Work Text:
It was still mostly Bucky’s fault that he was so emotionally unstable, but Steve liked to take the blame for it anyway. The little he’d got back of his memories told him that this wasn’t atypical Steve behavior. He remembered a small, scrawny boy with more courage than sense who stood up for every mistreated person in town, and at the time, that was a whole hell of a lot of people. He remembered a defiant teenager, determined to make it into the army and onto the front line, to beat up bullies and fight for what was right. He remembered kindness and laughter and a twinkle of blue eyes. He remembered a burning room and a voice calling for him to run, get out of there, and his own voice screaming back ‘not without you!’ with a certainty he’d never felt before.
But he also remembered the Soldier. He remembered the feel of a gun in his hand and a face in his mind, single-minded determination, cold disinterest as he took the shot, the near-soundless impact. He remembered faces – so many faces – dead, alive, innocent, monstrous… it all blurred.
Mostly he remembered nothing. The sort of nothing that comes from extended periods of unconsciousness, times when the world just passed by him and he slept on, unaware, comatose, frozen. Those memories were a welcome relief. They did not induce the gut-clenching guilt that came with his brief lapses into the Soldier’s thoughts, nor did they invoke that glimmer of hope that he found in the memories from before the war, before the complications, back when he was James Buchanan Barnes, but you can call me Bucky, and he had a life, a home, a friend. Steve.
Steve. Another complication, yet one which he did not regret. He was a mystery, and one which Bucky sometimes spent hours trying to figure out while pretending to be asleep with Steve sat beside him, Bucky’s flesh-and-blood hand clasped tightly between his. He would open his eyes only when he could hear Steve fall asleep beside him, labored breaths settling, softening, and then he’d just stare at the head of blond hair, the exposed line of neck, the clothes which harbored no weapons, no means of protection - nothing but the man in them. He marveled at the trust, or perhaps the naivety - but no, it wasn’t that; Steve was smart, smarter than people took him for.
Steve was never there when Bucky awoke, but sometimes Bucky would catch a glimpse of his face, outside the little window in the door, peering in, before it quickly vanished. Those were the few times Bucky smiled.
It was on a seemingly ordinary day, Bucky didn’t know when, had no way of keeping time, that Steve walked in while he was having lunch. He looked like an overgrown school kid, sack lunch in hand, cautious expression on his face, yet an unmistakable glint of anticipation in his eyes.
“Hey Buck,” he said, and then cleared his throat and said it again when it came out hoarse.
Bucky nodded. Steve pulled up the hard plastic chair that Bucky had come to think of as Steve’s Chair.
“Mind if I eat with you?” Steve asked, waving his sack. Bucky scooted aside in response, and Steve set the sack beside him on the bed. He didn’t open it.
They sat in silence, the only sound in the room that of Bucky chewing his sandwich.
“It’s good to see that you’re eating,” Steve said, voice loud in the quiet. “I was worried, at first, you know… Well, we all were.”
Bucky watched as Steve slowly began to spread out his own lunch, two ham sandwiches and an apple. Bucky breathed in the smell of the sandwich and let the memory wash over him: him and Steve at a diner, Steve ordering the special, two ham sandwiches with a slice of apple pie, and grinning as he told the waitress that it would be the same for Bucky. Bucky had protested – “We can share, Steve, you know we can’t afford-” – but Steve had waved him away, and he’d been so excited to buy Bucky lunch with his own money that he’d earned painting portraits of rich folks down on the pier that Bucky didn’t have the heart to deny him. (“We’re kings today, Buck. Ain’t nothing can stop us today.”)
Steve saw him eyeing the sandwich. “Do you want one?” He held it out to Bucky, who looked at it warily. “It used to be your favorite. Go on, I packed one for you.”
Bucky took it. Steve watched anxiously as he took a bite, and after he swallowed, Bucky smiled, a small smile, but Steve’s face lit up like it was Christmas come early.
“The doctors say you’ve been doing a lot better,” said Steve conversationally, swallowing his own bite of sandwich.
Bucky shrugged. “I guess. I’m remembering some stuff.”
“What sort of stuff?”
“Just things here and there. Nothing specific.” Steve’s face fell, and Bucky quickly added, “I remember Coney Island.”
Steve seemed surprised. “You remember the Cyclone?”
