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optimisticflicker · 2 months ago

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Soon You'll Get Better - Part 1: "Soup"

From the Clegan Astronaut AU

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Fic Summary: Scenes from Bucky's healing process, taking place between Artemis 3 splashdown and the epilogue of To the Moon and Back, filling in pieces of Gale and John’s lives as they navigate the aftermath of what happened at Shackleton. Mostly for all your clegan astronaut hurt/comfort needs.

Author's Note: I'm alive! I'm in the midst of finals and conferences and what have you but I'm alive. Love to you all if you're sticking with me and reading about our space boys ❤️

---

It’s quiet in Nassau Bay, a sleepy town on the water tucking in with the nightfall. Gale wouldn’t mind falling asleep, too. Doesn’t matter how early it is. He wouldn’t mind starting this day over again, or simply moving on. One day at a time, he keeps telling himself. That’s what the nurse said before they left Bucky’s hospital room, released into the world to try to make sense of it again. They just need to take it all one day at a time.

I will love you. In any way that you are.

There’s a rap at the front door, the sound breezing through Gale’s mind as he stares out at the stars. His fingers keep tapping on the countertop beside the glass of water he’s forcing himself to drink instead of yet another cup of coffee. Dr. Huston told him once that drinking so much caffeine would come back to bite him one day. He thinks he may have given the man some hint of a wry smile, a raised eyebrow, a silent fuck off or so what.

The glass of water is nearly full.

He knows he should get up and answer the door, but he can’t tear his eyes away from the stars outside, can’t quite make his legs move. It doesn’t matter, though. The door opens without Gale even having to answer it. He hears a key turn in the lock, and Pepper barks once, her paws clacking on the hardwood as she runs to the entryway. There’s really only three people it could be, if they have a key, and Gale realizes he’s already forgotten the call from this morning.

“Egan.” Chick’s voice cuts through the house, and Gale can’t help but feel a shaky moment of relief. The young, wary child in him is convinced that Chick will make everything better somehow. That he’ll keep Gale and John safe. That he’ll somehow know how to handle this topsy-turvy reality that Gale feels so incapable of handling. Chick will make this better.

Gale mentally kicks himself for thinking like that.

There’s a beat of silence, no reply from Bucky, followed by Chick’s curt, assertive “okay.” And then he keeps right on walking through the house. As Gale tracks the sound of footsteps coming closer, he closes his eyes and sighs, imagining what kind of unamused glare his husband greeted their boss with. Or was it just a blank, non-comprehending stare? Gale thinks that would be worse. One, at least, is Bucky. The other, Gale doesn’t know yet.

I will hold you up. From the dawn of time to the end of time.

Chick finds Gale in the kitchen, eyes closed as he sits at the island, his fingers frozen mid-tap on the countertop. He’s all alone in the quiet. Not even the dog comes to sit with him, having decided her job is to watch over Bucky at all times. That’s okay. If Bucky won’t let Gale hover over him, at least he can count on Pepper.

“What’s with Little Miss Sunshine in there?” Chick huffs as he sets a grocery bag down on the island.

Gale watches the colorful screensaver bubbles bounce around his blank laptop screen, feeling a little too much like the one that gets stuck in the corner, stuttering back and forth against the too-close edges. His eyes hurt from the blue light. His head hurts from… life.

“Buck.” Chick rolls his eyes and gently closes Gale’s laptop, pushing the glass of water closer to him. He taps it on the side. “Gale.”

Gale blinks and glances at him before obediently picking up the glass and taking a sip of water. It cools his throat, and he vaguely wonders how long it’s been since he actually drank any of it despite it sitting right in front of his face. “Sorry,” he mutters before taking another greedy sip. “He’s in a bad mood today.”

“I noticed.”

“He wanted to be alone.” Gale gestures vaguely to his little workspace in the kitchen, papers strewn about, an empty and stained coffee mug, manila folders labeled with NASA missions and protocols. He very well could have moved to their home office – the same one he sat in when he video chatted Bucky during quarantine for Artemis III, before everything went to shit. It would’ve been more comfortable, after all. It’s where he would usually work from home, after all.

This was… closer.

It’s not like he hasn’t stepped foot in that room since Benny woke him in the middle of the night to flip his world on its axis. He had to go in there to get Bucky’s medical records once. To find a copy of their marriage license. To stare blankly at the medals and awards lining the wall.

To work though? No. Perhaps not.

