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Bucky spends the majority of that night pacing his room, like he does when he can’t sleep and his mind is so overrun with thoughts that sitting still is damn near impossible. He heard me. He thinks, chewing nervously on the tip of his right thumb. He heard me tell him everything, and he didn’t say a word. What the hell was I thinking? Of course Steve won’t say anything; he’s Captain America, for fuck sakes. We could never — Bucky clenches his eyes shut and exhales a slow breath. This was a mistake from the get go. Why did I have to go prying into my own head? If I had never gone and relived that damn day on the train… If I never remembered my last real thought… None of this would be happening.
The trembling in his flesh and bone hand has started again, and it extends up to his shoulder. Bucky tries his best to keep himself under control, but it seems almost out of his reach. Everything that had happened today had been too much. From the conversation with Pepper earlier that afternoon, in which she’d completely conned him into going to the Gala in the first place, to Tony’s speech, and then his inability to keep his own damn mouth shut around Steve. Honestly, Bucky didn’t even know how to begin to process it all. Least of all what had come to light with Steve. Yes, getting it off his chest felt better. Yes, having Steve know of his true feelings was the only thing Bucky had ever wanted for years before he’d been taken by Hydra. But somehow, despite the positive in the situation, Bucky can only focus on the negative.
He didn’t even say anything. Bucky thinks, his hands dragging through his hair. That, most of all, hurt. The fact that Steve had sat entirely silent as Bucky had laid everything out for him, hurt more than words could express. Anything at all would have been better than silence. He could have told me to get the fuck out and it would have been better. But no, he kept his mouth shut. Is he mad? Does he want me to leave? Does he expect me to just forget about it? Is HE going leave? Is HE going to just forget about it?
Bucky’s mind pulses for hours, thoughts and scenarios passing through his restless brain until he finally manages to curl himself into a ball and sleep for a couple of hours. And the dreams that visit are far less pleasant than the ones he’d been having as of late.
The stench of blood fills his nostrils and the sound of gunfire assaults his ears. Screams of pain and the groans of the dying join the noise and Bucky can feel the wet squelch of blood, mud and guts under his boots. He’s running across No-Man’s-Land, back to the trench, back to safety. His heart hammers in his ears and his eyes scan the backs of the other fleeing soldiers for some glimpse of blond hair, or a red-white-and-blue shield. But no matter where he looks, all he sees is grey: Grey smoke, grey-green jackets and fatigues and grey skin on the bodies on the ground.
His boot catches on the arm of a dead soldier and he falls, crashing to the gore soaked battlefield, landing face down in the mud. When He lifts his head to clear the dirt from his eyes and finds himself face to face with a different dead soldier. A soldier with blond hair and blue eyes and a big white star embroidered on his blue and red uniform. “STEVE!” Bucky shouts, scrambling for the body. He hooks his arms under the limp ones of his friend and drags him back to the trench. “Steve, buddy. C’mon, you gotta wake up! You can’t leave me. It’s you and me, remember. Till the end of the line. And it’s not the end yet bud, you hear me!” Bucky says, gathering the lifeless body in his arms as he drops to his knees in the trench. “Don’t do this to me Steve. Not now. You can’t leave me yet.”
"He’s gone, Sarge.” A soldier says from behind Bucky. He looks up to meet the face of a man he doesn’t know. “Captain America is dead.”
Bucky shakes his head, face contorting in grief and rage and disbelief. “No.” He says firmly, though his voice wavers in the middle. “No.”
The soldier kneels beside Bucky and removes Steve’s cowl. Blue eyes are going grey and glassy, blood trickles from the corner of full lips. “I’m sorry, Sergeant.”
He breaks then, still clinging tight to the body of his oldest, closest friend. “No…” He shudders, burying his face into Steve’s shoulder, rocking him back and forth. “No… Steve… Please…. Not now….” Bucky doesn’t care that his comrades have gathered around him, looks of sympathy and stern sadness on their faces. They didn’t know Steve. They couldn’t possibly understand what an inherently good person he was — is… Was. He doesn’t even notice the way he rocks back and forth as he kneels in the muddy trench, sobbing and clutching Steve’s dead weight to his chest. “NO!” He screams, out of pure grief, letting the sound of mourning join the rest.
