Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

So here’s the thing:

Steve’s just coming off a casual, impromptu run-in with Vincent in the elevator, who just so happens to be Nat’s current compromise set-up-prospect from Marketing: he has an eyebrow piercing rather than a lip ring (aesthetic, Steve, not something you have to learn to swap spit around), which Steve can appreciate in theory—he’s an artist, he gets aesthetics—and objectively Vincent’s an attractive enough man, slender, good cheekbones. Nice ass.

Objectively.

But the fact is Steve hasn’t been looking for anything like that in a very long time. Maybe not ever. He doesn’t believe in soulmates, despite what he shared with Peggy. She’d been there when there’d been no one, at a time when the world was changing; when his world was changing something fierce and he didn’t know which way was up, and through all of it she was a constant, red lips and keen eyes and ready to take whatever came. Steve admired her, Steve was attracted to her on every possible level, and Steve was a maybe more than a little enraptured by her, but they’d had what Peggy had called, one day in her bed in DC, a snowdrop love, and the artist’s soul in Steve had latched onto that idea: something pure, and fledgling, and beautiful—full of possibility, held close to the chest to keep from harm for how fragile it was in the new dawn.

Steve’s not sure he agrees with her so far as she takes it from there—to insist that he deserves the full bouquet of spring through autumn, the rapture and impossible joy of it all that she’d had the privilege, the blessing of knowing, and that he’s meant to know, too, now that time’s been given him to find it.

Steve’s not sure he agrees that he deserves anything like that, but he loves that she knew what he was feeling more than he knows any words to say as much, and it’s true: he doesn’t believe in soulmates, and hell if he’s looking for what he maybe does believe in—love, even half a bouquet, he’d take that. And it’s not even just the fact that he can’t think of love, the real thing, without knowing that winter would always come and the leaves would always die in the ice and wondering whether he might just blossom onward, onward, onward without, and he doesn’t think he can do that. He’s big enough to admit that to himself, and he’s small enough to know that if he can’t say it to Peggy, she sees through him like glass anyway but still: it’s not just that.

It’s more that he’s still trying to find his way in this brave new millennium, and that’s difficult enough as it is; there’s no sense in adding to the struggle. Steve may like a fight more than is objectively healthy, but they didn’t praise his tactical prowess for nothing: one front at a time, when there’s only one man in the fray.

Which brings him here: objectively knowing that one, Vincent’s a very attractive man who seems very kind; two, he’s not looking for bouquets, half or whole or otherwise; and three, he really does need to find some way to discourage Natasha in her absolutely unwavering pitch to set him up with someone.

This is how Steve finds himself at Stark Tower, in Tony’s 73rd floor lab, on that particular day, at that particular moment, too lost in his thoughts to see danger when it’s lurking, when he should turn tail and run.

In hindsight, they may have over-praised that tactical prowess of his.

“You had your eyes on me for ages, Stark,” a voice echoes through the room, and it’s sweet and smooth like honey, or a midnight summer storm, and it quenches something in Steve that’s been aching, throbbing in every beat of his goddamn blood for tending and holding and sating, that’s been crying out forever, maybe, or else as long as he knows to remember anymore: it stops everything in him, takes a hand and makes a fist around the heart in his chest, fucking dangerous—

It sounds like Brooklyn, and hot rain, and sugared-up coffee when sugar was scarce: and somehow Steve knows that’s not the only reason for it resonating in his bones along the same octave as home.

“’Bout damn time you made an honest gentleman outta me.”

“Correction,” Tony snips immediately, though he never looks up; it’s then that Steve realizes that the man who owns the voice made solely out of home, lying reclined in an oddly—given the trademark madness of any lab of Tony’s—luxurious seat before him has a cybernetic implant from the shoulder, moulded down about three inches, and Tony’s poking around the insides of what Steve would guess is the rest of the arm from the size, the shape, the intricate plates and the deft-looking fingertips at the end, elegant somehow even cast in metal.

“The colonel had his eye on you for ages. He’s shy though, you gotta push him before he makes his move.” Tony, being Tony, infuses those words with every ounce of innuendo they can hold.

Typical.

“You can come in Capsicle,” Tony calls over his shoulder, and Steve wasn’t hiding, exactly, but it startles him nonetheless. “There’s no one important you’d be distracting me from, here.”

The man on the chaise doesn’t even dignify the barb with a response. Interesting.

“Do you know,” the man picks up instead, and Steve gets a good look at him now: broad, with muscle definition that could rival Steve’s own but more lithe, compact for speed where Steve’s all about bulk. He’s got a jawline to envy, and stubble to fantasize about, if Steve’s going to be honest in his own head—and he tries to be. Sam, who he’s admittedly only known a short while now but trusts like he’s known him forever; Sam suggests that’s the most important step, learning not to lie so much to yourself, but yeah. Stubble splayed out to the cheekbones, which are deadly in themselves on the kind of face Steve wants to study and learn to draw from memory, for all its angles and curves, the dip above full lips and eyes a color that Steve knows he’ll think on until he finds the right name, the right shade: storm clouds but just a little more blue, the kind of blue that wouldn’t be there if the clouds were quite that grey.

The man’s flipping his shoulder-length hair from his face as he talks, says words that Steve’s not following because oh: apparently he has a thing for hair that long. Steve knew he had a little bit of a thing for hair, yeah, but—well, the dive in his stomach is unexpected.

Words. Right. It’s polite to follow words when there’s a man in front of him whom he’s never met, doesn’t even have a name to match with, who’s having what appears to be a fairly significant medical procedure and hasn’t bothered to kick him out.

Words. Following those. Yes.

“I was fucking terrified of Rhodey, like, piss-my-pants terrified of him,” this gorgeous brunet is going on, gesturing enough with his right hand to make up for the immobility of his missing left. “And I’d been deployed five years by the time I actually stood in a room with him.”

Tony snorts, and looks all kinds of giddy, no doubt plotting how to best confess this to Rhodey in its entirety for the maximum effect of embarrassment.

“Laugh all you want, Stark, he already knows this story,” the man rolls his eyes, shutting Tony down with an ease Steve finds himself impressed by, and a grin Steve finds his knees going a little weak for.

“You know, I don’t think I’m ever going to understand how you do that kid-in-a-candy-shop and shit-eating-grin look all at once? But it’s kind of my favorite thing in the world when I get to wipe it straight off that adorable face of yours. Honeybun.”

Tony’s eyes narrow—and is that a flush on his cheeks? Oh, yes. Steve’s very impressed.

Possibly aroused. Both. Probably both.

Well shit.

“Oh, yes. See,” and the man turns those storm-cloud—storm clouds reflected in water, seasides, those undertones of cobalt that flash just a little; maybe that, maybe—the man turns his eyes to Steve and grins easily, and Steve has the strange, uncanny feeling of familiarity, camaraderie, like he’s somehow known that smile, deep down, for his entire life.

Not-so-deep-down, Steve's pulse ratchets up a notch.

“That’s how I stopped being scared shitless by the Big Bad Colonel,” the man winks, then looks very deliberately at Tony, who’s just a little too focused on the wiring in front of him. “First time I was in a room with him, back when he wanted to recruit me for his ‘I'm-a-part-time-Avenger-and-Tony-Stark's-Bestie-So-I-Get-What-I-Want’ special ops team,” and Tony looks goddamn betrayed, all open-mouth and wide-eyes and the man smirks damn near licentiously, apparently without even trying, and Steve has to breath deeply so as not to pop a stiffy because fuck if it’s not sexy as hell.

“Well, I was sent in to speak with him too early. He was on a call. Glares at me, and then tries to beg off,” the man looks back toward Steve then, tossing his head as he shrugs.

“And I mean, I were him? I’da hung up, because I’m big bad Colonel James Rhodes, right? But he doesn’t.”

And oh: oh, but the man grins, and it’s broad and true and sly and not at all familiar because if Steve had known something that bright, anywhere inside him, before this moment? He’d never have made it in the ice, because he’d have never known what it felt like to be cold.

Jesus fucking Christ.

“And that’s when I start to realize, he’s glaring, but like,” the smile’s gone, now, but the scrunch of those features in its wake is among the most adorable things Steve’s ever seen; “not at me? Even though I’m the only one there?”

Tony’s working very hard on the very same wires, it seems. He’s maybe pouting, but he’s doing a very good job of angling his face away so that it’s impossible to tell for sure.

Steve fights a snort.

“And I’m quiet as a fuckin’ church mouse,” the man continues, regaling his audience of one, and Steve wonders what he’s done to merit the honor, or whether it’s an honor at all, whether the man is just charismatic like that, a natural raconteur. “So I start to hear the tone, at least, from the other end. And it’s common knowledge that the Colonel and this asshole here are bosom-buddies. So the party on the other end? I could put two and two together.”

And those lips look soft, look smooth and plush and when they smirk it’s this perfect curve, this impossible expressive ellipse that Steve wants to trace with his fingers and memorize; wants to trace with his tongue—

“But the thing that really made me stop being afraid of Rhodey, at all, ever, even a little bit?” the man leans in, as if it’s a secret to be confessed:

“Stark here makes him call him ‘honeybun’ before they end a phone call.”

And Tony snaps a metal plate into place with a particularly echoing force just then, and turns, and yep: pouting. Because Tony’s absolutely the type of man who’d be pissy that he didn’t get to use a story like this to nag his long-suffering, beloved never say the words Iron Patriot in front of me ever again, you traitor work-husband. But he’s also fighting a grin, Steve can see it in his eyes, because Tony is also the type of man who gets joy in hearing such stories, even when he doesn’t get to own them and reap their rewards to the fullest.

“I mean,” the man with the smile and the eyes and the lips is winking in Tony’s direction, an inside joke that Steve finds he desperately wants to be a part of, or better: to have one of his own. Which is fucking absurd, and he needs to get a goddamn grip, but—

“Who can be afraid of a big squishy teddy bear with a honeybun waiting for him at home?”

And Tony laughs, and that smile is back on the other man’s face, and Steve feels absurd, yeah.

But it’s the nicest thing he’s felt in far too long; longer than he thinks he can remember clearly, even when he tries.

“And that, Major,” Tony says, lifting the limb he’d been toying with in both hands; “is why I love you.”

The man—a Major, whose arm is presumably being lofted in Tony’s grasp—snorts without restraint.

“You love my armless ass so you can tinker with your crazy engineering genius in vivo on a willing participant.”

“Love is multifaceted, Barnes,” Tony doesn’t bother to deny it; “has to be if it’s built to last.”

“I’m going to guess,” the Major tilts his head, considering. “Self-help book?”

“No—”

“Read by JARVIS.”

Tony’s silent.

JARVIS, on the other hand, is not.

“Excellent deduction, Major Barnes.”

The Major—Barnes—grins, self-satisfied. It’s a good look on him.

“Thank you kindly, J,” he tells the room around them before turning back to Tony. “How are things going with Pepper, anyway?”

And it’s not like Steve doesn’t know Pepper, or about Tony and Pepper, or has never had a conversation about them, together, being together, but this feels...not his speed. Not his place.

His pulse has gone beyond ratcheting up to thrumming almost painfully, and this is fucking ridiculous.

He’d duck out quietly if he thought they’d let him; in lieu of the opportunity, however, he excuses himself before Tony can divulge personal details that Steve just, well.

Steve’s not here for that.

Steve honestly doesn’t quite remember why he’s here at all, anymore.

“I’ll come back later,” he says, turning away.

“Why?” Tony asks, genuinely curious. “Take a seat, Cap.” He nods toward a worn-looking couch next to Major Barnes.

“You’re more than welcome,” Barnes nods, smiling just a little: welcoming. Steve’s entire body tingles. “Tony says the stupidest shit when he’s messing with this thing,” the smile broadens as he nods to the metal arm. “It’s awesome.”

Tony rolls his eyes, but gets back to work, and the Major reaches out his hand to Steve, and Steve thinks he should think twice before taking it—he has the overwhelming desire to touch too badly, too fully for this to be a good idea.

But his Ma raised him right. And Steve hasn’t wanted in so very long.

“James,” Steve catches the words, as his hand slips into Major Barnes’, and is gripped hard: Steve hopes it doesn’t give away his pulse at the wrist. “But call me Bucky.”

And Steve has the strangest sensation of hearing a woman’s voice in his head, long repeated and without context until just this moment: just because you aren’t looking for it, Steve, doesn’t mean it can’t come find you anyway.

It sounds like Peggy, and Steve sits against his conscious will, and shakes James-call-me-Bucky’s hand and thinks he might never forget the way that the heat of it feels like spring.

Chapter Text

There’s a cafe Steve went to once. Before.

Once, and then the sky opened and the world changed, and the sweet young woman who brought him coffee once and asked if he was watching for Tony fucking Stark of all people to zoom by on his way in or out of his scar-on-the-skyline now takes to serving him a drink on the house every single time he comes.

He should have stopped frequenting said cafe a long time ago, as a result of this, but he likes the location, and he likes the way it’s situated just a little bit obscurely, not smack-dab in the middle of prying eyes, and well.

They make a really, really good cup o’ joe.

“You really don’t have to keep thanking me, you know,” Steve says as he starts to pack up his things and gets some cash from his wallet, because even if Beth, his favorite waitress, refuses to give him a bill—and he likewise refuses to get more than a coffee as a result—she can’t stop him from leaving a generous tip.

She rolls her eyes; he doesn’t stop by all the time, but when he does, they’ve made this dance a routine, and Steve’s good at those.

Routines, if not dancing.

“Whatcha got there?” she asks before Steve can get his leather portfolio into his bag. He normally comes with his phone, or a book at most—more often, he just watches people, and stares off in the sheer attempt to empty his mind of everything that could possibly weigh him down or lift him up, seeking out a peace that’s too much like the moments, maybe dreams, he has of the ice to be considered healthy.

But it’s what he’s looking for, most of the time he comes here, so there it is.

This time, though. This time.

“Oh wow, are you drawing again?” Beth asks it kindly, idly, or maybe not because yeah, he’s memorable because of what he is, more than who he is but it was just the one time he’d been sketching at the tiny table, staring at the sky. And not that she’d know if he went home every night and sketched—even if the truth was he’d stopped bringing his sketchbook anywhere after the Battle, even out of his bedside table in the evenings, alone in his apartment. But she asks, and the truth is it’s been more than a year since he got his charcoal pencils out and felt the texture of the paper under his touch, whorls pressing opposite to those on his fingertips as he shades tenderly, sketching aimlessly, thoughtlessly, the same goddamn thing.

He thinks he’s been here for minutes, that might have been hours. He’s filled half the book with the same subject.

The same, singular subject, rendered again and again and again.

“You’re really good,” Beth glances at a loose page before he has a chance to stuff it away; Steve doesn’t know what to make of the way his usual reticence to share his work shifts suddenly toward the edge of something too close to a protective rage for his liking, or comfort.

“He looks so real,” she adds, and Steve thinks, unbidden: if only. “And really easy on the eyes, too.” Beth grins. “A friend of yours?”

And Steve thinks on the moments, mere moments and nothing more, that turned into dreams—every night, every fucking night, brighter and bolder and leaving him breathless upon waking, at the least, hot and hard and gasping and not at all like the ice, not even a little; and that face, that mouth, the curves of that body that Steve’s guessed from under clothing to match the bare chest he’d tried so hard to memorize without being obvious, without staring openly in that one time, that single time that’s taken hold of Steve’s every thought—

And she asks if it’s a friend he’s drawing, sketching in facets and fantasies like he would a lover.

Fuck all.

“Nah,” he shrugs, and forces a tiny grin. Not her fault that he’s crushing like a schoolboy; that he’s out of his mind with something too pervasive to just be called lust, but with nothing deeper to grasp to it can’t be more than that—

It can’t be.

“I just thought, you know, with the arm,” she shakes her own arm out, and yeah: Steve had very lovingly rendered the plates of the metal arm, working backwards from what he’d seen Tony doing, how he’d watched it being fitted and removed and fitted again—filling in the gaps as best he could with his knowledge more of anatomy than the tech itself, but still.

“Very hero-like, seemed like the kind of person you’d hang out with,” Beth grins, and then her eyes get wide.

“Are you doing a comic book?” she asks excitedly. “That’d be so cool, you know. Publish under a penname or something and be doubly famous,” and then she tilts her head.

“I don’t even read comics,” she tells him, her grin curling into a knowing smirk: “but I’d read something with that guy.”

Steve feels a flush, but the heat of it’s starting in the center of his chest—a flush, nothing more, nothing more—and what he says is “Have a good day, Beth,” as he takes his leave.

What he thinks is more along the lines of dear lord, so would I.

Chapter Text

Contrary to some opinions—Tony’s opinion, it’s really only Tony’s opinion—I don’t think so, not my thing is not “dinosaur-speak” for absolutely, I’ll be there with bells on.

Because Steve hates the Stark Industries galas. It’s selfish, and he knows it, and it makes him feel that uneasy stir in his stomach for even thinking it, but he always ends up feeling infinitely exposed, touted about like arm candy or a particularly large and awkward trophy. The suits they send him to wear always fit immaculately and yet make him feel like he’s naked, and at the same time floundering in something too big, something made to cover up all that he really is, instead of this paragon they’ve made him out to be.

It’d be different if the free bar had anything in it that took the edge off; but yeah.

And it was one thing when he could justify the exercise, and his immense discomfort with them, by saying they were working toward a good cause; raising money for the people who needed it from the only kinds of people who had enough to spare that it’d make a difference. It’s how he managed during the war, before they put him on the front lines: bonds and bullets and your best guy’s gun, and all that.

But, thing is: Tony’s got plenty of money. Steve’s got plenty of money. These events are, admittedly, about neither of them ever having to be the person who pays for everything, because that’s no kind of long term strategy at all, but, but—

In the end, how he feels is flat out selfish, yes, and that’s why he does show up when he doesn’t have a valid excuse otherwise. But for all that Steve makes sure he puts on his show-face, his reassuring posture, his polite smile and all the trappings?

Steve dreams of the Alps every time he leaves one of these penguin-suit events, and feels cold, and he won’t sleep again for days after. Sometimes longer. Because being here, on display—no matter how many times he runs numbers and tries to calculate the donation-equivalent of a polite nod or a smile or just a bit of smalltalk—being here, on fucking parade, still, makes him feel—

“Like a trained fuckin’ monkey.”

Two things go through Steve’s mind, when the voice registers from just over his shoulder. One, the question of when the hell people started to be able to sneak up on him, because no one can sneak up on him, not anymore. Natasha, sure, sometimes. Clint’s almost managed it; almost. But the way he nearly startles, almost jumps, here? This is ridiculous—

And two: he’s heard that voice once. Once. One time, one encounter, one conversation that wasn’t really a conversation because Steve didn’t say much at all, not unless it was a response or a smirk, a nod or a chuckle or something equally inane because that voice pervaded, that voice was larger than life because it was so full of life that Steve was fit to choke on it, drown in it for how much he wanted to soak it up and really feel that much of the heat of simply living, for the first time in too goddamn long—

“Hello,” and oh.

Oh, when Steve turns and meets the owner of that voice, and looks into the face he’s been sketching like a lovesick teenager with a crush, save that he never sketched any one of the people he carried a torch for back in those days, and his heart had tripped plenty for reasons unrelated to any one of those unsketched impossibilities—but now.

Now, Steve’s pulse is heavy and heady and all out of sync, and he thinks that, were this man also a supersoldier, or maybe just looking at the right angle at the right time? He’d hear it, or he’d see it, spelled clear at the side of his throat.

“You looked kinda spaced-out over here.” James—no, no, he said call him Bucky, and that’s dangerously intimate for Steve’s head, yes, he’s been avoiding it rather deliberately for that very reason, but Steve wasn’t the one to come over and take a seat, was he, and that’s gotta be promising, right, that’s gotta mean something, maybe?—Bucky is smiling in a way he hadn’t the last time: not with humor but with softness, a little bit of the slyness from before but playful, now. Less a performance and more an invitation and if Steve were sure, if he were sure that invitation was being extended to him, specifically, and not just to the world at large?

God, but he’d jump on it.

“Didn’t hear any of that, did’ya?” Bucky’s lips quirk just a little higher as he swings into a seat next to Steve’s, and the impulse to stroke the corners of that mouth with his fingertips, with his tongue—

Jesus.

Steve takes as inconspicuous of a steadying breath as he can manage before he quirks a brow to match those lips best he can—and it’s so easy; it’s so easy to stretch innocence over his features and ask, sweet as pie, just to see what he gets in reply:

“Trained monkeys?”

“Trained fucking monkeys,” Bucky repeats, props his left elbow on the table and leans in, onto the palm. “For emphasis, not description.”

Steve breaks, and snorts, and hell.

Holy hell, but he wants, and he’s not even sure what it is that he wants.

But he’s sure as anything that he does. Want.

Desperately.

“I mean,” Bucky clears his throat and leans back in the chair; making himself comfortable more than just physically for the way that he lounges, but also, Steve thinks, around whatever he’s going to say.

“Don’t think I’m not grateful,” Bucky starts, eyes wide and honest; “I am, god knows, and if I can do this for every moment of the rest of my sorry-ass life, waking and sleeping, and it helps anyone else who…”

He trails off, clenching metal fingers before drumming them, both unconscious and demonstrative at once, the arm on display with full intention, apparently, the sleek plates suddenly keenly comparable to the itchy cotton of Steve’s first ill-fitted pull-on mask: and yet their shine pales in comparison to the gleam of resolve that sharpens Bucky’s features, so much so that Steve almost has to look away.

Except, that’s a lie.

He couldn’t look away if he tried.

“If it helps, I’d do it in a heartbeat. I will do it.”

Bucky lets out a slow breath, held captive through his teeth and almost whistling, and it’s oddly endearing, particularly when it’s matched with the return of that smirk, and the playful tilt of the head that shakes a few pieces of soft-looking hair just enough to make Steve’s fingers itch with the long-dormant desire to just reach, to just touch.

“But I’m no saint, and I ain’t above complaining about it anyway.”

Steve grins, and the feeling is dizzying, for the way he didn’t know he was missing it so much: the feeling of being understood, even just a little.

The soft, tenuous brush of maybe not alone.

“I’m gonna get a drink,” Steve stands, because he needs to breathe, he needs to, to—something. “Can I get you anything?”

Bucky raises his brow, and it’s a fucking sensuous thing, that single motion. Whether it means to be or not.

“Offering to buy me a drink from an open bar?”

And Steve feels the flush start to build up his neck, pushed by the blood beating there like a battering ram: stupid, god, how stupid—

“Jesus, Captain,” and it jars Steve enough to stave off the blush of embarrassment somewhere near his chin, because Steve thinks it might be the first time he’s heard his rank said without any weight or expectation, without duty in it, just something that’s his: less than his name and more than a stranger’s sir—he’s not sure what to do with it, to be honest, but he’s sure as hell less sure what to do with what the next words, and the cheeky fucking wink that comes with them, do to his pulse:

“I don’t put out ‘til the third date, no matter how much you romance me.”

Steve’s heart leaps, and he’s thrown for a second. Bucky sees it, and latches onto it; throws his head back and laughs.

Oh, wow. Wow, that laugh.

“Jerk,” Steve manages to say around the way his own lips stretch wide with that infectious joy.

“Whatever you’re having,” Bucky nods behind him toward the bar, and Steve doesn’t know at all what he’s going to have. He hadn’t planned that far.

“Be right back,” he says anyway, because if there’s one thing he’s good at? It’s going in without a plan and figuring it out along the way.

“I’ll be right here,” Bucky’s smile shifts back to a smirk.

“Steve.”

Bucky blinks; tilts his head with a question.

“Call me Steve,” Steve clarifies. He wants that familiarity, he wants it to grow between them, and—

And he wants to hear it. He wants to hear his own name off that tongue, with the lingering tendrils of that laughter, wants it to thrill down his spine like he knows, like he knows that it will.

“I’ll be right here, then,” Bucky looks at him, big storm-sky eyes on him like he’s the only thing in the room; the only thing in the world before his mouth shapes the word:

“Steve.”

And yep. It shivers through his veins in a way that lights and sparks and sings: just a name.

Just his name.

Steve can’t get to the bar fast enough, mostly so he can get back to that voice, that smirk, those eyes.

His name.

________________________________________

He’s started sketching again, yeah. Specific subjects—subject, really—obviously, but still. He is sketching again.

Which is why what he does next makes him all the more...something. He doesn’t even think he has a word for how he feels about what he does next: crazy, pathetic, inspired, foolish, giddy, impossibly young. A sap before he’s earned the right. Soft where it means trusting in something he’s barely seen, and faith was never his strong suit in the pews, or hell: even in the foxholes. He’d always tried, but this.

This is something else.

Word or no word, though: what he does is goes home, and between kicking off his dress shoes and untying his tie, he’s made the decision. He sits down on his sofa and flips open the laptop he rarely uses before he’s out of his clothes, and he’s looking up the email address before he can think twice, and then he’s drafting a very pointed question to the curator of the boxes upon boxes of his pre-war and USO-time possessions that went into archives and museums and collections and whatever else, because while he didn’t take much back and he doesn’t keep track of where much of the rest even is, he does know who keeps his sketchbooks, all of the art that survived.

And so it’s past midnight and into a brand new day when he presses send, asking for one specific book that he can still feel the shape of in his hands, the whisper of a wind only he can hear with his enhanced senses on the Front, still a chorus boy more than a Captain and weighed down with it: heavy. And he feels like he’s vibrating with some impossible, invisible energy for the rest of the night until he gets a reply by open-of-business the next morning, surprisingly helpful about it, promising a courier will get the item to him by end-of-day.

He can’t focus on a goddamn thing until the package is in his hands.

And then he’s calling a home number that no one ever answers, and that’s why he’s calling, because when no one ever answers?

The calls always go to the same place.

“Stark Industries, consumer feedback line.”

Steve really does need to ask if that ever works for people who get the number accidentally. If it’s even possible to get the number accidentally and actually get through, at which point, Steve really needs to ask why there’s a default trick-message in the first place.

Irrelevant.

“JARVIS,” Steve knows he will feel guilty for forgoing a proper greeting, but he’s alight with that unnamable-something, still, and there’s a layer of his consciousness, very deep down, that might be a little afraid that he’ll think twice, think better of all this if he hesitates, if he lets the momentum die.

“If I asked you for an address, would Tony necessarily know about it?”

“Not unless I explicitly informed him, Captain.”

“Would you be able to, y’know,” Steve clears his throat, and he feels the vibrating, thick and strong around the bob of his Adam’s apple, all-consuming and driving his words before he can fully think them through; “not explicitly inform him?” Steve frowns to himself.

“Or, probably not implicitly, either?”

Steve will never entirely get used to the incredibly human inflections that JARVIS uses, with full contextualization and knowledge. The 21st century: it’s a fucking doozy.

“Sir had quite a fond relationship with tequila when he was originally programming me, Captain. I’m not entirely sure he recalls how much autonomous judgement he left at my disposal in terms of discretion.”

There’s a pause where a chuckle would be with anyone else; with JARVIS, though, the laughter is just a suggestion in his tone.

“I’ve sometimes suspected my inclination toward it was a subconscious effort on his part to balance his own disregard for it entirely.”

And that’s where Steve takes the suggestion and actually does laugh, until JARVIS prompts him back to the point:

“The address, Captain Rogers?”

Steve exhales heavily, and figures: now or never.

He wonders, not for the first time, how in the hell it was that he was never this nervous about things, never this consumed with that dagger-edge of fear when he was ninety pounds and couldn’t see over a tall counter—damn it all.

“Major James Barnes,” Steve says, voice steady if not particularly strong. “Please.”

He hopes, idly, that the please makes up for his lack of pleasantries when he’d initially answered the phone. He blames the Catholic guilt—he didn’t need to wait for the 21st century to dawn to pick that one up.

Chapter Text

Steve needs to get better at screening his calls. Or at the very least, looking at the caller ID before he slides to answer.

This is not news. The sheer number of times he’s answered Tony’s calls when Tony’s actually calling—which means it’s not an emergency, because then it’s JARVIS calling, and if Tony’s calling he’s a) bored or b) looking to be funny, which means he’s going to be a dick. And don’t even get Steve started on all of Natasha’s calls that he should have let go to voicemail.

But mostly, Steve thinks, he should look at the name on the screen first because at least then, this time, he’d have been prepared: he doesn’t get a greeting, just words, and he’s walking through the park after a run and he’s really lucky that’s where he is, honestly, because there are benches everywhere.

“You’re a punk, Rogers.”

He’s lucky, because there are benches everywhere, and that voice makes his knees go out: just like that.

“Sometimes,” Steve agrees without thinking, and Bucky—who’s called him, who Steve had wrestled with himself for all of three seconds before adding him as a contact when JARVIS has offered his number alongside his address, and then felt guilty about it but not nearly guilty enough to delete it; Bucky, who’s called him, who maybe niggled Tony or asked JARVIS, too, for Steve’s number, because he wanted it, wanted…

Bucky, who called him, huffs a laugh before silence falls, and all Steve can hear is the thump of his own heart and Bucky’s breath across the line.

“You’re really fucking talented, you know that?” Bucky says, voice low and soft, so sincere and tight with something thick and significant that Steve doesn’t want to make too much of, exactly, except that he kind of fell onto a fucking park bench and, in truth, he really wants to make a lot of it, and be right about it, too.

“You can see the shading on the individual little hairs, on the,” Bucky pauses; “are they hairs? Or fur? On a monkey?”

And Steve has to swallow the amount of laughter that wants to rise and tumble from his lips, because that’s the best response—the best one.

“I have no idea,” Steve confesses, and hopes that Bucky can hear how much his heart is in the words, hopes he hears at least a hint of the bubbling joy that’s caught in his throat.

“Whatever,” Bucky says, and it’s lighter for a second before his voice gets full and quiet again, in a way that vibrates across the line and shakes in Steve’s bones: “You’ve got a gift.”

Steve feels his face get hot, and he’s not sure what makes him respond at all, really, or say anything more than thanks. But he feels like he should; like he can.

“I loved it,” Steve murmurs, like a secret. “Drawing. It was,” he lets out a deep breath: “it always felt right.”

“I feel like saying thank you for something like this,” Bucky tells him softly; “doesn’t quite cut it.”

Steve’s breathless, suddenly, like everything is soft, and slow, and warm, and it’s not just his knees that are weak, it’s everything, and for the first time he can ever recall that’s oddly okay.

“You don’t have to thank me.”

“Then your register for what qualifies as gratitude must be way off,” Bucky tells him flatly, but then there’s an uptick in his tone that renders Steve powerless but to smile: “but we can work on that.”

Work on that; like they’ll have time and space—and we.

Steve likes the sound of that. A lot.

“Let’s start with me saying thank you,” Bucky says, voice so warm. “Because Steve, this,” and his voice cuts off, and he clears his throat before he murmurs, so full that Steve can feel it: “thank you.”

“You’re,” Steve tries to meet that sweet, soft sensation that Bucky’s words send through him in waves: “you’re welcome. I wanted to,” Steve bites his lip.

“Y’know, after the gala. I guess I just knew you were the one who was supposed to have it.”

And that’s the truth. And the truth draws an audible inhale from Bucky that makes Steve’s skin prickle so pleasantly that he couldn’t stop the shiver running through him even if he’d tried.

“Jesus,” Bucky exhales, and god: that sound. “What are you doing Tuesday night.”

It’s a statement, not a question.

“I,” Steve swallows; “nothing planned?”

It’s a question, not a statement.

“Good,” Bucky says, satisfaction dripping from the word. “I figure you’re the kinda guy who actually puts his real information in his return address?”

Steve ducks his head because, well. Yeah.

“I mean, at least I didn’t put my name there, right?”

“Oh, at least, sure. Yeah,” Bucky deadpans before he says simply: “Be ready at ten to eight.”

Steve finds himself smiling before he realizes it; only can tell because it’s so wide it almost hurts. “Where am I going?”

“Hmm,” Bucky hums, playful enough that it tingles through Steve’s veins from wherever he is, to right here where Steve sits with his phone pressed too tight to his ear, like it makes a difference, like he can be closer:

“Figure you’ve had enough of going to the future, yeah?” Bucky says, not a jab or a snark but a thoughtful musing that makes Steve wonder how no one has ever managed to say something like that to him—and they’re always saying shit like that to him, one way or another—but he can’t figure out how no one has ever managed to say it like that: simple, and kind, and perfect, even before Bucky finishes:

“How about I say you’re going to the past?”

Chapter Text

Steve’s pretty lucky there are no world-threatening events between that phone call on Saturday and Tuesday night, because what he manages to do in the interim is basically all of nothing. Absolutely nothing. Unless you count more cool showers than he cares to admit to, and a constant simmer of nervous energy in his every motion, and if he lacked grace in his everyday, non-battle-related movements at large?

This is ridiculous.

Because Steve somehow manages to make his way through a brand new sketchbook—full of doodles and sketchings and little studies of fantasies that he could never bear for anyone to ever see—over the course of a single, lost afternoon he doesn’t even remember passing by: and it’s a damned good thing that Steve’s somehow got money, now, because going through a whole sketchbook in a matter of hours, once upon a time, would have left him drawing on the damned walls for a month.

Then he manages to burn himself from the fingers to halfway up his forearm when he drops his fucking coffee because he’s daydreaming about folded hands that occupy a good fourth of the aforementioned sketches, flesh and metal entwined in the most fascinating contrast that’s all somehow still so warm: and Steve maybe watches his skin heal over like it’s mesmerizing, not at all because he’s imagining a full, plush set of lips kissing it better, long lashes framing those perfect seaglass eyes watching him with every press of that mouth and—

Nope. That’s absolutely not what happens. At all.

Fuck, but Steve’s pathetic. He actually goes through the full-sketchbook to make sure he hasn’t descended into any little hearts with his initials, or Mr. Steve Rogers-Barnes written like a preteen girl, Jesus Christ.

He is actually relieved that there’s none of that on the pages. There is, however, a great deal of material that makes him curious as to the accuracy of whether or not that’s what Bucky looks like when the bottom half of him’s uncovered, given that Steve already saw him shirtless the first time they met, getting his arm tended to.

Steve’s real glad these sorts of drawings won’t get him thrown in jail in this century. Real glad. He’d never risked it, then—maybe this is the dam bursting, or something.

Maybe that’s a reasonable explanation for some of these…yeah.

He maybe watches the clock tick the seconds, only half the pace of his pulse, after he gets himself dressed and feels like he’s wearing something Nat wouldn’t berate him for, or worse, cackle uproariously at—maybe that’s what he does, or maybe he listens to the clock and his heartbeat as he stares out his window and waits for a car, or a person, or whatever’s coming for him, all nerves and promise and so much breathless anticipation that he doesn’t know what to do with, because Steve Rogers’ dating history isn’t the most robust, but it’s not empty—and yet, Steve Rogers?

Steve Rogers has never had someone come to pick him up for a date before.

He’s staring so hard he almost misses the slowing of a sleek-as-hell car in front of his building.

But he doesn’t miss it, and Steve doesn’t pause to think that maybe it’s not for him, the car, no.

No, he’s already down the stairs and out the door before that thought registers as a possibility. And by that point Bucky’s grinning at him through a rolled-down window and Steve feels goddamn giddy.

“Come on,” Bucky calls over to him. “In ya get.”

Steve doesn’t need to be told twice.

“This is nice,” he comments, about the car—definitely about the car, which is fantastic, and not about Bucky’s tousled hair and just-tight-enough button-down, and nope, Steve will not look down at Bucky’s lap while he’s driving, no, Steve’s got more self control than that.

Really.

“It better be,” Bucky scoffs, but runs his hand appreciatively over the leather of the steering wheel. “Admittedly, I wanted a ‘68 big-block, but I had to argue with Tony for weeks just so I didn’t get some cocky special edition Audi,” Bucky shudders dramatically and pats the wheel again.

“Gotta be grateful that this, at least, looks kind of like a car other people have.”

“How much did it cost?”

Bucky grimaces. “You really don’t want to know,” he shakes his head. “I wish I didn’t.”

Right. Steve can guess.

“I feel like I should ask, given that you seem to think that giving decades-old sketches from warzones out to random guys you met in Tony Stark’s lab is no big deal,” Bucky says as he sneaks through a stoplight; he’s watching the road, obviously, which is convenient enough because it sounds like he’d be averting his eyes anyway—and Steve’s generally figured out that when he most wants to read someone’s eyes and see what they mean, and why, that’s when they’re most inclined to look away.

And Steve really wants to be able to read Bucky better than this angle allows.

“You do realize that sort of thing can be,” Bucky’s throat works around a swallow, and the way the streetlights play over his profile is nothing short of captivating: “it can be read into, you know?”

“I,” Steve doesn’t think he expected that; and he’s not sure he was aiming for this, exactly, when he sent that drawing to Bucky—not consciously, at least not with that particular choice. But he sees it now, in retrospect. And well:

“Yeah,” Steve says plainly, because he’s not stupid enough to pretend he doesn’t want this thing that’s slowly revealing itself as something he might possibly be able to have, to touch: here and now and right next to him.

“Yeah, I do.”

“So you,” Bucky clears his throat again; “I mean...”

He trails off, and Steve’s trying to think of something to say just when Bucky reaches out and grabs his hand, and threads their fingers together on top of the gear-shift, and Bucky’s thumb’s stroking against his skin and shit.

Shit, but automatic transmissions are a gift, and Steve’s grip in Bucky’s own tightens: this is a thing he wants to keep.

“Okay,” Bucky breathes, his lips quirking in the softest smile that catches in the squeeze of Steve’s heartbeat: beautiful. “Okay, good.”

“Yeah,” Steve whispers, because it feels like the moment demands that light of a touch, precious and ephemeral: “good.”

They drive like that, hand in hand, for a few blocks, maybe more, before Bucky lets out a slow breath.

“Would it be over the top if I asked you to close your eyes?”

Steve isn’t expecting that, obviously, but he thinks on it for only a moment before the answer’s clear.

“Oddly enough?” he says, hands still tangled up in Bucky’s, just close enough to brush against the heavy pump at his pulsepoint. “No, it wouldn’t.”

“Would you say yes?”

Steve nods. “I think so.”

“Would you actually do it?”

Steve turns and looks at Bucky, doesn’t answer until they hit a red light and Bucky can look back.

“If you wanted me to.”

Bucky’s lips part, and he’s stunning.

God, but he’s stunning.

“We’re nearly there,” he murmurs, cast in the crimson glow. “Close your eyes, Steve.” His fingers stroke Steve’s hand in his: “Please.”

Steve obeys. The space between them seems to shrink and the world fits inside the points of contact between their skin and Steve thinks he could feel every hitch of Bucky’s pumping blood, every rise and fall of breath if he could even possibly start to get past the deafening rush of his own.

“You can open your eyes now, if you want. We’re close enough.”

Time stood still, apparently, while Steve sat and held and knew only touch and his own heartbeat, and it kind of feels like that would be an okay way to live. If he could have no more than that, it would be okay.

“Nah,” Steve breathes; “that’d spoil the surprise.”

Deft fingers clench around his own: protective, maybe, but more…

More grateful, almost. Like Steve’s a thing to relish and cherish and want.

Steve doesn’t know what to do with that, isn’t sure if he can trust in it.

“You’re unbelievable.” And it’s not frustration or agitation; it’s wonder in those words, and Steve shouldn’t have wavered.

He can trust in it all, and if it fails him later?

Right now, that’s a risk he’ll take.

They slow, and park, and Bucky squeezes Steve’s hand meaningfully before letting him go and turning off the ignition—Steve’s eyes flutter open and he knows exactly where he is.

“So. Welcome, or, almost,” he opens Steve’s door like a real gentleman, and Steve wouldn’t ever admit it out loud, but the butterflies in his stomach are truly something else when he takes Bucky’s theatrically offered hand. “Our keycard-access for the evening is on her way.”

Steve’s not sure he understands: an evening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a pretty damned romantic gesture, but Steve keeps an eye on their calendar, and they’re not open late.

Except: keycard.

Keycard?

Bucky doesn’t lead him up the iconic stairs, no—they slip through a way Steve’s never gone toward, a door Steve’s never seen: an employee entrance that conveniently doesn’t need a swipecard, apparently, as Bucky taps in a numeric code that’s far too long for anyone to manage guessing at it without getting caught. Steve feels daring and insubordinate and ready for a ruler against his knuckles and it’s intoxicating.

Plus Bucky’s hand’s still in his, and: well.

They walk through the door and Bucky leads him down hall after hall, into an elevator and then down.

They’re going down for a while, and Steve thinks: no way.

No way in hell.

“Bucky, is this…” he starts to ask as the elevator doors open to a sparsely lit antechamber area where a keycard seems to be the only way forward.

“Come on,” Bucky pulls him by the wrist and out of the elevator car before the door slides closed.

“So,” Bucky turns to him, rubbing his hands together almost nervously, smiling weakly like he’s not sure whatever he’s doing will be welcome—and if Steve thinks they’re doing what it looks like they’re doing, my god: “I mean, I’m sure you coulda got in here on your own—”

“Nope.”

The word comes with a bright pop of lips on the ‘p’ and the appearance of a petite brunette out of nowhere, because Steve cannot tell where in the hell she could have come from: no sign of doors or ways in or out, save the very obvious glass wall in front of them, guarded by the card-scanner.

“Come on, Becs,” Bucky volleys back; “Stark could’ve—”

“You think your big sister can’t turn down Pepper Potts?” the woman—Bucky’s sister, apparently, and actually the resemblance is striking now that Steve’s looking—raises a dangerous brow. “Repeatedly?”

Bucky stares her down for a long moment, and she stares back just as unwavering, before Bucky grins and tilts his head in concession:

“I stand corrected.”

The woman smirks, and then inclines her head to Steve; Bucky clears his throat and ducks his head a little sheepishly.

“Right, Becca, Steve,” he gestures between them. “Steve, this is Becs, my—”

“Beloved sister and secretly the favorite but don’t tell the others,” Becca finishes for him with a wry grin before adding a stage whisper: “they’re sensitive about that kind of thing.”

She sticks out a hand toward Steve. “Pleasure.”

Steve says the same, while Bucky mutters ruefully:

“More like pain in my—”

“Would you like me to escort you out, James?” Becca cuts him off, turning back to eye him carefully. “Need I remind you, I could lose my job over this—”

“They’d be idiots to can you,” Bucky scoffs. “You’re like the best curator in the history of ever.”

“If anyone ever found out.”

It’s Bucky’s turn to cross his arms and cock a brow her way, and yeah. They’re siblings for sure.

“Need I remind you I was SpecOps for, oh, how many years? My clearance level—”

“You’re so lucky,” she interrupts, shaking her head and turning to address the rest of what she has toward Steve. “He is so lucky he got his dumb ass captured. Has me going easy on him, all soft and shit.”

She says it with more flippance than Steve can fathom for the subject, but Steve had noticed a certain resilience, a humor in the face of horror as a mechanism for moving forward shining clear that first day in Tony’s lab: maybe it’s a family trait.

“Aww,” Bucky puts a hand to his chest dramatically: “she loves me.”

“Mmmhmm,” Becca rolls her eyes before turning to them both pointedly. “Right, gentlemen. This is like The Da Vinci Code on steroids, but real and with rules and no Tom Hanks. Understand?” She eyes them until they both nod. “You’ve got two hours.”

“How ‘bout three hours?”

“How ‘bout I redirect your request to view our undisplayed masterworks to our storage warehouse in New Jersey?” Becca snarks back, clearly well-armed against Bucky’s charm where Steve absolutely isn’t, but Bucky doesn’t cave, and Steve thinks it’s only a sister who could stand against the force of those eyes because, goddamn.

Becca frowns at Bucky for a good long time before sighing deeply.

“So fucking soft on him, Jesus,” she shakes her head. “Three hours. Be here, on the dot. Do not make me come and track your ass down.”

“You’re the best, Becs,” Bucky grins wide, and Steve’s heart trips for it as he leans in to kiss his sister’s cheek. “Absolute best.”

“You owe me,” she says, then lowers her voice as if Steve can’t hear them—and granted, without his serum-enhanced hearing, he probably wouldn’t have. “This is storage at the Met, Buck, you owe me.”

Bucky nods knowingly. “It’s in the mail.”

Becca grins wide and hugs him from the side. “That’s why you’re my favorite brother.”

“Only brother.”

Becca shoos him as she taps her card, the glass doors opening with a swoosh of the mechanisms: pressure locks for air and temperature control, and Steve cannot believe this, he cannot believe this—

“Have fun, boys!” Becca says, blowing a kiss as she disappears from wherever she came from in the first place. Steve turns to Bucky, wide-eyed, kicking himself for the words about to come out of his mouth but his mother’s voice is in his ear and he can’t not, no matter what it costs him.

“Bucky,” he says, and he could not keep the wonder out of his voice even if he’d wanted to. “You, but, if she could get in trouble—”

“She’s exaggerating,” Bucky waves him off, leading him through the doors into the storage collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, fucking hell. “Plus she’s leaving for the Smithsonian in a month, so this is a small window of opportunity for any consequences to be basically bullshit. She signed a pretty ironclad contract.”

Then Bucky turns to him, takes both his hands now and smiles so wide it could be enough of a treat, a joy that they wouldn’t even need to bother walking any further, because that’s a masterpiece in motion, right there on Bucky’s face.

“Besides,” he says wryly; “d’ya think you’re the only one who’s been jonesing to see this kind of shit for ages?”

And while Bucky’s beautiful enough on his own? Steve’s a kid in a candy shop with the promise of everything to take in, waiting before them, for three whole hours with Bucky’s fingers tangled in his.

________________________________________

Steve’s chest is tight for stretching, like his ribs are nothing against the fluttering of his pulse as Bucky walks him to his door, precisely three hours and a car-ride’s-length later.

“Bucky,” Steve turns to him, hands in his pockets because he feels like he’s going to vibrate apart with the way his blood’s straining at his veins.

“I,” he shakes his head and takes one hand out to run through his hair, all nerves: “this was...”

“Yeah,” Bucky exhales, and his smile is almost bashful, almost sly as he ducks his head for a second before looking up again and meeting Steve’s gaze head-on before Steve can escape the shiver of it, the shock of it dancing on his skin as he’d stared when Bucky wasn’t looking; as he stares still, because he can’t look away.

“Yeah, it was.”

Steve swallows, hard, and the feeling running through him, pushing words from his mouth is—once again—one he doesn’t know a name for, but that doesn’t make it any less all-consuming, any less perfect and sweet on the tongue:

“Thank you.”

Bucky’s grin widens.

“See?” He leans in to nudge Steve’s shoulder, and Steve only then realizes just how close they are. “A thing worth gratitude. You’re learning already.”

And then Bucky’s grin dampens, gets smaller across his face, but somehow, bigger, so much bigger that it shines through Steve’s whole body when he says:

“You’re so very, very welcome.”

And Steve’s had the world at his fingertips before—had it in his hands for the saving, for safekeeping, for whatever people thought he was capable of regardless of who and what he really is and yet, in those words, Steve feels that world open and seem like a thing he might be able to touch one day, might have a shot at knowing for the very first time.

“Can I kiss you goodnight?”

And then, the world that Steve felt open, felt like he could know? That world’s bottom falls out and his heart starts skipping again and Jesus fuck, he can barely breathe.

He is so very far out of his depth, here. He can’t even see his depth, can’t sound it or understand where it goes.

Bucky doesn’t frown, exactly, when Steve’s stunned silence stretches, but there’s something like regret in his features that Steve wants nothing to do with, wants never to witness again when Bucky asks: “Is that a no?”

“No,” Steve rushes, stumbling over his words, his own breaths in the way but fuck all, anything but no. “I mean, yes, it’s a yes, I just—” he shakes his head.

“I’ve never been asked that before.”

Bucky’s almost-frown starts to curl upward, at that. Soft and gentle and more affectionate than Steve thinks he’s earned, just yet, or deserves. But dear god, does he want.

“Well then, I think it’s high time to rectify that oversight,” Bucky says softly, close enough that the words tickle Steve’s lips. “Though I don’t quite buy that you’ve never been asked for a kiss before,” Bucky eyes him through his lashes, and it burns embers in Steve’s blood, absolutely gorgeous. “You’re a goddamn catch.”

“Wasn’t always,” Steve breathes, heart pounding heavy in his neck as he watches Bucky lean closer, closer, closer—

“Now that,” Bucky tilts his head just a little; “I don’t believe for a second.”

And in retrospect, Steve thinks Bucky was aiming for Steve’s cheek. But Steve shivers, just a little, and leans, more than a lot, into the presence of Bucky, the feel of his exhale on Steve’s skin and so the chaste kiss intended for the line of Steve’s stubble ends up at the corner of Steve’s lips and lingers there with more intimacy, with more heat than Steve can fathom for such a simple touch, more of a tremble up Steve’s spine than he’s certain he can stand.

“Goodnight, Steve.” Bucky breathes it before he draws back, and so the drag of his lips is wet and plush against Steve’s skin and it’s impossible, it’s beautiful enough to break Steve’s heart between the pounding, and scatter what’s left.

“Goodnight,” Steve barely manages to breathe out, because he’s choked with something he can’t process or grasp, but he finds it in Bucky’s eyes when they both pull back, so at least it’s not just him.

Whatever this is, wherever this goes: he’s not alone.

He didn’t realize how long it’d been since he’d felt that, until it permeates the space between them, only half of the warmth of Bucky’s body but something beautiful still when Bucky whispers, before he walks backward toward the sidewalk, never once breaking eye contact:

“Sweet dreams.”

Steve doesn’t go inside until Bucky’s out of sight. And they’ve never quite measured it, not like this, but in this moment, for this reason: Steve?

Steve can see for miles.

Chapter Text

Bucky probably shouldn’t have bothered wishing him sweet dreams. Those, Steve was never going to have a problem with.

Well, at least: not the sweet part. Or the dreaming part. Both of those are more than taken care of.

What isn’t taken care of are his sheets, which he’s washing every morning because he’s apparently thirteen years old again, even though at the age of thirteen he never, never had this many of those kinds of dreams. Not even close.

At one point, his downstairs neighbor scolds him for leaving his sheets in the wash for two whole days, because she apparently saw them in the washer when she did her Monday loads as well as when she did her Wednesday loads and presumed he’d left them there.

Which, as a matter of fact, no. No, he had not. He’s pretty sure said sheets have faded already for the daily washing. Sometimes, twice daily.

The life of a “superhero” when there’s no life-saving to be done can be boring. Sometimes he naps. So sue him.

But it’s at the point that Mrs. Finnegan warns him off that Steve realizes he really, really, really needs to do something.

________________________________________

“What’s a pretty face like yours doing in a sorry place like this?”

First, it’s not a sorry place. If it was a sorry place, though, the presence of Bucky Barnes in the back corner would make it anything but.

Anything but.

However, it’s not a sorry place. It’s a gorgeous little jazz bar with live musicians setting up at just the perfect angle opposite where Bucky’s sitting, where Steve’s presumed he’s welcome enough to linger over the seat next to him and and settle with a drink he barely stopped to get because he wanted to get here, not the bar, but right here, where Bucky was, where Steve was impulsive enough to follow up on a comment made in response to a sculpture in the lowest of levels beneath the Met: Reminds me of the way light plays on the pianist in this little music joint I go to sometimes, just the way this curve comes in and those hands had traced the shape of the statue in the air; you should come, you’d love it, I think you’d, I mean, yeah, yeah I think you’d love it.

Steve swallows, and his heart’s been pounding since he decided to google live music and bar and Bucky’s address, while trying to judge the line between romantic and stalker and failing to find it—but then Bucky saw him, sees him, and the smile on his face is bright in the mood lighting, and Steve thinks, fuck the pianist’s shadows: that.

That, right there? Bucky is the perfection of that sculpture. Bucky is a goddamn work of art.

Steve breathes, and he thinks it’s a rum and coke that’s sweating in his hands as he tries to steady his world enough to reply.

“In the neighborhood,” Steve shrugs, or else, makes himself shrug; “felt like a drink.” He nods to Bucky’s empty beer.

“Need a refill?”

Bucky quirks a brow. “You gonna join me?”

Steve’s heart takes a break from pounding, and leaves a little room to skip, just a tiny bit hopeful.

“If that seat’s not taken,” Steve tries like hell to play it cool, but he’s pretty sure he misses the mark by a mile.

“Taken by you,” Bucky says, gesturing wide in invitation; “if you want it.”

Steve knows he offered to get Bucky another drink, but he mostly forgets to care when the opportunity to sit next to him’s offered. Bucky huffs a laugh, like maybe he sees that entire thought like a full and real thing to read off Steve’s body, and so he’s the one who gestures to the waitress passing nearby to ask for another.

Bucky turns to him, then, eyes solely focused on Steve in the dim light, catching the glow in unpredictable flashes, and Steve’s pulse decides that pounding and skipping are not, in fact, mutually exclusive.

“So,” Bucky says, entirely calm about eyeing Steve from just under his lashes, like they’ve been sitting here for hours, like they do this every week, and Steve realizes in that moment, more than he’d realized, that he wants that. He wants that so much.

“Tell me about you.”

Steve chuckles dryly. “Everyone knows about me.”

“Bullshit.” Bucky doesn’t even blink, and huh.

That’s the right answer, somehow, that Steve didn’t even know before someone said it.

He’s really glad that someone is Bucky.

“What do you wanna know?” And Steve would tell him, he’d tell him anything. He’s certain, in that moment, of that fact above most others.

He’s probably more certain that, given the opening, he’d kiss Bucky Barnes senseless, but.

“Tell me about the first scar you ever got.”

Steve doesn’t expect that, but honestly, he should know better by this point to think that Bucky’s going to do anything Steve could ever expect.

“Pretty sure it’s,” and Steve turns his arm to find it—it’s faint, and it was one of the curiosities from when he’d just had the serum, the fact that he can almost never scar now but the ones he’d already gotten stayed along for the ride, but he spots it and points it out, just at the crook of his elbow.

“This one,” he says, almost proud despite the how of it. “Messing around the kitchen, got too close to the stove,” he smiles, less sadly than he might have another time, in another place, with another man by his side. “Ma was furious, she’d told me to sit down about a hundred times.”

“You’re just as good now, then, I take it. At listening to sense.”

Steve feels himself flush, but still smirks. Bucky laughs.

Steve feels himself fall a little more, feels something grow a little bit warmer between his ribs.

“I’m bad at this game,” Steve says. “Can I,” he clears his throat; “will you answer the same things? After I do?”

And if Bucky’s grin does things to him; if Bucky’s laugh makes him melt?

“Sure thing, Stevie.”

That grin and that laugh and that voice around not just his name, but around Stevie, a name Steve hasn’t heard in decades, and has maybe never heard so goddamn sweet—

Steve might just come undone, here, and he thinks that’d be okay, too.

“Busted it on a badly pitched baseball,” Bucky points to his right ring finger. “This here split open and bled like a motherfucker,” he draws one of his metal fingertips along a silvery line of scar tissue. “And I was stubborn and didn’t tell my mom until too late, so I didn’t get the stitches I should have.”

And Steve wonders, for the first time—and that’s kind of surprising, now that the idea is in his head; surprising that it’s the first time—what his life might have looked like had he grown up with Bucky Barnes. Would they have played ball when the weather was fine and Steve was healthy enough to manage, or gone to see the Dodgers together, with birthday money as a rare treat?

Would they have—

“One memory from each year of school.” Bucky interrupts, and Steve tries not to spend too much of his time meandering in the past, comparing it to the now for better or for worse. “And a shot for whoever’s got the better story.”

Steve tries not to compare the then to the now, and frankly, he doesn’t want to be anywhere but the now. Right here, and right now.

“That’s probably not real fair,” Steve grins small, but it’s just a sliver of the joy that sparks along every inch of his skin when Bucky calls for tequila. “Alcohol doesn’t really touch me anymore.”

“Never really did, for me,” Bucky shrugs; “so maybe your advantage is less steep than you think,” and then he smirks, hard.

“You’re also assuming you’ve got the better stories,” Bucky drawls the words a little, and damn but Steve didn’t realize his khakis were this tight. “Which is a tactical error, when you’ve got no proof. You might want to regroup and try again, or at least wait til you’ve heard one, so you’ve got something to judge from.”

And then he winks. The bastard fucking winks, and grins wide, and yeah. Steve knows tight—the comments about his shirts have been clear enough, and frequent.

But if his fly strains any further, he’s gonna have a real problem.

Bucky smiles and thanks the server for their shots when they come and oh. Oh, Steve is well aware that tequila is a standard shot, but he wasn’t thinking. Hadn’t had a reason to, before.

But the salt and the limes: fucking hell.

He definitely has a real problem, and they haven’t even gotten started.

________________________________________

Bucky wasn’t lying: neither about holding his liquor, or about having the better stories. And it’s not just because Steve has to think hard for a “good” one in a few of those years, having spent more of the school days in bed than in class—it’s mostly because Bucky has really fuckin’ absurd stories. Like the time in first grade when he forgot some weird class competition where everyone had to wear a particular color every Friday, and unwilling to accept costing his peers their winning streak, he collected everyone’s crayons in various shades of green, sat on them to help them melt until the teacher took roll for the contest, and then smeared wax all over his tee shirt and pretended it was tie-dye. Or when he got ticked that his class counselor wouldn’t put him into the trigonometry class he wanted, so he snuck in under one of the back tables that couldn’t be seen from the front and took notes on the floor until the teacher spotted him seven weeks into the semester and got him suspended because they simply couldn’t believe that someone hadn’t just sneaked their boyfriend in to get off under the desk.

Because god forbid a kid want to learn shit, I mean, honestly, Bucky’d said as Steve was still cackling at Bucky’s imitation of the teacher’s lecturing of his supposedly “depraved nature”. Maybe the asshole should have been good enough at his job to notice the fugitive camping in the back of the room before the end of October. And come on, no self-respecting high-schooler wants to do anything in a math classroom. Not even me.

By the time they’re talking senior year, Steve feels pleasantly buzzed, and given that he knows the booze isn’t responsible for it, he’s pretty sure it has a hell of a lot more to do with Bucky. Bucky smiling, Bucky laughing, Bucky reacting to his story about staining his ma’s apron with a question about the apron’s pattern, and not some kind of awkward limbo between long-belated condolences for his long-dead mother, and over-eager desire to relate to a “time gone by”, like no one knows what a fucking apron is anymore. No, Bucky listened to him describe the flowers and the colors and that would have been enough on its own, really, but then Bucky’d lit up and banged open palms on the table with a childlike enthusiasm that melted Steve straight through—including the way Bucky’d jumped and gone wide-eyed at the clink of his metal hand against the edge of the tray of empty drinks still waiting for a refill—just before he’d told Steve that he was about 99.9% percent sure his grandmother had the same apron and that he was kind of known for hiding behind it as a little kid, and fuck, fuck but Steve wants to kiss that almost-breathless nostalgia off his face and make him breathless for entirely different reasons.

So yeah. Steve’s pretty sure that the buzzed feeling is entirely about Bucky. And maybe specifically, also, a little about the dilation in Bucky’s eyes that Steve’s pretty sure isn’t all that much about the alcohol either, because it started when Steve took the first shot—and honestly he didn’t quite know how to do the salt thing, just guessed and licked the space between his thumb and forefinger, and yep, those pupils got big, and maybe Steve had then played dumb with sticking his fingertips into his mouth, and then into the salt, and then sucking a little and yep, they got bigger—

So. The buzzing may have something to do with that, too.

“Favorite smell.”

Steve should probably think that’s weird, before he asks it—Bucky’d insisted Steve had to at least try to ask the questions, after they’d given up on the shots past twelfth grade and moved on to one-offs—but it’s not. It’s not weird at all, actually, because he’s buzzing and the music started ages ago and they’ve been here… hours maybe. Days? Minutes. Moments.

Bucky smiles, loose-limbed and gorgeous, and bites his bottom lip before he answers:

“How do you feel about pie?”

Steve pauses. “Good. Just, not apple.”

“Oh, fuck no,” Bucky says, scrunching his nose up. “Boring.”

And Steve laughs, too hard and too loud but he’s sick and tired of people using apple-pie-related metaphors involving his person, to the point where it’s ruined the decent-if-not-stellar dessert for him in the process.

“My grandma,” Bucky starts, and Steve’s just bit into one of the jalapeno poppers they ordered, so it’s muffled when he cuts in:

“The one wiff-tha apron?”

And Bucky chuckles, and the play of the light on his jawline’s like magic.

“The very same,” Bucky nods. “She used to make this black raspberry pie, now,” he lifts a finger, pointedly. “Don’t go mistaking black raspberries for blackberries, because they’re not the same, yeah?”

Steve nods, entirely too serious and Bucky nods back, just as serious but clearly approving before breaking down laughing.

“The smell of it baking,” Bucky says through the laughter; “at the very end, while it’s still in the oven, like, when you just open the oven, before you even touch it to bring it out. That smell.”

Steve groans. “I don’t even have a sweet tooth, Barnes, but you’re killing me here.”

“Everyone has a sweet tooth,” Bucky counters with a secret little grin. “You just gotta know where it is, and what it’s sweet for.”

Steve runs hot, immediately, and almost unbearably, for all that isn’t said in those words, in that tiny smile.

“What about you?”

Steve takes a second before he processes the question.

Smell. Right.

He kinda wants to kiss Bucky, specifically right now, to pay attention to how he smells. He thinks that would probably be his most honest answer.

“Probably,” Steve thinks for a second; “probably, wow, it’s really stupid—”

“Not possible.” And Steve basks for a moment in Bucky’s gaze, because it’s warm and fixed on him and only him where he’s propped his chin on hand just to watch, like Steve’s the best thing, or at least among the top, like, five things.

Yep. That’s the buzz, right there. Because it’s fucking intoxicating.

“Probably the smell after the rain?”

“Petrichor.”

Steve blinks.

“What?”

“The smell. S’called petrichor.”

“Right,” Steve nods to himself, like that word is what’s keeping his focus, processing it, when it’s really just Bucky.

“Petrichor, then,” Steve decides. “And fresh-ground coffee.”

Bucky just smiles. But then, Steve’s not sure that smile can be called just anything.

“Good choice.”

There’s a silence, somehow, that settles in what is objectively—Steve presumes—a rather loud jazz bar around them, quite deep into the night. But there’s a silence, in which Steve is only aware, and keenly so, of two things: the pump of his heart in his ears, and the way light plays on the bow of Bucky’s lips.

“Book you own that you wanted to read so bad when you bought it, but totally haven’t and it’s been on your shelf since you got it.”

Steve’s watching those lips move, and reads the words before he hears them, Bucky knocking him back to the world again by leaning forward and grabbing for what has to now be a cold jalapeno popper.

“Umm,” Steve thinks to the bookcase in his apartment that’s woefully empty, and still mostly for show. “Cloud Atlas, maybe?” Though, to be fair, it caught his attention because the cover art was so interesting.

“I saw the movie,” Bucky nods as he chews, and Steve maybe follows the motion of his throat as he swallows just a little too closely. “They said the book was better, but you know. They usually say that.” He drinks from his lager, and Steve’s still watching his throat. “Tell me if they’re right?”

“Oh yeah,” Steve deadpans. “Don’t hold your breath.” He’s had the book for at least a year now, maybe more.

“I carried Life of Pi around with me for an entire tour without cracking the spine,” Bucky answers, unprompted. “I still want to read it, though. I think, at the time, it was more about the thing than what was in it. If that makes sense.”

It does. Steve nods, because it makes a hell of a lot of sense.

Bucky makes sense, to Steve.

With Steve.

He only notices the music, which was great, when it dies down, and the players start to pack their instruments away.

“Fuck,” Bucky says, reaching for the phone in his pocket and checking the time. “We’ve been here all night.”

He looks up, and Steve figures he should think of something to say, but fuck all if he can.

He doesn’t have words.

“Can I walk you home?” Bucky asks, and those are the words he didn’t have, and he kind of wishes he’d said them, because it’d be more sensible to walk Bucky home: he lives closer.

He mostly doesn’t wish he’d said them, though, because the longer the walk, the longer this gets to last.

They mostly talk about ordinary things, weather and road works and complaining about the subway. They swap stories, mostly about Tony Stark because it’s funny and it’s a point of common contact beyond themselves and, where in any other scenario it’d seem sterile, politely disinterested, it’s anything but. It’s familiar, too familiar by any stretch or defense for how long they haven’t known one another. It’s intimate, in the casual way they settle into step like they’ve always known it.

Maybe they have. Steve thinks maybe he has. It’s as natural as anything in the world.

Which is probably how they end up at Steve’s door again, without Steve even noticing.

And suddenly? Steve can’t stand still, keep quiet. There’s a tightness in his chest that crawls up to his throat and makes words come out, unorganized and unplanned but at some point his hand slipped into Bucky’s on the way here, and he can’t just say nothing. He can’t just say goodnight, not when—

“I’d,” Steve starts, shakes his head. “I want to,” he stumbles, stammers; “to ask, and,” Steve’s tongue-tied, and it’s like the evening’s just beginning again, with the way his heart’s racing, but then:

“Me too,” Bucky says, voice low and layered with so much meaning Steve could drown in it if it didn’t make him so hopeful he could soar.

“Would you?” Steve leaps, and doesn’t fear falling, regardless of what the answer is as he tilts his head up the walk to the building door.

Bucky pauses, and even Steve can see the wanting, and the glaze of regret over so much more promise:

“Next time.”

And Steve’s heart’s racing, still, but it’s singing in the process, because Bucky’s eyes are dark, and he’s leaning in and—

The touch of those lips again—after only days after barely a fucking brush of their mouths, but days are too damn long—is unimaginable. It’s hot, and tender, so full of want that Steve doesn’t know if it’s all from him—it could be, he wants that much and more—or if it’s shared, if he’s wanted in kind like this, like this, he hopes; and it sends shivers up and down Steve’s spine even as he reaches and curls his hand around Bucky’s neck and slides his tongue across Bucky’s teeth, tasting and devouring, and Bucky’s made of a flavor that Steve’s never encountered and cannot possibly get enough of: Steve breathes him in and it’s all lime and musk, sweat and sweetness and the smoky cocktail of tobacco and grill-burn of the city at night but made so fucking sexy, so much a thing to desire and never be full from that Steve’s not sure he even recognizes it as a thing he’s ever known before this moment, before he inhales it in Bucky’s hair and feels alive, like the life in his veins moved slow, barely worth a breath until now, until now—

Bucky’s hand on the center of his chest isn’t a push, and somehow Steve knows he’s right to read it as a touchstone even as he feels his heart pounding all the more stark given the pressure there, and it’s sappy as all hell but Steve gets the distinct impression that it’s a safe hand for it, should the time come, should they—

“Next time.” Bucky voice is low, and rough, and his eyes bright, and his hand doesn’t move from Steve’s chest even as he splays metal fingers along Steve’s cheek, cradling his jaw and Steve can only lean in, can only turn and press lips to the fingertips and breathe out:

“Okay.”

Chapter Text

When Steve was small, and scrappy, and stubborn and just a little violent, maybe, headstrong as anything and willing to solve problems first with his fists, his Ma was always scolding him, at best. But after the scolding, she’d sigh, and she’d look skyward and say something along the lines of bless him, and let him make his own luck.

Steve’s never been sure he understood where it came from, or what specifically it means. But he does know that it carried him through a number of fights he never should have walked away from, and certainly drove him through 4F after 4F until a pair of brilliant eyes through perched spectacles bet on the little guy, and gave him the world.

So Steve’s not really thinking, so much as just acting on instinct and his mother’s voice in his ear, when he dials the number.

“Think you can wrangle me an invite to the benefit tomorrow?” he says, after exchanging more than just the requisite pleasantries—because the woman is a gift, honestly. None of them really deserve her.

“You’re lucky I’m an optimist,” Pepper answers, her tone wry but warm; “well, in comparison to the people around me,” she amends, and Steve laughs lightly.

“We never expect it of you, Steve,” she says gently; “but there’s always an invitation ready for you.”

And Steve’s heart jumps, because he knows that no dancing monkey worth his salt would miss a Stark Industries event like this one.

And he’s damn well counting on it. He can’t wait any longer.

Steve’s never been a patient man, and well.

All evidence to the contrary, he always did try to listen to his Ma, when he could. Mostly.

Sometimes.

________________________________________

Any other man would have left already. A less desperate man. Steve is sorely tempted, because he’s been at this unbearable shindig and smiled at enough warmongering, paid-off politicians than he can stomach for one night, and he’s not even caught a glimpse of Bucky. He’s not even sure he’s here, even though he has to be here.

Still. Steve’s at a table in the corner now, mostly overlooked—thank god, seeing as there is literally one person in the entire world he’d like to notice him, and that person’s nowhere to be found—and he desperately needs the gin in this gin and tonic to actually work, right about now.

See? A less desperate man would have left by now.

He blames those thoughts, and how far entrenched he is in his own mind, for not noticing the figure approaching until his shadow casts over Steve from above.

“Well, hello handsome.”

There’s a heat that suffuses his entire body when he hears that voice, and oh.

“Bucky.”

Steve doesn’t mean for that name to come out so breathy, so needy.

But it’s not like it’s a lie.

“Hey Stevie.” Bucky’s all in black, and god does it work for him—fitted, with the only part of his left arm on display being his ungloved hand and Steve is overcome, for a second; when the light hits the metal?

Steve’s struck with the absolutely overwhelming desire to take those fingers in between his lips and suck.

“Didn’t expect to see you here.”

Steve blinks. Right. Can’t suck fingers in public.

Or, well. Should not suck fingers in public. Bad form.

“I,” Steve blushes a little, oddly having nothing to do with his fantasizing and everything to do with how goddamn happy he is to see this man in front of him, like it’s been a lifetime instead of just days.

“I was maybe hoping to find you here.” Steve inclines his head toward the milling people at the party beyond them. “You’re a hard man to track down.”

“Wouldn’t have been, if I’d known you were coming,” Bucky shrugs with a grin, slipping his palms into his pockets and drawing Steve’s attention downward—

Jesus Christ.

“I’d sit and chat,” Bucky starts, but Steve shakes his head, tries not to be disappointed, or else, not to show his disappointment at those words, and what they point to, mainly: Bucky being anywhere but with Steve, at this table, for just a minute or two.

“No, I mean, I understand,” Steve swallows, and forces something like a grin. “You’re a busy man.”

“I am, yeah,” Bucky smirks, and eyes Steve with an intensity that shoots through Steve’s veins hard. “At this very moment, in fact, I can’t think of anything more pressing.”

“I’ll be here,” Steve says, without thinking, because he doesn’t need to think. He’ll wait here, on the off chance Bucky has a break, doesn’t need to schmooze with some investor in the Stark project or some military contact he’s better equipped than Tony to talk into committing to the pilot program, because Steve, as previously established?

Steve’s kind of pathetically desperate, and really, really far gone.

It takes him a second to realize that Bucky’s smirk’s turned into a grin, and it’s still aimed at Steve, because Bucky hasn’t left to schmooze, nope. Bucky’s still standing right there.

“Steve,” he says pointedly, just a little bit amused even, before he reaches out a theatrical hand.

“May I have this dance?”

Steve isn’t entirely sure he’d been fully aware that music was in fact playing at all, before that moment—and as soon as he notices it, and the people dancing on the other side of the room, it’s gone again, because his pulse is so fucking loud he can’t hear anything else.

“I,” Steve chokes out, and his voice might actually crack like he’s still going through fucking puberty, wow.

Like he said: pathetic. And desperate.

And really far gone.

“Yes?” Bucky prompts expectantly, not letting his hand fall. Steve’s mouth is dry, not least because it keeps opening and closing because his jaw’s broken, apparently, and he can’t focus on anything, let alone his keeping it from dropping every time he glances up to Bucky’s eyes, down to his hand, up, and then down, and back again.

“Guessing no one’s ever asked you this one, either,” Bucky ribs him, and there’s a shivering sensation in Steve’s stomach that he thinks he’d like to feel always, all anticipation and promise.

“Again, horrible oversight,” Bucky leans in a little, drops his voice just so:

“Unforgivable, that.”

The pulse in Steve’s throat has to be visible, now, for how it strains against his collar; how it makes it hard as all hell just to swallow.

“I’ve, um,” Steve clears his throat, to literally no effect whatsoever. “I’ve kinda got two left feet.”

Steve doesn’t expect the snort that only just fails to be restrained on Bucky’s part; but then again, he doesn’t expect anything less, and that’s the best thing.

The best thing.

“Shit, what, serum didn’t fix that?” Bucky scoffs, glancing judgingly at Steve’s shined-shoes.

“I’d ask for a refund.”

Steve huffs a laugh, and his skin’s buzzing, and there’s something unidentifiable in the moment. There’s something there he can’t put his finger on that’s pushing him toward a cliff’s edge and a mountaintop and somewhere quiet to pray as much as to scream and hear it echo and his heartbeat’s still what breaks the static in his ears, until—

“Steve,” Bucky’s close, he’s so close, and Steve can imagine the brush of his chest against Steve’s own body when he breathes, but only just because it’s almost a thing that doesn’t need imagination at all, it’s almost real, and there.

“It just so happens that I’m a fuckin’ excellent dancer.”

Until Bucky. So much, Steve’s beginning to realize, was a certain way, for so long.

Until there was Bucky.

“And I’d be happy to take the lead.”

Steve meets Bucky’s eyes and it’s every cinema cliche, every saucy pulp he saw sometimes on Mrs. Abernathy’s kitchen table: but the world stops, and they’re the only ones left in it, when Bucky smiles, and Steve realizes Bucky’s never retracted the offer of his hand once, throughout their exchange: not once.

“What d’ya say?”

And Steve’s a fool in a lot of things, in a lot of ways, but this?

Steve’s not fool enough to do anything short of taking that hand and going wherever it damn well sees fit to lead.

Chapter Text

“Next time, I said.”

Bucky’s gasping into the curve of his jaw.

“You did,” Steve exhales shakily.

“Fuck,” and Steve shouldn’t be surprised by the way the entire hallway shakes when Bucky pushes him hard against the wall—Steve isn’t surprised by the way his heart skips and then fucking slams against his ribs for the way it turns him on, and his breath hitches as Bucky’s lips drag against his skin with words, they’re making words with their shape but Steve’s barely there, Steve’s barely noticing the way that Bucky’s leading them, dragging Steve’s body not with any physical force, exactly, unless his lips count, unless leading each press of his kiss further toward what Steve can only think to be the bedroom: unless that counts?

Steve doesn’t know what counts, except that Bucky never stop touching, never stop kissing him because those lips, goddamn, but those lips—

“So fucking glad,” Bucky drags teeth down Steve’s throat and shit, shit that’s good. That’s so fucking good, and no, no, Steve’s not fucking glad, he’s fucking elated, Steve thinks he’s probably died, finally, and he did something right or God got it wrong and sent him something divine and it’s this, it’s Bucky’s hands on his body, tearing his shirt off, running through his hair and grasping his face and pressing against him like he’s the whole world and fuck, fuck—

He doesn’t realize they’ve made it to the bed until he’s tossed against it, on top of it, but only in such a way that Bucky’s clamoring on top of him, like the only reason he’s on that bed is so that Bucky only has to think about pressing against him, touching him everywhere and as much as he can, and nothing so pointless and useless as standing, maintaining balance, putting one foot in front of the other.

“So fuckin’ glad it’s next time,” Bucky murmurs against Steve’s jaw and Steve shudders, he’s already so fucking close to coming apart and they’re barely even there, they’ve barely even started.

Steve doesn’t want this to end. Steve doesn’t ever want this to end, so he looks up, meets the glow of Bucky’s eyes, so fucking bright with heat and want, and he doesn’t think twice when he uses all the strength he has, that he’s never really clocked the purpose and possibility of until this moment, and it’s only after he does it, only after he flips them and Bucky’s pupils are dilated and he’s hale and whole, still, that Steve marvels: this man.

This man can take it.

This man can take him.

So Steve’s pretty fucking sure he’s gotta be dead and this is a Heaven he didn’t count on or earn, some cosmic gift that he didn’t realize he’d been wanting for so long, so goddamn long.

“Steve,” Bucky gasps, even before Steve starts working his way down Bucky’s sternum, thumbing his nipples as he moves lower, and lower, and feels the tensing of Bucky’s muscles beneath his lips, the gasping in the heaving of his chest and the breaths that catch in his hair; “Steve, I—”

“Shh,” Steve hushes into the crease of Bucky’s thigh, nosing the curls there and the hardness growing swiftly against the curve of his jaw; “let me.”

And it’s been a pretty long time, and even then Steve’s never been what anyone could stretch to call ‘practiced’, but shaping his mouth around the tip is like an invitation, the length awaiting like his entire body was made to take it in, to make it his own and swallow it down and so that’s exactly what it does, because it feels goddamn right.

“Jesus,” Bucky curses as his hips jerk, and he fights it, tries not to throw Steve but Steve’s following without complaint, Steve’s dedicated to a singular task as he sucks and plays his tongue at the lines of veins and swallows when the tip his the back of his throat—and hell if there wasn’t a silver lining to being sick all the time as a kid, then, nigh-on a century late: he’s got no gag reflex.

None at all.

“Fucking hell, Steve.”

Steve wants to grin at that but his lips are busy, and hell if he’s going to compromise what’s apparently a halfway-decent blowjob, if the results are anything to go by, with letting up on the pressure, the press of teeth just so, just that little bit so the air that’s rushing through Bucky’s lungs catches and hisses and throbs a soft-sure rhythm out against the hollowing of Steve’s cheeks and oh, yeah.

Hell if Steve’s gonna compromise that.

“I’m close,” Bucky gasps, and that’s when Steve does let his lips curl, lets himself pull a smile off of Bucky’s cock, laving his tongue up the streams of come pearling brighter than Steve’s spit against the length and savoring the fucking taste with a shiver that feels revelatory, like he’s alive in a way he wasn’t before, goddamn.

“Good.”

Bucky lifts himself up and looks at him with enough momentary betrayal to make Steve want to laugh but he can’t, his heart’s getting big in his throat too quick for it to come out because it’s good, it’s so good, and Steve wants, and maybe the best thing he can think of in the world is the look of dawning comprehension on Bucky’s face that takes him from the wide-eyed you’re fucking kidding Rogers, you asshole, you cannot leave me like this to the truth of why Steve doesn’t want Bucky to come, yet, in his mouth, much as he wants that, yes, of course he fucking does, but now? He doesn’t, he doesn’t because—

“You,” Bucky says slowly, blinking slower. “I mean, is this,” he gestures vaguely, eyes widening as seeing what Steve means starts to mean something.

Steve wants him. So fucking bad.

This man can take him, and Steve wants him to, right fucking now.

But—

“I can, I mean, I,” Steve fumbles, because maybe he read it all wrong, or they’re not ready, or maybe Bucky’s just not into it like that, don’t jump to the worst conclusion Steve, or maybe Bucky’s not into him like that, or probably Steve actually read it all wrong, back to the most likely scenario because Steve’s not this lucky; “if you don’t? I mean—”

“Yes.”

Bucky says it in a breath, barely, and he’s got palms framing Steve’s face, and Steve gets a second to relish the feeling of it on its own before Bucky’s drawing him in and kissing him deep enough to taste his fucking soul, and Steve doesn’t even know where that lives, just that Bucky’s teasing it and wants it like anything and Steve thinks, in this moment, he’d fucking give it and say thank you for the taking, too.

Jesus.

“It’s,” Bucky mouths against the corner of Steve’s lips and Steve can feel his own pulse like a ricochet against that whisper-touch when Bucky exhales:

“God, yes.”

Bucky reaches to the side—nightstand, Steve processes—and grabs a telltale bottle, uncapping it with a deft thumb and circling his index finger before he twists his fist around the middle and ring in kind and Steve can’t swallow, mouth too dry, at the promise that comes, that sits at absolute, beautiful, unbearable odds with the hesitant want in Bucky’s eyes that matches the question from his lips:

“Can I?”

“Anything,” Steve says, arguably too fast but then again, not fast enough, because: “whatever you want, just,” and Steve didn’t realize how much he needed, how deeply he was thrumming, how close to an unseeable edge he’s shaking on, praying for the fall and yes, yes, anything:

“Fucking please, Buck.”

“Fuck,” Bucky answers, the word more breath than anything made of letters, eyes swollen black from the center to the otherworldly rim of sea-storm on the outsides, at the rims, and oh god, oh god: Steve’s spreading his legs and pulling them up like an instinct, like this got writ in his bones before he knew how to breathe.

And honestly? Steve’s thought a lot about Bucky’s fingers opening him up, stretching him fast or slow, careful or too needy for patience, too desperate but so full of desire: he’s thought about it more than he’s thought about some mission specs, but he hadn’t really thought there was any level of being disappointed in it, should the thought ever slide from fantasy to reality. And there isn’t, disappointment that is, not even close: but there turns out he’d had a preference without knowing it, because when Bucky starts to spread Steve’s cheeks and kneed the flesh more aggressively with his right hand than his left, Steve’s already too close to lost to think about much, but there’s a twinge of wanting that he didn’t think of.

He wants Bucky to use his left hand. He wants that metallic precision in him as much as anything because it’s Bucky, this is Bucky and Steve’s never met anyone close to Bucky in his life.

But he shouldn’t have worried, because he’s trembling by the time Bucky leans and runs a tongue just outside the cleft of Steve’s ass before he works in first, yes, his right index, but once that’s done the job, he doesn’t add the middle finger.

Nope, he adds the left index alongside.

And Steve gasps loud enough for the neighbors to hear, if he gave a shit at all.

“Thought you might like that,” Bucky says, a huff of self-satisfaction that’s hot as hell on its own, or Steve presumes as much, because he’s overwhelmed entirely as Bucky pulls and strokes and caresses and Steve feels himself clench, flutter, give against Bucky’s touch and fuck, fuck—

He feels himself wet with lube and sweating more than is probably defensible because they’re only at the start, really, but Steve’s so taken, so consumed, and the promise of Bucky inside him is somehow a given as much as it’s unfathomable, and Steve’s caught between impossibilities and realities he doesn’t know if it’s safe to breathe inside, lest he shatter it around him and cut himself on the shards, and oh. Oh.

But Bucky’s drawing his fingers from Steve’s entrance—worked up to three, two of them slick metal and the most perfect thing in the world, something Steve hadn’t even thought to imagine and all the more incredible for it, too—and maybe Steve whimpers because he feels empty, maybe Steve has enough presence of mind for a fraction of a second to wonder how he never noticed that emptiness before, to wonder if maybe that’s just how it works but it sure as hell isn’t going to work now, not now that he knows—

“Hold on, babe,” Bucky says, dropping an incongruously innocent kiss to Steve’s brow, and it’s then that Steve realizes that yep, he’s been whimpering and on top of that? He’s grasping, pawing at Bucky like he can’t imagine losing his heat even as he makes to draw away.

“What?” Steve says, genuinely at a loss in his head as much as he is in his body.

“You know,” Bucky quirks a brow; “gloves and glide?” he tilts his head to where the lube, well, near where it probably landed. Ish.

“In the bathroom,” Bucky clarifies. “Didn’t want to jinx it.”

And Steve wouldn’t have noticed the difference between sex flush and a genuine blush without the serum in his veins but he’s got the serum, so he notices. And it clenches like the sweetest need in his chest, dear lord.

“Oh,” Steve says dumbly around all the feeling and all the whirlwind of everything that distracts from sense in the moment, in the reality of Bucky’s bare skin—when did they both lose all their clothes? Steve kinda wishes he remembered that, except nope, not if it meant missing anything else that’s happened, that he’s felt thus far—against his own.

“Right,” Steve nods slowly, because that feels probably right; right? “I mean...”

“Unless you,” Bucky jumps in, reading Steve’s fucked-out-lethargy-except-not-yet-oh-hell-what-is-coming-for-him-when-Bucky-takes-him-for-real; reading that as hesitance when it’s anything but. “I mean, we can, if you want me to do it like,” and Bucky’s hand slides back down to cup Steve’s ass, fingering the cleft as an offer, and oh. Oh, wow, yeah.

“Another time,” Steve makes himself breathe, because he wants to feel Bucky, more than just his hands; he needs to feel Bucky, all of him, entirely, and he needs it right fucking now.

“But yeah,” Steve nods again, more aware this time with a glance toward the ensuite bath across the room. “if you want them.”

And Bucky rises, with another kiss against Steve’s mussed-as-fuck hair, this time, before he pauses, only halfway off the bed.

“If,” Bucky pauses, the syllables spilling slowly, as he processed words that Steve didn’t even think about, and maybe that says something even more about James Buchanan Barnes, that in the heat of it all, he picked it up, and thinks to ask:

“If I want them?”

Steve, this time, is the one blushing.

“I’m,” he clears his throat, awkward as hell. “The way I am,” he settles on, as explanation. “You can’t give me anything.”

Which is true. It was in the fine print. He ended up having a lot of time between the gym and avoiding his own grief and anger completely unsuccessfully, post-thaw.

“I’m clean,” Bucky says, seemingly rote, as he blinks blankly at Steve in a way that makes Steve feel the need to fill the space that stretches because he doesn’t want it to stretch far enough to lose the heat between them, for it to get cold because Steve can’t bear that, he won’t.

“And I can’t, y’know, carry anything,” Steve adds, realising he should have fucking started with that, and he’s verging on nervous babbling for it now—which he’s long wondered why the serum couldn’t have fixed that. “So.”

Steve’s pretty sure he’s ruined something he never thought he’d ever have before he could even have it, until the heat’s back, full force, and the touch is back, everywhere, and Bucky’s leaped onto him and pinned him to the bed and he’s kissing Steve like it’s the end of being itself, like he can suck Steve’s heart and soul out from his mouth and he’s saying one word, over and over again and it makes Steve’s blood pump hard when he figures out what it is, what it means:

“Yes.”

Oh, thank god.

Bucky spends long, torturous moments running hands along Steve’s chest, tracing the lines of his hips, drawing shivers from Steve that Steve believes, wholeheartedly in a heart that’s pounding faster and harder than he thinks it’s ever done: Steve believes he will come the fuck apart for this, and quick, but he wants to come apart in those hands, and he thinks they’ll put him back together but even if they don’t, or can’t, he doesn’t care.

That touch makes him feel precious. Makes him feel—

Fuck

“Steve,” Bucky breathes, and he’s speaking against Steve’s jawline, now, suddenly, and his whole front splayed against Steve’s so their gasping weighs against each other in a way Steve doesn’t have the words to fit, and Steve thinks that his own name from Bucky’s lips is the same: too full, too big for words to understand.

It’s unreal.

“I’ve wanted you since the second I saw you,” Steve can’t keeps the words in, can’t do anything but say the things too big for words himself, to trust that they’ll mean something, that they’ll hold something that matches, that shows he wants so much deeper than he can say.

“Your eyes,” Steve gasps, as Bucky starts kneading the insides of his thighs. “I saw those eyes and I just, needed,” Steve gasps as Bucky’s mouth finds his nipple. “I needed before I knew what I, that, I,” Steve trembles, and Bucky places hands at Steve’s hips, asking something vague but clear all at once, asking how Steve wants this and Steve knows his answer because it wasn’t a question, and he spreads his legs wider and cants his hips up for leverage, for momentum to hook over Bucky’s shoulders, awkward and unsteady but hopefully without any room for doubt.

“I needed before I knew that I needed a goddamn thing,” Steve exhales, staring through into Bucky’s eyes, and he finds something there, even if he’s not sure what; he finds something there that makes him feel warm and like he could know, one day, how it feels to be complete.

“Like this,” Bucky’s hands move from kneading to stroking up Steve’s legs and situating them, positioning himself just right.

“Your eyes, too,” Bucky says, staring so fucking deep, so fucking fast in Steve’s pulse. “I wanna—”

“Like this,” Steve breathes, answers, begs; reaching and gripping Bucky’s shoulders, both so warm. “Just like this.”

And the light around them doesn’t shift but Bucky’s eyes damn well flash as Bucky swallows, and Steve can see his pulse in his throat around the motion, and it’s breathtaking.

Or else, it was, until Bucky slides into him, slow but sure, in one carefully measured movement, and oh, breathtaking: but Bucky Barnes redefines that word.

Bucky has to be studying him, watching so closely and with absolute attention because striking the perfect rhythm isn’t a process of trial and error, like Steve’s generally known before, but instead a slow build of precision that teases just as long as it needs to, as far as it can before it spills supernovas behind Steve’s eyes and fucking hell, but it’s brilliance and agony and everything Steve’s ever felt before expanded, exploded, and so much more, so much of the things he never thought about touching because who could touch heat and brightness, there’s nothing, there’s everything, there’s—

“I wanna feel you, everywhere,” Steve gasps when Bucky slides home and Steve doesn’t think he’s got breath left until he says the words, until he demands and still it comes out like a plea: “harder.”

“Don’t gotta tell me twice, babydoll,” and no, apparently. Steve didn’t. Because harder is exactly what he gets, and it’s glorious, and Steve’s not sure what bruises, anymore, what can and can’t show on his skin but he thinks this is gonna push whatever threshold exists because the hands at Steve’s sides are holding so hard, and it’s got nothing to do with enhanced limbs and everything to do with sheer want and Steve loves it, and when his neck tips back Bucky’s mouth takes the opening, and Steve’s gonna lose it, he’s absolutely going to lose it and it’s going to be soon, goddamnit, goddamnit—

“Steve,” Bucky doesn’t cry out, or scream, but more like he sighs it as he shakes through his climax and Steve gasps as he comes hard and hot between them, and they both give out in the same moment as Steve falls back onto the bed and Bucky falls slick onto Steve and it’s hard to breathe and Steve doesn’t fucking care, he doesn’t care because the weight against his chest makes his heartbeat so loud and stark and he doesn’t know the last time he’s felt so real, like the moment is his forevermore and no one can ever touch it. Just him.

Just them.

He comes back to himself enough to shift, and to notice that Bucky isn’t; that they’re both soft, now, and Steve’s caught between their bodies and he makes to move before they stick but when he tries, Bucky moans—and Steve doesn’t know what that means.

“Buck?”

“Shh,” Bucky breathes against the hollow of Steve’s throat, shaking his head ever-so-slow. “Just.”

Steve frames Bucky’s face and lifts a little, but Bucky’s eyes are closed, so Steve just strokes his cheek and asks:

“You okay?”

The huff he gets in response is a little broken, and Steve knows the feeling intimately, in these moments, just now.

“Okay?” Bucky says, sounding a little bit hysterical. “Steve, I’m so far from okay, and so much more than okay I can barely hold it in.”

Bucky’s not pressed against his chest the same way anymore, but the thump Steve’s heart gives at that is the heaviest, hardest, most undeniable thing that Steve’s ever known.

Of that, he’s entirely sure.

Steve doesn’t know what to say, or what to do; if he’s supposed to do either, but Bucky starts talking, barely audible into Steve’s skin and that skin starts buzzing, even before the words register.

After, though; after they register? Steve thinks his whole being starts to shake.

“You let me, you gave me,” Bucky murmurs, still shaking his head just a little into the base of Steve’s neck. “I, I got to live moments of my life just feeling you, just feeling you and I,” Bucky’s voice cracks, and he shakes his head back and forth, silent save for his breathing for a few moments, and he clings tighter to Steve with his hands still at Steve’s hips, and Steve holds to him tighter in kind, because there’s nothing else, there’s nothing else he could possibly do.

“Just let me,” Bucky breathes, soft and spent and no longer shaking his head but laying it gentle against Steve’s skin:

“Please, just let me stay here a second longer.”

“Alright,” Steve says, because again, there’s nothing else.

There’s nothing else, and maybe the words didn’t come out of Steve’s mouth, but Bucky’s inside him, and he doesn’t know what he’s going to do when he loses it.

So seconds, minutes—a lifetime.

Alright.

Bucky eventually shudders, and lifts up, slides out, and yeah: it’s more of a loss than even Steve was fearing but Bucky doesn’t go anywhere, Bucky just rolls off of Steve and lines his body against Steve’s side, leaves an open palm stretch out over Steve’s chest and it feels protective, more than possessive, and Steve’s not sure what causes that difference but it’s clear and it’s true and Steve wants it forever.

And that’s dangerous.

“You with me?” Steve breathes, and Bucky doesn’t say anything, for more seconds than are strictly comfortable when they’re naked next to each other, and Steve’s mulling over just how good he feels, and just how much danger’s never turned him away once in his entire life.

“I um, I say stupid shit sometimes,” Bucky finally says, the cheek against Steve’s skin heating up as he trips over the words a little. “After I come.” He smiles, small, and Steve can feel it between his ribs—can hear it, self-deprecating, as Bucky adds: “Character flaw.”

Steve feels something uncomfortable settle in the pit of his stomach, and yeah, maybe he’d never before been with anyone who would say that because people don’t usually say that kind of thing out loud ever, really, so something was up with it, something wasn’t meant in it, just a slip of the tongue in the heat of the moment, that’s fine, yeah, and—

“Doesn’t always mean it isn’t also true, though,” Bucky says, a little more strength in his voice, more steadiness at least, even if it’s so soft: “the stupid shit.”

And the uncomfortable thing in Steve’s stomach dissolves and all he feels is warm, in those moments, and he turns so he can kiss Bucky, slow like the world’s going to wait for them, forever, and Bucky responds in kind, and it feels…

Right. Above everything else, it just feels right.

“You’re amazing.”

Steve doesn’t think those are the words he means to say, or the words stuck between his still-pounding heart and his mouth, not exactly, but they make Bucky smile, and that smile is the whole world, suddenly, and so yeah.

That’s enough.

________________________________________

Steve wakes, and it’s the middle of the night, but it’s a natural thing. And that never happens. He either wakes in the morning and goes for a run or, every now and again, he wakes in the dark gasping from one nightmare or another: all the things that he’s done, or failed to do, or failed to do right—

But no. He’s awake, and he’s warm, and he’s breathing easy, his heart’s steady, and the weight across his body is so fucking pleasant that he smiles as he reaches out, and gently tucks some of the mess of Bucky’s hair behind his ear, drawing a little snuffle and a sigh and then steady breaths, and that just makes Steve smile wider as he watches Bucky sleep, traces the curves of his face, the cut of his jaw and his cheekbones, imagines them in charcoal, in graphite, in oils and marble and soft under his hands: memorizes, he tells himself, but it’s more a function of the truth than a fact on its own, because Steve’s mesmerized. He couldn’t look away if he tried.

“I could fall so fuckin’ hard for you,” and God Almighty, but somewhere down the line Steve’s made lying into one hell of a habit, hasn’t he? Because he couldn’t, he can’t fall fucking hard for James Buchanan Barnes. It’s not possible.

It’s not possible to fall when you’ve already fallen.

________________________________________

Steve comes to again with patterns being drawn at the small of his back, and gentle breaths falling along his scalp, playing with his hair on every exhale. There’s a steady thump under his ear and warmth everywhere, and Steve’s pretty sure he never, ever wants to move again. Ever.

“So,” the breath toying with his hair changes pattern with the soft-spoken words; “without trying to count that first song-and-flash-the-shiny-arm benefit,” and the fingers at the dip of his spine start dancing up and down it gently, playing the ridges like keys. “Or the time you walked in on Tony fiddling with said shiny arm.”

Bucky presses his lips to Steve’s temple for a long moment, and Steve’s muscles couldn’t relax further into the man he’s splayed against, or so he thought; they release just a little more, proving him wrong.

“Museum, Rodney’s, last night.” Bucky’s lips curl against Steve’s skin as he whispers with a laugh in the words:

“I told you I wouldn’t put out until the third date.”

The joy in Steve’s chest bubbles upward and he laughs.

God, but he laughs, and he kisses Bucky’s chest like the sky might be falling and this chest is the only thing Steve’s charged to protect with all his heart and soul, and then Bucky’s hands are trailing down his sides, and then Steve’s moving further down, down that chest, and the joy doesn’t stop suffusing as the sheets shift, as Steve mouths down the trail of curls tracing a line down Bucky’s abs, and Steve doesn’t remember waking to a better morning before.

Ever.

Chapter Text

Days blend together. Cliched, but true.

Steve doesn’t spend the night alone after that first night, that first time. And it’d be too quick, or too claustrophobic; it should be too much, or too soon or whatever the hell people say—but it’s none of those things, not like this. And it’s a little bit terrifying, and that should make Steve pause and think this through, maybe, except Steve learned a long time ago to trust his instincts. And his instincts tell him that the terror should shut the fuck up, and even if it won’t, he won’t stop this. He doesn’t want to stop this, doesn’t want to do a single goddamn thing that could even possibly mean less time with Bucky, less of the breaths he breathes of the same air as Bucky. Because it’s not too much, or too quick.

Not with him.

Because Bucky’s fucking beautiful. Inside, outside, upside-down and backwards, Bucky Barnes is the most stunning thing Steve’s ever known. From the way he always sips his coffee a second too early and frowns at the lingering burn, to the way his hair curls and frizzes at the edges when he’s toweled-off fresh from the shower; to the way he helps his neighbor unload groceries because her arthritis causes trouble, to how he sends little trinkets to his sisters—all three of them—just because he sees something that makes him think of them, and can, and the way that he starts to do the same for Steve, even if half of said little gifts are heartfelt, and the other are Cap-themed with a sly grin and Steve doesn’t actually know which is better; from the way he half dances to no tune when he cooks at the stove, sliding around on the balls of his socked feet, to the way he blinks at Steve when Bucky’s the one who wakes later, and his eyes dance like Steve’s the sun waking him up, like a warm fist around Steve’s heart that Steve couldn’t possibly do anything but chase full-bodied and whole-soul.

Utterly fucking beautiful.

Bucky’s hilarious, even when he’s not hilarious. He’s hilarious when he snarks at his siblings—Becca, the eldest Barnes, and Bucky’s Irish twin, who meets Bucky’s sarcasm swipe for swipe to Steve’s great amusement even before Becca convinces Bucky to put their conversations on speaker (not that Steve’s enhanced hearing always needs it, given he’s usually in Bucky’s lap during their calls), usually with the intention of trying to get Steve to arbitrate one silly argument or another but more often just embroiling Steve and every single one of his own argumentative opinions in the debate at hand until they’re all three of them cackling, and Steve loves every second of it; Cara, Bucky’s younger sister by three years who’s working as an administrative assistant for a big-deal conglomerate in Manhattan that’s tapped her to help with setting up new offices in Belfast—she’s been there for almost a year now, and as far as Steve can tell, calls to regale Bucky with the office drama and international gossip twice a month largely because making Bucky laugh is a universal goal for anyone who knows him, and a universal joy to anyone lucky enough to witness it, and Bucky never fails to tell an equally absurd, albeit highly-redacted, tale from his unit, and sometimes (arguably the best times) about Tony’s antics surrounding Bucky’s arm; and Lizzy, the baby of the family and the one Bucky both dotes on and embarrasses in equal measure, though Steve feels a very specific kind of warmth in his chest when she stops seeming embarrassed because Steve hears what’s being said, when it seems like he slips into a role where his presence, and therefore knowledge of whatever Bucky’s saying, is an accepted given.

Bucky’s hilarious when he talks to his parents, too: usually Win, who he first called for help on a family recipe and so Steve got unexpectedly caught face-to-face on a video call with his boyfriend’s mom as he relayed instructions between a terrifying-prospect of a conversation that turned out being actually pretty wonderful, because Win was, is, lovely—easy-going and never interrogating and as casually, playfully sarcastic as the rest of the family, and with Steve too right off the bat, and Steve thinks he’ll never learn how to live without Sarah Rogers, not wholly, but god: he hadn’t realised that he’d forgotten how to live without a mother until he’d spoken to Win on his own when Bucky’d forgotten his phone when he went for groceries, and they’d just talked about Steve, and how Steve was, and what Win was up to in her classroom—teaching high-schoolers, Steve thinks not for the first time, may be more harrowing than anything Steve does for a living; they’d spoken for a good hour and Steve had felt light in a way he hadn’t expected, and his eyes had stung, and Steve only realized after they hung up that they’d talked about every holiday coming up in the next year, and Steve being there, being with Bucky and at the Barnes’ table, was a given.

