four
They don’t speak very much while Bucky busies himself making the promised sandwiches. Steve’s not quite sure what he’s supposed to be doing besides standing around and staring- it figures. Even when by some miracle, he’s brought back to Bucky, he still feels out of place. He’s still out of time.
But at least he isn’t alone.
“Peanut butter and honey good?” Bucky asks, his own sandwich looking to be already made and set on a plate beside where he’s still holding a knife.
There’s an ease with how he does that that Steve doesn’t yet understand- that last Bucky he’d had had been so good with his hands, but he’d also held his silverware like every other barbaric boy they’d known growing up, fist curled around the base like they were using a shovel and not a fork and spoon. Steve had always made fun of him for it- “Didn’t your Ma bother teaching her son some manners too?”- but then when they started eating together in the war, always hurried and always rushed, he’d begun doing it too. Bucky now holds even a butter knife like Steve holds his pencils. Elegantly. Easily.
He also holds it in the only flesh hand he has left.
Steve clears his throat and tears his gaze away from the knife. “That sounds great,” he says.
Bucky smiles and starts slathering the slice of bread held by that damn metal arm right away. “You can go sit on the bed, you know. I know it’s not made, but it won’t bite.”
Steve exhales and nods, relieved to have a direction to go in. Sitting he can manage. Everything today has him feeling sort of dizzy anyways. “Okay.”
The not speaking thing starts after that. Steve doesn’t mind. He has a lot of stuff that he’s still trying to take in- starting with what’s around Bucky’s hut and what apparently is now his home.
There’s a small, selfish part of Steve that wonders why that home appears to not be with him. He’s scared that he’s found the answer to that when as soon as he sits down, he spots a shirt on Bucky’s pillow that based off of the position and the size, clearly belongs to someone else.
Oh.
Bucky had… he’d mentioned Steve is still alive earlier, that he’s even met T’Challa and Shuri enough for them to be some sort of friends. Hadn’t he? Steve has been wondering why that’s the case when he apparently hasn’t been hanging around. There’s a horrible feeling creeping up Steve’s spine. He doesn’t want this to be the explanation for that, but even as he’s trying to push the fear of it away, his eyes are darting around and honing in on every small detail that suggests this hut is a shared home.
The strange shirt is still on the pillow. There’s a pair of faded pink underwear tossed in the top of the hamper that are definitely not Bucky’s style. He can see a second toothbrush in the cup by a stack of towels on top of the bookshelf. He can also see that Bucky’s bed is clearly one meant for two.
Steve sinks down onto the mattress and doesn’t want to stop until it swallows him up and he disappears. Logically, he knows he shouldn’t run with so little information about something as serious as this. Bucky hasn’t touched him in many ways beyond his usual tactile behavior when it comes to comfort, but he’d cupped his face, hadn’t he? He’s called Steve honey twice. Sweetheart once. But… Bucky’s always been sort of loose with the names.
He’s not a two timer. Steve knows that. But what else would he feel the need to do after his maybe ex-lover quite literally dropped from the sky? Bucky’s a good man, a gentle one even if he has the ability to decide not to be. He wouldn’t want Steve to be more put out that he already has been by being pulled out of time yet again.
There would be pity and him pushing himself to do more than he should. He’s always been willing to do anything to keep Steve from being in pain.
Bucky’s back is turned to him while he ties up the bread, so Steve lets his eyes squeeze shut and tries to suck in a shaky breath as silently as he can. Sometimes being around Bucky makes the need to be strong and the desire to just be get a little blurry.
“It’s not weak if you’re with me,” Bucky had once said, the first time he saw Steve cry and had to hold him through it during the war. It doesn’t feel that way now. Steve is with Bucky, but he’s not sure if Bucky really wants to be with him or if he feels like he has to. Steve doesn’t want Bucky to ever have to do anything for him ever again.
Look where that got him last time.
This isn’t payback, is it? It wasn’t. If it was, that’s a debt so deep now that Steve doesn’t know how he’ll ever repay it on his own end. Somehow Bucky has survived, which means he must know that Steve is the one who let him fall off that damn cliff. The sickness Steve’s stomach still has churning from the feeling of falling through that portal… it’s nothing in comparison. It’s vertigo versus Bucky giving his life.
Steve has to keep his eyes closed for another second until he hears the clatter of ceramic that suggests Bucky has just picked up their plates and is about to turn back towards him. He blinks them back open just in time- or maybe, a little too late, because Bucky is looking at him like he’s a little concerned.
He doesn’t say anything about it out loud, though. Steve’s thankful for it. They need to save the talking about things that are actually important. “There’s a picnic table out back,” Bucky says, handing Steve the plate with his sandwich on it so he can turn to the smallest refrigerator Steve has ever seen and pull out two cans of what Steve recognizes as the new design for Coke. It’s not the same tasting as what they used to drink from a green glass bottle, but it’s okay. It’s nice in that nostalgic sort of way that usually makes his chest hurt.
It clenches up a little now, right under Bucky’s shirt that he’s wearing, slightly loose around the shoulders where they’ve stretched under the bulk he’s accumulated from doing things Steve’s not yet sure of. But, it looks like he’s about to find out. Bucky leads the way again with Steve standing to follow, this time back outside and around from the front of the hut to where there’s a forest facing from behind.
Steve stops in his tracks the same way he had done up at the palace upon first seeing Wakanda from the outside. In comparison to how wide the landscape had spread from up there, this is tame in comparison- nothing but some trees and rocks, but so unlike any other view that Steve has ever seen, he can’t help but stare. It’s a far cry from the concrete he’d grown up with in the city. He suddenly has the urge to sketch it, but he’s not sure if he could ever do the wonder he’s feeling justice with mere paper and a pen.
Bucky doesn’t seem to have the same problem, sliding down onto the picnic table he’s mentioned and pointing to the seat across from him with the metal hand holding his can of coke. Steve wonders how easily he could crush it. “C’mon and sit down, Stevie.”
