Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Steve Rogers lay on his back on the hardpack sand in the half shade of a rubble wall, looking up at a perfect blue sky, trying to breathe through dust and overwhelming pain, ignoring the feel of liquid soaking his back which he knew was his blood, knowing that he was going to die and hoping that his team had the opening they needed to get out.

The black around the edge of his vision threatened to wipe out the blue sky, the noise of gunfire seemed to be miles away, he couldn’t catch his breath and the pain didn’t seem to matter anymore… He felt like he was floating as a sand covered soldier in sunglasses appeared leaning over him in a halo of sunlight and dust.

“Next time take on the guy with the RPG!”

Agony ripped through his side at the hard pressure, making him twist and slam his eyes shut against it. He was suddenly back in the wall of noise, the gunfire that had seem so far away was still right there… He couldn’t see the soldier when he opened his eyes again…

Steve grimaced as three gunshots boomed right next to him, making his ears ring… Another two gun shots…

“Hey!” The soldier was back, leaning over him sweat mixing with dust to leaving a trails of mud down his face. “Rogers stay awake!” He felt fingers on his neck. “Tizz! Jay!”

Steve tried to force the black from his vision away as a gun boomed next to him…

There were hands on his torso, prodding, pushing pain into his body, bringing the darkness… His eyes wouldn’t open… The pain seemed to be fading...

“Let’s get him the fuck out of here!”

He didn’t expect to wake up… He didn’t think he would make it to hospital never mind survive surgery or that the doctors would give him so many drugs that he would feel like his back teeth were floating as he drifted on a mix of exhaustion and painkillers.

He couldn’t keep track of time. He kept drifting to sleep and waking up surprised all over again that he could wake up.

He couldn’t say if it was hours or days later that he opened his eyes to find a gorgeous man standing at the end of his hospital bed in black SHIELD combat fatigues…Jaw length brown hair pushed back off his face by sunglasses, blue eyes...

“You’re beautiful.” Steve slurred.

“They’ve got you on the really good stuff, huh?” The soldier smiled and Steve felt his heart skip. “I’d heard you don’t do things by halves but that was something else. I’m glad you’re going to be ok... Have a safe flight home.”

“Come with me… Want to draw you.”

The man laughed as Steve felt his eyes drooping although all he wanted to do was keep looking at him.

“Take it easy Rogers… I’ll see you around.”

Steve knew that Strike Team Lima were involved in getting him out, John “Tizz” Tizzard, and Jason “Jay” Bird had been on their team for years. He knew every soldier on the Strike Teams.

The dark-haired blue eyed soldier was a mystery.

In his debriefing there weren’t any names used, it was a black op, Alpha weren’t meant to be there, Lima were definitely not meant to run a rescue for them when it had gone to shit.

The mystery soldier was referred to as Lima Nine despite not being on that team, and he had been the one to take a run across open ground under heavy fire to get to Steve and cleared the roof tops of hostiles so that he could be carried out.

Steve delivered a case of beer to each soldier of Lima as soon as he was released from hosptial to thank them, as per tradition and he signed every form he needed to so that they would get some kind of recognition on their files.

“Do you know who he was?” Steve asked Tizz.

“No name deal, sorry.” Tizz shrugged. “We just call him the Sniper; cos he had a rifle and he’s a crack shot. We’d only just picked him up from the middle of nowhere. Hit the ground.” Tizz whistled a little. “Top draw. He’s probably a specialist.”

The specialist on the lists he knew of or had seen around, but he knew there were others that he didn’t know and they weren’t on any lists.

Steve asked where he could send the case of beer for the mystery soldier and no one could give him an answer.

A year after he nearly died, he returned to active duty to find that in his absence Alpha had changed personnel completely. His entire team had either moved to other teams or retired and while each of them had come and seen him to let him know walking into the locker room to see the reality for the first time was shocking.

The direction of Alpha’s missions had changed, maybe he hadn’t noticed when he was in the thick of it, but coming back in fresh and seeing what they were being ordered to do made him realise that he wasn’t as comfortable as he had been.

Three months later his best friend Sam Wilson decided to leave SHIELD and Washington and help his sister with the family business and train to assist combat veterans.

Two months later he found out that Natasha Romanov and Clint Barton had been fired while he was out injured but the gossip had only just hit the canteen.

With the missions he was working being uncomfortable, his friends gone, he decided that SHIELD wasn’t for him anymore.

Four months after leaving SHIELD and multiple phone calls from friends who asked him to help them with jobs on security operations for companies in hostile areas of the world, without really realising he had started a career as a mercenary.

A year after he left SHIELD he worked his first hostage rescue.

Eighteen months after leaving SHIELD, four more hostage rescues, he had made himself a reputation for being the man to talk to about planning difficult exfiltration’s.

It was the botched rescue of the Berg family in Mexico which made him realise that he needed his own team, a team he knew and could trust all the way.

He barely had to ask Sam before his friend agreed to join him, the family boat needed repairs, his pay check wasn’t going to be enough and the clients that Steve had were all paying top money.

Clint Barton, he ran into in an airport in Paris, he and Natasha were on the mercenary circuit and were available at a phone call.

Tony Stark turned up on his doorstep one day, waltzed into his living room and said that he wanted to help rescue people, like he had been rescued from Five Rings in Afghanistan. Stark may have lost control of his company but he had a family fortune and tech that no one else could make or get.

Doctor Bruce Banner decided to join them after they had saved his life when he was caught up with aid workers in a village which had been seized by anti-government troops.

The last piece of the puzzle was introduced by Natasha in a bar in New York. Five years after the man had saved his life, he was finally able to buy Bucky Barnes a drink.

Four Years Later…

Steve paced the short length of the flimsy operations tent slowly. 

It was three in the morning. 

Bucky and Natasha were out on the perimeter keeping watch. Everyone else was asleep in the other tents.

Steve should be asleep except he was restless, it was five hours before they hit the Militia compound to rescue fifteen hostages however the nerves jangling in his stomach were nothing to do with the mission.

“Bucky, since the moment I saw you…”

“Are you sure that reminding him of that is a good idea?” Sam asked, shocking Steve, as he quickly came inside, making sure that the tent door was closed and pulling out a seat to sit at the table covered in maps.

“I want to do it right.” Lay it all out, have him listen and then there was a chance that Bucky would agree and he wouldn’t argue that they were good as they were and there was no need to change anything.

Natasha, the morning after he had met Bucky again in the bar, had told Steve to treat Bucky like a stray cat that he wanted to domesticate, at the time she was talking about getting Bucky to join the team on a permanent basis, she was so confident that Bucky was right for them however over the years it had been proven ‘stray cat’ had been an accurate description in so many more situations.

Four years since the first job that Bucky had worked for Steve with the team and he still worked for other people too on the side, keeping his options open and according to Bucky repaying favours. Steve’s team were Bucky’s priority, and he was always there when he was needed but he’d argued that they didn’t work enough, he had people who could use him in the field and he didn’t like down time anyway.

To Steve down time was the short amount of time, a few weeks, maybe two months, between planning and completing missions. To Bucky down time was time spent not being in danger of some kind.

He’d accused Bucky of being an adrenaline junkie more than once and the response was a shrug rather than a denial.

Bucky liked doing what he wanted when he wanted and it had taken him too long to realise that Steve wasn’t looking to chain him down, he just wanted to be in a relationship, which meant that when Bucky wasn’t running around getting shot at, they’d spend time together. Still, it had taken two and half years of living with together, for Bucky to admit that he lived with Steve.

He was hoping that with the right proposal, the right words, Bucky would see marriage as just a continuation of what they had, not something new that he needed to resist. And Steve wanted to be married to Bucky, he wanted them to have that commitment to each other, he wanted to be able to walk into a hospital and be told what was happening, he wanted them to be emergency contacts without any problems and maybe it was the traditionalist in him, but he wanted a ring on his finger.

He knew Bucky’s argument would be ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’, he just had to get around it.

“You know I’m not comfortable with you planning for life after this mission before it’s done.” Sam kicking a foot up onto the table and shook his head. “It’s bad enough that you’ve said that it’s your last one.”

It wasn’t going to be his last rescue, he wasn’t naïve enough to believe that, he’d get dragged back in for something. However, it was going to be his last job working full time in the field and the last job he worked for the rest of the year.

The jobs were getting tougher, all hostage rescues were tough, however the rate of success was falling as they became the team that were called when the odds were against the hostages getting out alive.

Even though he knew he wasn’t personally responsible for the deaths, he couldn’t help but feel the weight of it especially when the team were being asked to do more dangerous recoveries, to track down the bodies of hostages which had been killed so the families could bury them properly. He understood their need for closure, he didn’t like risking his teams’ lives to do it.

Finding out what had happened to the hostages, what they had been through before they had been killed, finding the bodies if there was even a body in one piece to find… Being asked by families to kill the people responsible, knowing that nine times out of ten the person pulling the trigger was doing it to save their own life from the same fate from someone up the food chain who was out of reach…

He was a mercenary, he wasn’t prepared to make himself into that kind of killer so he was stepping back, he was going to concentrate on planning missions and operations and have some time to explore other interests.

“You’ve jinxed the whole thing and you know it.” Sam stated.

Steve rolled his eyes. Sam might be teasing, but he knew underneath that his friend was at least a little superstitious about these kinds of things.

Steve wasn’t, if a job was going to go right or wrong it was in planning, timing and execution nothing to do with luck or jinxes.

“Are you showing him the house first?” Sam asked.

“I haven’t decided yet.”

It had been the house that had started the idea of proposal going and he had never meant for it be a secret. It had just happened that way.

He had seen the perfect place for them while Bucky had been overseas working, stressed and frustrated with his team added to which the comms lines had been patchy at best and non-existent at worst. Not that it was a conversation to have on a sat phone.

Steve hadn’t wanted them to miss out, so he had bought the house and he gotten started with the renovations.

They had been in the midst of five back to back jobs between the two of them where they’d been focused on work. The house had gone from something he hadn’t mentioned, into a six month long secret.

The one saving grace was that on Bucky’s list of priorities, where he lived wasn’t even a footnote. Before he had moved in with Steve, he hadn’t had a fixed address of his own since he was eighteen, he had worked all over the world for SHIELD, he had lived on bases then when he had left he had just continued to work all over the world and never settled anywhere; floor, sofa or bed, the country didn’t even matter, as long as there was a shower, food and beer nearby, Bucky didn’t care where he was.

He was fairly sure that Bucky wouldn’t care about Steve buying a house, the six months he had been keeping it secret would either result in Bucky taking a job for a few weeks somewhere in the middle east, which Steve hated, or a shrug and ‘when are we moving?’. It was difficult to know what he was going to get.

There was no difference in living with Steve at his apartment and living with him at the house, it was just whether Bucky would see it that way.

He was thinking about showing him the house and then proposing later, but both were about a life together and if Bucky was going to run away to come back on the same page, he would rather it only happen once rather than twice.

“I’ve thought about asking him before we go inside or when we first go inside.” He wasn’t sure.

“Ring in the fridge?” Sam snorted a laugh.

“You know Barnes hasn’t got a romantic bone in his body.” Tony said quickly coming inside the tent. Steve shook his head and looked up to the top of the tent supports, no one else was meant to be awake. “You aren’t going to get your movie moment.”

“Why is no one asleep?” Steve asked in frustration.

“Because some idiot said that it was his last job.” Clint said pushing inside and going straight to the kettle. “You should just propose now and fuck the entire thing up... Nothing says we’re going to die more than two people being happy and planning a future together… Just for the record if it’s me I want ‘I told you so Cap’ on my gravestone.”

“No one is going to die.” Steve rolled his eyes.

“Fuck Steve.” Sam shook his head at him like it was the last thing he should be saying even though he could hear in his tone that he wasn’t being completely serious.

“Are we amateurs?” Steve asked looking around at each of them. “Or are we a highly trained unit?”

“I’m not highly trained.” Tony said. “I’m gifted.”

“You’re going to be ten miles away.” Steve sighed.

“Stray missile?” Tony asked looking to Clint.

“They don’t have missiles.” Steve rolled his eyes.

“A meteor could land on you.” Clint replied pouring four coffee’s.

“I’d see that coming with my tech.” Tony frowned.

“Doesn’t mean you can run fast enough to get out of the way.” Clint replied handing Tony coffee first.

“Can you all stop? We have everything planned, we have every contingency covered, we’ve got confirmation that the authorities will not move on the compound until negotiations are exhausted which isn’t anywhere close to happening. We just need to do our jobs.”

“We’ve got hostages to deal with. Those always fuck everything up.” Clint said offering Steve a coffee. “And we’ve got a team leader who is up when he’s usually sleeping like a log before an op. That’s got to be a bad omen.”

“If any of you want to back out, then you know can, right up until go time.” Steve stated so that they would maybe shut up.

“You’ve got a wedding to pay for, the bar bill alone is going to be your entire share for this and that’s if you don’t invite Tony.” Sam said nodding to Clint in thanks for his coffee.

“He hasn’t said yes yet.” It was a long way from a proposal to the altar.

“The threat of a group of heavily armed psycho’s doesn’t make you blink and you’re worried about Barnes saying no? He’s the definition of a sure thing.” Clint said sitting down and kicking his feet up on to the table.

“He loves you, Steve.” Sam said seriously holding his eye then smiled. “And if he hates the house, you can always sell it.”

“Alright, that’s enough… Sam, you and Clint can you please go back over the weapons, detonators, explosives and ammo? Tony can I please have the latest satellite images and the weather updates? We may as well get started since you’re all up.”

The job went better than expected. The Militia were badly organised especially under attack, which they had planned for, those who didn’t run, surrendered. The hostages all followed instructions. It was almost perfect except that Clint had twisted an ankle getting caught on some camouflage netting.

“Feds are rolling in.” Tony said over the com.

“You going to be ok?” Steve asked Clint as they were preparing to split up to their exfil points. They had come in separately, they would all leave the area separately as a precaution to make it more difficult for the authorities to link them to any job.

“I told you so Cap.” Clint replied kicking his foot into the ground to harden the ankle up to the pain.

“They’re going to run straight into the feds.” Bucky said as he rounded the building and he picked up his black bag from the side of a shed. “I find out you put any of your shit in here Barton and I’ll shove it up your ass.”

“Good luck making it all fit.” Clint snorted.

“Boys.” Nat sighed picking up her bag. “See you all in a week.”

Steve nodded to her before she headed into the woods, followed by Clint who split a little right from her, he was limping but not enough to worry about. Sam was already clear.

“You good?” Bucky asked pulling on his black baseball cap and adjusting his bag again. “Some of them took a left, keep your eyes and ears open.” Bucky wrapped his left hand around Steve’s neck and kissed him quickly. “I’ll see you soon.” He smiled then jogged off towards the trees.

“See you in a week.” Steve called.

He had a week to work out exactly how he was going to propose.

Steve wasn’t worried when Bucky was a day late. Things happened and there had been a few more road blocks than Steve was expecting to be up which could have held him out. Bucky was brilliant and resourceful, he was a highly trained soldier with years of experience to draw from. He could deal with anything…

Two days overdue and everyone else had made it, he was starting to get a little anxious.

Three days and he had Tony pulling the satellite feeds and the coms of everyone in the area. He had Natasha asking around to see if Bucky had somehow manged to get picked up.

“There’s nothing.” Tony said. “I’ve run it through, dozens of times… He gets out clean… I lose him in the tunnel... There’s no camera’s in there.”

“Dash cams?”

“I’ve checked every single one in there, nothing.”

Four days and he’s starting to panic. There was nothing. No trace of him.

Five days and he and Natasha have a fight about nothing except their shared worry when they still can’t find Bucky.

Six days and he has called everyone he knows to find out what they can.

Two weeks, and he knows they have to split up. They’ve been together too long in one place. They’re a known mercenary team, they have people who notice them and ask what they are doing and Bucky could be on the other side of the planet by then, where they worked from didn’t matter.

He rang Agent Coulson because even though he knew that Natasha had rang him, Steve needed to hear Coulson tell him that he didn’t know what had happened and although the older man said did hope that Bucky turned back up, he couldn’t budget resources for an agent who had been out of SHIELD for years especially when he had been working as a mercenary which brought into the equation sources of danger that were none of SHIELD’s interests but if he heard anything he would let Steve know.

He even tried Fury knowing that he wouldn’t get any answers from him one way or the other. Fury had lied to his face plenty of times and he had never been able to tell. Lying on the phone would be a cake walk for him. Fury said the same as Coulson, that if he heard anything he would let Steve know.

Three months and he could barely make it out of bed in the morning. There was nothing. He had run out of people to ask and places to go, leads to trace… In his darkest moments he was starting to think that Bucky was dead.

Five and a half months and he went to the beautiful farmhouse with acres of grassland and woodland as a special kind of punishment to himself.

He turned the key in the lock with tears threatening to spill from his eyes. He was supposed to be with Bucky when he saw the finished house in person. He was supposed to be out of his mind with nerves that Bucky would say no to his proposal of marriage and rip into him about how much he hated the house and be pissed Steve have bought the place without at least telling him about it.

He wasn’t supposed be alone, with no idea if Bucky was alive or dead.

There was a letter on stairs when he pushed the door open. Three steps from the bottom sitting up in a blank envelope.

Steve stared at it frozen in place, he lost track of time before he rushed forward and tore it open.

Marriage, retirement and a quiet life in the country? That’s not me, Steve, you know it’s not.

I was never going to be your forever, find someone who will be.

Bucky.

Chapter Text

“Where is he?” Steve asked as he stormed in Natasha and Clint’s apartment.

“I don’t know.” Natasha backing up.

“Don’t lie to me. You know Nat, you always know.”

“Cap, calm down.” Clint said rushing.

“I don’t know where he is Steve.” She stated firmly.

“And you wouldn’t tell me even if you did.” She wouldn’t tell him because she and Bucky have some kind of code which meant that they will tell each other everything and fuck everyone else, damn the consequences.

He slammed the door on the way out. He had been asking her for months, he had confessed that he thought that Bucky was dead and she had said nothing to allay his fears. She had said that she was still looking, checking out old connections that she and Bucky had worked at SHIELD but she wasn’t getting anywhere.

