Archive of Our Own

Steve stumbles out of the bedroom five minutes too early. The eggs in the pan are still mostly liquid, but Bucky’s got the rest of their breakfast put together on a tray. Toast and strawberries. Bacon and orange juice. The quantities are quadruple what they would’ve been, if Bucky ever did this breakfast-in-bed shit during the 30s, now that it’s the 21st century and they’ve got two super soldier metabolisms to contend with. And two inexplicable bank accounts, massive enough to keep them fed on high quality food till they die.

Bucky doubts he ever brought Steve breakfast in bed, back in the day - unless nursing him back to health with soup counts.

“You’re ruining all my plans, you know that?” Bucky tells Steve. He keeps his eyes on the eggs, stirring slowly as Steve knocks into his back, wrapping his arms around his waist and yawning widely in his ear. Steve’s cheek is smooth against Bucky’s neck. He finally got rid of the scraggly beard a couple of months ago and it will not be missed. “Couldn’t sleep for five more goddamn minutes.”

Steve hums. “I woke up and you weren’t there. It was cold.”

Bucky rolls his eyes as the scrambled eggs start to firm up. He throws in some cheese and scallions. “You run a hundred fucking degrees on any given day.”

Steve chuckles and gets his freezing fingers under the hem of Bucky’s tank top, making Bucky jump.

“See?” he says. “Cold.”

“Bad circulation.” Bucky shakes his head, moving to dump eggs on an already overburdened plate. Steve moves with him, keeping his face tucked into Bucky’s neck. “Your body’s defective, ace.”

“Can’t have it all.”

“Should get a refund on that fancy super serum of yours.”

Steve snorts, and he sounds a little bitter still, but a whole lot less than a few months ago. It’s progress.

Bucky reaches for the tray and Steve trails along behind him, back towards the bedroom.

“Grab the coffee,” he instructs and Steve does.

They settle back in bed, resting against the headboard. Steve wraps his hands around a hot cup of joe, sighing and smiling. The bags under his eyes aren’t so dark this morning, and he hasn’t woken Bucky up with a nightmare in twelve consecutive days, a new record.

Breakfast in bed is exactly like Bucky imagined, even with Steve getting up five minutes too early. They eat off the same plate - Bucky taking more than his share of strawberries and leaving most of the bacon for Steve.

It’s quiet. It’s nice . They’ve got the whole day stretched out in front of them, the whole week and month and year, just waiting there for them to take their time and do whatever the hell they want with it. The days almost feel like that strange time he spent on his own in Bucharest; wandering around the city and sorting through the chaos of his returning memories and just living.

The cabin is far superior, though. Steve’s here.

Although Steve still gets frustrated without a more clear cut purpose to keep him busy - like saving the whole goddamn world - he’s been spending more time with his art and less time keeping his super soldier body in prime fighting condition.

It’s more progress.

Steve makes happy, sleepy, humming sounds as he eats. Every few minutes he leans close to kiss Bucky’s cheek, neck, ear, and that’s new, too. This easy affection is not something they let themselves indulge in before coming to the cabin. Bucky’s still not used to it, his cheeks burning hot whenever Steve touches him like this.

“That was real good, Buck,” Steve says when they’re done, setting the empty tray on the floor by the bed. They’ve got all day to take it back to the kitchen and do the dishes, and it took Bucky a solid two months of lounging in bed till noon, his poses purposefully seductive and appealing, to break Steve of the habit of getting up at the goddamn crack of dawn. “Breakfast in bed is a mighty inspired modern notion. What’s the occasion?”

Bucky purses his lips, cocks his head to the side, and looks up at the ceiling as he thinks about it. This morning, he just woke up and decided to make breakfast in bed. He didn’t have a specific occasion in mind, but this date is significant.

“It’s been nine months,” he says, settling back down with his head on the pillows. Steve mimics his position, stretched out on his side and facing him. “Nine months, to the day, since we moved out here.”

Five years since DC. Three since Siberia. One since Steve reached a compromise with the US government and put an end to their exile in Wakanda. Endless lifetimes since they were just a couple of wise ass kids, watching each other’s backs in Brooklyn.

Nine months upstate in a cabin in the woods, twenty miles from the nearest town, just the two of them, like something Bucky dreamed up back in 1941.

Steve smiles, a little shy and a lot crooked. He reaches out to touch Bucky’s jaw, running a thumb along Bucky’s cheek. “Wow, that long. Nine whole months.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s been pretty okay, hasn’t it?”

Bucky laughs, because “pretty okay” is a goddamn outrageous understatement. Fucking amazing, is more accurate. Or, so good Bucky wakes up some mornings unable to believe that it’s real, that after everything they’ve lived through, every throat he slit as the Winter Soldier and every command Nazis programmed into his head, somehow, he gets this. He gets Steve.

“Retirement sure looks good on you, Rogers.”

Steve laughs again and kisses him. He tastes like the hot sauce he insists on dumping all over his eggs. When Steve yawns again, mid kiss, Bucky laughs and presses him back against the pillows, lips against his ear, murmuring, “Sleep.”

Later, Steve will probably retreat to the barn out back to paint some masterpiece. It took five months of Bucky ordering an excess of art supplies for Steve to push back all the weight equipment he had in there to make room for his easels.

Later, Bucky will probably hike to his favorite bend in the creek. He’ll sit on a rock and catch the sun on his face, closing his eyes and listening to the intricate rhythm of running water. He won’t think of anything at all, and after he might head into Cazenovia. Flo works at the garden center on Wednesdays. He’s been meaning to talk to her about what to do with his garden in the winter, now that summer’s giving way to fall.

Right now, they’ll sleep until they’re no longer tired because they’ve got nowhere they need to be.

It’s been an adjustment, but they’re getting better at laziness. Steve forgot how to just be after they superheroed his body into Captain America and Bucky lived decades without a moment of peace, so they’ve earned all the respite they want, as far as Bucky’s concerned.

Steve does not always agree with Bucky’s relaxation philosophy, and he starts fidgeting under Bucky’s cheek long before Bucky’s ready to get out of bed.

“Five more minutes,” Bucky mutters, snuggling close to Steve’s chest.

“Wait,” Steve whispers. “Do you hear that?”

“No.” Bucky replies automatically, without bothering to actually listen. But after a few seconds, over the sound of Steve’s heartbeat, there is something. A whine, a cry, coming from beyond the walls of the cabin. A sad animal, maybe.

Bucky sits up, cocks his head to the side and strains to listen. Beside him, Steve does the same, holding his breath.

“Is that,” Steve whispers, “ crying ?”

Bucky shrugs and keeps listening.

“It can’t be a person. There’s no one around for miles, and the alarms would catch anyone coming onto the property. Plus, we’d hear footsteps.”

Bucky frowns, hating the way Steve’s voice sounds like Captain America, how he’s tactical now, and decidedly not relaxed .

Steve rolls out of bed, his feet silent on the carpet as he stalks out of the bedroom and through the cabin. There’s not a lot of ground to cover. The whole place is only 650 square feet.

Cursing under his breath, Bucky grabs the glock hidden under the bedside table, checks the safety, and tucks it into the back of his sweatpants as he follows.

The cries get louder as they approach the front door, plaintive and pathetic. If there were any possible way it could be a baby, Bucky would guess baby, but that’s decidedly not possible, so Bucky’s betting on wounded animal.

Can’t be a baby. Can’t be a baby. He repeats the mantra in his head as stupid, insidious, painful hope creeps into his heart. It won’t be a baby. It can’t be a baby. As much as he wants it to be a baby, it’s not and Bucky needs to stop hoping before it hurts him.

He tells himself it’s not a baby, right up until Steve squares his shoulders, takes a deep breath, and opens the front door.

Steve’s taking up the doorway, staring down at the front stoop, and the cries abruptly go silent. Bucky shoulders in next to him and freezes. Together they gape at the basket on their doorstep, the woven wicker no different than the one that delivered Rebecca when Bucky was five. No different than the one that delivered Steve, where Sarah Rogers kept her first aid supplies tucked under the bed before she died.

And inside the basket, swaddled in a soft grey blanket, is a baby. A living, breathing, newborn baby, with big wet eyes and a trembling lip, on the verge of letting out another wail. A shockingly tiny, impossibly fragile, actual baby, blinking up at them like it hasn’t quite gotten the hang of opening its eyes.

The little thing whimpers and Bucky gets dizzy.

“Holy shit ,” Bucky says.

“Language!” Steve replies. “Not in front of the baby!”

Steve’s not great at being retired.

Although he insists giving up the shield - and promising not to take it up again - was his own decision, Steve’s retirement from the superheroing went a long way in reaching an agreeable end to his standoff with the US government while they were in Wakanda.

Between going rogue for Bucky and releasing the details of how he broke various Avengers out of a secret, illegal prison to the public, he’s considered something of a loose cannon by the people in power these days, even when he turned out to be right about everything that went down in Europe a couple years ago.

Steve agreed to never be Captain America again. The US government agreed not to persecute any Avengers for what happened in Germany. The Winter Solider was declared a prisoner of war instead of a mass murderer, too, which was a nice touch.

So they came home, found an apartment in Flatbush, and tried out the whole retired thing. Steve walked into a midnight bodega robbery on their third week back in Brooklyn. He ended up tying up the criminals, leaving them on the front steps of the nearest police precinct, and fleeing the scene.

Steve is not great at being retired, especially when the temptation to fight crime is all over the goddamn place in New York.

Bucky hoped getting out of the city would help, and it has, but Bucky thinks long term now. Having goals and planning for the future are therapy things, and part of Bucky’s ongoing mission to relearn how to want. He can’t help but apply all this to Steve, too.

Bucky thought Steve might want to spend his future retirement taking art classes or teaching them. He could fill his days getting into sculpture, using all that super strength to create something big and bold and beautiful. He could show his work in actual galleries or give tours at a museum or teach little kids finger painting.

In some vague future, where Steve’s actually let Bucky talk him into therapy and admitted to struggling with a nice slice of depression with a whole heap of PTSD on the side, Steve’s gonna need something to do.

Bucky started making a list of possible future careers for Steve Rogers, formerly known as Captain fucking America, about three days after they got to the cabin.

A baby was never actually on that list, despite Bucky’s day dreaming.

Being a parent is far better than anything Bucky was able to come up with on his own.

“It’s a mistake,” Steve whispers when he’s done scolding Bucky for cursing. Neither of them have moved a muscle, too busy gaping down at the living, breathing, actually-here-somehow baby on their doorstep, blinking against the morning sunlight.

“There are no mistakes with babies,” Bucky whispers back. “That’s the whole goddamn point.”

“ Bucky !” Steve hisses.

“Goddamn is not a curse.”

“Yes it is! Jesus Christ , Buck.”

“Steve.” Bucky squeezes his wrist, trying to get him to focus. “That’s a baby. That’s our--”

“ Don’t . Don’t say it.” His voice is all Captain America, doling out orders and fully expecting to be obeyed.

Bucky’s not super comfortable with orders, given his recent and lengthy history as a brainwashed assassin with commands literally programed into his goddamn head. He closes his eyes and huffs out a breath through his nose, but not looking at the baby is not an option for more than a few seconds so he opens them again before the slimy, creepy sensation of ready to comply fully dissipates from his head.

Staring at the little bundle whimpering at their feet helps.

“Sorry!” Steve says, voice quiet and vaguely panicked, but free of command. “I’m so sorry, Buck.”

“It’s ok.”

“It’s not and I won’t do it again. I’m just. It’s just. This can’t.” Steve takes a deep breath, hands fisting at his sides. “It’s gotta be a mistake.”

“There’s no mistakes with babies,” Bucky repeats. A lot has changed since they were growing up, but this hasn’t. All babies are wanted. There are no mistakes.

“Bucky, it’s gotta be a mistake. It’s not even possible, right? For two men? Did you pray for this?”