In any case, office or no office, Gale hadn’t done too badly today. He finished some write-ups, looked over a statement that Marge wanted him to make about Artemis IV, virtually joined a meeting with his crew. No, he hadn’t done bad at all. After he slept away the remnants of the morning cuddled against Bucky, they tried some food and had some success with dry cereal and juice. Bucky got his next dose of pain meds. They talked, Gale thrilled with the way words seemed to come easily to his husband, at least for a little while. They turned on the TV and watched sitcoms until it started to give Bucky a headache, and then Gale was free to work the rest of the day because his husband did little other than try to sleep.

Gale tried not to take it personally a few hours ago when he asked Bucky if he wanted to sit outside with him for a while, get some fresh air, maybe go for a quick stroll in the wheelchair before sunset. He tried not to feel his heart stutter when Bucky frowned, avoiding eye contact, and said he wanted to be alone. He didn’t say it with malice. He wasn’t looking for a fight. But the encouragement of the early afternoon had waned and left emptiness in its wake. When Gale asked if Bucky was alright, he just firmly repeated he wanted to be alone, and that was that. He didn’t say another word, and so Gale had no choice but to collect himself and leave the room. Only, by the time he got himself set up in the kitchen, he found that he had no motivation or interest in doing much of anything.

He keeps thinking about the way Bucky yelled at him to leave him alone this morning, to get out and stop worrying so damn much.

Brain fog is cruel. But sometimes the brain fog lifting can be cruel, too.

I will love you.

Gale feels his heart tugged in two directions with John being home. During Artemis III, he legitimately thought he’d come out the other side a widower. He prepared himself, even when he couldn’t bear to think about it, when he refused to accept it. He would’ve given absolutely anything in this life to keep Bucky from slipping from it. He still would. It hits him like a gut punch every day how close he came to being half of a whole, never to be complete again.

And now Bucky is home, and Gale owes whatever gods may be his life, his soul, his service. He’d gladly give it. Yet he still finds himself floundering, worried, angry, sad, exhausted. John is here, but sometimes it seems like he doesn’t want to be.

It’s normal, the doctor says, for Bucky to be different, to be angry, to be sad. That’s always what she says. It’s normal.

That’s fine. If that’s what normal has to be, Gale will take it. He’ll take whatever he can have. That’s what he promised to himself when he was just wishing on a star that the universe would bring his husband home. Now he just wishes he could hear what Bucky is thinking, what he needs. He wishes Bucky wouldn’t push him away.

Chick starts pulling groceries out of the bag, and he studies the man in front of him. It’s all too easy tonight to see right through Gale’s normally stoic exterior to the young, scared kid trapped inside. Bucky wanted to be alone. Of course, Gale would respect that. Chick doesn’t say what’s painfully obvious: Gale doesn’t want to be alone at all.

“It’s okay for him to need some space,” Chick says gently. “He still fought like hell to come home to you.”

“I know,” Gale mutters.

Chick sets a bag of carrots on the counter next to a loaf of bread and a container of chicken broth. “He’s tired, Gale.” Celery. Onion. “He’s in pain. He’s embarrassed.” Chicken. Cheese. “He’s not used to needing people.”

“He’s always been okay needing me.”

If anyone else asks, Chick’s heart is solid steel. Reliable, sturdy, strong. It doesn’t melt, it doesn’t sink, it doesn’t so much as flutter. But he’s always had a soft spot for these two boys. His boys, as far as he’s concerned. He knows too well what it’s like coming up in the military, from a young age being taught to shove everything down and move forward. Always forward. He resents that Gale had to learn that younger than most, and as much as he respects all of his astronauts at NASA as strong and capable men and women – many of them soldiers who learned to keep their worries so close that they couldn’t see them anymore – he knows deep down there’s still a scared kid who didn’t get to grow up.

Gale Cleven is quite likely the most capable man Chick knows. But his heart still drops just a bit at the vulnerable sound of Gale’s voice. His eye catches the way Gale is mindlessly, nervously twisting his wedding ring around his finger. If Chick could turn back time somehow, give Gale the same happiness he felt on his wedding night, he would. He would do it in a heartbeat.

“He still needs you,” Chick insists instead. “He just needs to feel independent, too. He’s always been that way.”

“Mmm.” Gale glances up at Chick with tired, nervous blue eyes. Major Buck Cleven should know something about not wanting to need anyone, the way he’s been building up walls his entire life.

