Bucky has a memory, one that he doesn’t need to dream about to remember. It was back when he was under Soviet possession. Maybe. He remembers the guards had Russian accents, anyway. He remembers the cell was freezing cold, anyway. Seems like a Soviet.
He remembers being woken from a fitful sleep on the thin layer of mattress they considered a cot. He remembers a guard smacking his face with an envelope. An envelope with Steve and Bucky’s names on the front, then a line of Cyrillic script below.
“Look what I just found with your things,” the guard says to him. This is the guard with the best English out of the six or seven guards that Bucky has encountered during his Soviet imprisonment. It’s no coincidence that this is Bucky’s least favorite guard.
He opens the envelope, pulls out a piece of paper, folded.
It’s been so long since Bucky’s had food or water that his head spins when he lifts it from the floor. It takes him a moment for his eyes to focus, for his center of gravity to settle. But he knows instantly what the guard has pinched between his fingers.
It’s a photograph of Steve. The one Bucky kept in his breast pocket. He hasn’t seen it since the fall.
Bucky lunges for it. He gets closer to catching it than he expected, his fingers graze the edges, but the guard snatches it from his grasp. "Ah, ah, ah," he says, and Bucky couldn't possibly hate him more.
The guard kicks awake Bucky’s cellmate: a French soldier who they only dumped in here a few nights ago. The soldier is a fair-headed, small man, who can’t be any older than eighteen. He's a child, goddamn it. And, except in the face, he could be Steve’s cousin.
He hasn’t stopped crying since he got here. At first, he sobbed big and wet, wrenching air into his lungs only to pour it all back out again. Now, his weeping has diminished into soft pants against the floor. Crying even in his sleep. When the soldier wakes him, his eyes are swollen and misting. His eyelashes clumped together with salt water.
“If you want it,” the guard says, resting a boot between the shoulder blades of the French soldier, pushing him back down into the ground. “Then you’ll have to trade me for it.”
Dread settles in the pit of Bucky’s stomach. He long ago learned that he had nothing to trade here. He has no capital with the guards…except for the warm wet places inside him where they can fit.
The idea of submitting to them is awful. The idea of the French soldier witnessing it, worse.
Still, Bucky weighs his options. He has nothing in here, hasn’t owned anything in a long time. And the shape of Steve’s face grows faint and vague in his memory. Even now, when he squeezes shut his eyes and tries to remember Steve’s long nose, the line of his mouth, the kind droop of his eyes, the, the…the vision is blurry.
There is no choice here; he needs that photograph. He shuffles onto his knees and hopes that his hand or his mouth will be enough. He sure as hell isn't about to give the guard anything else. That's for damn sure.
“Nobody wants your stinking mouth,” the guard laughs, knocking Bucky's head away. He smacks the folded photograph against Bucky's cheek and presses his weight down against the French soldier.
“S’il vous plaît, s’il vous plaît,” the man mutters into the concrete floor, “Laisse moi mourir.”
“And nobody here speaks French,” the guard spits at him. “Stop crying.”
But he’s wrong; Bucky speaks French. Dernier—God, when was the last time he thought about Jacques Dernier?—taught him a little. At least enough to understand what's being said. This French soldier is asking to die.
Bucky breathes in deep, tries to get his wits about him. It’s hard. Harder than it is when he’s alone in the cell. Now there's an innocent. A hostage for Bucky to protect. “What do you want?”
(Bucky must have called him by name then, must have known the guard’s name by that point, but it is lost to time. To the static between his memories.)
“Take one of his fingers.” The guard gestures to the little French soldier. The boy is still begging for death.
Bucky pulls a face of disgust, shakes his head once. “Jesus Christ, I will not.”
“Are you certain?” The guard lifts his own pinky and wiggles it before Bucky's face. “It’s just one finger.”
Bucky turns his head away and loops his remaining arm around his knees. If he looks away, he can’t see the photograph he’s giving up. If he looks away, there’s less temptation.
“I understand,” the guard says, nodding. “Too good. You’re too good.”
Bucky winces. He is not too good.
“Well, the price just went up. Now you’ll have to take his hand if you want this.”
