Chapter 2
Six Feet under
‘Our love is six feet under
I can’t help but wonder
If our grave was watered by the rain
Would roses bloom?
Could roses bloom again?’
Steve sits hunched on the edge of the bed, staring sightlessly down at his clasped hands. Bucky’s expression — lost, broken, pained — plays through his mind over and over; a loop on endless repeat.
Since that disastrous encounter in the common room hours ago, Bucky’s more or less disappeared.
Sam had given Steve a look of pure empathy after Bucky had stumbled off; eyes wide open but moving like a blind man. He’d advised Steve to ‘just give Barnes some time’.
Steve, for lack of anywhere else to go, had ended up on his floor; his old floor, (and how crazy is it that this small part of his past survived the destruction Thanos had wrought upon the facility years ago?) with his old bedroom.
When he first enters the apartment, it isn’t immediately apparent that Bucky’s been living here.
Even though, as Sam had explained, Bucky’d taken up residence here — had in fact claimed the guest bedroom down the hall from Steve’s former room — the apartment appears completely the same; all of the furnishings unchanged as if it’s been only days, not years, since Steve had been here last.
When Steve approaches his old room, the door is shut. He opens it cautiously, unsure of what he might find. Three years is a long time, and it’s very possible that all of his things have been packed away, even thrown out. Steve expects at least one of those scenarios to be the case. What he isn’t expecting, and what he actually finds, is all of his things right where he’d left them, completely untouched.
Though there is no dust on anything, a sort of staleness to the air speaks to the fact that the room has been shut up for quite a while. It’s as if the place Steve had claimed as his own had simply been cut off from the rest of the apartment — a mausoleum of Steve’s former life.
Steve’s not sure what to think of that, but whatever his feelings are on the matter get shoved aside as he moves farther down the hall and meets with the unhappy discovery that Bucky’s room is even more disquieting.
It’s bare . Apart from the clothing and weapons stored in the closet, there’s nothing personal in the room, no little signs that anyone even lives here.
The bathroom down the hall shows more signs of Bucky’s presence than the bedroom he’s claimed as his.
If Steve’s room is a mausoleum, Bucky’s is a safehouse — a place devoid of all personality, meant only for temporary refuge, somewhere to go to be hidden from the world.
—
He sees them in his dreams.
All of them; the Avengers, the people he’d become close to outside of that small group. Even the neighbors he’d had while living in the city. They pass through his dreams as spectres, filling in the background, present even in his random imaginings.
Awake, he wonders if little Makayla ever learned to ride her bike without training wheels. If widowed Mrs. Harrison found someone else to help her carry her groceries up to the third floor Steve had shared with her, once upon a time.
Often he will see Sam, or Natasha, both of whom had always been so steady. Ready to provide a listening ear, and generous about offering advice. Tony will show up, talking a mile-a-minute about some new idea of his. Bruce will engage him in a quiet session of meditation. Clint will show off some new trick arrows, or ask him to baby-sit.
These dreams leave him feeling caught somewhere between fond exasperation and nostalgia. He will wake with a chuckle in his throat; or with something he wants to tell a friend, before he realizes, with a bittersweet ache, that there’s no one to say it to. He left those people behind.
Then there are the nights where he’ll see Bucky.
At first, he’s overjoyed to see his best friend. He longs to go to him, to talk to him, to see how he’s doing. But Bucky remains always out of his reach. Steve can be in the middle of a dream, something completely random, and he’ll look up to see Bucky: gazing at him from across the room; standing in the middle of a crowd; somewhere outside, just visible through the window. Inevitably, Steve will drop whatever he’s doing, try to reach his best friend. But Bucky slips away from him every time. He’s gone by the time Steve gets outside; become lost in the crowd; faded from view just as Steve says his name.
Always Bucky stares at him, blank-faced and expressionless. Like he doesn’t know who Steve is, like he doesn’t recognize his best friend. It tears at something deep within. Leaves Steve with a melancholy feeling that he has difficulty dispelling even after he wakes. And that isn’t the worst part.
The worst part, the part that leaves Steve troubled and uneasy, is the way Bucky looks at him, every time, in every dream.
Because while his face may be expressionless, Bucky’s eyes speak a message loud and clear. They speak of anguish. Of loss. Of being wounded too deeply to heal.
These dreams leave Steve feeling raw, fighting back tears.
