Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

le début

Steve is fifteen years old. Or he will be in a few days. He’s almost fifteen years old, he doesn’t see the point in not rounding up anymore, and he’s losing his best friend.

“I hate the army,” he says, throwing the ball to Bucky.

“I hate it, too.”

It’s the hottest summer New York has seen in Steve’s entire fourteen point nine years on the planet. Fourteen point eleven? Fourteen and 11.95 twelfths? It doesn’t much matter. Bucky’s moving to Indiana tomorrow, and Steve’s birthday is a few days after. He hates the army.

He and Bucky are spending their last day together at the park outside St. Michael’s, playing catch and pretending everything’s okay. It’s absolute shit. Steve would much rather be inside in a blanket fort pretending that they're five and six and Bucky isn’t moving, but Bucky had wanted to be outside, so they’re outside.

“I hate Indiana,” Bucky says, throwing the ball back. “It’s all corn and airfields.”

Steve catches it with his mitt, palms it, it throws it back. They’re not talking much. They’re exchanging things they hate.

“I hate July,” Steve says next.

“No, you don’t,” Bucky tells him.

Steve throws the ball hard, but Bucky just catches it. “I hate it,” he insists.

“It’s still June,” Bucky reminds him, spinning the baseball in his fingers. He’s frowning at Steve, squinting against the sun. His shirt, an old Ramones shirt that he’s cut the sleeves off of, is soaked in sweat. So are his shorts, jeans he’s cut the legs off of at the knees. Steve thinks he looks like a punk, Bucky says that he can’t because Steve’s the punk in their relationship.

“Tomorrow’s July,” Steve answers. His arms, just as sweaty as Bucky’s shirt, hang at his sides while he squints back at Bucky. “Throw the ball, jerk.”

Bucky tosses it carelessly once, then bounces it off the pavement. He licks sweat off his upper lip, then throws it overhand. Steve jumps to catch it, but it sails over his head.

“No fair!” he shouts, tossing his sweaty mitt onto the ground to run and chase it. His shoes, beat up Vans that used to be Bucky’s, burn his feet as they rub against his socks, but they’ve been burning his feet all summer, so it doesn’t much matter either.

“It’s too hot to play catch,” Bucky calls out. Steve ducks to reach for the ball under a set of bleachers, his knees stinging on the hot asphalt.

“You’re the one who wanted to play catch, shithead,” Steve replies. He snatches the ball, straightens up, turns back to find Bucky standing only a few feet from him, gaze on the ground and chewing his lower lip. “What?” he asks.

Bucky blows out his breath and his lower lip. “Nothing,” he says.

Steve scowls, part sun and part hatred of the army and Indiana and July, then throws the ball at him underhand, pointedly. It hits Bucky in the shoulder and bounces away. He ignores it.

“What?” Steve says again, propping his fists on his hips. Like his ma. He drops them to cross them over his chest instead.

“I hate the army,” Bucky mutters.

“We’ve established that,” Steve snaps.

“You’re mad at me,” Bucky says then.

Steve drops his arms, and his gaze. His hands ball into fists. “No, ‘m not,” he mutters.

“Yes, you are. You’re mad I’m leaving.”

“‘Course I am,” Steve says, looking up, squinting. He’s always squinting. The sun’s too bright and too close and too hot and he can’t see Bucky’s face for it. “But I’m not mad at you.”

Bucky takes a step closer. The faint, half-hearted June breeze that’s been gusting on and off all day changes, so it’s at his back, and Steve can smell him now. He presented over a year ago, just after he turned fifteen, so he smells like sweat and young Alpha. Steve wishes he could kid himself into believing that he’s just losing his best friend, but that’s not true. He’s losing Bucky’s dark gaze looking at him. He’s losing the way Bucky lifts the hem of his shirt to mop his brow when he knows Steve’s looking. He’s losing the barely concealed fact that Bucky likes seeing Steve in his old clothes, and whatever that might mean if Steve could have turned fifteen before he left and finally presented.

His ma swore he was gonna be an Omega. His dad was a Beta, and according to genetics, that meant he had a higher chance of being an Omega; it was like blood types, Beta was recessive, Alpha or Omega were dominant, and if he got a B from his dad and an O from his ma, he’d be an Omega. If he got an A from his ma, it’d be different, but she’d been swearing he’d turn out Omega since he was six years old. Said it was mother’s intuition. Steve figured it didn’t much matter one way or another, because Bucky would still like seeing him in his old clothes.

Bucky chews on his lower lip a while longer. Steve eventually drops his gaze away from Bucky’s face, watching the sunlight reflect off the sweat trailing down his upper arm. He’s losing the growing definition in Bucky’s arms, too. He hates the army.

“Let’s just play ball,” Steve says eventually.

“No,” Bucky answers. “I don’t wanna play catch no more.”

“Well, what do you want to do? You got one day left, then you’re off to Shelby fucking ville.”

“I wanna kiss you.”

Steve looks up. Bucky isn’t smiling, he’s still squinting from the sun, but he’s serious. It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve kissed, either.

“What’s stopping you?” Steve says evenly.

“I’m going to Shelby fucking ville tomorrow,” Bucky says. “And I wanna do more’n kiss you.”

Steve feels a flash of something in his gut, and it isn’t the heat of the sun. Bucky takes another step towards him.

“Remember when you were six, and I was seven,” Bucky starts quietly, “I gave you a Ring Pop and you said that meant I had to marry you?”

Steve nods. “Vaguely,” he lies. He remembers clear as day. He hates the army, ‘cause he’s losing that Ring Pop promise, too.

“I said that’d be fine with me,” Bucky adds. “‘S still fine with me.”

“You gonna give me another Ring Pop?” Steve snaps.

Bucky digs around in his pocket. He doesn’t hold out a Ring Pop.

Steve holds out his palm, and Bucky puts the little pewter band in it. Steve holds it between his thumb and forefinger, then turns it over with both hands.

“It’s a promise ring,” Bucky says unnecessarily.

“I know,” Steve says.

“I’ll write and call,” Bucky keeps talking. He sounds nervous. He’s playing with the skin around his left thumb, picking at the cuticle. He’s still squinting from the sun, and Steve wishes they were inside so he could see Bucky’s eyes for this.

He slips the ring onto his right ring finger, since it’s just a promise ring. He’s not stupid. He’s fourteen and 11.9 twelfths, Bucky is sixteen, and this isn’t a promise either of them are likely to keep. It’s nice to think that they might. Bucky comes even closer, and now there’s barely an inch between them.

“I wanna do more’n kiss you,” he says quietly.

Steve tilts his head up, then shuts his eyes. Bucky’s hand touches his hip, then the other presses against his cheek. His lips are chapped from the heat and taste like cherry popsicles. They kiss innocently for a moment, then Bucky’s fingers dig into his hip and his tongue pushes into Steve’s mouth. It’s a foreign intrusion, but not altogether adversive. Steve puts his hands on the back of Bucky’s neck, ‘cause he’s not sure what else to do with them, and Bucky starts backing him up until his back hits a tree. His fingers trail down his thigh, then his other hand drops to push under his shirt, and all the while, Bucky sucks on his tongue, bites at his lips, kisses like a fever. They’ve never kissed like this before. He likes it.

Steve’s knees are going weak, his breath is catching in his throat. Then Bucky’s pressing their hips together and he lets out a quiet noise, like a whimper, and Bucky growls in response. Bucky presses harder, then grinds their hips together. They’ve never done this before, either. Steve likes it. He hates the army.

Bucky’s fingers push into the back of his shorts, into the crack of his ass. Steve presses into the contact, then forward into his hips, and can’t decide which he wants more. Bucky kisses like he’s dying, like he’s got cancer and Steve’s the cure. One hand grips his hip and the other presses into his pants at the back, until his fingers are spreading his cheeks and reaching. Steve isn’t sure what Bucky wants, but he knows what he wants.

He breaks the kiss, Bucky snatches his hand out; eyes wide, obviously afraid he’d gone too far. Steve grabs it, then his waist before Bucky can pull away and hastily kisses him one more time.

“I want it real,” he says.

Bucky blinks at him. “I don’t… have a… you know.”

“So?” Steve says. The sun is in his eyes. He wants to see Bucky’s face, he wants it real and he doesn’t want it against a tree in a park. “Not like either of us have ever done anything before to catch something, not like you can knock me up when I haven’t even presented. Let’s go inside.”

“You sure?” Bucky asks.

Steve nods. “You’re promising, ain’t you? Promise right.”

From what he can see with the sun in his eyes, Bucky’s pupils are dilated. Steve drags him back into a kiss, then wraps both arms around his neck so he can put his weight on him and lifts a knee, pressing his whole body into Bucky. Bucky catches him by the hips, then the ass, then lifts him off the ground and Steve wraps both legs around his waist. He drops his head onto Bucky’s shoulder, while Bucky walks them to the church, taking them indoors somewhere. Steve buries his nose in Bucky’s neck, drinking in his scent. He doesn’t need to memorize it, he’s already got it imprinted on his bones.

When Bucky presented, he could smell it between the shared walls of their apartments. It had woken him up during the night, made him dizzy and hard. Steve had jerked off listening to Bucky groan through the wall, and had come harder than he’d ever done in his life.

Bucky takes them into a bathroom. He locks the door behind them, then presses Steve’s back into the wall and kisses him again like he’s dying. Steve lets his body slip down the wall, until his legs are clamped around Bucky’s hips, and shudders when Bucky rolls into him. Bucky’s hands are reaching again, this time for the clasp of his shorts and not down the back of them, then he’s pushing Steve’s feet to the ground to push them down around his ankles. Steve steps out of them, kicks them and his briefs aside, and Bucky’s hands are on him again in an instant. Steve undoes his jeans, then tugs at his shirt until Bucky lifts his arms so he can yank it off over his head. His underarms are ripe with body odor, but the rest of him smells heady with a scent like cedar woodsmoke. As Bucky relieves him of his shirt, Steve feels dizzy again, just like when he could smell the changing pheromones in his friend the night he presented. Bucky lifts him by the thighs again to press his back against the wall, to press his hips into Steve’s, and he shivers.

