It wasn't until he broke the chain on the heavy bag at Goldie's that he realized he wasn't boxing with his usual restraint. The room burst out into spontaneous applause—men catcalling, hooting and hollering at him in a way he hadn't heard since the war—and Steve turned, panting and a little embarrassed. "Hey Goldie!" somebody shouted. "When the hell are you gonna fix your broke-ass equipment?" and then there was more laughter and shouting: "Yeah, what the hell are we not paying our dues for, anyway?"

Steve reached for a towel and wiped his face, then saw Lalo ducking under the ropes and out of the ring where he'd been sparring. He looked up where the chain had snapped. "Te lastimaste?! Por poco y te cae esa cosa, te pudo haber volado la cabeza! Knocked your block off!"

"No, estoy bien," Steve replied, now more embarrassed than ever. "Really. I'm sorry, I must have...just hit it too hard or something."

Lalo rolled his eyes. "You're supposed to hit it hard," he said.

"Yeah, well, it's been a bit of a week," Steve confessed, rubbing his neck with the towel. "A bit of a month," he amended, and then he was laughing ruefully and saying, "A bit of a life, if I'm honest."

Lalo shook his head. "Man, you need a beer or something. Why don't you come over later - we'll be in the garage. Los muchachos y yo pasando el rato y jugando dominó." He fumbled for a moment and then said "Dominos. Gina is making nachos. Trae a tu novio."

"That sounds great," Steve said honestly, and Lalo pounded his shoulder a couple of times and then drifted off again, into the ring.

#

But it was hours before his phone vibrated and the text appeared—SHE'S GONE—so he could go home. It got dark in the afternoons now, but to Steve's surprise, all the lights were off—not just in the garage, but on the stairs and, when he opened the door, in the apartment, too. It wasn't until he flipped the switch for the metal dome lamp hanging over the kitchen table that he saw that Bucky'd been sitting on the sofa in the dark. He looked over at Steve with an expression that Steve couldn't remember seeing on his face before, or not for years, anyway: overwhelmed, overflowing; brimming with more inside than he could handle.

Bucky rolled up to his feet and took a step in Steve's direction—he was close to spilling over—and before Steve could think about it, he was closing the distance between them, pressing his fingers to Bucky's lips, and shaking his head no; no, no, shhh. Bucky's eyes widened with a kind of desperation, his lips moving under Steve's callused fingers—and so Steve shut him up the only way he knew how, sliding his fingertips across Bucky's stubble-roughened cheek and leaning in for a kiss, to smother the words against Bucky's mouth. Bucky let out a soft moan of protest, then gave in and took charge, grabbing Steve by his sleeves and yanking him in. It was always a surprise—it had always been a surprise—that Bucky wanted him. Bucky had been the first person to want him; Bucky had wanted him when nobody else did, when the very idea of wanting him was crazy. Sometimes it felt like Bucky's love for him had supercharged his whole life, that it was so powerful that they were both still alive and buzzing with it nearly a century later.

This time they made it to the bed; Christ, their bed, with its line-hung sheets and heavy wool blankets. This time it was Bucky pushing him back and unzipping him and worshipping his body with hand and mouth, with soft kisses and the gentle brush of his eyelashes. He could fight for this; if the world burned to ashes all around him and exhausted him, he would still fight for this. Steve breathed out, sighing almost soundlessly, as Bucky took him to the edge and pushed him over, then crawled up his body and kissed him almost brutally - his face, his neck, dragging his lips across Steve's bearded jaw and sucking bruises onto his shoulder. Bucky teased himself against Steve's hip, digging into him and then growing slick. Then Bucky hmmed softly and buried his face in Steve's hair, and Steve rolled closer and hooked his foot over Bucky's ankle, anchoring them. They were sprawled, half in and half out of their clothes.

After a while he felt Bucky's metal fingers tangle with his, and then Bucky whispered into his ear, "She says--"

"Don't tell me," Steve murmured back, tensing.

"I can tell you this. She says I've got rights. She's says I'm in the U.S. Army and I've got rights," and Steve had to turn away fast because his throat had closed up and his eyes were filling with tears and he didn't want Bucky to see. He squeezed Bucky's metal fingers and waited until he was pretty sure he could speak in a normal voice, and then said: "Lalo invited us down the block for beer and nachos. I'm going to take the dogs for a walk and then go over there. Come with me, okay? We'll take a long walk and then go smoke cigarettes and play dominoes."

"That sounds great," Bucky said.

"You'd've made a great short-order cook, you know that?" Natasha told Bucky, who was making massive amounts of bacon and eggs with a casual ease that she'd never seen outside of the very best greasy spoons: working three pans without breaking a sweat. "How did it go with Bernie Rosenthal?" and now Bucky tensed and looked at Steve, who went a little twitchy and raised his mug to his lips.

"Good," Bucky said absently. "We had a good... I'm not allowed to talk about it." He wiped his hands on the sides of his jeans. "But—good, I think." He made an absolutely enormous plate of food for Steve, and an only slightly less enormous plate for her, even though she was waving her hand wildly and making frowny faces at him; who could eat four eggs and half a pound of bacon?

She'd take the coffee, though; Bucky made the best coffee in the city.

"Tony wants to know what you want him to tell SHIELD," she said. "He's been holding them off by acting even more irresponsibly than usual, but they're about ready to pitch a fit; the President got asked about it yesterday, did you hear?"

"I'm trying not to pay attention to the news," Steve gritted out.

"He's been ducking the press, but he ran out of time. They came at him like bees." Natasha picked up a strip of bacon and munched on it. "Sir, is it true that James Buchanan Barnes is still alive? Mr. President, can you confirm that Sgt. Barnes was a member of the Super Soldier program during the war? Sir, has there always been more than one Captain America?" She licked her fingers. "Of course, they don't have any answers—they're all scrambling for answers—so Ellis was reduced to getting cute: 'I like to think that every man and woman who serves to defend the United States is in some small way like Captain America...' and then there was a whole song and dance about trusting the CIA and SHIELD to declassify the relevant information at their own pace, blah blah—as if they have any information to declassify. But they're gonna," she told them. "They've got both ends of the story—James Barnes falls off a train in 1945 and the Winter Soldier materializes on a D.C. street in 2014 - and they're going to piece together the middle: track you from the Alps to Russia to Zola and Hydra —"

"Tell them to talk to my goddamned attorney," Bucky growled. "I've got rights."