Bucky wakes with a start and gasps for a breath. His left hand is clenched so tightly on the spare pillow beside his head that the fabric had torn open to spill forth its feathery contents. The pillow that is under his head is discovered to be damp and his eyes are sticky as he blinks heavily trying to shake the sleep from them. It takes a couple minutes, but once he regains his bearings, reminding himself several times over of his own name and where he is, Bucky hoists himself up onto his right arm. The clock beside his bed flashes nine in the morning, and the sun outside has started to creep up into the December sky. He listens for the tell-tale sounds of Steve making breakfast, moving around the apartment, or even the sound of water rushing through the pipes as his friend showers. But he hears nothing. The apartment is utterly, eerily silent.
This strikes him as odd. Generally, Steve is awake and on the move by now. It’s their routine, the one that they had fallen into since the day Bucky was released from the medical ward into Steve’s care. Steve would get up for his morning run, be back to the apartment before seven, shower, and fix breakfast. It had been that way nearly every day, save for the few here and there that Steve would be out of town on a mission. Did he leave in the middle of the night? Bucky wonders in a fit of a panic, swinging his legs out of bed. It was an entirely too plausible scenario, given the events of the night before and the fool he’d made of himself. He wouldn’t be surprised to find a note taped to the fridge, telling him that Steve had gone elsewhere, giving Bucky enough time to pack his few possessions and move out.
Don’t be stupid. Steve would never kick you out. Bucky tells himself. You tried to kill him once and he still lets you live here and that was probably a lot worse than this.
He hauls on a pair of jeans and a black tank before padding silently out of the room and into the kitchen. The apartment’s main area is still dark, which is odder still. If Steve HAD left, he’d have turned a light or two on, or the coffee maker. But nothing is on; no lights, no coffee pot. Standing at the mouth of the hallway, Bucky looks back over his shoulder and zones in on the closed door to Steve’s room, which usually remains open unless he’s inside and wants privacy. Well, at least he didn’t walk out on me. Bucky thinks with a slight feeling of relief. Maybe he was just more exhausted than he let on yesterday and decided to sleep in.
Satisfied that things were at least somewhat alright, Bucky moves silently through the kitchen to make the coffee he was used to waking up to. There’s still a weight in his chest from the night before that Bucky finds irritating and the dream he’d had didn’t help any either. It felt as though no matter where he was, what state of mind he was in, Bucky was going to lose Steve some way or another. He knew that saying what he had was wrong, that telling Steve everything wasn’t going to go over nearly as well as he’d hoped it would. But Bucky does his best to burry those thought again. No use worrying about it until he gets up, anyway. He thinks, watching the dark droplets of steaming water drip into the clear pot.
He paces about the kitchen aimlessly, waiting for the coffee to brew, hands clasped behind his head, wishing that Steve would just come out and talk. Maybe they could work this out. Maybe Bucky could pass it all off as a passing crush…Again, even though it wasn’t. It wasn’t a crush and Bucky knows that. There was no getting past it this time, not that there had been the first time really. His feelings had been burned away by Hydra; that hardly counted as ‘getting over it’.
The fact of the matter was that he didn’t want to get over Steve. Unrequited or not, discovering his love for Steve was the only thing that made any sense. It was why he’d been so determined to seek Steve out, even though Bucky only had half a clue of who he was, and knew himself even less. It had been the reason that he couldn’t finish him off on the helicarrier that day, when Steve had refused to fight back. It was why he dove into the Potomac River to save the man he was supposed to assassinate. Even when Bucky didn’t know himself, some tiny part always knew Steve. No matter how many times his brain was scrambled, he always knew his best friend. The one person Bucky could count on no matter what.
It’s as he’s going to dig the milk from the fridge that the calendar pinned to the fridge door reminds Bucky of the actual date: December twenty-fifth, Christmas Day. He’d lied to Stark a few days ago when he’d said he didn’t like Christmas. He honestly enjoyed the holiday and always had. It had just gotten harder to enjoy it as much when he’d spent so many of them both poor and freezing with his best friend on death’s door, or as a Hydra controlled robot. But he’d been reminded during his brief appearance at the Gala why he’d loved the holiday so much. The pretty lights strung everywhere, the warm aromas of cinnamon and nutmeg and pine trees in the air and the smiles on everyone’s faces. Despite the way that Christmas had become so overly consumer based in the recent years, Bucky could still see the cheer the holidays put back in people’s eyes.
Bucky throws open the fridge with a sigh, grasping with his flesh hand for the jug of milk within. As he turns to the table he’s abruptly stopped in his own tracks as his eyes fall to a box wrapped in shiny, silver paper and topped with a blue bow and a little note bearing his name. We don’t do the Christmas gift thing. He thinks, as he eyes the box suspiciously. They never had. Even before the war, they were generally too tight on money, or Steve was far too sick to even be concerned with buying one another things. Of course, they often joked about when Steve became a world renowned artist and Bucky was a millionaire, they’d splurge on extravagant gifts for the other and their families. Bucky hovers over the box for a moment before pulling the folded piece of paper off the lid.
