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He's not here for the kill. Bucky reminds himself every few heartbeats, afraid the part of him that had no control, that served only orders and the mission, will forget and do it. He's only here to watch, to learn the man who stopped the walking weapon no one stops. Bucky needs to know him as much as he needs to believe in why he did it.
It's night—or rather early morning when predators and ghosts belong. Bucky is both and doesn't come out in the day; there's no space to breathe in that busy, suffocating world he exists outside of.
The apartment building is plain, but not so dirty as the one glinting in his memory beneath the haze of carnage. Bucky watches the third floor. The bedroom window is open. Old irritation flares feebly at the carelessness under the ice of long frozen feeling. Captain America has too many enemies to leave himself vulnerable while he sleeps. Bucky is one of them. Was one of them. The worst, in his mind.
Climbing up is effortless with the strength of his cybernetic arm. He barely makes a sound, scaling balcony after balcony to see whether anyone is inside. It's easy to look into the bedroom. All he has to do is perch on the balcony rail and balance one foot on the open window sill two and half feet away. Bucky's eyes fix on a big man alone in a bigger bed. Blond hair, solid muscle, uniform thrown to the floor as if he was desperate to get out of it. The room fades to something smaller and dingier in Bucky's mind, meager with poverty. The man in the bed becomes light and frail and small enough to lift in Bucky's arms. He's coughing, sweaty and worn out by the strain of it, and in the dresser mirror a younger, worried man with Bucky's face paces the floor.
Franklin said he'd be here to fix the stove an hour ago. I'm gonna go knock on his door. I told that idiot you needed something hot.
It's his biggest worry, keeping the smaller, sick man from dying on him, in this memory long before Bucky's biggest worry was how to cover his part in the kill.
He blinks and time restores itself. There's a box of cereal by the bed. They used to be so hungry... They—Bucky's reeling mind can barely grasp that the fragile man and the fussy, caring him were how it was once, that Captain America and the Winter Soldier used to be that close. Closeness is too alien a thing to understand anymore.
Hunger Bucky understands. He slips soundlessly inside the window to snatch the box of cereal. He can't understand closeness anymore, but for a moment, standing over the bed, he feels unbearably cut off.
**
The thought shakes Bucky beneath the dark he's buried under. There must be an allure to masochism the way he comes back to the apartment, dragging old memories from under the rubble of his mind, knowing he can't erase the years that changed him and all the crimes and crawl back into that other him again. The sight of food on the balcony argues otherwise—more cereal, milk, and a blue bowl and spoon. Left out for him. Hoping... Bucky climbs and eats alone in the early morning darkness, because he's had nothing else to eat since the last time, not because he believes.
**
Coming back to the apartment becomes a compulsion. It's not the hunger; Bucky loses so many hours paralyzed by remembering hunger isn't a driving concern. He needs to see if the food's left out. It becomes the measure of how much the man inside the apartment believes. It becomes the measure of what kind of man Bucky is how sick it makes him taking what he doesn't deserve.
Not much startles Bucky anymore—he's fought, been beaten, erased and remade—but he stops dead in the shadows on the fifth night at the sight of a broad-shouldered figure sitting on the balcony, gold hair crowned in an urban halo by the glow of the streetlights. He's waiting and his face is tired, but his keen soldier's eyes comb the darkness, still hoping. Bucky knows guilt, an oppressive weight on his shoulders, but his reaction now is more intimate and cuts him right in the pit of his stomach.
He doesn't come closer. It doesn't occur to him until he's slipping away by habit that he could have. That he wants to.
**
Bucky spends most of his time down a flight of dirty steps under an abandoned restaurant. The things tumbling through his mind hold him hostage there, the gruesome parade of assassinations, the waking up, the blankness before he's put away again where the years to slip out from under him. He grapples with a sense of time that comes in disconnected fragments, trying to put the memories in order and count how many victims. He's getting weak though and that brings a crawling sense of vulnerability he can't stand. Bucky knows he's lost weight, the muscle from his constant training, and there's the fact that when he stares into the apartment the flashes of memories from before hurt, but at least they aren't soaked in red.
It's not just cereal and milk and the same blue bowl he finds left out for him this time. There's coffee in a thermos to keep it warm. Bucky drinks. It burns his throat and he shivers violently with the night by contrast. He hadn't realized he was so cold.
Three nights, Bucky comes to the addition of the coffee. It feels like another kick to a beaten man and he knows beatings, that the man in the apartment cares about him being warm.
The next night, Bucky climbs up to the third floor balcony with his shoulder burning. Pain brings him a vestige of clarity and he knows the wound is bad. It was a homeless man, yelling at him in clumsy Vietnamese phrases, an older vet mistaking Bucky for the enemy. He had a knife and Bucky froze as the man came at him, terrified his body would erupt beyond his control into the deadly dance that would have the man's throat open in two heartbeats. The man got a slash in before Bucky could make himself move to deflect it.
He feels the dried blood on the back of his shoulder now, crusting his undershirt to his skin.
The food and coffee are there and the climb has drained him so much his legs buckle. Bucky catches himself on his metal hand, half slumping to the concrete. He feels the hunger now, a sharp gnawing thing, and devours the food twice as fast as usual, saving the coffee for last.
He gets up, teeth gritted as the movement pulls the wound on his shoulder, ready to make the climb back down, when the sliding door crashes open.
"Bucky!"
He doesn’t look up at the name, merely at being caught and cornered. The man they made Bucky into can't help but find the figure in the doorway with his blue, pleading eyes pathetic. The name is for the frail man and the other him, protection and family and the smoke and noise of a war and brothers-in-arms who would lay down their lives for each other. The name is for a dead man Captain America is too weak to let go of.
