‘Do you remember it?’ The question fell from Bucky’s lips before he could stop it. Steve tilted his head slightly so he could gaze at Bucky.
‘Remember what?’
Bucky turned to his side, moving in closer and grinning when Steve reached over to lazily trace patterns against his stomach. ‘When you first knew you loved me?’
Steve smiled softly, spreading his hand out so he could feel more under his skin, lacing his arm over Bucky’s waist. Touch was something that brought them both back to the present, kept them grounded. Kept them together. Whether it was small things like leaving the room to make coffee, or big things like leaving before a mission, they made sure that the last things they touched before the mug or the gun was each other. It started off as a way to help Bucky remember first, but then it became a habit, a way of keeping them on the same level, a way of reassuring them that they’d find their way back to each other. And they didn’t talk about what it meant, but they both knew. And everyone around them seemed to, as well. Sam knew not to clap Bucky on the back after he and Steve had broken apart, right before they left for a mission. Nat knew not to take the coffee mug off Steve to put on the table just in case their hands touched and something about his and Bucky’s bond was threatened for a second. Wanda would float the TV remote to them before either of them could get up because she saw the way they fit against each other so perfectly, and she let Clint smirk “show off” at her even though they both knew why she had done it.
‘I don’t think there was one time.’ Steve started, pulling the duvet around them tighter. ‘I think, somehow, I’ve always known.’
Bucky’s lips twitched into a smile. ‘That good, am I?’
Steve shook his head, laughing before placing a soft kiss on Bucky’s cheek, about to move away just as Bucky threaded a hand through his hair and brought their smiling lips together.
It had taken Bucky a long time to get better. He was healing slowly, but Steve was patient with him. They were kind of awkward at first. Shy. The first time Bucky had seen Steve on the bridge, heard his name fall from his lips like a reflex, he had felt something inside him shift, and just like that, a part of him that he had felt hollow without had come back. And soon, his memories had come back, too. He wrote them all down and kept them close because he was so terrified of the thought of him waking up and looking at Steve with eyes that didn’t recognize him, and Steve dying all over again as Bucky watched with removed indifference. Bucky had wondered, in the months he had been alone on the run piecing together bits of his past, how Steve could be the thing all his memories seemed to center around. He wondered how he could remember trivial things like the colour of Steve’s shirt when they went to the Brooklyn Bridge when he was seventeen and Steve was sixteen, and the most they had to worry about was people looking at them funny when they stood too close. He wondered how he could remember sleepless nights in a hard tent burning for Steve’s warm touch, wondering if Steve was waking up cold back home. He wondered how he could remember the feeling of his stomach twisting and his heart shaking when Steve looked at him with those big eyes and half smile, wondering if he wanted him back. He wondered why he didn’t care about any other memories he lost, as long as he remembered Steve. He wondered how he could remember Steve at a time when he couldn’t even remember himself.
‘I think I’ve loved you from the beginning.’ Bucky sighed against Steve’s lips, feeling Steve smile against him. ‘I remembered something else today.’ He said, opening his eyes to see Steve’s face light up with delight. Bucky had remembered everything Steve could remember, so now it was just a game of them seeing how much time together could trigger other memories that they hadn’t thought about in years. ‘Before the war. You were leaving to get something, a sketchbook I think. We were home, and just as you were walking out the door, you turned and said “I’ll be back”.’ Bucky started, pressing a kiss to Steve’s jaw in between pauses. ‘Thinking I wouldn’t follow you. Like I wouldn’t have followed you anywhere.’
Steve’s eyebrows knitted together at the memory, smiling faintly.
‘You followed me.’ He remembered as Bucky nodded, moving to bury his head into the crook of Steve’s neck, kissing the corner of his collarbone before feeling Steve gently pull him up to his lips.
There were a million things that Bucky wanted to tell him and he wondered if he would ever have the time to tell him all of it. He wondered if he could ever string enough words together to form the perfect way of letting him know just how deep he burned for him, so he said, ‘I followed you’ and hoped it was enough for now.