Bucky had had an easy time placing Peggy when his memories came back in broken pieces. He remembered her red lips and brown hair and a sudden wave of sadness that wasn’t related to one particular memory but all of them that made his knees weak. She was the one person who had scared him more than anything, because she had been the one person he could lose Steve to. He saw, when he first met her, that Steve looked at her when she wasn’t looking the way Bucky looked at Steve when he wasn’t looking. And he remembered thinking that he’d rather be strapped to that cold metal table again than have to see that look on Steve’s face whenever he saw her. Closing his eyes to it back then was all that kept him alive. He had hidden his feelings all his life, so what was so different about it now? He fought to keep the demons out of his head that told him it was different because Steve was looking at her the way he wanted to be looked at by him, and instead threw himself into an ocean of denial that drowned him a little more every time he smiled at the two of them. He remembered thinking that there was no way he would win against Peggy Carter, who he liked, he really did, but every time he looked at her all he thought was that he couldn’t compete, and the demons would drag him down deeper and he’d forget he knew how to swim and he’d let them keep him in the darkness for a while. And he hated himself for even thinking that he could hate Peggy. It’d be easier if he could hate her. But he couldn’t hate the person that could make Steve happy, so he suffered silently until the day he didn’t have to suffer at all.
Back then, home had been the feeling of Steve’s heartbeat against his and his blue eyes shining like a thousand burning stars when he laughed. On some days, Bucky tried to place the exact moment when he’d lost his home. At first, it was when he’d fallen off the train – that made the most sense after all, since he had lost his life then, too. But then he thought that maybe it was the night when he first met Peggy, and he’d felt his heart skip in fear, and it had beat a little differently after that. Maybe he’d lost his home before even that, and maybe when Steve had pulled him off that metal table and taken him to safety, he’d already lost him. Bucky had to remind himself most days that you couldn’t lose what was never yours. Steve had never belonged to him, but he’d always belonged to Steve.
He wondered if he should’ve done things differently, and how much difference it would’ve made. But he’d been scared that if he had said anything to Steve, he’d have just lost him sooner. And it was worth all the heartache if it meant he’d still be there the next day, no matter how much it hurt to look at him.
It was ironic, he thought, that forgetting was all he craved back then and now he’d give anything to remember what it felt like to look at Steve, even if it meant Steve was looking at someone else.
He’d left Steve after all the mess had been cleared up with the rest of his team and the government. Some of the mess they couldn’t fix, but the things he could, he did before he left. Steve looked for him after he was gone, but Bucky was good at not being found. Sometimes he was in Brooklyn and sometimes he wasn’t, but he thought that you couldn’t really leave someone if you’d left your heart with them, so in a way, he was always with Steve.
He’d left in the middle of the night and even though everything inside him was telling him to stay, Bucky forced himself to get out of bed, looking at Steve one last time before he left without a word. They had been staying in the same bed all their lives, and Bucky had been worried that it would be different now, that Steve would wordlessly leave him in an empty room all alone thinking he was doing the right thing. But he hadn’t. From the second Bucky had come back, even in the midst of the battle for his life, they’d been side by side, sharing a bed without question, Steve’s arms around Bucky every night except for the one night where Bucky had to hold Steve together after he’d heard him breaking down in the bathroom and known that his worst fears were true; he’d caused him pain. It was the one thing he was fighting to protect him from, since they were kids. He’d beat up the bullies that would leer at Steve and tighten their fists before they’d even had a chance to throw a punch and he’d thought he’d talked Steve out of signing up for the war and he’d always made sure that Steve had a scarf in the winter and he’d never once said anything bad about Peggy to him, and he’d thought that would be enough. But hearing Steve fall apart alone broke his heart all over again, because he hadn’t kept him from hurt at all. He’d caused it. So he left the next night, and tried to convince himself it was the right thing to do, and what he should’ve done all those years ago when he first saw Peggy.
Peggy. He’d wondered about her for months after he’d pulled Steve out of the water and onto the riverbed. He wondered if they’d gotten married, and tried to build a life together before Steve had crashed that plane, and felt a strange mix of happiness and sadness for them that he couldn’t explain. And months after he’d left Steve, he had been walking through New York and seen a paper that had her name on the headline. Steve had never mentioned her to him and Bucky assumed it was because he had loved her, and there was no point in telling Bucky about it because he thought he wouldn’t remember. But there was the paper, and the headline about the last founder of SHIELD dying, and Bucky’s hands shook and his mouth grew dry. He didn’t need to think as he skimmed through the article to where she was spending her last few days. He hardly realized what he was doing until he was on a train and his hands finally stopped shaking. He got to where she was staying and his hands started to tremble again, and he had to bite his tongue through his fear as he walked through halls and rooms until he got to hers.
