Chapter 9
It wasn’t long before all evidence of the life Steve and Bucky had eked out in New York started to disappear. Steve tried not to feel too torn up about it - he wasn’t torn up about it, really, not when he was gaining so much more than he’d lose - but it was still a little sad to resign and walk out of his job for the very last time, to see their apartment increasingly overtaken by boxes, to watch their rooms empty out as they started the arduous process of packing what they wanted to keep and carrying their old furniture down to the curb.
Then there was the task of moving itself, which had tensions running uncomfortably high. The sweat dripping down Bucky’s face and the slight shake in his arm as he carted boxes and furniture around told Steve he wasn’t quite as strong as he’d used to be, wasn’t quite as strong as he wanted to be. He still insisted on doing his fair share of the heavy lifting, his stubbornness a perfect match for Steve’s, who also refused to show weakness even in the face of his obviously trembling limbs. That combined stubbornness led to some completely avoidable near misses, with Bucky nearly dropping the end of the bedframe he was carrying on his foot, Steve nearly buckling under the weight of a box he was carrying and falling all the way down the stairs.
The frustration of it all momentarily had Steve wondering if this was all really worth it. But as he took a second to pause, glancing up from where he sat not-quite-delicately sorting through plates and bowls in the kitchen, he got a perfect view of Bucky working in their living room. He was sitting on the floor in the patch of sunlight falling in from the window, surrounded by their meager collection of records and books, handling each one with characteristic care as he ferried them into boxes. As though sensing that Steve was watching him, he glanced up, offering a tentative smile that momentarily erased the tense lines of stress painted on his face. Steve smiled back, and the last of his doubts melted away.
Of course this was worth it. Everything about this was worth it, when the end result would be the chance to see that smile every day for the rest of their lives.
It should have been scary, sitting there so casually thinking about the rest of their lives, but another glance at Bucky, just a room away, was enough to convince him that it wasn’t, really. Steve had never been more sure about wanting anything.
“I’m gonna miss this place,” Bucky said, watching Steve watch him from across the room.
“Yeah,” Steve agreed, taking in the jumble of boxes overtaking what had once been the surest home he’d ever known. “Still kind of hard to believe we’re really leaving. ‘Specially when we’ve been here so long. Remember when we first got the place?”
Bucky smiled fondly at him. “I sure remember how goddamn stubborn you were about it. Took me weeks to wear you down, convince you I actually wanted to go in on the place with you, that you weren’t just some charity case to me.”
Steve grimaced, thinking about those long, bleak weeks after his mother’s death. How important it had been to him that nobody could tell he was hurting. How frustrating it was when he realized Bucky could. But then, how much of a relief it had been when he’d finally let his walls down enough to let Bucky help him. How much better he’d felt after that. How good it felt to finally stop fighting after all that time.
“Glad you finally convinced me,” he admitted.
“Me too.”
Bucky sat looking at him for just a second too long, his silence leaving unsaid words hanging heavy in the air. That had been happening more and more lately - no matter how sure Steve was about all this, the new dimension they’d added to their relationship that night on the fire escape was still untested, still new. In the days since, they’d mostly been dancing around it, sometimes talking themselves into these heavy, charged silences, but never quite talking their way through them.
Steve waited, half-hoping Bucky might say something else, but he just shook his head and went back to sorting through the remains of their living room. Steve shrugged to himself, returning his attention to his own boxes. Maybe it didn’t matter so much that they still weren’t saying exactly what they meant, he reasoned. Not when they had their whole lives ahead of them to talk.
They sat working in companionable silence until Bucky eventually spoke up again.
“Hey, Stevie? You want me to go ahead and pack this?”
Steve looked up to see Bucky holding a thin, leather-bound book - his sketchbook, the one he’d left lying forgotten on the coffee table, displaced in favor of more important things. He was about to agree, reasoning he still had far more important things to be worrying about, but something stopped him.
