The Pursuit of Perfection (A Bucky Barnes Fanfic) [Sequel to Winter Is Coming]

Chapter 1: Sparklers

"Love is friendship that has caught fire. It is quiet, understanding, mutual confidence, sharing, and forgiving. It is loyalty through good and bad times. It settles for less than perfection and makes allowances for human weaknesses." -Ann Landers

***

            The cake is extravagant. Steve almost thinks it's too much, but he can't help thinking that he wouldn't want anything less for his birthday. It's tiered: the shape of his shield as the base, the first level a red, white, and blue chunk, the next sporting a city theme that's supposed to be Brooklyn, and the final level decked out with military propaganda. A Captain America figurine stands at the top, saluting everyone.

            July fourth. He couldn't have had a more patriotic birthday.

            "Just so you know, the cake was all Natasha," Harley says as she approaches him, gazing at the cake. "I trusted her to go all out."

            Steve laughs. "I would expect nothing less of her. What flavor is it?"

            "One is red velvet, another is vanilla, and I'm not sure what the last one is, but I'm sure it's something blue." Harley looks over her shoulder. "Time for fireworks!" She runs over to Bucky, who is waving her over, and they head inside S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters together to start the show. Steve floats over near Clint and Natasha, looking up at the sky and waiting.

***

        Bucky and Harley run off towards the tallest building in sight, where they've displayed their fireworks for the show (with permission from the company, of course). Harley can barely contain her excitement.

          Once in the elevator, though, her shaking is no longer from excitement.

                "Hey," Bucky says quietly, looping his arms around her. "It's alright. No need to be afraid."

                Harley looks up at him. "How can I not be afraid after a spy tried to kill you the same night I got you back?"

                "That shooter paid for his actions," Bucky reminds her. "Harls, no matter where we go, there will be people that are threats to us. But we are more than capable of handling it."

                The doors ding open, leading to a short hallway and a staircase to the roof. Bucky leads Harley up the stairs, her smiling returning when she sees their display.

                Bucky just stands back and watches. For once, Harley isn't regarding her power as a derogatory quality. Just like that night he showed her the fireworks outside the city, she's embracing her power.

                Harley peers over her shoulder, looking to Bucky for the signal.

                "Light up the sky, darling."

***

          Steve isn't sure how the fireworks show is going to go. It'll be wonderful, of course, he just hopes Bucky and Harley don't get carried away, especially since Harley is lighting them herself--she tends to lose control when she gets too excited.

            "Don't let her burn down the building," Steve had warned Bucky the previous morning.

            Bucky laughed. "I won't. But no promises."

            The first firework shoots into the sky, a tiny one that explodes into a lot of other tiny ones. The next ones are grander and more colorful, a plethora of sparks and cracks as they go off simultaneously.

            Steve leans over to Clint. "I forgot how loud these things can be!"

            Clint turns to him. "What? Sorry, I'm deaf in that ear. Say that again?"

            Steve repeats himself; Clint nods in agreement. He didn't know that Clint was deaf in one ear. Then again, a soldier never comes back with no injuries.

            Bucky and Harley kept dropping hints about the finale, and the closer it draws, the more nervous Steve gets. Why is he nervous about fireworks?

            The sky is silent for a moment, perhaps to ready the end. Suddenly, about fifty streams of gold shoot up in the air and explode into fireworks that cover the entire sky. They're followed by more, and pretty soon, it appears that the sky has been replaced with fireworks. They fade as everyone claps and cheers.

            "Cake time!" someone shouts, and they all move over to the cake table. They'd sung earlier; Steve wanted to get it out of the way. Tony hands Steve the figurine on top and tells him to put it on top of his TV or something.

            "That was amazing, guys!" Steve says to Bucky and Harley once they're back.

            Bucky holds up his hands. "It was all her."

            "Not true," Harley protests, punching him in the arm in a you're-being-too-modest way.

            "I want cake." Bucky disappears, and Steve takes this chance to thank Harley for her gift. She'd gotten him new hand straps for his punching bags. His cloth ones were getting ratty and tattered, so she bought him leather ones.

            "Hey, we already have one friend with a damaged arm," she says in a low voice. "We don't want another."

            Steve feels a headache coming on. He's been getting them more and more often, much to his dismay, but he doesn't think it's right to leave his own party before anyone else. And everyone's having fun. Tony and Thor are having a drinking contest, Clint and Natasha are arguing about who's name should come first when people address both of them, Bruce is having an engaging conversation with Fury about new scientific advances (presumably), and Harley and Bucky are throwing cake at each other. Steve grins. They're such children...if only they could go back to those days.