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”James Buchanan Barnes. Is that true what you've been... That you've been in love with me?”
“Yes. Always.”
“When – always?”
“Always always.”
Stevie skin is white, she's easy to blush. She blushes not because she is shy, she's out of her breath. He is not shy either, but his mouth is dry. Maybe it's dry because he's out of his breath, too. They run, and hide, and fight just to run and hide again.
The peak. And the sun rolling down the hills. So bright, it looks like fake blood. Real blood never gets that shade.
He used to know what he was going to say, but he has forgotten it. His mind rejects him, it has too many places he can't enter, but he tries to break through. Not all his memory belongs to him, the ones that do – he takes them back, day after day.
He wants to start, but she starts first.
“I was in love with you since school, but you never really noticed that. Did you fall for me because I was Captain America?”
Stevie he used to know before the war would say it brave, too. But she would have tears in her eyes because she felt too much for such a tiny girl. Stevie he used to know when they were at war would say it absolutely clear-headed, with no tears at all.
There are no tears now, and a lot of clear-headedness, too, but he knows she is hurt. It is even worse than the tears, the way he sees her hurt just to be hurt twice. He is accustomed to pain, but this pain is raw and new.
It was the hurt that kept him away, and it is the hurt that pushes him forward. He starts to talk, his thoughts are confused.
“Do you remember, the forest?” He has forgotten how to talk to her. There were commands and orders, he spoke on his own so rarely he forgot how he used to do that. “I thought it was you. But it was you no more. But, in the end, it was you.”
She doesn't understand, nor does he. Words have lost the connection between the tongue and the memory. He just wants to say that he wanted to see his friend, Stew, and whom he saw, was the woman he didn't know. The woman who was in charge, and it struck him hard.
The woman who saved him and who told him what to do. Gratitude and shame, he was lucky he wasn't the only one who owed her his life. Later, it came to him that it wasn't a shame to be Cap's debtor. It was a shame to feel like it was you who should have been her just because you were a man.
He remembers the shame, and he remembers regretting that. He owed her his life. He fought alongside her and he knew that after all, she still needed him. Because they were friends, and because she cared. Because she was Stevie Rogers he missed, though he didn't know it then.
The fact he fell for her stood alone in the distance. The man who loves the legend is unlucky because he longs for a woman no man can compare with.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” she asks.
“Language.” He says that automatically; the one who works with Stevie remembers it first. Language; watch your language; your language, soldier. Every time he swore he heard Stevie's voice in his head, but he swore no more as he was not supposed to be angry with his victims, he was only supposed to kill.
Stevie looks at him wearily. The sleeve of her red and blue suite with a silver star on the chest is half- torn so he can see the scar on her shoulder. Her nose in broken, there are two thin streams of gore over her upper lip.
“I worked with Nick Fury, Buck. Clint Barton was my partner. And most of all, I grew up with you. I can swear. The fact is I don't like it," she explains in a most common voice. In the same voice she adds, "I love you, Bucky. I know that I am not supposed to say it like that. But I may not have another chance.”
“Are you here because you love me?” He asks. He only repeats her words, for now, they stand alone with his “I love you”, too distant to become the knowing. He wants to hear her reasons; the ones he thought of are not enough to do what she has done.
“No. It is because I think it's the right thing to do.” Stevie's mouth is so resolute it can become a president. “Because you were, and you are, my friend.”
That's not he wants to hear. Not like that. He needs to say something, to do something, and he doesn't know what. He still holds her shield, and he gives it to her because it's hers. What makes the Captain? The shield, the uniform. And Bucky Barnes whom she always has to rescue.
She takes the shield with her fingertips. It's made of lightweight metal, but still it's metal though for Stevie it's more like paper. Stevie takes the shield, she looks down, she raises her eyes, she examines his face.
She embraces him. Language. No warning.
He stands still. Her shield is pressed to his back. He puts the arm on her shoulders, he puts the arm on her back. It's a friendly hug. Love and romance, nothing personal is needed when the Captain is fulfilling his duty to Bucky Barnes' rescue.
Why does it always go so wrong?
Stevie kisses him on the cheek. She kisses him, and it's so close to the mouth he can feel her breath on his lips. It would be better if they were not going to die. It's good even if they are.
“They can see us.”
“I know.”
“From here, you can't go back.”
“I couldn't go back from the moment I took your side, Bucky.”
He holds her, and she holds him. They can stand like this forever, but nothing lasts forever, and the embrace will be broken, too. Before it is broken, Bucky kisses Stevie on the lips, he kisses her so hard he feels his blood in her mouth.
“Here,” he says. His mouth is numb. “Like real people do.”