirely alone. 

Host 1: We don’t have a record of when Steve Rogers met his childhood best friend, Bucky Barnes, but following his mother’s death the two moved into an apartment just a stone’s throw away from our studio here in downtown Brooklyn.

Host 2: Cool!

Host 1: In fact, a reproduction of the apartment they shared forms a central part of the Captain America at Home exhibit. It’s been modelled from photographs and blueprints from the archives of the Brooklyn Historical Society and the Tenement Museum, since the actual building was knocked down in the early fifties. 

Host 2: Yes, and Brooklyn in the 1930s was a VERY different place than it is today. Where there are Starbucks and yellow cabs now, there would have been fruit vendors, knife sharpeners, and, still, horse drawn carts. The streetcars would be screeching along their tracks and ringing their bells. 

Host 1: James Buchanan Barnes was born in 1917 and was the oldest child of four, which, you know... We don’t exactly know how Barnes and Rogers met, aside from the fact that it happened in 1926, but as an eldest sibling myself, I could see how he might have taken Rogers under his wing. 

Host 2: Oh, yeah. The oldest kids tend to sort of adopt those around them. 

Host 1: The “mom” friend! *laughs*

Host 2: Yeah, exactly! *laughs*

Host 1: But anyway, we do know that they grew up together, attended school together, and were virtually inseparable during that time. The loss of Sarah Rogers brought them even closer. 

Host 2: The two shared only a handful of quiet years together until the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor swept the nation formally into World War II. Barnes enlisted in the army shortly thereafter and was promptly sent to Camp McCoy in Wisconsin for training. Meanwhile, Rogers did the same. Or attempted to. His ongoing health issues earned him a “4F” rating from the medical board. But that didn’t stop him!

Host 1: No! *laughs*

Host 2: He proceeded to re-apply at somewhere between 6 and 12 other locations that we know of under different names over the next two years. 

Host 1: Mhm. His reasons for doing so are somewhat obscured. Whether it was out of patriotism, a desire to combat the rise of fascism, a hope of reconnecting with Barnes, or a combination of all of these things is unknown. Not many historical figures rise from the grave to settle arguments among historians and scholars, but even after his return in 2011 Rogers was notoriously tight lipped with the media and press on the subject of his own history. 

Host 2: In 1943 he attended the World Exposition of Tomorrow in Queens, where we like to think he might have stopped by the Stark Expo to see Howard Stark’s flying car!

Host 1: *laughs* 

Host 2: But we do know that there was an army recruitment center there, and Rogers decided to try his luck one more time. In a twist of fate, he met Dr. Abraham Erskine of the Strategic Scientific Reserve. Erskine was the scientific lead on an experimental program codenamed Project Rebirth, and a German refugee. He recruited Rogers into the program. Rogers jumped at this chance to serve, and while his friend Barnes shipped out to the front, Rogers was sent to Camp Lehigh in New Jersey, where he first met Agent Peggy Carter, Colonel Chester Phillips, and Howard Stark, all of whom would play starring roles in the story of Captain America. 

Host 1: While the other candidates for Project Rebirth far surpassed him in terms of physical prowess, Rogers somehow stood out from the crowd. Something about him caught the attention of his superiors, who shocked his cohort by selecting him for the dangerous and risky procedure that would miraculously transform him into Captain America. 

Host 2: But Rogers didn’t go straight from Project Rebirth to the front. At first, the military didn’t know what to do with him! Dr. Erskine was killed by a German spy moments after Rogers’s transformation, taking the knowledge of how to create super soldier serum with him. So there went all the big plans to form a whole unit of super soldiers. The army was like, what do we do with this one guy? He's a great guy! - but still!

Host 1: *laughs* 

Host 1: Yeah, um. Their go-to was, of course, propaganda. They intended to boost the war effort by touring Captain America around the United States, selling war bonds to the public. Poor Cap was forced to star in a touring show with a whole bunch of chorus girls. This is also where that old classic, The Star Spangled Man With A Plan, originates. 

Host 2: No, no, do not! I will get it stuck in my head again! 

Host 1: Okay, okay! *laughs*

Host 2: We’ve already talked about Captain America the icon at length in our previous podcast, so we aren’t going to go too in depth on his time during the war. We know that he reunited with Barnes, formed the Howling Commandos, and shifted his role from USO star to special operations commander, targeting Hydra (the Nazi science division). Not long after the loss of his friend Barnes in 1945, Steve Rogers famously sacrificed himself to save New York by crashing the Hydra plane he was navigating into the frigid waters of the Atlantic. The plane and his body were thought to be lost until 2011, when they were re-discovered by a Stark Industries scientific vessel. And to everyone’s surprise: he survived! 

Host 1: Yeah, thanks to the super serum. I don't think even he expected that!

Host 2: In 2011 Rogers joined SHIELD and the Avengers, famously assisting in the Battle of New York. In 2014, while living in Washington D.C., he met and befriended a VA counselor who turned out to be Senior Airman Sam Wilson. He and Wilson worked together to root Hydra out of SHIELD in 2014. But in 2015, Rogers stepped back from public life, though Captain America did not. Unbeknownst to anyone, Captain Rogers had quietly handed the shield over to his childhood friend and second in command, James Buchanan Barnes. Who, it turned out, also received a form of the super serum and so has also survived to this day.

Host 1: Not a lot of people saw that one coming. 

Host 2: *laughs* No! 

Host 1: I remember where I was then the news reports came out that Bucky Barnes was alive. Do you remember?

Host 2: Oh, I totally remember. I thought I had to be hearing things. I thought maybe I was losing it.

Host 1: *also laughs* I know just what you mean. So, okay, let’s talk some more about Bucky Barnes. As we mentioned James Buchanan Barnes was born right here in Brooklyn on March 10, 1917 to parents George and Pamela Barnes. He grew up with three younger siblings, Eleanora, or "Ellie"… 

[Fade Out]

By the time Natasha pulled up outside of Coney Island Design and Construction, it was dark, though the window upstairs was a glowing rectangle of light: Steve was still up.

Bucky turned to Natasha, who was sitting in the driver's seat, gloved hands tight on the wheel. "How many moves away are you?" he asked her.

She considered this. "Two, maybe, from the top," she said. "If I do it."

"You shouldn't do it," Bucky said. "This is a fucking nightmare and you know it."

"I do know it," Natasha said. "But someone's got to do it. Someone's going to do it... "

"It doesn't have to be you," Bucky said.

"Hicks isn't going to last much longer: he's a fool and the career agents thought that was fine for a while, but now it's stopped being fine. Behind him is Garcia," and Natasha was mostly talking to herself now, thinking it through, "who's not dumb but he's got no field experience—he knows everything from books, he's never done tactical decision-making, and so he's going to crack under the pressure. Alison Murdoch's been floated, and Charleston Dunne might be in the mix—" Charleston Dunne? Bucky couldn't stop himself from making a small sound of disgust. That spineless wonder had been the UK envoy to Leningrad back in the day, and he'd made nice with the nastiest elements of the KGB, going out for long lunches and generally just jollying along with the apparatchiks while they— Natasha shot a sharp glance at him. "Right, this is what I'm saying," she said. "Do you want Charleston Dunne to be in charge of S.H.I.E.L.D. or what?"

"I wouldn't want Charleston Dunne to be in charge of my goddamned local laundromat," Bucky said.

"Right, that's the point: it gets harder when you actually look at the people in the room."

"Got it. The people in the room are crap." Bucky reached for the door handle: there was a glass of wine upstairs, one could only hope. "You still shouldn't do it," he said and got out of the car.

He'd meant it to be his parting shot, but Natasha was shouting across the car to him: "Alison Murdoch, Barnes! Charleston Dunne—" Bucky cut the words off by slamming the heavy car door, then stepped back and threw his arms up: Enough! Goodbye! The sportscar's engine revved, low and threatening, and then the car slid away from the curb and headed down Coney Island Avenue.

Bucky took a step out into the dark street and yelled after her, "You shouldn't do it!" He'd thought for sure that this would give him the last word, and it sort of did: the black car screeched to a halt and its interior light came on just long enough for Bucky to see Natasha raise her hand to give him the finger.

Bucky unlocked the metal door to the garage and stepped inside. Steve had left a light on for him down here, and Bucky took a quick look around and saw that the place hadn't been destroyed by the dogs, which was something: in fact, the concrete floor was spotless. He made a soft sound with his tongue and was immediately answered by a soft meow from the shadows. A moment later, the black streak of Shop Cat sprang out of nowhere and leapt onto the wooden counter. She was purring loudly, and so he went over and scritched her neck. The little black cat scrambled up the arm of his leather jacket and tried to perch on his shoulder. Grinning, Bucky pulled her down but held her in his arms and stroked her.

"That kind of day, huh? Tell me about it," Bucky said, and took the cat upstairs with him to the apartment. Once in the living room, he realized he was starving and made a bee-line for the frigidaire, where he found some leftover cold chicken and poured himself a glass of milk. He was eating a drumstick under Shop Cat's envious eye when he realized that the light in the bathroom was on, and wandered over to investigate, still chewing: he had assumed Steve was in bed, reading or something.

Steve wasn't in bed: Steve was sprawled back in the tub, grinning and listening to—something, a radio on somewhere. Steve's grin widened as he saw Bucky. "Hey, you're back: I really must have lost track of time," he said, and sloshed upright in the bathwater. "Bucky, you've got to listen to this. I've been listening to the most amazing thing," and then Steve was hauling himself up and staggering, naked and dripping, out of the bath, water running down his chest and heavy thighs.

