Bucky is dead. Logically, Steve knows this. He saw him fall. He failed to save him.
Bucky is dead and Steve knows this. But.
But he can still feel him, at the base of his spine. This gentle, unexplainable sensation holding Steve upright, just like always.
Impossible, irrational, colder than normal, but still a strong if somewhat sharp pulse.
The plane goes down and maybe it’s on purpose or maybe Steve is distracted because-
Because Bucky fell forever down into the snow and Steve is struggling to understand how he can still feel that support at the base of his spine.
The plane dies down and the ice crawls into his veins and Steve curls into the chilly support holding him upright as the world dims and he thinks maybe this is the for the best and I’ll find Bucky beyond.
-
The world defrost. Steve blinks, dark ice still crusting his eyes and weighing his lashes, but he can feel the warmth.
Too much, sweat coating his upper lip blistering in his bones. He tries to sink back into the sharp support at the base of his spine, but it’s all wrong now. Black, tar, so painful Steve jerked hard enough to crack the ice.
He claws his way up, rusty blood dripping from his blue nails, from his frozen lips.
He doesn’t think, beyond the heartbeat screaming Bucky.
The sun cracks before him, he’s drenched in slush.
Steve is awake, and Bucky is dead, and the black tar holding him up is threatening to snap him.
So he goes.
The ice, melting slow and steady, is still thick enough to splinter his nails and slice open his skin, and Steve licks at the rust falling down his wrist. He’s parched and starving, and he can’t get warm. That last one might be Bucky.
Steve can’t remember how long it’s been since he ate or drank or took a leak. He doesn’t know how long the ice held him prisoner.
What he does know, is the first unfiltered rays of sun blind him long enough for voices to deafen him, for hands to grappled at the straps and pull him up.
He uses the momentum to launch himself forward and into the idiot who would try to contain him.
Someone yells, says, “Calm down Captain!” But Steve doesn’t care. He takes his shield and slams it down as hard as he can, listening to the soothing squelch of flesh and muscle. The musical cracking of the neck giving under the vibranium.
Red, bright and fresh and not at all stale spills out into the pristine snow and Steve watches it, eyes alight.
He’s hungry, thirsty.
Survival, he learned as a kid, does funny things to the brain and it makes people do desperate things. He’s not desperate, not exactly. But he is thirsty and he probably does need the iron.
He’s just scooped sticky red snow into his hands, is about to lift it to his mouth when he feels the pin-prick bite in his neck.
The heavy sleep feels wrong, nothing like the icy rest he’s accustomed too. It’s warm, like a blanket, soft, and he panics, fights it with his teeth bared.
The pin-prick sleep slugs it’s way to the base of his spine and settles above Bucky’s tar, making Steve feel light and airy, unbalanced.
-
Steve dreams of before. Back when he was small and Bucky was all his.
Not that anyone knew it.
Not that Steve wanted them to know.
They had this game they played; dark and wrong and so likely to kill them, they gorged on it.
Wrestling is such a stupid sport, but such a grand excuse to lay hands all over. Steve was good at wrestling.
So good, in fact, that he used to get a good grip on Bucky’s neck and hold him down, hand sliding under his shirt, down his waist, claiming whatever skin he could. Bucky would grumble, fight, pant beneath Steve’s cold fingers.
It was part of the game, as was the rutting.
“Is this how you do it, Buck?” He’d whisper in his ear. “Hold ‘em down and take?”
Bucky would grunt beneath him, barely pretending to fight as Steve shoved his hand down the front of his trousers.
“Shut up Stevie, the girls beg for it,” Bucky huffed out. When he had his wits.
Sometimes, sometimes there was no wrestling. Sometimes there was Steve sitting in the kitchen, legs splayed and dinner going cold.
Bucky would come through the door lipstick on his collar and trousers all wrinkled. He’d smile at Steve, lean against a wall and say, “Wanna know what Doreen Talbot did for me tonight?”
Steve, coy and cruel, would flick a hard earned dime, kick his legs open wider and whisper, “No, Bucky. I want you to show me.”
Bucky, precious Bucky with that stupid lock of hair always falling in his eyes and that rosey grin of his would drop to his knees, crawl forward. Steve used to twist his fingers into those curls and smile, gently. “It’s just you and me, Bucky. Be a good boy and earn your keep?”
Because innocent little Bucky needed an excuse to play. Steve didn’t. Death used to nip so hard at his heels, Steve played with fire like it was string.
What else was there for him to do?
Aside from watch the spit gather in the corners of Bucky’s mouth, watch those stormy eyes go wild and listen to him grunt.
Steve might’ve been born a small little runt, but the universe always finds a way to even things out, and Bucky’s throat knew it well.
In this dream, he’s visions just going fuzzy at the edges, heat building beneath his skin, and he’s so close and then-
Steve jerks, fully body thing as a monitor screams at him.
