My Summary:
A week after their battle on the helicarrier, the Winter Soldier shows up at Steve's door. He has a little white cat with him. Both he and the cat are hungry and in rough shape. Slowly Bucky learns to let Steve help them. A lovely and tender little recovery fic.
Excerpt:
When Steve opens the door, Bucky is standing on the other side, a few feet closer than he’d been the night before, and the cat is sitting back upon his shoulder.
“Hi, Bucky,” Steve says, smiling like this is a normal thing to be happening to them.
Bucky ducks his head, looking up at Steve from beneath the curtain of his hair. It’s dark in the hallway since it’s well past midnight, and Steve can’t really see his face very well, but he can tell that Bucky is scowling—and that is so much better than terror or blank, glazed-over nothingness that Steve’s own smile grows if not in size than in genuineness.
“I brought you and your cat—”
“Высокогорный.”
Steve doesn’t miss a beat. “I don’t speak Russian, Buck.”
Bucky’s eyes drift closed as the cat nuzzles at his dirt-stained cheek with the tip of its velvety nose, and the sight is so adorable that Steve longs to draw it. They make a surprising, heart-wrenching pair, igniting something warm deep in the middle of Steve’s bones.
“Alpine,” Bucky rasps without opening his eyes, raising his flesh hand to stroke at the soft fur between the cat’s small ears. “It means Alpine. Her name.”
Steve’s face is going to split in half he’s smiling so widely. He named her. Bucky named this small animal, this thing he obviously cares for so much, and it is making Steve wholly, incandescently happy.
“Ok,” Steve says easily, leaning one shoulder against his door frame and watching Alpine shove her head against Bucky’s unsteady fingers. “I brought you and Alpine some things I thought you could use.”
Slowly, Bucky opens his eyes, dark eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks for a moment before his storm-gray gaze meets Steve’s. He seems a little more relaxed than he had yesterday, more calm with Alpine riding on his shoulders. With a shock of pain, Steve realizes that this cat is probably the only form of contact Bucky has had in seventy years that hasn’t been one of violence. No wonder he seems so much better when he’s touching her.
