Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at

http://download.archiveofourown.org/works/1695929.

Rating: Mature
Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: M/M
Fandom: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Relationship: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Character: Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes, Sam Wilson (Marvel),
Natasha Romanov, Other Avengers
Additional Tags: Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Slow Build, Canon-Typical Violence, Post-
Serum Steve Rogers
Stats: Published: 2014-05-27 Completed: 2017-05-19 Chapters: 2/2 Words:
15881

close to the sun

by thebrotherswinchester

Summary

Steve's known Bucky his whole life.

Notes

Inspired by this post.

Warnings: passing mention of a character having suicidal tendencies, canon-typical
violence.
Enjoy!

See the end of the work for more notes

 Chapter 1

***

“Standing on the cliff face

Highest fall you'll ever grace
It scares me half to death

Look out to the future

But it tells you nothing
So take another breath...

Icarus is flying too close to the sun

And Icarus's life, it has only just begun.”
—Bastille, “Icarus”

***

before

***

He's nine years old, lying on threadbare couch cushions in the dark, when Steve realizes that
Bucky is his best friend. Not just someone he sits next to in class, not just another schoolyard
outcast he plays with because nobody else will play with either of them—a real, steadfast best
friend. Like Shirley and Laura, who wear matching ribbons in their hair every Friday, or Denny
and Ira, who don't share their marbles with anyone else. A package of two.

Steve and Bucky, he thinks to himself, testing the shape of it.

“What're you smilin' about?” Bucky mumbles sleepily. He's curled up on his bed, looking down at
Steve, the moonlight glowing around his messy dark hair.

“Nothin',” says Steve, suddenly shy. Bucky may be his best friend, but he's not quite sure if it
goes both ways. After all, Steve may not have any other options, but Bucky has a whole
classroom full of boys who always pick him first in games and ask him for help on their times
tables. That's just how Bucky is.

Bucky shifts in bed, sitting up a little more. “No, c'mon, tell me.”

“We're best friends, right?” Steve blurts. He's glad it's dark, because he's blushing bright red.

Bucky doesn't say anything for a moment, and Steve dares to peek up at him. He can just barely
make out the look of surprise on Bucky's face, before Bucky gives him a big, toothy grin.

“Yeah, Rogers,” he says, because his dad calls people by their last names and Bucky thinks it
makes him sound grown up. “'Course we are.”

They smile goofily at each other for a second, then Bucky flops back onto his pillow and says,
“Night,” and Steve's chest always feels too small and tight, like his lungs end right below his
collarbone, but for a split second he feels something inside him loosen.

“Night, Bucky,” he whispers into the dark.

 ***

Steve is sixteen years old and still hasn't gotten anything even remotely approaching a growth
spurt, so he takes to reading Greek mythology. He likes the classic heroes, Hercules and Jason and
Perseus, all stubborn, strong, unafraid to die in the name of anything worth fighting for.

“God, again?” Bucky says from just inside Steve's apartment. He's leaning up against the window
frame, looking way cockier than any teenager has a right to, hands in his pockets. “Your ma let
me in.”

He clambers through the open window onto the fire escape and slides down the hot brick wall
next to Steve. “You ever gonna get tired of those books?”

“They're classics for a reason, Buck,” says Steve for the thousandth time. “They're really good.”

“Not enough pictures,” says Bucky, which is complete crap—Bucky's at the top of their class,
always has been. He leans over Steve's shoulder, eyes skimming the page. “What's this one?”

“The Myth of Icarus.” Steve flips back to the illustration at the beginning of the story. It's a sketch
of Icarus himself, wings melting off his shoulders as he plummets toward the roaring sea. Steve
nudges Bucky's shoulder, smiling at him. “You should read it, it's all about resisting temptation.
We both know you need some practice there.”

Bucky raises an eyebrow and leans into Steve despite the unbearable August heat. “What's the
point of resisting?” He grins when Steve makes a face. “Tell it to me, will ya? I'm so bored, I'll
take anything.”

“It's about a father and son trying to escape a place called Crete,” Steve begins. “The father is this
genius inventor, so he makes 'em both a pair of wings so they can fly away. Only he tells Icarus
he can't fly too close to the sun or the sea, because the wax on the wings'll melt and he'll fall.” He
turns to another illustration of Icarus, soaring with his arms spread, ecstasy on his face. “But see,
Icarus gets too excited, right? An' his dad tells him to calm down and just fly straight, but to Icarus
—,” he breaks off, struggling to find the right words. He's vaguely aware of Bucky watching him,
listening quietly.

“To Icarus,” says Steve, “the sun is such a beautiful thing, he can't even help flying too close,
even if it's dangerous. So the wax on his wings melts, and he falls into the sea and drowns.”

“Talk about a happy ending,” says Bucky, and Steve laughs a bit, but Bucky's got the strangest
look on his face. Rueful, maybe, if there were any word for it.

“That's the Greeks for you,” Steve shrugs. “S'pose we kinda know how Icarus feels, though.”

Bucky glances at him sharply, face still unreadable. “We do?”

“Yeah.” Steve gestures up at the bright sun beating down on their shoulders, trying to encompass
the sweltering heat. “Feels like we're gonna melt.”

“Well, that's easily solved,” says Bucky. “Wanna get ice cream?”

“Sure thing,” says Steve and lets Bucky pull him to his feet, laughing a bit when he stumbles into
Bucky's chest. When he regains his balance, Bucky's just staring at him, looking almost pained.
Steve's smile fades. “What?”

“Nothin',” Bucky mutters, and climbs back through the window without another word.
 ***

“Thought you had him on the ropes,” Steve says tightly, wiping blood off Bucky's brow with a
washcloth, ignoring Bucky's wince.

They're eighteen and Bucky's perched on the side of Steve's bathtub, Steve kneeling in front of
him, and Bucky's face and knuckles are bruised and bloody, and this isn't supposed to happen, it's
not supposed to be like this.

Bucky shrugs one shoulder, trying to hold his face still. “Didn't expect there to be three of 'em.”

“There shouldn't have even been one of them, Buck.” Steve dabs away the last of the blood
around Bucky's new shiner and moves on to his knuckles. He's mad, but he holds Bucky's hands
gently in his own, because he knows from experience how much it stings.

Bucky draws in a quiet breath, and Steve pauses, feeling a twinge of guilt. “I didn't hurt you, did
I?”

“Nah,” Bucky says. He looks away. “I—thanks.”

Steve relaxes a bit. “Just doing my job.” When Bucky still doesn't look at him, he reaches up to
touch Bucky's face, but Bucky flinches away as soon as Steve's fingers brush his skin.

“Hey, look at me,” Steve says softly. “C'mon, you big jerk, I just wanna make sure you're all
right.”

Slowly, jaw working, Bucky meets his gaze. “'M fine, Steve.”

“That's what you get for flirting with too many girls, anyway,” Steve teases, running the
washcloth across Bucky's swollen knuckles. “Turns out some of 'em got boyfriends already.”

Bucky gives him a ridiculous, theatrical wink. “I'm not interested in bein' anybody's boyfriend.”

“Don't tell me,” Steve groans. “I hear enough stories from guys at school. You an' your exploits.”

“Can't help that I'm a handsome guy, Rogers.”

“Humble as anything, too,” says Steve.

Bucky just smirks.

***

The first time Steve really, truly almost dies, it's the heart of winter and he's twenty-one and
walking to Bucky's place, because Steve's ma died a month ago and he doesn't like spending time
in his own apartment anymore. It's too empty but too full of her, all at the same time; Steve sees
his ma at the sink, at the table, smells her soap on the couch.

He thinks he's very lucky to not remember much of his dad.

So it's freezing in Brooklyn, the gutters heaped with dirty snow, the streets choked with people
hurrying home from work. Steve paints signs, because it doesn't require manual labor and he's
good at making the letters look neat. The only bad thing is that today he was sent clear to the other
side of town, and now he's having trouble breathing.

He tries to make his brain cooperate, focusing on a single step at a time. It feels like the cold has
punched right through him. Like it's a clenched fist around his heart, beating ice through his body
punched right through him. Like it's a clenched fist around his heart, beating ice through his body
with every rasping breath.

Steve knows this is bad, probably really bad, but he doesn't realize quite how bad until he tries to
take another step forward and his legs aren't quite working.

He sways on his feet, trying to blink away the familiar encroaching blackness that comes with
passing out, his vision narrowing into a small tunnel. He gasps for breath, lungs aching, but then
he's coughing in shuddering heaves, his throat scraped raw with it, and he tastes blood on his
tongue and thinks, Oh God.

He hears someone call his name and summons every ounce of strength left in his body to look up,
even though he's doubled over and half-conscious at this point. The world is spinning, but Steve
would recognize the shape of Bucky anywhere.

“Bucky—,” he tries to say, but all he can do is cough up blood.

“Steve?” says Bucky, and he sounds kinda scared now. “Hey, Stevie, are you—?” and there's the
sound of footsteps coming closer, quickly, like Bucky's running.

He's gonna slip on the ice and break his neck, Steve thinks hazily, but then he feels himself
collapse sideways into the snow, eyes fluttering shut, and he doesn't know anything that happens
after that.

***

When he blinks awake, the moon is big and round outside Bucky's bedroom window. For a
moment, Steve thinks he's a kid again, sleeping on Bucky's floor.

Then he tries to take a breath and hears the rattle of his own lungs, and he remembers.

“Hullo?” he croaks. There's a rustling at his feet immediately, and then Bucky's hovering over
him, pale as a ghost.

“Hey there, pal,” Bucky says, trying for casual, but Steve can hear the fear in his voice. “How ya
feelin'?”

“Fantastic,” says Steve. “Lemme up, 'm gonna run a mile.”

Bucky lets out a strangled laugh and runs a hand through his limp, unwashed hair. “You fuckin'
scared the hell outta me, you know that? I mean, you've been sick before, but...”

“'S okay,” Steve whispers, reaching out until his fingers brush the back of Bucky's left hand. He
grips Bucky's fingers as tight as he can muster. “I'm okay.”

“Just barely.”

“How long've I been out?”

“Four days, Steve,” says Bucky, his voice breaking on Steve's name—but that can't be right,
because Bucky never cries. “Four days. God, I saw you pass out, you just fell over into the snow,
and for a second I thought—,” he breaks off, shaking his head. “It's been touch and go this whole
time. Doc said he couldn't do much of anything unless the fever broke itself.”