Bucky’s head jerks up, concerned that the guard will destroy the photograph. But he doesn’t. The guard just leaves then, waving the photograph over his shoulder like a fan.
---
They’re left alone in the cell again, Bucky and the little French soldier. And again, he’s caught off guard by how much the kid reminds him of Steve.
Except Steve has never cowered in fear.
Bucky lowers himself to the ground next to the soldier, leaning against the wall. “Bonjour,” he says. Though Dernier told him there was a more casual way of saying hello, Bucky can’t remember it now. “Ça va?”
The next round of French from the solider is so rapid that Bucky can’t keep up. A long line of vowels barely interrupted by humming consonants. He rests a hand on the boy’s shoulder to settle him, but the gesture startles the soldier. Bucky sighs.
“Je suis désolé,” Bucky tries to apologize, straining what Dernier taught him. Now, if he needed to ask the kid to bed or tell him he has nice tits, they’d be in business. “Je m’appelle Bucky. Et…et tu?”
“Jean,” the little French soldier answers. “Jean Berger.”
“Oh,” Bucky says. Jean Berger. Like the pianist. They have a couple of his records, him and Steve. Or, at least, they had them. “Comme le…” He doesn’t know the French word for ‘pianist’ so he says it in English and mimes dancing his fingers over the keyboard.
Berger tucks his head into his knees. Either because he doesn’t understand or he’s too afraid, Bucky doesn’t know. He makes a few more attempts to talk to him. In fractured French, he asks him how old he is, where he’s from, what he likes, but gets no reply.
Eventually, he gives up and heaves his exhausted body on top of the single cot in their cell. He was going to offer it to Berger, but doesn’t know the French word for bed and without Berger’s attention, he can’t mime the offer.
Bucky sleeps, and he dreams of Steve. Because he always dreams of Steve.
---
In this dream, Steve comes into the cell and wraps his arms around Bucky. He tucks his face into his neck and promises to never leave him again. He gives him his overcoat to ward off the chill and apologizes for taking so long.
It's okay, Bucky tells him, and Steve smiles.
Bucky can't see him smile, not even in the dream. He can't remember what his face looks like enough to envision him smiling, but in the strange logic of dreams, it doesn't matter. He just knows that Steve is smiling at him and that's enough.
---
The price for the photograph does go up and continues to go up each time the guard pays them a visit. The hand must be accompanied by a toe. By a foot. By a leg. By his arm.
Bucky looks down at his own stump every time. Where the skin has healed over the knot of severed bone and hardened like an elephant’s foot. It's gruesome, ugly even. Bucky looks at his own stump every time, and every time he refuses.
Well, almost every time.
One day, the guard strolls into their cell in a particularly good mood. He’s smoking a cigarette and sweet smell fills the cell. Bucky’s never jonesed for a cigarette like he joneses for one now. The photograph is nowhere to be seen, but Bucky knows he has it on him. Knows it’s here.
“I’m going to give you one last chance, Sergeant Barnes,” the guard says amiably, and this is Bucky’s first sign that something terrible is about to happen. “I’ll give you a look at this…” The guard pulls the corner of the photograph from his pocket, just enough to show Bucky the grainy edge. “…if you take one of his fingers.”
Bucky exhales. He’s already shaking his head. Exhaustion weighs each of his limbs like sand. He just wants this to be over. He wants to curl up on his side and return to his dreams. (To his dreams of Steve.)
Despite this soul-exhaustion, Bucky’s voice still sounds level to his own ear. “If I wouldn’t chop one off to own the photograph, what makes you think I’d do it for a lousy glimpse? Get out of town.”
The guard sighs and slides out the photograph. He unfolds it with a snap. There’s a flash of Steve’s pale face in the gray murk of the background, and then the guard has turned it to himself. He looks over it, flicking ash off the end of his cigarette.
“Handsome man, isn’t he?” the guard says. “And you really don’t think a single finger from this—” (The guard used a Russian word to describe the little French soldier, Berger. Bucky can’t remember it, now.) “—is worth seeing him again?"
Bucky doesn’t like the implicative slant the guard uses to reference Steve. His nose crinkles in a snarl. “Fuck off.”