“Need lotion,” Bucky mutters in Steve’s ear. He starts kissing his neck, and Steve drops his head against the wall to give him full access. Bucky growls and a whine escapes Steve’s mouth; his hips shudder. “Lube, something,” Bucky adds, then starts sucking on his ear. Steve’s too young to produce slick, is what he means.

“‘S a bathroom,” Steve mumbles. “In’a church.”

“Lotion, then,” Bucky says.

He lifts off Steve’s neck, but keeps his hold on his ass, to go in search of a bottle of lotion. There’s one on a shelf by the sink, and Bucky takes the cap off before propping Steve up against the wall again. The tile is cold under his flushed skin, while Bucky’s lips are hot on him.

Steve is not yet fifteen when he loses his virginity to his best friend in a church bathroom. The preachers and the Sunday school teachers would tell him that this is a terrible thing, that he should feel like he’s lost something, but he only feels the impending pain of losing Bucky. When the sun sets and they have to return to their own apartments for dinner, Bucky stops him just outside his ma’s door to steal one last kiss.

“I’ll come through your window later,” he says.

It wouldn’t be the first time for that, either. Steve nods, and Bucky steals another kiss. They step into separate apartments, and Steve feels his whole body lose its air as the door shuts behind him.

He hates the army. He fiddles for a moment with the pewter ring on his right hand, before heading for his bedroom.

“Supper’s on the stove!” his ma calls to him.

“‘M not hungry,” Steve says.

His mother looks up from the sofa, where she’s got her crossword balanced on her knee. Steve heads straight for his room, but his mother is suddenly blocking the way. She grabs him by the shoulder, then by the jaw and tilts his head to the right.

“Ma!” he protests, jerking away from her.

“What is that?” she demands, grabbing him again. “What is that on your neck?”

“Probably a bug bite,” he says, and steps past her.

“Steven Grant Rogers!” his mother gasps.

“What?” he snaps.

“Sit down!” she snaps in return. Steve turns around and just glares at her. He does not sit. She points, her mouth pressed in a very firm line, and he does not sit.

“What?” he repeats belligerently.

“You are not even fifteen,” she hisses, “and you come home smelling like sex. Not even fifteen, Steve!”

Steve feels like Bucky’s lips are still pressing to his neck with how hot his face has gone. “What are you talking about?” he tries to lie, but his mother sees right through it.

“Was it Bucky?” she demands again. “Did he ask you to –”

“I asked him, alright,” Steve cuts her off. He’s crying, suddenly, but because he’s angry, not because he’s sad. Because he’s losing Bucky and he’s losing whatever marks Bucky left on his neck and whatever Bucky could do in the future and he hates the army. “I asked him! He’s leaving for fucking Indiana in the morning, I dunno if I’m ever gonna see him again, and I wanted him to!”

“You are fourteen –”

“I’m fifteen three days after he moves away,” Steve snaps. “Did you miss the part where we’re never gonna see each other again? After Indiana, he’ll probably go to North Carolina or Texas, or hell, some military base in Iraq – I wanted him to!”

“Steve,” his mother tries to say, placating, and he waves a dismissive hand at her, turning away to storm off to his bedroom. His mother catches his hand, however, and her grip tugs on his arm when he tries to pull away. He looks back. She is staring, mouth parted, at the pewter promise ring.

Steve jerks his hand away. His mother is fuming. “He had no right –” she starts to say, then before Steve can defend Bucky, she turns on her heel and marches out of the apartment. He hears her bang on next door. He follows, holding his right hand and his promise ring that represents a feeble promise to his heart, feeling horrible and even worse than he thought he could. He hates the army.

Mr. Barnes opens the door, and Steve’s mother storms right past him. Steve mouths sorry at him, while Bucky stands up from the kitchen table, Mrs. Barnes looks around with confusion and Rebecca stops with her spoon halfway to her mouth. Steve’s ma gets in Bucky’s face, jabbing a finger at his chest and hissing: “You had no right!”

Bucky says nothing. Steve holds his promise ring like he’s afraid his mother will force Bucky to take it back.

“He is too young!” his ma shouts.

“What’s going on?” Mr. Barnes says.

“Fourteen!” Steve’s ma screams in Bucky’s face. “Not even fifteen, and you dare – you dare –”

“Sarah,” Mrs. Barnes says, like it’s a question, and Steve’s ma lunges back to grab Steve by the arm, by the right arm, dragging him forward to thrust his right hand into the light of the overhead lamp.

The burnished pewter does not catch the light. Rebecca drops her spoon. Steve yanks his hand back and cradles it, Bucky’s promise, to his chest.

“James!” Mrs. Barnes still gasps.

“He is fourteen years old!” Steve’s ma screams in Bucky’s face. Steve wishes he’d scream back, but he stands there, face screwed up in concentration, though he doesn’t know concentration on what, with his fists at his sides and his mouth shut tight. Maybe he knows the promise is feeble, too.

“To give him that, and to take his – Oh, I can’t even say it; he’s only a child!”

“I’m almost fifteen!” Steve shouts.

“Fifteen is a child!” his mother yells.

“I’m not taking it back,” Bucky says.

Steve exhales heavily. He still cradles the feeble promise to his heart.

His mother looks at Bucky like he’s dog shit she’d found in her bedroom. “You are too young to make a promise like that,” she says darkly. “Only a child yourself! He is too young to accept it!”

“I’m not taking it back,” Bucky repeats. His voice is calm. His face is red, his jaw clenched, but his voice is calm.

“Sarah,” Mrs. Barnes says hesitantly. “You can’t actually ask him to take it back. Wouldn’t that be worse?”

Steve’s mother doesn’t stop glaring at Bucky. Finally, she takes a step back.

“You’re right.”

She grabs Steve by the hand, then points accusingly at Bucky.

“You can’t take it back now,” she says. “But trust me, you cannot take it back ever . You may  never  take it back now that you have given it.”

She hisses it like a threat. Bucky stands taller.

“I don’t ever intend to,” he says coldly.

Steve clutches the feeble promise closer. He feels like crying properly now.

His mother tugs him from the apartment and back into their own. The second she drops his arm, Steve runs for his bedroom and slams the door. He hears her calling him, but he locks the handle, and for good measure, shoves his dresser in front of it.

“Steve?” his mother says from outside. She’s knocking. Steve drops onto his bed, curls into a ball around Bucky’s feeble promise, and tries to cry as quietly as he can. “Darling, let me in.”

“Go away!” he screams.

“Steve –”

“Go!” he shouts, grabs something, anything, off the floor and throws it as hard as he can at the door above the dresser. It hits with a clang and clatters to the ground. He hears his mother’s footsteps retreat.

Steve knows perfectly well that after tomorrow, he will never see Bucky again. He knows that the promise ring is only a feeble attempt to soften the blow. Why couldn’t his mother let well alone?

The lock clicks, and the door hits the dresser. His mother tuts softly.

“I said, go away!” Steve snaps over his shoulder.

The dresser scraps along the ground. Steve sits up, grabs something else off the floor, and throws it towards the door. His mother ducks it, then squeezes her way in and ducks the next thing he throws, catching his hands before he can throw a fourth item and pinning them to his body when she hugs him. He hates himself for it, but he collapses into his mother’s breast and sobs.

“Oh, darling,” she sighs, “this is why he shouldn’t have done it.”

“Did you have to scream about it?” he hisses through choked sobs.

“He should’ve known better,” his mother coos, but she isn’t comforting him at all. “This will only make it harder on both of you. You’re too young.”

Steve hiccups. He pushes her away from his body, then crawls farther up his bed and grabs a pillow to hug instead. “I know it’s not real,” he says, “but do you have to rub it in?”

His mother blinks. She reaches out for him, and he turns away from her. She sighs again, then presses a hand to his back.

“You’re too young to know that,” she murmurs.

“Wasn’t that your whole point,” he snaps back. “That we’re too young to know the future?”

“No, darling. You’re too young to know the truth.”

Steve shoves her hand off him. “Get out,” he spits.

“Darling –”

“Get out!”

She sighs again. Her weight lifts off the mattress and the door closes. Steve buries his face in the pillow. It soaks through soon enough.

He hears the window open, smells Bucky entering the room, then feels his weight replacing his mother’s on the bed. Bucky lies behind him, pulling Steve against his chest, and holds tightly. He doesn’t say anything. His hands cover Steve’s right hand and the feeble attempt to soften the blow of his leaving. Steve feels the back of his shirt dampening with tears.

Steve is not yet fifteen when the worst thing that could ever happen to him happens. The next morning, Bucky can’t even hug him because their parents are watching with judgmental eyes.

“I’ll call,” Bucky promises.

Steve nods. He’s not going to cry again. He feels like his tears have all dried up. Maybe in a few years, he’ll be struck by tragedy again and then he’ll be able to shed another tear or two. But he’s all out of them now.

“And I’ll write,” Bucky adds.

Steve twists the promise ring on his finger. He nods. He squints against the bright sunlight, and he can’t quite see Bucky’s face for it.

He hates the army.

The moving van hauls away. Steve’s mother presses a hand to his shoulder. Steve pulls away from her and starts walking towards the park.

“Where are you going?”

“Nowhere,” he answers.

“Come back for supper,” she tells him.

He makes no promises.

Bucky calls from the hotel they stop at. They talk for five minutes, and Steve’s mother watches, listens, the entire time. It isn’t hard to tell that Bucky’s parents are eavesdropping as well.

“I hate hotels,” Bucky says.

“I hate them, too,” Steve answers. He’s never stayed in a hotel before in his life, but he hates them if Bucky hates them.

They speak for five minutes, then Bucky has to hang up so Rebecca can call her friends. Steve retreats into his bedroom, twisting the feeble promise on his right hand.

*

He turns fifteen on the fourth. On the sixth, he goes into heat. He’s an Omega.

