Chapter Text
The time he spends in the matrix, in the swirling monochrome of potentialities to the point of sickness and coming undone: the time he spends like that feels endless. He wonders if this is what comes after; he wonders if this is Hell.
When he lands, though: it is soft. It is warm.
The ringing that filled his ears subsides, and is replaced by something oddly familiar, oddly soothing and rhythmic.
Breathing. It’s the sound of breathing.
He’s in a bed. And he’s not alone.
He wasn’t done. He wasn’t done but he doesn’t know where he is.
He stays very, very still and takes stock of his surroundings, as his senses return to him. Or else, he tries to, but the first sense that returns evidence to him is the cadence of the breath beside him, and the truth of scent when he inhales: he knows both, intimately, better than he knows the beat of his own heart.
“Steve?”
Oh, and that voice, clouded and soft with sleep; that voice around his name.
Steve can’t swallow. He doesn’t know what this is—it still could be a hell of some sort, toying with him. He’s desperate to reach out but he’s afraid that he’ll meet thin air, that this is a dream or a trick.
He’s never been here before. He knows he’s never been here before. He’s never shared a bed with Bucky before like this after he fell, after he—
“Closer,” Bucky groans, reaching back and patting the bed between his body and Steve’s, almost close enough to meet Steve’s hand and touch—
It’s a lie. It has to be a lie but Steve moves closer against his own wishes, against all the things his soul can’t stand.
He rolls as close as he can to Bucky’s body without making contact. He’s still too scared, and after everything, everything he won’t be able to stand it, he won’t survive if he’s survived at all, if this isn’t just damnation and temptation and:
Bucky groans again, and gropes for Steve’s hand; finds it quick and stops Steve heart in his chest.
It’s solid. It fits Steve’s own hand just like it always had, every time.
“You’re so warm,” Bucky murmurs dazedly, and promptly falls back into the rhythmic breathing of sleep, and Steve can’t breathe. Steve can't breathe, but then he feels Bucky’s heat against him in kind and Steve doesn’t care just then if he’s condemned, if the universe forgot to end it and he gets just this one fantasy before the real close, he doesn’t care—
He wraps his arms around Bucky’s waist and presses against his back like a safe haven and is selfish, so selfish, and he buries his face in the nape of Bucky’s neck and prays for this purgatory never to end.
____________
“What the hell?”
Steve startles awake, realizing in slow pieces that he’s in bed, he’s alone, and he shouldn’t be, and that voice.
He turns to it immediately, because it’s shaking, and it’s near but still too far, and it’s...scared.
It sounds scared, and it’s Bucky’s voice. Bucky should be in bed, but he’s not, and instead he’s out of arm’s reach and he’s scared.
Steve begins to think that the whole Hell theory is making more sense. Give him a taste and then crush his foolish fucking heart beneath the boots of unending punishment. He’s heard enough sermons on the subject in his youth to figure it adds up.
“No, no,” Bucky’s standing at the other side of the room, plastered against the wall as he shakes his head almost compulsively, almost pendulously, eyes wide enough to look like it hurts.
“I’m past this, I fucking got past this,” he murmurs to himself, and Steve can’t help it; he sits up and makes to stand, to move closer and help, somehow help even though, if he’s being punished, he’ll fail and it’ll hurt more, but he can’t not.
He can’t not.
“Don’t.”
The sharpness, the harsh, raw edge of the word from Bucky’s throat stops Steve still.
“Don't, you,” he’s still shaking his head, but his expression is crumbling farther in on itself with every second, and he breathes only to let it gain some purchase, to reset before coming apart entirely, one step forward and two straight back.
“You disappear, every time, you disappear before I wake up and that’s,” Bucky’s voice cracks, and the sound of lost words, the lost breath makes something crack just as fierce, shatter just as hard in Steve’s chest.
“And I can live with that, that’s enough, so long as I don’t have to watch you…” he gestures vacantly, but stops quickly when he seems to lose purchase, grasps desperately at the wall behind him like he needs it to stay upright.
“But before, when, when I,” Bucky flounders, blinks too quick and seems to be fighting between staring at Steve like he’s a ghost or like he’s heaven-sent, or looking away from him like he can make some sort of horrible nightmare stop if he does.
“When you what?” Steve ventures, when Bucky’s breathing gets too fast for comfort.