Steve closes his eyes. “Guess I got lucky.”

“More like you're just too stubborn to give up.”

“You sound exhausted, Buck,” Steve murmurs, still not opening his eyes. He feels very heavy,
and Bucky's bed is so soft. “Should get some sleep, don't needa worry 'bout me...”

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky says hoarsely, and then his free hand is ruffling Steve's sweaty hair,
cupping his skull. Steve hums and leans into the touch as much as he can, smiling a tiny bit even
as he slips back into darkness, and Bucky sighs shakily, his breath warm on Steve's face.

Steve falls asleep a moment later, but not before he feels the light press of Bucky's mouth on his
forehead.

***

When Steve wakes up for good, his mind clear and fever broken, Bucky's ma brings him watery
soup and tells him how Bucky refused to leave his side until they knew Steve was gonna make it.

Steve smiles and blushes and knows he'll be thanking Bucky for the next year at least—it's a
miracle Bucky didn't lose his job, claiming sick leave for almost a week, because Steve sure as
hell lost his—but Bucky himself is nowhere to be found.

In fact, it takes another three days of scarcely seeing his best friend for Steve to realize Bucky is
actively avoiding him. He comes in from the docks after sundown, scarfs down his dinner, asks
how Steve is doing, and then curls up on the couch to sleep no matter how many times Steve begs
him to take back his bed. He doesn't sit by Steve's bed and gives him only one word answers
about his day.

Steve feels like a selfish idiot for being so hurt, but he can't help it. So as soon as he's strong
enough to walk on his own again, he sits in the dank, mildewed hallway outside the Barnes'
apartment and waits for Bucky to get home.

He must doze off—as if he hasn't been sleeping constantly for a week now—because he wakes up
to Bucky saying, “Steve?” in the same worried tone he always uses when Steve is on the verge of
an asthma attack or bedridden with flu.

“I'm fine, just waiting for you,” Steve says, and Bucky's face smoothes over. He sighs and lowers
himself onto the hallway floor across from Steve.

“Well, go on,” he says, waving a hand in the air.

Steve frowns at him. “Why are you avoiding me?”

“I'm not,” says Bucky immediately. Steve just fixes him with a hard look, and he squirms, pursing
his lips like he always does, because even Bucky's scowls are kinda pouty. “Fine, all right, stop
givin' me that face. You look like my ma.”

Steve contorts his face even more, imitating Mrs. Barnes's pinched I'm disappointed in you, boys
look, and Bucky huffs, letting his head fall back against the wall.

“I just,” he starts, staring at his knees. “Just. I told you, Stevie, you scared me real bad.”

Of all the things Steve tried to prepare himself for—the biggest being Bucky finally realizing he
didn't need sickly little Steve Rogers dragging him down all the time—this was not one of them.

“I'm sorry?” he tries, nonplussed.

“No, Christ, don't apologize,” says Bucky. “It's—I needed some time to, uh, think about some
stuff. That's all.”
“Think about what stuff?”

Bucky shakes his head and smiles widely at Steve, and there are hints of sadness on his face that
Steve's never seen before. “That, pal—that's a secret.”

He stands up before Steve can protest and pulls Steve to his feet like always, leading him inside
the apartment and shutting the door behind them.

For the rest of the evening, Steve does his absolute best to make Bucky laugh. He feels a strange
desperation for it tugging at his stomach, a fierce desire to erase all traces of that sadness from
Bucky's face. So he jokes about his own cooking, tells “remember when?” stories from when
they were kids, really hamming it up, until Bucky's sagging against the kitchen counter, his
shoulders shaking with silent laughter, and Steve can begin to breathe again.

***

Bucky's ma dies a year later, and they're on their own. They get a tiny, dirty apartment, the
cheapest they can find, and work as much as possible to keep their heads above water.

Whenever they have extra money after rent's due, Bucky gets a date and takes her out for a
hamburger or a night of dancing. He always invites Steve along, but Steve only goes every third
time or so.

Girls don't wanna kiss a scrawny guy like him, not when Bucky's standing right there beside him,
tall and strong and charming, with his glittering eyes and his wild, reckless grin.

Steve doesn't blame them one bit.

***

When they're twenty-five, Steve gets home late from the grocer's to find Bucky slumped over the
kitchen table with a full glass of whiskey in front of him. Judging by the half-empty bottle, it's not
his first glass.

“Jesus, Buck,” Steve says, putting the bottle away and pouring the rest of Bucky's glass down the
drain. Bucky doesn't even look up. “Bucky, what's gotten into you?”

Bucky gestures vaguely at a slip of paper on the table, and Steve's heart sinks. He knows what it is
before he sees the thick black stamp: 1A.

“You got in,” he says, clapping a hand down on Bucky's shoulder. “Hey, that's great. You'll be
fighting the good fight.”

Bucky snorts, all sloppy and drunk. “Right. 'Cause that's where I'm useful.”

Steve pulls up a chair and sits right next to Bucky at the table, their knees touching. “Bucky, come
on. I'm tougher 'n I look, I can handle myself.” He pauses, studying Bucky's profile in the dim
light, his straight nose and the downward tilt of his mouth. “Besides, I'll be over there before you
know it.”

“I'll never understand it,” Bucky says slowly, looking Steve right in the eye. He smells like sweat
and whiskey and the saltiness of the docks, the sea spray that forever clings to his clothes. “How
you wanna go.”

“They need all the help they can get,” Steve says.
“Don't take this the wrong way,” Bucky mumbles, “but I hope to God that you don't ever make it
in.”

Steve recoils, stung, but Bucky reaches out to cup the back of his neck and draw him in, and for
an insane, fleeting moment, Steve actually thinks Bucky is gonna kiss him, but Bucky just presses
their foreheads together, screwing his eyes shut.

“Sorry,” he says quietly. “Sorry, Steve. I'm just kinda fucked in the head tonight, is all.”

“That's okay,” says Steve. “You'll be getting your orders any day now, right? Let's find you a nice
girl to take dancing, how's that sound? Maybe she can even send you love letters.”

Bucky laughs, low and rough, his breath a hot rush against Steve's mouth. He pulls away and
straightens up, his lips still quirked in a smile. “You're somethin' else, Rogers, you know that?”

“Well, considering how you've been sayin' that for ten years now, think I'd have to be an idiot not
to know it,” Steve says. He gets to his feet. “C'mon, jerk, let's get some coffee in you. You're
gonna be miserable tomorrow.”

“What would I ever do without you,” Bucky drawls, and Steve punches him lightly in the arm for
it, but he drinks the coffee all the same.

***

Steve's struggling to stack crates of potatoes the next day when he overhears two women talking
about their neighbor, who just got a condolence letter for her son.

That night, he dreams of condolence letters and Bucky in a coffin. He wakes up gasping, his heart
wrapped in ice, and it takes two hours to fall back asleep.

***

They go on a disastrous (for Steve, not Bucky) double date the night before Bucky ships off, and
Bucky hugs him and calls him a punk, and Steve bites back his fear and jokes around with him,
and then Bucky disappears into the crowd.

See you soon, buddy, Steve thinks as hard as he can, as if he can will it to be true.

***

Agent Peggy Carter is smart and beautiful and tough as hell, and Steve falls a little bit in love with
her the moment he sees her throw a wicked punch.

***

Steve is twenty-five, a foot taller and a hundred and fifty pounds heavier than he was six months
ago, and Bucky is not dead, he cannot be dead, he is not allowed to be dead.

Steve fights his way through Schmidt and Zola's—God, it's a prison, a prison equipped with giant
tanks and guards every two feet and an isolation ward, according to the English soldier with the
mustache—headquarters, and he knows it's impossible for him to get an asthma attack now, but it
still feels like his chest is about to explode.

Colonel Phillips wasn't sure, he keeps reminding himself. James is a common name, Barnes is a
common name. He wasn't sure.
He's debating whether or not to go after Zola, who weirdly reminds him of Porky Pig but is still
goddamn dangerous and currently making an escape, when Steve hears someone talking softly.

“Sergeant...32557...”

Steve's heart leaps into his throat. He knows that voice, he's known that voice his whole life, he
knows every single version of that voice down to his bones.

He unstraps Bucky from the table (Bucky smiles when he says Steve's name, and then he says it
again as if he can't quite believe the truth of it) and helps him stand up. Steve knows that later, he
will realize the full extent of what's clearly been done to Bucky, and maybe later he will fall apart
a little bit, but right now he has to get them the hell out of here.

So he does.

They run as fast as they can off the base, buildings exploding in gigantic blooms of fire behind
them. Bucky's limping heavily, barely upright, and Steve has one arm wrapped around his
shoulders, trying to keep him steady as possible. They head toward the treeline, toward the
darkness and the chilly, welcoming mist.

Steve's had enough heat and flame for one lifetime, after that jump.

As soon as they reach the trees, Bucky says, “Wait, wait.”

“What is it?” Steve asks sharply. He scans Bucky's body, starts to pat him down gently, searching
for any serious wounds he might have missed.

Bucky is breathing hard, covered in grime and sweat and ash, his eyes dazed. Steve has never
been so overwhelmingly grateful to see another person in his entire life.

“No, no, Steve, 'm okay,” Bucky says, batting at Steve's hands. “It's just—,” he leans back, eyes
darting across Steve's face, the height and broadness of him. “God, Stevie, lookit you. Finally got
a body to match your stupid, huh?”

Something wells up in Steve's chest, and he chokes out a laugh. “I'm so damn glad you're alive,
Buck. You got no idea.”

“I probably do a little bit,” says Bucky. He gives Steve a small smile, but it doesn't quite reach his
eyes. “Hey, c'mere, will ya?”

Steve's still got one arm half across Bucky's shoulders, so he just steps in and folds Bucky
completely into his arms. It's strange for a moment—all the other times they've hugged, Steve was
so much smaller—but then Bucky makes a little noise and buries his face in the crook of Steve's
neck, twisting his fingers in the back of the Captain America uniform.

Steve holds Bucky close, right there on the edge of the cold dark woods, deep within enemy lines,
a Hydra base burning to the ground only a few hundred feet away.

For a single moment, everything seems all right.

It doesn't last.

***

“So,” Bucky says one night a few weeks after the start of the Howling Commandos, as he lays out
his bedroll in their tent. “Agent Carter.”
Steve blushes and looks away, trying not to smile. “Yeah, what about her?”

