Archive of Our Own ^beta

There is a moment, a single, breathless sliver of an instant, when time stops. It takes place when he sees the Winter Soldier’s mask lying on the asphalt, when he turns around to look at Steve with cold eyes and a hard, blank expression. It happens when their eyes meet across a space that is not that far apart but might as well be a hundred miles. Might as well be an entire ocean. It happens when he sees the soldier’s face and recognizes it. Under the fall of dark hair and the black kevlar and the shine of the metal arm, he knows that face.

The world slows, comes to a halt around them.

He does not breathe, he cannot move. There is nothing but the soldier on the bridge, staring at him like he’s never seen Steve before in his life.

Time, of course, never actually stopped. Not really. It plods on as it always does, an unstoppable force of the natural order of things. He will wish, later on, that time had indeed stopped. It has left him behind already; the least it can do for him is give him a frozen second or two. To come to terms with…

“Bucky?”

He breathes it, like a prayer, like a benediction.

Bucky- blue eyes flashing in the light from the small tenement window, a laugh that is a touch wicked, eating at a small, rickety table smudged with charcoal from Steve’s latest drawing, a brawling fight in an alleyway back to back. His Bucky.

“Who the hell is Bucky?” and it is not Bucky that asks but the Soldier.

Everything in Steve cracks. He cannot fight. Even when Bucky—The Soldier—makes to come at him again, he does not lift a finger. He watches those cold eyes flicker with anger and confusion and finds no hint of recognition in them. Sam comes flying in, rams the Soldier with his feet—Bucky, Bucky, he’s alive— but it’s like trying to move a brick wall, the Soldier is back on his feet, eyes still glued to Steve’s face. There’s no recognition in his face, no, but there is something else. Steve has no name for it, except bewilderment. It is enough to halt him in his tracks.

Their eyes meet again.

But before he can parcel out words from the jumble his head has become, Natasha shoulders a grenade launcher and a moment later Bucky is gone in an explosion of black smoke. Steve stares at the spot he had been and hurts.

It hurts the same way it hurts when Peggy forgets him over and over again, hurts the way it did when he went back to Brooklyn and found his old neighborhood gone to make way for newer construction. Hurts the way it does when he ponders his future and sees nothing but emptiness. Like he had left whatever future he might have had behind in 1944. Like it lays in the ice still, left behind just as he had been.

As the Strike team surrounds them(his team once), he hears the echo of rushing wind in his ears and Bucky’s scream as he falls.

As they are restrained and taken away, Steve does not fight.

He can’t remember why he was fighting in the first place.

Bucky’s scream replays over and over in his head and his entire life feels like a lie.

**

Speaking of lies, he knows Fury does not tell him the truth when he says he did not know about Bucky. How much of a lie it is, he cannot tell. Fury has been selling lies a lot longer than Steve has been alive (the years in the ice not withstanding). But this time, the words ring false. Maybe Fury didn’t know who the Soldier was or maybe he did. Steve doesn't care. He meets Nick Fury’s eyes and says.

“Shield, Hydra, it all goes,” because when Bucky died—didn’t die, he’s still alive, alive, alive—Steve flew a plane into the ice. This time Bucky isn’t really dead but he’s not Bucky either and Steve will burn the entire world down if he has to. To get Bucky back, to assuage the ache in the hollow place where his heart used to be.

Maybe it’s for those reasons, a little bit, but mostly it’s because he is angry and he wants to slaughter every last individual to hurt Bucky, who turned him into an assassin who can’t even remember his own name.

Fury thinks to argue but Steve just lifts his chin and stares him down.

He will burn the world for Bucky if he needs to but at the moment, the only thing burning is himself.

**

“They don’t have the greatest food here but you should eat something,” Sam says without preamble as he steps into the small, sterile room Steve has taken for himself. The underground bunker isn’t big but it has enough of these small, private rooms for everyone and then some. Not that there’s a lot of people in the bunker. Two dozen at the most. He thinks about S.H.I.E.L.D, about how Peggy and Howard had built it together from the ground up only to have Hydra grow beneath its surface like some ugly parasite, and he grits his teeth against the surge of helpless rage. With some difficulty, Steve lifts his gaze to Sam waiting in the doorway, both hands laden with plates and his dark eyes knowing.

“I’m not really that hungry,” he lies because after the serum, he’s hungry a lot. But he doesn’t think he can eat. The hollow pit of his stomach feels like lead. Under the anger and the hurt and the old grief (that’s not really all that old, not for him) picked open and raw, there is self-loathing. There is guilt. There are “what-if’s” that circle round and round in his head until he thinks he’ll go insane. Food would only make everything cramp up.

“Yeah, I call bullshit,” says Sam because he’s persistent like that. Which is something Steve usually likes about Same but now he just wants to sit on the uncomfortable bed and pretend the world doesn't exist.

That same world where Bucky is alive and doesn’t know him.

Sam places both plates on the small, metal table next to the door and leans on the wall, his arms crossed. Steve doesn’t like the way his eyebrows jut down and how his eyes are soft with sympathy. Not pity. Sam doesn’t do pity but the sympathy doesn’t make Steve feel much better.

“Now really isn’t a good time,” he finally responds quietly, after allowing the silence to drag on. He’s said all he thinks he’s able to say in the back of the van and the rage has just bottled up in the back of his throat. In all honesty, he’s afraid of what he might say.

“Now might be the only time,” Sam says reasonably. He’s right, of course. They have a couple of hours before they head out to dismantle Shield and the likely hood they won’t succeed is high.

“He’s been alive. All this time, he’s been alive and I had no idea,” the words are ripped from him, leaving him feeling raw and open. Steve rubs his fingers over an already fading bruise left by a metal fist, relishing the physical pain as if that could lessen the ache in his heart, “I watched him fall and I know for the rest of the world it happened more than seventy years ago but for me…for me…” for Steve it had only been two years? Three now? The grief is still heavy in his heart, still dark and and pressing. In this unfamiliar future he’s found himself, the loss of his best friend has only become more poignant. Steve leans forward, pressing his face into his hands, “That he’s still alive…”

“You said he didn't know you,” Sam says patiently. Kindly. Steve grunts a bitter laugh and sits up.

“He didn’t. He didn’t know himself,” Steve thinks about the confusion on Bucky’s face. Confused by his own name, “God, what did they do to him?” Sam is quiet but Steve can’t bring himself to look at him. Eventually, Sam slips away, leaving Steve to stare at his hands and remember over and over the way Bucky’s voice sounded when he said,

“Who the hell is Bucky?”

**

“I don’t think he’s the kind you save. I think he’s the kind you stop,” Sam says later as they look out over the wall of the dam. The breeze that blows up the river is warm and smells like damp earth.

“I don’t think I can do that,” Steve says but what he really means is, I know I can’t do that.

**

Later, this is what Steve remembers:

He doesn’t stop Bucky. He doesn’t save him either. He takes one look at the familiar blue eyes, dark with anger and confusion, and stops fighting. There, amidst the crumbling helicarrier, the explosions and the pain in his gut from a bullet, is another moment of stillness. Of Bucky watching him with suspicion and a flicker of fear in his eyes, his metal arm gleaming ominously.

“You know me,” he says, dizzy and sick. Bucky’s face twists and then the world is exploding again, a fist in his face, knocking him sideways.

“No I don’t!” it’s Bucky’s voice, the same way it’s his eyes and his lips and his nose. Even grooved with unfamiliar lines, Steve would know him anywhere.

“You’ve known me your whole life,” he manages, voice rough with pain, “Your name is James Buchanan Barns…”

“Shut up!” another hit. Another wave of agony. The bullet wounds ache, his belly feels like it’s being ripped apart but it’s the fist, cold and hard, that hurts the most. Staggering, he blinks at Bucky and lets his shield slide away. It slips through the broken glass at his feet and is lost.

“I’m not gonna fight you. You’re my friend,” then Bucky is on top of him, his metal fist becoming a battering ram as it strikes Steve again and again.

“You’re my mission!” and just when Steve thinks that’s it, that Bucky really will kill him, he hesitates. Eyes wild, fist raised above his head, he looks at Steve and stops. Through his one good eye, he can see the uncertainty written all over Bucky’s face and he knows, he knows, his best friend is still in there somewhere.

“Then finish it,” he grates out, “Because I’m with you to the end of the line,” and there is something. Something in the back of Bucky’s eyes, a flicker of more than just doubt. But before a resolution can be found, the ceiling crashes down and Steve is falling. His last thought is to wonder if this is what Bucky felt, when he fell from the train. If so, isn’t this a twisted kind of full circle. And then the cold, grimy water of the Potomac punches the breath from his body and there is only darkness.

**
The first time Steve wakes up in the hospital, Sam is sitting at his side, a line of worry between his brows but a small, relieved smile on his lips when Steve murmurs, “On your left.”

The second time it’s nighttime and there is a shadow in the corner that shouldn’t be there.

Steve doesn’t say anything. He’s afraid if he does, Bucky will disappear again. Or that he’s just dreaming and the dream will disperse if he acknowledges it. The distant, dull pain in his gut is real enough as is the soft beep of the monitors he’s hooked up to. But he just breathes as evenly as he can and pretends he’s asleep.

Because he trusts Bucky.

Which would probably infuriate Sam and Natasha, he thinks lamely, trying to pick up any sound from the shadow. A scrap of a breath, a whisper of shifting fabric, a barely-there scuff of a boot on the tiled floors. It occurs to him, fuzzily, as of from far away, that the Winter Soldier is too well trained to make any noise accidentally. What he cannot figure out is whether Bucky knows Steve is awake or he wants to wake Steve. It doesn’t matter in the end. Bucky disappears between one breath and the next, leaving Steve alone again.

