Chapter Text
Steve had lost a few pounds while Bucky had been in physical therapy, getting used to the new prosthesis. He’d been so worried, he’d barely eaten anything for days during Bucky’s recovery, and once Bucky had pulled through, he’d barely left his side, sitting through every agonizing part of the procedure to re-equip him with a functional left appendage. There wasn’t much time allotted for meals, and in those nervy, early days, with the first batches of the vaccine rolling out the door of Stark’s lab, neither of them had had much of an appetite.
One night, in their little apartment on the Stark Enterprises research campus outside Houston, Bucky had glared at Steve’s abstemious plate so despondently that Steve had worried he might be having a relapse.
“I’m fine,” Bucky had sighed, poking glumly at the healthy, vegetable-laden dinner Tony’s staff had delivered. “I guess I just miss road food.”
“You miss feeding me road food, you mean,” Steve had said, and Bucky hadn’t bothered to deny it.
“You look so…svelte.”
Steve had leaned back in his chair, one eyebrow raised in disbelief. “Bucky, I weigh two-hundred and seventy pounds,” he’d said, patting his belly in illustration of this fact. “I’m hardly svelte.”
“I guess,” Bucky had said.
“Tell you what,” Steve said, chucking Bucky under his chin across the table. “You finish this physical therapy thing? You can feed me anything you want.”
And of course, Bucky had perked right up, and finished out his treatment in three weeks.
Thanks to Tony and Peggy and their behind-the-scenes machinations, there had been no court martial for either of them, so as soon as the three weeks was up, they’d said their farewells to Tony and headed back to Brooklyn.
Their days are spent helping with the cleanup effort – Bucky working with a group of Peace Corps volunteers to tack plywood over broken windows, clear garbage and debris from the streets, and to gather bodies, a grim task he doesn’t speak about at all with Steve or anyone else. Steve, meanwhile, had joined a Red Cross volunteer corps setting up vaccine clinics and administering shots and first aid at the firehouse down the street from home. At the end of each shift, Bucky hunts down one of the few restaurants that had dared to reopen during the city’s slow recovery, returning home each night with a huge bag full of takeout boxes.
Two months in, the city is starting to look like home again, and Steve had regained all the weight he’d lost, plus a few extra pounds for good measure.
On an evening in late November, after a ridiculously lavish dinner of baked ziti and cheesecake, Steve sits down gingerly on the sofa, rubbing his achingly full belly and watching Bucky clean up the dishes.
“We need to talk,” he says. He wants to pop the button of his jeans, but he’s reasonably certain that if he does, Bucky will be too distracted – and distracting – for them to have much of a conversation.
“Uh-oh,” Bucky says, shutting off the water and turning to look at him. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” Steve says, patting the sofa cushion next to him. “C’mere.”
Bucky does, but instead of sitting down next to Steve, he straddles his lap, hands going automatically to his belly, rubbing little circles against the soft flannel of his shirt. “What is it?”
“I’m thinking about Wanda,” Steve says. “She’ll be finished with school soon.”
Bucky smiles, and Steve’s heart skips a beat. Too many times in the last few months, he’d thought he’d never see that smile again. He rests a hand on Bucky’s cheek, just briefly, then covers Bucky’s hands with his. “I know Tony got her a place and all, but I was thinking – what if she came to stay with us for a while? We have the space, and she’s all by herself. We could fix up a room for her, if she wants.” Bucky doesn’t say anything, so Steve goes on. “I mean – maybe that’s weird. Maybe she wants to go straight on to college, or something. I don’t know. But I thought, now that everything’s settled down…” he shrugs. “What do you think?”
Bucky tilts his head, still smiling down at Steve. “You think it’s safe? I thought we were supposed to avoid contact until after Pierce’s trial, to keep her out of everything.”
“Yeah, I got a call from her this afternoon. It’s all over – Pierce got twenty-five years. Leavenworth, the federal pen. Looks like we’re finally in the clear.”
“In that case,” Bucky says, leaning down to kiss Steve gently on the lips, “Yes. Let’s go bust her out of that stupid school.”
“I thought we should probably wait until she finishes,” Steve says. “Tony says she’s graduating next week, maybe we could go up there, catch the ceremony. What do you say?”
“I say yes,” Bucky says. “Of course I do. God, I miss that kid.”
“Me too. I miss her like crazy.”
Bucky kisses him again, slower this time. When he pulls away, Bucky’s eyes are dark, his cheeks a little flushed, and Steve loves him so goddamn much it takes his breath away. “What else do you want, baby boy?”
“Want you to eat the rest of the cheesecake,” Bucky says, pinching a little roll of fat at Steve’s waist, nibbling along his softening jawline.
