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Bucky always found Steve’s room in the original Avengers tower arid, banal, and straight up boring. Despite having expansive windows that stretched from the ceiling to the floor, providing constant adequate lighting and a gorgeous view of the New York cityscape, it was a rigid, sterile room with four walls, a single bed in the corner, and one nightstand with nothing but a lamp sitting neatly atop.
To give credit where it’s due, the Avengers had only temporarily used the old Stark Tower as a meeting location post the battle of New York before permanently relocating to the new compound. Steve, who was having frequent and perennial missions throughout his brief career as an Avenger in the present, used exactly that as his excuse to cleverly escape Bucky’s criticisms over his lack of decor.
“I just miss our apartment back in Brooklyn,” Bucky said one day, curling one corner of his mouth downwards in a half frown, “you used to be so artistic. Just you with your skinny ass frame and charcoal in hand.”
He was laying atop of Steve, the two of them way too overgrown to fit comfortably in the single bed, but legs still warmly tangled together under the thin sheets the way they were used to. Steve smiled softly and traced Bucky’s chin with his chiseled fingers.
“Yeah, well, drawing paper was way cheaper back then than actual wallpaper. We had a lot of holes to patch. Plus, I didn’t have much other activity to do back then besides that.”
Bucky cocked his eyebrow, stirred lazily and pinched Steve’s nose gently after removing his arm from beneath his stomach.
“Now you’re just being humble.”
Steve, still gazing at Bucky’s lowered head as the man placed his chin on Steve’s chest, nuzzling slowly like a cat, suddenly chuckled aloud and ruffled Bucky’s hair.
“You can just say you miss me.”
His voice rumbled through Bucky’s veins and his face shot up almost instantaneously, with, initially, a piqued and provoked exasperation, before gradually descending into a bashful fluster as he averted his eyes. It was almost embarrassing to admit that, at this age, he still missed Steve as if he was a child in love for the first time with a beautiful boy next door, and turned warm and pink at every breath and word shared between them.
“Don’t look at me like that, soldier,” Steve smirked, turning Bucky’s face back to face him, squeezing his cheeks a little before his smirk and touch both melted into a tender hold, “I miss you like crazy, regardless of whether you miss me or not.”
And at that, Bucky smiled too, taking one of Steve’s hands into his own and placing a small kiss on the crooks of the bones, murmuring: “Of course I miss you, you idiot.”
Moments were brief between them, even now, when imminent extraterrestrial dangers were, albeit possible, uncommon and infrequent. After handing the shield to Sam, Steve had officially entered an early retirement—on a technicality. Bucky knew that Steve kept his old uniform and other gear and equipment in the closet by the door of their small apartment away from the city, just in case any old friends called. He kept a pair of garments in his old—now Bucky’s—room, and habitually aided the Thunderbolts behind the scenes. Even if the brushes of their fingers were fleeting, they never ceased to seize any probable moment to hold each other and chased away their shared nightmares.
Steve turned his head and pondered for a moment before swallowing a chuckle.
“Yeah, but Congressman Barnes is so busy these days, I barely get to see him. And the nights in our empty bed is so, so cold—”
Bucky stopped Steve with an abrupt kiss before he could say more, and Steve’s words, now with his mouth occupied, trailed off into a series of muffled laughter.
The bed could barely contain their movements and creaked under their weights. If it didn’t so happen that the Thunderbolts were out for some kind of mission at this exact moment, the sounds reverberating from the room would have the group riled up in seconds, each utilizing their specific abilities to attempt to listen from behind the walls.
“You better stop talking, Rogers, or Congressman Barnes is going to have to impose some legal ramifications on you.”
Steve could not stop laughing, even if Bucky was pinching his cheeks, shoulders slumped and shaking with abrupt snorts and titters of his own. Concurrently, he couldn’t suppress a raw, almost-animal-like vehemence glare behind his eyes at those words, as if he was about to unleash an unregulated intention—a fervent desire—that will swallow them both.
In a state of unawareness, Steve licked the corner of his lips and leaned up from the bed, speaking in a low, raspy tone that dragged the end of each syllable, stretching across an unbearable length of time and space. He could feel the tip of his tongue on the roof of his mouth, curling faintly.
“Oh yeah? Mr. Barnes is going to do something to me?”