Bucky stared at him, the chicken leg forgotten. "Well, my day just got a thousand times better," he said.

Steve bent down to pick up—what was that, an iPad? An iPad—from the closed lid of the toilet. "Seriously, you've got to listen to this broadcast," Steve said again. "It'll make you feel so much better about the Captain America exhibit. It's not that it's wrong, it's that it's totally not right. It's not just backward: it's more like they're looking through the wrong end of a long telescope. What they see is small and far away and—they have no idea who we are at all, Buck. None, zilch, zero. I'm telling you—" and it was hard to pay attention to what Steve was telling him, because Steve's chest was glistening and his damp pubic hair and cock were dripping water onto the bathmat. Steve needed a towel, and Bucky had absolutely no intention of giving him one, "—if they passed us in the street, they wouldn't know us to look at us. They think I was a good soldier and a leader of men, Buck. They think the U.S. Army loved me. And they know you were always there to look out for me, Buck. They've grasped that essential point of our relationship. They've figured out...that you were kind of like a second mom to me," and Bucky jerked up from staring at Steve's dick to look at his face, because— was he serious? Steve crossed his arms over his wet naked chest and nodded earnestly. "Yeah," he assured Bucky. "Because you were the oldest, you took care of all of us kids: Becca and Ellie and Grace and me. I was, you know, practically one of the girls as far as you were concerned. They called you my 'mom friend,' and Steve looked like he was on the verge of laughing his head off, but Bucky slid the plate of chicken onto the vanity and reached out to cup Steve's balls, and Steve didn't laugh. Instead he sucked in a breath as Bucky rolled them and then squeezed gently, and Bucky had the almost irresistible urge to stuff them into his mouth. Instead, he let his hand slide up to grasp Steve's now-jutting cock and used it to tug Steve close.

"Well," Bucky said, and Steve was rock hard in his hand, and gasping for air like the asthmatic he had once been, "they sure were wrong about that."

He took Steve to bed and then he took him apart, slowly, lying across him.  He took his time, devoting himself to it a way he'd been embarrassed to do back in the '30s. Back then, he'd felt compelled to pretend that it was half a joke, this—not motivated by his deepest desires and  profoundest feelings; lust, love. Steve hadn't ever believed him, though. Steve had saved him from himself by resolutely ignoring his bullshit and never once calling him on it: never calling him frightened, or weak, or a coward, although he was all three. Steve had saved him by jumping down into this trench right along with him, just as he'd followed him into war and rescued him even though it meant going all the way into the teeth of the fucking Nazis. Steve had saved him by being queer and totally unembarrassed about it, in that totally pigheaded way Steve had about things sometimes. Steve had been sincere enough about their love affair for the both of them. 

And now, finally, he could return sincerity for sincerity, love Steve as hard as he could, which was only a fraction of what Steve deserved.  He lipped and sucked and teased, sliding his tongue up the ridge underneath Steve's cock and grinning against his belly. He loved the warmth, so fierce and the way it throbbed, strained against itself with wanting. He wanted to press his mouth down so bad, wanted to take the whole length of it inside his mouth and fill himself up with it, but instead he hummed around Steve's cock and felt it jerk in response. Christ, he loved that, and he swirled his tongue around Steve's cock, stroking Steve's heavy thighs with his palms and sometimes ducking his head down to swirl his tongue and press in with his fingers, building up a kind of rhythm that he could feel was making Steve go crazy. He was wild for it. He was grinding himself in the same rhythm, all hands and cock and mouth, and Steve sobbed and knotted his fingers in Bucky's hair—and then Bucky surged up into his arms, feeling the wet stripe of Steve's cock dragging along his belly.  He kissed Steve, then blindly slid his hands down Steve's sides, to his thighs—dragging his knees up and driving inside of him. 

They panted into each other's mouths, stifling each other's moans with kisses as Bucky fucked into him, in and out of him, rocking his hips and pushing Steve's cock hard against his belly. Sweat broke out on his forehead near the hairline, and trickled, tickling, down the small of his back. He sucked for air between his gritted teeth and drove down, and was dragged down by his hair for kisses, Steve's tongue in his mouth, Steve's beard soft against his lips, cheeks, jaw. 

He was close, he was so —and beneath him, Steve's whole body trembled and seemed to rise off the bed as he moaned and went over, muscles tightening, splashing wetness between them. Christ, he was beautiful, and the air smelled faintly salty now, like sex, like spunk. Bucky's hips jerked uncontrollably and sent him tumbling over, too, everything liquifying and releasing. 

"I love you," Bucky blurted between one gasp and the next, and then, even more stupidly, "still," as if that weren't obvious. But Steve only smiled against his mouth and stroked his hair tenderly even as he came, even as they both came, shuddering and clutching at each other.

Steve drifted awake in the dark to the sound of the radiator banging…the heat had come on. A moment later, he realized that Bucky was awake too, still half sprawled on top of him and lazily nuzzling and sucking at his neck and shoulder.  Steve flexed and stretched in their warm bed, feeling twinges in places you weren't supposed to feel twinges, but he didn't care. Bucky gave him a sharp little love bite, and Steve nudged him and said, "Quit it, you're gonna leave a mark."

Bucky's voice floated back to him in the darkness, "Mm-hmm,"   and so Steve flipped them over, rolling them so that Bucky was on his back and Steve could use him as a pillow for a while.  He slung a leg across Bucky's thighs, rested his head on Bucky's chest, and settled down happily. 

#

The sound of the radiator felt like winter, felt like Christmas coming.  "Maybe you want to put up lights tomorrow?" Steve murmured. "Everyone's putting up lights. We could go get a tree."

Bucky's voice came back sleepy and faintly amused.  "Sure, Steve. Whatever you want." 

#

Steve opened his eyes and said, "DId you guys really fight pirates?" 

Bucky let out a soft, incoherent sound and muttered, "...weren't my pirates, they were Natasha's pirates."

"Why was Natasha fighting pirates?" Steve asked.

"I don't know," Bucky said, but then a moment later he sighed into the dark and said, "She wants to take over the free world or something."

"Well, I'd vote for her," Steve said. He'd meant it to be funny, but it seemed to irritate Bucky, who shoved him off on the pretext of repositioning and plumping his pillows. 

"Yeah, see, that's why she's not asking you. You and she are just the same: egotists, both of you.  She's another one who thinks she can save the whole world. Me, I know I can't handle the world," Bucky said, and shoved a folded up pillow behind his head. "I can't even handle you."

Steve lay back and stared up at the shadowed ceiling.  "Well, I am challenging," he admitted.

#

 "...But it's funny, though," Steve said, after a while.  "I mean, I love Natasha, and I think we have a lot in common, more than you'd think just by looking at us, but in this?—well,  I would have said she's like you, Buck.  She thinks she's got stuff to atone for," Steve said softly, and was it his imagination, or was Bucky tensing in the bed, "and nothing she does will ever be enough."

Bucky's voice was low and rough, "You can just shut up any second now," but when Steve touched his arm in the darkness and curled his hand around it, Bucky didn't shake him off.

"Okay," Steve said.

# 

"...but she's wrong, though.  Natasha's done more good for the world than—"

"Any second now." 

"Okay," Steve said.

The next morning, they splurged and had breakfast out. A luncheonette had opened a couple of blocks from them, meaning to be ironically old, Steve thought, or what was the word—oh yeah, retro. But retro or not, Steve liked the place. They'd somehow managed to capture something of the coffeeshops and lunchrooms he and Bucky used to frequent back in the day: tin ceiling, black and white checkerboard floor, enormous cash register. Good details, though of course—

"Vinyl signs," Steve muttered to Buck, tsking. 

To his surprise, a young man with an unkempt beard said, "Pardon me, dude, but what did you say?"

Steve was taken aback.  "Nothing, sorry," he said, and Bucky rolled his eyes and dunked a piece of coffee cake into his coffee. 

"No, I want to—did you say something about the signs?" the guy pressed.

"Well." Steve shot a look at Bucky, who was no help whatsoever. "Yeah. Just. They're wrong for the, uh… you know, the period you're going for. Like those over there…"  Steve pointed to the signs above the formica-topped counter: they said things like "Good Eats", and "Try Our Delicious Sandwiches".  "They're printed," Steve said. "They ought to be hand-lettered. It wants to seem painted, but you can tell it's a font—the alphabet's too regular, and the quote marks are wrong, they're too straight. They ought to be smaller, and…" Steve drew a pair of curved quotation marks in the air with his fingers. "I mean, don't get me wrong, that font's sort of Deco, but even painted it's too much for a lunchroom like this. You could just do a nice simple stroke Roman, full ovals, lots of lowercase, maybe a slightly jagged alignment. Warm and friendly: come eat."

"Huh, yeah," the guy mused, he was staring at the wall, like he was picturing signs like the ones Steve was describing. "Yeah, I can see what you're—" He shot an admiring glance at Steve and said, "Man, you're hard core. I thought I was a font nerd, but you take the cake." 

Now Bucky looked up. "Well, it's his business. He was trained for it."

"Cool, cool," the bearded guy said. "You got a card or something?" and of course, Steve didn't, but Bucky drew a Coney Island Design & Construction card out of his shirt pocket and handed it over. "Cool, cool," the guy said again, "you guys are right around the block. Maybe I'll hire you to make something: a big piece, a whole menu-board. 'Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, & Ice Cream.'"