He’s angry, still hungry, and now? Now he needs the release he was so close to earning.
-
They want Steve to think it’s still it’s 1946, and he’s content to play along for now. The idiots put the wrong game on, but until he knows who “the idiots” are, he’s not going to remind them.
They run all kinds of test and Steve is fascinated by the machines. Nothing like he remembers. They monitor his heartbeat and his lungs. His brainwaves. He doesn't mind the test that let him run and sweat, beat into a bag full of heavy sand.
He knows what they’re finding: Steve’s heart hasn’t ever beat right. Not before the serum when it was too weak to do more than flutter. Not after when it beat in rhythm with another. He knows they’re concerned about his brainwaves. He’s not sure why, only that they’re obsessed with poking and prodding and riling him up.
He lets them, if only because the way his blood boils makes it easier to sink into the tar gurgling along his back.
Bucky’s all antsy about something, in a way that makes Steve’s teeth ache. He wants-
Steve smiles at Fury, genial and false.
Fury doesn’t smile, but he doesn’t call Steve out either.
“Want a job, Wonderboy?
Steve blinks. Not in surprise, not exactly.
The tar is swirling, shifted to his gut and it’s acidic and wrong. Steve’s nose twitches. “I’m no Wonder,” he informs Fury.
Fury shrugs. “Fuck. I know that.” He slides a picture across the desk and Steve looks at it board. “They say you did that with your magic shield.”
Steve grins at him, bright and practiced. “Well, shields are made for protection.”
Fury leans forward, eyes dark and mouth grim. “They also tell me you looked about half a second away from eating this poor fucker’s face.”
Steve leans forward now, gut churning and Bucky screaming somewhere in a memory gone wrong. “Well, Sir, did the mysterious ‘they’ also remind you I’d just woken up from a decades long nap and was in dire need of three things?”
“Three?” Fury asks unphased.
Steve holds up his fingers, one at a time. “A good long piss, something warm to drink, and a little bit of meat to eat.”
Fury doesn’t shudder and Steve gives him credit for that, if anything he looks bored with the conversation. “He was a good man,” Fury says, tapping the picture. “Hank Pym had a family, and a helluva lot more to discover.”
Steve ignores his words. “I’ll join your friendly band of sacrificial lambs, Fury. But I got one condition.”
Fury tells him, “This ain’t no negotiation.”
Steve leans forward, grips the desk until wood and metal begin to give beneath his fingers, “Listen, Fury. You’ve kept me locked here for months, and I gotta tell you. The food ain’t great, the drinks need work, and also? I desperately gotta piss.” Steve leans back and he’s starting to get real fucking annoyed Fury won’t flinch. But. Demands being displayed, “So yeah, I join your spandex merry men and you? You let me hunt, no restraints.”
Fury grins at him, and it’s a slow thing Steve has seen before. He doesn’t know where the trap was laid, or how, but he’s fucking caught and he is even more fucking furious. “So you are searching for the second rhythm.”
Steve wants to run. And he also wants to question. He stands up and says, “What second rhythm?”
Fury leans back in his chair and spins around, hand in the air. “My people will contact your people.”
Steve doesn’t have people, but he doesn’t doubt Fury either.
-
Hank Pym was a genius. Steve thinks he should feel bad about murdering him. And almost eating him.
He doesn’t. He is a little pissed at himself though, because as it turns out, Hank Pym is one of the only scientist in the whole fucking world studying the scarbond.
As far as Steve can tell, scarbonds are almost extinct in this world. They were rare when he was a child, growing up on fairytales and shit.
His mama worried all the time, made him grow his hair just a little too long. “It ain’t right and it ain’t normal and it ain’t easy.”
That’s all she’d ever say to him, tugging the hair over the starburst explosion over his ear. She loved him though, enough to want to protect him. “You just don’t tell nobody. And if you ever find your balm,” her face, beautiful and wane, would go all kinds of tight. “Don’t you ever let ‘em go, Stevie boy. Don’t you ever lose ‘em. ‘Cause when you lose your balm? That’s when the monster breaks free.”
Hank Pym had theories. Lot’s of ‘em, about the scarbonds.
Hank Pym had lots of theories about time and parallels and alternate dimensions. Fascinating stuff, really. Steve doesn’t care about quantum realms though.
Steve wants to know how Hank Pym knows about the scarbonds and that anchor at the base of one’s spine.
There’s nothing though, no explanation for how Hank Pym knew about the warm feeling, the violence in a soul when the match fits.
Steve wants to go dig up Hank’s body and find what the pictures don’t show, but he’s got a feeling it isn’t there.
Curious.
Even more curious? Hank’s wife vanished and Hank stayed sane.
“Not him then,” Steve grumbles.
It doesn’t matter. Understanding the scarbond won’t find Bucky. And that’s all that matters, really.