He blinks at the spot where the shadow had been standing and feels a small, tentative swell of hope in his chest.

**

Predictably, Bucky is nowhere to be found once Steve is released from the hospital.

He tells himself he’s not disappointed. He tells himself to be reasonable. Of course, Bucky isn’t going to hang around. There’s too many left over S.H.I.E.L.D agents roaming the hospital halls and he’s pretty sure at least two of the nurses are former S.H.I.E.L.D too. The Winter Soldier is on everyone’s Most Wanted lists and no one except Sam seems to be willing to think of Bucky as anything but the Winter Soldier. Even so, when Steve wakes come morning, the sun spilling warm and bright through the big windows, and sees the room is empty with not a trace of any night visitor, Steve finds himself swallowing down the bitter bite of dismay.

He knows, knows, with a surety he can feel in his bones, that Bucky recognized him. There was that moment, when Bucky raised his metal fist for the fourth—seventh, twentieth, millionth—time. When Steve said “with you to the end of the line”, there was that faint flicker, a drawing down of his eyebrows, a tightening of his mouth.

For that moment, he saw Bucky.

“He’s not going to break through nearly seventy years of conditioning overnight,” Sam says gently when Steve voices his thoughts. He’s been in the hospital for three days at this point and Bucky hadn’t returned since the first night. Left alone, his mind runs itself inside out, trying to decide if he’d been seeing things or not. Both on the helicarrier and the first night here. Even though Sam only says what he already knows, it helps.

“Yeah, I know,” he mutters, picking at the blanket over his knees. It’s soft under his fingers, not scratchy like he’d expect. Though he thinks maybe he’s getting deferential treatment because of who he is. Private room, decent bedding, good food that’s always hot. It makes him feel a little guilty.

“You’re sure he was here?” Sam asks and Steve shrugs.

“As sure as I can be. I mean, there was someone there. Who else would it have been?” it sounded more reasonable in his head but Sam doesn’t look at him like he’s gone crazy. He just watches him thoughtfully with his arms crossed over his chest.

“He been back?” Sam finally asks and Steve gets why he’s so good at the VA office. With his patience and his easy-going manners and complete lack of pity, Sam makes a good counselor. Steve just feels bad for dumping all of this on him.

“Nah, not that I can tell,” and isn’t that frustrating, “just the first night after I woke up.” Which is odd, when he stops to think about it. Because according to his doctor, he was out for nearly three days. He has super-healing, or whatever they call it, but being shot three times, being repeatedly smashed in the face with a metal fist, and then falling from the sky into the Potomac took its toll. Was Bucky there every night as Steve slept? The thought makes him feel itchy under his skin and he shifts, impatient. For the first time since he’s woken, he wants to be up, to run after the shadow of his best friend.

“You wanna know what I think?” Sam asks, leaning forward in the seat so that it creaks a little. Steve looks over at him, ignoring a small twinge in his stomach, “I think he came to see if you pulled through. Maybe he doesn’t remember you but he’s in there, somewhere.” Steve has to look away, down at his lap. His feet make two peaks in the blankets at the end of the bed and he stares at them.

“I thought you said he was someone you stop,” he says roughly around the ache filling his chest. Sam spreads his hands in a sweeping gesture.

“I’ve been known to be wrong before. If he was here and he didn’t finish whatever mission he was supposed to be on, then I was definitely wrong,” he smiles a little at Steve, probably sees the pathetic longing all over his face. He reaches over to clap a hand on Steve’s arm and his dark eyes are impossibly kind when he adds, “Just give it time, man.”

They change the subject after that, Sam filling him in on the mess they left behind and how Natasha is trying to pick up after it. He feels bad, thinks about seeing if he can get discharged early so she doesn’t have to deal with it on her own. But if she wanted his help, she would have come visiting.

He might feel a little sorry for himself that the only people who’ve come to see him are Sam and a shadow but it doesn’t last very long. Natasha is a friend in her own way. Rather like the stray cat that stuck to Steve the summer of ’38. Friendship on her terms. Sam comes by every day at four and stays until visiting hours are over. Considering before this whole mess, Steve didn’t think he had anyone, he figures he’s doing alright.

And, impossibly, Bucky’s alive so there’s that.

It’s enough to make him feel almost optimistic. How strange, he thinks. Optimism isn’t something he’s put much stock in since waking up from the ice.

Steve likes the way it feels.

**

They discharge him on the fifth day and when he steps out of the hospital in some of Sam’s borrowed clothes, the only pain that’s left is a small ache in his belly.

“Gut-shot, man,” Sam had said when Steve first woke up, “scared the shit outta me. Heard too many horror stories about guys being shot in the belly,” he’d shaken his head but Steve had just shrugged. It would take a lot more than that to kill him, he thinks. Now it is just a distant twinge on the edges of his awareness and a small, rapidly disappearing scar. It’s easier to think about the lingering pain rather than a shadow in a hospital room and how his immediate future now looks like nothing but one long game of catch.

A car pulls up to the curb, a familiar black corvette and he smiles when Natasha peers at him through the passenger side window.

“Sure you shouldn’t be in a wheel chair, Rogers? Or maybe I could get you a walker?” Steve rolls his eyes as he gingerly slides into the car, trying not to grin at the familiar banter.

“Yes, yes. You’re so funny I don’t know how I’ll stop laughing,” he grumbles. The car growls as she throws it into gear and peels out of the parking lot. Steve just hangs on to the door and presses his lips together. He’s long since stopped trying to convince Natasha that she doesn’t need to drive like she’s always in a car chase.

“It’s good to see you,” she says softly and it’s the only sign of affection he’s going to get from her. Steve settles into the leather seat with a smile.

“You too, Natasha.”

**

He makes the decision to move out of his old apartment the second he closes the door behind him upon his return.

There are several reasons. The first and foremost being the blood that has stained the floorboards in the living room. And the dining room. And the hallway. Not to mention the three holes from high velocity rounds letting in the light from the street outside through the damn wall. He doubts he’ll be able to walk through there and not hear the crack and thump of the bullets first busting through layers of concrete blocks and sheetrock then embedding themselves into Nick Fury’s body. Steve has been through his fair share of shit but he’s never had to bring it home with him. Now it just waits, sitting in the middle of his living room like a great, malevolent beast. Waits for him to open the door and step inside.

Steve looks around and is suddenly, achingly homesick. Homesick for New York City. Homesick for Brooklyn.

But he can’t leave DC, not yet.

Because going to New York without Bucky wouldn’t really be going home. Bucky is his home. What he misses are the hot, soupy summer days sitting on the rickety fire escape drawing on scraps of salvaged paper while Bucky talked about his day at work. He misses the way they would sit on the living room floor, knees touching as they darned the holes in their socks for the hundredth time because they couldn’t afford new ones. Misses how the smell of charcoal and Biocreme would greet him when he opened the door to their tiny apartment. Misses that couch cushion that always had a wonky spring, misses late dinners of canned soup and hard-crusted bread left over form the bakery around the block, misses trailing behind Bucky and his date to go dancing. Not that Steve ever danced; no girl wanted to dance with a fella that was shorter and skinnier than them. Bucky would just shake his head as they walk home together at the end of the night.

“I don’t understand it, Stevie,” he’d say, “Those gals don’t know what they’re missin’.” Steve always just rolled his eyes and smiled but it helped, a little, even if Bucky was just saying it because he was a good friend. And he misses that too.

The missing becomes a physical ache in his chest and he throws on some sweats and a tee shirt and goes for a run. He doesn’t come back until after he’s aching and it’s dark out. After a shower as hot as he can make it and a slap-dash sandwich, he tumbles into bed and sinks into dreams where Bucky is dead but Steve chases his shadow through the afterlife. Always right behind. Always just out of reach.

He calls Sam the next day, after staring at the ceiling after the last dream and watching light patterns from cars passing on the street below until the sun comes up.

“I really hate to ask this of you. You’ve already gone above the call of duty but…I don’t think I can stay in this apartment anymore and I’m not ready to go back to New York yet,” he doesn’t need to tell Sam why. They both know, “Do you think I could stay with you for a little while?”

“Duty?” Sam grumbles sleepily and Steve realizes, with a pang of guilt, it’s still kind of early, “Man, I didn’t stick with you out of some weird sense of obligation or whatever. We’re friends, right? That’s what friends do,” Sam puts careful emphasis on the word ‘do’, his voice hard. It makes Steve bite the inside of his cheek to check the sudden storm of emotion. Sam is still talking, though, and he has a moment to swallow the lump in his throat, “and yeah, you can totally crash here. As long as you want.”

It feels like being saved.

**

Sam comes to help him pack three days later, pulling up to the curb with an old pickup truck. It doesn’t take them more than an hour. All of the furniture came with the apartment when he arrived and he hasn’t collected all that many things in his stay there. Some clothes, a few pairs of sturdy boots and his running shoes, his uniform and his shield. He also carefully packs his record player and the bundle of records he’s managed to collect. When Sam isn’t looking, he shoves his stack of sketchbooks into one of the duffle bags.

“That’s all if it?” Sam asks a little incredulously as they stand in the hallway with two boxes and several duffle bags slumped at their feet.

“Been a little busy, I guess,” Steve says with a crooked grin, “besides, how much stuff does one person really need?” Sam snorts and shakes his head before bending down and shouldering two of the duffle bags.

“You’d be surprised how much crap people tend to accumulate,” Sam returns with a wry twist to his mouth. Steve, having gathered the rest of his things, follows him out the door and locks it behind him. It should seem like the ending of something but for the first time since he woke up in a world that left him behind, he feels like he might be catching up.