*

Steve is sixteen when the phone calls every night become a phone call once or twice a week. The worst part is that it’s his doing. Bucky will message him on MySpace asking if he can call and Steve will beg off for the sake of homework or sleep or chores. Really, it’s becoming too much for him. His mother one night tells him about old wounds that are left too long in the air.

“They congeal,” she says, looking at his right hand. “Did you know that? For a little while, the air does them good, but after too long, and it starts to poison them.”

Steve knows what she intends by it. It hurts to hear Bucky’s voice on the phone. So the calls become a few times a week, then only once a week, then, when he is seventeen, Bucky stops asking every night.

The first night he went without a message from Bucky, asking if he could call, hurt even more than hearing his voice projected from Indiana. It’s like the peroxide you pour over a cut before you can bandage it. It hurts like hell, but in the long run, he’s better off for it.

*

Steve is eighteen when his mother loses her job at the hospital. She comes home one morning, her whole body looking like she’s about to turn 80 instead of 40, and sits down next to him while he’s eating breakfast.

“I’m sorry,” she says first. Steve stops chewing. “I can’t pay for community college in the fall.”

“What happened?”

“Budget cuts,” she says wearily. “I have a month’s severance pay.”

Steve swallows the half-chewed food. “Oh.”

His mother stands up, kisses his forehead, and walks to her bedroom. Steve stares at her empty chair. He doesn’t feel eighteen, much like his mother doesn’t look 40.

He has a job at the library, but it doesn’t pay nearly enough to cover rent or utilities or tuition or even groceries. He’s been paying for gas in their car, but that’s about it.

He sees the ad next to his mother’s crossword. He leaves a note, dresses in good clothes, the best from Goodwill, and drives to the Red Room. It’s in a seedy part of town, and likely has seedy dealings going on, but he doesn’t much care. The bouncer looks him up and down, then laughs when he says he’s responding to the ad the club put out in the newspaper. He shows his ID. The bouncer squints, the sunlight getting in his eyes. Steve waits, then, finally, the bouncer shows him inside.

“Newb,” is all he says to introduce Steve to the manager.

The manager looks him up and down. Steve tries not to feel like he’s under a microscope.

“Loki,” the manager says finally, sticking out a hand.

“Steve Rogers,” he answers, shaking it.

“Have you ever done stripping before?” Loki asks.

“First time for everything.”

Loki nods, considering. “You look like you’re fifteen.”

Steve shrugs. “Someone somewhere’s into that.”

Slowly, Loki smiles. “I like the way you think,” he says. “You’re on trial tonight, then. We’ll go from there.”

Steve tells his mother when he gets home that he has a second job. He tells her he’s picked up a night shift at a 24 hour 7/11. She doesn’t look happy, but she can’t protest when she doesn’t have a job.

“I’ll start hunting for a new one in the morning,” she tells him as he’s getting ready to leave. “Be safe.”

“Love you,” Steve says, and leaves for the club. Whatever his limited experience with sex, it’s a strip club, not a brothel, and he did great in theater in high school the past two years.

The night ends at four in the morning, and Loki allows him to keep the money he collected in tips. It’s 200 dollars in fives, tens, the odd twenty, and mainly ones.

“You’ve got the job,” Loki tells him. “Friday and Saturday nights, show up at 5 in the evening for rehearsals.”

Steve thanks him and leaves. He feels numb. His mother is asleep when he gets back, and he tucks the money into a shoebox under his bed. His old promise ring, on its chain, swings out from under his shirt. It’s too small to fit his ring finger anymore. He could probably get it resized if every night goes like this one, if he wanted.

He doesn’t.

*

Steve is twenty when a client offers him 500 dollars for an hour alone in a private room. It takes Steve a second to process that this man is offering 500 dollars to have sex with him, another to see that Loki is nodding, and a third to say yes.

It is the first time he’s had sex since he was not yet fifteen. It is an underwhelming experience. The man gets grossly sweaty and gets semen on Steve’s clothes and he calls him  Jessica , which is downright insulting. Steve might be an Omega, but he’s still not a girl. He assumes it will be the last time, however.

He is wrong.

*

Steve is twenty-one years old, and staring at two pink lines on a test strip. He can hear his mother in the kitchen making breakfast, but he doesn’t want to eat anymore. He cannot  believe  that he could have been so stupid to have forgotten to take his pill even once, because he can't believe that he did take it and it failed him, and he is even more furious that someone slipped a condom off or punctured it or just that the rubber just failed. He is furious.

He’s terrified.

He buries the pregnancy test in the trash can, tells his mother he feels like he’s got the flu, and goes to the Red Room. Loki’s there, doing admin.

“I need help,” Steve says.

Loki reaches into his briefcase, draws out a stack of cards, then hands him a business card. Steve looks at it.

It’s an address and phone number for Planned Parenthood.

“How –”

“It’s all in the tone,” Loki sighs impatiently. “You lot only say  I need help  like that when you’ve been knocked up.”

Steve looks down at the business card. Loki waves an uncaring hand.

“Deal with it,” he says. “Or switch up your act. I don’t care.”

When Steve’s still standing there a minute later, Loki looks up at him. “Do you need something else?” he says in a frustrated tone.

Steve shakes his head. Loki waves his hand dismissively again, and Steve turns to go. He walks out, then reaches to fiddle with the chain holding his old promise ring unconsciously.

Planned Parenthood isn’t very frightening. The newscasters on TV always make it seem like a dungeon, but it’s actually bright and airy and the nurses are all friendly. They remind him of his mother before she turned 80 instead of 40. He, they tell him, is not the first Omega boy to come to them after a birth control failure. Apparently, all the birth controls available to the general public are made for female Omegas or Betas. There’s a birth control specifically for male Omegas in development, but it’s been in development since 1986 and it’s coming up on 2016 now and the developer has changed hands, so there’s little hope for it.

“It’s very safe, and it won’t hurt,” he’s promised. “We’re very discreet.”

Three weeks later, Steve is twenty-one years old when he has his first abortion. His first, unfortunately not his last.

He goes home after, feeling woozy and sore, and his mother makes him tea.

“Are we going to talk about it?” she asks.

“About what?” he says quietly.

She looks at him. She found out about his job over a year ago, so it’s not that.

She walks over to the sink, then pulls a ziplock bag out from under it. It has a thin test strip with two pink lines in it.

His mother raises her eyebrows. Steve deflates.

“What are you planning to do?” she asks.

“I already took care of it,” he says.

The ziplock bag slips from her fingers and falls to the ground. He doesn’t look at her.

“Oh,” she says quietly.

He takes the tea and goes to his room. He puts the chain on the door, then opens the window and crawls out onto the fire escape.

The teenager who lives in Bucky’s old bedroom jumps when he crawls out. He nods to Pietro, ignoring his cigarette, and leans against the railing, sipping his tea.

“Long day?” Pietro says a minute later.

“Yeah,” Steve sighs. He doesn’t elaborate. Pietro’s fifteen. He’s a child. “You do alright on that essay on World War II?”

“Got a B minus.”

“That’s great,” Steve tells him, and he means it. He’s not sure Pietro’s parents get proud of B minuses.

“Thanks,” Pietro mutters.

Steve sips his tea, and fiddles with the old, feeble and broken promise around his neck. He hasn’t spoken to Bucky in years, now.

*

Steve is twenty-two years old the first time he’s punched in the face by a client. And in other places. He’s twenty-two years old the first time he gets beat up by a client, and instead of defending him, the bouncers just haul the guy off and tell Steve to cool his jets. Steve spits blood onto the ground at the guy’s feet, some Skinhead he didn’t want to bother remembering the name of, and storms off. Loki catches his arm on his way to the back.

“Be careful who you agitate,” he says in Steve’s ear. Then he lets go and slips off into the crowd.

Natasha, another dancer, dabs at his split lip with witch hazel. “What did you do?”

“Skinhead,” Steve grumbles, then hisses when she presses the witch hazel against his cut. “Called him a bastard Skinhead.”

“He is one,” Natasha mutters. “But he’s buddy-buddy with the owner.”

Steve, in four years of working at the Red Room, has never met the illusive Lukin. “I don’t care,” he says.

Natasha looks at him with frank eyes. “You should,” she says simply, and dabs at a cut on his cheek.

*

Steve is twenty-three years old when a group of soldiers enters the Red Room for their last night before shipping out to Iraq. He’s on the floor most of the night, does a show twice, and he doesn’t even see him. Bucky was sitting in one of the booths, apparently, and had watched him the entire time. Steve is twenty-three and three days short of twenty-four.

He’s heading to his car when he does see him.

At first, he just sees a male figure leaning against his car, smoking a cigarette, and feels the tired resignation that he’s going to have to shove off some drunk and make a break for it, when the man sucks on his cigarette and the end turns bright red and illuminates his profile for a brief second.

Steve stops five feet away. His hand, out of habit, reaches up to touch the broken promise under his shirt.

Bucky pushes off his car and flicks his cigarette onto the ground, crushing it under his heel.

“We hated the army,” he says instead of a hello. He spreads his arms, showing off his military uniform. His dog tags glint in the streetlamps. “Look at us now.”

“What are you doing here?” Steve asks.

Bucky points toward the club. “Was in there. Boys wanted fun before we shipped out, I got drug along. Saw you.”

Steve swallows the lump growing in his throat. “Are you drunk?” he asks. He hates drunks.

Bucky shakes his head. He steps closer. Steve stays where he is.

“Someone in there, saw me watching you, said an hour was six hundred,” Bucky says.

Steve swallows the larger lump growing in his throat. Bucky shoves his hands in his pockets, looking at his boots now. His jaw is tight. His voice is calm. He looks like he did when Steve’s mother screamed at him that he had no right to promise Steve anything.

“Do you like working there?” Bucky says after a long minute.

Steve shrugs. He’s had two abortions since working there. His birth control is cheap, but he can’t afford to get a better one. Rent and gas and cable and utilities trump it, when even his cheap birth control prescriptions are 400 dollars a month and a single abortion is 300. The center gives him a discount on tests and screenings and abortions because he works at the Red Room. They give him looks of pity at the same time, too.

