Chapter 6
Bucky blinked slowly, trying to orient himself in space and time. It was hard to stay present, or even to think, through the pain steadily working to devour him. He could feel his crushed chest knitting itself back together in real time—sharp sparks along his healing ribs, a stabbing feeling in his lungs as they expelled residual blood with heavy coughs—but the feeling paled in comparison to the burning, twisting ache in his back. It felt like white-hot fire had wrapped itself around his spine, crawling between his vertebrae and burning away the nerve endings in its path. The feeling only got worse when he moved, or when he forced himself to breathe, however shallowly.
“Bucky. Bucky,” he heard, and he dragged himself out of the fog of his head and into the present. He was moving, he realized distantly. In a car, with lights flashing past the windows so fast they made him dizzy. Or maybe he’d already been dizzy. He couldn’t tell. He could hear the distant sounds of someone in distress, and the quiet groaning was only making it harder to think.
Two faces swam into view. They were staring at him; one from further away, looking back at him through a mirror. Sam Wilson, his mind supplied, and the pain kicked into a higher gear as he involuntarily tensed his body. The last time he’d seen that face, Wilson had been a target he’d been tasked with eliminating; Bucky couldn’t imagine he was ready to forgive and move on so quickly.
“Shh, Bucky,” he heard, and Bucky’s attention was dragged to the other face staring him down. This one was much closer. Bucky blinked wearily at it, watching blue eyes and tousled hair waver in his blurry vision.
Steve. The one he’d pulled from the river, the one he’d been keeping tabs on for months, the one he halfway remembered. His face was one Bucky knew intimately. He was sure always had, even if he sometimes didn’t remember why.
“Buck, you’re okay. I know it hurts. Just – just try to take some deep breaths, okay?”
Bucky didn’t have to follow orders anymore, he knew, and part of him bristled, wanting to fight back with all the vitriol he’d shown the HYDRA agents he’d spent the past few months taking down. But some traitorous part of him intrinsically trusted Steve. And he was so lightheaded he was starting to think he didn't have much of a choice either way.
Bucky still felt like he had a boulder sitting on his chest, but with a conscious effort he was able to force an almost-full breath into his lungs. The air was cold in his throat and hot where it pushed against his healing ribs. As soon as he inhaled, the groaning sound he’d been hearing stopped. His face burned as he realized he’d been the one making it.
Bucky set his jaw. He had to keep his guard up. He was already dangerously exposed, injured and mentally untethered in the presence of two people he’d just spent months hiding from, who had every reason to want to hurt him as retribution for all the things he’d done at HYDRA’s bidding. He couldn’t let them know how vulnerable he was right now. How weak.
“Good. That’s good.” The approval in Steve’s voice felt good, almost as good as the warm pressure of steady hands braced against his chest — not hurting, just holding. “We’re almost there, Buck. Just gotta hold on a little longer.”
Bucky tried to hold on — maybe for his own sake, maybe for Steve’s. But the shrapnel lodged in his back was still sending bolts of agony down his spine, sharper and more intense as his body started trying to heal around the twisted metal. Pain bloomed and swelled, and Bucky felt himself starting to drift towards the distant place in his mind he’d carved out during his time with HYDRA, the one he’d escaped to when whatever was happening to him grew too intense to even conceptualize. It had been a matter of survival back then. Now, immobilized with two pairs of unreadable eyes boring into him, it felt just as vital. No matter how hard he fought against it, he couldn’t help slipping into that safe, familiar darkness.
Get through this, he begged himself with every dizzy throb of heartbeat in his back and ribs and head. Get through this.
Bucky drifted, and the next time he surfaced from the fog the car had stopped. The lights outside the window still shimmered and swayed uncomfortably, but Bucky was pretty sure he was the only one who could see them moving. Pain blurred his vision like heatwaves, and he could feel the corresponding warmth snaking out of the wounds on his back in feverish bursts. He could see the dizzying lights, and Steve’s wide blue eyes, and Steve was saying something’s wrong and Bucky wasn’t present enough to tell him he was right.
