#joy and whimsey is alive again

[possuminnit]

rubs against my mutuals legs like a lil kitty. I LOVE U

[irndad]

the moon song- b.b.

a/n: IT’S BEEN SO LONG SINCE I POSTED I AM SO SORRY!!! real life has swallowed me whole, i’ve been out of town and college and bla bla bla. this is a really sweet one, a bit sad but good!

summary: for my @sgtjbuccky​ end of year challenge. my prompt was “tell me not to kiss you.” “mean it.” “I can’t.” this fic is about the history of a song through their lives together, and their marriage. 

wc: 3k (IT’S A LONG ONE)

Bucky Barnes falls in love on a night when the sky is peppered with diamonds, on the roof of a tower he’s just gotten used to living in, with a woman he hasn’t said a damn word to.

This woman, is laughing with someone he does know, smiling with his friends Natasha Romanoff and Tony Stark, a champagne glass between nimble fingers, a laugh on her face, joy written across her features as though she is a canvas and happiness was the only thing ever meant to cross it. He thinks he might’ve seen her before, a photo around the tower somewhere.

And she’s just lovely, wearing a blue dress that falls to her ankles, the color of the sky above them, with glitter all over it just the same, and then there’s her smile, the kind of smile you would give anything to be in the presence of.

In the end, it’s Steve who notices him staring, and it’s almost like they’re back where they used to be, two kids in Brooklyn, goading each other into the affection of a dame. Here they are, in 2018, under stars in a world neither of them quite understand, and Bucky is still being helped by Steve to talk to a girl. Some things are certain. And so Steve walks him over, cooly explains to her who Bucky is, and she nods as if she already knows but is listening anyway, doe eyes sparkling like jewels and flitting over to meet his gaze every now and then.

Then, she speaks her name, and offers her hand as though he is meant to kiss it. It might be a joke, based on the look of whimsey in her eye, the crookedness of her clever grin, and he wants to kiss that too. He presses his lips to her knuckles though, and she preens.

He commits her name to memory.

They talk, and her voice is like a flute, flowing and sweet just like her name, and he thinks of how amazing it would have been if he’d met her in the 40’s, if he’d met her in the age of smoky dance bars, if he’d have the confidence to pull her in to his chest, and dance to the crooning voice the band is playing.

But she seems to have what he lacks, and pulls him to the dance floor, and under a sky of stars Bucky Barnes dancing with a beautiful woman for the first time in decades, with the sound of a singer pulling heaven into reality.

I'm lying on the moon

My dear, I'll be there soon

___________________________________________________

He sees her all the time after that rooftop gala.

Of course, he could never forget the way she looked the night they met, all covered in grace and elegance, holding a champagne glass with pretty fingers and painted nails, bright and golden under starlight party lights. It was a beautiful setting, something out of a storybook, and he wondered if the magic of that was what endeared him to her, that first night.

But it wasn’t, and that reveals itself sooner than later, when he finds out more about her, and finds himself utterly fascinated with every aspect of doing so.

She is a writer, in the past for a newspaper (how she met Stark, an interview right after he closed weapons manufacturing) and now she write books, quietly publishing novels under a pen name no one knows.

More than the facts of her, Bucky finds himself falling in love with just about everything about her.

“Macaroons are so weird,” she says to him, one day sitting across from him, in a lovely light blue dress and a lovelier smile, pleasant atmosphere surrounding him. He hasn’t told her how he felt about her, wonders if it reads on his face every time he’s with her. She is so entrancing, excited by nothing and full of joy at the slightest mention of something he loves. He can’t help it.

“Have you noticed,” he says, looking up at her, brushing a crumb off of the corner of her lip, seeing the sweet expression of being flustered cross her face, “Every time we come here, you comment on the food, never just eat it.”

“I’m full of opinions, Barnes. You have to get used to it.” And she winks, crosses her hands to hold his own, set on the table.

She runs her hands across the thumb of the metal hand, and that’s what does him in, really.

She smiles at him, like he’s just a normal man, not an old soul or a broken man, just a man across a table from a girl who is helplessly endeared with him.

And he kisses her.

It’s his first kiss he can really remember from anything, first one since he’s had the choice to kiss again, and so it’s probably meant to be bad, but she’s smiling, holding on to his collar, when did she do that? And when she pulls away, there’s that smile again, the one that made a super soldier's heart stutter back on that rooftop.

“What?” he hears himself ask. He’s not sure if he made the choice to, too high on everything that comes with someone like her giving him her affection.

“It’s our song, Bucky.”