"Cool, cool," Steve said with a straight face.

They hadn't been planning on getting their Christmas tree quite so early in the day, but after breakfast they walked down to the Vitelli Lumberyard on MacDonald Avenue to price some mouldings, and found that that they were also selling trees out in front. There were lots of trees propped against the chain link fence: big ones, little ones, firs and pines and spruces.  

Steve saw a small, perfectly-proportioned fir. "We should just get a little one this year," he said.

Bucky made a face. "What's the point of that? I don't see the point of that," he said, and wandered to the other end, where the bigger trees were. Steve smiled and trailed after him, passing a woman who was standing there with a little girl in a stroller and small boy of about four who was excitedly dancing from tree to tree. The lady seemed to be haggling with Nicky Vitelli, who'd put on a red hat and scarf for the occasion. Nicky gave Steve a knowing nod and a wave as he passed; he and Bucky were pretty much regulars at the lumberyard.  

Steve had assumed that the lady was haggling over the price of the tree—which he respected; he couldn't believe people bought anything without haggling—but then he heard Nicky say, "I'm sorry, I can't, I'm shorthanded. Tomorrow, maybe, I could deliver it, if my brother shows up..." 

The little boy, overhearing this, immediately began to chant, "Tree, tree, tree, tree, tree..."  and the woman, his mother presumably, winced like she was was bracing for a massive headache.  

Still, she managed a bright and cheerful expression. "Tomorrow," she told the little boy.  "We'll pick out our tree now and we'll get it tomorrow. Meanwhile we'll go home and have hot chocolate and look for all our decorations, what do you say?" but the little boy wasn't having it, and moaned with what seemed like excruciating disappointment. "But you said we'd get one. Mommy, you said..." and Steve only debated with himself for half a second before stepping in.

"Hey, if you need someone to carry your tree home, I don't mind," and Steve didn't know who looked more relieved, the lady or Nicky Vitelli. Nicky immediately jumped in with, "Steve, would you? You'd do me a solid: Billy's out today and half my guys didn't show up," just as the woman said, "Oh, that would be great—I'm not far, just there's no way I can get it home by myself," and Steve said, looking from one to the other of them, "Really, it's no problem. Just give me one sec," and he went over to tell Bucky to pick out a tree and he'd be back in ten minutes.

Steve lifted the tree - it was enormous, Bucky would approve - and followed the lady, who was pushing her stroller down the street at a brisk pace. The little boy kept running between her and the tree, as if he couldn't believe his luck, and Steve smiled and tried to keep him in sight; the tree wasn't heavy but it was awkward to carry, and he didn't want to trip over the boy or run into him or anything. So he was distracted, his attention divided—and so he stopped short, shocked, when he suddenly looked up and saw Bucky standing in front of him with a gun.

"Oh boy," Steve said, staring; the ad was enormous, quite a lot taller than he was. His own face was turned away and half-hidden by his old army helmet, but there was Bucky, larger than life and looking a lot like the guy he'd left behind him at the lumberyard. "Oh, boy," Steve said again.

"Hey, mister, are you coming? Are you coming, mister?" the little boy shouted, and so Steve went.

When Steve came back to the lumberyard, he was fighting a grin. "Hey, look, she gave me ten bucks!" 

"Oh yeah?" Bucky said, and Steve waved the ten dollar bill at him; he seemed delighted. "Well, if that makes you happy," Bucky said, "just wait till you hear what your paintings are selling for at the Keller." 

Steve seemed taken aback. "Are they selling?" he asked.

"As far as I know they all sold before the show even opened. And not even to Stark—to other people, real people."

Steve frowned at this for a second, and then said, slowly, "Well, that's not real money, Buck. That's Monopoly money. That's S.H.I. E.L.D. money—I mean, you should hear the crazy things they said to me when I came back from the war. They took me to a cabin somewhere upstate and showed me a bank account and told me—crazy things, I can't even. This here, though, this is real money," Steve said, and tucked it into the pocket of his jacket. "Meanwhile, listen," Steve said, but then he stopped and didn't say anything. 

Bucky looked at him, waiting patiently. "What is it?" he said finally, raising his eyebrow. 

"I, um. Hm," Steve said, and then he was taking off his gold, wire-rimmed glasses and handing them over to Bucky. "Here, put these on. I want to see how you look in them."

"What for?" Bucky said. "They don't suit me."

"C'mon, just do it, willya?" Steve pleaded. "Indulge me," and so Bucky sighed and put the glasses on. Steve tilted his head to one side consideringly, and Bucky crossed his arms over his chest.

"You want to tell me what this is about?" Bucky demanded.

Steve blew out a breath. "Not really, but... There's a giant picture of us down by the bus stop. From the exhibition. You and me, larger than life," and somehow Bucky managed not to laugh.

"Uh-huh," Bucky said, dead serious. "You don't say," and then he raised his gloved hand and pointed into the street behind Steve, at the B67 bus passing by: Captain America at Home.

"Oh, geez," Steve said, and covered his face.

"Pal, they're everywhere," Bucky said. "They've been everywhere—and what the hell am I supposed to do about it, go ape? Smash the glass and start doing vandalism? I keep going on about Chicago but nobody's listening to me. Seriously, it's a nice town, Steve. It's cold, but you know, it's not Siberia cold: a person could live there is what I'm saying," and then Nicky Vitelli was coming over and saying, "Steve, thanks, you really saved my bacon with that lady. Is that the tree you guys want? Cause it's on the house, gratis—a little token of my appreciation."

Steve didn't seem like he was in any mood to answer, so Bucky said, "Aw, that's swell, Nicky, thanks. Yeah, we'll take this one," and together he and Steve hefted the tree between them and hauled it back to the garage on Coney Island Avenue.

They got the tree up the steps and into the apartment, and then Steve telephoned Sam while Bucky wrestled the tree into its stand: Bucky could sometimes get very meticulous about this, and it was best to get out of the way.

"Hey, so have you seen this thing," Steve asked Sam while keeping his eye on Bucky, who was somewhere down there under the enormous fir tree, muttering and cursing, "this exhibition they're doing, with all the posters? Bucky and me, there's a picture of us at the bus stop, and I saw a billboard with you on it, you were flying and—well, I hope you don't feel they're invading your privacy."

Sam laughed. "Are you kidding? I've been telling everyone I know! — I'm in a museum. There. Is. A. Picture. Of me. On a billboard. Flying over the Bronx in Captain America's uniform and carrying Captain America's shield— because I'm Captain America now! Me! Hell, Steve, I'm posting on Facebook, Instagram, I'm calling all my relatives, telling everyone at my high school reunion—"

Bucky was still wrestling with the tree. Steve looked over at him and said, "Sam's telling everyone at his high school reunion."

Bucky shot him a swift, narrow glare. "Tell him my high school reunion's in Greenwood Cemetery."

On the phone, Sam laughed out loud. "Man, is he being cheerful again? How I do miss his high spirits. How's Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky doing, anyway? Am I going to see him at Tony's party? You guys are coming, right?"

Steve wasn't sure what he was talking about. "I don't know," he said cautiously. "I don't think we got an invitation." 

"Uh, I'm sure you got an invitation, Steve; go down and check your mailbox," Sam said. "And you know, maybe step back a little when you open it. Brace yourself, and don't be holding any hot liquids, coffee or nothing," and Steve appreciated the wisdom of this advice when he went down to the mailbox. There, among the usual bills, invoices, catalogs, and junk, were two items of interest: a flyer inviting him to a public viewing of his own work, and an envelope that looked like it was made of solid gold. It was addressed to Messrs. Grant and Buchanan, and Steve was about to open it at arm's length, when Bucky stopped him and took the envelope in his metal hand. 

It opened with a cascade of what looked like sparks— pop! pop! pop! — and Bucky dropped the envelope onto the million dollar table just a second before the gold and red hologram of Tony Stark wearing a Santa hat appeared. Bucky rolled his eyes. 

"Ho ho ho! Seasons Greetings, Happy Hanukhah, Merry Christmas, Happy Birthday and all that jazz," Holographic Tony said, and then: "After last year I thought there was a decent chance that this invite might end up in the North Pole, but I took a chance. You and your better half are hereby invited to an intimate little Superheroes Only gathering at my place Christmas Eve to watch my little girl be spoiled beyond imagination. And if you don't come, I will hate you forever."

"Well, that's subtle," Bucky said, rubbing his head.

Steve blew out a laugh. "You think he wants us to come? I'm not sure, he wasn't clear." 

"Well, it's his little girl's first Christmas. We've got to show up, I think," and then Bucky's eye caught the flyer from the Keller. "And this—I think it's nice that they're doing this. We should go to this."

"I wouldn't be caught dead at that," Steve said. 

"It's open to the public, we're the public," Bucky pointed out. "We wouldn't be special. And it'll probably be crowded: we could take a look around without drawing a lot of attention."

"Tell you what," Steve said. "I'll do that if you come with me to the Historical Society."

"Are you out of your mind?" Bucky demanded.

"Yeah, probably," Steve said. "But I want to see what they did, hear what story they're telling," and then he remembered the larger-than-life-sized poster at the bus stop and added, "Just—you should put on a hat and glasses so you don't get recognized standing next to the exhibits."

"Sure, I'll put on a greasepaint mustache like Groucho Marx," Bucky said, and then: "Jesus Christ, Steve: if we get any better at being fugitives, we're going to have to hire a social secretary and a press agent." 

