Archive of Our Own ^beta

There’s a girl standing in front of him who looks nothing like Peggy Carter. 

Her lipstick is all wrong and her hair is too curly and it should be done up, and her smile is too unsettling, and her tie is too wide, too long. It’s all wrong.

He hears a game on the radio. The game he went to with Buck.

Something’s wrong.

He trips over his own feet as he rushes outside and sees signs bigger than he’s ever seen and more cars than can ever exist and he can hear him, in the back of his mind.

“Where are we going?”

“The future.”

They tell him he’s been asleep, for more than half a century, and they want to know if he’s going to be okay? What does okay even mean?

He manages a weak comment about a date he had, but then his mind starts racing.

Is she dead? Has time taken her from him? And if he’s here, is—

“Where’s Buck?”

On July 4th, 1918, Steven Grant Rogers is born into a world at war.

He’s underweight, premature, and the nurse thinks he’s dead when he first exits the womb.

They take him to the museum.

Steve hates it. 

It’s all wrong. 

The couch didn’t look like that, he’d know. He can still feel the shitty, worn fabric beneath his fingers. It’s weird that it’s under a spotlight, on a platform, raised up, like it isn’t the cheapest thing they could afford after the stock market crashed.

He’s wanted to fight his entire life, but never without Buck by his side. He doesn’t want this. Not like this.

There’s a sign that lists his maladies before and after the serum.

The conclusion is obvious: he’s stronger now.

There’s a tape rolling of him and Buck, and it’s faded and gritty but Steve can remember that exact instance, how glad he was that his friend hadn’t died in the war, wasn’t a casualty, that he could save him.

He sees the way he looks at him, and he wonders how did he never notice? He can chalk it up to gratitude that God hadn’t taken Bucky from him, but that can’t explain the way he grins too widely in all the photos. And Bucky is looking right back at him.

Those eyes haunt him.

What is the point?

Why is he strong if he can’t save anyone? If he can’t save him? What’s the use of it? It’s nothing but a uniform, a couple extra tons of muscle, and in the end it amounts to nothing because he’s standing in a museum dedicated to himself, and he’s not here.

The nurses are nice.

They wave and call him “Sarah’s boy”, and give him extra treats from their desks. 

He starts to make pictures for the kids in the hospital beds, writing “get well soon!” in big, block letters. Ma likes it when he does that, always ruffles his hair and grins down at him proudly.

He likes making Ma proud.

The kids at school make fun of him for being at the hospital all the time.

They call him sick. They call him weird. They say he’s infected.

Steve ignores them.

He passes out during gym class and wakes up in a white room, Ma looking over him with tears in her eyes.

It seems they were right.

He sits in the too-small chair and wonders if this is how they normally do it. Is he a special case? A super-soldier, submerged in ice for seventy years, now being rehabilitated into ordinary, civilian life? 

He’s seated in the back, and he can’t hear a single word the teacher is saying.

Her lips are moving and he knows that sounds are coming out but all he can focus on is the year.

It’s the twenty-first century.

It feels wrong, because he knows he was never meant to live long enough to see this.

Does Fury think it’s this easy? That by registering Steve in a few night classes and teaching him the ways of this time period, he’s just going to fit in? Does he think it’ll erase his past? Because everyone talks about the war like it’s over, ancient history, but it’s not. Not for him. 

He can still feel the cold of the Arctic, like an internal frostbite he carries with him everywhere. 

Steve is always cold.

He gets used to the white rooms. He gets used to the paper bracelet and the tubes and the needles. He gets used to being lightheaded and drowsy. 

Steve gets used to dying.

He gets used to the feeling of knuckles against his face, of the ground against his skin, of blood in his mouth. He gets used to hiding the drawings and the bruises and the tears, until one day he stops crying all together.

He’s treated like an object. This, he can do. This, he’s familiar with. 

It’s only been a year since he’s paraded around in tights, reading scripts off the stupid looking shield, with dancers surrounding him on either side. Part of him wants to reach back and punch Adolf Hitler in the face, a reflex. 

He’s really good at acting. All those times, reading those lines, he’s gotten used to it. 

The lines and audience have changed, but the idea is the same. 

Convince them the future is bright. Be a beacon of hope for the world. Never lose your cool.

He’s almost fooling himself.

The first time he does it, he throws up. 

He finds a dingy alleyway, pulls out the apple from the market, and then loses the contents of his lunch.

He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, his throat burning up with acid, but he’s got it now. He feels terrible, but times are trying and there are worse things he could do.

But Ma … Ma didn’t raise no thief.

The history teacher is an idiot.

They know nothing about war.

Steve can still hear the gunshots, feel the dirt in his mouth when he hits the ground in the trenches. He can feel the cold of the sleeping bag in the tents of the camp, can smell the gunpowder and rotting corpses. He sees eyes that are forever open, lifeless. 

The Howling Commandos are reduced to half a paragraph in a history textbook. 

He rips the paper when he sees them refer to Bucky as “James”.

Where do they get off, thinking they understand James Buchanan Barnes?

He’s cornered.

He knew, he fucking knew one day it was going to happen. He’d be caught. So he backs into the dark of the alleyway, hopes he’ll fade into the shadows, that they’ll forget, or even forgive him, because Ma is skinny and Steve’s stomach is always rumbling and it’s hard to get by.

There’s a crack.

The big guy’s on the ground and a new boy is towering over him.

There’s something familiar about him, but he can’t put his finger on it. Steve thinks he’s seen him around school.

“Bit of a scrape you got yourself in, huh, punk?” says the stranger. He’s tall. His eyes are grey and remind him of wet pavement. His hair is brown and it sticks up in odd places, wild and untamed. He’s handsome. 

He holds out a hand to Steve. He’s got fingers that could break every bone in the blond’s body. 

Steve ignores his hand and stands on his own. “I was fine.”

The boy raises an eyebrow, eyeing Steve’s lip.

He knows there’s blood dripping down his chin. He can taste it in his mouth. He lets it drip. 

He knows what he looks like. A disaster. 

“Never said you ain’t.” The boy grins. He has a chipped tooth. It adds to his charm.

Steve is confused.

This one is different.

Fury wants to know when he can get on the job again.

He can fucking forget it.

Steve’s done.

He’s so out of his element, it’s not even funny, and he doesn’t know what to do to get his footing back, to wrap his head around this new century, this new way of living, because everything is alien to him and he feels out of place.

The TV isn’t bulky enough, and the image is too crisp, and there’s colour, for some reason and it doesn’t look gritty. The sound is crystal clear without a hint of static and there are so many options of what to watch that it’s overwhelming so sometimes he just stares at the screen, with the device turned off.

He can’t help wondering what Buck would’ve thought of it.

He knows where he’s seen him before.

James Barnes, from the school football team.

Steve doesn’t have the slightest clue what he was doing in the alleyway, or why he saved him, but he feels like he owes him a thank-you. He doesn’t know what to tell him though, what to say. He’s used to keeping his head down and avoiding attention, blending into the background. 

He goes to his football practices a few times, watches from the bleachers and tries to gather up the courage to talk to him.

He never manages.

And then one day, without reason, James sits down at Steve’s table during lunch.

They don’t talk, they barely acknowledge each other, but neither of them move.

It’s when James has already left for his next class that Steve remembers he should’ve said something.

He has a melt down in the middle of a park.

He’s taking a walk because as much as the outside scares him and looks nothing like the Brooklyn he remembers, he needs the exercise so he’s walking outside the park closest to his apartment when he hears a gunshot and drops to the ground.

He curls into a ball and can’t move, can’t make himself do anything, other than lie there in the grass, like an idiot, trembling. 

His teeth chatter and he feels like he’s dying, and he’s cold. He can see his eyes as his hand slips, he can’t hear his own voice above the howling wind, but he knows it’s gut-wrenching (that’s how Peggy describes it to him later)—

Someone touches him on the shoulder. He pins them to the ground, getting them in a choke hold.

It’s a startled young man. Their eyes meet, and Steve comes back to his senses. 

“You okay, dude?”

Steve licks his lips, his throat dry. “Yeah. Sorry.” 

He gets off of them.

He can see a giant screen. A movie is playing, but it seems like a scene taken right from his nightmares. From his memories.

He looks it up later.

Saving Private Ryan.

That man, whoever made that movie, he knows what war is.

“Why are you sitting with me?”

The football player tilts his head to the side and quirks an eyebrow. “Why are you sitting here?” His mouth is full as he speaks, pieces of lettuce falling onto the tray in front of him.

Steve wrinkles his nose. “What?”

James swallows. Steve tries not to watch his throat. He fails. “Why are you here?” he repeats.

“I don’t …?”

“Sure, I sat down, but ya don’t gotta stay.” He reaches for a napkin from Steve’s side of the table. There’s an unwritten rule about never crossing to that side of the table. James has just broken it. Steve holds his breath. It’s because James has been smoking. That’s what he tells himself. It might also be because James makes him nervous. “So why ya here?” 

Steve watches as James wipes his mouth, somehow making a bigger mess than before. 

“I …” He draws a blank. “I don’t know.”

James laughs. It’s the first time Steve’s heard it. It’s a nice sound.

“Ain’t that grand? Tell me when ya figure it out, alright? Mind if I have some of dat?”

Steve eyes the apple that James is already reaching for. He slaps his hand away.

“Wow there!” He chuckles. “Bit defensive, ain’t ya?”

“You can’t take my food,” Steve says. 

James can’t take his food because Ma is still struggling to pay for Steve’s meds, and they barely scrape by and Steve still has to steal a bit and he just can’t afford to let James take from him.

“Ain’t taking if I axe ya,” says James, rolling his eyes. “‘Sides, wasn’t gonna to do it for nothin’. I ain’t no monster.” He picks up an orange from his tray. “I just want a bite. You can have this here. All of it.”

Steve frowns.

“That ain’t a fair trade.”

“Maybe dat’s the best Goddamn apple in Brooklyn,” says James. “And I’ll go to bed tonight, pleased as fuck that I had a nibble. Maybe it is fair.”

“It’s bruised.”

James laughs. “Didn’t bother climbing high enough to get ‘em good apples?”

Steve doesn’t say that he can’t. His lungs won’t let him. He envies James. He’s probably never fallen over from having to walk home in the cold. “It still ain’t fair.”

James rolls his eyes. “You gonna take the Goddamn orange?”

Steve does.

It’s called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, also known as PTSD.

It figures, that even after the serum, Steve is still being diagnosed with a thousand different things.

