Chapter 1
If Bucky didn't know the exact number of freckles he would find under Steve's black suit, he would be a happy man.
It was a Sunday; it wasn't raining, but moisture hung in the air and occasionally turned into horizontal lines when one chose to recognise them. It was what Bucky and Steve would've called a hill day, back when they were kids. Of course, they still were kids, just eighteen the both of them, but when they were proper kids, when they were younger and Steve had laughter lines and Sarah was alive.
Sarah.
Bucky had cried over her more times over the past few days than he'd cried over anything in his life, or at least he wished he had. The reality was that the second Steve opened the door to his house and Bucky saw Sarah lying dead in her favourite armchair, the emotions that had always been prevalent on Bucky's face suddenly disappeared. He couldn't find it within himself to cry, or scream, or feel anything. When Natasha had teased him that morning for forgetting to shave a spot on his cheek, he hadn't even been able to muster a smirk.
Crying, though - it came closer with each passing moment. Father Coulson read out the Catholic Prayer for Death. It was solemn and uninspiring, like many religious vows or promises were to Bucky, and soon his words managed to blur into the surrounding landscape of the Leavenworthian cornfields. Around him, his friends stood, their hair standing on end from the humidity, their clothes black. Beside him stood Steve.
Of course, beside him was always Steve. Steve was always beside him. Words became hard to form into sentences, because Sarah was dead, and Sarah had always made sense of things for Bucky.
He wished he'd told her. He wished he'd spoken to her before this all happened, before she disappeared to be with the Lord or whatever cock and bull story she believed in (Bucky hoped, though, that it wasn't cock and bull, that it was truth, that Sarah was up there somewhere having tea with Jesus and getting her hair plaited with flowers, but he couldn't believe it, not even when he tried. Neither could Steve; Bucky could tell by his face).
It was hard to focus. His vision was like how Betty described wearing only one contact. The world didn't seem solid, somehow. The only thing he could focus on was his own hand, placed squarely on Steve's shoulder. They stood hip-to-hip. Bucky could feel his crying. It reverberated through his back.
Don't cry, Barnes, he told himself. Steve needs someone strong. Steve is always so strong, and here he is breaking.
Two days before she died, Steve had been up in his bedroom. Bucky had came over with his baseball bat in a last stitch attempt to convince his friend to participate in the last friendly game of the season, and indeed their last year of school. He hadn't expected to be successful; he hadn't expected that it would be the last time he would speak to Sarah, either.
"James," Sarah said when she opened the door. Bucky came to Steve's house to see the smile on his best friend's face, but Sarah was the next best thing. He grinned at her and buried his face into her shoulder, lifting her a little from the floor. He used to do that to Steve as well, but then the other boy grew five inches, and they were pretty much eye to eye. Bucky wished ...
Bucky wished. That was the long and short of it.
When they broke apart, Bucky could notice how Sarah's blonde hair was whiter than ever before. Skin hung on her face like a rotten apple, and the red on her cheeks was nothing but blush. He was raised a gentleman, and so he didn't mention the fact that she was dying and her son didn't seem to realise. Sarah followed his lead.
"You're attempting to get my boy into sports, then?" she said as she closed the front door behind him. He stepped into the warmth of their house, breathed in the floral scents of Sarah's perfume, revelled in the paints scattered on the coffee table.
With a cocky smile, he ruffled his hair. "Am I that transparent?" He chuckled, and Sarah smiled, her lips tight and stretched with the unfamiliarity. They had a shared interest in Steve Rogers, and they loved each other for it.
Bucky was sure she knew. She had to have known. It was why she looked at him sometimes when she thought he didn't see. It was why, just before Steve clomped down the stairs, she wiped the polite greeting from her face and made Bucky promise that no matter what, he'd protect her boy.
"Even from yourself," she had warned, and Bucky didn't have the chance to ask anything of that, not that he needed to. He understood her words completely.
