Steve's slippers find a home next to the entrance of his kitchen where he can slip them on every time he goes in to make a smoothie. He still can't help the snatches of guilt that he feels when he thinks about their price, but at the same time, he also feels proud of himself for buying them, and every time he slips them on, he falls a little bit in love, so it's okay.

He's still in no way prepared to splurge on a mattress though.

Maybe I can save up for one, he thinks as he shuffles around the kitchen, preparing breakfast for himself and Bucky. I'm budgeting for everything else; I might as well add that to the list.

For breakfast he very carefully makes certain that he has all three thousand of his morning calories.

(And he hates it, that amount of food is still ridiculous and he's beginning to think that he might have to talk to Jason about how it feels to go from being really small to really big in one fell swoop.) However, despite everything, simply knowing that Jason expects him to eat properly actually helps motivate him a little.

The alarm system for training in the gym is working rather well too. JARVIS had only had to call Bucky down once before Steve's brain had clued in and started listening for his phone's signal to take a break. It's still hard to actually stop of course, but the threat of dragging Bucky down to the gym if he doesn't is usually enough to convince him to step back and take a breather.

His sleep isn't much better, but everywhere else he can see tiny improvements, something Jason is encouraging him to keep track of, for the days where he feels like nothing is getting better.

So, it stands to reason that just as he is beginning to feel like he's progressing somewhere, Bucky's own mood should take the opportunity to crash.

He hadn't quite realised how responsive his friend had become until he starts becoming less so, looking more and more unfocused as the days go by, until he seems to have reverted back to his stockpile of one-word answers.

He reacts less to the things around him too, fading back into a statue like he'd been when he'd first arrived at the tower, needing more specific directions to complete various tasks and staring blankly ahead of himself when not being directly addressed.

The blank stare makes his stomach twist and Bucky's sudden regression stresses the life out of him, especially since he can't figure out why.

"Recovery isn't linear," Sam reassures him on the fourth day, when he comes to him with his concerns. "Sometimes, bad days happen. Just keep doing what you're doing, and Bucky will come out the other side."

Steve tries his best to keep that in mind, but there's no point in pretending that Bucky's mood doesn't have an effect on his own emotional state and he finds his temperament plummeting along with Bucky's.

He finds it harder to concentrate on the project he'd started, his mind instead using his free time to worry constantly over his friend and overthinking his own actions, searching for some kind of clue that could help Bucky.

His sleep schedule becomes more erratic too and by the morning of the fifth day, he wakes up stressed and exhausted. By then he can't spend another minute in the stifling air of his room where Bucky stands at attention and does nothing but wait for him, so he bypasses his own kitchen entirely and drags them both miserably into the common room kitchen for breakfast instead.

The common room is mostly empty this early in the morning, although Tony is seated at one end of the counter, a cup of coffee in one hand and a tablet in the other.

He looks up as they enter and gives Steve a nod, which he tiredly returns before heading towards the fridge, Bucky settling himself quietly by the counter a few feet away from Tony.

He has no slippers up here in the common room and he scowls, his toes curling as he pulls out todays collection of frozen fruit and cold air from the freezer washing over him. He makes the smoothie and starts a pot of oatmeal in silence, trying not to let his bad mood leech out and start affecting everything around him.

It's not Bucky's fault, he reminds himself as he turns to serve the food. Being grumpy doesn't help anyone.

Still, he finds himself mulling over his food, his appetite not very inclined to participate this morning. (Which is just great because that just makes it even harder to balance out his calories.)

He's busy staring moodily at his smoothie when Tony stands up, heading toward the sink with his empty mug. Beside him, Bucky shivers, and if he'd been paying attention, he would have seen how Bucky's eyes tracked Tony's movements, showing more alertness than he had in days.

Instead he misses the way Bucky's mouth opens and closes a few times, his hand tight on his glass. "Steve needs—" He almost bites his tongue as he jerks his head up and stares, Bucky's words rushed and trembling, but oh so welcome.

"Steve needs'a bed," Bucky blurts out, his body shrinking in on himself as he speaks, but his eyes fixed determinedly on Tony's frozen form. "He c'n't sleep'on his."

Tony's eyes flicker between him and Bucky, and Steve's whole brain stalls as he tries to process the first sentence his friend has spoken in days.

What? His brain stutters and he stares in shock. (Another part of his brain stands up and sings because Bucky had called him by name). But, Bucky had— he'd never expected— he hadn't even known that Bucky knew he was having a hard time sleeping! And the fact that Bucky had taken it upon himself to speak up, let along ask for something, was mind-boggling.

"Steve?" Tony asks a little cautiously and slightly confusedly from his position by the sink. "Is that right?"

Steve's mind snaps back into gear and he becomes suddenly aware of how pale Bucky looks and how fast his heart is beating, probably scared out of his mind now that he's said his piece.

Steve's first instinct since childhood has been to insist on his self-sufficiency. Bucky himself had complained endlessly that the first words out of Steve's mouth were always 'I'm fine', regardless of what his actual situation was.

