Archive of Our Own

His own breath was hot in his mouth as  he pulled the kid (can’t even remember his name, Barnes) behind the wall of the school, scuffed his own knuckles on the brick. He moved in close, expecting the kid to get a knee up between them right then and there, but he just took a short huff of a breath and then Bucky pressed his lips against his, expecting it to be the same as all of his schoolyard kisses. Except it wasn’t. There was a strange jolt in the pit of his stomach, like a monster waking up, a growling, sinking, stirring feeling that rested just at the beginning of his pelvis and crawled up his chest, blackening his lungs and heading straight toward his heart. He smiled against the boy’s lips and parted his own, palms flat against brick, and when the boy gasped, his hands all knotted up on the front of Bucky’s uniform shirt, Bucky slipped his tongue in, breathing that monster up into his mouth like fire.

When Bucky heard the bell, he pulled back leisurely, smiling self-satisfiedly and fixing the creases in his white shirt, and the kid hauled back and punched him in the mouth hard enough to knock him down. He wiped some blood off the split in his lip and watched the kid go, still smiling, and it was then that he knew. Kissing girls was a bit of fun--tongue kissing had earned him a slap or two and a hard kick to the shin--but kissing a boy was everything kissing girls wasn’t. Higher stakes and there was that feeling. That feeling like smoke before a fire.

He was even proud of the blood stains on his collar, battle scars.

He’d been so dumb. So fucking dumb.
--

He went to the docks for the first time when he was sixteen, about two years before he moved in with Steve. He’d heard about it and he wanted to know what it was really like to touch--and be touched.

He’d always known that men interested in sexual relationships with other men existed. Fairies. Punks. He’d also known since his first same sex schoolyard kiss he was most likely one of them. He’d organized his outward life so it didn’t show--he had Steve, who was weaker, smaller, blond, everything that Bucky wasn’t. Something that everyone could always compare Bucky to and have Bucky come out on top, the perfect soldier’s son, destined to follow in his father’s footsteps. There were always girls. Girls to be seen on his arm, maybe whisper in their ear, make them believe he was theirs, all theirs, but he’d drop them off on their doorsteps without even a goodnight kiss.

The bar down by the docks was like his whole inner world, the secret Bucky he kept wrapped so tightly in himself, reflected. Made real. He was popular. He’d come home, staggering through the door, his lips bright red and his knees wobbly, and it felt good to know he was good at something, truly good at something. He was good at living this double life, living both of them so well nothing would bleed over. He could be the perfect soldier’s son, weak Steve Rogers’s best friend and sole protector, popular with the girls, and down on his knees for men twice his age and no one would know the difference.

That is until he moved in with Steve.

Steve. He didn’t know why he hadn’t seen it sooner. The way his eyelashes touched his cheek when he closed his eyes. That little stretch of skin between his shirt and pants when he stretched by the window at the sink. The line of his shoulders when he had his back turned to Bucky. The way a smile always reached his eyes, so fucking bright and blue it almost hurt, before it reached his lips. And his lips, god, his lips. So fucking pink all the time, begging to be crushed against Bucky’s.

It was all driving him crazy, but he figured he’d grow out of it. Steve was his best friend, had always been his best friend. He’d find somebody at the docks, somebody who liked sucking him off just as much as he liked sucking them off, and everything would go back to normal with Steve. It wouldn’t show, Steve wouldn’t know, Bucky’s double life wouldn’t bleed over into his real one.

He was being dumb. He was being so dumb.
--

He hadn’t meant for it to happen, exactly. Steve was out, trying to get enough money to pay the water bill, probably, and he hadn’t said when he was going to be back and it was a really hot summer that year, 1941, and he’d stripped his shirt off and made himself comfortable on the couch, all the windows open with Brooklyn alive just below him, and he allowed himself a single moment of weakness, of imagining what it would be like if he had the courage to tell Steve anything about who he really was.

He unfastened his pants, but was slow about getting his hand under them, imagining how Steve’s skin would taste on his tongue. His jaw, behind his ear, his collarbone, straight down his bare chest. He would be able to feel every single one of Steve’s ribs, but Steve was stronger than he looked and he hated being coddled more than anything, so he wouldn’t linger there long. Wouldn’t want to make Steve feel small when really it was all about how large Steve had become in the swellings of Bucky’s chest. Steve moaning into his mouth when he slips his tongue between his parted lips, greedy, hungry, surprised at himself. “Buck, Buck, come on. Bucky.”

He only got to touching himself when he’s got his mouth around Steve’s dick. More than anything else, he really wanted to suck Steve’s dick. His toes were pressing into the arms of the couch, making the whole frame creak, but he didn’t care because Steve’s fingers were tangled in his hair, his fingers kneading his scalp encouragingly. “Ah, Buck, you’re so good at this, you were made to do this to me, please. Bucky.” And he’s arching his back, his fingers still in Bucky’s hair, and he’s moaning so loud Bucky can practically taste it on his tongue.

He licked his own hand and imagined, for one unfathomable second, Steve returning the favor. Steve’s eyes flicking up to look at him under those long eyelashes, all wide blue eyes and Bucky would want to encourage him, but by that point, his voice would be long gone, so he’d stroke his thumbs along Steve’s jaw, mumble incoherently, rub his hand over his face, and it wouldn’t take long, not at all, because Steve. Steve.

Bucky’s whole body was covered in sweat, his breath caught somewhere between his throat and his chest, a slow, white burning starting across his chest and spreading dangerously lower, a heady, heavy feeling like all of his limbs are sinking into warm water, and he’s almost there, so close he can feel his own orgasm in his teeth, and then the door opened and there’s Steve with his top button undone and his sleeves rolled to his elbows and Bucky should have stopped, should have covered himself up, should have gotten the fuck out of the living room, but he squeezed the base of his dick, groaned, and came all over his hand, eyes locked with Steve’s. Steve’s face went from surprised, mouth a little slack, to flushed, and then Steve was looking away and the moment broke and Bucky was scrambling, wiping his hand on the first shirt he could reach (one of Steve’s, of course), fumbling with his belt buckle, “Steve, Steve, I didn’t know you were gonna be home, I would’ve--”

“It’s fine, Bucky. It’s--fine.”

“I’m really sorry, I really didn’t think--”

“I said it’s fine, Buck, okay? Drop it.”

It was all dumb. So fucking dumb.
--

He couldn’t come up with a reason why he did it. They were having coffee in the morning before Bucky went to the factory (seasonal work, all heavy lifting in dusty interiors that Steve couldn’t do) and Steve went to draw some of the city’s landscapes before it got too busy to see anything. He should have let it go, wanted to be able to let it go, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself off without remembering Steve’s eyes locked with his own when he came. It was haunting him, almost a weight on his back, and for all his fear about Steve knowing who and what he really was, he doubted very much that Steve was naive enough not to notice that he danced with dames but never went home with them.

