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1. the second star to the right shines in the night for you
They find Bucky three months after he goes AWOL: dirty and emaciated, his dislocated arm broken twice and healing poorly, prosthesis lacking in fine motor skill. Officially, Hill orders that Steve bring the Winter Soldier into the tower -- but it’s Natasha who shows up just outside of DC, a tight look on her face and a hand squeezed over Steve's. She sedates Bucky and they lift him carefully into the car, and Steve doesn’t have to ask where they’re going, doesn’t say anything until they see the bright light of the familiar neon blue insignia.
Tony’s AI has Steve's floor on near-complete lockdown. Steve still has clearance to enter at will but his presence is monitored and Steve isn’t sure which of them they distrust more. They re-set Bucky’s arm, though, and Tony images and models and frowns at Bucky’s prosthetic, repairs what he has and promises better. No sensitivity, he mutters, as Steve strokes the sweaty forehead of Bucky’s unconscious form. Didn’t even damn try.
Bucky wakes up an hour later, bandaged tight and wrapped in Steve's clothing, a pair of sweatpants and an oversized hoodie. He doesn't try to run, doesn't move from where he's been left on the couch, but he eyes Steve warily as he putts around the room, gaze sharp with nervous energy and whole body hunched. Steve feels like he’s trying to gentle an animal, and his gut flips horribly, seeing Bucky reduced to muscle-memory and nerves.
“Hey, Buck.” Steve moves carefully, sitting down on the opposite side of the couch. “Thought we’d watch a couple movies. Not much else to do. Sam -- he’s got the wings, you’ll like him -- Sam gave me some suggestions, stuff that might be good for you.”
Bucky blinks at him, and Steve sighs, but it doesn’t change his resolve. He just pulls the afghan off the back of the couch and holds it out to show it to Bucky before tucking it, slowly, over his shoulders. Bucky jerks in surprise but stays still while Steve wraps it around him. When he’s done, Bucky’s own right hand comes out to grip the edges, holding it in place.
“You remember Walt Disney? When we went and saw “Snow White?” Or that other one -- “Pinocchio?” He doesn’t expect Bucky to answer; it’s like talking to a ghost, and Steve aches with it, busying himself by putting in a DVD. “They still make those movies. It’s a whole big company now. I’ve got some of them -- I think this one’s…” He reads the cover. “Alice in Wonderland” and ‘Peter Pan.’ Is that okay?”
But Bucky just blinks at him again. Steve isn’t sure if he’s getting no response because the idea of decisions are overwhelming, or because there’s genuinely nothing in there. He can’t think about the second possibility, though, so he picks up “Peter Pan” and puts in the DVD. Bucky’s eyes follow him as he crosses back beside the couch, close enough to the prosthesis to be deadly, if Bucky wanted.
“I’ve got a meeting downstairs, but I’ll be back after that.” He reaches out, then thinks better of it, hand hovering momentarily before dropping it again. “Enjoy your movie, Buck.” And because Bucky’s been silent, an empty slate since he got here -- because there’s no one here to hear him but the AI, Steve thinks with a wash of resigned frustration -- Steve closes his eyes and adds as he hooks the shield behind him, “I love you.”
On the sofa, Bucky’s eyes widen, and he swallows. He’s silent, though, and Steve has nothing else to say. The movie begins to roll, and Steve hits the button for the elevator.
He waits until he’s inside to knock his head against the wall, calling, awkward, for Tony’s AI. “Captain Rogers?”
Steve rubs at his temple. “How is he? Is he trying to leave?”
“Sergeant Barnes is currently watching the television, sir. I can link your Stark phone into the room’s video feed, if you would like.”
Steve rests his head against the cool steel of the elevator and touches the thin phone in his pocket.
It feels invasive, inappropriate: Bucky hasn’t had privacy in over seventy years, and Steve won’t be the one to take it from him, not without a damn good reason.
“No, that won’t be--no.” He sighs and rights himself as the door opens into the common room kitchen. “Just, uh. Let me know if anything changes.”
“If anything changes, sir, you will be the first to hear about it.”
Steve nods to himself, and thanks the machine, scrubbing at his face in bone-deep exhaustion.
2. will my song go winging (I know you)
“So if any of these movies are bad, you realize he’s going to think we’re torturing him.”
Steve glares at Clint, who's rifling through a stack of brightly-colored DVDs, eyeing each of them critically. Bucky’s been holed up without protest on Steve’s floor of the tower for almost a week now: he’s still silent, watching visitors with wary, bloodshot eyes, but Steve’s been able to coax him to bathe, and to eat, and every small adjustment feels like a victory, even as Bucky still runs on the echoes of body memory, still looks at Steve like if he disobeys he expects to be punished.
