Chapter Text
The sharp smell of coffee was a relief to Bucky as he shut the door behind him. The acrid gasoline scent was now being overpowered, but he could still smell it even as he slid into the line of early morning coffee seekers. He could almost swear it was getting stronger, despite all logic telling him he'd left the angry driver arguing with the cop outside, his car spilling fuel as he tried to explain why it wasn't his fault.
Things like that were never the driver's fault. No, it was always a wayward dog, rolling trash can, or maybe that fence just happened to leap out onto the road and drag the car back over to the sidewalk with it.
Focus. The murmur of people ordering their coffee. The tinkle of the bell as a person left - male? He should know. He always knows. He has to know, has to keep watch-
Bucky takes in a breath, and lets the air out slowly through his nose. Three people in front of him. Two women, one elderly and frail, unlikely to be a threat. Other seemingly distracted, on her phone. Could be a trick to make herself appear non-threatening. Third person male, physically fit, a jacket long enough to cover a weapon. Another woman, young, familiar, behind the counter. Possible hiding place under the counter.
Focus. He needed to focus on the uneven clank of the machines and screech of the espresso machine. They're familiar sounds. They're safe.
He's been in this place so often that he knows the layout well, but he still can't stop himself from scanning - one glass front door, two windows, one large and one small - for anything out of the ordinary. The small window in the side wall is too small to be much of a threat, but the large one is a potential risk. The shop is set into the ground, making the window slightly less vulnerable, as it looks into a small space with stairs rather than the open street. The back has a door to the bathroom, a hallway to a staff area. Potential hiding place. Potential back entrance from the alleyway. Potential escape. Potential ambush.
Potential goddamn dancing coffee cups. Get a grip, Barnes.
The elderly woman leaves, vanilla scented concoction in hand. Bucky briefly looks down, realizes he's clenching the left fist repeatedly, working the fabric of his glove between the fingers until it's at danger of ripping. He closes his eyes just for a moment, to try and calm himself, and then abruptly breaks away from the line, moving towards the back, to the staff restroom he know is located there. He ignores the sign declaring no public restrooms. They can break the door down and drag him out if they care that much.
Locks the door with his right hand. He can't trust the left now, but his right is trembling as he twists the lock shut. Breathe, focus. The smell of coffee is fainter, the stench of cleaning chemicals more notable here. But the gasoline, he can still smell the gasoline.
Bucky moves to the sink, flips on the water and just tries to listen to that rush, and not the steadily growing roar in his head. Flips water on his face, the cold water shocking him to a moment of awareness, and he stares at the mirror. He momentarily has the urge to just bury his face in the cold water, until that's all he can feel and hear and taste and he can't smell anything at all.
Just breathe. Focus on the rush of water, the tang of chemicals overlaid with coffee. No gasoline, there's no gasoline in the bathroom with him. He's in a coffee shop in Brooklyn, not outside in searing sunlight and dust and dirt. The rush of the water seems distant, even though it's right there with him.
Bucky doesn't know how long he spends just listening to the rush of the water, and struggling for some sort of balance, before he shakily undoes the lock to the door and returns to the shop. He expects stares or suspiciously averted eyes - hell, he'd expected a knock on the door and a request to leave - but instead it's as it was before. Different customers in the line, but the smiling barista has turned to talk to him before he can properly assess them all. Familiar, small and non-athletic, but could conceal a knife in her apron.
What's her name? He knows her. He sees her most mornings, has to fight off her chipper attempts at conversation. Why can't he remember her name?
"Oh, James! I went ahead and made your regular for you. You seemed like you were in a hurry."
It takes Bucky a moment, as he blinks at her, to put her words together in a way that makes sense to him. And then realizes there's a large latte resting on the counter, his name scrawled on the side in looping script.
"Right. Uh, thanks," He mumbles, sliding out his wallet, hands over a few bills.