“You know that night you, uh, came home early?” He cleared his throat. Steve’s back was to him, looking out the dirty little window above the sink at the fire escape. “I, uh. I wanted you to know I was thinking about--you.”

Steve’s mug hit the counter and the handle broke off of it. There was a tiny sliver that cut his hand, a perfect half-moon, and it welled with blood. Steve wiped it on his pants. “You shouldn’t say things like that.” Steve’s voice was cold, distant, nothing like it normally was. Steve was much more introverted than Bucky and always needed a bit of time to catch up, but this was beyond. His eyes were like steel, all of his internal cogs working at maximum speed to keep Bucky shut out.

Bucky didn’t want to be shut out.

“Doesn’t mean that much, you know. Plenty of guys go down to the docks every once in a while, get themselves taken care of. Their shoes shined.” He sneered at Steve, but Steve wasn’t looking at him, lost in something he’d probably never tell Bucky about. “Some of ‘em got wives and kids and everything. Sail all the way around the world to get it in Brooklyn. I’m, uh, I’m pretty good at it. Shining shoes, I mean. At least as good as a dame you’d pay for, probably. It wouldn’t mean anything if we-- did that. I mean, I could be the punk, that’s not a--”

“Bucky, shut up.”

“Okay, I just--Steve, I really, uh, really got some feelings for you. I’ve been tryin’ really hard not to let them get the better of me, but the fact is that I can’t think of anyone or anything I want more than you. If, uh, if that’s too much for you, I understand, but I really think we could have something good here. If you wanted. Something good. With me.”

Steve didn’t say anything. Bucky drank the rest of his coffee, folded up the newspaper he’d only opened to have something to do with his hands, and tried to give Steve a pat on the back, but Steve shrank from his touch like a turtle drawing itself into its shell, curving his already curved spine tight and away from Bucky’s touch. Bucky let his hand fall in the space between them and tried to swallow his heart back down.

He was dumb. He was so fucking dumb.
--

It was tense between them, charged, but Steve was as good at lying to himself as Bucky was (experts)  and so they carried on as if nothing really happened. Steve started going to an art class in the city, wanted to drag Bucky along since he was going mostly on Bucky’s dime, but he couldn’t be bothered. Steve had all the talent. Bucky wasn’t really meant for the arts, not the way Steve was.

The tension finally broke when Steve asked Bucky if he could draw him. “It’s an assignment, it’s not-- Body proportion and all that. We’re supposed to use subjects--” Steve swallowed around the words like they were choking him, “someone close to us.”

“Do I, uh, have to be naked? I mean, what type of body proportion are we talking here?” Bucky shifted uncomfortably, suddenly hot under the collar, and he knew blood was rushing to his face. He prided himself on not being a prude--he never shrank away from anything anyone wanted him to do, anyone they wanted him to be, any name they wanted to call him--but this felt intimate. This was Steve.

“You--can. If you want to. I don’t think it’s necessary. The assignment is pretty unclear, I don’t think it specified how you should be posed or, uh, clothed. I can just… We can just forget it, if you don’t want to. You look like you don’t want to.”

Steve started packing away his notebook, but Bucky caught his wrist. Resisted the urge to rub his thumb along the top of Steve’s hand. “No, I want to.” Barely more than a whisper. He could have kicked himself.

He ended up sitting out on the fire escape, head thrown back against the folding chair they’d stolen from someone else’s fire escape, Steve tucked into himself on the steps, his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth as he smudged and erased and drew straight lines, his focus on Bucky so clinical and practiced that it almost ruined it.

Almost. When their eyes would meet, it was like electricity straight through Bucky, running hot up from his pelvis to his chest to his face. He shifted, trying to divert attention from the fact that he was getting hard, but it was too late.

“Do you want to--we can stop so you can… I mean--” Steve fumbled with his notebook, snapping it shut and sending his pencils everywhere.

“Going to take a long time to do this portrait if you have to stop every time I get excited.” Bucky stretched, hoping Steve’s eyes would find the line of his body and follow it down. They did. He couldn’t help himself. He cupped a hand over himself, groaning a little. “Just something about you, Rogers.”

Steve wasn’t averting his eyes. Good sign. Bucky started massaging himself through his pants, biting his lip as Steve licked his. It wasn’t a sexual lip licking, it was the same clinical way he flicked his tongue out when he was focused, but it was enough.

“This doesn’t bother you?” Steve shook his head. “Maybe, uh, wanna go inside and help me out a little?” Steve shook his head. “Then what do you want me to do, Rogers? Rub one out right here in my pants?” Steve shrugged.

So that’s exactly what he did. Steve never got up from the steps, never bothered to pick up all of his scattered pencils. Bucky hiked one of his legs up on the railing, to give Steve a better view, and felt himself through his pants, both frustrated and aroused by all the friction, the fact that he couldn’t quite make out the pressure of the palm of his own hand through the fabric.

“You wanna know what I’m thinking about?” He didn’t wait for Steve’s answer. “How good it would feel if you were right here, against me, sittin’ in my lap.” Bucky lifted his hips up, jerking up  into his palm. He wanted to close his eyes, really picture it, but he also wanted to watch every minute change on Steve’s face, gauge every hitch in his breath and the way the light caught in his eyes. “Would take your shirt off, slow, lean up and kiss your neck and start kissing down, you wiggling around on top of me. Nipple in my mouth.” He could feel sweat beading up at the base of his neck, starting to slide down and cool as it hit the September air. “Then I’d get a hand on top of you and you’d be hard, rock hard, waiting for me, and I’d let you wiggle around some more, till you were begging for it. And then I’d unbuckle your belt, take you out, stroke you real slow. Slow enough that you’re rocking into my hand, rocking against me. You’re leaning down, whispering dirty things in my ear, absolutely filthy, and then you kiss me full on the mouth, and we’re both--ahh--we’re both really close.” Bucky felt his chest tighten, the buildup starting in his curling toes and stretching up, lighting all of his muscles on fire, and he wanted Steve to say something, do something, anything. His dick hurt from how hard he was rubbing the front of his pants. “I’m gonna come, Rogers.”

Steve’s lips turned up. “Come for me, Bucky.”

No one could say he wasn’t good at following orders.