Steve groaned, because that was only too true. "Okay, look," he said. "Let's put some lights on the tree, and then get a pizza and lie on the sofa and watch a movie. Something good: a real movie in black and white. We'll see what's on the Turner network," but what was on the Turner network that evening was Captain America & The Sentinels of Liberty, a movie Steve himself had made in 1943.

"Seriously," Bucky said, scooping another handful of popcorn from the bowl, "it's not that bad."

"What are you talking about?" Steve's voice was a little muffled, he was lying across the sofa with his head in Bucky's lap and a blanket pulled up over him, and sometimes over his head when there were scenes he just couldn't take.  "It's terrible. And I'm terrible in it. I can't act—"

"Okay, but to be fair, nobody in this picture can act. Besides, in your case, what's to act?  You're playing Captain America and you actually are Captain America: whatever you do is right by default." 

"Yeah, that's nice of you to say," Steve muttered, "but—" 

"Shh, shh, you're on again," Bucky said, and this was the scene where Captain America was coming to ask the pretty blonde daughter of the guy who owned the local theatre (pronounced to rhyme with he ate her) if she'd help him convince her daddy to let them hold their big fundraising show in that venue. Captain America, who was visibly struggling not to look at the camera, said, in a loud, unnatural voice, "I know it's a lot to ask, miss, but we're all being asked to make sacrifices. Everyone's donating their time for the war effort - the girls, the band, all the stars who are coming out here to perform. Even the popcorn's being donated and the butter, too—"

"Not the butter, too!" Bucky exclaimed. Steve disappeared under the blanket.  

"—even with all the shortages," Captain America finished, and Bucky batted at Steve's blanket-covered head and said, "Steve, Steve, does the show go on? Do the stars turn up?  You gotta tell me how it turns out, Steve, I can't take the suspense!" 

Somewhere under the blanket, Steve was laughing or maybe sobbing and also muttering, "I fucking hate you so much, you are such a jerk," and then he was pulling the blanket down and saying, "You know what? I have an ego of steel, Barnes: I am goddamned unembarrassable. I have survived this, I have survived the USO, I have survived being a balloon - you think you're going to razz me? This is amateur hour, pal. I have been humiliated by professionals.  Tomorrow, we'll go down to the Brooklyn Historical Society where ten bucks says my medical records will be projected on the wall so that random people can pity me for having had asthma, rheumatic fever, and—oh, hey, wait, this is actually the good part of the movie," Steve said and abruptly sat up.  "They got some real talent to perform in the show part of the movie, the fake show," and just then the Andrews Sisters were announced to tremendous applause. They all crowded around Captain America and kissed his cheek (leaving lipstick marks) before going out onto the stage and arraying themselves in front of the big square silver microphone to sing.

"Wow, you got mauled," Bucky said admiringly.  "Your movie girlfriend is going to be jealous. I'm kind of jealous myself."

"Yeah, they were really nice, the Andrews Sisters. A lot of the show people were nice—and actually, a lot of them were, you know, like us," Steve said, and gave Bucky a knowing look.

"Genetically-enhanced super-soldiers?" Bucky deadpanned.

"Yeah, that's just what I mean. It's a little known fact, actually, but Maxene Andrews was the true first recipient of the Super Serum.  I mean, sure, she could sing harmony, but she also had a right hook that would knock your fucking block off.  Also, I think she was a lesbian," Steve said.

"Oh yeah?" Bucky asked, with some interest. "How could you tell?"

"You could just tell," Steve said.  "She had a girl, on her arm, that she was sort of with—"

"Maybe it was her mother," Bucky said.

"It wasn't her mother," Steve said, and sank back against him shoulder to shoulder to watch the rest of the movie. It featured a terrific performance by Betty Hutton, who was charming and hilarious, and even Captain America's final, turgid, speech couldn't ruin the movie after that.

Bucky was about to turn the TV off when they cut to the Turner Classics host guy, who was standing there holding a Captain America shield.  "We hope you've enjoyed tonight's encore presentation of Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty.  We'll be marathoning Captain America movies throughout this holiday season in conjunction with the exhibition Captain America at Home, now running at the Brooklyn Historical Society."

"Do tell," Bucky said, and Steve let out a groan like he was dying.

"Coming up next, the Valor of Captain America.  Made in 1946, it stars Guy Madison as Steve Rogers and Gene Tierney as Betty Carver, the fictional stand in for Steve Rogers' real life love Peggy Carter, SSR founder and Director of S.H.I.E.L.D….."

"Turn it off," Steve moaned.  "Please, I'm begging you, have a heart…"

"Well, I don't knowwwww," Bucky said, pretending to consider. "I haven't seen this one either…."

"Bucky, I'm going to murder you right here and then the historians are going to have to rewrite history all over again to account for our movie-related murder-suicide," Steve said, and Bucky grinned and took pity on him and turned the television off, and then gave him a kiss in the flickering green-red lights of their Christmas tree.

The Brooklyn Historical Society building was beautiful, even in their day: they must have walked past it a thousand times. Now there were banners on both the Pierrepont and Clinton Street sides: CAPTAIN AMERICA AT HOME. They both of them wore hats and glasses, and they'd gone at what they'd hoped was an off time (after lunch, during school hours), but there were still a surprising number of people. They got on line and paid for admission like everyone else, and were handed guides to the exhibition, which extended onto all four of the museum's floors. 

Bucky hesitated before they turned into the first room, and Steve put a hand on his arm. "Look," Steve said, "you've just got to pretend like it's a fictional character, and not you."

"Yeah I don't think I can do that," Bucky said, low and all in a rush; it was like he couldn't get enough air into his lungs. "You gotta understand: the last time I was at one of these things, I was still half out of my mind and trying to remember what was what. And the stuff on the walls…it was important to me. It was real. The last time I was here— me, I was the fiction." 

Something changed, softened in Steve's face. "We should go," he said. "Come on, Buck, let's get out of—"

But Bucky just shook his head. "We're here now. You want to see it, and I want to see it, too."

"Pal, we don't have to see it, we lived it, we—"

"It's okay, Steve. Really. C'mon," and they turned the corner into the exhibition's first room.

It was like stepping into a box full of light. All the walls were screens. The wall to their left was playing footage of Bucky, the wall on the right was showing footage of Sam Wilson, and on the screen straight ahead—there was Steve. There were also spotlit glass cases all around: the one at the center featured the prop shield that Steve had carried with him into Austria. Bucky remembered that shield.

Steve drifted off to peer into a case full of what looked like—small yellow pieces of paper? Bucky went closer, and Steve turned, stifling a grin. "It's amazing what people will save," he said, and Bucky slid past him to look. It looked like a handwritten script, with dialogue as terrible as the dialogue in Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty: "We all know this isn't about having a swell afternoon. This is about winning the war." That was some kind of candor, at least.

"I couldn't remember my lines," Steve murmured, smiling. "So I taped 'em to my shield."

"To be fair, they're pretty forgettable. It ain't exactly Hamlet," Bucky said.

Together they moved on: past the tattered flag from Camp Lehigh, past some Captain America comics and trading cards, past one of Steve's wartime sketchbooks, sitting open on a velvet pillow.

As Steve had surmised, they had copies of all of his 4-F'ed enlistment applications as well as his medical records: scarlet fever, rheumatic fever, sinusitis, chronic colds, palpitations, nervous trouble. Bucky could remember when "nervous trouble" was more or less understood as a euphemism for homosexuality, though nobody ever said it straight out. But the little museum card next to the forms didn't make any mention of that, which was just as well, really.

They moved into the next room, which was dedicated more broadly to the war years and the Howling Commandos. Bucky moved absently from exhibit to exhibit—familiar stuff, this, though it was always good to see the guys—their friends. God, but they'd lucked out with those guys.

"See," Bucky said when they'd gone through that room, "this is where they could actually have said something meaningful, which was that you were the first one to have the bright idea of assembling a strike team to go behind enemy lines and cause mayhem—which, they give the other guy, the British guy, credit for that. What was his name: Sterling, Stevens—"

"Stirling, David Stirling," Steve said. 

"Right of the whatchamacallit, the SAS—whereas in fact of course was you who had the bright idea of assembling your own private army straight out of a POW camp. You went and recruited a bunch of guys, none of whom had any business being in the army in the first place, to disobey orders all across Europe—I mean, seriously, have you ever obeyed an order? Like even one? 

"There must have been one," Steve said, frowning. "I mean, I went on missions and…"

"You did every mission your own goddamned way—"

"They call that improvising," Steve said, "You've got to improvise a lot when you're behind enemy lines—"

"Okay, sure, but then the way this thing oughta go is, like," and Bucky switched into his best announcer voice, "Steven Grant Rogers, who never once obeyed an order in his life, must of course be given credit for inventing the strike team, a concept that revolutionized war in the 20th century. Previous to Rogers, war had been conducted in an organized fashion, with two armies showing up at an appointed place and time to blow each other to bits. Rogers, on the other hand, took a bunch of neer-do-wells out of a prisoner of war camp and took them on missions behind enemy lines to generally cause mayhem in contradistinction to 200 years of military practice—"

"Nice use of contradistinction in a sentence," Steve said, rolling his eyes.

"—thereby bringing about the current military environment in which so-called special forces from around the nation carry out unsupervised and unauthorized military attacks on—" Bucky stopped suddenly and said, "Shit, she really oughta do it, shouldn't she?"

"Probably, yeah, or I don't know who the hell is going be doing oversight on those guys," Steve said.

