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The first time Steve Rogers took a swing, his eyes were closed.
A tiny thing, more spunk than pounds heavy, he already knew he was smaller than the other kids his age. But his Ma raised him right, giving him her sense of justice along with her small stature, and he knew that letting Billy O'Reilly break Susannah Brown's colored pencils into bits wasn't nice. So when Billy wouldn't stop at just five broken pencils, Steve wound up his little arm, squeezed his eyes shut, and let it fly. But he took no pride in this deemed necessary violence, and so scowled at "James-Buchanan-call-me-Bucky-Barnes" when he was the one to lay the final hit that got Billy off of Steve's back, a purple bruise blooming around his eye.
-----
A couple of years and a long list of scuffles later, Steve took a swing with his eyes wide open, but shut them after a few return hits that made it square into his gut.
Still gangly, not in the tall-and-lanky way but in the short-and-sickly-and-probably-will-break-bones-in-a-fight way, he had only moderately revised his punching technique since kindergarten. The knowledge that he rarely was left better off than the other guy in a fight did nothing to deter him from getting in fights in the first place, but at low points, like when precise blows were being laid on his ribs, he wondered if he ought to have a different tactic.
This time he figured it was better he get beat to a pulp rather than have Delilah's skirt lifted by this brute in plain daylight. As the blows continued to land on him, sometimes alternating with a kick from a heavy boot, he felt the pain shoot unnervingly through his back. In a rare moment of vulnerability, Steve's stopped his stubborn struggling and curled into himself. He squeezed his eyes shut and thought hazily about the scolding he'd get from Bucky when (if, his brain said wryly) he found him in time.
At some point, the beating stopped, but the darkness of his eyelids was too enticing. They stayed closed.
-----
"I don't want to kill anyone," he had said. "I don't like bullies, no matter where they're from."
The first time he fired a gun he closed his eyes.
Steve Rogers wasn't delusional. He didn't think that the Army and war and fighting for your country didn't involve actual fighting, or actual killing. He knew too well the brutality of men, and that in turn he wasn't a Quaker himself. But holding the cold metal in his hand, loaded and aimed at a target at Camp Lehigh, sent a cold wave through him he'd never felt before. It felt a lot like what people described as "cold feet," except it was his entire body.
He adjusted the grip of his hands on the gun, feeling a rivulet of sweat make its way down the side of his neck, and lifted it to stare down the barrel. As he clenched his finger, he clenched his eyes, and the knowledge that he would end life with this skill clenched tightly around his heart.
-----
If his eyes were closed, this was merely the worst nightmare of his life, and not him clinging pathetically to the side of a train while his Bucky (oh, God) fell to his death in a ravine in Switzerland.
-----
He might've be a supersoldier, but even he didn't expect to survive being frozen in arctic water for seventy years.
As consciousness returned to him, he inhaled a stale, artificial smell, heard the breathing city and the radio in the corner (the quality is too good, too clear - where am I?), felt the crushing weight of loss sitting on his chest.
He swallowed his nausea at the pressing reminder, eyes flicking under closed eyelids. He doesn't want to open them to a world where his anchor has been taken from him and he is left, directionless, floating, floundering. He keeps them closed a moment more. It hurts less in the dark.
He opens his eyes to a fake room. It is painfully clear it is not 1945.
-----
He might've be a supersoldier, but he still felt pain. As it wound through his body, he thought to himself that this is worse, this is worse than the train. For his Bucky wasn't resting in peace, but rather was suffering in a life that was devoid of it. If he kept his eyes closed, it wasn't real, and Buck would be here (he wanted him here in the future so bad it hurt in a completely separate way) with his smart smirk, his grey eyes picking up the color of his shirt, the ocean, the sunset over Brooklyn; his hair gently flopping onto his forehead. His hands that can both caress and hurt, play and heal.
But Bucky wasn't here, not at all, and his shell was still wandering the earth restlessly, and so he kept his eyes closed.
-----
He stands in a stairwell, cold and dank, his chest compressing in a half-assed attempt to make him remember his old asthma attacks. But the weight of it is real, and he still finds it hard to draw breath.
He clutches the railing as the waves wash over him, eyes shut against the realization of what is going to happen.
He is going to fight, as he always has and as he always will. His hands have fought so much and so hard, and seemingly for nothing, since he is now using them to hold Bucky close to his chest while simultaneously ripping apart the family he helped create. But it cannot be any other way.
His Bucky is back, and he will use his hands in any way necessary to ensure he isn't taken again.
-----
It is quiet - it is finally quiet around them, and they face each other in a way both familiar and strange, just within the edge of each other's space. Steve drags his eyes, shiny in the partial darkness, across familiar features - across his dimpled chin, his bow lips, wide cheekbones and dark hair. His neck and shoulders, where he can just barely see the beginning of a scar leading underneath his collar. Back up to his eyes, which he cannot leave for long, so newly clear and deep as the Mariana Trench.
Bucky steps forward, breaking their space (since when have they had bubbles around each other, anyhow) and crowds him against the wall. His breath washes over Steve's neck, the skin breaking out in gooseflesh where it curls over the surface. His flesh hand reaches out to cup Steve's elbow gently, and he shudders. He's not breathing at all. His eyes are wide open because he can't miss a moment of this, of Bucky, ever again. His eyes have been closed in pain too long, and so he drinks in a sight as sweet as honey and as greedily as a man parched in the desert.
But Bucky's eyes are soft, not hard; his touch is patient and tender, in a way that's so rare it makes Steve's heart clench. His movements are slow and purposeful, like he is taking measured sips of a fine wine.
"Darkness won't hold pain any longer," his voice rasps quietly in the twilight. "I'm here, sweetheart."
Steve lets his eyes slip closed as lips press against his.
Nothing's going to hurt with his eyes shut.