It was dumb. It was incredibly fucking dumb.
--

A few frustrated months of getting off to the thought of Steve at every opportunity and he agreed to go to the stupid class. Steve didn’t bring it up and it didn’t happen again. Steve would merely edit out the hard on in his drawings  and decline to comment when Bucky would take care of himself afterward. Steve would go in his room, away, not be an active participant. But it wasn’t off between them. Well, it didn’t seem off to Steve. If anything, he seemed relieved, as if some expectation had been lifted off of him by watching Bucky.

It wasn’t any easier for Bucky. If anything, it made the whole thing more difficult. He didn’t understand. Steve hadn’t been the least bit interested. If anything, he was interested in the idea that Bucky wanted it so badly, that it seemed important to Bucky. Bucky knew Steve had never been with anybody, that could be part of it, but there was an almost otherworldly quality to how he’d watched Bucky, like it was something from another world, something Steve could never understand. Something that scared virgins didn’t have. Something that no one Bucky had ever met had.  

The art class was dull. He found himself more talented than most of the students and Steve seemed to enjoy his company on the long train rides home. Even when Bucky (frequently) ended up falling asleep against his bony shoulder.

It was during that art class that they found out about Pearl Harbor.

Bucky didn’t talk on the train ride home. He knew what would happen. He’d enlist or he’d get drafted and Steve would be left behind. It was paralyzing, the thought of the kind of person he’d be without Steve. The kind of person Steve might be without him. They hadn’t spent a day without each other since grammar school. And there was always the possibility that something bad could happen. Both of their fathers…

“You’re going to enlist, aren’t you?” Steve waited to ask him until they got in the door, as if he’d been holding his breath till that moment.

“What choice do I have? Men are going to die. I’ll probably be at least a sergeant once basic is done, besides. And I don’t want to wait around to get drafted. You know it’ll happen.”

“I don’t want you to die, Buck.” His voice cracked. Bucky felt like his entire chest caved in. Starting at the solar plexus and crumbling outward. He wanted to run up, take Steve in his arms, but he knew about how well that would be received.

“I’m not gonna die, Steve. You’re melodramatic.” Everyone Steve had ever loved had died. Bucky knew that. Bucky didn’t say that.

They ended up putting all the couch cushions on the floor like they had when they were kids. Like they had when Steve’s mom died. Bucky tried to keep it innocent, he really did, but Steve rolled over, pressed his back against Bucky, curving his spine so most of his heat and pressure was right against Bucky’s crotch, and all of his attempts at sweetness, at an apology for being able-bodied and going to war, at being Steve Rogers’s best friend when he needed a best friend, were all gone.

“Steve…” A warning whisper, low in his ear, but Steve didn’t move. He made a sleepy, contented sound and settled in further, curving perfectly to fit around Bucky’s body. Bucky put his hand on Steve’s hip. Steve didn’t move.

He let his fingers inch upward, under the hem of Steve’s t-shirt, wrapped his hand around to press flat against Steve’s stomach. His hands looked huge on Steve, alien. “Steve. You can feel how much I want this. I’m not gonna… What can I do? What will you let me do? Can I touch you? Do you want me to touch you?”

“Just like this. Nothing south of the waist.” Steve put his hand over Bucky’s, intertwined their fingers, held him there. He was warm, warmer than Bucky expected.

“Can I kiss you?” Steve didn’t say anything, so Bucky pressed his lips against the back of Steve’s neck, opened them and breathed, his whole body starting to shiver with arousal and restraint. He wanted so badly to move his hips against Steve, but he held himself together, barely. He moved his lips to the underside of Steve’s jaw. His earlobe. His cheek. Steve turned his face and Bucky kissed him, feeling like he was swallowing fire. He moved his hand up Steve’s chest and then back down to his stomach, pulling himself tighter against Steve’s back as Steve’s tongue tangled with his. He got his other hand up in Steve’s hair, gentle, and it was like everything was happening in one of those stop-motion pictures with no sound, like it was happening to somebody else, but the feeling in his stomach and the curve of Steve’s body against his and the little noises he got to make in Steve’s mouth made it almost too real to be real.

“Can I… I’m really… I want…” He pressed his forehead against Steve’s cheek, breathing hard. “I either gotta stop this now or I gotta take care of… I’m too…”

Steve nodded against his head. “Take care of yourself. I’m not moving.”

Bucky groaned when he got a hand between them and under his sweatpants. He didn’t even really have enough in his reserves to ask Steve how uncomfortable it must be to have Bucky’s hand moving so fast against him. He pressed his mouth to the back of Steve’s neck, breathing hard. “God, Steve. Fucking you like this would be everything I ever wanted. My hand just where it is, flat on your stomach like it fits there, and I’d go so slow, god, I’d go slow enough that you’re begging me, your hands all fisted up and your face all flushed, your hair sticking to your forehead just like it is right now. You’re begging me and I’m still going so slow, achingly slow, and you’re working on yourself, pushing back against me, begging me to go faster. Harder. And I won’t, I won’t ‘cause I love how worked up you get, how you’re squirming on me, fucking love it. So hot.” He pressed a quick kiss to the back of Steve’s neck. “Tell me when, Steve, fuck. I’m so close, please.”

Steve turned his head, reached between them and caught Bucky’s forearm. He tugged it up and Bucky protested slightly, biting his lip to keep himself from whimpering, breathing hard in the shell of Steve’s ear, but he took his hand out of his pants, let it lay in the small space between his chest and Steve’s back.

“You’re always the one begging, Bucky.”

“You’re right, Steve, you’re right.” He was desperate. All of his muscles were screaming, holding tight, and all he needed was a couple of rubs against Steve and he’d be gone, so gone, but he held himself rigid, Steve’s hand still on his forearm. Slender fingers holding him tight. “Please, Steve. I want…” His voice was cracking so he just stopped, breathing hard against Steve. “Please.”

“What do you want?” Steve’s voice was measured, so in control. It was more maddening the tightness in his muscles and the desperate, clawing feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“Want… you. Please. Your hand. Or just… can I move against you? Please, anything. Want to come. Want you.” He pressed his mouth, open, against Steve’s cheek, squeezing his eyes shut because there were tears starting to well at the corners of his eyes. “Please, Steve, please.”

“Can you come without touching yourself?” A real question, not part of his game. Not a test. He really wanted to know.

