Chapter Text
Six months after that talk and Bucky was recognizable as Bucky again. It had not been easy, but from that talk he had made steady progress. He seemed happier and more at ease with himself. Steve, for his part, had not had a better time since he had last fought beside Bucky in the war. The rest of the Avengers and Sam had taken to Bucky, just as Steve knew they would. The easy friendship between all of them made Steve finally feel like he was home.
However, the one problem with Bucky being himself again, was the same issue that had plagued Steve for over 80 years now, he loved Bucky. He had always loved Bucky, but back when they had grown up that love had been illegal, so he tried his hardest to never think about it or acknowledge it. However, in this new century people were more able to love whoever they wanted. Worse yet, Steve found that the changes that both he and Bucky had undergone made them even closer than before and it only made the attraction stronger.
Steve never liked to lie, and not telling Bucky was beginning to feel like a lie. It left Steve unsure of how to proceed. He didn’t want to make things awkward between the two of them but it already was with this secret. So as he had done for so long, Steve tried to keep it buried deep. As he and Bucky laughed together on the couch one Friday night recounting pranks they had pulled on the other Avengers, Steve tried to keep from leaning in and invading Bucky’s half of the couch.
“Are you serious? You made him explain it to you?” Bucky laughed, bent at the waist, clutching his sides.
“Hey, he had it coming. Honestly, I think they believe sex was invented only after I went into the ice.” Steve laughed along with Bucky, feeling no remorse for making Clint explain a sex term to Steve in front of Agent Coulson.
“I wonder if they think you wore earplugs the whole time you lived in Brooklyn and served with us in the Howling Commandos.” Bucky shook his head at this and Steve nodded in agreement. Just because he hadn’t “fondue’d” with anyone didn’t mean he didn’t know a lot about the mechanics and terms for it.
“You should have seen Coulson’s face. I think he was trying to decide if he should make Clint explain, or just kill him to keep the ‘National Icon’ pure.” Here Steve waggled his eyebrows at Bucky and they burst into more laughter.
“I wonder if Tony has a tape of this that I can watch.” Bucky mused when they had both calmed down.
“Probably, but you can’t let him know I did it on purpose, that would ruin the fun. He’s almost as bad at Clint, and I got him to blush last time I made him ‘explain’ something for me!”
“You jerk, and to think all those people think you’re the good one!” Bucky smacked Steve lightly on the shoulder and shook his head fondly. “I can’t believe how many of them still fall for your ‘goody-two-shoes’ act.”
“That’s because none of them know me as well as you, Buck.” Steve stopped to consider for a moment before continuing, “And they haven’t realized I can blush on command.” He demonstrated for a moment and put on his best bashful face. Bucky stared at him wide eyed before falling into even louder laughter than before.
“Christ, it is a good thing you are one of the good guys.” Bucky said finally when he had calmed down again. Steve had pretended to return to his sketching, but had been watching Bucky laughing.
“I think the same could be said for pretty much all of us.” Steve stated primly as he smudged the jaw line of the Bucky he was sketching. He saw Bucky take a moment to consider and then nod in agreement. Then he pulled out the book he had been reading before Steve had arrived with his sketch book. It had become routine for them to find themselves quietly sharing the couch, one sketching and the other reading. Some night they would turn on the television or movie or even some music, other times one of the other Avengers would wander in and join them.
After at least the tenth time of catching himself looking at Bucky, Steve decided he needed something else to distract him.
“JARVIS?” He called out, looking at the ceiling even though he knew JARVIS was technically everywhere.
“Yes, Captain Rogers?” Came the amused reply.
“Could you please turn on the music from the 30s and 40s again?” Glancing over he could see a small smile tug at the corner of Bucky’s lips, and Steve felt an answering one tug on his.
“Of course Captain Rogers. However, I have been asked by Sir to inform you that he has made several playlists for you should you wish to listen to some actual music. His words, Captain, not mine.” The droll British voice made it very clear that JARVIS did not agree with Tony Stark’s opinions of music.
