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1945
I thought you were younger , are the words on the tips of Bucky’s tongue when he opens his eyes and sees Steve.
“Aren’t you out on watch?” is what he whispers instead, mindful not to wake the others in the neighboring tents. He knows what the answer will be. The Steve he last saw, the one who insisted on covering Falsworth’s shift tonight after they’d found out his brother had been shot— K.I.A. —had been lighter-haired and brighter-eyed. The Steve that stands before him now is starting to crinkle, just barely around the corners of his eyes and mouth. His jaw is set more tightly and stubble dots his chin. His nose is still large and strong, though, and his ears still slope the way Bucky remembers.
The lumpy pile of sleeping gear to Bucky’s right is still rumpled and empty.
“Don’t worry about it,” is what this Steve says in response.
“Steve,” says Bucky. He knows that for sure. Anytime, anywhere, there wouldn’t be a situation where he didn’t recognize him.
Steve nods.
“You look different, but you’re Steve.”
“I am.”
“Prove it.”
“Your ma’s name was Winifred,” Steve says, “but they all called her Winnie. After a long day working at the docks, you used to crash onto our shabby, worn-down couch—when you hadn’t bathed yet, you asshole—and beg me to massage your feet, and you were surprised once when I actually did it—”
“Okay, okay.” Bucky holds up his hands. “You can stop there.” He sure wouldn’t have told that to anyone else, and Steve better not have either. “Is this a dream?”
Steve shrugs. “Could be.”
Well, that was certainly helpful .
“There should be a noise around this time,” Steve suddenly says, “so we’ll have an opening. Let’s go outside.”
“What the hell, Stevie? It’s freezing out there.” Nonetheless, Bucky picks up his blue jacket—he’d been using it as a pillow—and puts it on, fastening the buttons as quickly as he can.
As soon as they step out of the tent, the rushing wind swoops in, ready for attack. Bucky tries his best not to clench his hands into fists, stiffening his arms to brace against the cold. Steve trudges onward in front of him, breaking away from the tents and into the woods, winding around barren trees. Bucky follows behind. Both their footsteps are swift and smooth and silent.
He already knows that Steve—the one out covering Falsworth’s shift on watch—won’t find them.
At the point when Steve’s footsteps finally begin to slow, the two of them are surrounded by trees in all directions. Steve comes to a stop; his back is still toward Bucky. When he looks up, Bucky counts exactly three stars in the black sky overhead. He says, “So you’re from the future.”
Steve follows his gaze. “Could’ve sworn we saw more of them in Brooklyn.” He pauses. And why do you think that?”
“It’s how all those novels go, the ones Becca always grumbles I read too much of. The person traveling back, they know more information.”
For what feels like a long time, Steve doesn’t reply.
Bucky continues, “Like when a noise will sound. They know because they’ve lived it.”
“You’re a smart guy, Buck,” Steve finally says. “You know how time travel works; you also know it has rules.”
“‘Course it does. Can’t go around messing up the past. That turns into the present, which turns into the future.”
He hears a hum from Steve. He’s seen enough of Steve’s back while they were walking; he wants to see his eyes.
Bucky adds, “I have to say, this is probably my favorite dream I’ve had yet.”
Finally, Steve turns around to face him. His lips twitch up into a faint smile.
In the light of those three stars and the thickening white moon, the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes and the line between his brows shine like freshly-healed scars.
“So hypothetically,” Bucky shifts his feet, “if he could travel back in time, pay me a visit from the future, what would my best pal want to do?”
“Something I always should have done,” says Steve. Then, he cups Bucky’s left cheek with his palm, his rough index fingertip gently caressing Bucky’s temple, his thumb resting on Bucky’s cheekbone.
That’s how Bucky knows he’s dreaming.
“Your eyes are so beautiful.” Steve’s palm drops from his cheek to rest upon his left shoulder. He gives the shoulder a solid squeeze. “A man once told me there was a bit of green in the blue of my eyes. How nice to find a flaw, he said.”
Bucky almost opens his mouth. Steve’s eyes are perfect; they always have been.
“I didn’t listen to him.” Steve’s hand has arrived at Bucky’s upper left arm. “Back then, I thought of the gray in the blue of your eyes, and I was so glad mine matched yours.” He presses into the inner crook of Bucky’s left elbow. “Blue-gray to blue-green. Sounds like a landscape sorta scene, doesn’t it? One I’d want to paint. The Appalachians standing strong and proud on the first day of spring, all the rivers running through the range like veins.”
When his hand glides over Bucky’s left forearm and his fingertips wrap themselves over onto Bucky’s palm, Steve says, “You’re the mountains to my rivers, Buck.”
Then, he raises Bucky’s left hand to his lips and lets his lips ghost over the knuckles.
And Bucky has never been so disgusted with himself. Sure, he’s thought about Steve before, in a way he knew was morally wrong to think about his best pal. He remembers coming home from work and seeing Steve draped over their couch with his sketchbook with his sharp collarbones exposed above loosened buttons, pencil rolling between deft fingers, and immediately taking an extra-long bath. He remembers sitting in water long-gone cold, whispers of repentance dripping off his tongue. He remembers seeing Steve drunk for the first time at age sixteen, watching him stumble around the alleys, catching himself from falling whenever he bumped into a wall, and wishing he could swoop him into his arms and carry him home and immediately hating himself for it—Winifred Barnes hadn’t raised a pervert. Those things before, they were all one thing. A vivid dream of Steve’s lips bestowing their gift to the back of his hand—as if Bucky was something he wanted to preserve , wanted to protect— was something else.
His train of thought is cut off by Steve saying, “I should have done this when I had the chance.”
Bucky’s been sick in the head for the past ten years. What’s one more night?
