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Steve has always loved music. Both he and Bucky have loved it since they were kids. He remembers when they first joined the church choir; singing every Sunday morning had put Steve in a good mood for the rest of the day. Bucky enjoyed it as well, but Steve was the only person he’d admit it to. They were some of the only young people to sing with all the little old ladies, all of whom Bucky of course befriended and brought tea to after services, but once they joined and stuck with it and enjoyed it, others followed their example. Maureen, the pianist/choir lady, was eternally grateful to them both for it.
Sometimes, after services when most of the congregation had headed home, Steve and Bucky would sit at the piano and strike out clunky notes, trying but usually failing to replicate what they had been singing. They tried to mentally connect the dots on the sheet music that had been left out to the notes they sung, but it resulted in battling fingers trying to get the tune right and more fun than success.
One Sunday, they noticed that small pieces of marking tape had been stuck along a length of the keys and letters written on them. A single sheet of music had been left out, and it looked more basic than what was usually there. It had small letters written on it as well.
They sat for an entire hour taking it in turns to read a bar of music and tap it out on the corresponding piano keys. It was one of the most satisfying feelings to get through the whole page with no mistakes.
Maureen had come over to them later, when the rest of the church was well and truly deserted. "You two are good. You should take lessons."
Steve had looked sad at that. "My mum can't afford a piano tutor."
Maureen smiled. "Well, I'm sure I could teach you," she had said with a kind smile. "For free."
Steve hadn't wanted to get his hopes up, but Bucky was looking excited as well. "Really? You'd do that?"
"For two lovely young men like you?" - they were only 10 at this moment in time - "I'd be glad to."
And so every Sunday after the service, Maureen would teach them on her piano at home (it was much warmer there than at the empty church, and she baked them biscuits every week). She marked all the piano keys and taught them about scales, how to read music and how to work around each other. After six years, they were pretty damn good.
And after those six years, Maureen passed away.
It was difficult. Both Steve and Bucky had lost members of family, but that didn't make it any easier, and Maureen had been like family to them.
She left them her piano. It was one of the only pieces of furniture in the apartment they shared. It seemed out of place because it wasn't in that little corner she had kept it in, with music scattered on and under it. They couldn't bring themselves to play it for a while, but the evening after her funeral, Bucky had sat on the stool and opened the key cover, staring at the bars of black and white that swam in his vision. When he managed to play a note, it echoed loudly around the room. The clear sound had brought the tears spilling out of his eyes and then Steve was there, gently pressing keys to bring out a sad melody that Maureen had once taught them. Bucky slumped against him, letting his sobs be swallowed by the music and his tears dampen Steve's bony shoulder. He had felt Steve press a kiss into his hair as he played on into the night.
The piano was far from new when it was given to them, but it was beyond well-used by the time they had to pass it on. They'd play it all the time, despite not being taught anymore. After all, Maureen had said to them in her will how proud she was of how far they'd come and how much closer it had made them. She'd always said that music was the light that shone even in the darkest times.
So they played. When they were happy, when they were sad, lonely, drunk, ecstatic, bored, content. Their favourite time to play was Christmas; they'd play for the carol concert at church and sing along with the choir ladies then head home and play them together, on into the night as the sipped mulled wine and indulged fully in the term 'season to be jolly'. They made up rude versions of the traditional carol lyrics that left each other giggling - Steve was a lot better than one would expect of a good little boy like him, and that was one of many things that Bucky loved about him. They’d play long into the night, not worrying about what the morning might bring.
But the morning always came. It came with brutality and war on its boots, trudging it in without relent. The time that dawned tore them apart, sending them to different corners of the world to do its dirty work.
There were few pianos on the Front. Very little music, in fact. The troops would sing, either a dirge that suited the atmosphere or a bright tune to block it out; it helped on the surface, but it's always short-lived when you're surrounded by such heavy reality.
The songs weren't the only facade on the Front - just a small part of a bigger one. Bucky got so used to his tough exterior, his thick sergeant skin, the bravado of war vets, that he forgot the person he was underneath. He'd always had someone to share that side of himself with, but he'd left that part of himself at home with Steve.
