Chapter Text
2003
One hundred and four.
Steve has counted the days.
He’s got all the time in the world, so he calculates the hours. Two thousand four hundred and ninety six. It feels like more. He tries for the minutes next, but they haven’t fed him in a while, and the lines of the bricks in the wall are already spinning slowly, so he closes his eyes and tries to sleep, though he can tell by the slanted light through the tiny window that it’s late in the day.
Later, he’s not sure how much later, the noise in the next cage rouses him. He can’t see anything, but he hears the guy struggling, cussing, heard him all the way down the hall. “Fuckyou, youpieceofshit, letmego, getyourhandsoff of me, OFF!” then a crack and a thud and silence broken only by the padlock.
“Fuckin’ firecracker, that one,” says the guard.
“Won’t that be interesting,” the other says dryly.
Steve drifts off.
--
The guy in the next cell is quiet for twelve days, almost thirteen. Just shy of three hundred hours. Steve thinks that’s an awful long time to be in your own head.
It’s a coughing attack that gets them both, actually. Gets Steve like it always get Steve, but after close to ten minutes of crawling to the toilet and hacking and spitting and then lying there on the cold cement, he hears the voice.
“Hey. You ok?”
Steve’s not worried. Since they’ve been giving him the shots he’s been healing much more quickly.
“Fine,” he croaks. “Are you?” This place is a shit hole on it’s best day. The guy must be freaking out.
There’s a dubious silence and then the voice says, “Really?”
Steve wipes his mouth on his sleeve and somehow manages to drag himself back to his cot. He has to inhale for a solid twenty seconds to be able to whisper, “What?”, but he gets it out.
“Never mind.” The other boy sounds young too, and after the few minutes he needs to ensure he won’t pass out if he talks again he says, “How old are you?”
“17. You?”
“16.”
“Shit,” the voice says.
“Rogers.”
“Bucky.”
“Nice to meet you, Bucky,” Steve says through the crackling in his lungs, and he hears a smile in the other boy’s voice as he says, “Likewise.”
“So how’d you end up in here?”
It’s weird how he can feel the change in emotion even from behind the shared wall, but he feels the air freeze all the way from the other room, and Bucky doesn’t answer. Steve figures he’s got the right to his silence, and closes his eyes, trying not to let the rattling in his chest keep him awake.
--
They take Steve to the lab only once that week, and only for injections. The med tech that takes him handles him almost carefully right up until he shoves a circle of needles into Steve’s arm. As far as lab visits go, it’s a fucking delight.
He sees the huddled shape of his neighbor as they drag him back to his cell, dark hair, pale skin, nothing else.
Bucky doesn’t talk much. He seems smart but lots of things set him off, and there are entire days he won’t speak a word. Strangely, the longer they share a wall, the more those silent days bother Steve, but he keeps it to himself.
He gets Bucky to talk the day the guard accidentally drops a receipt on the floor in front of Steve’s cell. When he’s sure the footsteps are gone, he creeps from his cot and reaches through the bars to pluck it from the floor.
“The hell you gonna do with that?”
Steve barely stifles yelp of surprise and lets the silence hang a little longer than usual, only partially out of spite for the day before when Bucky hadn’t respond to him all day, before he answers, ‘You’ll see.”
It’s been a long time since Steve’s seen anything but cement and bars and syringes and masked doctors, but he closes his eyes and let’s his mind drift, casting about for a good memory.
There was a park a little ways from his mom’s apartment that he’d loved. The two of them visited often when Steve was small, before she got sick, and there was one particular tree they used to sit under for hours, where his mother would read aloud to him. He digs the pencil he’d stolen from the lab out of a seam underneath his cot and gets to work.
“Holy crap,” Bucky whispers a while later.
Steve had kind of haphazardly reached his skinny arm between the bars and tossed the folded scrap of paper into the other cell then waited in surprisingly nervous silence for Bucky’s response.
“Where is this?” he asks softly.
“Park near my ma’s.”
“Where does she think you are?” It’s a good question, but Steve’s still not expecting it.
“She’s dead.”
The words slam into him like a truck. They do every time, and like with the coughing fit he has to take a few minutes to breathe. She’d gone the year before, slipped into sleep and never came back for him.
For a long time he’d been angry. Steve’d been sick all his life, but she was always so strong. When she died he’d wanted to go with her; he’d stopped eating, stopped taking quite so much care. The hospital picked him up a week later. He still feels so alone that it aches in his chest like the muscle cramps he gets when he coughs too hard.
But then - “Me too,” Bucky whispers. “Awful lonely, huh?”
It’s the most, both in number of words and emotional content, that he’s ever spoken, and Steve is surprised to find the knot behind his ribs loosen even as he says, “Yeah.”
--
They take Bucky the next day.
It’s only for a few hours, but when they come to get him it’s still early, still cool and dark, and Steve is actually soundly asleep for once when the door clangs open in the next room.
He hears Bucky startle awake. “Get off of me you fucker!”
They’re quicker this time around, and Steve hears a sharp slap and one of the guards say, “Shut up. You open your mouth again, I’ll tase your ass,” and then it feels like the whole world falls silent.
Steve doesn’t even try to go back to sleep, just sits with his back to their shared wall for the hours it takes.