He felt strangely like he’d done this all before — it was just like when he’d first left HYDRA and had had to figure out how to function without all the chemicals they’d kept him under. He remembered the nausea and the twitching in his muscles and the inexplicable flashes he’d seen of blue eyes and soft hands and whispers of Bucky and this was all the same, he was seeing things again, he was losing his mind, and he felt himself floating back into the fog and —
He blinked and he was standing up, stumbling along as best as he could as someone — Steve — led him through a doorway and into a warmly lit apartment. Inside, everything felt far quieter, far more still. Bucky blinked again and Steve was lowering him to lie down on his stomach. The surface beneath him was soft. He could feel the soft upholstery of a couch beneath the rough stubble on his cheek.
Despite the pressure it put on his ribs, lying facedown was a relief, both for his spine and for his lungs. He pulled in the easiest breath he’d taken since that building went down on him in the first place and felt the dizzy confusion in his head begin to abate.
“Bucky. Bucky, hey. Are you with me?”
Bucky squinted, trying to blink the room into focus. Steve was kneeling in front of him, his face warm in the soft light, his forehead creased with worry.
“Steve,” Bucky forced out. He could still taste blood in his mouth when he moved his tongue. It was threatening to send him into another panicked tailspin, but he gritted his teeth and held on.
“Hey, Buck.” Steve’s face broke into a wide, relieved smile. It looked good on him, Bucky thought stupidly, before he could stop himself. “You scared me back there. You kind of just… checked out. I thought you were...”
“Sorry.” Bucky cut Steve off before he had to explain how things like that happened a lot. How easy it was for him to drift and lose touch with reality, how it would be in Steve’s best interest to stay far away from him and the mess HYDRA had left behind.
“No,” Steve was saying. “No, don’t. You don’t have to be sorry for anything, Buck.” He sounded so earnest. Bucky sighed through sore lungs. “Sam’s just grabbing some first aid stuff from the bathroom, and then we’re gonna get your back taken care of. Can I — can I help you with anything in the meantime? Anything you need, Buck, I’ll get it.”
Bucky swallowed dryly against the lingering taste of blood, trying to keep from opening his mouth and begging for water. The very fact that he was here and not still trapped under a pile of rubble meant he was in Steve’s debt again; he didn’t need any more small kindnesses added to that when he had nothing left to give in return.
In the end it didn’t matter – Steve had heard the click of his parched throat when he swallowed.
“How ‘bout some water, alright? I’ll be right back.”
Steve stepped away, and Bucky was suddenly faced with a view of the living room in front of him. There was a television on the opposite wall, framed by bookshelves and some sort of record player so familiar that it made Bucky’s brain itch, but he hardly paid those objects any attention, because inches from his face was a coffee table. On top of that coffee table was a stack of black tapes. His vision was too blurry for him to read any of the labels, but he still knew exactly what they were.
Bucky twitched, half-wanting to hide those tapes from view, even though he knew Steve had already seen them. He only partly knew what had driven him to leave them for Steve to find in the first place; at some point, it had stopped feeling like pulling teeth, like paying back a debt. He’d been mindless, and desperate, and he’d just needed someone else to know all those things that had happened. And some part of him had halfway trusted Steve. Still, some part of him had halfway hoped Steve would stop looking for him once he saw them. But he hadn’t, and now all these pieces of his bared soul were laid out on the table for anyone to see.
“Here you go, Buck.” Steve was back, brandishing a full glass of water, and Bucky knew he'd failed miserably in that half-formed plan to put Steve off his trail. Somehow, despite everything, Steve hadn’t given up on him yet.
“Can I help you move?” Steve asked. Bucky didn’t want to, but he was nearly salivating at the sight of the water. He let Steve prop him up on his side and hold the rim of the glass to his lips. He gulped the water as fast as he could, too relieved to be ashamed at how desperate he must look. Even with the glass in front of him, he couldn’t stop looking at the tapes out of the corner of his eyes.
