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When Steve shuffled down the hall in flannel pajama pants and a tank top, scrubbing his wet hair with a towel, he thought a lot of things. He thought that if his shoulders hung any lower, he might as well start walking on his hands. He thought if he ran into another dead end with his search for anything- anything at all- on Bucky, it wouldn’t matter, because it wasn’t possible for him to get any more dispirited. He thought he just needed to lay back on his obscenely sumptuous couch and listen to some old big band music in the dark, with the rain pounding on his windows, and just try to unwind for a bit.
What he didn’t think was that he would walk into the living room and see a pair of heavy, slate-blue eyes staring back at him.
Bucky.
Steve sucked in a breath and dropped his towel, body tensing into fight stance. Between the shower and the stereo, he hadn’t heard anything, not that he would, considering Winter Soldier’s abilities. The atmosphere was deadly still, the quiet strains of Artie Shaw (Bucky’s favorite, Steve thought somewhere in the back of his mind) floating innocuously through the dimly lit room as if inviting the former friends to dance. Steve remembered rainy evenings a lot like this a long time ago, when Bucky valiantly tried to prove that Steve didn’t have two left feet, and attempted to teach him to dance to scratchy old records in Buck’s apartment living room, with the furniture pushed back against the walls. For all his teasing, he never did make a big deal out of when Steve stepped on Bucky’s feet, he just laughed and ruffled Steve’s hair and told him he’d eventually land a dame that didn’t have feeling in her toes, and it’d all work out in the end.
Right now, Bucky didn’t even seem aware of the music. He was in his full kit; mask, black paint smeared around his eyes, gleaming silver arm, gloves, and weapons, one of which was a vicious 357 Derringer, gripped tightly in his right hand. Steve held up both hands slowly, and felt like his chest was going to implode. This wasn’t his Bucky. This was Winter Soldier.
“Bucky. Please. Don’t do this. You don’t have to do what they say, okay? Just listen to me, I’m your friend…” he murmured slowly, clearly, bitterly calculating if he could get to his shield before he got to taste another one of those bullets in his gut.
“I know…”
The whispered words had Steve rooted in place. He stared, incredulous, as Bucky slowly raised the gun, and just as slowly, set it on the table next to him.
“Buck…?”
Bucky didn’t answer, but held Steve’s eyes and reached for his holsters, and one by one, emptied them, laying each weapon neatly on the table, and it did not escape Steve’s notice for a single moment that the barrel of each gun trembled in Bucky’s unsteady hand before he laid it on the surface of the table. When the molded half-mask finally clattered to the ground, Steve stared at the patchy almost-beard and the tension in the hard line of the mouth that used to smile so easily, and the sad, hollow eyes that looked like they stared into a grave from behind the matted mess of wet hair plastered to his forehead.
Then Bucky took a faltering step towards Steve, who rushed forward and caught him when he stumbled forward. Bucky didn’t make a sound, but clutched at Steve’s tank and stiffened when Steve’s hand went to his back to steady him, and Steve felt warm stickiness seeping though a gash in the heavy leather of his jacket.
“Bucky… what happened?” Steve breathed, and let Bucky lean against him as he guided him to the bathroom. He refused to entertain the notion that he might be in danger, that the last time he’d seen his friend, his “friend” had tried to kill him. No, the part that Steve chose to remember was the part where Bucky had saved him. He had been barely conscious, but he remembered that flash of silver in the murky waters of the Potomac. And right now, his deadly former friend had stolen into his apartment, given up his weapons, and was obviously hurting. With Hydra in disarray since the SHIELD collapse, Steve wondered if Bucky had anywhere to go, or if he was just blindly carrying on his mission. Or, he thought with a shudder, perhaps Bucky’s usefulness to Hydra as an “asset” had run out, and he had a target on his back now, as well.
Steve put down the lid of the toilet seat and pushed Bucky down on it unglamorously, and Bucky sat, and it was like the life utterly bled from him. His eyes stared at nothing, even when Steve knelt in front of him in his line of sight.
“Bucky? What happened? Why are you here?” he murmured, wanting to touch him, to comfort him, but hesitant to do so. “Please, answer me,” he added softly, but at that last part, Bucky’s entire body tensed, and his eyes flickered with some memory as he made the tiniest, almost imperceptible move backwards, as if he expected to be hit. Steve bit his lip. This wasn’t the same person he fought on the helicarrier. This was someone who didn’t know who he was. Hell, Steve wasn’t even really sure if he was looking at Bucky or Winter Soldier right now, and it made him hurt inside worse than when he fought for air during cold winters without heat when he was too proud to ask Bucky stay over just one more time. Steve filled a glass with water from the sink.