Steve licks his lips and nods faintly before following Bucky’s instructions. He sits down on the bench and puts his plate in front of him. Across the table in front of him, there’s a hiss as Bucky opens his coke. Then, there’s silence as Bucky apparently works out where they’re going to go.
Steve, for once in his life, waits. He doesn’t want to make the wrong move here, not when he’s still so uncertain. Not when he seems to be always so uncertain now. He’s supposed to be a captain who leads the charge- but how can he do that when he doesn’t know where that charge is supposed to lead?
Bucky gives him that direction once again, this time by being the first to speak. “So,” he says slowly, so slow that Steve has to pick up his sandwich and take a bite before his hands start to shake with the stress of having nothing to do. Bucky watches him chew, eyes calculating. He doesn’t continue until Steve swallows, stomach still feeling slightly out of sorts. From the trip or his typical nausea, Steve isn’t sure. He’s not sure it matters. Bucky goes on with what he was saying either way. “You have some questions, I’m sure.”
There’s a pause that Steve supposes he’s supposed to fill. “I do,” he answers quietly, eyes drifting up from the table to Bucky’s face.
Bucky smiles, but it’s half hearted. “I hope I have some answers, then.” There’s another pause, this time one that they both take so they can take the opportunity to think while they try and eat.
Steve doesn’t say this out loud, but Bucky has always been the one with the answers, at least for him. In general, really, though- maybe Sarah had worn it into Steve’s head that it was his duty to always get up from a fight, but that was because she knew more than likely, at least at some point, he would end up on his own. She had been more right about that than Steve thinks she would ever liked to have known. But that knowledge came from the fact that Steve was an only child, and even from a young age, he didn’t always quite fit in. He still doesn’t.
But Bucky… well, he was the oldest child. The only son. The big brother. Steve’s overprotective best friend. He was older than Steve and always so popular in school that Steve had barely believed it when Bucky decided he wanted to be friends with someone like him at all. When he was sixteen and Bucky kissed him for the first time after they climbed inside from watching the fireworks for the Fourth from the fire escape, that disbelief had done nothing but set in again. It was enough that Bucky wanted to be around him at all- and now he wanted to be with him?
He’d been scared it was a joke at first, or a birthday gift meant to be given out of pity because Bucky knew he hadn’t yet had his first kiss. As usual, his first reaction had been one of self defense, jutting out his chin after Bucky lips left his own and trying not to sound or look as scared as the kiss meant he felt. “What was that for?”
Bucky’d only smiled, like the reaction didn’t surprise him at all. “For you,” he’d said. “My fella, if that’s what you wanna be.” That was what Steve wanted more than anything, even at sixteen, scrawny, and sick. He just wasn’t sure how the hell Bucky knew when Steve had tried so hard to hide it. He’d asked. As usual, Bucky had had the answer. “We’re two of a kind, aren’t we?” I figured if I was wanting to be yours, you would be wanting to be mine.”
Steve has been Bucky’s since the moment they met, even now, when the man he sees across from him is more foreign than he is familiar. It is Bucky. Steve has no problem believing that no matter how much he’s changed. He’s just not sure of how they got here- and he’s even less sure of where he’s supposed to belong. Who he’s supposed to belong to. He takes another bite of his sandwich right as Bucky decides to speak again.
“I just don’t want to overwhelm you,” he murmurs, and Steve almost thinks he’s imagining how he can hear the metal arm whirring until the plates shift visibly and Bucky looks down at them with a wince. “Sorry. Happens when I get worked up sometimes.” He waves his flesh hand. “Shuri says it’s the sensors making sure I’m not doing anything stupid.” He sounds amused, and Steve gives him a small smile. Usually stupid is the word that Bucky would use to describe him.
Or he used to, anyways. Steve wonders if he’ll say it again.
He settles on asking something small of Bucky to start with. “I’m getting you worked up?” He says that as lightly as he can manage, but underneath the table, his leg starts bouncing. He wasn’t fishing for pity earlier- he really doesn’t want to put out, let alone bother the man.
But Bucky shakes his head and gives him the same exasperated look Steve’s been seeing since before he was ten. “That’s not what I mean. It’s just, some of what I know you’ll want to talk about is a little tough.” He finishes draining the Coke from his can and promptly crushes it up into a flat circle with his left hand.
Well, there’s the answer to at least one question.
Steve asks another, this time a little more hesitant. “Tough on you or on me?”
Now Bucky looks hesitant too, like he’s trying to keep from hurting Steve’s feelings. That’s also a look Steve is used to, this one usually saved for letting Steve down about the second girl cancelling for their double dates. There are no girls here now. At least, Steve doesn’t think. “On both of us,” Bucky eventually responds. “Neither of us have led easy lives.”
He reaches his right hand forward and lays it on top of Steve’s own, the touch tethering them together and sinking so deep into Steve’s skin that strangely, he almost wants to moan. Not in that way- Steve hasn’t had the urge for that sort of stuff since before the ice. It’s just been a while since someone has touched him with so much affection, is all. It’s been a while since he’s had someone whose skin he wants on his own. It’s a lot. Luckily, Bucky doesn’t seem to notice just how still Steve has gone.
He’s still going on with what he was saying. “I know more about what you’ve been through than you’re probably going to want to let on,” he says gently, thumb tracing over when Steve’s hand meets his wrist. Steve worries for a moment that Bucky will be able to tell he punched his hands out so hard earlier, it was almost enough to see bone. He doesn’t want to know if Bucky has found out about that from anyone. That’s a question he won’t ask. Bucky’s thumb continues tracing the same pattern as he pushes forward. “I think that the place I can start out is telling you a little bit about how I lost my arm.”
“You don’t have to.” Steve feels like he has to offer Bucky another out. “I don’t- I don’t need to know, not if you don’t want me to.”