When they come back, they’re dragging him. The thud of Bucky’s body hitting the floor makes Steve retch once before he rolls onto his stomach on the cold floor, face as close to the front corner of the cell as he can get and says, “Buck?”
He’s not actually expecting anything. Most of the time, coming back from the lab, he himself is incapable of much besides sleeping and pissing for a day or two. What Steve gets back is actually much worse.
Bucky lets out a snuffling whimper, like a kicked animal, and Steve immediately reaches a hand through the bars. “I’m here. I’m right here.” There’s a wet hiss and some shifting, and then freezing fingers pressed into his own. “You’re fine. I got you.” He curls his hand around the bigger one. “You’re ok, Buck.” It’s more to convince himself really.
They fall asleep.
--
“Are there others?”
“Yeah. It’s just us in this stretch, but I know there are at least two more hallways with a few people in each. I’d guess there’re eight of us all together.”
“What do they do to you?”
“Injections. Draw blood. Sometimes knock me out, but no weird scars or anything, so I dunno. You?”
Bucky’s tone is too tight when he says, “Same.” Then, “What do they want with us?”
“They say they’re US government...Can’t believe that’s true, but…”
He hears a thud, suspiciously like a fist hitting a wall.
“How’d they get you?” Bucky finally asks.
Steve’s on the floor next to his cot, doing push ups. It doesn’t make his arms any bigger, but he has to try. Sitting back on his haunches he says, “I volunteered.”
“What the fuck?”
“I was in the hospital,” he says, resuming his push ups. “They said-I could-help.” He has to pause every few words to have breath for both talking and exercise.
“Help?”
“That the work on my body-would be for a good-cause. They’d use what they learned-on me to help people.
The silence from the next room lightens, and Steve thinks he hears something close to fondness in Bucky’s voice when he says, “You dumb sonofabitch.”
“Guess I got had.” He’s not really expecting the amount of self loathing in his voice but makes no effort to cover it up. “Though to be honest, at the time, I don’t know that I would’ve cared.” He sighs and continues, “What about you?”
There is a practiced, active lack of answer from the next room.
Steve gives up on the push ups for the moment and crawls to his spot by the door, next to Bucky’s cell, and lies down. He’d expected Bucky to shut down, but he figures he can still keep the guy company.
When Bucky speaks again, Steve can tell he’s lying against the wall too. “For what it’s worth, Rogers,” he says so quietly Steve almost misses it, “I’m glad you’re here with me.”
--
“What’s this?” Bucky snorts. He must’ve found the gift, a drawing Steve had done of a buxom girl jumping out of a birthday cake. It’s cartoonish and silly, but Steve had to do something, and he loves making Bucky laugh.
“Saw your chart in the lab.”
“And?”
“Happy birthday.”
So much of their friendship was Steve waiting in silence for Bucky to give him something, anything of himself, and for once he does, not with information or anecdotes, but with the tone of his voice, awed and grateful and genuine, not for the picture...for something else, something more. Steve doesn’t know what he did, but Bucky sure sounds grateful.
“Damn. Th-thanks, Rogers. This is...somethin’ else.” He sniffs then chuckles, and even though Steve feels like he might puke his guts out from the after effects of the lab visit, he laughs too.
--
Steve wonders what Bucky looks like. Not all time time, he knows better than anyone not to set much stock in appearance, but he’s glimpsed enough of the high cheekbones and tousled hair that the artist in him wants to know more. Maybe another part of him wants to know more, too.
--
They’re together another two hundred and seven days before it all goes to hell.
Two hundred and seven days, and if Steve’s being honest with himself, they’re the best and worst days of his entire life. For the first time, he’s not lonely. For the first time, he feels understood.
The injections, the electrocution it’s worth it. Only barely, but it is.
Later, Steve estimates they got about a hundred fifty good days all said and done. Days where neither of them were taken to the lab, or recovering, where all they had to do was lie in their dank little cells and talk. Laugh.
They tell stories and talk about school. They make plans for an unknown future, a someday when they’d get out of here, find an apartment somewhere, get jobs. Bucky thinks Steve should go to art school. Steve wants to go into the Army. Bucky doesn’t know what he wants to do yet. They argue, good-naturedly, about everything and to Steve it feels like coming home.
It’s the first and last time the guards take them together, at the same time, though Bucky and his guard are in front of Steve as they move through the bunker. The men are rougher with them than usual and one of them says something about hoping they get the job done before they’re shut down.
There’s a fork in the hallway and Steve’s guard begins hauling him in the opposite direction as Bucky. It feels different this time, and Steve’s actually afraid, but not for himself. This will all have been worth it if Bucky gets out alright, and if not...Well, Steve just hopes it’s both or neither of them in the end. Preferably both. Steve’s a bit of an optimist these days.
Bucky never does get around to telling Steve anything about his life, but he’s learned other things. Learned that Bucky’s smarter than anyone Steve’s ever met. He’s goofy and reckless and angers easy but forgives even easier.
Steve’s never met anyone like him. He might love him a little, but there isn’t enough time.
“Bucky! If we don’t make it out-”
“Shut the fuck up, Rogers!” he calls back cheerfully. “I’ll see you on the other side!”