“Course you do. Then what? Tell me.”
“Then I want you to take me to bed, daddy,” Bucky whispers in his ear. “Please.”
*
The midyear graduation ceremony is a small affair, held in the dean’s office. There are a few parents present, sitting in fancy office chairs in the spacious room, looking on proudly as their kids accept rolled sheets of blank parchment. The real diplomas will be mailed. Wanda plucks at a stray thread in the sleeve of the polyester gown she’s wearing over her uniform, wondering why she’d even bothered with this.
“Phillips Exeter Academy,” Tony had said, handing her a thick, embossed envelope with her enrollment information. “You’re fast-tracked for graduation in December. It’s intensive,” he’d added, meeting her eyes. “But you seem smart. I’m usually a good judge of that kind of thing.”
“Smart enough to graduate from high school,” she’d said, defiantly.
“Good. Prove it. Your two dads in there will probably kill me in my sleep if this doesn’t work out.” He’d thumbed over his shoulder at the room where Bucky had been taken, where Steve was sitting beside him, hassling the doctors and worrying, probably needlessly. “They’re going to have to lie low for a little bit, and it’s probably a good idea for you to do the same. So…y’know. Keep your head down. Don’t make any waves, get me?”
She had gotten it, and she had kept her head down. Now the Affliction crisis is all but over, at least according to the news reports. The vaccine is working, cases of the virus are steadily diminishing, and Tony Stark is on every channel pretending to be humble about his stunning philanthropy in bringing the cure to the masses.
It’s harder than Wanda had ever expected, being cut off from Bucky and Steve. She feels left out, like a little kid sent to her room while the grownups took care of all the important business. And she’s never missed them more than she does right now.
“Excuse me,” she says, standing up and making for the door. “I – excuse me, I’m just going to go.”
The parents and administrators look concerned and a little irritated by her interruption, but don’t try to stop her; they roll their chairs out of the way, letting her pass. She heads across the quad to her dorm, not feeling as free as she’d hoped she would, now that this chapter of her life is done.
Thinking about them hurts. Your two dads, Tony had called them, and maybe it was stupid – she knows now that it must have been – but that’s what she had hoped for, ever since Bucky had looked her in the eye in her dad’s trailer, ever since he’d said I’ll take you with me so he can’t hit you anymore.
She sighs, checking the drawers of the dresser for anything she might have left behind, but there’s nothing. She gets her toothbrush and other toiletries out of the bathroom and stuffs them into her duffel bag, slips out of her cap and gown and folds them neatly on the twin bed.
I’ll take you with me. That’s what she’d hoped, in her stupid, babyish heart. And now she doesn’t know what to do. Go to her stupid new apartment and get on with her stupid new life, she guesses – but it seems so big, too much to handle after all she’s been through.
“Miss Maximoff? Wanda, dear? Are you here?”
It’s the faculty advisor and de facto house mother, Mrs. Warner. “Yeah, I’m here,” Wanda says. “I’m just getting my things.”
“I thought I saw you come in. But you’re always so…quiet.” Mrs. Warner laughs, nervously. Wanda makes Mrs. Warner uneasy. She isn’t like the other students. “There are, um, two gentlemen here to see you?” She makes it sound like a question, like she can’t believe Wanda actually knows anybody. “They said they didn’t see you at the graduation ceremony – someone told them you’d left halfway through?”
Wanda tries to tamp down the ridiculous surge of hope. It might not be Steve and Bucky. It could be police, coming to cart her off somewhere. She has to be careful. “Two guys?” she asks. “Who are they?”
“I’m sorry, dear, I didn’t get their names, but they’re waiting for you downstairs in the common room. I assumed that they must be relatives? Dark-haired young man, good-looking, prosthetic arm? And the other one’s…well. Quite a specimen. Big blonde fellow with a beard?”
Wanda’s flying down the stairs so fast she nearly stumbles, and has to grab the handrail to keep from tumbling headlong into the lobby. She flings open the heavy hardwood door to the common room and practically squeals with delight.
“Bucky!”
Bucky looks about a thousand times better than when she’d last seen him, pale and clammy-looking in the hospital bed at the research facility in Houston. His hair is still too long, but it looks clean now, pulled back in a messy, indifferent knot behind his head. He’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen. She nearly slams into him, but he catches her effortlessly and sweeps her off her feet in a huge hug.
“You’re supposed to be graduating,” Bucky says, smiling his light-the-world smile at her. “Why’d you skip out?”
“It’s not the real diploma,” she says breathlessly, and she knows she’s grinning like an idiot, but she can’t help it; she’s suddenly so full of happiness she can hardly stand it. “They mail the real one in a couple of weeks.”