“She's awful pretty,” says Bucky, his voice light and teasing. “An' I get the sense that she doesn't
need anybody stickin' up for her.”

“She's got a mean right hook,” Steve says casually. He settles in on his bedroll and glances over at
Bucky, who's focusing intently on getting every single wrinkle out of his extra undershirt. “There
a reason you're so curious?”

“Do you love her?” Bucky asks. He folds up the undershirt neatly and puts it in his pack.

“I don't know,” Steve answers honestly. He looks up to meet Bucky's gaze, feeling strangely
hesitant, like he's a schoolboy whispering about the prettiest girl in class. “I don't think I know her
well enough yet to love her for real.” He pauses. “But Bucky, I think I could. After all this is over,
you know. I think I could marry her.”

Bucky nods once.

“You like her, right?” Steve asks, suddenly nervous. “You gotta like her, Buck, I can't go after a
dame you can't stand—”

“Relax, Rogers,” Bucky laughs. “Agent Carter's one of a kind. And if you ask her to marry you,
after all this is over, she'd be crazy not to say yes.”

Steve grins at him, feeling lighter than he has in weeks. Bucky blinks a couple times and then
grins back, looking briefly like his old self from before Zola's labs, before the torture that Steve
can't think about without choking on his own rage.

“Just think,” Bucky says, “someday you're gonna be livin' in a little place of your own with Peggy
Rogers, couple of blond kids runnin' around, braggin' to the whole class that their dad's Captain
America...”

“Aw, shut up,” says Steve, still smiling. “'Sides, it's not like you won't be right next door with
your own pretty girl and your own kids.”

“Damn right,” Bucky says. “Anyway, I'm beat. Night, big guy.”

“G'night, James,” Steve replies, because Bucky knows full well that he finds the nickname big
guy to be completely embarrassing. But Bucky just rolls over on his side, facing the wall of the
tent, and doesn't say another word.

***

A week later, they hear intel of a train carrying Zola to Munich.

“Jumping onto a moving train,” says Bucky incredulously. Beside him, Gabe cracks up into his tin
of beans. The Howling Commandos are running high, buoyed by a dozen successful missions.

“Looks like it,” says Steve.

Bucky shakes his head. “You're gonna be the death of me, Rogers.”

***

Steve is twenty-five, and right now he knows he will not live to see twenty-six.
He tips the plane straight down, nosediving toward the freezing ocean, Peggy's voice in his ear.

The impact throws him into a wall. Water rushes into the pilot's cabin, and he goes under.

His second to last thought is that he's glad this is happening so quick, because he is so selfish, and
he doesn't want another moment to mourn the life he could have had. The life they could have
had.

His very last thought is of dark hair and a mean right hook, and he knows that it's wrong, but the
person he's thinking of as he sinks down, down, down doesn't wear red lipstick.

***

after

***

When the Winter Soldier's mask falls to the concrete and he reveals his face, Steve thinks he has
never done anything good enough to deserve this.

When the Winter Soldier asks, “Who the hell is Bucky?”, Steve thinks he's definitely done enough
terrible things.

***

It's 2013, and Steve is both twenty-six and ninety-five years old, and here is Bucky standing right
across from him in the Helicarrier, Bucky, who laid out the couch cushions for him when they
were nine and chased away the biggest bully in school when they were eleven and shared stolen
moonshine with him when they were fourteen and fought off Jack McGinnis when they were
fifteen and told Steve all about getting up Patty Akers's shirt when they were sixteen and cleaned
the blood off Steve's knees and black eye when they were eighteen, so goddamn gentle, and went
to Steve's ma's funeral and offered him a place to stay after and always told Steve to go to art
school and got him drunk, laughed at his jokes, patched up his bruises, fought off countless
bullies, slept next to him in the dark in Brooklyn and in a dozen camps all through Europe, let
Steve sleep in his bed when he was sick, stayed home from work until he was better, hugged him
and patted his face and slung one arm across his shoulders and grinned at Steve a thousand times
in a thousand different ways, held Steve in that misty forest in Italy like there was nothing else
worth holding onto, and Steve cannot fight Bucky. He'd rather die.

He lets his shield drop into the Potomac River, and he lets himself fall down right after it.

Steve thinks it's kind of fitting. Seems like he was always meant to drown.

***

He truly didn't expect to ever wake up, but like so many other times, he does.

“On your left,” he rasps, Marvin Gaye playing in the background. Sam looks at him and smiles.

***

They search for Bucky for three months, chasing dead end after dead end all over Eastern Europe.
Steve calls Natasha every now and then, and she picks up about every third time, but he gets the
idea that she's okay—just figuring out who to be next.

The first week, Steve reads the Winter Soldier's file cover to cover and tries not to be sick. He
punches a hole clean through the wall of an abandoned building instead, which is when Sam
walks up, two coffees in hand.

“Glad we're working through things the healthy way,” he comments.

Steve shrugs. “I picked an inanimate object.”

“Oh, my bad. You're a pillar of emotional stability,” Sam says, then passes him one of the coffees
and hops into the car. Bucky was apparently sighted recently in the outskirts of Volgograd, so
that's where they're headed.

No matter how long he lives, Steve knows he'll never stop owing Sam.

He thanks Sam profusely every day, until Sam tells him to quit with the Bambi eyes or he'll kick
Captain America right in the chiseled asscheeks of freedom.

Steve shuts up, and they drive to Volgograd.

They find nothing.

***

So three months pass, and since it's clear that they won't be able to find Bucky unless he wants to
be found, they head back Stateside. Steve offers to drop Sam off at his house, but Sam says flat
out that he's not leaving Steve alone the first couple nights, because Steve has been known to
display Bucky-adjacent suicidal tendencies.

Steve protests for about ten seconds before realizing there's no way in hell that Sam is gonna back
down, so he just sighs and they head up to Steve's (new, since the Fury incident) apartment
together.

Steve unlocks the door, steps inside the apartment, and stops dead. Sam, who was texting
someone (probably Natasha) all the way up the stairs, walks right into his back.

“Thank you for the warning,” Sam says. “My hobby is walking into brick walls.” He frowns
when Steve doesn't reply. “What?”

Unable to make his voice work, Steve just shifts aside so Sam can see for himself.

Bucky is sitting at the kitchen table, his hands folded in front of him. Steve can just make out the
glint of metal fingers.

“Bucky?” he says tentatively, trying to swallow down the swell of bright, sharp hope. He only
barely registers Sam's muttered, “Are you serious? Three months, dude,” from behind him.

Bucky doesn't move, doesn't look at him. It's dark, the only light in the kitchen filtering in from the
streetlamps outside, but Steve can tell he's exhausted from the hunch of his back. He's unshaven,
his long hair hanging in dirty clumps around his face.

“I'm not him. I'm not Bucky.”

Steve takes a small step forward. “Then who are you?”

“I don't know,” Bucky says, and Steve's heart breaks a little.

“That's okay,” he says. “Hey, it's all right. We'll figure it out.”
“Steve,” Sam says quietly from behind him, “I know you're having a moment, but I'd just like to
remind you that he did in fact try to kill you. That happened.”

“He's not gonna hurt me,” Steve says, and he ignores Sam's disbelieving noise, slowly
approaching Bucky until they're close enough that Steve could reach out and touch him. Bucky
still doesn't move.

Steve turns back toward Sam, and something on his face must mean something, because Sam
says, “Oh,” and then, “Oh,” and then, “Jesus, you coulda told me it was like that.”

Steve isn't quite sure what he's talking about—Sam definitely knows about his history with Bucky
and how much Bucky means to him, it shouldn't be a surprise at all—but it doesn't matter.
Because Bucky looks dead tired and kind of like he's been living on the streets for weeks now, but
he's alive and solid and sitting at Steve's kitchen table like he used to a lifetime ago, his metal arm
hidden under a ratty black hoodie, and Steve feels something slot together in his chest.

He reaches out to put his hand on Bucky's flesh and blood shoulder, moving so slowly, like he
would with a frightened animal. Bucky twitches a bit under the touch but doesn't push him away.

“You're safe here,” Steve tells him firmly, and goes to set up the couch.

“You're totally giving him the extra bed, aren't you.” Sam sighs. “I see how it is.”

But he's holding back a smile when he says it.

***

The first two nights, Bucky doesn't sleep at all. Steve hears him rustling around the apartment at
four a.m., but he takes it as a good sign—he knows Bucky could easily be completely silent about
it, could slip away in the night and Steve wouldn't have any idea until morning. The fact that he's
making human noises, that he probably knows Steve and Sam are listening to his every move, is
good. It's good.

Bucky shuts himself in his room all day, refusing to interact with them.

Sam says it's a miracle he's not catatonic, so get yourself together, Rogers, and let him figure his
shit out. If he leaves, he leaves.

***

The third night, Bucky sleeps for two hours and wakes up with a raw, choking noise that Steve
hears through the wall between their rooms.

He sends Natasha a text that says: Hi, hope you're doing well. Send me a postcard from wherever
you are. Also, Bucky is currently in my guest room.

is sam with you? she sends back a couple seconds later, along with a picture of herself raising one
eyebrow at the camera, lips quirked in a half-smile, sunlight in her eyes. Steve tries to convert the
time zones in his head. She must be somewhere in Europe.

Yes, he sends. Don't worry, I'm not completely helpless.

His phone buzzes a minute later, startling him a bit—he's focusing all his attention on Bucky's
room, straining to hear any concerning noises.

Natasha's text says, that's debatable, but she accompanies it with a smiley face.
Steve spends a ridiculous amount of time selecting the exact right emoji. He ends up picking the
one with a straight line for a mouth, because it looks suitably unamused, and nobody can ever say
Steve Rogers hasn't got the hang of texting.

He falls asleep with his phone on the pillow, his whole body pressed up against the wall. It is the
strangest thing to know Bucky is right there on the other side, just feet away, and Steve knows
exactly how to calm him down after a nightmare (a skill they both learned after their mothers
died), but Sam says he shouldn't go near Bucky at night. He's too unstable, it's too dangerous.

I'm sorry, Bucky, Steve thinks desperately, right before he slips back into sleep. The words feel
hollow in his head.

I am so fucking sorry.

***

A week later, Sam is at the stove making scrambled eggs while Steve pours them two cups of
coffee. Early morning sunlight falls across the linoleum, warm and clear.

When Steve looks up, he almost drops his favorite mug.