“That sounds like you know from experience,” he jokes as they traipse down the stairs. He nods to an older woman in the lobby checking for her mail and then they are outside, depositing his meager belongings into Sam’s truck.

“You would not believe the amount of stuff my sister had when we moved her back home from college. Took all three of our cars and an entire day to fill them,” Sam shrugs, “I thinks it’s pretty typical these days.” Steve was going to smile and say something like ‘I guess being a kid during the depression left some hang-ups’. But then he glances absently across the street and goes very still. There’s man standing on the sidewalk, a single point of calm amidst the swirl of pedestrian traffic. And he’s watching them.

His clothes are rough; a tattered hoodie and t-shirt and a pair of old jeans torn at one knee. But even with the cap pulled low over his face, Steve would recognize Bucky anywhere.

For a wild moment, he thinks to call out.

The words are there, right at the tip of his tongue. Or maybe he’ll just cross the street and…

“Hey, you alright?” Sam’s voice at his shoulder makes him jump and he spares him a quick glance just as a transit bus rumbles down the street. He’s not at all surprised that Bucky is gone once the bus has passed. Like he’d never been there in the first place. Steve blinks and bites his lip, staring at the empty place Bucky had been standing.

“Yeah I’m…I’m alright,” he lies and ignores Sam’s sharp look as he slips into the truck.

Steve resolutely does not search for Bucky as they pull away from the curb.

**

He has been staying at Sam’s house for nearly a week before he brings it up over breakfast.

During the time he is settling in, he tells himself not to think about what he’d seen. It doesn’t matter that Bucky was standing across the street, watching him. It doesn’t matter that his first instinct is to tear the city apart looking. Bucky would only run away.

“You gotta treat him like a stray cat, dude,” Sam says when Steve finally confides in him. Or more like desperately seeking approval that he’s taken the right course of action by waiting Bucky out. Sam watches him over his glass of orange juice, still sweaty from their early run, “You gotta be patient. Let him come to you. You go chasing after him, you’ll probably never see him again,” Sam is right, of course. Deep down, Steve already knows this. It’s the reason he didn’t tear after Bucky when he saw him standing across the street. It’s the reason he didn’t call out in the darkness of his hospital room, too. He’s afraid of how far Bucky will run if he’s pushed.

“Like a stray cat, huh?” he mutters into his cereal bowl and smiles to himself. Remembers Bucky coming home one cold night at the end of fall with a tiny cat bundled in his coat. Remembers how Bucky rubbed the little thing in a blanket, fed it some scraps they could barely spare and give it a place to sleep by the stove. They couldn’t keep it, of course. No pets in their tiny apartment. But Bucky asked around and managed to find the tiny cat a warm home and a little girl to love it.

He thinks about the way Bucky’s face looked when he burst in the door a few days later because “I found her a home, Stevie!”, and he’d been so damn happy about it.

Bucky isn’t a cat, though.

But he’s willing to give Sam’s advice a try.

**

Natasha shows up at their door several weeks later, a sly smile curling her lips and a thick file in her hand.

“Hello, boys,” she says as she breezed in through the front door like she hasn’t been gone for nearly a month. Steve finds himself ridiculously glad to see her. It’s been a while since the media shit-storm and the hearing that Natasha graciously attended alone and it’s the first time seeing her since the day they brought S.H.I.E.L.D crumbling down. He hugs her, tight and hard, and flushes when she presses an overly friendly kiss to the corner of his mouth, “Missed me that much, huh?” Steve rolls his eyes and lets her slip away again.

“Will you mock me mercilessly if I say yes?” he says around a grin. Nat throws her red hair over her shoulder and gives him a wicked, curling smirk as they settle themselves around the island in Sam’s kitchen. Steve still thinks of everything in the house as ‘Sam’s’ and probably will to the day he moves out. Yet while it doesn’t feel like home, it’s more comfortable than his previous place.

“You kinda just did, Rogers,” Natasha laughs, her hands pressed over the file on the table. They obscure the writing that’s printed on the cover enough that Steve can’t make out what it says and while she has made it look casual, he knows she’s covered it on purpose. Instead of asking, he grins at her.

“You know I can’t lie worth a damn,” he jokes and Sam, leaning on the counter from where he’s standing, says lightly,

“He was inconsolable. Cried himself to sleep every night,” Steve shakes his head, though he likes the way Natasha’s eyes sparkle with mirth. The three of them are a good fit, him and Sam and Natasha. They fight well together, yes, but this is easy too. This back and forth that he hasn’t really had since his time with the Howling Commandos. Everyone is always too intimidated or awestruck. It feels good to have friends again. When Natasha waggles her eyebrows at him, he shrugs easily.

“I’m afraid Sam is right. I’ve been utterly lost without you,” he likes her throaty laugh; it feels like he’s won something.

“If the rest of the world knew what a shit you are, Rogers, they’d all die of shock,” Natasha says matter of factly and Steve just shrugs. The rest of the world knows Captain America. He’s glad they don’t know Steve Rogers very well, “Speaking of, I’ve come bearing gifts,” she slides the folder under her hands across the counter, her expression suddenly grim. Steve studies the flat gleam of her eyes and the beginnings of a frown at the corner of her lips and all of his good humor immediately evaporates.

The writing on the folder is mostly in Russian but there are words in English that he can read. Sub 22 code-name Winter Soldier.

He wills his hand not to shake as he touches the corner of the folder’s cover.

“Do I want to know how you got your hands on this?” he asks roughly. Natasha tilts her head to the side and crosses her arms over her chest. When she smiles, it’s tight and unhappy.

“Probably not,” she answers softly and he frowns at his finger tips resting on the cold countertop, “but I can tell you there is one small Hydra base we no longer have to worry about,” there is a sharpness to her voice and it makes him look at her carefully. He cannot remember the last time he saw Natasha angry.

“You went in alone?” he asks carefully, though he is aware that his disapproval leaks through. She’s good; she’s the best at what she does but he still can’t help feeling uneasy when he thinks about her bringing down a Hydra base all by herself. Steve is relieved when she shakes her head.

“No, Clint owed me a favor,” she grins, “Actually he owes me like twenty favors but…” she shrugs, looking entirely too pleased with herself. Sam snorts softly in the background.

“Thank you,” Steve says finally, after staring down at the folder for a long, dragging moment. Natasha’s expression is gentle when he looks at her again and Sam is watching him carefully.

“Just,” she pauses, taps an index finger against her opposite elbow like she’s considering her words, “I know you’re going to want to run right out after him. Especially after reading what’s in that file,” her lips twist, “it’s not good. But…he’s still dangerous. He’s still the Winter Soldier, even if he’s remembering who he was before. It takes a long time to break through that kind of conditioning. And most of it never really goes away. He’s just going to have to learn to live with it,” he nods, thinking about the things she told him, the bits and pieces of her own past that he’s been able to string together.

“He’s still Bucky,” he says helplessly. Sam is the one who sighs, his expression grave.

“I think what she’s trying to say is that he’s also the Winter Soldier,” and he’s right, of course. Steve knows they are both right. It’s been seventy years since Bucky has been himself. It would be foolish to hope that if he can coax Bucky back, he’ll be the same person he was before he fell from the train. He won’t be the same Bucky he spent those years before the war sharing an apartment with. He won’t even be the same Bucky he fought alongside in the war. When Steve stays quiet, Sam clears his throat.

“So, who wants pizza?” Steve blinks, the moment broken, then shoots Sam a sly grin.

“I still say the stuff you guys have down here in DC isn’t real pizza,” he says and Sam laughs easily.

“Nah, you’re totally right man. What I wouldn’t do for a slice of real, authentic New York pizza,” he makes a longing noise in the back of his throat as Nat shakes her head at them.

“It’s pizza,” she says, “It’s all pretty much the same,” which, of course, starts an uproar, with Sam clutching dramatically at his heart and Steve gasping out a betrayed, “What!?” Sam tosses a friendly arm around Natasha’s shoulders, earning him a sharply arched eyebrow and a sideways half-smile.

“Listen, all pizza is not made equal and even if it kills me, I am going to prove it to you,” Natasha shoots him a heated smile that Steve is uncomfortably familiar with and he groans when she leans into Sam and says,

“I’m looking forward to it.” They get the pizza and the three of them crash in the living room to eat and watch episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise. He likes it almost as much as the original Star Trek that he’d binge-watched with Clint last summer. And he thinks the same thing now as he had then. That Bucky would have loved it.

**

Steve reads the file.

He wishes he didn’t.

**

“Fuck,” is what Sam says after making it half-way through the file the following afternoon. Steve, slumped on a chair in the kitchen and poking at a half-eaten sandwich, grunts. The folder is slapped down on the table and he stares at the picture that has slid free and now stares at him upside-down. It’s Bucky in his army dress uniform, cap titled jauntily on his head and the smallest smile beginning to curl at the corner of his mouth. The left side. They always began on the left side.

“Mother fucker,” Sam says again, louder and with more emphasis. Again Steve grunts. Motherfucker indeed. He’d said much worse last night, enough that he’s still surprised the paint hadn’t peeled from the walls. There is a heavy silence that hangs over the kitchen like a death pall. Sam sits down across from him heavily and there’s a line between his brows that suggests anger and disgust. Steve is pathetically glad for having someone with him. It’s not easier but it’s something.

“I just want to say, for the record, that it’s a miracle your boy can even function under his own power,” Sam says softly. Steve reaches out and stuffs the picture of Bucky back into the folder so he doesn’t have to look at it.

“Did you get to the Hydra parts?” he asks, voice dull. Sam lifts one shoulder.