He’s upstairs now, wrapped in a blanket and his towel from the shower, watching “Sleeping Beauty.” Steve frowns and uses a Stark Tablet to slide down his list in Tony’s movie queue. Clint probably has a point, and the thought gives the whole thing a kind of odd, demanding weight.
He’s surprised when the lights on his communicator go off -- the internal channel, rigged up to Stark Tower -- and the crackle of Bucky’s voice, already rough, worse with the static between them. “Steve?”
Steve’s name sounds twisted up and wrong through the speaker, and Steve can almost see Bucky on the other end, trying the word on, scowling at the shape. Not having a better option, because mission doesn’t fit, and Captain America feels stupid, he’s adamant, though he doesn’t know why.
“Bucky?” Steve’s already on his feet. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”
“No. But can you--” The line goes silent and Steve slams the elevator buttons, not even bothering to wait for the AI. He can hear Bucky’s breathing on the other end of the comm and he pushes it to his ear tight, listening to the hitch of breath that hasn’t changed in seventy years, the tic of failed hysteria that says Bucky’s trying not to cry.
“I’ll be up in a second, Buck.”
The elevator pings and opens, and Steve all but skids inside to find Bucky in more or less the same place he found him -- still wrapped in a thick wool blanket, in front of a grossly oversized screen, movie paused and remote on the remaining empty sofa cushion. He’s still clutching his communicator with both hands, but Steve still stops, unsure of himself.
“Bucky?” He takes a step towards the couch. “Everything alright in here?”
Bucky stares down at the black radio in his hands. “I shouldn’t have called. I just--wanted to see. If you’d really.”
The dull, solid weight on Steve’s chest has been a constant for the last month, but he feels the added pressure, anyway, wants to reach out and touch Bucky and can’t, because this Bucky isn’t his. “I’ll--always. You know that, Buck.”
“Do I?”
“You did.” Steve tries not to think, and then I didn’t, tries not to think, so I lied. Instead he sits down next to him, close enough to feel the heat of his body, and tries to focus on the film in front of him. He used to love these movies, back when they had the chance to see them -- not this one, the case said 1959, long after Steve was cold and gone -- but the others, before, and he remembers Bucky scraping together enough so they could see “Fantasia.” Never calling it what it was, because even saying it out loud was terrifying, but Bucky had paid for the movie and bought popcorn and drinks and held Steve’s hand under the armrest when the lights went out, and when they made it home that night Bucky pushed him onto the bed and kissed him until he was dizzy with it, thigh rubbing between Steve’s legs.
Steve swallows down the memory, hoping it doesn’t show on his face. When he looks over, it’s to find Bucky staring at him, cold blue eyes as sharp and watchful as they’ve ever been.
“You know, I keep remembering things,” Bucky says, quietly. “I’m never sure if they’re real or not, though. I used to--have these dreams. In the tank. They told me they were hallucinations, dosed me up higher, but they never went away and I just. Stopped saying anything.” He looks back at the movie, and the swirling green reflects on Bucky’s skin as Aurora follows lights up the stairs to her fate. “But--it wasn’t me.” He closes his eyes and squares his shoulders. “Did we fuck?”
Steve misses a breath. “What?”
“He was in love with you. So did you fuck?”
Steve scrubs a hand over his face. He hates when Bucky does this, talking about his own life like he’s giving another man’s eulogy. But it’s edged and barbed with fear tonight, and Steve wonders what Bucky’s remembering.
“It wasn’t like that,” he says, and Bucky scowls, whole body tensing. Steve keeps going because he doesn’t know what else to do. “We were--it wasn't fucking.” Steve hesitates, because he has no idea -- doesn’t even know where to begin explaining what they were to each other, what Bucky was to him.
There had never been time, during the war. They’d spent every night curled up in separate mummy bags, as close as they could get and still claim decorum.
Steve didn’t sleep, not really, in those miserable last days between Bucky’s fall and his own crash into the cold Atlantic. It gives his memories of what happened a distant haze to them, like looking through worn film, and he’s grateful now, in a sick, strange way, because it means it doesn’t quite feel real, someone else’s tragedy playing out on cellophane.
“Only remember what it was like when you were little.” Bucky looks down at his hands. “Figured it was like the museum said. With you and Agent Carter.”
And Steve thinks again how much he hates that exhibit, the way it twists and molds him into something who never existed, strips him of the things that he really loved, and why, and hides them behind an empty, hollow symbol. “No, Bucky. It was never like that. I never wanted anyone else.”