—
When Steve woke from the ice, so many years ago, he’d known right away that something was missing. Some piece of himself was lost, and — with every connection he’d ever made, every person he’d ever loved, gone — he’d known he’d never be able to fill that empty space again.
He lived in the quiet misery of that knowledge, caught up in an anguish that lingered even after he found Peggy again, aged but alive, near seventy years later.
She spoke to him of her life, her husband, her children. How she’d lived to the full, and how she was thankful for all of it. Hearing her story, a tiny corner of himself had been filled with a bitter sort of jealousy. The larger part of himself, though, ached with longing.
He’d thought, truly believed, that the longing he was feeling was because he’d missed her.
Because she was describing the life that he’d always wanted. Because the life they could have shared, the happinesses she was describing, had been shared with someoneelse.
He’d been convinced that Peggy was the piece he was missing. That she’d always been meant to fill that space, and would have, had time and events not prevented it.
So when he’d gotten the chance to do it over, to live in a world where he could have that dance, where the happiness she was describing involved him, he’d gone after it without a second thought.
He proposed almost as soon as he found her again. Bought her a ring. Spent his days with her at the little house she’d purchased for herself after the war. They finally got their dance. And he’d thought… that would be enough.
That she was what he’d wanted. What he’d been striving after, for so long.
—
It isn't until later, after, that he begins to understand the difference between the ache he’d always felt when missing Peggy, and the all-encompassing misery he’s left with even after that piece has been slotted into place.
It takes him time — too long, too much time — to realize the truth behind what he is feeling.
—
Eventually, understanding dawned, and the irony was cruel.
Suddenly,Peggy’s presence in his life had become the thing to highlight the stark difference between what Steve had thought he was missing and what was actually gone. It was a terrible realization to come to, and he hated himself for missingit when it had been right in front of him; for noticing it now — too late — when doing anything about it would be nothing short of heartless.
Because he couldn’t leave Peggy. Not now. Not when he’d barged so presumptuously back into her life — shoved aspects of her reality out of the way to make a place for himself where there hadn’t been before.
He’d decided his fate the moment he’d left his old life behind, the moment he’d returned to her, made promises to her.
He wouldn’t leave her.
He forced the anguish of his ill-timed revelation down deep. Refused to dwell on it. Reminded himself that sharing his life with Peggy had been his greatest dream.
He’d find happiness, surely. He did love her, after all.
(Even if that love paled in comparison to what could have been. What he could havehad, if only he’d been able to see what had been right in front ofhim. If only he’d realized, before it was too late.)
—
They plan a wedding.
Steve smiles in all the right places.
During the day, he gazes into warm, honey-brown eyes. Makes plans for a future in the past.
But at night.
At night he’s haunted by shattered blue eyes. He sees in them, things he’d overlooked — before. A plea for him to stay. The pain of rejection, cloaked by resignation.
At night, he aches for forgiveness; wakes to the knowledge that forgiveness is forever outside his reach.
—
“You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?”
Steve jerks his head up, pasting his gaze on his fiancé , a frisson of guilt swirling in his gut.
“Sorry, Peg,” he says, forcing a smile onto his face. “What were you saying?”
Peggy pulls out a chair, sits opposite of Steve at the small wooden table. Her expression is soft, empathetic.
“Let me see it,” she says, nodding at the sketchbook Steve’s been staring into, lost to his own musings.
He’s caught on a picture of Bucky — a black and white rendering of one of the last times Steve had seen his best friend before his disastrous decision to stay in the past.
On the page, Bucky’s outfitted in the combat gear he’d received in Wakanda — a remarkable combination of his Winter Soldier apparel and the uniform he’d worn as a Howling Commando. His expression is warm, akin to the one he’d turned on Steve that day before the snap, before everything had gone to hell.
‘How you doing, Buck?’
‘Not bad. For the end of the world.’
The curve of his cheek is smudged, and Steve realizes with another surge of guilt, that he’s been unconsciously stroking that spot with the edge of his thumb. He curls his fingers into a fist, as if he can hide anything from Peggy’s shrewd gaze, and slides the sketchbook across the table praying that for once, she’ll miss what is so obvious he’s nearly choking on it.
Peggy gazes at the picture for a long time. After, she flips to the front of the book and begins slowly paging through the rest of Steve’s sketches. All of the Avengers are in there, along with a number of city skylines, images of a couple of his neighbors. Mrs. Harrison. Little Makayla.
