Archive of Our Own ^beta

Airports, Bucky thinks, are the bane of his existence.

He's been shot before (many times, actually), he's been kidnapped, he's been caught and tortured and lost limbs and was even declared dead at one point, but airports.

The flight from Germany to New York was like all the others. He had been squeezed in between two old ladies (one of which gave him cookies and was rather nice, the other who made him constantly try on the sweater she was knitting for her grandson to make sure it was the right size). A kid in the seat behind him wouldn't stop crying for eight of the nine hours of flight, and there had been more than a little turbulence.

Bucky had thought things would pick up after the flight, but they didn't.

And so, he's standing in front of the baggage claim office, drumming his fingers absentmindedly on the counter in front of him, while a worker with a vest and an attitude far too cheery to be working in customer service sifted through all of the lost luggage.

There were all those people out in the world, hooked on spy movies and daydreaming about action, and Bucky wishes he could tell all of them that the life off a spy was less skydiving and Bond Girls, and more airports.

The woman comes back in, black suitcase in tow, and hands it off to him with a cheery grin.

“This is it, yeah?” she says, and Bucky doesn't even glance at the tag on it but it looks like the cargo he was assigned, so he says:

“Yep. Thanks.”

He's out of the airport in no less than five minutes.

Thank god.

It's nine a.m. when Bucky gets to his hotel, and despite it being morning, he's ready to collapse on the bed with the itchy sheets and pass out for a few hours. Instead, he places his black suitcase on the bed, decides to make sure the cargo hadn't been tampered with while it was separated from him.

He unhooks the two latches on the side and flips it open.

And where a glowing blue square is supposed to be resting, there isn't.

Instead he finds a suitcase full of clothes, a sketchbook resting on top with a pencil case next to it. There's a gray little machine thing tucked into a corner along with some tubes (Bucky has no idea what the hell it is), and there no less than three inhalers and two bottles of painkillers.

He'd gotten someone else's suitcase, which meant that someone else had his.

Bucky rolls his eyes (he doesn't even have the energy to scowl) and shuts the suitcase, before grabbing for the white tag dangling off of the handle.

A name, a phone number.

Bucky has his cellphone whipped out in a heartbeat, punching in the number.

He makes sure to put on his 'friendly' tone of voice, a smile slipping onto his face instinctively as he gets into character.

"Hi, is this, ah," Bucky pauses, glances down at the tag again, "Is this Steve Rogers? I think our luggage got mixed up at the airport."

The man on the end of the line thanks him, and Bucky offers his hotel name and room number (he's only there to sleep before hitting the road again, so giving out that info can't hurt).

Barely twenty minutes later there's a knock on the door.

And the guy on the other side of it is nothing like Bucky expected.

On the phone his voice had sounded deep and confident, and yet the guy there can't be an inch taller than five foot four, nothing more than ninety pounds soaking wet.

He's at least half a foot shorter than Bucky, all pale skin and floppy blond hair and bright blue eyes.

One hand is held out to Bucky, and the other is gripping the handle of Bucky's suitcase tightly.

And all Bucky should really care about is the suitcase, but he can't take his eyes off of those damn grey-blues.

"Hi," Steve says, hand still extended, and Bucky manages to compose himself enough to shake it. It's still rather startling how deep his voice is, compared to how utterly tiny he is. "I'm Steve."

"I'm Bucky. Hi," he replies, adding in a flirty smile.

(Unlike the last smile of his, this one is very, very real).

(Even though Bucky knows that he shouldn't be flirting with a civilian.)

(But he's tired and Steve is cute, and it's not gonna hurt anyone.)

(So he continues smiling.)

"Your suitcase is on the bed, I can go grab it," Bucky says, and he turns to enter the room. "You can come in if you want."

Steve does come in, trailing after Bucky.

"You didn't go through my stuff, did you?"

"No, of course not," Bucky replies, "I just opened up 'cause I thought it was my suitcase, but I didn't go through anything. You didn't go through my suitcase, did you?"

Steve seeing the Tesseract would be bad, but him finding the files about it (that were hidden underneath it), would be even worse.

Because this is a top priority mission, and Bucky would really hate to have to eliminate the tiny man with the gray-blue eyes.

Or, worse.

Because, of course, working with S.H.I.E.L.D., there's always a fate worse than death around the corner, waiting for any civilian (or spy, for that matter) who treads the wrong way.

"I thought it was my stuff so I did check it, but I didn't see anything besides the blue cube thing. What is that, anyway?"

"A family heirloom," Bucky says, slipping into the first lie that comes to mind, "It's some weird nightlight thing, my-"

Bucky's cut off by the sound of a bullet shooting through the hotel window, hitting the wall.

A few inches either way, either Steve or Bucky would have died.

Bucky ducks down to the ground, grabbing Steve by the front of his shirt and taking him down with him. They're hidden between the bed and the wall, out of sight from the window.

Steve's breath hitches in his throat, and he's even paler than he was a minute ago (if that's even possible).

Bucky mutters a curse, before turning to Steve.

"Look, we're going to make a run for it, okay?" he says, keeping his voice level, and it really panics Steve about how calm Bucky's acting about it.

Steve, after a moment, nods, and Bucky has the consideration to snatch Steve's suitcase off the bed (prompting another shot, Steve's eyes go wide, and Bucky only looks mildly annoyed).

"Stay low to the ground, crawl of you have to, but don't get high enough so they have a clear view from the window," Bucky orders, voice firm, "Be quick too, okay?"

Steve, after a moment, nods, tightens his hand on the handle of Bucky's suitcase.

And, at Bucky's mark, the two manage to exit the room unscathed.

Once they're out, Bucky grabs Steve by the hand, and heads for the nearest stairwell, as fast as his legs can carry him. Steve barely manages to keep up, but he does.

"We're probably surrounded, so don't leave my sight, don't drop the suitcase, and don't wander off," he says, and he's in front so he can't see Steve, but Steve's nodding again.

Halfway down the stairwell, Steve speaks.

"What the hell is going on?" Steve asks, voice a little higher than it was earlier.

Bucky stops, remembers he is with a civilian, and grabs his badge from his jacket pocket.

He shows off the shiny bird to Steve.

"I'm Bucky Barnes, I work for S.H.I.E.L.D. I'm supposed to be bringing that suitcase to a base in California, and the people shooting at us are willing to kill both me and you to get it. For the time being, I think it's safer if you stuck with me."

"Oh," is all Steve squeaks out, "Oh."

And they start running down the stairwell again.

They make quick work of the two flights of stairs, and cross out of the lobby easily.

Before they exit, he snatches two hats off of the coat rack by the door, hands a baseball cap to Steve and slips on one himself.

"Try to hide your face," he instructs.

"Okay." He has to fumble with the snaps in the back to make it small enough to fit, but in a few moments, it's perched on his head, (still a bit too lose, but as secure as it's gonna get).

"My car is the black Jeep, we're going to try to get there as soon as possible, okay?" He pauses, and turns to look Steve in the eyes.

"If anything happens to me, don't stop running. I've had skirmishes with people like these before, they won't hesitate to kill me, but they won't kill you. But you do not want to get caught by them. Keep running, don't stop, and once you're positive that they're not behind you, call 911 and tell them you have a R-S-K-42. They'll know what that means, and they'll get you to a secure location. Understand?"

Steve takes a moment to absorb the information, before steeling himself, and nodding firmly.

"Run, don't stop, R-S-K-42, got it," he says, and Bucky wants to grin, because he's known experienced spies and soldiers who didn't handle orders as well as the scrawny guy in front of him.

Instead, he grabs Steve's hand again (because that's totally necessary. It's so Steve doesn't get lost or dragged off or falls behind, and totally not because he likes the way those slender fingers feel laced with his own, his big hand completely dwarfing Steve's. Or so he tries to convince himself. Steve doesn't protest, though, and Bucky's plenty glad for it.)

"Ready?"

"As ready as I'll ever be," Steve replies, and they exit the hotel.

Bucky makes a mad dash to his car, half-dragging Steve after him, and they're almost there when a man in black darts out from a line of cars.

He jerks up his wrist.

"I've got Barnes and his partner," he says into some form of communicator in his wrist.

He reaches for the gun at his hip, and time seems to slow.

Bucky's faster, he drops Steve's suitcase and he's got a handle on the gun tucked in the back of his waistband in a heartbeat.

He pulls it out with his free hand and aims it at the mans head.

Steve's fingers, still laced with his, instinctively tighten, and there's a quiet gasp.

Bucky is generally a 'take no prisoners' kind of person.

But he takes a swift glance back to Steve, sees the frozen terror on his face, and decides he can't just kill a man in front of a civilian.

Especially one like Steve.

And maybe that's too soon a judgment considering that they've barely known each other, but whatever the reason, Bucky lowers his gun, and he shoots the guy in the kneecap instead of the head.

He screams and collapses, and Bucky's grabbed Steve's suitcase, tugging on Steve again.

And before either of them know it, they're in Bucky's car, Bucky driving off as fast as possible, Steve shaking in the passenger seat.

Neither of them speak until ten minutes later, until Bucky's positive he's driven for long enough that no one's tailing them. He slows down the jeep to a speed that they won't be pulled over for, and glances over at Steve.

He looks like some mixture of stone and terror, and he's got his arms wrapped around his suitcase like it's his lifeline. Bucky's own suitcase is sitting on the car floor at Steve's feet, but Bucky's concern is a bit more heavy for the blond than the cube.

The only movement he's made in the past ten minutes is to take his inhaler.

One puff, wait a minute, another puff, and he shoved the red and white thing back into his pocket.

Since then, he's been frozen.

"I didn't kill him, y'know," Bucky says, and he regrets diving right into the conversation the second Steve jumps at the sudden noise. Steve turns to look at him, and Bucky has to force himself to look back at the road and away from Steve.

Saving his life from Hydra wouldn't mean shit if he got them both killed in a car crash, of all things.

"I just incapacitated him, I didn't kill him," Bucky says.

Steve nods.

"Yeah," he says, undertone of stress in his voice evident, "I know."

"Are... are you okay?" Bucky says, and he feels that it's kind of a meaningless thing to ask. This is probably the most action that Steve's ever seen in his life, of course he's not okay.

Steve shrugs.

"I dunno, honestly. I'm just..." he pauses, lets out a frustrated breath before composing himself. A moment later, the fear is washed from his face completely, and when he speaks again, it's that same calm, deep voice Bucky talked to on the phone earlier. "What's going to happen now?"

A question Bucky had been mulling over himself, if he was honest.

"Well," he says, and it's obvious he's stalling while he thinks.

"The guy back there thought I was your partner," Steve says, "You can't just let me on my own now, can you? They'll come after me."

