seven
Maybe it’s a bit of a dramatic metaphor considering his past, but Bucky feels like he’s been hit by a train. Maybe not even a train. A plane? A quinjet? He can’t think of anything larger but he knows that even if he could, the completely crushed expression on Steve’s face would still make this feeling worse. He doesn’t just look crushed. He looks completely devastated. Bucky can’t blame him.
He knows this was always supposed to be the solution to him coming here, but it was a reality Bucky knew they were both avoiding, but now it’s one that they can no more. Steve is going home, and he’s going home alone.
Shuri, gods bless her, doesn’t seem to notice how badly Steve has taken her intended to be good news. Bucky can’t blame her. She’s sixteen, and it’s not like she knows how bad things are for Steve back where he comes from. “The key,” she’s saying, “Was looking into those particles I pointed out upon the initial analysis. Not detrimental, but definitely not supposed to be there.”
Steve is standing so stiff next to Bucky, Bucky can practically feel the urge to freak out vibrating off him. That shield is going back up, and it’s working in double time based off of how forcibly calm his words come out. “What were they?” He’s asking questions, but that isn’t necessarily a sign that would be much better than falling into absolute silence. Steve has always pushed himself into being overly productive with whatever work in front of when he’s feeling his worst.
T’Challa is stepping closer, but his expression is more cautious than his sister’s. He’s always been good at being level headed, and Bucky says that as someone who was once on the wrong end of receiving his wrath. “Fragments from the matter of what was once inside the device you called the Tesseract.”
Steve stiffens even more, if possible. He probably hasn’t talked about that device since he drowned in the plane he crashed to take it down. “What?”
Shuri is back to being the one with the answers, but she backs off the excitement the slightest amount with a look from T’Challa that passes between them. “We suspect that because you spent so long with the device underwater, before it burned through the bottom of your ship, it had an effect on you that went unnoticed by the technology from back in your time when you were woken up.” She smiles again, but it’s soft. “No disrespect to this Director Fury, but our abilities greatly exceed what those scientists would have been able to do back then.”
T’Challa is speaking then as well, one hand on Shuri’s shoulder as he casts a slightly concerned glance to where Steve looks almost queasy. Bucky doesn’t feel the best himself, but he discreetly checks around them for the nearest trash can just in case. “The device and matter it contained are mentioned in several variations of mythology around the world and in our records,” he ignores the dirty look Shuri shoots him at revealing what was most likely supposed to remain a secret, “and most of them have one thing in common.” He pauses and puts his gaze directly on Steve, probing and gentle all at once. “If the bearer of the Tesseract wishes to go somewhere, the Tesseract will open a portal in space that takes them wherever it was that they wanted to go.”
There’s silence then quieter than when Bucky first suggested time travel as the explanation to begin with. He’s not sure if this makes more or less sense, but with what they’ve already seen, it isn’t that far fetched. But for Steve… he doesn’t seem to believe it. He doesn’t seem to want to believe it.
“What?” he whispers, moving his head to dart his eyes between all of them like he’s waiting for them to reveal this as some sort of sick joke. “How is that possible? I have the serum, but I don’t have- I don’t have powers.” He sounds like he’s struggling to even get that word out.
Bucky has to close his eyes for a second, but when Shuri starts to speak, he opens them up to focus. They can’t both freak out. This isn’t fair, but when are things ever for the two of them?
“Not powers,” Shuri agrees, but she still looks serious about what else she’s saying. “But… abilities. The fragments are very faint, but they have enough energy still in them so that if you desire something enough- they will help take you to where you wanted to go.”
Bucky almost has to turn towards the trashcan himself upon hearing that. He can picture the situation she’s suggesting already- Steve, stumbling out of the gym with hands still freshly bloody, on his way back to his apartment hurting so badly that a part of himself he hadn’t even known existed realized how much he longed for home. How badly he wanted to be somewhere safe with Bucky once again where he wouldn’t have to get by all on his own. Somewhere where he wouldn’t be alone.
He has to try Steve’s method of throwing himself into the mission, then, asking a question like he wants more details about this explanation when really he doesn’t want to hear it at all. “Why take him to the future and not the past?”
Shuri looks at T’Challa before she answers, then back at Bucky with the same careful expression she’d work upon seeing him after he first woke up. “We have an answer, but we don’t have all of them. That’s something outside of what science alone can say.” That part came from Steve’s brain, she must mean. Steve wanted him back, but he didn’t want to go back.
He doesn’t even want to go back now. Bucky can see it written across his face, even while he’s trying to be stoic and strong the same way he always was after he came home from another lost fight that he fought when he was small. With the way he’s hunching his shoulders in, he looks sort of small in this moment too, but his voice still comes out putting on that commanding Captain America timbre. “What will you be using to send me back?”
Shuri’s feathers look slightly ruffled by him taking that sort of tone in her lab, but another touch from T’Challa to her shoulder settles her enough to answer, simple and straight to the point. “We’ll simply extract the matter that made you able to come here in the first place, and then we’ll use its controlled power to send you back home. Right to the moment you left from, not even a second’s difference.”
Steve’s voice is back to being small, and Bucky can’t hold back anymore from touching him, not when he’s afraid of how much longer it’ll be before he can no longer do it anymore. He slips his flesh arm around Steve’s narrow waist right as he’s saying “You can do that?”
You’re going to do that? Bucky can tell he wants to say.
“We can,” T’Challa interjects softly. “We must.” Upon a questioning look from Bucky, he hurries into a further explanation. “The longer that Captain Rogers remains here, the more dormant the matter in him will become.” He looks apologetic for what he has to say next. “The less he will want to go back to where he’s from. If his desire can no longer feed into the energy by the time we take the fragments out, the opportunity to send him home will be gone.”
Steve doesn’t want to go. This much Bucky knows, and it’s why he has to ask his next question no matter how impossible, how implausible it is to propose. “What happens if he stays here?”
Steve tries to cut in, the self-sacrificing bastard, but Shuri beats him to it with a shake of her head. “He’s already been missing for two days from the past’s timeline. Two inconsequential days. There’s no telling what the impact will be if he is pulled out of it any longer, let alone for a major event. If we wait too long to send him back to the exact moment he went missing…” She looks apologetic, but goes on anyways. “There’s no telling what will happen to him, or you, or anyone he’s supposed to help.”