Bucky's standing there in the kitchen doorway, expression guarded, muscles coiled tight as a
spring. He still hasn't shaved or washed his hair, but he's wearing sweatpants and a S.H.I.E.L.D.
T-shirt that are very clearly stolen from Steve's closet, which is a big step up from the bloody,
broken body armor and the ripped-up black hoodie he showed up in.

Steve waits. Sam gets a third plate out of the cabinet.

Bucky looks up and says, “Steve?”

His voice is rusty from disuse, and he looks wary as all hell, but it's still the best thing Steve's ever
heard.

“Yeah, Bucky,” Steve says, and this time Bucky doesn't correct him. “It's me. You hungry?”

Bucky nods.

***

Bucky outright refuses to see the team of ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. psychiatrists (even though they've all
been vetted a second time by Fury since the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D.), partly because he has absolutely
no trust in any major organizations and partly because he just seems to enjoy exercising his right to
say no as often as possible.

Among the other things Bucky refuses: cutting his hair (he does shave, but only on his own
terms), wearing the “#1 Fan of Iron Man” shirt sent to him courtesy of Tony Stark, eating
anything with tomatoes in it (Steve suspects that one is completely arbitrary, because Bucky never
had any problem with tomatoes), going running with Steve and Sam (he works out alone, in his
room, for hours), and putting maple syrup on his pancakes.

He talks reluctantly to a therapist that Sam finds for him and sleeps about three hours a night. He
wakes up screaming or vomiting sometimes, and Steve learns to reach for his shield—recovered
from the Potomac by Fury—whenever his bedroom door opens past midnight, because he wakes
up with Bucky's metal hand wrapped around his throat more than once.

But Bucky never gets very far before his eyes widen, snapping out of a daze, and he throws
himself off Steve's bed in horror. He always avoids Steve the next day, mouth tight with shame
and self-hatred. But he never leaves.

Steve is unimaginably grateful for every single second Bucky stays. Every single slow, aching,
painful second, every single day Bucky shuts himself in his room, every single night neither of
them sleep at all, every single time the Winter Soldier surfaces and spits at him in Russian.

Steve knows how sick it is. Whenever he thinks about the years between them, the decades of
torture and brainwashing locked inside Bucky's skull, the things Bucky was forced to do, he
wants to destroy every last Hydra agent with his bare hands.

He will never forget what he read in Bucky's file, and he will never forgive anyone who played
even the smallest part in it.

But God, he has Bucky again, more and more of him with each passing day. And he can't even
imagine how excruciating this is for Bucky. He knows how it would be so much easier if Bucky
just left, stopped trying to remember, sank back into the numbness of the Winter Soldier forever.

It's sick, it's selfish, and he's going to Hell for it, but Steve is so glad he chooses not to.

***

They move into Stark Tower, because of the added security plus the proximity to the rest of the
Avengers—turns out if you fight aliens with Tony Stark one time, he builds you an entire
customized floor in his massive skyscraper.

When Steve brings this up to Pepper, she sighs and says, “We're working on it. For now, Cap, just
take it as a compliment.”

So he does.

***

Steve is twenty-six and it's 2014 and things are strangely, improbably okay.

Nobody's tried to take over the world for a while now, and Bucky's therapy is going almost well,
most days. He doesn't get furious or pained when he remembers things anymore—he just closes
his eyes, letting the memories wash over him.

Sometimes he tells Steve about them, when it's a memory of Brooklyn or the war, a story from
when they were kids or fighting side by side. Most times he doesn't, because most times Bucky
remembers the face of a target, the smell of smoke and blood, dark corners and rooftops in cities
scattered across the entire world.

Steve takes it as it comes. They both do.

Tony offers to build Sam his own floor in Stark Tower too, because they bond over their mutual
love of antagonizing Steve about thirty seconds after they're introduced. Sam turns down the offer,
informing Tony that he may not be going back to D.C. anytime soon but he's just fine staying in a
normal apartment like a normal person.

Tony says, “Fine, your choice. I already used up all my bird-themed décor on Hawkeye,
anyway.”

Sam rolls his eyes. Tony programs him into JARVIS's security system anyway, so he can visit
whenever he wants.
Steve is beginning to get the idea that Tony was very lonely for a very, very long time.

He and Bucky dump their boxes and bags in the living room—there are so few personal
belongings between them that it took all of one trip—and try to settle into their new home. Steve
flops onto the couch with his sketchbook and a cup of coffee. Bucky heads straight for his new
bedroom, shutting the door gently behind him without a word.

Steve draws a rickety fire escape at night, shining beneath a big round moon, and forces himself
not to draw Bucky sitting on it.

***

One night, a couple weeks after they move in, Steve is lying wide awake at two a.m. when he
hears a knock at his bedroom door. He knows it's Bucky, and he knows from the sound of metal
on wood that Bucky knocked with his left hand, which seems somehow important. Steve pads
over to the door in bare feet and opens it.

“Hi,” Bucky mumbles, staring at the floor. He's wearing pajama pants and one of Steve's T-shirts,
his hair pulled back in a ponytail, and he looks oddly young and small in the darkness. “Can I
come in? I promise not to strangle you.”

“Of course,” Steve says, and steps aside to let him in.

Bucky sits on the edge of Steve's bed. “Couldn't sleep.”

“Me neither.” Steve hovers awkwardly at the foot of the bed. He's never sure how much space to
give Bucky these days.

“You glow,” says Bucky softly.

Steve racks his brain for any sort of context and finds nothing. “What?”

“Every memory he has of you, from before,” Bucky says. He refers to both Bucky Barnes and the
Winter Soldier in third person sometimes, which Sam says is to be expected. “Every last one, you
glow.”

“I—I'm not sure what you mean,” Steve says.

Bucky makes a frustrated noise, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, a black shadow in
the dark. “You're in every single one of his memories, you know,” he murmurs. “Since he was old
enough to be makin' em, you were in 'em. Even when you weren't around, even when he got
shipped off, he was thinkin' about you. Went kinda crazy with worry sometimes.”

“You always worried about me too much, Buck,” Steve says.

“And every time,” Bucky continues as if Steve said nothing, “you got this—this light comin' outta
you, shining outta your skin like somebody pointed the world's biggest spotlight on you. That's
how he remembers you, all gold an' smiling at him. Every time.” He looks up at Steve. “I got so
much of you in my head, glowin' like the fuckin' sun.”

Steve has no idea how to respond.

“Never thought he deserved you,” Bucky says. “Even when you were kids, he knew you were
somethin' special.”

“I'm not special,” Steve manages through the ache in his throat.
“Well, he sure thought you were. Only reason you're alive.”

Steve isn't sure whether Bucky's referring to pulling him out of the Potomac or the countless times
he saved Steve's life before and during the war, but it doesn't really matter in the end. The result
never changes.

He crosses to kneel in front of Bucky, hands bracketing Bucky's thighs. Steve lets his head drop
onto Bucky's knee and breathes deeply, filling his lungs with the smell of him, laundry detergent
and shampoo and the salt of his skin. He remembers sitting in this exact position so many times in
church, his bony knees bruising from the hard floor.

Steve looks up into Bucky's face, the darkness enveloping them like a blanket. Something is
welling up inside him, spreading through his ribs, a certain kind of growing warmth he can't quite
identify.

Bucky cautiously reaches out his right hand and cards his fingers through Steve's hair. Steve
closes his eyes, nudging into the touch, and Bucky lets out a shaky breath.

“C'mon,” Steve says after a few long moments of silence. “Let's go to bed.”

They climb beneath the sheets of Steve's bed, and Steve hesitates for a moment before curling
around Bucky, face to face, just like they used to whenever their apartment got too cold in winter.
Except now Bucky is the smaller one.

He presses their foreheads together, his arm across Bucky's waist, and drifts to sleep.

***

Steve wakes up to an empty bed. But when he heads into the kitchen, Sam and Natasha are
making pancakes while Bucky fries bacon, and Bucky gives him an actual smile and says, “Hey,
big guy, took you long enough.”

“Don't call me that,” Steve says reflexively, blushing a bit. “Hi, Natasha.”

“I brought you a postcard from Odessa,” she says. “It's on the counter.”

He picks it up. The front is a photo of a huge flight of stone steps labeled Potemkin Stairs. On the
back, in Natasha's looping handwriting, it reads: Hey fellas, hope you're having fun without me.
See you soon. N.

“Thanks,” Steve says, oddly touched. She nods, looking pleased, and expertly flips a pancake.

The four of them eat breakfast crowded around Steve's kitchen table, passing around the syrup
and the the orange juice and the coffee, and Sam rolls up his bacon in his pancake like a burrito
and promptly sparks a small pancake burrito revolution. Then Natasha mutters something under
her breath in Russian, Bucky snorts into his coffee, and all in all, it's one of the best mornings
Steve's ever had.

***

Bucky meets the rest of the Avengers one at a time over the course of a couple months, each
introduction arranged and presided over by Agent Coulson.

From what Steve can tell, Bucky likes Clint the best after Natasha, because they seem to have a lot
in common. He finds Dr. Banner calming, Thor confusing, and when he gets to know Tony more,
he finds him equally infuriating and hilarious. Much like everyone else.
he finds him equally infuriating and hilarious. Much like everyone else.

Bucky has inside jokes with Nat in seven different languages, talks shop with Clint, hangs out on
Dr. Banner's floor when he gets anxious or angry or sad. He shamelessly provokes Tony and
teaches Thor how to make mac 'n' cheese, because it turns out Bucky really likes Kraft mac 'n'
cheese.

He still wakes up screaming sometimes, but it happens much less often, and never when he sleeps
in Steve's bed. Which happens about three or four times per week.

The bed is always empty when Steve wakes up. It bothers him for reasons he can't explain.

***

Steve opens his eyes one night to the sound of glass clinking in the kitchen. He rolls out of bed
and heads down the hallway, frowning.

He finds Bucky slumped on the couch, a bottle of vodka (authentic Russian brand, the label in
Cyrillic, God knows where he got it) sitting before him on the coffee table. Bucky's holding a
half-empty glass in his metal hand, and Steve gets a sudden flash of a similar scene, decades
before, when Bucky first got accepted to the army.

“Hey there, Buck,” he says and sits next to Bucky on the couch, careful not to jostle him so the
vodka doesn't spill. He leans against the armrest, shoves his toes under Bucky's leg. “Whatcha
doin'?”

“Had a nightmare,” Bucky croaks.

