Chapter 4
IV
It had been difficult to learn how to want something again, after seventy years spent forgetting what it felt like to desire anything other than for the pain to stop. In the beginning, when he’d been in Wakanda with Steve, he’d been sure Hydra had succeeded in purging a thing as fickle as want out of him. Once, much later, Zemo told him that should have been reason enough to not deny himself anything now. But Bucky still believed he already had far more than he deserved, and irrationally, he was afraid of asking the universe for more – as if it would somehow cause him to lose everything, like one of those cruel moral lessons from the fables he’d read as a child. He tried to repress his wishes as much as possible: he avoided voicing them and dwelling on them.
However, nothing had prepared him for the sheer ache the Sokovian’s presence sometimes inspired; a longing he hadn’t experienced since he’d been a stupid Brooklyn boy, who would get every dame in the borough to look at him with stars in their eyes, while he knew, deep down, that the only one he truly wanted was already living with him and sharing his bed. This overwhelming yearning kept him up at night in the same way it had in the past, and it left him burning on the inside during every meaningful conversation, with every glance exchanged. He itched to be free of it, but it seemed to be yet another thing in his warzone of a mind that was beyond his conscious control.
And there was something.
He knew being a faggot wasn’t something to be ashamed of anymore, and he certainly wasn’t shocked or embarrassed by Zemo’s less than subtle innuendos or his own reactions to them – he’d never been a prude. And yet, when he went to visit Zemo in the Raft and he asked if Bucky’d missed him – and yes, god help him, he had – or when in the boring lulls between missions he caught himself imagining what Zemo would say about a piece of news he’d just read, he always got the sensation of doing something wrong, something he shouldn’t. Whenever Zemo looked at him with that sparkling, exhilarating curiosity in his eyes, a conspiratorial smirk on his lips like they were sharing a secret, that unsettling feeling was always there, and while he was occasionally successful at ignoring it, he was never able to shake it entirely. It wasn’t quite guilt, or shame. It was something fluttering in the air, lingering in the ever growing tension between them; as if the ghost of the first one who’d made him feel this way were still haunting him.
Steve had gone to rest, not before throwing one last dirty look at Zemo. The master of the house seemed nonplussed, and had offered to accompany him to the spare room he would stay in for the following days, but Steve had turned his back before he’d even finished the sentence, and stomped upstairs on his own.
Zemo had waited for Bucky’s sign that he’d heard Steve enter the room and close the door before approaching and gently cupping the side of his jaw, slightly craning his neck to look up at him.
“Call Sam. I’ll make dinner in the meantime,” he’d told Bucky in a firm tone.
He felt drained and worn out, but Zemo’s order managed to bring him back to the here and now. Slightly more at ease now that he had a task to complete, he nodded, feeling a rush of gratitude for the Sokovian for the second time that evening, and stepped away to make the call in the adjacent room as Zemo began to cook.
He pressed the call button and waited as the phone rang, his mind reeling, not knowing what to expect. Sam answered almost immediately, sounding frantic.
“Bucky! Are you alright?”
“Of course I’m alright, why the fuck wouldn’t I be?”
“Shit, man, I thought–”
“Sam, what’s going on?” Bucky sighed in exasperation, stopping himself before he could start to anxiously pace around the salon.
“Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
“What are you talking about?” he grunted impatiently as he sat on one of the Baroque sofas.
“I’m– I’m talking about Steve, isn’t he there with you?”
“Yeah, he’s here. But what were you talking about in the messages? What is it that you didn’t tell me, Sam?” He rubbed his face, trying to calm down. He knew Sam hated secrets, so what was he…?
Sam began to speak quickly but steadily. It sounded like he’d wanted to have this conversation for a long time. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you Steve was still around, of course. I know we haven’t talked about him in a while, but, see, Steve and I kept in contact through messages in these years. It wasn’t often, I wanted to leave him alone since that’s what we thought he wanted, but he wrote me now and then, like after that shitshow with the Flag Smashers, when I made that speech in front of the cameras, he sent me a text congratulating me, and then later sometimes he would ask me how you were doing and– Buck? You still there?”
Bucky was speechless for a moment. Steve had been out there, watching over them. Over him, just like he’d fantasized. But then why hadn’t he just written to Bucky?