“Slow down,” Steve chastised softly. “It’s not going anywhere, promise.” He pulled the glass back from Bucky’s mouth, then curiously followed Bucky’s gaze, still stuck on the coffee table. Steve’s face fell when his eyes landed on the tapes.
“Buck –” he said, and Bucky didn’t know what he was going to say, but judging by the broken look on Steve’s face, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to handle hearing it.
He was saved when Sam reentered the room bearing a first aid kit and an armful of towels. Steve turned his sad eyes away, and Bucky felt himself deflating a little in relief.
“Alright,” Sam said. “This stuff’s the best I could come up with. Not exactly ideal, but pararescue gave me some practice working on the fly.”
Steve nodded, and Bucky blinked in a way that he hoped conveyed his resignation. He wouldn’t fight. He’d been subdued; he’d do what he was told.
“Tell me what you need me to do,” Steve said.
“I’ll let you know. For now, since we don’t have any sedatives that’ll work on him, if you could just keep him… y’know. Calm. That’ll be a big help.”
Sam was giving Bucky a strange look. It wasn’t fear, exactly, or fascination, or cruelty; Bucky knew what those looked like, had seen all of them directed at him over the years by the various people tasked with repairing him. Instead it was wariness mixed with something else, something that told Bucky Sam wasn’t afraid of him. Maybe, Bucky thought, Sam didn’t see him as an enemy anymore.
He wanted to believe that, but he’d learned better than to trust so easily.
He gritted his teeth, letting Steve help him back onto his stomach. Steve knelt beside him, hands hovering in the air between them like he was both desperate and afraid to offer more touch.
“Is this okay?” he asked finally, offering the back of his hand to Bucky’s forehead, poised to wipe away the layer of clammy sweat that had accumulated there.
Bucky remembered the electric feeling of Steve’s warm fingers pressed deliberately to his arm. He shivered, full of fear and anticipation at the thought of having that again — warm skin directly against his own.
“Okay,” Bucky breathed. He swallowed a desperate noise when Steve’s hands brushed his forehead. He hadn’t known how much he could need something so simple as touch — how he could crave it more than water, more than air.
“Alright,” Sam was saying from somewhere just past the edges of his vision. “Here we go.”
A cold blade slid under the hem of Bucky’s shirt. He shivered, dread flowing through his body like ice.
“It’s okay.” Steve ran a comforting hand over Bucky’s grimy hair. Bucky felt himself pressing into the touch in spite of every instinct screaming at him to do otherwise. He squeezed his eyes shut as the blade traveled up his back, tearing away his ripped and bloodied shirt. Bucky kept imagining the blade slipping — imagining it being plunged gleefully into his back, adding another wound the the mess of blood and metal along his spine. He didn’t want it, but he probably deserved it, and Sam still had no reason not to hurt him —
The blade made a snipping sound at the base of Bucky’s neck, and the sides of his shirt fell open. Bucky felt the absence as the blade moved away from his skin, heard the metallic clang as Sam dropped it back into the first aid kit. He whimpered, whole body shuddering in relief.
“It’s okay,” Steve assured him. “You’re okay. You’re — you’re doing good.”
Bucky heard the slight waver in Steve’s voice, the hesitancy, and was sure he knew what had happened. With his shirt cut open like this, Steve could see the entirety of his back. Underneath the coating of fresh blood, scars from missions and training and punishments alike stood out in raised ridges along his skin. He knew they were bad – knew the way his handlers had curled their lips in fascinated disgust when they’d seen them – but he also knew that they paled in comparison to the thick mass of scar tissue spidering out from the prosthetic on his shoulder.
Bucky’s stomach crawled. Seeing it on the tapes may not have been a deterrent, but surely things would be different now that Steve had seen him up close. Surely the same disgust Bucky’s handlers had had for him was written all over Steve’s face.
If Steve had finally realized he should hate him, he wasn’t showing it. After a brief, startled pause, his hand resumed its soothing up-and-down motion, practically petting Bucky’s hair.