“You wanna talk about it?”

“Dreamed I didn't shoot you in the gut,” he says shortly, taking a swallow of vodka and wincing
at the burn. He reaches out and taps Steve on the forehead with his human fingers, right between
the eyes. “Got ya right there.”

“Wasn't real.”

“Could've been.”

“You saved my life,” Steve reminds him, watching Bucky closely. “You didn't know what was
happening, who I was. And I was your mission, your kill order, but you saved my life.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, “right after I shot you three times and beat you half to death.”

“Shit happens,” says Steve, and is rewarded with Bucky's sharp, startled laugh.

They're quiet for a moment, and then Bucky says, “We sure got our share of shit, huh?”

Steve nods. “That we did. Turned out pretty all right, though. Most days.”

“Some days,” Bucky corrects him. Steve just shrugs. To him, the fact that Bucky's alive at all in
this century is a goddamn miracle.

“Tell me a story,” says Bucky. He means tell me a memory of us.

So Steve talks. He starts at the beginning, the first things he can remember from the schoolyard,
and jumps around after that whenever he thinks of something interesting. He tells Bucky about
Jack McGinnis and Patty Akers, about Bucky's dad the soldier and Steve's ma who worked two
jobs, about the couch cushions and Coney Island and seeing Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in
the movie theater together three times because Steve was so enraptured by the art, about fighting
bullies and chasing after girls.

“Wasn't just girls,” Bucky interrupts him around three a.m., when Steve's voice is hoarse and he's
halfway through a story about their first failure of a double date.

“What?”

Bucky picks at a loose thread on the couch, not meeting Steve's eyes. “I remember. It wasn't just
girls. There were fellas, too.”

“You...,” Steve trails off, trying to think of any way Bucky couldn't mean that how it sounds.
“You...with men?”

“Yup.” Bucky laughs humorlessly, and Steve hates the emptiness of it. “Lotta guys like that down
by the docks, waiting in the dark. Easiest thing in the world to find 'em, take 'em into an alleyway
or an old building for a quick—well, you know.”

Steve opens his mouth and shuts it again.

“What,” says Bucky, his tone bitter, almost self-deprecating, even though he's clearly trying to
sound casual. “Don't tell me Captain America's got somethin' against queers.”

“No, God, of course not,” Steve says in a rush. “No, I mean—I never had a problem with that, not
back then and definitely not now. People should—nobody should ever have to hide who they
love.” He fumbles awkwardly for the right words, staring down at his folded knees. “I just never
knew you were, that's all. Thought you only went for dames.”

When he glances up again, Bucky looks stricken, gaping at him like Steve just punched him in the
stomach.

His heart sinks, and he feels like he somehow reacted in the worst way possible. “What, Bucky,
what did I say wrong?”

“Nothing,” Bucky groans, hiding his face in his hands. “Jesus, Rogers. I'm going to bed.”

“Okay,” Steve says cautiously as Bucky stands up, puts the vodka back in the freezer. A thought
occurs. “You know it's legal now, right, Buck? Some people still get angry about it, but hell, we're
in New York City—I see guys walking down the street all the time, holding hands and kissing
and stuff. Girls, too. Nobody bats an eye.” He gives Bucky a small smile. “There's nothing to be
afraid of anymore.”

Bucky stares at him for a long time, holding very still. Then he says, “Goodnight, Steve,” and
slips into his own bedroom, leaving Steve alone in the dark.

***

Steve walks into the kitchen the next morning to see Bucky leaning against the counter, spinning a
pair of scissors in his hands.

“Don't give me that look, Rogers,” he says, when Steve stops short in the doorway. “If I were
gonna kill either of us, I wouldn't use scissors.”

“That's not funny,” says Steve. He pours himself a bowl of Cheerios, sitting at the counter next to
Bucky. “What are you doin' with those, anyway?”
Bucky gives him a sidelong glance, smirking a bit, so familiar that Steve's heart twinges. “Well, I
thought maybe today I'd let you cut my hair.”

“I like it long,” Steve says without thinking. “It suits you.”

“Thanks, pal,” says Bucky. “But it keeps getting in my face, and Nat buys me all these ponytail
holders but I always lose 'em in a day.” He grins at Steve, sudden and bright. “'Sides, I know you
like it better short.”

“All right,” Steve says around a mouthful of Cheerios. “Sure you don't wanna go to a barber,
though? Can't promise I'll be any good at cutting hair.”

Bucky's face twists. “I don't wanna sit in a barber's chair.”

Steve realizes his mistake immediately and wants to kick himself. Of course Bucky wouldn't want
to see a barber. Steve and Sam saw the contraptions they used for brainwashing the Winter Soldier
during their trek around Eastern Europe, saw the leather chairs stained dark with piss, the shiny
metal instruments designed to trap a skull in place.

He sees a barbershop through Bucky's eyes—leaning back in another leather chair, exposing his
neck to a stranger with sharp tools...

“No problem,” he says gently, standing up to put his bowl in the sink. “I'll cut your hair for you.”

“Thanks, Stevie,” Bucky mumbles and heads to the bathroom. Steve just stands stock still in the
middle of the kitchen, eyes wide.

Of all the things Bucky calls him—Steve, Rogers, big guy, pal, buddy—he's never called him
Stevie in this century. Steve hasn't heard that nickname since 1943.

He swallows, blinking hard, and follows Bucky to the bathroom.

Bucky sits down on the toilet lid, facing the mirror, while Steve stands over him with the scissors.
He starts off by just cutting off Bucky's ponytail in one snip, letting it drop to the floor like a dead
thing. Then he works more carefully, picturing Bucky's hair the way it used to be. He's drawn it
enough, seen it from every angle a thousand times over the years, to remember it exactly: cropped
short and close on the sides, a bit longer on the top, enough to fall across Bucky's forehead
whenever he didn't slick it back.

Always parted on the left, Steve tells himself, running a comb across Bucky's head. The bathroom
tiles are dusted with dark hair, sticking to the bottoms of Steve's bare feet. He's not even sure he
owns a broom, but maybe JARVIS can help him find one.

Bucky looks calmer than he basically ever does, anyway. He doesn't talk at all the whole time, just
watches Steve solemnly in the mirror.

“There,” Steve says, and his voice comes out softer than he meant it to. He ruffles a hand through
Bucky's newly short hair. “How's that?”

“Good,” Bucky says. He stands up, and they're suddenly very close together, chests only a couple
inches apart. Steve's hand is still in Bucky's hair, cupping the back of his head, Bucky's face tilted
up with it.

“Good,” Steve echoes. He watches Bucky swallow, the movement of his throat, strangely unable
to look away. He feels a blush rising in his cheeks and bites his lip, unsure of what to say. Bucky's
eyes flick down to his mouth, then up again.
“You're better at this than you thought,” Bucky says quietly, and Steve blinks and drops his hand
away from Bucky's hair.

“Think I'm ready to go pro?” he jokes lamely.

“I dunno,” says Bucky. “Maybe practice on Natasha, that's how you'd find out.”

“God no,” Steve says with mock horror. “One wrong move with the scissors and I'd be a dead
man.”

“Please, she's got a total soft spot for you.”

Steve huffs a laugh, smiling warmly down at Bucky, and they're standing so close that he can hear
Bucky's breath catch in his throat. He frowns.

“Ah, Christ,” Bucky says, before Steve can say anything, and shakes his head a bit. “Hey, I
should probably go—Coulson told me to call him, apparently Fury wants somethin'.”

“Yeah, okay,” says Steve. Bucky ducks past him, and it takes a couple seconds for Steve to
realize that Bucky totally just ditched cleanup duty.

He sighs. “Hey, JARVIS?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Anyone in this place got a broom?”

***

Coulson does his absolute best to prevent Steve from finding out that Fury gave Bucky a solo
mission. He does not succeed.

“What the hell were you thinking,” Steve growls into the phone. “Sending him after a Hydra cell,
what could that possibly accomplish, other than maybe triggering him and undoing everything he's
been working on for months now—”

“I'm gonna ask you to calm down,” says Fury, sounding bored.

“And I'm gonna ask you again,” Steve snaps. He's pacing around his living room, ignoring
Natasha and Sam where they're sitting on the couch. “What the hell, Fury?”

“Barnes accepted the mission,” Fury says. “He knew the risks. He said yes. Not sure I understand
how it's any of your business past that, Captain.”

“It's my business because it's Bucky.” Steve pauses, taking a deep breath. “Why a Hydra cell? It
could be a trap, they could capture him again—”

Fury sighs, a rattle of static in Steve's ear. “It's not a trap. It's the last remaining Hydra cell. I've
taken care of all the rest, which is why you may have noticed nobody's come after Barnes. You're
welcome.”

“Thanks,” Steve says sarcastically, even though he actually does kinda mean it. “So why not take
care of this one, too?”

“Because I don't trust Barnes,” Fury says bluntly. “And I know you and Stark have been talking
about letting him join the team.”
Steve's silence confirms his guilt.

“That's what I thought,” says Fury. “So here's my reasoning: Barnes takes out the cell without
suffering a mental break, maybe he doesn't have a psychological trigger buried somewhere in his
head that could end up killing us all.” His voice turns low, deceptively calm. “Is that all right with
you, Captain?”

“What's your plan for if he does have a mental break?” Steve demands.

“Extraction team is equipped with tranqs,” says Fury. “We're not gonna execute him.”

Steve doesn't respond.

“Coulson will contact you when he's out,” Fury says after a moment. “Feel free to mother hen all
you want in the meantime.”

The line goes dead. Steve glares at his phone.

“So that sounds like it went well,” says Sam. “Can we watch the movie now?”

“They won't give me anything,” Steve says tightly. “I can't—I can't go after him, I can't back him
up.”

Sam looks at him, in that careful I'm not judging you, even though you definitely deserve judgment
right now way. “Maybe that's a good thing. Barnes can make his own decisions.”

“He's on his own,” Steve says. “He shouldn't be on his own, I should be there—”

“Steve,” says Sam, “Barnes. Can make. His own decisions. Just like you and me and everyone
else. If you can't give him that, maybe you should back off until you can.”

Steve stands there for a long moment, fists clenching and unclenching, then flops down on the
couch next to Sam. “Sorry, I'm just—kinda concerned.”

Sam snorts. “Kinda concerned. God, I hope you're never around when Barnes breaks a nail.”