Bucky’s remaining hand squeezes over his own as he huffs out a halfhearted laugh. “You are always trying to give people the chance to back away, you know that?” He fixes Steve with a fond look before he can defend it. “I know you do. And I know you wouldn’t try and make me talk about it if I didn’t want to, but I do.” He squeezes again, and his words soften. “You deserve the truth. People have lied to us both too many times. I won’t be someone who’ll do that to you.”
That sounds slightly ominous, and Steve isn’t sure he wants to know the context. He accepts the rest, though. Bucky has always been an honest man. “Okay,” he exhales. “So…”
Bucky shifts in his chair, a silent here we go movement that almost makes Steve smile until Bucky begins talking. The graveness in his tone is enough to take that urge away. “It was after the train,” he starts evenly, broad shoulders leaning in like he’s trying to make sure Steve is kept as close as possible while he has to hear this.
The mere mention of the word train is enough to have him crawling out of his skin, and suddenly, stupidly, he wishes they were back inside the hut with Bucky lying on top of him to keep him held down and away from the possibility of ever running off again.
They stay at the table. Steve doesn’t say he wants to go in.
“I don’t remember much of what happened during the actual fall,” Bucky admits. “But I don’t really mind losing that particular memory much in the end.” The emphasis on the word that is odd. Steve frowns deeper. “When I woke up, it was gone. Not like I ever saw it again,” he tries to joke, but he quickly sobers up after, and the apprehension Steve feels about what’s coming multiplies by ten.
He has to interject, words crawling up his throat and coming out choked when he realizes what this story means for them- what this means is Steve didn’t just let him fall. He left him to die. He didn’t look, and- oh, God, he wants to be sick again. “You survived?” he whispers. The answer is obvious, and has been obvious since Steve woke up at the palace, but the reality of it being laid out still has him feeling like he’s going to cry.
Bucky nods and looks concerned, like he’s not the one who should be telling Steve to crawl on his knees and beg for forgiveness. Like he’s not the one Steve abandoned to die without an arm in the Alps under all that snow. “There was no way for you to have known that, Steve,” he says, and it’s so genuine and gentle that the guilt Steve feels only intensifies more. But apparently, this is a conversation that Steve of the future and Bucky have had before. Steve wonders if he’ll ever believe Bucky when he says it isn’t his fault. Bucky says that now. “It wasn’t your fault. Any of it.”
“Any of it?” Steve repeats, small and strangled. “Buck… Buck, what else is there?” He knows his eyes have gone wild, but he can’t help it when he feels so wild himself, so worn down around the edges that he might be finally beginning to crack. “What else was done? What did I let them do to you?” He doesn’t even know who them is, but Bucky doesn’t argue, so there must have been someone.
“Stevie… ” Bucky’s own eyes are pained, and Steve puts the blame of that on himself too. He’s done this. Everything that even happened to Bucky after the train- no wonder he isn’t around. He’s still a coward, only this time without a plane to crash as an excuse. He can’t stay here with that shame on his shoulders.
Maybe Steve shouldn’t stay here either, then.
He shoves up from the table as fast as he can and begins walking back around to the front of the hut, not knowing where he’s going, but knowing he doesn’t deserve to stay here. No, what he deserved was to stay in the ice. What he deserved was to pay the price of everything he’s made Bucky lose.
He doesn’t make it far before he hears Bucky start to follow him. Of course he does- that’s what Bucky always does. Follows him into every fight that gets Steve in over his head. Wades his way in to make sure he can help pull Steve close to get him out. Only maybe, this time, Steve doesn’t want to get out. But Bucky Barnes has never been a quitter. For all that his Ma taught him about getting back up, Steve wishes he could say the same.
“Steve…” Bucky’s calling out to him before Steve even gets halfway to the gate, low and resigned, then louder when he doesn’t listen. “Steve!” It’s the snappy tone of voice Steve is used to hearing when Bucky’s got it in his head to scold him, and Bucky doesn’t hold back from that now. “Steven Grant, I know goddamn well you don’t know where you’re going, so you get back here and listen before I have to pin your ass down.”
Steve spins, and for all that he’s missed the other man, scoffs. It’s easy to fake the persona all the SHIELD agents and stories have shoved upon him. “You wouldn’t,” he says, as harshly as he’s feeling like he should be on himself.
Bucky’s mouth twists wryly from where he’s still striding closer. “It’s been a while since I’ve had to. But you know I would.” He stops too, and now they’re barely two feet apart with a type of tension between them Steve hasn’t felt since the night after Azzano when Bucky gave him the biggest washing down of his life. The memory of it makes him want to start sobbing, so he clenches his jaw and looks to the side instead, but Bucky doesn’t give him the space to do that for too long. He takes another step forward, and then his hand is back on Steve’s face. “Sweetheart,” he murmurs. “It’s okay to be overwhelmed. But you don’t gotta handle this one on your own.”
Steve has been on his own since that damn day on the train, so hearing Bucky say that so soon after he’s come to find he deserves it… “But I should,” he confesses, like some sort of terrible secrets he has to get off his chest before it crushes him. He doesn’t want to have to say it, but if Bucky won’t, Steve will. Bucky said Steve deserves honesty. Bucky deserves that honesty too. “It is my fault. All of it.”
Bucky closes his eyes and leans their foreheads together, Steve’s hands still hanging awkwardly at his sides where he’s still too shy to settle them on Bucky’s mismatched shoulders. He doesn’t know if that’s something he’s meant to touch. “You don’t even know what all of it is.” Bucky’s so near now that Steve, with his own eyes wide open, can see every new wrinkle and individual hair marking his skin. There are even some silver once sprinkled in there. Steve’s stomach flips at the sight. “Am I gonna have to tell you to stop jumping to conclusions again?”
