Chapter Text
Steve staggered into his bedroom, kicked off his shoes and flopped down onto the bed. He didn’t bother to crawl in under the sheets or even pull his rugged jeans off; dirt clung to them after so much travelling. He’d have to change the white bed sheets in the morning. Sam’s voice still floated around in his head. Giving him another lecture, secretly Steve knew the lectures were really about his doubt. ‘It’s been too long. Shouldn’t we be giving up?’ Was what he read in his good friend’s eyes when he gave him those prep talks. He’d have to talk to him, try to convince him to stay now that they were back in Washington and let Steve go off alone. He never asked Sam to come with him. Secretly Steve knew that he didn’t really want Sam with him this time, it was nice to have some company, someone to talk too. But Sam was so full of doubt these days that their conversations were dreary, and besides this wasn’t about him. Steve felt he was the only one in the world who could really understand, and then he realised he probably was, the only one who would never give up. Still he knew Sam wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Nine months he’d now spent circling the world for his long lost best friend, who was now perhaps his enemy. But it wasn’t that easy when SHEILD, or what had been recovered of it, kept calling you back to do their dirty work. Steve did it because he cared about SHEILD, he had people working there that were his friends, and he knew how unstable the organisation was right now, and he knew if SHEILD suffered, his friends would suffer too. So he protected them, he followed his orders, looped back half way from around the world when he felt he might be getting hot on a trail because some maniac was making trouble and pulled himself back into the star spangled suit again. But did it ever pay off? No one said life was ever going to be easy, even for a super-soldier.
Too tired to think on any of these damn stupid matters that were so important to him, Steve rolled onto his side a little and closed his eyes. The yellow glow of the street light peeped in through the blinds; he hadn’t bothered to close the curtains. He lay with one hand limply outstretched across the bed, fingers open, and the light shattered into rays by the blinds came down upon his hand, his torso, and his face.
Steve had never even noticed the lone figure stood draped beside the curtains in the corner of the room. Dressed in black and out of the light, he’d done this a hundred times before. Even his piercing cold eyes went unnoticed in the gloom. He’d been in the apartment all day, studying, waiting it out, knowing the target would return here tonight. Now was his chance to make his move.
The first indication Steve got of another being in his apartment was a touch to his outstretched hand on the bed. It felt like another hand, fingers and all, slowly caressing his own, if only briefly. But it was a cold touch, metallic.
His eyelids snapped open, he jolted up into a sitting position on the bed, swaying back and grabbing onto the bedpost with one hand to ensure he didn’t fall off. He stared eyes wide across his bed. Sure enough, on the other side a man sat with one leg causally up on the bed; he had long dark hair, a metal arm decorated with a red star at the top. He was facing away from the light, it illuminated him from behind but his face was bathed in darkness, only the white of his eyes shone out brilliantly against the dark colour of his pupils in the gloom.
Steve trembled, he dropped his hand from the bedpost and lent back on the pillows. For a moment he couldn’t say anything, he just gasped and shivered violently. The other man didn’t speak either, but he never took his gaze from the captain, always analysing and scrutinising. The two men just sat there staring at each other.
“Bucky?” Steve finally questioned. His voice was pleased, anxious, desperate, overwhelmed, scared, every feeling under the sun all in one name.
No reply. Bucky or the Winter Soldier, whoever this was, didn’t move. Perhaps he was trying to figure something out. But Steve couldn’t be sure; he wasn’t the same guy he once knew.
“Steve.” The dark haired man finally muttered in reply. The name sounded slightly sinister when it came off his lips. It wasn’t the tender way of calling his name that Steve had always remembered. But neither was it with the hate and fear that Bucky had spat out at him the last time they encountered each other. For Steve it was a hope, he knew that there was still some of his best friend in there, as he always had known, but here it was before him strongly renewed.
“Where have you been? I-I’ve been looking all over for you. I-” Steve said but then stopped. Bucky’s face still remained with that dark emotionless stare. One wrong move, one wrong word, Steve thought, and this could all change very quickly. Now that Bucky had come here of his own choosing Steve wasn’t about to let him get away again just as easily.
“Figuring out things. I had a lot of questions that needed answering, still do actually. I just had a lot of stuff to figure out.” Bucky answered. He shifted uncomfortably on the bed; he seemed unsure where to put his hands, even just staying in a relaxed position was strange to him. And he wasn’t even sure what he was saying, it just came out of his mouth, never had he remembered speaking so causally, except deliberately when undercover.
