Chapter 8
VIII
One of the first memories he’d been able to recover, back when he’d just begun to reclaim his mind, had been of piling all the blankets they’d owned onto Steve’s side of the bed, because he’d had a harsh cough that Bucky had feared would turn into bronchitis. The memory was hazy, but he thought he remembered it lasting days: Steve burning up with a fever so bad that, in the end, Bucky had been sure he would really die on him this time.
As he hugged him to contain his shivers one night, wrecked by the certainty it’d be the last night Steve would ever have, Bucky had kissed him, and the way Steve had looked up at him in the aftermath could only have been described as worshipful. Then and there, Bucky had known he would always love that scrawny kid, no matter what, and that if Steve survived the night, he would always do his best to protect him.
At eighteen, Bucky’d already known that he didn’t have the same nascent greatness Steve hid – even if he was the only one to see it, at the time. Steve’s bright righteousness, his stubbornness in believing that another choice, a better way was always possible – as if he were able to change things through sheer force of will – had always been terribly enticing, even before he became a fucking national hero. And what could a poor devil like Bucky do but believe in that promise of goodness, and be lured in by the dream of a world that wasn’t so rotten? How could he not want to follow him faithfully? Even when he made fun of his idealism, even when he berated him for getting beaten up because of his damned sense of justice, Bucky always admired Steve’s moral strength and felt drawn to it like a moth. So even if Bucky had no talent, no larger purpose in life, even if he wasn’t destined for greater things, he thought devoting himself to taking care of someone like Steve would be enough. That it’d be worth it.
The night before he left for the war, he’d cried softly for hours, careful not to wake Steve, feeling just as young and afraid as he was. The morning after, he’d put on the uniform, smiled at Steve as he said goodbye, and promised himself he would come back to him.
Steve Rogers had shone like the goddamn sun, even before the serum. And when Bucky had become Hydra’s, when the idea of redemption had seemed ludicrous, still he hadn’t been able to stop a small part of himself – what was left of Bucky Barnes – from believing that if someone could help him make up for his wrongdoings, it would be Steve.
Bucky sleptpoorlythat night. He had the sorts of nightmares he hadn’t had in a long time, and when he woke up, his insides still squirming, he wondered what the return of those old dreams meant.
They were memories, mostly: his first kill in the war, somewhere in France; two of Hydra’s men – both dead now – waterboarding him; Zola looking down at him as he was strapped to an operating table. But then there had been something new, something different from what he remembered: in the blink of an eye, it was Steve cutting him open instead of Zola, cold and indifferent to his pleas of stop, God, Steve, please, why.
When he woke up, he was sweaty, and his lip was bleeding. He must’ve bitten it in his sleep. Zemo was already up, judging by the empty side of the bed. Sitting up, Bucky ran his flesh-and-blood hand down his face, heart still racing in his chest. He could feel the knot he always got from putting weight on the metal arm during the night and he rotated it to make it pass.
Although dreaming about when they’d replaced his limb with a vibranium weapon usually left him tense for the rest of the day, he generally didn’t feel as self-conscious as he once had about the arm nowadays.
That had been a major step forward for him, at least according to his psychologist. He remembered Steve attempting, and failing, not to stare at it in Wakanda, as if he was still caught off guard by the absence of Bucky’s other arm. When he’d realized Bucky had caught him staring, he only intensified his efforts to ignore it, acting as if Bucky didn’t have a lethal piece of metal attached to his shoulder. Bucky had never held it against him. He’d seen himself as a bloody freak show for a long time, after all.
He tried to banish those thoughts. He got up and went to take a long shower.
The rest of the morning was pretty uneventful. They’d sent what they had found in the facility to both Sam and Shuri the evening before, and were now waiting for information and directions on what to do next. Zemo had gone to the market to buy the food they still needed, since Bucky had been distracted by having to escape the Hydra agents, and had left him a post-it note on the counter saying he would be back soon. Bucky tried to keep the anxiety at bay until Zemo returned home, unharmed and holding four bags full of fruit, vegetables, meat, fish and cheese. They put away the groceries and started to cook in comfortable silence, and then Bucky called Steve downstairs to eat the eggplant parmigiana.