"He's got rights," Steve agreed, swallowing and wiping grease from his lips with his napkin. "I haven't, but—"

"Oh, Christ," Bucky muttered.

"—that's okay, because I'm just a third party. I'm legally irrelevant to this situation."

"Fuck me," Bucky muttered, and then he was turning to Steve and saying in a voice so laden with sarcasm it was almost cheerful, "So, I mean, do you also want to be on trial for war crimes, like for togetherness, or what is it that you want exactly? You don't know, do you," Bucky accused, as Steve's jaw tightened. "You don't even know."

"I do know!" Steve said, and slammed his hand down on the table. "I wanted this; I wanted--"

"Hey, I wanted a table like this, too," Natasha interjected coolly, "but you bastards never made me one," and they both turned to her, and a moment later, the tension went pop. They all exhaled; they laughed. Steve rubbed his forehead and groaned.

"We'll make you a table, I promise," Bucky told her, and then he got up to get more coffee. "You're a stupid fuck," he told Steve in passing. Steve glared at him.

Natasha quickly changed the subject. "Did you notice: your SHIELD detail is back," and that got their attention; their heads immediately snapped back toward her.

"Oh?" Bucky sat down again, face hard; all business.

"Yeah." Natasha showed them the handheld: two red dots outside the dotted blue perimeter. "As of this morning, according to JARVIS, but I wouldn't worry." She looked from one to the other of them, and then smiled impishly. "I mean, I give it an hour before the cops boot their car or one of your neighbors slashes their tires."

They didn't laugh; they just stared at her, confused. "What?" Barnes began, just as Steve frowned and said, "I don't understand."

"Your neighbors," Natasha repeated. "Haven't you— Your neighbors have been looking out for you guys. This is not a block that takes shit; nobody's been able to get within a hundred feet of your—" and even as she said this, the handheld flashed, and JARVIS said, in his polite, mechanical voice, "There is someone at the door."

For a moment, they all stared at it. "Who?" Steve asked, finally, and JARVIS answered the question literally, throwing up a slowly spinning window that showed... a small boy, jittering around on the sidewalk, dancing from foot to foot.

"That's Anton," Bucky said, frowning. "Dmitri's son. What the hell?" and then they were all scraping back their chairs and going down through the garage to the door.

Bucky yanked it open and said, "Privet, Anton - what can I do for y—"

Anton nervously held out a pale blue envelope and then yanked it away again when Bucky reached out to take it. "Wait, sorry—I have to give it to Steve. Only to Steve, Dad said," and so Steve came forward and Anton immediately handed him the letter.

"You want to come in?" Bucky asked awkwardly, and Natasha could see that he was scanning the street outside for anything dangerous, anything unusual or strange.

"No, I'm good!" Anton chirped. "Dad says hi," and then he was racing back down the cracked pavement toward the auto glass store. Bucky watched the boy go until he'd darted inside. Then he gave the street a last look and shut and bolted the door.

Steve had moved deeper into the garage, turning on a goose-necked lamp so he could read the letter. "Why didn't Dmitri just come down here?" Bucky asked him. "Or call?"

"Because it's not from Dmitri," Steve said absently, still reading. "It's from Nancy."

Bucky looked thrown. "Wait, who?"

"Nancy; client Nancy; Nancy Monroe. I turned the shop phone off when we..." Steve looked up, seeming dazed, and explained vaguely to Natasha, "Nancy lives in a big old house on Argyle. We do a lot of custom work for her. She..." He looked down at the pale blue handwritten letter again, and then said to Bucky, "She wants us to come over and meet her grandson."

Bucky didn't miss a beat. "Well, tell her that's real sweet, but we--"

"He's a journalist. He's the dean of the journalism school at Brooklyn College."

Natasha let out a long, low whistle. "That's it; that's him; that's your guy," she told Bucky. "Guy like that'll have former students on every paper. Guy like that'll have reach."

"She wants us to talk to him. He wants to talk to us," Steve mumbled.

"I think I ought to call Bernie," Bucky said faintly.

"You ought to call Bernie," Steve agreed.

"Call Bernie," Natasha said. "Call Bernie right now."

"It's good timing," Bernie said absently, rummaging through her briefcase. "I've been preparing documents but I haven't planned out the press angle yet. It'd be good if we had someone to leak this to - someone respected—and this guy seems like the ticket. It'd be good to give him an exclusive interview, too, if he wants one; I'd been planning on television, but—"

"I'm not going on television," Bucky muttered.

"— but I'll take a newspaper reporter if he's reliable." She looked over her glasses. "Is he?"

"I don't know," Steve said. "He's the grandson of a woman I know; a friend. Natasha thinks—" He looked over at Natasha, who shrugged and waved him on. "Natasha thinks the newspapers have been unusually sympathetic to us, and that this fellow's likely to have been responsible."

"Sympathetic is good," Bernie said cheerfully, "I'll take sympathetic: worth its weight in gold." She took the pale blue letter from Steve, scanned it, and nodded. "I'll set up a meeting ASAP: we'll do it at Grandma's house. We'll ask your guy to get there first, before us; that way, even if we're followed, they'll still have to figure out who we're meeting." She tucked Nancy's letter into her planner and added, with a smirk, "I don't like giving anything away for free. Let them earn it."

"All right," Steve said, and then, awkwardly standing, "Should we give you the room?"

"Yeah, please; if you would," Bernie said, and he and Natasha left.

#

"Come back with me to Clint's," Natasha said to Steve when they reached the bottom of the staircase. "We'll order some food, hang out; you know he'd love to see you."

"I—thanks, Natasha, but—" Steve ducked his head, too demoralized even to make up a good excuse, and she sighed and reached up to hug him. He bent in, his head rolling forward, and she held him in her arms and rubbed his shoulders. "I'm sorry," Steve rumbled, "you've been great—we wouldn't have made it without you. I don't know why you do it," he said, "or what I did to deserve it. I'm a terrible friend; ask Bucky."

She smiled a little at this. "It's because you're the real thing, Rogers. I've seen a lot of fakes in my time." She tilted her head and sucked, ruefully, at her lower lip before letting it pop. "Fakes all over the world. But you're real - the hundred percent genuine article—and we all know it."