“Why are you here now?” Steve was growing more and more conscious that he might be pressing too much, asking too many questions. He didn’t know what the Winter Soldier’s limitations were, probably nought. But this wasn’t the Winter Solider; it was complicated mix of his best friend and a villainous assassin. He knew he needed this question answered. If Bucky had been away all this time searching for answers then what made him come back after all this time. Was he facing the man he once was? Or would he kill Steve and try to go back to the torturous life of crime and murder that had been drilled into him for so long.
“It just seemed right.” Said Bucky slowly, trying to think his words through. “I’ve been using my instincts, living alone, finding my own answers. I didn’t go back to them.”
Steve didn’t have to ask who ‘them’ was. He was glad Bucky hadn’t gone back to Hydra, if there was anything left of it. He knew if they found Bucky they’d wipe him, freeze him, take away his humanity and turn him into a twisted monster. No one should have to endure that, let alone the person Steve cared about more than anyone else ever. He became determined that even if Bucky wanted to leave, even if he didn’t want him, to make sure that he never went back to Hydra and Hydra wouldn’t find him. Bucky was worth more than their sick and cruel ways.
“Reading things helps.” Bucky continued. “I’ve found out everything that I could on him. Sometimes I can almost remember things.”
Steve’s face shined, he always knew his best friend was still somewhere trapped inside the Winter Soldier and now he was going to get him back.
But Bucky shook his head slowly and sadly, his expression turning dark once again. “I’m not him, Steve. Whoever James Barnes was, he had my face but he’s not me. I’m too full of what they did to me over all these years. Even the memories I have from before aren’t always pleasurable ones.”
At that all Steve wanted to do was grab Bucky and pull him into an embrace, feeling that if he did so he could somehow pull away all the torture of the Winter Soldier and bring Bucky back.
“Come here.” He said softly, barely more than a whisper.
Bucky looked at him in disbelief, unsure of what to do. So Steve got up and pulled himself across the bed, Bucky cautiously did the same, till the two men met in the middle. Steve slung his arm around Bucky’s shoulder, like he used to do when they were laughing, talking, just having fun together and being friends. That was the best part of a century ago. Although Bucky’s body was slightly ridged to the touch, it wasn’t unwelcomed; it felt more right than anything else since the Captain had woken up from that frosty bed.
“Tell me about the memories.” Steve said as he settled back down onto the pillows again. He purposely didn’t say ‘your memories’ for fear that it would trigger off something. Bucky clearly didn’t know if his own memories really were his. And no wonder, Steve had read his file, collected information from surviving Hydra agents working undercover in SHEILD. Bucky had had his mind wiped, abused, his mind taken from his at the will of others that it must be near impossible for him to distinguish the truth.
“Fire.” Bucky mumbled. “I remember fire all the time. But it’s like I can actually remember the heat the light, the feelings that went with it. I’ve worked with fire but I don’t feel, I don’t think about it.”
“That’s understandable.” Steve replied. “We were at war. There was always fire. Our team, we bombed the Hydra factories, set them on fire, you probably remember that. And there were always planes in the sky dropping bombs on every city all over the world; we used to see footage of that. Sometimes you might have even been there.”
“It never ended.” Bucky said glumly. He was staring off distantly at the blank wall across the bedroom and at the same time he wasn’t staring at it. “The war, it never ended, Steve.”
Steve nodded his head, only slightly so as not disturb Bucky, who was supporting his head on Steve’s shoulder. “Yes, Buck, I suppose it never did.”
“The fire, it was in a huge building, like a warehouse. I think you were there.” Bucky suddenly said, he was talking rapidly, as if remembering for the first time.
Steve was quite for a moment, thinking back on his own memories of a time long since past. “That was the base which I rescued you from. You were missing in action and the base was behind military line so no rescue mission was being prepared. So I went in alone and stormed the base and got the men out. Then I found you. I think you were being tested and experimented on, that’s probably how you survived.”
Steve paused for a moment, how strange it was that now he counted Bucky’s capture and experimentation more of a blessing than anything else. If that hadn’t happed, Bucky would have been killed in that fall. True he wouldn’t have endured the life of the Winter Soldier, all the torture, the murders. But perhaps Steve was selfish because he felt it was worth it. Bucky was worth anything. He was careful not to mention Hydra, or Red Skull, and especially Dr Zola in any of his words.
“And then the base started to blow up as I was trying to get you out. Self destructed so that we couldn’t recover anything later. That must be the fire you remember, the explosions in the warehouse. I got stranded and told you to go but you-”
“No, not without you.” Bucky cut in on him.