“Hey,” Steve murmured with a small smile. “Drink.” He knelt in front of Bucky again, holding the glass to his lips, and after what appeared to be initial surprise, Bucky drank thirstily, as though he’d forgotten what water was. Steve frowned and refilled the glass, and Bucky drank just as greedily that time, and the next two times, before he went unresponsive again. Steve set the glass down and stood again, moving to Bucky’s other side in the cramped bathroom, sitting on the edge of the tub.
“Let me see your back,” he murmured, and Bucky didn’t move. He just slumped on the toilet, staring vacantly and breathing shallowly, not even bothering to wipe the matted, wet hair from his eyes or the droplets of water from his beard. Steve was filled with red anger seeing Bucky like this. He knew who was responsible, and he wanted to kill them all. But the ones that had survived the collapse had disappeared like a wisp of smoke, and as much as he might fantasize about it, it was a little hard to hold a ghost by the collar and punch him until his skull collapsed.
He ran his fingers gently along a gash from Bucky’s right shoulder, almost to his left hip, along the shredded edges of black leather soaked in blood. Steve knew Buck was being hunted. But how? How could they have gotten the jump on him like this? He was too trained, too enhanced, too… Steve’s hand stilled on the edge of the leather. Too human? Was he remembering too much? Too distracted? He clenched his fists and moved back around to Bucky, who made no indication of noticing his presence.
“I need to take off your jacket so I can clean that,” he whispered, and when Bucky made no move to protest, Steve went to work. He worked all the buckles open of his holsters, piling them one by one on the floor by the sink, then took his right hand and unfastened the glove and tugged it off, doing the same with his metal hand after several seconds of hesitation. He stared, disconcerted, as he did so. The metal was unexpectedly warm, and seemed to move and shift under his touch like it was alive, and Steve felt queasy thinking about what had been done to him. Then the zipper of his jacket, and Bucky shrugged minutely as Steve peeled it off his shoulders. Steve tugged the plain black tank top over Bucky’s head, and he bit back a horrified gasp.
Bucky’s left shoulder and chest were a landscape of scars, where it looked like his metal arm was consuming him, biting into the flesh mercilessly. There were faded scars scattered over his skin, and one or two of them Steve knew from their time in the Commandoes, but he didn’t want to think about how he’d gotten the rest. He pulled out a first aid kit from under the sink, and moved back behind Buck. This wasn’t the time to stare, he had work to do.
The gash was shallow, but long, was covered in a dirty, blood-soaked, hastily-applied field bandage, and it looked like it hurt like a sonofabitch. Steve pulled out supplies, and began to delicately clean it, watching Bucky carefully. The silence was heavy, punctuated only by the faint strains of big band piano and Bucky’s increasingly shallow breathing, until Steve squeezed the wound shut to apply a butterfly bandage and there was a sharp crack through the room that had Steve jumping up, upsetting the kit onto the floor. Bucky was holding the broken-off corner of the countertop in his metallic left hand, where he’d been squeezing it too hard. Bucky stared at it in confusion, then there was something in his eyes like revulsion and he threw it away from him as if it was a grenade or a hot coal, and it hit the wall hard enough to go through the drywall. Bucky wrapped his metal arm over his chest, covering it with his right arm, curled in on himself, and Steve quickly slid to the floor in front of him, holding his face gently with both hands, this time with no hesitation.
“No! Bucky, it’s all right, it’s okay. Look, I did the same thing awhile back. I lost my security deposit a long time ago,” he murmured, trying for a small smile when he pointed at the opposite end of the counter where he’d left a hand-shaped dent and a broken corner after a particularly frustrating day. Bucky shook his head almost imperceptibly, and Steve floundered, wanting to pull him into a hug, while not wanting to put him on the defense. “It’s okay, it’s okay…” he repeated helplessly, then moved around to finish the wound.
It took awhile, and Bucky was shivering long before he finished, but otherwise, didn’t move or say a word, and his silence filled Steve with leaden dread. When he was done, he ran warm water in the sink and got a soft washcloth, and wiped gently at the grime over Bucky’s back, accumulated from god-knows how many days on the run. He kept wetting the cloth, drawing it tenderly over Bucky’s scarred skin, cleaning his arms, each finger, his chest, and even his metal arm, and he watched closely as the plates flexed and shifted in a reptilian manner, with a mind of their own. He stood in front of Bucky and tipped his chin up, and Bucky closed his eyes, as if he were ashamed to look at Steve. Steve sighed sadly, and wet the cloth again, delicately wiping away the black war paint around his eyes, cleaning his dirty skin while Bucky shivered and pressed his mouth into a thin line.