“Alright. I’m gonna work on getting these wounds clean, okay?”
Bucky heard Sam wetting a rag as he spoke, and he felt his fingers curling into fists. He’d been hurt like this before. He knew where this was going.
“I’m not gonna lie, this isn’t going to be comfortable.” Sam actually sounded apologetic. “Gonna try to get it over with as fast as possible, but just do what you need to do, okay? Cuss me out, break something, scream at me, whatever. It’ll be over before you know it, promise.”
“Buck?” Steve reached forward and tilted Bucky’s chin to the side, giving him a glimpse of wide, worried blue eyes. “Is this still okay? Can he help you?”
Bucky grunted in assent. He’d already resolved himself to this; he couldn’t keep being afforded chances to back out, or he might be tempted to take them.
“Alright,” Sam said, and the cloth came down cold and heavy on Bucky’s back. Sam started wiping away blood at the top of his back, far from the actual bullet wounds, but a few drops of wetness ran from the cloth, following the line of his spine straight to the first shrapnel-carved divot.
Bucky’s numb legs twitched; if he’d had his full range of feeling back in them, he would have jumped into a fetal position, squirming and bucking off the beads of liquid that burned the edges of the open wounds. His back arched as much as it could, and pain lit up a sickening pathway along the nerves down his spine. He felt a scream growing in his throat, and he flailed more to free his arms, desperate to smother the sound by any means necessary.
Making noise while he was being repaired was weakness, and weakness was punishable. The very thought of punishment had panic rising through his chest. He’d gotten used to a lot during his time with HYDRA, but they’d always been creative at finding new ways to hurt him.
Bucky wrestled his flesh hand free and jammed the back of it to his mouth, stifling a scream just in time for Sam to suddenly start flushing out the first wound with disinfectant.
“Bucky. Bucky, it’s okay,” Steve said, but somewhere foggy, far away. Sam was moving on to the next clod of shrapnel caught in his ribs, and Bucky bit down on his hand, screaming pain into his own clenched fist.
“Bucky.” Something was pulling at his hand, trying to free it from his teeth, and Bucky resisted on instinct for a second, desperate to keep his only security from being torn away. Only after he’d already tensed up for a struggle did he remember that fighting back was punishable, too. He let himself go limp, nauseous terror pulsing thorugh him as he let his hand be pulled from his mouth, waiting to be hurt in retribution.
“Bucky. Look at me.”
Bucky blinked, only dimly registering the strangeness of that word Bucky in his handler’s mouth. He didn’t have time to work out why it sounded so wrong – Steve’s face swam into focus, still blurred through the haze of fear and pain, and he remembered. He may not have been safe, but he was free.
Bucky had focused his eyes to find Steve kneeling at his side with his mouth slightly open in surprise. He was holding Bucky’s flesh hand, looking down at it with something like grief. Bucky frowned — his teeth hadn’t even pierced the skin yet, so Steve had no reason to be upset — before he remembered what Steve was seeing, what he probably hadn’t noticed in all those tapes. The multitude of small, pink, bite-shaped scars that covered the back of his hand, remnants of all the times he’d had to do this before.
“Almost done,” Sam was saying, moving his cloth down to the final gaping wound on Bucky’s back. Bucky’s eyes squeezed shut. His skin was crawling with sweat and agony and he wanted to pull free, wanted to curl up in a ball and hide, but he was powerless to do anything but lie there and take it. And his hand was still trapped in Steve’s grip.
“Just hold onto me,” Steve told him. Bucky felt his metal hand being gathered into Steve’s grasp too, and he wanted to tell Steve he was being stupid for treating that lethal metal hand so delicately. But then disinfectant met the deep wound on his lower back and Bucky couldn’t say anything at all. His hands tightened around Steve’s on instinct, and he felt pressure building up in his stomach and chest and his head as he fought with everything he had to keep from making noise.
“Just let it out,” Steve murmured to him. “It’s okay.”
He didn’t need to be told twice. Bucky screamed.