Bucky is on his feet, leg hooked around the rail ready to jump down. Captain America might be pathetic, but there's too much needless cruelty in torturing him with the ghost of the thing he lost. Bucky has tortured enough people and needless cruelty has always been a waste.
Captain America doesn't move from the doorway, but he looks like he wants to grab Bucky before he can slip over the rail. His voice leaks desperation when he says, "Come on, don't run. What are you gonna do all alone out there in the cold? There's more food."
Bucky sees him in the star-spangled uniform again, begging him over and over to remember. He's made his only plea for the night though and turns inside the aparment and closes the door.
Bucky creeps back to his shelter beneath the restaurant, but returns the next night. Maybe he could make himself useful, watch over the apartment in the dark in exchange for the food. Captain America has enemies... Bucky tucks himself in the corner of the balcony where it's warmer against the building. The burning in his shoulder is worse and his legs ache from walking. He ends up falling asleep, and when Bucky wakes the patio door is half open.
It's still dark. His blue cereal bowl is on the living room carpet, a few feet inside the door. It's filled with O-shaped pasta in what looks like spaghetti sauce, steaming beside the thermos of coffee. Hot food... Bucky can't remember the last time he's had hot food. Cereal is all he's eaten in days. It draws him inside and he crouches on the floor, shoveling it desperately into his mouth. Nothing's ever tasted so good.
**
The bowl of pasta is left on the living room floor for the next two nights, steaming hot along with the coffee. The sound of the patio door opening wakes him each time and lets him know it's there, but Bucky waits until he's alone to come inside and eat it. It's easier that way.
It rains two nights later. The overhang from the building's roof barely provides protection and by the time the downpours come in the middle of the night Bucky is soaked and shaking.
Memories ambush him as they always do now whenever he stays still enough. He's marching with dozens of other men in drab and dirty uniforms through the rain and mud, some bleeding from bullet and shrapnel wounds, all of them scared. Anyone too bad off to walk has been left behind with a bullet in their head. Bucky's ears still ring from the shots and the shock of it. If there were humanitarian laws against executing men who threw down their arms, these new breed of Krauts didn't give a fuck.
Bucky can't stop coughing in the cold and a muscular man in a bowler hat puts an arm around his shoulders.
Dugan. His name was Dugan.
Gonna hurt yourself if you keep coughing so hard, Jimmy. Maybe they got soup wherever we're going.
He's warning him to keep the coughing down, but Bucky grumbles through another bout,"I told you. It's Bucky."
One of the Krauts slams the barrel of his rifle into the back of Dugan's head and snaps in German that Bucky understands now, Shut up and march!
Decades too late, Bucky thinks about grabbing that Kraut's arm and breaking it in three places before the blow with the rifle can land. He thinks about grabbing the rifle and spraying the field with bullets until every Kraut with that snaky red patch on his uniform drops to rot there with the worms. Anger unravels into grief though. He knows Dugan is dead now and Gabe too, marching silent on Bucky's left.
"You can sleep inside."
Bucky's eyes jerk open. He didn't hear the door, but those few words are rescue, saving Bucky from having to march all over again to that hell he's headed toward.
"It's warm in here." Captain America's figure fills the doorway and he's pleading again, under the coaxing, believing. Believing Bucky deserves something other than shaking in the wet and cold.
He doesn't say anything else, just leaves the door open a crack and retreats into the kitchen.
Bucky watches him put a boxed frozen meal in the microwave, and at first Bucky thinks he's heating his own breakfast. Yet when it's done he spoons the scrambled eggs it comes with into Bucky's blue bowl and sets it at a place at the table. There's pancakes too and he sets those out on a plate alongside butter and coffee.
He leaves. Bucky swallows. He's a good man. He deserves the peace of letting go.
It seems cruel not to take what's offered though and allow him the solace of feeding what's left of his friend something better than pasta and cereal and keeping him dry for a night. Bucky is dripping wet, but it's comfortable at the table in the cushioned chair. His muscles ache so much he can't take the hard ground anymore.
He eats and when he's done he settles in the corner of the living room just inside the door. The carpet is softer than the concrete outside, but water runs everywhere off his clothes and it's only so long before Bucky itches with the feeling he's not clean enough to be here.
The bedroom door is closed, the man inside evidently sound asleep. Bucky peels off his sopped clothes, the bloody back of his shirt stuck to him. He slips into the bathroom and turns the shower on as hot as he can stand it. He wants it near scalding, enough to burn off the years of blood and murder. The water's heat sets fire to the wound on the back of his shoulder, but that's nothing. Nothing to the feeling that he'll never get clean enough.
The water is so hot Bucky is ready to faint. He gets out and opens the door for air, pulling on his pants and turning to examine his shoulder in the mirror. The gash is three inches long and likely needs stitches, red and scabbed and ugly. It's not the worst he's had. Bucky remembers crawling on the floor of an abandoned HYDRA base with three bullet wounds. He remembers lying on the Red Room's table and their frantic efforts to keep him from bleeding out from his stump of a shoulder the first time they thawed and revived him.
"Hey, let me look at that."
A broad-shouldered figure fills the mirror behind him, all smooth golden muscle in nothing but a pair of boxers. His eyes take in how thin Bucky is in comparison now, but mostly they settle on the wound. He reaches a hand out to turn Bucky around.
Bucky's heart speeds up and his skin is crawling. Their fight in that building he planned to blow up with the Cube comes back. He feels a cold gun in his hand, ready to fire and sees Steve's face desperate for a spark of recognition. It comes up sick in the back of Bucky's throat, the anger and red murder he felt surging through him then that the star spangled idiot just wouldn't shut up and let him spatter his brains on the ground and get on with his mission in silence.