“A little. I had to stop when…” he breaks off and swallows thickly. Steve gets it. By the time he’d managed to make his way all the way through the folder the first time, he’d wanted to scream, tear down what is left of the Triskelion with his bare hands, wanted to…well. Pierce can’t get any more dead but if he could, Steve would bring him back so he could be alive as he tears him limb from limb. Instead he’d closed the folder with shaking hands, pressed his face into his pillow and cried until their wasn’t breath or tears left in his body. That those things had been done to Bucky…

“It gets worse,” Steve says flatly, “In the end, the way they…they didn’t even see him as a human being. He was just…” he gestures helplessly with his hands. He wants to say like a weapon but that isn’t quite right.

“A means to an end,” Sam says and he sounds sad.

Yes, that’s exactly it. An object. A tool. A weapon. A means to an end.

Never human. Never Bucky.

**

When Bucky finds his way into Steve’s bedroom, it’s the middle of the night. Steve hears him come in because he can’t sleep, though he’s been lying in bed with his eyes closed for probably three hours now. He hasn’t been able to sleep very well for nearly a week and a half. Ever since he opened that cursed file and read through it. By now he’s got the whole thing memorized, every last scrap of information, every last mission detail and procedure to make Bucky into the Winter Soldier. When he closes his eyes, he sees Bucky in the cryo-chamber, cold and afraid and alone. And those are the best of the dreams. The easiest to wake up from and not scream.

He doesn’t move when there is a whisper of sound at his window, keeps himself still when he hears the tiniest scrape of it sliding open. There’s a breath of cool air that spills into the room, like an ill omen, the sound of a passing car strangely loud. It sends a chill up his spine, his instincts shouting at him to reach for the gun he keeps in the night table. He would never get to it in time, of course. But the impulse is still there.

Everything in him sparks when there is a dip in the mattress at his feet and the faintest touch to his calf.

When he rolls onto his back, he does it slowly and holds his breath, half-afraid he’s still dreaming. But no, there is a shadow perched at the edge of the bed, a shadow with long hair and hunched shoulders, like the world rests too heavy upon them.

“Bucky?” he breathes and there’s a sharp, answering sound. Not a word. Not even an agreement. It sounds broken and lost and his chest aches to hear it.

“They say that is my name,” the voice is familiar but the confusion and agony in it are not. Steve sit up, leaning against the headboard and keeping his hands open and unthreatening in his lap. But Bucky isn’t looking at him. His shadowed face is turned away, angled towards the closed bedroom door, “But an Asset doesn’t have a name.” There’s a gleam of metal when Bucky touches his gloved fingers to his forehead.

“Is that…” Steve begins then has to lick his lips in an attempt to draw moisture back into his suddenly dry mouth, “Is that all you remember being? Just an asset?” for a moment he thinks his question will send Bucky flying back out the open window but other than another low sound of distress, he doesn’t move.

“The taste…of rubber,” he begins, haltingly, “Someone…cutting off…off the remains of my arm,” Steve forces himself not to react and there is another dull flash of metal in the darkness, “A man…he tells me to report. Mission report: failed. Captain America is still…,” it is agony, listening to Bucky working through the scraps of his memory but he waits, “A…boy in an alley…he’s bleeding…his hair is…blond and his pants are ripped and he’s…losing the fight but…” Bucky pauses, sounding winded and then he turns towards Steve, body held tight, “He kept getting up. Even though he was losing,”

“Yeah, Bucky, he did,” Steve whispers, throat so tight he doesn’t know how he even spoke through it. Bucky is silent for a long moment. Then he sits a little straighter and asks,

“Do you know the story of the boy in the alley?” when Steve nods, he swings himself around so he’s sitting crossed legged at the bottom of Steve’s bed, boots and all, “Can you tell me?” and the plea in his voice nearly makes Steve sob.

“Sure, Buck,” he croaks and has to clear his throat to continue, “The first thing you gotta know about that boy was that he didn’t like bullies. Still doesn’t. Never could resist keeping his mouth shut when he saw someone picking on someone smaller than them or being disrespectful. It just didn’t sit right. So he’d open his mouth and sooner or later, he’d find himself in some alleyway or parking lot getting the stuffing kicked outta him,” as he speaks, Bucky leans forward a little, eyes gleaming and intent in the darkness as he hangs onto every word. Steve thinks he sees a hint of recognition in his face but it’s dark so he tells himself it’s just a trick of the shadows.

“When the boy met his best friend, he was seven and he’d just told three boys kicking a stray dog for sport to lay off…” Steve talks and talks, turns his and Bucky’s first meeting into what feels like a bedtime story and Bucky drinks it all in.

Yet, when Steve was finished, voice trailing off into silence, Bucky just gives him a tight nod and slips back through the window. A shadow returning to the night. Steve watches him go with the word “stay” shriveling up on his tongue. Bucky isn’t ready for that. Patience, he hears Sam’s voice in his head say. Like a stray cat.

When Steve falls asleep, it’s nearly dawn and he dreams about a dark haired boy standing between him and an army like a shield. His arm is made of metal but his smile is Bucky’s, through and through.

**

Steve doesn’t tell Sam about it. It feels too new and too fragile. Like if he puts the nighttime visit into words, it will never have happened.

Or worse, it won't happen again.

Steve just keeps his window unlocked and cracked, a clear invitation, and every night turns the light off with a small prayer that tonight Bucky will come back.

**

It’s colder the night Bucky returns, almost two weeks since the first time. Steve has nearly fretted himself ragged in that time and he feels like he’s breathing for the first time in eleven days when there’s a small hush of sound at the window. He glances at the small glowing clock on the bedside table and it reads 2:17 am. Despite the three abbreviated hours of sleep, every nerve ending is alight, his heart a rapid thrum in his chest. A cold draft of air flutters through the room and he doesn’t pretend to sleep this time. Steve sits up slowly and watches the shadow of his best friend standing silently at the end of his bed.

“Hey, Buck,” he says softly and he thinks for a long moment that Bucky isn’t going to answer. He stays absolutely still, barely breathing and the next swirl of breeze through the window bring to Steve the scent of dirt and unwashed hair and blood. If he looks carefully, he can see dark wetness shining on Bucky’s cheek. It takes everything in Steve to hold still, “Everything alright?” he knows it’s not but he’s afraid to push to hard.

“Satisfactory,” is the clipped answer. There’s a pause and an audible swallow before Bucky shifts his stance. Easing it, tension sliding off his shoulders like water, “Three threats eliminated, all targets destroyed. No evidence left,” he sounds proud of himself. Or, perhaps relieved.

“Hyrda?” Steve asks hesitantly and in the darkness Bucky nods twice. He wants to feel something other than a dark kind of satisfaction but he can’t find it in himself to try. So he nods and tries, “Can I turn on the light?” There’s pause then another nod. Smaller, less sure. When he leans over to click on the light beside his bed, he moves slowly. The light is almost too bright and he’s left blinking when he turns back to Bucky.

Steve wills himself very hard not to react.

Bucky looks tired, dark shadows making his eyes look hollow, and there’s a cut on his cheek that’s already dried and clotted but had bled onto the collar of his faded gray t-shirt. His hair hangs in greasy strands into his face and Steve can see dirt in the grooves of his metal hand where it pokes out from the sleeves of the black hoodie he’s wearing. And yet, he’s real and he’s alive and he’s the most beautiful thing Steve has seen since 1944. It takes an effort but he manages a smile.

“It’s good to see you again,” Bucky tilts his head like he’s doubting Steve’s word and his fingers tap restlessly against his thigh.

“Is it…good?” he finally asks and his voice is small. Steve’s heart aches.

“Yeah, Buck, it’s good. I’m happy that you came,” that gets another blink and head tilt but Bucky stays silent. They stare at one another for a few beats as Steve tries to think of something to say that isn’t going to send Bucky running back out the window.

“I think I remember…happy,” Bucky says hesitantly, like he’s unsure of the way the word tastes in his mouth. Like he’s only heard the word in passing but never thought of it in any kind of context to himself. Steve, fighting the tide of sadness in his chest, leans back against the headboard tiredly.

“We had some good times,” he says with an upwards quirk of his lips, “Anything specific that you remember?” he keeps his tone light and careful and is rewarded when Bucky’s expression turns thoughtful.

“A small apartment,” he begins, “with lots of light and…you were skinny, weren’t you?” Bucky’s eyes turn to him, assessing and cool, though he doesn’t give Steve a chance to answer before barreling on again, “I remember your smile. And a rickety table where you liked to draw. There was snow, too. It was dripping down my collar but I was laughing. Why would that make me laugh?” Steve remembers that time too, the winter of 1927 when they were ten. He smiles at the memory.

“That was the year of the Brooklyn snow wars,” he jokes, recalling frozen fingers and noses and how Steve’s mother had bundled the two of them close to the stove when they’d come in afterwards, scolding them for staying out so long. Bucky’s toes had gone alarmingly white and he’d cried as they’d thawed.

“Wars?” Bucky breaks through his recollection and the confusion on his face is such a familiar expression Steve feels a sharp pang.

“Yeah, that’s what we called them. By the time we were all said and done, there had to be at least forty of us, running up and down the streets, making an unholy racket while we tried to annihilate anyone who didn’t live on our block,” Bucky watches him carefully as he speaks and when Steve pauses to laugh a little at the memory, he climbs onto the end of the bed and sits like he had the first night. Legs crossed, boots still on, eyes fixed on Steve.

“Tell me,” he says roughly. It’s not really a demand but it’s not a request either. Steve wonders if Bucky knows how to ask for things anymore.

