Call Me Bucky

flcxn​:

“Nobody’s managed to knock me in the head hard enough to miss you yet. I figure if they do, it’ll just kill me instead.” Again, Bucky said it all with a largely straight face. Sam was a good guy. He had to be, or Steve would’ve have trusted him the way he did. That was enough on its own to at least get Bucky to be neutral with someone. He had to put faith in that judge of character, because if he didn’t...well, Steve going to bat for him might have implications he didn’t want to have to consider. 

“I was just on my way out. No plans. There’s a place across the street,” he nodded toward the door, “if you want lousy coffee and a sandwich.” Lousy by 2021 civilian standards, anyway. 

bcstardized​:

Bucky narrowed his eyes, only succeeding in keeping a fraction of the visible confusion off of his face. He didn’t remember him, not really. There was a nagging feeling that he knew who he was looking at, but nothing was settling in the right place. He obviously knew Bucky, though, so he granted a few more seconds to just watching him. 

It was something in the set of his jaw that finally made it click. Logan. Process of elimination. This had to be his son. Bucky went rigid immediately when he finally realized it, and what that meant. He wasn’t going to let it flood back in full sitting in that bar. He’d spent too long in therapy with Rachel all those months ago to have some kind of damn episode in public. He could keep some things behind doors, even the gruesome ones. Japan had been gruesome. That was putting it...lightly. Still, it didn’t free him of all the tension. 

“...I don’t know about any reputation,” he eventually said. 

chaos-hexes​:

He offered her a little smile and nodded. Whether or not what he made was worth treasuring, he had no idea, but he wasn’t going to try to decide. The act of actually making the things was good for him, and when he’d been in less of a decent place than he was right then it had been a solace, too.

“You can,” he said without hesitation. He wasn’t really trying to give her a pep talk, exactly, or some rousing speech to motivate her. Someone else would probably do that. Hell, Steve might, or maybe he already had. Bucky just stated it as simply as if he were telling her that the seasons would change. Eventually it would be spring. It was inevitable. “It’s in you somewhere to fix it.”

He paused in his twisting of the flowers and let out a quiet sigh. “Yeah, it does. Not all at once, and if you’re anything like me, you might not really want to let it.” There were days, weeks, months, where Bucky felt like he deserved to feel all the terrible, confusing things that he was supposed to be getting rid of. He had to fight against that as much as the things themselves. “But yeah, it gets easier.” 

chaos-hexes​:

“I spent plenty of time doing things I didn’t want to be doing,” he shrugged. “So I don’t really bother anymore.” If he was working on something, it was because that’s what he wanted to be working on. He had that freedom and that ability, most of the time. It was still a novelty to even be able to make something for his friends and to even have friends outside of Steve. Wanda wasn’t some kind of burden.

Bucky looked down at the flowers and pulled a few others to twist together, adjusting where the blossoms were as he went along. “Yeah. I know how that goes.” It wasn’t like he hadn’t done something very similar, deciding to remove himself (more than once) when the alternative felt unsafe for everyone. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” he said after a stretch of silence, “but I don’t really think there’s a fix. Not like a flipped switch or anything. You just...” he lifted one shoulder in a little shrug, “get some distance and clarity, I guess.” Not that their situations were identical and he did know that. Nothing was ever going to be a 1-to-1 comparison, especially not with abilities like Wanda’s. 

He didn’t really know that much about Wanda’s father, beyond the sort of things that everyone knew. Even then, it’s not like he’d really made it his business to know the ins and outs of what Magneto had done. Unless he had a reason to, unless for whatever reason he found himself on the side opposite him, it seemed like the kind of thing best left alone. “I hope he can.” 

bcstardized​:

Since arriving in Star City, Bucky hadn’t exactly worked on expanding his circle. Even Foggy, he’d met in New York, and if it hadn’t been for his trial he probably would’ve never crossed paths with or spoken to him. That hardly counted. He was years past all of that, though, and trying to work his way to something less...withdrawn. Something closer to the Bucky Barnes that had existed before HYDRA. That man could never truly returned, but the more he remembered of him, the harder he tried to reach for it. So, he did his best to push the paranoia down, to swallow the urge to leave his drink virtually untouched and step out of the bar altogether. 

Instead, he forced his hand to relax and turned his head just enough to the side to get a better look at who’d just sat down. He didn’t recognize him, not even with an appearance that distinct. Still, there was something in the air. Bucky had lived long enough with massive gaps in his memory to be hyper familiar with the feeling of something being just out of his grasp.

“We know each other?” he finally asked loudly enough to make sure it was obvious who he spoke to. If the answer was no, then it’d be a simple thing to brush off. For the other man, anyway.