“Yeah, and how you got sick that one time. Complained for hours about how it was a goddamn waste of a perfectly good lunch, and I got so tired of it I bought you hot dogs for dinner to shut you up.”
Steve grinned. “I knew you’d never gotten over that.”
Bucky smiled back. “Well it’s not like you ever let me forget it.”
Steve laughed, and Bucky was struck by the sound, the way it made Steve’s eyes shine, the crinkles that formed beneath his eyes, the way he stared at Bucky like he was the most important thing in the world.
Bucky cleared his throat and looked away. He poked at the remaining half of his sandwich, turning something over in his mind that he’d been thinking about for a long time.
“Look,” he said finally, “I don’t know how much better I’m going to get. The doctors say I’m improving, but it’s slow going. Sometimes I don’t remember something new for weeks. And sometimes a flood of it comes back at once and then I spend weeks curled up in bed trying to understand it all, put each memory where it belongs, like a puzzle.”
Steve reached out, cautious, and took his hand, stroked the back of it. “I know.”
Bucky sighed. “I mean… I’m trying to say that there’s no use waiting. I might never recover, not all the way. I might never be the Bucky you remember. I’m still the Soldier, he’s still a part of me. That’s probably never going to go away. And I don’t want you waiting forever for something that’s never going to happen.”
Steve was silent for a long moment. He let go of Bucky’s hand, and it took a long moment to realize it was because Steve had started to shake.
“And you think,” Steve’s eyes were aflame and locked on Bucky’s, “you think that, what, I’m going to abandon you? I’m going to give up hope?” Steve was visibly vibrating with anger, and Bucky felt a shiver run through him at the intensity.
“No… Well yes, but-”
“No, you listen to me. I did not find you again after almost a century of thinking you were dead, that I’d lost you forever, just to let you go again.” Steve stood abruptly and ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “Don’t you see? I don’t care if you’re never the same man I knew. I am not going to lose you again.”
He stood there, taking deep breaths until the shaking subsided, while Bucky absorbed this.
“Why?” he asked softly, looking up at Steve. It didn’t make sense. Why did Steve care so much, and about him of all people? “What am I to you?”
Steve made a strangled noise at the back of his throat. He looked down at Bucky fiercely, eyes shining.
“Bucky, you’re-”
And then he kissed him, sudden and fierce, pushing him back against the headboard. Bucky froze, too stunned to respond, but Steve didn’t seem to mind: he moved his lips desperately over Bucky’s, frantically, as if making up for lost time.
And it was like a dam had been broken. Bucky remembered – oh, he remembered everything. He remembered the two of them curled up on a sofa, legs intertwined, fighting about how Bucky had sneaked the last piece of chicken onto Steve’s plate instead of his own, and the way Steve’s mouth went slack when Bucky shut him up with a kiss. He remembered the slide of skin against skin, hesitant yet eager, slick and hot and desperate. Fingers, mouths, cocks, grinding, reaching out, stuttered groans and the squeak of the flimsy bedsprings. He remembered.
He came to with a gasp.
“Steve,” he breathed, and pulled him closer, moved his lips urgently against his, and finally – finally – Steve’s hands slid up to shoulders, his neck, thumbs stroking his jaw, fingers tangling in his ponytail, loosening it, letting the hair fall around them, curtaining them from the world.
They pulled back to breathe, and Steve pressed their foreheads together, panting.
“I remember,” Bucky whispered, kissing Steve’s eyelids, first one then the other. “I remember us.”
Steve kissed him again at that, little more than a quick press of lips, but it set Bucky’s heart racing.
Immediately the door burst open and several SHIELD nurses came racing in.
“Excuse me Mr. Rogers, but we must check the patient’s vitals,” one of them said, pushing Steve aside gently. “His heart rate suddenly spiked.”
Steve allowed himself to be ushered to the door, squeezing Bucky’s hand before he let go. “He remembers,” he said to no one in particular, staring at Bucky with a smile like he had hung the moon and stars. “He remembers.”
Bucky watched him through the little window in the door as the nurses bustled around him, adjusting cords and checking monitors. I love you, Steve mouthed, and Bucky closed his eyes as he was transported to the first time they’d said those words, lying in a garden, hands behind their heads, gazing into the sky.
I love you too, punk, he thought, and smiled.