Steve’s eyes are the ones that are closed now, chest heaving a little too hard for what should be normal breathing. He has to spend a few seconds controlling it before he can respond, and even when he does, the words come out rough. “I have to go back.”
Clenching his jaw, Bucky tries to shake his head, already hopeless enough to know that what they’re saying has to be done, but trying to hold out anyways. Steve can’t see Bucky just let him go. He has to at least try and hold on a little longer. “Steve-“
“No, Bucky.” This time the stubbornness in his voice is all Steve Rogers, no traces of Captain America anywhere in sight when Bucky turns to study his face with eyes that just can’t seem to hold still. “I have to. You know I have to.” His voice breaks when Bucky cups the side of his face, but he goes on as fierce as ever. Bucky’s sweet, feisty spitfire of a boy always helping even when it hurts. “I don’t… want to go, but there’s nothing else we can do.”
“Steve-“ Bucky tries again, but Steve stops him a second time.
“You don’t get to take this choice away from me.” He fixes him with a look Bucky can tell is fighting to stay even from eyes also fighting to stay dry. “It’s not your price to pay.” It’s like a slap to the face, having his own words thrown back at him like that, but Bucky knows that’s the point. Steve is trying to push him away.
Like hell Bucky is going to let him for what little time they apparently have left. He puts his other hand on Steve’s face as well, sometimes he wouldn’t usually do when they have an audience- but right now, he just can’t find it in himself to care that Shuri and T’Challa are standing there watching while they come to terms with what they probably should have known all along. “Sweetheart…”
“Buck, it’s gonna be fine,” Steve says, but his voice is thick. “This is just what has to happen.” Turning to the other two people still beside them, he clears his throat and tries to change the subject, but it isn’t to anything lighter. In fact, it might be even heavier. “Will I… be able to…”
Remember, he’s going to say. Bucky can already hear it, and it makes his heart ache something awful. It’s an ache that only gets worse when Shuri silently shakes her head.
Steve inhales shakily. “I won’t be able to remember any of this.” He says it not as a question this time, but a fact, because they both know that’s what it is.
T’Challa tips his head and looks down at the floor like he’s giving them a moment to mourn the news before he replies. “With the matter no longer in you, when you go back, the energy will not be able to keep the memories of your time here intact, nor any physical changes,” he murmurs. It’s quiet enough in the lab for him to keep his voice low, and the somberness of it makes the silence almost overwhelming. “Your return should register to you as nothing more than a lost moment. A blip.”
Steve’s breathing is getting shakier by the second and Bucky is almost afraid he’s about to run out the same way he had at the farm when finding out he survived the fall. For now, he stays in place, but there’ll be no promise of what will happen if there’s another panic attack. “But Bucky will remember,” he says, so soft it’s barely above a whisper. “And the Steve that’ll stay here. They’ll remember that I came?”
It’s the first good news that has actually come from what was promised when Shuri nods. “Of course,” she answers. “We won’t be turning time back for what has already happened here. We’ll merely be sending you back to yours so what needs to happen so we can get here will come to pass.”
Steve doesn’t look any happier, but something in him seems to settle at the promise that his time here will remain, even if only a small piece. Bucky wishes he could feel the same, but all he can think about is how sending Steve back means he’ll be alone. It means he’ll be hurting. It means he won’t have a home.
Steve is the one who has to forget this time. It feels like the worst kind of irony. Bucky went to war and Steve followed. He fell, and then Steve did too. Bucky forgot, and now… Steve is going to do the same. Soulmates who share the same fate no matter how fucking far they have to go to find each other. It’s so painful it’s almost poetic, but Bucky has never been one for that type of prose. The best words he can think of are those that he always shares with Steve.
Steve, who is still standing next to him, looking like his entire world has been shattered apart. Because it has been. Again. Three times, this has happened to him now. How many times can Bucky lose him? How many times can Steve keep being forced to let go? “How long do I have left here?” he asks dully, hands dropping to his sides as he turns completely and forces Bucky’s hands to do the same off of his face.
Shuri glances down at one of the screens set up on her work table. “Tomorrow afternoon,” she supplies. “Almost twenty four hours, but we’ll need to take the fragments of the Tesseract out now so we can begin to harness them in order for this to work.”
Steve is silent, so Bucky speaks up. “Will it hurt?” Steve doesn’t even complain about the obvious overprotection, only continues to stare at the floor like he’s trying to make sure it doesn’t fall out from under his feet.
“No,” Shuri promises. “It’ll be a simple procedure. We’re obtaining the energy of the matter, but not actual physical pieces, so nothing will even break skin.” She smiles again and moves her hand. “Like before, merely a wave of a wand. Only this time, a little bigger.”
Steve straightens and Bucky can see him visibly tense. It’s like he’s back at bootcamp, a soldier stuck standing at attention while he waits for the other shoe to drop. “Where do you need me?”
“If you’d come with me, we can go get started.” Steve moves to follow Shuri where she’s stepping away, but Bucky stops him before he can with a hand to his arm. Steve can’t just leave without a word. Bucky won’t let them end what little time together they have left this way.
“Do you want me to come with you?” He offers, but he already knows the answer. Sure enough, Steve shakes his head and Bucky sighs. “I won’t leave the palace while you’re stuck here, okay? Since you don’t want me with you…”
Steve’s face shutters the slightest bit. “I want you with me,” he whispers. “Just… not for this.” Shuri is standing at the edge of the room waiting while T’Challa has walked god knows where, so Steve doesn’t protest when Bucky pulls him in for a tight hug, one hand clasping behind his head while the other rubs at his back so they can breathe each other in. Just like always. Steve holds on so hard Bucky doesn’t know how he’ll ever let him go. Eventually, though, he has to. Steve is the one that makes the choice to step away, trying to offer Bucky up one of the saddest smiles he’s ever seen.
Bucky tries to smile back, but he can already see that Steve’s going to start breaking if he doesn’t get out of here soon. So he steps away too with a quick kiss pressed to Steve’s mouth that makes his eyes water when it ends. “I’ll be waiting for you when you’re done, okay?” It’s not much of a comfort, but it’s all he has to give him.
