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“I’m glad for it, y’know.”
“Hmm?” Steve hums, and it’s cool against the sheen on Bucky’s skin, against the pulse in his neck.
“This.” Bucky flattens a palm to Steve’s chest, to the pump-and-give of being itself inside Steve’s ribs, the rapidfire cry of life for better, for worse, and for better—against all odds—once again.
“We didn’t have a chance before,” Bucky murmurs into the crook of Steve’s shoulders, slowly dragging his sweat-slick skin down Steve’s body, edges and curves catching and sliding and Steve shivers for it because god, god, it’s perfection in a way he never dared to hope for, of a kind he didn’t think to pray to hold.
“I mean, you know,” Bucky’s mouth is at the last splay of smooth skin before the map of rise and ridge around the bud of his nipple as he breathes out, sinful as fuck: “After.”
And Steve remembers—and he knows Bucky remembers it now, too—so many missed opportunities, the meeting of eyes across a battlefield, a thank you for watching my back, for having my six, for saving my life as much as it was ever I want you, I want you, I need to pin you against that barnside, that jeep, that goddamn tree because I want to taste you, I need to feel you, I need to know you’re here and that you’re breathing because we’re both breathing and it’s one another that’s filling our fucking lungs and I need to know you love me, I need to know you still love me—
“So I wasn’t sure,” Bucky exhales, and lets his tongue tease, just at the tip, against the hard nub of Steve’s nipple, and yeah.
Steve remembers.
“That bum ticker of yours was the goddamn bane of my existence, Steve,” Bucky chokes out suddenly as he sighs, as he moves, the ring of his lips wet and trembling against Steve’s sternum as his fingers dance over the feeling of Steve’s wild-reeling pulse. “Fuckin’ center of my universe.”
There’s a shiver, a shudder, a chill down Steve’s spine that’s not a chill, not even close: it’s the warmth of being and making and wholeness and light that fills Steve up at how deep those words run; how far that touch goes.
“At first, when we,” Bucky falters, rests his head for a second against where Steve knows his heartbeat’s felt, where Steve knows Bucky needs to live because Steve needs him there just as much, just as deep as life and death.
“When we’d,” and Bucky’s hips are flush against Steve’s thigh, and the tightness, the line of arousal there speaks the unspoken words, and when Steve’s nipples’d gone hard for Bucky’s breath, they hadn’t been the only thing.
Not even close.
“I was so scared,” Bucky doesn’t tremble, but he doesn’t have to. “All the time, I was scared, so scared we’d push too far and you’d, it,” he kisses the pumping of Steve’s heart through the flesh like the feet of a saint, like the hand of God Himself. “I’d...”
Steve waits for Bucky’s lips to draw back, catches him between breaths and cups hands on either side of that face to lead him up and kiss him solid, sure, tight enough that maybe Bucky can still mouth his heartbeat inside his lips but it’s all benediction and need, all want and feeling that doesn’t exist in such depths, with such wholeness if it never knows loss and theirs has, more than anyone’s, and so it’s deeper, it’s fathomless.
It’s the definition of what it means to be whole.
“But when we were together,” Bucky speaks when they pull apart, each tasting more of the other than they taste of themselves, which is as it should be. Which is as it will be, always.
“When we fucked, when we made love,” and Bucky slips back down to nuzzle the hollow of Steve’s throat, where the pound of blood is a thing that Bucky can tongue idly, can taste vivid as the day.
“Never. Not once,” Bucky sucks against the swell of his blood. “Some kind of miracle,” and they are, it was; they were, it is.
They are.
“So fast, Stevie, like a flutter, the wings of a bird,” and as Bucky marvels, Steve remembers it, because when the high wore off slow, when he came back down to live in Bucky’s arms instead of in the light that always followed immediately after Bucky spilled inside him, after Steve ruined their threadbare, scratchy sheets: Steve noticed. Steve noticed how his heart was racing beyond what any doctor, any priest or practitioner ever said that he’d survive but he could breathe through it. He could feel it without tightness, like meeting the core of his being, his self for the very first time, because of Bucky.
Because Bucky was his everything. So it only made sense.
“The patter of the rain,” Bucky exhales, whisper-light on Steve’s skin in a way that makes the pulse Bucky’s worshipping with his lips leap up into that waiting mouth to be known, to be taken and adored all the better, all the closer.
“But steady as anything.” Bucky kisses the only-just visible pulse where it starts to abate. “Never faltered.”