Somewhere between the sad sight of their deconstructed living room, the perfect swatch of sunlight falling through the window, and that particular half-soft, half-sad smile Bucky had been putting on lately, an idea started to take shape.
“Nah, go ahead and leave it out. I’ll pack it later.”
Bucky shrugged amiably, setting the book aside before moving to tape his box closed. As Steve went back to packing, he couldn’t help but keep glancing out at their living room, plotting out the shapes of a new drawing in his head.
Steve and Bucky’s shared, relentless stubbornness was at least good for something - they made short work of the process of moving, and by the end of a long day most of their belongings were safely tucked away in boxes, all their furniture carted out to the curb. All that remained unpacked was the radio they’d been listening to while they worked, Steve’s sketchbook, and their mattresses, pulled from their bedframes and resting on the floor.
The day’s worth of heavy lifting left Steve’s body weighed down with exhaustion. He celebrated closing the final box with a well-deserved rest, leaning against the kitchen counter to absorb the cold of the tiles and occasionally bending over to gulp water straight from the sink.
“Hate to say it, Steve, but I don’t think we’re actually done moving for the day.”
Without Steve noticing, Bucky had wandered into the kitchen behind him. Steve whipped around from where he’d been about to drink straight from the faucet again to glare daggers at him.
“What? What could we possibly be forgetting?”
“Well, I just thought, we might wanna go ahead and take your mattress down to the curb. Easier to just go ahead and get rid of it.”
“But then where would I…” Steve’s exhausted mind felt just about as slow as his body. Only when he looked up to find Bucky flashing one of his flirtations dance-hall grins at him did he understand.
“Oh,” he said.
“Up to you. But I think it might be fun. Kinda those sleepovers we had on the couch cushions when we were kids…”
Steve rolled his eyes, but couldn’t keep a grin from spreading across his face, his heart speeding up a little in his chest.
“Yeah,” he said, deliberately casual. “Okay. Guess I can handle one more trip downstairs.”
And sure, Steve could certainly grit his teeth and handle that final trip down and back up the stairs with his mattress, but on top of the rest of the day’s work, it left his sore muscles absolutely screaming. It was a relief to finally lie down and relax, and Steve took full advantage of the opportunity, collapsing spread-eagled on Bucky’s narrow mattress, relaxing as he lazily marked out the structure of a drawing in his sketchbook.
“Hey,” Bucky said, entering the room with the radio in hand, the sound of his voice prompting Steve to quickly snap the sketchbook shut and set it aside. Bucky raised his eyebrows, looking down at Steve taking up every square inch of available room on the bed.
“Shove over, punk. You’re way too small to be taking up all that space.”
The familiar, well-worn teasing sparked a warm fondness in Steve’s heart. He tried to hide it under a scowl as he made a show out of scooting to one side of the bed and allowing Bucky to climb in beside him, but he could tell Bucky wasn’t buying the feigned reluctance. He was hardly buying it himself, his lips curling up into a smile in spite of himself.
Bucky settled in beside him, facing him, letting their noses brush together, and Steve’s heart uncontrollably sped up again. There was still something so terrifyingly new about this, being able to breathe the same air and share the same space and know it meant more than either of them was willing or able to say.
Several long minutes passed as they sat in silence together, feeling the rhythm of each other’s breath slowing as they wound down from the day. Steve couldn’t have guessed how long they stayed there - whenever they managed to find these quiet moments together, time always seemed to fall away. When Bucky finally spoke, it felt like forever had passed, but also like time had never really existed at all.
“Are you really sure about all this?”
Steve opened eyes he’d allowed to fall shut, meeting Bucky’s on the other side of the pillow. He wasn’t sure what Bucky was referring to - maybe the move, maybe all the feelings he’d finally admitted, or maybe just that particular moment, lying there just close enough to raise the possibility of more - but it didn’t matter. Whatever the question, Steve’s answer remained the same.
“Not even a question about it, Buck. I’m sure.”