“Suit yourself,” the guard says. He pinches the butt of his cigarette between two fingers and holds the burning end to the edge of the photograph.
That is the only scrap of Steve that Bucky has left. And the guard is going to burn it. He’s going to burn it. He going to burn it!
“Wait! Fuck, wait,” Bucky says, acting on sheer instinct, on the hot rush of adrenaline scorching his veins. He doesn’t look over to Berger as he says, “I’ll do it.”
“Too late, Sergeant,” the guard says, but he’s lowering the cigarette and Bucky’s heart unclenches. It’s almost a relief; he never should have offered to mutilate Berger. “You’ll have to give me something else.”
So far, Bucky has only ever let them use his mouth and hand. The last time a guard tried to wrench down his pants, Bucky had donkey-kicked him in the testicles. That was at least a month ago (though Bucky isn’t sure; his sense of time was never quite right in that cell). No one has tried since.
Now, he looks over to Berger, who is watching this interaction with wide eyes. He doesn’t speak enough English to follow what is happening. All he knows is that he’s in danger. The fear in his eyes is wild, unrestrained. As if it might consume him whole.
Bucky offered up Berger’s body once. He won’t do it again. He promises himself this now. Whatever sacrifice needs to be made, Bucky will make it himself.
He glances over to the cot in the corner of the room, and the guard follows his line of sight. When they meet eyes again, the guard is grinning at him. Wordlessly, Bucky walks over to the bed and kneels beside it.
Muscle memory reminds him of his boyhood, knees on the floor, elbows on the mattress to form the steeple of his hands. Bucky only ever pretended to pray then. He won’t pray here either.
“Belly down over it, I think,” the guard says, not yet moving to him. “With your hips on the side.”
Bucky does as instructed. The cot is low, low enough to the floor that Bucky can bend over the side of the mattress with his knees on the floor. Like this, he feels vulnerable. Not frightened. But exposed. His bare toes curl into the meat of his bare soles.
“Feet flat on the ground, and you—” There’s a blunt clapping noise. The guard has hit Berger upside the back of his head. “—eyes on the Sergeant.” He grips Berger by the hair and directs his gaze to Bucky. Once Berger's eyes are where he wants them, the guard gives his head a shake. Just once. Just to remind him what he's supposed to be doing.
If the guard burns the photograph, it would leave a small pile of ashes. A very small pile. And Bucky thinks about that now as he shifts onto the balls of his feet like he was ordered to. His bare toes curl into the concrete.
The angle is awful; forces his ass high into the air and his weight sinks down onto his neck. He tilts his head, shifting the pressure to his cheek. Over his shoulder, he can see the glassy eyes of Berger staring at him in horror.
“Vous serez…It’ll be okay,” Bucky says to him in English because he doesn’t know how to say it in French. What is “okay” in French? How did Dernier not teach him that? Bucky smiles a little and promises, “You’ll be okay.”
The guard approaches then, and Bucky’s eyes flick up to him. The photograph is tucked into his pocket again so that just the corner peers out. Bucky’s heart reaches out for it, stretching open in longing.
To Berger, the guard says, “Ready for a show?”
“He doesn’t speak English,” Bucky grumbles, his diction muffled by the press of the mattress against his cheek. “If you can call that gargling English…”
The guard palms the base of Bucky’s skull and drives his face down into the mattress. The pressure doesn’t hurt, but it isn’t meant to hurt. It’s meant to humiliate. That’s the goal here today, nothing more. Nothing less.
“Take them off,” the guard instructs, pulling at the waistband of Bucky’s trousers. “Keep the rest on.”
And as Bucky shuffles out of his clothes, the guard undoes his own fly. Bucky has only gotten his trousers down over the curve of his ass when the guard smacks him hard over the left cheek. It leaves a stinging, hot imprint and Bucky’s embarrassment rises and crests. He tries to focus on his breathing.
“Stop there,” the guard says. Bucky can feel the blunt, damp head of his cock press between his cheeks. The guard rubs it against his hole, blurting and dribbling between his thighs. It's hell on earth, and Bucky tries to wriggle away on instinct. The guard presses his knuckles against the small of Bucky's back, reminding him to be still.