The rage that he felt dissipates to be replaced by a hole of despair and heartbreak which has been threatening to pull him under for months, tipped over by her betrayal.

“I think you’ve had enough.” Sam said pulling the bottle from his hand.

“He’s alive.” Steve slurred slightly. He was on his second? Third? Bottle of whiskey. Bucky’s favourite, because he automatically bought it without thinking, he threw the first bottle against the wall after the taste of it reminded him of the taste on Bucky’s tongue. And then he started drinking it because the memories of them together hurt and he wanted it to keep hurting.

“Clint told me when he called.” Sam said.

Bucky’s note was on the table in front of him. The words that shattered his heart every time he read them, which is why he kept reading them.

“You need a shower and food. Come on.” Sam gripped under his arm to try and get him up.

“He left me, Sam.”

“I know buddy.” Sam sighed and wrapped him up in a hug.

He threw out all of Bucky’s things, which was a joke because there were only two shirts in Steve’s apartment both of which had been Steve’s, a ripped pair of jeans, four books and a cereal box.

It was like Bucky had never been there, he hadn’t realised when they were together how little Bucky actually kept at what was their apartment.

It was like he was planning to leave Steve from the beginning.

They had been happy together.

Marriage, retirement and a quiet life in the country?

It wasn’t like that.

Marriage didn’t mean that he expected Bucky to retire, he didn’t expect him to live the quiet life. It was Steve who wanted those things for himself with Bucky doing whatever he wanted as long as he came home.

If he could just explain, if he hadn’t kept the house secret, if he hadn’t decided to propose. If he hadn’t been stupid enough to think that Bucky wouldn’t find out.

I was never going to be your forever.

He tried to find Bucky again. He rang around again, and again, and most people wouldn’t take his calls anymore, those who did knew nothing.

Bucky was gone and he didn’t want to be found.

I was never going to be your forever.

Bucky had decided and there was nothing that Steve could do about it.

Sam had him pick up a few security jobs with him because he said that sitting in his apartment wasn’t doing him any good. He also knew that Sam needed the money to help his sister and he wouldn’t take a handout or even a loan from Steve.

Money wasn’t going to be a problem for him again; he could live the rest of his life in comfort from his savings. Three years in the army, five years with SHIELD and five as a mercenary, it wasn’t like he lived or even wanted an extravagant lifestyle.

Working security forced him to clean himself up and look respectable and talk to people again, which was also a part of Sam’s plans for the resurrection of Steve Rogers.

The thing about being a security guard at high end parties was that there was always someone who wanted to sleep with him. It used to happen all the time when he had first started working them after leaving SHIELD.

He was a good looking man, he wasn’t blind to what was in the mirror, before he had Bucky had finally got on the same page, he hadn’t been short of people who wanted to be in his bed.

He had always preferred getting to know someone first, not that he was against one night stands when that was what the other person wanted, he liked more of a connection.

Bucky was probably back to his ways of one night stands, Steve wondered how long he had waited before jumping into bed with someone else, how many there had been since… Maybe Bucky had been bored of him and too much of a coward to tell him to his face.

Three years was a long time to be fucking the same person when Bucky used to take someone different home every night before they were together.

Maybe that was the way that he should be, a cold heartless bastard who fucked whoever he wanted whenever he wanted, no strings, no ties, no heartbreak.

He barely lasted a week of a different person every night before he was done with it.

Empty meaningless sex just wasn’t his thing and if he happened to be comparing every person’s blowjob technique to Bucky’s and finding them lacking it had nothing to do with anything. If he couldn’t find anyone who knew how or when to kiss him, where to touch him, the right pace at the right time, rode him hard enough or fucked him the way he liked, it was because he hadn’t gotten to know them first and nothing to do with lacking the chemistry that he’d had with Bucky.

Julie was sweet and kind, her father owed a string for hotels and she bored him to tears within four hours but he persisted for three dates.

Robert was gorgeous, loved fast cars and the gym. He also lacked common sense and couldn’t understand that Europe wasn’t one country.

Callum owed a tech company, he liked nights in. He also couldn’t put his phone down, or turn off from work, Steve was a workaholic at times but he didn’t reach for his phone in the middle of a blowjob to check his emails or schedule when might be a good time for sex.

Bob wanted him as arm candy, Debbie was high maintenance, Ethan hated art galleries.

“Excuse me. You wouldn’t happen to know where I might find a bathroom? Oh I mean restroom. That’s right isn’t it? Sorry, I’m just getting to grips with all the different names for the same things.” She was stunning, classically beautiful and charming.

“Just up the stairs to the left.” Steve managed to say without tripping over his tongue.

“Thank you.” Her smile lit up the room.

His eyes seemed to find her everywhere she went in the room after that and he found himself getting a nervous flutter when she approached him as the night started to wind down.

“Do you know your away around New York?” She asked.

“I do, ma’am.”

“Ma’am makes me sound like a grandma. I’m Peggy.”

“Steve.”

“I’m staying at The Langham do you know it?” She asked with a smile.

“I do?”

“I’d like to take you for lunch tomorrow if you aren’t busy, say noon? Can I give you my number?”

He thought that lunch was going to be at a high end restaurant, so he wore a tie. He was having second thought about going to meet her except that when he had texted her, she had called him back and they had talked for a little while about the city and it had reassured him that he did want to see her and find out more about her.

Peggy arrived with personal protection as she greeted him at the front desk.

“My father worries about me, our family are well off. They won’t bother us.” She said sounding like she really didn’t want Steve to be upset. “It’s just something I have to live with. I hope you don’t mind.”

“It’s fine.” Steve replied.

“I didn’t ask you to lunch to sit in some stuffy boring room with people who treat the waiters like dirt. How about you take me to the best place for a real taste of New York?”

“You may regret saying that.” Steve smiled.

“I draw the line at rodent but anything else, I’m sure that my stomach will cope.”

Peggy was funny, sharp, intelligent and kind. She was an heiress, managing her fathers interests in America. She had travelled extensively and knew places that weren’t part of the traditional tourist destinations and her father had been in the military before he had retired so she wasn’t bothered by his soldier quirks.

He found himself asking her out on another date, which turned into another and barely without noticing they had been seeing each other for a month before they finally slept together.

Everything with Peggy was easy, fun and made him feel wanted and happy in a way he hadn’t been in a long time.

“I have business in LA, I was wondering if you would like to come with me?” Peggy asked as they were eating breakfast in bed in Peggy’s rented apartment. “It is rather a long trip but there will be plenty of time for sightseeing and I would hate to get bored… I’ve grown fond of your company.” She looked slightly nervous.

He smiled and caught her cheek to reassure her.

“I would love to come with you.”

“Hey Rogers, give me a call.” Tony left a message on his answer phone four weeks into their stay in LA. When he rang back the line was out of service.

“I’ve never heard of SHIELD.” Peggy frowned as he poured her glass of wine. “There are so many agencies with acronyms over here. FBI, CIA, DEA… I honestly can’t keep up. So how long did you work for them?”

“It was a five year contract, by the time I’d finished I was ready to move on.” More than ready.

“To be a security guard?” Peggy frowned.

“Yeah, I wanted to use my training to help keep people safe.” He didn’t want to tell her that he had been working as a mercenary, she deserved someone better than that and all of it tied to Bucky eventually.

He wanted the fresh start, he needed it and he wanted her to be a part of that future.

“So you are very much over qualified to be working at those dreadful parties. Was SHIELD just US based?”

“I’m really sorry Pegs but most of what I did for SHIELD was classified.” He didn’t want to talk about SHIELD to her either, if he couldn’t understand some of the things he had done, he couldn’t expect her to and he didn’t want to risk losing her over his past.

“I’m all for a little mystery.” She smiled.

“Hey Steve, give Tony a shout when you get this.” Sam left the message just before they got back to New York.

Sam had gone back to help his sister out and didn’t know what Tony wanted just that Steve should call him.

Tony’s line wouldn’t connect. He put a call into Pepper who said Tony was in Iowa and she had talked to him earlier in the day and the line had been working fine.

Five months after they had met and Steve was in love with Peggy, he had been in love with her since LA but he couldn’t bring himself to admit it, he hadn’t been willing to open himself up to that kind of pain again, but being with Peggy was easy and gentle, he was happy, she was happy with him. He loved her and she had already said that she loved him.

It wasn’t what he’d had with Bucky, given how it had ended he was glad that his love for Peggy couldn’t threaten to leave him broken. It was a different kind of love, less all consuming. He could be the man he wanted to be with her, he could hide the parts of himself from her, protect himself in a way he had never been able to with Bucky. It was a safer love.

“Wow.” Peggy turned as she looked around the farmhouse. “It’s beautiful. And you chose to live in New York rather than here? Steven Grant Rogers what on earth is wrong with you?”

He had needed to be on site to hand the keys over to the realtor since the sale had been finalised. He could have posted the keys but he had decided that he needed to see it one last time before he let it go completely.

“It’s criminal that you don’t live here.”

Steve swallowed hard against the sadness as he looked around the house he had spent so many hours on, perfecting the plans... It was meant to be their forever home. It was meant to be where he and Bucky grew older together.

“I can’t live here Pegs.” He managed to get out around the lump in his throat. He couldn’t live there without Bucky.

“Oh Steve... What’s wrong?” She asked immediately taking his hand and squeezing it reassuringly.

He took a deep breath. She deserved to know.

“I bought this house for someone, for me and him to live in together. He… He left me before we ever got the chance. And… Well everything in here was kind of designed around our tastes. Living here would… I just can’t...”

“You must have loved him very much.” She said sympathetically.

“I did…” He nodded. A part of him would always love Bucky, he was getting used to the idea that he couldn’t get rid of it and he had to accept it. “I thought we’d be together forever… Sorry... I mean it was nearly two years ago. I am over it… Just being here.”

“Has brought some hurt back?”

He nodded. It hurt like the first time he had read the letter from Bucky.

“How did you two meet?” She asked. “You don’t have to tell me, but if you want to, I’m happy to listen.”

“In a bar.” It was a half lie, the mission where he had met Bucky for the first time was classified.

He could vividly remember walking into the Irish bar where he was meant to be meeting the potential newest member of the team. He had seen Natasha and Clint in a booth first, then he had seen him.

Lima Nine.

He had seen his face so many times in his memories, there was no mistaking him. His hair was a little longer, shaggier, a little sun bleached and the tan he had was far deeper, but he knew it was him.

He had gone straight to the bar and bought two beers before walking over to them with nerves fluttering in his stomach.

“Steve Rogers this is Bucky Barnes.” Natasha had said then smirked at Bucky. “He’s more competent than he looks.”

“That’s about the nicest thing you’ve ever said about me.” Bucky had replied.

 “Bucky worked with us on Delta for a while.” Natasha had explained.

“Before Fury fired him.” Clint had commented.

“He fired you too.” Bucky had shrugged.

“I lasted longer.” Clint had shot back.

“You swallowed his bullshit longer.” Bucky had retorted.

“Boys. Let’s try to remember that first impressions are important.”

“We’ve already met. I owe you this.” Steve had said putting the bottle of beer he had bought for Bucky down on the table.

“Thanks, I wasn’t sure you’d remember me.” Bucky nodded. He was difficult to forget. “Are you still running at M4’s instead of taking your chances with RPG’s?”

“I try to avoid needing to choose.” Steve had replied.

“There is no choice. You take on the RPG.” Bucky had said. “Fuck getting shot.”

“Barnes is back in town.” Clint had snorted a laugh and offered his beer bottle up to Bucky who had knocked his beer bottle against Clint’s, then against Natasha’s offered bottle.

It was obviously an in joke between them and nothing to do with what had happened to Steve.

He could remember being surprised when Bucky had turned his attention to Steve and offered his bottle to him with a softer look on his face.

“It’s good seeing you again.”

It was good to be seen.

“We worked together for a while, before anything happened.”

Months of Bucky flirting with him and leaving bars with other people.

Missions full of seamless understanding in the field and an almost telepathic connection of what each other would do and it had been a Sunday morning in a villa in Belize that Steve had rented as a safe house when he couldn’t resist anymore and his excuses as to why he shouldn’t for the sake of the team evaporated.

He could still remember their first kiss like it was yesterday.

Bucky had been leaning against the kitchen worktop of the safe house pressing gauze to the wound on the nub of his collar bone while waiting for the coffee machine to finish.

The wound looked like a deep gravel rash, he had seen it the day before, Bucky didn’t even know how it had happened.

“Banner said to leave to dressing on.” Steve had said as he had walked up to him. “Let me see.”

Bucky had rolled his eyes at him and pulled the gauze away from his skin to show him the wound.

“I think I’ll live.” Bucky had said sarcastically, pulling his t-shirt further away, turning his head and stretching his neck so Steve had a better view.

 He hadn’t been able to stop himself touching him, he didn’t even needed to touch him but he couldn’t not, just to check on wound he had reasoned. Nothing to do with the want to touch him that had been gnawing at him every time they were close, nothing to do with waiting to press his lips onto Bucky’s neck and taste the skin and feel the texture of stubble on his tongue…

He’d been looking too long, lingering too close for too long… He should have stepped back like he had a dozen times before… Bucky had turned his head, blue eyes looking at him as though challenging him, step back again or do something about the tension and he’d just given in, vibrating with nerves and want, he had kissed him and Bucky had kissed him back.

“What was he like?”

Hot, dangerous and destructive. Cold, composed and stubborn. Kind, funny and passionate… Bucky had been the best thing to ever happen to him, it was a shame he had ended up being the worst too.

“He must have been quite something.” Peggy said squeezing his arm. “You miss him.”

“I do.” He nodded. He would always miss Bucky not just as a lover, but as his best friend. “I shouldn’t be talking about him to you.”

“Whyever not? He was obviously a big part of your life. Actually it helps me understand why you hesitate sometimes… To suffer that kind of hurt… I’m so sorry Steve.”

“Selling this place is my last connection to him and I’m ready to let him go.” He didn’t think he’d ever really let Bucky go, but he had to, if he and Peggy were going to have the future he wanted for them.

“Steve. You need to call me.” Tony left a message between Christmas and New Year. Steve called back and got Pepper who said that Tony was in rehab.

“No. I… Of course… Do you think… Where are Harrison and Amanda?” Steve frowned at the panic in Peggy’s voice. “No. No. That won’t be a problem. I can arrange the money. Are you sure you don’t want to wait for the authorities?... I… Yes. I will be there as soon as I can.” Peggy ran to the wardrobe and started pulling clothes out.

“What’s going on?”

“Sharon has been abducted in Texas.” Peggy replied rushing into the bathroom.

“Who’s Sharon?” Steve asked getting up and following her.

“My niece.” She replied pushing make up into a wash bag. “I need to arrange the ransom, her parents are in Australia. Where is my…”

“Peg. Calm down a second. Breath for me.” He put his hands on her shoulder. “Abducted in Texas?”

“Something about a cartel.” Peggy pulled herself out from his grip and back into the bedroom.

“Which cartel?”

“I don’t know, I don’t care. They’re threatening to kill her if we don’t pay. Simon!” Peggy ran into the living room and to the apartment door. “Simon I need the jet to take me to Dallas immediately.”

“I’ll make it happen.” The body guard replied easily.

Steve packed his bag in less than five minutes and tried to calm Peggy down as they made their way to the airport.

Steve pulled out his phone and dialled Tony to try and get some information to help, the line was dead.

Less than two minutes later there was a unknown number on calling him.

“Steve you need to…”

“Steve we need to go!” Peggy shouted and he missed what Tony said.

“Not who you think...” The line went dead.

“Steve hurry. We’ll miss our take off slot.” Peggy called.

He followed her out to the privet jet while trying to work out what Tony had said to him and trying to make the phone connect.

“I’m afraid all phones need to be switched off on this jet Mr Rogers.” The flight attendant stated as he got into the cabin.

“I can’t imagine what she’s going through.” Peggy said looking out the window. “She must be terrified. Poor girl. They could be doing anything to her… They could kill her even if we give them the money.” She leant back in the seat and closed her eyes.

“How much have they asked for?” Steve asked tapping on the table between them. What had Tony meant? Why call him back right then when he hadn’t before?

“Three million US dollar, cash. I’m to get used notes.” She said as the jet started moving. “Which I have no idea how to get.”

“What’s the deadline?” He asked. Three million. The Carters where worth a hell of a lot more than that. To ask for used notes, cash…

“Forty eight hours.” Peggy glanced at her watch. “Forty five hours.”

It wasn’t a cartel unless one of their cells had gone rouge. Used notes cash in that quantity took time. If they were serious they would have given more time.

Sharon was likely dead.

“Have you ever… Have you worked on a hostage situation before?” Peggy asked giving him a hopeful look. “They usually go badly don’t they?”

“Not always.” It depended on a lot of factors.

“She’s only thirteen Steve.” Peggy started crying.

“Hey, when we get there we’ll know more.” Steve rounded the end of the table to hug her.

Peggy nodded against his chest, she was shaking she was so upset.

“It’ll be ok.”

“You don’t know that.” Peggy cried deep sobs and he rubbed his hand up and down her back until she quieten a little. “They could keep her and ask for more money…”

“Not likely.” Steve replied. “The longer they have her the more at risk they are from being found.”

“Daddy said we can’t go to the police or they will kill her.” She pulled herself back and wiped at her face. “It was one of their threats. He said he’s trying to find someone who will go in and get her because he thinks that the longer we wait… He said something about Sharon being a danger to herself. He says he knows some ex-special forces who specialise in these kind of situations but they could take days to make it he doesn’t know anyone over here.”

His heartbeat was starting to pick up. It was a lure. She was luring him.

“Let’s get there and find out.” He managed to get out, maybe it was just paranoia.

“I’ve read so many terrible stories, we’ve all been taught how to cope if we’re abducted… She’s too young… Senator Holt’s wife and daughters were killed in a hostage situation.”

He nodded to himself and swallowed hard.

Peggy was playing him.