“When all I did was see you!” Bucky snaps, heels of his palms pressed against his eyes, and Steve thinks the emotion he might be pressing back there just gets stuck in his throat, in his words.
“But touching you, I couldn’t, you’d,” Bucky’s expression almost gives then, hands pulled away from his eyes and leaving them unguarded, pulled down so he can look at them, like those hands were the enemy not because of what they’d done—he’d looked at them that way for a long time after he remembered everything, Steve knows—but because of what they apparently failed to do when Steve was, when he saw Steve, after—
“I can’t,” Bucky pushes himself away from the wall and starts pacing rapidly, hands fisting in his hair as he murmurs over and over as he walks back and forth: “I can’t go back to this, I can’t—”
“Bucky?” Steve can’t help but speak, because watching this is painful; watching Bucky in so much pain itself is painful. “You okay?”
Bucky stops, and spins on Steve, and nearly shouts at him:
“Do you have any idea how much it hurts?”
Those words carry in them the entire process of a heart between when it beats and when it breaks and then it stops. Steve’s breathless for hearing it, punched straight with the sound against his sternum, stuttering his own pulse off-rhythm for the force.
“Of course you do, or,” Bucky runs hands over his face and through his hair; “or don’t, you’re not real, you’re, you, we lost you and I...”
He breathes heavy and long and deep, still too fast and Steve can see the blood his nails are digging out of his palms for the force of the fists he’s making and Steve has the unbearable urge to reach and uncoil those fingers and kiss the tips of them and never let them cause harm, never let Bucky come to harm, ever again. He’s been through their lives twice, now, and he’s seen so much hurt and maybe this is eternal rest, maybe this is pain forever, maybe this is what he’s always meant to feel: almost, but not quite. The best he can be, but still not enough, and he’ll have to watch it at arm’s length, failure after failure acted out in technicolor with just enough of a taste in the middle to remind him how hard to hurt: maybe that’s what this is going to be.
But Steve’s a fool, goddamnit, he’s a fool: if he gets those reminders, those tastes for the rest of his penance after a life he realizes now was fucking full of things he took for granted or let slip by; if this is what he suffers, then it’s worth it.
The tastes are worth it, he can already tell. They will be worth it, from now until the end of all things.
“I’m never going to get over it, am I? Not really. Fucking kidding myself,” Bucky’s pressed against the wall again, and he slides down it, knees drawn up so his arms spill over and his head buries between them; Steve hears when the tears come, once his face is hidden—he thinks that’s Steve’s a hallucination, but he still doesn’t want him to see the breakdown on display.
“It’s been months, almost a year and it doesn’t hurt any less,” Bucky gasps out. “Some days I think it hurts more but it’s been so long since I saw you, like this, in the light of day,” and he doesn’t even look up to see, just shakes from the shoulders and breathes heavy in the quiet of the room.
“I thought I was doing better, managing it,” Bucky scoffs wetly; “past this much, at least.”
He looks up then, eyes red but dry, now, mostly.
“And I can’t even tell you to go away, even when I know you’re not,” Bucky’s lips move around lost words before he huffs again, bitter as anything and the sting hits Steve, too.
“I can’t say even say the words, can’t even say that you—” Bucky confesses almost shamefully, entirely hatefully, and there’s that sound, that sound like a heart beating and then when it stops.
“I never want, I never—”
He shivers, full body, and gets to his feet again and he looks at Steve, and Steve looks at him, and it’s in those moments where Bucky’s looking at him and through him all at once that Steve starts to process the words that are scratching unforgivingly at Steve’s soul; he starts to follow them a little closer, for reasons he can’t quite piece together save that they’re Bucky’s words, and they’re hurting Bucky; Steve starts hearing the words instead of trying to staunch the bleeding.
It’s been almost a year—
“And now I’m fucking talking to you, like,” Bucky laughs the most ugly laugh Steve’s ever heard: in war, in combat, in life and death, from villains and enemies on the battlefield; nothing’s ever been such a hateful thing as the laugh that comes out of Bucky, so filled with self-loathing, and the idea of Bucky being hated, by anything or anyone but maybe worst by himself: Steve can’t stand it.