“We were going to surprise you,” Steve says. “But we got held up in traffic, got here late.”
She turns around, and there he is, as big and burly as ever, and Wanda is dismayed to feel tears spring to her eyes. Her affection for Bucky is easy - she loves him like the older brother she’d never had - but Steve is different. It isn’t that she loves him more than Bucky, but he occupies a place in her heart that’s been empty for so long, the filling of it is almost painful.
She flings herself into him; he wraps his arms around her and holds her tight. He feels even bigger than she remembers, and better, and it’s everything, having both of them back again.
“Hey, honey,” he says, and she knows she should let go, try to act like a normal person, but she stays there just a little longer, face pressed into his chest, letting her tears dry against the soft flannel of his shirt, and he goes on holding her, like he’ll never let go.
*
When Bucky had crawled up onto that table in the veterinary clinic last spring, he’d thought it was the last decision he’d ever make. And he’d been reasonably fine with it – dying comfortably, laid down under the watchful eye of the man who had kept him safe in Afghanistan, who had done his best by him since the day they had met. It had seemed like a good death.
Now, living with that same man, sharing his apartment in a Brooklyn that is starting to look a lot like home again, feels almost unreal sometimes. If someone had asked Bucky a year ago where he thought he’d be now? Living with his former CO and their pseudo-adopted daughter, wielding a shiny silver prosthesis instead of a left arm, an honorably discharged veteran – none of those things would have made the list of things that seemed even reasonably possible.
Life is funny like that.
It feels surreal, living this pretty little life, safe and warm and surrounded not just by Steve, but by friends, family. Tonight, for instance, he’s picking up Thai food not just for himself and Steve, but for Sam Wilson, who’s also back in New York and is as frustratingly unflappable as ever, and for Wanda and a friend of hers, a grad student with long red sex-kitten hair and a sharp Russian accent. Wanda thinks she can walk on water. Bucky thinks she looks like trouble.
He figures the way he feels about her is sort of the way that sitcom fathers always feel about their daughters’ boyfriends. He doesn’t trust her a bit, and it’s all he can do to keep from gratuitously polishing his service weapon when she’s around.
Still, it’s awfully nice that, at the moment, Bucky’s biggest problem is his pseudo-adopted-daughter’s maybe-girlfriend.
It’s all so shockingly domestic, and it feels remarkably good, sitting around Steve’s crowded little dining room table, watching Steve eat his weight in pad thai and listening to Sam crack good-natured jokes about Steve’s still-growing gut. And Bucky is pretty sure Sam has their number, the way he’s knowingly eyeballing Bucky every time he silently passes over this or that container to Steve, every time he dumps extra spring rolls onto his plate or brings him another beer.
It even feels good, sort of, to watch Wanda across the table, peering at the woman who is probably her girlfriend, although Wanda isn’t using the word and Bucky isn’t sure he wants her to. The not-girlfriend, Natasha, is a stunner. She’s a good six or seven years older than Wanda, at least, with a filthy-slow smile that she aims at Wanda when she thinks no one is looking. But Bucky is looking.
Wanda still looks younger than she is, skinny and delicate, but there’s a confidence about her that she hadn’t had when Bucky had met her in Missouri all those months ago. Even when she’d been setting fields on fire and crashing planes, she’d always looked tentative, like an animal just a hair’s breadth away from bolting at any moment. Now she looks like she’s home.
It’s a good life, and it’s something Bucky had never been able to envision for himself.
*
When everyone leaves – Sam turning down the offer of taking his leftovers with him in favor of shoving them toward Steve with a good-natured grin, Wanda heading off to “go get coffee” with Natasha, whatever that means – Steve sprawls out across their couch, slow and lazy. His sweater is hitched up a little at the bottom, and an inch or two of his lower belly shows, just enough to drive Bucky crazy.
He wonders if it will ever go away, if he’ll ever not react to Steve like this, like he’s the sexiest thing Bucky’s ever seen.
He had even wondered, in the back of his mind, if things wouldn’t be so intense between them, once they weren’t in constant grinding peril. He’s read about that, the thing where people form intense emotional attachments in times of upheaval, only to fade away, their purpose served, when the life-or-death emergency had passed. A little, tiny part of him had been scared that might happen to him and Steve. That once they weren’t on the road, once it wasn’t them against the world, it wouldn’t be the same.
The truth is, it’s not the same. It’s better.
The frenentic, terrifying pace of those days on the road is gone, and in its place is a kind of relaxed, easy tenor Bucky has never known. He’s always been a little high strung, a little too tightly wound for his own good, and the military had been a good way to channel all of that energy. Someone to tell him what to do, a task to complete, even if it was just filling time – and that was often the case.