“Okay. Finished,” Sam finally said, drawing the cloth away from Bucky’s skin. Bucky swore he could still hear his own screams echoing around the room. He was twitching, breathing in and out in a rhythm that felt like crying even though the only moisture in his eyes was the sweat that seemed to keep falling into them. Steve was staring at him with unabashed worry. Bucky didn’t think he’d ever felt more raw or exposed.
“You alright, Barnes?” Sam asked. Bucky groaned something that he hoped conveyed the sentiment of just get this over with.
“Okay.” Sam seemed, miraculously, to track with him. “This is gonna be the hard part. You’ve still got a good amount of metal in these wounds. I’m gonna work on getting it out so they can heal right, but it looks like you’ve started healing around some of it already.”
Bucky heard Steve’s sharp intake of breath, watched his worried eyes flick from Sam to Bucky’s back to Bucky’s face again.
“If you need me to stop, let me know,” Sam told him. Bucky was grateful for the small mercy of Sam staying focused in on him instead of on Steve’s panic. It made him feel just slightly more in control. “But the faster I can work, the sooner this’ll be over with. Alright?”
Bucky didn’t have the energy for another nod. He just closed his eyes, steeling himself in preparation.
“Alright,” Sam breathed. Bucky heard the clattering of metal instruments as Sam selected the tools he needed. Steve’s hands were still clasped around his, and Bucky found himself squeezing them a little, letting out tiny expulsions of pent-up fear with the pressure.
Steve still looked unbearably sad, but he smiled a little at Bucky holding onto him. He reached for a clean towel with his free hand and pressed it gently to Bucky’s face, dabbing away the sweat that had collected below his eyes. Bucky blinked gratefully at him, in too much pain to keep his guard up the way he was supposed to.
“I’ve got you,” Steve murmured. “Promise.”
Sam hadn't been lying — this was definitely the hard part.
He'd slipped on a fresh pair of latex gloves, making Bucky’s skin crawl when the rubbery, inhuman texture met the edge of an oozing wound. Then latex-covered fingers weren’t just prodding but pulling, and the jagged piece of metal lodged highest up on Bucky’s spine was sliding out of place, tearing apart fibers of muscle and skin as it moved.
Bucky’s advanced healing may have pushed the bullet fragment halfway out again, but Sam was having to reopen the wound in order to finish the job.
Sam hissed out a quiet curse as the fragment shifted and caught again, some twisted part of it buried too deep in Bucky’s back for it to be removed in a single smooth motion. Then the cold metal of a scalpel was joining gloved fingers and hot blood was bubbling up and spilling and Bucky wasn’t even screaming anymore, didn’t have the energy, just wailing out something weak and breathless while he channeled every bit of his consciousness into clinging to Steve’s grounding touch.
“It’s okay. Just hold on, Buck. You’re gonna be alright.” Steve’s voice was shaking.
Bucky trembled, sweat running down his forehead, drenching his hairline and falling into his eyes in burning drops. The world shimmered with that familiar haze of bright pain, and the deeper Sam prodded at his back, the worse it got. Steve’s living room was starting to spin in stuttering, nauseous loops, and Bucky swallowed hard against the water Steve had given him, now trying to crawl back up his throat. The only thing keeping him from losing control entirely was Steve squeezing his hands, rubbing a steady, up-and-down rhythm across the bite-shaped scars with his thumb.
“Steve?” Sam’s voice this time, thin and strained. “Can you help me out here? I need your hands…”
“I — okay.” Steve pried one hand free to brush Bucky’s hair out of his eyes, trying to check in, but Bucky’s vision was swimming far too much to make eye contact. Dizzy with pain and seeing stars, he could feel his eyes rolling halfway back, making it that much harder to focus on the images in front of him. Steve gave his hands a final squeeze before relinquishing his touch. “Okay. What should I do?”