It’s no one but his own’s business if he tenses up at loud noises, or if the dark reminds him of too-small alleyways. He’s fine. And if he talks aloud when no one is there, and likes to pretend that he’s catching Peggy up to speed, well, no one has to know.

“Hey, wanna walk home together?”

Steve turns to the football player, confused. “Why?”

“We’re friends, aren’t we?”

Steve’s nose wrinkles. “Are we?”

James laughs. “You think I share my food with just anybody?”

The blond grips his bag tighter. “Do you even know my name?”

“Steve, right?”

The shock must show on his face.

“Surprised? Just cause I’m a jock, don’t mean I got nothin’ up here. Do you know my name?”

Steve snorts. “Everyone knows your name, James.”

James frowns. “Don’t call me that.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t like it,” he says. “Sounds so … proper and all that shit. I ain’t that proper.” 

“So what do I call you?”

The brunet shrugs. “Dunno. Figure it out, punk.”

“Jerk.”

The brunet rolls his eyes. “That the best you got, Stevie?”

Steve wrinkles his nose. “Don’t call me Stevie.”

“Then don’t call me James. Name’s James Buchanan Barnes, don’t laugh, I know it’s weird as fuck. Should be enough material for you to figure somethin’ else out.”

Steve goes to a modern art museum.

He thinks the art is stupid.

He wishes Buck was around so he could laugh at it with him. 

“Can you believe it, Bucky?” he’d say, “they think a blank canvas is art!”

Steve relates to the blank canvas too much. 

Everyone’s trying to make him into something, before he can figure himself out, and they want to paint over the dark blood and the bold black and the icy cold and turn him into a blank slate, to coat him in their own version of red, white and blue.

Steve doesn’t feel so patriotic anymore.

“Bucky.”

James blinks. 

Steve sweats.

Slowly, a grin spreads across the older’s face. “I like it.”

For someone who has broken the very concept of dying, Steve doesn’t get that much attention.

Maybe it’s Fury trying to give him room to breathe. Maybe it’s because no one cares about a revived war hero who doesn’t understand what “wi-fi” is. Either way, he appreciates it. 

He visits his mother’s tombstone in peace and he fills her in. Or, as best as he can. He’s still trying to wrap his head around the fact that there’s a 2 at the beginning of the year’s date because as far as he’s concerned, it’s just become 1945 and they have a long way to go till the next century.

He sits in the cold with lilies, her favourite type of flower. He worried for a moment at the florist that his memories of her would be faded, and he’d forget, but it’s like he just saw her yesterday and she was scolding him and Buck for walking into the house with their boots on.

Steve wonders if his blood has been replaced by ice.

“Ever been to Coney Island?”

Steve snorts. “With my broke ass? Very funny, Buck.”

Bucky frowns. “Really?”

The blond rolls his eyes. “Why would I lie ‘bout something like that?”

Bucky shakes his head. “Dat won’t do. We gotta change that, seriously.”

“Okay, sure.”

Bucky rises onto his elbows and tilts his head, looking at Steve with those curious eyes that are full of sparkle and wonder. He grins. “Oh hell yeah sure, Stevie. Imma take you out to Coney Island and it’s gonna be the greatest fucking day of your life.”

Steve scoffs. “Whatever you say, Buck.”

He hoards stuff.

No one really comments on it, but they notice he buys more than he needs and he always takes small portions.

Fury comes over for dinner once a month and asks him how he’s doing.

How the fuck does he think Steve’s doing?

Fury is paying for his housing, though it doesn’t seem like he has to, Steve’s bank account has been collecting interest for years. He has more money than he can conceive and he doesn’t know what to do with it all. It would be rude to throw it all back in his face though, so he puts up with it.

He does throw a fit when Fury tells him it’s been six months and he should go to physiotherapy though.

“Why you so close to the curb, Buck?”

“What are you talking about?” asks the football player, but it’s stupid because Steve watches him trip over the uneven pavement. 

“Why are you doing that?”

“Doing what?”

The blond frowns. “You don’t need to protect me from passing cars, Buck.” He hates it when he’s baby-ed and he thought Bucky knew that.

“I ain’t treating you like no fool,” says Bucky, rolling his eyes. “I know you’re a tough cookie.”

It’s Steve’s turn to roll his eyes

“I’m not on the curb. I’m on your left.”

Steve blinks. They cross the street and Bucky moves to the side farthest from the curb. He’s on Steve’s left.

“Why?”

“You hear me better this way, right?”

Steve blinks. It’s true that his left ear is stronger than his right, but he’s never mentioned it to Bucky.

“Doesn’t mean you gotta stand so close to the edge.”

“I wouldn’t be so close if you didn’t take up the whole sidewalk, you punk!”

The therapist thinks he needs to go outside more.

He doesn’t tell her about the Private Ryan incident. 

“Shouldn’t you be at practice?”

Bucky turns to him, his eyebrows raising into his hairline. “Practice?”

“Football practice.”

Bucky puts his hands in his pockets. “Don’t have it.”

Steve frowns. “Don’t have it?” he echoes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I quit.”

“You quit?”

“Dat’s what I said.”

It doesn’t make any sense. Steve says so.

“Makes perfect sense.”

“Why’d you do it?”

Bucky turns to him. He looks incredulous. “They punched you. Repeatedly.”

Steve doesn't know how he found out, because he’s been throwing him off his tail for a few weeks. The boys on the football team aren’t very nice, and just last week they called him “fag” while beating at his face. Bucky had asked about the blood on his shirt. The blond had told him it was jelly. Apparently, he had seen through him.

The coach yells at Buck to come back to the team, but he refuses and that’s the end of that.

The world keeps spinning and falling apart simultaneously. 

He’s used to this.

Steve’s always needed longer to catch his breath, to get his surroundings and wits about him, to shrug things off. He’s always needed more time. But the world waits for no one and as he struggles with it every day, the world outside his window is always so loud and busy.

He wishes he could tell it to stop, for silence to come to him.

It’s not that he isn’t used to the noise. The source of the white noise has changed, but it’s always been there. 

Sometimes he doesn’t know what he’s hearing and what he’s imagining. He can’t tell the difference. 

Steve’s always lived inside his head a bit more than the real world, always drawn line after line, trying to escape reality. 

His mind is more treacherous than any illness he’s overcome. 

He takes out a fresh piece of paper, and sits down in front of the TV, closed as usual, and lifts his pencil to the surface for the first time in seventy years.

“Holy shit, Stevie!”

Steve opens his mouth to tell Bucky not to call him that, he doesn’t like it, almost as much as he hates being called Steven, but the blood runs cold in his veins as Bucky holds up a paper to the light.

“Give that back!”

Bucky holds it high, out of his reach. Steve crosses his arms. He’s not going to jump for it. That’ll make him look pathetic.

“You never told me you could do shit like this!”

Steve rubs his arm. He doesn’t know what to tell him, what Bucky wants from him. So he fiddles with the hole in the seam of his shirt. “It’s not that big a deal.”

“Are you kidding me? This is fucking amazing!” Bucky’s grinning real big, and it’s like Steve’s brain short-circuits. Bucky’s looking at him like that, like he’s better than sliced bread. He doesn’t know what to do with that.

“It’s no big, seriously—”

“Steve, you’re a fucking artist!”

Steve doesn’t like that one. It’s a rough sketch of his house. The shading is all wrong, and the windows are disproportionate and he didn’t get the perspective right.

“Think you could draw me?”

Steve’s breath hitches.

He has drawn Bucky. 

There are sketchbooks filled with just Bucky. Bucky’s eyes, his hands, his smile, his hair, his nose, his fingers, his legs, his thighs, his torso. Pages and pages of Bucky’s figure, and Steve has never gotten it just right.

“I uh …” He licks his lips. “I’m not that good.”

“Hey, with your skills you could even make a big goof like me look good.”

Steve doesn’t need to. Buck always looks good. He knows better than to tell him that.

It’s like learning to ride a bike (Steve’s never learnt, though he’s pretty sure that’s how the saying goes).

His hand moves on its own, forming shapes, shading in the appropriate areas. The world fades away and becomes monochrome as he focuses on the lines and curves of the figure he’s drawing. The curl of the lip, the dimples, the sparkle in those eyes, the chipped tooth—

It’s wrong.

He doesn’t know how, but it’s wrong and the image isn’t right and he doesn’t know why, but he just knows it is and it hurts him and he’s suddenly in a sea of half-remembered faces, with the sunlight creeping in through the window and a giant billboard advertising himself and he wonders why he is the one history remembers when James Buchanan Barnes existed as well.

Something’s off. Steve doesn’t know what it is, but it’s been like this for a few months.

Bucky is walking by his side, as usual, but he keeps reaching into his pocket, trying to pull out something, and coming up dry.

And then it hits him.

“You need a cigarette.”

Bucky flinches. “What?”

“You haven’t had one in a while.” The blond frowns. He can’t remember the last time Bucky’s smoked. It’s weird to see him without the fag between his lips. “Do you want me to stop by the market and get ya a pack?”

“Nah, it’s all good.”

It’s not.

Steve can tell he hasn’t slept, he looks run down. He needs his high to function. He’s told Steve as much when he got him to try it once and Steve hacked up his lungs. “Let me get you some—”

“It’s a waste of money,” says Bucky. “Really, Stevie, I’m fine.”

The smaller boy frowns. “But—”

“It’s all good. I quit.”

“You what?”

Bucky lets out a long sigh. “I mean, I’m quitting. It was a nasty habit anyway.”

“But why?” 

Steve doesn’t get it. Bucky’s cigarettes are what make him Bucky. He loves those cigarettes, they help him calm his head and he always looks his best when it hangs between his lips all lazy like. 

Why’d you give it up?

“You coughed.” 

People smoke all the time now.

He buys a pack at the drug store and a lighter. He waits until he’s home before lighting it up.

It doesn’t hurt his lungs anymore, but it’s not really pleasant. He continues anyway, presses his head against the cold wall, shuts his eyes and continues to inhale the smoke. It can’t hurt him, not anymore, not with the serum. His body is too strong for that.

He wants to cry.

He thinks of all the sad things he can. He thinks about Buck, about Peggy, about Ma. He thinks about all the people he couldn’t save, the weight of one lost life amounting to more pain than the joy of saving one ever can. He punches a wall, but it gives way and now there’s a hole.

The tears never come.

He wonders if his humanity has melted away with the ice.

He stares at the hole in the wall.

He’ll have to call the landlord.

It’s a bad idea. 

Buck doesn’t listen to him, just drags him by his arm across the park, and then they’re in line and there’s time for him to get out, just slip away. He doesn’t.