In a moment of bravery, Steve reached out a gentle hand toward Bucky. Bucky was curled on his left arm, his stump shoulder positioned carefully in the air, so Steve moved to touch whatever he could, brushing against the lines of Bucky’s ribs through his shirt before snaking an arm around to his back, running fingers delicately up and down his spine. Bucky in turn shifted to free his arm, lifting his hand to trace the line of Steve’s jaw with his thumb. His hand was warm, but Steve shivered under his touch.
“How… how long did you know?” Bucky whispered tentatively. Steve didn’t have to ask what he meant. He gave a shaky smile.
“A while,” he admitted. “I-I think, when you were gone, I realized that, maybe, what we had with each other meant more to me than I’d thought.” He took a deep breath in an attempt to steady his voice. “You know I… I kept trying to enlist, whole time you were over there. ‘Specially after I heard you were - well, after I heard you weren’t in a good spot. I just couldn’t stand the thought of you over there, going through whatever you were going through. Couldn’t stand not knowing. Felt like I had to save you, somehow. Even though I knew I couldn’t.”
“Steve…” Bucky sighed, a note of admonishment in his voice.
“I know. I know, and it didn’t work, obviously, so don’t be mad. They wouldn’t take me. So I just had to wait.” Bucky still looked like he wanted to protest, but after scanning Steve’s face he held it back. Steve pressed on.
“And then, when you came back, that’s when it really hit me. Not just the fact that what we had meant something more to me than I’d thought before. I was finally starting to figure out exactly what it meant.” He cleared his throat. “That night we went out. The night you taught me to dance. You just… you held me, and we were so close, and it felt… it felt right. Dunno how else to put it. That’s when I really knew.”
Steve searched Bucky’s face, watching all the frustration borne of his enlistment story fade out into something softer.
“What about you?” Steve whispered. “When did you know?”
Bucky smiled softly, running gentle fingers through Steve’s hair.
“That time when we were fourteen and I had to pull you out of a fight with that bully Eddie Johnson. When I told you not to mess with him, but you stood up to him anyway, just ‘cause it was right. It was… brave. Stupid, totally stupid, but brave. That’s when I figured out you were gonna be the death of me, but it was also when I… knew.”
Steve gaped at him for a moment, completely taken aback.
“You knew that long?”
Bucky nodded, almost afraid as he waited for Steve’s reaction.
“You… god, you jerk.”
Bucky looked like he was about to apologize, but then Steve was leaning in, covering his mouth with a kiss, long and lazy and slow, showing him just how little there was to be sorry for.
The kiss started out soft, a reassurance, but soon some force outside Steve’s control seemed to drive it further, morphing it into something else entirely. Steve wound his hands into fists in Bucky’s clothes, pulling him impossibly closer, and Bucky’s hand moved to Steve’s waist, fingernails scraping against the spot where his shirt had ridden up to show skin. With their lips still locked together, Steve pulled himself to his knees, moving to straddle Bucky’s lap. He was toeing a line now, he knew, one that marked the point of no return, but despite common sense warning him not to, all he wanted was to keep going.
He broke away from Bucky’s lips, flushed and breathless. Cautiously, he slipped a hand beneath the hem of Bucky’s shirt.
“Is this okay?” he asked. Bucky was nodding as soon as the words were out of his mouth.
“Yeah. Yeah, more than okay.”
And suddenly it didn’t matter so much that they were crossing a line they could never double back on, not when they were crossing it together.
It wasn’t perfect. It was still awkward, fumbling, new. Steve hardly had any idea what he was doing, and even Bucky seemed unsure somehow, like no amount of experience could have prepared him to actually have Steve in his arms. But, awkwardness and all, it was still soft, still real, and it started to feel like all the words they hadn’t yet been able to say were finally out there in the open, finally concrete.
It felt so obvious, so sure, that Steve was surprised to hear Bucky speak when it was over. They’d collapsed chest to chest, heartbeats thudding against each other as they slowed, fingers tracing soft patterns into each other’s skin. Steve didn’t think anything more needed to be said. Bucky still managed to find his voice, whispering blindly into the dark.