She knew. She had to have known. It was why she wiped her nose before waving the boys off to the hills.
Focus on things other than Sarah. The chill of the air. The drone of Father Coulson's voice. The sound of Natasha shuffling on her feet. The gesture of Clint reaching his fingers out to touch hers and then letting his hand drop.
Steve's breath, coming heavy and laboured, though not asthmatic, not that he could tell, and he'd gotten pretty proficient at telling. Sarah had been a nurse; she'd taught Bucky things like that. She'd been prepping him to take over for her. She'd known. She'd known he'd never leave Steve.
Bucky sniffed. Blond hairs stood to attention on the back of Steve's neck. His hand was mere millimetres away from them, and he almost grasped onto the back of his best friend's head and brought it to his lips, but stopped himself just short. He took his hand off Steve's shoulder and pretended not to notice the soft inhalation of disappointment. He raked his fingers through his greased hair and tried desperately hard not to cry.
She'd known. She'd known he was in love with his best friend. He'd been in love with Steve since ... Since he could remember. He'd wanted to kiss him since he knew what kissing was. He'd wanted ... He'd wished and he'd wanted for as long as he'd known him.
He knew how many freckles were under his shirt. He knew how many times Steve had bitten his fingernails that morning alone. He knew what his paintings consisted of, how they'd gone from reds to greens to blues over the years, how his own face was a feature, but never in the way he wanted. He knew what Steve dreamed about, because the other boy used to lie beside him in a field and tell him in mind-blowing and quite unbelievable detail.
Bucky wanted to kiss him. He wanted to cry and kiss him, all at once. His own breaths were coming out uneven and Nick Fury was behind him sniffling. He'd never seen Nick Fury show any kind of emotion when it wasn't directed at Natasha, and it was terrifying. It was terrifying because Bucky didn't know what to do with himself or his body.
Since he'd figured out whatever it was to figure out, he hadn't known what to do with his hands. Hands were such a precious thing; Steve's were perfectly formed, skinny fingers with larger knuckles, soft skin with no calluses like Bucky's. Steve's hands were artist's hands, and Bucky had seen him do so many things with them, like writing maths equations and flipping someone off and swimming and cupping Betty Ross' face as he kissed her.
Fuck.
Think of anything but Sarah. Think of anything but Steve. Think of anything but the most important people in the world to him. Think, think, think.
Natasha. Her form was lovely in her dress. It was too tight, but it suited her. She knew boys liked her when she wore tight things. Her face was bright, even with the grief. Her eyes were knowing, and they flitted from person to person, cataloguing their reaction and comparing them to her own correct assumptions.
She caught Bucky's gaze. He dropped it almost immediately, but she continued to look after him, finally taking Clint's hand as she did so.
Too much was known about him by Natasha Romanoff. He had called her up one morning, mere hours after he'd left Steve's house, mere hours after he'd almost lost his best friend. She'd allowed him to come over and sit on her bed and cry his heart out.
They'd pretended it didn't happen afterwards, and he couldn't thank her enough for that.
"What's this about?" she had asked. His head was in her lap and she was stroking his hair, just like his mother did, just like Steve did as Bucky fell asleep in the car on the way to someplace amazing.
"I almost lost him, Nat," he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "I almost lost him, what the hell else would it be about?"
Natasha had not said anything, and eventually, ever so quietly, Bucky had said the words he dreaded even to think to himself.
"I love Steve."
She dried his eyes, and she pulled him to the school gym, which was open to the public most of the time on account of Leavenworth not having nearly enough to spend on two gyms in one town.
"Go on," she had said. "Tell me about it."
He'd blinked at her like a deer in headlights. Then, without another moment of hesitation, he took a swing at the bag. He kept punching and kicking and yelling as he went.
"I love Steve!" he declared, thumping the bag right in the middle and wheezing when it rebounded back on him. "I fucking love Steve. I - I want to fuck Steve. Fuck. I want to fuck my best friend. Fuck fuck fuck."