Steve turned his head, staring at him in disbelief. “Yes.” He whispered. “Yes, that’s what you said to me.”
“This guy, Bucky, you must have really cared about him if you’d risk your life like that, not even knowing if he was alive or not.” Bucky said coldly, he didn’t care about his sudden remembrance of the words. He couldn’t remember anything else to do with them. They were just words. Words were meaningless. Instructions. Orders. Commands. Those were the only words he ever knew among the screams. Why should he care about words?
It hurt Steve, the way Bucky referred to himself in the third person. Another reminder that no matter how much he wanted him to be, the guy sitting next him, resting his head on his arm wasn’t Bucky.
“Yes, I do care about him.” Steve replied with a sad smile.
“It’s stupid.” Bucky answered bluntly.
“You took all the stupid.” Steve said. He wanted to laugh as a memory resurfaced but felt instantly sad as he realised moments like that might never exist again. “You don’t think it was stupid the way you wouldn’t leave me behind. You cared too.”
“Yes, I did.” Bucky said, his voice was quiet, barely above a whisper and he was gazing off into nothingness, trying to remember things from a life unknown to him. Suddenly he sat up, pushing his body away from Steve and staring at the super soldier eyes wide. “The memories, they still confuse me. I read up on James Barnes, found out everything that I could about him. But it doesn’t make sense with what I remember.”
“What do you remember?” Steve questioned. He leaned forward urgently, willing Bucky to remember who he was. They’d both come too far to lose him.
Bucky looked down, shutting his eyelids tight and trying to squeeze back anything of the past into his mind. “I can’t remember actual memories, events and such. I remember feelings, occasional images come to mind, but the things the guy must have felt, when I read about his life they come back. He must have been very strong minded, it’s very powerful.” He turned his head, looking back up at Steve, his face remained its usual blank, but there was a twinkle in his eyes, some life was there. “From what I’ve found out about this guy he liked his girls, I read a few statements they’d made after his death. But that doesn’t make sense with what I remember.”
“You liked girls.” Steve reassured him, a smile on his face. “People used to go dancing back then, you were a great dancer. The dames were always lining up for a dance with you. Me on the other hand, well girls didn’t dance with a guy smaller than they themselves were.”
But at Steve’s words Bucky started to shake his head determinedly. “Maybe I was popular with the girls, doesn’t mean I liked them. I remember thinking of you in the base, or rather not you but a skinny kid with your face.”
“That was me.” Steve cut in. “Before they put the serum in me. I looked like that all through childhood, when we grew up together.”
Bucky nodded once to show he understood, he’d read all about the super soldier serum. “I can’t remember what was going on, only that I didn’t know what was going to happen, I had no certainty of the future, but I remember thinking to myself it’s okay because at the time I thought you were safe and no harm was going to come to you and I was ready to die so long as I knew you were okay.”
A dark look came over Bucky’s face now, not one of anger but pain and loss. “I could never have told you. Not back then, it wouldn’t have been allowed. So he played the image that he should have done, I was good, all my life. And it was fine so long as you were there.”
“Tell me what, Bucky?” Steve asked. He didn’t like the look in his eyes, darkness and misery. It frustrated him how Bucky kept referring to himself like he remembered and then changed back to third person again. But worse it scared him even more now that he clearly knew his best friend was inside there, fighting to get out.
A smirk crossed Bucky’s face, only briefly. A memory had appeared and then vanished just as quickly. “Steve, a guy like that doesn’t hang around with a kid like you were unless it means something. At first he was probably just looking out for you as a child because he didn’t think it was fare to see you picked on, but then as he got older things changed. He wanted to tell you, Steve, but he knew it was safer not too. Even if he said something it could change everything.”
“Tell me what?” Steve pressed, raising his voice louder now. What was it that Bucky clearly had cared so much about all those years ago but he could never tell him, even now he was only dancing around the subject.
“I love you.” Bucky burst out. “I’ve always been in love with you, Steve.” He yelled looking like tears would begin to fall on his face any second.
And in the next moment he really was crying and then the dangerous side that he’d been keeping oppressed kicked back in because the Winter Soldier does not cry and he ended up with his hand formed into a fist punching into the soft bed sheets over and over again to try get the pain, the rage, the confusion out of him.
Steve just sat there stunned, Bucky’s wrath before his very eyes seemed to be happening miles away, distant to him. It all made sense now, he’d never questioned why Bucky wouldn’t stay with one woman that long, sooner or later there’d always be another girl in line. He’d always put it down to the fact that Bucky could, and who wouldn’t if you were a guy as popular as he had been? At the time Steve had been more focused on his own jealousy, the fact that he was just the shadow, the one who had to be dragged around and the one Bucky’s girl had to put up with. How could he have been so stupid? It was never the girls. It was always just him and Bucky, the two of them against the world, even if Bucky could never say it.