“Sure, alright,” Steve agrees and settles against the headboard with his pillow at his back, “It was the first real snow we’d had that year. Actually, in several years. Seventeen inches of glorious snow. It was the first time I can remember ever getting out of school because of poor weather and you come busting in to my place already covered in snow goin’, ‘Steve, the Italians have Jimmy and Sean cornered up on Church street, we gotta help em!’ And then you talked my mother into bundling me up and dragged me through all that snow to find Jimmy and Sean holed up behind a huge bank of snow, firing snowballs at the group of kids up the street,” Steve huffs a laugh, “I was so ticked at you! I thought you meant they were fighting!” Bucky isn’t smiling as Steve talks but his face has softened and he watches Steve with an intentness that is almost unnerving.

“So me and you, we come around behind the Italian kids and start in on them, yelling all kinds of things kids shouldn’t know. Usually, we wouldn’t get along with the kids from the other side of Fulton. But everyone’s friends during a snowball fight,” he shakes his head.

“You were…hit in the face,” Bucky mutters uncertainly and jerks a little in surprise when Steve laughs.

“Yeah, bit of friendly fire. Of course, when Jimmy hit me, you started firing snowballs at them too, which started a free-for-all. And all the shouting kept bringing in more kids,” he thinks about how rolling up snow for hours on end had frozen their fingers but they hadn’t cared. Hadn’t cared that the wet snow melting off Steve’s hair was going down his shirt or how Bucky’s boots were a little too small. As more and more kids had joined the fray, the only thing that mattered was standing back to back with his best friend and hitting anything that moved with a snowball.

Bucky is biting his lip, eyes dragging off to the left like he’s trying to recall and can’t.

“What happened?” he finally asks. So Steve tells him. Tells him how the commotion finally drew the local beat cops that had to call reinforcements twice before they could break it up, and not before getting slammed with finely packed snow themselves. Tells him how Bucky had shoved Jimmy face-first into a snow bank on the slog home in retaliation for hitting Steve with a snowball in the face. Tells him how their mothers fussed over them and how they cuddled up on the rug in front of the stove, sipping hot cocoa and giggling over the highlights of their adventure. When he’s done, a smile lingering on his face, Bucky ducks his head and stares at his boots for a long time.

When he lifts his head, he looks like he wants to say something. But his eyes just slide away and then he’s gone.

Steve sighs as he stares at the now closed window. He’s not disappointed, though. Because it seems like every time Bucky remembers something, he comes back. So Steve will wait. For as long as it takes, he will wait.

**

They find a small Hydra cell tucked away in the backlands of Georgia a little while later.

It’s hardly a fair fight. Sure, they’re out numbered. There’s a whole small Strike battalion waiting for them behind the bedrock, thirty strong at least, not to mention a slew of scientists and personnel, all carrying some kind of weapon. All Steve has is himself, Sam, Natasha, and Hawkeye, who is in between missions. Even for all of that, the Hydra cell didn’t stand a chance.

Between his shield and his rage, Steve becomes an unstoppable force.

“Something bothering you, Cap?” Clint asks as they stand back from the wreckage and watch it burn. He’s leaning casually on his bow and his eyes are watching the flames flickering from the side of the mountain.

“Now why would you think that?” he returns flatly and Clint barks a laugh.

“Thought as much,” he doesn’t ask any more about it but between the looks Sam is giving him and the lack of expression on Natasha’s face, they’d all noticed. Sam knows. He’s read the file. So has Nat. They know why Steve wants to tear what’s left of Hydra down with his bare hands. He thinks about Bucky’s empty eyes and the things the file said and is already itching to hunt down the next base by the time they are driving away in a borrowed car.

“Why can’t we just say it’s stolen and call it a day,” Clint grouses from behind the wheel as they speed down a winding country road. Steve lifts his eyebrows when Sam snorts, effectively pulled out of his own head where he was wallowing in violence and revenge.

“Because stealing suggests we have no intention of returning it to its rightful owner,” Steve tells the window he’s looking out of. Natasha makes a low noise of amusement, the same noise she made the first time he said it.

“But how often do the cars you ‘borrow’ ever get returned?” Sam interjects. Steve glances over at him and sees a grin beginning to curl at the corners of Sam’s lips.

“Realistically? Never, as far as I know. But I always borrow with the intention of giving them back. So, technically not stealing,” he reasons and gets three eye-rolls as an answer. The exchange is beginning to feel familiar and when he quirks his lips upwards in a smile, he realizes Clint had started it simply to pull him out of his own head.

Steve looks out the window again and some of the tightness in his chest he’s been carrying around with him since reading the damned file disappears.

**

Bucky’s third visit goes very differently than the first two.

It is only five nights after the last time, and the same night Steve got back from ripping apart the Hydra base, that Bucky comes back. He is so tired, Steve barely manages a shower and two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches before collapsing into bed. As tired as he is, though, he wakes only a few hours later with a start to find a shadow bending over him and a cold metal hand pressing at his throat. Not enough to cut off air but the threat is very real.

“Bucky?” he gasps, heart racing and body tensing. He doesn’t fight back but it takes everything in him to crush his instincts. It takes him a moment to really grasp what’s going on but when he does, he makes himself go very still. It is Bucky, the window open to let in the cool night air. He crouches over Steve, knees planted on either side of his hips and his free hand bunching the sheets by Steve’s shoulder. If he wanted to, he could remove the threat Bucky presents with barely an effort but he doesn’t. He doesn’t because the hand at his throat is shaking and the breath on his cheek is rapid. In fact, Bucky’s face is so close, the ends of his hair brush against Steve’s cheeks. It takes only a moment to realize Bucky is dirty and unsteady and close to panic.

“Why are you in my head?” Bucky rasps, voice rough like he doesn’t use it much, “No matter what I do, you’re always there. Why?” the hand tightens on Steve’s throat but he can still breathe. For the most part.

“Because we grew up together, Bucky,” Steve begins, wincing as Bucky’s hand continues to tighten, “We did everything together. School, got into trouble, lived together, went to war. You…your family took me in after my ma died and then we…we got…Bucky, please I can’t…breathe…” Instantly the hand at his throat is gone but Bucky doesn’t move. He continues to hover over Steve as he gasps for air. Like, if he gets close enough, he can make out Steve’s face in the shadows.

“There’s…so much of you in my head…” Bucky whispers then pitches forward so his face is mashed into Steve’s neck. Shocked, Steve moves to roll Bucky off of him, certain he’s passed out. But then he feels the hot wetness dripping onto his neck and he stops. Bucky smells and he’s thin and shaky and Steve wants to hold him close and never let him go. Slowly, slowly enough that Bucky can tell him to fuck off if he wants, Steve lifts his hands and slides them over Bucky’s shaking shoulders. Not trapping but barley touching in an effort to comfort.

Bucky doesn’t make a single sound when he cries, just drips tears and snot onto Steve’s skin and sheets. It seems like a year before he stops, still leaning awkwardly over Steve.

“I want you to know, I’m here for you. For whatever you need. No matter what,” Steve says softly, pressing his fingers hard against the metal shoulder. Bucky makes a soft noise that could be an affirmative or just a sound of distress, “You are everything to me, Buck. You always were,” he whispers and holds Bucky as he shakes. Finally, after long, agonizing moments, Bucky slides off to the side, sitting slumped over next to Steve’s hip on the bed. He can see the dark, dirty curtain of hair hanging over Bucky’s face and the gleam of his cheeks were tears cling to his skin. Steve sits up and presses his knees against Bucky’s thigh.

“That thing you said to me…in the…before you fell,” Bucky says hesitantly, voice rough. He peers beseechingly at Steve through his hair, “Say it again.” Steve bites his lip.

“I’m with you to the end of the line,” he answers and Bucky nods.

“I…said it to you,” the words are dragged out of him like he didn’t want to say them but he had to, “I remember the way it feels in my mouth, the…weight of them,” he breathes a few ragged breaths then says, so quietly Steve almost can’t hear him, “They are so heavy.” Steve swallows thickly but stays quiet. He knows the weight of them himself, sagging under all that they’ve lost. Everything that’s been taken from them. They are heavy with broken promises, with guilt and anger and grief.

The grief is the heaviest of them all.

“Tell me a story,” Bucky finally says but Steve knows what he’s asking for. He’s asking for a memory. So Steve gives him one. He tells Bucky about the time when they were eighteen, just before his mother died. How Bucky stayed by Steve’s side as much as he could, learned how to cook when Steve was sitting at his mother’s bedside, reminded him to sleep, when to bathe, how to be human. How he still made Sarah laugh despite how sick she was and how often her laughs would be ground down into wet, heaving coughs. How he begged his parents for money for Sarah’s medicine but told Steve he stole it because the Roger’s were too proud to accept charity. Steve knew, of course. Back then Bucky was a terrible liar. But his mother needed it and Bucky wouldn’t hear of bringing it back.

When he is done, Bucky asks for another memory and then another. All the while, he remains rapt, hanging onto Steve’s words like they are air. Like he needs them to live. Maybe he does. So Steve gives him as many memories as he can, voice running rough and a slow, a burning ache in his chest and watches the way dim light from the street lamps outside reflect off Bucky’s sharp, watchful gaze.

Steve doesn’t remember falling asleep. He’d been talking about the stolen chocolate incident, which wasn’t funny at the time but they’d laughed over many times later and the next thing he knows is sunlight pouring onto his face and the odd, painful angle of his neck creaks as he straightens.

When he looks, Bucky is gone, the spot he’d been sitting empty and the window closed.

**

“So,” Sam sits down at the kitchen table across from him, setting down two plates of eggs between them. Steve glances up at him from where he’d been absently scanning the newspaper (he likes the internet but sometimes he just needs something familiar).