As usual, during lunch, it was mainly Zemo who spoke, talking about the newest exhibitions organized in the city and then about someone he knew that he’d met at the market. Meanwhile, Bucky tried to ignore the sideways looks Steve kept throwing his way. Afterward, when Bucky had finished clearing the table while Zemo was loading the dishwasher in the kitchen, Steve seemed to hesitate behind him before finally going upstairs.
Bucky closed a drawer with his hip and followed him up a couple minutes later. He went into his own room, contemplating taking a nap to catch up on the sleep he’d lost because of the nightmares, when he realized someone had opened his door. Turning, he saw it was Steve. He chastised himself – he really had to be out of sorts if he hadn’t heard him approaching in the hallway.
“Hey,” Steve said quietly, already with a foot through the doorstep. “Can I come in?”
“I’m not entirely sure I’m willing to speak with you right now,” Bucky warned.
“You’re angry,” Steve acknowledged, closing the door. He still sported a graze on his cheek from yesterday’s fight that would be gone by tomorrow.
“Excellent deduction, Sherlock.”
“Oh come on, Buck, you’d have been done for if I hadn’t come.”
Continuing to be reminded of that didn’t really help. Bucky rolled his eyes. “Which is why I am talking to you.”
“Something for which I am extremely grateful,” Steve said, grinning a little.
Bucky huffed. “Still, I really didn’t want you out there with us, Steve. What if there had been more of them, and they’d managed to take all three of us?” He’d thought about the possibility of more old Hydra commanders lurking in the shadows that morning. After all, Sarkov wasn’t the only one they’d lost the track of in the wake of Hydra’s dissolution, and later, Thanos’ snap. Most criminals who’d survived it had used the disappearance of half of the population to vanish, creating new identities in order to live in another part of the globe.
“I wish I could say that I’m sorry, Buck, but you know I would do it again,” Steve said, as honest and determined as ever.
Bucky sighed in defeat. “I know. I don’t know why I expected any different. I’ve learned by now I can’t stop you from throwing yourself into danger.”
“Excellent deduction, Sherlock,” Steve said, echoing Bucky’s earlier words, his grin returning.
He shook his head, eyeing Steve with helplessly fond exasperation.
They just looked at each other for a minute, before Bucky glanced away. “I guess I’m just scared to lose you again, now that you’re back. And it’s not even about– I know you can defend yourself in a fight, Stevie. But I keep thinking–” he exhaled, frustrated, his words failing him. “I have this fear that at any minute you’ll disappear again, like you were never here. And that you won't return, this time.” He hadn’t meant to confess that, and his voice cracked on the last words, but he was tired and had been wallowing in this for weeks now, and it felt good to finally admit at least a little of what he was feeling.
Steve’s eyes were wide. “Buck, I told you, I’m not gonna leave, okay? I swear. I came back to stay,” he murmured, coming closer. Bucky felt something in him unclench slightly at the words. “No more walking into danger without each other, alright?”
“Deal,” Bucky said. He leaned against the wall, feeling world-weary and sleepy, and brought his hands to his pockets, stretching out his legs and crossing the ankles as he eyed the bed. When he looked back at Steve, he was briefly stunned by what he saw: Steve’s eyes dragged over his body, before returning quickly to his face.
His voice sounded a little raspy when he spoke. “By the way, I, uh. I’ve been thinking about something a lot, recently.”
“Well, don’t hurt yourself, pal,” Bucky joked.
Steve let out a startled bark of laughter. “Jerk,” he muttered affectionately, his serious expression momentarily replaced by the slightly dopey smile Bucky knew well.