Still, Hank isn’t the only scientist of this time, and the tar, still acidic and wrong, hasn’t found its home just yet.
“Stark,” Steve sighs.
Mr. Stark rounds the corner of the building they’ve trapped Steve in, eyes bright and hands twitchy. “Finally ready to let me crack that brain open?”
Steve scoffs. “You’re not that kind of Scientist.”
“Nope!” Stark says and it’s too cheerful, too exuberant. It grates on every single one of Steve’s nerves, and probably a few of Bucky’s if the way the tar bubbles is any indication. “But I know a guy.”
Steve ignores him. He does hold out the shield. “One hour for a few questions.”
“I’m listening,” Stark says, slamming into the seat next to him.
“Tell me what you know of a scarbond,” Steve demands.
Stark pushes the shield back towards him. “Sorry Ice Prince, that’s off limits.”
“That’s not the same as ‘I don’t know,’” Steve says primly.
Stark jerks, grins at him uncomfortably, and shrugs.
They don’t get to argue anymore because the fucking alarm goes off.
Steve touches his nose and Stark squawks. “You can’t noses out of Hero-ing, Steve! It’s not like the dishes.”
Steve leaves his finger pressed to his nostril until his hip vibrates. “Fuck me,” he groans.
Stark grins, brows dancing, and says, “Ask nicely big boy.”
Steve doesn’t flick him off, but only because his phone won’t shut the hell up. “Rogers,” he snarls.
“Stutergate,” Fury tells him.
“If I say no?”
“Then I’ll cap your ass and Mr. Barnes can rot wherever he is, like the monster he is.”
It’s a cold threat, and not one without merit. Steve sneers at the phone if only because it soothes him.
“And the problem?”
“Why don’t you hop that pretty little ass on the jet I’m sending and find out?” Fury disconnects.
-
Steve finds out two things in Stutergate; one, he likes Avenging and two, Bucky hates it.
They don’t fit together, these two facts. Steve handles it by beating the shit out of mind-controlled morons. Stark gives him a dirty look when he fits his hands around the throat of some old woman with a really large axe to grind. “Murder paws down,” Stark chides.
Steve growls at him, skin the worst kind of itchy.
“We don’t murder locals,” Romanov adds. “If we can help it.”
The woman swings the axe, narrowly avoiding Steve’s shoulder and there’s a burst of panic above his left ear. He squeezes, until he hears a satisfying crunch and her face bloats and her eyes burst.
He drops her, looks at Stark and says, “Couldn’t be helped.”
“Jesus,” someone says over the coms.
Steve looks around, frowning. Something is wrong here, with this scene. It’s…
It’s not his problem.
“Fury,” he grunts. He presses two fingers to his temple, grimacing. “Can I be excused?”
Fury huffs, the closest thing to laughing he’ll do over the coms. “So Captain’s finally found that Good Boy sense of Manners!”
Steve makes a noise, not even close to human and he sees Romanov and Stark both jerk. Funny, but the Hawk doesn’t even look at him. “So?” he demands.
Bucky’s close. He’s sure of it. But something is very wrong because he can feel the heart strong in his ribs, but it’s… off beat somehow. He’s so fucking cold, but there’s this god-awful nuclear heat right above his ass, burning like nothing he’s ever felt.
“Sorry, Cap,” Fury says far too cheerfully to mean it. “But you’re heading back to New York.”
“What?” Steve cries. “What no-” He’s so fucking close.
“Quinjet, Cap,” Fury sings.
Steve obeys, if only because his body is screaming at him and he’s not sure where to run.
-
New York turns out to be quite the release. Steve happily finds out the murder no-go rule mostly just applies to humans and humanoid gods. Aliens are free reign and Steve swings his shield like a battering ram.
He gets bored with it, and starts grabbing them. He wants to see how easy their spines pop from their bodies.
Beautifully, he discovers and he’s not quite laughing, but he’s got a kill count in the hundreds pretty quickly.
In the background, people are figuring out how to close Steve’s toy, and someone asks him something but he ignores it.
Bucky’s gone quiet. Total silence, making Steve all feathery and light. He doesn’t like it, and if he can’t pop Fury’s head off, he’s gonna squeezes these fuckers like they’re zits on dance night.
He’s chasing that high, blood singing in his skin when he’s clocked by half a building and drops.
Dropping is nice. Dropping is a dream.
-
Steve’s a fighter and his Pa blames genetics and his Ma blams the scarbond. Steve blames being a runt in the shitty part of town. Not his fault the bigger boys are pansies. Not his fault they think he’s easy like a starved, street mutt.
Steve likes the way they sing to him though, Or, the way their broken nose and splintered bones do, anyhow.
He’s licking blood from his wrist when something shifts. Something untouchable, something that blinds him for a moment, screams in his ears. He’s fucking drowning in a song that’s horrible and he likes it.