He has a gun on him, tucked in his pants, and all Bucky can think is how he wasn't in control then, how that other man and his instincts and loyalties are still a part of him.
He slips out of the bathroom and grabs his jacket, hurrying out of the apartment and trying to ignore the sound of his name following him from the balcony.
**
Bucky calms down enough to reassure himself he wouldn't have gone for his gun and pulled the trigger there in the bathroom, that he would rather shoot himself. That's what he carries the gun for as much for the fact that it's the only safety he has. His head rings with the echo of his name from the patio doorway, Captain America's fear laid bare of losing him again, and guilt brings Bucky back in the dead of early morning. He doesn't have to make it worse for him.
It continues to rain and the food is left out yet again on the kitchen table, begging him to come inside. Bucky lets himself curl up on the carpet beside the patio door, but satisfies the part of him that doesn't trust himself not to revert to Lukin and the Red Skull's mission by slipping out the second he hears stirring in the bedroom or isn't alone.
**
The pattern works until one evening Captain America is gone and Bucky dozes in the corner of the balcony guarding the apartment while he's away. His body has an alarming leaden heaviness and his mind is foggy enough that he sleeps deeper than he means to, the back of his shoulder all throbbing pain and his eyes burning with the effort of keeping them open. He's so tired, the sound of the sliding door startles him and Bucky makes to back away. The figure in the doorway doesn't come any closer though.
There's a shopping bag on his wrist and a blue plastic bin in his hands. His voice is the forced, non-threatening softness of a man trying to coax an animal out of leaping for his throat.
"I know you don't have much, but I bought you some things." The bin has a toothbrush, clean socks and underwear, and a comb. "I'll leave it in the bathroom for you, Buck."
It goes on the coffee table and he pulls out what's in the shopping bag—a plush dark blue blanket large enough for Bucky to wrap himself in. He sets it in the corner of the couch, a clear invitation for Bucky to sleep there.
Bucky stares at the color. He's back in a building in London, standing before a mirror and buttoning up the dark blue coat of his new uniform. Peggy Carter walks briskly by, but stops long enough to shoot Bucky a look of approval.
Very sharp, Sergeant. That color does suit you.
She walks on and the man in red, white, and blue beams beside him in the mirror.
I wanted us to match. They think people back home will really take to the idea of us being best friends. He pats Bucky's shoulder. Peggy's right. You look good, Buck.
His hand lingers. It both chafes Bucky's pride and warms him with relief that he's being marked by the color as a possession.
Bucky blinks and he's left alone. He creeps into the living room now that it's empty and folds himself up on the couch. He wants to wrap himself in that deep blue color, wants to remember what he was—the guy who stood beside Captain America, the loyal friend.
**
Bucky feels worse as the night goes on, weak and blurry-minded with fatigue, but sleep doesn't come, only memories of taking out weapons facilities and the two of them sitting out together at night, laughing and talking about home. Bucky's mind tries to wrap around the fact that they've made it home and the war is seventy years behind them. It leaves him restless. He crawls off the couch and slips into the bedroom.
He's sleeping, piled in blankets. Bucky remembers when they didn't have enough to stay warm. No heat but each other. It was that way on missions sometimes when it was just the two of them. He remembers itchy wool blankets and a solid wall of warmth against his back that it felt weak to admit made him feel safe.
He wants to feel that way now. He wants to stop feeling like the enemy in his own horrified skin.
The blankets stir. Bright blue eyes open. Bucky freezes.
Those eyes go to his face and a strong hand draws its way out of the covers. "Bucky..."
Panic crawls under Bucky's skin again. He remembers his gaze locked with those desperate blue eyes over the barrel of his gun and his stomach twists with thoughts he can't help, of how vulnerable Captain America is now, lying down and the few quick moves Bucky could use to pin him and kill him. He sees himself doing it, slamming a knee into his chest, getting his metal hand around his throat, drawing his gun while he kicks and screams, spraying blood and brains all over the headboard. Bucky goes cold with sweat and his heart races. Afraid he'll vomit, he backs away.
**
It starts to snow and Bucky's too tired to fight going back to the apartment if the point of him having belongings there is keep him from vanishing out onto the streets. The cold is the kind that slices deep, but his face is burning and his throat feels raw from thirst.
Captain America cooks dinner alone, chicken on a portable grill with vegetables. He calls to Bucky that the back door is unlocked.
Bucky takes off his snow-dusted jacket and shirt to keep from wetting the couch where he sits. Blue eyes follow him, troubled by the thin lines of his body. Without a word, another chicken breast goes on the portable grill and a few minutes later it's served to Bucky cut up over rice and vegetables.
"I made you something special." The approach is cautious, but the words are gentle. He sets the plate on the coffee table, coming much closer than what Bucky thinks is safe. "I figure you haven't been getting much meat."
Is that what Captain America worries about? Not the gun his "best friend" thrust in his face or the images of killing him that pulse vivid through Bucky's mind? Yet as half-dead as Bucky feels, something in him responds to the sight of the food.
He stares a moment, and then he's devouring it. It's not just the hunger. He wants to devour the idea of being cared for as a man and not a weapon. He wants to devour it until he remembers how to be a man and not a weapon.
**
Bucky tries to burn away the cold cutting through his bones and the ache in his body and that feeling of never being clean again in a long shower. He's dizzy and his head pounds when he comes out and he wants to lie down.