When he gets off the ride the world is spinning and he’s unsteady as hell and he regrets eating.

He’s dizzy and his stomach hurts and half of his lunch is on the ground and the other half is dripping down the front of his shirt and his blood is pumping in his ears and Bucky is looking at him with the biggest shit eating grin on his face and it hits him.

It’s the spring of 1934, Steven Grant Rogers is sixteen, and hopelessly in love with his best friend, James Buchanan Barnes.

It’s not romantic. He doesn’t feel butterflies in his stomach, it’s nothing like the stories say it is. The world doesn’t stop the instant it hits him. He’s not in a panic, it’s not an epiphany, it’s just a thought that drifts into his head.

I’m in love with him.

It’s so ridiculous that he can’t help himself.

He starts to laugh.

He may be getting addicted.

It’s not a problem. He can stop anytime he wants.

He needs it, not because he loves nicotine, but because the smell of cigarettes clung to Buck even after he quit, for months on end.

It smells like Bucky. It smells like home.

It’s the only thing that’s keeping him sane as Fury gets on his back about ditching the physiotherapist and the giant cabinet full of food, and the Private Ryan movie that he forces himself to watch sometimes because he deserves this because he couldn’t save him.

Because Buck should be here, standing right next to him, smoking to his heart’s content because Steve can handle it now, and it doesn’t bug him and they can share that cigarette, and he knows it’s childish to think, but it’d be an indirect kiss.

He’s always so cold and the fire of the cigarette is the only thing that convinces him he can feel anymore.

Later that night, he stays awake and it really hits him.

Holy shit, I’m in love with Bucky.

The casualness of it, how simple it seems to him, is what blows his mind. Because it can’t be that easy. 

Every great love story he’s ever seen on the screens, or in the books, it’s always a struggle. The world always stops, a choir of angels always sing, there’s always something big and dramatic that happens when it dawns on the main character that this is the person they’re meant to love for the rest of their life. 

And then it dawns on him.

The reason it’s so easy, when no amazing love story ever is, must mean this is not a great love story.

It’s a love story that’s never meant to happen, never meant to start. 

Fury sees him with a cigarette and blows a fit.

He’s supposed to be a symbol of America, he can’t smoke, what kind of an impression does that give children? His life isn’t his anymore, it’s a public thing, and as much as he tries to avoid it, Fury keeps forcing it on him.

One day he’s going to snap, he really will.

Fury gives him a patch to ease him off the nicotine.

Steve hates it.

All his connections, all his ways of keeping himself grounded, they’re leaving him because apparently they’re not “right”, they’re not “good”. As much as the world has progressed, it moves backwards when it comes to letting Steve feel okay.

He’d give anything just to feel again.

It was bound to happen.

Steve’s always known it, with all the exposure she gets every day she goes off to work. 

He’s not surprised by it.

The doctor tells him his mother has tuberculosis and he nods.

He knew it was coming.

It still feels like a nightmare.

Steve can see how Anthony Stark is a descendant of Howard Stark.

One look into Tony’s eyes and he sees past the confident genius playboy persona.

Fear.

It’s unmistakable.

He’s scared.

There’s something familiar about that, about finding the fear inside of him. 

It’s eating him up at night. He can’t sleep. His cockiness is a shield for his true insecurities; that even with all his brilliance, it won’t be enough. That his iron suit, his innovations, his attempt to change the direction of Stark Industries, it’ll all amount to nothing. That he’ll never be able to make up for his mistakes, never be able to do right, even if he stays awake every night and tinkers until the crack of dawn, his life isn’t something that can be fixed with a few twists of a wrench and a hammer, but he keeps tinkering at it since he doesn’t know what else to do.

Somehow, it’s comforting that Tony Stark is scared.

Steve should eat. 

The funerary service had been small, quiet. He hadn’t shed a tear. Ma wouldn’t have wanted him to cry.

He’s spent the past three days drowning in his own tears.

His stomach is grumbling. He feels gross. His clothes are sticking to his body, his hair is oily. He’s sure he looks like a shrivelled up corpse. More so than before. 

He tries drawing, but all he can do is see her face and it hurts so much, so he pushes it aside and throws the pencils and paper across the room. He feels bad about it. She gave those to him with what little money she had. 

There’s a knock on the door.

“Oi! Punk!”

Bucky?

Steve hasn’t seen Bucky since the funeral. 

He wants to get up, to see him, but stops.

He doesn’t know why, it’s not like he’s good company. He’ll probably bring Buck down. 

He tumbles off the bed, unable to stand.

“STEVE?”

There’s a BANG as the door caves in under Bucky’s foot.

The boy is towering over him, which is really, nothing new. Bucky’s always been taller. 

“You’re a fucking wreck.”

“Gee, thanks, Buck.” It’s dry, and weak, and it hurts his throat to speak when all he’s used his vocal chords for is tears and wailing and struggling to breathe and thinking about just stopping because he has no use for breathing without her here.

Bucky shakes his head. He bends down to the floor until he’s eye-level with Steve. “You gonna stay on the floor for the rest of your life?”

The floor is cold. Steve is always cold. “Not now, Buck.”

Bucky shakes his head. “No, you’re getting out.” 

He heaves Steve up, and the blond feels like a newborn calf, unable to stand without leaning on his friend. His friend, who is so fucking worried about him, and he feels bad, because he thought he was done making people worry.

“You don’t understand,” he says, because he’s bitter and pissed and sad and depressed and frustrated and he thinks he’s going to cry and it’s not because of the ice that’s crawling along his skin, it’s the hot fire of prickling heat in his stomach that tells him Bucky needs to get the fuck away from him before he sends him to an early grave worrying about him. “You could never understand. You got Becca, and your Ma, and your Pa, and so much. You don’t know shit about how I feel!”

Why won’t he react?

“I hate you!” 

No, I don’t. I swear, I love you. I love you so much. But Steve bites back the words, like he’s been doing for two years now. It’s easy. Or so he tells himself.

Bucky doesn’t flinch.

“You’re coming home with me.”

And then he’s being hoisted into air before he can fight back because his body is too weak to fight him off, and he’s slung over Bucky’s shoulder. He pounds his fists against the brunet’s back with what little strength his frail, malnourished body has, his arms flailing, legs flying. Buck doesn’t even flinch. The blond tries to bite his shoulder, tries to do anything to get Buck to drop him.

He thought he knew desperation.

He was wrong.

He’s never been more desperate before as he kicks and screams, his voice going hoarse and Bucky goes down the stairs of Steve’s too empty apartment, and drags him a few blocks to his house.

Stop. You have to stop. Before things get worse. Let me go! I’m weird, I’m an abomination! I’m … I’m so fucking queer for you!

He doesn’t want to fall, because he’s done falling. He’s been falling for two years and it’s terrible. He wants to hit the ground. He wants it to stop.

He feels like Alice, in a never-ending free-fall, and he just wants to know the end of his feelings so he can contain them, figure out where they end and work his way around them. 

Because he can’t ruin this, can’t ruin what he and Bucky have. Because now … Now Bucky’s all he has left.

Let me hit the ground. Please.

He spends more time with Stark, who doesn’t seem at all interested in his previous relationships with the Stark family. 

It’s refreshing.

He’s still an asshole though.

He likes to make jokes about Steve’s age, and call him “Cap”, and laughs when Fury gives him a phone for SHIELD business and Steve spends forever, fascinated by the brightness feature, and jumps in surprise when he gets a text. Stark has trouble breathing when Steve lets out a yelp after discovering the flashlight function.

He feels good knowing that he’s helping Tony forget about his sleepless nights, even for a moment.

He knows he hasn’t been kept alive in order to comfort as much as he’s been comforted, to balance out a non-existent scale, but he likes to think Buck would be proud of him.

Air. He needs air. He can’t breathe.

He can hear Bucky asking him where his inhaler is, his hands on his shoulders, trying to steady him but he can barely suck in enough breath to breathe, never mind answer.

“Steve, Steve, look at me Stevie, eyes on me, you hear me? Focus! I need you to focus! Where is your inhaler?”

“D-don’t… d-don’t …”

“I’d say you fucking need it,” snaps the brunet and Steve hates to say he agrees with him.

“Have. Don’t … don’t … have … don’t …”

Bucky’s eyes are wide and Steve would laugh, if he could breathe. It comes out like a wheeze. 

“What the fuck do you mean you don’t have it?”

“Didn’t … didn’t want…”

“Didn’t want to breathe? Don’t you like breathing?”

“Weak,” he grits out finally. “Didn’t wanna… don’t wanna be…” 

Bucky’s harsh expression falls away. “Oh, Stevie…”

“I’m not …”

“I know you’re not,” says Buck. “Who cares what doze fuckers think? I know you’re not.”

He hands him a paper bag and it’s the best that can be done on such short notice. He sits down on the bench, feels the wood against his hand, feels like he must be getting a splinter, and Bucky rubs his back, circles along his spine. Steve calms down slightly.

“You ain’t weak,” says Buck once Steve can breathe again. “Needing an inhaler ain’t a sign of weakness.”

Natasha thinks he needs a date.

Steve thinks she shouldn’t waste her time.

He can’t dance, and he tells her such. She offers to teach him, but only one person can really teach Steve to dance, and he’s not here. 

He thanks her for her concern, but brushes her off.

She takes this to mean it is her duty to get Steve laid.

Steve feels like he’s twenty all over again.

“Why don’t you ever dance with the girls?”

Steve frowns. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, why don’t you ever dance with doze broads?” Bucky repeats. “Seriously. I think if you danced with them, they’d love you. Really.”

“I don’t know, Buck …”

“Never know unless you try.”

Steve’s cheeks flush. “I can’t … I don’t …”

“What?”

“I don’t know … how … to?”

Bucky blinks. Then, a grin starts to spread across his face. “I gotta change that.” He takes Steve by the shoulders and makes him stand up, then the brunet sits down. “Ask.”

“What?”

“Ask me to dance.”

The blond’s eyebrows crease. “Shouldn’t you be asking me that?”

“I’m used to asking the dames to dance, you ain’t. So do it. Ask me to dance.”

“But you’re not a dame.”

“No shit.” Bucky’s eyes are sparkling, shining with laughter. “Come on Rogers, before some other, less chivalrous gent asks me.”

Steve stumbles over his words and he throws in a weird bow that’s way too formal, his hair falling over his eyes. 

Bucky laughs at him and offers his hand. The way he holds it out for Steve to take is dainty, like he’s made of glass. Steve can feel the calluses beneath his fingers. 