The bag broke off the chain. Whether that was due to the force he was delivering, or because it was weak to begin with, they couldn't decide. Natasha nodded, didn't say anything, and they walked back to her house with weight on their feet.
Bucky wanted nothing more on the day of Sarah's funeral than to go over to her and say that this day, he wanted to fuck Steve more than ever. How did that make sense? How did any of this make sense, that Steve looked more beautiful that morning than he ever had before, even in his pain?
Then Bucky realised what he really wanted. He wanted to help Steve; he wanted Steve to love him back, and he wanted to put a smile on his face instead of that dreaded grief. He wanted to fuck him - no, he wanted to make love to him.
Fuck. His grip on Steve's shoulder tightened a little, and the other boy never noticed. He never noticed anything, that was Bucky's problem. Or else he noticed everything and chose not to say a word. Bucky wasn't sure which was worse.
Maybe Steve felt Bucky's eyes on him. After hours of constant staring, it must've begun to burn. Steve turned to him, those bright blue eyes, the eyes he knew better than his own, and there were tears in them and they were more red than blue. Bucky blinked the tears out of his own eyes and looked at Steve, looked at him and said all the things he wanted to say without speaking a word.
Steve didn't understand. He would never understand how much Bucky bled for him, how much he drunk to try and forget him, how much he died every second Steve wasn't there. How Bucky couldn't live without him, even if he tried.
Steve wouldn't understand. He wouldn't have to: he would never know. Bucky would make sure of that.
He had to protect Steve, even from himself, no matter how much it hurt.
"Hey," he said, because he couldn't think of anything else. "She's good now, yeah?"
Right thing to say. Bucky couldn't put into words how relieved he was, how much he wished he could take this all away. Steve patted Bucky's lower back, and didn't seem to notice how the action drew shivers up Bucky's spine.
"She's with Pa," he said. "She's good."
Bucky could sympathise. God, if Steve died, he'd want to die a thousand times to be with him. (He'd need to do a couple penances first though, because God knows he'd done a million things wrong, whereas Steve would go straight to Heaven for his heart alone.)
They both turned back to watch as the coffin was lowered into the ground, and Bucky's hand acted of its own volition. It travelled from between the blades of Steve's shoulders down to the middle of his back, and when he got no response, ill or otherwise, his fingers rested there with satisfaction, rubbing little circles into his best friend's skin.
"Thank you, Buck," Steve said as the congregation shuffled out of the cemetery.
"Ah, it's nothing, pal," Bucky replied, waving it off. "What're friends for, right?"
Not the right thing to say. Steve furrowed his eyebrows a little, the way he used to every time Rumlow spoke, and Bucky swallowed three times in succession.
He was beautiful. Bucky was an idiot. A stupid fucking idiot who kept trying to make conversation with the boy whose mother had just died.
"At least it wasn't raining."
"Huh? I thought it was."
"Not really. Just drizzles."
"Ah. Nat'll be mad at me."
"Why?"
"Her hair."
"Oh. Yeah. Nah, she'll be alright today."
"Today?"
"Well, y-"
Steve had forgot. Somehow, even as they walked in a procession down the Main Street, he had forgotten that his mother was dead.
Bucky was the worst fucking person in the world. He deserved to be in so much pain. He deserved to feel a knife through his heart every time Steve came to him for dating advice, or to tell him about his day, or even to complain about the teachers. He deserved all of it.
He didn't deserve Steve as a best friend, though. He wasn't sure who he'd saved in another life to make that possible.
They got back to Steve's small house - just Steve's now, God - and Bucky's Ma immediately got to work planting lilies in vases on the fireplace, the coffee table, the side table, every surface she could get her hands on. Delilah brought in sandwiches, and Mary started pouring the tea for the guests.