Once all of the ingredients for chicken noodle soup are laid out on the countertop, Chick pulls a tupperware container out of the bag. It’s filled with chocolate chip cookies and has a sticky note on top with “For Buck” scrawled in too-pretty purple pen. “From the missus.” Chick sets the container in front of Gale, who allows a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it smile before popping open the container. The smile returns when he takes a bite.

Mrs. Harding’s baking always tastes a little something like home.

Chick chuckles and pulls a case of beer out of the last grocery bag. “From me,” he quips, setting two bottles on the counter beside the tupperware container.

He’s surprised when Gale doesn’t deny the alcohol, instead standing up from his stool with half a cookie still in hand and going to rummage through a drawer beside the stove, searching for a can opener. Chick sets the remaining bottles in the fridge. He knows better than to expect that Gale will drink another after tonight, and Bucky is sober for the time being – doctor’s orders – but they’ll just be here until Chick comes by again. Or until Curt finds them.

When he closes the refrigerator door, his eyes land on a scribbled drawing, stuck to the stainless steel with a NASA magnet. In colorful crayon, an earnest hand had drawn an American astronaut on the moon, stars in the sky. In red are the words “Feel Better Jon” with a backwards J and a heart at the end. No doubt from the girl across the street, the one Gale and John both adore so much.

“Maggie gave me that,” Gale says quietly. “The day… uh, the day John got hurt.”

Got hurt. Nearly died. Tore Gale’s heart out of his chest. Put more fear into Chick’s soul than he ever thought possible. But sure, got hurt is just fine . There’s so much space left beneath those words, so much pain that Chick didn’t even bear witness to. He wonders if a sweet little girl giving him that drawing, so much love all over it, would have bolstered Gale or shattered him.

Chick finds himself unable to drag his eyes away from it, the way half of it is soft and crumpled as if someone was clutching to it for dear life. Shattered.

He suddenly doesn’t know if he’s stuck staring at the artwork for what it is, or because he suddenly can’t bear to look at Gale, and that damn steel heart of his creaks a little looser. He takes a deep, quiet breath, runs a finger over the clumsy words written in crayon.

“Chick?”

His mind tries to make sense of these moments, what happened then and what’s happening now, and he knows he can rationalize it all damn day: he was doing his job. He had to do his job. He had to keep the ship afloat. He had to keep the crew alive, on the ground and in the sky. He firmly believed that was the best way to support everyone that depended on him.

But he knows deep down that he should’ve been here.

He could’ve been here.

His boy needed him, and he wasn’t here. Not enough.

“Neil?”

He clenches his jaw and finally rips his gaze away from the drawing, looking down at the floor, and then he takes another breath.

He’s here now. And Gale still needs him.

“Sorry,” he mutters. He looks up, right into Gale’s eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Gale is standing there, can opener in hand, and all he does is nod as he hands it over. One at a time, Chick pops the beers open, and he hands one to Gale. The bottles clink together, and they both take a sip.

—

The sense of calm that followed Chick into the kitchen doesn’t last. He has the chicken well underway, cooking in a pan as he seasons the broth in the pot on the other burner. He has David Bowie playing through the kitchen to fill the silence, and he’s trying very hard to ignore the way Gale won’t stop fidgeting or pacing.

He’d smacked Gale’s hand away when he tried to help cook, telling him to sit down and take a break for once in his life, hoping he could communicate what he really meant: I’m here, you don’t have to worry about anything, I’ll take care of it.

So Gale had returned to his stool at the island and opened his laptop to stare at more Artemis reports. He sat there for a while, trying to force himself to focus but inevitably unable to keep his attention from drifting as he tapped his fingers, kept switching positions, nearly closed his laptop and then decided against it several times.

Finally he stood up, closed the laptop for good, and went to lean against the counter, still holding a half-empty bottle of beer. He wasted mindless energy straightening up appliances that didn’t need straightening, checking the fridge to make sure there was enough of all of Bucky’s favorites, adding more water to Pepper’s bowl even though it was already almost full.

Now he’s back to leaning against the counter, mindlessly spinning the beer in place where it sits on the marble countertop so it makes a low scraping noise, his eyes locked on the movement in a too-focused, spooked sort of way.

“Cleven.” Chick barks, abruptly setting the wooden spoon down beside the stove and glaring at Gale with such intensity that it makes him go still, standing at attention like he’s back at basic. Chick rolls his eyes and watches Gale realize the habit he slipped into, tugging awkwardly at the hem of his sweater to keep himself from just switching to parade rest. Chick takes pity on him and softens his gaze. “If I let you help, will you quit flutterin’ around like a butterfly with a broken wing?”