"Right," Bucky says, "The nearest safe house we have is here in New York, but there's probably no way we can get back into the city without Hydra - those guys are called Hydra, by the way - without them noticing. The next nearest safe house is in Virginia, I could bring you there. They'd keep you safe until this is all blown over, but they may have to set you up someplace far away with another name. Hydra is pretty damn persistent when they want something, and what happens next is dependent on how badly they want you."

There's a moment of tense silence, before:

"Okay," Steve says, and he says it so casually that Bucky's more than a little surprised. 

Last few times he had to admit civilians into safe houses, tell them the prospect of them ditching their old identity, it didn't go smooth. More crying and begging, less casual 'Okay's.

"You're alright with this?"

"I guess so. I mean, I'll miss New York, lived there for my whole life, but there's nothing really for me there, anymore. And I got my bag, so I have clothes and all my meds and my art supplies, I think I'm good. Whatever happens happens, I guess."

"Alright," Bucky says, and he's beginning to like Steve more and more. "Should only take a few days to get to Virginia."

"A few days?" Steve questions, "I thought it only took a couple hours?"

"Generally, yeah. But we're on the run from Hydra, and you can bet they'd be scanning every traffic camera and have snipers on every major highway. Being on the run, you drive in short bursts, change cars and clothes often, and avoid major roads. A trip that'd take a few hours becomes days."

"And you said you're heading to California like this?"

"Yep. Gonna take two months, at minimum, but that's just because I'm being extremely careful. Not a mission I can afford to fail."

Steve nods, and he looks down at the suitcase at his feet. He wants to ask about the cube, wants to ask about the mission, wants to pester Bucky with every question in his mind.

He glances up from the suitcase to look at Bucky.

Eyes the color of something Steve can't quite pin are fixed firmly on the road, two large hands (both gloved) gripping the steering wheel. Well built but not overly muscled. He's got a perfectly straight nose and stubble gracing his cheeks, hair that is a bit too long and a bit too messy but works anyway, and a jawline so sharp it could cut diamond.

Long and short of it, he's any artists dream subject. Steve takes a moment to commit features to memory, because the first thing he wants to do when he's settled in wherever the fuck he's going is to whip out his pencil and sketchbook and draw him.

But he doesn't say that aloud, and he doesn't voice any of the multiple questions dancing in his head.

Steve leans his head on the window, watching trees and telephone pole lines whip by.

"Virginia, here we come," he murmurs, quiet enough that only he hears it.

They drive for three hours, until a little past noon.

"See, Hydra knows that the thing anyone does when they're being followed is get as far as possible. So there's gonna be search teams all over. But they also know that a more savvy person may try to subvert that, stay close to where they were spotted. So they'll be scouring all around that hotel, too. So, we're going to stay in the middle ground for a while."

Bucky explains all of this as he pulls into a chain coffee shop in the middle of some town that's a mix between rural and city, but not quite suburb.

"Hungry?" he asks, because he, for one, is starving. Also in dire need of coffee. The adrenaline from the morning's earlier events has long faded, and a caffeine boost to fight off the exhaustion of jet lag would be nice.

"Starving," Steve replies. Bucky edges the car into a parking space and Steve pries open his suitcase.

He shifts through layers of clothes and other things until he finds what he needs, and by the time that Bucky is satisfied with his parking job, Steve has his stuff all packed up and his suitcase closed.

They exit the car and enter the cafe, which is mostly dead. There's a girl behind the counter with white streaks in her hair and gloves on her fingers, standing next to a guy who's flipping around his lighter like him getting burned isn't even a possibility. The other guy behind the counter, dressed in an ice blue shirt underneath his apron, is the only one who appears to be doing any work.

Bucky saunters up to the counter, Steve trailing after him.

"Coffee, black, and a sandwich, please," Bucky says.

"What kind of sandwich?" the girl asks, waving a hand in the general direction of the menu behind her.

Bucky decides he's too tired to bother deducing the overly-pompous names of the sandwiches the shop offers, and just says:

"The most popular one."

The girl (name tag reading Marie, Bucky notes) nods in affirmation and the guy in the blue shirt (his name tag reading Bobby) turns to get ready to prep the food. The other guy continued flipping around his lighter (his name tag had a sticker over it that said 'Pyro", but the girl had fussed at him to get to work using the name John).

"And for your boyfriend?" the girl asks, glancing over to Steve.

Bucky has pretended to be people's boyfriends before, he's been in relationships before, he's been mistaken for people's boyfriends before. Relationship comments generally slide off of him like water off a duck's back.

And yet, he blushes (Marie smiles at this, and Bucky tries not to get mad at a teenager who's just serving shitty coffee and paninis).

Steve steps closer to the counter.

"We're not dating, actually," he says, "And I'll just have some water and a... hmm... give me a turkey and Swiss panini."

"Oh, sorry 'bout that," Marie says, although she sounds like she's not sorry at all, "And we'll get y'all's food out real quick, you can have a seat, we're not busy so we'll bring it to ya'."

"Thanks," Steve says, and he goes to sit down at a table with two chairs, tucked in a corner, next to a window.

Bucky follows, and he faintly overhears Bobby fussing at Marie.

"I can't believe you said that!" he exclaimS, in a half whisper that shows that Bobby's really not good at whispering.

"Well, John dared me to," Marie replies, sounding entirely satisfied with herself. John proceeded to high five her, while Bobby rolls his eyes.

Bucky sits across from Steve.

Bucky has his hands in his lap, and his right foot is tapping against the ground anxiously.

It's been ages since he had to sit down and make (honest) conversation with someone, if you didn't count his hang outs with Natasha, Clint, and Sam. He's pretty sure that those hang outs don't fit in the same category as whatever this is.

If he were with Sam and Nat and Clint, they'd be talking over their latest missions, the latest episode of Glee, or exchanging dick and yo' mama jokes.

And most of his missions are classified, and he doesn't know if Steve watches Glee (even if he does, he's not sure if he wants Steve to know that he watches Glee), and he's fairly certain dick jokes would be a tad inappropriate considering that they've known each other for all of four hours.

And he's known Nat, Clint, and Sam for most of his life, they were at the point where pretty much anything was comfortable between them, 'inappropriate' and 'secret' didn't really exist between the four.

And they are his only friends.

But if his friendship with them is at 100 and his with Steve is just a budding 1, he isn't quite sure what the median would be.

Probably not talk of assassinations or glowing cubes, and not talk over Glee, and certainly not dick nor yo' mama jokes.

However charismatic he may seem, Bucky's only truly good at being charismatic when he's either faking it for a mission, or sweet talking a dame.

Friendship, or sweet talking a fella, (Bucky's not sure what he wants to do with Steve yet, because both sound appealing), those are two things Bucky's a little rusty with.

But, despite Bucky's brief moments of panic, Steve winds up speaking first.

"So, we should get to know each other," Steve says, "We're going to be together for the next few days, right? We should at least know the basics."

"Yeah," Bucky says, relief settling over him, "I was thinking the same thing."

"So, you go first," Steve says.

The panic is back again.

"Um," he says (Real smooth, Barnes, an amazing job, truly, he thinks, before getting irritated at himself for his own sarcasm), "What do you want to know?"

"Well, I know you work for that secret agency, and your name is Bucky, and that's about it. Tell me somethin' else."

"Well," Bucky says, and he drags it out, and Steve realizes that that's just a thing he does when he's thinking or stalling, "Well. I don't really know what to say."

"First thing that comes to mind," Steve says.

"I like dancing."

Steve smiles, but before he can say anything, Bobby comes up to the table, bottle of water in one hand, mug of coffee in another.

He sets them down and scurries back to behind the counter.

Steve slips no less than six pills out of his pocket, in varying size and colors.

"What are those for?" Bucky asks.

"Long or short version?" Steve jokes, and he doesn't give Bucky room to say anything before he's pointing and describing, "This one is for heart issues, these are for back pain, these are for stomach issues."

"Whoa," is all Bucky says, and he watches as Steve tosses the pills into his mouth two at a time, taking sips of water in between.

"And that isn't even all of my health issues," Steve says. He says it with a half grin, as if it's a joke, even though it's obvious neither of them think that way.

"Is there anything I should be worried about?"

"Nope. Well, yes, probably, but I can handle it all. Have been on my own for the past couple of years, I can handle it all. I'll let you know if I'm dying and need to go to the hospital, though."

"Yeah," Bucky said, a smile of his own forming at Steve's sarcasm, "That'd be appreciated."

"Steve?"

"Yeah?"

"What is a panini, anyway?"

"A grilled sandwich, kinda. They're good."

"Dammit. Should have gotten one of those."

Then the food arrives, and apparently the most popular sandwich in the cafe is, in fact, a panini.

Bucky takes one bite, and frowns.

"I don't like paninis," Bucky says, and Steve frowns at him like he's been personally wounded.

"Let me see that," and he snatches a hunk of Bucky's panini, and pops it into his mouth.

He shudders a moment later.

"That's cause they gave you a blue cheese and spinach one," he says, "Which usually isn't that bad, but the ratio of blue cheese to spinach on this one is horrifying. Here, try this."

Steve proceeds to tear his own panini in half, passing it over to Bucky.

Bucky hesitates for just a moment, then he remembers the one time Natasha made him eat goat eyeball soup (a horrifying mission, honestly), and decides that a panini can't be any worse than that.

He takes a bite.

"I think I like paninis," he says, and Steve smiles.

Bucky smiles too, but for a different reason.

Steve's feeling comfortable enough around him to divulge his health issues and steal hunks of his food, and that makes Bucky think that he shouldn't really worry too much about the whole 'how to approach him' thing.

They talk over Steve's shared panini, and the two of them click together like it's meant to be.

And, maybe, it is.

They linger over their food, and they don't wind up leaving the cafe until two.

They split another panini, got cake afterwards, and watched as the guy with the lighter accidentally set an entire stack of paper cups on fire.

(John had panicked, Marie had rolled her eyes, Bobby grabbed the fire extinguisher and sprayed it down as calmly as if it were an every day occurrence.

"Food and a show," Steve had commented, prompting laughter from Bucky and Bobby, a smile from Marie, and a frown from John.)

They even take a couple brownies to go, food for the road, Bucky had said, and they had wound up leaving a bit more lighthearted than they came.

"You don't mind sharing a hotel room, do you?" Bucky asks, once they're walking into some dingy hotel, after a couple more hours of driving, "Separate beds, of course."

"Um," Steve says, the tips of his ears turning faintly red (and Bucky finds that adorable), "Yeah, I don't mind."

"Alright," Bucky replies, "Cause technically this is all going on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s budget, so we could afford multiple rooms if need be, but if Hydra does find us, it's probably best that we're close."

"Okay," Steve says.

Bucky's got the room paid for in a short amount of time, and soon the two of them find themselves standing in a trashy hotel room.