The punch comes out of nowhere, shatters his socket. “Shit,” a voice says. “Wrong face.”
Steve doesn’t have the time to parse that out because Tommy Decker goes down hard and his lackies aren’t sure if they’re to run or fight ‘cause ain’t no one ever downed Decker before.
There’s a warm weight at Steve’s back and for the first time the world feels solid beneath his feet and he throws crooked punches until he can’t tell if it’s his blood or theirs running down his knuckles.
When the dust settles, there’s a set of storm-grey eyes dancing in front of him, and a starburst scar trying to break through delightful inky curls.
“Aw fuck,” he hears and Steve snarls. He launches himself forward, before he’s even decided if he’s going for a kiss or a kill.
“Wait, wait!” Strong hands, hot like brands, squeeze his shoulders and hold him back. “I didn’t mean it like that! It’s just, ain’t no fixin’ your nose now.”
Steve stops struggling and narrows his eyes. “Well damn.”
“Scuze me?”
“Always thought my other half’d be… better,” Steve pouts.
The other boy looks at him with his hands on his hips, “Now you listen here you little punk. I’m taller ‘n you, stronger, ‘n prettier to boot.”
Steve says, “Yeah, but I can’t fuck you can I?”
“Why not?”
Steve shoots his meanest look, the one that usually gets him kicked real hard. “Well you ain’t exactly got the parts do ya?”
The guy leans over him, lecherous grin. “Now, I know you’ve heard about the boys in the alleys.”
Steve lunges forward, fight still coursing through his veins. He manages two good strikes before he’s on his back, a heavy weight on his hips. “I’m James Barnes, but folks call me Bucky. And if you’re nice, and you stop trying to rip my face off, I might let you fuck me later.”
Steve hikes a knee up, just because he can, and because watching this Bucky’s face contort is possibly the hottest thing. “I’m Steve, and if you get off me, I might take you up on that offer.”
-
Steve doesn’t make it back to Stutergate. Scarbonds don’t work like compasses, not exactly. Not as far as he can tell.
But he’s commandeered a plane from some punk with bright eyes, and he’s over the ocean and chugging past mountains when pain blooms beside his left eye. Sharp and cruel and definitely not his own, but he still doesn’t have words.
He crashes the plane, because it’s his thing now, and shacks up with a family in a tiny little hut divide by threadbare scraps of fabric.
He likes the family. Likes that they don’t speak his language, they don’t seem to know his face.
Likes even more that he gets to go out and hunt with his hands and they’re too thankful for meat to be concerned.
When he was little, before his Pa died, he and Ma and Pa had a room like this.
Pa didn’t let him hunt though. Not because he was sick, although that was the easy excuse.
Pa didn’t let him hunt because he was afraid of Steve. ‘Cause if Ma thought losing the balm made the scarbond rot, Pa knew you had to be sick in the head to even have one.
Steve used to hear him whisper, on the rare occasions he deigned to bend his knees in front of a cross he didn’t believe in. “He ain’t right, Sarah. No boy should have eyes that vicious. I’ve seen men murder with less bloodthirsty glow about their cheeks.”
Sarah would hiss at him. Pa would say, “Lord, don’t you ever let him meet his balm. ‘Cause he will lose ‘em, and he will go mad.”
Steve watches the little girl he’s staying with eye the elk like it’s Christmas itself. Pa might’ve been right.
Might’ve been wrong. Either way he started a game with Steve. “What percentage?” He’d ask over dinner.
Steve would dutifully answer. “78%. Patrick Flanner called me a gal and offered me lipstick. I bit him in the knee.”
Ma hates that game and Pa only worried if it got up into the 90’s percentage wise and Steve tried not to think how accurate his answers were.
Now, he’s studying the bruises on the little girl’s cheek, counting to five in thick purple strokes.
He can hear his Pa rustling a newspaper as he asks, “Hungry?”
Steve says, “87%. He’s a bastard.”
Steve scratches at the scarbond, annoyed at the blistered skin and the pain that won’t subside.
He waits until the man goes out, ostensibly to work and Steve? Steve hunts.
The gal’s Pa only gets as far as he does so Steve can hear him scream without bothering anyone else. Steve tackles him, and he studies his face and considers punching until there’s nothing left.
He doesn’t have that kind of time, so he settles for pulling his spine through his chest.
He leaves him for the birds and starts walking. The pain at his temple beats a steady pulse he follows.
-
Steve lets Fury track him all along the coast. He lets the tracker tick between the bones of his wrist until it stops amusing him. Then he sits in the dark, damp sand and sinks his teeth into skin and muscle and tendon until rust drips into his jaws and he can feel the metal rolling along his tongue.
He spits it into his hand and looks at the blinking orb in his palm. Part of him wants to crush it. Pulverize it into dust. Or maybe bury it in the mud. Chuck it into the ocean.
