Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s just another one of those days. Sometimes when Bucky sits down in this chair, his chest feels tight and full to bursting, and all that’s really able to relieve the pressure is the act of spilling his proverbial guts. But then there are days like this one, wherein his chest feels empty and hollow. Like if you gave him a friendly thump on the back it’d echo, dull and tinny like a knock to the hood of a car in an empty garage. He hasn’t much to say on days like this.

“How are you sleeping?” Dr. Raynor keeps her tone even and unemotional. The stagnance of the energy in the room must very well be palpable. After nearly 4 years working with him she’s come to grasp the distinct ways in which to handle Bucky’s various moods and neuroses. Today they’ll play their usual game of psychological 3D chess, each piece making a calculated move toward the desired check-mate that gets Bucky out of the room the quickest.

“Not.” The reply comes, but it’s out-of-body and robotic.

“Why is that?”

“Not sure.”

“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter.” It’s always clear when Dr. Raynor is anticipating Bucky’s next words or moves. Her lightning-quick responses cut through before his sentences can even fully exit his mouth.

“I’m not. I don’t know.”

Bucky does know, but as far as he’s concerned this isn’t anything he’s willing to rehash. He understands that that’s perhaps the entire point of therapy, to rehash and revisit traumas and problems over and over until they’ve been beaten past the point of death and into the spirit realm, ghosts of themselves that linger like a residual haunt. But sometimes he’s just tired of talking about it. Sometimes he’s more exhausted of hearing himself talk about Steve than anyone else around him.

“Are you having nightmares again?” Dr. Raynor prods uselessly. It’s an ignorant question with a predictable answer.

“Saying the word ‘again’ implies that they’ve stopped.”

“Don’t be a smartass. You were doing pretty well for a hot minute there. What happened?”

“I don’t know.”

Dr. Raynor sighs through her nose, short and irked at the resistance but unsurprised. She leans back in her chair and folds her arms across her chest as though in an act of petulance against Bucky’s willful defiance to making this session anything other than a waste of 60 minutes. Her eyes stay sharp and tunnel themselves into Bucky’s skull.

Bucky gets it, he looks like shit these days, pallid and hardened with perpetual bruises under his eyes and a gaunt cut to his cheekbones. Any normal person would be concerned. But he doesn’t want concern and he certainly doesn’t want pity. He just wants a single night of uninterrupted rest. He knows the concept alone is a pipe dream these days. 

Dr. Raynor breaks the fragile silence.

“If you just want to waste your money by sitting here in silence for the next 50 minutes then that’s your prerogative, Barnes.” 

“Not my money. The government’s money. I’m required to be here at bare minimum bi-weekly to keep my job and maintain my pardon.”

“Have you ever considered retiring?” 

Yet another ignorant question with a mathematically predictable answer. Bucky refuses to justify it with any level of recognition. He’ll retire when he feels his soul is cleansed. He’ll retire when he’s dead.

It’s Bucky’s turn to bore his pupils past the thick of Dr. Raynor’s skull and into the meat of her brain. He’s irritable and easily vexed from his lack of sleep so he feels far less inclined to put up with any level of nonsense. He knows she knows what he’s doing. Why waste any time beating around the bush?

Dr. Raynor sighs through her nose again and relaxes her posture, leaning in toward her desk and unfurling her crossed arms to rest at the keyboard in front of her computer monitor. A plain and dull expression falls over her face and she sets herself to typing, working on whatever digital paperwork it is that therapists work on these days. The white flag has been raised.

Bucky reclines back and allows his gaze to drift to a small divot in the plaster of the wall behind Dr. Raynor’s head, vision going unfocused and blurred. His breathing evens out, shallow and quiet, and time begins to occur in skips and jumps that are punctuated by throat clearing, mouse clicking and the soft tsks of the keyboard.

“Alright, your required 60 minutes is up. I’ve already typed up and bullshitted your session eval form so I can hit send once you leave. Do me a favor and actually try in our next session. I won’t be doing this again.” Dr. Raynor continues to speak without ever looking up or away from her computer screen.

Bucky blinks rapidly and his eyes come back into focus. He glances up at the clock on the wall and confirms that an hour has passed. He stands, cracks his neck and moves to leave.

“Thanks.”

“I’m serious. Come prepared to at least pretend Thursday after next or don’t bother coming at all.”

Bucky accepts the statement without acknowledgement and leaves the room. He likes Dr. Raynor. Her short threshold for games is ultimately what works for him, he thinks, even if he’s often keen to play hardball.

When he exits the office building and steps out onto the sidewalk, it’s raining. It’s nothing but a relatively light drizzle, but the threat of impending thunder and lightning is thick in the air. The sky is darkened and gray, casting a dull gloom across DC. He pulls his phone from his jacket pocket and quickly checks for any important notifications: a couple texts from Sam that he knows full-well will remain unanswered and a severe thunderstorm warning from the built-in weather app. Bucky rolls his eyes back into his head and sighs in agitation, lamenting having taken his motorcycle to his session today. He figures if he takes the highway he can make it home and stow his bike away in the parking garage before the storm gets too severe. And he’s correct, he does indeed make it back just in time to see the rain begin a torrential downpour, thunder clapping in the sky as he enters the apartment building and shakes his newly-cut hair free of any lingering droplets.

It’s dead quiet inside the building save for the smattering sounds of rain and the rumble of the thunder, the lighting warm and soft. Bucky takes his sweet time reaching his apartment. He takes the stairs instead of the elevator and avoids the urge to climb them two at a time. In past sessions Dr. Raynor had a penchant for asking Bucky things like, ‘What are you in such a hurry for? What’s so wrong with the concept of stopping and smelling the roses?’ and it gave him pause, caused him to reevaluate the speed with which he lives his life. When he’s not out in the field and there’s nowhere to be, why not shorten his stride? Lengthen the stretch of his breaths? It started to hit him all at once how he has nowhere really to be. 

Like a roach in the blast radius of an atomic bomb, he’ll be here long after everyone he knows and loves is gone. There’s no one left on this Earth like him. He has no one to impress.

Bucky finally reaches the door to his apartment and fumbles with his keys, lazily sliding them across the ring they’re attached to one by one to find the one that fits in the lock. It’s an action that is for no purpose other than to extend the amount of time that he’s taking; there are only 4 keys on the ring. One for his bike, one for his truck, one that unlocks both the knob and deadbolt on his apartment door, and a key to Sam’s home that he’s never used. He can hear Sam’s voice echoing between his ears as he slides it to clink and land next to the other keys, telling him No, take it. In case you need it. You’ll always have somewhere to go. I’m serious. He tried to deny the kindness an inordinate amount of times. He even tried to covertly “forget” the key back at Sam's place once, but no dice. The very next day it somehow found its way back into the left pocket of Bucky’s favorite leather jacket. And now here he is nearly a year later, it having remained unused.

Bucky shoves the key into the lock, his eyes trained downward, and notices something off. The Bucky that existed before his government-mandated therapy probably would’ve noticed this 20 feet back, before he even approached the door. He probably would’ve sensed something different or off upon his initial entrance into the building. But this Bucky, the Bucky who’s worked so tirelessly to unfurl the knots that various world governments and morally repugnant organizations have tied within him, only notices just now. 

There is a plain brown mat that lies just beyond this threshold, and the left corner of it seems to be peeking out just underneath the door. Bucky may have worked incredibly hard to dull the need to always be on high alert, to act like there’s always a killer around the corner brandishing a weapon. But he still has the capacity to know when something isn’t quite right. And he knows damn well the mat wasn’t like this when he left.

No one he knows has a spare key. He doesn’t own any pets that might dishevel the inside of his apartment in his absence. Someone was, or still is, inside. It sinks down his throat and into his stomach like a jagged stone.

Before unlocking the deadbolt, with deft fingers Bucky reaches down and slides the one knife he still allows himself for self-defense from the holster strapped around his calf. He conceals it in his sleeve for quick access in the event that he needs to act immediately upon opening the door and pushes inside. The hall light is on. A solid figure stands in the living area shadowed by the low lighting, back to Bucky. It turns.

The door closes with a soft snick behind Bucky. But it’s loud, it’s so loud, and the blood is rushing in his ears, time has stopped but the world keeps turning, everything is falling apart and crashing and breaking.

The figure speaks, and his voice is familiar like the creak of a rusted fire escape on a sweltering summer evening in Brooklyn. Explosive in between Bucky’s ears like the falling of shrapnel in an Austrian military base.

“Hi, Buck.”

Bucky’s brow furrows deeply. Tears immediately begin to sting the corners of his eyes like a violently corrosive acid. He must be dreaming, must be hallucinating. Maybe someone with a cruel, long-held grudge placed a curse on the threshold of his apartment, sending him directly into a physical manifestation of his worst nightmares. Maybe someone is just playing the meanest prank on him of all time. Or maybe every hour he’s spent in his therapist’s office for the past 4 years has been completely worthless and he’s finally snapped. His mouth goes dry, his tongue feels swollen and useless. When he finally speaks, it’s one single word, and it comes out like gravel, thick with anger and grief and devastation. Thick with at least 100 other adjectives that Bucky couldn’t even begin to conjure in a moment like this.

“Steve.”

Chapter Text

When Bucky says Steve’s name, it bears no confusion, contains no inflection of a question. It’s a statement. A declaration, like he’s asserting that this is real but underneath is a prayer that it’s not.

For the last four years, Bucky carried this insurmountable cosmic grief around with him like a tunic of concrete. For four years, nothing made sense; nothing fit, nothing sounded or felt right. And for the last year, the flesh and bones that Bucky had been calling Steve was resting six feet below the Earth’s crust. Everything that Bucky knows and understands has exploded in his face in an instant, and four years of progress and acceptance in a therapist’s office has been crushed like an insect and tossed in the trash. The gears in Bucky’s head are whirring and grinding in a way that feels venomous in his brain. He didn’t realize anyone could run the full gambit of human emotion so quickly.

And then suddenly, like a rubber band drawn too tight, Bucky snaps all at once. He moves with lightning speed, the knife in his sleeve slipping out and into his cold metal grip. He growls, wild and primal, and it comes out almost like a scream as he charges forward and slams Steve back and up against the wall. The drywall cracks and the room shakes. Bucky expertly positions the blade of the knife just against Steve’s jugular and holds him there, chest heaving, tears flowing freely now as he restrains a man long dead to him.

Throughout it all, Steve doesn’t react. His jaw remains set, his expression stoic; and if Bucky didn’t know better, maybe even remorseful. But Bucky doesn’t know better. He doesn’t know anything anymore. And he certainly doesn’t know Steve.

Bucky never loosens his grip or lets up on the blade. But here now, in this low light, pressed body-to-body with this man he recognizes to be the closest approximation he has left to family, he gets a good look at him.

Steve looks worn and weathered in the face and behind the eyes, his beard has fully grown back in and the tips of his sandy blond hair are touching his shoulders. He’s wearing just a simple white t-shirt under a tattered navy windbreaker and a stained pair of jeans. He looks unhoused and unassuming, just another face in the crowd. He looks the way he did before the end of the world, but there’s an exhaustion there that wasn’t present before. A man laying down his arms and throwing in the towel. A man driven time and again from house and home. A man whose legs can no longer carry him.

Bucky’s chest heaves a little less with each passing moment, his eyes still glassy but the tears have ceased their spill. Steve swallows, and his Adam's apple bobs, scraping lightly against the blade. His arms remain limp at his sides.

Bucky chokes back the softball sized lump in his throat and speaks.

“Talk.”

Steve’s chest shudders pitifully with a deep breath, his eyes remaining glued to Bucky’s. Iris to iris, pupil to pupil.

“I can’t imagine how much you must hate me right now.” He says, and it comes out as a whisper. A pathetic little murmur of sorrow.

Bucky growls like a caged mountain lion again and lets up on his grip only to slam Steve back against the wall once more, paint and plaster crackling and coming down to pepper the floor and the polyester of Steve’s windbreaker. Steve’s face doesn’t change. He still doesn’t react.

“Who are you?” Bucky bites, and the question tastes rancid in his mouth. It’s a question that reeks of at least twenty other questions. Did I ever know you? Where the hell have you been? Who the fuck did I bury?

“You know me.”

“No I don’t.” Bucky roars, and he grips Steve’s shoulders, whirling him around and slamming him with all of the militaristic force he can muster into the floor. He pins Steve’s body with his own and the knife clatters to the side, lost in the shuffle of rage. It’s all he can do to not put them both through the hardwood and into the neighbor’s apartment below.

“I’ll explain everything if you let me.” Steve pants, and his voice trembles with it, scared and small like that little boy from Brooklyn with scraped knees and knobby elbows; That kid who never did know what’s good for him. 

Suddenly this is all too familiar, and he’s flashing back to a time when his mind didn’t belong to him and his body was but a weapon. He’s breaking inside, and he’s hard pressed to keep himself from wailing a pathetic sob. He’s backed into a corner, backed into a place he never wanted to go ever again, and there’s not a single coping mechanism in the world that can yank him from the precipice now.

Three loud thuds from below Steve’s back rupture the energy of the moment, followed by a muffled, “Shut the fuck up!” and Bucky inhales and blinks, temporarily broken out of his trance.

“I’ve been around for a while. I’ve seen the news.” Steve’s voice is rough and cracks around the edges like a prepubescent boy. He sounds so young and defeated. “That wasn’t me. The man you buried isn’t me.”

“How am I supposed to know that?” Bucky cries, and it comes out like the whimper of a kicked dog.

“Why would I do that to you? Huh? Why would I walk out on you like that?” Steve pleads. His hands jerk like they want to grab onto Bucky like a life preserver, but they stay pinned underneath his knees. “Why would I leave on purpose?”

“I don’t know, you’re gonna have to tell me that.” 

“I’m not gonna fight you. I just want to explain. And if you want me to leave after I’ve said my piece, I will. But I have to tell you, Buck. I have to tell you what happened. I can’t live with myself if I don’t. I’m not armed, please.”

And maybe it’s instinct. Maybe the flame inside of Bucky that always burned so brightly for Steve never really went out, maybe it just got moved to the back of the range. But in that moment, he feels himself deflate; he pushes himself back into the rubble of the scuffle, sliding through the crumbles and dust particles of drywall and pulling his knees to his chest like a child evading a parent's wrath in the back of the closet.

“When I went back… to return the stones. It didn’t go so smooth, Buck. I ran into some… trouble.” Steve lifts himself back up as he’s speaking and starts to crawl toward Bucky tentatively.

Bucky hugs his knees tighter, defensive. 

“Don’t be fucking cryptic, say what you mean and mean what you say.” He spits, and Steve stops just short of Bucky’s personal bubble.

“It’s all going to sound insane.”

Bucky gives Steve a wide-eyed and incredulous look. 

“Insane? You think anything sounds insane to me anymore?” He‘s vibrating, amused and furious. ”I been fightin’ nazis and aliens and monsters on a daily basis all my life and you think I’ve got some kind of imaginary threshold for insanity? I’ve died twice. And now you have too. Fucking speak it plain or don’t speak it at all.”

“Tell me you’ve heard of the Skrulls.” Steve prompts around a gasp, and he moves in just a little closer, almost placating himself at Bucky’s feet.

“I haven’t, but keep talking.” Bucky starts to unwind himself just a little, arms loosening around his knees, eyes drying.

“They’re reptilians. But they shape shift. A long time ago… God, I couldn’t even tell you how long… Their planet. It was destroyed. And they set out to colonize other planets by assuming the form of whatever race inhabits them. They got me, Bucky. When I was back there. I had just returned the last infinity stone, and they took me captive. They wanted them, but I wouldn’t give up their locations. I couldn’t. I worked so hard to save the world, to save you.”

Steve inches closer with each word, and Bucky’s heart is pounding right out of his chest. 

“They sent one of them. As me. Back to the present. They took my shield, they had me strung up from my fucking thumbs for years.” And Steve is pleading with his skin now, moving in, greedy for it. He takes Bucky’s face between his hands, thumbs brushing the drying tear tracks on his cheeks. “For you it was four years, but for me it was decades. I was in hell, Buck. And all I could ever think about was you, how to make it back to you, how I was breakin’ your heart.”

It’s then that Bucky’s resolve falters, and he finds himself clutching onto Steve’s wrists, gripping like if he lets go he’ll disappear again.

“You have no idea how deep it went. How deep it still goes. But I’m back. It’s over now. I promise, it’s over. I worked so hard to make sure it was all over before I showed up here. I’m not goin’ anywhere ever again. I promise.”

Bucky allows his knees to drop, his posture to relax. Steve takes advantage of it and shoves himself into Bucky’s space fully now, sweaty foreheads meeting in the middle. Silent worship between them that only they understand.

It’s scorching where their foreheads touch, a fever born not of illness but of a century of pain and suffering. A hundred years of being torn apart and sewn back together like the ragged wool shirts and cotton trousers Bucky would wear to work down at the docks when the world felt so new. The same clothing that Steve would mend for Bucky with nimble fingers void of prompting or request, simple stitches to extend the life of the fabric for another few months. A quiet declaration of love embedded in the thread. A way to say it without saying it. And now here they sit, stitching and mending in their own way.

It’s so funny how history repeats. So strange the way life works out. Maybe this was their destiny all along. Maybe they were never quite meant to be whole.

“Then how am I supposed to know you’re not one of them?” Bucky croaks, and he angles his head so that their noses brush. 

Steve huffs humorlessly, because of course. Of course he would need to prove to Bucky beyond a shadow of a doubt that it’s him. Of course rising from the grave would never be so simple. So Steve allows both of his big hands, capable of harm and heavy with the weight of the fight, to slide down and cup Bucky’s jaw in a way most unquantifiably tender. His thumbs swipe brief lines below the bruises under Bucky’s eyes.

“You had a little sister named Rebecca. It’s funny, I never see her in the history books. But she meant everything to you. If you weren’t pulling me out of back-alley scraps, you were bailing her out of something insane. She had such conviction. Could stand bullies even less than I could, I think. She was so clever with how she handled things. Made me feel like a dumb fuckin’ dog most days.”

Bucky chokes out a laugh, and it’s a raw and awful sound. A fresh, plump tear rolls past Steve’s thumb and accentuates the moment with a sharp spat onto the floor.

“Sometimes I think you had hidden motives.” Steve begins to catch tears with every swipe of his thumb.

“‘Sat right?” Bucky replies, but it’s nearly inaudible.

“Mm.” Steve presses his lips together into a hard line and moves to scrape his nails against the short hairs at the base of Bucky’s neck. “Yeah. At first. I think when we were kids I reminded you so much of your scrappy snot-nosed little kid sister.”

“Yeah?”

“But then you actually had a conversation with me and realized we’re nothing alike.”

The chuckle that Bucky gives is so fractured and uncertain.

“And then…” Steve presses on, “On my 18th birthday… God, I was so pissed. Got sent home with my tail between my legs for the hundredth time with the hundredth girl, it seemed. Her name was Charlotte, but you always called her Charlie because it steamed her up good. She always said, ‘Charlie was a man’s name and she wasn’t no man.’”

“Oh my god.” Bucky grasps at Steve’s wrists now, his skin, metal and flesh, begging him, stay, stay, stay.

“We met up just outside of Prospect Park that night, and you said to me, ‘Screw that tramp, she wouldn’t know what’s good for her if it crawled up her ass and out her nose.’”

The laughter that Bucky emits now is nothing but pitchy huffs of breath, and he feels himself melting down like a pad of butter in a hot pan, his forehead slipping from its spot against Steve’s and down into the crook of his neck.

Bucky inhales and shudders on the exhale.

Steve’s fingers continue their gentle path, razing the skin at Bucky’s neck just slightly as they go.

“And you took me up to the roof of the apartment afterward. We laid there, just the two of us. Watched the fireworks. Just some couch pillows, a thin sheet and a bottle of wine you stole from your ma. You got the belt for that one. I remember the way you reenacted the scene. She went nuts on you, said she didn’t care that you were grown in the eyes of the law. Said if you had the balls to steal from her, you had the balls to handle the belt.”

“Yeah.” Bucky’s hands fall to Steve’s sides and bunch and grip fiercely at his clothing.

“You said you’d do it all again a thousand times over if it was guaranteed to make me smile the same way each time.”

Bucky breathes, “Still would,” because he’s nothing if not predictable, and no one if not a lunatic for Steve Rogers.

They just stay for a moment, wading in the deep end of the stillness, breathing and healing the broken and bloody meat of their souls.

Steve pricks the bubble of the fragile moment and whispers, so quiet and so gentle, in a way neither man has been in an age and a half, “So I’ve said what I had to say. That’s all. I just needed you to know. You’ve always pointed north for me, Buck. I was always gonna find my way back. We always do.”

Steve starts to pull back and Bucky snatches his right forearm quickly, panic rising like fresh bile in his throat.

“Don’t… go. Don’t go. You can stay here. If you want to.”

When Steve sighs like there’s a great relief of pressure in the emptiness of his chest cavity, Bucky softens and lets go of his arm. Steve plops back with a thud and sits across from Bucky, slumped over himself and mirroring his posture, just sharing oxygen and space.

“So…” Bucky sighs, and it slices through the quiet in the wake of the storm like a blade.

“So…” Steve echos.

“You look like shit.”

“Look who’s talkin’.”

“Ha…” Bucky thumps his head back against the cracked wall behind him and inhales deeply, closing his eyes.

“The hair though… Looks good. I like it.” Steve smiles crookedly.

“Thanks.” Bucky licks his bottom lip and peers back at Steve with drained, hooded eyes. “You know, I like the long hair on you. Frames your face nicely. You might do well with uh,” Bucky gestures vaguely around his own face. “A shower and a shave, though.”

Steve laughs, and it’s youthful. It’s been so long since he’s been seen like this.

“Yeah. I can’t remember the last time I bathed, truth be told.”

Bucky swallows and gestures again, this time toward the short hallway.

“I have um. I can grab you a t-shirt. And some sweats. If you…”

“Yeah! Yeah… That would be great. Thank you.” 

The conversation feels awkward, like they’re bumbling through it like fools, but Bucky figures this is just the way of things, then. Their senses of time are all shot to shit, Steve having been gone for what he claims were decades when Bucky had only been living without him, the real him, for four years. It’s strange and uncomfortable, but the sensation of knowing each other, the cores of their very selves, is so pervasive that even the way they trip over each other's words and cut each other off feels like home.

Bucky scrubs his face and his eyes with the heels of his palms and rises, brushing wall particles off of himself as he stands.

“I’ll uh, I’ll get you… yeah.” He clears his throat and heads for the bedroom space that he never really uses but for the storage of his clothes and belongings. When he returns to the sparse living area, he’s holding a neatly folded stack: a plain gray t-shirt, black drawstring sweatpants and two towels. “If you need anything uh, just let me know. But I mean, I assume you haven’t forgotten how to shower, so. Use whatever. It’s all in there. Razors and soaps and shit. Use my toothbrush, I don’t care.”

Steve stands and takes the stack of clothing and towels, eyes red-rimmed and misty.

“Thank you, Buck. I would get it if you tossed me out on my ass, believe m—”

Bucky cuts him off with a wave of his hand, “Don’t. You talk too much. You’re welcome. Just shower. Go nuts.”

Steve nods, short and sweet, and makes his way toward the bathroom.

After a moment, Bucky hears the hum of the fan followed by some knocking around. He just stands and listens, and after a while there’s a buzzing noise indicating that Steve must’ve found the electric razor. While Steve cleans himself up, Bucky quietly goes about his own set of tasks.

About an hour and some change passes when Steve finally vacates the bathroom. When he comes out, clean, beard trimmed but not completely shaven, freshly dressed and pinked-up from the heat of the shower, he finds himself stuttering to a stop just short of the threshold of the hallway. The apartment is indeed incredibly small, just big enough for Bucky alone, so the entirety of both the kitchen and living areas are visible from the hall. 

It’s a simple scene, really. The kitchen lights are on now, casting soft illumination across the entire space. A spread of Chinese food sits across the breakfast bar that separates the kitchen from the living room. And then there’s Bucky, sitting on the floor in front of the couch in a plain t-shirt and pajama bottoms among a sea of blankets, the cushions pulled down behind him. 

It touches Steve so deeply that it’s physically painful. He can feel his lungs tightening, his heart skipping beats, his stomach clenching. All this time and distance between them, and they always seem to be able to say to each other, hey, come home? in the language only they know.

Bucky looks up at Steve from the takeout container in his hand and swallows the mouthful of lo mein he’d been chewing.

“Oh… I um.” He averts his eyes and sets the food to his side. “Sorry. I thought—”

But Bucky can’t complete his thought, because Steve has already made his way swiftly into the room and lowered himself down to Bucky’s side, wrapping his arms around his waist and burying his face there. He breathes, and he can’t help but tremble. Bucky is the first warm-blooded thing he’s touched in so fucking long.

“Thanks.” Steve whispers, muffled against the cotton of Bucky’s shirt.

“So… This is okay?” 

“Yeah. It’s perfect.” Steve tightens the vice of his arms and Bucky brings a hand around to tentatively card through his damp locks.

A few moments pass and Bucky keeps the strokes of his fingers gentle. 

He continues his light ministrations as he speaks, soft and reverent. “You should eat something,” he says, but it means let me nourish you the way I know how. Let me take care of you. I have all this room in here, please take up space. I can’t remember the last time I felt full. It was probably whenever your heart was beating warm and alive against mine last.

