fish in the sky

by alby_mangroves, chaosmanor

Summary:

The Stark family farm has four cows with calves, some chickens and some pigs, a vegetable garden, a crumbling farmhouse, and a cybernetically enhanced Russian caretaker named James. And now Steve, who is on medical leave.

It's a good summer.

Notes:

Author notes:
Collaborating with alby_mangroves has been amazing. I may have originally started the story, but we jointly finished it. The art and the words completely belong together.

Thanks to my beta team: Maharetr, Samvara and imprecisefool

Story and chapter titles are from Walden by Thoreau.

Chapter 1: Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is.

 

Steve rode east and then north, out of New York and away from the Tower, under low clouds, spitting rain and a cold wind blowing in off the Atlantic.

He was benched, on medical leave, thanks to the terribly nice civilian psychologist in their terribly nice office full of plants and books. Apparently civilian psychologists, even those that worked for Stark Corp, had completely different standards from all of the military head-shrinkers Steve had seen over the years, first in the Army and then with SHIELD.

Stress. Hyper-focus on work. Trauma. Insomnia. Dr Nedel had not been impressed, especially when Steve tried to brush off pulling Natasha out of the Potomac and resuscitating her as a normal workday occurrence.

“Go and do some normal things,” Dr Nedel had said. “Live in the present moment. Make friends with people who aren’t soldiers. Take a lover. Slow down, sleep a lot.”

Steve had no idea how to even begin doing any of those things, so Pepper had stepped in and offered him the use of one of the Stark properties.

“It’s the family farm,” Pepper had said. “Clearwater Farm in Vermont. It’s not a working farm anymore, not really, and the farm house is empty, so you can stay there. A caretaker, James, lives on the property. He maintains the fences and wells, runs a few cows, makes sure nothing falls down. He’s practically a hermit, so you might even not see him.”

It sounded perfect.

“No power in the farm house,” Pepper had said. “So don’t expect to be able to charge your phone. No cell reception either, so that won’t matter. James has a satellite phone, so I’ll let him know you'll be heading up in the next day or so.”

No electricity. The persistent noise of appliances was one of the many things that troubled Steve, late at night.

Steve had warm clothes and his sketchbooks in his saddlebags. He planned to stop at the nearest town to the farm, about five miles out, to stock up on some basic food supplies.

The country opened up and bare-limbed trees replaced rows of houses. The weak spring sun broke through the clouds, making the road gleam. The miles began to slip away.

Steve wasn’t sure what he was feeling, riding away from New York and any pretence of helping Tony get a vigilante team together. He guessed he felt most like he had been lying awake at night in a foxhole and listening to bombing runs fade as the aircraft passed over and away.

 

Steve rolled his bike up to the farmhouse late in the afternoon. The house was a crumbling wreck, with a porch that leaned alarmingly and siding dipping loose. The yard around the house was knee deep with weeds, buzzing with bees in the fading sunshine.

A cow considered him accusingly from lush green pasture bordered by deep, shadowed woods. Down the hill, a barn in better condition than the house was surrounded by a small garden and smoke rose from the chimney of a cabin.

All Steve could hear, when he took his helmet off, was birds calling in the wood with a clear two-note song, chickens and cicadas burbling, and the engine of his bike ticking as it cooled.

It felt like some of the stillness and calm from the farm was seeping into Steve through his pores.

The porch creaked as Steve walked across it, threatening to cave in under his weight, and he had to drag the screen door open. The kitchen was shadowed in gloom until Steve put down his saddle bags on the table and pulled the curtain open, sending clouds of dust flying.

He knew this kind of kitchen from a lifetime ago. Pump handle at the sink, instead of a faucet. Bare wooden boards for counters and table top. Creaking chairs. Rag rug in front of the sink. No fridge. Kerosene lantern hanging on a chain over the table.

He nearly wept at the flood of intense memories from his childhood. Homemade cookies. Cold hands warmed in front of the stove. The smell of spirit lamps. Bread and dripping for breakfast. Sitting on his mom’s lap.

A note on the counter pulled him back from dangerous waters. Milk in urn. Eggs, butter and cheese on shelf. Aired bedding. J

Steve opened the doors off the kitchen. Pantry with shelving, currently holding an urn of milk, a wooden box of eggs, canisters of flour, sugar, drums of kerosene and cooking oil. A chunk of cheese sat on a plate beside small containers of dried yeast and spices. Another door opened on to an even more dusty front parlor. A different door led to a bathroom containing only a tub.

He climbed the stairs, the treads creaking at each step. Upstairs, there were two bedrooms, one with a double bed and one with twins. The double bed had a stack of neatly folded clean linen on the end and a kerosene lamp on a bedside table. A ladderback chair stood in the corner, beneath a row of hooks on the wall. The ceiling sloped down steeply in one corner, far too low for Steve to stand, between the windows.

Everything in the house was startlingly plain and shabby, and it made Steve’s heart soar. He understood everything. He felt still and quiet, not looking for patterns or making lists of queries to answer later.

Never mind Tony’s intelligence, Pepper was the fucking genius for arranging for Steve to stay there.

 

First light and the rising waves of bird song woke Steve. Actually woke him, from proper sleep, the kind of sleep that made him stretch on the creaking bed to crack his shoulders. He’d slept diagonally, feet against the metal end of the bed, faded handmade quilt pulled over him, the cool air flowing through the open window above his head. It should have been uncomfortable on the saggy mattress and ancient springs, but it was the best bed he’d felt since escaping the ice.

He pulled on jeans and padded down the stairs and out to the outhouse in the yard. The grass in the yard was dewy under his bare feet. The sky over the trees behind the fields was just beginning to change from deep turquoise to lilac.

Steve carried wood in from the wood pile beside the porch on his way back from the outhouse. The sky through the windows lightened while Steve lit the stove, coaxing the flicker of flame with kindling and puffs of air. Boiling water was slow on a wood stove, and making coffee with a manual dripper took patience. The woods were backlit by golden glow by the time Steve took his coffee out to the porch to enjoy.

The cows in the field beside the farmhouse were clustered around the gate at the far end of the field, lowing steadily. Steve sipped his coffee and watched as someone--the caretaker, James, presumably--came out of the distant cabin and walked toward the barn, pausing to greet the cows.

James leaned over the fence, patted a cow on her head and scratched around her ears, then disappeared into the barn.

Steve had skimmed cream off the jug of milk in the pantry to add to his coffee. Clearly someone had to milk the cows for the first part of that equation to work. Steve could cope with the stress of meeting a new person if it meant he got cream with his coffee, especially if James was as silent as Pepper said.

The sun cleared the tree line, kissing the fields and farmhouse with early morning sunshine. James came out of the barn and opened the gate to the field, and the cows walked sedately into the barn.

 

The morning moved slowly. Steve fried himself half a dozen eggs for breakfast, then washed his plate and pan in water from the kettle. He thought about shaving, decided it was too hard, and settled for brushing his teeth and wetting his hair.

Steve was kneading bread dough on the newly scrubbed kitchen table when the peace of the morning was disturbed by a knock on the screen door.

“Come in,” he called out, and the door scraped open.

Steve looked up, his hands in the dough, flour up his arms. A shadow in the doorway blocked the daylight, and Steve had to remind himself that there was no threat and he didn’t need to look for an alternate exit.

 

 

“Hey, I’m James,” the man filling the doorway said. “Got today’s milk for you.”

James came in and put an urn of milk on the sink drainer. He was big, like Steve, but maybe not as tall, and wearing a plaid shirt and dark jeans, with work boots and leather work gloves. His dark hair was pulled back in a rough ponytail and he had a thick black beard streaked with gray. He smelled of sweat, wood smoke and open air.

Steve wiped his hands on his shirt, spreading flour on his clothes.

“I’m Steve,” Steve said. “Thanks, but you didn’t need to. I haven’t finished the last one yet.”

“Give it to me,” James said. “Pigs can have it.”

Steve retrieved the partially full jug from the pantry and handed it to James, then remembered his manners. “Thanks for the milk, cheese and eggs, and the firewood.”

“Need anything,” James said, nodding. “Ask me.”

He turned and left, taking the milk jug, dragging the screen door closed behind him. Steve watched through the kitchen window as James hopped over the fence into the field and strolled toward the barn, urn swinging in his hand.

Steve wasn’t sure if he wanted to be James or just rub his face all over James’s chest. His gut twisted with a sudden hunger he didn’t understand.

Steve set the bread dough to rise beside the stove. He needed something else to do, to keep his hands and mind busy, and there wasn’t a punching bag available.

He’d have to find something to do.

The storeroom off the porch held a cobwebby collection of broken furniture and household tools. Steve pulled out the ax and, as an afterthought, a screwdriver and file. “A rasp would be good,” Steve said to the collection of spiders watching him. “Or a plane? No?”

The screwdriver and file would be enough to fix the screen door.

The next day, Steve carried the mostly empty milk urn across the field to the gate and let himself through, closing the gate carefully after. The gravel surface of the yard outside the barn squeaked under his boots from the rain overnight and everything felt fresh and clean in the early morning.

“Hi,” Steve said, looking into the barn.

“Over here,” James said, from the other end of the barn.

Tiny bands of gold sliced through the dust, where cracks in the barn let the sunshine in. Cows lined one side of the barn in a pen, chewing on hay, with the calves in a separate small pen at the end. On the other side, abandoned farm machinery filled half of the space, and the other half was mostly empty, apart from a handful of hay bales and feed sacks.

Steve walked past the row of cows, who looked at him curiously, and found James sitting on an upturned bucket beside a cow in a stanchion.

“I’m returning yesterday’s urn,” Steve said.

“Oh, right,” James said, not looking up from where he was milking the cow. “You can tip whatever’s left into the pig feed trough, in the pig enclosure, then leave the urn on the steps of the cabin. Do you need a refill?”

“Okay,” Steve said. “Thanks. No, I don’t need more milk.”

As he turned to leave, James said, “You ever milked a cow?”

“No,” Steve said, looking back at James, who was looking at Steve with gentle blue eyes. “City born and bred.”

“If you’d like to try, come back when you’re done and I’ll show you how.”

Steve found the pen of pigs and poured the leftover milk into their trough, where they clambered over each other in their efforts to get at the milk. Then he left the empty urn on the steps of James’ cabin.

The cabin was in better shape than the farm house, with new tar paper on the roof and fresh shingles on the walls. A rusty pickup truck was parked in front of the cabin. The land between the cabin and the barn was fenced, the ground tilled into neat rows, where vegetables grew, pushing green shoots up out of the dark wet soil.

Stepping back into the barn from the morning sunshine was like stepping into a cool twilight dusk.

James gestured to Steve. “Pull up a seat.” James was wearing a thin leather glove on his left hand.

“Beside you?” Steve asked, finding a bucket amidst the clutter of wheelbarrows and pitchforks. He upended the bucket and sat on it cautiously, testing to see if it would hold his weight.

“Yep,” James said. “Some cows will tolerate being milked from the left, but these cows are particular. Wet a cloth and give your hands a wipe, then slide on in.” Steve took a clean cloth from the folded pile, poured water from the thermos James pointed at onto the cloth, then wiped his hands.

“You a soldier?” James asked, moving his seat aside to make room for Steve.

“Yes,” Steve said.

“This ain’t soldier’s work,” James said, smiling. “Clara’s a lady. You gotta treat her right, real gentle.”

Steve leaned in close to watch James’s hands on Clara’s teats, hoping James couldn’t see him blushing. “Okay.”

“Circle the top of the teat with your thumb and first finger and squeeze gently. Then pull down the teat with your other fingers,” James said. “Go on.”

James leaned back and Steve reached out cautiously, settling his fingers into place on the teats.

“Don’t be scared,” James said. “Clara nurses a calf and even your big hands are going to be smoother than a calf’s mouth.”

That would explain a single glove, if James had done something to his left hand that made it uncomfortable for cows.

Steve squeezed carefully and then pulled with his fingers, and milk sprayed out of the teats into the bucket under Clara. “Like that?”

“Yeah,” James said. “Try a little more pressure with your thumbs.”

Clara fidgeted her back legs, nudging Steve’s elbow, so Steve had to readjust his grip, but it kept working.

“S’good,” James said. “I’ll let you know if Clara is gonna shit and you can yank the bucket out of the way.”

Steve had a brief and nauseating flash of memory of latrine duty during basic training, and squashed the memory hard.

Steve milked in silence for some minutes, apart from the splash of the milk in the pail and the rumbling of Clara’s belly against his face. The barn smelled good, of warm cows and hay, and maybe also of sweat and men who didn’t shower every day.

This was kind of how things used to smell, even in Brooklyn or in Europe in the camps, but with more cows than Brooklyn.

“How’d you know I was a soldier?” Steve asked, once he was sure his hands could work without him having to think about every movement.

“You’re always looking,” James said. “Looking for snipers and ordinance. Looking for ways out.”

Steve was not aware that he did that. Or, if he did, that other people might be able to tell. But it was 17 yards to the barn doors and three yards to the only cover, behind the tractor.

“Army,” Steve admitted. “I’m on medical leave.” It seemed the simplest explanation. “You?”

“I’m Russian, and Russia has conscription,” James said, with a shrug. “Been a farmer for a long time though. I’ve got a shotgun in the cab of the pickup and a rifle in the cabin, for putting down pigs and cattle if I need to. Any of this a problem?”

“All good. And, thanks,” Steve said. “Appreciate that.”

“What’re you carrying?”James asked.

“I’m unarmed,” Steve said. “Carrying absolutely nothing.”

James chuckled wryly. “No way I’d ever want to be punched by you, even if you’re unarmed. Those hands look lethal.” He patted Clara’s side. “He treating you good, girl? Showing you a good time?”

The bucket was filling satisfactorily, in Steve’s opinion. He didn’t know if that counted as a ‘good time’ in cow terms or not, but it was pleasing work to do.

“Whoop, there goes the tail,” James said. “Get the bucket out.”

Steve handed James the bucket just before Clara let loose from her backend.

James emptied the bucket into the large stainless steel milk urn at the end of the stanchion and handed it back to Steve. “Give her a few seconds, to make sure. Then I’ll sluice down and you can clean her up and get back to it.”

“What do you do with the milk?” Steve asked. “Sell it?”

“Huh. Not a chance. This place is not up to code,” James said, pulling a hose across the barn floor and rinsing the stanchion clean. “I take some cream for myself each day, make a bit of cheese or butter occasionally, feed the rest to the pigs and chickens. I’d run just one milk cow if I could, but Stark says to keep the farm as it always was, which means a herd of four or five cows, a bull, and some yearlings for meat, so that’s what I do. They’re good cows, all A2-A2 milkers.”

“Do you know Tony Stark well?” Steve asked. The teats he was working on had stopped producing milk, so he moved his hands to the other two, leaning a bit further under the cow to reach.

“The kid?” James asked. “I guess so. Knew Howard and Maria better. They spent much more time here. Tony comes out a few times a year, just to check up on the place and do maintenance.”

Steve got the sense that James was leaving something out, but had no intention of asking. Tony did a lot of things for completely bullshit reasons. James might or might not know them.

“Tony’s a friend,” Steve said. “But I knew Howard as well.”

James was quiet, but his gaze felt speculative on Steve’s back.

“The milk’s stopped,” Steve said. “Does that mean Clara and I are done?”

James leaned forward and looked into the pail. “Clara’s holding out on us, because she’s clever and wants to keep the good milk for her calf. Hang on.”

James stood up and walked over to the pen of calves, lifting a halter off the railing of the pen. He came back a minute later, leading a calf.

“This is Clara’s calf, Fergie,” James said. “Move out the way.”

Steve stood up and moved his bucket aside. The calf dove in, nuzzling at Clara’s udder, then latching on to a teat and sucking hard. Steve could see the calf’s teeth and tongue working, and yes, even his hands would be more gentle.

James pushed his fingers into the calf’s mouth, breaking the suction, and pulled the calf back by the halter. He tied the calf up to the stanchion, by Clara’s head.

“Wipe down the teats again,” James said. “And have another go.”

Milk flowed from Clara’s udder into the pail again when Steve squeezed Clara’s teats, and Steve smiled at James. “Hey, you’re right, the milk is flowing.”

“Told you,” James said.

“Sorry for slowing down your work,” Steve said. “This must be much quicker to do by yourself.”

“Maybe,” James said. “But I’m not in a rush. One thing I have plenty of is time.”

Steve leaned his forehead against Clara’s side and concentrated on his hands. “Guess I do too.”

 

James strolled up to the farmhouse late in the day, while Steve was wrestling with the dismantled screen door on the porch.

“Brought you some steak and vegetables,” James said, holding out a package wrapped in newspaper and a bucket of greenery. Steve thought he could see freshly dug beets, carrots, and potatoes under the mess of leaves.

“Thanks,” Steve said, putting down the file he was using to try and smooth out the bottom of the screen door. “You have a fridge for meat? Freezer? Power?”

“Stark set up a 24 volt rig in the workshop,” James said. “Didn’t ask him to. Couldn’t stop him. The freezer is kind of useful though. Why are you using a file instead of a rasp?”

Steve held up the rusty screwdriver and file to show James. “What I could find.”

“C’mon,” James said. “If you’re gonna fix shit, you’d better see where the proper tools are kept.” He sounded grumpy, as though Steve fixing anything was an imposition, but his eyes were kind.

Steve quickly put the package of steak on a plate in the pantry, then followed James across the field.

Steve had found the newer outbuilding the tools were kept in, past the cabin and behind a row of fruit trees, when he’d done his first late night perimeter patrol. Solar panels stood in a bank beside the outbuilding and a wind turbine spun lazily above a water tank beside it.

Common courtesy and a certain caution about Tony’s defense systems had stopped him from opening any doors on his patrols.

Inside the outbuilding was a decent workshop setup, with a workbench and rack of woodworking tools, and a mechanic’s toolbox on wheels. Two chest freezers and a bank of what Steve guessed were batteries stood along the back wall. “Tony huh?” Steve said, and James grunted.

“It was fine before,” James said. “Could charge stuff off my pickup if I needed to. This is bullshit.”

Steve took a rasp and a much better screwdriver off the tool rack. “Tools are useful.”

James did not look like he agreed with Steve. “Still bullshit.”

Steve spent the rest of the afternoon tightening the screen door frame and screen then smoothing the bottom of the door. He rehung it and it swung smoothly on its hinges, closing with a satisfying bang.

 

The sun was low in the sky when he strolled down to the workshop to return the tools. James had moved the cows to another field on the other side of the barn after milking, so no bovines hassled Steve on his way down to the cabin and barn.

The vegetable garden beside the cabin looked freshly hoed, soil damp and newly turned, and several rows had been cleared. Beets? Steve thought he remembered what beets looked like with their tops on.

The cabin door was open, a gray tabby cat sitting grooming itself in the doorway, but James wasn’t in sight.

The cat followed Steve to the workshop. Steve replaced the tools and started to close up, not helped by the cat who twined around his ankles and generally got in the way. .

“Careful,” he said, picking the cat up and carrying it back out into the late afternoon sunlight. The cat headbutted Steve’s chin affectionately before Steve put the cat back on the dirt ground.

The afternoon sun gleamed on the workshop solar panels and the fruit trees rustled in the breeze. Somewhere close by, Steve could hear water tumbling, running over rocks. Clearwater Farm implied a stream at least, if not a river, right?

Steve followed a path past the fruit trees, downhill and toward the sound of the water, between maple and spruce trees. He could hear a male voice--James--singing as well, in another language, so Steve kept his steps light and movements careful so as not to intrude.

Through the trees, sunlight reflected sparkles off water.

James was singing in Russian, something repetitive and sonorous. Steve smiled to himself, thinking of Nat after too many vodkas.

Another couple of steps and a gap opened in the trees to a broad stream with trees growing on the banks. The water rippled over a small rapid before slowing through a wider pool. James was floating on his back in the pool, mostly underwater, and definitely naked.

 

 

His left arm was metallic, shaped the same as his right and moving naturally when he lifted it to smack against the water emphatically in time with his song. The metal arm ended in a thick ring of scar tissue at James’s shoulder.

Steve had seen a lot of shit in the past couple of years. He’d seen aliens and robots and more magic than he liked to think about. But he had never seen anything as brutal and as beautiful as James’ arm.

When James rolled in the water and submerged his face, the song turned into muted gurgles.

Steve retreated silently back up the path, then turned and headed back to the farm house. He inhaled a long breath of surprise at the image of James’s metallic arm, wet and shining in the sunlight, but he couldn’t shake the sight of James’s broad chest and the trail of dark hair leading down to his groin, even when the surprise had faded.

Steve went to bed naked that night, sheet loose around his hips, cool air weaving in through the open window and over his bare skin. He could smell the farm outside, the cows and the pastures, and the damp woods. Insects chirped. A mouse scurried somewhere close by, inside a wall. And it was all a velvet silence compared to DC or New York, where every wall and ceiling crackled and hummed with electrical wires, and every room buzzed with appliances on standby.

Steve’s dreams woke him that night, a jumble of images of wet skin and thick thighs. Round ass cheeks. Water running down body hair and a thick cock. Long dark hair slicked across broad shoulders, and a silver arm shining in the sun.

Mixed in with the usual junk from his dreams. Desperately trying to start a stolen German tank, while Bucky bled out in the bow gunner’s seat. Foxholes, strafing, hunger and pain. Running through a pine forest in the rain and dark, terrified of what was behind him. And always, always, the train and the fall.

The next morning, when Steve walked into the barn, James was waiting for him. Steve felt embarrassed, as though James knew what Steve had dreamed, the way Steve had woken hard and aching, his heart racing from another nightmare chase.

Steve paused inside the door, hands in his pockets, gaze searching the dusty shadows for a moment.

“Cleaned out another stanchion,” James said, from beside the cow he was milking. “Pails and cloths are there for you.”

“Thanks,” Steve said. “Um, how do I get a cow in there?”

“Open the pen gate,” James said. “Lindy knows it’s her turn next, so she should walk out by herself. She might be confused by the second stanchion, so give her a nudge to move past where Gloria and I are.”

Steve wasn’t sure he knew how to nudge a cow, but okay. He could try this.

He opened the pen gate and the cows in the pen stared at him. “Open it wider,” James called out. “And call Lindy to you.”

Steve opened the gate all the way and called out, “C’mon, Lindy, hey, Lindy.”

A large cow lumbered away from the others and through the gate, eyeing Steve dubiously. “Good girl, Lindy,” Steve said, following the cow as she ambled her way to the stanchion where James was milking Gloria.

“Give her a swat on her ass,” James said. “Get her moving.”

“Is that okay?” Steve asked, and James turned his head to look at Steve.

“Not asking you to beat her,” James said, shaking his head as he chuckled. “Just remind her to walk.”

Steve slapped Lindy’s rear and the cow rolled into motion again, past James and Gloria, and into the second stanchion. Steve pulled the wooden bars into place around her neck and she made a low grumbling noise.

“She wants alfalfa,” James said. “Give her a couple of scoops in the trough as a reward.”