Bucky wasn't very good with funerals. He'd never even been to one before. His Da, though, was very good at funerals. When he'd been in the army, he'd attended one a week. Pretty soon, so his Da said, they all seemed like the same thing. Bucky glanced around the room and found his Da in the corner, puffing on a cigar. His Ma walked past and coughed pointedly, but his Da had that look on his face, so he probably hadn't even seen her.
As the day wore on, people drifted in and out of the small house. Bucky's Ma had been rubbing insistently at the blood-stain on Sarah's armchair from where she'd coughed her last breath, but had been unsuccessful at moving it anywhere. In Bucky's opinion, it had actually spread.
He ran a hand through his hair, screwing up his face at the grease on his hand from the pomade his Da had loaned him, and made his way into the kitchen to find a rag to rub it on.
There was no one in the kitchen but Steve hunched over the cooker, stirring insistently at a pot of stew. Bucky wiped his hands off then rolled up his shirt sleeves, moving over beside Steve. Wordlessly, he leaned over and flicked the cooker switch to 'on.' Steve just blinked.
"Buck."
"Happens to us all," Bucky interrupted. Steve's Adam's apple jolted in his throat. Bucky nearly died on the spot. "Listen, I'll finish this up. You go up to your room for a while, okay?"
Steve glanced at the door that led to the living room. "But the people..."
"I'll deal with them for a while," Bucky said. He put both of his hands on the side of Steve's face. "I'm good with people, remember?"
Steve laughed, a weak pathetic sound, and rubbed his face a little against the roughness of Bucky's hands. "How could I forget?" he asked. "Pretty sure half the school would marry you if you asked them."
"Well, I'm not asking," Bucky replied. He didn't care if anyone wanted to marry him; he just wanted Steve to not have to suffer anymore. "Go on," he said, putting his hands back on the ladle where they belonged. Steve wasn't his; he was just his best friend. "Get some rest. I'll come wake you in an hour or so, kay?"
Needless to say, Bucky didn't wake him up. He stayed up himself until about ten o'clock that night, long after his own family kissed him goodbye and dispersed to their own home and routines.
("Darling, I know he's your best friend, but you need some sleep too."
"I'll get more sleep here."
"You always have.")
Bucky shoved the final casserole of the night into the fridge, managed to eat a couple spoonfuls of it without retching into the sink, and then reluctantly trailed himself upstairs. Sarah's door remained open, her double bed beckoning but smelling too much of her perfume, too empty and large. Steve's was closed, but as Bucky pushed it open, he automatically felt at home.
"Hey, Buck," Steve said. He was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling. He didn't even turn to his friend as he entered.
Bucky pulled his tie off and dropped it onto the floor, followed swiftly by his shoes.
"How long you been awake?"
"Not long. 'bout five hours."
"Jesus, Steve."
Steve closed his eyes. He didn't like it when Bucky took the Lord's name in vain, not on days like this, not when they needed his favour. Bucky chastised himself under his breath and began to unbutton his shirt, when Steve poked his hand out of the covers.
Bucky's eyes dashed from the white expanse of his fingers to Steve's face. It was clearly an invitation. Who was Bucky to refuse?
Slowly, he crept into Steve's single bed. It had been easier to fit when they were twelve; Steve's knees were digging into Bucky's thighs, and their faces were closer than they'd ever been before. Bucky wasn't complaining, but he hoped grief would stop his body's reaction from being in such proximity to Steve.
"Hey," Bucky said, taking Steve's hand under the covers and holding it between their chests. "She's okay, now, you know. Ma said the big guy makes everything better."
"You don't believe that."
"Maybe not. But you didn't believe I had genital herpes a year ago either. Sometimes things you don't believe in turn out to be the truest things there are."
Steve looked at him for a moment and then burst into laughter. It was different than his usual; heavier and filled with sadness, but still. His smile was just as beautiful as ever. Bucky didn't laugh with him as he usually did, instead preferring to just watch him.