“He's gonna be fine, Steve,” adds Natasha, grabbing a handful of popcorn from the bowl in Sam's
lap. “It'll suck, but he'll be okay. It might even be kinda therapeutic for him.”

“Plus, the guy desperately needs to get away from your sad mama bear eyes for a while,” adds
Sam. “Kicking Hydra butt sounds like the way to go.”

“I am not his mother,” Steve says in a strangled voice, because between Fury and Sam it's just
getting ridiculous.

Sam blinks at him. “Seriously? That's what you got from that?”

“Well, I'm not.”

“All right, man, you're not the mama bear,” says Sam, holding up his hands in surrender. “Can we
watch Anastasia before I'm Steve's age?”

“Anastasia?” Steve asks.

Natasha nods. “It's historically inaccurate, but very cute.”

And Steve hates waiting, hates not knowing where Bucky is or if he's okay, but if he has to just sit
there and be useless, he figures he might as well be useless with Sam and Nat.

***

They're halfway through Mulan when Steve hears the elevator ding, and he's on his feet in a
fraction of a second, rushing toward the door. It slides open and in stumbles Bucky, looking
exhausted and maybe limping a bit, but stunningly whole and alive.

“Hey there, Stevie,” he says, giving Steve a tired smile. “Don't tell me you waited up.”

It's the exact same thing he used to say whenever he got in late from the docks, and they both
know it. Steve scans Bucky's body—there's a bit of blood glistening slickly on his standard issue
uniform, but it doesn't seem to be his—and tries to keep the breathless relief off his face.

“Next time, give me a head's up before you storm Hydra on your own, okay?” he says weakly,
beckoning Bucky into the living room. Sam and Natasha scoot over to make room on the couch.

“Sorry about that,” says Bucky. “Top secret, you know the drill.”

“How'd it go?” asks Natasha.

“Well, there used to be a Hydra base outside Richmond,” Bucky says, and gives them a nasty,
sharp-edged smile. “Not anymore.”

Sam holds out his fist, and Bucky bumps his metal knuckles against it gently. He glances at the
TV. “What're we watching?”

“Mulan,” answers Steve. “Buck, did you know there's, like, fifty Disney movies?”

“Sounds like a challenge to me,” says Bucky. Natasha unpauses the movie, and Bucky curls into
Steve's side, resting his head on Steve's shoulder. He's clearly more tired than he let on, probably a
lot more upset too, but Steve doesn't force the issue. Instead, he wraps one arm around Bucky's
shoulders and arranges it so they're pressed together more comfortably, taking up most of the
couch. (Not that Sam and Natasha seem to mind.)

Steve starts dozing off as Shang and the others ditch Mulan in the snowy mountains, armed with
nothing but her horse and the hyperactive little dragon. Bucky's hair is tickling his jaw, and to be
honest Bucky kind of reeks—sweat, blood, something weird and swampy that Steve doesn't want
to think about too much—but he's always loved having Bucky in his arms, all warm and solid,
because it means that Bucky is safe and right there with Steve, which is how it should always be.

It hits him like a ton of goddamn bricks.

He actually sucks in a breath, eyes flying open, and Bucky makes a small, displeased noise against
his collarbone. Steve tightens his hold on him absently, trying to hide the fact that he is, as Darcy
Lewis would say, freaking the fuck out.

Because in one moment, Steve realizes he loves Bucky. He loves Bucky, every single ridiculous
thing about him, all the way down to his core. Loves him so much that it aches hot and sharp and
constant, like a burning star lodged between Steve's lungs.

He swallows hard, trying to focus on the movie, but all he can think about is how suddenly an
entire lifetime of moments are making a horrible sort of sense. Snippets of memory flash behind
his eyes: Bucky laughing with his head thrown back, Bucky whispering quietly in the dark,
pulling Steve into his chest, into his arms, when Steve was still tiny and bony and shivering in the
cold, the perpetual warmth of him, the smell of Pomade in his hair whenever he styled it for a date,
the curve of his jaw and cheekbones, the brightness of his blue-gray eyes.

Jesus Christ, Rogers, Steve thinks, and resolutely ignores how his inner voice sounds a hell of a
lot like Bucky.

He barely pays attention to the rest of Mulan, startling a bit when Bucky suddenly yawns loudly
over the credits music and says, “God, I need a shower.”

“Yeah, you stink, dude,” Sam says. “We were all being polite about it.”

Bucky flips him off and gets to his feet, stretching. Steve stares at the coffee table, jaw clenched.

“Well, night,” Bucky says, and heads back to his bedroom. Natasha leans over to turn on a lamp,
and Steve squints in the sudden light, painfully aware that his face is probably bright red.

“Whoa,” says Sam, peering at him. “You okay?”

Steve nods too quickly, blushing even harder. He gets to his feet and brings the empty popcorn
bowl into the kitchen, not quite trusting himself to talk.

“Whoomp, there it is,” he hears Sam whisper to Natasha. “Only took him eighty years.”

Judging by the pained yelp that comes a couple seconds later, Natasha elbows Sam in the ribs.

Steve escapes to his own bedroom and doesn't sleep at all.

***

It's almost 2014, and Steve is both twenty-six and ninety-five years old, and every single stubborn
piece of him loves Bucky Barnes.

It doesn't change anything.

***

Of course, just a couple weeks later, Fury gets wind of another massive, population-threatening
attack. Never a dull moment.

The latest battle for New York is against this kind of slime monster alien army—nobody has no
idea what they're called, and they literally look like something out of an old science fiction
magazine, all green and dripping with acidic ooze, their flesh stretched out and rotting.

Honestly, none of the Avengers take it very seriously, because the slime aliens are extremely
flammable. Like, it takes just one of Iron Man's missiles or Clint's flaming arrows to take down a
whole line of them, and they make sort of funny noises when they explode. Natasha does the best
impressions by far.

So Steve's sprinting down Fifth Avenue in the November chill, doing his level best to stop the
slime aliens from destroying the Armani store, while Tony and Rhodey bicker over the comms
about who's got the highest explosion count. Sam is soaring somewhere above Steve's head,
taking out the aliens from above with Clint and Bucky.

Yes, Bucky. Steve is both overwhelmingly glad to have Bucky watching his six again and
worried as always. But it's the same way he used to worry back in the war, when Bucky was the
best sniper in the army and therefore an enemy target, and not how Steve worried when Bucky
first escaped from Hydra.

He skids around an overturned taxi, thinking about how much it's gonna suck to scrape all the
green goo off his shield later, just in time to see Bucky take a flying leap off the roof of the glass
Apple store and unload a clip into an alien's bloated side.

Bucky lands hard and meets Steve's eyes, half grossed out, half lit up with adrenaline. “Aliens,
Steve, aliens!”

“Welcome to my life,” says Steve, and hurls his shield to slice clean through another alien's neck-
ish area. (It's a little hard to tell—they're mostly just blobs.)

They fight side by side, whirling and ducking around each other, almost like a strange, violent
dance. Bucky fights like the Winter Soldier, all raw, brute force, his metal arm glinting in the pale
winter sunlight. Steve plants his feet and waits for the aliens to come toward him, sinking his fists
and shield into their oozing flesh. He doesn't know how long he and Bucky fight like that, time
slipping away like it always does in a battle, but finally the stream of aliens begins to slow.

“How's everyone doing?” Steve grunts into his comm, breathing hard. He gets five versions of
“Gross but fine,” and Thor adds, “Banner is unable to speak for himself, but he is an unstoppable
force, Captain!”

“Thanks,” says Steve, and Tony says, “We should totally make a tradition out of victory
shawarma,” and Rhodey says, “It's hilarious how you keep insisting you're not a nostalgic
person,” and then everything happens very fast.

Steve turns around to ask Bucky how he feels about shawarma, and another alien appears out of
nowhere. It doesn't look like the others—it's not a blob, it's shaped more like a giant scorpion, all
shiny-hard and segmented with a wicked sharp tail.

When Steve was twelve, he went through a phase where he was really interested in insects. He
filled a whole sketchbook with drawings of beetles and butterflies, checked out a big book from
the library called The Encyclopedia of Insects and Arachnids. Bucky teased him about it
relentlessly, but Steve found it fascinating—how all the different species had their own tiny,
thriving cultures.

In the split second before the scorpion alien raises its tail, Steve remembers a paragraph about bee
colonies. It described how every single bee, all those thousands of workers and drones, spends its
life in service to a single queen bee whose sole purpose is to lay eggs. The whole hive is
expendable, but the queen bee is fiercely protected.

Steve stares at the scorpion alien, at the green poison dripping from the tip of its tail, and thinks
maybe they've just found the queen.

The tail comes thrusting down, aiming straight for the middle of Bucky's back as he fights off the
last of the drone aliens. There is no time to shout a warning, and Steve's shield is lodged in the
body of another alien ten feet away.

He rushes forward.

***

The queen's tail pierces right through Steve's stomach, comes out the other side.

It only hurts for a second. Then the poison starts to spread through him, cold and numbing, and
Steve falls to his knees.
 ***

Vaguely, through the gray haze in his head, he hears his team shouting around him. There's a
plume of foul-smelling fire when Tony blows up the queen alien, but Steve knows it's too late.

Everything is a blur. He sways forward.

Suddenly, there are strong hands on him, someone's shoulder against his chest, holding him
upright. Steve blinks a couple times and can just barely make out Bucky's pale, terrified face right
in front of his own. They're kneeling together amidst the rubble, the bodies of dead aliens, the
smoldering remains of the queen.

“Steve,” Bucky chokes out, “Steve, God, you fucking idiot, what were you thinking—”

Steve tries to speak, but nothing comes out.

“Oh God, oh Christ, okay, just hang on,” Bucky's saying, and then he shouts, “STARK,
WILSON, GET HELP NOW, STEVE IS DOWN,” and then he's quiet again, clutching Steve
close to his chest. “Stevie, it's okay, just keep breathing, everything's gonna be okay—”

“'M not sick,” Steve slurs. “Not th' flu.”

Bucky makes a noise that sounds almost like a sob, except Bucky doesn't cry, even when he
wakes up screaming from a nightmare. Steve feels Bucky's hand flutter across the wound in his
abdomen, and Bucky's grip tightens even more on his shoulders.

Steve manages to open his eyes again, not sure when he closed them, and gazes at Bucky's face.
His eyes are wide and scared, and he's covered in grime and a bit of green goo, but he is—as
always—the most amazing, astonishing thing Steve has ever seen.