Steve tries to make a sound somewhere between a huff and a snort, but what ends up coming out is more of a sniff with how his eyes are growing wetter with the closer Bucky gets. Jesus, he’s ridiculous- but it’s been so long. So long to go without what he’s getting now in excess even when he doesn’t deserve it. He’s done nothing to earn this new Bucky’s affections, but here Bucky is offering them anyways. “Yeah, well,” he gets out. “It’s always taken a lot for your lessons to sink in.”
“C’mere, kid.” Bucky laughs out loud after, and then Steve’s entire world gets even brighter when Bucky brings his metal arm around Steve’s back and his flesh hair behind his hair to pull him in for a hug that’s so warm Steve can feel it seeing under every inch of his skin.
It’s the sort of thing Steve’s been dreaming about for the last six weeks during every night that was kind enough to bring a peaceful sleep. He gasps and goes still, surprise and something akin to adrenaline rushing inside of him at the now unfamiliar feeling of being held. His skin hurt without Bucky, and now, every inch of it is singing so loud at the contact that it almost stings. He doesn’t know what to do for a moment. It’s been so goddamn long since someone has given him a proper hug. Is he meant to go pliant? Hold still? This used to come naturally even after the serum changed his size and meant he had to duck down. It doesn’t now.
But then, as soon as he feels Bucky’s hand stroking circles into the small of the back, it does. His shoulders slump down as soon as he brings his arms up to circle over Bucky’s back, the same sort of clingy way of hugging he’s had since they were children. His chin digs into the right side of Bucky’s neck as he hides his face, holds on tight, and finally starts to cry. It’s cathartic. And kind of embarrassing. He’s twenty seven, not six.
Bucky doesn’t tease him for it though, just holds him tighter and presses Steve’s face further into his neck with the hand still fit in the back of his hair. He shushes him and Steve can feel the sound of it coming from his chest. He holds his breath so he can hear Bucky’s heartbeat doing the same. “Let it out,” Bucky says. Steve can feel his hair sticking into where his beard is pressed against it. “I’ve got you.”
Steve knows Bucky does. He always has. That’s not what has him teary eyed and torn up right now- he knows Bucky has his back now. But why should he, when Steve hadn’t had his when he needed it most? He thought it was hard to live with the guilt when he thought Bucky was dead. What is he supposed to do now that he knows Bucky is alive, but only in a world where Steve is still the one who doesn’t belong?
He doesn’t know what else to do, so he just keeps crying, harder than he has since he woke up from the ice. That need to be strong he was thinking about earlier has faded away far enough for him to fall into Bucky without looking back.
It’s not weak if he’s with Bucky. He doesn’t have to be strong when he’s just being Steve.
Those are both things that Bucky said to him time and time again, both before the war and when they found themselves stationed in the thick of it. Steve doesn’t know which time he needed to hear them more, but he sure as hell is glad to remember them now.
Without Bucky, Steve’s not sure he knows how to be anyone at all. Bucky was the only one who knew him before the serum. He was the only one after who saw Steve only as Steve all in all. And then after the fall… there was no replacing that kind of bond, not when Bucky had his sighs set on Steve down to his soul.
Even then, Captain America comes easier than being Steve. Captain America wasn’t the one who had lost Bucky on the train. Captain America had completed his mission at the end of the day. It was Steve who was at a loss for the love of his life. Steve who let himself sink down into the sea without trying to stop it. It’s hard to handle no matter who Steve tries to be.
Now that he’s somehow back with Bucky, all that damn hurt inside he’s feeling doesn’t just magically disappear, especially not now that he knows he was the one who had put him in the situation for it to be done in the first place. He’s found his person again, but still not his place. Half of him has been worried since seeing the hut that Bucky only is willing to share his home because he knows he’s Steve’s only familiar face he has left, 2011, 2017, or otherwise. It’s not a good feeling, thinking you’re an obligation to someone you love. But Steve is used to that by now. He’s also gotten used to feeling like he’s no longer loved at all.
It’s hard to feel that way when Bucky is still hugging him, though. Steve holds on tighter. He’ll take what he can get as long as he can get it, guilt be damned. If this does all end up being a dream, Steve at least wants to make it a good one.
They stay in that position for at least the next ten minutes, Steve curled up and crying into Bucky’s body. Steve didn’t bother to check if anyone was watching before he started the waterworks, but he distantly remembers the kink saying something about a surveillance device. He doesn’t see one anywhere, but he suspects it’s probably not tech he would recognize anyways.
After the tear tracks finally start to dry, Steve pulls himself together enough to realize just how hard he’s clinging. Bucky is also still rubbing his lower back, and briefly, Steve wonders how his wrist hasn’t started to cramp. And then he remembers. Bucky’s left wrist is also now made of unfamiliar tech. He has to hold on for another moment after that.
Eventually, he starts to pull away, and Bucky must realize because he starts patting his back and preemptively whispering “You’re okay” for another mini breakdown Steve hasn’t even had. He might have one soon, though. With how long and weird this day has been, there’s really no way to tell. At least for these ones, Bucky will be sticking by his side to help him through. That hug has done more than Steve can say he has during the last six weeks he’s spent trying to break out of panic attacks on his own.
PTSD induced, the doctors at SHIELD had called it. No one actually bothered telling Steve what that’s supposed to mean, though that might be his fault for not reading the pamphlet or going back. But in his defense, reading the files alone had taken enough nerve to get to. Steve was still working up to all the rest before the portal got him zapped.
Maybe he was right about the whole downfallen hero thing. Being shown everything he could have but doesn’t, everything that he caused to occur, only after it can’t be fixed. Being shown Bucky, living happy and healing, in a home that doesn’t require Steve Rogers to be around. Just like the last time he woke up out of time. Being given everything he once wanted with the object of his real desires forever out of his reach. He supposes if this sort of thing has to happen, this is the better option. At least Bucky is alive.