I’m sorry for last night , I never meant to upset you. You know that I’ve never been very good with words… So, maybe this will speak where I failed to.
-Steve.
Bucky smirks a little bit. Ain’t that the truth? He thinks before flipping the box open. Inside is a sight he hadn’t seen since 1942; Steve’s mother’s old photo album. His smirk splits into a warm smile as he takes a seat, gingerly lifting the old leather bound book from the box. Sara Rogers had spent many a day chasing the two of them around the city, making sure to get somebody she knew with a camera to snap a couple pictures of them every few months. Bucky could remember it like it was yesterday. When she passed on, Steve made sure to keep adding to it. “Ma would have wanted us to have something to show our kids.” Bucky recalls Steve saying, while fixing a new photo to a page.
He thumbs through the first few pages, the images bringing to life the old memories. He and Steve as kids, sitting on a pier; Steve with his eyes pointed towards the sky and a dreamy smile on his face, while Bucky looked at Steve like he hung the moon. His tenth birthday. Bucky remembers fondly. Mrs. Rogers took us to Coney Island for the day. His lips tug up in one corner as he stares at the picture of a while. It had been such a good day, the best that Bucky could remember Steve having that year. Poor kid had come down with pneumonia late that fall and stayed sick nearly all winter. More pictures from that day show he and Steve under either of his mother’s arms, clinging tight to her and all three with smiles a mile wide. She was so happy that he’d actually lived to see ten. Wonder what she’d say if she saw him now. Bucky thinks, giving Sara’s face a long look.
Soon the pictures of Sara start to lessen, before they vanish completely. Bucky remembers the day she died, how sad Steve had been. He’d tried so hard to convince Steve to come home with him and his family, but the little punk was persistent that he didn’t need anyone’s help, that he could make it alone. What Steve hadn’t known was that it wasn’t just for his sake that Bucky offered; Bucky needed to make sure that Steve was ok, to keep him from harm. He needed to keep Steve close, even if it was for purely selfish reasons.
Sketches from Steve’s art classes begin to join the rest, and Bucky knew it was because neither of them had the money to afford a camera or even a photographer. Hell, if they did, they would have been a lot better off back then. Bucky stops at a sketch, breath knocked from his lungs. It was one of him, one that he didn’t even know Steve had done. He was back on, looking out the window of their bedroom, elbows leaning against the window sill. His face was turned enough that Bucky could see the cigarette hanging from his lips and the wispy trail of smoke curling off its end and out into the ally beyond. His trousers hung off his hips, suspenders hanging uselessly at his sides, while his bare shoulders and back were contoured perfectly with light and dark shadows where the muscles would lie.
Steve had let him see several of his sketches of him and each had been just as clear any picture taken with a camera. But something about this one made Bucky’s cheeks warm up just that much more. Was this how Steve saw him back then, as some tall, almost godly looking figure? Surely that wasn’t the case, how could it be? Bucky was never that perfect. Not like the figure on the page. Sure, he had the eye of almost every dame in Brooklyn back then, but that didn’t mean much. Confused, Bucky flips the page again.
He smiles fondly then, rolling his ashy blue eyes. Steve, you fucking little sap. He thinks with a low chuckle. On the pages that followed were the letters Bucky had sent back to Steve overseas. There weren’t many, and they were never very long — because trying to write by the light of bombs and gunfire was never the easiest task — but they were enough to let Steve know that he were still alive. He reads his own words and frowns from time to time, remembering the days he’d written them, and how he’d prayed to god that Steve was still alive to read them. The last two pages of the album hold the very last letter Bucky had written to Steve before Hydra had captured him the first time, as well as a picture of Bucky in his full dress uniform.
He remembers Steve making him get the picture done before the Stark Expo, before their double date with two girls that Bucky hardly remembers now. Steve had the same thing his mother had — That it was going to be something to show his children and grandchildren — and reluctantly, Bucky had gone along with that reasoning. Deep down inside, though, he wanted Steve to have at least one last picture to remember him by when he was dead and gone. His right thumb runs down the edge of the faded and yellowed photograph and he smiles, sadly.
Bucky is so lost in thought and memory that he hardly notices the extra presence in the kitchen, barely registering that Steve is standing across the room, watching him look through the old photo album with sad eyes. “Found that in my old footlocker when I woke up.” Steve tells him. “Thought you might like to see it.”