“Please,” Bucky’s begging now, maybe not of Steve, maybe of the same universe that’s been playing with Steve this whole time, maybe of time itself: “stop, just stop, please—”
And Steve’s on his feet
“Steve?”
“Buck,” Steve says softly, and doesn’t reach, not yet. Maybe he’s afraid he’ll disappear, too.
“What,” he swallows hard; “when did you...” And Steve, it seems, can’t say it either. But the fact remains that for all the times that Steve’s lost Bucky?
There’s only one time, one time where Bucky could have lost Steve, the time when Steve was afraid that the mission would take him alive even if he was supposed to come back to Bucky seconds later, even when he'd damn well promised it'd be okay, when Bruce swore it was safe, but when Bucky said he'd miss him like moments would be years and fuck, fuck—
“We could see it,” Bucky says, words more breaths, more shapes of his lips than anything possible to hear. “The time matrix, when you, we could,” he shakes his head slowly, and his eyes are big like he’s seeing it again, here and now; Steve can see the pulse in his throat beat heavier, harder, faster as the moments string along, and that’s exactly what’s happening. Bucky’s seeing whatever the details, the things only enhance vision could pick up on in that quantum transfer of an instant; he's seeing Steve disappearing into the past, indefinitely, watching it happening all over again.
“When you went, when it took,” his voice cracks, and Steve thinks he’ll fall apart when the tear escapes Bucky’s eye, just one, and traces down his cheek painfully slow.
“I could see it, and you were supposed to come back, and I was afraid and it wasn't even supposed to be you, and by the time we knew anything was wrong it was too late to stop you and then there was nothing, I couldn’t even reach,” and his hand is almost stretched far enough to touch Steve’s face but it freezes as soon as he realizes it; his eyes meet Steve’s and they’re filled with so many more tears, so much more feeling.
“There was nothing to do, I couldn’t even try,”and that’s the sound: the sound of the heart and the beating-breaking-stopping: it’s that, in his eyes. It makes something in Steve wither just to see.
“Broke my heart, Steve,” Bucky whispers, entirely diminished in a way that he never should be because Bucky’s survived so much, so much more than anything Steve could embody, even the loss of him, but this is what breaks him and that can’t be—
“Goddamn broke my heart.”
And that’s what breaks Steve, too; and Steve just turns his head a little, tilts it just so, so that the hand Bucky never thought to retract makes contact with his cheek and Bucky stills, breath catching so sharp it sounds painful, and Steve sighs, nearly moans at the contact and just leans into it, greedy and desperate and the touch is so warm, and Bucky's hand spreads out, fingertips splaying like discovering something unbearably fragile, something cosmic, something unexplained and desperately desired and full of fear in failing it entirely, and, just, just like...
Oh.
Oh, but what if—
“It’s worse now, isn’t it? When I thought it was getting better?” Bucky whispers, finger twitching, drawing minutes circles into Steve’s skin. “If I can touch you, and you’re just in my head—”
“I’m not,” Steve says, tries it on his tongue to see if it fits the way it’s growing hopeful in his chest. This rings like the energy, the universal mystery that delivered him to every missed opportunity in his past but at the very same time, this is new. This is new and almost a year and what if, what if there were opportunities yet to be had and he’d been sent not just to fix but to learn, to learn how to hold them and learn how to lay foundations to make them last, what if—
“I’m not, I,” Steve says it again, and it feels solid when he does. Bucky just blinks at him, not comprehending the way Steve can feel his own expression starting to dawn with tentative, but genuine wonder.
“I think I’m here,” he looks up at Bucky, drinking him in and trying to see if he can grasp what it could mean to stay forever in this moment, and all the moments to follow, where Bucky is solid against his hands but isn’t just temporary, isn’t something that will get lost.
“Finally.”
Bucky’s looking at him like he’s an incomprehensible puzzle, and maybe he is, but Steve’s heart is starting both to pound and put itself together, all at once, and scrambling frantic mess of new-dawning, only-half-possible joy.
“When is it?” Steve asks; “Now, I mean. How long, did you say, since?”
“Coming up on a year,” Bucky looks dumbfounded for a second at the question, before it morphs straight into sorrow. “More often than not I didn’t think I’d survive it,” he whispers, confesses:
“Still don’t think I’m gonna survive it much longer.”