"Yeah, a real idiot," Steve said, rubbing his eyebrow. "A real dope," and Natasha nodded and added: "Real stubborn, real bossy, real self-righteous; just generally difficult, actually, if you really want to--"

Steve's lips twitched. "I thought we were saying nice things about me."

"Oh, we were," Natasha said, all earnestness. "Sorry. I got off track."

#

In the end, Natasha went to Clint's and he whistled for the dogs and took them out for a long walk in the park. It was cold, and so only the die-hards were out: other dog-walkers and red-faced joggers, bundled up in their fancy running gear. He checked his watch and was just about to take the dogs off the leash when his phone beeped in his pocket. DONE HERE, HURRY BACK, and his heart leapt a little like it always did when Bucky called for him.

It wasn't what he expected though, because Bernie was still there, though she'd packed all her papers away and she was leaning back, casually expectant, on the thick, rolled arm of the sofa.

"Sorry," Steve said, hanging his coat on the hook. "I came back as soon as I could."

"No problem," Bernie said, and then she looked over at Bucky, who was sitting at the kitchen table with a faraway look on his face. Bernie said, pointedly, "Bucky, is it okay for me to tell him what we just talked about?" and Bucky nodded vaguely and then said, "Yeah, sure. Tell him."

Steve wondered if maybe he should sit down himself, but then Bernie turned to him and started talking, her voice studiously casual. "Just to keep you in the loop," she began, "I'm going to be filing a lot of paperwork on Bucky's behalf over the next couple of days. We're going to sue them," she declared, and Steve blinked and jerked to look at Bucky, who didn't react or act like he'd even heard her, "for benefits, for back pay, for redress commensurate with that given to other soldiers who were POWs during the war," Bernie was ticking these points off on her heavily-ringed fingers, "and for an honorable discharge in recognition of Sgt. Barnes's years of service to his country. We are also," and Bernie's voice suddenly turned careful, "filing an affidavit stipulating that Sgt. Barnes operated as the Winter Soldier from 1954 to 2014."

Steve did sit down then, dragging out a chair from the table and slowly settling down on it.

"We're going to admit everything, have him allocute what he remembers—which isn't a lot—and get them close the book on this, which I think they're going to want to do," Bernie told them. "Because the thing is—the thing that you both have to remember—is that your story doesn't end in 2014. That's a couple of years ago now: it's past tense, over, bookended. Our key word in this case is recovered. Bucky Barnes has been recovered."

Bucky looked up, frowning. "You mean like recovered from being brainwashed?"

"Sure, but what I really meant is that you were recovered by the United States after the fall of Hydra," Bernie said. "I mean, like, literally recovered. In 2014, Sgt. James Buchanan Barnes of the Howling Commandos was recovered from captivity by Steve Rogers after the Battle at the Triskelion. After which you guys resumed your life: you have been quietly living here and working and being Captain America when needed. That's the next part of the story," Bernie told them. "That's the part that's happening now, and it's as real and as meaningful as anything else." She began to put on her coat. "Try to relax, guys, okay?" she said, on her way out the door. "Get a good night sleep."

"Sure," Bucky muttered.

"Right," Steve said.

"Bucky..." Steve slid his arm across Bucky's body in the darkness, not wanting Bucky to think there was something wrong. "Bucky, wake up..."

Bucky made a soft, sleepy sound, though Steve knew that, recovered or not, there was enough Winter Soldier in Bucky that he would have come fully awake at the sound of his name. "S'jus the radiator banging..." He patted Steve's arm reassuringly. "Jus'the steam."

"Yeah," Steve murmured into the darkness. "I know. Bucky, I think we should get married."

It was like Steve hadn't said it; Bucky didn't respond, didn't move, didn't say anything.

"Okay, well, this is a really weird dream," Bucky groaned finally, and so Steve had to sit up and switch on the bedside lamp. Bucky winced and raised a hand to his eyes.

"It's not a dream, I'm serious," Steve said.

Bucky rolled away from him, tucking a pillow under his head. "You're crazy is what you are. This ain't a time for gestures."

"It's not a gesture, it's good legal sense. For example, if we get married, then I don't have to testify if I don't want to," Steve argued, and that made Bucky groan and sit up and glare at him.

"You want to get into it?" Bucky ground the heels of his hands into his eyes. "Then let's get into it. First, Steve—Steven—in what possible universe are you not going to testify? You can't keep your mouth shut for five fucking minutes. You are temperamentally unsuited to not testifying. I would put my money on the Titanic rising out of the ocean before I'd believe that you'd sit there quietly in a situation where I'm on trial." Steve leaned back against his propped-up pillows, arms crossed, and blew out his cheeks; he was fuming, but he didn't quite have an argument for this. "And second," Bucky went on, "in what possible universe would even I want you to do that? You're the best witness I got. People love you - which is because they don't know you—but you are literally the most trusted man in the world. They took the U.S. government apart on your say-so. And what are you going to tell them that's worse than what I'm overtly admitting to: that I beat up Billy LaSalle in fifth grade?"

"He was a bad kid," Steve muttered.

"He was a bastard and a half but so what?" Bucky looked at the bedside clock and then groaned, "Steeeeeve, it's four in the morning. You woke me up for this nonsense at four in the fucking—"

"I still want to do it," Steve insisted. "It's just forms—we go to City Hall and fill out the forms, and then we go back the day after. There's a twenty-four hour waiting period."

"What, no syphilis test?" Bucky shot back.

"They got rid of that," Steve replied.

"Well, that's good. Okay, look." Bucky was clearly gearing up to try again. "You still can't sit in on the meetings. Even if we're married; even if you were my mother. The presence of another person ruins it, the whatsit—the privilege: attorney/client privilege. That said," Bucky added with a sigh, "it is true that you and me would then have our own privilege, which means that this nonsense need never be repeated in front of God or man if we don't want it to be. This here," Bucky said, waving a hand between them, "is what they call pillow talk, and it's not admissible."

"I still want to do it," Steve said.

"I don't look good in white."

"Like you would wear white."