Even with those pictures scattered throughout, though, it is overwhelmingly obvious that Bucky is the focal point of Steve’s attention. Steve’s drawn Bucky dozens of times. His hands, flesh and metal; his eyes; lips; the curve of his jaw.
Looking at it now, with Peggy’s perspective in mind, Steve can practically see his feelings spilling off the pages.
That there are no sketches of Peggy anywhere in the book is, in itself, unmistakably telling.
Steve used to draw Peggy. After he came out of the ice, she’d featured regularly in his sketchbooks.
Now he doesn’t draw her at all.
He’s never stopped drawing Bucky.
Bucky from before the draft, bright-eyed and innocent. Bucky during the war; harder, less naive. Bucky as the Soldier. Bucky in Wakanda. Bucky with his new arm. Bucky half-disappeared after Thanos’ snap. All of these, and more.
When she’s reached the end of it, Peggy closes the sketchbook softly, pushes it aside, fixes Steve with a steady gaze.
“Steve,” she says, firm but gentle, more gracious than Steve could ever deserve, “we need to talk.”
—
In the end, Peggy was the one to convince him to go back. Steve wouldn’t have listened to anyone else, not even himself — especially not himself — if they’d told him to go. But Peggy’d seen much more clearly than Steve could.
‘You’re grieving your other life’, she’d told him.
‘We had potential, Steve. I’m not discounting that. Maybe, we could have had something real, something good. But even before this, during the war, there was always... a barrier between us, something holding you back. Someone.’
She’d leveled Steve with a direct, straightforward gaze.
‘He’s still here, Steve,’ she’d said, not pulling any punches. ‘He’s standing right here, between us.’
The truth, made plain by her words, sliced through him — tore him open as soon as he stopped fighting to bury it. Was forced to actually acknowledge it.
‘I made a mistake, ’ he’d finally admitted, guilt-ridden and choking on the words, but helpless not to tell the truth in the face of her strength, her candor. ‘God, Peggy. I’m so sorry. I’m so — how can I even ask you to forgive me for this?’
Peggy, ever graceful, and far more benevolent than Steve could ever deserve for what he’d done, took his tear-stained face between gentle palms.
‘Steve,’ she’d said, staring into his wet eyes. ‘I forgive you. I forgive you, Steve.’
—
Steve lies awake, well past midnight, unable to sleep.
He’d returned to reclaim his half of the apartment hours ago. Had fixed himself a paltry dinner, showered, and finally slid between freshly changed sheets on his former — current — mattress.
Still, Bucky hasn’t returned.
Steve’s mind spins in exhausted circles. He wonders when, if, the weight he’s carrying will ever begin to lift. It’s a heavy burden, this guilt for what he’s done to Bucky.
Peggy, at least, had forgiven him and the deep shame for what he’d put her through has started to ease, if only a little.
But there’s nothing to ease the fact that a few hours ago, Bucky couldn’t even bear to be in the same room as him.
When Steve had finally agreed to end his relationship with Peggy, to accept the fact that he’d fallen for someone else over ninety years ago, and to return to his own timeline to do something about it, he’d never imagined that he’d be returning to a future any further along than the five seconds Bruce had calculated.
But: three years, Sam had said. It’s been three years since Steve left. And Bucky’s been alone all that time; little better than abandoned by someone who claimed to be his best friend, ‘till the end of the line.
He thinks back on the day he left, sees the events from this new perspective. His eidetic memory can be both a blessing and a curse. In this case, it lets him replay the events of that day in excruciating detail. He sees, now, what he hadn’t before: Bucky fighting to maintain a brave front, the paper-thin veneer of his smile, the heartbreak in his blue, blue eyes, and he thinks, how could I have missed it? How could I not have seen something so obvious?
It’s little wonder Bucky’s memory had haunted his dreams.
Steve’s eyes had seen what his brain had refused to acknowledge: Bucky’d been miserable.
And Steve had been too caught up in himself to see it.
Would he have stayed, he wonders, if he had seen it? If he had realized just how much his leaving would affect Bucky, would hurt him… Would Steve have stayed for him?
He’d like to think he would have. That he would never be so heartless in his treatment of his friend.
Another question rises, then, on the heels of the last: Does Bucky think Steve would have stayed? Or could it be— Does he think that Steve had seen, that he’d seen and just decided that Bucky wasn’t important enough, wasn’t worth staying for?
Steve hopes with every part of him that this isn’t the case.
But it would make sense, wouldn’t it? It would explain the shock on his best friend’s face at seeing Steve again. It would explain the hurt, and the dejection in his eyes. How utterly lost he’d looked, just before he’d fled from the common room.