That’s old language, an antiquated way of looking at things. Most people call it wishing for babies now, not praying. Last Bucky checked, not even the pope himself thinks that only the faithful of his religion can pray their way into having kids, not like every religion was claiming back in their day.

Bucky blinks down at the tiny little human at their feet, soothed into silence by the sound of their voices, eyes closed and yawning widely. The baby has a little tuft of fuzzy blond hair and Bucky’s dizzy.

“I dunno,” Bucky replies, except it’s a lie because he does know. Yesterday, he would've said that thinking about having a family with Steve didn’t count as wanting to actually have a baby, but today there is a baby on their doorstep and that’s something he’s been wishing for since 1941. “Did you?”

“What?” Steve squeaks. “No! Why would I wish for something I can’t have. This has gotta be you, if it’s even possible.”

“It’s obviously possible. That’s a fucking baby.”

“Bucky!”

At the frantic tone of Steve’s voice, the baby whimpers again, pale blue eyes blinking open. The sound breaks Bucky’s heart and he watches in horror as the baby starts to cry, red faced and screaming. Steve lets out a strangled, panicked sound, dropping to his knees and resting a hand on the baby’s chest.

They both stare, fascinated, as a tiny little hand latches onto the tip of Steve’s thumb.

Bucky presses the heel of his metal hand into his chest, trying to get his heart to ache less. There are old memories rattling around in his head, of his sister drifting down from the sky and Steve insisting that the nuns had to be wrong when he was all of eleven years old, as they talked about prayers and good Catholics. He remembers fantasizing about having this with Steve from the inside of a foxhole, when it didn’t matter if he was wishing for something that could never happen because he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to last the night.  

And the last nine months, waking up everyday with Steve, wanting to give him a home and a life outside of endless war after endless war.

Bucky clears his throat, tearing his eyes away from the child to look at Steve. “Yeah,” he whispers. “It was me. With the wishing, I mean.”

Steve stares up at him over his shoulders, eyes bright and hopeful for a moment. But then he jumps, pulling his hand away from the baby and sitting back on his heels. He clenches his jaw, his expression turning into the determined mask of Captain America.

“It’s gotta be a mistake,” Steve repeats, voice a terrible monotone. It’s better than the commanding one he uses to give orders.

“Just check, why don’t you.”

Steve takes a deep breath, and pauses with his fingers on the edge of the basket. He glances up at Bucky again and Bucky nods his encouragement. It takes him a few seconds, digging around in the blankets, until he finds the birth certificate. He reads it, staying frozen and still for a moment before handing it up to Bucky without turning around.

The baby’s whimpering again, and Steve makes soothing sounds, resting a hand on that little chest.

With great care, Bucky plucks the card from between Steve’s fingers. The thick paper is the same as it was in the 30s, too. He takes a deep breath, and flips it over.

Letting out a big breath, he leans against the doorframe while his knees rattle. He’s so fucking relieved to see his last name scrawled there in delicate gold script, right next to Steve’s, and above today’s date.

That’s both their names on the birth certificate.

There’s no mistake.

“Our baby,” Bucky murmurs.

Bucky drives into Cazenovia for supplies while Steve packs. Being more than five feet away from their new baby girl is nearly unbearable, but babies need things . Diapers, food, a car seat; Bucky wrote out a list based on the very best google had to offer on the subject but he’s dissatisfied with the limited amount of research he was able to do. They’ll probably end up with a second round of more thoroughly researched baby things once they settled down wherever the fuck they’re going to settle down.

They can’t stay in their little cabin in the woods. It’s not an ideal place for a baby, and they need help, a doctor for a newborn checkup and someone to tell them what the hell they’re supposed to do after they make sure she’s healthy.

Steve won’t even consider seeing the doctor in Cazenovia, not when neither of them have any earthly idea how this is supposed to work in the 21st century. If two fellas ended up with both their names on a birth certificate back in the 30s, there’s no way they’d be able to keep the kid. They’d probably land themselves in jail or the loony bin, while they were at it.

Hell, it was considered common knowledge at the time, that praying for a baby took a man and a woman and a legal marriage. That was obviously not true, even then.

Despite all the great social changes in this century, Cazenovia still is far from the kinda place where Bucky would want to walk down the street holding Steve’s hand, so they’re not going to risk something as precious as the little baby that floated down onto their doorstep only a few hours ago.

Bucky buys up everything they could possibly need for the drive back to the city and makes it back to the cabin in record time. Inside, he finds Steve on the couch and the baby making sad, plaintive sounds. Not quite a cry yet, but getting there.

Bucky doesn’t think he’s seen Steve look so obviously terrified since a certain factory in Azzano, with fire licking up from below and an impossible divide to jump. He’s got the whole basket on his lap, both arms wrapped around the wicker, and he says, “Shush, shush. Oh, sweetpea, it’s alright. It’s ok. Your pop will be back real soon.”

“What the hell are you doing?” Buck demands, dropping a new and freshly loaded diaper bag at his feet.

Steve squeaks and startles. “She’s upset .”

“No shit,” Bucky mutters, crossing the room in a couple hurried steps and dropping down next to Steve on the sofa. “You gotta hold her for real.”

Bucky coos at their daughter, gently bringing her into his arms and carefully supporting her neck. He’s got vague memories popping around in his head, of holding Rebecca like this, but they all blur together, nothing solid that he can hold on to.

She settles when he cradles her against his chest, making sure to keep the blankets between her skin and the cool metal of his left arm.

It’s the second time he’s held her, and he only put her down last time because she needed things . If he has his way, he’ll never put her down again, and when she blinks up at him, still struggling to get the hang of working her eyelids, he feels like a different person, a better person, a father.

Everything he’s done, everything he’s survived, it all lead him here and in this moment it becomes worth it, like he was always meant to do this, to hold this little girl in his arms and just love her with everything he’s got.

Steve’s still looking a little too panicked for comfort, his eyes wild and his arms clenched around the now empty basket, but even Steve’s distress can’t touch Bucky’s sudden, breathless joy.

“I bought formula,” Bucky says.

Steve nods, says, “Okay,” and then just continues to sit there.

Bucky would rather stare at their daughter, but now he’s got to stare at Steve instead. He regards him silently for a few seconds until Steve jumps and seems to get it.

“Oh,” he says, blinking at Bucky. “You want me to do that? I don’t know how to do that!”

Bucky closes his eyes and finds his patience. “Neither do I. Good thing you can read the instructions.”

Steve squares his shoulders and marches off towards the kitchen like he marches into battle, bending to grab the diaper bag on the way.

“Your daddy’s a little ridiculous sometimes, baby girl,” Bucky murmurs. “But we sure do love him anyway, don’t we?”

Bucky’s never even told Steve that, not in so many words, but it’s easy as anything to love their daughter and to tell her that he loves her daddy, too.

Steve manages with the formula, comparing the instructions on the container with instructions on the internet and testing the temperature about seven times more than necessary. When they settle back on the couch and Bucky tries to hand the baby over for Steve to feed, Steve shakes his head and gives Bucky the bottle instead.

Later, Bucky will have to figure out what’s got Steve so squirrely about holding their daughter, but right now he can’t do anything but watch her eat.

“We’re in way over our heads here, Buck,” Steve whispers when the bottle is empty and abandoned on the coffee table. He wraps an arm around Bucky’s waist, rests with his cheek against Bucky’s temple, as they both watch her sleep in Bucky’s arms.

“Yeah,” he agrees, but he’s not particularly bothered by anything at the moment.

“We need help.”

“I know. We agreed to head back to the city, right? Find a doctor.”

“I don’t think we should go all the way to the city. We need more help than that. I don’t trust just any doc we might find on our own.”

Bucky finally looks up from the sleeping newborn cradled in his arms because Steve’s speaking with that irritating, careful tone that means Bucky’s not gonna like what he has to say. He narrows his eyes and watches in silence as Steve shuffles in his seat and messes with the seam of Bucky’s jeans.

Bucky raises an eyebrow and Steve sighs, hiding his face against Bucky’s shoulder. “This looks like a job for Captain America,” he says.

“Oh.” Bucky blinks. “Well, fuck .”

Steve just sighs.

After the charges on Bucky were dropped and Steve was forced into retirement, they didn’t talk about how Steve ended up in Bucky’s bed more nights than not, back in their two bedroom apartment in Brooklyn.

They didn’t talk about it on their first night in the cabin, everything so quiet and still around them, when Steve fucked Bucky for the first time in the 21st century and then made him pancakes in the morning, going on about buying an ambient noise machine while he licked raw batter off a spoon. Three months in the woods, and they didn’t talk about it when Steve started kissing Bucky before getting out of bed in the mornings, and after his fifty mile runs in the afternoons, and as Bucky turns off the lights at night.

WWII was not exactly a conducive environment for getting into the gory details of some queer as hell feelings for your best friend, so they definitely didn’t fucking talk about it then. Plus, Steve had Peggy. Anything he might’ve had to say to Bucky during the war - after the handful of occasions when fear and adrenaline and surviving yet another death defying mission had them pressing each other into trees, hands down each other’s pants, breathing harsh into each other’s mouths - was probably not anything Bucky wanted to hear anyhow.

Despite his patchwork memory and all those times the pair of them drunkenly fooled around before Bucky went to war, he’s pretty fucking positive they never talked about it back then. In the harsh light of morning, hungover and miserable, they’d make sure there was more space between them as they walked down the sidewalk and Bucky would find dates for them as soon as possible.

They’ve only talked about it a grand total of once, in 1941, when Steve was delirious with fever and Bucky was beyond exhausted, staying up for his twenty-sixth consecutive hour, watching Steve struggle to pull breaths into his lungs. Steve said, “The nuns are wrong, Buck, saying only good Catholics can pray up a baby. I bet they’re wrong about other stuff, too. I bet two men could pray up a baby, if they loved each other enough. Would you pray for a baby with me, Buck?”

And Bucky said , “Yes.”

Pearl Harbor happened not five days later, and seventy some odd years after that, they still haven’t gotten around to talking about it.

Admittedly, they probably should’ve got their shit together before accidentally wishing up a baby.

They bicker about who should drive.

Steve learned to drive around bomb craters in war torn Poland, and that’s how he acts on modern highways, too, speeding like they’re being chased and swerving around cars like they’re Nazi tanks. Bucky, conversely, learned under the careful instruction of his father when he was twelve and his legs were finally long enough to reach the pedals on one of the company trucks. It was clear from the get go that he’d better drive well, because crashing the truck or fucking up whatever cargo they were carrying could mean ruin for the whole family in those days. He remains careful and precise behind the wheel, or, as Steve calls it, slow as ever-loving shit.

“I’ll be careful,” Steve promises.

“You wouldn’t know careful if it smacked you in your goddamn perfect face.” Bucky checks all the straps and buckles on the car seat for the fourth time before gently closing the back door, not wanting to disturb the baby’s sleep.

“You really shouldn’t curse around her like that.”

“And you sure as shit won’t be driving with cargo this precious.”

“But, Buck--”

“Nope.” He sticks his hand out and Steve huffs as he drops the keys into his metal palm.

They bicker some more when Steve tries to climb into the front seat and Bucky’s horrified that he would even consider leaving a newborn all by herself .

“What if she’s fussy and I don’t notice because I can’t see her face? What if something horrible happens? What if I’m so distracted checking on her every half a second that I drive us off a cliff?” Bucky’s voice is rising in pitch as he contemplates every terrifying possibility for their two hour drive south.

He’s been pretty cool about their surprise wish baby so far, but now he finally understands the panicked, wild eyes Steve was sporting when Bucky got back from the shopping.

Steve reaches out to wrap a big palm around the back of Bucky’s neck, tugging him close until their foreheads are resting together.

