Chapter Text
Steve Rogers spends a lot of time in the 21st century explaining to people that he has a young, agile mind - despite having spent seventy or so years on ice - that he doesn't struggle with technology the way everyone assumes he does and no, Tony, I don't need extra large buttons for this - it was one time!
(He'd cracked the screen of the last StarkPad Tony had handed over. It's not his fault the things break at the slightest sign of pressure. And, really, any good friend would have warned him about Flappy Bird before he'd done hundreds of dollars worth of damage. Nat had just laughed at him. Laughed. And wandered off, leaving him to his Flappy Bird-induced misery.)
He doesn't need an instruction manual for an iPhone and he's read extensively on the difference between Mac and PC. He's all up to date, he reassures his team mates as he holds his brand new StarkPad upside down.
It's all an enormous lie. It's also one of the many reasons he's glad Bucky's here with him in the 21st century. He can usually avert minor, technology-induced disasters before they even happen; it had been Bucky who had patiently explained computer viruses to him and told him that just because the internet says you've one a million bucks doesn't mean you really have.
(He hadn't really believed that one. No, really. He'd just been - curious. Or something.)
Bucky sets him up with a twitter and a facebook and warns him off tumblr - he gets one anyway. He likes looking at the drawings. His username is CaptainAmerica1920 and absolutely no one believes he's the real Captain America because, according to one user, the symbol of American freedom and patriotism doesn't use Comic Sans.
It's a particularly cheery font. So sue him.
Tony's the one who gets his twitter account authenticated for him, and as soon as the little blue tick appears next to his name followers start flooding in. Bucky insists on taking dozens of selfies - Steve had scoffed, because there's no way in hell that's a real word, until Stark had fetched a dictionary and showed it to him, along with a particularly smug expression - of the two of them and sets one of them as Steve's profile photo, Bucky grinning through a faceful of bedhead, Steve mock-scowling up at him.
He gets a lot of notifications. More than he can really keep up with. He turns on his phone one day and finds it's only showing tweets from people he follows - and Bucky's looking particularly suspicious - but Steve determinedly sets it back to normal and tries to reply to a few messages. He tells teenage girls he likes their drawings, says hello to a fan in Hong Kong - you hear that Buck? Hong Kong! - and asks Obama how his day is, because it always pays to be polite. Also because he and Bucky are sort of in D.C.'s bad books since they destroyed half of Washington.
When his twitter conversation with the President is on the news the next morning, Bucky staring slack-jawed over his cereal, he learns that a little reservation on twitter might be best.
Bucky's unfairly good at twitter, though. If you can be good at such a thing. He largely eschews facebook - his only friend is Steve. Steve has six thousand, five hundred and forty friends, leading Pepper to tentatively offer a PR woman to take over his facebook posts, which so far consist of a picture of a dog he saw on his daily run and a single "hello!". He declines, politely - but twitter is his forte. He has more followers than Clint and Nat put together - a fact that secretly infuriates them both greatly. His recent success is a hashtag: #badcaptainamericaphotos, with various unflattering shots of Steve doing ordinary, every day things. The one where it looks like he's picking his nose - I was scratching it, Bucky! Take it down! - gets the most retweets.
thanks 2 @official_barnes 4 setting up my twitter. here is a photo. #badbarnesphotos
He posts one of the selfies they took the other day - he kissing Bucky on the cheek, the man scrunching his face up in mock-disgust - and rolls his eyes at the tweet that quickly pops up on his timeline.
u all think steve rogers is so great. you're wrong he's the #actualworst
'You were joking, right?' Steve calls out to the bathroom where Bucky's brushing his teeth, the man in question poking his head round the door, hair pulled up into a messy bun, toothbrush sticking out of his mouth. He's wearing a vest top with some obscure symbols printed across it, skinny jeans - Nat forced Steve into a pair once. They were quite possibly the most uncomfortable things he's worn in his life - and a pair of reading glasses he insists he needs despite the fact Steve knows he's got 20/20 vision.
'I was joking,' Bucky reassures him, rolling his eyes once his confusion clears up.
'Good.' He pauses, tilts his head to one side, then whips his phone out. 'You look like a hipster,' he throws out, a little unsure with the terminology, trying not to cackle when Bucky appears like a shot round the door.
'You take that back you preppy little shit -' he's cut off by the sound of Steve's camera snapping. Blinking in surprise, a little toothpaste running down his chin, Bucky's expression darkens. 'I swear to god if you post that on instagram -'
'You'll what?' Steve challenges, smirking at the infuriated expression flirting across Bucky's features. 'Please, I don't know what instagram is,' Steve reassures him, watching as Bucky's slim shoulders relax a fraction and he turns back to the bathroom mirror, making a disgruntled face at the state of his hair. 'I'm posting it on twitter,' Steve admits quietly, pressing send just as Bucky twists around, already scrabbling to get his phone out of his pocket.
we all think bucky is a hipster. what do u think? #outfitoftheday
'Hey, look -' Steve breaks off, scrolling through the replies that have already cropped up a few moments later. 'Three hundred and twenty-one people agree with me. Guess you must be a hipster.'