Steve hums, his eyes closed and his nose pressed to the crease of Bucky’s hip.

“Just… give me a second.” He responds, the sound of his voice still dulled from the press of fabric against his mouth.

Bucky shivers. He’d spent so long pushing back against the supremely human need for touch that he had almost forgotten how starved he was for it. When Bucky had last truly held or been held, he can’t recall, and the warm sizzle of long-ignored need snakes its way up and down his spine. And so, he bends himself in half over Steve’s vulnerable form. He clings back like he’s dying for it.

Bucky posits that maybe five minutes have passed by the time he lifts himself back up, thumbs rubbing slow circles into whatever expanses of Steve’s body that he can find purchase.

“Food’s getting cold. Eat.” He mumbles, and Steve pulls himself away slowly like the distance burns his skin.

But he does successfully pull himself away, and he rises to shuffle the short distance to grab an available takeout container full of beef and peppers. He settles back next to Bucky, their shoulders brushing, and begins to consume the first substantial meal he’s had in months.

“Don’t feel pressured to talk about it, you know?” Bucky grits the sentiment through the safety net of a full mouth, keeping his gaze trained down. Steve halts his chewing and blinks. “It’s just that… I know what it’s like. Coming back from something like that. You deal with it however you gotta deal with it. Don’t feel like you gotta spill your guts to me.”

Steve blinks again, and nods slowly.

“You know, I ended up on the moon at one point.” He says it like it’s so simple, so obvious.

Bucky smiles, wide and untethered, and laughs through his nose. “You know what? Why not? We’ve seen crazier shit. Why wouldn’t you have gone to the moon?” And some more stretches of silence settle in and pass them by.

“A thousand different timelines.” Steve murmurs suddenly, and his eyes are downturned and oh, so sad.

“Hm?” Bucky hums and pushes his empty takeout container off to the side, wiping his hands on a nearby napkin before turning back to Steve.

“A thousand lives. A thousand different timelines. I saw you. Found you in every one. But I could never say anything. Couldn’t risk changing anything in this one. I was always just… behind the two-way mirror. I could see you but you couldn’t see me. There were some timelines… I’d get so close. It was like… you know when you try to push the opposite sides of two magnets together? You can get ‘em so close but they’ll never quite touch. I couldn’t breathe. I felt crazy.”

Bucky’s chest aches and throbs. He can’t help but wonder to himself if it would be the same were their roles reversed. Would he always find his way back to Steve? Would he have the moral fiber and psychological fortitude to keep himself from crossing that line? He guesses he’ll just never know.

True to form, he doesn’t know how to respond either, so he replies with the too-big-for-his-bones need to comfort and nurture, “You should rest.”

Steve closes his eyes, haggard and sore, and lets his lungs swallow the fullest intake of oxygen he thinks he must’ve had in a long, long while.

Bucky takes the almost-empty container of food from Steve and makes quick work of cleaning up, tossing any trash, throwing leftovers into the embarrassingly empty refrigerator, and clicking the lights off.

Steve is supine by the time Bucky returns to the nest of cushions and blankets, and he’s either too spent or too smart to be surprised by it when Bucky lies prone next to him. They settle, and the room becomes thick with the warm and quiet intimacy of sharing air.

And then, Bucky finds his prosthetic arm is acting with a consciousness of its own. Or at least that's the easiest thing he can tell himself that grants him the privilege of rest. The tepid vibranium of Bucky’s knuckles drift their way up and onto Steve’s chest, a muted and desperate search. The sensations his prosthetic feel are not at all the same as those felt by his flesh and blood hand, but what his hand is there for is perceived all the same: the reticent thumps of a lost-and-found heart, free to good home. But what home is there but this, and who could it ever be but Bucky?

Steve takes another deep and meditative breath, and he falls asleep not long after loosely weaving the fingers of his own left hand with Buck’s.

Bucky sleeps without nightmare or terror for the first time in four trips around the sun; Steve sleeps for the first time in twenty years.

Chapter Text

When Bucky wakes up, Steve is quietly shuffling around in the kitchen, opening and closing cupboards softly and searching their contents.

He blinks the bleary sleep from his eyes and inhales sharply, body becoming rigid and alert with a flood of adrenaline. He usually wakes like this, fight or flight kicking in the moment his brain comes back online, but this time there’s an entire other person in his living space. It sharpens his senses, and it lifts him to his feet out of instinct.

The soft thud of cabinet doors stops, the room going deadly quiet. “Good morning,” Steve whispers at Bucky’s defensive form, feather-light and impossibly gentle.

Bucky’s shoulders relax, just the slightest, and his posture softens. All at once those stress hormones seem to drain from his veins, and he becomes abundantly aware of the weight of his hands and the tightness in his lungs. He drifts forward toward the breakfast bar separating him from Steve and inhales the deepest breath of oxygen he can muster. Leaning against the edge of the surface, he pushes the stools in his way haphazardly to the side as he props himself up, the legs scraping against the hardwood and squealing as he goes.

“Hey…” Steve murmurs, and he’s putting a jar of instant coffee grounds that Bucky hadn’t even noticed he was holding back down on the counter. 

Bucky only blinks, and suddenly Steve is leaning across the space of the countertop that separates them, strong hands coming up to grip each of his arms like a vise. He gives Bucky a squeeze and makes intentional eye contact, ducking his head to catch his drooping gaze. 

“Is this an everyday occurrence?” Steve probes, but his voice carries a softened edge of familiar banter.

“Uhh…” Bucky trails off with a facetious chuckle. “Not exactly.” He shakes his head slowly and continues to inhale very steady breaths as his dizziness fades and the acid in his muscles dissipates. “Not usually any other people in my home, so... I don’t typically end up on my feet giving myself, ya know, vertigo. Just… instinct. Brain wakes up, notices I’m not alone, body reacts… you get the picture.”

By the time Bucky has finished his thought his head has cleared enough to allow him to stand independent of the support of the counter, but he stays where he is. The steadying grip of Steve’s hands on Bucky’s forearms grounds him so well that it almost frightens him.

“Yeah… I do.” Steve’s thumbs are stroking back and forth in a soothing rhythm. He gives Bucky one final squeeze and tears himself away, returning to the task of making a cup of coffee. “Do you want…” Steve trails off, head nodding toward the instant coffee grounds in the form of a question.

“Uh, yeah, sure. Thanks.” Bucky rasps as he seats himself on one of the stools close-by.

Steve keeps rummaging through cabinets like he owns the place, and as Bucky watches him, chin propped on the heel of his palm like a daydreaming school girl, he thinks he might just as well. He’d give Steve anything, really. This apartment belonged just as much to him as it did Bucky the moment he threw down the security deposit. There was never a universe where Steve wouldn’t have been able to fold himself into whatever household Bucky fashioned, whether it be a box in an alleyway or a midtown Manhattan penthouse. 

“So…” Steve trails off as he sets to filling a small pot with tap water and setting it onto one of the gas burners on the stove. With a few clicks of the knob it ignites, and Steve steps away and turns back to face Bucky. “What’s your day looking like today?”

Bucky finds himself frowning and furrowing his brow. With Steve standing in his apartment, all warm flesh and solid bone, the rest of the universe sort of just ceased to exist. Like a temporary bout of amnesia, he had forgotten everything that wasn’t Steve. But being posed with this question forces him to recall that he actually had a pretty full day ahead of him involving a lot of paperwork and a stop at the new Avengers training compound up near Oakland.

“Oh, shit. Yeah. I have a job, don’t I?” Bucky jokes as he rubs his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. He huffs a dark laugh and shakes his head, a level of trepidation unable to stop itself from seeping into his tone as he stutters, “But… I… I mean, I’m sure I can move things around if you need —” 

“Buck.” Steve crosses his arms against his chest and awkwardly leans his hip against the counter. “Listen I… I knew… And I know… That it wasn’t going to matter whether I— It doesn’t matter whether I turned up now, six months ago, or six years from now. I was always going to be sweeping in here and uprooting… everything.”

Bucky goes to open his mouth to speak, but Steve cuts him off swiftly at the inhale.

“There was never any way for me to do this that wasn’t just… Bull in a china shop. And I could’ve stayed away, I could’ve just integrated myself into some far-off undisclosed farming community and given in to the tedium and the rot for the sake of never kicking up dust. For the sake of your stability, I suppose. But I don’t think that ever was or ever will be an option.”

Bucky’s jaw sets and his gaze hardens as his heart rate picks up at even just the mere thought— the simple idea of Steve willingly living his life and breathing the same oxygen on the same planet in the same timeline as him, but never daring to come close enough to even tease at his orbit.

“No. No it wasn’t. And it isn’t.” The statement is overwhelmingly resolute but he can’t help but let his voice shake on the tail end of it.

“My point is, I knew what this would do to you and I did it anyway. But my being here shouldn’t… I won’t allow you to halt your entire life for me. I’m not here to take you by the hand and whisk you away into a life of obscurity where you’ve cut off everyone and everything you know and love.”

“What if I ain’t got shit to even know or love?” Bucky challenges thickly, throat closing around the words.

Steve rolls his eyes and curls his lip like he’s just smelled something grotesque.

“Oh, please spare me. I know of ten unopened notifications on your phone's lock screen from Sam that tell me otherwise. Just because your response to trauma is to shut down, that doesn’t mean people stop caring about you. And don’t give me that fucking face. You love him, too. Pretending to be dead inside doesn’t make it any less true.”

Bucky’s gut feels like it’s being squeezed and pulled like taffy at the sensation of being so exposed. He hasn’t felt this seen or known since the last time he saw Steve, this Steve, four years ago. He’s rattled and flaring because Steve’s got him dead to rights. He’s ripping out Bucky’s pulpy innards, laying them out in the open air between them with reckless abandon.

“You’re soft, you’ve always been soft. And I’m not sayin’ that in the ‘you’re a wuss,’ way. I’m sayin’ it in the ‘your heart’s always been ten sizes too big for your ribcage,’ way. You’ve always been a lover, Buck.” Steve looks away and starts to open cabinets and drawers again, pulling down two simple white mugs and producing a spoon. His movements are so casual as he begins transferring instant coffee grounds into the cups while his words are anything but. “They could put a rifle in your hands but it never made ‘em any less gentle. They could fit you with a vibranium arm only ever made to kill and wipe your brains with electricity and bleach a hundred thousand times but they could never change who you are at your core. You have friends. You have family. You have loved ones. Acting like you don’t won’t make them go away and it won’t stop that hollow ache in your chest you got from willingly putting yourself in a position to feel lonely in a crowded room.”

The poor heart in Bucky’s chest is beating so fast it feels more like a constant vibration. He can’t even begin to pinpoint what the exact emotion is that he’s feeling, he just knows it’s something akin to anger. Anger that he’s being dragged kicking and screaming out of his foxhole. Smoked out and staring down the barrel of a gun.

“Are you done?” Bucky says icily, jaw clicking as he clenches it back into place.

Steve doesn’t dignify that with a response and continues. “It doesn’t matter if we’ve been separated four years or twenty or two hundred, you’re my favorite book and I don’t even have to read you anymore. I just look at you and know what the pages say. And I know you’re hurting. And I know it’s hard. And I know you probably want to disappear yourself and destroy everything you’ve been building so we can pick up where we left off. But I physically won’t let you. We can pick up our pieces in a way that doesn’t involve shattering everything else you’ve mended.”

The pot on the stove has long since come to a boil, but only now does the bubbling seem to be theatrically loud in their ears. Steve says nothing more, just turns to click the burner off and pour the hot water into the mugs. He replaces the pot on the stove, gives each mug an aggressive stir, and places the used spoon in the sink.

“Now I’m done.” Steve states, placing Bucky’s cup in front of him with a ceramic clunk.

Bucky takes it by the handle and slides it towards himself so he can stare down into the dark abyss of the truck stop elixir in front of him instead of Steve’s eyes. There’s a silence that stretches between them punctuated only by the sound of intermittent whistles of air coming from Steve as he blows on the surface of his coffee to cool it down.

“So.” Steve says again, repeating his original question with obstinance. “What’s your day looking like today?”

Bucky takes in a shaky but deep breath and lets it out slow and steady. He takes a sip from his cup and swallows with difficulty. “I have to stop by the CIA building to fill out some paperwork about my… Some paperwork. And then I have to make a trip upstate to the new Avengers training compound to meet some new recruits.”

“Okay, great. Sounds like an all day event.” Steve responds coolly and follows it up with a sip.

“It is.”

“I have a couple loose ends of my own to tie up today. Some errands to run and visits to pay. Trying to figure out a way to work my way back into the land of the living while remaining dead. You know how it goes.” 

“Yeah.” Bucky sighs, “Unfortunately.”

“Just… fulfill your obligations. Do the things you need to do. We have time, Buck. I told you, I’m really not going anywhere.” Steve’s voice softens in a desperate way, “I promise.”

Bucky stands from the stool and stretches the sleep and anxiety from his muscles. “‘Kay, well, I guess I’m going to, uh, ya know. Do my thing. Take a shower and get ready.”

Steve finishes swallowing the gulp of coffee in his mouth and sets the cup down. “Sounds good, Buck.” 

“Um, just… Keep doing what you’re doing, okay? Make yourself… at home. Wear my clothes, sleep in my bed, eat my food. I just—“

“I know, Buck. I know.”

This dance of theirs has become clumsy and cumbrous with the decay of time and distance. They stumble and fall over each other in new and foreign ways but always seem to right themselves in the end. Always seem to just know unequivocally the things that go unsaid, or the fine print beneath the text.

Bucky doesn’t say anything more, he simply takes a final sip of his coffee before heading back to the bedroom that is so rarely used for anything other than dressing himself and charging his phone and closes the door.

In the silence of his own company, Steve takes a shaky breath and prays to a God he hasn’t believed in in nearly a century.

Chapter Text

Bucky showers, dresses, and readies himself for the day on autopilot the same as any other day.

If anything, he finds himself in more of a brain fog than ever, his hands scrubbing at his hair and brushing his teeth on muscle memory alone. Simple acts of dissociation and small time jumps that feel more like a quantum leap.

When Bucky comes out of the bathroom clean and freshly dressed in a plain black t-shirt and jeans, he enters the living space to find Steve picking at leftover lo mein and reading a newspaper at the breakfast bar. He’s not quite sure where he got it from but he doesn’t go out of his way to ask.

There’s a line of coat hooks mounted on the wall by the front door where Bucky keeps his keys, the leather jacket he wears most often, and a messenger bag that he uses on days that involve more pencil pushing than they do active combat or investigation. On the floor below are his boots. He makes his way over to them and starts pulling on the black socks he holds crumpled in his metal hand as he speaks.

“Listen, I don’t have a spare key so you’re just gonna have to let yourself in the same way you did last night.” He pulls on his boots swiftly and begins to shrug himself into his jacket. He straightens his collar, keeps his eyes down and on anything but Steve’s face. “I assume if you can break in once you can do it again.” Jingle of keys, creak of leather against leather as Bucky slides the messenger bag over his head and fixes it at his side. “I um….” A pause and a breath.

Bucky takes his keys back out of his pocket and begins to fiddle with the ring. He slides one key off, the key to his bike, and strides over to where Steve’s sitting to clumsily plunk the key onto the countertop in front of him. 

“I uh, I’m taking my truck today. But this is the key to my bike. Use it… If you need to, I guess. Figure riding a motorcycle with a tinted helmet is ironically a little more unassuming than taking the bus or walking.”

Steve furrows his brow while looking down at the key. He breathes in to speak but Bucky is quick to continue.

“Parking garage. Across the street. Second level. You’ll know which bike it is because it’s the only bike.”

Steve looks up and his expression looks almost painful. “Why are you…?” He shakes his head and snickers. “What makes me… Christ, Buck. Why let me back in like this? I just feel… I don’t know. I guess I just don’t comprehend what makes me of all people deserving of this level of implicit trust.”

Bucky’s back at the front door by now, fidgeting. He’s checking the contents of his bag, patting his pockets, ensuring he has all the essentials before leaving. It’s an awkward dance of trying to avoid those sad blue eyes. Those eyes that if he gives them even just one single glance, he’ll never make it out that door.

“Because I’m me. And you’re you.” Bucky shrugs and pulls open the door so he can be gone before Steve has any time to respond properly. “And I was dead for a hell of a lot longer when you let me come home.”

The door closes behind Bucky with a thunk and a click. 

A stone grows in Steve’s throat, and the acid of longing burns his eyes.

~

Bucky’s day continues on in skips and jumps, like a record worn with use on a player with a faulty needle. He drives to the CIA in silence, one-handed and unblinking. His brain goes offline and his body knows to drive the familiar route. When he arrives, he flashes his identification card to security, parks, and heads into the main administration building.

It’s mostly quiet when he enters and begins traversing the sterile halls, but it typically is on Fridays. Most people on the bureaucratic side of the operations are either diligently crunching to complete the work they didn’t get to throughout the week, or they’re speeding through whatever they have for the day - each with the same goal of starting their weekends as soon as possible. 

Bucky is fumbling with his keycard that grants him clearance to various rooms and buildings throughout the complex when a familiar voice shoots like a speeding bullet through the echoing hall.

“Bucky!”

He’d finally gotten his keycard up to the sensor-lock when he hears it, and it makes him freeze in place. The light on the lock beeps and clicks, flashing green, then after three precise seconds flashes to red to signal its return back to a locked state. His muscles tighten and his anxiety flares.

Bucky steadies himself with a slow inhale through his nose and turns around to the sight of Sam walking in long but even strides toward him down the hall, shoes squeaking against the linoleum floors.

“Sam.” Bucky says flatly, but he tries his best to not make it sound as lifeless as he feels these days. 

Sam starts talking before he’s even gotten within a socially acceptable distance for proper conversation, and he sounds just the barest bit out of breath, like he was rushing somewhere but not quite running. 

“Before I even start, have you opened quite literally any of the texts I’ve sent you this week?” His inflection makes his words come out more like a statement, like he knows the answer he’s going to get already.

“I’ve been… busy. Why are you here?” 

“Busy, he says.” Sam scoffs. “Yeah I’m sure that little black book of yours keeps you real busy, man. Anyway, I —”

“Oh, fuck off.” Bucky rolls his eyes and his lip twitches. 

“I’m not your therapist. I’m not here to place a value judgment on your whole method of contrition. You know how I feel ab—”

“Yeah, great, and I don’t care.”

Sam starts agreeing in unison with Bucky and shaking his head in a mocking motion, “And you don’t care. I know, I know. I’m not here to rehash this shit with you, I’ve just been trying to get a hold of you for a week and I know you come here every Friday.”

“You drove your ass all the way down here just to talk to me?”

Sam forgoes words and glares back at him as a response. Bucky’s eyes narrow and then soften. 

“Fine. Fair.”

“I need help with something.”

“Gee, Sam, say less.”

“Kiss my ass.” Sam pulls a manila file folder out from under his left armpit and holds it out in front of himself for Bucky to take. Bucky does, but it comes off much more aggressive than he means it to. Most of his interactions with Sam tend to come off more aggressive than he means them to.

Bucky opens the folder and starts scanning his eyes down the pages, he takes his time and neither man says a thing as he flips through the contents.

“What kind of lame ass fucking name is the Flag Smashers for a terrorist organization?” Bucky says with an edge without lifting his eyes from the page. “They couldn’t pick a name that doesn’t sound like a kindergarten class came up with it? Christ alive.” Sam responds with a knowing roll of his eyes and Bucky goes on, “So who gives a shit if they think things were better during the Blip? Plenty of people think that. They sound like a bunch of nonthreatening liberal arts college kids with too much time on their hands.” 

“Keep reading, asshole.”

Bucky keeps scanning the page but stays on the same note. “I’m gonna keep it real with you Wilson, I’m not seeing what’s so wrong with what this is saying they stand for. I’m not exactly the world's biggest patriot either. Mindless nationalism is bad.”

“Says the guy standing in the middle of the CIA with top security clearance. On the US government’s payroll, no less.” Sam intones sarcastically.

“I don’t do what I do for the government.” Bucky bites, “I never have. I do what I do for me. And for what I believe in. And the people I love. I’m not above defecting and ghosting if their leash gets too tight and I’m pretty positive there’s not a soul in this building that’s not abundantly aware of that.”

“I get it, you’re a cool and mysterious ex-Soviet assassin who makes his own rules. None of this is the point. This is the point.” Sam reaches over and flips two more pages of the documents to get to the second to last one. He slaps his index finger a quarter down the page with a thwack and retracts his hand to cross his arms across his chest.

Bucky’s brow creases in something less like confusion and more like fear. His ears start ringing, and the only thing he can force out of his mouth is a fried, “What?”

“Yeah.” Sam sighs.

“How?” Bucky is still having trouble processing coherent thought or stringing multiple words together to form a sentence. His mouth goes dry.

“We think there’s someone here. On the inside. A mole providing them with the serum.”

“But how do we know for sure that they even —”

Sam cuts him off with a final page flip and another finger thwack.

Bucky reads slowly and thoroughly but still can’t seem to kick his brain back into functioning. The gears are whirring and sparking and he only catches snippets of information embedded in the text. Switzerland… Bank robbery… Three injured... No civilian casualties… Male, mid-twenties, exhibiting superhuman strength... Characteristics of the supersoldier serum developed in 1942… Potential tampering with the chemical makeup to enhance certain effects.

“But-but, we don’t know, right? We can’t know that what this is is necessarily the serum.”

“Don’t be obtuse, Buck.”

Bucky snaps on instinct, “Don’t fucking call me that.”

“Steve called you that.”

“Yeah, and taking on that shield and putting on a red white and blue suit doesn’t make you Steve.” Bucky snarls hostilely.

“Okay. Point taken.”

“Thank you.”

Bucky continues reading to the very end and grimaces.

“Sam… these are just kids.”

“I know.”

“Listen, I— Fuck. I’m not… I understand.” Bucky slaps the folder closed and gives it back to Sam with his left hand so he won’t see how badly the right one is shaking. “I understand, okay, I fucking get it. It’s bad out there right now. We’re recovering from a global cataclysm. At the end of the day… They can rob all the banks and swipe all the military MRE’s from cargo ships they want. I couldn’t care less. But we gotta get that serum out of their hands, Sam.”

“That’s why I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for a week, jackass.” Sam replies, but he softens his tone on the tail end of it, clashing with the sharpness of his words.

“Fucking atom bomb.” Bucky mutters under his breath, and his features harden further as he shoves his fists into his jacket pockets.

“Excuse me?”

“Fucking mistake. Like the atom bomb. The serum. Never shoulda been created in the first place. Shoulda fucking burned their whole lab down with every ounce of it and all of the instructions to make it inside.”

Bucky feels queasy and sick down past his stomach and into his toes. He can’t help but constantly envision what his life might’ve been like if the serum had never even been invented. What Steve’s life might’ve been like. He would’ve died like a man on the battlefield and Steve would still have been safe at home, untouched and unmarred by all of the death and destruction. Maybe would’ve married a nice girl and started a typical American nuclear family. But it doesn’t matter. They’re here now, and it just doesn’t matter. You can’t alter the past without devastating the future. He’s had that proven to him time and again.

Sam sighs deeply and sways to ease his posture.

“You’re my obvious first choice to partner up with, here. You of all people have abundant and intimate knowledge regarding the serum and all of the fucked up knock-offs that have already been made or could be made. I really can’t do this one without you.”

Bucky sighs deeply as well and closes his eyes for a beat to compose himself.

“Yeah. Fine, okay. Of course.”

“Yippee,” Sam exclaims with weak sarcasm. “Guess this means you’ll actually start answering the phone now.”

Bucky has nothing to say to that. He just sets his jaw and clenches his fists tighter in his pockets.

“Look, Bucky…” Sam starts in with that tone that Bucky knows all too well. The tone that sounds like a condolence. His instincts are screaming at him to cut Sam off, to draw the line and set the boundary. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, do not give me your damn pity. But his resolve is weak and his mind is tired so Sam forges on, “I know you’ve been having a really hard time since Steve passed. I know you’ve been having a hard time since he left and didn’t come back that day.”

“Sam…” Bucky attempts pathetically.

“No, stop, let me finish.” Sam raises a hand in a halting motion. “I won’t ever pretend to know the kind of relationship you had, and I certainly won’t pretend to ever comprehend your bond. You guys were and still are well and truly the first and last of your kind. I’ll never know the complexities and nuances of how all of this has made you feel. But as much as we bitch and banter and pick on each other… I still care. And you’re my friend. No matter how much you push me, I won’t go away. And that’s a promise.”

Bucky lets a beat of silence pass between them and he chews on his bottom lip in brief contemplation. For once, he lets the brick wall that he’s built between himself and other human beings crumble, and he gives in to the human need to be cared for and known.

“Thanks… Thank you. I…” Bucky doesn’t know what else to say, so he simply says, “I’m sorry.”

“Once a week, at least. Just a response once a week, that’s all I’m askin’. I just wanna know how you’re doin’.”

“I know.”

“I’ll leave you to your business now. I just needed to catch you up to speed and get you in on this operation. We have some intel that these kids may be somewhere in Munich next week trying to intercept a shipment of medical supplies. I’m gonna need your help bringing these kids in alive and hopefully unharmed.”

“Yeah, hopefully.”