It turned out Peggy didn’t remember him at first. Her once beautiful face had squinted at him when he said, ‘hey, Peggy. Do you remember me?’ until he mentioned Steve, and then her eyes grew wide and filled with tears.
‘You’re – you’re Bucky? His Bucky?’ Her voice was still soft.
Bucky had to fight to keep his voice steady, and when he found he couldn’t, he just nodded.
She laughed then, and reached for a tissue box next to her bed that Bucky grabbed for her with his metal arm, that she didn’t seem surprised to see through her tears.
‘Steve. He – he talks about you.’ She said after a while with a sad smile on her face. Bucky’s heart raced.
‘Steve talks about me?’ He repeated with a shaky voice.
‘All the time.’ She answered, seeing the tears in his eyes. She talked slowly, like she was concentrating on her words, or maybe she was just trying to make sure she said the right thing. ‘He misses you, Bucky. Go home.’
And that was all it took Bucky to stand up and turn away from her, hands shaking as they wiped tears away impatiently. ‘I can’t.’ He heard himself stay as his heart pounded with words unsaid. ‘I – I hurt him.’
‘Mister Barnes.’ Peggy’s tone made him turn back around, catching his reflection in the mirror as he did; red eyes, darkness under them, pale face and cracked lips. ‘You can see just as well as I can that you’re not doing him or yourself any favors. It’s killing him being without you.’
‘When . . . when was he here last?’
Peggy took too long to answer, but Bucky was patient with her as she thought. ‘Yesterday. He came to say goodbye yesterday.’
They didn’t speak for a few minutes after that, and when Bucky feared, in between deep breaths that she’d forgotten him, he moved to the door to leave, deciding that she deserved to spend her last days without ghosts from the past. She said one last thing as he was leaving, and his heart leapt into his throat as he heard her say with a smile, ‘if you saw how he would look at you, you never would’ve wasted your time worrying about me.’
He left her with an awkward goodbye, stumbling over words and trying not to think about hers, but she didn’t seem to mind. And as soon as he was able to breathe in fresh air, he was hit with a thought that he’d been desperately trying to suppress for the longest time. It had been a mistake to leave Steve. Maybe the moment when he’d glanced at Steve for what he thought would be the last time and closed the apartment door with finality had been the moment he had lost his home. Maybe he’d still had it in Steve, all along, and he was just desperately trying to convince himself he’d already lost him instead of waiting to find out if that was true or not. So he left for Brooklyn straight away, conscious that he hadn’t slept in days and that he probably needed a shower, but he went anyway. He was going home.
Blurry hours later, he found himself at the front door of the apartment. He couldn’t remember anything since he left Peggy’s room, just a rush to get back, to fix what he had done, and hope it wasn’t too late. The door was unlocked, and he barely stepped inside before Steve had leapt off the kitchen chair and drew in a sharp breath, looking at him in a way that made him wonder if Peggy had been right. And then they were hugging and crying and laughing in disbelief and Steve was muttering things into the crook of his neck that Bucky somehow understood even though he couldn’t make out half of it, and he didn’t need to. He was home.
Later that night, when Steve slid into bed and pulled Bucky in, too, he told him that he loved him all along. He told him that he didn’t think Bucky would ever feel the same, so he tried not to pine over something that could never be his. He said that he liked Peggy, he did, and for the longest time he’d watch as Bucky smiled at the two of them and he’d think that Bucky saw something he didn’t, and that maybe this was the right thing to do. He told Bucky how he thought he could love her, but he knew he’d never love anyone like he loved him. Like he loves him.
At this, Bucky found the courage to turn his head to look at him. He felt himself breathing in quickly, deeply, not daring to even imagine the possibility that Steve really had felt the same all along, and still did.
‘I’ve always been yours, Bucky. I’m yours, if you want me.’
And Bucky choked on his own laugh and wiped at wet eyes as he watched Steve grin, the stars in his eyes brighter than ever. Bucky’s heart had bled for so long for someone he thought would never be his, but he had been this whole time. And maybe later, they’d talk about it all, but for now, Bucky leaned in as Steve slid a hand through his hair and smiled against his lips, and they both laughed in between frantic, long-overdue kisses, and they were both home again.