Steve swallows thickly.
He’s been a fool. More than that, he’s been cruel — even if accidentally.
But he can see it, now.
And it’s time to make things right.
—
Steve stands on the viewing side of a mirrored window, staring down into the training room where Bucky’s working his way through a simulated combat exercise.
Though the program Bucky has running is more advanced than the one Steve is technically familiar with, he does understand the mechanics.
(It was something Tony had been working on before the Accords, before Thanos and the snap; an idea he had pitched to the rest of the team during one of their regularly scheduled Avengers meetings. He’d wanted to “up the game", to make the combat more realistic — though still safe and ideal for training purposes. Steve guesses he must have gotten it up and running after all.)
As Steve understands it, specialized gear worn during the program’s simulations allows the virtual enemy to “make contact” with a training combatant. Upon an instance of enemy contact, the gear is designed to light-up, vibrate, or both, at the contact point, making the wearer aware of each strike.
The AI running the program keeps track of all “damage” sustained by the training combatants, announcing a combatants’ status as necessary.
Currently, Bucky’s engaged in close-range combat, and Steve watches as a number of enemies attempt to converge on him all at once. ‘Attempt’, because Bucky cuts through the simulated forms like he’s exorcising his demons, ducking and whirling, eliminating his adversaries with lethal strokes from his blades, one clutched in each fist.
The tally of neutralized opponents is projected on a screen high above the training room, the number rising steadily as Steve continues to watch, slack-jawed with something very close to awe.
It’s the first time he’s seen Bucky fight like this — unhindered by the distraction of fighting for his own life — and the visual is… stunning. Bucky moves with liquid grace, all deadly accuracy. He’s fast, and innovative, moving in ways Steve’s nowhere near flexible enough to try, and the simulated enemies never touch him. The screen displaying the number of times they’ve made contact never changes, never shows anything other than ‘zero’.
Something hot curls in the pit of his stomach as he watches Bucky take down opponent after opponent, seemingly tireless, and Steve — so used to burying that sensation, forcing himself to ignore it — pushes it away. Now is not the time. Not when he has obstacles to overcome, wrongs to right.
He focuses, instead, on how Bucky looks physically; emotionally. Steve’s barely spent three minutes in his best friend’s presence since he came back days ago. He needs to make up for lost time. He needs to see Bucky. To catalogue everything about him that’s changed over the last three years.
He’s thinner, Steve notes. Not thin, precisely. But lean. Leaner than he was when Steve’d found him in Bucharest. He looks, now, even leaner than he’d looked as the Winter Soldier — just enough weight on him to sustain his enhancements, to keep him lethal.
There are dark circles beneath his eyes, and his skin is pale, as if he hasn’t seen the sun since Steve left. His blue gaze retains the blank, thousand-yard stare of the Winter Soldier, face expressionless even as he cuts down enemy after enemy with vicious precision.
Eventually Bucky finishes, breathing only slightly elevated, a thin sheen of sweat gleaming faintly across his brow, in the hollow of his throat.
The AI — not Friday, and certainly not JARVIS — informs him of his score; the time it took him to complete the simulation; and that he has surpassed all previous records by a sizable margin. Bucky’s expression doesn’t change. There is no joy, no satisfaction at hearing his stats. He simply waits for the computer to finish, then directs it to shut down the program.
The computer goes quiet, the lights dimming in the room below, and Bucky turns, replacing the combat knives he’d used during the simulation and then heading for the door that leads to the shower room, already beginning to strip off his gear.
Steve stays where he is, watching Bucky go. He’ll wait, he decides, for Bucky to finish cleaning up. Then he’ll talk to him.
—
Bucky stalks into the shower room, tossing his sweaty gear into the basket designated for dirty laundry. His breathing is elevated, muscles shivering beneath his skin, pulse fluttering in agitated thuds beneath his sternum. This feeling, while relatively new, is becoming uncomfortably familiar. It makes him restless. Unable to settle.
He thinks about the reason behind the agitation, recalls the awareness that had settled on his shoulders about halfway through his final combat drill.
He’s too well trained to have missed the sensation of eyes upon him, and there’s only one person he can think of who would attempt to watch him unannounced. The others — anyone who comes and goes from the compound, who knows even the remotest fact about him — wouldn’t dare attempt anything that could even remotely be construed as spying on him. They all believe him to be too unhinged, too unbalanced. No one would want to risk the possibility of disturbing him.