Sam pats Bucky on his bicep firmly and gives it a squeeze before turning and leaving without another word.

Bucky swallows thickly and wills himself back into a functional mode, turning back to the door to the records room behind him. He enters, and makes his way to the section marked for the Winter Soldier Project.

Bucky pulls back a thick volume of files and brings it back to one of the tables in the middle of the room. He doesn’t even bother to pull up a seat, just slips his small black notebook from his messenger bag and begins to write down more names of the lives he stole.

Chapter Text

By the time Bucky leaves the CIA, his priorities have already shifted completely on their axis twice. First a dead man shows up in his living room and up-ends his entire life, and then news slips in that a bunch of kids are running around committing crimes with vials of serum in their fists, handing them out to each other like halloween candy. He’s overwhelmed and tired but he shuts down the center or his brain that deals with emotion and tells himself what he always does: I’ll deal with it later.

The drive up to the training compound takes about an hour and some change, and he doesn’t spend more time there than is absolutely necessary today. He tends to pop in to head training sessions regarding arms safety and defense for the kids whose mutant abilities have less to do with brute strength and more to do with telekinesis or psychic precognition. It’s a facet of his job that he does more by choice than by assignment. He likes working with kids. There was a time in his life where he thought maybe even one day, he might have one or two of his own. But those dreams are mist and a relic of the past, so he teaches kids who live in fear of the world living in fear of them how to keep themselves alive out there in the fight instead.

There are two new boys, Billy and Tommy, and Bucky takes to them quickly. There’s something about them that feels familiar, but he just can’t quite place it, so he lets it go. They’re sweet kids and they’re eager to learn, so Bucky spends a couple hours at the compound getting to know them and starting with the basics. Tommy’s whole schtick seems to be running and moving objects at supersonic speed, to the point where Bucky watches the kid phase straight through a wall using his powers. Bucky chuckles when the kid trips over the leg of a chair, clumsily stumbling into the room from accelerating his particles at an unquantifiable rate after taking a bathroom break. He asks Tommy if it ever hurts, and he just smirks and says “nah.” Billy is quiet and shy, and Bucky knows he’s holding back. His powers seem telekinetic in nature, but he ends up admitting to Bucky that they feel too big to handle most days, and that he’s actually not even sure what all he can do. He says he just doesn’t want to hurt anyone. Bucky pats the kid on the back and tells him he doesn’t either.

They end up parting ways with a short hug, because the boys look so young and something tells Bucky they just needed a good squeeze. Everyone does sometimes, he supposes.

The drive home is uneventful as always, and when Bucky arrives back at the parking garage he notices that his bike is missing. Something a bit like pride swells in his chest; a feeling he can’t name bubbles under his skin knowing that Steve remains comfortable as an extension of him even after all of this time and separation, death and rebirth.

When Bucky enters the apartment, he leaves the door unlocked behind him for Steve whenever he returns. He only has enough time to remove his coat, boots, and bag, and then plop himself down on the couch that Steve seemed to have put back together in his absence with a dramatic sigh before he’s coming straight in with an arm full of grocery sacks.

“Hey…” Bucky murmurs softly, sinking further into the cushions behind him.

“Hey,” Steve smiles tightly and locks the door behind him. He sets the plastic bags down on the counter and begins putting what looks like various meats and produce away in the fridge. He’s wearing a pair of Bucky’s ripped blue jeans and one of his plain hooded sweatshirts. A fist-sized lump develops in Bucky’s throat and he swallows it back and down without question or ceremony. It settles like a smooth stone in his gut. “Have you eaten today?” 

Bucky pauses. Such a simple question and it sets him spinning. A moment passes, he quirks his lips in a one-sided smirk and chuckles softly to himself. A realization: the last person to ask him that question was Steve — four years ago.

“Uh… No I don’t think I have.”

“You don’t think?” Steve interrogates, one eyebrow quirked and a mother hen-like expression.

“I mean, I don’t remember eating. I had that coffee this morning and left. The rest of the day was all sort of auto-pilot.” Bucky props his elbow on the arm of the couch and leans his temple against the closed fist of his metal hand. He ghosts his other hand between the cushions beside him in a search for the remote to the TV before him. Background noise to overtake the noise in his head.

“Okay well, I’ll make dinner in a bit.” Steve finishes putting any perishables in the fridge and goes to Bucky with long strides just as he’s turning on the TV and tossing the remote back across the couch. He throws himself down next to him, far too close for any men who weren’t them, and both of their bodies bounce a little with it.

“How were your… errands?” Bucky asks, shifting slightly in his seat. The desire to be close but the fear of it all the same. Never not at war with himself over what should and should not be, what he wants and what he needs.

Steve chuckles and pulls some items from the large pocket in the front of his — Bucky’s — sweatshirt. First a phone, a regular smartphone, not a burner you’d find at a gas station. A social security card. A folded piece of paper. A driver’s license and some credit cards. And because Bucky’s bones are old and tired, and all that’s left in his muscles are memories, his hands begin to reach for the items in Steve’s lap without verbal permission. He takes the driver’s license first, but Steve is pressed so close that he keeps his forearm resting on Steve’s thigh as he flips it around in his hand to get a good look.

“Grant Stevenson?” Bucky laughs, his eyes crinkling around the smile brought on by the silly new identity. “Really?”

“What, you think you coulda come up with somethin’ better?” Steve jabs teasingly. He presses in closer and rests his own arm overtop Bucky’s to take the ID back but doesn’t move; just rests his hand on Bucky’s knee and inspects the card again.

“He’s an artist and he comes up with the least creative, most obvious alias in the world. Go figure.” Bucky mumbles facetiously to no one but the oxygen particles in the room.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bite me.” 

And of course something about Steve has always made him feel so playful, like a child with no inhibitions and nothing to lose, so he does. He scoops up Steve’s hand in his own and brings it up to his mouth to fake-gnaw on his knuckles, and Steve cackles and slips his hand away to unfold the piece of paper in his lap. It’s a birth certificate with the same name on it, and Bucky takes it to study it as well.

“Oof…” Bucky exhales hard and fast as he scans the page. “Déjà vu.”

“Hm?”

“Just, uh…” An uncomfortable laugh and a shake of his head. “Really? Jersey?”

Steve plucks the paper back out of Bucky’s hand and scoffs, “Where am I supposed to be from? Louisiana? I can get away with Jersey. Not sure about anywhere else.”

“Tch, yeah, you’ve always said that, huh?”

Steve doesn’t respond to that, just folds the paper back up and places the documents he produced from his pocket down onto the open cushion beside him along with the phone.

“Where did you get all of this?” Bucky asks, his body melting down into the couch; his head falling to rest on Steve’s shoulder like a magnet.

“You’re not the only one with people and ways. Captain America was never so squeaky clean, you know. He committed treason for you.” Steve says the last part so plainly, like it’s obvious. Like he’d do it again and again.

Bucky’s flesh and blood hand makes its way back to a spot on Steve’s knee where the denim is distressed. He picks at a thread nervously and swallows.

“I know.”

A beat of silence between them, the sound of some ridiculous luxury car commercial filling the room.

Steve disintegrates into the couch alongside Bucky and begins picking at an adjacent thread to the one he’s fiddling with. It becomes a clumsy dance of fingers, warm and calloused.

“Well, I exist again.” Steve chuckles. “Sort of.”

“I don’t have to call you Grant, do I?” Bucky smirks and pushes against Steve’s side.

“Oh god, no.”

Both men dissolve into laughter and Steve lowers his head to rest his temple against Bucky’s hair as it dies away.

“What about you, how was your day?” Steve brings his voice down to a quiet rumble now, and Bucky can feel it resonate inside his chest cavity. It bounces around inside of him and makes him fragile.

“Not much to tell.” Bucky fights through his anxiety and lies through omission. “Driving. Paperwork. Met some of the new kids. Real sweet, a little shy. Kinda sad. But good kids.”

Steve hums and suddenly Bucky can feel his mouth resting on the crown of his head. His heart seizes and skips 10 beats, and Steve’s lips begin to move, words gently muffled by his hair, “You’ve always been good with kids. They like you.”

Bucky swallows and sets his jaw, his fingers twirling the loose thread of denim that’s become the unfortunate victim of his current neuroses more frantically.

A clearing of a throat and Steve moves so that his cheek is resting back atop Bucky’s head now. 

“Welp, now that I’m a person again,” Steve sighs and gets up off the couch. Bucky lets him go easily but his side feels cold and empty when he walks away. “I was browsing around online for something to make for dinner tonight.”

“Oh yeah?” Bucky grins. “Whatcha gonna make?”

“Uh… chicken. And pasta. With a cheesy… cream sauce, or something.”

“Well, look at you.”

“I know. I’m a regular Wolfgang Puck.” Steve begins taking out pots and pans and removing ingredients from the fridge that he had just placed in there not long ago.

Bucky relaxes his tired bones to conform to the cushions beneath him and goes on dissociating in front of the television as Steve cooks, crisp sounds of chopping and sizzling as various delicious smells permeate the room. Bucky is blinking at a rerun of some old 90’s sitcom when he feels the warmth of a large hand skate across his jaw.

“Hey.” Steve’s voice, tender and worried as he puts a plate of pasta into one of Bucky’s hands. “Eat.”

A collection of moments for Bucky to kickstart his brain again and he feels a glass filled with water being placed into his other hand. Shake out the everlasting haze and breathe.

Bucky looks over at Steve as he settles back in next to him on the couch. “So what, you’re gonna feed me but not eat anything yourself?”

“Already ate while I was out, not hungry.” Steve sighs, big and heavy. He keeps his gaze trained on the TV, the blue light flashing and casting shadows across his features in the low lighting.

Bucky doesn’t fight or argue, just begins to shovel the food Steve so lovingly prepared for him into his mouth. It's good, the kind of good where it would be even if it wasn’t, so he hums a grateful noise and swallows. Steve responds with a natural and knowing, “You’re welcome, Buck.” and Bucky finishes the meal in silence with Steve’s arm around him over the back of the couch.

When Bucky’s finished, he rises from the couch and takes his plate and empty glass to the sink with a tired groan. “I’m just gonna head straight to bed,” Bucky says over the hiss of the running faucet. “I have way too much sleep to catch up on.”

“Yeah, I hear that.” Steve responds with a grunt as he stretches his muscles and cracks his neck.

Bucky makes his way to the hall and stops short in the threshold. He turns to Steve who’s still sitting on the couch but pauses with his mouth opening and closing like a guppy when he fails to find any words to say.

“I’ll be fine out here on the couch, Buck. Goodnight, get some good rest.” Steve’s eyes are weary but fond, and Bucky returns his words with a tight lipped smile.

“Goodnight, Stevie.”

Bucky follows his regular nighttime routine and climbs into the bed he so rarely sleeps in, sheets feeling foreign on his skin. He leaves his bedroom door open just a sliver and falls asleep to the sound of the shower running and Steve humming I’ll Be Seeing You across the hall.

~

Blood. It’s the only scent his nose is capable of picking up anywhere in this room. It’s all just blood and death. A body somewhere in the corner twitches and his metal finger pulls the trigger at it before his brain can process any other information. Crack; and the twitching ceases. Another pop of a bullet just for good measure. Suddenly, a voice in his ear reciting cold praises in Russian: Excellent work, Soldier. Return to the extraction point. There’s a mask covering his mouth and nose, and it’s growing tighter with the passing seconds. It’s suffocating him now, and his lungs burn as they fight for oxygen, fight to keep him alive. The Soldier grows wild in the eyes and long in the tooth, he rips and tears at the muzzle. It presses at his nose until it cracks, and for the first time he screams; for the first time he speaks without being spoken to. He screams the only name he still knows but it dies away behind the gurgle of blood in his mouth.

Bucky awakens with a violent gasp and immediately reaches for his face to paw dizzily at his nose and mouth. He sputters and coughs on the invisible blood in his throat, wheezing through the saliva that caught in the wrong pipe on his abrupt inhale of air. He keeps feeling around and checking his fingers uselessly in the dark, but comes up with nothing but sweat.

“Buck?”

The dim sliver of warm light from the hall widens as his bedroom door opens and Steve slips inside the room. Bucky sits up and squints at the broad form approaching him, sheets pooling around his waist as he swallows and pants.

“Asking you if you’re okay seems like a stupid question right about now.” Steve mumbles lightheartedly, and he lowers himself gently to sit on the edge of the bed next to Bucky.

Bucky swallows deeply again and starts wiping his face and rubbing his eyes to adjust his vision to the low lighting, any words he could use to respond to Steve still far beyond his reach.

“Steve.” Bucky croaks, his voice hoarse with the feeling of overuse.

“Yeah, I’m right here. Scouts honor.” Steve does a little two-finger salute before using both hands to push Bucky’s sweat-plastered hair back and off his forehead. 

Bucky feels woozy and confused, and he sways back and forth a little as Steve’s hands wipe the sweat and tears off of his cheeks with his thumbs.

“I don’t… I’m sorry, I—”

Steve shushes Bucky and starts lightly tugging up at the hem of his t-shirt.

“Come on, get this off. It’s soaked. You’re gonna be miserable in the morning if you sleep in this.”

Bucky raises his arms and the shirt comes off easy in his delirium. Steve bunches up the fabric and uses it to wipe the excess sweat from Bucky’s face and neck before tossing it haphazardly to the side. Bucky can barely keep his eyes open but he can feel and hear Steve’s hands doing something with the pillow behind him.

“Okay, lay back down.”

Bucky is still teetering on the tightrope between awake and asleep, and he resists with a childish whine in the back of his throat as Steve presses against his sternum with a firm hand.

“Shhh, hey.” Steve whispers so sweetly, nothing but pure softness to his voice. “I got you. Do I got ya, Buck?”

Bucky nods, eyes half-lidded and vision blurred, and slowly lowers himself back into a supine position. The texture of his pillow has changed, and he realizes that what Steve was doing was laying a towel down to catch his nightmare-fueled sweat.

Bucky’s chest rises and falls with huge, deep breaths, and the hand on his sternum stays where it is. A creak, the rustle of sheets, the shifting of the mattress. Warmth covers Bucky’s right side and his eyes fall shut again as his breathing slows. 

Bucky drifts back to sleep, and Steve tracks the beat of his heart with his fingertips through the rest of the night.

Chapter Text

Bucky blinks himself awake against the harshness of the morning sun streaming in between the blinds and begins taking slow mental notes of his surroundings: something behind his head — a towel. A long line of warmth along his right side. Soft snores and a big hand resting limply over his naked collar bone.

Steve.

Dried sweat has Bucky’s skin sticking to the sheets as he does his best to slide out of bed with stealth. Steve stirs but doesn’t seem to awaken, and Bucky grabs a pair of track pants and a t-shirt from the basket full of clean laundry on his floor before quietly slipping out and into the bathroom. He showers quickly and quietly, and dresses just as swiftly. There’s an unnameable itch under his skin that laments the seconds he spends away from Steve and informs his speed, even if he’s just a room away.

By the time Bucky returns to his bedroom Steve is awake and sleep-ragged, pushing himself up and back against the headboard as he yawns. The room brightens and a wound deep inside of Bucky begins to knit itself together.

“Hi.” Bucky murmurs and leans back against the doorframe, taking it all in.

“Hi…” Steve answers back on another yawn and stretches.

“Sorry about, uh—“ Bucky starts but Steve cuts him off with a loud groan.

“No. No… Don’t do that.” Steve flops over dramatically onto the other side of the bed and shouts his muffled complaints from behind a pillow. “No sorry. No sorries! You of all people don’t get to be sorry for having nightmares.” 

Bucky sighs through his nose and smiles, all warm sunshine burbling in his insides as he watches Steve writhe around and right himself on his bed. He’s so beautiful. The thought comes and passes the way it always does.

“‘Kay. ‘Mnot sorry then.”

“Good.” Steve chucks a pillow at Bucky and Bucky returns the serve hard. Steve huffs a deep oof and groans.

“Hey, I didn’t throw it at you that hard.” 

Bucky crawls forward on the bed and settles himself casually next to Steve. “It’s a pillow, you big baby.”

“A pillow thrown by a super soldier.”

“Oh, fuck off. ”

Steve shoves Bucky playfully and Bucky lets himself be shoved, falling back splayed out with a sigh. Bucky stares at the ceiling and Steve props himself up on his elbow.

“So what’s on the docket for today?” Steve hovers over Bucky and yawns again. “Can it be staying in bed? I’m exhausted.”

Bucky sighs deeply and it's tinged with knowing sadness. His right hand moves on muscle memory and brushes the hair back from Steve’s face, pushing errant locks behind his ear. “That sounds great actually.” 

“Do you have anywhere you have to be?” Steve yawns again through his sentence and settles back into the sheets.

“Mmno…” Bucky nuzzles into the sheets as well and pulls the comforter back up over their bodies. “I’m sort of… on call and waiting for something right now.”

Steve makes an inquisitive noise in the back of his throat but sleep is already overtaking him again, his eyes closed and his breathing evening out.

“I’ll tell you about it later.” Bucky murmurs contentedly and returns to his gentle ministrations, petting hair back from Steve’s forehead.

Steve hums a sweet little noise of agreement and drifts back off. It doesn’t take him long. Sleep was a luxury he didn’t get afforded much of on the run and when he did it was fitful and with one eye open. Suddenly, it becomes easy to sleep when the guy who’s always had your six is right next to you.

And so they stay in bed all day. They nap in shifts. They watch each other breathe when the other isn’t awake. They study the lines on each other’s faces, memorizing the ones they haven’t gotten the chance to learn yet. In the times they both stir to consciousness they talk about life before the war; they warm their insides with happy memories and funny anecdotes. The light outside begins to dim and Bucky clicks one of the bedside lamps on so he doesn’t have to stop seeing Steve’s face. Their bodies shuffle around the bed and closer and closer together until suddenly it’s seven o’clock at night and Bucky’s using Steve’s pec as a pillow.

They’re in the middle of an in depth conversation about all of the upgrades Bucky’s left arm has been through. Steve is pressing his palm firmly against Bucky’s metal one and tediously comparing their sizes.

“No no no no,” Steve gripes, stretching all five of his fingers as far as they can go. “My hand is still totally bigger. My hands have always been bigger. Even when I was small.”

“Nope. Sorry, bitch. You lost this round. Score one for Bucky. Your freakish genetics can’t beat cybernetic perfection.” Bucky teases.

“No! You do not win, look.” Steve pinches their two middle fingers together and then points at it. “See! I still have a tiny fucking millimeter on you. That still counts!” 

“No- ho-hoo. ” Bucky laughs, tears gathering in the creases of his laugh lines. “Let me have this! Let the amputee have this or you hate the disabled.”

“Hate the disabled!” Steve squawks and laughs like he hasn’t laughed in ages. 

“You are so mean to me!” Bucky jibes.

“Oh? I’m mean?” Steve takes those as fighting words and overtakes Bucky swiftly. Bucky turns into a giggling mess of flailing limbs and bedsheets and he feels like a kid again. “I’m mean??”

“Stop!” Bucky is cackling now, his face beet red from the lack of air in his lungs.

“Say my hands are bigger than yours!” Steve shouts unseriously and pins Bucky’s hands to the mattress.

“No!” Bucky cackles and strains lazily against Steve’s grip.

“Say it!”

“No!” 

Suddenly Bucky hears the sound of Steve hocking a loogie up in the back of his throat like he’s winding up a fastball and he squeals like a schoolgirl.

“Okay! Okayyy!” Bucky chokes on his laughter and strains a bit harder, but never hard enough to break free. “Uncle! Uncle! Fine, your hands are still bigger than mine!”

“That’s more like it.” Steve says with finality and starts to relax his grip. The laughter fades but Steve stays hovering over Bucky, their eyes searching each other's faces. 

The tension of the moment builds and builds and then at the apex it pops, Steve’s voice acting as the needle.

“Can you feel that?” Steve’s voice is barely above a whisper.

“Huh?” Bucky blinks and comes back to reality.

“Can you feel that?” Steve repeats the question more like a statement and points toward Bucky’s metal hand with a dart of his eyes.

Bucky cranes his neck a bit and looks over at his hand laying against the gray sheets. Steve’s thumb is stroking back and forth over where his pulse point would be in a soothing fashion.

“Um…” Bucky furrows his brow and thinks about it for a second. “Kind of…?”

Steve settles onto his side but continues holding Bucky’s mechanical hand, thumb still traveling its pathways across his wrist.

“Tell me what it feels like.” There’s earnesty and something else Bucky can’t quite identify in Steve’s voice.

“Well…” Bucky swallows and brings his hand in closer to meet Steve in between themselves. Steve weaves their fingers together and keeps stroking any metal he can find purchase on. “It’s like… well it’s not like how it feels on my actual hand… if that makes sense.”

Steve hums and starts massaging slow circles into Bucky’s palm with his thumb. 

Bucky continues, his breath hitching unnoticeably in his throat. “It’s sort of like…. a memory of how it feels. You know? Like my hand is remembering what it’s like to hold someone's hand.” A pause and a wry chuckle. “The circuitry is connected to my nerves and my spine but I just… guess we’re not at the point yet with medical technology where it feels like the original.”

“I was just wondering.” Steve mumbles, his eyes still intent on the grooves and plating of Bucky’s hand. “I realized I’ve never asked. I should’ve asked.”

The moment gets harshly interrupted by a loud and conspicuous gurgle. It erupts from Bucky’s stomach and the two men look down at the source of the noise in tandem.

“Oh my god, what time is it? We really fuckin’ did stay in bed all day.” Steve notes a bit incredulously. He’s never been one to make friends with his mattress. Especially not since the serum.

“Shit, yeah. We need to eat.” Bucky begins to rise from the mess of sheets and blankets.

“I bought one of those huge Stouffer's mac and cheese pans when I went grocery shopping. Throw that in the oven.”

“‘Kay. Wanna watch TV out in the living room while we wait for it?”

“Only if I get to pick what we watch.” Steve says cheekily, and Bucky laughs fondly.

“Sure, Stevie. Anything you want.” 

They transfer to the living room and throw on Friends. It’s a show everyone they know had always begged them to watch in their quest to catch up on anything they’ve missed, but neither of them ever really got around to watching it. It’s hard to find time when the world is always ending. 

They share the macaroni and cheese directly out of the pan; no need to dirty any plates. They end up annihilating the entire tray anyway. When they finish they kick back and pay all of their attention to the TV. Steve likes the show well enough but Bucky really seems to love it. He’s smitten with Joey and wants a Phoebe of his own in his life. Steve thinks maybe he likes watching Bucky watch the show more than he likes the actual show itself; and then he thinks some more about what that means. 

It doesn’t take long for the same forces acting upon them in the bed to take shape on the couch, gravity doing its work and subtle touches to patches of skin morphing into Bucky laying with his feet crossed propped up on the arm of the couch as Steve strokes and plays with Bucky’s hair in his lap. 

Bucky somehow falls asleep for what must be the 50th time that day, Steve’s warm and calloused fingers lulling him back into that relaxed liquid state. When he awakens in the dead of night, face lit by nothing but the purples and blacks of his TV’s idle screen, Steve is gone.

—

Steve whistles three times. Gentle with an upward lilt on each one. Precise and specific. He paces nervously and waits five minutes before spouting off three more whistles.

A crack and the rustle of leaves. A sleek feminine figure steps forward out of the nearby treeline.

“Don’t do that to me. You scared the shit out of me.” Steve admonishes the dark figure and she chuckles, stepping into the dim light being given off by the street lamps above them on the overpass.

“What, thought I wouldn’t show?” That sultry low rasp is so familiar and comforting to hear. Steve melts at it.

“Nat, you bitch.” Steve charges forward and scoops the lithe but rock-solid woman into his arms, squeezing her for dear life.

“Ok-ay…” Natasha wheezes. “Be careful, Lenny. You’ll kill me for real this time.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah, long time no see and all that.”

“God, this is so crazy.”

Steve releases Natasha from his grip and steps back to get a good look at her. As is par for the course with Nat, she’s dressed head to toe in black and leather. Her hair has gotten longer now, and it’s as jet black as the rest of her wardrobe.

“I know. ‘Two dead people walk under an overpass’ sounds like the start of a bad joke.” Natasha quips and opens her coat to pull out a manila folder.

“You’re not funny.” Steve chuckles, betraying himself.

“Okay so business out of the way first, I got you what you asked for. As always. Because that’s the kind of friend I am.” Natasha goes on jokingly, passing the folder over to Steve. “But we have simply got to stop meeting like this.”

“What are you talking about?” Steve’s voice trails off slightly as he opens the folder and starts reading.

“You know, the whole ‘me-stealing-classified-information-about-your-boyfriend-and-bringing-it-to-you-before-disappearing-for-an-indeterminate-amount-of-time’ thing?”

“He’s not my boyfriend.” Steve doesn’t lift his eyes from the page.

“Oh cool, that’s the first part of the sentence you responded to. He is so your boyfriend.”

“Fuck off.”

“Whatever, I guess none of that is even technically about Barnes. It’s just about the job he’s currently on.”

“So he just got assigned to this?” Steve looks up from the documents for a brief moment of eye contact with Natasha and then keeps reading.

