For as long as he can remember, he hasn’t been right. His lungs, his back, his eyes, his ears, his entire immune system all culminating into something far less than satisfactory. Into something that he’s been told repeatedly is wrong by doctors and peers and even just people on the street. He doesn’t stand for it, always has sharp words on his lips and fire in his eyes as he defends who he is and what he’s made of to the death.
(But there’s always been a tiny, niggling part of him that wonders if they’re right.)
Not for the ways they think, though, the surface things like the way he coughs or walks or can’t stand up quite straight. But in another way entirely, something below the surface that he himself doesn’t entirely understand. And that’s what makes it even worse. He’s just wrong.
He gets a flash of hope with the serum, Erskine's promise that he’ll be fixed and whole and new-- and he is. On the outside. But not in the way he’d truly hoped, and it burns him to the very core to know that it’s just him, this broken piece is somehow in his very soul, unchangeable, unfixable. There’s something wrong up in his head and in his heart and so deep down that even the serum can’t reach.
But he soldiers on like he’s meant to do, keeps up the act and the smile and stays a good man like he’s promised and for awhile he forgets that part of himself he hides, the part of himself that makes him ashamed more than any physical ailment ever did. He’s too busy, after all, touring the states and doing shows, then finally getting shipped overseas to perform there as well. It feels wrong, but he doesn’t know what else to do.
Until Peggy.
And god how Peggy saves him and destroys him all at once, gives him purpose and rips open old wounds until he’s a sharpened arrow, frayed and bleeding but pointed dead ahead in purpose. He’ll save Bucky, hell, he’ll save the world. But the feeling of wrongness is once again in the forefront of his mind.
And it stays there, in his thoughts and in his heart like a dark plague as he looks at Peggy and sees the way other men look at her-- knows it isn’t the same. Knows it can never be the same because he’s wrong.
Because Peggy loves him, he can see it in her eyes and in her smile and in the way she kisses him just before he has to jump. Peggy loves him and he can’t love her back the way he’s supposed to, can’t make the blood in his veins or the thoughts in his head match the words other men say. Can’t convert the singing of his heart to anything more physical.
Even through the crackling of the radio he can tell Peggy’s crying as he sends the plane towards the sea, can picture her face as the water comes up to meet him. He promises her a date he can’t keep, a dream he twists into a nightmare, but in a dark place in the back of his mind he’s whispering that it’s for the best, that he wouldn’t be right for her anyway. Wouldn’t be able to be with her the way she wanted, at least not completely.
Screaming metal and piercing cold and his mind is still stuck on how he’s failed. Failed his first chance at a relationship. Failed all the people who held him up. Failed his best friend.
And oh god Bucky.
He squeezes his eyes shut and imagines that hand reaching for him, grabs onto it with everything he has and lets himself fall with it, down into the cold, cold abyss where he knows Bucky’s already waiting.
|---|---|---|
They pull him out and wind up him, place him in the center of this crazy new world and ask him to keep going, to serve, to soldier on. They ask him to keep living when all he’d wanted was to die. They revive their icon because they found him and he’s theirs, like an old toy rediscovered at the bottom of the box, just needs a bit of dusting off before it’s good as new.
He grits his teeth, he squares his jaw, and he soldiers on. He bears it. Because that’s what he’s meant to do.
But on the inside, oh god on the inside he is still so broken. Even more than before. The chip on his soul is almost forgotten now, so buried as it is under miles and miles of ice and snow and heartbreak. His insides feel like shattered glass, his blood is cold and slow. He’s not meant to be here, he’s not. Not even when he feels Peggy’s withered hand in his own, smiles helplessly down at her, not even then does he feel like he belongs.
His body is broken, split open and scattered at the bottom of an icy cliff with Bucky and a thousand tons of metal at his side.
If he closes his eyes he can still see them both, can see terrified grey eyes and impersonal steel, a hand he can never reach and a radio call he can never turn off.
They ask him to protect a world he doesn’t recognize, doesn’t know, and he does it because he doesn’t have anything else to do, no other purpose, just keeps soldiering on because that’s what he was made to do.
|---|---|---|
It’s not until he sees familiar grey eyes looking back at him, blank and lifeless and filled with nothing but chilling intent that he really starts to feel again. Starts to feel the consuming fire of pain inside him as he’s ripped in two, mind screaming and soul breaking and he’s so broken.
So broken.
He’s failed again.
For the second time, he lets himself fall. Feels water creep in around him and pain numb his mind and darkness coat his senses.
For the second time, he follows Bucky into a dark abyss he doesn’t plan to come out of.
For the second time, they bring him back.
But he doesn’t know if he can do it this time, doesn’t know if he can keep soldiering on. He’s all duct tape and safety pins on the inside and he honestly doesn’t know how long it’ll be before he falls apart.