The stripped wallpaper is peeling and the carpet has it's fair share of questionable stains. The sheets look surprisingly clean, though, and the lights all work, so that's good enough for Steve and Bucky.

"I call bed by the window," Steve says, and he goes over to set his suitcase on it.

"Fine by me," Bucky answers. He sets his own suitcase down by his bed, and promptly flops onto the mattress, sprawled out so wide he's almost too big for the twin sized bed.

"I'm gonna go to sleep," he says, "I'm still exhausted from the plane ride."

"I'll probably be going to sleep too," Steve replies, "After a shower."

"Alright," Bucky says.

He doesn't even bother changing or getting under the covers, and it takes no less than two minutes for him to fall asleep.

Steve gathers a few things from his suitcase before heading to the bathroom.

He takes a quick second to get the layout in his head, before shutting and locking the door, and flicking the heater on, the lights off.

Showering in the dark always helped him think, and god, after the day he's had, he really has some thinking to do.

There's a whole sense of detachment tied to the situation.

At least, that's what Steve concludes, as he's scrubbing vanilla scented shampoo into his hair, in the dark.

He is well aware that the whole thing is happening to him.

Steve is well aware that he's now in the company of a spy, he's well aware that he could have died today, he's well aware that if he wasn't there, Bucky would have probably wound up killing that guy earlier.

And yet, it doesn't really feel like it's happening him.

He's read somewhere that detachment is the beginning of some form of trauma disorder, and he doesn't know if that's true or if the day's events would count as a trauma, and he muses on this as he rinses out soap suds from his hair.

After he lather, rinses, repeats, Steve comes to the conclusion that no, he probably doesn't have a trauma disorder, but yes, he should google it when he gets a chance. More out of curiosity spawning from over-thinking it, less out of concern.

By the time the shampoo's all out and his hair is more or less squeaky clean, Steve decides that while the events of the day were stressful and slightly incomprehensible, they happened, and there's nothing he can do to change it.

He's probably being hunted by 'evil bad guys', he might die, and he's going to an actual spy safe house in Virginia where he might have to change his identity, and he might never see New York again.

And it's all a little overwhelming, and it does make his chest clench up in anxiety if he thinks too hard about it, so he settles on the fact that there's nothing he can do to change it, and turns his thoughts to other things.

He dumps some conditioner into his hair, and moves away from the lukewarm water to let the conditioner set for the three-to-five minutes the bottle suggests.

And, somehow or another, his thoughts wander to Bucky.

He's not that bad, nice, actually. And pretty damn attractive-

Steve frowns, tries to tell himself that he's not thinking about the guy who dragged him into this, and whom he probably won't see ever again after the next few days are over and done with.

Steve turns the shower ice cold, rinses off, dries off, goes to bed.

And Bucky wakes him up at four in the morning.

Four in the goddamn morning.

Generally Steve has nothing against waking up early, he likes mornings, honestly. But for him, waking up at any time before seven a.m. is a fucking crime.

"Steve," Bucky says, and he has a hand on Steve's bony shoulder, shaking it gently, "Steve."

Steve opens his eyes slowly and blinks, blue eyes squinting and long eyelashes batting.

"What?" he says, voice raspy from sleep.

"Time to hit the road," Bucky says.

Steve blinks again, and it takes his sleep addled mind several seconds to process what Bucky just said.

He glances over, and the harsh red numbers of the alarm clock on the nightstand proudly proclaim that it is 4:02 a.m.

Steve drags his eyes back to Bucky.

"No."

He says it with such determination and force that's Bucky's stunned into silence for a moment, and before he can say or do anything, Steve's already fallen back asleep.

It takes Bucky an hour to get Steve to wake up, alternating between begging and threatening (gently, of course).

He gets hit in the face with a pillow no less than three times, and it ends when Bucky says "If you don't get your ass out of that bed and into the car, I will pick you up and throw you over my shoulder and carry you there."

Steve glares daggers at Bucky, but he stands and pulls on his shoes anyway, not even bothering to change out of his pajamas (white t-shirt, gray sweatpants, Steve's convinced that they can totally pass as daytime clothes and he will glare at anyone who dares suggest otherwise).

Steve grabs his suitcase, shuffles out to the car, and gets even more pissed when he realizes that the sun isn't even out.

"Are you mad?" Bucky asks, once the two of them are in the car and they're pulling out of the hotel parking lot.

Steve turns to him, and looks him dead in the eyes.

"You woke me up before the sun is even out," he says, voice deadly quiet.

He's back asleep in just a few seconds.

"Hey, Steve, what do you want from Starbucks?"

Steve cracks open his eyes, and the clock on the car dashboard says 5:23.

"A big ol' cup of go fuck yourself and let me sleep," he says. And maybe that's not a good thing to say to a spy who has a gun, but Bucky's nice and Steve is too tired to care.

Steve closes his eyes, leans back against the window, and starts dozing again.

Bucky smiles, and orders two large hot chocolates and six cake-pops.

"Sorry for getting angry earlier," Steve says. His voice is still a little rough and a little crackly, and his eyelids are drooping, but he's awake and sitting crosslegged in the passenger seat.

It's seven and the hot chocolate Bucky had ordered for him has long gone cold, but Steve drinks it anyway.

"It's fine," Bucky says, "Not the worst I endured from waking someone up."

"Really?" Steve asks.

"Oh, yeah. My friend, Natasha, one time I woke her up at three in the morning because we had a new mission, she stabbed me because she thought I was an enemy spy."

"Holy shit," Steve says.

"I'd take a bit of yelling and getting hit in the face with a pillow over being stabbed any day," Bucky replies.

"Same," Steve says.

Somewhat surprisingly, it takes Steve two whole days of being with Bucky for him to notice that Bucky is missing an arm.

They're in a motel, having ditched the jeep a while back and borrowed (stole, technically, but tomato-tomahto) a white mustang that has definitely seen better days. It had only been just two days, but the two got along rather well, working as well together as if they had known each other for years.

Some rerun of some sitcom was playing on the TV, neither Steve nor Bucky was really paying attention, it was just mere background noise. Steve had his sketchbook in his lap, doodling trees absentmindedly, and Bucky was washing some of his clothes in the bathroom sink.

Steve glances up at the TV, taking his eyes off his pages of trees, and then his eyes flit to Bucky.

And Bucky doesn't have his gloves on, and had stripped from his usual long sleeve shirt to just a tank top.

And Bucky's entire left arm is made out of metal.

Steve's pencil falls from his hand, making a thick thumping noise when it hits his sketchbook.

Bucky glances up, and follows Steve's gaze, eyes landing on his arm.

"Oh, the arm," he says, calmly, "You didn't know?"

"You always had gloves, or sleeves on," Steve says.

"Oh."

"I'm... I'm sorry for staring," Steve stammers out, "I know how shitty that can feel. Sorry."

"It's alright," Bucky replies.

Steve frowns, knowing it is not alright, because he has more than a few disabilities and he knows how shitty it is to be stared at.

And so, Steve closes his sketchbook and sets it off to the side, resting the pencil on top of it.

"Most of my health problems aren't really visible, but..." he says as he moves over to stand in the doorway of the bathroom.

He lifts up his shirt, a bit, revealing the plastic brace underneath.

"Scoliosis," Steve says, letting the hem of his shirt drop back down, "I have to wear the brace pretty much all day. It's not really that noticeable most of the time, but there are a few people who know about it, and who were less than kind about it. I know what it's like. So I'm sorry."

Bucky smiles, small but undeniably genuine.

"Thank you," he says, and he means it.

It's five in the afternoon on the third day of them knowing each other. They're at least halfway to Virginia, but Bucky has another idea.

"So," he said, speaking casually, "I had a thought."

"Hmm?" Steve prompts. He's doodling again (various poses without faces, this time), and it's kind of hard considering how bumpy the car is, but he figures rough drawing is better than doing nothing.

"Well, what if, instead of going to the safe house in Virginia, you come with me to Cali?"

Steve looks up from his sketchbook.

"Why?" he asks, and when Bucky frowns, he continues, "That's not a no, just a why."

"Well, you're going to the safe house to be safe, right? You'll probably be safer with me. And if Hydra does want you and you do need to start over, when we hit Cali I'll be done with my mission, and I can help you get set up there."

Steve thinks for a moment, drumming the end of his pencil on his sketchbook.

"I'd be safer with you?"

"Just call me your personal body guard," Bucky replies.

"Alright," Steve says.

He goes back to drawing, and Bucky can't help but smile.

"Hey."

It's been a week, Virginia's in the rear view mirror, and Steve is still perched in his passenger seat.

"Yeah?"

"Is it... is it alright if I draw you?"

"Of course!"

Steve smiles at his enthusiasm, and grabs a freshly sharpened pencil out of his bag.

"Can I see?"

"I'm not done yet."

"But let me see."

"I'm not done yet."

"Why am I missing half my face?"

"I am not done yet."

"Why is-"

"Bucky, I swear to god."

Their first close call comes a week and a half after knowing each other, they're in the middle of Kentucky.

Louisville is nice (but not as nice as New York, Steve says, and Bucky (hailing from Brooklyn himself) agrees), and Bucky divulges and gets them a hotel room that's a bit nicer than the cheesy motels they've been staying in.

The carpets plush and the curtains in the window actually shut all the way, so it's a lot better than some of the other places.

Steve's the one who decides that doing nothing but sitting in the car or sitting in hotels are boring, and since they've arrived in the city early enough to go do something, they go out for the rest of the day.

The food is good, a bit too... fried for Steve's tastes, but Bucky likes it, and they spend the entire afternoon wandering the city.

And Bucky knows somethings wrong when he glances over to his left, across the street that he and Steve are walking along side of, and sees a guy with something akin to an octopus on his arm.

The Hydra logo is, in fact, not an octopus, but it certainly looks like it, and Bucky's seen his fare share of Hydra people to know that he's one of them.

From the way the soldier is scanning the area around him, it's obvious that he hasn't caught a sight of them yet.

"On our left," Bucky says, and he says it with a smile, so if anyone's watching they'd think nothing's wrong.

Steve (in as subtle a way he can) glances over, and spots him.

"What do we do?"

"Act casual, don't look at him, keep moving. We'll go back to the hotel and get on the road again," Bucky says.

He worries for a split second, because maybe he should have made Steve go to the safe house in Virginia.

But he didn't.

The two started moving down the sidewalk again, attempting to hide in the thin crowd of people.

"He's coming this way," Steve whispers, barely a minute later.

Bucky panics, and, acting mostly on instinct, grabs Steve by the hand and tugs him into the nearest alley. Steve's back hits the wall of a brick building, and Bucky places his right hand on Steve's waist, the other hand pinned by the side of his head, and he ducks his face in close.

