#varooooom

The Grand Canyon's an old dream of theirs, Bucky's childhood fantasy shared with Becca and Lizzie and even little Joe, and then with Steve, a dream both of them know has about as much chance of being fulfilled now as, say, grown men flying.

But, hell, Steve was ninety pounds dripping wet just a few months ago, and now here he is. Maybe they might make it to the Grand Canyon, after all.

"We'd have to borrow the old family car, though," he says, thinking about the Barnes's old Ford truck. "What if it breaks down in the middle of nowhere?"

"Then we'd fix it up or hitch a ride," Bucky says, easily. "'Sides, who'd want to turn us down? Couple of handsome fellas, one much more handsome than the other, nobody'd even think about saying no to us."

"I don't know, I can say no to your ugly mug easy enough," Steve says, and Bucky punches him in the shoulder in response, lets out a huff of breath and shakes his hand out. "Ow," Steve says, quite falsely.

"Christ, sometimes I forget you're built like a brick wall these days," Bucky says. "And I think you're forgetting I'm not completely invisible next to you, Rogers."

You never could be to me, Steve thinks. "You're sure?" he says, instead. "I mean, right now I can barely see your hand--"

He gets punched in the shoulder again, but they're both grinning and trying not to laugh, because if they do they'll give themselves away and fuck up the whole mission. Steve's kind of glad, for that--he kind of needs to breathe, after all.

He knows, deep down, that they're just deluding themselves, but he doesn't want to face the hard truth, not right now. Bucky's here, Bucky's grinning in a way he hasn't seen him do in a while now, and Steve thinks maybe, just maybe, they'll get to see the Grand Canyon after all.

--

Seventy years after Bucky's fall, seven months after the SHYDRA Incident (as nearly everyone has taken to calling it), on a cold December night, someone knocks on Steve's door.

He sighs, takes his hot cocoa with him as he stands, and walks to the door to let the visitor in. Sam, probably, with the batch of Christmas cookies he promised to bring, or maybe Natasha with the Robin Williams movie marathon she wanted to do.

He almost drops his hot cocoa when he sees Bucky, standing on the porch, shivering in his threadbare hoodie. He looks more ragged than the last time Steve saw him, two months ago in Europe.

(You have a home, Steve had said. You can do whatever you want to do first, but you have to remember--you can come home any time you want. You can always knock on my door and I'll let you in.

Bucky hadn't said a word to him then, just nodded, understanding what he'd meant. Then he'd turned and walked away, into the pouring rain.)

"Can I come in?" Bucky asks.

"You don't have to ask," Steve says, and steps aside to let his best friend in from the cold.

--

Recovery, Steve finds, is a long and hard process, for the both of them. But slowly but surely Bucky begins to smile again, has fewer nightmares (and fewer excuses to sneak into Steve's bed at night, but Steve doesn't mind it at all) and fewer bad days, remembers a little more, and six months later he leans against the doorway to their kitchen and says, out of nowhere, "I remembered something."

"Please don't let it be anything like the moonshine incident," Steve mutters, and Bucky gives him a completely innocent look.

"What moonshine incident?" he asks, the little shit. "I was talking about the Grand Canyon. I remember I wanted to go there." He taps his metal fingers absently against the doorway, knocking out a soft rhythm, one-two-three-four-one-two-three-four. "You could probably nag Stark into lending us one of his cars. Doesn't even have to be flashy, just has to get us there."

"I said nothing," Steve says, as innocently as possible. "It was a Barnes family dream, I think--going to the Grand Canyon. But out of your whole family you were the one who wanted to go the most." He flips the finished pancakes onto the waiting plates, and deposits them on the kitchen table. "I'm sure Stark can bear to part with one of his cars for a few days," he says.

--

A week later they're setting out from New York, in a sleek grey pick-up truck ("Stark-grey!" Tony had exclaimed over it, and he and Bucky had proceeded to debate hotly with each other over who would take the Iron Throne) with two duffel bags taking up the backseat, the radio blaring out Sam's nineties mix, and Bucky in the front seat singing along to Britney Spears, his feet up on the dashboard.

"Get your feet off the dashboard, Buck," Steve says. "We're borrowing this car."

"Gee, Pops, live a little," Bucky counters, but takes his feet off the dash, singing along to the next verse--oh baby, baby, the reason I breathe is you, boy you got me blinded.

Steve looks at him, then, looks at Bucky silhouetted against the dying daylight, alive and warm and real and right next to him, and he's not blinded but it's a damn near thing.

It took seventy more years than he thought, but now the road to the Grand Canyon is stretching on in front of them, New York disappearing in the distance, and Steve has never felt more at home than he is now, sitting in the driver's seat of a borrowed pick-up truck with his best friend singing nineties bubblegum pop at the top of his lungs beside him.

He's--happy.

The man's hood had come away, snagged on a stray nail in the doorway (and [Della] was going to have to repair that soon), and he was frantically trying to yank it off the nail with both hands. He had dirty red hair like he'd been running through the woods, blue eyes that seemed more red from lack of sleep, and most tellingly, some of the bandages around his left arm had loosened, exposing Valyrian steel underneath.

"My gods," she whispered, and the Winter Soldier (the Young Wolf, Robb Stark) whipped around, eyes wide in panic. He looked different from the last time she'd seen him, at Moat Cailin--he wasn't wearing black, to start with, but ragged clothes she suspected were taken off bandits who had the misfortune to cross him. His hair was a little longer, falling down to his shoulders now, and a little wilder as well. But the biggest difference was in his eyes: they were dead at Moat Cailin, blank and devoid of any emotion, yet here she could see fear in them.

She almost wanted to laugh. Here was a man who'd led an army to war, who'd left behind a trail of bodies, who rumors made out to be one of the most dangerous men in Westeros. Here was a man who could, if he wanted to, crush her throat in a metal fist, yet instead he was backing up against the wall like a cornered rat, eyes wide and fearful, as if Della--Della of King's Landing, with a dead husband and a dead son and a dead brother and an inn to keep running and the wear and tear of twenty years of fighting for various causes showing--was the threat here, not him. Instead she held her hands up, to let him see that she had nothing to harm him with.

"You're the Soldier," she said.