Sam is there, though, and Sam looks at him sometimes like he knows Steve is just a hollow shell of the man he used to be, knows his soul is more damaged than not. He watches Steve carefully as they search-- cross countries and continents and turn up empty handed. He’s pulled on the thread and gotten nothing but more pain and disappointment and a crushing sense of what he’s always known deep down inside--
He’s failed.
The next time they’re called out-- a mission he doesn’t bother comprehending past the order to go, to fight, to protect and serve and win-- there’s a part of him that already knows he’s done. Even before one of the robot thrusts a metal hook through his chest, impales him until his feet leave the ground and hot, wet blood drips past his lips, even before all of that he knows he’s done. It just takes until that moment for him to acknowledge it, to close his eyes and picture wintry grey eyes and blood red lips and pray that for once in his life when he lets go they’ll let him drop. That he’ll finally be done.
|---|---|---|
They bring him back.
|---|---|---|
He wakes up and stares at the ceiling, takes in a breath because his lungs tell him to and blinks because his eyes are dry. He must’ve been asleep for a long time because his body feels healed, there’s no throbbing pain in his abdomen or discomfort from where he remembers his skull cracking against the ground. It’s just like when he woke up the first time-- his heart skips a single beat at the possibilities but his mind never breaks from its stagnancy, keeps its numbing pace as he continues to stare blankly straight ahead.
It’s the worst kind of torture-- the way he feels like his insides have been gutted, like the space beneath his skin has been scraped raw and bloody and left to rot. He’s like one of those jack o’ lanterns he’s seen on the streets, carved out smile and hollow on the inside.
God he wishes they’d let him die.
“Steve,” someone says, heavy and familiar, filled with a tightly controlled rage that has him blinking again. But he doesn’t turn his head, because if he does he admits he’s awake, that he’s alive and ready to once again soldier on.
(He’s not. Oh god he is not.)
“Steve,” it comes again, sharper, and a hand grabs his wrist, tightens against the bones there. “Steve, you fucking idiot. What the hell were you thinking?”
He doesn’t really bother thinking before he speaks, can’t get past the pain and the anger and the disappointment, just opens his mouth and-- “I wanted to be done.”
The hand tightens painfully, “You can’t mean that.”
Steve says nothing, keeps staring at the ceiling. He wonders vaguely if he is done, since Bucky’s here. It isn’t a dark abyss, but it isn’t heaven either, so maybe this is their personal version of hell.
Suddenly, the bed creaks and jostles, Steve’s view of the ceiling disrupted by tight grey eyes, worry in the wrinkles between familiar brows. Dark hair is cascading down either side of Bucky’s face, framing them both, and Steve takes a moment to let his eyes wander. “Steve,” Bucky breathes, forehead tipping down to knock against Steve’s. “You can’t mean that.”
Once again, Steve says nothing, but he does let his hand come up, strokes through some of Bucky’s hair and watches as his fingers slip through the strands. When he looks back up Bucky’s already watching him, takes his hand and guides it further up until his fingers tangle in the thick strands at the back of his head and he lets out a breath, finally anchored when Bucky takes his other hand and does the same. It’s an exposing position, makes him vulnerable, but he can’t find it in himself to care, just tightens his grip and breathes in when Bucky breathes out, blinks up into winter grey and lets himself start to wonder.
“Bucky?” he asks.
“Yeah,” Bucky whispers back. “Yeah, pal, it’s me.” His hands are framing Steve’s face and he rubs his thumbs over strong cheekbones, keeps up the gentle motion as Steve stares up at him. “Scared the fuck outta me, Steve, you know that?” he asks. “Still scaring me.”
Steve closes his eyes, imagines a cold ravine and an icy drop and a watery grave and blood splattering across the pavement. It scares him, too, just how many times they’ve managed to bring him back from the dead. Like Frankenstein's monster, he’s just stitched up pieces and poorly planned hopes and dreams.
A failure.
He can’t even die right.
“Steve,” Bucky says again, forceful and sharp like he used to get when he was pulling Steve out of fights he knew he couldn’t win. His hands are tight around Steve’s face and he shakes him slightly, gets him to open those gorgeous blue eyes that he’s never seen so dead before in his life. It makes him want to scream, to cry, to punch and hurt and kill anything and everything that made Steve this way. “Steve,” he says instead. “Steve, please, please stay with me.” He lowers his voice and his head next to Steve’s ear. “I just got you back, pal. You can’t leave me now.”
And Steve can’t find a way out, can’t find the words to convince Bucky to let him go. Every whisper that he’s wrong, that he’s broken, that he’s already gone-- they’re all shushed away by Bucky’s hands and gentle words, eyes so pained and tortured that Steve wonders why he doesn’t just let him fall.