Oddly, Steve is probably more hilarious with George, because George delights most in ribbing his son and pretending to be very bad at technology when Bucky tries to get him to video chat; pretending, quite obviously, because he’d made a living in computers, working for Apple early in his career and keeping enough stocks on-hand from those years to retire early—not enough for a yacht, he’d explained dryly, but enough to pay off the mortgage and take my wife to Hawaii—and those two delights endear him to Steve pretty easily, because Steve enjoys those two things quite a bit himself. What’s funny about Bucky, there, is the way he groans, sometimes even blushes, when Steve gangs up on him alongside George until Bucky pouts gorgeously, wholly undermining the way he threatens to throw Steve out—what’s glorious about that is that Steve never for a moment believes him, and Steve’s never been confident in the way he fits with another human being like that before; what’s glorious is the way that Bucky buries his reddening cheeks in Steve’s chest and whines even as he’s cursing Steve and his father shamelessly.

Bucky’s also hilarious when he makes faces at babies over their mother’s shoulders in elevators, sparing no absurdity in his expression to make a tiny human giggle, and it twists something fierce and exquisite in Steve’s chest when he watches it play out—something he doesn’t exactly recognize, save to know that it vibrates on the same frequency as every right thing he knows. Maybe it’s not hilarious, to be honest. Maybe Steve is ready for just about anything, but not yet ready to name what that feeling is. He’s adorable though, and the kids find him hilarious, so.

So.

He has nightmares sometimes. More than sometimes. Bucky has a lot of nightmares and it breaks Steve’s heart more than a little, for the way that it displays, real and raw from the throat, everything Bucky’s suffered, all the trauma and horror someone so good has known; for the way Bucky’s told him he hasn’t bothered with a relationship that’s lasted more than a few weeks since he got back from overseas, which makes a possessive little space in Steve’s hindbrain gleeful, but every other part of him feel the need to hold Bucky closer to try and make up for all the nights he screamed himself awake on his own, even if that’s how he wanted it then—and the privilege of it, to be able to feel Bucky’s pounding heartbeat slow against Steve’s own, to kiss the sweat from his brow, and know that whatever kept Bucky from staying with someone before was something he decided against with Steve, of all people.

The extra gutpunch of it, though—a privilege beyond anything Steve could have imagined—is that Steve finds out he does, too. Or else, at least, far more often than he ever thought he did. He woke himself up with them every once in a while, before, but apparently he slept through more of them, forgot them come morning: and now, he doesn’t. He doesn’t, because when they start, when he tenses, when he begins to toss and breathe heavy and catching, now arms tighten around him, and oftentimes he doesn’t even wake exactly. But arms tighten around him and an open palm rubs up and down his chest ever so slowly, and lips press just behind his ear and Steve breathes and whatever failure was plaguing him fades before it roots in his mind; when he does wake, Bucky’s always there, and Steve sinks unapologetically into him, and whatever the nightmare was, it feels distant. It could have been something that happened a week ago, but when Bucky’s warm and real and breathing against him, wrapped around him and whispering soft-sweet nonsense to him, it’s all far away in comparison.

Just thinking about it makes Steve a little bit weak in the knees, and fluttery between his ribs.

To be fair: Bucky is also annoying as hell, but Steve’s far gone enough that about half the time, after he’s felt sufficiently irked about whatever Bucky’s done, Steve finds him adorable for it. Bucky slips his boots off in a frankly impressive way, given how tight the laces are, but then swears a blue streak when he can’t slip them back on again. Bucky leaves a trail of coffee mugs, and no other dishware, around the apartment, from bedroom to the front-door table where he drops his keys and Steve still hasn’t figured out how the mugs even get there. Bucky loads the dishwasher with the knives blade down—correct—but the forks tines-up—wrong, wrong, entirely wrong. Much as he’d been happpy to nix condoms in their increasingly adventurous sex life, Bucky consistently underestimates their need for lube when he’s out shopping, always happy to fall back on the lube-like substance Tony kept him stocked with for his arm, and while Steve gets that this is his problem more than it's Bucky’s, Steve doesn’t like being stretched on arm lube courtesy of Tony Stark, and Bucky’s persistent tendency to overlook that fact and kill every hundredth erection Steve gets is...well.

It’s annoying. No erection with Bucky Barnes should be squandered, last of all because of fucking Iron Man.

Also, sure, Bucky doesn’t leave just crumbs in a bag of chips, but he does clip them at the top no matter how many or few are left making it impossible to guess how much is left—though, to his credit, he stocks up on sales like it’s his job, and that could be annoying but it also means that when Bucky clips the Cheetos at the top and there’s only two handfuls inside, there are also four more bags of Cheetos at the back of the pantry. Either way, Steve finds himself adjusting around it without much thought, and it’s kind of amazing, kind of infuriating.

Kind of incredible.

Not that it’s surprising or anything, but Bucky is brave as hell—and not just for what Steve learns in little pieces that build to harrowing truths: from soft-whispered tail-ends of thoughts when Bucky shakes away the last of a bad dream in Steve’s arms, or the way Bucky will tell a story from his deployment and sometimes will throw a wink and a classified, sorry at Steve in a way no one has ever done to Captain America before—and that Steve Rogers, specifically, adores all the more for it—and then sometimes, the story will trail off without an end in a way that Steve comes to recognize as butting up against Bucky’s time in captivity, and the loss of his limb. More than all that, Steve sees just how brave Bucky is in the way he lets Steve see the still-raw parts of Bucky’s wounds from that time—months, they’d had him for months and Steve is torn, repeatedly, between wanting to steal a quinjet and blow every possible person responsible to hell and back, just to do it again for the fear in it, rather than just the rage, for the impossibility that Bucky survived when he far more easily could have been lost before Steve ever knew him, ever knew the weight of him in his arms or the feel of his lips; either he wants to run off and destroy the people responsible, and those responsible for them as far as the web stretches, but equally he wants to hold Bucky close enough that Steve can feel his pulse through the skin against Steve’s own chest and never, ever let go.

Steve also learns what it means for Bucky to have the arm Tony engineered, beyond the obvious. He learns just why Bucky’s able to hold so firm, to take all of Steve’s weight when they’re in bed—specially designed injections into the muscles of both arms so that Bucky could build the sufficient mass to support the arm, and balance his strength on the right; injections that Bruce had collaborated in, ensuring they were safe, twenty times over, Steve, at least, there’s no super-soldier fuckery in it, and no risk of turning green, we just needed to work out the kinks on a person, and the early models were way heavier, and okay, Bucky’s obviously fine and Tony and Bruce are probably among the most trustworthy people on the subject, despite the former also being a professional dickhead, plus they’d have collaborated with Helen as a rule and she actually is the most trustworthy person Steve can think of, but even so. Even so, Steve’s blood is pounding adrenaline even as the very muscles in question hold him close for comfort: the risks beneath the risks of what Bucky’s been through, the path Bucky’s chosen and keeps choosing…

Yeah. Yeah, Bucky’s fucking brave. And admittedly, it helps soothe Steve’s anxieties that Bucky demonstrates the perks of those choices on the way he can lift Steve—not for as long as Steve could do the same, but long enough to carry him to the bed, and to drop him with deliberate force so that he can pounce on Steve and settle his weight, straddled at Steve’s hips as he sucks bruises deep enough to last hours into Steve’s neck and, yes.

Yes, that definitely helps.

Steve also learns that Bucky has had to go under the knife a whole fucking lot for the arm, and is waiting for another go now—when Tony’s satisfied with the changes, which could be tomorrow or next year, but it’s also the last one for a while, if all goes well, so whatever, but it’s not that simple, Steve knows that, because Bucky also makes it clear that any further changes, as the program expands, would be risk-assessed and tested on him first if there was any estimable increased risk involved. But more than that is the fact that Bucky’s awake for almost all of the procedures, which is horrifying to Steve even as Bucky explains he has to be, oftentimes, to judge reactions and neural connection, or Steve thinks that’s what it is, but it’s not even just that.

It’s the fact that, when he can’t be awake, Bucky admits that he’s absolutely terrified. He’s terrified because when he was held captive they’d kept him half-conscious more often than not, and to this day he doesn’t know for sure what was real and what was a fever dream as his arm hanged dead and half-attached as long as it could be left before it killed him with sepsis—his torturers had been hateful, and heartless, and smart—and Bucky fears, more than most things, the haze of anesthesia, the idea of leaving himself vulnerable to what he’ll never remember, not for certain. And he trembles, just talking about it even as he commits in the very same breath to doing it over and again for as long as it takes to help as many people as they can, and Steve’s heart hurts for it, for all of it: but hell if that’s not maybe the bravest thing of all.

And for that, alongside so many other things: Bucky is kind. Good god, is he kind.

He’s moody, and it’s a testament to how much Steve feels that usually, Steve’s first impulse is to comfort, to soothe. It takes a bit to learn, and then longer to not get hurt—if he’s honest, that’s still a work in progress—when Bucky just needs space and time and quiet to feel like shit. Steve just wants to fix whatever is bringing him so low, and like all things in his life, Steve hates it when he can’t punch or glare or will something into submission, to make things right by force. What he does do, every time, is wait for Bucky in bed. And Bucky comes to him, sooner or later, to be held, or to be kissed, or to ride Steve into next week. And usually, the next morning, they’re both in a pretty good mood to start with. The end doesn’t justify the means, but it does end well, and Steve will goddamn take it.

He’s genuinely impressive. From the fact that he’d already planned a degree in engineering on a scholarship at Columbia before he’d enlisted, to the fact that he doesn’t miss an appointment with his therapist for anything short of a small apocalypse—he’s stopped Steve halfway through a suckjob so he won’t be late, and zipped up unfinished, and that’s fucking dedication—to things that are just coincidental but that Steve feels justified in attributing to Bucky just being that amazing because Steve is not biased one little bit at all, like how good he looks in the reading glasses he wears when his meds give him a migraine. It’s not as if said glasses make Steve kiss him soft and slow to serve a full-180 from the swift and rough pace at which he jerks Bucky off, because when Bucky comes he relaxes head to toe and maybe it’s coincidence, or wishful thinking, but it seems to help just a little when Bucky’s skull is pounding.

He’s stubborn, which clashes with Steve’s bone-deep orientation toward the same, but it also helps them understand, once they inevitably calm down, where the other’s coming from, why they’re so dug in to where they stand. It tests them, and when it’s not actually happening Steve can appreciate it for what it is, what it does: it makes them stronger. It proves to Steve, in small but real ways, that what he’s feeling so strong and so fast is steeped in something real, that’s got a hold on his heart so tight it’d be lethal, like he’d bleed out if it let go.

Bucky’s a nerd, of a very high order, and upon learning that Star Wars/Trek was still in his catch-up list—and that Steve did, in fact, want to form an opinion, versus just keeping it there out of a sense of obligation—he has thus far ushered the watching of at least one episode of Star Trek a day, from the first series onward, in order, so that Steve is wholly versed in the history and the lore before he picks a favorite (and no matter what Steve offers him as incentive, he will not tell Steve his own preference until they’re done).

He’s an excellent life model, because Steve’s gone ahead and ran with getting back into sketching, and maybe not least because he has a fucking Adonis to stare at to get his skills back up to snuff. Steve had been pretty fucking mortified when he’d asked Bucky to grab his sketchbook and Bucky’d come across the one full of himself, over and over, during Steve’s unabashed pining prior to their first real date, but Bucky’s laughter, unbridled and joyful, had predictably done what it always did and made the whole world bright. Now, Bucky just usually apologized for getting a refill of a drink without warning when Steve was laying out the lines of his body on the page, or else did not apologize at all when he placed a firm hand at the top of the book, eyes bright and intent and Steve would go hot and know it was very much time to trace the shades of Bucky’s body in an infinitely better way because Bucky, he’s, he is.

He’s—

“No, that one’s not yours.”

Steve blinks, doesn’t immediately clock that he’d been asleep, dozing again next to Bucky when he’d woken in the dark and decided he didn’t want to dress, or go for a run, or even set the coffee to start when he knew he’d forgotten the night before because the other option had been staying warm curled next to Bucky and that almost always won out; he likewise doesn’t realize he was reaching upward before he was fully awake; isn’t sure what woke him in the first place until he —and in truth, once he’s shaken enough of the haze of sleep to think on it, he wasn’t reaching for the coffee. He was reaching because he felt the settling of weight next to him in the bed and that always meant the same thing: reach, touch, hold, keep.

It’s rote, already.

He blinks again, and notices that the thing closest to his still-outstretched hand is a cup, steaming from the top, and Bucky’s fingers shining around the handle as he holds it out for him, his other hand wrapping around Steve’s calf from atop the blankets.

“Double sugar, little bit of milk,” and before Steve can take the mug, Bucky pulls it away but only as a function of leaning in and pressing a quick kiss to Steve’s lips. “Calling bullshit, again, that you don’t have much of a sweet tooth.”

Bucky does point that out—sweet reminder that it is, twice over, of that night at the bar—fairly frequently, in response to Steve’s tendency to eat most of any pastry that enters the kitchen, either from the bakery on the corner or their own oven, or the way Steve sucks Bucky’s skin slow and methodical like Bucky’s a goddamn treat because that’s precisely what he is, or this: Steve’s now happily avowed desire for his coffee to be something more indulgent, more gentle and smooth with, yes, quite a bit of sugar.

“I didn’t think I did,” Steve protests, even if it’s not a protest anymore, and when he takes the cup in hand it’s him pulling it out of the way to kiss Bucky’s lips, now, deeper than he got but no more or less perfect. “What was it you said? Just had to find it?”

Steve draws back only when Bucky’s grin get a little wide for kissing and not losing himself in it—he’s got a hot drink in hand, after all—but Bucky’s eyes are closed and his cheeks flushed happily and Steve’s warm all over in a way that neither the coffee, nor the blanket, could ever hope to touch.

“Something like that.”

And Steve bends his knee to make a little nook for Bucky to sit inside, and Bucky is already leaning into it because he knows, he trusts what Steve’s body is sure to do, and maybe it’s not anywhere near too much, or too fast. Maybe it’s exactly what it should be, which is a feeling of peace alongside an unprecedented thrill, and the certainty that Steve’s never once, in any time or either life, known what it meant to be in the exact place he should be, doing exactly what he’s supposed to do, and feel like his soul is singing not just with it, but for it.

It’s only later, halfway through his coffee and Bucky’s warmth a given now against his leg, that he realizes what woke him—the scent of fresh-ground coffee. And the fact that the window across from him was opened, a soft breeze coming through, saturated with the scent of the rain.

Petrichor.

Steve’s chest clenches as he thinks back for the second time just that very morning, to that one night in that one jazz joint and every possibility Steve never thought he’d see comes to be, and he bites his tongue against the way words that are made of too much and too soon, and then not enough and so real flash through his brain unbidden—but it’s not the first time, is it, and hell: he could gnash teeth and draw blood as much as he wants. Wouldn’t matter.

So the words linger, and the tightness in his chest doesn’t give way—but more than that, so much more than those words and whichever ones speak loudest and whichever ones thrum harder and bleed quicker or make that fucking blood sing even as it seeps—more than that? Steve likes it.

Except no.

Steve loves it. And isn’t that just a couple steps away from—

Well, shit.

Chapter Text

It’s a typical enough morning: Steve was up first, just getting back in from his run, which means he’s horny as hell—Steve’ll sleep in when he’s been run ragged enough already by Bucky’s thighs, but today he was up before dawn and pounding pavement with the promise of pounding something much nicer when he gets home. Which does make Steve wonder how in the hell he managed to get up and run every goddamn morning the past few years without proper incentive, but that strand of wondering leads Steve a little too close to dwelling on how mechanical, how pure-function based, how sad he’d let his life become for too damn long, and frankly, Steve is absolutely thrilled with his life as it presently stands, promising only to get better in the immediate future—he can hear the coffee brewing, which means Bucky’s in his boxer-briefs and nothing else, standing at the counter, a buzz so much better than caffeine even before the serum, just waiting for him to drink in once Steve’s shucked his shoes—and maybe not promising, but hinting, when Steve’s feeling uncharacteristically optimistic, at staying better in the long-term, too.

Steve’s ready to look his fill and then accost Bucky up against the cutlery drawer, right up until he realizes his view is obscured by—flowers.

Flowers made of...fruit?

“Never seen an edible arrangement before, I take it.”

Steve cranes his neck over the frankly-absurd tower of colorful...yeah. Fruit. But why.

“A what?”

“Melon and pineapple and shit made into little flowers,” Bucky says, hip cocked into the counter as he dramatically plucks what looks like a fucking Bird of Paradise make of god-knows-what and sucks it slowly between his lips in a way that’s goddamn sinful, so it’s a very poetic juxtaposition that’s pooling in Steve’s groin, sure.

“Mmm, pomelo,” Bucky comments, popping the consonant as he swallows, then shrugs with a grin. “Normal people send ones about one-tenth the size of this when they want to be fancy.”

There’s a card on the counter, but with this tidbit of information about edible arrangements, Steve really doesn’t have to pick it up to answer his next question:

“So this came from Tony.”

Bucky’s grin turns more to a smirk, but there’s something curled around the base of it that sits sour in Steve’s chest.

“He sends them when he’s come up with a new thing he wants to add to my arm.”

Ah. So that’s the sour thing.

“You’ve gone in for things before,” Steve notes, because yeah, Bucky’s been in and out of Tony’s lab in the time they’ve spent together, more than once. They go into the city together, usually, when that happens. Steve never craves the end of his workday like he does when he knows he can ask JARVIS to take him straight to Bucky and they’ll head home—home—together. They’re both the longest and the most incredible days he spends on the job.

“Did you eat all of those,” Steve’s raises a brow; “bouquets, the other times?”

Bucky snorts, grabbing another blossom that looks to be mostly exquisitely-shaped watermelon and sliding it off of the stick holding it together only to chance a look at Steve for agreement before lobbing it in a perfect arc for Steve to catch in his mouth.

It’s delicious watermelon. The flush it gives to Bucky’s cheeks to watch Steve savor it’s even more delicious—because of course it is.

Bucky watches him for a long moment, though—the flush soft and persistent but his eyes go from dilated to close-on a little too big to match the almost subdued feeling in them.

“I only get produce when he wants to put me under.”

Steve’s blood stutters, and goes a little cold because Bucky sighs with a kind of resigned quirk to his lips as he turns to the oven, adjusting the knobs and peeking through the window at whatever’s inside—something with eggs, given the shells sitting nearby, and Steve’s torn between worry for the slight tension in the line of Bucky’s spin, and the frisson of want that shoots through him, watching the curve of ass as he bends down.

Steve’s still trying to make sense of the conflicting emotions when Bucky straightens, and grabs another fruit-flower to sample.

“And he tries to be all billionaire about it, see?” Bucky takes a bite of half, leaving just enough to still cling to the wooden pick; leans toward Steve to tap the selection on Steve’s lower lip, begging entrance. “Lycee, and it’s fucking fresh.”

It is. Sweet and juicy, but Steve would rather taste something sweeter, so he leans in and nips Bucky’s lower lip, begs entrance of his own and is granted immediately because Steve’s a lucky bastard and this is his life.

“So, fruit salad for breakfast?” Steve asks, a little breathy as he leans his forehead to Bucky’s, as he feels the stiffness in Bucky’s body and tries to just hold still, to take as much of it into himself and off those shoulders as he can; Bucky hates going under. It scares him.

He does it anyway. And this time, maybe, Steve can help carry the least of the load, if nothing else.

“And lunch. And dinner,” Bucky murmurs, kisses the corner of Steve’s mouth, just a peck that feels like acknowledgement, like Bucky sees what Steve’s trying to do and accepts it. “And probably breakfast tomorrow.”

“Some of it’ll freeze probably, right?” Because if Bucky’s treating the giant produce-elephant in the room as an inconvenience, it's a tasty one, and not like a guillotine waiting to fall, Steve’ll follow his lead.

“The strawberries are always better to freeze,” Bucky answers idly, distracted as he starts to gather up the detritus of his cooking; the line of his back is straighter, harder now than before and Steve doesn’t know what to do, precisely, to help, so he stalls for time.

“Whatcha making?”

“Frittata.”

Steve breathes in, and underneath the cloying fruit scent, the pepper and cheese heating in the oven smells delicious.

He feels both inadequate, and grateful, when Bucky speaks again before Steve finds a way to fumble in support of whatever Bucky’s feeling, wherever Bucky’s mind is in response to Tony’s not-at-all-subtle announcement that he wants Bucky stretched out on an operating table.

“It’s gonna increase sensitivity in the receptors,” Bucky tells him, his tone kind of heartbreakingly stoic; blank. “Tony’s pretty sure he’s maxed out what can be done with the sensors themselves, for now at least, but Helen,” and something’s both eased and sharpened in Steve, when Bucky speaks of Dr. Cho: that means he’s in incredible hands, but it also means this is more serious than anything Steve’s been here for yet.

“She’s been working with Bruce, who seems like such a solid guy, y’know?” Steve nods, because it’s true, and because Bruce is: and the two of them. Amazing. Bucky is truly in the best hands, and yet—

“But they’ve been thinking that the neuro relay side of things can give me feeling that’s indistinguishable from the right side.”

Steve frowns, jarred from his anxiety.

“Is it that different now?” Steve didn’t think that Bucky’s left hand was exactly the same as his right, he’s not a moron, but Bucky doesn’t treat them differently. Bucky’s touch, the pressure and the deftness: Steve’s pretty intimately familiar with it and it’s never even crossed his mind that—apart from the slightest different in temperature and the most incredible variation in texture—Bucky’s experience of the world through one side or the other was so significantly separate.

“No,” Bucky says, and it shouldn’t soothe Steve to hear it, because it’s not Steve’s goddamn body, but it does: it soothes him because he wants to believe that he’d have noticed. He wants to be sure, down to his bones, that he knows Bucky well enough, even now already; and that Bucky trusts him. That Bucky gives, and would let him know. Let him see.

“But I’m used to it, y’know?” Bucky stretches his fingers out from his left wrist, watching them consideringly. “People coming in with a fresh loss, having it brought back when they haven’t already started to forget how it used to feel,” he makes a fist and then meets Steve’s eyes, gaze a little clearer and a little stronger as he smiles, just a touch.

“It’ll be good, if it can be as close as possible.”

God, but Bucky’s a fucking marvel. A miracle.

Steve’s throat is tight when Bucky quirks a brow and reaches, grabs Steve’s hip and pulls him in flush, quicker than Steve could stop even if he’d wanted, and closer than Steve can hide the hardening of his cock against Bucky’s own when Bucky’s mouth latches to the side of Steve’s neck and he breathes, hot and wet:

“Plus,” and Steve shivers at the way Bucky’s lips purse against the space where his skin gives for the force of his pulse; at the way Bucky’s tongue slips out just so, fucking tease: “chance to feel more of you?”

He rocks into Steve, just the slightest bit, but it’s intoxicating because it’s Bucky and fuck, but Steve moans because he’s a goner and he’s, he’s—

“Wouldn’t pass that up,” Bucky smirks into the line of Steve’s jaw, and sets to rocking his hips forward almost leisurely, dragging the blunts of his teeth across Steve’s morning stubble and Steve can’t keep it leisurely, can’t keep it soft and steady: his hips jerk forward with force, and need, and Bucky gasps for the pressure and Steve tilts his head and captures Bucky’s mouth straight on.

“Buck,” he breathes into the kiss, hungry as hell; “I want you.”

And Bucky gives, lets Steve devour him but only until Steve has to break the hold, gasp for air, and then Bucky pulls back, but his eyes are dancing even before Steve whimpers a little at the loss, and the empty air he leans back into, intent on continuing his plunder.

“I know,” Bucky damn-near purrs, an open palm on Steve’s chest to placate and also still his unconscious advance because god, does he want:

“But I’ll be damned if I let this burn.”

If Steve eats fruit-kabobs petulantly while Bucky finishes his frittata? Steve does not plan to make a single goddamn apology for it.

________________________________________

Tony wasn’t wasting any time, apparently, when it came to butter-up fruit bouquets, because the day of the procedure—the procedure—comes within a week, and it has Steve’s heart tripping like it hasn’t done in close-on a century.

And in reality, when Steve tries to step back and remember what it felt like to not wake up in Bucky’s arms like it’s been a lifetime already, and Steve never wants anything less; in reality, they’ve known each other a handful of weeks, just a few months, and oh, fuck: but Steve’s so far gone he could be on another continent, another planet: but he wants to be here, here on this planet, in this time, in this room, for the first time in so fucking long—

He only wants to be right here.

“Breathe,” Bucky murmurs into the crook of his neck as he leans them against the wall of the elevator, sliding a flat palm up Steve’s chest. “S’gonna be fine,” he huffs, the breath on Steve’s skin a shiver counterpoint to the trembling of his pulse. “This is the least of the shit I’ve gone through, here.”

And Steve picks up on the distinction—here; knowing that Bucky’s terrified because he’ll be put under for the last part of the surgery, and still knowing that the reason that’s scares him so deeply is because elsewhere he’s suffered so much worse. So he can’t be blamed for wrapping both arms now around Bucky’s shoulders and drawing him in so close that Steve thinks he can feel the vibration of his own pulse through Bucky’s skin and still, he wishes he could hold him closer.

“Thank you.”

It takes Steve a second to register the words against his collarbone.

“Hmm?”

“For being here,” Bucky says, turning his head so his hair brushes Steve’s chin where Bucky’s head is burrowed against him. “Coming in with me.”

“Of course,” Steve presses his lips to the crown of Bucky’s head, a little bewildered. “Fuck, don’t thank me,” he scoffs, but his arms hold Bucky so close the utter absurdity of the idea has to be tangible, at this point; the notion—

“I wouldn’t be anywhere else.”

Bucky snorts as the elevator pings. “Other than Stark Tower?”

“Avengers Tower!” Tony passes with the opening of the doors, timed just perfectly enough that he had to have goddamn planned it— or, in truth, that JARVIS planned it for him.

“Other than with you,” Steve nips Bucky’s lower lip before he shifts to devour his goddamn mouth, a little too desperate, save that he feels made of what it means to be desperate, just now, and nothing could possibly convey it, ever.

Bucky’s pupils are very dilated when they break apart, chest heaving a little and mouth red, swollen up good, and that helps a little to cushion the way Bucky takes his hand, squeezes before he lifts Steve’s wrist, seeming on a whim, and kisses the inside, just between the pulse and the jut of bone and it’s so tender, so intimate that Steve doesn’t know what to do with himself, only really settles back into the reality of the now when Bucky lets go and smiles soft as he moves away.

“See you soon.”

Helen’s waiting behind Bucky at a set of doors that Steve knows leads to the surgical suites on this floor; he hadn’t noticed her, but she waves at Steve and Steve manages the ghost of a smile that probably looks more like a grimace but at least he tries, and Helen doesn’t seem to mind; in fact, she grins at him and gives him a cheesy thumbs up, and the playfulness in it does ease something in Steve’s blood, if only just a little as they disappear through the doorway.

“He’s a good one.”

Goddamnit, but Tony Stark shouldn’t be able to appear at Steve’s side without Steve noticing. He can’t, as a matter of fact, except that Steve’s never been like this, feeling like this, mind entirely elsewhere and attention anywhere but on his own self, his own person, save for how he is entwined, so fucking deeply, with the subject of his every thought, the trajectory of his every breath—

God, he’s so fucked. He’s fucked, and it’s so big. It’s so big, and it’s only just begun.

“Excuse me?” He’s really glad he finds it in himself to turn, and to ask, because Tony wouldn’t let him live it down if he hadn’t. He’s pretty sure his voice is pitched strange, a little pitchy and broken, but Tony doesn’t comment, and so either Steve manages to sound put together, or Tony’s being oddly forgiving.

“Barnes.” Tony nods toward the just-barely swinging doors Bucky’d walked through, as if Steve needs clarity on the matter.

“Are you,” Steve pauses, forces himself to gather his wits.

“Are you trying to give me relationship advice?”

“Oh, so it is a relationship?” Tony asks, a weird combination of skeptical, and judgey, and giddy. “Good, I was afraid maybe it was just a fuck buddies sorta thing.”

“Fuck buddies?” Steve raises both brows at that.

“It’s not?” Tony asks, this time his tone weighing heavier in the skeptical realm. “You’ve been holed up in your Brooklyn hovel, almost uninterrupted, for,” he ticks off a count on his fingers silently, wholly for show of course, because he’s a prick.

“Fuck, Cap, enough weeks that we can count by months, now.”

Yes, months. Months. The best months Steve could ever dream up.

“Considering you have a state of the art floor here that, once upon a time, you rarely left, I kinda figured you’d turned the hovel into a sex den.”

Steve takes a little tiny bit of satisfaction over the fact that Natasha did, in fact, de-bug his home sufficiently, because Tony apparently doesn’t know that he’s not spent more nights than he can count on both hands in the past months in his own apartment. Still: Steve does not appreciate his perfectly nice, recently renovated but not too renovated, perfectly cozy Brooklyn apartment being called a hovel just because it doesn’t cast a giant phallic shadow on the city—but then, he’s used to that. He’s not, however, entirely used to Tony making sex jokes that...actually hit the mark, even a little.

So he’s unprepared, and that means he blushes, and that Tony notices, and is not forgiving enough to forgo fucking crowing over.

“Oh,” Tony fucking claps his goddamn hands as he draws the sound out. “Well. Both then, okay. Either way. You do you, and that shit.” He looks like a kid in a candy shop and Steve braces for the harassment to come.

“But you haven’t even brought him home to meet the family yet, Capsicle,” Tony laments, and Steve can’t help but roll his eyes.

“I met him in your lab—”

“And I just worry, y’know,” Tony pouts theatrically. “Don’t want you giving him mixed messages if you’re really into him.”

“You know that having Nat playing matchmaker is already one person too many, right?” Steve grouses, crossing his arms and trying to tune out Tony’s subsequent laughter and quipping until the sounds of both fade, quicker than he’d have predicted. Much quicker.

He turns, hoping to figure out why that kind of unprecedented shutting-up occured, but Tony’s leaning against the wall, staring seemingly at nothing, looking...thoughtful.

Steve feels like he should be suspicious, at this point, but for some reason he can’t quite muster it.

“It wasn’t Rhodey.”

Steve frowns, because that’s a real non-sequitur; enough of one, in fact, that Steve’s distracted for even just a moment from thinking about Bucky, about fucking Bucky stupid, about forgetting words when Bucky’s rocking into him, about how Bucky’s hand feels in his and how he doesn’t think there’s any possible mixed message that can be sent in what the contact of their skin does; about fretting over Bucky, being prepped down the hall somewhere Steve can’t see—

“What?” Steve asks, because Tony’s apparently not going to expand on that of his own accord.

“Well, okay, it was, but not just Rhodey.”

Steve still doesn’t understand and his face must show as much, given the force of Tony’s eyeroll.

“That made him the candidate for the robo-arm pilot.”

Steve, at any other time, might have been offended by just how dumb Tony’s tone makes it clear Steve apparently is, in Tony’s present estimation. Not that that’s a particularly new thing, for Tony in interacting with Steve, but still. If they weren’t talking about Bucky, and if Bucky weren’t about to have major surgery, then Steve would be more offended.

“He was a POW. Captured,” and Steve wishes Tony wouldn’t say those words out loud, and certainly not with such flat detachment when they gouge violent in his chest. “Tortured,” and Steve wants to protest, to ask him to stop because Steve’s heard it, yes, and he knows it, sure, but it’s only manageable when he can pair hearing it with the feeling, the proof of Bucky in his arms; “taken so the rest of his men could escape and then—”

Then Steve looks, his own mouth open to stop him, but he sees the look in Tony’s eyes and it shuts him right up because Tony’s not detached at all.

“Well,” Tony clears his throat, and blinks hard. “There was a,” he chews his lip, and Steve’s never seen him do that before, and isn’t entirely sure what it means, but he could guess.

“There was a, familiarity there.”

Jesus. Steve hadn’t thought, but: yeah.

“But he’s fucking strong,” Tony regroups and barrels on. “And brave, like the real kind of brave and not the posterboy bullshit, he’s the real deal, all that bullshit the flag stands for and whatever,” Tony shakes his head, and it says a lot that he doesn’t take a swipe at Steve’s star-spangled ass in the process, there; “but what they did to him? And they did a fuckton, things I,” Tony takes a sharp breath, and breathes it out slow. “And hell, we don’t even know all of it, but honestly, he,” and he cuts off, and Steve’s on tenterhooks because it’s nothing he doesn’t know, either from Bucky’s stories or just who Bucky is, but hearing it, like this?

Hearing it like this reaches straight between Steve’s ribs and claws at his lungs; scores rusty nails across his beating heart.

“They didn’t break him,” Tony finally says, and he meets Steve’s eyes now, demanding in a way Steve’s never known from him before so that Steve couldn’t look away if he wanted to, if it was even a thought in his mind.

“He’s a fucking riot, and a pain in my ass, and he wouldn’t take the arm unless I swore in blood that if it worked, everyone who needed it would have a shot at one. Said he wouldn’t touch the project if what he was doing was anything less than taking the risk to work out the kinks for a full program launch. Selfless fuck, sometimes. Makes my life more difficult. You’d think I’d have had enough practice at that by now, y’know?”

Tony raises a brow, and it’s only then that Steve breaks eye contact, looking down to his feet, weirdly bashful.

“But he’s a good man,” Tony—again, uncharacteristically—saves him from an awkward silence, and does it with an unassailable truth at that. “One of the best I know, short a time as I’ve known him.”

And it surprises Steve, shocks his gaze straight back to Tony’s, when Tony grips his shoulder hard and smiles, just barely, squeezing before he lets go and turns, tossing back as he strides down toward the hall that holds Bucky, Bucky, Bucky—

“You almost deserve him, Cap.”

Steve’s breath catches, because he knew, but he didn’t know, how much he’s never given a shit to deserving something before, much as he’d thought otherwise—didn’t deserve the serum, didn’t deserve the praise when so many lives were lost, when other men sacrificed more, worked harder—but this. This, Steve thinks he might just give everything to deserve, even a little. That he could be good enough for this one man; enough to deserve him by halves, at best; to keep him: it’s both impossible, and essential.

“He’ll come out of this.”

Tony’s next to him again, the war in Steve’s head must have been wholly visible on his face and attributed to the wrong thing or else, one immediate instantiation of all things that matter.

“Worst is already over,” he assures Steve, voice confident more than cocky for once, but that doesn’t last as a smirk twists his mouth:

“So maybe think about doing something about the whole doe-eyes thing, yeah, when he wakes up? Those cartoon-hearts around your head are starting to get real fuckin’ obvious.”

Chapter Text

Five hours later, and Steve is absolutely certain about two things.

First: Helen Cho is a goddamn saint. That’s not new, and Steve was probably certain of it already, but he’s absolutely certain of it, to an uncanny degree, after Steve damn near pounces on her as soon as she emerges from the surgical wing—and maybe he should be embarrassed by the mess of anxiety that he is, in every way, or how he almost collapses against her when she reassures him that everything went perfectly, textbook even; maybe he should be, but he’s not. He’s also certain she’s a saint after he pesters her, against his own will almost, for the hours that follow, asking one more time if it’s normal that Bucky hasn’t woken up yet only to be told—again, even though he knows, he knows, because she’s told him—that it’s entirely normal, and it’ll be normal if Bucky’s out anything from another hour to another five given the the particular anesthetic they had to use, which is good to know and should calm Steve’s pulse but is simultaneously so amorphous and imprecise that it makes his mind whir fast enough that, far too few minutes later, he’s tracking her down to ask. Again.

Saint Helen. Truly.

Second, though, and—maybe, maybe Steve was pretty certain of this already, too. Maybe he just didn’t want—no. No, he wanted, he wanted too much, really; maybe he wasn’t ready. Maybe he’s still not ready. And he knows he doesn’t have words for it, but he’s never been good at words. Communication was always easier with his fists, and now, now he knows his hands don’t need to be clenched to get his point across—he can touch and press and hold and caress and words fail him, he thinks they’d fail him about what he’s feeling even if he were the poet fucking laureate because this is so big, this is so much.

But he is absolutely certain: he’s in love with Bucky Barnes.

From the way his whole body vibrated, pulse high and heavy, caught between clavicles and rattling through his skeleton as hard as through his veins from the moment JARVIS informed him the procedure was underway, to the way he’s nearly collapsed on Bucky’s bed, tempted to rest his head on Bucky’s chest to hear and feel and know the depth and breadth of his life, for sure: all of that culminating in the full gravity of Steve’s fear only evident in the aftermath, in the residue it leaves and the crater of impact left behind as it mostly subsides—though only mostly, while Bucky’s eyes are still closed. Because that lingering anxious shaking his heart had been doing for every half-skip it was willing to give, hard and violent like it was a crime against nature and the rules of the universe to ask it to beat at all in the face of uncertainty like this. And that.

That is where the proof lives, if Steve needed it. He doesn’t, not truly, but if he did?

It’s in that.

Because Steve’s pondered—maudlin, Peggy would say; always so dramatic, Steve—but he’s thought his share on all the people he’s outlived, all the others to come who he’ll leave behind. He’s touched more than once on the unfathomable, sinking-feeling possibility that there could be years, decades, more to go where he’ll lose until that’s all he knows. It weighs upon him, it’s thick in his blood and makes everything in his body sluggish, his heart hurt for the effort of moving his own life, for the horrible promise of too much life that won’t mean a goddamn thing if it goes on that long and he only ever ends up alone.

It’s horrible, but he accepts it and puts it away: not resolved, and not properly dealt with, he knows that. But he’s able to move around it and not disturb it every goddamn moment of the day.

Now, though.

Now, Steve’s afraid that it might be the only thing he’ll ever think about again, because this was routine, this was minimal risk, this was something Bucky’d been in for, or close enough to, countless times. This was as worry-free as it was probably possible to get.

But Steve? Steve is a mess, Steve is a puddle of untamed emotion and a pile of every what-if his overactive, overanxious mind could come up with. The vision behind Steve’s eyes flashed too many times to the unthinkable: Bucky, still and ashen and gone and that’s….

That’s the proof. Because Steve can tiptoe around the idea that he might outlive the goddamn sun for all he knows; but he cannot, he will not, he won’t survive even just the idea, let alone the untenable possibility that he’ll live long enough to know a world without Bucky Barnes.

He doesn’t think he can stay standing against a potential world where he won’t wake up in those arms: warm.

He can’t step around and put aside something that swirls in and out of his ribs, endless. He can’t ignore, even for a second, the niggling, ever-present maybe that whatever sins he’s committed, he’ll pay for them with a price he won’t survive, ironically survival itself. Without.

“Hey.”

Bucky’s voice is gravelly, and Steve shoots up at the low rumble of it, eyes locking quick onto the bleary ones slowly coming to focus on him and Steve can breathe again, even as he cannot breathe.

Steve is so fucking blessed; Steve is so fucking screwed.

“Y’didn’t have to stay.”

Steve scoffs, scooting his chair impossibly closer to Bucky’s bed. “You’re kidding me, right?”

Bucky smirks, a little snuffle of a snort escaping as he works further to shake off the sedatives. “Boring as fuck, I imagine.”

“Like I said,” Steve says, and notices—but doesn’t fight—the way his heart is audible in his voice, where it’s lodged in his throat. “I wouldn’t be anywhere else.”

Bucky’s smirk blooms, full blown and blinding and Steve’s breath catches and oh. Oh.

“Fuckin’ sap,” Bucky rolls his eyes, lets them slip closed for a second and just breathes for a bit, and Steve watches, enraptured, until Bucky blinks and watches back, his gaze so fucking soft.

“’M glad, though,” Bucky murmurs, and his eyes fall to where Steve’s hand is bunched in the sheets, and Steve’s not sure why he wasn’t already touching Bucky, grasping him, touching warm skin and smooth metal as both proof against all his worst fears in the past hours, manifestations of just how deep the things he doesn’t have words for run in his veins, but likewise: the promise of a future, living and breath, solid and real.

He’s not sure why they’re not already touching, until Bucky eyes Steve’s hand, and then flexes the fingers of his own on the left, almost testing, and Steve knows his body was waiting, where his own mind was already running, ready to leap: Bucky’s eyes are gentle, considering, and Steve imagines Bucky’s feeling whatever new textures, whatever details are different in the linens now with the impact of the new receptors, the wiring tweaks Steve doesn’t understand save that he can see...something. He can see something in Bucky’s face that’s wondering and tentative and overflowing, and that’s not quite close enough to make contact with Steve’s hand.

“Wanted,” Bucky whispers; clears his throat and starts again, stronger: “wanted you to be the first.”

And then he reaches, and he touches Steve’s hand, and his breath catches quietly, or maybe quiet only in comparison to the way Steve’s own gasp is loud because Steve’s skin is unchanged but his senses are somehow heightened even beyond a serum’s reach: Bucky’s touch trembles the slightest bit just before he grips Steve’s hand full on, wraps around his wrist and holds and if Bucky’s breathing is laboured, it’s not entirely audible over the tripping of Steve’s pulse in his ears, and Steve doesn’t register anything wholly outside the feeling of Bucky’s left hand, the gentle, deliberate circling of fingertips against his skin, until he’s jarred from his oasis of gentle, simple human contact, all heat and joy, by the sudden screech of a monitor looming above him, sending Steve’s thumping, overfull heart to racing, high-alert and scared, so fucking scared—

But Bucky looks up, and squints at the screens before he flushes and chuckles, shaking his head as he ducks his chin.

“Look what you do to me, Rogers,” he says, nodding toward the no-longer-squealing but still blinking warning of the ECG, he realizes, which sends an ice he’s never known—for all the sorts he has—through his veins until he watches and it’s quick, yes, but steady, and strong. The peaks of the ever-moving graph of the way Bucky’s life sparks through his veins are sharper than anything about Bucky should ever be, let alone that generous heart that Steve would give everything in the world to, for, alongside until the end of days and oh.

Look what you do to me..

But it could be the fact that Bucky’s fingertip can pick up something wholly new, out of the clear blue; it could be the drugs, and a little bit of leftover giddiness. It could be—

Yet Bucky seems to recognize when Steve registers that much, down to the moment and he smiles, cheeks still pink: “Every goddamn time.”

Oh.

Oh, but if Steve somehow does that, has that impact, means something to or in or for that heart? Fucking hell, but he’s not sure he’s been more proud, or more moved by anything he’s ever done or been in his life than he is in this moment, with this man and his pounding heart starting to slow on display for Steve to see, all the while never once letting go of Steve’s hand.

“How long you gonna be in here?” Steve finds himself asking; he’s not wholly sure how he jumps straight to that, save for desperate need to ensure this lasts as long as possible, which may quite possibly be forever.

“Couple days,” Bucky shrugs, taking it in stride. “Tony optimized the procedure. Minimally invasive, given the givens. Impressive as fuck, even for him.”

“Good,” Steve nods even if he already knew it—was told by Dr. Cho and Tony himself, more than once; but he’s feeling the gentle warmth swimming in his chest start to spread and build throughout his whole body like a pledge, or a glimpse of what could be, what’s to come.

“May stay a little longer, if they say I need someone around to watch my invalided ass,” Bucky adds, and Steve’s eyes cut to him sharply because: the fuck.

“No you won’t,” Steve says simply, and realizes in that instance that people are right, when they accuse him of using his Captain America voice, but in truth, there’s a voice he possesses that’s much more certain, much less open to argument or compromise, and that’s apparently the voice he uses when he’s head over fucking heels, and the person he loves is being an absolute moron. “You’re coming home with me.”

Bucky turns, and blinks so owlishly that something tugs recklessly in Steve’s chest because goddamn is he beautiful, and adorable, and doesn’t quite realize, apparently, that Steve’s entire world has started shaping itself around a space for him, carved in stone so as to never falter or shift away from a perfect fit.

“What?”

“You’ll come to my place,” Steve says, noticing that his hand is still in Bucky’s and it’s only when Bucky says nothing for too many moments that Steve’s tone shifts, and doubt is allowed the slightest of footholds.

“Unless you don’t—”

“I do,” Bucky’s quick, and his eyes are shining, now, almost glowing. “But I mean, are you sure?”

And Steve could probably find words, if he had a lifetime—he hopes he does, fuck does he hope. But as a rule he’s not good with them, and he wants Bucky to know exactly how sure he is, right now, so he takes Bucky’s hand-still-in-his and leads it to Steve’s chest, and he’s not hooked up to any monitor but even the softest touch would tell Bucky the cadence of his heart, heavy and too-full and giddy and so fast, so fast and Bucky blinks, eyes back to being wide as he meets Steve’s gaze and presses of his own accord closer to Steve’s bounding heartbeat and Steve knows he’s understood in that moment: loud and clear.

Steve’s always spoken clearest in actions, anyway.

“You do it to me too,” Steve murmurs, and rubs a thumbprint, metronomic, across Bucky’s knuckles, much slower than his pulse but just as honest and true. “I'm really fucking sure.”

And really: that’s that.

Chapter Text

For the first few days, Bucky fights him.

“I’m sore, Steve, I can still carry my own plate to the table.”

“I can eat at the table, as a matter of fact, in the first place! I don’t need my meals in bed!”

“You bringing everything to the sofa isn’t actually a notable recognition of the absurdity of the bed-bound stage of your worry-warting.”

“A week, Steve! And a week was a generous estimate because the surgery was minor!”

Steve listens to his boyfriend. He does. Listens, as in, he absolutely hears him and processes his words because he loves Bucky and he loves the sound of his voice and every time he speaks Steve likes to sink into the cadence. Even if that cadence is displeased as fuck, and a little on the whiney side.

Still beautiful.

Steve, maybe, does not listen to his boyfriend in the I-am-paying-attention-and-responding-to-your-stated-wishes kind of way. Because Bucky may be able to get his own meals, but he can’t reach the higher shelves and his options are limited, and he needs to keep up his strength if he’s actually going to heal in that very-short-and-not-at-all-believable-or-safe-as-far-as-Steve-is-concerned time frame of recovery.

And maybe Bucky doesn’t need food and books and his tablet and everything moved in full limited-reach of the bedside, but if he has those then Steve can pay closer attention to the things that aren’t as obvious, like when he needs an extra dose of his pain meds that he won’t ask for. Or when he’s stubborn as all hell and waits more than a minute to ask Steve to help him wash his hair because his range of motion is still reduced from the incision sites. And Steve is a protective son of a bitch, but he never fully realized how much that translated into taking care, specifically, until he has his hands tangled in Bucky’s tresses, massaging his scalp and watching as Bucky relaxes, full-body against Steve’s bare chest under the shower and there’s no sexual undertones, just affection and the strongest desire to be present and to give, and, actually, maybe Steve has always been protective.

Maybe taking care, like this, is just new. Just for Bucky.

But after those first few days, Bucky grouses, but there’s no real heat or force behind it. Bucky complains that Steve’s making coffee that Bucky could get himself, but he takes it with only the slightest frown, never trying to get up from the couch in the meantime. He wraps himself in a blanket when Steve ushers him into the bedroom and settles him safely there for the afternoon—he maybe tells Steve in no uncertain terms that he’ll be on his feet by dinner, and Steve works to be okay with that, to recognize that Bucky really is okay, and more than healing on schedule, and Steve's actually really fucking lucky that Bucky’s even going along with Steve’s possibly-paranoid need to keep him home and metaphorically bubble-wrapped long after there’s any objective reason for it; only the subjective keeping of his heart in one piece.

He’s lucky, because Bucky sees it—he has to, else a man like him would have rebuffed him more strongly, would have pushed harder; and because he has to, Steve doesn’t know what he’s ever done to deserve Bucky, to deserve whatever level of care he holds for Steve of all people, to allow this. To give this much.

“You’re a mother fuckin’ hen,” Bucky chides as Steve brings him a beer—the first he’s allowed, about a week after he was allowed but Steve wanted to be safe, wanted to be sure. Steve maybe feels heat rise to his cheeks, but he doesn’t regret the reason for it, and Bucky grins just a little, fond enough in just that curve of lips that the heat rises wholly into Steve’s face but also spreads honey-thick through Steve’s chest like a balm. “It’d be adorable if you weren’t mother-henning me.”

Steve ducks his head, but lets the motion move further, to bend and kiss the corner of Bucky’s lips, just a peck but as full of feeling as he’s able: more so than Steve ever thought he could muster and press into skin.

“Fuck it,” Bucky exhales, and leans into Steve when Steve finally pulls back, resting his temple against Steve’s cheek and nuzzling stubble-to-stubble, and Steve damn well melts.

“I lied.” His lips tickle the line of Steve’s jaw and Steve doesn’t even bother trying to hide the way he shivers:

“Damn you, it’s adorable anyway.”

________________________________________

Steve, once or twice—and not recently—had the thought in his mind that spending most of the last months living in Bucky’s pocket, mostly in Bucky’s space; he wondered, though not very seriously, whether there was a level of escape in how much he was throwing himself into being together. Losing himself in it. His feelings, he’s realized since those thoughts, run far too deep for that: fast or not, they’re strong and sure and real, and yes he’s a little lost in it—but only in the very best of ways. Terrifying, but the very best of ways.

However, if he’d still be wondering what underpinned the sheer, all-encompassing need in him, for this, for Bucky, for them, then living with Bucky now—living with, god—would dispel all possible doubt.

When Steve comes home and Bucky’s already there—already home—there’s always music playing. Sometimes it’s something Steve recognizes, which Bucky admits he looked up because of Steve and which means so fucking much because he is not shy about the kind of Big Band he enjoys, and the kind he absolutely doesn’t; sometimes it’s something entirely new, and Steve kisses Bucky hello even if it’s only been an hour and Bucky grins into the kiss every time and Steve doesn't even mean to give anything away, but Bucky can suss his opinion on the music just by the way Steve’s mouth moves on his.

Where Steve used to spend his evenings—when he had evenings; he doesn’t remember nearly as much time away from the Tower, or the heavy bag, or the fight as he seems to have now and that’s probably a matter of choice, of having something so much better, so much more to give himself to, now: but where Steve used to spend what little free time he’d have before bed mulling his catch-up list endlessly and selecting absolutely nothing from it because, despite his decisiveness on the battlefield, he apparently can’t make a choice for his own life, his own self to save his skin, but now.

Now, with Steve’s incredible wealth of time to spend of his own accord in the evenings, he sits on the couch with Bucky and sometimes he sketches with the pad balanced on Bucky’s stomach where Bucky sprawls over Steve’s lap, reading from a book dangling nimbly from his fingertips in a fucking impossible and stunningly elegant way that Steve has already dedicated more pages to than any other hand in the world. Steve’s Netflix account can actually recommend useful things because they’ve crafted a list of thumbs up-and-down accordingly, maybe it’s silly but Steve loves it, Steve fucking loves it.

And maybe the simplest, most beautiful thing that proves wrong any possible hint at doubt that may have ever existed, before: maybe the most organic and soulful and intrinsic testament to any and all of it is the way that Steve wakes up in the morning before Bucky, maybe more than half of all their mornings—and on some of those half-of-all-mornings, Bucky’s blanketing him like Steve is the most precious thing in the world and he has to keep him there, keep him safe and warm and he has to know Steve is there, under his body; on some of those mornings, Bucky’s curled round Steve’s side, a parenthesis that holds Steve in and holds him close in the very same breath, rising and falling with hands over Steve’s chest and sunk into all of Steve’s lines and divots and his head pillowed in the crease of Steve’s arm, mouth parted just enough that it’s as sexy as it is angelic, maybe more of both for the other, even, a bigger sum than the parts and that is true of all of this. That’s the most true thing Steve knows, because he is bigger, now—his world and his life and his heart have been shown, undeniably, to be so much bigger than Steve could ever have dreamed.

And that’s proof; and so is the tightness in Steve’s chest, and the lead in his stomach, when he thinks about it just being for now; when he glories in Bucky’s wellbeing, in the fact that he doesn't need a helping hand in his recovery, that he’s fine and he’s here, and Steve tells himself it’s not entirely baseless, or wishful thinking, to read it hopefully that they haven’t even started a conversation about what happens once Bucky’s cleared fully post-op in just a week, that neither of them is eager enough to stop this, whatever it is, maybe everything; when Steve holds that close against the idea that it will stop, that it could stop, that he could ever possibly go back to living, sleeping, breathing, being alone, after this because—

This.

Bucky’s lips when Steve comes home, speaking through the press of their mouths in a language they both know without understanding how. The length of Bucky’s body draped over Steve’s, eyes catching the glow of the television, or flashing dark as he finishes a chapter, lower lip caught between his teeth as he concentrates and balances his novel but keeps his other hand unwavering stretched open over Steve’s leg, or arm, or wrist with his thumb stroking softly, endless, mindless but committed.

Bucky's body, pressed to Steve’s body in any possible way, any configuration or alignment or design, and the meeting is puzzle-perfect not because they’re cut without flaws but because they give and bend and yield and move with each other without even thinking. As if the desire to be, like this, is so deep as to be elemental. It’s not that they don’t have to try, but more that trying is unconscious. Trying is a given. And trying succeeds, almost like breathing, in this.

In this, Bucky fits. Seamlessly.

God, but he fits.

________________________________________

Bucky’s shoving toast in his mouth too fast, cheeks puffed out, and it’s an incongruous picture, chipmunked against the sharp line of his jaw and the soft-sure, heart-tangled warmth it sends through Steve’s torso, top to bottom, forces Steve to walk to his side and lean in, kiss those too-full cheeks against Bucky’s protests—ineffectual, because he still hasn’t chewed through his breakfast—and fuck, but Steve giggles at Bucky’s poor attempt to glare his way.

“You gonna be at the Tower today, too?” Bucky asks when he’s finally swallowed, and Steve follows the motion down that gorgeous throat before he blinks and registers the question.

“Was going to meet with Maria today,” Steve grimaces—they’ll likely have to take one of the jets to DC to elbow-rub with some senators who are grousing about superhero oversight, with Steve deploying his All-American Reassuring Smile™—but Bucky’s on his way into Manhattan to have Tony take a look at the arm and run tests now that Bucky’s in the apparently-crucial three-weeks-out period from surgery, healed enough to start taking more intensive readings that need to be in person, versus what Bucky’s been doing over video calls with JARVIS guiding anything out of the ordinary: Bucky knows the drill well enough by now but Tony, unsurprisingly, comes up with some new twist to throw everyone a curveball.

“Want me to?” Steve doesn’t ask a whole question of it, really, not least because he’s asked Bucky more than once already if he’s sure he doesn’t want Steve to come with him—more than once but not too many times, because Bucky’s a grown man, fierce as anything, but if he wanted Steve to be with him, there’s not a single place or time or reason Steve would be anywhere else.

“Stevie,” and oh, Steve’s still fucking weak when Bucky calls him that, like it’s the first time every single time, and also because Bucky hears what Steve’s asking and what it means and what it holds and saying Stevie like that is made of something that vibrates on the same frequency as love, Steve’s sure of it, it might not be there yet but it knows the rhythm and it could get there, and could is closer than most things, is really damn close to will.

“Stevie,” Bucky’s finished his toast, but there are crumbs on his chin when he leans in close and taps Steve’s cheek, pure affection in it.

“I want you to,” and the emphasis is on you, somehow—it’s not deeper or louder but it’s like honey in Steve’s veins, sweet and smooth and big when his heart beats. “But this is just paperwork.”

“Paperwork?” Steve scoffs a little, even as he’s twining his arms around Bucky’s neck and clasping his hands behind, fingers at his nape. “I wouldn’t say that.”

Because nothing about Bucky is just anything, let alone paperwork. Because Bucky’s arm is part of Bucky’s body, and Bucky’s body is something Steve deeply appreciates, treasures, fucking adores because it houses Bucky, Bucky, heart and soul and Steve’s...invested in that.

So much.

“Well,” Bucky ducks his head to press a kiss under Steve’s jaw, right where he knows it makes Steve shiver, like fucking clockwork, and he grins when he’s proven right like it’s a discovery—every time, Bucky does that. “Let’s find out tonight?”

Steve pulls back, only enough to move and give Bucky a proper kiss, full of the multitude of promises in that comment, that question-that’s-not-a-question, from the soft and comfortable to the hot and flexible to everything in between, and when Steve says:

“I’ll be waiting,”

He definitely means he’s probably going to be haunting the lab floor Steve met Bucky on a lifetime ago, for all that it seems like worthwhile things existed much—or else, existed like they do now—before Bucky.

“Good.”

And Bucky knows it, to the letter, and—impossibly, improbably, unwaveringly—welcomes it. The smile on his face makes that clear and Steve thinks Bucky’s body in his lap, Bucky’s lips on his skin, Bucky thrusting into his body and whichever combination in whichever order, they’ll find out tonight. Steve’ll be waiting.

But, of course, it’s never a bad thing to indulge in a preview—which is why Steve drops to his knees, fingers already drawing Bucky’s belt apart, because Tony’s grasp of time is tenuous at best when it’s not life-or-death.

He won’t even notice if Bucky’s a little late.

Chapter Text

Steve’s leaning adjacent to the door to the lab Tony’s brought Bucky to, per JARVIS being a very kind co-conspirator to Steve tracking down his boyfriend; and Steve’s only just keeping himself from sneaking in and interrupting which sure, it would not be the first time—and the first time ended up turning out spectacularly—but Steve likes to think he can at least pretend at restraint. It’s only been hours, not days, since he’s seen Bucky.

He can manage.

Though managing, in this case, means Bucky taking him by surprise when he pokes his head around the doorframe with a playfully deadpan “boo” at least an hour before Steve had expected him to be done, and probably a good 45-minutes before Steve would have caved because yes, he could manage, but: he didn’t have to, and he didn’t want to, and Sam has, more than once, made the comment that Steve didn’t have to make life harder for himself just on principle, and Steve does try to listen to Sam. Sometimes.

Like he would have in about fifteen minutes, here and now.

“Cinch and a half, Stevie,” Bucky winks, bumping his bare-metal shoulder to Steve's as he finishes rolling his sleeve down before shrugging on his jacket and leading the way to the lifts that run toward the private garage level.

“Plus,” Bucky’s lips curl upward, leaning into the wall as the doors close and spreading his arms out along the bar that runs the length, the hard planes of his chest stretching the henley peeking out soft between his unzipped coat, and sending Steve’s mouth a little dry in a way that’s damn near Pavlovian.

“You are looking at a man who’s been cleared for any and all physical activity,” which, even if they’d still found plenty of activities Steve wasn’t half-panicked about Bucky overexerting his range of motion for, still makes Steve shiver deliciously: “unconditionally.”

It is not damn near anything, when Steve’s pulse trips and his groin tightens at the words but more the tone, and the gleam in Bucky’s eyes as he appraises Steve openly from across the elevator car.

Steve knows very well who has access to these lower Tower levels, and knows probably-well who has access to the security feeds in this space, and Steve cares absolutely not at all about the possibility of any of those people walking in, or watching him on a screen somewhere, when he grabs Bucky’s jacket and drags their bodies flush, kisseing him almost manically, so hard they’re both breathless in seconds, and if they break apart when the lift stops and the doors open just so that Steve can drag Bucky’s willing frame out into the garage and pin him against the wall as the elevator shoots back up without them, it’s only so that Steve can slide his knee between Bucky’s leg and cant his thigh against the hard, tantalizing line of Bucky’s dick as he swallows Bucky’s ensuing moan with sheer fucking gusto, absolute goddamn delight.

“How about I drive us home?” Steve gasps as he pulls back just enough to draw air; just enough, because before he can finish speaking, or breathe in any deeper, he’s diving back in, capturing Bucky’s mouth.

“To celebrate.”

“Bike’s quickest,” Bucky purrs against the underside of Steve’s chin, stubble dragging against the tender skin Steve’s thrown his head back to expose—and Bucky’s not wrong, particularly when Steve’s driving, but Steve knows very, very well that Bucky’s probably less concerned, if only just, about the speed with which they can get to Steve’s apartment than he is about the fact that Steve will go even quicker with Bucky’s legs spread behind him, and Bucky’s hands wrapped around him—and Bucky will enjoy every goddamn minute, driving Steve fucking insane.

And just as predicted: Steve weaves through traffic, Bucky’s dick chubbed enough to be pressing just a hint and yet very deliberately against the top-tell curve of Steve’s ass; enough for Steve to be very much aware of how much they’re both aching, wanting as Bucky leans heavily into him, moving his weight with Steve’s like they’re tied together but sliding one hand to Steve’s chest, away form his hips and clutching a little harder than necessary just for balance, making it absolutely clear that Steve’s not breaking the speed limit just for shits and giggles and the need and lust coursing through his own veins alone.

The roar of the engine doesn’t even get a chance to stop echoing before Steve’s swung off the bike and dragged Bucky, still straddling the seat, against him, kissing him as deep as Steve knows how and yet still not deep enough, and he wants to get Bucky upstairs, he wants to get Bucky undressed, he wants to get Bucky in bed and on top of him so he’s the only thing Steve feels or sees or breathes, but the mind’s a funny thing, and Steve’s soul sings so loud when Bucky’s pressed up this close, and Steve’s tongue’s not always well-tamed in his staunchest moments, let alone when said tongue is literally playing chase between Bucky’s lips so the words come out simply because they’ve been living in his throat, because they’re unlocked under the flavour of Bucky’s mouth:

“Move in with me.”

Bucky sucks hard onto Steve’s lip and finishes the kiss Steve had interrupted to speak at a leisurely pace with an impossibly thorough intent, with maddeningly zealous pressure and give and Steve moans for it, dizzy for long seconds after Bucky pulls back, his chest heaving just a little against Steve’s—before Steve realizes Bucky hasn’t responded.

Steve swallows hard around the way his pulse falters for the silence: easy, he tells himself, because Bucky’s looking at him with such wide, warm eyes, and his parted lips are wet and swollen red, and he doesn’t have to fear, in this. He worries for so many things, but it’s not needed here, he can see it.

He can feel it.

“I know you don’t need to be here, now, like, need to, need to,” but I need you Steve thinks, I have needed you with me from damn near the start, and he is real fucking proud that he bites down around that confession, that so-deep truth because it’s ready to burst from his lips with all due feeling; “and I know it’s soon and shit, but—”

“Yes.”

And Steve doesn’t even get a chance to blink, let alone catch his breath and process that word and all it holds before Bucky’s got the heat of his mouth pressed home to Steve’s lips, again, and Steve surrenders to the feeling because it is built from a degree of contentment that resonates in Steve’s cells, that he’s never known outside of this, a rightness Steve didn’t think existed because he’d never seen it before, and he’s not entirely sure it does exist elsewhere, that it could ever be found if Bucky Barnes weren’t pointing the way from the blessing of his very goddamn being, his whole heart poured into kissing Steve like Steve is worth it all, and then some.

Unfathomable.

“Yes, move in with you,” Bucky pulls back only enough to breathe the answer again into the slick pillow of Steve’s bottom lip; “Or you move in with me,” and he nips that bottom lip, now, and Steve goddamn moans for it; whimpers when Bucky’s mouth curls into a grin where it touches.

“Whatever you want, wherever you want to be, just,” he pulls back, and Steve leans to follow without even planning to, against his own conscious will, but Bucky places a hand to the center of Steve’s chest and keeps just enough distance that he can hold Steve’s gaze, the raincover shade of those eyes like fresh air; Steve yearns for his warmth, his body closer to Steve’s but those eyes are a revelation. Those eyes see into and through Steve for all that he is, for all of his sins and shortcomings and they glimmer like they want all of him anyway.

“Yeah, Steve,” Bucky murmurs, and then reaches to cup Steve’s cheek. “Yes.” And then. And then—

Then Bucky smiles, and Steve comes undone a little for the beauty of it, raw and unadulterated, unfettered and so free and the draw of Bucky, the need in Steve to follow that body with his body is too vast, too deep: Steve grabs the palm of Bucky’s hand on his chest and pulls from that anchor so Bucky’s braced against him, so Steve can lean in and devour him and take in some of the sunshine of that grin, swallow it and know it in his lungs, warm and real until it burns to breathe for how unrelenting Steve is in his quest for Bucky’s mouth, teeth and tongue and sweet gasps, and god. God, Steve wants, and he’ll never get enough. He doesn’t think it’s possible in principle, but he knows it’s not possible for him, not for his heart or his soul wrapped up in Bucky so tight already and only burrowing further, deeper, singularly-fixated and drowning for it, blissful, to the end of all things.

“Or,” Steve finds himself exhaling, less because he has anything to say than because he has an image, wholly-realized and in vivid color behind his eyes: Steve in Bucky’s arms, sprawled on a deep sofa that’s likely closer to a bed, the sun rising outside big bay windows over a city Steve doesn’t know but doesn’t have to, not just then because Bucky’s warm around him and breathing slow and steady, and Steve’s pulse is conducted in the rise and fall of that chest beneath him—and there’s a metal hand carding through Steve’s hair like time stands still, and Steve sees Bucky’s hand pressed light against Steve’s stomach, right arm wrapped around him to hold him close and it’s the hand he’d see if he looked just now, but it’s also darker, like it’s been in the sun, and then looser, older, and Steve’s stomach dives before the vision shifts back and Steve clings to what remains instead: something unknown, unfamiliar, a home that Steve’s never seen before but still knows that it’s home because the skin against his skin is familiar, and so known, and is, is—

“Or?” Bucky whispers, gentle, like he knows Steve’s wholly with him but, in being that, is wholly somewhere Bucky can’t see just now; just yet.

“Or I mean, there are, places,” Steve finds himself stammering a little, eyes wide and then he’s dipping his chin, nipping at the corners of Bucky’s mouth, the hinge of his jaw, frenetic and uncoordinated and reduced to pure instinct and what his heartbeat whispers to him, autonomic and painted wholly in dramatic shades, all matters of life and death; “options to,” and Steve doesn’t stop a moan escaping, doesn’t keep it back from breaking into the words because Bucky’s slipping, shifting, lifting and moving closer as he stands—good god, they’re still crowded against Steve’s bike—

“We could get a place, of our own,” Steve gasps, stumbles a little as Bucky presses him backwards, as Bucky never ceases to maintain a grip on him to keep him upright, hale and whole; he gasps, as Bucky dismounts to stand straight in front of Steve.

“We could get a place,” Steve says again, his voice small but only because that’s all that can fit alongside the sheer enormity of the future he’s seeing, and feeling, and knows is all he’ll ever want or strive toward, in this world or any other: “to live together, to be, to be…”

“Stevie,” Bucky exhales it, like Steve’s name is a prayer and a benediction and a riddle and Steve is none of those things but he could be, he thinks, if given the chance to learn inside the way Bucky speaks, the way Bucky holds him in his gaze and somehow unthinkable: marvels.

“Wake up with me in the morning,” Steve speaks; asks. Would beg, but Bucky looks lit from within, like this is as perfect between his ribs as it is between Steve’s: “go to bed with me at night. Every night.” Without an end date. Without questions, even unasked. For always.

God, Steve thinks, because he doesn’t have to temper words in his own mind; his own chest—every night, forever.

And the beautiful thing, possibly the most beautiful thing in all of it—and fuck, but that’s saying something; but quite possible the most beautiful thing, is that Steve doesn’t say those words pumping bright and deafening through his veins, but he doesn’t have to.

Steve can see a world, a whole life in Bucky’s eyes, just then, and those eyes know, miracle of miracles for it, and in knowing wholly and fully and true, Bucky just smiles, and leans in, and breathes like promise, warm and precious against Steve’s parted lips:

“Yes.”

Chapter Text

Steve’s staring at the ceiling: Bucky’s head against his chest, every other exhale snuffling just a little as he rises and falls on Steve’s breaths, open lips brushing Steve’s skin and Steve loses time, tracing the bevels of the Artex before he blinks hard enough that the patterns glow behind his eyelids, riding the high of being able to think with real purpose, with real possibility of saying aloud that it’s their ceiling, above their bed, down the hall from their kitchen inside their apartment, and Steve’s imagining so many futures for them as his eyes swim the endless spiral waves in their goddamn Artex patterns in paint overhead. The whisper of Bucky’s breathing makes him shiver—it’s shifted, and Bucky’s likely awake, and Steve loves the feeling of Bucky’s weight against the dip of his chest, pressed to the beat his heart; loves where his own hand rests against Bucky’s spine and can feel his pulse in kind, close to matching, strong and languid and full and Steve loves—

“I got something to tell you.”

Bucky’s words are more of a feeling than a sound, and Steve feels a little thread of apprehension dance through his blood but Bucky’s warm breath hits Steve’s nipple, hardening it against Steve’s own will and sending a frisson of arousal to meet the little niggling of fear: they’re heady feelings at odds, but they mingle and Steve’s heartbeat is steady under Bucky’s constant weight, both his tousled head and now his sleep-warm left hand at the center of his sternum like a guardian—pure promise and reassurance and so Steve reaches up and runs his fingers through Bucky’s hair in response, all encouragement to tell Steve anything, everything.

Always.

“Tony made me an offer, when I went in for the tests.”

Anything, everything, always.

That holds, but it doesn’t mean Steve automatically understands. He keeps running his fingers against Bucky’s scalp, keeps the touch steady, and waits.

“Turns out this bad boy is significantly stronger than anticipated, once it’s all properly calibrated and attached,” Bucky presses down just a little with the hand in question, still atop Steve’s heart. “Too late to change it now for my sake, but definitely something he wants to tweak before the first round of trial candidates get fitted.”

Bucky starts drawing circles around Steve’s chest, lazy loops as Steve feels his adrenaline spike because he can tamp down fear of abstractions, sometimes; more easily when Bucky’s plastered to his body, at least. But when he’s faced with Bucky’s self, Bucky’s well-being, Bucky’s safety—

“Is it, I mean, are you okay?” Steve breath comes out a little strained in asking, but the heavy pumping of his anxious blood up into Bucky’s palm feels like an inherent balm; it’s here, he’s here, they’re here.

Theirs.

“Oh, yeah. I’m fine,” Bucky arcs his neck and kisses the notch of Steve’s throat, right where he knows Steve’s especially sensitive, and it’s the physical sensation as much as the intimacy of that knowing that helps Steve calm. “Great, really,” Bucky presses a soft smile into Steve’s skin, that curl of lips shaped against the heartbeat there and Steve isn’t entirely sure if Bucky’s waiting for Steve to settle wholly, or relishing the way that Bucky’s real, solid presence of okay is also, currently, sending shivers up Steve’s spine with the way he breathes against Steve’s definitely-not-settling-now pulse.

He isn’t sure, that is, until Bucky’s tongue darts out and wets that already perpetually hair-triggered stretch of skin, exhaling a little shaky with smugness when Steve goes a lot shaky with arousal as Bucky purrs into Steve’s neck: “Really great.”

Steve gives into the full-body shudder that’s dancing along his nerves; Bucky leans down and sucks deliberately where he’d been kissing, an encouragement and a reward and a tease, and Steve hasn’t ever really bothered to hold back his moans with Bucky, but maybe he drops his jaw a little lower and whimpers from somewhere deeper in his chest, the sound tremulous with the tripping of his blood and Steve can feel Bucky’s dick swell just a little against Steve’s thigh at the sound, and Steve can’t catch a deep breath off the keening before Bucky’s kissing him so fucking wholly, so all-consuming that Steve loses his grasp on his body, the size of his bones and his sense of self for a few perfect moments that have him blinking a little bleary when Bucky pulls back, panting, and this time when Steve processes the weight of Bucky’s palm on his chest over his thrashing pulse, Steve can tell in the blown pupils slowly yielding back color in Bucky’s eyes that Bucky’s touch is truly and wholly and only a touchtone made to steady, for both of them, a point of reference to remake the world as he syncs his breathing to Steve’s and the whole of them both is caught up inside the effort and it’s something momentous, enough that Steve spends a long stretch of moments just staring at Bucky, marvelling unabashedly, before the fact that they’d been having a coversation—and a serious one at that—reasserts itself in Steve’s mind.

Bucky’s great, he said so—Bucky’s really great; Steve can’t be blamed if he gets lost in that all-encompassing fact for a little while, goddamnit. There is not a soul in the universe who could blame him for that.

Bucky settles back onto Steve’s chest before he speaks again; lets Steve’s fingers build up a rhythm again stroking through his hair for a bit, first.

“But, y’know, given that there’s not really a booming market for superhuman-strength-via-a-cool-ass-bionic-arm,” Bucky drums the corresponding fingers against Steve’s pec, soft like a caress and playful, familiar like a love-tap; “he asked me if I wanted to join up with, well,” Bucky’s head shifts a little on Steve’s chest, and he breathes out slow:

“With you guys. Doing the hero thing.” He sounds casual, maybe even a little shy, but he’s sure. Steve can hear it, and he knows it, even before Bucky says it plain:

“And I do,” Bucky turns his head, ear digging hard into Steve’s ribs like he’s pushing closer, looking to sink straight in and Steve would have it, were it possible. In a fucking heartbeat.

“I do want to.”

Steve’s still saying nothing, mostly because he doesn’t know the words yet, but close-second because his tongue feels suddenly huge and clumsy. His hands are still threading through Bucky’s hair and trailing along the line of his back at counterpoints: mostly because the feeling of Bucky’s skin, real and warm under his touch is essential, but equal-in-measure because his hands are goddamn shaking and this is the only way to hide it even the slightest bit.

“I don’t miss the fight,” Bucky says, and Steve’s not sure if it’s because they’re words he’s planned or just a way to fill the silence—he hopes the former, really, because silence has always been comfortable between them, impossibly and beautifully so, and Steve never wants that to change. “Or else, I don’t miss war,” Bucky tacks on quick; “but I want what I’ve always wanted for my life, y’know? Help people.”

“The arm’s gonna do that,” Steve finds his voice, even if it sounds clumsy and pitchy and frays around the ends. “Already does that.”

“Yeah,” Bucky draws out the word, the sound a rolling of the eyes in itself; “and what about me?”

Steve feels himself stiffen, caught off guard only just less than he’s caught downright offended.

“It is you,” Steve immediately counters, covering Bucky’s metal hand where it lies on Steve’s chest; “Buck—”

“Not what I meant,” Bucky says, softer now, as he flips his palm to lace his fingers with Steve’s and hold fast.

“I mean, I don’t have to do shit for this to make a difference,” Bucky explains. “Being a guinea pig was a passive role, passive risk. And sure, active risk isn’t something I get off on in itself, anymore,” Bucky says, a hint rueful, and Steve feels that deeply as much as he’s on edge for where he sees this conversation heading: they both know what it feels like to crave that danger, to one exteme or another.

“But I want,” Bucky starts, then shakes his head, and Steve tries to focus more on the rub of Bucky’s slight scruff against his skin instead of the staccato tapping of his own pulse.

“I’ve got this,” Bucky hums, considering; “pure unlucky luck, y’know? Got the rest of my life, suddenly, right in front of me.” Steve closes his eyes and focuses on drawing in a breath, and letting it out, over and again through the way Bucky’s lips quirk where they’re pressed to Steve’s chest.

“A chance to do something, again. A chance to help.”

It’s a dizzying sensation, for Steve, in that moment and the moments that follow, the sheer breadth of feeling coursing through his veins, pumping through his heart and electric on his skin. There’s fear, the likes of which Steve had never felt before he met Bucky, and even so: the likes of which he’s never felt before since until now, because this is a new thing in this moment, these instants, building on the anxieties that’d found shadows to hide in, unseen behind Steve’s bones for so long.

But there’s admiration, too, and pride: for Bucky, in Bucky, and in the fact that Bucky would have ever looked at Steve twice for the heart in him, the fierceness, and seen a match of any kind at all. There’s pride—there’s warmth, and breath, and Bucky’s weight on Steve’s chest like an anchor to the moment, like a promise or a vow.

And there’s love. There’s so much goddamn love thundering through Steve, body and soul, that he could choke on it or fly, and he’s not sure he’ll ever learn which he’s closer to. He’s not sure he’s ever meant to; thinks maybe that’s just love, when it’s like this, all big and blinding. When it could block out the sun as much as it’d outshine the stars.

“You’re thinking of every single other way I could help that doesn’t involve a team of death-defying alien slayers, aren’t you?”

Bucky’s lips are stretched into a smirk against Steve’s skin as he speaks, and Steve, no matter the feelings in him—or mattering them wholly, because of them entirely; Steve can’t help but smile back, and drop his own lips to the crown of Bucky’s head. And if the warmth of that body on his body swells to overwhelm when Bucky burrows a little into Steve’s frame for the kiss, the tiny intimacy, the soft domesticity that Steve never bothered to dream of, never entertained for a blink in the war with soft curls and steel nerves, but now: now, it’s in his arms and it’s, it’s—

“Yes,” Steve admits, and drops another kiss to Bucky’s temple, now. “But I’m also thinking that I,” Steve swallows, and nuzzles his cheek against Bucky’s tousled locks.

“I know you, I mean,” Steve rests his cheek on Bucky’s head, closing his eyes. “I think I know you well enough at this point—”

Steve lets out a sound that’s nothing more or less than a damn squeak when Bucky pinches the skin just next to Steve’s nipple with lips wrapped around his teeth, pillowed but with bite to it before Bucky rests his ear against the skin again, scoffing out something just shy of a growl:

“Sure as hell hope so.”

“Shut it, jerk,” Steve tugs at the curling ends of Bucky’s hair for a second before he, too, settles again.

“But I know you well enough to hear that tone in your voice,” Steve says, palm tracing up and down Bucky’s spine almost mindlessly, like the comfort given and taken both ways is already ingrained in his bones; not just something he needs but something he is.

“This matters,” Steve nods, and maybe he presses Bucky harder to him, closer to him; if he does, though, he’s pretty sure Bucky doesn’t merely let him, but presses closer just the same.

“And if it matters to you? It matters to me.”

And that’s the truth; simple as that.

“Good,” Bucky says, as much sass to it as fondness and now, Bucky definitely presses closer, and Steve feels the tightness of his worry melt with the softness of that body so near.

“And I’m not going to pretend you wouldn’t be amazing in the field.”

Bucky huffs. “You’d be stupid to pretend that.”

“Jerk.” Steve says again, but it’s got so much joy in it, and Bucky chuckles, and that’s got such joy in it too. “Just, don’t ask me not to worry.”

Bucky hums, and drags just-parted lips across Steve’s skin, back and forth like a caress.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Bucky props his chin on Steve’s pec, gazing up through his lashes: mesmerizing.

“I will ask you to respect me, though. You lead the team, and I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Bucky’s fingers dance up and down Steve’s right side, the smooth metal of that touch settling something in Steve he couldn’t place a name to if he tried. “So I want you to be real clear that it’s not about any of that kind of shit. It’s about, us, you and me, and you seeing me as capable enough to treat me as an equal,” and then Bucky’s palm curls around Steve’s hip, thumb swiping a metronome against the sensitive skin: “out there, like we do here.”

“Always,” Steve exhales, a little breathless for feeling, in all its forms. “I won’t pretend like I won’t slip up sometimes, in showing it, but always.”

“Can’t ask more than that,” Bucky leans up and brushes a kiss to the corner of Steve’s mouth, sliding his hands behind Steve’s shoulder blades and lifting Steve just that slightest bit into his chest so it’s impossible to inhale or exhale and not feel every subtle shift. “We’ll learn together, then.”

Steve breathes out slow, and feels every second of it, feels the beating of his heart against Bucky’s sternum as his skin slides against it, deflating and trying like hell to bleed the anxiety dry.

“Okay.” Steve’s not sure it is, exactly, but he knows that it will be. Because Bucky is—

Bucky is already the bulk of Steve’s life, the best of the light in Steve’s world. Steve will learn what he has to, move where he needs to, in order to keep him.

So yeah. Okay.

But Bucky’s exquisitely heavy, solid against Steve’s chest; it’s impossible, lying as they are, not to feel the heavy rattle of his pulse shaking up into Bucky’s body. Bucky, god bless the man, doesn’t say anything for feeling it, just holds to him tight and unwavering until Steve speaks. Or doesn’t. In fact, it’s possible that the most beautiful, unfathomable thing in it all is that either, both, anything in between or beyond—it’s okay. It’s okay, and Bucky will stay exactly where he is wrapped around Steve, living and breathing and here.

“I’ve never had anything to lose,” Steve finds himself saying, soft and strained but close enough to be heard, and not least—in fact, almost certainly absolutely most—because Bucky is there, and his heart’s beating into Steve’s skin, too: “not when I had the means to save it.”

Then Steve’s being lifted up, and turned, and rested on his side only to tip into Bucky’s frame, now stretched out on his back across the mattress.

“Come on,” Bucky urges, though his hand’s on Steve’s arm, pressing him close again before the heat between them can fade much at all—a relief in itself—so Steve wasn’t going to have a choice otherwise even if he wanted it: “snuggle. Then nap.”

“We just woke up,” Steve says, more as an observation than any kind of question, because he’s already moudling his body into Bucky’s like a haven, a reprieve; like home.

“And yet here you are,” Bucky’s voice rumbles through the whole of Steve’s frame, and Steve moans for it; “putting up absolutely no fight at all.”

“You’re really fuckin’ persuasive,” Steve breathes, as Bucky wraps his thighs around Steve’s, locks legs around Steve’s knees and whispers warm and soft and fucking perfect, just below Steve’s ear:

“I know.”

Chapter Text

Were he to reflect on the matter, Steve’s not sure it would have been better, or easier, if it hadn’t happened the way it did. If it hadn’t been so fast, if there’d been some foolish reprieve where Steve could have fretted, stewed in near-constant anxiety just a little longer.

And, if he were thinking clearly, they’re long overdue, as a team: Steve has received an embarrassment of riches in the past months, a goddamn miracle with Bucky at his side, in his arms, close-on hidden away together from anything outside of themselves, while an improbable quiet took hold of the world and everything that popped up on the Avengers radar was better suited to spywork, or S.H.I.E.L.D. agents of one stripe or another—even stripped lean as they’ve been after Pierce’s plans were brought to light.

So, objectively: the storm was long overdue.

In the moment, though: there’s so much Steve’d hoped for, hoped to do and ensure and double-check, then triple-check again for good measure, before Bucky found himself faced with a call into the field. Again. Into the field again, because Bucky knows the field better than Steve does, but this...is different. This is robots and space whales and alien gods and, and—

This is the love of Steve’s goddamn life.

But Steve: he wishes maybe they could have run more specs on the arm, for impact resistance. Or maybe used one of Tony’s bots to test the integrity of the uniform, one more time, make extra-sure it’d protect Bucky like it was made to.

And Bucky could have trained with the team more, Steve would have liked that—he knew Tony, of course, and Bruce, but not in battle. He could at least say that much about Rhodey for all that the latter wasn’t often called in; and Sam, who Bucky knew already from VA work in D.C., and who served in at least the same century as him, but likewise: Sam doesn’t join the fray all that often, and Bucky knows him more from ribbing over shitty coffee at the back of a meeting hall. Nat’s waylaid them a few times when they’d been in and out of the Tower, together and individually, so at least Bucky has a sense of her, and per his own stories related to Steve, Bucky’s started to get a hang of the impossible: knowing when the Black Widow is watching.

But, he’s only run through the ops programs Tony’s set up for them a handful of times, and usually just with Steve and Tony, who usually just gets sidetracked making notes on the arm’s performance. And two times—incredibly, given the rarity of his appearances—with Thor. Who had taken to Bucky immediately—better watch your man, Cap, Tony’d ribbed, Fabio likes brunets—and Bucky’d been less awed (though definitely also awed) than he’d been fascinated by an ageless, glowing giant throwing around a hammer and bringing down the wrath of…himself, and then turning around to quip either half-understood-so-only-half-effective pop culture, or incredibly-well-understood-and-suitably-nerdy science, both of which Bucky met with enthusiasm, their banter almost jovial even as they took out AI targets for points in the training sims.

And Steve hadn’t felt jealous, exactly, but he hadn’t realized what he’d felt about it until Bucky’d come up to him that first night, pressing himself into the curve of Steve’s ass as he breathed at Steve’s neck: glowing tower of muscles tossing his weapon away half the time like an idiot, leaving himself to the wolves? Gotta take care of idiots like that, it’s ingrained in me already, y’know? Gotta keep this safe however I can and he’d pressed a broad palm over the center of Steve’s chest as he’d rocked his hips up, and Steve had tipped his head back toward where Bucky’d draped himself, chin hooked over Steve’s shoulder—

Steve hadn’t felt jealous, exactly, but whatever he had felt was subsumed entirely, wholly and in perpetuity, in the wash of heat and sensation that had overcome Steve in that moment, and that had burned him alive in the moments that followed.

Plus, Steve’s been learning a lot with the random internet shit Bucky sends Thor’s way, because more often than not Bucky scrolls through his phone on the sofa next to Steve, and so Steve gets to see it all, too.

But maybe all of that—maybe all of that is exactly why Steve wanted more time. Maybe it was more time with Bucky on the couch, against his back, more of Bucky’s laugh guaranteed, and held in no balance but Bucky’s chest and maybe Steve’s hands, if Steve’s lucky: more time to let the terror fester over the possibility of that guarantee being threatened, being crushed to dust and Steve never comprehending how to recover.

It’s now, though. There’s no more time. The threat is moderate: they’re the ones called in because someone’s brought their half-baked attempt at an Iron Man suit with tech far, far less advanced than the arc reactor but, also, much more suggestive of Tesseract-like extraterrestriality—either way, they’re best suited to the problem at hand. Nat’s grabbing Clint off a recon mission and will meet them in Midtown; Tony’ll make an entrance after everyone else is in position.

Steve’s hands are even moderately steady, when they pull on his gloves and drag the cowl over his eyes.

His breathing’s not even close to moderately steady, but he’s quiet about it. He can do this.

He’s quiet about it, but Bucky knows him, now; someone in the world knows him, now.

And so: Bucky sees.

“Relax.”

Steve doesn’t expect the hands on his shoulders, the grip tight first and then easing, if only just to start to work the tension from the muscles beneath; he doesn’t expect it, but he leans into it, moth to flame, and his eyes slip closed as his breath punches out of his lungs with a shudder—he’s been seen, and there’s no reason to hide the way he’s one wrong-step from oblivion.

But Bucky? Bucky just keeps working his fingertips through the layers of Steve’s uniform, all heat and pressure and patience, and care so honest and unyielding that Steve thinks he could construct a life in this moment, inside this feeling, and would live and die happier than he’s maybe ever been.

Save for the thing that’s put them here. The thing that’s waiting. The danger outside.

Bucky presses his lips against Steve’s neck, and murmurs deep enough that it rumbles against the line of Steve’s back where they touch.

“We’ve got this.”

Then Bucky pulls back, and Steve is cold, and it’s time.

“Tony,” Steve says, steeling himself as he fits the comm to his ear; “we’re inbound in five.”

“Roger Rogers,” Tony’s voice comes through, and Steve hears Bucky’s snort multiplied, from across the room and through the tech—okay.

Okay, they’ve got this. It’s time.

Relax.

Fucking hell.

________________________________________

For the record: Steve had not relaxed, despite Bucky’s attempts to soothe him.

Steve had not relaxed one damn bit.

But they had taken care of the incursion—in the end it was really just rogue tech some amateur terrorist cell had pilfered from the sad remains of Hammer Industries’ endless attempts to replicate Tony’s designs with none of the brilliance to see it through; far less of a threat than they’d feared, and definitely could have been taken care of by a S.T.R.I.K.E. team. And they’d worked damn near seamlessly, all of them in the field together, Nat and Bucky anticipating each other’s steps like they were on a dance floor, Tony volleying banter with him possibly more naturally, and definitely better matched, than with anyone else. Clint certainly hadn’t worked with a shot at his level before, who he could depend on to take out targets with skill enough for his standards, and Bruce—who stayed on comms this time—more than once noted that he appreciated the presence of someone who actually heeded his bird’s-eye warnings. Even Thor—who wasn’t strictly needed but who Bucky’d texted and had come barrelling out of the clouds to the fanfare of Bucky’s giddy laughter, promising mead in celebration after their inevitable victory—seemed to have had a blast playing up Bucky’s unabashedly entertained reactions to the talents of an alien deity.

And then: with Steve? Damn, but he couldn’t dwell on it as it happened, but their bodies knew each other as well in battle and they did in bed and it was incredible, it was exhilarating, and Steve wouldn’t have been able to keep his eyes off Bucky for sheer nerves and general worry, but even if that hadn’t been driving him—Steve wouldn’t have stood a chance, even so.

All of it spiralled together, though, would have almost certainly shorted out a normal human brain; would have run ragged and stopped still a heart-not-serumed, too much feeling in too small a space making too much blood pound too hard and too fast—fuck, but Steve had damn well felt it trying to shred him to pieces, nonetheless. Which: in terms of taxing him—body, mind, and soul—there was one element of the onslaught that Steve hadn’t wholly anticipated.

Namely: how fucking devastating/ that uniform looks plastered to Bucky’s body, stretched over the stretch of his muscles in combat, or his heaving chest as Steve devours him with his eyes, surveying the feast of him, immobilized by unmitigated want, overcome with the embarrassment of riches set out in the form of the man standing before him, laced in black and chrome.

And yes, sure, Steve had seen the parts come together; had half-watched Bucky dress because even with his heart working triple-time and threatening to tear out of his throat for how far and fast and hard it was pounding, traversing his torso up and down in rage and fear and desperation—even so, he’d watched because it was Bucky and there were parts of Steve, for all sorts of reasons, that would forever be unable or unwilling to look away.

Or both.

But he’d been a mess, and Steve had seen it, but he hadn’t…seen it.

Now, though: after the fighting and after the staring and after taking a few extra hits himself for all the split attention but never anything critical, or even close, because Bucky’d watched his six in a way Steve’s never felt before, because Steve’s had incredible teams, and has one now, but has never had a sniper at his back who had a vested interest like this, and so now—after, once they’re home, once Steve’s checked Bucky over on the flight back about three times more than necessary, hands running along his suit checking for injuries, for threats, for things just waiting to still his breath and crush his ribs; now?

Now, Steve’s heart is leaping around his chest again, up to his neck then banging back to his ribs deep enough to move his whole body, before swirling giddy with relief as much as primal fucking lust, a potent mix Steve’s never felt before like this—Steve is fucking done in, and he can’t help himself.

“You,” and Steve’s hands are on Bucky, his chest heaving where he’s pressed up against the line of Bucky’s spine and he mouths at Bucky’s neck, as he reaches around to work the straps along Bucky’s jacket like his hands aren’t his own, like they serve a higher calling and that’s to strip one James Buchanan Barnes bare, and then he’s bracing his palms on Bucky’s broad shoulders, cupped on the globes cuffed above his biceps on either side and swinging around to face him, chest to chest because Steve’s hands serve a higher calling but fuck, so do his lips, so do his teeth, so does his mouth as he bites the tab of each zipper criss-crossing Bucky’s chest and pulls, nips through the fabric of Bucky’s base layers with every inch revealed, and Steve’s mind is foggy because he needs Bucky, naked, but Steve doesn’t know how long he can hold out before he drops to his knees and tests just how well-enforced the crotch, specifically, on his own uniform is for how hard he knows he’ll get once he wraps lips around Bucky’s length and sucks him wholly down.

“Didn’t,” Steve growls, thumbs hooking, catching unforgiving on the newly-exposed skin near Bucky’s hips—near, but not goddamn close enough so Steve takes those hooked-thumbs in the flaps of Bucky’s tac pants and pulls, but goddamn him, goddamn him: Tony had been smart enough to make it harder to tear the damn thing off than it would be to peel it, or unfasten it like a man of patience and restraint.

Too bad Steve’s a man of neither.

“Tell me,” he grits out; he’s about to pull harder and Bucky rolls his hips, and it’s a mouth-watering sight that stills Steve dumb for a moment, long enough for Bucky to sneak a hand down the front himself and push along the clear cut of his dick underneath, and Steve comes to again, goddamn salivating just in time to join in the effort and drag the material just far enough that Steve can reach back and liberate that perfect ass while Bucky starts to free his own cock, except there are about two more layers between Steve’s mouth and Bucky’s taste, and Steve’s not about to stand for that.

So he sinks to the floor, bringing the reinforced flexi-armor and Bucky’s soft boxer-briefs down with both hands in the same, fluid drop.

“About this,” Steve breathes into the bared crease of Bucky’s thigh, and Bucky’s still half dressed on top—and Steve had seen the component parts of the ensemble, a uniform of metal and leather and he’d read protection. Safety.

But now Steve’s cheek is pressed against the tight curve of Bucky’s balls and—well.

“I didn’t realize—” Bucky gasps as Steve runs the tip of his nose along the vein up Bucky’s length, root to crown before he’s cut off by Steve sucking hard at just the tip, tongue pressing into the slit and drawing half a keen, half a sob from Bucky’s lips for it before it fades into a whimper when Steve pulls off, almost violently.

“Bullshit,” Steve hisses, glaring up at Bucky who’s staring right back, pupils blown, and Steve’s blood is molten metal, quicksilver, vibrating manic and he can’t help himself.

Steve can’t help himself but to swallow Bucky whole.

“I didn’t know,” Bucky gasps, burying his hands in Steve’s hair and tugging hard, and the reaction to that is innate: Steve moans around Bucky’s shaft and swallows convulsively so that Bucky’s gasping for the sensation around the wholly-swallowed head of his cock; so that Buck can’t help but let himself thrust into Steve’s mouth, uncoordinated and beyond holding back.

“Didn’t know,” Bucky pants, and groans, and it sounds like just breathing hurts for the way it all swells, cascades; Steve’s sucks harder, and grips tighter around Bucky’s thighs, marks him with the crescents of his nails; “I hoped.”

And Bucky cries out when he comes hard and long straight down Steve’s throat, the force of it enough that Steve’s eyes water even as he works himself off, still doggedly milking every last drop from Bucky, intent on every inch, sucking along the length and pressing lips, gluttonous against the softening length until Bucky slips free and goes a little boneless above Steve, steadying himself on the wall nearby.

Steve’s own hands are holding him at the knees, gripping tight even as Steve trembles through the remnants of his own release, but then Bucky lets go of the wall and lets Steve alone support him, and that—that lights fire in Steve’s chest all over again.

And that’s the fire that has Steve’s hands climbing up Bucky’s body, has Steve rising to his feet, has Steve ripping off the layers hiding Bucky’s chest from view before he reaches to cup Bucky’s ass with one hand, and to work open his own uniform with the other, leaning in to devour Bucky’s mouth, to share Bucky’s taste, and Bucky’s lips open hungrily for him as he exhales, wild-eyed and breathy:

“Seems I hoped right.”

Chapter Text

It’s not until the morning after that first battle—the most nerve-wracking thing Steve may have ever experienced, but if he’s honest, also the most effortless, the most seamlessly Steve’s ever fought alongside anyone, ever, which is absolutely no surprise, and makes the soft echo of an ache in his thighs as he comes awake a complicated feeling: beautiful and decadent and expansive in his chest, the gorgeous hint of a burn in his muscles different, a little stronger for what the serum hasn’t fully wiped clean yet on top of the strain of battle, proof twice over that it’s not just fighting, it’s that Steve’s never moved alongside anyone before like he does beside Bucky, with Bucky.

But, as a result, it is not until the morning after that Steve sees the message on his phone:

Steve blinks at the screen in his hands before registering the words, and the sender: Win Barnes—and he’s actually thought a lot about changing the name on her contact to Ma Barnes, as she’d made clear in the strangest most wonderfully casual-but-wholly-honest way that she’d welcome, if and when Steve was ready; when Steve was ready—and Steve might talk to her with and without Bucky more than he talks to some of the members of his team, but he wants to see her in the flesh first: he’s old fashioned like that.

Steve glances across the mattress to where Bucky’s slowly waking up, but is still more asleep on balance, and wonders if Bucky’s phone has matching messages, or if it’s just Steve.

For the tone of the text, as much as he knows of Win? It was probably just Steve.

Particularly given the one that follows:

“They know how I get, with surgery like that,” Bucky's voice comes from over Steve’s shoulder, reading Steve’s phone from where his jaw’s hooked over, his cheek pressed into Steve’s neck. “Most of the first year, probably, whenever Tony put me under the knife I’d end up at their place for at least a week after, soon as he could put me on one of his jets.” Steve’s chest clenches a little, thinking about it, but Bucky’s tone is really just thoughtful, and fond, and Steve hopes in whole new ways that he might get to have that again, in ways new and unthought of: a family he can be fond of. A family he’s fond of already, and wants as his own, too, more than he can fully process even just in his own head.

“I think it helped them, too. My, you know,” Bucky shrugs, and really what it does is press his head closer to Steve’s back, and brush his stubble against Steve’s skin—he rarely says the words capture, or torture, or anything like that, particularly outside of the dark hours in their bed, wrapped together, but Steve knows anyway, always, and his heart thumps hard for it.

“They took it hard. So.”

No shit, Steve thinks. of course they did. You’re here in front of me, breathing and warm, and I am taking it hard.

“I think they’re bluffing on this one, though,” Bucky adds, and Steve glances out of his periphery and sees the furrow between Bucky’s brow: considering. “Like, there is nothing visible on the arm to have indicated what they did last time.” What they did: so fucking small, the words don’t even start to encompass what Steve had felt with his hands in Bucky’s grip that night, both their hands on each other’s chest with an intimacy unnamable: but yeah. Yeah, Steve sometimes lamented that there was no visible evidence of that world-shifting moment. That said, it’s warm enough, an eternal ember like so many things Steve hoards in his chest about Bucky, about him and Bucky: and that’s more than enough.

“Do you,” Bucky says slowly, softly, breaking Steve out of his musings; “do you want to come with me, to see them?” It’s not hesitant, though: not like Steve’s heard of meeting a significant other’s family. Steve does talk to them all, very regularly, but seeing them in person is different; still.

Still: Steve doesn’t feel an ounce of doubt.

“Probably late this week, get back for Monday, or if—”

“Of course,” Steve’s answer, and his hand is groping behind him to find Bucky's hand, and spin himself chest-to-chest as he meets Bucky’s eyes, a little wide and a lot filled with heart.

“Absolutely,” Steve says, with a smile and a nod and a kiss to the corner of Bucky’s lips where he adds straight into the skin: “absolutely I do.”

And Steve only just catches the glimmering of Bucky’s answering grin before Bucky slides his mouth to the side and catches Steve’s lips full on, kissing deep and all-consuming and Steve gives himself to it wholly, loses himself in Bucky’s taste and touch; it’s only after he’s panting, gasping back his breath with Bucky’s hands cupping his face that Steve thinks of the calendar, and asks without fear for it, but with a little hesitation, nonetheless:

“If I, we’re,” Steve starts, but while Bucky starts to pull further away to listen to him, Steve decides in an instant that doesn’t actually like that, so he pauses, and dives back in to finish kissing Bucky with a deep lick into his mouth.

“If we’re going to be gone, would you,” and this time, Steve pauses because he’s careful, because there’s something in him that’s naturally a little unsure, just in case: “would you want to come with me, to—”

“Of course.”

Steve blinks, and the thing in him that’s a little unsure, a little hesitant, shrivels and dies in the light of something bright and blinding.

“You don’t know what I’m going to ask.”

Bucky scoffs, but it’s a laugh too, and it’s shaped by the gentle, unthinkably fond curve of his lips.

“Absolutely,” he tosses Steve’s words back at him, and his expression is teasing, almost, but his eyes are profound, intense, and Steve feels fucking buoyant with it, all of it. “Of course I want to. Absolutely.”

Which is how they end up at the nursing facility in D.C. earlier than Steve would usually arrive on his own; he hasn’t seen Peggy for longer than he likes, and his schedule to visit was established long before he met Bucky—Peggy scoffs at the precision of it all, but her doctors have impressed upon Steve more than once that routine is best, given her condition; helps her stay rooted in the now for longer, they tell him, so of course Steve isn’t going to risk otherwise. But if Steve visits her mid-afternoon on Thursdays as often as he’s able, Bucky’s slotted to check in with Rhodey’s people every other week at the same time, and to liaise with Pepper’s team in the weeks between to ease the coming release of SI’s prosthetics program. He’s there in the evenings, afterward, and Steve hasn’t tried to temper the wave of emotion that his visits cause to roll over him, long after he lands back in New York. Steve talks about her, too, for possibly the first times—meaningfully, at least—since the 40s; he tells Bucky about himself more than he’s told anyone in this century—no, ever; more than he’s told anyone ever—and of course that means telling him about Peggy Carter, and Bucky listens with the same rapt attention that makes Steve feel wanted and treasured, and not at all like he’s a museum exhibit to gawk at, or like he’s reading from a history book everyone knows and he’s being politely humored while he bears his soul.

Which is probably why Bucky’s not surprised by Steve’s reaction when they reach Peggy’s room, and find it empty—not just unoccupied for the moment, but wholly bare: none of Peggy’s photos, and hell, the bed’s not even made.