“I… yes,” he said dully. “So you– You were talking to Steve? How did you know it was actually him?” He ran a hand through his hair as he frowned. His headache wasn’t receding.
Sam faltered. “Well I, I didn’t really, I just… He signed with his name, and spoke like him, and asked after you so I thought… I know I could’ve had someone analyze the origin of the messages, find the IP address or whatever, but I didn’t try to. I didn’t– I wanted to leave him his privacy, I guess, if it was really him. And then, a year or so ago, he stopped writing, and after a while I thought that he might be– that he wasn’t there anymore. I always thought about telling you, man, but I didn’t think Steve would have wanted it. You finally seemed like you were moving on, especially after Zemo joined us, and if you’d known Steve was still, still reachable somehow, you would have–”
“Yes, I understand.” He did. He didn’t blame Sam for not telling him, and he knew how difficult of a position he’d been put in. Still, it stung.
“I’m sorry, Buck. I just didn’t want you to be hurt again.” Sam sounded terribly apologetic.
“It’s fine, pal, really. So, he wrote to you again today?”
“Yeah. He said he was sorry to do this over the phone, not really sure what he meant by that, and that we’d talk again soon, and then he asked for your current address. You can imagine my surprise when I read that, though I wrote I was happy to hear from him again and sent it, thinking maybe he wanted to send you a letter, or a gift, I dunno.”
“Then why the panicked messages?”
Sam sounded sheepish. “Well, after a bit I thought better of it, thinking maybe it would’ve been better if you’d known about it, just in case Steve showed up in person taking you by surprise.” Which was exactly what Steve’s younger self had done. “Didn’t want you to pass out, or instinctively attack him on the doorstep, you know. And then, when you didn’t fucking answer, I sorta overreacted, started to believe maybe it had been someone else I’d just given your address to like a fuckin’ idiot, especially since the number was a new one.”
That explained it, then. Sam had thought he’d given sensitive information to someone who could have come for him in Italy, where they were less protected than in the U.S. “Well, everything’s fine, you can calm down.”
“Good. That’s… good. So, Steve’s over there?”
“Yeah, he’s – he’s resting upstairs, but Sam… there’s something I need to tell you too.” Bucky paused again, thinking about how to break it to Sam that the Steve at Zemo’s house wasn’t the older one he thought he’d talked to that morning. Which meant that one was probably–
“Damn man, Zemo’s enigmatic schtick is really starting to rub off on you, you know? And that’s not a good thing. Just tell me, come on.”
“So? What did Sam have to say?”
Zemo was almost finished with the preparation of a carbonara and was pouring the pasta he’d just drained into the pan with the crispy guanciale and the eggs as he spoke. He was wearing the ‘kiss the chef’ apron that usually never failed to amuse Bucky.
“He thought he’d talked with the old Steve. Apparently, they were still in contact until some time ago.”
Zemo raised an eyebrow but remained focused on mixing the pasta with the eggs and cheese sauce. “Were they? Then is he still around?”
Bucky sat down heavily at the table. “Sam doesn’t know. Steve hasn’t written to him in a year.”
“I see,” Zemo said in a careful tone.
The words came blurting out before he could stop them. “Sam said he’d been asking about me.” That made Zemo turn to look at him, but he couldn’t meet his stare. “He would ask how I was doing, or stuff like that.”
“And?” Zemo encouraged, evidently sensing there was something else eating at Bucky.
“And– I get why Sam didn’t tell me, I do, but– why didn’t Steve speak to me?” he asked in an angry, halting voice, gazing downwards at his clenched fists on the table without really seeing them. When Steve had chosen Sam to be his successor over him, he’d taken no offense, recognizing that with the mental state he was in he would have made for the worst possible choice as the new Captain America. Sam was the perfect candidate, the only one who deserved that role. And if accepting Steve’s legacy had been hard for Sam, it would only have been another fucking burden for Bucky to deal with, which would have made him feel even more unworthy of it.
This was different, though. He wondered why the older version of Steve had preferred to simply disappear without even saying a last goodbye to him. Perhaps it was as Sam had said, he’d wanted to give Bucky the chance to move on with his life without him. Maybe he’d wanted to leave him free of– of what? Steve’s memory? Good fucking riddance for that. For his first few months on his own, when he wasn’t having nightmares about the atrocious things he’d done for Hydra, his dreams were only about Steve.