“So?” he asks, helping himself to a generous portion of the eggs. Sam always makes him extra helpings, especially on days after a particularly hard run. Sam is watching him carefully as he takes his own breakfast.

“So, I wasn’t going to bring it up because I wanted to see if you would but,” he stops, takes a bite and looks off to the side as he chews. Steve is suddenly wary, “were you planning on telling me about your nighttime visitor?” Sam’s tone isn’t accusing, just curious but Steve sits back, overcome with guilt.

“Yes, I…I’m sorry, Sam. I was going to say something, but,” he pauses because he’s not sure how to put it into words. Sam just shrugs.

“Yeah, man, I get it. Just let me know if he’s coming to stay or if there’s a chance I’ll stumble across him in the middle of the night, alight?” Steve winces, imagining how badly that would go for everyone, though worst of all Sam. Steve fiddles with a piece of toast on his plate, thinking about the way Bucky had leaned over him and cried. His tears had felt so hot on his skin he can still feel them even now. He resists the urge to touch the place on his neck they had fallen and eats the rest of his breakfast quickly after promising Sam he’d be safe.

Steve is going to get Bucky back and keep both he and Sam safe, no matter what it takes.

No matter what it takes.

**

Bucky stays away for nearly three weeks after that. And every night that passes without the window opening on a whisper and the cool air swirling in alongside a shadow Steve grows more and more worried. Sam doesn’t say anything but his long looks across the dinner table are telling. Steve chooses not to acknowledge them, even though he knows he’s getting quieter and more withdrawn by the day. They still go for their morning runs and he, more often than not, still follows Sam to his work at the V.A. He still goes to the National Gallery of Art and the sculpture garden at the Smithsonian to draw a handful of times and spends time loitering at the local coffee shop sketching people at the other tables. Sometimes Bucky’s likeness ends up on the pages of his sketchbook and sometimes it’s Peggy.

But at night he sleeps lightly so he won’t miss a moment if Bucky comes back and every time he wakes up, it’s because a loud car passed by on the street or a neighbor came home down the street.

Every night for three weeks his window stays firmly shut.

And then, as the third week is ending, Natasha comes wandering back with Clint in tow. It’s late, nearly ten and Steve is nodding off on the couch while watching one of the movies on his Netflx queue. Sam is out with a couple friends from work and will probably be back after midnight since he doesn’t work tomorrow morning. It’s quiet, the volume on the TV low, and he’s thinking abstractly of bed when there’s a rap on the front door. Frowning and grumbling under his breath about the hour, he hoists himself off the couch and answers the door to find a grinning Natasha and an equally sunny Clint on the other side.

“Hey, Rogers,” Natasha greets him happily while Clint waves and he wonders how a couple of master assassins/spies could be so ridiculous sometimes. He raises his eyebrows.

“You realize it’s ten at night, right?” he says pointedly when they grin at him. They share a look and Clint snorts, handing Natasha a folded up twenty.

“You were right, Tash,” Clint says, though he doesn’t look all that upset about whatever bet he’s just lost. Annoyed, Steve crosses his arms over his chest and leans against the door jamb, blocking the entrance.

“What was that all about?” he asks before he thinks about it. With them, he’s not sure he wants to know. He once overheard them making a bet over whether a certain sex position was possible and sustainable, much to his amusement, though he has no idea how they settled it. Frankly, he could live just fine never knowing. Natasha had the same look on her face then as she does now. Smug and amused.

“Oh, just that you’d open the door and greet us like an old man who's up past his bedtime. Really, Steve, ten isn’t that late at all,” then she pulls a small hard drive out of her jeans pocket and waves it at him, “Besides, I got something here you might really want to see,” and just like that, she’s caught his attention. As she knew she would. Steve sighs and lets her push past him into the house. Clint follows with a crooked smile and a shrug.

Natasha has set up his laptop by the time he makes it back into the kitchen, the hard drive already plugged in. It makes a soft, mechanical purring sound as she types on the keyboard. Clint is lounging against the far counter and the coffee maker is already gurgling at his elbow.

“You didn’t waste time, did you,” he says, keeping his face carefully turned so Clint can read his lips. He gets a slow, lazy blink as an answer.

“Never do, when there’s coffee to be made,” is the mild reply. Steve opens his mouth for a retort because Clint’s coffee addiction is obscene but then Natasha turns the laptop around so he can see the screen and he closes his mouth with a sharp click of teeth. On the screen is a picture of a hallway of a sterile facility, probably from a surveillance video going by the grainy quality. And at the end of a hallway is clearly Bucky, with his ragged hair and his bared left arm gleaming and metallic.

“Where is this?” he asks and if his voice is rough, well, no one says anything, “When was it taken?” Natasha touches his wrist, gentle.

“Keep your panties on, Steve,” she gives him a thin smile, “He’s alright. This was caught at a medical clinic outside of Montreal. I don’t know what he was doing there. At the clinic, I mean. He wanted to be seen, I think. We wouldn’t have caught even this much if he didn’t want to be found,” Steve nods but his heart clenches painfully in his chest. None of them need to ask who Bucky wanted to find him. Not to come after him, Steve thinks, but as a message. For the one hundredth time, he thinks about Bucky’s tears as they slid down his skin, hot like fire, and when he sighs, it’s one of relief.

“Thank you, Natasha,” he murmurs, staring at Bucky’s grainy face on the screen. It’s turned towards the camera but he can’t make out more than the plane of Bucky’s forehead and cheekbones. His eyes are unfathomable and his lips are quirked. Like in a crooked smile. It’s very slight but Steve would know that smile anywhere.

“Oh, that’s not even the best part,” Clint says just as mildly as he seems to do everything else, wandering over to one of the stools pulled up to the counter and sitting down with a steaming cup of coffee clutched in his hands. When Steve looks at him in confusion, Clint waves at Natasha, “Show him. If anyone will appreciate it, it’s him.”

“Appreciate?” Steve asks as Natasha opens another window and taps a key. This time it’s a real video, not a picture, of the outside of what looks like an abandoned prison. It’s better quality than the one the picture of Bucky was taken from, images relatively sharp. The camera looks down on a big yard, choked with weeds, and vine crawling up the parts of the chainlink fence. On the far side of the yard is a big door, its hinges cracked open so it hangs awkwardly open. There are three bodies piled in front of it. Judging by the pool of blood on the ground around them, they are all very dead.

Steve feels a serge of satisfaction when he just makes out the symbol on one of the jackets.

Hydra.

Everything is very still for about the first twenty seconds of the video. Then, at 00.22, there is movement in the broken doorway as more than a dozen men and women in white lab coats are forcibly marched out into the open. Bringing up the rear is Bucky, dressed very much like he’d been the day on the bridge. His metal arm gleams and even at a distance, Steve can tell his face is set in cold, hard lines. All of the scientists are in varying stages of panic, tripping over each other and loose stones on the ground. Bucky marches them to the middle of the yard and says something, though with no sound on the video, Steve doesn’t know what. Whatever it is, it has the scientists wheeling around to face him. One of them, a tall man with grey hair and slightly bent shoulders seems to be trying to reason with Bucky, hands moving in small, jerky gestures. Whatever he says makes Bucky raise the gun in his hand and shoot the man between the eyes.

He goes down in a graceless heap.

Another two try to run and they are similarly gunned down.

There is a heavy weight in Steve’s stomach as he watches Bucky’s kill count get higher.

“I know what you’re thinking, Steve,” Natasha says beside him, her voice soft. Steve doesn’t look at her, can’t look away as Bucky goes up to each of the scientists that are left and says something to each of them. Only one is shot in the head. The others he waves away and allows them to scatter.

“What am I thinking?” he whispers, not realizing his hands are fisted hard enough his knuckles creak and his teeth grind horribly with the tension. Bucky goes back into the building for long, agonizing moments.

“That he’s still killing, still getting blood on his hands. That the man you are looking at is not James Barns but the Winter Soldier,” Steve flicks his eyes to her and she is as serious as he’s ever seen her, “In which case you’d be mostly right. But the thing you have to realize is that he chose this. They took away every single choice a human being makes for themselves. For seventy years. That’s…it’s amazing he can still function,” Steve nods just as Bucky reemerges on the screen, striding away from the prison with squared shoulders and no backwards glances.

“So you’re saying I should be happy he’s chosen to keep being what they made him into?” he asks, voice sounding distant to his own ears. Bucky is gone from the screen and nothing moves in the yard. He feels a touch on his shoulder.

“No. You should be happy that he’s making sure they can never take him back. That’s his choice,” and just as she finishes, the prison goes up in a fireball, smoke and flame billowing outwards in a spectacular explosion. The video ends and Natasha folds the laptop closed.

“That was the biggest base North America, by the way,” Clint says casually. He sips at his coffee and meets Steve’s eyes across the counter, “We think anyone who managed to escape that mess in D.C. withe S.H.I.E.L.D ended up there,” Steve nods and presses his fingertips against the cool metal of the computer.

“I should have been looking harder. If we’d gotten to the base first, he wouldn’t need to…” Steve begins only to have Natasha dig her nails into his shoulder.

“Don’t, Steve,” Natasha’s voice is firm and he looks at her, startled, “Don’t do that to yourself. You nearly died bringing down Project Insight. Hydra was pretty crippled after that. What you did freed Bucky in the first place. Now he’s just choosing which side to fight on. Let him fight, if that’s what he wants. Do you want to know how I got this video in the first place?”

“How?” Steve asks, though he’s beginning to suspect already.

“Found it under the door of the hotel room we were staying in. Someone left it there for us to find. One guess who it was,” she flashes him a smile and Steve realizes he’s smiling back. Because she’s right. Of course she is. He has found, in the time he was working with her, that Natasha Romanov is always right.

