fossilised | It's AU time

"Buck--". Damn it! Steve kept the curse in and stood only to see around the corner where Bucky was going, before he snatched up the phone and went to sit back down on the edge of the sofa. "Mrs. Barnes? Hi. It's Steve. I'm-- I'm so sorry. I really am. I'm Bucky's-- I'm James' downstairs neighbor. We've become friends over the last few months. I-- its not my place to really tell you... No."

Ah, he didn't even know what to say right now. He couldn't out Bucky to his mother to say he and her son were in a romantic relationship. She could figure out by the area code that he was calling from New York so saying it outloud was pointless.

And about his issues--

"He's having a hard time. Since his discharge--"

"His arm? They told me that he had missed an appointment with his-- I can't even say it," she wept.

"You don't need to. He's doing really well. He just is afraid that you'll be upset with him and-- Well I suppose that was realistic to be afraid of that, ma'am. But just know that he's doing all right. He has friends here thst really care about him. He just-- he wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas. And so do I. But let me give you my number. You can call or text if you need anything. Just give James some time."

He hung up shortly after and headed into the hall. He hoped Bucky was there or downstairs. Otherwise he'd just wait for him in his apartment until he returned.

Winifred couldn't stop crying all through the phone call, feeling both as if she had found her baby and lost him again all at once. He sounded really bad, not like her Jimmy at all. There was no way that she would be able to keep herself from researching this phone number and finding his address, though she wouldn't go down there if she could keep herself strong. She'd probably have to try and keep Rebecca from haring off down there too, she wouldn't want to just sit idly by.

Steve sounded nice, she really hoped he was a good friend for her boy. She thanked him in a choked voice and took his number gratefully, telling him to call her Winifred, and then let him hang up.

Bucky wasn't far. He was just down a floor sat outside Steve's apartment with his back against the front door, glaring up at Steve as he came down as if this was all his stupid blond idiot friend's fault for putting the idea in his head in the first place.

"Well that was a fucking disaster."

Bucky had complicated everything by moving in upstairs. Steve had never had to work so hard for anything. It was as if Bucky's ease came at a price with all of the baggage towed under the surface. At least most of that was floating now, no less light but still visible.

Steve sat on the second to last step, looking at Bucky through the spindles of the staircase. Once upon a time, this place had been so nice. The cheapness and rent control meant that the building owner didn't do a whole lot of upkeep. The wood of the banister needed to be sanded and repainted.

"I'm real sorry."

And Steve was. He looked almost ashamed of himself, staring now at his hands as if he could blame them. "I'm... I'm not the best person for advice. I'll stop giving it."

"I'm not mad at you, you stupid punk."

Okay, maybe he was a little mad at Steve, but that wasn't fair because his advice was good advice. And even if he had complicated everything, Steve had already helped Bucky a whole hell of a lot more than he might realise. He smiled, he laughed sometimes, and he actually trusted someone. That was huge.

"It was hearing the VA had gone 'round and hassled my Ma. What right do they have to go butting in and telling her personal stuff about me? I didn't tell them-- I didn't want them to know what happened, and it turns out that they got told anyway by someone else. Fuck."

"From... What I gathered was that they had tried to set up an appointment for a new refitting for your arm. I guess you hadn't gotten around to changing your address yet so someone went to the house." Mrs Barnes didn't seem like she knew a whole lot. She'd been told when Bucky was brought home that he had been severely injured. That he'd lost a limb. And that he hadn't given family permission to come onto the base.

Steve bit his lower lip.

"She just was so happy to know you were all right. I didn't... I didn't tell her anything real, Buck. No real information. But I said you were settled in and had friends that cared for you." He ended up pressing his thumbs against his eyelids.

He'd give anything to have his mom poking and prying into all of his stuff. He really would. But he understood that every family and every son and mother were different.

"She loves you. She just wants what's best for you. And I really don't think she knows everything." Steve didn't think anyone but Bucky did.

She wasn't even meant to know that he'd lost a limb. He had wanted to keep everything from his family and let them preserve his memory as what he used to be, a literal idiot's pipe dream because there was no way of making it happen. A part of him knew it had been unsustainable and he hadn't been protecting his family by staying away so much as protecting himself by burying his head in the sand, but now he couldn't lie to himself any more.

It was probably for the best, it was just terrifying.

He scrubbed his hand over his face and then pushed himself up from in front of the door, offering his hand out to Steve to help him up from his perch on the stairs if he anted it.

"I know she does, that's why I was trying to protect her. She doesn't deserve to have to deal with the mistakes I made, and I'm just-- I'm so angry they couldn't leave her alone. But I swear I'm not mad at you, don't stop-- giving me advice and being the little asshole you are, because you mean a lot to me."