“I--probably. I need a little help, though, you know. Like… talking, or, uh moaning, or…”

Steve turned again, pressing their chests flush. He put a hand on Bucky’s cheek as if he was afraid he’d get burned and leaned up to kiss him square on the mouth, sloppy and unpracticed and deeply. Bucky hadn’t really thought about it, but he might be the first person Steve had ever kissed. He’d never heard him talk about it on the schoolyard like most of their classmates, although that wouldn’t really have been Steve’s style anyway. He kissed like it was his first kiss, but he also kissed like he meant it, his tongue sweet and rolling in Bucky’s mouth before he could get a real grasp on what was going on. Bucky tilted his head, deepened the kiss even further so their mouths were practically crushed together, his hand tightening on the back of Steve’s t-shirt. When Steve finally pulled away, Bucky tried to lean forward, catch his bruised and sticking out bottom lip, but Steve put a hand on his chest, shook his head, and licked his lips. His bruised, red lips that more than anything Bucky wanted on his throat, on his chest, on his annoyingly aching dick.

“Goddammit, you’re such a tease. Steve, please. Can I at least stroke myself off, jesus.”

Steve ran the hand on Bucky’s chest up to his throat, ran his thumb along Bucky’s jaw, up into Bucky’s hair, smoothing it away from his face. “You’re in love with me, aren’t you?”

“What a time to ask a guy.” Bucky squirmed, the front of his pants pressed against Steve’s thigh. Just a few more inches and he’d be gold, could get himself off in a heartbeat, fall asleep without having to have this conversation when he was trying to dry hump his best friend. “Even dames don’t got timing like that, Rogers.”

“Tell me the truth and I’ll… well.” The corners of Steve’s lips turned up and Bucky’s hips involuntarily jumped. Steve laughed and put a hand on Bucky’s waist. Like that could stop him if Bucky really wanted to finish and they both didn’t know it.

“I… I think so, yeah. I mean, I try real hard not to. You’re my best friend and I don’t want… It would be horrible if things ended badly. And it’s not safe for you to be, you know. Like me. I can take care of myself and you… You know. You get beat up without adding being a queer on top of it, so I just… I’ve been tryin’ really hard to talk myself out of it. You’re all I’ve got, Steve.”

Steve’s hand moved down from Bucky’s jaw, down to the middle of his chest. “Keep talking.”

“What--I--that’s all I got to say about it. I’m trying not to be in love with you, isn’t that what you want to hear?”

“No.” He moved his hand lower, rested right on the spot on Bucky’s stomach where all of his desire was pooled, just before the waistband of his drawstring pants. “I want to hear you say you love me. I want to hear the truth.” His fingers were crawling and Bucky would have told him anything if he thought that Steve would actually touch him.

He didn’t think that Steve would actually touch him.

“I love you. Always have. Goddammit, Steve Rogers, I am in love with you.” He was yelling and Steve craned up, smashed their lips together to shut him up and slid his fingers under the waistband of Bucky’s pants. Deft, delicate, artist’s fingers, fingers with no callouses and his palm wasn’t rough and gritty, and he gripped Bucky like he was afraid he would break him. Bucky jerked his hips into Steve’s hand a few times, did all the work himself as Steve kissed him almost lazily, his tongue running along the inside of Bucky’s bottom lip. Bucky tried to warn him, pull his hand out in time, but Steve bit down on his bottom lip and it was all over.

Steve pulled his hand out of Bucky's pants and pulled a face. Bucky grabbed his hand, licked all the cum off, even between his fingers, expecting to get at least a little bit of a rise out of Steve, but he was looking at Bucky that same way, like he was an animal in a cage at the zoo, something completely different from Steve himself. “You like the way that tastes?”

“I don’t know.” Bucky shrugged. “Just used to it, I guess.” He was tired all the way to his bones. He rubbed small circles on Steve’s back and closed his eyes for a second before he felt Steve’s breath hovering near his face. “Thank you. For that.”

“For what?” Steve laid his head on Bucky’s chest like he used to when they were kids. He used to listen to Bucky’s heartbeat, drum it out on his arm in the summer when they were too hot and tired to do anything else. It wasn’t the summer, but their skin was sticking together and Bucky’s heart felt about twelve times too big for his chest.

“You know. I--I think I get that you don’t, um. Aren’t interested in that sort of thing. But you. You did it for me. That’s… I mean, that’s pretty great, if you ask me.”

“Maybe I love you too.” Steve tightened his arms around Bucky’s waist, nuzzled his nose against Bucky’s chest, settled in like he was going to sleep like that.

“I’m not going to die, Steve.”

They were so dumb. They were so fucking dumb.
--

It’s not that he expected something to happen the night before he got deployed. He just didn’t expect Steve to be so sullen and distant. He lost Steve in the crowd somewhere before Stark’s part of the fair was over and he almost gave up looking, sitting on the steps in front of the memorial. All the soldiers in their dress uniforms, kissing their girls goodbye. The loves of their lives. The girls whose pictures they would carry around while they were shot and killed two thousand miles away.

He wanted Steve.

He found him and they argued, like they’d been arguing since Pearl Harbor, Steve as stubborn and blinded by his own convictions as always. They hugged, but that was it. No kiss. No picture. No desperate plea that Bucky not go. No promise that he come back alive. Nothing romantic at all. Like they were just friends again, like that night on the couch cushions had never existed.

For a selfish couple of seconds, Bucky wished he would die overseas. That Steve would cry every night for the rest of his life, regretting the fact that he’d had everything he ever wanted and let it slip through his fingers.

Bucky didn’t know there were things worse than death yet.

He was dumb. He would learn.
--

The first thing Zola tried to take from him was Steve. He was the hardest, the toughest they’d seen, a good candidate, Zola had said as he injected him with more and more things, things that made him fall asleep, things that made him feel like he’d never sleep again, things that felt like poison, things that felt like fire, things that felt like rainwater going through his blood. But Bucky must have said something about Steve. In between all the recitations of Sergeant James Barnes 32557038, he must have said it. He must have said Steve’s name.

“Steve, Sergeant Barnes? Who is Steve? There is no one in the 107th named Steve.” Bucky said nothing but his name and his serial number over and over again, praying that Zola would kill him soon. “I can make things much simpler for you, Sergeant Barnes, if you tell me who Steve is. We are only trying to help you, improve you, make you into the perfect soldier.”

The perfect soldier. “Sergeant James Barnes 322557038, Sergeant James Barnes 322557038, Sergeant James Barnes 322557038.” Zola put something in his IV and his mouth felt like it was sealed with concrete.

“Sergeant Barnes, I have given you something that should make you more willing to answer my questions since violence and opiates do not seem to be working. It is called SP-117, a Russian creation. You should find yourself calming down. Who is Steve?”

“Love him.”

“You love him. Are you a homosexual, Sergeant Barnes?”

“Yes.”

“Is Steve a fellow soldier?”

“No.”

“Is he in New York?”

“Yes.”

“Does he write you letters?”