“Okay.” Steve takes in a deep breath and nods, ducking his head after and turning to follow Shuri out the door and down the hallway.
Bucky stares at his back until they’re both out of sight, and then, he’s left alone in the lab. Or at least he thinks he’s alone until T’Challa steps out of one of the side rooms and comes over to stand beside him in silent companionship. Bucky can’t find it in him to speak, so he’s glad when T’Challa does it for him.
“Shuri estimated earlier that collecting the fragments would take an hour or two.” He glances at Bucky out of the corner of his eye. “There’s nothing you can do locked up in this room.”
Bucky sighs, knowing he’s right, but not knowing what else he’s supposed to do. The other man clearly has a suggestion, from the sounds of it. “Is there somewhere else you’d like me to wait, your Majesty?”
T’Challa hums and leaves him hanging for a moment, only answering when Bucky turns to face him. “Ayo is down at the training room.” He gives Bucky a long look. “And you seem like you are maybe in need of a fair fight.” Something Bucky can go up against and try to win, he must mean. Once again, he’s right.
When it comes to the situation with Steve, that’s something with impossible odds. The only thing he can do is let Steve make his choices and make sure he stays safe. He can’t fight for him. He can’t give in. He definitely can’t win. T’Challa is offering him the chance to burn off some steam and talk to a friend.
Steve’s always needed a few of those, and Bucky has too. He nods, taking the offer. Ten seconds later, he turns and heads down to the gym.
-
As promised, Ayo is waiting there for him, already changed into the standard black tank and pants that are standard for those who come down here to spar. There’s a pile of similar clothes that she points Bucky to sitting on the bench. “I’m ready to begin whenever you are, Sergeant Barnes.” Her tone is already challenging him.
He tips his head in greeting and goes to grab the clothing, ducking into the changing area to switch clothes as quickly as he can before stepping out. The mere preparation for a fight has a conditioned sense of calm sinking in.
He and Ayo have sparred more than a few times before, so getting into the position to face her on the mat isn’t one that’s unfamiliar. Normally, Bucky would be more polite about it. Ask her how she and Aneka are doing, if her father is doing well, whether the new recruits she helps oversee are struggling with their own training. He doesn’t do any of that now, but she doesn’t complain about it. She was with them when they first found Steve and delivered the message to bring him back up. She’s a smart woman. She has to know something is up.
Bucky’s in a bad mood, but that doesn’t mean either of them will allow for that to be taken out on her. This fight isn’t about that- that’s the whole point. It’s something different. Something Bucky doesn’t have to bring back upstairs to Steve when all the anger is still there but the need for aggression is burned out. Bucky isn’t angry at Steve, or Ayo, or Shuri, or anyone else. He’s angry at the universe. He’s angry at himself for accepting that there’s nothing else he can do.
They face each other and Ayo smiles, a signal that lets Bucky know they’re about to get started. She tells him as much a second later. “Let’s begin.”
The first few minutes of the fight are nothing more than a blur, and Bucky’s not sure if it’s because his brain has been reeling since Shuri dropped the news Steve was going home or because sparring with Wakandans is always this intense. Ayo is one of their best. Bucky often spends their fights in the frame of defense.
She throws the first punch now, one Bucky blocks with a swipe of his flesh arm and a sweep of his leg to try and knock hers out from under her. It works, but she’s more agile than he is, so it doesn’t take her long to get back up and throw a punch of her own, one that Bucky has to duck under as she also aims to kick. He catches her foot and uses the momentum to push her down to land on her back, the both of them grunting at the force.
While he stalks closer to her, she somehow finds the time to toss her head back and laugh before rolling back up onto her feet. “Is that the best you’ve got, Sergeant Barnes?” After months of knowing him, she still won’t call him Bucky. Says it sounds ridiculous. Right now, she sounds like she’s taunting him.
Bucky huffs, not yet out of air, but breathing a bit heavy. “I’ve got a lot on my mind.”
“You’ll need to use more than your mind if you want to win this fight.” She says that, but then tuts at him when he knocks her back using his metal arm, retaliating by being the one to knock him down this time by a long leg used to knock out where the skin is weak behind his knees so he has to tuck and roll his way out of her reach on the rubber floor of the mat. “If you don’t try, you’ll make this too easy.”
The banter is something they always take up during their sessions on the mar, but for some reason, Bucky can’t find it in him to make up his usual responses. He settles instead for rising to her challenge and throwing everything he can into meeting her match.
Twenty minutes later, they’re both out of breath and panting, but neither of them have been able to pin the other down. Bucky’s tank is sticking to his chest with sweat, and he can see where there’s beads of it dripping down the sides of Ayo’s neck as well, for once exposed by the lack of her usual coating of armor to cover it. They’ve reached what Bucky thinks is a silent standstill, but he knows better than to think Ayo would be the type of person to back off and give up without reason. She’s just standing there, watching, the both of them moving around each other in circles but gone far past the usual window of waiting to strike.
Bucky blows out a breath and tucks a strand of wayward hair behind his ear before deciding to ask. “What happened to sparring?” he questions, cracking the knuckles of his flesh hand against his thighs while letting the other recalibrate though repositioning the plates.
Ayo shrugs and continues to survey him. “What fun is a fight when your partner is merely playing the game to throw a couple punches? You could get that from a bag.” Her eyes narrow as she comes to a complete stop, one hand on her hip. “I have better things to be doing with my time than babysitting a grown man.”
Bucky scowls and turns to get off the mat and back over to where he can sit on the bench, hissing when he hits a still healing bruise on the back of his thigh. “No one has a bullet to your brain trying to keep you here.”
Ayo scoffs and joins him, though she opts for the edge of the mat rather than to sit by his side. “Well, technically the king did ask me to come in here and see if you wanted to train, but… “ She shrugs and begins to wipe her face off with the towel Bucky tosses over. “I stayed in here to see if you were okay because you’re my friend.” She gives him a faint smile. “Bucky.”
Bucky makes a face at the sound of her saying his name- it does sound a little stupid coming from someone as generally serious as her- but then smiles tiredly too. It’s nice to know he has someone in his corner who is concerned, even aside from those that are upstairs. “Thank you.” Then, after a second, “I’m sorry that the fight was… distracted.”