"I kind of think it's mandatory to tell next of kin...." Which meant that his mom very likely was aware that he'd gone missing too. Steve felt badly for everyone in this situation and the liquid of his eyes collecting along his lash line pretty much said as much even as he accepted Bucky's hand up. "You need to go and lock up your apartment. There aren't as many nice people living here as me and Nat make it seem."

They were in a low rent area. Thst meant that it wasn't all that safe.

"And I brought you dinner. Can you-- will you stay tonight? I know you've been staying every night for a week, but I want you to stay with me." The words were loaded. He knew that. Standing on the second step, at least he could look Bucky directly in the eye while they spoke. "Get the McDonald's and a change of clothes, okay?"

That wasn't quite an order but it certainly was forceful.

Bucky's eyebrows rose a little. Now that they'd kissed and admitted that they liked one another, it was certainly a more loaded question than before. But he didn't think that Steve was the sort to want to jump into bed with just anyone so soon, especially when they weren't even formally dating, so he was just going to assume that he was being asked to sleep on the couch again.

He hadn't even thought about how his Ma would probably find out where he lived now, and that meant he was probably on a countdown to Rebecca showing up and chewing him out for disappearing on them. He just knew that he was starting to relax now the call was over and there was just Steve again.

"Yeah... yeah, okay. Maybe-- maybe you can show me some more of your art tonight? You know I really love it, you're so talented."

Also he really wanted to not focus on himself for the night. So he darted past Steve upstairs to his apartment to grab what he'd been told to bring, before slipping back down again to Steve's place.

Steve actually hadn't planned on Bucky getting the couch again. His bed was just small, though, but with Bucky's help, he could pull out the futon to a bed. That would be big enough for the two of them. If Bucky slipped up close to him. He just wasn't ready for for sex. His first time had to be meaningful and amazing and he wasn't in any rush. But that didn't mean that the idea of a body sleeping beside him wasn't thrilling.

He was already trying to unfold the futon when Bucky came back. He'd get his art supplies after that and they could sit up and look at them or discuss a comic maybe? It could be fun to collaborate and eat that fifty piece of chicken nuggets he'd gotten Bucky until they flopped together like puppies.

The futon was really fighting him though. All of his romantic fantasies were on hold as he growled and pulled at the wooden slats.

"Come. On!"

Bucky set the chicken nuggets down on the side table and dumped his clothes by the end of the couch, and then just leaned against the door jamb of the bedroom and started to laugh. Silently at first, but it built and built until he was almost hysterical, the sound rare but chasing away the dark clouds that usually existed on his face to make him look younger and more carefree.

He couldn't help it, it was just the most adorable sight he had ever seen. Because of course Steve would struggle with the furniture and get frustrated at it in such a family friendly manner.

He was just... unreal. Fucking perfectly unreal, and he couldn't go and help out because he was too busy dying of laughter watching.

The laughter startled Steve enough to drop the tension rod and it flung itself back and snapped into place. He glanced over his shoulder and Bucky and put his hands on his hips before he crossed his arms over his chest for a more masculine appearance.

"Thanks for all of your help, Sergeant," he said as gravely as possible. "If we end up folded into a couch at some point tonight I will be blaming you."

But he could hardly manage to look angry. Not when Bucky's laughter was infectious and felt good to hear after he was so hurt and angry.

He turned fully, tilting his head to the side.

"We aren't both going to fit on the sofa and I'm a little too old for sleeping bags on the floor."

Even Steve looking faux annoyed couldn't stop his mirth. He really needed that after today, it helped to push the terrible conversation with his mother out of his mind (stupid, really, that was just burying his head in the sand some more), and let him focus on the good points in his life. Namely, Steve, who was pretty much the best thing in his life at the moment.

"If we end up folded into a couch, you can blame your own bad craftsmanship. Come on, who can't put up a futon?"

He didn't even mind being called Sergeant, stepping forward to put his hand on Steve's hip, eyes full of warmth.

"Jeez, has anyone told you that you're gorgeous today?"

Bucky made Steve's heart regularly stop beating. It was probably the most amazing thing about all of this and it was the only medical condition that didn't immediately freak him out feeling.

"This guy I'm probably going to ask out did say my eyes were gorgeous," Steve said, leaning towards Bucky. His hand moved up the chest of the man in front of him, feeling muscle and sinew and none of the ugly scars that told entirely too many stories.

He found Bucky to be the beautiful one here and he gazed up at him with heat and attraction and a surety that this was real and it was good and even if it wasn't entirely conventional, it didn't matter.

God... He wanted him.

"You're going to have to try real hard to win me over. My heart's set on that other guy."