“No.”

“Would you die for him?”

“Yes.”

“Ahh, Sergeant Barnes, Sergeant Barnes. We can’t have these kind of attachments if the procedure is to work. We will start working on that first, then. Before you forget who you are, you will forget who this ‘Steve’ is.”

It was the first time that Zola made him scream.

He was dumb for thinking that was the worst thing that Zola--HYDRA--could do to him.
--

Zola had him for two weeks before Captain America rescued him. He couldn’t wipe him. The cognitive behavioral torture wasn’t replacing anything. He remembered the way Steve smelled and the cadence of his voice and the way his body had felt against Bucky’s that night, the night the war really started. And he thought he was dreaming when he heard Steve’s voice. Another drug-induced fever meant to make him physically sweat Steve out, manipulate his memories and write Steve directly out of his life.

It took him a while to call Captain America Steve. To think of him as Steve. Not just because of the serum, but because of the change in him. The serum magnified everything, even the spirit that had been resting in Steve. Everything that Bucky had fallen in love with was on a grand stage now, was there for everyone to see, and everyone was responding. Whether Steve had liked it or not, in so many ways, he’d belonged to Bucky. He depended on him not only financially, but physically, emotionally, psychologically, and now… He was the perfect soldier. He belonged to everyone else.

“You’re mad.” They were alone, late, after the colonel and the rest of the 107th had left, after they’d caught up with Phillips in Italy. Steve was in his dress uniform, badges pinned to his chest, but Bucky was still in the fatigues they’d captured him in. His dog tags sat on his bare chest, cold, right over his heart.

“Mad? Why would I be mad? You went and nearly got yourself killed turning into a superhero while I was watching the Germans plow through the 107th, but I don’t understand why I should be mad about that. It’s what you wanted, after all. To be the perfect soldier. More than anything. More than me.”

“Oh, don’t act like that, Bucky.” Steve stood up. He was a head taller than Bucky now, a thought that nearly brought him to tears. He wanted Steve back. He wanted Steve back so badly, he almost wished he was still on Zola’s table if this was what the rest of his life was going to look like. “You would have done the same. If I was over here and you weren’t, you can’t tell me you wouldn’t do anything you could to get over here.”

“That’s not the reason you did it.” Bucky crossed his arms over his chest, took a step back. “You’re selfish.”

“No. I didn’t do this because I--I think I’m better than anyone else or that I deserved it for all the times I was picked on for being the little guy, I did it because I believed it was the right thing to do. And I still do. We can win this war, Bucky. We can save lives.” Captain America, not Steve. Still not Steve.

“You know, the whole time Zola had me, all he asked me about was you. Not military strategies, not anything about tactics, not even about the 107. Just you. He wanted to know everything I felt about you so he could rip it out of me and mold me into something else. All that time, I was fighting to hold onto you. You, Steve, not Captain fucking America. I don’t want to win the war, I don’t care about the war. I want to go home.” He was crying. He hadn’t noticed.

“I’m the same person, Bucky. I’m the same man.”

“Maybe I’m not.”

He left the strategy tent. He didn’t know where he was going, anywhere there wasn’t a poster of Captain America.

Steve had been dumb. He would only get dumber.
--

Steve looked at her like she was something he understood, something from his world. Not the way he had looked at Bucky back in their too small apartment  and certainly not the way he looked at Bucky now, pity etching lines around his eyes and in the downward turn of his mouth. It made his stomach turn over. It was a bullet straight to the gut. It was confirmation of everything he’d always known. It wasn’t Steve that had been the problem, the hitch in them really getting together, it had been Bucky. He was the degenerate, after all.

He would fall for a girl like Peggy. He probably kissed her better than he’d kissed Bucky, probably had no problem sliding his hand up under her skirt, fuck, maybe even his tongue, probably fucked her like he meant it, earnest and strong and slow.

Maybe she has a friend, he’d said. Maybe she has a friend.

Bucky was going to follow Steve Rogers into the jaws of death. Only because the thing he wanted most in the world was to die.

Dumb. So fucking dumb.
--

He did his job. He sniped. He was a prime marksman, even better now that he had a common disregard for his own life. He watched Captain America’s back and played the role of dutiful right hand man, hoping against hope that someday soon one of those HYDRA scouts would get a good shot in and he wouldn’t have to do it anymore.

He never slept well. Not because of the hard ground and the sound of soldiers around him. He had gotten used to that. It was the memory of Zola, what he’d tried to take from Bucky. What he’d already lost. Nightmares about Steve, Steve before the serum, with a helmet on his head and a gun in his hand and a chest blown apart right in front of Bucky’s eyes like so many of the men in the 107. A Steve he couldn’t protect anymore. A Steve that didn’t exist anymore.

Steve found him. Bucky pointedly didn’t sleep near Steve’s tent like the rest of the Howling Commandos, preferring the company of the more expendable soldiers. The kind of soldier he hoped to be.

“You can’t sleep either, huh?” He sat next to Bucky, on the ground, uninvited. He was wearing fatigues that were a little too tight, probably someone else’s. Captain America hadn’t really been intended to be combat ready.

“I reckon super soldiers probably don’t need any.” Bucky didn’t sit up, he stayed on his bedroll, staring at stars he felt like he’d never seen before. They had to be the same everywhere, the same stars, but he wasn’t sure. Hemispheres and all that. To be honest, he wasn’t even sure what country they were in anymore. The bases were blending together into rounds and blood splatter and questioning scientists and the bags under his eyes from another sleepless night under a sky he couldn’t even recognize.

“You’d be wrong.” He let the silence stretch between them, tilting his head up to look at the sky. He seemed as dissatisfied as Bucky. “I miss you, you know. A lot. I’ve missed you every single day you were gone.”

“Hmm. Funny how you didn’t write.”

“I, uh. Erskine had already selected me for the program. Before you even left the States, honestly. They wouldn’t let me write you, it had to all be top secret. No one could know what was going to happen to me, where I was. It might not have worked, so they didn’t want any record, you know, in case. I… I wanted to follow you, Buck. I didn’t want to sit around and wait for you to get back. I didn’t want you to be someone I didn’t know.”

“Neither did I, but here we are.”

Steve punched the ground. It actually shook underneath Bucky. He tightened his jaw, sat up, looked Steve in the eye.

“What do you want me to say, Steve? That everything can go back to normal and we’ll be best friends again? We’re in a war. While you were traveling around the country with your three ring circus and Agent Carter, I was watching men die like flies and wondering if I’d even get to see your face again. I don’t know what I can say that changes that and I don’t know what you can say that changes that, so I don’t see what the point is. I’m with you because I ain’t got any other choice. But I’m not dying for you, I’m dying for the kid you left in Brooklyn. The kid I loved.”

