Chapter Text
One day Bucky is alone in the apartment when he hears a noise. He finds Sam Wilson hunched over the kitchen counter, pack abandoned on the ground, blood running sluggishly all down one side of him. He looks up when Bucky approaches, his smile wry and wary. "Hey man," he says. "Sorry to barge in like this, Stark said he'd send someone up."
It's not something that seems to need a reply so Bucky doesn't say anything. There's bits of metal and glass and gravel in Sam's shoulder and arm and scattered around his lower back. "Fell into a pile of trash," Sam says tiredly. "Guess it had to happen sooner or later."
Bucky goes to retrieve the first aid kit from the bathroom. Sam frowns when he comes back. "It's cool," he says. "Someone will be up soon. I'm okay for now."
Bucky shrugs and sets out some bandages and peroxide. Sam eases himself down on a stool, looking skeptical, and lets Bucky cut his shirt away. Bucky holds the tweezers in his left hand, which never shakes.
It's bloody, but the actual damage isn't so bad. There are six pieces of glass but only two are larger than an inch. It looks like the gravel hurts more, Sam's shoulder twitching under his other hand as he starts pulling pieces out. "So this is a little weird," Sam says, after a few minutes.
Bucky pauses. Tips some peroxide into a long scrape on Sam's back and finds two more gravel bits he missed when the bubbles subside. "Why?"
"Well, you've almost killed me about four or five times now," Sam says. "Didn't really picture you as Florence Nightingale."
"Why not?" Sam twists to look up at Bucky, a look in his eyes like he thinks Bucky's kidding him. Bucky meets his eyes evenly.
"Don't know," Sam says eventually. "Guess I don't know you very well."
Bucky offers him a smile. The motion of his hands, plucking little bits of hurt out of Sam, is soothing and familiar. "Steve did this for me once," he says to Sam. "Got knocked down, went into some broken glass. It was on this arm though," he tips his chin towards the left one, "so you can't see it anymore. Is Steve okay?"
Sam makes a noise of sheer exasperation. "Steve is fine. He said to tell you he'd be back in a little while, they're doing clean up."
"Okay," Bucky says. His heart squeezes a little; he doesn't always know what Steve does when he leaves. He leans in close to look at the deepest tear in Sam's skin, debating whether Sam would allow Bucky to give him stitches. "You're afraid of me," he says. It's not really a question.
Sam winces. Bucky leaves the big wound alone and grabs some bandages and ointment for the smaller ones. Sam’s shoulder is warm and reassuring under his fingertips. “It’s not personal,” Sam says.
“I know,” Bucky says. He feels inexplicably shy. "I don’t mind.”
“Yeah, well, Steve would probably kill me if I admitted that to him,” Sam says.
“Why?” Bucky asks. A smear of ointment on Sam’s skin, two bandaids on top laid parallel, like railroad tracks. It feels good to be - good. Kind the way that Steve is kind, the way that Sam himself is kind to Bucky, even though he's afraid.
Instead of answering directly, Sam swivels a little on the stool, enough that he can look Bucky in the face. He doesn't shrug Bucky's hand off, though, so after a moment Bucky moves onto the next patch of gravel burn, ointment, bandages. Sam's eyes on him make him feel - uncomfortable. Awkward. "You doing okay these days?" Sam asks, and Bucky snorts.
"You're the one with glass in your shoulder," he says.
"Yeah, but -" Sam cuts himself off, wincing as Bucky's hand encounters a sore spot. Maybe Bucky should bind his ribs, after he finishes with Sam's back. The big cut is bleeding again, just a little. It should really get stitches.
"Steve told me that you and he were ... together," Sam says. Bucky looks up, finds that Sam is watching him, an awkward little smile on his face. "I just wanted to ask - you've been through hell. You were tortured and forced to kill people for longer than a lot of people are even alive. Steve is - he's a great guy, he's the best. And I know he'd never hurt you on purpose. But sex can be a lot to handle on top of, you know, relearning basic care, so I just want to ask if you're okay with - everything."
Bucky stares at Sam, confused. He turns the words over in his head, trying to parse what Sam is saying to him. Everything except the big cut is bandaged now. He puts a hand on either side of Sam's rib cage, guiding him to sit up straighter. Sam sighs. "Okay, then. Sorry I asked."
"Steve's fine," Bucky tells him, running his hands down Sam's torso, looking for painful or hard spots. "It's me. It's always been me." Sam frowns. "I masturbate a lot, too," Bucky adds, in case it helps.