“Why do you do it?”

Steve pulls some bills from his bag. “Pays rent.”

Bucky looks incredibly uncomfortable, but Steve couldn’t blame him. There’s a broken promise hanging around Steve’s neck, yet it wasn’t Bucky, like Sarah had feared, that had broken it.

“You don’t wear it,” Bucky says, like he can read Steve’s mind.

Steve hesitates, then reaches under his shirt and pulls out the chain. He sees Bucky swallow, his face, though in shadow, touched.

“It got too small,” Steve says, and leaves it at that.

Bucky makes a move, as if to reach for him, then stops. Steve feels like he’s resisting the pull of a magnet, but can’t move closer.

“I’m on a plane to Iraq tomorrow,” Bucky tells him.

Steve vaguely recalls telling his ma years and years ago that one day Bucky would be living on a military base in Iraq. Who knew he wasn’t too young to tell the future?

There’s three feet of space between them. Steve is tired, and worn out, and he doesn’t feel 23. Abruptly the old wound in his heart rips and burst open anew and he runs forward, dropping his bag, to throw his arms around Bucky’s neck. Bucky catches him, swings him around, then grabs him by the face and kisses him like he’s dying. Steve feels wetness on his cheeks and doesn’t know whose tears it belongs to. His back presses to the car, Bucky’s body covers him wholly and it feels right when everything else has felt unfeeling.

“Are you at a base or hotel?” Steve asks a minute later.

“Hotel,” Bucky mumbles against his neck.

Steve tugs on his arm. Bucky lifts his head. “Let’s go,” Steve says. He is not yet fifteen again, telling Bucky to take him inside because he wants it for real.

Bucky gives him directions, Steve drives. It’s his car, after all. There, Bucky takes him up to a motel room, unlocks it, and is kissing him again before the door shuts. Steve wraps his arms around Bucky’s neck, then jumps and wraps his legs around Bucky’s hips, and Bucky cups and then kneads his ass with hot hands.

Bucky puts him on the bed, and like the first time, kisses him continually while taking his clothes off. Steve tugs Bucky’s uniform off. Bucky mouths at the scent gland in his neck and Steve feels sparks through his whole body. He’s not fifteen anymore, and there’s slick dripping out of him now. Bucky works Steve open gently, sucking and licking at his scent gland the whole time. The old promise burns against Steve's skin.

“Condom,” Bucky mutters. “Shit. I don’t have any.”

“What kinda guy goes to a strip club with no condoms?” Steve hisses. He doesn’t have any either.

“Kinda guy who doesn’t do casual sex,” Bucky answers.

Steve leans up on his elbows. Bucky looks him in the eye. He doesn't say it, but Steve hears it. This means something to him. It means something to Steve. A broken promise hangs around Steve’s neck, and Bucky reaches up with his clean hand to pick it up between his fingers.

“Don’t use one, then,” Steve decides. “I’m clean. Tested last yesterday, didn’t do anything tonight.”

“You on a pill?” Bucky counters.

He nods. It’s risky, given his cheap pill and what happened last two times a condom failed, but last two times it had been some faceless Alpha Steve didn’t give a shit about, let alone could identify.

Bucky presses into him bare, like the first time. Steve threads his fingers through Bucky’s hair. If his pill fails again, he won’t go to Planned Parenthood.

Bucky knots him, and holds him until morning. Steve sleeps evenly through the night.

When dawn comes, Bucky pulls out, kisses him gently, and then reaches up and pulls his dog tags off his neck. He holds them out to Steve.

“Take ‘em,” he says.

Steve takes them in hand, but doesn’t hang them around his neck. “Don’t you need ‘em?”

“I can get another set. ‘Sides, they say it’s good luck for your someone to wear your tags. Means you can’t die.”

Steve drapes the tags around his neck. Bucky looks at them dangling next to the old promise ring, then cups his jaw and kisses his lips tenderly.

“Means I’ll come back,” he promises against his lips.

“You already promised that,” Steve says before he can stop himself. Bucky’s fingers close on the ring.

“Means I still intend to keep it,” Bucky murmurs.

Steve pulls back. Bucky holds on to the ring. “I always meant to keep it,” he says. “I enlisted to get the GI bill to go to MIT, but they actually decided to send me out. I thought, go to MIT, get a degree, get a job, get married.”

“To me?” Steve asks. He doesn’t believe it.

“Yeah.”

Bucky looks him in the eye, squarely, honestly. Steve looks at his hands, sinuoy and calloused from poles, his body grown lean from the eyes burning away his baby fat.

“I never thought it’d be true,” he admits quietly.

“I always meant it,” Bucky swears. “Wasn’t even fear of your ma.”

Steve nods. His ma’s gonna kill him when he gets home.

“You got a cellphone now?” Bucky asks him. He leans over the side of the bed, digs around past the Bible in the side table drawer, and pulls out a notepad and pen. He writes a number on it, then presses the top sheet into Steve’s palm. “That’s my number, we get an hour free in the evening for personal time.”

“You wouldn’t rather use it to jerk off?” Steve quips, looking at the number.

Bucky’s finger traces his jaw, taps his chin and he looks up. Bucky smirks at him.

“If you’re in the mood for it,” he says, and kisses him. Steve presses his lips back, reaching up to put his hands in Bucky’s hair and crumples the paper in his palm.

Someone knocks on the door. Steve lurches back, but Bucky holds firm to his body.

“Come on, Barnes, time to pack up!” someone shouts through the door.

Bucky kisses the corner of his mouth. “I’ll text you when I can, alright?”

“You don’t even have my number,” Steve mutters.

“Text me, then,” Bucky says. He sounds desperate. “And I’ll reply soon as I can.”

Steve nods after a minute. Bucky steals one more kiss.

Steve puts on yesterday’s clothes, Bucky dresses in a fresh uniform. When they leave the room, someone wolf whistles.

“Get it, Sarge!” they shout.

“Shuddup!” Bucky shouts back, gripping Steve’s waist.

He walks Steve to his car. When Steve gets in, he leans over the window until he puts it down.

“I love you,” Bucky says matter of factly.

Steve is shocked. Bucky reaches in and kisses his cheek, then pulls back and walks away to join the rest of the group of soldiers. Steve sits there for a long time, then turns the engine and drives home.

His mother jumps on him the second he walked in the door.

“Where the hell have you been?”

“Crashed at a friend’s place,” Steve says.

She wrinkles her nose slightly, probably because he smells like sweat and semen. Steve shoulders past her, aiming for the shower. He’s not in the mood for it.

In the bathroom, he texts the number on the pad of paper from the motel. Just a hey it’s Steve .

He gets an answer back almost immediately.

< 3. getting on the plane now. text you when i land.

Steve stares for a long time.

< 3

*

Steve is almost twenty-four, it’s been a month since he met Bucky again, and every morning at 10, he speaks with him on the phone for an hour. Every morning, Bucky says I love you and Steve doesn’t say it back. He feels fifteen again, but at the same time, he feels vastly different.

“You okay, Stevie?” Bucky asks, and not for the first time this morning. Steve’s been quiet.

“Yeah,” he says. He’s looking at a thin test strip, at two pink lines. He’s known for about two weeks now, and he hasn’t said anything. His mother has guessed. Bucky has not. “I’m fine.”

At eleven, he leaves his room, goes to the bathroom, and throws up. His mother looks at him, then makes tea.

“What are you going to do?” she asks when he comes into the kitchen.

“I don’t know,” he answers.

She looks at him, startled. “Thought you would have taken care of it already.”

Steve shakes his head. Not this one. Not this time.

*

Steve is twenty-four when he quits at the Red Room.

“Why?” Loki asks, as though he’s disappointed.

“I’m just done,” Steve says. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“You’ve got a great thing going here,” Loki reminds him, like he needs persuading to stay. “You’re rising up in the ranks, I was going to up the price for an hour to 650.”

“I don’t want to do it anymore,” Steve insists.

Loki crosses his arms. “Why now? Why so sudden?”

Steve’s hands fall to his stomach. Loki’s gaze drops, then he scoffs and rolls his eyes. “Oh, come on. Just get rid of it again. You never had complaints before.”

“Not this time!” Steve snaps.

“Why, are you attached to the father?” Loki retorts.

“Kinda,” Steve says. He wears Bucky’s promise next to his dog tags on one chain now. He’s very attached. He wants it to work this time.

Loki shakes his head. “Fine. Fine. If I can’t convince you to change your mind, fine. You don’t get any severance pay or anything like that.”

“That’s fine,” Steve says. There’s a diner hiring across the road from his apartment, and his mother’s job at a local health clinic is steady now. And he’s got a few thousand dollars saved up. And a spare 400 hundred a month now that he’s canceled his birth control prescription.

“We’ll be sad to see you go,” Loki adds. He touches Steve’s shoulder briefly. “Lukin wanted to meet you, and everything.”

Steve’s oddly fine with not meeting him. He goes home, settles in his bedroom and waits for his phone to ring.

“Hey, Steve,” Bucky says.

Steve feels the smile before he answers. “Hey, Buck.”

“How’s things?”

“Good. I quit at the Red Room.”

“That’s great! I mean, if you think it’s great. You didn’t seem happy there.”

“It is great,” Steve assures him. “I wasn’t happy there.”

Bucky sounds relieved, and Steve doesn’t blame him. He fiddles with the promise ring, a little less broken than it was before.

He’s starting to show a little, too. His stomach has a gentle curve to it at eight weeks. He means to tell him, but a story from his mother’s job, about a kid with measles, comes out of his mouth instead.

Bucky laughs at the story, though. He’s afraid Bucky wouldn’t laugh if he said anything.

At eleven, he throws up. His mother makes tea.

“Do you know what you’re going to do yet?” she asks him.

He shakes his head. He’s keeping it, but he doesn’t know what to do.

