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It’s not that Steve doesn’t get it. On the contrary, he understands the thinking—in the abstract—better than Bucky probably suspects. Sympathizes, even, with the idea of it, the general notion.
So it’s not that Steve doesn’t get it.
It’s just that Steve can’t make sense of it. It’s that Steve can’t understand how Bucky fails to see it, can’t process the contradictory truth that they’re living, that they’re breathing, here and now.
Because Bucky’s come a long way since Washington; since the weeks, the months after. Since coming back and coming in and letting Steve help him; letting Steve provide him safety while he worked to help himself. And no, Bucky’s not who he used to be; Bucky didn’t emerge from a time capsule, and pop to the present from a war long since fought and done. No, Bucky’s not who he used to be.
He’s more.
And Steve doesn’t love him any more or any less in the now than in the then, but what Steve sees, now, when he looks at Bucky is every piece of the boy he loved proven true more times over, in greater magnitudes, than Steve could have fathomed possible; than the world should ever have allowed to plague and pressure a man like James Buchanan Barnes, a soul like Bucky’s that was bright and good and too open, maybe; too fascinated by the world where Steve was jaded, too dazzled by possibility where Steve was single-minded, where Steve couldn’t see the forest for the trees.
The Bucky before him now is infinitely complex, is a crystalline structure of so many facets— just as beautiful as ever but mesmerizing, now, in a whole new way: catching light and dark and wrapping it around Steve’s body, around Steve’s being, squeezing around Steve’s heart in his chest and making it known without trying, before wanting, that Steve was always Bucky’s, and where the world might shift and shatter, that would never fail as a truth.
And Steve knows this. Steve always knew this.
But Bucky.
Bucky still looks at everything as if he half suspects that it’s a dream; that it will crumble. Bucky still doesn’t quite believe any of it’s real, or that it’ll last. And maybe he’s starting to believe that he’s worthy of life in the first place, after everything; but kindness still baffles him, sometimes.
Love still throws him for a loop.
Bucky still apologizes, on the bad days, before he can stop himself. Bucky still says he’s sorry.
I’m sorry, Steve. I’m sorry that I’m not him.
And Bucky still sees more of the Winter Soldier in the mirror than Steve can find in him; still sees more of a killer at a glance than Steve could dig out from the whole of him, if he were so inclined to try. Bucky still views his actions, his thoughts, his inclinations and emotions and his worth on the whole through the lens of repentance. Bucky still sees himself as damaged goods, as less-than.
As undeserving of the love Steve defines himself by, in so many ways; as unsuited for it, because he’s not the man it’s meant for.
And Steve can’t fathom it, can’t process it. Can’t see how Bucky misses not just that Steve loves all of him, all that he’s been and all that he is and all that he’ll be, and that there are no conditions to that; no caveats, no rules or restrictions. No ifs and no buts.
More than that, though: Steve doesn't understand how Bucky misses how much he isn’t the Winter Soldier, anymore. How much—regardless of Steve, outside of deserving and getting and feeling and want—he is the Bucky he’s always been.
Steve doesn’t understand how they can sleep, like this, and not prove it in the curve of their bodies; how they can go to bed chest-to-back, loosely curled only to wake with Bucky’s limbs tucked up, careful and long-learned so as to maximize the way they warm, and minimize the weight on Steve’s chest, on Steve’s lungs—hand splayed open, but featherlight at his waist, counting breaths without thinking, without ever waking: just knowing.
Steve doesn’t understand how Bucky can think that he’s more assassin than lover, like this. Because no self-respecting assassin, let alone the best the world’s seen in a century, would leave so many weak spots open, so many points of vulnerability unchecked. No assassin would leave Steve’s weight against one arm—tucked useless, immobile without exerting effort—to hold Steve tight and keep Steve warm when Steve hasn’t needed that for years; not to survive, at least.
He might still need it to live, even now.
But the fact is that Bucky’s snoring lightly, and drooling just a little, and his left hand is curled around, crushed at Steve’s back, and an assassin wouldn’t forgo his weapon for anything. Least of all for the comfort of another; for the safety of his target.
And besides: only Bucky Barnes knew how to keep Steve warm like this.
So Steve doesn’t understand it, how Bucky doesn’t see.
Give it time, he tells himself—and it sounds like Sam, and Nat, and Bruce all at once. Give him time. And he will. Of course Steve will.
They’ve got plenty of time, after all.