Sam bursts out laughing, but cuts himself off immediately, wincing - one hand going protectively to his ribs, brushing over Bucky's wrist. Bucky flinches. Sam looks up at him, carefully withdraws, and braces both hands back on the countertop. A clear signal: continue, so Bucky does.
"How is this my life," Sam mutters, and then says to Bucky, "well, okay, so, that's, you know - perfectly normal. Does it help? To," he makes an abstract gesture with one hand.
"Masturbate," Bucky guesses, and Sam rolls his eyes heavenward. "Oh. Yes."
And then, hesitantly, "Sometimes. I don't know."
"It's okay not to know, just ..." Sam trails off. "I was gonna say, don't do anything you don't want to do, but I guess that's sorta been your problem, isn't it?"
Even more confusing. "Nothing's broken," Bucky says, and steps away. "You need stitches on that one near your armpit." He lays two metal fingers on Sam's side, not too close to the cut, to show him where it is, and Sam shivers. Bucky's fingers curl back, and he tucks the arm into his side.
"Yeah, I figured. I guess someone'll be up in a bit to take care of it. The uh, the rest of it, I feel a lot better. Thanks, Barnes."
Bucky retreats to the first aid kit, pops a few painkillers out of their blister packs, lays them on the counter near Sam. Looks at them for a second, and then goes and fills a glass of water. Sets that next to the pills. "Bucky," he says. "Call me Bucky."
Sam is staring at him with a strange look on his face. He's seen Steve look like that sometimes - considering. "What?" he asks.
"Nothing, just," Sam shakes his head. "This is the first time you've said more than ten words to me. Thought maybe I smelled bad or something."
"It's not personal," Bucky says, and Sam smiles.
"Look at you, cracking wise," he marvels, and Bucky smiles back, pleased. The novelty of having a conversation with someone who isn't Steve is - nice. His other hand is shaking, and he tucks it behind himself, knits it in with the metal one. He used to know how to do this.
"You really aren't what I was expecting," Sam admits.
"What were you expecting?" Bucky asks, and for just a moment Sam's face freezes like it can't figure out what to do, what to say, and Bucky hears the answer like his doctor has whispered it into his ear: my soldier, he will do anything you tell him to.
The look on their faces, when he had. Each time he'd come back in from a mission, the way they'd watched him. Coming up from the cold, seizing and disoriented and terrified, surrounded by guns already drawn.
Whatever Sam manages to say, Bucky isn't listening anymore.
-
He leaves Sam in the apartment and goes to sit outside, on Stark's balcony. This high up he can't hear the city noise. All he feels is clean, cool wind on his shoulders. All he can smell is his own cigarettes, the sulphur strike of the match against the pack. It helps, a little. He breathes. He doesn't have a name for what he's feeling, the jumble of heat and shame and frustration roiling in his chest. He smokes another cigarette, and another.
He's still outside, when Steve comes back. He hears the door slide open and snaps back into awareness, looks down at his hand to see that the cigarette's gone out, a column of ash on top
of his bare feet. Steve's still in uniform. He sets the shield down before sitting next to Bucky, pulling off the mask with a long sigh. Bucky looks down at the shield. It glints in the fading sun, less than the arm does, which is shiny and hardly ever seems to scratch. In contrast, the shield looks like it's seen better days. Bucky reaches for it, curls both hands around it. The rim of it digs into his thighs, his calves where he's cradling it in his lap. Steve doesn't even react, his head dropped back against the couch, eyes closed. His throat is bare and mesmerizing, and Bucky wraps the left hand around it and squeezes.
Steve opens his eyes. Bucky's heart stutters, for just a second, but he keeps his hand where it is, gripping Steve's throat. Steve is grimy where the uniform didn't cover him, and he looks tired.
"Why aren't you afraid of me?" Bucky asks.
Steve swallows. Bucky can feel Steve's heartbeat in the pads of his fingers. "Why would I be?"
It's a stupid question. "I kill people," Bucky says. "I've killed a lot of people."
"So have I," Steve says. "I don't know where you're going with this, Buck."
"I could kill you," Bucky tells him, even though he knows a lie when it's coming out of his own mouth.
The corner of Steve's mouth lifts. "You had your shot," he says, like it's funny, and Bucky snarls at him: "You don't get to laugh about it, Rogers." The hand whirrs as he tightens his grip, Steve's throat turning white and blotchy underneath his fingers. Both of Steve's hands come up, wrap around the metal - not struggling, even as his breath gets thick and fast - staring Bucky straight in the face - refusing to look away.
