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Steve’s limbs still felt tingly and pleasantly jelly-like, his hot shower having relaxed him even more after their final orgasm of the evening. He and Bucky had finished, panting and laughing into each other’s mouths. Bucky flopped on top of him, pinning Steve to the bed in a way that felt like security and not confinement.
They had mumbled dozily about their days. Steve had had to attend a meeting in the tower, boring as ever, but Bucky had gone to the farmers market that set up shop every two weeks a few blocks away. They mused on plans for the next day, the weather, everything and nothing at all. All the while Bucky traced patterns into Steve's chest while Steve coiled fingers through Bucky’s hair.
It had been wonderful. Normal. Those things got to be synonyms for their life now. Mostly.
Steve switched off the lights in the rest of the apartment on his way back to bed, a towel wound low around his hips.
Bucky sat on the edge of their bed, head low, shoulders hunched. Steve’s hopes of pulling him into his arms and drifting off together stalled at the hazy look in his eye.
“Buck?” Steve crouched down, peering through the curtain of dark hair. A knot of dread ensnared his gut. “Bucky?” The scene was familiar in all the wrong ways.
“Steve?” Bucky’s voice was soft, confused. Steve’s heart cracked. Despite all his promises to never flinch away from Bucky’s recovery, he was never prepared for how much it hurt.
“You feeling alright, sweetheart?” He asked, knowing the answer.
“Stevie…you’re so big?” Bucky said, his tone vacant.
Steve clenched his jaw so hard it might have made a sound. All the progress, the work, the rebuilding. It had all drawn back like a low tide. Bucky put a heavy hand on Steve’s chest. He eyed the metal of his own hand with bemusement, but not alarm. At least this version of Bucky was only confused, not distressed. Not yet anyway, Steve had to pull himself together and keep it that way.
“Sure am.” He covered Bucky’s hand with his own. It was no use probing him. Making him remember. His Bucky, the man he’d watched drag himself from the pits of hell, the one who had rebuilt his life brick by brick, the one he’d married. He wasn’t present right now. But a version of him was, soft and vulnerable. Bucky's eyes dragged themselves between Steve’s. Slow and syrupy. Steve could see the thoughts struggling to form in his mind. A pale blessing was that this Bucky knew him. Maybe not the details, but enough to trust him. That was something he could never take for granted.
“I was gonna lie down for a bit. Will you lie with me pal?” He hated talking to his husband like he was a timid zoo animal, but any incongruous details might confuse and upset him. Like talking to someone with Alzheimer’s, join them in their reality. Bruce had said to him the first time it happened.
Bucky’s eyebrows knit together as if translating the words through something thick and strange, but then he nodded.
Steve crawled up into bed, their bed, and lifted the duvet for Bucky to join him. He scooted in, obedient in a way that Steve didn’t want to think about right now, and settled in Steve’s waiting arms.
“Try and get some sleep, nothing else to worry about right now. Just rest.”
Bucky let Steve pet his hair. Let Steve's gentle knuckle brush along the thin skin under his eye. Seemed content to keep his ear pressed where he could hear Steve’s heart and keep a splayed hand on his flank. Feeling his chest rise and fall.
Steve reached out to flick off the lamp beside them and into the dark Bucky said in a heartbreakingly small voice; “When are we going home?”
Steve had not heard him sound so much like a child in nearly 100 years.
“We are home, doll.” Steve squeezed out, fighting to keep his voice light. “We’re right where we should be.” He hoped Bucky’s silence was acceptance. Trust, not fear.
He listened to Bucky’s breathing smooth out as quiet tears traced tracks from his eyes into his hairline, considering the space around them. Soft fabrics over almost every surface, art and old photographs framed on the walls. Their house, which had been as empty as Steve when he had arrived in the 21st century, was now full of books and love and thick golden lamp light.
It had been over a year since something like this had happened, and there was no way to tell if it would be hours, days, maybe weeks before the rest of Bucky could rearrange inside himself. Every time, Steve feared that they wouldn't. That they would have to start from scratch again. Suffer through the worst of it over and over, and yet again he would have to bear the burden of two of their lifetimes in his own one body. It was too much, even as big as he was now.