After all, it’s what Steve did to him.
|---|---|---|
Months later and Steve can breathe again, looks out and sees the world and has Bucky by his side. The hollow feeling is gone, filled instead with warmth and reassurance and love. Friendship. A new kind of family.
But now when he looks at Bucky he feels something different, it’s not the same as it was before and he doesn’t understand-- he doesn’t know what’s changed or if maybe nothing’s actually changed at all. Maybe it’s just him remembering it wrong. But he doesn’t remember that tightness in his chest, or the drop in his stomach, doesn’t remember the soft smile on his lips when Bucky walks into a room.
He doesn’t even realize what’s happening until he and Bucky are looking through some old photos, Bucky tossing one Steve’s way with a chuckle of, “Look at your face.” And he does, but that’s not what’s important, what’s important is what- or who -he’s looking at.
It’s Peggy.
And while his heart gives a painful throb at the loss, she’s not the reason his eyes suddenly feel tight and strained and an old forgotten part of him is once again tearing at the seams. Bucky’s on him in an instant, careful hands and comforting arms and a mouth pressed into Steve’s hair whispering over and over again to tell him what’s wrong.
“It’s alright,” Bucky murmurs when Steve shakes his head, turns away so Bucky can’t see his face. “It’s alright to cry. You love her.”
Steve shakes his head again. “I did,” he breathes. “Oh god, I did, but I--”
“But it’s different now, huh, punk?” Bucky finishes for him. “Lot of things have changed between now and then.”
And yeah, they have. For better or for worse they’re here now, in this new world, with too many scars to count and the weight of so many terrors on their shoulders. So many things have changed, but-- “Not enough,” Steve whispers, lets it slip out before he can take it back.
Bucky freezes next to him. “Steve?”
“I’m sorry,” Steve says, makes to stand but doesn’t get more than an inch off the ground before Bucky’s tugging him down again, using his slight imbalance to bring him straight into his lap.
“No, Steve. You don’t get to apologize to me,” Bucky says, winds his arms tight around Steve’s shoulders and urges his head into the crook of his neck. “Don’t get to lie to me either, you know.”
And Steve sucks in a shaky breath, knows Bucky’s right and that he’s never been a good liar, never been able to keep anything from Bucky, from those keen eyes and careful looks. “I--” He starts, then buries his face further into Bucky’s shoulder, fingers tightening in the fabric at Bucky’s back. “You’re gonna be upset with me,” he settles for instead.
Bucky shakes his head. “Even if that’s true, nothing you can say will ever make me leave you. I might just have to knock some sense into that thick head of yours, is all.” Then, when Steve doesn’t make any move to continue, he strokes a gentle hand up and down the other man’s spine. “It’s alright, I promise. You’ve just gotta tell me, can’t make it right unless you do.”
“That picture, the way I looked--” he pulls back just enough to meet Bucky’s eyes, sees something like realization and hope and fear all mixed into one. “Pretty sure it’s the same way I look at you,” he admits quietly, lets the words settle between them, flutter gently to the floor between their legs.
“Steve,” Bucky breathes. “Steve, you--” he reaches up and puts a hand to the side of Steve’s face, holds him steady. Then, when Steve doesn’t try to pull or run away, he lets a small, teasing smile curve up his lips. “Took you long enough to realize, punk.”
And Steve laughs softly, lets his forehead drop back down onto Bucky’s shoulder. “Jerk,” he mumbles back. Bucky’s arms wrap around him and they sit there in the middle of their room surrounded by old photographs and memories from an age gone by, a mix of each other and what they carry with them. And Steve should be happy (he is, oh god he wants to cry with the way his heart is singing out in his chest), but the filled up space inside of him and the reconstruction of his soul, the way love is once again beating through his veins...it’s uncovered that secret part of him-- the one jagged edge he’s never managed to smooth out or fix.
He’s broken.
He knows he is. He knows he won’t be able to give Bucky what he needs, won’t be able to love him right or do all the things he’s supposed to. It’s Peggy all over again, but this time it’s worse because there isn’t a war or rank or oceans between them to serve as excuses, however feeble. It’s just him and Bucky, the world safe and a room to themselves and he has no idea how he’s going to survive it. But he will. He will. He’ll soldier on, just like he’s supposed to. He’ll make it work, he will.
He won’t fail.
Not this time.
Not again.
|---|---|---|
It’s dark in their room, the fan humming softly from the corner and the sheets rustling as Bucky shifts above him, rocks hips against him and kisses at his neck. Steve swallows and his throat clicks, his mind is buzzing, whirring, and he can’t slow the rapid beating of his heart, hopes Bucky writes it off as excitement for the moment.