Bucky nods, the barest of movements, and Steve misses him like a physical thing, so badly his fingers ache. “Okay,” he says quietly, eyes still fixed on the movie in front of him.
not in death, but just in sleep.
“Okay,” he says again, and they lapse back into silence.
3. lonely in a world of my own
The next movie in the stack -- shuffled, picked at, and now completely out of order -- is “The Rescuers.” Steve puts it on as Bucky blinks at him still half-awake on the couch, watching Steve lace up his running shoes.
“Where are you going?” Bucky eyes him from over the back rest, with a face that would probably be suspicion, if not for the way his hair has curled and shocked out around him, giving him the appearance of a particularly cranky dandelion. Steve can’t help but smile and reach out, ruffling his hand through the disaster on his head. It’s second nature, and he doesn’t realize until afterwards that he isn’t supposed to touch Bucky like that -- or that Bucky let him do it, didn’t flinch away or even react. He’s still looking up at Steve expectantly, suspicious and maybe a little concerned.
“On a run with Sam. I’ll be back before your movie’s over.” He jerks his chin in the direction of the television and Bucky scowls.
“Who’s Sam?”
“Works at the VA down in DC. Got the wings.” Bucky makes a thoughtful sound, and Steve hopes that’s enough information for him, because he doesn’t want to add, you tried to throw him off a helicarrier.
He doesn’t have to. Bucky burrows a little farther down in the couch. “Yeah. Tell him I’m sorry about those.”
Steve frowns and grabs the afghan off the back of the couch, wrapping it carefully around Bucky’s shoulders. “Wasn’t you, Buck. He knows that.” Bucky takes the edges of the blanket and pulls them in more tightly, and Steve takes it as permission, reaches down and squeezes his flesh and blood hand. “How about when you’re feeling better you come out with us and tell him yourself?”
Bucky stiffens, just barely, but nods in agreement. Steve leaves him still curled in front of the television, scowling at the tiny, animated mice.
*
Sam waits until they’ve hit a steady pace to ask, “how’s your boy doing?”
“He’s not--” Steve gives up before he starts. Bucky’s always been his, in some way or other.
Steve turns a corner and uses an unneeded sharp exhale to cover the sigh when he actually stops to think about Bucky the way he is now, silent and untrusting, still skittish like something feral. “Better, I think. Still not leaving the room much, but he’s talking more. Natasha comes up to see him sometimes.” Usually with Clint in tow, but Bucky will only talk to her, an unfamiliar language on an intimate tongue that leaves Steve twisted up, knotted until he leaves the room. “Watching a lot of television.”
“Going through the movies I gave you?”
Steve finds a steady beat on the pavement, letting the rhythm of his sneakers distract him for a moment. “It’s keeping him in the Tower. He doesn’t seem to really react to them, though. I feel like I could put him in front of a fish tank all day.”
Sam shakes his head. “You gotta give him time. Boy’s been through hell. Seventy years he’s had people treating him like their big gun: keeping him clean, hooking him up and keeping him alive, thawing him out when they want something, putting him back in when they don’t. Kid probably hadn’t had a thought of his own since 1944 before you came barreling in.”
Steve slows at this, leaning forward and resting his hands on bent knees. He’s nowhere near winded, but his vision grays sharply, and when it evens again Sam’s got him by the elbow, propping him up.
“Woah, Cap. When was the last time you slept?”
Steve pushes him off. “I’m fine, Sam. I went to bed at eleven last night.”
“I didn’t ask how long you tossed and turned and stared at the ceiling. When was the last time you actually slept?”
Steve’s shoulders slump. “I don’t know.”
“Alright.” Sam pushes him back in the direction of the road. “So first, we are getting breakfast. And you’re paying, because I love a senior discount. And then we’re catching a cab and taking you back to Stark’s tower, and you are going to get some actual sleep if I have to lock you in there myself.”
Steve can’t help the twist of his mouth, even as he thinks he shouldn’t leave Bucky alone any longer. Sam’s impossible to say no to when he really means it, and Steve can’t remember when he ate last, either. He’s all but steered in the direction of the nearest cafe, and he goes, willingly, already reaching for his wallet.
*
Steve and Sam both get out of the elevator to find Bucky’s moved on to “Alice in Wonderland.” He’s still exactly where Steve left him, otherwise, though he’s made himself a new pot of coffee and is clutching his mug, far less bleary. It gives him an assessing kind of sharpness and he watches Sam across the coffee table, kneeling to look through the pile of movies stacked across the glass and metal.
“You’re making your way through these. I’m impressed.”
Bucky doesn’t even blink. He does answer, though, voice flat but unthreatening. “Not a lot of other options.”