Bucky lets him guide him to his feet, and once they’re standing, he feels ridiculous, in the best way.

“There’s no music.”

“Don’t need no music when we got the song of our hearts.”

Steve snorts. “Does that seriously work on ‘em?”

“Sometimes,” he shrugs. “Alright, let’s do this. So, you’re gonna put your hands on my hips, and I’m gonna put mine on your shoulders.” He does it as he speaks and Steve feels like he’s dying of heat. 

His hands are sweaty as they settle on Bucky’s waist.

“Not my waist, my hips,” Bucky says. He guides Steve’s hands and chuckles as Steve turns red. “You can go lower if you want to.”

“Jesus, Buck,” Steve hisses. “You can’t just tell me shit like that. Do you proposition every dame too?”

“Only you.” 

There’s laughter in his voice, but not in his eyes.

Bucky starts to hum a tune. “It’s real simple, Stevie, only got a few steps to it. You’re gonna lead me, okay? You go like this.” 

Bucky starts to move his feet and Steve stares at his feet a hell of a lot and he’s pretty sure he’s overthinking it as he slides across the floor.  

“Eyes up here, Beautiful.”

Steve chokes on his tongue. 

“Buck!”

“Sorry, can’t turn off the charm.” He doesn’t sound apologetic. “Occupational hazard.”

Steve frowns. 

It’s not right, the way they’re dancing. Steve’s too small for this, but Bucky follows him, even when he screws up. He doesn’t question any of his moves, just keeps following. He lets Steve lead. The blond’s sure he’s leading him off a metaphorical cliff, but Bucky comes willingly, without hesitation. 

They step on each other’s toes, a hell of a lot, and it’s clumsy and the apartment is still silent as Bucky hums, a beat, a rhythm. A pattern. He forgets to hum at one point but Steve doesn’t notice, because now he’s humming it, and he’s stressing on the minimal footwork still, but he keeps going.

They spend the evening dancing around the apartment, bumping into furniture as Steve walks like a newly born fawn. Bucky sees the walls, the lamp, the couch. He lets Steve lead him into them, and laughs it off.

Bucky’s probably bruised as fuck when they’re done.

Dancing isn’t really for Steve, but he enjoys the hours he’s spent with Buck, dancing around without a care in the world.

The outside world can’t touch him here.

Stark gets sick.

It’s not a big deal, Steve’s dealt with worse. Every time he got sick, he thought he was dying. But he goes overboard in trying to take care of Stark because that’s the way Buck’s always dealt with him, like every cough might be the last sound he makes, like every inhale will be his last.

“I’m not going to croak,” says Stark when Steve tries to put an icepack on his head. 

His voice sounds pretty croaky to Steve and he tells him so.

“It’s not like I’ve got scarlet fever,” says the playboy, rolling his bloodshot eyes. He sniffles at the end and ruins the statement.

Steve rolls his eyes. “Of course you don’t have scarlet fever.” He would know. He’s had it. It’s nothing like this. This is just a common flu. “So stop acting like it.”

“Stop treating me like I’m a baby!”

“Once you stop acting like one, I will!”

“Leave me alone, Gramps!”

“Respect your elders!”

Stark frowns. He sits up straighter in his bed and sighs, rubbing his temples. “Pepper let you in. Why the fuck did Pepper let you in?”

“It’s called being nice, Tony. You should try it some time.”

“Shut up, Star Spangled Banner.”

This is odd.

Bucky has a date today, with some girl named Bessie or something. So why is he in Steve’s kitchen, making soup with a ratty apron wrapped around his waist and a handkerchief pushing back his hair like he’s a Goddamn housewife?

Steve sways and Bucky catches him in an instant.

“Jesus, punk, gotta rest up that energy. Can’t have my best guy dying on me, can I?”

“You have a date.”

Bucky straightens the blond. He doesn’t give him a chair, doesn’t ask him to sit down, doesn’t usher him off to bed. Buck cares for him in a way that acknowledges his weaknesses but never makes him feel weak. He loves it. More than he should. 

“Date?” Bucky says, turning back to the stove. Steve’s worried about the electrical bill. 

“With that girl.”

Bucky shrugs. “This is more important.”

Bessie comes knocking on the door two hours later, demanding why she’s been stood up. 

Buck tells her that Steve’s fallen sick, and he needs to be here, to make sure Steve doesn’t do something stupid like try and go bar hopping. She doesn’t laugh. Instead, she starts to climb Buck in the doorway and Steve feels cold, despite the hot soup in his lap.

Bucky pushes her off, which is certainly new. 

“Not now,” he tells her. “Later. Gotta look after my best guy.”

She slaps him.

They’re over.

Steve shouldn’t be this happy about that.

They want him ready to fight.

He’s tired of fighting.

Maybe someday he’ll be ready, but he doesn’t see it happening any time soon.

They seem to think his seventy years in cryo have been enough for him to recover from the war. 

Time stops in the ice.

He is never going to get over the war.

One morning Steve wakes up and the paper reads: QUIT WAR ON POLAND OR FACE GT. BRITAIN, LONDON WARNS REICH NAZI BOMBERS RAID MANY CITIES; F.D VOWS TO KEEP AMERICA OUT

The world is at war.

It’s official.

He and Buck talk about enlisting, about joining the forces. Steve knows they’ll never accept him, not the way he is. He’s way too weak, he doesn’t have the power or strength to do it himself. 

That doesn’t stop him from trying.

They call him the Winter Soldier.

They say he’s ruthless, heartless. A cold-blooded killing machine who shows no mercy and has never once felt remorse for his actions. They don’t know how many the Soldier has killed, only that it’s many —hundreds, possibly thousands— and he never misses his target.

The only saving grace Steve can think of is that at least Bucky never had to die at the hands of such a monster.

Steve’s glad his best friend is having a good night. He just wishes he didn’t have to hear it.

The walls are so thin, and he thinks Buck’s drunk. He stumbled into the apartment and when Steve had gone to laugh at his drunk ass, he had heard her giggle. He shut himself in his room, where he lies now and kind of wishes he had greeted him, let them know he’s here. Maybe then he wouldn’t be hearing this. Or he wouldn’t be paralyzed, unable to move, unable to leave.

“James!” she moans and Steve frowns.

It’s weird. To hear him being called “James”. 

It feels wrong.

What’s more wrong is the way he’s reacting because he’s not meant to hear this, and yet he is and he knows it’s wrong, but as he snakes his hands down his zipper, he closes his eyes and imagines what Buck looks like with his head tossed back. He tortures himself with fantasies of what he looks when he comes undone, considers walking in and pretending he didn’t know, just to see it. 

On really bad days, he imagines he says Steve’s name instead of hers.

They call him the Winter Soldier.

Steve calls him Buck.

One time, he does hear it.

But it can’t be him.

Because he remembers being on the train, screaming until his voice was hoarse, until his throat didn’t work, until his lungs wouldn’t give, and shouting to the skies because that fucking bastard you said we’d see the future together, and he remembers crashing into the cold and thinking there is no future.

Not without him.

Ma always told him his imagination was too wild. 

The Winter Soldier glares and snarls “Who the hell is Bucky?”.

Steve feels cold all over again.

They’re strong, and their body is fit and defined. They have hair the colour of chocolate and eyes the colour of thunderclouds. They talk with a baritone and their smile is beautiful.

But they’re not him.

The hair is too well-kept, his eyes are the colour of wet pavement, and his smile isn’t crooked enough. There’s no chipped tooth, his cheeks don’t crinkle in the right places.

So when they go in for a kiss, Steve pushes lightly against their chest and shakes his head.

“Someone else?”

Steve gulps. “Yeah.”

He’s never said it aloud before. He certainly never thought he’d be saying it to a complete stranger, and that’s what they are, Steve hadn’t bothered to ask his name.

He’s hopeless.

The thing is, it’s that he looks like Buck. Sort of.

If Buck had grown out his hair, stopped grooming himself and ripped out one of his arms to be replaced with something cold and unfeeling. He has a muzzle, and there’s a dead stillness in his eyes and it terrifies him.

He apologizes and leaves.

When he opens the door to their shitty apartment, all he can hear is the girl’s moans.

At least one of them got lucky tonight.

He tells Stark his theory. 

Howard Stark’s child thinks he’s crazy.

Steve knows he is.

There’s a letter in the mail addressed to James Buchanan Barnes. From the US Armed Forces.

Steve knows it’s not right, but he carefully opens the envelope. He’s good at opening things without ripping paper, it helps them reuse it.

He’s been enlisted.

Why didn’t he tell him?

Fury wants him to put aside his feelings for the man and fight him, but how can he fight an old friend?

It doesn’t matter if Buck doesn’t remember him, or if he’s got a new personality, he’s still Bucky. 

He’s the boy from Brooklyn with the chipped tooth and crooked smile who punched him the shoulder and laughed with his head tossed back and always gave him seconds to eat even when Steve knew he was hungry. He’s the one who asked about his cut lip and knew when he lied about it. He’s the one who stole for him when times got real tough and they were barely scrapping by, who let him help lug the ugly couch into the living room and didn’t laugh when he got winded from a few flights of stairs, who gave him every penny he found on the ground for a wish, and always told him his eyelash wishes aloud, and they were always about him. He’s the one who always let him ride shotgun in the car, even if he had a dame in the backseat, who lent him his comic books and whose little sister would call him “brother”.

Winter Soldier or not, Bucky Barnes is in there, and Steve’s going to get him back.

They get into a fight about it.

It’s not as if Steve hasn’t tried to enlist. It’s not as if he hasn’t visited every recruiting station, but he can’t lie on medical forms and the doctors always give him that once over that clearly says “hate to break it to ya kid, but there’s no way we’re sending you on the front lines”.  It’s not as if Bucky doesn’t know Steve wants to fight for this country with every fibre of his being.

He can’t do it.

He knows what Fury wants him to do. He wants the Winter Soldier dead, but if it really is Bucky, he can’t be the one to end his life. 

Not right after he got him back.

Even with the fight, Buck still saves his ass in the alleyway. It’s unpatriotic to yell at enlisting propaganda, and it’s not his fault that he can’t just sit by and watch it happen. 

He asks Buck where he’s taking him.

“To the future,” he says.

Steve believes him.

He drops his shield.

He writes letters to Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes of 107. He never sends them. 

He’s going to hand them to him in person, when he sees him again.

There’s blood in his mouth, but that’s to be expected. He’s always been stronger than Steve, but he’s never turned that strength against him. Not ever. Until now.