“Alfalfa, alfalfa,” Steve said to himself, looking around until he found a drum of green pellets that smelled like grass in summertime, with a big scoop in the top. He gave Lindy two scoops, which she shoved her face into immediately.

Lindy munched and Steve milked. With his head against the warm pelt on Lindy’s belly, Steve could hear her gut rumbling and her heart beating over the plinking of the milk into the pail. James hummed, out of Steve’s line of sight. Dust settled around them and something like contentment settled inside Steve.

 

The heat from the wood stove in James’s cabin was oppressive, even with the two windows open. Steve stacked another armful of wood beside the stove, where James was stirring two vats of milk over the heat.

Steve stripped off his shirt and wiped his face and neck with the bunched-up material.

The cabin was cramped, definitely not large enough for two men as big as James and Steve. Possibly not big enough for James by himself. Tiny table, with a single chair. Bed against the wall, with rumpled blankets and a creased pillow, the sight of which made strange feelings stir in Steve's gut. Wood stove, deep sink with a hand pump, same as in the farmhouse kitchen. Open shelves held dried goods, a couple of saucepans, and rows of books. The titles on the book spines were in Cyrillic and Farsi, and a range of European languages, far more than Steve could read. The rifle on the wall. Clothes hung from hooks behind the door. A stained rag rug stood in front of the kitchen sink. This was a plain cabin, for a plain life.

James pumped a mug of water for himself and a glass for Steve, and wiped his sweaty forehead on his shirtsleeve. He still wore gloves and a plaid shirt, despite the heat from the wood stove.

“Hey,” Steve said. “If you want to take off your shirt and gloves, it’s okay.”

James stopped stirring the vats of milk and turned to look cautiously at Steve. “Shirt and gloves?”

“Your left arm,” Steve said. “No need to hide it.”

“Stark,” James said, sounding grim.

“No, Tony didn’t say anything,” Steve said. “I’ve seen your arm. It really is okay.”

James held Steve’s gaze steadily for long seconds, then nodded. “Okay.” He rested the spoons across the vats, then pulled off his gloves and tossed them on his bed. He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled that off too, and threw that at his bed, leaving just his undershirt on, with his shoulders exposed.

Sweat stuck his undershirt to his back. The metallic arm ended at his shoulder joint, thick ring of scar tissue visible under the armhole of his undershirt. The metallic arm was smooth and articulated, with a red five-pointed star on the shoulder.

“Do you want to ask about it?” James said, going back to stirring the milk.

“Your arm? A bit,” Steve said. “Is it one of Stark’s?”

“Huh,” James said. “Not what I expected. No, Howard said this is a Soviet prosthetic. Stark does the maintenance for me, same as Howard did.”

Steve emptied his glass of water. “Is there room on the stove to get some coffee going? I could do with another cup.”

“Don’t drink coffee,” James said. “Tea?”

“Sure, tea,” Steve said, and James pushed a kettle onto the heat in between the vats of milk.

“Milk’s hot,” James said, and he lifted the vats off the stove and stood them on the floor, with lids on them.

“Now what?” Steve asked.

“We drink tea while the culture develops, then heat the milk back up and add the rennet,” James said.

He placed his mug on the table, emptied Steve’s glass and stood it beside the mug, and put a small tea pot on the table as well.

“You had Russian tea?” James asked, taking a plate down from a shelf and placing it on the table before the tea pot. The plate held small rings of golden bread, shining with sugar. “And sushki?”

Steve nodded. “Got a Russian friend in New York. She adds jam to her tea and eats round cookies like those.”

“Jam or honey,” James said. “And maybe lemon. Jam is best.” He took a jar of dark jam off one of the kitchen shelves and put it on the table.

“Blackberry jam,” Steve said, lifting the jar and looking at the residue around the lid. It smelled of autumn and forest floors, like something he remembered from a long march in France, or perhaps Germany.

“Made it myself,” James said. “Blackberries grow in the woods here.”

James handed Steve a small teapot and then carried the steaming kettle across to the table from the stove.

Steve mentally thanked Natasha for having taught him how to mix and drink Russian tea, and poured himself a slurp of intense tea from the teapot. He topped up his glass from the kettle, then spooned in jam, and stirred.

James watched, and Steve hoped that the unreadable look on his face was approval, or at least not despair at Steve’s tea-mixing process.

The tea was hot and strong and sweet, a wonderful mix of bitter tannins and ripe fruit flavors. It wasn’t coffee you could strip paint with, but to Steve’s tastebuds it occupied a similar place. The sushki weren’t as soft or as sweet as the type Natasha liked, but they went well with the strong tea and sharp jam.

“Next step?” Steve asked, when James had made his own tea and sat on the edge of the bed to drink it and eat sushki.

James took a spoonful of jam, ate it, and then drank tea.

“Rennet and cutting the curd. Then we heat the curds and whey, drain the curd, and pack it into molds. That’s the hard work done. After that, I’ll weight and turn the cheese in the molds for a few days, and in a few months, we’ll have cheese.”

“Cheese for you?” Steve asked.

“Miss Potts will want some,” James said. “But the rest is for me. And you.”

Steve drank his tea and stared out of the window at the rows of young beans bobbing in the breeze.

“You got a question?” James asked. “You sure look like you do.”

“This a good life?” Steve asked, looking back at James, his eyes adapting to the dim cabin interior after the bright sunshine through the window. James ate another spoonful of jam, drank a long pull of tea, and made a pleased sound. He looked as though his tea was the most delicious thing in the world.

“I can’t take noise,” James said, cradling his mug in his big hands. “Or people. This is the only life.”

Steve put his glass back on the table, lining the base up with one of the stain marks on the wooden surface.

“I’m not people?” Steve asked.

“Nah.” James smiled, slow and gentle. “I reckon you and me are the same inside. Stark lets us both stay on this farm because we’re too wild to be anywhere else.”

The dark feeling that had woken Steve during the night uncoiled in his belly again, hungry and secret. He wanted something he didn’t know the name of, and he suspected--hoped--that James understood.

Steve smiled back at James, not one of his Captain America grins, but one of his Brooklyn-kid half-smiles, the kind that sometimes ended in punches.

“I think you might be right,” Steve said.

James drained his mug and put it solidly on the table. “Time to add rennet to the milk.”

 

They spent the next hour mixing the vats, then cutting the curds that formed.

While James stirred the mixture over the heat to cook the curds, Steve pulled his undershirt off and wiped his face with the cotton.

“Swim in the stream?” James asked. “While the curds settle in the molds?”

“Sounds good,” Steve said. “Sounds necessary.”

An hour later, they left the curds packed in fabric-lined molds with weights on top, and walked out of the cabin into the cooler air outside.

The afternoon sun was hot on Steve’s skin when they moved out of the shade of the trees and onto the smooth rock sloping down to the stream.

James sat down on the rock and began to pull his work boots off, so Steve followed his example. Seconds later, James stood up, pulled his undershirt off and pushed his jeans down, then walked naked into the stream.

He grinned over his shoulder at Steve, and fuck it, Steve ditched his jeans and underwear in a rush. He was seconds away from an awkward adolescent-style boner. Getting into the cold water in a hurry was imperative.

 

 

James floated face down in the stream, arms outstretched, his shoulders broad and strong in the sunlight.

Steve splashed down into the waist-height water and submerged himself completely in the cool water. When he surfaced, shaking water off his face and pushing his wet hair back, James was laughing at him.

“What?” Steve asked.

“Better?”

“I may never get out,” Steve said.

“Not as much fun in winter,” James said. “Tub of water in front of the stove is better for bathing then.”

“Okay, I’ll get out before the first frost,” Steve said.

“Promise I’ll bring you cheese every day,” James said.

James climbed out of the stream and lowered himself down on the smooth shelf of rock, head resting on his folded arms. Water pooled around his body, darkening the rock. He reached out and pulled his undershirt over his face, shielding it from the sun, and tension slid out of his muscles. He was going to sleep.

Steve stepped out of the stream as well. He’d bathed in streams before, in occupied France and behind enemy lines in Germany, but that had always been cold and hurried. Sleeping naked on a warm rock beside a stream? Completely new experience.

Steve lay face down on the sun-warm rock and cradled his head on his arms. The sun was deliciously warm, drying the stream water off his skin. Ants scurried across the rock, moving sand granules.

The shadows moved slowly.

It felt like maybe, after all the time Steve had been out of the ice, he was finally warm all the way through.

James stirred beside Steve, stretching and scratching. Steve watched through hooded eyes as James stood up and rubbed grit off his belly. James pulled his scrotum down, rearranging his balls with his right hand, then gave his mostly-hard cock a quick rub with his metal hand as he walked into the stream.

It was the most gloriously un-self-conscious physical action Steve had ever seen. Steve needed to jerk off so desperately he could barely breathe.

Cool stream water splashed on Steve’s legs, and James said, “Wake up. We have cheese to turn.”

If James could walk into the stream with a hard dick, then fuck it, Steve could too.

James’s eyes were wide and he grinned at Steve as Steve surfaced from sploshing into the stream.

“Got something to say?” Steve asked, and James shook his head.

They dressed in silence and headed back. The fire in the wood stove had died down and the temperature dropped in the cabin. James turned the cheese in the molds, and Steve helped him haul the leftover whey to the pig enclosure.

 

 

On the farm house porch, with the sun low in the sky, something hot and bold coursed through Steve’s veins, making him grab the front of James’s plaid shirt when James turned to leave.

“Wait,” Steve said, James’s metal hand closing over his.

The moment hung outside of time. James let go of Steve’s hand, then stepped closer.

“Do you want me to stay?” James asked. He smelled of sunshine, hard work and whey.

“Come inside,” Steve said. Then, “Upstairs.”

“Been a long time since anyone’s made me that kind of offer,” James said.

“Never made it to a man before,” Steve said. “So, you’re out of practice and I don’t know what to do.”

“I’ve seen you milk a cow. You’ve got good hands,” James said, taking hold of Steve’s wrist and pulling him toward the screen door. “It’ll be fine.”

“It’s got to be more complicated than milking a cow,” Steve said, following James up the creaking stairs.

“Doesn’t have to be,” James said, pulling Steve into his bedroom and backing him against the wall. “Could be as simple as you saying you want me to kiss you.”

“Yes,” Steve said. “Yes, I want that.”

James kissed Steve, one hand planted solidly on the wall beside Steve’s head. The kiss was firm, lips pressed hard against Steve’s. Steve slung an arm around James’s neck and opened his mouth, falling into the heat.

James’ body pushed against Steve’s, pinning him against the wall, the battens creaking under their combined weight. James lifted his mouth, his lips shining, and said, “Lay with me?”

Steve nodded, and the skin around James’s eyes creased as he smiled. “We’re gonna touch, okay? This what you want?”

“Yeah,” Steve said, and James slid a hand between their bodies and pushed the heel of his hand against the ridge of Steve’s cock.

The bed creaked alarmingly when James crawled over Steve and started undoing the buttons on Steve’s shirt. He slid a hand into the open front of Steve’s shirt, smoothing his palm across Steve’s chest, his calluses scratching on skin. “Not seen someone as pretty as you before,” James said.

James knelt up and pulled his own shirt off, then his undershirt. The metal of James’s arm was smooth and cool when Steve ran his hand up the sheen to rest over the red star, and then Steve pulled James down so their mouths met again.

They kissed, long and slow, and James rubbed his thigh against Steve’s cock, through Steve’s jeans. James’ cock pushed firmly against Steve’s hip, digging in with each rock, each creak of the springs.

When James lifted his head, his mouth was wet, his beard darkening around his lips where their spit combined.

James lifted up and slid his hand between their bodies, finding the button on Steve’s jeans.

“Yeah?” James asked, and Steve nodded.

“Please,” Steve said, because he hadn’t wanted anyone for so long, and he wanted James desperately.

“Oh,” James sighed, dragging Steve’s fly undone and sliding fingers into the opening. “D’ya like it dry? Or a little wet?”

“Dry.”

James’ fingers were callused and rough, scraping over Steve’s cock, catching in his pubic hair. It was all sharp and shivery, making Steve hurt inside from want. He gritted his teeth and clutched at the quilt underneath them, trying to stay silent and still.

James nipped at Steve’s neck, pulling his teeth over the stubble. “No need to be quiet,” he said. “No one can hear.”

Steve’s jeans were caught around his thighs, trapping his legs, and James’ weight was holding him down, holding him steady.

“Open your mouth,” James coaxed.

Steve opened his eyes to look at James, and James leaned down to kiss him.

He kissed James back, their mouths sliding together. James’ hand was tight, dragging the sensations out of Steve, until Steve cried out, the heat and tension breaking over him like a wave on rocks.

He opened his eyes again, his breathing beginning to slow. He felt like he’d just had his first shower after a five day march in the mud, sluiced clean, everything new.

James smiled at him and said, “Will you touch me? I’d like that.”

James’s jeans pulled open easily under Steve’s hands, his cock bobbing free, his balls pulled up tight. James kicked his jeans down and off, kneeling astride Steve’s thighs, leaning forward.

“I like it wet,” he said. “Rub your come on me.”

His dark hair had fallen loose, hanging down around his face and shoulders, and his arm glistened.

Steve scooped up some of the come cooling on his belly and smeared it on James’ cock. One hand slid down the length of James’ cock, pulling the foreskin back, and he wiped come over the head with the other hand.

James groaned and closed his eyes. “Yeah, like that,” he said.

The feel of James’ cock, sitting heavy and hard in Steve’s hands, was the hottest thing Steve had ever experienced. The smell rolling off their bodies, skin and sweat and come, made Steve frantic inside, like he might scream from the intensity. His own cock was hard, had never softened, and he was going to come again, just from touching James.

“So good, sweetheart,” James said. “You’re so beautiful, makes me wanna come just looking at you, just wanna rub my dick all over you.” Steve wrapped fingers firmly around the base of Jame’s cock to hold it steady and pulled quickly on the skin of James’ cock with the other hand.

“Yeah,” James breathed. “Like that, good and tight.”

Sweat dripped from James, marking Steve’s skin, and it felt so raw and visceral and wild that Steve had to let go of James’ cock with one hand and grab his own, and start stroking too.

James rested his forehead on Steve’s, so his hair fell around Steve’s face and his beard scratched at Steve’s chin. He began to thrust his cock into Steve’s hand, moaning with each rock of his hips.

James cried out, loud and urgent, and warm wetness splashed across Steve’s belly and chest. Steve loosened the hand that was around James’ cock and let James ride out the last shuddering gasps.

It was the feeling that did it, of come and sweat sliding across his belly, making Steve grunt and jerk his own cock hard, coming again.

James lowered himself down, on Steve, then rolled them onto their sides. “Don’t you dare move,” James said, burrowing his face against Steve’s shoulder. “Not for a while.”

Steve could barely make words to agree, but he pressed his face into James’ hair, wrapped a leg over James’, and let James hold him while the last of the day faded from the room.

“We should eat,” James said eventually, beginning to shift. “I have canned stew to heat up. Then sleep?”

Steve didn’t want to move, at all, but he was also hungry. He raised his head, reluctantly, made himself stretch, and then felt the way their skin stuck and slid. “Your bed, rather than this one?”

“Good idea,” James said.

Steve’s face felt weird, while he was pulling his jeans on, and when he touched his cheeks and jaw, he found he was smiling. Smiling involuntarily, without having to think about making it happen.

He’d forgotten that could happen.

 

 

Steve parked his bike outside the general store and took off his helmet. Apart from a couple of pickups outside the feed store and a woman walking her dog along the road, the place was deserted.

He unzipped his jacket and pulled out his phone. It was a chunk of black glass and metal. That was all.

Switching it back on felt much bigger, and worse, than Steve had anticipated.

“Hey,” Natasha said. “How’s the Vermont vacation going? Getting lots of sleep?”

“It’s interesting here,” Steve said. “How’re you?”

He could hear muted city noises in the background and voices speaking in French creole. Where was she? Brazil? The Seychelles? Mauritius?

“Oh, I’m having fun,” Natasha said, which could mean anything from a private wetwork contract to a two week snorkeling getaway while the ink dried on her new passport. “Is this a chat or work, because my meal is being carried across the restaurant, and I need to eat this lobster.”

“Work. I’ve got a situation here. I’m not sure what’s going on or what I’m doing. Can you run a quick check on someone for me?”

“That does sound like my kind of vacation,” Nat said. “Got a name for me?”

“James,” Steve said, and he could hear the clink of plates and cutlery and Natasha murmuring her thanks to someone in French.

Natasha huffed into Steve’s ear. “That’s it? James in Vermont. You gotta give me more, Steve.”

“He’s Russian, has a robot arm, and he’s caretaker on the Stark family farm. Does that help?”

Natasha’s cutlery clattered. “Steve?” Natasha said sharply. “Are you safe? Right now? Can you get away?”

“I’m in the nearest town,” Steve said, frowning and making the woman walking the dog cross the street to get away from him. “I don’t want to get away. I really want you to tell me that James is okay.”

“Oh,” Natasha said. “He’s not. Not a lot of Russians with cyber arms in the world, so there’s every reason to believe that your James is the Winter Soldier. The Winter Soldier was a Soviet-era KGB assassin, utterly lethal, did a tremendous amount of damage to the political structure of the world during the Cold War. Then he disappeared sometime in the ‘80s, presumed terminated with malice.”

“He’s a farmer, Nat,” Steve said. “He milks cows and makes cheese.”

“Elite assassin,” Natasha countered. “Kind of like you, but with good aim and no ethics.”

“Not everyone needs to be a crackshot. James has cows and a vegetable garden,” he insisted. “A tractor and a cat.”

“And what about you?” Natasha asked. “Have you stopped being a force for vengeance and taken up farming too? Don’t get close to the Winter Soldier, even if he does own a cat now.”

Steve stared across the street at the only diner in town. “Too late,” he admitted.

If James was the Winter Soldier, then Steve was already too close.

Natasha sighed. “Okay,” she said. “Try, for once, to look after yourself then? I’ll do a proper search on your farmer after I’ve eaten an indecent amount of lobster.”

Natasha called back while Steve was sitting in the diner. He was eating homemade coffee cake and reading the local newspaper, going through the For Sale listings.

“Hey,” Steve said, putting down the paper where he’d been looking at a listing for a hundred fertilised C-cross chicken eggs.

“I can’t find anything useful,” Natasha said. “Not anywhere I can search easily. Your farmer is a cipher. He first appeared in domestic records some time in the late ‘80s, with driver and firearm licences, all connected to generic SHIELD fake IDs. No real passport or birth certificate. He could have been on Tony’s farm all this time. Or he’s got a lockbox of IDs and he’s been single handedly taking down governments for the past few decades.”

“Okay,” Steve said. “Thanks?”

“Take care,” Natasha said. “I’ll bring you lobsters when I get back.”

 

James was sitting on the farm house porch when Steve parked his bike. Steve took his package from the general store (undershirt, underwear, socks, bourbon) and walked up the creaky steps to the screen door that opened smoothly now.

James followed him into the kitchen. “Did you call Stark to ask about me?’ James asked.

Steve put the package down on the kitchen counter. “No, I called someone else.”

“Maybe it’s fair,” James said. “I called Miss Potts to ask who you were.”

“Oh,” Steve said, sitting down at the kitchen table. “Do we have a problem?”

James sat down as well. “You’re some kind of superhero.”

“Some kind,” Steve agreed. “Possibly not the right kind. I rang my Russian friend. She thought you might be a Soviet assassin called the Winter Soldier.”

James tilted his head, looking thoughtful. “I don’t like the idea, but I guess I coulda been. Someone built this arm for me to fight with. So, yes, a soldier, an assassin. For the KGB perhaps. The KGB would build someone like me.”

“I was made by the SSR,” Steve said. “In World War Two. I fought in Europe with a team called the Howling Commandos. Then my plane ditched into the ice and I froze for seventy years.”

James’ eyes clouded at the mention of ice. “You’re old,” he said.

“I’m old to everyone else, but inside, I’m not. The war was only a few years ago. Everyone died in the war or while I was gone.”

“Everyone dies.” James brought his gaze back to Steve. “So, I’m a Russian killer and you’re Captain America. This is potentially uncomfortable. You should probably not tell the government about last night.”

James sounded downright amused.

“You’re a farmer and cheese maker,” Steve said. “I’m a soldier on extended medical leave. Doesn’t need to be anything uncomfortable about this.”

James’s left hand flexed and Steve could hear the servo motors whir in the arm. “Also true.”

“How did you end up on a Stark farm?” Steve asked.

James shrugged. “I woke up in America. Howard Stark took me from a military base in Georgia and brought me here, told me I’d been traded for Soviet assets, gave me a name. The farm was much better than a military base, so I didn’t complain.”

“What’s your name?” Steve asked. “What did Howard choose for you?”

“James Barnes,” James said.

Grief gripped Steve’s chest, never further away than his dreams, and James looked at him with concern.

“Howard Stark said James Barnes had been his friend,” James said. “And that it was a good name.”

“I knew James Barnes too,” Steve said, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand, trying to hold it together. “Bucky Barnes, that was what his friends called him.” Steve managed a nearly steady breath. “He was my best friend. It’s a good name.”

“He died,” James said, and it wasn’t a question.

“In Austria, in World War Two,” Steve said. He was crying now, and he couldn’t stop. “I was there when it happened.”

James took Steve’s hands, pulling them away from Steve’s face and wrapping his own work-roughened fingers around Steve’s. “I’m sorry your friend is gone.”

“I loved him.” Steve faltered. “He didn’t know. Not even Howard knew. I could never tell anyone, not then.”

James’ face held the weight of shared experience in creases and furrows. Soviet Russia would not have been an easy place to be a gay man, Steve guessed. For all he knew, small-town Vermont was shitty too.

“I will take care of the name,” James said.

The kitchen was full of late afternoon golden sunshine and the lowing of the cows carried through the open window. Steve rubbed his hands over his tear-streaked stubble.

“You look a bit like him,” Steve said.

James turned to greet his cat as the cat climbed through the open kitchen window and onto the counter, and Steve appreciated the opportunity to compose himself.

“Your eyes are the same color. Winter sky,” Steve said.

“Yeah?”

“If Bucky had been a Russian lumberjack with a cyber arm, he would have looked like you,” Steve said, and James laughed, short and loud. “Seriously,” Steve said. “I don’t know what you’ve got under your beard. Could be anything.”

James’ beard was long and bushy, growing wildly out from his cheeks and falling in a mess of dark curls and tangles down his chest.

James smiled. “Gotta a jaw you could cut shit with.”

“Best left covered up?” Steve asked.

“Ultimate concealed weapon,” James said. “No carry license required.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, while the cat stalked around the kitchen. Steve didn’t know what to say, and James didn’t speak either. Steve thought about lighting the stove so he could offer James a drink, but it would take too long and he didn’t have the makings for Russian tea.

Eventually, James stretched his legs out and then stood up. “I have to lock up the chickens,” he said. “Have supper with me in the cabin?”

Steve stood up too. “I’d like to. Should I bring anything?”

“A chair,” James said. He opened the screen door and looked back at Steve. “See you at seven for supper. Stay for breakfast.”