Because Steve’s reaction? Steve’s reaction is to handle the way his stomach drops by planning some bastardized cross between a search-and-rescue and a manhunt, and Bucky, god bless the man, goes left when Steve goes right and seeks out either the woman herself, or an employee who can quell the fear in Steve’s veins.

Steve’s made his way nearly three-fourths the way around the circular corridor—walking too fast for subtlety, but he can’t find anyone in a uniform, scrubs or otherwise, and he can’t find Peggy—before he picks up the voice, if only because of the serum’s effect on his hearing.

“Well, hello.”

Peggy’s tone is wry, and Steve’s caught between stopping still on instinct at the playfulness in those two words, rougher for the years but still so sharp; he’s caught between freezing where he is inside this echo of the past in the present, and running toward the sound to see proof of the life in that voice—which leaves him awkwardly poised to shuffle, maybe, down the remainder of the hall.

At least until someone answers back; except, not just someone.

Someone who is everything.

“Ma’am?”

Bucky’s voice is warm, but reserved; he knows Peggy well enough, now, through Steve’s stories and memories, far more than just recognizing her from photos in a newspaper, or a course text. He’s careful, but not even close to patronizing, and it’s clear somehow in those words maybe because Steve knows him well enough, but also, maybe, just because Bucky is Bucky.

“You’re here with Steve, I take it?” Steve frowns to himself, taking slow steps toward these two people so dear to his heart; quiet enough not to disturb them yet.

“I am.”

Steve can see them around the curving hall; Bucky’s face isn’t blank, a soft curl to his mouth, but he isn’t wholly open either. There’s a quirk to his brow that’s telling, that Steve notices, and more fool him that it takes Peggy’s huff of laughter to know that she’s still sharp enough to notice, too.

“A civilian wouldn’t have caught you checking the rooms, don’t worry,” she reassures, reading his expression accordingly. “You look determined. He inspires that.”

And that’s where Bucky’s expression shifts, and does open fully: his eyebrow raises a bit more, but his eyes dance, and his lips turn fuller on to a grin, and fuck all—Steve’s heart trips at just that. At a distance.

“Singularly?” Bucky asks wrly, and is met in kind when Peggy smirks.

“Possibly. But they moved my room and he’s always so dramatic. Did he launch a search-and-rescue and recruit you in the effort?”

Bucky snorts, and Steve loves that sound an unjustifiable amount. Then he smiles—broadly, truly—and Steve loves that, too, just as much or more.

“That sounds about right,” Bucky shrugs and leans forward, his hand outstretched. “James Barnes.”

“Margaret Carter,” Peggy shakes with a firmness that’s never left her; “but anyone dear to Steve can call me Peggy.”

Steve feels himself flush at the knowing tone in her voice; feels himself grow warm and feather-light because it’s true, it’s so true, Bucky is so, so dear—

“Anyone dear to Steve can call me Bucky.”

And Steve feels a piece of himself that he didn’t know was there slip right, lock in for the first time, for the fact that these pieces of him are meeting, and knowing, and knowing him, and it’s terrifying to be seen like that, and understood, but hell if it’s not beautiful too, something Steve’s never experienced before: not once—these parts of his heart shaking hands for the fact of him.

“It’s a pleasure then, Bucky.” Peggy drops his hand, and settles back into the wheelchair she’s sitting in, and Steve only now notices the nurse at her back, holding a forgotten walker, folded down—she got tired, then, and probably not after very long given the trend of her being on her feet.

“I assure you, the pleasure is mine,” Bucky’s saying with the kind of smile that just envelopes, that holds tight and makes warm and sparks smiles in kind, and right on cue Peggy’s smiling wider for it, too, and Steve’s feet are moving before he can make the decision to close the gap between them.

“It’s shared, how’s that?” Peggy asks, though it’s a statement in that way of hers, authoritative to the end. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

Steve is grateful that his feet made the choice to move him before he could think on it twice, because those words are said with a glint that has, for as long as Steve’s known her, spelled some kind of trouble in the form of things Steve’s heart-on-his-sleeve couldn’t hide if it tried being spelled out in words for him, whether a hint of attraction or absolute rage that Peggy reads and gives voice to sometimes before Steve himself has come to acknowledge it: and Steve is less concerned about Bucky learning things about the true incredible depth of the way Steve feels about him than he is about not being able to sit with it, all of it, on his own terms, in his own time, suffused in it wholly until he can say the words clearly himself, like Bucky deserves.

Jesus Christ, but love has made Steve a sap. Anything he’d ever done before now to merit the term pales in comparison.

“Pegs,” Steve steps into her sight line, and Bucky turns, and Steve makes a point to kiss Peggy’s cheek before looking at Bucky, and getting lost in the softness Steve can feel in his gaze; “I got worried.”

“Of course you did,” Peggy says with a grin, long-suffering but far more endeared by it all than Steve probably deserves. “I see you’ve brought a friend.”

Steve raises an eyebrow at her and crosses his arms over his chest, as faux-stern as he can muster. “I heard you introducing yourself and slandering my name accordingly.”

His posturing doesn’t faze Peggy, of course, and he’s only really served to give away that he was eavesdropping, watching from a distance, and he can feel the blush fight for purchase on his cheeks but he swallows hard around it, tries his damnedest to fight back.

Her grin tells him he fails, pretty miserably.

“Slander implies I said anything untrue,” Peggy counters primly, and however correct she may or may not be, he eyes her critically anyway.

“Hmm,” he hums, noncommittal, as if that will contradict her point rather than underscore it.

“She’s got you there, Stevie,” Bucky nudges him playfully in the side, leaning close, and Steve is unrepentant, but likewise fucking useless in countering how he melts for the proximity, for the warmth and the smooth honey of laughter in Bucky’s voice, and whether Bucky plans on touching him further or not Steve leans on instinct into him, and meets his palm at Steve’s back and the contact sends peace, calm, and a sweetness unnameable through Steve’s goddamn bones; his eyes flutter open again before he registers that they’d slipped closed, and he sighs, less a sound and more the way his chest expands with a vastness anyone could see.

Peggy sees. She smiles at him with a tenderness, a clear comprehension, and Steve feels stripped bare a little, but also feels like that’s not a bad thing—not here. Not like this.

“Please tell me you’re stealing me away for lunch,” Peggy turns to Bucky, then, inviting them both to shift the conversation; Steve’s not sure if Bucky clocked the revelations Steve had revealed so plainly without intending to, but without ever possibly being able to do otherwise—but that, too, isn’t something Steve thinks would be a bad thing either way. “The room menu today is meatloaf, and for a purported luxury facility?” Peggy’s face scrunches. “It looks as if it survived a nuclear detonation.”

Bucky’s whole body jolts when a laugh is surprised out of him, at that; Steve feels the giddiness in the tiny shift of the hand at the base of his spine, and the way Bucky’s frame brushes against Steve’s when he moves with unexpected joy, and yeah.

Steve never knew what “sap” meant, not really, before now.

“And the taste?” Bucky asks, bantering back, and Peggy looks both delighted at being met for the back-and-forth, but likewise grim as she answers, and it’s not even wholly put on for show:

“I don’t dare risk it.”

________________________________________

Steve’s not surprised, exactly, that he’s immediately more comfortable in the Barnes’ house, when he and Bucky arrive, than Steve finds himself in most places, period. But still, surprising or no, Steve’s kind of quietly giddy over how Win embraces him full-on, complete with a firm kiss to his cheek—she’d warned him she’d want to, as much a question as a declaration, and he’d laughed and welcomed it but he hadn’t quite believed he’d be received with that much warmth—and George even forgoes a friendly handshake for a hug when they arrive, not all that different from how they greet their own son; maybe a little less snark, but not absent of it entirely because he’s learned and grown to deeply value the sarcasm and ribbing this family used, always lovingly, to somehow communicate more clearly and deeply than Steve had ever considered possible without damn near wrenching your chest open to bleed. He wishes his team could see it; maybe they will, and maybe they’ll learn better than they’ve known thus far in life from Bucky’s example, because Steve sure as hell is, and he knows he’s better for it.

But he’s better for it, not least because he’s somehow part of it, already. They’ve welcomed him with open arms, in this era where phone chats and video calls made them close enough to meet in person now with affection already present, and Steve’s forever learning the wealth of things he didn’t know that he didn’t know, before now. And he thinks in another time, another life, he’d have dwelled on wasted moments, on the time he spent without, but now—now, he just relishes, and he feels like that alone means more than it looks like at first glance.

Bucky’d gone straight to the fridge and grabbed them beers—that’s a new pilsner from the brewery that opened downtown, let me know what you think, George was saying, while Win wrinkled her nose: not a fan, but there’s a really good porter further back on the same shelf—and there’s something warm that settles in the middle of Steve’s chest and spreads outward, at how Bucky might not live in this house but it is absolutely home, and the very concept that Steve’s being ushered into it like a rule, the fuzzy notion that it could be Steve’s too, someday: it’s overwhelming, and effervescent; luminescent and impossibly delicate, but also bold.

Steve’s about halfway through the pilsner—light, a little malty, perfectly fine, and Steve’s actually taken to trying to understand “craft” beer given that the alcohol won’t touch him; might as well find what he likes, he figures, and why he likes it, though admittedly his intention in doing so was a bit more focused before Bucky entered his life, not least because it was a way, small or no, to prove to people like Nat and Tony and most of his team, really, that he had something like an interest outside of work—but Steve’s halfway through it, and looking at the label for any pertinent information to file away in his mental rolodex of beer tasting notes when George pops his head in and beckons Bucky out to the pole barn behind the house for help, apparently, with the grill.

“The grill?” Bucky asks his mother with a quirked brow and a skeptical look. “Is there an actual reason he can’t roll the grill across the driveway, on the wheels it specifically has so basically anyone can move it without throwing their back out? Or does he really not believe there was no change in the arm and he’s, what, testing me?”

“Oh no,” Win smirks; “he needs your arm, change or no change. You’ll see. Thinks he’s a grillmaster, started building himself a damned compound.” And before Bucky can ask any further questions, she makes her way into the living room.

Bucky rolls his eyes after her, before putting his beer on the counter and walking toward Steve, pressing a kiss to the corner of Steve’s mouth and holding there until Steve’s lips curve in a smile under the attention.

“You’re not the only one who’s exploited for the gifts imparted to you by science and technology,” Bucky laments playfully, pulling back.

“And the mad-genius meddlings of a Stark,” Steve quips with a grin, which widens when Bucky scrunches up his face, sending a half-hearted scowl at him.

“Better think twice before saying that in mixed company.”

“‘Mixed’ meaning when Tony is there,” Steve notes, unnecessarily: however much they may appreciate Tony, and value him, neither of them wants to stroke his ego unnecessarily—but likewise: neither wants to bring up the oft-touchy subject of Howard when it’s not explicitly necessary.

“Brains and brawn,” Bucky’s expression shifts on a dime, heated and sly and so fucking beautiful. “I’m a lucky sonuvabitch.”

Before Steve can debate the point—if anyone is lucky in this equation—Bucky’s heading for the door and Steve’s ready to follow like he’s tethered somewhere just behind his sternum to the man in front of him, when Steve hears Win’s voice from the front room:

“Steve,” and both he and Bucky pause to listen; “could I ask you to bring that bottle of Rioja in here?”

And Bucky meets his eyes, and it’s the strangest-blessed thing, the way he looks at Steve: less a question, if Steve’s comfortable staying with Win, if he wants to be left alone with his boyfriend’s mother—even though it’s that, too, but more of a recognition than an inquiry, because Steve’s had more than his share of long talks with Winifred Barnes, and Steve feels the echoes of his mother in their connection, and it is a precious thing in his chest—but the look Bucky shoots his way is nothing more or less than open and waiting, and clear in that he’s happy to do what Steve wants; that he’ll support Steve where he steps first. That he’ll follow Steve’s lead with trust and a hand at his back or a steadiness at his side. Unwavering.

Steve feels so goddamn warm.

“Of course,” Steve calls back to Win with a smile at Bucky, who reads him perfectly and heads on his own out the door.

Steve, on the other hand, goes to top off a mostly-full glass of red on the side table, registering quickly that the wine was likely an excuse, given that there’s a second glass, empty and untouched, waiting next to it.

“Come on,” Win grins, and stretches her leg to tap her foot on the far side of the sofa, an impressively-thick folder sitting between on the center cushion. “Sit with me while I mark these quizzes. I solemnly swear I am neither the exploitative type, nor have I ever been named ‘Stark’,” she winks, clearly having overheard Steve’s conversation with Bucky in the kitchen; “My maiden name is Morse.”

Steve chuckles—in a weightless, honest way that’s been slowly coming easier and easier to him everywhere, with everyone—and pours himself a little of the wine before taking a seat and just enjoying the quiet, really, and the company, the soft-scritch of pen to paper as Win grades papers, and the oddly-immediate feeling of comfort and family in this room, in this house.

“Oh, bless,” Win says, shaking her head with a smile and tapping her pen on the paper in her hands. Steve hums, a question that doesn’t have to be answered but she looks up over the rims of her glasses and sighs a little, but fond with it.

“A student in my AP Bio class,” she explains, and yep: fond exasperation; Steve well knows that tone, no matter the context. “We got on a tangent last week talking about gemels, and they obviously had no idea what the answer to this question was,” and Steve doesn’t know what in the world a gemel is, so the student probably did a lot better answering the question than he ever would: “but they wrote a damn sonnet’s worth of gorgeous words explaining inosculation.”

Steve’s confusion must be very, very visible on his face, because Win’s face softens and she shifts on the sofa, leaning over with her thumb strategically placed over the student’s name, which makes something soft and sweet bloom in Steve’s gut because she’s a professional and that kind of privacy is standard, even for family, but for years Captain America has been some mythical moral exception to such rules and Steve, just plain Steve, a person, this woman’s son’s partner: he’s treated like a normal man.

It’s tight in Steve’s throat for a moment, for no reason, and for every single reason: all at once.

“Hugging trees, look, she even included a doodle.” Win points the capped-end of her pen to the graphite sketch, with very detailed bark, of two trees twined together, making a shape close-to-but-not-quite like a heart in the space where the branches meet and Steve melts a little, like the fucking sap he is.

“You’ve seen them before?” Win asks, because Steve’s easy as hell to read when he’s not trying to be otherwise, and she’s a kind woman and will give him an innocuous out if he wants one.

He’s just not sure he does.

“Yeah,” Steve says, reaching out and tracing the drawing on the paper. “Quite a few in Europe.” A lifetime ago. A goddamn lifetime ago, but again, again: they both know he means the War, but he’s no one more or less than Steve Rogers, here, and she just nods in his periphery and hums a little, hearing him and acknowledging and the truth of it all is that maybe, that’s just what Steve’s needed for longer than he wants to wholly grasp.

“I guess I always did think they were,” Steve swallows, and tries not to sink too far into the rising emotion that the kitschy little drawn-almost-heart; that the memories of battle; that the surety in him then that he’d die without knowing what it meant to love much at all, let alone how he’s learned to now—

Win doesn’t say anything, just holds the silence for when Steve’s ready to finish his thought, pathetic as the words are in trying to sum up everything in him, trilling overwhelmingly inside his soul:

“Thought they were poetic.”

“They kind of are,” Win agrees with an indulgent sort of smile. “It’s very romantic, I mean, I remember reading about them as being called marriage trees in school,” and she probably says more, and Steve might be a terrible guest, but that trilling, overwhelming thing that’s pumping through his veins is distracting, even as it’s a thing that’s always there these days, blissful and terrifying and wondrous all at once, waiting to consume him and Steve gravitates toward it gladly, lets it overcome him and take in all that he is n because it makes him feel more alive in ways he didn’t know were possible, warm and bright and light and whole, and Steve wants to live like that for all the days stretching out before him, he wants Bucky’s body and his beauty and his being and his heart next to him, and he wants to grow into a family, to trust his team in the model of a family, this family here that beckons him to be a part of them, too—he wants so much and he’s so selfish, and he’s so desperate and lost to it, his heart trembles and sings with it all at once and he’s struggling, he knows.

He knows he’s struggling with how black-and-white it was spelled out, watching Bucky in battle, so skilled and so competent, confident in an effortless way that Steve doesn’t think even exists in his body, small or big: it was always half-performance but with Bucky it’s smooth, writ in his bones but he was there, he was beautiful and formidable and his smile was still a cocky-flip of warmth, molten through Steve even in the middle of combat but it had been in combat, Bucky had been risking himself alongside each of them, and Steve cares about his team, he does, really and truly to the heart of him and more so every day, now, but he doesn’t halfway live for them; he doesn’t love them with every fiber of his being oriented, magnetic and keening, toward the fact that one person, one person amongst all people; he doesn’t love them like he loves Bucky Barnes, to the point that Steve feels, more often than not these days, that he only exists with the weight and value he recognizes as himself anymore for the fact that Bucky breathes, and Steve gets to feel it and hold that breathing close every night.

But in battle, for as beautiful as Bucky’d shone for it, fucking gleaming in the light, towering even in the face of skyscrapers and cities: even for that, maybe exactly for that, Steve fears. Maybe he was always feeling that, somewhere, and it was just so small compared to something so big as falling so completely in love, and now it’s been thrown in his face inescapably, impossible to ignore: losing Bucky is something his mind doesn’t want to accept, but now that it’s front and center Steve can’t think clearly around it, not for long. And are those spaces he can’t avoid for long—whether he’s able to run from them after only just dipping in his toes, or he gets sucked in and starts to flounder, starts to struggle for air and feel small and young and helpless, and worse now with it than he ever was because it paralyzes him; he was never afraid of death for himself, not wholly, save maybe for his mother’s grief and when she was gone, then not much fearful at all. And then there was war, and war means death as a rule; but now.

Now he has reason to fear death in a way he’s never felt fear before; now, he’s got more than cause to be terrified of loss—to be overcome with it, his throat closing and his heart screaming, throwing itself at his ribs with abandon, pleading with the universe to act in advance, to accept the offer of himself in the place of the first and only loss he doesn’t think he can properly comprehend as an idea, let alone survive as anything but a shell, at best, because Steve Rogers? Steve Rogers has spent the past months learning what living feels like, in a way he never imagined the word could encompass, in a way that he never conceived a person could possibly feel, or was built to know: and certainly, if if could be grasped, how could the globe still spin and that impossible thing be entrusted to hands like Steve’s?

Un-fucking-fathomable.

And yes, god, yes: when the fear swallows him and he feels like he’s choking? It is never, not once, lost on him that the tone of the voice pounding under his pulse in every moment of it is taunting, is viscous, and is reminding him that for all that he feels like he’s dying? He isn’t, and maybe he won’t, at least not in the way that would count, that he’s quickly feeling more and more desperate for should he lose everything he’s gained, everything he’s been gifted with and blessed to hold and keep with all that Bucky is beside him, all that Bucky brings to his world as revelation—the voice coursing through him remind him, incessantly, that the last time he felt like he was choking this horribly, with this much finality if for lesser reasons in his chest, was when a whole goddamn ocean was trying to swallow him up.

And it hadn’t worked.

It hadn’t fucking worked, and its not like the thought hasn’t plagued Steve since he woke up, with that knowledge on his heels every single moment, every stolen breath from the sea: but now, now the idea haunts him that if that crashed hadn’t killed him, maybe nothing would. He’d ignored it, locked it in a box in his mind, shoved it down somewhere dark beneath his ribs and every time Natasha arranged a date, or Peggy had looked at him and told him he deserved all the love he wanted, maybe he’d really believed that he had it already. Maybe in those moments, the love he already knew was enough, or maybe he was lying to himself and hanging on by threads: threads built to hold himself together, but at the very same time and just as important, to keep that box shut really fucking tight.

And then out of nowhere came a man who caused Steve’s heart to swell and expand beyond reason or sense, and fling itself open unguarded because it was foolish, Steve was foolish but also he knew, he knew deeper than anything he’d ever felt before that there was no gamble, that Bucky was never something to guard from save that in opening so wholly and without restraint, and feeling so deeply the dark spaces in his chest that were suddenly forced to brightness, everything kept in those shadows revealed in living color: when Bucky unlocked pieces of Steve that Steve didn’t even know were waiting in him to be found and led to light and held close and cherished as they found their feet, it included that goddamn box that cracked open, just a little, started to whispered ever-louder: maybe.

Maybe if the ocean couldn’t end him, maybe nothing ever would. Maybe that’s the gamble he’d made, and should have thought on twice. Maybe he’s selfish to even consider regret for it. Maybe he deserves it; or else, deserves nothing less. Maybe he’d never rest, but more—now, so much more—maybe he’ll never be able to escape an eternity of living with a heart that’s not just shattered, but that gets swept out of him in jagged shards, each slicing and gouging on the way out to bleed and to fester and still leave him perfectly hollow forever, forever, and—

“Steve.”

And he startles, turning sharply: because as gentle as Win’s voice is, the void of thinking, of feeling like this: when it overtakes him, doesn’t do it by halves.

“I don’t make it a point to meddle the love lives of my children, or,” she chews her lip, considering him carefully: “well, in the love lives of anyone, really. Not my business.”

Steve’s caught, frozen, absolutely unsure what to do or how to respond or how not to dwell on the innocuous, completely causal use of the word love that doesn’t have to mean anything specifically or literally, not like that but it does, it absolutely does, and Steve wants to find comfort but he’s also, suddenly, a little bit cowed and little bit intimidated because it’s her son that Steve would give his everything for, and Steve remembers how his mother felt about protecting him: his body as much as his heart, from the world at large, no matter how often Steve threw himself to its wolves without thinking twice.

“But.”

Steve’s eyes jump to hers, because there’s a quality to her voice that Bucky’s learned from her, or maybe that’s born into him: a quality that feels soft and steely, all at once. That makes Steve feel like he can let his guard down, open up his chest and breathe fuller for it, but bleed out a little for it, too; that makes it less of an invitation and more of an observation of a need, a necessity of the cosmos. He doesn’t know if Win can read it all in his eyes, then and there, but her expression goes so tender and caring and welcoming and gentle, so very very gentle that Steve wants, for an instant, to just stop and to fall apart and to give in to the urge to soak up a mother’s love, so long forgotten and suddenly so clear to have been needed, the lack of it crushing him from the center of his chest straight down.

“You look like you’re about to break wide open with some very, very big kind of feeling,” Win says gently, like she has a great deal of practice at it; “and that from looking at a little sketch of conjoined trees.”

Steve’s throat is tight, and his eyes are wide and stinging, and he tries to breathe and can’t, and he must look as helpless as he feels because when Win holds an arm out casually, giving him every chance to lean away before she reaches to rub along his arm, his shoulder, careful comfort and more than that: she doesn’t watch him, just offers a kind of protective, preserving touch as he works to catch his breath, chest heaving and bones shaking for seconds or minutes, he doesn’t feel like it matters, and she never stops running her palm up and down his bicep, shoulder to elbow, back and forth and Steve focuses on it; only straightens when he thinks he can do so steadily, even if a trembling sort of breath is what escapes when he finally does.

Win’s hand retreats without a word, unobtrusive but just as gentle as the touch itself, and yeah: she’s definitely got practice at this.

Steve clears his throat, and blinks too many times.

“It says,” Steve says, a little raw, his eyes going back to the sketch on the quiz, reading the scribbled explanation next to it that was fishing for points toward a final grade; and yes, he’s deliberately not looking up to meet Win’s gaze.

“It says they grow together like that, because the, um,” Steve swallows; “the bark rubs off? So they fuse to help protect the exposed parts? Like,” and it’s not a metaphor, it’s not something to be read into, it’s not everything Bucky is and had been for him from damn near the beginning, even without Steve knowing he’d needed it like oxygen: “like they’re healing each other. Like dressing a wound.”

Win’s eyes don’t judge him, though they see more than Steve’s entirely comfortable with; but her eyes are very much like Bucky’s, and so he’s not as unsettled by that knowing gaze as he might be otherwise.

“Kind of,” she says, neither agreeing nor disagreeing: acknowledging, and Steve takes a moment before deciding that’s the best he could ask for; the thing he probably needs most in this moment.

Then Win’s putting her stack of papers aside, flipping them over so that the trees are hidden from view, and Steve’s gaze follows the line of her arm as she stands up, extending her hand toward Steve, which he takes and does not expect the way she pulls him to the edge of the cushion, stronger than he expects as he gets to his feet. She grins at him with something like approval, and with warmth, and Steve finds himself smiling back even though the spiralling of his thoughts has left him dizzy; even if his thoughts are spiraling still, making him a little bit faint; even if his heart’s not yet calmed to a pace less than frenzied.

He smiles back.

“George whipped up some seven layer dip earlier, and I would never offend your expectations by building them up without cause,” she says casually, and Steve doesn’t notice how she leads, no—how she basically herds him into the kitchen with her, a gleam in her eye as she walks around the island to the fridge, tossing him a wink before she turns: “but I definitely agreed to the first date he brought me to at his parents’ because that dip was going to be there.”

Steve laughs, a little weak but genuine, and Win looks satisfied.

“Come on,” she cocks her head toward the stove; “help me get it in the oven.”

There is absolutely no reason that she could possibly need his help to get that single dish into the oven, and Steve could not be more appreciative of the distraction, and the fact that somehow, she makes it seem like a shared joke, rather than anything close to sympathy.

She starts a running commentary on what George is probably whipping up for dinner in his grillmaster compound—which Win assures Steve she thinks is absurd, though the quality of the food is undeniable—and it’s nice. It’s so fucking nice, and easy, and there are no expectations of him and there is no pressure to perform or to get a grip on himself wholly before he’s ready, and Bucky must have inhereited a little of how calming and soothing his very being is from his mom, because she doesn’t look like she’s even trying as the tension Steve knew was there but didn’t expect to be rid of any time soon—it starts to fade. Not wholly, but not-wholly is a miracle in itself.

And Steve’s a lucky man, and it feels like he’s learning just how in wholly new ways, more often than he’s done anything to merit. But merited or not: he’s grateful as hell for it.

Even when it hurts.

Chapter Text

Steve thinks the universe might hate him, at least a little; maybe the luck he doesn’t feel like he deserved, all that time with Bucky, quiet and peaceful and safe, was an attempt to even the balance so that when the world tries to break him now, or stretch him too far to recover from, well: he can’t really complain, can he?

They’ll called to assemble fairly regularly—more, maybe, than what had become their normal, but it’s entirely possible it just feels that way because Steve wishes it were far less, and that he and Bucky were left alone, together; that Bucky were kept out of harm’s way. Though Bucky’s proven himself an asset that none of them ever doubted—whatever they’d expected of him, though, he’s far exceeded. He’s eagle-eyed, and the way he thinks on his feet is a little enviable. He recognizes how to support the members of the team around him, sees where his own abilities can be shored up by doubling-up with another’s, and can judge with almost preternatural insight how to use his skills to complete the mission while simultaneously applying them to help the others amplify their talents to new heights.

It’s kind of magnificent to watch, when Steve can put aside his near-constant need to double-check that Bucky’s safe; it’s kind of mesmerizing, and sometimes lets him forget that need for glorious moments as he sinks into the splendor of it, though he feels guilty after the worry takes control again—but then, then there are the moments where it’s Steve, specifically, whose talents Bucky’s helping to elevate and perfect, and in those moments they move like one body, they move like an intricate dance Steve can actually follow with two deft feet less because he has any gift for it, and more because it feels writ in his bones. It’s as natural as breathing, and feels better than air in lungs at that; it’s magnetic and invigorating, leaving Steve electric and giddy and so fucking alive that, yeah, sure, he’s grabbed Bucky in the wake of a win and kissed him hard enough to clack teeth, chests heaving into one another from the rush, the adrenaline of battle feeding into an ever-present want buzzing along Steve’s nerves, embedded inextricable in his cells, and it’s intoxicating in wholly new and thrilling ways, tasting that shared desire alongside the edge of the fight on lips he loves so deep-rooted in his chest. It is singular and perfect and Steve never wants to leave it, never wants to fight without it, be without it; Steve never wants to lose it. Ever.

Which is only one of the many reasons why Steve feels like the world’s ending, his eyes wide and his breath thin when he watches Bucky, perched across from Clint taking out doombots apparently escaped—rather than set loose, it seems, because they’re both disorganized and chaotic, and not just in ways that make it more dangerous to fight them, as a strategy, but just as often sabotaging themselves—from a facility across the border in Transia. It’s not the first time Steve’s been up against them, of course, one iteration or another; they’re probably the enemy that the team’s best prepared for, simply because Tony’s imagination is just as unfathomable as Victor Von Doom’s when he wants to dream up new robots for them to train against, but that doesn’t mean it’s a sure bet to fight them, because nothing is. Still, it’s more routine than they usually get, and hell, even Bucky’s already faced them a time or two, and is hitting their targets right and left, and so Steve doesn’t expect his world to shift and tilt and threaten ending when Bucky calls out, but even Steve can’t pick out what he says—comms disrupted, maybe, and that’s never safe—but Clint tilts his head, closer, like he understood what was said before Buck throws his rifle toward Clint with the full superhuman strength of his left arm before he takes a running start to the ledge of the roof he’d been standing on, and fucking jumps.

Steve, for every time he’s flirted with death, let alone given himself to it only to be spat back out, never once did see his life flash before his eyes, but hell if that’s not what happens in this very moment: but it’s truer, like this, and maybe that’s the point. He sees his life in this moment and in the moments since he’s woken, but more than that he sees images of a future he didn’t realize he had crafted so carefully: lazy weekends, and weekdays, and breakfasts in bed and nights curled on the sofa; holidays with the Barnes family, Steve laughing with Bucky’s sisters’ kids that they don’t even have yet, babies trusted to his arms, natural in ways that Steve could never have imagined for all the infants shoved at him during the USO tours, and Bucky, Bucky every time watching him with a softness that made Steve want to stop time just to know the feeling of those eyes on him for the rest of eternity; his fingers entwined in Bucky’s, sometimes shaky just to be steadied by that touch, sometimes clutching like the world depended on it, sometimes rubbing a thumb back and forth in comfort, or for comfort, sometimes as their hands look now and sometimes with tiny scars, or the lines of time but they always match, and they always have rings that match too, and Steve stutters at that marvel, that promise made that he never dreamed of knowing before; waking up in Bucky’s arms, with Bucky lying across his chest, with Bucky sprawled over him, blanketing him with warmth or Steve clinging to him like a limpet, folded wholly around him, with every season of every year casting light on their skin.

Steve sees all of these things and every moment between glow incandescent before they shatter, as Bucky drops from a height even Steve might think twice about—now, at least, if not so much before—and Steve doesn’t consciously decide to open his mouth and scream Bucky’s name but he does, he absolutely does and he’s goddamn lucky these bots are glitchy fucks else he’d likely be drawing their collective attention, and fire, to the man currently falling through the air and Steve can’t blink, can’t look away, tries to figure out how he can cross too many feet in too few seconds to stop this, to catch him, to do something—

But then Bucky is twisting in midair, and lunging with his left arm out for the building coming up alongside lim, using the metal of his grip to ride down the side in a cascade of sparks and Steve didn’t have the presence of mind to figure that Bucky’d clocked a trajectory, and he was falling now, controlled even for as horrifying the as the screeching of metal-on-metal sounds and then his right hand’s darting out into the empty air, and Steve thinks for a moment Bucky’s trying to slow his descent, maybe, or gain balance, but the pummelling of Steve’s pulse is too distracting for him to put together the motion in his periphery—Clint, still taking shots from the same position, but shifting abruptly, drawing Steve’s eye to the fact that Bucky’s gun is dropping swiftly, with perfect fucking aim, to be caught by that waiting right hand as Bucky swings off the the tower-side he’d been riding and takes a perfect fucking shot against a particularly large bot that was already half-on-fire, flailing as it broke down, but approaching the base of a complex connected to a whole host of other buildings: one buggy robot could have set half this side of the city coming down if it took out the foundations just right, and Bucky’d seen it.

Bucky’d stopped it.

Jesus Christ, he was incredible.

But Steve’s chest is in real, searing pain notched deep into the bones for the way his heart had tried to break out and catch Bucky’s falling frame the way his body couldn’t have managed; didn’t need to in the end but fuck, fuck—

Good god, Bucky was going to be the death of him.

The battle was, thankfully, over soon after; too long for Steve’s nerves but short enough that he’s still standing, and the way his hands are shaking doesn’t keep him from wrapping things up and watching the backs that need it—but then it’s done, and Tony’s landed next to Bucky, and Steve is walking, processing the world around him like it’s all distant, dreamlike, moving in slow motion as his vision tunnels and he’s drawn by something deeper than want or even need, feet carrying him forward without thought.

“Think you can buff this out, Stark?” Bucky’s asking Tony, reaching his left hand out for inspection, while Tony flips back his visor and scoffing.

“You underestimate my craftsmanship,” Tony chides, but adds with a small, but genuine grin: “hell of a catch on that rouge bot, Robocop.”

And Bucky’s rolling his eyes, and he’s beautiful, and he’s breathing, and he’s safe and then he’s there, right there; then Steve’s right there, with him and he reaches, and while Bucky must read the need in him, and the fear still swimming in his veins Steve is grabbing him tight and hauling him close and Steve wraps him tight enough to feel Bucky’s chest rise and fall with every breath but never far enough from Steve’s own that they ever part, and Bucky closes strong, steady arms around Steve so that he’s engulfed, so that he’s small again somehow and pressed close, cradled and cherished beyond all logic and sense in a way Steve didn’t think was possible, and may not be outside of this, outside of them: outside of Bucky.

“Come on,” Bucky whispers, a gentle exhale against the shell of Steve’s ear; “let’s head home.”

The flight back to New York is long, even if Tony’s quinjets are quicker than any alternative, and Steve wants desperately to curl around Bucky in the hours that stretch out between where they are and when they can strip off their uniforms and hide from the world and Steve can prove to himself for as long as he needs to that Bucky is solid and living and real under his hands, under his mouth—he won’t, here, because his grasp on his composure is already slipping, and he won’t know how much of himself it’s acceptable to lose in the company of his teammates—his friends, his family, but not like Bucky. Nothing like Bucky.

He never moves from Bucky’s side on the jet, though, and Bucky never untangles their hands, sometimes raising Steve’s knuckles to his lips and Steve doesn’t realize the tension in his own body until that gentle intimacy, casual but somehow always profound, catching deep in Steve’s chest and holding tight: but Steve doesn’t realize the tension in his body, unrelenting, until that touch makes it ease—not a lot, but enough, enough that Steve can catch his breath and lean into Bucky’s solid presence next to him, and believe its truth.

Steve doesn’t know how many minutes, how many hours pass by; he loses himself in waves to terror, to despair, to all-consuming love, to desperation, to unmitigated lust, to a gratitude unparalleled, to pure and overriding sensation: Bucky’s hand, every crease and line, every peak of a knuckle; the ridges between smooth plates, predictable and uniform down to the wrist where they’re just as predictable, to Steve, but start to vary into steel mandalas, works of art and Steve doesn’t know how Bucky can tell there’s something that shivers in him as he carefully inspects the truth of Bucky’s left hand—maybe Steve grips harder just by a hair—but Bucky turns his palm upward, the life in that single gesture so clear and then Steve feels himself loosen, and realizes: he couldn’t measure Bucky’s pulse on this side, and he’d been taking comfort in that warm proof where they’d touched everywhere else without even meaning to, or registering it beyond his conscious choice burrowed down to soul-seared necessity, and sometimes Steve wonders at just how much he’s changed, shifted on his own axis as a human being, to say nothing of his world, his reality at large: Steve gets breathless and speechless and lost on the immensity of how much he’s changed so quickly, rewritten down to the cells of him by this feeling and what it teaches and reveals, how it grows him and expands everything he is and knows. And he’s grateful.

God, is he grateful.

Bucky’s turned the tables, teasing at Steve’s fingers and rubbing at the joints and tendons up and down the line of Steve’s arm, his eyes fixated on the wrinkles and tears in the suit between where it covers Steve’s skin and Steve thinks he’s going to vibrate apart, and either sob or scream through the undoing, and he’s probably trembling, and it’d probably be obvious if he didn’t move so goddamn fast getting off the jet when it lands at the Tower; his heart’s racing and it’d probably be felt in the grip of his fingers around Bucky’s wrist as he pulls him toward the elevator if Bucky’s pulse wasn’t knocking straight against it, paired exquisitely; it’d probably be heard if Steve wasn’t tearing from the doors of the elevator as they open, their feet tramping to the doors of their shared floor, thunderous almost to rival the pounding of Steve’s blood and Bucky’s too, just as hard and fast and Steve’s riveted by it, strong and steadfast and brave all for its own self, no serum required and Steve’s enamoured, Steve is a being constructed of pure need and aching, until they’re sliding through the door to their Tower suite as it slips open, until Steve’s swinging Bucky to the side and pinning him hard to the wall next to the door and Bucky’s pliant, doesn’t even put up a tacit fight, his body attuned to Steve and matched unflinchingly, wanting like Steve wants and moving forever aimed, focused, relentless in the best of ways so they’re both satisfied quick enough to discover new courses toward pleasure, toward undoing that Steve had never imagined before: Bucky somehow manages to press himself back into the wall further, an agent of the pressure of Steve’s hands on him and yet at the very same time he’s giving himself wholly to Steve’s touch, pushing into it—simultaneous, opposite, impossibly fucking perfect.

Steve sets to ravaging Bucky’s mouth with singular force but no focus whatsoever; frenzied and frantic and bruising, moaning loud and unfettered when Bucky meets the onslaught and fucks his tongue between Steve’s lips, rough and at a counterpoint to the roll of his hips against Steve’s dick, hard and trapped between them, wedged along the line of Bucky’s own arousal and the heavy curve of Bucky’s thigh, and Steve’s gasping, Steve’s choking, he wants—

Bucky’s pressing the advantage of Steve’s distraction, his mindless quest to affirm that life inside every second and cell, twisting so it’s his hands on Steve holding him less steady and more together entirely: he’s walking Steve backwards, slower than Steve wants but maybe even a little faster than he’s probably capable, for how he nearly stumbles, his vision wholly fixated on the spit-slick wonder of Bucky’s lower lip as they work their way toward the bedroom nearest the entryway, as Bucky coaxes Steve’s muscle memory and the instinct that lives just beneath his consciousness to shed their uniforms piece by piece, and when they cross the threshold it’s a flipped switch in Steve’s chest, along the line of his sternum: fire in his veins to his limbs as he spins, grabs Bucky by the wrists first, then holds tight to Bucky’s sides as he leans to bite at that menace of a gleaming, worried red lip taunting him as Bucky’s head tips back and he stutters a gasp for it. Steve pushes him hard toward the bed, and it’s a tussle of sorts, because when Steve nips at his mouth Bucky comes alive for it, fighting back as much as he’s fighting for more, fighting to keep it, to keep Steve like Steve’s not the surest fucking bet in the universe when it comes to this, to them—but they meet and they crash like waves to tangle into something bigger and stronger and lethal for the force of it, or lifegiving, or both at once and then the momentum is breaking in the shape of their bodies falling hard, heavy onto the mattress, Bucky panting deep enough that his chest is knocking a frenetic tattoo between Steve’s pecs and it’s a glorious feeling, the sensation of sweat-gilded skin, the press of muscle and bone and the tease of a raucous pulse beneath the surface; the hot rush of Bucky’s breath against the same dampness covering Steve’s body for moving, for needing this fiercely, for the promise of exertion and the hard-heat of arousal: sheer, unbridled, soul-tangled lust.

Steve’s stradling Bucky in the space of half-a-breath, and if Steve bares his throat on a high-pitched keen for the way he drags the tight draw of his balls against the curls at the base of Bucky’s cock then who could goddamn blame him, it’s pure fucking bliss and if he grinds down as he reaches one hand towards Bucky’s face, dips his fingers into Bucky’s waiting mouth to suck long, and slow, and hard as the other hand fishes for lube to make up the difference when Steve circles his own hole to stretch—if Steve wants to touch the way they press together but is trembling too much with the build of heat and wanting in his veins and has to steady himself to finish the job, then it’s like Bucky hears the lament in him without a sound and palms them almost idly, but with such clear knowing, with such intent that speaks to the way he has learned and taken in dear the gives and tells of Steve’s body, and he presses just enough on the swell of Steve’s erection, the heel of his palm lined against just the right vein at just the right angle and Steve’s buried inside himself three fingers deep but he cries out and slides free, because he needs more.

So he relishes the sounds Bucky makes when Steve lifts up and sinks down, takes Bucky into his body so swift and so completely that they’re two people in one moment, and a single being in the next and Steve stills when he’s seated fully, his weight heavy and real where it hits against Bucky’s body, flush and slick and warm: Steve stills, and lets those sounds that slip from Bucky’s lips, that drag from deep in his chest and up his thrown-back throat; Steve lets those sounds seep into his pores and become him, shape and remake him better for the privilege of the feeling before he starts to move, setting an unforgiving pace like a thread’s been cut and he’s been let loose; set free.

He pulls back and slams down mercilessly, and Bucky’s hands are braced on Steve’s sides, fingernails digging around into his abs as Bucky rocks into the pace, eyes closed and jaw gentled, gasping as Steve drives the air from his lungs over, and over, and over. Steve’s own hands find Bucky’s thighs because they’re needy, he’s needy: the position isn’t easy but Steve needs to touch, and so he sinks his fingerprints into the meat of them like he can imprint on them permanently, and he knows he’s leaving bruises but he also knows that’s okay, knows the strength of those thighs as much as the man they belong to: knows those thighs can hold him down, have held him down, and with the serum he’d have been able to break the hold if he’d wanted, if he’d had a mind to but that was the beauty of it, the blessing in it: Steve could leave his mind somewhere else and let go, and Bucky was strong enough to tether that version of Steve, wanton with pleasure, to the earth enough that he could come back steady and sure and satiated in a way he’d never experienced before, not once.

Not before Bucky.

Bucky, whose impossible thighs are still reining Steve where he needs it, like a track to follow as he moves, the rhythm fathering and Bucky’s body, legs spread just enough that those thighs keep him lined up when his bones start to give and then they do, he does: everything gives and Steve cries out and comes over both their chests, and he collapses into the mess of it, Bucky’s cock still buried, pulsing hot inside him as Bucky follows him over the edge.

Bucky’s breaths are calming down, coming slower, and Steve doesn’t want to lose the feeling of him but he also wants desperately, suddenly maybe or else always, to bury his face in the crook of Bucky’s neck, close enough so that all he breathes in is Bucky’s scent and the multivariate proof of life that coalesces there: close enough to feel Bucky’s breath in his hair and the tick of Bucky’s pulse at his jaw, and just a hairsbreadth from being able to shift and listen to the tide-rising rush of his exhales from the source; from being able to close his eyes and muster the senses science gifted him and pick out the same sound of waves from the blood bounding through the arteries in Bucky’s neck and just live in the music of it, and the motion, and the feeling. He wants that.

Steve, newly comfortable with being both selfish and a little hedonistic, lifts himself off Bucky’s body only to blanket it anew in an instant, no warmth lost in the process, and he moans a pleasured sound of relief, a release all its own, as he settles in the juncture of Bucky left shoulder and breathes, just letting himself float on the waves.

“Goddamn,” Bucky finally says, wondering and casual, idle almost with his hands tending fervently to the soft-silk strands of Steve’s hair, running deft fingers through their now-matted, still sweat-damp tangles.

“You get off on it, don’t you.”

And Bucky doesn’t say anything more, doesn’t explain it further because he doesn’t have to: not only is it obvious, but Steve knows him, and he hears all the layers inside. And it’s not that Bucky’s wrong, it’s just that even with all the layers it’s so far from being the whole truth, the fullness of everything in Steve’s chest where it covers Bucky’s own, where they breathe now in the comedown and their hearts knock ever-softening against their ribs in greeting, in welcome—like they, too, just want to be closer.

“I,” Steve opens his mouth, and his lips drag against the salt-sweet taste of Bucky’s skin: “I...”

“You do,” Bucky says, not smug with it exactly but a little bit closer to the awe of revelation in the sound than Steve is sure Bucky means to show; and either way, far far more than Steve thinks he merits, in this.

“Not just the get-up,” Bucky adds, and Steve can’t help but snort a breath and bury his face harder into Bucky’s shoulder, a nuzzle and the nip of his teeth and the kept promise that Bucky’s laughter will always follow both in these moments, because yeah. Yeah, they’ve definitely established that Steve gets off on the goddamn get-up.

But no: it’s absolutely not just that.

“You get off on the fight,” Bucky says softly, fingers returning to Steve’s hair and stroking through—and again, he’s not wrong, but that’s not the whole of it. It would have been closer to the full truth before, Steve suspects: not so much a turn on than it was a reason for being, an impetus that drove his life forward, the animus that kept him from staying down each time he took a hit that drove him to his knees or lower, the blow being physical or otherwise. But now?

Now, yes. There’s something sexy as hell in the way Bucky moves, in his competence. Steve’s pretty sure that simple, bedrock fact is what makes it all so much harder; what makes it weigh on his chest to the point of cracking, because Steve’s turned on as hell when they fight together, and that’s enough to drive his blood too hot through his veins, to burn him up without relent on its own but then there’s the terror, there’s the fear of losing Bucky in the moment that awakens the fear of his loss in the abstract, his human fragility a truth both at odds with the breathtaking display of his strength, his sheer ability on the battlefield, but just as much proof of it because he’s running into the jaws of a threat to his life, and Steve’s life, too, for as much of Steve’s world is tied up in Bucky Barnes, and the fact that Bucky’s still breathing so that when it’s done now Steve is left a jumble of all of it, a crisscross of bleeding wounds that need desperately and he’s just as driven to press Bucky’s body to his own to sate the thrumming ache that builds from watching that body move, as he is to eke some incontrovertible testament to Bucky’s continued existence from the feel of him: muscle, blood, and bone; the pace of his breaths and the way they condense on top of Steve’s skin and shiver through—the knowledge of him proven again and again through every sense and every intuition so that when Steve threatens to come apart there’s enough solid evidence to catch him and hold him together against the onslaught.

So yeah.

“I get off on,” Steve swallows, and tries to find a way to put into words enough of his heart that it’ll make clear to Bucky that Steve’s heart is his, is comprised of him more and more each day, and it’s the way his frame fits in leather as much as it’s the significance of that leather moving under his breathing-living chest when he sucks in air; “on you—”

But then Bucky’s lips are on Steve’s, bruising with an intensity that sucks the air from Steve’s throat and half his soul right out with it, and Steve gives himself over to the feeling, the joy of it as much as the near-on desperation, and Steve’s pretty sure Bucky doesn’t understand all of it, everything in Steve after combat, or even just after meeting Bucky, and learning so many things about himself he never even thought to guess.

“Thank god,” Bucky breathes, a hiss and a whisper and the kind of sound against Steve’s open mouth that makes everything in him molten and light; “not just me, then.”

And no—Bucky may not understand all of it, but the fever in his kiss is dizzying, and the expansive way it builds and spreads in Steve’s chest makes it clear that Bucky understands the basics, the essential parts, more than Steve could probably put into words even, to explain if he tried; Bucky may not understand all of it, and hell, neither does Steve, not wholly, beyond the feeling, the drowning in it.

But understood or otherwise: it’s not just Bucky; neither one of them’s alone in this at all.

Chapter Text

“I’m gonna have a heart attack,” Steve says, his voice oddly calm but pitched low: lethal almost, because goddamnit, this is life or death: “a fuckin’ heart attack, Nat, I swear.”

“Almost clinically impossible unless artificially induced,” Nat replies where she’s sitting across from him in the back corner of the cafe they frequent, out of the way and possibly kept in business partially because they tip enormously for the privacy. Her tone is almost flippant, never once looking up from her phone. “Did you not read the shit that got spilled in my awesome file-dump?”

“How’d you even get those?” She’s never told him, not that he thinks he’d understand any explanation all that well, but still. That idea is softer in his bones to muse on than the swirling terror that’s shaking through his arteries every goddamn moment.

“Secrets, secrets,” Natasha sing-songs, though her eyes are sharp. “Don’t try to deflect.”

Fuck, but Steve sometimes really does wish she wasn’t a spy; didn’t see everything.

“I’m guessing your concerns are more warm-and-fuzzy heart based, rather than the bloody-beating one, yeah?”

Steve swallows, because the bloody-beating one is lodged permanently in his throat and he’s foolish enough to think that if he keeps trying, he can force it back in place.

Idiot.

“I,” he starts, and chokes, and his eyes burn so he stares down before they water and Nat doesn’t make a noise but he feels her gaze on him, assessing, and doesn’t know whether he’s grateful or horrified when he hears her breathe in deep.

“Oh, shit,” she says softly, exhaling slow but somehow loud—but maybe it’s just weighty. Knowing. “Alright.”

“I always just,” Steve finds himself speaking into the silence that follows because otherwise he has to listen to his bounding blood and it scares him, it makes him even more breathless and that could fucking kill him too: “I watch him and I...”

Natasha, of course, was there to see it, to know it in the field, but even if she hadn’t been—she blessedly hears everything he can’t find it in himself to shape around words.

“It hasn’t compromised you in battle, if you’re worried there,” she says, even though they both know that’s not what he’s most worried about, whatever that says about him as a leader, as a soldier. “Not, you know, in a way that endangers anyone,” she adds thoughtfully, like she’s reevaluating assumptions in real time.

“We were mostly thinking you weren’t quite that far yet, I guess. Still in that stage closer to a rampant lusting situation,” then she tacks on with a tiny grin; “but then, that’s kinda unavoidable. I mean, if you have eyes.”

He can hear the smirk in her voice, the attempt to lighten the lead in Steve’s veins, to ease the clenched fist in the middle of his chest but Steve’s fucking shaking, maybe half for his nerves coming undone; maybe half just with the force of his pounding pulse, its tremors spilling everywhere.

“Have you thought about talking to him?”

Steve glances up, even if it feels like an impossible feat.

“I don’t,” Steve trips a bit; “I promised him,” he breathes; tries to find some footing, no matter how unsteady.

“I promised I’d respect, that I’d,” he breathes in sharp through his nose; “that in the field I’d respect him, and his choices, like anyone else. Like an equal on this team, no special considerations or terms.”

Hearing it out loud makes it even more clear than it was in Steve’s head, if he was being honest: it’s so fucking insufficient. It doesn’t touch on anything that really matters.

It doesn’t even skim the surface of what’s slowly fucking killing him.

“That’s all well and good, Steve,” Natasha gives voice to that fact pointedly, though it’s not without sympathy, which is saying a lot given how fucking cowardly Steve’s being; how desperate.

“But you’re really easy to read, you know? If someone knows what they’re looking for. And most people don’t,” she concedes, but then falls quiet until Steve finally meets her eyes.

“But I do,” she tells him, and reaches to cover his hand with her own, and he knows she has to catch the tension in the tendons and the pulse at his wrist but she doesn’t mention it, or hold any tighter, and Steve is so fucking grateful for her.

“I know what to look for, and so does he.” And there are so many conclusions he could come to that’d flay you alive she doesn’t have to say, if she’d intended to say anything at all. Steve hears it, echoing endless and blinding, some existential strike of lightning.

“This is going to snap, Steve,” Nat tells him softly, less like she thinks it’s a revelation and more like she knows it’s a warning, a matter of life or death. “If you’re in that deep, if you feel…”

It’s terrifying, just how much that if is both wrong in every way, and insufficient, and almost offensive for how much it doesn’t belong.

If.

“Steve, talk to him,” and Natasha doesn’t cut corners, or pretend this is less than what it is; and that’s both comforting, because this is real, and so frightening for just how real it is that Steve thinks he might be sick; “before it blows up in your face.”

He’s apparently wholly unable to keep that truth from showing on his face—or else, Natasha is just right: she knows what to look for—but she’s standing up and dropping bills on the table as she pulls him to his feet and leads him to the door. He briefly registers they’re supposed to go to lunch, he thinks, and meet...someone. They’re supposed to do something, somewhere, but Steve can’t fucking breathe right all of a sudden and he feels like it’s just another cruel twist of fate that he apparently can’t remember how to manage his own body rejecting him, failing him like this or else—maybe everything physically wrong with him once upon a time can’t even hold a candle to this.

“You can’t have a heart attack,” Natasha is standing on her toes, leaning in and pressing a kiss to his cheek and patting his arm solidly; “but you can get that heart broken in other ways.” She squeezes his bicep before she steps away, and her gaze feels for him, he knows, and he’s grateful but god, he’s not sure anyone can grasp this at all but then she’s adding:

“And that might end up worse.”

God. Might.

Fuck.

“I’ll give Sam your apologies.” Then she turns and lets him be—lunch with Sam, yes, because Sam’s in town looking into a transfer from D.C. without Tony’s paws all over the arrangement, and fuck Steve’s such a shitty friend, and he’s worse because he can’t even wholly care just now; she turns and Steve stares into the distance, can only catch shallow breaths, and despite believing so many times that he understood, before?

He thinks he finally gets why people are always saying love hurts.

________________________________________

Honestly: Steve means to. He means to talk to Bucky. He means to—well.

He means to do nothing less than explain the depths of something more essential in him than a soul, something more innate and crucial than that idea had ever managed to contain—he means to convey the depths of his heart as an insufficient repository for something so breathtaking, insufficient but so fucking grateful, ecstatic, on-his-knees worshipful, and for that there is no reason to be afraid because the only fear in that is to be consumed by it entirely and Steve is not only already there, but he welcomed it wholly—he’s not afraid of this. Except he is afraid of everything it holds and stands to lose, and that’s somehow every reason to be afraid in the whole goddamn world—

And Steve, well: he’s already confessed, professed, given his love so wholly with his body, with his hands that he should be empty save that it’s ever-burgeoning and bright-burning inside him so that he’s always spilling over with it; he’s good with his hands, with his body. He knows how to communicate that way.

But still, still: he’s never been good with words.

So he means to give everything, and make it plain.

He’ll be lucky if he actually manages complete sentences.

But he’s going to have to fucking figure it out, though, because Nat’s right. Nat’s right.

There is so much he could lose for loving like this; there is so much he doesn’t think he’ll survive being stripped from him, losing hold of when it’s lodged in his heart so hard, so deep but fuck—the possibility of losing because he wasn’t strong enough is somehow nothing compared to the idea of losing because he was too fucking weak to just speak, however imperfectly. However garbled, and impossibly short of what he means, what his heart beats in and out and through in every moment.

He cannot lose because he couldn’t put just a shred of this thing, so much bigger than he thought love ever pointed to, or dreamt of; he will not lose because he says nothing.

If his heart bursts for so much fear with every battle, with every night he spends just watching Bucky breathe when they come home—if he comes apart and bleeds out for the way everything in him trembles, terrified, and he spills over Bucky too for the proximity Steve demands, clinging to him like a lifeline because he goddamn is; if he combusts and the force wrenches Bucky from him, or pushes him out of reach forever, and it’s Steve’s fault and Steve’s alone—

No. He—

No.

“I love you,” Steve looks his reflection in the eye, hard, and doesn't dwell on the fact that his own eyes aren’t the ones he wants to speak those words into, unto the end of the world; aren’t depthless, are the wrong shade of blue, too sunny when the shade Steve hoards in his chest is more elemental, more like the face of the depths at the beginning of all things.

“I love you, so fucking much, and seeing you in danger is killing me and I don’t know what to do with it.”

Right. Clumsy, but real. He can do this.

“I would never ask you to stop,” and saying those words is easier than he imagined before he let them fall from his tongue; likely because they’re true. “You can stop as much as I can stop, I get that, I promise I get that, and I told you from the beginning that I understood, how important this was to you and I don’t even know the words for how important you are, to me,” Steve shakes his head, his breathing fast to the point of dizziness, though Steve’s sure that’s not just a result of his gasping, his grasping at something solid. He swallows hard, and tries to regroup; can’t look at himself and doesn’t bother wondering if he’ll be able to look at Bucky when he says the words.

“But it feels like I’m, like I can’t—” Steve’s voice is small and even so, it catches and cracks and Steve doesn’t even get a chance to try and swallow the whimper that follows like a cosmic imperative; like the very notion, unspoken, of what’s coming, what’s drowning him, is unforgivable—is pain: pure and unyielding.

“I see it in my dreams sometimes, nightmares,” Steve barely breathes, and he doesn’t know if he’s talking to himself, or to the promise of Bucky, the need of him; or maybe to a god Steve doesn’t believe in but would sell or devote or sacrifice his soul to, for the sake of the heart in James Buchanan Barnes’s beloved chest.

“It’s hard enough to try not to think about how I’ll lose you, eventually. They don’t know how long the serum will, how long I’ll stick around kicking past my right to, past whatever I might want,” and that’s a deeper horror, a thought that comes late at night and plagued only every so often in the darkness, before, but now creeps in far more, and is starting to leach far deeper because his soul got tangled with another, and his world expanded even as it turned upside down with Bucky by his side, in his bed, more essential than blood in his veins: Steve hadn’t minded the length of his line so much, before that. He hadn’t expected it to stretch very far, before the War; during, that hadn’t changed. Waking up, he assumed he’d die in battle, because that’s what they’d made him to do. He’d fight, and be useful in it, until he couldn’t, one way or another and it was fine—his fate was written, and he didn’t have much reason to fight it. But now.

But now.

Now, the fact that he’s already had to watch nearly everyone he loved in his life die once is a weight, and the fact that he was quite-probably going to have to do it if he cared to love anyone in the now was a vise, but the very suggestion that he might have to watch Bucky, watch this person who’s sunk in and become the very beating chambers of his heart: the idea that he could even possibly live on past that is both unthinkable and unbearable; is something that squeezes in his chest so hard, nails dug in deep so that the damage is lasting, so that it hurts long after and never quite lets up entirely now that it’s properly taken hold because love means something wholly new, something all-consuming that rewrites his reality. The way he values life, specifically his own: now, Steve wants to live forever, so long as forever is the same as the exact number of moments that Bucky Barnes draws breath at his side. Steve wants to take whatever blessings or curses the serum bestowed upon him and tie them to the life in Bucky, braid them inextricable so that he’ll never know a world without this man again, not ever again.

“But in my nightmares, every close call becomes a direct hit and I lose,” Steve croaks, and he’s gripping their dresser, the wood creaking ominously, and he looks ashen in the glass; “Every time I lose, I can’t—”

Because watching him risk his life at Steve’s side doesn’t help, multiplies these fears exponentially: that’ll be what breaks him, what sends his heart careening, an unholdable center that he won’t survive the collapsing of.

“I love you,” Steve half gasps, half whines for the way it steals his breath, and rips straight from between his ribs. “I love you. Bucky, I—”

Simultaneously, Steve is startled by the sound of a distinctive alarm from his phone and the bang of the front door to the apartment—jarring, even if neither matches the thundering his pulse’s taken on; Bucky’s back from stopping for some face time at a VA uptown that Sam suggested beyond his usual, SI-arranged rounds, and the Avengers, apparently, need to assemble ASAP.

“Stevie,” Bucky says, a little breathless as he tears into the room, pecking a kiss to the corner of Steve’s mouth—distracted enough, thank god, to not notice that Steve’s already more than fraying at the seams—as he brushes past toward the closet where they both keep uniforms for when they’re nowhere near the Tower.

“There’s a thing on the West Coast,” he says as he strips, and Steve doesn’t pretend that the tightness in his chest from the confessions he was offering to no one but himself just moments before doesn’t shift to something that exerts just as much pressure, but it’s hot and pooled low, coiled in his belly. “Everyone else hopped in the quinjet so,” and Bucky glances up, calculated through his lashes, bent so his ass curves just so against the unspeakable cling of Stark-grade performance ripstop.

“You up for a little R&R on Stark’s private jet while he flies his suit solo, before we dive in?”

And Steve swallows down the still-bubbling terror he’d been spilling in front of the mirror; wallows around the heavy thump of his pulse for the promise in Bucky’s hooded gaze—Steve swallows and crosses to Bucky, braces an open palm on Bucky’s bare chest and leans, kisses him deep enough that Bucky could read it all as desire, instead of mostly just the breadth of Steve’s whole goddamn heart.

“Absolutely,” Steve says, voice rough, and he doesn’t meet Bucky’s eyes yet, not yet ready, not yet able to shake, to push aside the gravity of everything he’d drudged up to the surface. “Give me a sec to suit up.”

“Aww,” Bucky whines a little, and his grin is so sly, is so much like a sunrise that Steve could stand in its heat forever and never wish for shade; “do you have to?” His hand meets Steve’s and helps him take off his shirt, but stops Steve for just a half-a-second from reaching for his uniform as he damn-near growls:

“Would save time if I didn’t have to peel it off as soon as we get on board.”

And Steve knows he can get battle-ready in less than 2 minutes if it’s necessary, and also that Tony’s closest jet wouldn’t get to them in less than 5, so he takes a second to kiss Bucky just as deep as he already had but now with the line of his cock straining as Bucky’s hands tug at the waist of his pants, as his hips roll unconsciously into Bucky’s thigh, and he gives in to wanting, to needing, to how fucking gorgeous this man is and how much his body makes Steve fucking weak.

Though, looking back, that’s the moment. That is the precise moment Nat warned him about.

That’s the moment it starts to snap.

Chapter Text

To no one’s surprise: they’re in California. Specifically Malibu.

Specifically outside Tony’s goddamn seaside fortress.

So: not surprising, but the location is also indicative, because if their enemy cares enough to target something of Iron Man’s, they have an agenda, rather than just being hellbent on mindless destruction—which is sometimes helpful, really, having a clear orienting goal to identify, and then shut the hell down.

But to attack Tony there, with nothing immediately nearby, with minimal collateral damage and only delayed publicity: this is personal, and that is never helpful.

That is never helpful. That’s always, especially, absolutely fucking dangerous.

It turns out they’re after Tony’s tech, but only as a fringe benefit: they’re not angry that the Avengers left their town in ruins trying to save its people, or even something like Tony’s playboy days coming to bite him in the ass because he slept with someone’s girl, no—it’s professional envy, and a long-nurtured grudge that soured into hatred. It’s a man who’s last name’s his first name, or maybe the other way around, who apparently tried to kidnap Pepper and set alarms off to his master plan before he was ready but who was going to go down swinging if he had no other choice—swinging and with as much smoking wreckage behind him as he could manage. It’s people turned into walking timebombs, the kind that actually explode and kill everything close enough to the blast, unpredictable and more heart-stopping than any grenade Steve Rogers has thrown his scrawny little body on because he thought he was a hero.

He was, though—then more so than now, at least, because Steve’s trying to watch for the few-seconds’ worth of warning signs that this endless crop of human dynamite is ready to go off. And he can take them down, killshots everywhere he knows to land one, but then they’re up again; he can break their bones, snap their necks, sever limbs and skewer organs: and they come right back. It tastes sour in the back of his throat, and pounds heavier with every second, with every reanimated pair of red eyes charging at him manically—and Steve doesn’t think all that much between planning and acting because these walking Molotov cocktails are hellbent on killing his friends, his fucking family; he’s watching that, and he doesn’t stop to question it before he’s flinging the explosives-with-a-pulse into the ocean with far less compunction than maybe he should have but it’s war, it’s always war and in truth, in his heart: he is watching closer for Bucky.

Bucky: whose voice is ringing out, sharp and commanding, “Barton! Five seconds at the clavicle,” and then he’s spinning, shooting the target coming at him more as a distraction than anything before he’s propelling the glowing body through the air—glowing, but only bright at center mass; five seconds at the clavicle. They don’t explode before then, they just keep reanimating as needed, and—

They’re saving Steve’s tactic for a last resort, when there’s no other option.

Bucky, who it seems has a little more compunction and is putting down the pipebombs-with-a-pulse without relent only after a screamed conversation still filtering through the din of battle between himself and Tony about any possible way to save them, disarm them, something—something Steve should have asked, would have asked; maybe trusted his team enough, Tony especially, to know they’d have already put it in motion if it were possible or maybe he’s just too consumed with the way Bucky’s bleeding from the neck with a long, angry gash that Steve’s so fucking scared is too close to the jugular, or the way Bucky’s uniform is singed so that the flesh that meets his left arm is exposed, angry-red and maybe-blistered and Steve can’t see, can’t touch, can’t know—

And it’s not new, exactly. Bucky’s been injured before. Bucky’s been burned, Bucky’s taken a beating and that’s why Steve’s heart’s stretched thin enough to tear into ribbons with too harsh of a breath—but this feels different. Steve can’t put his finger on why, exactly, but it does, and he trusts his instincts even when they tell him the last thing he ever wants to know.

Steve can’t put his finger on why, until Bucky’s moving toward him, sprinting towards him, eyes wide and frantic and Steve can hear Bucky’s voice around his name and he tries to figure out what Bucky needs because fuck, Steve will do anything, give anything, blanket his body over a hundred grenades for this man, just—

Bucky’s body is barrelling into Steve’s, mental palm first as he shoves Steve hard and sends him flailing backwards only a shred-of-a-second before the world goes white, then black, then searing as Steve hits the ground first, and only gets enough time to blink before he’s covered in a heavy, motionless weight and Steve called it heart-stopping, fighting like this against an enemy that’s made it personal, and nothing less.

He should have been more careful, with his words, his thoughts. He didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about, not really.

Not until everything in him recognizes the shape of the heavy stillness pinning him down, like the cadence of the breaths he’s not taking and his own pulse that’s not pumping: not until he realizes Bucky is on top of him, blanketed over Steve with a human-shaped crater behind him and he’s not fucking moving.

And Steve’s stretched-thin heart is racing even though it’s already given up, is a band pulled so fucking tight around his chest it starts to cut, garrotte-sharp and slicing in two and he’s ready, in those moments, for it to press straight through and take him, put him down and make whatever he’s feeling, or not feeling, too numb and whole-ablaze and dying like he’s never died before: but then it snaps.

It fucking snaps, and he gasps in the burning flesh thick in the air, and it’s a sob at the end of the world that dares to escape him that he can’t even hear because the world isn’t real; and the first thing he sees at the angle he’s lying at is Natasha running toward him, looking stricken, and she warned him.

She warned him, and she was right, and it’s too goddamn late—

He’s barely got arms on Bucky’s body to turn him, to touch him, to hold him before he can think to check for a pulse, desperate; he’s barely got a conscious thought in his head before Bucky gasps and his eyes snap open, and Steve knows enough of dying to say confidently that death is at least a straightforward kind of pain; the unfathomable dance of hope and despair and need and the way a heart can break and sour all at once only to flay itself alive in the confusion—that’s excoriating, and not straightforward at all.

“Steve,” Bucky’s saying his name, sweet against an overcasting blanket of horror; his voice is hazy, and his eyes aren’t wholly focused yet but his touch on Steve is solid, and his gaze is clearing with every blessed breath that his chest is rising with, moving, god, oh god—

“Steve.”

Bucky’s hands are on Steve’s chest, now, a little unsteady but still sure, and Steve’s largely frozen in a way that battle isn’t forgiving of, in a way Steve himself has never been struck with in the middle of the fight; his eyes are stinging for the smoke in the air, for the terror in his veins and the loss, the grief his heart’s not sure it’s safe to even try to shake off just yet, and the fact that even his eyelashes feel heavy, suspended: blinking itself is so very very slow but Bucky’s not, Bucky’s careful and increasingly precise as his palm presses above where he’d made contact to push Steve out of the line of fire, the touch just enough through the reinforced material of Steve’s suit for Steve to groan but not flinch: a bruise, and a damn deep one, but no cracked bones. Anyone else and there’d have been damage to the sternum, Steve’s sure of it, and Bucky doesn’t take that for granted in the slightest when his eyes widen at the sound Steve makes, and the grimace that he’s not in control of himself enough to rein in above the tides of emotions overwhelming him, threatening still to consume.

“Shit, Steve,” Bucky murmurs, a note of horror and so much worry in his words that Steve wants to laugh, wants to sob, wants to disappear but only with Bucky plastered to his body to exist somewhere that is only the two of them, the two of them and safety, pressed close and unceasing.

“Breathe deep for me, come on,” Bucky’s coaxing, and if Steve had to think to respond he’d have failed the request but he doesn’t: Bucky is asking something of him, and he is a miracle on the best and simplest of days but just moments ago Steve had thought him lost to dirt and dust and the blood in Steve is only still beating worth anything because he was wrong, and so of course: of course that blood and all dependent on it rises to give Bucky want he asks for.

Bucky’s eyes narrow—drawing the breath is slow by necessity, for the sting it pulls out, but it’s full and clear with time and Bucky finally nods, satisfied, before he braces his hands on Steve’s shoulders and pulls him in close and Steve curls himself into the touch less as a matter of will and more as a matter of the laws of the universe demanding he obey: Bucky is here, and warm, and even in the middle of the fray Steve is drawn into him—now, of all times, of all moments, Steve needs to be as close as possible to convince his soul that it’s real, that Bucky’s body is warm and his heartbeat isn’t a trick, or a lie Steve’s own mind is peddling just to keep him from collapse.

“I had to get you down,” Bucky is breathing out against the shell of Steve’s ear; “the blast radius is lateral, doing the worst damage straight out, looking safest about ten feet from the explosion if you hit the ground and I just,” Bucky’s babbling, a little, and his breaths are short and shallow, little gasps really, and that snaps something vital to attention in Steve that berates him—you useless, shameful excuse for a soldier, for a lover, for a man, you let him rise from the dead in front of your eyes just to have him fret over you—as much as it zeros his attention in simultaneously on all of the most important things: the breathing is shallow but present, and is strained from emotion more than from injury; there are no incoming threats close enough that they can’t stay as they are a few moments more.

Bucky is real, Bucky is warm, his heartbeat against Steve’s own, pressed chest-to-chest is the same revelation as it ever is as Bucky watches his face with a heartbreaking level of concern: real. Not a trick.

His hand slides to cover it, though, to feel it as best he can through the leather of Bucky’s uniform: real, real, real.

His eyes slide closed a moment to soak in the feeling, to wrap it around himself to stop the bleeding in him more vital than lifeblood from the vein; Bucky, though, he sees Steve’s eyes close and immediately panics, the pitch of his voice rising and his grip on Steve’s arm tightening and that real-real heartbeat leaping sharp, ready for battle.

“You were too close, there wasn’t enough time,” Bucky’s rambling, eyes wide as he scans over Steve’s frame again, and again, and Steve realizes belatedly that his stillness, and his silence are probably cause for concern for all the wrong reasons; “and Steve, Steve, you were right there—”

“You’re okay?” Steve’s hands move between blinks to grab at Bucky’s wrists, feeling his pulse but not counting, not have the presence of mind beyond the proof, more proof, he needs more proof and so he’s touching everywhere, all of the energy that’d been arrested in the moments prior, Bucky checking on him, all that momentum bursts forth now with serum-fueled intensity and Steve only remembers this kind of breathlessness in another century and even that was nothing compared to the ache in his chest alongside the heaven-sent sweetness of relief as he gasps, as he touches every part of Bucky he can reach without rhyme, reason, or relent.

“Buck,” he whispers, reverent and his hands finally rest to cup around Bucky’s neck, safe, the blood-beat strong under Steve’s palms: “fuck, Bucky,” and it’s all registering, it’s all sinking in and Steve doesn’t think his legs will hold him up on their own but then Bucky’s threading their hands together and moving to stand, moving to ask Steve’s feet to bear weight when all of Steve, body and soul, is still trying to square with losing its soul and then getting it back in seconds—a nightmare, a premonition of the inevitable, a death knell that Steve’s lungs can’t lift against.

“Come on,” Bucky says, working to ease toward standing, testing his balance and the effects of the explosion, the impact with practiced attention and he’d be upright in an instant if Steve weren’t suddenly grasping at him, muscles primed before he can think but even if he’d thought first, the result would have been the same.

“Bucky, don’t fucking move,” Steve’s hissing through clenched teeth, desperate and furious and terrified all at once beyond his own grasping; “you’re hurt—”

“M’Fine,” Bucky clasps both hands over Steve’s where Steve’s trying to hold him, and keep him, meeting Steve’s gaze, almost apologetic when he pushes to his feet with a grimace before pulling Steve’s hands to follow, like Steve needs encouragement: following Bucky is natural; necessary.

“Just knocked the wind outta me,” Bucky shakes himself a little at the limbs before straightening and looking around with sharp, focused eyes: for his gun, Steve realizes, as the reality of where they are and what they're about to run back into hits fully. “Rang my bell extra hard, is all,” Bucky adds, his lips quirked a touch, trying to lighten the fact that Steve had thought him gone from the world for whole moments of his life—and Steve should have known better, should have seen clearer, but with Bucky, he just can’t; and thinking that, believing it for the space of seconds, was enough to strip Steve bare, raw, and leave him happy to bleed out for it until an end too far away, alone.

Jesus.

“Come on,” Bucky squeezes Steve’s hand, gaze darting around to take in the terrain around them, the lay of the battle still raging; he surges up for an instant to press lips to Steve’s, perfection in the hellscape and water in the desert, too swift almost to even see or sense save that it wraps around Steve’s heart in his chest, all pressure as much as promise; then he’s crouching for his weapon, straightening, and gripping Steve by the bicep with a grin:

“Let’s finish this.”

Steve’s voice has abandoned him, and his chest feels so fucking tight: he doesn’t know what he’d say, if he could, doesn’t have the words, but then Bucky’s rushing back into the fray and again, following Bucky: it’s natural.

There’s no choice in it—but there’s not a different one he’d ever make even if there was.

Chapter Text

And that’s when, after the snapping happens, it all threatens to blow up in his fucking face and yes: break his goddamn heart.

It’s only that second one that actually scares him, though. Because that’ll burn him in a way he won’t come back from—that no serum in the world could ever know how to heal.

“I don’t know what’s got your panties in such a goddamn twist, Steve,” Bucky bites out, spinning on Steve as soon as the door closes behind them when they get home—and Steve thinks that’s probably both true and not true all at once, because Steve’s very much aware of how many times he’s tried to put into words exactly what had put him in such a state, because the trying in itself had set his heart to racing, and tripping, and aching; he was equally aware of how many times he’d shoved his foot in his mouth for trying and failing to do it, too, over and again across the hours of debriefing where Steve was pulled apart by the ever-more-clearly dawning, realization that not only had he believed, for full moments of his life, that Bucky was dead, but the fact that such an unthinkable, unlivable possibility was thrown into his world, festering in his chest because Bucky, Bucky had thrown himself on top of Steve. To protect him.

To save Steve.

And maybe, with every passing minute those facts soaked deeper into his psyche, into his bones, seeping fully through him to make him tremble with rage and despair in almost equal part save that no anger would ever outweigh such a heartbreak, and no anger for this would be rooted in anything but love; but grief.

And maybe Steve had snapped, maybe Steve had caved inward in the vain hope of putting pressure on the wounds bleeding out in him but the fact of it all was that there was already an unbreathable pressure in his chest that he couldn’t lift his lungs against, that his heart was sore enough for trying to move around that it was throbbing more for pain than any real beating—and pressure upon pressure would only lead to breaking, to bursting forth so that even Steve’s enhanced strength stood nothing against it, no power in the world enough to save him, not from this.

So: maybe Steve had snapped, maybe Steve had shied a bit from even Bucky’s touch when all he wanted was to drown in it so far as to forget anything less; maybe Steve had kept himself apart even as he knew to the inhale when Bucky was just too far from him, and he moved to fix it even so: the maximum space between that Steve thought he could survive, on the cusp of everything he couldn’t have.

Maybe, when Clint had added to the report that he and Bucky had used their vantage points above to calculate exactly what Bucky had said—if they couldn’t get those living bombs to the ocean, to detonate underwater or well on their way, then there was nothing safer than to hit ground: more damage was thrown out laterally, and if here was no hope of getting out of the blast radius entirely, it was better to be closer and lower than to be further and still upright, running; maybe, when Clint was recounting that they’d been in the process of sharing the insight with the team over comms just when Bucky’d gone for Steve and pushed him down, maybe Steve had stiffened, sharpened, frozen, the whole of him from the outside turning to stone as everything held within had cried out in agony—maybe Steve had wrapped up with his usual comments on the skill of his colleagues, telling them to get rest and reconvene once they’ve had time to settle, and recover, what with Tony a little ashen-faced for how close things had touched for him, his home and his history and Pepper, Pepper; what with Bucky only just safe from a brush too close; bruised and—

Breathing. Bruised, and breathing, and maybe the pressure in Steve’s chest is what forced out through clenched teeth a note that they should all sleep the worst of this off as best they could, and if he’d walked away before he could make comments about self-sacrificing and the value of human lives that had less to do with Aldrich Killian’s science experiments and far more to do with the feeling of Bucky’s body on top of his body with the explosion of flesh and blood screaming around them as much as through Steve’s veins as the truth of it all settled in, as much as out from Steve’s soul in the endless moments he’d feared the worse and then lower still—if Steve holds his tongue from those words by walking away before they escape he also walks away before Bucky can reach for him, and in that Bucky hears the words anyway, and Steve is left all the colder and heartsick with it anyway.

Heartsick, and still fucking bleeding—

And now they’re here. And Bucky is bruised, and he’s breathing really fucking heavy as he stares Steve down with an anger, a flatness that takes all that fire, all those flames and keeps them contained, but only in so much as they feed on themselves and simmer, gain momentum held and built for just the right moment and Steve doesn’t know how to diffuse this, wouldn’t have known in the best of moments because this is uncharted territory but he’s also a roiling mess beneath the surface, if not wholly bare for all to see and Steve feels so much, so deeply and he wants to say something, wants to reach out and cup Bucky’s face and pull him close and feel his chest warm and rising into Steve’s instead of just heaving into the ether, creating a chasm between them where Steve can’t bear one to ever be, instead of writing proof of his life, his beating heart and flowing blood against Steve’s body, conducting Steve’s being and letting Steve’s world continue spinning, and, and—

Goddamnit.

They’ve had their arguments. Squabbles, really, in truth; in comparison. And god, god it was so much easier in front of a mirror to try and put any of this into words, translate it to sense, and even that had damn near eviscerated him. This, though; this.

“You could have been killed,” Steve finally finds himself saying; the wrong truth to offer, and he knows it even as it chokes out from his lips, and in another moment he could have maybe, maybe had the foresight, or at least the presence of mind, to register that the tightness in his voice made wholly of terror would sound stilted, could come out biting, a command more than a confession.

And that’s exactly what happens.

“Pot calling the fuckin’ kettle!” Bucky shouts, turning away with his hands buried in his hair; Steve is only human, at the end of the day, and he loses a little bit of the tension pulling him taut to shattering at the fucking cascade of dark waves, curling at the ends, moving in rhythm as Bucky stalks into the apartment—Steve loses a bit of the tension just to gain it back tenfold, fucking impossible as it would be seemed a moment before: Steve feels the tightness in him send him to trembling, and he can’t catch a breath, he can’t think—

“And you want to do this?” Bucky says, more than he asks; and his tone’s changed. Where there’d be heat, Steve shivers for the emptiness, the chill in that beautiful voice because he hates it, he hates it; “You want to go there?”

Steve’s not entirely sure where there is, everything in him is a mess and he can’t make sense of any of it except that he feels like something is breaking, something is crumbling beneath his feet and he can’t move, can’t even try to stop it; he doesn’t want to go there, wherever there is, because the words sound sour in the air, taste like ash even trying to shape his tongue around them to make sense of it at all.

Steve doesn’t want to, but Bucky’s damn near squaring his shoulders, and Steve quickly sees the territory; reads the trajectory.

“First,” Bucky says, like this is an offensive, like he has to build fortifications; like he’s planning to unleash something that could warrant retaliation.

Like he thinks for a second Steve would do it.

“First, you don’t outrank me,” Bucky says, direct and pointed and true, rooted in fact and dispassionate save that Steve knows him, Steve knows him and the fire in him is still very much real, very much present and it licks at the edges of the words; “so you certainly don’t get to give me orders off the field, and pretend you’re hot shit, Captain,” and oh, Steve’s heard that title thrown around with a lot of feelings, a lot of emotions and opinions before, but it’s never hurt, not like this does.

Not like this.

“And for that matter, second,” Bucky ticks off, and the fire in him licks closer, shows itself clearer seemingly against Bucky’s will or plan as he looks up and narrows his eyes, meets Steve’s gaze and oh, oh: he’s beautiful. Steve is aching down the marrow in him for the anger he sees in Bucky’s eyes, but deeper still: Steve aches for the hurt that spurs it on, what the roots are made of—his anger, like Steve’s, doesn’t burn pure for itself, on its own.

“Total combat hours, not to mention command experience?” Bucky's lips curl, like they want to sneer but fight off the urge. “If I was the type to whip out my dick and compare size, Rogers,” Bucky scoffs, but it sounds off, and some of the force in it all, the thrust in it giving way because that isn’t what Bucky does, Bucky isn’t the type to make that argument, even if it’s true and even if the half-assed attempt hits Steve at center-mass.

But Bucky shakes himself a little, and sighs, and when he meets Steve’s eyes again they’re steely with something stronger, now: resolve.

“I know how to fucking handle myself, I know how to assess risk,” Bucky says, simple and absolute because it’s real, and that is what Bucky does, who he is. Steve wants to kiss him, and feel the warmth of him pressed close.

“Risk?” Steve’s saying, close-on screeching, instead. Like the idiot he is. The mess he’s become. “You fucking—”

“And third,” Bucky speaks over him; not louder but knife-sharp, like the blade Bucky loads up on in the field, welded with precision just the same and shutting Steve up by the last syllable.

“Third, because at the end of the day, I think this is closest to where the stick up your ass sits,” Bucky's eyes narrow again, but different; the hint of a sneer is almost sympathetic, but a touch too close to pitying for it; with a touch too much offense tucked into it, too.

“Have you looked at your team recently? You haven’t all been pumped up with rays of vita-sunshine, you’re about half and half. Hell, Stark’s not even suped-up, and you’ve got a god on your side of the equation, if that even counts.”

Oh. Oh. Bucky thinks he; Bucky thinks that Steve thinks he, that, it—

“And if that’s your major fucking malfunction, Steve,” and that could not be further from the truth, not like this at least; not like this, for the hurt Bucky’s feeling, that Steve caused but for it landing with all the wrong reasons propelling it forward, and Bucky’s raising his left arm and Steve is grasping at invisible straws, feeling like the strings that hold him up are fraying too quick, and not getting cut because that’d be too easy, too quick and painless by comparison, versus what he deserves.

“This arm can hold your super-soldier ass down on a springy surface as long as I want,” Bucky says the words like they’re made to be delivered with a wink, with a softness that he can’t grasp or summon, and it lands sick and leaden for the disconnect. “So just think about what it can do on something significantly less like a breathing brick wall, and when I’ve got solid ground to throw against.”

Steve doesn’t even react to the implications; he’s too unhinged, unspooled, and the insinuations aren’t bright and playful in Bucky’s eyes, and it’s wrong, it’s wrong but it’s not anywhere near as wrong as the hollowness, the certainty that’s somehow managed to get tangled up something like resignation in a way that goddamn hurts in Steve’s chest.

“I’m as capable as you are,” Bucky’s saying, just reciting facts but said like they’re meant to convince, like they have to be defended and no, no; but Bucky’s got his lower lip just a little bit between his teeth, just a shade of hesitant and no, not ever; “not in the same ways, maybe, but—”

“I know.”

Steve pushes his bleeding heart into those words as best it can fit, flayed and ribboned as it is so it’s not as strong, not as much a bulwark as it should be but it’s every bit as true as Steve can hold, and the small parts, the agonized cut-pieces mould and shape themselves into the nooks and crannies so there’s nothing Steve offers, nothing he gives that isn’t saturated to the fullest with every undying bit of his resolve, his unfettered truth.

“Jesus,” Steve gasps, because this thing, this feeling that walks around in the shape of the word ‘love’ but overflows from it at every turn, in every frame and moment—it overflows from him, too.

“Fuck, I know,” Steve steps forward, and Bucky doesn’t move, neither toward him or away and that’s enough, that’s okay, and Steve’s heart is pounding, racing, Steve can only move in the infinitesimal space it isn’t humming, it’s pummeling him unforgivingly but even if it’s small, even if it’s slow Steve can wait, Steve can persevere because Bucky’s on the other end of the trial, and Bucky is worth everything.

“Buck,” Steve says, and it only comes out a whisper, but there’s something changing in Bucky’s eyes, and the change is familiar: it’s the same thing that’s been mouldering in Steve’s chest and it hurts all the more to see if mirrored, to see it multiplied but at the same time, Steve knows it.

Steve knows it, and he knows Bucky, and he can do this.

He can do this.

“You think just because a bullet can’t stop you,” Bucky breathes, and it’s quiet like Steve’s voice around his name—like at the end of the day, at the end of the line, they match.

They meet.

“You think just because you can’t get gunned down, you’re immortal,” Bucky shakes his head, an undefinable edge creeping into his tone. “But I’ve seen those records, all of them,” Bucky looks at Steve, almost pleading now; “the ones you probably didn’t even bother with, the reports you probably didn’t even listen to, and none of those shots were deadly,” and yeah, yes, that’s pleading, Bucky’s eyes and his voice and something so much deeper, so much more is pleading with Steve, as if Steve wouldn’t give Bucky everything, all of him, without ever being asked.

“You’ve survived things that other people would have had a 50-50 shot with, at best,” Bucky tries to explain, tries to reason; “and you’ve bounced back quicker than anyone else ever could, and where some people never would, but,” and Bucky’s voice cracks on that, just a little; Steve’s sternum cracks straight in half, at least, for the way the sound bursts through him and tears.

“But you don’t know what’ll put you down any better than I know what’ll end me,” and Steve can’t help himself but to whimper, and he’s not sure if the sound is loud enough for Bucky to hear but just the idea spoken aloud, it’s too much for Steve to bear silently, talons gouged into the meat of him, relentless as Bucky forges on:

“You don’t know, and you can’t know, and so I’m not gonna pretend you’re fucking dispensible, I’m not gonna treat you like a fucking shield just because you carry one, just because you’re you and you think you can take it but you don’t know what you can take, not that far and—”

“I love you.”

Bucky stops, stills; turns to Steve silent at those words but with all the momentum of his argument still banked—waiting.

Steve can do this.

“I love you,” Steve says, because he can state his truths, too—he can find the voice to make known the things that shine in his world stronger than fact; “and I have cared about every single person I’ve ever gone into battle with but,” Steve’s throat threatens to close around the immensity of it all: “but I’ve never loved them.” Steve takes a step closer, lets the force of his pounding blood propel him now instead of waiting for the breaks between to sneak through because how else can he tear his heart open, lay it bare, save to go where it leads and not look back: so he’s close enough to feel Bucky’s warmth shift the air, but not yet close enough to touch—he’s near enough to watch Bucky’s eyes widen, but even with his eyesight, he can’t watch the pupils shift and Steve wants, but more than that, Steve needs more than air and water; Steve needs because his soul lives on the absolute truth of the words than come next:

“I’ve never loved them so hard it hurts to breathe.”

Steve watches Bucky’s throat work around a swallow; watches his lips part around no sound at all, and Steve gives him something between a smile and a grimace, filled to bursting with something timid but still very, very close to hope.

“I know you’re capable, god,” Steve shakes his head; “you’ve earned what you have and where you are in ways I never could—”

“Don’t.” Bucky’s expression twists, his eyes turned pained; Steve can see how he fears his earlier words, sour in his own mouth, put the idea in Steve’s head—that Bucky’s amassing of evidence for how he was a soldier and he could handle himself had led to some new, or at least newly-reawakened insecurity in Steve but that’s not it. That’s not it, because Steve is constantly aware, in awe in one way or another, of the fact that Bucky’s a Major in the goddamn US Army and for as complicated and fraught as that is for anyone, as that’s been for him, he is at his core the myth of it—good, and thoughtful, skilled and brave, and beautiful inside even more, somehow, than he is on the ouside and heroic in all the ways that films and comic books don’t capture quite right—and Steve? Steve fell upward into his rank skipping all the steps between Captain and chorusgirl on the recommendation of his pectoral muscles and some handy vita-rays. He does his best to earn it, every day, and thinks maybe he’s close, definitely more so in this century than the last, but now the benchmark’s shifted: Steve doesn’t honestly give so much of a shit about earning the right to call himself a Captain anymore, so much as he cares mind body and soul about earning the right to stand next to Bucky and call himself even a shred of worthwhile to do it, to be there, to hold him and at the end of the day fall asleep in his arms and be able to breathe, soft and sure, in the knowledge that his heart is given so truly, so wholly, and it’s a good one, like Bucky deserves.

And Steve has done that, consistently, over the past months; sighed to himself with a smile that he felt mirrored, pressed into the crown of his head as Bucky kisses his hair and Steve nosed closer into the planes of Bucky’s chest: but to have gotten here, Steve missed something. Steve’s let something slide and now he needs to fix it.

“I know you’re capable,” Steve repeats, but he huffs around the word like it’s laughable, because in so many senses it is—it’s not boundless enough, much like the next words to come out of his mouth.

“But I love you, and all that hard proof and logic and black-and-white truth goes out the fuckin’ window when I see you in harm’s way.” Because love is a decent enough word, but it’s too small for the thing that’s not in his heart, not anymore, it swelled and swelled abundant until it engulfed his heart like wondrous armor; like an unfailing embrace.

“It’s selfish, yes,” Steve barrels on, because some words have got to be better than none, here and now, even if they’re too-small words, or not-quite-right. “Stupid, risky, but goddamnit, James Barnes, I am so fucking in love with you, and there is not a single part of me that can’t leap when I see, when I could, when you’re...”

And then Steve’s breath is catching in his lungs, because Bucky closes the steps between them and he’s got broad hands cupped at Steve’s jaw, and the rush of Bucky’s breath over Steve’s skin is how Steve realizes just how his eyes are stinging, just how tight his throat is clutched against the galloping of his heart, like his body knows the damn thing will beat straight up and out for the franticness, for the mindless desire to be given to Bucky through and through and so for feeling, as much as sense, his throat has to close against the threat of escape but Steve doesn’t want that, Steve wants his heart to leap from his chest and find its way to Bucky unequivocally: to Bucky, who’s cupping his face and watching Steve with wide, shining eyes, liquid with the kind of emotion that would steal Steve’s breath if there was any there to take, and Steve just watches, and can’t keep himself from turning into the touch, the heat when Bucky's hands give away just the barest hint of trembling; when Bucky strokes his thumbs back and forth across Steve’s cheeks.

“That’s literally every fucking moment out there, you understand that?” Bucky whispers, hisses a little broken, this side of desperate and shaking like his hands but ripped raw from him, so honest and true that Steve can’t quite believe it’s happening, that he’s being handed all this in a single question, wrapped up and proof that a heart doesn’t always take the shape of what’s at the center of his chest when it’s given; it’s so honest, and so true, that Steve can’t quite believe anything less than all that’s inside.

“I do,” Steve breathes back, and there’s a not-insignificant piece of him that resonates, that rings out and shines in the light of those two words and the things they can hold, like soft fire and promise at the center of his chest; but then there’s the flip-side of that piece, and it’s so mired in the fear that’s taken up residence curled around his ribs, long and sinuous and set like a brand against the bone and he can’t bear it, can’t stand it; “and that’s what I—”

“And you know that every word you’ve just said,” Bucky cuts him off, gaze unwavering and hands turning desperate for the way he’s cradling Steve’s face as much as he’s clutching to him like a lifeline; cherishing Steve beyond reason as much as he’s turned desperate; “every word is exactly where I am, what I…”

And Bucky’s lips work around words he doesn’t give voice to, Steve's arrested, helpless as he refuses to blink, transfixed by the way Bucky’s looking at him, like Steve is the most necessary thing in existence; like Steve is precious, to be kept well and safe for the simple fact of him, and it glows out from Bucky’s whole face and Steve feels it gleam in technicolor through his veins in time with his pulse: unfathomable, and Bucky’s hands on his face are steadier, with time, but they never lose the need.

“You know that’s why I have to be there, right?” Bucky exhales, tilts his head in askance as he stretches his thumb to the corner of Steve’s lips and rubs back and forth like a touchstone; like proof of something essential. “Because I can, and because I believe in it,” Bucky says, building foundations on immutable truths; “but also because I need to be there when,” and his voice breaks, cuts to silence that catches in Steve’s heartbeat, the trip like a first in his chest squeezing too tight and Bucky bites his lip, and breathes even though it stays uneven, and when he looks a little broken when he focuses back on Steve, which only splits Steve open wider for it, somehow:

“I need to be there when you need it,” Bucky says simply, but it lands in a way that’s profound; “when you need…”

“You,” Steve murmurs, leaning nearly all of him into Bucky’s touch now, closing his eyes and feeling lighter when all he knows in the world for a moment is the shape of Bucky’s hands. “When I need you,” Steve turns a little, and doesn’t kiss Bucky’s palm but lets his lips make full contact with his hand to catch close the next truth he shapes:

“I always need you.”

Bucky blinks, and his face goes through a complicated, naked, wholly vulnerable sequence of feelings, and he looks like he might cry, he looks like he might burst open then and there, but what he does is to move their lips together, and kiss Steve with a depth unheard of, save that Steve’s felt it, known it, shared it between them so many times and yet somehow still it’s new, still a revelation that tugs insistent, an ache against his sternum, and reminds him what it means to be alive.

“I love you, Steve,” Bucky breathes between Steve’s lips, like the only way to catch a breath that matters is from Steve’s lungs; Bucky runs the tip of his nose along the profile of Steve’s face, drawing a shiver, and looks at Steve with something damn near reverence.

“Fuck,” he gasps a little, and Steve’s not sure if his vision’s hazy with the enormity of it all, of feeling, or if he’s never seen more clearly in his whole goddamn life; “fuck, but I love you,” and then he’s devouring Steve with a singular devotion that washes over Steve and envelopes; with a full-souled relentlessness Steve couldn’t fight if he wanted to, if he even thought to try.

________________________________________

The ache in Steve’s chest has gone sweet by the time they’re lying, skin-to-skin in their bed, the sweat on them only just cooling, their breaths only just calming, Steve's pressed close, his head on Bucky’s chest, swaying with the rise and fall, his ear held purposefully tight against the heavy-heady thump of Bucky’s heart, the proof of his life as much as the proof of the way they fit together and move together and come together like a single entity like this in their bed; the fact that they can, still, that Bucky is here and Steve is here and the horrors of the world tried to change that but didn’t. Couldn’t.

This time.

But Steve just burrows closer, impossibly closer—Steve just presses in and closes his eyes and sinks inside Bucky’s pulse, hears it settling, a few softer beats less hurried and wild with every moment, so near to him that Steve can hear the rush of blood like tides turning, could hear every note without the enhancements of the serum, even; his arms are curled around Bucky’s chest, like an extra pair of ribs both so in love with what they curve ago embrace that they’re immutable, and so sworn to protect that they don’t wholly exist without said singular purpose. Steve understands that to the very core of him.

And Bucky: the whole time, Bucky’s got fingers carding through Steve’s hair, gentle but sure with a little tug now and again when he draws patterns on Steve’s scalp, draws Steve to arch just a tiny bit into the touch, full-bodied so long as it doesn’t take him from the warm reassurance of Bucky’s heartbeat—but every few minutes, Bucky’s touch trails from Steve’s hair down the line of his jaw and teases toward the pulse point at the hinge on one side, while the other hand slips lower still to measure the motion of Steve’s blood closer to the hollow of his throat and Steve closes his eyes and lets himself feel Bucky’s touch against the bounding, tangible and real, true and there and so fucking alive that Steve can relish it, revel in it, sink in it through his pores and bask because he is surrounded entirely by the proof that they exist, together, in love like a universal law, and Steve’ll be damned if he’s ever known a truth so sweet.

“I’m sorry I didn’t see it,” Bucky’s breath is a glorious damp heat at the crown of Steve’s head. “Hadn’t even considered it, if I’m honest,” Bucky’s lips purse into a kiss and Steve hums; “that being the reason.”

Steve feels his expression twist a little, incredulous but so sated and full of so much in this moment, tucked against the man he loves.

“Seriously?”

And Bucky laughs, just a little huff, at Steve’s tone but Steve can feel it breeze through his hair and shake through Bucky’s chest where Steve’s pressed tight and it’s so beautiful he doesn’t wholly know how to make sense of it; can only wrap himself in it and hope the way he can feel it reshaping his world, his cells and bones, is a permanent thing, because it is more peace and wonder in that moment than he can imagine living to deserve.

“I mean,” Bucky starts, and Steve takes a second to separate the sound of his voice in his ear, and the sound of his voice through his ribs: two songs braiding to strike a deeper chord and Steve alone has the privilege of knowing it. “Not like that, I guess.” Bucky dips his head, and rests his chin against Steve’s head closer while he presses his mouth to Steve’s brow, holds there to speak with an intimacy, but also something so very simple.

“Because loving you’s been like breathing from the start,” and Steve listens to those words with all of him, and lets them echo out through Bucky’s chest, from just next to Bucky’s heart, and then again made real in the world, circling the little cocoon of warmth around them in their bed, here and now.

“Maybe I didn’t see how much it was crushing you, in the field like that,” Bucky’s arms reach and tighten just the slightest bit around Steve’s shoulders; “I think maybe because it’s been there almost since the beginning?” Bucky nuzzles against the top of Steve’s head, thoughtful but seeking comfort too, and Steve tilts into the contact for the very same reason.

“The only thing that’s changed is how it grew,” Bucky murmurs, and there’s a little kick, something like a swelling, open and honest and whole that Steve swears he can hear in the heart under at his ear: impossible but so real. “Maybe I just thought you’d have snapped like that from the first time, if that’s what it was,” Bucky reasons; not an excuse, but thinking, soft and open and like Steve’s simply a wove-in element of his consciousness, there for the meandering parts as much as anything else: given unfettered access to the way Bucky moves and breathes, body and soul, and Steve’s so fucking lucky; he’s so lucky—

“But that’s just me, maybe.” Bucky can’t duck his head, even how they’re twined together, but Steve can feel the subtle shift of his muscles, automatic; Steve can hear it in his tone, like everything he’s sure of is solid, and real, but there’s space for healthy doubt that Steve hones in on like an enemy combatant, virulent and unacceptable, stood so close to that heart he never wants to live without.

“Hey,” Steve tips his head up, and hates that it moves Bucky’s chin from the top of Steve’s hair, and hates deeper the way it takes Bucky’s pulse from the cup of Steve’s ear, but Steve needs to see him. Steve needs to look into those eyes and match the conch-shell song of Bucky’s heartbeat to the ocean in his gaze, all of it perfect: fathomless and essential for living at its core.

“Moment I saw you, Buck, I was a fucking goner,” Steve whispers, and the vowels tremble a little for how heavy, how full they settle and swell outward; his hand trembles a little as he fits his palm to Bucky’s cheek. “Too much too soon by anyone else’s measure and I know it, but it only ever felt like the most right thing I’ve ever done. You only ever felt like,” Steve’s breath catches, and he reaches his free hand to catch Bucky’s left in kind, not enough suddenly just to touch his skin when he could, instead, hold and be held.

“You felt like a piece of my soul I’d lived my whole life without, but hadn’t known was missing,” Steve exhales all at once, and Bucky strokes at his wrist with the smooth metal of his thumb and Steve sighs out the weight of the universe, so that piece of his soul can settle in, find new ways it fits in every moment they breathe in close proximity.

“I was,” Steve looks down, needing to steady himself outside the piercing blue of Bucky’s eyes but at the very same time aching for any moment he’s not staring into them, losing himself inside their depths; he focuses on the lacing of their fingers, a delicate, elegant kind of strength in the shapes their hands make.

“Sometimes I was afraid it was just me,” Steve confesses to the peaks and valleys of their knuckles; “in this deep.”

Steve stares down for all of a moment more before his eyes follow, innate when Bucky lifts their tangled hands and brings them to his mouth, kisses his way across Steve’s fingers and Steve just watches, feels his chest expand so that the pressure against his ribs is a glorious burn before Bucky takes their joined hands and nudges Steve’s chin up, lifts his face so that he’s looking Bucky straight in the eye again, so that he can see every millisecond that shifts between the moments before Bucky leans in, their gathered hands pressed into his stubble and close enough at the neck for Bucky to feel the raucous thrum of his blood as their lips meet; as Bucky kisses slow and steadfast and sweet and so fucking gorgeous, moulded to Steve and made to meet him and only him, them and only them, and cradling Steve with a kind of absolute dedication to the idea that Steve is irreplicable solely for himself, and nothing more or less; the idea that Steve needs to be treasured and that Bucky’s devoted himself to that goal, that imperative, for the long fucking haul. It’s unthinkable. It’s unbelievable.