__________________________
It’s a pattern Steve’s been observing with growing interest.
Because, well: they need to eat. A lot. And Steve—contrary to popular belief, apparently—is not above a little hedonism when it comes to indulging what the 21st century has to offer in terms of variety.
Their breakfast table, every morning, is a prime example.
Steve likes the meats, mostly; the rich and flavorful stuff. He likes eggs and he likes potatoes and he likes the textures when he mixes yogurts with granolas, or flakes apart a croissant to add butter to its already buttery taste.
Bucky, as ever, goes for the sweet shit.
Which isn’t to say he doesn’t try, every now and again, to consume less-empty calories, or to drink his coffee with only three spoons of sugar. Steve loves those days most, he thinks, because he gets to watch the half-scrunch of Bucky’s face as he tries to fight visible proof of his displeasure at not eating the Lucky Charms, or the cronuts, or the bear claws, or the Pop Tarts.
Steve fucking loves that face. It’s adorable.
Today, it’s a maple long john. The long john had bacon on it too, originally, but Bucky’s discarded that in favor of just the icing. He’s maybe already had three bowls of Froot Loops, poured into the same milk, which he then drank the frosted-entirety of. He maybe also has some of the cream from the donut stuck at the corner of his mouth.
Steve maybe wants to lick it off, but okay.
“Tactical advantage,” Steve says instead, and the way Bucky looks up at him, one hand holding the donut poised to bite, the other adding yet another spoonful of sugar to his coffee, eyes wide—confused, almost innocent, still a little sleep-hazy: Bucky can’t see himself, obviously, but Steve could close his eyes and know this look, with different food and a smaller room and a thinner frame on the both of them: but Steve would know it.
It’s out of a memory; it’s out of the past, except that it’s now.
And yeah, Bucky can’t see it, and maybe that’s why Bucky still doesn’t understand that Steve fell in love with the person he was, and has always been, then to now, through everything. Steve fell in love with the sweet tooth and the lazy mornings and the pout of that lip when its chewed on and the heart that gleams unhidden in those eyes before Bucky’s awake to rein it in: then. Now.
No difference.
And Bucky knows what Steve’s doing, asking the tactical advantage, once Steve raises a brow and nods at the sugar and the colorful cereals and the remaining end of the long john in his hand and says: “Of that.”
Bucky knows what Steve means, what Steve’s doing, because he scowls just a little and adds a fifth spoon to his cup of sugar with a splash of espresso: Bucky doesn’t say as much, but Steve knows that he sees it.
And Steve knows what it feels like; Steve knows that it’s harder to learn to accept that for all the shit you’ve done wrong, for all the blood on your hands, for all the times you’ve failed, you still deserve goodness, kindness.
Love.
He’s still working on it himself, some days. There are still things he can’t forgive himself for.
He still has to grasp Bucky’s hand sometimes, in his sleep. He still sobs, sometimes, and whispers his own apologies.
So yeah, he knows.
And maybe Bucky knows more than he wants to; maybe Bucky sees more than he’s ready to feel. Because he shoves the rest of his donut in his mouth and chews wide-lipped as he snarls out a muffled:
“Shut up.”
And Steve stifles the giggle, but not the urge to kiss Bucky senseless—to lick the sugar from his teeth.
Besides: Steve’s got something of a sweet-tooth himself.
__________________________
“What’s up?” Steve finally asks after a good hour and a half of Bucky staring off into space. It’s a thing that scared Steve, for a long time: Bucky’s silence, Bucky’s far-away gaze, but eventually Steve figured out that it shouldn’t; recognized that far-away wasn’t the same as blank, and it’s a hallmark of the progress made, not just in Bucky but in both of them, between both of them.
It’s another thing that Bucky doesn’t see.
“Nothing.”
“Lies,” Steve says plainly, neither accusing nor condemning: playful, almost. Simple observation. He doesn’t say anything more, though; just climbs onto the couch next to Bucky and spreads out, sprawls across his lap and waits until Bucky’s hand starts playing with Steve’s hair, until his breaths grow deep and slow—until he relaxes, meditative; until the soft echo of his pulse is like a metronome where it hums beneath Steve’s ear.
“If you get someone flowers,” Bucky asks, out of nowhere. “Is it,” he pauses, considers, and Steve can hear the way a blush that Bucky fights from his skin manages to color his words, instead: “Is it less meaningful, if you send them? Instead of like, dropping them off in person?”