Bucky let out a long, shuddering breath and let his head roll first to the left, then to the right, while he collected himself. "Okay," he said. "So you got new papers when you came out of the ice, but me, I'm a ghost; I don't exist. "

"Sure you exist," Steve said, "I'm looking straight at you: you're James Buchanan Barnes," and he raised his hand before Bucky could object, "—and for what it's worth, you're not dead, you're MIA. You've got a birth certificate on file somewhere, a baptismal certificate—we can get a copy of that on our way into the city, from St. Anne's. "

Now Bucky wore a look that was almost amused. "Are you saying that you want me to go down to City Hall with my birth certificate from 1917—"

"Well, I wouldn't want them to think I was cradle-robbing," Steve said, and Bucky laughed out loud and said, "You know what: okay. Fine. Let's do it. We'll go in the morning; I give up."

"Great," Steve said, and turned to switch the light off. "Glad we could come to an agreement," and they settled back into the darkness and pulled the covers around their necks.

#

"It's just a piece of paper."

"I know," Steve said.

#

"I shouldn't have pushed you at Peggy, all those years ago. I knew we were married; I knew."

"Yeah," Steve said.

"So it was wrong, but it was the right kind of wrong," Bucky said quietly, "like when those French women came up to us and begged us to take their babies out of the country. They were willing to give them up to save them; they wanted better for them. I wanted better for you than me."

"I know," Steve said, into the darkness. The radiator banged.

#

"The thing is, Buck, I can't stand it. Being nothing to you—"

"Jesus. Steve. You're not—"

"I'm not your brother. I'm not even your C.O. anymore. If we're going to live by the law then I want to live by the law. So maybe it's just a piece of paper, but I want one. Why can't I have one?"

"You can have one. But Jesus, Steve, you're already everything. You idiot. You're everything to me; there's no life outside of you, and the whole wide goddamned world already knows it."

"I'm just saying there are statues ten feet high. Bronze statues."

"Yeah, I've seen 'em." Steve was fishing through their closet; he couldn't decide on a shirt.

"A thirty-foot-long mural in DC. A full-scale diorama of us storming a mountain in Cleveland--"

"I don't remember storming a mountain in Cleveland. I thought we mainly fought overseas."

Bucky ignored this. "I toured all these places after the helicarriers," he told Steve. "And it's always the same composition. I'm always, like, glued to your right shoulder. I'm like a parrot."

"A parrot with a gun," Steve agreed, finally choosing a white button-down; you couldn't go wrong with a white button-down. "A big gun. Usually you've got the biggest gun of any of us." He held the shirt up, briefly considered an iron. "So somebody knew something."

"My point is, we are not exactly hidden from history," Bucky said, crossing his arms. "It's not like people are going to be surprised that we're entangled with each other--it's not like finding out that Groucho Marx and T.S. Eliot were friends. I'm halfway up your ass in every picture we're in."

"Yeah, you always had poor follow-through," Steve shot back, and then: "Get dressed."

Bucky opened his mouth to argue, but then his phone rang, and he glared at Steve and scooped it up off the nightstand. "Hi, Bernie," he said, and then listened. "Two o'clock," he said, meeting Steve's eyes. "At Nancy's," he repeated for Steve's benefit, and Steve nodded; two o'clock should be fine. But Bucky looked at the metal alarm clock on the table and then said, "That should be fine, but if we're late, just wait for us: we're going into the city to—" Bucky stopped and rubbed his forehead, like he couldn't believe what he was going to say. "Bernie, we're going to apply for a marriage license." Steve went still, and Bucky met his eyes.

"Yeah, that's what I said," Bucky said, and Steve held his breath.

"Yeah, City Hall—actually, I guess it's the City Clerk's office. Downtown somewhere. Worth Street." Bucky scrubbed at the back of his head, which left his hair standing up on end.

"Yeah, I can hold," Bucky said. He stood there for a while, phone to his ear, then frowned and held out the phone to Steve: "What the hell's this song called, it's driving me crazy."

Steve took the phone, held it to his ear, listened. "Oh, it's— it's—" He squeezed his eyes shut; it was right on the tip of his tongue. Then he had it: "It's 'Don't Be That Way.' It's Benny Goodman."

"Right, that's it," Bucky said, relieved, and took the phone back.

#

Steve was eating a bowl of corn flakes, determined to be calm and normal, when Bucky came out of the bedroom wearing wool pants and a plain sweater and somehow looking infinitely sharper than he did. Steve squinted and tried to figure out how Bucky did it. It was the shoes, he decided finally. Goddamned narrow pointy-toed brogues.

"All right," Bucky said, pouring himself a quick cup of coffee and slugging it. "M'ready; let's go."

Steve could hardly believe it. "She gave us the okay?"

"I think we gave her a minor coronary," Bucky said, "and she put me on hold four times, but yeah, she said it was okay in the end. She says we gotta be prepared for it to leak—" and Steve nodded at this, "—but at the same time, it might not, because this is New York and they've seen everything down there. Well, almost everything," Bucky added, rolling his eyes. "We're probably new. But's let's go," he said, with a glance at his watch. "We've got to get to Nancy's after."

"I'm ready," Steve said, standing. "Let's go."

#

The New York City Clerk's office had the decor of a contemporary bank lobby. They had to take a number, and so they did, and then they sat back in their chairs and people-watched. There were twenty-something brides clutching their boyfriends' arms and a pair of middle-aged lesbians filling out paperwork while trying to keep control of two rowdy kids. A chic Japanese couple stood there, waiting, with a wedding party that looked like they'd just stepped out of a fashion magazine.

"A-261!" someone called out, and they looked at each other and shrugged and went to the window they'd been directed to. "Hello," said the clerk, a friendly looking woman with elaborately braided hair, and then she was passing a form through the slot at the bottom of the thick glass window. Steve ran his eyes over it, surprised at how little information was wanted: their names and address, their place of employment, their parents' names and where they were born. They neither of them had any previous marriages. And that was it; the only things that were even remotely anomalous were their dates of birth. March 10, 1917. July 4, 1918.

"Thanks," the clerk said, when they passed the forms back. They watched her carefully, trying to seem relaxed, as she jotted down some information off their birth certificates—and then squinted down at the dates. Her head came up. "Steve Rogers?" she asked, leaning forward to peer through the thick window at him. "Are you that Steve Rogers?"