Bucky nods, though he doesn’t look over. “I did…Thanks.”
“There’s more in there.” Steve says.
Bucky lifts the little square box that’s covered in a dull gold foil and pulls the lid off. The sight inside renders him speechless as he sets the box down. With his right hand, he gingerly lifts the World War II issue dog tags from their cotton cushion, resting the tags in his left palm. They’re dented and chipped and nowhere near perfect or new and Bucky knows instantly that they’re the original set he’d had so many years ago. On the two little metal plates his name, rank, number, and identifying mark are etched in a stiff print, nearly worn away from wear and time. His mouth hangs open as he stares at the tags for several minutes, in utter disbelief at what he’s holding. “… How…” He starts, his voice catching in his throat. Bucky looks over at Steve then, eyes widened. “Where did you find these?!”
Steve, who’s been busying himself with fixing a coffee leans back against the counter to meet Bucky’s gaze for the first time since Bucky had revealed his true feelings the night before. “After you fell, I felt guilty. You died because of me, so I made it my personal mission to see to it that you were going to be brought back to American soil and honoured like the true hero you were. But I was just one man and I was needed elsewhere. So Peggy — God love her soul — sent a recon team out to find your body. They combed every inch of the gorge below that cliff, scoured the woods, everything. One young recruit told me that there was nothing to be found; that the only evidence that there was even a body anywhere around was the trail of blood being hauled off, so they were certain that —“ Steve swallows, and Bucky sees the pain of reliving the memory in his bright blue eyes. “— That you’d been taken by wolves, eaten. The only thing they’d found belonged to you was your tags, caught on a branch sticking out the side of the cliff. They said that as your next-of-kin that they were mine to do with what I wanted… So I wore them.”
“You wore them?” Bucky asks, though his voice is far off and lost. He was still trying to get his head around seeing something that he’d thought he lost forever.
Steve nods, his hand reaching to his own chest to idly toy with his own dog tags that lie underneath his pale blue tee. “Every single day. They were the only thing belonged to you that I had left, the only way I could —“ He cuts himself off again with a sigh. “I had them on me when I put that plane in the water and I had them on me when I woke up seventy years in the future. I only took them off after you came home, just in case you wanted them back.”
Bucky’s hand closes around the tags for a second before he lifts the chain and drops it around his neck. The familiar weight rests against his chest, and for the first time in a while, he feels almost complete. “Jeez, Steve… I dunno what to say here.” He says.
“Don’t say anything until you open the last thing.” Steve says.
Curious, Bucky peers back into the box and sees an envelope lying in there. It’s old, the paper yellowed and the stamps peeling back from it in the corners. Steve’s neat writing on the front has addressed and dated it to just a few months before Bucky was captured, likely when Steve was undergoing Erskine’s program. He picks the letter up and notices that the back is still sealed. With a glance back to Steve, Bucky gingerly opens the envelope, removing the folded piece of paper within, unfolding it slowly and gingerly in his flesh hand.
Dear Bucky,
Don’t worry so much about me, I keep telling you that I’m just fine. Now that most of the men in the country are gone overseas, work isn’t so hard to come by. I took up a job at a factory nearby that makes military uniforms from the troops. The pay is pretty good, so I’ve been able to keep the radiator fixed proper and there’s enough to eat in the cupboards. I’m fine Buck, really.
I’m sorry to hear about you getting shot and I really hope you’re doing ok. But I guess that kind of thing is inevitable over there where you are. Where are you now, anyway? Still in France? Take care of yourself for me, though, and don’t do anything stupid until I get over there. And you better believe that I’m going. It’s you and me, remember? We’re a team.
Bucky reads through the letter with a small smile; it had been the reply he’d never gotten from his last letter home. But half way down the page, little splotches start to appear every so often, and the black ink starts to smear. Bucky assumes that Steve had gotten into a coughing fit as he wrote, and some spit had landed on the paper. He shrugs it off and keeps reading.
I miss you, though. And I really do hope that you pull through this thing. But I know you will. You’re tough as nails. You’ll come home. You really have to come home, Buck. There are things on my mind that I need to tell you. Things that I probably should have told you before you left, but couldn’t because I’m not as brave as you. But you know what? I’m going to say them here because if I don’t, you might never know.
The splotches become more frequent, and in some places entire words are missing, but Bucky knows Steve well enough to fill in the blanks for him.
