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Bucky watches the posting bar creep across the top of his phone’s screen. The wifi seems infinitely slower than when he posted earlier, the bar creeping glacially from left to right. He knows he’s extrapolating, being dramatic, but it would hardly be the first time. The picture finishes processing, and appears at the top of the feed, the “0s” timestamp feeling somewhat like the calm before the storm. He’s glad that Sam showed him how to disable notifications a while back, glad that he can save himself at least for now from the somewhat alarming speed with which individuals will recognise Steve’s hands. For now, he turns off his phone, and pockets it.
He rises and scans the skyline, pulling himself onto the wall and letting his feet swing. He apologises internally to the twenty-seven people he threatened to kill, cringing at letting his emotions take control in such a destructive way. No doubt someone from PR, if not Natasha herself, will have removed that photo by now, scrubbed it form the internet.
Bucky watches the early evening hustle and bustle in the street below. It’s that particular time of the evening, with the last of the office workers making their way home and the first of those venturing out for the night making their way out, a time where everyone has a destination in mind. It’s the perfect time to disappear, something in the back of his mind tells him, the streets full of focussed people, too wrapped up in their own evening plans to even notice, let alone care about, one more stranger moving a shade too quickly through the crowds.
But he also notices that there’s a light gone in the bistro-café on the corner, that the bodega across the street has changed its window display, and that the leaves on the trees in the park one block down are showing the first signs of turning with the season. They’re the kind of details he used to point out to Steve whenever they camped out anywhere above the throng of street level, and Steve’s vision needed a few nudges to flesh out the world around him. They're not the kind of details a mission demands for success, and that's significant, he knows it is, but noticing everything all the time is exhausting. This city has a way of worming itself under your skin and staying there, no matter how long you leave it for.
Except. Except it’s not really the city is it?
Because Bucky has been running for such a long time, leaving as soon as those first tendrils of familiarity crept in. Whether on orders or out of self-preservation he can’t remember, but he’s never stayed in one place for so long in years.
(red, red hair surrounded him and cut off the outside world, and sharp eyes knew him one day and were blank the next, and he didn’t remember her soft smile and the solace of her arms until she held a gun to his head, and oh, he never did have an ounce of self-preservation when it came to Steve Natalia. Oh)
“Fuck,” he whispered, half delirious on dawning realisation. “Fuck.” Because he loves Steve, that he knows, the man may drive him insane, but he’s certain of that. And he’s starting to realise that it’s not some saviour-thing, some turning point in their relationship which has taken Steve from faithful best friend to something more, and oh fuck, if he hasn’t always loved him, in that desperate, hopeless way that settles itself into your bones and becomes part of your very being.
*
He must sit staring out across the city that he has allowed to become familiar (has always been familiar?) for longer than he realises, because Steve joins him with a bowl of pasta which he wordlessly hands over just as the sun dips low enough for a chill to settle in the air. Steve bumps shoulders in a gesture that Bucky knows in his very core, but doesn’t break the silence. It’s a comfortable kind of silence, the kind Bucky remembers from before all of this, so he pulls his legs up under him and works his way through his meal.
Bucky finishes and sets his bowl aside, turns to watch Steve. He’s always watching Steve these days, but not how he was always watching everyone in those first awful months. He catalogues the way a blush starts high on his cheeks before settling across his nose, the way his fingers tap against the counter as he waits for water to boil for tea. Soft hands that tuck the blanket tighter around Bucky’s shoulders, and the way he pulls his jacket closer to hide the way it gapes against his own narrow shoulders- wait. Like now, Steve looks like he’s idly swinging his feet, but there’s too much tension in his thighs and too much concentration on his face and-
-Bucky’s a child and he’s watching Steve through his eyelashes as he pretends to soak in the sun. Steve’s doing that thing where he traces pedestrians with his feet and he’s rambling about God or something, and he always gets carried away and leans too far forwards and Bucky has to be ready to catch him, always always ready-
“What are you doing?” Steve breathes, his face suddenly much closer. Bucky has lurched forwards and fisted his hand in the back of Steve’s shirt, clinging to him desperately.
He doesn’t loosen his grip -can’t lose him got to watch out idiot always runs into trouble- and instead just frowns, trying to pin down the onslaught of memories vying for precedence. “Did we,” he starts. He lets go of Steve’s shirt and flattens his palm against his back instead. Steve frowns and rests his hand against Bucky’s leg, just above the knee. Bucky thinks of thighs pressed together in dance halls, closer than necessary, his body wrapped around a smaller frame, and there’s something missing, fuck, why is his memory full of holes?
He brings his eyes to meet Steve’s.
“Were we more?” he whispers, “Once?”
Steve’s soft smile as he extracts himself is all the answer Bucky needs. It’s the smile he uses when he’s breaking bad news, sympathetic but professional, distant.