To his credit, Sam doesn’t flinch -- he’s seen all of this before, Steve remembers, and he’s grateful for him all over again.
“One day at a time, right? You’ll get there.”
Bucky tips his head, curious, and Steve makes his way to the bedroom while the two stare each other down.
He’s already stripped down to boxers and his undershirt by the time Sam finds him, peeling off his socks and lying back down on the bed. He crosses his arms over his chest and stares up at the ceiling, trying to think of every piece of advice he was given in the army. Count sheep; count backwards; imagine the void of nothingness calling -- Steve doesn’t like that one, much, it’s far too vivid now -- none of it matters, even has an effect. Steve shifts onto his side and heaves out a sigh, his body too fatigued to even loosen to sleep. He rolls onto his back again to find Sam staring at him from the doorframe. He shakes his head when he sees that Steve’s eyes are still open.
“This what you’ve been doing for how long now?”
Steve winces. “I don’t know anymore. Every time I try to sleep, Sam. I see -- another way I could have saved him. Jumped after him, been, god, just a little faster, not let him…. If he hadn’t picked up the shield. If he hadn’t been protecting me.”
“You know you can’t think that way.” Sam leans on the wooden molding.
“Kind of hard not to.”
Sam’s expression goes a little bit distant. “Don’t I know it. But -- look. You’re gonna kill yourself like this. The guy out there… he's not gonna come back the same from that. I'm not saying it's gonna happen, but. You gotta prepare yourself in case there's just not enough left in there that's still Barnes."
Steve sits up, swinging his legs off the edge of the mattress. “Sam, if it wasn’t him...I’d know. I knew Bucky better than anyone. I knew him all my life. He was my best friend, he was-- We lived together, the first time we were ever really apart was after the army took him off to training.” He scrubs his hand through his hair. “He’s in there somewhere. They didn’t take him. He’s too stubborn for that.”
Sam eyes him carefully, like he’s afraid to press on with whatever he’s thinking. “You and Barnes,” he says, finally. “Were you…” Sam looks like he’s scrambling for a word Steve would understand, that encapsulates whatever it is he’s thinking. “Were you, like….going steady?”
Steve raises an eyebrow. “'Going steady?' That’s the best you can come up with?” A grin breaks out on Steve’s face for what might be the first time in days.
Sam flips him the bird. “Whatever, Rogers, trying to spare your delicate sensibilities. You know what I’m asking. You and Barnes. What was going on there, really?”
Steve lets his head drop, shoulders heavy and strained. “We were kids. It was always me and Bucky, I never could make myself look at anybody else. Even after he grew up and everybody else started looking at him too. Always thought...” He shifts and stares up at the ceiling instead, anywhere but Sam’s face, all that well-practiced neutrality still not quite enough to hide the worry in his expression. “That isn’t why I’m doing this, though. If that’s what you’re getting at.”
Sam shakes his head as he says, “didn’t think it was. Just asking. Trying to get an idea what I’m dealing with.”
Steve laughs and looks at the floor. “Yeah well, when you find out let me know too, okay?”
4. if only the world wouldn’t get in the way
Steve’s tossing in bed when his door creaks open. He recognizes the silhouette that spills in immediately, is comforted by the fact Bucky is making no effort to be stealthy. This becomes even more apparent when Bucky crawls into bed with him, pressing his body against Steve’s back and his forehead to Steve's shoulder blade.
“Steve,” he whispers quietly. Even expecting it, Steve startles.
“Bucky?” He twists, carefully at first, and he’s a little surprised when Bucky lets him, doesn’t protest when Steve turns to look at his face. His eyes are red, and there are dried marks of tears down the corners of his eyes; his nose is raw and he looks like he’s been crying for a while. Steve cups his cheek on instinct, has to pull back the urge to lean in and kiss him, slow and careful. “What happened?”
Bucky drops his head again, chuffing softly. “Would you believe I was watching those stupid movies?” He moves closer to Steve’s body, and Steve is suddenly hyper-aware of his presence, the fact that Steve is only wearing a thin pair of cotton boxers. “Fox and the Hound,” Bucky says, and Steve makes a sympathetic noise and rubs the back of his neck.
“Shoulda warned you about that one,” he says, apologetic. “Sorry, Buck.”
Bucky shakes his head, giving the space between them an anemic smile. “Forgot I could do that.”
Feeling brave, Steve reaches out with his other hand, brushes the hair out of Bucky’s face. “Do what?”