He goes still.
“This is all I need,” the guard says and pushes inside.
Bucky tries to force his mind to go blank, to disconnect with his body. But the hot, hard surge inside his body is all-consuming. His body sharpened to a single point that the guard cleaves through over and over again.
The guard is slow-moving inside him, but dry. And Bucky balls his fist against the mattress, eyes leaking. It’s too much. It’s ripping him in half. There's not enough room. Breathing hard, flushed and embarrassed, Bucky shifts his legs wider. The adjustment eases the intensity of the pressure, but Bucky isn’t sure it’s worth it. The guard’s ensuing laugh is high and mocking, already braying his victory.
Still laughing, the guard grasps the shirt at the base of Bucky’s spine. He balls the fabric in his fist and uses it as leverage to drive into Bucky with slow rolls of the hips. The guard isn’t chasing his own pleasure, so much as enjoying Bucky’s degradation.
None of this is about sex. It’s about being the first of the guards to fuck him. It’s about being the first one to make him submit.
Bucky knew this from the start, but now that it’s happening, now that the man is inside him cleaving out a space for himself, Bucky’s indignation rises. He squirms, trying to find leverage. He has to get out of this. Both of them. Him and Steve—Berger. Him and Jean Berger. Together they can escape, he just has to get him on board. He just has to—
The guard claps a hand over his buttock again, sharper than before. Bucky’s efforts redouble. He’s just started to scramble away when the guard lays the photograph in front of him. He’s laid it face down on the mattress, like Bucky.
“Go ahead,” the guard says. He’s no longer inside Bucky and uses this moment to drive back into him. Punishing. “Look at it.”
Bucky hesitates. But when the guard starts up his slow rhythm again, Bucky takes it into his hand and turns it over.
There he is. Steve Rogers. In black and white, but somehow brighter than anything Bucky has ever seen. The hollows of his cheeks are gaunt; this photograph was taken before the super soldier serum bullshit. So the photograph depicts a thin little wisp of a boy with a set in his jaw that speaks of bigger things.
His smile is broad, but bashful. Something in his eyes that says he doesn’t know what to make of being looked at. But he likes it.
Bucky was there when this photograph was taken. He remembers goading Steve into it, remembers Steve smiling at him as it was taken. That’s why his eyes aren’t on the camera, but just to the left. He’s looking at Bucky.
Bucky presses his forehead against the photograph, smells the ink. Steve is out there somewhere. No longer scrappy and gaunt, but still Bucky’s Steve.
The guard hauls Bucky’s ass higher by the hips, shifting the angle to plunge deeper into him. His fingers curl into the meat of Bucky’s haunches, pulling him even closer though he’s totally seated inside him. His hips are pressed flush against Bucky’s backside, but still he rocks his hips in deeper.
"Eyes open, Sergeant," the guard says.
Bucky does as he's told. He lifts his head and keeps his eyes on Steve. But as the guard drives into him, the image is no longer a comfort.
The fullness is terrible, and to Bucky’s horror, it feels good. Right somehow, like he was made for it. It hurts, it’s agony, but somehow it’s also good. It’s right. The searing pain is right inside him. This is what he deserves, this is what he is for.
(In retrospect, this won’t make much sense to Bucky. They conditioned him for this kind of treatment, yes, but it wasn’t the Soviets. It was the Americans who trained his body for sexual use. It was the Americans, wasn't it?)
“That’s it,” the guard coos in his ear. (And Bucky remembers his accent as American. That can’t be right.) He sinks a hand into the front of Bucky’s trousers and palms him into hardness. The guard’s callouses are rough against the sensitive skin. It makes Bucky shiver all over. “Submit to me.”
Bucky grips the photograph tightly between his fingers. He can't look at it anymore, but still likes the feel of it in his hand. Needs it, even. The edges crinkle as he ruts into the guard’s touch. The guard laughs, calls him the Russian word for “whore" and smacks his ass again.
(Maybe he was just always a whore. Maybe he just always wanted it.)
The guard comes inside of Bucky. When he pulls out, the suction and wetness pop audibly, making Berger cry out in surprise. Bucky winces. He’s still hard, painfully so, but that won’t last much longer.