*

Steve is a few months shy of twenty-five when he gives birth. It takes two days, and it’s the worst pain he’s ever endured in his life, but like they say, the second the nurse places the baby in his arms, the pain’s forgotten.

It’s a boy, with Bucky’s nose. Steve coos at him and his mother kisses his temple and offers the baby a little, stuffed bear.

“What’s his name?” the nurse asks.

“James,” Steve says.

At home, he has thirty-eight missed calls from Bucky. It’s eight, and the phone will ring again at ten. Steve sits in the living room, staring at it and nursing James, and his mother makes him cocoa instead of tea.

“You should tell him,” she says.

“I know,” he mutters.

His ma puts the cocoa next to the phone. “Bucky deserves to know he’s a father.”

Steve looks up at her. “I never said…”

“You didn’t need to,” she tells him. She nods to James in his arms. “You kept him.”

Bucky calls at ten on the dot. Steve hands James to his mother, takes the phone and goes into his room, shutting the door before he answers.

“Hey,” he says.

“Steve!” Bucky shouts in his ear. Steve winces. “Oh, thank God. Are you okay? What happened? Where have you been?”

“I had the flu,” Steve lies.

Through the door, he hears James crying. He itches to go to him.

“Flu? But – What’s that noise?”

“Nothing,” Steve lies again. “It’s the TV.”

At eleven, when Bucky has to go, he says I love you , and Steve almost blurts out I love you back or Your son is crying in the other room , but he doesn’t say either. He hangs up, and goes out to find James. His mother raises her eyebrows. He holds out his hands and she places his son gently in his arms. Steve sits down, cradling his baby, and rocks him back and forth.

“You didn’t tell him,” his mother guesses.

Steve shakes his head.

“Why not?”

“I dunno where a baby fits into his plans,” he mumbles.

His mother purses her lips and looks away. She still doesn’t think Bucky had any right to promise Steve anything. She doesn’t think Steve has any right to keep James secret from Bucky, either.

*

The next morning at ten, Steve’s phone doesn’t ring. It doesn’t ring the day after, either. A week goes by, and Steve spends the hour between ten and eleven in a mixture of anger and tears, still addled by pregnancy hormones and spitting mad that Bucky’s ignoring him, all the while terrified that Bucky had figured it out and didn’t want anything to do with him anymore.

Another week goes by. At ten am, his phone doesn’t ring, but there is a knock at the door.

His mother is out. Steve is alone with James, who he has on his hip when he answers the door.

It’s a man in a military uniform. With a somber expression. Steve covers his mouth with a hand, shaking his head.

“Steve Rogers?” he asks.

“Y–Yes,” Steve forces out.

No , he thinks.

“My name is Colonel Chester Phillips,” the man says.

“No,” Steve breathes out. James starts crying.

Colonel Phillips looks at James sadly, like he knows. Like he knows just how old James is, like he knows Bucky doesn't know, like he knows Steve still hasn't said  I love you  back. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“No,” Steve repeats. “No, no, no –”

“Sergeant James Barnes is missing in action,” Colonel Phillips tells him. “He is presumed dead. I’m sorry.”

Steve shuts the door on him. He hugs James to his chest, then stumbles to the sofa and collapses onto it. James crying on his stomach.

“No,” he repeats. “No. No. No.”

His mother gets home an hour later. Steve’s still muttering no and James is still crying.

“Steve!” she calls. “What happened?”

“No,” Steve whispers. His voice has gone hoarse. “No.”

“Did Bucky call –”

“No!” Steve spits out, then breaks into a sob. His mother, confused, glances between him and James, sobbing son and wailing grandson, as if she doesn’t know who to comfort.

Pietro and Wanda stick their heads in. “There was a colonel here earlier,” Wanda says.

Steve’s mother sits upright. She looks at them, then slowly at Steve. Like she knows.

“Oh, darling,” she whispers.

Steve clutches to James and sobs harder.

*

Steve is three days short of twenty-five when the funeral is held. James is two months old. Bucky’s parents see him at the graveside, then they see James, and they just nod briefly. Steve doesn’t tell them that James is their grandson. His mother says nothing either.

The flag, though, is given to him. Mrs. Barnes looks shocked. Steve takes it, holding it in one arm and James in the other. He doesn’t cry.

At the reception, Rebecca is the one to talk to him.

“You and Bucky met up?”

He nods.

She points to James. “Who’s this?”

“Your nephew,” Steve says quietly.

Her jaw goes slack. A beat passes, and Steve bounces James gently, staring into nothingness. Rebecca is staring at James.

“Oh,” she says finally.

Steve nods a second time. Rebecca looks again at James, harder, and slowly, she nods, too.

“His eyes,” she says after a moment. “Nose. Chin. Beautiful. What’s his name?”

“James,” Steve answers.

“He’d hate it,” Rebecca says, sniffing and grinning at the same time. “Middle name isn’t Buchanan, is it?”

“Yep,” Steve says, breathing shakily. “James Buchanan Barnes.”

She nods again. “Ma’ll understand. You want me to tell her?”

He just nods. James is whimpering.

“He’s hungry,” Steve says, standing up. “Sorry.”

She just nods again, and he walks out. He sinks to the floor in the Omega bathroom, undoes his shirt and lets James attach to his breast, his little hands kneading what flesh is left, and it hurts.

Time passes. Steve stares at the wall. The funeral is held at St. Michael’s. This is the bathroom where he and Bucky first had sex.

The door opens. He expects his mother, but it’s Bucky’s ma. She kneels down in front of him. Her face is streaked by tears.

“He’s gorgeous,” she says quietly. “Like his papa.”

Steve nods numbly.

“If you ever need anything,” Mrs. Barnes starts, then has to stop to blow her nose. “I’m sorry. I didn’t – I didn’t expect to – to lose a son and gain a – a grandson.”

She dabs at her eyes. When James stops suckling, Steve pulls his shirt closed, then carefully arranges James in his arms and holds him out to her. She takes him, sits down on the ground in front of him, and smiles down at James tearfully.

“Hi, little one,” she says. “I’m Nana.”

James blinks at her. Mrs. Barnes waves, but he only blinks. He looks over at Steve, then reaches for him. Steve takes him back, and James huddles into his chest.

“He’s shy,” Steve says.

“I understand,” Mrs. Barnes says back, sniffling. “Ja– Bucky was the same. How old is he?”

“Two months,” Steve answers. His voice is raw. Born just a day or more before Bucky was declared missing in action; presumed dead.

Mrs. Barnes chokes back a sob, pressing her fist against her mouth. She nods, blinking rapidly.

“Did he – Did he get to speak to him? At all?” she asks.

Steve swallows. His throat is dry. Bucky never even knew.

“Yes,” he lies.

“He never said,” Mrs. Barnes mutters, voice breaking. She doesn’t look suspicious, only weepy.

“I wanted to tell you in person,” Steve comes up with the excuse. “It happened so quick.”

He leaves it there. Mrs. Barnes nods.

“He always said he’d go back for you,” she says abruptly. Steve looks at James. “Always said, it’d be you or no one. Even after you lost touch.”

Steve nods. Bucky told him.

The door opens again, and Steve’s mother enters. James perks up at the sight of her, and she sits down next to Steve. Mrs. Barnes inhales loudly, then dabs at her eyes again.

“George,” she says after a minute. “George wants to – to meet little James.”

Steve nods. He braces James, then stands up. His mother touches his waist.

George cries, but says nothing. He kisses James’s forehead, and James, unused to the attention, cries, too. Steve holds him close, and maybe it’s just as much for his comfort as his son’s. He asks the Barneses not to make him go around and introduce Bucky’s son to the whole family. He feels sick to his stomach knowing that Bucky’s parents and sister got to know James existed and Bucky didn’t. His mother drives home and never says a word.

Steve fingers the flag in his lap. He hates the army.

*

He resumes working at the diner three months after James was born. He works nights again, his mother works mornings, so they take it in shifts to watch James. Wanda helps out sometimes, when Steve can afford to pay her. His savings have dried up quick to buy diapers and teething rings and bottles and formula. James gets a little money every month from the army, but Steve never touches it. It's blood money.

He is twenty-five when he meets Brock Rumlow.

“Hey, I know you,” Brock says with a wide grin. “Damn, little Stevie, wondered what happened to you.”

He was actually eighteen when he met Brock Rumlow, but he is twenty-five when he meets him outside of the Red Room.

“You were a bouncer,” Steve says in answer. “What can I get you?”

Brock eyes him from the side, then elbows his buddy. “Everything sampler with a side of gorgeous, if you don’t mind.”

“Coffee, then,” Steve says. Brock is not the first to pull this trick. He’s less amused with it now.

The next night, Brock comes back. He asks for Steve’s number. Steve says no. It repeats the next night. And the next. It repeats for several weeks. Steve asks for afternoon shifts, tired of it, and the owner and manager, Mrs. Peggy, is understanding.

A month goes by and he doesn’t see Brock Rumlow. James says his first word, and it’s papa . Steve doesn’t cry.

“Papa’s not here,” he tells James. He points to himself. “Dada.”

“Papa,” James repeats.

Steve cries. He said he didn’t. He’s a liar.

Brock shows up again in November. He’s alone. Steve sighs, and approaches him at the counter. He lights up. “There you are!”

“Coffee?” Steve offers.

“Look, I wanna apologize if I seemed forceful,” Brock says instead of answering. Steve holds out the coffee pot. “I really do like you, have since I saw you on the stage, and I think I like you better here. What’d’ya say?”

His ma kept telling him to get out there.

“Sure,” Steve sighs.

Brock perks up. “Friday, I take you to dinner?”

He shrugs. “Why not. You want coffee or not?”

*

He’s still going out with Brock when James turns a year old. Brock buys him a big stuffed elephant, baby blue and fuzzy, and James adores the thing. He hasn’t ever called him papa , and Steve isn’t sure if he’s grateful or not. James quit saying papa a long time ago.

He’s still going out with Brock when he turns twenty-six. Brock buys him lingerie, and Steve politely declines it. Brock is visibly crestfallen.