Bucky has had his fair share of faking relationships (for missions, mostly with Nat, sometimes with Sam, and only once with Clint (never again)). He's so focused on watching the side-walk from the corner of his eyes that the close propinquity only fazes him a little.

(A little.)

(Actually a lot.)

(Steve's eyes have gone wide and there's a bit of red dusting his cheeks, and those lips look even pinker up close.)

(It takes all of Bucky's restraint not to just take him right there.)

Steve, however, isn't used to PDA, fake or otherwise.

He turns bright red, swallowing nervously, and looks at anything but Bucky.

"Just until they're-" Bucky starts, and it's supposed to be something comforting, something to make Steve less stressed.

He's interrupted by Steve smashing his mouth into his.

Steve, even with Bucky's head ducked down, has to stand on tiptoe, and he brings a hand up to grip the front of Bucky's shirt for balance.

Steve's eyes are shut and his face is scrunched up in a way that shows he's putting everything into it, and Bucky sees this because his eyes are open.

(Because of the surprise.)

(Because, holy fuck, Steve is kissing him.)

It takes him a moment to get into it, eyes fluttering shut and him deepening it.

Steve's the one who breaks it off.

It could have been just a heartbeat later, or several minutes, or an hour, whatever it was, it wasn't long enough as far as Bucky is concerned.

"I'm sorry," Steve squeaks out, and he's blushing even harder now, if that's possible.

"No... no, it's okay. More than okay."

"There was one of those guys and he saw us and PDA makes people uncomfortable so I just went for it and I think he's gone now and god I am so sorry," Steve stammers out.

"Oh," Bucky says, and now he's stammering too. He darts backwards a step, letting his hands fall back to his sides. "Oh... I thought you... um. Oh."

"Oh, did you - did you, um..."

"Did you?"

Steve bites his lip in thought (making Bucky wishes he were the one biting that lip), before looking back up at him.

"We should go back to the hotel," he says, "Get away from those guys. We'll talk later."

Bucky wants to protest, wants to talk, wants to clear the air.

(Wants to kiss Steve again.)

Instead, he forces himself to think of the Hydra agents on their tail, and all he says is:

"Okay."

It winds up being two a.m. before they get the chance to talk.

They do go back to the hotel to grab their things, and a prompt car chase (complete with bullets flying) ensued, and it's honestly a miracle that the two of them got out unscathed.

They tear out of Louisville, and Bucky doesn't even look at Steve until they're several hours out and positive that there's no one behind him.

Steve is asleep, by that time.

Bucky waits.

Two a.m., and the car thumps over a pothole in the dark, unkempt back road they're driving on.

Steve jumps awake, and he panics for a split second before gathering his surroundings.

Bucky's in the driver seat, neither of them are shot nor dead, and some old Adele song is playing on the radio (it's kind of surprising that Bucky listens to Adele, but Steve doesn't judge).

Once he realizes he's safe, the tension leaves his shoulders and Steve relaxes, leaning back into the comfortable, decades old leather seat.

"So," Bucky says, "We should probably talk now. About that. That thing."

"The alley thing."

"Yeah. That thing."

"Yeah."

And the car falls silent again.

Neither of them want to talk first, and both are expecting the other to.

It winds up being Steve.

"Did you... shit, um. Did you like it?"

Bucky hesitates for just a second, his fingers tensing over the steering wheel and his eyes darting off the road for a second to look at Steve.

"I'll be honest," he says, "I think you're cute. I did like it."

And the words are out there, and Steve lets out a breath of air he didn't even know he was holding.

"I liked it too," he said, "And I did do it because of that guy, but I'm not regretting that I did it."

"I do wish it had been for different reasons, like you wanting to do it, but I didn't mind it."

"I did want to do it. Like, holy shit, second my back hit that wall, it was all I can think about. But y'know, I didn't know what you were doing and when I saw that guy I just did the first thing I could think of and that was kissing you because that was the only thing I could think of. I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize, you didn't do anything wrong," Bucky says.

"Don't worry," Steve says, a moment later, and there's a weight off his chest, "Next time. Next time there won't be any Hydra involved."

Bucky smiles to himself, and Steve can't help but grin, and it's a silent agreement between themselves that yes, there is going to be a next time.

There's fact that Bucky's a secret agent and Steve's a civilian and after they hit California, they probably won't see each other ever again.

Two months, Bucky had said, and it is like a timer in the back of their minds, slowly ticking away.

Neither of them talk about it, brings it up, questions it.

But still, it looms over them like storm clouds, thick and heavy.

Steve, as a kid, always liked playing in the rain.

But the pneumonia afterwards was a bitch.

Steve played in the rain anyway.

And he starts caring about Bucky, anyway.

They're in a small motel in Illinois, coming close to hitting Missouri, when Steve learns something rather interesting about Bucky.

He is fucking terrified of bugs.

A cockroach scuttles out from underneath the dresser in the room. Steve frowns, because, gross, and Bucky lets out something akin to a squeal and jumps on the nightstand. (The lamp shatters to the ground, and Bucky doesn't really care.)

"Oh my god burn it with fire!" he rushes out, voice having gone high.

Steve doesn't do anything, but that's just because he's now doubled over in laughter on the bed.

"What's so funny?" Bucky says.

Steve's laughing so hard that his lungs are wheezing, and he has to pull out his inhaler and take a dose.

"Super spy," he says, biting his lip so he doesn't burst out laughing again, "Who can shoot someone without a second thought, who's scared of bugs."

Bucky scowls.

"If you don't kill it I am going to shoot it," he says, glaring down at Steve from his perch on the nightstand.

Steve takes the second hit from his inhaler and shoves it back into his pocket.

"Fine," he says, and he's still grinning like mad.

"Do you not like to talk about it?" Steve asks, out of the blue.

It's been two weeks and they're heading up through Iowa, because Bucky got a tip off that there were rumors of a Hydra base in Nebraska and Kansas. Why Hydra would chose Nebraska of all places, Bucky doesn't know, but he decided to play it safe anyway. His plan is to get halfway through Minnesota, before they stop heading north and go back to heading west.

"Talk about what?" Bucky asks. At this point, he's sure he'll like to talk about anything, because there's nothing but static and football games on the radio, and they've been driving past corn fields for the past couple hours (and despite what one may think, counting cows isn't exactly the most entertaining thing).

"Your arm," Steve says, and he regrets it almost the moment he says it.

Bucky, though, shakes his head.

"Not really. I don't mind," he says, "I was kinda sensitive about it when it first happened, anyone would be, but it's been a while."

(Eight and half months, to be exact.)

(And he's still coping and a bit reluctant to talk about it.)

(But Steve has his own laundry list of ailments, and Bucky feels like he could trust he won't be rude about it.)

(But it's easier to say 'I'm fine with talking about it,' instead of 'I'm not fine but I trust you, and talking might help, so lets talk'.)

"Okay," Steve says, but he still gets the feeling it's not okay. He wipes his sweaty palms on his jeans, and picks up his pencil again (the subject of his doodle page of the day is hands, this time, which is something he needs a bit of practice with).

Bucky gets the feeling that Steve isn't going to talk, and so he talks himself.

"Lost it almost a year ago," he says, and he doesn't take his eyes off the road. But he can hear Steve setting down his pencil, shifting in his seat to turn to him. "I fell out of a train, my arm got torn off on the way down. They sent out a search and rescue, and by the time they found me, I was nearly frozen solid. Took a lot for them to get me back, at one point, I was even declared dead for a solid nine and a half seconds."

Steve's eyes go wide.

"Oh," he says, "I'm sorry."

Bucky smiles at him.

"Thanks. Anything else you want to know?"

"Does... does it function just like a real arm?" Steve asks, "Like, all the prosthetics I've seen were mostly for show, none could actually move like a real arm, but I couldn't even tell yours was metal until I saw you without your gloves."

Bucky nods.

"It does. It's pretty nice, actually. It's more dexterous than my old arm, and it doesn't get tired. The only downside is that all feeling in it is kind of... muted, would be the word, I guess. Like, that helps cause I can touch really hot things and really cold stuff, but still, everything is kinda just muffled."

"I thought that prosthetics like that were only theoretical?"

Bucky grins.

"Well, most of the things civilians think are just theoretical are actually real. Prosthetics like these have existed for a while."

"So pretty much every insane cure I've been hearing about is real?"

"Yep," Bucky said, "And us working for S.H.I.E.L.D. get first grabs. Advanced prosthetics like this won't be hitting the shelves for another twenty years."

"Holy shit," Steve says, "I should join."

Bucky glances over at him.

"Why, looking for some arms bigger than those twigs you got?" he teases, and the air in the car is considerably lighter than the tenseness that filled it a while ago. Something easy settles over the two, something light that makes them feel like they could share anything, talk about anything, and suddenly talking about missing limbs is no longer hard.

It's light.

Steve glares at him.

"No," he says, "My arms are very fine as they are. But all of the other stuff needs work."

"Okay," Bucky replies, "What stuff? If you could fix yourself up, what would you do?"

"Well," Steve says, and every cure that he's heard about that wasn't real flashes through his mind. "Hmm. First things first, new lungs. No more asthma would be nice."

"Of course."

"Maybe a robot spine. No scoliosis, no braces."

"I'm not sure if robot spines exist, but cool."

"And new feet. I have flat feet, which don't sound bad, but it is. The back pain from it is terrible, god. So new feet. And a robot heart to match my robot spine. I have heart arrhythmia. And, lemme think, a new stomach. Ulcers are a bitch. And better hearing aids. I only have kinda cheaper ones, and they suck, because they don't just amplify the things I want to hear, it's everything. Your voice is as loud as the car engine."

Bucky makes a mental note to borrow (steal) a more silent car next time, and considering the mustang's engine is loud even for him, he cringes to think about how it must sound for Steve.

"I didn't realize that you had so much stuff going on," Bucky says.

"It's a lot," Steve says, "But you know what I'd want to have the most?"

"Tell me."

"I'd get my eyes fixed."

Bucky glances over at him.

Steve does wear glasses, but he had said once that his sight wasn't that bad, it was just a little bit of blurriness.

"Your eyes are that bad?"

"It's not the astigmatism," Steve says, and Bucky wants to frown a bit at how easy medical terms roll off Steve's tongue. "I'm color blind."

It's a miracle that Bucky contains his surprise enough to not veer off the road.

"Wait, really?" he says, and he says it in such surprise.

"Yep," Steve replies, and he's kinda grinning at Bucky's flabbergasted reaction.

"So you can't see colors? Like, at all?"

"No, it's not that kind of color blindness. I have the red-green type, I can't see red or green."

"Whoa," Bucky says, "Whoa."

Because it's kind of hard to imagine not seeing red or green.

