Not Bucky Barnes, Not Anymore
Stevie was there when he opened his eyes. Of fucking course he was. Bucky Barnes was such a fucking failure, the Winter Soldier was so fucking damned they couldn’t even die right. He opened his eyes and Stevie was there, a prickly bunch of unwashed, uncombed blonde hair laid on his bedside, smelling of stink, sweat, and halitosis.
“Hey, Stevie,” he tried to say. But it was more just a wordless whine. Couldn’t make his lips, his lungs work right.
“Bucky?” Steve sat up instantly, blinked the bleariness from his blue eyes. “Bucky—?”
“You dumb punk,” he wheezed. “You just don’t know when to quit, do you?”
“Not on you,” those hands found his, clutched them greedily. “Not ever.”
“Don’t, Stevie—“
“I’m, I’m sorry, I—“ and that hurt look was plain enough. I know what they did to you. (Hell, the whole world knew. It was kind of the fucking point). “I’ll—I’ll try not to touch you, Buck.”
And it was just so adorably, stupidly, mistakenly Stevie he had to laugh. Then choke. Then it took him five minutes just to be able to fucking breathe again.
“You okay?” Stevie asked, reaching out then remembering half-way what he’d just promised.
“You think that’s why?” he continued, the ridiculousness and nostalgia turning to bitter ice. “Don’t you know anything? That thing’s still here, Stevie! It’s still here. In this arm. And it wants to kill you.”
“I know you,” Steve insisted, scooting closer like the ass he was. “I know you, Buck. And you won’t hurt me.”
“I’m not who you think I am, Stevie. I went to the—“ the word escaped him. Words often did. “Place. With all the pictures. Commandos and stuff. And they were right: Barnes died a long time ago. I’m not him. They ripped Barnes out and stuffed hate inside, sewed this arm on to keep it all in and that’s what’s left. All there is. All there’ll ever be.”
“I don’t believe that. I won’t believe that. Not for a minute. Not if it takes you the rest of our lives.”
He tried not to smile. Tried not to cry. But something was broken inside him where his heart used to be. He got them confused sometimes. Sometimes he couldn’t feel anything at all. “You always were such a beautiful idiot…and such an insufferably self-righteous piece of shit. And God, I loved you for it—at least he did—but you should’ve let me die.”
But Stevie was Stevie, after all this time, all these years, as beautiful and earnest as ever. “I’m not going to let that happen, Buck.”
“But if you don’t, Stevie, it’s going to kill you. I’m going to kill you,” he shut his eyes. Tried not to cry, not to think of those moments on the bridge, the helicarrier, the wet, crunching sound of Steve’s throat in his fist, the way his lips split over his teeth and gums when his jaw had broken over and over and over again…and he was whimpering, retching, small, not the Winter Solder, not Bucky Barnes, not some boy from Brooklyn just some sniveling, wretched, broken thing that knew the only goodness, only kindness, only real love in the whole wide world across a thousand centuries had a name and his name was Steve Rogers and still he’d almost killed him. “Please, Stevie. Please let me die. Please don’t make me kill you.”
“I know you.” Stevie insisted. “James Buchanan Barnes, I know you.”
[You know me, he said. You know me.]
[It was English. How strange. Because even the Asset knew.]
[It means I love you.]
“I know you.” Then Stevie leaned forward, kissed his hand—his metal hand—his hair, his forehead, kissed the tears from his lashes, the lines from his face, the salt from his sniveling nose, kissed the very cries from his lips…