The barista's smile falters, and her expression changes to a frown. It takes Bucky another moment to realize why, that he's gotten the money wet. His gloves, he didn't take off his gloves before using the sink. His right hand feels soggy.
"You look a little off this morning, maybe you should go get some rest?"
Bucky takes the coffee, grunting out words in a combination meant to be some sort of goodbye, but he's not sure it comes out as anything more than a garbled mess of sound. Turns towards the door, lowering his head to his coffee as he does so.
And then, before opening the door, he removes the lid so that he can get as much of the scent as he can. He catches a called out, "Feel better!" as he exits.
And then Bucky walks away from the shop, past the car still leaking gasoline while its owner gets handcuffed and read his rights by the cop. Apparently she didn't buy his moving fence story, or whatever crap he'd dreamed up. Couldn't have been in there too long, if that asshat's only now getting arrested. Bucky just sticks his nose in as close to the cup as he can, breathing in that sweet coffee scent, and focuses on just putting one foot in front of the other.
Finally, Bucky trails to a stop, walking up the steps and sitting down with his back against the wall of his building. All he can smell now is coffee. Well, he also gets a whiff of garbage, but at least he knows that scent is actually there and not some malicious echo in his brain. He can hear the sounds of the city waking up, even if the people in it just want to sleep.
The sun's not even up yet, and all he wants to do is crawl up to his apartment and go back to bed.
"Start to a wonderful day here, Barnes." His voice is raspy, but at least he can put the words together. Even if he's only talking to himself. He takes a sip, having almost forgotten that he could drink it, that it was more than just a scent.
Ah, that's why he needs to drink it. The intermingled sweet and bitter, the creaminess. Bucky finds the fog clearing away with each sip, and starts to feel more like he's actually there in Brooklyn, sitting on the steps in the slowly growing light, and not halfway around the world with his life being blown to bits. Starts to feel like he's a person, instead of a tangled mess of guard dog and robot.
He removes his right glove, the slightly damp feeling having graduated to unpleasantly cold. He doesn't bother to remove the left. It's not like he can feel it.
And then Bucky sits there, finishing his coffee and trying to regain a sense of the world. He watches the morning commuters pass by, honking horns at pedestrians who refuse to look too closely at each other as they scurry, each clearly on their way to Somewhere Very Important on this early fall morning.
And if Bucky scans each person for potential weapons, runs his eyes over the windows of the building opposite, the nearby rooftops - well, at least everything he's hearing and seeing is meant to be there. He'll take whatever sort of calm he can grasp.
He still has to go to work, after all. The day's just beginning.
----
"Running a little late this morning, Mr. Barnes."
The man sitting at the security desk in the lobby isn't what Bucky would consider intimidating, but then again, that's not really necessary for the job. Despite the title, the job was about checking IDs and being alert, not taking action. So an aging man with a bit of pouch, an easy smile and watchful eyes was perfect for the job. He knew who to call if there was a real threat.
Bucky quirked the corner of his mouth up, approximating a smile, "Hard to get out the door some mornings, you know how it is."
His attempt at a smile must have come out right, as Melvin - still couldn't believe that was the guy's name, even if he saw it on the ID badge almost every damn day - laughed in response, "I'm with you on that."
Unlikely.
"He in yet?" Bucky asks, swiping his ID badge across the scanner.
"What, the big boss or your new hire?" Melvin shook his head, "Neither. New hire's not due for a little longer, anyway. You aren't that late, just late for you."
Which translated into technically on time, but still late enough to get reamed for it.
Bucky flicked his fingers at Melvin in a brief goodbye, before entering the elevator and swiping his badge across the screen to get access to his floor. He counted four people in the elevator with him, none of them going to the same floor, and all of them vaguely familiar. Lab techs or scientists, maybe, with the floors they're going to. All of them wearing light jackets, one long enough to cover the waist and hips. Bucky almost wished it was summer again, for all that he hated the heat, just so that it'd be more fucking obvious if someone was trying to hide something.