“Stevie, Stevie, Stevie,” Bucky breathes against Steve’s mouth, lips quirked in a smile that isn’t amusement so much as it’s pure joy; “only person in the world with flawless vision, and you’re still so goddamned blind sometimes.”

And oh, but the thing shining out of Bucky’s eyes when he speaks those words, something that outstrips the word affection by a galaxy, that sings stronger even than the feelings Steve hoped for in his wildest dreams, that Bucky could feel for him—

It is everything.

“I didn’t know,” Bucky whispers, a confession and an apology and so much feeling as he reaches to stroke the line of Steve’s jaw and Steve leans into the touch, because there’s nothing else in the world he could ever do. Would ever want to do.

Even when the idea Steve thinks Bucky’s speaking is entirely fucking absurd.

“That I loved—” Steve starts, incredulous even as he sinks further into Bucky’s touch, because how, how could Bucky not see it and know it, particularly from Steve, a man whose best words can’t touch the ferocity of his actions, the way his heart lives on his sleeve and bleeds through his eyes—

Bucky shakes his head softly, a smile so bright and gentle that it looks otherworldly, impossible, and Bucky’s pressing the pad of a finger against the curve of Steve’s lower lip, pausing his words so lovingly that Steve’s incredulity has to turn inward, too; it has to, because there’s no way Steve can justify not knowing to his bones without a single solitary doubt that Bucky loved him, not when those eyes could drink him in like that.

“I didn’t know that it could grow so big,” Bucky breathes, and fuck but it’s so sweet; “and you could still breathe around it. That it could grow into the thing you breathe, and the pieces of your heart and,” Bucky’s eyes are so big, and so bright, and his lips are so red and parted around the breaths his chest’s heaving with as he looks at Steve like he’s the whole world and Steve doesn’t know how to do anything but lean in and kiss it all from his mouth; to suck those heaving breaths straight from his lungs like an offering, a gift Steve doesn’t deserve but wants to relish, and wrap himself in so that he never feels what the world means outside it, beyond it, because nothing could be this warm, this right.

“This you sayin’ stupid shit after you come?” Steve gasps when he pulls away, but only so far as to bow his head to Bucky, brow to brow.

“You make me sentimental as fuck, Stevie,” Bucky’s smile shapes every word, transforms them, but fits most incredible, exquisitely around Steve’s name. “Orgasm’s just a convenient excuse,” he braces a hand on Steve’s chest and tilts his head, runs the tip of his nose along the length of Steve’s, an intimacy Steve’s never known before, so simple and unspoken, spun like sugar between his lungs when Bucky grins and adds: “albeit a very enjoyable convenient excuse.”

And Steve can’t help the stretch of his lips, the toothy, brilliant, almost painfully-wide smile that probably makes him look like a loon but he doesn’t care, not one bit, because his heart’s tripping giddily, hopefully, unburdened in this moment of all the hesitance, all the what-ifs, and unthinkably, all the fear: he’s entirely buoyant, unshackled and light and he can tell the moment Bucky starts to chart the constant galloping, the consistent skips in the beat of his heart for just how much he’s untethered, at the utter mercy of this feeling, this gift of and from and entirely composed of the man in his arms: Bucky’s touch presses closer, like he wants to soak it in too, and Steve doesn’t think much of god these days, but he knows what a blessing is, and so he grabs Bucky’s hand and crushes it closer where it shouldn’t be possible, save that it is. Between them, it is, and the laugh that bursts from Steve is something like a song, unselfconscious and made entirely of what his heart’s pumping out through his body, into the world.

“What?” Bucky asks, on an answering chuckle, the joy both mirrored and infectious, Steve thinks, in equal shares and parts and he can’t help but to lean in and kiss him, savour every taste and gild of that wonder on his tongue and swallow it down to wrap his heart in the kind of sense memory that soaks in to live forever, because that’s what this is. That’s all this is.

All anything is, and Steve’s hands come again to cup Bucky’s face as he looks at him with eyes wide open, glorying in disbelief and much as in absolute certainty; keeping every moment in full blinding color before him so that he doesn’t miss a single goddamn second.

“You,” Steve says finally, reading the little twitches of Bucky’s expression for the answer; curiosity, maybe, for a moment, but it really never veers from the same giddy bliss that’s dancing along Steve’s nerves, racing through his veins and Steve wraps his hands around Bucky’s wrists to feel his warmth, to feel his pulse, to know his singular self in the metal on the left because Steve cherishes that uniqueness in a way he’d had no way to prepare for, to anticipate: it is everything because it is Bucky where it could be absolutely no one else and that’s true of everything this man is and brings and embodies, but Steve marvels differently at every element and instance, and to touch like this is nothing short of revelation, every time, so when Bucky just looks back, and there’s a love so big even Steve’s wide eyes can’t track it all, staring right back at him without any thought to hold back or trim down, there are only two words he can fit around his tongue: a novel, an epic, a sonnet at least but Steve has two words and they light up Bucky’s already incandescent gaze enough for Steve to think they’re fine as they are, and so he breathes them only as a prelude to capturing Bucky’s mouth once more in earnest:

“Only you.”

Chapter Text

“You look tired.”

For the record, Steve doesn’t mean for it to happen like this. Doesn’t intend it, or plan it, or even do it consciously—usually, he only recognizes it for what it is after it’s done. Steve may have believed, what feels like a lifetime ago, that while the world interfered to shape a person’s destiny—in big and small ways that he knew, and knew intimately—at the end of the day? At the end of the day, Steve thought the real thrust of his being—if not the credit, given just how much of his life was so wildly far beyond his ability to take credit for—but the momentum and intention of his life was something Steve thought he had some grasp of, some control over.

Now, though, with Bucky? With this humming desire and sheer pulsing love driving his steps, his breaths more than any decision, any awareness beyond the clarity of Bucky’s proximity, the sounds of Bucky’s being, held near and real and constant: now, Steve isn’t so naive as to think he has any real control at all, driven as he is by something bigger than both his full comprehension and own stubborn will—or else, with his will given wholly to the force of this feeling, this love and this need, without a second thought, without a semblance of hesitation, without an ounce of a fight against it, only ever the fight to keep.

So Steve doesn’t mean for it to happen, like this; like it does. But it’s like his heart had been hovering, magnetic, pointed toward the singular focus of Bucky, honing closer and closer over these glorious months together, building to this new point where the pull doesn’t hover or give at all anymore but connects, and holds, and every sense of being subsumed in the light of not just what Steve feels but what he finds himself becoming, newer and brighter and fuller in these moments than he’s ever known before: no, Steve knows damn well that he has no real say over who and what he is or becomes in this, from this, save that he chooses to give himself to loving James Buchanan Barnes, and there will be consequences, and that word doesn’t have to mean terrible things like it sounds in his memories, of schoolyards and back alleys, of disobeyed orders and years of choosing the recovery, long or short, as the price demanded from his body for doing what Steve believed was right—no, consequences could be the warmth of Bucky’s soft, snuffling breaths in the morning against Steve’s neck while he dreamed, or waking up to Bucky’s deft metal fingers in his hair, and that smile on those lips so much like an answered prayer that Steve can’t help but kiss them, a sin to turn away. It can be the way Bucky’s body feels around him, or the way Bucky fits Steve in kind, in every way, beyond reason or likelihood or possibility, it seems, sometimes. It can be the way Steve feels like he sees the world in brighter colors, and higher definition: like he’s both paying closer attention and drinking more in, and loving so much more deeply in everything for the fact that he’s loving Bucky with all that he is and knows and has. Giving himself down to his goddamn cells to this has consequences.

And Steve is fine with that. More than. Every action bears a reaction, save that Steve knows, he knows its neither equal nor opposite: it’s the same in kind and so much more.

One of those necessary consequences of loving, however, is falling ever-deeper down the rabbit hole of his own thoughts, his own fears, his own absolute panic over what he can’t help but fixate upon as the only possible outcome of not just his feelings but his life, his heart in every sense of the term—just as life and death either way, in either case; Steve cannot plan for or work against the fact that his terror at the prospect, fuck, more like the promise of losing Bucky—inevitably, unavoidably—seeps into everything he does and thinks and says.

And Bucky looks tired.

Not excessively. Just a slump to his shoulders, and heavier lean into the arm of the sofa, a little shading under his eyes. They’d all been laid up after the last mission—nothing life threatening but the sum of parts for every cut and bruise took its own composite toll.

So yeah, of course Bucky looks tired. Steve doesn’t have to say it, though—but that fear; that panic. It’s started forcing things out that are unnecessary, that don’t fit but that hurt so much that Steve gets distracted, and they push themselves out like a splinter in his blood when he’s not watching.

“Oh, thanks a fuckload,” Bucky looks up from his phone and rolls his eyes, the smirk that goes along with it a strained, brittle thing.

“C’mon, me too,” and it’s not a lie, not even close, because Steve is tired. Steve is always tired just a little, sometimes a whole fuckton of a lot: there’s a level of Steve’s being that is constantly exhausted because terror saps at the energy, wrings the soul from a person in unique and painful ways that no serum had thought to counter, to anticipate and try to shore up against.

“Nap?” Steve says, too hopeful probably, his palm sliding to the crook of Bucky’s neck, massaging slowly when he finds the muscles too hard under his touch.

“You’ve got a meeting, don’t you?” Bucky tilts his head back and blinks up at him—he looks half-asleep already, but his eyes are still more sharp than misty, and his mind is at least more focused than Steve’s because he’d remembered the fucking meeting Steve’s got, probably within the hour and hadn’t planned for or thought about; and now has every intention of ignoring because it’s not critical, and it’ll go on the very same without him, and he can text Nat or Tony to make apologies for him within an instant of hitting his pillow, in the seconds between crashing onto the mattress and fitting Bucky’s frame against him just so—he has a meeting he can ignore for things that take up far more space in his head, in his chest, and take far more precedent in his world.

“Maybe,” Steve hums, and leans down to press his lips to Bucky’s temple, the hinge of his jaw. “In bed,” Steve mouths against his stubble: “with you.”

And Bucky laughs, cloud-soft and warm as he turns, meets Steve’s lips, and doesn’t let Steve pull him up and lead him to bed; drags Steve down to him instead and they stretch out on the couch, and Steve feels tired in his bones but more alive against Bucky’s body for it than he thinks he could ever justify or name.

And it helps. In turns—sometimes longer, sometimes impossibly small, but Steve chances it with singular focus, overwhelming need; there’s a little lever in Steve’s soul that releases pressure when Steve gives in to the need to cling, to hold fast and not merely prove Bucky’s ensured continued existence but to perpetuate it actively, to do and to preserve and to care so close and so deep.

“Hungry?” Steve’s asking, before Bucky even glances at the kitchen, and long after Steve’s been gathering something, assembling a sandwich and draining pasta and overdoing it, always, but the drive in him is big and bold and loud, and this is the only way Steve knows to even try to meet it.

“Not particularly,” Bucky answers, because of course, of course he’s not hungry because Steve is only just starting to get hungry and Bucky may be as strong as Steve in so many ways but it’s normal—if extraordinary—human blood in his veins and he doesn’t need to pack calories like Steve and fuck but Steve is an idiot and yet knowing and acknowledging that changes nothing, does not change a goddamn thing because Steve feels a need in his own body and immediately, not a breath later it is followed by a deeper, more quintessential need to make sure Bucky, in turn, needs for nothing, is made safe and kept warm and thriving always—but this has already grown routine, Steve asking and hovering and giving unasked but also more often than not unneeded, and so Bucky’s brow is furrowed, aggravated as much as confused, but his eyes are soft, fond, and Steve will take that.

As long as Bucky is breathing beside him, Steve will take just about anything else that comes with.

“Nag,” Bucky rolls his eyes and grabs for the very tall, very-much-about-to-spill-all-over-when-squeezed mountain of pastrami on the plate Steve’s holding out and takes a bite of the sandwich almost violently, and entirely petulantly, and Steve just grins, and leans in to kiss the corner of his still-chewing mouth.

“You love it,” Steve snarks, because there’s lightness in him; that release valve is letting him feel lightness.

“I love you,” Bucky says pointedly, nudging him toward the table with his elbow. “But could still do without the nagging.”

And Steve knows that. Steve knows that, deep down—hell, not even that deep down, really. He’s aware that Bucky can take care of himself, brilliantly, impressively at that; has and could and does but Steve never wants him to have to, not ever again, and it’s that awareness that pervades, that prevails, that bleeds into so many moments, so many instances where Bucky could be risked, where Bucky could be lost—far-reaching and unlikely in the moment but too much a risk because Steve is not comfortable with any risk to this man, this perfect-moulded part of Steve’s heart and soul, now, that he doesn’t remember how to breathe around the absence of: from the wide-cast possibilities of the cosmos, to the immediate jeopardy, all the alien lasers and searing magic acids, the gun barrels and the bullet holes and the blood, so much blood outside the veins where it belongs, doing something other than serving this one miracle, the one absolute necessity of sustaining this one, singular life that Steve doesn’t think he can hold the world in his hands—or breath in his lungs—without.

“We don’t need more than two on this one,” Steve says when the mission comes up; and it’s true. He would not say it if it wasn’t true, and he would not dent Bucky is rightful place as a member of the team, and he would not put himself at risk for Bucky’s sake or his own, or both—he wouldn’t.

It’s just a lucky boon for his emotional state when the truth helps him out, is all.

“Tony’s even staying back,” Steve adds, fastening the top half of his uniform over the strategically reinforced layers beneath; “and you know how he likes to just show up and flash around his latest suit upgrades. I’m just meeting Thor—”

Bucky turns to him, raising an eyebrow, and Steve catches a glimpse of Bucky’s phone screen: texts. From Thor. Who Steve knows without a goddamn doubt has already filled Bucky in on the milk run and has absolutely asked him what’s holding the two of them up, because Thor would have absolutely assumed Bucky was coming too, because Steve and Bucky are partners, always, and a unit in the field whenever they can be, and Steve’s chest tightens at the thought because how is it that being apart from Bucky feels safer when it’s the worst possible way Steve can think to live, to move in the world, and it’s all so big, it’s all so confusing and it’s tearing itself apart at the seams inside Steve for all the contradictions; it’s tearing Steve apart from the cells trying to hold it together when the world is at war inside him, thrashing through his heart at every turn.

“Tryin’ to get rid of me, punk?” Bucky asks, and his tone is mostly playful, but there’s something that’s pitched like a genuine question, like a real thought that Steve would ever, in any possible way, want to get rid of Bucky, and when those eyes sparkle mischief but hold just the edge of a shadow of doubt? Steve’s helpless but to reach for him. Steve’s helpless but to give.

“Never,” Steve speaks against Bucky’s mouth before pressing a kiss, firm with intent and the truth of it all, against his lips. “Suit up, babe.”

And if he lets a hand slip down to Bucky’s ass to cup it for a breath, and then squeeze; if Steve relishes the little squeak it pulls from Bucky’s throat in the process and the soft, delighted flush it puts on his cheeks, well: Steve’s only human, and the warmth of it all is a balm and a gift as Bucky makes for their bedroom to suit up, only to turn, grabbing the door frame and swinging back toward Steve with a leer.

“Gonna watch?”

And the warmth in Steve shifts quickly to a sear, and Steve doesn’t expect the growl that rises from his chest, but he doesn’t mind it—particularly given how the sound of it darkens Bucky’s pupils so beautifully.

“Hell yes, I’m gonna watch.”

And it is a milk run, and it’s fine, and it’s infinitely better because Bucky is there; because the world is better because Bucky is there—and that realization, once it’s settled and the adrenaline is softened; that realization releases some of the tension in Steve’s muscles, the ache in his bones. But even relief is dangerous, in Steve’s state—it softens him. It makes him forget how hard failure hits when it’s even hinted at; strips the immediacy of why he’s so fearful, and why he’s goddamn right to be, because a life without Bucky may well undo him entirely.

Which is why he can barely stand straight, his legs so close to failing him, as they board the quinjet after their very next mission—decidedly not a milk run. Complete with civilian hostages and armor-piercing rounds that were somehow, somehow up to giving Tony’s designs a run for their money when they hit.

And none of them had got more than bruises for it, and Steve’s fucking grateful for that fact in ways he could never fit to words; and Tony’s got one of their weapons to run specs on, to shore up their uniforms as a priority before they enter the field again—it’s fine. They’re fine.

Except—

“Shh,” Bucky’s hand is on his shoulder, stroking soft but sure up and down Steve’s arm as Steve is processing it all, or better: as Steve is failing miserably at processing anything at all.

Because they’re fine, all of them. Sore, but not even limping. The hostages, on the other hand, had been a real fucking close call—the building they’d been held inside was old, the architecture foreign but even more so for its age, and the age part had made entering safely a problem, because the structure looked unstable to an untrained eye even before JARVIS had run a scan. They were gambling with saving lives from their captors, against burying them all due to structural collapse before they were free.

And it would have been horrifying, it would have stuck like glass in the soft parts of Steve’s chest, when Bucky’d lost comms—when Steve had barked out for a status check, his tone biting as he lashed out, desperate to hear Bucky’s voice, to be able to breathe again; they were mid-fight, and no one else seemed concerned just yet, hell: Tony had tried to reassure him that the tracking tech in Bucky’s uniform was still functional, and showing movement: like maybe there’d be no possible reason for their targets to move a corpse.

Steve managed not to retch at just the thought, but it was a close thing.

“Stevie, you’re shaking,” Bucky breathes against Steve’s temple, now, drawing him close and tucking Steve into his side in the now, where they’re safe; “what’s wrong?”

And it’s not a baseless question, or without feeling: Bucky’d been dark for less than a minute, and Bucky it turned out hadn’t even noticed until he was connected again—weather interference, of all things, that Tony is presently taking very personally; but Bucky’d clocked one of the kidnappers entering the building and heading in from underground, never disturbing the precarious looking entrances to the structure itself, and he’d told the team—even if the message had been lost without him knowing—before he’d followed, and once comms were reestablished JARVIS was able to catch them all up, and they’d moved seamlessly to provide backup, getting everyone out and blowing the building for good measure. And Steve had grabbed Bucky and held him for a long moment in the aftermath, once everything was over, and grounded himself in the fact of the man in his arms; and what was Bucky to think when that had become routine, Steve reaching for him and grabbing and holding after a fight, how was Bucky to know Steve had spent that less-than-a-minute mourning what-ifs like proved fact behind his heart? He couldn’t, he wouldn’t, because Steve had let his weight rest in Bucky’s arms while he remembered how to fill his own lungs with the scent of battle, and being, and Bucky himself but then Steve had straightened, and Bucky’d held to his forearm, gaze sharp as he scanned up and down Steve’s frame, assessing as had likewise become routine for them but, once satisfied, he’d let go, and Steve had stood on his own two feet reliably, and they’d both gone their separate ways to work on cleanup so they could all just head home.

But now, Steve’s shaking, and even Steve isn’t sure why it’s hitting him like this, when it’s been hours and they’re inbound to the Tower within 20 minutes, and Steve’s already touched close to Bucky’s skin, making certain of him more than once in the back of the jet, kissing him just to make him breathless enough for it to be undeniable when he gasps the breath back, sucking in proof of life—Steve knows what’s wrong in a basic sense, and Bucky knows it too, but why now, why still, why in this moment?

“Nothing,” Steve hears himself answer, even though the truth is something else entirely, despite the fact that Steve’s not sure what that something else fully is.

“Don’t lie. You’re bad at it,” Bucky tells him, no accusation in it, just simple fact.

And Steve breathes, and breathes, and breathes again, and Bucky kisses his hairline as he waits, and breathes next to Steve in kind, pressed close while Steve searches out the words, whispers them like secrets with his eyes screwed shut.

“When you disappeared today,” Steve starts, though that’s as far as he gets before his throat tightens, and if he was shaking before now he’s shivering, he’s so cold—and the cold takes him back to loss, to the edges of death and so he leans into the hold of Bucky’s arm around him all the heavier, all the more wholly because for all that coldness whispers of the threat of death, it whispers just as much of the threat of death remaining elusive in the face of everything bright and good and real in Steve’s chest rotting away unending—

For all of that, there is Bucky, and Bucky is warm.

“And I trusted you to do your job and get back,” Steve murmurs, turning his face closer, burying himself into the line of Bucky’s neck; “I did, I do, but,” and his breath catches again, loud and harsh in defense of a sob lodged too close to his heart, bearing down on his lungs, and Bucky: Bucky must feel it, must know it deep in his own bones because he doesn’t hesitate to wrap both arms now around Steve and draw him in, fold his frame, the whole bulk of it crumpled against Bucky’s body like so much paper as he gives Steve shelter, grants unconditional safe haven and quarter for his trembling until he can grasp air steady in his lungs, until he can grasp words again.

“When you disappeared,” Steve finally exhales, swallowing hard enough to feel like it cuts, raw and bloody and straight through his ribs: “Buck, I could barely fucking breathe.”

“Oh, Stevie,” and when Bucky calls him that it bends something, molten and warm and unbearable along the line of Steve’s sternum, like he’s soft in Bucky’s hands, and Bucky doesn’t fail him, never could: he doesn’t let Steve go for an instant, presses his lips to Steve’s hair and holds there, breathes there, exhales around Steve’s body and fuck but Steve feels it, head to toe and through every inch of him and maybe the cold doesn’t dissipate wholly, doesn’t die in the vein but the bulk of Steve is warm, is reminded that the world is warm inside these arms, that his world is warm for the fact of this embrace and the body and soul pressed against him and Steve feels in the beat of his heart something solid again, feels that pulse knowing it belongs, where and to whom in this world and if Bucky’s hand slides to the center of Steve’s chest to hold him all the closer, then Steve just thinks the world feels that much more right for it; feels that much more true.

Chapter Text

It’s only when Peggy’s fingers, cragged but sure, rest against his tellingly-still wrist that Steve recognizes that studying his muse has turned into unabashed staring, unblinking; and maybe a little unnerving to an outside observer, given how he has to consciously unfurrow his brow.

“He’s not going to vanish into thin air, Steven,” Peggy says, softly but still a little chiding. She’s always seen more than Steve would have liked, more than he’s comfortable with, but in this—in this, Steve knows he’s obvious.

So he sighs, and he takes a moment to weigh whether the heaviness in his chest can fit on his tongue just now, whether he can speak the question that’s caught in his throat as he’s closing his long-abandoned sketchbook on the outlines of Bucky’s napping head, finally resting after a long flight back from a tedious mission, his chin tilted just so near the window that it looked like the bright sunset-hued hibiscus outside was tucked behind his ear: sweetly ethereal.

Precious beyond measure.

Steve had felt steady enough to at least go and say hello to Peggy this week—he’d missed last week for the mission already, and he’d planned to make it short, and be back home before Bucky woke from a much-needed nap, but Bucky’d had absolutely none of it: I haven’t seen her in over a month now, Steve, because there’d been SI promotional work as they slowly-but-steadily approach the pilot launch of prosthetic arms with significantly-less super strength, and Bucky’d been unable to come along these past handful of weeks, and Peggy’s been doing well, lately, and she asks after Bucky, and uses his absence to question Steve about their relationship around the rest of their topics of conversation until she tires, or loses time. But it’s fine, and he could have just come next week, but no. No, Bucky’s insisted, and so here they are, mostly just spending a quiet afternoon in each others’ company the three of them, Steve doodling for Peggy’s amusement before he got distracted—and now Bucky’s nodded off, and the vision of him leaves Steve breathless, a soft-soreness holding root deep in his chest.

Steve closes his eyes, steels himself. Bites his tongue until it hurts too much to keep his jaw clenched that tight and he’s left with no choice but to speak.

“When they were putting Project Rebirth together,” Steve says, slowly and so quiet, eyes never leaving Bucky’s lax features, so smooth; the tiny lilt at the corners of his lips. “You were around for the early parts. Planning and stuff.”

“Some,” Peggy hums, though there’s an edge of caution to the sound; “though whatever you’re about to ask, my memory isn’t what it used to be.”

Steve smiles, even if it’s tight at the edges, and while he doesn’t look away from the rise and fall of Bucky’s chest, he turns his hand so that Peggy’s grasp, which hadn’t left his arm, slides against his palm and his can squeeze, reassuring and dear:

“Sharper than most, even so,” and his smile grows just a little when she huffs, catching the fond shake of her head in his peripheral vision.

“Do you know if they,” Steve’s proud, a little, that he gets that much out before his voice starts to roughed; he’s ashamed, a little, that it’s only as far as he gets.

He takes a deep breath, and blinks too many times—takes Bucky from his gaze too many times—as Peggy’s hand tightens in his.

“Did they have any idea about,” he clears his throat, lest his voice crack of its own accord and he can’t recover the pieces; “increased lifespan?”

Peggy doesn’t move for a few long seconds; Steve’s heart’s pounding harder than it has any right.

“My darling,” she finally breathes, and there’s real compassion in her tone; Steve can’t bring himself to listen any closer, just in case there’s pity too—if there’s pity, too, he doesn’t want to find it.

“I don’t know,” she answers, and Steve doesn’t know if that’s better or worse; if it’s anything, or everything, or nothing at all. “I don’t think they spent much time on it, really. You were to be the first of a whole host of soldiers, after all. Perfect in a colloquial sense, certainly,” he hears a smile in her tone, though it’s tight and strained; “but superhuman is still rooted in the latter of the term, and attrition in your numbers was projected to be significant…”

She trails off, and Steve wants to look at her, wants to see her face but he can’t bring himself to look away from Bucky and it hurts, everywhere in him and through him and clenched tight in his chest but ruinous in his veins just as harsh, every second counted by the fear and the need and the ache of everything he knows outweighed by everything he can’t know, wants to and doesn't want to, can’t know, in equal measure and he’s going to split down the seams soon, he can feel it.

He can feel it, but always stronger than that feeling is the overarching, overwhelming necessity of keeping Bucky close, and safe, and here.

“I think they presumed they’d have time to figure it out as they went,” Peggy says softly, or else: it sounds soft. Far away as Steve watches light play over Bucky’s skin. “After the war was won.”

Steve’s nodding, he can feel it, but when he opens his mouth to speak his throat’s too dry; it takes a second, then another, to make a sound, let alone form a word:

“Right.”

Right.

Goddamnit.

Goddamnit. It was never supposed to be him. It was never supposed to be just him, and he knows it now deeper than he ever has, deeper than maybe he’s known anything—deeper than he knew he wouldn’t live to see 25; deeper than he knew he’d never forget or wholly recover from the loss of his mother; deeper than he knew he was doing the right thing, putting the Valkyrie down in the ocean; deeper than he knew, in those final moments in the cold, that if nothing else he’d done with what the serum had given him, at least this would have made Erskine proud—but deeper than anything else in his life, he knows that he’s not supposed to be alone after he’s known what it means to be with someone, to love someone this much, with all of himself so that the veins of him damn well tangle around all the Bucky is and if they’re severed Steve will bleed out and walk as a shell among the living.

It’s not supposed to be just him. Not ever.

Peggy’s hand moves on his, shifts to cover his pulse and it’s the pressure of her touch that makes him keenly aware of how fast it’s pounding; clocks him in to how quick his breath is coming, shallow and weak.

“He’s special,” Peggy murmurs, almost hums, and she groans a bit as she pushes herself up, leans close enough that he doesn’t have to take Bucky from his field of vision in order to see that she’s watching Bucky too.

“To you, of course,” she says, a little wistful but just as much sly; “else this wouldn’t be the first time it’s occurred to you, or else, the first time it’s hit so strongly. Just what kinds of implications the serum might have.”

She’s close enough that she can tip her chin and meet Steve’s shoulder; he shivers when he feels her lips press for a moment against the fabric of his shirt.

“But he really is special, isn’t he,” she muses, and it lights something that doesn’t drive out the terror in him, but does make it cower for enough seconds to be a marvel: pride, in all that Bucky is, and wonder, in all that being offered to Steve of all people, and joy in Bucky being seen for it, known for it, even in small glimpses; particularly by eyes Steve trusts, and knows see value keenly and true.

“Do you think of him, if he’d been with us in the War?”

Steve smiles, and it’s a thing that warms him just for doing, just for breathing out and feeling joy and Bucky shifts in his sleep, chest lifting full and deep and crossed-arms rest over it tightening and then relaxing as he sighs the most beautiful little huff of air and Steve’s mesmerized. There’s no other word that even comes close.

“He’d have been incredible,” Steve whispers, seeing in his mind’s eye fleeting images that have played now and again, thinking of Bucky at his side in Europe in another lifetime, another world in so many ways: still Bucky, and still everything Steve wants and needs that makes Steve better, in every way, just for the fact of him. His existence in the world at all.

“He’d have outshone me at every turn, without even trying.”

Steve knows he sounds starstruck, lovesick. He doesn’t think he could hide either of those things from the world if he tried; he doesn’t want to try, though, not even slightly. It’s so big and it’s so strong and it’s slowly fraying every piece of him but for all the fear it spurs, snags and pulls asunder, it is simultaneously everything, and for as much as Steve’s heart goddamn hurts when it shakes for the worry, it swells, soars so much more.

So much more.

Bucky’s face scrunches and his lashes start fluttering; he’s waking and Steve’s sketch isn’t even half finished, and Steve doesn’t realize he’s trembling, ever so finely, until Peggy leans against him, mostly for leverage as she eases back down wholly into the bed: Steve can turn, now, has to as Bucky’s eyes crack open and he smacks his lips, emerging slowly from his nap and keeping soft with it, safe enough to ease gently, peaceful: slow.

“I’m sorry I have no answers,” Peggy whispers to him as Steve reaches to help her settle onto her pillow, speaking low enough that Bucky won’t even know she’s speaking at all, even if he comes to fully: “but what I can give you is complete conviction that whether you have a second, or you have a century, with a man that makes you look like that,” and her arm extends, her hand reaching and tracing his face, his cheek, his lips, the corners of his eyes:

“Oh, Steve. That’s worth everything.”

Chapter Text

Bucky’s fingers are tangling in Steve’s hair, over and again where Steve’s curled in his lap, and Steve is warm; content.

Which makes it all the more jarring, all the more devastating, when the things that follow, both thoughts and words—the confessions that spill from him unintended and unbidden—run wild; start cracks that threaten shattering.

The wedding in the movie they’re watching is incidental, really. Steve doesn't even know what they’re watching, if he’s honest, which is a shame, kind of—he generally likes what’s in their queue, and wants to see the things on the list. But he’s comfortable, and he’s surrounded by the solidity, the undeniable presence of Bucky, and that’s something he needs more and more every day, it seems: needs it front and center, all the goddamn time, because there’s so much doubt, there’s so much anguish threatening at the edges of his mind, waiting to reach out and consume him in every moment that isn’t spent with Bucky pressed to him as proof against those threats, the losses that Steve want be able to bear if they come too close.

Lying here, though: Steve can just be, and Bucky’s touch pervades, the smell and feel of him the sum total of all Steve knows: perfection.

It keeps every hateful thing lurking at the edges from creeping in; taking hold.

“Can you even imagine, that kind of money on a wedding?” Bucky chuckles lightly, the sound candlelight warm and soft against Steve’s ear pressed against Bucky’s body; the tone of the question largely idle amusement, generic incredulity—doesn’t sound like Bucky’s giving much thought to the film either, and it doesn’t even feel like Steve even needs to respond. If he did, it’d probably make sense to comment on the money, a concept Steve has had wildly different experiences with in his life, from barely scraping by to having back pay in amounts he cannot entirely grasp, plus Tony’s fortunes if he ever needed them—which, of course, are often thrown his way in the form of things-he-doesn’t-strictly-need-and-did-not-ask-for-but-usually-enjoys because that’s how Tony operates. That would make sense; that, or just a hum of acknowledgement, maybe, and turning to kiss Bucky’s flank, or the crease of his thigh.

But it’s Steve, and Steve’s fragile somehow just now, newly so as much as always so, lately, held so taut at the seams of everything he is that even small things snap the threads—and Steve, like that?

Doesn’t make much sense at all.

“I,” Steve swallows, blinks, licks his lips and frowns because the thought is out of his mouth he can square with the truth of it, where it sits sour in his chest closer to the surface than he’d have guessed. “I never really imagined putting me, and a wedding, in the same sentence.”

Bucky’s hand tightens, pulls at the strands near Steve’s neck just a little, and Steve lets out a tight, agonized sort of breath: he can hear how Bucky’s own breath catches at Steve’s words, but only because he’s listening pressed up against Bucky’s lungs. He’d never have known it, any other way.

“I guess it felt unfair? No one expected me to live very long,” Steve huffs, not even sure what’s spurring more words when he should swallow this and just stop but whatever it is pressing him onward it’s shapeless, sure, but strong, and so Steve pushes his face into Bucky’s stomach, buries his forehead against the firm muscle and soft skin like a comfort and a refuge. “Definitely not long enough to give a wife what she deserved, or hell,” Steve flattens his palm against Bucky’s hip, grounding himself as his voice goes rough against his will:

“Not long enough to give a man what he deserved, either, even if we had to keep it to ourselves.”

Steve falls quiet, save for an involuntary whine that catches in his throat when Bucky’s hands stop carding through his hair; but he settles again, listens to Bucky’s breathing as those hands take back to running over him, now from his wrist to his shoulder, an embrace in constant motion, never ceasing. Steve thinks it’s enough: the warmth, the touch, and the fact that Bucky never pushes for more than Steve wants to say in moments like this, about things like this—Steve would tell him everything, hopes he can one day. He just can’t always fit his mouth around the words without feeling like he’s suffocating.

He thinks it’s enough, and that they can lie together like this, and spend the night in the soft kind of quiet that wraps around Steve’s ribs like silk. Like peace.

For all that the words choke him more often than not, he’s apparently not used to them, not used to when they coalesce unasked for, untried for: he’s not accustomed to the feeling enough to stop them before they’re tumbling forth.,

“To swear to love and honor and care for,” Steve slips off; muses; “all that sickness and in health stuff when I was only sickness,” and he doesn’t wholly recognize his own voice, his own tone, but Bucky doesn’t stop stroking his arm, and breathing in slow, and somehow that gives something rooted deep in Steve’s being the freedom to keep going, unfiltered and unthinking: just feeling. Just heart.

“And we definitely were poorer,” Steve says, a rueful curve to his lips and a burn behind his eyes that he doesn’t expect, but doesn’t mind so much in the moment; his mind is running through those vows, the unions he’d witnessed for members of their congregation, for the children of their neighbors in another place, another life.

“But, ‘til death do us part? That bit,” and there, oh: that’s where the edge to Steve’s words start to fray, starts to give and crumble; and Bucky is a rock, and he doesn’t falter, but he does press Steve’s body closer, puts more pressure on the hand that’s tracing up and down Steve’s arm and lower, now, touching firm to Steve’s hip and then cupping his neck, tender as much as it screams safety, and protection, and a need that echoes and meets its twin in Steve’s chest for feeling.

“That part didn’t hold a lot of weight. As long as we both shall live?” Steve shakes his head into Bucky’s stomach, exhaling shaky as Bucky takes one hand and holds Steve close there, steady and sure: unflinching.

“That put a hell of a lot of responsibility on the other party to uphold, if I wasn’t going to be around for the long haul. Like I was cheating something holy, you know? Getting an easy out of a commitment that should have been...” Steve trails off; remembers the handful of people in another life that had caught his eye long enough, and strong enough, to even have the idle thought about such things. Trading promises of any kind, let alone sacred ones. He’d mostly kept to himself, and shared beds only with those who were equally aware there was no view to the future in what they were doing, just pleasure and companionship for the present. It was okay. Sometimes it was better than that: sometimes it was beautiful, for what it was, in all that it was. Steve had been fine with it; happy, even, at least here and there.

For a value of what he’d understood it meant to feel happiness at all, at least. Back then.

Bucky’s hand on his arm has slowed, almost contemplative, and while there’s no clear question in it, Steve feels like there’s something unspoken, something gentling at Steve to say more, to make sense of that thought out loud: Steve closes his eyes and breathes in deep, and Steve knows it’s involuntary, simple instinct when Bucky does the very same, but Steve wants to believe it’s rooted in the way they exist with each other, in and with each other. A language; a communion all its own.

“Seemed like I’d be walking in with my fingers crossed behind my back, if I was offering vows,” Steve sighs, not sure if he’s making sense, but sure that the words at least feel like the truth, even if the truth is shadowy and skewed in the telling. “Didn’t seem like I could be honest about ‘em. Like promising before a priest, or standing before God,” Steve shakes his head and shifts his weight, just enough that he’s propper more on Bucky’s chest than on his middle, so he can rise and fall a little differently, a little more sharply with every breath those lungs draw in.

“It felt like a lie,” Steve breathes out when Bucky does, losing himself a little in the feeling, the concert. “I didn’t want that. Even now, it, it—”

Steve’s mouth goes dry, and he tries to swallow, tries and tries, over and again: Bucky’s hand on his starts adding a detour, a balm, sliding from shoulder across Steve’s chest, rubbing against his firmly, devotedly, and Steve sighs for the contact before Bucky’s touch even starts it’s way back down his arm.

“I know things are different,” Steve whispers, because that’s true. There is definitely a part of him that is absolutely aware of that undeniably fact.

It’s just the other parts of himself that are causing trouble.

“I know things have changed but, in here—”

Steve’s hand goes to his chest, indicative as much as it’s instinctual and he doesn’t plan to catch Bucky’s palm beneath his own there but the keening sound in his throat is a thing he can’t stifle, won’t deny—his heart is pounding, and Steve thinks if he looked down Bucky’s hand in his would be jumping with the force but all Steve can do is breathe, and absorb through his pores, into his goddamn cells the feeling of the man he loves touching him strong and sure and unyielding, unfailing: Steve’s heart in his hands, right where it belongs for...always.

For-fucking-ever.

And the window where there were words that fit, that could roll off his tongue drives closed again at a second’s notice, and all the roiling emotion in him overcomes him in the silence, the words rushing through him with his blood: it feels like I’m still lying but for different reasons now, because what if I can’t be with the person I love most, the person I wanna make those vows to, those vows and so many more to the person I want to give everything I am and everything I have, every piece of what it means to be in the world, and Steve’s pulse trips, and his throat goes impossibly tight but Bucky’s hand on him today waver and it’s both the best thing, the only thing, and proof of Steve’s inevitable ruin because the words his pulse trips around from there are worse, and they threaten to burn him alive:

I’m afraid, I am so fucking afraid of what it looks like if I can’t give the person I love most as long as we both shall live, and what if even trying still ends up being a lie and I can’t lie, I cannot lie to you, and if I can’t give the person I love most ‘til death do us part because, what if, what if it it comes too soon? Or it never comes at all but only on one side, and how can it because I’m so wrapped up in you that I don’t know where you start and I end and it’s beautiful, and I’ve never felt but what if that’s what happens, what if it cuts apart and bleeds for fucking ever, what if it never stops in all the worst ways and—

And Bucky: he deserves better than this. He deserves a person who can love him with abandon, with nothing holding them back. A partner who will see Bucky clearly for everything he is—all the wonder and stunning imperfection that is this singular, ineffable man Steve never thought the world could hold—everything he is, seen fully and embraced with wild abandon, without something as cloying and viscous and vile as fear clouding the view.

And Steve can love. Steve thinks he could strip love like flesh from the very core of himself, every day for the rest of eternity and never run low on this feeling, as powerful and endless and renewing as anything Steve’s ever heard of, or dreamed could be. But if he loves enough for eternity, maybe that’s where he also starts to fall short, to fail this man that he’d carve his heart out for again, and again, and again: because Steve wants forever, and the impossibility of it scares him. The potential for it anyway, possible or not: that kind of horror doesn’t fit in words Steve even knows. Forever, ripped apart. Torn in two. The hearty Steve’s only just realized the fullness of, cracked open and hollowed, never to be filled again, not like this.

Bucky deserves better, and Steve can’t.

But what Steve can do it lift himself up just the slightest bit, hand still covering Bucky’s on his chest and so it’s easy, it’s so easy to to lift that palm to Steve’s lips, and press gentle, almost delicate, wholly reverent as Steve looks up and finds Bucky’s eyes taking him in like he, too, is somehow worthy of the same feeling of worship, as if Steve is worthy of that veneration: unfathomable.

Goddamn breathtaking.

And Steve’s pulse kicks for the feeling of it, that gaze on him so adoring and sure, and he kisses Bucky’s had against before pressing it again to his chest, harder still and desperate for Bucky to feel the way the simple fact of his existence surges through Steve’s being in kind.

If I could grab my soul out of my body, I would give it to you, Steve thinks, and wills the feeling to somehow show in this eyes and pulse in the bounding of his blood: this, the heart of all these fears but more so all this feeling, the heart of him that’s all Bucky’s, that’s wholly and only, Bucky’s; he thinks: I would take every ounce of warmth and heavensent joy that you give me in every moment, and I’d press it into the fucking fibers in the muscles of me, and I’d cut out my beating heart the moment it’s full of it all just to beat the fullness of it, the impossible wholeness of it, I’d cut it out and put it in your hands to know it better than I can speak or name, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m scared. I’m sorry I want so much, and I’m selfish with it. I’m broken like this, I’m sorry I’m not, I’m not—

“I see it, sometimes.”

And Steve starles a little, even though the words are so soft; ever though that voice will never be anything but a balm on Steve’s world: but Bucky’s lacing their fingers, not tight but sure, and lifting Steve’s hand in his now to Bucky’s mouth, kissing Steve’s palm like the making of the universe in the lines of Steve’s skin for the sake of Bucky’s breathing there, hold his lips there and letting them curl into the kind of smile that shine out wonder, that beams contentment and rightness the likes of which the world doesn’t often know: Steve can feel it.

“Sometimes, I see him” Bucky murmurs against the skin of Steve’s hand. “That boy you’re talking about.”

Steve swallows, staring up at Bucky with the whole of himself laid bare in his eyes, he knows it: Bucky keeps Steve’s hand near his lips and just holds there, and brathes; he reaches from the left to stroke Steve’s face, to cup his cheek and Steve’s leans in, turns toward the sun of him unrepentantly, with his entire self.

“I overcompensate,” Steve whispers into the plates, the ridges at Bucky’s wrist, his voice gravelly and jagged at the edges. “My, um, my gait. When I walk, I,” Steve tries to clear his throat, to speak the words stronger, but it’s a lost cause.

“They said I did,” Steve exhales, thin and gossamer, the past a heavy but somehow insubstantial thing in this moment where Steve is held in Bucky’s arms, pressed to his body.

“Trick of the mind, still feeling like my spine was crooked and my back was hurting for it,” Steve shakes his head a little into Bucky’s touch, more like nuzzling, more like seeking that hold all the surer, all the more firmly: “I never did—”

“No.”

Steve blinks, swallowing down the words that had been moving too fast to think about, that stick hard in his throat when he grinds them down.

“No,” Bucky says, tracing his thumb back and forth against the corner of Steve’s lips. “You walk just fine.”

And Steve can do nothing, absolutely nothing but watch as Bucky leads their clasped hands down to rest where Steve’s frame is tucked into Bucky’s, the juncture where they meet and press home, together. Immaculate.

“You look at me sometimes like you don’t understand how I’m here,” Bucky finally breathes; “with you.”

And Steve has nothing to say to that—it’s true, and he hadn’t ever connected those feeling from before to that feeling in the now—it’s so different, now, so much more—but he sees it.

He sees it.

“Like it doesn’t make sense, like I could,” Bucky swallows, and outlines the swell of Steve’s lower lip with his fingertip, considering and a little entranced: “vanish between the second where you blink.”

Steve thinks to just days before, with Peggy seeing exactly that in him; Steve wonders how long it’s been so obvious. He wonders if it always was.

“It kills me, a little,” Bucky says, so softly, so tender Steve shivers with it, overwhelmed with it and so blissfully warm, content inside and outside and through: pervasive and shining; “to think that there was ever a time, a place, a world, where you were made to feel anything but incredible,” and Bucky’s hand slides from the line of Steve’s mouth to cradle his head and lift, to bend and kiss Steve, a claiming kind of pressure paired with a protective sort of promise; “awe-inspiring,” he speaks the feeling, the shape of the words into Steve’s parted mouth, and the unthinkable certainty of them slides down his throat for it, curls through his chest.

“Somewhere and some time where you, your heart, was seen as anything less a fucking privilege to hold for so much as a moment,” Bucky exhales, voice deep and just this side of a hiss, adamant and unyielding, eyes bright—but there’s also something soft and wet in the sound, and Steve’s own eyes sting for it, like salt on the exposed nerve that is his entire body, his entire life surging through it; “let alone as it’s offered, given like the goddamn gift that it is,” and Bucky bows his head to press his brow to Steve’s, cups both sides of his face close and safe:

“That you are.”

Steve—eyes burning and heart humming; mind buzzing and soul soaring—closes his eyes and gives himself over to the trembling that his bones are made of just then: but Bucky’s hands are on him, holding his close and steady, and Steve can shake like the earth moves, but he won’t fall apart.

Not under those hands.

“My heart couldn’t even beat right,” Steve counters, even if it’s weak, eyes still shut and voice wavering; “I don’t think—”

“Don’t.”

Steve blinks his gaze back to focus on Bucky, whose own eyes are hard but somehow damn well spilling out feeling, swollen with the soul of him.

“What matters, what really matters in that heart,” Bucky says, shaking his head and breathing in deep before eases them both onto the couch, prone and side-by-side as he braces both hands, open and heavy; forceful and sure on either side of Steve’s chest: “I don’t for a second believe that hasn’t been with you always. I don’t for a second believe you’ve ever breathed with a heart that was, what,” Bucky frowns, looks both devastated and wrathful, something otherworldly and somehow close to whatever passes for god:

“What, lesser?” Bucky spits it out, hateful at the very concept, incredulous at the mere suggestion, and Steve grows light for that kind of faith. “Found wanting?”

And there’s nothing Steve can say, really, even if his voice were up to the challenge: that much had been true, as far as he’d been concerned. As far as he’d ever known.

“Never.” Bucky’s proclamation of it, though: it brooks no argument, and even Steve—stubborn as he was born to be, and only grew in over time; even Steve can’t push against the steel of it.

“Steve,” and Bucky's voice drops, goes so low and so sincere, so giving and open and soft for Steve to fall into and land glorious if he needs it; to wrap grateful and tight inside if he wants.

“Steve, not ever.”

And Steve: he chooses something in the middle, gathering Bucky’s hands from either side of his chest and bring them to meet in the middle, but clasped so he can drag Bucky to him, closer even now: so he can bury his face in the crook of Bucky’s neck and breathe him in, and feel his every inhalation, and guess at the beat of his pulse between the moments he presses against his neck, the hollow of his throat to be sure he’s got it right, just so.

“Do you understand,” Bucky murmurs into Steve’s hair, holding onto him so tight: “do you even realize how much I love you?”

Steve feels his heart kick hard, maybe because Steve knows Bucky loves him, but to hear it spoken with such vehemence, such fire: it’s the sort of thing that shifts the ground beneath them, and trips up the pumping in his Steve’s chest as a rule for how much it holds.

“You’re like nothing I’ve ever known, or ever even thought existed to know.” Bucky says, solemn and unwavering, and Steve can hear it through where he’s pressed to Bucky’s body, the way the words are given a weight unfathomable for the underscoring of every syllable with the beat of Bucky’s blood.

“I’d want you, I will want you, in sickness, in health,” Bucky kisses the words, the sounds across Steve’s brow; “in every way, shape, or form that you come, that you’ve been, or,” and he pauses, breathes in and out against the bridge of Steve’s nose before he presses lips there, too: “or that you’ll someday grow to be.”

And Steve: Steve is reeling, for all of it. The improbability of it, the devotion and the vows being offered in ways and in shapes and sounds Steve hadn’t ever imagined but that settle in his chest, mould against his ribs like that’d always existed to live there, to slowly coax the bones to give and spread wider to his how expansive what dwells inside has grown.

Steve—and he only dares to think it for a moment, but a moment is long enough for it to stick—thinks maybe vows like these could be something close to ones he could say with a clear conscience, and a heart as full and free as this man deserves.

Maybe.

“Never, ever again, think that wanting you depends on any of that,” Bucky wraps his arms around Steve and brings them fully flush together, chest to chest now so Bucky’s eyes, watching him, are close enough to chart the way their colors shift for feeling: cuts of crystal catching in the eye of a storm.

“None of that matters because you, your heart’s the same,” Bucky tells Steve with the kind of certainty, the kind of conviction that some people place in a god, and stares at Steve with a depth of feeling in saying it that Steve’s sure is what people use to build any faith worth having.

And it’s all being given to Steve.

“Your heart’s the same,” Bucky breathes it again, softer now but no less sure for the way it’s a caress, rather than a claim: “no matter what.”

And Steve feels both buoyant, weightless and undeniably solid, heavy with the feeling of Bucky’s eyes on him, the weight of the words and all that they hold sinking deeper and deeper, pervasive and coming from every direction, pressed into him by Bucky’s hands on his skin so quick and so relentless, so certain that Steve can’t even build up a fight to them, not quick enough to keep them from taking root and shining; he feels both searing, lit up and burning a beacon to the universe for things he never dreamed but at the same time he's frozen, cannot move or speak and can barely breathe: just stare.

Just marvel, and feel the burn behind his eyes like it feels in his chest, as something in him—crucial—falls apart entirely just to be put together by the way Bucky looks at him, the way Bucky’s throat moves around a swallow and dances with the bounding of his pulse beneath the skin: miraculous.

Bucky reachings, and cups Steve’s cheek again but it feels different, somehow—something in it, in them that feels brand new.

“You’re beautiful,” Bucky murmurs, intimate, leans in close not so that they touch but so that Steve feels every breath Bucky takes closer than he feels his own. “Heart and soul, Steve,” and there, Bucky only just moves closer, so his lips brush Steve’s skin with the soft shape of the words, the patterns draw into flesh:

“Body and blood, you are fucking radiant,” and it’s Bucky, really, Bucky and the heat of his lips dragging on Steve’s cheekbone that radiant, like the rays of the goddamn sun: “and you’re so strong. So brave,” and Bucky reaches, holds Steve’s face in his broad palm and tilts Steve into a kiss pressed to the crease of his nose, angel-soft and prayerful for it before his voice deepens, and he bows his head to Steve’s now and Steve leans so wholly, so grateful for that touch.

“And you’re mine,” Bucky breathes, a hint of steel in his tone like the world could dare defy him, but it’d regret it to the end of all things. “And I’m yours.”

And Steve shivers, and leans in even closer somehow, where wholly wasn’t all it could be before; he captures Bucky’s lips with a desperate sort of feeling and even if he’s the one pressing, and aching, and nipping and gasping and going in ever deeper, even if Steve’s directing the motion he’s the one who needs; he’s the one who begs with his mouth for things he can’t name but that Bucky knows, he must know because he gives without question or hesitation under Steve’s lips and Steve moans, he whimpers, he feels washed clean in those moments and when he pulls back only to collapse more fully into Bucky’s body, strung out but sated for it in all the ways he couldn’t speak to but knows so much closer, so much more dear for them being met and filled and lit up with Bucky, Bucky, Bucky.

“I don’t deserve you,” Steve breathes into the crook of Bucky’s neck, boneless against Bucky’s steady, solid warmth, wrapped in Bucky’s steady, solid arms.

“That’s bullshit.” Bucky breathes it into the small hairs at Steve’s nape, and braces Steve to him tighter, chiding almost, but so much more like a promise.

“I love you.” Steve holds his lips to the side of Bucky’s neck, closes his eyes and lets himself fall into the feeling of Bucky around him, the sensation of home made so fucking real it hurts.

“That’s better,” and Bucky’s grin is a soft thing Steve can hear in his voice, but the curve of it, satisfied and gentle, is so much better to feel against Steve’s temple, matched with a kiss there that Steve sighs for, and feels himself float a little inside. “I love you.”

Steve lets himself float a little inside those words, too, for endless moments that might add up to minutes, or centuries, and would never be enough either way. His chest tightens, and his heart knocks fierce but it’s all held so close against Bucky: who is warm, and who loves him, and whose heart is steady and open and giving even when Steve’s can only trip and feel so much, and it’s beautiful. Steve’s so goddamn lucky; it’s hateful that he hurts so much for being so selfish as to want more, for some piece of him to believe so strong that this isn’t enough, when this is everything.

But the fear is there, always, whether it’s hateful or selfish or something else entirely. It’s there now, even when Steve has long melted entirely into Bucky’s arms.

It’s there when Bucky pulls him in and whispers:

“Come on. Time for bed.”

It’s there when they wrap themselves in each other under the covers, and Steve thinks—hatefully, selfishly—that it’ll always be there, but he can handle that, he can be those things so long as he can be Bucky’s, and live inside the way Bucky breathes as he drifts to sleep.

But it’s there, and so the idea of being those things without does not, for one single second, stop from flaying him alive.

Chapter Text

Defining moments in the life of Steve Rogers, were—he realizes now in hindsight—pretty damn obvious in the coming. He’d gotten sick like clockwork with the seasons; his ma had been bedridden long enough that losing her was a foregone, if heartbreaking, conclusion to be expected. He signed up for a war, and once they took him, he knew he’d be forever changed—if not wholly how, and what would come of it in the end. He ran a plane into an ocean: he did kind of expect that to be the end of it, so the fact that it wasn’t hadn’t been obvious, but the fact remains that it was undoubtedly a defining moment, either way. Point is: Steve usually could point out then and there, when something momentous was happening, and even oftentimes when it was on its way.

Until, of course, he met Bucky Barnes.

Now: maybe it’s the fact that Steve’s exhausted, always, in a way that doesn’t always show on his face, or in his body but weighs in his bones something fierce, like no one who worked on the serum ever gave a thought to the way that heartache, or the anxious spiral of a mind maybe made more vulnerable for the effects of scientific experimentation heightening everything about his body, brain not exempt, or maybe that was just what love like this would do to anyone, Steve doesn’t fucking know but he’s exhaused. And maybe that’s why.

Or maybe it’s the fact that they’re just coming off a fight: aliens, because of-fucking-course—unfortunately named ones, too, because why Skrulls?—impersonating politicians to stir up violence, and ending it all in a shootout with weapons Steve’s never seen before alongside good old-fashioned Terran firearms. It’s a shitshow, and Steve is exhausted, but he’s dialed to high alert when Bucky draws fire, again and again and Steve is shaking from the veins of him for all that he has to keep his hands steady, his aim sure because for all that he’s terrified of losing, failing makes losing all that more of a risk and he can’t, he can’t—

And part of Steve wishes it was just the battle, the natural risk of loss in combat that was gnawing away at him, every moment of the day, even when he gets distracted from it by Bucky’s lips, or Bucky’s voice, or Bucky’s smile or his body or his laugh—when he slips back into feeling it full on, Steve can see the damage, the little bits of himself cut down all the worse while he wasn’t paying attention; he doesn’t regret the slips in vigilance, not when they’re always flavored with this man his whole heart beats for.

It’s just evident, is all. When he comes to and the fear rattles around to make itself known, Steve feels that heart, beating for Bucky, absolutely, but pulsing through veins that are just that little bit more strained, have a few new points more frayed at the branchings.

And so part of him wishes that, even if it had to take up this much space a rule, the fear in him was just about a building collapsing, or an explosion in a fight, a hand around a precious neck or a bullet too close to the heart Steve loves more than his own; and he believed it was the bigger terror, for a while. He’d even spoken it, said it out loud to Bucky’s face if only in fragments, choppy little bursts of the honest truth beneath his ribs not because he wouldn’t let Bucky see it, let Bucky fucking live there, safe in Steve’s chest for however long the universe sees fit to keep stretching—but, then, Steve’s slowly coming to realize: that’s the problem, right there.

Because Steve, it seems, could wrap Bucky Barnes in his arms, and wrap them both in a bubble, far from any battle or whisper of war, and he could press Bucky so close to his body that he meshed with Steve’s flesh and lived underneath Steve’s heart so that if anything every could come for him, it’d go through the core of Steve first, would have to somehow best him and end him first—Steve could do all of that, keep Bucky close and safe in impossible ways and, still.

Still, it wouldn’t be enough, would it? Because losing Bucky in battle is a real, horrifying fear. It cuts at him and he feels like he walks around leaving a trail of blood, just drops but steady, endless for it. But that’s not everything. That’s not the fear that holds even that terror in its hands, a component part of what envelops Steve and makes him small, trembling and powerless. Losing Bucky in battle is just a kind of losing, encompassed by the bigger losing:

Time.

And Steve hadn’t put it together fully, or hadn’t let himself see it, not at first, and hell: not for a damn long stretch after, either. Though in fairness: Steve’s always been pretty damn good at telling himself fictions to get through the day. He thought he’d been making progress on that, but maybe he’s got a longer ways to go than he’d have guessed.

But here, now: maybe it’s the fact that Steve’s exhausted. Or maybe it’s the fact that they’ve been in battle, and are now juggling cleanup with taking out the stragglers among their targets where they’re darting out from hiding every few minutes to take refuge somewhere probably in the sky in a fancy spacecraft, to be honest, now that their covers have been made—and so maybe Steve’s that extra bit strung-out, based on context; just place and time.

Or maybe Steve’s heart just hurts, constantly, and it can’t tell anymore what’s only a threat to breaking, versus hands dug in the flesh, ready to rip it clean in two.

It could be a lot of things then, probably, that propel his next moments, his next motions: they’re taking out the stragglers on retreat. They’re on guard even as they start to wrap up the op. It’s not even uncommon; it’s kinda fucking textbook.

When Steve sees the green face flicker back into deep flesh tones from behind a stack of crates, forty yards or so away, and take aim toward where Bucky’s standing, counting bodies for whatever half-assed attempt someone makes at a mission report when they’re back home: when Steve sees the Skrull line up the shot at Bucky—who took down more of the enemy today than the rest of the team because Clint had taken point for recon, identified the targets for Bucky to make the hits while the rest of them had largely been tasked with corralling the aliens toward Clint’s sights, and then inevitably Bucky’s once the information was relayed—but there’s a finger on the trigger and this time Bucky’s in the line of fire and Bucky’s turned away, and maybe it’s irony that Steve of all people sees the threat on his six, when Steve can’t watch a six to save his life but he can, he will, he has to when that life is Bucky’s and so he runs, he takes that serum in his veins and throws it against the laws of physics, of gods and men, and pushes himself to outpace a bullet, to throw Bucky out of the way, to—

“Bucky!” Steve calls out, and it’s a bark of a sound, harsh around that beloved name: he’s a Captain when his heart’s pounding, when his mind’s reeling, when he’s in standing in the wake of battle in his uniform, not close enough to touch the body he breathes for more than his own; he’s a Captain. His voice is a command, and it dodges the heart in his throat somehow, impossibly, because there’s no feeling in the sound.

Because if it didn’t, if it had sifted through that pounding on the way past his lip, Steve’s sure the shouting would have just been a sob, or blood on the pavement.

But Bucky turns, and Steve is just close enough to touch, and the bullet’s trajectory should be simple, should be second nature to Steve because calculating trajectories are one thing he knows; the trajectory is simple, and Steve knows it in his bones because it’s a Earth-made gun, it’s a human weapon, thank god it’s a human weapon and Steve knows how it moves and Steve knows how to thrust the shield out to protect Bucky’s body, to throw himself toward the calculated point of impact and he can do it, he’s so close, he knows this and he is so close—

But then there’s impact.

There’s impact, but not from where he’s expecting, where he’d anticipated the hit: there’s force pulling him forward, sharp and almost violent from the far side of his shield. And there’s a weight settling around him, harnessing his momentum and turning him inward: it takes a moment to recognize what his body knows by rote but the weight is an arm, one he knows the heft of in his bones, and what he’s being turned inward toward is a body, the one body Steve will hold and need and protect above all others, above all things, and Steve hears the rush of his blood interrupted only by the harsh ping of metal off of metal, torrential before he’s spun further and his body takes over where his mind it muddled: Bucky’s turning the shield, still on Steve’s arm, toward the onslaught of bullets to cover them both, but he’s trying, struggling to make sure Steve’s somehow on the inside, that Steve is the one shielded by metal as much as by Bucky’s body and that’s not right, that’s not—

“The fuck—” Bucky lets go and spins back outward, untangles himself from Steve and the shield once the bullets cease, his tone clipped as he looks to Steve, the kind of anger in his gaze that precedes the fight, the hint of a threat to steel against, the preparation for a march to war and Steve’s chest is caving in because the preceding moments—just moments, how was it only moments—but those moments are starting to clear in his vision as much as in his mind: Steve had rushed into the path of a bullet not because that was his primary aim, but because that was the necessary course to keep Bucky safe from the bullet on its way toward him, seeking to rip him apart, rip him from Steve; Steve had run straight into the path of that bullet assuming Bucky hadn’t seen it, because Bucky was distracted, Bucky hadn’t acknowledged the shooter, Bucky had to be kept safe but Bucky had turned on a dime and grabbed for Steve, had wrapped an arm around him that was positioned just so, just so to be certain the trajectory Bucky damn well hadn’t been distracted from would lead the first bullet straight to the plates of his left arm, and not into the flesh of Steve’s sprinting back; had turned them and maneuvered the shield in Steve’s grip so it would cover the, for the second bullet, and the third, and however many bullets made it after before their team stepped in with support, because that’s how this worked. That’s how they worked.

Steve had tried to save Bucky from a nonexistent threat. And in so doing, Steve had left lead to hit Bucky’s body, on Steve’s behalf.

Steve doesn’t know if he breathes, as the realization sinks in, the implications and the repercussions, echoing out with every thud of his pulse that was racing toward a goal, before, terrified and adrenaline-fueled but now races toward a cliff’s edge, a knife’s tip, and Steve feels faint, he feels sick, he’s blinking black spots from his vision.

Steve is coming undone in real time but it turns out, when Steve’s world is crumbling, they must have designed the suit to account for the possibility, because apparently, when Steve is in the field and Steve is Captain America, this heartbreak, of his own making, doesn’t send him straight to his knees—it makes him still, hardens him like steel. He can’t hear anything but a buzzing in his ears, his mouth is dry and his throat feels raw, feels sore but he does not swallow.

Maybe it makes sense, though—if their perfect soldier stepped wrong even once, he’d need to be one of two things: a perfect soldier still, and unflappably so, to right the wrong—or, if the wrong was grave enough? They’d need a sitting duck, to make for an easy target to put down as a lost cause.

Steve has no idea which he is, in the now. Just that he isn’t moving, and he can’t tell if his lungs are filled with air.

And hell, fuck; fuck, but Nat had told him this—this feeling of something so much bigger than love had ever looked like in a masterpiece at the Met, or read off a page in the most fantastical of books, the most epic of myths, or felt like in church pews or at hospital beds or in foxholes; something Steve could never have been manufactured from a chamber to hold between his bones, let alone inside his heart, it couldn’t have been possible because love like this hadn’t existed to plan for, before, if anyone’d even bothered to try—but Nat had told him it hadn’t compromised him in battle, fuck, fuck but maybe that was just tempting fate, maybe that was just the understood you and the understood yet and he’d thought there’d been progress. He’d thought they were where they needed to be, that he was where he needed to be, now, and it was safe but all he can here is the buzzing, and all he can see are the encroaching lines of black in his gaze, and it all spells somewhere ephemeral a singular promise, just one enduring truth:

This is going to snap, this is going to snap, this is going to snap—

“Steve.”

Steve feels himself blink, and he knows it takes too long to focus on the source of the sound; he knows, from the tone of the sound, that he’s been silent, and still, too long already—and hell, it takes too long to hear the tone, even, to figure any of it—and Steve’s sure, to his bones: he is sure that the only reason the sound cuts through at all is because of whose voice it is.

Is because the hands on his shoulders that might just have appeared, might have been there for an age already, belong to Bucky.

“Steve, it was safe, we were all safe,” Bucky is speaking low, and even if his tone hints at concern—which in itself understates the fact that Bucky’s maybe just shy of panic, and Bucky shouldn’t feel panic, not for anything, certainly not because of Steve, Steve who failed him, nearly lost him because Steve himself wasn’t able to process, to protect, to act in the right way at the right time and—

“Clint had eyes on it, the whole time, Tony gave him the veil shots,” veil shots; right. Right, the ones Tony called shield shots and had tried to color-code to Steve’s own frisbee because Tony’s an asshole like that, and the bullets had stopped, quickly, when Steve had charged and Bucky had grabbed him and held them against the barrage as he took the fire because Steve was stupid, Steve was unforgivably stupid, risking the only thing that mattered, by trying to keep it, fucking hell—

“We were all fine,” Bucky’s saying, still, and right: right, Clint had the veil shots and Steve can’t see anything beyond Bucky’s face, won’t look away to check for the telltale remnants of the tech the arrows deployed, a veritable mini-forcefield but it makes sense, it makes sense and he trusts Bucky, and he should have trusted his team, his team who he loves and believes in and yet he couldn’t trust that belief, couldn’t trust himself and he had leapt for that fear and left Bucky in the sights of the enemy—

“We wanted one to question, you know that, you know we did,” and Bucky’s voice doesn’t falter as he tries to get through to Steve, who tries to feel himself under Bucky’s hands, tries to will himself to feel anything, rather than numb and far away; rather than only thinking anxious and endless and reeling: he tries, he does, and Bucky’s voice doesn’t falter but his words come faster, a tell Steve knows well by now: “I was fine, we were fine, it was fine,” and Bucky hands on him don’t move, don’t stroke comfortingly against his arm, have only slipped a little further down to hold fast against his biceps while Bucky’s eyes, that gorgeous predawn grey after the rain: those eyes hold him, even if Steve’s own can’t see straight, can’t focus, and so Steve tries his damnedest to run down the facts in his brain, sluggish still but with the fog slowly lifting the longer he can make out the pressure of Bucky’s grip on his arms.

They did want one, they needed at least one to question, and they’d been waiting, they’d be waiting for the unaccounted-for target to crawl out from hiding, that’s why they’d been standing on the open waiting for backup to come and take said one-alive for transport, they hadn’t just been counting bodies and writing up reports under the clear blue sky, they’d been hoping to draw out the necessary combatant to hand over to Hill when she arrived and they all knew it, Steve had helped strategize for that specific positioning, in fact, even if it’s only just coming back to him wherever sense, and professionalism, and duty had run to hide from fallout of possibly losing his purpose, his reason for breathing even if that possibility had been slim: his heart hadn’t felt it as anything but sure. Absolute.

Steve blinks, and sucks in a deep breath that’s not nearly as shaky as it should be, given everything he’s feeling creeping back into his awareness—Bucky’s gripping at the curve of his neck though, now, and hard; he has to feel the absolute onslaught of Steve’s pulse where the artery curls, and that’s another fact: I was fine, we were fine, it was fine, yes, yes because Steve can feel Bucky’s touch, and if he focuses, draws in the scattered pieces of his awareness, he can feel the soft shift in the air when Bucky breathes, close if not close enough to Steve’s body but real, so real, breathing, real: he’s breathing. He’s alive, and he’s breathing, and his hands are holding Steve upright, pressing Steve together.

He’s fine.

“Nothing would have changed that,” Bucky’s still speaking, fast if not quite frantic, but only just; pitched low but soothing for it.

“It’s okay,” he exhales, and Steve feels something loosen in his chest that leave so many things to fall between his ribs but also letting him breathe fully for the first time in what seems like eternity, and the scent of the battle fills his lungs but it’s nothing compared to the scent of Bucky underneath it, warm and spiced and real, held either side of Steve’s heart so desperate, so needy that it pulls at his muscles, tears at his organs for the greed.

“It’s all okay, all okay,” Bucky’s saying, a little like a mantra as he makes no secret of scanning Steve’s body up and down, gaze quick with it as he takes Steve in, and Steve’s breath shudders as he seems to settle back into the moment, back into his bones and Bucky’s eyes widen a little, and then soften with relief at whatever he finds writ on Steve’s face just then, enough that he bring his hand up to tap at Steve’s chin, such familiar affection in it before his hand steadies back on Steve’s arm.

“Yeah?” Bucky asks, like Steve’s body had spoken volumes, told him truth beyond anything Steve’s words could have even scratched for the surface. “You’re okay. We’re okay.”

And Steve breathes in, and out, and Bucky watches him without blinking until finally, Steve finds himself nodding. Bucky is fine. Bucky’s okay.

They’re both standing. They’re both standing right here.

“Okay?” Bucky asks again, almost the same, close at least, but this time he’s not watching Steve anymore, seems to have gleaned what he needed for checking him over again and again and he looks torn almost, for a moment but only just, maybe not even; he looks torn over something Steve can’t quite grasp until Bucky’s gaze darts around, and Steve’s follows belatedly—their friends, their teammates have already given them space, and Bucky’s hand are only on Steve’s arms, and they’re bowed a little close but they could be having no more than an intense discussion, a private conversation if no one poked closer and what they are to one another is no secret to the people here, but Bucky—god, Bucky—Bucky knows Steve’s a Captain here, now, in this space, Steve holds command and takes it seriously, and if Steve’s going to crumble after freezing Bucky’s going to hold him together until he can come apart in safety, in solitude with Bucky’s hands ready to fit him back in place again, and no one the wiser when he emerges again, and Steve nearly fucking got this man killed because Steve can’t handle the massive truths, the unthinkable weight that’s grown wide and taken root in his own goddamn heart—

“Walk,” Bucky pushes at Steve, not hard but not entirely lightly, either but Steve stumbles a little for it, for how it shakes him from his own head but Bucky—Bucky’s ready, and if he pushes then he’s already prepared to catch and keep safe, and his voice soft but gilded in steel; not a command but a certainty, not a reprimand but a recognition, a seeing of Steve’s need for something even Steve can’t put into words and a meeting of it without question, beyond what Steve’s ever deserved. “We’re going to prep the jet.”

Steve stops, which is really how he realizes he’d been walking, following Bucky’s lead by rote because of course, of course he was: he blinks a few times and turns, taking in the world around him outside of his frantic thoughts and the living fact of Bucky for the first time: he sees another quinjet having landed—Maria’s people, and Tony’s got the Skrull restrained—and Natasha’s talking with members of a S.T.R.I.K.E. team while agents on cleanup start the real work of setting things in order, and fuck, fuck—

“We have to,” Steve starts, moves to take a step forward to help, to be a leader, to be Captain goddamn America, and he doesn’t expect his legs to feel so unsteady on his own, he doesn’t expect how rocky it is just to move, he doesn’t—

He doesn’t get even the full step he tries, before Bucky’s hand is at the center of his chest, stopping Steve’s momentum with his full weight, and blocking Steve’s path entirely.

“No.”

Steve meets his eyes, and he sees what Bucky wants him to see; Steve can tell Bucky’s guarding himself, but he lets a little bit through, and it’s intentional, it’s for Steve: Steve can see fear, which he recognizes first because it’s what he thinks runs through his veins, now, always, and he knows it well enough to read immediately, even through the haze of his own reeling mind, pounding pulse, circulating terror through him head to toe; Steve can see

Steve can see the iceberg tip of heartbreak in those eyes, and that means, that means Bucky isn’t choosing to show him all of it; or he’s not choosing at all, not able to hide all of that hurt and Steve feels the constant burning in his chest take full flame, twist violent in his goddamn soul because this hurt is Steve’s fault, this hurt is Steve’s fault—

So Steve doesn’t give voice to the fact that they both know the jets can ready and pilot themselves, even if JARVIS wasn’t there to go the extra mile on their behalf, just follows Bucky deep into the ship until Bucky stops, and turns, and Steve can’t draw a breath before he’s pulled tight to Bucky’s body, with Bucky’s palms framing his face, and Bucky doesn’t have to say anything, Bucky doesn’t have to say anything for the motion, the pressure, the warmth and the presence to sever some band, some tie holding onto Steve’s resolve and all of a sudden Steve’s trembling, and Bucky might be holding him so tight he’ll leave bruises on Steve’s cheeks and Steve’s reaching, grasping in kind to feel Bucky under his touch, press his own marks to the hinges of Bucky’s jaw, the only pieces of Steve that aren’t shaking, save for the bounding of Bucky’s pulse under the pads of his fingertips and he can’t catch his breath, Steve cannot catch his breath but Bucky doesn’t falter, Bucky doesn’t waver, his heartbeat’s as much a battering ram as Steve’s and that’s terrifying as much as it’s a relief, a synchronicity speaking to the fact that Steve is Bucky’s and Bucky is Steve’s and despite everything, despite everything, they’re here, and Steve cannot breathe but it’s okay, it’s okay. They’re here.

He’s here. With Bucky.

“Stevie,” Bucky’s leaning in, breathing at the shell of Steve’s ear and Steve treshivers for the feeling but then he’s pulling away, and there’s a flash of hurtt Steve sees in Bucky’s expression, less guarded now and it kills Steve to see it at all but it’s killing him more, in this moment, not to be able to know for sure that Bucky’s safe, that Bucky’s unharmed so he’s pulling back and grabbing Bucky’s left arm in both his hands, running scenarios in his head so he can narrow it all down to where Bucky’d taken fire, where the bullets had hit and ricocheted, and Steve can feel it under his hands, the tension turned to softness when Bucky realizes what he’s doing, what he’s looking for—

“Steve,” Bucky speaks his name, almost too gently, holding still under Steve’s desperate checking and checking and checking again from every angle, seeking out the marks, the proof of damage, or of pain.

“You were hit,” Steve says it like it’s an unknown variable; like it’s not a knife in his goddamn chest.

“It just hit the arm,” Bucky murmurs back, still so gentle, too gentle and Steve’s eyes snap to his.

“Your arm,” Steve hisses out low between clenched teeth, his heart in his throat and his grip so fucking tight at Bucky’s left bicep, and then at the elbow just the same: Steve doesn’t fucking care which arm, save that this one means Bucky’s not bleeding—it’s all Bucky, and he’ll be damned if there’s a difference when it comes to keeping Bucky safe, to protecting and caring and needing the whole of him and it’s all too much, it’s all too fucking much—

Steve’s on the very precipice of a sob when Bucky’s grabbing him, and hauling him close, and kissing him so fucking keep he has to taste the tears, he has to breathe the air into Steve’s lungs on his own because Steve doesn’t have the room, or the will to do it without him. Bucky kisses him like the world’s ending, until Steve finds the will to breathe beside him again, and the space around them feels solid once more; stops spinning.

Bucky pulls back, and they’re both panting, and Bucky’s hands go back to cupping Steve’s cheeks and Steve leans in, lets Bucky support his weight almost wholly as he leans his forehead in, meets Bucky halfway and breathes, and breathes, and breathes.

And eventually, Steve looks up. And in hindsight, at least, Steve can see it, even if he couldn’t predict it as well as he should have: defining moments.

There’s a familiar wounded hinting in Bucky eyes is more a glaze, a shimmer that might be what tears look like before they think to really form whatever it is—it’s familiar not because Steve often sees it in Bucky’s own eyes, but because the feeling it puts between Steve’s lungs is something he would know by touch alone; and there’s no wound, there’s not even a mark for Tony to buff out but in this moment there’s no denying that Bucky is in pain, Bucky is hurting, and nonetheless Bucky’s wraps around him, breathing and giving to Steve, and why, why should Steve get that sanctuary when Bucky took the bullet, in the end. And Steve not only failed to stop it, but he may well have been the distraction that caused it. Steve.

Steve.

So many defining moments. They should have been obvious. The should have been so obvious.

Steve’s been living half-terrified for weeks, maybe months now: but fuck if that fact doesn’t scare the shit out of him.

Chapter Text

“Steve?”

It’s just his name. It’s just his name, in the voice he loves most. The voice he loves most, belonging to the man he loves more than life, more than the whole universe and every possibility the entire breadth of existence holds. All of it. Anything

It’s just Steve’s name, in the most beloved voice from the most beloved lips and it should not, it should never, make Steve’s heart drop the way it does just now.

It’s wrong. It shouldn’t be possible.

Though, to be fair: Steve’s not sure he deserves anything less.

He puts his keys down by the door, and shrugs out of his jacket; he’d known Bucky was going to beat him home today, because Steve was the one who had to go to DC for meetings, and they’d texted when those meetings had run over. Nothing is different, between them. They’re not closer, or further from each other. They sleep as close together, they touch as often, they hold as dear as they’ve ever done.

It’s just Steve’s mind that’s frayed, his nerves that are shot; it’s just Steve being so incredibly overwhelmed, overcome that makes that beloved sound clench like ending in his chest. Makes the bag of Thai takeout—his favorite—mock him from the table when he walks through the kitchen, makes him feel defeated, broken in advance when he thinks of it as a consolation, as a way to soften some blow Steve should have fallen for on impact, crumbled around irredeemable, unsalvageable, long before now. It’s Steve who takes the nearness, and the softness of touch, and the way Bucky’s not just what lives in his chest but is everything in his chest now; it’s Steve who cannot help but take gratitude and wonder and turn it into fear and loss, who can’t stop the creeping stench of exploding bodies, or the rushing sound of bullets on approach from forcing him to recognize that he can’t quite remember the feeling, can only acknowledge the textbook-truth of the fact that he once existed in the world without Bucky Barnes beside him, making up all the parts of Steve’s world he loves most. It’s Steve who cannot separate love from loss, inevitable loss when he looks in the mirror and sees Bucky sleeping in the reflection, peaceful and perfect and Steve’s own face is haggard and anxious, but young, so young and Bucky’s is too, for now; he is too but what if, what happens when, and what will Steve even do then if he cannot remember, cannot hold in his mind the way that it felt once to walk in a world without—

He’s sick to his goddamn stomach as he rounds toward the living room, where Bucky’s sitting on the sofa with a book, where Bucky’s immediate reaction is to turn eyes on Steve that are as soft and bright and sure as ever; Steve’s sick to his stomach and he doesn’t know why, save that he knows exactly why, just not the words to wrap around and make it known outside his frantic pulse.

“Sit down,” Bucky says with a tiny smile, something fond-close-on-adoring in it that thumps hard in the pace of Steve’s heart, and it’s only then that Steve realizes he’d been hovering, motionless. His eyes sting for more than just how wide they’ve grown, no matter that he can’t see anything past his own fears just here, just now.

“Breathe, asshole,” and Bucky’s next to him, then; has gotten to his feet and crossed to Steve because despite the urging, and the gentleness of just—just love in Bucky’s grin, Steve apparently still couldn’t move, and he needs Bucky to lead him to the couch and to settle close enough, body to body for Bucky’s warmth to be clear and full against Steve’s side, because of course Bucky’s there, of course Bucky knows what Steve needs without words, and Steve just needs, he needs so goddamn much—

“It’s not bad.” Bucky pulls him closer, or maybe leans in: he presses his lips to Steve’s temple and just rests there, speaks there while Steve lets his eyes close and tries to focus on that point of contact and nothing else in the world. “I just want to talk.”

Steve snorts; chokes a little. “Those aren’t good words, Buck,” because Steve may not have the most experience with relationships, but he sure as hell knows that much.

“Been talking to Nat too much, huh?” Bucky shoots back, but doesn’t stop speaking straight against Steve’s skin and for that Steve is grateful; for that, Steve can feel his heartbeats as separate, racing things but no longer a full-on haphazard hum. He can feel his lungs at least trying to draw in breath.

And he feels it, all of it, against Bucky’s lips, right up until Bucky sighs, and wraps an arm around Steve and tucks Steve under his chin, like Steve is a sacred charge to protect against whatever the universe is bringing to his door, including whatever words are to come.

“You can’t keep this up.”

And Steve focuses on the specifics of the phrasing, as best he can in the whirring of his mind. You: Steve, himself. Bucky’s not saying something Steve’s done is making Bucky incapable of doing this, of being like this.

But still: this. This, meaning, meaning…

Them, but no. No, for all that Steve fears and doubts, he doesn’t doubt that. He dosen’t doubt what they are, what they have. That particular blessing is, in fact, probably what makes the rest of it hurt so damn sheer.

He doesn’t mean to whimper, to almost whine when Bucky frames his face and draws him slowly from his safe place in the crook of Bucky’s neck, both palms steady and pressed heel to fingertip to Steve’s skin as Bucky leads him to sit up a little, to look Bucky straight on and meet eyes that Steve doesn’t think could hold more genuine feeling; more than Steve’s ever seen there before, and he’s never wanted for affection from Bucky, not in the slightest but maybe Steve hadn’t been desperate, hadn’t been looking like he is now; or maybe Bucky sees in him the thing he can’t speak out loud, not for lack of trust but more for lack of strength: he needs.

He needs it spelled out clear, because his heart is a battering ram, and his mind is a goddamn hurricane, and he cannot be left to second guess even the most fundamental of truths.

And then Bucky lets him go, at the jaw to brace both hands for a stretch of moments on Steve’s shoulders; slides to his biceps and does the exact same, watching the motion of his own hands touching Steve, innocent but so fucking filled with care that Steve could disintegrate into it happily but then one hand trails over to the center of Steve’s chest, and with one hand on his arm and one hand against his sternum, held tight until the gasping beneath starts to settle, if only just: in the middle of it, Steve feels in his body before he recognizes with any coherent thought the parallels, the things that touch, that kind of touch means, in Malibu and in the wake of a firefight, in their bed—that touch, both hands, the words they holds:

“You can’t Steve,” Bucky speaks softly, looks up under his lashes and now the feeling is just as big, but sadder. “Not this,” Bucky shakes his head a little, like he’d maybe gesture with a hand if his hands weren’t dedicated to the task of holding Steve together, and making him know that he’s treasured, somehow. Impossible and absolutely true.

“Not this whole,” Bucky starts, and he grimaces a bit, and Steve gets it, he gets it and he makes himself meet Bucky in the middle because it’s the least this man deserves from him; the least Steve can do—

“Kid-gloves thing?” It’s not what this is. But it’s what this looks like, at least a little, and they both know it. Bucky looks up and pins him with all that feeling, and now? Now, there’s sharpness. There’s a solid, immoveable intent there that sends a shiver up Steve’s spine.

“That, yes,” Bucky watches him, unblinking, and the need for it to be clear and seep into Steve’s being, to be understood without a single hint of uncertainty, is clear enough to tremble in Steve’s blood.

“But this,” then the hand on Steve’s chest starts to press harder, and the hand on Steve’s arm goes back to Steve’s face, stroking back and forth and Steve feels fragile but precious; like being cared for is maybe something he’d forgotten, or had never known to feel like this before. He’s cracked in so many places that breathing seems precarious, always, but here, here with this man he can do it; he can do it because those hands are never going to let him falter, let alone shatter on impact.

But he also feels like he knows this, from Bucky,

“You’re killing yourself, Stevie.”

It’s almost a whisper, and Steve meets Bucky’s gaze full on then only to find the heartbreak there unbearable; whatever Bucky sees in Steve, for all that Steve failed to hide, whatever Bucky thinks of when he thinks of Steve killing himself, straining himself, putting himself in jeopardy, losing and being lost—Steve can’t stand it, but he also doesn’t fully understand because losing is the point, dying is the whole point and how is Bucky fearing it when it’s Bucky that’s irreplaceable, that’s important in ways Steve doesn’t know words for, didn’t have space for in his own soul until they met and this grew to be so big, so full, and Bucky’s hand caresses his cheek still, and his palm rubs circles over his heart, still, and there will no future, with those hands on him, where Steve is torn to pieces that can’t be picked up, can’t be patched stronger than before.

But that’s the point: that’s the point, the space where those hands are gone—

Steve can’t falter, he has to stay focused, he has to protect and he can do better, he can do better and keep the weight from Bucky in the process, he knows he can.

“I’m not,” Steve starts to shakes his head, but the motion just rocks him closer into Bucky’s hold: “I’m—”

“You’re not just your muscles, babe,” Bucky murmurs, low and deep and less a confession and more a decree, like Bucky’s word holds truths Steve could never even see, so much as hope to accept on his own. “And it’s not just in the field, this thing that’s eating you.”

Steve glances up and sees more thoughts Bucky’s not giving voice to, more ways that Bucky’s seen, more ways that Steve’s failed to manage to keep his needs from bleeding all over Bucky in the process of trying to meet them; from hurting Bucky as much as the threat of Bucky being hurt destroys Steve at a breath. There is so much in those eyes, and every blink that hides them feels like an eternity; feels like Bucky sorting through what comes next and Steve can’t breathe until Bucky sighs, and his shoulders shift the slightest bit but all resolve, and then Steve’s can’t breathe because Bucky’s going to say something, and Steve knows in his bones it’s something that could break the world.

But Bucky’s hands don’t leave; his touch doesn’t falter on Steve’s skin and so if the world breaks, it won’t end. Not now.

Not yet.

But then Bucky watches him, quiet for long seconds first. Bucky steels himself, and Steve’s heart thuds hard and he can’t swallow around it; it’s a new kind of fear. Steve wasn’t wholly convinced there were any kinds he didn’t already know.

“I want,” and Steve startles, just a little, when Bucky finally speaks but it’s not just for the suddenness, it’s for the tenor: a roughness in Bucky’s voice that’s more tattered than tears, but so much soul, so much unmitigated honesty and clarity that Steve is rendered breathless in ways just as novel and unknown. The sound lingers, resonates and echoes through the space and through Steve’s veins and it could be the beginning of something, he knows that on balance, but Steve can help but know deeper that it’ll point toward an end.

“I want to be the kind of man who says you’ve got carte blanche,” Bucky says, but when Steve takes a breath, he notices that Bucky isn’t looking at him, not holding his gaze; he notices that Bucky doesn’t sound like he really wants to be that kind of man at all; “the one who says you’re free to go if you need to, if you just can’t,” and Bucky’s voice cracks a bit, and it fractures something left inside Steve, unexpected, that still remains to splinter; “or if you thought it was possible and now, having tried, you know it’s not.”

And spelled out, said like that, resonant with Bucky’s throat working hard around swallowing after: like that, Steve can’t stand it. Like that, Steve can’t even imagine any of it: what could he have thought possible, probable even—what fucking certainty, even, in the whole world could have ever made Steve believe that there was anything but to try, but to give, but to hold and to love and to keep his man for as long as god or fate or the universe or Bucky himself would let him?

“But I’m not that good of a man, Steve,” Bucky says, a self-deprecating grin on his lips for it, not even touching his eyes. “I’m not that strong.”

But that’s the lie, isn’t it. Bucky is the strong one, Bucky is so much stronger than Steve could ever hope to be.

“I’m in love with you.”

Steve will never get tired of hearing that, not ever, but like so much in these moments it feels new, spoken in a cadence that feels all-consuming when Steve had long since thought himself enveloped, reshaped in the wake of those words. “I love you so much I can’t stand it, except it’s the only thing in the whole goddamn world that I want to hold and keep.” And that.

That’s not a lie at all, and Steve’s eyes burn for how much it means.

“And sure, of course, you’re free to leave, as much as anyone is,” Bucky says, blinking too fast before he sucks in a deep breath, holds it so his chest is full and brushes Steve’s, held still where Steve’s is heaving, overwhelmed before he exhales slow, and looks at Steve in a way that’s somehow hollowed out, just the bones and the barest pieces of all that be is, but at the same time wholly himself, more brilliant and perfect than Steve could ever dream.

“But I’m not going to stand aside and let it happen without a fight,” Bucky shrugs, and his grin is less sad, turns into a press of lips together that speak only to resolve: “I can’t.”

“Buck—” Steve tries to find words, but the name comes out more like a gasp, and there’s nothing waiting after. There’s just Bucky, his name, his being, and the shape of him in Steve’s heart so permanently etched that the mere idea of there being any standing aside, or any need to fight to keep: it’s absurd.

How could he have ever even hinted at it being anything less?

“What I can do, if you want,” Bucky hedges, just a little; and even that little bit, it’s not like him—it’s not like him, to even have that little bit of unsureness, and that snag Steve’s attention all the clearer, all the more unwavering where it’d already held Bucky as the wholeness of all things.

“What I will try, to do, is help you figure this out,” and the words come a little halting, but not because they’re uncertain; it’s because Bucky’s struggling, like Steve struggles, and that parallel is baffling to Steve in a way but is also double-edged sensation: a searing and a balm—he isn’t alone even where he should be. He’s never been alone, even if alone is what’s to come.

“I can help you, in every way a soul can try, to figure out how we move forward,” Bucky tells him, stronger than any vow Steve’s ever heard spoken aloud before this moment. “Because I want that. I love you, and I want that,” Bucky leans in, then, and presses himself cheek-to-cheek against Steve’s face, and rubs stubble gently there with an intimacy beyond words, breathes Steve’s breaths in and kisses the line of his jaw, the pulse at the hinge.

“I want to move forward, with you,” and that’s when Bucky’s hand leaves the center of Steve’s chest while Steve’s heart’s still pounding, so without the pressure it almost feels like it’ll breath free, but then both of Bucky’s palms are braced on the sides of Steve’s neck, the pulse there just as torrential, just as violent as he pulls Steve in, tips their foreheads together and lets them both savour the space, the sharing of breaths that close.

“I want to be with you, and hell,” Steve feels Bucky sink into where they press together, keep each other upright; he can feel the flutter of Bucky’s lashes as they slip closed and he murmurs, fractured and broken and desperate but for all of it, never hiding a single inch of it: not from Steve when he breathes:

“Hell, Steve, but I want you to want to be with me, too.”

If Bucky’s hand were still at his chest, Steve has to imagine Bucky’d feel the cracking, real and unforgiving straight through his sternum, a clean line down his heart: he’d have to, but his hand’s not there, and all Steve can do it follow Bucky’s lead, and let him see it.

All of it, nothing hidden.

“I do,” Steve whispers, love and want and need and all of him in a way he’s never even thought to reveal himself; things he didn’t even think he’d left covered up, he can feel the air hitting, the sting like an open wound but he knows it’ll be better for it, it’ll all be better for it because Bucky will see it, and know Steve’s heart in the place Steve hid every from himself, at least a little, maybe almost fully: Bucky will know, and damn the way it burns in the process of baring it full where it spills out so Bucky can see it, every goddamn beat that races and trips because of this man, because of everything Steve never thought he could feel before and is drowning in now, and doesn’t ever want any other way.

“Fuck, I do,” and Steve reaches, blindly but sure, and knowing exactly where to grab when he takes Bucky’s hands in his own and laces their fingers inextricable; he squeezes them tight and brings them up between both their chests, his lips dipped down to Bucky’s fingertips, the whorls of the prints like a touchstone Steve can write his future inside, maybe.

Maybe.

“That’s the only thing, I,” Steve’s voice breaks, the air in his lungs choked off and he struggling, and Bucky grips his hand harder, pulls Steve closer and that helps, because it’s Bucky and he’s nearer and his even more undeniable, and that will never do anything but help.

“I wish,” Steve starts, but that’s not it. That’s not it, and Natasha had told him to talk, to speak words that mattered, and Steve doesn’t have a goddamn clue how but his heart’s pounding wild in the open air for Bucky to watch it and know, and for the first time in so fucking long Steve’s not afraid of this.

He doesn’t know if it can last, and if so how long, but he’s not afraid, and his breathes, and Bucky breathes with him and he can try.

He can try.

“It’s hard, in my head,” Steve whispers, a secret still but unveiled. Not hidden.

“I know without this,” he nods down to himself, his body, his muscles, and implies their reason as best he can. “Without it, I’da probably never made it past 25,” and Bucky stiffens, tense at the suggestion and again: Steve’s struck by Bucky’s reaction to even the theoretical loss of Steve. He knew they loved as equals, but he hadn’t, he didn’t—

He’s struck by it. It shivers in the naked chambers quivering under Bucky’s gaze.

“And if I’d never made it past 25,” Steve turns his head, so that his cheeks is pressed to Bucky’s again, and his lips are at Bucky’s ear to breath: “and then I’d never have met you, and that’s,” Steve trips, his breath catching again as he forces out: “that’s unacceptable.”

That’s a fucking understatement.

“And still, at the same time, I just want,” Steve shakes his head, and swallows hard, and wonders if it counts as hiding if he doesn’t even know how to put the feelings, the fears into words. He thinks, though, that it’d be wrong, hiding or no, not to try.

Bucky deserves everything Steve has, even his fumbling; even his failures, so long as he tries.

“They can’t even tell me if I’ve got fifty years, or a hundred years, or a thousand, and fuck,” Steve feels the tears well in his eyes and doesn’t know if they’ll fall; doesn’t care, doesn’t fucking care: “but I just want to be able to hold you for the rest of my life and know that, when the time comes, you’ll hold me, or that I’ll,” and they fall, then, he thinks they do at least, shaping the words to come and feeling them digging nails in his chest: “That I’ll follow and then—”

Steve breaks off, and his cheeks might be wet but Bucky’s are too, and they’re pressed to close then, so close that Steve doesn’t know whose pain, whose terror, whose mourning in advance is whose and it doesn’t matter. They’re not alone, and Steve wraps his arms around Bucky and pulls him close enough that Steve can’t feel any single centimeter of himself not touched by that necessary heat.

“I want us to grow old together,” Steve chokes, the sob in his throat needing release, so fucking tight: “I want—”

“Steve.”

And Bucky’s hands, both hands, are on Steve’s arms and he’s pulling back just from the middle, from the waist so he can look at Steve and wipe the salt-streaks from his face where Bucky’s own stay put, unashamed: he leans in and kisses the tear-tracks and Steve shivers because it’s intimate, it speaks straight to his soul and it’s a reason to start shaking, and his body needs to tremble for this, for all of this.

“I don’t pretend to know what you’re feeling,” Bucky forms words, the shape of his lips a tangible caress for every syllable at the corner Steve’s mouth. “But I see what it does to you. And I just want to take that hurt away, even a little of it if that’s all I can touch but,” and then Bucky’s shaking his head, then Bucky’s sliding to the side just enough to kiss Steve soft, chaste and yet hemorrhaging emotion in a way Steve wants to swallow, to breathe in and keep inside his every cell until the goddamn end of time.

“I’ll do anything this side of the grave, or the other, because this?” And then Bucky’s stroking the tender skin beneath Steve’s eyes with gentle thumbs, and smiling wet up at Steve with so much in it, so much and Steve will burst, Steve will come apart but Bucky’s got both hands drying Steve’s tears and he will not break forever. He will never break forever so long as those hands don’t leave—

“This, Steve. I can’t believe this ends,” Bucky whispers, and Steve can’t stop the sob from rising up and slipping past his lips, so broken and so consumed by need but Bucky just slips his touch to Steve’s temples, and leans to replace the stroking of his thumbs with the press of his mouth as he says, all wet laughter born of awe:

“It’s so much,” and it is, it is so much; it’s so much more than Steve imagined could ever be. And maybe that touch doesn’t have to leave, if that’s true; maybe it’s a fool’s hope, and a pretty fantasy, but the way it beats in Steve’s chest is steadier, more right than his pulse has felt in months, and maybe that touch won’t leave, just change, and Steve knows change well enough: Steve can weather change if it means Bucky’s always there, somehow.

Except, even so; except—

“We might,” Bucky seems to read his heart quicker than Steve himself makes any sense of it; not even a surprised. “We might grow old together,” and god, god, but Steve hopes, he hopes—

“But not knowing, not knowing for sure that it’s even possible, I,” Bucky looks at him, so much sorrow in his eyes, the empathy a little sour but so soft, like a balm that cold to the air but heals in an instant.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky speaks again into the tiny part of Steve’s lips; “I’m sorry you have to wrestle with this, all this,” and his hand moves up and down Steve’s jaw line, and Steve closes his eyes and just leans, and feels as Bucky tells him, indisputable:

“You never deserved this part.”

But Steve can only shake his head, and only just at that; he cannot shake Bucky’s touch away. He can’t.

“Came with the package,” and that’s true, even if Steve didn’t know it then. Didn’t think, wasn’t wise enough to imagine. His own fault for leaping without a thought to the consequences of a miracle that never should have been possible, and more than that: one offered to him.

“I will grow old, Steve,” Bucky says, and it’s solid, it’s true, and it’s a sharp kind of reality, but Steve knew it already; Steve’s been sitting with it festering for so long now, it’s almost a comfort to poke at the throbbing mess of it all but somehow, in Bucky’s voice and with Bucky’s touch and just, with Bucky, it’s like a cleansing; it doesn’t close the wound but it starts to fight the infection, the way it burns and bleeds. “That might be the only certain thing we’ve got in the cards, here.” And Bucky looks sad, and Bucky should never be sad to be everything that he is, to be the person, the whole-hearted, sure-souled human he is, beyond Steve’s wildest dreams.

Steve won’t stand that for a second; but he also won’t stand it for the lie that it speaks.

“I love you,” Steve immediately states that foundational truth that keeps the Earth spinning: “that’s a certain thing.”

And Bucky smiles then, without so much sadness, closer to how he should.

“I will grow old, and we love each other,” Bucky nods, and that’s better. That’s much better, but then Bucky sobers, and Steve wishes he wouldn’t, even as Steve knows that he must.

“So the question is,” Bucky leans back, and cups Steve’s hands in both of his and just holds them to his lips for a second, not a kiss but a promise somehow, still, before he gathers them under his chin where Steve can feel the swift-steady pulse there and still see Bucky’s eyes when he speaks words that flip Steve’s heart in his chest:

“Will you have me for the ride up, however it looks, for as far as it goes?”

Yeah, yeah: those words flip his goddamn heart over in his chest, more than once, and then stretches the damn thing like taffy for how much bigger it has to become to hold any of this, to keep it close and make it stay, and it aches but it’s beautiful, it’s so beautiful and these vows dance between Steve’s ribs like a song, and oh.

Oh.

“God,” Steve marvels, eyes so damn wide. “Of course I will have you,” and Steve presses their hands between their chest as a matter of course, as a matter of necessity as he leans in and captures Bucky’s mouth, consumes him less to take him in and more to help him taste just a scrap of all that Steve’s feeling coursing through his very being, recomposing his very soul.

“I’ll have you, as long as you’ll have me. I’ll have you, I’ll need you, I’ll want you,” and Steve kisses each proclamation, each vow for itself, a each separate piece of everything Steve’s already become for this, for them, and everything he’ll learn to be from here, more joy than pain because whichever pervades, the joy will always mean more.

“Til the end of the line, Buck,” Steve sighs against Bucky’s open lips, against his panting breath; “and as far as it goes beyond that, whatever happens, I’ll…”

Steve falters, a little lost inside so much feeling, so much relief alongside the unknown, the things that keep him up at night and in this instant it makes him dizzy, because it all feels right, if only just for now. He falters; but Bucky’s there. So he can, and it won’t come to ruin.

“We ran at this quick, Steve, because that’s what this is,” Bucky draws back a little, and Steve whimpers for the loss, but his eyes bore into Steve, then, strong and sure and full of more feeling than Steve thinks he’s maybe every seen, save he thinks it’s the only thing Bucky’s ever given him, and that might just prove the point being made. “We started strong, because what else do you do when your heart’s found its mooring, huh?”

He’s not wrong. Steve feels those words ping the exact same note, the exact same string in his chest like someone plucking his goddamn heartstrings. They ran fast, they fell fast, and they haven’t stopped once because there was no choice worth making, save this one, together and true. Days, to weeks, to months, to now when time almost seems irrelevant, save for how much Steve’s focused on how little might be left—but focused, that way, because this is everything he’s ever dared to wonder for, to hope.

But time isn’t irrelevant. Past, or future, or present right here, beating blood between them. And maybe that’s it, right there. Maybe that’s the seed that needs watering, needs to bloom, that’s been pushed away from the light all this time for the wrong reasons, because it hurt too much to look at straight-on.

But what if it hurt, because it was too bright; what if it hurt because it was the goddamn sun?

“Now, maybe, we just have to learn things, and maybe some of that happens slower, maybe some of that’s just working at the care and keeping a little bit different,” Bucky doesn’t look away, not for an instant, but his body knows Steve’s body to the millimeter, to the breath, and he reaches to laces the fingers of his left hand with the fingers of Steve’s right: perfection. “And learning? That we can do. We can do that together, if we want.”

Steve wants, Steve wants so goddamn much he can taste it.

“I don’t think there’s anything,” Steve says, a little slow with the words because they’re so heavy, they hold so much; “I don’t think there’s anything in the world I want, like I want that, I don’t think want’s even a word, except for that, I—”

“Then let’s do this,” Bucky cuts in, and it feels necessary, it feels like the only possible place they can be. “Eyes open, let’s do this.”