“Duly noted, JARVIS.” In a moment the quiet strains of ‘We’ll Meet Again’ by Vera Lynn filled the room. Steve was able to hum and quietly sing along as he carefully worked on his sketch. The music and his mood had led him to drawing Bucky, Monty, and Gabe, as they sat around the campfire and laughed at dirty jokes. Drawing the old version of Bucky helped keep Steve from looking up, and instead he just focused on the memory.
Almost an hour later Steve felt Bucky begin to shift uncomfortably on the other end of the couch. It took him a moment to realize he had been singing along to the music, and it took another moment to stop as he realized what he was singing along with.
“You always break the kindest heart, With a hasty word you can't recall…” It was ‘You Always Hurt the One You Love’ by the Mills Brothers. The song had been popular in their last six months with the Howling Commandos. And unfortunately it immediately made Steve think of that conversation he and Bucky had had in Bucky’s first week of recovery. With a quick glance at Bucky, he could tell Bucky was thinking the same thing. He tried to pretend he wasn’t watching as Bucky placed his book down and turned towards Steve, as the song kept playing in the background.
“Hey Steve?” Bucky asked his voice uncertain again, in a way it hadn’t been in months.
“Mmhmm?” Steve kept pretending to sketch, thinking it might be easier to not make eye contact with Bucky; he had a feeling he knew where this was going.
“Do you remember that conversation we had? That one about being friends even if we accidentally hurt each other?”
“Yeah,” Steve hedged, still not looking up.
“Well you mentioned all those times that you hurt me without meaning to, even though I didn’t remember most of them yet.” Here Bucky seemed to pause as if gathering his thoughts, and Steve couldn’t stop himself from looking at his friend. Seeing Bucky struggling with his words hurt Steve and he reached out and gave a comforting squeeze to Bucky’s metal arm.
“Just ask what you want to ask, I promise I won’t get mad.” Steve said gently, hoping it was what Bucky needed to hear. It seemed to work, as Bucky took a breath and then met Steve’s eyes.
“You said that I had hurt you back before I was the Winter Solider. I need to know what those things were. There are still so many things I can’t remember. But mostly I want to try not to repeat any of those things if I can help it.” He was looking so earnestly at Steve, that Steve had to go back to looking at his sketch book.
“Are you sure?” Steve asked quietly. He knew he would do whatever Bucky asked, but it would also hurt Bucky to hear these things. Besides, Steve’s feelings about Bucky were tied into several of the incidents he could think of. Glancing back at Bucky, he saw the other man brace himself and nod curtly.
“There are the ones that you couldn't help, and would have changed if you could.” Steve decided to start with the obvious ones and then gauge how Bucky took them before he continued. He knew he had to tread carefully as Bucky was still recovering but if Bucky felt Steve was holding back and babying him it would also upset Bucky.
“There was the fact that you were so strong and big and could protect yourself, and me. That you were always healthy and never got sick, and I could never make it more than a month without getting ill. Then you were able to enlist and fight for our country when I couldn’t.” He paused a moment and glanced at Bucky while he tried to think about how to phrase the next one, it would be the best one to indicate how much truth Bucky was looking for right now.
“When you didn’t tell me what was wrong after I saved you from the HYDRA base. And that you stopped smiling for the most part after that; you were only just starting to smile again when...” Steve trailed off unable to say the end of the sentence as he returned to staring at his sketchpad, but he wasn’t seeing it. Instead he could picture that broken twitch of the lips that Bucky had started doing after Steve had saved him, that had only started to give way to real smiles again just before Bucky fell.
Glancing over at Bucky, he could see just a slight furrowing of his brow. He realized Bucky seemed to be doing alright with what he had mentioned already. More so he was looking at Steve expectantly, he knew or guessed there were other hurts. Steve realized that all the ones he could think of would make it painfully obvious about how he felt about Bucky. However, in that moment, with his hair tied messily back, and the light dim around them, Bucky was beautiful. Steve realized that he hated being a coward and 80 years was too long to not say anything. He had never run from a physical fight, so why was he running from this?