“Cry. Not--” He swallows. “Not allowed.” He shakes his head. “I don’t remember a lot of things. In the beginning I used to dream about...things. I’d wake up sometimes with my eyes swollen shut, fucked up a couple missions because my target heard me screaming, or begging in my sleep, figured someone else was getting offed first. So they started the chair.”
Steve’s seen the pictures in Bucky’s file, text carefully translated in Natasha’s clean writing. They hadn’t started wiping Bucky’s memories until the late fifties - nearly a decade after he was put into active service, after they started experimenting with cryogenics. There aren’t many notes on their decision to do it: a statement about his memories compromising future missions, that “the asset” functioned at a higher level if it remained a clean slate. Steve had made a fist tight enough to break the skin of his palm as he’d read through Natasha’s writing, the way they talked about Bucky like a weapon, like an object.
“Bucky…”
Bucky cuts him off. “Didn’t want to talk about that. I just.” He shifts again, scooting closer, and Steve can feel the air in the room change, heavier somehow. The entire world has narrowed down to this bed and the two of them, and it’s as familiar as it’s ever been, a surreal kind of sense memory that Steve can almost feel underneath his fingertips, taste its echo on his tongue. It’s wrong, and he feels horrible, immediately, except the look on Bucky’s face is familiar again, too, and when his right hands reaches out to curl careful fingers around Steve’s neck, they both go still, unsure of each other, of where this is going. “Didn’t want you to think this was anybody but me.”
And then Bucky kisses him.
It’s a thousand memories crashing in at once, and Steve freezes, at first, not sure what to do. He scrambles to imagine what Sam would tell him; what Natasha would say, and he dismisses them both, because Bucky pulls him closer, pulling Steve on top of him. It’s so familiar, despite the awkward miss-match of it. Bucky's as convincing as he’s always been, and Steve is dizzy even before Bucky coaxes his mouth open, tongue tracing along Steve’s lips and right hand cradling the back of Steve's neck, guiding him, angling the kiss. His other hand -- the metal hand -- slides down Steve’s naked back, teasing at his waistband, and Steve breathes in, shaky, still not pulling back, afraid if he does this will vanish into smoke.
“Fuck, Steve -- two years looking at you like this and not taking a test drive, shoulda been nominated for sainthood or something.” Bucky pulls Steve’s head back enough to get at his neck, sucking like he wishes he could leave a mark behind.
Steve squirms against him, abruptly, fully hard and no idea where this is going. “Something wrong with me before that, Barnes?”
“God, no. Half the time I was still jerking off thinking about before Uncle Sam got hold of you. Picking you up, fucking you against whatever was closest. Couldn’t have done that after they turned you into a patriotic lab monkey.” His hand slips -- slowly, finally -- into Steve’s boxers, squeezing his ass, and Steve’s breath hitches. He lets his head fall to the side, giving Bucky better access to his jugular. He’s rewarded with a careful bite, cool fingers tracing the seam of his ass and lower. “Bet I could now though.”
Steve shivers, and only partially because Bucky's fingers are rubbing the thin skin behind his balls. “Don’t. Don’t tease.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” His hand pulls away, out of Steve’s underwear, earning him an undignified whine. “Roll over for me,” Bucky murmurs, voice low and gravelly, and it’s automatic, Steve does it without thinking, rolling off of Bucky and onto his back, pushing his boxers down and kicking them off onto the floor. It leaves him naked and hard and desperate and vulnerable, and Bucky sits back on his haunches and looks at him, eyes piercing, still dark and clouded with the Winter Soldier’s stare, but edged with the possessiveness Steve’s always remembered, that used to annoy him, sometimes, when he was still small enough that it was hard to be taken seriously, that made him insist that he didn’t need to be taken care of.
He’d let Bucky do whatever he wanted, now, any way Bucky would have him. It scares him, how true the sentiment is -- makes his chest tighten up, like his lungs won’t take air. Bucky looks him up and down, and leans in to kiss his sternum. “You got anything?”
Steve thinks, twisting himself into knots before he remembers. “Lotion or--vaseline or something. Bathroom cabinet.”
Bucky’s gone and back before Steve has a chance to process what’s happening, to question whether this is really a good idea, if Bucky should really be making these kinds of decisions right now. When he returns from the bathroom he’s carrying a small jar of petroleum jelly and Steve can’t make himself give a damn beyond that -- not when Bucky’s already opened it, slicking his flesh and blood fingers and climbing back onto the bed, left hand braced on Steve’s raised knee.
“When was the last time you did this,” he asks, rubbing a slick finger against Steve’s entrance. It makes him squirm, and his fingers dig for purchase in the give of the mattress.