Bucky is alive enough to put his arm around Steve’s shoulders and start steering him back towards the hut a second later. The fit of it feels slightly different, and Steve wonders why until he glances to the side and realizes Bucky has gotten taller. Only an inch or so maybe from when they were last together, but… there’s a difference. Steve doesn’t understand why and isn’t sure how to ask. But, Bucky seems to be on the track to answering questions again, so he doesn’t end up having to.
With Bucky’s direction, they’re heading back out again to the table where Steve can still see his half empty can of coke and the crust of their sandwiches on the plates. “We’ll have to clean up before some creature gets nosy and comes to see about the smell. Can’t leave stuff sitting outside for too long- I learned that lesson the hard way.” He picks up his place. Steve does the same. “You feel up for some more talking when we get inside?”
Steve takes in a deep breath, but nods as determinedly as he can. “Yeah,” he mutters. Then, trying to sound lighter through some self deprecation, “This time I might even not run away.”
“You get lost, you can always be found,” Bucky says easily, already stepping past Steve to head up inside like he suggested. “The universe gave us a pretty decent sense of direction when it comes to each other, I think.” That sounds like a joke. Steve frowns and doesn’t understand, but figures he’s done enough asking for now. He at least owes it to Bucky to listen. It’s the least he can do.
He’ll try to refrain from running this time. For now, he walks behind Bucky, and then when he gets in the hut, he stands. Bucky sets his plate down and then turns to take Steve’s. “You can take the bed, the chair, anything you see you can sit on. Just gimme a second to get the door so the kids don’t try to come in and I’ll be good to go.”
Steve doesn’t want to sit on the bed again while he’s still uncertain about Bucky sharing it with someone else, so he chooses the chair in front of the fireplace instead. It’s an odd looking thing- wicker with a brown cushion and shape almost like a globe that’s been half hollowed out. Similarly to that comparison, it spins around when Steve goes to sit. It’s a bit wobbly, but convenient to turn around so he can face the bed where Bucky is choosing to sit himself. “Kids?”
Please don’t tell me he has a kid.
Bucky hums and nods his head. “They’re the neighborhood menaces, same as we used to be,” he says, grinning. “They like to come watch me because they think I’m weird.”
Steve snorts and tries to grin back too. He thinks it comes out better than the last attempt, but he’s still getting back into practice with that particular expression. “Well, if the shoe fits…”
“Hey,” Bucky warns, but his eyes are crinkling up at the sides. They’ve always done that when he smiles or laughs, but now, the edges lead into crows feet. Steve looks at them for so long, Bucky has to clear his throat to bring his attention back. “So. Answers. Again.”
Steve shifts in his chair to get more comfortable and tries to ignore the urge he has to curl up in a ball to hide inside it. “Yeah,” he echoes faintly. “Again.”
“I know it’s gonna be a lot for you,” Bucky says softly. “Just… if it gets to be too much, tell me and we can slow down.” He shrugs, half of a smile starting to curve on his face. “I can even offer to give you another hug.”
Steve wants that more than anything already, but he has to let Bucky say his piece. He tries to control his breathing. Everything today has been too much. “Okay.”
Bucky begins this time in a voice that’s very close to how he’d talk from Steve’s bedside when he was feeling bad or particularly sick, soft and careful. “When you found me at Azzano, there had been experiments ran on my body that made me survive the fall. Enhancements. No one knew about them because they weren’t as obvious as yours. Not even me.” He bends forward and braces his elbows on his knees, clashing hands clasped between them. “I wasn’t awake for most of them, and when I was, I was pretty out of it.” His voice gets even softer. “Steve, you didn’t have a clue. There was no reason that you should have believed I could still be alive.”
I could have looked, Steve wants to say. He thinks it would come out as a whisper, but inside it’s a scream. I could have at least tried to find a body to bury.
He doesn’t say those things. Bucky takes that as the go ahead to go on. “I don’t think I actually would have survived if they hadn’t found me,” he says, still watching Steve cautiously, like he’s waiting for him to crack yet again.
This time Steve does speak up. It’s only one word, and it comes out so tiny he’s surprised Bucky even hears. Or maybe he isn’t, since Bucky is apparently somewhat enhanced. “They?”
Bucky winces, and Steve knows that whatever the answer is, it isn’t good. “Zola and his men.” He hunches forward even further, mouth set in a grim line. “Hydra.”
If Steve thought that portal made him feel like the world dropped out from under him, he doesn’t know what words he should use to describe the emotions racing through him right now. “Hydra,” he repeats dumbly. This is… this isn’t a dream anymore. This must be a nightmare somehow come to like, only it’s not his. It’s Bucky’s. “Hydra had you,” he says, and it’s almost funny how monotone he can hear himself now. Or maybe that’s just the hysteria. He looks at Bucky, hands held into fists so tight where they’re tucked under his arms that he feels like the knuckles might be able to split back open even without a bag. “How long?”
Bucky doesn’t answer. Steve tries again, only this time it’s a plead full of every bit of pain he’s felt while Bucky was gone because Steve let him go.
“How long?”
“You don’t need the number,” Bucky tries, standing and already taking a step forward, as if he’s preparing to pin Steve down if he tries to run. “It’s not what matters.” Then, he’s crouching in front of Steve’s chair just like he had done up at the palace. “There was nothing you could have done.”
Steve stares down at him. “How long?” he begs. It’s like he can’t say anything else. He’s a broken record. Useless, just like the ones at his apartment, meant for a machine the owner doesn’t know to work.
Bucky closes his eyes, metal hand moving to sit on Steve’s knee and whirring through the silence that settles between them before he speaks. “I was only awake periodically,” he says haltingly. Steve can tell he doesn't want to say it at all. “The Soldier completed over one hundred missions while you were asleep.” Steve is speechless, and Bucky takes advantage of that, flesh hand fitting to cup his jaw and then move to grip his chin instead, holding him still so he can’t hell but meet Bucky’s gaze. “What’s done is done,” he says. “Don’t try to punish yourself for the past, sweetheart. It’s not your price to pay.”
