Sometimes in the dead of night he gasps awake with the sound of knocking echoing in his dreams. Those nights Steve always gives him space and how he knows why James needs it always surprises him.
Other nights Steve wakes up screaming out his name, the one of the dead man he used to be, and he gets up calmly and makes them both a strong drink to nurse until morning because neither one of them gets any sleep.
But most nights they sleep back to back, heart to heart, one eye open and a hand under the pillow clutching a weapon of choice and then morning comes and Steve gets up first and James will lay still for a moment and try to remember how it used to be before either of them became damaged little soldiers in someone else’s war.
Steve shows up 2 years after the incident in Washington where James had dragged him out of that river and left him. It surprises him only a little. James knows the Widow had known about his location for months and it was only a matter of time before one of them showed up at his door demanding answers. But Steve shows up alone, in wet clothes and a beard. The look of defeat and sadness in his eyes is what surprises him. James never knew a man could look that way without the barrel of a gun facing him down.
He won’t lie that he doesn’t trust him completely at first. Lots of scenarios go through his head as he offers Steve a glass of amber liquid and sits across from him, most of them aren’t good and end with him and a bullet to the head. But he know’s that if Steve is there right now no shield in sight, that this isn’t a Captain America visit and wonders how many people truly know he’s there.
“The alcohol doesn’t really work on me, but I appreciate the gesture Buck.”
James flinches at the name as Steve takes a swig of his drink and downs it all in one.
“Hm.”
James looks up at Steve who’s staring at the empty glass with those sad eyes again.
“Since when is Bucky Barnes a whiskey drinker?”
Part of James wants to ask Steve to leave, and he’s pretty sure Steve would do it. Nod his head, hide his tears, stand up, and walk away without a look back. But James is tired that night and something about it all tugs at his heart, so instead he doesn't and almost make shim cry anyways.
“Since Bucky Barnes died when he fell off that train.”
They don’t talk the rest of the night, just sit and drink their drinks, and watch each other.
James learns more about Captain America in that night then any HYDRA recon mission ever did.
2 weeks later James is in town buying some fresh fruit when he see’s his new housemate plastered all over every paper.
‘CAPTAIN AMERICA MIA AFTER HYDRA BUST GONE WRONG’
‘AVENGERS HAVE NO ANSWERS BUT SAY THEY WONT STOP SEARCHING TILL HE’S FOUND’
'CAPTAIN AMERICA’S SHIELD WASHED ASHORE A SMALL COSTAL TOWN IN MAINE. IS THE CAPTAIN TRULEY GONE?’
He enters the apartment calmly, newspapers clenched tightly in his human hand and Steve has the audacity to look up at him with this broken blue eyes.
“I can explain.”
James doens’t remember much about Steve Rogers from before he became an Asset but he doesn’t think he could ever forget the recklessness that came with everything Steve Rogers ever did.
All the fights and broken noses and bleeding knuckles never once made Steve question any decision he’d made.
That kind of righteousness used to make Bucky’s heart skip a beat. Wether of admiration for the man or fear of losing him James wasn’t sure, since those memories only existed clouded in fog in his mind, but something about becoming Captain America and losing everything had changed Steve in ways outsiders would never understand. And James knew just like how Bucky had died that night on that train so had the old Steve.
“Throwing your shield off a bridge is a bit overdramatic, even for you Steve.”
James watches Steve closely as he shrugs and looks out the window, a sketch book abandoned in front of him.
“It was symbolic Buck.”
James tells his body not to flinch at the name and is grateful that Steve’s not facing him when he fails at it.
“Symbolic of what exactly? That you have a flair for the dramatic?”
Steve laughs, it’s loud and it echo’s off of the walls around them. James closes his eyes and tries to remember Steve’s real laugh.
“No. Not quiet.”
Steve goes quiet for the rest of the day and that night is the first night he slips into James' bed and falls asleep to their heartbeats syncing up.
The Widow shows up almost 6 months after Steve with her archer in tow. She’s arguing with Steve when James walks in through the door and they booth freeze.
James doesn’t react to the sound of a gun clicking at his side and ignores the archer as he walks over to the Steve and places a new sketchbook and pens on the table in front of him.
Steve looks surprised and the Widow is as still as a statue following his every move. James feels his throat go dry before he turns and makes his way back out the door.
“Happy birthday Steve.”
James returns late into the next morning and finds the Widow sitting in his favorite chair on his small balcony, the archer and Steve no where in site.
There are two glasses set on the small table and a half lit cigarette stuck in an ash tray. He approaches her slowly, aware that she knows he’s there.
“You know these things kill.”
The Widow snorts. As he takes a seat next to her and reaches for the glass closest to him.
“If you poison me, Steve will be very sad.”
She turns to look at him, a wicked smile on her lips.
“Steve always said you where a hoot and a half. His words, not mine. Who knew the Winter Soldier had a sense of humor.”
James shrugs. He doesn’t. The Asset was trained to kill and follow orders. There was never room for anything resembling a personality, much less humor. James, there and now, sharing a drink with the Widow however was not the Asset anymore, he was just a shell of a ghost and a dead man walking.
“The world needs him James. Steve.”
James lets out a bitter laugh as he takes a drink from his glass. He lets the slow burn calm him and for once is grateful that of all the way they tried to make his body just like Steve’s, the alcohol actually hums underneath his skin and stays there.
“The world doesn’t need him Natalia. The world needs Captain America. And Steve is tired of playing the role.”
She gives him a low hum and looks out onto the city below them. They sit silently for a moment and James finishes his drink then sets his glass down and picks up the Widow's.