“I--oh. I haven’t. Not since.” You, he finishes, and Bucky’s eyes flash and he pushes in abruptly, finger crooking and hitting whatever it is that makes Steve tense his thighs. “Bucky…”
“Seventy years, seriously?” Bucky’s movements are lazy, and Steve could cry. Bucky’s still dressed, in his shirt and sweatpants, and Steve wants -- he wants more, in every way possible, curls up until he can tug on Bucky’s shirt, hoping it gets the point across. It must, because Bucky smirks, looking down at his own state of dress in comparison to Steve’s nudity. “You want this off?”
Steve nods; Bucky grins, and takes his distraction to push in another finger, twisting and stretching and making Steve whine.
“Gimme a minute. Gonna get you ready first. I want this to be good.”
By the time Bucky’s got three fingers in him, Steve is long past ready, sliding fast into desperate. He’s sweating, sheets tangled around him, and Bucky is looking at him like he’s working out a puzzle, curling his fingers in a way that makes Steve moan, frowning, repeating the process with a different rhythm. Steve reaches for him and swears when Bucky moves away; “Bucky -- I gotta. I’m gonna...please, please, come on.”
“You’re fucking bossy,” Bucky gripes, smiling in a way that says he knows it’s a familiar exchange. He slides his fingers out, though, pulling away long enough to shuck his clothes, and then he’s positioning himself between Steve’s legs, hesitating and looking around with the air of the truly torn. “Did we--I mean, they kept me clean, I don’t have anything, but I can get--”
It takes a moment for Steve to blink through his haze of arousal and realize Bucky’s asking if he wants to use a condom. The thought is almost absurd for him to even consider. They never had, back then -- too expensive, and a pointless waste, because Bucky may have been seen going out with a coterie of girls, but he only ever came home to Steve, and rubbers were an expense they didn’t need, so they didn’t. A little mess was worth what they saved every month, and it never even occurred to Steve not to trust him, not when he had nothing to gain from fucking his asthmatic, sickly male best friend and risking everything he could possibly build, the normal -- successful -- life he could have had without Steve in the picture.
Steve shakes his head and pulls Bucky in for another kiss. It’s sloppy and distracted, and Steve can feel Bucky reaching down to line himself up, metal hand gripping the meat of Steve’s thigh, hitching it around his own waist.
“You okay,” Bucky asks, almost into Steve’s mouth.
“Can’t hurt me, come on.”
Bucky pulls back far enough that Steve can see the face he makes, so familiar and Bucky his breath catches momentarily. And then the air is knocked entirely out of his lungs, because Bucky pushes into him in a single, fluid movement, and -- god, maybe he’d been underestimating just how long it’s really been. Steve takes short breaths and tries to relax, tightens his thighs around Bucky’s hips and digs his fingers into his biceps.
“You okay?” Bucky freezes once he’s sunk home, bracing himself with his left hand and using his right to trace Steve’s cheekbones, brush fingers through his hair. “Breathe.”
Steve laughs at that, a breathless huff -- it’s his Bucky, through and through, back in their drafty apartment in Brooklyn, lying in blankets on the floor out of fear they’d make the bed squeak, that their neighbors next door, the landlord downstairs, might hear them and call the vice cops. The constant stop-and-start and Bucky always patient, damn careful, listening to Steve’s breathing and freezing the second he rattled, cupping his cheek and telling him to breathe.
“Can’t hurt me,” he repeats, this time around a grin. “Whatever you want, I can take it.”
Bucky ducks his head, hair falling like a curtain around him.
What Bucky wants, it turns out, is excruciatingly slow: the kind of sex Steve forgot existed, hips moving lazily in counter to a chorus of slow, lingering kisses across Steve’s forehead, cheeks, eyelids. It’s sex like an apology, and Steve gets his arms around Bucky’s back and pulls him in closer, until his forehead’s pressed into Steve’s shoulder and he's moving against Steve with enough force to bruise a normal human, angling sharp and precise and sniper-deadly with every thrust. Steve closes his eyes and he can feel himself winding tight as a bowstring, moment stretching out into endless, coiled seconds. Orgasm hits him harder than he can remember, string snapping, back arched and mouth gaping in a silent, breathless gasp. When he opens his eyes again, Bucky's grinning like he's won something, and Steve realizes abruptly that he came untouched, doesn’t even know if that’s happened before.
“Fuck -- Steve. You're just. God. Steve.”
Bucky moves faster, losing his rhythm, and Steve tightens his legs around him, ignoring his own sensitivity and digging his hands into Bucky’s hair.