“Yeah. But the CIA has been sitting on this one for a while. They were trying to handle this quickly and quietly but the CIA wouldn’t know real subtlety if it set a bomb off in their own basement so, no surprise there. They assigned Wilson and then Wilson asked for Barnes. Honestly, probably should’ve called them in sooner. This shit has gotten way out of hand.”

“I can see that.”

Steve flips another page and Natasha cuts in to point at it.

“So that—” She taps the paper twice. “That’s what Barnes is gonna get a call about. Probably in the morning. That’s literally all the information I could find. If you couldn’t all but shadow him the entire way there and back then I’d tell you you fucking suck at this and should probably find a new line of work.”

“I’ll kill you.”

“You love me.” Natasha winks and Steve sighs affectionately. 

“I know.”

“But you know you don’t… need to, right? You know he can handle himself on his own.”

“I know. That’s not what this is about.”

Steve closes the folder and stuffs it inside his own coat, zipping himself back up and shoving his fists back into his pockets.

“Then what is it about?” Natasha questions gently with a tip of her head.

Exhale. Inhale. Blink back the tears and look to the stars. A thick swallow and a click of the throat and the freshly cut artery spurts and throbs.

“What are you trying to do here, Steve?”

“I just…” He starts but cuts himself off with a sniff. “I just… Maybe I wanna get him out.”

Natasha’s responses always come so lightning quick and measured. “Out of what?”

“You know!” Steve starts to pace again, his eyes glassy blue and rimmed with red. He bites his lip so hard he tears at the chapped skin there. “Out! Out of all of it! Out of the fight!” 

“You want him to run away with you.” Natasha intones gently.

“I don’t know!” Steve throws his hands up and sighs exasperatedly. “Maybe! Or…I don’t know. I just… I am a dead person, walking around with nowhere to go and no one to be and nothing to be responsible for and I just…” He rushes through his words in a flurry of emotion and then takes a moment to compose himself. He shudders a breath. “I… Have been through hell and high water. I have been taken out of my life and my time two entirely separate times and that’s too many fucking times! I have been to war! I have killed people! I have destroyed and built and destroyed so much and I have seen so many people I love die and there’s nothing I can do about it I….”

Steve trails off and Natasha finishes for him: “Just want peace.”

Natasha is staring at the ground, hands balled up in her pockets, worrying at a stone in the dirt with the toe of her boot.

“Yeah.” Steve exhales the word with his eyes closed, discontinuing his back-and-forth pacing and going still. “I just want peace.”

Steve allows the moment to settle and then continues.

“He’s just… all I have left, Nat. And yeah, maybe I want to make sure I don’t lose all that I have left. So I’m just… trying to arm myself with knowledge. Or something. I don’t know.”

“Maybe part of getting him out of the fight is going back into it.”

“I know. That’s what this is.”

“I see that.”

Steve sighs again in a big woosh of breath and wipes his eyes. “This sucks.”

“Such is our lot in life.” Natasha shrugs.

“I know.”

Natasha hones in for another hug and burrows herself into Steve’s broad chest, allowing herself to be engulfed by his impossibly big arms. They stand for a few moments, just breathing slowly and allowing themselves to hold and be held. A luxury not often afforded to these cursed bodies they inhabit.

“Rumor has it Sammy laid down that shield ‘you’ gave him.” Natasha says, muffled by the cotton of Steve’s shirt.

Steve grumbles and rocks Natasha back and forth in his arms, refusing to let go but allowing her a bit of space to pull away and speak.

“They’re searching for a new Captain America as we speak. Like it’s a fucking Miss Universe pageant or American Idol or some shit.”

“I can imagine that’s… a relatively substantial part of why Sam wants no part of it.” Steve chuckles and Natasha can feel it vibrate deep inside her chest. “Hey, ‘I’ didn’t give him that shield. I wouldn’t wish this evil on anyone. Though if I were the one to choose my successor I probably would have offered it to Sam. But I didn’t! And that’s the point.”

“Yeah it’s… definitely complicated for him. There’s a lot of… baggage and context that comes with him being in that role.”

“Have you… seen him? At all?” Steve grimaces a little on the question like he knows it’s stupid but finds himself surprised by the answer.

“Actually, yes. You would be happy to know that Wilson is one of the few people in the land of the living that knows I’m not dead. I just saw him on the low the other day. He misses you terribly. You should pay him a visit.”

“Resurrecting a second person he loves sounds like it might be a little too much to deal with at present, but I’ll keep it in mind.”

They both laugh at that and lean back into each other, letting the warmth of their bodies heal the wounds that aren’t visible to the open air.

Natasha rests her ear against Steve’s heart again and revels in the steady thumps before speaking again.

“I don’t know the next time I’ll be able to see you.” She murmurs sadly, and Steve rubs her back reassuringly.

“I know.”

“I miss you… so fucking much. I miss… everyone.”

“I know.” Steve squeezes her tight and then lets her go. “Me too.”

When they pull themselves apart Natasha takes Steve by the face and guides him down to her, giving him a sweet but chaste kiss on the lips that lingers for the pure deprivation from it for so long.

“I’ll see you when I see you.” Natasha whispers.

Steve grabs her hand and holds it for another brief moment. Natasha pulls away and her fingers slip softly from Steve’s grip as she slinks back into the tree line.

Chapter Text

Bucky is half asleep when Steve returns — or at least, he pretends to be. He's migrated to the bed, rolled over onto the right side of the mattress facing away from the door. It's a quiet and hopeful gesture under the cover of darkness that night grants him. There's a hushed sort of fumble coming from the living area and then the sound of footsteps.

A creaking sound and some quiet breathing, a dip of the mattress and a dull heat at his back. 

"Is this okay?" Steve whispers hesitantly.

Before Bucky starts smelling smoke from the gears grinding in Steve's head, he reaches back and snatches the nervous hand hovering at his side from behind himself. Steve makes a sound a little like a cut off 'oof,' and Bucky manhandles him into the position of the big spoon, entwining their fingers and tucking both of their hands tightly under his chin.

And then suddenly, it's the winter of '43 and the fall of '36 and the summer of '32. It's the end of January in 1945 and they're in the Alps and Steve's nose is in his hair, mouthing hot nothings and promises he can't possibly keep. And it's cold. So cold. Twenty below freezing and dropping fast.

"Buck?" Steve murmurs his concern into the back of Bucky's head, and the shivering subsides.

Bucky didn't know he was shivering.

"Where did you go?" Steve is nothing but softness and sighs now, the tension in his shoulders melting down to envelop the poor creature in his arms. Tame the beast with honeyed words and phantom kisses. Just the way you've always done. A long stillness and then a confession: "I think I went with you."

Bucky inhales long and deep through his nose, Steve's body slowly rising and falling with the rhythm of his lungs.

Finally, Bucky speaks, rough and low.

"Did it feel the same for you?" And then as though he needs to clarify, "All the time you spent without me. All the times we've been ripped apart." 

Steve tightens around Bucky like a python, nose burrowing further into the cowlick at the top of his head.

Bucky more so feels than hears the words being spoken into his hair when Steve says, "That depends. What did it feel like for you?"

It's automatic and unflinching: "Like I lost a limb that they couldn't replace with metal and wires. Like I was suffocating. Like I couldn't breathe but I wouldn't die. Like I didn't realize something could hurt that bad and not kill you."

There’s a long beat, Steve considering the various analogies and conjuring his own inside his head.

Like I was wasting away. Like I was starving. Like I lost my compass and I would never find my way home again.

"Then yeah. It felt the same."

More silence stretches and pulls at the lack of space between them, and then Steve can feel Bucky's lips ghosting over their woven knuckles. He unfurls their hands, and when he speaks again, it's in a humid press against the heel of Steve's palm.

"You don't have to tell me where you were tonight."

Steve slides his palm down from Bucky's mouth, chapped skin catching slightly on his bottom lip as he moves to flatten his hand over the erratic thud of that precious, beautifully alive heart. So alive. Alive and warm and here.

"Mmm …" Steve hums a noise of passive agreement into that little cowlick again, mouth flattening into a straight line.

They fall asleep like that; Bucky under the sheets and Steve half under them, wound tight around each other and dreaming of a thousand different lifetimes.

~

In the morning, it's Bucky who's missing this time.

Steve’s eyes flutter open as he’s reaching a hand over to assess the empty mattress. Rumpled sheets and a dent still deep in the pillow. They’ve gone cold though, so Bucky must’ve been missing for a while.

Steve sits up slowly off the edge of the bed and stretches the sleep out of his limbs, a few cracks and pops ringing out from his joints more from disuse than the plights of aging. He wiggles his toes on the smooth wood and realizes one of his feet is on a piece of fabric — a sweatshirt. He picks it up and looks at it.

It’s just a grey sweatshirt with BROOKLYN, NEW YORK embroidered into the chest in big bold letters. Nothing special. Nice and oversized, a fleecy sort of inner fabric. He rubs at the lettering with his thumb and sighs.

Nostalgic. Sentimental. Those are the words an average person might use to describe what he feels right now. But it’s not really that. It’s something unnamable and strange. It’s something the psychologists and scholars have yet to identify because a man like him has yet to exist until now. There’s no one else quite like him, no one else who can quite comprehend the depth of grief he carries, the enormity of his longing. Except Bucky.

Then, because Steve is weary and foolhardy with that same longing, he brings the collar of the sweatshirt up to his mouth and closes his eyes. He doesn’t quite breathe in yet, just sits. Lingers with a hollow chest while his eyes grow hot with the threat of tears. And then — slow and steady — the inhale.

He’s insane, or he must be, Steve thinks; acting like some sort of distraught widow snorting her dead husband's garments like a line of cocaine. It’s just as intoxicating, he assumes. Maybe more so.

Bucky smells the same way he always has. Of course he would. He favors those same woodsy scents in his soaps and colognes — sandalwoods and ambers and pines. And then there’s that undercurrent of sweat and salt and skin that’s just Bucky. 

Steve’s a little disgusted with himself at this private display of his, but he can’t stop. His throat is tight and he’s overcome with it — that yearning. That need and that sadness that hurts deep in the skin and spine. He shudders on another inhale and crumples the fabric forcefully against his mouth, the ghost of a muffled whisper making its way from his vocal cords, “I missed you so bad.”

“Hey…”

The sound of Bucky’s gruff voice from the doorway  shatters the fragile energy of the room and it all comes squealing to a halt. Steve jumps like he’s been shot at and drops the sweatshirt, eyes red-rimmed and misty as he turns to see Bucky standing there in his full combat gear.

“Sorry,” Is the first thing that comes out of Steve's mouth, strained and harsh. “Sorry, I don’t — I thought you left.”

Steve trains his eyes downward like a scolded dog and clasps his hands in his lap. 

There’s an explanation for this. I know, I’m deranged. I must be sick in the head. I was just trying to see if you smelled the same. Isn’t that stupid? Why does it even matter, right? We can just laugh off what a psycho I am and move on, okay?

Bucky rounds the bed and stands there in front of Steve, looming, eyes soft and expression like something of a deep empathy. Without a word he bends down and picks the sweatshirt up, studying the tear stains on the collar. He offers it back to Steve with a sort of gentleness in his gloved hands.

And then, as though he can read Steve’s mind:

“Do I still smell like me?”

Steve laughs then, boisterous and somewhat hysterical. 

“Yeah, actually. It’s making me kind of crazy.”

Bucky forces an amused puff of air from his nose as Steve takes the sweatshirt and drapes it reverently across his own lap.

“Good. I’m glad,” Bucky says, straightening back up and making his way over to the closet to pull a black duffel from the depths of it. “You can keep that if you want.”

“Oh.”

“I don’t mind. I have a dozen just like it. Sometimes when people get me gifts the only frame of reference they have for my personality is ‘World War II Vet’ and ‘I’m from Brooklyn,’ so I end up with a lot of New York themed shit.” He drags the back of his hand across a line of sweaters hanging up in the closet like they’re a rolodex, all of which have some sort of I Heart New York or Brooklyn Est. (insert arbitrary year here) theme to them. “See?”

“Yeah,” Steve chuckles, “People did the same thing to me.”

Bucky plods back over to the bed, thick boots heavy on the floor. They squeak a little when he stops in front of Steve, and he holds a hand out in a beckoning gesture. 

“Alright. Take your shirt off.”

“What?!” Steve furrows his brow in confusion, but he can’t hide the playful grin on his face.

“We have to be even. Give me your shirt.”

“Technically it’s your shirt.”

“Give me the shirt, smartass.”

Steve slips the plain white t-shirt smoothly from his torso and shoves it into Bucky’s open and waiting hands. He’s still for a moment, and then right there — right in front of Steve — Bucky brings the shirt up to his nose and inhales deeply. Eyes closed, face scrunched into an expression of that same longing and heartache that only Steve has etched into himself otherwise. And then, the melt. The dissolving. The release of tension and the calming of the ocean tide. It’s a terribly vulnerable display of solidarity.

See? We’re the same. We always have been. I love you just the same, I missed you just the same. It’s not just you. It’s us. It’s always been us.

“Do I still smell like me?” Steve’s turn to ask now, quiet and timid.

Bucky snaps his eyes open at the question, glazed over with tears and hauntingly blue. He lowers the shirt down to press it to his chest, his heart, and gives a faux-macho sniffle.

“Yeah.” He nods fiercely, firm and convicted. “Yeah, you do. You really do.”

It shocks Steve a little bit when Bucky crouches down to stuff the shirt into a side pocket on his duffel and zips it up, but he doesn’t say anything. Just lets it mean whatever it means and doesn’t wake the sleeping dog from where it lies

“I’m gonna be gone for a few days.” Bucky picks up the bag at his feet and sighs. “I can probably explain more when I get back.”

And then, because Steve is feeling brazen and laid bare from Bucky’s own silent confessions, he grabs Bucky’s belt and pulls him forward between his knees and into an embrace. Bucky standing, Steve sitting, his arms crushing Bucky’s tight waist and his face buried into the harsh trimmings of the tac suit. 

There are hands in Steve’s hair suddenly, nimble gloved fingers scratching tiny circles into his scalp. Steve turns his face sideways, cheek pressing into a hard seam. 

“Be good while I’m gone, yeah?” Bucky is simply cradling Steve’s head now, one hand petting back an errant strand of hair that refuses to stay in place over and over.

“Only if you watch your six.”

“Eh, if I feel like it.”

“Buck,” Steve warns, and pulls back to look up at him.

Bucky slides his hands around from the back of Steve’s head and holds his face affectionately.

“I promise.” And he means it. He really does. “Now put a shirt on, you look ridiculous.”

“You fucking —” Steve shoves Bucky away from him and cup-checks him swiftly with a firm backhand. “Jerk.”

Bucky reacts with an immediate and long groan, doubling over and laughing with his whole body. When he can right himself again, he invades Steve’s space and picks up the sweatshirt once more. He stretches the collar to go over Steve’s head and begins manhandling him into the thing.

It’s so strange, really. This closeness. This nameless intimacy. The world spins on the axis of you and yet there isn’t a word for what we are.

“There. Better, punk?”

Steve makes an amused little noise and huffs a laugh, hair mussed and staticky. 

Hands back on the face — holding, cupping, worshiping. Bucky smooths Steve’s hair back and goes on to assure him, “I’ll call if I’ll be gone any longer. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Bucky steps away then, picking up his bag and reluctantly making his way toward the door. Just short of the threshold, he pauses. Too many beats pass; and then he turns back to Steve, face tense from an era where a man didn’t dare wear his heart on his sleeve, let alone his bruised one.

“I love you.” 

He says it like it’s simple and plain. Simple and plain, but the hardest thing he’s ever grinded out of his throat nonetheless. It’s a shameful leftover from a different time. But he means it all just the same. I love you. Here, there, and everywhere, I love you.

“I love you too, Buck.”

Steve says it back, wide eyed and childlike. Awestruck and never not amazed. Yeah, I love you. You can’t ever know how. Won’t ever know how. Couldn’t possibly.

Bucky takes his leave, front door clicking behind him as he goes and his keys jingling in the deadbolt as he locks up behind himself.

There on the edge of the bed, Steve turns his face into his shoulder and takes another whiff of that damn sweatshirt. He closes his eyes and really lets himself bathe in the feeling that creeps up his shoulder blades now that he’s actually alone. 

He stays like that for a while — sitting, contemplating, feeling. Safety. That’s what it is. That’s that feeling. Security.

It won’t last. He has 52 minutes to get to the coordinates Natasha sent him earlier this morning.

Chapter Text

Steve has been meticulous about his comings and goings. Always alert. Always a backup plan. Always an escape route. He has multiple undetectable weapons caches stashed along the outskirts of the city and a few vehicles he can access as long as he can make it to them.

Geared to the gills, he chooses a worn out Chevy truck that he tucked behind some brush off a quiet county road on the West side, and heads toward the extraction point: a privately owned tarmac in the middle of nowhere. One short interaction in broken Russian with a man in a black balaclava later, and he's boarding a beat-up quinjet headed to Switzerland that looks like it was retired and pilfered from the U.S. government long before the Blip.

It's eight hours and some change to get there on a normal nonstop flight — works out to a solid six in the quinjet. They travel in silence. Steve doesn't speak enough Russian to engage in small talk, but he doubts there's much else to be said anyway. Even if he could casually ask 'So how do you know Natasha?' in the man's native tongue, he's not sure he would get anything beyond a warning Slavic stare. So they move in silence, land quietly, and part ways in peace. A few more sloppy Russian words exchanged about the return flight plan, and Steve is shoving off through somewhere in the middle of the unidentifiable Swiss wilderness.

Three and a quarter miles is what he hikes to the second set of coordinates Nat gave him. Stays with the theme; middle of nowhere. A seemingly abandoned cabin with an unassuming pickup truck parked out front. He swings the front gate open wide and approaches the back of the vehicle first. 

Like a worn and weathered professional, Steve pops the tailgate, runs his fingers under the lip of the floor panel, and then with a quiet 'ah! ' finds the little lever he's searching for. With a hard click and some well-rusted groaning noises, the floor panel lifts up to reveal a hidden compartment. There are only three items inside.

A fake ID, a fake passport, and a massive, scraped up, silver vibranium disk. It's the shield, but it's not the shield. No stars and stripes, no symbolism, no meaning. Just a hunk of dangerous metal built not just to protect, but to kill. On top of it is a somewhat weather-worn sticky note and Steve sighs through his nose.

Use it. It's what you know.

Steve rips the note off unceremoniously and hoists the hunk of metal out of the compartment. He tests its weight, maneuvers with it a little — God it's been so long. But fortunately, or unfortunately depending on the framing of it all, it's like riding a bike. A horrible little bike that has the power to decapitate people. He gives it a few tosses and swings into a nearby tree before accepting that this object is just a third arm to him at this point, barely even breaking a sweat. 

Load it back up into the compartment and shut the tailgate, there will be a time and a place for it. But it's not here and it's not now. Grab the keys from the driver's seat. Get in. Turn the ignition three times because it stalls out a little on the first two tries. Back out of the driveway and get out while the truck's still running to sweep the tire tracks with a branch and close the gate behind you. 

It's all muscle memory now.

Shadow Bucky. Keep him out of trouble. Gather as much information as you can. Acquire a vial of the knock-off serum. 

So that's exactly what he does. 

It's fucking grueling, maintaining that level of stealth. Bucky is not the type to have one pulled over on him like this. Neither is Sam for that matter. So Steve gives them a wide berth and lets them carry on with their mission while he goes on with his own. It's not that he doesn't trust Sam and Bucky to handle this appropriately — it's that he doesn't trust any government body. Too many cooks in the kitchen. Too many hands in the pot. Too much greed and power involved. And Steve wants to cut it all off at the head. No more serum. No more superhuman killing machines to use in pissing matches to trade blood for oil. 

And that's really the crux of it; the big thing of it all that Steve realized the moment he stepped back into his time and found Bucky in the state that he's in: Until the supersoldier serum is eradicated, there is no such thing as retirement. No such thing as peace. 

But then again, Steve knows realistically that there is no such thing as eradicating this horrible thing from the face of the Earth. There will always be people trying to recreate it and harness its power. He supposes though, the least he can do is make it harder to get your hands on. So he'll follow Bucky's lead around the globe and make some of the choices that the CIA are too pussy or maybe too dumb to make. Whatever. 'Til the end of the line. He fucking means it.

That becomes their silent dance. Whatever mission Bucky goes on, Steve follows right behind him to pick up the missing pieces. Homemade bombs go off in empty buildings that house versions of the serum. Dumbass kids get knocked out, incapacitated, and served up to Sam and Bucky on little silver platters. The CIA stays dumbfounded and Sam and Bucky move with more suspicion than ever.

It really is true. It was always true: 

If you want to get him out of the fight, you're gonna have to go back in.

~

Steve returns from that first mission having been just about as successful as you can be. He rocks up to the agreed upon coordinates with a soot-smeared face, a sprained wrist and a cracked rib. There's some blood on his face and the front of his gear, but he can't tell who it belongs to. The little Russian guy in his balaclava makes a quiet noise when he sees Steve, something like a concerned 'woof …' Steve hobbles up, sticks his fingers down into a small pocket on the side of his thigh, and produces a vial of thick electric blue liquid.

"Natasha." Steve grits out, eyes piercing right through the man's ski mask. Then, in broken Russian, "No stops, no messing around, this goes directly into Natasha's hand." And then, in crystal clear, perfect Russian, "Or I will find you, and I will kill you. "

The man draws his eyebrows together in serious consternation and nods before taking the vial.

The flight back is about the same as the flight there. Dead silence save for the hum of the machinery and the air around them. In the six or so hours it takes to get back to the States, Steve's rib and wrist have already mended themselves. His breath comes a little easier and the pain subsides. He leaves the pilot, whom he learns is named Mikhail, with a firm handshake and another verbal warning. Mikhail makes a promise to Steve in attempted English and leaves him to return to his beat up Chevy.

Steve makes it back to the apartment more or less in one piece, having shed his tac-gear and stowed it in the back seat of the Chevy. He's down to just a white undershirt and a pair of boxers by the time he's stumbling back into the apartment from the fire escape. He's only just stepping out of the shower when Bucky calls, muscles unfurling themselves from the tension of battle by way of the hot steam.

"Hey." Bucky's voice is like sun-bleached gravel, audibly fucking knackered.

"Hey." Steve struggles a little with the touchscreen on account of his massive wet fingers, attempting to put it on speaker while he towels dry. He accidentally mutes it a few times before finally getting it and sets the phone on the bathroom counter.

"So I'm back stateside."

"Oh?" Steve feigns ignorance as he bends down and rubs his legs dry first, working from the bottom up. "Are you allowed to tell me where you went now?"

"Eghh…" Bucky makes a noise that comes out like pure annoyance. "Europe."

“Ah.”

"I just wanted to let you know I'm on my way home."

"Okay…" Steve trails off as he's ruffling his shaggy hair with the towel, an awkward silence settling between the airwaves.

A little more of that pregnant pause, and then it's Bucky that forces it to give way.

"Okay… See you in an hour?"

Steve hobbles a little unsteadily back into Bucky's bedroom and starts to rifle through his drawers like they belong to him, snatching up a pair of drawstring gym shorts and a plain gray t-shirt.

"You need more of a personality," Steve pops back suddenly, pushing solid colored t-shirt after solid colored t-shirt aside in the middle drawer.

"Excuse me?" The raw confusion in Bucky's voice is palpable, and it makes Steve laugh.

"I mean, are plain grayscale t-shirts and jeans the only thing you own?"

"You—" Bucky cuts himself off like if he were there in person, he'd be smacking Steve in the back of the head, but his own soft laughter betrays him. "You are such a jackass!"

"Let's go shopping this week," Steve grunts casually as he pulls the shorts up and slips the shirt on.

"Oh, what? You gonna play dress-up with me like I'm a little paper doll?"

"Shaddup," Steve takes the phone off speaker now that he's dressed and brings it up to the side of his face, Bucky's voice hot and vibrating in his eardrum now.

"Fine, we can go clothes shopping."

Steve puts on a stupid little voice and laughs a little, "And can we go for ice cream after, too, Pa? " 

"I'll throttle you."

"You love me."

"I know." Bucky's words are fond and gentle, little threads of his tension having melted away with the sound of Steve's voice. "I'll see you soon. I'm almost home."

Without any further chatter or dramatics, Bucky hangs up. It leaves Steve standing there in front of the dresser, pressing the heels of his palms painfully into its edges. He's not sure why he does it. It grounds him, maybe. Bucky always pulls him somewhere out into the stratosphere, confused and breathless — so he presses on short-lived bruises and digs fingernails into skin to compensate. 

Bucky makes him stupid. Bucky makes him blind. Bucky makes him commit treason and destroy government property. Bucky makes him believe in possibilities that don't exist and a life that will never come to be. So he picks and he presses and he plucks. He chews holes into his cheeks that disappear within hours and scrapes mindless welts into the insides of his arms that don't stay long enough to be visible to anyone else but him.

Steve lays down on the too-small couch and turns the TV on. He doesn't change the channel, doesn't adjust the volume. Just stretches out across the cushions and picks at a hangnail on his thumb enough for it to bleed as he dozes off for the first time in 6 days.

Chapter Text

When Bucky gets home, Steve is passed out on the couch. One arm hanging off the edge of it, a soft snore from the back of his throat, and a gentle shift when the door clicks shut. Bucky leaves him and heads straight for the shower.