And she’s right, the song that played in that gala is being played on the radio, soft and crooning.

The right thing to do, when such a thing occurs is to of course, kiss her again. Which he does.

Your shadow follows me all day

Making sure that I'm

Okay and we're a million miles away

___________________________________________________

Years later, they have a spring wedding.

It’s full of colors, held out in the compound with breath of spring coating the area, last night’s rain giving birth to a clear blue sky and clouds that are overhead as his bride to be walks down the aisle. Steve is at his side, and such things seem to always be the case, as her father walks her down the aisle.

And she’s a vision in ivory, under a veil and looking up at him when she reaches, and there are a million things he wants to say. She’s just gorgeous, and he can never be sure if it’s the adoration he holds or her or if she’s’ really looks like something plucked out of a Louvre painting.

“Hi,” she whispers, as the officiator speaks. Her lips are a gorgeous scarlet, and he tries to meet her eyes, instead of staring at her cupid’s bow.

“Hey there,” he whispers back, smiling that cocky smirk she loves, playful because they both know nerves are eating them alive.

Before he knows it, she says the two words he needs to hear, and the words curl around the air like a blessing.

“I do,” he says when the time comes, and kisses her, like no one was watching. It hardly mattered that anyone did, holding her face in his hands and she is smiling, and it is the kind of moment he is going to remember for the rest of his life.

At the reception, they dance to the same song they danced to when they met.

Years have produced familiarity, and the beautiful stranger who had given a chance to a man with a jaded history and the nervous man, have been replaced with a woman he’s in love with, a partner he knows like lines on his palm, her mind a constellation he spends forever trying learn every detail of.

Her head is against his chest, and it strikes him that this is it, the beginning of his happy ending. If he plays his cards right, this is his forever.

They sway, and she kisses the corner of his mouth, and he is blessed.

Time's we're swallowed up

In space we're here a million miles away

___________________________________________________

Bucky is a much better father than he ever expected himself to be.

They had Winnie after being married for 2 years, a little girl with his wife’s eyes and his tenacity, bright and loud and adorable, the apple of his eye. He is so incredibly blessed, given the kind of life with a loving wife and a child that looked at his metal arm like a toy, like the thing that feeds her and plays with her and keeps her safe. And his wife, who regards him with such warmth after time has hardly spared them from hardship.

At this moment, Bucky is watching JARVIS’ cameras in the nursery. His wife has been shushing her for a while, a restless child who wasn’t hungry or thirsty but missed her father, and Bucky’s heart ached. Winnie was a great kid, adorable and sweet and she was going to be a heart stealer, he just knew it. She looked just like her mom. There was about nothing in the world Bucky wouldn’t do for his little girl, no obstacle he wouldn’t cross to see his Winnie smiling again.

But he is on a quinjet, far from being able to hold her and to have her sleep. Instead, he is off playing the hero, when his girls need him. And what kind of father is that?

Panic builds in his chest as he hears her small cries build, and whoever thought the Winter soldier could handle being a father? This was never meant to be his life, the man who could’ve been a husband and a father went down in a fall, and tricking himself into thinking he could handle it is hardly enough.

“Did you know,” he hears his wife say, and isn’t that just like her, pulling him out of his panic when she doesn’t even know he’s looking, “Your daddy loves you so much, did you know that?”

He smiles. She has too much faith in him, too much belief in the goodness of his heart. She’s right, though. The two women on his screen are his entire world.

“Sometimes bad people try to hurt the world,” and WInnie has no idea what she’s saying, not old enough to understand but the words seeming to calm her down a little, “And so Daddy has to go fight people who would want to hurt us.”

Winnie’s not asleep, but just about, her eyes fluttering a bit and he wants nothing more than to be there, and she begins singing. It’s the same song they always loved, the song that played when they met, what feels like a million years ago, the song that they first kissed to, the song they danced to at their wedding. Now, she’s singing it to their child.

His heart could burst.

I'm lying on the moon

My dear, I'll be there soon

Bucky arrives in the morning, and kisses his wife and his daughter’s head, and he promises that no matter where he goes, he will be home soon.

___________________________________________________

Life is beautiful, for Bucky Barnes.

Winnie grows up too fast, crawls and walks and talks so fast it is unbelievable, and the song follows them through their life. His wife is beautiful and wears age like fine jewelry, carries everything life throws at them in stride, and sings the song to their daughter, as she washes dishes or kisses him goodbye, or writes her books.

He goes to a SHIELD doctor when his good elbow starts hurting

“The serum is breaking down,” the doctor says, and the floor falls out from under him.