“Just grab one of those towels, and keep pressure here,” Sam was saying. “Gotta get this bleeding under control…”
Bucky flinched weakly as rough terrycloth dropped onto his back. Steady hands pressed it into his skin, driving a spike of pain into his abdomen through the well of the newly emptied wound. He curled his hands into fists around the upholstery of the couch, but it wasn’t the same as holding onto the warmth of Steve’s skin. Reality was spiraling away from him again, and suddenly he was back in that distant, hard-fought place he’d clawed out in his mind for survival.
Get through this. Get through this.
Things got hazy after that. He could hear muted snatches of sound — the clink of newly removed metal fragments dropping into a bowl, the thump of wet towels hitting the floor in the brief moments when the pressure on his back abated. Everything smelled like antiseptic and iron, and nausea built in Bucky’s chest until he was constantly bobbing along the waves of it, fighting to keep afloat.
Eventually he couldn’t help it anymore. He gagged weakly into the fabric of the couch, the muscles of his back screaming with pain as they clenched.
“Oh, shit. Okay. It’s okay.”
The gloved hands disappeared, the pressure on his wounds let up, and Bucky was being shifted sideways so his head hung over the edge of the couch, dangling over a bucket on the floor. Beside the bucket he could see the discarded towels that had been pressed into his back, and he suddenly understood why they’d felt and sounded so wet. They were drenched, soaked through with dully gleaming blood.
Bucky vomited without warning, the sight and smell of blood heavy in his senses. Pain flared until it whited out his vision, and soon he was hovering in limbo, blindly spitting out acid while static roared in his ears.
“Breathe, Bucky. Just try to breathe. You’re alright.”
The words came in disjointed chunks through the rush of blood in his ears. Bucky tried to obey, but the muscles of his abdomen were still spasming too hard for him to pull in any air. He hiccuped, and the resulting ache rippling through his ribs and spine had him close to blacking out.
When his vision finally started to clear and he managed to suck in a breath, Bucky felt the warmth of tears streaking down his face. Humiliated, he tried to reach up and wipe them away, but he was hurting too much to execute the movement.
“It’s okay,” Steve murmured, reaching out to clear the tears away with his own thumb. Bucky wanted to pull away, to try to save face, but he could do nothing but lie there breathing shallowly while Steve wiped the sweat and tears from his face with a hand still stained with blood.
“How much…” Bucky groaned, his throat gritty like sandpaper. “How much more?”
“Not long now. We’re almost done,” Sam promised. Even he looked wide-eyed and rattled, like he too would give anything for this to be over.
Steve’s hand rubbed gently at the base of Bucky’s neck, staying clear of the wounds lower down while still helping to release some of the tension in his muscles. “Are you gonna make it?” he asked softly.
Bucky grimaced. He knew, realistically, he’d been through worse; HYDRA had never been generous with trivial things like pain medication or anesthesia during surgery. There was still something different, so much harder, about going through it all in front of Steve. But he knew he didn’t have much choice. He set his jaw.
“Yeah,” he grunted, putting on a face far braver than he felt. “Been worse. ‘M fine.”
Both Steve and Sam looked stricken at that, and Bucky tensed up, afraid on instinct. He hadn't meant to say anything wrong.
“Okay,” was all Sam said after a long moment. “Let’s finish this up so you can get some rest.”
Bucky went back to clutching the couch cushions for dear life, nearly boring a hole in the fabric with his metal fingers. Steve was still helping Sam out with the procedure on his back, but he found moments to check in, brushing a hand over Bucky’s hair or resting it against his forehead.
“You’re doing good,” he said when someone started packing a wound and Bucky choked on a scream.
“Doing so good, Buck. We’re almost there,” when Bucky buried his face in the cushion to keep anyone from seeing his eyes leaking again.
“Last thing. I promise,” when Sam started winding a bandage around his torso and Bucky had to shove up on shaking forearms to give him access.
When it was done, Bucky was a sweaty, shivering mess, too weak to move from where he lay facedown on the sofa. He sighed out a shaky breath into the fabric beneath his face, wishing he could just stop feeling for a moment, wishing he could sink into the soft cushion and fade away.