“Asshole,” Bucky replied automatically.
“If only that were true,” Steve said after a moment, suddenly looking almost rueful. The levity vanished, leaving something much heavier in its wake.
Bucky frowned, uncomprehending, but before he could ask anything, Steve seemed to steel himself. “In the last few years, Buck, I often wished I had been more selfish than I was.”
As he spoke, Steve came closer still, almost caging Bucky against the wall, and took his hand in one of his. It was warm.
Bucky blinked. “Steve, what are you…”
“I mean it, you know. I came back to stay, to be with you, and– whatever kind of life you want to lead, I won’t leave unless you ask me to.” There was something defiant in Steve’s gaze, as though he was daring the world to try and take Bucky from him again. Bucky’s palms felt clammy.
Steve raised his other hand to his cheek, touching the same spot where he had his own graze. Bucky’s heart was thrumming like hummingbird’s wings in his chest, drowning out the part of himself that was calling for him to stop Steve now, before–
“Bucky,” Steve said slowly, as if savoring his name on his lips, and in a flash Bucky remembered a smaller Steve looking up at him with that same unbelievably worshipful expression.
“I missed you so much,” he continued hoarsely, and somehow Bucky knew he wasn’t talking only of the time he’d spent in the forties. “I know things were still hard for you during those months in Wakanda, and after then– with Thanos and everything that happened, we never really had the time to talk about us, but I always hoped…”
Feeling unsteady and dazed, Bucky let himself drink in the feeling of Steve pressing against him, his thumb stroking his cheek like he was something precious. He was overwhelmed by a sudden undercurrent of emotion, of familiarity and intimacy, threatening to sweep him underneath its tide.
“Do you remember it now, Buck?” Steve traced the corner of his lips with his fingertips, rediscovering them, asking for permission. “Do you remember this?”
“I remember,” Bucky murmured, and he did. Caring for Steve had always come as naturally as breathing. And so it was muscle memory that let his eyes flutter closed as Steve’s grip tightened slightly at his answer; muscle memory that had him leaning forward to breath him in, and Steve smelled like sweat after hours spent down in the trenches, like Brooklyn, like coming home, and–
And there was something Bucky should be thinking of, something else he should remember but–
But this was Steve, and he was standing right there, right next to him after so long away, and he was so close that Bucky could practically feel how warm he was, how solid. He sunk into the sensation of Steve’s hand raking slowly through Bucky’s hair, and became aware of the way he had angled himself to avoid pressing on his metal arm, which wasn’t unexpected – he’d always tried to make Bucky forget about it, unlike Zemo who’d always been so openly fascinated by the arm it sometimes made Bucky think he–
And God, what the fuck was he doing?
Bucky sucked in a breath, opened his eyes. It felt like awakening from under a spell. “Steve… Stevie, we can’t, I can’t–”
Fuck, fuck. He made himself bring the hand that had somehow found its way to Steve’s waist up to his chest to try and push him back, to reclaim some of the space that had vanished in the last few minutes.
“It’s okay, we don’t have to hide anymore now, Buck,” Steve said reassuringly, his body immovable although his face had pulled back slightly to look him in the eye.
“What?” He almost laughed when his brain caught up with Steve’s words. “Oh, yeah, I– I know that. It’s not about being a fagg– gay,” he said, and jeez, he hadn’t used that word in a while. Having Steve here sure brought him back in time. Fuck, he’d almost–
“You know that…” Steve repeated, looking down, finally taking a step back and loosening his hold. Bucky felt a pang in his chest, although he wasn’t sure if it was guilt or relief. “Is that what this is about?”
“What?”
“Are you already seeing somebody?” Steve was looking at him again now, his expression enquiring.
And Bucky was a fucking asshole, yes, but he couldn’t find it in himself to deny it. Not after what he’d been so close to doing to Zemo.