Senator Holt’s wife and two daughters had been killed when a mission that Steve and his team had run that had gone to shit because of a faulty detonator which hadn’t turned off on command to let a jeep which had come back out of the blue. The explosives which were there to block the road and stop the Militia’s men bringing in the tanks they had stationed a mile down the road or using vehicles to escape had exploded. They had lost all elements of surprise.

The Militia’s men had turned on the hostages before Steve or Bucky had been able to get there to stop them. There had been fifteen hostages, four died, nine were injured.

Steve’s team had been paid by the family of Juan Perez to retrieve their son while Senator Holt had no choice but to rely on the authorities, who were tied in red tape and stuck negotiating. Holt blamed the team for getting his family killed. He believed if the outside force hadn’t gone in then his family would still be alive.

Holt wanted the mercenaries charged with murder it had been all over the press for a few weeks.

Peggy was a honey trap.

Steve let his head tip back slightly and he had fallen in love with her.

“How much are the limits on the ATM’s over here?” Peggy asked. “It would take days. Do I need to go into a bank… That much money the authorisations will take days to process. Oh Steve I don’t know what to do.”

“When we get there, we’ll know more. There’s no point speculating. You should try and get more information from your Dad.”

He was beginning to think about a future with her. He had already mapped it half out if he was honest with himself. Marry her, maybe have a few children if she wanted…

“He should be able to tell you how to get the money. Your family should have a lot of plans in place since it’s been an ongoing threat. Give him a call. Find out what you can.”

“I can’t call him until we’re on the ground. We’re up here for hours.”

He didn’t know a privet jet that you couldn’t make a phone call on these days, not that he travelled in them but even when he had been at SHIELD that had been a thing. Phones could be used when up in the air just not during take off or landing.

“There should be a phone in the front you can use.” Steve moved out to allow her to get out.

“I can’t bother the pilots.”

“Ask the airhostess.” Steve said and nodded towards the woman who was sitting in the small alcove that kept her out of the way.

Peggy got out and went forward to talk to the woman while Steve tried to work out who she was working for.

She was British, her accent had been consistent without any slips and she had used English names for all types of things without hesitation, her hesitation was on the American, probably MI5 or MI6 trained. She was MI6 to be working in the States or she had come over and joined a agency. SHIELD had had British agents, they’d had agents from all over the globe.

Who would Holt go to? US Senator… CIA or FBI. It wouldn’t be Fury.

He reached into his pocket and quickly pulled out the sim card even though there was no where to put it and no easy way to destroy it…

Tony was trying to tell him. Tony knew. That meant that he would have taken Steve offline and he would have sent out the alert to change numbers to anyone Steve had contacted, which was why no one had called him. He thought it was because he had said somethings that he shouldn’t in his desperation to find Bucky.

He thought he had burned his bridges.

His call history on the phone was only to Sam and Tony, he still changed his phone number regularly even though he was technically a civilian, some habits were difficult to break and other were just good sense.

Tony had called Sam to give him a message…

Fuck. Tony had been trying to tell him for months. Why the fuck hadn’t Tony made more effort than a few messages?

He scrubbed his face and tried not to think about Peggy’s betrayal because they still had four hours in the air at least and he couldn’t let on that he knew because he didn’t know who he was dealing with, unless he had already given himself away… He blew out a breath. He’d seen Natasha at work multiple times, he’d seen Bucky do similar although they both had very different takes on how to bluff… It’s about confidence and within expected reactions. Be normal, don’t let the other person become suspicious.

Peggy came back after an hour and a half saying that her Dad was going to her everything she needed when she was in Dallas.

“Hey Simon have you ever been involved in hostage situations?” Steve asked the body guard who was sat at the very back of the plane.

“No, sir. Never.” Simon said.

“You must have training though?”

“My job is to get my client to safety.” Client, not principle, it was a rookie error. He moved as he should, he had been trained, he was likely ex-army but he didn’t have the terms down. That was sloppy. “Get them out of the situation as fast as possible. Hostage situations aren’t usually a concern.”

“That’s surprising.” Steve said. “I suppose if it’s not your training… It’s probably something you should look into.”

“I will be sure to, sir.” Simon nodded.

“You don’t need to worry about me Steve. It’s Sharon we need to think about.” Peggy said. “That poor girl could be… They wouldn’t… I mean… She’s only a child.”

“I know it’s difficult Pegs, try to think about her being safe and a few kids pranking you because it could just be that.”

“They’re threatening to kill her Steven!”

“Kids can be cruel and stupid.” Steve replied. “You know how many prank calls there are for that sort of thing? Too many to count… Usually it’s to get back at parents or family or because they’re bored and it seems like a good idea at the time you read about it all the time.”

“Sharon wouldn’t do that to us! I can’t believe that you think that this could be some kind of twisted game.”

He nearly laughed, because it was a game and he was the one being played and had been played for months.

There was a car waiting for them on the tarmac. Steve tried to take his time to looked around and look for posted agents but he couldn’t see any. He dropped into the back seat as Simon sat in the front.

Peggy’s phone rang and she answered it quickly.

“Yes?... Are you sure that’s what we should do?... No I understand… Yes. Ok.” She put the phone down. “We are to meet with some people who are going to help us. Driver I’ve sent you the location.”

The car started moving.

How screwed was he? What had he told her? Next to nothing about operations, next to nothing about missions, next to nothing about SHIELD. A little about Sam, a little about Bucky… They would already know those associations, any intelligence agency could find that out, agents had friends in other agencies who exchanged information.

He looked out of the window as they pulled out of the airport, he caught a tail, too close, only two cars back.

As the traffic stacked up and the car slowed, a motorbike came up between lanes and stopped just behind his door. The person dressed in black leathers with a tinted helmet on the bike was slight for the size of bike. He missed most the hand signal the first time, he caught it all the second time.

SHIELD hand signals.

Get out. Get on.

The motorbike dropped a fraction back so it would be clear of the door. The car was still rolling gently. He pushed the door open, got out and got onto the back of the bike. The driver immediately revved the engine and weaved through the traffic as Steve held on to… Her waist. She sped of the highway and into the busy streets at an alarming speed, weaving traffic. Two very tight turns and he knew it was Natasha from the recovery and reactions that meant they didn’t end up in the front end of the cars coming the other way.

She kept going until a wagon that was running front of them opened the back doors to reveal a sports car at the very end near the cab, she slowed to match the speed, a ramp dropped and she drove up and on skidding to a stop just before they went into the back of the car.

“Get in the car.” She said pulling off her helmet and shaking out her red hair. “Rogers. Move.” He stepped off the bike and she started pushing it towards the cab out of the way. “Anytime today.” She opened the drivers door and pulled off her leather jacket so she was just in a vest, pushing it inside before dropping in.

Steve shook his head and opened the passenger door. He hadn’t seen her since he had nearly ripped her head off about lying to him.

“She’s working for Senator Holt, General Ross and the CIA. Holt promised Ross funding for his special projects and he recently started golfing with the Director of the CIA, who wants you for Glosha and will take any chance to get back at Fury.”

Glosha was a SHIELD op that had gone wrong because the CIA had fucked up. The CIA didn’t like fucking up especially when Fury loved to rub it in their face and court favour because of it.

“We had to leave you in place long enough to find out what they had.” She checked her watch.

“You’re working for Fury?” Given the funding and equipment that went in to an op like they were running just to collect him, SHIELD were the only real option.

“Ross came after me and Clint, Fury offered us protection in return for coming back to work for him.”

Natasha and Clint had both swore never to work for Fury again.

“What did Ross do?”

“Not what he was hoping to do.” She shrugged and checked her watch again. “When we get to where we’re going, I can tell you more. Right now, I need to concentrate of getting us there.” She pressed the start on the engine and reversed back. “Ready.” The back door opened. “Hang on this will be rough.”

He had no idea how she kept control as she reversed down the ramp, then changed gears and let the ramp go from underneath them. He could only be grateful that she did.

She kept the speed limit as Steve kept checking for tails.

“ETA fifteen minutes.” Natasha said.

“Cap.” Barton said as he stepped inside the jet that was waiting for them inside a private airfield, as Natasha handed the car off to another agent drove it away.

He took a seat opposite the ramp out of habit, as soon as Natasha was inside the ramp closed and she sat behind Clint, pulling on a harness.

“Strap in, it’s a sharp one.”

Clint took off inside the hanger, going forward slowly before speeding up and taking them almost vertical as soon as they were clear of the door which made Steve stomach drop and he grimaced at the G forces until finally the jet levelled out.

Peggy was an agent. Peggy had been trying to set Steve up. Peggy wasn’t who he thought she was.

Not who you think.

He had to give it to her, she had done a good job. He hadn’t suspected her at all until she had pushed. She had never pushed him for information before. Good honey traps didn’t. Their mark gave them what they needed as long as they were given enough time.

Someone had lost their patience and he didn’t think it was her.

How long would it have been before he had said something to her that incriminated him or worse someone else?

He rubbed his face. He should have seen it. He had worked with some of the best agents in the world, he knew all the tricks, well not all of them but enough to know better. How could he have been so stupid?

The jet landed in small hanger, he didn’t know where, which would be the point and he followed Natasha and Clint as they walked him through to a elevator which took them down nine floors before opened up to a short grey corridor with a single door at the end. It was like a hundred other SHIELD bases he had been in. There were no easy to identify features.

Natasha put a code in and the door opened to a small grey room with a black table in the centre with two chairs either side. It was an interrogation room.

He was going to be interrogated because they needed to know what he had told her and he knew that his word couldn’t be enough for them.

He was going to have to rake over every bit of his relationship, his time with Peggy Carter, if that was even her name.

“Take a seat.” Natasha said gesturing him inside. “I’ll be with you in a few minutes.”

She wouldn’t be with him any time soon. She was leaving him to sit and stew.

There were two mirrors on either end of the table, he bet there were people outside watching him, monitoring him on top of the camera’s, microphones, heart rate monitors… They would need to establish base lines.

He pulled out the chair that they would want him to sit in. He had done this to himself by being stupid and trusting her… Loving her… Loving someone who didn’t exist.

He was surprised it was Coulson that walked through the door rather than Natasha. It was probably deliberate, to get a reading on his reactions on the monitors that were no doubt in the room.

“Steve.” Coulson smiled tightly and placed down three files. “Can I get you anything before we begin?”

“I’ve had enough games Coulson.” He sighed heavily. He had been trained in counter interrogation, he knew the angles that the older man would work.

“I know you understand that I have got to ask you some questions.” Coulson nodded.

“Let’s just get it over with.”

It was everything. He knew it would be. Everything and going back over everything to make sure that all his answers and reactions were consistent.

Every conversation he could think of, every dinner, every lunch, every date, every time at her apartment, every time they’d had sex, every time they had talked on the phone, it having his entire life ripped apart since he had met her.

He hadn’t told her anything. He knew he hadn’t, but by the time Coulson was finished, he had gone from being one hundred percent sure to doubting himself to being sure again.

“Thank you for your cooperation.” Coulson nodded. “I’ll have someone take you to a room so you can rest.”

He had questions he wanted to ask, it took all of his resolve not to ask them. He wouldn’t get any answers until they had decided what they were going to do with him.

The young woman sent to collect him, led him back to the elevator without a word. He was put in a locked guest room five floors down.

He already knew he wasn’t a guest, he was a prisoner.

Chapter Text

A grey haired male agent he didn’t recognise led in out of the room accompanied by four soldiers like he was going to try something like there was any point in trying when he was looking down the barrel of having to clear his name of treason.

He was taken back in the elevator and down to a short corridor. The door opened up to a wide white room. It was a guest suite. He had taken people into them before.

A central living room with sofa’s and a large TV on the wall, a kitchen area, a quiet area with books, there were six doors, he knew they led to en suite bedrooms.

“Steve!” Sam exclaimed coming out of a room to his right with his arm in a sling and scabbed over cuts on his face. “Are you ok?”

“Are you?” Steve frowned at the injuries that his friend was carrying.

“I tried to warn you about Carter but Ross kept fucking with my stuff.” Tony said sitting up on the sofa where he had been concealed by the high back. “Then he poisoned me. OD at Christmas? I’m not that much of a cliché. You know Spider and Robin Hood have gone back to the dark side?”

“I’ve seen them.” Steve nodded then turned to Sam. “What happened to you?”

“Car crash. Someone drained the break fluid and cut the hand break, I had to ditch it.” Sam replied with a shrug. “Been here a month.”

“Natasha said that Ross had gone after her and Clint.”

“Explosion took out their apartment block, everything written up from every authority like it was just an accident caused by the crackhead in the basement cooking after a dose too many.” Stark stated. “But they went to ground and I couldn’t find either of them, which is looking like Fury messing with me given that they are here… It happened around the time you met Carter... You know I don’t believe in coincidence.”

“Anything from Banner?” The Doctor had been with the team for that job.

“He’s in India working at some kind of clinic. Fury has sent someone or so he says.”

That was everyone accounted for except for Bucky. If Ross had gone after Natasha and Clint that hard then Bucky would have had the same, he had been on Delta for a time at SHIELD.

“Bucky?” He asked scrubbing his face with his hand.

“I would have told you if I’d found him, I was looking again...” Stark stated. “Problem with the three musketeers working with me is they know how to counter me especially when I’m on limited resources. I kept having to move so Ross couldn’t find me again. It was Romanov who told Fury how to find me I guarantee it.”

“I want to talk to Natasha.” Steve stated directly at the camera in the corner of the room. Whatever had happened between them personally, Bucky was still one of his team who had been on the rescue, it wasn’t just that he wanted to know for himself if Bucky was safe, he did, but if Ross was coming at them, he wanted to know that Fury was doing everything he could to find him and protect him too.

“You think that’ll work? I’ve been here for weeks. All I get in junior agents bring me food.” Sam said.

“Steve Rogers follow me please.” A young female agent said with four security guards behind her. There would be more, there were always more. They would be in strategic positions around the base in case he ran. He wasn’t going to run, he had nowhere to go.

He followed her through the corridor into the elevator and up onto the fourth floor to another grey corridor. She opened a door where Natasha was waiting for him sat behind a grey desk with Clint leaning against the wall behind her with his arms folded.

“Is Bucky safe?” Steve asked the question that was bothering him. Bucky may have ruined him and ripped his heart to shreds and yet he still couldn’t bring himself to not care.

“I don’t know.” Natasha replied as the junior agent closed the door.

“What do you mean you don’t know?” Steve demanded.

“I don’t know Steve.” She replied sharply. “I haven’t seen him since the last job we worked. I haven’t heard from him except for a coded postcard he sent me to let me know he was alive.”

“Which arrived about ten minuets before you turned up at our door by the way.” Clint stated defensively. “We weren’t keeping anything from you.”

Steve closed his eyes as his stomach clenched. There was something wrong about the entire situation. He looked at Natasha which only confirmed it.

“I can’t find him Steve and I’ve looked everywhere.” She stated and she was worried about it. “I’ve been looking and there’s nothing.”

“It’s too much nothing.” Clint said kicking his foot against the wall.

Steve felt his stomach drop to the floor, he had tried everything to find him.

“You think someone has him.” The thought made him sick all over again. How many scenario’s had he ran through before he had the letter? There was nothing one way or the other. He had looked everywhere, he had gone through everyone he could think of to find nothing. “You think that the letter and the postcard were fake?”

“The postcard wasn’t fake. That code, only Bucky would know it.” She crossed her arms. “I don’t know what’s happened to him.”

“You’re telling me that you think he’s been taken and you let me…”

“We didn’t let you do anything.” Clint snapped. “You cut us out of your life.”

“I thought that he would turn back up by now.” Natasha gave a little shrug. “I thought he had been dragged into a mission by someone and he would be back when he was finished with whatever he was doing… I can’t find him Steve and with what Ross has tried to do. I can’t help but think there’s a connection.”

He felt his knees go weak. If Ross had Bucky… He had to sit down at the table.

“We don’t know anything.” Clint stated cutting through the white noise in Steve’s head. “We’ve looked into Ross, the CIA, we’ve been looking and there’s nothing.”

The door opened and Fury stepped inside, closing the door behind him.

“Ross doesn’t have Barnes.” Fury said. “Someone else did.”

“What do you mean did?” Clint asked while Steve tried not to be sick.

“I called Barnes back for a mission against Nicholas Raynard, he was…”

“Where is he now?” Natasha asked sharply cutting Fury off.

“That’s classified.” Fury said with the nerve to sound remorseful.

Steve got up out of the chair before he even thought about it and punched Fury as hard as he could. As he pulled back to throw another punch Clint pushed Steve back with a firm hand on his chest.

“You keep going we’ll never find him.” Clint warned.

“Barnes is safe. All of you will be moving to a safe location until I get the problems with Holt, Ross and the CIA resolved.” Fury said thumbing his split lip. “Get packed. Transport is in one hour.” As soon as Fury left the room six agents entered and Steve was handcuffed… He was walked through the base to a garage and put in the back seat of a car with metal mesh on the windows.

The safe house that he was driven to was massive, a mansion, secluded surrounded by tall fences and had plenty of security guards. It took less than an hour to have a blind spot and a way out.

It took three hours to remove the cameras and listening devices. Natasha handed Tony a laptop she had stolen off the base while Steve sat down onto the sofa.

“Fury knows where Bucky is.” Steve stated. “We need to find him before Ross does.”

“Turn Fury upside down and shake out his pockets.” Tony nodded.

“Who is Raynard?” Steve asked looking to Natasha and Clint. He had never heard of him, from their reaction it had been a Delta mission.

“He runs an influential crime syndicate into everything and anything bad, he’s violent, clever, not shy on torture or executions.” Clint stated while Natasha put her head in her hands. “We got as close as anyone to taking him down... All I can think is that Bucky was trying to stop Fury dragging us all back in.” Clint said sitting on the back of the sofa behind Natasha and putting his hand on her shoulder.

“He knows better.” Natasha snapped and strode out of the room.

Steve looked up at Clint who rolled his neck as though he was trying to ease some tension.

“That bad?” Steve asked, everything from the two of them was telling him that whatever their mission had been it hadn’t ended well, that Raynard was still alive and free by the end of it was a very clear indicator that something had gone wrong.