Bucky comes like he’s been shot, and Steve finds himself wondering how long it's been since Bucky’s done this -- Natasha, maybe, but that was decades ago, and Bucky said himself that he’d stopped feeling human, wonders just how far that emptiness extended. He collapses onto Steve, his whole body shivering, and Steve rubs his back and presses kisses to his shoulder and neck, ignoring the stickiness between their stomachs and the odd feeling of Bucky softening inside of him, his hips and knees cramping up in a way that not even the serum could exorcise completely. It’s comforting, somehow, that part of him that’s still the same way he always was, familiar as the last time he did this with Bucky. After a while, he feels dampness against his skin, and he realizes Bucky is crying, a few faint tears that have rubbed against Steve’s neck.
“Buck?” Steve scratches his fingers through Bucky’s long hair.
“Fuck. Sorry. It’s not--” Bucky pulls out and rolls off of him, and Steve ignores the momentary discomfort, the slide of semen down his thighs and the desire he always has to fall asleep afterwards, and rolls onto his side to watch him. “Half the time I still wasn’t sure this was real, like -- I kept thinking maybe I was still in the freeze, that they’d shoved me in and I just….I wanted it so bad.”
“But now?”
Bucky snorts. “Not near creative enough to come up with you now. Christ, Rogers, it’s like fucking a Greek statue.” He turns onto his side, too, pushes Steve’s shoulder until he lies back down again. Shifts to put his head on Steve’s chest. “You’re real. You came back for me.”
Steve swallows hard, because he doesn’t deserve credit for that, never will, really. It took too long, far too damn late, and he couldn’t protect Bucky when it actually mattered -- when he needed him, after all of the times Bucky saved him, kept him alive long enough to be here in the first place.
Instead he wraps his arm around Bucky, reaches down with his free hand and pulls the covers over them both. “I’m real, Buck. And you’re safe. I’m not letting anything happen to you again.”
Bucky looks up at Steve like he believes him and oh. Steve will take a bullet before he lets himself be wrong.
5. beginnings are contagious there
The Avengers don’t get many days off. Hazard of the job description, Steve supposes, but it’s a rare day that something doesn’t have him awake well before dawn -- a call to assemble, or a meeting with Fury, or a PR crisis in need of Captain America’s seal of approval. Actual time to themselves is rare and hard to come by, and Steve takes it for the gift it is and turns off his alarm clock, resolutely swearing that for once, he’s going to get some real and genuine sleep.
Instead, the sun has barely come up when he wakes to a thorough manhandling. Bucky is climbing over him, pressing himself into Steve until it’s instinct for Steve to open his arms, wrap them around the warm, shirtless body insinuating itself into his space. Steve’s eyes crack open to find Bucky curled against him holding a Stark Industries tablet, the tell-tale animated Disney logo queuing up on its crystalline screen. He has the volume down low enough that it would probably be silent if anyone else were to walk in right now -- but ‘silent’ has nothing on two sets of enhanced eardrums, and Steve yawns sleepily and hooks his chin over Bucky’s shoulder.
“Mmmm. It’s six in the morning. Tops.”
Bucky turns his head to catch Steve’s profile. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“Liar.” Steve kisses his cheek. “What’s this?”
“‘Oliver and Company.’” Bucky sets the tablet’s stand at enough of a distance that they can both see it, brings his arms up to hold Steve’s more tightly against his chest. “Sam says it’s ‘Oliver Twist’ with a cat.”
“Oh. That’s what Sam says, huh?” Bucky’s been spending time with Sam on his own, lately -- actually leaving the tower, to diners and museums and, on occasion, the VA. He’s coming to trust Sam, apparently enough to listen to movie suggestions without having to filter them through Steve, first. It's gradual, but persistent, Bucky’s shift back into the person he used to be.
Bucky hums, and Steve’s already waiting for the other shoe to drop. “Sam says, he says sometimes pets can help.”
Steve glances at the tablet, where a small orange kitten is climbing over his litter mates, waiting to be adopted while mid-tempo pop plays in the background. “You want a cat,” he surmises, trying to hide the smile that threatens to break through his sleepy neutrality.
Bucky shrugs. “Remember that stray that used to come to our window?”
“The skinny mangy one Mrs. Moss was always chasing off with a broom?” Steve remembers it -- gray and white and missing its tail, and Bucky used to leave the window open sometimes, a bowl of cream even when he couldn’t afford to do so. That cat was afraid of everything, but it loved Bucky anyway, and Bucky would climb out onto the fire escape and call to it like a dog, bring it fish heads and scratch behind its patched, hairless ears, making soft sounds when he didn’t realize Steve was watching him.