“Anything could go wrong,” Bucky whispers, feeling miserable and weak. Where he was fine one fucking minute ago, now he’s flailing wildly, unable to breathe right.

He was in control of exactly nothing for seventy miserable goddamn years, so he’s well aware that he can’t control the whole world now - he can only control what he does and how he reacts, that was a big therapy lesson - but he’s got a tiny, precious, breakable-as-all-shit daughter now and it’s a goddamn imperative that he control everything, just to keep her safe, except he can’t and--

“ Bucky .” Steve says his name like he used to during the war, when Bucky would find him after one of his solo missions. He’d chain smoke cigarettes to give his hands something to do beside shake, but Steve always saw his distress anyway. “Hey, hey. Breathe with me, pal.”

So they count out their breaths - another therapy trick, and it helps Steve too when he wakes from a nightmare even if Bucky’s had no success getting him to talk to a therapist of his own - and everything looks a lot less dire with his heart rate settled and Steve’s forehead pressed to his, Steve’s warm palms on either side of his neck.

“You sure you want to drive?” Steve murmurs, smiling his small, crooked smile.

Bucky rolls his eyes, huffs, and doesn’t bother with a reply, climbing into the front seat while Steve gets into the back, buckling in next to their daughter.

Bucky drives exactly the speed limit down the 81 and for once Steve offers no complaint. They don’t talk at all. Steve puts on a podcast about baseball and the baby sleeps all the way till Binghamton. When she gets fussy they pull over, and Bucky doesn’t say anything when Steve practically shoves Bucky towards the back seat after he suggests Steve hold her.

Steve trails along behind them as Bucky wanders around the parking lot, holding their daughter to his chest and cooing nonsensically against her downy blond head. She doesn’t seem interested in another bottle but Bucky doesn’t freak out because most of the internet seems to agree that newborns only eat every three hours on average. A diaper change on the backseat of their SUV is not ideal, but Bucky makes it work.

Back on the road, taking the 86 towards the city, Steve keeps his hand on the baby’s chest. He looks equal parts awestruck and on the brink of puking his guts out.

They’re about a half an hour from their destination - Bucky wants to keep driving all the way back to the city, back to Brooklyn, but he promised Steve that he wouldn’t - when Steve says, “She needs a name.”

Bucky probably should’ve thought of that. Good thing Steve’s around, always thinking of what Bucky doesn’t.

Though a name should’ve been more obvious, probably.

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees, turning off the stereo and glancing at Steve in the rearview mirror. He appears no less nauseated and shocked than he did a minute ago, but he also doesn’t seem capable of looking at anything other than the baby in her carseat. “What’re you thinking? Sarah? Rebecca?”

Steve hums and readjusts the blankets. “I dunno. I kinda think she should have her own name.”

“Yeah.” Bucky clears his throat, swallows down the lump suddenly lodged in his chest, and resolves to save the sappiness and general awestruck waterworks for later, when he’s not barrelling down the highway in a thousand pound tin can that contains the only things that really matter to him in the whole goddamn world. “Yeah, her own name sounds real good, pal.”

“But something normal.”

“Normal?”

“Not one of those fancy modern names.”

“So what. Like Ethel?”

Steve scoffs. “She doesn’t look like an Ethel. Dolores?”

“I thought you said you wanted her to have her own name?” Bucky huffs. “Were we not just reminiscing about Dot?”

Steve winces and Bucky wishes he could take it back. Although it’s been a couple years since that big showdown in Siberia with Tony Stark, Steve still won’t talk about it. Steve calls Tony Stark every few months now - who seems to be way better at retirement and dealing with his PTSD than Steve is - but when it comes to the fight with Tony, Steve’s still stoic and suffering.

“What about Irene?”

“Eh,” says Steve, shrugging.

“What, did I forget an Irene and she was awful?”

“Naw, it’s just not right. Betty?”

“No.”

“Evelyn?”

“Closer,” Bucky says. This conversation would be more enjoyable if he could stare at their daughter's face like Steve can, but he stares at the road stretched out before them instead, blessedly deserted of other cars.

“Eleanor?”

Bucky laughs. “Like the president’s wife?”

“Hey, did you know she had a thing with her best friend?”

In the rearview mirror, Steve’s grinning at him. He looks almost relaxed for the first time since breakfast and his smiles have always been so goddamn infectious. Bucky grins back for a second before staring back out at the road.

“A thing?”

“A thing,” Steve repeats. “You know, a thing thing . Like we had a thing. Like they were in love.”

Bucky’s heart flutters in his chest. Steve says it like it’s obvious that it was love with them, too, even when all that had happened was drunken fooling around that they never talked about afterwards.

“Yeah?” Bucky whispers.

“There are letters. It’s good stuff. Should put it on your reading list.”

“I like Eleanor. She looks like an Eleanor. We could call her Ellie.”

“Now that sounds like some fancy modern bullshit.”

Bucky glances in the rearview quick enough to see Steve’s eyes go wide in horror when he realizes he cursed in front of the kid. He squeaks, slaps a palm over his mouth, and Bucky laughs so hard driving almost gets dangerous. Almost .

When Bucky woke from cryo in a bright Wakandan lab instead of a dark Hydra lair, Steve had been there. Bucky’d collapsed into his arms, breathed deep into his neck, and whispered, “How long?”

It had only been a couple weeks. Time goes funny in cryo, like an eternity and a millisecond wrapped up into one horrible, freezing-as-shit nightmare. Those couple weeks frozen in Wakanda felt no different than the decade he spent in stasis during the 80s before Pierce revived the Winter Soldier program.

Bucky had been pretty fucking perturbed when Steve confessed that no, they did not have a solid way to get the Winter Soldier out of his head, but they did have a plan based on equal parts magic, science, and blind fucking hope .

Bucky’d spent his days in Wakanda hanging out with the newly liberated Wanda, plus a whole horde of neurologists and a handful of psychologists. It was hard fucking work, wrestling his head back from the Goddamn Winter Soldier, but it was cathartic, too. Even after hard days, exhausted and wrung out, with old traumas brought to the surface but not quite exorcised yet, it was so much fucking better than any single moment he spent as a weapon.

So while Bucky had been healing, talking to a therapist, and meditating, and remembering how to be a person, relearning what happiness felt like and remembering to want things and figuring out how to forgive himself for everything he did as The Soldier, Steve had been a fugitive. He spent his days dealing with the aftermath of busting his friends out of a secret goddamn prison and going full on Cold War with the US government, battling it out in the court of public opinion.

Bucky learned to knit. Steve told the internet about that secret goddamn prison and the army of super soldiers he fought his fellow Avengers to protect the world from. Bucky learned to cook Wakandan food, got the last of those fucking triggers out of his head, and found peace swimming laps in a lake so massive it might as well have been an ocean. Steve barely slept, the shadows beneath his eyes growing darker by the day, and started negotiating with the US government for a peaceful solution to the whole clusterfuck when it became clear that the majority of the American public was Team Cap.

It’d taken Bucky way too goddamn long to figure out that Steve was a fucking mess, maybe not as fucked up as Bucky but also not dealing with it all, relying on his usual stubborn mix of pigheadedness and sheer force of will to get him through.

By the time their exile was officially over, Bucky felt recovered enough to take care of Steve. When they got back on US soil, it was all art museums and nice meals and long bubble baths.

Still, Steve hadn’t managed to really smile or sleep through the night until they got to the cabin.

It would’ve been nice if he’d gotten to do a little more of that before a baby floated down to their doorstep.

There’s no visible security when Bucky turns onto the narrow dirt road. The driveway looks like nothing at all and he would’ve missed it all together, if not for Steve. There’s only a handful of people in the whole fucking world who know the location of the facility, and although they did a good job keeping this road looking like it goes nowhere, Bucky’s sure there’s about a thousand robots ready to blow them up, sensors under ground tracking their progress.

Bucky breathes through his panic, tells himself that they’re guests, fugitives no longer. No one is getting blown up. They are expected. Steve even called Tony Stark while Bucky was out shopping, just to give him a heads up, even if he is fully retired now and has nothing to do with what goes on at the Avengers Facility these days.

Bucky knows they aren’t about to be blown to smithereens. He still glances in the rearview at Steve with his arm slung over the carseat every two seconds anyway.

It takes a couple miles before they clear the dense woods, a lake coming into view as the dirt road turns to pavement. They curve around it and pull up to the front entrance of the facility, parking under an overhang like they’re checking in at an ugly metal hotel rather than superhero headquarters.

And there, standing outside the entrance with his arms crossed over his chest, is Captain America. Bucky kinda hoped he’d be decked out in a uniform goofy enough to rival Steve’s USO getup, so the jeans and t-shirt are a disappointment. He grins and waves and Bucky is not overly happy to see him, but he gets why Steve wants to go to people he trusts. And who’s more trustworthy than Captain America, in an interation.

Bucky keeps his head down as he parks, slipping out of the door before Steve’s even got his seatbelt off and holding his door open for him. Steve squeezes his shoulder as he climbs out of the car and says, “Sam!”

Ignoring the greetings going on behind him, complete with an excess of hugging and backslapping, he works the carrier part of the car seat free. Eleanor’s asleep again, jerking a little when he lifts her carrier but settling quickly. Her face is squished the way new babies always seem to be, her tiny mouth slack in her sleep, and Bucky’s momentarily too wrapped up in her to do anything but stare for a few seconds.

Watching Eleanor sleep is a much more enjoyable activity than whatever awaits him in the Avengers Facility, but he can’t dilly dally any longer when Steve says, “Buck, c’mon .”

Bucky’s still not sure how Steve sold the whole Sam Wilson - who recently was a prisoner of the US government - as the new Captain America thing , but it ended up being part of the agreement. The decision probably had more to do with what Sam did in Wakanda, working closely with King T’Challa to come up with the new independent board of super people that replaced the Sokovia Accords as the governing body that would provide the oversight for the Avengers and their ilk.

Bucky worries that it’s gonna be tough for Steve, to be here at the facility as someone other than Captain America.

He shuffles toward Sam and Steve, keeping his eyes on the ground. He’s still not great at interacting with people who are not Steve, even if he was forced to spend more time than he ever wanted with Sam when they were both fugitives in Wakanda.

“Bird Brain,” he says in greeting.

Sam clenches his jaw. “Sargent Sourpuss.”

Sam’s never fully forgiven Bucky for destroying his wings and drop kicking him off a building. Bucky can admire this kind of good sense that Steve Rogers decidedly lacks, but Sam is still annoying as all shit.

“Really, guys? In front of the baby?” Steve huffs and rests a hand on Bucky’s shoulder. Sam’s falcon-sharp eyes narrow in on the point of contact, and Bucky’s got to stare at the ground some more to keep from blushing.

Touching in front of other people is another thing they’ve never done, right along with talking about this thing between them. It might’ve taken having a baby together to get Steve to bring this little piece of their private life out around Sam, but Bucky’s not one to miss an opportunity.

He scoots closer to Steve, leaning into his side. It’s a great victory when Steve’s hand drags down his spine to rest at his lower back, intimate and warm.

“Well, dang. Look at this baby.” Sam bends down, getting his face close to the carrier.

Bucky deserves a goddamn medal for ignoring the urge to pull his daughter away and punch New Captain America in the face.

But Sam doesn’t do anything stupid, like try to touch her, and he’s got an appropriately adoring look on his annoyingly handsome face. So, overall, Bucky feels good about his decision to not actually punch him.

“Wow, she’s beautiful, fellas.” Sam straightens up, slaps Steve on the arm and, again, doesn’t do something stupid like try to touch Bucky. It’s not really fair that Sam’s eyes are all misty when Bucky’s not had the time to have a good cry over this little miracle yet today.

Jesus Christ, she’s existed for less than twelve hours and is already the center of his entire goddamn universe.