“Kinda ruins the surprise if you tell me in advance, Buck,” Steve grins cheekily up at the ceiling, eyes drifting closed at the way Bucky keeps stroking his hair. “But you know I like daffodils, right? That’d be nice. Delivery’s fine.”
“Asshole,” Bucky rumbles out, tugs at the ends of Steve’s hair just enough to register annoyance; not enough to dampen the affection in those hands, the flesh and the metal alike.
“I was sparring earlier,” Bucky adds after a time. “With Nat. She was distracted,” and Steve doesn’t react openly when Bucky’s voice starts to tighten, but if he leans a little bit more eagerly into Bucky’s ministrations, well. Bucky doesn’t seem to mind one bit.
“She didn’t block fast enough,” Bucky murmurs. “I almost...”
And there’s guilt welling, there: undeserved and unfounded and so wrong, but if it’s welling then it never overflows, and Steve damn well thinks he might burst with how proud he is; with how much that, in itself, is progress.
“I don’t know what’s going on, but,” Bucky shrugs, hand stilling for a spell at the base of Steve’s skull, cradling there and massaging with the fingertips until the rhythm starts again. “She likes flowers. She would never admit it, but they make her smile.”
Steve knows Bucky well enough—his mannerisms, his quirks, what’s buried in the cadence of his breathing, what it means; Steve knows Bucky well enough that he can feel the cogs in that head turning, the thoughts and emotions churning ‘round, spilling into chaos until Bucky gives them structure, and so Steve waits it out, because he trusts Bucky to know himself. Because he trusts Bucky to speak when he knows the words that fit.
He trusts Bucky to speak, or not, as he needs to. As he wants. Steve trusts him never to let go of Steve where he holds, where he touches him like he matters, like he’s precious.
“When she used to go running with me,” Bucky eventually says; “In the beginning.” And it’s not an explanation. It’s an invitation into his head: sacred, really. An honor.
“She’d stop for a breather, never in the same spot,” and Steve can hear the small hint of a smile in that voice; “But always where the flowers grew.”
And Natasha’d been a godsend, in those early days. She’d held no grudges, and Bucky’d taken to her somehow; hadn’t trusted her, but hadn’t feared her. She’d been the first to convince him to leave the Tower; the first to convince him to take off the glove on his left hand. Steve can’t help but smile when he thinks of it: his friends across so much time, pulling something good out of one another.
“So I thought it might,” Bucky shrugs a little, more a sound in his voice than a shift of his body; “y’know. Help.”
And Steve thinks of cakes with too much flour, because flour’s what they had. Steve thinks of dandelions and crabgrass snatched from spare patches of green and bundled together to make a sister, a mother, a neighbor smile. Steve thinks of battlefields, and dank trenches, and dark nights, and a smile traced in deep mud; a splotch of dirt on a nose just to draw half-a laugh.
“S’just dumb,” Bucky mutters, and Steve’s heart knocks hard against his ribs, because dumb is the last thing it is. He grabs for Bucky’s hand, leads it down from his head and brings it to his lips, kisses each knuckle careful, purposeful: one by one as he breathes out:
“It’s not dumb.”
And what Steve wants to say is: this guilt’s not new, this want to help is ingrained in your bones. You’ve always thought of others. You’ve always given more than you got. You’ve always had a bigger heart than you could ever know, or ever see, you were always looking at mine and you never stopped to look down at your own fool chest and see that you gave love wherever you could, without a thought, and you hurt deeper for wounds than you ever deserved, and you felt stronger and held tighter than anyone else in the world, and the fact that I’m breathing here and now is proof of it, because you gave and you cared and you protected me, and where I was angry, you were compassionate; where I lashed, you soothed, and goddamnit, that’s your soul, Bucky Barnes. That’s your soul, and what they did to you can’t shake that, what they tried to make you into wouldn’t allow that, and who you are does not live and then die, it shines out from then to now, and it is you. This is you.
Steve wants to speak it, but he doesn’t. Just kisses back along each finger, the dips between, and hopes that Bucky feels it. Understands it, without the words.
“And like I said,” Steve mouths against the center of Bucky’s palm: “delivery’s fine.”
__________________________
Natasha grins at nothing, and trails the subtle scent of lilies for the next few days, and Steve can’t help but grin in kind: can’t help but to remember the past, but more than that—to bask in the present.