“Stay here,” the guard says, does up his trousers, and leaves the cell. Bucky grips the photograph tighter, trying to breathe in the ink again. All he smells is sex now.
He can't meet Berger's eyes, but can hear the muted sobs that pour from his corner of the cell. Berger must think he's next, must be terrified. Bucky shifts up to clothe himself, eyes still on Steve’s photograph. At least he has this.
They are rejoined a moment later by a hoard of guards, six or seven of them, peering curiously at Bucky. They take in his prostration over the bed, the come trickling down his thighs. All while the guard speaks animated Russian to his buddies. Clearly telling the story of what he's just done.
One guard looks disbelievingly to Berger. He squats down next to him and asks him something in Russian. The soldier cowers, shakes his head, insists, “Je ne comprend pas.” I do not understand.
The guard pumps a finger through the circle of his thumb and index finger. He nods to Bucky as his finger pushes in and out, in and out. Berger looks between Bucky and the guard. Then, blushing, he nods.
Bucky looks away just as their laughter washes over his ears. He closes his eyes tightly, focusing until the sound is not much more than white noise. Perhaps, he could stay like this forever. Sealed in his humiliation, but separate from them. Bucky breathes, just breathes.
Then, he hears a gun shot.
His eyes fly open, certain that it's him whose been shot. (They’ve shot him before—shot him in the knee cap, in the shoulder, just for fun, just to see. They’ve shot him before and will shoot him again.) But there’s no bloom of pain. No blood seeping into his clothes.
Oh, but he smells blood.
Knowing what’s happened, dreading seeing it, Bucky’s eyes move of their own accord towards Berger, the little French soldier. His body is slumped over at an unnatural angle, head drooped towards a pool of blood while the rest of his body remains seated on the ground.
He’s been shot in the head. Right between the eyes so he could see it coming.
For a moment, Bucky is suspended in disbelief. Bucky looks to Steve’s picture as if he’s really there, as if he's in the room with them. As if he can help him out of this. And Steve, Steve just smiles up from the mattress.
Enraged, crying out like an animal, Bucky flies at the guards. He manages to kick one to the ground and break the jaw of another before they tackle him into submission. They descend on him in a heap, pinning his arm to his side and crushing him against the floor.
He can barely move under the press of bodies, but Bucky can see a guard stride over to the cot and pluck up the photograph. It’s then that he realizes he’s made a terrible mistake. He left the photograph unprotected. Fuck.
Bucky’s eyes are watering as the guard strikes a match. He’s kicking and biting and thrashing as the guard sets the image ablaze.
Once there is nothing but a heap of gray ash on the floor, Bucky goes limp.
“The fuck,” he sobs, more angry than sad (and more crushed than angry), “The fuck did you do that for?”
The guard, Bucky’s guard, the one that fucked him and burned the photograph, stoops down low to get on Bucky’s level. His hair—usually in a perfect soldier’s swoop—is damp with sweat and mussed over his forehead. He’s flushed and grinning, looks absolutely wild as he whispers, “We were always going to kill him, Sergeant.”
Shame floods through Bucky, and he doesn’t know why. He did everything right. He didn’t mutilate Berger. He didn’t make any compromises to his morality. He, Bucky, made the sacrifice. He made the sacrifice and it was for nothing. Not for the photograph, not for Berger...
Nothing.
“Don’t call me that.” Bucky turns his head away. The guard’s hair tickles his cheek.
“And what would you prefer we call you?”
“Anything else.”
The guard smiles. That’s all Bucky remembers.
---
Decades later, Bucky tells Steve all of this in a flat monotone while staring at the patterned rug in their apartment. Their New York apartment currently being warmed by the summer sun. Steve picked this rug and it shows.
When Bucky has finished, he can’t look at Steve, can’t bear to meet his eyes. There will be hurt there, and guilt. Steve will find a way to blame himself. Bucky never should have told him. He never should have—
Steve slings an arm around his shoulders and squeezes Bucky against himself. Bucky’s head momentarily lolls against Steve’s, their temples pressed together, eyes on the floor. Then, Steve releases Bucky.