So he lets himself enjoy this while he can. The knuckles of his left hand are throbbing and aching, and it’s the most pleasurable pain he’s ever felt.
When Steve lets go of his hand, he says, “I think I remember coming back right around this time.” His tone is hesitant, apologetic. “Sorry about this, Buck. I wish we had more time.”
Immediately, Bucky says, “That’s okay.”
“It’s late. Or early, depending on how you look at it.” Under the moonlight, Bucky can see Steve’s Adam’s apple bob. “And we’ve got a big day tomorrow.”
“Heck, yeah,” says Bucky. They’re going after Zola. Steve’s going after Zola, and he’s following Steve.
Into the jaws of death, all the way to the end of the line.
Steve insists on walking him back, and before he knows it, they’re back inside their tent. Bucky starts taking his jacket off; Steve covers his hands with his own, and, taking over, slips his blue jacket off his shoulders and folds it neatly— where had he learned that? —and sets it down. With one hand on his left shoulder and the other cradling the back of his head, Steve lowers him onto his sleeping gear, prone on his back, and crouches next to him. (The lumpy pile of sleeping gear to Bucky’s right is still rumpled and empty.)
“Rest,” says Steve.
“What about you?”
“I will.” Steve begins to card his hand through Bucky’s hair. “Don’t you worry about me.”
Bucky doesn’t know how to do that; nonetheless, he allows himself one last glimpse of Steve’s face—the placement of his cheekbones, the green specks in his blue eyes, the outline of his nose and jaw against the faint light seeping into the tent—before he forces his eyes shut.
Steve’s nails scritch lightly against his scalp, and he almost lets out a moan. Instead, he breaks his lips into a grin and says, “A bit to my right, Stevie?”
A deep chuckle; then, he feels Steve’s nails dragging over the right side of his scalp, parting through his hair. Bucky imagines waves lapping at a crumpling beavers’ dam, all the branches falling and drifting away in each and every direction.
“You’ve never indulged me like this before. What’s brought it on now?”
“Just keep enjoying yourself,” says Steve. “Keep having sweet dreams, Buck.”
That’s the last thing Bucky remembers hearing before he goes under.
Except in the murkiness, he thinks he hears, “I’m sorry, Buck. I’m so, so sorry.”
. .
All too soon, Steve—the one he knows, lighter-haired and brighter-eyed than the one from last night—shakes him awake by the shoulders. “Rise and shine, you big jerk.”
Bucky does not want to rise and shine. He forces his eyelids upward. “Rising and shining, punk.”
Steve is kneeling by his side, already suited in his uniform. Satisfied upon seeing him awake and functioning, Steve lets go of him and stands up. Bucky allows himself approximately two more seconds of lying on his back before he pushes himself upright onto his ass with a groan.
Before him, Steve stands tall, expression stormy and jaw clenched in anticipation of facing Zola. (Bucky wishes he could feel the same.) His face softens when they lock eyes, and the early morning sun casts his expression in a faint golden glow. Bucky wants to grab his hand and bring it to his hair and make Steve rub circles into his scalp, and then maybe once he’s satisfied he’ll also bring it to his mouth, returning to him a spectral echo of his dream from last night.
Bucky could never do that to him.
So all he does is cock his head and give his most winning smile, the one that had all the dames in Brooklyn swooning in his arms in the dance halls, the one he would give Steve when they were dancing alone in their tiny shoebox apartment next to that worn-down couch, right before Steve would stomp on his foot, and he would pretend to yelp and Steve would laugh, and it’d just be the two of them, laughing the night away.
“Hey, Stevie,” he says, “you wanna catch a train to see some elephants?”
Steve rolls his blue-green eyes ( “You’re the mountains to my rivers, Buck” ) and chuckles. It’s a small laugh; it’s as beautiful as all the others. “Elephants? You know there ain’t any more elephants in the Alps.”
2023
When Steve steps off the platform, the sensation of Bucky’s hair between his fingers has already begun to fizzle away. His lips, however, still tingle.
He presses his hand onto his lips and imagines every rise and dip of Bucky’s knuckles, solid as the Appalachians.
“What’re you doing? You’re late.”
Steve lets his hand fall down; Bucky—his Bucky, the one who the young man he lulled to sleep hair would grow into—stands before him, arms crossed. One is flesh and blood, the other is black-and-gold vibranium.
His eyes remain the same.
“Sorry, Buck,” he says, much more lightly than the apology he had murmured under his breath, what to him was last night. “I had one extra stop I wanted to make.” And he reaches out for Bucky’s hand, the vibranium one, and brings it upward toward his mouth.
It never gets there. With a deft twist of his wrist, Bucky flips their hands and pulls Steve toward him, lightly and gently; he glosses his own lips over Steve’s knuckles, a mirror of Steve’s intent. “I remember now.”
“You do?” It shouldn’t be a surprise. Steve had known he would; it was now in his past, their past, after all.
“I remember all of it,” says Bucky. “Thank you, Steve.”
“For what?” For snatching his chance to get what he needed, and leaving Bucky there the morning after?
“For taking the time to give me that before… before, you know.”
Oh.
“Even if I only know it now, it really helps. Knowing that I had it.”
Maybe Steve hadn’t been as selfish as he thought. Maybe he’d given Bucky something Bucky needed, too.
“Anyway,” Bucky wets his lips and grins. “I never knew you were hiding those massage skills from me this whole time, you asshole. Any chance I can get another one of those scalp treatments? Maybe once we get home?”
“Of course,” Steve immediately says, “anytime.” And Bucky beams and clasps their hands together, metal intertwined with flesh, and they walk away from the platform side by side, facing the setting sun.