There are daffodils in the kitchen, when he comes home at night, and Steve can’t help but taste joy when he kisses Bucky, and it doesn’t matter which of them that sweetness lives inside, but Steve wants to believe that they both know the feeling; that they both share that warmth.
__________________________
By the time Bucky stands, piles his empty dishware and goes for the sink, Steve’s finished his meal—plate nearly cleared down to the strange design etched into the ceramic—three times.
Steve’s been keeping count.
"Quit chin-waggin'," Bucky chides; cuts off what’s turned into an impassioned defense of
microwave cooking that even Steve knows is mostly bullshit, and he’s only standing by it at all because Bucky’s a smartass, and if Steve has to hear any more snide remarks about how he’d slaved over the oven all goddamned day just to feed Steve’s hopeless freezer-meal ass, Steve’s going to knock the man into next Tuesday.
Case and point: the way that bastard—that perfect, loveable, moronical bastard—smirks, quirking a brow and nodding down toward the pile of cooked vegetables and pot roast that constitutes Steve’s fourth full serving. Which is excessive even for their metabolisms. “Clean your plate."
"I did.” Steve leans back in his chair, folds arms over his chest in a challenge that Bucky absolutely doesn’t rise to, simply turning back to the sink and starting the washing up.
And Steve’s got an iron will, he really does, but there’s this thing in his chest that twists when Bucky’s like this, when Bucky protects him because he believes Steve needs it—when Bucky does what used to be necessary and isn’t anymore, what used to keep Steve’s left foot from joining his right one in the grave; and yet the sentiment, the way Bucky still thinks Steve’s worth that kind of care: Steve can’t fight the way his heart swells for it.
Doesn’t want to fight it. Not ever.
So Steve sighs, and eats another spoonful of veggies before he gets to his feet, fits himself to Bucky’s back and grins when Bucky doesn’t even shift, doesn’t even react to the way Steve wraps around his waist: just keeps washing the dishes, slow. Methodical.
Steve presses lips beneath Bucky’s ear, nuzzles his neck: can’t help himself.
"Did you think I didn't notice?" Steve breathes out, and it’s the food on his plate. It’s the weight of the action. It’s the heart in Bucky’s eyes and Bucky still can’t see it, not fully—but he’ll get there.
Steve believes that Bucky will get there.
"Don't know what you're talkin' about,” Bucky shrugs, slips the rinsed plates into the drying rack because he doesn’t trust the ungodly number of buttons on the overly-complex dishwasher in the corner. And to be fair: neither does Steve. It’s just supposed to wash the dishes. A button for pulsating hydro-spray does seem suspect.
"Altruism," Steve clarifies, and he doesn’t have to force the point: doesn’t have to reach out and say the Winter Soldier wouldn’t have given his rations to his enemy, an assassin wouldn’t be sure to feed his mark, a mindless killing machine wouldn’t support the very life it was supposed to take, but Bucky, Bucky, you would do just that, and you always have, and you always will, and good god, I love you, I love you.
It doesn’t have to be said. It’s understood.
Bucky swallows hard. Steve’s hold around him tightens, just a tad, and Bucky sets the dishes down and leans into the feel, into the give of Steve’s chest at his back.
"Naw," Bucky exhales long, low, and his voice is warm, like honey and fire and whiskey and longing and Steve wants to bottle it. Steve will never let it go.
"Naw, Stevie," and Bucky tilts his head back to rest on Steve’s shoulder, cranes his neck in invitation so that Steve can lean, can kiss. “Keeping watch of you was always the most selfish thing."
And Steve’s hands rise and fall with the breath in Bucky’s lungs; Steve’s mouth moves with the beat of Bucky’s blood at the throat, with the shiver of his words as they come:
"Most selfish thing I could ever live to do."
And Steve is also selfish. Steve is in love, and he is selfish, and this man has always been the best thing he’s ever known; Steve is selfish, and he steers them both toward the bedroom.
The dishes can wait until morning.
__________________________
“All the drinks here,” Steve smirks; “and you go with that.”
“I’ll have something else,” Bucky protests half-heartedly, observing the ballroom idly from his perch at the bar. “Later.”
“You realize Tony had them go and get that, for you,” Steve says, glancing down at the cheap brew that’s clenched in Bucky’s left hand; a hand which doesn’t clench tighter at the words, though Bucky’s lips do quirk downward, and that’s not an expression Steve ever wants to see on Bucky’s face—let alone an expression he wants to place there himself.
“I didn’t point it out to make you feel bad.”