He draws back further this time; Steve didn’t realize their legs were tangled where they sat together the way that they are until Bucky’s not pressed against him in another other way, and yet it’s beautiful; Steve’s a little drunk on it, Steve’s a little giddy, Steve’s a little broken but he thinks he can imagine the pieces fitting again, and maybe not having to break so often anymore.

“Let’s be together, Stevie,” Bucky watches him, breathless, and his eyes shine so bright: “To the end of the goddamn line.”

And: yes. Yes, that.

That, and so much more; so much further besides.

Chapter Text

Steve calls the next morning; the very next morning.

He waits until Sam would be done with his run—Steve doesn’t bother with his own, not today, just sits on a park bench and stares at the pond in front of him until the time he knows Sam will be heading home after a cool down, because Steve’s needy, but he tries not to be selfish—but he’s calling Sam, the very next morning.

“To what do I owe the pleasure this lovely morning, Captain Small-Ass?”

“You’re a dick.”

“That’d be your opinion,” Sam volleys back. “Your better half thinks I’m hilarious.”

“My better half is a big fan of my ass just the size it is, too,” Steve scoffs, but then he sobers, because he’s barely even reached out to Sam beyond missions and a few stray calls as Sam’s worked on relocating to NYC—a longer and more paperwork-riddled process than Steve thinks even the government can defend—and yet Bucky’s apparently talked to him, because there’s an implication there that Bucky’s recently found Sam hilarious, or consistently finds Sam hilarious, and Steve’s been in his own head, he’s been so tangled up, and he’s been such a shitty friend—

“You’ve been going through it, man,” Sam derails Steve’s internal monologue unexpectedly, and Steve’s not sure if Sam’s just using his weirdly preternatural gift of knowing what a person’s thinking when it comes to feeling stuff, or if Steve’s said some of his own thoughts out loud without meaning to.

“I am sorry, though,” Steve says, abashed and ashamed, but Sam doesn’t let him stew it in, because Sam’s a better man than most people deserve.

“Even if I couldn’t have guessed it prior to, after the whole Skrull thing in Sufind?” And Steve can hear the grace in Sam’s silence because he’s not going to describe the way Steve fell apart and froze; Steve hadn’t bothered in the moment to think about the way Bucky had ushered them so quickly to the quinjet, the way no one had interrupted them, the way they’d been ensconced in the back on their own the whole ride home, with no member of the team crossing their way: it would have been obvious.

Steve breathes out slowly, and swallows the shame that rises up automatically as realization dawns: he can’t get lost there. In fact, that’s why he’s making the call.

“How much more shitty of me is it to ask a favor, when I’ve been kind of the poster boy for absentee friends lately?”

“Man,” and Steve can see Sam’s expression in his head, just from the tone: “that’s not how it works. What do you need?”

And Steve is lucky, Steve is so goddamn lucky in so many ways, and being able to call Sam Wilson his friend is really fucking high on the list.

“I need help.” For as much build-up as Steve had given it, for how much his stomach had churned and his palms had gone sweaty as he stared at the goddamn ducks for over an hour in the early-morning sun—for all that Steve’d been dreading saying it, at all, it’s actually really kind of easy, once it’s done.

“Okay.”

That, however, as a response: simple, no real tone to it, just acknowledgement and readiness to listen to whatever follows—that seems too easy, even for Sam.

“Like,” Steve clears his throat and steels himself; maybe he wasn’t being understood. “Like a psychiatrist?” he flails a little, because he wasn’t expecting to have to spell it out and therefore is a bit surprised by the extent to which he doesn’t know how to spell it out at all.

“I’d probably be thinking psychologist, first,” Sam says, and this time there is a tone in his voice, and it is, in fact, easy. Typical, easy-going, take-everything-as-it-comes Sam Wilson. “Psychiatrists usually do meds,” Sam anticipates Steve’s general ignorance on the topic like a pro; “and if it turns out they’d be helpful, we’d need to loop Bruce and Helen in, for obvious reasons,” there’s a little hint of a wince in Sam’s voice then, but Steve knows, intrinsically, it’s for Steve’s own well established frustration, at best, with what the serum does to make life more difficult, sometimes.

Many times, as it happens, just about now. Or else, in ways that are so big Steve can’t swallow around them right and so he needs help—

“But I’d say you want to start with some good therapy.”

“Right,” Steve nods to himself. “Right,” and he passes a hand over his face as he sighs, and tries to figure out what that—good and useful information and advice as it is—actually means now that it’s given, now that it’s his to move forward with when Steve’s not actually sure how to move with it at all, what to do with it in the first place, whether forward is the right way at all, even.

“Steve?” It’s the warmth in Sam’s tone that knocks Steve off track of his own spiral of uncertainty.

“Do you think you’re the only superhero who’s ever asked this question?” Then there’s amusement, now, alongside the warmth in that voice when Sam snorts a little and adds: “Or hell, the only one in New York?”

Steve blinks. Then blinks again.

“What?”

“Ever wonder why you don’t have to deal with Hell’s Kitchen, like, ever?” Sam’s got his kind-and-patient-teaching voice on that drives Steve fucking crazy, nine times out of ten. “Plus, you know, doing the whole masked vigilante thing takes a toll even on those of us who don’t have any magic serum complicating matters.”

And then Sam goes and gets all understanding and Steve can't even stay annoyed. Sam Wilson is infuriating—but then he thinks:

“How do you know—”

“I was deputized as a liaison for the List as soon as I got roped into this crazy lifestyle,” Sam doesn’t have to wait to give an answer, and sounds just a little bit smug about it, too. “I figure it’s the counselling gig that made me seem more qualified than I was, but frankly, I did know more about the system than anyone else involved.”

Which, yes, fine: fair enough.

“What is the List?” Steve asks about the next most pressing issue.

“Database of mental health professionals absolutely unattached to any alphabet agency, including S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Sam rattles off like it’s from a script, which, probably it is. “Reputable and vetted extensively and, crucially, already on retainer with the most iron-clad NDAs I’ve ever seen. Ever.”

“Right.” Steve swallows, and mulls it over a bit, lets it sink in. The existence of such a document makes it all feel very real, suddenly, but also regimented. Organized. Trustworthy.

Plus, he’s very familiar with NDAs these days. He’s friends with Tony.

“I don’t have the most updated names for New York, but I can send what I do have,” Sam picks back up, and snaps Steve back toward the momentum of the process, the making-it-happen part. “Unless you’re okay with me reaching out to the main contact there? They can get you the latest details, and they’re trustworthy as hell, I promise, confidentiality is a big deal in therapy but when you add celebrity and superheroics to the mix it’s a whole other level.” Sam pauses, and Steve thinks he can hear the creak of him leaning back in a chair. “But I absolutely respect it if you don’t want anyone else involved, even so.”

“No,” Steve’s quick on that account, because he doesn’t have to consider: “no, I trust you. If you say they’re solid, they’re solid. And,” then he takes a deep breath and tries putting words to his feelings into practice, if that’s going to be as big a part of this process as he suspects: “And, I mean, I kinda need all the help I can get.”

He smiles to himself, a little tight, as he says it, but he thinks it’s enough that Sam can hear it because Sam’s own smile is audible too:

“I’ll reach out as soon as we hang up, then.”

“Sam,” Steve’s quick to stop him hanging up too soon, though: “thank you.”

“I’m proud of you, Steve.” And Steve thinks he might blush at that, because Sam’s so damn genuine, and Steve can tell how much he means it. “It’s hard to recognize when you need help. And even harder to ask for it.”

“Can’t take credit for recognizing it,” Steve rubs the back of his neck out of habit, but when he ducks his head to do it, it feels like maybe he doesn’t need to. Didn’t need to. Maybe he doesn’t need to hide from this, or else, can start not to.

Maybe.

“Yes, you can,” Sam’s quick to point out. “You’re allowed to share credit, you know. And it’s just as hard to learn to share the load of it all. I’m proud you’re making a start on that, too.”

Steve scoffs, but it’s half-hearted, just for show. “How do you know I’m making a start?”

“Because we’re having this conversation,” Sam points out, clearly unimpressed. “And I’m not stupid.”

Which is very true.

“I suspect you’re going to have a lot of conversations about your own worth and stuff coming in your future, and I want to emphasize, first and foremost,” Sam’s voice goes stern, but open, warm almost:

“You, Steven Grant Rogers, are worth doing the work for. Worth learning the tools and finding a kinder way to live.”

And it’s Steve, now, that feels warm, entirely, and open, cracked wide.

“But because I know you, and I know him,” and that’s something Steve loves, something that’s beautiful, that Bucky’s so much a part of his world, and he of Bucky’s that people just know; that Bucky’s so much understood as a piece of Steve, as a given—that’s a bona fide brightness under Steve’s sternum, light and perfect.

“He's worth making this choice for, too,” Sam says, and the tone of his voice resonates with the same certainty that lives in Steve’s chest when it comes to anything, really, about Bucky. For all of Steve’s fears and doubts, when it’s pared down to brass tacks, there’s never anything but absolute, unshakable faith in Bucky.

“What you guys have? I mean,” Sam’s adding on, then, and he whistles low across the line before drawing out long: “Fuck.”

And that—that recognition, not that Steve needs it, but the fact that what Steve feels, what Steve knows has reshaped the composition of his blood and bones it’s so deep, so strong, this thing he has with Bucky that he wants to fight for, that they’re going to fight for and if Steve Rogers knows anything it’s how to stay with a fight until it’s won, and there’s never been one he’s been so invested in before: this unimaginable degree of love, being seen and known for anyone to see—that’s more than just brightness and perfection underneath Steve’s ribs, even. That’s a thing that makes everything inside him fucking glow.

Hell, he damn well knows it shows on the outside, too. How could it not? There’s no degree of muscle mass, no bigger-new-improved version of himself thrice his size that could contain this without overflowing, not even close. It’s so much.

So yeah. Fuck, is both accurate, and not even close to enough.

“It’s not going to be easy,” Sam starts, gently, but with both the sense that he’s stating the obvious, even for Steve, and the sense that he knows the end of the sentence is heard without having to say any more: “but—”

“It’s worth it,” Steve says, automatic not because it’s rote, but because it’s the thing that beats through his blood every goddamn second, and lives on the tip of his tongue as his more precious truth, always. “It’s worth everything.”

“You’ve got this, Steve,” Sam’s smile is so bright through the phone that Steve finds himself grinning in return just as wide; “And I’m here if you need anything.”

“Thank you,” and Steve means it, with all of him. “And, well,” Steve huffs a breath; he means this with all of him, too, it’s just harder to say with words.

“I don’t know if I’d be very good at it,” Steve tries anyway; “but I’m here. Too. If you ever need anything.”

“I know,” and in saying that, Sam’s voice doesn’t lose any of the smile, or any of the shine. “Love you man. Speak soon.”

They hang up, then, and Steve walks home, and within ten minutes, a folio is delivered by courier, with a biometric lock he has to disengage before even before he can even touch the package, and see the sender listed on the tablet as ℅ Stark International.

Stark International. Not Stark Industries.

Pepper runs the whole show now, sure, but Steve knows she’s the reason all the philanthropic work filters through Stark International now—all the outreach. All the things that she started, or oversaw enough to have been in charge even when she was working as far-more-than-a-PA. Now, though, she has full say over the direction, the projects, the priorities. The privacy.

Which, apparently, includes overseeing the process of helping high-profile costumed hero-types find a trustworthy doc to bare their soul to.

Huh.

He shoots off a text to her private number: a simple Thanks that doesn’t require a reply, because she’s a busy woman who knows how to prioritize and she’d made sure he’d got the names within half-an-hour and that spoke volumes.

Maybe he’ll ask Bucky, later, about what kinds of normal-people sized fruit bouquets exist, as long as there are strawberry-free options.

He spends the whole day reading the profiles of therapists, of practices, of philosophies and schools of counseling: Bucky’s in D.C., he won’t be home until they make a late dinner, or order one; hours still, and Steve feels like this is a part of this he needs to do on this own, not because he has to but because it feels like he needs to own it, to map it out as territory to navigate in his way, internalise it without anything, even good things, distracting his focus. Fuck knows Bucky does that as a rule.

He ends up overwhelmed, which aggravates him because battleplans don’t overwhlem him and they’re a hell of a lot more complicated, though he tries to tell himself this is different, because this is different. And frankly they all sound fairly fine, Pepper and Sam and people those two trust have put together the list that’s not really surprising—and he honestly doesn’t fully grasp half the things he’s reading and even googling gets to be too much, it all blends together. He crosses a few names off here and there, but he’s hungry and his muscles have been clenched ever-tighter for hours, now, as the information overloaded, and it’s getting dark and Bucky will be home and Steve’s going to order from the burger place they like, if he orders now it’ll be perfect timing for when Bucky’s expected home—so what he does isn’t something he’s exactly proud of, but the first not-crossed-off name is three names, a practice, and he forwards it to the number at the bottom of the List. He gets a screen with a big ass attachment that he glances at for just the size and the name, figures out it’s a profile to fill out, and shuts the tablet off in favor of his phone and the app that’ll bring food.

Bucky ends up bringing in said food, having met the delivery person outside, and Steve kisses him, hard and long and maybe a little too desperate but it eases something in him that nothing else can and Steve breathes in deep when they part, lets Bucky run hands through his hair for a few stretched-far moments, and they eat in their living room, Steve's half in Bucky’s lap, and Steve kind of wants to fuck through the weird feeling he feels drenched in once they finish, but Steve flicks Netflix onto the very last season of Star Trek: The Next Generation—they’d had a gap, for a while, mostly watched movies if they watched anything but Steve’s committed to this, not least because Bucky’s just as committed to not telling Steve either his favourite iteration of Star Trek or whether he likes it better than Star Wars and Steve wants to know—and Bucky starts working on the tight knots of muscle in Steve’s shoulders without saying anything, and Steve falls asleep right there on the couch.

Bucky’s home all of the next day, and Steve spends that time largely in the same position he slept in, pressed against Bucky on the sofa, filling out forms, and Steve thinks he was right to make the choice of his therapist on his own—even if it was as much a choice as rolling dice—but doing this, with at least one of Bucky’s hands running over his neck, his arm, his hip, his scalp almost ceaselessly as Bucky scrolls through emails or Instagram or turns on the television to watch reruns of some late night show for background noise: doing this, he needs Bucky, just Bucky being there and teasing down Steve’s pulse when he gets to thinking too much just because he’s there, the metronomic touch of him easing Steve from every tiny precipice before it mounts into a cliff, and Steve loves him, and every time he has to stop typing just to bask in that knowledge for a moment, he has to likewise turn around a little and kiss Bucky, sometimes Steve even reaches his lips full on, and that’s how Steve spends half the day finishing the endless stream of paperwork and questions about himself and his goals and his hopes and his fears and the tedious shit right down to his shoe size—and the other half of the day with his mouth on Bucky, somewhere. Steve only thinks later that Bucky probably had other ways he’d planned to spend his day; Steve never asked, and Bucky never once made so much as a hint that suggested as much, but that realization? That’s how Steve ends up sucking Bucky off with extra special fervor before they turn in for the night.

All of which, in turn, is how he ends up here. Now.

The building is in the middle of a slew of buildings, all short in comparison to Stark Tower (Avengers Tower, Rogers, Tony’s voice is perpetually reminding him in his own head, I mean seriously), but immense by normal standards: Steve thinks he’s in the wrong place for a good five minutes but he follows the instructions—last elevator in the line, up to the 54th floor—which he steps out on, and finds another elevator, which he sees just as he gets a text message from one of the shell accounts attached to the larger Stark conglomerate: Press the bottom button.

Steve probably should have expected the smoke and mirrors, the treasure hunt of it all—the whole process seems pretty damn dedicated to confidentiality, and Steve figures that’s warranted. Appreciates it even.

He’s not expecting the quick drop, down all fifty-four floors and then some to what’s clearly a subterranean level, but one that’s furnished closest to one of Pepper’s waiting areas in the CEO suites she keeps. Classy, welcoming, professional.

He thinks that association keeps him from bolting back into the elevator immediately, to be honest, because there’s no one in the lobby, just chairs and a whole wall of crawling, thriving ferns and other green growing things—that probably helps, too, makes him think of Win and her plants, of biology classes and gardens around the grillmaster setup, and trees: and Bucky.

Always Bucky.

Steve deserves to work at this, just like Sam said. He might not know it in his bones yet, but he can understand it.

What he does know in his bones is that he’s going to do this, he has to do this, for Bucky. For the way his heart skips a little excited, a little off-balance because it’s too full when he just thinks of him, sometimes, when Steve sees him in his mind’s eye.

So Steve sits his ass down, and waits, and studies the plants. Memorizes them enough to maybe draw them, and ask Win about them when he calls her next.

He’s studying the leaves of one of the thinnest vines crawling about across from him; he doesn’t notice a door open, one he didn’t see before it’s suddenly there, a woman in dark slacks and a coral-colored button-up standing in the unforeseeable gap in the wall, looking at Steve with a degree of welcome, a degree of expectation, maybe, and the rest of what’s in her eyes behind her glasses, Steve can’t read. His back straightens, the reaction automatic.

“Good morning,” the woman greets him—he’s not sure yet if she’s an assistant, or one of the therapists in the tri-named practice he picked out. He nods at her, though, and his voice is small, strained a little as he manages a paltry Morning, and feels himself flush. He’s nervous, he thinks. Or maybe not quite nervous. Close though.

He focuses mostly on not tripping over his feet when he gets up once she asks if he’ll follow her; the invisible door slides flush into the wall once he’s through and Steve’s struck with how much security must be at work here that he can’t see.

That relaxes his shoulders, just a little.

“Drink?”

Steve blinks at the word, the offering; he’d just been following, not thinking, looking around for hints at tech that wasn’t obvious as a distraction maybe, some idle focus to calm his mind as much as his jumpy pulse—not quite nerves, not quite—but he had only just noticed they’d stopped quick enough not to plow into his guide. Fantastic.

But Steve fumbles for a second, when he starts to gather himself—is he thirsty? Does that matter? Is it expected to accept or decline, what’s better, it doesn’t feel like other places where what he knows of politeness applies as a rule, but maybe it should be, maybe go with what he knows.

Fuck.

Steve meets her eyes, and she’s just waiting, no expectation in it. Steve looks around, sees the coffee maker before anything else and knows he doesn’t want that, so—

“We’ve got water, too,” she adds; maybe he said something, maybe his face gave him away, maybe it’s her damn job to kind of get a sense of people so it wouldn’t have mattered either way, but he nods, his throat drier than he’d noticed, and takes the bottle grateful as he follows her down a hall of doors, to a room near the end.

It’s clear, by that point, that she’s the therapist, versus an admin or someone whose job it is to take him to the therapist, though Steve’s not sure which one, is it appropriate to ask or do you wait, fuck if he knows; but while there’s a bigger chair with a desk in the room they enter, and Steve expects her to take it, she just steps out of Steve’s way, just inside the door, and gestures broadly with a “Wherever you’re comfortable”, and Steve notices some overstuffed chairs and a couch and two uncomfortable looking, stiff-backed seats: wherever he’s comfortable.

He takes a deep breath, and picks the three-seater sofa: he doesn’t pretend in his own mind that he does it because it reminds him a little of home—not as big, but similar enough to where he shares his evenings with Bucky, where he feels wrapped up and wanted and warm.

Steve notices, belatedly, that all the seating options are distanced just so, so that wherever the client picked, the therapist had a choice near enough, but not too close, and with a table of some sort nearby: strategic.

Steve appreciates it, as the therapist settles in one of the overstuffed chairs.

“Before we begin with anything,” she opens, just when Steve’s starting to feel claustrophobic, just a little, with the quiet, or more than that, the expectation that he break it, violate its code of silence.

“I want to be sure I start this by making it clear that all of this,” she reaches for a tablet, the same ones Steve’s seen around the Tower that no one can hand to Tony but that often get handed to other people; she lifts it up in example and it rouses from sleep mode; Steve’s eyes narrow and pick up the name he gave for the intake documents he’d filled out with Pepper’s paperwork: Timothy Montgomery. Seemed common enough to fit the bill.

“This is highly irregular, for typical therapy, that is. I don’t generally get dossiers on my clients before I actually meet them. But more to the point,” she sets the tablet down and shoves it across the table it’d be sitting on, lets it slide a ways down. “I want you to be assured that I don’t think that I know you, because I read that.” Her gaze is intent, and Steve’s not uncomfortable, but he’s alert to it, intent in kind: she’s genuine, he thinks. That’s nice. That’s not particularly common. She wants him to know she means what she says.

He’s no therapist, but he does know how to read people, too.

“And I do not presume to know you, until you invite me to,” she adds on, the same intent, but her tone shifting, a little gentler as she leans into her chain a bit. “Okay?”

Steve nods. She nods back. It feels...solid. He’s not sure how that feels, because it feels like something, but he knows at least he doesn’t dislike it.

“Now, what I do know, from reading that,” she doesn’t smile, but her face softens though it hadn’t been hard, and Steve feels himself relax his muscles a little, without thinking, to see it; “is a little bit more than I might otherwise have at hand, at this point, about what brought you here, and what you’re looking to get from this therapeutic relationship,” she grins a little, there: “which gives you a leg up on the typical client. Hopefully it will help us figure out if this is a good match more quickly.”

Steve likes that she doesn’t assume. Doesn’t plan ahead. Sees this as a trial run, but is invested, is clearly engaged with him in the here and now anyway. He feels like that makes a difference.

“And,” she starts again; her smile’s faded but her eyes are particularly keen, sharp: “while I don’t know you yet, I did pick up enough about you in your answers to put together that you’re something of a straight-shooter,” that’s true, of course, but Steve’s not sure anyone really needs a dossier for that; more like just a history book. “You don’t like bullshit, or subterfuge, or shady surprises down the line.”

Again: true. And Steve isn’t sure if he likes the direction this may or may not be headed. So he waits, revealing nothing, maybe testing out something he can’t wholly identify for himself in the gesture, but he thinks it’s important. Or maybe entirely pointless.

“So, and again, to be very clear that this is not the regular course of things, even if clients with your,” she pauses, purses her lips: “”pecific brand of circumstances.” And Steve focuses a little bit extra on the microexpressions that come with the words: raised brows, a grin, restrained; not strained, but reserved. LIke it’s weighing things, too. Steve doesn’t know if he’s uncomfortable, should withhold trust, should walk out—or respect the display of tactics, subtle as it is.

“My name is not Dr. Bensen.”

Okay. Good. Steve hadn’t needed to ask, just had to wait; but there were two others, he thinks they were alphabetical, definitely one starting with an ‘A’ given how he’d made the selection so discerningly. Had Steve asked for Dr. Bensen and hadn’t noticed? He hadn’t cared, at all, so it’s not a big deal, but which of the other two is he sitting across from, not that he can remember their names either, but—

“My name’s not Allerton or Carson, either, in fairness.”

Oh. Well then. Steve’s not sure what to make of that; not sure how he feels about it, what it means for the reason he’s here: he needs to do this, for Bucky, for both of them but—

“For security reasons, we don’t give our names when our identities could be used to compromise our clients. You know, in the worst case scenario,” and at that, the forwardness, the way she didn’t wait for him to speak before she offered, before she trusted—it’s instantaneous, but the gears in Steve’s head are already working, already reevaluating the interaction so far. His muscles don’t loosen, yet, but they’re not making to tighten any further. He feels steady, for the moment.

He’s pretty sure she sees it, too, because she nods the tiniest bit, and then goes on.

“More often, and definitely as a standard, I change aliases for everyone I see.” Aliases. Right. Smoke and mirrors. Steve shouldn’t be surprised, again: and maybe he’s not. Maybe he’s grateful, if only because then, for all that he hates this part of his life now, the subterfuge and the necessity of it: maybe this isn’t wholly new, wholly unfamiliar. Does it count if the thing that makes it feel known is something he winces for having to put up with?

“But, I think you’d hate it, even if you never explicitly found out,” she’s saying, tone a little wry, a little apologetic: taking the words straight from Steve’s head, after a fashion. He feels a little like this entire enterprise, this attempt at action is needle-sharp, balanced on a knife’s edge. Sink or swim—save that Steve’s always fared better with that one.

“I feel like you’d hate it to know that we started this on even the smallest, most safety-oriented of white lies.” Which is true. And she’s quiet for a second, then, which he’s grateful for: Steve lets himself breathe, and take stock, analyze the variables, plan his response.

His shoulders have relaxed without him knowing, though., and it doesn’t take long for him to figure why: she showed her hand. She knows who she’s dealing with, knows what she’s doing. She’s a worthy opponent, but she’s not…his opponent. She could be his ally. She could be his captain, his guide, in this.

He respects her skill; he admires her strategy.

He’s pretty sure he knows what he’s going to do, how he’s going to proceed, before she offers any more; but if he didn’t, it seals the deal:

“So,” she folds her hands and breathes out slow. “You can call me whatever you like. Pick a name. Make up a name. Maybe the first name of someone you’re already comfortable with, that makes you feel at ease,” she huffs a laugh, and adjusts her glasses: “maybe the exact opposite.”

Steve doesn’t think before he meets her grin. Just does.

“You can just call me your therapist, too. Literally. Tell your partner you went to see ‘your therapist’, use the tools we discuss and let someone know ‘your therapist said’, etcetera and so on.” She shrugs then, and it’s clear: “whatever you like, should you want to move forward.”

The ball’s in his court, now. Cards on the table, and he can walk and feel no regret; he can run, and be wholly justified.

“Right,” Steve breathes out slow, now, and leans back against the cushions of the sofa, something in him receding as he sinks into it: something that makes him feel comfortable, here, almost instantaneously. It’s a little jarring, and maybe he should be thinking twice, should be taking more time to reflect, but he’s long learned to trust his instincts, so. Here goes.

“Hi,” he says, and sticks out his hand, a little showy with it, a little rueful. “I’m Steve Rogers, and I’d like to, umm,” he bites his lip, and looks up through his lashes: “do therapy?” Then he adds, more sure with it now: “With my therapist.”

And she grins at him, full on, and there’s something in Steve that feels light. There’s something in Steve that feels like optimism.

“Hi Steve Rogers.” She takes his hand, and her grip is firm, confident, but he was right: she feels like an ally. Like they’re on the same team.

“I’m your therapist, and I am very glad you’re here, so that I can help you do therapy.” And honestly: Steve thinks he is, too.

He thinks this is going to be a good thing.

Chapter Text

Steve still thinks therapy’s going to be a good thing, after that first session. He’d been clear-headed enough to know and identify with his own words two big things he needed to work on: communication, and this relentless terror in him when it comes to Bucky—or, really, the threat of anything but Bucky, at his side. Always. She’d been honest, and told him she suspected they’d come across a lot more than those two things in the process of working on said two things, and she’d asked if he was ready for it.

He’d been honest, too, when he told her that he was. He was very much ready; he’s not sure he expected that, and he’s not sure he would have felt it so clearly if it hadn’t come to a head, everything, the way that it did. But he knows. And he really does think it’s going to be a good thing.

That said, he also really thinks he could do without nightmares that come directly afterward, if that’s going to be a fucking recurring trend. It’s only been twice, of course, and Steve’s probably blowing it out of proportion—he’s been told he’s dramatic, sure, and it’s not exactly a lie, and it’s not new that he has nightmares, a little more often than Bucky does, or that Steve can tell Bucky has for how they sleep closer to one body than as two, but it’s so much more uncommon, that’s because of Bucky, that is absolutely for the presence of Bucky, for the shape of him against Steve’s skin. And yes, if it’s a thing that happens every time he sees his therapist he’ll get used to it, and he’ll wake up to Bucky’s warmth and his steady-soft breathing and it’ll be okay.

It’s making him a little fidgety, though, maybe, as he wastes time before leaving for his second session.

Which Steve doesn’t even bother trying to hedge around when Bucky asks him why he’s still swirling his coffee mug around, when it’s apparently been empty for the past ten minutes.

“I didn’t know you had an appointment,” Bucky says, more curious than anything, but Steve stands there, little off-balance: Bucky’s not angry, he’s not hurt, he’s not justifying—it takes Steve a minute to process that Bucky...Bucky’s moving, grabbing for his phone and tapping away.

“She had a cancellation, and I,” Steve stares at his coffee cup and, yep: empty. Huh. “Well, it felt like,” Steve’s not entirely sure what it felt like, he doesn’t know if people usually see their therapist more than once in a week, but he’s not like other people in a lot of ways so—fine. And maybe it’s because there’s just a part of him that’s wired to dive in and tackle a challenge, and a part of him that’s a little scared out of his mind at this challenge, but he wanted to go back. He wanted to keep pressing, and working, and coming home to Bucky and feeling like he was doing something tangible to keep this man happy and whole, next to him—to the end of the line, they’d said, but Steve kind of thinks “the line” is a nebulous thing, and it points at the universe. When Steve said it then, when he thinks it, he means forever.

And Steve is pretty fucking sure Bucky does, too.

Bucky looks up, pauses a second while he studies Steve’s face, whatever it’s doing, and then asks: “Do you want me to come with you?”

It’s an afterthought, Steve realizes, and quickly: Bucky’s phone was already in his hand, and he’d grabbed it from the other side of the table where it was charging, where he wasn’t doing anything with it while he ate breakfast, as soon as Steve mentioned booking a session, and going later today. Bucky had moved to, to plan to be with Steve as a rule, to go with him as support as a given not just one time but for all times, and asking to make sure he was wanted was an afterthought because the default was to place himself where he might be needed and Steve loves him more than he thinks he’ll ever understand, but he doesn’t have to understand it. It takes over everything, and Steve can just bask in it and be grateful until the goddamn day he dies.

“Always,” Steve says, because that’s never anything less than the truth. There’s nothing and nowhere Steve can imagine that he wouldn’t want Bucky beside him.

“Let me just call them and cancel,” and he means it, Steve can see: just, like his phonecall to the suits he’s supposed to schmooze today on SI’s behalf are just...people to cancel on, and the fact that they are, and they are because of Steve, jolts in Steve’s chest, knocks the wind out of him for a minute as he watches Bucky grab for his phone and start scrolling through his contacts.“And if you’re going to set up regular sessions, just tell me when and we’ll work that out.”

“Don’t—”

Steve doesn’t intend to speak, exactly, and that’s probably why he stops so quickly, just as quickly as Bucky’s hand stills and his head snaps up, question in his eyes and Steve tries to figure out what he’d intended to follow in that sentence, that interruption. Tries to weigh his thoughts and emotions in a few-seconds’-span to fit words around something.

“You’ve got a tight schedule,” Steve ultimately says around the tightness growing in his throat. “A routine.” He’s not sure he means it as a protest, is fairly sure it doesn’t come out as one either way, too weak-willed for that, but he thinks he just needs to lay it out, like a battleplan, hearing it out loud to make sure he understands, to make sure they’re both on the same page. It was something Steve had admired in Bucky from the beginning, the way he balanced his commitments with such grace, and still always managed to put his own wellbeing and health at the forefront—Steve knows that had been a battle fought in the time before they met, and Bucky’s told Steve more than enough about his struggles, and the hard work they’d demanded, and still do and Steve sees it and admires it every day in the now; Steve knows that Bucky’s dedication to routine and well-honed prioritization of where he gives his time and energy is something he learned through trial and error—and fuck, Stevie, he’d shared more than once, but the errors, Jesus—Steve knows. He trusts that Bucky’s thought that through, knows himself, isn’t acting rashly or anything. In fact, it kind of looks like this had been a given he’d never questioned at all.

But Steve is—Steve is learning. He’s learning, and he’s working now, he’s working and he’s going to work harder than he’s ever worked before, he’ll stretch his own damn chest to fit it all, pull his body long another foot if he needs to with his own bare hands, somehow, he will: he just. Needs clarification.

He knows Bucky’s in this, at his side, matched in the depth of this thing step for step, feels this through and through: he doesn’t doubt that. It’s just that sometimes it’s too much, too wild to imagine the truth of it when it’s played out. When it’s spoken and offered and lived into action in some way that’s new, even the smallest amount.

To think that this thing inside Steve is not just seen, but met, matched and offered in kind. It’s just…wild, sometimes, and he needs to make sure he’s not dreaming it up.

“Steve?”

And Steve doesn’t startle at the hand on his arm that he didn't notice coming, because the touch is soft, and gentle, and so welcome he’s nothing but embraced down to the atoms that make him: he doesn’t startle, but he turns quick and Bucky’s expression when Steve meets his eyes is gentle, too, and soft, and fond and Steve can’t help but think it: all that tenderness glows to look at, and makes Steve warm down to his toes to see, and breathe beside.

“When you love someone?” Bucky’s not asking, really, but Steve nods along like he means for him to, unconsciously in time with the circles Bucky’s tracing on Steve’s skin. “When you love someone, your routine damn well finds a way to fit around what they need, when they need it.”

And it’s simple, isn’t it; it’s simple, and that’s really the long and short of it. The heart of it in every possible way and Steve can’t help but cover Bucky’s hand on him and use it to steady them both as he leans, a little off-balance, to press his lips to Bucky’s.

They break apart at the sound of an incoming text from Bucky’s phone, but they do it so on a grin, their eyes bright, and Bucky grabs to check the message, stands to go make the call he’d started out meaning to make safely away from the reach of the burbling of the coffee maker he knows Steve’s going to start again in a second, but he pauses, that hand on Steve’s arm again, and it’s a grounding thing. It’s a necessary thing, that touch.

“Do you want me to be waiting for you here?” Bucky asks him; “or come with and wait outside?”

The first time, just a few days ago, Bucky’d been waiting not in the building where the appointment was, but just across the street. Steve had found him afterwards with a latte half-drunk and a book not-much-read, his phone set close enough to feel the vibrations of it, just in case he missed seeing a message, everything about him casual to the equally-casual observer—but Steve was a close and careful study when it came to James Buchanan Barnes, and the level of precision in his care, the focus and singular attention he was giving to Steve when Steve wasn’t even there in front of him, when in truth there was little threat, save Steve’s own nerve and worries: Steve had melted to see it, and he’d felt fairly good coming out of the session already, but that, seeing Bucky like that waiting for him and ready to meet whatever Steve came to him with, ready to take Steve in wholly and with so much love: Steve had felt the softness in his goddamn cells, tender inside the atoms that made him.

It takes a second to get over the guilt of asking—but a second’s not as long as it could be, and it’s something he’s already aware he needs to work on in the very sessions in question, creating a reason for said guilt—and after that second’s passed?

Bucky’s grabbing the very same book he hadn’t read much of two days ago, and telling Steve the coffee was pretty good, actually, at the cafe he’d camped at—how about they leave early and grab a drink before his appointment.

Steve feels a very similar melty-sensation suffused through him entirely, at that, and just smiles, and pulls Bucky in to kiss him one more time.

And that’s how it goes. Steve starts seeing his therapist twice a week—there is no ‘normal’, Steve, she’d told him when he couldn’t help but ask, but lots of people do it like this, either way, and he really likes that she seemed to know it was important, helpful, for him to know both of those things, to hear that fact both ways—and Bucky works his way through the menu at the cafe diligently, and only drinks about half of what he orders at the temperature he orders it, at least the first two weeks; once Steve comes to him safe and calm and really, at worst, just tired, it becomes clear that Bucky was maybe as anxious for Steve as Steve was for himself, and it’s easing with time just the same.

Steve kisses Bucky on the couch that night, when he realizes that fact so plainly, for hours and hours until he can’t feel his damned lips.

It’s after his sixth session, end of week three, and Steve comes home—they go to coffee together, before every appointment, but then Bucky heads back and makes something to eat because it’s getting grittier, now, already, and Steve’s exhausted after therapy more often than he isn’t, and food helps and Steve’s stupidly grateful for him: but it’s after his sixth session that Steve realizes another thing he probably should have noticed before now.

“Have you talked to Rhodey lately?”

“Mmm,” Bucky hums, a bit distracted as he leans over to peck Steve’s cheek in greeting while he keeps stirring pasta sauce on the stovetop. Steve doesn’t think twice before lingering notably close to Bucky’s face until Bucky sighs dramatically and lifts the spoon to Steve’s lips to taste.

“You haven’t gone to D.C. in, like, a month,” Steve notes, the words slow, thoughtful as he licks his lips to get every last bit of spice as if he’s not going to be inhaling an entire bowl of arrabbiata in less than five minutes.

“No,” Bucky answers, shrugs a little, but then grins at Steve and moves to lick, then kiss at the corner of his mouth.

“You missed a spot,” Bucky reasons, pulling away, but Steve thinks that’s a bald-faced lie. He loves it a lot, even so.

But the fact remains: Rhodey’s become Bucky’s near-singular point of contact in D.C., working the government side of the prosthetics programme, with the VA and beyond, even more so than before he joined up with the Avengers and they were fighting on the same field every so often, when Rhodey decided to break out the War Machine armor, or Tony goaded him into it with a new Mark to test. And Bucky went down to meet in person at least every other week, at least—regularly. Even more often than that over the past couple months, as they’ve been eyeing a larger scope for the pilot launch.

And Bucky...has talked to him, but hasn’t met with him. When they’re gearing up to do something massive.

Plus: Bucky was last in D.C. just before Steve started therapy, so even closer to a month longer than normal. Steve knows, and can cross-reference it in his head on various points, because he hasn’t seen Peggy in that long, either, because he goes with Bucky now, almost always, and Steve usually heads down when Bucky’s already there, versus making a separate trip. Unless there’s an Avengers-related reason for Steve to be in D.C., which—

Which there hasn’t been. There hasn’t been any Avengers-related reasons for Steve to be anywhere, recently.

“Is something wrong?” Steve finds himself asking, a little distractedly even as he’d growing increasingly concerned: the wheels in his head are turning over the implications of the fact that he talks to his teammates, sometimes, and usually it’s quick and it’s perfunctory and he actually doesn’t think he’s asked after missions or assignments, but he’s also been empty handed in terms of being offered any, or called for an assist.

Suspiciously so, actually. Now that he’s sitting here thinking about it.

“Not that I’m aware of,” Bucky jerks Steve back to the moment, the present, and the question he’s asked aloud. “They’ve been having me do video calls internationally,” right, Steve’s been shushed a few times when he dared to interrupt Bucky’s calls for the sake of a quick suck job under Bucky’s desk; “potential investors outside the US and such, I think someone’s got the idea to use SI for diplomacy or some shit.”

Steve snorts, but it comes with a softness in his chest even alongside all the uncertainty lodged there for his ponderings—Tony Stark’s creation as a means of exerting soft power on the global stage, as tool for peace. Steve can’t help but smile at the way time changes things, and for the better. In ways well deserved for the work and sacrifice demanded.

But Steve’s neither stupid, nor a novice at piecing together the whole of a scenario, the likely trajectory of a situation. The timing, the change in patterns, the intersection of occurrence too well-aligned for coincidence—

“Did you ask them?” Steve breathes out, oddly uncertain of what the answer will be, and even more unsure what he hopes for. “To, you know, leave me be or something?” Because he can kind of see it; Bucky wanting to give him space, wanting him to have his nightmares and the mornings wrapped tighter around Bucky’s frame to process, and learn, and feel, and grieve. And in all honesty, Steve’s needed it—he feels shame, now, more than he has in passing moments he shrugged off because why feel too bad if there was nothing going on that he was missing, that he was leaving to others to clean up for him; but he feels shame, because he needed it, sure, but he took it greedily, without meaning to, and left his responsibilities to fall to the wayside.

Then his breath catches, and he can’t help but add: “To let you be here, because I…”

If he’d been monopolizing Bucky, that’s not a surprise; he knows it, and he’s not sutpid enough to think he hasn’t needed it, needed Bucky—but then, Bucky’s shushed him repeatedly when he’s brought it up, enough times that Steve’s starting to really take in the idea of giving, time and space and priority in all respects, despite visible inconvenience, because you love someone. He’s starting to take it in as something he more than just understands, and practices for his own overfull-heart, but as something he’s been deemed worthy of deserving in kind, without reservation.

Kind of unbelievable, but the evidence is clear as day.

But if Bucky’s been cornered into inconveniencing others, if he’s been harmed at all for his work and the people he’s trying to help—

“I did not.”

It takes Steve a second to stop the whir of his mind and hone in on the words; a few more, after, to process what those words are, and what they mean.

Oh.

“Steve,” Bucky reaches, and just grabs light against Steve’s elbow, steady and present and everything Steve needs.

“I didn’t ask them. And I wouldn’t have, without talking to you.” And Steve knows that; he’s quick to check to see if Bucky’s hurt, or angry, that Steve even briefly, even for the best reasons, might have thought otherwise but there’s no trace of it, and Steve breathes out easier; leans into Bucky’s touch.

“But I never asked you,” Bucky’s adding, then, leaning closer; tone intent: “because I never had to.”

Steve frowns, and looks up.

“What do you mean?”

Bucky smiles, a small but certain thing, as he turns the heat off the burner and moves to look at Steve head-on, hand never once losing contact with Steve’s skin.

“I’m in love with you,” Bucky tells him then, says it simple, and the conviction, the way he states it as immutable fact is something Steve doesn’t think he’ll ever get over feeling floored by, overcome and warm all over: “through and through, desperate like a trashy bodice ripper,” Bucky grins a little crookedly, and his eyes dance, and Steve feels the ease of it, the weight of it envelop him, blanket him from the inside and stoke the kind of fire that’s all comfort, all proof of life and home.

“But I am not the only person who loves you.” Bucky reaches, then, and cups Steve’s cheek; Steve leans into it immediately, always, and relishes every line, every join of articulation pressed to his skin like the gift it won’t ever stop being, all the way through.

“And no one knows anything you haven’t told them,” which hasn’t been much, but largely because Steve has kept to himself, has been tired and has been thinking and has been trying to give this cause his all because there’s no other option, and honestly, he doesn’t want to do any less, not for this. Not for them. Still.

“But they all knew you were hurting.” Bucky’s thumb runs up and down Steve’s jawline, and Steve feels himself relax into the rhythm; he feels a spike of guilt, new amongst the persistent swirling of it already in place, but Bucky’s hand on him tightens like he can see it, or feel it, like he knows, and Steve settles. He’s been working on that in therapy, too—the guilt thing; so he has that voice in his head alongside Bucky’s touch, Bucky’s eyes on him, Bucky’s breath against him: it’s okay.

It’ll be okay.

“They might not have all the pieces, but they can absolutely see you need space, and support.” Steve feels himself flush a little; he’s not sure if it’s for being seen, being read so plainly, or if it’s shame, at how true those things are. Neither is crippling though, as a feeling. And that’s proof he’s taking actual steps toward...something.

“And they love you, all of them,” Bucky murmurs, now, voice having grown increasingly low and soft and resonant like a caress; “and they want to give that to you the best way they know how.”

And Steve goes to take a deep breath only to find his chest’s real tight; he’s always known how much he cares for his team, for the people he works with and lives with and saves the goddamn planet alongside: but there’s something in this moment that drives home the depth of it. Just how much it is that they share, that he feels for every one of them; just how grateful, how blessed he is.

“I,” Steve starts, but he has no idea what he even considered saying next. No idea where to even look for words, so he just lets his lips close, and if that’s a good way for them to sit until Bucky tilts his head and kisses him soft, but earnest with it, well: that’s just a sweet stroke of luck.

“Come on,” Bucky exhales once he pulls back, and Steve whines a little bit at the loss, and Bucky chuckles for it, and Steve sighs at the way that sound is just as warm and right as a touch, in itself, as Bucky pulls him toward the table and sits him down.

“They do all love you, Stevie,” he bends down to kiss the corner of Steve’s mouth, and nips there playfully before standing straight: “but I fucking feed you. That’s the real deal there.”

And, while definitely not the only reason, or the most significant: Steve really does have to agree.

Chapter Text

“Words are hard, sometimes.”

And Steve had nodded as soon as she’d said the words, in summary—because his therapist was right; absolutely right.

“Most times,” Steve had added, because he’s trying, and part of that trying as time’s going on has come in the form of him owning and shaping his own understanding of where he is, and what he needs, and what he struggles with—and how to work on it. So it’s an ever-slightly-changing target, in the specifics at least, but he’s making a concerted effort to be here, always, and give everything he has to this work, this process, and he’d figured out that even tiny bits of honesty, extra slivers of himself: maybe they can help.

Sometimes, even, they already have.

But his therapist had smiled a little, jotted something impossibly short in the corner of her notebook, and then capped her pen before folding her hands, propping her chin and leaning in a little, watching Steve carefully over the rims of her glasses.

“How do you feel about some homework?”

Steve had never loved homework as a kid, passed his classes but often only just for missing so many days stuck in a bed; but homework, as far as Steve could figure, was basically just tactics, basically just strategic planning and book learning hadn’t captured his imagination back then like battle plans came to. Like Bucky did, now—far more than just imagination.

Planning is necessary, much as he’s gotten by before running off half-cocked. Strategy is crucial if you’re going to reach your goal, if you need to emerge victorious. If there’s absolutely no other option.

There was no other option, here, in this, that Steve was willing to entertain, or survive.

Steve may have nodded a touch too eagerly; he felt great about homework, as it happened. Fucking fantastic about it.

“Try asking for something you want,” and Steve was already starting to figure out that the line between want and need, particularly with Bucky, had been blurred early on, and might always be, but the best way he’s figured out—they’ve figured out, in session, together—to make the distinction in his mind was to think about how much not having something, not seeing it fulfilled or resolved or reframed to be better, to hold stronger and more firm and real: how much a thing felt like a knife through his chest. That was a good metric, he was figuring out. How long he figured he could survive without it, that helped separate the two.

So: something he wanted. Something he wouldn’t feel that bleeding-out sensation for lacking. He didn’t want, in that way, for much in his relationship with Bucky, to be honest—but.

Something he wanted. Okay.

“I ask for things,” Steve had said, though, surprising himself with words, and he must have looked the part because his therapist had smiled a bit, said, “I’m sure you do, and well too. But this is your life, and not your work,” and yes, that distinction had been made more than once already, and needed to be reiterated often, still: “and this is intentional. Words are harder when you’ve thought about them, right?”

And his mouth had snapped shut, and he wondered yet again how she knew things without him saying anything at all.

You’re not alone in the things you feel, Steve, she’d told him when he’d said as much out loud in their second session. She knew some things because they were...common. Shared with other people, sometimes with most people. He wasn’t sure, and he’s still not sure, if it was relief or comfort or neither in the slightest that he felt when that truth sank in; if it had sunk in yet, even.

“So, a thing you want, that you’ve paused to think about, whether for a few days or a few moments,” his therapist had expanded, reeling him back in. “And specifically,” she considered him then, with clear intent: “something you want that has to do with a thing you’re deeply comfortable with. In general, and in your relationship.” Steve had nodded, again; most things with Bucky were comfortable, and most of the little pain points were because of Steve—but she knows he works better with a gameplan, he’s not all about jumping out of planes without parachutes all the time, and certainly not about this. And, from here, he could narrow things down okay. Probably.

“However it comes out, we’re just feeling out the skill, yeah?” She nods encouragingly at him, and he returns it with at least some degree of confidence, he hopes. “Whether it’s something simple, something small, or something big and complex. Whatever feels right.” Steve had noticed that about her from the very start: she put the ball in his court, the power in his hands—and the work, the decisions, the real test of strength and will and devotion in all this right alongside both. “Or as right as an assignment meant to challenge you and push your comfort zone a little can be.”

He’d chuckled, if weakly, and because they both knew he’d be spending the rest of the session thinking through all possible angles of what he’d just been tasked to do, he’d taken her up on the offer to wrap early.

It ends up taking a few days for him to find a thing to ask; he thinks about it here and there, less than he’d expected really—he thought it would get in his head and dig teeth but it doesn’t. They make it through most of the second season of Voyager, after a long hiatus of not making headway through Star Trek at all, and Steve tries not to be put out that Bucky’s poker face remains inscrutable regarding his favorite run of the franchise, not to mention his favorite Captain (other than you, of course, sweetheart is all Bucky will say, with a wicked grin, when Steve tries to be sly and get his answer before they finish all the way through the shows and the movies); he tries, and mostly succeeds, because maybe Steve can’t read all his pop culture tells but he knows Bucky, which is a little sneaking bit of certitude, of progress in his own mind that he can step into that knowledge with confidence, with pride, and just know.

Plus he’s pretty sure Bucky’s a TNG man. Fairly sure, at least. But he won’t feel like a failure if he’s wrong. He thinks. Probably he won’t.

Possibly.

It’s progress either way, though, and Steve’s going to take it; that was a surprise, too, that he didn’t fight the little signs as too insignificant, but latched onto them and bit his lip against a grin sometimes when they came to light, and then grinned full-on when Bucky noticed him doing it, and guessed right as to why, Steve’s sure, without Steve ever saying—he tells Bucky about therapy, sometimes, but never at length; what Bucky knows about his sessions is more in his actions, in him trying to put the strategies he’s learning into practice, at least so far—but Steve always ends up grinning fully for the small victories, because Bucky teases the smile out to full bloom with his lips at the corners of Steve’s own until Steve can’t help it, the joy just ping-pongs on itself until he feels like he glows.

So it takes a few days, before Steve finds a thing that he wants. A thing that has to do with something he’s comfortable in, and confident with, but that he’s never said out loud and asked to have before.

They’re in the shower—and of course that’s not where the original sensation stems from, not where Steve was standing when the echo, the memory of the feeling that spirals up his spine first happened, way back when; but they’re in the shower when he starts to think about it.

Starts, but doesn’t get far, because there are hands on his skin running up and down, slipping along planes of oversensitized flesh underneath the endless stream of water, and Bucky’s mouth drawing patterns just the same is warm, so much warmer than the spray, so much softer and so much brighter; the press of his weight and the drag of his lips cleansing something so much deeper, so much more than any other thing.

“You’re done for the day, yeah?” Bucky asks, mouths against the whorl of Steve’s ear and Steve can damn well feel the way Bucky soaks up the shudder that wracks him, full-bodied, as a result. Steve makes himself nod, because there’s something electric in Bucky’s body language, in his touch: worshipful and reverent and wanting on a molecular level that Steve thinks might well define all of who they are to each other, together, but in this present moment feels like lightning striking, and then just refusing flat-out to stop, their whole selves alight with promise, with potential.

Bucky hums, moans as he leans his weight into Steve a little closer, runs his hands a little further down Steve’s chest as he pulls Steve tighter against him.

“Good,” Bucky murmurs; “Because I’m going to get you out of here and spread you out on the bed like the fucking feast you are,” and Bucky’s sliding a palm down the line of Steve’s thigh and speaking to the straining tendon of Steve’s neck and fuck, but his tongue teases when he talks and Steve trembles, knee-knocking and unabashed with it, and then Bucky’s mouthing at the juncture of Steve’s neck, along his shoulders, and Steve’s arcing into it, shameless because it hasn’t been a long day, exactly, just too long since he’s had Bucky's hands on him, since he’s felt pliant under Bucky’s attention, eased just that little bit closer to boneless by the absolute certainty that Steve will come out the other side of the evening with the shape of Bucky’s lips as much as his hands bruised into his skin for the passion of it all, and Steve will be wrung to just the right level of ruin that he needs, because Bucky, somehow, always knows what he needs.

“Goddamn mouthwatering,” Bucky whispers then, the rush of sound so close to being lost in the sound of the of the water except that nothing, not a single thing of Bucky Barnes could be lost on Steve, for the fact that Steve’s attuned to him intrinsically, unfailingly; orients toward him like magnetic north and the fixed orbit of the globe.

“I’m going to devour every piece and part of you,” Bucky mouths against Steve’s jaw; “gonna fucking savor it,” and Steve just gives in to the shiver, now, and whimpers a little when Bucky presses the hardening line of his cock just a little more perfectly against the cleft of Steve’s ass, casual-like and gentle and routine and it’s gorgeous, it’s so fucking gorgeous Steve could cry, or scream, or fall apart with it all but what he does instead is tip his head back and pant:

“Yeah,” and Steve can’t catch his breath, so far beyond and above the steam of the shower around them; he feels like his pulse is just hammering because it knows Bucky’s lips are there to feel every trip: “Yes.”

And yes, yes, fuck, Steve wants that, he wants to be worshipped and adored and made to feel like the flesh and bones of him are not just desired but essential to this singular human being wrapping arms around him, now; he wants to be singled out and separated into his component parts so that they’re seen as worthy, but also seen for how they only shine, only hold that worth for how much they’re made of the depth of feeling, the thing that the word ‘love’ doesn’t wholly cover but that has to suffice for—hell yes, he wants that, always. Always, and he says it, babbles and presses needy into Bucky’s touch;

“I want that, yes, yeah.”

The thing is, though: Steve’s been discovering for a while now that he’s a needy person when he feels safe, when there’s trust enough to allow it. Steve’s needy, and he’s selfish a little, and he’s greedy, he’s learning this about himself, and he’s trying very hard to learn alongside that knowledge that none of those things are inherently bad, or shameful, particularly not in this context; particularly not so wrapped up in unwavering love. So, yes, Steve wants that, what Bucky’s offering, telling him, preparing him to expect and anticipate in every moment and molecule between.

But the sensation, from before, that never happened in a shower but that happened in a place Steve had felt some safety, some trust: it was the hands.

It was Bucky’s hands, at a very specific point against the lower curve of his ribs, and Bucky’s hands are there again now, just coincidence, and Steve pauses. His breath catches.

And Steve is selfish, because Steve wants many things, all at once.

“I want that,” Steve exhales, a little shaky but wholly sure, and Steve’s not sure what about him gives away the thoughts in his head but Bucky reads it plain, and stops; doesn’t pull away, or stop touching Steve and Steve lets out a breath he was only half-holding, really, but didn’t even know that much until it’s done, and then he’s being held, chest-to-spine so either one of them can breathe and feel the curve of Steve’s backbone line up with Bucky’s sternum just so, Bucky’s palms still and splayed full over Steve’s in kind.

“What is it?” Bucky breathes, hooking his chin over Steve’s shoulder and breathing, breathing, breathing and it’s comfortable, and it’s right, and Steve can let that soak into his entire self, let it consume him so wholly enough to push out the answer without him having to think about it.

“I want that,” Steve whispers, hands moving automatically to cover Bucky’s against his chest: “but, maybe tonight,” and he pauses, swallows, and he thinks he may have been derailed, may have lost the momentum to say anything but Bucky’s pressing his lips, soft and sweet to Steve’s wet skin, the curve of his neck, and Steve feels a bliss in it; a joy and the certainty that he can do and be and say what he needs, here; what he wants. He doesn’t even have to make sense—Bucky’s still going to press his lips to Steve’s skin, just like this. Suddenly—but for so very long, and all the time, too—Steve’s sure of it.

“I don’t know why I thought of it,” Steve’s saying it, low and breathless and Bucky’s body’s pressed against him so close and Steve can feel those lungs heaving counterpoint to his own and so he has to focus on making words in the face of sheer sensation, the touch of him that never fails to consume Steve wholly, never gets tired or old or anything less than overwhelming in the best of ways.

“Obviously it couldn't have been the exact same but there’s something about the way that you,” and he’s dragging Bucky’s palm down a little, and just the soft slip of his touch sends lightning back through Steve’s veins; “the feel of you, and your hands and the way you looked at me, later,” Steve shudders, and Bucky presses further, tighter to hold the trembling of him in, like a reflex, and Steve feels so much for this man it’s beyond his capacity to wholly grasp sometimes.

“Just, everything, and it came out of nowhere kind of,” Steve takes a few breaths, and tries not to dwell on the disjointed way the words are coming, because they’re not hard like this, in Bucky’s arms, it’s just hard to make them fit together like they’re supposed to; and it’s okay, he’s just feeling out the skill, it’s all okay—

“I just, she said,” and is it weird, to bring up therapy even vaguely, when your boyfriend’s teeth are grazing back and forth along your collarbone and his fingers are teasing hairs leading down your stomach? That kills the mood, or like, shouldn’t it? WIll it?

“My therapist, I mean,” and oh, well, if it’s going to kill the mood he just committed straight to it, no tiptoeing for Steve Rogers, nope, and if he wants to tell his dumb brain, or else, his dumb and useless brain-to-mouth filter it was just so Bucky didn’t think Steve was thinking about a woman instead of Bucky he can’t even try that excuse because that’s a line of both reasoning and apprehension Steve’s blessed to never have run in to with Bucky, never felt an inkling of in himself or from Bucky either way: jealousy.

So it’s really just Steve, and his stupid mouth, and he’s talking about his therapist during foreplay and—

“Fuck.”

Bucky huffs a breath, and it’d be a laugh if Steve thought Bucky’d laugh at him like this, but he knows better. It’s close though, and something that may just be a thing that Bucky Barnes does for, gives in the face of Steve Rogers—sometimes-bumbling, far too earnest, so in love he can’t see straight so he trips over it often; it’s a huff of breath, and a soft hum that tickles the tone in Steve’s chest that speaks to pure fondness, and he nuzzles at Steve’s throat a little as he runs a hand up the center of Steve’s chest, and that strikes another tone in Steve’s chest, in a way he never knew the word could even work or mean or feel: possessiveness, but then, even so, not that at all.

Or else it is that, and more, and new solely for them, maybe, because it’s still the touch that Bucky uses always that lets Steve feel like he’s treasured, somehow, and above all other things at that; there’s no jealousy, and it’s not ownership, never anything close, that’s not them: but it’s...homecoming. Belonging. Being so wanted and needed and held as a given in someone’s world because that world includes you in its definition, and that world defines your world in kind.

That feeling.

Steve melts into it, all that it is, and mostly-but-not-entirely forgets to be humiliated for bringing up his therapist as Bucky’s sweet talking him toward the bedroom while they’re naked in the shower. Bucky pulls him in closer somehow when he melts, though, and Bucky’s still just as hard where the curve of Steve’s ass presses against his length and yeah, then Steve forgets being humiliated entirely, because it seems like he had nothing to worry about.

This man, whose arms are snaked around him, whose broad hands are on Steve’s chest and whose own chest is rising and falling into the line of Steve’s spine? This man is goddamn perfection.

“Come on,” Bucky whispers, nips a little at the lobe of Steve’s ear as he strokes through Steve’s hair with one hand, the other still braced at the center of Steve’s chest. “Let me wash this out. Then let’s get you into bed and you can tell me exactly what I made you think of.”

Steve hadn’t even remembered the shampoo in his hair, and so it’s with a moments’-notice kind of abandon that he hands himself over to Bucky stroking, massaging gentle along his scalp, half the pace because Steve keeps Bucky’s other hand pressed to his chest the whole time.

By the time they climb out from under the water, Bucky’s ready to lead, to towel Steve off and take him to bed but: by the time they climb out it’s Steve who wants to wrap Bucky up and make him warm and hold him close and give him care and Bucky lets him, Bucky gives himself to Steve to be moved and when Steve’s done, and can’t help himself but to bury his face in the damp mess of Bucky’s fluffed-up hair, Steve’s given free reign, and it’s a gorgeous dance of sorts, who leads, who yields, how they fit and shape around each other: it’s natural, and it’s a balm for Steve always, and he doesn’t even realize he’s been maneuvered gently, Bucky pulling him slowly into the adjoining bedroom, until Bucky’s giving into the pressure of the mattress against the backs of his own knees and dragging Steve to fall on top of him, still so gentle, so slow.

“Perfect,” Steve’s murmuring, without thought he doesn’t need to spend on a matter so obvious as he lifts himself up and kneels either side of Bucky’s thighs, reaching to cup his cheek, drinking in the splendor of him. “Goddamn gorgeous.”

“Says the man who wrote the book,” Bucky breathes back with a grin, and mirrors the position to frame Steve’s face, and draw him down again to kiss; slow, still, but less gentle, more deep.

Steve lets himself fall to the side when he breaks away to gasp back his breath, to curl as a parenthesis to Bucky’s frame while still reaching over to him, still asking that body to stay as his to touch and Bucky knows it, moves closer, runs warm hands up and down Steve’s side.

“When I wasn’t,” Steve finds himself speaking after enough minutes go by, with his hands on Bucky’s skin and Bucky’s hands returning the favor; “well, when I wasn’t too sick but I wasn’t doing great either,” Steve’s staring at the ceiling as he speaks, but his breathing’s easy, even; he feels at ease: “sometimes—”

But then there’s something in his line of sight, unexpected: Bucky’s touch had never faltered, but he’s stradling Steve, now, and his touch is in so many more places, his weight settled calmly, deftly around Steve’s hips and Steve blinks, and revisits his own words in his mind because Bucky looks wholly ready to do and be everything that popped into Steve’s brain, surged upwards from his memories, the way he’d only go to people he trusted, as far as he could trust anyone, when he was still weak from the worst of his illnesses, when he wasn’t even back to his version of well; only to people who’d see him, and not think him less for needing with conditions, not judge when they did all the work because he couldn’t, and not expect payment in kind when he’d recovered even though Steve was always good for it. Bucky’s just, there, and ready, and Steve knows he didn’t say a goddamn word to warrant this.

“How’d you know?” Steve frowns up at him, confused even as Bucky’s cock is hot against his stomach, and Steve’s own is starting to strain upward toward the curve of Bucky’s ass.

“Makes sense,” Bucky says simply, lips quirked ever so slightly, cherishing something in Steve that Steve himself can’t imagine, but is grateful is seen, because of the light it stirs in Bucky’s eyes.

“Also?” Bucky quirks a brow, with that, and nods down toward his side—where Steve’s got an unexpectedly firm grip on his hips,with every indication that he’d been at least softly, possibly-but-not-particularly-probably subtly, coaxing Bucky toward him, to the position he currently occupies, and Steve feels the flush on his skin but it’s irrelevant, in the grander scheme of the moment because—

Something that you want, and Bucky doesn’t even need to be asked, not all the way; feels what Steve asks for with actions, with half-realized words, jumbled sentiments half-revealed even at their lacklustre best but Bucky sees it, and takes the cues Steve doesn’t always know he gives but is now coming to know very clearly is something he needs, in a partner, in a lover, in the bigger portion of his soul and maybe that’s the key to it, maybe that’s what it all gathers and builds into and from: Bucky’s a part of him, inextricably, and so of course he knows.

Bucky knows, and the only way he could was to be woven in between Steve’s ribs, to feel from the inside the way that he breathes.

“You want me here?” And Steve’s breath catches at those words, because Bucky shifts, thighs braced around Steve and it’s exactly what he wants: it’s how it was in his memories, made new and shining with how he wants it here, now, with Bucky in ways that he’s never had before, and Bucky’s hand is exactly where the pressure drove Steve wild, and the touch there’s just testing, just checking but Steve wants one more thing and he’s free, empowered in this half-halcyon moment, recollection on top of the present, all backlit with the feeling in Steve’s mind, behind Steve’s eyes and it’s on the high of it that Steve’s hand covers Bucky, just high enough on his torso for the weight to be felt heavy when he inhales; Steve’s hand covers Bucky and holds fast, firm; feels his own pulse driving hard under the skin.

“No one had to try, back then. Probably the opposite.” Steve swallows, and meets Bucky’s eyes and they’re so big, they’re so open, and Bucky’s a goddamn miracle made flesh. “But they didn’t have to try, it just happened. But then, since,” and Steve presses down, and hopes all the pieces add up to what he’s trying to say: he needs to gasp under Bucky’s touch, Bucky’s weight—loved to feel it a little, when he was smaller, like a struggle he was choosing, or at the very least not fighting in the slightest, and needs to remember that, inscribe that same perfect heft on his lungs like this, held down just that little bit in this body, with a person he trusts like always but right here with a soul he trusts more than he thought he ever could, where he can offer a surrender he can revoke at any moment but won’t, fuck; he just hopes some of that, any of that comes through, that any of it makes sense—

Bucky’s hand is at Steve’s cheek, and he must have faltered, must have given away the giddy-nervous-heaviness of it all in his chest, echoes of the past and right here now: Bucky watches him with so much unfettered, unmistakable love that Steve thinks he could drown in it, easily, and never regret a moment of the descent.

“Can you?” Steve whispers, which isn’t what Steve meant to say, exactly, but it’s the same in the end—Bucky’s probably one of the only people who can, and that’s not even the point, not even what made Steve think of wanting this, else he’d have damn well thought it earlier; but he needs Bucky to want it to. It’s important to him, tight in his chest in an unexpected way inside this space between them and he wanted to try to make that clear, and make that known, but it’s just those two words he manages: messy.

Bucky, though: Bucky just smiles soft, also searing; leans in to press their lips together, and Steve damn near vibrates with the tenderness of it, the promise of Bucky’s body poised above his, the idle drag of his balls against Steve’s hair-trigger skin, so poised to unravel and open to Bucky wholly, to only retake a shape and form that encompasses all that Bucky is and holds him close, unending, because Steve is a line of pure need, more so with every breath he’s heaving, stuttering through because his lungs aren’t big enough, they can’t hold all this.

“So right here?” Bucky leans, and it blanks Steve’s mind out in pure sunshine, the daring bright white at the center of a star, dangerous and life-giving and Steve moans: Bucky’s hand is exactly where it had touched, tingled and spurred the memories and the need, but stretched like that, Steve, well.

Steve wants, and that’s the point, isn’t it? And Bucky’s watching him intently, the comprehension and the understanding and the willingness in his gaze a goddamn miracle and nothing less, and Steve can want.

Steve can want anything, everything, and this beautiful fool will give it to him, and Steve’s never been blessed by the universe before. Not like this. Surviving inside a metal pod, shooting up a foot and shoulder muscles he never could have fathomed, waking up after breathless decades in the cold: nothing compares. Nothing comes close.

He can want, and so he reaches for Bucky’s hand, presses down harder, just shy of pain, and Bucky’s pupils blow impossible wider for it, and Steve can feel his own thrashing blood underneath, close enough to the apex to measure under both their hands. He lingers, and that is life-giving now in more ways than one.

“A little lower,” Steve breathes, and it’s shaky, but he drags Bucky’s palm just the slightest bit further down and presses hard, so they both gasp: Bucky with his whole body and Steve with as much as can manage but under Bucky’s whole body and the air he gets in is thinner even than he could have planned for because he arcs up hard at the sensation, and Bucky moves by instinct to brace him, so the pressure’s damn near tripled through against his sternum but Steve gasps, as best he can, under Bucky’s gasping body and their eyes stay locked the whole damn time and the feeling is nothing short of transcendental; incandescent.

That alone is a breath deeper, more settling and sure than he thought could rightly be known.

“Yeah,” and the sound falls from Steve’s lips as Bucky moves to let up for pressing, just a bit but Steve’s hand’s still sure against his, still insists Bucky’s touch stay exactly where it is as Steve charts out a different way to breathe around the gravity of it, physical and so much more.

“Yeah,” Steve sighs a little, eyes slipping closed for a few precious seconds he counts out for every double-beat of his heart under Bucky’s hand: “right there.”

And Bucky’s mouth is at the corner of Steve’s lips, then, and the hard length of his dick is heavy on Steve’s stomach where he leans, and his breath is so warm, so warm when he speaks:

“You tell me if you need anything,” Bucky murmurs into Steve’s skin, honey-thick and smooth, low and rough and decadent. “You tell me if I do anything wrong, or if I can do something more right.”

And Steve’s eyes open then, and catch Bucky’s, close enough Steve can see the light play off their sheen, catch the specks in the color, and Steve couldn’t make himself blink if he tried it, couldn’t force himself to miss a single moment just now, like this, so he squeezes Bucky’s hand still caught beneath his own and whispers the only words that he know will come out right when he feels so close to coming apart:

“I love you.”

And then Bucky’s kissing him, full on and hard, needy, and Steve goes from feeling like a bow string, too tight for his pulse to beat safe and not shatter, too liquid, languid, molten under Bucky’s lips and this man is magic and wonder; this feeling between them is beauty and light, and Steve is a mess in all the best ways for how it’s so much more than he can grasp, but he doesn’t need to. It’s soaked into his bones, saturates him straight through. There is no part of Steve Rogers that lives in this world anymore that’s not mostly made out of this.

He whines, though, when Bucky pulls back, and it’s not just because his cock’s been straining up against Bucky’s body where he’d been perched above him, or because Bucky’s ass drags a little against the aching length on his way off; he damn well keens when Bucky’s hand moves from his chest—he’s bereft, but Bucky has to see it, has to know it quick because he reaches for Steve’s ankle, innocuous little touch but the point of contact Steve needs in that instant to keep from crumbling: then Steve sees how Bucky’s moving, how he’s flexing and stretching and the splay of his muscles and what he’s reaching for and, oh.

“You want to,” Bucky nods between his spread-wide thighs, glorious things they are; “or you want to watch?”

Steve’s blood trips for no good reason—they’ve done this plenty of times, at least this part—and every good reason at once: they’ve done this so many times, and they get to have all of them and more to come.

“Let me watch,” Steve huffs out; Bucky’s palm’s no longer pressing the breath from him, but it’s like Steve’s chest hasn’t gotten the memo: it’s still tight and leaves him gasping, and his jaw’s gone perpetually loose even as he tries to swallow: “at least to start.”

Bucky grins at him a little crooked, and his lashes are so dark when he watches Steve as he slicks up his fingers. “You got it.”

And the man’s a goddamn vision, always, toeing the perfectly-practiced line between giving Steve a bit of a show and prepping himself with no time to waste because they both want this, need this; Steve can see he’s not the only one aching for Bucky’s heat around him in the measured, tight-held way Bucky’s stretching himself, a hitch to his muscles that only comes when he’s holding himself together toward a larger goal, and the fact that it’s often the goal of getting Steve’s dick inside him is a fucking gift; and Steve can’t help sitting up a little further and grabbing just a bit at the globes of Bucky’s ass in gratitude as Bucky circles and scissors his hole for Steve; to take Steve in, and keep him, and drive him fucking insane.

Bucky’s mouth’s dropped open, his breath starting to come quick when he starts easing himself back closer to Steve again, lifting up a little and letting his fingers loose from his ass where Steve himself isn’t willing, not just yet, and digs his fingers in to hold Bucky spread wide as he moves; it slows things, just a little, and Bucky lifts and lines himself up, grabs Steve at the root of his cock to steady him and draw a bone fide whimper from Steve’s throat in the process, fingers hot and slick already where they touch. It jolts Steve into participating in the process, a little clumsy, almost shaky with want but it’s quick between them to get Steve’s dick caught just perfectly at Bucky’s rim, teasing Steve with lax-but-still-pursed resistance as Bucky moves from the hips to get on top of Steve just so, and then—

“Right here, yeah?” Bucky’s breathing’s coming heavy, and his pupils are close-on to blown, and Steve’s trembling so finely he doesn’t know if either of them can feel it past the overfull pounding of his heartbeat, drum-violent and echoing and caught suddenly, for all its force, under Bucky’s hand back on his chest to press the air from his lungs, too: to hold all of him, right there, and Steve’s struck by it in that instant, the gravity it lays on him in every possible way, and so when he nods, he’s fully aware of the fact that Bucky’s swift move to sink onto him will undo him.

He’s still not prepared for what it makes him feel.

Bucky’s rhythm is a variation on the theme Steve keeps in his bones, now, for all of its iterations that Steve’s learned like this, pressed up against Bucky’s fucking immaculate body, under his hands, filled with or wrapped up in Bucky’s heat alike: but this is new, with Bucky’s frame balanced and angled, weight held just so and barely moving where he braces against Steve’s chest and Steve’s breaths are already coming quick, maybe too quick, maybe just right but he can feel the five-point outline in the push of Bucky’s palm when his lungs lift, sharp, and it only makes his gasp quicker, harder, a raucous sort of panting as Bucky sets a roll to his hips as he lifts up, and clenches, and sinks down quick once, then slow—and maybe it’s all in Steve’s mind, the anticipation and the nostalgia and the freedom alongside old fears and limits, the joy despite them then, and despite everything now; Steve’s not sure what makes him dizzy with it from the very first, if it’s the shape of Bucky’s body, the muscles and the curves, the hardness and the give in him, or something else, something added, something unnameable.

Whatever it is, though: when he was younger, Steve couldn’t meet his partners taking him in like this because his body was weak, recovering. Right now: Steve can’t meet Bucky, can’t do anything but stare wide-eyed and slack-jawed and reeling, overcome, and take beautiful half-breaths under the careful meter of Bucky’s touch, and fucking bask in the, the—the awe of it, something he can’t add all the components together to define now, predictably, but doesn’t think he could manage at his best, either. Something bigger than that, or beyond him as a rule.

But the words don’t have to be perfect, inside his head or out. The pieces don’t have to be flawless.

Especially not when the feeling is this.

The funny thing is, Steve may not have said it—meant to, maybe, or at least more than he managed, but never said a thing to this specifically: he kind of figured that to hold him down this hard, Bucky would need his left arm as a rule. They went at it heavy sometimes, wild sometimes, and when Steve had realized that their very first time it had been an awakening, had caught inside Steve’s pulse, the discovery that he could be like this, with this man; he’d known already, that first time, that it could, would be so much bigger than letting go of his body, his strength if they chose to let it—and fuck: did they ever.

Steve still kind of assumed Bucky would need the metal, the enhanced capabilities it leant, to keep him down. And it’s only when Steve’s a raw nerve beneath Bucky, chest heaving blissfully with that push against the fullness of his breath, just so, skin slick with sweat: it’s only then he notices that, so far, it’s not just been his sweat, but Bucky’s too, against the flesh-and-blood palm he’s played at the base of Steve’s sternum.

Steve thinks it might hurt, a little, the way his eyes stretch even wider when Bucky moves his right hand from Steve’s chest to cup at Steve’s ass, and replaces it with his left.

Steve knows it hurts, a little but exquisitely, the way he tries an inhale against the steel of that hold, placed just so, and Bucky’s not even trying.

Steve doesn’t think so, at least; he can’t tell for sure, because Bucky’s pupils have been huge for ages now, and they gleam at him the same.

The way he rides Steve now is a goddamn revelation, nothing less—it shouldn’t change the motion so much, has no right to, Bucky leaning as he does into the breadth of Steve’s chest when he lifts, drops, pistons sharp from the thighs and drags slow to drive Steve mad with it. It shouldn’t be such a vast difference, but hell if it’s quite like anything Steve’s ever known and he was on edge already but he’s close to delirium now, body coiled with the need to keen or thrash or cry out or something but the thing is, even if he possessed, in theory, the capacity to react to the impetus, the unfathomable need pounding through his veins there’s a limit in the shape of Bucky’s hand, there’s a cap to how far he can move, how deep he can breathe, how much he can do anything but receive the attention, the warmth, the offering of Bucky doing the work for Steve, for Steve and keeping him still, keeping him well, keeping him steady.

And Steve didn’t understand it, not wholly, didn’t know it because it wasn’t something he thought he needed to know at all; but this, this simultaneous pressure and release, this heady sense of all-consuming trust made impossibly new in this small way that’s so big it feels like it’s moving mountains in Steve’s whole sense of the world—it’s euphoric, and he’s not surprised when he comes long, hard because it’s powerful but Steve’s trembling with it, close to whimpering for it, and Bucky follows, spilling wet across the hand that never falters, never gives way even if it gentles against Steve’s sternum.

Steve’s pulse is all thunder, still, and his breath not-quite caught when Bucky’s cleaned them off enough to curl around Steve; when Steve grasps needy for Bucky’s hand and tracing the grooves in the plating like a talisman, more sacred, more known to him than the beads of a rosary, settling more inside of him and putting him further to ease.

“I think,” Steve finally says, his awareness tied entirely to two things and two things alone—Bucky’s head on his shoulder, hair tickling his chin, and Bucky’s hand still rising-and-falling as a constant against the first hint of the curve of Steve’s ribs—and Steve’s boneless, and marveling, and the words won’t be perfect but they’re so big in his chest, and the touch of Bucky like a parenthesis on either end of that chest just the same feels like safety and comfort and a promise to keep everything between hale and whole, and the weight of that touch is barely anything in reality, but it’s so much that it’d press all the imperfect words out like blood-letting, like confession; sacramental:

“I think I could’ve dreamed about the best person, the best match for everything that I am and everything that I was ever going to be,” Steve tips his head down to nuzzle a little at the top of Bucky’s head, to breathe in the heat, the sweat, the sweetness of him. “I could’ve dreamt someone up and that image, that made-up fantasy thing,” and Steve’s heart knocks hard as the words rise up past it, a truth he knows can’t even fit into anything so simple as letter and syllables but none of it has to be perfect, does it; not when the feeling is already there.

“The dream never would have touched you,” Steve whispers into Bucky’s hair, then turns to press the rest of his breath against Bucky’s temple in a rush: “would’ve never even come close.”

“Fuck, Stevie,” Bucky breathes, ducked into Steve’s collarbone, now, and his breath there is a little shaky when he kisses the line of clavicle straining Steve’s skin; when he raises his head and watches Steve, takes Steve in with such singular focus it would be uncomfortable, with anyone else, but here it’s like a blanket, it’s all comfort and awe; when he leans, and sucks Steve’s mouth against his own until his breath’s ragged, shuddering for a whole different reason—or maybe the exact same reason, in the end.

“Just so you know,” Bucky says, though only once they’re settled again, and both of them are breathing easy, slow and soft and sated; “I’m still gonna spread you out and eat you from top to bottom, okay?” Bucky’s kiss to Steve’s neck at that meets the bark of laughter that escapes his throat; that’s cut off in a huff and a bit-back moan when Bucky adds a little bit of teeth and tacks on: “Maybe tomorrow.”

And Steve’s grin at that starts slow, largely just so it can blossom full on and take over his face, suffuse through his skin and cells and bones until the laughter comes because there’s nothing else that could come of it, nothing else that could follow and Steve only lets go of Bucky’s hand on his chest to wrap him fully in both arms and coax him up to kiss again, to share the taste of his joy:

“Oh, I’m counting on it.”

Chapter Text

Steve drops his keys by the door and toes off his boots, knows Bucky’s waiting for him even if he wasn’t at therapy this afternoon: it’s become their default mode even more than it was before, really, their schedules melding with a little bit of intention but mostly as a matter of course. Steve makes to call out for him, but the lights in the kitchen and the soft-scritching of paper lead him in without needing to.

“What’s this?” Steve points to the little army of jars with the hardware store labels, plain plastic with nothing to give them away but they look familiar, like the shape and size of something Steve knows well in his bones, but then he sees one cracked open and he knows it for sure: it’s paint.

It’s so much paint.

“Remember when you asked to move in together?”

Steve blinks at the table covered with containers—at least thirty, probably closer to fifty stacked up and spread out—and he’s stunned still for just a moment: he wasn’t expecting that.

“We never really actually talked about it, after.” Bucky doesn’t look hesitant, exactly, or nervous—but it’s a close thing. There’s a seriousness in the set of Bucky’s shoulders, not squared but held firm; there’s a lilt in Bucky’s tone that’s almost wistful, but somehow bright with it, just on the edge of shy without getting there and it’s close enough to unfamiliar that Steve leans in on instinct, needing to be there, close and steady and present; it’s close enough to adorable, and soft and shining that Steve wants to wrap himself in it, in all that Bucky is within this moment, and just breathe.

“Talk?” Steve makes himself ask, because there’s space for a word there and he needs to fill it, and because a question makes the most sense, because he honestly didn’t know they needed to talk about it; they agreed like it was a given, they fucked for the rest of the night, and nothing much changed save that they gained a sense of permanence as they went from occupying space together, and happily so, to living together, through and through, as something they’d spoken aloud, concrete and undeniable, only to instantly find it was pretty concrete the whole damn time.

“I kinda want to get a place.” Steve didn’t realize Bucky’s hands had been playing around one of the jars on the table until he sets it down with a tiny thud, and looks up to meet Steve’s eyes straight-on. “Our place, you know, from the start. Just ours.”

Bucky smiles at him them, and his eyes are wide, hopeful; they see a future that’s clear and looks bright just for the reflection in that gaze and Steve feels it warm him by sheer proximity because Steve’s fingers itch for that future, his heart sings for it, and the idea of it is starting to thrill him alongside the terror—slowly, so very slowly, and he has a long way to go, the fear still wins, but there are embers there in the full light of day, versus only managing to catch and glow when Steve managed to ignore reality, to hide from his own anxious thoughts for spare seconds before they rushed back in to douse the spark.

And Steve remembers, clearly just here, how he’d proposed the idea to Bucky in the first place, how he’d fumbled and kissed Bucky between his half-formed thoughts like a madman, of home as a place when Steve was already certain, and rightly that his home was a person and would be for always. He thinks, though, about how much has changed and how much hasn’t, for them, between them: Steve’s still grasping at the words he needs when it comes to what Bucky is, what Bucky means, but he’s slowly learning how to navigate that; he’s asking for help in navigating that, which isn’t something Steve Rogers has ever been known for before; isn’t something Steve Rogers had a reason to accept it or seek it or bother learning for to overcome his own pride.

He’s grown, he realizes, more than he thought; he’s become more himself, in ways he hadn’t been looking for, or expecting.

“We’d have the Tower,” Bucky nods, maybe to them both or maybe to himself; “and I mean, you can keep your apartment, hell, I can keep mine, we can do whatever—”

“You want to get a place?” Steve cuts him off, because he feels a lightness rising in his chest that pushes the words out before he can think twice: so close again to the same words Steve himself had used what feels like a lifetime again, but they’re weighted different. They carry different things in the letters, the syllable-lines of every sound and when Bucky nods, it carries something new and terrifyingly beautiful in it, too.

“I feel like we’re building something,” Bucky says, but then he shakes his head just the smallest amount, and his grin comes back, a little wry and wholly expansive, drawing Steve in swift and effortless. “We’ve been building something for a really fucking long time, but lately, we,” he swallows, and Steve follows the motion with his eyes, hungry and marvelling all at once: “it feels like we’re building something to last.”

And Steve marvels at that, too, wholeheartedly: that he’s here, that they’re here, that it’s real and he gets to have this, that he’s starting to believe he gets to have this.

That he’ll get to keep this. Because that’s exactly what they’re doing, and of course Bucky saw it: they’re building something to last, for always, and Steve can even dare to think, to hope that his own choices have something to do with the shift, with this turn toward the sun in all that they are.

“I want to get a place for us to keep building,” Bucky tells him, those full lips a little quirked, a little parted; “that fits who we are, what we want,” and he reaches for Steve’s hand, fits his palm over Steve’s knuckles with a surety that settles the blood in Steve’s veins that he hadn’t realized was bounding wild: “the two of us.”

And what can Steve do, then, but kiss this man he loves senseless, deep and devotional: all of him poured into it and taken heartfully with a tenderness, with a passion for it, for the two of them together that Steve doesn’t know that he deserves, even now, but that he’ll never tire of, or stop wondering at for its joy, or for the way it’s met with a ferocity, every time, a need just as strong.

His free hand had moved to cup Bucky’s face in the meantime, but it’s sliding down his chest as they part, their breaths short as Steve leans his forehead into Bucky’s and closes his eyes for a second; just feels.

“Don’t they make little cardboard squares for this?” Steve’s voice is a little hoarse when he looks up and lets his hands tap across the closest tubs of paint.

“You can’t trust swatches,” Bucky glares at him, like the suggestion’s a heresy, and the laugh that bubbles forth from Steve’s lips is something innate, organic, pushes up on every crest of his pulse and Steve feels buoyant for it; watches Bucky melt for it, too, and it all feels like such a goddamn gift, Steve’s not sure how to breathe through it.

“There are a lot of options, here,” he finally settles on, still chuckling, Bucky full-on beaming at him, a contagious giddiness to it, between them.

“You’re an artist,” Bucky’s sense of Steve’s apparent blasphemy only deepens, but it’s so far outweighed by the joy that it just comes out as warmth; “are you telling me you want boring eggshell rooms?”

And, well. Point. A luxury Steven imagined, but one that, yes. He wants to avail himself of.

He is really, really starting to believe he gets to have this.

“You’ll need an art studio,” Bucky’s tone softens, deepens, the affection in it like spun gold and sunshine: “with good lighting. Even I know that any kind of lighting is going to play off the wall colors.”

Steve is blessed beyond reason, is the thing. Steve is in love the way the universe intended when the feeling was first born into being.

“I,” he starts, but it’s an overwhelming thing that comes over him in a wave, crashes hard and he needs to steady himself, needs to moor somewhere so the only thing, the only thing there is for him is to wrap around Bucky and breathe him in: steady. Sure.

“I have never felt like I needed to build a home with you,” Steve eventually exhales, nuzzling into Bucky’s neck, voice soft and pressed safe, kissed direct into the skin: “because you are my home.”

And where Steve’s pressed he can feel the shiver run through Bucky’s body for the words, the confession of Steve’s heart against the beat of Bucky’s pulse at the throat.

“But that’s what we’ve been doing, you’re right,” Steve nods, tilts his chin up to catch Bucky’s gaze. “Like, an extension of that, of you,” and he turns to kiss again, against Bucky’s stubble now: “being home.” And he couldn’t stop the smile curling his lips if he tried. “That’s exactly it.”

“So, let’s keep fucking building, then?” Bucky asks, even as they both know there’s no need, they’re on the same page, and it’s just for the freedom to speak it and bask in it, just a little; that’s what drives Steve to respond with anything save his lips on Bucky’s mouth.

“Absolutely.”

Steve gives in to the need to kiss Bucky, then, again, hard and sweeping and he leans them both where Bucky sits in his chair to suck farther into Bucky’s mouth, to tongue deeper and taste all that promise, all that

“Mix the colors for me?”

Bucky’s eyes narrow, confused and amused and adoring and Steve feels it all vibrate through him, wrap around his limbs and squeeze. “What?”

“Pick your favorites. Make new ones.” Steve leans, grabs three paint jars at random and sets them in front of Bucky. “I,” Steve swallows, because the words are coming before he can think on them, raw and true without wondering, waiting for sense.

“I want to paint something,” and Steve realizes, as the sounds fade, that he hasn’t felt paint beneath his fingernails since the handful of classes he managed to scrape tuition for in 1941; a piece of itself unlocked without looking, or asking, in the face of this man, and everything he makes Steve feel and want: “I want to paint,” he says again, more sure now, spilling over with wonder; “but,” and he breathes in deep, and frames Bucky’s cheek with an open palm: “just with your colors.”

Bucky’s eyes sparkle as the words land, lips stretching into a full grin over languid moments; stunning.

“You are such a fucking sap,” Bucky whispers to him, turns to kiss the hand at his jaw, teases the skin a little with his tongue before he covers Steve’s hand with his own and just hold them, flesh to flesh to metal, writing every truth there is to know when he breathes, and Steve’s chest aches so sweet:

“And I love you so fucking much, Steve Rogers, you have no idea.”

Steve, though, thinks he has a very good idea. It beats in his blood and swirls instead of oxygen through his lungs, gives him more life for it than he’s ever touched or grasped or kept.

He knows.

Chapter Text

When his therapist had asked him how his homework had gone, he’d blushed like a tomato and she’d smiled a little, and nodded, and they’d gone about their session—but Steve had known better than to think he was off the hook for good.

Which is why he isn’t surprised when, a week or two later, he’s asked if he wants to “level up” this time, if last time went so well.

It’s not exactly a dare, but it’s close enough, and he wonders exactly how she knew he was damn-near genetically incapable of backing down from that kind of challenge, explicit or implied.

Then again: it might be kind of obvious, as a personality trait of his. Well publicized, at least.

Either way, that’s how he finds himself here, on the instruction of: take one of the things in your chest, buried deep, he hadn’t meant to use those words, when he tried to explain what he was feeling; they were messy, silly words, dramatic and poorly chosen and he couldn’t do better, and he’d felt shame for it, but she’d leaned in, and had taken his hand for the first time after they’d established Steve was okay with it; she’d taken his hand and smiled at him so wide and proud and told him that was beautiful, and they were going to work on better understanding all those things in his chest, and maybe even unearth a few along the way, and something in the way she spoke made him feel lighter, or else, like he could feel lighter one day and he’d been speechless, and she’d been using the phrase ever since.

And he’s been feeling just a little lighter, most days, since then too, but maybe it’s a coincidence.

Anyway.

Take any one of them, as long as it’s one you haven’t had a chance to share with him yet, she’d told him. Take one of those things and say it with whatever words come, even ones that feel strange, or wrong. Don’t think about it so much that you’re not feeling it anymore, that you’re feeling what you’re thinking about more than the thing you’re grabbing for in your chest to make words to match, that you’re giving to Bucky. And when you do that, don’t ask for anything, need or want. See what happens. And then she’d smiled, and tilted her head to consider Steve a little closer before adding:

From what you’ve told me so far, it’s likely fair to trust that he’ll give what you need, where he can.

She’s not wrong. Not even a little. And the tension in his chest at the thought of it: it’s not as big as it used to be.

It’s still big, but he can tell the difference, is the thing. He figures that’s what counts.

Still: when the time comes, without really planning, Steve starts with thinking too much, and missing the feeling. They’re in bed, stretched out skin to skin: Bucky’s mouth is parted just a little, his breaths warm and wet on Steve’s body as he draws patterns around Steve’s tender nipple from the full hour’s attention Bucky’d spent on it not so long before that it’s no longer flushed red for it, just long enough that the sweat’s dried between them. The weight of his head on the breadth of Steve’s chest is heavy, solid, like protection and esteem against the lazy, sated beating of Steve’s heart and it feels decadent, really, indulgent and damn-well wonderful: and he wants to say that, even if it’s not a buried-thing, just a real thing. He kind of wants to say just that; but that’s also when his head starts getting louder.

Steve tries his damnedest, though, to stay in the sensation, the weight of Bucky’s torso lining Steve, the huffs of air from plush lips, the tracing of deft fingers, the sweet-scratch of stubble, the tickle of stray bits of hair. He tries to anchor on it. He wonders, if in doing just that, the buried-thing crawls up before he can stop it, or consider how it looks, how it’s made and offered to the world. How it escapes into being beyond himself, and is given to Bucky as...not an offering. It’s not worth anything, it’s a burden if anything—all of it is.

But he thinks maybe, in pushing himself to sink into the perfection of what he’s feeling, the unexpected rears its head and escapes when he breathes out.

“When I, when they,” Steve starts, and he can feel his heartbeat start ramping up for the size of the thing that's building next to it, rooted in his chest; Bucky feels it too, where Steve’s spread beneath him, and he looks up, a tiny frown tilting his mouth.

“Steve?”

Steve can’t help how he clutches at Bucky’s body, then: desperate. Needy.

Steve can’t help how his voice is barely a whisper.

His heart won’t stop raising up toward pounding, though: and Bucky shifts against it, and in Steve’s mind, in Steve’s skin, it feels like a motion to protect, like Bucky’s shielding the soft parts of him in their vulnerability, in their frenzy and their fear and their leaping into the unknown, and Steve’s never felt luckier, even as he tries not to tremble for what’s swelling in him, and spilling forth now too late to be stemmed, to hold back.

“I’ve never said this, never told,” he tries hedging anyway, and the worst thing, or the best thing, or both all at once, is that Steve’s got nothing to hedge against, save himself: his own feeling of owing Bucky the rest of what’s brewing in him, what’s been there for so long, but only now’s becoming impossible to swallow down and put back safely, without the risk of it all shattering and escaping, wreaking more havoc than Steve can brace against, or stand to watch. But Bucky doesn’t demand a damned thing; Bucky just holds against him, body firm and unyielding on top of Steve’s, rising and falling just a little along the pattern of Steve’s breaths, coming quick and Steve doesn’t want that, Steve doesn’t like that Bucky’s thrown on the waves of Steve’s nerves physically when he’s committed, here, to be tossed by them every other way, and he commits to it again and again: Steve wants to keep Bucky safe, too.

Steve owes Bucky something in exchange for the solidity of him; the devotion of him. He forces himself to take a deep breath, and bring Bucky back to gentler waters splayed against him, fights the heady pump of his blood to inhale, exhale, just a little slower, before he takes to shaping words again.

“When they made me like this,” he grabs Bucky’s hand then, and uses the comfort, the promise of that touch, that skin on his skin, to trace up and down exactly what he was made like—this; to linger on muscles and lines of bone, to find its way to Steve’s lips to mouth the words into Bucky’s palm where they’ll be safe, where Steve can hide a little and still be known for this; this buried thing he’s unearthing, for better or worse.

“It was incredible, you know?” Steve leans into Bucky’s hand: still braced under Steve's own but cupping of its own accord now, holding Steve’s cheek to be nuzzled, to be held and kept. "I couldn’t have dreamed, couldn’t have asked for…”

Steve trails off, and there’s a clench that happens without conscious cause under his ribs, then—he flinches for it, and Bucky makes a tiny protest of a noise, like he can see and feel and know exactly what Steve’s body’s doing for this storm of emotion, of anxiety; like Bucky knows it wholly and disapproves, would crawl under Steve’s skin and protect him from himself in an instant, and Steve’s breath catches again as he realizes: Bucky would.

Bucky would.

When Steve exhales—this time—the tightness, the clenching eases. Just a little.

“It just,” and Steve feels something shiver in him, under the words, pressing them out; the buried-thing shaking off the dust:

“It always felt like something important got left behind.”

It doesn’t feel real, Steve relaizes, until he says it. He thought it had been real, the whole time. He’d been wrestling with the sense of it since the night after he got the serum, off and on. It’s been persistent. It’d been stronger in this century. Stronger by the day, once he fell in love.

But he didn’t realize it had all been theoretical until it hits him head on, like a scream even though he only spoke in a whisper.

He breathes, for a bit; careful, steady, so Bucky moves gently on his chest. He succeeds, to a point, and figures he should be grateful for that much.

“I remember almost all of it, in the chamber,” which is true. Almost all of it are the first memories he has, with the kind of clarity that defines everything, after. “It was just,” and he shakes his head, and then buries his face in the top of Bucky’s head, presses his lips to the roots of his hair and breathes and breathes and breathes through the memory, because the first thing, the strongest thing was always—

“Pain. So much pain,” and Steve swallows around it, and finds his footing in Bucky’s closeness, the way they’re more tangled up than Steve realized; things Bucky’s moved without him noticing, to achor Steve in the now where the pain is an echo, where his fears hurt more—and if letting the blood of them is going to cause hurt here, too, Steve has to believe it’s worth it, has to believe it’ll mean he rebuilds stronger, and not least because Bucky’s hands, strong and sure and committed for the love of Steve in a way no one’s ever been in shaping him: Steve has to believe that the hurting in the now will mean he’s something better when he emerges from the broken pieces, in no small part because Bucky’s hands are going to help put him back together.

But this pain isn’t here, no matter how strong, and here his body is pressed on all sides by Bucky’s, and it’s okay.

It’s okay. He breathes in again, and sighs out long and slow.

“It was only pain, but there’s a part where I remember losing grasp of, of, everything, and then coming to again,” Steve doesn’t know when he screwed his eyes shut so fierce, so tight, versus just keeping them closed, with the heat of Bucky’s body a beautiful calm against him, but it almost sears, the way his face contorts around the memories; or maybe, just as much, for where the memories lead next.

Because those things in his chest, buried deep: they all hurt, he’s finding, even just in digging close enough to grab at, to unmoor it from its hold and pull it toward the light.

This one, though: it’s almost like he didn’t realize which one he grabbed for, which one he’d let loose. He does, now, and he’s so close to trembling apart. It’s so big. Too big, he—

“I wondered, for the longest time, if I died in the middle,” Steve’s saying, because it’s too strong, in being so big: it’s one of the things where all the fear is sourced, it’s one of the strongholds. He woke a fucking beast and he’s scared, he’s so fucking scared. “Somewhere before the serum took hold to make me strong and, bring me back?” He sighs, then, and he feels tension drain from him for a moment, strings cut and he wonders if it’ll work, the immediate way his body tries to shy back, to protect, to move to cut this loose and shove back these thoughts, these feelings into the dark, into the dirt and try again another time, or maybe never, because it’s too much, it’s too much:

“It sounds stupid—”

“No.”

And Bucky’s hand on Steve’s check had slid to his neck, just a steady hold, but now it’s back to his face, now it’s both of Bucky’s hands and Steve’s scared of a new thing, for a second: that Bucky will move, will leave his place stretched across Steve’s chest and leave him open to an unknown horror that Steve can’t rationalize but can’t dismiss, some darkness he feels in his bones, that will inescapably come if Bucky moves too far and leaves him open to the hit.

But Bucky does no such thing, in fact contorts himself nigh-impossibly to stay pressed where he lies, sworn sentinel of all that Steve is, and still manages to hold Steve between his palms and tilt his head to catch Steve’s eyes and murmur, the resonance of the sound something Steve feels shudder through his blood:

“No it doesn’t.”

Steve nods, more of a pattern, a settling as he rocks with the motion just a bit, just a little. He loves this man so much more than he can fathom, than he can hold anywhere in him without it overflowing, without it becoming the thing that tried to hold it in: Steve loves.

“I wondered,” he mouths, more than speaks, but he knows Bucky holds it, sees it: “I wondered, I mean,” he goes from nodding his head to shaking it, then, because he feels small, so small in a face of so many massive things, so much immensity it’s unthinkable, untenable. “I’m not, with,” Steve swallows, and tries to forgive his rambling, the fact that it’s all so messy, so sloppy, so thick with feeling more than meaning when Steve doesn’t know how to separate the two cleanly, anymore: “words.”

“Come here,” Bucky says, though he doesn’t need to; they’re already here, they’re already so close that Steve doesn’t know his own breath clearly, distinctly; he doesn’t know what heat comes from his body even though he tends to run hotter, Bucky’s body is warmth and not just heat and it tangles—they’re so close, and Steve still wishes he could be closer. Bucky’s lips form his words against Steve’s skin, though, and it’s always an intimate softness, things from Bucky’s own self passed into Steve like that, a tangible reality that supersedes romantic notion. It’s fact, and it’s theirs, and Steve lets himself sink into it, surrender to it wholly.

“I like your words just fine,” Bucky exhales against the hinge of Steve’s jaw, and it settles something in Steve, just as much as it stokes need, as it underscores the weight of everything Steve’s wrestling with setting free, clenched where it is around his ribs.

“I’m a sap,” Steve almost tries to excuse the gravity of the moment, heavy and thick to breathe through but he can’t, and Bucky makes sure of it when he stretches upward just a little, just enough and starts kissing the perimeter of Steve’s lips, featherlight and pursed tiny so he can leave more on the way before he slides them full-on to kiss his own words straight into Steve’s waiting mouth:

“I love you.”

And what the hell is Steve supposed to do, in the face of that, save to kiss back and give everything?

Bucky straddles his thighs and keeps his torso low, keeps Steve covered in as much of him is possible while he takes in all that Steve’s giving, lets Steve consume him until Steve starts to flag, the ebb and flow uneasy in him: Bucky knows it, and sees it, and picks up as soon as Steve starts to falter, and it’s his turn to give, to take, to reverence Steve’s mouth and run his hands along Steve’s skin and gasp breaths between Steve’s lips and it drains as much as it renews: it’s exactly what Steve needs, what he thinks they both always need, because that’s what they are to each other. They find the cracks and they make of themselves what is needed to shore them, to heal them, to be again with all that they are, together.

Steve lets himself bask in that knowledge, ever-strengthening and fusing to his bones as a universal law, more and more each day. In this moment, here. He lets himself start to believe in it more than in gravity, or the rising of the sun.

“I wondered for the longest time whether, when,” Steve’s voice cracks quick, once he starts speaking again, but he stops, he stops before the fracture can form, at least for now. If he gets through this, if he makes the words real, he doesn’t think it can end with him wholly intact.

“When the ice stopped Steve Rogers’ heart and then they found me in the ocean,” Steve clears his throat, like he can shove that self-same heart back down between his ribs if he swallows hard enough: “I wondered if they found me, and they started Captain America’s heart again, but maybe...”

Steve feels his pulse like a breaking, like a faultline crumbling and destroying and running rampant, it’s so fast, it’s so hard, and he can’t draw in a breath cleanly around it but he has to, he has to try, and it’s a little choked when the words finally come but they come, and that counts, goddamnit, that counts:

“Maybe they forgot about Steve’s.”

And again, Steve can’t open his eyes, can’t face the thoughts given shape and sound because he’s a little bit of a coward—can’t risk watching them birthed into the world. But he can’t hide from Bucky’s gaze either because that’s home, that’s safe, that’s where he’s trusting these naked, pulled-bleeding words from his chest to land and live and be held, and fuck, fuck.