It’s all they need for now.
---
Weeks pass. Steve discovers avocados, and no one is safe from the strange, green alien fruit. Avocados go on their eggs, on their sandwiches, on their toast (of course). Steve has even taken to blending them into their protein smoothies.
At first, Bucky thought it was disgusting. But even he has to admit that avocados improve the grainy texture.
Bucky is sipping Steve’s creamy green concoction and reading the newspaper when the big man himself comes in with the mail. Steve enters the kitchen in a glow, bouncing all the way. There’s a package under his arm. Bucky gestures to it with his cup. Green sludge teems towards the edge, but doesn't spill over.
“What’s that?”
“Came from the Smithsonian,” Steve says brightly. Steve is never in such a fine mood when the Smithsonian sends along his own things. It must be something of Bucky’s. Or maybe both of theirs.
The package is slim and flat. When Steve peels it open, it’s mostly bubble wrap inside. Steve unwraps it with careful artists’ hands while Bucky looks over it. Inside is a small stack of photographs, each enclosed in a sleeve of clear plastic. Two long strips from a photobooth are on top of the stack, and Bucky crowds in close to see.
It’s them, of course. Bucky is laughing and pulling faces while Steve looks grim in just about every picture. Steve was irritable that day for some reason that Bucky can’t remember. But it looks like Bucky coaxed a smile out of him on the very last picture. Bucky is grinning a shit-eating grin at Steve, and Steve’s smile in return is softer. More sincere. Warm. They lean so close into each other that their foreheads nearly brush.
“That’s a good one,” Steve says. He doesn’t always like pictures of himself before the serum, but Bucky always does. He likes any and all pictures of Steve, to be honest.
They flip through the next few. There’s several photographs of Bucky in his uniform, and these he cringes away from. His eyes drift away as if repelled by an opposing magnet. He’s only interested in the ones with Steve.
“You looked handsome in that hat,” Steve says. “You never hurt for a date when you were dressed up like that.” He flips to the next photograph, beaming at Bucky.
But Bucky isn’t looking at Steve. He’s got his eyes fixed on the photograph in Steve’s hand. The last in the stack. It’s crinkled along the edges, bisected by a horizontal fold in the middle, in much worse quality than the others, but Bucky recognizes it instantly.
It’s the photograph from Bucky’s breast pocket. The one that was burned.
Much to Steve’s surprise, Bucky snatches it from his hands. He needs a better look at it, so he slides it from the clear sleeve.
“I don’t think we’re supposed to take them out of the plastic,” Steve says, though there's no real edge of command in his tone.
Bucky flat out ignores him. He rubs his thumb, his real thumb, against the bottom edge of the photograph. And sure enough, there’s a singe-mark there from where the guard held his cigarette to it.
As if burnt himself, Bucky drops the photograph onto his lap. When he looks up at Steve, he can see that Steve’s read the whole story on his face. He knows that this is the photograph. He knows that it shouldn’t be here. That it should be a pile of ash somewhere in Siberia.
Steve waits quietly for Bucky’s response, one hand laid between his shoulder blades. It's heavy and broad. Feels good there.
“I don’t understand,” Bucky rasps.
“The way they messed with your memories... For years and years they were moving things around in there, Buck, there’s bound to be…” Steve’s mouth bunches as he tries to find the most delicate word. “…idiosyncrasies.”
Bucky rubs his thumb over the image of Steve’s soft, brave face. “I know it happened,” he says to the photograph. He can see the indents of his fingers along the right side, where he clutched it tightly. The singe-mark.
“I know, Buck—”
“But if it wasn’t burned…” Bucky reasons to himself. He feels on the precipice of a downward spiral, on the edge of losing his hard-won stability.
“Hydra could have fabricated just parts of the memory,” Steve suggests softly. "It doesn't mean everything was fabricated."
His hand is sprawled wide over Bucky’s back, and Bucky leans into it. His palm is stable, his touch bracing. Bucky allows himself to be comforted. Steve senses the tension leaking from his muscles and skims his touch down over his spine.
Bucky breathes, just breathes.
