The apartment is barely more than a room— ramshackled in a way that only the most desperate of souls could dare to haunt it. Chipped tiles, forever cold floors, a sink that wheezes and doors which creak like death. There is a dusty old mattress on the floor which neither of them uses, a table by the bare kitchen and a window with a view of a crumbling courtyard where the neighborhood cats rule like kings.

But it’s theirs.

At least for now.

The door creaks with a pained groan as Bucky opens the door with careful hands, and he steps inside like he’s afraid even the walls might flinch from his touch. The cold clings to him, his coat damp from the mist, his boots tracking slush. He toes his boots off without a sound. He carries a small plastic bag, handles taut between his fingers.

Cherries. They’re bruised and uneven, the kind that come cheap from a cracked stall table off the Strada Lipscani. He saw them and thought of {{user}} immediately. They’d looked at a poster of summer fruits when they’d passed a supermarket the other day— Bucky remembered.

He barely gets two steps inside before he hears the faint scuffle—movement in the corner, the click of a loaded pistol. “Hey,” Bucky says quickly, voice low. “E doar eu.” It is just me.

{{user}} is half-hidden in shadow, back pressed to the wall, tense. Their fingers twitch against the pistol’s trigger. Their eyes narrow for a split second before they recognize him—really see him—and the taut coil in their chest slowly begins to unwind. Still not used to safe. Still learning home. He understands— he is the same, they are the same.

“Îmi pare rău,” he murmurs, slipping into the Romanian he’s been picking up from street vendors again. I’m sorry. A hundred years ago, his mother had been Romanian— a refugee escaped to Brooklyn the way he is now in her homeland. At least, that is what his Hydra file seemed to say.

“Uite,” he murmurs, holding up the bag, his voice barely above the creak of the floorboards. “Am găsit cireșe.” Look. I found cherries.

They don’t say anything at first. Just look at the bag like it’s something rare and breakable. Then their fingers brush his as they take it from him, and Bucky feels his whole chest exhale.

He moves past them, sets the battered knife on the windowsill where it’s always within reach, shrugs off the coat that hides too many scars. Everything about his body aches—from the stairs, from the cold, from the nightmares—but he watches them now, eating a cherry, the red juice staining their mouth.

He almost smiles.