At Bucky’s back, Steve’s hand fists in his t-shirt. He’s all jaw-clenched and hard eyed again, his adam’s apple bobbing as he audibly swallows. “Yeah,” he whispers. “She sure is.”

“Does she have a name yet?”

Bucky says, “Ellie,” at the same moment Steve says, “Eleanor.”

Steve scowls at him and Bucky gives him his best smirk in return. Bucky says, “Diaper bag,” and Steve immediately bops off to get the necessities out of the trunk.

“Oh man ,” Sam says, rubbing his hands together. “This is gonna be fun.”

They do the newborn exam in what used to be Steve’s room after Bucky gets all white-faced and shaky over the prospect of spending any time in any place overly medical and lab-like. Dr. Cho’s got a big hug for Steve, but she’s professional and competent when she checks out Eleanor.

Bucky’s heard plenty about Dr. Cho, but never actually met her. He would’ve highly preferred one of three trusted Wakandan doctors who he worked with for months, but Steve said holding out for that would be impractical.

Dr. Cho drove up from the city to meet them because Steve might pretend to be mister practical, but he seems as freaked out and particular about their daughter’s care as Bucky is.

Bucky’s shoulders feel about a million pounds lighter when Dr. Cho pronounces her healthy, and then gives them a whole slew of parenting advice and things to read. She promises to come back in a few days to check in and jots down the name of an actual pediatrician in the city, for the one month check up she recommends.

Bucky’s got no goddamn idea where they’ll be in a month. That’s one of about a million things they’ve got to talk about.

The whole exam calms Bucky down, and knocks Eleanor out for yet another nap - she falls asleep with the bottle still in her mouth and Bucky’s sure it’s the cutest thing to ever happen in the history of the world - but it seems to have the opposite effect on Steve. By the time Dr. Cho excuses herself, Steve’s up and pacing, wringing his hands and gnawing on his bottom lip and generally infecting the entire room with his anxiety.

“You about ready to tell me what’s wrong there, ace?” Bucky asks, tracking Steve’s movements from where he’s sprawled out on the bed. Normally, he’d get up and hug on Steve to calm him down a little, but there’s a newborn sleeping on his chest and he’s got no plans to move. Maybe for the rest of his life. Or at least until Eleanor’s old enough to start school.

“I’m fine ,” Steve says, like he’s willing himself to believe it.

Bucky does not point out Steve’s great reluctance to hold their daughter and current freak out, both big indications that Steve is indeed not fine . Instead he says, “You didn’t get a run in today.”

It took Bucky an excessively long time to figure out Steve needs to run like Bucky needs to sit outside with his eyes closed.

Ayo - the Dora Milaje tasked with keeping an eye on Bucky to make sure he didn’t go all Winter Soldier rampaging again - taught him and Wanda meditation when they were still fugitives, and in Wakanda Bucky would sit on the beach, breathe steady, listen to the waves, and just be. Upstate he found a creek a mile from the cabin, and a flat rock in a bend that caught the sun, where he’d sit for an hour or so most days. He’ll have to find some moving water on the property here if they end up staying for any length of time. Bucky sits still and when he’s done, he’s calm, centered, his head mercifully quiet.

But Steve is not Bucky and he was shit at sitting still even when he was small and his back was so crooked that just walking from one end of his apartment to the other hurt like a son of a bitch some days. Bucky tried to make Steve sit still and meditate with him exactly once, and then he figured out that when Steve comes back from a run, he’s calm, centered. And once when Bucky asked, “ Is your head mercifully quiet after you run ?” Steve smiled, wiped sweat from his forehead with the bottom of his t-shirt and said, “ Sure, Buck. ”

“Oh!” Steve says, perking right up just at the thought of a good run. He stops his pacing at the end of the bed, but keeps wringing his hands. “I don’t want to leave you on your own, sweetheart.”

If having a baby with Steve is all it took to get Steve to touch him around other people, Bucky wonders what he’s gotta do to get Steve to call him that always .

“Think we’re all set here. I’m just gonna read a little.”

“I’m taking my phone. So you can call me.”

Steve changes into his running clothes, but it takes Bucky insisting three more times that they’re fine to get Steve out the door. And only after he runs his hand over the crown of Eleanor’s head and kisses Bucky full on the lips.

Bucky’s been working his way through a weird sci-fi novel Natasha sent him in her last care package, but watching Eleanor sleep is more riveting than any fiction yet created by humankind. He loses half an hour just staring at her before a soft knock sounds on the door, tapped out in a specific and familiar pattern.

Bucky grins, because he knows that knock.

They came up with that rhythm in Wakanda, for days when Bucky could only handle two specific people coming into his room and he wanted to know immediately who was outside his door.

“Come in,” he says in Russian, slipping easily into the Sokovian dialect. Wanda opens the door before he even gets the phrase fully out. It’s been a year since he last saw her and she looks no different, hiding behind a curtain of dark hair with her sleeves pulled down over her hands, smiling shy and private.

Bucky grins at her and nods at the end of the bed.

He’d forgotten the uniqueness of her gait in the last twelve months, her movements graceful and creepy, almost serpentine. Her superhero name is well earned when she slinks around like that, but then she trips over Steve’s boots, giggling wildly as she catches herself on the end of the bed, and the effect is lost. She’s just a kid again, one that’s finally learning how to laugh after enduring some truly horrific shit at the hands of the same people responsible for the truly horrific shit Bucky had to endure.

“Look at what you did.” Wanda kneels on the bed, tucking her hair behind her ears and staring at Eleanor. “Sam says her name is Eleanor. She looks like Steve. Can I hold her?”

Bucky hesitates. He needs to hold her for approximately three thousand more hours before he’ll get anywhere close to his fill, and it seems weird to hand her over to someone else when Steve hasn’t really held her yet.

(He’s working very hard not to think about why Steve hasn’t held her yet. Eleanor, perfect creation that she is, provides an excellent distraction.)

“Nevermind,” says Wanda and if he didn’t trust her to stay out of his head without express permission, he’d think she was reading his mind. Turns out she’s pretty good at reading faces without the assistance of any magic tricks. “She’s sleeping.”

“That’s mostly what she does.”

“Well, she’s a newborn. That’s what they’re supposed to do.”

She sounds wistful when she says it, her mouth a little pinched around the corners. It’s the same look she gets when she talks about Pietro.

“We had a baby brother once,” she murmurs, looking at Eleanor. “Little Pasha. I was the one to find him by the front door in his basket. We were eight, and our worst fights were over who got to hold him. He didn’t see his first birthday. They killed him the night they came for us. Pietro was holding him. Maybe they would’ve let him be, if he was in his basket, but Pietro was holding him.”

Heart aching in his chest, Bucky counts his breaths and presses his nose into Eleanor’s fuzzy hair.

“Thank you for telling me,” he murmurs because that’s the thing they tell each other.

Wanda started it, when Bucky told her about all the skinny Steve look alikes they forced him to kill with his new robot arm, not long after he forgot his own name but before he forgot Steve’s. When Bucky said, “ It could’ve been worse ,” Wanda looked right at him and said, “ Thank God it wasn’t. Thank you for telling me. ”

He let her into his head a day later. It only took a few hours to get rid of the Longing trigger. The rest weren’t so easy.

“You can hold her,” Bucky says.

Wanda smiles. “Fatherhood’s made you soft. One sad story and you’ll give me anything I want.”

“Shows what you know. I was always soft. And you really can hold her.”

“Later,” she says, stretching out on her stomach and lying with her head pillowed on her folded arms. “When she wakes up.”

So Bucky tells her about their little cabin in the woods and finding Eleanor this morning. And Wanda tells him that she’s going to take classes at a community college in the city two days a week. She recites classes like she’s got the course catalog memorized, and is planning on taking a wide variety of subjects, from ancient history to pottery and auto shop, bound and determined to figure out what her interests might be now that she’s allowed to have them.

When Steve comes in, she leaps off the bed and into his arms. She makes a big scene about how gross and sweaty he is, but keeps on hugging him anyway.

They have dinner with Sam and Wanda. Bucky’s sure there are other Avengers lurking around, but he’s glad they keep it small. He forgot how quiet Steve is these days, around non-Bucky people.

He noticed it about ten goddamn minutes after their ill fated reunion in Bucharest. The most drastic and jarring change that the seventy decades they were apart wrought on Steve is his silence. He lost his smart mouth and his constant need to fight everything always and his sass, but with every day they spent up in the cabin, he got better; quicker to smile and ready with a wise ass quip.

But they aren’t at the cabin any longer and, even with just Wanda and Sam, Steve’s too quiet.

Dinner’s nice anyway. Sam and Wanda do most of the talking. Eleanor sleeps in her carrier on the chair next to Steve. They put together a crib after Steve got back from his run, and that’s where she’ll sleep tonight, probably waking them up a lot, if the internet and Sam’s stories about all his kid siblings and cousins are to be believed. His ma got remarried when he was fifteen and he had two sisters and one brother by the time he went off to college, so he’s got more baby experience than the rest of them combined. It’s that impressive resume that convinced Bucky to come to the facility in the first place.

Steve’s still quiet when they get back to the room and when Bucky emerges from the bathroom, teeth brushed and ready for bed, he finds Steve at the crib. Bucky presses into Steve’s back, kisses the back of his neck, and hooks his chin over his shoulder to stare down at their daughter.

Eleanor, freshly fed and diapered, is still up. It’s a new record. The only thing better than watching her sleep is watching her blink up at the world, her eyes going in and out of focus as she looks at Steve and then at the ceiling and then back at Steve.

“Do you think she’ll be here when we wake up in the morning?” Steve whispers.

“It does feel like a dream,” Bucky agrees. Suddenly he gets why Steve’s been so strange today, why he’s hesitant to hold her. Why he whispers her name like a secret, like it’s dangerous. “Is that what’s got you all worried? You think she’s too good to be true? You think she’ll disappear?”

Steve doesn’t say anything, but he lets out a little huff of breath, his shoulders slumping, that tells Bucky he’s right on the money.

“I know it’s scary,” Bucky whispers.

Steve nods, doing his damnedest to hold it all in and push it all down like he always does, but after a few seconds he gives up, turning in Bucky’s arms and hiding his face against Bucky’s neck. Normally, Steve will only let Bucky comfort him like this right after a nightmare. And even then, he always pulls it together after a few minutes and insists he’s fine and tells Bucky to go back to sleep.

“Steve,” Bucky whispers, running his fingers through Steve’s hair as he shudders.

“What if I can’t do it this time?”

Bucky’s so shocked that Steve’s actually talking to him about his fear that his hand stills in Steve’s hair for one little moment, before he takes a breath and continues. “Can’t do what?”

“Keep her,” he whispers, holding Bucky tighter. “I just barely managed to keep you safe, and it was so close. It was so close to them separating us again and taking you away and somehow we managed to hold it together and it finally turned out alright. But what if I can’t do it next time? What if we lose her or they take her away or I can’t keep her safe? And I’m not even Captain America anymore! What if--”

“Hey.” Bucky pulls Steve out of his hiding spot in the crook of Bucky’s neck and rests their foreheads together. “I’m gonna need you to breathe, pal. Count them out with me. There you go.”

They breathe and count and hold on to each other for a few minutes, until Steve has it together enough to try to pull away. Even after all those months in the cabin, Steve hasn’t quite figured out that he can lean on Bucky, too. That he doesn’t need to carry every burden on his own.

Bucky holds him tighter, doesn’t let him pull away, and interrupts before Steve can say, I’m fine .

“No one’s going to take her from us,” Bucky says. “It’s our names on her birth certificate, yours and mine, and nothing’s gonna change that. She’s ours , and come what may, we’ll keep her safe. I can’t think of two more well equipped people to do that, and this parenting thing might be a bit of a surprise, but we’ll figure it out. I promise, Steve. She’s really ours and we’re really going to keep her.”

“Okay.”