“No,” he starts, but his voice splits, and something catches behind his eyes. Bucky would fight anyone who put that look on Steve’s face, but he doesn’t know what to do when it’s him causing it, so all he can do is stare in horror, breath caught in his throat.
Steve shakes his head sadly, and his gaze turns wistful as he looks out over the city that has grown with the both of them. Nothing matches up with the memories in Bucky’s head, not the city, not Steve, not even Bucky himself, but-
“But I was so sure,” Bucky says, not sure why he keeps pressing the wound. He feels almost like he’s had this conversation before, or maybe something near this. He’s looking for an answer, but it’s not a question. His voice doesn’t waver in the way that it usually does when he’s looking to Steve to fill in the blanks in his memory. Maybe that’s what brings Steve’s attention back to him, clear and sharp (sharp eyes that know him).
“I thought,” Steve says, swallows. “I thought maybe, once. But no, not- No.” Steve’s eyes flit across Bucky’s face, nervous. It’s a confession, and this is Bucky’s chance. He can back away, laugh awkwardly and make excuses, blame his amnesia. But.
But he’s feeling brave. And they’re on top of the tower with their city spread out below them, and this damn awful, wonderful city is in their bones and this, this, is coming home.
“You told me to leave you,” he says.
“Not like-”
“No wait,” Bucky interrupts. “It was ’38 and you were laid up something awful, and I was so goddamn worried, so fucking sure that this was it, and you told me to. Leave. You. You selfish bastard, you had no idea.” He stops, breathing heavily.
Steve smiles gently. “I didn’t think you remembered that.”
“Well I do,” Bucky snaps. He sighs. “I didn’t, but I do now. More and more has been coming back to me. Have you always been this boneheaded?” Steve snorts. “You told me to let you go and move on as if you didn’t realise, you didn’t-" He pauses, feeling short of breath. His pulse is fluttering against his throat like a humming bird, and every survival instinct is telling him to shutupshutupshutup- But. "How could you not see that I’d already spent my whole life watching out for you? You fucking idiot Steve, I was yours before I knew what that meant.”
He feels Steve’s fingers lace through his, and looks down. The flesh against metal is a stark reminder of how far they’ve come, but it feels somehow fitting. New York is not the same as it was, but then, neither are they.
“I-” Steve starts. He seems uncharacteristically stuck for words, his usual eloquence caught somewhere in the back of his throat. “That time, when I was ill. I thought I’d imagined it, a fever dream or something. But, I told you not to make me the centre of your world-”
“-and I told you I already had. Of course you punk, I love you.”
Bucky could swear the world pauses for a moment, holing its breath, because he hadn't meant to say that, hadn't meant to show quite all his cards. Steve’s eyes slip closed and he knows he's fucked up, but Steve just leans his forehead against Bucky’s. They’re so close now that they’re sharing breath. He can't understand how this is happening, can’t remember the last time he was this close to someone voluntarily, but he wouldn’t move for the world. His free hand slides against Steve’s neck, cradling the back of his head gently, fingers slipping through the strands of his hair with ease. He feels Steve press back against his hand, and pulls him closer, so close their lips are almost (finally, finally) touching. He doesn’t know where this sudden bravery has come from, what staid his hand before. He could blame the world they lived in, the so-called ‘times’, expectation, but the truth is-
-the truth is, Steve was always the brave one. And it’s Steve who closes that final gap and presses their lips together. It’s not much, as kisses go, really just a pressing together - the barest pressure behind it - of lips. There’s the slightest whisper as Steve pulls back to murmur against his mouth.
“Say it again,” and Bucky can feel Steve’s mouth curve against his, the teasing lilt to his voice, and this, this is a moment almost a century in the making.
Bucky shakes his head fondly. “I fucking hate you.”
“No you don’t.”
“No, I don’t,” Bucky agrees, reeling Steve back in for a kiss with far more intent.
*
Later, they’re lying pressed together on the roof, divest of clothes and not really caring if anyone ventures up. The sky has travelled through a full range of colours, and the stars are beginning to appear. They’re both comfy, and Bucky feels pleasantly tired, and really, he’s slept in much worse places.
“I love you too, you know,” Steve mumbles. “Always have.”
I know, Bucky thinks, his soul almost singing with the knowledge. In some way, he thinks he always has known. In much the same way he always knew he’d return to this city. After a lifetime of dancing around one another, why here? Why now?
The truth is simple: they weren’t ready. They are both of them different people to the boys who left this city over seventy years ago. New York remembers her two boys who went to war and never returned: the city is as much a part of them as they are of it. Time, and the people who pass through it, have not been kind. It has affected them, and has wrought change and left scars on them all. But change is not a matter of becoming better or worse, simply of growth.
So whilst a New York roof top is perhaps not the most auspicious of locations for a first time, the sounds and smells of the city surrounding them from all sides, it is somewhat fitting for two boys from Brooklyn - with fire escapes, baseball stadiums and dance halls in their bones – to finally, finally, come home from war.