“If you want to talk about it, I don’t think I’ll be able to give you much advice,” Ayo says bluntly, which is true. She doesn’t have all the details of the situation, which is hard enough to understand even for those that do. “But I can listen.” She tugs the towel around the back of her neck and looks up at him with another small smile. “And then sometime later, you can listen to me.”
“What, you’ve got girl problems?” Bucky teases, relenting at the unimpressed look she gives him. “Woman problems.”
She still looks unimpressed, but rolls her eyes and makes a carry on gesture at him with her hand. “Speak.”
And Bucky does, though it takes him a few moments to really feel able to dig down into the grit of it. Like he said, it’s complicated, so he doesn’t give her the details so much as a summation of the problem.
“I just don’t know how I’m supposed to say goodbye so easily without making him feel like I’m choosing my other options over him,” he eventually says. “But I also don’t want to make it harder on him to go.” He shifts and spreads his legs as he resituates, picking one of his own hairs of the fabric of his pants waiting for a response.
It only comes after a few minutes of silence, and for a molent, Bucky’s not sure she’s going to answer at all until she speaks. “I’ve seen the way you look at him, you know,” she murmurs. “With stars in your eyes. He’s as much your love as Aneka is mine, and I think that’s something they both know even without it being said.” She’s silent for another few seconds, choosing what words to use next while drumming her heel into the gym floor so the sound echoes around the otherwise empty room. “You’ve welcomed him here best you can, have you not? Into your heart, your home.”
Bucky wants to argue for a second about how Wakanda isn’t his that he could truly welcome Steve here in the first place, but he knows that’s not what she means. Steve had been thrown here and even without fully knowing this version of him, Bucky had taken him in as his own. Because that’s what he is , no matter what time he’s from. “I have.”
“Then why would he think that for one second that you wanted to let him go?” Ayo’s voice is as soft as he’s ever heard it, and though it’s unyielding, Bucky can feel the message of what she says start to sink down in his skin. She’s apparently not done yet, either. For someone who said she wasn’t going to offer any advice, she’s giving him plenty to take. “That man knows you love him. He also knows that your love will always be his home.”
A hush falls over them after that, during which Bucky contemplates what’s just been said. Bucky has loved Steve since he was thirteen years old, and a lot of damn things have happened between then and now. A lot of things have changed, but the core of who they are and how they love weren’t some of them. Steve’s still stubborn as hell and Bucky’s still overprotective. He’s still as much of a tease as Steve is a punk. They’ve been each other’s homes since they were old enough to have a concept of what it’s like to be on your own.
Bucky just wishes Steve were always able to know he hasn’t been on his own since.
But like Steve can’t save Bucky from his fate of becoming the Soldier, Bucky can’t save Steve from what his fate takes to carry them to that point in the first place. These things… they have to happen to bring them both home.
They get lost, they can always be found.
Fifteen minutes later when Shuri rings him on his watch, Bucky knows it’s time to go find Steve Rogers again.
-
Steve turns out to be waiting for Bucky in his unofficial palace chambers, the place where Bucky had first stayed in with the Steve that had been present in Siberia before he chose to go under and that Steve up and went on the run. He’s still running. Running from what, Bucky isn’t always sure, but he can only hope that it’s never from him.
This Steve, the one that’s still bleach blonde with a smooth face and slightly more supple skin- he isn’t moving at all. He’s almost completely motionless when Bucky walks in, sitting on the side of the bed and staring at the painting that’s been put up beside it. Bucky knocks before fully entering. It might be sort of his room, but he’s spooked Steve enough before, and he’s not sure what state of mine the procedure might have left him in.
When Steve turns, Bucky prepares himself to find out.
He looks tired, is Bucky’s first thought, but not in physical appearance so much as his experience. His face is just… drained. Something has been sucked out of him that’s more than just whatever was left from the Tesseract. Hope, Bucky realizes. That’s what’s been lost. He’s heading over to the bed before a single word can even make it out of either of their mouths.
Bucky quietly sits down beside him. Steve still doesn’t speak, not even when Bucky slips an arm around his back and guides his head as gently as he can to rest on his shoulder that’s still made of flesh. Steve goes into it without a fight, which makes sense. Bucky doesn’t think he has much fight in him left.
When Steve finally speaks, it’s with a defeated whisper. “Shuri said that by noon tomorrow, everything should be ready to go.” Bucky has no doubt that that’ll be true. Shuri’s the smartest person he’s ever met. Everything will be ready to go- everything but Steve. “They offered to let me stay tonight at the palace, but…” Steve chokes out his next words like he’s worried they’re going to get stuck in his throat. “I don’t want to. I want to go back down to the hut. I want to-“ And then his words really do get stuck, because what ends up coming out instead is a sob.
Bucky is shushing him before he even gets both arms up to hug him, but he doesn’t think it’s effective when he feels like joining in on said sobbing himself. It’s not fair. It’s not right. But it is what has to happen. That doesn’t mean Bucky won’t still be taking care of Steve in the meantime, though, hence how he’s still holding on tight even as Steve tries to push him off and fight. “Baby,” Bucky tries, but Steve just thrashes harder, and Bucky isn’t even sure why. “Steve!”
Steve’s eyes are shot and nose a mess when he finally lifts his head, but doesn’t answer past a weak “get off me” that hurts Bucky beyond words to hear, but doesn’t make him listen. Steve’s shields have never been for him besides the one picked up after Azzano. Bucky’s was his shield before that. His protector. And Bucky promised to himself and to Steve that he was going to treat him right.
So he holds on and tries to gentle him until half the tears dry and the sobs start dying down. After a while, Steve goes limp, but Bucky can’t be happy about that when Steve is still so upset he’s sniffling. His features twist into a frown, and it’s a second nature he didn’t even know he had to pluck a tissue off the nightstand table and hold it up to his nose, the same one he’d once broken. Bucky doesn’t carry a hanky anymore, but this will have to do.
“Blow.” Steve doesn’t even bother with a protest this time. He just obeys, but for once, Bucky can’t even tease. He just helps clean Steve’s face off and lets the younger man cry into the cotton of his henley, all while wishing he could take that hurt away and hand it to himself.