The words barely register with how hard Steve is reeling. He was under the ice for sixty six years. Sixty six years, all during which Hydra had Bucky captured doing God knows what. Steve doesn’t even know who or what The Soldier is, but it can’t be anything good.
Bucky keeps saying it isn’t Steve’s fault, but the root of everything that happened to him after seems to be that goddamn day on the train where Steve got them trapped with stakes too high and Bucky was the one who took the fall. What’s done might be done. But that doesn’t change the fact that Steve is the one who let it happen.
He closes his eyes and doesn’t open them until he feels like he can talk again. “When did you… when did you get free?”
Is he awake back in Steve’s time? Is there something Steve can do if he can go back to help him? Bucky had read enough sci-fi novels to him when they were growing up for him to know trying to change the past is a bad idea, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t even know if he’ll be going back there in the first place, let alone what being told all this means in terms of changing the timeline of events. But he still has to ask. He still has to know.
Bucky does give him a number this time. “2014,” he answers, and now both his hands are on Steve’s face, one cold and hard, the other soft and warm. “And you were the one that got me out. Made me remember who I was.”
That’s the first good thing Steve has gotten out of these answers. “How?” he whispers. If he goes back, he doesn’t want to do it wrong.
But Bucky shakes his head. “You don’t need to know right now. You’ve dealt with enough today.” Steve wants to protest, but Bucky shuts him up with a look and a thumb that presses to the center of his lips to keep him quiet. It’s nicer than his old method of just clapping his whole hand across Steve’s mouth. “How about I show you around the rest of the farm instead?”
Steve is stubborn no matter how worn down he is, but Bucky’s taken a tone he knows better than to argue with, so he doesn’t protest when Bucky stands and pulls Steve up along with him. “You’re really bad at changing the subject, you know.” He doesn’t have much room to talk considering how charming Bucky’s always been, especially in comparison to his own awkwardness, but he’s a little tired of being a downer during all this. Really, he’s just tired in general.
Bucky just grunts and gives his hair a playful tug where the cowlick in the back is still sticking up from where he’d sweat out the product in it at the gym. Christ. It feels like a lifetime ago- technically it was. “Maybe I just want to show off the fruits of my labor.” He pauses as he gives Steve a gentle push back out the door. “Not literally. Mostly I just load hay and look after the livestock.”
Steve bets that’s part of what has him so bulked up- even before the war, the Bucky he knew (which he guesses is also the Bucky he’s seeing now) was big, but only in the way that growing up in the Depression allowed. He was a boxer and a dock grunt, but they could barely afford to eat every day, which made gaining weight and muscle mass from more than just hard work a bit difficult. During the war… well, Azzano left him kind of lean and a little too wiry, and in comparison to Steve courtesy of the serum, he wasn’t the prize of the pen anymore.
But now, the difference is back in their size, or at least their builds. Bucky’s legs are thick as tree trunks and his waist twice as wide. His arms- both flesh and fake- are nothing to shy at either. His hair is shaggy and beard thicker than any of the stubble Steve had seen him sporting before, but underneath it all… he’s aged and he’s changed, but Steve can tell he’s the same man where it matters. He’s the same man that Steve still loves, and the same man that Steve once lost.
If you get lost, you can always be found, Bucky told him. Steve hopes he never has to put that to the test with him again.
In the meantime, he follows Bucky around on what apparently is his borrowed land. He lives here, and it’s clear it’s only going to be for so long, but he doesn’t say where he’ll be going. Steve wonders where he himself has gone off to. He’s not sure if it would be weird to ask, because he’s not sure what would be worse: Bucky not caring enough to know or Bucky being glad that he’s gone. Steve doesn’t think he could stand that, but it wouldn’t be the worst thing he’s heard today. That would have to be the news about Bucky’s time with Hydra.
In the present moment, though, Bucky isn’t mourning the same way Steve is. He’s moved past that, it seems, taking his time here to do some healing. He looks happy, gesturing to the fence he says he built himself and going on about some goats he’s apparently supposed to start raising next week. With his hair pulled back and standing in the sun, he’s practically glowing. Steve’s awestruck by it, even more so than he was upon seeing the Wakanda’s landscape for the first time. It’s like he’s looking at a god.
With how Bucky died and came back to life, maybe he is. Steve wonders if that’s how everyone else sees him in this part of the future, then has to wonder if anyone sees him at all. Fury had talked back in his timeline about revealing his return to the public. Steve had gone along with the idea even though he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want it. He just didn’t have it in him to fight the pressure. The people at SHIELD are all that he knows back there. All that he has.
Here, he has Bucky. And if what Bucky says is to be believed, Bucky has him, at least for now. Steve doesn’t even want to think about what will happen once Shuri figures out how to send him back home, or back to whatever he has behind him. He doesn’t have it in him for that right now either.
After a while, Bucky eventually brings their strolling to a stop so they can both lean against the fence he had pointed out previously, close enough for their shoulders to touch while they stare at the horizon laid out over the landscape in front of them. They’re on the far edge of the farm, right where Bucky must have intentionally taken them so they can see the sun set.
It’s been a long day.
Steve is so mesmerized by the sight of the lit up hills and warm hue of it all that he barely even notices when Bucky puts his arm around him and guides his head to lay on his shoulder. It’s the soft one, but Steve doesn’t think he would have minded the other side. He sinks as gratefully into the touch as every other one Bucky has given him today, letting out a small sigh that Bucky responds to with a hum.
“This is my favorite part of being out here,” he says.
Steve can see why. “It’s beautiful.” He wants to look up at Bucky and call him the same, but the uncertainty from earlier about where their relationship stands remains like a rock in his shoe that he can’t stop to shake out. He doesn’t know how to ask. He wishes he didn’t have to.