But now, looking at Bucky's anxious face, he abruptly realises that that is not an option. If he downplays or avoids Tony's question, Bucky will probably take it the wrong way, assuming that he'd done something wrong, or had made a mistake.

That, plus the fact that this is pretty much the first thing he'd said in days, leads Steve to wonder if Bucky's silence had something to do with his statement. Obviously telling Tony about Steve's sleeping arrangements had not been an easy choice for him to make, and whether he'd intended to or not, Bucky had effectively trapped Steve into giving an honest answer as a reply.

"Ah—" Steve swallows and looks over at Tony, his cheeks heating. "Ah, well, my bed's kind of…" His shoulders start to tense up and his hands clench as he speaks, but he presses on. "It's kind of… too soft for me, so— I have a hard time… sleeping on it."

Tony's expression rapidly flies through disbelief, confusion and a touch of indignation before settling on exasperated. "Well why didn't you say something?" He replies before waving his hand and rambling off on different types of beds and how they could get him a new one right away and 'all you had to do was ask Rogers'.

Across from him, Bucky starts to relax, a glitter of something bright in his eye and the faintest hint of a smile on his lips.

oOo

Steve's new bed arrives with little additional fanfare, and while it might be the placebo effect, he thinks that it might even help, at least a little.

He's not naïve enough to think that switching out beds will completely cure him of his nightmares or restless nights, but now, every time he looks at it, he can remember how Bucky had facilitated its arrival.

The dilemma around telling someone about Steve's sleeping situation seems to have been the cause for Bucky's most recent bout of silence, since once he's done the deed and no disastrous consequences had made themselves directly apparent, he goes back to his quiet but attentive self.

A day or two after the arrival of the bed, Steve wanders down to the labs, letting himself in and watching fondly while Tony buzzes around the place, muttering various equations and observations under his breath.

After a while he happens to glance up and a smile flashes across his face when he spots him. "Hiya, Cap," he says, lifting up his goggles and waving a screwdriver. "How's the bed treating you?"

Steve's mouth quirks up and he pushes himself off the bench he'd been leaning on, making his way over to Tony and his cluster of holograms.

"Well enough," he says amiably. "What are you working on?"

And with that, Tony is off again, his mouth running a mile a minute as he waves his hands at various holograms.

And maybe that's the nice thing about Tony, you knew he cared, he cared enough to manhandle Steve into a new bed and ask after it, but he's also completely willing to drop the topic and move on to less emotionally rocky territory.

It's actually quite amazing, Steve realises upon reflection, just how far Tony had been willing to reach while trying to drag him back up from the hole that he'd fallen into after waking up from the war.

Tony might not like emotional situations, and he might not think that he was any good at them. But no one could ever say that he didn't care.

So, when Tony casually mentions that he'd found a doctor somewhere that was willing to try and remove his arc reactor (a Doctor Strange… or a strange doctor, one of the two), his voice as light as if they were discussing the weather, Steve doesn't ask him if he's sure, and he doesn't congratulate him.

Instead he simply asks, "How're you going to power your suit afterwards?"

And suddenly Tony is relaxed and rambling again about suit designs and repulsors, before somehow following a train of thought that leads him to planning out Steve's upcoming birthday (no fireworks), leaving Steve to smile and listen while Tony spins the universe around him.

oOo

With Bucky and Tony both relatively safe and stable, Steve goes back to working on his project.

He works on it whenever he gets a free minute which is usually when one of the other Avengers takes Bucky off for some sort of activity (the time when Sam had taught Bucky to make pancakes had been… memorable).

As he works, Steve can't help thinking back over the last year and how much things have changed. Oh, certainly there had been less than pleasant things that had come up. He'd spent most of the last year working undercover in a terrorist organisation, only to blow them and his other job out of the sky a few months ago.

He'd found Bucky again, and been forced to stand by while he was used as a tool for far too long.

But he'd also been able to be there to watch Bucky grow, watch as he slowly came out of his shell and grew past the creature that Hydra had tried to beat him into.

He'd watched himself grow as well and had seen his relationship with the Avengers twist and evolve. What could have been simply a business relationship had become… well, had become a family.

And things are better.

They are better in Natasha and Clint's trusting of JARVIS to protect them inside the tower. They are better in Bruce's long-winded science talks with Tony and in Tony's declaration of his plans to remove the arc reactor. They are better with Sam's addition to the group, and hopefully, one day with Thor's return.

Of course, Steve knows that there will still be bad days. Days were Tony shuts himself down in the lab and Natasha stares blankly over her coffee cup and Clint disappears into the vents without a word to anyone. There will be days were Steve can't sleep and Bucky won't look anyone in the eye…

They still have plenty that they need to work on, and they still have plenty of Hydra heads to cut down.

But there will always be better days.

And that's what his project is about.

oOo

He'd originally started his project when he had first been faced with his newfound free time, thanks to the Avengers' involvement with Bucky. Before then, free time had been something he'd consciously and unconsciously avoided, since it often led to thinking too much…

But now, he tried to use it to encourage himself to get back into doing things that he used to enjoy. Originally, when he'd first started his project, he'd only been intending to sharpen up his skills and reintroduce his fingers to his art after having neglected it for so long.

