Chapter Text
Chapter 1: The Return
The pie crust is too flaky.
I used lard like the recipe said—lard like Steve’s ma would have used, the kind that smells faintly of Sunday kitchens and forgiveness—and it’s crumbling under my thumbs when I try to crimp the edges. The apples are sliced too thin; cinnamon bleeds out the sides before the top even browns. I should have used butter. Butter holds things together. I don’t know why I thought lard would be better. Maybe because Steve smiled that soft, faraway smile when he talked about his mother’s pies, and I wanted to give him that smile back. Wanted to be the one who could hand it to him on a plate still warm from the oven.
He hasn’t looked at it yet.
He’s looking at Bucky.
Bucky is sitting at the long table in the common room, metal arm resting on the wood like it might dent the surface if he presses too hard. Steve’s hand is on his shoulder—steady, familiar, the same grip he used to use on me when the nightmares came. Now it’s there for Bucky, thumb moving in small, unconscious circles over the seam where flesh meets alloy. They’re talking low, heads bent together, the way people do when the rest of the room doesn’t exist. Steve laughs—quiet, surprised, the laugh he saves for things that matter—and Bucky’s mouth twitches, not quite a smile but close enough that Steve’s whole face lights up.
I set the pie on the counter. The heat from the dish seeps through the oven mitts and burns my palms. I don’t move my hands.
My skin itches.
Pre-heat. Not full yet, just the warning: a low, restless heat behind my navel, the faint wet slide between my thighs when I shift my weight. Biology is announcing itself again, loud and inconvenient. I press my legs together under the apron. Smile harder. The team is milling around—Natasha sipping something clear and lethal, Clint stealing bites of hors d’oeuvres, Thor booming about mead, Bruce hovering near the windows like he’s calculating escape velocity. They’re happy. Bucky’s home. The ghost is back in the body. Everyone’s pretending the last seventy years didn’t happen the way they did.
I walk over with the pie. “Hey, fellas. Fresh from 1940s Brooklyn, courtesy of one very sweaty Omega and a questionable amount of lard.”
Steve looks up. Finally. His eyes soften the way they always do when he sees me, but there’s a delay tonight—like he has to remember to pull the expression from wherever it went when he was looking at Bucky. “Tony,” he says, warm. “You didn’t have to.”
“I know.” I set the dish down between them. “But I did. Eat it before it gets cold and sad.”
Bucky’s gaze lifts slowly. Blue eyes, pale and unreadable, tracking from the pie to my face. His nostrils flare—just once, subtle—and something in his expression tightens. Not gratitude. Not hunger. Something colder. Like he’s cataloguing the way I smell: Steve’s cedar-and-morning-coffee scent layered over my skin, my own pre-heat sweetness bleeding through the edges. He doesn’t speak. Just looks.
Steve cuts the first slice. The crust shatters. Apples spill. He laughs again—that same surprised sound—and offers the plate to Bucky. “You gotta try this. Tony’s a menace in the kitchen when he wants to be.”
Bucky takes it. Metal fingers close around the fork. He doesn’t eat. Just holds it, staring at the mess of pastry and fruit like it personally offended him.
I turn away before the silence stretches too thin. Head to the workshop under the guise of checking Bucky’s arm diagnostics. The upgrades took forty hours: vibration nodes along the palm and fingers so he can feel texture again, temperature modulation to stop the metal from running cold, neural feedback loops fine-tuned to his remaining nerves. I told myself it was practical. Kind, even. A way to say welcome home without saying the words.
Now I’m sitting on the bench, legs dangling, staring at the readouts on the holoscreen. Everything’s green. Perfect integration. I should feel proud. Instead my chest feels tight, like someone tightened the arc reactor housing by half a turn.
Footsteps behind me.
I don’t turn. I know the cadence—deliberate, heavy, metal plating clicking faintly against tile.
Bucky stops just inside the doorway. Doesn’t speak at first. Just breathes. I can feel the shift in air pressure when he moves closer.
“You did good work,” he says finally. Voice low, rough. “On the arm.”
“Thanks.” I keep my eyes on the screen. “Figured you’d want to feel things again. Coffee cups. Gun grips. Whatever.”
He doesn’t answer right away. When he does, it’s quieter. “Steve talks about you a lot.”
Something cold slides down my spine. “Yeah. He’s a sap like that.”
Another pause. I can hear him inhale—slow, deliberate. Smelling me. Smelling Steve on me.
“You smell like him,” Bucky says. Flat. Not a question.
I force a laugh. It comes out thin. “Perks of dating a super-soldier. Pheromone imprinting is basically permanent.”
He steps closer. Close enough that I feel the heat off his body even though the arm stays cold. “He’s happy you’re here.”
I swallow. “Good. That’s… good.”
Bucky’s voice drops lower. “He was happy before you, too.”
The words land like a slap I didn’t see coming. I turn then—slowly—because turning fast would show fear.
His eyes are locked on my throat. On the faint bruise Steve left there two nights ago when he was scenting me, marking me the way Alphas do when they’re feeling possessive. Bucky’s pupils are blown. Not lust. Not affection. Something hungrier and emptier.
I open my mouth to say something—anything—but the common room door opens down the hall. Steve’s voice carries, calling Bucky back for another story, another laugh.
Bucky doesn’t move right away. Just stares. Then he turns, walks out without another word.
I stay on the bench until my legs stop shaking.
Later, when the party winds down, Steve finds me in the kitchen scraping cold pie into the trash. He wraps his arms around me from behind, chin on my shoulder, breathes me in like I’m still something precious.
“You okay?” he murmurs.
I nod. Smile. “Yeah. Just tired.”
He kisses the side of my neck. “Come to bed.”
I go.
In the hallway, Bucky watches us leave. Steve’s arm around my waist. My head on Steve’s shoulder.
Bucky’s fists clench at his sides.
He doesn’t growl out loud.
But I hear it anyway.
Inside my own chest.
Mine first.