He lets Steve go, pulls away, curls into himself. The shield drops out of his lap and onto the ground. Arms wrapped around his knees and bare feet up on the couch. Listens to Steve wheeze for a second before he can get his breath back.
Steve's hand is warm on his shoulder and Bucky wants to lean into it, wants to push Steve face down into the couch and fuck him, right out here in front of god and New York City, wants to curl up into Steve and go away for a while. "I killed all those people," he says into his knees, his voice dull. "It was me."
Steve, damn him, finally tumbles to what Bucky's trying to say. "No, Buck," he says, urgently. He's close enough that his air brushes over the nape of Bucky's neck. "It wasn't you. They made you do it," he says, when Bucky shakes his head.
"You don't know shit," Bucky tells him. His face is hidden between his thigh and the underside of his right arm and it feels good, his whole world warm and scratchy with hair, the air in his nose humid and smelling of his own body. "I coulda left. I coulda tried to run."
"Did you? What would they have done to you if you did?"
Bucky frowns. Chases hazy memory: jackboots slipping through a pool of blood. His right arm in agony above his head. The razor pain of a cracked rib, cutting every breath into pieces. The urgent need to shit twisting his whole body in knots, trying to hold out just a little while longer. The shake of humiliation and fever wracking all the way through him.
"I coulda left," he says. Steve's whole body is wrapped around him, framing him.
"You're so goddamn stubborn," he whispers. "It wasn't you, Buck. You didn't have a choice. They tortured you."
"You don't know what they did."
"I read the file HYDRA had on you," Steve says, and Bucky's shoulders pull in on themselves, every nerve in his body screaming. It hadn't occurred to him that there would be a file, that they would have kept records of what was done, that Steve of all people would read it. Steve lets him go, lets Bucky scramble backwards and there's a long moment of silence where they just look at each other.
"You don't know," Bucky breathes. The words stutter and shake on their way out. "The first time they sent me out it was to a - a test, to an American base, and I drank a beer with a guy and then I went back to them. I did that. I did all of that, whatever you think you saw in, in some fucking file."
Steve leans forward and Bucky puts both hands up. He can't get his fingers to uncurl out of fists. The right hand is shaking. "Even you think I'm some kinda wild animal," he says.
"I don't, I don't think that," Steve says, putting his own hands up. There's a long, jagged tear down his right glove and Bucky grabs Steve's arm, sticks his fingers into the hole, searching for unbroken skin underneath. Steve lets him, doesn't resist as Bucky yanks him forward, closer.
"You should think it," Bucky tells him. "You'd be right if you did."
Steve shakes his head. The skin on his arm is intact and relief slides through Bucky like a wave. "You don't know," Bucky tells him. He tries to make his tone gentle but it just sounds rough and scratchy to his ears: pathetic.
"Okay, so I don't know," Steve says. "I would if you told me, though." He slides his hand up and down Bucky's arm, comforting. One of his knees is between Bucky's thighs and Bucky's dick feels heavy in the loose pants he's got on, and if he was better, clearer, calmer he'd slide up onto his own knees to grind his dick up against Steve's instead of letting his fucking mouth keep talking.
"I don't want you to know," Bucky says, but what comes out next is the earliest memory he has of after: "After they found me they left bones sticking out of my arm for days. My fingers were rotting right off my hand. I didn't know where I was. I thought I was gonna die."
Steve's face goes so white he stops himself from saying any more. The words themselves hurt coming out, jagged edges that push out of his throat like shards of glass, like gritty sand in his mouth. There’s so much he’s never said to anyone, never had anyone to say these things to. But he doesn’t -
He doesn’t want to hurt Steve. The idea of it an anathema, now. (On the helicarrier, shoulder dislocated, arm fractured, head bleeding, body injured, tired and hurting and afraid, he’d felt vicious, feral joy seeing the last bullet strike home.)
He lets go. "I like killing people," he tells Steve, "I like hurting them. I like when they're afraid of me. You're the only one who's too chicken to see me for what I am. Your friends would put me down if they could, but you're too stupid to let it happen. How long do you think you can keep me locked up in here, Steve?"
Steve reaches for him, and Bucky jerks back. Steve sucks in a little breath - but then his jaw tightens up and his shoulders square. He sets his hands in his lap, palms up. "Until you don't want to be here anymore."