It takes another ten minutes and two more tissues, but eventually Steve does speak, voice deep and wobbly in the way it always is after he cries. He sounds so stuffed up with it that Bucky could mistake him for being sick. “I’m sorry,” he mutters, mouth pressed into a straight line that’s just as shaky as his hands are clutching at the bottom of Bucky’s shirt.
Bucky raises his eyebrows and tries to discreetly wipe his own eyes under the guise of getting rid of some hair. “What the hell are you sorry for, kid?”
Steve snuffles in again and takes the kleenex Bucky has in hand for himself, still sounding mumbly and slurred even after he takes it down from his face. “Feel like I’ve spent half my time with you these past few days crying.” He laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “Guess you were always right when you called me a crybaby.”
Bucky slips his hand up under the hem of Steve’s shirt to rub at the bare skin of his back, hoping the skin on skin contact will soothe him. “You cry on me all you need,” he murmurs, mouth pressing a kiss into Steve’s hair that he doesn’t move from even when he goes on. “It’s been hard on you, honey. There’s no shame in it.”
“Like life’s been easy on you,” Steve says, but he shifts closer into Bucky’s space like he wasn’t just trying to push him away not fifteen minutes ago. That’s just how Steve’s always been, though. The first sign of softness never gets easier to accept when he’s upset.
Life hasn’t been easy on me, Bucky wants to sah. But at least I think I’m through it. He isn’t truly- or completely, at least. He knows healing is a never ending process, but he’s getting to the hind end of his. Steve’s still right in the rough of it. He’s really about to get thrown right in.
But he doesn’t need to hear what they both already know, not when they only have hours left together. So Bucky just hums and runs his free hand through Steve’s hair, giving him a moment to settle his chest while his breathing begins to calm. Steve has two ways of crying. Sometimes it can last for hours and burn into the night. Other times it comes in bursts after each of which he’ll be alright until the next one comes. It’s pretty clear which one is happening right now.
He eventually settles on trying to change the subject to something that’ll trigger another round of tears. Not that he minds holding Steve through it, but… Steve deserves something good tonight. “You sure you don’t want to spend the night up here?” He waves his hand around to the rest of the room. “This place is pretty nice. Bet the food is even nicer.” Privately, he wants to go back down to the hut too, but he might as well tell Steve what he’d be missing out on if they do.
Steve shakes his head and sniffs once more, tissues still crumbled up in his lap. “Bed’s too soft up here. I don’t think I could sleep.” He doesn’t sound convinced he’ll sleep either way, but Bucky isn’t going to argue one of his fella’s final wishes for while he’s here.
“Okay,” he says softly, still tracing patterns into the small of Steve’s back. “You wanna get cleaned up before we head out?” Steve has always hated crying in front of people, so Bucky figures he’ll want a minute to get composed. The swollen eyes are telling, but a splash of water to the face should do the trick. Steve nods, but Bucky doesn’t let him get up right away, taking a tissue and taking a last pass at Steve’s nose instead. He doesn’t need to, but he wants to, mostly so he has an excuse to kiss the bump on it after. “I’ll be out here. Take however long you need.”
Steve smiles, a tired expression that trembles around the edges. It’s beautiful to Bucky anyways. “Okay.”
However long Steve needs ends up being about five more minutes, and by the time he comes out, he looks more like he’s had a cold than he does like he’s been bawling. His nose is still a little red, but Bucky doesn’t think that can be helped. They can try and blame it on the slight sunburn anyways.
He stands, ready to go, but first Steve pauses to point at the painting he’d been staring at when Bucky came in. “Are you really vain enough to have artwork of yourself hanging up?” He’s clearly trying to joke, but Bucky has to take a second to study that particular painting before he can answer.
It’s the one that his usual Steve had once done in the hut. It’s not much in terms of paintings, Bucky doesn’t think- mostly muted colors and rough strokes of a brush rather than anything as complicated as realism- but it’s important to him, he’d say. Sort of special. It was the first time he’d really seen himself in this body and recognized it as his own. Bucky doesn’t come up here often anymore, but half the time when he stops by, it’s to look at the figure of his own body filling the canvas. He’d stayed in here a solid three hours after Shuri finished attaching the new arm.
He shakes his head with a small smile and turns to Steve so he can go join at his side, aforementioned arm wrapping around his waist so they can stand close while they both survey it. “You’re the one who suggested it, actually. I just hung it up here for safekeeping.”
“Huh.” Steve looks thoughtful this time when he looks back at the painting. “I never knew I was so handy with a brush.”
“You will be one day.” Bucky reaches down his right hand to slip in the back pocket of Steve’s borrowed jeans and gives his butt a little squeeze just to try and keep him smiling. “Now c’mon. Let’s go down to the hut. It’s almost time for dinner.”
-
Bucky decides that tonight he’ll make Steve something a little more hearty than just soup from the can or some sandwiches. He settles on making a few dishes. The main one being a sausage and potato sheet and the other chicken noodle soup that’s homemade this time, something filling that will leave Steve content after they eat and the hut smelling fragrant while he cooks. He doesn’t ask Steve to help, and unusually, Steve doesn’t offer. He spends the hour it takes Bucky to make their meal curled up on the bed, sat up with his back against the headboard and his hands holding his sketchbook while he pencils something Bucky isn’t sure of in it lazily.
Actually, that’s a lie. He’s pretty sure (positive) that Steve is drawing him with all the furtive glances and flustered grins that are coming his way every time he turns and Steve gets caught looking. But, seeing as how that’s something he’s long used to, Bucky leaves it be. Steve’s not telling him to stop moving, and far be it from Bucky to tell him to stop doing one of the only other things he’s ever loved.
Plus, if Steve is leaving tomorrow… Bucky doesn’t mind him making his mark on all the things he can, sketchbook included. He knows it might be stupid, but he’s going to miss him. He already misses the other Steve, but this is something different, something he’s not sure he’s ever going to be able to explain. He knows he has Steve with him always, and he loves all versions of him he’s ever been with equally, but to have to let him go… it hurts. He wants to know that this Steve was with him. When he goes, Bucky wants him to be able to leave something behind.