"You and I both know that you don't just wake up one day and decide you don't want to be who the world knows you as. And Steve knows that as well, he's just being stubborn."
James looks over at her and notices how much she's truly grown since the first time he met her. She dons her red hair short now, almost has the same style as her partner, the archer, but somehow more stylish. She looks tired underneath the perfectly crafted facade she's mastered over the years. He feels a memory tugging at his brain of her at age 10, standing stoically in front of him as the other children cowered at his stare.
"I'm sorry I couldn't save you Natalia. That life, for a child is..."
He can't get himself to finish. The Widow doesn't react to his apology, instead she stands and leans out against the railing, eyes closed. He watches her and knows she's thinking of her time in the Red Room with him as her mentor. He knows she remembering the pain and tears and screaming of her training, how he molded her into the perfect protege, stripping away her humanity one day at a time.
"I wasn't yours to save. And neither is Steve."
Steve returns with the archer by mid day and he and the Widow take over his small kitchen and cook them dinner. It's quiet and awkward and James spends most of it glaring at the archer every time he holds the Widow's hand under the table just to watch him sputter and pull away ashamed. They leave early the next morning after Steve and the Widow have a huge fight in his bathroom that they don't seem to care if the neighbors hear. James and the archer drink half a bottle of whiskey together and James quietly threatens him not to hurt the Widow. The archer simply smiles at him softly and nods in agreement.
Steve doesn't come to bed for 3 nights after they're gone. Won't talk to James about the Widow calling him a coward for running away from his life.
On the last night James wakes up grasping for Steve's hand on that train.
Eventually things stop feeling like they're frozen in time and it all burns down around them.
Hydra agents find them because the Widow was right, you can't just choose to leave behind who you where to the world and expect them to listen. And James is still the Asset even if he's not and he's just James. Except when they find them Steve's the one who's home and there's too many of them and he doesn't have his shield or time to escape and James comes back to a burnt down apartment and no trace of either of them ever existing there.
When he shows up in New York Tony Stark puts a bullet in his shoulder.
It takes them 3 whole months to track down where they've taken Steve and by then James feels like his bones are breaking down over the weight of guilt. It should have been him they took not Steve. He never should have let him stay. He should have made him leave and go back with the Widow. Should have asked him to walk away that first night.
The Widow knows all this even if he never says it.
When she hands him the shield she tells him to suck it up and be the man Steve still believed was somewhere inside him. To be Bucky.
And so he becomes him.
Just a shell of a ghost and a dead man walking pretending that he's still alive.
They find Steve bruised and bloodied and more broken then he was before. And the anger James feels resonates through his veins and fuels him as he fights his way out of the half burning building. The fog begins to clear and he see's young skinny righteous Steve fighting in some dirty alley, never giving up, no matter how many times he got put down. He see's block of nothing but muscle new Steve saving him in that warehouse during the war and bringing back all those men to have lives ahead of them. He see's that boy from Brooklyn that old him-that Bucky followed til the end of the line.
And then it's over and they're safe and Steve doesn't wake up for 9 days and Bucky kills more men who did this too him and the shield fits perfectly in the groove of his palms and it's almost terrifying.
The archer is the one who calls him when Steve is walking again.
When James gets back, the beard is gone and the haunting look he had in his eyes that day he knocked on his door is gone and instead replaced with the look of a ghost.
Steve is broken like James is and it's chilling and so wrong that James has to walk back out into the hallway to will his body not to scream.
That night Steve wakes up yelling for Bucky and James doesn't flinch, instead he crawls into bed with him and holds him till there are only silent cries left in his body.
The world eventually moves on from Captain America.
They don't need Steve Rogers anymore and sometimes when he laughs James can hear the old Steve in him.
They share an apartment now, like they did when they where just Steve and Bucky and the war was long from happening, and like they did when they where Captain America and the Asset, 2 broken soldiers missing in action. But this time it's different, they're just Steve and James, finally returning from war.
James keeps the shield. Even long after Steve comes back and is fighting side by side with him. He keeps the shield and it's a reminder, a tether, an anchor, to his life and his recovery and to Steve.
Steve laughs at him the first time he puts on the star-spangled uniform, with minor modifications for his arm of course, and for a second James feels like Bucky again making his best friend laugh.
Some days are worse then others in the road to recovery.
They fight and cry and maybe are a little codependent as Sam tries to point out, but slowly James stops feeling like a dead man on ice and members how to be alive again.
Steve also recovers, he starts talking about it all and stops trying to shoulder the weight of the world and every once in a while goes out as Captain America, but mostly he's just Steve. He's still righteous and won't back down from a fight and it scares James how scared he is of losing him every time they go on missions.
The archer-Clint, he tries to tell him that's how he feels about his Natasha, but James still isn't ready to hear that. Not while they're still recovering and trying to figure themselves out.
It's slow and painful, but they hold each other up through it all and the pained looks go away and they stop walking around like dead men, ghosts, memories, and instead start living and soaking up what time they have together. And somehow it just happens, through the recovery, they fall into place with each other and Steve reaches over and holds his hand and James is at peace. It starts with the little things, like kisses on the temple, and soft touches of reassurance, all things they did before but they both know mean something different, something much more now.
Things change and they're good and Steve laughs and it's real and James is Bucky again, maybe not the same one, but neither is Steve so it doesn't matter.
Some nights, Bucky hears the echoes of knocking in his dreams, and those nights, Steve holds him closer because he always knows what Bucky needs without him even having to tell him. They stay that way, arms interlocked, heartbeat to heartbeat, and nothing's like it was before the war, but there they are again, just 2 men against the world.