Chapter Text
“We were best friends, you know.”
Steve felt like he was talking to a tombstone. He’d been talking to one for so long, maybe it was just his brain holding onto old habits. It wasn’t, though. It was the line of hard shoulder and cold metal. Bucky didn’t sit like himself anymore. He hunched over, and let long hair fall over his eyes.
Steve had decided that he hated that most of all. Bucky wouldn’t have let hair cover his eyes. He sat taller, eyes open and shining, with a smirk waiting on the edge of his lips. Steve had claimed to hate that smirk. They’d mocked each other a million times, and Buck had won every battle with the smirk firmly in place. It wasn’t a hard argument to win. All Bucky had to do was laugh and say he kept it there to catch a pretty girl’s kiss.
That wasn’t why. Steve knew that. Bucky knew too, that’s why he kept smiling when the girls walked on by.
This Bucky never smirked.
He never smiled. He never even moved the damn hair out of his eyes.
“No, we weren’t.”
“What?” It was the first words Bucky had said to him all night.
“We weren’t best friends.” Bucky shifted just enough to be facing Steve. The bar faced the kitchen, and the dirty dishes. Turning to face Steve didn’t mean anything; it just meant that Bucky was sick of looking at their dirty dishes. That’s what Steve told himself.
“Look, I know you forgot a lot. You’ve been through a lot. But you’ve got to believe me on this one, buddy.” Steve kept looking at the dirty dishes.
He decided that maybe the hair in front of Bucky’s eyes wasn’t so bad. It was probably better that way, actually.
“Yeah. Buddy. Pal. Right.” Steve heard a snort, and it broke him. He had to look. He had to check. Sometimes this New Bucky just sounded so much like Old Bucky that he had to see him. He had to see the metal, and the cold stare. He had to see the hair falling into his eyes, and the slump of shoulders being held stiff for too long. Steve just needed the reminder sometimes. Sounding like Bucky didn’t mean anything – it was just a reflex of muscles that used to be there. It was just another phantom limb of the body beside him, or maybe it was Steve’s phantom memory holding on.
Bucky had his hair swept back, with a beer bottle held up to his lips. “Best friends, right?” He raised an eyebrow, and he smirked.
Bucky smirked.
“We were best friends, Bucky.” Steve tried not to smile back. He’d learned that you had to handle New Bucky more like a startled animal. You couldn’t react too much to anything that he did that seemed out of character for him. You just had to act like it was normal.
Easy. He just had to act like Bucky smirking at him like he hadn’t in decades was normal, run-of-the-mill stuff.
Bucky raised his eyebrow again, but kept smirking. He turned in his seat until his whole body faced Steve. He was open, he was smirking. “Got a question, Stevie?”
Alright. Steve could play that game.
Steve turned to face Bucky, the Old Bucky, his Bucky. “What’cha got that smirk for, Buck?”
Bucky leaned back, like Steve had finally started playing into his hand. He leaned against the back of his chair, stretching out until his leg bumped against Steve’s. “Oh this old thing?” Bucky smirked again, his leg pressing warm against Steve’s. “You know me, buddy. Just trying to catch a pretty girl’s kiss.”
Steve thought he was dying.
It was time. He’d had a good run. Most of it had been frozen at the bottom of a lake, sure.
He probably should have expected Bucky’s lips against his. It was how things always played out, but even Steve’s mind had to let some of the past go.
Bucky’s metal hand was tight on his knee. That was new. Old Bucky held Steve like he was precious, but breakable. It was unbearable.
New Bucky held just a little too tight. He wasn’t afraid of breaking Steve. He wasn’t caught up in memories of coughing fits and iron lungs. Too much time had passed between them since then. New Bucky held on like Steve was going to whisper away into nothing.
Until New Bucky started pulling away and Steve wasn’t okay with that.
“I remember, Stevie.” Steve’s eyes were closed, but he could feel the smirk melting away.
“We were best friends.” Steve couldn’t open his eyes. He couldn’t move his hand out of Bucky’s hair, and he hadn’t even remembered putting it there in the first place. Maybe, he thought, the hair wasn’t such a bad change.
“Sure, Buddy.” Bucky’s lips were on his again. Bucky didn’t even pull them away when he spoke, as if it had been too long. Steve could get behind that idea. “Just best friends?”
“Maybe a little more.”