They’re too afraid, his mind whispers. Too afraid of him. Of what he might do, if provoked.
He wouldn’t hurt anyone. He would never. But no one seems to know that, to believe it.
Steve had. He’d never given up hope that Bucky was more than what Hydra had made him.
When Steve was around, Bucky had thrived off of that confidence, that unerring faith.
Steve’s faith had been an ember of light amid the suffocating darkness Bucky’d fought through every single day. Steve had believed in him, believed that Bucky was good, and Bucky had worked to make it true. (Even though it wasn’t. Couldn’t ever be.)
Then Steve… left. And that belief, any trust people might have once had in Bucky, had vanished with him.
These days, everyone gives Bucky a wide berth — even the remaining Avengers, even Fury, and Hill. They send him on missions, sometimes alone, sometimes with a team, and his brutal efficiency, tempered by decades of Hydra conditioning, by the Winter Soldier that still lurks inside him, makes them uneasy. Nervous.
Like he’s a feral animal. An attack dog that’s useful when it’s been pointed at a target, but still too volatile to be trusted when it could turn on its handlers at any moment. So they keep their distance, hold their weapons close. Ready to put the animal down as soon as it gives them cause.
It’s not unlike being the Winter Soldier, and his situation isn’t helped any by the fact that he cannot seem to force himself to connect with anyone. He’d need emotions for that, and these days he’s all but emotionally drained. Except in rare moments, like now, when emotion suddenly surges over him in a turbulent, overwhelming swell.
Frustration washes through him, right on the heels of the restless agitation evoking a full-body crawling sensation; an almost-itch, like his skin is too tight.
It happens like this sometimes. Something will push its way through the muted haze that dulls Bucky’s waking hours, and suddenly he’s forced to feel — emotions bright, and sharp, and often overwhelming.
He prefers the numbness.
When he gets like this, regaining equilibrium becomes especially difficult. Falling back on the Soldier’s conditioning has become one of the few things he can rely on to get him through. The Soldier wasn’t allowed to express what he was feeling, leaving Bucky with decades of practice forcing himself to feel nothing at all.
It’s not as easy, these days, to trigger that aspect of his conditioning — he’d been away from it for a while, and his years of autonomy had curtailed the easy proficiency with which he could cut himself off from the world. Over the last few years, though, he’s revitalized a good portion of that cool detachment. And when his emotions go haywire at the most random of times, he’s usually able to shove them down, keep them contained until he’s alone; somewhere he can allow them to tear through him in deep shudders and a too-quick heart rate, trembling muscles and shaky breaths.
Cold showers help too, sometimes. More often than not.
The cold engenders a different kind of numbness. A physical insensitivity. But that sensation — so much like cryofreeze, like the frigid temperature of pressurized water — nearly always succeeds in pushing him outside himself. Letting him float in a fuzzy, indistinct sort of haze.
When he’s cold enough, his mind can be peaceful for a time. Quiet, and empty.
Until his temperature eventually rises high enough to force his muscles to start trembling, breath shuddering in and out as he shivers his way back to his baseline. Even that, though, is familiar — a cold comfort.
—
When Bucky exits the showers, dark hair dripping steadily onto the shoulders of his short-sleeved t-shirt, Steve is there to meet him.
Bucky pauses, regarding him with a calm sort of expression; almost distant, in a way. But his eyes manage to find Steve’s this time, and he waits silently, looking resolved to listen to what Steve has to say.
“I’m so sorry, Buck.” Steve begins. “God I’m— I never imagined my leaving would have taken so much time here. I thought— Bruce said five seconds, and I never considered it would be anything more than that, I swear I didn’t, Bucky. Please believe me.”
Bucky’s eyes trail away from his, slowly moving about the room. “I believe you,” he says, voice subdued.
There’s something… off about the way he’s acting, something Steve can’t quite put his finger on. But Bucky is here, he’s not running away, so Steve will make the best of the situation.
“If I had known,” Steve says, “I think… I don’t think I would have gone. I would have... chosen differently.”
These words cause a more visible reaction, sparking some life into Bucky’s too-calm demeanor. His eyes cut sharply back to Steve’s, smoldering with blue fire. His jaw clenches and unclenches, as if he’s biting back the first words that come to mind before finally, he says, words like broken glass, “Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not—”
Bucky jerks his head to the side, physically rejecting the words coming out of Steve’s mouth. “Bullshit.”