“She’ll be here when we wake up, ace.” Bucky kisses Steve’s cheek, holding him a little tighter when Steve leans into the touch. “I promise. And it’s probably gonna be in about three damn hours, seeing as she’s been eating exactly as often as the internet said she’ll eat.”

Steve chuckles. “How the hell would we manage to do this without the internet?”

“I’ve got no fucking clue.”

“ Language , Buck.”

They stand there while Eleanor falls back asleep and then they stand there a little longer until Steve says, “If she’s gonna wake us up in two hours and fifteen minutes, we should probably go to sleep.”

He’s got a good point, and it’s been a long fucking day, but even cuddled up in bed with the lights off, Bucky can’t quite keep his eyes closed.

“Hey,” he whispers, head pillowed on Steve’s chest.

“Hey.” Steve sounds no closer to sleep than Bucky.

“We should stay here for a while,” Bucky says.

He’s been thinking about it since Wanda told him about her classes and her superhero training and her continued therapy. They could go anywhere, but all the familiar places in the city aren’t familiar anymore and this is where their people are; Sam and Wanda, other random Avenger types, Natasha, when she’s in the country, Clint Barton, when he gets bored with retirement. There is always a chance of a Tony Stark sighting, but Sam says he’s only been by once, when Sam first got the shield, preferring to stick to the west coast and a series of tropical islands with Pepper Potts.

Bucky remains worried that the close proximity will leave Steve guilty that he’s no longer using all the super soldier gifts he was given to save people, but so far he seems ok. And they can always leave if it gets to be too much. Overall, it seems worth it to stay, at least until they figure out where they want to raise Eleanor.

“You want to live here?” Steve asks. “In this tiny room? It’s so sterile and modern and horrible . Like a fancy, tech infested barracks.”

“Well, not in the facility,” Bucky says. “But maybe in the nearest town? Or on the property? It’s a hundred goddamn acres. Would they let us build a cabin?”

“There might already be one, come to think of it.” Steve finally sounds like he’s considering the idea. “I think Tony mentioned a guest cabin? I’ll ask Sam tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” Bucky agrees. “When we wake up and still have a baby.”

“When we wake up and still have a baby,” Steve repeats, like he’s trying to convince himself that it’ll be true.

There’s nothing more convincing than a newborn wail, ringing out an hour after they both manage to fall asleep.

When morning finally comes, Bucky wakes up groggy and Steve’s looking at him. He smiles and kisses Bucky on the corner of his mouth. Eleanor’s between them, fast asleep, Bucky and Steve curled around her. It’s an ideal way to start the day.

“Told you so,” Bucky murmurs, running metal fingers through Steve’s messy hair.

Steve rolls his eyes and smiles brighter than Bucky’s seen in a long time.

They’ve eaten breakfast, gotten directions to the guest cabin, and are driving around the lake towards it before Bucky realizes that if he didn’t bring Eleanor into bed with them this morning, that means Steve did.

At some point in the night, Steve picked her up and soothed her and fed her. Steve brought her to bed because he wanted to keep her close.

Bucky’s about to pull the car over so he can kiss Steve for a while when Steve gasps and sticks his head out the window.

“Holy shit ,” he says, pointing in the direction of a huge house that emerges out of the trees when they come around a bend in the road. “That’s not a fucking cabin!”

“Language,” Bucky says.

Bucky sinks back into the cushions of the plush leather couch and kicks up his feet up on the coffee table. It’s one solid piece of wood, sanded and polished and beautiful. He pulls Eleanor into the crook of his arm. She makes adorable snuffly baby noises and Bucky bites his lip bloody to keep from laughing at her other father.

“You can turn this fireplace on with a flick of a switch!” Steve says, stalking through the living room. “That does not count as starting a fire! No way.”

“There are marble countertops!” he reports from the kitchen, just through an archway constructed of wooden beams. “And two ovens! And floor to ceiling windows with a view of the lake!”

“There are five goddamn bedrooms!” he shouts from the top of the stairs. The rest of his assessment of the top floor gets lost as he moves deeper into said bedrooms, and Bucky grins down at Eleanor. Her gaze is locked onto his nose, and Bucky’s satisfied that she seems to find him almost as fascinating as he finds her.

“Your daddy just needs to get it out of his system,” Bucky tells her. “This place will suit us just fine.”

Eleanor answers with more sniffly baby sounds as if in total agreement.

Steve wears himself out eventually, collapsing next to Bucky with a sigh. He tilts sideways, resting his head on Bucky’s shoulder. “Baby proofing this place is gonna be an almighty pain in the butt.”

“I’ve read about heated floors. Do you think the bathroom has heated floors?”

“ Probably .” Steve sighs again, all drama and indignation for another second before he confesses, “There’s a big deck off the master bedroom. It’s not terrible. But there’s still no way this can reasonably be called a cabin .”

“It’ll do for now,” Bucky says. “We’ll have to figure out where we want to be when she gets old enough for school and friends and all that, but we’ve got time.”

“I should think so. She’s only 28 gosh darn hours old, after all.”

Bucky’s got a memory of the one time they talked about it. Sometimes, it plays on a loop in his head, like a sepia-tinted newsreel.

The memory didn’t come back to him until the first time they pulled up to their little cabin in the woods, outside Cazenovia. They bought the place site unseen, based on a series of pictures on the internet, location, and remoteness. Steve waffled for awhile - hemming and hawing about spending so much goddamn money and overindulgence and couldn’t they just rent some place instead - until Bucky said, “ I’m doing this ,” and Steve said, “ Okay .”

Neither of them mentioned that the cabin only had one small bedroom.

Steve was downright speechless over the price of the SUV Bucky wanted to buy for the trip upstate, but the salesman was a Captain America fan and he gave them a deal. “ The things you boys endured for your country. It’s the least I can do.” They posed in front of their new vehicle with the guy. The pictures got a whole lot of likes on Instagram.

In exchange for being such a good sport about spending so much money over the course of three days, Bucky let Steve do the driving upstate. Everything was normal as they approached the cabin - Bucky giving Steve a hard time over his driving and Steve laughing, claiming they’d still be slowly leaving the city, if Bucky had been behind the wheel - until Bucky got out of the car and got a good view of their new home, up close and personal.

Bucky stumbled with the force of the returning memory, and had to lean against the car for a few seconds to stay upright, but it sure explained why Bucky had been so goddamn certain that moving here was the right call.

It goes like this:

1941, Steve’s apartment. Bucky staying there with him to nurse him through his latest round of sickness. Steve, delirious, burning up and then shivering so hard his teeth rattle together.

Bucky’s parents aren’t even giving him a hard time for never being home and skipping work, a sure sign that Steve’s knocking on death's door. Bucky’s mother - Winnie, he can almost remember her face on good days - calls the priest in for last rites. She kisses Steve’s temple and then Bucky’s before leaving afterwards. Leaving Bucky alone to say his goodbyes.

But in the middle of the night, with Bucky there, holding Steve’s hand and watching his chest struggle to rise and fall with each thin breath, Steve starts talking.

“Do you ever wish it could be different?”

Bucky doesn’t have a spare hand to wipe the tears from his cheeks, not the way he’s holding on to Steve’s, like he could keep him alive through sheer force of will alone.

“I wish you had a healthy pair of lungs,” Bucky whispers. “And a solid ticker to boot.”

Steve wheezes out a laugh. “Yeah, that sure would be something.”

Bucky kisses his hands, watching his chest move.

Steve says, “The nuns are wrong, Buck, saying only good Catholics can pray up a baby. I bet they’re wrong about other stuff, too. I bet two men could pray up a baby, if they loved each other enough. Would you pray for a baby with me, Buck ? ”

And Bucky says, “Yes.”

It’s the fever talking . Steve’s going to die any minute, everybody's saying so, and this conversation would be painful even if it wasn’t their last conversation. Steve’s wheezing, bad, and Bucky can barely breathe himself. Bucky feels like he’s the one with the faulty heart, the way it swoops and races in his chest.

“Good.” Steve breathes out the word like he’s relieved. Like that one yes from Bucky is enough to fix his lungs and drive away his fever and to end the war in Europe, too. For a moment he looks calm, but then his brow furrows and he’s blinking up at Bucky with sad, plaintive eyes. “How though?”

The real answer is, we can’t. Even if it turned out that a coupla fellas could get together and pray up a family, there’s no way they could keep it. Not in this neighborhood or any other Bucky’s ever heard of.

But Steve really might die this time. And the real answer is not the one Bucky gives.

He climbs into bed next to Steve, stretching out on the edge and resting a hand on Steve’s chest. They’ve never been in bed like this together sober, but Steve’s eyes are so fever bright he might as well be drunk.

“You get better,” Bucky whispers, “and we’ll give it a try, if you want. We couldn’t do it in the city, but when you’re better we’ll get on a train and just go get lost somewhere. Become mountain men, live off the land and build a cabin in the woods with our bare hands.”

Steve smiles wheezes and says, “Yeah, Buck. You can learn to hunt and I’ll learn to fish.”

“And there will be no one around for miles to tell us how to live. Just you and me, in our little cabin in the woods, and at night we’ll love each other and we’ll pray our very hardest and we’ll see if God gives us a baby.”

“What else?” Steve eyes drift closed, and Bucky keeps talking, pushing past the fear that they won’t open again. He talks about their cabin in the woods, Steve painting a nursery and Bucky learning how to make furniture from trees he chopped down himself like a proper mountain man and a little creek babbling by, replacing the sounds of the city. He keeps on talking, even after Steve falls asleep, living for a few minutes in his own fantasy, where Steve is healthy and they can be together for real.

It’s one of Bucky’s clearest memories, playing on a loop in his head, like a sepia-tinted newsreel. And in the nine months they lived in that little cabin in the woods, not a day went by without Bucky remembering it again.

And when he was remembering, he was really wishing .

When the sun gets low in the sky, and the day’s been windless, the surface of the lake turns to glass, the line of evergreen trees reflected perfectly on the water with the sunset a riot of color above it.

It’s nice.

Steve should paint it.

Bucky sits on the back deck, feet kicked up on the railing, and watches the still water. There’s a chill in the air, winter fast approaching, and Bucky won’t be able to linger outside much longer, his tolerance for the cold nearly non existent these days.

Somewhere in the house at his back, Steve and Natasha are catching up and watching Eleanor. Their daughter’s twenty-six whole days old, and Steve’s still a little hesitant with her, but Natasha isn’t. She hasn’t put her down since she arrived an hour ago.

Bucky’s a little weird around Natasha, even though they do alright exchanging letters and care packages. She’s weird around him too, the pair of them overly cordial and polite, but she’s one of the few people who can coax a full on, no holds barred, actual goddamn belly laugh from Steve these days. Their friendship is a good thing, and Bucky tries to stay out of their way.

Turning in his chair, Bucky cranes his neck, trying to figure out if Steve can see him through any windows. Reasonably sure that there are no spies currently spying on him, he wrestles his cigarettes out of his pocket. He’ll be down to two after this one. This is the last pack he bought, just a few days before Eleanor was born, and he’s been savoring them.

He inhales, tilts his head back, and lets out a plume of smoke, obscuring his view of the lake for a few seconds before it curls and dissipates.

Bucky’s so busy looking over his shoulder every five seconds to avoid Steve’s wrath, he nearly misses Captain America himself, emerging from the narrow path in the woods that leads on a nice hike around the lake before eventually spitting out at the facility.

“Those things might not actually kill you,” Sam says, crossing the backyard and tromping up the stairs, “but second hand smoke is like, a thing .”

Bucky rolls his eyes and takes another long drag. “Relax, Captain Tightass. This is my last pack ever.”

Sam stands before him on the deck, nods, and crosses his arms over his chest. “She get here okay?”

“Yup.”

“They having their Cap and Nat time?”