“Maybe that was the difference?” and he makes himself look up then, and meet Bucky’s eyes in the dark, and they’re wide and they’re wet and they’re aching, and they’re as they ever were: they’re home, and Steve can push through the rest; “or something, and if that was the difference, if they—”

Steve gasps, a little unexpected, can’t breathe right for it, but Bucky’s hands are on his hands and Steve’s eyes are still open and: okay.

Okay.

“I wonder if they changed me and killed me and brought me back, and froze me and did it all over again and that whole time they forgot to start Steve’s heart up again.”

Steve, above the cacophony of his own rattling pulse, picks out the hitch in Bucky’s breathing like a beacon, and he looks immediately for the threat but Bucky’s hands are clenching where they hold Steve’s, lacing their fingers strong, almost to the point of an ache and it’s right, and it’s true, and Steve can feel the beat of his blood under Bucky’s fingertips, which is the greater point, the real threat, the core of the buried-thing Steve’s uprooted to be seen and known.

“You brought something back in me,” Steve says, clear but soft and his pulse is heavy, his veins feel like they’re about to tear at the seams but Steve can bear it, will bear, is braced against Bucky who holds him, who’s touched to that barrage, pressed against it and does not waver; strokes the line of Steve’s veins at the wrists like he loves that too, Steve’s unravelling; the chaotic mess of him down to the blood.

“Or maybe you, you made something new, in me?” Steve wonders, and turns one hand to measure Bucky’s pulse in kind, to meet him here, too: strong, and frantic, and alive, so fucking alive. “I’ve never, not ever before, and if—”

Steve’s voice breaks, and he lets himself give into it, lets it crumble a little and lets himself fall into the rhythm of Bucky’s blood, lets himself sway to the tumult of it under his touch.

“I feel like you woke my heart up again, my heart,” Steve breathes, cracked wide open, spilling and unrestrained, borne up on the beat beneath his fingerprints; “you started it up and made me feel like I could be whole, like I could see all the different parts of me as one person, one Steve Rogers who was Captain America and a kid from Brooklyn and a man so, so in love, all at once, and I—”

Steve’s throat closes up, and he tries to rally, to breathe out slow—only to realise there’s no breath left in him.

“They made me strong,” Steve whispers, and now he can’t, he can’t look at Bucky’s eyes but he looks at his hands, their hands, and he holds on so fucking tight that he’s a little afraid he’ll hurt Bucky’s right hand but Bucky does what he always does: he meets Steve step for step, fingers digging blanched crescents into Steve’s skin in kind, just as strong.

“But, but if I lose you, if you, when...” and his voice cracks, and his lungs seize and he starts to shake, he can’t stop it; can’t stop it from trembling in his voice, either.

“They built me to last, and to hold, and every other fuckin’ muscle seems like it works even when it breaks, but this one,” and Steve didn’t realize he’d led their joined grasp to his heaving chest until he’s scrambling fingers to press Bucky palms against his thrashing heart like an instinct, like every cell of him knows that heart needs Bucky, needs Bucky and—

“This won’t just break,” Steve chokes out, cheeks wet. “You’ll take it with you.” And then he looks up: Bucky’s eyes are red, and his lips are parted, and it’s devastating—it’s devastating and Steve’s heart knows how to last through breaking well enough; it does exactly that here and now. But it can last, it can only last because Bucky’s there, Bucky’s here; but without him, without him—

And then Bucky’s wrapping him up tight, so tight and he’s kissing Steve in a way that Steve can lose himself inside, practiced and true, all warmth and safety, all devotion and declarations that don’t need words and Steve lets it happen, Steve lets himself get lost and lets Bucky do most of the work, of their mouths and their breaths as much as holding together the breaking, softening the edges left over and mending the cracks, if only just: Steve lets him because Steve is weak, just now, and it’s okay, it’s okay that he’s weak and he can give himself to Bucky with the understanding, with the trust that Bucky doesn’t have to be asked to hold him, to keep him, to smooth him over so he can inhale deep without scattering to the wind.

Trust that he’ll give what you need, Steve thinks, and if that was the point then, yes. Yes, Steve does. Wholly, and with all that he is.

Which is why he can say the last part, the understood you, and feel wrung out entirely and terrified to his bones, still, and Bucky won’t stop holding him, won’t do anything but press his lips to Steve’s skin and breathe when Steve confesses the obvious culmination of what has to happen, can be the only thing that happens when Steve’s heart more-than-breaks, and stops living in his chest and goes with Bucky toward whatever comes next, because for everything, for everything:

“Even they didn’t figure out how to make me keep going without it.”

And Bucky’s mouth goes to the pulse at Steve’s jaw. And Bucky holds him, so fucking tight. And Bucky breathes; of course.

Because that’s what Steve needs; within the realm of what can be given, that’s what Steve needs, so yeah.

Of course.

Chapter Text

Steve’s glad he has therapy in the afternoon the next day.

Not the morning, though, because in the morning he’s woken up by Bucky, just Bucky, all Bucky: Bucky’s mouth and his hands and his words that are mostly senseless and still everything Steve needs. It takes the realization of the night before as it dawns again with the day and softens it, makes of it a blanket of release, of trust and a step toward something whole and solid and more real than the most real thing Steve’s ever touched: Bucky ushered that in for Steve, ushers Steve in to the day, to the world after he bared his soul in a way he never imagined he could. Never thought he’d dare, and never could have guessed, before, there’d ever be a place, or another soul, that would not just receive him, but hold him close, and carry him home.

Steve needs that, first. But after: he’s really glad he has therapy.

He tells her, almost before he’s taken a seat, spills it in what feels like a single breath, needing to get it out before he tries to inhale again, and he’s rightly breathless when he’s done, when it’s quiet.

It’s quiet: she doesn’t say anything, just considers him with a warmth, and openness, a glint in her eye that’s not uncommon, but that means she sees something, suspects something already that Steve’s not yet stumbled on for himself. It’s frustrating, but also motivating: Steve always wants to push, to keep going. He needs to see it too, and judge its worth for himself.

And the proof’s been made by now: what she sees, and what he finds, is usually worth a great deal.

“More things,” he finds himself adding to the story, staring at his hands and swallowing around the revelation; it’s not a big one, but it’s a truth: “than I’d meant.”

He makes himself meet her eyes before he says anything more.

“More of the things that were buried came out, all at once.”

“How did that feel?”

Steve lets himself sit with the question, like she’s taught him; to think about the actual answer.

“Terrifying.”

She nods, and he sits with it some more.

“Freeing.”

She nods again, and her lips quirk a little. She waits a while before she follows up the point:

“What part was terrifying?”

Steve laughs a little. “All of it. The thing itself was fear, so looking at it, making it solid enough to speak, it’s,” Steve shakes his head: “And then saying it out loud. In front of another person. Terror on top of terror.”

“Being seen is scary, as you’re well aware,” she affirms; they’ve touched on that for the shield, the cowl, the passage of time—this isn’t the same, but it’s not wholly different. “It can be hard. Being known.”

“But I want that.” Steve surprises himself with the words, automatic and immediate. “I want him to know everything.”

And in the quiet that follows, the bare moments, Steve realizes slowly, but with a profundity that’d knock him to his knees if he weren’t sitting down: she’d touched on being known, on putting his fear on display, but she hadn’t mentioned the fear itself—why bother, when that was the established running theme of so much of their work together; the familiar quantity. But, maybe, this unfamiliar quantity, is something Steve already knew, better than he knew how to open his lungs and breathe, but much like what he’d done last night, it’s made real in a brand new way when words find it.

He’s discovering things, but he feels himself start to breathe a little heavy for it, start to lose himself to his head, and then he hears his therapist’s voice, and rallies: she knows how to reign him in, pull him back to the moment so that when he comes to conclusions that redefine his world, his sense of self, he can hold them with both hands and stay standing.

“What happened?” she asks, an anchor thrown; “when you told him?”

And Steve smiles softly, thinking of Bucky’s steadfast compassion, his preternatural recognition of what Steve was grasping for, aching for, spiralling around—and how to offer it at just the level Steve could reach. Almost flawlessly.

“He gave what I needed,” Steve says simply, can hear the punchdrunk note in his own voice; “I never had to ask.”

She smiles then, broad and bright, and Steve returns it: Bucky makes him radiate with the kind of peace and soft light that makes smiling so easy, like a given.

“How did that feel?”

Weightless. Breathless. Chest-sore. Wrung-dry.

Rooted. Every single time he thought he couldn’t go on, couldn’t hold so much pain, so much worry, so much threat of loss and the way just thinking on it makes him tremble: Bucky’s hands had never ceased to hold him, and those hands were a gift, they cradle him heart and soul as much as skin and bones, and every time Steve started to come undone beyond enduring Bucky had sustained him, Bucky’s being, the truth of him and the love Steve can’t quite grasp because he believes to the core of him it’s too vast and depthless to even try, and it just grows, it just fucking grows, and—

Steve’s gasping, and he can feel the intensity of his therapist’s gaze, concerned but watchful, waiting, letting him get wherever he’s going and Steve’s mind is a blank slate for a moment, all that it holds too bright and too much to see straight, because he thinks, he; if he thinks back to last night, to this morning, to the past weeks and months, this new lifetime that seems to have started, a new epoch of what it means to live in the world as Steven Grant Rogers beside James Buchanan Barnes: if he thinks, and he lets it in, and he takes it all as it is and doesn’t try to hide or excuse or prevaricate, if he is terrified and free all at once, and he knows now that he can be, and he’ll live to tell the tale; if he trusts—

Steve Rogers is scared. Steve Rogers is so in love he’s pretty sure his heart beats that singular truth through his veins first, before blood even tries.

And at the end of the day, at the start of each breath: he loves, more than he fears.

He’s not sure whether that makes the fear more manageable, more bearable, or if it magnifies the love beyond measuring, for how big the terror is, and how immense the love has to be in kind to eclipse it. He’s not sure.

He’s not sure it matters. Because Steve Rogers, when all’s accounted for, is scared. But so much more: he’s in love.

And what a miracle that is, what a goddamn impossibility. What a, what a…

What a gift. What a joy.

“Alright?”

His head snaps up, and he meets his therapist’s gaze, still intense and a little wary, and only then does he realize his eyes had started watering. He’s so fucking floored, so blown away, so consumed with emotion and certainty, with relief and want and, and—

Alright.

“More than,” he breathes out, and the sound’s rough around the edges, and his pulse is hard against the wall of his chest, and Steve feels reborn, a little. Like the world’s made new.

“I love him,” he says, because for all the things he’s made real with words in a very short span of time, this needs to be real in every way. Everywhere.

“I love him more than I’m afraid to lose him.”

And his therapist? She fucking beams at him, for that.

“Can I tell you something?”

Steve tilts his head, curious, and nods.

“You always did.”

And he thinks: it’s true. And it was obvious enough that she saw it from the start. It drove his choices, his commitment to being here, his valuing of life and death. The fear was big, is big, but the love was, is transcendent.

“How did I miss it?” Steve asks, voice small, a little lost at sea for it, a little regretful. So much wasted time—

“You didn’t,” his therapist tells him, and her tone is unshakable: it helps Steve right himself, hold himself steady to listen, because when he’s done the work, when he needs the guiding hand, she’s always there, and he can tell she’s ready for him now.

“Love was driving you from the start, Steve,” she tells him simply, “from the first time you came here, the first reasons that brought you to try and make sense of what you were feeling. The feelings were huge,” an understatement, Steve barely holds back a snort; “but if they’re huge, only something bigger can motivate you to tackle them. To fight.”

And that, Steve understands; recognises. Steve speaks that language, and it resonates.

It was always love.

“You never had a chance, or a reason, to learn how to hold the fear of the unknown, Steve,” she explains, her eyes full of the compassion Steve thought he’d bristle under, until he learned to let it soothe him, and set him to rights. “You didn’t imagine your life past 30 at best,” which is true, that would have been a miracle; “and as soon as you were given a body more likely to last that long and then some, you were thrown into war where no body is a sure thing.” She has a point, there; a very good point. Sure, the times were different, thinking about those sorts of things were something you generally kept to yourself, and learned how not to think about, to your detriment if necessary; but then Steve had been thrown here, and now, and—

“Let me ask you,” she pauses; “what does the future mean to you? What does it look like?”

Steve blinks, and feels his heart stumble, and feels cold for a moment before he regains his composure—he’s in love, and he loves more than this fear; he’s in love, and that’s the only future he wants—but his reaction was visceral; he knows it was seen.

“You never learned, or developed the tools, or built the resilience to consider the future healthfully, before,” his therapist says, tone soft and low and gentle, coaxing Steve back to calm. “You were thrown into not just crises of time and mortality and identity and trauma of the body and the soul,” they’ve touched on those, before, and Steve knows they’ll be coming back to them for some time to come, but now they all are starting to feel a little different, fitting together to make a new sort of image.

“But then, all this time, you’ve had to hurt for the belief that your fears made you something other, were because you were alone in the experiences you’ve had, because of the serum or the ice or any other thing, and Steve,” she looks at him with such care, such empathy: “they’re the most human fears, the fear of the unknown is the quintessential fear, and the fear of loss is built from it.”

She’s told him that before, in various sorts of ways, but Steve’s never heard it like this; Steve’s never felt it echo through his body and shift something crucial before.

He’s been painfully, beautifully, foolishly, unshakably human, all this time.

“You didn’t know how to think about the future outside those contexts. And so when love knocked you on your ass from the first?” This time, Steve doesn’t fight the snort that rises at the phrasing, because it’s accurate as all hell; because Steve’s kind of stayed knocked on his ass ever since, and relishes every single moment, never wants to stand again, but then she's leaning in a little, eyeing him knowingly:

“How else were you going to try and make sense of it?”

And Steve knows, in that moment, that he’s going to be revisiting every moment he’s spent with the man who changed his whole life, thinking it all through and recasting it in this new frame, because Bucky is joy, and life, and love, he means those things for Steve—but in this moment, he’s suddenly absolutely certain that all of those things, all of those definitional truths, are going to look brighter. Vivid and breathtaking, in whole new ways.

Steve desperately wants Bucky close to him, right now, to touch and marvel at. To worship, and hold tight to his chest.

“But now, that you’re learning, and you’re healing,” his therapist says, a coaxing tone to her words: “look.”

She doesn’t have to say more, really: Bucky’s already at the forefront of his mind, as almost-always, but it’s more colorful, the saturation of it deeper already. Look, yes: the most beautiful thing Steve’s ever known is more than exquisite. Is otherworldly, unprecedented, imbued with the pressure that pumps his goddamn blood.

“The future feels a little different, doesn’t it,” she tips her head, a little playful, clearly feeding off the blooming euphoria Steve’s radiating, couldn’t do anything less. “Now that you know how to say, hey, wait. There’s a different light I can paint this in.”

Steve thinks to painting, literally, at that, and a sketchbook at the coffee shop filled with a man whose name he knew, and not much else, and how small his chest felt against the thing that had already started taking hold. He didn’t know how to hold it, how to frame it. He only had the light of loss, and tumult, and threat; the light of not-enough-time, of dancing monkeys and no control, of crashing into water and inevitability, of sacrifice and regret.

And it still looked beautiful. How stunning must it be, that it still looked beautiful?

And those darker casts, those filters for his world will always be there. They’re a part of him, he knows that. The fear won’t go away, he’ll have to square with it over and again, he’s pretty fucking sure. But they’re not the only thing anymore. Or the biggest. They’re not the only lens he can look at his world, his life through. His love.

His eyes feel too huge, too wide when he looks up at his therapist, who’s just grinning at him, and Steve’s breathless, Steve’s entire being’s going to sprout wings and soar.

“What does the future mean to you, Steve?” she asks again, and Steve half-gasps the first thing that comes to mind because the future means one thing that holds so much, that holds all things:

“We want to buy a house.”

Chapter Text

This, Steve thinks, as they’re led to their seats, as the view of the fading light plays off the sculptures outside, the vision unfolding from the sprawling windows; as the lush scents of meats and oils and spices wafts around them; as Bucky laughs, just a little, as he straightens his button-down and slides gracefully into the chair Steve holds out for him: Steve thinks this was a great idea.

This, Steve also thinks, is something he can share credit for, maybe even take most of the credit for noticing, and almost all of the credit for breaking out; he decided to do it all on his own, didn’t run it past his therapist first, didn’t call Nat or Sam, didn’t ask Tony for an assist in the reservation.

He did call Win to make sure that Bucky liked French food—the place is known for it, well, not really, it’s like elevated American or some shit but Steve read it had a lot of French touches so he wanted to be sure, and of course Bucky could order something else if he wanted, it just feels like something he needs to double-check, it’s one of the few foods they haven’t settled into eating on the regular, not exactly common takeout fodder—

But after she giggled a little and said in no uncertain terms that her son would probably like guga if he was sharing it over a meal with Steve, Steve realized he’d really just wanted to talk to Win because he loves her, and he hadn’t called her in almost two weeks.

She still deserves her share of the credit, though. Steve looked up what the hell guga was, later; that was a hell of a confidence booster, if Steve’d needed one.

But at the end of the day, it was nice to have, but he didn’t need confidence to do what felt more natural than breathing: he’s taking his partner, his best friend, his lover out to dinner, and then to look at some beautiful art.

Because Steve’s not just making a start anymore. The start was progress, sure, but now: now, Steve’s making progress. He’s going to start house hunting. He ordered specific paint shades because the standard set wasn’t enough. They’re making plans to spend the holidays with Bucky’s family, even though they’ve planned it before but work got in the way each and every time: this time they’re going to have a holiday with the whole family, and it’s going to become routine. He bought a new dresser, that’ll hopefully move with them, in that hopefully it’ll prove up to the task of a shared storage unit for the items they, well, that they share; that belonged to Bucky first but that Steve puts on when he likes the heat in Bucky’s eyes, or when he wants comfort after a nightmare, or after therapy, or just until Bucky gets home, any day, any time: that Bucky sleeps in sometimes if Steve gets home very late—not often, but when it happens; that he sneaks with him to DC when he has to stay overnight and Steve can’t come along.

A dresser, for those clothes. Steve hopes it fits the bill, but if it doesn’t, they can get another one. It’s fine. There’s time for trial and error.

There’s time.

Because Steve is making progress. Steve’s learning how to live again, in whole new ways, and maybe it’s fucking terrifying, but sometimes—maybe even most times, or more times than there aren’t—the newness feels a little like flying, too.

And when he’d told Bucky to be ready by half-six, and to dress up maybe a little, and Bucky’d looked at him carefully and asked what’d gotten into him, Steve had reached out, and cupped his cheek, and looked careful right back before saying, unexpected and unplanned and unscripted, no thoughts save the truth that beats constant in his blood, and is getting louder maybe because it’s always growing, or maybe because he's learning better how to listen:

“I,” he’d started, and then taken a deep breath.

“I have no idea what the future looks like,” and Bucky’s eyes had softened, Steve’s fears known between them, and Bucky was immediately ready to comfort, to try and wrap him in what assurances he had, and Steve...Steve could not love a person more. He knew, from experience, that he’d learn to love more every minute of the day, until he stopped breathing, because his love for Bucky was growing constantly: but Steve could never love anyone else like he loves Bucky.

“I have no idea what the future looks like, except you,” Steve had said, honest to a fault and so close to shaking he can feel his body trying to brace for it, but it can’t, why would it, when Bucky’s skin’s under his touch.

“It looks like you, like,” Steve brushed Bucky’s cheek, and felt his heart swell when Bucky leaned in, preened for it a little, even as his posture was still ready to catch Steve if he fell. “It looks like us.”

They’re gonna buy a fucking house together. And the house doesn’t really matter, Steve knows: but it’s solid, it’s real, and it’s a thing Steve never thought he’d have as a kid, as a teenager, before the ice because how’d he even manage it, he could barely afford the rent on his shithole apartment, and he couldn’t process the idea of a house, a home outside a tent or a foxhole, after that. Since: he’d had places to live, and they’re homes enough in the simplest since: but Bucky’s home. Bucky’s his home, and Steve is going to look for places to help hold the wonder of him, the gift of him, and of what they make as a team: they’re going to find a place they both see as a reflection of that feeling, a place that’s up to the task of housing, of safekeeping something that precious.

It’s come to feel immense, and symbolic, in Steve’s mind, and he likes it. So he’s keeping it.

“I think I might always be a little afraid,” Steve had said, though, back in their kitchen, Bucky sat on a barstool at the island—Steve wants that, in the house they choose for the both of them, but bigger; for them and for the people they love—Steve had said it, though, and hadn’t meant to, and he’d surprised himself because it comes out steady. A statement of fact, rather than a confession of fear, even though it was both.

It can be both.

“More than a little,” Steve had corrected with a little quirk of his lips, a stroke of his thumb across Bucky’s cheekbone; “but Buck.”

It can be both, and that moment, like so many, just proved it: Bucky’s skin so warm, the hint of stubble even though he’d shaved that morning—he’s perfect, and Steve can be as scared as anyone who ever lived but he thinks maybe part of that’s because this is something unfathomable, something the world’s never known and it can’t be risked, can’t be broken, but it’s also stronger than anything Steve’s ever thought of, heard of, dreamt of, it’s bigger and bolder and brighter and maybe it’s unbreakable, no matter any of it: Steve can be scared, and Steve’s heart can pound for fear, but it can race for joy, and he can be so in love it blinds everything else, even fear that big.

It can all happen at once. Because it has . It is

“The future looks like us.” And Steve had said it, because that was all there was to it. It was as simple as that. “That’s the only thing I know. That I can see.”

It was simple as that, and it was really the only thing that mattered, and Steve didn’t realize his breathing was so quick until it caught, floated zephyr-like on the way Bucky turned fully into his touch.

“I love you so fucking much,” Bucky had breathed into the center of Steve’s palm, his closed eyes brushing long lashes along the undersides of Steve’s fingers, and kissed his palm more as a matter of necessity, proximity and feeling, than a choice—save that both were choices already made.

Kind of like them, really.

“Be ready at six-thirty,” Steve hadn’t been willing to disengage from the way Bucky’s mouth was fixed on the lines of his hand, breathing in and out; he wasn’t willing to give that up yet, so he’d leaned down to press his own lips to Bucky’s brow.

“We going to this...future, punk?” It was lighthearted, but Bucky’s voice was low: the meaning, the significance he’d heard and read and recognized in Steve’s every word clear, and taken fully in.

Which had immediately brought to mind a date, a first date, not wholly unlike this one except in almost every way: How about I say you’re going to the past?, and Steve’s heart's thrumming almost as fast as the butterflies in his stomach, and oh, oh, but he thought he knew then what he was getting into, he thought he could see what was coming even if what he had seen, even he could admit was an ideal, was unrealistic—

Fell so fucking short, even so, of what he has now: what they’ve built, what they’ve found.

But alongside that recollection was one just before it, the kind-meant goading that set up the comment itself, that Steve would have had enough of going to the future—and maybe then it had been true, maybe that had been the turning point, even.

But Bucky’d turned his face upward, then, to meet Steve’s eyes; and Bucky had asked, in the now, if they were going to the future. And Steve had told him the future was nothing, if it wasn’t made of this, of them.

So Steve had leaned in again, and spoken his response to Bucky’s smiling lips:

“You’re coming with me? Then hell yes,” and he couldn’t help by smile, too, not with Bucky’s mouth against his like that: “fuck yes, we’re going to the future.”

And he’d covered Bucky’s hand in his own just to squeeze it before he’d straightened, only to lean in once more, to kiss him one more time before he grabbed his keys and called from the door:

“Six-thirty, don’t be late.”

Bucky wouldn’t be, never was. But there was a giddiness in Steve, and it wanted to underscore the point: he was taking Bucky on a date

Which is how, here and now, all that leading up to Bucky reading the menu across from him, his toe poking Steve’s innocently under the table, a tiny, perfect grin teasing his expression: Steve really does think this was a great idea.

“Not that I’m complaining,” Bucky says, conversational and still reading the menu; “but I kinda get the feeling you had a reason for asking me to dinner and a museum?”

Okay, sure, it’s maybe a little heavy-handed that he went with a museum, but the restaurant’s Michelin-starred, and, well. The MoMA has night tours.

Steve clears his throat, because he knows when he’s been seen, when he’s been spotted. And he knows just how deep Bucky sees, in him. Of him.

No sense in pretending otherwise, not that Steve would want to, would aim to, not anymore at least. Better sense in working on using his words, getting in some practice.

Training, he thinks, meeting Bucky’s eyes as he folds his hands on the tablecloth before him. It’s what he knows, if nothing else.

“You had it just right,” Steve tells him plainly, with conviction: it’s easier to make the certainty he feels plain, easier to imbue the words with their due and rightful weight, when the words aren’t just his, so he’s lucky the man he loves is so much better with them. “When you said we ran at this quick, and we started so strong, because there’s no other choice when it’s this, when it feels like this,” and Steve reaches, then, around the laid cutlery to take Bucky’s hand in his own and hold it like the goddamn treasure it is as he says softer, a little, but straight from the heart:

“When it’s us.”

“But we started strong, and we haven’t let up,” and Steve is relieved, is so happy that the way the words come out make it undeniable, make it crystal fucking clear that he wouldn’t have it any other way, and the proof of it, if Steve needed any, is the softness, the gentle-emanating-blinding joy that colors Bucky’s cheeks a little like physical warmth, that curves his lips like a smile’s what thinking about them, and how they are, will always be, demands, necessitates as a rule.

“But we did go quick,” Steve nods along, hearing Bucky’s words to him in his mind before they reach his own lips, feeling the rightness of them all the stronger for how they’ve long settled in Steve’s blood and bones as unshakable fact.

“Because this is for diving in to, not tip-toeing around,” Steve squeezes Bucky’s hand, still in his own, runs the pad of his thumb over Bucky’s knuckles, soft and smooth and in the same pattern of his pulse without thinking of it, or planning the rhythm.

“This is something you,” Steve’s voice gets a little rough without planning, too—but it’s not unexpected. The words come from deep, blood-warm and real when he breathes them out, all life and heart:

“Love like this is something that consumes you, and you say thank you for it every step of the way.”

Steve watches, unblinking, as Bucky lifts Steve’s hand up to his lips, and kisses his wrist, his pulse, teases the slightest bit of tongue like a gift, or an offering in the same kind of gratitude Steve’s trying to speak to, to convey.

It’s perfect, whatever it is. Of course it is.

“But you savor it, too. You relish it.” The words come to Steve more on instinct than anything else, his eyes fixed on Bucky’s mouth moving against Steve’s skin, the heel of his palm. “We went fast, and I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Steve’s eyes are dilated for the contact, the intimacy, the attention of Bucky’s lips so innocent, so intent: he sees everything in technicolor somehow, as a result. Bucky’s never less than exquisite, no matter the light, but Steve feels like he sees his lover and the world as separate—one essential, and one passing, unnecessary backdrop—as much as they’re the exact same, because what is the world if it isn’t Bucky Barnes?

“We deserve all the earlier parts, just as much,” Steve exhales, discovering only in the attempt to speak at all that he’s a little breathless in the middle of a restaurant, just because Bucky’s holding his hand, and that really says it all: “we deserve them wherever we want them,” and in the middle of one, in a way, even: Steve remembers so clearly being unable to draw air fully into his lungs when Bucky was in the room from damn near the start, just in a slightly different way—for the sake of newness, of wanting, imagining, desiring, when now the desire is there and its real in his hands, in his arms; the wanting is there but the newness is only because Bucky is always new to him as much as he’s familiar like a fingerprint or a heartbeat; there’ve always been pieces of what Steve’s speaking to. He just thinks they’ve earned them all, put together in even more stunning arrangements than they could have dreamed of at the first, even. Could have stumbled into when they met, and started the freefall.

If Bucky was like waking up, in the beginning, he’s every way to wake, because now he’s home with all that holds; if Bucky felt like the promise of the sunrise, then, well—he’s the universe now, with every star.

They still deserve to have the sunrises, though. As a part of the whole. Steve wants them to reach and taste them fully, for the privilege of them; the impish delight.

“We deserve the dinners and the dates,” Steve sees Bucky in one of his suits in the Tower, one of the galas they sometimes go to and sometimes don’t, promotional events in different varieties that Steve sees the full breadth of, now from the inside; “the drinks and the,” Steve thinks of showing up at a jazz bar and tasting tequila off Bucky’s teeth, the curve of his lips; “spontaneity,” Steve adds, trying to speak around something he doesn’t quite know how to say: what they have isn’t made less for how it’s less or more like how they started—it’s, it’s...

“Headfirst means the longing,” Steve tries to explain, even if he’s absolutely certain Bucky gets it, sees it in him at the least but knows it because they share this, and they’re on the same page, they’re in this, intertwined and intricate, embedded and enmeshed in one another. Steve knows, so Bucky knows, in this: Steve’s sure of it.

Still.

“It means the longing, and the reckless sort of wanting where you don’t know how deep the bottom goes, and the, the…”

“The rampant fucking salivating over each other, maybe?” Bucky grazes his teeth on the turn of Steve’s wrist before letting go, likely because he knows Steve will have to swallow a whimper as he does; and he does; then he grins at Steve so sweet, all promise:

“Something like that?”

Steve swallows, his arm still extended across the table even if he’s no longer touching Bucky’s hand.

“Yes,” and Steve’s voice is almost indecently deep when he speaks. “Also that.”

And Bucky, that fucking asshole, that beautiful bastard, that perfect fucking man, he’s not just playing fucking footsie now, he’s sliding just a little too high up Steve’s calf, a little too goddamn slow.

“Headfirst meant, means,” Steve fumbles a bit, bites his lip, looks up just a little bit to meet Bucky’s eyes just a little more straight-on, and Bucky’s foot goes back to the floor—Steve can’t tell if he’s grateful for it or regretful, but it clears his head a little, makes his tongue just a little better at shaping words instead of salivating and salivating alone;

“It means that those things started strong, almost instantaneously,” then Steve’s other hand’s coming up, reaching over, and they’re both coming together to cups both of Bucky’s together in kind, to grasp him and cradle him in the best way he can, here and now.

“And they didn’t stop even for a second,” Steve’s voice lowers to a depth, near a hiss for the force he’d trying to imbue. “Not for me.”

“Not just for you,” Bucky’s saying back, immediate, and it sends something sparking, something fierce as flame and soft as silk through Steve’s whole body for it; he knew it, he did, but like most things—hearing it is a wonder. “Not for a goddamn heartbeat, Stevie.”

And Steve can’t let that go with just his hands, with just touching Bucky and feeling his warmth under his fingertips, tracing the beat of his pulse if he wants, with a stretch of a thumb: no.

No, then Steve lifts just enough from his seat, and pulls just enough at Bucky’s arms to coax him to the same, and he kisses Bucky in front of god and the fine diners of New York and he hopes the universe sees it, marks it down with the significance it merits. Bucky’s wine is sweeter, even though it's the same that’s in Steve’s glass. It’s sweeter, like this.

Steve loves him so goddamn much.

“But we deserve to have as much of those, in that early light, in the,” Steve locks his lips; it’s not an idle thing, either: “the style, of that early footing, as we want, though, too. We deserve that first flush of spring every goddamn day if we want it, even though,” and Steve only realises after the words are out that he’s thinking in terms of growing things, and seasons, when he’d shied from the imagery of seasons and time, the metaphors before—except they fit: the two of them, together, are alive in ways Steve didn’t know the word could hold, could convey; they’re in the full light of the brightest, boldest, most saturated with color, with love by extension just because it can: they’re opening fully. Fast and in response to the light of what it means to feel this strongly, this much.

“Even though it’s like,” and Steve sucks in a deep breath, glances over the garden before he looks back at Bucky, and exhales: “even though it’s like, in my fucking soul, you’re planted and radiant and fully grown,” Steve forces the words out, a little thicker than the ones that came before but so necessary, so real and vibrant once they’re in that full, unflinching light; “you’re rooted for a lifetime and then some.”

And it’s transformative, to say it. It’s miraculous, to know it. It’s Steve’s life, like a blessing that unveils itself anew, every moment of every day. Worth everything.

There aren’t words for what it does, in passing over Bucky’s face with every syllable. There’s not a word Steve knows for beauty that stark and sheer.

“I don’t know if I’m making any sense,” Steve whispers, even if he kind of thinks it’s more a reflex, a leftover, unnecessary defense mechanism, because he’s learning, slow but sure and quicker with time, that even if sense for the world in his words and his meanings might be shaky, those same things might be the exact language Bucky was born to read, to speak as a mother tongue twined inside his marrow and built into his bones.

Another layer, another revelation of the miracle of this. Of him.

“You’re making all the sense,” Bucky smiles soft, gentle and reverent and made as a precious cushion, a protective pillow for something made of the kind of glass that stands time and trial for its strength but deserves the most possible care that hands can offer, that a heart can hold itself to catch and cradle sure; and his voice like a bar of a song, and its resonance sets Steve soaring.

“We went from punch-drunk to,” Bucky plus with his lips, eyes dancing; “to heart-full and forever in the blink of an eye,” and god, god: ain’t that the fucking truth in a nutshell, in just a breath that would give life to a world on its own.

“Tony says we’re the definition of a honeymoon lifetime, not a period,” Bucky laughs a little, but it's fond, it's almost adoring; it’s in full agreement, and Steve feels the same as soon as the words settle and make sense.

“But we deep-dived,” Bucky nods along with what Steve’s said; what Steve’s tried to convey and even in the tone, Steve already knows he was heard and understood, this is known for them, always.

“And we deserve to have the lightness, the different kind,” Bucky takes a sip from his glass, the burgundy staining his lips, exquisite. “That very particular, very…playful kind?” Bucky smiles around the lip, the tendrils of the wine sinking back down, highlighting the brightness of his full-toothed smile. “The kind where we’re punch-drunk and lust-stupid whenever we so choose.”

Yes. Yes.

“Though to be fair,” Bucky’s adding, then, setting the glass back down and propping his elbows on the table, resting his chin in his hands and leaning in, watching Steve with an adoration, a glowing kind of mesmerized wonder that makes Steve’s heart skips several beats, every time. “I am already still pretty lust-stupid when it comes to you,” Bucky’s chest rises and falls with a satisfied sigh. “Don’t think I’m ever going to grow out of that.”

The way Steve lights up, from the very cells of him, at those words, at the look on Bucky’s face: he could power the globe. He could make the dim of space, of the endless night sky look like the core of the goddamn sun.

“Kinda think you’re lust-smart,” Steve says, tongue a little loose, a little babbling, and he knows it, but he always knows the grin on his face is just this side of dopey, and the grimace on Bucky’s in turn comes from a place of love, and nothing less.

“That was tragic.” Bucky laments for him, but his eyes sparkle, and it’s everything. Everything.

“Or maybe that was just punch-drunk,” Steve teases back, a little sing-songy, a little overjoyed before leaning in and asking, conspiratory if anything:

“So, do y’wanna choose punch-lustiness a little more often, with me?”

Bucky’s grin is sinful, and Steve loves it more than he can say or stand.

“Abso-fucking-lutely.”

Steve’s grin, he suspects, will break his face one day; can at least be seen from space.

“Now, in practical terms,” and Bucky’s voice changes, dips a bit, arrests Steve’s whole attention, long before Bucky’s foot hooks around Steve’s ankle again, catching Steve’s breath in his throat:

“Does that mean I can feel you up a little in front of one of the Picassos tonight, or something?”

Steve has to try, very hard, not to snort just a bit, and to instead stroke his chin in consideration before coming to the only conclusion he’d had from the start:

“You can feel me up in front of the Van Gogh.”

And Steve knows, that Bucky knows, that Steve doesn’t mean The Starry Night; Steve fucking means his personal favorite, at least of the moment—Olive Trees, specifically the ones in the ‘Mountainous Landscape’—the motion of it serving as a well of inspiration as Steve’s started to dive back in to painting himself in every way, content and color and form—it’s shaping the painting Steve’s finally committed to making in Bucky's colors, and Bucky’s colors alone.

Steve bought a not-too-cheap-but-not-even-close-to-truly-expensive print of it, even, for the room he’s using as a studio—the room that’s serving as a reference, but not an inspiration, because his inspiration is sitting right in front of him, looking a little breath-taken, a little starstruck, a little flushed and downright edible with it.

“Stevie,” this edible-starstruck-blushing stunner of a man says, and yep: breathless with it, and only half of that fact’s a performance as Bucky’s hand goes to his chest, a little theatrically, but there’s a shift in the color of his eyes that speaks to something actually affected, maybe even truly touched.

“I knew you loved me, but,” Bucky shakes his head, and yeah: it’s a little bit of a show, but it’s a little bit of that glorious wondering that lights Bucky up, a joy to bear witness to: “wow.”

And yeah. That’s accurate. That sums it up.

Wow.

And Steve’s going to go ahead and revise accordingly: he doesn’t think this was a great idea.

He damn well knows it was.

Chapter Text

Steve thinks, idly—or else, idly; around the pain—that it’s ironic, kind of, that he’s been fairly newly schooled in the concept of fear of the unknown being fundamentally human.

Because this might not have been the absolute unknown, but he and Bucky have only been back in the field, at least regularly, for a few weeks at best, and mostly small-scale scuffles, really; Steve was working on applying his new awareness of his own thought patterns—or something like that, his therapist said it better, he’s sure of that—to the reality of the least unknown threat to the love of his life: the fact that they were throwing themselves back into the path of death and destruction, for good reasons, but as a career. Maybe a calling.

He was working on it, and he thinks he is probably going to lose his mind if—when, it was more likely to be when—something happens, no matter how serious; given his track record, he’s pretty sure that’s a given and he’s definitely not been in therapy long enough to have made a huge difference in it, to have altered his reactions entirely, but he does think he’ll be able to talk himself down, or at least around to still functioning, still breathing and acting to make things right rather than freezing indefinitely while his chest caves in.

He knows, at the very least, he has resources now, to deal with it and learn from it and make further progress, little by little. Neither he, nor Bucky, is built to stand aside when they’re needed. Steve thinks, someday, he could step down, if it was for, and with, Bucky. Both of those things were necessary, though, to even consider it; and Bucky was thriving. Steve sees that, and Steve—before, even, Steve knew he relished fighting alongside his lover from the start, but now he can revel in it and feel more delight, if only just; more giddiness in the adrenaline rush and the way Bucky moves, covers him as a rule like he’s the most important part of the mission, every time: he can only just feel more joy than fear, but it’s a start. And a start means there’s room to grow, a time in the future where it could be more than “only just”.

Which is a nice thought. An unknown that’s a little scary, because that’s normal, but...promising, almost. Possibility more than fear.

Which, back to the point: Steve thinks it’s really fucking ironic that fear of the unknown—and of loss tied up with it, as a matter of course—were on the list of things he’s recently been picking his way through making some sense of, or, making something in the realm of sense: maybe even in just understanding, and someday accepting, that none of it makes much sense at all.

Something like that.

It’s been in his head in new ways, is the thing. All the fear looking a little different, cast in a different light, even if it’s still consuming, intimidating. Coming back into the field just a few weeks earlier, he’d been sitting with the fact that their work was chock full of unknowns, and of the risk of loss, more than most. He’d been wondering about a future, maybe a distant one or maybe one he can touch, where they don’t fight as a rule. Fight less, maybe. Closer to the reprieve Steve’s been given these past months. It’s all ambiguous, amorphous, terrifying in its own right—all the payoffs feel perfect, feel right, but the way he defines pieces of himself, not all of himself, or even most, and certainly not the most important ones, at least not anymore: but pieces of himself are still defined by that uniform, and some of the big pieces, and necessary pieces are defined, will always be defined by why he fights, even if he’s proud that the fact of the fight isn’t so pronounced in who he is and how he understands himself; he’s been thinking on it. All of it. Mulling it over, and of course, weighing it against the losses he went to therapy to try and process, or steel against, or both, or something.

He’s been thinking a lot, about how he could handle, can handle, might handle—will handle loss.

But honestly, Steve hadn’t given so much thought, really, to it being the other way around.

As in, lying here, pinned down and barely breathing because if he inhales deeper the piece of the building lodged in his chest will dig deeper, more dangerous, and he doesn’t know when evac’s coming, can’t risk it: before here, right now, Steve hadn’t really considered that the loss could go down either way.

It was actually a bit of a freak accident, though the pieces were all there, they just thought they’d accounted for everything. Evacuation of a city block, and Steve was running point on a five-story apartment, nothing massive save for being massively overcrowded, but it was really just a race against time: the explosions of the main conflict they’d kept outside the city, and which was mostly wrapped up in the favour of truth, justice, and not-killing-all-the-civilians-with-acidic-alien-guts, had triggered already-fragile faultlines to give way, quaking buildings too old to stand against the onslaught. Best they could do was get the people out, and trust JARVIS and their recon to time it so they saved as many people as possible.

There was no way to have known one of the buildings—the one Steve had just cleared, next to where Steve was working now—had a basement unit owned by a wannabe terrorist with an arsenal of homemade explosives, waiting for just the right spark: like all sorts of collapsing wood when the ground came to shake the foundations apart.

And when one unit doesn’t just collapse, but explodes a little bit? It tends to cause problems.

Steve doesn’t know the casualties, knows there were still units he had to check to make sure were clear, but it’s possible everyone was out. No one responded to his calls to vacate, so maybe no one was left. He doesn’t know how many other buildings came down at the same time, before they could corral the panicked residents to relative safety. This was the second-to-last building Steve was set to clear; maybe people were safe. Maybe people got out on their own. Maybe Nat, or Clint, or, or Bucky—

He could hear them, before the building came down round him; the shield covered him for the most part, until something really, really undeserved by the term ‘debris’ swiped his legs out from under him and fucked the whole production: but Steve’s comms unit ripped out and is definitely crushed to smithereens somewhere in the general vicinity of being entirely unhelpful; Steve’s suit’s been damaged, he’s sure of that, but he doesn’t know where exactly, or how bad—the tracing and monitoring tech embedded in all their uniforms isn’t as precise as the rest of it on a good day, in fact Steve knows that’s a current project Tony’s working on, but this is not a good day, at least in that regard, so Steve doesn't know if they know where he is, if they were close enough to see what happened immediately, Steve can’t think wholly straight to remember, just knows he heard their voices, his team safe and at work, before it all came down, he heard them, they were safe at least, so they could be coming, they should be on their way, Bucky’s voice had been there, Bucky will come, he’d been safe—

But Steve doesn’t know. He tries his damnedest to avoid that train of thought, that downward spiral, because he cannot let himself give in to the anxiousness of it, the pace of breath demanded as a result: he’d heard Bucky. He believes with no reason save that his own heart’s still beating that Bucky’s alive, and alright, because he’d know. Steve would know, if that was no longer true. And because Bucky’s alive, and alright, he’ll be on his way to Steve as soon as humanly possible—or sooner.

It’s not a question of if; Steve just doesn’t know when.

And so, because Steve doesn’t fucking know, he has to work with what he does, not least of which being that he has to breathe very shallowly, and that even if his vision’s going a little blurry, and dark at the corners; even if his heart wants to pump harder for fear—what if something’s happened elsewhere, what if the collapse triggered others, what if they’re not okay, what if Bucky’s not okay—

In other circumstances—maybe later, when this is over, when everyone’s safe, and yeah, himself included—Steve would probably be impressed, may likely be impressed after the fact, with how quickly he’s able to calm himself, not just for necessity, or the more-than-searing sensation of the barb in his belly nudging deeper when he starts toward gasping: he’ll be impressed, yeah, he’s pretty damned sure he will be, at the speed with which he goes from the edge of outright panic, or despair, to keeping himself still as possible, breathing as little as he can, and all for the thought, the reminder-to-self: Bucky is fine, and you have to stay here for him, you have to.

Which does push close to the forefront the need to stave off the thornier thoughts that grow around that affirmation; the concurrent realization: you might well lose each other, and maybe it’ll be you who falls first.

Fuck.

Though, in fairness, Steve’s very unlikely to actually die, right now, unless something goes drastically wrong, or else: more drastically wrong. He can feel that the beam sticking out of his torso isn’t deep enough to puncture any of the important body parts underneath the point of impact, it just hurts like a bitch and is bleeding like crazy: looks far worse than it is, he’s at least ninety-percent sure.

Not that his version of ‘looks worse’ is from the most comprehensive perspective, given his angle being...entirely pinned to the ground.

But perspective: that’s the one he’s got. So he’s sticking with it, and the messages his body’s sending—bad, not bad, and manageable if he wants it bad enough and fuck does he want it more than ‘bad enough’ so it’s doable, it’s happening, he’ll manage as long as it takes—and so he breathes, but only just. Exhales in such small little bursts it’s barely worth the name. And does it again.

And again. Thinks of Bucky: hale and whole, maybe ash on those cheekbones, maybe a split lip Steve can coo over and kiss better, maybe—

“Report.”

The sound is a bark, really, there’s no other word for it—Steve’s never heard that voice in that tone before but he knows that voice anywhere, in every permutation: it thumps hard in his pulse but at the same time keeps him so still and steady, more than he’d been able to even at the best moments of trying with everything in him; it’s just a fact.

The reality of Bucky there, close enough to hear if still some ways off: the reality is more, so much more and better, than even Steve’s best attempts on his own.

“Unchanged,” and it’s the slightest sound, that; Steve can only just pick it out because the tone is like rote now: JARVIS in someone’s ear, but Bucky must have put it on whatever-mode-Tony-does-not-call-speaker-I’m-not-that-fucking-basic-Rogers-I-mean-seriouly-seriously-though-come-on; Steve can pick up JARVIS’s response like a whisper, but he can follow it, and that, he kind of thinks that’s encouraging: his senses can manage that. He’s not so far impaired as he could be.

“Major, if you’ll permit me to remind you,” there’s JARVIS again, and it’s not as calming, not as much a boon to Steve’s current predicament as Bucky’s voice is, would be, but it’s effective to a point, nonetheless; “you did establish standing protocols for me to update you automatically, unprompted, should there be any change.”

“Irrelevant,” and that bark, again: it’s not right, Bucky shouldn’t sound that harsh, that sharp, that jagged and almost dangerous, but with an edge of terror Steve can just pick out; only just: “how much further?”

“Lack of access to the comms systems is severely compromising precision,” JARVIS responds quickly, shifting tacks like the pro that he is, programmed to be or otherwise: “and the sensors in the suit are only functioning at half capacity at best, but I would be confident that we are within a five-hundred foot radius of the Captain’s location.”

Bucky’s quick for a moment, but when he speaks again, he’s just a little louder; a little closer, he has to be, and Steve tries to gather enough breath, safely, to project a sound to be picked up on—but no dice.

“Nothing else?” Bucky asks, and it’s a serrated sort of comment; too harsh for this man with a heart so soft, a soul so open, Steve doesn’t like having to hear it at all; doesn’t want to think about being the cause of it, either.

“Nothing with sufficient reliability,” JARVIS replies, and sounds regretful in his way.

“Fuck,” Bucky hisses, then nearly growls out: “report.”

“Unchanged,” JARVIS is quick with, maybe because it’s been less than a minute, probably, since Bucky last asked, and Steve’s pretty clear on the fact that a ‘report’ is entirely about himself—his awareness is clear enough to note that much.

“His vitals indicate likely oxygen depletion—”

Oh yeah, Steve thinks: definitely about him.

“Fucking hell,” Bucky seethes, but it’s horrified, it’s smacked-across-the-face, it’s torn from the center of his chest: “you said—”

“Within the normal parameters that his enhanced physiology can and has withstood over extended periods of time, far beyond what we can anticipate here, with no lasting ill effect,” JARVIS speaks in measured tones; intended to calm, to reassure, with facts no less—Steve’s not entirely sure it’ll work this time, to be honest. He’s pretty much entirely sure it wouldn’t work on him, if the tables were turned.

“What about—” Bucky starts, sharper still; Steve doesn't know if Bucky’d be that emotional, to any extent, if he weren’t alone with JARVIS on a rescue mission for Steve in particular, but it’s jarring either way, when Bucky’s usually so composed in the field.

“His other vitals remain within acceptable range,” JARVIS preempts him expertly; “not ideal, Major, but more than acceptable. And at that,” JARVIS adds, and there’s that lilt of humanity in him that Steve will never fully comprehend, will never be able to absolutely reconcile with JARVIS being less than flesh and blood in a way that’s wholly inaccurate in the literal sense, but more than true in any other understanding of the term; “at that, more than safe, given the circumstances.”

Bucky sighs, deeper than Steve thinks he’s ever heard anyone sigh, ever, let alone Bucky—and Steve can hear the slightest footfalls, now: Bucky normally keeps his motions so light that even Steve’s enhanced senses can’t spot them. He’s closer, and he doesn’t give a shit who hears; maybe hopes to be heard, on the whole. Steve tests his breath, wants more than anything to make a noise that’ll reach Bucky, or even just JARVIS’s sensors: all he manages is a hoarse, breathy thing that’s barely a sound at all, and feels the beam in his torso shift the slightest bit in warning for it.

Goddamnit.

“Do you have a suggestion of direction with insufficient reliability?” Bucky finally asks, voice a little more measured, a little more controlled but still uneasy below the surface.

“Given the analysis of the collapse, and where the last ping from the communications systems can be tracked,” JARVIS contextualizes first, because he’s JARVIS: “southeast.”

Steve heard the footsteps continue, for a few seconds, the space of just a few heartbeats, before:

“Repor—”

“Severely elevated vitals.”

Steve frowns, takes stock: his vitals haven’t changed that he can tell, he’s keeping breathing steady, shallow, just-shy-of-enough, exactly what he needs, and—

“In the requesting party.”

Oh. Oh, it’s Bucky’s vitals. Steve bites his lip to force himself not to react to his own detriment, and in doing so eventually cause Bucky’s own reaction to be even more extreme, more threatening: he won’t contribute to that. He can’t. Bucky’s on his feet, and JARVIS wouldn’t be throwing barbs if it was critical, Steve knows.

“Captain Rogers remains unchanged within any statistical significance.”

“Jesus,” Bucky breathes out slow, then bites back: “if you want my fuckin’ vitals severely elevated—”

“To be honest, Major,” JARVIS says, a little too fucking blithely in Steve’s opinion, even given Steve’s admittedly-not-ideal state of mental clarity: “given the readings you are already producing, my comments did not cause as much of a spike as you might suppose.”

Bucky scoffs, while Steve struggles to maintain composure: “I’ll calm down when he’s in my sights.”

The footsteps, Steve notes, are close now, actually close: he tries making the whistling-half-noise again, tries to do it in a way that won’t drive the spike deeper into his flesh; pleads with the universe that it’ll make a difference, that it’ll be enough—

He hears Bucky’s footsteps halt abruptly, and within fucking seconds, those footsteps are thundering, racing closer, louder, closer, and then:

“Steve,” it’s a whisper, like what your heart pushes out, pressed from your lips when they’re dropped open, and then:

“Steve!”

And then there’s scrambling, Bucky really having fully disregarded anything like the stealth he usually moves with to an almost impressive degree, and he’s standing, leaning over Steve from above, having approached at Steve’s head so he’s upside down in Steve’s vision, but he’s beautiful, and Bucky’s reaching carefully to check Steve’s pulse in the space of a second: Steve feels himself want to sink into the contact, but he has to stay still, he has to—he can let it ease the pain as a function of its very presence, though. Bucky’s very presence.

That definitely works.

“Hey Buck,” Steve knows it’s more a matter of reading lips than anything, but it’s fine, it’s fine because Bucky’s here, and he can calm down, and Steve’s vision’s clearer somehow, impossibly, just because there’s Bucky in his view.

“Oh, god,” Bucky gasps out, just a breath really; “fuck,” and he moves to Steve’s side, takes in the plank sticking upward from Steve’s intercostal spaces, or maybe just beneath; Steve tries to suss it out, tries to focus and feel: he should have done that before, been more precise, but it can’t be anywhere too terrible, too horrible—it hurts, fuck but it hurts, but it’s not getting signifcantly worse. He can’t have nicked anything too unforgivable else he’d know it by now, serum or no.

Bucky, though: Bucky just sees Steve, barely moving, eyes hooded, with a splintered piece of wood staking through his chest.

“Stevie.”

That kind of heartbreak has no place in this world, not coming from Bucky Barnes’ mouth. Not spilling from Bucky Barnes’ soul.

Steve needs to speak.

“Bucky.” And sure, even Steve can acknowledge it sounds a little too close to a fucking death rattle to probably be helpful, but maybe he can say more. Maybe more words will ease the look of unmitigated grief that’s not needed here—maybe.

Steve will damn well try.

“S’okay, gonna be okay,” that part’s more mouthing, more lip-reading than Steve hoped for, but he forges on, steels his instincts, the autonomic parts of his body to keep breathing at just the right intervals, and with only the minimum capacity to be viable, to stay alive and not-more-skewered-than-necessary; he wills that to the background, to the things that happen without his attention, if only for a moment, so that he can focus on Bucky, on easing that look off his face.

“S’good to see y—,” Steve starts, wants more than anything to be able to read; “see your face,” and the air really is thin, trying to take it in so delicately. He has to be short. He has to make the words count in bite-sizes.

He can do that.

“Knew you were comin’,” Steve shoves down the pain to grin, just a little; “were on your way.”

“‘Course I was,” Bucky leans in, precariously but oh-so-careful, planned from the start to brush Steve’s cheek with the back of his knuckles without jostling him, or even coming close. “I’m sorry I wasn’t quicker.”

“Uhh-uhh,” Steve chokes out as a gasp, a pitchy kind of sound that widens Bucky’s eyes in horror but no, no; Steve was just urgent, needed to nip that as soon as it was so much as thought, best he could.

“No,” Steve wants nothing more, nothing more in that moment than to reach for Bucky’s hand and squeeze his conviction into the touch. “Y’were always on your way.”

Bucky, though: Bucky takes a moment to assess, and he does what he maybe does best—he takes Steve’s hand in his, and gives what Steve needs without being asked at all as he pledges, almost solemn but also light, and edge of the fear palpable in it:

“I’ll always be on my way.”

Steve knows it, too; could never believe anything less.

“JARVIS,” Bucky’s barking again, orders, imperatives; Steve’s pretty sure only he’d be able to pick out the cracking at the edges.

“Scanning structural integrity, sir, in progress.”

“Scan him,” Bucky growls, and calculates the angle he can reach to touch Steve’s jaw; measure his heart rate again none-too-subtly.

“I am more than capable of doing both simultaneously, Major.” JARVIS sounds gentle, even as he rebukes; maybe Steve wasn’t the only one who heard the cracks; maybe they’re bigger than cracks, even, and Steve’s just a little woozy.

“I,” Bucky lets out a long breath, eyes closing for a long second before he inhales, shaky, and murmurs: “thank you.”

“Your vitals, while still notably elevated,” JARVIS adds casually; “have indeed inched ever so slightly closer to a mid-battle-max dataset, Major.”

Steve tries not to smile at the snark, but he can’t help the warmth that spreads through him when Bucky shoots back: “Told you I’d be fine once I could see him.”

“I love you, Buck,” Steve says, because he’s full with it, and in the haze of his brain just now, it’s the biggest thing there is. It’s kind of always the biggest thing there is, but there’s nothing else telling it to pipe down, to exist-that-big in a quiet way.

Bucky stiffens, though, and goes ashen, and Steve blinks, uncertain until:

“Steve, don’t you fucking dare start with that shit, with goodb—”

“No, no,” Steve’s a little frantic, desperate to cut this off at the core but he can’t move with the force of his intent; it’s hard.

“Not that,” Steve tries to say quickly enough without panting, without jostling his midsection: “not even close, Bucky, not that.”

He does his best to convey sincerity, the depths of, just, all of him with his eyes, as clear as he can, and he holds Bucky’s gaze unwavering until he can see the panic start to ebb back: good.

Okay, good.

“You’re gonna get me out, I know that,” Steve exhales, but he thinks he’s going to have to depend mostly on the shape of his lips again; but Bucky’s watching, not wavering for a moment, so it’ll be okay. It’ll be just fine.

“Just love you, s’all.” Steve smiles, feels his chest swell so quick with the feeling that he has to check, make sure he’s held position: he’s good.

“Love you so g’damn much.”

He’s good, save for feeling things that are fucking seismic. Kinda normal, now, to be fair.

“You came t’get me,” Steve hisses as best he can, words and sounds: “I love you, an’ you came to get me, and I,” he runs out of air, and has to recover, has to recoup it for a second:

“Knew you’d come t’get me, ‘cause you love me too, so,” Steve tries to imply a shrug; he’s not sure he makes it happen, but the attempt is there to make it all seem like the given, the absolute that it is: “I love you.”

“Love you too, you fuckin’ punk,” Bucky breathes out immediately, lets his head fall forward, to touch Steve’s brow but only just; touches Steve’s everything when he whispers, close to Steve’s ear: “With all my heart.”

“Which, despite a momentary spike just a moment ago, is now currently functioning at a rate only just above your tactical baseline, Major, I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know.” Steve can hear JARVIS, even though the sound’s been relegated back to Bucky’s headset, Steve registers belatedly: dangling out of his ear so he can hear necessary updates, but can focus wholly on Steve, and any threat in their surroundings.

“J,” Bucky chokes a little on a laugh; “shut up.”

He doesn’t mean it, save for the very mechanics of it: he wants them focused, Steve knows, even though Steve himself is very interested in the state of Bucky’s own well-being, he knows JARVIS wouldn’t nit-pick this way if it were a cause for true alarm; and he knows Bucky’ll probably apologize to JARVIS later for anything less than friendly drawn from him in the heat of the moment, anyway, because that’s who Bucky Barnes is.

“Steve,” Bucky murmurs, but he straightens up, his eyes wide with feeling but also like they’re prepared, honed solely on taking in as much of Steve as possible, head to toe, and assessing damage. “Where’s the pain,” he asks, eyes pointedly on the puncture wound; that’s the obvious answer but it’s not what he’s asking, and Steve knows it keenly: “what can’t I see?”

Bucky wasn’t a medic by trade, but he’d been a shockingly capable one during his service, Steve knows this. If he'd been the worst fucking medic in the history of the military, though: Steve would still trust him with his life, without reservation.

Just a fact of being, of the universe in whole.

“Localized,” Steve answers; truthful with it: “it doesn’t go as deep as it looks,” he tries to reassure, tries to explain breathing just enough to maintain consciousness and not enough to encourage gravity any more to drive through his body: “just trying to—”

“Steve!”

Steve hears his name screamed loud, and he tries to do the same with Bucky’s because he sees the pulmeting of something, something too fucking big and too fucking close coming toward them—but before he can try his visions blocked out, dark with shadow and dirt, debris; and his lungs are compressed, Bucky’s name on his lips is a squeak, a breath as dust billows and the sounds of crashing, of collapse and destruction again fill the air, and fuck, fuck, what if it’s both of them, what if the loss is both of them and what if Steve is why Bucky’s here when it happens, what if—

“Steve,” Bucky’s voice when it makes its way through the fog of it all, the resonance of collapse and the pounding of Steve’s blood, the blinking, the spottiness of his mind because he needs to gulp air, he needs to find real oxygen hidden in the thickness of the dust swarming—but he can’t, he can’t move and he’d panic, he’s panicking a little but it’s softening quick, fading because Bucky’s voice is close, and it’s so low, so strained, so desperate but then: those are all underneath something like steel, something thick and unshakable, and Steve knows in an instant he’s listening to the Major, in the field. He’s listening to the Major, who is also his lover: the amalgamation of the two, seamless, and shaken, but unwavering.

“You stay still,” Bucky’s voice is command as much as plea, but it surges through Steve’s veins as unquestionable. “Still as you possibly can while still breathing even a little bit, okay,” because of course Bucky knows what Steve’s been doing, understands how Steve’s trying to mimimize total damage, play the long game of his own fucking wellbeing, and Bucky’s hand on him is a vise, really, a boon and a blessing not just for the touch of the man he loves, but for the way Steve can’t move, and can trust Bucky to keep him, to help him in the mission as Steve himself starts to falter; Steve can shift his limited resources to other things, with Bucky’s hand like that, holding him in place and ensuring him, keeping him.

Loving him.

“You know what you can do, what you can handle,” Bucky’s saying, as Steve’s letting his body, his unconscious mind shift priorities, realign what he needs to focus on most: “do the bare minimum, whatever requires the least motion, but keeps you with me.” There’s an edge there, on those last words that wrenches Steve’s attention back from within himself, to the man balanced above him, whose weight is stilling him:

“No matter what, you stay with me,” Bucky barely breathes it, but he doesn’t have to do more than that for it to be heard, for it to be law: “you understand.”

“Buck,” Steve opens his mouth; can’t tell if there’s sound but the words, in kind, are heard: “ain’t even a question.”

And oh, but if he bears his teeth and focuses on something outside the tearing of his own flesh, Steve thinks, maybe, that can kind of feel Bucky’s pulse in how tight he’s pressing down, now, holding Steve to the ground and away from the threat of the beam cutting further into his midsection—Steve really does think he can feel it, and can understand why JARVIS kept bringing it up, it’s so fast and so hard but it’s strong, god is it strong, just like the man it’s housed inside, and maybe it’s too fast but it’s real, and it’s alive, and they’re alive, they’re going to stay alive—

“I’m never goin’ anywhere without you,” Steve exhales, closest to a sign he can get, and feels a little floaty, a little impossibly giddy, and it’s part oxygen deprivation, he’s not stupid, but it is at least the champagne fizz of relief, of adoration; it’s at least as much that, too.

“Eyes open, Steve,” Bucky’s voice is there, command with an edge of dire need; Steve’s eyes open without question, but the thing is: he hadn’t realized they’d gone closed.

“Mmm,” Steve tries to nod, to root himself. He’s awake, he’ll stay awake. “I’m tired though, Buck.” He could nod off, he thinks; he could, because Bucky’ll keep him still, and maybe it’d be safer, for them both, to ride it out with Steve being more docile to keep in one place, despite Steve’s own best efforts—maybe;

“I know,” Bucky whispers, and he really is very close to Steve, now, but he’s not close enough to kiss Steve’s brow, or touch his face; he’d touched his face before, and Steve lets himself wish to have it back.

“I know, babydoll,” Bucky murmurs low: “JARVIS doesn’t see any evidence of head trauma, but,” and Bucky’s breathing goes uneven when he exhales, then:

“It’s selfish, I know it, but if you close your eyes for longer than blinking right now,” and it’s funny; the command is gone, in these words now, but they’re no less carved in stone, immovable and unbreakable and capable of shaping Steve to their will:

“You do that, and I think it might break me.”

“Then I won’t,” Steve rasps; it’s an accidental use of too much air and he feels the repercussions quick, but he makes himself weather the shock and regroup.

“Won’t break you,” Steve shapes air to the words, a promise he’ll break his own self before he fails: “you’re perfect and precious and,” Steve wants nothing more than to reach up, than to cup Bucky’s face, than to touch him in a way that proves he’s a treasure, priceless, exquisite and valued beyond measure; he wants nothing more but he can't move, not just because he knows he has to stay still but Bucky’s right hand feels almost firmer, now, in pinning him, pressed firm, so carefully intentional, far enough from anywhere that would aggravate the pole sticking out of Steve’s body, but heavy enough on Steve’s torso to keep him in check against any possibility that Steve falters in bearing out the need for stillness just now, in the overwhelming rush of desire to reach and to show beyond measure, the best he’s able, all that Bucky is.

Which is good. But still, regardless of the reason: he can’t.

He can’t, so he lets himself breathe the tiny, paltry, less-than-half inhales he can manage under the circumstances with relative safety; he lets himself do that with as much of his own intention as possible under Bucky’s touch, in kind, and hopes it says something alongside the words he scrapes together the air to add: “I’d never break you.”

Bucky’s breath catches, then, and Steve frowns, eyes narrowed, attention and awareness pinged if only for an instant in the floating lack of air: not hurt, no danger, just the shine in Bucky’s eyes betraying the words struck somewhere unseen, no real blood spilling for it: Steve didn’t mean it to have that impact, but he’s glad to be understood.

“God, Steve,” Bucky grits out through clenched teeth, but he doesn’t move: the pressure on Steve’s chest doesn’t even tremble, no give for the way Bucky himself breathes in and out.

“Just hang in there,” Bucky coaxes, begs and demands, almost mumbles to himself, all at once, a cacophony of delivery with only one intent, but Steve’s not distracted, not deterred, because Steve is realizing that the pressure on his chest is unyielding, it was from the start, but the angle of it, something about how it’s balanced: it’s different.

It’s been different since whatever fell around them both settled, Steve thinks, and what if Bucky’s hurt, fuck, oh god, what if Bucky—

“What about you?” Steve gathers all his breath together to make it sound like the barest whisper, rather than just making motions with his mouth.“You’re,” and then Steve’s eyes flicker away from Bucky: and that’s the kicker. Turns out that had been the sticking point: Steve’s gaze had not strayed from Bucky’s face once, because it was Bucky, and it helped keep Steve steady, and still, and helped him feel calm, and safe, and right, why would he ever look away, except—

“Oh my god,” Steve wheezes, and damn well tries to move and see better, prove he’s not hallucinating but Bucky’s hold on him is too ironclad; but Steve kind of hopes the lack of air’s getting to him, to be honest, because whatever shifted, and raining dust and bits of foundation down on them rained something big enough to have merited the noise and the disturbance, and Steve hadn’t really thought about where that big-enough thing had ended up, or if there’d been more than one of them, because he was still here, and Bucky was still with him, and they were okay, they were fine but Bucky’s pressing against Steve with his right hand, more firm and steady than human flesh should be capable of so of course Bucky makes it a rule: but his left hand.

His left arm—

“Bucky, you’re—”

“Shh shh shh,” Bucky’s trying to save him breath, there’s a space in the back of Steve’s head that knows it, but fucking hell: “shh, Stevie, stay real still, remember? Just stay still.”

“Buck,” Steve huffs out a wheeze: “are you holding up—”

He is. Steve can’t see; can’t move to see whether whatever Bucky’s left arm is propping up, and lifting off of them, keeping away from their bodies and saving them both from being crushed—Steve can’t see if it’s attached to something and Bucky’s leveraging it up, or if it free-fell and Bucky’s got it in hand, trying to strike a balance of not letting it fall, or knock something bigger to tumble and bury them both.

But no matter the details—though Steve’s fuzzy-brain is feeding him as many rampant and insane and terrible details as it can, to be sure; whatever the specifics, Steve’s pretty goddamn sure that Bucky is holding up part of the fucking building so it doesn’t fucking kill them both, and Jesus, Jesus, Steve can’t, he—

“S’nothing,” Bucky’s saying, the idiot, this beautiful, perfect, terrifying idiot. “Just doing what needs to be done,” he’s going on, like holding up part of an apartment complex is on par with taking out the recycling every other week; “best any of us can do.”

“If that comes down, it’ll crush you—” Steve tries to convey the gravity, the insanity, the way his chest hurts so much worse for that fact than for any piece of wood cutting into him: no contest, not even close.

It’s hard, to get it across when he can’t get a full breath to scream it, but he tries really fucking hard.

“I won’t let it come down,” the idiot on top of him says, like it’s simple.

“You can’t know—”

“Not going anywhere,” and his voice’s shifted, now: deeper, and edge of command bleeding seamlessly with the weight of feeling, and Steve notices he’s breathing a little hard, but it’s not shaking him. It’s not doing anything, because the words are the bond, are the law, are the promise, and Bucky’s…

Bucky’s not going anywhere.

“Not without you.”

Not without Steve.

“So, we’re going,” Bucky sums up pointedly, never blinking as he wills the words into Steve to be known and grasped and held on to tight: “home. Together.”

Steve lets himself take in as much air as Bucky’s weight, his hand pressing down will permit: he lets himself take all of it and sink into that fact: they’re in the middle of a fucking warzone.

But they’re only leaving together. And there’s something in that, simple and undeniable, that puts Steve at ease in a way that could move mountains and part fucking seas.

“Stark’s coming with the fucking phalanx,” Bucky says, and Steve startles a little; he doesn’t know how long he was quiet, basking in that ill-placed but wholly-real sense of peace; he processes the words, though, then tries to snort without much air to devote to the task: Tony’s ‘Iron Legion’ is coming for them—for fuck’s sake, that man’s ego.

Steve figures it’s probably for the best, though; it’ll spread the load and get them out, get them home, safest; quickest.

“How many is he up to?” Last Steve knew, there were close to 50 less-Iron-Men in Tony’s storage bunker.

“Drones or Marks?” Bucky asks; breathless, but there’s humor, and Steve rolls his eyes because that requires no expenditure of air whatsoever.

“Shit,” Steve would sigh, if he could properly; “I don’t want to know.”

Honestly, he doesn’t. Because Steve’s not sure if he’s more or less unsettled, or impressed, by the JARVIS-driver hollow-suits, or the robots. He’s really, really not sure, and he does not care to think about it just now.

“We are going to get you out,” Bucky says suddenly; maybe he mistook Steve’s uncertainty about Tony’s army of tech for something bigger—he shouldn’t have. Steve’s not worried; doesn’t even think he should be, and is just being…Steve about it, either.

“Us,” Steve does take the opportunity to correct, though: “get us out.”

“Of course,” Bucky exhales, and smiles, and the sound and the expression are like a caress, somehow, in a way only Bucky can make and give: “of course, Stevie.”

Which, honestly, is all Steve needs, really: he doesn’t need to hear JARVIS confirming inbound time estimates; he doesn’t need to pick up the telltale hum in the air of too many fucking suits flying near—he really, really wasn’t worried, and still he isn’t.

Steve wants Bucky safe, that’s what matters. After that, Steve wants range of motion to touch him; wants freedom to breathe in and have the whole inhalation be Bucky, through and through.

Aside from that, though, they’ll see the other side of this. It’s not even a bet, or a wager; it’s a certainty.

“Fifty bucks says there are over a hundred Iron-Thingies on their way, drone or otherwise.”

Steve frowns: because that there is a wager, and…

And Steve cannot take it in good conscience, because he kinda suspects Bucky’s very much correct.

And Steve loves Bucky something fucking fierce, but that does not mean he’s in the business of being fleeced for cash.

Chapter Text

Had there been a compelling argument for Steve to stay in the Tower’s medical suite for the evening, he’s a reasonable man; he’d have considered it duly and responsibly and—

And, there had been compelling arguments. From everyone: from Bruce (predictably) to Tony (kind of a surprise, given the level of hypocrisy to it), to Bucky, who’d said nothing, but had stared so stone-faced, so unblinking and stock-still, that Steve knew very well where he stood on the matter when every suggestion was rebuffed, every concession turned down—of course Bucky can stay with you, Steve, the beds are big enough, even though they weren’t; serum or no serum, you were impaled, Steve, you need at least to stay for observation, it wasn’t impalement if it didn’t go all the way through, was it, plus he’s well-wrapped and stitched up—in part thanks to Saint Helen herself via VR interface on the ground, so yes, that was handy—but that meant the worst of it was done on the flight back, which was more than long enough for healing to have kicked in anyway; and cutting-edge AI and virtual surgical set-ups aside, even those wouldn’t have cut it if it had been absolutely criticial, so if they’d managed that on the quinjet then it couldn’t have been that bad to begin with, could it, not to mention that word, impalement, Steve would really rather they stopped suggested that when a) it was clearly inaccurate and b) it made Bucky’s already-too-stiff posture go harder still at the mere mention, and Steve didn’t like that one bit— Steve knew better, though, and yes he’s played fast and loose with his well being more than once but he also knows his own body, and so compelling arguments though they’d been, he’d maybe considered them, with some level of responsibility he’s sure, before rejecting then outright.

Because, at the end of the day, he was still breathing, and the pain was near the top of his spectrum of experience, sure, but he’d still known worse, and if what he needed was rest, and recuperation, and medication for his body to heal, what he needed, not to get well but to keep being, was his bed, next to the man he loves, and that man’s warmth real and true next to him without sensors or wires or a well meaning medical professional who’d pretend like they didn’t receive the clear insatructions Steve insisted upon to be left to rest, to fall asleep to the sound of Bucky’s steady breathing, his strong-safe pulse under Steve’s ear, the best fucking medicine he could ever hope to know—he needed Bucky, unrestricted and uncensored and outside the confines of that kind of space, even if it meant slowing down his own return to wellness, because if it had to be a trade off, an exchange one for the other, Steve would choose wholeness, the feeling that overtakes him in Bucky’s arms; Steve would choose that every time.

Nevermind the fact that Bucky, who hasn’t been further than arm’s length once, not once, likewise hasn’t shown a single goddamned facial expression once, either. Barely uttered a word, once it was confirmed that Steve was stable, that it was smooth sailing — comparatively — moving forward. The few times he’d spoken were a few words at most, always aimed at Steve’s welfare: Okay?, How bad?, Where’s the worst of it?, all in a tone Steve recognized but only barely, more in theory than in practice because Bucky’s heart, most of the time, was vibrant and visible in all of him, through everything he did and was and breathed, so this: Steve knows what this is not because he’s seen it before and remembers it as familiar, but because that heart in him is dim, hardly an echo of it to be found, and Steve knows its presence like the back of his hand.

Its absence is a gut punch; steals the oxygen from the room worse, more completely than the damage to Steve’s bruised lungs. So, more than any new-and-improved infusion line hooked to his veins, or a few hours in Helen’s recently-upgraded Cradle? Steve needs—in order to recover, in order to be well, to be hale and whole and to breathe right in the world, Steve needs to do something to bring back the light in Bucky's eyes, the kind that shines out his pores even in rage, or frustration, or stress or anxiety. He needs to be able to see the life in him at a glance, Steve needs to be able to pick out the heart of him, even the barest sliver of it so long as it’s true: Steve needs to do what it fucking takes to make that happen, to heal a deeper wound than the flesh, one that had bled as freely as Steve’s own tattered flesh as he’d languished, pinned to the ground and saved only by Bucky’s unflagging, superhuman resolve to keep the collapsing beams from hitting anywhere even more serious, from digging any further toward muscle and bone.

That was a wound no scan could pick up, but Steve knew it was there, and Steve knew it was more of a threat than anything his body was currently stitching back together under the rust-stained dressings at his chest. And Steve needed, more than anything else, to isolate the wound, and do his best to cauterize it with contact, with touch if he was permitted it—questionable, given the distance between them’s been just too far to comfortably breach; he needed to see to the source and give whatever was needed to start the healing there, as sure as his own, because the righting of his skin, his organs, the viscera of his body depended on so much more than the physical.

More than anything, really: Steve being well and right and whole in the world, anywhere and always, really just depended on Bucky.

So all Steve wants to do is go home, with Bucky; all he wants is to take Bucky home, because it feels like Bucky’s the one in far greater danger than Steve, at this point: Steve had damn near demanded Bucky get examined, and he’d consented wordlessly — wordlessly — so long as Steve was never out of sight, and he was fine, if sporting a muscle strain or two, but again it was all the things a sensor couldn’t read that worried Steve to sickness in his gut. Bucky’s skin looked sallow; Steve had thought it was actual dust and ash until he’d watched Bucky clean the blood from his face and the color hadn’t come back, flesh too close to grey, his eyes too stunted to monochrome, too faded and bleak. It settled sick in Steve’s stomach from the first, and the fact that it hadn’t eased at all, hadn’t receded to show a hint of blood in his cheeks, or a peek at the shade of the sky in the middle of summer even when Steve was declared “definitely not dying” and proved it handily by checking himself out for home—which, he’s not a fucking idiot, and he’s not dying but he’s certainly battered to hell, and if he were gambling with his life for the choice he’s making it wouldn’t have been a choice, he’s strong at his best and he has a home in the Tower, sure, but it’s not his playground, and given his physical disadvantages at the moment he could absolutely be contained by the security crawling through the place if push came to shove—but the fact of Bucky, looking hollow, sanded flat and blank and empty: that fact festered, twisted blind and hateful and all Steve wanted, all Steve needed, was to find a way to bring that singular life back to the surface, to be known and seen and treasured every moment, that one and only life that mattered more than the goddamn world, always.

Always. Unequivocally.

It is possible now, however, that all his attempts, his hopes at making some progress, hitting some headway, it all may be in the process of backfiring spectacularly, because they’re home, safe, but still Bucky takes a moment to just look at Steve, consider him as if it’s not been a given for months now past a goddamn year for him to crawl in beside because he belongs there, his shape is made to match Steve’s own, it’s a rule ordained by the cosmos—Bucky’s just standing there, though, like it’s a question, and maybe Steve had flirted closer with death than he’d assumed, because the pang of the sight before him clamours in his chest, through his heart, and sends a pain deeper, harder through the wound in him, or else, maybe: just cuts a new one for the ache of the scene he watches, here and now.

His breath’s caught though, and he’s near as still as Bucky is; Bucky, who’s standing, still standing, still not next to Steve close enough to feel his breath, and Steve realizes with a start it’s been hours, the whole goddamn day almost since they made it out alive since he’s felt Bucky’s warmth, Bucky’s skin, Bucky’s life—the barest touch to settle him in bed first, all the cushions and pillows for propping placed before Steve was touched to situate, and Bucky’s uniform gloves were still in place, the brush of his fingers scarce, and he’d be flawless making Steve comfortable, leaning him back just so with the guidance he’d been given to see through, but…

Steve had barely felt him. It had been efficient and as painless to his body as possible, yet efficient to the point of pain inside his soul. He hasn’t felt Bucky, not truly, since Bucky had been positioned above him, gasping hard enough for more reasons than Steve could see let alone name but that could be felt as he braved there, holding back certain death, and even then they hadn’t touched—

And that hurts in his chest harder, deeper than any hole carved there, any puncture between his ribs ever could.

Steve thinks it’s a lifetime, and the lonely kind, a semblance of the things he’s been feeling and fearing so deep: he thinks it’s a lifetime before Bucky peels back the sheets on his side of their bed. Steve holds his breath, even if it hurts, he’s not sure if it’s in his head, surely it should hurt more for his body to actually breathe, given the way its weaving itself together and where, but then again: deeper wounds, harsher tears are teetering on Steve’s consciousness, are slipping in as careful as humanly possible not to jostle the mattress across from him: and goddamn, but Steve holds his breath for the fear that Bucky will keep his distance, Steve’s heart ringing a gong, deep and hollow, when Bucky doesn’t move, when there’s such space between their bodies as there’s never been between them, let alone inside this bed, their bed—

“You tell me,” Bucky’s voice is low, dragged over gravel into a rumble; Steve still won’t let himself breathe but for shifting reasons, largely because he needs that voice, he needs to hear every hitch of that beloved breathing, he needs it to seep into his pores and flow through his goddamn veins, not a single piece of it missed.

“You tell me the moment it hurts, you understand me?” and Bucky’s hand is hovering just above Steve’s body, almost laughably far from his wounds but still hesitant, still so fucking cautious; his head bows over Steve’s shoulder, opposite the side that took the heft of the blow anyway, but likewise: so careful. So hesitant.

“Even the slightest bit, do you understand me?” The rumbling of that voice shifts toward a hiss, now; a threat and a promise but it’s gilded, or else, lanced with so much terror, and Steve realises he’s heard Bucky scared before but—not like this. Another thing that’s familiar for the worst of reasons, not because it’s been known before exactly the way it rises now, but for this at least: it’s familiar because Steve knows that fear in his own gut. It’s the fear that he carries around, is getting a grip on to be fair to himself but: this is his fear.

Has he bled it onto Bucky, too, finally? Fuck, fuck—

“I mean it,” Bucky growls; either seeing something of Steve’s internal upset, or simply knowing him too well: “I will see it in a second if you lie.”

No matter how much Steve needs Bucky’s touch, Bucky’s body heat, the tangible proof of him: no matter how much—Steve cannot lie. Not to Bucky.

Not like this.

Bucky’s hand comes down first, still so far from even possibly causing pain, from causing anything but relief, but joy, but Steve thinks maybe he understands one of probably a host of reasons Bucky’d been beside him, unwaveringly, but with a distance that broke Steve’s heart a little: because Bucky’s hand, when it touches Steve’s skin, trembles something fierce.

Steve has to swallow the moan at that fact, what it means, lest he be misunderstood for the type of pain it causes.

Bucky takes an age to so much as line his body against Steve’s safer side, his stomach brushing Steve’s forearm on the right, his hand taking Steve’s only loose around the wrist—the left doesn’t tremble, because it can’t, but Steve can read every touch Bucky’s body can bestow and it doesn’t matter, its stillness and its exactitude feel just the goddamn same, somehow, as outright shaking; Bucky won’t even fully rest his head on Steve’s shoulder, doesn’t even quite touch his nose to Steve’s neck, Steve’s throat, and Steve can’t help himself, Steve knows it’ll hurt to reach but it won’t matter, adrenaline will soften it even as Bucky’s demands: he needs Bucky closer, he needs Bucky against his skin more than he needs his own fucking skin, so he does reach, and Bucky protests immediately, and there it is—the fear, and Steve’s heart twists at it, so clear and so depthless-sounding, feeling—but Steve grits his teeth, doesn’t make a sound, lets himself breathe now, and steady even if it fucking kills him, to lead Bucky’s head to his shoulder properly, to lay him there, his chest against his pec, further than Steve wants but closer than Bucky was even aiming to consider and then Steve really breathes, a long sigh that pulls painfully but settles his heart so much more, and Bucky.

Bucky is rigid, for long moments, before the fight goes out of him and he's boneless between blinks, not heavy with it, like even subconsciously his body’s unwilling to burden Steve’s with its weight even if Steve wants it, and desperately so: nevermind that it’d be so far from a burden, and so much more a gift.

But Bucky is oddly insubstantial against him, even as he presses into Steve, even as Steve can measure inch for inch the frame of him where it makes contact and finds home.

The moment stretches to minutes at least, just like that: Bucky present and solid and real against him and easing something primal and urgent inside Steve’s bones but there’s a tension, an anticipation and not one that feels safe, or at least, not one that Steve can read enough to know is safe, and Steve’s injured, and tired, but this is Bucky, and Bucky is boneless yet still threaded with something immense that Steve can feel in the way his body leans—Steve loves, and he needs, and he will both relish and hold safe in the meantime, but that fission, that fear-echo: it’s haunting. Enormous.

“I have nightmares too, you know.”

Steve blinks: Bucky’s voice is so small, and his hand is trembling still but that’s not all of it; by now it’s Bucky’s whole body, every bit of him where he’s pressed to Steve and Steve can’t reach again, not without moving Bucky away from him, so he drops his head and does everything he can to make an embrace of the press of his cheek to the crown of Bucky’s head.

“I know,” Steve says, just a breath in return, because it’s a little bit of a non-sequitur, but that frisson, that fear—that’s what’s driving the words. Steve needs to give and be and hold, for this man he loves, and if he also needs to be wary of what’s underneath, what’s coming on the heels: it comes second. It could ruin him, it could break him more than a collapsing building could ever hope: but that’s secondary.

He is Bucky’s, and he is here pressed against, held close to Bucky first. Always.

“No,” Bucky sighs, and the trembling’s still there, but it’s a little softer; “I mean…”

Then, Steve feels lips against the globe of his shoulder, then the jut of his collarbone. He feels warmth and breath and the promise inherent in both. Steve can breathe again and his heat feels just that little bit steadier. Because of Bucky, and he is here for Bucky. Because of Bucky.

Even as he can see the crumbling, the devastation waiting in the wings.

It doesn’t even wait for long.

“I never knew whether telling you would hurt more, or help more,” Bucky whispers, more the motion of his lips on Steve’s skin than any sounds. “I still don’t know, but I,” and that whisper cuts short, cracks hard, and Steve presses his own lips again to Bucky’s head, holds there: needs that to matter.

He thinks it does, even if maybe not enough; Bucky leans into it just the slightest bit, but it’s monumental—Bucky breathes, and Steve feels it, in and out and in, and they exist together inside that rhythm. Just for a time.

It’s something.

“I dream of losing you.”

Steve doesn’t know what he expected. He doesn’t know if he expected anything, specifically, or if he ever could.

He didn’t expect that. He knows, just as surely though, that he should have.

It kills him; kills him: but he sure as hell should have expected nothing less.

“Not always, not all the time,” Bucky murmurs, and oh, oh no, he almost sounds ashamed, almost hides in Steve’s chest and Steve wants always to be a haven for this man but no, no he shouldn’t have to feel that way, he wouldn’t have to feel that way ever, but to feel it attached in any possible way to Steve—

“But enough,” Bucky scoffs a little, but it’s brittle: “once would be enough, but,” he shakes his head, and it’s a nuzzling, a softness when it should only hurt but maybe it’s fair, or fitting: maybe when love hurts, when it’s love like this, it has to come with something true to form, something small but impossibly beautiful.

“And they’re worse than nightmares of the war,” and Steve had heard the gravel in Bucky’s tone before but now, this: this is a knife’s edge, serrated and full of rust, the kind that draws blood sadistically, that tears to shreds: “worse than the ones of my arm, of, of,” and yeah.

Yeah: shreds might have been generous, for what’s left in Steve’s chest after those words hit home.

“Sometimes, it’s battle.” And Bucky sounds so resigned, there, that Steve feels it like clenched fists around his lungs, intimately. “Because of course it fucking is, but that’s a given, that’s a familiar risk. For both of us.”

Bucky’s chin dips the slightest bit, and Steve feels a little like the press of his lips as a result is automatic, isn’t even planned: the kiss instinctive. It swirls through Steve’s veins like feathers and wings, even as everything else weighs down worse than lead.

“Sometimes, though,” and there, right there: that’s the lead part, that’s it starting to crush and consume:

and Steve’s hearing’s enhanced, sure, but he’s not close enough, he’s not pressed near enough, like he wants to be with everything in him: he does not have the physical proximity to explain the way he can pick out the skip, the trip-and-slam, the grasping-for-purchase ringing out, sickening inside Bucky’s pulse, just then.

Steve isn’t close enough, but he knows it nonetheless. Feels it spawn an echo between Steve’s ribs, just the same, so loud and so unsettling it almost drowns out what comes next.

Almost, but not quite:

“Sometimes, the serum fails.”

Steve thinks, for a second, that maybe he misheard; but he knows better. It rattles around though, in his head and around his heart, not real. Too real. All painted out in shades of agony, just for the fact of the syllables; just for the sound from those lips.

“Sometimes, it takes you back to how you were, how you tell me stories about your body being difficult,” Bucky’s hand on Steve’s chest—so flung-far, too concerned for safety—seeks out a pulse point, somewhere close enough to feel it, to count it out.

“But that would be fine, and sometimes those dreams are soft, even,” and Steve, he can feel Bucky’s lips curve just the smallest bit; he cracks in two for it, immediate: “because sometimes you take meds and you manage the things that were a dire threat, but decades ago, and now they’re something you survive alongside, and I get to survive alongside with you, I get to help take care of you and it’s a gift that you let me, and,” Bucky’s breath runs out on that last word, and his chest is heaving into Steve’s side, and Steve feels suspended, dangerously; his own breath is likewise proving insufficient, not least for the devastating wistfulness that spills next from Bucky’s lips:

“You’re an old wrinkly asthmatic in a world so far from now, in those dreams,” Bucky huffs, and burrows into Steve just the tiniest bit more, so careful, and Steve screws shut his eyes to try and emanate all that Bucky needs through his pores: “a world I can’t imagine, save for that you’re next to me.”

It’s like pressure on a bruise, the way Steve can’t see it either, but he can’t see nothing but a future that starts and ends next to Bucky. Always.

“But other times,” and then the certainty takes a shadow to it; solid, still, but the agony, the heartbreak dancing not at the edges of those words but all over, trampling and trouncing and leaving no space untouched; it’s, it’s…

Fuck. Fuck.

“Other times it fails in different ways.”

And Bucky, he’s trembling, and Steve waits for the feeling of tears to hit his skin but it never comes, and somehow: somehow that’s so much worse.

“Like, it gives you back all the problems, but with serum-strength in reverse, like how fucking anemia and palpitations would look if they were what the serum made big, instead of fighting against,” Bucky says it, so small and quiet like maybe he can hide it from the world, like maybe if it’s too slight to hear or know it can’t be known, like he can keep it from the world that way.

The trembling of his body against Steve gets worse, then, and suddenly too, and so, no: making the words quiet doesn’t make what they take from Bucky any lesser, doesn’t hold back the wracking of the whole of him in response, and of Steve in kind, against him skin to skin, wrapped around him in every way a soul knows how, as close as he can get.

“Steve, it’s,” and Bucky sounds, he sounds—he sounds broken, in a way Steve’s never heard in quite that timbre before, and it slices him to the core. “Watching that happen, it’s…”

And the quiet wasn’t enough to stall it, and the nearness isn’t enough to quash the hurting, but Steve prays it’s enough to make it something that can be survived—Bucky saved his life today, not entirely unlike how he saves Steve every day by breathing; Steve has to be able give something in return. He has to.

“Or then,” Bucky’s voice cracks from the first, now, and drags over the shards; “it takes all the years you were in the ice and breaks your body under them, all at once, and you’re an old wrinkly asthmatic, sure, but in the course of fucking weeks,” and Bucky’s curled himself, now, Steve didn’t realise it so clearly as it happened in slow, constant motion, but now he’s so small, he’s hidden against the corner of Steve’s chest when he should be splayed across it wholly, because that’s where he belongs, that’s the home Steve’s body holds for him always.

“And I hold your hand at the end, I feel it happen,” Bucky damn well moans, and his mouth is open, wet against Steve’s clavicle like it rends as bile to speak at all: “I feel it happen, Stevie, but I can’t fucking believe it.”

And Bucky doesn’t deserve this, Steve feels his lungs start to strain, his own breath coming shallower, just a little at first, for the pain that lives inside the man he loves. But Bucky shouldn’t feel this. Bucky, Bucky—

“I don’t have the dreams all the time,” and there Bucky is, holding himself in, straightening to comfort Steve, for fuck's sake; “but Steve…”

Bucky’s breath catches, and Steve can’t stand it, he can’t fucking stand it now, not a moment longer: he tries to spare a moment to know his own muscles, his own organs: burning, a little, on the mend and stitching together slowly and if he’s careful he can do this, if he’s careful he can move and hold Bucky close, unfailingly:

“Love like this,” Bucky exhales, and nuzzles into Steve, touches the words into him, deliberate and honest and with everything: “of course the biggest fear is losing it. No matter when, or how. Of fucking course it is.”

And then Bucky leans, closer now, more in control of himself when he has every right to fall apart, to be in pieces because Steve knows these pieces, just hadn’t fucking realised how much harder they’d hit, how much faster they’d fall when he watched their jagged edges shine out through Bucky’s voice, through Bucky’s touch and he just wants to turn, just wants to see Bucky’s eyes and see the life in them now, even if it’s pain, so much pain: Steve needs to see but Bucky’s pressing his lips to the side of Steve’s neck, right against the swell of his pulse:

“Do you think my heart could stand to lose you, any more than—“

And that’s the tipping point, there: Steve needs, and Steve loves, and for the sake of that heart next to his own, always, Steve grits his teeth, and reaches around Bucky’s frame as best he can, holds against the pain in him, so much secondary to the soreness in his chest that is nothing to do with blunt force trauma, and everything to do with all that Bucky’s said, all that Bucky’s shared and known, and felt, fuck, fuck—

“Steve, what the hell,” Bucky snaps, the fear in his voice familiar now and Steve hates it, on principle, but does it, for the knowledge, the trust of this heart he holds closer than his own; he’ll earn it, always, work harder and closer and truer, he will until the day he goddamn dies but not how Bucky fears, not what Bucky sees in his nightmares, Steve won’t let it happen, he won’t, and he uses what little leverage he has without totally ruining his bandages—he’d do so, happily, but he knows that, too, would bring Bucky deeper pain and he can’t let that happen, either—but he maneuvers Bucky as best he can to lean at a right angle, straight across Steve’s torso at the top, just so there’s more of them touching. Just so Steve can look down and see Bucky’s face, if Bucky looks up and lets him.

Just so he can feel Bucky’s chest rise and fall against his own; so he can feel Bucky’s weight on the top half of his own heart.

And those eyes, when Bucky does look up, and lets him see: they’re so wide, and there is so much pain, but god, god, there’s all the life that’d been closed off. There’s everything Steve was aching for, to be sure of again and to feel in his veins and serum be damned, he can feel pieces of himself heal over and fuse stronger, now, just for seeing. For knowing.

For Bucky stretched against him, just like this.

And Bucky takes a moment, first, to read any tell Steve has to how much damage was done to drag him up and splay him here: Steve feels it, but what he feels, the part of that feeling that’s pain is so insignificant it’s almost fucking laughable, and Bucky can’t argue with that truth written in even millimeter of him, so he settles, and dares to let his fingers drift lower, far enough from the entry wound but adjacent, drawing spirals that feel like absolution and adoration and all the parts of the world worth having and knowing and keeping for good.

“I wasn’t going to let that happen today,” Bucky says, fierce as anything, and Steve has to go back: loss, loss because love like this could only know one threat in the universe: “if it took you,” and Bucky reaches, the angle awkward but the touch transcendent when he cups Steve’s cheek with meaning:

“If it took you, it was going to take me first. Simple as that.”

Steve’s heart trips under Bucky’s head, and he feels himself tense because no, no—

“Don’t you dare tell me you’d have felt different, if the tables were turned.”

Steve swallows, hard, and bites his tongue: they’re in this together. Steve realizes that in new and world-tipping ways every day, but this: Bucky’s right. Steve just didn’t quite expect it’d be in this, too, even if he should have.

The most human fears, Steve remembers hearing from his therapist, and: fuck.

Fuck, he and Bucky are a match made in goddamn heaven. Made of and from and for whatever’s bigger, more than that in the whole of the universe, in all that exists. That ever will, or ever could.

“Til death do us part,” Bucky’s tracing patterns again, then, drawing symbols Steve can’t name but doesn’t need to, just needs to feel and soak in Bucky, Bucky, Bucky: “As long as we both shall live,” Bucky exhales, and it’s little more than that, really, and Steve’s not sure the reason for the words, these words, but he’s entranced, he’s wholly taken, he’s liquid under that touch, under the reverberations of the words from one chest to another. “Those are so,” and Bucky trails off, and his tracing slows, then stops, there's just a palm pressed to Steve’s ribs, like protection. Like a heart-in-hand pressed safe, and sure, and unfaltering. Without a thought, because it’s a given; necessity for breathing, for being at all.

“You said the vows didn’t fit, didn’t feel true,” Bucky finally says, breath warm a good inch above Steve’s nipple before he starts to move, to turn, so careful and so slowly, until he’s looking up at Steve as a rule: wide eyes, so wide, and pain there still but love, so much fucking love Steve could drown in it, could soak in it: will give all that he is to it.

Forever.

“You were right, if for different reasons,” Bucky’s lips quirk up a bit, tight with it though, and he doesn’t say wrong reasons most likely because he doesn’t have to—Bucky isn’t one to judge Steve’s feelings, unless they’re less than complimentary to Steve.

“But they don’t feel true,” Bucky’s not drawing patterns on Steve’s ribs any longer, because he’s gone to find Steve’s hand, to lace their fingers:

“They don’t feel true, because they fall fucking short.”

And oh: Bucky’s head’s still on top of Steve’s chest, right above Steve’s heart when it trips, but it’s so different, it’s so perfect: it’s everything.

Goddamn everything.

“And I don’t know what comes after, I don’t,” Bucky’s saying, and his lips are grazing the underside of Steve’s jaw because he’s just looking at Steve, never turning away, nothing to hide from in this and Steve’s chest is tight, now, but only for how his heart’s swelling with every breath, every word: “and I don’t know how you go through the things we’ve gone through and believe in the fairytale of it all but—“

And Bucky shifts, the slightest bit, and takes his hand in Steve’s, both hands in both of Steve’s, and frames Steve’s face, and speaks words so close to Steve’s mouth that he can feel every word against his lips; that he can inhale and feel every word against his fucking bones where they belong:

“I don’t care if we’re ghosts floating around, or atoms scattered into space and time,” Bucky mouths, and his lashes are so dark, so long: “whatever is left of me will always,” and he swallows, and Steve feels the pump of Bucky’s blood where he’s put a death grip between Bucky’s fingers, where they meet and fold and Steve can feel it near the wrist.

“Will always always always,” and Bucky smiles, so so soft when he slides that hand from Steve’s cheek and braces it straight to his own chest, where Steve’s knuckles chart the pace of his blood like clockwork as Bucky whispers, and drags the tip of his nose back and forth against Steve’s, tender as anything in the world:

“Whatever’s there’ll just be, just exist, it,” and Bucky seems to decide something, and it takes Steve a second to recognize it for exactly what it is: love. Love, over fear.

And Bucky’s been making that choice the whole goddamn time; he’s magnificent.

But he lets Steve go, and Steve whimpers; he brings Steve’s wrists to his lips, one then the other, does the same to the centers of each palm—Steve whimpers then, too, but wholly different. Then Bucky’s lifting up, ever so gently, and straddling Steve’s thighs, and leaning forward, too far from Steve’s chest for Steve’s liking but then his hands are back to Steve’s face, and his lips are just above Steve’s own, and that’s okay; that’s good, too.

“Whatever is left will only stay anywhere, will only be anywhere in all the fucking cosmos, in order to look for you, and to reach for you, to find you again, over and over,” and Bucky teases a kiss, a press to Steve’s lips then but pulls back, says more: “to hold you and to never ever let you go.”

And it’s worth the tease, the wait, because Steve’s heart latches onto those words, all of them, and then Bucky leans, and he kisses Steve with purpose, with feeling, and Steve feels air reach his lungs right for the first time in hours that feel like days; he breathes Bucky’s breath and relishes the way he traces Steve’s teeth with his tongue, slow and meticulous and thorough, before breaking to gasp: Steve relishes it, and nothing less.

“Okay?” Bucky pants against Steve’s chin, looks up at Steve with hooded lids, and oh, but ‘okay’ is such a poor excuse for a word.

Steve tips his head, to kiss back in kind, and prove no words are suited for this; just this, just here and now.

“That’s the vow that matters, I think,” and it’s for all the ones that felt like lies that goes unsaid, now, but those are the words that dance around Steve’s sternum and sink into the chambers, saturate the blood pooled in his heart waiting to spread forth and set him ablaze like starlight.

“And that’s the vow I make to you,” and Bucky kisses him, like a seal; “and that I will keep making for fucking ever, Steve,” and another kiss, then: but the words are known, Steve isn’t hearing anything his soul didn’t already recognize, it’s just solidifying it, etching it in stone. And that’s beautiful, that trembles like a song in Steve’s pulse, glorious.

“And I will hold to it, whatever comes, whatever happens next for us now like this,” and a kiss, another kiss, Steve’s eyes fluttering closed and his heartbeat skipping, fucking giddy. “And for whatever we become, whenever that happens, even if there’s,” and Bucky’s lips hold to Steve’s longer, now, like they’re considering infinitude; like they’re proving a point.

“Even if there’s some waiting space,” Bucky whispers, straight into Steve’s open mouth, before he nips at Steve’s swollen lower lip, before he leans his forehead to Steve’s like rote.

“Love is patient…” he murmurs, and runs the line of his nose against Steve’s cheekbone; “isn’t that how it goes?”

Steve smiles, and finds a way to lean back enough to meet Bucky’s eyes. “I always liked that part.”

“But not the vows,” Bucky snorts a little, and it’s a lightness that makes sense, somehow, in the face of so many promises, so much life-altering weight.

“These vows,” Steve corrects him, forceful with it, needing to be understood as he reaches, fights the strain of his muscles to brace a hand behind Bucky’s neck and hold: “until we’re less than dust, until there’s nothing left,” and Steve’s breathless with the enormity, with the rightness, and he doesn’t know what else he means to say, just that whatever it is it could go on forever and still not scratch the surface of enough, but—

“Yes.”

Bucky smiles at him, and it’s just a small thing but it’s a full thing, and it’s blinding, and Steve’s heart’s racing like it wants to swear off gravity and fucking take flight and that’s fine, that’s perfect, every single part of Steve can soar and land with Bucky, in Bucky, and Steve is fucking overjoyed that maybe, just maybe, every part of him might damn well get the chance—always; so he breathes right back, and grins incandescent with it:

“Yes.”

Chapter Text

The first thing Steve clocks upon waking is that he’s alone in bed. In the past handful of days, he hasn’t once woken up on his own—not that he often did, ever, but it was a nice stretch of mornings to relish as his body went about stitching itself up, Bucky at his side, curled next to him, once in a while watching him, still a little glazed with sleep himself. Steve lets out a breath: and the second thing he clocks is, yeah. His body’s gone from the stitching-back-together phase of healing to the sore-and-too-big-for-its-skin stage where Steve’s mostly just tired and irritable.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

“Morning, sleepyhead.”