He isn’t stupid enough to think Fury is going to let him go that easily.
He stops in a small village and studies the locals. Poor, mangy, half starved and flea-bitten. He should do something for them. Save them, because it’s what Bucky would want and it might make the festering mass at his temple stop itching.
Bucky isn’t here, which is Steve’s damn fault. Skewed, half memories of Bucky are Steve’s morals, alas, which means he finds the runtiest, mangiest, most beaten mutt he can find and he steals a whole fucking turkey. Steve slips the tracker into the meat, feeds the beast as much as it can handle, then cuts the ropes from its neck and scares it into the wild.
A dog like that’ll run for years and years and it’ll take Fury at least six months to figure out what he’s done. If he’s lucky.
Steve hates the snow. He didn’t used to, even when it was trying to kill him. He used to love snow, and the way it coated Bucky’s lashes and made his cheeks red.
And.
More importantly, it was a very nice excuse to sit too close which let Steve slip his hands into Bucky’s pockets.
Now his hands are cold and all he has are his own armpits.
That and whatever he kills and cooks.
It’s not the same though, and he’s bored. Traipsing through the woods is only fun with a gun in his hands and targets in his sight.
Or at least a good face to punch a few times.
There’s no one around though, and rabbit only fills his belly so full.
Steve falls back on a childhood solution. ‘Cause scarbonds might be a curse, but insanity has its perks.
He walks until the mud is damp and cool and digs himself a nice little hole. Steve sits, criss-crossed legs and eyes shut. He digs two fingers into the scar and presses until stars explode behind his closed lids and blood trails thick and sluggish into his ear.
“Alright alright.” Bucky’s hands, faint and itchy like okra fuzz tug his hand away. He pulls Steve up and stares mournfully at the muddy jeans. “Those were nice. Jesus, Rogers, you know you don’t have to dig.”
Steve knows this. “You’ll clean me up,” he says smartly.
Bucky snaps rusty fingers in Steve’s face. “Not how it works Rogers. I’m not real.”
“Nope,” Steve grins cheerfully. “But somehow we always make it work? Don’t we Barnes.”
Bucky sighs, long suffering and exhausted, and it sends the best damn shivers down Steve’s spine, all the way into that inky anchor at the base. It almost feels right.
“Real hasn’t ever seemed to matter before,” Steve says primly. Bucky’s already digging his fingers into the button of Steve’s shirt, tugging.
“Steve, baby,” Bucky grimaces. “All I can do right now is whatever you’re skeevy brain tells me too. And we both know you aren’t going to waste time having me clean a little blood. So let's just get to business yeah?”
Steve grabs Bucky’s phantom fingers with a frown. “Grumpy puppy,” he chides. “So impatient.”
Bucky leans back on his heels, rocking a little. “Oh fuck you.”
Steve growls because this is his fucking hallucination and Bucky is hijacking it like a little bitch.
“Hey shithead, it’s not my fault your brain isn’t dollin’ me up. You want me on my knees?” Bucky’s eyes are the wrong shade of teal when he leans in and licks the rust on the shell of Steve’s ear. “Then take out your cock.”
Thing is, Steve could. Has. It’s a bit of a thing, between them. Bucky had figured this quirk out. Steve had caught something that had turned into a meaner thing and it meant they couldn’t play. Between nights spent making sure Steve’s heart didn’t stop and days spent at the dock, Bucky’s brain had gone a bit wonky.
That Steve had woken up, or rather -
Bucky licks his way to Steve’s mouth. “Stop thinking babe. Just fuck me and move on, ‘cause I ain’t gonna remember it this time anyway.”
Steve pulls back abruptly. “That’s not how it goes.”
Bucky’s teal eyes, grey at the edges, go fuzzy. “Steve, baby. Please. Stop thinking.”
Steve considers this, Bucky’s fingers trailing through the curls on his belly. It’s distracting, comforting, and Steve really fucking wantes to sink into it. “I know you’re a hallucination and all, but it’s supposed to be a mutually beneficial arrangement. I get off, you wake up sore and satisfied, we chide each other on boundaries later.”
Bucky pushes at Steve, pushes him back into the mud and straddles his lips, forcing Steve to grab his dainty hips. He lets Bucky mouth at his jaw, digs his fingers into leather pants. “It’s no fun this way,” Steve groans. He falls back into the mud, dragging Bucky with him.
Bucky goes, because despite the turn this is still Steve’s hallucination. Steve twist his fingers into long dark hair, then frowns as he tugs it. Bucky whines beneath his hands. “Why’s it long?”
“They like it that way,” Bucky pants.
“Who?” Steve demands. Bucky whines again and he tries to grind against Steve, but Steve tugs the hair until Bucky is forced to look at him. “Who, Bucky?”