“'S okay, Buck,” he whispers, smiling a little in reassurance. “'S okay.”

“No,” Bucky says fiercely, “no, no, Steve, stay awake, just keep lookin' at me, don't you dare fall
asleep—”

It occurs to Steve, then, that this is what it feels like to really die. He thought he had an idea, what
with all the times he got sick and then when he slid beneath the ice, trapped in the belly of
Schmidt's plane, and then again when he fell backwards off the Helicarrier, but this is really it. He
is about to die. His life is bleeding out on the concrete as alien poison pumps through his veins.

He knows he should feel something about it, righteous anger maybe, but his brain isn't working
quite right.

The only thing he feels, really, is a dull sense of sadness. Here he is, wrapped tight in Bucky's
arms, and he's so fucking in love with Bucky, so much that he could never even begin to explain
the incredible ache and heat of it, and now Bucky will never know.

Steve is fading fast, but he screws up the last bit of strength he has left. One last thing, Rogers,
come on.

He leans forward and presses his mouth to Bucky's, tasting the flecks of blood on his lips.

When he pulls back, Bucky is staring at him in pure, abject horror, but Steve's too far gone to even
care—it's not like rejection matters now. He just needed Bucky to know.

“'M sorry,” he murmurs, letting his eyes close, his head tip back. “Had to do it, Buck, just th' once.
'M sorry.”

“Steve,” Bucky says, his voice breaking, “please, Stevie, no, no,” and he's shouting something to
the others, calling Steve's name over and over again, but Steve is slipping away into the soft,
warm dark.

***

The first thing he hears is the beeping.

Steve opens his eyes slowly and blinks away the fog in his head. Just as he thought—the beeping
is from a heart monitor, measuring out the even beats of Steve's heart like a metronome.

But why is he hooked up to a heart monitor?

Why is he in the hospital at all?

He tries to move but immediately freezes, hissing in pain. His stomach feels like he got gut-
punched by the Hulk, then shot five or six times to boot.

“Hey, Cap,” says a familiar voice to his right.

Steve turns his head painstakingly, careful not to move his lower body at all. Sam is sitting at his
bedside, watching him.

“Gave us all a pretty good scare,” says Sam. “How ya feelin'?”

“Awesome,” says Steve, another twenty-first century vocab word he picked up from Darcy.
“What...what happened?”

“Well, do you remember the aliens?” asks Sam.

Steve frowns, concentrating, and then it all comes rushing back. He gasps, eyes wide. “Is
everyone—? Is Bucky—?”

“Everyone's fine,” Sam tells him. “Seems Captain America was the only one who sustained major
injuries, largely because Captain America is a self-sacrificing idiot.”

“There was no time. It was gonna kill Bucky.”

“Speaking of that,” Sam says, reaching over to press the button for painkillers, “your boy Barnes
is not very happy with you.”

Steve winces even as he feels morphine spread through his system, dulling the pain in his
stomach. “Yeah, he wouldn't be.”

“Yeah.” Sam meets Steve's gaze. “See, for a while there, Barnes thought the love of his life only
got his shit together right in time to die. So yeah. He's pretty upset.” His mouth quirks. “Stark says
you owe him about ten thousand dollars in repair fees for the Tower, and you best pay up.”

“Stark can stick it where the sun don't shine,” Steve mumbles, and it has the intended effect: Sam
snorts a laugh, shaking his head.

His eyelids are so heavy, and he can feel himself sinking back into sleep. He wants to ask Sam
about what he said—about Steve being the love of Bucky's life, because that's not right, it's the
other way round—but he's so tired.
“Glad you're okay, Rogers,” Sam says softly, and Steve smiles even as he passes out again.

***

Natasha drives him home from the hospital a week later, because even with the super-soldier
healing, Steve's stomach hurts like a sonofabitch and he's not supposed to do anything even mildly
taxing until he gets an okay from the doctors. They listen to Florence & The Machine all the way
back to Stark Tower. Natasha hums along.

“He's on your floor,” she says, as soon as they get out of the car. “You should go deal with that.”

“Yeah,” says Steve and stands still for the retinal scan.

“Welcome back, Captain Rogers,” says JARVIS. “Good to see you're doing well.”

“Thanks, JARVIS,” says Steve, stepping into the elevator. He tries to tamp down on his nerves,
the swell of anxiety in his throat. Most of what happened after the queen alien impaled him is a
blur, but he definitely remembers kissing his best friend.

He almost wrings his hands like his ma. Jesus.

When the elevator doors slide open, the first thing Steve notices is the ring of bullet holes in the
living room wall. The second thing he notices is Bucky, sitting at the kitchen table like he always
does.

His eyes flick over Steve, but his expression doesn't change.

Steve gestures lamely to the bullet holes. “Uh, I'm assuming that's what Stark meant by damages.”

“Some of it,” Bucky says, but doesn't elaborate.

Steve stands there awkwardly, completely unsure of how to deal with any of this.

Finally, Bucky looks up, and Steve realizes with a jolt that he looks absolutely furious. “If you
ever do anything like that again,” Bucky says, quiet and deadly calm, “I am leaving. You will
never see me again.”

Steve's injured stomach turns to ice. “What?”

Bucky doesn't stop staring at him. “I would rather leave here and not come back than watch you
die for me,” he says. “Do you understand that?”

“Bucky, I—”

“No.” Bucky's expression falters for a second, old fear bleeding into his eyes. “No, Steve. If
having me around means you're always gonna take a bullet for me, no thought of your own safety,
I'm gone. I can't—I can't live with that, you understand me? I can't.”

Steve is quiet for a long moment. Then he says, “I'm sorry, Buck. I can't promise you anything.”

“Why?” Bucky demands, and he sounds kind of young and rough and broken.

“I need to protect you,” says Steve.

Bucky laughs, short and without humor. “No, you don't.”

“Yes, I do.”
“Christ, Steve, you do not—”

“I do!” Steve says, louder than he meant to, and Bucky's mouth snaps shut. “I do, Bucky, and it's
not because of Captain America, it's not because you can't handle yourself, you can, I know that,
it's because—it's selfish, can't you see that? I am so goddamn selfish about you, always have
been.”

Bucky frowns. “What are you talking about?”

Steve lets out a shaky breath, running one hand through his hair. “You're the most important
person in the world to me, our whole lives.” He glances up, taking in Bucky's stunned face. “God,
Buck, you gotta see it. It's you. It's always been you, it will always be you.”

“But—but you loved Agent Carter,” Bucky says hoarsely. “Nat told me you went on a date with
Carrie from R&D.”

“And I kissed you,” Steve says, even though he's terrified, because he's never been one to back
down from anything. “Because I thought I was gonna die, and I had to. Just one time.”

Bucky seems incapable of speech.

Steve sighs. “Yeah, I could've married Peggy. But everything I saw in her was the same stuff I see
in you.” He pauses, brow furrowing. “Also, for the record, Carrie from R&D didn't like me
much.”

“You're being serious,” says Bucky.

Steve nods.

“I'm still pissed as hell at you,” Bucky informs him.

He nods again and takes a step closer, hope flickering in his chest. He moves to kneel in the vee of
Bucky's legs, just like he did in his dark bedroom months ago. Bucky stares down at him with
wide eyes.

“You gotta know, Buck,” Steve repeats softly. “You gotta know how much.”

A moment of stillness, and then—“God,” Bucky breathes, “God, Steve, come here,” and he leans
down just as Steve reaches up to frame Bucky's face in his hands.

Bucky grips the front of Steve's shirt, melting into him, and for a second they just stay there,
clutching at each other, breathing the same air, and then Bucky nudges Steve's nose with his own,
and Steve tips his face up to slant their mouths together, firm and purposeful.

Bucky makes a strangled sound into his mouth, fingers tightening in Steve's shirt. He kisses back
immediately, moving his mouth against Steve's in the most amazing way, and it feels like he's out
of practice—of course he is, they both are—but he's making the softest little noises, kissing hard
and almost desperate, and he gasps when Steve bites his bottom lip. Steve slides his tongue into
Bucky's mouth, licking into the warmth of him, and he can't stop thinking that he's kissing Bucky,
he's kissing Bucky, and he smiles against Bucky's mouth and Bucky hums, smiling right back. He
gives as good as he gets, dragging his fingers through Steve's hair, cupping his chin and pressing
with one metal thumb against his jaw until Steve's mouth falls open even more.

Steve finally pulls back after a few fevered minutes, catching his breath.
“No, no, hey,” Bucky mumbles, eyes still closed. His cheekbones are flushed pink. “No, come
back and kiss me, Stevie, been waitin' way too long—”

“God, Bucky,” Steve says, half-laughing because he just can't help it, and tilts up to press another
kiss to Bucky's mouth, and then another and another, quick and chaste, rubbing his thumb across
the curve of Bucky's cheek. Then he pauses, Bucky's words actually registering.

“Wait,” Steve says. “How long?”

“How long what,” Bucky says absently, beaming down at him with his mouth all red and kiss-
bruised, eyes shining with the kind of affection he's been directing at Steve their whole lives, and
oh shit.

“How long have you waited?”

Bucky looks away. “Doesn't matter, don't worry about it.”

“No, tell me,” Steve says, suddenly intent on getting an answer. He presses closer, bracing one
hand on Bucky's thigh, curling his other hand around the back of Bucky's neck.

“Steve—”

“Buck—”

“I don't know,” Bucky blurts out, sounding kind of miserable and refusing to meet Steve's eyes,
and Steve immediately regrets pushing it. “God, I don't even—forever, okay? Since we were kids
and I didn't even like girls yet. I didn't even know what it meant, I just knew I—,” he breaks off,
biting his lip.

“I'm sorry,” Steve says quietly. “I'm sorry it took me so long.” He waits until Bucky looks at him
again, then gives him a sad smile. “Even my best friend thinks I'm kinda slow on the uptake, when
it comes to this kind of thing.”

Bucky huffs a laugh. “You never could talk to girls.”

“Still can't, really,” Steve says. “Think that's why Carrie from R&D said I left her cold.”

“Carrie from R&D wouldn't know a good thing if it danced naked in her living room.”

“You're right,” says Steve seriously. “Maybe I should've tried that.”

Bucky snorts, completely undignified, and Steve has to kiss him again for it. They stay like that
for another couple minutes, mouths moving together slowly, just exploring, and then Bucky
breaks away, leaning his forehead against Steve's.