Flopping down on the bed next to him, Bucky lets out an elongated, ridiculous groan.
'You're skating on thin ice, pal,' Bucky tells him, looking decidedly nonthreatening as he smothers a yawn and buries his face into a pillow. 'Actual worst,' he grumbles, voice a little muffled. 'Here. Find an obscure indie band and post it to my twitter to confirm the rumours. The Winter Soldier: Soviet hipster.'
It's still a little odd, Steve must admit, when Bucky mentions the Winter Soldier in such casual terms. He always looks a little stiff when he does it, as if he's forcing the words out - but Sam's reassured him it's perfectly normal for Bucky to have such a black sense of humour, that it's a way of dealing with what's happened. It would be worse, apparently, if he never mentioned the Winter Soldier at all. So Steve shrugs, pulls gently on a strand of Bucky's hair that he's got wrapped around his finger.
'I think Nat would be pissed; Clint's been calling her the Soviet hipster since the Hozier incident,' Steve eventually manages, a little unsure still.
Bucky, lying face down on the bed, still manages to express his shudder. Everyone remembers the Hozier incident.
He leaves his twitter alone for a little while when they get entrenched in a mission helping Coulson - Director Coulson, Steve has to keep on reminding himself, who's still alive. Somehow - and his team take down a particularly persistent Hydra branch. Skye nearly faints when she meets Bucky - who blinks, a little bemused, before laying the charm on thick - and, judging by their equally tongue-tied state, Bucky claims Fitzsimmons are more in love with Steve than they are with each other.
They're eating celebratory pizza for a mission well done - it's tradition, Trip tells Steve seriously, pressing a slice of pizza and a napkin into his hand - Simmons lost in discussion with Thor about alien biology whilst Fitz looks on disapprovingly, Trip flirting shamelessly with both Maria Hill and Sam at the same time, when Skye whips out her phone. She's absently checking the thing - as people seem to do these days - when she lets out a low whistle, calling out across the room;
'Fitz, you owe me ten dollars!'
'Piss off do I owe you ten - oh,' he shoots back, abruptly looking all-too guilty under Captain America's stare whilst Skye grins across at him.
'Congrats, Cap,' the woman tells him as May rolls her eyes from where she's deep in conversation with Nat - and there's a pairing that could take over the world in approximately 0.5 seconds, Steve muses with an impending sense of dread - 'you beat Obama.'
'S-sorry?' Steve splutters just as Bucky appears at his elbow, eyebrow raised and drink in hand.
He's more relaxed than Steve's seen him in a long while, bundled up in a thick-knit sweater, hair pulled up into its usual bun. His shoulders are set free and easy, a smile constantly darting along his lips - and something warms, deep in Steve's chest, because he doesn't think he's ever seen Bucky with such a sense of simply belonging. Even in the forties he'd kept up an endless rhythm of a new girl each date and a constant stream of shady friends he'd never quite seem at ease with. Seeing his friend now, like this, taking Skye for a quick spin around an impromptu dance floor, joking with Clint, reminds him of the Bucky he once only got to see when they were alone, bumbling around their too-small apartment, scraping elbows and reveling in the closeness and comfort of one another.
'Here,' Skye tells him, shoving her phone into his hand, breaking his Bucky-induced reverie as he glances down at the screen. 'Forty three-point seven million followers - you've officially got more than Obama.'
'Just got Katy Perry and Bieber to beat out next,' Clint throws over his shoulder, even as Bucky scoffs.
'Please. You'll never take out the Biebs,' he mutters, scowl etched onto his forehead.
'You're just jealous because I have more followers than you,' Steve teases, eyebrow cocked as Bucky flounders, pizza turning a little crumpled in the tight grip of his metal hand.
'I - well -'
'Steve Rogers, your header image is the american flag. It is quite frankly twitter sacrilege that someone as lame as you has more followers than Obama. And, more importantly, more followers than me,' Tony interrupts, his own phone in hand, peering down at Skye's battered iPhone contemptuously. 'Your latest tweet was about the pandas at the zoo.'
You went to the zoo without me? Comes Sam's outraged shout, muffled by the music and crowd of people.
-
He posts a song he heard at the party when he gets home, Bucky grumbling at him to turn the damn light off and get into bed, Steve. He obliges, ditching his phone on the chest of draws and sliding under the sheets, Bucky attatching himself to him like a limpet.
-
heard this today. #cute ! youtube.com/watch?v=0VG1bj...
-
'What the fuck did you do?'
It's early - too early, pale winter light just beginning to bleed in through the curtains, and Clint's a dark shape in the doorway. One of Bucky's arms is wound around his neck and he's got a mouthful of his hair too. Shoving a grumbling Bucky off him as Clint snaps the light on, blinding the pair of them, Steve sits up a little in bed.
'What happened? Is there an emergency? Is it HYDRA?' Steve mumbles, shielding bleary eyes against the overhead light.
Very slowly, Bucky sits up. Silently, he stares at Clint. Thirty seconds pass.
Clint turns off the light again.
'What's going on?' Steve whispers, mindful of Bucky as he steals a pillow from behind Steve and hugs it to his chest, grumbling a little as Clint noisily shifts from foot to foot in the doorway.