"Yes, ma'am," Steve said. "I confess I am."

"Well, well," she said, and then looked over at Bucky. "And you're really Bucky Barnes?"

"Yes, ma'am," Bucky said.

"Well, that's really cool," the woman said, and then she was banging on their forms with a square stamp. "That'll be thirty-five dollars, gentlemen," she told them, and after they gave her the money, she gave them the license. "You've got to wait twenty-four hours," she reminded them, "and it's good for the next 60 days."

"Great," Steve said, standing. "Thank you, ma'am; thanks so much."

They stepped out into the bustle of lower Manhattan. It was getting close to Christmas, so it seemed even more of a madhouse than usual. People rushed past them on the sidewalk, totally ignoring them. "New York," Bucky said incredulously. "You just gotta love it."

"My vision's not what it used to be, but I'm not blind, dear." Nancy brought a teapot to the table and set it beside a plate of cookies. "I've had both the cataract surgery and the Lasik, and I saw you every week in the newsreels for years, big as life: bigger, in fact, now I've seen you in person. And you still have proper manners," she added, "when nobody under eighty has proper manners. And you remember Kay Francis," she concluded. "That was a dead giveaway, Steve; nobody remembers Kay Francis these days."

"Who was Kay Francis?" Paul Monroe asked curiously, hand stealing out to take a cookie; he was forty-something and graying, but he still had a lean build and a young man's face. Steve was a little unnerved to discover that Nancy's grandson was fifteen years older than he and Bucky were. "I've never even heard her name."

"Oh, she was a movie star," Steve told him. "She was the most famous movie star in the world when we were kids. On the cover of every magazine every week. "

"And her clothes," Nancy said. "The clothes she wore...oh, when I was a little girl I was astounded by them. Silk evening dresses and coats with enormous white fox fur collars. Strings of pearls that went down to the floor." Nancy sighed longingly and then said to Bernie Rosenthal, "Will you have tea or would you like something stronger? I've got a very nice selection of wine and there's whiskey on the bar."

"I'm working today, unfortunately," Bernie replied, "so I'd better keep my wits about me," and then Nancy looked the question at Bucky, who showed her a thin smile and then said, with a slight rasp, "I wouldn't mind a glass of something stronger, if you're offering, Nancy."

Bernie showed him a quizzical smile. "Huh, I thought I read somewhere that the super serum made you guys impervious to alcohol. I mean, it's technically a poison, right? - however pleasant it might sometimes feel to be drunk?"

"Steve's impervious," Bucky replied. " I got the second-rate serum, which lets you get stewed," which was what he always said when the subject came up, but this time he licked his lips and went on, voice faltering a little: "Because they needed to be able to dope me, you see: to control me. Put me down, bring me up: shut me up. So my serum isn't resistant to chemicals. They gave me a lot of different drugs over the years - morphine, heroin, scopolamine, atropine, dexedrine, mephentermine, and then there were all the experimental--" He stopped, realizing the room had gone quiet. Paul Monroe had quietly picked up his pencil and was taking notes on a lined stenographer's pad. "Anyway the good news is that I'd really enjoy a glass of whiskey if you've got one. Maybe with a little water?" and just like that, they were down to business.

#

Steve sat there, holding a mug of tea that had gone cold, as Paul Monroe gently asked Bucky question after question. Occasionally Bernie put her hand on Bucky's arm and said, softly but firmly, "Don't answer that." Steve understood the game plan: Bucky was going to admit everything that he could remember first-hand, but put it all in past tense. He'd served in the war. He'd been captured and forced to fight: first for Russia, then for Hydra. He'd been liberated from Hydra in 2014. He had returned to serving his country by picking up the shield of Captain America.

"And the other Avengers know?" Paul Monroe pressed.

"Sure they know," Bucky confirmed. "Stark, Romanoff, Barton - I work with them a lot. Sam Wilson. Dr. Banner, sometimes. I don't see much of Thor."

"What made you do it?" Paul Monroe asked. "Pick up the shield."

"I really don't know," Bucky said. "Steve wanted a break from it. And I'd had the serum - I mean, I knew I could do it. It seemed like the right thing to do. When terrible things are happening..." He looked over at Steve, who was sitting there, trying to control his face. "...it's really hard to do nothing. That's the problem we've always had, Steve and me." Steve nodded slowly and then looked away.

Paul Monroe laughed quietly and flipped his notebook shut. "That's...not the problem most people have, Sergeant Barnes." He smiled at Bucky and then looked over at Steve. "It's quite a story," he said. "To tell you the truth, when Gran first called me up and told me that it was true that you were alive because she knew you both, I thought..." He shook his head, perhaps not wanting to say what he had thought.

"Alzheimer's?" Nancy suggested cheerfully. "Rapid onset dementia?"

"Something like that," he admitted, and then he turned to Bernie and appealed to her, "Well, what would you have thought? Your Gran hires Captain America and Bucky Barnes to take down your window screens and put up the shutters?"

"But she did," Steve pointed.

"I did," Nancy agreed.

"I would have taken my Grandma straight to the hospital," Bernie reassured Paul. "But in this case...it really just so happens to be true. "

"Yeah, so I discovered," Paul said. "And then Gran said...well." He looked at them both. "She said that in her opinion you just wanted to be left alone. That the other men who served in the war got to come home and do that and you were just trying to take your chance at it. She said you boys were good neighbors and that you deserved that chance, and that maybe SHIELD and the CIA were going to try and take it from you." He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. "Is that about the situation?"

Steve knew that Bucky wouldn't be able to speak. "That's about the size of it."

"Well, let's see what we can do." Paul Monroe opened his notebook again and idly scratched at the base of his throat as he reviewed his notes. "It's a good time of year for this story, Christmas. People love a human-interest story at the holidays, and nobody's going to want to dwell on the nasty stuff - war, assassinations, the torture of a POW. We've got to focus on the good stuff: Best friends reunited! The war is finally over! Our heroes get the ending they deserve! The thing is to sell it without giving away too many private details - because if you guys end up with paparazzi at your door, you've lost even if you win."

"Right," Bernie agreed, and then Steve started as she elbowed him in the ribs. "Do you want to tell him about the thing? You know, the thing?" She was widening her eyes at him. "The thing from this morning; the errand that you and Bucky..."