He's as quick and methodical as he can possibly be as he washes; still encased in a thin, lingering layer of grime and sweat from his week of battle and travel. But he's been worn out and ground to dust and he's ready to be some semblance of supine.

Steve is still fast asleep by the time Bucky comes out, dressed and hot pink up to the neck with slicked back hair and warm skin. Bucky nudges his knee at Steve's dangling arm and doesn't react when he wakes up with a snort and start.

"Jesus… " Steve grumbles, pinching the bridge of his nose and pushing his feet against the other end of the couch to try to slide back up into a sitting position.

"Don't get up," Bucky murmurs in reply, and swings a knee up and over to wedge in between Steve's legs before he can think about it too much.

Steve tenses and goes rigid, his breath pausing momentarily in the pit of his chest before he catches up with what's happening; and Bucky settles down on top of him like a sunbathing cat.

Pressed front to front, Bucky nestles into the crook of Steve's neck and uses the swell of his well-muscled chest like a pillow. For a moment it's all strange and gut-curdling and too much, and then all of a sudden it isn't. Just the slow rise and fall of their shared breathing and skin on skin wherever it meets beyond the boundaries of their clothes. A hand comes up to card through the mop of damp hair on top of Bucky's head and curls around the back of his skull. Tender fingers massage circles into his scalp, and he feels himself melting so quickly that he might get lost between the couch cushions. 

Buzzing and liquid. That's how it feels. Like still water in an earthquake.

"Are you hungry?" Steve mumbles, soft and low, and Bucky moreso feels the vibration of the words than hears them. 

Bucky only responds with an exhausted "uhn-uh," deep in his chest, no energy to use any actual words.

They're more tank than man against the backdrop of the pitiful couch beneath them, limbs spilling over in each direction. Steve clings. Bucky dissolves. 

But then, something happens, and Bucky doesn't know what it is. The muscles underneath him tense, the arm wrapped around his midsection goes stiff, the hand in his hair disappears. The heart under his cheek palpitates slightly off-rhythm. Something changes and Bucky doesn't know what it is but he can nearly smell it wafting off of Steve's skin like some kind of horrible pheromone.

Bucky pries his eyes back open and stares forward at the commercial flickering quietly across the television. He won't say something first. He can't. Steve has to tell him. 

Please, just tell me. He's begging for it, if he's honest with himself. Please tell me to knock it off so I can stop making a fool of myself. Snorting your sweat like cocaine and wearing your tattered clothes like a straitjacket. I don't want to test the tension of this tightrope anymore. Just say it. Say it out loud.

There's a barely noticeable shudder of a breath that flutters into the top of Bucky's half-dried locks and he finds himself matching Steve's tension. He tries to speak with his body before his mouth. He's too exhausted; bone-tired and weary and it's not from the fight anymore.

Please tell me you don't love me. Please tell me you don't want me like I want you.

The shaking comes first, and then the tears. Hot acid in the ducts, spilling onto the front of Steve's shirt and blowing his cover.

It was easier the first time you left. 

The hand returns to Bucky's hair, but it's hardened and strange — more of a grip than a caress.

Just do it. Do it. Kill me again.

It's then that Bucky breaks, because he's weakened from war and whittled down to nothing from the past 4 years.

"Steve," He sobs, and it comes out so pathetic. Just drained of everything he has and pathetic.

"What are we doing here, Buck?" Comes the ghost of a reply, instantaneous and just as spent as Bucky is.

The limbs around Bucky tighten even more, his ribs creaking with it. He can't respond; the only thing that comes out are these dreadful little infantile hiccups, so he swallows it back over and over and over. His muscles scream and his throat scorches and his eyes lose focus behind the curtain of tears.

"I mean, what is this?" Steve sounds desperate, like he's close to shattering too. And Bucky just can't get a read on it all. He's too overcome by the waves of his grief and it informs every cry, every sob, every shake and shiver and horrible thought.

If you just get up and leave without a word maybe I can start picking up the pieces again. Maybe I can find myself somewhere in the wreckage. But you have to be the one, because I'll never snip that invisible string. It has to be you. Please, it always had to be you.

"You have to tell me what you want from me, Bucky," Steve's voice is strained, his throat full of rocks made from the calcified buildup of his own self-hate. It tastes rotten on his tongue and he spits the words now, desperate to be rid of them. "I have to know what you want from me, because I'm scared. I'm scared I can't give it to you. I'm scared of all the time I lost."

"I don't want anything from you," Bucky weeps brokenly, and he buries his face further into the side of Steve's neck because he can't think to do anything else but burrow.

Please leave. Don't leave me. Throw me off of you. Hold me closer. Leave me bleeding here on the floor. Tend to my wounds.

"Bullshit," Steve's voice is hysterical now, like he's laughing through tears, and Bucky isn't witnessing any of it.

All for the best, Bucky supposes. He doesn't know what he would do if he had to see the cracks form along the lines of Steve's expression in real time. If he had to match a face to the awful ache tainting the timbre of his voice.

"Bullshit," Steve gasps again, and the fingers in Bucky's hair grow painful against his skull. "Say it. You have to say it. Please, tell me."

What is this humiliation ritual? Bucky thinks to himself, but the pressure in his chest is becoming too much to bear, he's fading and crumbling and his will is gone. So he suffocates himself against Steve's artery and sobs it out, raw and unyielding:

"I want you." 

I want you.

Not 'I love you.' You know that. We both know that.

I want you.

The metal of Bucky's left hand claws so deeply at Steve's shirt that it rips, and it all comes pouring out of him now. The heartache, the desire, the feelings of worthlessness, the fear, the gnawing lust. He's gasping and weeping into the crook of Steve's neck now, writhing against him like he's been poisoned with this grotesque yearning. "I want you — I want you so bad. I've wanted you since I knew what wanting was."

There's so much more, but he just can't get it out. He's completely wrecked, laid bare before his soul's very keeper.

A hundred years. Put on ice and thawed; iced and thawed a thousand times, shocked and prodded like cattle; They bleached my brain and injected me with hate and still I could never forget you. You were always there, handprint on my heart, swear to God — you were always there with me. Even when I thought you got tired of the fight and left me for a time so familiar and a girl so sweet, there you were. You're the love of my life and I'm sorry. I know I'm not yours. Not like that. I'm sorry.

But none of that comes, so Bucky just lets himself cry like a child into the cradle of Steve's crushing embrace.

"I'm sorry," Is all that comes out again and again, skating over the choppy sea of hiccups and wails. 

The storm settles and the waves calm. At some point, Steve had started to stroke slow, repetitive patterns up and down the knobs of Bucky's spine like it’s the only thing he knew to do. When Bucky notices, that's the point in which the 'too-muchness' of it all starts to surge forward again, and he can't. He just can't. So he extracts himself from Steve's vise-like arms and stands on unsteady feet. Steve is moving too, sitting up on the edge of the couch. But Bucky still can't look at him so he walks away and leans himself onto his elbows against the breakfast bar.

"I'm sorry," Bucky repeats, a bit more composed this time, wiping his hair back off of his forehead and scrubbing away tears. And then, the hysteria creeping back under his tone, "Please say something."

There's nothing but silence and the sick sounds of their agony, so Bucky says it again, screams it this time, "Please say something! Fuck!"

Bucky turns around to face Steve, but he startles and nearly winds himself when Steve is suddenly crowding him back against the counter. Fuck, he still can't look at him. So Bucky ducks his head and the tears start coming again. Steve presses their foreheads together and grips him hard and fast by the sides of his neck.

"I can't," Steve whispers fiercely, breath hot against Bucky's already scalding face. "I've already said everything, I — I…"

It's not anything supernatural, really. It's not like it is in the movies. Angels coming down from the sky, heavenly choirs singing, light filling the room type feeling. No, it's none of that. It's just simple and elementary, like remembering the answer to a question or finding the word you've been rooting around for in your brain for the past ten minutes. 

It's less like choirs singing, and more like an, 'Oh!' Less like divine light filling the room, and more like a hanging bulb flickering on. 

Yeah, this is it. Stupid stupid stupid. This is what you could've had all along.

Steve's mouth is on Bucky's in an instant, and it's slick and feral. It's teeth and tongue and massive paws gripping the sides of Bucky's tear-stained, blood-mottled face. The noises they make are animalistic and raw, wet and terrifyingly sexual. It's sure not divine, but it's fast; time catching up with them and flinging them forward into the uncharted waters of a century of intimacy they were so cruelly denied.

Bucky swallows the filthy taste of Steve like it's a precious elixir, teeth catching on his bottom lip as he walks him back and shoves him down into the couch again. He mounts Steve like he’s a prey animal and descends upon his mouth, unable to stand that horrible fucking itch and pull that comes at the absence of Steve's skin on his. 

"Touch me," Bucky growls, bassy and dialed up to 11. "Fucking touch me."

Steve moans like he's actually dying without it, and the shirts come off promptly; a tangle of flesh and fabric and labored breathing. Once they're off, Steve leans forward and his mouth finds every inch of skin before him — his tongue laving over taught muscle, teeth scraping over sensitive scar tissue, lips worshiping each freckle. Bucky cradles Steve's head in his hands reverently as he explores the valley of his skin and undulates his hips, eyes fluttering closed when he feels a sudden and beautiful suction at his left nipple.

"Fuck… fuck… fuck," It's all just words of pleasure and neanderthal grunts at this point, all so fast but not fast enough.

Move your hands. No, let me get the drawstring. Fuck — take your pants off. Wanna feel you. 

By some miracle they end up naked; their cocks bump and brush, hard and welling up with precum at the tips. Bucky steadies himself with his metal hand against the wall and reaches down with the other to grip himself and tug at his balls hard. The crest is approaching too swiftly for his liking and he just isn't going to last long, unable to recall the last time he was ever touched like this. Probably never. Nobody has ever gotten to have him like this, so open and exposed. This was always reserved for Steve. He would've died waiting for it.

He's been living his life so numb, so stuck on autopilot and devoid of real pleasure — shit, does he masturbate? He doesn't recall the last time he jerked off. It's like hitting puberty all over again, horny and ravenous and backed up with ages of orgasms you didn't know were possible. 

"Tell me," Steve huffs, masculine and harsh, and pulls Bucky's hips in tight so that their cocks mash and grind obscenely. "Tell me how you want it."

It's like warm seltzer washing over Bucky's whole body — it's fucking indescribable, the warmth that radiates up his back from the base of his spine, the bliss. He lets his arms relax to loop around Steve's neck, and Steve wastes no time in turning his head to make contact with vibranium, lips and tongue luxuriating in the tang of metal. He kisses the crook of Bucky's elbow and then turns his attention to the other side to bite at the sensitive skin on the inside of his arm.

"Want you to fuck me," Bucky grits out, head dropping to meet Steve for a few more sloppy, open-mouthed kisses. "Want you inside me. "

Steve draws out a groan and it’s almost pained, a quiet little 'fuck…' to punctuate it at the end.

Then suddenly, Bucky is letting out an involuntary yelp as he's being hoisted up and carried, legs reflexively wrapping around Steve's middle as he wastes no time in sweeping him away into the bedroom.

The manhandling is simply delicious. Bucky leans into it and starts to play up the whiny bottom act, landing hard on the mattress with a small bounce and spreading his legs wide to accommodate Steve's hulking frame. He bites his lip and looks up through his lashes as Steve dives back in, going for his neck to suck a bruise right into the sensitive spot where it connects with his shoulder. He kisses his way down Bucky's chest before sitting back up on his knees and taking his cock in hand to give it a few dry tugs.

"Wanted you…" Bucky pants and trails off for a moment, his palms exploring any of Steve's skin that he can reach, completely awestruck. "Wanted you since you were small. Thought about this," Some more carnal panting and he tilts his hips up as Steve sucks down two of his own fingers to wet them up. "Thought about this since — ah — thought about this since the fucking 1930s."

“Shit, Buck,” Steve gasps, pushing one of Bucky’s thighs up with one hand to pry him open and reaching down to massage his hole with the other. “Fuck… Say it again.”

“Wanted you my whole life,” Bucky gives Steve a reedy moan and it sets him reeling.

Steve spits, sharp and dirty down onto where they’re joined, and with a few more tender presses and strokes, the furled pink flesh gives way.

Bucky is totally gone now, a noise he’s never made before in his life escaping his throat as Steve presses in further and begins a slow thrust to open him up. He spits a few more times, adds another finger. It’s torture. A confusing, delectable torture.

Steve grips the base of his cock to line himself up and leans down to mouth at Bucky’s jaw, making his way back to the heat of that sumptuous mouth as he slides inside, nice and easy.

The pressure and the stretch are absurd, and Bucky starts making these high pitched, breathy noises with every slow roll of Steve’s hips. Little ‘Ha… ha…. haaa’s’ that have Steve taking his precious time just so he can hear more of it.

Steve slides his hands up Bucky’s arms until they find each others fingers and slot them together, Bucky going willingly as Steve pins them above his head while he fucks. They’re pressed so close, face to face and sharing breath, lips just brushing over one another’s. Steve alternates between lightning quick rabbit-fucks and syrup-slow grinds that reach that sweet spot deep inside Bucky, his cock crushed between their abdomens, weeping and nearly purple.

“Steve, ha… Steve…” Bucky’s tone becomes urgent, his thighs tightening around Steve’s waist to keep him locked into his current pace. Bucky swallows hard, throat clicking, Adam's apple bobbing. “‘Mg’na come. Steve, hah, I can’t — I can’t —”

Steve cuts him off with a vicious kiss and releases the hold on Bucky’s hands. He moves to frame Bucky’s face with calloused fingers and Bucky scrambles to scratch massive red welts down the expanse of Steve’s back.

Steve rises up on his knees, readjusting himself inside that tight heat, hissing as Bucky clenches down hard and his own dick twitches lewdly against the crease of his thigh. 

As though he were some bawdy construction worker putting himself back to work in the midday sun, Steve wipes the back of his arm across his sweat-slick forehead before grasping Bucky’s hip with one hand and his pulsating cock with the other. He jerks him in time with his thrusts, the only sounds filling the room being that of the discordant smacking of skin and the rapid schlick of Steve stripping Bucky bare.

Then, there it is: the top of the mountain, the climax — Bucky gasps and arches up off the mattress like he’s possessed, eyes rolling back when he sucks in another breath as though he’s just breached the surface of the blackened ocean for the first time in his life. He comes, spurting hot and wet over Steve’s fist.

Bucky clutches the sheets for purchase and chases the sensation with his hips, grinding down on Steve and borderline convulsing with the overstimulation of it all. Steve pulls out suddenly, jacking himself furiously over Bucky's own twitching, softening cock; and then he's coming too, mingling the evidence of their lust in a milky pool on Bucky's belly.

Drained half to death — Steve collapses down beside Bucky, muscles having burnt off all the adrenaline and cortisol to give way to that flood of oxytocin to soften him. They huff and puff alongside each other, trying to even out their breaths. Steve runs a hand through his hair and it stays frozen there a while, elbow sticking up in the air like a white flag. 

The ceiling becomes Bucky's focal point; he studies the divots and ridges of the stucco. It's all hazy now. Surreal. There's a strange veil that draws itself between him and the rest of the world like a gauzy sheet, and it settles in his gut that this moment is set to become an eternal snapshot in the endless photobook of his life.

Steve is shifting now, turning over to bury a hand in the side of Bucky's hair and bathe his face in saccharine kisses. He pulls his knee up into Bucky's crotch and brings himself down with these soft little humping motions, no intent behind them besides to soothe his tingling skin.

The moments pass, and Bucky finds that his rate of breath is increasing rather than slowing. There's no fluid left inside of him — he may as well have just ejaculated and sweat it all out — so no tears come. But his eyes sting again. Little pinpricks at the waterline that feel like needles. Throat constricts. Chest caves in on itself. He's overwhelmed in a sour way now, and it hits him: with starvation comes a certain sickness after you've been fed; and he just did the most idiotic thing of gorging himself.

"Buck?" Steve's eyebrows are drawn together in concern as he looks down at him, thumb brushing back and forth over his cheekbone.

Bucky is hyperventilating now; small, heartrending involuntary whimpers coming with each exhale. It's not warm seltzer and tight heat anymore, not even that uncomfortable itch and pull he knows so well. It's ants, fire ants. Fire ants crawling and biting and stinging under every inch of his skin. And it smarts where Steve touches him. It feels wrong.

"Buck—" Steve starts, but Bucky is cutting him off by rolling himself clumsily off the bed and stumbling like a drunkard for the bathroom.

It's visceral — An exorcism after the possession. The slamming of the door, the sound of violent retching. The world spins harrowingly around him and he vomits pure bile. It's yellow and bitter and only spurs on more gagging, emptying the contents of his longing into the porcelain. Bucky can feel the blood vessels bursting like popping candy across his face in real time, eyes red-rimmed and aching.

"Buck?"

"I'm okay, " Bucky rushes to choke out before spitting a few times into the bowl. "I just…" Another spit and a cut off wheeze, "I need a minute."

There's a sound of a dull thump on the other side of the door and Bucky winces. I'm not trying to hurt you. 

"Alright." Steve's tone when he says it is so benign it almost frightens him. But then, continuing on with some sort of psychic precognition, voice stern, "I'm not going anywhere."

Empty as he's ever gonna get, Bucky collapses back against the wall and huffs. He closes his eyes and starts the 'in through your nose, out through your mouth' process of regulating himself. His tongue feels dry and swollen in his mouth, so he can't respond. But if he could, he's not even sure what he would say.

Good. Slip under my skin so we stay conjoined forever. Don't ever leave me again.

Bucky stays glued to the cool tile for several long minutes trying to clear his mind and self-soothe. The minutes stretch into an hour, and then his tailbone begins to protest against the hard surface beneath him. He knocks his head back against the wall a few times to rattle himself to full consciousness and rises, dreading what the mirror across from him has to say — so he avoids it. Eyes cast down, he brushes his teeth three times and gargles Listerine; splashes his face with cold water and combs his hair back.

It's a walk of shame unlike any other Bucky has ever had to do, naked and beet-red from the sheer amount of stress he's put his body under in the past four hours alone. He exits slowly and covers himself with his hands as though it even matters.

The bedroom door is still wide open and Steve is sitting there at the edge of the bed, hunched over and wringing his hands. He's still shirtless but the shorts are on again, and when he sees Bucky, it's a reflex to jump up and come to him. He brings him a pair of boxers but keeps a wide berth, letting Bucky set the pace and ask for what he needs.

Bucky slips the boxers on and starts to shiver hard, his blood running ice cold as he moves past Steve toward the bed. He takes the place where Steve was seated at the end of the mattress and wraps his arms tightly around himself, attempting to quell the convulsions.

Fuck, he's too delirious to even know where to start.

"Bucky, you're shaking, you need to —" Don't take any choices from him. Shift gears. "Do you want a sweater?" Steve doesn't know what to do with himself, so he stands like a statue and dangles his hands limply at his sides.

"I want you to hold me," Bucky whines, head bowed low and voice trembling on the tail end of his words. Steve moves to step forward, but then stops dead when Bucky goes on, "But it h–hurts. "

Steve crouches down in front of Bucky, hovering but still not touching. He ducks low to try to catch his eyes, but every time he finds them Bucky averts his gaze.

"I'm sorry," Bucky extends his apparent apology tour, shooting for the world record in self-inflicted regret.

"Stop apologizing. There's nothing to be sorry for, just breathe."

"Can we t–try—" Bucky cuts himself off with another shudder and a hiccup of air and then grits the rest out as best he can. "Just — h–hold me until it doesn— doesn't hurt anymore?"

Steve climbs up into the middle of the mattress and adjusts the pillows and blankets until they feel like a bird's nest before pulling Bucky backward into his arms. Bucky rasps out little noises of anguish that slice and dice Steve's heart to pieces as their skin meets again, settling back into the hard planes of supersoldier muscle and sinew that envelop him. Steve wraps them up in the large comforter, and the shakes start to come a bit farther between each other.

Steve's embrace is snug and unbreakable — Bucky tests it. As the time ticks by, the fire under his skin ebbs and flows, disappearing and then erupting again with a vengeance; when that happens, the shakes start to look a lot more like seizures, and Steve lets himself be the straitjacket.

"If you want me to stop, just tell me." Steve whispers into the shell of Bucky's ear.

"No!"

And that's the end of that conversation. Steve understands what he's negating. 

Don't let me go. Ever again.

Steve starts a gentle rocking motion from side to side, and there it is. That's the ticket. Swaddle and rock, take it all the way back to the womb. There's a battered kid somewhere inside of Bucky that's been beating at the bars of his prison until his hands are bloodied and bruised and this is all he needed. Just hold me. Press your skin against mine and show me it doesn't have to feel like salting an infected wound.

It had been silent for so long, that Steve flinches a little when Bucky speaks again.

"You told me to stop apologizing," Bucky says, voice husky with overuse. "But it's how I want to start every sentence."

Steve doesn't stop their gentle sway, just presses a chaste kiss to Bucky's temple and listens.

"I realized… I don't remember… I don't remember sex. I can't remember ever having sex." Bucky presses further back into Steve if it's even possible, his head fitting like a puzzle piece right into the crook of his neck. "They took that from me."

The swaying stops abruptly. Bucky continues.

"I know I have. At least, I think I did. You know, before. I think there were girls. I don't know if there were any men. I just can't remember. Sometimes so much floods back to me that it makes me sick, just like this. But I don't remember sex. I don't remember touch that wasn't meant to keep me obedient. I don't remember touch that wasn't designed for suffering."

Steve starts to relax his hold, and Bucky turns himself around in his arms. They shift and shuffle, huddling up together properly, nose to nose.

"Do you remember?" Bucky asks; and Steve blinks, a bit dumbfounded. "You know, like… Me ever comin' home with dates? Did I ever try to tell you about who I was hookin' up with?"

"Uhhh…" Steve's eyes dart back and forth across Bucky's face; Bucky's expression is open and pleading.

"I guess I just wanna know I'm not some hundred year old virgin."

"Well, not anymore," Steve jokes.

"Come on, be serious." There's no bite to Bucky's response, words soft and mellow. He tucks his head under Steve's chin and waits for the answer.

"Well, I mean… You didn't ever bring anyone home. You went out, but nobody ever came back with you. There were dates. We went on a lot of double dates together that never really panned out for me."

"I know. I remember that."

"But you were never very open about your sex life. You looked like the quintessential loverboy to people back then, but… You were very private. Come to think of it, I don't remember you being very comfortable with sex talk at all, you tended to shut it down pretty quickly in social situations."

Steve pulls back to study Bucky's expression, and it's a furrowed and concerned thing. Wrinkled brow and a tightly set mouth. So he continues, pressing on with a memory that comes to him and slightly churns his guts.

"You came home drunk once."

Bucky leans back another fraction so he can watch Steve's face as he shares this stolen puzzle piece with him.

"Wasted," Steve persists. "You were falling all over yourself. So bad you couldn't even make it up the stairs. You threw rocks at our bedroom window and caterwauled fuckin' Billie Holiday songs outside until I woke up and came down to get you. Said you needed a big strong man to carry you up the steps."

Bucky laughs at that, so Steve does too.

"So I did. I came down in my boxer shorts and gave you a shoulder to lean on so you could make it back up. You crawled into my bed that night. And we laid there, just like this. Face to face. You smelled like liquor and aftershave but when you talked I could smell, well… Ya know."

Bucky shakes his head a little in confusion, understanding what Steve is getting at but waiting for him to be more specific. 

"Pussy?" Steve intones, presenting it more like a question than a statement. 

Bucky can't help but chuckle again at the word, so informal and ridiculous. But something inside of him quiets at the idea that he did get to experience some kind of normalcy before the fall.

"Your mouth just reeked of pussy. And I remember…" Steve lingers on the scene he's conjuring in his mind, mouth opening and closing a few times like a fish out of water before finishing his story. "I remember feelings sometimes, more than the actual events, you know? And I just remember feeling so… jealous. And trying to, I dunno, manipulate myself into believing I was jealous of you. But… I wasn't. And I know that now for certain. I was jealous of her."

Steve says it like it's some kind of revelation, but it's not, really. He always knew it, but it was never something he had permission to know until now. It didn't have to be some repressed, shameful secret that he had to condition himself into forgetting anymore. It can just be the truth and he can share it with anyone he chooses. The danger just isn't anything like it used to be.

Bucky doesn't know what to say, so he kisses Steve instead, delicate and slow. When they pull away, they stay close, lips brushing indulgently as Bucky speaks.

"Guess she can be jealous of you now."

"She's probably dead."

"From the other side."

They burst into a shared laughter and it's childlike and free — a well needed respite from all the wretched catharsis. When the giggles subside, Steve tips Bucky's chin up with a forefinger and presses his thumb into that little divot there.

"Let me take care of you, Buck."

Bucky's eyes go hazy and hooded, granting himself permission to luxuriate in this quiet dedication.

And so — he does. He allows Steve to coddle him a bit tonight. Lets him cook for him and kiss his scars and knead knots out of shoulders with sure hands and strong fingers. When the panic returns and his skin starts feeling tight and wrong, Bucky doesn't run anymore. He just leans into the touch even harder until that bubble of pain expands and then pops, leaving behind nothing else but a balm to work into the open wounds littering his insides. Then, when they're sated, they climb back into bed and kiss each other to sleep; time no longer lost. Regret no longer a word in their vocabulary. Just skin on skin and infinity stretching out before them.