There was something so very honest about Steve, as if nobody with those eyes could ever tell a lie. Which was stupid, everybody lied sometimes, but he just seemed so open and like every emotion crossed his face without any boundaries on it being appropriate or not. To be looked at with that heat... it was amazing, it was something that he never thought he'd have again after the war.

"Forget him, he sounds like a jerk."

He bent his head and pressed a feather light kiss to the corner of Steve's lips, and then another and another in between his words.

"He's not even here. You snooze you lose, buddy, you need to move on and find someone else."

It was hard to really concentrate and to play the game when Bucky took his breath away like that and so the best Steve could come up with as a retort between lips being pressed to his was that: "I think you two would get along, actually." After that, he took as much command as his five foot, four inch body would allow him and tugged Bucky into a kiss much better than the few light pecks pressed to his mouth. That was a tease. This was passion.

Sure, it was too fast and too heavy for the both of them. Bucky should have focused on himself. Steve was never quick about anything and still inexperienced. If Bucky wanted a lover, there were a thousand better people to choose!

Steve just decided that he wasn't letter go. It felt right to back them up so that Bucky and he collapsed against the couch-mode futon. He had no intention of going too far but surely this whole thing called for a lot of making out, right?

That's what they had been doing right around the time that Nat pulled him away anyhow!

It was almost midnight. The air was cold. Christmas lights dazzled across the city. But all Steve wanted was the man he hoped he could help put back together because Bucky was so, so special.

A whole load of making out sounded good to Bucky. He had never expected to find someone who looked at him with such desire in his eyes, especially not someone like Steve who should have a million and ones guys and girls falling over themselves to ask him out and treat him right. But he wasn't complaining, especially not when Steve toppled them onto the futon together.

He wound his arm around Steve's slender waist to hold him close, just savouring the kisses without needing to progress to anything more. He had already mentally decided that he was going to let Steve set the pace for their physical relationship anyway, he didn't want to force the man to be okay with getting naked with all those scars, so... it was all on what Steve wanted.

By the time he came up for air, his lips and cheeks were red and his eyes were much darker with desire, curled up in a proper smile for once.

"Seriously, Rogers, that other guy... dump his ass, date me, I'll be a good boyfriend."

"Are you asking me out then, Buck?" They probably should unfold the futon. As much as Steve liked being curled around Bucky like this, limbs entwined, he figured that if he had an asthma attack in the middle of the night, he wanted to at least attempt to not wake Bucky up. "Because if you are, I'm going to say yes. You're a much better kisser and that guy told me to lie to my best friend about how he made my toes curl. You actually did."

Half an hour later, with the windows fogged from the temperature that Steve kept the place and with snow falling outside, not wet enough to actually stick to the pavement, Steve convinced his friend to pull out the futon with him. And convinced him to take off that stupid prosthesis to sleep because, honestly, it probably needed to be refitted anyway so that it would stop hurting so much, and, once all that was done, he stripped down to his undershirt and boxers and climbed into a proper bed for the first time in who knew how long.

He never had trouble stretching out before. But stretching out next to someone else? That was nice.

Bucky let himself be bullied into getting up and pull out the futon, and then to getting his prosthetic off, though he refused to strip down much more than that. He stayed in his long sleeve t-shirt to hide the scars, but he went down to his boxers, and then slipped in beside Steve.

It was more comforting than he thought it would be, hearing someone else breathe next to him and feeling the warm weight of a body against his own. Damn, but he was already falling too far and too fast. That was a problem for another time.

He slept pretty damn well that night, even sleeping through Steve's alarm that told him he had to be up to go into the tattoo studio, and a message from his boss telling him that they were already rammed with idiots wanting tattoos for Christmas. Bucky had somehow shifted onto his stomach in the night, his one arm splayed out over Steve's hips and his legs splayed like a starfish.

Trying to get out from under his bedmate was impossible. Steve squirmed and wriggled and laid still to pant for a long time before he managed to find an escape route. He slipped a pillow under Bucky's leg so it wouldn't rouse him too much and then showered and dressed quickly so he could dash off to work.

He, however, leave a note to his boyfriend (oh god!) reminding him to eat something with a picture of that bounty hunter character eating cereal shaped like bullets.

It was a long day. A very long. A longer than long day. By lunch, Steve had mostly just designed lettering patterns and a rosebud (that looked exactly like the one in the catalogue), and took a break to pee and to check his phone.

If Bucky hasn't texted, he'd ask him for a picture of his smiling face. He missed him.

Bucky hadn't woken up feeling so relaxed in months. Even the fact that his mother was probably out there crying to herself, or that his sister might even now be hunting him down, didn't penetrate his good mood. He had slept well, the bed was still warm from Steve when he woke up, and the whole place just smelled comforting. Like paints and charcoals and Steve.

