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Steve talks to him sometimes.
Usually he grabs a stool from the corner of the room and sits like a child - his legs spread, feet planted firmly on the floor - and rests his forehead against the cool glass of the cryo chamber. He doesn’t do it every day, not every week, sometimes not even every month. Steve doesn’t stay permanently in Wakanda, too occupied with blasting HYDRA bases to smithereens - and talking every day to a person who isn’t awake is a bit too miserably lonely and fucked up, even for him.
The facility is mostly quiet. The doctors wander in and out of the room Bucky’s in, checking the scans of Bucky’s dangerous, beautiful brain, trying to figure out how to erase the triggers branded in him without messing his head up even more. They keep a respectful distance whenever Steve’s around.
Steve knows that Bucky’s safe and secure, that he’s healing, but still the sheer number of doctors manage to unnerve him. He’s too accustomed to several doctors meaning a turn for worse. He doesn’t like to look at them, so he looks at Bucky instead.
Bucky looks peaceful in the cryo; not the dead peace of that blurry picture in his file, but like he’s enjoying the world’s longest and best-earned nap. His face is smooth, slack with sleep, and he looks so painfully young under shadows and stubble, under the tired lines etched onto his forehead.
Bucky’s never been a huge, hulking guy, with his surprisingly delicate build and narrow hips, and he’s been slowly losing the excess muscle mass in his time in the cryo. He looks slimmer, smaller; like he could fold into Steve’s arms like an origami bird.
Steve half-heartedly wants to draw him, but after a couple of rough sketches he abandons the thought. He doesn’t want to capture Bucky in his glass case like a precious artifact in a museum. He wants to draw Bucky in natural sleep, curled up and fragile, or awake, with a hint of laughter in his eyes.
It’s probably the first real peace Bucky’s had since 1944, but Steve doesn’t like to think about it, because it makes him a goddamn sad son of a bitch , quoth Sam. What he likes to think about is that memory of riding at the back of the freezer truck in Brooklyn; the solid muscle of Bucky’s shoulder under Steve’s hand in Siberia; the tender, trusting way Bucky leaned on him, hurt and one-armed and precious, when they stumbled back to the quinjet.
The last time Steve held Bucky upright and helped him to safety like that was in 1943, when he pulled Bucky off Zola’s examination table. This time Steve’s going to do his damnedest to be able to keep him for longer than a year.
Steve wishes he could reach out and touch Bucky, cup his familiar jaw, cradle the fragile curve in the palm of his hand like a baby bird. It’s exhilarating, having Bucky back, and Steve’s skin is yearning for him, so close, just a two-inch glass and a million miles away.
But he can’t touch, only press his hands against the chamber, wishing that Bucky could feel the warmth of his hands through it, so he talks instead. He tells Bucky about the places he’s been to; about Peggy and her funeral. He talks about Bucky himself, stumbling through faltering descriptions of the violent joy of having him back, getting to love him again.
Do you remember London? He whispers in a tender, hushed voice, over and over again. Every inch of you was like the sun rising over a landscape full of mines. Now every inch of you is a mile over frozen continent, making your way home. I loved you then. I love you now. Do you remember London? In London I got you back.
In London Bucky was gaunt and underfed, riddled with needle marks, haunted and angry and alive , and that was what mattered to Steve the most. Bucky wasn’t beautiful because he was ruined and tormented. He was blazing and glorious because he was alive and back in Steve’s arms; because he looked up at Steve from where he was lying under him, flushed and panting, and said, I don’t care if you don’t-- if you don’t. But I loved you first. You fucking better remember that.
Steve never forgot.
Steve knows Sam watches him sometimes, a worried shadow in the doorway. Sam’s concerned, of course, because he’s seen Steve when Bucky’s impossible, amnesiac existence was still a raw scrape across Steve’s heart. But he knows Sam goes to sit with Bucky when Steve isn’t around, describing the country around them, telling him about all the stupid things Steve has done under Sam’s watch.
Sam cares for Bucky now. What finally bent him was the voluntary cryofreeze, Bucky trying to protect people around him by restraining himself. Sam could appreciate that sort of sacrifice, even if he thought Bucky and Steve were both idiots, and Steve is fiercely glad to have the both of them.
T’Challa leans into the room a couple of times early on, when Vienna and Siberia are still fresh wounds, possibly looking for Steve, but he always leaves after seeing him with Bucky. T’Challa probably knows more about Steve and Bucky than he lets on, but he’s respectful and understanding.
Whenever Steve gets back to Wakanda, he’s never expected to visit the king before heading to the cryo room. It’s a rare form of empathy - T’Challa is the protector of Steve’s fugitive team, and by all formalities Steve should always go and pay his respects to him before doing anything else. Instead, T’Challa lets him go to see Bucky first and foremost, just to check on that sleeping face and wish he could grab Bucky’s vulnerable fingers, curled like a flower.
Steve knows they’re building a new arm for Bucky. He’s seen the schematics and the half-finished prototype and listened to the doctors explain everything to him. The new arm will be lighter, more agile, and it’s designed to set into Bucky’s metal shoulder and existing nerve wirings. Steve wishes he could do more to express his gratitude to T’Challa and his doctors.
You’ll love it, he tells Bucky. It’s not a weapon. You can touch me and not always remember trying to kill me with it. I can touch you and not always remember that it was given to you without your consent.
Then he thinks again and says, If you don’t want it, it’s all right, too. As long as-- as long as you want me. Please. Bucky. Please.
Bucky sleeps on. Steve presses his hand against the glass, the kisses he isn’t able to give in his fingertips, and thinks, I don’t think there’s any version of you that I wouldn’t want.
When they finally thaw Bucky, nine months after he went in, Steve’s waiting for him. Nine months, like Bucky’d been cocooned in his man-made womb, getting ready to live again.
Steve stands a little to the side and lets the doctors do their job, watching the soft movements of Bucky’s face as he starts to wake up. It’s a little astonishing and a little painful to follow the gentle twitching of Bucky’s fingers, the tiny crease between his eyes. Steve’s hands itch for him; for this reborn, overwhelming miracle of a man, a friend, a lover.
When Bucky takes his first stumbling step out of the chamber, Steve pushes past the doctors and opens his arms. Bucky falls against him, shivering, feeling gaunt and familiarly small in Steve’s arms. Somebody puts a blanket on Bucky’s shoulders, and Steve drapes it better around him, pulls him in tightly.
“Hey Buck,” Steve says into Bucky’s matted dark hair. And then, because he can’t help it, “I missed you,” and, “You feel thin.”
Bucky’s forehead is sweaty and cool against Steve’s neck, and his fingers feel chilly when he curls them into Steve’s shirt and holds on. Bucky laughs, just a quiet huff, safe and enveloped in the warmth.
“Do you remember London?” Bucky’s cracking, raspy voice murmurs, and Steve swallows, blinks away the pressure behind his eyes.
“Yes,” he says. “Yes, yes, yes.”