'Well, you got more followers than Katy Perry.'
'That's what you woke us up for? To tell me that I got more followers than some actress -'
'Katy Perry's a singer,' Bucky mumbles into the pillow.
'-Some singer? It's -' he breaks off, checks the digital clock next to him. 'It's six o clock in the morning!' Next to him, Bucky lets out an offended groan.
'You're also on the news. Again.'
There's a long silence. Bucky snorts into the mattress, now, having rolled over a little in a determined mission to take over the entire bed.
'What the fuck did you do?' Bucky asks, echoing Clint's earlier sentiment.
'He posted a song about being gay on twitter.'
'Ooh. Brave choice there.'
'Apparently, according to the song, everyone's gay. Big words coming from America's national icon. The Republican Party want to withdraw their sponsorship deal offer.'
'Oh, however will I go on,' Steve snaps bitterly under his breath, rolling out of bed and allowing Bucky to succeed in having the entire thing to himself. He looks on with affection as Bucky spreads himself out, star-fish like, shaking his head as he pulls on a pair of joggers and a t-shirt. 'I don't get it, what's the big deal?' Steve shrugs as Clint switches on their television, a twenty-four hour news station flickering into life. His name is plastered across the screen.
And now, returning to our top story: is Captain America gay?
This, at least, seems to have Bucky a little more awake.
'They're fucking kidding, right?' He snorts, voice still thick with sleep, not noticing as Clint, clearly not overly concerned about their current predicament, snaps a picture of his frankly ridiculous bed head.
'I'm bisexual, actually,' Steve corrects the television, resting his hands on his hips to glare at the screen. 'And I'm a little amazed they haven't noticed already, to be honest.'
'Pepper wants to have a press conference. Apparently her phone's been going nuts.'
'God Steve, this is such a shit song,' Bucky groans, and Steve turns to see YouTube pulled up on Bucky's phone, one headphone dangling out of his ear. 'If you wanted to come out to the world via the medium of music you could at least have picked something cool.'
'I wasn't - I wasn't coming out! I'm already - you know! Out!' Steve insists, gesturing towards Bucky, who's languishing across their bed trying not to laugh.
'Incoming from Pep. She says - Steve, you have to find a nice tie and try to get Barnes in a suit. You're talking to the press at at ten. She'll prep you on what to say. Meet downstairs at quarter to and try not to get into any more trouble until then. And she says she's going to have someone checking all your tweets from now on.'
Steve pauses, trying to take in the information Clint's just rattled off at him - but the archer's already wandering off down the corridor, bare feet slapping against the wooden floorboards as he goes.
'Um?' Steve declares to the room at last.
'Ten o clock, right? We got at least another four hours sleep,' Bucky reaches out a scrabbling arm in Steve's direction. 'Come back to bed, I wanna enjoy being America's greatest controversy.'
'You're the worst, you know that?' Steve huffs as he clambers underneath the covers. Bucky immediately latches on again, leg thrown across Steve's knees to keep him in place. 'You only want me for my body.'
'Yep. Your great, sexy, cuddly body. Now shut up and be the big spoon.'
-
'Captain America -'
'Please. Call me Steve. Or sir,' Steve interrupts, glad at least to get the awkward crowd laughing. Bucky's at his right hand side, jittering his leg up and down. Steve reaches under the table and wraps his fingers around Bucky's metal hand, offers a quiet smile when he glances over. It's not enough to stop the constant movement of Bucky's leg but he does release a long breath and stop eyeing the exits quite so fervently.
For all his blase joking and attitude, Bucky's never been good at press. There's always the niggling feeling, deep under his skin, that the newspapers look at him and see his past before they even consider his present. They see James Buchanan Barnes, Captain America's best friend, war hero, the man who gave his life for his country. Or - even worse - they see the Winter Soldier, the assassin, the man with half the world's blood on his hands. They very rarely look and simply see Bucky.
So Steve's determined to make this as easy, painless and quick as possible.
'Um, Steve,' the journalist corrects himself; he's young, sweating profusely, a stylish haircut beginning to wilt. He's from the New York Times, clearly nervous as hell, throat bobbing when Steve offers him a smile and Bucky stares flatly at him, drumming the fingers of his right hand against the table top they're sat behind. 'I - well I guess I'll just ask what everyone's thinking. Um. Are you gay?'
Bucky hides his smirk behind a hand. Steve sighs.
'Actually I'm bisexual.'
There's a moments silence.
'I'm currently dating Bucky, which is why he's here with me today.'
More silence. The entire room is staring at him. Steve can't seem to stop talking.
'I - uh, I sort of thought everyone already knew?'
A few beats. Then the room explodes into chaos as everyone asks half a dozen questions at once. Pepper steps in to attempt some crowd control and when Steve turns to look at Bucky, he's rolling his eyes - but he's grinning too, and Steve feels him squeeze his fingers.
'Jerk,' Bucky murmurs quietly, so the microphone won't pick up the sound.
'Punk,' Steve responds, smiling at Bucky as if he's the only one in the room.