Steve stayed sitting in the kitchen in the quiet, smiling to himself. Despite all of the potential complications, he felt okay. More than okay. Maybe his civilian psychologist had been on to something, after all?

 

 

The next day, Steve sat in the diner, his phone charged overnight from the battery bank in the workshop, and started calling.

Maria Hill knew nothing about SHIELD history involving Howard Stark handling an asset exchange in the ‘80s. Her opinions on the rigor of SHIELD archival processes took several minutes to get through and left Steve not optimistic there was an answer to be found there, even if he could get to the SHIELD vaults.

Natasha’s phone went to voicemail. Steve left a message saying he hoped she hadn’t died from lobster overdose and asking for an update if she had one.

Steve called the names Maria had given him in the State Department, starting at the bottom and working up. The first two were giggly and awestruck, but didn’t have access to anything relevant. The next name possibly did, but correctly understood the tension between Title 18, covering Federal Government espionage, and the First Amendment, and refused to discuss anything. The fourth contact, in the Secretary of State’s office, hung up on him.

Which left him with Peggy, who might not even remember Title 18, or the United Kingdom Official Secrets Act, on a bad day and on a good day would tell him everything anyway.

And, if all else failed, Tony. Talking to Tony didn’t ever give the result the other person wanted. It really wouldn’t work when Steve had walked away from helping Tony set up his team of extrajudicial vigilantes. Talking to Tony would be the last resort.

 

The long ride to see Peggy gave Steve time to get his thoughts in order and work out what he wanted to say. And to work out how to see Peggy when his feelings were a jumbled mix of nostalgia, grief and downright horniness.

Peggy’s smile was bright and her eyes sparkled. “Steve!” she said happily. “Is it your day again?”

“Surprise visit,” Steve said, propping the roses on the bedside table and leaning across to kiss both of Peggy’s cheeks. “How are you today?”

“The nurse tells me this is a good day,” Peggy said. She leaned forward conspiratorially. “I think this means that I’m not being a nuisance today.”

“You’re always the best kind of nuisance,” Steve said, pulling a chair up to Peggy’s bed and taking her hand.

“Why are you really here?” Peggy asked. “It’s not your Tuesday.”

“I’m looking for information, and I think you might have it,” Steve said. She was the brightest he’d seen for a long time, so maybe it would work.

“I’ve forgotten everything,” Peggy said. “That’s the only reason they haven’t killed me. If I don’t know anything, I can’t blurt it out on a bad day.”

Steve looked hopefully at Peggy, and she said, “I’ll try. What is it?”

“I can’t get some files unlocked,” Steve said. “They’re about a Russian operative called the Winter Soldier, active up until the ‘80s. Do you know about him?”

Peggy shook her head. “No, sorry. Who has the files?”

“State Department. They won’t talk to me, after the whole Pierce thing,” Steve said.

Peggy shrugged. “You kill one Secretary to the World Security Council, and everyone takes it personally.”

“I guess.”

“Go higher,” Peggy said. “Go to the top. Ask the President to get you the files. You’re Captain America, so put on your dress uniform, go scare some politicians.”

“Hadn’t thought of that,” Steve admitted. “Good idea.”

“Why do you need to know about an ‘80s Russian operative?” Peggy asked.

“The US traded assets with the Soviets, some time in the mid-80s I think. He was part of the deal. I want to know why the US wanted him and why the Soviets got rid of him. I want to know who he was.”

“Let me think,” Peggy said, and her face dropped, her smile gone, her eyes serious. “Steve? Has no one told you about that asset exchange?” She blinked. “Oh no, there’s no one left alive who knows.”

“Apart from you?” Steve asked, and Peggy nodded.

“I’ve forgotten so much,” Peggy said. “I can’t remember the code name. We did the deal for him, traded the Grigors, and that scientist whose bombs never worked, and a double agent we’d caught, stupid prat. Traded them all. I would have given them Zola too if I’d had to, but he was already dead.”

“Why?” Steve asked.

“Oh love. We couldn’t bring you home, Howard and I knew that, but the least we could do was get him home safely.”

Steve lifted Peggy’s hand and kissed the back of it. “Who, dearest? Who did you bring home?”

“Bucky, of course,” Peggy said. “Bucky Barnes. His mind was gone, poor darling, when we got him back, but at least he was safe with us.”

Steve put Peggy’s hand down and shoved his hands between his knees to hide the way his hands were shaking.

“Bucky?” Steve asked, and his voice cracked on the thickness in his throat.

“Your Bucky,” Peggy said. “They’d given him a metal arm, of all things. Driven him half-wild, taken all his memories. Howard cried, afterward, when it was just the two of us in his office.”

Peggy reached out with her worn hand and wiped Steve’s cheeks. “Making the trade for Bucky was the best thing Howard and I ever did.”

“Thank you,” Steve said.

Peggy wiped her own face, where tears had trickled down her cheeks. “I don’t cry anymore,” she said. “Not now I’m old and have forgotten everything. But I still cry for you, darling.”

Steve kissed Peggy’s cheek. “You’re still my girl.”

Peggy’s gaze was watery and weary, and Steve knew she was starting to slip away into confusion again.

“Howard took him somewhere safe. I don’t know where he is now. I’m sorry,” Peggy said. “Maybe Howard’s boy would know? You have to find Bucky.”

“I already know where Bucky is,” Steve said. “He’s living on a farm in Vermont.”

“Oh,” Peggy said. “Oh! How do you know this?”

“Because I’m staying there too, darling girl.”

“Then you’d better go to him,” Peggy said. “Stop dawdling here.”

“I will,” Steve said. “I’ll come and see you again when it’s my Tuesday.”

Peggy had leaned back against her pillows tiredly. “Tell him this time,” she said. “Promise me?”

“Tell him what?” Steve asked.

Peggy didn’t answer him, and her focus had slipped, her eyes cloudy when Steve leaned forward to kiss her forehead goodbye.

“Promise,” Steve whispered against her skin.

 

Steve rode back to the farm directly from seeing Peggy. He had thought briefly of diverting through New York and shouting at Tony, but abandoned that idea. Tony would either be blissfully untouched by Steve’s anger or would explode right back at him, and neither option would make Steve feel any less shit.

Better to ride through the night, heading for the only place he could be. On the farm with Bucky.

He killed his bike ignition and rolled down the access lane in silence, pushing his bike the last stretch to the farmhouse. He didn’t want to wake James. He wasn’t ready to talk about what he’d learned.

The farmhouse was silent, making the creaking floorboards loud under Steve’s feet. He put away the food he’d picked up on the way. He hung his jacket up beside the door, brushed his teeth at the kitchen sink, then crept up the stairs.

He could hear slow, deep breaths upstairs. Sleeping breaths.

Through the open bedroom door, in the light of the late moon, James was sprawled across Steve’s bed. The slanted moonlight turned his back into a landscape of valleys and curves, and his metal arm shone.

This was all Steve had ever wanted. To come home and find Bucky waiting for him, peaceful and asleep. This was everything he needed.

James stirred. “You’re back. Come to bed?” he asked sleepily.

“Yes,” Steve said. “Right now.”

He left his clothes on the bedroom floor and slid under the covers naked beside James.

“Mmm,” James said approvingly, rolling onto his side and draping an arm over Steve.

James settled back into slow breaths, asleep again, and Steve lay as still as he could. Grief and happiness were seeping into the cracks forming in his defenses, and he breathed deeply and let them in, let them roll in like waves, leaking out of him as silent tears of joy and distress.

The light through the open windows changed slowly, from moonlight to teal first light to mellow lavender dawn. James stirred and then woke. He moved closer to Steve, the full length of his body pressed against Steve’s.

“Morning,” James said. “Time for me to get up.”

His dick was hard, pushing firmly against Steve’s thigh. “You could stay,” Steve suggested.

James groaned. “Later. Cows aren’t gonna milk themselves.”

Steve lay in bed and watched James drag on the jeans he’d left draped over the foot of the bed then pick up his undershirt and flannel shirt from the chair in the corner.

“You enjoying this?” James asked, grinning. “I get dressed most days, if you wanna watch.”

“Yeah, I’m enjoying,” Steve said. Steve lay in bed for a moment after James left the room, breathing in the thuds of James on the stairs.

Bucky got to have this every day: the waking from a good night’s sleep; the putting on of worn-soft clothes in dawn light to the rising chorus of birdsong… the relief and gratitude threatened to choke Steve again.

He followed James down the stairs a few minutes later.

James had lit the kerosene lamp and was standing in front of the kitchen sink, bare-chested and washing himself quickly in the cold water. The hissing sound he made as he splashed cold water under his arms hadn’t changed from the ‘40s. Steve made himself walk away rather than shout the truth from the top of his lungs. Besides, cows needed milking, and bladders needed attending to, and well...was James his Bucky?.

When Steve returned, James was crouched in front of the woodstove, lighting the fire. Steve went back out to the porch and picked up an armful of wood.

Steve washed up at the sink quickly too. Something about repeating the steps, the splashing of cold water, the drying with a small rough towel, put everything right after the trip to see Peggy.

“Fire’s going,” James said, standing up while Steve was brushing his teeth. “Be a while until the kettle boils for tea. How ‘bout you tell me what’s on your mind?”

Steve choked a little on his toothpaste, then spat and rinsed his toothbrush. “Yes, okay.” He sat at the table in the pool of light from the lamp, though soon the light outside would be bright enough not to need it.

“Well?” James asked, sitting down at the table and dragging his chair closer, the legs scraping on the wooden floor.

“Peggy was having a good day,” Steve said. “She remembered the asset exchange. Your exchange. She and Howard arranged it to get you to the US.”

“Did she say why?” James asked.

“She said it was because they both knew they would never be able to bring me home, so the least they could do was get you back,” Steve said. “Peggy said that you’re James Barnes, the first one.”

James stared at Steve. “What? Howard’s friend?”

“Mine too. They traded you back from the Soviets because you are Bucky Barnes,” Steve said. Saying the words out loud didn’t make them any easier to deal with. “You remembered nothing when they got you, so Howard looked after you.”

“Oh,” James said.

Steve took hold of James’ hands where they rested on the table.

“This is still only one old lady’s ramblings,” James said. “Not conclusive.”

“I’ve requested a five minute appointment with the President,” Steve said. “In which I’ll ask him to release your files to me.”

James looked more skeptical about that than he had about Peggy’s memory. “You know the President? You can’t know the President.”

“Captain America knows the President,” Steve said. “I’m just the meat in the costume that makes it all look real. Except that I’ll have to wear my dress uniform, not my tac suit, this time.”

James leaned back in his chair, dragging his hands away from Steve’s. “This is bullshit. You can’t ask the President to release top secret files about a Soviet asset exchange from thirty years ago.”

“I can ask,” Steve said. “Might not work. If it doesn’t, I’ll have to get Tony to help. He saved President Ellis’ life a while ago and has more traction than I do.”

“Tony? Annoying, unable to be silent, can’t leave anything alone Stark?” James asked.

“Sure,” Steve said. “Big time superhero, as well as all of those other things.”

“Like you?” James asked, and Steve laughed, more than a little bitterly.

“Not like me at all. I’m a soldier. Fighting has been my job. Same as most of the rest of my team. Tony knows better than us, but still does it anyway. Pepper says it’s compensating for all of the other stuff he stopped doing when she became part of his life, like people who go through endless packets of chewing gum when they stop smoking.”

“What did your James do?” James asked. “Was he a soldier too?”

“Give me a moment,” Steve said, and he stood up and went into the parlor, where he’d stacked his sketchbooks, pencils and charcoals.

He sat down again and thumbed through one of the sketchbooks, the one he thought of as his memory pictures. “This is Bucky,” Steve said, turning the sketchbook around so James could see the drawing. “When he was about sixteen. He worked on the docks, in the warehouses. He liked to get dressed up all slick on Saturday nights, lie about his age, and go drinking and dancing.”

James touched a careful fingertip to the corner of the page. “What else?”

Steve turned the pages, found a sketch of Bucky with the Howling Commandos, the team sprawled around a fire with bedrolls beside them, in a forest in Italy.

“This was when Bucky was a soldier, in World War Two. He was a crack shot, spent a lot of time up trees or on cliffs, providing suppressing fire for us. He didn’t want to be there, but he turned down an honorable discharge to stay because we needed him. I needed him.”

James stared at the sketch. “Do you know how he lost his arm?”

Steve shook his head. “No. I thought he died in Austria. The only explanation I have is that something had been done to him when he had been held captive by Hydra at Azzano.”

James looked up from the sketch to Steve’s face. “Hydra?”

“Hydra held Bucky captive for some time during the war. I think they experimented on him,” Steve said. “Do you know anything about Hydra or what was done to you?”

James stared out the kitchen window at the early morning world. They didn't really need the kerosene light, but the faint smell made Steve feel right inside.

“James?” Steve asked, as time passed and James kept staring.

“This stops,” James said, gaze firmly on the cows grazing in the field beside the farmhouse. His face was bleak in profile. “This has to stop. I don’t want the President looking at any files, or anyone talking about me. I don’t like the word Hydra or to think about you being frozen.”

Steve closed the sketchbook, then slid his hand in his lap to hide how much it was shaking. He wanted to touch James, comfort him, but James’ shoulders were hunched and he sounded angry. Or hurt.

“I’ll cancel my request for a meeting with the President. Cancel everything,” Steve said. However much he needed to do this for Bucky, he wouldn’t fight James directly.

James turned to look at Steve. “I don’t know what I did before Howard brought me here, but I am certain it was terrible. It HAS to stay in the past.”

Steve watched James leave the farmhouse, down the creaking steps and across the dewy field to the barn.

Steve would head into town later, stop the processes he’d started. If James was Bucky, or more accurately, Bucky was James, then Steve needed to be there, on the farm.

If James needed time, Steve could give him that. If he ever needed answers, then Steve would be ready to get them for him.

 

Steve parked his bike outside the cabin. In the sudden quiet, he could hear the rhythmic thud-thud of James chopping wood, block splitter on log.

The wood pile was enormous, as tall as the cabin, and as wide, a chaotic jumble of felled trees and dead wood from the property. Steve had already discovered the satisfaction of smashing through the pile for half an hour or so, then stacking the chopped wood neatly in the lean-to firewood shed.

James was bare-chested, swinging the block splitter hard, with more force than even Steve could generate. Steve stopped, well out of range of flying debris.

Sweat streaked James’ back and stuck his hair to his neck. The muscles on his back bunched with each swing. The handle of the block splitter was smeared darker under his right hand.

Steve knew these moments, from pounding punching bags and running endless night-time laps of the Reflecting Pool in DC by himself. Some things could only be driven out.

“Hey,” Steve said, and James smashed the block splitter down into a log then looked up at him. “Got another splitter?”

James wiped sweat from his face with his right forearm and pointed at the lean-to with his left hand.

Steve pulled off his jacket and shirt and hung them on the edge of the lean-to, and retrieved the other block splitter. James waited while Steve found a solid round of wood to use as a base and got a block of wood in place, then went back to swinging his own splitter.

They swung and chopped and split wood, working fast and hard, until Steve was sweating as well. It felt good to do something with the tension in his gut, turn it into action. Building a mound of split wood was more useful than ruining punching bags or running shoes too.

James rested his splitter on his block and waited for Steve to finish the log he was working through.

“I was okay, before you came here,” James said, wiping his right hand on his shirt and smearing blood. He sounded like Steve had kicked him in the gut. “I didn’t have to think about what might have happened before or what this arm might mean.”

James held his left hand out to Steve, his palm shining in the afternoon sunlight slanting through the trees, then he dropped it down.

Steve nodded. “I’m sorry.” He was sorry. He felt shame and guilt, now, for having hurt James. “I will go.”

“I don’t want you to leave,” James said. “But you can’t keep dragging up a past that isn’t mine.”

“Okay,” Steve said. “I won’t.”

James picked up the log splitter and shouldered it. “I have a farm to run. If you want to stay a while, I could do with a hand.”

“I want to stay,” Steve said. He did want to. Through the tangle of his own thoughts and the mess of his feelings, he wanted desperately to stay.

“I’m going to move the cows and feed the pigs,” James said, carrying his splitter to the lean-to and propping it against the wall.

Steve waited until James had gone, boots crunching over gravel. “Guess I’ll stack some wood,” Steve said to himself. They’d chopped plenty, between them.

 

 

Staying and helping on the farm meant a lot of kneeling in the garden.

One bucket for rocks, another for beets, and a wheelbarrow for weeds.

“Rocks?” Steve asked James, who was two rows away in the garden, loosening soil with the biggest garden fork Steve had ever seen.

“Rocks,” James said. “I pull several barrows of rocks out each time I do this, but there’s always more. I think they come up from below.”

Steve was dubious about the explanation, but there was no denying that every beet he pulled revealed more rocks in the loam.

More beets in the bucket, staining Steve’s hands red and gold through the dirt, while the sun bit into the skin on the back of his neck.

James hummed, working his way down his row loosening the soil, and Steve shuffled along, pulling overwintered beets.

The creak of a distant gate caught Steve’s attention. When he looked up the hill at the track to the farmhouse, he could see a small person on a bike pedaling toward them, creating puffs of dust with their tires.

James shrugged on the shirt that had been draped over a fence post and pulled a glove out of a pocket, waving at the child with his other hand.

“Neighbors,” James said to Steve, then he called out, “Hi, Emily!”

Emily slid past the barn in a spray of gravel and dropped the bike beside the gate to the vegetable garden where they were working.

“Hi, James!” Emily called, pushing the gate open and tumbling through. “Mom says Daisy is in season, so please can we borrow Bruce, and if you come over at lunchtime, you can stay.”

James leaned on his garden fork—a broad fork, he’d called it—and nodded. “Sounds good. Emily, this is my friend Steve. Steve, this is Emily.”

Steve waved at Emily, who stared at him suspiciously.

“I’ll bring Bruce over. Do you want to come along too, Steve?” James asked, turning toward Steve.

James looked… hopeful?

Steve nodded. “Yes.”

“Can you let your mom know Steve will be there for lunch too?” James said to Emily.

James sent Emily off with a cloth bag slung over the handlebars of the bike, containing, “Overwintered beets, so tell your mom they’ll be woody, some parsnips, and some cheese that’s gone rogue.”

Steve shuffled along and pulled up another handful of beets. “Bruce?”

“Bruce is the bull. He’s a registered Normande stud bull, with the kind of stupid name you’d expect for that, but Stark insisted his actual name was Bruce,” James said.

“Tony names the cows?” Steve asked, standing up and looking up the hill, to where the dairy flock were grazing in the field behind the farmhouse.

“The bulls. I name the cows,” James said. “Miss Potts complains, but Stark does it anyway.”

“Bruce is a friend,” Steve said. “I don’t think he knows Tony has named a bull after him.”

James paused, his weight leaning on the broad fork. “Is Clint a friend too?”

Steve nodded.

James scratched at his beard with grubby fingers. “We’re keeping the yearling Clint for breeding stock, so I hope the real Clint is healthy and fertile with good conformation too.”

“I don’t know. Have you sent any Steves off to slaughter?” Steve asked. “Out of curiosity.”

“No,” James said, grinning. “But Stark is planning on importing a rare Gloucester bull and naming him Rhodey. Is Rhodey a person?”

“Oh yes, Rhodey is a person.”

“Stark names the pigs too,” James said, going back to levering his broad fork and loosening soil.

“I don’t want to know,” Steve said.

 

Up close, Bruce the bull turned out to be huge, with a white coat with brown speckles and brown rings around his eyes. He looked mournfully at James, but didn’t resist when James slid a halter over his head and clipped a rope to it.

“You can walk him on a lead, like a dog?” Steve asked, as James started across the field to the gate, Bruce trailing resentfully behind.

“The metal arm is an asset,” James said. “None of the cattle sass me.”

Steve opened the gate for James and Bruce, then followed them through and closed it behind them.

Steve studied Bruce the bull’s slow and dignified progress up the farm laneway. “He does kind of look like the other Bruce,” Steve said. “I can see a resemblance.”

James and Bruce turned right at the end of the laneway, on to the sealed road. “It’s safe walking on the road,” James said. “Anyone who runs into us has to get through a ton of steak before they get to us.”

No cars passed them. The trees beside the road met overhead, casting dappled shade. Bruce’s hooves plodded heavily on the asphalt, and he only had to be reminded to keep walking every twenty or so steps.

“You lend Bruce out like this often?” Steve asked.

“Only to this family,” James said. “I’m not supposed to at all, because he’s in the stud book, but Emily’s family help me out too. Bruce likes it, I suspect. Going for a walk, getting to father some illegitimate children. This would be a highlight in anyone’s calendar.”

They moved slowly down the hill and around a small curve in the road, then James turned Bruce down a laneway, out of the shade of trees and onto a rocky track between fields.

Partway down the lane, Bruce tensed and lifted his head, then bellowed.

“Hang on,” James muttered, tightening his hold on the lead as Bruce surged forward.

Steve reached out and grabbed the halter on the other side, pulling back, and James caught his gaze over Bruce’s withers.

“Bruce can smell Daisy,” James said, as a child came running down the lane toward them, waving.

“Second gate,” the child called out, pointing, and an adult’s voice shouted, “Get out of the lane this instant, Eden!”

Eden went over a fence in the opposite direction from where they had been pointing.

“Get the gate open?” James said. “And I’ll slow Bruce down.”

Steve let go of Bruce’s halter and ran for the gate Eden had pointed at. It took a moment to unlatch and push open, then a determined Bruce strode past, James holding firmly onto his halter.

James pulled Bruce to a stop as Steve fastened the gate again, then Bruce was off, announcing his amorous intentions loudly to the waiting cows.

James walked over to Steve, Bruce’s lead over his shoulder. “We don’t want to hang around for this bit,” James said, hoisting himself over the gate.

“Is this a ‘takes two minutes and then we walk Bruce home’ thing?” Steve asked.

James laughed. “Well, maybe on the timing, but we’ll leave Bruce here for a few days. He can service some of the other cows as well, if they come into season. As long as he comes back before it’s time for him to do our cows in July.”

A cluster of buildings—sheds and barns—waited at the end of the lane, surrounded by oak trees in glorious sharp green new leaves. Cloth diapers flapped on lines strung between the barns, and children’s toys and bicycles spread across the ground. In the middle of the clearing, a pale-haired woman put her head out of the door of a large round tent and called out, “James! Good to see you. Can you give us a few minutes? Naomi is dealing with nap time, and I’ve got a kitchen crisis.”

James waved back. “We’ll go down to the orchard, come back in a few minutes, okay?”

“Thank you, darling,” the woman called, and the door swung shut again. Steve could hear children’s voices inside, clamoring, and a small child crying.

“C’mon,” James said, taking Steve’s elbow and guiding him under a washing line. “They have the most amazing orchard here.”

“That’s not a circus tent, is it?” Steve asked, following James behind the barn and past a pen of goats in a field. Chickens fluttered from the fence, and a goose hissed authoritatively from the long grass beside a shed.

“It’s a yurt,” James said, opening a gate in a rickety fence into a large vegetable garden, and closing it behind Steve. “It’s Hannah and Naomi’s home. Very comfortable inside.”