God, how Steve had never realised was beyond Bucky. How he'd never said anything to his best friend that had made him question their relationship ...
"You did not just compare the Lord to genital herpes."
"It worked, didn't it? I got my message across."
"Yeah," Steve said, a light chuckle in his tone. "It worked. Fuck. I-"
He cut himself off. Bucky wanted to kiss the words right off his lips.
"Hey," Bucky said. "Why do you do that? What'd you want to say?"
Steve pulled a bit of skin off his lip. Blood bloomed to the surface. Bucky lifted his hand up to wipe it away, but decided last minute to scratch at his own upper lip instead.
"Nothing important," Steve said. "Just - I can't believe she's gone."
"Yeah," Bucky said. "Fuck, yeah. I know. I can't believe it either."
"Nick Fury cried."
"You cried."
"She was my Ma."
"I know. I just - don't really see you cry much, is all."
"I cry all the time."
"Really?"
"Well, not really. You do, though."
"Oh, I totally admit to that."
"You didn't today."
"Yeah." Bucky shrugged his shoulders, a difficult thing to do in a single bed occupied by two fully grown teenage boys. "Guess I didn't really need to cry."
"All cried out on Christmas adverts and ex-girlfriends?"
Bucky looked at Steve in the darkness of his room. "Yeah," he said. "Something like that."
There was that heaviness over them, that feeling that they could go anywhere and do anything, but they were just too tired to do a single thing. It was the same feeling they got at midnight on the hill as they stared up at the stars, and everything that seemed to go unspoken between them still lay there in the meagre space between their bodies that Bucky so desperately, achingly wanted to close.
"Go to sleep," Bucky whispered. He touched his hand to the side of Steve's head, pushing some blond hair behind his ear. He needed to get it cut; Bucky would make the appointment for him tomorrow. "Sleeping will make it better."
Steve closed his eyes, still pulling at that wound on his lip.
"Nothing will make it better, Buck."
Bucky would've chastised him for being pessimistic, but before he had the chance, he heard soft snores coming from Steve's mouth.
He wasn't sure when he fell asleep. When he looked back on that night, he wished he'd spent the eight hours before morning simply staring at his best friend's face, memorising every stretch of it as if he hadn't before. Maybe then he wouldn't have woken up in a fusty room wearing a crumpled suit, with nothing beside him but a note on the pillow.
Buck,
Didn't tell you last night because you'd just worry. Guess you'll worry now too, but you always worry anyway.
Don't worry though. I applied to join the army a couple months ago, and now I'm eighteen and Ma is gone, I've decided to take their offer. I'm headed to New York today to begin health assessments and training.
I'll keep in touch,
Steve.
Steve had left his phone on the dressing table in his Ma's room. Bucky picked it up and called the first number on the list.
"Steve?"
"Ma?"
"James? What's the matter? Are you okay? Is Steve-"
"Steve's gone. He's gone, he's-"
"James, I'll be there in five minutes. Hold on, darling."
When his mother arrived, Bucky was sitting on his best friend's bed, his head in his hands and tears dripping down his chin.
Winnie ran to him and cupped his head in her hands, pressing his face into her chest in a hug.
"Oh my darling," she said. "What's wrong?"
"I loved him, Ma," he told her, grasping onto her shirt like he used to when he was ten years old, never after. The white linen of her bed shirt became soaked within seconds.
"I know you did, my darling," she said. "I know you loved him."
"No," Bucky said, pushing her away. Perhaps he was stronger when he was upset, because she broke apart from him like he was a hot poker. Her eyes were wide and hurt. "Please don't look at me like that."
"James..."
"I loved him, Ma," he repeated. "I loved him."
"I ... I know?"
"No, Ma. I loved him like you love Da."
Winnie pretended she hadn't known all along as she held her sobbing son in her arms, reading the letter that had more tears on it than ink, lying to herself that more than anything, she didn't really hate Steve Rogers that day.