“Yup.” Bucky doesn’t bother telling Sam that if anyone around here is Cap these days, it sure as shit ain’t Steve.

Sighing with great drama, Sam looks at the chair next to Bucky, and then at the back door.

Bucky understands his indecision. Natasha takes great pleasure in teasing Sam within an inch of his life, and somehow manages to get Steve to join in. Together, they are something of a menace. Plus, they haven’t seen each other in a year. They’re in rare fucking form right now.

Bucky kicks the chair next to him in Sam’s general direction. Sam raises an eyebrow at him, and then sits.

“I’d offer you a cigarette but you don’t have super soldier lungs,” Bucky says.

“Gee, thanks.”

“There’s beer inside, but that’s kinda the danger zone. Natasha stole my baby.”

Sam barks out a laugh. “Is that why you’re out here pouting?”

“I do not pout .”

“It’s like your fourth most common facial expression, after scowling and smirking and looking all googly eyed at Steve.”

Bucky bites the inside of his cheek to keep from scowling and therefore proving Sam right.

“Damn,” says Sam, looking out at the lake. “This is a good spot.”

Bucky agrees. They sit in companionable silence for a few minutes, until Bucky finishes his cigarette.

“So tell me about babies,” Bucky says.

Sam gives him a look.

“I mean, like, how modern society views the whole wishing for a baby process. It’s different these days, right?”

Sam stares at him long enough for Bucky to get fidgety. Eye contact is just not on the table at the moment, so he stares at the lake some more.

“Yeah,” Sam says. “Two men on a birth certificate would’ve caused quite the stir back then, huh?”

Bucky snorts and wonders if Steve told Sam that this is their situation, or if Sam just guessed.

“I mean,” Bucky says, “pretty much every religion I’ve ever heard of had everyone pretty convinced that it wasn’t even possible.”

“Well, it still happened.”

“Not that I ever heard of.”

“Look.” Sam leans forward in his seat, resting his elbows on his knees. Bucky watches him in his periphery, but mostly looks at the lake. “Most people these days get that it’s about love. Sure, there’s folks that are still spouting the same tired nonsense, claiming that kids need one man and one woman raising them for whatever bullshit reason people have always been saying that. But it’s about love. Obviously it’s about love.”

Bucky smiles, remembering Steve - a whole lot younger and a whole lot frailer and a whole lot angier - saying that exact thing. He certainly had that one figured out before Bucky even got around to thinking about this kind of stuff.

“So now you’ve got any kind of parents you can think of. Single parents. Interracial parents. More than two names on a birth certificate, although I think that’s still kinda rare, still a big no no in a lot of places. Plus, there’s birth control now, for people that want kids but don’t want to want kids. Or who want kids, who can’t help wishing for a baby, even if it’s not the right time. It’s some cool stuff.”

Bucky hums, wondering if he would’ve sought out something like that, if he knew it was an option. If he ever managed to figure out all that remembering was actually wishing. Sure, the timing here wasn’t perfect. Bucky’s stable, but shaky with it. Steve’s sleeping through the night more often. Collectively they’re still a goddamn mess a solid 40% of the time. It’s not the ideal circumstances to be raising a kid.

But their daughter is twenty-six days old and already Bucky can’t imagine a world without her in it.

“Plus, some people even have kids together platonically,” Sam says. He’s talking slowly, carefully, like Bucky’s gonna get spooked any second. His typical annoyed and disdainful tone that he takes with Bucky is much better than this goddamn mollycoddling. “Sure, it’s more common with people in sexual relationships, but mostly it’s about intimacy. And people can get close enough to each other platonically to get both their names on a birth certificate.”

“How about that.” Bucky bites his cheek when he realizes he’s smirking. He really needs some new facial expressions for Sam.

“I’m just saying.” Sam holds up both hands and leans back in his chair. And Bucky hears him, loud and clear. He’s making no assumptions on the details of Steve and Bucky’s relationship. It answers Bucky’s questions, on just what Steve’s told his friends about them.

Which is nothing, apparently .

Of course Sam probably does make some assumptions later, after Wanda shows up and they're sitting down for dinner, when Steve catches Bucky in a kiss - right there in front of Captain America and everyone - as he pulls Bucky’s chair out at the table. Steve’s quiet during the meal, like he can handle Wanda, Natasha, and Sam one on one, but a group remains too much for him. He sits close to Bucky, throws his arm over the back of Bucky’s chair as they linger, long after the dishes are picked clean, and when Bucky finally gets up to clean the kitchen, Steve tugs him down into another kiss, saying, “Thanks, Buck,” against his mouth.

All the touching makes Bucky brave. When everyone is saying their goodbyes - the girls walking back to the facility along the lake and Sam driving the jeep Natasha drove over earlier in the day - Bucky says, “Sam forgot to take his leftovers.”

Steve frowns and says, “No he didn’t,” but Bucky’s already moving towards the front door, leaving Steve alone at the foot of the stairs. “Hey, Bucky, you aren’t even taking him anything!”

Bucky closes the door behind him and jogs down the steps just as Sam’s putting the Jeep into gear.

“Is it possible to wish someone’s name onto a birth certificate?” Bucky blurts it all out before Sam’s even rolled down the window. It’s too dark to see clearly, but it’s obvious that Sam’s surprised.

“What?”

“If one person wants a baby, and wishes for not just that baby but a baby with another specific person, could they make that happen? Even if the other person wasn’t wishing for it?”

His rambling isn’t making total sense, and it would be easier if he just used his name and Steve’s to ask this question, but he can’t. The fear that he forced Steve into this somehow has been steeping away in the back of his head for twenty-six days, growing bigger and more toxic by the minute, but Bucky mostly didn’t want to know.

What’s done is done. Eleanor’s here. Steve’s been so goddamn good with her, now that he’s not letting all that fear hold him back. And Bucky didn’t want to know if this was something he forced Steve into, intentionally or not.

But Steve was so happy today - held Eleanor close and laughed with Natasha and kissed Bucky in front of his friends, even if he was quiet at dinner - so Bucky thinks he knows the answer. He wants Sam to confirm it. To be sure.

“No,” says Sam, like he’s still trying to parse out exactly what Bucky means. “If two people have a kid together, it means not only are they wishing for the kid, but they’re wishing for each other, too.”

Bucky lets out a big, relieved breath and turns on his heel, retreating back towards the house without saying a word.

“Hey!” yells Sam. “You’re welcome! And tell your boy that I’m borrowing him tomorrow. Wanna show off some more fancy new moves with that shield!”

Bucky doesn’t turn around but he does wave behind him in acknowledgement. He can’t let Sam see him grinning. That is not one of the new facial expressions he’s working on for Captain America.

Upstairs, Steve and Eleanor are having a conversation. Smiling from ear to ear, Bucky lingers in the hallway and listens to Steve talk to Eleanor like she’s a grown up. Listens to Eleanor babble back. It’s nothing even close to words yet, mostly grunts and squeaks and spit bubbles but it seems almost intentional now, like her first little foray into communication.

“So that was Natasha,” Steve says. “She wanted to meet you a whole lot sooner, but she was off saving people on the other side of the world. Your pop and I used to try to do stuff like that too, but we’re retired now.”

Eleanor gurgles merrily in reply.

“It really is past your bedtime, sweetpea,” Steve continues. “Don’t know why you haven’t fallen asleep yet, with such an exciting day. Your pop says routines are important, so I should really put you in your crib, but he’s hanging out in the hallway for some reason instead of hanging out in here with us, so maybe just a few more minutes.”

Bucky rolls his eyes and slinks into the room. “I didn’t want to interrupt,” he says, closing the door behind him. He leans against it for a minute, soaking up the sight of Steve sitting up in bed, his long legs stretched out in front of him with Eleanor nestled in the crease between his thighs.

She’s all half formed coos and babbles, like she is actually responding to the sounds of their voices. Her little limbs kick and flail when she gets excited, her eyes wide as she takes in the world like everything is a wonder. Before their eyes, she’s growing into her own little personality and it’s so incredible that Bucky can almost be as amazed by the world as Eleanor is. Eleanor coos up at Steve, and everything is a wonder.

“Pop chased after Sam a few minutes ago,” Steve says. “But I bet he’s not gonna tell us why .”

“Just wanted to get in a few more precious minutes with my best pal, Captain America.” Bucky kicks off his shoes, pulls off his hoodie, and leaves his jeans in a heap on the floor as he makes his way towards the bed.

“I’m your best pal,” Steve mutters as Bucky crawls into bed, his mouth wet and pouty.

Bucky laughs, kisses him, and says, “You’re my best everything.”

That has Steve grinning and Bucky settles into his side, resting his right hand on Eleanor’s tummy. She grabs his thumb, turns to look at him, and grunts.

“Well hello there, Ellie,” Bucky says. “Aren’t you up late?”

She squeaks and kicks her feet and Bucky loves her.

“Your friends aren’t so terrible,” Bucky tells Steve.

“ Our friends,” Steve corrects.

“Wanda, maybe,” Bucky replies. “But you can keep Romanov. And Wilson too, if you must.”

“You like him.”

“You’ll never get me to admit it. Oh, and he wants to show you some fancy shield moves tomorrow if you’re up for it.”

Steve hums, leaning against Bucky. Bucky rubs Eleanor’s tummy, smiling as she yawns.

“Also,” Bucky murmurs, “I’m getting up early to bake him cookies but you can’t tell him they're from me.”

“Okay,” says Steve. “What for?”

“They are thank-you-for-not-being-insufferable-for-one-goddamn-meal cookies.”

“You two have one weird dynamic going on, Buck.”

“Not like you have room to talk. You and Romanov are just bizarre.”

Steve chuckles, getting an arm around Bucky’s shoulders. Eleanor’s eyes are drooping now, and they sit quietly, watching her drift off.

“Natasha gave me some names,” Steve whispers, as Eleanor breathing goes deep and even.

Bucky turns to frown at Steve, his mind going to the worst possible scenarios. Natasha has names of people who are after them and therefore need to die. Natasha has names of more Winter Soldier victims, ones that Bucky can’t remember when he thought he’d remembered them all. Natasha has names of members of the press who somehow found out about ex-Captain America’s century long queer love affair with his best friend and Eleanor.

“She and Clint know people, you know? Have helped people like me, or needed help themselves,” Steve continues. His cheeks are bright red. He won’t look Bucky in the eye.

Bucky presses into Steve’s side, ducks his head to kiss Steve’s shoulder.

Steve takes a deep breath and says, “She gave me the names of five therapists. Think we’ve got it narrowed down to two. I’m gonna call, see if I can set up an appointment.”

Bucky bites his lip to keep from letting out some sort of victory cheer and kisses Steve’s shoulder again. “Really?”

Steve nods. He looks small and tired, and Bucky knows how hard it is for him to admit he needs help. He was shit at it in 1930, and up until two seconds ago, he was shit at it in the 21st century, too.

Bucky’s so proud he could just about burst.

“It’s been a long time coming,” Steve whispers. “I’ve known since before we moved up to the cabin, that I’m not… well, you know.”

Bucky nods and wraps both his arms around one of Steve’s.

“I was just putting it off, hoping it would all just go away on its own if I could soldier through it. I was doing better up there at the cabin. Slowly but surely, and on good days I thought I could handle it on my own. But Eleanor’s here and I can’t handle it on my own. No more dilly dallying. Especially after. Well, you know.”

Bucky nods, wincing.

A couple weeks ago, Steve got low. He had a hard time getting out of bed and was slow to respond when Bucky talked to him, blinking up at Bucky like it was a struggle just to listen, like simply being awake was hard work.

It wasn’t the first time Steve had a hard day, not by a long shot, but it was the first time since Eleanor was born. And normally Bucky could’ve handled it fine except Eleanor was going through a phase of nonstop crying for no goddamn apparent reason.