“I don’t feel bad,” Bucky says, tone blank. “I am confused as to why it fucking matters enough for you to point it out in the first place.”
Steve swallows, thinks through his next move. The music changes; couples shift on and off the dance floor—the benefit’s a success, if the turnout is any indication. But Steve doesn’t think that a Stark event knows how to fail.
“Draws attention, doesn’t it?” Steve finally says. “To you.”
Because Steve doesn’t have to tell Bucky that he knows why Bucky drinks that swill in the face of better options; Bucky doesn’t have to say out loud that it’s a comfort, doesn’t have to explain that crowds still put him on edge sometimes, doesn’t have to remember, or admit to remembering that he drank the same shit when he could afford it way back when, and it calms him, anchors him, sets him at ease.
So Steve points to the other end of the issue: the fact that Bucky, were he less Bucky and more someone, something else, wouldn’t want to stand out, wouldn’t want to sacrifice anonymity for the sake of a strange preference in his alcohol. Wouldn’t think to have a preference at all.
Bucky takes another drink, but the set of his shoulders relaxes, just a little. Steve claps a hand over one of them, and squeezes brief, but tight.
“Dance?”
Bucky snorts.
“You can’t dance, Rogers.”
Steve grins, and offers a hand.
“You’re good enough to make up for it.”
Bucky considers for the lost half of a second before he downs his beer and shakes his head, a little rueful.
But he also takes Steve’s hand, and that’s what counts.
__________________________
Now, Steve is not the kind of person who’s going to call his sex life the highlight of his relationship. Not least because that’s not true at all. It is not the highlight.
It is a highlight.
Because it doesn’t matter what year they’re in: Bucky’s always been a fucking marvel in bed. Patient, imaginative, passionate, relentless, and fucking giddy with it, start to finish, and so in love with Steve that, despite everything, Steve never felt less than the luckiest son of a bitch in the world during, and after. And where they had to be careful, before, for all kinds of reasons—Steve’s lungs, or his heart, or the neighbors, or the people who might see that mark above the collar—they’ve got no reason now to hold back, to think twice, and sometimes they’re a perfect dance of bodies, and sometimes they’re a sloppy tangle of limbs, and it doesn’t matter which they end up with: they only stop when they’re both too breathless to keep at it.
And for the record? It takes a whole fucking lot to get them both that breathless.
But sometimes; sometimes, when Bucky’s tired, when his eyelids droop and Steve smiles warm to see it, to know that Bucky allows it, now—allows himself to be vulnerable, trusts Steve to watch his six, to keep him safe; sometimes, when Bucky’s tired and wants to fuck them both to bonelessness, to the absolute exhaustion that eliminates the possibility for dreams: sometimes, Bucky forgets the moment, almost. Relies on muscle memory, on the things he knows deeper than thought.
Sometimes, when they’re like that, Bucky’s gentle in ways he doesn’t need to be anymore. Bucky’s careful of Steve’s body; no less reverent, no more in love with Steve’s frame than he always is, but hesitant as a rule, touches ghosting and his own weight held back as he lavishes Steve with attention, gently rebukes Steve’s advances and tests his pulse on second-to-second whims that aren’t whims, Steve knows: are what kept him from crumbling when he didn’t know his own limits, when he’d pushed too far: greedy. Foolish.
Fucking punch-drunk over this jerk.
So sometimes, Bucky rides him slow, and it drives him mad; sometimes Bucky reverts to his default way of caring for Steve and it’s this, it’s careful and whisper-light and still like a dream and Steve lets himself love it: the attention, the change of pace, the slice of then in the now.
He doesn’t know if Bucky remembers, when he wakes, how it happens; how they move. He doesn’t know if Bucky even realizes what, and who, he is without thinking. Without trying. Just because it’s him.
Steve remembers it, though. That might be enough.
__________________________
Steve Rogers hates Bucky Barnes. Fucking hates him.
“I fucking hate you.”
“Yep,” Bucky tries to smirk, ends up with a grimace, from where he sits prone on the sofa. “Got that.”
“Do you have any idea,” Steve grits out, fluffing yet another pillow—because five’s not enough, goddamnit—and fitting it behind Bucky’s shoulder as tenderly as he can; “Any idea how fucking scared I was?”
“Any idea?” Bucky turns disbelieving eyes Steve’s way, sarcasm thick enough to cut through in his tone. “Yeah, you know, I think I do. I’ve been damn-near married to your stupid ass for enough years.”