“Bucky,” Steve says, low, aching.
“Why,” Bucky says, forehead crumpled, folding his arms across his chest. “Why would you say something like that? You think you would have ‘chosen differently’? Why would you…?”
Steve feels a rush of something like sorrow, steeped in self-hatred. If he was unsure before, it’s now more plain than ever the effect his leaving had had on Bucky.
There had been trust between them, before he left. Confidence in the strength of their friendship. Confidence that they would always be there for each other.
But the Bucky looking at Steve now has lost that trust. That confidence has been shattered, and Steve can see it in the way Bucky avoids his eyes, in how his voice wavers when he asks Steve why he would have chosen to stay, as if the very notion is inconceivable.
Steve had done that.
Made Bucky feel insignificant; unimportant.
Looking back on his rationale for leaving only serves to add to the fury Steve feels toward himself. Hindsight makes it perfectly clear how horrible of a friend he’s been.
He’d abandoned Bucky. Run away. Treated Bucky exactly the opposite of how Bucky’d always treated Steve.
Bucky’d alwaysrefused to walk away when it came to Steve.
Even when Steve was scrawny — more of a burden than Bucky should have ever had to deal with — even when he’d so stubbornly claimed that he could get by on his own. ‘You don’t have to,’ Bucky had told him. ‘I’m with you ‘till the end of the line, pal.’
And later, when Bucky’d had every right, every reason , to retire from a war that had already taken so much from him, he’d stayed. For Steve. Not for Captain America. Bucky had made that clear. ‘That little guy from Brooklyn,’ he’d said. 'I’m following him.’
Seventy years’ worth of brainwashing and torture later, Bucky had rescued Steve from the Potomac — when he’d barely known who Steve was, who he himself was. He’d dragged Steve out of what had promised to be a watery grave; brought him safely to shore.
So many times Bucky has rescued Steve, refused to leave him.
Even when it was dangerous, even when Steve all but ordered him to go, Bucky’s loyalty stood firm, everything in his nature screaming no. ‘Not without you.’
Even when Steve’d had nothing, he’d had Bucky.
For this, and so many other reasons, Bucky had deserved more. And Steve had failed, miserably, when he’d had an opportunity to do something about it. How could he have been so selfish?
The only thing he can comfort himself with — and really, it’s the smallest of comforts — is that he hadn’t deliberately set out to hurt Bucky. He’d been stupid, and selfish, and lying to himself, but he hadn’t set out to hurt his best friend. Hadn’t understood the magnitude of the negative impact leaving would have.
In fact, a big part of why he’d wanted to go back to Peggy had been because Steve had, in a way, been trying to move on. He and Bucky had always been close. Closer than the average friendship entailed, even considering that they were best friends. But they’d never defined their relationship as anything more.
That didn’t change the fact that Steve’s life revolved around Bucky — and Steve knew it. Always had.
Never had it been more obvious, though, than in the years before the snap, when he’d discovered Bucky still alive after having thought him lost forever.
In the wake of that discovery, Steve had gone on to destroy SHIELD. To stare into the face of his own death. Defy governments. Fight against the closest friends he’d had since the ice. All for the sake of Bucky.
He’d given up the shield for Bucky.
And then risked his life again, against Thanos, for the chance to bring Bucky back from obliteration.
Steve’s not so oblivious about his feelings that he doesn’t understand why he’d done all those things. To help a friend, definitely. But there’d been so much more behind Steve’s actions than mere feelings of friendship. He’d been willing to go ‘till the end of the line for Bucky. To do ‘whatever it takes’. And in the end, he’d succeeded. He’d gotten Bucky back safe, and alive.
Still, he’d never managed to find the courage to ascertain if the closeness between them actually meant anything more. If, maybe, the feelings Steve had for Bucky could be returned.
There were times, when he looked into his best friend’s eyes, where he thought there might be hope. That maybe he was seeing something deeper than friendship staring back at him.
But then he’d traveled into the past, and Peggy had been right there, a shadow on the other side of shaded glass, and he’d thought...he’d thought, maybeit was a sign. Maybe he shouldn’t ruin what he already had with Bucky by trying to force their relationship into something more. Maybe he was supposed to be with Peggy; should have been, all along.
When it came to Peggy, his feelings had never been convoluted. And he’d never been uncertain about whether those feelings were mutual. Returning to Peggy had been the safe choice. The easy choice. And he’d reached for it with both hands.