Proof, maybe. That this man was here and Bucky held him through the hurt. He helped, and even though Steve won’t be able to recall it himself, Bucky will be able to tell him that he was there even when he felt alone. He’s not alone. He never truly will be as long as Bucky still walks this earth.
The soup is set to warm over the fire in Bucky’s favorite pot while he pops the sausage and potatoes into the convection oven to roast. Not the most complex way of cooking, but the meat he uses is pre-cooked, and it gets the job done in the end. He adds some apples to the sheet and herbs to the soup, the sweet smell of the two mixed together filling the hut while he works. He goes outside and washes their already dirtied dishes at one point, wanting to get it done before dark and give Steve a little space before Bucky decides to cling on tight for the rest of the night.
Steve still has the sketchbook in his lap by the time Bucky walks over to bring him his share of soup in a large bowl mug with a spoon already inside and a plate that’s loaded with a generous portion of sausage and potatoes. It’s a warm meal. Comfort food, he’d call it. He hopes it works as well as it does with the other guy.
Steve smiles at the sight of it, at least, setting the sketchbook to the side so he can accept both dishes while Bucky turns to get his own. “Thanks, Buck,” he says softly. Bucky wants to sigh at the slight sadness he hears there, but realistically he knows there’s no way to get completely rid of it. They just will have to keep it from ruining their night.
He puts on his own smile when he joins Steve to sit on the bed beside him, Steve scooting to the side the slightest but so Bucky can have more room, both of their legs stretched out so their plates can be put to balance on their laps. They start eating side by side in silence.
Upon his first spoonful of soup, Steve groans, so Bucky mentally congratulates himself on a job well done in terms of making it. The noodles are homemade (though admittedly by his neighbor rather than himself) and the herbs simmered beforehand in butter to make the flavors sing. Paired with the sweetness of the apple roasted potatoes and sausage, it’s everything Bucky was aiming for and more.
His mother once described to him that food is love. He was only ten years old at the time, so he didn’t really take her too seriously, but nowadays he knows she was right. Food is love- but then again, everything he shares with Steve is.
They go back and forth a little during dinner about some trivial things, the both of them pointedly ignoring the subject they know they’re going to have to tackle afterwards. It feels a bit like things did during the war. Impending doom. Only this time, they know exactly what that doom is. But, in the meantime, they don’t have to talk about it. Not yet. The night is still relatively young.
It’s barely eight in the evening by the time they finish eating, but Bucky decides to pamper Steve a little more by pulling out the bars of chocolate he’s had stored away for a rainy day. It may have been sunny outside today, but it somehow still feels right to use it now.
Steve still looks at him like he’s crazy when Bucky hops back up on the bed and pats his lap as if to tell him to put his head on it. Bucky tells him out loud a moment later, too, and Steve flushes, but goes down easy. He complains when he makes contact with Bucky’s legs, but that’s softened when Bucky begins carding a hand through his hair while using the other to hold up a piece of chocolate to his face.
“You’re hand feeding me?” He sighs like it’s a hardship, but accepts the sweet and begins to chew, speaking again after he swallows. “You’re ridiculous.” He groans when Bucky flicks him in the nose. “Awful.”
“Awfully in love with you, babydoll,” Bucky croons, cracking a smile when Steve groans again. He’s heard that line at least a million times. “I’m just giving you your dessert.”
Steve swallows another chunk of chocolate and hums, adjusting his head where it’s pressed against the maybe less than comfortable fabric of Bucky’s jeans. “Where’s yours?”
“Mm.” Bucky watched Steve carefully for his reaction to the next line that’s laid out. “Maybe I want you to be my dessert, how about that?”
How about it, alright. There’s no easy way to go about asking something like that after the day they’ve had, but… time is running out, and it’s running out a little too fast. Bucky wants to make his chances to touch this version of Steve and take care of him last as long as they can. He’s thinking about his phone conversation with the other Steve from yesterday when he says it.
No one really touched me for years. I didn’t let them. But I’d let you.
Bucky only hopes the Steve he has here with him now will let him too. He’s unsure of whether or not that will happen when Steve freezes with Bucky’s finger and a piece of now melting chocolate up against his lips.
Steve stiffens, but doesn’t move his head to peer up at him. “You’d want to…” He struggles to finish that sentence. Like Bucky said, not a prude, but definitely not forward. He used to hate even using the word fuck as a verb- he still doesn’t use it now. “You’d want to be with me? Like that? Tonight?” He acts as if the idea is a shock after all the times they’ve lain together before, like they didn’t practically do something similar to it just this morning.
Christ. The bath they took together feels like a lifetime ago. Bucky wishes they could go back.
What other time do we have? he almost says, but he’s smart enough not to. He opts for something lighter instead. “You’ve always said I’m a dirty old man.” He yanks on Steve’s hair a little to get him to look up, cheeks still flushed from how flustered the suggestion has got him. “Guess now it’s literal.” Then, because he’s a tease but also is sweet on his guy, he says something softer. “I just… I know we haven’t had long together.” Not nearly long enough. “But I want to share what I can with you while I can still do it.” Bucky wants to give him this. Bucky wants to give him the whole goddamn world, but that would take time that they don’t have.
Steve is still looking at him, eyes gone large. He licks his lips, looking a little nervous, but… not opposed. He’s been craving touch like a kicked puppy ever since that portal popped him up practically on Bucky’s lap in the first place, this is about as intimate of a touch as he could possibly get. “And the other guy… he’s…”
Bucky smiles and brushes Steve’s bangs off of his forehead, fonder than ever. He’s so damn self sacrificing, even when who he’s trying to sacrifice something for is himself. “You think I’d bring this up if he wasn’t?” Bucky raises his eyebrows at him. “I think it’s safe to say that if you want something, he’d want it too.” That might not be true for everything, but it’s honest as a blanket statement.
Steve seems to realize that, because the tips of his ears turn red. “Oh.” Bucky huffs out a laugh and Steve hits him half heartedly in the leg, but he still sounds shy when he answers. “I- uh. I’d like that.” He looks like he’d like that a lot, with how his cheeks have started to glow.
Bucky almost sighs out in relief, satisfaction (and a little something else) already curling up in his stomach at the affirmation that Steve wants this too. Bucky’s relieved, but he’s also still got a reputation to uphold, so he makes sure that his expression turns into a smirk when he strokes his hand down the side of Steve’s cheek. “You’d like what?”