Bucky eyes him, warily. "You can't let me leave," he says.
Steve shrugs. "Go ahead. Get out of here. I won't try and stop you. No one will."
He feels caught. Frozen in indecision. He sets one foot on the ground, weight shifting, fists up in case Steve isn't telling the truth. Steve just sits there, shoulders relaxed, face tilted up, any marks on his throat already faded.
Bucky takes a step. Another. Steve watches him do it. His chest feels hot. His stomach hurts. He's at the door now, and the moment breaks.
He takes two knives from the kitchen. He grabs Steve's shoes from the hall and puts them on in the elevator. He throws his phone into a garbage can outside the building. He’s not positive Stark hadn’t put a tracker in his arm when he was deactivating the ones HYDRA put in there, but there’s not a lot he can do about that short of leaving the arm behind as well. He goes out into the world.
Manhattan is loud and confusing but it’s not much worse than Coney Island, the sheer variety of noises and sound and people veering in and out of his awareness, trying to get somewhere else in a big damn hurry. It gets easier as he moves south, away from midtown, where the streets don’t smell so antiseptic and faces get a little bit less pinched. He walks west just to stay where the shops are bursting with green, living things. He follows people at random for blocks at a time, zig zagging east as the street numbers wind down.
He hasn't been outside for - a month, maybe. Hasn't been by himself for - he stumbles over his own feet. He rights himself in the same step, but fear flickers over him. He doesn't know how long it's been, since he's been with Steve. Weeks? Months? Has it been years? He slows when he passes a newsstand but the date on the papers is meaningless. He feels dizzy with it, time stretching out like the avenue underneath his feet, and he'd been so busy watching one foot step in front of the other that he hadn't even noticed. The sunlight is weak and cold.
Two blocks later is a park and an empty bench that he slumps into, gratefully. There are fat squirrels on the grass and the air smells sweet from the nut cart a few yards away. There are people all around him. It's starting to rain, but he doesn't notice. For little while he can't remember where he is but that's - almost normal. It's the sudden lack of when that's terrifying.
He used to be somebody. He used to live here. He used to have a friend named Steve, who was the scariest little bastard Buck had ever met. He used to have a family who loved him. He doesn't really know when that changed, when it ceased to matter, and it's so fucking unfair that he knows all the pain and the terror and the cold and the killing and the little scraps of kindness, but doesn't know when he stopped being someone who had a name.
-
He walks for a long time. Buildings become smaller, dingier, and then start to rise again dramatically. He can't bring himself to talk to anyone, to try and be charming. He has the words but maybe they're not the right ones, not anymore. He sees himself pass in shop windows, tugs his sleeve down to hide any glint of metal. He walks the streets of Manhattan and it's 1927, 1939, 1968, 1994. The city rises and falls in his memory, wooden signs and cobblestone streets, neon lights, snowbanks as high as his head, graffiti, speakeasies, disco, the heavy clip clop of horse hooves. He rests whenever he finds trees, little pockets of greenery carved into the landscape.
This is how he makes his way to the Brooklyn Bridge. There's a park across the street from the pedestrian plaza and he sits under a tree for a long time, trying to stop his hands from shaking.
He tugs the elastic out of his hair and pulls it back up again, mechanically. He hasn't cut his hair since 1945 and it fits neatly into the loose bun he wears these days. He smooths any flyaway strands back, takes a deep breath, then another. He tugs the hood up over his head, tucks his hands into his pockets. And walks.
The bridge is crowded. People stop and take photos along the way. He makes himself look up, watch the bridge rise above the river, curling away from the ships passing underneath. Brooklyn draws closer with each step. He doesn't know where his family is buried. He doesn't recognize the shape of the city rushing to meet him.
He realizes, abruptly, that it's raining, that it's been raining for hours. He's soaked all the way through. He stops walking, right in the middle of the pathway, and tilts his head up to the sky.
He's not sure what he thinks will happen, when he steps off the bridge and into Brooklyn for the first time in seventy one years. There are bright white lights guiding people off the walkway and towards the waterfront, and he follows the crowd until it thins out a bit, people drifting off, the sound of conversation fading against the white noise backdrop of the East River and the BQE. He feels - quiet. Expectant.
He draws in a long breath, and then another. He looks up into the traffic camera that had turned slightly to watch him pass. "All right," he says to it. "You can tell him where I am."