Gale nods quietly, and Chick motions vaguely to the cutting board he’d laid on the counter. “Chop some damn carrots then.”

Gale selects some carrots from the bag beside the cutting board and grabs the chef’s knife, grateful to have something to do. They work in silence, side by side, Bowie drifting between them. We could be heroes… just for one day.

Chick feels his heart tug when he glances over at Gale, so focused on what he’s doing, either trapped in his own head or trying to avoid it. He’s moved onto celery now, the chopped carrots saved in a bowl, and he’s being so careful to cut them up as small as possible, to make it easier for John to eat. His face is tired, his hair is messy. His unfinished beer is still sitting on the counter. But his hands don’t shake, and he doesn’t complain, and he’s so, so unwilling to let anyone take care of him even when he’s given his entire self to take care of someone else, even when that someone else wasn’t even on the same planet.

To hell and back, some might say.

“You’re doing enough, Buck.” Chick glances casually over at him, long enough to see the way Gale’s hand freezes. “More than enough.”

“I…” Gale frowns and makes a few more slow chops, getting down to the end of the last celery stalk. “He needs me to be better.” And it kills Chick to know that this young man, who could never in his life be accused of doing less than his best, of not being good enough, firmly believes that.

“He doesn’t,” Chick jumps to say, a hint of desperation in his voice that doesn’t suit the Human Spaceflight Director part of him very well, but suits the fatherly part of him just fine. Men who are raised to be good soldiers, better officers, never know when they’ve done enough. “He just needs you to support him. Sure, sometimes he gets angry. He gets sad. He gets tired. It’s not your fault.”

Chick completely stops what he’s doing, turns to face the younger man, and pokes him firmly in the chest because he needs this to hit home, even if it can't last. “He doesn’t need you to be better. He doesn’t need you to be strong all the damn time. He doesn’t need you to be anything. He just needs you.”

Gale’s hands fall limp on top of the cutting board, his shoulders slumping. “I just don’t know how to help him, Chick.”

“You’re doing a fine job. It’s just not an easy one.”

Gale looks up, chewing incessantly on his lower lip. It makes Chick want to smack him on the arm, tell him to knock it off. Instead he gently reaches over and takes the knife from Gale’s hand, setting it by the sink. Then he takes the cutting board and dumps the celery into the pot of boiling broth, then the carrots.

“You want anything special on your grilled cheese?” Chick asks as he picks up a wooden spoon to mix everything together.

Gale shakes his head. “I can start-”

Chick cuts him off. “I got it. Go convince your boy to come eat.”

—

“Bucky?”

“John.”

Bucky blinks, mentally tracing over the words left echoing around inside his head. His name. The letters are fuzzy, not feeling quite right. The beeping of some hospital machine or another is ringing in his ears, making everything feel quiet and loud and underwater. But then he realizes the white ceiling he’s staring at isn’t the right kind of white. The light surrounding him is too warm. The blanket over his chest is too comfy. There’s music coming from somewhere nearby, and the beeping fades away. He’s on his couch, he remembers, and his arm is hanging over the side, fingers drifting over a dog’s soft fur. He imagines a breeze ruffling a wheat field. He imagines he’s the wind, shapeless, thoughtless. Unpained. Unworried.

“John?”

His head hurts, and heart feels tight. He flexes his fingers, petting his dog with more force.

His dog. Pepper. His.

He blinks again, frowns, feels the way his weight presses him into the soft couch.

He doesn’t want to be shapeless.

“Honey, can you hear me?”

Bucky turns his head toward the voice that he so badly wants to wrap himself up in. He feels like he’s been alone for so long. Why? He holds onto the sound of that voice, and his eyes follow it all the way to Gale.

Gale.

Gale is leaning against the chair beside the couch, arms crossed. His lips quirk into a hesitant smile, his eyes lighting up when Bucky looks at him. It makes Bucky smile back. “Hey there,” he says. Gingerly, he uses his hands to push himself up into more of an upright position, grimacing at the way his whole body protests. Gale’s smile drops and he steps forward as Pepper shoots to her feet, whining as she turns to face Bucky, too, with her tail wagging and her head cocked in concern. Bucky raises a hand to placate them both. “M’fine.”

Gale aborts his movement with a puzzling look that Bucky can’t sort out, like he doesn’t know what to do, whether to help Bucky or not, whether to say anything or not. Whether he’s welcome at Bucky’s side or not. It makes something in Bucky’s chest feel empty, like he’s missing something, like he can’t remember something important. He watches Gale lower himself to one knee instead, taking Pepper’s head in his hands and scratching under her collar and behind her ears, silently telling her that everything is okay.