"Goddammit," Bucky said.

His mood was not brightened any by the next room, which was all about reconstructing his tenure as Captain America. They'd created a narrative that began with his 1943 Hydra capture and rescue by Steve (for which Steve had won a medal; said medal on display) and ended with him being exposed as Captain America after getting injured at the trainyards. There were YouTube videos of Harry Perkins begging Steve to take his shield back ("Please, Cap, take it back!"), videos of President Ellis refusing to confirm whether Bucky Barnes was alive or not (because he had no fucking idea), and people holding up pictures of Bucky's face in front of the Captain America balloon on Thanksgiving. 

 "We are living in a goddamned surveillance state," Bucky muttered.

There was a pair of headphones hanging from a hook next to a small television screen that was showing pictures that meant to evoke the bad years, his lost years. There were a few images of the Winter Soldier caught on film in Washington just before the fall of SHIELD, but the curators were able to evoke the whole era of the Winter Soldier by showing newspaper headlines reporting his assassinations, pictures of Russia, Siberia, guns, bunkers, Soviet-era squares, and, terrifyingly, a shot of him taken through the glass of a cryofreeze chamber. 

Bucky hesitated, then picked up the headphones and held them to his ear. "If Steve Rogers represents the idealism and strength of the greatest generation, the life of James Barnes tells a sadder, truer story of how we treat our soldiers both in service and after they come home. The abuse and abandonment of James Barnes—" Bucky yanked the headphones away, panting and gritting his teeth. He had to fight the temptation to pull them out of the damn wall. After a moment, he lifted them back up to his ear again. "—a cause that has been taken up with gusto by the current Captain America, Sam Wilson, who has been active with veteran's groups—" and Bucky hung the headphones up again and walked away; just walked away.

The centerpiece of the exhibit was the result of a partnership with the Lower East Side Tenement Museum: a life-sized recreation of the small apartment they'd shared after Steve's Ma passed. Their building had long ago been knocked down, but the BHS had tracked down the blueprints and floor plans, and the SSR had gone through the place after he and Steve were killed and taken a bunch of pictures before tearing the place apart. So the experts at the Tenement Museum had a pretty good idea of what they were trying to reconstruct, down to the plank of wood over the kitchen bathtub, the pictures on the walls, and... the old chair.

Bucky bit his lip. Beside him, Steve unselfconsciously mirrored his motion, biting his lip and hugging himself as he wandered around the replica of their apartment. They didn't speak; they didn't need to. It was unnerving; Bucky felt strangely on the verge of the giggles. The place looked pretty much as they had left it. But how they'd left it wasn't the same as how they'd lived in it. Of course, there was only the one bed, but as the museum's commentary helpfully pointed out, apartments were small in those days, and separate beds the exception not the rule. Whole families of six or eight could live in a place this small or smaller—and that was true. But Bucky couldn't help but feel like the people wandering around in this clean, sterile version of their apartment—no clutter or smells, no coal, no heat, no bugs or mice, no camphor, no grease, no sweat, no cigarettes, no love—weren't seeing what he and Steve were seeing. His eyes moved back to the old chair. 

Afterwards, they walked around their old neighborhood for a while, past brownstones that had been there when they lived here, and past enormous steel and glass buildings that hadn't.  Bucky was quiet, and after a while Steve slung his arm around Bucky's neck like he'd always wanted to do when they were kids, and pulled him in by the shoulders, and kissed his forehead. And Bucky let him do it, and let Steve drape his arm around his neck and tug him south, down along Flatbush Avenue toward Grand Army Plaza and into the park. Out of their old neighborhood and into their new one.  

Bucky said, suddenly, as they walked past the ball fields,  "Sam's part of the exhibition was good," and that was true: Sam Wilson's part was good.  Sam was grinning his head off in every photo, and the entire narrative was dedicated to the proposition that Sam was the rightful and proper heir to the title of Captain America. The BHS spent some time rehearsing the Army's history of segregation, and gave Steve more credit than he thought he was owed for choosing a diverse team for the Howling Commandos. Steve had just selfishly wanted to stay alive.

When they got back to the garage, Bucky stopped at the bottom of the staircase and said, "Hang on a minute — I want my cat," and Steve had to turn away quick before Bucky could see his face, because Bucky never admitted he loved the animal and wanted her for emotional reasons. His story was always that they needed a mouser for the shop. Bucky made a clicking noise with his tongue, and a moment later, Shop Cat trotted out of the darkness. Bucky bent to pick her up and climbed the stairs to the apartment with her purring in his arms. 

Steve unlocked the door switched on the light and— stopped, overwhelmed. Bucky looked at him and instantly read his mind: "Yeah, it's a world of difference. It's the air, it's in the smell of the place. It feels like home because it smells like home. The nose knows," and now that Bucky had said it, Steve realized he was right. He closed his eyes and breathed in: the place smelled more like their old apartment than the place they had just left, like wood and leather and oil paint and the eggs and onions that Bucky'd fried up that morning.  But there were smells that were missing, too, and when Bucky said, suddenly, "I'm of a mind to smoke - do you mind?" Steve answered honestly, "Actually, I wish you would."

Bucky didn't smoke often, but he liked to have the occasional cigarette after sex or with a drink, and now he pulled a pack of Lucky Strikes from the drawer of the coffee table and lit one up.  That was familiar - the smell of the match, the first exhale - but there were so many scents that were gone from the world now: bread baking, and fish wafting up from the market, and wool clothes in mothballs, and aftershave and cologne mixed with sweat. 

Bucky was staring at him, smoking thoughtfully, and then he said, still reading Steve's mind, "Yeah, it churns up a lot, doesn't it.  You should go paint," and yes, God, yes, he wanted to. Now that Bucky had said it, he realized he could feel the tingle in his fingers, in his hands. 

He wasn't ready to paint, though; instead, he opened a sketchbook and let himself think with a pencil for a while.  He often didn't know what was on his mind until he looked down and saw what was on the paper in front of him, and today when he looked down he saw--God, all the bottles and tins and tubes that used to clutter the top of his bureau back in the day. The little round tin of Watkins Mentholated Ointment. Packs of Elliot's Asthma Cigarettes. The brown bottle of Piso's Cough Medicine. Stotherts Albon Tablets. Faulding's Influenza Medicine. 

Bucky put a hand on his shoulder and peered down at the sketchbook. "God, I remember the smell of that ointment," he said, "and you were always chewing those damn tablets. "

"Yeah, and they only give 'em to dogs and cats now," Steve sighed, pushing his fingers through his hair. "It's not considered good enough for people anymore. But it's what we had, and I used it: I took all of it. I think it saved my life, more than once." He retraced the edges of the bottles with his pencil, darkened the lettering on the tins. "And now it's all gone--and I'm gone, too, the me who needed that stuff. Making pictures helps me figure out what to do with that," and then he looked up at Bucky and said, "That's what it's for, making pictures. That's why I do it. Not to be 'an artist,' not to have made pictures, but to make pictures, to do the making of them.  Screw the Keller, I don't want to go to the Keller, Buck--that's just where the pictures go after I'm done with them, see?" 

"Yeah, I see."  Bucky stroked Steve's bearded cheek with his thumb.  "So, all right. Forget it. We won't go. We'll stay home."

Bucky woke up in bed alone, which meant that Steve'd gone off to the studio. He took a minute to luxuriate in the warm sheets and blankets while gazing across the bedroom at Steve's ice painting. It looked like an aerial view to him now: distant, so far away.

After a while he drifted into the kitchen and put up the coffee before going in search of Steve. To his surprise, Steve had pulled out his enamel paints and the lettering brushes he used for commercial work. "Hey, did you get a commission?" Bucky asked. "You didn't tell me."

"No, I— I'm just making these for myself. Ads that nobody'll want, for products that don't exist, or don't exist anymore. Various styles, different levels of abstraction, maybe. I don't know, with one thing and another lately, it just feels like the right project. Like someone's sending me—" and Steve cracked a grin and threw his arms at the canvas, "—a sign," and Bucky stared at him for a long second in disbelief, shocked and appalled that Steve could do such a thing to him after all they'd been through.

Bucky clamped down on the laugh, refusing it, and went for him instead, low and hard. "Oh you're funny? You think you're funny? Do you?" and Steve fought him a bit, but when Bucky moved to put him in a headlock, Steve let him, which was a sure sign of guilt—because after all, fair was fair. He didn't make the rules.

Steve called, from the bedroom, "What are you going to wear to this thing?" and Bucky, who'd just finished washing dishes, called back, "I don't know, clothes? Pants?"

"No I mean," Steve said, appearing in the doorway wearing a dress shirt but barelegged; obviously pants were, in fact, optional, "how do you read the invite? Intimate, he said, but it's Christmas Eve, and it's Tony and Pepper, so…You remember how formal Thanksgiving was?"

"That Thanksgiving was a blur of pinball and cocktails, as far as I'm concerned," Bucky said, but he came into the bedroom, considered the options, and started pulling out wool and tweed. "Trousers, sweater, jacket, scarf," Bucky said, throwing the garments down on the bed.

Steve looked down at them helplessly. "I don't know how you do it, it's like some weird magic."

"It's just practice, and you've never had any. I mean, I don't think you wore an item of clothes that wasn't second-hand until…" Bucky frowned, unable to finish the thought, "Actually, have you ever bought clothes for yourself? New clothes, from a store? That you chose?"