There’s nothing in his eyes, only emptiness, but they still remind him of wet pavement and he knows it’s stupid, he knows if Fury were here, he’d kick his ass, but the shield is down, and he looks into his eyes, searching for him in there, that boy he knew who took him on the Cyclone and made him laugh at himself in the best way.

He will see him again.

“I’m with you, till the end of the line,” Steve says, barely manages to choke the words out past the copper taste in his mouth. His vision is fading, his bearings are gone, he doesn’t know where he is, but if he’s going to die, fine.

It’s about damn time.

He was never meant to see this century anyway, not like this, and never without him.

If the last thing he sees before he goes is Bucky Barnes, well, that’s not so terrible.

Peggy Carter stands on Steve’s left when she talks to him.

He wonders if she knows she’s doing it.

Only one person he’s ever known does that.

But he isn’t here.

He wakes on a river bank, the Winter Soldier no where to be seen.

He asks if a Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes is on the list of casualties and nearly strangles the man when he doesn’t get the words out fast enough, before he hops on a plane to Austria.

Fury warns him not to go after him.

Steve’s never taken orders well.

They congratulate him for saving so many lives.

He only went in for one.

When Steve is welcomed to the Avengers Tower by Fury tapping his foot impatiently, he knows something’s gone wrong.

They show him the security footage, and Fury says “I told you not to go after him”.

Steve tried, but the Winter Soldier is nearly impossible to find.

The ice that embedded itself into his heart when he hit the Arctic thaws a little as he watches the gritty image of Bucky Barnes wandering aimlessly around Avengers Tower.

Steve has all his letters, and he can give them to Bucky now.

He doesn’t. Not yet.

They want to do a psych evaluation of Bucky, but the man won’t sit still long enough.

The man who is a shell of his old friend.

He flinches at the slightest sound, and shies away from any physical contact. 

They try to give him a haircut. He stabs the stylist with the scissors. It’s a shallow wound, but it’s enough to convince Fury he needs to be detained.

Steve can’t let them do that. Not when he’s finally got him back, not after all this time of thinking he was dead, that it was his fault, he can’t have him taken away from him. He doesn’t know what Buck’s been through, what kind of state his mind is in, but he’s sure that detainment is the worst thing for him, so he offers to take him home.

Buck would’ve done the same for him.

He can’t stop looking at him.

He’s here.

He’s actually here.

He’s standing by Steve’s side, on his left, just like he’s meant to, even though he doesn’t need it anymore. He looks at Steve like he doesn’t quite know him, but likes him anyway. He makes fun of him for the stars and stripes and it’s like they’re nineteen again and Buck’s forced him out on a double date with the dames who see right through him and know somehow, just by looking at him that something ain’t right with him, and Buck defends him against unsaid accusations and it feels so good to be like this again. 

The moment they enter Steve’s shabby apartment, Bucky grabs a knife. 

Steve tries to stop him, if not for his own safety, than for Bucky’s. He’s a danger to himself, unpredictable and unstable. But the brunet just takes a knife from the kitchen drawer and hands it to Steve.

He takes it, and Bucky nods at him, then turns and walks around the apartment to familiarize himself with it, as though nothing’s happened.

“You said your name’s Steve?” says one of the Howling Commandos. 

Steve nods, but his heart isn’t in it. He’s looking over the man’s shoulder, looking for him. He’s scared if he looks away for too long, he’ll disappear in a puff of smoke and he’ll wake up at home in his bed, alone, and cold, and waiting for the chill of winter to creep into his bones and freeze him from the inside.

The man looks him up and down, and grins. “You ever heard of Stella?”

“Like, stars?”

The man shakes his head. “Nice meeting ya, Stevie.”

He wants to tell him he hates that name, but if it gets him to leave him alone faster, then all the better. Bucky’s started talking to others when he should be catching up with him.

He learns later that Bucky saw him as a handler who needed to be armed in case he went rogue.

He’s always touching him. Needs that physical, tangible proof that James Buchanan Barnes is sitting next to him at the bar, talking and laughing like old times is all he needs. 

They knock against each other whenever the other leans one way. He walks close enough to brush up against his shoulder. He puts a hand on his arm to steady him when he drinks too much, and he never takes his eyes off that chipped tooth and crooked grin, even when he knows he’s being watched. 

He doesn’t give a fuck. All that matters is that Bucky is back with him now.

Steve gives Bucky a plastic knife.

It sounds stupid, and it kind of is, but he feels like the man is more comfortable when he’s armed, even if it’s with pathetic picnic cutlery. He can’t hurt anyone with it, and he tends to break it, crushing it in his metal fist when he isn’t paying attention, but it calms him down.

Steve remembers when humming the right verse of an old drinking song was all it took to get him at ease. His heart aches when he hums it anyway as Bucky breaks his newest plastic knife.

Steve has a whole cupboard full of them.

“You’re different.”

“Not that different, Buck,” says Steve.

“Can’t believe they got you in tights.”

The blond shrugs. “You do what you have to for your country.”

“Damn straight.” The sergeant takes another gulp of his drink. “So, what’s it like? With the chorus line girls and punching Hitler in the face?”

“Same old routine.” 

The “I missed you” goes unsaid. It makes a damn good effort trying to claw itself up his throat and out his lips though. 

Most days, it’s like living with a ghost. 

The Soldier is silent as he moves from room to room. He snoops around, not that there’s much to find since Steve doesn’t have much in his apartment. 

It doesn’t feel like a home, even after living in it for as long as he has. To be honest, a lot of his stuff is in their boxes, like he’s planning on packing up and moving again. 

One day though he wakes up and there’s a cup of coffee on the table.

He takes a sip. It’s sweet.

“Hey, Buck?” he calls and he knows it’s a risk because Bucky doesn’t always remember, and he usually lets him instigate all contact, but this is confusing him and he didn’t make the coffee, which means—

“Huh?”

Guess he’s barrelling through this. “My coffee—”

“Yeah, I don’t know how you deal with all that sugar. Unless I messed it up?” and he sounds like the Bucky he knows and Bucky, not the Soldier, pops his head into the kitchen and frowns. “Why are you looking at me like that? It’s creepy.”

Steve can’t stop it. He thinks his face is going to split in half.

“What?”

Steve brings the coffee mug to his lips and takes another sweet sip. “Nothing.”

The fact that Steve never told Bucky how he likes his coffee makes the days he becomes the Soldier bearable.

Peggy Carter is a beautiful woman. What’s more, she’s kind, and opinionated and just the right amount of badass. 

Peggy Carter is a beautiful woman who likes him. She likes him for who he is, not who he’s become. She liked him when he needed a sandwich, and she likes him now that he’s gotten his sandwich.

It’s all Steve could’ve hoped for, really. That the little guy who threw himself on a grenade and drew monkeys in a circus got the attention of a woman as kind and amazing as Peggy Carter is dumbfounding.

And yet his eyes always linger in his direction.

Steve can’t breathe.

He reaches out for his inhaler, (it’s routine, he’s used to it, he’s spent forever thinking the serum is a fluke and it’ll revert him back to his old state), when his arm sweeps against the top of his nightstand, but he comes up dry. It’s in the drawer, but he can’t reach the knob.

The pain isn’t in his chest, it’s in his throat. There are fingers wrapped tightly around his windpipe, squeezing hard, a thumb against his larynx. He squirms. He opens his eyes and freezes.

Eyes the colour of wet pavement.

They’re still squeezing, holding him tightly by the neck, and he can’t fight back, not when he sees how empty those eyes are. They look like steel.

“B-Buck,” he rasps out. It’s hoarse, and he knows it’s weak. He feels weak, and he knows that doesn’t make sense because he can fight him off, but he doesn’t want to, not after knowing what they’ve done to his brain. He can’t make it any worse, he can’t contribute to that damage.

But Bucky isn’t damaged.

He’s hurt. And Steve will never add to that hurt.

He tries his name again. It sounds like a whine, like a dying man asking for a drink. 

There’s no hint of recognition in his eyes.

So he stays as is, and wonders what lead to this.

They’ve settled into a routine. Bucky sleeps on the couch, Steve sleeps in his room with the door open, and there’s always light. He never approaches Buck unless he makes the first move, he leaves his food out for him. If Buck wants to interact with him, he’ll seek Steve out. 

His vision starts blurring, so he starts humming. It’s a tune from one of those newer movies that came out, the one he couldn’t watch in its entirety because he broke down in the theatre and started banging on the door until it gave way and he ran. He doesn’t go out much.

He opens his mouth, draws in a deep breath, what he can, and starts to sing. His voice is hoarse, and it sounds weird and distorted and garbled and his fingers tremble with each letter he taps against the metallic bicep. He’s out of tune and off key, but he makes the words form, though he can’t remember them all.

“Just close your eyes …”

He pleads, he begs, he can't stand looking into those dead eyes, the wet pavement with all its cracks. 

“The sun is going down. You’ll be alright …” 

He draws in shape breaths, trying to see past the fuzzy vision. It might be asphyxiation, might be tears. And it’s wrong, but he’s so happy that he’s touching him at all because it means he’s real and he’s here and after so many hallucinations, after talking to so many ghosts the pain is welcomed, knowing he can touch, that when he uses that old code against his arm, even if it doesn’t feel the same, his hand doesn’t go through air. 

“No one can hurt you now.”

He’s promising, and he knows he let him down, and this isn’t the reunion he imagined, but it’s what he’s got and he’ll take it because he’s been waiting forever to be with him again, any way he can and it doesn’t matter if he’s struggling to draw breath as an elbow digs into his diaphragm and he feels weak and helpless because he’s here and he swears this time around he’ll never let him go. He should’ve never let him go in the first place and if he gets the chance, he’ll be better, so they’ll never have to do this again, so the end of the line will be reached together. 

“Come morning light, you and I’ll be safe and sound.”

He swears it because he’s not a hero, he’s selfish and he will deny Fury all he wants because what the man doesn’t understand is that for Steve, it doesn’t matter that he’s been saved. He doesn’t want to be saved if Buck isn’t right next to him the whole time. 

He wants to pick up right back where they left off, laughing at the bar and talking about all the damn stories they’re gonna tell Buck’s little sis and how he’s got some money in his pocket to get some new flowers for Ma’s grave and how he’ll make him ride the Cyclone again, and he hopefully won’t puke this time around and he wants to take that instant on that bright day in summer that was so perfect, it froze in his mind and was stored away in a snow globe for a rainy day and live in it. He wants to smash it open and feel it again, that instant he looked over at his best friend and just knew he was the most beautiful thing on the Goddamn Earth.