The garden, much like James’, was a mix of overwintered beets and turnips waiting to be pulled, and rows of freshly tilled beds full of seedlings.

James was winning the fight against weeds more decisively than Hannah and Naomi, in Steve’s opinion.

A gate at the other end of the garden let into the orchard. The air was heavy with the buzz of bees and the thick scent of pollen, and a duck burst out of the long grass beside the gate, squawking at them in outrage.

Rows of trees ran down the hill. The branches were pale green with new leaves and pale pink and white blossoms dusted every branch and sprinkled the grass.

Steve stopped, overcome by the overwhelming certainty of new life, of spring.

“This is…” Beautiful Steve tried to say, but he couldn’t form the word.

James looked back at him and held out his hand. “Come see.”

They stopped under the boughs of a gnarled fruit tree, where the sweet, heady pollen was dense in the air, sticking to James’ beard and shirt.

“This is a toka plum,” James said. “The bees are from hives in the orchard.”

Steve had never imagined that such a place existed in the world, that so much life could thrive in one place.

A bee covered in golden pollen landed in James’ beard, and James removed it carefully with a gloved finger, sending it on its way.

“James,” Steve said, and James leaned forward and kissed Steve, his lips tender, his beard brushing against Steve’s chin.

Steve exhaled and wrapped his arms around James, and James pushed him back against the plum tree. He tasted sweet, from jam in tea, and his mouth coaxed Steve’s into a deeper kiss.

James paused to breathe, sliding his right, ungloved hand between their bodies to rub at the front of Steve’s jeans. “We can’t,” Steve said. “Not here.”

“Why?” asked James, against Steve’s neck.

“There’s a small person watching us,” Steve said.

James chuckled, then dragged his teeth lightly over the skin of Steve’s neck, making Steve grit his teeth to stay silent.

“Naomi and Hannah are married,” James said. “Guarantee the kids know what a little same gender making out looks like.”

Steve’s head thudded against the branch behind him and James gave his dick a squeeze.

In the distance a chime sounded, metal on metal, and a child’s voice called out, “Lunch!”

“Now we stop, for food,” James said.

When Steve opened his eyes, James had petals, twigs and pollen in his hair and beard, and Steve couldn’t help grinning.

James grinned back at him.

“Darlin’,” James said, and it wasn’t the same Brooklyn-drawl Steve remembered, but it was close enough that Steve wanted to hear it over and over again.

Steve followed James back through the orchard and garden, to the barns, sheds and ridiculous tent.

The light-haired woman from earlier was carrying bowls and plates out of the tent to a large table surrounded by benches under an oak tree. James took a platter from her hands, kissed her cheek, and said, “Hi Hannah, this is my friend Steve. Steve, this is Hannah.”

Steve took in her long braid of light colored hair, smudged glasses and T-shirt generously stained in something sticky.

“Recovered from the kitchen issue?” Steve asked, holding out his arm, and shaking Hannah’s hand.

“Still have to wash the floor,” Hannah said, waving Steve and James over to sit at the table. “Don’t drop jars of sweet pickles, that’s my advice.”

Small children swarmed around Steve, too fast for him to keep track of, despite James naming them.

“This is Eden,” James said, as the tallest child put a jug and cups on the table, where James and Steve were sitting on a bench.

“Hi Steve,” Eden said, before disappearing inside again.

“Emily, you met earlier,” James said. Emily waved while running past the table.

“Coulter,” James said, pointing out a smaller child who hurtled past on a bike.

A red-haired woman came out of the tent, a wriggly toddler on her hip.

“Hi, I’m Naomi,” she said, holding out the toddler to James, who calmly took the child and settled the baby on his lap. “You must be Steve.”

“This is Rebecca,” James said. “The baby of the family.”

Rebecca squealed and grabbed at James’ beard in delight.

Steve watched James and the baby with astonished disbelief.

“Hands everyone,” Hannah said, handing out wet cloths.

Steve took one, wiped his own hands, then turned to James, who was holding baby Rebecca’s hands out towards Steve.

He could do this. If James, with his metal arm and hand, could hold Rebecca’s hands so gently and carefully, then Steve could wipe them clean.

“Thanks,” James said, and Rebecca drummed her feet against Steve.

“Quiet everyone,” Naomi said.

Steve expected Grace, perhaps, because surely some people still said Grace before eating? Instead Naomi took a slice of bread from the platter of dense dark bread on the table, broke a piece off, and passed the rest of the slice to her right, to Eden. The slice went around the table, each person taking a piece, until the crust was passed back to Naomi.

When Naomi lifted her piece to her mouth and began to chew, everyone else followed, so Steve did as well. James shared his piece with Rebecca, who gummed at the bread and promptly drooled mess down her clothes.

A child kicked at a table leg repeatedly, but no one said anything until Naomi said, “Thank you, everyone. Let’s eat. Jump in fast Steve, before small people demolish everything.”

The plates held potato salad, pickles presumably salvaged from the kitchen disaster, chunks of cooked chicken, a slab of James’ rogue cheese, and a random collection of leftover cooked vegetables.

Steve took more of the bread, a wedge of chicken, a pile of cooked carrots and beets, and some potato salad. James added cheese to Steve’s plate when Hannah removed the plate of cheese from Eden’s monopoly and put it within James’ reach.

Rebecca ate bits from James’ plate without James even seeming to notice, and what wasn’t eaten was thrown on the ground.

Steve was fascinated by the ease with which James juggled the child and his food, moving her back and forth between his knees, without stopping talking with Hannah and Naomi about the weather and the soil, and with the children about a tree house they were building.

All of the food was like the bread, firm textured, intensely flavoured and robust. Every mouthful was sharp or sweet or coarse, and Steve actually felt like he was eating properly, rather than just filling his body with fuel.

This was old food, not the stuff that the SHIELD cafeteria served, or that could be bought premade from a supermarket. Steve watched James stack a piece of bread with ripe cheese, cooked beets and sweet pickles, and thought that maybe James felt the same way too.

At one point, James handed Rebecca to Steve absent-mindedly, so he could pour himself more juice from the jug on the table.

Steve took the child cautiously, his hands completely enclosing her rib cage, and settled her on his knee. She burbled happily and pulled a piece of beet off his plate to mash into her hair.

Okay. He’d fought alien slime monsters. He was friends with an actual god. He’d terrifyingly pulled Natasha out of the Potomac when the helicarriers went down and done CPR on her. He was totally up to the task of holding an infant and not freaking out.

Rebecca tossed the chicken bones from Steve’s plate on the ground. Nothing happened. She shoved her fist into her mouth and sucked noisily. No one said anything. This worked. This actually worked.

Rebecca’s weight slumped against Steve’s abdomen as she relaxed against him, and his leg was suspiciously damp and warm underneath her. He could definitely do this.

“Are you just visiting James?” Hannah asked. “Or do you know the Starks as well?”

“I’ve known the Stark family forever,” Steve said.

“You know Tony Stark?” Naomi asked. “Like, socially?”

“I worked for Howard Stark,” Steve said. “And then with Tony. All the Stark family have been friends.”

“You don’t look like a weapons manufacturer or a green energy entrepreneur,” Naomi said.

“Security,” Steve said. “Not involved in any of the businesses.”

“Is it boring? A lot of standing around in a fancy suit, hoping nothing happens?” Hannah asked.

“That is exactly what it's like,” Steve said. “With terrifying moments of panic when stuff does happen. Then it’s over, and we all go home.”

Hannah nodded. “Must be good to be on the farm, away from that then,” she said.

Steve patted Rebecca’s back as gently as he could and smiled neutrally, then Hannah turned to James with a question about last frost dates and seed germination.

 

 

The walk back to the farm was quiet without a bull to coax and prod along. The trees rustled in a rising breeze and the air smelled like rain was coming. Birds called and insects hummed, and Steve thought maybe he could hear frogs too.

So much life was welling up around him, on the farms and in the woods. It felt like his own body was unfolding inside in some way he couldn’t identify, as though he was becoming bigger and filling out his skin.

Hope. Hope was rising within him. He felt like he had as a child in church with his mom, looking up at the stained-glass saints, listening to the Missa Cantata, when God had been right there in the church with them.

Steve hadn’t felt God, or hope, for a long time.

His thoughts drifted back to the lunch, sitting with a sleepy baby on his lap, listening to James, Hannah and Naomi talk about cows and milking, while the older children ate, talked and played at and around the table.

Hannah with her light hair. Naomi with her red curls. The dark-haired children. Baby Rebecca.

Steve spoke. “One night, we were somewhere in occupied France, waiting on an airdrop. It was a cold night, spitting icy rain, and we couldn’t have a fire or any light. Just Bucky and myself in a foxhole, trying to stay awake,” he said.

Beside him, on the road, James nodded.

“Late in the night, Bucky started talking, whispering, about wanting to go home from the war, wanting to live somewhere quiet, maybe have a family one day,” Steve said. “A little place, he said, with a bit of garden and maybe a dog, if he could ever find a girl that would put up with someone like him.

“At the time, I didn’t know what he meant because he always had lots of girls, but he was trying to tell me…”

Bucky had cried that night in the foxhole, and Steve had held him in the dark and rain, while they waited for an air drop that never arrived.

Bucky never talked about going home or mentioned that night again.

“He got to come home from the war and have everything he wanted,” Steve said.

James’ eyes were old when he looked at Steve.

“What about you?” James asked. “When do you come home from the war too?”

Steve stopped suddenly. James walked on for a moment before pausing and looking back at him.

“You’re on leave?” James asked, and Steve nodded. “When’s your seven years up? Or however long you signed up for?”

“I didn’t… I’m not…” Steve said, not knowing how to complete the sentence. “The organization I worked for is gone.”

“So, you’re unemployed?”

“No,” Steve said, thinking of Tony and the Avengers. “I was going to…”

“Keep fighting?” James asked, coming back to where Steve was standing, and Steve nodded.

“What did you tell Bucky, that night in the foxhole?” James asked.

Steve thought back, to the smell of the wet ground, sweat and burned propellant. “I didn’t say anything,” Steve said. “I thought we would both die, maybe that night, and there was no point in dreaming about home.”

One of the children had threaded white clover flowers into James’ beard while they had drunk tea, and some of the tiny flowers were still nestled in among the grey and black curls.

“If you had told him, what would you have said?” James asked.

“That I was weary and wanted to rest. That I wanted to be with him and I didn’t care where.”

James nodded, slowly, like he’d already known that answer.

“Stay here,” James said. “With me.”

James’ hands were firm on Steve’s shoulders and kindness creased his face.

“I don’t know how to farm,” Steve said.

“Swords to plowshares and spears to pruning hooks,” James said. “You can learn, the same as I did.”

A motor whirred and plates clicked faintly when James let go of Steve’s shoulders. Steve remembered that James had an arm, a KGB arm, made for killing, that he now used to milk cows and hold babies.

They started walking again, James’ boots heavy on the road.

“Did you name Rebecca?” Steve asked, as James pushed open the front gate of the farm.

Down the lane, the farmhouse shimmered silver under the growing clouds. The air was warm and thick with coming rain.

The cows in the top field looked up at James hopefully as he closed the gate again.

“How did you know?” James asked.

The cabin was hidden by barns and the tree line. Steve thought about being there on a rainy afternoon, in James’ rumpled bed.

“Just a guess,” Steve said.

All those dark-haired children growing up with a beautiful orchard and so much room to run and play…

The first benedicting drops of rain spattered on them, heavy and warm.

“Can we go to bed?” Steve asked, and James grinned.

“Definitely.”

 

 

The Stark-branded pickup rumbled down the lane and stopped in front of the farmhouse.

“You expecting someone?” James asked, looking up from shoveling rotted manure into a wheelbarrow and reaching for the shirt hanging from a loose nail in the side of the barn.

“That’s Nat,” Steve said, putting down his shovel. “No need to cover up, she knows about your arm.”

James huffed and pulled on his shirt anyway.

Steve waved at Natasha as she climbed out of the cab of the pickup, and she waved back.

A minute later, she climbed the gate to the barnyard and dropped to the gravel, then walked around to where they were working on moving the rotted manure to the garden.

“Hello, Steve,” she said, presenting her cheek to him.

Steve kissed her cheek, figuring she could see how filthy he was and knew the risk she was taking.

“Natasha,” Steve said.

“You’ve got shit on your face, Steve,” Natasha said, and Steve rubbed his cheek against the sleeve of his shirt.

“Better?” Steve asked.

“I meant the whole fuzz thing,” Nat said, waving her fingers around her chin and cheeks. She turned to James. “And you must be James. I’m Natalia Romanova.” She held her hand out to James, who shook it with a very grubby hand.

Natasha didn’t flinch or wipe her hand on her jeans. Instead she smiled at James, then turned to Steve. “Either give me a shovel as well, or make me tea.”

“Steve can’t make tea,” James said. “Not satisfactorily. I’ll do it.”

Natasha flicked an eyebrow at Steve and followed the two of them over to the hand pump over the cow trough, where James was washing his hands. Steve pumped water and rinsed his hands off, then levered the pump so Natasha could rinse her hands too.

“A Stark pickup?” Steve asked Natasha, as they followed James to the cabin.

“When I got the address from Pepper, she said my Corvette wouldn’t make it down the lane, and gave me a loaner,” Nat said.

“But a Stark pickup?” Steve insisted.

Natasha dropped her voice. “This is a Stark property. I thought I’d be less likely to be RPGed if I turned up in a company car.”

“It’s a farm, Nat,” Steve said. Ahead of them, James toed off his filthy boots.

James opened the cabin door and said, “No RPGs here, unless you brought them. Rifle in this cabin. Shotgun in my pickup.” James propped the cabin door open and opened all the windows, then knelt in front of the stove to fan the remaining embers from the breakfast fire.

“This is cosy,” Natasha said, sitting at the table.

Steve perched on the edge of the bed, grateful it was still made from them getting up that morning. He couldn’t vouch for how the cabin smelled, but maybe the smoke from the wood stove would cover the way the smell of their skin and sweat mingled when they were in bed.

When Steve looked up again, Natasha was staring at him, and Steve could feel his cheeks warming.

James stood up and closed the front of the stove’s firebox, then pushed the kettle across the hob, over the heat, and put the teapot on the edge of the stove to warm.

“I’ll get something to eat,” James said.

He bent down and lifted the trapdoor to the cellar, and Natasha twitched, reaching for thigh holsters that weren’t there.

James blinked at her, and said “Cheese?”

“Nat,” Steve said. “Take it easy.”

James carried bottles of pickles, bowls, and a cloth-wrapped slab of cheese back up from the cellar and put them on the table.

Steve closed the cellar trap door and took the remains of the previous day’s loaf off the shelf and put it on the table as well, while James rinsed their two cups and one glass, ready for tea.

James set the table and sat opposite Natasha. “You work too hard,” James said to Natasha. “Like Steve. You don’t have to be a soldier all the time.”

Natasha blinked and looked from James to Steve. “The truth according to James,” Steve said. “Best served with cheese.”

James laughed, creasing his face. “All things are better with cheese,” James said, unwrapping the cloth from the cheese and passing a knife to Natasha, hilt first.

Natasha smiled too, some of the tension dropping out of the cabin, then took the knife and cut herself a chunk of cheese.

Steve handed Natasha a slab of bread and James unscrewed the lids from the jars of pickles.

“Beets, cucumber, apple, garlic,” James said, pointing at the jars. “Tvorog,” he said, lifting a cloth off a bowl of creamy cheese. “Cheddar,” he said, pointing at the round cheese with the heavy rind flecked with mold.

“Tvorog? Is that what this cream cheese is called?” Steve asked, spooning dollops on his bread.

Natasha took a bite of the bread and cheddar, and said, “This is amazing,” around her mouthful. “Is this the famous cheese Pepper serves at her dinner parties?”

James shrugged.

She swallowed. “Pickled apples? Homemade?”

“Yes,” James said.

“Mmm, tvorog,” Natasha said, scooping tvorog onto her bread as well.

Natasha skewered one of the small and almost translucent apple wedges with the knife . She made a contented noise at the taste of the apple, then bit into the cheese and bread again.

The kettle whistled on the stove, so James swung around on his chair and lifted the kettle off the heat with his left hand.

Natasha poured the strong tea from the teapot into her glass and Steve’s cup, and James topped up with hot water, then put the jam pot on the table, making Natasha’s face soften.

“Is this how James persuaded you to stay?” Natasha asked Steve. “With cheese and tea?”

Steve stirred his tea. “I saw him naked. James didn’t know.”

Natasha laughed, and James said, “You did? When?”

“In the stream,” Steve said to James. “And yes, then there was the cheese. I was helpless.”

“Steven Rogers,” Natasha said. “I would never have thought you were so easy.”

James leaned back in his chair, making it creak, and Steve grinned.

Natasha pulled a pickled garlic clove out of the jar and ate it, her face shining in delight. “I’ve not had proper homemade tvorog and pickles like this for so long,” she said. “I’m nostalgic for Russia now, James. Do you miss it? Miss home?”

James chewed cheese and bread contemplatively. “I don’t remember anything really,” he said. He looked at the table, encompassing the jars of pickles and the tea. “I do apparently have some lingering preferences.

“And there are moments too, in the winter, when I walk to the barn to milk and there’s a hard frost on the ground, when things seem righter than usual. The crackling sound of ice under my boots, the smell of the cows and the hay in the barn, the sting of the cold on my face. Makes me feel like running for miles then drinking hard.”

Natasha leaned forward slightly. “Yes? That sounds like one of the training camps in what was then Czechoslovakia. I spent a winter in a Czech camp too. The Soviets sent us there if they thought we were getting soft. I found it a welcome break from Moscow.”

“What did you do there?” James asked.

Natasha shrugged. “More long runs, less combat training. It was rather pleasant, stomping around in the snow and the frozen forests while being shouted at by an officer in the back of a vehicle.”

“I’ve had that training too, in America, not in Czechoslovakia,” Steve said. “It’s even better if they have a loud hailer and are farther away.”

Natasha nodded. “Don’t have to deal with the vehicle kicking up clods of snow then. Anyway, several months of running in the snow and drinking Becherovka was a holiday. Wouldn’t mind doing it again. Do you think Clint would go with me?”

James looked up from adding jam to his tea. “You know Clint?”

Natasha nodded. “Why?”

James nodded towards the door. They wrapped the cheese back up and stowed the rest of the spread to save it from the cat, and headed outside still carrying their tea and bread.

Steve followed James and Natasha across the barnyard, to where the yearlings were grazing in the field beside the farmhouse.

“That bull calf,” James said, gesturing at a cow. “The one with the scar on the shoulder. Does he look like Clint? Steve won’t tell me.”

Natasha leaned against the fence and chewed bread. “He kind of does. He’s a bit dopey looking, like he’s about to fall over, isn’t he?”

The yearling ambled around without tripping over, and Natasha laughed. “Look at his balls! He’s a keeper.”

James said, “That’s Clint. Stark named him, presumably after the other Clint.”

“There’s a resemblance,” Natasha said, gleefully taking out her phone to take a photo.

“There’s Bruce the bull too,” Steve said. “Tony has been naming farm animals after us.”

“Can I see Bruce the bull?” Natasha asked, looking around the field.

“He’s gone to a training camp to run in the snow,” James said. James handed his empty tea mug to Steve. “I’m going back to moving the manure pile.”

When he’d gone, Steve and Natasha took the mugs back to the cabin, where the cat was on the table, licking at the cheese knife.

“Better give me that shovel now,” Natasha said, tucking her shirt in more securely.

In the barn, Steve found Natasha a pair of gloves and a shovel. She pulled her hair back in a ponytail, hefted the shovel, and joined them in shifting the rotted manure pile.

 

Two hours later, Steve propped his shovel against the fence around the garden. “Are you staying in the farmhouse?” he asked Natasha.

“Oh, no,” she said, pulling off her borrowed gloves. “Pepper described the farmhouse, so I booked a room in the town. I want a hot shower, once a day, every day, unless I’m being paid for the inconvenience. I did bring us vodka and lobsters for dinner, though.”

James stopped raking manure over the garden bed. “Lobsters? I’ve not had lobster since Howard and Maria used to spend the summers here.”

“Carefully packed in ice in the truck,” Natasha said. “Courtesy of Pepper. I’ll cook them for dinner, if you two take care of the rest of the meal.”

“Hope beets and greens go with lobster,” James said. “Wrong time of year for much else.”

“Beets go with everything,” Natasha said, and Steve could almost hear his mother’s voice saying something similar about potatoes.

Steve set Natasha up in the cabin with a stack of firewood for the stove and then retrieved a faintly clattering box from Natasha’s pickup, before going to do his share of the evening chores. His time on the farm had already taught him that he did not need to know what Natasha did to live lobsters to turn them into a meal.

James was feeding the pigs, so Steve hefted a bucket of feed and a bucket of water to the layers and the meat birds. James found Steve in the barn, putting the buckets back.

“Why is Natasha here? Really?” James asked, putting the pig buckets back as well.

“She’s a good friend of mine,” Steve said. “And she wanted to make sure I wasn’t messing up by getting involved with you.”

James picked at the dirt on the muffler of the tractor. “Are you?”

“Am I what?” Steve asked.

“Messing up,” James said.

Steve stepped inside James’ space, pushing him back against the tractor. “I am. Thoroughly,” Steve said, rubbing at a smear of dirt on James’ forehead.

Natasha’s footsteps crunched on the gravel outside the barn, then she appeared, a dark shape backlit by the afternoon sun.

“Hey,” Natasha said, and Steve let go of James. “Any chance that all of the cows here mean there’s butter and cream? Some garlic or shallots would be good too.”

“I’ll show you,” Steve said, leaving James leaning against the tractor.

In the cabin, Steve lifted the trapdoor to the root cellar and dropped down into the cool darkness. Natasha followed him down the ladder with the flashlight.

“Cream,” Steve said, taking a quart of that morning’s milk, cream sitting thick and pale gold on top of the milk, and reaching up to put the quart on the floor of the cabin. “And butter.” He added a ball of butter wrapped in paper.

Natasha shone her flashlight around the cellar, taking in the jars of pickles, the boxes of root vegetables packed in dirt, the shelves of cloth-wrapped cheeses, the shelves of empty preserving jars waiting for the summer’s harvest.

“Huh,” Natasha said. “There really aren’t racks of AK-47s in here.”

“The most dangerous thing down here is the year-old cheddar,” Steve said, pointing at the top shelf of cheeses, all balls of blue furry fungal growth.

“That’s moldy,” Natasha said.

“I’ve learned that all cheese is inherently off,” Steve said. “Why are you so insistent James has an armory?”

“Because he’s just like me, and I have,” Natasha said.

Steve thought back to James sitting with baby Rebecca on his lap in the spring sunshine while he earnestly discussed mechanical cream separators with Hannah and Naomi. “He’s different.”

“You’re in love with him,” Natasha said. She didn’t sound accusatory, or even teasing. Just factual, like at a briefing.

