Chapter 9
I banished every memory you and I had ever made
But when you touch me like this
And you hold me like that
I just have to admit
That it's all coming back to me
If you touch me like this
And when you hold me like that
It was gone with the wind but it's all coming back to me
When you see me like this
And when I see you like that
Then we see what we want to see all coming back to me
The flesh and the fantasies all coming back to me
I can barely recall but it's all coming back to me now
If you forgive me all this
If I forgive you all that
We forgive and forget and it's all coming back to me
When you see me like this
And when I see you like that
We see just what we want to see all coming back to me
“Bucky.”
It’s said softly, lowly and it’s not that Bucky doesn’t hear it but he’s too focused on leaving and trying to avoid the stranger wearing his lover’s face in front of him.
“I can call Tony,” Bucky starts. “Or Clint if you’re trying to avoid Tony, which I can understand.”
“B-”
“Must be scary,” Bucky says solemnly. “People telling you to remember, begging you to, but no matter what you can’t.” Bucky still avoids looking at Steve but looks at him now. “Not that I can’t relate but I was more of a blank slate.” He smiles sadly and turns away from Steve again, his face looking more lost than Bucky remembered.
“Don’t worry, though,” Bucky starts again. “I’ll be out of here in no time and you can go back to...well you can go on with your life I guess.” He peaks another glance at Steve and something is definitely different.
“Bucky.” It’s said again, a bit louder, more clear.
It takes Bucky a minute.
“Bucky? You said ‘Bucky’. You…” Bucky's brows lower in confusion. “You never call me Bucky you call me-”
“James. I know I called you James.”
“Did Stark tell you that? That people call me ‘Bucky’?”
“No he-”
“Well he shouldn't’ have. That’s not fair to me. You can’t go around calling me Bucky when you’re not him.” He interupts.
“Bucky.” It’s said firm this time and Bucky turns to him, looks at Steve straight on. “It’s me.”
“It’s…? What do you mean it’s you?”
Steve walks closer to Bucky, his eyes emotional, more than Bucky has seen in the past month or so. “It’s me.” He says again.
“Steve?”
Steve nods and Bucky can see the tears trying to spill out of Steve’s eyes.
“It’s me, Buck,” Steve chokes out. He drops to his knees in front of Bucky. His arms wrap around Bucky’s hips, gripping his lower back. “I’m sorry, Bucky,” Steve says. “I’m so sorry.”
And Bucky doesn’t understand. He doesn’t know why Steve is apologizing. It’s not his fault. None of this is. But he grips tightly on to Steve’s back, pushes him closer to him, and tells him it’s okay over and over. “It’s okay, Steve.” He says. “It’s okay.” He runs his hands through Steve’s hair below him. It’s Steve and he can touch and hold him. It’s Steve. His Steve.
“How?” Bucky finally asks and Steve moves away from Bucky’s body. God did he not want that.
“Hmm?”
“Tony called. Said it didn’t work so how are you here and ...you?”
Steve nods and stands up. “I...when I woke up I didn’t remember. It was the same as it had been. Tony mentioned Sam to see if it worked and I couldn’t remember a Sam or Nat. But then suddenly I started too. It was small things at first and it freaked me out because he was another person I didn’t remember so I ran….stupidly. I quickly realized I didn’t have a place to go so I started running here.”
He pauses for a minute, thinks.
“I remembered Sam quickly. They didn’t take as much of him from me just his name and his connection to us. But then as soon as I remembered him memories of us..of you and me came flooding back and I ran and ran.” Steve stops again. “Finally a cab stopped and I got in. Told him where to go. Did you know Clint must’ve made a dozen trick turns? It’s actually way more of a straightforward trip from Starks to here.”
Bucky lets a small grin slip through his mouth, definitely Steve, but quickly hides it and nods at Steve to go on.
“But,” Steve continues. “For safety reasons I actually told him the complex a few blocks away because I don’t know a Hydra agent could easily drive a cab so...”
Steve takes another pause.
“Through the ride I was still so sure it was...that someone was fucking with my head that I couldn’t possibly forget someone so important to me,” Steve looks up to Bucky, his heavy eyelashes trying to block his gaze. “But it was the walk here that I knew. Everything came back in minutes, Buck. I-” Steve wipes his eyes again and Bucky wants nothing more than to grab him and hold him till their arms grew tired and he had to let go. “Minutes,” He says again. “How could I forget you so easily?”