He tried to calm his thoughts with a plan; in the morning, he’d call the doctors. Decline any field missions, no matter how important. Hunker down for the long haul. Somewhere in his spiralling, he drifted off, fingers still tangled in Bucky’s hair.
He woke to Bucky nosing groggily into his chest and rubbing a heel of his metal hand into his eye against the early morning light that streamed through the gap in the curtains. Suddenly, he bolted up, as if hit by a cattle prod.
“How long was I gone?” Bucky’s voice was timid, eyes wide and pleading. He sounded like something small and kicked. Steve could have sobbed with relief, they were through the worst of it. For now. He reached for him and tried to cherish the feelings of Bucky leaning into his palm against his cheek, knowing him. Knowing himself.
“Not long sweetheart. A night. Just a few hours. You slept most of it off.”
Bucky bit his lip, chewing on it instead of speaking. His face scrunched up and he pushed out a shaky breath.
“It doesn’t mean- its not… lost progress.” Steve said, but he was only parroting things he’d heard doctors say. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
Bucky's eyes scanned his face, as if looking for memories there. He smiled, fiendish, finding them.
“Well, I had just finished fucking you into next week.” He said with a smirk that told Steve his husband was fully back in the room. He turned his face just enough to kiss the palm of Steve’s hand. “And then we laid here for a while, just talking, then cleaned up a bit. You said you were gonna take a shower and I said I’d join you in a minute. And I was laying here, listening to the water. And your terrible singing…” Steve smiled at the old familiar jab, but Bucky’s face fell again, “and then nothing. Blank. I woke up now.”
“Shorter than the last time.” Steve said. It meant little, but it was something to cling to. “Much shorter.”
The last time had lasted four full awful days. Bucky a hollow pliable ghost. Steve could only coax him to wash and eat and sleep. Or rather, be washed, fed, and put down at night. Not speak. Not smile. Not look at Steve and see anything but a handler performing maintenance. And then he’d just… come back. An empty vessel suddenly refilled. Between one blink and the next he reinhabited his own body, asking Steve what the hell he looked so down in the dumps about. And Steve had nearly fallen to his knees in relief, collapsing into Bucky’s lap and clawing desperately at him as they hugged like he could get any closer.
“How long?” Bucky had croaked out then, understanding seeping into him like ink into paper.
“Seventy-eight hours and thirty-four minutes,” Steve said, a shipwrecked look to him. “Roughly.”
“Oh.” Was all Bucky managed. He held Steve tighter. “I’m back now. I’m here.”
He stroked the back of Steve’s head where it rested against his hip.
It stumped his doctors. Some kind of dissociation. Prolonged absent seizures perhaps. The level of trauma Bucky had been subjected to would have been unsurvivable to an unenhanced individual. But just Bucky’s luck, he had thought, first time for everything.
“Do you think it will ever stop?” Buck asked now. He rolled over, settling back onto the bed. Suddenly exhausted, like he hadn’t just been unconscious for hours. Whatever ghost had stolen his life had taken those hours of sleep with them.
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Steve said. He’d stopped trying to predict the ways in which his heart could break a long time ago. “But I know I won’t. I’ll never stop. I’ll be here every time you go, every time you come back. I’ll love you forever.”
Steve clasped Bucky's hand in his, kissed the back of it, kissed his wedding band where it gleamed in the pale morning light. His thumb moved in soothing circles on the inside of Bucky’s wrist.
“Sap.” Bucky said wetly, tears gathered at the corners of his eyes. Steve’s earnest words glowed like hot coals in his chest, but he’d never been much of a wordsmith himself. So instead he said the only thing that really mattered anyway. “I love you.” And he kissed their hands where they were clutched between them, before giving up entirely and rolling bodily onto Steve and kissing him properly.
Their legs tangled together, and Steve’s arms went around him. Wherever he went. He hoped to always come back to this.