“I see,” Steve said. He wasn’t touching him at all anymore. “It’s ok, Buck. I should have known, really, you’ve always been the playboy out of the two of us,” he added after a pause with a shadow of his old self-deprecating smile, as he took another step back. “You were the only one of our age who managed to snag the interest of Margaret Kinney, remember? Should’ve figured your charm wouldn’t‘ve abandoned you in the twenty-first century.”
Bucky hadn’t been a playboy in a long time. He’d tried to recover the smooth personality and the flirtatious smile that had always gotten him the best dame of the ball, but between his rusty social skills, his self-consciousness about the arm, and the mess in his head, he hadn’t been able to. And then when things with Zemo had gotten more serious, he hadn’t cared to. Even when the Sokovian managed to convince him to go to a nightclub or party of some kind, it didn’t matter that Bucky was much more taciturn than in the past: he simply let Zemo be charming enough for the both of them. Zemo had never tried to impose himself as a moral compass for Bucky to follow in the process of his recovery. He’d just– been there. Which, apparently, had been what Bucky’d needed to get better.
And Christ, Bucky had just risked fucking it all up.
“I’m sorry,” he said to Steve. He’d never felt as socially inept as he did in this moment – this wasn’t just a conquest he had to politely dump. This was his best friend, his only connection to his past life. Someone he knew he would always love, in a manner or another. He didn’t want to screw this up.
Steve shrugged lightly. “Don’t be, it’s fine. If this person makes you happy…” he trailed off, watching him closely, and Bucky rushed to nod. “Okay, then that’s enough for me.”
For a moment, it seemed like Steve wanted to ask something else, and Bucky thought he would want to know who it was. In the end, though, he remained silent.
“Thank you, Steve. I mean it.”
Steve flashed him a smile, but his heart clearly wasn’t in it. Bucky had no idea what to say. For all of Steve’s apparent acceptance, there was now a tension in the room completely different from the one that had lingered between their bodies just a few minutes before. Bucky hated it.
“See you at dinner?” He asked in a hopeful tone.
“Sure,” Steve said. As quiet as he’d come, he went, leaving Bucky alone with his thoughts.
It wasn’t a comfortable place to be.
Dinner was an awkward affair.
Steve and Bucky mostly sat in uneasy silence, speaking little and appearing particularly interested in their respective plates.
“Thanks,” Bucky said when Steve passed him the salt, and his voice sounded strained to his own ears as he avoided looking up when taking it. He flinched slightly when their fingers made contact for a brief moment, and berated himself for it.
“You’re welcome,” Steve said softly.
As it was, remorseful and guilty and generally feeling like shit for more than one reason, Bucky couldn’t look either of the two men eating with him in the eye, and Steve– he didn’t know what Steve was thinking. Which, in itself, was unusual: Bucky had been able to pick up on Steve’s mood since they’d been kids.
It unnerved him. He sensed Steve watching him a couple of times, but he didn't dare to meet his gaze for fear of giving a hint of what had passed between them that afternoon to Zemo.
However, if Bucky hadn’t been so worried and focused on his leg lightly touching Steve’s knee under the table – should he pull it away? Would that be weird? – he’d have realized someone as observant as Zemo was bound to sense something off between him and Steve anyway, and that he would draw his own conclusions.
By the end of the meal, Bucky felt a little nauseous, and noticed he practically hadn’t eaten.
“I’m going to go for a walk,” Zemo said in a bland tone after Steve had gone upstairs and Bucky had started to mechanically clear the table.
“Alright,” Bucky answered distractedly, still without raising his eyes. He heard him close the door and continued to put the cutlery away without really seeing it. He briefly wondered if he should accompany Zemo, in case someone from Hydra was still lurking around. The thought of being near Zemo in that moment, though, made him want to crawl under a rock in shame and die. They would have to talk, just not right now. Zemo would be fine, Bucky told himself, looking around the kitchen for something else to keep his hands busy with.
Five hours later, Zemo still hadn’t come back.