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Bucky already has his key in the lock when he hears someone walking around inside his apartment. He mentally slaps himself for not noticing sooner, he would’ve just waltzed into the apartment and met the Hydra agent completely unprepared if he hadn’t heard them at the last moment. He’s been living in this apartment for a year, in Romania for almost a year and a half.
In the first couple months he’d kept on the move, never staying in the same country for more than a couple weeks, never sleeping in the same place for more than a couple nights. He heard that Hydra collapsed along with S.H.I.E.L.D, most of them dead, but he’s still terrified that one of the surviving members will find him and say the words. So, he kept moving, never staying in one place long enough for anyone to track him.
When he arrived in Romania fifteen months ago, he was exhausted. He’d been running for so long and he just needed a place to stay for a while, just somewhere to lay low until he was ready to keep moving. He planned on staying a week, maybe two, but then he never left.
There was something about the place that made him feel safe. It was like he’d finally found a place he could let his guard down, somewhere he could see himself build a life for himself.
Eventually he found an actual apartment and he’s been staying there ever since. It’s just a small, run down apartment, but it feels like a home. He’d picked out the furniture, carefully placing them where he could easily use them to his advantage if they ever found him.
He should’ve known it was a bad idea, that they would eventually find him. It was stupid to think that staying in the same apartment for a year was going to end any other way than Hydra finding him.
He had wanted Steve to find him, he knows that the main reason he wanted to find a place he could stay for a while was so Steve could track him down. But after what he did to Steve, he has no idea why he would be looking for him. Who in their right mind would try to track down the person who nearly killed them for any other reason than revenge?
Bucky takes a deep breath, trying to will down the fear that’s sitting deep in his stomach and slowly twists the key in the lock. If they’ve found him, he’s not going to go down without a fight.
The door slowly opens, and he steps through just as a voice murmurs something he can’t make out. He is unarmed as he’d just been at the market. He mentally slaps himself again for letting his guard down enough to end up in this situation; Hydra found him and broke into his apartment, and he is completely unarmed.
The man in his apartment doesn’t seem to hear him as he walks into the room. He’s murmuring something again; Bucky still can’t hear what he’s saying. He finds himself thinking that the Winter Soldier would have no problem hearing the words. His stomach twists with a new kind of fear when he recognizes the man.
The suit the man is wearing looks the same as the last time he saw it, with the shield on his back. He stops when he’s standing a few feet behind the man and prepares himself for what might come next. All this time he had wanted Steve to find him, but now that he’s standing there, right in front of Bucky, he’s terrified.
His heart had longed for Steve, but he hadn’t thought of what he’d do or say if it actually happened. He’s not sure if he should lunge forward and wrap Steve in a hug or run out the door he came in through. He’d dreamt of this moment so many times, in so many ways, but in none of them did Steve break into his apartment and start reading his notebooks while Bucky was out buying plums.
It’s almost funny, he would laugh but positive emotions haven’t really been a big priority. He’s been too busy dealing with the negative ones to even think about laughter.
Steve reading in his notebooks however, that is not funny, at all. Those notebooks are his memories, his mind. He writes down every memory and every thought in them, Steve reading them is pretty much the same as Steve just opening up his brain and taking a peek at what’s inside.
The one he’s reading in is the one he wanted Steve to see the least. It’s the one with all his Steve memories. He wrote in it this morning when another memory had come back in his dreams which is why it was just thrown on top of his fridge.
Bucky sees the exact moment Steve realizes someone is in the room with him. He watches warily as Steve turns around and puts down the notebook he’s been flipping through. For a moment they just stand there, looking at each other.
Bucky has put on his mask of no emotions even though he’s pretty sure every singe emotion that exists is rushing through his body. He can’t let Steve know that he remembers, he doesn’t know why, just that it’s going to be painful if he admits that he knows the man standing in front of him.
Steve takes a step towards him and Bucky has to stop himself from taking a step back. His heart jumps into his throat and he struggles to keep up his façade. There is a mask of something on Steve’s face too, but Bucky can see right through it. He sees every emotion on Steve’s face as clear as day.
The guy that’s standing in front of him is the same guy that’s in all of Bucky’s memories, but he still looks so different. The guy in his memories was the definition of sunshine, this guy is tense, tired and he looks at Bucky with such sadness, it breaks Bucky’s heart.
“Do you know me?” Steve looks cautious, like any wrong move can set Bucky off. He has his Winter Soldier face on, so he can see where Steve is coming from. He wants to scream ‘yes, I do know you!’ But he can’t. It would be obvious that he’s lying if he says no though, there’s no way Steve’s going to believe that he didn’t find out who Steve was after their last meeting, even if he didn’t remember him.
“You’re Steve.” He says, keeping his voice void of any emotion. “I read about you in a museum.” It’s not exactly a lie, he did read about Steve in a museum, but only after he remembered him. He had been on the run for a few weeks when it came to him, he’d had memories of Steve before, but in this one he realized who Steve had been to him. That he wasn’t just a friend from before the war, he was Bucky’s everything; the love of his life.