"Tony sent a personal shopper to me once, at the Tower," Steve told him. "She wanted me to buy a camouflage coat with a raccoon collar for fourteen thousand dollars— I'll never forget it."

Bucky shook his head. "That doesn't count."

"Well, then, no, actually," Steve said, as Bucky went back into their closet, picked out an outfit for himself (black shirt and pants, dark blue jacket), and began to get changed. "I went straight into fatigues, and then into the Captain America outfit, and then into the ice, and then S.H.I.E.L.D. gave me clothes for the 21st century."...." He trailed off, and Bucky realized that Steve was watching him strip down with...some attentiveness. Something was definitely happening down around Steve's hanging shirt tails. "You know," Steve said slowly, "we don't have to be the first ones there or anything. Punctuality doesn't seem to be a virtue of the 21st century."

Bucky considered this, his hands still on the buttons of his shirt. "I don't need to be punctual," he said. "I'm happy to get there when we get there," though he took the extra second to take their dress clothes off the bed and drape them carefully over the back of a nearby chair, because if they stayed on the bed they were about to get wrinkled as fuck.

They were the last ones to arrive, it turned out. They took the train into Grand Central, which was awash in holiday music, rows of pop-up shops selling things for Christmas, and big red bows tied everywhere you could tie a big red bow. It was ironic, really, that Tony Stark lived in the easiest place in the world to get to via public transportation—considering that he never used it at all. On one side of the Grand Concourse, there was an enormous banner for the Captain America At Home exhibition, and Bucky sighed and rolled his eyes as they walked underneath it into the Graybar passage and thence to the Stark Tower elevators.

JARVIS greeted Steve by name and the elevator shot upward without them pressing any buttons. When the doors opened—well, for a moment Bucky thought it must be a mistake, and a glance at Steve's raised eyebrows showed that he thought so, too. The glass and steel framework was gone, the multi-level floorplan with the steel railings and open staircases had been eliminated: the place had seen major construction. Now, a fire roared safely behind glass doors, and thick furry rugs outlined various living spaces filled with invitingly soft furniture. One of these areas was dominated by an enormous Christmas tree and it was there that the most Avengers seemed to have congregated. The first person they saw was Sam Wilson, but only because he was wearing a bright red sweater. "Well, look who finally decided to show up," Sam said. "Captains America One and Two—or maybe I mean Captain America 1.0 and 2.0."

"How're you doing, Sam," Steve said, and hugged him.

"I'm good. Great, even," Sam said. "I know you guys were P.O.'d by the exhibit, but I got to tell you: the little bit of extra power that gives me when I enter a room? I'm going to take that power. I am going to use that power to do the things that I've got to get done, " Sam said. "But right this moment I'm going to get myself another glass of champagne, courtesy of this lovely lady," and Sam gestured over toward the enormous white sofa. Pepper, barefoot, had sunk deep into the cushions of the chaise longue, a glass of champagne in her hand. She waved her glass at them and said, "We're doing things easy this year, guys. There's food, there's drink, there's anything you want—and if you don't see something that you want, please ask."

"I think we can make do with what's on offer," Steve said, smiling, and they followed Sam over to the tufted leather bar, where Sam refilled his glass from the champagne bottle chilling in the ice, and Bucky poured out glasses of whiskey for him and Steve. Almost helplessly, Bucky mapped out the newly configured room - people, danger spots, escape routes - and knew that Steve was doing the same thing. Pepper, Hawkeye, Maria Hill, Thor. Bruce Banner. And there, by the fireplace, sitting on the white fur rug, were Tony, Natasha, and Morgan Stark.

Tony, wearing a velvet tuxedo, stretched out on his side, elbow propping his head. Natasha was wearing a green velvet dress with some kind of crinoline that made it poof out around her on all sides. And Morgan Stark was wearing a Santa suit, and she was eagerly - almost desperately - trying to crawl.

Bucky was talking to Clint when he caught a glimpse of movement and tensed and turned and—a small bear came barreling into the enormous room and galumphed straight for Morgan Stark. Every instinct told him that he should try to wrestle the bear down before it got to her, except it was wearing a bright red bow and Morgan Stark was beaming at it even as it skidded to a stop in front of her, huge paws sliding out on the floor. It— what the— it was—

It was the dog, Tony Bark, and if he needed any confirmation of that, it was Steve materializing out of fuck-nowhere to be excited and delighted: Christmas had come early for Steve Rogers.

"Tony!" Steve exclaimed. "What a good boy! Aren't you a good boy—" 

"Okay, yeah, so that started taking me to the bad fantasy place some time last year?" Tony Stark said, "so mostly we call him Barksey for short, just to take a couple of years off my long-term therapy," and Bucky thought Steve basically heard that as blah blah blah blah Barksey blah blah because Steve barely interrupted his vigorous petting and stroking of the big dog's face while muttering, "Good boy, Barksey, you are such a good boy!"  

"Wait, wait, look at this—this such a good bit," Tony said, waddling closer on his knees. "Barksey, come help Morgan. Help Morgan, Barksey," and the big dog bent down to the little girl, who reached and used the big dog to pull herself up to a standing position. She wobbled a bit and then sat down hard on her behind. "Only eight months old! And already a genius!"

Bucky wasn't going to mention it if she wasn't, but at some point Natasha caught his eye and held up one finger, which he had no trouble understanding.  One more move.  Bucky swung by the bar, grabbed an open champagne bottle out of the ice, and went over to refill her glass. 

"Look, if it's a job you're after," Bucky told her, "I can pretty much guarantee you a job with us as a receptionist or something. Decent hourly wage, benefits—we're a union shop."

Natasha tilted her head to the side and looked up at him. "You know, I think that's the nicest offer I've ever gotten. I might even take you up on it someday." 

"I still think you shouldn't do it," Bucky said. "And if my hard-earned wisdom doesn't convince you, you should understand that Steve thinks it's a good idea," and that brought her up short, her beautiful face contorting with surprise and maybe other emotions as well. "Right," he said, to give her cover, "so if that doesn't make you rethink the whole enterprise, I don't know what the hell will." 

Natasha opened and closed her mouth a few times, and then, without a word, she shoved her champagne glass into his hand and made a beeline for Steve. He drained it, smiling.

"Steve," Natasha said, putting her hand on his arm, "do you have a minute?" and she nodded her head toward an emptier section of the cavernous room. 

"Sure," Steve said, "of course," and then: "I was hoping to get a chance to talk to you privately, too. About the exhibition," he explained in a low voice as they walked away from the main party. "Bucky's really worried about it. He thinks we might be on the verge of being exposed to the point where our life here becomes untenable, and he's been telling me about it but I don't want to run away again and he knows that, but maybe I'm wrong and I should be more encouraging, because at the same time I don't want to risk—"

"Okay, wait, whoa," Natasha said, raising her hands, having been derailed on to this strange track. Steve stopped and took a breath, and the worry on his face was palpable. "Look, don't you know him by now? Barnes isn't worried, he's just irritated. Pissed off. If he was worried, believe me you'd know it, because he'd have you drugged and unconscious in a steamer trunk on a ship in the middle of the Atlantic, and if you don't know that, you don't know anything."

Steve frowned. "But, I mean, there are pictures of us everywhere, won't people—"

Natasha pulled her phone out of her bag, which was just big enough to carry the phone and her gun. "You get tagged sometimes," she admitted, and pulled up her saved searches: Barnes was probably also tracking them on social media. "Here, look," she said and handed him her phone. "See, they got you here."

Steve stared down at the phone with the poleaxed look of someone who'd actually thought that they'd successfully escaped surveillance. But who needed S.H.I.E.L.D. agents tracking your movements and whereabouts when every person around you had a camera and a tracking device? Before her, Steve was tensing - he was overreacting - and she put a hand on his arm. 

"No, but wait," Natasha said, "what you have to understand is—" She snatched her phone back and did a quick search on the #CapAtHome hashtag, which was the one people used when they thought they'd spotted Captain America in the wild: usually Brooklyn, but other places, too. Steve probably didn't even know that that was where the Brooklyn Historical Society had gotten their exhibition's name from. Natasha's screen filled with pictures and she handed it to Steve, who stared down at it, first with horror and then... dawning... confusion. He began to scroll down.

"This…" Steve said slowly. "These aren't me."

"Are you sure?" Natasha asked, and when Steve glared at her, she crooked a grin. "Right," she agreed. "They're not you. In fact, they're overwhelmingly not you. Which someone who knows you would see right away, but... well, sorry to say it, but most people don't really know you well enough to pick you out of a lineup. I mean, your neighbors do—now, they do—but if there's one thing I've learned to appreciate, it's the almost tribal clannishness of the typical Brooklyn neighborhood. Anyway, the people who know you aren't the ones taking pictures of you. It's the people who don't know you, and they're… well, mainly taking pictures of the wrong guys. So I wouldn't worry too much," Natasha said, and smiled in the face of Steve's obvious relief. "And don't feel too bad," she added. "Even Barnes got caught once, but only once—"

"Really?" Steve asked, and Natasha called it up on her phone. 

"Yeah," Natasha replied. "I think it was the cut of the jacket." She gave Steve her phone and turned to shout across the room at Barnes, "Barnes, you've got to stop wearing military-cut jackets! And navy!" He was wearing a navy blue jacket even now, she saw. "You wear too much navy blue." 

Barnes stared back at her, baffled. "I like navy!" he called back. "I look good in navy."

