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It’s Logan who drags him back. Not that Bucky had put up much of a fight. His hands had been busy grasping weakly at his fifth bottle of bourbon and the edge of the bar, and he hadn’t slept in three days. He hadn’t showered in longer and Logan made sure to let him know every thirty minutes or so what an inconvenience the reek of him was.
He had been looking for cracks to crawl into and had succeeded. His journey home takes him from a tiny hotel room to a cozy bar to a claustrophobic jet, so that by the time he’s on the helicarrier the expanse of sky above him makes him feel weightless. Though that could be the hangover. Steve meets them on the bridge and Bucky can’t stand to look him in the eye, so he doesn’t know if it’s relief or anger that strengthens the grip of Steve’s fingers around his arm as he’s towed back to the bunks, black turbulence in the wake of that pristine red, white, and blue. He feels at home finally, in Steve’s shadow.
Bucky is propped against a wall like a training dummy and Steve closes the door behind them, locking them in a small metal room with nothing but two sets of bunk beds. Bucky feels comfortable again, with the ratio of himself and empty space. At least, on the outside. He doesn’t have long to think about it before Steve drags him away from the wall and wraps his arms around Bucky’s shoulders, burying his face in the crook of Bucky’s neck. He takes heavy breaths and doesn’t once mention the smell.
Steve is shaking, which Bucky realizes gradually, as his brain works itself from under the slip of alcohol and grief. Steve is shaking and crushing Bucky against him and Bucky thinks that it might not have been fair of him to disappear for six months without so much as a note. Not that he’d felt he needed more of a note than Nat staring blankly at him from the hospital bed.
“I’m sorry,” he says, voice raspy from disuse. He doesn’t know how many times he’s apologized to Steve over the years, but he thinks that he might, at this moment, mean it more than he ever as before.
Steve stops trembling and pulls away, leaving his heavy hands on Bucky’s shoulders. “I know it won’t do me any good to tell you to never do that again.”
“I’m a big boy.” Bucky tries to approximate a lopsided grin. “I can take care of myself.”
The look on Steve’s face is serious and says that he doesn’t believe that. He might have once and may very well again, but Bucky knows that the current unshaven, unwashed, bleary-eyed, rumpled state of him says otherwise. “You know we’re not going to give up on her,” Steve says.
“You shouldn’t. She wouldn’t give up on me.”
“Don’t you want to be here when we succeed?”
Bucky knows that’s not the way the world works. Even if he did hang about, he’d be out on some mission or another when the breakthrough finally came—probably pinned down by gunfire or another gorilla—and it wouldn’t make a difference that they had dragged him back from Croatia instead of Bolivia. Not to Natasha and not to him. But as always, his reflection in Steve’s eyes was a better, stronger man than he felt himself to be and he had the urge to live up to it.
Still, he can’t bring himself to say yes. “Do you think you could find me a toothbrush somewhere amongst the nuclear warheads here?”
Steve smiles finally and the relief is contagious. He grasps Bucky’s cheeks with both hands and pulls their foreheads together. “As long as you promise not to fashion a ladder from it and try to escape again.”
“That would take an awful lot of effort when I could just boost a plane.”
“I’m having you chipped,” Steve says. Then he lets go of Bucky and heads off to find the ingredients it will take to make Bucky a real man again.
The air rushes out of Bucky into the vacuum of the room. He doesn’t remember climbing onto one of the top bunks, but he’s incredibly grateful for the rough wool blanket and the squeak of the springs beneath him.