Bucky’s nerves were pretty frayed, but he managed to hold it together rather admirably. It was harder on Steve, who spends the majority of his time feeling guilty that he’s no longer using all his super-soldiered gifts to save the world. So he just felt extra triple guilty for leaving Bucky on his own to deal with a constantly screaming infant.

In the end, Bucky dropped Eleanor off with Wanda, and then spent the rest of the day huddled down in bed with Steve, watching Chaplin movies and dozing.

All and all, it could’ve been way worse, but Steve still felt the urge to apologize about a million times. And since telling Steve what to do has never worked in the history of ever, Bucky’s been talking more about how much therapy’s helped him, how the cocktail of mood stabilizers and antidepressants he takes every morning make the bad days manageable instead of totally, miserably debilitating.

Steve just hummed noncommittally and changed the subject, but apparently Bucky managed to get through to him, somewhere in there.

“I’m really fucking proud of you,” Bucky says.

“Yeah?” Steve blushes, peeks up at Bucky from underneath his eyelashes, and grimaces. “You sure?”

“Yeah.”

Steve’s got hangups older than the Great Depression about asking for help. Therapy might be all well and good for Bucky, a show of strength rather than weakness, but for Steve Rogers - survivor of scarlet fever, pneumonia, about a million other maladies, and a wacky science experiment, WWII veteran, ex-Captain America, and briefly one of America’s more wanted - therapy means failure. Asking for help means weakness.

And logically Steve probably knows that’s all bullshit, but that frail little punk inside of him who stands up every time he gets his ass kicked - saying, “ I could do this all day ” - is still trying to get up off the mat after going ten rounds with depression using sheer force of will alone and that’s just not how it works.

Bucky wishes he had the words to explain that getting help, going to talk to someone and maybe getting on some meds and trying to get better, that’s how you get up off the mat when it’s your own brain chemistry and past traumas you’re fighting.

Instead, Bucky kisses Steve’s neck, nibbling on the soft skin behind his ear until Steve is smiling and giggling. He says, “I think it’s great, doll. I think it’s so great I wanna give you something.”

“Like what?” Steve murmurs, breathless.

“Like a blowjob.”

Steve squeaks and jumps, and in his lap, Eleanor stirs in her sleep. Bucky forgot she was there, just a little bit.

“James Buchanan Barnes,” Steve hisses. “Our daughter is sleeping right here .”

“Ok, ok,” Bucky says, gently lifting Eleanor up onto his shoulder. She’s boneless and truly conked out, after her very exciting day of meeting Natasha and staying up past her bedtime. Bucky holds her with one arm and shuffles out of bed. “Pants off, Rogers,” he says as he walks through the door. “I promised you one I’m-proud-of-you-BJ and I’m not one to go back on my promises.”

Steve throws a pillow at him and Bucky chuckles as he slips out into the hall, deeply satisfied when he can clearly hear the sounds of Steve shucking his pajamas behind him.

“I’ve got homework,” Steve says the second he walks through the front door. He’s been at the facility, Skyping with his therapist and catching up with Bruce Banner, who got snowed in a month ago and then sorta never left.

Bucky’s lying on his back in the living room. Eleanor’s in a similar position on her blanket next to him, gnawing on a teething toy. Bucky’s spent an hour trying to encourage her to rollover through demonstration, by rolling over a bunch himself. She did it once two days ago, and has yet to attempt a repeat performance.

Steve marches into the livingroom, coming to stand over Bucky and crossing his arms over his chest.

“What a view,” Bucky says, staring up at Steve’s crotch.

Steve giggles - a beautiful, magical sound - so his session must not have been too intense today. Sometimes, Steve comes back exhausted and quiet and Bucky just holds him for awhile. That’s what Steve did for him in the beginning too, when Bucky first realized that therapy means talking about things and he hated it. EMDR was a nightmare, those first couple times especially.

Crossing his legs beneath him, Steve takes a seat by Bucky’s head. Bucky shuffles up onto his elbows, stretching to kiss Steve before settling with his head in Steve’s lap.

“Hello, sweetpea,” Steve says, tickling Eleanor’s tummy. She shrieks with delight and still does not rollover, more interested in getting Steve’s fingers in her mouth. “Did you have a nice afternoon with Pop?”

“There was a minor meltdown when I couldn’t find that stuffed Hulk she’s so into right now,” Bucky says. “But he was hiding under her crib and the day was salvaged. Now if only she would roll over. Like this, Ellie.”

Bucky rolls over a couple times, ending up on his back again. Eleanor says, “Goo! Goo!” and then goes back to playing with Steve’s fingers.

Bucky sighs deeply and Steve fails to hold back a laugh.

“You have homework?” Bucky asks, sitting up next to Steve. They’ll try rolling some more tomorrow.

“Oh, yeah.” Steve cheeks go a little red and he rubs at the back of his neck. “You and me, we’re not great at talking to each other, apparently.”

“Apparently?” Bucky asks, because that’s pretty damn obvious to him.

Steve shrugs, like this assignment is completely baffling to him but he’s gonna do it anyway, because when Steve commits to something, he goes all in. And he’s finally committed to figuring out his recovery. “I’m supposed to tell you how I feel and stuff.”

“Yeah?” Bucky grins, bumping his shoulder into Steve’s. “How do you feel there, ace?”

“Well,” says Steve, leaning into Bucky’s side and wringing his hands in his lap. “Um, to start, I guess I feel like I love you.”

Here they are, crashing in a mansion on a superhero compound, decades removed from their own time, trying to do their best by their daughter, and they are finally, finally talking about it. It’s so absurd that Bucky lets out a startled laugh.

Steve pouts, and as good as his mouth looks when he makes that face, Bucky can’t let Steve think that his laughter means rejection. He wraps his arms around Steve’s neck, kissing him soundly, thoroughly. By the time he’s done, he leaves Steve blinking and love sick, like he’d very much like to say, fuck the homework , and drag Bucky upstairs.

“I already knew that, Steve.” Bucky kisses Steve’s cheek and murmurs in his ear. “But it’s nice to hear. I love you too, you know.”

“I know.” Steve grins and blushes, looking pleased as punch, and goddamn, does Bucky love him. “But it’s pretty ridiculous that we haven’t actually said that before. It’s only been a century, give or take.”

“I hate to break it to you, pal, but our whole lives are pretty gosh darn ridiculous.”

Steve hums his agreement, gives Eleanor’s foot a little squeeze, and then rests his head on Bucky’s shoulder, closing his eyes. “I also feel really lucky. That our names are together on the baby’s birth certificate.”

“You really were wishing for this, huh?” Bucky whispers.

“Of course I was. Of course.”

“I know.” Bucky takes a deep breath because Steve’s therapy homework should be Bucky’s, too.  “I know . But you were just so weird and twitchy when she first came to us.”

“I was freaked out!” Steve lifts his head and flails his hands around as he talks. “That doesn’t mean I didn’t want her!”

“Sam told me that for two names to show up on the birth certificate, both people have to want a baby, but they also have to want each other, too.”

“Bucky,” Steve whispers, reaching out to stroke his cheek. “I’ve always wanted you. Wanted everything with you.”

“And the wishing can’t just be a fleeting desire,” Bucky continues. Now that he and Steve are talking about this, he sorta just wants to share everything that’s been in his head since they found Eleanor on their doorstep and Steve thought it was a mistake. “It can’t just be a fleeting desire, you have to have sustained wishing for a good chunk of time to get a baby.”

“How could I not think about it every day up at the cabin, when we were living in a place like something you dreamed up in 1941.”

Bucky’s mouth pops open. “You remember that?”

“ You remember that?” Steve appears equally shocked.

“I wasn’t delirious with fever at the time.”

Steve looks like he wants to counter that, but he graciously does not say, I wasn’t a brainwashed assassin for seventy years with memories like swiss cheese.

“Yeah.” Steve smiles, soft and fond and crooked. “Well. I remembered everything you said right after the fever broke. You know, I was even working up the courage to talk to you about it. It seemed different after that, like you looked at me more and weren’t in a rush to find some date and you kept on touching me. But then.”

“Pearl Harbor,” Bucky says.

“And you were leaving.”

“And you found Peggy.”

“And nothing I wanted with you seemed even a little bit possible back then, so I just tried to stop thinking about it. But then you fell, and I hated myself for not telling you every day how I felt.”

“Jesus Christ.” Bucky rubs his eyes. He’s glad to know it wasn’t just him that whole time, but it’s so fucking painful anyway. “Our whole lives are a tragedy.”

“Not our whole lives.”

They both look down as one to Eleanor on her blanket. Only there is no Eleanor on the blanket and for a few panicked seconds, Bucky’s convinced that some new super villain snatched her from right beneath their noses.

But they spot her a moment later, all the way on the other side of the room pressed up against the wall, babbling nonsense, staring at the ceiling, and gnawing on her fist. Steve scrambles to his feet to retrieve her, cradling her against his chest as he whirls around to gape at Bucky.

“Did she roll all the way over here? Without us noticing!”

“Uh,” says Bucky. “I guess?”

“Is she supposed to be able to do that?”

Bucky cocks his head, stares up at them, and very slowly says, “No.”

“It might be time to call Dr. Cho.”

“Well, shit . And I know!” Bucky says before Steve can scold him. “ Language .”

Dr. Cho looks fascinated by Eleanor’s DNA when the results come back as decidedly super soldier-like. The doc doesn’t suggest anything horribly insensitive, like turning their daughter into a lab rat, but Bucky gets in the car after the appointment and has a panic attack about it anyway.

He loses some time, comes to lying on his back with Steve curled around him.

“No one’s going to make her a weapon,” Steve murmurs, stroking Bucky’s hair after Bucky turns to him, pleading silently for reassurance. He doesn’t remember getting into bed with Steve, but they’re in the master bedroom with all the black-out curtains pulled shut. “No one’s gonna touch her. We won’t let them. We won’t .”

Bucky nods, relieved that despite Steve’s therapy homework for them to talk more, some things Steve just gets without Bucky having to say a goddamn thing. Bucky’s not the only one in this relationship with the experience of being used like a weapon. SHIELD was less blatant about it, but the intent was there, and now Steve understands exactly why Bucky’s so goddamn freaked out.

“Where’s the baby?” Bucky barely remembers getting back from the facility and for all he knows she’s still buckled into her car seat.

“She’s in her crib, fell asleep on the ride over. It’s been a long day.”

Eleanor screamed and screamed when they drew her blood. It’s been a long fucking day indeed.

“You should call Dr. Mbuyi today,” Steve murmurs.

Bucky nods. He’s got a standing appointment every two weeks with his therapist back in Wakanda, and he might not be able to get in touch with her today with the time difference, but he probably shouldn’t wait ten days before speaking to her again.

“It might be a good thing, Buck,” Steve says, when Bucky’s been quiet for a long time.

Bucky snorts. “She’ll be sturdier at least. Hopefully she’ll get your quick healing and my ability to get drunk.”

He chuckles and presses his smile into Bucky’s temple.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “But you know how we might age a whole lot slower than your average, non-science experiment type person?”

It’s a theory they discussed back in Wakanda, when they had a quiet moment to just look at each other and catalog the differences in their appearances since they last saw each other.

All the things that make them look older than a couple of naive chuckleheads, rearing to leave Brooklyn for a war, were left by trauma rather than age. The bags under Steve’s eyes, the scars covering Bucky from head to toe, that tired expression in both their eyes indicating they’ve seen some real shit, none of it was left by time passing. They’ve yet to find a grey hair between them and their faces remain relatively wrinkle free.

Bucky’s known that they might live a very long time, if something doesn’t manage to kill them violently first, but he never once thought about it in relation to Eleanor. He never considered the possibility that he’d have to live long enough to see his child age and die, while he and Steve remained.

But Steve obviously has.

“Oh,” Bucky says, breathless.