“It was pretty nasty.” Clint nodded before following Natasha out of the room.

Pretty nasty on a Delta mission was as close to catastrophic without them all dying as it got.

“Anything?” Steve turned his attention to Tony.

“You’re not sitting there and staring at me… I’m working on it.” Tony said dismissing him.

“Come on, let’s take a look around.” Sam encouraged leading him out into a wide wooden panelled hallway. “How are you doing?”

“Fine.” Steve replied walking away. He didn’t want to talk about any of it. He didn’t want to think about any of it.

He walked around the rooms until he found a gym set up and set up a punching bag. He punched until his arms were numb and his knuckles were raw, then punched so more.

“The easiest target in the world is a broken heart.” Natasha said from behind him as he sat on the floor to catch his breath.

“I was stupid.” Steve wiped at his mouth.

“I don’t think you were stupid.” Natasha said stepping into the room. “Peggy Carter doesn’t make the kind of mistake that got you back to us.”

“What are you saying?”

“She made a decision to let you get away... She cared about you.”

“Nat... Not now.” Steve warned. He couldn’t think about Peggy caring, she had lied to him and set him up.

“When Tony finds an address…”

“I’m going Natasha.” Steve cut her off. “If nothing else I got him into this Ross and Holt mess. I’m team leader.” A faulty detonator had a lot to answer for. “I need to do this.”

Steve drove to the little cabin that Tony had given him the location for with trepidation. It was a hunch, a guess that it could possibly be where Bucky was and only because the deeds for the land had been hidden in open view. The cabin was so deep and remote in a forest, so far out of the way that he had needed to take fuel cans for the journey.

He had been on the road four days by the time he drove up to the large wooden cabin nestled in a break in the trees high light in the morning sunlight, it was clear that it was in a good state of repair.

There were no cars in the wide gravel bay that was obviously meant for parking. There were no people obvious as he approached, any guards for the safe house must have taken positions in the trees. He kept his eyes on the treeline either side of the road as he pulled up to the cabin trying to work out where he would put himself and looking for scopes but didn’t see any.

He waited in the car for a moment giving himself a chance to look around again. There was no guarantee this was the right place he reminded himself.

Seeing no one he stepped out of the SUV, checking the windows into what looked like a kitchen for any signs of life and tried to listen over the crunch of his feet on the gravel as he approached the door to the cabin. He looked inside again. The floors were dust free, the worktops were tidy, there was nothing tipped over.

It looked empty.

He turned the doorhandle, surprised that it was unlocked.

There was something off. He didn’t know what it was, but there something not right. Even though he couldn’t see anything or hear anything, everything looked like the cabin was recently lived in but now empty, instinct told him that there was a danger somewhere.

He stepped into a long kitchen with a dining table to his right, seeing no one he kept going into a large room that had two long L shaped sofa’s staged around a massive TV on the wall, none of the cushions were out of place. At the end of the room was a sliding door leading to a wide deck and what looked like grassland before the treeline. There were stairs on his right leading up an open banister to doors, there was only one door to his left to clear.

He opened the door and he found a small room with a standard grey SHIELD weapons locker with the door ajar. He stepped closer to see if the weapons were still inside, there weren’t.

Suddenly there was the sound of boots on floorboards, multiple boots. He reached for his pistol just before there was deafening gunfire and he dropped down.

As quickly as it had started it was over.

His ears rang with the echoing of gunfire and the thud of his heart from the surge of adrenaline. He took a couple of calming breaths and tried to listen over the ringing in his ears.

“Rogers move your ass!” A male voice boomed. Steve moved to the door and carefully looked through the hinges. The man in the centre of the room was tall and broad dressed in black with a pistol in his hand and a machine gun over his shoulder. “I’m not dropping my weapons. I’m not going to ask you to drop yours. You are wasting time, we do not have.”

“Who are you?” Steve called.

“We’ve got four minutes until their back up gets here. You’d already be dead if I wanted you dead.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Frank and we need to move.”

Steve stepped out of the room, what greeted him was stilled chaos, there were dead black clothed soldiers on the floor of the living room, one the stairs and hanging over the banister. The sofa’s and walls were riddled with bullet holes.

“Fall behind, stay behind.” Frank stated, striding towards the open sliding doors.

Steve had to run to catch up with Frank who was already striding across the grass, as soon as he was within a ten feet the taller man started jogging towards the tree line. Once in the trees the dark haired made took a sharp left walking a few stride to pick up a olive coloured backpack which he pulled onto his back before turning right and continuing to jog.

“What’s going on?” Steve asked.

A serious of large booms of explosions rang out from behind them towards the cabin.

“Move.” Frank stated and picked up his pace again.

Steve stayed a few paces behind Frank on the undulating terrain as the trees spaced out as the trucks became thicker although the canopy remained in pace except for the fire roads which they crossed from time to time as the pace remained the same.

It was easily half an hour before Steve heard the sound of running water to his left although the source wasn’t in view, they were jogging parallel to it.

Another ten minutes and Frank slowed to a walk.

“You need a break?” The dark hair man asked gruffly pulling out a canteen from the side of his backpack and taking a mouthful.

“No.” Steve replied evenly, the pace was stiff, and he wasn’t as fit as he used to be, he was still fit enough to keep going.

“Good.” Frank said keeping a high walking pace as they started to climb up hill crossing a wide stream and another fire road before climbing down a steep valley to a dirt pack road where a car was waiting.

“Get in.” Frank said as he opened the drivers door, throwing his bag into the back seat.

“What’s going on?”

“Get in the car.” Frank growled and dropped into the drivers seat heavily and starting the engine, he barely waited for Steve to get into the passenger seat before he was pulling away. “Fury baited you up on a hook for Ross, his team are coming in behind to take the rest but they’re slow ass. What Fury hasn’t worked out is that Ross cut his losses after his honey trap went to shit and now Holt just wants you dead before Homeland take him down so he hired a bunch of trigger happy mercs for the job.”

“Take down Holt for what?” Steve asked trying to get the pieces together, concerned that Frank knew so much when he knew nothing about him, other than he was a good shot and moved with military training.

“Paying the militia to launch the attack and kill his wife. All so she couldn’t divorce him for adultery and ruin his political career. His daughters weren’t meant to be taken. Holt didn’t take into account that paying a bunch of psycho’s doesn’t mean they’ll do as they’re told. When it came down to it, he paid them extra to make sure his family died, so he could milk it for votes. There was no faulty detonator, it was an inside man.”

“Do you have proof?” Steve asked rubbing his jaw and trying to digest the information on Holt.

“It’s with Homeland and SHIELD.” Frank said checking his mirrors.

“You work for Homeland?”

Frank snorted a short laugh.

“SHIELD?”

“Keep on insulting me, see what it gets you.” Frank stated, turning onto another fire road.

“So why are you here?”

“Mopping up.” Frank replied, pulling out hard onto a tarmac road.

“Why are you here?” Steve asked again.

Frank glanced over him and twisted his lip before turning his attention back to the road.

“A couple of years ago I’m at a gas station on the highway… I’m minding my business and across the lot I see this group of men approach some collage kids, I guess it was spring break or something, they’re all laughing and enjoying themselves… Two minutes later a mini van rolls up on them and a group of men jump out… They start trying to force the girls into the back of a minivan and they’ve got guns on the boys… They’re fighting and screaming, I’m trying to get there… Out of nowhere a police cruiser goes by and the cops not even looking… Doesn’t matter to them… They shoot all the kids, there’s bodies everywhere before I can stop it… So I find the men responsible and they tell me they’re working for a some piece of shit. This piece of shit says he’s working for another piece of shit. All the way up the chain to the head asshole. Some shit goes down and I end up thrown into a cell with what I thought was a body, turns out that the dead meat had one hell of a skill set…” Frank looked him dead in the eye.

“Bucky.” He said numbly.

“He gives me the weak points, I carry him out and get him to a hospital… Less than a week later Ross comes in and tries to take him… I made Ross regret it... He’s still regretting it.”

What I thought was a body.

A horrible sick feeling twisted his guts. When had Bucky written the note? Before the mission in case something went wrong, or after?

He hadn’t come back.

Letter or no letter, Bucky hadn’t come back to him after the mission, even if he was done with Steve… Even if he didn’t want to see Steve, Bucky hadn’t been in touch with Natasha about Ross.

“Where is he?”

“Safe.” Frank stated.

“Safe isn’t a location.” Steve snapped, he wasn’t in the mood for stone walling.

“Safe is all you’re getting and you’re going to have to swallow it.” Frank said harshly. “Think very carefully before you do something stupid.” He added with a growl of threat. “He asked me to get you out of the trap alive, he didn’t specify more than that.”

Bucky had sent Frank. Steve banged his head back against the headrest.

“What happened to him?” Bucky wouldn’t have sent anyone, he would have come himself, if he could. “Why isn’t he here?”

“That would have been one hell of a reunion.” Frank snorted. “You two, wrapped up in a bow for the mercs because you couldn’t get your shit together.”

Steve shook his head.

“Not how we were. We’d get the job done first.”

“If you say so.” Frank muttered full of doubt.

“He’d trust me to keep it together.” They had always trusted each other to be professional, they had always been professional, work and personal, it had overlapped, but it had never got in the way of any job. “He got shot in the waist and I left him bleeding to finish take out the hostiles we were meant to. We’d been sleeping together for a year, so don’t try to tell me that he didn’t trust me to be focused on what needed doing… Why isn’t he here?” At worst, if Frank had somehow managed to convince Bucky to let him get Steve, then Bucky would have be waiting for them at the car. He wasn’t there.

“I’m taking you back to Fury’s mansion.” Frank said, ignoring the question.

It was as telling as any lie. Steve nodded to himself.

There was something wrong with Bucky. He wasn’t there because he couldn’t be or he didn’t trust himself.

What I thought was a body. Franks description rang in his head.

“How bad was he when you got him out?” It would be bad, he knew it would.

“None of your business.” Frank replied flatly. Lucky to still be alive. He didn’t need to know Frank to know the tone, he’d heard it from strangers before.

“When you see him, tell him he’s an idiot.” Steve sighed rubbing his face with his hand.

“Excuse me?”

“You married?” Steve asked.

“None of your business.” Frank replied sharply. He was married, and he was all in on it.

“I was going to ask him to marry me because I loved, I love him, and there’s nothing that would change that. He’s an idiot if he thinks that anything would. I never would have stopped looking for him if he hadn’t written a break up letter, I still looked after that… You can only find thin air on a person that you think doesn’t want you anymore for so long before you give in, and he wanted me to give in, right? Yeah. He got what he wanted.” Steve shook his head. He had given Bucky exactly what he wanted. Bucky had made him give up. He’d made it hopeless. “You can add that of all the things I’ve thought about him, I’ve never thought he was a coward.”

“What makes you think I’m your messenger?”

Steve turned his head to look out the window, trying to make some sense of the mess.

It took three weeks for SHIELD and Homeland to wrap up the mess of Ross, Holt and the mercs, until everyone they wanted was in a cell or under their thumb.

Three weeks of being confined to the grounds, the holes in security fixed, more guards, a promise of chains and locks if any of them broke out again, it didn’t matter because he didn’t know where Bucky was and that would the only place he wanted to be.

He needed to know what was so bad that Bucky didn’t come back. There were a thousand things that could have happened to Bucky and not one was a good enough excuse.

His apartment was covered in dust when he walked in. He’d been living with Peggy. It was something to do. He blitz the place from top to bottom and put it on the market.

He didn’t know where he was going, but he wasn’t staying there.

He pulled his Harley out of storage and loaded it up. It had been years since he had been on the open road, he had absolute freedom to do whatever he wanted, go wherever, Bucky would be able to find him. And he would find him. He wouldn’t take being called a coward.

Frank was standing next to his bike when Steve stepped out of the mom-and-pop gas station, on a nowhere road in Nebraska.

“Got something for you.” Frank said offering a white envelope to him.

“Is he serious?” Steve shook his head. He tore open the envelope roughly.

“Yep.” Frank didn’t sound impressed either. “Plane ticket and Carter’s address.”

You two will be good together.

Another note. A sentence. Followed by an address in London.

“No, not this time. He wants this; he needs to look me in the eye and tell me.”

Frank pursed his lips for a moment, looking Steve up and down very deliberately, then nodded.

“It ain’t going to be peaches and cream.” It was a warning he didn’t need.

“I’m expecting rainbows and gum drops.” Steve said sarcastically. “Where?”

“The funniest thing to me is that you don’t already know.” Frank replied as he started walking away towards a black truck. “You know him so well, right? Where do you think he is?”

“If I knew I would be asking.” Steve said following him.

“You’ve been asking the wrong question.” Frank said as he opened the truck door.

“What’s the right question?” Steve asked in confusion.

“Who bought your farmhouse?”

Chapter Text

Three and a half years earlier...

Steve looked over the departure board as he made his way back to where Bucky was sitting against the cream airport wall with his knees drawn up typing on his phone, which meant that he had somehow worked out that Steve had switched his phone back on or he hadn’t, and was just going to be shameless.

“I thought we said that we weren’t switching cells back on until LA.” Steve said offering Bucky one of the two bottles of water he had in his hands.

“Thanks.” Bucky took the bottle with his left hand and put it down by his ankle as he continued to type with his right thumb. “You text Sam two hours ago. I’m not the one who broke first.”

Steve nodded to himself. He should have known that Bucky know that there wasn’t a line for the restroom, despite the number of people in the departure lounge.

“Just to let him know we’re delayed, and we’ll get a ride home instead so he’s not hanging around on us.” He didn’t know why he was explaining himself, he had still had his phone switched on first.

“Which you could have done from LA when we have a better idea of when we’ll get back to New York.” Bucky pointed out as he read a message.

“How’s Natasha?” Steve asked as he sat down next to him.

“Barton, not Nat.” Bucky replied then started typing again.

“Something wrong?” Steve frowned. It wasn’t like Bucky to text Clint except to exchange insulting memes.

“No, just wanted to ask him something.” Bucky shrugged putting the phone down to his right so it was on the opposite side to Steve.

"Something which couldn't wait until LA?" 

Bucky shrugged again, clearly not going to answer what he was texting Clint about.

"What did the board say?”

“Three more hours.” Steve replied as he picked up his sketchbook and pencil from off of the top of his bag and opening it back up on the drawing he was working on.

“So it’ll be five.” Bucky nodded. He slid himself forward a few feet away from the wall, reached for his bag, he pushed it under his knees and lay flat on his back on the blue carpet. “I spend too much of my life in airports.” He sighed heavily and closed his eyes.

“You’d spend less time in them if you’d work for me full time.” Steve said picking back up shading Bucky’s hair on the page, then glanced down when he didn’t get a reply.

“Cute.” Bucky gave him a sarcastic smile. “You know I know your real game, right?” He added in a teasing tone, which meant he wasn’t prepared to get into the argument.

“My game?” Steve sighed.

There was no game, but he didn’t want to argue either, especially when it didn’t change anything.

“There are easier ways than working for you to get me back into a suit.”

The last time he’d seen Bucky in a suit had been their date at The Modern, Bucky’s birthday present to Steve.

He’d gotten a text message in the morning wishing him a happy birthday followed by another a few minutes later: Wear a suit, I’m taking you out tonight. Cab will pick you up at 7. As far he knew Bucky was still in Africa for another week.

When he’d gotten out of the cab outside the restaurant and art gallery, Bucky had been waiting for him in a tailored navy suit and tie, white shirt with a bright smile, every inch of him stunning.

“You couldn’t keep your hands to yourself.” Bucky smiled up at him.

“I wasn’t the only one.” Steve said pointedly.

“Good night.” Bucky said wistfully. “If you wore a suit to work, I’d seriously consider my options.” He knew Bucky was joking, still if that was what it took, Steve would do it. “I could come into your office and give it ‘Captain Rogers, sir.’” Bucky said in an overtly sultry tone. “I need your expertise.”

“I’d happily give it to you.”

“Think your desk could handle it?” Bucky smiled then shifted picking up his phone and looking at the screen. “Roddy.”

“I switched my cell back off.” Steve sighed, instantly annoyed, as he dropped his head back against the wall.

He knew that Bucky would answer the call, he always did.

Of all the other people that Bucky worked for, Roddy McBride was the one that he wanted Bucky to drop the most.

Every mission McBride ran was done by the seat of his pants and to make it worse, he used Bucky to be the glue to hold it together.

It didn’t matter that Bucky had just healed up from a broken wrist. It didn’t matter that Bucky agreed with him about McBride’s poor planning or that he complained about it…

“Hey. I’m in Auckland.” Bucky said into the cell then listened. “New Zealand, dumbass.”

He wondered if Bucky was going to change his flight and head straight out to meet McBride wherever his latest operation was instead of coming home.

“Fighting orcs and climbing volcano’s.” Bucky said, likely to the question about what he was doing there. There was no fighting anything, but they had climbed two dormant volcanos. “Fine.” Bucky rolled his right wrist as though to test it, probably to the question about how his wrist was, then listening to whatever Roddy wanted. “I've already got a job lined up.” Steve looked down sharply at Bucky, he had said that he didn’t have anything for when they got home. “I'm going to do some work for Rat.” George ‘Rat’ Piper trained security personnel for contracts in the middle east from his compound, which was only an hour fifteen from their apartment less the way Bucky rode, he'd be at home for the duration, he'd want to ride his bike up and back to Rat's everyday. “I need to pay him back some favours. He’s dug me out more than a few times. It’s already arranged. I’m not backing out on him. You’ll need Oiler or Vali.” Bucky ended the call, then pressed on the button on the side of his phone to switch it off and showed the black screen to Steve as being off before putting it down on the floor between them, lying back and closing his eyes. “I figured after being out with my wrist, it’s good timing to square up with Rat and I can do some training at the same time, sharpen up.” He pointed down at his phone. “I was checking dates with him, he wants me for the next two he’s running, and he wanted me to try and get Barton for one of them.”

“How long are you going to be home?” Steve asked with a mix of excitement and relief that Bucky wasn’t going to be going anywhere for a while.