Chapter Text

Bucky sleeps like the dead.

Steve reckons they must have drifted off sometime around five o'clock in the morning, when the hue of the sky starts to grey but the sun still hasn't quite peeked above the horizon. So when he wakes like the soldier he is around 8 am to see Bucky lying there: chest rising and falling slowly, lips slightly parted and lashes splayed against his cheekbones in a peaceful expression; he simply lies alongside him and watches, dozing off a few times in the process.

It's around 3 pm that Steve starts to get fidgety, Bucky having rolled over just once and giving no signs of waking despite the ten hours he'd already spent unconscious. He doesn't want to wake him — would love to let him rest. God knows he needs it. But the longer Steve spends without his mouth attached to some part of Bucky's skin, the more hollow he starts to feel in the cavern of his chest. So he only makes it to about twenty three minutes past the hour before crawling back into the bed and skating his fingers over the ridges of Bucky's abs to try to rouse him.

Bucky stirs, brow furrowing with a sniff and a twitch of his nose, and Steve leans in to brush little kisses over his face as he grumbles awake.

"Didn't wanna wake you up…" Steve whispers, more sweet kisses ghosting over Bucky's jaw and chin. "But —" A brief kiss to his half-parted lips. "It's almost 4 pm. I figured you wouldn't want to sleep through all the daylight."

Bucky groans, low and fussy, nose and eyebrows squinching up as he stretches out his muscles and opens his eyes.

And then, Jesus, there he is.

Sapphire eyes and plush, rosy lips. Strong jaw and soft skin; soft despite the abuse of battle. Flesh and blood and muscle and sinew. Alive. So alive and real and touching him right now, in his bed.

Bucky blinks a few times like he's going blind — it's still so hard to believe. 

You're real? You're real.

"Hi," Steve breathes, eyes fond and searching over every inch of Bucky's features.

Bucky responds by reaching up and grabbing Steve by the chin, firm but not bruising. He forces his head to turn left and then right, slow in his motions — studying.

"Ha-hi," Steve says again, an undercurrent of laughter to his voice as Bucky furrows his brow deeply and manipulates his face back and forth, up and down.

Bucky taps Steve’s left cheek with his forefinger three times.

“You have a mole here. Kinda like a big freckle.”

Steve chuckles, confused.

“Thanks.”

“The other guy didn’t.”

Oxygen gets vacuumed out of the room with that one, and Steve goes still. Bucky releases his face but keeps two fingers there on the freckle, a bit darkened and more prominent on Steve’s cheek on account of recent sun exposure.

“He didn’t come around much,” Bucky continues. “But when I saw him he put up a pretty good act. Convinced me well enough. Except this. But I think I just told myself that the aging process erased it. He looked so old and tired.” He drops his hand now, curling it against the middle of Steve’s chest. “That’s stupid, isn’t it?”

“No,” Steve shakes his head just a fraction, negating Bucky’s guilt. “You couldn’t have known.”

“I really thought you had gotten tired of the fight enough to be tired of me.”

Steve doesn’t know what to do, so he kisses Bucky then; a hard, closed press of mouths. He exhales through his nose against Bucky’s skin and shivers, pulling away only when he’s lost all his oxygen.

“Never.” Steve thinks, you don’t know how wrong you are. “Never.”

Steve moves in for another kiss and Bucky stops him suddenly, pulling back into the pillow just a fraction of an inch and covering his lips with three metal fingers.

“I don’t…” Bucky begins, expression knit up like something is twisting tight around his ribcage. “I’ve never been more scared in my life, Steve. Of anything.”

That warm vibranium slips down from Steve’s mouth and he ducks his head against Bucky’s own, hair falling like a curtain around their faces. He knows what he means. He doesn’t have to say much more.

I know how to fight. I know how to kill. I know how to die. But I don’t know how to love you. I don’t know how to do this; whatever this is. I’ve never done it before you — and I’ll never do it again after you.

“It’s okay, Buck,” Steve whispers, low and reassuring. “I have no fucking clue what I’m doing either,” And that makes Bucky laugh, tension melting from his shoulders, so Steve presses on. “We can figure it out together.”

Steve begins a journey of kisses, a few chaste ones on the lips trailing lazily down to Bucky’s collarbone. Bucky scritches his fingers a few times through Steve’s hair and chuckles again, tugging gently to signal him to stop.

“Let me pee first, though.”

“Fine, I guess.” Steve gives a pretty good performance, rolling off of Bucky and groaning in faux agitation. He lets him go reluctantly, hands reaching for and trailing behind the skin of Bucky’s hip even as he tears himself away. 

The door stays cracked as Bucky empties his bladder, and suddenly, he remembers:

“Hey, Steve?” Bucky calls out, voice just loud enough to carry to the bedroom.

“Ya?”

“Do you have any idea where my phone ended up last night?”

“Uhh…” A short pause. “I think it was still in your pocket when I took your pants off of you on the couch.”

Last night.

Bucky’s skin prickles uncomfortably at some of the memories of last night that he conjures. Carnal pawing and embarrassing moans. Over the top, animalistic behavior and a level of vulnerability that makes his insides sour.

Ugh.

Bucky shakes himself dry and washes his hands, eyes still casting downward and away from every reflective surface. And then it’s simply a race to find his phone, feeling a little bit awful about not texting Sam that he had gotten home safely. I really am trying.

Bucky finds his phone on the living room floor half out of his sweatpants’ pocket. It’s chugging along on 1%, so he rushes back to the bedroom to charge it.

Steve slides in closer behind Bucky the moment he sits down on the edge of the bed, his phone chiming as he plugs it in at his nightstand. He hunches over and fiddles with it, typing up a quippy response to Sam’s 1 am, ‘Hope ur good. If ur not I’ll kill you.’

Steve kisses along the expanse of Bucky’s lower back, chaste and sweet, as he slithers an arm around his waist. He lingers right in that dip in the middle, brushing his lips over the fuzz there, and Bucky responds by covering the hand Steve has curled around his hip with his free one.

Grunting and rolling over onto his stomach, Steve rises up on his knees and sidles up behind Bucky, looming over him as he combs his hair back from his forehead with deft fingers. Bucky leans back into it, and Steve cups his jaw, coaxing him to tilt his head up to look at him.

“Can I help you, sir?” Bucky asks, attempting to toe the line of sultry and silly. He fumbles it, obviously — sounding a bit like some kind of naughty secretary in a shitty porno — and of course it only adds to his charm.  

Steve strokes his thumbs across Bucky’s five o’clock shadow and leans in, huffing little breaths of amusement through his nose the whole way down. Their mouths connect, and for the first time since last night, Steve attempts to deepen the kiss. Bucky melts into it willingly, a little cut off whimper escaping the back of his throat as Steve coaxes his mouth open with a soft and pliant tongue. It feels like it lasts forever; trying to savor the taste and feel of it all, wolfish teeth nipping back and forth at each other’s lips.

Christ. You went so long without it that your body doesn’t know what the hell to do with itself. It craves and claws for Steve’s skin like a magnet and then suddenly you’re just sick with it. Will the sickness ever fade? Right now it seems like it’ll never not feel so new.

Bucky pulls away just long enough to hit send on his text and scrambles to discard his phone onto the tabletop, letting himself be dragged freely when Steve hoists him backwards to sprawl out sideways on the bed.

It’s just shared breath and little huffs of laughter then, Steve coming to settle on top of Bucky like a massive weighted blanket. He nearly covers Bucky head to toe, hands bumping clumsily as they push each other's hair back off of their foreheads and they kiss like they’re drowning.

Steve begins his descent — jaw, chin, neck, collarbone, throat; back over to the collarbone — and then, gentle and reverent, his shoulder. The metal one.

Bucky’s chest and throat squeeze tight, drawn up together in a single breath. Steve laves his tongue over the raised scar tissue there, tasting both skin and the tang of metal as he goes. He ends his tongue’s journey only when it dries up, pressing in to kiss back down the wet trail he made.

It’s just a hair's breadth of a brush of Steve’s lips then, and Bucky’s hands fly up to the back of his head, body suddenly shuddering and overwhelmed.

“Too much?” Steve murmurs against the silky, raised flesh. 

“Ha— Hmmn… Ah, a little.” 

“Mmmm…” Steve hums in a soothing baritone against Bucky’s chest, having kissed his way over to the spot just above his heart. “Tell me, okay?”

Bucky lifts his hips as Steve sneaks his fingers into the waistband of his boxers to pull them down, a little noise of confusion escaping his throat as Steve continues his pilgrimage of kisses and goes on:

“When it feels good... When it doesn’t.” Steve pauses to kiss Bucky’s navel, testing some virgin territory and dipping the tip of his tongue just barely into the divot.

Bucky makes a pathetic little noise as he jumps slightly at the sensation. It’s a bit of an internal recoil, but the feeling isn’t totally unpleasant if he’s honest.

“Good?” Steve slips seamlessly between Bucky’s legs and rests there on his front, arms coming up under his thighs to wrap around them and bracket his face. He nuzzles there in the crease, inhaling the scent and exhaling hot and humid directly onto Bucky’s soft cock.

“Mhm… Good,” Bucky gasps as Steve noses in closer. “New. Weird. But good.”

Steve flattens a palm over Bucky’s Adonis lines, bringing his other hand up to gently guide Bucky’s still-limp cock to his lips. He toys with it a bit, brushing the spot just under the head over his bottom lip, kissing a line down the underside, tonguing at the slit. Still — it flags, and Bucky grows redder by the second; frustration rather than arousal rising in his face.

The silent worship doesn’t stop despite Bucky’s cock’s lack of compliance, and he throws a hand over his eyes, chest heaving in embarrassment.

Suddenly, Bucky’s cock slips away from Steve’s mouth with a lewd smooch and a wet spat when it falls back against the crease of his thigh, interrupting his ministrations to speak.

“Hey…” Steve whispers reassuringly, the hand on Bucky’s abdomen stroking and soothing. “It’s okay, Buck. I just wanna touch you.”

I wanna touch you. I wanna taste you. I want to learn every centimeter of you inside and out. I want to put my mouth all over you and discover freckles and scars you didn’t know were there. I don’t care if your cock is up or down. I just can’t stand one more fucking second without your skin against mine.

Bucky finally chances a look down, and Christ, that was a mistake. If he wasn’t embarrassed before, he is now — no, not embarrassed. Pissed. Pissed off at his cock for not cooperating when that’s what he has between his legs.

What a fucking vision: Steve with hot pink, spit-slick lips, mussed hair, and half-moon eyes. His pert little ass rising and falling slowly, humping the fucking mattress in syrup-slow motions like he’s falling apart already.

Steve resumes his obsessive attention on Bucky’s cock, popping the whole thing into his mouth and drawing upon it in the most lewd, whorish, manner. Bucky whines then, sharp and nasal, every single atom of his body vibrating with it except for his damn dick.

It feels good — there’s no doubt about that — fucking incredible even. But the desperation that comes with the stimulation turns into a painful, constipated feeling, and Bucky taps out then.

“Steve,” Bucky warns, the internal pressure build-up teetering on the edge of too much. “Stop.”

It’s immediate, the way Steve removes himself. His mouth and the weight of him is gone in an instant. Bucky hurts for it, suddenly, reaching out and making pathetic grabbing motions at Steve; he goes instantly, leaning on his elbow and back down over Bucky.

Bucky threads his fingers through the hair at the base of Steve’s neck and pulls him in for a kiss, tasting himself on the roof of his mouth.

“It was just —” A few more soft, broken up kisses. “Getting overstimulating.”

“That’s okay, Buck.” Steve kisses at the corner of Bucky’s mouth now, still involving his tongue as much as possible — still desperate to taste. “I wouldn’t care if you could never get it up again.”

Bucky has a visceral reaction to that one, groaning and then chuckling.

“God, don’t say that…” 

Then, sincere and earnest, Steve cradles Bucky’s jaw and thumbs at his tongue-chapped bottom lip, expression going tender and wonderstruck.

“I could do this all day.”

Bucky surges forward for another kiss then, speaking in short spurts between each one that he lands on and around Steve’s mouth.

“Mmchanging our plans for today.”

“Oh?”

“Don’t need clothes.”

A juvenile giggle and a jab:

“Oh, now you remember our plans.”

“Going to the pharmacy.”

“Yeah?”

“Need…” Bucky flattens his tongue along the underside of Steve’s jaw and then nips at his chin. “Need lube.” A particularly vicious kiss, a little more teeth than tongue. “And…” A kiss to the side of his neck. “Better razor. Chapstick.”

Steve cackles out some good, joyful laughter. The real unadulterated kind, like the world is brand new again. 

“The stubble,” Bucky says before latching onto the skin just above Steve’s artery for a bit and then coming back up for air. “Killing me.”

“Okay,” Steve giggles again. He’d agree to anything if it means he never has to stop kissing Bucky. “Sounds good, baby.”

The rotation of the Earth slows then, tilting just slightly off of its axis. Bucky pauses, pressing himself back into the tangle of sheets and blankets beneath his head and searching Steve’s eyes.

“Say it again,” Bucky breathes, flush high in his cheeks, eyes wide like saucers and his chest rising and falling.

Steve watches Bucky intently before he speaks next, gaze flitting back and forth between his eyes and his mouth. He leans in painfully close, lips forming the words so delicately against Bucky’s.

“We can do whatever you want, baby. ”

Pitiful little whimpers escape Bucky’s vocal cords as Steve just breathes directly into his ear and slides a hand down to apply firm pressure to his now awakening cock.

“Was this all I had to do?” Steve murmurs seductively, massive palm sliding up and down the silky length of Bucky as he starts to fill out. “I just had to sweet talk you a little?”

Bucky whines and buries his face in the crook of Steve’s neck as he settles down close next to him.

Steve only removes his hand for a split second to lick a sloppy stripe up it from heel to tip, transforming his soft massage into a proper jerking. He pauses every now and then to sneak a few fingers up behind Bucky’s balls, pressing in and making Bucky moan.

Note taken, Steve thinks to himself, you know you’re right on the money when Bucky starts getting whiny. And then Bucky confirms his theory with a particularly high pitched whine when Steve ghosts his fingers just so along his length and then thumbs at the head, pushing back his foreskin.

“Just relax, sweetheart. I’ve got you. ”

Bucky curls in on Steve even harder, vibranium arm shooting up between them to claw and press at Steve’s unyielding chest. On every breath a whimpery little, ‘ha… ha…’ slips from deep in Bucky’s chest, his cock filling and hardening with every stroke.

Steve licks his palm again, dribbling a little extra saliva at the tip of his fingers before returning to Bucky’s cock. His pace increases, fist working him faster and faster until it’s just Bucky’s whines and the sickeningly slick noises of their lust.

“Let go, baby.” Steve can feel Bucky’s cock pulsing and straining in his hand, ready to burst. “I’ve got you, just let go.”

Bucky scrunches his face up tight, sweat dripping from his temple as he presses his face hard against Steve’s jugular.

“Ha… Steve… ” Bucky almost cries out, breathing and vocalizations growing desperate; the new problem becoming readily apparent: now that he’s up, how the fuck does he get back down?  “Ha… Hmn… Hurts. Fuck. Fuck.”

Steve doesn’t stop, dedicated to his task. He shushes Bucky sweetly, kissing his forehead where the sweat gathers in an attempt to keep it from stinging his eyes.

“It’s okay, Buck,” Steve banters, a little moment of some silly respite amidst the sincerity of their lovemaking. “I can do this all day, remember?”

Bucky cracks a pretty substantial smile at that, grinning and pressing his teeth into Steve’s Adam's apple. He chuckles, abs flexing with every contraction of his lungs and heightening the sensation.

Steve’s encouragements and sweet nothings continue to spill forth.

Just relax. You’re safe with me, baby, you’re right here in my arms. You can let go. Let go, sweetheart.

And then Bucky is sobbing as he comes, an intense release he’s never felt in the entirety of his hundred plus years. It’s like a dam finally bursts, and he’s spurting seemingly endlessly all over Steve’s fist and his own abdomen.

Bucky goes limp in Steve’s arms, wheezing on every exhale, face blooming with bright peaches and hot reds.

“Shh, I’m coming right back,” Steve soothes, slipping away.

Bucky’s head lolls back and forth at the loss, half his motor functioning having disappeared and turned him into a helpless newborn fawn. He hears the squeaking of the closet doors and the faucet in the bathroom. It’s only another few seconds afterward that Steve comes sweeping back into the room, warm washcloth in hand.

Steve slips back into his spot like a puzzle piece and cleans Bucky up, all tender touches and barely-there whispers only they can hear despite the lack of an audience. Not even the angels in heaven nor the spirits in the walls could eavesdrop on their soft exchange; some words only pressed directly against Bucky’s ear, lips forming what Steve’s vocal cords can’t. And then, it’s simply ‘I love you.’ 

I love you, I love you, pressed like braille into each other's mouths.

The air settles, and then it’s just Bucky breathing contentedly and Steve tracing lazy patterns into his skin with the tips of his fingers. 

When Steve notices Bucky attempting to snake his left hand down between them, he grabs it up and brings it to his mouth, kissing the sex-warmed metal of his palm.

“It’s okay, Buck. I’m fine. I just wanted to make you feel good, that’s all.”

Bucky nods and pulls back with quiet acceptance, unwilling to argue or ask why as his breathing evens out.

“You can return the favor by buying me some good lube. The spit is only as sexy as it is functional,” Steve grunts, rolling off the side of the bed and stumbling a little as he heads back toward the bathroom. He turns around in the doorway and bites his bottom lip before flashing Bucky a cheeky grin. “Wanna take a shower with me before we go out?”

Bucky rolls his head to the side, and he just can’t stop cheesing. He doesn’t believe it. He knows he must wake up at some point — surely we aren’t in Kansas anymore.

But Steve never vanishes into thin air, and the roof never comes caving in around them; so Bucky launches himself off of the mattress and chases Steve into the bathroom, laughing without the weight of the fight for the first time since he was a child — maybe, even, for the first time in his life.

Chapter Text

Everything is so goddamn funny all of a sudden. The night air, the moon, the stars in the sky. The ants on the ground and the cars whizzing past as they jaywalk. It all just makes Bucky laugh for some reason; and when Bucky laughs, Steve laughs. 

It's got Bucky feeling so young and wild inside — impulse control disappearing along with any kind of good sense. So he lives within the sanctuary he and Steve have built for themselves for now; a delusional little honeymoon phase just to treat themselves. 

Men like them don't get honeymoon phases. They don't get to build a bubble or shut the world out to craft a soft epilogue; to plan their retirement. They don't get to live for themselves. They get to lie to themselves, though. So they do. As long as they possibly can.

It starts with tonight: two cold corpses back from the dead, resuscitated and walking amongst the living for the first time in… ever? That's what it feels like, so that's the narrative Bucky sticks with.

They take the truck; Bucky drives and Steve maintains some point of contact at all times. Hand on the knee, on the back of Bucky's neck, in his hair.

“You look sexy when you’re driving,” Steve says suddenly, his touch having migrated back to the inside of Bucky’s thigh. 

“Oh, come on,” Bucky laments, one-handing the steering wheel. “You’re just making shit up now.”

"No, it's true. You look so intense, like you're concentrating." Pick his hand up from where it's resting over the center console and hold it. Thread your fingers together and kiss the back of his palm. Do it — Do it because you can, now; for no other reason. You just can. "You look like that when you come."

Steve can't help but laugh as the tail end of the sentence slips out of his mouth, smooching the back of Bucky's hand over and over. He gnaws softly on the knuckles for a moment — just testing what he can get away with; and Bucky guffaws.

"You're ridiculous." 

"I'm going out of my mind, is what I am. I wanna get back to the apartment with that damn lube."

"We just left!" Bucky exclaims, eyes shining.

Every street lamp and headlight reflects and plays off of the icy blues of Bucky's eyes and the bottomless black of his blown pupils. It's like an oil-slick road after a torrential storm, equal parts beautiful and terrifying. And it really does scare Steve, this. The enormity of it. The weight of his devotion and how it crushes him like the sky is falling every day. 

Sometimes it hurts — in the chambers of his heart, in the cavern of his lungs. Real pain, physical pain. A haunting ache that feels worse than sticking your dirty finger in a bullet wound and pressing the thing in deeper; and for some reason, Bucky becoming more accessible to Steve than ever has only amplified it tenfold. It sings like a siren within him in moments like this: the ones where Bucky is laughing and carefree, where his smile goes past his eyes and his shoulders swing loose. He's so beautiful, and he could never really know it. There are no words in the English language for Steve to convey to Bucky what he sees.

So now that he has permission to stare, he does and he does often. And when Bucky inevitably catches him and says, "What?" Steve just replies with a soft, far away:

"I just missed you."

This time Steve says it as though he has no air left in his lungs, precious oxygen all stolen from him by the pout of Bucky's lips and the cut of his jaw.

Bucky softens every time, face relaxing and sighing through his nose.

"I missed you too, Stevie."

When they arrive at the CVS, they throw on some wide brimmed caps that Bucky keeps haphazardly tossed in the back seat, and they tilt them low to shadow their faces. It seems fruitless, sometimes, doing shit like this. But after all these years Bucky has learned that attempting to dress in a way that conceals his identity becomes less about actually concealing the identity, and more about coming across as supremely unapproachable after a certain point. Usually no one wants to fuck with a guy in a solid-colored baseball cap and a windbreaker who looks like he's definitely killed before and will not hesitate to do it again. 

Steve trails behind Bucky as they find their way inside by hooking two fingers into the belt loop just above his ass. They don't pause at all, just beeline straight for the "sexual wellness" aisle. Luckily it's late and the store is empty, so once they arrive there they get comfortable and take their time looking at options and choosing what they might like.

Bucky crouches down, narrowing his eyes and studying the line of various lubricants on the bottom shelf, and Steve reluctantly releases his belt loop. He crosses his arms across his chest and looms behind Bucky, giving him space to pick something as high quality and expensive as the pharmacy can offer.

Steve quirks his head to the side and asks suddenly, eyeing Bucky’s ass, “Are you sore?”

“Huh?” Bucky picks up a sleek looking purple bottle and turns it over to read its ingredients and claims. 'Water-based, for her pleasure.' He puts it back and chooses another one.

“Are you sore?” Steve repeats, tone coming across more declarative this time. “After last night.”

“Oh.”

That didn’t really occur to Bucky — that most people’s asses feel at least somewhat sore after their first time having rough anal sex. But he definitely isn’t most people, and he isn’t really sure what sort of impact the serum and its healing properties might have in that sort of thing. He spends a lot of time outside of his own body too, a mere observer and passenger rather than the pilot of his own meat suit. Most of the time, pain doesn’t really register at all.

But when he’s prompted, he can do a quick scan enough to know if something is wrong, at least. So now that Steve does, he snaps back inside of himself and focuses on the sensations in that area.

“Mm… No. Not really. Maybe a little tender.” Bucky clenches his hole once and it pulses gently — the tiniest bit hot and swollen, perhaps. But it really doesn’t hurt.

“Good. I’m glad.”

Then suddenly there’s a hand in Bucky’s hair, fingers swiping through the soft strands and scratching at his scalp. Bucky tips his head up and looks at Steve, expression open and wanting.

He stands back up with a lubricant in his hand — it’s in a tiny box with a deep orange gradient and words denoting its warming properties.

“Is that the one you want, baby?”

Bucky’s skin tingles at the endearment and he nods, a faint blush rising in his cheeks.

They move on to the razors, and Steve spends the entire time draped over Bucky’s back with his chin hooked over his shoulder, arms tight around his waist. Bucky shuffles through one after the other, some brands looking more sleek than others but always swearing for the closest shave. Bucky ends up just choosing the most expensive one, and they slowly pull themselves back toward the self checkouts.

At the little automated register, Steve plops a vanilla flavored Chapstick and a pack of spearmint gum down onto the counter, slipping a sly hand into one of Bucky’s back pockets. Bucky rings it all up and tosses it into one bag before pulling out his phone, double-clicking the lock button, and paying for everything in one swift tap.

“The future is now,” Steve remarks, and Bucky scoffs, stuffing the phone back into his pocket.

“The future is fucked.” Bucky swipes up the bag and makes his exit, suddenly hurried in his movements now that they’ve secured the loot. “Everything's digital and that means everyone is tracking you. And you don’t really have a choice if you want to participate in society these days.”

Steve hums in tepid agreement as they stride past the cashier at the regular register; a young woman with piercings in her face and her eyes cast down at her own phone scrolling mindlessly.

“Have a nice night,” The girl pipes up, eyes never leaving the screen.

And Steve, ever the gentleman, can’t help but hit her back with the, “You too.”

Once they're past the automatic doors, Steve digs his hand into the plastic bag while they're still walking and snags the gum, popping a piece into his mouth.

"Impatient," Bucky comments, and then Steve is tugging him by the arm and swirling him around as they reach the truck on the far side of the parking lot.

The kiss is wicked, Steve pressing Bucky into the driver's side of the truck and shoving a minty tongue into his mouth. It's a sensory explosion, and Bucky goes limp into the cool steel at his back. The plastic bag slips from his fingers and clatters to the pavement, and Steve slides his huge mitts up Bucky's chest and onto the sides of his neck to steady him. 