“It hurt when you set up all those awful double dates and I would end up as the odd one out.” Steve paused and took a calming breath before continuing, he couldn’t glance at Bucky until he said everything else. “Every time you called yelled at someone for being a ‘fucking fairy’ it felt like a sucker punch to the gut. Did you know the first time you did that, when you saved me in a fight, I thought you were talking to me? I thought you had finally figured out what I was trying so hard to deny.” He gave a helpless shrug of his shoulders, still refusing to look up. He continued on before his nerves could get the best of him. “It broke something in me when I watched you fall and there was nothing I could do to save you. I thought I might have been in Hell when I woke up after I should have died and you weren’t here, and even more so when I found you but you didn’t remember me.”
There was a long stretch of silence as Steve finished speaking. While he had been brave enough to hint at what he had felt and feels for Bucky, he didn’t want to look up and see Bucky’s reaction. But as the silence stretched, he found it impossible not to glance at his friend. He was surprised; he had thought maybe Bucky would be upset or maybe angry, instead he looked shocked and sad.
“Shit, Stevie.” He finally whispered in a ragged voice. “I never meant it, not in the way you were thinking. And…And I never knew that you were…Didn’t think there was any way…” Bucky seemed to stumble over the words, unsure of what to say, stopping himself before he could finish a thought. Steve still didn’t really know what Bucky was trying to say.
“S’alright, Buck. I tried really hard to make sure you didn’t know.” Steve said and shrugged his shoulders, and again returned to looking at his sketchpad. “But I’ve always liked gals and guys.”
“You could have told me; you should have told me.” Bucky gave a sad laugh, which made Steve’s eyebrows furrow and he stole a quick look back to Bucky. Bucky was looking wistful and his eyes were clearly more focused on the past than anything in the room. “It would have been nice to know I wasn’t the only one who liked both.”
Steve’s head whipped up to face Bucky so fast he was fairly certain he had tweaked something in his neck. He tried replaying all his memories of Bucky to see if there was any hint of Bucky liking guys as well, but there were none that he could think of.
“Are you sure? I mean you really loved the dames back in the day. Maybe you are misinterpreting some memories or something. I mean how could you have shouted what you did if you were sort of one?” Part of the reason Steve had never told Bucky how he felt was because of Bucky’s words in the fights, and how there was no hint that he felt like Steve. Instead of responding right away Bucky finally met Steve’s eyes incredulously, one of his eyebrows rose slowly as Steve just kept staring confusedly back.
“You’re not kidding are you? You really had no idea? No idea how I felt or why I said what I did?” The way he asked this made Steve bristle a little, it was the tone someone would use when another person didn’t get a simple concept after the 3rd time of having it explained to them. “Shit, Stevie. I’m pretty sure most people knew I was in love with you.”
Steve felt his heart clench at those words. He wasn’t sure if it was the fact that it was so close to what he had always wanted to hear, or because it was in past tense. He shook his head, trying to clear out what he had thought he had heard and what was actually said, but Bucky’s words didn’t change when he replayed them in his head. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Bucky’s hand reaching towards him, before faltering as if afraid to continue. As he turned to look at Bucky, Bucky pulled his hand back the rest of the way and clenched it into a fist. His face darkened as memories he didn’t like floated to the surface.
“The guys at the docks; not all of them liked me. A few of them knew what neighborhood we lived in, knew the reputation of the area. But it was alright, they couldn’t really prove one way or the other, and I was always able to talk about the girls I had been with. It was fine until you stopped by that one day when I forgot my lunch.” Bucky gave a helpless shrug of his non-metal shoulder, a bitter smile snaked across his face. “According to a couple of the guys I get ‘googly eyes’ when you are around. And everyone agreed you were rather pretty, so they made assumptions about you and us. After that they really started giving me a hard time, which wasn’t a problem. But it bothered them that they couldn’t rattle me, and they couldn’t beat me in a fight. So then they began to start making threats against you, they knew that that would hurt me. That first time I called anyone a ‘fucking fairy’ it was some of the guys from the dock. They had seen us on a double date, and thought that was further proof, so they waited until I left you for a bit.”
Steve felt his breath catch in his chest in a way it hadn’t since he had received the serum. He had thought that fight was strange, usually he had done something to aggravate the other party, but that night the guys had seemed to target him. The pain in Bucky’s voice also made Steve clench his fist in anger at the men who were all probably long dead.
