Fic Repository

The doctor tells him to start small.

“It’s good to talk, James. Just to get into the habit. Just a greeting - a ‘hello,’ and that can be it.”

She had said it like it was easy. She said everything like it was easy, like it was within his reach. Bucky liked that about her.

He liked a bunch of things about her. She was teaching him to like things again, starting with the way she spoke to him - not like he was wounded, or stupid, or dangerous. But with a warm curiosity that somehow matched the way she balanced her clipboard on her knee and cocked her head after she asked him a question.

He liked the way she wore her yellow hair up in a twist, and the way little strands of it loosened and corkscrewed around her temples. He liked how the soft skin at the corners of her eyes and mouth had deep lines even when her expression was neutral, like she’d spent so much time smiling that it had permanently etched itself onto her face.

He had lines like that, too, but they were across his forehead, gauged in by scowling. The Winter Soldier had scowled a lot, he’d been told. And had spoken very little.

Some of the Winter Soldier’s habits had seemingly, over the years, become Bucky’s habits. Sometimes he was scared to find out just how many.

But he could start small by talking.

“How does that sound, James? Just a ‘hello.’ Just to the people on your list.”

His list.

The doctor had made him make a list of all the people he could potentially feel comfortable around. She had wanted a list of everyone he already did feel comfortable around, but had ‘hmm’d in a tone of kind disapproval when he’d handed the paper back with a single name on it:

STEVE.

So she’d expanded it to everyone who could, maybe, one day see himself feeling comfortable around. And it had grown by four:

STEVE. RHODES. BANNER. SAM.

And, crossed out twice before being rewritten in a precise, clear hand:

ROMANOFF.

He had intentionally left off Stark and the Maximoff girl. They both made him uneasy. And it wasn’t that he disliked Thor and Vision; he just didn’t understand them yet. Gods and Visions hadn’t existed the last time Bucky had been Bucky, and he needed some time to adjust.

So he had his list.

“Can you do that?” she prompted, head cocked, warm and gentle as ever. For some reason he didn’t hate speaking with her. Maybe because he rarely spoke; it was mostly nods and shrugs, an occasional grunt. Monosyllabic answers.

“Yes,” he finally said.

His doctor beamed at him as if he’d just offered her the entirety of the world and a clean bill of his own mental health. It was almost enough to make him smile back - almost.

At least he wasn’t scowling.

***

Stark was letting him stay at the tower.

Bucky had resisted at first; everything about it screamed no, screamed claustrophobia and too many eyes and too high in the air and too much oversight and where was Steve. He had lived well enough on his own before all of this, lurking as he’d been in alleyways, squatting in luxe spare houses that sat empty for months at a time, breaking and entering as he saw fit and never leaving a trace.

“Thank you. No,” he’d said stiffly, repeating himself intermittently during gaps in Steve and Stark’s arguing match, the pair of them talking over one another at increasingly high volumes, neither of them seemingly aware that Bucky didn’t want either option - he didn’t want to live under Stark’s thumb but he didn’t want to live with Steve, either. He was tired of being at the behest of other people, though he could see Stark’s point, even as inelegantly as he’d put it:

“We can’t just have one of the world’s most sophisticated weapons curled up at the foot of your bed like a pet, Rogers, not when he’s about as mentally stable as Vision after a Nora Ephron movie.”

“He’s my friend, Stark - he needs to be with me -”

“Or do you need to be with him?”

“Just because you can’t understand what actual friendship feels like -”

“Thank you. No.”

“- Doesn’t mean that you can belittle what I’m trying to do here, what progress Bucky’s made -”

“Counterpoint, Capsicle, Benedict Arnold here gets triggered by some Russian and strangles you in your sleep -”

“Thank you. No.”

“He wouldn’t do that -”

“There need to be protective measures to look out for civilians -”

“There need to be protective measures to look out for Bucky -”

“Thank you. No.”

“- So that Anton Chigurh over here doesn’t go on a rampage -”

“No one’s going on a rampage, Tony, for goodness’ sake -”

“I’m just saying, he needs to be where we can see him, where we can intervene if anything goes wrong -”

“FINE! Fine, we’ll both stay here!”

“Thank you. N- what?” Bucky had stared at Steve, scowling again, trying to work out how he felt about this development. Neither Steve nor Tony seemed to have noticed; for someone they were both so concerned about keeping tabs on, it was worth noting that both seemed to go completely deaf and blind to his presence when heated. Steve only gave Stark a heated glare before adding a stipulation.

“But you’re covering the rent on my apartment, Tony.”

“Oh, golly gee, a squat in Brooklyn, however will I afford it?!”

Anyway.

That’s how Bucky had come to be living - temporarily - at Stark Tower, where he was in proximity to the people on his list. Granted, he did spend most daylight hours in his room; he had gotten accustomed to a nocturnal sleep schedule and still found the bustle of the tower during work hours off-putting, even on the domestic floors, so he’d taken to sleeping during the day and exploring at night.

‘Prowling,’ Stark called it. ‘Perimeter checks,’ Romanoff countered, kinder. ‘Bucky stuff,’ Steve said, always with a smile.

Whatever it was, it meant he didn’t always run into other people, which he preferred. Steve was the one he saw most frequently, and even that wasn’t every day, though he did ensure that Steve was present and every morning, midday, and evening.

But his doctor had told him to start small. He could do that. He could start small.

It was just after ten o’clock and Bucky knew that this was the time Steve usually returned from the tower’s gym, hair damp from the shower, face freshly shaved, always wearing gray sweatpants and a white shirt. It was routine - Bucky liked routine. Sometimes he wondered if Steve knew that and he made himself predictable on purpose.

Usually, at this time, Bucky was in the kitchen off of the common area, putting together something for ‘breakfast.’ Steve would always step out of the elevator and greet him with his toothpaste-commercial smile: “Hey, Buck.” Sometimes Bucky would smile back. Sometimes he wouldn’t. It depended on which nightmares he’d just woken up from.

Tonight, though. Tonight he was ready.

He had a pile of fluffy scrambled eggs untouched in front of him and he waited, watching the elevator. The numbers suddenly began to tick - 32. The gym floor. Climbing up, up, up, until they settled on 84, the doors sliding open to reveal Steve, damp and clean, gray and white. He saw Bucky and his expression lit up the way it always did when he saw Bucky, and he opened his mouth -

“Hey, Steve,” Bucky said, beating him to the punch.