Bucky’s hand carding through his hair for now is enough to tide him over, and what he murmurs out next is enough to take him over the edge. “I don’t know how the hell you got here, kid. But since you are, I’m glad it’s with me.”
Steve doesn’t manage to say anything before he’s turning away from the sun and into Bucky’s body once again instead for a second hug, this time one he initiates himself. “I missed you,” he whispers, muffled into Bucky’s neck as he clutches at both of his shoulders from behind. He can feel what he thinks might be scarring on the left one’s seam and struggles for what seems like the millionth time that day not to cry. “I can’t even tell you how much.”
Bucky’s shushing him and stroking over his hair after that, but then he’s speaking too. “I know, honey,” he murmurs, voice so hoarse Steve can feel the vibrations of it ripple into the hug. “I know.”
Somehow, Steve doesn’t doubt that he does.
-
It’s nearly dark by the time they actually decide to head back to the hut and make it inside. Bucky makes Steve supper, this time soup heated up over the fire while Steve sits closeby in the chair Bucky bought from the market the other week. Bucky doesn’t mind the proximity, even when he bumps into Steve’s knees a few times while he works. Steve has been cold for long enough. Bucky can keep him warm. He knows what Steve needs.
It’s sort of handy being so far into the future from him. It means Bucky knows more than the Steve sitting beside him sipping soup from his spoon wants to let on, all thanks to the Steve across the globe having finally gotten to a point where he’s opened up about it. This kid, though… like Bucky said, he’s closed off. He’s cagey. And god, he’s so young- Bucky isn’t thinking about that in a way that makes him feel creepy, but it’s something he can’t help but note. Steve is twenty seven. The same age Bucky was when he fell. For Steve, it's only been a few months since he and Bucky both ‘died’. It’s handy having that little leg up, but it’s also heartbreaking to see how much he was hurting when Bucky wasn’t able to be around.
He looks to be feeling okay now, at least, laughing at the dumb jokes Bucky makes sure to crack during dinner and ducking his head down to look at his feet whenever Bucky says something that’s particularly teasing or calls him a name even the slightest bit sweet. Bucky tries not to lay it on too thick. He still needs to give his own Steve a call, but what the hell is he going to say? It’s just hard to hold back with this different Steve, vulnerable and so very tired of being alone, right in front of him. He needs someone. Bucky knows that someone should be him.
He just hopes that his Steve feels the same. He should. He knows how this kid is feeling better than anyone, right?
Regardless of Bucky’s internal battling, soon enough, both of their bowls are empty while their stomachs are now full. Steve looks to be so satisfied that he’s sleepy with it, which brings another slightly sticky situation to mind. Bucky has to figure out where they’re going to sleep- how they’re going to sleep.
He and Steve have shared a bed for most of their lives, so on a surface level, it’s no problem. But bearing in mind that Bucky is yet to call Steve… he’s not sure he feels comfortable getting into bed with another man- even if that man is Steve. It’s complicated. Everything today has been.
Maybe he can simplify it by getting the damn call over with. It’s not like it’s a hardship getting to talk to him. But first Bucky has to figure out what to do with the him that’s here.
The Steve that’s here is curled up in the chair, shoes kicked off and one of Bucky’s throw blankets draped over his shoulders. He looks so cozy Bucky almost hates to make him move, but he thinks that with how tired Steve is, the better option is the bed. Even if Bucky may not end up sharing with him. He has a hammock he can string up outside, if need be, but for now…
“Stevie.” Bucky lays his right hand on Steve’s shoulder, careful to not try and startle him too much from where he’s been nodding off. “Steve. C’mon, how about we get you changed so you can go to bed, yeah?”
Steve looks a little dazed. “Huh?”
“It’s probably past your bedtime, pal. You’ve had a big day.” Bucky turns, already preparing to send him to sleep by pulling out a clean t-shirt and a pair of cotton sleep shorts he rarely wears himself with how he usually chooses to sleep in the buff. It gets warm at night.
He doesn’t think that Steve will want to sleep naked in an unfamiliar environment, so he tosses the clothes into his lap and ruffles his hair before passing by him to grab his rarely used phone from the bookshelf. He hovers by the door while Steve looks down at the clothes he now has in hand.
“You can get in the bed. I’ll be right back.” He holds up his phone. “I have to make a quick call. Won’t be going too far for it.”
Steve nods his head slowly. It’s a testament to how tired he must be if he’s not protesting about putting Bucky out. “Okay.”
Bucky flashes him with a soft smile before stepping out. “I’ll be back in just a sec.” And with that, he shuts the door behind him and his view of Steve starting to shrug off his shirt is gone.
Now to talk to the other one.
True to his word, Bucky doesn’t straw too far, choosing to get in the back of the currently empty wagon he usually loads the hay into so he can watch the stars while he waits for his boyfriend to hopefully pick up. He lays back flat on the back and dials the number, putting it on speaker so he can have his hands free to pillow behind his head.
Steve answers after only a few rings, right on time to what Bucky expected. They don’t usually call. So of course, Steve sounds concerned. “Buck?”
Bucky smiles at the sound of his voice, same as the one he’s heard all day but somehow also different. “Hey, babydoll.”
Steve must be shutting himself in his room again because it takes him a second to respond. “Is everything okay?”
Taking in a deep breath and blowing it out, Bucky has to consider before he can choose what to say. He stares up at the sky while he thinks, eyes settling on what he thinks is Ursa Major. Great Bear. Steve had said it looked like him when Bucky first pointed it out during an early visit. “No one is hurt,” he eventually settles on. “But there’s a… situation that I’m not really sure how to explain.”
“What is it?” Steve sounds even more concerned now, so earnest with it it’s kind of cute. Or it would be, if Bucky wasn’t so worried that he’s going to freak out about this news when Bucky isn’t near enough to try and properly calm him down. “You can just say it.”