“Excuse me?” he hears himself say.

“While this does lessen your lifespan,” and oh god, he is going to leave his family, going to lose his life, how could he expect this to last- “You still will have excellent health for the next 70 or so years.”

70 years. Bucky has 70 more years to live, and his wife likely has 60 or so, and for a second, he realizes his life is going to be just fine.

He decides not to tell his wife about it, not yet, anyway. When he comes home to their apartment, Winnie runs to his leg and she lifts up her glasses, smiling up at him, and gives him a look.

“What?” he says, pulling her into his arms. Her smile is full of warmth, and he adores her. All he does is love her, it seems. It takes up most of his heart.

“Tell me not to kiss you,” and she’s teasing, too close to him, no bite in her words and now that’s all he wants to do.

“Don’t kiss me.”

“Mean it.”

“I can’t.”

And they’ve been married ages, know each other inside out, he knows the lines on her palms like an old book, but they still understand each other. He worried often what he would do when she passed, when everyone he loved did, the serum making him live longer than anyone he loves.

He just kisses her, and laughs when Winnie yells at them.

___________________________________________________

In their old age, after Winnie is a beautiful young woman and off on her own adventures, after their apartment is all their own but never quiet, full of life and love. They are never lonely, and Bucky loves her as much as he did the day they got married. He has grey hair, wrinkles by his eyes, and she loves these all the same.

“You know,” she had said, the night he first got a grey hair, sipping tea out of a chipped blue mug, “I thought I’d be married to a man with eternal youth. This is much better.”

And so life continues as normal, good and sweet, hot tea and adventures in their own right time spent in her company.

Every night, when they get ready for bed, when she puts on the cream that insists it will reduce the symbols of age (he insists she doesn’t need it, every night kissing her shoulder and telling her she is beautiful) and she hums that song, the same one that no one really remembers anymore.

But with you my dear

I'm safe and we're a million miles away

She sings softly, like she doesn’t mean to, and he kisses her like they’re still punch drunk kids on a rooftop.

___________________________________________________

She starts forgetting things.

It’s here and there, little things. Bucky gets used to it quick, his reflexes are still great for a man that looks 70, and he covers her slack. When she forgets the recipe to that italian dish they always have on Sundays, he makes it instead. When she forgets the punchline, he smiles anyway. He wants her to be okay, and she seems okay. She does.

But then she can’t remember the song.

“You don’t know it?”

“I’m sorry,” she says, and her voice is a whisper. She’s scared, and honestly, he is too.

The doctor’s office is cold and unwelcoming. Maybe it just feels that way because the words alzheimers settles over the room, and he realizes what it means.

She’s going to lose her memory, and her mind, if she doesn’t die first.

Here’s the thing. Bucky knew he was going to outlive her, and he knew they had an incredible life together, that she’s in 70’s, that they’ve had a beautiful life.

Goodbye is coming, and he should be ready for it.

But he’s not. He never will be.

So when the silence settles over them on the drive home, and when she enters through the door, Bucky hums the song, and holds her hand and makes her dance with him to a record player. Bucky is a relic of a past time who found a place with her. If she is forgetting time now, he will fill in the gaps.

It’s different to hear him singing it, his deeper voice, and she smiles, so it’s okay. Maybe the things are different, but she is still with him.

___________________________________________________

In the end, it works out. She forgets more than she remembers, and he has to hold her sometimes when her joints start aching, and more often than not, even if she doesn’t know the time, she knows him. That is enough. Any piece of her is better than nothing, and he loves her.

One day, she lifts herself up to go walk by him, and he smiles up at her. She has that glint in her eye, both the lucidity of knowing exactly where she is, and knowing her husband is right there with her. She also has that mischief in her eyes, and he loves her so much.

“Tell me not to kiss you,” she says, and he remembers this, remembers this like the song they dance together, like their first kiss, like every bit of joy that’s laced his life from the minute she stepped into it.

“Don’t kiss me.” He replies, in kind. She is smiling, and he could cry. That smile is rare, and he’d cross oceans to see it.

“Mean it.”

“I can’t.”

And she kisses him, smiling and warm, and he recognizes that with her burst of energy, she got the speaker to play an old recording of her singing.

Bucky Barnes holds his wife while she knows who he is, while the ghost of her voice from a time she always did plays, and he can’t fathom how life could be any more perfect.

We’re lying on the moon

It’s a perfect afternoon

Your shadow follows me all day

Making sure that I'm

Okay and we’re a million miles away

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