He had deliberately chosen to not look too closely at what he and Bucky were to each other. How they were with each other.
He’d known a piece of himself was missing, but he’d believed — truly — that Peggy could fill it.
So he’d taken the opportunity presented to him.
And in doing so, he’d unwittingly resigned his friend to somehow find his way through the same sort of chaotic loneliness Steve had been defrosted into all those years ago. He’d left without even considering what it might do to Bucky — to be dropped into an unfamiliar world, surrounded by people he barely knew.
It’d been such an incredible oversight that it bordered on cruelty.
But now Steve’s back. And there’s a reason for that. An explanation that Bucky deserves to hear. One Steve won’t keep from him any longer.
(It’s a risk, it’s such a huge risk, because he has no idea if Bucky feels the same. If Bucky could ever love Steve as more than a friend, the way that Steve loves Bucky. But Steve’s already hurt Bucky too much by trying to deny the truth.)
“If I had known that so much time would pass,” Steve stresses, “I would have made a different choice. I’d thought that my being gone would only take seconds. That even if I were gone for a lifetime in the past, it wouldn’t really affect you here, because I would be back right away. I… care about you, Buck. I wouldn’t have abandoned you. I never meant to.”
He pauses, takes in Bucky’s expression — careful and guarded but attentive — and asks, “Can— Do you believe me?”
“I believe you,” Bucky says. “But—” He stops, lips pressed tight together, expression pained. “I don’t...understand. You were finally back with her. You’d finally gotten the life you always wanted.” He gazes at Steve, blue eyes lost. “Why would you… Why...come back?”
“I went back,” Steve explains, “because I felt like I was… missing something. A part of myself. A piece that I needed to get back. For so long, I’d assumed that Peggy was that missing piece. I never considered that I might be wrong.” He hadn’t wanted to. “So, when I realized I had a second chance, a chance to be with her, I— I didn’t think; I jumped at the opportunity.”
Bucky nods. “You’ve always loved Carter,” he says, with quiet certainty.
“I love you too, Buck.” Steve says, solemnly.
Bucky makes a grating sound that can’t be even remotely mistaken for laughter. He releases his folded arms, bringing a hand up to rub at his face. “Sure, pal,” he says. “But you and I both know it’s not the same thing.”
Bucky’s right, Steve thinks, and so completely wrong at the same time.
And is that so surprising? Steve’s never given him reason to believe otherwise. And leaving him here alone certainly hadn’t done their relationship any favors.
But Steve refuses to deny any longer that the way he feels about Peggy doesn’t even come close to the way his feelings are — have always been — tangled up in Bucky.
Being with Peggy had given him the push he’d needed to recognize it — to finally acknowledge it — and seeing Bucky again after having been away for so long, seeing him now, looking fragile and wary and wounded, brings Steve’s feelings into even sharper clarity.
“I was with Peggy for almost half a year,” Steve says, side-stepping, for now, the truth about how he feels about Bucky. There’s more he needs to say, more he needs to explain, first. “I kept waiting for that empty feeling to go away. I didn’t know, couldn’t figure out why it didn’t. Why it got worse. It was… so much worse.
“Peggy and I… we got along. I could have made a life with her — I tried to, even. But I still kept… looking back. I didn’t realize that I had moved on — really moved on from my life before the ice — until I was back there and wishing I wasn’t.”
That had been a startling realization. Something that had filled Steve with regret.
But it didn’t cause nearly the amount of grief as coming to the conclusion that leaving Bucky behind, had been a colossal mistake.
“Peggy finally talked some sense into me,” Steve confesses. “She helped me to realize that the piece of myself I’ve been missing all this time didn’t belong to her — it never had. That’s what made me decide, in the end, that I needed to come back.”
Bucky frowns, not yet grasping what Steve is trying to tell him. “I don’t understand,” he says, finally. His voice is tired, frustrated, and Steve dips his head, catches that silvery-blue gaze.
“Bucky,” he says, seriously, “There’s— I need to tell you. What I realized while I was away. It’s— You deserve to know. It’s something I should have told you a long time ago.”
Bucky looks away. He curls his hands into fists, tightening his jaw and pressing his lips into a thin line.
He doesn’twant to know, Steve realizes, watching the play of emotions over his best friend’s face.
Bucky clearly expects what Steve has to tell him to add yet another wound to his battered soul. Still, he stays. Waits for whatever Steve has to say, and Steve’s heart aches for him.
What Steve says is this: “I love you, Bucky. I’m — in love, with you.”