The couch isn't empty. The TV is on and Bucky lingers in the hallway, wondering if he would just let Bucky curl up and pretend he's not there. He's busy reading a set of documents and though he glances up at him, he makes no move to speak. Bucky cautiously comes forward and folds himself up against the side of the couch. He knows something's wrong with him and doesn't feel like much of a threat just now.
He's too groggy to stay awake. In his dreams, Bucky's warm, huddled so close against a solid, muscular body he doesn't feel the cold even though they're high up in the frozen alps. He's bone tired and wants to sleep for a week. He wants to go home, he's so weary of being ready to draw his weapon or duck for cover at any minute. He wants to make sure the man he's pressed against makes it home. He has to. Someone has to remember Captain America isn't invincible.
A cellphone beeps and Bucky's eyes open. He still feels that solid heat and realizes his cheek is pressed to denim and that he's lying in Steve's lap. His heart speeds up. It's too close. But a big hand comes to rest gently in his hair, silently asking him not to pull away.
"It's okay, Buck."
The instinct toward flight and panic lets go at the gentleness. He's comfortable like this, and the truth is Bucky just wants to lie here, wants the warmth of another body, wants to give up grappling with right and wrong. If he can let himself be what they wanted, why can't he do the same here? Give Captain America what's left of the friend he lost and let him care for him and soothe his guilt.
It's a half-dreamed thought and Bucky falls back asleep. A sharp tugging at his scalp yanks him awake a second time. There's fingers in his long hair and his mind flashes to interrogations and angry threats in Russian and it hurts enough that Bucky whips his head around.
The face above him is sorry, but determined. "You have to let me look."
Bucky has forgotten about the cut on his scalp, scabbed-over and leaving his hair matted with old blood. He just wants to sleep though, not be fussed with, and he pulls away into his blanket against the corner of the couch.
**
His dreams are searing, disturbing things. Bucky is ordered to hunt down everyone Captain America loves and kill them with the utmost brutality to break his faith. Bucky refuses, but they do something to his mind that saps him of any reason to resist. The faces are blurry, screaming under his knife, but he gets the job done. Last on the list is the younger version of him, cocky and the star of his own little world in his corner of Brooklyn. Bucky drives knife into him over and over with a special cruelty while Captain America screams. The cocky kid can send bullies running, but he doesn't know yet how to kill to defend himself in all those dozens of ways. He stands no chance and Bucky leaves him in a mess of red with Captain America kneeling over him on the ground, frantically searching for a pulse and trying to staunch wounds he doesn't have enough hands for. He should know better. There's no saving him. Why would he want someone he loves to live like that anyway, scarred and damaged inside and out? Why is he so selfish?
Bucky wakes covered in sweat, feeling the stab of a knife through the back of his shoulder. He feels like that near-dead version of himself he left lying on the ground, grasping to stay awake, but at the same time too disturbed to go back to sleep. He's so groggy and leaden and thirsty.
There's noise in the kitchen, a figure opening a cabinet for a cup and taking it to the fridge for water. Bucky slides off the couch. He needs water badly.
He's so used to not making noise that He gives a start when he turns around, unaware Bucky is standing so close. He sets the cup down and for a moment, Bucky stares at him. He never saw the end of the dream. Maybe he did save him.
There's nothing but dogged affection in his eyes now and hope he refuses to let go of that's been dragged over the coals. He's so close Bucky can feel the warmth of him. Bucky meets his earnest eyes and wants to ask if he could have done it, bring back the old him from a ravaged, destroyed mess. Isn't Captain America supposed to make people believe?
It's a shock when his big calloused hand comes up to touch Bucky's cheek.
"Hey, Buck..." It's slow, deliberate, as if he means to melt through everything they've done with gentleness.
Bucky doesn't need the gentleness, just the warmth.
He barely knows what he's doing, but the touch sparks something in him. He's surging forward. It must look like an attack the way strong hands come up as if to fight him off, but they fall and clutch his shoulders as Bucky's balance wavers and he ends up pressing Steve backward against the fridge. Heat bleeds through him everywhere their bodies touch and Bucky can't get enough of it. That warmth could do it, he thinks, bring him back if Bucky could soak up enough of it and with it Steve's dogged faith and strength.
He buries his face in the heat of Steve's neck. Bucky can feel his heart hammering where their chests meet. He can feel Steve's breathing and his body tight with anticipation. His own heart speeds up at the forgotten thrill of so much contact, and the press of a warm thigh against his stirs his cock until its hard and pounding.
His head swims with vague memories of soft legs wrapped around him and breathy voices panting Bucky, Bucky... in his ear. He sees her with her red hair spilling over the pillow. Her nails claw his back and his teeth drive into her neck to muffle his groans as they come together in the dark. All those memories hurt and make his cock harder at the same time, but those others aren't what Bucky's starved for just now.
It's the startled moan of the familiar voice in his ear that spurs him. He realizes he's grinding his hips and the sensation of another man's erection against his is new, but that fails to matter. It's Steve himself Bucky needs and he's clawing and panting, feeding off the choked groans in his ear. Hands clutch him with twice the force, needing too, and Bucky clings harder, clings to the sense of connection. He doesn't want Steve to let go of him.
Orgasm catches Bucky off guard and his teeth sink into the throbbing flesh of Steve's neck. Steve is shuddering against him, gripping his thin arms hard enough to bruise and moaning like the pleasure is something torn from him that he fought to hold back.
Bucky staggers off him when it's over, his legs shaking. In the clarity of afterglow it hits him that what just happened was real and not the rest of his dream. The shock of it is in the face across from him and Bucky doesn't know what to do but make a and confused attempt to scrub the past few moments away.