“You're sure, right?” he asks.

“Yes,” Steve replies. “I'm all in, Buck.”

Bucky grins wide and beautiful, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Christ, Rogers, I'll never
deserve this. And you got me already, always have.”

Steve frowns at him. “Never been anything about me you don't deserve.”

Bucky doesn't reply, so Steve kisses him again, on his mouth and his cheek and then down his
neck. “You deserve it, you jerk, you deserve everything,” he murmurs against Bucky's skin, and
Bucky leans back in his chair, exposing more of his neck with a little sigh.
Bucky leans back in his chair, exposing more of his neck with a little sigh.

“I wanna get my hands all over you,” Bucky says, his eyes closed, and Steve feels his whole face
turn bright red.

“My stomach,” he says apologetically. “I can't do any, um, taxing activities.”

Bucky groans. “Until when?”

“Like a week?”

“You're killing me, pal,” Bucky says, but he's smiling. “Well, come on then, let's do something
that's not taxing for you.” He gets to his feet and gently pulls Steve up along with him, leading
him into the living room. “Here, sit back on the couch.”

“Bucky, what—?”

“Just trust me,” says Bucky, so Steve does as he's told. When Bucky sinks to his knees between
Steve's legs and reaches for his fly, Steve's jaw drops. Bucky holds up a hand before Steve can
say anything. “Nope, let it happen.”

“You don't have to—”

“Steve,” says Bucky, meeting his eyes solemnly, “I've been wanting to do this for about eighty
years now.”

Steve's mouth shuts with a click.

“That's what I thought,” Bucky says smugly, and he cups Steve through his pants, smirk growing
when Steve gasps. He unbuttons Steve's pants—“Fuckin' khakis, God, you don't have to dress
your age”—and unzips his fly, then runs his warm human fingers down the length of Steve's dick,
grinning when it twitches at his touch.

“God, you're ready, aren't you,” he murmurs, holding Steve loosely through his boxers. “So
fuckin' hard, Stevie, Jesus.”

“Stop sweet-talkin' and just touch me before I turn ninety-six,” Steve says breathily, knowing
Bucky will probably tease the hell out of him later for it, but right now Bucky just laughs and pulls
down his boxers and finally wraps his warm right hand around Steve's cock.

Steve isn't quite able to bite back his moan. Bucky strokes him once, twice, three times, firm and
sure, and then without warning he leans down and takes Steve in his mouth, and Steve sees stars.
Bucky's mouth is warm and wet, sucking and bobbing up and down in the most torturously slow
rhythm, jacking the base of Steve's cock with his left hand and rolling Steve's balls with his right,
and all Steve can do is lean back and watch and try not to fall completely apart at the sight of it.
Bucky's tongue flutters over the head of his dick and he moans again, reaching down to tangle his
fingers in Bucky's short hair. Bucky pulls off and presses an open-mouthed kiss to the inside of
Steve's thigh, licks him from root to tip, takes him deep again, and Steve is babbling incoherently,
mostly just saying Bucky's name and twisting his fingers in Bucky's hair, unable to tear his eyes
away.

He tugs at Bucky's hair a couple minutes later, but Bucky just gives a small nod, and then Steve is
coming hard, careful not to thrust upwards. Bucky sucks him through it, throat working as he
swallows, then pulls off with a satisfied little noise, wiping his mouth with his right hand.

He grins at Steve, his mouth red and obscene. Steve immediately yanks Bucky up into his lap,
ignoring the spark of pain in his bandaged stomach, and kisses him hard and dirty, tasting himself
on Bucky's tongue, and reaches into Bucky's sweatpants to wrap his fingers around Bucky's cock,
bringing him off while Bucky moans into his mouth, hips stuttering.

Bucky comes into Steve's hand and then sags against him, gasping into Steve's neck. Steve kisses
the top of his head.

After a few moments, both just trying catch their breath, Bucky says, “Never pegged you for a
talker.”

“Guess there's a lotta things you'll be finding out about me,” Steve says.

“Guess so,” says Bucky, shifting to straddle Steve more comfortably, mindful of his stomach. He
smiles at Steve, looking so ridiculously happy, his hair all messed up and his mouth still bright red,
and Steve pulls him close, fitting their bodies together.

If he whispers something into Bucky's ear, then, that's for them to know.

***

epilogue

***

“I regret everything about this,” says Steve.

“I'm sorry,” says Tony. “Do you want me to call you a wahmbulance? Trust me, no matter how
much you're hating this, I am hating it more.”

Steve sighs, smoothing down the front of his stupid black suit. Probably the worst part about being
an Avenger, aside from getting beaten up by supervillains on the regular, is being forced to attend
social events courtesy of Tony Stark (which really means courtesy of Coulson and Pepper, who
are the ones forcing Tony to actually hold social events).

Sam sidles up beside him, holding a full glass of champagne. “Yo. You seen Natasha?”

“Pretty sure she escaped out the back like an hour ago,” Steve says miserably.

“She's a dirty traitor and should be shunned,” says Sam. Steve nods in agreement. “Where's your
boy?”

“Not sure. I was about to go look for him, he doesn't like crowds.”

“But he's bein' a damn good sport about it,” Bucky says from behind them, “and definitely
deserves some sort of reward for this.” He raises his eyebrows at Steve. “In fact, he's got some
pretty good ideas.”

Steve is extremely interested in this vein of conversation, especially because Bucky's wearing a
suit. Steve has been known to get a little ridiculous about Bucky in a suit.

“Man, stop talking in the third person, it weirds me out,” says Sam, and Steve blinks back to
reality. Bucky makes a face and plucks the champagne out of Sam's hands, taking a long swallow.

Sam points at them and says, “You are both gross and terrible,” before rolling his eyes and
walking away, presumably to go track down Natasha.

Bucky turns to Steve. “How much longer till we can get outta here?”
“A half hour,” answers Steve. “Coulson said we can leave at ten. Hey, wanna dance with me?”

“What?”

“Do you want to dance with me,” Steve repeats, staring straight ahead. He feels Bucky watching
him, but doesn't look back.

“Yeah, all right,” Bucky says quietly, and Steve relaxes a bit. “Sure you can keep up with me,
though?”

“Fuck you, Barnes,” Steve says, just because Bucky always enjoys it when he swears. “I can
dance just fine.”

Bucky makes a noise that communicates just how much he doubts that—and he's totally right, not
that Steve will ever admit it—but he follows Steve onto the dance floor. The song switches to
something slow and pretty, and Bucky automatically starts to lead them, one hand on Steve's
waist, his metal fingers entwined in Steve's.

They keep a few careful inches between them, even though nobody here cares about two men
dancing. Steve knows Bucky still gets fidgety about it sometimes, and he never holds Steve's hand
or kisses him in public. But it's okay. When it's just the two of them, Bucky basically never takes
his hands off Steve.

He says he's got a lot of years to make up for. Steve is completely on board with that.

They dance in slow circles to a song about a crying shoulder, meeting each other's eyes every so
often and grinning stupidly, and Steve knows he's blushing but he thinks maybe Bucky is too, a
little bit.

Steve pulls Bucky a little closer, and he can't help thinking that it's 2014, and he's both twenty-
seven and ninety-six years old, and somehow, miraculously, Bucky is still right here with him.
They both fell apart and then came back together again after decades of ice and pain and death,
and here they are, two kids who grew up in Brooklyn in the 1930s, dancing together in public
eighty years later. Still alive, impossibly young.

And they will go home to sleep in the same bed, and they will kiss each other goodnight, and
when Steve wakes up tomorrow morning Bucky will be curled around him, all the blankets on his
side of the bed.

Steve tightens his grip on Bucky's hand and thinks, To the end, to the end, to the end.
 Chapter 2

Hello everyone—those of you who are reading this because you’re subscribed to me, because you
recognized my name or the fic title, because you just happened to click on this for the first time—

This is really long. Sorry about that. But I hope you read all of it.

Basically, I have some news.

It’s very good news.

I have written a book, and that book is going to be published.

I am super excited about this. I can’t tell you anything about the story yet—it’s hush hush for now
—but it’s a story I really believe in, and it’s only the first step in what I hope will be a very long
career of writing books.

HOWEVER.

I am going to be published. My name is gonna be out there in the Real World. And my fandom
accounts—my Tumblr, my AO3—have been around long enough that they’re kind of inextricably
linked to my actual real life name.

I don’t actually mind that. Like I said, it’s inextricable. I’m not ashamed of my fandom life,
especially because writing fic is the single best thing I have ever done for myself As A Writer. Fic
has helped me improve more than college ever did. And beyond that: all your feedback, and all
your incredibly kind comments, has helped me as a person. I don’t know where I would be right
now if I hadn’t spent my teenage years writing fic. I would be a worse writer, that’s for sure. And
there have been plenty of times when reading over your comments was the only thing that made
me actually open up a new doc and start typing.

That said, I do want to enter the world of publishing and “professional” writing with a clean slate.

So in about 24 hours (May 19, 12:00AM EST) I will be taking down my all my fics and then
deleting my AO3 account.

I’m really sad about this, guys. Again: I cannot put into words how much YOUR words have
encouraged me over the years. I have read all your comments (all of them twice, some 10+ times).
I appreciate every single comment I have ever gotten. Your excitement, your emotions, your
passion for the characters we both love—it keeps me writing. It’s why I want to write books.

I’m going to lose your comments. I am really, really sad about that.

But I don’t want you to lose my work. You’ve told me that it makes you happy, and that makes
me happy. So heck it—I’m taking it off the internet, but the reason I’m waiting a day is because I
want to give you a chance to keep it.

So: if you want to download my work (and you haven’t already), now is the time. Download
away, y’all. Put it on your Kindle, print it out, take screenshots, whatever you want. It’s yours.

There will still be podfics and translations up—I’m not asking anyone else to delete their hard
work. Just the originals will be gone. (My Tumblr is staying up for now, though I might end up
deleting that too.)
 If you want to contact me—or hear updates about my Book Thing—feel free to follow me
on Twitter.

So…that’s it. All that’s left to say is: thank you. Thank you so, so, so much. For your comments,
for your kudos, for your endless support. Thank you to the people who have read and commented
on everything I’ve ever posted; thank you for the silent kudos-ers; thank you to the lurkers. Every
single one of you made me a better writer. Thank you.

Much love.

End Notes

My Tumblr.
My Twitter.

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