"Don't feel bad about it," Steve says, "I've never been able to see either, so I don't really know what I'm missing. But I just want to see what it's like, y'know?"

"Yeah," Bucky says, and he doesn't say much more because he's still processing it all.

"So, are there robot eyeballs that can make me see?" Steve says, and he says it only half jokingly.

"I think so," Bucky says, "I know we have eyes that fix blindness and blurriness, so some lab somewhere probably has some that fixes color issues. I actually know a team of scientists who had to remove a robot eye once, Fitz and Simmons, I think that's their names. Apparently the surgery was horrifying. They had to keep the woman awake and just numb her eye up."

"Holy shit," Steve says, "So she watched the whole thing happen to her?"

"Yep. That wasn't even the worst part about it. Turns out, there was a bomb in the eye."

"I don't think I want robot eyes," Steve says, and Bucky laughs.

The car falls back into silence, but this time it's comfortable, easy.

And Steve shatters that when he speaks up again.

"If all of that is supposed to be a secret from civilians, why are you telling me?" he asks.

Bucky frowns, for just a split second. The spot between his eyebrows creases, his eyes narrow, but he's back and smiling again before Steve can question it.

"I like you," is all Bucky says, casting a glance over.

It's not a lie.

It's just not the whole truth either.

Underneath one of the S.H.I.E.L.D. bases in California, there's a chair.

Metal plates attached to the headrest, straps on the arms and legs.

Built from plans that were stolen from Hydra decades ago, modified a dozen times over to serve S.H.I.E.L.D.'s purposes.

The purposes, of which, Bucky had considered many times over.

It doesn't cause death.

It gives freedom, at the price of memory.

There is a fifty percent chance that Steve is going to wind up in that chair, and Bucky's beginning to think that maybe he should join him.

The next car they borrow (steal) comes from North Dakota, and it's some kind of 'futuristic' car that Bucky can't pronounce the name of. However, he remembers seeing some ad somewhere proclaiming the engine has one of the silentest engines available, and so while Steve stays in the hotel room, Bucky scourers the city of Bismark for one like it.

The mileage is shit and it's a bit too cramped, but Bucky finds that Steve is a bit more alert, and sleeps a bit better, without the clunky noise of the mustang flooding their ears.

It's worth it, Bucky thinks.

It's been a month, and they're halfway through Wyoming.

Bucky learns three things about Steve on the same day.

One: Steve is forgetful.

Bucky finds this out when he goes to the bathroom and twists the doorknob, opens it, and Steve is there showering. Steve forgot to lock the door, apparently.

Two: Steve showers in the dark.

There's nothing but the soft light from behind Bucky illuminating the bathroom. Its too steamy and too dark to see anything, but there is a clear outline of Steve.

Both he and Bucky let out something akin to a squeak (mashed with apologies on Bucky's end) before Bucky slams the door shut and turns to pace back around the hotel room.

Three: Steve is skinny as fuck.

He exits the bathroom a moment later, standing in the doorway with nothing but a white towel around his hips, that he has to hold tight with a fist to keep from slipping down.

Bucky glances up to look at him.

And Bucky freezes.

He's pretty sure if he had his hands on Steve, he could wrap them completely around his waist, fingertips touching.

Steve's ribs jut out, his collarbones protrude so much that you could probably hold liquid in the skin between them. His hips are bony, his chest is flat, his stomach seems to be caving inwards.

Bucky's pretty sure he can see the flutter in Steve's chest from when his heart murmurs, but maybe that's just imagination.

"Knock next time," Steve says.

Bucky doesn't comment on his stature. Instead, all he says is:

"Okay. Sorry."

"Steve, maybe you should eat a hamburger."

"Why?

"Protein, and all. Get your strength up."

"Is this about you seeing me without clothes on?"

"No. Of course not."

"Bucky."

"Maybe. I dunno. Maybe. Yes. You're skinny as a twig."

"Bucky."

"Look, that sign says there's a McDonald's off the next exit!"

"Bu-"

"Guess where we're going, Steve?"

"I'm gonna punch you."

"Do it after the hamburgers, you'll be stronger then."

"Okay, I'm actually going to punch you now."

“So,” Bucky says.

He flops onto Steve's uncomfortable, twin sized, standard issue hotel bed without warning, startling the artist. Steve, who is drawing, jumps at the sudden voice and even more sudden appearance, leaving a trail of granite across the sketchbook in his lap, propped up on his knees.

He scowls, Bucky winces.
“Sorry,” he says. Bucky tries to get a look at the drawing (he doesn't, though, because Steve's quick to turn the book away from him).

Steve continues scowling, even as he twirls his pencil around and begins dancing his eraser over the page, cleaning up the mess Bucky made.

“You were saying?” he prompts, not looking up.

Bucky (who is still on his stomach) props his chin up on his hand, and looks at Steve with wide eyes.

“So,” he says again, “I was wondering. Why were you in Germany?”

Steve's eraser stills, and he stares down at the page like he could burn a hole in it with his eyes.

“Vacation,” he says, bluntly, before carrying on with erasing.

“Wrong,” Bucky says.

Steve glances up.

“Why is that wrong?”

“Because you mentioned earlier that you didn't have a lot of money or a well paying job, and so why would you, in the middle of winter, go on vacation to Germany? Plane rides and hotel rooms aren't cheap. It has to be something bigger than a vacation.”

Steve turns back down to the drawing, skates his eraser over the line a few more times, before it's gone completely. He flips his pencil back around to the tip, and continues, eyes narrowed in scrutiny.

“Doctor's appointment,” he says, after a moment, so softly Bucky can barely hear him.

“What was it for? Something big, right?”

Because there's no way Steve, with his minimum wage and one bedroom apartment he can barely keep, would fly all the way to Germany for something small.

“It was for everything,” he says, and he frowns again, and he squints his eyes again, and he pretends to be drawing so he won't have to look at Bucky.

Bucky thinks for a moment.

“You're gonna have to explain that one to me,” he says, super spy powers of deduction failing him.

Steve sets down his pencil, and turns to Bucky.

“I went to a lot of doctors, back in New York. My whole life has been nothing but one doctor's appointment after another, basically. And for my issues, there are no cures, nothing permanent, it's always temporary solutions or meds that make me feel even shittier.”

Bucky nods, half in prompting him to continue, and half in comfort.

“And a few months ago, I got a phone call. This doctor, Dr. Erskine, he tells me that he heard about me through some thread of doctors. He said that he's been working on a catch-all cure, something that'd fix everything.”

Bucky manages to reign himself in.

He knows Dr. Erskine.

Dr. Erskine is S.H.I.E.L.D.

And he really wants to know why S.H.EI.L.D. tried to get their paws on Steve, but he doesn't ask, and either way, he's pretty sure Steve wouldn't even know.

Steve continues.

“And he said that all tests had been going well, everything had been in order, and he thought I'd be perfect for the first human trials. Because, god, with all the shit that's wrong with me, what's a failed cure gonna do? So he arraigned for me to go over to his lab in Germany, and I did.”

“What happened?”

“I showed up, the whole lab was deserted, there was just one guy at the front desk. Said that he'd been waiting for me. Apparently some rival scientists busted into the place and took the serum, and Dr. Erskine died in the cross-fire, and they had nothing for me there.”

“Oh,” Bucky says, because that's all he can think to say.

Steve returns to his sketching.

“I'm sorry,” Bucky says, five minutes later.

“Hmm?” Steve glances up.

“I'm sorry that it didn't work out.”

Steve nods, solemn, “I am too. Thank you. And, is it okay if I ask why you were in Germany?"

"You know," Bucky replies, "I was picking up that suitcase from one of our bases in Germany."

"Why is that cube even so important?" Steve says, looking up from his sketchbook to glance over at the suitcase tucked into a corner.

"I dunno, and even if I did, it's probably classified. A better question is, why are you drawing me shirtless?"

Steve snaps his eyes back to Bucky, who's now invaded his personal space so he can get a look at Steve's sketchbook.

Ears turning red, Steve stammers out an explanation.

"I-I'm not done yet, y'know, you're supposed to draw people without clothes on to get their p-physique down and then you sketch the clothes on and you have a base to see how the fabric hangs and all," he stutters out.

Bucky, still staring at the photo, still with that goddamn smirk on his lips, shakes his head.

"Nah," he says, "I don't think that level of detail goes into something you're gonna erase and cover up."

Steve, who's blushing even deeper, manages to snap his book shut.

Bucky looks up at him.

"Y'should have told me," he says, "I would have posed for you."

And then, he winks at him, and goes off to take a shower, leaving Steve bright red.

Their second close call coincidentally coincides with their second kiss.

And, despite Steve's promise, Hydra is involved, more or less.

It's a Tuesday night in Colorado, and since neither Steve nor Bucky feel like sleeping, they drive past midnight.

A cool summer breeze is twisting in through the rolled-down car windows, and an oldies station playing music from the 40's is on low.

Steve's got his feet propped up on the dashboard, and Bucky has only one hand on the steering wheel, the other hung outside the window, feeling the wind whipping about them.

Crickets are chirping, the moon's dangling overhead, and there's nothing but a strong, lulling sense of utter comfort wrapped around the two of them.

At least, until there's the sharp sound of a gunshot, and one of their car tires are blown out.

The car swerves, making Steve almost slip out of his seat, and Bucky jerks his other hand up to grab the steering wheel. The car almost takes a dive off the road and into a ditch, but Bucky manages to keep them straight.

Another gunshot echoes, a bullet slicing through the glass of the back window.

"Fuck," Bucky says, "Hold on to something."

And Steve barely has time to put his feet back down and his seat belt back on when Bucky floors it.

The car roars forward, speeding down the highway at a speed far too fast to be safe. Steve risks a glance behind them, and there's a black SUV, barely visible in the thick of the night, barreling after them.

"They're pretty close," he says, and Bucky pushes the car further. Another shot cracks out, this time clipping the mirror on Steve's side.

"Get down," Bucky orders, not taking his eyes off the road, "Get down, and holy shit, do not let go."

And then he swerves right, driving them off the side of the road, and into a field. The car stutters and jerks over the uneven dirt, but Bucky doesn't stop, plowing through rows of wheat.

Five minutes in, the car starts to sputter and slow. Bucky belatedly remembers that they hadn't filled up the tank in several days. He jerks the car to a halt, grabs the suitcases in the backseat, and turns to Steve.

"We're going to have to run," he says, deadly serious, and Steve nods. "Do not stop, for anything. Even if I get hit, even if you get hit, if you are still capable of running, you run Steve, got it?"

Steve nods, and the two, suitcases in tow and Bucky's backpack on, exit the vehicle.

"Which way?" Steve asks, and Bucky gestures forwards, so that's the way they go.

The midnight that had seemed calm and comforting minutes ago shifts into something more darker.