Bucky waits for Gale to move from Pepper to him, to reach out, to stroke his hair back or grab his hand, but he doesn’t. Bucky doesn’t like the frown tugging at Gale’s lips, or the faint dark circles beneath his eyes or the way his face looks pale and drawn. And yet Bucky still wants to reach out and tangle his stubbornly adversarial fingers into that soft, messy hair and smell Gale’s aftershave and feel the warmth of his body. Even closed off and sad, he’s the most beautiful thing Bucky thinks he’ll ever see.

Sad. That’s what that look is.

Why is Gale sad?

Bucky imagines himself standing right up off of this couch and clearing the distance between them, grabbing Gale by the hand drawing him into a deep kiss that makes butterflies flutter in his chest. He thinks about holding Gale tight and making whatever’s wrong go away.

And then Gale looks at him again, biting at his lower lip. He tilts his head in question, hands falling away from the dog, and the room tilts in Bucky’s vision as his brain tries to process everything in front of him and everything behind him.

“John, I just-“

“No.”

That can’t be right. Why would he-

“I don’t-“

But he did.

“Go, Gale.”

He told Gale to leave him alone. That’s why he’s been exactly that – alone – for what seemed like forever. He told Gale that he needed space, that he couldn’t breathe with him hovering over him, that he didn’t need him.

He told Gale to go. Insisted, even. Demanded.

“Dinner’s ‘bout ready,” Gale says softly as he gets back to his feet. “Chick’s in the kitchen.”

Right. Chick. He thinks he remembers him coming in.

“Eat with us?” Gale raises an eyebrow.

“Won’t stay down,” Bucky complains.

“It’s soup,” Gale offers. “Chicken noodle. Don’t even have to eat the chicken if you don’t want.”

To hell with soup. Bucky needs to fix whatever his stupid brain did.

“C’mere?” He holds out a hand, bridging the space that Gale doesn’t seem ready to cross on his own. Gale takes a step forward, then another, and their hands touch, Gale’s fingers a little cold as usual but soft and familiar. And when he sits down on the couch, Bucky leans against him, and he feels the confusion in his head and the nerves in his heart settle down when Gale’s arm wraps around his back, holding him tight, holding him up.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky whispers. “F-For pushin’ you away.”

His brain may be cloudy, but he clocks the way Gale tenses.

“You’re allowed to want some space.” Gale says this like he’s assuring himself of the same thing. “It’s okay.”

“I hurt you.”

Gale shrugs. “S’not about me.”

Bucky knows that that’s not quite right, but he can’t make the thoughts string together in his mind fast enough to figure out how to put them together on his tongue. Before he makes it that far, Gale is squeezing him gently and standing back up, and then suddenly he’s scooping Bucky into his arms.

The world turns a little funny, blood rushing through Bucky’s head and making the pounding worse. He looks around until he finds Gale’s face again. A very pretty face.

“Huh?”

“Gonna eat dinner.” Gale insists again. And that’s it, Bucky supposes. So he lets himself be carried to the kitchen, where he smells herbs and spices and all the good stuff. It makes him notice how hungry he is at the same time that the idea of eating makes him feel ill. Chick is at the stove, still in his work clothes.

“Hey Chick,” Bucky greets, his head resting tiredly against Gale’s solid shoulder as he’s carried to the island in the middle of the room.

Chick spares him a glance. “So you wanna play nice now?” Bucky catches the teasing look on his face, the same exasperated look that Chick’s been giving him for years.

“Interrupted my beauty sleep.” Bucky grunts as Gale sets him down on one of the stools at the island. He winces as Gale adjusts his leg and reaches his hand toward the holy orange bottle sitting in front of him on the countertop, the peace-bringer, the pain-stopper.

Gale swats his hand away, and Bucky glares at him. “Gotta eat first or it’ll make you feel sick.”

“Already do.”

“We don’t wanna make it worse.”

“Food makes it worse.”

“Not eating makes it worse, too.” Gale pushes the bottle further away.

He’s not wrong. Bucky knows he’s not wrong, but it’s also not fair. The last 24 hours he feels sick when he eats something. And he feels sick when he doesn’t. He’d like to stop feeling sick now.

He can’t argue, so he glares at Gale indignantly instead. Gale sighs and looks over at Chick, who’s watching their back and forth with his arms crossed. Chick shrugs, and Bucky thinks he might win for a moment. Win what, he’s not exactly sure. He feels like crap either way.