“It’s just a theory.” Steve is calm, steady and sure, and Bucky’s glad one of them is managing to handle this long as hell day without completely falling apart. “There’s no one like us. We can’t say for sure.”

“There’s no one like Eleanor, either.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, smiling his lopsided little grin. “We’ll figure it out, sweetheart. We always do.”

And Bucky believes him.

In the spring, after much debate, they buy a brownstone in Flatbush, just south of Prospect Park. It’s a beat old place, fallen into disrepair in recent decades. Plus it needs renovations to make it fit for three super-people requiring a complex security system.

Tony Stark insists on handling the whole remodel, and Steve spends a couple hours on the phone with him after they find the brownstone, saying, “You clear all decisions with me, Tony. We want the history of the house preserved, Tony. If you turn my home into some modern monstrosity we will have words, Tony. If you install some secret security measure that will spy on us all the time or collect data on our habits, we will have way more words, Tony.”

The project is gonna take a long time, but Bucky figures they don’t really need to live there until Eleanor’s old enough for school. They debated the city versus small town thing for months, until they agreed they wanted Eleanor to grow up around all sorts of folks. And Brooklyn might look a whole lot fancier these days, but Flatbush still has some of that old neighborhood feel. And it’s certainly better than the overwhelmingly straight, white, Protestant population of Cazenovia.

Maybe they’ll spend every summer at the cabin as a compromise. Maybe they’ll only go up there when they really need to get away.

They sign the papers for the brownstone, say their goodbyes at the facility, and hit the road, heading upstate.

Steve reclines in the passenger's seat while Bucky drives, one hand out the window, the other resting on Bucky’s thigh. Eleanor is nine months old and could probably pry apart the straps of her car seat if she set her mind to it, just like she pried apart the slats in her crib a couple weeks ago.

“You ready to go home, sweetpea?” Steve says, turning in his seat to grin at Eleanor.

Eleanor shrieks in reply, kicks her feet, and attempts to stuff as much of the Hulk into her mouth as possible.

Bucky wakes up, and the bed is empty. So is the crib across the room.

He’s been making progress building an addition to the cabin - helped by YouTube videos, how-to manuals, and a couple of local kids with construction experience - but until her room’s done, they’re all camping out together.

More often than not, Eleanor will climb out of her crib in the night, settling between them so silently she doesn’t wake either of them. She might not even be walking yet, but she’s basically become a professional crib climber, since they got one so strong she can’t bend the bars apart.

Yawning widely, Bucky shuffles into the kitchen. Steve’s at the stove, stirring something in a pan with one hand, holding Eleanor with the other. She’s always so clingy first thing in the morning, and she takes longer than Steve and Bucky combined to really wake up for the day.

This morning she looks particularly pathetic, her head resting on Steve’s shoulder and her blue eyes still wet with tears. Steve is narrating his every move, talking to her about what he’s doing like he always does, but she’s very obviously ignoring him.

She whimpers when she sees Bucky, pouting as if she’s offended by the whole world. Sticking out a chubby little hand, she makes grabby motions in his direction and says, “Ba, ba, ba.”

“Aw, baby girl,” Bucky says, crossing the room to take her from Steve. “You don’t have to be awake right now, you know.”

Eleanor sighs and hides her face against Bucky’s neck.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” Steve says, leaning over to drop a kiss at the corner of Bucky’s mouth before dumping the eggs on a plate. “You’re ruining all my plans, you know that? Couldn’t sleep another five minutes, could you.”

Bucky grins, rubs Eleanor’s back, and says, “I got cold. Didn’t know you were planning breakfast in bed. What’s the occasion here, ace?”

It’s still a couple months until Eleanor’s first birthday, the most obvious occasion for breakfast in bed. A couple Avengers are planning on coming up to celebrate with them, but Bucky was already planning on surprising Steve this way, too. Maybe Steve’s just picking a random day to return the favor from last year.

Still assembling their breakfast on a tray, Steve nods to a pile of mail sitting on the island. Bucky shuffles through it, tossing the junk and sorting out bills, until he unearths a small package. Smiling softly, he traces the edges with this thumb and then shakes the thing near his ear, listening to it jangle.

“These what I think they are?” he asks.

Steve beams and picks up the tray. “C’mon. Breakfast first.”

With a bottle and a few bites of egg in her, Eleanor is in a considerably better mood. She picks at the metal plates at Bucky’s wrist, babbling at them like she’s having a conversation and giggling when Bucky moves and the plates whir.

They don’t have suits or anything picked out for the day, but they dress carefully in jeans with no holes and clean flannels. Steve puts Eleanor in a new blue dress Natasha sent in her latest care package. Eleanor shrieks in delight as Steve blows raspberries at her, trying to catch his lip between her hands. She looks more like Steve everyday, her wispy blond hair so pale it seems translucent in certain light.

At the front door, Bucky hitches Eleanor up on his hip, says, “Don’t forget the rings,” and Steve jogs back into the house, stuffing the package in his pocket as he pulls the door shut behind him.

Steve takes Bucky’s metal hand in his, and they walk around the back of the house, weaving around Bucky’s raised beds, where he’s growing greens, onions, potatoes. They pass the old barn out back, now free of all work out machinery, where Steve spends the majority of his days painting and sculpting and creating, before they dip into the woods. The path is too narrow to keep holding hands, so Bucky leads the way towards the creek, Steve hooking his fingers through the belt loops at the back of Bucky’s jeans.

They walk to Bucky’s favorite bend in the creek, Steve pointing out birds or flowers along the way to Eleanor, Eleanor babbling back. When they get to the little clearing, stepping into the sunshine, Bucky brings them all to a stop and turns to face Steve.

Steve fumbles, struggling to get the rings out of his pocket and Bucky laughs.

“Your daddy’s having a real hard time here, Ellie,” Bucky says.

Steve blushes, rolls his eyes, and says, “Shut up.”

“Oh, the romance,” Bucky teases and Eleanor says, “Da, da, da.”

They’re better at talking about things now and one of their grown up conversations - somewhere between where the hell should we live and how the hell do we baby proof for a super strong infant who can crawl faster than most kids can run - was a we should probably get hitched discussion.

They’ll get around to the paper work eventually, when the prospect of the whole world finding out about Eleanor and wanting a piece of them becomes less dire. It’s pretty fucking cool that it’s even an option these days, but neither of them were over eager to stand up in front of other people and recite such intimate vows. Big groups of people and attention from the public are still no goes for the both of them.

But vows sounded really good. Something just for them.

“Here,” Steve says, flicking a ring at Bucky like he’d flip a coin.

The gold catches the sun as it spins in the air, and Eleanor says, “Oh!” as Bucky snags it.

“Nice,” says Steve.

“Me first.” Bucky shuffles a little closer.

Steve takes Eleanor, holding her in the crook of his left arm and offering his right hand to Bucky.

They might be better at the whole communicating thing these days, but Bucky’s still not the gregarious little chatterbox he was once upon a time so he just squeezes Steve’s hand, looks at their shoes, and whispers, “I've wanted to be your husband since I was about ten freaking years old. That I get to marry you now, have a life with you and raise a daughter with you and just be with you, now. Well . It's a gosh darn miracle is what it is. So. Um. I just love this life we’ve fought to build together, a lot. And I love you a lot, too, okay?”

Tearing up, Steve murmurs back, “I love you, a lot.”

“So, I guess I promise to always be your partner, in every sense of the word. I promise to stay with you always and whatever might happen in the future, we’ll figure out together.”

Bouncing excited against Steve’s hip, like she knows exactly what’s going on here and she’s voicing her approval, Eleanor says, “Glurg!”

Steve laughs, even as he cries a little. Bucky tears up too, sliding the gold ring onto the third finger of Steve’s right hand (Bucky wanted his ring on his flesh hand so he could feel it better; Steve wanted his ring on the same hand as Bucky). He gets the ring on Steve’s finger before he gets the whole question out because he’s got no doubt of the answer. “So will you marry me, ace?”

“Yes,” Steve says, voice rough. He steps close, sliding the ring all the way down to his knuckle. When Steve kisses him, Bucky smiles against his mouth, laughing. He runs his thumb over the ring on Steve’s hand and kisses him more seriously, until Eleanor decides they aren’t paying enough attention to her and starts kicking on Steve’s hip, chattering away.

So they take a break from the whole getting married thing to tickle Eleanor and rain kisses on her cheeks and tell her they’ll love her forever, too. Eventually, Bucky takes her, holding her with his metal arm, and she scratches at the material of his shirt, trying to get to the plates beneath.

“Hey, Ellie,” Bucky says, kissing her cheek. “Your daddy just agreed to marry me. Isn’t that something?”

“Bud,” says Eleanor.

“Is it my turn now?” Steve asks.

“Go for it.”

“Okay.” Steve clears his throat, his cheeks burning red, and Bucky might not have been able to meet Steve’s eye while he said his own piece, but he can’t do anything but stare at Steve now, looking radiant and bashful in the mid morning sun. “Okay. James Buchanan Barnes.”

Bucky laughs and rolls his eyes.

“ Bucky .” Steve holds Bucky’s hand, getting close so he can rest his forehead against Bucky for a moment before continuing. He sounds so soft, so earnest, that even Eleanor stops messing with Bucky’s sleeve to watch her father speak. “You’ve never, not once, broken a promise to me. You know that? When we were kids, you promised to have my back. When my ma died, you promised I wouldn’t have to go through life alone because you’d be there. And when we both thought I was gonna die, you promised me this whole fantasy life that neither of us ever thought we could have. But here we are. Somehow, you even managed to keep that promise, too.”

Steve gets choked up and has to take a break. Eleanor leans precariously far away from Bucky, reaching out to pat Steve’s cheek. Steve nibbles on her fingers until she’s giggling and Bucky’s heart is just so goddamn full.

“Anyway,” Steve says.

Bucky nods in encouragement, words a little beyond him at the moment.

“It’s just, everything you’ve been through, Buck. Everything you’ve survived to keep all those promises, I’m just in awe of you. I was so lost in this century without you, but you reminded me how to be a person again. You reminded me how to want things for myself again. You take care of me and let me take care of you. And you wished up this wondrous little girl with me. I love you and our family so much, and I just really want to be your husband.”

Bucky’s really crying now, a strange sound coming from deep in his chest, happy and needy at the same time.

“So what do you say? You wanna be married to me?”

“Yes,” Bucky says when he once again regains the ability to speak. “I really do.”

Grinning, big and sloppy, Steve gets the ring on Bucky’s finger and then sinks his hands into Bucky’s hair, kissing him.

Steve, his husband , kisses him, and Bucky feels the echo of a thousand memories. This is steadier than the frantic, drunken kisses they shared before the war, happier than the messy, terrified things after particularly daunting missions with the Commandos, and sweeter than the shy, tentative ones they exchanged in the dark when they first moved to the cabin.

This is a forever kind of kiss, steady and sure, till death do them part. Another promise that Bucky fully intends to keep.

With a creek babbling by and their daughter clapping her chubby baby hands in his ear, Bucky keeps on kissing Steve.

Maybe later, Steve will watch Eleanor while Bucky works on insulating the expansion to the cabin. Maybe after that, Steve will head to the studio while Bucky reads Eleanor to sleep. Maybe for dinner, Bucky will make Steve’s favorite and Steve will insist on doing the dishes. Maybe tomorrow Eleanor will finally decide to give walking a try. Maybe she’ll have it mastered in a matter of hours, like she did with rolling and then sitting up and then standing and then, somehow, climbing out of her crib. Maybe, when she’s old enough, they’ll be like that family in The Incredibles , cheering Eleanor as she easily beats all her non-super classmates before dropping back to second place.

Maybe someday, they’ll wish up a sibling for her.

But for now they sit on Bucky’s favorite rock by the creek, arms around each other, content to just be.

They’ve got their whole lives stretched out in front of them.