The air feels a bit colder, the crickets chirping seems a bit harsher, the moon seems a bit duller.

It doesn't take Steve long to feel that telltale pain in his side, right where his left lung is, like a dagger is being buried in his ribs. He forces himself to take a big gasp of air in, and tries to ignore the wheezing that accompanies it.

Bucky has no problem moving through the field, honestly, he'd been through worse (nothing near as bad as Clint and Nat's time in Budapest, but his, Nat's, and Sam's mission in Quebec does come a pretty close second to that). A handful of Hydra agents behind him and a suitcase in his hand, with Steve on his left, it could be a lot worse.

It does get a lot worse, when Bucky glances over and sees Steve isn't on his left anymore.

Bucky stops short and glances back, and Steve's just a few yards behind him. He catches up somewhat quickly.

"Why... did... you... stop?" Steve all but chokes out, words interrupted by large gasps.

"What's wrong?" Bucky says, still listening for anyone coming up behind them, but most of his concern on the small man in front of him.

"Asthma attack," Steve says, "I'll be fine, just-"

"Can you breathe?"

"Not really."

There's a rustle in the wheat behind them, it could just be the wind, or it could be Hydra agents, either way, Bucky isn't taking chances.

Before Steve knows what's happening, Bucky picks him up, easy as anything, one arm behind his shoulder blades, metal arm under his knees.

They're running again, and Steve has to loop his arms around Bucky's neck so he won't fall.

The edge of the field reveals a small town, and there hasn't been any noise from behind them in ten minutes, so Bucky feels safe in assuming that they weren't followed.

Bucky continues carrying Steve (and Steve really wishes he could protest, but his lungs are on fire, and he doubts he could even walk. Running wasn't something he did often, and it always took quite a toll on him when he had to).

There's a dingy motel and an expensive chain hotel to chose from, and Bucky settles on the latter simply because it's closer. He sets Steve down when they're at the desk, pays (for two nights, instead of their usual one), and laces a hand through his when they head to their room.

They even take the elevator up, which is a tad bit surprising, because by this point Steve knows that Bucky doesn't like small places and goes with the stairs at every opportunity.

"Go sit down," Bucky says, the second they're in their room. Steve does go sit down, on the one large bed in the room (Bucky realizes that he forgot to specify a room with two beds, but that's a problem for another time.)

Steve sets his suitcase down in front of him and begins to root through it, pushing aside clothes and bottles of pills, until he pulls out a small gray machine, a handful of tubes, something resembling a pipe, and one slender little bottle with some liquid in it.

"What's that?" Bucky asks, sitting down on the bed, across from Steve.

"It's officially called a nebulizer," Steve says. His breathing is a bit better, but only slightly. His lungs still wheeze, his voice is still raspy, his chest rises and falls rapidly. "It's like... like the hardcore version of an inhaler. You hook in this wire to the machine, and to this pipe thing, you put the medicine in it like this, it turns the meds into vapor so I can breathe it in, and hey, plug it into the wall for me?"

Bucky does, and by then Steve is done setting it up. He flicks a switch on the machine, and a loud rumbling emits, and something resembling smoke comes out of the pipe. Steve places the end in his mouth, taking deep breaths.

"That's gonna make you breathe better?" Steve nods.

It takes about ten minutes for the breathing treatment to be done, and Bucky paces around the room the entire time. He goes from the window, checks to make sure no one's followed them, goes back to Steve, make sure everything's alright there, before going back again.

Once he's done, Steve drops the pipe down on the bed next to him, and leans back.

"Are you okay?" Bucky asks, because although Steve isn't breathing harshly anymore, he doesn't look that better.

His hands are shaking, and his heart his pounding in his chest.

"Side effect of the asthma meds," Steve says. He shuts his eyes, leans against the headboard of the bed. "It makes my heart race and I just get all shaky."

"Is there anything I can do?"

Steve cracks his eyes open again, and shakes his head.

"No, but thanks. I can breathe now, the shakiness will wear off in a while, I'm fine."

"Okay," Bucky says.

He winds up sitting on the bed next to Steve, back against the headboard, their shoulders brushing each other.

Bucky flicks on the TV, and they wind up watching Everybody Loves Raymond reruns for a while. They're all episodes both Bucky and Steve have seen before, but they laugh at all the jokes anyway.

At some point, Steve leans his head over to rest it on Bucky's shoulder, and Bucky slips an arm around Steve, pulling him closer.

Somewhere in between the credits and the after-credits scene of their third episode, Bucky tilts his head down to look at the blond in his arms.

"I'm glad you're okay," he says.

Steve looks up at him, and smiles.

Bucky ducks his head down, pressing a soft kiss to Steve's lips.

When Steve wakes up, he's half on top of Bucky, who's asleep and has one arm wrapped around his waist, holding him close.

Steve, noting that the time is before seven, closes his eyes, presses his face in Bucky's shoulder, and smiles.

As he drifts back asleep, he can't help but think that it's the nicest he's felt in a very long time.

After that night, Bucky only asks for rooms with one bed.

It's a snowy day in Utah, Steve went on a vending machine run and said that he'd be back in five minutes.

He's been gone for fifteen.

Bucky's beginning to worry.

Before he think to do anything though, the door to the room creaks open, and Steve shuffles inside.

"Got you your chips," he says.

Bucky glances up from the files in his lap (which he wasn't reading, mostly because he was too worried to focus on anything, but he's not going to let that show, and so he pretends that he wasn't worried and he was reading).

Steve walks in with two candy bars, two bags of chips, one of those frappuchino's in a bottle (because the vending machines here are awesome like that), a Coke, a black eye, and a split lip.

"Oh my god," Bucky says, pushing files aside, to sit up better, while Steve goes and sets his armful of snacks on the nightstand.

Steve glances up at him.

"Oh, this?" he says, gesturing to his face when one hand's free, "It's nothin' big."

Bucky gets up and walks over, taking Steve's chin in his hand to angle his face to the light, to see the wound better.

"Your eye is so swollen it's barely open," he says.

"I've had worse," Steve replies, with something like a cocky grin, and Bucky wonders how he can be so damn calm about it all.

"Who did this to you?" Bucky says, and it sounds like he's out for blood.

"Some dick, he's already split now, though, so you can't really do anything," Steve answers, accurately guessing Bucky's intentions.

"You'd be surprised at how easy S.H.I.E.L.D. can track down people."

"You're really gonna put out a manhunt for someone just because they gave me a black eye?" Steve says, a hint of smugness in his tone because he knows Bucky won't.

Bucky lowers his hand, and Steve turns back to the snacks.

"Can you tell me what happened?"

"Well," Steve begins, as he fumbles with the wrapper of his chocolate bar, "I was at the vending machines, and this girl walked past, super drunk, with this guy, who wasn't drunk at all. And from what I overheard, she wasn't that lucid, like, about to pass out, and the guy was someone she didn't know but he was taking her back to his room. So I went out and asked if everything's okay, and the girl didn't really answer but the guy got super pissed, and yeah. He gave me this, I told him I was rooming with a cop - he bought it - and now had evidence against him, he punched me again, and bolted."

"Holy shit," Bucky says.

"Yep. I walked the girl back to her room, her friends were really worried about her, so yeah. Then I just came back here."

"That's pretty awesome of you," Bucky says, and he means it.

Steve takes a bite of his chocolate bar.

"I'm no super spy, but I try to help where I can. Back in Brooklyn, everyone who lived by me knew me as 'that guy who saved them that one time' or 'that guy they beat up that one time'."

Bucky smiles.

"You're too good for me, y'know that?"

Steve returns the smile (even though it hurts, with his split lip).

"Shut up and eat your chips," he says.

Steve leaves his sketchbook out one day, and when he goes to take a shower, he tells Bucky that he doesn't mind if he looks through it.

While Steve showers in the dark, Bucky slowly flips through the pages.

There's a couple of pages of random doodles, pages filled with trees and clouds and people without faces. There's the shirtless drawing of him (Bucky notes, smugly, he's still shirtless in it), and there's the first drawing Steve did of Bucky (a bit rough from being drawn in the car, but rather impressive all the same).

And then there's the page of drawings from that one time Bucky described Nat, Sam, and Clint, along with a few others to Steve, and Steve attempted to draw them from Bucky's descriptions only. Nat came out pretty accurate, but Sam's hair is a bit too long, chin a bit too narrow, and Clint's nose is just a little off.

There's a couple doodles of the jeep, the mustang, the car after that, and the truck that they borrowed (stole) a few days prior.

There's a few pages of random scenery, one drawing of the trio from the cafe they went to on the first day, and quite a few pages of drawings from before he met him.

Steve, in the early days of them being together, mentioned once that he generally didn't like showing his art to people he wasn't comfortable with.

Bucky remembers that vividly.

(And that's why he grins ear to ear the entire time the sketchbook is open in his lap).

They're in some motel in Eureka, Nevada.

Sunlight slips in through the windows, spilling over the sheets. Bucky's asleep, and Steve isn't in the bed with him.

When Bucky wakes up, he frowns and checks the bathroom, and Steve isn't there either.

He searches their room, although it's too tiny to hide anywhere.

He checks the front desk, and the bored man behind the counter informs him that yes, he did see a scrawny blond leave, and he was accompanied by a guy (dressed like a soldier, and the man behind the desk thinks it's because of some geek convention that's going on in a nearby city).

Bucky panics.

Bucky tears the town apart. Eureka, Nevada, has a relatively small population, about a thousand people in it. He tosses their stuff in the passenger seat of the truck, and presses the speed limit as he drives around, searching for any sign of Steve.

He asks civilians, and it takes him an hour before someone says that they saw someone with someone else going in some direction.

It's a shit lead coming from a guy with red eyes and questionable lucidity, but it all Bucky has to hang onto.

He stops and fills up the truck with gas as fast as humanly possible, and then he tears out of Eureka, onto the interstate and into the desert.

He has the petal slammed down on the floor, eyes wide open, scanning for anything, anything.

The one time he gets pulled over by a cop for speeding, Bucky scowls, flips out his badge and waves it in the disgruntled officers face, and tears off without another word.

He doesn't see anything until he's halfway to Austin, and there's a blur of black. Bucky eases down on the brakes (he wishes he could slam, but wrecking the car will do Steve no good).

The black blur turns out to be a car, and there's a man outside of it, phone in hand. He's pacing about, and doesn't see Bucky.

Bucky makes sure his pistol is loaded and the safety's off before he gets out of the truck.

Elbows locked, arm straight, gun aimed, he marches up.

"Where is he," Bucky says, catching the attention of the Hydra agent. He doesn't say it as a question or a request, it's a demand, plain and simple.

The Hydra agent looks startled for just one second, he frowns for a moment, before snapping his phone shut and turning to Bucky, smile fixed in place. He has a black eye, and Bucky feels a bit of pride knowing that Steve didn't go without a fight.