And Steve’s breathless, still; Steve could melt into the touch of Bucky’s lips, of Bucky’s skin, of Bucky’s body, and never wish to emerge as a singular soul again. Steve’s braced by the palms on Bucky’s shoulders as Bucky rests his chin on the center of Steve’s just and looks up, lashes long and lazy: Steve is breathless.
No wonder, really.
“Once they made you big on the outside,” Bucky tells him, low like a secret. “You never got out of breath, you never seemed to strain more than a little,” Bucky shakes his head, and the tickle of the tips of his hair with the motion is a temptation, is a thrill. “I figured, they had to have changed everything. Endurance, y’know. Efficiency.”
He lets his hands both meet above Steve’s calming heart: calming but still alight with such wild abandon that Steve can taste it in the back of his throat, like cherries beneath the lingering flavor of Bucky in his mouth.
“It meant life, y’know?” Bucky presses his palm down, a little, gaze focused on the gaps between his fingers in the dark. “It meant you were with me, it meant you weren’t going anywhere,” and there it is, there’s the little shiver, the little terror coming out of Bucky’s bones as he shakes for how deep that fear had run, and for how long, to have remained, to still tremble there after everything, after forgetting and unmaking and rebuilding and coming home—it says everything as Bucky breathes it out between them in confession:
“I could breathe,” Bucky mouths, moans; “‘Cause you were the rain, and you’d always come back.” Bucky leans his ear, then against Steve’s chest and just listens: soaks up, seeps inside the rain. “You’d always come back to me.”
Steve soaks in it, too: Bucky’s head against his chest, keeping him. Holding him close and tethering. Making clear to the universe that Steve is his, and that whatever seeks to take him away will answer to Bucky. Will die at his hands.
It is one of the warmest feelings, one of the most perfect sensations Steve’s ever known: that safety. That much undying love.
The heart that Bucky’s pressed again could burst for it, but even that Bucky stands watch against. Bucky protects from breaking, even from too much joy.
“But they didn’t take that,” and the feeling of Bucky’s smile, the curls of his lips against Steve’s chest is a thing that could swallow Steve whole, and he’d let it without a second thought: that smile, for him, after so much. After everything.
“And if they had,” those splayed hands clench a little, shift a little, and Steve’s heart slips just a bit from their frame. “I wouldn’t have wished otherwise, you know that. You’re still a goddamn fool for lettin’ ‘em touch you, nearly kill you,” Bucky’s eyes flash up to Steve’s, fire in them, yet so familiar for it that it aches. “But I think I can only even start to fathom believing in a god because they made you well.” Bucky takes a moment, watches Steve’s chest rise and then fall before he presses his lips to the beating again, before he drinks Steve in and gives himself over and pledges every vow and promise to the heart beneath his hands, and Steve wishes there were words enough to tell Bucky how much he truly holds that heart, how much it pumps because he cradled it close through the worst of the winters, through the end of the world to hell and back: Steve wishes there were words.
“And I figured you’d just be the thunder, now,” Bucky tells him, voice far and yet, still right there. “Careful, measured.” He brushes his lips backward, forward over the heaviest place where Steve’s heart fights his ribs. “Some cosmic metronome beneath my hands.”
And Steve’s head tilts back, and his chest arches up, and his eyes slip closed as he wills everything he’s ever been and ever was, and might become someday with this man, this love of his life beside him: he wills it all into his blood, wills it all to move and give and show itself undeniable in the heart that Bucky reaches for; that reaches back.
Steve wills it. And his will is a formidable thing.
“But you’re both,” Bucky breathes out wonder and disbelief, which is everything they are, Steve thinks. Which sums them up perfectly, when held inside the bigger soul their two singular souls have twined together to become. “You’re everything, just like you’ve always been. Just like you’ll always be.”
And Steve’s tingling with the overwhelming feeling in it all, Steve’s skin is electric and against the thunder-deluge of his pulse he is a storm, he is chaos and unfathomable strength, he could do anything, he could be anything: but only for Bucky. In Bucky.
With Bucky.
And Bucky exhales, goes boneless against Steve’s chest again, ear to the heart once more and Steve settles in kind, everything draining from him save the way he feels for the man against him, holding him so close.
“And I’m glad for it, s’all,” Bucky murmurs, sleep gilding the edges of his words as he settles deeper against Steve’s body, into the grooves made in his shape, the space carved in his image, where he belongs: “So fucking glad.”
And as sleep starts to creep into Steve’s bones just the same, he can say it, he can know it so goddamn clear: so is he.
So is he.