"No," Steve said.

"No," Bucky said.

"Okay, well--okay," Bernie said, and pushed her glasses up, and rubbed her eyes. "That's fine."

Natasha

His phone rang and Bucky opened his eyes, shoved Steve off him, and grabbed it; who the hell would be calling at—was it 7:30 already? It was Natasha, and Bucky hit answer. "Hi, what's going on?"

"Sorry, did I wake you?" she said. "I figured you'd be up. In fact, you're the only people I know who'd be up."

"We're up," Bucky said, and that was almost true; Steve looked rumpled and sleepy, but he'd propped himself up on one elbow and had opened one eye. "What's going on?" he asked.

"I'm outside," Natasha said. "I brought bagels," and Bucky looked at Steve and repeated, "She's downstairs, she brought bagels," and they had a quick, wordless conversation—Steve making a face, Bucky nodding then shrugging, before Steve sighed and sank back on the pillows, draping his arm over his eyes. It wasn't a great time for company, but Natasha wasn't exactly company and they both knew it. "Hang on," Bucky said, "I'll be right down," he said and hung up.

"Just keep your mouth shut," Bucky said, groaning and rolling out of bed. "We'll tell her we have a job. It'll be fine."

"Right," Steve said, "because I'm an amazing liar and Natasha's kind of obtuse." He grabbed Bucky's abandoned pillow and pulled it on top of his own face. Bucky sighed: any plan that depended on Steve keeping his mouth shut was probably doomed anyway, but it was worth a shot.

Natasha was standing on the street holding a bag of bagels and wearing a tan coat. She looked strangely exhausted. "Goddammit, I did wake you," she said, and it wasn't a question. "I'm sorry, I really assumed—"

"Nah, it's good you woke us." Bucky waved her in. "We overslept and we've got a job to get to."

She stopped and gave him a sharp look. "You're starting a job this close to Christmas?"

He replied without hesitating. "Yeah, just a small one," he said. "Guy wants his fireplace to look nice for the holidays," and Natasha seemed to accept that as a reasonable explanation.

Upstairs, Steve had committed to the conceit by putting on his work clothes: stiff canvas pants and long sleeved shirt. "Hey, Natasha," he said, going to put up coffee. "Thanks for waking us. We've got a job to get to—"

"Right," she drawled, unbuttoning her coat, "the fireplace," but that line of inquiry was immediately derailed when they saw she was wearing her Black Widow gear, stingers and all.

Steve set the coffeepot down with a bang. "Natasha," he said, voice warming with concern, "you've been on a mission, you haven't slept—" but Natasha just smiled and said, "It's fine. It's good, actually—SHIELD called me in to work. Nothing too dangerous, but they wanted an expert. They can't ever stay mad at us for long, boys," she concluded wryly, "because they need us. With this world, they always need us. Make me a cup of coffee, will you? I'm too wired to sleep." Steve went back to the percolator and Natasha dropped into the armchair and put up her feet. "And I want to hear about your meeting with the reporter. Was he the guy? How did it go?"

"He was the guy, and it went fine," Bucky said, perching on the arm of the sofa. "He's gonna write an article about me where the Winter Soldier is, like, glossed over in paragraph three. He's gonna try to wedge the fact that I was a mass murderer in between my childhood love of jelly donuts and my feelings about the Cubs finally winning the World Series."

Natasha looked at him and then twisted her neck back toward Steve. "This is why we don't let people defend themselves."

"Word," Steve said.

"We don't really say that anymore," Natasha told him.

"Okay," Steve said; behind him the coffee started brewing, and he set out bagels, cream cheese, and butter.

"I want to hear about this mission they sent you on," Bucky said frowning. "What was important enough that they were willing to eat crow and ask you to do it?"

"It was nothing; I had to break in somewhere, blow something up, make it look like an accident." She shrugged. "I think they thought I wouldn't be conspicuous. It'll be in the papers."

"Coffee's up," Steve said, and then, looking pointedly at Bucky, "We should eat fast, because we ought to get to the—" He waved his hand in the air. "You know, the job," and that was when Bucky's phone rang again.

Bernie

"These things are a curse of the modern age," Bucky declared, and then he pressed answer and held the phone to his ear. "Hi, Bernie," he said, and then, "Oh?" and then, meeting Steve's eyes. "When?" Steve groaned internally and braced for it. "Okay," Bucky said finally. "Hold on," and then he said to Steve, "Bernie wants to come over and have me sign some papers. She wants to file them today but the courthouse is gonna close early because of the holiday weekend."

"Yeah. I know," Steve said irritably, and then, he sighed and said, "Sure, tell her to come over; we've got coffee and bagels."

Bucky waited until Natasha went into their bathroom to wash up, and then said, gently, to Steve, "You know, it doesn't have to be today."

"I know," Steve replied. "Except then it's Christmas and then there's a holiday break that goes into the New Year--" and then the bathroom door was opening again and so Bucky hijacked the sentence, shrugging as Natasha came out, "—yeah, and we'll lose the job for sure. So we'll get there today hell or high water. Bernie promised it won't take long. It's just signatures."

Bernie Rosenthal arrived forty minutes later, breathless and laden with bags. "Sorry, sorry," she said, "but the traffic, Jesus. I wouldn't have driven into Brooklyn at this hour except I want to make sure this all gets filed and dated properly, and half of the part will take off after lunch. Five minutes of your time, I swear, and then I'll let you get on with your day." She pushed their plates out of the way and gestured for Bucky to sit down beside her, then began spreading out documents for him to sign. The signature lines were marked with little green arrow stickers.

Bucky stared down at them for a moment, and a little shudder seemed to go through him. Then he uncapped the pen she handed him and began to sign his name, over and over, with the formal handwriting he'd developed in Mrs. McLaughlin's penmanship class back in 1925.

James Buchanan Barnes, he signed. James Buchanan Barnes, James Buchanan Barnes.