Third thing he clocks is that, while he is definitely alone in bed, he is not alone in the room.

“You missed breakfast by a country mile,” Win Barnes looks up from her lap full of papers and files, peering over the frames of her glasses. “It’s almost like you’ve got whole chunks of your body regrowing themselves or something, sleeping in like this.”

Steve doesn’t even have to try to manage a grin; it’s natural. She’s watching him warmly, but intently, checking him over to assess need for worry—Steve recognizes the motion, the darting of eyes from Bucky doing the exact same thing, the exact same way. He knew the Barnes’ had been worried, had been in touch with Bucky from the morning after the fight itself, once Bucky’d gone to his phone to find the avalanche of worried messages from everyone—and gone to Steve’s phone to find the same, and then some, because the news had been clear that Captain America was in critical condition, which was obviously an exaggeration, but at least they didn’t throw around the word ‘impaled’ like it was truth, so.

Win some, lose some.

But after he’d talked to them all, Win and George and every sister, talked to them on his own steam and not through Bucky as a go-between, sitting up and with video, he’d been surprised when Bucky’d crawled into bed the night before and mouthed drowsily into the globe of Steve’s shoulder after hanging up with his mother:

“Think they’re gonna come down.”

“They’re hmm?” Steve, admittedly, had been half-to-sleep and now Bucky was warm and solid beside him, so the waking world wasn’t his top priority.

“Mom and dad,” Bucky sighs out, and snuggles closer: carefully, but closer, and Steve melts into the press of him. “Or at the very least mom.”

“Come here?” Steve asks, a little dumb around it.

“Mmm,” Bucky yawned. “Didn’t say it outright, but I wouldn’t be shocked if she was setting the GPS for Stark Tower right fuckin’ now.”

“Hmm, b’why?” Steve asked; the Barnes family moved away from New York when George retired, after all.

“See you with their own two eyes, dumbass,” Bucky huffed a little, laughing against Steve’s skin and turning it into a tiny little kiss that made Steve feel warm everywhere, when he thought he was already as warm as he could get: “check you’re still breathing.”

“But,” Steve had smacked his lips, frowning: “chat?”

He was pretty sure it was earlier, that day, that he’d seen them all on the StarkPad.

“Oh, Stevie,” Bucky’d murmured lazily, weariness pulling him in, dragging on his words so they slipped into each other a little: “don’t think the heart knows how to be absolutely sure,” and it’s broken by another yawn, and the rest of it’s on the edge of real sleep, only just sighed out: “through a screen.”

Turns out, Bucky had been very much correct: they hadn’t even waited for morning. Win—who preferred the driver’s seat—also preferred to drive in the dark, for reasons Steve doesn’t know he wholly believes are credible, versus being just an excuse to have got to New York in close-on to record time. They’ve been staying in a hotel, despite both Steve and Bucky throwing their own doors open as rule, and Tony having a standing fucking floor for friends and families in Avengers Tower, Avengers Tower, for the Avengers to use, fucking hell: Win booked the closest rooms to their house in Brooklyn, saying she did not intend to impose on Tony Stark (she’ll get there, Bucky’d laughed when Steve had tried to raise a protest, because he is trying to learn what Tony’s been telling him about the Tower being theirs, everyone’s, like a family—Steve just, well, he does still like just fucking with the man when he can, for the sake of it—and Steve also really loves the idea of the longevity, that Win will get it, in time, which they’re going to have, because she and George already fit in the category of family to stay there and they’ll get there, they will), but more than not imposing on Tony Stark, she reminded them pointedly that there were noises from her son’s bedroom she’d heard plenty of in his teen years, and she wasn’t going to deprive either of them—or subject herself to even through multiple walls and doors—of whatever joy Steve could safely get up to.

Steve had gone beet red, and he kind of thinks the point was to gauge his healthiness by means of how deep he blushed: she’d grinned, and looked brighter herself while Bucky groaned, flushing himself just a little, but laughed heartily enough for Steve’s chest to feel too small for the sound, an ache that makes the remaining pain of his injury seem far away and barely real.

He’d shaken himself from mooning over that fact, heart-eyed and a little dazed, only to be met with Win’s amused, but similarly joy-filled, gaze on him: he’d also learned he could, in fact, always turn a little deeper shade of red, saturations his artist’s brain doesn’t even know and needs to learn because Jesus, does it seem to happen with fair regularity.

It’s been a week and a half since Bucky’d saved his ass. It’s been three days of him thinking the word ‘in-laws’ a little too often to ignore.

“S’almost done though,” Steve picks up the thread of conversation regarding his serum-enhanced convalescence; it’s true, too. He’ll be mostly back to normal, ready to train and finish recouping anything he needs to hone, by week’s end. “Hate that it means I’m missing such excellent company.”

He throws a grin in her direction, which only grows wider when she snorts at him.

“Not that I’d routinely sit myself in your bedroom,” Win pivots a bit, and grabs for her phone; “but I was tasked, in no uncertain terms, to keep an eye on you,” Steve hears her fingernails click a little as she types on the screen: “and to text as soon as you woke up.” She lifts the phone, then:

“Say cheese.”

Steve rolls his eyes, but he couldn’t fight the grin in him if he tried.

“Photo required?”

“Additional perk,” Win smirks at him, though the corners of her lips turn a little serious after a second. “Proof-of-life. Which is the whole point, isn’t it?”

The ball of emotion that rises in his throat at that is a formidable thing, but it’s so fucking beautiful for it: he’s a part of this family. He came to the future, and for all that was left behind, and for all that he stumbled here and there along the way, here he stands—or lies in bed, semantics—with more family than he could have possibly dreamed of.

Win must notice that he’s quiet because he doesn’t want to let on just how choked up he’s suddenly become; from the first, she’s been so good at seeing that, and giving to match the need.

“He’s on a call,” she tells Steve, who’s able to nod and get back to swallowing around the spiral of emotions churning at the base of his throat, slowly settling closer to his chest where it can more easily do the ceaseless-expanding it’s taken to as a rule.

“Mmm,” Steve hums, testing his voice: he could pass it off as still waking up, it’s solid enough for that. Good. “Rhodes?”

“Mr. Colonel War Machine? Pretty sure, yeah.” Win reaches to put her phone down and leans back in the chair no one ever sits in, that Steve isn’t even sure is comfortable because it exists solely as a glorified table. He hopes it's not flat out uncomfortable.

“And George is cooking tonight, so he went shopping.”

Steve frowns a little, pushing himself up further against the headboard, and making himself pay attention to the pull in his muscles, pangs and aches: what’s mending, what still needs time. He’s about on schedule, he thinks, even if he also kind of thinks he should have more of his energy back by now.

“You could have used my phone, asked JARVIS to have it sent over,” Steve says through a little groan as he shifts positions, but Win just scoffs.

“You were resting, silly.”

“You could have easily guessed my passcode,” because, well. She knows her own son’s birthday and could easily find his service number, if she didn’t know that by heart just the same.

“I would never,” Win looks honestly scandalized, so Steve avoids rolling his eyes; Steve’s life, and therefore his sense of what constitutes the privacy he deserves, is admittedly skewed, but he also gets the impression Win is a bit of a stickler for respecting boundaries unless she’s explicitly given leave, to a refreshing and almost uncommon degree—he loves her for it, to be honest.

“Which means this is curiosity, mind you,” she tacks on; “I didn’t go poking around, and I definitely wouldn’t snoop for your art, especially not without permission to see the works themselves,” she’s honest about it, and Steve knows she knows that from experience—Becca got into curating because she tried art school first, and there have been stories related to Steve here and there regarding traumatic unveilings of works-in-progress, so it’s with a little extra dramatics but honest feeling that Win adds:

“Again, I would never.”

Steve lets himself chuckle, just a little, and nods in a way he hopes is encouraging, because he really doesn’t know what Win’s getting at; Steve doesn’t think he has any works in progress here right now to have been found anyway.

“Basically, I saw paint brushes in the kitchen.”

And it’s in the second-and-a-half those words take to speak that Steve is slammed face-first into the visceral knowledge of who is sitting next to him. In his bedroom. That he shares with his lover, who is also this woman’s son.

Because Steve, when he thinks about it just that little bit more: he knows exactly why there were brushes in the kitchen—drying, and still out, because Steve’s been mostly bed-bound and god, it’s sharp through his ribs because Bucky’s not one to leave stray dishes-and-other-implements unwashed, his endless and unwavering trail of mugs aside: he does the dishes, not least because if he doesn’t he has to suffer what he deems to be Steve’s ‘painful’ excuse for loading the dishwasher; if he’d left the brushes by the sink all this time, when they were hand washable, he must have been struggling even more than he let Steve see.

Bucky, his Bucky: holding Steve safe in both hands, and all the while holding none of his own wounds close enough, tight enough to close up. Steve…

Steve needs to do better. He’s been laid up, sure, but he still has eyes; still has that body pressed to his one way or another more hours of the day, probably, than he doesn’t. He needs to do better.

“I’m admittedly kind of wondering how you’re managing with billowing clouds of linseed and turpentine saturating the air, though,” Win shakes him from his internal self-recrimination; “because I’d love to give some pointers to my neighboring chemistry teacher when the kids do,” her expression shifts, trying very hard to encompass all of the subtext of her next words, and honestly does a damn good job of it: “interesting things in his class.”

Steve laughs, but it dies quicker than it probably merits because those precise words—now that Steve’s resolved to watch Bucky more closely, to see Bucky more through every layer of him—once Steve’s made that clear to himself? That jolts Steve back to being very aware of who’s sitting next to him, and why he needs to keep himself from blushing for the reality of paint fumes, which he’d rarely brought here, even before the accident, and the brushes: which are not of such a hair-quality to merit a canvas. Because they’re not meant for the kind of paint that goes on a canvas.

They’d kind of dived in head-first to reinvigorating all of the giddy-playful joy they deserve, when they’re this deep in love—head-first is kind of all they’re built for, Steve’s pretty sure. And if Steve had said in bed one night Want to paint you, Buck, and Bucky had said Any time, any place with a grin before he’d rolled Steve over and taken him apart with his tongue in his own version of painting, well. It’d given Steve ideas.

So maybe he’d ordered edible body paint. In various flavors. And maybe he’d ordered the fancy brushes that held up to the viscosity of them, while also being a feather-touch on Bucky’s gorgeous skin. And maybe Steve had spent hours with his mouth and his paintbrush altering, dancing across Bucky’s body. Maybe he’d felt light enough to float for the sounds Bucky’d made, new even to them somehow, when Steve was sure he’d heard, he’d drawn every sound from Bucky there was to coax. He’d been struck dumb by the blood-hot proof that he’d never fail discovering new things about this man he loved. They’d decided, in a joint effort, that the sheets were a lost cause and threw them away the next morning—a more-than worthy casualty, though. Bucky suggested, maybe-joking, that they try selling it, donating it, something to a museum as modern art; Steve had thought less-jokingly about new and exciting ways to bring Bucky's body into his artwork.

It had been a really good night.

And Winifred Barnes is sitting next to him. Asking about brushes, and turpentine fumes.

“Tony Stark may not be famous for his air purification technology,” Steve pulls entirely out of his ass, and he’s lucky it’s a true thing at its core even if it’s not wholly relevant here, else he’d have no chance fighting the blushing; “but damn if it’s not effective.”

Win hums at that, and nods, then glances back to the files and folders she was working on before: Steve’s face feels hot, and he suspects she’s being gracious with him. He tries to convince himself that maybe she figures the serum heats him up in healing him: calls working extra hard or something. It’s not untrue, either, but. It doesn’t make him flush like a schoolboy, normally.

He figures the best he can do is take her grace, and try to put any other possibilities out of his mind.

“What’s on the syllabus today?” he manages to ask with an even tone, and Win glances up at him with a grin.

“Linnaean hierarchy identification,” she says, as if Steve has any idea what that is: “the mnemonic devices they come up with every year for the order of taxa is just,” she chuckles brightly;” honestly one of the most fun weeks of my year.”

Steve makes a mental note to google what that is later, but he can at least guess what it’s not:

“Aww,” he pouts a little; “no more trees?”

“Well, now, not as a rule,” Win leans in, her glasses slipping down her nose with the motion, but the look it achieves is almost pointed: “and definitely not no trees for the whole rest of the course.”

Steve chuckles, because there’s conviction clear in her voice, all woe-betide-any-banisher-of-tree-education-from-the-classroom-of-Dr-Barnes, and Steve loves her. He loves her so much.

“I read up on them,” he’s speaking, suddenly; “inosculated trees.” And he’s not entirely sure why he’s saying it, because he told her this before, after he saw them, after they stuck in his mind like an omen, or a promise, or something in-between that was more maddening for not knowing: he even told her when he brought up the idea of them, and everything they sparked completely unrelated to trees and everything to do with growth and change and time, sitting there in her living room and ever since, with his therapist.

She knows these things, because she’s Win Barnes, and he’s been calling her ‘mom’ now for months.

“Not much to find.”

He’s told her this, too, in more roundabout ways. Never head-on, like now.

“What’s out there’s probably limited,” she humors him, doesn’t comment on his repetition, his rambling, because she’s a better woman than Steve deserves to have caring so much for him; “but also buried behind paywalls you probably couldn’t unearth in time with even a month’s subscription,” and she sounds so angry about it, and her irritated-by-mid-grade-injustice-face looks like Bucky’s just enough that it makes Steve smile; makes him say more because this space is safe for his words, too, even if they’re not perfect, even if he’s not entirely sure why they’re coming out, or how they’re going to form, just that something coiled along his sternum is pushing them; he’s learning to trust that feeling, and trust the people who have proven to be worth it, and then some.

“There’s a lot to learn about root systems,” Steve notes in a way he probably bothered, at not a single level at all, to even try to make sound casual. Because when Steve couldn’t get all that much information on inosculated trees? When he couldn’t source on his own the answers to questions like, if one tree died could the other keep it standing, would the other wither away, would they decay together into the ground when the time came, as one, just like they lived?—which, he’s gained enough insight since to recognize as probably very morbid and possibly ones driven by deeply unhealthy fixations, the fears he’s learning his way around the heft of little by little, now, day by bay: but still. When he couldn’t find the information he’d wanted?

He’d gone digging deeper. Literally.

“Root systems are fascinating.” Win’s eyes light up at that, more than anything like professional curiosity can account for; and Steve thinks she sees something in him, in his bringing it up, already, that plays a role.

“Did you know,” though of course she does, he’s hedging, because even with the people he trusts the words are still sometimes just, just…hard.

“Apparently,” Steve starts again; “if even the smallest part of a tree’s roots is left behind when it’s damaged, or removed, or taken,” he take a breath, tries to untangle some of those words from the symbolism he’s been clinging to so close because thinking of any of it too literally fucking hurts:

“Something of it would still grow back?” and he knows that the case because he’d read it a hundred times by now, but he asks is like a child in need of reassurance, at least a little, because he is that, in this, sometimes—at least in part. “If even the smallest part of the root system can sprout new leaves, then,” and he runs out of air, unexpectedly. He’d not sure if it’s recovery, or feeling, but he’s pretty damn with it’s the latter. It wouldn’t be the first time. He sucks in another deep breath, and looks up, jaw a little squared, heart a little fast but at the same time, a little hopeful:

“If you leave the possibility for leaves,” Steve says with a little crooked grin: “something’s left behind.”

“The bane of gardeners the world over,” Win says, but she doesn’t sound even close to sorry; she sounds like she’s following exactly what Steve’s trying very hard to say, oblique as it is; warm as it burns in his own heart.

“And trees communicate,” Steve forges on; “through the roots, and everything.”

“Mycorrhizal networks,” Win nods, a glint in her eye; “they’re pretty wild.”

“So both ways,” Steve hears himself sound a little too emphatic, maybe, a little excited and breathless because the answers he’d been seeking, that had eluded him before he had the tools to start picking apart the questions themselves; these new answers had sprung out of nowhere, and given him this abstract-but-too-universal-to-ignore well of hope, and light, and a breathing space—literally and figuratively—and he’s allowed to be in awe of it: “the roots themselves, you’d have to get rid of the tiniest hints of potential. Sometimes over, and over, and over again, even.”

And it’s so clear, what Steve’s really talking about; he swallows hard—there’s no avoiding the way all this, as massive and impossibly infinite as it is, breathes big enough on its own to spill from him without permission, and hell, half the time without him even noticing.

But if he’s honest: he’d only want to ever notice, so as to stand and marvel at it himself, too; to give it the appreciation and respect it deserves. He would never hide this. Never seek to make it smaller as it’s seen from the outside. It beats through him, and it’s the best thing he’s ever dreamed of: she sees it. Everyone does.

Steve knows that. So why bother stopping, now?

“And if you even managed that,” he picks up, with that momentum, that renewed enthusiasm to not just refuse to dim the shine of his feelings, his enamorment, but to amplify it, to bare it clear and plain, here and now, even if the words he has to use to match the light of it on his face are about goddamn plants: “if you could slowly but eventually get rid of every single bit so there were no leaves left to grow, forever,” and oh, Steve needs to get used to this feeling, he thinks: because the righteous force of speechmaking and rallying cries, he’s used to; and yeah, he’s a little extra breathless because he is still healing, but this fullness in his chest, this indignation on the part of anything less than the love he knows? Putting it into words that aren’t just to Bucky is something new, something exhilarating, something a little bit terrifying and so necessary Steve doesn’t know if, once he gets the hang of it properly, he’ll ever shut up about it again.

“If you managed,” and he almost laughs; his own tone is so sceptical, so doubtful that a thing could ever be achieved; not when it’s attached to the meaning he holds in his ribs, at least: “even if, other trees would still know, at least kind of, and so the original tree would never be lost.” He uses the singular without thinking, but the thinking comes after: the trees, twined together, for him, to him, are one and the same. A singular soul.

“They’d live on, in their way, until the end of,” and Steve runs out of steam a little, then, his voice going slower, softer with unexpected speed as he breathes out: “of everything. Everything in all the cosmos.”

He looks up at Win, who he didn’t realize he’d broken eye contact with during his diatribe, his proclamation of love and god and infinity and tree roots: all of it, really, just about Bucky, even if Steve never said the name.

Win, who it seems had never stopped looking at Steve, has an extra brightness in her gaze, a little bit of a sheen, as she speaks, matches Steve’s tone low and soft but filled to the brim with feeling:

“Matter, I think, like energy, is never truly destroyed,” she almost-whispers: “and matter is never without spirit, spirit never without matter.” The words seep into Steve’s pores and feel like safety, and home, and a warm embrace; like the notes of a song, familiar in a way he can’t pin down.

“Love is the greatest of each of these,” she tells him, like an open secret he still needed to be told: “never destroyed, only reshaped.” Then she reaches for his hand on the bed, and squeezes when she adds: “Renewed.”

Steve doesn’t expect his breath to catch, but he should have. Win knew, from the first, exactly what he was saying, for all the words that pointed nearby, rather than defined head-on.

“Intertwined, even, for all to see,” she muses, seemingly idle about it, but Steve can see in his mind’s eye the shape she’s tracing on the back of his hands—the simple-perfect sketch from the quiz paper in her living room so very long ago: “and endless, in a way, for the reach of it beneath the surface,” she draws dangling roots near the visible veins under his skin, and she’s nowhere near his wrist, so she couldn’t possibly even hope to feel it, but then she taps at the bottom of each one of her tendrils, and it matches the pulse of his blood every time:

“From the heart outward from the roots.”

Steve has to clear his throat more than once in order to speak, after that; is grateful Win’s hand is still on his as he blinks away the sting of tears.

“You ever thought about being a poet?”

Win laughs softly, and squeezes his hand again; Steve really likes the feeling of that, here and now—he couldn’t articulate why, but it feels like it means the world.

“Half of those were bastardizations of quotes,” Win tells him, the smile in her words so much larger than the soft one on her face; both equally beautiful, though.

“But the other half,” Steve presses, and she laughs a little stronger, smiles a little wider, and Steve feels the warmth in him grow for it, too.

The chair screetches a little as Win scoots it closer, somehow, without ever leaving go of Steve’s hand, until she can lean over close to him and kiss his cheek, then his temples; put her free hand on his shoulder and speak straight against the side of his head, like she’s working directly to get the words that come next through his notoriously thick skull with as much love and care as she can:

“I’m proud of you,” she tells him, straight and plain and with certainty, like he’s earned it. He’s worth it. “Already, you have come so far and I,” she huffs a bit, in the way that might cover a snuffle, but Steve’s not going to turn and look to check—not least because he feels so good, so relaxed and at peace and almost, almost protected like this, and he’ll be damned if it shakes it off before he has to.

“I am so proud of you, Steven Grant, like you were my own,” Win whispers to him fiercely, and Steve’s pulse trips, kicks hard to steady itself again; it’s not that he didn’t basically know it—but things, he’s learning more and more each day: things said simply, truly, and plainly without any artifice or room for guesswork, can change the whole goddamn world.

“You know that I love you as my own, and just the very same, I am proud of you,” she kisses his temple again, lips pressed hard: “like you’re my own.”

And Steve feels it, too, beyond taking the step to call Win ‘mom’ for the first time—he’d told himself it wasn’t fair to call her that until it stopped feeling like a betrayal of Sarah somehow, or like he’d have to call Win that with a caveat or with exceptions in his own mind; he hadn’t been able to make himself go to the cemetery to make peace with it, but he had been able to take it to therapy, and he’d even ducked into a church the first time in years, meant to praise a god he didn’t really buy into, but one his mom had never visited but that had been standing while she’d been alive, and he’d sat there until he felt right about it all—Win had shed a tear or two, if the video call hadn’t just offered tricks of the light that first time, and then she’d hugged him so goddamn tight, when they’d visited next. It felt like something…something monumental.

Maybe because it was. Is. Continues to be right up to this moment. Is…increasingly likely to continue to be right up through the rest of his life.

“You nearly short circuited, for the idea of trees holding on to each other and growing all tangled,” the fond warmth of Win’s voice shakes him back to the present, and her hand moving from his shoulder to run through his hair, so much like Sarah Rogers, like a mom by definition the only way Steve’s ever known; “now look at you.”

Steve blinks, and Win’s hand is moving again, cupping his face and tilting his cheek.

“Look at me?” she instructs, more than asks, and Steve’s quick to comply; her eyes on him evaluate, but also watch with love, take him in like…like Bucky was right, because of course he was.

Don’t think the heart knows how to be absolutely sure through a screen.

“You’re,” she purses her lips, consideringly; “you do look a bit shattered, but in the heart of even that,” she asks a little, but the disapproval is weak; “you’re still recovering from major physical trauma, and nonetheless,” and then the disapproval, the evaluating melts away entirely as she damn well marvels at him to say:

“You are absolutely glowing, Steve.”

And he knows it. They both know it. Steve is lit up from every cell, every molecule, every moment of every day: exhilarating and ebullient. For any other reason, it might be exhausting; with any other person, it wouldn’t even be possible, but Steve’s not sure he understood how a body felt when it was alive, how a heart was supposed to go about beating at its best, and its most fully realized and understood, before now.

“Every mother hopes for someone like you for their child,” Win’s saying, seeming to take the image of Bucky straight from his head; “but you kind of assume it’s a pipe dream, can’t be real, a fantasy,” she shakes her head, and then the tenderness in her gaze is turned directly on Steve, and he feels tender, almost too much so, in kind.

“But you’re none of those things,” she tells him, like he’s a rarity, fantastical, and being thought of as that is strange enough, but being considered it with nothing to do of a uniform or.a rank is, is…

It’s something.

“You’ve weathered such hardships, and you’re still working through the thorny parts, but you’re doing the work, both of you,” she strokes his face with her thumb, smile tightening a little because it’s true, it’s true more than just how he’s laid up in bed for injury in battle, it’s layered and it’s work and Steve’s learning that it’s kind of like training for combat, save that it’s building up for something you share, something that’s only stepped at the end of the line in joy and warmth and home, and that makes the world of difference. That settles like honey and light through his chest, through his whole goddamn body: heart and soul.

“And I am so grateful, for you, and for him, for the both of you for each other.”

And Steve? Really couldn’t have said that better himself. And he needs her to know it. He needs to, he needs—

“Need help?”

He didn’t notice he was inching forward in the bed, making for the edge to stand; he frowns, a little sheepish: he can get by on his own, in this. He can get to his feet, even if it takes an extra second or two—less and less each day—and maybe a bonus twinge or grimace along the way.

He can do it on his own, but:

“It’d save time,” Steve smiles, a little sheepish but unashamed of it: "if you’re willing.”

Win shakes her head and gets to her feet, shoves the chair back and leans forward, extending a hand to meet the one that never left Steve’s not once, for him to grab so she can steady him to standing: ”If I’m willing.”

It’s quick work, and nothing in the grand scheme of things, but it feels bigger. He’s not sure if she can see all of it, or any of it, or if the offer she puts forth next is just natural, is a given:

“Need a hug?”

“Need,” Steve repeats with a shrug; lets himself do that, and then swallows and lets himself do just a little bit more in admitting, the difference profound as he says: “want.”

That part, Win definitely sees the significance of, as she carefully, but thoroughly, gathers him into her arms.

“Oh, baby,” and he didn’t doubt her, hasn’t once along the whole way of becoming a part of her family, and she a part of his—but those words in that tone of voice, in her embrace like this? He is as much her baby as the ones she birthed, he can feel that in the way she holds him now.

He’s struck, in that moment, how much he missed feeling like this. How good it is to be home in a whole new way.

“You’re so strong, and your heart’s so big,” she tells him, rocking his larger frame back and forth just a little, side to side with earnestness, like the motion emphasises the truth of her words beyond question—and honestly, kind of, it does.

“And I am so grateful you’ve let me see and know and share some of it,” she murmurs to him, and it's a balm to a sore spot he didn’t recognize himself as having, or else, not quite so clearly until it’s soothed; “and that your heart, and my son’s heart, that those hearts get to live pressed flush together, woven around and maybe merging sometimes, protecting and cherishing and,” Steve sees what she’s doing, feels it in his bones, using his images, his metaphors, his not-good-words save that from her lips, they sound…

They sound kind of perfect. They sound absolutely right.

“And never lost, or destroyed,” she finishes gently, but firm, the foundations of those words unshakable: “always renewed to be more, and more, and more.”

Steve feels a tear run down his cheek without having anticipated it, but it’s not surprising, really. Win leans in, and kisses his forehead, before letting him go, and Steve straightens, feels lighter in odd places he wasn’t looking at, where he didn’t realize there was weight to be shed.

“It’s lunchtime, now,” Win tells him as she turns to lead them from the bedroom; “but do you want pancakes instead?”

Steve giggles, a little, and it sounds so young; Steve doesn’t know if he remembers being that young, the age of that sound.

“You’re a godsend,” is what he says, though, because fuck yes, he wants pancakes. And Win’s pancakes are spectacular; second only to Bucky’s.

He had an exceptional teacher; credit where it’s due.

“George’s gonna take an age to make dinner anyway, so maybe sandwiches between,” she shrugs, like an excuse for more food in this household is ever necessary.

“What’s he making?” Steve asks, genuinely curious. Win’s not the only good cook in the family, of course.

“Something far more complicated than necessary,” Win sighs; the grillmaster phase had evolved into an obsession with sous vide most recently, as far as Steve recalls: “but you know him.”

Steve does. Steve loves the fact that such a throw away comment is exactly that: a given. No question about it.

“Think he’ll make the layer-dip?” Steve can’t help himself, he has to ask. He’s grown more than fond of it since that first visit to the Barnes homestead; and he has accepted that it wasn’t just a joke, or an exaggeration, that Win agreed to meet the parents as a result of this particular delicacy.

“Steve,” Win’s at the stove now, grabbing for the griddle; “you nearly got smooshed,” she glances over at Steve, compelling him with the force of her gaze to sit at the island and be restful, particularly in light of her pointing out the circumstances of her presence in his kitchen:

“Of course there’s also going to be layer dip.”

________________________________________

When he does finally leaves the house, after Win and George are safely on their way back home—and there’s layer dip in the fridge and extra in the freezer to hold him over until the winter holidays because:

“We get you for the first one that’s not overrun with aliens or the like,” George had informed him, and Steve had laughed—almost every major holiday on the calendar since he and Bucky had been together was, in fact, overridden by a mission of some kind. They’d had a Christmas dinner of Stark-level MREs, which to be fair were just shy of gourmet, on the jet, and they’d eaten the ham they’d bought just for the two of them for Easter nearly two months after the fact last year.

“You get us for any and all the holidays you want,” Steve had said, because of course they would, for as long as they both shall live and—

And—yeah.

But Win had poked his uninjured side and countered quickly:

“We are not the only family wanting a claim to your holidays, Steven Grant,” and oh, wow. Her not-wholly-newfound, but definitely more-pronounced-when-he’d-been-injured propensity of using his middle name was effective in getting his attention and cowing him just a little and yes, it was kind of horrible, but yes, it was amazing to hear it, like a mother would say it, again. After so fucking long.

But Steve had frowned a little, confused—he and Bucky might want a few holidays to themselves here and there, sure, but that didn’t seem to fit, exactly; neither with Win’s expression, or George’s tone, or even the feeling of it all in Steve’s chest as he’d worked it over in his mind.

And he’d figured it out, only seconds before Win spoke, like a blow to his solar plexus that then trickled warmth through him, up and down his bones:

“Tell me,” Win had said conversationally, but loaded underneath; “what do you think of Tony Stark?”

Steve had blinked, and knew his answer immediately, but Win had tacked more on before he could speak first:

“Because you know, the most I know about him is really kind of split down the middle,” and out of Steve’s peripheral vision, he’d caught George rolling his eyes; “I spent a lot of years writing petitions, a few weekends here and there at rallies against some of his most questionable defense,” and the sarcasm in that single word was palpable; “contracts. But then he also made my kid an arm that’s going to help thousands of people some day, and sometimes he himself suits up and saves the planet, but sometimes he causes the thing that requires saving, also. So,” Win had drummed her fingers faux-casually, “you can understand why I’m conflicted.”

Steve could, indeed, understand. But still.

“Tony Stark,” Steve had said without any hesitation at all, “is infuriating, annoying, and over-the-top in basically every possible way,” Steve hadn’t bothered to keep his smile to himself, then, either, when he added the crucial conclusion to anything about Tony: “He is one of the best men I know.”

And Win had smiled back, and Steve—who’d figured out the point before he’d spoken anyway—had seen where this was headed, but was fond of the destination in view. So he’d stayed silent as Win had continued:

“It was hard to be sure, you know, when we came down and Stark wanted to put us up in his behemoth of a tower,” Steve did vaguely remember Bucky saying they’d refused lodging there; “but then I get a call, yesterday afternoon, from the man himself asking what, exactly, we were looking for in our floor, inside said tower, to make it more accommodating and welcoming in the future. Specifically, if we wanted it to match the blueprints of our own home more closely, if that would be more convincing.”

Steve had been a little dumbstruck, for a second at least; but he’d recovered quickly, if not without a rush of emotion coursing through his veins: Tony—Steve’s family, too, and Bucky’s—was welcoming the rest of both their family. Was inviting them to be at home among them, too.

And Tony, being Tony, and accessing the fucking blurprints to the Barnes’ home for comparison.

“A woman named Pepper called this morning to ask for details of renovations, and to apologise that some people had no consideration for anyone’s privacy,” Win’s lips had quirked in a smirk. “That his wife?”

“Not yet,” Steve had grinned, and answered truthfully with a little extra burst of that warmth just coating his insides like nectar, like gold: “He’ll ask soon though, I think.”

“He absolutely should, she was lovely,” Win had said decisively; “but she invited us to Christmas at the Tower, in our appropriately-redesigned floor, if we wanted to come. And the girls. And whoever we wanted to bring.”

Steve hadn’t bothered to say anything, to that, in part because he was a little too choked up for the words to have come out intelligibly. But Win had understood, as always, and smiled at him, reiterating:

“You have family here, too, that wants to spend holidays with you. So,” and Steve had reached for her then, and wrapped her in a tight hug, his muscles only protesting a little for the motion now—slowly but surely; “we’ll figure out the visiting and this, this,” and Win had been crushed against his chest, but Steve could clearly hear the way her hand would have been gesturing a little wildly if she hadn’t been; “Stark Tower floor thing along the way.”

“Avengers Tower,” Steve had found himself correcting without meaning to, and then he’d let her go because he’d started to laugh at the fact that the one time he’d done it, there was no JARVIS hooked up to prove it. Of course.

“Whatever,” Win had shrugged, bustling a little in order to make sure they had everything ready to take off for home; “but you’re sleeping under my roof for at least one holiday this year, mister.” And she’d framed his face and bore through him with her eyes, with the authority of her stare as she’d said simply: “Understood?”

And Steve had agreed, and both she and George had escorted him back to bed for Bucky to help him settle there safe and sound—unnecessary, physically, because he really was mostly mended now; but: proof of life, he understood that, and he could give that, if he was loved enough to have people want that from him then fuck, yes, he would give that—and he’d listened to them say goodbyes through the walls, and he’d thought about just how big a family he never thought to fathom, or imagine, that was all his somehow, kind of out of nowhere and kind of right there, always, until Bucky enabled the blackout setting on their windows, those being one of the key concessions they both make to Tony’s tech in their own homes, before crawling into bed behind Steve, arms wrapped around him before his body was even wholly stretched out, his frame warm and his hold made of such pure, visceral comfort that Steve had drifted back to sleep for whatever daylight was left, and woke to the smell of coffee slowly approaching the bedroom, stronger by the second to serve him in bed, as had become standard since his injury rather than a still-pretty-common treat—Steve feels his lips curve upward before he opens his eyes, tries to take stock of his body, whether he feels rested, back to himself yet, but Bucky leans in to kiss him, Steve’s eyes still closed and the sound of a mug being set on the bedside table echoing and, well.

For the next while, Steve has better things to do that are absolutely worth choking down cold coffee.

After that, though: when Steve finally leaves the house?

First thing’s first: therapy.

Steve’s gotten better at taking a seat and digging in, but also at giving space to just process the daily things that, in so many ways he’d never appreciated fully before, counted for everything; shaped his world. So he talks about Win and George, about dips and the sous vide version of seemingly-everything-that-could-be-made-on-a-grill, and pancakes and basically enough home-cooked food that Steve kind of—but not entirely—missed the Portuguese place he and Bucky had been hitting near-weekly, given that, much as they cooked for themselves, Steve’s appetite was demanding on its own, and one of the lingering effects of Bucky’s muscle stim treatments before getting his arm was increased caloric needs not-quite-on-Steve’s-level but not…not, so they’d relegated the bulk of their own cooking mostly for the weekends and evenings when Steve got home from therapy—Steve had offered, from the beginning, long before Steve considered sitting down in an office to work on himself, but part of Bucky’s post-therapy process was to bring food with him or order food to race him home, corresponding roughly with how heavy a session went. Steve had the code of it down to a decent art by now, but what he had down to a master level, was a true connoisseur of, was knowing when Bucky needed comfort, and affection, a little more than maybe he’d usually ask for or take. And that’s the important part.

But Steve gives time and space and words to the time between his last appointment and the ones he’s missed for recovery, to the immensity and the simplicity, all at once, of this new reality of family that just keeps expanding and shifting in the best of ways. He mentions feeling a little bit sore, and wishing the healing process would stop taking its sweet time—stops, and thinking that maybe it is taking too long, the serum not quite kicking in to do the work, but it’s a passing thought, really, a half-shaped thing, when he relays the tale of Win already undergoing full Stark Treatment in having a suite, Steven, calling them a floor is gauche designed specifically for her family, because Pepper may have suggested sub-suites for Becs, Lizzy, and even Cara when she’s stateside, and Steve thought it was kind and was not one bit surprised, but Win had been so overwhelmed and dumbstruck that he’d wanted to reach out and ask them to tone it down, maybe, or slow it down at least, though Bucky? Bucky had cackled so hard at his mother’s reactions, and looked so incandescent for it, that Steve had kept his mouth shut and learned to relish Win’s half-shouted, not-quite-hysteric expressions of consternated…gratefulness? With the same kind of joy Bucky did, even if Bucky’s expressions were the source of Steve’s joy, in the process.

“That’s very partner-in-law of you,” his therapist had said, and she was always good at referring to Bucky either by name, or as Steve’s partner, because those were the only ways Steve referred to him in session; the only things close to real and true—but, it’s not the first time ‘in-law’ has been on his mind, and hearing it out loud, like this, leaves Steve feeling off-kilter, but not…not in a bad way.

A kind of bubbly, effervescent way, actually. Like sitting at the tip-top of the Cyclone, watching the work from above and waiting to plummet.

Which is when, about twenty minutes in to talking about meals and holidays and home, and family, Steve realizes two key points: he’s mired in a world, a life that’s so deeply domestic he doesn’t think the word itself even gets close to encompassing it fully, and he thinks he loves it, no, knows he loves it—and that he’s maybe been getting all of this off his chest for another reason, too. The reason behind all of it happening just now, like this, concentrated and immediate and present: so.

Steve takes a deep breath, and starts talking about the mission.

He doesn’t usually dig in to his work, not the details, even if his therapist has extensive clearance to know each and every detail he does want to divulge: when he touches on work, he’s almost always touching on the people—civilians, his team, his, his: Bucky. On where it feeds into, or diverges from, the feelings he has about his life, his love, his future, his mortality—it always ends up being about something so much bigger than the fight.

Steve registers—peripherals, but profoundly—that the future was always going to be the fight; that was the thing he knew for sure. Then, Bucky was at his side, with the fight; then in the fight, and now.

Now: Steve can close his eyes and breathe in deep and see no uniform, no battle, no shield: just Bucky.

Huh.

He blinks back quickly, though, because the swirling in his chest is pushed by something less amorphous, even if it’s just as strong and he needs to get it out, he needs to say it to someone, to see if it makes the same sense, comes to the same shaky-but-kind-thrilling conclusions in conversations, as they’re starting to in his head; his heart.

“He was so scared,” Steve breathes out; sees Bucky’s eyes through the dust and debris, keeping his cool because their lives depended on it but Steve—Steve’s had people care about him, love him even, and take care with him, protect him and worry for him in the field countless times across the years. But Bucky: Bucky was watching him like his whole world was condensed to Steve’s body pinned to the ground, like his heart was lying fleshy and exposed just there, and he was holding up the sky from falling onto it, onto Steve, and bringing it any further harm.

“He was so scared,” Steve whispers again, thinking now to their bed that night, Bucky’s hesitant touch, Bucky’s whispered confessions, the nightmares Steve wouldn’t have imagined, but maybe damn well should have: “and he told me, he told me…”

Steve trails off, and must be quiet longer than he thought, because his therapist leans in just a little and says, low but warm:

“Did he tell you he was human, with very human fears, about the person he loves?”

And while Steve thinks he 100% deserves it, there’s not even one single hint of I-told-you-so

“I knew he loved me,” Steve’s saying before he realizes; staying at his hands; “I know he loves me,” and Steve does, god, Steve does: “I just…”

“Sometimes it just hits different,” his therapist picks up for him, when he starts to flounder, his pulse heavy with the weight of the things he can’t fit in the words to say: “from a different sight-line.”

And Steve’s not foolish, or naive enough to think she doesn’t see all the layers of her words, and applies them intentionally, the intersections of Steve’s life, war zones and canvases and life and death and loss and hope and all the things he’s seeing in new ways, but this one. This thing.

This, he; Steve, he—

“He said vows to me,” is what comes out of Steve’s mouth, and that’s probably where he was going anyway. The delivery might be inelegant, but for once, they’re the best words. Terrifying. But exquisite to say, to hear, to know.

To think of.

“Wedding vows?” his therapist asks, even-toned. Steve takes a moment to find a way to even try to sum up the things Bucky said to him that night, after the building had come down on him, and then tried to come down on them both; he works his throat around words that don’t fit, before he realises he’s just working his throat around swallowing over the tight ball of feeling that’s congregated there, again. As if it’s just going to live there, now, as a rule.

Which Steve is okay with, in all honesty. He’s so very much okay with that.

“Bigger,” Steve finally settles on: “more.”

That’s the vow that matters, I think,, Steve hears in his mind, twined into the pace of his pulse, faster now for the thoughts, the possibilities, the nerves around what Steve feels he needs to ask, to know, because he thinks there’s probably nothing that he couldn’t ask of Bucky, of what they have and what they are and what they’re looking toward being, toward making as a couple, a team: the vow that matters.

Whatever is left of me will always be, just exist, to reach for you, to find you again, over and over, and, yes. Yes.

God, yes.

“If you’ve said you don’t want to get married, but you think,” Steve starts, then steels himself a little, swallows hard: “you think maybe you just didn’t understand what all it could hold and be,” he looks up then from his folded hands, bracing for a blow but determined:

“Can you change your mind, or is that kind of a,” Steve clears his throat a little too forcefully, too shakily; “a done deal sort of thing? Once you say you don’t want it, out loud?”

His therapist studies him for half a second before her smile spreads softly, fondly. Steve feels the tension in him start to bleed out immediately for it; he trusts her.

“Steve,” she tilts her head at him, still watching a little wry over the tops of her glasses even at an angle: “Very little in life is a done deal sort of thing. At least, not irrevocably.”

Steve sighs out slowly, and nods, and feels lighter than he expected; didn’t realize how this fear was pressing on him—fear that he’d cut off possibilities, that he’d shoehorned the future he’s been so scared of before he could envision its vastness, its immense capacity for joy and for trying its damnedest to fit a love as big as the one Steve gets to live within, breathe around every moment.

“Do you want to keep that on the table or the shelf, for now?” His therapist cuts through the thick molasses thoughts he’s churning in, the question gentle but Steve takes it in, and considers it.

“Somewhere in the middle?” is what he lands on; he knows what he wants: Bucky, forever, for always. He thinks he wants to sit with the way he feels relieved to know he could still ask Bucky to be with him in this one extra way, because it feels as if every way is the only acceptable outcome—Steve was pretty sure, but he wants to think through the way his heart’s beating lighter, his lungs filling fuller: he wants to give the size of this option, this particular vision of their future, the consideration it deserves on its own before they tackle it in session. Maybe he’s got vague ideas about rings in his head that he’d like to consider as they deserve, too. First.

“That works,” his therapist nods and they move on, but Steve holds the floaty kind of promise flowing through his veins close through the rest of the appointment, and it’s clear from Bucky’s expression that it was tangible in Steve’s kiss hello when he was finished.

It colors his next few days, generally, and propels him finally to do what he’s been putting off: which is finally going in to see Bruce for a follow up on the care he may or may not have been possibly, a little, irresponsible about.

He sent all the digital evaluations, though. Even consented to let JARVIS’s systems into their home beyond the bare essentials that they gave the go-ahead to operate outside the Tower, to collect the scans and readings needed. It wasn’t like he was completely antagonistic to the process. He just, he…

He needed to be home. He needed something he can’t name better than just saying the fact: he needed Bucky. He needs Bucky always and this time, they needed each other so much, so clearly, and it was maybe the first time Steve had been able to recognize that Bucky’s need was expressed differently, and Steve isn’t sure if he’d missed it before but the possibility of it destroys him; he needed to be with Bucky. Nothing else.

And it’s been kind of perfect, despite the soreness of his body stitching back together. And he’s pretty-well stitched, and buoyed up on that promise of the future, of the years to come as something golden and shining, when he makes his way to Bruce’s labs.

Steve’s mostly just standing still and letting JARVIS run the scans needed while bruce stares at the holo-projections surrounding him, alongside a traditional monitor setup that looks monstrous, has to have at least 50 screens, but that Bruce insists on because it pisses Tony off to have ‘dinosaur tech’ in his building.

I thought it was our building, Tony, Avengers Tower—Bruce’s canned retort—is one of Steve’s favourite exchanges to watch unfold every time Tony does try to convince Bruce to toss them.

But he’s watching those, filling with whatever’s being read about Steve’s body that specific millisecond, probably, or something of that nature—and Steve figures the only thing he can really ask in the silence is when he’ll be cleared to be back in the field, if Bruce is going to give him the go-ahead; that’s what opens his mouth to do, too.

Steve’s mouth has a bad habit of spilling stray thoughts that he doesn’t intend, though. Every now and again; if the thought is persistent enough, and it isn’t until it’s out and said and done that Steve recognizes this one’s been building pressure without him noticing for probably a while.

“Does it look,” he says, eyes flicking around to the backward-facing readouts floating mid-air: “does it look like I healed maybe slower, at all?”

Steve doesn’t know why he asks it, or more: he knows why, but he doesn’t know why it comes out then and there so quickly, so immediate. He’s been more aware of his healing than he remembers being in the past, and he really didn’t think it was as bad of an injury as it apparently actually was, if the recovery was indicative of anything—and maybe he’d thought about what that could mean. Maybe every time he’d thought about it, it was a thought relegated to the back of his mind by something more pressing in the moment.

But, when he thinks a little harder, he can see it clearly: every time, before it strayed from the foreground, the thought of how slow it felt like his recovery was taking was always paired with an image in his head: a ray chamber from another time, that was big enough to fit what he’d become; and an ambiguous sense of question, of doubt, of maybe it’s not—

“You’ve never avoided follow-up treatment for so long after taking quite such a beating from a collapsed building, Steve,” Bruce glances up at him, tone flat but his eyes openly critical; but not just critical. Assessing. “Which is saying something. For you.”

“But, like, on balance,” Steve shoots back on autopilot, focusing on the fact that Bruce didn’t immediately shut down Steve’s suspicions; maybe he was healing slower, for whatever reason, but whatever reason could include—

“I did not avoid treatment,” Steve sidetracks himself, observing in real-time how he got around the heft of his doubts this far to begin with; “I got excellent treatment.” Steve sets his jaw when Bruce raises a brow in his direction: “On the jet.”

Bruce shakes his head, but there’s a little smile there, so.

“I’ll look into it,” is all he says, and Steve knows, then and there, that he’s been seen. The motivation, and the thoughts behind what he’s asked: Bruce sees it all for exactly what it is.

Steve feels a little bit like he wants to hide, but the labs: they’re kind of open concept to a fault.

A very big, very immediate fault in this moment, is all.

“But for your own wellbeing, Steve,” Bruce takes his glasses of and folds them, grips the bridge of his nose before he looks up and meets Steve’s gaze, a little too grave-looking for Steve’s liking; “I’m not going to tell you anything unless there is a statistically significant timeline deficit,” he tells Steve, and sounds almost harsh, for Bruce; or maybe tired; “and I am not going to make this a priority analysis.”

Steve swallows a little harder than strictly necessary, and nods, but isn’t sure he really follows, or agrees, or wants that even, as much as it probably looks like from the outside.

But then Bruce sighs, heavy with it too, and Steve thinks maybe he’s far more readable than he thinks.

“You have,” Bruce starts, but cuts himself off, shrinks a little and shakes his head: “maybe it’s not my place to say.”

“Bruce,” Steve leans toward him, takes a step forward; “we’re a team.” Then, he thinks about the past weeks, and he thinks about Win and his bedside, and Bucky next to him always, and the big fucking feelings he’d thrown down like the warmest, softest gauntlet during therapy, the words overflowing from him and the emotions continuing to do so long before, and ever since; and then he adds: “we’re family.”

Bruce looks a little struck by that, and Steve thinks, much as he did about Bucky, that he needs to do better. He thinks about Win, telling him he had other people expecting him for holidays, and yeah. He needs to do better.

He knows more now, about his own self, and so he’s going to do better.

“You have come so far, Steve,” Bruce says slowly, after a minute, like he was debating still whether to say what he has to say, even to family: “the progress you’ve made? For the two of you? For the sake of, god,” Bruce huffs, gesturing broadly: “of the kind of love you read about in storybooks,” Bruce shakes his head and breathes out slow, and looks at Steve almost pleadingly:

“You’ve worked so hard,” and yeah, Steve has, but he didn’t realize other people were watching. That anyone cared to take notice of that part, outside himself and Bucky, and Win, and—

Family. Right.

“Don’t go hanging all of that,” Bruce starts, frowns, and then finds the words he wants: “all that promise and possibility, and yeah, uncertainty and fear but so much joy, so much humanity—”

The emotion in Bruce’s words is more than Steve usually sees from the man. He knows there’s loss, and sacrifice, in Bruce’s past that Steve only knows the bare outlines of. The same kinds of emotions Steve knows, but in wholly different color palettes. Steve respects him enormously. Steve makes himself listen, and take in what’s being said—but even from the first, and especially from the recognition of how much the love he shares with Bucky is; Steve’s listening. Steve’s hearing it, it’s sinking in quick and true.

“Please, just,” Bruce heaves a deep breath; “don’t throw it all to the side because something that may or may not be there, and may or may not mean anything, if it is.”

And that’s the kicker, isn’t it: that’s what it’s always been, and what he’s always been dancing around, and only saw once he got into therapy with fully-opened eyes but it’s there, and he has made progress, good progress from hard work, and Steve thinks progress, however far it’s stretched thus far, is what kept this entire line of questioning from infiltrating his thoughts wholly, from taking hold to steer his every move: he knows better, now. He’s learning. His life is with Bucky. They’re going to buy a house. Steve…Steve’s staring at his hands and imagining a ring on one finger, natural as anything.

He loves, more than he fears.

“Because what you have, the two of you,” Bruce continues, conviction in his tone that Steve doesn’t need, here and now, to be convinced, not anymore; “that is there, that is here,” Steve can hear the slight smile, the hopeful good nature in his voice when Bruce adds:

“And I’d bet at least half my doctorates that it means a hell of a lot more than anything I could find.”

“Right,” Steve breathes out, eyes fixed on his hands still for a moment, Steve’s pulse racing a little, but signing with it; he wonders if JARVIS is still taking any more measures, but then again: he doesn’t think he cares at all, either way.

He lifts his head and looks at Bruce straight on:

“You’re right.”

Bruce blinks at him; he was expecting more of a fight.

But Steve sees clearer, now, what’s worth fighting for.

“You’re right, and I know better,” Steve confesses, a little abashed, a little shamefaced, but somehow proud at the very same time because: “I know better, now.”

He does. He really does, and seeing it, recognizing it to be able to course correct and make it right: that counts.

That, too, is progress.

Steve startles as Bruce’s stool scrapes the floor and he stands, comes to Steve’s side and grips his arm solidly.

“Sometimes, even when we learn better, we slip back.” Bruce’s eyes are warm—understanding, if tired: Steve thinks they have more in common, maybe, than even he suspected, hopes they can make something of it.

“Habits,” Bruce tacks on, like he feels the need to clarify before shooting a wry sort of grin. “Think you’re the only one in therapy?”

“I know I’m not,” Steve says plainly, but open, grateful for Bruce’s trust here as a warmness floods him the feeling Steve gets every time he brushes up against the word, the reality, the concept at large: family.

“I certainly didn’t fail in providing psychological intervention for Tony that one time for lack of wanting him to have the help he deserves,” Bruce says, chagrined; “he needed a professional.”

“Of course,” Steve feels the need to assure him , because Tony well: “Tony’s exaggerates.”

Tony is family, and a good man to the core, but he’s an absolute dick who’s too unapologetic about that fact for it to ever be likely to change, and he relishes telling the story of Bruce’s failure at talk-therapy a little too much.

“Mmm,” Bruce hums in agreement, because he hears all the things ‘exaggerates’ contains. And they’re quiet with it, for a while, before Steve straightens, and decides:

“Don’t look.”

Bruce takes a second to double back to the point being made: the serum. Don’t look at whether or not it’s wearing thin.

“It’d be a waste of your time, to seek out something that,” Steve smiles into the words as he speaks them, feeling their truth outweigh the doubts that counter them: “doesn’t matter one bit.”

Because that’s the core of it. The doubts are still there, still loom, but ultimately his blood beats love and want and joy in the arms and at the side of the person he’s given his whole soul to, so much stronger than any doubt.

“If I saw, incidentally,” and Bruce is serious with his words again, but his eyes smile for him, pleased; “at any point, genuine proof of whether you’re aging, or you’re not,” he shakes his head there, bites at his lip.

“Because Steve, you haven’t been off the ice long enough to even know for sure, remember that,” and that’s true, that’s truer than Steve probably processes in his own head: time hasn’t run normally for him in a…a very long time.

“I know it feels like it’s been an age, it’s got to, but the records we had from before, they’re not detailed in the ways we need to be able to measure—“

“Bruce,” Steve cuts him off: “I understand.”

And he does. He understands the limitations, the questions without answers for valid reasons.

He understands he’s in love, and his partner’s at home, and he’s suddenly very interested in seeing Bucky with his own two eyes, tasting him between his own two lips.

“The moment I notice, if I notice, without looking specifically,” Bruce ties up the train of thought nonetheless: "I’d tell you. One way or the other.”

“Sure,” Steve nods, and means it when he says: “thank you.”

“Family looks out for each other, yeah?” Bruce says with a tiny smirk, and Steve finds himself smiling broadly in return.

“Movie night next week?” he asks; Bruce doesn’t always come—not that Steve’s been great with attendance for a good long while, but.

“Tony’s pick.” Bruce shudders, and it doesn’t even look wholly theatrical. Tony’s picks aren’t good, but Steve didn’t think they were that bad.

Usually.

“Do you need an excuse to be out of town?” Steve asks, a little sly with it; “Bucky and I might go to DC, or…” he tilts his head back and forth consideringly: “something. You’re more than welcome to come.”

“Grow a pair, Rogers,” Bruce scoffs; ”it’ll probably be a Michael Bay explosion fest,” Bruce offers a smirk, then: “plenty of loud noises and distractions for you to make out with your man during.”

And then it’s Steve’s turn to scoff.

“I don’t feel any need, whatsoever, to hide the way I show my partner affection.”

Bruce snorts, and waves him off.

“Of course not.”

“See you Friday, then.”

And Steve turns, a little slow with it, a little caught in his head: he didn’t expect to feel lighter, leaving the lab. He’s not even sure if he’s cleared for the field, but it doesn’t matter. The floating buoyancy is back, somehow, for no reason and every reason and Steve’s not going to try and question it out of existence. He’s going to ride it right home, into Bucky’s waiting arms.

“Looking forward to,” Bruce starts, but the stops short, and quickly, his distaste for the inevitable film choice evident on his face when Steve turns back to look: “well. Looking forward to seeing you both, then.”

Steve laughs as he leaves the lab, and it feels prescient, like he’s setting the tone for a new era of maybe everything, or at least: everything that matters.

He’s terrified, and he’s ecstatic, and he’s ready for it.

Chapter Text

“Question,” and Steve startles a little where he sits at the kitchen table; he hadn’t heard the door open, and he knows why: he’s been “cleared” for duty, for two weeks now, and yet he’s been on domestic missions just one step above desk duty, and nothing more.

He’s not bitter. Or, well. Maybe he’s a little bitter, but that’s not why he’s distracted; why he’s a bit on edge.

Bucky’s been overseas in that same span of time, with at least two members of the team, twice. Never more than a day or two—but.

But.

Steve’s been a bit on edge, even if Bucky’s been messaging him, and calling him, and never so much as entertaining an op that would require radio silence, and Steve’s grateful as fuck for that, more so than he’d have thought—they hadn’t had much reason to go into the field without one another yet, and while Steve had always known it was a possibility, and he is both horrified and humbled at the fact that said possibility is only coming to pass now is a probably deliberate thing, and probably that at least in part because his teammates are still a little bit stuck in the overprotective mother-henning phase of things, letting Steve back on duty but just in only the lightest sense of the term; it’s still not easy.

And therapy, these past weeks, has made the obvious even more crystal clear: it never will be easy. Not ever.

It’s something Steve’s long put on the shelf, in session. To revisit. Because it needs it, he needs to, but he...needs some time to mull it over before he can dive in. It’s increasingly something he’s noticed he’s actually good at, could handle almost right off the bat in therapy: delegating, even to his own self. Prioritising the mission, especially one as important as this. The most important one he’s ever undertaken.

But he really does need to think more deeply, with the ever-clearing eyes he’s able to turn to the problem now, day by day, on the issue of fighting, and risking, and running into harm’s way alongside the man he loves—and sometimes not even that, not side-by-side: not literally at least.

“Did you mean to leave this delivery at the door?”

Steve turns fully, then, and takes Bucky in like a drowning man who doesn’t need air, would suffocate willingly just to drink Bucky in to the end. Bucky lets him, too, stands still and watches Steve with a warm, open gaze, hand holding up a box and barely moving. Letting himself be taken stock of; deemed hale and whole so a weight can slip from Steve’s chest.

Steve swallows around the new lightness there, breathes deep around it, before his eyes narrow toward the box.

“I did,” he bites out pointedly; “because it’s probably from Natasha and she deserves to stew a little.”

And she does. She really fucking does because Natasha is one of the best friends Steve could ask for, but the slow-and-not-wholly-graceful-but-absolutely-wholly-worth-it process of becoming a family, amongst his teammates?

That’s made her already irritatingly sibling-like capacity for haranguing Steve to high-hell? Yeah, that’s elevated it to being un-fucking-bearable.

“It is, in fact,” Bucky’s voice jars Steve from his scowling; “not from Natasha.”

Steve blinks, probably just this side of embarrassingly owlish, and feels his scowl soften, mellow, and weigh down to a heavy frown.

“Oh. Well,” he says, a little dumb with it; “small mercies, I guess.”

He shrugs, and Bucky walks in, closer, and rests his hands on Steve’s shoulders, massages tensions Steve knew very clearly had been building ever tighter there since he’s kissed Bucky goodbye on the quinjet, committed his words to memory as much as just the sound of his voice, repeating to his whirring mind and his anxious heart over the last few days, reminding him over and again:

My guess is they want to keep your ass away from any possible risk of getting flattened for just a little while longer, and I am not exempt from that desire, Steven Grant, Bucky’d nipped at his ear pointedly before softening, before drawing Steve in like Steve was small and precious, could and would be held and kept; something only a Bucky seemed capable of; maybe in part because Steve only ever wanted that, from Bucky:

But there’s no secret in the fact that keeping either of us safe?, and he’d cupped Steve’s cheek, and Steve had closed his eyes and relished the feeling of every line, every join in the metal like a whisper between lovers, like a secret, a gift; Keeping one of us safe means keeping the other one the very same, and tenfold at that, and it’s not wrong, there’s not a single hint of a lie in it, and Steve bit back a little moan and how deep it ran, how it shook his blood better than his pulse.

So when I say I’m leaving on a milk run, it’s not the kind that has any likelihood of turning into something else. I’m basically doing what you’re doing, just a bit further afield from home. And he’d gripped Steve’s hip, and pulled him in once more to press lips to his temple and breathe out; The most dangerous part is the flight there.

And there’s no accounting for the unknowable, there's no stopping that all-too-human fear, but, in truth, Bucky looks like he stepped off a yacht, maybe. Showered, groomed, runway-fresh gorgeous with the barest hint of a damn tan, for fuck’s sake.

Steve still feels like the world is finally spinning again, tilted right, and maybe his heart beats the same rhythm as Bucky’s, when Bucky’s close to him, as he should be; maybe that’s biology, maybe that’s natural, but Steve’s heart feels steady for the first time in days and it’s…

He’s going to breathe with it, and relish it close to his chest for a few moments, just for itself, close his eyes and savor.

And not just when he opens his eyes he’ll see the not-from-Natasha box, next to the absolutely-from-Natasha print out lying with the pristine folds flattened out as best he could manage out of pure spite.

“I kinda wanted her to stew.”

And Steve knows he sounds as petty as he absolutely feels, but he had genuinely hoped Natasha had sent him a box with a too-carefully wrapped, too-cheap, chintzy gift shop purchase, and that in turn he’d been very pointedly denying her the pleasure of his reaction to it for the hours since she’d made her first move in harassing him.

Bucky presses a kiss to his temple from behind, though, the line of his clavicle meeting Steve’s shoulder blades and oh.

Yeah, that’s so much better than denying Natasha her kicks.

“She told you about the Smithsonian.”

Bucky says it like he already knows, but also like he must see the folded up announcement flyer on the counter from this angle; the one that had flown through his open window, paper-plane style because yes, Natasha told him ahead of the press release an hour ago that the AIB had been granted a very generous donation from Stark Industries to jumpstart their reopening timeline by several years, and they were now planning to launch featuring a Howling Commandos exhibit: which, despite Steve’s best efforts every fucking time, ends up being a Cap-and-friends sideshow circus.

“Oh,” Steve says tartly, pushing the flyer closer for Bucky’s inspection: “she certainly told me.”

And Steve’s quiet, maybe stewing in Natasha’s stead, maybe not, while Bucky takes the perfectly-weighted paper in hand, reading the print while tracing the expert creases, testing the balance when he re-folds them with a precision Steve does not think this charade deserves, but which he also finds unaccountably attractive to watch in his peripherals.

“The photoshopping isexcellent,” is what Bucky finally says, his tone a complicated layer of emotions but Steve could have picked up humor in it even if he hadn’t caught the barely-there quirk of Bucky’s mouth.

“Of course,” Steve scoffs, because he can be irritated with Natasha all he wants, but there’s no denying her skill. Not ever.

And that’s when Bucky gives up on making his grin small and laughs, full on, reaching for Steve and pulling him in and kissing him hard, a proper hello, and Steve melts and keens and gives for it in every measure, at every point of touch because that’s a certainty as clear and immutable as the sunrise, or the orbit of the earth.

He’s a little breathless, then, when Bucky mouths against his lips:

“How long did it take you to notice which museum she’d listed?”

Because the photoshop job had indeed included all the necessary and relevant information that did not in fact exist on a flyer yet because the museum hadn’t released one, but it also sneakily listed the event as a fucking ‘petrified remains tour’ at the goddamn Museum of Natural History.

“Too long,” Steve admits with a sigh, and buries his face in the crook of Bucky’s neck, because he’s absolutely not admitting anything further than that on the matter. Bucky chuckles softly, and Steve feels himself grin, feels something in him damn near purr at the motion of Bucky’s laughter pressed chest to chest against Steve’s body again, where it belongs; where it lives and where Steve hoards it greedily without needing to, ever, and every inch of him knows it, not least because Bucky melds to him and give so beautifully every goddamn time, splayed hands drawing Steve into his frame with a single perfectly-honed gesture that fits theirs curves and lines just so, every time: less like puzzle pieces and more like lock-keys, like home.

“It really is fantastic editing, so,” Steve eventually admits, muffled into buckets skin; “I’m not too mad it took me a while.”

“Not too mad?” Bucky asks against Steve’s jaw from where he’s mostly just pressed to Steve’s side, now, one step from leaning into Steve’s lap where he’s seated, save that Bucky’s still on both feet and leaning down, the heat of his body, of his breath simply fucking exquisite as it forms a cocoon of sorts around Steve’s body—and Steve’s pretty sure Bucky knows it, too. “Mad about Nat, or about the exhibit?” Steve can’t help but snort, when he even bothers to barely think about that question—but then he gives it more time, more space to breathe because it’s Bucky who asks it, and his reaction turns to a shallow little sigh, in the end; not resignation, exactly, but not wholly divorced from it either.

“These shows are just,” Steve’s face scrunches up of its own accord as he casts about for the right words; “seems like every year somewhere is gonna be the norm, at least for a while. Don’t understand why, but,” he turns when Bucky’s quiet at that, because Steve not understanding why, and expressing as much, usually gets a huff at least, but Bucky’s eyes are closed, Steve can’t even catch a glimmer of exasperated amusement; but those pillowed lips are turned up just the slightest bit, and Steve warms for it. Because part of him never will comprehend the magnitude of public obsession; the rest of him understands the obsession is for a legend for bigger than he’s ever been or ever will be, and he’s just the sorry sonuvabitch caught in the middle.

And the whole of him loves Bucky’s smile, this particular one that always comes when Steve says this particular kind of thing, so yeah. He’ll keep coaxing it out to the day he dies.

“Can’t be any worse than the first time,” Steve finds himself tacking on casually, chucking a little woefully at himself for the memory that surfaces; “I wandered into the Air and Space spread without any clue while I was still getting used to, well, everything,” he snorts, Times Square flashing behind his eyelids in his memory, more akin to hallucination than anything else.

“At least the predictability is a form of warning,” he finally sighs and yeah. Not resignation. Just recognizing the battles worth fighting—which he’s getting better at in general, probably largely because the only battle worth anything came into his life and gave him a reference point worth using for the very first time—and from there, appreciating what advantages, what intel is provided in advance.

Bucky’s quiet, but his grip on Steve’s a little tighter, and Steve makes to turn, to ask after it, but first he sees the box from the hall. Bigger than he expected.

“Wait,” he says, nosing toward the package; “if it wasn’t a gag from Nat…”

“Thor’s been stuck off planet,” Bucky nips a little behind Steve’s ear before straightening up only enough to stretch and grab the box in question; “so he sends his apologies for not knowing about you being laid up before now,” Steve’s eyes narrow as Bucky’s lithe fingertip slips under the brown-paper wrapped covering of the box, that Steve hadn’t noticed at first but feels a distinct rush of nearly-possessive excitement at seeing now.

“And he sent a get-well-slash-congrats-on-the-recovery present your way,” Bucky rips the box clean in half in one go, revealing a bottle that looks both ancient and mythical, and centuries beyond anything he could dream up all at once, mostly opaque but with a hint of motion inside that Steve thinks maybe he should be wary of, but is instead drawn to inexplicably; unavoidably.

And not without cause; he’s never seen this specific bottle before, more than any he has laid eyes on to be sure, but it’s familiar enough, and if it’s a gift, it’s clearly one thing: Asgardian booze.

“Also, bonus,” Bucky says, flipping the bottle around in the air with his left hand and instigating a theatrical series of bubbling effects from the content inside, clearly in on the whole thing for the grin he gets when Steve’s eyes go wide before he can even think to help it, mesmerized by the effect but also, by his lover showing off, just a touch; “because he responds to my texts when he’s in-realm,” Bucky says, the haughtiness put on but not unwarned if it weren’t; “he told me it was coming, and so I maybe asked him what this particular Asgardian brew would do to if a human took shots of it,” Steve stills, waits, because Bucky can be a dramatic fuck and damn if Steve doesn’t love every last bit of it; of him.

“He said it’d only hit twice as hard, at best,” Bucky informs with the kind of factual relay that’s a little too invested, a little too giddy around the edges to be just that, that’s clearly leading up to something; “as he he didn’t want to overwhelm you in your recovery.”

“Uh huh,” Steve nods, drinking Bucky’s soft sheen of excitement in, but deeper than that, the low timbre of promise cast wide underneath.

“So, I think,” Bucky says, acting as if he’s actually contemplating, as if it’s not clear to Steve the determination, the clear intent in the set of his body; “in the spirit of acknowledging we got knocked a little off track in the whole reclaiming being playful-lust-bunnies department,” and fuck, fuck: Bucky could have done it with his flesh and blood hand almost as easily but hell if Steve isn’t set aflame in a second by how Bucky pops the closure—something like a cork but threaded with a gleaming sparkle—with his left hand using all the effort of flicking away a damn fly.

What can he say: Steve has very specific turn-ons. If they include ‘anything and everything involving one James Buchanan Barnes’, we’ll, there’s a subset that has to do specifically with that goddamn left arm.

If there’s another subset specifically devoted to his right arm, too, well.

Well, fucking sue him.

“Would you,” Steve blinks back to the moment, Bucky smirking, eyes dancing as he sees Steve’s distraction and knows damn well where it came from before he leans in with one hand—the left one, to Steve’s shivering delight, while the right holds the bottle just a touch aloft as Bucky traces Steve’s lips and enunciates carefully, sensually: “like to play a game?”

Steve isn’t breathing, isn’t moving. He wants whatever Bucky gives him always and answering that question would be useless when they both goddamn know it.

The way Bucky’s smirk grows is merely extra evidence to that fact.

“See,” Bucky’s hand leaves Steve’s face to the tune of Steve’s poorly-stifled whimper; Bucky’s right hand toys with the bottle ever so slightly, the dark glass-like planes of it catching light; “I remember, once upon a time, being really struck by just how fascinated you were with the technique of doing shots of tequila,” and of course he was, watching those cherry lips Steve didn’t know the shape of by heart yet, licking skin Steve wasn’t intimately familiar with yet, could only imagine the flavor; “like, you were glued to my every move and sure,” Bucky’s grin then is damn near diabolical, the gleam on his eyes close on blinding:

“I put on a show the whole goddamn time, but,” and he bites his lips then, because all this time later, he still knows how to put on a show and all this time later, Steve is still entranced to his bones.

“I thought to myself,” Bucky says, lips wet now and catching light better, more tantalizing and mesmerIzing than the glass of the bottle could ever hope for; “I thought huh, you know,” and then Bucky’s swinging his body around Steve’s chair without warning, curling his legs around the back against the spindles and perching on Steve’s lap, his half-chub rubbing against Steve’s significantly more than half-mast arousal before he bows his head to breathe at the corner of Steve’s mouth:

“This opportunity to not simply revisit the classics, but potentially even improve upon them,” and the weight of the bottle plopping between Bucky’s legs, just shy of the line of Steve’s cock, nearly causes him to jump: “just kinda fell into my lap.”

“It arrived at the door.”

Steve, as he still evidences regularly, is sometimes a fucking idiot who also really, really isn’t good with words. But fuck if he was even going to try for better just now; like this.

Bucky leans, kisses him hard and ends the production on a bite to his lower lip before asking, laced with warning:

“You want to do body shots, or don’t you?”

“Body shots?”

To be fair: Steve’s facility with language, or thought, did not stand a chance of gaining ground since last he’d tried. And it predictably had not.

At all.

“Not like,” Bucky’s tongue is running a line up Steve's jaw, then, unnecessary for the point and glorious for everything else; “you lick the salt off,” right, yes, Bucky had explained in great detail what they couldn’t do in public some time after they’d spent that evening in the jazz bar, and Steve still very much does want to try that sometime; knows as a fact that they will; “and this doesn’t need that, but,” Bucky tightens his thighs around Steve’s hips for balance.

“But I mean, honestly,” and Steve’s salivating as Bucky licks salt just as effectively from the sweat on Steve’s Adam’s apple as any other way; “you’re plenty enough cut,” he nips down toward the hollow of Steve’s throat; “in plenty enough places,” and his thumb digs in where Steve’s collarbones shadow skin; “to serve as a halfways decent shot glass,” and Steve’s shirt is still perfectly placed across his torso, a proper, even slightly oversized men’s medium that’s not even that horrifically stretched.

Under Bucky’s eyes like this, though—as ever—he feels stripped bare and flayed wide.

“Right off the skin,” Bucky hums, feeling closer than he is, even, his voice all silk and rubble, rough and smooth and sunk deep under Steve’s flesh, inside his marrow and the blood pumping ever-heavier through his veins.

“Wh,” Steve starts, but his throat’s too tight; his mouth is too dry. He swallows hard and tries again; fails wholly to sound anything but desperate, but wholly wrecked: “what’s the game then?”

Bucky considers him with the strangest, most titillating combination of desire and exasperation, the specific brand of the latter that usually means Steve’s absolutely missing a very obvious point.

It’s a heady and distracting mix, to be honest. Bucky’s hands on the hem of his shirt, peeling it off at his leisure, in absolutely no fucking hurry at all: that admittedly does not help.

“First impressions,” Bucky deadpans; Steve’s distracted by the way he’s batting his eyes deliberately because he’s a manipulative asshole every now and again and Steve loves every single minute of it, every single time.

“Of…”

Though by then, he’s made some headway; it’s half a question his deeply-distracted brain means as genuine, pressed to breaking all the more for the way Bucky’s slowly started to tip the bottle just as he tips Steve back, sliding himprobe against the edge of the table as the thinnest stream of garnet spilling in Steve’s peripherals: but it’s half what the parts of his brain, so deeply distracted by the gleam in Bucky’s eyes, are well aware of— that Bucky’s baiting him; fishing. He’s recreating that night, that bar, that music more in Steve’s veins, in Steve’s chest, then, than in the space around them: wholly so, now, and immense for it.

They’d been getting to know each other. Steve’s been seeing newer and brighter lights of a future Bucky wants to hear first impressions they had about each other.

Steve, though, in kind—he kinda wants to relish the warmth that’ll suffuse him to hear Bucky say it clear.

Bucky looks up through his lashes once he’s pooled enough of the red liqueur in the deeply defined and therefore apparently suitable line between Steve’s pecs.

“Of the team.”

Steve’s mind short circuits once again then; he picks up the even tone, the arch of Bucky’s brow—Steve’s been read for what he wanted, and he’s being played. Like a fucking fiddle.

Goddamn if he doesn’t fall for it, crave it, love it every single time.

“Smooth,” Steve chokes out, but it’s enough of a dousing of his list-soaked consciousness to rise to the challenge; to meet the terms of engagement head on.

“Tony,” Steve starts, holds up his end of the bargain even if his voice is a little shaky; “difficult.”

“Hmm,” Bucky considers, wholly baiting him; “be more specific?”

He sounds as innocent as anything; he’s a fucking asshole. He, unfortunately, can be as difficult as he wants without a single repercussion, because Steve’s just that far fucking gone.

“To to deal with, to understand, to read, to work with,” Steve gives in, a little babbling because Bucky’s breathing just enough to hush across the river of red, the drink lines between Steve’s nipples; to make it rock in a breeze but not nearly enough to disturb it from its bed; “it wasn’t just him, but—“

Then Steve’s shuddering like mad, part for surprise and part for sensation: Bucky’s got pursed lips and is sucking to fight gravity, to draw the liquor up, only employing the assistance of his tongue as absolutely necessary, in a single puckered inhale as he takes his shot: Steve’s reward for answering, but for the moans Bucky makes as he swallows, Steve has to wonder, even if he’s fucking floating on bliss already, the shivers deep and long-lived, electric through his nerve and veins; he still isn’t entirely sure who’s more taken by the ecstasy of it. Which feels; which feels…

“Who’s the one who’s getting rewarded for answering the questions, exactly?” Steve ekes out, a little blocked, more than slightly breathless.

“Dunno,” Bucky hums, all unadulterated satisfaction, eyes closed and face lax with something goddamn close to rapture as he shimmies Steve to lie straight on the table, now, straddling him full but never letting his mouth get distracted from Steve skin: “you went on kinda long there, but this shot is pretty fucking delicious, so—“

It strikes a nerve, immediately, because Bucky’s body is heavy and warm atop him, his weight more an echo, a promise than anything pressing down and it’s what lets Steve move, lets Steve become electrified as Bucky swallows, to hook ankles over Bucky’s calves and flip them, relishing they way Bucky’s hands go for Steve’s biceps on instinct, no fear, all desire to keep close and Steve’s the breathless one again, again once Bucky’s splayed beneath him.

And Steve’s enraptured for it, too, because Bucky’s pupils are blown, chest heaving, and frankly Bucky’s pecs are far more enticing than Steve’s could ever hope to be, and watching the almost-prism like quality of the liquid glimmering against his skin as Steve reaches for the bottle and pours the same rivulet in advance, lets Bucky’s gasping make a little mess of it that don’t matter for shit because the shadows his muscles make, is, is…

Basically, just. Steve’s having a little trouble swallowing? But he overcomes it quick enough when Bucky quirks a brow, a genuine question in his eyes: this perfect idiot.

“Did you think mine was the only chest that could double for a glass?” Steve asks, breathy with it, unable to keep his eyes from the muscles, the brighter-than-rubies glimmering along that gorgeous stretch of skin.

Bucky huffs, but makes himself near-boneless between breaths for Steve to lay him out and survey his options: he’s not the more imaginative one between them, though, and especially not when his brains a little bit short-circuited at the sight before him, that never gets old or easier to breathe around the beauty of.

“Your turn,” Steve finally says, takes a long swig straight from the bottle out of pure petulance, mostly, while thinking to add a single novel concept if he was so goddamn wordy before: “one word. Teammates. Tony.”

A Steve with more capable higher cognitive functions might have balked a little at continuing on with the juxtaposition of their colleagues, their friends-made-family, as they’re apparently embarking on a stretch of shirtless, drink-laden debauchery, but this Steve, with his heartbeat heavy in his ears and eyes only for the glistening of sweat starting to sheen Bucky’s bare chest, well.

That Steve wants to hear Bucky’s voice, and know Bucky’s thoughts on all things in all ways at all times, not least because Steve can form very few of his own in the moment; he wants to lick Bucky’s skin and figure out how it makes the stone-fruit tartness shift when he drinks alien intoxicants from it and if they’re abusing their kitchen table in the process and replaying one of their first dates with a game of getting-to-know-you they sure as fuck don’t need, that’s a little bit crossed with a game of chicken Steve would lose readily and heartfelt with it in a second on principle, the opportunity to tell Bucky again, and again, and again what it was like to see him and suspect his world had the chance to change entirely, then learn he was right in theory, and simultaneously not even close in magnitude for where they’ve ended up—Steve would lose that game and spill his heart as always, as ever, right fucking now.

If drawing the process out for the sake of nostalgia, and the taste of the liqueur on his tongue, and Bucky’s skin just beneath it, weren’t the most sinfully delightful stops along the scenic route to that same destination.

“It was hard, upon meeting him,” yes, right, yes, first impressions, Tony Stark; “to think of anything but honeybun,” and Steve nuzzles around the dripping line of liquor now, to feel the hum of Bucky’s words through his ribs first, to let it blanket him; he’s likely to get a little tipsy off whatever’s tracing tendrils on Bucky’s skin but hell if he doesn’t feel drunk already.

“That said, one word?” Bucky sighs, and stretches from the shoulders, salacious about it and intentional as hell. “Complicated.” He pauses, before meeting Steve’s eyes meaningfully and saying far more than one fucking word more:

“Not necessary in a bad way, just like, an onion. Lots of layers.” Steve dives into Bucky’s chest then, in punishment, a deterrent to more words, in desperation and wild desire: Steve’s not sure what trumps what but hell if he doesn’t lap Bucky’s skin clean, and lets a little teeth graze in the process.

Bucky’s smiling at him a little sloppily once he straightens, victorious, before Bucky’s drawing a squeak from Steve’s throat and reversing their positions again, spread out full on the tabletop.

“The best ones being the hardest to get to,” Bucky adds, about goddamn Tony, but he’s also running fingertips under the waist of Steve's jeans like maybe there are better, more pressing and relevant things for peeling off, too, and fuck. Just fuck.

“Nat,” Steve shivers before Bucky can even prompt, because he’s knocking her flyer off the surface he’s stretched out on, and doesn’t get to finish a full thought about how her pranking’s being wholly thwarted, incinerated to nothing more than ash for the way Steve burns with how Bucky just slightly tugs the waist of his jeans from the belt loops now, and pours bare drops into the slightest suggestion of the crest of Steve’s hip and licks it greedy, nearly impatient to keep it from sliding away from him, spoiling the delicious tease of it all.

Which is the reason—all of it, together, in aggregate—that it takes Steve a moment to regroup and answer his turn; first impression: ”Impenetrable.”

“That’s a scrabble-winning word,” Bucky smacks his lips before he licks them, wholly unnecessary, that perfect fucking bastard.

“I was gonna say a blank wall,” Bucky counters, pouring and drawing something like a little pattern, maybe even a sarcastic sort of spider web over the dips of Steve’s abs; “but that’s more than one word, so.”

Steve’s eyes roll back a little when Bucky starts dragging the liqueur around with the blunts of his teeth, the pace of it leisurely, agonizing, Steve trembling ever-so-finely as Bucky calculates how much of his tongue peeks out and when, how he drinks from Steve’s body at his own pace; at the absolute peril of Steve’s composure.

“Natasha,” Bucky hums before swirling his tongue a little extra, a little unfair; “hmm,” and Steve bites back a pitchy keen building right at the back of his throat before Bucky purses his lips and whispers, before he takes to sucking diligently at what’s left of the red liquor on Steve’s flesh to leave only the red of Bucky attention behind:

“Warm.”

It’s not wrong, really, in its way. But Steve absolutely believes Bucky picks that word not just to describe the Widow beyond her Bites, but also to make comment on the friction burns, the suction marks, the unavoidable flush overtaking Steve entirely.

“I’m not even sure I understand that one, but that’s what I keep coming back to,” Bucky lifts up a little, pins Steve with a crooked grin that plays in Steve’s bounding pulse, toys with the beat of his blood. “Maybe it’s the booze.” Bucky looks at the bottle; “Which is definitely also warm.”

Steve frowns, no: Steve pouts. He doesn’t have enough pride intact right now to pretend otherwise.

“You took two shots in a row.”

If they even qualify for the term; more like lapped-up-swirled-around pools of liquor. Steve’s already actually starting to feel like there's a soft haze over his vision, his way to finding words.

“So I did.”

At least Bucky doesn’t argue calling them shots; but his eyes are a little extra bright, and Steve thinks he’s starting toward feeling it too.

“Those aren’t the rules.” With that, Steve pouts deeper. Bucky snorts loud and cackles:

“What rules?”

Steve…has to admit that’s a fair point. They’re not following any they’d even defined half-assed. Bucky probably wasn’t even being serious when he rejected his first choice word because it was technically two.

Steve should possibly not have taken quitesuch a swig of the tame-for-Asgard-but-still-strong-on-Earth alcohol earlier, now that he’s thinking on it.

Steve is also distracted enough to note that Bucky’s taking a third shot in a row off the line of Steve’s neck, now, like a cheating dickhead except there are no rules and he’s asking after Clint with a total nonchalance that drives Steve fucking crazy, that’s leaving Steve trembling fine against the woodtop because for some reason he’s adhering to nonexistent rules like a moron.

But then Bucky’s sucking slowly up Steve’s carotid, mimicking a much slower pulse but glorious for it, the feeling and the contrast, and Steve’s lost until words come back and he can speak them.

“Direct,” he finally answers; “Funny came later. Sarcastic.” Steve swallows hard when Bucky finishes lapping up his share and kisses the peak of the line in his neck with a delicateness that almost feels too much.

“But first,” Steve whispers, closing his eyes when Bucky keeps his mouth on him and still for a few more seconds; “direct.”

Bucky eventually draws back, though, and the clank of the bottle is audible, and maybe Steve’s feeling a little reckless, a little uninhibited, and he rolls Bucky over then with the whole of his weight, so that he can drizzle Bucky’s abs with the liqueur in his own good time.

“Shameless,” Bucky drawls, borough-thick inside the syllables as he answers the question in his turn; clearer headed than Steve, even though Steve’s got a fucking serum and quite possibly’s drank less—and how, that bastard: “in the best sense.”

Bucky smirks up, and at least that’s proof he’s feeling something; he wouldn’t normally give the plan to flip Steve over away, so Steve takes advantage of the slip and fills the notch at the base of Bucky’s throat with ruby-red and answers for himself before he sucks it out hard:

“Thor was just,” Steve licks around the bouncing pool of liquor, following the line of Bucky’s heartbeat where it stands; “unbelievable, literally, but once the disbelief was gone.”

“Larger-than-fuckin’-life” Steve settles on, then pours another shot before Bucky can move to watch the spike in his pulse as Steve’s thumbs go to his nipples, as Steve bits near his jaw; “with hyphens between, so it’s one word.”

“Hyphens,” Bucky’s eyeroll is so audible it almost sends Steve giggling; “but, wow, Thor,” and then Steve is giggling, just a little, but more than enough to be helpless. Bucky tackles him back, teases Steve’s lips open with rough kisses only to pour a mouthful of liquor inside and suck it straight out, licking frantically before Steve could even consider swallowing for himself.

His lungs are wholly devoid of air as he sinks into, savors the revelation of the sweetness of Bucky alongside the drink in real time. It’s worth every moment, every breath sacrificed to this—and then some.

“Kindred,” Bucky sighs his answer after a span of time Steve can’t chart accurately, has no desire to try, his world pinpoints of light and unsteady spirals now behind his eyes as Bucky rests his cheek to Steve’s for a moment, a tiny reprieve.

“He’s not a whole lot like me, not in any ways I could put a finger on,” Steve could put his finger on the ways, easily, in a number of ways with varying degrees of depth, though Bucky’d win out every time by a landslide, by the whole space that makes a universe twice over; “but there’s something of a kindred spirit in that guy, for sure.”

Steve smiles, and gropes sloppily for the bottle with his eyes still closed before he cracks them open and pushes Bucky down on to his back, traces his lips to keep them closed before summoning the very last of his composure and concentration, all the steadiness left to his bones to fill the perfect Cupid’s bow, the little dip between the halves of Bucky’s upper lips, just above and waiting for the smallest, most precise kiss of sinful-sweet ruby that, magical though it probably literally is, doesn’t so much as touch the look on Bucky’s face.

“Bruce,” Steve says, traces Bucky’s cheekbones, his jaw, before sucking at Bucky’s mouth with wanton abandon, not even bothering to be careful, accurate in sucking up the liquor there, just wanting to sink wholly into a kiss and he does, they do, so that time goes away a little. So the spiral behind Steve’s eyes turns to galaxies and promises of an infinity that maybe he’ll see, with Bucky pressed against him, nipping his lips greedily.

When they part, it’s slow, and Steve takes a moment with an arm across Bucky’s chest because he answers his own now-very late question: “introspective.”

Bucky recovers quicker than Steve, or else, he’s consumed by something closer to frenzy and fire than Steve for these moments, where Steve’s stuck feeling like the whole of existence with Bucky’s heart by his is unfolding around him, and he’s still so as not to miss a second—Bucky takes a page from Steve’s book and fills the suprasterbal notch and watches Steve’s pulse dance in the overfilled divot of flesh; Steve breathes, and loves to feel Bucky’s attention.

Bucky’s impatient though, and leans to suck it straight out so there’s no hint of a drop left to find, then presses Steve’s chest to still him and forces Steve to lean forward so the right bones jut, so Bucky can pour against alone the lines of Steve’s clavicle.

“Professor,” Bucky’s answer is immediate as soon as he moves again, but then he purses his lips, not wholly unrelated to the work he’s doing sucking the syrupy crimson from the ledge of Steve’s collarbone, quick before it drops; “did he ever teach, at some point? He just,” Bucky continues the musing while Steve feels the cut of Bucky’s teeth against his skin as he makes a final thorough pass along his clavicle: “exudes it, from the moment you see him fidget with his glasses.”

Bucky laughs a little, makes an inelegant but enchanting motion with his hands to mime playing with frames that don’t exist on his face, but then his breathing settles, and Steve’s follows, and it takes a minute for Steve’s eyes to leave Bucky’s mouth to wholly take on Bucky’s unbroken attention on him, like all the many traces of inebriation soften when it comes to focus on Steve.

It’s a heady feeling in his chest, in his veins, in his goddamn toes on any day. Steve’s electrified though, from love and libations alike. He meets Bucky’s eyes and grins dopily because what else is there, but the joy; the giddiness of it?

“Waiting for something?” Steve asks, breathes a whisper in the saccharine fog of his mind suggests the game, the memories, the fact that they’d likely meant to speak of themselves. Shower each other with a brutally honest kind of praise not so different than most days and nights, in fairness, but different in every way, all the same.

Bucky watches him with wide eyes; no judgement. No exasperation. Something like wonder maybe. The good kind, and Steve suffuses with heat, goes warm all over and knows what he’s being asked for, and all things Bucky asks for, Steve will deliver with his heart bared in hand, just in case it’s needed too.

He knows beyond all reason or sense, that it’s wanted. Unquestionable and unwavering. He’s wanted. He’s cherished and treasured and he, they, it’s—

“You,” Steve exhales, last member of the team left, whole reason they’re here; and he’s as much at sea as he is stood firm and steady in the only place he knows, or ever cares to know again: “you, I,” he swallows, and reaches for a strand of Bucky’s hair that’s started to curl: “one word?”

“To start,” Bucky exhales, fragile and almost musical; “I wouldn’t, like, penalize you if you added more but,” he smiles so bright, so clear, shy but in a coaxing, coquettish way that’s somehow open, broken wide for Steve to take and give to, for Steve to make his own as he will, for Steve to worship and burrow inside for safety, for comfort and warmth. The gleam in his gaze is almost otherworldly, and beyond all Steve’s imaginings for himself in this world or the next, any other stream of space or time: no possibility could be born or crafted by design that surpasses any piece or part of this.

“Start with one.”

“Breathtaking.”

Steve says it breathlessly, too, and not even planned for it: it’s just soul-seared truth.

“Literally,” he adds, because it feels important. He’s suddenly both entirely sure he’s told Bucky this a hundred times, and unclear if he’s ever shared this shred of first truth, so overcome by others they’ve built upon its foundations of fate, or pure luck. “Could not fuckin’ breathe right, and I know intimately what that feels like, so.”

Bucky doesn’t smile, doesn’t speak, doesn’t say anything but doesn’t need to; somehow he just glows, and Steve leans down and kisses him deep, but tender: cherishes him, lips to lips.

“Home,” he breathes against Bucky’s open, swollen mouth; “but not like you are now, more like,” Steve licks his lips for time, to find words, but to taste Bucky’s longer too, just a as much; “like everything in the whole of being, in all of space and time, knew in that moment what I know now, and was giving me a glimpse, a taste, and I was already overwhelmed by it. Your voice was…” Steve’s body tingles, like a limb gone to sleep but set on fire, charged with lightning as he remembers the sensation in his chest that day, so familiar but forgotten: “home.”

So familiar if forgotten: then. It’s all he knows, now. He’s blessed by things he can’t comprehend the existence of, he figures. He has to be.

“The accent,” Bucky’s musing sweetly, softly, nodding: “makes sense.”

“Not just that, though.” Steve leans in on an impulse and nuzzles Bucky’s nose. “Like I said,” Steve leans his forehead to Bucky’s then and breathes, and breathes, and breathes. “Think the universe knew what you could come to mean, if I took the chance, and if you gave me one,” Steve’s breath catches, unthinkable what-it’s flashing but proving merciful, floating away just as fast: “and I wanted, so much, so hell yeah, I was taking that chance. Chasing it down and catching it with both hands.”

He grasps Bucky’s hands then, where they’d migrated to Steve’s chest and brings them to his mouth to kiss the rest into the skin:

“I also kinda wanted to climb you like a tree.”

Bucky snorts, and Steve takes the chance to offer Bucky a drink straight, to feed him the indulgence and watch his eyes slip shut: perfection.

He takes another drink himself, knowing it’ll taste even better with Bucky as a sugar-rim, an unparalleled chaser on the mouth of the bottle.

“Your turn,” Steve rumbles a little into the line of Bucky’s jaw once he’s finished savouring the treat against his tongue and needs to chase it back to the source, which then turned to kissing slow, worshipping Bucky’s flesh, his neck, his collarbones back up to his face, languid and lazy and warm from the inside out.

Steve looks up at a clicking noise, sort of musical: Bucky’s left pointer finger tapping indicatively on the bottle. Steve rolls his eyes but grabs for it immediately; fair’s fair, and he damn well’s spent the last good hour falling apart a little in, all cracks like spiderwebs, hairline fractures in his ability to see straight, or speak coherently: the perfect frisson of fire, the half-breath moment before control evaporates to the wind each time before they started again, question for question and shot for shot and if it was building to this all along, fuck—he will hold up his end of giving that gift to Bucky in a heartbeat, even as Steve suspects they’re going to smash the capacity to be even partially articulate all to hell, for the way his pulse is jackhammering, waiting for the words that match the hooded gleam, the banked embers of blue Bucky raises up, let’s the hint of his motion ease Steve to his back so Bucky can crawl atop him, Bucky’s gaze follows the ripple of Steve’s muscles for the shift while Steve follows Bucky dribbling the liqueur along one especially deep, and as yet unspecifically attended, line of his abs.

“Ass-lust,” Bucky finally speaks with a certain flippancy, a soft-glinting wryness: “with the hyphen.”

Steve laughs, but it’s shaky. Bucky’s not playing fair, exhaling along the line of alcohol, raising goosebumps on Steve’s skin.

“But,” Bucky’s tone is low as he breathes out slow and lets Steve tremble: “bright.”

He glances up, hooks Steve’s eyes when they pop open finally to check why the torturous thrill has stopped, and Steve’s trapped. Taken in heart and soul but then: always was.

“You were just like the sensation of brightness, the warmth that comes from it, the joy and the way it makes you smile, but like,” and Bucky smiles then, incandescent—object lesson in the flesh: “coaxes the smile so big, from the inside out.”

And Steve did that. Bucky is saying that Steve did that from the start.

The ache in Steve’s chest is a pleasure and privilege of a thing it can barely contain, even when Steve thought he’d gotten pretty good at holding things too big for his ribs.

“Bright ass-lust, then?” Steve whispers, mostly to hear, to feel Bucky’s laugh against his body, huffed against his skin.

“Exactly.” And Bucky dives in and licks the line like a puzzle, following careful and sure where it leads, before he kisses wet and wide at the center of Steve’s chest: far from where he started but seemingly exactly where he meant to end up.

Bucky looks up unexpectedly, to find Steve staring with emotions he’s not sure he could ever hope to name undoubtedly flooding his eyes. He tilts a brow, face low and lips shiny red:

“What?”

Steve shakes his head, filled with a rising, weightless-making sense of wonder and light:

“One word isn’t enough,” he murmurs, so much more in it than the truth of the words themselves, but he watches Bucky hear it, all of it.

He always does.

“Mmm,” Bucky nods; “couldn’t be, could it. But s’just a game.”

Bucky’s assurance soothes something, but in so doing it lets other things shift to brightness, breathe air wholly and find space and light to be known. Steve feels them rise geyser-fast, and strong, and he couldn’t have stopped them if he wanted to.

“I wish,” he’s saying, voice thick unedited lyrics, but also because no other way’s even possible: “I wish I could share how it feels,” and his eyes are blurring, he’s unspooling from the Center, his heart’s a mallet and a one-winged hummingbird, uneven and working double-time: “what I feel for you, this much, this much—”

“Stevie,” Bucky breathes out, a comfort as he runs hands up and down Steve’s chest, Steve’s jaw line, Steve’s arms and back again; “you do. You share it. Because it’s,” Bucky kisses him, and because he’s a miracle he steals air for it and gives Steve back his breath, the life inside him all at once.

“It’s us,” Bucky exhales into the corner of Steve’s lips. A kiss of their own. “Us together, feels like this.”

“You’re gonna make me cry, you fucking jerk,” Steve half-chokes, half-growls out before he reaches, and pulls Bucky in chest to chest.

“I love you,” he exhales into the curling ends of hair at Bucky’s nape, eyes closed to chart one pulse pressed tight against the other. “I will love you, until the day I die.”

Bucky makes a nearly wounded noise before he’s kissing Steve again, deep and desperate and touching everywhere, seeping everywhere, and Steve’s felt love coursing through his veins before blood before, for the sake of Bucky Barnes but this is different. Somehow this is different.

“No.”

Steve’s said it, given the word life before it forms further; the liquor apparently smooths the edges that better keep his clumsy words in check.

“No,” Steve forges on, quick with it too because these words aren’t clumsy. This is the voice his soul speaks in his own head, pumps through his own heart, always.

“I will love you so far beyond the day I die,” Steve whispers. “The universe, the whole fucking production, it’ll all have to burn out, until there’s nothing there, so nothing exists ever again,” Steve gasps air, running out and then giving it all up to kiss Bucky hard enough to empty his lungs all over again. He gasps against Bucky’s parted lips for a moment, forehead to forehead with this man he’ll rewrite the stars for.

“That’s the only thing that could stop this, James Buchanan Barnes,” Steve speaks the truth of it unflinchingly, unconditionally against Bucky’s lips: “And that might not even do the trick.”

Steve pulls back before he’s maybe thought through being ready, before he remembers to register that he never has to wait; is always ready to see this, the fuller part of his heart—and the glint in those coastswept eyes, just the slightest bit red at the edges, tells Steve all he needs to know, but then: laughter.

Sweet laughter. Joyful and untethered and ready to be all that Steve needs or imagines, to walk where Steve promises to challenge even the laws of life and death, and make it a labor of love and love alone.

Bucky’s laugh is a goddamn song.

“You’re ridiculous,” Bucky tells him, holds him, cherishes him with touch and holds tight enough Steve knows he could do anything, ridiculous or otherwise, and it would not change a single thing: Bucky would hold him, and touch him, and promise himself to Steve the very same either way.

“You are ridiculous, but I believe you,” Bucky exhales, and buries into Steve’s jaw, nuzzles his stubble; “even if the only sense in it is,” Bucky trails off, licks his lips more than once before Steve’s leaning in against his conscious will to do the same himself but Bucky’s ready, Bucky meets him and kisses hard, all consuming and declarative and certain to the point of impossibility as he whispers into Steve’s mouth:

“Even if that’s the only sense in it at all.”

“Is there better sense?” Steve asks softly: half a laugh, have a plea.

“Dunno,” Bucky exhales, long and gentle, blanketing all there is: “don’t think so.”

Steve hums—that’s possibly the best of all answers, Steve feels it effervescent in his blood, overwhelmed by something without name as much as without warning as he reaches out to trace Bucky’s cheekbones, one after the other with one hand braced for balance and feeling at Bucky’s sternum as he breathes out, the tightness in his own chest driving toward painful; the look in his eyes suddenly sharp and overwhelming.

“I want wrinkles that match, between the both of us,” Steve whispers, like he can petition the universe when his hands can feel Bucky’s pulse move; like he can draw the promise out of Bucky’s skin: “but I will fall to my fucking knees for the privilege of watching them grace your face, either way.”

His tears take a second to register as falling, dampening Bucky’s skin and drawing patterns of salt now, clear but crystalline as the light’s faded, feeling weighty like something sacred. Bigger than Steve can comprehend. He hopes that’s true, true to the cords of being itself.

It takes a second, and then a second more to feel Bucky’s tears joint his own: and Steve’s breath catches, and his hands frame Bucky’s face now as he rises up to look him in the eye, to be sure he’s safe, to see Bucky’s eyes and the love sun-blinding shining from him in the dusk: bigger than Steve can comprehend.

He could swear he heard the cords of the universe granting it truth.

“We’re a little tipsy, aren’t we?” Steve breathes, running a thumb over Bucky’s tear-slick lower lip.

“Fuck yeah, we are,” Bucky laughs wetly, kissing Steve’s finger sweetly as he closes his eyes and leans for a moment into Steve’s over hand at his cheek.

“But I’m an honest drunk,” Steve strokes that cheek with all the tenderness, all the need he can feel inside his soul and more, spilling over at every end. “Always was.”

“Add weepy drunk, and I think we’re a matched pair for both,” Bucky sits up, but brings his hand to keep Steve's palm on his face: he didn’t need to. Steve’s not going anywhere. And they breathe there, that point of contact meeting tangled legs, for minutes or hours or lifetimes as proof that this is more than life and death and the stretch of a mortal claim to the world. One or both. All and more.

Bucky’s breath shudders, and he looks at Steve, who murmurs:

“Want another shot?”

Bucky chuckles, but his eyes go big and bright; they’d clear with emotion. And Steve’s not opposed to some properly tipsy sex, the kind that fucking fossils can’t even dream of.

“Hell yeah,” Bucky nearly growls before lunging for the bottle, much lighter now than it began; “this stuff’s fantastic.”

Bucky lifts it, but instead of bringing it to his mouth he fits it to Steve’s, and Steve drinks long, and deep, like an offering from a god and it feels just as much like life itself distilled and granted as a goddamn gift.

It’s true, but it’s also true they’re clearer-eyed; not clear-eyed on the whole.

“Think he’ll bring more?” Bucky asks, considering as Steve swallows, and then Bucky lips around Steve’s mouth to clean the drips up for him.

“Text him,” Steve snarks just a little, before he devours Bucky’s mouth, still the best intoxicant on offer.

Any time. Anywhere.

________________________________________

Steve’s just off the very first mission he was allowed to do more than observe and advise on comms since the….building-collapse incident, so he’s already a little buoyant. It was a good mission, too: halfway across the world, taxing and straining enough to make his body feel used and alive without anything proving too threatening, too much of a risk—Bucky at his side. No injuries. No casualties. He’s buzzing with it a little, even hours later, still in their uniforms and fresh from the jet.

So here, in this familiar room, Steve’s grin is fit to crack his face with all sorts of effervescent joy when he sees the light in Peggy’s eyes, an innocent glee in her gaze that’s younger, purer than any one of them can still lay claim to in their lives, in what they’ve known and seen and survived; but it’s a glimmering wonder of a thing on its own—but then.