“I don’t know what that means,” Steve said. He rested his hand on the rough-hewn wood of the ladder, cool and damp to touch. “But I’m home, and I’ve not been home since ’41.”

Natasha switched off her flashlight, leaving them standing in the cool cellar in half-light coming down from the cabin, before Steve followed her up the ladder.

“I’m happy for you,” Natasha said, as Steve settled the hatch door back into place. “You’ve been alone for a long time.”

“You don’t approve of him, though, do you?” Steve said.

“Us KGB-trained killers are dangerous,” Natasha said.

“I’m not a safe person to be around myself,” Steve said, sitting down at the table to watch Natasha cook.

Natasha didn’t look up from dropping butter into a skillet, but she didn’t disagree with Steve either.

“Do you think that being with James feels good to me the same way long distance training in the snow feels good—because everything else has been utterly shit?” Steve asked.

Natasha took the head of garlic Steve handed her and rubbed the papery cover off the outside, then pulled some cloves loose. She freed a knife from a sheath on her belt and deftly sliced the garlic into the butter in the skillet.

“I don’t know, Steve.”

“I would swap much more difficult things than a life of working on a farm to be with James,” Steve said. “I’m going to give up the shield for this, lay down my arms.”

“Who is he that you would do this for him?” Natasha asked, turning to the table to take the cover off the quart jar of milk, but Steve just shook his head.

“Who am I that I would hesitate?” Steve asked in turn.

Natasha spooned cream off the top of the milk and into a bowl. “I always thought you’d settle down with some safe girl,” she said. “Compromise. Trade yourself for companionship and the chance for a family. Here you are with the most dangerous man in the world, apart from possibly Bruce. This is not the kind of compromise I thought you’d make.”

Steve watched Natasha pour vodka from a bottle into the pan, making it hiss, then stir the mix quickly.

“If it was going to be a girl, it would have been one of the Star Spangled Dancers,” Steve said. “Not sure any of them counted as ‘safe’.”

Natasha turned around from the stove, vodka bottle in her hand, and took a quick pull from the bottle. “Did you fuck them?” Natasha asked.

Steve crossed his arms.

“So, I should have been trying to get you to date showgirls,” Natasha said, putting the vodka down on the table and turning back to the stove. “Or farmers with big beards. I was led astray by the whole Peggy Carter thing.”

“Peggy Carter was not safe,” Steve said. “Peggy Carter was a lethal operative and brutal enough to be Director of SHIELD. She was also never really my girl.”

Natasha stirred the pan, the contents of which smelled amazingly good. “Really? That was all propaganda? What was the truth?”

“Mostly that she and Howard felt deeply responsible for so much,” Steve said. “Like for not getting Bucky or me home from the war.”

“I’ve tried looking out for you in combat, Steve,” Natasha said. “It’s just not possible. And that’s in combat that is localized and of limited duration. How could Howard and Peggy hope to get someone as reckless as you through a war?”

“I made it most of the way,” Steve said, as Natasha moved the pan of garlic mix to the side of the stove, away from the heat.

Natasha sat down at the table with Steve and pulled a cooked lobster out of one of James’ cheese-making vats.

“Know how to take the shell off a lobster?” Natasha asked, and Steve shook his head.

Natasha flicked a small knife open and began to dismantle the lobster, piling the pale, cooked meat on a plate and tossing the shell and bits back into the vat.

“You never talk about Bucky. Tell me about him,” Natasha said.

Steve froze, and Natasha said, “Well, that’s interesting. You usually blush at personal questions, but you went pale this time.”

Steve reached for the bottle of vodka and poured a slug into an abandoned tea mug on the table. “He died,” Steve said. “He died in 1944 in Austria because I couldn’t save him.”

The sound of Natasha cracking lobster legs was loud in the cabin.

“Enemy action?’ Natasha asked, and Steve nodded, then he took a gulp of tea dregs and vodka.

“War killed him, not you,” Natasha said, working her knife blade into a lobster claw. “Eat this, it’s the best part.”

Steve took the chunk of lobster flesh off the end of Natasha’s knife and ate it. After the remains of the bitter tea mixed with astringent vodka, the meat was sweet and soft, melting in his mouth.

“But—” Steve said, and Natasha waggled her knifepoint at him.

“And this is why you never went on a date,” Natasha said. “Not because you prefer showgirls or Russian men with beards, though I do understand about Russian men because sometimes I go back there, just so someone will fuck me adequately.”

James’ cat jumped in through the open window, meowing, and Natasha tossed a lobster leg on the floor for the cat without breaking eye contact with Steve.

“You were grieving,” Natasha said.

“Yes,” Steve said.

“And now you’re not,” Natasha said.

“Now I’m not,” Steve agreed.

They sat in silence in the cabin, apart from the cat crunching on a lobster leg and the slow crack of the fire in the stove.

James banged his boots outside the cabin door and then pushed the door open a moment later. He stood beside Steve in his socks and work clothes, a bucket of eggs in one hand and of beets in the other.

“Do we need wood for the fire?” James asked, setting the buckets down and standing in front of the sink.

“I’ll get it,” Steve said, standing up.

James smiled over his shoulder at Steve, working the kitchen sink pump one-handed. The sun-worn skin around his eyes crinkled.

Steve didn’t know how much was showing on his own face, and if Natasha was seeing anything like the truth shining through.

“Is it safe for cats to eat lobster?” Steve heard James ask Natasha, as Steve stepped outside the cabin to pull his own boots on.

“No,” Natasha said. “But only because then they will expect it every meal.”

The wood shed contained plenty of wood already split, but Steve picked up the block splitter anyway.

He carried an armful of split logs back in, past Natasha standing at the stove stirring a pan, and filled the wood box.

“James has gone to the farmhouse to get a third plate,” Natasha said.

Steve looked into the pan she was stirring, then the other pots on the stove. “Beets and something green?” Steve asked.

“Nettles and dandelions, I think,” Natasha said. “And beet leaves.”

Natasha poked at the pan of simmering lobster with a satisfied “humpf” and poured cream from a bowl onto the greens.

“I’ve decided I would stay for the food,” Natasha said, licking the spoon she was using to stir with.

“We don’t eat lobster all the time,” Steve said, dipping a finger into the lobster sauce and tasting. “That is good.”

“No, you eat yearling beef and fat chickens that break into the vegetable garden, according to James,” Natasha said. “I plan on making Pepper share the farm produce James sends her.”

James opened the cabin door and kicked off his boots, then handed the extra plate to Steve. “I could smell the garlic from the farmhouse,” James said, pushing past to wash his hands at the sink.

“As it should be,” Natasha said. “Tonight we feast, and tomorrow we reek.”

Steve and Natasha sat on chairs at the table and James perched on the edge of the bed, elbow to elbow in the cabin, and they ate. The cat wound around their feet, begging for scraps. Natasha kept the vodka flowing.

After they’d eaten, Steve pushed his chair back until it collided with the bookshelf behind it and stretched his legs out. He was full of good food, he’d had enough of Natasha’s vodka to feel mellow, and the evening was closing in outside, the birdsong shifting from the daytime chorus to the evening calls of the nighthawk.

James stood and cleared their plates into the sink, then lit the lamp that hung over the table. His cat had settled on Natasha’s lap.

In the lamp light, Natasha looked peaceful, maybe even happy.

James lifted down a pouch and a pipe from the top of his kitchen shelf, and Natasha stirred, making the cat squirm.

“Tobacco?” Natasha asked.

“Sativa,” James said. “Homegrown.”

“I’m ridiculously pleased you grow a crop on Tony’s farm,” Natasha said. “Please tell me he doesn’t know.”

“Needs a greenhouse and I don’t have one,” James said as he packed the pipe bowl. “I barter for it.”

James nudged Steve under the table with his sock-clad toes, so Steve’s suppositions about where the sativa came from and what James traded for it were presumably showing.

James handed the pipe to Natasha, along with the box of matches from the kitchen shelf. “Oh well,” Natasha said, taking the pipe. “I’m condemning myself to a night in the farmhouse, aren’t I?”

James topped up her mug of vodka. “You were probably already committed to it.”

Natasha took a long drag on the pipe and handed it to James, who passed it to Steve. Steve curled his hand around the bowl and sucked on the stem, and held the smoke in his lungs, while Natasha took a photo with her phone, with a mock scandalized expression.

Steve let his breath out. “What?” he said. “You think we didn’t smoke weed in Brooklyn in the ‘30s and ‘40s?”

“I’m reconsidering everything I thought I knew about you,” Natasha said, her voice rich with laughter.

James repacked the pipe, his smile wide.

 

Later, Steve walked Natasha up to the farm house through spitting rain. Frogs called out in the darkness and the wind whistled through the trees around the fields.

“I expect coffee tomorrow morning,” Natasha said, when Steve showed her upstairs to the room that he’d started off sleeping in. “And bacon.”

Steve set the lamp on the nightstand and hugged Natasha. “For you, the biggest, best breakfast this farm can provide.”

“Go back to your Russian,” Natasha said, pushing Steve towards the stairs.

Steve walked back to the cabin through the rain, and he didn’t feel cold at all.

In the cabin, James had filled one of the vats with water and put all the dishes in. He was standing at the kitchen sink with his shirt off, washing up, the golden light of the lamp glancing off his broad back and metallic arm.

Steve stood against the closed door and watched James for a moment, the splash of water and the rub of a towel, and pulled his own shirt off.

James turned around and took the toothbrush out of his mouth. “Natasha safely in the farm house?”

“Yes,” Steve said. “I want to do something more tonight.”

James spat and rinsed his mouth, then turned around and leaned back on the sink. The hair on his chest was darker, from where he’d washed himself, curling and damp, and Steve wanted to feel the curls spring against his mouth, lick the last of the day’s sweat from James’ skin.

“Yeah?” James said, low and interested. “What do you want to do?”

The cabin was so small that two steps around the table brought Steve to stand in front of James.

The cabin floor was gritty through Steve’s jeans when he dropped to his knees. He wound his fingers around James’ belt and pulled his face in close to the front of James’ jeans.

James smelled utterly real. Very faintly of soap, from washing his hands and face. More of wood smoke from the stove. And when Steve rubbed against James’ crotch, where his cock was clearly thickening behind the denim, he smelled of the rich, warm life that ran through all of him.

Steve shifted his knees, trying to find room in his own jeans for his cock. He wanted, needed, to shove the heel of a hand down into his own crotch, take the beginning of the ache off, but getting at James’ cock was more urgent

Steve’s fingers fumbled at James’ fly, catching on the button and not finding the zipper.

“Hey, darlin’,” James said, sliding his hands over Steve’s and stilling them. “How about you let me sit down first?”

Steve pushed his face hard against James’ hands and crotch, almost giddy with how much he needed to touch. To taste.

“Okay,” he managed.

James tipped Steve’s face up and smiled down at him. “Look at you,” James said gently. “Like I been dreamin’ you forever.”

The legs of the chair scraped across the floor, and James pushed his jeans down to his ankles and sat down. His cock pushed at the cotton of his boxers.

Steve put his hands on James’ knees, slid them up his thighs, over the thick cords of muscle, the coarse hair on James’ thighs catching on the new calluses on Steve’s palms.

James slid his hips forward on the chair. “Yeah?”

Steve hooked a finger under the edge of the leg of James’ boxers, lifted the cotton up, over the head of James’ cock.

“I want…” Steve said, but he didn’t have words to continue, to give shape to the longing inside, to how hungry he was to touch James, to know James.

The head of James’ cock slid further out from his foreskin, gleaming in the lamp light, and his cock twitched, thickening and lifting on his leg.

James slid his thumb into Steve’s mouth, soap and the clean taste of the soil, and he said, “No hurry.”

 

 

Steve nipped at the end of James’ thumb, feeling the faint grit of the garden under his nail, then leaned forward and licked the head of his cock. James made a low sound in his throat, his cock swelling more against Steve’s tongue.

Steve pushed James’ boxers up higher, freeing his cock, making it easier to suck.

The head was slippery and smooth in Steve’s mouth, the skin slid and moved under his hand, pushing the foreskin into his mouth and pulling back.

James was making sounds, humming and sighing, and his hand was gentle on the curve of Steve’s shoulder. “Like that,” James said. “Feels good.”

Steve opened his eyes and looked up at James, the weight of James’ cock resting heavy on his tongue. James groaned and a new taste slid across Steve’s tongue, bitter and sweet, like the tea they drank.

“Can you take more, sweetheart?” James asked, his fingers easing up into Steve’s hair. “Get some more of my dick in your mouth?”

Steve closed his eyes and leaned forward, saliva slipping down his chin and dripping on to James’ thigh. The head of James’ cock pushed against the roof of his mouth, making him swallow and James sigh. “Like that,” James said. “Do that again.”

Steve sucked and swallowed, his nose pushed into the damp folds of James’ boxers, fingers curled around James’ cock holding it steady. The dark, secret smell of James filled Steve’s senses, flushing him with heady life. He wanted this, wanted more, to be filled with tangy sweat and mossy, earthy life.

More bitterness in Steve’s mouth, and James said, “I’m gonna come, I’m gonna come, start swallowing darlin’.”

Steve swallowed, and James cried out, and Steve tried, he really tried, but he needed to moan and maybe sob, because this was perfect, so perfect, and he never wanted to be anywhere else except kneeling in front of James in that moment.

James lifted Steve up, onto the bed behind them and pulled Steve’s jeans down to his knees. “I got you,” James said. “Let me.

James’ mouth was on Steve’s cock in a moment, cool metal fingers cupping Steve’s balls. The slickness and pressure, the slide of calluses over sensitive skin, scattered Steve, leaving him gasping and fragmented.

James wriggled and kicked, then climbed up to lie on the bed beside Steve, his legs bare, skin warm where the cool air prickled against Steve’s skin. He kissed Steve, slow and tender.

“Did you like that?” James asked.

Steve touched James’ hair, where it had fallen out of its binder, then his beard. “That was amazing.”

“Good,” James said, grinning. “Hate to think that was the only time we got to do that. Maybe next time, we take our clothes off?”

Steve looked down his body, to where his jeans and underwear were bunched around his legs, and grinned too.

 

 

The next morning, Natasha wandered into the barn as they were nearly done with the milking. Her clothes were rumpled and her hair disheveled.

“I’ll finish up,” James said. “You go rescue.”

Steve stood up from the cow he was milking and patted James’ shoulder.

“Nat,” Steve said, and Natasha blinked at Steve. “Coffee and bacon?”

“Please,” Natasha said, threading her arm through his. “What happened last night? Did I try and outdrink you?”

“You brought a large bottle of vodka with you,” Steve said. “These things should be predictable.”

Natasha sat at the table while Steve filled his new coffee dripper and set it on the stove, over the heat.

“I woke in the night,” Natasha said.

“Thirsty?” Steve asked sympathetically, and Natasha nodded.

“Standing in that kitchen in the darkness, drinking water, and thinking about you and James,” Natasha said.

Steve dropped the bacon James had left ready for Natasha’s breakfast into a pan and added a chunk of butter.

“Oh?” Steve said, hoping he sounded casual, rather than burning with curiosity.

“Mostly about you,” she said, as the bacon began to sizzle.

“What about me?” Steve asked.

“My head knows you’re dangerous,” Natasha said. “You’re a soldier. I’ve seen you do terrible things.”

Steve shrugged.

“But my gut knows you’re honorable. You’re kind to kittens and old ladies. I think you probably even believe in love.”

The coffee dripper hissed and bubbled, and Steve flipped the bacon strips over. “Okay?”

“I accept that your reading of James is accurate,” Natasha said. “Or at least, accurate enough. My head thinks he’s a dangerous assassin, but my gut is being persuaded otherwise.”

Steve sat down on the other chair. “Thank you.”

“I hope you’re happy here, with all the good food and fucking, with your ruthless KGB assassin,” Natasha said. “I’m reconsidering my own position on such offers.”

“Has someone made you an offer?” Steve asked, because Natasha’s eyes were guarded, even beyond a hangover and her flippant tone.

“Of course not,” Natasha said. “That would be ridiculous.”

Steve pulled the coffee dripper off the heat and poured her a mug.

“No sugar?” Natasha asked. Steve shook his head, so she spooned blackberry jam into her coffee and stirred it in.

They sat in silence while Natasha sipped her coffee and Steve flipped the bacon again.

Steve cracked several eggs into the pooled butter and bacon fat and swished the pan around to spread the fat over the eggs. When the whites had stopped wriggling, he lifted the strips of bacon and the eggs out of the sizzling fat and put them on a plate, and handed the plate to Natasha. “Pickles?”

Natasha took the plate. “So, yes, I turned down an offer.”

Steve moved jars of pickles from the shelf behind him to the table and undid the lids so Natasha could dig out beets and apples to go with her bacon and eggs.

“I didn’t think I could deal with all the rescue animals and the shitty housing,” Natasha said. “This bacon is amazing.”

“And the non-Russian sex?” Steve suggested, and Natasha grimaced.

“That too. Anyway, I’m now thinking that lots of rescue animals and a lifetime of substandard housing might be a reasonable trade-off for kindness,” Natasha said, before diving back into her breakfast.

Steve watched her eat. “Do you think a couple of the issues might be negotiable, if you went back with a counter offer?”

Natasha looked up, chewing her mouthful of bacon. “Huh?”

Steve topped up Natasha’s coffee. And people thought Natasha had impeccable manners? They hadn’t seen her with a hangover.

“Somewhere decent to live. Acceptably Russian levels of personal attention,” Steve suggested. “A motivated person could achieve both of those. A kind person.”

Natasha waved her fork, with a chunk of pickled beet on it, at Steve. “See? You’re sentimental.”

“Not arguing with any beet-wielding Russians,” Steve said.

 

 

Natasha drove off after breakfast, heading to the town, for a hot shower and more sleep before driving back to New York.

James hefted his broad fork. “Are all of your friends like Natasha?” James asked.

“Yes. Or like Tony,” Steve said.

James nodded. “Good to know in advance.”

“Are your friends all like Naomi and Hannah?” Steve asked.

James shrugged. “Yeah, sure.”

Steve nodded, thinking about Natasha’s ferocity, and how she deserved a chance to to feel something other than fear and rage sometimes.

 

Later, a misting rain settled over the morning, making the damp soil and muck stick to Steve’s boots as he moved down the rows of manured garden beds, raking and turning.

Two rows ahead, James was spreading rock dust and lime across the manure, ready for Steve to mix in. At the end of a row, James looked up at Steve, rain darkening his hair and slicking his skin.

“Natasha thinks you’re staying,” James said. “Are you?”

Steve leaned on the spade he’d been breaking manure clods with. “I will If you’ll have me?”

Warm spring rain ran down the neck of the shirt Steve had borrowed from James and at his feet an earthworm wriggled back into the rich, dark loam Steve was working.

James’ smile was slow and affectionate, and he tossed another handful of dust and grit onto the bed.

“Stay,” James said.

The moment hung between them, while the chickens chattered in the distance and the trees at the edge of the fields dripped with rain.

“Then I will,” Steve said.

James looked around the garden. “I’ll need to break ground on some new beds then. For the extra growing space.”

When Steve got to the end of the row and turned around to move up the next bed, James was watching him.

“You’re worrying ‘bout something,” James said.

Steve had been turning over what he needed to do in his head.

“Guess I should ask Tony if I can stay,” Steve said.

“Ask Miss Potts,” James said. “Stark is only ever problems, never solutions.”

Steve nodded, because that was a fair assessment of Tony.

“And I’ll ask Miss Potts if I can put in a lumber order,” James continued. “You any good at construction?”

“I fixed the screen door,” Steve said. “Is that good enough? What are we building?”

“Going to need to add a room to the cabin before winter,” James said. “Don’t fancy the two of us being snowed in with 250 square feet of space.”

Steve wiped the rain off his face. “Hadn’t thought of that.” After sharing a tent, and less than a tent, with Bucky through a war, the cabin seemed comfortable. “I could trade my bike for a pickup too.”

James shrugged, and there was a little grin in the corners of his eyes. “I like your bike, and I was looking forward to the first time I asked you to bring a 100 pounds of hog balancer feed back from town on it.”

“One sack of hog balancer feed would be fine on the bike,” Steve said, deadpan. “But the suspension isn’t built for more.”

And being gently ribbed by James was a world and a lifetime removed from the kind of back-slapping, ribald teasing Bucky used to deliver. Steve rather liked the change.

 

 

Steve sat on the workshop steps, satellite phone in his hands and Pepper’s number on a card in James’ handwriting, along with numbers for ‘Vet’ and ‘feedstore’. He called Pepper. Pepper’s assistant put his call through immediately, and Pepper said, “Steve? How are you? How’s the farm?”

“Hi Pepper. I’m feeling much better. So much better. This was exactly what I needed. Thank you!”

“I’m so relieved,” Pepper said. “Is Nat with you?”

“Nat’s on her way back to the city, having traded lobster and vodka for a hangover,” Steve said.

Pepper laughed. “Good. I’ll catch up with her when she gets here, get the good gossip.”

“I’m going to stay here,” Steve said. “I should probably ask Tony if that’s okay.”

“Stay?” Pepper said. “How long for?”

“I’m moving here,” Steve said. “I, um, have moved in with James.”

Pepper was quiet for a long pause. “Okay. That’s James the farm caretaker?”

“Yes.”

“And by moved in, you mean…?”

“James wants me to ask if it’s okay to buy lumber on the Stark account, because the cabin isn’t big enough for both of us to live in,” Steve said. “That sort of moved in.”

“Buy anything you want, Steve,” Pepper said. “Buy enough lumber to build a new house. I’m a little surprised, that’s all. Partly because James never talks much, and partly because you are you. I can’t see how the two of you worked this out so quickly.”

Steve laughed, because fuck, Pepper was right, at least about him. “Assume at least one of us has some moves, Pepper,” he said. “And that person isn’t me.”

“Are you happy?” Pepper asked. “I want you to be happy.”

Steve paused and thought, looking down the path through the trees to the stream. “Happy isn’t the right word. I feel calm and peaceful and quiet inside. I never want to leave here.”

Pepper sighed. “Yes. Sounds wonderful. I’ll sort everything out with Tony.”

“Another thing,” Steve said. “My shield’s in my tower apartment. Can you see it goes to the right person?”

Pepper was silent for a long moment. “Who’s that?”

“You choose. Or ask Bruce to.”

“Shouldn’t you?” Pepper asked.

“I would choose no one,” Steve said. “Let the world go on without a Captain America.”

“Ah,” Pepper said. “I can see your problem. Let me handle this one then.”

“Thank you,” Steve said. James’ cat strolled up to Steve and wound itself around Steve’s ankles. Steve held his hand out for the cat to sniff and butt against.

“Is there anything you need?” Pepper asked. “Anything you want shipped to you?”

Steve considered. “No, it’s all good. I don’t need anything.”

“Could you tell James I have a dinner for twenty to cater for on the 17th, and need ingredients sent to the city?”

“I’ll do that,” Steve said.

After they’d said goodbye, Steve found James in the barn, standing behind a cow in a stanchion, with one of the cow’s rear hooves held securely between his knees and clamped in place by his left hand.