"Agent Barnes," he says, as if welcoming a friend, "Didn't expect you to be so fast."

"Answer the damn question," Bucky says. He walks closer, until he's nothing more than a couple yards away, gun still aimed.

"Rogers? He's in the car," the agent replies, "But I'm afraid I can't just give him to you."

"Is this about the Tesseract?"

"Ransom?" the agent says, as if he were disgusted, "How petty do you think we are? No, this isn't a hostage situation."

Bucky's momentarily thrown off, because if this isn't about the cube, what could it be about?

"No, we never wanted the Tesseract. We want something else. And we have him."

Him.

They want Steve.

And they have Steve.

Bucky squeezes the trigger.

The bullet to the knee catches the Hydra agent off guard and he collapses. He doesn't scream, though.

Bucky goes closer, and the agent actually laughs.

"You've gone soft," he says, "I used to hear about all of the bullets you've put in brains, and now you're settling for knees?"

Bucky looks down at him, and smiles softly.

He lifts his foot up, and stomps down on the agent's knee.

Blood splatters, his knee makes some form of crunching noise that cannot, in anyway, be good, and the man screams his fucking lungs out.

"Just shut up," Bucky says.

He leaves the agent writing in pain in the dirt, and turns to the car.

When Bucky opens the door, he isn't quite sure what he's expecting. Maybe for Steve to be hurt, or scared, or unconscious.

Steve's there, handcuffed, and looking pissed as hell. There's not a bit of terror on his face, only pure anger in his eyes.

He refuses to look at the open car door, until Bucky speaks and Steve realizes it's not the Hydra agent.

"Oh my god," Bucky says, and Steve turns to look at him, "I'm so fucking glad you're okay."

"And I'm fucking glad you're here," Steve replies. "Did... uh... did you kill him?"

Bucky shakes his head, knowing Steve is still not quite comfortable with that part of his career.

"I just incapacitated him," he says.

He decides to not mention that due to blood loss and the Nevada heat, the agent probably will be dead in just a few hours. Even if Hydra gets to him before he bleeds out or succumbs to heatstroke or dehydration, the repercussions Hydra will give to him will be worse than death, if not including it.

Bucky helps Steve out of the handcuffs and out of the car. Bucky puts an arm around his shoulders as they walk back to the truck, and keeps them moving forward so Steve doesn't have to look back at the agent.

They're driving again, going at a more leisurely pace down the interstate. They drive for about ten minutes, before the weight of what happened slams into Steve.

"Oh, god," he says, so quietly that Bucky barely hears it, "I could have died."

Bucky stops the truck right then and there, (the road's pretty much dead, anyway, so no other drivers to worry about).

He slides over on the seat, sitting closer to Steve, but still giving him a bit of space.

"But you didn't," he says.

Steve nods, numbly.

"But I could have."

His hands are shaking.

"Steve, you're okay," Bucky says, keeping his voice soft.

He momentarily wonders if any of the bottles of pills Steve owns is for anxiety, because that's seeming more and more like a likely possibility.

If Sam were there, he'd know how to handle this. Hell, even Clint would be better at this, because Natasha does have a minor anxiety disorder, and even though it always happens behind closed doors, the four of them are aware of her panic attacks, and Clint's the only one she's allowed to see them, help her through them.

Steve is breathing heavy, and it's not from his asthma.

Bucky slides closer, and places hand tentatively on Steve's back. He rubs soft circles, meaningless patterns.

"It's going to be okay, you are okay," he says, "You're alive and you're okay. We're going to be in California in a few days, and you're okay."

And he keeps on repeating it.

And Steve begins to believe it.

The next three days proceed as usual, driving and hotel rooms and vending machine food and sharing a bed.

However, the next few days are laced with a bit of uncertainty on both ends, because California is upcoming and inevitable.

And so is what follows.

The problem is, neither of them know what's going to follow.

They drive past a sign that says Welcome to California! in bright yellow letters.

Neither of them smile.

The base is about five hours out from the welcome to Cali sign, and those five hours speed by all too soon.

On the outside, the base is nothing more than a small, nondescript office building, but Steve doesn't doubt that there's something hiding underneath it.

"You can leave your suitcase in the car," Bucky says, and it comes out sounding like a promise that whatever happens, they're going to leave together.

Steve leaves his suitcase in the truck, and Bucky grabs the one with the Tesseract.

Inside, the building does look like a regular office building. The receptionist at the front desk (nameplate reading Darcy Lewis) glances up from her computer that's currently playing cat videos on YouTube, and smiles at Bucky.

"Sup, Bucky," she says with a grin, "I'll buzz you down."

Darcy shifts around fast food wrappers and various papers until she unearths a button. She taps it twice, and then part of the wall on their left shifts away, revealing elevator doors.

"Want me to tell Eye-patch that you and blondie are coming down?" she asks, before grabbing a mug of coffee from her desk and taking a sip.

"Nah," Bucky says, as he and Steve walk to the elevator, "I'll surprise him."

"You know he doesn't like surprises," Darcy replies.

"Do me this favor, and I'll do you a favor and won't tell him that you called him 'Eye-patch'," Bucky replies. He grins at her, and taps the button for the lowest floor.

As the elevator doors close, Darcy sticks her tongue out at them.

"That's Darcy," Bucky says, once the elevator starts going downwards. Steve notices Bucky's discomfort at the tight space, decides to talk to him, distract him in a way.

"She seems nice."

"She is. Except for when her and Tony - he works down in the labs - are fighting. They currently have this ongoing prank war, it's a miracle the place hasn't blown up because of it."

The floor that they're going to is the one on the bottom, and they've got twenty more floors to go.

"What kind of pranks?" Steve asks.

"Last one that Tony pulled, that I know of, he plugged a wireless mouse into her computer, and kept the mouse on him at all times. He'd jiggle it when he knew Darcy was on her computer, making the mouse on her screen go all over, it drove her crazy. And the last one Darcy did, well, Tony has this advanced computer system, called Jarvis. And this thing is like it's own person, it's really cool. We'll, Darcy talked Jarvis into deleting every single rock song from Tony's music library, and replacing it with One Direction songs. Tony was pissed as hell."

"Oh my god," Steve says, "That sounds hilarious."

"It was! This place is supposed to be all 'tight ship' and professional and all, but I swear, we are the least serious group of people anywhere. Scary at first, but when you look into it, it's mostly just prank wars and Cupcake Fridays."

"Cupcake Fridays?" Steve questions.

"Jane, she also works down in the lab, she makes the best, what are they called, I think they're vanilla almond, with cream cheese icing and maple syrup. Second to hers are Coulson's, he makes doughnut, jelly filled cupcakes. They're amazing."

"What is a doughnut cupcake?"

"A cupcake that somehow tastes exactly like a doughnut. No one knows how he does it. My money's on magic, but Nat thinks he sold his soul for baking skills."

"What kind of cupcakes do you make when it's your turn?"

"Whatever box mix is cheapest at the store," Bucky says, with a grin.

And then the elevator dings.

The two doors open up to reveal a large room, filled with various desks and people hunched over them, a large glass wall on the right revealing an area that Steve assumes is the lab, packed full of tech equipment.

The exit the elevator just in time to see a small explosion on someone's desk in the lab. Steve is mildly alarmed, Bucky merely rolls his eyes.

"Tony," is all he says, as if that explains everything.

He and Steve head to the left of the room, towards a hallway branching off of it. Bucky ignores the stares that Steve and him are getting. Steve does too, but that's mostly because he's too busy soaking in an actual secret super spy headquarters.

He follows Bucky down a maze of hallways and rooms, until they arrive in front of a door. The sign on it says Director N .J. Fury in simple letters.

"Ready?" Bucky asks, looking down at Steve.

"Yeah," Steve says, although he really isn't.

Bucky brings a hand up, and knocks at the door twice before letting it fall back to his side.

A moment later, there's the sound of the locks clicking off on the door, and that's all the invitation to come inside that Steve and Bucky get.

They enter.

There's a man behind a desk (sporting a rather impressive eye-patch, and so Steve assumes that that's Fury), and a redhead beside it (based on the description that Bucky gave him a while back, Steve assumes that's Natasha).

Nat quirks an eyebrow up at Steve, but remains impassive.

"Barnes," Fury says, "Do you have the package?"

He notices Steve, after a second.

"Who's that?"

Bucky moves into the room, and sets the suitcase down on Fury's desk. "I'll explain. And yes, everything went smoothly. It's all here."

Fury unlocks the clasps of the suitcase and takes a look at the contents, and raises an eye to Bucky.

"Clothes and a sketchbook?"

Bucky leans over to peer down into the suitcase.

It's Steve's.

This is oddly reminiscent of how they met, Steve thinks.

Bucky fights off the urge to grin, and Steve has to tilt his head down to the ground to conceal his smile.

"Sorry," Bucky says, "I must have grabbed the wrong suitcase, sir."

The situation is remedied shortly, and once Fury checks to make sure the contents of the actual suitcase is in tact, it's sent off to the lab (to a very eager Tony, Jane, and FitzSimmons).

There's the sense of completion and pride in Bucky's chest at finishing another mission well, but that's quickly doused when he and Steve are standing in front of Fury's desk.

Fury has his hands steepled and is eyeing the both of them, and Bucky feels like a little kid standing in front of mom, waiting for a stern lecture.

"Explain," is all Fury says, and Bucky does.

"Our luggage was mixed up at the airport," Bucky starts. "I arraigned a meeting to swap the suitcases, but we were interrupted by Hydra agents. They assumed that Steve was working with me, and so we mutually decided he would travel with me for his protection."

Steve nods, affirming the situation.

"Why didn't you drop him off at a safe house?" Fury asks.

Bucky swallows, nervously. This isn't the first time he's had to explain his actions to Fury, but it still pushes him on edge every time.

"I thought he'd be safer with me," Bucky says.

"You thought he'd be safer with you, instead of with people who are specifically trained to handle this kind of situation?"

Bucky hesitates, for just a moment.

"Yes, sir."

Fury frowns (but Fury is almost always frowning, so this isn't news).

Natasha, who's still in the room, standing near Fury, speaks up.

"What's done is done," she says, and if it were any other agent Fury would have glared at them, but it's Nat, and everyone knows Fury has a bit of a soft spot for her. "The package is safe, both of you are alive, and everything else that happened doesn't matter. What does matter is how we're going to proceed."

Fury turns to Steve.

"Name?" he asks.

"Steve Rogers, sir," Steve answers.

"You should wait outside for this, Rogers."

"Alright."

"Do you want me to escort him to a holding cell?" Natasha asks.