When Steve finally came back to reality Bucky had calmed down. The tears had left his cheeks the only remains of them was the prickly sparkle in his eyes. He was perched on the bed, his hands gripping his knees, breathing very shallow, glaring into nothingness.
“I could never have told you, not back then.” Bucky repeated in a quiet mutter, continuing to glare darkly at nothing in particular rather than look at Steve. “It was criminal. And I was scared Steve, I know you never thought I was, but I was terrified out of my mind that if I said anything it could lead to something and we could end up caught, or worse than that I might scare you away, and I couldn’t face losing you.”
Suddenly his eyes flickered upwards to Steve. His breathing slowed. “But times are different now.”
Steve leaned forward and clapped his hand over Bucky’s shoulder the way he’d used to do all those years ago. “The truth is Buck, I want you back. I lost you before and I can’t lose you again.”
Bucky’s eyes cast doubtfully on his metal arm. Steve saw his gaze. No words were exchanged between them but it was clear enough what Bucky was thinking. Whatever he could remember of the man he once was, he would never been that man again, even if he wanted to, he could never fully be Steve’s Bucky ever again.
“All of you.” Steve whispered and he moved his free hand to enclose his fingers in Bucky’s metal hand. It felt cold and hard against his flesh but he wasn’t afraid. He tried the feeling of it out against his skin, moving his fingers backwards and forth across the silver surface. A remarkable piece of machinery.
Although Bucky could never truly feel Steve’s touch the metal arm was now a part of him. It was rigged into his brain, telling him what he should feel whenever he touched anything with it. The Winter Soldier did not need to feel. But it helped him complete whatever current mission he was on at the time. Right now at Steve’s touch Bucky’s brain was telling him the feeling was triggering something he hadn’t felt in a long, long time; arousal.
Bucky stared at Steve. Steve could feel Bucky’s piercing gaze on his face, forcing his eyes to stop concentrating on his tender touch of Bucky’s metal hand. Slowly Bucky wrapped his free arm around Steve and he gripped him close. It felt right, more right than anything else in the swirling mess of Bucky’s mind could ever remember. It was as if so long as he stayed like this, his body pressed as tightly as it could be to the super soldier’s, then he didn’t have to be this confused mix of two people, the Winter Soldier and Bucky Barns, everything could just melt into simplicity and all that remained was him and Steve.
Bucky’s long hair felt heavy and rough on Steve’s neck. He wriggled his hand away from their pressed bodies and off Bucky’s shoulder, travelling instead across his hair. Now this touch Bucky really could feel, not the mechanical and programmed feeling in his arm, and this touch excited him even more. He lifted his head from where he’d buried it into Steve’s shoulder and turned to the side to instead meet his face. Bucky’s face was inches away from Steve’s. Steve could not just hear but feel Bucky heavily drawing breath. He didn’t need to think twice. Fortunately neither did Bucky.
Their lips met, neither was sure by whose action. Bucky’s mouth seemed to move in unison with Steve’s, knowing when to part his lips, when to draw breath, when to slip his tongue over the rim of Steve’s lips. Steve on the other hand needed more guidance; never had he had a kiss this strong, but that didn’t mean that he’d change it for the world. Bucky’s lips felt firm and tough on his own. It wasn’t like the few women he’d kissed; it was forceful yet tender, rushed yet slow, all in the same moment. He could feel Bucky’s strength, the muscles in his jaw, working on his own, not the soft touch of a woman’s skin but although this was unknown to him, although he’d been brought up being told that this was a sin, his mind should’ve be screaming over what he was doing with his best friend, but Steve couldn’t help but love the kiss. Something that felt this good couldn’t be bad.
Bucky’s arm wrapped even tighter around Steve’s body, moving from his shoulder blade in his lower back, finding his waist. All the while their hands remained locked together, silver metal pressing hard against soft flesh. Steve’s hand stopped merely glazing across Bucky’s hair and instead dug deep into the roots, twisting his fingers around the coarse dark locks.
The feeling of Steve’s body pressed so close to his ignited a spark in Bucky. The flame from before he was lost, the feelings, the secrets, was rekindled in the other man’s loving touch. He forced Steve down onto the bed sheets and swung his leg over the other man, straddling him and digging his body against Steve’s thighs. Steve gasped, short of breath after the hard shove of Bucky’s action, but he barely had time to draw in air before Bucky’s mouth were back on his own again, consuming his lips even more. There weren’t enough hours in the night.