“Aw, c’mon, Steve,” he says, pushing it back towards him. “We’ve been dating nine months.”

“I’m not ready,” Steve says, pushing it back.

Brock looks at the lace, then takes it and puts it back in the bag. He nods. Steve can’t read his expression. “Okay,” he says. He can’t read his voice, either. “Fine.”

Steve’s mother still doesn’t like him.

*

After a year of them dating, Brock moves in. Steve’s reluctant to share a bed with him, but Brock whines until he says yes. He still won’t have sex with him. Sometimes, he thinks he doesn’t like the look Brock gets when Steve puts his hand somewhere else when it trails up his thigh, but it always goes away soon enough.

*

James is two years old. Bucky has been dead two years. They throw a party for James, Steve’s old friends from high school, Natasha from the Red Room, and Bucky’s parents and sister show up. James is a pampered and confused two-year-old. He gets cake all over his face, and Steve’s ma snaps a picture of him with James in his lap, cake smeared on his cheek and the corner of his lip curled up.

It’s the closest he’s come to smiling outside of his room with James in two years. You’ve got to smile at kids, he’s read, whether you want to or not.

*

Steve isn’t home when it happens. He’s at work.

His ma tells him the story later, years later.

She answers the door, James, two and two months, sitting on her hip and sucking on a cherry popsicle. She claps a hand over her mouth. Bucky, minus an arm, smiles at her, then waves at James.

“You babysitting?” he asks her. “Is Steve in?”

“He’s at work,” she answers the second question. Not the first. “Come in.”

She brings Bucky inside, apologizes for the mess, and puts James in the playpen. Bucky sits on the couch, bouncing his knees. James waves at him, grinning toothlessly. Bucky waves back. He doesn’t have a clue. Steve’s ma sits on the rocking chair, her palms on her knees, and stares at Bucky.

“We went to your funeral,” she says.

Bucky looks away from James. “Yeah,” he says, like he’s sorry, Steve’s ma described it. “I know.”

“What happened?”

“Captured,” Bucky tells her. “Held underground for a while. Escaped a few months ago. They discharged me, honorably, gave me a ticket home.”

“You didn’t go to your parents?” she asks.

He shakes his head. “I spoke to ‘em, for a minute. Ma’s thrilled, they’re coming out to see me.”

His ma said she’d looked at James, then at Bucky, like she expects Bucky to ask why he’d never been told he was a father. But he doesn’t hardly glance at James.

“Steve will be home in a little while,” his ma says. James perks up, according to her, and claps his hands. Bucky smiles at him.

“He’s cute,” he says.

“Yes,” Steve’s ma agrees, saying later that she felt like fainting.

Steve wasn’t home when Bucky turned up back from the dead. He got home half an hour later, Brock following behind him, tired and ready to just fall asleep with his baby. He is three days shy of twenty-seven and tired and not prepared for a ghost.

Bucky’s sitting on the couch. He jumps up, grinning, when Steve walks in. Steve covers his mouth with his hands, like when Colonel Phillips came, only with both hands ‘cause one of ‘em isn’t occupied with a baby now.

James gets up in his playpen and makes demanding noises at Steve. Brock nudges him.

Steve’s transfixed. Bucky’s just grinning at him. His heart’s beating out of his chest, he feels like everyone ought to hear it making the dog tags and the ring around his neck rattle.

“Bucky,” he exhales.

“Hey,” Bucky says. He won’t stop grinning.

James makes a loud noise, holding up his hands, and Steve’s ma swoops in to pick him up and hush him. Steve steps over a toy xylophone, a teething ring, to stand in front of Bucky, close enough to touch.

James is crying now, and Bucky’s glancing at him, away from Steve. Steve’s ma is trying to shush him. Steve needs to go to him, but he’s resisting a magnet.

He uncovers his mouth, slowly. And he slaps Bucky hard across the face. His palm stings. Bucky spits and swears, and Steve darts around toys to gather James from his ma’s arms and tuck him securely against his chest, shushing him gently.

“What was that for?” Bucky demands.

“I went to your funeral!” Steve shouts. James starts crying again. He bounces him; he’s crying too. “They handed me a fucking flag and your ma cried all over me and – and –”

He can’t finish. Bucky’s gaping at him, James is wailing, and Brock’s hand lands on his shoulder. Steve turns toward him.

“Can you take him?” Steve asks, holding James out. Brock takes him, but James just wails louder. “Go in our room,” he adds. Brock nods, and ducks into their bedroom. Steve can’t look at Bucky, realizing what he’s just said, what he’s just done; he’s just handed Bucky’s son to another man and told him to take him into their bedroom, right in front of Bucky.

“Who is that?” Bucky asks behind him.

“Brock,” Steve says. He can’t look at him.

“That’s your kid, then?”

Steve nods.

“Looks like his pop,” Bucky says.

Steve looks at him. Bucky’s glaring at Steve’s closed door.

Steve wants to call him a moron. James definitely  looks like his pop.

“Have you spoken to your parents?” he snaps. He can’t believe this.

“Yeah, but I said I needed to see you first,” Bucky says. Steve looks away again. “I made a promise.”

Steve’s fingers clutch at the chain around his neck. Bucky doesn’t seem to notice.

“But you’ve moved on, I see that,” Bucky goes on. “I wouldn’t hold it against you, since you went to my funeral and all, ‘cept I think you should have told me you’d moved on before that! I kept calling you like a fool!”

James is clearly at least two years old. Bucky’s only been missing in action, presumed dead, about two years.

“What was I to you, if you were sleeping with him the whole time?!”

“Get out!” Steve’s mother snaps.

“You should’ve told me!” Bucky shouts.

“Get out!” Sarah screams. James is wailing. Steve’s torn between two magnets, and he chooses James.

He hears the front door slam when he ducks into his bedroom. Brock thrusts James at him, and Steve snatches him away, bouncing him and hushing, trying to get him to stop crying. His mother bangs the door open and James’s wails redouble.

“You should’ve told him,” she snaps.

“Leave me alone,” Steve snaps back.

“You’ve brought this on yourself!” she yells.

“Maybe I was terrified he’d leave me!” Steve yells back. “Like you always said he would! Like Dad!”

His mother draws herself together. Steve looks away, bouncing James and making soft, shhing noises. He sees her shadow retreat, and Brock steps into his view.

“Uh,” he says.

“Dad ran out when she was pregnant,” Steve says shortly. “Ma told me when we were kids that Bucky wouldn’t keep his promise.”

Brock’s eyes drop to the chain around Steve’s neck. “Oh.”

Steve has never taken it off. Brock asked him to, long time ago, but Steve’s ignored it.

“Then, that’s his dad?” Brock asks, pointing at James. “The one who died in Iraq?”

Steve nods. “Obviously not dead.”

He can’t read Brock’s face. He turns away, opens the window and carefully crawls out. James huddles against his body and the late summer breeze shifts his dark hair. He does look a little like Brock.

Pietro’s sitting on Bucky’s fire escape. He waves, stubbing out his cigarette, for James’s sake.

“Heard yelling,” he comments.

“James’s dad showed up,” Steve answers. He feels tired and worn out. James paws at his chest, but he doesn’t have any milk, his breasts ran dry several months ago.

“Thought he was dead?” Pietro asks. Pietro doesn’t mince words, he just speaks. Steve likes that about him.

“So did we,” Steve murmurs. He’s squinting against the sunset, casting shadows off the railings across his face and body. “So did we.”

“Brock’s not mad, is he?”

Steve shrugs. He doesn’t really care if Brock’s mad or not. He doesn’t love Brock.

Bucky’s walking out to his car. He watches him unlock it, get inside and sit there. Steve leans closer to the railing, arms tight around James, wondering if this was how Bucky felt watching him in the Red Room. Unseen, hurt.

Bucky drops his head against the steering wheel. When he lifts it, the sunlight glints off his face, like crystals reflecting the shine. Tears. He drives away.

“He’s good-looking,” Pietro says.

Steve nods. He draws in a long, slow breath, then lets it out. He’s not going to cry.

“Where’d you meet?”

Steve leans back, scoots closer to the bricks, and raises one hand to point at Pietro’s fire escape.

He looks down. “Wait, really?”

Steve nods again. He’s tired.

He was five, Bucky was six. Steve had crawled out his window to escape the sounds of shouting. His dad had shown up, tart in tow, to try and get some money out of his ma. She’d screamed and screamed. Bucky had crawled out, too, though he’d never said what for, and they’d started talking. Steve said his parents and his dad’s girlfriend were fighting, Bucky had said he had Trix GoGurts and invited him in. When the shouting stopped next door, Steve had just gone back through the window. It’d just gone from there.

Bucky had kissed him for the first time on this fire escape. Steve had thought it was the best first kiss of the century.

“Pietro, mama says you’ve got to come help make dinner,” Wanda says, sticking her head out the window. “Hello, Steve!”

“Hey,” Steve says.

“Steve’s baby daddy came back from the dead,” Pietro tells his twin.

“Tact!” Wanda says, smacking him on the back of the head. Pietro hisses and rubs his head, glaring at her. “Sorry,” she adds to Steve.

Steve shrugs. He’s too tired to give a shit about Pietro being tactless.

“Do you still need me to babysit tomorrow morning?” Wanda asks him then.

“Please,” Steve says. His ma has work and Brock and him are going out. He doesn’t want to go anymore, but Brock will just complain until he says yes and then he’ll have to tell Wanda that he’s changed his mind again. He hates it when Brock whines until he changes his mind.

“And if the baby daddy shows up?” Pietro asks.

“You just let him continue being an idiot and assume James is Brock’s,” Steve answers, cold and cold-hearted. He doesn’t care anymore.

“Oh,” Pietro says.

“My,” Wanda murmurs.

Steve says nothing. James is asleep. He leans his head against the window and shuts his eyes. He can sleep out here, too.

Brock opens the window when it starts getting cold. Steve starts, clutches at James, who wakes up and makes a distressed noise.

“Come inside already,” Brock snaps.