“Don’t say that,” Steve damn near growls at him, takes the hand still on Steve’s cheek and grabs for the other one and holds Bucky’s wrists in his grasp like a touchstone to what the here and now could be. “Don’t fucking say that—”
“Why?” Bucky asks, half-a-challenge, but only half; the rest is still sorrow. “You’re not here and I—”
“But I am here,” Steve says again, as strong as he can, because he’s starting to believe that it’s true. “And I love you.”
And that he says, stronger than anything, because it will always be true.
“I love you.”
Bucky blinks at him, and there’s a leftover tear on his lashes that goes free across his cheekbone, but is still, more than still: stunned stiff, doesn’t even appear to breathe.
“Buck?” Steve asks gently, carefully, not wanting to spook him but desperately needing to hear his voice, for better or worse—
“You never say that,” Bucky whispers hoarsely. “I’ve wanted it, but then I always thought it was better, maybe, that my head didn’t gouge at my heart that deep but...”
He steps closer, and Steve can feel the heat of his breath, and it shakes, trembles out in little puffs of desperate air and then Steve notices the shaking is everywhere, clear in the hands Steve’s holding onto for dear life..
“You’ve never said that.”
“I do,” Steve says, and musters the strength in that truth that holds his soul together. “I love you more than life, or death. I love you in a way I’m not sure anyone’s ever loved before because I have loved you through life and death and I only love you all the stronger for it, all the bigger and I can hardly hold it,” he huffs a disbelieving, grateful breath for that fact and takes a half step closer, so that when he breathes in it’s Bucky’s air; when his lungs expand it’s to touch Bucky’s chest against his own.
“And all I’ve wanted, for longer than I can say or stand is to stop holding it back and just give it. Give it straight to you so maybe it’ll light you up like it glows in my chest and I,” Steve slides his hands from Bucky’s wrists to press their palms flush, the match uncanny.
“If you want it, I want to give it to you to hold and keep, that and more. Now and always. Forever.”
Bucky stares at their not-quite-joined hands, pressing weight against Steve’s touch like a test, like he can’t believe quite yet.
“How can I prove to you that I’m not in your head?” Steve asks him, begs for an answer he can make happen, make as real as he is, because he is.
Real.
“Because if I’m in your head then you’re in mine,” Steve reasons, impassioned; “and if that’s the case that just seems like the real world, doesn’t it? You’re in every part of me, all the time,” Steve says, the words growing harsh as his throat gets tight. “And if you, if you ever could—”
He’s not expecting Bucky’s mouth on his but he knows the feel of it now like a second skin, a firmer heartbeat and so he knows when to open and where to move and how to give, and goddamn does Bucky give, and take, and sucks Steve’s tongue fierce, licks around his mouth like he’s trying to map and test and tease all at once, like he can answer the questions of the entire universe if he tongues it out of Steve’s mouth and god, Steve can barely stand it, can barely keep from pushing it further and feeling all of Bucky, giving him everything—
The suddenness of Bucky pulling away makes Steve whimper, and his eyes, he knows, are sad when they meet Bucky’s, but only for a moment. Only for a moment because Bucky’s eyes are shining, and the wonderment is back, and it’s only tinged with fear, with hesitation.
The wonderment is what speaks loudest.
“I don’t know how you taste,” Bucky says simply, softly, touching fingers to his lips. “I didn’t know until now but you’re everything I imagined and so much I didn’t, couldn’t...”
And Steve sees the realization as it sinks into Bucky’s bones. Steve isn’t what he imagined.
Maybe Steve isn’t something he’s imagining at all.
“Steve?” And Bucky’s voice is small, and when Steve looks at him he looks like he’s had the weight of the world rolled off of him after being bowed by it too long, and his body isn’t sure yet that it’s really over, that he can stand straight and lift his chest tall and open his heart again: it’s not sure yet.
Steve will goddamn make sure he knows.
“Yeah?”
Bucky dares to take Steve’s hand, line up the lines in their palms and thread his fingers through, and leads him back to the bed even though the sun’s already started streaming through the blinds.
“Be here again, still,” he says as he sits, then stretches out; it’s a statement, and a wish; a plea and a command and a hope all at once; “when I wake up.”
And Steve doesn’t let go of his hand, and lies down beside him, and runs his free hand through Bucky’s hair and whispers close enough to feel it warm on Bucky’s lips:
“Always.”