Steve watched James clean and file the cow’s hoof, working deftly and firmly.

When James had finished and released the cow, they watched the cow walk out of the barn and into the field to join the rest of the herd.

“That’s better,” James said. “She was favoring that leg, but now she’s weight bearing properly. Small crack in her hoof. Did you get through to Miss Potts?”

“Yes,” Steve said. “Pepper says to go ahead and order the lumber. And she is having a function for twenty people on the 17th, could you please send food.”

“Didn’t say what she wanted?” James asked.

“No,” Steve said, following James past the vegetable garden to the edge of the woods, where the pigs were digging up brambles and eating poison ivy with astonishing efficiency.

James walked past the sow with piglets to the portable electric fence around the boar and the barrow pigs.

“We’re just about out of pork in the freezer,” James said. “If we slaughter one of the barrows, then I can send Miss Potts a haunch.”

“Do you butcher here?” Steve asked.

“Have done before, but spring is busy, so I’ll send the pig to be processed. Much tidier work than I can do, and it’ll save a day’s work,” James said.

The pigs looked hopefully up at Steve and James, and Steve held out his empty hands. “See? No feed bucket?” Steve said to the pigs.

James slung a muddy and damp arm around Steve’s shoulders. “It’s time for Bruce to come home again. Feel like a walk?”

The walk to Naomi and Hannah’s property seemed shorter this time, down the hill under the dripping trees. Steve could hear the children shouting to each other happily before he spotted the laneway to the farm.

One of the larger children met them at the main gate, peddling up on a bike as James was lifting the latch.

“James! James!” the child called out. “We’ve got cake! Do you want some?”

“If there’s enough for both of us, Eden,” James said. “Steve might like a piece too.”

Eden stared at Steve for a second, then said, “Okay. I’ll ask.”

“Tell your moms to put the kettle on!” James called out to Eden’s back, as Eden peddled away from them.

The washing on the lines around the yurt flapped wetly in the slow rain as Steve and James picked their way over bikes and scooters strewn around the yard.

“Come on in,” Hannah called out, as James and Steve paused on the steps up to the tent to take their muddy rubber boots and damp jackets off. “Kettle’s on.”

Half the space inside the tent was a kitchen and living area, with a big table in the middle, and the other half was partitioned into sleeping space. Emily and Coulter were sitting at the table in the kitchen, papers and books spread in front of them. Eden banged in behind James and Steve, arms full of firewood to put beside the stove. Naomi sat in a scuffed armchair close to the wood stove, nursing Rebecca, while Hannah clattered around the kitchen, putting away dishes and pans from the draining rack.

The room smelled of freshly made cake and roasting meat, along with damp clothes and hair. Eden sat down at the table and pulled a paper closer, then picked up a pencil and began to chew the end.

The murmur of the children’s voices and the smell of the wet afternoon hit Steve hard, sense memories of the Barnes’ apartment after school welling up, and he sat down at the table beside Emily.

Rebecca looked up from nursing, wriggling and squirming on Naomi’s lap, and James scooped Rebecca up into his arms.

“Check my work, Steve?” Emily asked, scooting her chair closer and pushing over a page with printing on the left and careful hand lettering on the right.

Steve looked up, at James playing with Rebecca, and Hannah and Naomi in the kitchen making tea and stacking plates, but no one said anything or looked back at him.

“Okay,” Steve said. “Sure.”

Emily propped her chin on her hand and watched as Steve took her pencil and stared at the worksheet. Okay, it was geography. He was on solid ground, having spent most of his adult life staring at maps.

He ticked Emily’s first answer, but her second answer wasn’t right.

“Look,” Steve said, taking the pencil and starting to sketch. “This is where the Arctic Circle is. It’s an imaginary line on the Earth, marking a latitude.”

Emily pointed at the map Steve had sketched on her worksheet. “Not a real line?” She sounded disappointed.

“Sadly, no,” Steve said. “That would make navigating much easier.”

Emily patted Steve’s cheek. “You’ve got hair on your face now, like James.”

“I do. It’s called a beard,” Steve said. “Do you want me to tell you more about the Arctic Circle?”

Emily nodded, and wriggled her way on to Steve’s lap.

Across the table, with Rebecca falling asleep against his shoulder, James said, “That’s not a beard, Steve. I’ve got a beard. You’ve got a facial hair problem.”

Steve rubbed at his chin. “I have beard aspirations.” He looked down at the worksheet and drew a sun carefully. “Okay, Emily, this is how the Arctic Circle was worked out.”

Five minutes later, Hannah and Naomi put the teapot and mugs on the table, along with a cake.

Emily pushed aside her worksheet, now covered in a mix of her writing and Steve’s drawings, and squirmed on Steve’s knees.

The rain was loud on the yurt roof, but the kitchen was warm and full of people. Hannah lifted Rebecca off James and took her into one of the sleeping areas, and Coulter climbed on to James’ lap in Rebecca’s place.

The tea wasn’t Russian, and was served with milk and sugar. The cake was plain and sweet, with a big dollop of thick cream on the plate beside the slice. Steve ate his cake carefully, so as not to get crumbs in Emily’s hair. This time, he found he could keep up with the farming conversation.

“What have you planted?” Hannah asked.

“Potatoes,” James said. “Beans and corn.”

“And two rows of chard,” Steve said. “What are we going to do with two rows, James? I don’t want to eat that much chard.”

“You could have told me that at the end of the first row,” James said. “You eat beet greens in a way that implies you’re a chard eater.”

James was laughing at Steve with his eyes, and Steve grinned back.

“We’ve put in peas and tomatoes as well,” Naomi said.

“Isn’t it too soon for tomatoes?” James said.

James and Naomi launched into a discussion of soil temperature differences between the two properties, and Steve turned his attention back to Emily.

Emily had pulled her worksheet close again and was adding to Steve’s sketches, carefully filling in details Steve had clearly missed out.

Steve took another pencil off the table and began to draw a row of chard plants across the top of the worksheet. Emily added a drawing of a chicken, so Steve drew a duck.

Naomi and Hannah’s farm was for the children.

Steve had to stop drawing, put his pencil down and take a long drink from his mug of tea at the idea.

He didn’t know how Hannah and Naomi generated income, but he was sure that the primary purpose of the farm wasn’t selling milk or vegetables. It was making a home for their children.

Which meant the Stark farm was a home for James, and now him.

Steve ducked his head down so his face pressed against Emily’s hair for a moment, not quite sure what to do with how he was feeling.

Hannah stood up from the table and moved behind Steve, leaning across to serve him another piece of cake. Steve blinked his eyes clear and sat back up.

 

The walk back to the Stark farm was slow, with Bruce the bull plodding along beside them, needing to be nudged every few yards. The rain had stopped, leaving the road slick underfoot and the warm spring air heavy with moisture.

“Are Naomi and Hannah okay for money?” Steve asked, when they’d turned from the lane on to the main road. “Do they make the farm work?”

James slapped Bruce on the rump to keep the bull moving. “I think there are several answers to your question,” James said. “Their milking parlor is up to health code, so they sell raw milk through an alternative dairy distributor. They sell yearlings as well. It’s not a huge income, but they live almost completely off the farm. So, yes.”

Bruce snorted and ambled to a halt, so Steve whopped Bruce’s butt, and the bull started moving again.

“They’ve got good land, probably better than Stark’s, and it’s productive,” James continued. “They don’t overgraze the pasture, which is good for the land but not the money. But they owe money on the land.

“I’ve given them money over the past ten years,” James said. “Paid for a tractor repair I couldn’t do myself, put a new roof on the main barn last winter, replaced a solar inverter that fused. Nothing enormous, unless it’s your farm and you’re short of cash.”

“Are you okay for money?” Steve asked. “Is this something we should talk about? I’ve got substantial resources.”

James poked Bruce to remind the bull to keep walking and grinned at Steve across the bull. “That’s sweet of you. The Stark Estate has always paid me a ridiculous amount to look after the farm, and I’ve got nothing to spend it on except making sure Hannah, Naomi and the children are comfortable. I’ve offered to clear their loan, but they wouldn’t let me.”

“I was going to offer the same thing,” Steve said.

Bruce snorted and shook his head, spraying goop around.

They walked in silence for a couple of minutes, under the dripping trees, and then James said, “You sure know a lot about the Arctic Circle.”

Steve poked Bruce, who seemed to be about to stop. “Should do. It’s my least favorite place in the world.”

They turned into the lane to the Stark farm, with only a small amount of dragging on Bruce’s halter.

The milk cows called to their calves, soft and low, in the afternoon, and Bruce’s pace picked up.

“Sorry, Bruce,” James said, pointing at the gate to the top field, where the yearlings grazed. “You get to hang out with the boys for a while, until it’s time to do your thing.”

Steve undid the gate, James released Bruce’s halter, and Bruce went into the field reasonably amiably, trotting over to greet the yearling cattle who were grazing against the edge of the woods.

For a moment, Steve was overcome. The clover in the fields, the seedlings and weeds in the vegetable garden, the rocks in the stream and the dark coolness of the woods. James, swinging Bruce’s lead and halter, whistling to himself. The clouds scudding overhead, sunlight glimmering through in golden bands.

James waved at Steve from the end of the lane, when he reached the gate to the yard, and Steve waved back and started down the lane.

In the barn, James was filling pails with pig feed. James didn’t say anything to Steve about Steve’s moment of distraction in the lane, but in the gloom of the barn his eyes were gentle and kind.

 

 

The afternoon sun prickled Steve’s skin as the stream water dried, shifting through pleasantly cool to too warm. He was freckling on his back, according to James, from working with his shirt off and lazing on the rock by the stream.

James sighed and shifted his weight. “Gravel,” he said.

Steve kept tracing fingers over James’ back, down the long grooves beside his spine, back up over his ribs, then across the furrows and twists of scar tissue radiating out from his left shoulder.

“I can stop,” Steve offered, letting his fingers swoop lower, over the swell of James’ ass. “We could rinse off in the stream…”

The night before, the way James’ mouth had felt on Steve’s ass? Steve wanted to try that from the other side, find out how much noise James might make.

James bent one knee and pushed his metal hand underneath himself, rearranging his cock, wincing a little at the contact with the rock underneath.

“Cabin?” James asked. “Or here?”

Steve looked around, at the trees on the banks of the stream, the clear water flowing down the small weir upstream, the crisp blue afternoon sky. “Here. Kneel.”

A distant rumble of tires on gravel made Steve lift his head, at the same time as James said, “That’s on the lane.”

Steve jumped up and grabbed his jeans from where they were hanging over a tree branch, and pulled them up his damp, sandy legs. James moved quickly too, dragging on jeans, doing them up carefully over his cock, then threading his arms into shirt sleeves.

Steve pushed his feet into boots and scooped up the rest of his clothes, and headed for the cabin. He could clearly hear a large vehicle crunching over the gravel outside the barn and trundling up to the cabin and workshop.

Another delivery of lumber? The truckful that had arrived that morning seemed like it should be enough, but what did he know about building cabins?

The truck parked beside James’ pickup and his bike was a Stark Industry six wheeler, and Tony was swinging down from the driver’s side.

“Steve!” Tony said. “How’s the big gay awakening going?”

Steve could hear James walking up behind him on the path, boots on stones and dirt. He shifted posture slightly, tensing his muscles. Sometimes, sometimes, if Tony wasn’t in his suit, he’d back down from a threat without realising it.

James dropped his left arm over Steve’s shoulders, his hand gleaming in the sunshine, and nodded at Tony.

Tony swore under his breath and turned back to the truck. Today was one of the days Tony didn’t decide to bare-knuckle fight a wall of muscle. Good.

“Want a hand unloading the truck?” Steve asked.

“No need, I brought robots,” Tony said. “Go and mend things or look after cows or whatever while being super gay.”

James kissed the side of Steve’s face and said, “Barn,” then sauntered off.

Steve pulled on the shirt he was holding then went around the back of the truck, where Tony was clattering and clanking.

“I do not want to know what you did to him to make him talk,” Tony said. “But a whole word? In context? That’s like a year’s ration of communication.”

Tony pulled out the hoist at the back of the truck and jumped up.

“Why do you and Pepper think James doesn’t talk? He talks to me all the time,” Steve said, leaping on to the hoist as well.

Tony pointed at a box labelled ‘Farm Dum-E’. “Pull that one out.” Steve dragged the crate on to the hoist.

“Really?” Tony said. “When I was a kid visiting the farm, all he did was swear at me in Russian under his breath. Forced me to learn Russian at thirteen, just to find out what he was saying.”

Tony pushed the controls to lower the hoist.

“What was he saying?” Steve asked, when Tony jumped down to the ground again to watch Steve drag the crate off.

“Calling me a spoiled shit,” Tony said. “Which was entirely accurate, of course.”

Tony at thirteen was presumably unspeakably awful. Steve certainly had been at that age.

Tony pulled a small pinch bar out of his belt kit and cracked open the crate.

“Didn’t know you spoke Russian,” Steve said. “Did you at least learn enough to now be able to swear back at Nat?”

Tony waved the pinch bar at Steve.

“I can call her a spoiled shit,” Tony said. “Which is of limited usefulness if I want to remain alive.”

Tony pulled the sides of the crate off, revealing a larger version of Dum-E on all terrain tracks. “Okay,” Tony said, fiddling with his phone and powering up Dum-E. “Farm-E can unload the truck while you make me a coffee and explain how come you’ve run away to live on my farm.”

“It’s not running away if I tell everyone where I’m going,” Steve said, heading for the cabin with Tony following.

“You don’t have to live in the cabin,” Tony said, as Steve kicked off his boots at the steps. “There’s a perfectly good fallen-down farmhouse here as well.”

Tony stood in the doorway, peering into the dimness of the cabin, while the cat hissed at him from under the table.

“Farmhouse is unusable in winter,” Steve said, scooping up the cranky cat and transferring it to the unmade bed. “Can’t exactly seal it against the cold.”

“That’s a technical problem. I fix those,” Tony said, sitting down at the table.

Steve knelt down in front of the stove, opened the firebox and pushed some kindling in on top of the glowing remains of the morning’s fire.

“We’re fine here,” Steve said. “There’ll be plenty of space once we add another room on.” Steve blew on the kindling, encouraging the tiny flames to catch.

“Please, please let me upgrade the utilities here,” Tony said. “You can have a gas stove and running water. I don’t know how to explain how much it hurts to watch you do this.”

Steve balanced split wood on the kindling, checked it was going to catch, and closed the firebox.

“What was hard about that?” Steve asked. “Do you want tea or coffee?”

“Coffee, before I die from something I could only catch in the 1930s,” Tony said. “What was wrong? It was so… primitive.” He waved both arms, indicating all of the cabin and knocking one hand against James’ bookshelf.

Steve spooned ground coffee into the coffee pot and filled the bottom of the jug with water from the pump over the sink, while Tony groaned.

“Do you know the family on the next farm lives in a tent?” Steve asked. “Why don’t you go fix their lives instead and leave us alone?”

Tony’s eyes gleamed. “Stop trying to distract me.”

“Why are you here? Really?” Steve asked.

“You’re kidding?” Tony said. “Pepper says you want her to choose the new Captain because you’ve retired. Nat says you’re living in some kind of wedded bliss with the crankiest person I know, and I know Nicholas Fury. And you and the angry cyborg want to build things on my farm. This is the perfect storm of how to get my attention.”

Steve set the coffee pot on the hottest part of the stove and sat down at the table.

Was it worth an attempt at asking Tony? Steve figured it was.

“I’m glad you’re here. I want to ask you about James,” Steve said.

“I’m not his father,” Tony said. “I’m not the person you need to be asking for permission to marry him.”

“Okay,” Steve said. “Noted. How much do you know about him?”

“Hmm,” Tony said. “Less than you would expect. I do maintenance on his arm every few months. You know, grease the moving parts, tighten some screws, worry about the attachments to his spine.”

Steve nodded. The coffee pot began to burble on the stove behind him.

“And he’s clearly been drinking from the same super soldier sauce bottle you have,” Tony said. “But I’m sure you know about that.”

“Do you know why he’s here?”

The coffee pot bubbled and hissed on the stove, boiling its way through making coffee, and Steve put the two cups from the kitchen shelf on the table.

Tony fiddled with the open jampot on the table, poking the spoon deeper into the fragrant blackberry preserve, making the cabin smell of sweetness and summer.

“I inherited James,” Tony said, looking contemplatively at the jam. “Along with a Stark Industries-sized cog in the military industrial complex, Dad left me my very own cold war relic. Other people inherit houses and companies, and I get the ruins of wars.”

Steve reached behind him for the burbling coffee pot and poured them both cups of coffee.

“Is that it?” Tony said, looking at his mug.

“Okay,” Steve said, standing up and retrieving the covered bowl of cream from the top kitchen shelf and passing it to Tony. “We’re out of sugar, so you’ll have to use jam instead.”

Tony looked at Steve with dismay, then added a thick dollop of yellow cream and a spoon of jam to his coffee anyway.

“And Nat left vodka,” Steve said, reaching for the bottle on the bookshelf beside Tony.

“That’s better,” Tony said, topping up his coffee. “If you’re going to make me talk about my father, I demand alcohol as well.”

Steve shrugged and sipped his black coffee. “James?” he prodded.

“Did you know there was more in my father’s will about James than there was about me?” Tony asked. “Pages of instructions to me on looking after James. I can’t remove James from the farm, he’s guaranteed occupation of the property while the Stark estate exists. And if he outlives the Stark family, the farm becomes his. If he ever wants to leave, he gets the market value of the farm as a retirement gift.”

“That’s generous,” Steve said.

“You don’t know how expensive land is here,” Tony said. “That’s a fortune. I’ve always wanted to know why my father adopted a cold war Soviet asset and set him up for life. I’m beginning to suspect you know.”

Steve leaned back, making the chair creak faintly. “And I wanted to know why you hadn’t told me about James sooner, but seems you don’t have much to tell.”

“What do you know that I don’t?” Tony persisted. “I don’t like not knowing everything. Jarvis?”

Tony’s phone crackled into life and said, “Sir?”

“What does Steve know that I don’t?” Tony asked.

Steve laughed. He couldn’t help it. Tony was himself, all the way through.

“Captain Rogers is an expert on Word War Two military strategy, contemporary guerilla military conflict, and American life in the 1930s and 1940s, particularly in Brooklyn,” Jarvis said.

“But not cold war Soviet espionage?” Tony asked.

“Not that I am aware of, Sir,” Jarvis replied.

“What did Howard tell you about James?” Steve asked.

“Never turn my back on him, never startle him,” Tony said. “Leave him alone because the Soviets put his brain through a mincer. And to make sure he had everything he wanted.” Tony gulped at his coffee. “I don’t know what happened, why Pops felt he owed James so much, but it can’t be good. Did Dad fuck up and scramble James’ brains accidentally and then claim the Soviets did it? Or was this the result of some shady SHIELD clusterfuck in the 80s? And why the fuck did my father name him after your dead best friend? This is some fucked-up shit.”

Steve held his coffee mug in both his hands. “Wish someone had brought me here when I woke up. I would have stayed here, never gone into the world.”

“The Stark Residential Facility for Retired Super Soldiers,” Tony said. “Should I send Banner here, next time he has a meltdown?”

“We’ll need a bigger cabin if you do,” Steve said. “And we’d have to rename the bull, to avoid confusion.”

Tony’s gaze was speculative. “You’ve asked Peggy Carter? About James?”

Steve shrugged. “She has dementia.”

“Which means you aren’t sharing what Peggy said,” Tony said. “That’s okay, you can have your lover’s confidences with Peggy.”

“Peggy was never my lover.” Steve drank some of his rapidly cooling coffee.

Tony topped up his coffee with more vodka and chugged it down, but his gaze was clear and speculative. “I’ve got a tractor to fix,” he said, “and a run-of-river turbine to install, while I think about this.”

Steve followed Tony back out to the Stark truck, where Farm-E had stacked crates and tubs of equipment neatly on the gravel.

“Can Farm-E open gates?” Steve asked, watching the robot pick up a tub of tools and trundle toward the barn with the box.

“Yes,” Tony said, following the bot. “It's not so good at closing them again though.”

 

 

Later that night, when Steve made his way back to the cabin from the outhouse, he looked into the floodlit barn. Tony was draped over the tractor chassis, his arms black to the elbows with grease, singing along to music coming through headphones.

Farm-E poked Tony in the butt, making him squawk and drop a wrench, then look up.

Steve waved at Tony. “Got everything you need?” Steve asked, when Tony lifted the headphones.

Tony pointed at a tarp spread on the dirt floor, with a sleeping bag and an empty wheatgrass juice container, and gave Steve a thumbs-up.

“Stark working?” James asked sleepily when Steve folded his jeans over a chair and then slid under the blankets. James was warm and pliant, curling around Steve, his beard rubbing warm against Steve’s shoulder.

“On the tractor,” Steve said.

James made a noise that might have been of approval, or of annoyance, then slid back asleep, his metal arm heavy across Steve’s ribs. Steve stroked his palm down the articulated plates, listening to the faint whir of servos and hiss of electronics from the arm, along with the solid purr of James’ cat from the end of the bed.

Faintly, in the distance, he could hear the whoosh of the stream and the clank of Tony working, against the background chatter of frogs and insects. James breathed heavily, murmuring in his sleep, and Steve pulled James’ arm a little closer.

 

In the morning, Steve pulled the large barn door open, and found Tony sprawled asleep on top of his sleeping bag. Tony had a t-shirt draped over his face to shield his eyes from the floodlights still burning strong.

Farm-E waggled at Steve, a sideways motion for ‘no’, but since Steve knew that several cows were about to walk through where Tony was sprawled and the robot didn’t, Steve ignored the bot.

“Tony?” Steve said. “Cows are on their way. If you want to keep sleeping, go to the farmhouse.”

Tony pulled the T-shirt off his face, grunting. “Coffee?”

“On the stove in the cabin,” Steve said, while Tony fumbled his sunglasses on.

Tony staggered out of the barn into the daylight. Steve switched off the floodlights while Farm-E bumbled around picking up tools and tractor parts. He could hear the cows talking to James and each other outside in the lane.

“And the sleeping bag,” Steve told Farm-E.

Steve had stanchions to get ready and milking pails to collect. Hopefully Farm-E was cow-proof.

In the cabin, Tony was hunched over at the table, mug of coffee in his hands. Steve patted his back and picked up the milking pails and the urn, along with the flask of warm water and the milking cloths.

“Breakfast in an hour,” Steve said, and Tony nodded.

The morning was cool and pale gold as Steve crunched back across the gravel to the barn, to where James was whistling to himself and the cows.

Steve set the milking pails out and hung the flask of warm water from the nail on the beam between the stanchions.

“Today will be warm,” James said, opening the pen gate and letting the first two cows through. “Garden after breakfast?”

Steve took the lid off the drum of alfalfa and measured out the portions into the two feed troughs, making the first cows to be milked hurry forward.

“You want to sort the lumber today too?” Steve asked, dropping the latches on the neck catchers, holding Margery in place, ready for milking.

“Sure,” James said. “After the shade has made it around to that part of the yard.”