Steve sighs, but crawls back through the window. He puts James to bed, lies down and faces the wall. Brock drapes himself over Steve’s back and starts snoring. He feels suffocated.

Steve slips out of the bed, picks up James carefully so he doesn’t wake up, and goes to sleep on the couch.

Brock glares at him in the morning. Steve doesn’t care.

Wanda comes over, his ma goes to work, and Brock steers Steve out of the building. He feels tired and he’d much rather just go back to bed, but Brock’s talking excitedly about the Stark Expo they’re going to. Steve doesn’t need to say anything, Brock talks enough for both of them.

When they get home, walk up the stairs to their apartment so Steve can change and head to work, Bucky’s leaning outside the door.

He pushes off the wall when they walk up. “Steve,” he says.

Steve unlocks the door and goes inside. Brock shoves at Bucky’s only intact shoulder, then slams the door. Steve doesn’t care.

Steve takes James from Wanda, kisses his head, then goes to change. Bucky bangs on the front door. He gives James back to her, tells her his ma will be off in a little while, hands her fifty dollars for watching James, and leaves. Brock sets up to watch football.

He shuts the door and Bucky crosses his arms over his chest. Steve ignores him, walking out to head for the stairs.

“Don’t you have anything to say to me?” Bucky asks. He’s following him.

“No,” Steve says. “Yes. You’re an idiot.”

“I was held underground for twenty months,” Bucky snaps. Steve lingers at the stairs, looking at Bucky’s feet. “I didn’t see sunlight for that whole time.”

He swings his left shoulder, and his sleeve flutters, empty. “They cut my arm off. Just ‘cause they could.”

“What do you want me to do about it?” Steve asks. He hates the army.

“Say something!” Bucky snaps. “Anything!”

“You’re blind,” Steve says, and goes down the stairs.

“I loved you!” Bucky shouts.

“I know,” Steve snaps, slamming doors.

“I still love you! How could you do that to me?!”

Steve slams more doors. Someone sticks their head out of their apartment and Steve flips them off before they can say anything.

“I wanted to marry you!” Bucky yells.

“I know!” Steve screams. The dog tags, the promise, they burn against his skin and he wishes he could rip them off and throw them at Bucky’s feet if he wants them back so bad. He turns around and shoves Bucky, hard, away from him and he’s crying now. “I knew that! You died! You died and I never told you –”

He breaks off to breathe, but Bucky doesn’t understand.

“I wasn’t dead when you had that kid!” Bucky screams back.

“You are blind!” Steve yells. “Blind, blind motherfucker, you don’t know shit –”

“Cut it out!” someone yells.

Steve spins on his heel and marches out of the building. Bucky trails after him. Bucky’s always trailing after him, ever since they were five and six and Steve didn’t have a father.  

“You lead me on!”

“I hate you,” Steve swears, yanking open his car door. “You want to think that, fine. I hate you.”

Bucky’s face is red and his jaw is tight when Steve drives off. His fists hang uselessly at his side. Steve drives the five minutes to the diner, parks in the back, and leans against the steering wheel to cry for a minute. He breathes in deep, swipes at his face, and gets out.

He hates the army.

“You alright, dear?” Mrs. Peggy asks when he gets in.

“Fine,” he says. She pats him on the shoulder.

“Alpha trouble?” she asks, smiling kindly.

Steve shrugs. “They’re morons.”

Mrs. Peggy grins, patting his shoulder again. “That they are, my love, that they are.”

He washes his face in the bathroom, ties on his apron and walks out. Natasha is sitting at the counter, her eye swollen shut by a bruise.

“You look like shit,” she says.

“You look worse,” he answers. “Who?”

“Lukin,” she answers. Then grins, gleeful and proud, like a little boy run home to show his ma his shiner. “He’s been arrested. Human trafficking.”

“Oh,” Steve says.

Natasha pulls a badge from her belt. “Longest time I’ve ever been undercover. Thank fuck it’s over.”

“Oh,” he says again. He’s holding a pot of coffee, having walked over to fill up her mug. “Oh.”

“What’s new with you?” she asks.

“Nothing,” he says.

She raises an eyebrow.

“James’s dad isn’t dead,” he corrects.

Natasha slowly raises both eyebrows, then slowly nods. “That’s something,” she says.

“I never told him,” Steve says.

“I know,” Natasha murmurs. She reaches out, takes his hand and squeezes it. “You’re going to now?”

“He thinks it was Brock,” Steve tells her. “Says I lead him on.”

“Motherfucker,” Natasha says kindly.

Steve fills her mug. “I can’t stand around and talk all day.”

“How’s Brock taking it?” she asks as he walks away. He only shrugs. He doesn’t care.

When he gets back to his building, Bucky’s sitting on the steps.

“Go home,” Steve tells him.

Bucky points upstairs. “People’s living there.”

“Go to Indiana,” Steve says. “Go to your parents.”

His nose stings, and he blinks hastily. They’d mention their grandson offhand and Bucky’d be shocked, and then they’d all know Steve’s a liar.

“Don’t wanna,” Bucky says.

“What do you want?” Steve snaps.

Bucky looks up at him; sunlight gets in his eyes and he has to squint. “I want to kiss you.”

Steve inhales shakily, then looks up towards his apartment. The curtain’s parted, someone’s watching.

It’s not fair. Bucky still loving him and Brock waiting patiently for him to be ready and James needing every minute of his time and him never being able to get enough sleep. It wasn’t fair when his ring got too small for his finger and it wasn’t fair when he quit answering Bucky’s messages in high school and it wasn’t fair that Bucky got captured and held underground for twenty months. Nothing is ever fair.

Lukin’s been arrested, maybe that’s fair. Bright side.

“Your ma says you never smile,” Bucky says.

“No,” Steve answers in an exhale, because at least that's true.

“Don’t smile at your boyfriend,” Bucky mutters, looking away.

“He doesn’t care,” Steve says.

“That’s not a good thing,” Bucky snaps. He sounds angry.

“I don’t care,” Steve says. He crosses his arms over his chest, wishing he had James. He could hide in James’s baby-soft hair, tickle him and make him giggle so he distracted Steve from Bucky’s anger and Brock’s patience and his tiredness.

“That’s even worse,” Bucky hisses. He stands up. “You don’t smile ever, she says. You hardly even smile for his kid.”

“Brock is not his dad!” Steve spits. He’s angry, too. Life isn’t fair, he hates the army and he hates the sun getting in his eyes and he hates that Bucky is downright blind .

“Well, whose kid is he?” Bucky roars. "Do you even know?"

Steve reaches up and yanks on the chain around his neck. It snaps, making his skin sting. Like his nose, his eyes, Bucky's words. “Whose kid is he, Bucky Barnes?” he hisses, dangling the dog tags and the promise ring in Bucky’s face. “Whose kid is he!” he screams then, and shoves the chain at him. He storms up the steps, leaving Bucky behind; leaving him to stare at the dog tags and the old, broken promise with a slack jaw and awed eyes.

His ma doesn’t look at him when he gets in. He takes James, goes to the kitchen to get food out of the fridge for him, stands there while he eats pureed carrots and chicken. James gets it all over his face and laughs, and Steve just wipes it off. He puts James to bed and collapses without eating himself.

Brock drapes himself over Steve’s back. His hand lands on Steve’s hip.

Steve pushes it away. Brock is still behind him, then he moves.

Steve was half asleep, or maybe he could have reacted. Brock grabs him by the shoulders and rolls him over, throws a leg over his body and drops his weight onto him. He kisses Steve, bangs their teeth together and bites his lip hard enough to draw blood. Steve’s too stunned to struggle at first, then he shoves at Brock’s chest.

“Get off!” he hisses.

“No!” Brock snaps. He grabs both of Steve’s hands and pins them over his head. “I have waited long enough! It’s been almost two years , I’m not just going to hang around while your ex yells about loving you!”

“Get off!” Steve yells. Brock kisses him again, his hands holding his wrists firmly above his head. Steve tries to kick at him and Brock uses his bulk to hold him down. Brock starts biting down his neck, towards the scent gland buried in his skin, and Steve starts panicking. He starts yelling, screaming, and the door bangs open. His mother grabs Brock by the shoulder, Steve shoves and Brock lands on the floor.

“Get out!” Steve yells at him.

“Get out of here!” his mother shouts. She kicks at him and Brock scrambles to get to his feet.

“Stay out of this, Sarah!”

“Get out!” Steve screams, getting up and grabbing Brock’s jacket, flinging it at him. “Get out! I never want to see you again, get out!”

Brock grabs him by the throat. Steve chokes. His mother runs out, James is wailing, there’s someone next door banging on the wall. Steve can’t breathe.

“You are mine now,” Brock breathes in his face.

“Fuck you,” Steve chokes.

His mother appears in the doorway. She’s holding a shotgun, or maybe Steve is hallucinating. She cocks it, and Brock’s fingers unclench around his throat. Steve coughs, runs for James and scoops him up, while his mother levels the shotgun at Brock. James wails, on and on.

“Get out!” she spits.

Steve gapes at the shotgun. He never knew she knew how to fire one, let alone own one.

Brock opens his mouth, his mother jabs the gun at him. “I won’t say it again!”

Brock growls, but grabs his phone and ducks out. His mother locks the door, puts the chain on behind him, and lowers the gun. She looks at Steve, who collapses onto the couch with James, trying to hush him.

“What just happened?” she asks.

Steve shakes his head. He holds James to his body while his heart settles down. His mother shakes her head, then breaks the shotgun and pulls the shells from it, walking back into her room. Steve shakes.

Someone knocks, gently, on the door. He gets up, then checks the peephole before opening it. Wanda wrings her hands.

“Are you alright?” she asks.

“Fine,” he lies.

“What happened?”

“Kicked Brock out,” he says. He looks around, half expecting Bucky to be standing outside. “Sorry if we disturbed you.”

Wanda shakes her head, shrugs. “Don’t worry. As long as you’re alright.”