Steve’s eyes flick to the side, then back up to Bucky’s face. He already knows where this is going. He’s well aware just what kind of asshole Bucky is- a bossy one, almost as bad as he himself is out in the field. Not in here, though. Never in here. “You know. It was your idea to begin with.”
“I do,” Bucky agrees, grin going broad when Steve groans and decides to shove his face and hide it into his thigh. “And it was. But I just like to hear you say it.”
Steve doesn’t move from Bucky’s leg when he mutters out his response, which makes it come out muffled. Bucky still hears it loud and clear. “Want you to make love to me, you asshole.” He sounds a little embarrassed even phrasing it as sappily as he does.
Bucky still loves it. Loves him, and all the dumb little quirks that never seem to dull over time. “Well, then, lover boy,” he murmurs back. “You better get a move on and let me.” For a second, Steve just blinks at him, but Bucky just rolls his eyes and nudges him up. “We don’t have all night.”
It’s pretty much all they have, but neither of them want to think about that right now, so it’s pushed to the side right along with Steve’s shirt when he sits up and Bucky takes it upon himself to help strip it off. A few seconds later, Steve shyly helps him do the same, eyes taking in the scars that the tossed to the side clothing reveals.
Bucky watches him do it, and when Steve hesitates, Bucky takes his hand and brings it up to help Steve touch the scars himself. It’s something the other Steve had done as well.
I want to know every new part of you, he’d said. Bucky had let him learn. It’s only fair he let this Steve learn too.
He lets him feel as well, more than just the raised lines. Bucky wants him to feel in his own body, so it’s with no hesitation on his own end that he raises up both hands to Steve’s chest, mismatched metal and flesh laying flat on his skin. It’s a stark difference in sensation, one that Steve lets out a shaky breath at when Bucky brushes intentionally over the peaked up spots on his pecs that have been left sensitive by the serum. They stay like that for a while, sat up on the bed with their pants still and on the fire crackling in the background while they explore the upper halves of each other’s bodies.
Bucky tries to be patient with it, but eventually, he can’t help but lean in and kiss him, all that smooth skin still under his fingertips and growing warmer when he takes it upon himself to lick into Steve’s mouth. It’s not exactly the most innocent of kisses, not with how they’re both reacting, but it’s intimate and slow. It’s sweet. It’s nice.
It gets even nicer when Steve gasps out his first small sound at Bucky dropping one hand down from his chest to brush at the bulge in the front of his now tightened jeans instead. He’s responsive. Bucky had noticed this morning, but he’d tried not to think about why. Steve went without touch for too long, but with what they’re about to do- Bucky can sure as hell touch him now. He wants to have him everywhere.
He pulls back from where their mouths are still touching now, hand on his pants pressing down so Steve knows exactly what he’s referring to when he whispers “Take them off.” Truthfully, there’s not much else he could be referring to, but that’s besides the point. The priority right now is him shucking out of his jeans as well.
Their underwear ends up coming off at the same time, so when they both come back together for another kiss, they’re both bare from head to toe. Steve’s blush covers about the same area once Bucky flips him to lay on his back with his own body blanketed over top of him, blue eyes blown when Bucky looks down at him with a soft smile.
“You still want this?” he asks quietly, just to make sure. What’s currently pressing between their bodies gives him a good direction to go in for a guess, but it can’t hurt to check in.
Steve lets out a soft sigh and settles down lower, legs spreading wide to accommodate the width of Bucky’s waist. “It’s ah- It’s been a while,” he admits, looking a little embarrassed, as if Bucky didn’t already know. “But yeah, Buck. I want it.” He leans forward a little to kiss Bucky’s right shoulder. “I want you.”
Bucky hums and shifts his weight to rest on his knees and prosthetic so he can use his right hand to rub up one of Steve’s thighs instead until it’s sitting in the soft crease of his hip and where his arousal has gone heavy with exactly how much want he’s feeling. Bucky feels it too, and it’s why he doesn’t wait to kiss Steve again, hand going even higher as he does it to wrap around where he knows Steve wants all that touch most.
Steve can’t fit his hands down to do the same, but the way he’s rocking his hips up into it is more than enough to get Bucky going, and Steve gasping out a moment later as soon as Bucky pulls back from his mouth only gets him going even more. It’s enough for him to draw back completely, having to hush Steve’s unhappy noise at the loss by leaning down for another quick kiss and a laugh.
“Hold your horses, cowboy,” Bucky teases, reaching over to open up one of the lower dresser drawers without leaving the bed. “You said it’s been a while. Gotta work a little harder to open you up.”
Steve just grunts, but doesn’t complain as much as he normally might when Bucky tosses the small bottle of lube to land on his chest above where his cock is already wet at the tip with how ready to go the rest of him is. “You calling me uptight?”
It’s nice to hear him happy enough to have a bit of his attitude back, even if Bucky does decide to put him back in his place. He grins wickedly and balances back on his left arm so he can use the flesh one to flick open the lube’s cap and complete the well practiced maneuver of putting it on his own fingers one handed without making too much of a mess. This silicone stuff is a miracle.
Steve seems to appreciate some of it’s qualities when Bucky starts using it on him to work some magic a moment later, particularly how well it eases the sting when Bucky slips the first of his fingers inside. Bucky isn’t sure if Steve saying it’s been a while applies to how he does things with himself or not, but he doesn’t think that now is the proper moment to find out, not when ten minutes later he’s three fingers inside him and ready to put in something else. Steve is more than ready based off how strong his reactions are, cut off little moans he tries to muffle by turning his head into Bucky’s side of the pillows and breathy sighs when Bucky crooks his fingers just right.
Once again, Bucky decides it can’t hurt to ask. When he does, it’s in a low voice that’s rough with all the arousal of his own that’s yet to be addressed past Steve trying to rock up into him, legs pulling him in like he’s trying to invite him inside. Maybe he is- either way, Bucky is about to accept the invitation as soon as Steve manages to pull himself together enough to give him the say so. “You ready for me, sweetheart? You ready for me to treat you right?”