“My handlers,” Bucky sighs. “My handlers Rogers. Christ. You vanish for almost seven decades, can’t even spare a minute to visit your balm.” He climbs off Steve and begins pacing and there’s something off about his movements. He’s unbalanced.
And not like Steve’s mental status either.
“You leave a guy high and dry and when you finally show the fuck up you won’t play,” Bucky twitches. For a second Steve can see him, naked and greasy and screaming, and then he’s back with his long hair and his ancient uniform. “Christ, Stevie. I haven’t felt this alive since the fall, and you won’t play with me. Gimme something good to dream about when they shoot the ice in my veins.” Bucky is begging him. Really and truly begging and Steve?
Steve was always weak for Bucky anyhow. “I’ll make you a deal, Buck,” he says. He leans up on his elbow and tugs at the waist of his pants. “You gimme something to go on, some way to find you, and I’ll let you blow me.”
Bucky’s eyes shift, teal fading into a stormy sapphire. “Somehow, Rogers, that sounds like a win-win situation for you, not me.”
Steve snorts at him. “Sure it’s a win for you. You get my dick in your mouth and I might actually rescue you one of these days.”
They’re serious for a heartbeat, Steve making promises to a fuzzy fever dream since he can’t tell it straight to Bucky.
The moment passes and Bucky sinks to his knees in the mud. “Tell you what Stevie. You go South. Go until the trees turn orange and the sky is pink and find the valley that looks like that place we hid that summer. That’s where I am.”
Steve tangles his hands in Bucky’s hair and he pulls too hard. He’s angry, because that’s a bullshit answer. Angry, because Hallucination Bucky’s mouth is perfect and wrong. There’s no fight, no struggle. Bucky takes him all the way, easy and clean.
No spit, no gagging. His eyes don’t even water when Steve brushes the back of his throat.
If anything, Bucky’s eyes are the wrong kind of dead. The serene kind of blank, and he swallows Steve’s spend without so much as a snarl.
His lips aren’t red and when he kisses Steve in parting, Steve grabs his wrist and says, “What the fuck have they done to you Bucky?”
Bucky taps the festering scarbond sadly. “Shit, Steve. You’re not the only fucked up half of this curse.”
-
Hallucination Bucky doesn’t go away like he’s supposed to. Steve isn’t exactly annoyed, so much as perplexed. Hallucinations are nice and all, except that normally he gets to make them go away. It’s the perk of the scarbond curse; dream a balm up when they’re gone, then have ‘em fuck off to the recess of your mind when it suits ya.
“Go away,” Steve snaps.
Hallucination Bucky is all fucked up. He’s not, he isn’t. Ain’t right. “When did you grow your hair out? I don’t remember this,” Steve grouses. He knows that Bucky’s saying it’s ‘cause of his Handlers, but it doesn’t make a goddamned lick of sense. Bucky is Steve’s hallucination, which means there shouldn’t be anything new. Unfamiliar.
Hallucination Bucky is extremely quiet next to him. That’s new too, and Steve hates it. What in the goddamned hell is hallucinating his probably-not-dead balm up good for if he can’t even have a fucking conversation with him.
Hallucination Bucky isn’t right though. And the more they go south, the more Steve looks for fucking pink sky and yellow leaves. Steve has been walking for long enough that time has lost meaning and even the warmer climates are getting colder.
Occasionally Steve runs into someone else, some other human stupid enough to be wandering about the world alone.
Bucky won’t let him eat them, because ethics or some shit. “You’re the Catholic here, Buck. Not me.”
Bucky doesn’t say shit back.
Steve doesn’t eat the pretty hiker with the forest brown eyes. He steals their backpack, and probably gives them a concussion, and then because he’s pissy and tired and lonely, he belts their wrists together and steals their cash.
“Why in the hell are you rack’n’up cash like payday is late, rent is due, and you’re afraid the next pal you blow is gonna brain you with a brick?” Bucky asks.
“Your voice sounds like you ain’t spoke in weeks but you screamed a shit ton right before,” Steve snaps. “It’s ugly so shut up.”
Hallucination Bucky does just that, and for the first time in a long while, Steve is absolutely and truly fucking alone. He cusses in three languages he thinks are real and one he knows is definitely not. “You’re a goddamn bitch, Bucky Banres. You fucking hear me?”
Birds crow back at him, angry and disgruntled, but mostly amused.
Or some shit.
Turns out, Hallucination Bucky was still the better alternative to being ab-so-fucking-lutely alone. He finds and eats a bunch of rabbits, and once when he gets lucky, he stumbles across a moose. It takes a few tries because the thing is so fucking large and he ends up with several gashes on his arm that’re definitely going to scar, but he starts a fire and feeds.
He’s wiping grease into the leaves, feeling bloated, and noting their peculiar not-quite-gold shade when Hallucination Bucky grips his shoulder.