But Steve was back, tilting his head to the side, offering him more water and running a wet rag over the sweat and blood on his face. With his head at that sideways angle, Bucky couldn’t avoid looking at the tapes piled up on the coffee table. He closed his eyes.
“Alright, Buck. I know you’ve been through a lot. Just try to rest. I’ll be here for you when you wake up.”
He could feel the warmth of Steve’s hands, hovering over his skin but not quite touching. Then Steve moved away and it was gone. Bucky couldn’t decide whether that was a disappointment or a relief.
Steve would be here, he’d said. Bucky would wake up and Steve would be here and then they’d… Bucky wasn’t sure what. He’d have to face it one way or the other, but for now he’d been given permission to slip away. He kept his eyes closed and let his mind drift, trying hard not to think of the tapes or Steve’s sad eyes or anything at all.
“You know what I’m gonna ask you,” Sam said.
Steve sighed, emptying the armful of bloody towels he’d been holding into his hamper with a thud. With Bucky passed out in the living room, he and Sam had been in the bathroom, cleaning up and putting away the first aid supplies in silence. He should have known this was coming, but Sam had still caught him off guard by broaching the subject so bluntly.
“I know,” he said.
“You wanna explain what the hell’s going on? Where all those videotapes came from?”
Steve sighed. “I… I didn’t mean to, Sam. You gotta believe me. I didn’t go looking for ‘em. And I —”
He’d been about to say that he hadn’t wanted to find them, but that wasn’t really true. He could still hear Bucky’s strained voice in his mind, echoing that you said you wanted to know, and Steve couldn’t in good conscience say he’d been wrong.
Steve took a deep breath. “I… I found the first one in a base. The burned-out one, back in Austria.”
He told Sam the whole story in halting chunks — about finding the tapes as though they’d been left just for him, about carrying them home and watching them in secret, about feeling both closer and further away from Bucky than he had since that day on the train in 1945.
“And… what was on them? What made them so important that he left them there for you like that?”
Steve just shook his head. Sam had seen the labels; he didn’t feel like explaining more than that.
“Okay,” Sam sighed. “God, you should’ve told me. Told someone, at least. They could’ve been intel, or even a trap. So many things could’ve gone wrong. And… and you shouldn’t’ve had to go through all that by yourself.”
Sam was clearly trying to be stern, but that last part came out more softly, and Steve’s heart ached.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Really, I am.”
Sam stowed the first aid kit back in the cupboard where it belonged. “I know.”
Steve smiled, but it felt watery, unsure.
“What’re you going to do now?” Sam asked. “With the tapes, and… with him?”
Steve shook his head. “I don’t know. He’s been through so much, Sam. I watched him…” he took a deep breath. “I watched him go through so much. And that was only a fraction of what they did to him. I have no idea how much he remembers from before, or – or if he’s even going to want to stay.”
Steve couldn’t help it; his voice cracked on the last word. And now Sam knew how desperate he was, and he was going to figure out why, and Steve couldn’t let him know, nobody was supposed to know —
“You saw that, back there?” Maybe there was something dawning on Sam’s face, but he hid it behind a practiced shake of his head. “How hurt he was, how scared, but how he still let me patch him up? Still let you touch him?”
Steve didn’t trust his voice, but managed to nod.
“He trusts you. And after everything he’s been through, you really can’t ask more of him than that. But between you and me, I’d still bet you he's going to stay.”
Steve wanted nothing more than for that to be true.
THREE WEEKS LATER
Steve was sitting on his living room floor, organizing his various books and records into boxes, when he heard Bucky walking up behind him. Bucky’s gait was different than it used to be; he limped a little, shuffling on the leg that had never quite regained its full range of motion even after his spine had healed. It gave his steps a distinctive sound, and Steve turned toward it, smiling. He didn’t think he’d ever get used to the sight of Bucky standing in his living room, sharing his space and even wearing his clothes. It was still a miracle to Steve that they could have this — and that Bucky had actually trusted him enough to stay.