Bucky didn’t withdraw from the intensity of Steve’s voice and rather matched its ardor, arching his back so he was looming above Steve’s face. The setting sun lightly trotted over the top of his head, a few streaks of golden light trailing slowly over loose strands of hair that fell silently by his left ear, unwilling to recoil. As he lowered his chin and narrowed his eyes, a shadow cast over his face, adjoining his features with a dim, roughened edge.
“Yeah,” he started, intentionally grunting beneath his throat and looked down at Steve’s lips, simultaneously tracing its lines with the tip of his metal thumb, “I’m going to punch you in the face.”
Both men kept their facade until they both broke into a synchronized cackle, squinting their eyes closed and laughing boisterously, their bodies pushed together with warmth transferred in between. Steve, almost out of breath, gently slapped Bucky’s face away and feigned a choking motion before ultimately flicking Bucky on the forehead.
“You’re getting cocky by the day, you know,” Steve said, still smiling, blue eyes twinkling in the sunlight. “The whole politician thing is getting to you.”
Bucky opened his mouth as if he was caught in a fanatical surprise, gasping dramatically: “I don’t know what you mean. I’m just following your lead, the old fashioned Captain America and Sergeant Barnes way.”
He gave a little salute with his hand and winked playfully, ticking his teeth with a bout of youth.
“Into the jaws of death?” Steve asked, the corners of his eyes softening into a gentle wrinkle.
“Mmhm,” Bucky nodded and hummed under his breath, placing his chin on Steve’s chest, “Wherever.”
Steve’s hand paused in the air as he was reaching to fluff Bucky’s hair. As if his words triggered something stagnant in his mind, in a sudden jolt, his motions were frozen and he was overcome by old memories, now tinted with a decaying yellow blush, as they played in a succeeding carousel in his mind.
He saw Bucky, skinnier and younger than he was now, but with the same shade of blue in his eyes. Still a young boy, mercifully untouched by the cruelties of life; he was blooming cheerily, his body colored by a certain avidity. Even then, when Steve was much smaller and stumbily capered along his heels, he was following him—he would find himself in the blues of his eyes.
And he felt that life wasn’t fair—that he wasn’t fair. All that time that he was oblivious to his lover’s suffering as a result of his own evasion of reality, he knew that even if he exhausted every second of the remainder of his life, he would never be able to fully make it up to him. He had realized, not long after he reunited with Bucky for the first time since that snowy night in 1944, that he was never going to have enough time.
The trepidation and torment nibbled at his heart, and he always felt that his heart wasn’t his; that it was going to leap out of his throat against his will whenever he parted with him. His desperation, which only grew more aggressively after the formation of the new Avengers, to steal more time than he could afford, now tucked into a gentle pull of Bucky’s face closer to his own, and he placed his palm over Bucky’s cheek, his thumb slowly tracing the small wrinkle that developed in the crease of his right eye in his absence.
“Ask me to stay,” Steve said, his voice so soft the wind almost mistook it as part of its own echo, “Ask me to stay, and I will.”
Bucky smiled sadly, turning his head so he’s laying his ear over Steve’s chest, listening to the steady frequency of his heart. He reached up with his metal hand and tenderly traced circles just under Steve’s collarbone.
“You've done enough,” Bucky hummed, though it was evident that perhaps a portion of himself didn’t believe in what he was saying—that he needed Steve so desperately; that he longed for the constant press of his skin on his own to remind himself of a tenderness that he once lost.
Steve placed his own hand over Bucky’s, trying to transmit his own warmth onto Bucky’s hand that can no longer feel any temperature. That coldness never startled him, but pained his heart tremendously. He took Bucky’s hand into his own and raised it to his lips before placing a soft kiss amongst Bucky’s knuckles, causing Bucky to let out a soft chuckle.
“So have you,” Steve said, furrowing his brows unconsciously and emphasized, “A lot more than me. You don’t have to stay here.”
“I know, but those kids see me as a leader. If I leave now, God knows what the media will say about them.”
Steve saw no point in reminding Bucky that, theoretically, only two of the Thunderbolts were considered to be “kids”, and the rest were not so much younger than they were. He simply laughed warmly: “Well, you know what they said about me when I stepped down. I think that was the nicest way they could’ve said ‘fuck you’ to someone.”