But when Gale’s pleading look turns to an expectant glare, the older man breaks easy enough. “You gotta eat son,” he says. No nonsense, no sympathy. “Ain’t takin’ no for an answer. I can do this all day.”

Bucky narrows his eyes. “S-So can I.”

But still, he doesn’t argue as he watches Chick fill a bowl of soup for him, and his eyes follow as Gale takes it and walks back around the island to him.

“Homemade with love,” Chick quips without even looking back at them. “So if it sucks, pretend it doesn’t.”

Gale’s hand squeezes his shoulder and he presses his lips to the top of Bucky’s head as he sets the bowl down. When he shifts to step away, Bucky’s hand grabs onto his with surprising force, making him pause. He looks at Bucky curiously, and Bucky smiles, just for him. Just to let him know that he’s okay, and that they’re okay. He presses his lips to the back of Gale’s hand.

He catches sight of the ring on Gale’s finger, and he can’t help but remember their wedding night, stumbling into the kitchen and popping open a glass of champagne. God, how beautiful his husband looked. He remembers the way they laughed and hung off of each other, the moonlight through the window making Gale’s eyes shine like stars. He thinks about standing between Gale’s legs as he sat on the counter, just right over there. So easy. So happy. With no idea what was coming their way.

There’s gentle fingers stroking his hair. “You okay?” Gale asks.

“Yeah,” Bucky says. He thinks he might even mean it.

Chick sits down on a stool on the other side of the island, sliding a bowl of soup toward Gale where he sits at Bucky’s side. The two of them also have plates with grilled cheese sandwiches. They both dig in, immediately dipping a corner of their sandwiches into the broth. Two of a kind.

Bucky’s spoon is on the counter next to his bowl, the overhead light glinting off of the metal, and he stares at it. And stares.

It’s right there, in his reach, but he feels his fingers twitching in his lap at the mere thought of trying to pick it up. He has to find a way to get his fingertips underneath the handle where it’s pressed to the marble. Then he has to find a way to position it properly in his hand, to keep it steady, to guide it from bowl to mouth without spilling soggy pieces of carrot all over himself. There’s steam rising up from it, and he wonders how hot it is. How much it would burn if it sloshed against his skin.

Just do it. You have to do it, he thinks. His fingers twitch again, and he bites the inside of his cheek.

It’s not that fucking hard. Just pick up the damn spoon, John.

He’s an astronaut. A goddamn astronaut. He walked on the moon. He flew a ship down to its surface. He can pick up a lousy spoon.

“Hold on, son.”

Chick’s gruff hands reach across the island. One picks up the spoon, while the other gently pushes the bowl to the side before waiting expectantly. “Come on,” he says.

Bucky looks up at him. He’s aware of Gale taking a very slow bite, keeping an eye on him but not wanting to ‘hover’ again. Bucky picks his hand up from his lap, focusing on Chick so he doesn’t think too much about the stubborn unwillingness of his hands to cooperate. Gently, Chick takes his hand and positions the spoon between his fingers, helping him to close his fingers around it, stabilizing it.

He squeezes Bucky’s hand before pushing the bowl closer to him again. “Give it a shot.”

So he does. He lowers the spoon carefully, watching broth and little chopped pieces of celery and carrot pool in it, and he raises it to his mouth. Sure, maybe a small drop splatters onto the counter, but he makes it, and he swallows, and it tastes fucking amazing.

There’s a flash of a crew capsule, a silver package of something thick and watery. Curt or Rosie holding it to his mouth. Blobs of amorphous liquid floating in front of his face. Bad.

This isn’t that, though. Not at all.

Bucky bites back a smile, slowly repeating the motion, and it’s another success.

No one says a word about it, but he feels Gale’s foot poke his ankle in silent encouragement.

“Chick should cook every night,” Bucky says, taking another bite. “His soup is better than yours.”

Chick snorts, nearly inhaling the bite of grilled cheese in his mouth and making him splutter.

“You did not just say that,” Gale protests, and the look on his face nearly makes Bucky spit out his soup when he laughs. He has to cover his mouth with his free hand to stop himself. It feels good, though, to see the way Gale’s face lightens at the sound of his laughter, to see a hint of a smile overtake Chick’s face.

“I love you,” he says innocently, and the way Gale stares back at him, not with pity or fear or exhaustion, but with the same lighthearted love as the day they met… that feels pretty good, too.

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