“Hey, Buck,” Steve said, watching Bucky catalog the scene in front of him in that cautious, hypervigilant way he did things now. The bags under his eyes were still two dark smudges, remnants of a rough night, and the stubble beneath his long hair was starting to look overgrown again. Steve had to keep reminding himself that that was okay; that getting Bucky feeling better was going to take a lot more than a few weeks’ rest and care.
“Can I help?” Bucky asked softly, gesturing to the box Steve was in the process of taping up.
“Sure, if you’re up for it.” Steve shifted over a foot on the floor to give Bucky room to kneel beside him. He sank down close enough for his knee to press against Steve’s. Ever since he’d come back and apparently realized that touch didn’t have to equate to pain, Bucky had craved human contact, seeking it out whenever he felt he was allowed. Steve reached out to squeeze his hand before returning to taping up his box.
That was something they could do now, too, and it felt like another small miracle. Steve’s affection for Bucky hadn’t been able to manifest the way he’d once hoped it would, a confident declaration of the fact that he loved him and was pretty sure he had since they were kids. Instead it was holding Bucky’s hand when he needed a grounding touch and confirming every hard-won memory that resurfaced in his mind. It was sleeping beside him and watching as he shook and sweated his way through nightmares, being prepared to assure and reassure him that you’re safe, I’m here, and this is real, and you’re free.
“Are you sure about this?” Bucky blurted, turning one of Steve’s books over and over in his hands, reluctant to pack it.
“Sure about what, Buck?”
Bucky cleared his throat. “Anything. Moving. Retiring. And… and me. You shouldn’t have to uproot your whole life for me. I’m not sure I'm worth all this. I can go —”
“Bucky.” Steve hated cutting Bucky off when he spoke, especially considering how quiet he was these days, but he couldn’t bear to let that train of thought continue. “Of course you are. I really didn’t have much of a life here in the first place. It was mostly just… missing you.” Steve swallowed against the lump that had suddenly risen in his throat. “And you said yourself it isn’t safe here. Staying with Tony in New York will buy us some security, and some more resources than we’ve got here on our own. And Sam’ll be based there too, helping finish what you started with HYDRA. Pretty sure he’ll make a better Cap than I ever did. There’s really no question about it, Buck. I’m sure as long as you are.”
Bucky didn’t look convinced, but he placed the book he was holding into the box and reached for the roll of tape to seal it off. Steve smiled to himself, returning to his own task. Every small, painstaking step they took was still progress.
They worked in companionable silence until Steve realized Bucky had stopped what he was doing and was staring down at a box he held cradled in his lap. Steve looked over and felt his stomach drop.
He’d forgotten he still had that shoebox sitting on his bookshelf, packed full of all the tapes that Bucky had left for him.
“I’m so sorry,” Steve whispered.
Bucky shook his head, still staring at the box instead of Steve. “My fault.”
“I never should’ve…” Steve forced himself to stop, collect himself. “Those are yours. Whatever you want to do with them, it’s fine.”
Bucky swallowed hard. “I… I don’t know what I want.”
“Okay. That’s fine, too.”
Bucky played with a battered corner of the box with his metal fingers. “You’re really. You’re really still... okay with me. After…”
“Bucky…”
I love you. Nothing's going to change that.
He couldn’t say it. It was too soon; they were still too fragile.
Steve did the next best thing he could think of. He shifted closer to Bucky, taking his hand, pressing their shoulders together to offer as much warmth as he could, the way he knew Bucky craved. After a moment, Bucky leaned into him, cautiously resting against his chest.
“I’m here,” Steve said, trying to infuse everything he couldn't say into those words. “As long as you want me, I’m here.”
Bucky’s fingers twitched, finally breaking down and interlacing with Steve’s. “Me, too.”
With the box still weighing heavy on Bucky’s lap, Steve closed his eyes and breathed him in and held him, and the lost time didn’t feel half so important anymore. They had all the time in the world left in front of them, and Steve was ready to stay there as long as it took.