“That would be no news to you,” Bucky chuckled alongside him, “or to me. We have both heard many things in our lives.”
Steve’s face flinched at the sound of the lock as it dropped from the vaults of their past, unleashing a cadence of cacophony that they both cannot run from. Often, it shocked Steve to a certain degree that Bucky, so gentle and addable in nature, would still carve away what remains of his life to the world despite its unjustifiable iniquity against him. He had thought that, had altruism truly been possible, Bucky would undoubtedly be its exemplar.
He had thought it impossible for someone to sacrifice what appears to be their entirety, and more still, to a suppositious goodness that may never be salvaged. Yet Bucky, as he always did, showed him that nothing was ever impossible.
The brevity of life seemed a distant and foreign concept to them now, having lived beyond a regular man's time, yet Steve was always reminded that a lifetime was not enough to love someone. He had loved Bucky ardently and recklessly, always a step behind time.
He tangled his finger in Bucky's hair, feeling as they gently curled around his touch. Seeing that Steve had not spoken, Bucky tried to steer the conversation.
“Come on, soldier. Don’t brood.”
Steve feigned a smile, lips pressed tightly together.
“The world treated me too kindly,” He said, out of the blue. “for what I had done to you.”
Bucky furrowed his brows, evidently wincing at the brutality of his words. Clearly, Bucky was not in accordance with whatever coursed through Steve's mind at the moment.
“Why do you say that?”
I ran away,” Steve paused briefly, “You couldn’t run. Yet the world praises me and condemns you.”
Bucky sighed softly, wiggled his fingers loose from Steve’s grip and booped Steve on the nose: “I’d hardly call sacrificing yourself for the world running away, per se.”
He cleverly skipped over the latter half of Steve's sentence, knowing deep down that Steve had never forgiven himself for something that he never thought, for a second of his life, was his fault in any capacity or under any circumstance.
Steve regained his clasp over Bucky’s fingers and held them, the callouses of at his fingertips tracing over the platings of tensile metal.
Then, almost out of nowhere, Steve said quietly: “I wasn’t sacrificing myself. I wanted to die.”
Bucky froze in his place. It startled him staggeringly to hear Steve, the most agitatedly persevering man he knew, a man that he loved greatly, unmistakably admit that he chose to die. It frightened him even more to consider that, no matter how unbearable it had felt to be the Winter Soldier, he had never earnestly considered taking himself out with one, simple, untraceable strike. Even after all of that, he had wanted to live. Bucky was not sure which, between the hero’s crave for death and the villain’s desire for life, was worse.
Steve’s voice interrupted Bucky’s moment of introspection.
“I couldn’t convince myself that what happened to you wasn’t my fault. I didn’t want to be responsible for your death. The only way for me to stop that guilt was to die myself. I ran away because I wasn’t brave enough to face what I had done to you.”
Bucky felt his heart flutter at the weight of Steve’s words, spoken quietly but not losing vigor or sorrow, and stirred to press his face deeper into Steve’s embrace. He felt Steve cradle him, similar to the way that he used to hold Steve when they slept through sick nights in their one-bedroom apartment on the colder Brooklyn days.
“Steve, you wanted to die because you loved me. That is not something to be ashamed about.”
“Yes, yet my life cost you yours. Twice.”
“One day, you will have to learn that the circumstances that we couldn’t control do not define us, Stevie. You keep saying this stuff, and I’m going to punch you for real.”
Bucky felt Steve chuckle below him.
“Is that what you believe?” Steve asked, raising an eyebrow, “Maybe start lecturing me after you listen to your own advice, jerk.”
Bucky laughed into Steve’s chest. He knew they were both of stubborn hearts, and did not budge, even against kind words. When a brief silence loomed over them both once more, Bucky was the first to break it.
“You were so small,” he said.
“Hm?”
“When we were little, you were so small that the blankets swallowed you whenever we laid the cushions on the floor and built forts in the summer. I’d wake up and think that you left and went home without telling me, only to find you curled up like a cat somewhere in the corner, tangled in some sheets. You were so small, even when we turned 17, and I was afraid that I’d somehow snap your bones when I held you. I liked watching you sleep, because you had a cute face, but more so I liked when you were awake, because then I knew you didn’t die from some fever or me crushing you overnight.”