Steve grabs his wrist, bends until he can feel it crack, and turns, taking Steve down with him. Hallucination Bucky narrowly avoids landing in the flames. Steve is still fucking pissed at being left alone to traipse across a foreign landscape, so he punches him a few times. He doesn’t touch his face though, not until he’s ready to kiss him.
Bucky kisses him first though, nails digging into Steve’s neck and his collarbone and it shouldn’t fucking be possible because this is Steve’s goddamned hallucination. When did he lose control?
When he took down the goddamned plane.
“You died, Bucky,” Steve gasps. “I felt you fall.”
Bucky bites his lips, bites them hard and digs his fingers into Steve’s shoulders like if he squeezes hard enough, he can anchor himself here, in this moment. “Steve. You died. You fucker. You let me fall and then you died. And then you came back. You dropped me and died and came back and said you’d find me, but I’m still,” Bucky is gasping. He’s choking and shaking, and he’s naked suddenly. Naked and shivering and his skin’s a masterpiece of handprint bruises and dark marks like a police baton. “Find me, Stevie, ‘cause I’m dyin’-”
Bucky starts rambling in what Steve thinks is russian but might be german. Might be some other coldweather language for all he cares.
He grapples with Bucky; grabs and wrestles and pins his balm to the ground as best he can until he’s yelling into his face. “Where are you, Bucky? How do I fucking save you?”
Bucky growls at him, animalistic and desperate and he digs his fingers into the festering rot that was his scarbond and now is just a wound full of blood primed for killing.
Steve gasps. He’s freezing, and there are voices screaming at him, demanding things of him. He’s shivering, naked, wet, and there is fire coursing through his veins. Fire that lights up the skies, and then.
Then he is empty. His mind is blank and he is alone in the woods. Infection runs from his temple, down into his ear. It clogs his nostrils and blocks his throat and he vomits up the meat, vomits up blood.
Steve is drowning in the chaos of his own mind, in the fear he’s syphoning from Bucky, in the ice. The ice, the ice, ice, so black, he’s cold, so cold, and he can’t breath. His veins are bursting and his skin is splitting open and his lungs are heavy with foreign panic.
Steve gasps until his vision blacks out and vomits again for good measure.
-
Hallucination Bucky kicks him in the shins so hard Steve gasps. “Jesus fuck.”
“Blasphemous.”
“Kick me again and I’ll tell Him I’m sorry in person,” Steve grits out.
“You gotta go, Steve. They’re comin’” Bucky whispers it. He’s looking at Steve, but there’s no way he sees him. His eyes, those turbulent, storm filled orbs are so empty, Steve can see the dying morning beyond Bucky’s head.
“Who?” He chokes out. His throat is so fucking dry and his stomach is turning, trying to expell nothing.
“Handlers,” Bucky says. He’s scratching at his temple, flakes of blistery, dry skin peeling off.
Steve aches. Or, his chest does. Heart. Something like that.
“Ma always said,” Bucky starts. His temple is starting to bleed, but the blood is thick, sludge like. Steve’s spine aches, all of him weighing into one shitty point right above his ass. Only the weight isn’t a comfort.
He is drowning in a swamp of black ink and poison, and by the looks of his twisted face, so is Bucky.
“Your Ma always said the scarbond was kinda like a homing device. But that both sides had to want it,” Steve finishes for him.
Bucky nods. “Do you want it, Steve?” He asks, and his face is serious and his eyes are empty but his voice is so goddamned broken.
“I’m trying,” Steve gasps out. “I’m trying Bucky. I went South, I found the orange leaves. But the sky ain’t turning pink and you won’t help me.”
Steve ain’t crying, but he’s twitchy and angry and he wants-
He wants Bucky.
So he takes.
It’s easy enough, Bucky goes willingly. They don’t even fight this time. There is no pretense. “Quick,” Bucky urges him.
Steve pushes him into the dirt, into the poison. They’re messy, sweaty.
Ill prepared.
Bucky grunts, and Steve bites his own lips raw, and he feels for the first time in a long time. He is consumed with Bucky, stuffed with him. He’s never in his life been on fire this way, skin aflame, and his heart beats so smooth, so steady.
His chest is heavy with Bucky’s pulse and when Bucky kneels above him, naked and pale-glowing, he fits his hand to the scarbond at Bucky’s temple.
Bucky fits his to Steve’s, and then places Steve’s other hand to his spine, slides it over the sharp knobs of his vertebra. When Steve’s hand finds that place, “Jesus,” Steve gasps.
Everything snaps into place, his skin stitching together and his mind settling. Even the scar on the side of his face stops pulsing with infection. “You’re beautiful,” Bucky whispers.
Steve shakes his head, “Not me,” Steve growls.
“You gotta go,” Bucky says desperately. “Stevie, Stevie love. You gotta get up, right now, and you gotta go. You gotta run until you find the place like that summer.” He tugs at Steve, pulls and yanks and pushes, and Steve is struggling.