Bucky sighs and crosses his ankles. “That’s very literally easier said than done in this case.”
“Bucky,” Steve says, and now he’s complaining. “C’mon.”
“You asked for this,” Bucky warns him. He still has to wait a beat before he can work out what to say. “You remember that book I read to you when you were thirteen about that kid who had that magic watch that could make him travel to different timelines?” Bucky barely remembers it himself, but the title and the ending don’t matter as long as Steve gets the gist of where this is going.
He must, because his answer comes out slow and so skeptical Bucky is almost insulted. “Yes?”
“And you know how we both have a habit of losing track of time and waking up in places where we’re not supposed to be?”
Steve’s reply comes even slower the second time. “What are you saying?”
“I think you know.”
There’s a rustling sound that must be Steve shaking his head even though Bucky can’t see him. Here comes the freak out. “No. No. Tell me you’re fucking kidding, Bucky- tell me you don’t want me to believe that-“
“That I walked down to my hut earlier and saw a portal collapse you from 2011 into a heap on Wakandan soil?” Bucky interrupts. If he sounds like he’s being sarcastic, he isn’t. “I know it sounds like I’m making shit up, but- Jesus, I wouldn’t play around with something like this. You know me better than that.”
For a brief moment, there’s nothing but the sound of Steve breathing coming across the line and mixing with the crickets starting to chirp on Bucky’s own end of the phone. Then, in a distressed tone Bucky almost never hears Steve so openly use, “What are we supposed to do?”
“T’Challa and Shuri are working with the palace science staff to figure out the anomaly and how to send him back home,” Bucky says, voice just as gentle as what he’d used on the Steve inside earlier. “He’s staying with me for now.” He pauses, then sighs again. “I’m sorry I waited so long to tell you, sweetheart.”
“It’s okay,” Steve responds, but it’s a touch too quiet.
Bucky sits up then, phone now held in his flesh hand and brought up to be closer to his face, elbows braced on his knees. “I know it’s a stressful situation. I wish I didn’t have to put it on you too, but…” He pulls his ponytail out with his prosthetic and runs the hand through his hair. “I know you know I’d never two time you, but sharing what we share with someone else without you knowing just… didn’t feel right. Even if it is technically you I’d be sharing it with.” Steve is now completely quiet, so Bucky takes it upon himself to continue. “He’s just like you were after the ice, because that’s who he is.”
I didn’t know how low you’d get, he wants to say, but he doesn’t. That’s not what Steve needs to hear.
Steve is still breathing a bit heavier than usual, but he manages a whisper that’s so mow Bucky almost misses it. “I needed someone real bad back then, Buck.” That’s something Bucky knows now better than ever, but he’s not sure why Steve is saying it until he goes on. “I know you’d never…” He clears his throat. “I know you’d never step out on me.”
“Never, sweetheart,” Bucky has to interject.
Steve huffs out in a way that sounds affectionate, but still sounds careful when he speaks. “But I also know how lonely I was when things were like that for me,” he says softly. “I don’t… do you understand what I’m saying?”
Bucky’s not sure he does. “I think I’d rather you lay it out for me so I don’t read this wrong.” He bounces the heel of his boot onto the wooden bed of the wagon and distantly wonders what Steve is doing on the bed inside. Sleeping, hopefully. He doesn’t want both Steves to be stressed at the same time. Dealing with one stressed Steve Rogers is already enough of a handful. Case and point, the conversation Bucky is having right now.
Steve takes a full minute to respond to that, and when he does, he sounds even more hesitant. “I’m trying to say that I’ll understand anything that happens with… me while I’m there with you,” he says quietly. “I know you love me. You’ve loved me more than once.” That’s true. Whether he was small and skinny or big and tall, clean shaven, stubbly, or even with a beard- Bucky has and will love him through it all. He loved him even when he didn’t have a heart or anything human left in the Soldier’s head. “I love you. And I trust you.”
“To do what?” Bucky has to ask, just to make sure.
Steve doesn’t even take a beat this time to answer. “To take care of me, Buck.”
Bucky’s heart has done so much aching today it really ought to be sore, but the only thing it’s doing at the present moment is moving its way up his throat. “Oh, honey,” he promises, wishing more than anything he could see Steve’s face to do this proper. “I love you back. And I’m always gonna take care of you.” No matter time, body, or place. That’s a promise he’s sworn forever to keep, because Bucky Barnes is nothing if not an honest man when it comes to loving Steve.
“I know,” Steve answers, soft as a secret. “You always do.” And that’s that.
They chat for a few minutes after that, mostly because Bucky doesn’t want to end the exchange on such a weird note (even if it is a generally weird situation) but also because he doesn’t often get to catch Steve like this in the mornings when his voice is still a little sleep muzzy and every other word punctuated by a yawn that comes from the satisfaction of a stretch. Even from halfway across the world laying in a wagon, Bucky can picture it perfectly, the image ingrained into his mind with how many mornings with Steve exactly like that that they’ve shared. It’s as sentimental as Steve is sweet.
Eventually, though, Bucky knows he has to go back inside. If the Steve in there isn’t asleep, he doesn’t want him to worry about what’s taking him so long, so after about ten more minutes he takes the phone off speaker and hds it to his ear while heading back to the hut.
“I gotta go turn in, okay?” he murmurs. “I’ll call you again as soon as we have things sorted out. Text you before then too.”
Steve sighs on the other end of the line, then laughs when Bucky makes a ridiculous kissing sound into the phone. “I love you, Buck. Night.”
Bucky’s practically at the door, already pulling it open by the time he hangs up. “I love you back, sweetheart. Have a good day, alright? I’ll talk to you soon.” He’s so busy putting his phone back on top of the bookshelf that he almost doesn’t notice how the other Steve is sitting up on the bed and staring at him looking like he’s been stabbed in the back as soon as he steps inside.