One of the techs, slight build, male, was reaching into his jacket. Could be a gun, could be-
A fucking phone. Goddamnit.
Bucky made it to his floor without incident, none of the lab workers so much as looking at him, too distracted with the incoming work day to care about the security punk glowering at them all from the back corner. Well, he might have freaked out that little curly-haired lab tech a bit. He'd scurried out of the elevator so quickly that Bucky's last view before the elevator doors closed, was him apologizing frantically as he tried to help pick up papers and folders while an admin scowled angrily.
Maybe they weren't as distracted by work as they'd looked. They're like ostriches. Stick your head down, pretend he can't see you, maybe you won't get dragged into a security office and interrogated.
Any amusement from that thought shatters away as Bucky gets off the elevator, to be greeted by a snapped out, "Did you stop to flirt with the damn barista? You need coffee that bad, we've got it here."
They had coffee, decent enough. Wasn't the sludge he'd drank at plenty of jobs, that's for sure. But he'd learned early on that routine was important, that it helped, even if his had been fucked with this morning. Besides, it wasn't the coffee that had slowed him down. It was coffee-tangential stuff.
Rumlow brushed aside his apology as Bucky entered the security office, past the assistant at her desk, who somehow always managed to look bored and distracted even when workers were getting chewed out or fired in front of her.
Brock Rumlow was still scowling at him, his scruff a sign that he hadn't taken much time with his own morning routine however late of a night they'd had. As head of the security team, Rumlow had an obsessive focus on his job, and didn't let anything interfere with that. If he was there early, he expected everyone to be.
"I was thinking about where to position the new guy," Finally letting his scowl fade away, Rumlow continued, "I want you to handle him, keep an eye on him until we see how he does on the job."
"That mean I'm getting the crap jobs too?" Bucky grimaced. Damn Russo. They were supposed to go over the schedule, decide on placements after their manpower got screwed by Russo getting injured. The new guy had to fit in somewhere, but just putting him in Russo's slot was a bad idea. Rumlow had said he had good recs, but that didn't mean much when they hadn't worked with him before. They wouldn't want to trust him in a solo role just yet.
It was unlikely they'd have any issues in the States, but they were going overseas in a few days. They needed to know if they could rely on this guy before then.
"You'll damn well like it, Barnes," Rumlow smirked at him, "Getting to sit in the car and keep watch while Rollins and I sit through these meetings. You should be grateful I'm giving it to you, paint dries faster than those negotiations are hashed out."
Yeah right. Sit in a car with a stranger, in line of sight of how many rooftops and windows? I'd take the closed off room with a finite number of people, thanks. Who cares if it's fucking boring.
Bucky just grunts, and Rumlow takes it as a sign of agreement. He knows better than to complain about an assignment.
His ear piece crackles then with a notification from the overnight security team, giving the ETA for their boss's arrival at the office. That was followed almost immediately by the assistant buzzing the intercom, letting them know that the new hire is here and she's having him sent up.
Rumlow glanced over at the security feed on his desk. "This Rogers guy had better be as good as my buddy claimed. It's going to be shit if we have to replace him before we fly out, and I do not want to be down a man out there," Rumlow shook his head with a grimace.
Bucky felt his breath stutter for a moment before returning to normal. But he knew it wasn't him. Rumlow had a thing about hiring vets, and there was no fucking way anyone would have let his scrawny ass enlist. It'd been 18 years, and he still did that every time he'd heard the name, or some variation on it. He still looked for some skinny blonde punk, and it always turned out to be some pudgy middle-aged balding guy named Roger.
At least this one probably wasn't a pudgy, middle-aged balding guy.
The elevator gave a ding, and Rumlow headed out of the office to greet the new hire, Bucky following behind him. And then a blonde giant got off the elevator, and for a moment, Bucky thought he was hallucinating. That he was seeing an echo, the gaunt shadow of a long ago friend superimposed over the tall, muscled vet who had entered the room. Maybe he was having some sort of stress-induced hallucination, his nerves from this morning finally tipping him over the edge.