“It ties me up, unless something comes up with you, into the back end of next month. I was going to tell you when we got home.” Bucky shrugged at little then opened his eyes and looked up at Steve. “If you’ve had enough of me, I could stay with him instead.” Bucky said teasing.

“I can't get enough of you.” A month in New Zealand together without the stress of being on a mission or constantly being on edge that Bucky was going to get a phone call for a job and leave for an unspecified amount of time, he hoped had proven to Bucky, how good they could be together all of the time.

Chapter Text

He had four states to work out what he was going to say when he saw Bucky again, he’d gone from reasonable to livid to so anxious about what he might find that he had to be sick by the side of the road, to relieved to finally know where he was, in a spiralling whirlwind that didn’t make getting to the farmhouse away quicker and every single word, each and every thing he had planned to say completely left his tongue and he’d already forgiven him by the time he pulled onto the single track which led to the house.

It was five miles through woods and grassland, he had been pinged by every security camera and tracer on the road. There was no doubt that Bucky would know he was coming.

The farmhouse looked exactly the same as how he had last seen it, out the rear view mirror of his car as he and Peggy drove away except there was a new single story stone building in the same style as the house to the right. There weren’t any windows but there were two doors, side by side facing the house, one wide big enough for a car, one narrower. It looked like a garage, it was the one thing that they house hadn’t had that he was planning on adding, with Bucky’s input.

The house sat nestled in a small valley with a stream and woodland to the left of it, blocking it from view until the last few hundred metres where it opened up to a lawn and scrub garden, there was rocky rough land to the right, the two story rough stone four bedroom house with big windows to the front offering miles of uninterrupted views down the valley onto more grassland, rocky outcrops and woods. It all belonged with the house, over five thousand acres all told.

He parked up his bike as the sun stared to set and looked over the house again with a growing trepidation that it was going to be just another dead end, except there was someone living there because the lawn was mown, the place was cared for, lived in.

It could be that Bucky had bought the farmhouse, then moved on and it was a paper trail that he was meant to follow because Frank wasn’t meant to tell him or had said he wouldn’t tell Steve where Bucky was.

Frank hadn’t told him outright…

His heart thudded in his chest and his feet felt heavy as he climbed up the five steps onto the wooden porch, the oak table and chair set he had bought were still on the wood decking. He had thought that they would be able to eat outside, it was a gorgeous unspoilt view down the valley, a mix of wild grass land, rocky outcrops and woodland, all the land to the massive forest four miles away belonged to the house.

It was the land that had drawn him to the house in the first place. Miles and miles of varied land that meant that they could do whatever they wanted... Bucky could have a shooting range, they could have a dirt bike track, and ride all of it, they could hike on their own land for days, camp out, there were amazing landscapes in all directions that Steve could practice painting. They could have all the security they would both want.

The house was an afterthought, but as soon as he’d been there and stepped inside, it had felt right. It had been in disrepair and needed gutting but it felt like home to him straight away.

As soon as he’d been inside, he knew how he wanted to be. He’d called up one of his old army unit who worked renovation, and he’d told him what he wanted.

He’d had them knock the small kitchen and two small rooms through to make one big kitchen with room for a dining table and a window that ran the full length for light and for the view, they spent so much time in the kitchen together that he had wanted it to be the heart of the house. He’d had them do the same with the living room, take out walls and made it more open. He’d had them make the three rooms at the back for an office, a studio and a gym.

He'd had them reconfigure the upstairs from six rooms into four bedrooms, two with ensuite and a bathroom, so they would be able to have the team stay over, knowing that it wouldn’t all of them at the same time.

He had picked the master bedroom to be the room at the front with the best view down the valley, a view he wanted to wake up to everyday, with Bucky beside him as often as possible.

He blew out a breath and knocked on the black reinforced door, glancing up at the security camera, pushing down the hope in his chest and trying to convince himself that it wouldn’t be Bucky who opened the door.

He heard the door unlock and held his breath as it opened then let it out with relief as Bucky came into view.

His hair was longer, longer than he’d ever had it, he had a short beard, he was thinner…

Steve stepped forward and wrapped his arms around his neater waist and pressed his face into the right side of his neck. Whatever had happened he needed to feel him back in his arms, make him real.

Bucky was real, he was there…

He wasn’t hugging Steve back. He was rigid in his arms.

He gripped him tighter, wanting him to embrace him back, he wanted to feel Bucky’s right hand on his back and his left hand on hip like it had always been. He needed it.

The pain, the sorrow, the frustration, the years, he needed to feel like it was worth it to have him back in his arms.

There was a sinking feeling, his stomach was bottoming out and a nausea was setting in, because this was all he had wanted for so long, to see Bucky was alive, to know he was ok and it wasn’t anything like he had imagined.

Bucky didn’t feel the same, a part of Steve didn’t want him to feel the same.

Bucky had ruined his life and he was standing still, breathing like it wasn’t affecting him at all, Steve was shaking and there were tears of relief, frustration and anger threatening to roll down his cheeks…

Bucky didn’t smell the same, he realised. The leather from his jacket was familiar but there was no whiskey, gun powder or gun oil. He’d changed shampoo, although he’d always used what Steve had. There was a faint hint of engine oil and earth.

Bucky wasn't holding him back.

It wasn’t the same, it would never be what it was…

He wasn’t sure he wanted it to be.

Steve stepped back and turned away for a moment to take a breath, collect himself back together instead of feeling as scattered as his emotions, he wiped the few tears that had fallen away. And blew out a deep breath before turning towards Bucky again.

“Go to London.”

Two years, nine months, twenty five days… Go to London.

He looked Bucky over again, taking him in, looking for the differences more carefully.

There were scars on his right cheek near his jaw, three, straight, deep, they weren’t hidden by the beard, they broke the hair line. There was another scar on his left eye, right at the edge of the corner. There was a vicious scar on the side of his neck, deep, it started somewhere hidden by his hair and continued down over near his jugular before it disappeared under the black high roll neck jumper.

Bucky never wore roll neck jumpers. A scarf maybe if it was twenty below, but never a roll neck.

The black leather jacket was different than the one he’d had, and it was zipped to the base of his neck, if Bucky zipped his jacket it was to pec height, never higher.

All in black. Black jacket, jumper, jeans, heavy combat boots, even gloves, the only time he wore gloves was when he was riding his bike.

The nonchalant look in his eyes, the emotionless tone…

Armour.

He’d known that Steve was coming, and he’d chosen to put on armour.

“I’m not going anywhere.” Steve stated, focusing himself, hardening his resolved.

Bucky was holding his eye, unremorseful. His defences were sky high. Cold, calculating, practiced. He had every answer ready. Every offence prepared to make sure that Steve walked away and never came back… If Steve showed even a hint of weakness, a chink that Bucky could go at, he was going to be steamrollered.

He couldn’t engage in a war of words; Bucky would make sure that he lost.

Bucky had never, in all the time they were together, ripped into Steve the way that he knew he could. Steve had seen Bucky reduce the most hardened men to begging on occasion, with barely an inch of leverage, he dug into the core of them, twisted and ripped out everything.

Bucky could gut a person when he wanted to.

Even in the grip of their worst arguments, Bucky would walk away as soon as he started to look like he was going to turn it on Steve.

Bucky had never even come close. He hadn’t even gone as far as he could with the letter. He’d never come close to hurting Steve like that face to face.

Bucky had gone to work for Fury on a mission. He hadn’t told Steve, everything he’d heard, it sounded like Bucky was protecting the team from being involved. Something had gone wrong. He had chosen to break Steve’s heart and stay away. Bucky could’ve gone anywhere else in the world; he had chosen to buy the house that Steve bought for them. In his own way, he had come back to him. He had greeted Steve with armour, indifference and told him to go to London.

He needed to get under his defences, throw him off what he had prepared for, if he was going to even a chance of getting to the truth.

“How do you like the house?” Steve asked forcing a casual tone, he looked around, as far as he could see, there hadn’t been any changes. The walls were the same colour of warm light cream.

“It’s a place to live.” Bucky replied flatly. Like it didn’t matter, only it did matter because otherwise he wouldn’t be there.

“Can I look around?”

“Carter loves you. The way she can operate, she could have taken you down almost straight away and she didn’t, she extended the mission. The hostage drama, that was Ross forcing her hand. Go to her, patch things up, you can have everything you want with her. You love her, she loves you, you’ll have a great life together.”

Steve nodded to himself. Bucky was pushing hard and sweetening at the same time. He was also standing in the house that Steve had designed for them, telling him to go to someone else.

“Say it, mean it and I’ll walk away.” Steve said being deliberately vague. He needed to get Bucky thinking and off centre; he needed something he couldn’t block.

“Say what?” Bucky asked shrugging a little like it wouldn’t matter what it was.

“Say you don’t love me, make me believe it and I’ll leave.”

He saw Bucky set his jaw, and a flash of outrage through his eyes before he could hide it.

“I can’t have a fairy tale with Peggy without hearing you say it. I don’t love her like I love you; I never have. She deserves to be the love of someone’s life. I can’t be with her, knowing that you still love me. You can kick me to the curb again, tell me we’ll never be anything and I’m still not going to go to her. It’s not fair on her. We won’t have that perfect life you think that we can have because it’ll turn bitter, and we’ll end up miserable. So come on Buck.” Steve challenged. “You want me gone. It’s all you got to do.”

He couldn’t, Steve knew he couldn’t, the look in his eyes was like he was daring himself, like he was going to force himself, even knowing that Steve wouldn’t believe the lie. He saw raw desperation before Bucky looked over Steve’s shoulder.

“I don’t love you.” He said it like he meant it, only he couldn’t look him the eye and say it.

“Liar.”

“You’re a jerk.” Bucky growled, tilting his head back, exposing more of the scar on his neck.

“Yeah, I know.” Steve said and pulled him into another hug, a half apology for going through his defences.

This time Bucky did hug him back, a half hug, turned half in, half out, his right hand gripping into his back, his chin rested on to top of his shoulder, his left side away from Steve. It felt closer to how it should.

“I’ve called you so much worse than that.” He kissed the side of his head. “My Mom’s been spinning in her grave with the things I’ve said about you. There’s a spoon with my name on it waiting for me.”

“There’s nothing for you here.” Bucky said digging the fingers of his right hand into Steve’s back and pulling him closer.

“You’re here.”

Bucky let out a bitter laugh, as Steve felt tremors starting, he could feel the held in emotion, Bucky was trying not to cry, Steve shifted his hand to cradled the back of his head. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d seen Bucky cry.

The first time had been after they had told the mother of a little six-year-old girl that her daughter was dead.

They’d been a week too late and what had been done to her, the state she had been in, if he closed his eyes, he could still see what was left of her... Bucky had found her, he had wanted to be there to tell her mother that she was gone… It was the begging of the mother, pleading with them to be wrong, her asking what happened to her, asking for the details when they couldn’t do that to her, she’d never have any kind of peace as it was… It had been her soul deep howl of a pain when they had left the house that had made Bucky break down.

The second time it had been in the apartment watching a movie, Good Will Hunting.

“Are you crying?” Steve had asked, his own tears falling, trying to see Bucky’s face as he wiped at it.

“You probably cry at Bambi.”

“I do because I’m not a psychopath.” Steve had reached across the sofa and pulled him into a hug.

“It’s a cartoon, Steve.” Bucky said with his arm tight around Steve’s waist and his head on his chest.

“So? It can’t be sad? Have you ever seen Watership down?” He had kissed the top of Bucky’s head and held him long past the end credits.

The last time he had seen Bucky cry, it had been in pain and frustration as they hiked out of a job the opposite way to the plan after the authorities had been closer than expected. It had been a difficult fast assault to save the hostages, followed by hours of steep slopes and awkward climbs.

A slip on a wet rock and Bucky had stayed down instead of cursing and popping back up.

“Hey.” Steve had crouched down next to him.

“Give me a second.” Bucky had said with his head down, breathing hard, harder than he should have been.

“Keeping going, we’ll catch up.” Steve had said to Natasha and Clint. “Okay?” He’d turned his attention back to Bucky. “Need a hand up?”

Bucky had nodded and Steve had needed to get his arms right under Bucky's armpits to get him upright, it felt like Bucky didn’t have any power in his legs and he hadn’t straighten up all the way.

“Your back again?” Steve had asked already ready to turn him and try to ease his lower back as he’d had to do before, only Bucky had lifted his head and there had been tears running down his face.

“It’s gone this time.” Bucky had said with a frantic laugh as another tear fell. He had leaned forward onto Steve’s shoulder, blowing out shaky breaths as Steve gently brought his arms around him, trying to offer any comfort that he could.

“Banner’s got all of the good drugs. A few more miles, we’ll have you as high as a kite. Then you’re going to get it fixed because you’re not doing this yourself. I don’t care that you’re the world’s worst patient.”

“We’re about square on that.” Bucky had said, his breathing was starting to even out, he was getting the pain under control. “Are you going to hold my hand and mop my brow?”

“I’m going to tie you to the bed.”

“How am I only finding out this kink now?” Bucky had asked, then had blown out a very slow breath.

“You’ve had a bad back, I’ve had to be careful with you.” Steve had replied and adjusted his grip. “Steady pace. We’ll stop however many times it takes. Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

It took a lot to get Bucky upset enough to cry, most of the time he’d be on the verge then pull himself back.

“Fuck.” Bucky muttered, dropping his forehead onto Steve’s shoulder and pressing down bring him back out of his memories and back to being in the doorway of the farmhouse.

“You’re ok.” Steve said stroking his hair with his thumb.

“I’m not.” Bucky replied tightening his grip on Steve’s back. There was a weight behind the words. There was more. Steve knew there would be, he’d known for weeks. Bucky had been captured, likely tortured and whatever happened, it was so bad he didn’t want Steve to know about it. He would rather stay away than let Steve in.

“You will be.” Steve would make sure he was.

“I’m not your problem Steve.” Bucky said pulling out of his arms and striding away through the doorway and into the kitchen.

Steve sighed. The worst of Bucky Barnes, greatest hits.

“You know the one thing I’d change about you?” Steve asked leaning his shoulder against the doorframe, giving him space because crowding him never worked out, watching Bucky’s back as he was bent over the oak worktop with his head bowed.

“Just one?”

“Just one.” Steve said looking around the large kitchen with a dining table by the windows, something Bucky would have complained about, he probably would have called it a waste of space and asked when they ever had dinner parties, still it was there, the walls were still the same colour, even the mugs hanging on the hooks on the cupboard were the same. “Your need to protect everyone.”

Bucky turned to face him and wiped at his face with his gloved right hand, clearing the few tears that had fallen.

“Coming from you?” 

Steve nodded, watching him carefully.

“I don’t need to be protected by you, from you.”

He winced when Bucky’s face hardened.

“Fury picked me up.” Bucky said evenly, emotion getting locked back down and leaning back against the work top. “He told me what Raynard was looking to expand again using force to take the Marcelo operation. It would have caused an all-out street war, thousands of people would have died unless he was taken out. He wanted to bring you, Nat, Barton and Stark into it, I wasn’t letting any of you get involved in anything that dangerous, so I took the mission.”

Bucky had taken the mission to protect them.

“You know what I’m going to say.” He clamped down hard on his anger.

Bucky should have told him what he was doing. He knew the argument would be that if he had told Steve what he was going to do, then Steve would have insisted that they did it together. If Bucky tried to go alone, it wouldn’t have happened. Worst case Steve would have needed Natasha to find him. Whatever way it happened, if Bucky had told him, they all would have gone anyway.

“Yeah. I know.” Bucky nodded. “But better me than one of you.”

Steve pushed off the doorframe, he had to move to have any hope of not losing his temper with Bucky. He paced back and forth along the length of the room until the edge was off.

It was done, there was no going back and changing it.

Bucky had made his decision, a bad one in Steve opinion, the only way if could have been worse was if Bucky had died.

“You’d have done the same.” Bucky said firmly.

He would. That wasn’t the point. He hadn’t. Bucky had. And he hadn’t come back.

“Why you? Delta went up against Raynard before. Fury shouldn’t have been able to use you.”

“I was backup first go around. It was Natasha and Clint that went in. I knew what I was getting in to, and I knew most of the players around him.”

And he still went. He had seen the Delta mission go wrong and he’d still chosen to go.

Steve would have gone on the mission too.

“What went wrong?”

“I wasn’t the only game in town. The wrong piece of information was used at the wrong time and a deal collapsed when it should have gone through. Raynard decided there were spies in the ranks, he called a meeting and started picking people to torture randomly. Called a meeting the next day, and the next. You didn’t turn up you were called a spy hunted down by his private army and tortured, you turned up you could still be a spy and picked. He didn’t pick me out. I finally got him where I needed for a clean job and another agency had switched out the driver with a plan to capture Raynard instead of kill him, we get side swiped hard for a pick up, except there were six tails of Raynards soldiers, not the four they had thought so they didn’t have every angle covered and they got taken out. Raynard decided I was in on it.”

It was a fuck up, agencies not talking and running their own operations as though the others weren’t there.

Bucky hadn’t done anything to compromise the mission, he’d held his nerve under extreme pressure, he was going to complete it, and he’d ended up getting screwed over.

“Eventually Frank was put in the cell with me. You’ve met him, you can work out the rest.”

Bucky had been tortured by Raynard, and he was glossing over it.

Bucky had told him about being tortured before from previous missions with SHIELD, he’d been waterboarded, had his fingernails ripped out, starved… To not even mention anything, to dismiss it, it was worse than anything he’d been through before.

“Is Raynard dead?” Because if he wasn’t, he would be.

“Emptied two clips into him.” Bucky said bluntly. It sounded like he was proud of himself for it.

Frank had called Bucky dead meat, he didn’t want to think about the state Bucky had been in. He got a flash of an image of a bloodied desperate Bucky firing a pistol being held up by Frank.

He had taken the time to reload, or Frank had reloaded for him, either way, he’d reloaded.

As a sniper Bucky had lived by the words, one shot, one kill. There was no overkill, it wasn’t his style. He’d seen Bucky about as angry as he could be and he only taken the shots required to take a life.