Steve discarded the cloth in the sink and reached for a towel, rubbing softly at Bucky’s long hair, until it no longer dripped down his back, but hung in damp waves around his face. He wrapped the towel around Bucky’s shoulders, rubbing up and down, even over the metal, in an attempt to warm him. Bucky’s eyes were still closed, but he snaked his flesh hand up slowly and clutched at the towel, holding it tightly around himself as though terrified it would be snatched away.
He stayed exactly like that, curled inward, gripping the towel, eyes closed, while Steve ran fresh water and pulled out a new razor, and set about rubbing shaving cream into Bucky’s beard, and Bucky held very, very still, while Steve carefully shaved him. Every stroke, every drag of the razor pulled on Steve’s heart, and he imagined that each pass brought him one step closer to Bucky, one step further from Winter Soldier. He hoped that each gentle touch might help his friend be a little more human, and a little less machine, until he finally finished, and it was no longer Winter Soldier sitting in front of him. It was just Bucky. His Bucky.
“All done,” Steve whispered with a soft smile as he finished, wiping gently at Bucky’s smooth, clean face with the corner of the towel. He knelt in front of him, keeping one hand on Bucky’s cheek, and pushed his damp hair back off his face.
Bucky finally opened his eyes.
And Steve felt like he’d taken another bullet to the gut.
Bucky’s eyes were heavy and shadowed, weighed down with decades of bone-deep grief and confusion and anger and fear. He looked at Steve like he was begging him to either save him, or end him, and his haunted, exhausted eyes seemed far to large for his face. Now that he was clean, sitting on Steve’s toilet in his bathroom wrapped in a towel and shivering, he looked painfully young, like a scared little kid, in a way Steve never remembered him being. Bucky was always the strong one, the assured one, standing by Steve’s side. Till the end of the line, they always said. Steve sighed and brushed a thumb over Bucky’s cheekbone, and Bucky’s eyes slid shut again.
“Stay here, I’ll be right back,” he whispered, and went to his room, returning in just a few moments with a bundle, and set it on the broken countertop. He held up a t-shirt; baggy (even for him) and comfortable, well-washed and even more well-worn, the softest he had. It had a ridiculous Captain America shield on the front, faded from washings, but Steve didn’t care. He put his hands through the armholes and reached for Bucky’s hands, helping him into the shirt, careful not to tug on the bandages. Then he pulled him standing, and helped him with his boots and heavy canvas cargo pants, still soaked from the rain, letting them fall in a sodden heap with the holsters and jacket, and guided Bucky into a pair of soft flannel pajama pants. Then he pulled a navy blue zip hoodie around his shoulders, zipping it gently all the way up once his arms were in.
“Is that better?” he said softly, rubbing his hands up and down Bucky’s arms as he curled into the warmth of the clothing, looking at his sleeve with slightly widened eyes, like he’d forgotten what warmth and softness and gentle touches felt like, familiar instead with only violence and pain and fear. He finally flicked his eyes back up to Steve’s, and Steve could see the turbulence behind them, the struggle between person and programming, and Steve held very still when Bucky hesitantly reached out and touched Steve’s face with just the tips of his flesh fingertips, his touch feather-light.
“On the bridge. I knew you,” Bucky murmured very softly, his voice sounding lost and broken, cracking like he rarely used it anymore. Steve felt his face crumple a little, and he closed his hand over Bucky’s, pressing it to his cheek.
“Yeah, it’s me, Buck. It’s your Steve, remember?” he breathed shakily, and Bucky just stared at him. “You’re home now, okay? I got you, you’re home now…”
“But I knew you…”
Steve let out a sound that could have been a sob, and gently pulled Bucky forward and pressed a tender kiss to his forehead, and to his surprise, Bucky collapsed into his arms, curling against him, and he was utterly silent, except for the tiniest, telltale hitch of his breath in his throat. Steve wrapped his arms around him and held him close, and it was never how he imagined this, if he ever dared let himself imagine that Bucky would ever come back to him. More often than not, he imagined that one of them was likely to end at the hands of the other, and it made his insides feel like ice and he had to swallow back bile. But he certainly didn’t imagine that he’d be kneeling in front of his toilet, Bucky shivering and crying silently in his arms while wearing his pajamas, cracked and broken to the point that Steve wasn’t sure if he’d ever be able to put him back together. But having him here, right now, like this, was more than he’d ever hoped he would get. Steve held him tight, mindful of the bandages, stroking his long hair back and pressing his face into Bucky’s shoulder.
“You’re home now, Buck. It’s okay; you’re home now…” he breathed. And it was true. It was no longer Winter Soldier and Captain America facing off to the death.
From now on, it was just Steve and Bucky. Till the end of the line.