He continued to think this even as he probably looked like a fucking psycho, staring at the guy. He continued to think it, up until those blue eyes fixed on his, and a voice that seemed simultaneously familiar and strange, deeper than he remembered but with the same inflections, said a name that he hadn't heard for what seemed like a lifetime. A name he still thought of himself by, even if he never spoke it aloud.
"Bucky?"
And he just stared a moment longer, vaguely aware that there were two other people in the room, but only in the way you're aware of a painting on the wall or the color of the carpet. Then he managed, raspy but there, "Steve?"
"Wait, you know each other? And what the hell kind of name is Bucky?"
Rumlow was talking, and if Bucky still couldn't tear his eyes away, at least he could manage a response, "A childhood one."
The giant - Steve - raised a hand, rubbing at the back of his neck. God, he still did that. He grew a foot and packed on muscle like a fucking linebacker, but he still did that. "We haven't seen each other since we were kids. You, uh, you work here, Buck?"
Bucky managed a sharp nod, feeling at a complete loss of what to do. He had the urge to reach out, to do something - hug the guy? Shake his hand? It was ridiculous, he was a 6 foot something giant, not some scrawny teenager who didn't even weigh 100 pounds. And he couldn't. He just couldn't, not here, not with Rumlow watching. And there were a million questions careening through his head -
Where the hell have you been? How the fuck did you convince anyone to let you enlist? What happened to you?
But he couldn’t. His mouth just wouldn't open again, as he just stood there woodenly, staring like a fucking idiot. He saw Steve's hand twitch in some quickly aborted motion, and the guy's eyes darted between him and Rumlow. Well, at least he wasn’t alone in this, the big guy seemed about as lost as him.
"Well, you two can have your reunion later," Rumlow bit out the words, a mocking twist to them that drew a startled look from Steve. "But right now we have work to do."
"Right, of course." Bucky watched Steve draw himself up, professionalism returning to his expression and demeanor, even if he kept flicking his eyes over to watch Bucky. "Thank you again, sir."
"Yeah well, you came with high recommendations. We needed someone short notice, and you fit the bill," Rumlow's mood seemed to have soured, and it looked like Steve was unsure of how to take it. 18 years, and Bucky still felt like he could read the guy's expression in a heartbeat. The confused turn to his mouth, the uncertain set of his shoulder when he was trying to figure something out. Weren't people supposed to change in that kind of time?
Then again, going from a mouthy brat who didn't weigh 100 pounds soaking wet to someone who looks like they stepped out of a war-time propaganda poster is a pretty big fucking change.
But Rumlow was right, they had work to do. Maybe he'd even have the time to figure out what the hell to say.
----
Bucky was wrong. He hadn't thought of the words to say. Or rather, there were too many words, all spinning around in his head like they were caught in a fucking hurricane, slamming up against the silence between them in the car. Of course they'd be stuck in the goddamn car together, keeping watch and parked out on the street, stuck on follow car duty.
Which meant that for the duration of the next however many hours, Bucky was trapped in a car with the Great Wall of Silence between him and a ghost. The boss had a string of meetings in the city, and while they were at stop number one, they needed to be ready to go at a moment's notice for the next. On top of that, his nerves from this morning were in overdrive and he couldn't stop scanning the buildings around them, the pedestrians walking by.
He might seriously implode if something didn't happen soon. The tension was just going to push in on him like a bubble until he popped.
"I really missed you, Buck." Bucky manages to tear his eyes away from their surroundings to focus in on the man next to him. Steve is looking at him with his big dopey eyes all earnest and hopeful, "Are you angry? You know I wouldn't have left if I'd had a choice."
The punk should patent that look and sell it. Although it oddly reassured him to see that Steve still had that look in his arsenal, even if now it looked less like an underfed puppy begging for attention and more like a repentant golden retriever.