“When I finally found you out there, and saw who it was that was beating on you, I knew it was my fault. I hadn’t done enough to convince them that there was no reason to go after you. That was why I said what I did. I knew they would think, I guess like you did too, that there was no way a ‘fairy’ would use those phrases.” Bucky’s voice was self deprecating and angry. Steve didn’t hesitate this time, he set his sketch pad on the floor, and reached over to take one of Bucky’s hands. Bucky looked up at Steve, startled, and then looked back down to his lap as he continued. But he didn’t pull his hand away.
“I don’t regret doing what I had to do to try to keep us, and mostly you, safe. I wish I could have told you how I felt, and that those words where never meant for you. But if I had to do it over again I would, there is very little I would not have done to keep you safe. So each time I realized it was someone from the dock who had started the fight with either of us, I did what I had to.” Steve just rubbed lightly at the back of Bucky’s knuckles with his thumb. He remembered the times Bucky had returned home with his knuckles bruised and refused to tell Steve what had happened.
“It worked though, they backed off. But that might just have been because of the War. I couldn’t have enlisted and left you there if I hadn’t known that the ones that caused me the most trouble had already shipped out.” Bucky continued to look down to his lap and not at Steve. They lapsed into silence, each thinking about the past, while Steve continued to stroke Bucky’s hand. Finally Steve decided to break the silence.
“You said everyone but me knew, but if it was only the dock guys…” He let his sentence trail off, as a small smirk pulled at the corner of Bucky’s lips.
“All the Commandos knew, and Peggy and Howard.” There was a small hint of laughter in Bucky’s voice as he responded.
“You told the Commandos?” Steve spluttered, he wasn’t ready to think about Peggy and Howard knowing. But now things they had said to him were making more sense, especially Howard’s offers of locks to keep the other Commandos out.
“Not really.” Bucky bit his lip and screwed up his face in thought, then scrunched up his nose in embarrassment as he continued. “Well, sort of. There wasn’t a lot to do while being held captive by Hydra, so we all got to talking. Everyone else was talking about the people they missed most from back home, their girls. I might have told them about this adorable, little spitfire of a blonde that could throw a mean right hook, or draw the most breathtaking artwork with these beautiful long fingers.” Here Bucky reached up with his left hand and rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. It was a motion that Steve recognized as one he still did, and wondered if Bucky had learned it from him. Then he felt an incredulous smile cross his face as he realized Bucky had really liked him, even before the serum.
“I might even have said her name was Stevie, and that while we had never talked about how we felt, she wrote me letters every week and included drawings from home. The other guys were so jealous.” Here both Steve and Bucky chuckled for a moment. Then Bucky sobered a bit and continued. “I don’t think any of us thought we would get out alive from that base, so I wasn’t that worried. But the next thing I knew I was waking up to your face; thinking I had either died or that Hydra had figured out the one thing that could break me.” Steve gave Bucky’s hand a light squeeze, and bit his lip to keep from interrupting.
“I knew it wouldn’t take them long to figure everything out. The bastards pulled me aside on the march back to camp.” There was a fondness to Bucky’s voice that softened his words, and the soft smirk was back. “I was prepared to fight them, as I thought they might be ganging up on me. Instead Dum Dum walked right up to me, clapped me on the shoulder and congratulated me on snagging Captain America. The others joined him, and generally gave me a hard time. It was nice knowing they didn’t have a problem, but I had to explain that we weren’t a couple, and that you didn’t feel the same way I did.” He gave another helpless shrug at this, and Steve gave him another light squeeze.
“Thing was I did, I always had. Still do actually.” It was Steve turn to look down and away. It was the first time either of them had really broached what they were currently feeling, not just how they had. He felt Bucky give his hand a light squeeze in return.
“But I didn’t know that then. I probably should have taken more of a hint from their pointed glances and teasing, but I just thought I was interpreting things the way I wanted to see them. The Commandos seemed to make it a game to see who could make the most innuendos about the two of us, and get me to blush first. You were so goddamned oblivious to all of it, which just made it worse.” Steve felt a blush stain his cheeks as he thought back to all the comments the Commandos had said around him and Bucky. He realized just how many of them there had been, and buried his face into his free hand and shook his head. He really had been an idiot.