It hadn’t just been anger that had driven him to reload, it had been primal. Fear, most likely. Scared that Raynard would get back up, that he’d come back. He’d needed to know without a doubt that Raynard was dead.

What had Raynard done to make Bucky that scared of him?

“How long?” Steve asked rubbing his face.

“Five months til Frank got me out.” Bucky said still looking down.

“Five months.” He had written the letter after he had escaped or Steve would have had the letter sooner. Bucky had written the letter after Ross had tried to take him from the hospital.

He hadn’t even warned him about Holt and Ross. He hadn’t warned any of them. No, because then he would have had to come back. He’d have been working on it, keeping Steve in the dark hoping that he never found out and if it had gone the way he wanted, if Steve hadn’t gone to the cabin, if Fury hadn’t tried to use Steve as bait then Bucky wouldn’t have gotten involved, he wouldn’t have sent Frank. Steve would have never found him.

“We’re done Steve.” Bucky stated looking him dead in the eye. “You know what happened. We were good together, but I’m not the guy you fell in love with. He’s gone.”

“You’re standing right in front of me.” Steve snapped, losing a fraction of his grip on himself. Bucky was standing there, and he had been through the mill, but he was there.

“And I’m telling you that I’m not the same. I’m not going to let you try and cling on to some memory of who I was. There’s no going back. I chose a mission for Fury over you and I’d do it again despite the consequences.” Bucky said holding his eyes. He hadn’t chosen Fury over him, he’d chosen to protect him. “I do still love you, but that’s not a chain that I’m putting around your neck or something I want you to use to keep yourself here. I’m telling you that it’s not going to be what you think it is, there is no silver lining to this, there is no happy ending so get on your bike and don’t look back.”

Marriage, retirement, a quiet life in the country? That’s not me Steve, you know it’s not.

I was never going to be your forever, find someone who will be.

He had a sickening realisation as he looked at Bucky again.

“You were going to say yes.” He was going to say yes to the proposal, they were going to get married. He was going to live in the house with Steve and they were going to be happy together.

“It doesn’t matter what I was going to do, it didn’t happen.” Bucky stated firmly.

“You were going to say yes.” Steve bit him lip and tipped his head back as he let it sink fully in. All the time he had let himself console himself the doubts that it wasn’t what Bucky wanted.

It was what he wanted, and he wouldn’t fight for it.

“You don’t tap out.” Steve said. Bucky didn’t quit on anything.

“I am this time.” Bucky stated firmly. “You know where the door is.”

Bucky didn’t give up. It didn’t matter how bad the situation, it didn’t matter how much it hurt or what had to be done. Bucky had always been brave, too brave for his own good more often than not…

“Why hide from me?” Steve asked looking back at him. There was something wrong about all of it. “Why bother with the letters? You could have come and seen me; you could’ve done this face to face years ago.”

“I’m sorry.” He meant it.

“I don’t want an apology Bucky, I want to know why.”

“You’re right, I am a coward.” Bucky stated, straightening up.

“But you’re not.” Steve said frowned. He was missing something. “You’re not a coward and if you were going to give me the bullet you wouldn’t have waited this long.”

“It is what is it.” Bucky shrugged. “I should have come to see you, but I couldn’t face it. You’d met Peggy and I thought you two would make it, I didn’t want to come back and ruin anything for you.”

It sounded right, Bucky sounded like he believed what he was saying, he was digging in, putting a bit of blame on Steve for being with Peggy, saying that he could have ruined it…

“You knew she was an agent.” Steve said, frowning. “You were working on stopping Ross and catching Holt.” He would have been working on it because Ross had come at him in the hospital according to Frank, and Ross had gone after Natasha, Bucky wouldn’t let that slide. “You knew that she was a honey trap, months before I did. You knew that she could put me in prison.”

“It wasn’t going to happen.” Bucky said flatly.

“You couldn’t know from the start that she was going to compromise the mission for me.” Bucky wouldn’t have let Steve be exposed like that even if he’d had to come back into Steve’s life.  

“Between Frank, Fury and Homeland, it was covered.”

“Because you’d put not just me but Natasha, Clint, Tony, Sam and Bruce in their hands?” It wouldn’t happen.

“It worked out.” Bucky said catching his bottom lip between his teeth. He didn’t like where Steve was going, which meant he needed to keep going.

“Why weren’t you at the cabin?” What was he hiding?

“Frank prefers to work alone.” Bucky shrugged a little. That was probably true, only Bucky wouldn’t have listened.

“The thing is Buck, you wouldn’t trust anyone that much. Not even Natasha. So why weren’t you there?”

“Might be a shock to you, but I do trust Frank that much.” Bucky stated firmly, because he'd had no choice. “It would have gotten messy, there was too much at stake for something to go wrong.”

Steve huffed a laugh. Bucky had done a good job, pushing him away, directing him, making sure that he didn’t ask the questions he didn’t want to answer.

“You can come up with a better lie than that.” Steve said giving him a hard look. “Ethan and Julie Nicolson. Remember that?” Bucky did, he knew he did. “All we did that mission was fight because you wouldn’t tell Harper to find someone else for his team for that stupid job. You didn’t even want to go but because I even suggested that you should turn him down, that was it. I didn’t want you to go, so you were going. Do you remember the argument in the café?” They had gotten way too heated and Steve hadn’t let Bucky walk away when he’d wanted to so he had locked himself down and Steve had tried to provoke him into agreeing with him that he shouldn’t go. “You didn’t speak to me for two days, you slept on the floor of the ops room because you and Natasha fell out too. But Natasha wouldn’t take my side against you and Clint was on her side but not yours or mine. Sam was on my side against you. Tony kept stirring the pot. We were all at each other’s throats so much Banner wasn't talking to any of us. What happened when we went ran the mission?”

“Nothing.” Bucky said flicking his lip with his teeth.

“Like clockwork, all arguments put to one side. So don’t stand there and tell me that you were worried about messy… Messy has never bothered you, me or us. So why weren’t you there?”

“You got out and it got handled it.” Bucky said giving him a hard look but there was a plea under it to not ask the question. The question he’d been avoiding.

“What happened with Raynard?”

“All the fun things.” Bucky shrugged. He’d worked out it was coming.

“What did he do to you?” Steve asked moving closer, but careful not to block him in fully, Bucky didn’t deal with being trapped well. Although if he kept going, maybe making him lash out would be the only way.

“He tortured me.” Bucky said like he was talking about something mundane.

“What did he do to you?” Steve asked again, pressing.

“Enough.” Bucky said noticeably swallowing and biting the inside of his cheek. “He did enough.” Bucky nodded a little then strode past Steve and out of the kitchen. “You need to get back on the road before you lose the light.”

“Because my bike doesn’t have lights?” Steve asked sarcastically.

He heard Bucky open the front door.

“Buck. I’m not leaving.” Steve said. “You know I’m not.” He needed to know.

He heard the door shut, he expected Bucky to come back into the kitchen to unload a volley of brutal home truths, about how he didn’t want him in his house and he needed to go.

Steve frowned when he couldn’t hear anything. He strode into the hallway, there was no sign of Bucky. He caught sight of him through the living room window in the near the darkness shutting the narrow door on the building he was assuming was garage.

Something so bad he was still running, years and he was still running... Something so bad that he didn’t think he could be with Steve anymore.

Steve wiped his face with his right hand. There was no point following Bucky, the door on the garage would probably be locked.

Bucky would want time to rebuild his defences and work out a new strategy to get Steve out of his life.

Steve looked around the living room, other than a bigger TV and three tall thin oak book bases of with an eclectic mix of books in the living room, everything was the same as when he had been there with Peggy, the same as he had wanted it. The office still had the same furniture in it, the monitors for the CCTV were black, when he moved the mouse it stayed black and brought up a nine dots, a shape, there was no telling what Bucky had picked.

The studio still had the drawing table and stool, the overhead lights that he had specifically sourced. The extended pencil sets, the paints and brushes that Steve had ordered for himself were on the unit in the corner still in their wrappers and in the top draw. The canvas; were stored in the lower draws clean and untouched; the collection of various sketch books he had bought were in their draw. It was exactly as he had left it.

The gym was the same although the equipment had been moved around so it all faced the window in some way. It was already dark outside.

He felt a little uncomfortable walking up the stairs, wondering if he should pry, but then Bucky had left him in there. He’d know that Steve was going to look around.

Upstairs, the bathroom and two smaller bedrooms were all the same colour, the furniture, fixtures and fittings were the same even the linen, everything was clean, there wasn’t any dust anywhere and while Bucky was a neat person, he wasn’t known for dusting and washing.

The Master bedroom and ensuite were untouched too.

Bucky was using the second largest bedroom at the other end of the house the one that looked over the back garden but there was a heavy blind drawn down, so Steve had to flick the lights on.

The double bed was neatly made with different dark navy covers and there were another two bookcases that hadn’t been there when Steve had owned the place.

He felt his chest tighten as he saw the two middle shelves of the bookcase nearest the bed, filled with the largest collections of prescription pill bottles he’d seen outside of a hospital.

Bucky had been tortured, they were consequences. PTSD, depression, panic attacks, anxiety, paranoia, it wasn’t something that anyone just got over. Bucky had been through therapy in SHIELD before just as Steve had for nearly dying. Bucky had never said that he’d needed pills before, or maybe he had and he hadn’t told Steve that part.

Steve sighed as he looked them over, pulling out his phone surprised that he had Wi-Fi, although maybe he shouldn’t have been because Steve had had the satellite internet connection installed, he checked what the drugs were and what they did.

There were fifteen different pain killers of varying strength, including two opioids, eight different tranquillisers, five different mood stabilisers, two anti-psychotics, six different anti-depressants.

He didn’t know whether to be relieved or worried that when he picked the bottles up, they were empty, every single one was just a bottle with Bucky’s name on it.

On the small bedside table there were three more bottles, those had pills in, all different from the others again, a pain killer, an anti-depressant and a tranquilliser and in front of them a weeklong pill dispenser, filled for the rest of the week with three pills in each. The lid was still down on Wednesday; he hadn’t taken them yet, he probably took them at night.

That he still needed them… It hadn’t just happened, there had been time... Bucky had a life he was living, he was far from a gibbering wreck but he was far more fragile than Steve had been letting himself realise, than Bucky wanted him to know.

He said that the Bucky Steve knew was gone.

The Bucky he knew didn’t need medication, that was true but it wasn’t enough to have him shoving Steve out the door.

They both had friends who had come back from warzones needing medication and therapy, it wasn’t something either of them saw as anyone needing to be ashamed of needing help.

Stress could make symptoms worse, the thought hit him hard… Stress like having his ex turn up on his doorstep making him rehash everything.

Steve rushed back downstairs and out of the front door into the darkness lit by lights on the side of the house with fear climbing up his throat and across the building.

There was a code on the doorhandle. He slammed his side of his hand on the metal door.

“Bucky!” He banged hard. “Bucky! Open the door! Please Buck!”

As soon as the door opened he pushed inside, Bucky was already walking away past the wider door towards a computer desk surrounded by monitors.

“Are you ok?” Steve asked looking him over and following.

“I’m fine, Steve.” Bucky said dropping into the black chair by the desk. “You wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think I could handle it… I just… I couldn’t go the round. I needed a break.”

Steve nodded, calming himself down, he glanced around and he realised that he was surrounded by motorbikes. Easily twenty, some of them in pieces, there were parts on shelves and in boxes, roller tool kits, lifts, ramps. It looked like half a show room and half a working garage.

He looked back to Bucky, there were five monitors mounted on the walls around him, two dedicated to the CCTV camera’s all around the property and inside the house, two others with coding on a black screen and one more with an motorbike auction site on it.

“You buy and sell bikes?”

“It’s a hobby.” Bucky said blandly. “You know I had to try?”

Steve frowned at him, not sure what he meant.

“I thought I knew exactly what you’d say.” Bucky sighed, dropping his head back against the headrest of the chair. “Say it and make me believe it?” Bucky huffed. “Where’d you cook up that one?”

“I need to know what happened Buck.” Steve nodded.

“Do you?” Bucky asked rhetorically and flicked his bottom lip with his teeth. “Because I don’t think you do. It won’t change anything. It won’t fix it… I think you’re better off not knowing but then if you knew what was good for you, you’d be on a plane in the middle of the Atlantic by now.” Bucky pursed his lips and blew out a breath the straightened in the seat. “Last roll of the dice…” Bucky paused then shook his head and dropped back, the picture of defeat, giving Steve a sad look that he never wanted to be the one responsible for. “It’s not even worth it is it? You’re not going to listen.”

“I always listen to you.” Steve said.

“Yeah, you listen then fucking ignore me.” Bucky bit out.

“When have I ever ignored your advice?” Steve frowned. He couldn’t think of a single time.

Bucky gave him a look. Right now. Steve was ignoring him when he said to leave it alone and go to Peggy.

“You left me and you didn’t come back. You knew I’d forgive you for going on the mission because like you said, I’d have done the same thing when push came to shove. I want to know what is so bad that you think I wouldn’t want to be there for you. I want to know why you think my love is conditional?”

What was Bucky so afraid of telling him?

“It's not about that.” Bucky shrugged. “It’s about what’s good for you.”

“You don’t get to decide that.” Steve snapped. “How many arguments did we have that were all about just this? I’d say I’d rather you didn’t do something because I was worried you were going to get hurt or killed and you’d do it anyway but here’s the thing Buck, I never gave you an ultimatum. I never once said to you, if you did whatever it was, don’t come back to me.”

“It’s why I did keep coming back.” Bucky nodded and sighed. “This isn’t about control Steve, it might sound like it and if I was in your shoes I’d be pissed off too.”

“I’m more worried than pissed off. This isn’t like you Bucky.” He wasn’t braver than this. He’d front up.

“That’s my point.” Bucky said fiercely. “I’m not who I was. I can’t be him again.”

The medications, anti-depressants, there had been mood stabilisers, he had been through a lot of trauma, it would take time, it was probably already taking him more time than he was used to…

“It might feel that…”

“I spend enough time talking to shrinks Steve, don’t bother.” Bucky cut him off and rolled his eyes. “It’s not about feeling like I’m not the same person or working my way back to anything.” Bucky bit his lip and grimaced. “I tell you, you won’t leave. You’ll make yourself stay and I don’t want that. You think that ‘it’ll be rough but we’ll get back there’. You’ll convince yourself ‘we’ll get back on track, back to where we were’… Just because I was going to marry you doesn’t mean it can happen now. When I say I want you to leave it’s because I do love you and I want you to be happy. There’s no happiness for you here, that life you had planned for us, it’s gone.” Bucky squeezed his eyes shut and blew out a breath then opened them again. “And to be honest, I don’t have the stomach to watch you realise that who you loved is gone, that you don’t love me anymore and fight against it because you’re too stubborn to let me go. I’m asking you now, please, let me go and walk away.”

He was afraid that Steve wouldn’t love him anymore.

Steve pressed his lips together. The pain that Bucky was in asking him. The plea in his tone. He wished he could walk away but he couldn’t. Bucky even knew he couldn’t.

“You know I can’t.” Steve said folding his arms. “I wish I could.” He knew he couldn’t walk out the door and leave him. If he walked out the door today he would be back, he wouldn’t be able to let it lie, he’d need to know everything.

“One thing I’d change about you? Your hero complex.” Bucky said in a harder tone, standing up, and pulling off the glove on his right hand with his teeth. “Hate to break it to you but not everyone needs saving. Whatever you think, I don’t.”

Steve frowned as Bucky unzipped his jacket and dropped his right arm out before carefully taking it around his left, then letting it drop off the arm, he threw it onto chair and reached down to the hem of his jumper with only his right hand. There was something on his upper left arm, a strapping maybe, he could see the rise up through the fabric. Bucky lifted up the jumper, separating it from a black t-shirt underneath, not quick enough to hide the scars on his stomach, they were deep and numerous.

“You’ve got no appreciation for the bitch that this thing is to get off.” Bucky muttered pulling the jumper over his head but leaving the sleeve on his left arm.

Bucky rolled to jumper off leaving him in a black short sleeve t-shirt.

It was prosthetic, his left arm was a prosthetic from the upper arm down. Fairly realistic in shape, off on skin tone and texture, it was clearly not flesh.

Bucky reached across himself, lifting the sleeve on his t-shirt, he pressed something before pulling two bands loose, pinching the arm against his body then gripping it with his right hand and dropping it down and off. He placed the arm down on the computer desk and gave Steve an expectant look.

Steve could help but stare at him. Bucky without a left arm, there was a stump, wrapped in cream bandages that sat below the sleeve hem of his t-shirt.

“Tell me this isn’t why you think I need to go.” Steve said taking a deep breath to keep his anger at bay. A missing limb? “Tell me that this isn’t what this is about.”

“He took the fingers tips first, one by one.” Bucky said suddenly emotionless. “He jointed them off, let me watch him scrap the skin and muscles off the bones. He’d wash them in a basin and show me again when they were nice and clean.” Steve felt the blood drain from his face, as he imagined Bucky on a metal table, strapped down, a knife, hacking strokes, the bones being held up... “Do you know there are twenty-seven bones in a hand? He showed me every single one of mine over what was probably a month maybe two, I don’t know how long but it was a long time because he didn’t want me dying of shock or blood loss. He said he liked hearing me scream.” Steve swallowed hard against the bile that rose up his throat. The bones, the bloody water, Bucky screaming and shouting. “He deboned my arm to my elbow and he sliced it like it was deli meat, when his knife was sharp enough, he hacked at once or twice with a meat cleaver, but by then I didn’t scream anymore.”

Steve couldn’t help it, he rushed for the door and bodied it out the way before he threw up on the grass.

“By the time Frank got me to hospital, the infection was raging, they had to cut off more to save my life.” Bucky said from behind him, still seemingly unaffected.

Steve dry heaved as he tried to stop his mind racing with images of a screaming Bucky having his arms sliced into pieces, the blood, the meat of his arm, the bones, the cutting of slices.

“Here.” Bucky said. As Steve opened his eyes there a black cup in front of him filled with water.

Steve took it greedily and swilled his mouth out again and spat the water out onto the grass.