“You were so small, my little Stevie. I thought I needed to protect you forever, and I was always so worried about what would happen to you once I was drafted into the war. And one day, suddenly you’re not so small anymore. You’re Captain America. You went to places I never wished for you to go. And many, many years passed between us. Yet somehow, despite all of that, I still have you by my side, here, in the present. I have your hand in mine, and we wouldn’t have to worry about being called fairies or pansies in the schoolyard. You could put me on your walls and we wouldn’t have to rip it off whenever someone came to visit. You could keep a drawing of me in your front pocket, and I a picture of you when you were 16. That's way more than I had ever hoped for in my entire lifetime.”
Bucky felt Steve’s arms tighten around him.
“You'll always have me.”
“I know, Stevie.”
“Did you know, one of my trigger words was Seventeen.”
Steve shook his head softly.
“Seventeen. My seventeen. That’s when I realized I loved you for the first time. You remember that, right?”
He felt Steve plant a kiss on his temple.
“Of course I do. At your birthday party, you wished to stay with me forever. That’s when I knew.”
Bucky recalled the way his heart raced when he spoke those wishful words under his quivering lips, eyes weakly shut because he was too scared of the look Steve would wear on his face when he hears them. He felt Steve flicker his forehead, and his eyes fluttered open in disbelief.
“I hereby grant your wish.”
Little Stevie wore a smile brighter than any star he’d ever seen in the sky. The first smile he saw on his seventeenth birthday, vivid and faithful, electric to the touch. He knew he’d love that smile forever from that moment onwards, just by that swift look at it, unwavering in whichever theory of temporality.
“Somehow, the memory of you still lingered with me when we were apart. That alone, to me, was enough of an indication that there had been something greater than what they put inside my head. It was motivation enough to seek you out. And it led me back to you. That’s what matters. Us. Here. In this moment.”
Bucky felt the tension in Steve’s shoulders soften as he drew another breath in. Of course, he knew deep down that Steve’s guilt would never be erased by his words, but he also knew that Steve shared his desire to keep loving as they were now, leaving the past as a wound that can only be scarred over by time.
“So ask me to stay,” Steve said again, “ If you can’t come home more often, ask me to stay here. We can decorate these walls like we used to. I’ll sketch you and put them up, if you won’t feel embarrassed in front of the kids.”
Bucky felt baffled and flushed at the implication, yet felt relieved at Steve’s ability to jest after such a conversation about death. He truly felt that Steve was akin to an alien, flung from space, stubborn and pertinacious and obstinate like a meteor fixed in course to strike the Earth.
“When’s the last time you drew a living person? Sure you aren’t rusty, Rogers?”
A faint shutting of the door travelled through the walls. Both could hear a distant chatter in the kitchen followed by a series of ruckus that resembled trouble.
“Looks like your kids are back, that’s my signal to get out of here. Wouldn’t want to get into your parenting ways.”
Steve signaled Bucky to get off of him, and perked his eyebrows up in confusion when Bucky did not budge and instead turned to look him in the eyes with a smile hanging off the corners of his lips.
“You asked me to ask you to stay,” Bucky chuckled, a strand of loose hair falling onto his face, lightly brushing Steve’s chin. “That’s quite a handful to say, don’t you think.”
“Come on, Buck, move your ass. If your team catches us in the room like this, your reputation’s really going to precede you.” Steve said in a fit of laughter, yet Bucky did not move. They were both super soldiers of equal strength, but Bucky was still Steve’s senior, and since childhood, he had always been, albeit kind, a playful, frisky, and mischievous type of boy. Earning the title jerk, he often found toying with Steve in this certain way lavishly amusing.
“Stay,” he said, tenderly. “I’m asking you to.”
Steve glanced up in surprise.
“Stay.”
He repeated, distinct and grounded. He was no longer the boy who flushed at the thought of expressing his wish for eternity in front of the boy he loved. It was much clearer to him now.
“Grant my wish?”
Steve’s face lit up the same way it had on Bucky’s seventeenth birthday.
“I hereby grant your wish.”
He didn’t let those words fall. In a prompt and eager motion, Bucky saw the sun, moon, and star of his life look at him before he swept his spoken words into lips that pressed against Bucky’s own, catching them both in a fall. Vibrant. Pulsating. Turning against time.
end.