“I know you’re nervous, and you have plenty of reason to be.” Steve says with a hint of nervousness in his voice. “But you’re lying.” When Bucky doesn’t say anything, he continues. “You pulled me from the river.” It’s not a question, Steve knows that it was Bucky who pulled him from the river that day. “Why?”
Bucky should’ve expected the question, god knows he’s been thinking about it every single day. When Steve fell, he still hadn’t remembered, not really, he just knew that he needed to protect him. He’d broken out enough for his instincts to keep Steve safe to take over, but not enough to know why.
“I don’t know.” He says it too quickly to be believable, he knows that, but perhaps a part of him doesn’t want Steve to believe it. He wants to tell the truth, he just can’t. It seems like his body has forgotten how to breath, he has to force his lungs to inhale and exhale. He can feel his heartbeat all the way into his fingers and toes and he’s pretty sure Steve can see the way his whole head gets bigger with every heartbeat.
“Yes, you do.” Steve says in a clear, stern voice as he reaches into a pocket in his suit and pulls something out. He takes another step closer and Bucky swallows thickly, fear taking over his body as Steve hands him something. He takes it with his right hand, he doesn’t trust his left arm to behave after what it did to Steve last time.
As soon as he holds it in his hand it feels familiar and when he looks at it his vision goes blurry. He can’t control his breathing anymore; it’s coming in and out way too quickly now.
“What’s this?” His voice is shaking along with the rest of his body. He knows exactly what it is, but he gives a last desperate try at pretending not to remember. In his flesh hand is a silver chain with his dog tags, the familiar name and number he remembers mumbling over and over to himself while Hydra were taking his memories, one by one.
He remembers the fear he felt the day he couldn’t remember the numbers anymore, how terrified he’d been when he couldn’t remember his own name, when he lost himself.
There is also a ring on the chain, it’s a thin silver band. He can feel the tears form in his eyes as he looks at it. No amount of blinking or clearing his throat can hold back the flood of emotion that’s crashing into him.
“You know.” Steve says, Bucky looks up at him and finally lets himself nod. He expects pain to follow as he admits it, like every other time he had remembered Steve, but it doesn’t come. There’s no electricity surging through his brain, no punches, no stabbing, no slapping, no pain.
It’s just him and Steve, in this small apartment in Bucharest, almost seventy-five years after the first time Steve gave him that ring.
“It’s been so long.” He chokes out. Steve lifts his arms and moves even closer as if he’s going to hug Bucky, but stops himself, looking at him with a questioning look. Bucky nods and when Steve’s arms wrap around him, he lets himself collapse against his chest. He holds his breath and tries to push the emotion back, but to no avail. His sobs rip out him, uncontrollably and violently. Finally, he lets go.
The emotions have been building and building for months. He’s grieving. For himself, for the time he’s lost, for what happened to him. He’s grieving for Steve, for the small boy he met in Brooklyn, for the man who gave him a silver ring to represent their love when they couldn’t get married. He’s grieving for who they used to be, for everything they’ve lost and for everything that’s been done to them.
Steve doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t have to. He knows what Bucky is going through. He too went through a similar process when he first woke up from the ice. It’s hard to realize that everyone and everything you know is gone; nothing is the same anymore. The world went on without them, the earth kept turning, and then they were just thrust back into it.
It’s overwhelming in every sense of the word. So, he does the only thing that would help Bucky calm down when he had anxiety attacks or breakdowns during the war. He held him close, tight enough for Bucky to feel like he’s being held together when it feels like he’s completely falling apart.
Steve lifts a hand to play with the hair at Bucky’s neck as Bucky slowly feels himself start to calm down. As soon as he’s calm enough to regain control over his emotions, he forces himself to stop crying and pulls back from Steve.
He’s exhausted, there’s no more fight in him. There is no point in fighting Steve anymore either, he already knows that Bucky remembers. A part of him is still waiting for the pain he’s so used to following any question about Steve.
Throughout his seventy years with Hydra a memory of Steve would resurface every now and then. He would ask about the small blonde who never walked away from a fight or the big guy in the blue, white, and red suit, sometimes he’d just ask, ‘Who is Steve?’. They would hurt him every time, beat him, stab him, burn him, before they erased his memories again.
But there is still no pain, and it’s just him and Steve in the room, no Hydra, so perhaps he’s safe.
He looks down at the chain in his hand again and before he can think too much about it, he opens the chain, frees the ring and puts the dog tags in his own pocket. He glances nervously at Steve who looks back at him with so much love. Steve quickly catches on to what Bucky wants and takes the ring from him with a grin in his face.
As he holds out his right hand for Steve there is a smile forming on his own face too. It’s his first real smile in god knows how long and it feels amazing. Steve takes his hand in his own and carefully slips the ring onto Bucky’s finger. Every touch of their skin sends shivers down his spine.
Then Steve kisses him and Bucky feels safer than he has for a really long time. The feeling of Steve’s lips on his is so familiar, but it also feels like it’s the first time. He gets lost in the feeling, finally letting his guard down completely.
He’s worked for so long to put his life back together piece by shattered piece, but no matter what he did something was missing. There was a big hole in his life where Steve was supposed to be and now that he’s got him back, he feels whole again, or as whole as he can be all things considered. He decides right then that he’s never letting Steve go again.
Whatever happens next, they will do it together.