He tries in the shower. He tries to stay awake. He's not well, sweaty and clammy all over. It isn't natural, his living this long. Maybe his body is finally breaking down and he'll age rapidly now. Bucky's not sure whether the thought of it all being over soon brings him relief.
He can't stop thinking of Steve clutching at him, pulling him closer, of his hard cock against Bucky's own. What happened against the fridge wasn't unwanted. More than that, Bucky got close and didn't think once of killing him. Bucky thinks about the nightmare he had and doesn't want to sleep alone.
He waits and curls next to Steve in his bed once he's asleep. He doesn't want anything but to lie there and tells himself he'll go back to the couch before morning.
**
Bucky sleeps too deep to remember to get up and leave. Heat presses against his back and he realizes one of them curled closer sometime in the night. It's familiar from the war when they had nowhere to sleep save the frozen ground, but no longer feels innocent.
Covers rustle and the body against Bucky turns toward him. He doesn't move. A hand strokes his shoulder and Bucky doesn't go tense this time.
"You nice and warm there?" It's the voice you use with the sick, or a mistreated animal you want to coax into trusting you. Bucky feels sick. The covers are sweltering.
He wets his lips. He wants to say he's sorry for last night. He would never have thrown himself at a woman like that. He wants to ask for water and if he can sleep here for the day.
Someone pounds on the front door and a man yells to "open up." The bed shifts and there's the rustling of clothes before the bedroom door closes and Bucky is left alone.
He sits up. He's so thirsty it's painful and so dizzy the bright room reels, but he is what he is and ignores all that to focus on the voices outside the door. The walls are thick enough that he can't hear all that's being said, but the words "Winter Soldier" have Bucky out of bed and on his feet. He pulls his boots on. He hears the name "Bucky" and both voices erupt into an argument.
Whoever is in the apartment, they know he's here. The only question is what they would do with Captain America if they found the Winter Soldier cozy in his bed. Slap him with treason charges? Name him an accomplice? Bucky can't let his crimes stain him.
He's quick and slides open the window and slips out while they're in the hall and can't see him, dropping onto the second-story balcony and climbing the rest of the way down. He's good at making a quiet escape.
Adrenaline slices through whatever is wrong with him and Bucky is away from the apartment building in minutes. It's snowing and the muscles in his legs threaten to buckle if he lets himself get bogged down in it. He stumbles a few times, but keeps going. Everything is reeling by the time he reaches his abandoned restaurant. His legs are outright shaking with weakness and his ears ring so loud he can barely hear anything else. He's so thirsty, dehydrated by the sweat he's covered in despite the cold. His vision tunnels and his surroundings grow distant. He misses one of the dirty concrete steps leading beneath the building and falls, rolling over and over with a tearing pain above his left knee and landing at the bottom in the snow. He knows he's on the verge of passing out and does his best to drag himself out of sight underneath the building.
**
Bucky's not sure he isn't dreaming when He appears at the bottom of the stairs. His mind is in too thick of a fog to care. Yet if Captain America can make it halfway around the world to find him in a prison facility, he can find him less than two miles from his home.
It's night now. He's flushed and covered in snow and his approach is careful, but where is Bucky going to run when he's sure he would pass out again if he tried standing up?
"Bucky..."
There's so much relief in that voice, betraying long hours of worry. He's been searching all day. Of course he has. He doesn't give up when he wants something.
He doesn't give up on him.
Bucky lowers his eyes to the cold, dirty concrete. Why can't he let something go for once, for his own good? Why can't he do it for him?
He ventures closer and holds up his hands as if he thinks Bucky might not trust him. "I'm not here to hurt you. I think you need help. You don't have to hide." He lowers himself to his knees so he's not looming anymore. It just looks more like begging. "I know you don't remember me, but you're my best friend. I wouldn't let anyone-"
Bucky's head comes up, startled. He thinks he doesn't know who he is...? Bucky grits his teeth, sick to his stomach all over again remembering when it all came back, the blue light of the Cube searing it all into his mind, branding it—every mission, every murder, every memory from before. He swallows and his eyes water because all he does now is remember.
"I remember..." His throat is tight it's been so long since he's spoken. His voice scrapes, but he meets those blue eyes and makes himself say it. "Steve."
Steve's face comes alive with shock and a relief that visibly overwhelms him.
"Then why'd you run? You know I wouldn't let anyone blame you."
Bucky wets his lips, but he doesn't have the energy to explain.
"I don't trust them."
Steve knows that's not the whole of it, but he also seems to know Bucky's not well enough to press.
"They say you could still have triggers in your head. I know you don't want to hurt anyone, Buck."
Steve slides closer. His hand sinks in his pocket and Bucky tenses, feels the trap ready to spring. Steve moves again, and Bucky barely hears him mutter he's sorry before he lunges.
He's strong and though Bucky's body struggles to fight on instinct he knows he's too weak. It scares him more that he might have hallucinated Steve the whole time, that they did something to his mind after the last time he tried to escape, forty years ago, and now they're taking him back. His heart bucks dangerously against his ribs. There's the prick of a needle and then he's falling forward into strong arms.
**
Bucky wakes to the hum of machines and the pressure of an oxygen mask on his face. His throat feels raw, but that barely registers. He's hooked up to something and panic crawls cold through him that they've brought him out of stasis again. His heart hammers though his body doesn't seem to have the strength for it. It sinks with loss at the same time. He had something to grasp onto in this new era with Steve in that apartment and now time—a thing more merciless than he's ever been—has broken that feeble grip and he's gone speeding through the years again with no way back there.
A machine beeps from far away before Bucky can wonder why they didn't erase his memories this time. He knows they will if he doesn't get out of here, and he struggles.
