Bucky had built something new and delicate and precious and he’d trusted Steve to have him by his side. Bucky’d said he’d never go back but now he was back; caught between old and new and something in between that was still forming. And Steve had stood by and and jerked off with the symbolic equivalent of Bucky’s tender metamorphosis. “That’s why they pay you the big bucks,” Sam says.“I don’t have to get paid to do the right thing.”“Captain America, tactical genius.”“I was upset.”“Where did you say you used the lotion again?”“Bye, Sam.” *Steve slinks back into the house like a robber in the night. A robber of joy and overpriced lotion. He hears the faint sound of water running, like Bucky’s filling the tub, and then stopping as Steve stands and listens. He decides to take another chance. He’ll take Bucky biting his head off rather than another second of silence.