He gets his pants up, belted, he runs.
-
Steve runs until his chest burns and his lungs stop and his legs shake. He runs until he stumbles onto a scene that looks as real as a summer spent filling their bodies with sweet green smoke and hiding from all the responsibilities of the whole damn world.
Steve doesn’t remember too much about that summer. Not how they got the leave, or what they were hiding from, if anything. But he remembers the clearing: supple green forest on one side, a large lake, so deep and dark it looked like a portal to another word, and the mountains, so out of place and so ominous.
Like a fucking God watching them, judging their naked bodies and the twisted scrap of sunburst skin tying them together across time and space and logic.
He can feel Bucky.
Like-
Like right before he went down in that god-awful plane. Bucky is asleep. Steve knows this like he knows his hair is blond and his eyes are blue and once, he was a sick little runt.
But Bucky’s sleep is all wrong. He’s cold. Bucky is freezing, Bucky is sleeping and freezing and his mind-
Jesus Fuck.
Blasphemous.
Steve follows the feeling, follows the drip of panic sludging down his jaw. The door is easy. The door cracks open under his shield. The people are easier. They’re like straw men, bursting in red hazes beneath his hands.
It’s close enough to heaven that Steve thinks, when I find Bucky, I’ma tell him to teach me Catholicism.
Bones turn to dust, faces into paint smears. He uses his shield like a cleaver, like a boomerang. Like a knife and a hammer and everything but a shield.
Steve doesn’t need protection. He’s got wings, he’s got a weapon, he’s got a million stupid toys standing in his way, and this beaming pulse of home fucking with his head and calling him towards absolution.
Bucky wakes up and Steve can feel him warming up his spine, but it’s all wrong.
It’s an empty warmth. One that makes Steve nauseous, makes his knees weak.
Steve murders his way towards the only dark spot in this weird double vision he has going on.
He finds Bucky, and it’s exactly what he knew he was going to find, without ever realizing it.
Because if Steve is some fucked up version of an avenging angel, golden hair caked in flesh and blood, then Bucky is some kinda God-sent Death standing there with his beautiful mouth muzzled and his hands clenched into fist.
They stare at each other.
Bucky’s chest trips a few times and Steve drops his shield.
He isn’t afraid of death. He’s survived it once.
He isn’t afraid of the metal fist Bucky is swinging at him, or the way his nose cracks. He isn’t afraid of the blood filling his lungs.
he’s not even afraid of the absolute nothingness in Bucky’s soulless eyes.
Steve drops to his knees, one eye refusing to open anymore, and he smiles.
“Are you fearless in the face of this?” Bucky demands.
“My fears were drowned a long time ago,” Steve says gently. “But you knew this. You felt this.”
Bucky’s hand stills, and the first true feeling floods his eyes a grey so sharp it cuts like steel. He’s confused. “I can’t know anything about you.”
Steve reaches for the hand and he presses cold metal fingers to his temple and Bucky stops breathing. Steve squeezes his wrist until he’s sure he’s going to break it, but he can’t let go. Not until Bucky breaks the surface. His Bucky.
“I hate to say this,” rasps out from behind his muzzle, “but I mean it this time. You’re nose is completely fucked up for real this time. Ain’t nothing to be done for that shit stain.”
Steve barks out an ugly laugh, and he pulls Bucky down. Places his own palm into Bucky’s scar, into the beautiful, pinky patch of flesh that’s rendered their souls forever entwined.
-
For a long time, it’s just them, forehead to forehead, knees in snow-slush and gore. Steve isn’t even sure when Fury and his loyal piss-ons show up and raid the place.
Doesn’t matter. He doesn’t care.
He’s moderately curious how they found this place, how they tracked him, but that’s an issue for some other time.
Someone reaches for Bucky, tries to pull him away and Steve screams. He claws and swings and bites, until there is blood and shit under his nails.
“Steve! We aren’t taking him from you!”
Steve pauses, and there’s a face in his hands, half caved in and only maybe beyond repair. “What’d’ya mean?”
Stark squats before him, bound in red and gold and his face masks swishes up. “I mean, we’re taking murder pup here, but you can stay with him. Lots of people have been trying tame this shit and you just walked in the front door and he splayed his belly. Like hell we’re separating you two weirdos.”
There’s a lot of nonsense in Stark’s words but Steve mostly just hears, “Not separating you.”
Bucky doesn’t look super thrilled, but Steve holds him close and shuts his eyes. “Goin’ home, babe,” Steve whispers.
“I am home,” Bucky growls.
Fury and Stark and a million other lap pets are pulling them up, tugging them away from the mess, but Bucky clings to Steve. He won’t move his hands, and he breathes. Steve breaths. They breath together, their hearts beat together, and forehead to forehead Steve thinks, my fears drowned in that ice but now with him I can walk on water.
Even monsters deserve love.