“And I’m the jerk.” Steve said and spat again. Bucky didn’t need to tell him like that, he hadn’t needed to put in the descriptions, the similarities, he knew what Steve’s imagination was like... It was Bucky's morbid, gallows humour. Steve had always hated it.

“You’re not staying out of pity Steve. I don’t need it.” Bucky said unapologetically.

“Pity?” Steve glanced up at him, before taking the last of the water and spitting it out. “It’d take a lot more than that for me to pity you.” He was assaulted by images of deli meats being cut, Bucky’s arm in the machine.

He heaved again. There was nothing coming up, it was just saliva.

Bucky took the cup out of his fingers and went back inside the garage coming back out a minute later with more water, which Steve took and swilled his mouth out, then took an actual drink so if he was going to keep being sick there was something in his stomach.

“There’s a 1942 Harley “Liberator” I’ve got stripped and ready to rebuild.” Bucky said. “The parts for it are there I haven’t had time to work on it. You build it back up, you can have the profit.” It was an offer, one he wasn’t expecting. “I don’t need a carer, I don’t need a shrink, I don’t need pseudo-doctor or nurse…”

“What do you need?” Steve asked standing up and controlling his breathing.

“I don't need anything from you." Bucky replied firmly. "But since you're going to drag this out... I wouldn’t mind having you here as a friend, until you go. I didn’t come back for a reason Steve, when you realise it, you get on your bike and you leave. There won’t be any hard feelings. I won’t need an explanation.”

Steve bit his tongue, there was nothing that could make him leave him but Bucky was certain that there was and he wasn’t in a position to dispute it, yet.

“You’re going to think that this.” Bucky gestured to the stump of left arm. “Doesn’t matter... In some ways it doesn’t, you’d be right. In others… I can’t be a soldier anymore, I can’t go on missions, I can’t get into fights… And you’re going to be like ‘I hated you doing that anyway’ but it was a big part of who I was… My PTSD is under control; it’s taken a long time to be where I am.” A long time to be able to have this conversation with Steve. “It’s routine, coping strategies, therapy and medication.”

“What’s your routine?” Steve asked carefully, feeling unexpectedly nervous for some reason that he couldn’t explain.

“I get up at five.” Bucky never used to get out of bed before eight if he wasn’t working.

His mind went straight to a memory of Bucky lying on his front in Steve’s bed in his covers, with his turned to the side looking asleep as Steve walked into their bedroom.

“Did you get me jelly or custard?” Bucky had asked with his eyes still closed.

“I got you a breakfast sandwich.”

“No blow job for you.” Bucky muttered.

“And…” Steve had climbed onto the bed next to him. “I got you a chocolate cake from Sally’s.”

It was five blocks out of the way, Bucky hadn’t asked for it even though it was his favourite, he’d said doughnuts, which Steve could get when he got his bagels.

“Going big. I know your game, Rogers.” Bucky smiled, turning over and wrapping his left hand around Steve’s neck.

Steve’s eyes went to Bucky’s missing arm.

“I do half an hour in the gym, eat, go into the garden and do whatever needs doing.”

“Garden?” Steve frowned. They hadn’t even had a house plant.

“When you bought this place did you even look where the nearest store is?” He can’t say that he had. “It’s three hours away. It’s the best part of a day to do a grocery shop. Being self-sufficient is useful especially in winter when the road gets blocked... When I’m done in the garden, I go into the garage, I work on whatever needs working on and keep an eye on auction sites the rest of the day, then I eat, shower and go to bed. Rinse and repeat.”

“Ok.” Steve nodded, filing the information away.

“The smell of cooking meat makes me sick without fail.” Steve’s stomach rolled. “No he didn’t feed me my own arm, he wasn’t a cannibal, he liked to burn people with hot metal to hear them scream.” As if to make his point Bucky twisted his right arm over to show Steve the burn scars in the light from inside the garage, there were more that he had seen briefly on his abdomen. “There are chest freezers of meat in the basement. The hunters I let onto the land give me a share. It’s butchered. Frank built a wood fired barbeque on the other side of the garage, you want to cook meat, that’s where you do it. It’s all meat, there are no exceptions.”

“You’re vegetarian now?” Steve frowned. Bucky had lived on steak, burgers and chicken.

“If you’re staying, your bike should go in there.” Bucky nodded towards the garage.

If you’re staying.

“I’ll go and get it.” Steve said before walking back to the house and getting his bike, by the time he got where Bucky had the wider door open, he had light to get the bike to where it needed to be. He tried not to stare at Bucky as he waited for him, his prosthetic arm under his right arm and leather jacket in his hand. Steve’s eyes automatically looked to where the left arm should have been., he needed to stop doing it. “Anywhere in particular?”

“Somewhere on the left.” Bucky replied. “Anything finished is on the left.”

Steve put his bike on it’s stand and collected his travel bags off the back with a numb feeling that was almost shock, but that didn’t feel quite right, nothing felt right.

“The main door needs to be pulled across first.” Bucky said jutting his chin towards the door. Steve walked across and pulled it on the runners across until it sat flush. Then followed Bucky outside. “Lights are on the panel by the door.” Steve flicked the three switches down. “Close the door, the code is 0310 for everything in there.”

“Your birthday?” Steve frowned, he was usually more particular about codes having no connection to him. He pulled the door closed and put in the code. As soon as he did a light on the house shone across towards them.

“It’s the middle of nowhere.” Bucky retorted. “Someone comes down here to steal anything, they aren’t going to try using a code.”

Bucky walked back towards the house as Steve followed him.

“I don’t wear the prosthetic all the time, it depends if I need two hands for what I’m doing… I need to eat before I take my meds. I take it you’re not hungry?”

Bucky had distracted him, at the mention of food, felt faintly nauseous.

“Not right now, no.”

Steve followed Bucky up the steps to the front door, where he put his leather jacket between his legs to free his hand.

“Forward a quarter turn and back three quarters.” Bucky demonstrated and the door opened. “More than three tries the place locks down.”

“And a palm and, or fingerprint recognition?” Steve asked, he knew about security, it was almost comforting to ask the question.

“I added yours, since you’re going to be stubborn about this.” Bucky replied as he turned and put his leather jacket on a hook then flicked on the lights. “Want to look around some more or did you see enough?” Bucky asked as he walked into the kitchen.

“I wasn’t snooping.” He was and Bucky knew it, he’d wanted Steve to look around. He’d wanted Steve to see.

“I keep the bottles so I know what I’ve tried before.” Bucky said pushing the prosthetic arm back over his stump and resting it against the worktop against the wall, then fastening the straps with practiced ease. “I flushed most of the pills.”

“The ones you didn’t flush?” He didn’t want to know, he didn’t know if he could handle knowing, he’d guess there were desperate times, he still had to ask.

“Not going to say that the thought hasn’t crossed my mind more than once, especially when I couldn’t sleep.” He was too casual about it. “I’ve had a couple of bad experiences with meds that made things worse, we’ve got that worked out now.”

“We?” Steve asked leaning his hip into the work top to keep himself upright, watching him as he opened a draw and pulled out a bag of rice.

“I’ve got a psychiatrist, Daniel Bell and a psychologist, John Harrison, courtesy of Fury. I talk to Bell once a month and I talk to Harrison once a week, they were both soldiers, they both have dealt with combat stress and torture. They don’t sugar coat anything but they’re nice about telling me to pull my head out of my ass. They’re good.” Bucky was giving him reassurance, he was building it up, he was calm, he was casual, he was in control and if Steve walked away he would be absolutely fine.

Bucky pulled a pan from a cupboard and took it across to the sink, filling it with water, using his prosthetic to control the tap. Then brought it back to the stove and turned a ring on.

“I wanted to fake my death.” Bucky said bluntly. “I wish I had now.”

“Don’t.” Steve bit out. It was deliberate shock tactics. “Don’t.” He had gone through enough when he had thought Bucky was dead while still having hope that he wasn’t. The idea of grieving for him, going to a funeral when it was a lie, that Bucky would do that to him.

“Fury had already had the death certificate done; it was Frank that stopped me going through with it. ‘You don’t fuck around playing dead because you’re being a pussy Barnes’. He has a way with words.”

“Sounds like it.” And he could believe it from Frank given their short interactions.

“There’s water, fresh orange juice in the fridge, coffee but I don’t keep milk most of the time.” Bucky said as pan started to steam. “You want a beer? Have a nice drive.”

“You’ve given up drinking?” Steve couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow. Bucky had been a big drinker, it was nothing out of control but he liked whiskey and beer to relax and for a good time.   

“Doesn’t mix well with my meds.” Bucky replied like Steve should have known that, he reached up and opened a cupboard full of jars with Bucky’s handwriting on the labels, he took one jar down half full of a dark orange sauce.

“You make your own?”

“I batch cook just about everything, it makes it easier especially when some days I don’t want to cook and having something prepared that I can put in the oven or make quickly, means I will eat instead of just eating a couple of slices of bread, if I’ve made bread... There’s three pasta bakes portioned in the freezer.” He pointed to the two large silver appliances, fridge and freezer in the corner.

“You make your own bread?” Steve raised his eyebrows. Bucky could cook, he was never a baker, or he hadn’t been before.

“Three hours to the store.” Bucky stated flatly.

“Is that the only thing you don’t like about being here?” Steve asked, he was on level ground discussing the house, he knew it, he’d help design it.

“I’m used to it now. When I first got here, it was a pain in the ass. And the nearest take away is also three hours away, by the way.” Instead of the multitude that had been close to Steve’s apartment.

“Can you eat meat if it’s cooked somewhere else?” He asked with the numb feeling climbing up his throat.

“It’s the sound and the smell of it cooking. I walk into a café for a coffee and they’re cooking meat I throw up. I walk into a take away, it’s the same. Restaurant, same. I can eat cold meat, I can tolerate being near the hot meals in stores if I know it’s there because they’re being kept warm they aren’t sizzling… This time of year, I don’t need to go into town so I don’t, there’s no meat in the fridge. If Frank drops by he’ll cook me a steak and I can eat it, it’s better to eat it outside. I can put a casserole in the slow cooker and plug it in outside but its not worth it for one meal. I can’t freeze it because I don’t want to put it in the oven in here, I don’t like the smell cooking meat in the house. There are ways around it but cooking for myself, it’s easier to avoid it.”

“It won’t get better…”

“I told you, I don’t need another therapist.” Bucky sighed. “There are things that you’re going to see and you’re going to think you know better, that’s fine. Before you say anything to try and fix it for me. Think about whether it’s practical when I’m by myself most of the time.”

“I could cook meat for you like Frank does, if you want.” Steve offered. If that was all that was stopping Bucky eating what he wanted to.

“I’m not asking you to.” Bucky said. But he wouldn’t mind if Steve did that.

“Am I being allowed to stay so I’ll cook meat for you?” Steve asked, bemused, pushing down hard on the wash of emotions that were rolling into the numbness.

“Got to get something out of this while it lasts.” Bucky replied nonchalantly.

While it lasts.

Steve caught sight of the scar on his neck, it ran across the front of his neck and was still going under the neck of his t-shirt. There would be more that he couldn’t see, more burns, more scars under his t-shirt, under his trousers, he knew there would be.

It never should have happened; Bucky should have told him about the mission…

“Glasses are in the cupboard by your head. I’m guessing you still don’t like black coffee.”

“That hasn’t changed.” It was just about the only thing that hadn’t. “Do you want water too?” Steve asked turning and opening the cupboard to take two of the six tall glasses.

“Please.” Bucky replied a little formally, pouring some rice into the boiling pan. “You can help yourself to food when your appetite comes back. There’s pasta, rice, flour in here.” He pointed to the draws to his left with his prosthetic hand. “There’s potatoes, onions and tomatoes in here. There’s more in the garden I just don’t bring in what I don’t need.” He opened a cupboard to show Steve a few containers. “Tins of soup.” He pointed to another cupboard. “Jelly's and preserves in just about every other cupboard and the pantry. You wanted me to be a housewife, I got there in the end.”

Smooth, then bam, right out of left field.

“I never wanted you to be a housewife.” Steve gritted out, clamping down on the sharp anger that cut through the numbness at the accusation because even Bucky didn’t believe it. “I was going to be the home body. I didn’t expect you to stop working because I was easing back. I wasn’t even going to retire fully. I was going to work on getting us out of so many high risks by concentrating on building out the connections so we could do more lower risks, I was going to ask you, Natasha and Clint to run missions on the ground most of the time and come back when you needed me.”

“You didn’t say that.” Bucky said sharply.

“I didn’t know what you were going to say about getting married.” Steve said and closed his eyes. “I wanted to get the house and the proposal out of the way then when I knew the answer, I was going to ask.”

“You wouldn’t have been planning to ask if you didn’t think I’d say yes.”

“I didn’t know how far you’d run before you came back.” Steve shot back, feeling his chest tightening. “I didn’t know how long you’d be gone.”

Suddenly he couldn’t catch his breath… His chest tightened hard… It felt like he was having a heart attack, the pressure in his chest, the overwhelming panic, he couldn’t catch his breath, it was all too much, there was too much… He gripped onto the worktop, it felt like he was going to fall, he couldn’t breathe...

“Easy.” Bucky said, he could feel his arms around him, the one that felt right and, the stiff, hard odd feeling left arm, helping his down to the floor. He couldn’t get hold of it, he couldn’t control it, he couldn’t make himself… “Steve… Hey... Try and relax.” Bucky said kneeling down in front of him. “You’re safe, there’s nothing you can’t handle... Nice and slow… You’re safe.” He looked into Bucky’s eyes and closed his and listened instead. “It’s just a panic attack… You’re not dying…” Bucky gripped Steve’s right hand in his. “You’re not dying.” Bucky twisted Steve’s hand in his, and pulled it forward, pressing his palm against fabric then pressing his warm hand over Steve’s. “You’re ok.” Steve opened his eyes, his hand was on the middle of Bucky’s chest, he could feel the warmth, he could feel him breathing. “Slow in.” He felt Bucky’s chest move. “Slow out.” He felt it again. “Slow in.” He focused on his hand and the feel. “Out slow.” He followed the instruction, the pressure in his chest let go a fraction. “In slow.” He followed the rhythm. “Out slow.”

He nodded, he had it. It still took too long until the overwhelmed feeling was backing off.

He kept following the rhythm he could feel and see, the one Bucky was telling him until he could breath freely and he started to feel drained like he’d ran for hours, the exhaustion and strain in his muscles.

“They’re not fun.” Bucky sighed heavily letting go of Steve’s hand and sitting down next to the left of him, so they were shoulder to shoulder so there was still some connection, but all Steve had to do was move an inch and it would be gone. Space if he needed it, he didn’t. He needed more, as the edges of the pressure threatened to come back. Steve dropped his head onto Bucky’s shoulder and Bucky brought his right arm around Steve’s back, rubbing soothing circles. “You’re fine.”

“I don’t feel fine.” He blew out another slow breath.

“Trust me, you feel better now than you would if you passed out.” Bucky sighed heavily.

“Not the first one I’ve had.” Steve blew out a breath. The first one had been when he’d first had the thought and believed Bucky was dead. “Haven’t had one in two years.” Since he had forced himself to move forward.

“I passed out every time I had one for six months.” Bucky huffed. “I couldn’t listen to anyone. Just breath? Not like I wasn’t trying. I used to get pissed off at them for telling me and myself. It made them worse.”

“First one I had I didn’t know what it was.” It had just hit him, just like that one had.

“I haven’t had one in a year.” Bucky said continuing to rub the soothing circles on Steve’s back. “Soon as I feel one coming, I count corners. Wherever you are there are always corners. It’s counter intuitive, it should make it worse because there are always more than you think, it should make me feel more overwhelmed because I can’t find them all, but it’s like the hardest setting on the reaction pistol target drills I used to do. It was designed for failure, there was no way to get all of the targets. There’s something familiar and safe about the feeling, even though those drills used to drive me insane.”

Bucky had always been competitive.

“You wanted to beat the machine.”

“I’ll stop.” Bucky said pressing his cheek to the top of Steve’s head briefly, like an apology. “I’ll act like an adult instead of a jerk. Pretty sure you know it’s self-defence.”

“I know.” Steve nodded against his shoulder. “You’re like a hurricane.”

“A hurricane? Huh?” He could feel Bucky looking at him.

“Nothing like being in the eye of a storm but if it shifts there’s no telling what you’re going to get hit with.”

“Why did you ever put up with me?” Bucky asked and Steve knew it was rhetorical, but he had to answer it.

“I loved you, and I still do.” He’d never loved anyone more.

“Give it time.” Bucky said sadly, kissing the top of his head. “You ok if I get up? The rice is going to catch.”

The rice was already burned to the pan. He could smell it.

He nodded and moved away, leaning back against the cupboard as Bucky pushed himself up, taking the pan across to the sink.

Steve drew his knees up and rested his elbows on them.

None of it was right.

It wasn’t how it was meant to be.

“I’m going to eat, then I’m going to go upstairs, take a shower and go to bed.” Bucky said turning to face him. “The sedative I take is heavy so don’t worry about wondering around or having the TV on. You can take any of the free bedrooms. Don’t come in my room for any reason.”

“I wouldn’t.” Steve frowned at him.

“No matter what you hear, don’t come in.” Bucky said firmly. “Frank says I talk in my sleep, I don’t think I will with these pills but I don’t know one way or the other. Don’t try to wake me up, they put me down deep, if I even do wake up, I’ll be out of it and probably seeing things.”

“I’m not going to come into your room.” He wouldn’t break that privacy when it was clearly important to him.

Bucky nodded and pulled the plate across.

“You’re not going to eat that?” The rice was burnt.

“It’s not all burnt.” Bucky replied pulling out a draw and picking up a spoon, he went back to the pan and drained it off, heaping two spoons of overcooked rice onto the plate and retrieving the jar of source and drizzling some on the rice before mixing it around.

“That’s all you’re having?” It was no wonder he was thinner. It was barely anything.

“I’m not hungry but if I don’t line my stomach I’ll regret it in the morning.” Bucky replied.  “You feeling any better?”