His visions focuses just as two nurses come running toward him, one strawberry blonde and the other a young Japanese girl. Neither have a dangerous look about them and shouldn't be much trouble to fight past.
The strawberry blonde reaches him first.
"Oh god, Sergeant, don't!" She puts a hand on his arm. Bucky almost reacts by throwing her across the room with his metal one, but then she's petting him, trying to calm him down. "You'll tear the stitches in the back of your shoulder. Your heart's beating too fast. You have to take it easy."
The badge clipped to the pocket of her scrubs reads "SHIELD Medical." Her name is Lisa. It's a fleeting thought how pretty she and the other girl are. Department X had pretty girls too.
"You're in recovery," the Japanese girl adds—'Michelle', her badge says. "Your wound is infected. You're lucky you aren't septic. Do you want to sit up? You're not going anywhere until your IV is finished."
What he wants is to crawl up to a vantage point and observe what he can of this SHIELD place, preferably through the scope of a rifle. Who knows what kind of new aliances Department X has made. But he nods.
"Is it okay if we tell Captain America you're awake?" Lisa stops petting his arm and smooths his hair that Bucky realizes is damp and short now. The bare back of his neck is cold. "I can't believe they found you alive too."
She looks like she wants to cry. These girls don't know what he's been. But Steve... Bucky wants to say keep him away from me, yet Michelle has already skipped off like she can't wait to tell him.
A man and a woman enter. Bucky's skin crawls with the way they stare at him. Maybe he's paranoid, but he knows the feel of an interrogation.
"It must have been a long seventy years," the woman says. "I wonder how much you remember. Don't answer." She waves a hand."Relax and let the nurses do their work."
Acting as if they aren't there, Lisa pushes a button on the bed and he's sitting up. The room spins and he feels awful, though not nearly as thirsty. His leg doesn't hurt, but it's wrapped tight beneath a pair of thin hospital pants someone put on him and Bucky can barely move it.
Lisa chatters while the man and the woman study him with far too much concentration to simply be observing. She rearranges the blankets, combs his hair, tells him how they had to shave his chest to hook him up to a heart monitor, and that they're filling him with fluids and strong antibiotics.
The man and the woman leave, and the other nurse comes back. "We'll let you out of here as soon as you can drink something. Captain America's taking you home."
It's a shock that they're letting him go, but whatever they've put in the IV is making Bucky too groggy to do anything but nod. Lisa brings a clear plastic cup from a table across the room. Bucky takes it in a weak grip and his mind wanders back to the nights before he went to Steve when he was so thirsty and confused he would lap up snow from the ground in the silence beneath that vacant restaurant. The memory twists into a disaster of a mission in Latvia where he had no choice but to do the same. Bucky ends up staring into the cup, forgetting what he's doing with it.
"Here." Lisa puts her hand around his, bringing the cup to his lips. Her other hand goes to the back of his head and she helps him drink. Bucky's eyes water. She's not Steve, clinging to the past; she has no reason to be nice to him. It's worse than her being afraid of him for what he is, being treated like any other sick man in need of help.
**
The girls help Bucky up and walk him slowly out to Steve. The white, sterile hall is too bright. Bucky's leg refuses to take much of his weight and he's so weak and queasy he's sweating after a few steps.
A handsome black man waiting on a bench stands up and snaps, "Someone get that kid a wheelchair."
One materializes and the girls help him sit. Bucky remembers a mission in Armenia where he gained access to a diplomatic function by checking into the hotel in a wheelchair with his arm removed.
Steve is surrounded by half a dozen people in lab coats who hand him a paper bag and a stack of print-outs. He smiles at the sight of him and the girls make a fuss over Bucky's short hair.
They ask if they can take a "selfie" with him to brag to their friends that they got to be the first to take care of him after he was found alive. Bucky just nods, though their excitement like he's some sort of hero makes him sicker, but he reminds himself the lie is better, that the truth could be dangerous for Steve.
When they're gone, the black man takes over his wheelchair and Steve is still smiling at him.
"We're taking you home, Buck. This is Sam—he's a friend. He helped me find you."
Sam pats his shoulder and starts to push him toward the double doors while Steve walks beside them. "We're busting you out of here, kid."
Bucky remembers bristling when people called him "kid" during the war, but the way this man does it, it makes him feel harmless.
**
Steve has to help him in and out of the backseat of Sam's car. He buckles him in next to grocery bags and shopping bags with red bullseyes all over them, but Steve holds on to the papers and bag he says holds Bucky's medications.
Sam carries the stuff inside and Steve thanks him for the help and the ride. He wraps a muscular arm around Bucky's shoulders and pulls him into a half hug, promising, "we'll get you back on your feet again" and that Bucky would see him tomorrow.
Once he's gone, Steve leads Bucky to the stairs to enter through the front door for once. Bucky attempts the bottom step, but whatever is twisted in his leg threatens to tear if he tries to climb. Bucky is good at ignoring pain, but he lacks the motivation to.
"Don't," Steve says. "I'll have to pick you up."
He lifts Bucky easily against the broad warmth of his chest. Bucky doesn't think Steve's aware that he's cradling him, but he doesn't fight it; he's so drowsy his head falls on Steve's shoulder. What does it matter if he's weak? He has nothing to be strong for.
"I got you some new clothes," Steve tells him once they get inside. "They gave me these too. The SHIELD shrinks said it might help keep you grounded."
Steve pulls a pair of silver dog tags out of his pocket. They have "James Barnes" engraved on them and Bucky stares. Steve's face pinches that he's forced to explain.
"That's your name. You just prefer 'Bucky'."