“Why did he leave it with you, though?” he asks after a moment, feeling infinitely better about the whole thing.

“We were there because we followed that security video. He knows we’ve been keeping an eye on him, just like he’s been keeping tabs on us,” she tilts her head to the side and red curls slide over his shoulder, “be terrible spies if we didn’t,” she adds, making Steve laugh a little. It feels like it’s the first time he’s laughed since this whole thing started and his body feels light. With relief, maybe, or hope.

“Yeah, absolutely terrible,” he returns, “I was going to say something before now but…” Steve breaks off with a yelp when Natasha pinches him.

“Look who’s talking, Mr. Can’t Lie Worth a Damn,” and Steve barks a laugh.

“Okay, but I’m not a spy. I’m a soldier,” he says reasonably. Clint raises his coffee cup, still perched solidly on the stool.

“Man has a point, Tash,” and Steve gets a certain kind of satisfaction when Clint looks like he regrets ever opening his mouth when Natasha turns her stare on him. He offers them dinner and they are all crashed out on the couch in a pile of limbs when Sam comes home; Natasha sprawled over Steve and Clint curled against Natasha. They are all laughing at the movie Clint picked to watch, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, though Steve suspects it’s funnier because it’s nearly one in the morning. Sam flops bonelessly onto his favorite squashy chair and they all fall asleep like that, giggling breathlessly as they drop off.

**

“You weren’t here last night,” Bucky doesn’t even wait for Steve to turn his bedside light off. He slips into the room as soon as Steve shuts the door, already dressed in the ridiculous pajama pants and t-shirt Natasha got him (they have small Captain America shields all over them, for God’s sakes). Steve was reaching for his own shield when he heard the window open, ready to fight an enemy intruder. But the familiar voice stops him in his tracks and he turns to find Bucky standing beside the bed, window cracked open to allow a flood of cool air.

“Uh, yeah,” Steve starts unintelligibly, blinking inanely at Bucky for a moment. It is odd to see him standing in the light, though Steve has seen him in daylight and lamplight before. Perhaps it is the way Bucky is carrying himself. Like he wants to be seen, instead of hunched over, ready to bolt for the shadows. He’s still dirty and his clothes are worn and in desperate need of a wash.

He’s the most wonderful thing Steve’s seen this century.

It takes him a moment to realize he’s staring and that he hasn’t answered Bucky’s not-question, “Yeah, Nat—a couple friends ended up staying over,” he starts only to be cut off.

“I know who Hawkeye and the Black Widow are,” Bucky says and his voice is a little sharp. He seems agitated, though he stands as still as he ever does. Not an uncontrolled twitch of muscles to be seen. And yet his eyes are anxious and unhappy. Steve silently breathes out the tension he’d been holding in his body and pads across the room to sit on the bed.

“They showed me the video you left with them,” he begins slowly, watching the emotions shift across Bucky’s face. They are hard to read, “I understand your need to bring Hydra down, believe me. And if you want to do it by yourself, I get that too. But if you do want help, if you want someone to watch your six, I’ll go wherever you need lead,” there is a horrible, naked sincerity in his voice and he finds himself flushing like he’s just made some big, emotional confession. But he holds Bucky’s eyes as they study him carefully. Finally Bucky nods.

“That’s acceptable,” he says shortly and Steve bites back a wave of relief. Whether Bucky will actually ask for help remains to be seen but it’s something more than Steve was expecting. He takes a breath, studying Steve with the kind of intensity that makes Steve’s skin prickle and lets it out all at once in a sigh. Steve doesn’t know what it means; Bucky never did that when he knew him before.

“Do you want to tell me?” Steve finally asks because it’s clear Bucky wants to say something. He’s surprised by a quirk of Bucky’s mouth in what is definitely a smile.

“No,” he says, voice rough and finally he looks away, “yes. I…remember a lot of things that happened…before,” he gestures to his metal arm and Steve understands what he’s trying to say. Before I fell. Before they took me. Before, before, before, “but most of what happened after is still…” a blink, an empty gesture, “I do remember one thing very clearly. And that’s how they broke me,” Steve hates how flat his voice is, how emotionless. And he wants to react, wants to tell Bucky to stop. He doesn’t. Steve just clenches his teeth against the sudden swell of emotion that tightens at the back of his throat and stays very still.

Bucky is back to searching his face intently.

“They told me you were dead. I don’t remember how long I’d been with…long enough. Long enough to keep defying them. I think…I remember thinking of you when they came in every day, a new method or an old one or something experimental. They tried them all. But I never…” Bucky makes a harsh noise and his face twists for a moment in agony.

“Bucky,” Steve begins, heart heavy and aching but Bucky holds up one hand, stopping him.

“No, listen, I have to…” he breathes harshly, “That’s what did it. The woman, she was…I was scared of her. She was the most terrifying woman I’ve ever met and she never had to raise her voice. She would say these things…” Bucky shakes his head. He’s trembling, distressed but he doesn’t stop, “They were trying to dismantle me. But it didn’t work because I had you in my head. All the time, I would think, Steve would never break. Not Steve. I gotta get back so I can protect him. I have to be like Steve. Barns, James B. Sergeant. Three two five five seven zero three eight,” he takes another breath and in the pause Steve hears the echoes of Bucky’s voice from a dirty warehouse in Italy.

There is suddenly not enough air in the room.

“And then she came into the place they kept me and told me that Captain America was dead. Showed me the newspapers and then, when I didn’t believe her, played me the radio broad cast of your funeral,” Bucky laughs and it’s a sound Steve never wants to hear again. It is full of broken glass and grief, “I broke then. Right there and then, that was the day Bucky Barns died,” he bows his head, arms tight to his sides like his gut aches. Steve bites back the agonized sound that wants to come out of his throat.

“I’m sorry,” he finally manages when he thinks he can trust himself. Bucky shrugs.

“For what?”

“I should have gone back to look,” Steve says and his voice is thick with the old grief, “I wanted to, I was all set to go back and look for your body because the thought of leaving you there like that…” this time he can’t control the sob that climbs up his throat and he ducks his head, hunched over at the edge of the bed. His eyes flood and his nose stings and the hurt in his chest is consuming, “I should have saved you, Bucky,” there is quiet as he tries to get himself under control, biting down in the inside of his mouth so he doesn’t make a sound.

And then there is a dip in the mattress beside him and a warmth at his side. When he looks over, Bucky is staring forward, face once more trapped in unhappy lines.

“I know that you would have, if you had any idea I was still alive,” Bucky says softly. Not gently. It is not forgiveness. Steve wipes his palm to erase the wetness from under his eyes and nods. They are quiet, sitting side by side staring at the darkness outside the closed window. Then Steve turns to Bucky and asks,

“So who are you now?” and gets a wry look in response.

“Not the Winter Soldier. But not…not Bucky anymore either. I haven’t been him in a very long time. I don’t think I’ll ever remember how to be again,” agains Steve nods and it doesn’t hurt as much as he thought it would, to hear that. After all, he is no longer the same Steve that went into the ice. Hell, he’s not the same Steve who agreed to the serum in the first place.

“What should I call you then?” Steve asks, “James?” He half means it as a joke but the look Bucky levels on him is baleful at best.

“I just told you I remember being Bucky. Call me that,” he makes a derisive noise and shakes his head and Steve finds himself grinning past the painful, persistent ache lingering in his chest.

“Yeah, alright. Bucky,” he looks to his right and sees Bucky has ducked his own head. His long hair hides whatever expression he’s wearing but he thinks maybe Bucky’s relieved. Carefully, moving slowly enough Bucky knows the touch is happening, Steve leans to the side and presses his shoulder into Bucky’s. They are nearly of a size now and Steve sighs at the grounding warmth of the touch.

“Tell me about that Christmas we spent in France,” Bucky says softly, keeping his face bowed so it remains hidden. He doesn’t move his shoulder away though. Steve huffs a laugh.

“Remember that one, do you?” he shakes his head and settles in for a long night of talking, beginning the story by saying, “First thing about France we all got to learn really quick is that those Resistance dames were beautiful and tough as nails. A lesson Dum Dum had to learn the hard way more than once,” surprisingly, Bucky makes a soft, amused sound.

“Dominique,” he says and Steve starts. Yes, that had been her name. He hadn't spoken to her much but half of the Commandos had been smitten with her. But none so much as Dum Dum Dugan. Only his pursuit of her, during the few short days they’d spent in the barn of her mother’s farm, had been clumsy and completely unsuccessful. Not only that but Dominique seemed to have a special aversion for bowler hats and a special fondness for knives. There were several times Steve was sure she would cut his mustache off and feed it to him.

“Yeah, fuck,” he laughs and it comes out a little incredulously, “Dum Dum was lucky to get away from her with his balls still attached,” and earns himself a low, sincere laugh.

It’s a beautiful sound.

**

Every day for five days Bucky comes back.

Sometimes he asks for Steve to fill in the gaps of his memory and sometimes he hesitantly talks a little bit about what it was like under the control of first the Russians and the Red Room and later, Hydra. Steve has read the file; he knows Bucky was sold some time in the nineties like a piece of furniture. It’s still shocking to be reminded of it. Some of the things Bucky tells him make his teeth ache from clenching them so hard.

But he listens because every time Bucky talks about it, he seems less burdened.

His eyes are still shadowed and his face pale and often set in the Winter Soldier’s blank hardness. Yet every night he slips in through the window and sits down on the bed next to Steve and for long hours they wind their way through their pasts. Bucky isn't stable, not by any means. More often than not Steve has to do all of the talking and once or twice a memory sends him back out into the night abruptly. A car alarm nearly jolts him out of his skin and by the time he’s done scrambling, Bucky has his back to the wall and a knife in his hand. Another time Sam gets up to use the bathroom and Bucky is nearly at the doorway with his gun drawn before Steve can stop him.