But then it’s met with the smile on Bucky’s face, pride and affection and a similar brand of childlike wonder as he holds the technicolored, many-splendored bouquet in his hands out to Peggy, and bites his lower lip just the tiniest bit—adorable—as he waits for her hands to steady, her grip to tighten and take the stems, bring them in close:

“We missed your birthday, Pegs,” Bucky says, his hands folding around hers for a second as his eyes take on more of the smiling and he watches her inspect the blossoms with something bordering on fascination: “Least we could do is bring you flowers.”

Peggy’s eyes flick up to Bucky’s, and in that instant she’s wholly transformed—but then, in another sense, wholly as she’s ever been, and always is; she’s a young woman who’s only seen the first shards of war, and still is astounded by the good in the world for its own sake, and not just for how it balances the horror.

“They’re exquisite, James,” she breathes, looking up at Bucky through her lashes, strangely almost shy with gratitude.

“From both of us,” Bucky tilts his head toward Steve as he leans in, and kisses her cheek; “Only the best.”

Steve steps closer to Peggy’s bed as Bucky leaves to find water and a vase, and Steve just keeps smiling as he watches Peggy bury her face in the blooms, inhaling the sweetness.

“Where on earth did you get such an arrangement?” she asks, glancing up at Steve. “I don’t even know what all of them are.”

“Literally got them all over Earth,” Steve chuckles lightly. They’d wrapped up a mission outside Sydney which had been, in the end, blessedly-but-also-maddeningly fought more through international treaties than fists, and the spread of flora outside the Embassy, blooming in opposite season, had prompted Bucky’s quest for the perfect birthday arrangement at every diplomatic pit-stop they made on the way back stateside.

“Turns out the refrigeration units on the quinjets are pretty good at preserving plants,” and more than any of the flowers themselves, Steve feels warmth and light bloom in his chest as he thinks of Bucky’s giddiness, matched only by his dogged resolve to pair colors and sizes and shapes just right, the aesthetic flair something that spoke to Steve deeply, but not nearly as deeply as the sheer adoration that Steve knows—and not just because Natasha had pointed it out more than once—had damn well been seeping from his pores as he watched Bucky glow with the same focus and skill he put toward a battle, just as breathtaking but here set toward such delicate ends: Steve felt as smitten as it was possible to be and still fit air to breathe beside it in his chest; “and he—”

Steve’s voice catches a little, and he breathes deep and lets his eyes slip closed as he relives the words that had followed Bucky’s repurposing of the quinjet cooling systems; replays the look on Bucky’s face, the glow in his eyes.

“He said,” Steve breathes, half in the moment but still halfway in his thoughts: “his mom’s a botanist, teaches science, y’know,” he tells Peggy, as if she doesn’t know all about Win Barnes, as if Bucky doesn’t talk his mother up with a little bit of hero-worship when the thought of her proves relevant to the conversation at hand, hell: as if Bucky hadn’t taken a call on speaker with his mom when they’d been here in this very room, letting Peggy weigh in on destinations for the Barnes’ expiring frequent flyer miles to be put towards seeing.

As if Peggy isn’t part of Bucky’s family now, too, because he’s Steve’s. Because Steve has a family again, a real one—being with Bucky brought him the whole Barnes clan, but fighting alongside Bucky with his heart so full, that had taught him to love and lean on his team in new ways, it had brought him new joy in visiting Peggy with Bucky beside him, steeped in promise rather than lost in the past, because this is the future, his future, and he has a family; and god.

God.

“He said,” Steve’s voice is gentle, because in his head he just hears Bucky: “she always taught him that if you were going to give a bouquet of flowers to a person you love,” and this, when he says it: this is the part that he knows is catching him up, breaking the skin and sinking in with something life altering and brilliant and terrifying in ways he can’t fit to words:

“For the people you love, it should be a bouquet that blossoms all year ‘round.”

Peggy’s eyes widen, and Steve feels on the edges of that unutterable thing drawing in around him, the precipice of something bigger than he’s certain he can stand, so he leans in, and stalls whatever’s coming just a little longer by pointing out each flower just like Bucky’d done for him, from the alstroemeria in bright hues to a trio of magnolias near the center each framed by jewel-toned hellebores, to the ixora bubbling around the circumference of the bundle here and there between lavender and salvia and three spare branches of bleeding hearts, and—

“Oh Steve, look.”

Peggy’s breathless as her fingers lift the tiny blooms, almost-lost as they are at the very base of the arrangement, nearly risking being crushed by even the most careful of hands holding the colors close: and that’s when it rings in his head, and seizes his lungs, and beats like a church bell through the chambers of a heart not prepared for the feeling, for the immensity of what he sees and how it builds and all that he used to think and know and dream and wish and how every single scrap of that is overcome entirely by what he holds in his arms every night, and wakes to every morning, and presses tight to his chest just to know that it’s real, he—

“Snowdrops,” she murmurs, and oh.

Oh: that’s what she’d told him, ages ago. Called what he’d known, what they’d known, or could have done, if fate had dealt a different hand. Snowdrops, what they’d had, and then she’d told him about more, so much more—about things he didn’t grasp, or believe, about deserving, or maybe being good enough to earn.

But maybe, maybe, things he already has, right in front of him.

And in truth: he doesn’t think he is good enough; doesn’t know if it’s even possible to deserve the things he’s found, and been given. But dear lord—and he hears Bucky’s footsteps in the hall, only because he knows them as well as he knows the drumbeat of a pulse hammering in his ears; just as well or better—dear lord.

“Spring through autumn, darling,” Peggy whispers, and plucks a snowdrop from the bouquet and holds it out to Steve to take with shaking hands. “And further still.”

And Steve? He likely hasn’t earned this. He probably doesn’t deserve it. He’s not sure anyone could.

But Bucky comes back in, and wraps a hand around Steve’s waist, pressing lips to the base of his neck before he even puts down the vase he’s found, as if greeting Steve and kissing his skin is the first and only thing to do, before which everything else pales in comparison.

And Steve thought Bucky’d taught him what love could mean, and do, and be.

But he’s reminded, here and now, that Bucky’s going to teach him that bigger, brighter, over and again anew until Steve Rogers breathes his last.

Chapter Text

They’ve caught their breaths, but Steve is still a little sweat-slick, and he’s unabashedly relishing the deep cut of scratch marks, the sweet-sore press of bruises in the shape of Bucky’s hands—effervescent; like a goddamn dream.

And where he’s curled around Bucky, head at the base of Bucky’s sternum and legs tangled: where they’re skin-to-skin at every point of Steve’s frame they’re still warmer than normal, and it’s exquisite, and where Steve looks up at Bucky—the cut of his jaw, the dip in his chin, the swell of his lips: he’s mesmerizing. He’s impossible. He’s perfect.

“What?”

Bucky smirks down at him, and Steve knows his own gaze is wholly enamored; nothing hidden or tamped down. Steve only really has one answer to offer:

“I love you.”

Bucks smirk widens, and his eyes sparkle, sand played in moonlight: incalculable and beyond logic, stretched endless beyond life and death.

“Hmm,” he draws out, squints playfully down at Steve, running a hand through Steve’s hair: “you sure?”

He’s joking, the mirth and the joy in it roll off in waves Steve can nearly feel against his bare skin, and the surety that lends itself to the ribbing make Steve’s soul sing, but there’s the fundamental, deathless part of Steve that cannot stand down, or sit quietly, or turn a blind eye to even the smallest wrongs in the world—not when they’re to do with the most important of things, and not when they’re to do with the most essential of people.

And even the suggestion, in jest, that Bucky doesn’t know beyond any question or doubt, that Steve’s entire definition of love has shifted and been reshaped by the fact, the breathing reality of one James Buchanan Barnes, through and through?

He’s been working, diligently, on using his words. He’s made so much progress, learned so much about himself and his needs and his faults and his failings and his strengths, even, too, and he can almost call them that and not feel like a fraud. He’s grappling, meaningfully, with how to deal with the fears everyone knows, that make them human, in his special-flavor of them, just in case he’s not entirely human anymore when it’s said and done and he’s left alone; and even so, he’s trying to entertain the idea of balancing hope, too, for what he wants from that possibility, because possibilities can go a multitude of directions, can land toward a plethora of ends—he’s trying to hope for the unknown quantity of that fear to tip in his favor, a place where the last inhale his lungs dein to take tastes like the final beat of the heart he holds closer than his own.

He’s trying like hell, to learn how to hope.

And funnily enough, it’s something he thinks he can do, too. He’s not entirely sure how yet, it’s still a work in progress, but the fact that he thinks he could hope for the ending he’s been living in fear of never seeing as a possibility is...fuck.

It’s kind of amazing.

But maybe the most consistent thing he’d been trying to do is to, doggedly, push through imperfection in order to show his heart wholly, because—for him, for the way Steve Rogers thinks, and even he can admit his therapist is right in saying as much—only by leaving nothing unsaid can there be as few regrets as the world could allow.

And nothing, nothing about Bucky could even flirt with being a regret.

And it’s helped, in working on using his words and shaping his soul for the sharing, to trust the instincts that have usually served him well, so when here, and now, Steve feels the unprompted, unexpected need to give voice the things his pulse’s moving awkward around for their size and heft? Steve checks those instincts.

And Steve is so, absolutely, eternally, unfailingly sure.

So he slides up Bucky’s side a little higher, curls a little closer, drapes a little more fully over the left side of him and rests his head just at his clavicle, close enough to hear his heartbeat as just a gentle susurrus, all waves on the shore unending, and powerful, and true. And that’s the sound he lets propel him, that steady rush.

There are so many reasons why he’s certain he loves Bucky Barnes; more certain than he is that he lives and breathes in the world at all. The least he can do, in this moment, is speak his heart; the first example of that surety that came to mind when Bucky glanced down to meet his eyes, lip quirked, hand in Steve’s hair, humming and asking—

You sure?

He leans just a little, so that he can kiss the pulsepoint between Bucky’s collarbones, because of a million reasons, Steve can damn well give voice to one.

“When I was small,” Steve whispers soft against the beat of blood there—essential; “and I’d get real sick,” and Bucky’s pulse at the swell of Steve’s lip trips a little, adjusting accordingly to the heaviness, the solemnity Steve can’t banish from his tone even if his voice is horribly faint, so Steve kisses it again, maybe to reassure, to reaffirm them both, before he tries to form the words to follow.

“My ma, she’d bundle me up, trying to keep me warm,” Steve swallows hard, remembering the soft blonde curls of his mother’s hair, tickling his cheeks.

“But when my breathing was bad, or,” Steve’s voice stumbles, a hairline fracture already that he knows will crack and shatter before he’s done but he’s in warm arms now, too, and the hands on his skin will save all the pieces.

He can do this.

“Sometimes, y’know, when my heart would beat funny, after I had the fever, and that,” Steve pauses again, just this time it’s because the arms around him tighten, ever so slightly when he speaks about the scarlatina, the terrifying strawberried tongue and the fire in his throat: that closest of calls in his youth, one of too many, save that too many in truth would have kept him from this moment—but Bucky still feels the threat of it, long before he was even born; Bucky still reacts to the barest memory of it shared, even with proof against the worst breathing in his hold, and Steve loves him so much he thinks he could live off the force of that feeling until the sun gave out and the world burned. He’s sure of it.

Bucky kisses his temple, and holds there, and Steve leans into the press of lips greedily, needy as hell; closes his eyes and steadies his words.

“She’d pull me in close,” and Steve doesn’t think Bucky means to, or knows it: but he does exactly the same, like Steve’s asking, instead of trying to bare his soul.

“And she’d say, you know, kid stuff,” Steve presses his lips together hard, makes the edges of his teeth dig divots into the flesh so he can taste the threat, but not quite the fact of blood on his tongue for it. He tries to find a way to say the words in his head, in his chest, lead-heavy and fluttering all at once.

“She’d hold me,” Steve breathes in, and tries to root himself in the warm-soft scent of Bucky’s body wrapped around his own. “She’d hold me, and she’d say,” and with that rooting, he can let himself slip a little, fade a little into a past he doesn’t always trust himself to walk inside, to touch too close lest he get lost and for the longest time, he thought it was a weakness, to sometimes wish he would get lost; and then he’d met Bucky, and he’d thought it nothing short of a sin to even risk losing anything that they might have, that they could find and build between them, but now—now, Steve trusts Bucky, and trusts himself, enough that he can remember, and he’s close enough to being at peace with the past that even if he snags, gets caught climbing back out to the present, there are hands that won’t just pull him back, but know him, and trust him, too, to believe wholly that Steve would never, ever, want to get lost back there. That Steve would never want to be anywhere, but here. With the man he loves more fiercely than he’s ever fought, or strived, or wished for: more than he’d ever imagined he could feel or know.

So Steve trusts, and he inhales long, and he remembers his mother’s words like they’re being murmured, hushed and tight and scared against the shell of his ear in a too-small room, in a too-cold bed, with a too-thin blanket to warn of the chill:

“Hold tight, a stóirín,” Steve whispers, like the words are fragile and sacred, like his mother whispered them to him, like they’re branded in his mind even through the haze of the illnesses they’d matched, so deep that he thinks he’d remember them without any serum to make every memory crystalline; indelible. He’d know this on his deathbed; he could be reborn, and this would be one of the things that would latch on and hold.

“Hold so tight and so close,” Steve dips his face closer, tighter into the side of Bucky’s neck, and Bucky lifts his head automatically, by rote; stretches his neck so Steve is cradled with perfect constancy, not a moment lost: “so close that when you breathe in, my lungs can fill yours, so close that your heart beats straight between my ribs,” and where Sarah Rogers had rubbed measured lines along Steve’s crooked spine, Bucky’s hand immediately, without a moment’s thought to hold it, burrows between Steve’s pec against Bucky’s side and flips, palm up, to splay warm against Steve’s chest, to encompass the shape of that very same organ and its turbulent melee beneath the skin that Bucky knows, somehow, the core of what steves about to say; how much it means when Steve’s bulk is pressing Bucky’s touch into his flesh so tight and close and hard that Bucky has to feel the riot, has to be able to pick up every give-and-take of those chambers of muscle dancing with familiar left feet.

It takes Steve’s breath away, and he lets it, lives without the air so he can savor the moment and the outline of Bucky’s touch raised against every beat—and then he inhales, a little sharp, and he takes Bucky’s touch and everything it means to him, body and soul, and lets it sink into his bones so he can hear his mother’s voice again; can lay himself open wide so Bucky can see: can know.

“Straight between my ribs, so my heart can protect your heart,” Steve whispers his ma’s words, Bucky’s breath warm on his skin and he’s a creature made solely and entirely of feeling in those instants, stretching into lifetimes: “protect it and teach it new songs, new rhythms whenever it forgets.”

And Bucky’s cheek is setting its own rhythm against the crown of Steve’s head, back and forth as Bucky cradles him close and holds to his chest with one hand, and around his back with the other, and the pressure of ever that featherlight caress tucks Steve closer into Bucky’s chest, and now it’s not just a wind-wisp; now, Steve can hear Bucky’s heartbeat like a homecoming, and Steve give himself a moment to recognize everything about the song as much as he learns it anew like the very first time, and Steve’s pressing heavy, almost desperate into the skin welcoming him there as he whispers the last of the words he carries in him, before fever or weakness or delirium overtook him every time:

“Sweet boy, a thaisce, just—” and Steve’s voice breaks, and he drops open lips to the press of Bucky’s beating blood, his breath catching for the closeness, the parallel, the intimacy as much as he’s likely only able to have a chance of catching his breath again at all for being that, for knowing that deep and feeling the life and warmth so that’s where he stays, breathing heavily until he starts breathing soft again and Bucky holds him. Bucky’s hands never falter, and his pulse never gives, and it’s proof-perfect of all the words he’s saying, and all the words waiting under Steve’s tongue to be offered, come what may.

“I didn’t,” Steve’s voice is more gravel than sound, but he pushes on: “I didn’t realize, at first, I mean, why would I—” Steve huffs, a little wet, a little at tattered ends and loose, scrabbling, but Bucky: Bucky's hands are still on Steve’s skin, so steady. So warm.

Deep breaths.

“After the serum, I didn’t…” Steve’s chest heaves as he inhales sharp, the skin stretched over his ribs pressing against Bucky’s pulse with the breath life to life. “I mean, I was strong, I was the one protecting people, so I didn’t notice, not really, until,” and it’s not a conscious choice, when Steve’s hand covers Bucky’s had, caught between their bodies where Bucky’s still holding against the center of Steve’s chest, and it’s not conscious, either: the way he clutches to that hand like a lifeline.

“With my ma,” Steve whispers like a secret, and maybe it is: never spoken, barely thought until it mattered here, like this, with the man wrapped around him and pressed against him.

“It was the only time in my life,” Steve closes his eyes tight, his lashes catching on Bucky’s skin; “that I knew what it was like to feel safe.”

Steve feels Bucky’s throat working, but no words come out; Bucky’s lips drop to the crown of Steve’s head, once and twice and again, and Steve’s eyelids ease, still closed but soft now newer against something far but holding, relishing what’s here.

“And once I realized,” Steve’s voice comes out pitchy,strained and a little desperate because this is the peak. This is where he doesn’t have to remember and know the ending; this is where he has to leap and hope.

“I missed it,” Steve says, soft but there’s steel beneath because it’s a truth he’s been holding, soldering firm for years, now. “I missed it so much, and then—”

Steve doesn’t realize he’s gasping until Bucky’s hand on Steve’s chest turns again and laces in an instant with Steve’s fingers and draws them, tight just to the point of pain against Steve’s heaving lungs and pounding heart and Steve uses it as a lodestone, that point of touch alongside Bucky’s lips pressed to his brow, hard and firm enough to hold Steve still as he tries to find a point of balance.

“I’m not saying this right,” Steve finally manages to huff, shaking his head and burying his face into the crook of Bucky’s neck with a groan, hating that the motion shakes Bucky’s lips from his skin; thinking through how to just leave this, how to say what he wants to, needs to—except that what he wants is impossible, is childlike magic just as he’s been telling it: he needs to just put his heart in Bucky’s chest so he can fucking know the breadth and depth of how Steve feels, of how much Bucky is. “You know I’m no good at words.”

“You’re beautiful,” Bucky murmurs, and it’s Bucky burying his face at the top of Steve’s head, now, kissing his hair; “I think your words are beautiful.”

Steve let’s himself bask in those words, the honeyed light of them a beacon to follow if it lets it be, one step in front of another, no shame when there’s this much love. The words don’t have to be perfect, and neither does he. Not with this much love.

His therapist’ll be proud. Steve thinks he, himself: hell, Steve thinks he’s proud.

“I felt so,” Steve bites hard at his lip for a second; “so stupid, and selfish, and—”

Steve makes himself push back enough to be able to tip his head and see Bucky’s face, and it’s a struggle but it’s also a need: he needs to see Bucky. He needs to find and hold his eyes, if he’s going to do this.

Steve has never been one to do what matters by halves; hell if he’ll start now.

“And Buck,” he reaches the hand not braced in Bucky’s own at Steve’s chest; he reaches, cups Bucky’s cheek.

“I’ve been that selfish, still,” Steve speaks like a confession when he’s not been in the confessional in nearly a century; before God when he believed, though, he hadn’t felt like his soul hanged in the balance more than he does right now.

“Selfish, with how I’ve hoarded every piece of you that you’ve given, shared with me,” Steve’s vision, enhanced as it is, still can’t see enough of Bucky’s eyes, can’t read every hint of what the words draw, how they land, and Steve’s heart hurts for the thrashing, now, but he tries to keep some small part of himself tied in how his hand in Bucky’s doesn’t leave Steve’s chest. Which is fitting. Which is everything.

“I’ve been slipping all that straight between my ribs, so my heart could give all that I am to protect yours, god,” Steve’s throat closes around words and breath alike, choked and before he can try to gasp for it Bucky’s moved, Bucky’s lips are on his and the contact alone steals Steve’s breath in a wholly different way and Steve melts into the kiss, consuming even as its gentle; world-shifting, even as its brief,

“From damn near the very first, Bucky, long before we ever said, or, or,” Steve pants at the corner of Bucky’s mouth when they part; “I was, I’ve been…”

Steve bows his head, more a victim of gravity than anything else, nestled under Bucky’s chin.

“You, you make me feel it,” Steve mouths against his throat: “like my heart’s in your chest, like your heart protects my heart, even if you don’t know it, even if it’s not, for you, if you don’t—“

“I do,” Bucky cuts him off, one palm cradling Steve’s cheek as he moves their bodies in a moment, an instant, so that they’re face to face and its Steve’s hand, now, pressed hard enough to Bucky’s chest for Steve to chart each half of every pulse, the electricity tingling impossible through his skin.

“Steve,” Bucky breathes, and Steve meets his eyes: huge and bright and unblinking: “Steve, you’re—”

“I feel safe,” Steve blurts out, the words tumbling because that’s the heart of it, the core and Steve needs it said and known. “For the first time in a goddamn century, Buck,” and Steve reaches too, now, mirrors Bucky wholly and holds his face dear in his hands.

“You love me,” Steve breathes, if barely; marvels, more than he can hold or stand. “You love me, and you make me feel so, so safe and, and I...”

Suddenly, Steve feels weightless, and unmoored, and his very being flails for it—flails, though, for less than a moment because when he trails off, falls silent, Bucky lets his hands drop from Steve’s cheek and moves instead to take Steve’s hand from his own, and to lead that hand to gather both Steve’s palms between Bucky’s first against Bucky’s heart—pounding now, faster now—and then lifted to Bucky’s lips where Bucky’s kisses them: something sacred in the gesture, in the touch and taste.

“Steve,” Bucky exhales against Steve’s fingertips and Steve shivers for it, and he’s made only of love and hope and disbelief in the face of incomprehensible joy, for the feeling in Bucky’s gaze; to be the focus of it all.

“Fuck, but you make a guy feel fifty feet tall,” Bucky shakes his head, the most exquisite smile tilting his lips. He kisses Steve’s hands again, and then he shifts them, moves Steve’s frame to settle—safe—against his chest, ear to Bucky’s heartbeat, and Steve sighs and sinks into it, into him, exhaust but filled with pure light, all the same.

They’re quiet, and they breathe each other in for long moments before Bucky breathes in deep, and breaks the still.

“Sometimes,” he murmurs, “when I remember things, you know, childhood. High school. When I think about it, it takes a second, because I feel like you’ve always been there, always been a part of everything I’ve been and known,” and he nuzzles Steve’s forehead, urges him to look up and meet Bucky’s eyes a Steve would ever deny him, as if there’s a better sight in the world.

“Like my whole life, there was, not a hole but a,” Bucky sucks on his lower lip, thinking a moment before he lets it go, glossy in the dim.

“But a space, waiting,” and now Bucky reaches with both hands, and frames Steve’s face like a gift.

“A space where you’d fit,” he says, something incredulous and giddy lacing the words and shaped like his smile: awe-struck.

“Like I was born with it, this perfect, Steve-shaped space,” Bucky runs his thumbs back and forth against Steve’s cheekbones: “to hold you, to,” he blinks, and swallows hard: “to have you, you’re...”

And Steve: Steve thinks he might come apart, or float away, or dissolve into the glorious ether of Bucky and his words and the light in his eyes that’s made of the same love, somehow, that bursts in Steve’s chest. Steve wants to be unmade in this moment, here and now, so he can be reshaped in the world made only of this feeling, and the way that is shared.

“You, heart and soul and everything, Steve,” Bucky whispers, leans in so that his lips drag wet and hot against the hard line of Steve’s jaw; “you, everything you are, every bit of you,” the bridge of his nose presses at the underside of Steve’s chin and Steve’s head tilts back on instinct, and Bucky breathes in, breathes out between the twin pulses along Steve’s throat.

“I’ll live and die for you.”

And Steve’s world stops, stills just as it tilts and breaks open, trembles and spills honey-sweet, sunshine pure and golden, unbearable for its brightness, its brilliance, for every piece of Steve it brings to new life and envelopes like every bit of him is worth cradling closer than blood and breath.

“And my heart will always protect your heart, any way it can,” Bucky presses the words, one by one from the gap between Steve’s collarbones to the riotous jump of his skin where that held-close blood beats harder than Steve thinks his ribs can hold.

“Look at me,” Bucky murmurs, lifting his head, his mouth from just above the heart that’s his, entirely his:

“Always, Steve. For as long as we live, and as long as the universe stretches after.”

And Steve does come undone, then; gives himself not to the universe but to the heart and hands of this moment to be remade and he thinks he’s shaking, he thinks he’s shattering, he thinks he’s soaring and none of it matters because his hands are on Bucky, whose hands are on him, and he can see the sheen in Bucky’s eyes when he speaks from his soul:

“I love you. I love you so fucking much, Buck,” he says it, he vows it, he swears it bloom-to-bone through the marrow of him and it’s still not enough: “I can’t—”

But Bucky can, of course he can, and he does, because the way their lips meet is somehow, unfathomably, brand new to the cosmos, and Steve meets it, because that small novelty, that perfect brush with infinitude, is closer to the universe Steve cups in his chest, in his hands, to hold the vastness of this feeling, this wholeness safe inside his ribs.

Chapter Text

Steve’s fidgeting in his seat. He can feel the banked curiosity, bordering on concern—he hasn’t been this keyed up since he started counseling, and his therapist reads him better than almost everyone, but he knows what he looks like. The anxiety coming through loudest on the surface, even if Steve’s heart’s drumming something bigger, deeper, and the swell of it is unrestrained, undeniable.

“Can I,” Steve finally starts, and then stops himself. He can find better words, or any words. Plus he knows by now that’s a useless questions: there’s nothing off limits here. He’s safe. He’s supported. He’s in excellent hands.

But it’s, he’s…

“Steve?”

Steve looks up and meets his therapist’s eyes: soft. Compassionate. Ready for whatever he has to throw at her, even if it’s clear she’s expecting something on the other end of the spectrum from where he stands.

“Can I just,” Steve leans back, sighing deeply and rubbing his face:

“I just want to talk about how much I love my,” and Steve thinks the term’s what’s tripping him, what has been for a while as he pondered this very idea, this concept, as it morphed into something solid, a possibility he could touch: how does he name what Bucky is to him? What he’s always be?

“My everything.”

Well. He guesses that works alright. For now. Even if somehow it still short.

But he babbles, rambles, gushes for it, for who know how long—he could go for longer, could go on forever, but his voice eventually sticks, eyes prickling when he starts to recall Bucky, propped against him, splayed beneath him all skin and heartbeat, equally bare; Bucky’s words as much to Sarah Rogers as to Steve, Bucky, Bucky, Bucky.

“You have something special, you know,” his therapist tells him in the quiet that follows as Steve tries to manage a grasp on his emotions, her smile soft but warm.

“I do know.”

God, does Steve know. The words are rough but they’re painted from the truth of his heart because with all that he is, he knows.

“Steve,” and he must stay quiet, chest tight and lost in his thoughts longer than he thinks because she doesn’t often steer the conversation unprompted; doesn’t take the reins from him without reason.

“Time, and years, and fear of loss,” she says, almost speculative, the auditory version of scratching the chin; “of losing before you can have the life you want, the experiences you’re hoping to know together,” she leans forward, and steeped her fingers. “Not enough time, right?”

Steve swallows hard only to find it heart picking up speed and lodged right on the way behind his Adam’s apple; nods mechanically. But nods, and he makes himself recognize it for whatnot all is: fear.

But progress, somehow, nonetheless.

“Think about all that you’ve just told me,” she proposes, open with it as always; never instructive. Almost suggestive. Steve breathe deep and finds himself in the familiarity, rather than the terrifying expanse of possibility without direction or limits, with the potential to be decimating to all that he is, as much as life giving, as much as it might save his soul.

“Think about all those things you’ve told me, and all that you haven’t,” she quirks a brow, and Steve colors, snorts, and he knows it predictable, knows that’s precisely why she said it. His chest loosens the slightest bit. “Think about the breadth and depth of it. How much of it there is.”

Steve listens, digests it: tries to even conceive those things, the breadth of endlessness and the depth of infinitude.

“How much time would be enough?”

Steve’s head snaps up, and his jaw drops a little, and he’s entirely lost for a lagging space of seconds. In the end, though, it’s not a hard question to answer.

“There’s no amount of time.”

Maybe the idea of ‘enough’ itself was foolish from the get-go, was the wrong question to even bother trying to tackle. Because it’s irrelevant; because in one way, it doesn’t exist. And then in another—

“There’s no possible amount of time that would be enough,” Steve speaks, staring at the wall in revelation, almost dumbfounded with how hard it all hits him, a hurricane and a punch to the gut.

“But then,” his eyes go to his therapist; “every moment,” he’s breathless, suddenly, his voice small but unwavering; full and fit to burst.

“Every single moment is so much more than enough, and I,” his breath cuts him off before he can make a choice, and look for the words. He feels a little like he’s run a marathon, or he’s been crushed beneath an avalanche; like he’s seeing the sun for the first time, or touching the Holy Grail.

He breathes in deep, and it hurts a little, but it feels so much like life, just pure fucking life that’s he could cry.

“Do you remember how we, um,” Steve starts, and bites his lip: “how we put, not on the shelf, but um…”

“Vows?”

Steve doesn’t know how she does it, lips and brown quirked—he doesn’t know how she knows it but:

“Yeah,” Steve exhales, and Lena’s back in his chair. “Yeah. Can we talk about that, again?”

Her smile grows, and Steve feels light.

________________________________________

Steve isn’t sure what sparks it, on that particular day. Mortality, maybe—what with therapy, and thinking about enough time, and the impossibility of the idea itself, just the word: when Bucky is so far beyond enough himself that having enough of him, with him is unfathomable—maybe it’s the darker lens, now. A softer focus though too, somehow.

It’s possible. Probable, even.

But he’s not certain.

On the flip side of that coin: Steve isn’t certain, either, or what’s left him to leave it so long. He’s gone, twice a month, like clockwork unless a mission’s keeping him; changes the flowers—but it’s almost rote by now. He doesn’t know how to pray in this new world, with an understanding of meaning and life and what comes after that’d be unrecognizable to his childhood; even to the self that went to war. He doesn’t know how to stand there and look and think and speak a God he doubts not just in the face of gods he knows, but for all that he’s known—he doesn’t know how, and he feels uncomfortable with the attempt so he rarely tries anymore, just tends the plot and sometimes sheds a tear, and wishes he could see her face again somewhere outside his memories, hear her voice. Sometimes he feels sick with it, when he thinks about it, somewhere deeper down than he knows words for, how what he’s doing isn’t enough, how he’s not enough but then; just as deep, and somewhere far more powerful, now: he feels certain he needs to do this.

Whatever enough is or isn’t, he suddenly needs this with every pulse of his heart.

“Hey, Buck?”

Because that would always be enough, Bucky himself, Bucky at his side, Bucky’s hand in his, in love: and Steve’s genuinely overcome with the need to ask Bucky if he’ll come stand beside him in this like everything else, because Steve needs to do this, and—maybe selfishly, maybe not, he isn’t sure—he needs Bucky there. He’s gone on his own, always after an errand or appointment, a meeting or task, sandwiched between distractions from the fact that he lost his mother closer to a century ago than not; he hadn’t deliberately excluded Bucky, but it had already become routine by the time they met, to hide it in his own schedule as if he could hide from the pain that way, and to be fair sometimes it worked: when it didn’t, he didn’t see any need to share the ache.

But now: now he shared his aches and bears another’s with gratitude in any breath. And he just hadn’t thought of it, feels shame that it had become a routine to feel as little of his ritual as possible that it had grown mechanical: but maybe it’d been Win, on the phone earlier in the week, asking after the menu for maybe the world’s most belated Easter dinner—they’d had a hell of a mission the week of this year, and had ended up off the grid for nearly a month; maybe he’d felt home again, and warmth, like he always does but maybe it had hit differently, jostled something in his head, behind his sternum, spoke new truths likewise overdue.

Or maybe it was remembering her words and whispering them against Bucky’s skin, pressing them to the beating heart of this man he feels so much for, words fall short every time to name it; his ribs nearly break to contain it.

Maybe it’s a bit of everything. Maybe it’s about what he didn’t have enough time of, with, near: maybe it’s about having it returned in a new shade, played in a transposed key, different but beautiful and—in Bucky—more than his biggest dreams on tenement steps could have stretched to even see the surface of; would have broken, shattered fully at even the suggestion of this, and so maybe, maybe Steve needs to take the better half of his heart by by the hand to do this right now, because what’s pulling him to do it right now is the bone-deep need for his mom to meet the love of his life.

And Bucky: he doesn’t wait for Steve to finish, or elaborate, when choked a bit in asking if Bucky will come with him—and that means more than Steve can wholly fathom, he thinks; maybe more than he’ll ever be able to fully grasp because buckets got his boots laced—has grumbled because shoving them on didn’t work, as it only ever half does, before starting from scratch—and is sliding his jacket over his shoulders, the slip of metal beneath the black a mesmerizing dance, the shine of it from the window light breathtaking, and Steve’s still in his goddamn socks when he strides toward the door and grabs Bucky’s face and kisses him, long and deep and so fucking hard, desperate with it, and feels like he can breathe again when Bucky gives back, meets him instead of simply inviting his fervor and welcoming it in—matching it nip for suck when Steve didn’t even realize it’s what he needed. What he wanted more than air.

It’s probably how he seems to know somehow where they’re headed, or else, enough that he moves first toward the flower shop they pass, leans in the direction of the irises, one of Sarah’s favorites without Steve leading the way, taking them in his grasp as he takes Steve hand on the other side, and is wholly unsurprised when they get to the cemetery, old enough the newest grave in its from the previous century.

“Hey Ma,” Steve says, his hands making to go to his pockets as he shuffles forward a little, but Bucky’s hold on his hand tightens, his fingers lacing sure between Steve’s, as he follows wordlessly, a solid presence against his side, his grip firm enough Steve can feel his own pulse in the press of their palms.

“Sorry it’s,” Steve turns to the headstone, makes himself straighten and doesn’t question the way he increases the pressure, the desperation of his hold on Bucky, and is repaid immediately by the unquestioning return of the same: sure and unwavering. “I mean, that it’s been, that I,” Steve starts to fumble: guilt, sorrow, the wash of emotion he tries to hide from between schedule commitments as he sets his bouquet and gives his love and leaves once, the twice every month like it’s enough, like it’s—

He doesn’t notice how heavily he’s breathing, or the wetness on his cheeks, until Bucky’s releasing his hand and turning his body to line their frames together, to pull Steve to his chest and breathe slow, sure against Steve’s heaving ribs, coaxing him without a single word and only adding words, the softest breath at the shell of his ear, once Steve’s rediscovered the feeling of oxygen in his lungs:

“She’s with you always,” Bucky whispers against him, knowing, again, because he’s Bucky; “you keep her in your heart every day.”

And Steve bows his head into the crook of Bucky’s neck, breathes heavy there as Bucky’s hand comes to cradle him close until Steve catches his breath, eases and Bucky can straighten him on two feet to take his hand again, to bend awkwardly but never letting go to place the flowers at the bat of the grave, gentle: almost reverent, before he stands again and pulls himself by Steve’s touch, all the way to pressing staves knuckles to his lips.

“Here is just a place to see, to remember in a different way,” Bucky tells him, adds on like a warmth, forgiveness and absolution in his tone and his words not because Bucky puts them there, but because Steve finds them, open as they are to be whatever Steve’s needs inside of every syllable. “Not better. Not the only way.”

And Steve can do only one thing in that moment, before spirits and rocks and dust, beneath untended willows and the full spread of the universe swimming beyond a slate-shaded sky:

Steve pulls back and frames Bucky’s face and kisses him full, hard and with every feeling he can distill through his lips, through that touch, until they’re both breathless enough to need a minute, to require the support when they touch their heads together to lean, to breathe.

“I love you so fucking much,” Steve murmurs between them, and it’s Bucky who kisses him now, who captures his mouth in something sweeter, something softer that leaves Steve feeling cherished, like a caress, but also strong—strong enough to grab Bucky’s hand again and turn to his mothers name etched in the stone.

“Ma,” he starts again, no with shame or guilt but with love, and that’s bigger. The hand in his own reminds him of that fact keenly; truly.

“I, umm,” he swallows, licks his lips and breathes deep. “I wanted to bring someone with me. To introduce you. Maybe you already know him, if you can, if you’re,” Steve falters, knows full well what he doesn’t know about the world he inhabits, which is still infinitely more than what he knows about what lies next; he starts toward floundering, but Bucky’s squeezing his hand and he remembers: whatever is next, will be with this man. Or it won’t be anything at all.

“Well,” Steve rights himself, and closes his eyes to focus on Bucky’s touch, and the feeling of love that was only familiar in the first place because of his mother.

“Either way,” Steve finally says, blinking his eyes back open. “Long overdue. But I want you to meet Bucky Barnes, he’s,” and at that, Steve trails off again, not sure how to put his feelings, the magnitude of Bucky and all that he means into words. Steve can barely scrape the surface in the embrace of him, safe in their bed—he tries to think of words small enough to manage for the moment, but it’s impossible, he can’t contain this in—

But then it comes to him: a sense memory met alongside the images, the soft-focus pictures in his mind. His heart’s moving quick in his chest again, and maybe that sparks it. Maybe it’s his mother’s name spelled out, etched before him. The echo of her presence, real somewhere beyond the seen or willed forth from within him. Or the soft scent of the irises still in Bucky’s hand.

But he remembers, whatever caused it. Remembers asking his mother how she knew she was in love with his father. He was so small, begging for stories of his Pa, and she’d smiled her soft smile and tucked him in against the cold, the threat of fever and worse, and she’d told him, simple but true, so Steve returns the favor, bringing his hand joined with Bucky’s to his lips before covering it with both palm against his chest and speaking plain:

“He’s the man who makes my heart go fast.” And his own smile is soft, too, for feeling but the feeling is so broad, so wide and endless that soft as it is, his smile nearly cracks his face in two when he breathes out:

“So, so fast.”

And it’s honest, his heart galloping for adoration and joy more than apprehension or chagrin, and with it leaping against Bucky’s hand Steve can only hope both these souls he loves know the gravity, the wholeness of everything he feels and breathes.

Steve’s not sure how long they stand like that, how long Bucky’s head spends leaning against Steve’s shoulder, kissing at his neck here and there, before Bucky’s lifting it, raising up; Steve can feel his gaze and turns to see him wide-eyes and asking—and Steve can’t tell what for until Bucky gestures to the headstone with the flowers he’s still guarding and Steve huffs a laugh at himself before letting go of Bucky’s hand, regretfully but with a nod as he steps back the tiniest bit for the thinnest lie of privacy.

Bucky bends down and settles the bouquet, not seeming to mind one bit that Steve’s so close. Can’t turn away, or bear to be any further.

“It’s such a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Rogers, truly,” and Steve’s heart, still galloping, swells for how Bucky speaks, where some would find it odd or silly; Bucky speaks to her like Steve does. Without reservation, right from the start.

“Unless,” Bucky’s eyes dart to Steve then, even if he still talks to Steve’s ma; “I can call you Sarah?”

Steve grins and nods, and Bucky’s smiles back before turning to the stone again; she’d have loved him. She’d have loved him to pieces.

“Steve’s told me so much about you, and there are,” Steve can’t help but lean in as Bucky’s voice turns more serious, and Bucky himself bends back to the ground and starts untying the flowers, a man on a mission but no one Steve can see or grasp just yet:

“There’s some things I want to make sure you know.”

Steve watches, still in the dark for direction, as Bucky starts to arrange each stem in the dozen individually, considering the petals, the leaves with such care that Steve aches; feels it in his bones and on his skin because he’s known that touch so deeply, so often, and he thinks there’s a reason it’s familiar in this moment. He thinks he’s seeing the direction, now.

“I love him, in a way that,” Bucky starts, and Steve watches his hands like blinking would shatter an illusion, for how full, abundant to bursting, to overflowing, Bucky’s tone is when he speaks, so that even the pause that follows as he strokes out the leaf of a flower, too, is overcome with feeling.

“Whatever I thought I knew of love before was so pale, and so small,” Bucky says, soft as his touch in arranging blossoms to lay on the hard-worn stone, to stroke like hands themselves.

“He is everything love means,” Bucky tells her, less a confession than a proclamation, a truth from the soul that shivers through Steve to hear aloud like this, makes him numb and sets him ablaze even though he knows it, well and tried and true to the marrow of him.

“He is everything love is, to me, for me. He’s my whole entire heart and I will do everything in my power to be all that he needs, as long as this world lets me,” Bucky’s saying, clear and so much like a vow it pings between Steve’s sternum and all the soft parts further down, tingles across his skin: “and as far into forever as the next world stretches after that.”

Bucky’s got half the stems interwoven, never snapped but softly slayed against and atop and around each other, the showy blooms of the flowertops starting a cascade at opposite ends. It’s mesmerizing. The movements of his hands are mesmerizing. He is mesmerizing—

“I hope you’d,” Bucky trails off, his hands stilling for a long moment v before his lips quirk and he starts speaking and arranging again in one go:

“I hope you see how I love him, and it makes you smile.”

It makes Steve smile. It makes Steve beam. Hell, he’s damn near sure he’s flowing.

“I’ll keep him safe, as best I can. We’re” Bucky murmurs, fluffing petals longer than necessary, probably; contemplative and not hesitant, but maybe only just shy of it. “We fight the battles other people can’t. And we’ll,” Bucky trails off again, but his eyes are fixed now on the writing on the stone before him, his hands moving without oversight.

“We’ll do that, as long as we’re needed,” Bucky says with a certainty that Steve recognizes being born of tenacity more than certainty; “but more people will come, who can meet those fights just the same, or better even, and we’ll step aside when the time is right,” and Steve’s not expecting it, those words. That different kind of cow that gives them the possibility of something Steve used to imagine was impossible, until he started dreaming of it, wishing for it in the interstices with so much of his heart: and Bucky, offering it on the silver platter of care and love and need and the promise of the future Steve wants with the whole of his soul, set alongside the scent of the only home Steve’s truly known outside of Bucky, the flowers’ perfume stronger than it has any right to be. He’s perfect; it’s perfect, Bucky will keep him safe, will stand at his side and then others will outpace them, will do the work and keep each other safe once more and—

“And I’ll be here to keep him then, too.”

Steve’s eyes water, the idea that they’re both committed having never really been a question, just a thing that grew unending, so the way it grows now, concrete and devoted, painted in shades of Steve in Bucky’s arms, soft and warm to the end: it’s too much.

It’s everything.

“Thank you,” Bucky’s saying to the stone, one stray iris left between his thumb and forefinger where he spins it, the action idle but his attention sharp. He shakes his head, nearly rueful, before he threads in into the left side of his arrangement, a spray of violet that connects so as to see unbroken between petals, green stately only on the ends and at the base, connecting to the grass. It feels symbolic; it sends a trip through Steve blood, heart thumping heavy and the stinging in his eyes sharpening to a point.

“I know he makes you proud, every day,” Bucky says, leaning in and touching the stone before he makes to stand. “He sure as hell makes me proud.”

Steve’s throat’s so damn tight, he can hardly breathe, barely swallow. He wants to reach for Bucky, to hold him close and use the contact between them to echo back every single word but he’s rooted to the spot. He knows Bucky’s not done yet.

“He’s the best man I’ve ever known, the best soul the universe has ever,” and Bucky swallows thick before he continue on, rougher but determined, set for certain: “has ever spun into being,” then he smiles a little curve of a thing, a bare crescent as he exhales with a nod to the grave before him:

“But you know that.”

Steve’s going to break, he can feel it. He’s going to burst wide open and every piece of Bucky will be taken into every piece of Steve as a rule because Steve will reach and Bucky will rush to him; Steve will protect and look to keep him safe while Bucky holds his veins together and pumps his blood by hand or something just as dramatically harrowing, but these moment, these feeling, times like this? Steve’s convinced.

They have a love for the ages; for myths and legends and fairytales. They have whatever powers the universe hid from the masses: the meeting of two wholes that create something ineffable, together. The archetype of what love looks like in its truest form.

“He’s family,” Bucky’s speaking through Steve reeling, Steve’s breathlessness; “we take care of him, we love him thicker and stronger than blood, he’s a Barnes as much as anyone,” and Steve knows it, feels it, lives that family and the way they gave him, by extension, the family of his team, the eyes to see from a new perspective what it could be to have so much affection and care and people in his corner without question, who he can defend and hold dear just the same.

“But he’ll always be a Rogers. He’ll always be yours, too,” and Steve’s chest squeezes tight for those words, for the surety in it: undeniable. “He deserves so much, though, y’know? And we do our best, all of us. And every single one of us is blessed, privileged to call him our own. That he lets us, that he gives us that right when he doesn’t have to.”

They shouldn’t have to feel that way; Steve doesn’t deserve this kind of love so pervasive, so unquestioned and unwavering but he will grasp it, hold onto it with both hands, right to his chest pressed close as he can until he can believe he’s worthy, or can grow into that worth. He will hold it because he will not imagine his life without it. He will not give any part of this love up.

“He’s a gift, Sarah. You know that.” Bucky breathes out, then lays an open palm to the top of the stone. “You knew that first.”

Steve’s cheeks are damp again, but he doesn’t realize he’s shaking until Bucky comes over, slips his arm into Steve’s and hooks their elbows, leans into Steve and lends steadiness, gives comfort as a given but never breaks eye contact with the grave as he holds to Steve and speaks to quiet around them, somehow warmer than it has any right to be:

“Thanks. For sharing him.”

And once more Steve can’t help himself. He spins Bucky and kisses him to bruising—to tasting him to the cells, to pressing firm enough to tease out his beating heart.

And Steve kisses him, and he kisses him, and he thinks toward the idea of his mother, and tells her the sure thing dancing around his soul: I will give my body for the breath in this man’s lungs. I will breathe my last in the world with this man by my side, and we’ll wait for each other again where you are, wherever the next door leads after this one closes.

And if he’ll have me, I am going to marry the hell out of him. I am going to hold to him forever, in every way I can.

________________________________________

Steve’s been working on small homework assignments in therapy, that are honestly much bigger in the grander scheme, that are aiming toward acknowledging the impossibility of defining the idea of enough, let alone living it out or protecting against the exhaustion of it, its extinguishment. Steve asks to tend all of Bucky’s injuries needing anything less than surgical intervention, to touch his and feel his living breathing susceptible but so fucking strong body; he lets Bucky do the same, even if Steve’s often will heal hours later. It becomes ritual. A sacred thing. Steve cannot deny how it eases something in his soul, and he wouldn’t try to.

He talks about proposals. When. Where. How. How long, both to wait—if he should, he feels like he absolutely should not but he’s no fucking expert on marriage vows—and how long the proposal itself should take. Moments? Minutes? Steve could wax poetic and mean every word like a heartbeat for hours on end but what allowed, what’s supposed to happen? Movies lie, he knows that, and that’s the extent of his experience. Not to mention no film’s ever captured anything close to what he has with Bucky.

No words, no grand gesture, no diamond or platinum or vibranium trinket, no nebula or supernova, no miracle or impossible feat could surpass what Bucky is. And so much more: what he is to Steve.

Then he spirals a little, in the process; worries he’s doing things wrong, even the things that feel more right than breathing. He and Bucky live in each other’s pockets and, given the shit Tony’s spouts off, Steve had been a little concerned he’d get called for being codependent’, whatever that meant in reality, but surprisingly—blessedly—his therapist had nearly laughed and said measuring codependency among superheroes was a lost cause anyway, and of all her clients she was least concerned, at least for now, about Steve’s relationship with Bucky.

“You both have jobs,” his therapist points out; Steve frowns.

“Together,” he counters, indefensibly uncomfortable.

“You’ve had increasingly frequent solo missions,” his therapist reminds him and he purses his lips, pauses before nodding, his hands clasped tight as he tries to kid his fingers from fidgeting.

“Or separate teams,” Steve finally concedes, though he knows he sounds as displeased as he feels: he’s got better with working apart in the field. That doesn’t mean he likes it.

“You both have therapy, and you stick with it.”

Steve bites his lip.

“He waits for me, still,” Steve confesses, even though he know his therapist is well aware of his partner killing time at a cafe one week, a bookstore the next. “A lot.”

His therapist shrugs, unconcerned. “Nothing wrong with that at all.”

“I wait for him sometimes, too.” Steve’s not sure why he points it out; or why it almost seems like a challenge.

“Good.” His therapist doesn’t rise to the bait that Steve doesn’t even understand offering, smiling toothily, a tiny bit wolfish. He doesn’t know whether to feel frustrated or proud or relieved and thinks he should probably just settle on feeling a little pissed off with Tony for putting stupid paranoid ideas in his head.

“You socialize,” his therapist offers, and Steve can’t help but scoff.

“With the Avengers.”

“That’s not nothing, Steve,” she volleys, unimpressed. “And sure, maybe it’s the preponderance of your social life, but it’s not all of it.”

Her tone forces Steve to think, really think.

“No…” he draws out, thinking on the bodega down the road from them, and Lucia who keeps a turtle and runs off cats because of her daughter’s allergy, and how Steve had sympathized because said daughter sounded too much like himself, a lifetime ago, and he’d started dropping in on his way home to help little Ainsley with her homework when she missed more school than ideal. He thinks about walks in the park and the terrier who has a nose for the specific alloy combination of Bucky’s arm to the point they’ve taken to bringing treats, and making small talk with the owner like normal people long enough they’d merited an unexpected tray of Christmas cookies last December. Or the farm stand Bucky found after therapy on the way home that he dragged Steve to promptly and now they’re regulars, on a first name basis with most everyone who sells anything, Steve willing to try almost all of it at least once.

“Baby steps, Steve,” his therapist says softly, touching his arm for just a second and rooting him in the now, with encouragement, outside of his head.

“I’m not being,” Steve can’t help himself, he has to ask, if Tony is right, isn’t just joking and instead has a point, if Steve’s fears hold Bucky back, if—

“I’m not, you know…”

“Just because the way you love looks different from what most people know doesn’t make it wrong.”

And that—that kind of settles it. The way his therapist puts things sometimes tends to have that effect but this: there’s a finality in it. An honoring of what Steve has and nourishes and is blessed with, not what he lacks or fucks up.

They both let silence settle for a spell to leave the words to sink in deeper before his therapist chucked, just a bit:

“And honestly, too much love?” she asks incredulously, with a knowing sort of grin and just a little bit of something wistful. “Hell, Steve. If only that were the problem I helped everyone with.”

Steve grins at that, and feels just that little bit lighter.

“Experimenting with healthier coping mechanisms? Is hard,” she reminds him; “and it sounds to me, and don’t let me put words in your mouth,” she waits for his head to shake in assurance and smiles at him; “but it sounds like you have largely found only good things.”

And at that—the truth in it; at that, Steve can only smile in mind.

“Yeah.” He can feel his mouth stretching, his lips smiling wider to the point of soreness and it’s glorious.

“Yeah,” his therapist echoes, and the contagiousness of the smiling apparently goes both ways from the looks of her.

“Look at you, Steve,” she says, marveling the slightest bit in a broad gesture of her hand, leaning back in her chair. “Do you remember when you first walked in?”

“I,” Steve makes to say of course he does, but when he thinks on it, he just remembers emotions the clearest—emotions he’s learned to quieten, to treat with, stumbling along the way but learning, and growing his skills, and falling impossibly more in love by the day in a way that helps him battle the demons. The memory of the start of all this is muted, too, in its own way.

“Kind of?” Steve settles on finally as an answer, knowing he’s an open book here, and his therapist’s a keen reader—she undoing saw all of those thoughts on his face.

“Think about everything that means,” she prompts him and…yeah.

Fuck, just, yeah. He’s, he has, it’s—

“Take your time,” his therapist says, grabbing the pitcher on the table between them and standing up; “I’m going to refill the water.”

Steve’s grateful—for the moment to process, and the privacy; grateful to her, for his progress and the lens he can view his world, his love, his life through anew.

Her back’s still turned to the water cooler when he asks, for all that goddamn gratitude:

“Can we talk about vows again?”

He probably sounds like a giddy child, at least to his own ears, so overcome as to be nervous with the promise of joy, but she turns, comes over, and gestures at Steve’s empty glass in offering.

“Refill?” she offers with a little glint in her eye. “In case we run long.”

And Steve laughs from his belly, because when he talks about vows, and making them forever to the only person Steve can imagine forever with: yeah.

Steve always makes them run over time when he starts on the topic of making vows.

Chapter Text

In the end: Steve plans it, in as much as he knows without a doubt that it’s going to happen. He ran big sweeping ideas, and dinners, and trips, and every manner of proposal by his therapist for weeks before he’d slumped back into his seat and said, more to himself:

“I just want him, forever, by my side.” He’d looked up and then asked, maybe a little less to just himself: “Can I just, just, ask?”

His therapist had grinned at him, and assured him: “You can ask him in the same breath you ask what’s sounds good for dinner, if you want.”

And he’d laughed, and it’d felt more right to think of that, really, than anything else he’d tried to plot out in that room before. So he was just holding it, tight and close and dear beneath his ribs always: for the moment he felt moved. Not for the right moment, because it was always right, it would always be the most right thing in the world to be with Bucky, to ask him for an eternity even if Steve already has it, even if he’s already asked and been answered in different words: it’s always right. But Steve thinks—and maybe it’s naive—but he thinks he’ll know, when this version of the question has its place.

Turns out: they’ve eaten dinner, so he can’t ask in the same breath as that, but Bucky’s stacks takeout boxes

He remembers the first time he saw Bucky in a suit, going home and feeling lit-up and glowing with an unnameable-something, and he still glows, he’s still trembling with the brightness of it from the inside out, except so much bigger, and it has a name, it has so many names, and maybe the only one that really fits is: them. Unparalleled.

The next best, though: whatever its fullest version, whatever its deepest form; multiply that times infinity, and the next best word for that once-unnamable thing, is love.

“Do you remember,” Steve finds himself starting, maybe because he didn’t know how to start, maybe because he knew exactly how, maybe because it doesn’t matter either way; “we were watching that show, with the stupid expensive wedding, and we, I—”

“You said the vows felt like lies.”

Steve’s stopped short, for a second; they watch shows, all the time, if not wedding ones; but it’s so specific, and it’s not that Steve thinks Bucky doesn’t pay near-enamored attention to him, much like Steve pays in kind, but, but how the hell did he just know, and know the exact part that Steve was aiming to—

“Sometimes, Stevie,” Bucky breathes out low, like he’s letting Steve in on a secret save that the secret is so drenched in adoration, in softness and fondness and a playful affection, the whole wide spectrum of all the feelings that live soul-deep, and no less.

“Sometimes, when you love somebody,” and he stretches out further, where he’s tucked next to Steve, to kiss behind Steve’s ear and whisper there soft, low: “love ‘em so much, your heart’s the same thing as theirs in your chest,” and Steve shivers, heart skipping madly for the sensation as much as the feeling, the cyclone of them whirring through his veins, around his bones.

“When it’s like that,” Bucky’s warm breath hums against his skin, and Steve can feel the rumble through his chest at the very same time; “sometimes, you’re just,” and it’s funny, because the words fit the moment, but they also fit their everything, their always exactly as close and true:

“You’re just always close enough to hear the things that they don’t say.”

Steve’s eyes burn before he knows they’ve started to water, before he registers the tightness of his throat. His heart’s a mallet, a gong, a bird, a miracle less of science these days and more of the unspeakable, the things it’s sacrilege to try to pin with definitions or understanding, that rewrite your genes and your fate and your world and Steve: Steve is lost to it and found in it and shape by it and it is so much more than he thought he could hold, save he’s convinced this, this more than any other thing is what he was made for. Birth, to rebirth, to ice then warmth and all the rest. Steve exists, first and foremost, for this.

“You’ve given me so much,” Steve’s saying then, not expecting his voice to be so rough, so reedy, but not truly surprised when it is. He thinks every syllables comes out strung from the heartstrings; it fits. “You told me things that were vows, that made sense,” and fuck, fuck, sense and then some, sense was a woeful understatement; “things that were true down to the cells, that were the most real things I’ve ever known.”

Steve looks up from where he’d at rated tracing lines on Bucky’s clavicle, back and forth and in and out; Bucky’s eyes on him are steady, and so very very blue.

“You say that like it was just me,” Bucky breathes out, simple but so full, so goddamn profound Steve feels the force starting to shift the rhythm of his pulse: just as it should be. As it should always be.

“Like you haven’t been doing the same goddamn thing, every single day.” Buck moves, just the slight bit, curling against Steve more than lying next to time now just that little bit more. “You’ve showed me love, Steve, like I never knew it could be.”

Steve’s still floored when such ideas are placed before him, it steels his breath still a little; unfathomable, that little Steve Rogers could do such a thing, but it’s Bucky speaking it. And Bucky wouldn’t lie to him, that Steve knows.

Still. It’s hard to wrap his head around, sometimes.

“You’ve stood by me as I learned how true the other vows could be, too,” Steve played versions of this part through his head before; tried some of it on his therapist—none of it could compare with the rush and the rightness of soeaking it where it belongs, to whom it’s made for. “not as true,” and it’s not: nothing, nothing is as true as anything other than this, with Bucky, anything and everything with Bucky.

“Because how could they be, they were written for,” Steve shakes his head, laughs at himself a little; it’s absurd, trying to make sense of these things without understanding they, them are something wholly different, wholly new: “they were written for things that could never touch this, could never conceive of it.”

Bucky’s turned fully on his side now, stretched the length of the sofa and pressed to Steve with every breath he takes, and Steve’s reaching, cupping his cheek and turning his face to look Steve straight on.

“But you’ve shown me how they aren’t lies, even if they’re too small to fit the truth,” Steve weaves the unnamable feelings into words the best he knows, and hopes they’re as precious as they feel, as they can ever be outside the confines of his ribs: “you’ve…”

Steve breathes in deep, doesn’t come up short so much as comes up with too much, and waits the moment necessary to hold his breath and leap:

“If I told you that you showed me my own heart, for what it is,” he murmurs, breathy and shaky and sure even so, leaning his face into the crook of Bucky’s neck: “would that be too much?”

“Never,” Bucky speaks against Steve’s temple, and wraps arms around him, immediate and unshakable. “I think that’d be just enough,” and a Bucky presses the shape of his smile, with that, against Steve’s skin; “it’d be kinda what I’d want to tell you, right back.”

Steve wants nothing more than to stay on the hold Bucky wraps him in; but he wants to do this right, so he slips free, feels cold, but his heart gets to racing almost immediately, a whole different heat rushing through him as he slides to his floor, to one knee.

He pulls the ring out; it never had a box, and he’d carried it close to his chest since he got it—in a breast pocket, or on the chain between his tags, only taking all of them off when Bucky’s hands filled that space, when Bucky’s head rested there instead; for the most part, though, it’s been soppily, devotedly held against his heart since Tony’d managed to merge the metals: the rings, his parents’, one of the few things he’d saved from collectors and prying eyes because he’d damn well carried them with him to Europe an age ago, and they’d made their way—impossibly—through Dum Dum, to Peggy, and back to Steve again when the time came like they’d been waiting, like this was as meant to be, written in the fabric of space and time as deeply as it felt in Steve’s blood and bones, just waiting; the line of vibranium, and they could have sourced it new but Steve had asked, sentimental as fuck, if there was a way Tony could safely take it from the shield itself, and Tony being Tony—a man who could not turn from a challenge, but also, a man who genuinely cared for Steve, and sure as hell cared for Bucky, made it happen, stripped from between the grips, just where he slips it into the holster: a permanent mark that Tony cut in the shape of a heart because Tony is Tony, and he’s an asshole, and it’s perfect: all of it moulded into the design Steve drew himself, like tree branches and strong roots, and the knots his mother used to show him a her part of her birthright, and thus a part of his: endless and unbreakable.

“However you want me,” Steve breathes out, and for all his voice breaks around the emotional he’s never felt more whole: “however you’ll have me,” he pauses, backtracks just a little, just in case: “if you’ll have me, I mean—”

“What did I just fucking say?” Bucky says, and maybe it’s a growl, or a sigh, or a song, or half-a-sob, the half where joy and wonder live:

“It’s you.” And he reaches out then, frames Steve’s face and holds tight, lines his jaw and then softens, traces thumbs along Steve’s cheekbones back and forth: “It’s you,” he whispers, like there’s awe and revelation in it, and the very notion makes Steve heart stutter, then take wing again to whole new heights.

“You, same as the heart in my chest, is you, and known as close for it, always,” then Bucky leans in, drags Steve back up to him and inhales close at Steve’s lips and breathes out: “You.”

The way Bucky kisses him them isn’t something Steve can fit into words in a way that does anything any justice at all; he feels it though, straight through him, lightning striking, save that it’s infinite and everything and always; quicksilver but only in the way Bucky moves his lips, nips and sucks and licks and devours without any aim to ever stop—golden, and shining, and Steve is breathless and more alive than he’s ever felt before as Bucky murmurs into the corners of his mouth between kisses:

“You showed me my heart, because you showed me you.”

And the depth of that, the core of it, is resonant; unfailing: Bucky’s heart is Steve, just as Steve’s is Bucky. To learn, to know one another had been to find their own truths, to test the depths of all they were themselves for their own sake, but then, to see every inch of it as offering, as shared, as two souls twined together and kept sure for all that they were inextricable, and blessedly so—and all of it, everything, from the very first, and more again each moment, each day.

“Will you marry me,” Steve gasps, when Bucky leans back for air after minutes that might be hours that might be a lifetime, that Steve feels sure will be a lifetime and then some: “will you, even though the words might be too small?”

Oh, but Bucky’s expression then is liquid, is the ocean, as much as it’s the sunrise reflected, doubled and unbearable for how beautiful and bright.

Steve soaks it in, every inch and ounce.

“I will,” Bucky says, solemn even as he shines. “I will marry you, and we will make the words mean, what we mean. What we are.”

Steve chokes on a sob he didn’t realise had grown so big; only noticed how wet his cheeks are belatedly as a result. He’s a mess. He feels incandescent.

“We can shape them however we want, Stevie,” Bucky breathes life into the flame of him with those words, going back to suckling at Steve’s swollen lips, devoted and unflagging but more tender, more enduring now around that inimitable fact: “as the closest truths we know.”

And Steve feels his bones as questionable constructions, suggestions rather than realities now in this dreamlike perfect space; and Bucky sucks in a gasp after ages, instant, still half-attached to Steve’s mouth, so it’s there, right there, that he whispers:

“You’re my whole heart, you know.”

Steve’s eyes are streaming again, and his heart’s in his throat but only because it has to be; it’s too big to not spill over where there’s space to be filled.

“Buck—“

“And I’m so goddamn lucky,” Bucky whispers, hisses fierce almost through his own tears: “because I fell in love like that with,” and he eyes Steve with disbelief and certainty, with every contraction in creation and it’s exactly a sit should be, as it’s meant to be, as they are, every beginning and end for all the middle to be made and shaped and lived with unutterable gratitude: the world as it can be; as it will be.

“With maybe the only person who could feel the same,” and Steve whimpers, the slightest little bit, not least because what Bucky’s saying has nothing to do with a serum, or a century, or time past or lessons learned; what Bucky’s saying has everything to do with who Steve is, and who Steve is?

Is the man Bucky loves.

“I’m so lucky, because it was you, the only person who could possibly feel this,” Bucky touches Steve’s chest, his neck, his face, each with deliberate meaning: “with me, so I could be their whole heart, too,” and Bucky chokes on the words, tears coming faster again, and Steve kisses at them, a benediction as much as an offering, a promise: “so we could both love that big, and still be our whole selves because between us, we’re more ourselves than we’ve ever been before. Selves that can hold it all, and treasure it with,” Bucky swallows hard before his eyes damn well swallow Steve: “everything.”

Steve breathes heavy, then, bowing his head now to Bucky’s and just steadying, just savouring the heat of them, the taste of Bucky’s exhales on the air like the way life and being are meant to be savored.

“That doesn’t make any sense, does it?” Bucky damn-near giggles, and god is that exquisite. “I think you made me love-stupid just now, proposing like this.”

Steve, perpetually less graceful and endearing than this man who is his everything, ends up less giggling, and huffing more of a snort.

“Proposing on the couch?”

“Proposing,” Bucky repeats, a little dreamily; “so, so,” Bucky rolls his eyes, even as he likewise rolls a little more fully on top of Steve, even as he slides his hand to the Center Steve’s chest, almost without thinking if the way hide yes widen, then melt as he breathes out, wondering: “close to home.”

And Steve’s breath catches under that hand; his heart gallops there, too, giddy and exultant, overflowing with the promise of being held safe in this chest, here, and in the chest lowering weight to press Bucky’s hand between them, to fear the ecstasy and bliss in every clench and give of the heart that will live between them both; close enough that Steve can feel it’s twin, it’s second-self in Bucky’s chest the same: exquisite.

The universe at ease; at rights.

“It made sense, you know.”

Bucky quirks a brow, before it dawns: his proposal. Their love: this big, this deep, and theirs alone.

“Everything you are,” Steve leans in to whisper, as his fingers blindly lead the ring to Bucky’s left hand; “has always made perfect sense.”

Steve watches Bucky’s eyes as he slides the ring home, a perfect fit; he knows Bucky’s body better than his own by far, better than he know most things at all. Bucky’s eyes, though, they change color between heartbeats and overflow with new tears as he glances between the circlet and Steve’s own gaze, back and forth and beautiful—Steve’s as entranced as he ever was. This is right

“I love you so fucking much,” Bucky finally croaks out, cheeks still wet: “Fiancé.”

Oh, and Steve’s heart skips a few beats in a row because yes: this is so right.

“I love you, too, my husband-to-be,” and Steve tries it out, so he could say the first part, the husband part early, wanting to taste it—it’s glorious. It’s aching and it’s nothing new and it’s wholly uncharted and it’s everything.

Everything.

“Take me to bed.” It might be hours of staring, a grinning like idiots, before Bucky leans up and speaks straight on Steve’s tear-slick lips: “wanna give engagement sex a spin.” As if Steve could deny him.

This is his fiancé, after all.

Chapter Text

They came down here for their own reasons, for once. Bucky didn’t have any meetings, no one to song-and-dance with his left arm and his irresistible smile. They’d stopped to see Peggy, but it was a short visit: she was tired, and she was that a little more often these days, it seemed, and it panged in Steve’s chest when he thought about it too long but then he’d notice anew all the beautiful lines in her beautiful face, all the years in her hands, all the time in her eyes, and he’d think about how she saw and touched and held the snowdrops, as close and dear as the poinsettias, and she’s even getting to see the first crocuses poke up heads again—

Steve will miss her, mourn her; but she loved, is loved, and she has had so much life, so much joy and heartache and sorrow and delight and hell, she’s still got some waiting ahead, and sometimes Steve and Bucky get to be there to share it, and hopefully, offer a little to add in, too and: Steve will miss her.

Loss is, at least in part, fear of the unknown. And fear of the unknown is maybe the most human thing in the world.

And if Steve’s learned anything these past months, years—with help, with guidance, with a palm pressed tight to his own, guarding safe against his heart—if Steve’s learned anything, it’s that he wouldn’t trade what it means to be human, to feel all of this, fully and wholly with every beat of his heart: Steve wouldn’t trade that for the world. Really and truly, and he is coming to believe in his blood and bones, in such a way that all that feeling in every beat of his heart is making that heart feel both lighter and stronger, even for the fear and the haunting-maybes lingering in the future. Because some, probably most of those maybes are going to be glorious.

Not least; in fact, deeply because Bucky’s going to be next to him. The whole time.

But they stop in to see Peggy, and tell her about the two houses they’re checking out in the D.C. metro area, and she grins at them and tells them a little liltingly as sleep threatens at the edges of her voice, that living so close to the capital is for retirement, boys, and Bucky chuckles, while Steve reaches out to grab his hand and squeeze, thinking of Bucky’s words at the cemetery and how they’d been perfect, how they’d been so right and so known, maybe—

Maybe because, sometimes when you love someone so much, with your heart pumping like it’s the same as theirs inside their chest, you just already know.

And maybe they’d see that, maybe they’re poised already to walk into that life, that sparkling fantasy that used to feel foolish, unfathomable; that he imagined himself too rough and callused to even dream himself alongside. But maybe now, maybe together: maybe their future was already in motion: nothing like he’d ever expected or thought possible, so beautifully visible—and so fucking bright.

Peggy grabs his wrist when they’re on their way out, stopping Steve when he leans down to kiss her cheek:

“Summer looks beautiful on you both, darling,” she whispers in his ear and it takes him a minute, because they’re just halfway into fall, and then it hits.

Oh.

The full bouquet. Spring to autumn and then some.

He bows his smile into her hair a little longer than usual when the tears of realization, of goddamn joy, prickle in his eyes, and she cradles his head to her with more strength than she’s shown the whole time they’ve been here today, and when Bucky comes to the other side of her bed and kisses her opposite cheek, his forehead grazing Steve’s: it’s the planets aligned and the cosmos in perfect harmony. It’s rightness in the center of his chest and the deep wells of his soul.

Steve straightens, and Bucky follows, and Peggy smiles softly at them as they take their leave, but Steve—Steve can’t help himself. They’re barely out the door before Steve reels Bucky in and kisses him with all the feeling beating through his veins.

And Bucky laughs, shoulders shaking and face like the sun, then he laces their hands and leads on because that’s rightness, too.

Steve figures they’re going to grab a car, one of the endless stream that either the government or SI has on demand for them here, but Bucky steers them toward the closest Metro station, stopping short before they step on the escalator:

“If I asked you to close your eyes,” he holds Steve’s hands in both his own now, smiling a little bashful: “would that be over the top?”

Steve’s mind might have been wholly transported to that car ride, that first date, their hands clasped by the gearshift and a hidden entry to a familiar retreat made wholly new alongside Bucky’s eyes, at Bucky’s side, with Bucky for that first time that charted the course toward Steve’s present moment, and his future sprawling vast: everything he’ll ever know started before that night in small hints and glimpses, but that night was the first that was theirs alone, and Steve’s heart isn’t immune yet—never will be, he’s sure of it—to the thrill, the rush of the memory, of feeling in recalling those hours together, the art that was breathtaking and yet paled, failed to compare to the man at his side, then to now; their first kiss.

Steve is not, and never ever will be, immune to the way the sense memory, the weight of it all then to now, thumps hard, then trips, then races and sings in his pulse like his heart’s falling in love for the first time, all over again. Every time. He doesn’t think it’s changed at all, in fact; knows it hasn’t lessened. Maybe it’s grown.

Either way, for all that’s changed or hasn’t, all that undeniably grown: now, Steve’s unabashedly consumed by the fit of Bucky’s hand in his a little different, a little new: the circle of his engagement ring a different texture, a different temperature in Steve’s hold; inexorable. Unshakable and deliberate and pure, universal fact.

Steve is reminded, for yet another reason, just how lucky he is to have this man beside him, and for always: they descend from ground level with the practiced ease of knowledge, but also trust—it’s a familiar station, and only a handful of lines, so from Pegs’ it’d probably be Blue or Yellow, but Bucky’s hands are always either at the small of Steve’s back, clasped in Steve’s own, or maneuvered so as to do bother at once; they board a train that Steve doesn’t notice the announcement for because Bucky deliberately starts whispering pretty fucking gorgeously obscene things in his ear at just the right time, and then they’re taking it however many stops, and Bucky steers him back to the surface apparently, while Steve’s largely oblivious: just floating downright besotted on these never-ending waves of being this goddamn in love.

“Buck?” Steve says from where he’s dropped his closed-eyed face to be buried in Bucky’s collarbone, when Bucky’s fingers tighten where they’re laced with his.

“Come on,” Bucky exhales against the shell of Steve’s ear, presses a kiss just behind it and straightens; Steve moves in kind as they stand and Bucky leads him sightless from the train. He feels people pass, sometimes brush his arm but it’s peripheral: Bucky’s touch still hits like lightning and a balm at once and Steve can’t wholly think around it without the sight of him providing distraction.

He vaguely registers the hum of the escalators before noticing them fade rather than growing closer; he frowns and Bucky huffs a chuckling sound—“Elevator’s safer, this station’s busier,” and sure, right, they managed moving stairs with fewer people but the people now are a clue. Steve runs the route map through his head, tries to remember the journey and approximately how long it lasted, how many times Bucky let his hair obscure the way he nipped at Steve’s neck and jaw and whisper distractingly to blank Steve’s senses out enough to make it easy to ignore the station announcements—but then they’re walking, and soon after there’s a light breeze, and it’s not an overlong stroll, hand in hand, before Bucky’s drawing them to a halt and kissing Steve temple, murmuring “You can open ‘em,” and so Steve does.

And blinks a bit at the known, but generally unfamiliar building laid before them.

“They haven’t opened yet,” he says a little dumbly; the whole point of the AIB hosting the Commandos exhibit was that they’d been closed since the early 2000s, and Tony’d almost certainly pretended he wasn’t tickled by the ‘Industries’ coincidence of names when he wrote the check to speed reopening, and reopening with a bang at that.

Bucky, however, looks sidelong at him, still decidedly pointed even at an angle.

“Not to the public.”

“We are the public.”

Bucky’s stare goes a little blank, a little dead if not for the quirk of the very corners of his lips: he can never hide the amusement, the fondness, the love, even when Steve proves denser than lead.

Maybe especially when, or else, as much because of it as anything. Because Steve Rogers?

Steven Grant Rogers is loved, through and through, for all that he is and all that he lacks because what he lacks makes up him. Who’d have ever thought.

“It’s the Met all over again, isn’t it,” Steve breathes out a little airily, a little shakily—Bucky’s still has Steve’s hand caught up and held tight but he’s leading forward, and not to the main entrance.

“Not entirely.” Bucky bits his lip a little as he looks back and Steve and tilts his head back and forth. “But not…not entirely.”

Steve fells his face scrunch up enough that Bucky must see it even sidelong in his peripheral, because he laughs, and he drags Steve even with him, and kisses Steve’s hand before sighing gently.

“Taking you to the past, punk,” he clarifies, voice so soft, enveloping: “but it’s nothing you haven’t seen.” It’s not self deprecating exactly, but it’s a little too close for Steve’s liking.

So Steve pulls Bucky in this time, and does everything he can to shape his body around their first kiss, brushes his lips deliberately this time against Bucky’s cheek before he curls his fingers at Bucky’s chin and turns those lips to him, kitten licks at the corner and kisses soft but clear to the promise of more, of what Steve’s pulse beats around, always has and always will every single time every single moment of the goddamn day: Bucky’s hand comes up to gradle the side of Steve’s neck, right against the bounding rush of his blood and Steve remembers breathlessly the self-same feeling, that first night, doesn’t know if Bucky noticed then, touched anywhere to have felt it but maybe he’d clocked it, seen it as they’d watched, entranced by one another in parting, Steve heart dancing quicker and quicker even as Bucky’d moved further and further away into the night and—

And when Bucky’s lips curl against Steve’s, that’s when he knows he’s got at least enough of it right, made his point and got it across; that Bucky can feel it too, remembers those moments and the softness of his body in response, the gentling of him against Steve like the unveiling of a gift is miraculous as much as its well-worn, well-loved; Bucky takes the initiative to turn the then to the now and moves his lips to meet Steve’s full on, and Steve doesn’t hesitate:

“Becca told me the same day you did,” Bucky narrates as they walk; “though there were no pamphlets involved at the time on my end.” He says it dryly, and Steve snorts. He’d eventually gifted Natasha a commemorative faux amber piece with a laser etching about a ‘Fossils in Ice’ exhibit with a tawdry little shield in the middle that Steve had convinced Bucky to comandeer one of Tony’s bots to create at the next check-in for his arm. Although Steve thinks Bucky probably just asked and Tony just let him without question, because Tony’s really putty in Bucky’s hands more often than not, and Bucky also came home with some etchings that had nothing to do with Natasha and spoke very plainly to Bucky just wanting to play with the tech. Including a very sentimental little addition to Steve’s dog tags that he never took off—one of Bucky’s own, modified to have both their blood types and serials side by side as best could fit, and an extra line that read the date of their engagement, and a clear waiting space for a date they hadn’t set yet—as well as a very particularly and inventively ridged contraption of a very telling shape that was staying safely in the confines of their home.

Steve’d been pleased to find the very innocent amber featured on Nat’s coffee table, too, when he’d stopped by her place a few weeks later. And very, very pleased to find Bucky’s craftsmanship was as genius as anything he did ever was when they tried out the extra-special-textured dildo, so much so that the effects nearly lost him his tags for the grabbing onto something to hold between them both.

So, basically: it all worked out.

“But Becs had been working this before I could even ask,” Bucky picks back up, and Steve blinks back to the hallway they’re walking, his fingers having strayed to his tags under his shirt while a smile curled unconsciously on his lips as he traced the tag that was more himself than the other—only one left, because he’d insisted they hit the lab and repeat the process on one of his, for Bucky’s chain—but then they’re stopping at a door and tapping a card Steve’s never seen before, and would bet money isn’t Bucky’s own. “She figured you’d know before the museum so much as whispered about it,” Bucky waves the card indicatively, just as Steve suspected, as the lock disengages, the indicator turning green; “given Tony’s tracking algorithms.”

“Not,” Steve breathes out as Bucky ushers him inside, letting go of Steve’s hand to hold the door; “not untrue.”

Steve has a pretty clear sense of what he’s walking into; it’s not the first time. It’s not the fifth time.

But somehow, stepping through the door, he wishes Bucky’s hand was still in his so badly he aches.

“You said one thing,” Bucky picks back up just as he slips up next to Steve, just as he laces their hands back together and guides him into the room—maybe he sees the hitch in Steve’s step, maybe he senses Steve’s moment of arguably-unjustifiable longing, save that Steve thinks there are whole pieces of his body, the majority of his bones simply fabricated of the feeling, the need; Bucky’s touching him again, though, and Steve’s going toa past he knows, and the world steadies, rights itself again. He doesn’t fear his past; he doesn’t need Bucky to put one foot in front of the other. Just…

He just kind of needs Bucky there to make the walking really worthwhile.

“You only said the one thing,” Bucky whispers at Steve’s ear, knowing he’ll get a shiver for it because he’s the most perfect asshole in the entire world, Steve’s heart on his sleeve in Bucky’s chest caught between them; “just one thing about the whole production,”

“To be fair,” Steve murmurs, turning to rub the bridge of his nose against Bucky’s stubble, back and forth and back; “I kind of remember ending up with your mouth making it real hard to think about museums, sometime very soon after the subject came up.”

Bucky laughs, head tilting back and Steve’s granted inadvertant—probably—access to Bucky neck, where he starts kissing on instinct, automatic and guaranteed.

“With the aid of some alien liquor,” Bucky breathes out, and Steve follows the motion of it down Bucky’s throat with his lips; “point taken.”

Steve smiles against the side of Bucky’s neck before nosing his collar down enough to press a kiss to the notch in his throat that turns into a nip before Steve pulls back, the start of a wicked grin softening at the gentle, but determined warmth in Bucky’s gaze trained solely on him. Unwavering.

“But still,” Bucky tilts his head, still keeping a watch on Steve; “all you said was,” and he squeezes Steve hand before he says: “that it wasn’t as if it could be worse than the first time, when you hadn’t had any warning at all.”

Steve thinks in a different world, it would still bother him. In a different time, it would transport him straight back to the off-footedness, the sense of being so outside his own world, his own skin: that first time finding himself in a museum, seeing himself in an exhibit, the black-and-white photos of a yesterday in his mind painted in full color.

In a world where the present felt foreign, still, it’d probably kill him a little.

The present here, though: the present is blinding and bright, and Steve never wants to be anywhere else.

“I was able to get my hands on a couple things, Tony has lawyers,” Steve shrugs, eyes surveying the exhibition space, some lighted and some not, motion-sensored Steve suspects, and then he grins at Bucky warm and cheeky all at once as he specifies; “got my sketchbooks.”

And the look on Bucky’s face as the memory permeates between them melts something soft and glorious in his chest, and Steve can’t but smile, and watch it unfold vivid like a sunrise, the promise of morning and daybreak painted with a flourish across an entire person who holds Steve’s entire heart.

“It wasn’t worth it, after a while,” Steve says honestly; it’d been a little hard, and a little sad at the time, but he knows the truth of worth in a lot of places and times, wearing a lot of hats and living a couple of lives already. He knows what is and isn’t worth the work, the heft, the risk. “The rest, it’s just,” he trails off with a shake of the head, but Bucky watches him curiously, so he tries to find words.

“I dunno, lost luggage?” When Bucky’s brows raise and his nose scrunches adorably at the comparison, Steve tries again: “Collateral damage?”

“Christ, Steve,” Bucky huffs at the melodrama in it; “of what?”

And Steve didn’t even mean it like that, he meant it in the sarcastic action movie way, the flippant way, but while he’s still pretty shaky with the right words much of the time, he can’t even blame that here; he’s been told enough—from the time being memorialized in the cases around them to the present day in front of him—that he’s always so dramatic, so he guesses he can see the assumption.

Even if he generally does not agree, just for the record.

“Come on,” Bucky rolls his eyes and links their elbows, scootching them forward to where the lights have already turned on in the first display.

“You didn’t have any warning,” he reiterates to Steve while he looks at the items laid out; “which means you didn’t have any control, over what they did with your own fucking history, your memories, your life,” he untangles their arms and turns to Steve head-on, expression earnest.

“I wanted to give it back, a little,” Bucky tells him plainly; “I know it’s probably all stuff you know about, at least in theory,” he shrugs, and Steve starts to feel unaccountably warm, and light, from the center of his chest spreading out.

“And maybe it’s just the stuff you don’t care much about anymore, but,” Bucky gestures broadly first to the case before them, then to the room at large: “anything here, about to go up? You have full veto power.” Steve blinks at him, the implications kind of blurry around the core of the matter: this unfathomable man in front of him loves him enough to care this much about Steve’s past, and Steve’s person where it lives in the records, the momentos therein; cares more about Steve’s history than Steve probably does anymore.

“You can cancel the whole damn thing, if that’s what you want,” Bucky says, no hint of humor in the words so Steve knows he’s dead fucking serious with it, and...maybe Steve needs to give his history a visit, here, for what the man he loves more than life believes that history deserves.

“You can claim back anything in here, too,” Bucky adds, a little slyly, and a little proud as goes: “it’s not her specific turf,” because right, yes, Becs has been ping-ponging around the art and art-adjacent museums and archives since she got there, despite her official contractual assignment—Steve hears about the unorthodox back-and-forth of it biweekly at least, and reminds her it’s only because she so damn good at her job that it happens in the first place; but what’s she doing involved with anything here—

“But it’s Becca.” Unsaid in words, but clear in Bucky’s eyes, is the rest of it: and it’s you, so there’s not a fucking question when taking care of family

“And she’s already got the paperwork waiting, way quicker process than even those Stark lawyers could compel.”

Steve is glancing at wartime memorabilia, the basics all put together here instead of spread out, medals he doesn’t care for and a flat screen playing footage Steve thinks was maybe shot in France, but the impact of its white noise as something bigger slams him off balance, even while righting the soul of him in a single blow.

Because…god. God, but Steve is loved. And he knew it, knows it every minute of the day but he’s loved like loves in return, as big as serum made everything in him and as big as devotion made that unfathomable still—good god, but Steve is loved.

“Come on,” Bucky murmurs gently, and releases Steve’s hand to put a palm at the small of his back, guiding him onwards; “it might still be the basic song and dance but Becca likes to think it might be a nicer version of the devil you know.”

Steve snorts but does the only thing he’ll ever do: follow Bucky’s lead, anywhere he’s heading.

But the difference between this and every other exhibit is stark, and quickly: he sees less of his face and more of Monty’s, Gabe’s, Dernier’s, Morita’s, and Steve never knew Dum Dum had so many hats that had cycled through the years, has no fucking clue how the one with the bullet hole that got blown off his head survived to sit in front of him enshrined in glass. Or god, so many sniper rifles apparently used to watch hiss ice hen they’d all mostly looked the same. This really is the display Steve’s been hoping for if he has to stand them, asking for since the beginning: his team. His brothers-in-arms. These years in their fullness, with all of the pieces in play. Unabashedly real, not just an ideal, a caricature of what it meant to live, to survive, to win the day as human beings. Fearful and phenomenal and unapologetic, warts and wings and all.

It’s clear Bucky’s been here. Becca’s obviously had her hand in from the start. They…they gave him this.

They have him this.

“Collateral damage,” he whispers and Bucky turns to him, guileless while Steve’s heart’s swelling fit to break his ribs.

“Hmm?”

“It wasn’t a great word choice,” Steve breathes, and he can’t help himself, has to step straight into Bucky’s space and frame his cheeks, hold him tight and study the swirling of his eyes, the way they churn and catch the light.

“Not to mention, I don’t really like thinking of this in even vague connection to the word ‘damage’,” because Bucky is the cure for that, the antithesis, and the smile Steve feels forming small and sweet under his palms proves it’s known. Good.

“But you asked,” Steve says slowly, “all of this on display, usually,” Steve emphasizes pointedly, grateful beyond measure; “at the whims of a curator or the government or whoever. Toy asked what it was collateral damage of.”

“I did,” Bucky exhales, barely a whisper, and Steve could abandon the strain, could kiss him and get lost in his gaze so easily but the words, their meaning: they deserve to be known. More than almost anything, they deserve to be said and gifted to Bucky from the bottom of his goddamn heart, all the way up and through, all veins and marrow and the whole of Steve’s soul.

“Waking up in time to meet you.” And it’s the truth. The collateral, the exchange, the things left behind in the coming. This life, this gift, this man.

“And it was worth it a thousand-fold. A million, I,” Steve swallows thick, blinks back the inevitable sting. “There’s not a price in the world I wouldn’t pay for that, Buck. No measure that could ever possibly compare.”

“Well,” and Bucky’s voice is rough now too as his hands cover Steve’s on his cheeks; “this time, at least,” and Bucky leans in and kisses Steve’s lips chaste, soft, sincere to his bones: “no price necessary,” and he rests his forehead against Steve’s and they breathe, the revelation of it familiar and intimate and new every time: “this is all already yours.”

It is. How, Steve still isn’t always sure, but it is.

“Oh god,” Bucky says suddenly after the minutes slip by long and languid, straightening and pulling Steve toward a wall display across the room. It takes Steve a second to clock what’s taken Bucky’s interest but then—

“Is that,” Bucky starts with a laugh, looking back at Steve almost imploringly.

“From when Dernier was practicing,” Steve nods, chuckling, feeling warm at the memory but warmer at the recounting of it in Peggy’s room, early days when she and Bucky were getting to know one another and she’d groused playfully about the press releases on the Commandos and the one time she’d been in the field to meet them at base camp timed unfortunately enough to cross paths with a news team and a camera.

And Jacques doing a trial run for a new rigging pattern using some low-impact explosives he got hands on outside Marseilles that Steve didn’t understand. Save that they went off with a bright sienna-colored powder all over Peggy’s uniform, thick enough to color over her lipstick.

I had this compass that I hid the clipping in, but this one here caught a glimpse and made me change it to a stock portrait from another newspaper, Steve had chimes in from his chair at Peggy’s bedside, leaning back smugly remembers, as Peggy’d turned a glare at him.

Oh my god, Bucky had snorted, slapping a hand over his mouth as he’d damn well glimmered with the start of giddy laughter.

The reputation of the SSR deserved better than such a clownish image, Peggy had said icily, but her eyes danced, so Steve pushed.

Oh, you mean literally, Steve deadpanned, tracing clown makeup lines in the pattern he remembers vividly being exploded onto Peggy’s face. Which frowned comically at him before she broke and giggled, sounding so young. The sound alongside the music of Bucky’s laughter had been something to behold.

And little did she know the other photo was underneath, Steve stage-whispered to Bucky, leaning to kiss beneath his ear in the space of a second before he looked back to Peggy who was reaching for her throw to smack at him as she squealed, just a little:

Steven Grant!

We were active duty! A special forces team! Steve had protested futilely while he laughed, and while Bucky, the traitor, helped Peggy grab her pillow to toss at Steve’s face. Denying us the joy of our demolitions expert’s triumphs would have been cruel, Pegs. That rigging system helped us nab Zola!

Bucky’s laughter, in the end, had rung out enough to draw the nurses. Steve had rode that entire day soaring, just feeling weightless and filled with joy.

“I see what she meant,” Bucky’s saying with a grin toward the compass in question, opened with the staid portrait removed so that Peggy’s stained face was on full display inside.

“Great, right?” Steve says, and then they’re snorting, chuckling, giggling a little madly, more than is probably warranted. But damn.

Damn, but joy more than anything is the rule of their world, now. And Steve could never have imagined. He could never have pictured the colors, the sweetness of the full bouquet of love, like this.

Because that’s exactly what this is.

“Fuck,” Steve finds himself breathing out, for realization and recognition and for the colors sneaking in the corner of his eye, impossible. Except—

“Your ma’s apron.” Bucky breathes it out as he follows Steve toward the display case, where Steve’s feet carried him with no conscious decision required and Buckys there right next to him.

“Your grandma’s.” Steve breathes back, and Bucky just presses a closed mouth smile to Steve’s neck.

“Yeah.”

Steve’s transfixed, not least because he realizes what this layout is about: not Cap, for the Commandos, but Steve. Steve Rogers from Brooklyn, and about his Brooklyn, then. His world, and his people.

His ma.

And Bucky gives him space with it, wanders back to the rifles, while Steve soaks in the produce crate from the store down the road from his building, always filled with apples in his memories for some reason, nothing else. An advertisement he’d drawn for a furniture joint trying to make ends meet, and a closed grey-back that Steve recognizes with a little smirk; hopes enough people do to get a thrill, to see that glimpse who he is and always has been.

But then—

Then he sees it.

It was a poor excuse for a hope chest, the little box the dowry she could bring as if it amounted to much: but she made it her own with a man who’s never cared, if her stories of him did him justice, and Steve trusted his Ma. But he remembers her stories of the contents of the box, memories and promises and wishes all put together. The most fascinating being the bits and bobs, the tiny pieces of the milestones of married life met and dreamed of for the future, and those dreams dashed to be transferred tenfold to Steve, with his less than hopeful prospects to live long enough for marriage in the first place, let alone any traditional tokens to mark them.

Still, his ma had kept the ones she’d received, and put in new ones when she came across ones that mattered. Paper, and he has no idea how it’s so fragile, but somehow not in tatters: a marriage announcement for one Miss Sarah Murray, to a Mr. Joseph Rogers, and the tale of his father’s smooth-talking antics to slip their dirt-poor names into the society section; the way his mother had laughed every time in the telling—one of the few memories she could recount without the pain of loss gripping so tight. A broken leather watch strap, and a used matchstick. A tiny bowl, almost a thimble really, that Steve didn’t have the proper name for, and Sarah may not have either, passed down through his father’s family: ironworkers through the ages, this piece older than a nation’s name, Steve was told, and proud for it.

“You okay?

Steve must have lost track of time, because Bucky’s wrapping up behind him, arms around his waist and his head bent to hook his chin over Steve’s shoulder.

“Fine,” Steve breathes out, a little shaky. “But, umm…”

“What, babe?” Bucky asks, concern just a little flared in his eyes, his stance and his arms on Steve, spinning him around to face fully.

God, Steve loves him.

“I’d like that,” Steve points at the chest, only now realizing it’s closed, its contents hidden to anyone else. The memories were so clear. “Even if it’s after the exhibit closes, I’d—“

He wants the box. He wants its collection. He wants to add to it and give Bucky the tokens, the tradition, another piece of Steve when Bucky has all of them, all of him. Steve wants that.

Steve’s damn well going to have it, too.

“Of course, that’s the whole idea of carte blanche,” Bucky laughs a little, the tension easing from him as he leads Steve to a table with a form that just needs his signature, and a big stack of tags to label his requests. He didn’t expect it, but it does feel nice, does feel like a reclamation of something he doesn’t have a name for, saying yes. That. That’s mine and I want it.

Bucky did that for him; gave that to him. His family did that.

They pass a good third of the content of the exhibit on the way to the forms, and Steve means to walk back and look, wants to see if there’s more memorabilia from the Brooklyn of his youth, but he’s stopped short as Bucky taps the paperwork down straight and folds it to seal.

It’s a mural.

Painted, even, Steve can see the brushstrokes, and he feels overcome in an instant that it was done by an artist, may have been done that way because of who Steve Rogers is, has been, with and without a cowl and a shield. It’s a collage, though, mixed media with Steve as the painted focal point and then articles, newsprint, photographs, gorgeously done like a mosaic some places and then more of a playful abstract hodgepodge in others. He starts from one side and moves slowly down, studying the images, remembering, being reminded anew of things he’d flat out forgotten. It’s exquisite, and Steve wants to know the artist, wants to meet them and shake their hand but then he’s struck by a bit of the mosaic style again, recurring halfway down the wall—so many copies of his face stuck close together, a young man in the middle of hell, smiling but with something missing behind it, something hollow, something—

“Do you,” Steve starts to say, but then he stops. He's not going to ask it out loud; not only because it’s not fair, the expectation it implies—Bucky knows, intimately, the work Steve’s been doing in therapy. Bucky’s been there for every single step, his rock and his safe harbor and his home, his steadiness. Steve couldn’t have managed this, breaking down so many parts of his worldview, digging in and excavating so much of his self and reshaping, rebuilding with new materials added in, in new patterns and colors, letting more light in to show so many of the shadows there as depth, as value necessary for the beauty to fully shine.

“I look different.” Steve says softly, but with it with greater steadiness, with greater confidence than he’d expected to hear in his own voice, but it feels right. It settles in his bones, beats in his blood like it belongs, like it fits. Because it’s true. The man he sees in the mirror every morning is not this man, not exactly, at least.

He does think he looks younger in the photos. He doesn't need to, but he looks younger than he does now, and he can tell because by comparison? The youth isn’t a carefreeness, or a lightness or a bit of softness the serum left behind—no. It’s notable, the difference, because by comparison? He looks unhappy, and he can’t remember being unhappy; more that he's so fucking happy now, and even with the worry and the stress and the years and the ice, he looks brighter now like he could never have imagined; he looks filled in where there were holes before, piece of hims undiscovered and unshaped, not yet full grown. There might not be any grey hairs—yet—and the wrinkles in his skin might mostly go away when he moisturises with the set Nat bought him, because fine, he's not great at skincare unless it's in a bathtub, and Bucky's also in that bathtub, and—

But he's older. He can feel it. And, even if he wasn't? He's okay with that. He has his bad days where he isn’t where he falters toward despair but he knows how to ask for help, how to right himself or lean toward Bucky’s ever-present hand to hold him. More often than not, though: he’s okay with that. Because what he has with Bucky is enough, is so much more than enough, transcends the concept. Whatever it becomes, for however long it grows and changes to fit them in this perfect, miraculous way—it’s so far beyond enough as to be wholly

But he can see it, in himself, and it feels right.

“I was right.”

This, Steve expects to say with the confidence it comes out with. Because this part he knows.

Bucky turns and cocks a brow,

“You brought something back in me, maybe, that they forgot to revive,” Steve tells him, eyes still on the photo montage stretching the wall near the exit; “but even so,” and then he turns, and Bucky’s so close suddenly their chests brush when Steve moves, press when he breathes.

“Even so, you made something new in me, too.” He reaches for Bucky’s hand, because he needs it, and lifts it to his lips because he wants. “Loving you,” he breathes against their palms, kissing the heel:

“Loving you’s made me so much more.”

Bucky watches him, his smile mostly in his eyes as he reaches his free hand out to cup Steve’s cheek.

“You always wore your heart on your sleeve,” he tells Steve fondly, but also fiercely, and Steve knows what it’s for: a pledge to protect that heart wherever and whenever it needs, but always when it’s stuck out in the elements, exposed to the world.

Steve’s never felt more safe, more loved in his entire life.

“But,” Bucky strokes his thumb across Steve’s cheekbone; “it looks different, now, yeah,” and Bucky’s lips curl with the smile in his eyes when he adds: “brighter.”

“Because of you,” Steve says with certainty, leaning in and kissing Bucky gently, but with all the feeling in him.

“Because of you,” Bucky mouths against his lips, and leans brow-to-brow when they break apart to keep them close.

“Serum made my heart bigger, same as the rest of me,” Steve breathes between them; “but you showed me how to use it right.” His eyes look up, Bucky so close that all he can see is the ocean, infinite blue shining.

“I hope I’ve learned, am learning to, I, to be,” Steve starts, but then Bucky presses their lips together, just a peck but with such feeling.

“You’re more than,” Bucky makes sense of his rambling and lifts it up to sing through the noise. “You made my heart bigger, too,” Bucky whispers, a little tight in his throat; “had to,” his voice cracks and then overflows for breaking:

“Had to, Steve, to hold it all,” and god, he loves Bucky so fucking much he could drown in it, and would. Willingly.

And that man, who drowns and breathes all at once for the miracle of a love so big: he's the product of everything here, in these display cases. He's a product of the time and the people and the feelings, the losses and the missteps: every single second, led him here. Right here, and he doesn't ever want to be anywhere else. And this version of him plastered in bulk all around him—younger, somehow smaller, and his heart far less full, never having learned how much it could grow for feeling so much—this version of him deserves his thanks.

“Will Becca be mad?”

Bucky draws back and looks up quizzically.

“Hmm?”

“If we leave?”

“Now?”

Steve exhales long, and looks around, takes everything in at a glance before he speaks.

“He brought me here,” Steve says softly, with a hint of reverence; “all of this, it brought me here.” And he gathers Bucky’s hands again and holds them tight.

“I’m,” Steve licks his lips, gathers himself. “I don’t wholly recognize him, when I look in the mirror,” for whatever reason, and the reason isn’t the point either way; “and I’m grateful for it.” Because that’s the point. He’s grateful to be who he is, so much greater than he was, grateful beyond measure of reason or words for Bucky, who’s warm and real against his touch.

“But I’m grateful to him, too,” Steve tries to articulate the feelings roiling through him, the complicated milieu of relief, thankfulness, awe, understanding, surprise.

“He did this, survived all this,” Steve looks back to the wall, and studies his own eyes in black-and-white: “so someday I could learn to...”

He trails off, and blinks back the sting in his eyes.

“All I have for this is gratitude,” Steve finally gathers himself to say, nodding with finality before turning to Bucky and pulling him in close, pressed together thighs to chest:

“My time and energy, my care, beyond that,” Steve breathes against Bucky’s jaw; “has far better places to be spent.”

And Bucky fucking melts into the touch, blooms under the declaration and takes initiative to kiss Steve fully, hungrily, until he’s breathless and the way their chests heave against one another demands the best kind of hurting in the world.

“I kinda planned to be here a few hours at least,” Bucky says between kisses to Steve’s neck as they gasp back their breaths. “Before I took you to dinner, and then checked us into the hotel before we go house-hunting, tomorrow,” and Steve had damn well forgot about the house, and he feels it cap off his realizations, his conviction with a perfect gasp of joy. This is where they are. This is why they’re here. This is what they have, and who they’ve become. Will become, further still.

“Can we do the Portrait Gallery, d’ya think? Before dinner? I want to see the new ones,” Steve asks hopefully, and beams helplessly into the kiss Bucky lands on his mouth, curled up to meet his smile to the millimeter.

“Lead the way.”

And this. This is why they gave him the serum—this is the chance he was granted, gifted, maybe not just because he was a good man, and more because somewhere, somehow, sometime, there was another good man who could make him feel light, and full, and so much joy he can’t fucking stand it, the give-clench of his every heartbeat like lightning striking gold, leaping radiant.

And whatever happens, whatever’s left to come—in this, with him: Steve Rogers has never been happier, and he knows, whenever his time comes, whatever road rises up to meet him, regardless of the bruises, the hurt along the way, that might await nearer the close: wherever this leads, it won’t change goddamn thing that really matters.

Because when Steve Rogers breathes his last in this world, Bucky’s love will still live in his lungs. The last beat of his heart, whenever and however it comes, will still be shaped from Bucky’s name. And Steve knows, he knows it’ll be with Bucky by his side, however they look, however it lands, whatever shape it takes. There’s nothing else, no other way the universe can move because his heart’s in Bucky’s chest; they’ve created their own gravity.

His hand’s in Bucky’s hand.

The world turns with that rule held to mind.