Bucky jerks his gaze back to Steve’s face, and Steve keeps talking. Lets it pour out of him, tells Bucky everything.
“That emptiness that I was looking to fill, that I thought Peggy was the missing piece to?” he says, laying himself bare; pulling out his heart and placing it at Bucky’s feet. “It was never her I was missing. It was you, Buck. It’s always been you.”
Bucky’s eyes grow wide, and Steve barrels on, needing to say it, hoping with everything in his soul that he’s not making another huge mistake.
“I’m sorry that I left you here. I was...stupid, and selfish. And I know, now, that there’s no one on this Earth who can take your place, Bucky. No one I want like I want you. No one I love, like I love you.”
Bucky’s shakes his head, dazed, as if he can’t believe what he’s hearing. “You—” he rasps, haltingly. “W-What?”
And Steve repeats himself, not allowing any room for doubt, not ever again. “I love you,” he says, “ I love you, Bucky. I never should have left. And I can’t begin to explain how much I regret that I did.”
Bucky blinks rapidly, breathing gone sharp and unsteady. A shaky hand lifts to cover his eyes.
He doesn’t speak, doesn’t make a sound, and Steve feels a spike of concern.
“Buck?” he asks, worriedly.
“Sorry,” Bucky says, still hiding his eyes. “I’m— fine. I’m okay.”
Steve doesn’t — won’t — ask if Bucky loves him back, if Bucky could ever feel for Steve what Steve feels about him. There’s only so much of his own selfishness he can stomach.
But,“Could you ever forgive me?” he can’t help but ask, voice soft, imploring.
Bucky drags in an unsteady breath. “I—” he begins, voice rough, before he cuts himself off. Steve feels his heart sink. If Bucky can’t forgive him, Steve doesn’t know what he’ll do.
But Bucky continues, “I— Yes, I forgive you.” He lowers his hand, eyes tracing over Steve’s expression.
Steve lets out a shaky breath. “Thankyou,” he exhales, closing his eyes, legs feeling weak with relief.“Thank you, Buck.”
There is a silence before Bucky says, uncertainly, “Steve...” and Steve’s eyes snap back open, finding Bucky’s blue gaze still fixed unerringly upon him.
Then Bucky swallows, dropping his eyes. Draws his lower lip between his teeth to gnaw at it. He’s clearly struggling, and Steve waits, nerves rising as Bucky opens his mouth, closes it again.
Finally Bucky says, voice quiet, “I love you... too, Steve.”
Steve sucks in a quick breath, and Bucky shifts — almost flinches — at the sharp sound. He watches Steve closely, body tense, adding, “I have. For a long time.”
For all that he’d wanted to explain himself to Bucky, throughout all the scenarios he’d run through in his head for how it might turn out, Steve’d never expected, never even hoped for, something like this; Bucky stating that he loved Steve back.
Oddly, though, for someone who’s confessed his feelings, who’s just learned that those feelings are returned, Bucky doesn’t seem particularly… happy. Anxiety seems to pour off of him in waves, and Steve takes a step toward him — to touch, to hug him, maybe; to offer comfort in the face of his obvious agitation.
“Bucky,” he says, softly, “What’s wrong?”
He goes to take another step, but Bucky throws up a hand, a sharp gesture, and Steve stills where he is.
“S-stop.” Bucky says, overwhelmed, wary, and Steve feels a pang of sorrow twist through him. This is his fault. He’d put that expression on Bucky’s face. Requited feelings aside, if Bucky never trusts him again, Steve has no one to blame but himself. “I’m— sorry,” Bucky says. “I forgive you, I do. But I need— time. Please. Just. Some time.”
“Of course, Buck,” Steve says, softly. “Whatever you need.” How could he deny Bucky anything, after what he’s been through? After what Steve had done to him? “You don’t have to— Don’t be sorry.”
Bucky glances away, eyes resting everywhere but on Steve. “Okay,” he says, and Steve doesn’t think he’s agreeing so much as trying to end the conversation. He motions toward the exit. “I’m gonna—” He ducks his head, hunches his shoulders.
Then he’s edging around Steve, and slipping out the door.
—
Later, when Steve goes to retire for the night, Bucky’s bedroom door is closed. The room is completely silent on the other side, but Steve allows the smallest sense of relief to wash through him.
At least Bucky’s not avoiding the apartment anymore.
At least Steve knows where he is, won’t spend another sleepless night wondering.
—