“Bucky, I love you.” It was barely more than a whisper. “And you promised me you wouldn’t die, do you remember that?”

“That feels like a hundred years ago.”

“It wasn’t. Did you mean it?”

“Mean what? That I wouldn’t die? No, I was just--”

“No. When you said you loved me. That you’d always loved me.”

“Yes. I meant it.” He laid back down on the bedroll, tried to find anything he recognized in the night sky, anything to ground him. Remind him who he had been before Zola, before Pearl Harbor, before Steve, before he’d kissed that kid in the schoolyard. He felt like there wasn’t anything there, that he'd been hollowed out.

“I got you out by myself, you know. Everyone. I was--you’re right, while other men were dying, I was in tights, telling people to buy war bonds. But when they told me the 107 was captured, I risked everything. Defied direct orders. Colonel Phillips told me you were dead. And a part of me believed him, but I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t stand in front of any crowds knowing you needed me and I hadn’t tried to get to you. If I had to take home a body, I’d take home a body. There was no one else, it was just me.”

Bucky didn’t say anything, didn’t feel like he could. He did know that. He knew exactly how the operation had gone down because Colonel Phillips had told him personally as if was some pinnacle of friendship, a legend that he’d pass down to his grandchildren. How Captain America saved his closest friend from the Nazi demons and they won the war together, riding off into the sunset in USO tanks.  It didn’t change anything. He’d told Steve about Zola, what he’d tried to do, and that hadn’t changed anything either. It wasn’t about keeping score.

“And I’m not--Peggy is interested in me. I think she’s interested in me, but I’ve never. You know what--how I am.” Bucky glanced at Steve’s profile. He had pulled his knees to his chest, ridiculous considering his size, so jarringly vulnerable it made his heart jump. “I’d never do that with anyone but you. If I’m going to do that, be that, it’d have to be with you.”

“Did you--tell her? That you’re not… that sex isn’t…” He trailed off. They’d never acknowledged it verbally, a kind of elephant between them. It had mattered to Bucky less and less the more distance he got from Steve. He’d had sex. He’d had plenty of sex. Enough sex for both of them. There were more important things.

“No. I think she’s starting to put the pieces together, though. Or at least she knows I’ve never... “ He gestured vaguely. Bucky suppressed a laugh. “It doesn’t have to be this hard, Bucky. We love each other. It shouldn’t have to be this hard.”

Steve was so fucking dumb.
--

Bucky started sleeping in Steve’s tent. On his bedroll at first, in the corner, listening to the quiet sounds Steve made as he slept, almost like he forgot he didn’t have asthma anymore. It didn’t arouse suspicion because Steve was so well known for burning the candle at both ends and Bucky was always his first consultation on strategy matters, whether it made the most sense or not.

“Bucky.” Bucky didn’t move, kept his back turned to Steve. It had been a few hours since they’d cleared out the tent, but the table was still folded out between them, all the little figurines still in place for the raid in the next few days. “Bucky. I know you’re awake. Bucky.” He rolled over, but he didn’t move. “Come over here. I’ve got plenty of room. Sleep with me. It’s cold.”

It was cold, but Bucky didn’t move. “Buck. Stop being so fucking stubborn. Get in my bed.”

He was loathe to deny a direct order. He padded over to Steve’s bed, still wearing three pairs of socks in hopes of keeping the cold in the ground. Back in Brooklyn, he would have fit perfectly, tucked behind a tiny Steve on a cot, but now it would take some situating. Steve shrank back and Bucky laid down and Steve’s warmth filled his back, so much more solid than he imagined him being. And they still fit, just backwards. Bucky arched his back, pressed himself tighter into Steve, pulling at one of Steve’s wrists to get an arm around him. Steve put his hand on Bucky’s stomach, warm even through the jacket he was wearing. His hand was huge.

He hadn’t slept better since he’d left Brooklyn.

So fucking dumb.
--

Bucky turned around in Steve’s arms the next morning, pressed his face to Steve’s much bigger chest, watching his breath steam up in the air. Steve didn’t feel like anything he could remember under his hands, but his eyelashes resting on his cheeks still looked the same, too long for his face, and he still had the same furrow between his brows as if he was thinking too hard even in his sleep, and he smelled the same and he was still so impossibly warm against Bucky.

It was enough to get him worked up, to be this close again.

He got a hand between their bodies, tried to keep his hand slow and steady so as not to disturb Steve, but he was breathing too hard, trying too hard to keep quiet. Steve opened his eyes, took his hand off Bucky’s waist to wipe at them, yawned, stretched against Bucky, his hand falling right across Bucky’s lap. His lips turned up at the corners. “Can’t even spend one night with me without getting off?”

“You know me.”

Steve reached between them, pulled Bucky’s hand out of his pants. He didn’t protest. Steve looked like he had a plan. “Remember how the first time I watched you, you said you wanted me in your lap? Do you remember that?”

“Hmm, sure.” He pressed himself closer against Steve, to feel the heat, but also to feel how all of Steve’s new muscles felt against his body. It was different, so different, but a good different, Steve’s smell strong enough to make his head swim.

“Can we do that? Only you. You on my lap.”

They ended up on the floor. Bucky wrapped his legs around Steve, put his hands on Steve’s shoulders to steady himself, took a deep breath. It had most definitely not escaped his notice that this was the first sexual--intimate--thing Steve had ever asked for. He’d thought about it. What Bucky had said over a year ago and he’d pictured it and he’d wanted it, all this time. Bucky kissed him, slowly at first, giving Steve time to break it off if he wanted to, but Steve just followed his lead and responded when he deepened the kiss, his fingers tightening in Bucky’s hair. Bucky rocked his hips a little, pressed tight against Steve’s stomach and groaned into his mouth.

“You could fuck me just like this, you know? Wouldn’t even have to do any work,” he whispered into the shell of Steve’s ear, dipping down to wrap his lips around Steve’s ear lobe. “I would do all the work. Ride you till we were both screaming. Bet you’re bigger down there, god, I bet you’re fucking huge. Have to stretch myself out first. Wanna watch?”

“Hmm?” There were tiny red marks all along Steve’s jaw where Bucky’s unshaven face had irritated it. He rubbed at some of them with his thumb. Apparently the serum hadn’t made his skin less sensitive, it just made everything heal so much faster. “Watch you do what?”