Zemo was silent for a moment, then he turned off the stove and came closer, although not quite close enough to touch him.
“I don’t know why he didn’t, rodnoy. Maybe we’ll never know. But what matters is you never doubt that he cared for you, until the end.” Till the end of the line, pal. He nodded faintly.
“I know.”
“Okay.” Only then did Zemo raise a hand to the back of his head, fingers threading through Bucky’s hair as he guided him into a short kiss, while his other hand went to caress his cheek. They kept close, Zemo pressing his forehead to Bucky’s, who closed his eyes, sighing. “Thanks.”
Zemo’s thumb touched the corner of Bucky’s mouth, and he didn’t say anything else. They stayed like that for a bit, until they remembered about dinner.
“Zemo, I was thinking,” he murmured regretfully as they disentangled, “it’d probably be better if Steve didn’t know about us, at least for the moment. Just for a couple of days. You’ve seen how he reacted to the fact we’re allies, imagine if–”
“Yes, of course,” Zemo replied in a neutral tone.
Bucky peered at him, searching for any trace of resentment, but while Zemo wasn’t looking at him anymore as he started to plate, he didn’t seem to be excessively bitter or disappointed by the request. He’d probably come to the same conclusion before Bucky had.
“Wouldn’t want to be the one to give Captain America an apoplexy, after all.” The atmosphere lifted considerably when Zemo smirked, probably imagining just that.
“Alright. ‘M gonna call him down. And please, try not to rile him up.”
“I swear I’ll be on my best behavior.”
That didn’t make Bucky feel particularly reassured, and Zemo had to know it, because his smirk grew even more mischievous.
“Feel better now, Stevie?”
“I’m not a petulant child you need to placate, you know.” Steve was sitting on the bed, looking at the elegant room’s rich ornaments in clear distaste.
“No, you’re just a stubborn idiot.” Bucky leaned against the door frame, folding his arms across his chest. “You couldn’t just go back to the forties and stay there – you had to risk your life again messing with time. Christ, I still can’t believe this sci-fi shit even as I say it,” he added, shaking his head.
“Guess I took all the stupid with me in the forties,” Steve quipped, trying a smile.
“You certainly did, you asshole,” Bucky scoffed lightheartedly.
They were quiet for a moment, grinning like kids, until Steve turned serious again.
“Are you sure you’re okay, Buck? If you think he’s manipulating you somehow, I–”
He was using the worried, patronizing voice he’d always used with Bucky during their time in Wakanda. Bucky tried not to let himself be upset by it.
“Stand down, Captain. I’m fine. And it’s not your job to worry about me, anyway.”
“Right, that’s your job,” Steve said, his smile growing wider again.
“Yep. Always has been,” he replied.
The truth was, their roles had reversed the exact moment they’d reunited in D.C. and Bucky had started his painfully slow recovery, Steve constantly by his side (until he’d been deemed cured, and Steve had left). Or perhaps it had happened before that, when he’d been tortured by the Nazis in the same country he was in now (getting just a taste of what he would suffer later), or maybe it was the day Steve had taken that damned serum, making it so that he would never need Bucky’s help with bullies or illnesses or anything else ever again.
“So this house, it’s his?” Steve asked suddenly. “Why are you staying here? Are you currently on a mission?”
“Yeah, it’s one of his properties. And no, we’re… we aren’t on a mission right now. Just– taking a vacation of a sort. Wakanda is giving him more freedom these days, so we decided– to stay here for a bit.”
There was a pause.
“Oh. So you are… close?” Steve asked slowly, his brow furrowing.
Bucky panicked a little, and went to look outside the window, from where the Coliseum could be seen in the distance, avoiding Steve’s gaze. “We are… friends, yes.” Which wasn’t a lie, not really. He turned just in time to catch Steve’s grimace. “We can talk about it later, though. There’s a few things you need to be updated on, anyway. Come on, dinner’ll get cold. Zemo prepared a typical Italian dish, you’ll love it.”
“How do I know he’s not gonna poison me?” Steve asked, only half joking.
“He won’t, punk, he’s too proud of his cuisine for that. Let’s go.”
And together they went downstairs.