Bucky scoffed at him, before letting out a sigh. "Steve, I get it. I'm not blaming you. I just…what do we say? Where do we even start? It's been a long damn time."
"I can start with I'm sorry. I got us into that fight, I shouldn't have let it go so far, backed down or-"
Bucky let out a huff that felt almost like the start of a laugh, warmth in his chest. "You, back down? Are you sure you've met yourself? Because the guy I knew, he wouldn't back down in a fight even if somebody was holding a gun to his head."
Steve gave a chuckle, lowering his head for a moment with a small smile playing on his lips. "I really can't argue with that."
"You're damn right you can't argue with it."
Bucky was trying to keep his eyes on their surroundings, but was finding it surprisingly difficult. Part of it was the mental chant in his head of Steve, Steve, Steve, the other part was that whenever he wasn't looking at the guy, he kept catching him in his peripheral vision and feeling his heart jump. He knew it was Steve, but that didn't stop his brain from shrieking that he was stuck in an enclosed space with a stranger and gigantic fucking threat only an arm's length away, every moment that he wasn't actively reminding himself who it was.
"Besides, it was only a matter of time before they'd split us up. If it wasn't those guys, it would have been someone else in a month or two," Bucky knew there was only one way things were going to end. In retrospect, it was kind of surprising they hadn't been split up earlier, all the fights they'd gotten into. "The uh, the new foster you got sent to - they treat you right?"
"Yeah. The Erskines, they were good people." Steve's smile had turned a bit gentler, fonder.
Silence set back in, but this time it's more comfortable than confining. It felt easy, not like he's going to choke on it. There's still so fucking much he wanted to talk to Steve about, but his mind felt more ordered now. There was still a swirl of words, but now it had settled and was more gentle spin than hurricane-force.
But then, he guessed Steve might have a small hurricane of his own going in that oversized noggin, so at least he wasn't alone. Steve had redirected his gaze out his own window, chewing on his bottom lip before glancing back over at Bucky.
"If you don't mind me asking, what's with the gloves?"
Goddamn it Steve, you just have to ask all the wrong questions, don't you?
Bucky stopped his fingers from tapping on the wheel, looking at them for a moment. He'd changed gloves after soaking the ones he was wearing this morning. He preferred the looks he got for being the freak always wearing gloves even in the midst of a heat wave, than the looks he got after people saw the left hand.
Carefully, he reached out and peeled the glove off of his left hand, turning towards Steve and holding it up for him to see. And then he forced himself to watch Steve's expression, bracing for pity, disgust, fear. Instead, he just sees surprise, Steve's eyes slightly widened and his mouth opened slightly. And then sees Steve's eyes dart towards his other hand, the question clear even without being spoken.
"Other hand's still there. This one is courtesy of our employer." Gleaming metal, articulate fingers. A network of sensors to help him direct force properly, to help him balance. It was an amazing piece of equipment, and something Bucky never could have afforded on his own. He'd probably have some plastic crap that didn't move. Even if he never got over feeling like it wasn't really his, even if there were days where it made his shoulder ache enough that he felt like ripping the whole damn thing off, he'd never get over how grateful he was to have it.
"That's just, wow." Steve didn't seem to know what to say. "I can't say I was expecting that, Buck."
"You and me both, pal." Bucky could see the conflict on Steve's face, the guy was so damn easy to read. Knew he wanted to ask questions, but at the same time, didn't want to push. "Not here."
"Sorry?"
Bucky let out a slow breath of air, switching his eyes back to the road. Talking to Steve was like a fucking roller coaster, except he couldn't see whether he was about to go up the track or coming crashing down. "I can't talk about that shit here. Later. After work."
"Yeah, no problem Bucky. We can do that." Steve paused for a moment, before continuing in a low voice, "I have to say though, that's looks like some good work there."
Bucky flicked his eyes down to the left hand, and rested it back against the steering wheel, "Yeah. I don't think I'll ever get over how lucky I was to be at the VA on the day Alexander Pierce came to visit."