“Just close your eyes,” he repeats because he doesn’t know any of the other words, and he wants to pretend that this closeness, this intimacy is different and it’s the way he’s always dreamed and he just wants it all back. He wants to turn back the clock and go back, because he’s realizing to his horror he almost wishes Buck were dead, because this … This isn’t living.

“You’ll be alright, no one can hurt you now,” he whispers and he’s crying and his breathing is erratic and the pressure has lessened but he can’t, he can’t, his eyes are shut tight and he’s seeing colours behind them and he needs this because who the fuck is he kidding? Taking care of Buck when he’s hardly in good shape himself.

“Come morning light, you and I’ll be safe and sound.”

The last syllable dies on his lips, and he can feel the man’s breath on his face and he tastes the salt on his tongue as he tries to get himself together because he’s a fucking soldier, but maybe he was never meant for this job, maybe he’s always been too weak because Jesus Christ, if this is the price of war he doesn’t want it. He doesn’t want any of it.

“S … Steve?”

His eyes pop open and it’s like a fog’s been lifted and the wet pavement is just that, wet pavement. His head’s tilted in that way it always does when he's just the slightest bit confused, and Steve’s blinking because fuck, he can’t see past these waterworks, and it’s ruining it because it sounds like he knows him and he’s waited forever since that day with the coffee for this to happen and he just can’t—

“Jerk,” he gasps out and there’s no venom but he feels like there should be because he’s in his bed, with Bucky on top of him, and he doesn’t know how long this lucidity will last, how long before he wraps his fingers around his neck again and he just lies down and accepts it this time—

“Punk.”

He laughs. He laughs and he’s nowhere near out of the danger zone yet, but he tosses his head back and feels light for the first time in forever because the snow globe seems to have cracked, and broken and he’s got it again, that feeling in the pit of his stomach, that’s full of wonder and awe and so much adoration for the boy with the chipped tooth he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

“Steve … Stevie,” says Bucky, and yes, yes, say my name, look at me, know it’s me, talk to me, just like old times. “W-w … W-what’s going on?”

The snow globe remakes itself and his stomach falls out as he sits up in bed and Bucky’s still got his fingers around his windpipe but he’s shaking and he’s slowly pulling away and there’s a tremor in his hands and his body and the look on his face is devastating.

He opens his bed-side drawer and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. He hands it to Buck. “I’d say 70 years is long enough going cold turkey.”

Bucky takes it. Steve pretends he doesn’t see the way he shakes. “Where … where am I?”

My room. My apartment. You’re alive. You’re real, you’re here, and you’re scared. You’re hurt, but I’ll help you, I’ll fix you. I’ll mend you until I break too, and we can pick up the pieces together. You’re in Brooklyn. It’s changed a lot, in so many ways has stayed the exact same and did you know the laundry mat is a rarity now? You can order food and it’ll get to your door in fifteen minutes and they’ve got these weird things, called cell phones. Did you know that women can vote now? Basically everywhere across the country. They made a comic book series about me, can you believe that? Everyone we know is dead now, just about, or old and dying. I can’t get drunk anymore, did I ever mention that to you? I still have the letters. Apparently we have to check out this thing, it’s called Star Wars ? Tony— did you know Howard Stark had a kid? He’s a genius, and an asshole, but what else is new, but he says we gotta check out Star Wars , and Star Trek , which are different things apparently and everyone thinks one is better than the other and— oh my God, I get to know this new century with you , and it’s going to be awesome and they put our couch on a pedestal in a fucking museum, can you believe that? That ratty old thing? Did you know that politics got fucking weirder? I didn’t think it was possible either! And I’ve met so many people! There’s this girl, she’s Russian, — you speak Russian, right? And she’s a badass, a bit pushy and scary but you always liked the feisty ones. And did you know Disney’s like a huge thing now? Like a really big thing, and they have a black president Buck! Did ya know your collection of comics is invaluable now? By the way, did I ever give you back that one copy of—

“The future.”

Bucky blinks.

It’s such a simplified answer, but it’s all he seems able to process right now so it’ll have to be enough.

“I made it?”

“We made it.”

But even as he says it, he’s not so sure.

“So what do you say, Buck? You gonna follow Cap into battle?”

The brunet looks him up and down, like he’s a stranger, like he can’t figure out who the person in front of him is, and Steve gets it, he does. It’s a lot to take in, but it’s almost like Bucky wishes he had stayed weak with the strange look on his face.

“Nah.”

Steve loses his appetite.

“I’m gonna follow little Stevie,” says Buck and Steve’s floating and he knows he looks stupid but he feels so much for this man and doesn’t know what to do with himself. He raises his glass to him. “That little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb not to run away from a fight. Till the end of the line, punk. You ain’t getting rid of me now.”

As if he’d ever want to.

Some days Bucky’s coherent and he knows what’s happening as Steve tries to get him up to speed. He watches him go through the motions and it’s like he’s relearning him, finding out who he is alongside him. Steve’s been in his place, adjusting to this new century, but it’s different because he’s been through hell and back, but Bucky has ruled hell and crawled out of the pit with dirt underneath his fingernails and blood on his face and a feral nature that’s never quite escaped him. 

Other days, he forgets and wanders around aimlessly.

Slowly those days become fewer and far in between, and it’s almost like he’s got his old friend back. They sit on the couch and watch Star Trek, and Star Wars, and they make their way down the list of things Steve supposedly needs to know to help him function in this modern society, and they laugh and slowly, Steve’s allowed to touch Bucky more and more and he knows it’s selfish but he still wants more.

He wants, and wants, and it’s stupid and selfish and greedy but he’s glad that Bucky doesn’t seem to want to leave the apartment, that he prefers to stay inside with Steve all day and watch the impressive effects of the 1960s, and ignore Stark when he tells them they’re idiots because can’t they see the CGI is pathetic and terrible.

It’s when they watch The Wizard of Oz, and suddenly, there’s colour everywhere, and he’s not in Kansas anymore. Life’s been monochrome since the ice, but he looks to his side and sees Bucky butchering Over the Rainbow, and everything’s in technicolor and the image is sharp and clear and beautiful and he knows that this isn’t the same Bucky he knew, but he’s falling in love all over again and it’s better this time around, somehow, and it’s fragile but inevitable because how can he hear him laugh and not adore him?

Sharing a tent with Bucky Barnes is a sweet kind of torture. 

They don’t really sleep all that much. They pull out the bed rolls and sit down and Bucky wants to hear every little detail about what Steve’s been up to since he went out to war, and he could hand him the letters, but he doesn’t. Instead he tells him everything with words from his own mouth, his arms waving frantically as he gets into it and he knows he’s never going to give him the letters.

The letters have secrets in them, things he shared that he knows he can never tell Buck. There are too many “I miss you”s, and so many “I had a nightmare that you died”s, and stuff about Peggy and how she’s amazing but she’s not him. To give him the letters would be to pour out his soul and he’s not sure if he can do that just yet.

So they stay up into the late night, exchanging stories like they're gossiping girls. Steve listens in rapt awe, clinging to each of Bucky’s words, and Bucky eats up his own with the same attention and devotion, and in the darkness of the night it feels like no time has passed, like there hasn't been miles and months between them. It’s like they saw each other just yesterday and that familiar ache of loving him is back full force and it’s comforting, knowing it’s there, because it proves to Steve that the serum hasn’t changed him.

He’s still the same idiot in love with his best friend who snorts when he laughs and derails conversations by talking about how hard it is to play poker when you’ve got a bullet hole through the king of hearts. 

CRASH!

He’s being grabbed and now he’s on the ground and Bucky’s reaching for something and coming up dry. He reaches upwards and grabs a knife from the kitchen cabinet and Steve puts his hands on Buck’s shoulders and the Winter Soldier pushes him back because he touched the wrong arm, and he goes flying across the kitchen.

“Hey, it’s just a mug, just a mug,” he says. “Just dropped it.” 

It’s not just a mug.

It’s all of Steve’s expectations. Because Bucky is never going to be who Steve remembers. Those days are gone now, and though they come close to those moments where they feel normal and everything is back the way it was, it isn’t, and there’s no way to restore Bucky’s memory to what it was. Even if there was, there’s no way he could be the same man.

Bucky thinks Peggy Carter is beautiful. Steve can’t blame him. She is.

She’s gorgeous and she’s everything Steve’s ever wanted in a girl. She’s the one he should be focusing on. He’s got a chance with her. He can have her, in a way he’ll never have his best friend.

So he flirts, and it’s awkward but she doesn’t seem to mind and Bucky watches with a look on his face that just doesn’t sit right with him. He’s not sure what it is, he doesn’t get it because he’s watching him like he might— but he doesn’t, and what is he doing? Steve’s making a valiant effort to get the fuck over this and there he goes looking at him like that and his heart jumps into his throat and he trips up and says something stupid and Peggy laughs but he can’t stop looking over her shoulder at the POW he saved, who has saved him a thousand times over.

“You love him.”

Steve freezes. He takes too long to laugh. “And just who do I love?”

He sees right through him. Goddamn Anthony Stark. “Cut the bullshit, Cap.”

“Language,” he says, but it’s weak at best.

Stark frowns. “You know … times have changed. It’s not wrong to love him.”

Steve’s starting to sweat and he really wishes he would just stop. “I know.”

“I mean, ever seen the way he looks at you? I’d say you’ve got a shot—”

“He’s not like that.” He can’t hope. He’s back to that stage where he comes to terms with the hopelessness of it all and learns to live with it and Anthony fucking Stark is shoving a Goddamn wrench in it, like he does with everything he thinks he can fix, but he can’t fix this.

“How do you know?”

“He’s just not.”

Stark’s quiet for a moment. It’s a Godsend, but it can’t last forever.

“Ever asked him?”

No. Because he doesn’t want confirmation.

“Just saying … think about it.”

As if he ever thinks of anything else. He’s about to open his mouth, to tell Stark to mind his own business, don’t talk about things you don’t understand—

“Did ya know they made a line of Captain America themed sex toys?”

Thank Heaven for the small mercies.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. The Iron Dildo’s selling better than the Captain’s Whip though, so … just saying.”

When Bucky asks him if he’s been on a date, Steve tells him no.

“Bullshit.”

He shrugs. “Never had the time.”

“So what about the agent?”

“Peggy?”

Bucky nods. “She’s a hot one, right? Just your type.”

You’re my type.

He doesn’t say it.

“Out of my league,” Steve shrugs.

“Yeah, right. When you look like that?” Bucky rolls his eyes. “Guess my days of being a lady killer are over. They’ll look right past me once they see you.”