Natasha turned back to Steve and said, "Truth is, it doesn't matter: most people are not expecting to see Bucky Barnes in the hardware store and so they won't. Or they'll think, like this guy, wow, that dude looks like Bucky Barnes. So don't worry about it, okay? If there's something to be worried about, Barnes will handle it—or I will."

"I know you will," Steve said softly, and then, unprompted, he answered the question she'd intended to ask. "You should do it," he said. "You should run the place, absolutely. Do you want me to weigh in on it? Because I will—despite everything I still have some clout in certain quarters," and Natasha felt suddenly strange and then realized, to her horror, that she might cry and debated emptying her Glock into Tony's windows as a distraction. 

"I didn't..." Natasha said, her mind tripping over the thought, "somehow I didn't think you'd—" but that was foolish, she saw it now: Steve had nearly married the woman who'd been the longest-serving director of S.H.I E.L.D. And Peggy Carter hadn't been born an American either. Steve saw the thought cross her mind and nodded, then leaned in closer to say, "Yeah, I don't think it's a good thing for S.H.I E.L.D. to become too dominated by men—or Americans for that matter: we're so goddamned provincial. The S.S.R. wasn't. The Howling Commandos weren't. S.H.I E.L.D. was supposed to be an international organization, helmed by someone with…" Steve trailed off and let his hands fly in the air. "Perspective. And I can't imagine anyone better than you," and then she was crying, a little, and Steve put his arms around her and let her hide her face against his shoulder until she felt herself again.

They stayed until after midnight to ring in Christmas, and had a final round of champagne and a toast. When the party broke up, they took a cab back over the Brooklyn Bridge. The cab driver was playing Christmas music from the forties, Benny Goodman, the Andrews Sisters. It felt like a sign, and they sprawled back happily, shoulder-to-shoulder, on the back seat of the cab.

When they got to the garage, Steve stopped Bucky by the Studebaker and said, "Look, I talked to Natasha. She's going for it. She's going to do it."

"Yeah, I figured." Bucky sounded resigned. "You seem pretty sanguine about it."

"I'm more than sanguine; I'm downright cheered by it. The guys in charge now, they're incompetent and they're not going to keep control. Somebody's going to step in and just who is that going to be? I'll take Natasha, thank you very much. And it's not just about who's in charge: it's about who the person in charge puts around them. It's about the culture they create: what they find acceptable or unacceptable—and you know the kind of thing that can be. We've both of us seen some pretty goddamned unacceptable situations over the years. It's not a case of all things being equal, Buck. Things are never equal. But here's the thing," Steve said, and took a breath. "You know what I'm like, and so you know I'm impervious to—"

"Common sense," Bucky interjected.

Steve glared at him. "I was going to say peer pressure."

"It amounts to the same thing," Bucky said.

"No it doesn't," Steve said. "What I'm trying to say is that Natasha knows damn well what she can ask me for and what she can't ask me for. She knows that I'm past doing missions I don't believe in and that I can't be guilted or pressured or cajoled. But you…" Steve said softly. "You're the one I'm worried about, because…" and he didn't finish the thought, but he didn't need to; Bucky could finish it for himself. Because you're the one who thinks you've got something to atone for. Because you think you still owe something.

Bucky nodded slowly, and Steve nodded back in response. "But it's not true, do you hear me?" Steve said. "You're all paid up, pal. You've served your time, given everything you had and more—and you get to come home now, all right? War's over, Buck," and Steve was tugging him close, putting his arms around him and whispering into his ear, his hair, his mouth teasing and his breath warm. "So come on home, buddy. Come home," and Bucky hugged Steve back and made fists in the back of his jacket, and then they tumbled together up the stairs.

"Hurry it up!" Bucky called, for the third time, half-distractedly; he was at the kitchen table reading the paper and eating coffee cake, so he didn't exactly look the picture of urgency.

"I'm coming," Steve said, for the third time; he was out of the shower now and roughly toweling his hair, hurrying across to the bedroom to get dressed. He'd wanted to paint, a little, while the light was good, and he'd lost track of time: it had been a good morning. He yanked open the bureau, dragged out a pair of work pants, skivvies, socks—

"Just we said we'd be there at ten," Bucky called from the kitchen. "And I don't want to be late. It's a good job, a restoration, four stories in Bed Stuy. A beautiful place, or it was, and it could be again with a little...Holy shit, she..."

Steve's head had been inside his sweater, so he hadn't quite caught the last part; now he tugged the wool down and adjusted the sleeves and called out, turning, "Bucky, what did you—?" except Bucky was standing in the bedroom doorway holding the newspaper.

"She did it." Bucky looked a little shocked. "She made the move, she—"

"How do you know?" Steve asked. "Did she call, or—?"

Bucky shook his head. "Back page item in the paper," he said, lifting it, and then he was muttering: "Hang on," and then reading: "'—foster a spirit of international—' blah blah, wait, here we go: 'Their stated goal is to take advantage of the building's proximity to the United Nations Security Council, the General Assembly, and the diplomatic corps. However, some see the move not simply as an attempt to re-align the organization's goals with those of the U.N. but as a decision to finally put some real muscle behind the post-war idealism out of which the U.N. was founded. Still others see it more cynically as an implicit rejection of the dysfunctional state of the current U.S. government or as a futile, perhaps even dangerous, attempt to—"

Steve raised a hand. "Wait, I'm sorry, I've lost the thread. What's this article about?"

"S.H.I.E.L.D. is moving its headquarters to New York," Bucky said.

She had been vaguely worried he wouldn't answer, but Barnes picked up on the first ring.

"Well, well," he said, "to what do I owe the honor of this call, Director Romanov?" and one of the things Natasha most appreciated about James Barnes was his straightforwardness; he never pretended not to be keeping close tabs on things. "I hope it's not business of any kind," Barnes added darkly, 'because we're closed for business for New Year's Eve."

Natasha tilted her head and said, "Well, that's just why I was calling. I'm new in town and wondering what New Yorkers do on New Year's Eve. Times Square, I suppose—the ball drop?"

"Sure," Barnes said easily, "if you like standing out in the freezing cold with a bunch of drunk strangers getting your pocket picked, which personally I don't though there's no accounting for taste. Sam's coming over," he told her. "We're going to order Chinese and then head out to Farrell's around ten. You're welcome to come if you want," and Natasha quickly googled Farrell's on her laptop. It turned out to be an old man bar which had been operating at the same location on Prospect Park West since 1933. Clint, who had come up behind her and was staring over her shoulder at the screen, nodded happily half a dozen times.

"Sure," Natasha said, closing the laptop lid. "That sounds perfect. "

There were Christmas lights strung up around Coney Island Design and Construction's bright yellow sign as well as around the gray metal front door and the single upstairs window, their bedroom window, which looked out onto the street. They knocked and were greeted by the excited barking of dogs; a moment later, Barnes opened the door, mouth twisted in amusement. "Hurry up, you're missing it," he told Clint and Natasha. "Sam is making Steve watch Captain America: The Man Behind the Shield," and they grinned and followed him through the garage and up the stairs.

The sound of yelling got louder. Steve was half-yelling, half-laughing, "Out! Get out of my house!" even as Sam declaimed "Hey, let's watch one of my movies next! Oh, wait!—I don't have any movies! Do you think Denzel will be in my movie? Will Smith? How about Idris Elba?"

"In your dreams, Idris Elba," Barnes said as he went in; Natasha followed, smiling at the enormous, lit-up Christmas tree dominating the sitting room. A television playing a black and white movie was on the other side of the room, opposite the plaid sofa and the armchair; the pictures flickered but the sound had been muted, and Steve was standing, holding the remote.

Sam Wilson laughed and turned to plead his case to Natasha and Clint. "Do you guys know that Steve Rogers was played by Steve McQueen in the 1950s?"

"I don't know who that is," Barnes said, just as Clint said, mouth full (he'd already gone in for a handful of potato chips from the bowl on the coffee table), "Sure, yeah, Man Behind the Shield, that was 1957—a year before McQueen made The Blob— which is a classic, you should see it."

"Are you sure this isn't The Blob?" Steve gestured toward the TV screen, where a man in an awkward looking Captain America uniform was kissing a pretty girl in a strapless gown.

"What the hell is The Blob?" Barnes asked.

"Oh, it's a great movie, you'll love it," Clint said enthusiastically. "It's about an amorphous alien creature that comes out of a meteorite and starts eating things and getting bigger and bigger. Real old school sci-fi. It was part of a double feature with I Married A Creature From Outer Space, which was also great. They used to play 'em back to back on TV when I was a kid."

To her surprise, Barnes replied, in all earnestness, "You're right, that sounds great."

Steve said, to Natasha, "There's spare ribs. I know you like spare ribs," and Sam said, "Come on, Steve, give me the remote—we're missing the movie!" and Steve said, "Not on your life, pal," and held it up in the air while Gracie galumphed around them, maybe thinking it was a treat or something. George, knowing better, just sprawled out and watched.

Natasha went into the kitchen to make herself a plate from the square white boxes on the counter: chicken and duck and shrimp and fried rice and scallion pancakes and egg rolls. She heard Barnes ask, "So how are you dealing with Natasha's new job situation?" and went still, listening hard. To her relief, Clint replied, "Well, it's pretty wild to realize she's running the free world from our kitchen table—which is to say your table, the table you guys made for her."

Barnes sounded amused. "Well, there it is, our true impact on history. FDR had the Resolute desk, Natasha's got a Million Dollar table, courtesy of Coney Island Design and Construction."