He blew out a breath. There was no point in lying. “It’s a lot.” More than he had realised.

“I would stay up with you, but I’ve had enough for one day.” Bucky said mixing the rice on the plate. “I’m not going to kick you out, I’m not going anywhere. I’m not going to run. This is where I live.” He scraped the rice together into a pile. “I’m not keeping you here. I don’t need you here. You up and go tonight, I’ll be fine.” He ate the last of the rice and immediately rinsed the plate. “Leave the pan to steep, I’ll wash it in the morning.” He said then walked out of the kitchen and up the stairs.

It wasn’t meant to be like this.

He looked around the kitchen that he had designed, when he and Bucky were in this room for the first time, it was going to be when Steve proposed. It wasn’t meant to be bulldozing Bucky’s defences.

The second time in the room  was meant to be to get the beers out of the fridge and take upstairs to bed to complete their celebration. It wasn’t meant to be another round of body shots and getting overwhelmed or burnt rice.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out, flicking the screen and pressing in his passcode. He pressed on the gallery and scrolled down to the file that he’d asked Sam put every picture of Bucky in, so he could delete them, only they both knew that he wasn’t going to do it.

There were only five.

The first picture was the last one he had of Bucky.

It was Bucky sitting on the beach in New Zealand in board shorts with sunglasses on with his two middle fingers up to the camera with ‘hope you’re having fun’ written in wet sand.

Bucky had broken his wrist six weeks earlier and couldn’t work so he had wanted to go somewhere he hadn't been before rather than being in the apartment. The team were between jobs and there was nothing pressing and Steve hadn’t been to New Zealand either, so they had gone to explore together.

Steve had taken the photograph standing in the sea on a burner phone he'd had and he sent it to his usual phone. It was originally for Natasha, the message and middle fingers were for Clint, when he was shown it by her.

“You can’t just smile?”

“It’s proof of life.” Bucky replied, Steve didn’t need to see the eye roll to know was happening. “I just smile at the camera and she’s coming with anti tank missiles.”

“Or she’ll think that you’re having a good time?”

Bucky leant back on his hands and gave him a patronising look up and down.

“Steve, it’s a good thing you’re pretty.”

“Kiss my ass.” Steve replied pushing the phone back into his shorts pocket.

“I’ll kiss your ass any time.” Bucky smiled at him. “Come here I’ll prove it.”

A month in New Zealand together and there was one photograph of Bucky.

The next picture was Steve smiling at the camera with Bucky in sunglasses again, giving a barely there smile next to him. Even though they filled the screen, he knew he had taken it in Tuscany. He’d sent it to Sam.

He opened the door to his apartment, heard the TV was on and immediately saw the black bag against the wall next to a pair of combat boots. He looked straight to the sofa to find Bucky lying on his back in shorts and a t-shirt with an arm over his face and his hair damp on a towel.

Showered and changed, he’d been back over half an hour.

“Hey.” Steve said closing the door and putting the bag of grocery’s on kitchen work top.

“Good session?” Bucky asked sounding tired but not exhausted.

“Leg day.” Steve replied walking over and sitting on the coffee table looking him over for obvious injuries. There were a couple of small bruises on his legs, some swallow cuts on his arms. He’d been in Africa three weeks working for Garett, usually there weren’t any problems.

“Do I pass inspection?” Bucky asked dropping his arm off his face and turning his head to look at him. There weren’t any marks on his face.

“Always.” Steve replied leaning forward and pressing a kiss to his lips. “You’re back earlier than you said?”

“We got them in and out quick. First time ever that a group of journalists haven’t wanted to overstay anywhere.” Bucky said sitting up and moving down the sofa, letting Steve have room to pick up the towel and sit down, he folded the towel and put it on his thigh before Bucky put his head down on it. “Would keep their asses safe again.”

“High praise.” Steve nodded, resting one hand on Bucky’s chest and running the other hand through his damp hair.

“What have you got on the books?”

“Three in planning, close but not yet. Sam, Clint and Natasha are chasing down some potential body retrievals.”

“Want to get out of here for a few days?” Bucky asked looking up.

“What have you got in mind?” Steve frowned. It could be anything.

“Amazing galleries, great food and incredible scenery.” Bucky replied. “Tatt has a villa in Tuscany he’s offering it to me for a week in return for a favour I did him a while ago. All we’d have to pay is flights and food.”

“You want to go on vacation?” Steve frowned, wondering if he was feeling ok or something had happened.

“I want to go to Italy. Work or play, it’s all the same to me. And I think that you’ll like it.”

“I can’t just drop everything.”

“What are you dropping? A few hours extra flight time? There’s nothing that you can do here that you can’t do there. Phones, internet, all available.”

“You’ve already asked Natasha to cover.”

“No, I haven’t but I know she would and so would Wilson. Do you want to come with me? I’m going anyway.”

The photograph was Bucky sitting on a barely held together dirt bike, looking away from the camera and over an incredible view of scrub green grass land rising to huge snow topped mountains on the Silk Road.

Steve sat watching baseball as he heard the door of the apartment open.

“Before you say anything, it was nothing to do with McBride.” Bucky said as he walked in with his cuts down the side of his face. “I crashed a jeep into a ditch. Yes, I was drunk. Don’t ask what we were doing because, yes, it was stupid.”

“Anything permanent?”

“Pretty big dint in my pride.” Bucky replied. “But other than that no.” He dropped his bag onto the floor. “What have you got on in the next two weeks?”

“Why?”

“Because I want to show you something. You have to be there to understand.” Bucky replied. “It’s a bike trip to get there, camping out, not one hundred percent safe but believe me, you need to see it in person.”

The penultimate photograph was sent by Tony, it was from Bucky’s seventh job with them. It was Bucky in tight jeans and a t-shirt, bent over a pool table about to take a shot.

It had come with a message.

Come down here, take the stick out of your ass and get some for all our sakes.

“Hey.”

Steve looked up from his laptop and Bucky smiled at him. Steve immediately looked away. It was getting worse. Every time he saw Bucky for the first time on a mission after they’d been apart, he got nervous. It settled down, quickly enough, after a few hours, then it was just too easy to be around Bucky.

“Did you review the package that Tony sent you?” He asked. There were people who were relying on Steve, on the team to rescue them, they had a mission to complete.

“Yeah, looks tight.” Bucky said dropping his bag down. “Anything changed?”

“Probably, it was over a day ago.”

Bucky should have been there two days ago, he’d been delayed by a plane mechanical in Iraq where he’d been working security for businessmen needing to move around the country.

“Want to show me the plan?” Bucky asked looking over the map on the table.

“I don’t have time. It’s your responsibility to be up to speed when you arrive if you’re not going to be here for the initial planning stages.” If Bucky would just commit to working for Steve, full time then there wouldn’t be as many problems.

“Want a hand?”

“I want you to get up to speed and be ready to go.” Steve replied firmly.

“Yeah I got that.” Bucky said, sounding bemused. “I’m asking you if you want me to have a look.”

“If you don’t know what’s happening, how do you think you can help me?”

“Oh Rogers there are so many ways I could help you.” Bucky said flirtatiously. “All you have to do is let me.”

“Barnes, you’re two, nearly three days overdue, you really think now is the time to push it?”

“Do you want to tell what your problem is?” Bucky asked sharply.

“You’re wasting my time.” Bucky was flirting with him when nothing could happen between them.

Bucky was good looking there was no escaping it, he was easy to get along with, there was a carefree ease that contrasted with a dry wit and cynical nature that was just as attractive to Steve and he was also a brilliant soldier, confident in his abilities, sure of himself without getting close to being arrogant. He knew what he needed to do, he listened, he could adapt easily to changes in plan, he did everything without any grandstanding and he didn’t want or need praise for anything.

Bucky had slotted into the team like no one else had even come close to. Natasha, Clint and Bucky were amazing together, which hadn’t been a surprise because after just one night in the bar with them he’d known that there was a complete understanding between them. Bucky could work with everyone, but he could work with Steve like no one he’d ever met, it was an understanding that hadn’t been talked about, not even on the first job, it had just been there immediately.

He wasn’t going to ruin the team over a one night stand because that was all Bucky wanted. He’d met plenty of men like him before, one night and on to the next warm body.

As soon as Steve gave in it would ruin the dynamic because he didn’t want just once with Bucky and he didn’t want to have what he wanted to watch Bucky move on to someone else the next night. The want for more and the frustration that Bucky wouldn’t give him it, would make it impossible to work with him and that would be it. The team wouldn’t have Bucky, they wouldn’t work as well and it wouldn’t be as good again.

“I know one of the guys working this for the Feds he was on the Miles Little job.” Probably the same Fed that had been in the bar after they had completed, that Bucky had taken back to his hotel room. “They brought in Cookson as the negotiator four hours ago. There’s a deal nearly agreed already for staggered release of hostages in return for no arrest and walk. This goes south; we need launch on the other side of the compound.” Bucky said cooly. “But you know that right? That’s what you’re working on.”

Steve closed his eyes. He didn’t know about Cookson.

“Yeah, didn’t think so.” Bucky said, unimpressed. “You want to be an asshole, that’s fine. But don’t ever think I can’t do my job.”

“Bucky.” Steve ran his hand down his face.

“The roads on the other side of the compound are shit, nothing heavy is going down them so it’ll be foot to foot. There is a gorge, it’s narrow, they’re going to want to use to try and take everyone out. Barton needs to be over there now.” Bucky said ignoring him. “Somewhere round here.” He tapped his finger on the map. “Covers the route and any additional hostiles coming in that way. We could use a wider satellite image of the area. I’m going to put my bag in my tent and take a walk down to meet my contact in person. Is there anything you want to know, except the obvious?”

Steve blew out his cheeks.

“What’s wrong?” Bucky asked sounding concerned. “I mean there’s something else on your mind right?”

Bucky had been on his mind, seeing him again. He was excited about seeing him and nervous, and he didn’t want to be either.

It wasn’t good enough. He was better than being distracted.

“You didn’t think to call in what you knew ahead of arrival?” Steve asked.

“You don’t want to tell me, fine, then tell Wilson. Sort it out.”

“I thought you were going to a meeting?” With a man Bucky had slept with and was probably going to again to get them more information.

The last photograph was sent to him by Natasha from their fifth mission together. Neither of them had known it was being taken. It was Steve sitting at a table looking over maps looking up at Bucky who was leaning on the table opposite him smiling at him.

Steve sat in the bar watching Bucky at the pool table flirting with a built black haired man, they were close, closer than was needed and Bucky was smiling at the man and his body language was all towards him and away from Steve.

“If you went over there, you could step in, he’d leave with you.” Natasha said sliding into the seat next to him.

Steve looked away and took a drink of his beer.

“You’re not good enough at hiding your feelings for it to work Steve.”

He glanced at her.

“He’s working for a lot of different people, he’s choosing to work with us too. Don’t think that me and Clint are enough to keep him on the team. You keep treating him like you are and he will stop working with us altogether. He’ll take hits, but sooner or later he’ll hit back. When he does, you’re going to lose him if you don’t do something.”

“Better he goes now then.”

“He’s not who you think he is, don’t believe all the fast living. He doesn’t want to go. He wants to stay.”

“What makes you so sure?” Steve asked and glanced towards her, only she was already walking away.

Four years, over three together and there were five photographs of Bucky.

He’d had sketch books full of drawings of him.

“What are you doing?” Bucky asked lifting his head off the pillow and running his hand through his hair.

“Nothing.” Steve said putting the sketchbook and pencil onto the side. “Doodling.”

“Get me a coffee and I’ll pose however you want.” Bucky pushed up and kissed his cheek. “You told me you wanted to draw me.”

“I was hoping you’d forgotten.”

“Hot as all hell guy out of his mind on drugs says he wants to draw me.” Bucky smiled. “I’m not going to forget that.”

He’d thrown the sketch books out. Hundreds of hours of drawing Bucky, when he was there, usually when he wasn’t.

He’d had favourite drawing in them.

Bucky sitting on the ground of the ops tent with his legs draw up, his rifle on the floor next to him, his bag next to it and a book in his right hand. They’d been waiting for darkness and there was nothing to do, they were ready.

It was the first time he’d seen Bucky stay still and be content about it, like maybe Natasha wasn’t wrong and the whirlwind that was Bucky Barnes did like to stay still sometimes.

There was a drawing of Bucky sitting by Steve’s bedside in a hotel room after he had been knocked out during an explosion. Sitting on red cushioned chair with his head bowed and his hands wringing. It was the first time that he realised that Bucky cared about him and it wasn’t just sex to him.

“Hey.” Steve said to get his attention as his head throbbed.

“That was too close.” Bucky stood straight up, took two steps and sat on the edge of his bed. Putting his hand in Steve’s hair, blue eyes searching his full of worry. “I thought you knew better.”

“Water?” Steve asked pushing with his heels to get himself sitting up higher so he could drink.

“Here.” Bucky had held the glass of water up for him to take but didn’t let go when Steve had it in his hand and guided it to his mouth so a few sips then put it back down for him. “Any double vision?”

“Just a headache. Can you turn down the lights?”

“Banner needs to see you first.” Bucky replied apologetically and stroked his head with his thumb gently. “I’ll go get him.”

The drawing of Bucky sitting in El Dorado airport as they waited for their plane, the first time Bucky had acknowledged Steve to someone he knew that Steve didn’t as his boyfriend.

He had been trying to get the shading right on Bucky’s cheek as a rough looking older ginger bearded man in a combat jacket and blue jeans sat down next to Bucky.

“If I change my flight, do we do the mile high challenge for old times?” The man asked Bucky boldly.

“If I’m mile highing it, it’d be with him.” Bucky had replied easily nodding to Steve. “Hedge, Steve. Steve Rogers, Paul Hogg. We’ve worked together a few times.”

“I’d heard you were on good behaviour these days.” Hedge said and looked over at Steve. “Sleeping with team leaders, some things don’t change... A Captain though, you’re betraying the ranks Sargent.”

“I’m sure I’ll start caring at some point.” Bucky replied unfazed. “He’s my boyfriend, Hedge, I’m living with him.”

Steve was stunned. Boyfriend and admitting living with him, in one breath.

“I can’t see a halo, but you’re a Saint, right? You’d need the patience to put up with him.” Hedge said to Steve with another assessing look.

“Don’t let the blonde hair, blue eyes deceive you, he’s a hellion.” Bucky smiled at Steve before turning his attention back to Hedge. “How’s Kate doing?”

“Getting married.”

“Didn’t she just graduate high school?” Bucky frowned.

“She’s twenty-one, with a kid on the way.” Hedge replied. “Yeah, I know, where does the time go? That’s why I’m over here, you’re welcome at the wedding if you’re around. I kept a few invites in case I ran into anyone.” Hedge pulled his bag off his shoulder and rummaged around, pulling out a envelope then a A6 piece of card. “Plus one, obviously. Free bar and some of the other boys are coming.”

“The place will be lucky to still be standing by morning.” Bucky said taking the offered invitation.

“Doesn’t matter. She’s my only daughter and I want her to meet some of the people that will keep her and her family safe, when I go.”

“I’ll try and be there.” Bucky nodded.

“All I’m asking.” Hedge said patting Bucky shoulder.

They stood at the same time and hugged, patting each other on the back.

“I better get to my gate. Hope to see you soon.” Hedge said, then nodded to Steve before walking away.

“What do you think?” Bucky asked holding the invitation up as he sat back down. “It’s in Iowa next month.”

They hadn’t made it to Kate's wedding; there had been an emergency rescue in Brazil.

There was the drawing he had done of Bucky stripping his rifle with absolute focus, while he was lying in bed with Bucky’s head against his waist and his fingers tracing Steve’s abs because neither of them had the energy to get up after the week long mission full of stressors, with too many sleep free nights, however, Steve couldn’t lie awake in bed and do nothing especially when he didn’t want to be anywhere else.

“I love you.” Steve said shading under Bucky’s lip with his pencil on the paper. He’d known it for so long but he’d never said it before, because he didn’t think that Bucky would want to hear it, it would be too serious.

Bucky’s fingers had stopped moving then started moving again.

“I love you too.”

“You do?” Steve had looked down at him, not expecting him to say it back.

“Yeah, but you have awful timing.” Bucky sighed.

“Why’s that?” Steve frowned, wondering if Bucky was about to announce he had picked up another job.

“Because I don’t want to move right now.”

“Do you have to move?” Because Steve was happy to stay just as they were.

“Since I want to kiss you, yeah.” Bucky sighed heavily.

“Or.” Steve put his sketchpad down on the bedside table and moved down the bed until they were level and Bucky’s hand had travelled up his chest staying in contact. “No moving required.”

Bucky slid his fingers around Steve’s neck and encouraged him into a gentle slow, lazy kiss.

Pages and pages of drawings of Bucky that were gone.

Bucky said that he was gone.

But he still sounded the same, he acted the same, he thought the same… He was sharper, more brutal than he had been… He had been through the wringer and then some, he’d been broken, he was missing an arm… If Bucky was gone then Steve wouldn’t know how to get through his defences, he wouldn’t get through Bucky’s defences at all…   

If all of Bucky was gone, like he said, then he wouldn’t have bought the house because it wouldn’t have meant anything to him.

He grimaced as he shifted his weight and his ass tingled from sitting on the wooden floor for too long.

He wouldn’t get any more answers until tomorrow. He climbed to his feet with a hollow feeling in his guts that he couldn’t explain and exhaustion that seemed to want to wrap it’s arms around him and drag him under.

He flicked off the kitchen lights and collected his bag before climbing the stairs.

The first night he was going to spend sleeping in the completed house and they were going to be in separate bedrooms.

Because Bucky was taking pills to sleep.

He wished he had been the one to kill Raynard.

He walked into the master bedroom, dropping his bag and dropping face down on the bed.

Bucky was scared Steve wouldn’t be able to love him as he was now. He was sure that Steve couldn’t.

He was going to prove it to Steve, he was going to make sure he was right.

Steve turned over and stared at the ceiling as the moonlight shone into the room.

If there was anything that Steve knew about Bucky it was that, sometimes he was his own worst enemy.