Now Steve fills that role, and it feels good. It’s a different kind of feeling to be with Steve this way, slow and easy. He remembers those nights on the road, cooking for him in an abandoned hotel in Indianapolis or eating greasy diner food in Illinois, wondering if that was all they would have. Now they have all the time in the world, and it spins out in front of them like a seemingly endless thread.
Sometimes, though, Bucky still feels as desperate and undone as he ever did when they were on the run, and tonight is one of those nights.
He gets a carton of ice cream on his way to the living room, and he straddles Steve’s hips, letting one leg dangle on the floor and smashing the other between Steve’s wide body and the couch. It’s an increasingly tight fit, and Steve huffs a little at his weight, shifting under him. Bucky shoves his hips forward, shamelessly pressing his cock, already half hard, against Steve’s gut.
Steve grins up at him, his expression that mix of fondness and amusement that he always has when Bucky’s like this, desperate and practically begging for it. “Hey, baby boy.”
Bucky shoves his hips forward again. “Hey, daddy.” He starts to lean forward and falters for a second; sometimes when he catches sight of the prosthetic arm – shiny and silver, alarmingly mechanical to Bucky’s eyes – it takes him by surprise, maybe even more than the original absence ever did.
Steve knows immediately what Bucky’s thinking, and he gently lays a hand on Bucky’s metal arm, managing to make it seem perfectly casual, like it’s nothing. Bucky may have reservations about the arm, but if Steve does, too, he’s never once let them show.
Bucky takes a breath and throws himself back into things, scooping up a melty bite of ice cream and holding it out. Steve takes it good-naturedly, lazily licking the spoon clean, and he shifts his weight again, like he’s getting comfortable, settling in to let Bucky take care of him.
And so Bucky does, not bothering to speak, just spooning ice cream into Steve’s mouth and grinding on him a little, sometimes leaning forward and catching Steve’s lips against his own. When they’re kissing, Bucky’s lean body spread over Steve’s thick frame, Bucky revels in the feeling of Steve’s round, bloated tummy against his own abs, the way Steve’s belly feels soft and firm at the same time, full and fat and safe in ways that Bucky could never put into words.
By the time the ice cream’s gone, the last liquid spoonful delivered stickily to Steve’s mouth, Bucky’s needy, pressing desperately against Steve’s gut and riding his thigh.
“Shh, easy, baby,” Steve murmurs against his lips, his voice casually confident even though he’s so full he’s short of breath. “Easy. I’ve got you.”
And he does.
*
Later, Bucky lies in bed, watching through the bathroom door as Steve brushes his teeth. He’s still damp from the shower, an extra-large towel wrapped around his stocky hips, his swollen belly pressed over the lip of the sink as he leans forward to spit mouthwash. Christ, he’s the hottest thing Bucky’s ever seen, and he thinks he could probably go another round when Steve comes to bed, get him dirty all over again.
He doesn’t, though. Steve looks sleepy, happy and full, eyes heavy, and Bucky curls himself around Steve’s tummy instead, the way they used to sleep on the road, when Bucky had clung to him with a desperation that makes him almost embarrassed, now.
“Do you think Wanda’s gay?” Steve asks once the light’s off.
Bucky grins, pressing his lips against the plush chub of Steve’s ribs and sucking up a little kiss before he answers. “I think she wants to fuck the Russian girl,” he answers, his words muffled against Steve’s side.
Steve heaves a sigh, his tummy expanding impossibly farther. “I thought so.” He’s quiet for a minute. “She’s too old for her.”
“It could be worse,” Bucky says, still biting occasionally at the little roll of pudge under Steve’s armpit.
“How?”
Bucky shrugs. “Wanda could be a regular kid.”
“She is a regular kid,” Steve begins defensively, and Bucky cuts him off.
“I mean if anyone tries to hurt her, Wanda can just give ‘em the old one-two mind-punch knockout. Don’t worry so much.”
“Think we can talk Stark into paying for Berkley instead of NYU?” Steve asks speculatively, sounding about half serious.
“Nope.”
“Maybe a year abroad, at least.”
“Maybe,” Bucky says, just to placate him, and Steve starts listing off possible places of study, each more remote than the next, all of them very far away from beautiful, dangerous-looking redheads with exotic accents and the audacity to give Wanda bedroom-eyes.
The sound of Steve’s voice lulls Bucky to sleep, and he drifts off while Steve’s still talking.
They don’t say good night, don’t exchange I love yous.
They haven’t made any big confessions or commitments, not since Bucky was lying on the table in Banner’s spare bedroom.
They don’t have to. This is the end of the line, and they’re here. Together.