Natasha smiled and finished building her plate, and then her eye was caught by a painting hanging on the wall above the pie cabinet. For all the painting Steve did in the studio, very few of his works made it into their apartment; maybe Steve didn't want to compete with the Kandinsky, which still held pride of place along with a framed photograph of Neil Armstrong. But this painting looked like one of the retro ads that you sometimes saw in cool coffeehouses, except these weren't any products that someone would be nostalgic for—except Steve might. She stared at the still life of a nearly-stilled life: asthma cigarettes, cough medicine, pain tablets, cheerfully done up in bright green and black packages, orange boxes, blue enamelled tins.

Barnes, coming back from the fridge, pushed a cold bottle of beer into her hand. She took a swig and said, "So if you didn't go to Times Square for the ball drop, what did you do?"

Barnes stopped to consider the question. "Before Steve, you mean? Because after Steve there was Steve."

Natasha crooked a smile, and said, teasingly, "So you did Steve for New Year's, is that what you're saying?" but if she thought she was going to make James Barnes blush, she was wrong; he just leaned one hip against the counter and said, in all seriousness, "Yeah. But before that, we just stayed home—we kids, I mean—with my grandma. My folks usually went out to a bar like we're doing later…" and he trailed off, maybe seeing her eyebrows rise into her hairline.

"You had a grandma?" Natasha asked incredulously.

Barnes just stared flatly back at her. "Doesn't everyone?"

"Yeah, but you knew her, I mean."

"Sure I knew her," Barnes said, and then Steve seemed to materialize at Barnes's side from out of nowhere, his arm loosely slung around Barnes's waist in subtle reassurance.

"Bucky had an enormous family," Steve explained with a cheerful blitheness that Natasha immediately saw for what it was: a front, a distraction to let Barnes collect himself. "He had his Ma and his Dad and three sisters, and then you had two uncles there living with you—your mother's brothers, right? Younger brothers?" and Barnes jerked a nod. "Right, and then your Grandma in the basement apartment—so there were nine of you in that house," and Natasha immediately understood what Steve was telling her: that James Buchanan Barnes had been brought up as a social animal, and was still a social animal, in a way that Steve, for all his nearly luminescent goodness, was not. There was something distant about Steve, some essential apartness—and that was maybe one of the ways in which she and Steve were alike, Natasha realized. They were family-deprived scrappers, lone survivors. Steve's aloofness was somehow key to his strength, which was more like the beaten-down toughness of an alley cat than—

She had to bite her lip, hard, to keep from smiling. Steve Rogers was an alley cat...and James Barnes was the sort of person who'd open a window for a stray, give it a saucer of milk and a home in the shop. And Steve—introverted, aloof, go-it-alone Steve—was a guy who loved his goddamned dogs: animals that were social, obedient, useful—loyal and so terrifyingly trainable. And that thought chased away any desire to smile.

"My house was just me and my Ma, until I lost her," Steve was saying. "She often had to work New Year's Eve—there were always accidents, people drunk or falling down, hurting themselves. I did a couple of New Year's Eves at your house—it was mayhem," Steve said, and laughed, '"just the noise, and—actually, that's what I remember most about New Year's Eves before the war, the noise, the way that people would throw open their windows at midnight to make noise, bang things, pots and pans, forks on glasses, ringing bells—"

"We had a tambourine." Barnes smiled at the memory. "I don't even know why. My mother liked it, I guess. And blocks—blocks of wood, you would bang 'em together—"

"—out the open windows—in the tenement, this is, so there were all these windows, windows for blocks, everyone's lights on, everybody yelling and cheering, shouting 'Happy New Year!' People don't do that anymore, I guess."

"Oh, they still do it in Harlem," Sam Wilson said; he and Clint had drifted into the kitchen to refill their plates. Natasha quickly snatched another spare rib, just in case.

"See, we should have moved to Harlem," Steve said to Bucky.

"Yeah, because we don't stick out enough," Bucky said.

"It's the TV," Clint said thoughtfully. "I mean, people still have New Year's Eve parties, but they do it around the TV, mostly. Dick Clark. Lawrence Welk when I was a kid, God help me. You'd watch the ball drop on TV and see crowds from around the world and feel like you were with a group of people even if you weren't. But I think if you didn't have a TV you would go to the windows at midnight, or out into the street: there's something about New Year's Eve that makes you want to be with other people. It's not like Christmas, which feels like a family celebration: New Year's Eve is an outward-looking, forward-looking holiday."

"A community holiday," Sam agreed. "There are TVs in Harlem, just people know not to mistake pictures for reality. You want real people, you've got to go outside. Talk to your neighbors."

"Oh—which reminds me," Natasha said, "I have a belated Christmas present for you guys," and she went back to her bag and came back with the flat, rectangular box. She'd debated wrapping it, then decided that that was maybe trying too hard, then decided that maybe she didn't mind being the kind of person who tried too hard, then found that she didn't have any wrapping paper anyway. Clint only looked at her with bafflement at the very idea.

She handed the box to Steve, but it was Barnes she was looking at when she said, "Sam's right that pictures aren't reality, but you guys are sorely in need of some up-to-date pictures of yourselves," and she heard Steve's soft "Oh," when he saw the framed photograph.

Sam Wilson laughed and said, "Well, I approve. Have you ever seen three better looking guys?"

Natasha smiled at Clint and said, "I'm afraid I have to plead the fifth."

Clint blew out a breath in mock-relief. "Well, I'll count my blessings," he said.

Steve and Bucky were still staring down at the photo she'd taken of them on Christmas Eve. She wondered if they were seeing what she'd seen in it. How young and relaxed Steve looked. The proprietary arm Barnes had slung around Steve's shoulder, and his ungloved hand—James Barnes had felt comfortable enough at the party to take his gloves off, like he did at home.

Still wore too much navy, though. Natasha tsked.

When they finally looked up, they were smiling, and she knew that they'd seen it—that they didn't look anything like those exhausted soldiers decorating New York City's billboards and bus shelters.

They didn't look like them at all.

Farrell's Bar and Grill was crowded and warm and playing nothing but old songs on the soundsystem. Ain't Misbehavin', Sweet Georgia Brown, Yes Sir That's My Baby, T'Ain't Nobody's Business if I Do, Me and My Shadow, Ain't We Got Fun, My Blue Heaven, California Here I Come —and it took Natasha a second to realize the common denominator: these were songs from the twenties. There were a bunch more she didn't recognize, but Steve and Bucky seemed to know them all, even the most obscure ones. Steve practically glowed with delight.

The beer flowed freely, and the people, too. Some played pool, others cleared a space at the back of the bar and began to dance. Natasha recognized some of CIDC's neighbors: Lalo and his wife Gina, and Dmitri and Yuri who always flirted with her, and some others whose names she couldn't remember. People began to put on funny hats and pick up noise makers. She'd expected Sam, Steve, and Clint to put on funny hats without hesitation, but was surprised and delighted when Barnes put on a tophat and a pair of sunglasses shaped into the year 2020.

As it grew closer to midnight, the bartenders started putting ice buckets full of cold champagne onto the bar. Then Steve surprised her by asking her to dance to a slow number, a song she didn't know but with a warm, sensual horn part. She followed him out to the floor and let him put his arms around her and guide her around. Unlike Barnes, Steve wasn't much of a dancer.

But he hadn't really come here to dance. "Listen," Steve said, his funny hat tilted at a rakish angle, "take a word of advice from an old man, will you? Let him catch you," and Steve didn't have to say who he was. "He's nervous about you. You might not think it—believe me, I wouldn't have thought it either—but you'd be surprised how far a little assurance can go. I always figured that people like that—good-looking, talented, healthy—you'd think they'd be confident, but they're not for whatever reason. And don't be afraid he'll try to own you," Steve murmured as they turned. "He knows who you are, what you are. He's proven it time and again, hasn't he?"

"Yes, he has," Natasha said softly. "But Steve—he's never asked me."

"And he's not going to, either. He's afraid you'll run away. You're going to have to go to him," and Natasha tucked her face against Steve's shoulder so that he wouldn't see her expression, because she was imagining Clint putting a saucer of milk on the windowsill—and well, hadn't he?

She grinned and asked, "Does Shop Cat wear a collar?" and that stopped Steve mid-step; Steve Rogers wasn't a good enough dancer to go on without serious concentration.

"I don't know. I think she does? Or—hm, maybe not. Bucky would know. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, no reason," Natasha said, just as their song ended. The next one started—some big jazzy number—Muskrat Ramble?—and Steve brightened and said, "Sorry, hang on," and made a beeline for Barnes. Steve grabbed his arm eagerly, and Barnes turned, still wearing those hilarious 2020 sunglasses. "Hey, Buck, remember this? When was the last time you heard this?"

She'd never seen Barnes smile so widely. "I remember, I remember. How could I forget?"

Steve laughed and grabbed both Barnes's arms like he wanted to hug him or shake him or kiss him, maybe. "All the right songs are on the radio—it's like we've caught up with ourselves!"

"Nah, it's just the world finally caught up with us," Barnes replied, and suddenly there was shouting and people were yelling, "Here we go!" and then counting down, "Ten! Nine! Eight!..." and Sam was there and Clint was there, beaming, his arms around her, and "Seven! Six! Five! Four!" and the press of bodies and the rising tension of "Three! Two! One!— HAPPY NEW YEAR!" and there were champagne corks popping and happy cheers, crackling noisemakers and tootling horns and noise noise noise— mayhem.