"He's not going into a holding cell," Bucky says immediately. He turns to Steve. "You remember your way back to the elevator, right? You can go back up and hang out with Darcy. She doesn't look threatening but she's amazing with a taser, so if anything happens she'll have your back. That cool with you?"

Steve nods, and glances over at Fury, who gives a barely perceptible nod.

With that, Steve leaves the room, and Bucky doesn't take his eyes off of him until the door's shut behind him.

"He can't go into the civilian witness system," Bucky says, as soon as he's positive Steve's out of earshot.

"And why's that?" Fury asks.

"I have been living with him for two months, sir, I know him. If you stick him in some dead office job in nowhere, Canada, he won't do well at all."

"Since when have you been concerned with the wellness of your witnesses?" Fury asks, and he continues only when it's apparent that Bucky isn't going to answer. "What would you suggest we do? You're one of our top agents, Barnes, you can't take a full time job as his personal body guard."

"I'm not suggesting that."

"Then what are you suggesting?"

Bucky takes a deep breath, and steels himself before speaking.

"Memory wiping."

Natasha's eyes go wide, and Fury frowns.

"And, when we do wipe his memory, I'm going after."

Fury loses his frown entirely, and he's looking the closest to confused that Bucky's ever seen him. Even Natasha looses her composure, gaping at him.

"No," she says, "You're not serious, are you?"

Bucky nods.

"Deadly serious."

Natasha marches forward and grabs Bucky by the elbow.

"We need to talk," she says, and she drags him out of Fury's office. She takes him a bit down the hallway, out of earshot from everyone.

She crosses her arms over her chest, and frowns up at him.

"James," she says, and Bucky knows she's being serious, because she only ever uses his first name when she's being serious. "Please don't tell me that you're giving up your life long career over a guy you met two months ago."

Bucky frowns.

"It's not because of Steve-"

"Don't you dare lie to me," and she allows herself a small smile, "I saw you making heart eyes at him. You've got it for him, bad."

Bucky smiles.

"Yeah. I do," he says, and it's really freeing to admit it out loud. "But he's not why I'm doing this. He's part of the reason, but not the only one. You know I've been wanting to get out for a while now."

"But the mind wiping, the whole process, that's horrifying. You can't want to go through that."

"I don't, but if it means getting out, living normally? Then I'll do what it takes."

"Do you love him?" Natasha asks.

"Not yet," Bucky says, and it's the truth, "Like you said, I've only been knowing him for two months. It isn't love yet. But with some time, god, Natasha, I think I can see myself spending the rest of my life with him."

Natasha nods, in complete understanding.

"You do know there's a chance you won't fall for each other, after the process," she says, and she feels like shit saying that, but someone has to. "You won't remember each other, what happened between you."

Bucky nods. He knows, it's one of the things he's been thinking about since the idea of the chair hit him.

"I know. But, there's a chance that it will work out. And I'm willing to take that chance over the certainty of him being shipped off to some dead town with a new name, where I'll never see him again."

Natasha narrows her eyes in scrutiny, simply staring at Bucky for a few moments. She finds what she's looking for, and then nods.

"Okay," she says, "If that's what you and Steve want, I support you. I can talk to Fury, you go talk to your boyfriend."

Bucky smiles at her.

"Thanks, Natasha."

They turn, and head back down the hall.

"And I'll help you get set up in your new identity," Natasha says, "I'll befriend you once you think you're a civi."

"Really?"

"Of course, you think I'm gonna let our friendship go just like that?" she says, and she grins up at him. "Is there anyplace in particular you want to live?"

Bucky thinks for a moment.

"Brooklyn."

"So," Steve says, and Bucky can tell he's nervous by the way he's wringing his hands, "How does this work?"

He's apprehensive about the idea of mind wiping, and Bucky knows this, so he tries to explain calmly.

"The chair is old Hydra tech, it's been modified since then. Basically, you sit in it, the lab guys do their tech thing, and you wind up loosing all of your memories. We have the tech to put in fake memories, though. For you, they'll probably just put in all of your old memories, and just get rid of me, but for me, they'll probably just start over entirely. After that, Natasha and her team's going to set us up in new identities. Erase our old lives from all databases, set us up new. New houses, new jobs, everything. I... uh, I requested Brooklyn, if you do want to do this, because I know you like it there."

Steve nods, a small frown on his face, but not a bad one. The tiny frown he gets when he's thinking rather hard about something.

"So, I wouldn't remember any of the past two months?"

Bucky nods.

"Yeah," he says, "Neither would I."

Steve frowns, for real this time. "That really sucks."

"I know," Bucky says, and he takes one of Steve's hands in his, gives it a squeeze, "It does."

"And how would we even be sure that we'd get together again?"

Bucky grins. "Natasha said she'd set us up. She's good at playing matchmaker, at least half of the relationships in this base are her fault. And, I've done my fair share of helping couples get out of the system. Three, specifically, Charles and Erik, Alex and Darwin, Hank and Raven. They're all still together. If a couple ever leaves S.H.I.E.L.D., we make sure they stay together after."

Steve nods.

"Does it hurt?"

"Like hell."

"And there's no other alternative?"

"The only other option is you being put into our civilian witness program, but that means you'd have to change your name, move to a low-population, nondescript town, get a boring job, and live low-key for the rest of your life. And I wouldn't be able to see you again. This way, it's more personalized. You get to keep your name, and you'd be put into a S.H.I.E.L.D. protection list, since usually this is just reserved for agents. You could live life like normal, because you'd have a few agents watching over you."

"Oh," Steve says.

He's thinking again, and Bucky can practically picture the gears turning in his head.

"Okay," he winds up saying, and he clutches to Bucky's hand a little tighter, "Let's do it."

Steve goes first.

Before he enters the room, he grabs Bucky by the collar of his shirt, tugs him down, and gives him a rough, deep kiss, before turning and walking into the room.

Fury lets out something between a chuckle and a snort as he walks into the room after him, and shuts the door.

Natasha, who's standing outside with Bucky, elbows him in the ribs, and gives him a smirk.

Bucky blushes, slightly, and ducks his head, lingering on the taste of Steve's lips on his.

Bucky's glad his memories are going to be wiped.

Because Steve's screams from the process in the other room are deafening.

They send chills down Bucky's spine.

And he prays to whatever deity that's listening that he'll never have to hear Steve in such pain again.

Steve's wheeled out on something akin to a hospital bed, a clipboard at the end filled with important facts (the medical ones are real, but most of the rest is made up).

He's paler than usual, and he's asleep. There's bruises on his arms from where the straps dug into them.

Bucky looks at him, and he wants to cry.

Instead, he turns and marches into the room.

The chair is comfortable.

The straps digging into his arms and legs are not.

Bruce, Tony, and Jane are there, bustling about the room, preparing things.

Tony's scribbling down on a clipboard, while Bruce is typing away at the computer hooked up to the chair. Jane has a syringe, and she sticks it into a vein in Bucky's non-metal arm.

"Painkillers," she says, "It's as much as we can give you, but this will still hurt."

Bucky nods.

"I hope you like your new life," she says, once the syringe is out, and the few minutes to give the painkillers time to settle into his system.

"Yeah," Bruce agrees, from his perch by the computer. "I'm going to miss having you around."

"It's gonna be weird without you," Tony says, "You're the only one who brought Funfetti cupcakes, those are the bomb. And, you are the only one who was in support of my karaoke night idea. I'm gonna have to start a new petition for that now."

Bucky smiles at the three of them.

"I'm going to miss you too," he says, "Say goodbye to the others for me."

Jane nods. "Ready?" she asks.

Bucky nods, and forces himself to lean back into the chair.

"As ready as ever."

Bruce taps a few keys on the computer.

Two metal plates swing forward, clamp down around Bucky's head.

Bucky screams.

And then, for a very long time, there's nothing.

Bucky's sprawled out on his sofa, book open on his chest from where he must have dropped it when he fell asleep.

The sound of his doorbell is loud and sudden in the air, and he jerks awake, scrambling to an upright position.

For a moment, he can't remember a single thing.

And then, it drifts back to him.

His name is Bucky, he works at the diner down the corner busing tables, and he lives in a nice, one bedroom apartment in Brooklyn. He doesn't have that many friends but the few he has are good ones, and dating hasn't ever been a big thing for him.

The sound of his doorbell goes off again, and Bucky stands.

"Coming!" he shouts, to whomever is persistently ringing his doorbell.

As he moves to answer it, he thinks that it must of been a hell of a nap to make him momentarily forget his life.

When he swings the door open, it reveals a redhead in a hoodie, snapping her gum and looking rather bored.

"Hey," she says, once the door's open, "You ready?"

"Um," Bucky says, because he knows the woman is familiar, but he can't quite pin her name, or think of what he's supposed to be ready for.

"For coffee?" she prompts, and frowns when he doesn't show any sign of recognition, "God, you told me you'd be ready. 'I'll totally be on time, Nat'."

Nat. Natasha. That's her name.

She lives in the apartment down the hall with her boyfriend Clint, and she's been Bucky's best friend for a couple years.

"At least your dressed," she says, "C'mon."

Bucky notes that he is, in fact dressed, t-shirt, jeans boots. He can't remember getting dressed that morning, but he can't remember that morning in generally.

Just the fogginess from the nap, he decides.

He follows Nat, down the hall. He insists that they don't take the elevator (and he doesn't quite know why. But Nat smiles at that, and they take the stairs instead).

"Remember," she says, once they're out on the sidewalk, dodging people and heading for the cafe (which Bucky is starting to remember. He, Nat, Clint, and Sam hang out there a lot). "Sam's gonna introduce you to one of his friends. Total cutie, Sam said you two would be cute together. I've met him before, he's nice."

"Oh," Bucky says, because he's not quite sure what else to say.

"So be on your best behavior," Natasha teases.

They arrive at the coffee shop quickly. It's a mellow, quiet place, there aren't many people in it.

There's a table in the corner, and Bucky recognizes one of the men at it as Sam.

The other one, however.

As soon as Bucky's eyes land on him, it's as if all the air is expelled out of his lungs.

Because he's so, so goddamn familiar.

Natasha drags Bucky up to the table, and she takes a seat across from Sam, leaving Bucky the seat across from the stranger. He doesn't glance up from his sketchbook.

"Hey," Sam greets, before turning to the blond. "Steve, this is Bucky. Bucky, Steve."

Steve glances up from his sketchbook, and things seem to freeze the second gray-blue meets brown.

There's a small little feeling in Bucky's chest, that Steve, even though he doesn't know a damn thing about him, is important.

And Steve is having his own moment of surprise, because there's a few sketches in his sketchbook of a man he drew without thinking, and this guy named Bucky looks exactly like them.

"Hey," Bucky says.

(Steve thinks Bucky's voice feels like home.)

"Hi," Steve replies.

(Bucky thinks the same exact thing.)