“I think… I think I’m in love with you.”
Steve felt his breath catch in his throat. There it was, everything they’d been so carefully sidestepping since they’d first kissed - or maybe, if Steve was honest with himself, for a lot longer than that. He lifted his head from where it was resting on Bucky’s chest, trying to make out his face through the shadows. There was no more room for hesitation
“I think I love you, too,” he breathed, the words pulled from him before he could even think. Only after having said them did he realize what a relief it was to finally stop holding them back. Beneath him, he felt Bucky relax, an equally relieved smile spreading across his face, visible even through the dark.
With a contented sigh, Steve burrowed back into Bucky’s chest. His head came to rest in the space between Bucky’s collarbone and his neck, a perfect fit, like their bodies had been made to lie together like this. Now that everything was finally out in the open, he felt at peace, maybe more so than he ever had. With Bucky safe and warm beside him, he closed his eyes and gave in to the overwhelming tiredness pulling him towards sleep.
The spell broke sometime in the middle of the night. Steve woke in the dark, disoriented and afraid, to the feeling of the mattress moving underneath him. It took him a moment to realize why - it was Bucky, writhing as he curled away in his sleep, a low whine sounding in the back of his throat. It was a familiar sound at this point, one that accompanied all the nightmares he’d heard over the months through the walls. It was just so much closer now, and doubly frightening because of it.
“Buck. Bucky.”
Steve disentangled himself from the blankets to prod at Bucky’s shoulder, glad he couldn’t see the expression on Bucky’s face. Bucky stiffened under his touch, still trying to pull away.
“Come on. Need you to wake up, okay? It’s just a dream.”
Steve shook him a little harder, and Bucky jolted under the touch, gasping once in terror before finally going still.
“Yeah,” Steve encouraged. “Just a dream. It was just a dream.”
Bucky laid still for a moment, breathing heavily in and out. Steve kept a hand resting against his shoulder, a touch that felt so different than the one they’d shared just hours before. His heart was sinking even as the heat of panicky sweat faded away and Bucky’s heart rate slowed.
When most of the tension had finally bled out of him, Bucky started moving again, cautiously maneuvering himself until he was facing Steve. His eyes were squeezed shut, and he rubbed at his forehead the way he always did when he got confused and was trying to remind himself what was real.
“Sorry,” he whispered hoarsely.
Steve shook his head automatically before remembering Bucky wasn’t even looking at him. “No. None of that. Keep telling you you don’t gotta be sorry for anything.”
Bucky sighed and finally opened his eyes to a squint, taking in the concern on Steve’s face. “Yeah, Just, this was supposed to be a nice night. Didn’t mean to ruin it.”
“You didn’t,” Steve insisted, and found that he really meant it. “It’s not your fault.”
Bucky shrugged, but didn’t look convinced. He let his eyes drift away from Steve’s face, glancing up and tracing over the cracks in the low plaster ceiling.
“Do you wanna talk about it?” Steve murmured into the silence. Bucky quickly shook his head, then winced at the motion.
“No. Sorry. I - I just. Felt like I was back there. Felt like I was… alone. I want my head to stay here. I want to stay here. With you.”
“Okay,” Steve said. “Well, I got you. I’m not goin’ anywhere.”
He did his best to make good on it, even as tiredness crept up on him again and his eyes kept wanting to slip shut. The unease still lingering in Bucky’s face told him he wasn’t going back to sleep anytime soon, and Steve, despite his exhaustion, wanted nothing more than to keep him company, keep his mind away from the war and firmly rooted in the present.
“Want music, or something?” Steve asked through a yawn, imagining that the noise might keep them both anchored in reality.
“Sure,” Bucky whispered. Steve reached over to fumble for the radio Bucky had left beside the bed, hoping for music, but all he was able to find was the droning sound of a talk station. The monotone voice crackling through the speakers did nothing but make his eyelids even heavier, and the fight against sleep was starting to look like a losing battle.