He nods. She nods, too, then steps back. Steve shuts the door and locks it again, then goes back to the sofa. His room stinks like Brock, he won’t be able to sleep in there.

Later, his mother will say that she saw him leave the building, watching from out the window. She saw him and Bucky exchange words, then Bucky punch him square in the face. She doesn’t say what Brock does, but she says that Bucky left his nose gushing blood like she’s proud.

Steve sleeps through the morning. He wakes up when his mother gets home from work, and falls asleep again when she pulls a blanket over him and takes James, who’s whining for food, and tells him she called the diner to say he’s staying home. He sleeps through the night again, waking in the early hours of the next morning hungry and itching to move. His mother’s gone through his room and gotten all Brock’s things, and when he looks out the window, he sees that she’s just flung them over the fire escape railing. Brock’s out picking them up when he looks. He feels nothing looking at him scooping his underwear out of the gutter.

His mother’s gotten all the bedclothes, too, and she’s sprayed the room with air freshener so that it smells heavily of chemical fresh linen and not like Brock hardly at all. She left the window open, too. James’s crib isn’t in the room, and he goes looking for it. It, and his baby, are in his mother’s room. Steve’s selfish, though. He pulls it out to the living room, quiet and smooth as he can so he doesn’t wake James. He eats leftovers from the fridge, collapses onto the sofa again, and lets his hand hang from the bars of James’s crib. He sleeps again.

He wakes when his mother leaves for work. He takes James, feeds him, changes him and gets him fresh clothes, then thinks about going to the park. Instead, he takes James and crawls onto the fire escape. James likes watching the cars.

He hears someone knocking but ignores it. His ma has a key so it’s not her and he doesn’t care. James points down the street and Steve encourages him vaguely, keeping his grip firm to hold James in his lap.

Pietro’s window opens, but it’s not Pietro that crawls out. Steve startles, pressing a hand to his chest, then briefly panics that he doesn’t have Bucky’s dog tags or ring around his neck, but he doesn’t need to remember where he left it. The chain hangs from Bucky’s fingers as he settles on the fire escape next to Steve.

“Neighbors are nice,” Bucky says. “They let me out here.”

Steve holds James closer. Bucky shifts, shortening the gap between them, and holds out his hand for James.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says, but he says it to James. “I shouldn’t’ve assumed.”

Steve buries his face in James’s hair, but peeks out to see Bucky’s fingers reaching for his son. James looks for a while at Bucky’s fingers, then reaches out and touches him. Bucky lets out a breath, letting James wrap his whole hand around one finger.

“I’m so sorry,” Bucky exhales, looking at James still. “I – I jumped to conclusions. I never thought –… I thought you were on the pill?”

“I was. It failed,” Steve mumbles. "I should've told you."

“I get why you didn’t,” Bucky says.

Steve shuts his eyes. The noon sun stains his lids red.

“I’ll love him,” Bucky says. His voice is closer. “I swear, I’ll love him, too. I love you.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve mutters, then. “I should’ve told you.”

Bucky’s hand touches his shoulder, and Steve doesn’t move. Eventually, his hand slips around him, draping his arm over his neck and shoulders. Steve lifts his head, and James is looking curiously up at his father.

“What’s his name?” Bucky asks quietly.

“James,” Steve mutters.

Bucky exhales, like a blow to the gut. He has to pull his arm away from Steve to reach out, but with a finger, he touches James’s cheek. “Hey, kiddo.”

Steve drops his head against Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky kisses his hair, then leans down and kisses James on the forehead. He touches Steve’s jaw, then gently kisses his lips. When he pulls back, he holds out the dog tags to him.

Steve takes them, but stops when he doesn’t see the pewter ring.

Bucky digs around in his pocket. “I got it resized,” he says. He pulls it out, then holds it out between his thumb and forefinger. “So you can wear it on your hand.”

Steve puts the dog tags around his neck, then goes to put the ring on his right hand. Bucky catches his hand, and he looks up, confused.

“Other hand,” Bucky murmurs.

Steve blinks. “It’s a promise ring,” he says hesitantly.

Bucky smiles, and his eyes catch the light. He blinks, and the light catches on his cheeks and lashes. “Not anymore,” he says quietly. “Said I’d marry you, didn’t I?”

Steve looks at it, then puts it into his other palm. He slips it onto his left ring finger, and it fits perfectly. Bucky kisses his temple, tender, and wraps his only arm around him and James both. The sun is in his eyes, but for once, he does not mind.

“I hate the army,” Steve whispers. He holds the dog tags so tight the metal cuts into his palm.

Bucky kisses him again, like he’s compelled to. “I hate it, too.”

“You died,” Steve keeps whispering, “and I never said I loved you back.”

“I knew you did,” Bucky promises. “I knew.”

“I never said – I never said I loved you, I never said about James, I never said any of the things that mattered.”

“‘M here now. I got you.”

Steve presses his face into Bucky’s shoulder, and James reaches up for his hand. He takes James’s hand, out of habit, but James bats his fingers away and keeps reaching. Steve lifts his head, and James is reaching for Bucky.

“Papa,” he says.

Bucky lifts James out of Steve’s lap, Steve supporting his weight ‘cause he’s afraid with Bucky unable to use two arms to steady him, and Bucky’s openly crying and grinning now. He sets James’s feet on his knees, holding him under the arm, and cries and grins. Steve wipes at his cheeks, and James babbles, again, “Papa!”

“Yeah,” Bucky says thickly, through intense emotion and tears, “that’s me, kiddo.”

“Papa, papa, papa!” James bounces up and down on Bucky’s knees, gleeful that finally, Steve’s not saying, no, papa’s not here, baby, it’s just me .

“That’s me,” Bucky says to James. “I love you, kiddo. Papa loves you.”

Steve presses his cheek to Bucky’s shoulder, reaching out to wrap both arms around Bucky’s waist. So many times he’d held James, when he wouldn’t calm for his ma and wouldn’t stop crying for him, bounced him in his arms and pointed to the only photo of Bucky he had, one Mrs. Barnes had given him of Bucky in his fatigues, saluting and squinting against the sunlight; pointed and said Papa loves you, too, baby, but it’s just daddy right now. Papa loves you, too.

James is a smart kid to recognize Bucky from only his picture. Just like his pop.

His ma comes home from work, and they crawl back through the window. She looks at the pewter ring on Steve’s left hand, and he half expects her to protest. She only nods.

“I’ve got work,” he says to Bucky. “At the diner.”

“We’ll go with you,” Bucky says quickly. He’s still holding James. “Just hang out in a booth?”

Steve nods. His mother nods, too, like she approves. Steve puts James in the carseat and Bucky spends the five-minute ride turned around to watch James.

Mrs. Peggy raises her eyebrows and smiles when Bucky trails in after Steve. “I see you brought the wee one,” she says, wiggling her fingers at James. “And…?” She’s looking at Bucky.

“Papa,” Steve says, handing James to Bucky so he can go wash up and don his apron. “Do you mind if they hang around?”

“Of course not,” Mrs. Peggy says. She looks Bucky up and down. “Iraq or Afghanistan?”

“Iraq,” he answers. She gives a firm nod, then salutes. It’s lopsided, as she’s leaning on her cane, and Bucky can’t salute her in return while he’s holding James, but Steve smiles to himself.

“I served all over Europe in the war,” she says proudly.

Bucky sees him smiling and grins. James waves absently.

Natasha’s sitting at the counter. She points to Bucky, raising an eyebrow.

“Still a moron,” Steve says, filling her mug, but he smiles in Bucky’s direction. He’s playing patty-cake with James.

“I see you’re sporting new bling,” Natasha comments, pointing at the dog tags hanging in the neck of his shirt and then the ring on his left hand.

“Not that new,” Steve tells her, already moving on.

“Good to see you smiling,” says Stan, the old vet down the counter. “I could swear I never seen you smile before, kid.”

“Never had something to smile at,” Steve answers, filling up his mug, moving on. He takes orders, buses tables, carries dishes to the back. He pauses at the corner booth to kiss James’s hair and collect a kiss from Bucky’s lips.

Tips are better that night. Mrs. Peggy always said he’d get more if he smiled. Steve’s been grinning all night. Clint comes in to relieve him at eight, and Steve fills up Natasha’s cup one last time.

“Who’s the goof in the corner?” Clint asks, pointing to Bucky, playing Peekaboo now. He nods to Natasha, raising a flirtatious eyebrow. She ignores him.

“James Buchanan Barnes,” Steve answers. He smiles in their direction. “Senior and junior.”

“Hey, you gotta ring!”

Steve waves with his left hand, putting the coffee pot back. “Have fun,” he says, untying his apron. He clocks out, then walks to the booth in the corner and leans in to kiss Bucky before lifting James from the high chair.

“Get it, Rogers!” Natasha calls after him as they leave. Steve waves, the polished pewter ring on his hand catching the light.

Bucky rests his hand on Steve’s waist back to the car. They drive back to his building, and Bucky trails along behind him up to the apartment. He trails along behind him while Steve feeds James pureed turkey and gravy. He trails along behind him into his room, and lies down beside him when Steve gets into bed. Steve rolls over to face him, and Bucky grins, reaching up to tap his chin.

“I love you,” he says.

“I love you,” Steve answers quietly.

There’s still the inner workings of the lie to undo. Bucky’s parents will have to be told that until just a few days ago, Bucky was unaware of his son. Steve will have to tell him that his parents knew before he did. He’ll have to tell Bucky about the first two times his birth control failed. For the moment, he lies next to him, their bodies a closed parenthesis, and in the crib at the end of his bed, James breathes slowly and deeply. Steve is older than the last time he lay next to Bucky, but so is he. They are both missing pieces.

Steve’s eyes are open, and so are Bucky’s. The future, which Bucky had no right to promise Steve, hangs somewhere in the distance. With the sounds of traffic and the headlights illuminating the room. Bucky traces Steve’s face with his only hand, loving and tender. Steve shuts his eyes, and sleeps.

He sleeps evenly through the night.

la fin.