Cool sunlight instead of the orange glow of the streetlight streamed in shattered rays through the blinds the next morning. Steve awoke, his eyes fluttering awake. For a split second he wondered on how strangely relaxed he felt when he should be exhausted. Then the memories of the night before came back. Steve rolled over his side in the bed and was half surprised when he found Bucky’s naked form lying asleep beside him in the bed. Had he ever looked so peaceful when the slept side by side in the camps? Those memories were clouded now even for Steve but he didn’t think he’d ever seen Bucky with a more tranquil expression on his face than now. It gave Steve a sense of satisfaction knowing he’d been the one to put it there.
So at ninety-six years old he’d finally done it, Steve thought to himself, he felt glad that of all the people to do it with he’d done it with Bucky.
The super soldier wriggled over to Bucky’s sleeping figure and wrapped his arms around the other carefully, trying not to wake him and disturb the peace. It didn’t work. Even after a night as good as the last one all traces of the Winter Soldier couldn’t be shaken off, restless sleep patterns included. Bucky’s eyes snapped open, widening when he felt another person’s arms around him, then he remembered where he was. He took a moment to stare at the window he was facing, if he looked hard enough he could see the glass in the windows of the building opposite through the bright sunlight and the slits of the blinds. Finally he turned his head slowly to gaze at the man behind him.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d still be here in the morning.” Steve mumbled. He had his eyes closed, his forehead resting against the back of Bucky’s lower neck, but he’d felt Bucky’s movements and knew he was away.
“Well, I didn’t really have anywhere else to go.” Bucky muttered with cheek and turned back to face the window. “Besides I didn’t want to.” He added honestly after a moment’s pause.
Steve smiled happily though Bucky never saw him. That sounded a lot more like the old Bucky he used to know. He understood that the chances were he’d never quite know that Bucky again, but it was worth saving what he had. He pressed his lips into Bucky’s neck because he could express all the words he needed to; just a quick kiss but it said a lot. He never saw Bucky’s reaction with his face turned away from him but somehow he knew he understood.
“I was going to tell you.” Bucky said later out of the blue. The two men had now been lying awake for about half an hour. They didn’t speak even though there was so much they should say, so many questions that demanded answers, but words felt beneath them. They both simply just lay there in the quiet light, some might say wasting their lives away, but from one point of view they’d each already done that and the morning was still early and neither of them was going anywhere anytime soon.
“Tell me what?” Steve asked.
“I remember thinking, when the war was over I might tell you how I feel. There was a woman, an agent of the army or something, she liked you and I think you liked her too. But I was going to tell you anyway once we’d got through it all, once we were free from the burden of war. And if you disowned me then at least you’d have better luck with her. It was selfish really to think like that but I suppose it doesn’t matter. I’m sorry that day never came.”
“I’m the one who should be sorry.” Steve replied, he drew his arms away from Bucky and gently turned him around so that the two were staring at each other, side by side in the bed. “I should have tried harder to save you, I should have said something over all those years that we knew each other, maybe even taken a hint. I’m sorry that you didn’t get the life you deserved, Buck.”
Bucky sighed but then a small smile appeared on his lips. “It wouldn’t have been a good life, Steve. Back then we’d have been skinned alive both of us if anyone found out. You’re Captain America remember, you belonged to everyone, and everyone loved you. If we’d had a life together then it would’ve had to have been a secret, and it could never had been kept from everyone. But times are different now.”
Steve smiled and reached across for Bucky’s metal hand, finding it he grasped it and gave a quick squeeze. “I am Captain America, but I don’t want to be that to you, I just wanna be Steve Rodgers, the kid from Brooklyn.”
Bucky rolled his gaze upwards towards the blank ceiling and once again stared at nothingness, he had a blank dull look in his eyes that made Steve feel very afraid. “I don’t want to be him.” He muttered bitterly, his voice sounded like it would break any moment. Steve didn’t have ask who him was, he meant the Winter Soldier. “But I’m not Bucky either, I want to be, but I can’t Steve, I’m not anymore, I don’t know if I ever can be again.” He drew breath heavily and fluttered his eyelids fast several times, trying to push back tears. When he’d calmed he turned his head to face Steve again. “There’s just one thing I want to be right now, one thing that I always have been and that I know I always will be no matter what they do to me.”
“What’s that?” Steve asked.
“Yours.” Bucky whispered.