It takes Bucky a moment to remember that and he nods. He hasn't seen his own name written since the war. He just hears "codename Winter Soldier" over and over in his head.
Bucky stands still while Steve slips the chain over his head and tucks the tags neatly inside the top of his blue hospital clothes.
"How about putting on some pajamas?" Steve pulls a pair of blue plaid ones out of the shopping bag with the red bullseyes. "I'll help you get into them."
Bucky steps back. He's having trouble staying awake and he wants to be left alone.
"No? The doctors said you have to eat. How about a protein shake?"
Bucky's stomach knots at the thought of food. He just wants to lie down. He shakes his head and limps into the bedroom and Steve doesn't come after him.
The bed is still unmade since Steve spend the whole day searching for him. Bucky doesn't bother climbing under the covers, just collapses on top. Being in that SHIELD facility stirred up more memories of labs and experiments, leaving his mind feeling like even more of a ramsacked room, but the smell of Steve's pillow is calming and Bucky buries his face and wraps his arms around it, the scent the only connection he has to yet another alien era. Bucky blinks and sees Karpov and Lukin growing more weathered and gray as he sleeps and wakes and tumbles in fits and starts through years and decades like night to morning.
Steve turns the television on in the other room and Bucky lies quiet trying to count the kills again, but remembering only makes him sicker from whatever drugs they've given him. Worse, he feels like he's hiding the slashed and bullet-ridden corpses right here in Steve's bed. Tears come despite their pointlessness, but they wrack him hard enough that he's worn out when there's no more left to cry.
**
Shadows change to unfamiliar patterns and Bucky opens his eyes to the first traces of light. Fear of the unfamiliar rises like a specter from the devastation of his mind every time Bucky wakes now, but he's in the same bed and the television is still on.
He's sick to his stomach and his twisted leg and the gash on the back of his shoulder throb. The painkillers have worn off and in their wake they leave a slithering anxiety that feels like the walls and all the ghosts of the people he killed are closing in on him.
He doesn't want to be alone anymore and drags himself limping out of the bedroom.
Steve sits on the couch with his feet on the coffee table. He looks drained and that's Bucky's fault, but his face brightens at the sight of him before it crumples in sympathy Bucky doesn't deserve for how miserable he must look.
He pats the spot next to him. "You want your blanket?"
Every step feels like it might tear something in Bucky's leg, but he makes his way over and curls up, spreading the blue fur over himself. He feels like he could puke any minute and it takes too much effort to hold himself up.
Steve is watching him and Bucky doesn't know what else to do. He shifts and lays his head on Steve's thigh, against the warmth of him that bleeds through the flashes of red violence and cold.
A hand comes up to stroke his hair and Bucky's queasy insides go a little stiller. Trust is a long-buried emotion, but it claws its way out of the ice frozen over real feeling now. It's not like fear or panic, overpowering when it emerges, but thin and atrophied. Steve continues petting his hair and something in Bucky just... quiets.
"Bucky...?" Steve's hand pauses, resting light on the top of his head. "Can you say something so I know you're in there?"
Bucky swallows. His thoughts spin so fast now and are so distracting he forgets he's been so quiet. "Like what?" His voice is a rasp.
"Anything. Just talk to me."
There's too much to say and nothing to say that could say it all. There's no point in saying it all; it won't change anything.
He wants the stroking of Steve's hand back and jerks his head so it moves through his hair again.
"That feels good." Bucky wets his dry lips. "Keep doing it."
Steve does, and then his hand wanders lower over his shoulder and down his back. Bucky closes his eyes and hears himself make a soft, grateful sound.
**
He dozes off. Steve shakes him gently and the room is streaked in sunlight now.
"Time for breakfast. You have to eat."
Bucky sits up. so dizzy from drugs and fever he needs Steve to steady him. Steves goes to the kitchen and pulls pans out of cupboards and Bucky remembers a man he watched for hours through a window who looked like Steve except for the fancy tailored suits he wore—a business man with KGB ties and scientific secrets they didn't want him taking to a norma life. Bucky remembers setting fire to the house and opening the doors so the flames spread faster. The next morning the newspapers announced the man's death as a cooking accident.
What an awful way to die, Bucky can't help but think, smothered by smoke, panicking that you can't see to find your way out. The man saw him, too, a figure in black. Probably thought he had rushed in to help.
"Bucky..." Steve is calling him. "Bucky..."
He comes over to the couch and puts a hand on his shoulder. Bucky blinks. Steve is wary, but his voice is patient.
"You want toast or pancakes?"
The choice is so trivial it irritates Bucky he has to stop thinking about the man he burned to death long enough to make it. He doesn't care about toast or pancakes. He wants to be put back inside the person he's supposed to be. He wants this red stuff out of his head.
Steve's hand is still on his shoulder. "Toast," Bucky says. It's easier to make.
"I'll bring it to you." Steve pats him and goes back to the kitchen.
Bucky stares at the living room wall and sees dark streets he remembers prowling through, tracking like a predator. He feels the weight of a rifle in his hands and the cold calculation of the angle of the shot, how to make the body fall to throw off the authorities as to where the bullet came from.
He's crouching in a dark building. The rifle strapped to his back is a last resort. A push down the stairs is better, once he's spilled the HYDRA secrets from the man he's after, and he has his knives for that.
"Buck?"
He jerks at the weight of a hand on his arm. Steve is next to him, setting a plate of eggs and sausage and toast on the coffee table. There's a glass of milk instead of coffee, for the protein.
"Did you hear me?"
Bucky runs a hand over his face. "Sorry... I keep- One second I'm looking at you, the next it's 1975 and I'm kneeling over somebody, cutting his throat." Bucky swallows. It's the most he's said in weeks. "My mind won't stay in one place. Hard to keep track of what's going on."