He sits down on the barrier wall to wait. It's quit raining but the concrete wall is wet and cold. There's a haze over the city, like someone's smeared Vaseline on the lens. It's beautiful. The bridge is a solid presence over his right shoulder, strung all over with sodium lights. Water laps up against the high barrier, smelling briny and familiar.
After a while, he hears a scuffle in someone's step. Steve, warning Bucky of his approach. He sits down next to Bucky, unmindful of the wet concrete. He's got three slices of pizza in each hand, stacked on greasy paper plates. He hands Bucky one set and they sit and eat in silence.
"How long have I been here?" Bucky asks, once he's finished. He tips the paper plate towards the ground, letting the grease run off before he folds it into it a ball.
"Seven months," Steve answers, a little muffled - his mouth full of pizza. He swallows and adds, "and two weeks and a day. If you wanna be exact."
"What month is it?"
"October," Steve says.
Bucky nods, staring down at the crumpled plate in his hands. "I missed your birthday."
"That's okay."
Steve takes the plate from him and throws their garbage away. Returns with his hands tucked into his pockets and they sit and watch the city in silence. After a while Steve says, "You remember we used to swim in this sometimes, in the summer?"
It's more of a sense memory than anything else. The weight of the sun, the creak of the docks, the slick wood underfoot. Steve's sunburnt shoulders. Bucky's wet underwear sticking to his ass, the fear of them sliding off as he dove back into the river. Rinsing off in the spray of a fire hydrant. All of it so far away it might as well have happened on a different planet.
But he does remember. He does.
"I want to read my file," he says. Out of the corner of his eyes he sees Steve nod.
“I figured,” Steve says. He digs one-handed into his pocket for napkins, hands half of them over to Bucky. “I’ve got it for you, back at the Tower.” He hesitates. “Do you - want to tell me about any of it?”
Bucky curls his left hand, inspecting in between the joints for any leftover pizza grease. Sighs, looks over. “I don’t know, Steve,” he says.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Steve says. In the orange light of the bridge he looks very sincere. Bucky can’t even remember how old he was when they first met. “You know that, right?”
"Steve," he says, exasperated, "In a world where I was either a person who could make choices or a - a rabid animal who had no control, what do you think I'd want to be? If I don't -"
He has to stop, the words crowding into his throat and he thinks run away, and then forces them out anyway. "If it wasn’t something I could have changed - if I really couldn’t have fought back - I hate that worse. If I don't blame myself, then I don't feel anything at all. You hear me? I don't want to be like that again. Not ever. I'll take it."
"But -" Steve says, and Bucky throws up a hand.
"Steven Grant Rogers, you listen to me," he snarls. "I'll take it."
“All right, all right,” Steve grumbles, face mutinous. “It's all your fault, you dumb shit. I don't know why you'd listen to anyone tell you otherwise. Anyone ever tell you you're more stubborn than god?"
"That's rich, coming from you," Bucky says, and adds, "and I was in love with you, you fucking mook, and don't you try and tell me I wasn't. I know."
He leans back, satisfied that that'll shut Steve up for a long while, but he barely has time to tug the pack of smokes out of his pocket before he realizes Steve is laughing at him.
Steve is laughing at Bucky, a grin eating up his whole face. "Yeah, you tell it, Cagney," he says. "Whaddaya hear, whaddaya say - no, no, hang on. I'm sorry, you don't usually sound so - I'm sorry, Buck, come on."
Bucky looks down where Steve has grabbed his hand. Slowly allows himself to be guided back down, Steve's fingers tangled up with his. "You never told me, back then," Steve says. "Least you can do is give me a chance now."
Bucky pulls his hand away, looks out over the water. "I'm not that guy anymore, Steve. Haven't you been listening to me?"
"That guy I was never woulda gave it a shot," Steve says, and Bucky looks back at him, sharply. "Maybe he didn't know he could. I dunno, Buck. You tell me. What kind of people are you and me now?"
Bucky pulls a cigarette out of the pack, lights it with his left hand, which never shakes. He draws in a lungful, lets it out towards the water. "You gonna hear me, if I tell you?" he asks, finally.
"I know you'll tell me if I'm not," Steve says, the line of his mouth trying hard to curl.
Bucky holds out his right hand, tangles their fingers back together when Steve takes it. They both glance over their shoulders but no one's watching, no one's even close. They're as alone as they can be, looking out across the river, towards the rest of the world. Steve's fingers are warm against his own.
He licks his lips. Takes another breath. And starts: "When I didn't die, they cut off my arm, above the elbow. They never once asked me any questions ..."