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The forest moves around them both as they wait for Sam and Bruce to join them at the travel site, the wind carefully whips around them as if it had a life of it’s own, caressing the bristles of his beard and the length of Steve’s hair. The light shines through the canopy, creating an ebb of gold and jade light warming his skin. The birds dance around one another in the branches, rustles punctuated by careful chirps filled the silence between them. Bucky has always meant to ask Steve what it was like when the snap had happened, a little less life around them. How quiet were the trees if there were no birds to fill them.
Steve holds his shield between his hands, running the tips of his fingers across the edge of the shield. He pauses for a moment, the slight whistle of the glove against metal disintegrates into the air. He looks over to Bucky before grabbing Mjolnir by his side and heading away from the site.
Bucky hightails after Steve who is still moving too quickly for comfort. “Are you sure I can’t come with you, I’ve always wanted to go to space,” Bucky pants, not because he’s out of breath but he wants Steve to stop at talk to him otherwise he’s worried that Steve might start walking and never come back. The future was terrifying, but a past neither of them had experienced either? That was a terrifying experience worth getting lost in the woods for.
Steve stops and turns to Bucky,“I know”. Bucky had always told Steve as kids that he’d live on the moon, but only if Steve’d live with him. Steve sighs, “But it’s too dangerous.”
Bucky crosses his arms indignantly, “Too dangerous for the cyborg assassin? Wow, space is dangerous.” He can feel his eyebrows twitching at the arches.
Steve drops the shield by his side, “You know I didn’t mean it like that.” He thrusts one hand into his pocket rubs the bridge of his nose with the other, “I just don’t want you to get hurt again”
“Till the end of the line, remember?” Bucky grins at his best friend.
Steve groans but he lifts his hand away from his face a small familiar smile on his pink lips, “You can’t use that to guilt me into taking you to space. You can’t use that card now.”
Bucky throws his hands dramatically in the air in fake irritation,“When can I use it then?”
Suddenly the smile on Steve’s beautiful face is gone, it’s replaced with something far more pensive and solmen, “I just need you and Sam to stay here, keep everyone and yourselves safe and I’ll be back for you and then we can-”
Bucky looks at Steve again, even with the serum he looks tired, his skin paper thin, dark circles under his eyes, Bucky was finding it hard to believe that he’d slept a single night in five years. His voice is hurried and close to trembling before Bucky cuts him off, “Steve-”
“Buck?”
“Don’t come back, okay. Find her.” Bucky’s tone is strong and decisive.
“I-” Steve starts in apparent confusion, but ends with exhaustion, his head bowed.
Bucky takes a step forward, “Look at me” Steve looks up at Bucky, his blue eyes glassy and lost, “You’ve done enough, more than enough Steve.” Bucky places his hand on Steve’s shoulder and squeezes, “I know you’re conflicted and you think you don’t know how to live without a fight, but you owe it to yourself to at least try. You deserve happiness.”
Steve swallows hard and looks up at the canopy above them and then at the forest floor below them and finally with exhausted tear filled eyes he looks at Bucky, “I can find that here, with you, you’re my home Buck.”
Bucky wants to kiss him. He’s never ever wanted to do something so strongly his entire life and he’s never had to hold back so strongly either, “I’m your shitty RV version of home and you deserve a palace, Why stay here when you can go back to someone you can love.”
Steve places his gloved had over Bucky’s,“I, you-” he starts but can’t quite find the words then his voice drops to a little more than a whisper over the sounds of the earth. “Don’t you know?” Steve’s open and he’s raw and Bucky is suddenly the trees around them are the blocks of Brooklyn towering over a school yard.
Bucky rolls his tongue between his lips and lowers his voice to a matching whisper like he’s worried that if anyone else heard this moment that it’d come crashing down on them both, “I do, you know I do.”
Steve’s back teeth lock and then unlock but his tone remains firm, “Then let me stay.”