They kiss like that for what must be over a minute under the flickering street lamp, Bucky's arms hanging lifelessly at his sides as Steve breathes new life into his chest and sucks on his tongue. When they come up for air, Steve has seamlessly passed the gum over Bucky's teeth and into his mouth, the lights in the proverbial house clicking on slowly as Bucky begins to chew.

"Jesus," Bucky huffs, fingers in a death grip on the front of Steve's shirt now.

"I saw that in a movie once and I wanted to try it." Steve is giggling and loose, head still tilting to the side to move in and capture Bucky's lips at any moment.

"What fucking movie? "

Bucky joins Steve in his bubbly giggles and shoves at his chest with a hollow thunk, spitting the gum out into the grass over the curb and climbing into the cab of the truck.

The drive back is the same as the drive there, boisterous laughter and easy touches cut up by Steve's constant poetic waxing on how hot and breathtaking Bucky is. If Steve isn't careful, he might actually convince him it's true.

They more fall through the door when they get back to the apartment than walk through it, bursting in like the kool-aid man with their mouths attached to each other like a pair of lovebugs in May. Steve is already reaching for Bucky's jeans and fumbling with the button, kiss turning into more bite than anything as he smiles wide into it.

"Okay, okay," Bucky guffaws, getting slammed back into the wall next to the door as Steve pulls at his clothes.

Steve doesn't stop kissing and pawing, jacket falling from Bucky's shoulders and pooling on the floor. He finally gets the zipper on the jeans and, fly finally undone, slips his hand down it to massage Bucky's dick with the V of his fingers.

"Will you do it for me?" Bucky asks suddenly, words popping forth like someone poured acetone over tightly glued lips keeping a horrible secret.

Steve pauses his ministrations and pulls back, eyes searching Bucky's face for more meaning.

"Sorry. Nevermind. Go back to what you were doing." Bucky looks fire-engine red and embarrassed, rushing Steve back to the task at hand. But Steve won't go willingly, so he grips Bucky's hips firmly and angles his head so that their noses brush, breath ghosting over each other's face.

"No," Steve demands, eyebrows knitting together as he slides his fingers behind Bucky's ear and up into his hair. "Say what you were gonna say. Tell me what you want."

"I want…" The words get stuck in Bucky's throat and he swallows them. His vocal cords just don't seem to work in times like these — times when he's being asked and not ordered. 

What did I want again? I want what you want. That's all.

It rises and falls in his trachea a few more times before it starts to hurt trying to force it out, so Bucky just collapses forward into Steve's neck and exhales dejectedly.

"Sorry," He sighs, curling his fingers into Steve's shoulder blades.

"No sorries," Comes the expected reply, and Steve kisses his hair. "I just wanna know how to make you feel good. I can't know if you don't tell me."

Bucky knows that. Really, he does. But he doesn't want to tell Steve the things he desires. What he wants is to be pushed and pulled and manhandled into place, pleasure taken and not given.

I know that's not good. Know it can't be healthy or right. But it's all so new and I can't stitch all these wounds together in one night, try as I may. My insides went fallow with the absence of you and everything just feels like it's been moving backwards since. But now you're here and time's stopped. I don't know how to force it forward again.

"Bucky?" Steve prompts, tightening his embrace.

"'Mnot so good with using my words sometimes. Hard to describe. Don't like being asked what I want." Bucky burrows in harder, hiding his face with the shame of what he's saying. But saying this is easier than asking for comfort or pleasure. "Would rather be told."

Steve is glad Bucky is hiding himself in the crook of his neck, because he really doesn't want him to see it when his face falls at the implications there. It's a mournful expression he makes, and his hands come up to stroke soothingly up and down Bucky's spine.

"I don't want to order you around, Buck."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"Ugh," Steve groans, squeezing Bucky even harder. “Okay —" And then he's cutting himself off, swirling Bucky around and scooping him up bridal style.

Bucky gasps and instinctively hangs onto the back of Steve's neck for dear life, going dizzy with the sheer force of it all. Steve carries him back to the front door where Bucky dropped the bag of their spoils onto the shoe rack, expertly leaning over and slipping the plastic handle over his pinky without ever faltering in his grip. Both Bucky and their loot in hand, he brings them back to the mussed sheets and sex-stench of the bedroom.

"How about this," Steve grunts, lowering Bucky onto the mattress and setting the bag down directly on his abs, rifling through it. "I'll ask you yes or no questions, and you answer — yes or no. Or just, make noises that sound vaguely like yes or no."

Bucky nods, a little awestruck.

"That works too." Steve picks up the lube and turns it toward Bucky. "This?"

Words stolen from him again, Bucky shakes his head 'no' and rises up on his elbows.

"You wanna shave first, then?"

Bucky nods slowly this time, face scrunched up in an almost juvenile display of frustration and turned to the side so he doesn't have to make eye contact. Don't look at me when I'm like this. 

Steve removes the bag then, taking out the razor and discarding the rest haphazardly to the floor. He kneels up in between Bucky's thighs, transferring the items into one hand, the other hand coming up to firmly massage Bucky's bent knee. His expression softens and becomes knowing as it all dawns on him.

"That's what you want me to do? You want me to shave your face for you?"

Slide your free hand up and grip his chin; unyielding but gentle — never not gentle. Make him look at you. He likes the manhandling, so give it to him. Show him you hear him even when he doesn't speak, that you still share that unique quiet language. Show him you're still the same.

Steve guides Bucky's chin to look at him again, fingers pressing soft dents into the stubbled flesh, and Bucky nods. A silent confirmation. And then the reaction is immediate, Steve descending upon Bucky's mouth like a ravenous jungle cat, hunched over and starving.

"I would love to," Steve purrs. "I want that. I wanna take care of you, Buck."

It becomes even harder to speak as they press forward, kissing their way to the bathroom while removing articles of clothing one at a time. Bucky is forced to give all of his trust to Steve, not that he didn't before — it's just all brand new, and this territory wasn't anywhere on the map before. So just as well, Bucky has to trust himself to let go.

Unfurl. Breathe. Let the tension in the hardened sinew of your back seep away. This is Steve. Your Steve. Let him have you like this. Let him see you.

So Bucky does.

Steve situates Bucky on the edge of the bathroom counter, back against the mirror and knees spread wide. Both of their cocks are only just mildly at attention, in a limbo of being ready to fill at the slightest touch. But for now, they keep it innocent; a particular goal on the docket that needs to be accomplished before any mouths get back to work.

It’s an electric razor, small and rechargeable, and Steve gets in close. He goes about shaving Bucky methodically and with exactness, creating smooth patch after smooth patch. He stops after the fourth swipe and touches the area with his thumb.

“Hm?” Bucky hums, voice lilting up like a question.

Steve studies his face and responds to the unsaid inquiry.

“It’s good. It’s a close shave. But,” Steve murmurs, leaning in to kiss the area. “Hm… Good enough.”

Bucky chuckles and Steve gets back to work, one hand cupping his jaw to hold him steady, and the other shaving the opposite side. After every patch he clears, he leans in to kiss it and declare whether or not it’s acceptable.

Steve takes special care on Bucky’s chin and around his mouth, obvious spots he favors. When he gets there, he finds himself landing a kiss between every stroke of the razor. Bucky starts laughing in earnest, and then Steve is smiling into every kiss.

“What?” Lips smacking. A soft giggle directly into each other’s mouths. “Huhuwhaaat?”

But Bucky is still lacking in the speech department, the capabilities of his voice box reduced to nothing; so he lets Steve go on — Smooch. Smooch. Smooch

When Steve is finished, he leans back and admires his handiwork, thumbs rubbing circles into the newly smooth skin. Bucky nuzzles into it, eyes fluttering shut, and then Steve goes in for the final kiss to put the cherry on top of his creation. He coaxes Bucky’s mouth open, tongues soft against each other’s.

The razor clatters into the bowl of the sink and Bucky’s thighs come up to wrap like a python around Steve’s waist, cock twitching in interest. They make out like that for a while, Bucky draping his arms lazily behind Steve’s neck; and then suddenly, Steve is licking a sloppy stripe from the bottom of Bucky’s chin to the top of his cheek.

Bucky squeals like a schoolgirl then, playfully struggling to jerk away from the wetness on his face and failing.

“What the hell!” Bucky cackles, and Steve’s response comes, flirtatious and immediate.

“Oh, that’s what makes us talk?”

“What was that for!”

“It’s my final test...” Steve’s voice drops sultry and low, his tongue peeking out to lick another path from the corner of Bucky’s mouth up to his earlobe. “To see if —” A kiss right there below his ear. “It’s a close enough shave.

And then Bucky is quickly swooning, skin suddenly buzzing and warm wherever Steve’s hands connect. Steve licks another stripe up the line of Bucky’s neck and doesn’t stop this time; keeps going until his velvety tongue is playing directly in Bucky’s ear.

Bucky’s lashes flutter and his eyes roll back, an embarrassing sound escaping the back of his throat at the way his skin cools with spit when Steve pulls away.

“My turn?” Steve asks, grabbing the razor out of the sink and presenting it to Bucky.

They switch places, and Bucky goes about his task much more systematically than Steve. Quickness is his goal — eager to wash their faces off and get back to bed. So he doesn’t waste time with kisses like Steve, just shaves his face and then steps back to observe; make sure no spots were missed.

That’s when it all slows down, though — when he steps back. He holds Steve’s chin in his hand, tipping his face in different directions to admire the smoothness. Something settles in his gut like homesickness, sinking past his throat like a rough stone. His touch becomes impossibly gentle, and he can’t help but start tracing Steve’s features with reverent sweetness; and suddenly, Steve is small in his arms again.

That scrawny kid from Brooklyn, I’d follow him anywhere.

“Hey,” Steve murmurs, waking Bucky up from his daydream. He frames Bucky’s face and swipes his thumbs just under his eyes, tears having welled and spilled over his waterline.

Bucky gives a strained smile and sniffles. It’s still just so hard to believe that any of this is real. These are the little moments: the ones where they’re just sitting quietly on the bathroom sink, shaving each other's faces. The ones where Steve is holding him by the hips in a pharmacy and calling him ‘baby.’ Ones where they’re just lazily tracing each other’s skin and they find a new scar to kiss.

In those moments, they’re young again. Young and small — skinny from poverty and war, clinging to each other tight in a rat-infested one bedroom apartment in the dead of a New York winter. 

“It’s just… It’s you, ya know?” 

And Steve does know.

“Yeah… It’s me.” 

Bucky traces the seam of Steve’s plush, kiss-bitten lips and laughs through the tears.

“You’re not gonna disappear or die on me again?” Bucky asks, his voice tinged with a mixture of grief and hysterical joy. 

“No, never. Not if I can help it.” Steve holds Bucky’s face in his hands firmly, making direct and intense eye contact when he says, “You’re it for me, Buck. It’s always been you. You’re the end of the line.”

And then Bucky is surging forward and kissing Steve like an animal, hands starving and frenzied.

Steve slides off the counter and shuffles Bucky back into the bedroom, mouths never apart for more than a second. When the backs of Bucky’s knees make contact with the mattress, as though it’s an instinct deep in his bones, he turns around and climbs up, ass sticking straight up in the air. He has enough foresight to reach for a pillow, stuffing it under himself lengthwise to give himself a little extra support; and then Steve is kneeling behind and hovering over him, kissing up the line of Bucky’s spine.

“Don’t let me hurt you,” Steve whispers into the shell of Bucky’s ear, draping himself over his back. There’s fear in his voice — fear of the unknown. “Let me know if I do anything you don’t like.”

Bucky curls a hand up by his mouth and nods, but he knows Steve can’t quite see him with his face shoved into the pillow, so he accompanies it with a soft, “‘Kay…”

So Steve begins his descent, landing tender kisses across the broad expanse of Bucky, making his way down and down and down until he reaches the swell of his ass.

Bucky lets himself melt — safe. That’s what he feels right now. Not dissociating, just safe. He can check out without leaving his entire body; present but loose, simply giving himself the permission to feel protected and falling right into it.

The warmth of Steve is gone suddenly, but it’s not gone long enough for Bucky to ache for it. Just some quick rustling around and then he’s back. 

Two big paws grip lustily at each of Bucky’s asscheeks, prying them apart and massaging gently. Bucky keens, a tiny moan slithering out from the back of his throat, and Steve responds with a soft, “Fuck.”

Steve traces a dry line with his thumb from the back of Bucky’s heavy balls all the way up to his ass crack, giving his hole a little extra pressure as he passes over it. Bucky responds again, ass kicking back just slightly and whining.

“I wanna put my mouth on you, fuck,” Steve groans, thumb passing back and forth over Bucky’s hole diligently now, watching the way the tight pink furl of flesh pulsates with his ministrations.

Bucky responds with a little whimper and arches his back harder, burying his face further into the rumpled sheets beneath him. Steve takes the clear invitation and wastes no time diving in, tongue flattening against Bucky’s asshole and moaning into it like he’s famished.

Steve eats him out like he positively craves it, sloppy and unpracticed. After a while he starts experimenting with slipping in a finger, licking and kissing around it before adding another. It goes on like that for what feels like ages, and then, humping the bed pathetically, Bucky finds his voice enough for a playful jab.

“What did we even buy the lube for,” He pants, and the words come out muffled by fabric but tinged with laughter.

Steve laughs along, deep baritone of a chuckle transferring vibrations from his chest down Bucky’s asshole and directly to his cock. Bucky gasps, and then Steve is pulling away and fumbling with the lube.

“Alright, alright,” Steve starts coating his fingers, unable to stop giggling. “Pillow princess.”

Bucky snorts and scoffs, “Pillow princess. Haven’t heard that one bef— ohhhhhh…”

Steve slips a lubed up finger deep into Bucky’s ass, and then Bucky is groaning hard, grinding his face into the mattress and gripping the sheets for dear life.

“Sorry,” Steve breathes, slowly sliding his forefinger in and out. “It’s so slick.”

Steve really luxuriates in it and takes his time, twisting his fingers and trying new angles. He gets two worked in and curls them downward, eliciting a sharp whine from Bucky. Then he's backing off and adding a third finger, fucking them in and out at a brutally slow pace.

It's when Bucky starts sobbing into the sheets and chanting, 'please… please… please…' that Steve finally wets himself up with the lube and presses in, face screwing up in pure indulgence as Bucky squeezes around him and groans. With one final grunt, Steve is pressed in to the hilt, cock pulsing hot inside of Bucky. He drapes himself over his back again, kissing along Bucky's shoulder, his hair, the side of his face. And that's how they stay for several long moments, just sharing breath and heartbeats.

Steve rises back up on his knees when he's composed himself, situating himself at a comfortable angle. He starts out molasses-slow, fucking Bucky in long, deep strokes, petting his lower back the entire time. Bucky takes these deep inhales, like he's breathing for the first time in his life — fisting the sheets, hair sticking to his forehead with sweat, completely blissed out expression — he sinks into the mattress like an unmoored ship without a captain.

Steve picks up the pace, and Bucky starts in with his little whines — tiny unh unh unh's at first as they find a rhythm. He increases his speed in steady increments, grip on Bucky's hips turning just a fraction away from bruising as he starts to enter 'rabbit fucking' territory. Bucky wails as Steve drills him, vocalizations muffled by fabric as he starts frantically biting at the sheets.

Then Bucky is coming — untouched — starbursts behind his eyes, cock pressed hard into the pillow beneath him. 

And this; this. This moment of just letting go. This pure, distilled, unadulterated pleasure. This kickstarts the addiction. Steve is pure heroin and his dick is the fucking needle — More, harder, don't stop, faster, fuck me, fuck me. It's just a string of filth from Bucky's mouth as his cock pulses into the pillow, Steve grunting like a wild beast and following soon after.

They fuck again an hour later — and again forty five minutes after that. An hour after that they find themselves on the couch somehow, Steve stretched out across the length of it and sucking Bucky off like it's his life's passion. And then when they're limp and spent, they still can't help but toy with each other's cocks and explore the depths of intimate areas until they fill out again, pulling each other back into another round to discover new freckles and different positions.

This becomes the week: Eat, sleep, shower, fuck; and they know it can't last. Know the world will come knocking on the other side of that door at some point. But for now, they have it. For now, they live so deeply within the moment that they convince themselves it's all there is. 

Just you, me, and this bed I never slept in until you came to share it.

Chapter Text

Tub faucet drips, steady little plinks every six seconds. There are smatterings of dried semen on the shower tiles, remnants of when Bucky came with Steve plowing him against the wall earlier. Garbage can in the kitchen overflows, piled high with more than a week’s worth of takeout. Dishwasher is only half full — task abandoned after Steve slapped Bucky’s ass while he was bent over it; turning into a 10 minute blowjob with Bucky backed against the sink. Blackout curtains drawn, it's darker than hell, only tiny slivers of the sunlight behind them making it through. The air's grown stale, reeking of come and sweat and spit.

It’s a sex nest; that’s what they’ve created. A bonafide dungeon of lust and depravity. Neither of them have worn clothes in upwards of six days and they ran completely out of lube by day four, already resorting back to the spit. Steve can't keep his hands off of Bucky long enough to get him clothed and the last thing Bucky wants to do is leave the apartment, anyway. The rest of the world is out there and if he steps outside, they might ask something of him. He can't chance it.

But life’s responsibilities are creeping up fast, so it’s in one of their tender intermissions that Bucky speaks. Steve is leaned over him, head propped on his fist as he traces the shape of Bucky’s lips with the calloused tips of his fingers so gently that it tickles.

“Steve,” Bucky starts, voice cracked around the edges from overuse. 

Steve responds by flicking his attention instead back to the seam of scar tissue there at Bucky’s left shoulder, repeating the feather-light touches along the bumps and ridges of light pink flesh. He’s transfixed, a little lost in it — so Bucky prompts him again.

“Stevie,” Bucky croons, so sweet; and Steve responds with an acknowledging hum, eyes and fingers never leaving the masterpiece of lightning bolts he paints across the scars.

Bucky slides his hands up Steve’s neck and behind his ears, tugging him down for a slow kiss. When they break apart, Bucky slips his thumb up to cover Steve’s lips; a little failsafe to prevent him from leaning in to kiss him again.

“Babydoll,” Bucky says, low and devastating, and fuck.

There he is. That charming 25 year old boy with a new girl for me to be jealous of on each arm every other night. Brooklyn’s resident Romeo. My back alley loverboy. My 107th honey.

Steve kisses Bucky’s thumb then instead, lips pursing around it; and then he’s swallowing the whole digit, half-moon bedroom eyes eliciting a soft moan from Bucky.

“Baby,” Bucky tries again, fucking his thumb in and out of Steve’s lush mouth. “I have to leave tomorrow.”

Steve stops dead, Bucky’s words having taken the wind out of his sails, thumb slipping out of his mouth with a wet pop.

“I just have to go to my therapy appointment. Tomorrow in the afternoon.”

The built up tension melts out of Steve then, his mouth returning to work and bending down to suck a hickey into the side of Bucky’s neck — the bruise won’t last but Steve likes to make little impressionist paintings on his skin with the time that they linger.

"Mmm… Gonna tell your therapist you're fucking a hot older man?" Steve asks around a new bright red mark he's leaving over Bucky's clavicle.

"You're younger than me!" Bucky laughs, incredulous, and Steve sinks deeper into his neck like a starving vampire.

Steve is still going, making comical little snorts and sucking noises as he ravishes Bucky's neck while he giggles. Between chomps and open mouthed kisses he speaks.

"Not anymore…" A bite to the underside of Bucky's jaw. "I technically have —" Another kiss. "About a hundred years or so on you now, you know…"

Bucky wonders if he’s supposed to be laughing now. The joy of the moment slowly drains out of him until he’s left lifeless and rigid, hands curling and uncurling nervously in Steve’s hair. 

Of course Steve notices. He pulls back, movements measured and deliberate, and whispers, “Hey…”

Furrowed brow and a far-away expression, Bucky's breath slows and slows until it reaches a halt; and then Steve is there, hovering over him and kissing the tops of his cheeks, under his eyes, his nose — anywhere on his face he can access.

"Sorry —," Steve starts, but then Bucky is cutting him off abruptly as though he were unaware anyone was even speaking.

"How does— did that even work?"

Steve pulls back and watches Bucky's face intently, the backs of his fingers stroking a soothing path up and down his sternum. 

"Hm?"

"You don't look like you've aged a day."

"I had to live a lot of days over again, Buck."

They'll talk about it at some point. Really, they will. Steve swears it — up and down, left and right. But he just can't right now; and he's not sure he can in a few days, or a week, or even a month. When he reaches back in the file cabinet of his mind for those memories of his time in captivity, his gut churns threateningly. It's just still too fresh.

Bucky reads the intensity of Steve's eyes and the set of his jaw and backs off.

"Okay." Plain and simple — just: "Okay."

Steve settles down on top of Bucky and buries his nose just under the hinge of his jaw, a grandiose sigh escaping his chest as he deflates into the warmth.

They don't speak on it further. In fact, they don't speak much at all after the moment sinks like a stone. Steve curls deeper into the cage of Bucky's arms and falls asleep after a while, and awake Bucky remains, metal fingers combing protectively through the silken blond hair beneath his chin.

Is this it? The beginning of the end of the honeymoon phase? And then after that, what's next? The beginning of the end of it all? Bucky expects this to end at some point, just as he expects everything to end. It's all finite in this life — people live and die, empires rise and fall, oceans dry up and species go extinct. That's the nature of it all. To begin is to end, and to start something is to finish; even if it gets cut short and you never get all your answers.

So this: this anxious tension. This dying of words in the throat and unwillingness to press further for any expectations or boundaries, this dance of avoidance and dread, self-hate and self-doubt; This is what Bucky presumes is the first symptom of a disease so terminal it refuses to be cured. And no doctor nor God in heaven could tell him how long it has left. Maybe a week, maybe a year. Maybe ten years from now when he's made himself comfortable enough to believe a man like him could find salvation in the heat of Steve's mouth or the crush of his arms. But it has an expiration date. Everything does.

Bucky does fall asleep eventually, turning over on his side only for Steve to cling even more pathetically behind him, somehow making himself small despite his position as the larger spoon. He only gets in a handful of hours before he's stirring awake again, the feel of Steve peeling himself off the sleep-sweat dampness of his back rousing him.

"Sorry," Steve whispers, soft and raspy, planting a kiss on Bucky's forehead as he moves to slip away. "Go back to sleep, baby."

But of course Bucky doesn't listen, turning onto his back and sleepily pulling Steve back in toward his chest. He makes a noise of protest when Steve tugs himself out of his grip and away, leaving another lingering kiss on the side of his face.

"Let me pee first."

When Steve gets back, Bucky is a little more awake, hungry skin and eager hands. They make love again, slow as sap from the maple tree — and it carries them into the late morning when Bucky has no choice but to tear himself away to shower and ready himself for his appointment. Steve doesn't join him this time, knowing if he does it'll turn into another hour long session of hot mouths and animalistic pawing.

Bucky, shower-fresh and dressed now in tight denim and dark leather, comes back to the bed and crawls halfway over Steve for a kiss.

"I'll be back in a few hours," He murmurs against Steve's mouth, lips brushing exquisitely with every word. "Be good while I'm gone, yeah?"

Steve bites at Bucky's bottom lip cheekily, huffing a small laugh.

"Whatever you say, doll."

Bucky takes the bike to Dr. Raynor’s office, figuring he needs the sun after days upon days of being cooped up and having his insides softened; offered up like a tender veal for Steve’s devouring. And of course it’s impossible to evade the whip-smart woman's scrutinizing gaze — she clocks him immediately upon the top of the hour.

“You’ve been sleeping.”

Typing, like she always is. Constantly multitasking.

“I have.”

“You look good. Well rested. What’s changed?”

Bucky considers his next move. He could lie, but that won’t work on her. He could tell the truth, but that’s too dangerous. So he settles for something in between, a lie with a hint of truth baked into it. His lungs seize ever so slightly and his heart picks up almost imperceptibly in pace.

This is so hard. Why is talking so hard?

“I…”

Dr. Raynor looks up at Bucky expectantly, fingers pausing over her keyboard. He goes on with an unstable voice.

“I met someone.”

“You met someone…”

“I don't want to get into it," Bucky asserts abruptly, cutting himself off at the head to avoid talking himself into a corner.

"Okay."

"It's just been… nice. To spend time with someone I can… kinda relate to? I've been occupied, I guess, in a more… positive way. So I've been sleeping better."

The room goes still and Bucky worries at the skin of his flesh and blood palm with his metal thumb, rubbing the love line there until it goes red as a beet.

"So this is a romantic relationship?" Dr. Raynor clarifies, and Bucky averts his eyes, focusing on a spot on the wall.

"Uhh… yeah, yes?"

"You say that like you aren't so sure."

"Well, no, I am sure, I just —"

"This isn't someone from work, is it?"

There's an exasperated, 'oh god,' underneath her tone, drawing the conclusion through the assumption that there aren't many other places Bucky could possibly meet someone, let alone someone he can relate to. The thing is, she wouldn't really be wrong — and she isn't, technically. But whatever HR violation she dreads isn't what's happening here, so Bucky quells her fears.

"No, oh god, no."

"Thank God."

"Everyone I work with is too young for me," Bucky quips, eyes rolling a little.

Raynor breathes a soft tsk of a laugh and continues with her typing, posture easing again.