“Then they’re idiots,” because Steve feels healthier in this new body of his, but he doesn’t feel right, and it takes time to get used to it, and he knows that any girl he gets now is gonna be because of what he looks like. He’ll keep a nice relationship, so long as he keeps his mouth shut. He says as much.

“Aw, don’t be like that,” says the brunet and that’s easy for him to say because he’s always been gorgeous. “Listen, they didn’t know from nothin’ back then, and they don’t know from nothin’ now.  Overlooking you! You! You never get a girl, neither will I.”

“Huh?”

“End of the line and all that, right?” Bucky grins. “I don’t want you wasting your time on some dame that can’t appreciate what she’s got. If you don’t got one, then I don’t want one. And no dame I date who don’t like my best guy can stay, ammirite?”

“But—”

“No buts,” says Bucky. “Nothin’ changes, yeah? Doesn’t matter that you’ve got like an extra foot, you’re still you. I’m still me. A little shaken up, but I can dance as good as any of them. And hey, if any girl thinks she’s not worth your time, you point her out to me. I’ll join you in ganging up on her.”

“Buck, you know I don’t—”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t hit the girls. I’m kidding.” There’s something in his eyes that says he’s not.

“Hey … Steve?”

“Hmm?”

“Why haven’t you ever dated anyone?”

It feels like Natasha all over again, except this time it’s Bucky, of all people, telling him to get a move on and sell himself on the dating market. It hurts more this way.

“Just … never found the time.” It’s a weak excuse, and they both know it.

“You don’t … I mean …”

“What?”

“You don’t … like … anyone?”

Steve won’t mention Buck to himself. It just makes everything more pathetic, that he’s been holding a torch since 1934, that somehow never burnt out despite being submerged under the ice for seventy years. Instead, he grabs the remote from the coffee table and lets the pillows try to swallow him. “What do you wanna watch?”

Bucky frowns. “You’re hiding something from me.”

You’ve just noticed?

“Suspicious, much?” Steve hopes his laugh isn’t too fake.

“C’mon, you can tell me anything. You know you’re my best guy.”

Best guy. Of course. It’s just another way of saying he’s his best friend.

The blond heaves a heavy sigh. He sneaks a sideway glance at his old friend only to see him staring back. His eyes, the colour of wet pavement, watch him steadily with a certain scrutiny Steve can only assume comes from years as a tool for HYDRA. 

“I just …” Steve bites his bottom lip, wishes he could bring himself to break through the skin. Maybe if he starts bleeding, Bucky will let it go. “I mean there is someone, but …”  Steve bites his lip and it’s hilarious and ironic and painful and the words it’s you are on the tip of his tongue, but he holds them back. Stark’s words ring in his head over and over but he knows they can’t be true, so he clamps them down and swallows them like he's used to and hopes, prays Bucky won't ask for more. 

Bucky rearranges himself on the couch, sits on his knees, which, Steve doesn’t understand since he's always said it makes his feet fall asleep, and he hates those beesting pricks he gets whenever that happens.

“Oh really?” 

“It doesn’t really matter,” Steve says hurriedly. 

“C’mon, we never got to talk about this before, tell me about ‘em.” Bucky is smiling so widely, too widely. His eyes aren’t smiling. “I think I owe it to you, after so many times you listened me go on about Beatrice.”

“Bessie?”

“Yeah, whoever she was.”

Steve frowns. “I …” He doesn’t feel comfortable, talking to Buck about Buck, but he’s in a corner now. And it would be nice to get it off his chest, he’s been holding it for so many years, for lifetimes now. So he gets himself comfortable and thinks about his next words very carefully.

“They …” He licks his lips. He’s never had to put it into words before, and it’s hard. He doesn’t know how people throw words around so carelessly, not when they hold so much weight. He fidgets, tries to calm his racing thoughts, choose just the right words. He can’t give himself away, but he’s been waiting forever to say these things, and now they’re just a mix of alphabet soup as he tries to get it just right.

“They have a mouth of a sailor,” he finally manages to say. 

Buck laughs. “Fitting, ain’t it?”

Steve laughs too. It sounds tense, even to his own ears. “They … they hate peanut butter.” He doesn’t know who to talk about, Bucky before, or Bucky now. It’s hard to separate the two, but he doesn’t really want to because he’s realized he loves both of them, because he’s been doomed to love James Buchanan Barnes in whatever form he’s in. “It’s like … I can’t explain them to you, they’re too complicated for words, but when I’m with them … it’s like dying. 

“The world doesn’t fade away, and I don’t know who wrote about those damn butterflies, because they’re so fucking wrong about what it’s like. Because it feels … it feels normal. Like it’s meant to be that way. Like I’m supposed to be with them, and they’re supposed to be with me, next to me, just as we are. And I … I like them, I love them, and I want it to be more, but I’m okay with how it is right now.

“I don’t feel something in the pit of my stomach or anything like that. It’s more like, the stress of everything just undoes itself? Because when I’m with them, I just know that in this moment, everything is okay, and I can think that everything will be okay. 

“It’s not … it’s not something you can just explain. It’s like … it always sounds so extravagant in books and movies, and I guess it has to sound that way, because you need comparisons and maybe I’m just defective that the way I experience love is different? But it’s not like Peggy, Peggy was that. Peggy was butterflies and tripping over words and forgetting what breathing was, and needing an inhaler. And I’ve had both, I’ve fallen for both, and I love both of the experiences equally.

“It’s complicated. I … It’s not like a big revelation to me, it’s just a fact. Loving them … loving them is just what my life has become. It’s not a choice, not a thing about me, it’s my lifestyle, it’s always a part of me. And I don’t understand how all the movies when the hero lets the girl go because he thinks he’ll make her a target and he can’t compromise, he can’t let himself get distracted by her. Because she shouldn’t be a distraction, not if you really love her. You’d never reduce who you love to something like a distraction. 

“And the moment you fall, you’re already compromised. That’s the way it is.

“And I don’t dream about all those cliché things, because that’s stupid. I think it’s stupid at least. Because kissing in the rain sounds so impractical to me, and lightning is a thing, and getting all your clothes wet? And giant signs proclaiming your love to someone is like, what if you end up at the wrong house? Or if you misspell something? And what if the sprinklers turn on and you get kicked out by their dad who’ll never let you see them again? Grand gestures, they don’t have to be like that.

“Small things. I like the small things best. And they’re what I imagine if I ever got the guts to tell them. Things like date night hanging in the apartment, watching I Love Lucy. Or a grand dinner being something we make together, trying not to burn down the establishment.

“Any time I spend with them, regardless of what we’re doing, is special. Because it’s with them, it’s not about what I’m doing. Nothing I do makes it special, the way I feel for them … that’s what gives things meaning. I mean, I can do the same romantic crap to someone other than them, and it won’t be the same, cause it’s not the same person. Am I making any sense?”

Bucky fidgets.

Steve’s said too much. “I uh—”

“You should tell them.”

Bucky won’t look at him.

Steve chews at his lip. “Nah.” He’s satisfied as they are, and he can accept it this way. He is okay with this. Really, he is. This is fine. This is not a consolation prize, this is a friendship that’s crossed brainwashing, and generations, and time, and everything. They really are till the end of the line.

“You should.”

“I’m okay, Buck.”

“Are you scared?”

Steve shakes his head. “No … just … content. The way it is.”

Bucky wrinkles his nose. “They’re an idiot.”

“No, they’re not.” I am. For falling for his best friend when it wasn’t appropriate, for falling again when it was, and never managing to speak up. Steve is a thousand different kinds of fool as he laughs and changes topics to Coney Island and all the new attractions they've added since they last went.

 
“Hey, about that dame Carter,” the way he says it almost sounds like “damn”, “she’s been looking at you like you’re a piece of meat. Why don’t you ask her to dance?” He’s smiling and it’s beautiful and tragic and Steve doesn’t know why.

Steve should really start cutting Bucky off. 

Bucky’s always had a high alcohol tolerance, but this is a bit much. He’s falling all over the place, unable to stay straight, unsteady. But it’s hilarious and Steve is still high off the fact that Bucky is here and he’s real and he’s alive and he didn’t lose him.

“Remember that Brit?” Bucky’s got that accent, that old timey Brooklyn accent, and Steve loves it. It’s exactly how he remembers it, it’s like he’s been frozen in time. He has been. And he’s not the Bucky he used to be, but Steve thinks he loves this Bucky even more, and Steve has been doomed to love him, no matter how he is.

“The Brit?” he echoes.

“Carter?”

“Peggy?”

“Yeah, her,” says Bucky. His arm raises to the sky and he stares at his fingers, the metal fingers, in contemplation. He shrugs and his arm drops. Steve loves the days Bucky doesn’t focus on the mechanical arm that much. “With her curly hair and her accent and her big, wide brown eyes?”

Steve remembers Peggy. So well. How can he forget her? She gave him everything he had wanted with Bucky, that he still wants with Bucky. She was the right option, the good choice, the right choice.

He did love her. He really did. Just not as much as Bucky.

Did Bucky like her?

“I fucking hated her.”

Steve blinks. “What?”

“She was a Goddamn bitch. She thought who she was … so perfect, so beautiful, she was gonna steal ya away, wasn’t she, Stevie?” Bucky hums to himself a song in Russian, tapping his fingers against his chest. “I saw ya, in that bar, the way you were with her. Fuck, Steve, the way you looked at her … like she had hung the stars. I fucking hated her. She was so … 

“She was so right for you. Like she had dropped right out of heaven, on a golden platter for you. She was everything all those birds I set ya up with weren’t, she saw you, didn’t she? She appreciated ya, the way you had to be appreciated.” 

Is this a confession?

It feels like a confession, but Steve’s stomach feels weird and he’s scared, he’s terrified because he’s wanted this for nearly three lifetimes and he doesn’t know if he can handle disappointment. 

“It’s so hard to fucking hate her, cause she was good. She was so fucking good, for you. She was perfect for you.”

“Buck—”

“She was … she was everything I wasn’t, wasn’t she?”

No. She was perfect, so perfect, but I didn’t want perfect. I wanted your stupid blanket-stealing ways, and the way you drink milk out of the carton. I wanted to make you new keys cause you kept losing yours, and I wanted to stay in when you wanted to go out and huddle for warmth because it’s fucking freezing in the winter and I could pretend I was wrapped in yours arms like you wanted me. I wanted— I want you.

He doesn’t say any of it.

He’s good at biting his tongue.

They’ve found a HYDRA base and he can’t wait to fight alongside his best friend, the way he’s always imagined that he’s basically jumping out of his seat during the debriefing.