“It’s not your fault.” Bucky says, and it wasn’t. Bucky sighs. “But I still need proof.”
Steve’s brows lower in confusion.
“I need to know it’s really you. Like you said, Hydra agents could be anywhere. They could’ve gotten to you to get to me.”
“They didn’t.”
“Steve.” Bucky says and he realizes he’s not sure what he would do if that was the case. If once again this wasn’t Steve, wasn’t his Steve, and was actually someone so much worse than the Steve he was subjected to the past few weeks.
Steve takes it though. He nods. “Okay,” he paces, thinks. “Okay okay.” He looks up to the ceiling, trying to catch a memory. “September…” Steve trails on. “13th...uhh 1935.”
Bucky even has to think for a moment but then he too remembers. He thinks the words but Steve’s the one to say it.
“Our first date.”
“First date,” Bucky repeats.
“You had set it all up. I almost didn’t make it because I was coming down with whatever was going around at the time but-”
“But by some miracle your immune system decided to work.”
“Yeah,” Steve smiles. “Some sort of miracle. I remember I told my mom we were going to the movies to meet some girls there but she knew, somehow she did”
“Sarah was always...nothing got past her.” Bucky says.
“Yeah,” Steve says and Bucky looks at him to go on. “But you had told your dad you’d be at the gym I remember you telling me that.’
“He was no Sarah Rogers.”
“No, but he did his best.” Steve says, something Bucky always told him when Steve was concerned his dad was too harsh.
“So what did we do? Movies? Dancing?”
Steve smiles. “No,” he clears his throat. “You had an uncle who co owned a small restaurant. He was… like us. Well more like you because he was really-”
“-yeah, okay-
“-gay. Like so…’
“Okay ‘Mr. Bisexual’ keep going.”
Steve clears his throat this time to stop from cracking up. “So I don’t know when he found out about you or us…”
“I was 10,” Bucky admits and it’s fair because he never really did tell Steve about that.
“10. Okay yeah. So his co owner was away on some family trip to Florida or something like that and he…umm... well you asked if there was any way to rent out the restaurant. I remember laughing when you told me because neither of us had that kind of money and he sure as hell didn’t have that kind of money to give it to you so…”
Steve breathes in thinking.
“But he knew about us, about me and when you asked him about that and told him why you needed the place to yourself he gave us a room. It was separate from the restaurant reserved for ‘important people’, well more important than we could afford at any other restaurant. I remember he brought us the food himself and claimed that it was a slow night anyways so we could have the room with no charge. I don't really remember what we ate,”
Bucky almosts laughs because he really wasn’t expecting Steve to remember that.
“But I remember everything else. I remember just staring at you, laughing with you, and imagining that I could never be happier than I was in that moment. We were alone, we were safe, no one was after us or will be after us soon and it was…” Steve stops himself the emotions puddling. “It was amazing.” He nods and breathes in. “It was our first date.”
Bucky bites his lips and looks down. “Our first date and our only date.”
“Yeah,” Steve looks down and rubs his neck. “We went to the movied after. I think we held hands for the first block until we started seeing people on the streets but for a small bit we were...us”
Neither mention why there wasn’t more dates after, secret or not. That part wasn’t needed.
"And what did we see?" Bucky asks, and waits.
"We saw Top Hat" Steve says clearly. "Then we danced to that song in your apartment."
"Which song?"
And Steve thinks for a minute but the answer doesn't take long. "Cheek to Cheek" He smiles fondly at the memory.
“It’s really you.” Bucky says after a long silence, this time a statement. It had to be. Neither ever told anyone about that. It was only him, Steve, and his Uncle who was long gone by now.
“It’s really me,” Steve smiles in an almost bashful way.
Bucky walks over and he wants to cry, he wants to laugh, he wants to squeeze Steve close to him and never let go, never let him walk out the door just him and Steve in this apartment alone. He grabs Steve’s face and let’s his fingers trace over his skin, his eyes, his nose, his lips. And it’s Steve. It’s his Steve, his eyes tell him that.
“I don’t know long we have,” Steve says, closing his eyes to Bucky’s touch. “I don’t know when it will all go away again.”
And that breaks Bucky more than anything else ever could.