“You’re probably right, but…” He cranes his jaw until it pops, thinking. “What else did they take out?” He hesitates, looking down to the photograph again. He thinks about how he’d enjoyed it, or remembers enjoying it at least. “Or what did they put in?”
Gingerly, Steve removes the photograph from Bucky’s fingers. He slips it back into its protective sleeve and sets the stack aside. With the light of the kitchen shining over the plastic, Bucky can’t see the image anymore, and the memory of it is foggy at best. Already.
"What can I do?" Steve asks.
Bucky shakes his head. "There's nothing to do, Steve." He wants to say, "The damage has already been done," but doesn't. It would crush Steve.
“We could see the doctor again,” Steve offers. He means the doctor who deprogrammed Bucky, the one who reached in and pulled out triggers. It would mean a trip to Wakanda. It might even mean a night of dreamless cryostasis. It’s tempting.
But Bucky shakes his head. “It’s not that. I’m not going to…” He grinds his teeth. “I’ll just never know what really happened that night. And that drives me fucking crazy."
Steve nods and considers the stack of photographs again. He pulls free one of the photobooth strips, the one with him smiling at the end.
“Want to know what really happened this night? I remember it like it was yesterday. Hell, for me it basically was yesterday."
Bucky nods, but isn’t totally sure that he means it. He means it enough to make Steve happy, and that’s really all he’s ever wanted.
“It was during the Stark Expo. Your last night in America before they shipped you out. Remember that?”
Bucky nods, once. He remembers parts of it. Howard Stark's insane hovering car that crashed within seconds. The girl he’d brought for Steve was named Myrtle. Maybe. He can’t remember his own date’s name.
“I had wanted to stop by the recruitment booth to see if they’d let me enlist. You kept putting it off, kept dragging me around the fair. Probably just stalling for time until our dates arrived.” Steve laughs here, fond. “I was in a terrible mood all night. Remember that?”
“If I didn’t remember, I could guess from this alone.” Bucky snorts and points to the second photo in the strip. In this one, Steve is mid-eyeroll. His jaw a little slack and mouth a little parted as if he’s in the midst of complaining, Bucky.
“Psh. Okay, fair. But do you remember what happened between this one…” Steve jabs a finger into the third photograph: his face now in a scowling profile, hand pressed to the center of Bucky’s chest. “And this one?” He touches the last picture lightly, just brushing his thumb over their smiling faces, their nearly brushing foreheads.
Bucky squints down at it. Sees that Steve’s hand is stuck between their chests in this picture. “Didja finally sucker punch me?”
“No, you idiot.” Steve mimes sucker punching him now. His knuckles only barely brush the flat of Bucky's stomach. “You kissed me.”
Bucky blinks, startled. “Did I really?”
“You did,” Steve says, and he’s blushing now. Just a little. “You kissed me, and you laughed, so I laughed. And after this photo was taken, you kissed me again, and then I kissed you back. And I kissed you better.”
"Doubtful," Bucky jokes shakily.
And if he thinks about it, really settles back and thinks about it, he can remember being in the bright yellow interior of the photobooth. He remembers that it was warm in there despite the chilly night, and the bench was only just barely big enough for the two of them. He remembers…
“I told you if you were gonna look so sour," Bucky says, "I’d give you something sweet instead.”
“I was very scandalized,” Steve says. The blush laid over the bridge of his nose deepens into a scarlet. Bucky cackles his approval. "What? It was very scandalous. You were very scandalous, Bucky."
“Would you be scandalized now?”
“Probably not,” Steve says with a shrug. “You should hear some of the things the team talks about—”
That’s not what Bucky meant. And he doesn't feel like going through the trouble of clarifying. He leans forward and kisses him. The sensation of Steve’s soft lips yielding against his own is familiar. So familiar, that for a moment, Bucky wonders if all his memories between the photobooth and now were fabricated. If it wasn’t just some bad dream.
When he leans back, Steve’s scarlet flush has spread up to his ears and down into the V of his t-shirt. Bucky cackles again and rests a hand there over the flush. Steve’s skin is warm beneath his fingertips. He can feel his heart thudding hard against his chest.
This is right. Bucky is certain this time.