Steve pulled the bucket he sat on closer and squatted beside Margery. James tossed him a damp cloth from the cloth pail, and Steve settled his forehead against Margery’s flank and wiped her udder. She was alive and content against his face, her gut growling as she digested. She was in calf, too, and he now knew how to feel around her side and find the shape of the uterus. That had seemed too personal at first, but then, he milked her, and that was pretty up close as well.

Behind him, milk was plinking into James’ pail in steady streams, and Steve started milking as well.

 

“I’ve called for an excavator!” Tony said. “Two hours by road. Jarvis, change that to delivery by air.”

“Yes, Sir,” Tony’s phone said.

James hefted his spade. “We dig.”

Steve hadn’t stopped trenching the outline for the cheese cellar extension underneath the new room while Tony had been attempting to upgrade them to heavy machinery. It was better to just keep going under these circumstances, in Steve’s experience.

“Fuck!” Tony swore, stepping back in a hurry as James also began to dig quickly and efficiently on the other side of the planned extension to the cabin.

Soil sprayed and the mounds of earth and rubble beside the building site grew quickly.

“Jarvis, cancel the excavator,” Tony said, backing away further and sounding dispirited.

“Sir,” Jarvis said.

James snapped his spade ten minutes into the task and switched to a mattock for breaking up the subsoil. Steve pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it aside and changed his grip on his spade. Across the dig site, James grinned at Steve between mattock swings. Steve grinned back.

James was right. This was deeply satisfying work. Fuck Tony and his excavator.

“There’s a small person here,” Tony called out. “On a bicycle. Hello, small person!”

“Who are you?” a child’s voice asked. Steve looked up and over the piles of dirt and rubble. Eden.

“Hi Eden,” Steve said.

James stuck his mattock into the rubble at his feet. “Hi Eden. This is Tony. What’s up?”

“Mom says the batteries aren’t charging and the lights are off on the inverter. Can you come and help? We’ve got milk and cream waiting for collection,” Eden said, staring at Tony.

“Sure,” James said, wiping sweat off his face and onto his shirt sleeve. “I’ll drive over with some tools.”

Eden took off on their bike, back across the barnyard and up the lane, and James jumped out of the trench. “Steve?”

“I’m in,” Steve said. “There might be cake.”

“What about me?” Tony said. “Come on! It’s an actual solar power system issue, which is so thoroughly my thing it’s embarrassing.”

“Can we use your tools?” James asked, and Tony beamed at him.

“Firstly, all of the tools are my tools, technically. Secondly, we can definitely take the truck with the full electrical kit in it, because I don’t want to fix shit with your soldering iron,” Tony said.

A minute later, Tony turned the Stark truck down the lane to Hannah and Naomi’s farm, between the fields where their cows grazed.

“Well, look at that,” Tony said. “Your neighbors have a herd of Jersey and Normande crossbred cows. What a coincidence, given my herd is purebred Normande.”

On the other side of Steve on the bench seat, James was nonchalant. “Bruce is a stud bull,” James said. “Sometimes he takes himself for walks. What can you do?”

Tony looked like he was about to reply, but he was distracted by pulling the truck up close to the barns, dodging the bikes and skateboards strewn everywhere. James jumped out of the truck as soon as it had stopped moving and scooped up a child--Emily--into his arms and carried her toward the yurt. Other children flowed toward him, calling his name. The yurt door opened, and Hannah was standing on the top step, baby Rebecca on her hip, waving to James and Steve.

Naomi came out of one of the barns, wearing rubber boots and overalls. “Hi Steve, hi James,” she called. “Thanks so much for coming.”

“We brought expert help,” James said, pointing at the Stark truck with his spare hand. He let Emily down on the ground and took Rebecca off Hannah for a hug.

“Look at all these children,” Tony said under his breath, and he climbed out of the truck. “Hi, I’m Tony,” he said. “What needs fixing?”

Naomi wiped her hands on her overalls. “Solar rig isn’t putting power into the battery bank. The batteries are just about flat, and we have milk in the cooling tank and cream in the fridges. We can hand pump water from the well, but not fast enough to scrub a milking parlor down twice a day.”

“Show me your batteries,” Tony said, following Naomi into a barn. “How many watts does your cooling system pull?”

Rebecca held out her arms to Steve, and Steve took her and held her against his side where she wriggled and giggled.

Tony came back out of the barn. “Whoever isn’t holding that baby? Carry stuff for me.”

James patted Rebecca’s curls and went to lift crates out of the truck.

Tony stood back. “And that cable,” he said to James. “Haul it into the control board for the batteries and I’ll connect it. It’ll keep everything running while I figure out what’s wrong with config.”

Hannah walked over to stand beside Steve, and watched Tony and Naomi transfer tubs and crates into the barn. James dragged a heavy duty power cable from the side of the truck and into the barn.

“So that’s Tony Stark?” Hannah said, and Steve nodded. “He’s more down to earth than I expected.”

“He slept on the barn floor last night,” Steve said. “Some of that rustic air is just plain dirt. Any moment now he’ll have a spare part couriered in by chopper, at great expense and with a lot of noise to completely destroy the illusion.”

Hannah laughed. “Okay. I’m going to start getting food organized. Bring Becky in and keep me company?”

The inside of the yurt was dim, with afternoon sun filtering through the trees coming in through the windows, and Steve stepped carefully over the toys spread across the floor.

A moment later, the light over the kitchen table flickered and the fridge hummed, and then lights came on through the yurt.

“That’s a relief,” Hannah said. “In time for afternoon milking.”

Steve sat at the table and put Rebecca down on the floor, where she crawled around finding toys to bang against his shins.

“You don’t want to help Tony and James?” Hannah asked, crouching down in front of the wood stove to feed more fuel into the firebox.

“I know nothing about solar power,” Steve said. “If they need me to lift heavy things, they’ll let me know.”

Hannah closed the firebox on the stove.

Steve looked up from where Rebecca had lifted herself up so she was standing and was clutching on to his knee and squealing with joy.

“James has told us a little about his life and past. The difficult parts. I appreciate you want to be private, but if the effort is too much, it’s okay to be yourself,” Hannah said.

“Um, okay, thanks,” Steve said. He stroked Rebecca’s tangled curls carefully, pulling them back off her face.

Hannah ran water into the sink and washed her sooty hands. “You’ve relaxed so much with her.”

“I was terrified at first,” Steve admitted. “Scared I would hurt her by not knowing what to do.”

Hannah set bowls and utensils on the counter. “What kind of cake does Tony like? Do you know?”

Steve thought for a moment. “He lives on wheatgrass shakes. I’ve also seen him eat sushi and donuts. No idea about cake.”

Hannah looked over from where she was rummaging through kitchen cupboards. “That’s sad.”

Steve picked Rebecca up again and she pushed a toy train at his nose. “Yeah, it is.”

Hannah patted Steve’s shoulder with a floury hand on her way past to the kitchen store cupboard. “I’ll give him real cake.”

Forty minutes later, the larger children ran into the yurt, a wave of noise and grit ahead of Tony, Naomi and James.

Steve waved from the comfortable chair beside the stove, where Rebecca was sprawled asleep across his chest, drooling down his shirt.

“Wash your hands, all of you,” Hannah said.

Tony grinned at Steve, took a photo of him with his phone, then followed Naomi into the bathroom. “Neat tent,” Tony said. “How does it go for moisture build up?”

Steve didn’t hear Naomi’s reply, because Hannah was lifting Rebecca off him and carrying her away for a nap, all sleepy and soft.

The way Steve was feeling, such deep gratitude to the world for bringing him to that place on that afternoon, must have shown on his face because when James came back from washing his hands, James leaned down and kissed Steve’s forehead.

Tony walked back in, still talking. “Crossways ventilation,” he said to Naomi. “Also, why don’t you have a backup generator for your dairy equipment? Solar and batteries is just too precarious to run a whole enterprise on.”

“Generators are loud,” Hannah said, pointing at a chair at the table. “Sit down, everyone.”

Steve moved from the comfortable chair, the nursing chair, to a seat at the table between James and Emily.

“What was the problem?” Steve asked James, who was setting mugs in front of Eden and Coulter.

“Rats in the wiring,” James said. “Tony rewired the panels down to the inverter, and wrapped the wires in casing to keep the rats out. Actual solution is to get a barn cat.”

“Give me a real problem next time,” Tony said. “Something that takes some effort to fix.”

Hannah looked thoughtful as she laid out the cups and plates. “How do you feel about drainage? It gets awfully muddy around the barns in winter.”

Tony nodded. “I can get excited about drainage. Can I bring an excavator in?”

“Sure,” Naomi said. “We’ll even move the kids’ bikes out of the way.”

“A digger!” Eden said. “That would be great!”

“See!” Tony said, pointing at Steve and James. “Other people let me use heavy machinery!”

“We’re digging the new cheese cellar out by hand,” James said, to Naomi and Hannah. “I’m happy to dig your drains too, if you don’t want earth moving equipment around the barns.”

Hannah patted James’ shoulder as she put a plate of freshly sliced bread on the table. “I can’t ask you to do that, James.”

Rebecca cried from the other room and Naomi stood up. “I’ll get her.”

By the time she came back carrying Rebecca, the table was covered in platters of bread, cheese and cake, with jars of pickle and jam in between.

“Here you are, Tony,” Hannah said, cutting Tony a large wedge of cake and putting it on his plate, despite his attempts to get her not to.

James pushed a bowl of thick yellow cream across to Tony, to go with his cake.

“I don’t--” Tony tried to say, and Steve pushed a jam jar across James to Tony.

“Try the jam.”

Hannah poured tea, strong for the adults and weak for the children, and Steve helped himself to a slab of cake, a piece of bread and a chunk of cheese.

Naomi passed Rebecca to Steve, so she could drink her tea. Then, while James and Hannah were trying to explain the drainage issue to Tony, Steve passed the baby to James, so Steve could eat cake.

“There’s the slurry from the main barn,” Hannah said. “That has to drain away from the milking parlor. We’ll need to drop the gradient that way. Coulter, get me paper and pencil, please.”

Coulter found Hannah paper and a purple drawing pencil. James passed Rebecca to Tony and leaned forward over the sketch, so he could point at the outlines of the barns.

Tony made a high pitched noise as Rebecca wriggled in his arms, pulling at his sunglasses and grabbing his goatee.

What do I do? Tony mouthed at Steve.

“Emily, hand Rebecca a toy, please,” Steve said, and Emily scooped a bendy plastic dog off the floor and passed it to Rebecca, who let go of Tony’s face and grabbed the dog.

Naomi passed a chunk of apple to Tony as well, and said, “And the grate will need to take the weight of the milk truck, remember.”

“How much do you think the milk truck weighs?” James asked.

Tony held the apple piece out for Rebecca and she took it as well, so both hands were occupied. The alarm on his face was shifting into amusement. “How big is the tank?” Tony asked.

“Five thousand gallons,” Eden said.

“I like you,” Tony said. “You can come and work for me. That’s a 13 ton tanker when unladen.”

“You just know this?” Steve asked.

Tony shrugged. “I have a fleet of commercial vehicles. Tankers are pretty exciting. That’s the kind of area where incremental improvements really make a difference. How much energy does it take to refrigerate a milk tanker? Have we really optimized the insulation on the tank? What about the pump effici--?”

Rebecca shoved the bendy plastic dog into his mouth.

Tony choked a little, then took it out and gave it back to her. “Everyone's a critic,” he told her.

“We think milk production data is very exciting,” Hannah said, and Naomi nodded.

“And soil temperature,” Steve said. He hadn’t known people even talked about that before he moved to the farm.

Tony jiggled Rebecca on his knee distractedly. “Really? Are you interested in monitoring soil temp, or modulating? I’ve got an idea for a passive heat pump that would work on a medium scale. I could put it in at the same time as the drains.”

James leaned against Steve. “This is why I don’t allow experimentation on the farm,” he said quietly.

“We’ve already got this year’s garden in,” Hannah said. “Can you work around that?”

Tony stared distractedly up at the yurt roof, letting Rebecca climb over his chest. “Maybe? Show me the garden…”

Naomi scooped Rebecca off Tony and said, “Cake and tea first, then garden.”

Tony pulled the paper and pencil over and scribbled in between mouthfuls of tea.

 

Hannah and Steve walked at the back of the entourage, closing the gates and rounding up the smaller children, while Tony barrelled ahead, taking photos and waving his arms in the air.

“You won’t get rid of him,” Steve said. “He’ll be sneaking in and upgrading things when you’re not looking.”

Hannah hefted Emily higher on her hip. “We’ll make him stop if we have to. We banned James from buying anything bigger than a bicycle for that reason.”

That explained the large number of bikes and scooters on the farm.

“He can take direction,” Steve said. “We’ll get Pepper involved if it’s too much.”

“We knew Pepper Potts, in our former lives,” Hannah said. “I was a contract attorney and Naomi was an actuary, and we moved in the same corporate circles.”

“Does Pepper know you have the farm here?” Steve asked.

Hannah shook her head. “We’ve never intruded when she’s been visiting. Stark has always seemed so protective of his privacy here.”

Tony shouted with laughter at something Coulter said, up ahead.

“We may have been mistaken about that part,” Hannah said.

In the garden, Steve held Rebecca’s hands and guided her carefully as she tried to take one wobbly step, then another, on the damp ground. The afternoon sun was low in the sky, dipping toward the trees, and the air was still warm from the day. Mosquitoes buzzed in the air, rising up from the ground as the children ran around. Tony lay on his belly between the beds, taking measurements with his watch and Jarvis, poking his fingers into the soil of the beds.

“This is great!” Tony called out, from dirt level. “You’re on a 5% incline, which is perfect.”

“Don’t you want to install it on your own farm?” Hannah asked. “Extend the growing season for your garden.”

James crossed his arms. “No.”

Tony glared up at James. “And that’s why. This farm is much more fun. They live in a tent.”

“Call Pepper preemptively,” Steve said quietly to Hannah. “If you call the main reception at Stark Tower and say Tony is being a nuisance, they’ll put you through to Pepper’s PA immediately.”

“Isn’t that proprietary knowledge?” Hannah asked. “Stark Industries can’t possibly want the world knowing there’s a shortcut to get through to the CEO.”

“I’ve seen the barista at the cafe in the Stark Tower lobby use it, and the waitstaff at the bar next to the tower. I think anyone in a service industry who has to deal with Tony gets briefed on it,” Steve said.

“You giving away Stark Industry secrets, Steve?” Tony called out, climbing onto his knees and standing up.

“Yes,” Steve said, turning to Hannah again. “So, you remember the prices for buying and selling shares?”

“Definitely,” Hannah said. “Thanks for the insider trading tips.”

Tony stood up and looked around, nodding to himself. “I’ve got what I need.”

In the truck, during the very short drive back to the Stark farm, Tony said, “I can’t believe your friends insisted on paying me for rewiring their solar panels. I can’t believe they paid me in half a cake and a pound of weed.”

The cake and weed were on James’ lap. “If you don’t want them…?” Steve suggested.

“Hands off,” Tony said firmly. “I have plans for both.”

 

James went off to feed the pigs and chickens, and Tony sat with his feet dangling in the hole that was the beginnings of the new cellar and watched Steve dig.

“I’ve ordered more bearer beams,” Tony said. “I want to reinforce this cellar roof.”

“Okay,” Steve said, and he dug.

“I’ve also changed my mind,” Tony said.

Steve paused his digging and looked up at Tony. “About?”

“I’m supposed to talk you into returning to New York and taking up the Captaincy again. But I’m not going to try,” Tony said.

“Thanks,” Steve said. “Appreciate that.”

“Ask me why,” Tony said. “C’mon.”

“You really want to tell me?” Steve asked, and Tony nodded.

“I was softening, watching you with James. You should get this, having a lover and a home. Seeing you holding that sleeping baby this afternoon did it for me,” Tony said. “If a family is something you want, and this is the only way you can have one, I can’t ask you to leave here.”

“I wasn’t going to leave,” Steve said.

“I was going to be very persuasive,” Tony said. “Use all of my charm and intellect. Instead, I’m telling you to stay here and cuddle babies and be happy.”

“What about you?” Steve asked. “When are you going to choose family over war?”

“Babies are gross,” Tony said. “I was one once, and it was terrible.”

Steve stuck his spade into the subsoil and dug. “Don’t let it be a reason why you lose Pepper.”

When Steve looked up a few seconds later, Tony was gone, presumably to smoke weed, eat cake and fix the tractor. Or maybe to call Pepper.

 

When Tony left, days later, the tractor was fixed, the new cellar was dug and framed, and a turbine was installed in the stream, down from where Steve and James swam. James’ arm had been serviced. Tony was many layers of dirt filthier, but had slept for several hours in a row most nights. Steve liked to think he was returning Tony to Pepper in better condition than Tony had arrived at the farm.

 

They moved the bed into the new room as soon as the walls were framed, insulated and lined, and the roof was on.

The room was the same size as the cabin, doubling the available space, and the extended cellar underneath gave much more room for cheese storage. James was gleeful about the increased room for cheese. Steve could understand his enthusiasm, because cheese was turning out to be very important.

James’ bed looked small in the middle of the new bedroom, with empty floor space around it, but Steve didn’t suggest getting a larger bed, and James didn’t mention it either.

Steve had slept alone and cold for too long.

 

From where Steve was kneeling on the roof of the new room, tapping nails into shingles up on the ridge, he could see through the trees to where James was hoeing the rows of beans, shirt off and arm gleaming in the July sunshine.

When Steve had nailed the ridge cap in place, he jumped down from the roof and went to join James.

James leaned his hoe against a pea frame and took the stoneware jug of cool water Steve held out for him.

“Ridge cap is on,” Steve said, while James drank.

Water ran down James’ beard, clinging to the curls, sliding down the dark strands.

Steve was suddenly thirsty.

James handed the water jug to Steve, and Steve finished the last few mouthfuls. In the nearest field, Bruce the bull shouted his opinion over something very important to cows.

“First raspberries are ripe,” James said. “Want to pick them for later?”

They’d unearthed the raspberry canes and blueberry bushes from a tangle of weeds and brambles in the spring, after James had admitted to giving up on them a couple of years before. “Too much to do to muck about with soft fruit. Wasn’t worth it for just me,” James had said. “But now there are two of us…”

They’d moved the chicken house and run to a new spot in a corner of the field next to the garden and turned the old pen and run into more garden beds. “Got to grow more,” James had said, before sending Steve into town to the feed store to buy more sacks of seed potatoes and soil amendments.

Then Tony had sent a delivery of currant bushes and autumn raspberry canes, which they’d planted in trenches of manure dug around the edge of the new garden section.

Steve set the water jug on a fence pole and pulled off his shirt. “I’ll get a bucket for the raspberries.”

In bed that night, they lay under a sheet in the humid night air while bats swooped in and out of the open space in the wall where a window would go. Mosquitoes buzzed in the cool, humid summer air drifting through the hole in the wall.

James mouthed at Steve’s shoulder, hot kisses in the dark, and his skin smelled of sweat and soap. “Want me to?” James asked, scratching rough fingernails down Steve’s chest. His thighs moved against Steve’s, skin sticking, and his cock nudged Steve’s hip.

“Yeah,” Steve said. “Want you to.”

James’ weight lowered over Steve, shoulder and hip, and his hand curled around Steve’s cock. “Like this? Or something different?” His mouth pressed against Steve’s cheek, hot against the edge of Steve’s beard.

Steve turned his head, seeking James’ lips, nipping and kissing. “Different.”

James’ beard moved against Steve’s chest as he smiled.

“Sure, gorgeous,” James said. The bed creaked as he moved over Steve and settled again, kneeling with his weight on his elbows.

Steve kicked and squirmed the sheet out of the way, then sighed at the feeling of James’ mouth sliding over his cock, lips and tongue wet and warm, beard rubbing against his belly. Above him, in the half light from the wall opening, James’ cock swung heavy and hot, and the smell of James’ body wrapped around Steve completely, dense and moist.

When Steve guided James’ cock into his mouth, James made a contented noise and settled lower, pushing down against Steve’s tongue in a slow slide. Steve’s mouth stung from the stretch and he had to tip his head back and remember to relax, before everything slid just right.

James began to rock his hips slowly, pushing firmly, and Steve felt like they could fly into the sky, transcend the pull of gravity.

James moved, curling his flesh arm under Steve and pushing up with his metal arm, lifting Steve’s hips, then his mouth was moving down, over Steve’s balls and back to his ass.

Steve couldn’t move, held firmly by James’ grip, pinned down by James’ knees and weight. Couldn’t do anything except whimper around James’ cock and hang on while James licked and sucked, sending wave after wave of heat rushing through Steve’s body, leaving him slick with sweat and a steady leaking of come.

The feeling of James’ fingers, thick and rough, sliding into him, wet with spit, broke Steve, making him come so hard his vision sparked as he shouted.

When James rolled off, the taste of come was strong and ripe in Steve’s mouth, and his face felt slippery.

James flopped back on the bed beside Steve and wiped his mouth on the back of his flesh arm.

“You okay?” James asked, slinging his arm over Steve’s chest.

“Yeah,” Steve said. “More than. I can’t believe we haven’t broken something important doing that.”

“Give it time,” James said, his voice rumbling with laughter. “You’ve got a mean kick and are going to take out the baseboard of the bed one day, either during sex or a nightmare.”

“Do you do, you know, more?” Steve asked. Because if that’s what James’ mouth and fingers felt like…

In the half light, James propped himself up on one elbow. “I don’t fuck, not anymore. Is this something you want?”

“I don’t know,” Steve said. “Apart from the USO chorus girls, I have pretty much no experience. I guess I don’t know what I don’t know.” Steve touched James’ cheek, where a shadow was hiding his face. “Why did you stop?”

James was quiet and the noise from outside intruded. Bruce the bull complained and a cow answered. The rooster tried a premature crow and gave up halfway through, far too early. The wind hissed and rustled through the trees around the cabin while the new wood in the bedroom walls settled and creaked as the day cooled.

“After I’d been here a couple of years, I felt like I’d settled in enough to be able to blend in,” James said. “I started going to clubs in Burlington or Albany or even Boston when I was lonely and horny enough for the drive home to be worth it.”

Steve pulled James in closer. He knew those feelings from living in DC, but had never worked out what to do with them.

“But this was the late 80s and early 90s,” James said. “And everyone died. Every man I fucked. Every man I dated. I couldn’t take it. So I stopped, forever.”

“They died?” Steve said. “Did someone kill them? Were you being watched?”

James rubbed his face against Steve’s chest, and Steve could tell he was trying not to laugh, only it wasn’t a good laugh.

“No. AIDS, not assassins,” James said. “I could have told Howard and Maria about assassins, and got help.”

Again, the bitter unfairness of James having to live through decades that Steve only knew from history books hit Steve in the gut. Steve tried to imagine reaching out to random people, trusting them enough to be close, then losing them, one after another. It would have been ‘43 and ‘44 all over again.

“If the only thing we ever do is what we did tonight, it’ll still be a thousand times better than anything that I had before I got here,” Steve said.