Steve blinks, and the sudden pounding of his blood in a slightly different cadence, with a slightly different weight tells him that his mind—and maybe his heart, yeah—probably picked up on the wrong part of that snarking.
“Are you trying to distract me with a half-assed proposal?”
Bucky snorts.
“Naw,” he drawls, leaning back into the pile of pillows gently, and still with too much of a flinch before he musters up a leer, and a wink. “Gonna do better than that. Promise.”
There’s a flutter in Steve’s stomach at that, but it’s not the time to dwell on it.
“You’re an asshole.”
“I’m aware.”
They stare each other down for the space of a few breaths before Steve sighs, long and deep before falling onto the sofa next to Bucky, just enough room between them to keep from jostling him, from aggravating his wounds; but only just.
“What the fucking hell were you thinking?” Steve hisses out, emotions still running too high through him; a shiver still just on the edge of every motion, every thought.
“I was thinking you were going to get mowed down by those lizard things,” Bucky says, like it’s obvious. And yeah, maybe that part was.
“So it was better if you got mowed down instead?”
That’s the part that’s less obvious. Like, not obvious at all.
And all Bucky does is almost-shrug. Because he can’t full-on shrug. Because he got trampled by lizard things. Because he threw himself at Steve to push him out of the line of that godforsaken stampede of alien fuckery and had nearly died as a result.
Bucky almost-shrugs.
“More or less.”
And Steve can’t take it.
“You can’t do this,” Steve says, his voice tight as he tilts his head back over the edge of the couch, runs trembling hands over his face, reminds himself to breathe as all the what-ifs start to gather, start to overwhelm. “You cannot do this to me, Buck.”
“You lookin’ for an apology?” Bucky asks, just shy of incredulous; mostly filled with indignation. “Ain’t gonna find one here, Stevie.”
“You walk around like your life’s not worth a damn,” Steve throws back, tries to get him to see how fucked up this is, how fucked up it is that he risks himself like this, and Steve is selfish enough to push the point because he loves Bucky more than life; because he can’t take the way it feels when he has to watch Bucky’s very being hanging in the balance.
“Compared to yours?” Bucky quirks a brow. “It’s not worth a damn. It never was.” Bucky’s eyes flicker downward, and he plays with the thread on the blanket around his waist as he murmurs: “Certainly isn’t now.”
“That is the biggest fucking crock of bullshit I’ve ever heard,” Steve damn near snarls it, because fucking hell.
Fucking hell.
“What do you want me to say, Steve?” Bucky bites back, wincing before consciously curtailing the fierceness in his body, in his bones; reining in his breathing so as not to aggravate the damage in his chest.
“I know you don’t see it,” Bucky finally says: calmer now, and Steve’s grateful for that, can’t bear to see him hurt more than he already is; but where there was anger, before, now there’s sadness, resignation, and that cuts Steve just as deep. “I know you don’t understand, and that you still see him when you look at me, you still see that guy I used to be and—”
Steve doesn’t know what snaps in him; what drives the impulse. Even after, Steve doesn’t think he’ll be able to make sense of it, not really. It’s something lodged, though: real and tangible and true in the trip of his pulse at those words, and the pain in Bucky’s eyes that makes him do it.
The knife’s on a plate from the night before; they’d been called out for the mission before they’d had the chance to clean up. A fruit plate. They’d shared it between them. Fed each other; stolen kisses that didn’t need stealing, but felt special for it, wild and daring and exhilerating.
Bucky’d eaten all the pineapple. That fucking sweet tooth.
It’s far away, just now; those moments. That feeling.
Maybe it’s how much he hates the distance, the yawning gap that separates yesterday and today, and that’s the larger issue, isn’t it and fuck, maybe that’s what does it.
Steve grabs the knife and drags it down hard from the tip of one finger.
He doesn’t make it past the heel of his palm before it’s smacked from his grip.
“What the fuck, Steve!” Bucky’s eyes are blazing, and it has to hurt him, the way he’s leaning over and grabbing Steve’s hand and taking the blanket on his lap and wrapping the wound; and Steve is sorry for that, for the pain, but there’s a point to be made, and there’s a point where all men break and both are at hand, goddamnit.
Pun unintended.
“Jesus,” Bucky’s fretting, torn-up, half-crushed chest heaving, and he’s taking his left hand and pressing down, hard and even against the gash. “Pressure, come on, just—”
“Bucky.”