Bucky stands there at the door with Steve’s hand holding him back at the wrist, head tilted and face closed off.

“Wilson,” he grinds out finally, tension flowing out of him all at once. Steve slowly lets him go, though he stays close as long as he can see the gun in Bucky’s hand.

“He’s a good friend,” Steve confirms and he waits, watching the way Bucky’s eyes glitter in the shadows through his dirty hair.

“He watches your back when I can’t,” Bucky says finally and it sounds like approval.

So things aren’t going to magically fix themselves. But by some strange twist of fate Steve has found Bucky again, his best friend, his brother in arms, his everything, because even when he had nothing, he had Bucky. And while he hardly has nothing here in this new world, the empty space in his soul that was distinctly Bucky-shaped is beginning to fill again. It is bright and new and different from what it used to be but still good.

**

And then, on the sixth day, Steve gets home late after hunting down a loose end from the mess they left of S.H.I.E.L.D., body aching and tired, to find Bucky waiting for him on the couch. Right there out in the open, with the lights on and an animated movie playing on the television. Bucky is crossed legged on the cushions, hair still wet from a shower, and wearing clothes Steve vaguely recognizes from his own closet. Clean and warm and safe.

It seems like an impossible dream.

Sam standing in the kitchen is proof of reality, though, leaning on the counter with a glass of orange juice, like he’s been watching Bucky watch TV for a while. When Steve looks at him with wide eyes and a gaping mouth, Sam just shrugs. Steve turns back to gape at Bucky as he stands frozen in the doorway, shield still draped over his shoulder. He can’t quite find his voice through the shock to say something. Not only because Bucky is here, on the couch, watching the television but he also deliberately has his back to Sam. He doesn’t need to say anything, though, because Bucky beats him to it.

“I wish I had been here to see your face when you discovered today’s animation,” and it’s so incongruous with the situation that Steve just blinks. It’s Sam who barks a laugh.

“From what I hear, it was pretty priceless. Ask Natasha sometime, I think she got a video of it,” Like they’ve been friends for months. Indignant enough now that it breaks through his surprise, Steve lifts his eyes to the ceiling and put his shield down against the wall.

“I should have known,” he says wryly and smiles a little when Bucky finally drags his eyes from the TV and looks at him with an expression that could turn into a smile.

“Then I’ll have to ask her,” it’s just this side of fond and Steve has to tell his knees not to buckle. The last time he saw that look, they were standing side by side in the Alps waiting for a train to arrive.

“Yeah,” he croaks and walks woodenly into the kitchen. On the television, a small black dragon with wide green eyes befriends a thin, clever boy who brings him fish in baskets and tries to fix the dragon’s injured tail. Steve hasn’t seen this one yet but even a perfunctory glance shows him that, yes, the animation is beautiful and he feels the same pang he always does when he watches any of today’s animated movies. Then he looks at Sam and spreads his hands in a questioning gesture.

“Man, I don’t even know,” he says softly and there’s strain around the corners of his eyes and lips. Of course Sam is concerned. You’d have to be very foolish or very stupid not to fear the man who once was the Winter Soldier. Even if he’s sitting on your couch watching a movie about dragons. Steve feels bad but that quickly disappears when he glances over and sees Bucky’s rapt attention still on the movie.

“How long has he been here?” he finally asks and nearly jumps when Bucky says,

“Three hours and twenty seven minutes,” there is no offense in his voice. For some reason, it makes Sam relax a little, a grin curling up at the corners of his lips.

“You didn’t tell me your boy was a smart-ass,” and it drags a laugh out of Steve. Bucky stays quiet, though there’s no doubt he heard. Steve can practically feel the smirk.

“Haven’t I? Surely I mentioned that Bucky had the smartest mouth in the neighborhood. It’s a fundamental flaw,” he enjoys the way Sam’s eyebrows climb up his forehead, making a valiant attempt to meet his hairline. Bucky turns around, leaning his left arm across the back of the couch where it gleams in the flickering light from the TV.

“No, Rogers, that was you. I thought I was the one with the faulty memory,” Steve stares at him and Sam bursts out laughing, which of course only encourages Bucky further, “Seriously, who do you think started all those damn fights. Certainly wasn’t me. I was just the poor slob saving your punk ass every time you opened your damn wise trap,” Sam is holding onto the counter for support now, his laughter as much out of surprise as humor and Steve finds his own surprise melting away. This is a familiar and well-worn theme for them. It used to make the rest of the Howling Commandos laugh too.

“Yeah, well, guess I just can’t help myself sometimes,” he says wryly and earns himself an eye roll from both Sam and Bucky.

“You know, it’s almost comforting to know you were like this before the whole star spangled tights thing,” Sam jokes with a hearty clap to Steve’s shoulder. Bucky turns back around with a shake of his head.

“It works now. Try to imagine what it was like, listening to this short, skinny kid, a hundred pounds soaking wet, running his mouth off at guys twice his size. I often had to peel him off a wall or the ground,” when Sam turns to look at Steve incredulously, Steve just shrugs. 

“It might have happened a few times,” he says and grimaces when Bucky makes a loud, incredulous noise from the couch.

“What is your definition of ‘a few’?” which sets Sam off again. Steve huffs and stomps over to the couch, feeling a warm thrill curl through his belly when Bucky looks up at him and smiles a slow, crooked smile. Up close he can see how tense Bucky is, how he forced himself to interact with a stranger, forced himself into a situation with a lot of uncontrollable variables. He holds himself stiffly, like his joints will break if he moves too suddenly. But there is pride in Bucky’s expression too so Steve just smiles back.

“You are both horrible,” he states, ignoring the way the shining blue of Bucky’s eyes set his heart skipping joyfully about in his chest, then flaps his hands in a shooing motion, “Move over.” Bucky shifts to the side and Steve flops down next to him. He momentarily forgot his fatigue and the general aches of a long, hard day running and fighting but they come back to him as he sinks back into the couch. On the screen, the boy and the dragon are flying over a calm sea overlooked by a radiant sunset. Bucky’s arm presses into his own and Steve feels everything just kind of…fall into place.

“A far cry from Snow White,” he murmurs absently and feels the low sound of agreement rumble between them.

“Hey, I’m gonna order pizza,” Sam calls after a moment and Bucky makes another sound, this time in appreciation. Steve’s stomach agrees.

“Better order a few extra pies,” and smiles wearily when he hears Sam grumbling. It’s the most at home Steve has felt since he shipped out to basic training. No, since Bucky shipped out. Since they lived in that run down apartment with one bedroom and two rickety beds and faulty heating. Since Bucky used to fish him out of alley ways and bring him soup when he was sick and hold his hand when the doctors said this time, this he won’t survive. You should prepare yourselves. Only Bucky never did. He sat there and said over and over you’re not allowed to leave yet, Stevie. Stay with me. Stay.

Sam answers the door when the pizzas arrive, a stack of six boxes that will undoubtedly be empty in about an hour, and they eat while watching the rest of the movie; Steve and Bucky on the couch and Sam sprawled in his favorite chair. Bucky grunts when they learn the main character loses his leg but before Steve can so much as look at him, there’s a warm hand curling around his. It’s dry and strong, with worn calluses on the palms and fingers from long hours holding knives or guns. They match his own, line up when their fingers slot together.

Hot all over, Steve holds very still, gipping Bucky’s hand hard.

It’s new and it’s familiar all at the same time. Another layer to the complicated thing they share already and it feels like it is only the next natural step in a long, hard journey. Steve forces himself to concentrate on the rest of the movie but the anchoring point of warmth is distracting and leaves him a little in awe. He doesn’t flinch when Sam reaches for the remote on the coffee table with a cheerfully declared, 

“They made a sequel and it’s even better,” even though Steve knows Sam sees. He doesn’t care and Sam doesn’t say anything. So he just presses his shoulder and hip against Bucky’s solid strength and holds on.

Sam is right about the movie being good, though he makes it only half way through before he’s dozing in his big, comfortable chair. It leaves Steve and Bucky to marvel over the beautiful art on the screen and get immersed in the story of the boy and his dragon trying to do the right thing to stop a war that doesn’t want to be stopped. When the boy’s father dies, Steve turns to Bucky with a lump in his throat and whispers,

“Will you stay?” All of the places the touch ask, will you stay with me? The flickering images of the tv dance and twirl in brilliant swirls of color in Bucky’s eyes and for a moment he doesn’t answer. In the silence, broken only by the voices from the movie, he studies the shape of Bucky’s mouth and the angle of his eyebrows and the little dip in his chin. All of these he memorized a long time ago and it is like following streets he’s known all his life. Achingly familiar. Yes Bucky’s older, fine lines beginning to set around his mouth and between his eyebrows. But he’s real and he’s here and, despite the time and Zola and the Red Room and Hydra, he is, more or less, Bucky.

Finally Bucky turns his head and looks at Steve.

“Do you want me to stay?” he asks calmly and Steve thinks he’s going to fly apart. He grips Bucky’s hand and leans in to brush his lips over Bucky’s cheek. He smells of shampoo and laundry detergent and metal.

“I want you to stay,” he breathes into Bucky’s skin then loses his breath altogether when their lips slide together. It’s brief and a little clumsy but perfect anyway. When Bucky pulls away, Steve chases the taste of him lingering on his bottom lip. Bucky sits back and he is the most serene Steve has seen him in a very long time. He smiles and says,

“Then I’ll stay.”

**

He does.

Sometimes it’s difficult, sometimes it seems impossible. But he stays.

For a very long time.