But of course he notices, leans up on his elbows and looks down at Steve with worry set into the lines of his face. “Steve?” he asks quietly. Steve doesn’t respond, just breathes quietly through his nose and puts hands in Bucky’s hair to drag him down again. But Bucky doesn’t go, takes Steve’s hands gently in his own before gathering both of them into one, holding onto his wrists before reaching for the lamp and flicking it on. Steve blinks at the brightness.
Bucky smooths a hand through Steve’s hair.
“Steve,” he says again. “Why didn’t you tell me you didn’t want to?” There’s something like hurt in his tone, hurt and guilt and worry and so many things Steve never wanted to put there.
He shakes his head, clutches at Bucky and tries to distract him with wandering hands as he lies through his teeth, and-- “Don’t know what you’re talking about, Buck.”
But that’s the wrong thing to say, because Bucky is off of him in an instant, across the bed and staring at him with his hands balled into fists. “Don’t lie to me, Steve,” he hisses. “Not about this, especially not about this.”
Steve scoots back as well, up against the headboard with his knees drawn into his chest. There’s a moment of tense silence between them before Steve finally shakes his head, lets out a breath and looks over to Bucky with a sad smile on his face. “I’m sorry, Buck. Just wanted to make you happy.”
Bucky deflates at that, runs a hand over his face before coming to sit by Steve’s side. “And how do you figure that, huh? Think it makes me happy to see you so uncomfortable? I only want this if you do, Steve. And it’s okay if you don’t.”
“I'm sorry.” Steve bites his lip, fingers digging into the palms of his hands. “I thought the serum would fix me, but...” He hangs his head in shame, can feel the way Bucky shifts slightly beside him.
“But what?” Bucky prompts softly, one hand coming up to rub at Steve’s back, voice so caring and patient that Steve has to squeeze his eyes shut against the sudden tightening in his chest.
“But I’m broken.” It only takes seconds for his lips to form the words that have been coming for years, festering in the back of his mind and in the bottom of his heart for as long as he knew their meaning. “I’m broken, Buck. And I’m so, so sorry.”
“Steven Grant Rogers,” Bucky says, voice harsh but hands gentle as he takes Steve’s head in his hands and turns him so their eyes can meet. “You are not broken.”
“But I am,” Steve admits, leans into one of Bucky’s palms as he says it to soften the blow. “There’s something wrong with me, always has been, and I don’t know how to fix it.”
Bucky blows out a frustrated breath. “There’s nothing wrong with you. I’ve told you that since I was scraping your ass off the schoolyard.”
“I’m not talking about the outside, Buck, I’m talking about in here,” he points to his chest and looks away from the sudden confusion that overtakes Bucky’s face.
“Is this about us being men?” Bucky asks, coming to the wrong conclusion and letting fire lick up his veins, protective and strong. “Because homosexuality isn’t a sin, Steve, you know tha-”
“I don’t like sex.” Steve blurts out before Bucky can go any further. And Bucky immediately goes quiet, mouth still half open, and Steve lets out a sigh. “I don’t get urges, I don’t have those kinds of thoughts about girls, guys, no one. Not about Peggy and--” he blinks a few times, rubs the heel of his hand against his eye. “And not about you, Buck. I just can’t and I don’t know why.”
“Oh, Stevie,” Bucky murmurs, reaches out and pulls Steve tight to his chest. “Steve, there’s nothing wrong with you. Nothing at all, alright? So you don’t like sex, so what? That doesn’t mean anything. You’re still you.” He lowers his head and presses a kiss to the back of Steve’s ear. “And I still love you, punk. Nothing’s gonna change that.”
Steve huffs, sniffles, buries his face in Bucky’s neck to hide the way his eyes are watering.
“I mean it, Steve,” Bucky says again. “Sex or no sex, you’re my best guy. Got that?”
Steve nods and Bucky kisses the top of his head, pulls him closer before easing them both down into a more comfortable position, Steve draped across his chest. There’s tears clinging to Steve’s lashes and a few stains across his cheeks, but Bucky brushes them away gently, runs his fingers through Steve’s hair and down his neck.
His chest is still tight, his heart open and throbbing, but now it’s a different kind of pain, the pain that comes with healing and acceptance and growth. Because that piece of his soul that he always thought was broken, that part of him he always knew for sure would hold him back, would keep him from loving and being loved in return-- he’s starting to wonder if it’s so broken after all.
The serum didn’t touch it.
Time didn’t change it.
And Bucky still loves him, still wants him…
His heart is still singing, reaching, longing for Bucky in ways he can’t describe and-- and maybe that’s enough. That kind of love.
Maybe that’s exactly what he needs.
|---|---|---|