"You feeling okay after your last assignment?"

They go on with their session, a gentle back and forth of expelling unsavory internalizations and combing through all the justifications of why it's okay to stay the same. Bucky is loose this time; more honest. With himself and with her. He opens up on the broader things and keeps the fine details close to his chest. He's sure she thinks with time she'll get him to knife his own sternum open and spill it all, but ultimately, he's not sure they'll ever make it that far.

Dr. Raynor tells him, "Good talk today," with a small smile and they part.

When Bucky steps out of the office and onto the street, he immediately whips out his phone and dials, pressing it to his ear. Hands shake, skin vibrates at quantum speeds. Withdrawal. It's the ache of missing his skin — even after only just a couple of hours. It's sick, and you're sick; so call him, hurry. Just a bump of his voice to get you home to him.

And of course Steve answers with a gruff and sleepy, "Hey, baby," that expands Bucky's lungs and sets something right within his chest. Something without a name that's gone askew every time this life has tested the tenacity of the red thread binding them together and choking their souls.

Light feet carry Bucky back to his bike on the other side of the street, looking both ways as he blurts it out, youthful and starving:

“Let’s go to the beach this weekend.”

~

They go all out and rent an expensive AirBnB in Ocean City, an entire house just a short walk from the beach with its own heated pool and a stupid little tiki bar in the back. It's a kitschy space with seashells and oceanic colors, little wooden signs hanging everywhere that say something or other about toes in the sand and drinks in your hand, ‘beach life’ and the like.  

Really, they end up spending most of their time there in the pool. It’s quiet and secluded, and the lights that decorate the deck give it all a dreamy aura. Bucky is pretty sure they only went down to the beach one time during the night to stand at the shoreline and make out under the moon. They're under no illusions as to why they're there — it's just another, albeit nicer, space to have sex in. Just another fortress to push out the inevitable.

It's around dusk on their last night, the sky turning bruised as their insides as the sun sets in the west, and Bucky finally begins to chip away at their cocoon. He's wrapped around Steve in the pool the way a koala might wrap itself around the trunk of a tree, pruny fingers and slick skin, and Steve is painting his shoulders with short-lived bite marks again.

Bucky simply doesn't know how to do any of this, so he finds himself blurting things out in seemingly inappropriate moments most of the time.

"Are we just supposed to go on like this?" Bucky looks toward the sea, a few gulls squawking a familiar song and slicing their way through his eyeline with the sharp cut of their wings. Steve goes still, warm water lapping at his scarred and tanned arms; and then, because he doesn't know what else Steve wants from him, he rephrases it: "Can we possibly go on like this?"

Steve lowers Bucky from where his legs are wrapped around his waist, leaning back a little but maintaining close contact. He just wants to look at him. But there are no words that Steve can say, just an unreadable expression and soft eyes, so Bucky goes on.

"I'll get a call soon," Bucky says, pushing wet strands of darkened blond hair from Steve's forehead and temples with nimble fingers. "And there'll be other assignments. Other jobs. Times I'll be gone and 'when I'll be back' is a question I can't answer."

It's like Steve can't bear to look at Bucky suddenly, his eyes gone misty and the facade of their intensity broken. The moment is pulpy and raw now — a consequence of their shared avoidance. Don't pop the bubble, don't shatter the glass. Just touch me and put your mouth on me and tell me the ravenous fanged beast they turned me into is beautiful, that the scars they wrought are sexy and that you'll refashion me in your own image with my spittle and your blood; my flesh and your bone. And then, Steve still with nothing to offer, Bucky continues.

"Are you comfortable with… Can you tolerate this? Just, being at home — in that apartment, waiting for me? Over and over again. I can't ask you to throw yourself back into the fight, I won't. The only way out is in a body bag and you seem to have found the loophole."

Steve's expression changes then, and there's something distraught about it — a screwed up brow and eyes that burn like the blue of a torch flame. He doesn't interrupt though, just goes on holding Bucky and searching his face.

"You told me I didn't have to uproot my whole life for you — well, this is my life. This is how I dealt with the absence of you. I worked. I atoned. But the God's honest truth, Steve, is that I don't know if the job will ever be done. I don't know where forgiveness starts and contrition ends. I don't think it does, actually. It feels more like a mobius strip sometimes."

Steve blinks and Bucky conjures a conclusion out of the hollows of his suffering.

"So I guess what I'm getting at here… is that I won't blame you if this isn't what you signed up for."

Bucky doesn't have the opportunity to clarify or wrap up his thoughts, because something deep inside of Steve snaps then. Something under his skin, his guts, his ribcage, caught between the marrow of his bones and his teeth — it just snaps like a dried twig underfoot in the silence of the forest; and it makes him frantic. His eyes, his hands, his movements; it all comes unglued.

"No," Steve declares firmly. "No."

"Steve, I —"

"No, you can't — I can't — you can't just say shit like that, Bucky, fuck."

And then it's a full blown argument, a flurry of words overlapping and panic so perfectly distilled it spills forth from their mouths like blood coming up from their lungs.

"I'm just trying to let you know —"

"—out of your mind? The shit I had to do to come home to you, the blood on my hands —"

"—give you the option, I don't know, the license —"

"The license?! The fucking license?! To what, leave you? Gee, thanks Buck! That's exactly what I wanted. You seem to be so goddamn all knowing —"

"Don't fucking twist my intentions, that's not what I meant!"

"If that's not what you mean then don't fucking say it that way!"

Steve is walking away now, wading toward the steps and climbing out of the pool toward the towels stacked on the tiki bar. The water is heated but Bucky's body chills from the top of his skull to the tips of his toes at the loss, real and honest terror pushing bile up his esophagus as he scrambles to follow.

"No, stop." It comes out of Bucky's mouth so childlike, almost innocent. A plea, a prayer; and then he's colliding with Steve's back hard, arms snaking around his middle and squeezing like if he lets go he'll fall straight through the earth's crust. "Stop."

They just stand and breathe for a moment, Steve leaned against the bar with a beach towel crumpled under the clench of his grip and Bucky clinging.

“I didn’t mean it like that, you know I didn’t mean it like that. I’m sorry.”

Steve exhales, long and hard, and he slides his arms over the backs of Bucky’s, twining their fingers together.

“You have to understand how hard it is for me to believe people don’t need a way out of being close to me. I’m sick, Steve. I’m fucked up.” Bucky shudders and squeezes, mingling his tears with the sweat and chlorine between Steve’s shoulder blades. He chooses bloodcurdling honesty. “It’s backbreaking work to be near me and I don’t want to torture you any more than you have been. But don’t ever mistake that for me not wanting you. I want you, okay, that won’t ever change. I already told you, I want you so bad it feels like a disease.” Another brief pause, the ocean’s tide crashing behind them to carry forth this last whispered, grim truth: “It'll be the only thing that kills me, I think.”

Steve turns around in Bucky's arms then, throwing a towel around his shoulders and wrapping him in close. Nuzzling down into the cleavage of Steve's pecs like he could get lost there and making himself small, Bucky allows himself the luxury of being comforted despite his nervous system's best efforts to reject it — guts pulsing and skin burning as though with some sort of horrible neuropathy. 

"Keep me locked like a princess in a tower, I don't give a single shit. I can't do it again, Buck. I can't. I'll wait forever, if that's what it takes.” Steve says finally, tone gruff with hurt. “And I’d do all of this again to come home to you. I need you to believe that."

Bucky clenches back the tears and buries his eyes right into Steve's artery. He feels the vibrations deep in his carved out chest when Steve continues with his own terrible truth, shamefaced and low:

"If you can't believe that, then I've failed. If my love isn't the one thing in this universe you can rely on, the one thing you never have to question — then I don't know what else to do."

It's just silence between them now. The ocean waves crash, the gulls mourn, the wind dries the salt in the air to their skin. Bucky doesn't have anything to say to that, so Steve dries him off with ginger hands, starting with his hair and working his way down. The cogs within his mind work, gears turn; it's when Steve gets to Bucky's legs that he decides to attempt human speech again, but he's thwarted by the sight below him.

Knelt in front of him like Christ before Judas, wiping his legs and feet dry with such detestable reverence — such repulsive adoration — Steve looks up. His eyes are wide, glassy and worshipful, and the unnamable thing within Bucky curdles to lust. He cups Steve's chin with a vibranium palm and it's all over in an instant.

"Show me." Bucky growls, and Steve falls apart against his crotch, pawing his damp swim trunks down to his feet with a splat and nosing at his cock like it's some sacred thing.

Steve sucks him off right there against the bar, vigorous and sloppy with a fist around the base of his cock. He deepthroats, he chokes, he gags. He looks up at Bucky with red-rimmed baby-blues and spit painting him from the bottom half of his face all the way down his neck; like he's dying for it.

Like this? Is this how you want me to show you the size of my love? My piety? Cock filling my mouth, cum drenching the insides of my esophagus and filling me up — is this how I'm supposed to worship at the altar of you? Ugly and hungry? Lewd and blasphemous?

When Steve finishes him off and swallows it all down, he wraps the pool towel around Bucky's waist and tucks it in, sitting back on his heels. Bucky pets the tangled hair out of Steve's face as he comes down, chest heaving. The orgasm always seems to simplify it all.

"We have to be out by 11 am tomorrow," Bucky breathes, thumb of his right hand tracing the shape of Steve's fucked-raw mouth.

"Huh?" Steve grunts back, still a little delirious.

"We have to leave the AirBnB. By 11 tomorrow."

"Oh."

So that's that, then. Later, later, later. We'll talk about it later. We'll replace the words we would've exchanged with bodily fluids instead and forget what we were even mad about in the first place. Later.

It's always funny how later never seems to come.

Chapter Text

Sam Wilson structures his daily routines like he never left the Air Force; up at 6 am, five mile run, coffee, a protein-rich breakfast, guzzle nearly a liter of water — everything falls within the confines of the same exact minutes of every single day. It sets a foundation that’s difficult to surprise the man on and upsets to the schedule come few and far between. If you can sneak up on the guy, you must be good.

So when he turns around to lean back against his kitchen sink, hot coffee in hand, it’s no surprise that the mug goes shattering to the floor at the sight of a slinky black cat of a figure leisurely kicked back at his kitchen table.

“Jesus fucking —”

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare ya.”

There’s a childlike giggle underneath Natasha’s words; she flicks her dark hair back off her face and chews on a piece of gum like some shithead teenager.

“You’re an asshole.” Sam reaches back and grabs the roll of paper towel on the counter behind him, immediately crouching down to start wiping up the caffeinated carnage. “I really liked that mug, too.”

“I’m sorry! I’ll get you a new one.”

“It’s fine.”

“I’ll go down to Homegoods right now. I’ll pick one out special.”

“It’s okay, Nat,” Sam grunts, plucking larger pieces of ceramic from around himself and placing them gingerly onto a paper towel. “To what do I owe the displeasure of you breaking into my damn house?”

"Oh, you know. Just wanted to drop in and say howdy."

"You only ever come around when you need something, so what do you need?" It comes out colder and meaner than Sam intends, and the room goes still. The quiet shatters with a soft and penitent sigh from Natasha's direction, and she comes to crouch down beside the wreckage on the floor.

A soft rip from the paper towel roll; Sam's eyes stay down.

"I know it's just the way it has to be right now."

"I wish it were different."

They exchange these words in tense murmurs, Natasha leaning in to wipe up the extended splash zone. 

"I don't mean to sound like I don't appreciate every drop-in." Sam's voice goes hoarse as it lowers in pitch, throaty and sorrowful. "There aren't a lot of us left."

It's the perfect moment for another uncomfortable silence — a stretch of quiet for them to marinate in their repressed tears and lamentations; but Natasha in her infinite pragmatism cuts right to the purpose of her visit.

"I need a favor."

"I gathered."

The pair start transferring broken cup pieces and coffee-soaked paper towels to the trash can, Natasha wiping up the final remnants of spillage as Sam gets up to grab the Swiffer.

Sam mops as Natasha washes her hands at the sink and she goes on:

"I need you to give Barnes a little encouragement in the direction of retirement."

Sam stops in his tracks, and Natasha turns to finally meet his eyes as she dries her hands on the dish towel hanging from the handle on a nearby drawer.

"You don't tell Bucky Barnes what to do," Sam says harshly, eyes narrowing. "Why is this the favor?"

"I'm not at liberty to discuss specifics at present."

"Don't piss me off."

"Just the same as I promise I would resurrect myself if I could, I promise I would fucking tell you if I could, okay?" Natasha snaps, voice thick; and then, immediately: "I'm sorry. I don't mean… I'm working on it. Okay. All of it."

"I just wish I knew what 'it' was."

"I know, okay, and I wish I didn't have to be cryptic and obnoxious."

Sam tosses the dirty Swiffer pad into the trash can and stows the mop back in the broom closet, tension slowly slipping from his shoulders with the surrender of his radical acceptance for what he cannot control or change. Natasha continues.

"Just trust me. And know that this is in Bucky's best interest. Even without the information I have, you have to know this isn't good for him. You know he deserves the quiet ending to this story."

Sam contemplates it, eyes glazing a little as he folds his arms across his middle and leans back against the counter again.

"Maybe you should put some thought into the soft ending, too," Natasha whispers, leaning in for a timid yet longing kiss on Sam's cheek.

She's gone without a sound before he can turn into it and reciprocate her affections, insides cold with the loss. So few of them left, time so limited on this Earth. 

What else is there but to fill this vacancy in one's soul with the profound indulgence of government sanctioned blood and violence? It's all I know. All any of us know. They made us all weapons. 

It's a fool's gambit trying to get any one of us to stop. 

Chapter Text

Bucky finds that Steve's "princess in a tower" comment really sticks with him. He can't get over it, so instead he stays under it. It haunts and oppresses him; makes him increasingly restless. He fidgets when he's home from work far more often and finds himself tugging Steve's shirt sleeve like a cranky child most nights. 

Take me on a ride? Let's find a scenic spot and make out like teenagers. Go hiking with me. See a movie with me. 

But the low profile they're both attempting to maintain makes discreet locations and low-key hangouts hard to come by, least of all for men like them and let alone during the day. So eventually they always end up back at the apartment, exchanging "well, what do you want to do's?" before finding themselves right back in the bedroom, trying to unearth new ways to take each other apart.

They can only make so many discoveries before Bucky's libido starts its slow and winding decline; and instead of reading the clear and present signals his body sends him, he powers on through. Surely it's something that's wrong with me. Maybe I just need it harder, faster, more intense — Which is how they end up veering far off the beaten path of Google and venturing into the concepts of edging and hands-free orgasms.

Steve has got Bucky splayed out naked on the bare mattress, fresh sheets abandoned in a hamper to the side in their failed quest to change them. He's got one hand gripping Bucky's hip, pressing bruises that won't last into the pale flesh there as he fucks him with three fingers and no mercy.

Bucky is panting hard, hips canting up in pathetic little ministrations with every graze of those thick fingers on his prostate. 

"I've got you, baby," Steve huffs, and Bucky's head lolls to the side — eyes half-moon and blurred with tears. "Let go, sweetheart. You can let go."

Steve goes on running his mouth, sensual encouragements and heartrending endearments spilling from those spun-sugar lips. The blood rushes in Bucky's ears and it all muffles and fades away — Steve nothing but a dirty-blond shadow as his words fuse with the uptick of chemicals and hormones coursing through Bucky to morph into something new. He's losing himself in the mattress, sinking; losing himself, losing himself —

"What?" Steve stalls, his fingers pausing mid-thrust as he squints and shakes his head, color in his face gone.

Bucky is of no use, limbs limp and eyes glazed over, cock having slowly flagged to a state of softness.

"Просто делай то, что должен."

Steve pulls his fingers out of Bucky like he's been burned, heart hammering and lungs ceasing simultaneously in the cage of his ribs. His Russian is really shitty —  rudimentary at best, even after all these years — but he clocks it as something along the lines of 'do what you've gotta do.' But Bucky doesn't speak Russian in bed. Bucky doesn't really speak Russian at all anymore.

"я готов отвечать."

"Bucky?" Tears sting at Steve's eyes as he flinches back, stumbling a little and catching himself with the heel of his palm. He has no idea what to do. He didn't account for this.

The static and the fuzz start to clear from Bucky's vision, and for a brief moment he can see Steve. Except, he's not Steve. He's a hundred different faceless blond men from a subzero time that only existed inside an iron cage.

"Bucky?" Steve pleads again, and it comes out borderline hysterical.

Bucky is just staring at the ceiling murmuring in Russian now, voice growing small and terrified. Something about "I will comply, I will comply."

Steve scrambles up the length of Bucky's naked body and cradles his face, thumbs stroking his cheekbones and gently manipulating his head from side to side. He inspects those glazed icy-blues, pupils blown and irises reduced to silver rings.

Frantic, out of control. Erratic breaths and unrelenting tears, all language functioning has gone from Steve beyond his little mutterings of "No no no no no… " and "Bucky? Buck?"

It's like Bucky is just casually resurfacing for air when he finally comes out of it — breath sharp but measured, eyes swimming with tears that finally spill and race down his temples. The noises he makes are primitive and feeble, little grunts and moans in the back of his throat as Steve pets the sweat back from his forehead and grips the sides of his neck.

And then, the only thing that comes back naturally to him, slurred and unsure: "Steve?" 

"Hey, hey, yeah — Bucky? Yeah, I'm right here —"

"Steve?" This time, choked on the tail end of a sob.

Body heavy, face numb, muscles quivering; Bucky starts to hyperventilate, flesh and blood hand reaching over to dig in his armpit. His fingers feel swollen and he can't get to that damn switch, that little thing that kills the whole arm and makes it go clunking to the floor.

The English trickles back in, and soon he's whimpering in a fit hysterics, begging: help me, just get this thing off; please, get it off — I can't —

Steve finds the switch, and the gears and servos inside the arm whir to a halt, the whole thing going limp and snapping off to the side. He shoves the stupid fucking hunk of vibranium off the bed and it crashes loudly to the floor, Bucky crumpling alongside the sound. He allows himself to be gathered into Steve's arms like a torn-up ragdoll that's been wrestled from a German Shepherd's jaws, lethargic and cumbersome.

Bucky chants against Steve's artery, terrible little whispers of "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I don't know. I don't know what happened. I'm sorry," as they rock back and forth; sick, sad penitence for all these things they never asked for.

~

Bucky takes to talking less and showering more. He spends an inordinate amount of time at the bottom of the tub, water temperature fit to burn and spray on a setting like intramuscular needles. He ducks and dodges Steve's hands with expert precision and spends more time with the arm off than with it on.

"Are you ready to talk about it yet?" 

"No."

"Okay."

~

"What are you doing?"

Steve's seated at the breakfast bar, hunched over with his cheek in his palm as he taps on his phone and it spits words back out at him. Russian words.

"Practicing my Russian."

Bucky isn't quite sure what it is in Steve's voice, but he decodes it as pity. He despises it. The scoff leaves his lips before he can think about it, door slamming behind him as he leaves for the day.

~

"So what happened?" Dr. Raynor is quick to call Bucky out today, everything written on his face and displayed on his sleeve.

"Nothing. I'm just not feeling well."

"You look like shit again, and not because you're sick. You don't get sick, James." Dr. Raynor sighs and leans back in her seat, voice softening now. "I'm only able to really help you when you're honest with me."

A beat passes, Bucky's face collapsing as he scrubs at his eyes with stiff and creaky fingers. As he's breathing in to respond, she goes on:

"Or at least whatever your version of honesty is. You don't have to tell me everything. Just enough."

Bucky exhales long and hard and slumps down in his chair, the fight leaving him.

"I don't know how to talk about it."

Dr. Raynor studies Bucky's face and then:

"Nightmares again?"

Bucky's eyebrows knit together in a solemn expression before Dr. Raynor catches on and continues.

"Not nightmares. Flashbacks?"

"I don't know how to describe it. It's like I was having a nightmare while I was wide awake. Like I was hallucinating." Bucky casts his eyes down and picks at a hangnail on his right thumb. "But also like being possessed. I don't know…"

"Do you know what triggered it?"

Bucky's face flushes bright red and his face screws up tighter, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. Dr. Raynor doesn't say anything, just waits patiently until Bucky clears his throat and answers.

"I was… um. In bed." Dr. Raynor's brow quirks up and Bucky goes on. "With my… uh. Person that I'm seeing."

Graceless, Bucky stumbles and trips through his words. None of the modern terms he can conjure quite describe what Steve is and anything that does describe it is too flowery and verbose. So he settles for the awkward and almost juvenile, "person that I'm seeing."

"And this has never happened before?"

"No."

"Was anything different about this time? Anything happen in the time leading up to the incident?"

"I'm not exactly… I mean, I guess." Visibly uncomfortable, Bucky recedes into himself and tiptoes around his very meticulously chosen words. "We were kind of… Trying some new things. Maybe being a bit rougher than usual. But it wasn't anything crazy. We were almost done and then I was just sort of… gone. I wasn't in my room anymore. The person in front of me wasn't the person in front me anymore."

Dr. Raynor is typing something on her computer now and it sets Bucky's nerves on edge. She glances over and clocks him, tone flat when she says: 

"Calm down, I'm not ratting on you. Just let me think." She keeps typing as she says, "Do you think you were tapping into some repressed memories?"

Bucky's inclination is to deliver a sarcastic, no shit, Sherlock, but instead he opts for a pensive nod.

"Okay…" Dr. Raynor huffs another great sigh, eyes sad. "Now comes the hard part." She pushes a notepad and a pen across the desk toward Bucky and sets her fingers back to her keyboard. "You have to tell me everything, and everyone you remember."

~

By the time Bucky makes it out of therapy, it's been two and a half hours and he's entirely spent. His chest is hollow, his body exhausted, and the only things on his mind are fitting into the pocket of Steve's hips and a mindless TV show that he doesn't have to follow along with.

He told Raynor everything. The switch-flip to Russian, the visions of nondescript blond men, the feeling of horrible, dark, surrender. The feelings of metal and damp concrete on his skin and the tearing of flesh. As many descriptors as he could conjure for the souls he recalls and any flashes of names he might have heard in the background. The anger that won't leave him and the touch-repulsion and the specific places on his body that it aches. 

That's part of the deal, Barnes. Therapy won't just benefit you in your life, it'll benefit us all by bringing the people who hurt you to justice.

But what good is justice if it just leaves you spent? A husk of raw innards and memories you dare not speak outside of the requirements of these four walls.

Whatever. Them's the breaks.

He even relays the incident before he left his apartment with the "person that he's seeing." 

"I just don't want anyone's pity. It pisses me off."

"I don't think it's pity, James. It sounds like this person just likes you. There's a difference."

When he gets home, Steve is on the couch with a book in his hand that Bucky can't quite see the title of. Steve is a bit of a deer in the headlights, face turning up in a neutral expression like he's trying desperately not to showcase the real fear bubbling under his features. Bucky's jacket comes off and goes up on the coat hook, and then, loitering awkwardly in the kitchen, he turns back toward Steve.

"Can you, um…"

"Yeah?" Steve is too eager, like a puppy. It breaks Bucky's heart and sets something loose inside him. 

"Can you come help me with my arm?"

"Of course."

He's off the couch and in the kitchen with Bucky in three big strides, hands coming up to grip that warm metal elbow. It's a ginger touch as he traces his fingers up the back of the arm, stopping just short of the pit where gnarled flesh meets metal when Bucky continues with his thoughts.

"I can do it myself. I just like it better when you help."

It's soft and intimate, and it's the most Steve's gotten out of him in weeks. Fuck if it isn't music to his ears.

Steve unhooks the arm from its socket and slides it onto the counter behind Bucky. They're inches apart and sharing breath for the first time in what feels like a century, and Bucky curls into Steve's chest like a cat, listing slightly to his right now with the weight of the prosthetic limb gone.

"Can we talk about it now?" Steve whispers into Bucky's hair, breathing the scent of him in, deep and slow.

"Later. I did enough talking about it today." Those massive arms wrap around the middle of Bucky's back and squeeze. "Will you just hold me tonight?"

Steve doesn't answer with words, just guides themselves over to the couch and settles Bucky right there between his hips, back to chest. Bucky relaxes and melts, Steve's cheek pressed against his temple as he noses at that dark brunet hairline every now and again. He plants a few chaste kisses on the side of Bucky's face and nibbles at his jaw, biting at the skin with no real intent. After the third round of commercials Bucky starts to turn his mouth up to meet Steve's, and a pathetic whimper escapes Steve's throat when their lips catch. Bucky’s right arm slinks behind them to place a tender palm on the back of Steve's skull and pull him closer, noses brushing, tongues soft and languid against each other. Steve pulls ever so gently on Bucky's bottom lip with his teeth when they part.

"Stevie," Bucky rasps, low and sweet. "Can't right now —"

"I know," Steve cuts him off before he can really finish, kisses the side of his nose and the top of his cheek. "Me neither. Just missed you."

They make out for a while longer before Bucky sinks back into the hard expanse of Steve's chest, right hands resting atop one another's as Steve traces light lines up and down Bucky's sternum with the fingertips of his left. It soothes him into a dreamy, twilight state, and beyond the veil he hears Steve's voice uttering a sentence he's never heard said to him in all his life; a new string of words he didn't realize could be put together for a man like him:

"You can fall asleep, doll. I'll carry you to bed if you do."