Bucky stays quiet, eyes on the movie, and Steve can’t help but watch his profile: his eyes are bright, maybe a little wet because the little cat is abandoned and alone and scared under a newspaper, and Steve tightens his grip and pulls Bucky closer, reaches out and adjusts the volume so they can both hear the movie better.
“Tony’s always saying it’s our home now, right?” Steve kisses Bucky’s cheek again. “Don’t see why we couldn’t get a cat.”
Bucky makes a noise that’s probably meant to be non-committal, but Steve doesn’t miss the way the corner of his mouth twists, or the way he squeezes Steve's forearms just a little bit harder when Oliver finally finds a family.
Steve’s already thinking about texting Sam, asking for the names of shelters in the area. He’s never been able to say no to Bucky; not really, not when it’s something he really wants. He thinks maybe Bucky could use the grounding. And besides, Steve thinks with a wry smile of his own, eyes sliding from the tablet screen to the man in his arms, watching with a kind of single-minded focus. They’ve both always had a thing for strays.
+ 1 it's enough for this restless warrior (that we got this far)
Steve spills out of the elevator already shucking chain mail and armor, covered in dust and singed around the edges. He’s dirty and tired and he wants to go to bed, but the television is on upstairs, in the living room, and he already knows where he’ll be headed, instead.
“Not watching the news?”
Bucky doesn’t bother to look up when he comes in -- doesn’t move at all, actually, and Steve takes it for the progress it is. It wasn’t all that long ago that sneaking up on Bucky, even on accident, would have gotten him a fist or a gun in his face, would have undone days of progress. Now, though, his eyes are fixed on one of Stark’s oversized TV screens, the holographic ones that seem to float from the ceiling, that Steve swears tracks them across the room. Bucky has it turned to another Disney movie: “The Lion King,” Steve recognizes, though he’s never seen this one; the screen is a wash of lush greens and blues, a landscape of rich color that makes Steve’s fingertips ache for oils and the time to learn how to use them.
Sliding around to the other side of the couch, Steve realizes Bucky isn’t alone. There’s a tiny ball of patchy black fur curled into a ball on his bare chest, just below his collar. It rises with every breath he takes, and seems to sense Steve’s presence; the kitten looks up, blinking muzzy, yellow eyes, yawns impressively, and curls itself in tighter. Bucky looks smitten. Steve grins and sits down on the floor beside them both.
“You and Sam go out today?”
“Nope.” Bucky shrugs, careful not to dislodge the ball of fuzz. “Just me. Asked Sam for the shelter address. Just wanted to go look, but…” He scritches behind the fuzz-ball’s ears. “You aren’t mad I went without you?”
Bucky’s getting better about this: understanding he doesn’t need permission, that not even Steve has any claim over him. But the nervous expression he has is different, and Steve leans in and kisses his forehead, reaches across his chest to run a careful palm across the small kitten’s back.
“Of course not. You got a name for it yet?”
“S’a boy.” Bucky sinks a little further into the couch. “You remember that comic strip we used to read when we were kids, with that guy that fell asleep, ended up in the future?”
“Pretty sure you kept reading that right up ‘til we shipped out,” Steve corrects absently. Bucky smacks his shoulder, lightly, with his flesh and blood hand. “Yeah -- Buck Rogers, right? You used to love that.”
Bucky hums in agreement. “That’s what I’m naming him.”
“You’re giving the cat your name?” Steve looks at the cat, then back at Bucky.
“Buck Rogers.” Bucky rolls his eyes and lifts the cat, scooping it into his left hand and holding it out to Steve. “Not my name yet.”
Steve files the yet away for later and takes the tiny animal in his hands, suddenly feeling impossibly oversized. It blinks up at him, apparently unperturbed by their extreme difference in size, and yawns. Steve twists until his back’s against the sofa and stares down at the cat, carefully scratching the back of its neck.
“See, he likes you.” Bucky makes it sound like that somehow settles it. “Buck Rogers. Besides.” He sits up, swinging around until his legs are bracketing Steve, arm coming up to wrap around his chest. “I’m still me, doesn’t matter ‘bout the name, right?” His chin hooks over Steve’s shoulder. “Don’t mind sharing."
Steve doesn’t have a good comeback to that -- just something in his chest that twists and blocks his airway, makes his breathing go tight like he’s an asthmatic kid again. He looks at the cat -- Buck, Rogers, okay then -- and his smile stretches, and he knows he looks ridiculous, grinning dopey at a kitten.
“Yeah. Okay Buck.” He turns his head and presses a kiss to Bucky’s temple, and he doesn’t miss the way Bucky leans into the warmth, not all that different from the rescue in his hands. “You win, that’s his name.”