The back of Steve's hand presses to his forehead. "You still have a fever. They said you might start to feel better by the end of the day. Be patient, Buck."
For now, Steve puts the plate in Bucky's lap and puts an arm around him. He gets the fork with the other hand and feeds him in small, slow mouthfuls. Bucky lets him, though the food has no taste and he's mostly thirsty.
**
He goes to sleep again afterward. Steve wakes him for lunch and dinner, and to unwrap his leg for a few hours, but Bucky sleeps off an on throughout the rest of the day.
He starts awake to the sound of a drawer closing and all Bucky sees is a large shadow facing away from in the dark.
"It's just me," Steve says. "Needed some socks."
Bucky doesn't relax. His instinct was to leap up, slam Steve against the dresser, and snap his neck. Steve could fight him off, but...
"Didn't mean to kick you out," Bucky says hoarsely.
Steve shakes his head, his arms full of things for a shower. "We can start flippoing coins for who gets the couch next week."
He's teasing, but it's still not right, taking his bed. "There's room." A whole other half of the mattress.
Steve turns, looks at him for a moment, then bends to rub his shoulder through the covers. "All right, Buck."
He leaves and Bucky drops off again. When he wakes, it's still dark, but the bed is much warmer. He rolls over. Steve is awake, lying on his side staring at him in the dark. He doesn't move now that they're face-to-face, just smiles at him though it's worn around the edges, and brushes Bucky's cheek with his thumb.
"Really thought I lost you."
Steve's eyes hold his and he looks so happy Bucky wishes he felt more alive. He wants to. He wants to crawl out from under the mess of his own head toward this idea of a happy reunion and a miracle.
Either he's inched closer or Steve's has. Steve's hand follows the curve of his good shoulder. Bucky shifts and Steve's hand is hot on the back of his neck. They're so close Steve's nose would brush his if he moved at all, breathing the same breath, quiet and tense. Steve's smiling, and Bucky's not sure who moves first, but he tilts his head and his mouth is on Steve's. Their lips slide together, warm and tentative in what feels like kissing in slow motion. It's dizzying and surreal, and Bucky swears his heart is too paralyzed to beat.
Steve cups his jaw and gently pulls back.
"Do you know what you're doing?"
Bucky nods—though everything feels outside unreal these days, like he's wandering through an afterlife where nothing counts—but it's enough that Steve's mouth is back on his again, moving warm and slow, taking the time to taste. It's only for a few moments, and then Steve draws away again.
Bucky doesn't expect the disappointment inside him. He swallows it down though. "Better with whatever girl you've got now, right?"
Steve shakes his head. "That's not it. This feels like something we should wait to talk about when you're better."
Bucky's not sure he can imagine being better, the shock of it all ever wearing off, but he accepts that Steve wouldn't want him like this, that Steve doesn't want to feel guilty for taking advantage of him on top of everything else.
He lays his head back down on the pillow and is tired enough to go back to sleep.
**
Bucky wakes to muffled wet sounds trying hard not to be sounds. Steve is crying, fingers clutching into Bucky's side without being aware of it. It's worse than all the killing in its own way. As disoriented and confused as he is, Bucky knows he doesn't want anyone else suffering this with him, not Steve. He knows it with the first stirrings of real determination since the last mission they gave him.
Bucky lifts his head. Steve's face is wet in the dark, his strong jaw clenched trying to keep the sobs in so he doesn't wake him. He sees he's done it anyway and swallows another one with a choked sound.
"Did they do it because of me?" The question quivers with all his fear of the answer. "Because you were my partner?"
Bucky shakes his head, but he doesn't know. Maybe. It doesn't matter though. If they did, it was only because they hated what Steve stood for.
"I - " Steve starts to say. Bucky doesn't want to hear he's sorry. The tears are still trickling down and Bucky leans in, kissing the salt off Steve's cheek. Steve tilts his face up and Bucky finds himself tasting the salt on his mouth now too.
Steve's hands shake, one curling against his neck, the other careful on Bucky's back below the gauze dressing. He's pressing closer and kissing Bucky with growing desperation. Bucky slides a hand under Steve's shoulder and pushes at him to roll onto him.
Bucky's leg is stiff and it burns to bend it, but once he's on his back he manages to pull Steve between his thighs. He thought he would mind the weight on top of him, but it's just Steve and he doesn't.
Steve's hard and he's desperate, grinding against him, smothering Bucky's mouth and choking out, "God, I thought you were dead..." against his lips. Bucky's cock stirs with the barest ghost of arousal, but not much else. It's the closeness Bucky's likes though, Steve's need that calls to something in him that feels like him.
Steve buries his face in Bucky's neck as he shudders through an orgasm and Bucky likes the way his hands cling. It feels like being dragged out from the cold gray rubble into something brighter.
They lie facing each other on the pillow when Steve is done. He takes a long time to catch his breath, but he looks worried once he returns to his senses.
"You didn't... Should I do something more?"
Bucky shakes his head. "It's just the meds."
Steve lets it go at that, lying there taking him in in the dark as if he means to draw Bucky that way tomorrow. After a few quiet moments, he says, "Would you let me hold you? I think I need that."
Bucky's heart clenches and for a moment there's real warmth beating through him. "Me too," he lets himself admit.
He lays his head on the sturdy warmth of Steve's chest and closes his eyes when Steve's arms settle around him. It's comforting, the rise and fall of his breathing and the rhythm of his heart in Bucky's ear. His own breathing falls in time with him and it feels like coming out of the ice and being shown how to be alive again.