“Hold on.” Bucky stood up and peeled off his pants, hissing as the cold air hit his bare legs. He pulled off his shorts and sat back down on Steve’s lap, resisting the temptation to rock back against the solid muscle of Steve’s legs. He dug his heels into Steve’s back so he could get better leverage. “Lick my fingers.”

Steve did as he was told, licking up and down both Bucky’s index finger and his middle finger. Bucky groaned just watching him, his dick jumping against Steve’s stomach. “You’re good at that, you know.”

Steve just laughed, low in his throat. “What are you doing, Buck?”

“Stretching myself out for you.” He could feel the smirk on his lips, but he was nervous, his whole body flushed and hot and feeling too tight. He leaned forward, putting more of his weight across Steve’s shoulders as he reached his left hand behind himself. He pressed one wet fingertip into himself and felt like he was seeing stars already, breathing hot into the shell of Steve’s ear. “Wish they were your fingers, but this’ll do. Fuck myself in your lap. Dream come true.”

Passed the first knuckle and it was taking everything in his power not to roll his hips against Steve, his dick hard and begging and leaking already between them. “God, you wreck me, Steve.” He rocked back onto his index finger, hissing, resisting the urge to bite down on Steve’s shoulder. Instead he leaned his head against Steve’s neck, mouthed at his shoulder as he curled his finger inside himself. “God, Steve. Missed you. Missed this.”

He could feel Steve’s chest hitching, the strongest reaction he’d ever gotten out of him. He rocked back on himself again, throwing his head back. He kept his eyes open so he could lock them with Steve’s as he curled his finger again, his vision starting to fade at the edges. “Feels so good, fuck, Steve.” Steve’s mouth was open and his eyes were clouded, hooded, heavy. He wasn’t turned on, or at least not in the way Bucky was, but there was something. Something different than his practiced interest in Bucky’s sexuality.

He slid his second finger in and his legs, wrapped so tightly around Steve’s waist, started shaking. He rocked back against both of his fingers, all the way to the third knuckle, and he felt like he was going to explode, his whole body feeling like it was on fire from the inside out. “God, wanted this so bad. Gonna come without touching my dick if you keep looking at me like that.”

Steve craned up to kiss him, lifting his legs a little bit so Bucky sank further onto his own fingers, groaning around Steve’s tongue. Bucky started rocking earnestly against himself and against Steve’s stomach, feeling desperate and on the edge and like he was going to completely fall apart. Steve’s hips were moving in time with the curling of his fingers and Steve was panting in his mouth, against his cheek, down his neck, and it was all getting too much, tears welling up at the corners of his eyes.

He fell apart. Felt like he’d never feel that good again. He did end up biting Steve’s shoulder, tearing little marks through his thermal shirt with his canines. He was crying, nearly sobbing against Steve’s neck, his body shaking hard as he finally let his legs relax against Steve.

“You’re beautiful like that, Buck.” Steve smoothed a hand over his hair, pressed a kiss to the top of his ear. “Absolutely beautiful.”

Bucky had never felt so dumb.
--

He was wearing Steve’s dog tags when he  fell.

The absolute dumbest thing he had ever done.
--

His shoulder hurt so bad, he couldn’t sleep without being pumped up with benzodiazepines. Analgesics made him scratch too hard at the stitched site on his shoulder, his body resolutely rejecting the metal. They wanted it to be a part of him, but his blood was screaming to get it off, get it out, get it away from him, even with all the cauterization and hacksawing and how carefully they’d welded each individual piece so it could fit the nerve endings in his shoulder. He’d never be able to feel anything with his fingertips again, only temperature shooting up the metal to his human shoulder, but he’d be a perfect weapon.

Not a soldier, never a soldier. Not the one behind the trigger. HYDRA wanted nothing but the trigger itself.

At any cost.

The benzodiazepines made him more compliant than he had been the last time Zola strapped him to a table. He listened. He learned. He gave over the memories readily, the ones they most wanted to wipe. Gone was his childhood. Gone was his mother’s voice when she sang him to sleep. Gone was his father in his dress uniform, a spitting image of Bucky himself when he shipped off, also gone. And they ripped Steve out. It felt like his metal fingers scraping him out of Bucky’s skull, leaving nothing but a shell.

When they took Steve, there really wasn’t anything left. It was easy to forget who Bucky Barnes was supposed to be when there was no Steve Rogers.

When it was announced that Captain America had died in a plane crash, Zola thought he’d won. Crafted his perfect little Frankenstein’s monster, filled his head with everything he wanted where it was empty.

He had been dumb not to realize that no one had ever found Captain America’s corpse. Or Bucky Barnes’s.
--

The KGB started calling him the Winter Soldier. The Americans called him the Ghost. HYDRA called him Zola’s Monster. Whatever they called him, it didn’t matter. He woke up, was briefed on a target, just enough information to stalk and kill and fade into the shadows before anyone could even whisper his name to themselves, wiped, put back in cryofreeze, start all over again. Living and breathing only so he could pull the trigger and then he was dead again, an eternal hell made personally for him.

They may as well have called him Sisyphus for all the good it did him.

Until they activated him to kill Nick Fury.

That had been pretty dumb.
--

It felt like an electric shock through his mind, a tazer being held to the bridge of his nose and pressed for minutes, hours, days. He could hear a ringing sound in his ears and he couldn’t place anything, the whole world falling apart underneath him. He was nothing but a hired gun, no past, no present, no future, but he… That face. There was something about that face.

Bucky. It sounded like he was talking with cotton in his mouth, Bucky Bucky Bucky.

He didn’t ask them who Bucky was, he asked them about the man on the bridge. They had to tell him about the man on the bridge. When they briefed him, they’d told him absolutely nothing. Described him. Didn’t even show him a picture. Reminded him that he’d seen him on the Fury mission, the man with the shield.

It hadn’t rang any bells then, but now his whole head was ringing and he had to know. He had to know his name, something.

Pierce’s slap reminded him that he had no past, no present, no future.

No man on the bridge, either.

Even with the metal fingers digging through his skull, sorting through the last week like a cheese grater and shredding out the parts HYDRA deemed too classified to remain in his memory, he could remember what the man on the bridge smelled like, the way his eyelashes rested on his cheek, the way the man’s hand had felt on a left arm he no longer had, a left arm he had never before remembered having.

HYDRA was seriously dumb to send him out again, memory wiped or not. They couldn’t wipe everything. They couldn’t start from scratch. Not anymore.
--

He saved the man on the bridge from drowning because he remembered his name. Steve Rogers. The man on the bridge, the man on the hellicarrier, the man who had single-handedly brought down the institution that made him a liar, assassin, killer, monster. His name was Steve Rogers. He was wearing dog tags around his neck, tucked tight under the kevlar. It was an old suit, made for hand-to-hand combat and not stopping Russian slugs, meant to make the Winter Soldier remember who he was, who he had been.