“This… okay?” he asked, only half-awake to hear his own words. He wasn’t sure if Bucky’s nod of affirmation was real or part of a dream quickly overtaking him.
About the third time he caught himself falling asleep, he jerked back awake to the feeling of Bucky’s hand gently pressing against his shoulder.
“Hey,” Bucky said softly.
“Sorry,” Steve mumbled, rubbing his eyes. “Didn’t mean to fall asleep. Wanna keep you company.”
“Nah, don’t worry about it. You’re exhausted, Stevie. You oughta get some rest.”
“But… said I’d… stay with you.”
“I know.” Bucky was whispering, but his voice sounded so close. A moment later Steve felt something - the unmistakable, soft press of lips against his forehead - and he let eyes he hadn’t realized were closed flutter back open. “I think I’m okay now, though. Think I know you’re not really going anywhere. And that means everything’s alright.” Bucky brushed his lips against Steve’s forehead again. “You can go back to sleep. Know you’re tired.”
“But…” Steve still felt the need to protest.
“Shh. Don’t be stubborn, Stevie,” Bucky said with a sideways grin. “You’ve been taking real good care of me. Gotta let me take care of you sometimes too.” Bucky moved to wrap Steve with his arm. “Go ahead and rest. It’s okay.”
“You can’t make me,” Steve grumbled. But then Bucky’s arm was draped around him, and it was warm, and the voice on the radio was fuzzing out into pleasant white noise, and there was nothing to do but surrender.
Bucky was taking care of him, just the way he always had, and Steve couldn’t deny how good it felt. It felt like, maybe, they’d finally found their way home.
The next thing Steve knew, he was blinking awake to sunlight streaming in past the blinds of the small bedroom window. He sat up slowly, rubbing at his eyes, before turning to gripe at Bucky for letting him fall asleep - but the mattress beside him was empty. Steve whipped around to find Bucky crouched on the floor beside the radio, cranking up the volume dial as high as it would go. He hardly even seemed to notice that Steve was awake, all his attention focused on the sound coming in from the radio.
Steve opened his mouth to speak, but a wave of Bucky’s hand stopped him. He stopped short, finally listening in on what was happening. As the message being relayed over the airwaves became clear, Bucky looked over at Steve with wide eyes, a look of shock that Steve was sure he was echoing right back.
“It’s over. The war, it’s - they surrendered in Europe. It’s over.”
Noise was suddenly pouring in, not just from the radio, but from the window, rising from the street below. With Bucky still frozen in place, Steve clambered to his feet and lifted the blinds.
It was like nothing he’d ever seen. People were spilling out of their apartments, gathering on street corners, hanging out of open car windows, brandishing newspapers at every turn. Steve’s heart soared, and he almost wanted to smile - at least, until he remembered Bucky.
Bucky, still sitting on the floor, rigid as though in shock. Bucky, who looked like he hadn’t slept a wink after waking from his nightmare. Bucky, who’d been tired in more ways than that ever since he’d arrived home those few short months ago. Steve abandoned the celebration outside, letting the blinds fall closed. Bucky was so much more important than all that.
Steve returned to sit on the floor, close enough to Bucky that their knees brushed together. He offered his hand. Slowly, still not meeting his eyes, Bucky took it.
Going outside, plunging themselves into the noise and the crowd to celebrate in kind, was out of the question, Steve knew - but it hardly mattered. Sitting with his fingers carefully interlaced with Bucky’s felt like its own kind of happiness.
“You gonna be okay?” Steve asked, gently squeezing Bucky’s hand.
Bucky still looked stricken, exhausted. But, looking at him now, Steve realized there was another emotion under all that - relief, finally starting to smooth out the lines of his face. After a long moment, he nodded, solid and sure.
“Yeah. Yeah, I think I’m gonna be.”