The Shot You Need (Stucky fanfic, #coffeeshopau, #fanficfriday)

Prologue

~Bucky~ 

 When your memory comes back in shards, stabbing and painful, who would want to know more? Nobody would want to suffer more than they had to, more than they needed to. Bucky didn't want to know who he was, who he had been, he wanted to ignore it. The museum could only tell him so much, only patch up so many splinters in his fragmented mind. For once, he actually wanted to forget, forget everything that happened that day in Washington DC. The day the winter soldier realised something inevitable, the one thing which made him remember that he was James Buchanan Barnes: that he was the soldier who fell in love with his Captain. Bucky needed to forget him though, he needed to stop the ripples that the Captain was creating because he knew no one would be around to stop him from drowning. 

 Yet there was nothing Bucky could do to stop that person from entering the coffee shop every weekend. Bucky should have moved, left America after their argument, but where was a brainwashed war hero meant to go? Besides who could ever truly leave their love behind? The person who stood by you and was with you till the end of the line wasn't someone you just instantly forgot about. Bucky couldn't run, not with all his baggage holding him down, yet he didn't quite know how to just let it all go. The reoccurring image of Steve's broken body on the lake side after the helicarrier exploded just wouldn't leave his mind. A bruised Steve on TV after the Avengers had destroyed Ultron was too raw an image in Bucky's conflicted head. 

 Whatever the feeling was that he'd once felt, Bucky was sure Steve had forgotten it. That he'd buried it in the past. Bucky had tried to do the same but it wasn't that simple, and it left him wondering whether he should have done it all. The same exquisite pain always greeted him every morning when he woke up, how his words had done so much more damage than any action could have. Trying not to love the Captain was like trying to make your heart stop beating, you could do it, but then there was no life after that. Instead Bucky chose to isolate himself, ignore the constant ache in his chest. He got a job as a barista in the coffee shop in the Smithsonian, that way he could always be close to Steve without being near him, and in time he hoped that he could try to forget Steve Rogers. Try. 

 ~Steve~ 

 You'd think being asleep for such a long time you'd want to do more, see more, live more. But life isn't the same as it was over seventy years ago, the orders men are supposed to follow are different, not what he was expecting when he woke up. When Steve Rogers woke up alone. His right hand man, his soldier was gone, and quite frankly the Captain was lost without him. Trying to find the soldier was like the Captain's own separate war, by the end of it he wasn't sure if he'd be the same man, but it would be worth it to save others, to save the soldier. 

The museum was empty. The Captain America exhibition like that of a graveyard to the person standing in it. The guard had made an exception to Steve lately, allowing him to stay in the Smithsonian for as long as he needed. Since the Avengers had departed and been told to lay low Steve had had only one thing on his mind: find Bucky. But in the vast world of the 21st century that was easier said than done. Steve had tried to get S.H.I.E.L.D to help but they only wanted to find Bucky to eliminate a threat, and Steve knew what that meant, and it didn't involve Bucky seeing the outside world again. So Steve being the righteous person he was had abruptly left S.H.I.E.L.D to go and find Bucky himself. He didn't need people around him when he saw Bucky again: the soft brown hair and perfectly chiseled jaw bone would quite possibly prove too much for him. It had been too long since he'd heard his laugh, looked into those startling blue eyes which bore into him now from the display. 

Before Steve became Captain America he'd had no luck with women, but Bucky... He had them in swarms especially since he got the uniform. Steve grinned, Bucky in his uniform was a pleasing sight. The uniform always seemed to guarantee Bucky a date, so Steve never said anything, he never told Bucky how he felt. It was clear what Bucky preferred. The roles had been reversed now but Steve didn't want the women, he wanted Bucky. The one person who didn't want him. Steve sighed, he could never tell Bucky anyway, he would end up losing a best friend if Bucky took it the wrong way. If any of the Bucky he knew was left. It was like experiencing Peggy, his second love, all over again, her Alzheimers finally taking its hold. Steve grimaced as he remembered the panic on her face when she saw him, her face a blank slate. He didn't want to relive that with Bucky, he couldn't. 

 Steve looked at Bucky's picture once more before walking to the exit. "I'll find you one day, I promise." 

The rising sun highlighted the Captain's blonde locks as he exited the building, a tall man in sunglasses and a hat brushing past him. Steve shivered, whether from the cold he didn't know, his eyes trained on the uniform for the coffee shop walking away. The stance, the jawline, it couldn't be. But it was. James Buchanan Barnes had just walked past him and instilled the one thing Steve needed: hope.