"Great," Bernie said, gathering the papers up once he'd signed at the last green arrow. "We're done: enjoy your holiday, try not to worry about anything too much. Nothing's going to happen on the legal front until the new year at the earliest, and if things explode on the publicity front—well, you have my number; call me and we'll figure something out." She smiled and quickly repacked her briefcase, then shoved her arms into the sleeves of her coat and pulled a scarf around her throat. Then she stopped and said, "Oh, I nearly forgot," and pulled a velvet-sheathed bottle of champagne out of her leather tote bag. "Congratulations, mazel tov, good luck and all that," she said, and leaned up to kiss one of them and down to kiss the other. "All right, I'm going to court - I'll be in touch after," and Bucky stood up as Steve saw her to the door.

When they turned around they saw that Natasha was glaring at them.

"I'm going to fucking kill you," she said.

Bucky had a moment of sick, fluttering defensiveness - and so he was surprised when Steve suddenly came out with a strong offense, all self-righteousness and firm moral justification.

"No, you're not," Steve said, "because this is not a thing, okay?—It is not," he repeated, when Natasha glared and opened her mouth to argue, "—a thing. I am dead serious about this, Natasha; we are not those guys. It's a change of legal status, that's all; we are applying for a change of legal status, which we're entitled to if we want it, and I happen to want it. But we—Bucky and me--no piece of paper could—" and that's when Bucky saw the first real doubt in Natasha's eyes, because Steve was a terrible liar, but he could tell the truth like nobody's business. "What we've been through. Who we are to each other. Nobody could give that to us, and nobody can take it away either. Everybody else is irrelevant here; everybody."

"All right, I get it," Natasha said; she was backing down. "It's not a big thing to you."

"It's not a big thing," Steve agreed.

Bucky looked at him and said, "You should wear a suit though."

"I'll wear a suit; of course, I'll wear a suit," Steve said and rolled his eyes.

Angel

The Clerk's Office was the same as it had been the day they got the license, except the people were different; it was like watching the same play with a different cast. It was even more crowded than they'd feared, because the wedding ceremonies were first come-first served and it was the last Friday before the Christmas holiday and the post-holiday break, when all the offices would be closed. Again, they had to take a number, and Steve was really worried about how high it was until someone told him that if you had a number, they would definitely marry you if you waited.

Finally, someone called their number and they were directed to a door; inside there was a bland little room with a podium and a single painting behind it—which was bad, Steve thought; just paint slapped on to be colorful. There was a man looking down at some papers. "Steven Rogers," the man read out, not waiting for his answer. "James Barnes," the man went on, and only then did he stop and look up at them: "And your witness: where's your witness?"

"Witness?" Steve repeated.

"Yeah, you need a witness," the man said, and then he sighed and waved his hand. "Go and get someone from the waiting room," and so Bucky stepped out and came back in a moment with a pretty girl in a red sari. "Priscilla Singh," she said, when the man at the podium asked her name.

"Now Natasha really is going to kill us," Bucky muttered to Steve, but the man was waving them all closer.

"My name is Angel Ramirez," he said, "and I have the privilege and pleasure of marrying you in the great state of New York. Let's begin, shall we? Steve and James, do you—"

"Bucky," Bucky interrupted. "My name is Bucky."

"Bucky, okay. Steve and Bucky, do you—" and then Ramirez looked down at the paper, and then up at Bucky, and then down at the paper. "You're Bucky Barnes?"

"Uh-huh," Bucky said.

The man then looked at Steve. "So you're—"

"Yeah."

"Wow. Well, that's cool," Angel Ramirez said, and then started again. "Steve and Bucky, have you come here freely and without reservation to give yourselves to each other in marriage?"

"Yeah," Bucky said. "Yes," Steve said.

"Bucky, do you take Steve as a partner for life? Do you promise to keep him, love and comfort him, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, for better or for worse and to be faithful until death do you part?" and Steve could see that Bucky was vastly amused by the question, like he didn't have a track record of doing these things that was miles wide and years long.

"Yes, I do," Bucky said finally, and Angel Ramirez turned the question to Steve.

"I do, I certainly do," Steve replied, thinking to death, yeah, and likely a good while after.

"Great," Angel Ramirez said. "Do you have rings?" and no, they didn't have rings, though as a kind of afterthought Steve fished the chain of his dog tags from around his neck, pulled them off, and slid them over Bucky's head. Bucky rolled his eyes at him like he was maybe a moron, but there was a flush to his cheeks and Steve thought he was secretly kind of pleased.

"All right, well. By the powers vested in me by the State of New York, I now pronounce you truly and lawfully married," Angel said. "You may now kiss, if you'd like," and Steve hadn't anticipated this somehow, and turned to Bucky feeling embarrassed and a little shocked. They'd never really kissed in front of other people; not real strangers like this, only Natasha.

All his feelings were mirrored on Bucky's face. "Don't hit me!" Bucky warned, and Steve burst out laughing. "I wouldn't!" Steve protested, and then he was leaning in to kiss Bucky awkwardly, sweetly, on the mouth. "Yay! Congratulations!" Priscilla Singh said, clapping and then they all had to sign the marriage certificate. They shook Angel Ramirez's hand. The whole thing had taken about four minutes. They went out the back door onto the street.

"Wow, I've just shackled myself to you for all eternity," Bucky said, but it was like there was new light in his face, something shining and glad. Steve felt it, too: there was a tingling running all through him that he hadn't expected, a feeling not so much adrenaline as—joy.

Steve jammed his hands into his pockets and said, shrugging and grinning, "You wanna go get cheesecake or something?"

"Yeah," Bucky said, grinning back at him. "I do. Cheesecake sounds great."

At Bucky's suggestion they went to Jahn's, which still looked like it had when they were kids: semicircular red-leatherette booths, fancy chrome-plated soda fountain and ice cream counter. They ordered coffee and cheesecake and then, impulsively, decided to plump for a giant Kitchen Sink sundae on top of everything, picking at it with long silver spoons.

They'd started on opposite sides of the semicircle, but while eating the ice cream, Steve had slid over, a bit, and then another bit, and then Bucky'd been unable to help himself; they had privacy enough for a little canoodling anyway. He reached over and petted Steve's hair, then slid his hand into it, ruffling it with his fingers so that he could see the gold strands underneath. So soft and familiar to his touch, and time telescoped, connecting them—Steve a pale little kid with hollowed eyes, trying to sell papers; himself with torn pants and bruised knuckles—to who and where they were now. Bucky said, "You should grow this out. We're not fooling anybody anymore," and rubbed Steve's scalp with his thumb, and he could feel Steve go pliable in his hands, could feel Steve's desire for him like a living thing. His mouth went dry. "And you should shave," he added thickly. "I want to see your stupid face."