When they were reunited in Italy, Bucky truly noticed how much he had changed. Steve, this new version who everyone paid attention to but was still the same awkward dork on the inside, brought his past flooding back to him. He ached for home, for things to go back to they way they were, but he was conscious of the way he surreptitiously repressed the longings that he knew could never be satisfied. He knows that Steve noticed that he was more closed off, not willing to divulge every dirty mission he’d been on, generally lacking the lust he used to have for life. But then, a battlefield will do that to you.
Yet sometimes, in the dead of night, when they could hear nothing but the cicadas lurking the other side of a tent wall and the occasional snore from Dum Dum, Bucky’s head would rest against Steve’s shoulder. And out of the quiet, a soft, low melody would rumble in his ear, an old tune that they used to play together. And Bucky would close his eyes, and in that moment, he was back at home.
-
The past couple of years have been more than difficult for Steve. Well, the last couple of his years - to everyone else, it was decades, but for Steve, 2011 was the same as 1945 and the loss of Bucky was still a fresh wound.
Since that fateful mission, piano music has struck Steve's heart harder than ever before. He could barely listen to traditional carols or hymns, and even the tech-ified versions on the radio left him feeling off.
But he found Bucky again. He did. He was broken and beaten and bruised, but Bucky was in there. Steve knew it. No matter what the others might have said, this was Bucky and he would come back to himself one day.
It took a long time to get him to come to the Tower. He’d camped on Steve’s couch for months, not saying much other than what was needed and trying to keep out of the way. Little by little he began to emerge, the occasional flicker of a smile or a look that held some kind of depth. Little by little, he stopped flinching whenever he experienced physical contact, even began to talk and initiate conversation. Little by little, he seemed more and more like himself. It was with more than a little reluctance that he agreed to come to Stark’s, having met most of them individually but never as a group. Steve hopes against hope, as the cab weaves through the streets as it heads towards the monument that is Stark Tower, that this kind of exposure to other people will do his friend more good than bad, that maybe it’ll trigger some snarky response and flip that final switch that brings him back to Bucky.
It’s the piano that does it. Bucky is curled up on the sofa, minding his own business and trying not to get in the way of everyone's festivities, and he has an odd, distant look on his face which Steve is used to (not that it makes it any easier to see). There isn't any Christmas music - Tony knows it’s a sensitive area from last year when Steve was round, and has elected to be tactful for once.
Steve had noticed the piano hiding in the corner of the room the first time he ever came into this room, but had ignored it ever since. This time, though, he glimpses it and he pauses. He'd been in the middle of calling Bucky to join them back at the table, but instead he gets up and walks slowly over to it, lifts up the lid and hovers his fingers where they used to so easily fit all those years ago.
The moment he presses the keys, Bucky's head snaps up. Their eyes meet as the chord rings out, and there's a humanity there that Steve has been waiting to see since he found him. It calls back memories that Bucky had thought he'd lost forever. He feels his throat constrict with the emotions that he thought had been beaten out of him and he can only stare and experience it.
The rest of the room is silent as well, watching, wary, but when Steve plays again, Bucky gives the smallest smile. With tentative movements, and a look to Steve that seems to ask permission to join him, he stands up and walks over.
Steve scoots over to one half of the stool, inviting Bucky to join him. They sit, legs touching, and their fingers fall as one, a beautiful chord filling the room.
Little by little, they recall the notes. It must be ingrained well and truly in the back of their minds because before long, they've sped up and they're playing like they used to, fighting for control of the pedals and reaching across one another to run their finger down the keys, crossing arms and somehow bringing out this perfect sound, and it feels like Christmas again. The first real Christmas since 1938. The songs that had brought back memories of loss now filled the world with joy, and Steve could not stop grinning.
The others join them round the piano, smiling at the moment they’re witnessing an eventually singing along to the ones they know in varying degrees of vocal quality. There are some that only Steve and Bucky know; the others sit back and watch, seeing this connection that Steve had insisted for so long was there, seeing it truly for the first time.
Steve can hardly believe what is happening; he gets swept away by the flow of it, the sensation that his missed and longed for all these years and when they eventually take a pause, it hits him. He looks to Bucky and squeezes his hand, and Bucky looks back at him, his Bucky, the one that found serenity in music and song, that spent an hour after every Sunday morning service catching up with every old lady in the choir, bringing them cakes whenever they could afford the ingredients, playing with the kids and grandkids out in the courtyard, smiling all the while.
His Bucky has finally come home.