The way Bucky says “Cap” like he’s teasing him, the way he says “punk”, makes him warm despite the cold of the mountains and everything feels right.

Bucky gets real honest if you put enough beers in him.

“I saw you first.”

Steve looks over at Bucky, sprawled out on the couch, nearly empty beer bottle in hand. His tongue seems to loll in his mouth, like it’s too big for it. His eyes are unfocused. He’s obviously drunk, so very, very drunk.

“I saw you first,” Bucky says. It’s a whisper. “Dammit Stevie, I’ve always seen you. I saw you before anyone. Before everything. Before the ice, before the uniform with the tights, before the serum, before the fucking guy in that alleyway tried to beat you up. I saw you. I saw you before I even knew ya.

“I saw ya when you were reading the cap of a shitty coke, and you laughed at it, and I just … I knew I had to talk to ya. I had to know ya. Had to see you. And I swear, I saw … before I even saw you, I saw your fire. And you burn, so bright. So fucking luminous, I thought you were a matchstick, a piece of wood on fire, you were going to burn yourself up, and die before I could capture that flame. You’ve always been that way. So intense, you were fire. You are fire. And I’m always getting burned, aren’t I?”

What’s happening? Because nothing’s making any sense and he can feel that balloon of hope in his chest like a fucking traitor and—

“I just can’t … I can never stop it, can’t look away. I saw this fire, and then I saw you. And I’m like a moth to the flame, always chasing after it, always getting to close. You’re like … you’re like heat. 

“You are fire. And I thought, I thought you were going to burn out like a light, but my God, it was going to be glorious. It would be the most beautiful explosion the world had ever seen, and I wanted to be right next to ya when you did. And you did go out with a bang, didn’t ya, Steve? But you’re too tough for something like … something like … you’re too bold, too bright, you shine too bright to be taken down by the fucking Arctic.”

Steve swallows because Stark’s words are ringing in his head and they can’t be true, but they sound so real, and he’s not a saint, no matter what others believe because if Bucky’s going to keep doing this, he’s going to lose his mind and—

They did it. Their exit isn’t as clean as they wanted, but they’re making it and the train is speeding and he’s smiling and his lips are cracked from the cold but he’s on cloud nine because Jesus fucking Christ, they did it and—

Steve has spent his entire life in the cold, but when he touches Bucky, when their lips align in one of the most awkward angles, he’s warm. He’s so, so warm, he thinks he’s burning up.

It’s the clumsiest fucking kiss in the world.

Steve doesn’t have a lot to compare it to, but it’s still the best fucking thing that’s ever happened to him. 

Bucky comes at him, hands flying everywhere, and he’s pulling at his shirt, and the buttons are popping, but the fabric is also tearing, but he’s not taking it off, he’s just tumbling on the couch and then they’re not on it and they’re on the floor and Steve’s hit his head on the coffee table and he’s laughing and this is it. 

It’s not perfect, but Jesus, Steve never wanted it to be perfect. He just wanted it to happen and now it has and he thinks he’s dreaming.

His elbow hits the couch wrong and pain shoots through him and he smiles against his lips because this is real and it’s wonderful and he runs his fingers through his hair and he’s laughing and he can feel him underneath his fingers, all broad shoulders and rough hands and him, circling his head and making him dizzy and he’s very quite possibly high off of everything.

And then everything’s gone wrong somehow and he doesn’t understand how he went from such a high to such a low as he holds on for dear life because he’s just got him back and this can’t be the end—

Steve fucks up.

His fingers are knotted in his hair, and the curve of his ass is at Steve’s groin, and he’s in heaven, that this has happened, that after nearly three lifetimes are waiting, of wanting, of never knowing, it’s happened, and they’re nothing like they were when they started this journey but they’re here and he can’t ignore it, can’t pretend it’s something he hasn’t wanted since forever and when he turns over in the bed and sees the expression of horror and regret on that face he’s come to know so well, everything shatters.

The snow globe breaks.

The wind is howling in his ears and his hands are cold, he’s cold, they’re both freezing, and he’s stronger now, he’s can save people, so just let him save the only one who has ever mattered and he swears he’ll never ask for anything more and—

Steve goes for a run because he can’t hear Bucky say it was a mistake. 

Not when it’s the only thing he’s ever wanted.

His scream is swallowed by the storm and he can faintly feel her hands on him, trying to pull him out from the storm, into the warmth of the train compartment but he’s ready to jump right off after him because those eyes, those wet pavement eyes were the colour of a thunderstorm in that split second and he feels like a failure and his fingers still feel the ghost of his touch and this can’t be the end, not when he’s fought so fucking hard to be beside him this way and—

He goes back. Because of course he does, he has no where else to go and he knows this is the end of whatever comfort they had together. They can’t go back from this, but Steve will pretend he can.

He can smile and say that he was drunk (he wasn’t). He can say whatever Bucky needs to hear because he needs them to be okay because Bucky is the only thing that makes any Goddamn sense in this confusing world where the years start with 20 and end in some other number that’s far less than 40, and he can ignore the ache in his chest, just like he did all those years ago because he’s used to it.

He burns for the touch of more, but he knows he won’t get it, so he puts the perfect moment in a snow globe, like he does with all his precious memories of him, to review on a rainy day, to remind him that they happened and they might be over before they ever started but they happened. He’ll remember every place he touched him and he can close his eyes and pretend that in that moment he was loved back in return.

When he turns the knob of the apartment door and braces himself to tell the biggest lie of two centuries, he calls the one who claims it takes less effort to smile than to frown a fucking liar and careful steps around the fragment of his heart to mend the greatest thing he’s ever had before it’s too late.

Fucking serum. He can’t even get drunk now. 

So he sits at the bar and sees a ghost of the boy with the crooked smile and he thinks of all the words he never said, and wishes that when he had gotten shit-faced before he had been daring enough to just say it, so that he’d know, because now he’ll never get that chance.

Peggy sits down with him and drinks his fill for him, along with her own and she lets him talk her ear off about him, about all that he was to him and all that he wishes he could’ve been and she looks at him with eyes that say she understands. She knows all that he’s tried to keep secret because he loves her just fine but just it’s not the same and is she going to turn him in? Is he going to an institution for this? He may as well, he’s gone, so it doesn’t matter anymore, does it?

“I’m weird, aren’t I?” he asks. He means broken, scarred, damaged.

“No,” she says. “You’re in love.”

“I’m sorry.”

Well. He was not expecting this.

“For what?”

Bucky takes a deep breath. “I know you don’t love me, and I get it, that’s cool. I honestly wouldn’t love me if I had the choice either,” and that hurts because Steve has fallen in love with Bucky in so many ways and so many times that he can’t fathom there being anyone else and his chest hurts so much with the ache of it all. “And I know this isn’t fair to say when you love someone else, but … fuck them.”

Steve wants to tell the universe to hold the fuck on because he has no idea if the world is still spinning because it’s just keeled over on its axis because this doesn’t make any sense and why is this happening? But the brunet is looking at him with those eyes and the words die in his throat because he looks desperate, so he swallows back his confusion.

“I’ve been … I’ve been waiting a literal lifetime to tell you this, and if you want, that’s where it ends. I’ll tell you this, spill my guts, and shut up and pretend this never happened, but at least you’ll know.” 

And then Bucky’s talking, just spewing out words quickly and fast, like if he doesn’t say them now they’ll get trapped in his throat forever and never escape him.

“The first time I saw you, you were walking home from school dressed in this stupidly thin jacket and you just kept coughing and no one said a fucking thing and I thought you were going to collapse, but you kept going, and by the time you had climbed to the top of that Goddamn hill I was in love with you. You were just so strong, and you are still so strong, and then I met you and I got to know you and I fell out of love with you, because I never really knew you but then I fell in love with you all over again and every time I look at you, it’s just like, there you are. 

“I don’t … I don’t want to tell you that I’m better than them, or I can love you more, so I won’t. And I’m not going to tell you that what we could have would be infinitely better than whatever the fuck they think they can offer you, because that’d be a fucking lie.

“I’m fucked up. So, so fucked up. I’m not who you used to know. I barely even know how the fuck I am some days when I look in the mirror, but then I walk into the living room and I see you and even though nothing makes any fucking sense in this century, you do. Even though I can’t even remember my last name half the time, I know you take your coffee with three sugars, and you stir your tea counterclockwise and you choke on popcorn kernels when you suck on the unpopped parts. 

“I don’t need you to want me, or need me, I’m not asking you for any of those things. I just, I want you to know that I love you. And I know, I know it doesn’t compare to Peggy, can’t even begin to, with what she offered you, and it’s not the same, and it’ll never be as good as it was with her, and I get that. And I just … I need you to know.

“You’re my best guy. You were always my best guy. And I was just hoping … some day, maybe, if you wanted, I could be your best guy.”

Bucky’s so out of breath and his chest is heaving and he’s beautiful and Steve knows it’s wrong but he’s laughing because they’re a bunch of fucking idiots and this is amazing and fantastic and maybe just this once he can hold everything he’s ever wanted in the palm of his hand and he doesn’t have to give it up, maybe he can have this cause Bucky’s looking at him like he’s hung the stars and is this real life?

“I thought I was taking advantage of you,” Steve says, trying to catch his breath. “You were drunk and I wasn’t and I … I was so scared that I had raped you, and here you are apologizing because you don’t think I love you,” and it’s really funny to him, beyond words funny, but there’s something bitter about it because if Bucky likes him, how long has he liked him? How long could they have had this? 

“You fucking jerk,” he says and he wraps his arms around his neck and he’s sixteen and Coney Island is spinning and Bucky’s the centre of his universe, and he kisses him and he’s warm, to his very fucking core and there’s a part of him that’s pissed because it sounds like they’ve wasted so much fucking time but it doesn’t matter how long it took them to get here because the point is they’re here and Bucky is here in his arms and he can kiss him and feel his stubble and run his fingers through his hair and it’s longer than he thought it would be and they’re older than he thought they would be and it’s not his first, like he had hoped it would be but it’s fucking fantastic because this is just the beginning of everything Steve’s always wished for and never dreamed could happen.

As he goes down, he remembers the cold.

The cold is familiar.

The cold is the feeling of the floor after Ma died. It’s the nights without firewood in the winter, waiting to die. It’s walking home with Buck with the leaves in the fall. It’s ice cream at Coney Island. It’s the snow in the snow globe that Steve wants to live in.

He’s going to be in a snow globe, forever.

Steve can live with that.

He welcomes the cold.