Steve reaches with his free hand and tilts Bucky’s chin up to meet his eyes.
“Breathe.”
Bucky doesn’t seem to understand; Steve uncurls his grasp to cup Bucky’s jaw, to stroke slow at his cheek.
“Breathe, and look at me.” Bucky breathes, and focuses. “Look at this.” Steve slowly extricates his other hand from Bucky’s, despite Bucky’s protests; unwraps the wound to see the bleeding stopped; the flesh already shining with healing tissue.
And Bucky stares at the line of pinkening red for a long string of moments, and Steve feels the jaw beneath his touch slacken slow before Bucky looks up at him, eyes wide, and Steve knows he gets it. Steve knows he hears the words unsaid.
The Winter Soldier only knew me as this, as someone who would heal, as someone who a knife wouldn’t stop; he wouldn’t have reacted, even if he’d known to care, he wouldn’t have needed to tend to a wound that didn’t matter, that would close in minutes, but you, you care, you love, and you remember what it meant when that wound would have bled too long, would have cost us both more than we could spare and you are that boy and that man and this man and I love you, and yes I see that guy when I look at you, because I see you, I see you—
“You are that guy,” Steve breathes out, soft and desperate as his hands reach to the sides of Bucky’s neck; grip firm. Real.
The pump of Bucky’s blood beneath both palms is an anchor; heavy and quick but there.
“Steve—”
“Do you love me, Buck?” Steve whispers, breaks eye contact because there’s too much feeling; loses himself in the heartbeat under his hands.
“What the hell kind of question is that?”
“Do you love me?” Steve says it again, asks once more; not because he doesn’t know the answer, but because he needs Bucky to follow him down this line, like he does down every other.
“You know I do,” Bucky rasps out, eyes searing with it. “You know.”
Steve does.
“Close your eyes,” Steve says. Bucky considers only for a second before his eyes slide shut. “And I want you to tell me the first thing that comes to mind, then. When I ask you who you love.”
Bucky face scrunches up. And Steve really does love that face.
“Umm,” Bucky deadpans; “you, you moron.”
“Am I skinny?” Steve asks him simply. “Short? Twigs for arms and a rasp when I breathe?”
Bucky’s eyes snap open.
“What?”
“Do you see me,” Steve pushes, coaxes out the answer, whatever the answer is: “like that?”
“I,” Bucky stops short; frowns. “No, but,” he catches his lip between his teeth. “First thing?”
Steve nods.
“First thing’s just,” Bucky considers Steve shrewdly, fully: “Just you.”
“Me.”
“Yeah,” and Bucky reaches up, traces Steve’s face slow; deliberate. “Yeah. This.” He dwells on Steve’s mouth, which quirks upward at the touch; which leaves Bucky’s to mirror the motion. “You.”
And that’s exactly what Steve was looking for. That’s exactly what Steve needs.
“Then for fuck’s sake, Buck,” Steve shifts his hold to Bucky’s shoulders; grips, mindful of his wounds but fierce all the same.
“Stop thinking that all I see is you in an alleyway with blood on your knuckles, or in a uniform waiting for cars to fly,” Steve demands it; begs it of him, and Steve gives himself the permission to look at Bucky, to drink him in for a breath, and then two, and to marvel at him. To wonder at him.
“Stop thinking I see anything but you, here and now and with me, when I think about the man I love.”
And Bucky’s looking back, drinking in just as deep: disbelieving.
And for the first time in far too long: hopeful.
“Because it’s you. It’s you,” Steve leans in, leaves their foreheads to touch. “And yes, I remember then, I remember you, back then, but I remember it because I see it, now. I see it in you, and you remind me.”
And he tilts his head to meet Bucky’s lips, which are waiting, which are wanting, which welcome him, invite him in and it feels new, somehow; for all that Steve would never call anything they’ve ever had lacking, this is overflowing with something miraculous. This is wholly given, and joyfully received.
“You’re my whole fucking heart, you jackass,” Steve breathes against those lips, sears it in with all that he is; all that he knows. “Everything about you. Everything you’ve known, everything you’ve done, everything you’ve survived,” Steve shakes his head, and blinks hard against the sting in his eyes.
“You’re everything,” he exhales, warm and soft and true. “Everything about you, is my everything.”
And if the way Bucky presses his mouth to Steve’s is any indication, Steve thinks that maybe, just maybe: this time?
He believes it.