"Okay, Buck," Steve said softly and—Bucky's phone rang and the moment broke.

"Jesus Christ on a crutch," Bucky growled. "That's it, I'm getting rid of these things for New Year's. I don't care if there's bats on the Brooklyn Bridge, or glowing goo in the Hudson. They can all go to hell."

"Love that Christmas spirit," Steve said, and took another mouthful of ice cream and bananas.

It was Lalo, and Bucky listened to what he wanted, half-distracted by watching Steve eat the ice cream; obscene the way he licked the silver spoon like that. "Hang on," Bucky said finally, and then said to Steve, "They want some help hanging decorations at Holy Innocents later."

"Didn't that happen already?" Steve asked, frowning. "They hung all the boughs weeks ago—"

"Yeah, I don't know, it's something special for midnight mass, he says," and they had another wordless conversation: I don't want to. I really don't want to, either, but... Yeah, all right, and then Steve sighed and said, "Yeah, tell them we'll come. We've got to go home and change, though."

"Right, okay," Bucky said, and told Lalo, then hung up. "Why do these guys always call me?" he grumbled, sliding his phone into his suit pocket. "Nobody ever calls you," and Steve licked whipped cream from the corner of his mouth and replied, "Because you're a reliable neighborhood guy, Buck, just like your dad was," and Bucky, ambushed, had to blink rapidly to clear his eyes, "while I'm just a fatherless troublemaker who'll never come to any good."

"Oh, yeah, that's right; I forgot," Bucky said, and raised his arm for the check.

#

"Geez, it's really almost Christmas," Bucky said, once they were home and changing clothes. "And we haven't done anything - you maybe want to stop and get a tree on our way back?"

Steve, carefully re-hanging his dress pants, tried to stifle a smile. "Oh, I don't know, Buck," he said, "let's just not do Christmas this—"

"Oh shut up, just shut up; Christ, shut up."

#

It didn't take long before they were dressed and ready. "Come on, let's go," Bucky said to Steve. "The sooner we get there, the sooner we'll get back and—" he was surprised when Steve knocked him back against the door and kissed him, cupping his face and practically inhaling him.

"I always wanted you, you know," Steve whispered against his mouth; they were forehead to forehead and nose to nose. "Call me superficial, but you were so handsome. You could have had anybody and I knew it. You think this was all your idea but it wasn't." Steve's smile was just a little dangerous. "So don't cross me, Barnes," he warned, "because I always get what I want in the end."

"You're my lucky penny," Bucky said, swallowing. "You're all the good luck I ever had in my life."

Steve kissed him again, muttering, "That's an IOU," but the owing was all the other way around.

#

It was dark by the time they got to Holy Innocents, which was all lit up and draped with boughs. The inside was even fancier, with holly and ribbons and candles. "Jesus," Steve said, looking around the empty church, "how much more decorated do they want it to be?" and Bucky shrugged and jerked his head toward the propped-open door that led toward the rectory.

They could hear noises from inside the hall where they held the AA meetings and the Girl Scout jamborees and all that, and Steve had just stepped through the door when someone yelled, "Yo, Rogers—catch!" and he raised his hand just in time to catch, what, a flying football shaped in tin-foil; a hero sandwich, he recognized a second later. It took him another second to realize that the thrower of the sandwich was Clint Barton, and another second to wonder what the hell Clint was doing there. He blinked and looked around the room, which was surprisingly crowded: there was Dmitri and Marco and Yuri and Lalo, but also Gina and the kids, and what was Dmitri's wife's name, Susan? There was a long table piled up with sandwiches, and an enormous punchbowl, and bottles of soda, and a stack of what looked like eight pizzas, and wait, there was Father Miera talking to—

"Oh my God," Bucky muttered, somewhere behind him, "we're in trouble," and yeah, Steve could see that, because Father Anthony Miera, the pastor of Holy Innocents, was talking to Anthony Edward Stark, who was the least innocent person Steve had ever met.

"Tony?" Steve said, and Tony, who was already a little drunk, turned to him and said, "Steve, hi. I want to tell you that I really appreciate this paneling." He waved a hand at the blond-wood paneling on the walls of the church hall. "I think it's a daring move; retro before retro," and then Steve felt a hand on his shoulder and turned and saw Pepper Potts standing there, smiling. "Congratulations," she said, and kissed Steve on the cheek before disappearing into the crowd.

Steve turned again and saw Sam Wilson eating a turkey sandwich and chewing with a look on his face that meant, "I hear you but I totally disagree with what you're saying," and as Steve went closer he saw that Dmitri was talking to him, as Dmitri so often did, about the merits of hockey vs. basketball. Sam grinned as he saw Steve coming, and tapped Dmitri's chest, and then they were both pounding Steve on the shoulders.

"So this is pretty great," Sam said, waving his sandwich around at the room. "Lalo told me you call this a football wedding, though all this idiot wants to talk about is hockey," and Dmitri glared at him and said, "If you ever saw Sergei Federov skate, you would cry from joy. You would weep."

"A football wedding's not about football," Steve said, "it's about sandwiches," and he mimed throwing the sandwich Clint had tossed at him. "It's what people did, back in the day."

"Oh, I get it," Sam said. "They're good," and then he picked up a clear plastic tumbler and said, shaking it, "And you gotta have some of this punch, man. Gina made the punch, but then Stark added I-don't-even-know-what to it, and it's dangerous," and Steve smiled and made his way over to the table.

He found Bucky glaring at Natasha, who was sitting in Clint's lap, a plastic tumbler clutched in her hand. "Up yours, Barnes," she was saying, "this isn't about you, or even about your—husband," she said, and then laughed, pointing, because Bucky's face was reddening but he was smirking a little too. "This is more of a block party, where you are just the occasion, the goddamned pretext - you and your change of legal status. Honestly," she said, and slugged back the rest of her punch in one gulp, "you're pretty irrelevant to the situation," and then she turned to Steve and said, "Did you know that Father Miera's brother is in charge of the 70^th precinct? I just learned that today. The more you know," she said, and held out her glass for a refill.

#