The dog tags read Sergeant James Barnes.

Bucky.

He had to figure out if it was possible to be that man again, if he’d ever existed in the first place. He remembered Steve Rogers, remembered a sinking feeling in his chest like a cinder block tied to his feet, but he didn’t remember himself at all, could only hear static when he tried to think about what he could have possibly meant to Captain America.

What he could possibly mean to Captain America now that he was soaked in half a century’s worth of blood.

He was good at disappearing. He wanted to disappear before the memories came crashing back like an a hammer on an anvil and he wanted to do it without Steve Rogers.

Dumb.
--

He was pretty sure he could drown himself in the shower if he tried hard enough.

Captain America’s lips had been blue when he pulled him out of the water. He remembered the blood on his stomach, the dried blood under the fingernails of his human hand, the taste in his mouth when he came to on the hellicarrier with everything falling around him, hot copper and like something else, something he remembered but couldn’t place.

Steve Rogers. The man Captain America had been before World War II.

The memories came unbidden, like the nightmares. Cold moments that froze him in his tracks when he would try to do normal things. Eat breakfast. Shave. Get out of bed. Memories of who he’d been, who he had wanted to be, who he’d become. He would freeze thinking about the kid who’d gone down to the docks. The kid who’d fallen in love so blindly and so irrevocably that it was the only thing that could pull him out of the fog, the torture, the unending pain of what he’d let himself become.

The nightmares were worse. So bad sometimes he wasn’t sure if they were happening when he was awake or asleep--if he ever even slept at all. Faces, voices, coming back, whispering about their children, their wives, their mothers. All the pain he’d caused by pulling all those triggers. Some faces he’d only seen through a rifle scope, but they were perfectly clear when they came back to haunt him, the bullet wounds spreading in their chests until they were gaping and the blood was soaking up through the carpet to flood his hotel room.

He couldn’t stand to look at himself in the mirror, so he covered it with towels and shaved like he’d learned to in the army, with a close razor and faith.

He got his hair cut. Not like Bucky, but close. Shaved on the sides, long enough down the middle that he could comb it back and off of his forehead. Not as unkempt, but easy to maintain. Easy to look like he belonged in the twenty first century and not in cryofreeze.

He used the internet to catch up. Tried to avoid major assassinations of the last fifty years, but some of them came back anyway. He’d killed a lot of people. Indiscriminately. And he could rationalize it away when it got so bad he couldn’t sleep, his head a loud box of screaming and the fear that it was about to all be taken away again, but it had still been his arm, HYDRA manufactured or not, that had pulled the trigger.

He was angry.

He was really fucking angry.

He wished more than anything that he died. That Zola would have killed him in 1943. That Captain America had never existed and Steve was allowed to live his life out normally.

Because he hadn’t known, not really. He hadn’t known that Steve had woken up to a brand new world, too. He hadn’t known how much Steve wished he was dead, too. Until he dropped the shield.

It was then he realized his mistake, how dumb he was being.

He needed someone with similar life experience.

It was a year before he saw Bucky again. James. He was going by James.

He looked tired. Bags under his eyes, his fingernails all chewed up, hair hanging in his eyes so it wasn’t as obvious that he was avoiding any and all eye contact.

Steve got it, he really did, but he felt like he was dying. Looking at Bucky, faded and folded into himself and like he would never smile again (god, his smile, he was always smiling. His crooked bottom teeth, the way he’d chew on his lip when he was thinking, his smile was so wide it took up half his face) was like looking into a mirror he’d rather break. He wasn’t in a place to help Bucky--James--but he’d chased him halfway around the world for a year and he couldn’t abandon him, not again. Not after what had been done to him.

“Do I look like him yet?” Small, sad smile. Still avoiding eye contact.

Steve felt like he was choking, drowning, completely underwater with no sight of land. “Doesn’t matter. I’m not here because of him. I’m here because of you.”

James made a noncommittal noise. He looked up for the first time. It was like a swift punch to the gut and Steve felt like he was sucking air up through a straw. His eyes were the same. The exact same. A deep, dark blue that flashed like steel, so much resolve and so unafraid, everything that Steve wished he could be. He didn’t feel like he was talking to a ghost anymore. He was talking to someone he knew once, someone he could know again.

“I’m sorry for what happened to you.” He reached for the metal around his neck, tucked underneath his shirt, and stepped forward. He expected James to shrink away, but he didn’t. He extended his hand, his right hand, palm up, and closed it around the dog tags. His dog tags. “I don’t blame you, you know. For… for what happened. For any of it. I meant it, what I said. I’m with you till the end of the line, wherever that is.”

James squeezed the dog tags and then opened his fist again, deep imprints left in his palm. “Keep ‘em. I don’t know what happened to yours. Keep ‘em.”

Steve didn’t want to touch Bucky’s--James’s--bare hand, but he took the dog tags back, his fingers brushing against James’s hand, always so much more worn, torn open, beat up than his own. It was like a time warp. Enough to make his head spin. James seemed similarly affected, staring hard at the ground. Steve noticed that he tucked the sleeve of his sweatshirt down farther, hiding the glint off the metal in the sun.

“This just keeps happening, you know.” He hadn’t really meant to say it out loud, but James looked up again, another punch to the gut, flicking his hair out of his eyes.

“What keeps happening?”

“Us. You and me. Finding each other over and over again. We’re like magnets. Or I’m a magnet and you’re a bad penny.” Bucky would have laughed. James did not. “It’s just… I blamed myself for so long. For your death. For everything bad that happened to me after that. I felt selfish, weak, stupid. How could anyone save the world when they couldn’t even save the man they--” His throat closed up. He didn’t finish that sentence. It didn’t feel right.

“But I was finally in a good place, finally moving past it, and I saw you, what they’d done to you, and my whole world fell apart. Well, probably I tore it down, but god, Buck, it was the worst thing I could ever imagine. You looked at me, right at me, and you didn’t even know me. I was dreaming about you all the time, could always hear your voice in the back of my head like you were talking to me just yesterday, and you didn’t remember me. But I don’t--I don’t expect that things will just fall back into place. I don’t want them to. I’m not the same person I was seventy years ago. Bad things have happened to me, too. Things I don’t want to remember. But I can. Remember them. With you. I think it could be good.”

James smiled. It was like a flicker of a flame before it even started to smoke, but it was big enough to make Steve’s whole chest expand. A remnant of humanity. Of Bucky.

“You’re so fucking dumb, Rogers.”
--