He already knew the answer, but he wasn’t lying when he told Steve he likes to hear him say it. Steve does, even though getting the words out sets his face alight. “Please,” he breathes, body clenching up when Bucky tries to pull his hand away like he doesn’t want him to leave.
Bucky groans then, the gesture nothing but a sign for him of what’s to come. “You don’t gotta ask me twice.” Then, after a second of thought that comes to him a little too late, “You want me to use a rubber?”
Steve makes a sound pitched so high it’s pretty much a whimper, shaking his head like the idea is one that he hates. It is, Bucky finds out, and he hates to hear the reason why. “No,” Steve says, tone almost a beg with how badly he wants to reject it. “I want to remember. Wanna remember this for as long as I can before I…” He swallows and suddenly looks like the urge to cry is coming back to the surface. “Before I have to say goodbye.”
That hits Bucky like a punch to the gut, but what kind of guy would he be to say no to his baby when he asks so sweetly? He can’t. With how hard things have been on them, he won’t. But what he will do is slick himself up to get ready to sink inside, all while nodding his head and nudging Steve into another kiss.
“I will love you whether you remember me or not,” he whispers, gaze locked onto Steve’s face and his now shining eyes. “You’ll do the same for me, and sweetheart, we will find each other again.”
Steve smiles, even as his voice comes out wet. “We always do.”
There isn't much to say after that. Bucky is pretty busy lining himself up and starting to push his way into Steve’s body, and Steve is pretty preoccupied lying there and trying to take it without groaning out so loud he has what formerly would have been an asthma attack and takes the hut down with him. Not even that would be enough for Bucky to leave him right now, he doesn’t think. Not when he has Steve so sweet underneath him and so goddamn tight as he takes him inside.
He gets especially sweet when Bucky finally starts to move, holding on to mismatched shoulders and struggling to stay quiet when Bucky hits the spot inside that always has him seeing stars. Bucky, for his part, doesn’t bother staying silent. Why should he, when he has so much to say?
He starts off with what’s most important, even as he’s still getting into the rhythm of rocking his hips. “I love you.” Them, while Steve is still letting out a particularly satisfied sound, “The goddamn love of my life. Every single one of them, it’s always been you.” He rocks forward again faster, fixing his eyes on Steve’s own so he knows how much Bucky means what he’s about to say. “I’m yours. And you, Steve Rogers- you are mine.” ‘Til the end of the line, just like they’ve always said.
Steve’s eyes are shining like those stars Bucky said he was seeing before, voice hushed despite the loud moan he lets out before he answers. “I love you,” he gets out, hands holding on tighter the harder Bucky slams home. “Even if I don’t remember this- I’ll remember that.”
The words come out a promise, one that Bucky can’t find a reason to tell him not to make. So he doesn’t. He just keeps moving, ready to mark Steve as his own and make him finally believe everything is going to someday be fine. It’s a hard fight to get there, but he will. They will. And Bucky will wait until the end of time.
He at least doesn’t have to wait that long until they both eventually crash over the edge that’s been rising since Bucky first kissed him tonight, a relief that comes when they both do not that far apart, Steve with Bucky’s fist back around him and Bucky with Steve clenching tight up around him, big body yielding where it’s usually as solid as a rock. It’s still just as solid when Bucky collapses down against it once the aftershocks have run their course, but Steve doesn’t look to be feeling the same. Bucky is still in him, but if Steve weren’t already laying down, Bucky suspects that now would be a moment where he’s about to collapse.
He’s softening enough to slip out, but he doesn’t move. Bucky wants to make sure Steve is ready before he does. Steve doesn’t need more sudden emptiness than today has already made him feel. Steve’s eyes are closed and hairline sweaty, but he doesn’t stir when Bucky uses his left hand to wipe back over his forehead.
“Stevie,” Bucky says softly, bringing his hand back down to go through the gentle motion again. “C’mon, sweetheart. Look at me.” When Steve does, his eyes are glittering with tears, and Bucky can’t only blame the over sensitivity of still being buried inside Steve’s body when his start to do the same. “Oh, honey…”
“I already miss you so much,” Steve whispers. Apparently they’re going to talk about this now. Freak outs and breakdowns can’t always happen at the most convenient moments, Bucky knows. “How am I supposed to go on again without even the memory of having this now?”
Bucky wishes more than words can say that he could have a real answer to give him, but all he has is what comes from the heart. He offers them anyways and hopes that they’ll at least be of some help. “You have to leave so we can have our happy ending,” he says, ignoring the cooling mess that’s stuck between them so he can focus on how Steve feels instead. “You have to leave so you can come back home.” He tips their foreheads together, noses bumping side by side right below where Steve is marked as Bucky’s down to the bone.
The first of Steve’s tears start falling again, dripping down to soak into the pillowcase, but he doesn’t try to interrupt, so Bucky goes on.
“You are going to go back, baby, and I can’t lie. It’s going to be hard,” he says honestly. “You’re going to feel alone, and angry, and go through things that are awful, but you’re also going to meet some amazing people one day.” He wishes he could tell him more about Sam and Nat, but now just isn’t the time. There’s so many things that he’s not sure they have the time for left. “I know you think that there’ll be no one for you until I get back, but that’s not true.” He wipes a tear from his own eyes and then one from Steve’s, the two mixing together like the pain they’re sharing right now. “You need to go back. You need to go back so you can come find me again, okay?”
Steve’s eyes close for so long Bucky starts to get worried, but then, they open. They’re still watering and are filled with a sadness Bucky knows he can’t soak up. But they’re also trusting. Steve believes what he’s saying is true, and really, isn’t that all Bucky can ask for?
There’s a pause where Bucky can practice feel Steve’s heartbeat pulse around him, the popping of the fire in the back the only noise that fills the room. And then, quietly, almost out of nowhere- “I love you, Buck,” Steve says quietly. “I love you so much I feel weak when I’m not with you.” The last part is said so small it’s like a secret, one that Bucky hears and chooses to disprove.
“You don’t need to be strong right now, sweetheart,” he promises. “Not for me. You just need to be loved, and I’m gonna do everything I can to make you feel that way.”
He kisses him after that, and minutes later when he finally moves to pull out so Steve can cuddle up to him while they put off the clean up, he can help but think that loving Steve Rogers is a feeling he never wants to have to lose.