That plus the fact that the Avengers had given him a sketchbook for his birthday, and he hadn't wanted to waste that, despite how intimidating the fresh white pages could be sometimes.

He'd started with Tony first before moving on to the rest of the Avengers, doing his best to get each sketch to come out the way he wanted. It had been difficult at first, and sometimes discouraging, but he'd soon found that the driving urge he'd carried with him since he'd been a child to draw had not been lost to him in the ice.

When he was younger, the need to etch things out on paper had often felt like an all-consuming itch under his skin, a need that drove him to sketch and draw whenever he had the chance. After he'd woken up though… he hadn't really felt the urge to do anything, and any art that he'd been able to create had felt flat and empty, leaving him feeling like maybe he just… didn't have that spark anymore.

That obviously wasn't the case though, and he's beginning to understand that his melancholy probably had something to do with his own PTSD. Either way, he'd been able to finish his project in time and he'd had JARVIS order frames for each picture so that on the eve of his birthday, almost one year after the Avengers had given him his paper and pencils in the first place, he can start delivering them.

With JARVIS' help, he slips his way through the tower, feeling almost like Santa Clause as he drops off the framed pictures to where the intended recipients will be able to find them and admire them for themselves.

Tony's, he slips into the lab, JARVIS assuring him that the resident genius is out for the night with Pepper. It isn't a large frame, about the size of his sketchbook, and Steve stands it up to sit on Tony's work bench, where he's sure to see.

DUM-E whirls over to see and Steve smiles gently at him. "That's you," he tells him, pointing to the picture. More accurately, it's a picture of Tony, his head bent over a piece of tech, his face bright and animated, with his robots surrounding him like a crowd of excited children as he explains to them the intricacies of a repulsor engine.

Natasha's picture he slips just inside her door, JARVIS consenting to unlock her room just long enough for him to get his arm through. Her picture shows her seated on the couch, her hair hanging lose by her face as she bends over her feet, a nail polish brush held delicately in her hand.

For Clint, he settles the picture next to his bow in the gym's equipment room, the image of Clint crouched with his hand out, staring intently at a pigeon bringing a smile to his face.

JARVIS lets him slip inside Bruce's room, the scientist currently busy reading in the common room upstairs. The inside of Bruce's room is a mix of scientific papers and experiments and cozy reading chairs next to overstuffed bookshelves on the walls.

Steve sets his picture on the kitchen counter—a shot of Bruce in his reading glasses, seated in the common room with a well-worn book in his lap—before slipping out again.

Sam's picture gets placed in his gym locker, where he's sure to see it after his morning work out. The scene he'd chosen for this one is one of Sam standing in the kitchen over a pot on the stove, a spoon in one hand and a cookbook in the other, an intense look of concentration on his face.

He'd drawn one for Thor as well, for when the god got back. A picture of Thor sitting in the middle of a dog park, talking amiably with nearly every dog in the vicinity.

Bucky's picture…

Bucky's picture he sets gently on top of his dresser.

It's a simple scene, just Bucky standing in the common room, his face calm and thoughtful as he looks outside the window, the sun from the window lighting up his face and reflects gently off the metal of his left arm.

Steve had chosen this picture very carefully.

Actually, all of the scenes that he had drawn had been strategically chosen. They were all quiet, intimate moments from the Avengers lives that showed the person behind the mask, none of them fighting or training or posing in their suits. And Bucky's picture is the Bucky of now, rather than the Bucky that Steve had lost nearly 70 years before.

That is the most important part. It isn't about masks or suits of armor; it's about the people that had taken Steve in, and given him a home.

Stepping back and smiling, satisfied at a job well done, he slips back into his room to lay down on his new bed.

Tomorrow, America will wake up and start celebrating his birthday, but he won't be there. Tomorrow Captain America has accepted not one single invitation to come and speak, neither has he accepted a single interview or phone call.

Tomorrow, his friends will have found his little presents and Tony will have a birthday planned guaranteed to involve hilarious mishaps with his friends turned family, and absolutely no fireworks at all.

Tomorrow, Steve thinks as he settles down under his blanket, will be a good day.

The End

AN: So, here's the end! This was pretty crazy, when I started writing this in the AU after Endgame came out, I did not expect it to turn into a whole book. But, I'm happy with how it turned out, and I hope you like it too. Thank you to everyone who commented, favorited or followed (a special thank you to those who commented more than once, you guys make my day!)

NOW, for the big news: I am writing a sequel. It is called "The Alternate Handler" and it is from Bucky's POV. Since I wanted to start posting it right away I haven't finished the whole thing like I had with this one, but I have written 12 chapters already, so hopefully I'll be able to keep up. I've posted the first chapter already and will be updating it weekly, so you can follow it if you like.

The story with cover Bucky's POV of these events but will eventually expand beyond what this story covered. I hope you enjoy :)