“As to Peggy she must have just used her ‘woman’s intuition’ but she just shot me meaningful looks, and mentioned that you were a bit blind to any romantic interest unless someone was kissing you.” That did not help Steve’s blush, and he buried his face further in his hand. “And Howard stopped me one day when I was picking up my rifle from him, and he warned me to be careful. He said while it might not matter to people on the front, if higher ups in plushy offices heard something they didn’t like they would easily take me away, as I was the expendable bit. I tried to tell him I had no idea what he was talking about. But he said, and I am quoting him here, he might believe me if I didn’t look at you ‘like you were the center of my fucking universe.’ He certainly had a way with words.” Bucky said ruefully.
“How blind was I, if a Stark noticed before I did?” Steve muttered to himself. He only hoped that Howard had never mentioned anything to Tony, because that would just make things awkward.
“Yeah well at least you weren’t the one called out by a Stark for being so obvious.” There was another comfortable pause between them, and again Steve decided to break it.
“How did you not know how I felt about you Buck? I mean looking back I am sure Peggy and Howard figured it out when I went to rescue you. Not many people disobey orders, steal military equipment, temporarily hijack the top weapons consultant to play pilot, and sass off to superior officer as they are jumping out of a plane to rescue one man. And then take on a whole base filled with the highest grade weapons in the war. Looking back I guess I was as subtle as my outfit.” Steve couldn’t help the giggle that escaped him as he really thought about the implications of that rescue mission.
“Alright so I guess we are both idiots.” Bucky was chuckling too. He stopped and tugged lightly on their joined hands, and made sure Steve was looking at him before he continued. “Did you mean it Stevie? Do you still really feel the same way about me? Even after everything I have done? After how I have changed?” While Bucky made sure to keep eye contact with Steve, there was nervousness in his voice. Once he had asked the questions he began to worry his bottom lip with his teeth.
“James Buchanan Barnes, I love you. I loved you when we were kids, when we had nothing else but each other. I loved you even when I thought I had lost you forever. And now that you are back I find that I love you a more each day.” Steve loved the way a very slight flush rose to Bucky’s cheekbones, and his eyes widened in response to Steve’s somewhat dramatic words. It had felt so good to finally say how he felt, he could finally admit out loud how much he loved Bucky.
“You are such as sap, Steve.” Bucky smiled and shook his head. Steve took that as a good sign, but he still needed to ask.
“So what do you say, Buck? Is there a chance that you still feel like you used to about me?” He was impressed that he had managed to ask in such an even voice.
“You were the one thing that was able to break through to me after everything Hydra did to me. When my memories first started coming back I didn’t even know who I was, but I knew I loved you, you punk. It’s always been you Steve, and it always will be.” Bucky’s face had softened, and Steve felt a smile stretch across his face. Then Bucky was tugging at their joined hands, and Steve went with it. Leaning close he sealed their lips together in a kiss that had been 80 years in the making. It felt like coming home.
When they finally pulled apart, there was some shuffling on the couch until they were curled up together. Bucky half in Steve’s lap, leaning back against him, with Steve’s arms holding him close. It was comfortable and felt right.
“So does this mean you’re my boyfriend then?” Steve teased.
“God knows you deserve someone so much better than me, but I also know that if I suggest that you are too stubborn to listen to me. So I guess if you will have me, I am. Although I think I prefer the term partner.” Bucky gave a little flippant shrug at this last bit. Steve decided he would have to try and convince Bucky later that he was exactly what Steve deserved, but for now he just pulled Bucky close.
“I like that even better. Partners then. ’Til the end of the line.” Bucky nodded against his shoulder, and Steve smiled as the opening strains of Frank Sinatra’s version of “Day by Day” started to play.
“Day by day I'm falling more in love with you,
And day by day my love seems to grow,
There isn’t any end to my devotion,
It's deeper dear by far than any ocean…”
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