When he received the request for a picture of his smiling face, he sent back a picture of him holding up a sheet of paper in front of his face on which he had drawn a bad cartoon copy of the smiling emoji.

FROM: Bucky Barnes
TO: Steve Rogers

Better? Work kicking your butt, huh? How many hearts with the word MOM in have you designed today? Such artistic vision! BTW Nat pushed a note under your door saying Christmas dinner is at hers tomorrow. Is that right? Was going to cook you many ball shaped things, but won't if you're going to hers.

Still laughing over the picture when the text came in, Steve cursed a little (it was a quick and soft 'damn.' Nothing too scandalous) and hit the dial button. He didn't have time for a lot of back and forth. There was a giggling girl with a dozen of her friends trying to design a really 'special' tramp stamp with the word Bitch in it, hidden so only she would know what it said, waiting on him.

And Bucky was going to g et an earful as soon as he picked up too.

"I'm sorry, I was blackmailed. She told me I wasn't allowed to argue with her about going to Thor's but I argued anyway and then talked her into having dinner at her place but all cooking had to be done at mine-- I want to spend tomorrow with you. I thought it would be better if we stayed home. Like. We can escape if we need to? Don't be mad!"

"Whoa, whoa-- slow down, Steve, I'm not mad."

Bucky sounded sort of bemused by the sudden torrent of words. It was true, he hadn't been mad, though he had been disappointed. He had told himself that was stupid, though, because he didn't own the monopoly on Steve and it wasn't fair to think that he wouldn't want to spend Christmas with his friends. But the reassurance did help.

"It's-- It means a lot that you reorganised so I could be there, and I can try and go to her place. I'll even help you cook. Maybe not tater tots and meatballs, okay?"

This guy was amazing. He had really tried to include Bucky in his plans, and that made a warmth spread in his chest.

"Whoa let's not go nuts," Steve said in his best scowling voice. "I mean, we need ball shaped items in our diets. I thought you knew me, Buck? I really thought you knew me. If you're going to be my date to this thing, I require the presence of at least two ball shaped items."

And thus he put his foot down, stating that this wasn't up for discussion, that he'd be home in about four hours and that Bucky needn't bother to put his pants on if he didn't want to. That last bit was what caused Steve to hang up quickly, pressing his face against his wrists like he'd just said the most horrible thing ever.

Mickey watched him slump back into his seat, though he perked up when the girls came over, each deciding that they wanted a tattoo and two of them fighting over who was going to get SEXY 'hidden' in the ink.

Steve had his work cut out for him. Especially when none of the girls actually wanted the image the be unreadable. In fact, at the end of his multiple consultations, they all decided on simple lettering with matching hearts and stars as a border.

It was insane. He hoped their mothers never knew.

After participating in the photoshoot for Instagram, he managed to get one meaningful commission, which would end up lasting several sessions, before he collected his tips and headed back out into the cold.

He had some Christmas shopping to do first. Bad idea. Everyone in New York was also doing Christmas shopping and so by the time he got home, he was sniffling and laden with bags and hoping Bucky was upstairs so he could wrap.

Bucky had spent the rest of his day seeing absolutely nobody. He tried to convince himself to go out and get a Christmas present for Steve, but he couldn't quite bring himself to do it, so he ended up doing some things around Steve's apartment before heading upstairs to tear through his belongings in search of something he could wrap and present to Steve the next day.

Which meant that he wasn't there when Steve came in.

But the heating was on, there was a plate of cheese balls and bread rolls with a little note that said: AN OFFERING OF BALL SHAPED ITEMS TO APPEASE YOU. But otherwise Steve would be left alone to wrap and fall into bed alone, unless he chose to come up and spend the remainder of Christmas Eve with Bucky.

If not, he'd be woken the next morning by a knocking on his door. Which might just be Natasha and Thor in the world's most hideous Christmas sweaters.

Though Steve didn't go upstairs to spend time with Bucky, he did text him most of the evening before falling asleep with his phone on his pillow, mid text. He didn't wake up until the insistent pounding on his front door shook him from his dreams. He was groggy and in his eagle sweater when he pulled open the door and immediately lifted a hand over his eyes. "Holy crap you guys! It's so bright! Aah!"

The pair at the door were grinning and Thor had a small tree and some presents in his arms, a stupidly pleasant grin on his face. "Your boyfriend is also here?" he asked and Steve blinked at Natalia and her big mouth. She just grinned and shoved a cookie into his mouth.

It was awful. She was not a baker. "Nat! Jeez! These are-- how are these so salty?! Bucky is upstairs! Go torture him!"

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