“No-” Bucky can feel a heart breaking sob collect in his throat. He stops and swallows and starts again, “Your skinny punk ass is gonna go and find Peggy Carter and live the life you deserve.”
Steve shakes his head in dissatisfaction, “What if I never see you again?”
Bucky holds a thought for a moment and squeezes down on Steve’s shoulder again,“You will, trust me.”
Bucky would never take Steve’s trust for granted, he will see him again.
“How-”
“Do you think I’m going to let you go back in time on your own? The last time I let you do anything on your own you jumped on a grenade and then got yourself turned into this ” Bucky takes a step back and gestures to all of Steve, considering every last inch of stacked muscle beneath his suit.
“You’re coming with me now ?” Steve asks, still waiting for Bucky to shed light on well, everything.
“I’m going to meet you later, someone’s gotta take care of Hydra.” By the look on Steve’s face he’d totally forgotten about Hydra inside of SHIELD, for one glorious ignorant moment. Bucky leans in and jabs Steve with his vibranium arm, “Plus if I come with you straight away, she’ll never agree to marry you when she sees this cool metal arm.” He flexes his fingers playfully.
He takes Steve’s hand into his own, this wasn’t for the first time, but when you’re in love, everything feels like the first time for something.“I’ll meet you on the Brooklyn Bridge, in the centre. Your birthday, 1951”
“It’s a date” Steve grins back at him before his face is hit with something horrible, that can only be described as unyielding unflinching, grotesque reality,“Y’know if I marry Peggy, we can’t be together.”
Bucky clicks his tongue and Steve leans his head a little to the left, trying to gain a little perspective on the whole scenario, “You’ve seem to have forgotten that I’ve known her far longer than you have Steve. She knows how I feel about you, this wouldn’t be the first time having this conversation.”
“We’ll work something out in the fifties,” He takes Steve’s other hand in his own,“If not, we can all time travel back to Ancient Greece or something. It was different for folks like us back then” he pauses, his mind awash with possibilities before stuttering on, “Or we could get Peggy and come back here.” He holds Steve’s hands tightly in his own, “The world is ours, finally, for once in our long miserable lives.”
“I love you” Steve sighs.
Bucky moves forward carefully, wrapping his hand around the back of Steve’s neck and pulls them together. If being in love meant everything would feel like this first time, he would welcome it with open arms.
“I love you too” he mumbles into Steve’s still parted lips.
Suddenly Steve’s ducks down and collects his shield from by his feet and hands it over to Bucky, and the note taped to the back of it.
“Please can you, uh give this to Sam, after I’m gone.”
Bucky eyes the glistening red, white and blue for a moment.
“Unless you want it?” Steve asks with genuine curiosity..
Bucky shakes his head ferociously. Sam’s earned that shield. “Na, it’ll ruin my bad boy image”
Steve gestures to himself, “I’m not a bad boy?” he utters with squeaky indignation in his voice.
Bucky makes an indecisive ehh sound and shrugs, “The blonde hair, the baby blues -”
Steve shakes his head and lifts an exasperated finger, “I committed treason, twice! for you-”
“Are you really pulling out the treason card now?” Bucky states with mocking familiarity.
“Well,”
Bucky puts his hand on his hip and the other through the shield and puts on his best worst Steve impression,“I’m Steve “ America’s Ass ” Rogers and I committed treason for the guy I’m in love with,” he tuts and grins, “Whatever Steve, we’ve all done it.”
Steve pokes at Bucky’s side and then slides his fingers between Bucky’s and begin walking back to the transporter to meet Sam and Bruce, “I’m going to smother you to death when you get back to me”
Bucky tightens his lips to a straight line and tuts again, “If you do that I’ll come back from the dead and tell Peggy you made out with her niece whilst giving me the eyes”
Steve’s eyes are narrow, “You wouldn’t.”
“You’d think after 100 years you’d know me a little better than that Stevie.”