“Those chorus girls let you down,” James said. “At least one of them should have known how to suck dick.”

“Maybe the issue was with my dick, not the chorus girls,” Steve said.

“Not possible,” James said. “Your dick is perfect.”

“Glad you approve,” Steve said.

James was comforting and solid, sprawled half across Steve, easing into sleep. Steve stroked James’ back, running his palm over rough hair, dips and curves of muscle and ribs, and cords of scar tissue.

James didn’t let go of Steve after he fell asleep that night and Steve was happy to lie there, James warm against his side, breathing deep enough to almost count as snoring. James’ cat climbed through the open window and sat on the end of the bed, washing its face and butt, and Steve and the cat let the night pass.

 

 

Spreading manure on the fields sounded like it would be horrible work, but was actually pleasant. With the tractor working again and a manure spreader borrowed from Hannah and Naomi, the moving and distribution of the manure was easy. The rotted manure smelled rich and earthy to shovel into the spreader, with the tick and thrum of the tractor engine as background noise.

Steve leaned against the side of the barn in the shade and watched James rumble the tractor over the bottom field, clouds of manure spraying behind the spreader. The morning sun was bright and hot on the wooden barn, and the boards ticked and creaked as they expanded in the heat. Chickens squawked. Bruce bellowed from where he was in with the older cows, and Clint answered from his field with the two heifers.

James rumbled the tractor back through the gate and stopped it in front of the barn. With the engine silent, the quieter sounds rushed in to fill the space. The wind turbine hummed and slapped, shifting as the wind changed. The bees in the garden burred. The stream tumbled and whispered, down past the cabin.

“We’ll need to move the heifers and Clint before we can spread any more,” James said, swinging off the tractor.

James’ hair was pulled back and up, away from his face, and his skin was tanned and ruddy from the summer sun and heat. Sweat darkened his shirt, sticking the cotton to his back and belly.

Longing coiled around Steve’s chest, pulling the breath from him momentarily.

Steve propped his shovel against the barn more securely. “Stream?” he asked.

James wiped his forearm across his forehead. “Sure.”

The water level in the stream was lower than in spring, making getting fully submerged an artform. Steve was not the most buoyant of people, being built for sinking rather than swimming, so he mostly just lay on the sandy bottom of the stream and let the water run over him, the sky a shining blue dome overhead.

James, with his metal arm, practically dug into the stream bed.

The rushing water washed away the sweat and grime and cooled Steve’s body. Beside him, James rolled over so his face was in the flow of the water and gulped.

“Want to dry off on the rock?” Steve asked.

James lifted his head, his hair sticking wetly to his face. “I’m not falling for that again, not like yesterday,” he said accusingly. “I lie on the rock to dry off. You stick your face between my legs and lick my ass. Two hours later, neither of us can walk, and no work has been done.”

Steve grinned and splashed James. “You could have stopped me at any stage.”

“That’s the problem,” James said. “I don’t want to.”

“That’s a non-problem,” Steve said, knowing he sounded like Tony, and James grimaced at him.

“Have you seen the garden today?” James asked. “That is not a non-problem. And now you’re making me say stupid things too.”

“I blame Tony,” Steve said.

James said something offensive sounding in Russian and Steve grinned.

“You just called him a spoiled shit, didn’t you?” Steve said.

James roared with laughter, great bellowing guffaws that had him slapping the water and kicking his legs, his whole body shaking with amusement.

Steve knew, in that moment, that he was never going to leave James and the farm. There were no options in his life that could take him away from the chance to see James, see Bucky, so filled with joy.

Steve watched James, still chuckling, climb out of the water and walk across the dirt to where their clothes were tossed over tree branches. Water coursed down James’ back and legs, over tanned shoulders and pale ass, and dripped from James’ hair and beard.

James wriggled jeans up over his damp legs and looked back at Steve. “You staying in there?”

Steve splashed his face and pushed his hair out of his eyes. “Coming,” he said. “Let’s look at this garden.”

In the garden, James stepped through where the gap between the potato beds was supposed to be, climbing through the growth. Beyond the potatoes, the beets were pushing their way out of the ground, their leafy green tops up to James’ thighs. The trellis sagged under the weight of the pea vines. Bean plants were out of control, crowding the gaps between the beds and each other. Everything smelled overwhelmingly green and lush. Steve knew this smell, from hauling himself, a shield and a loaded pack reluctantly through rain forests around the globe.

“Steve?” James asked, and Steve looked up from where he was holding a handful of pea pods and leaves.

No shield weighed down his back.

“I don’t know if it’s because we’ve had the right mix of rain and hot days,” James said, wading through beet greens to where the chard was. The chard leaf he picked off and waved around was big enough to use as an umbrella. “Or if having two people here meant we could move enough manure to get the beds prepped right. But this,” and James pointed the chard leaf around at the garden, “is a ridiculous amount of food. We need to get pickling.”

James munched on the chard leaf.

“Okay,” Steve said. “Give me instructions, preferably no more complex than the level you provide for cheese making.”

James’ smile was affectionate and contained chard. “I don’t know what past-me did to deserve you, but I am endlessly grateful.”

Steve clambered through the undergrowth and dodged the overloaded cucumber trellis, to where James stood waist-deep in oppressively nutritious collard greens and kale plants.

“I’m here for James,” Steve said. “Not Bucky.”

Steve kissed James, and decided he disliked uncooked chard even more than cooked chard, but that alone was not a reason to stop kissing.

 

 

Steve’s pickup, which he’d traded his bike for, was a stick shift. The real reason he’d been insistent on a stick shift wasn’t anything to do with deep-seated belief that shifts were better, or a stubborn refusal to adapt to a different transmission. It was so he could drive down a shaded road in mid-summer resting his hand on James’ knee between gear changes.

“Like your truck,” James said, and Steve turned his head to smile at James, who was sprawled across the passenger seat, two cloth-wrapped cheeses on his lap.

“I do too,” Steve said.

“Mine still smells from taking the sick piglet to the vet,” James said.

Steve nodded. This was true.

“Is lunch for a special reason,” Steve asked, slowing right down to turn down the lane to Hannah and Naomi’s farm. “We don’t usually take two cheeses.”

“I’m hungry,” James said. “And you and I can eat a whole round to ourselves if we put our minds to it. Add in the kids, and we need two cheeses.”

This was also true. Steve had been on the farm long enough that he’d help make the current batch of cheese. James reckoned it was a fine batch. Steve thought it was the best food he’d ever tasted, better even than the round of Bleu des Causses Dum Dum and Dernier had bartered for, when they’d been hiding out in Aveyron, waiting for orders.

The truck rattled from the lane and onto the new hardstand in front of the barns. James pushed the door open and called out, “Your drains look great!”

Steve pulled the handbrake on and killed the ignition, then climbed out too. He lifted the two crates of garden produce out of the pickup tray and followed James to the yurt.

James held a cheese aloft in each hand in greeting to Hannah, while Emily spidered up his back, either trying to get to the cheese or claim a hug.

“Tony says he’ll be back next week to put the sump pump in,” Hannah said, holding the yurt door open. “At the moment the drains just run into the home field.”

James kissed Hannah’s cheek on the way past. She removed Emily from his back smoothly as he turned to put the cheeses on the table.

“Hi Steve,” Hannah said, setting Emily down then turning to take the crates from Steve. Steve kissed her cheek too, which made her beam.

“Hi Hannah,” Steve said.

“We do have a garden too, James,” Hannah said, looking into the crates.

James lifted out a radish as big as his fist. “Look!” James said. “This is what I mean.”

Hannah poked through the forest of greens and inspected the bag of peas, and shook her head. “I can see. We are definitely not in veggie overdrive here.”

“Please take some,” Steve said. “Please.”

Naomi walked into the kitchen, Rebecca on her hip, and Rebecca immediately held her hands out to Steve and squealed.

“Okay, cutie,” Steve said, taking Rebecca off Naomi and settling her in the crook of one arm. “Gotcha now.”

Rebecca pushed her sticky hands into Steve’s beard and chortled, and Steve laughed too and cuddled her closer.

They walked around the new drains Tony had installed, the children in tow. Steve didn’t know all of the complexities of milk parlor hygiene codes, but he had a thorough acquaintance with cow manure, having learned that on a dairy farm 5% of the work involved milk and the other 95% was about cow shit.

“That’s neat,” James said, laying down on the hard stand to peer between the grating and down the drains. “That’s diverting the slurry from the solids? What about when it freezes?”

“There’s a passive heat pump under the hard stand, warming the drains and the barn floor,” Naomi said. “Tony says it’s rated to minus thirty, and after that, we are all in some kind of arctic temperature inversion nightmare anyway.”

That definitely sounded like Tony.

“What do you do for frozen drains?” Steve asked James, when he stood back up again.

“Wait for spring,” James said. “Hasn’t let me down yet.”

The vegetable garden was a chaotic mess of dug up paths, coils of tubing and stacks of equipment. In between and around Tony’s construction of the soil warming system, the beds were full of thriving plants, though not on the same scale as James’ garden. Steve left Hannah, Naomi and James deep in a discussion about aphid management on lettuce and carried Rebecca over to the greenhouse at the side of the garden.

The doors at either end of the greenhouse were open. Steve ducked his head under the lintel and stepped into the intense heat and humidity of the greenhouse.

“You okay?” he asked Rebecca, who reached out and tried to grab a heavy blood red tomato off the nearest vine.

Tomato plants were tied to the greenhouse roof, their branches cascading with fruit. Under the tomatoes, eggplants gleamed on bushes and zucchinis sprawled over the walkways.

“Wow,” Steve told Rebecca. “James and I should have a greenhouse too, huh?”

The inside of the greenhouse was oppressively hot and sweat trickled down Steve’s back and prickled at his face, making walking back out into a hot summer day feel like walking into the chilly air of Stark Tower.

Hannah was sitting on an upturned bucket, Naomi was cross legged in the dirt and James was squatting in front of them, when Steve picked his way back through the rows of normal-sized celery heads and potato plants.

Something about James’ posture read as tense, which made Steve cautious. He felt like he was walking in on a private conversation even though no one was talking.

“Hey Steve,” Hannah said, looking up at him, her face warm and affectionate. “Could you check on the other children? And see if Rebecca wants a snack?”

Rebecca wriggled in his arms, trying to get down, but Steve kept a solid grip on her.

“Sure,” Steve said. “Let’s get you a snack, little one?”

Rebecca gave a half-hearted cry when Steve carried her away from her moms, but was easily distracted by Steve pointing cows out to her over the fence. The cows seemed pretty interested in Rebecca too, and it took them a while to make their way back up the path to the yurt.

 

The home field had been empty for some time, while Tony and his crew of interns worked on installing the drainage system. This meant, when Hannah held the gate to the field open, the pasture was deep, lush clover and grasses. The clover and grass had grown over the cow pats, leaving a rippling carpet of dark green leaves and tiny white and pink flowers, humming with bees.

“Ice cream feed,” James said, throwing himself down on the clover in the shade of the oak tree at the top of the field.

“Because it makes good ice cream?” Steve asked, sitting down beside James, Rebecca on his lap.

“Because cows love this as much as we love ice cream,” James said. “But yes, the cows will give a lot of cream from this feed too.”

James reached across to wipe drool off Rebecca’s face and she giggled and launched herself from Steve’s lap to James’ arms.

James made noises at her with his lips and she grabbed his beard, hanging on tight, laughing. James’ smile was wide and genuine, and nothing remained of the earlier tension.

Steve figured whatever had made James tense was gone, or was between Hannah and Naomi. He could relax too.

Rebecca let go of James’ beard and clambered back to Steve. Steve stood her up, holding her hands while she balanced herself, then let her go.

Rebecca triumphantly ran back toward the gate, where Eden, Hannah and Naomi were carrying armsful of food through, then tripped over an obstacle hidden by the clover and went down with a wail.

“I’ve got her,” Steve said, jumping up and bounding over to scoop up Rebecca into his arms. Rebecca’s cries turned to shrieks of delight as Steve settled her astride his shoulders, both hands holding her securely in place. She pulled his hair, patted his head and wrapped damp and grassy arms around his face, until Steve knelt down next to James. James reached up and lifted her off Steve’s shoulders, then turned her loose again.

“It’s a good game,” James said, as they watched Rebecca run back toward her moms again, then fall and cry. Steve stood up, and James said, “But who will get tired first? You or her?”

“Rebecca will,” Steve said confidently, setting off to rescue her again.

Steve was right. The three of them sat in the shade of the oak tree, the heat of the day making the field shimmer around them, while Naomi set out food and ginger beer.

Hannah handed around lunch, which was freshly made dark rye bread, egg salad, wedges of cheese, and piles of greens and tomatoes. Beside Steve, James was demolishing his second heaped plate of egg, mayonnaise and cheese, so Steve didn’t hesitate to pile his own plate high with a second serving.

The children ate, then ran around shouting, and then ate some more. Rebecca crawled over all of the adults, smearing tomatoes and mayonnaise everywhere, until Naomi picked her up and took back to the yurt for a clean up and a nap.

The shade of the tree shifted as the sun moved in the sky. Steve took off his boots and socks, stretching his feet out in the sunshine and clover.

“Watch the children?” Hannah asked, standing up and beginning to gather up the dirty plates.

“Sure,” Steve said, propping himself up on his elbows to see where the older three children were. Eden and Coulter were hanging from the maple tree, down the field, while Emily handed a bucket up to them.

No imminent disaster there.

James carried plates and bowls back to the yurt with Hannah, their voices fading as they walked across the field. The children were shouting to each other, but it didn’t sound like a dispute.

Steve relaxed and watched the tiny puffs of white cloud scud across the startling blue sky and the beginnings of a cool change start to ruffle the thick oak leaves overhead.

James came back and sat next to Steve, his arms wrapped around his legs, chin resting on his knees. Cicadas sang loudly in the heat.

James held a plum out to Steve. “First of the season,” he said. “It’s an early Toka.”

Steve took the dusky pink plum and watched as James bit into his own, look of bliss on his face.

The plum was firm and a little tart, then the full, rich fruit flavor hit Steve, and he sighed happily and took another bite.

Beside Steve, James sucked on the plum pit, juice slicking into his beard.

They didn’t need to do anything or be anywhere, not until late afternoon when the animals on the farm would need moving and feeding, ready for the night. Until then, endless hours of summer afternoon stretched ahead of them.

“Is this what happiness feels like?” Steve asked, turning his head so he could see James’ face clearly.

James’ eyes were closed and he was smiling as he finished his plum and tossed away the pit. James tipped his head sideways so he could crinkle his eyes at Steve. “Not quite the word I would have used, but it’s a good one. Yes, this is what happiness feels like.”

This wasn’t James roaring with laughter, or making Steve laugh with his clever jokes and ideas. This wasn’t just the absence of pain and sorrow. This was bone-deep warmth and contentment. This was a window into another world. An open window.

“What oth--” Steve started, as the children shrieked, “Snake! Snake!” and ran toward James and Steve to show them a snake in their bucket.

“Can we keep it?” Eden asked. “It’s a garter snake.”

“It belongs outside,” James said. “Let it go where you found it.”

“We can let it go in the barn, so it can eat rats,” Coulter said, and the three of them took off at speed toward the yurt and barn.

“Where you found it!” James repeated loudly.

They diverted, away from the gate to the barn, and ran back toward the corner of the field they’d been playing in.

“The snake smelled bad,” Steve said.

“Yep,” James said. “No garter snakes indoors.”

Steve watched the three children climb back up the maple tree, hopefully without the snake, and James said, “Do you ever think about having children?”

Emily and Coulter swung from a branch and Eden dropped down to the ground, possibly too heavily, but there were no shouts of dismay.

“I never dared hope for a family,” Steve said. “It’s not possible, not anymore.” He wasn’t sure how his voice sounded, but he felt heavy inside suddenly at the reminder of what he’d traded for the serum.

James lay back on the grass beside Steve and looked up at the tree. “We should have a place like this,” he said, and Steve was relieved he’d changed the subject. “Do you think it’s worth moving the fence line around the big oak? There’s probably only five or six fence posts that we’d need to shift.”

“So we can sit under the oak tree without the cows hassling us? I’d move a lot of fence posts if it meant I was never licked in the ear by a cow again,” Steve said.

James grinned. “That was funny. Gloria just wanted to taste you. I feel the same way sometimes.”

“Yeah, well I’m okay with you doing it, but Miss Gloria was too presumptuous,” Steve said. “If I wanted to be slobbered on like that, I’d go back to wearing tights and dancing for a living.”

“Let’s move the fence and save your virtue from Miss Gloria,” James said.

 

In the truck on the way home, Steve rested his hand on James’ thigh between gear changes. The sky had darkened with clouds as the sun lowered in the sky, and the wind was blowing cool, damp air through the pickup windows.

It was going to storm again.

“Is everything okay?” Steve asked. “Looked like you were having an intense discussion with Hannah and Naomi in the garden earlier. Have they got a problem with their farm?”

“Everything’s fine,” James said. “We were doing some planning for next year.”

“In July?”

“Fall and winter crops go in soon, in August,” James said. “It’s time to order silage for the cows for the winter. And we plan the calves at least eighteen months ahead. It’s always time to get ready for next year.”

James touched Steve’s hand gently.

“Hey,” James said. “Nothing’s wrong. We’re good.”

“Do we really have to plan for winter now?” Steve asked, turning off the road onto the lane.

“I was thinking we should put up extra cheese for winter. I dry the cows off in the new year, to give them a break before calving, so we’ll have some months without milk or cream,” James said, opening his door as the pickup rattled to a stop at the first gate.

Steve drove through the open gate slowly, over the cattle grid, and stopped the pickup while James closed the gate behind them, then climbed back in.

“No milk?” Steve said. “We’ll definitely need extra cheese.”

“We’ve got a whole new cheese cellar to fill.”

 

 

With the bed moved into the new bedroom, there was now space in the main room of the cabin for a new solid workbench.

Steve carried the vat of hot milk, culture, mold powder and rennet from the wood stove to the bench and set it down beside the two other vats of milk on the bench. The cabin door was propped open and the gusts of wind carried spits of rain in, breaking up the heat pouring out of the stove. James’ cat jumped up on to the bench, sniffing at a vat.

“Nope,” Steve said, putting a lid on that vat, and then covering the others. “You can have a very small amount of the finished product, but you cannot swim in the raw materials.”

The vats of milk needed to stand for at least three hours, so Steve filled the kettle and pushed it over the heat of the stove. It was also day two of tvorog making, so that pan of cheese could warm on the stove while the brie cooled. Steve could do with another pot of coffee. And James would want tea soon.

James came into the cabin before Steve had finished the dishes, stamping his boots on the steps, then taking them off and leaving them in the open doorway. He had a thick pencil pushed behind one ear and a notebook in his hands.

“How’s the cheese?” he asked. “Can I boil the kettle?”

Steve pointed at the kettle simmering on the stove top, next to the tvorog pan. “Cheese is cooling. Water’s ready for you. Get the feed ordered?”

“Clean cut of clover and mixed grasses,” James said, sitting down at the table. “We’ll need to get the clamp ready before the next dry spell, when the grass will be cut.”

Steve looked at James expectantly as he put the kettle on the table, beside the remains of yesterday’s batch of sushki.

“Oh, right,” James said, reaching for the kettle and his mug. “The clamp is the three-sided enclosure on the south side of the barn. The cut grass goes in there, we seal it off from the air and moisture, and it ferments. The animals get pickled grass all winter.”

“Thank you,” Steve said. “That’s not happening as often now, but you are still sometimes as incomprehensible as Tony.”

James chuckled. “You’ll just think you’ve got the farm sorted out, and we’ll be into calving with a whole new lot of mysteries.”

“It’s a cow. How complicated can it be?” Steve asked.

“True,” James said. “I’ve only had to pull a few calves out over the years. Most of them get out by themselves.”

James spooned jam into his tea and stirred it in, and Steve sat down at the table with his coffee.

“I called Miss Potts to get approval for the silage order,” James said, from behind his mug. “She says she’s making Tony come back to us in a couple of weeks, to work on Hannah and Naomi’s farm, and please can we make him sleep, like we did last time.”

“Can we?” Steve asked, taking a sushki and breaking it apart to dunk in his coffee.

“I’ll get another bag off Hannah and Naomi,” James said. “Stark will sleep. I guess we will have to put up with him fixing things here too.”

James looked so downcast at the idea that Steve had to pat his shoulder consolingly. “Perhaps we can direct Tony toward building a greenhouse,” Steve suggested.

That seemed to help.

“Miss Potts was very pleased when I told her you were experimenting with soft cheeses. She wants rounds sent to the Tower as soon as they’re ready,” James said.

“We don’t even know if the brie will be any good,” Steve said, between mouthfuls of sushki.

“Have you made a bad batch of cheese yet?” James asked. “No. You’ve definitely improved on the quality of my cheese since you’ve been here.”

Steve sipped his coffee. “I didn’t know I wanted to make cheese, but it’s probably the most satisfying thing I’ve ever done.”

There it was again, the warmth spreading through his body as he filled with happiness. James was looking at him with warm affection, as though Steve and the cheese were the most important thing in the world, and the warmth just kept building.

“There’s something you said yesterday,” James said. “Made it sound like maybe you felt like you had to give up the idea of ever having children because of the serum. Yeah?”

“James,” Steve said. “Don’t.”

“Because the serum might affect the child?” James asked.

This was the pit of fear in Steve’s gut, one of the horrors that stalked him in his dreams. It was bad enough that he had been turned into a monster, a killer, but he could never live with passing that on.

To create a child to be a soldier was abhorrent.

“I never let Howard have a sample,” Steve said. “He really wanted one, but I was very careful.”

“Howard only asked me once,” James said. “It didn’t go well.”

Steve looked up from his coffee to meet James’ calm and gentle gaze.

“But what if you knew the child would be unaffected?” James asked.

“How could I be sure?” Steve said. “It’s too big a risk.”

“Hannah and Naomi’s children are all completely normal,” James said. “You’ve held Rebecca lots. You know she’s just a baby. Eden’s balance is wobbly, and you’ve seen them with stitches for a week after falling off their bike. Coulter gets sunburned all the time. Emily gets horrible colds every winter. They’re all just children.”

Steve blinked at James. This was too big and too sudden. The potential for having a child was as big as the serum itself had been.

“There’s no hurry,” James said. “Take as long as you need to think about this.”

Steve stood up and went over to the vats of milk and culture. The vats were still warm to touch and the curds were beginning to form on the top of the milk.

The cat climbed up to sit on the table in front of James and the cabin was quiet apart from the mrowps of the cat and the crack of the fire in the stove. James’ pencil moved over his notebook with the faintest of scratchings and James hummed to himself under his breath.

When Steve looked through the open window, a warm rain was drifting down from the low clouds. The cows were dark shapes in the two fields behind the old farmhouse, grazing the deep summer grass.

He had cheese to make and crates of beans, early peas and squash to pickle and can. Good work. Peaceful work.

The page of James’ notebook crackled as he turned it over, and the scratching started again.

Steve had curds to cut and then settle in a mold.