I could have told you this so many times over the years, because I’ve known since I was fifteen. I could have said something on your last night here, but I was so damn wrapped up in the fact that you were going and I wasn’t. I was too selfish to even enjoy your last night here, too jealous that you wanted to spend it with Connie and not me. I’ve wanted to say something to you for years, but I never could because I didn’t want you to look at me any differently once you heard. But now, you’re in some dirty trench, and there’s a good chance you may never come home. And you can’t die without ever knowing.
Bucky’s heart starts to break, finally realizing what the little marks on the page are. Tears: Heavy, sad, and scared tears. Bucky swallow around the lump that’s formed in his throat and continues to read.
I need you to know this Bucky; I love you and not just like a brother and not like family. I love you so much that it hurts. I let you leave without ever saying it to your face. I couldn’t tell you. I was a coward. Hell, even this is cowardly. You shouldn’t be reading these words; you should be hearing them from my mouth. So please, please, please… Come home. Come home so I can look you in the eye and tell you the truth like a man. The truth that I’ve been in love with you since we were old enough to have some idea of what the word even means. Please.
In the meantime, look after yourself, okay? I can’t do this without you. You’re all I’ve got left.
- Steve.
Tears fill his eyes as Bucky reads the letter over several times. The neat handwriting was most certainly Steve’s and the dates printed on the front of the envelope wouldn’t lie. He had written this letter, crying his little heart out, just to tell Bucky how he felt and he never sent it. But the thing that Bucky took from it was that Steve had felt the same. Steve had loved him too and if giving him this letter now is any indication, he still does.
Bucky sets the letter down on top of the photo album and gets up from his chair, his feet carrying him across the room before he even knows what he’s doing. Steve is still leaning against the counter, left arm folded over his stomach, right clutching his coffee cup to his chest. His big, bright blue eyes are staring down into the dark liquid, but Bucky can see the wet shimmer of them from here. “Steve,” Bucky says softly, voice hardly more than a whisper. “Stevie, look at me.” He watches the way Steve’s throat contracts as he swallows, though his eyes don’t meet Bucky’s. “C’mon…”
Steve closes his eyes tight as Bucky closes the gap between them, so they stand toe-to-toe. “Hey, what’s wrong?” Bucky asks gently still. Steve just shakes his head, a little sad smile tugging his lips into a partial smile. He can’t stand the way Steve won’t look at him and it needs to change. He can’t have this conversation without Steve looking him in the eye. With his right hand, Bucky takes the coffee cup from Steve’s hand and sets it on the counter, then lifts the other’s chin so their eyes finally meet. “You got something you wanna say to me?” He asks again. Steve just nods, blinking slowly in reply. “What is it, then?”
“It’s always been you, Buck.” Steve replies, his voice soft and gentle. “Just you. Only you. Always you. No one else on this earth has ever been able to hold a candle to you.”
Bucky feels like his heart is about to burst and the warmth in Steve’s voice warms his infinitely cold soul. His hand lingers on the side of Steve’s face and he keeps holding Steve’s gaze, even as his lips tug up into the first real, genuine smile he can remember giving since coming back. His fingers work their way into the soft blond strands behind his ear and Bucky’s thumb runs along a perfect cheekbone. Steve leans into the touch, his eyes fluttering shut as a contented breath passes through his lips. Bucky steps in closer and Steve automatically reaches out, putting his hand on the side of Bucky’s neck. The blond leans down, pressing their foreheads together as his other hand rests itself on Bucky’s hip, tugging him in closer. Their chests are flush with one another and Bucky still needs more. So despite not being able to feel with it, he reaches up and presses his left hand to Steve’s chest, and that makes the other’s eyes snap open.
As a general rule, Bucky rarely used his left hand — the cybernetic one — to even so much as hand people things. He’d always been afraid of what he was capable of with it, even without trying. The arm was Hydra’s weapon, not Bucky Barnes’ appendage in his mind. It was tainted with all the bad he’d done, all the blood on it. But Steve; he never cared. The little shit would purposely stand or sit in such a place that Bucky would HAVE to use it to pass the salt at dinner. If they’d spar, Steve would pin his right arm, leaving the left free to do with at he pleased. Steve wasn’t afraid of him, wasn’t afraid of that he could do. Despite that knowledge, Bucky still did his best not to make contact to anyone with the arm. Steve knew just how big a deal this seemingly small gesture was and his lips tug into a little smile.
The closeness is almost intoxicating, and the intimacy of such a simple, harmless touch is nearly too much. But he craves it. He longs to be so nearer to Steve, to feel those strong arms holding tight to him. His bones ache to mould around Steve’s frame, to keep him safe and warm like he was made to do. “Steve?” He whispers.
“Hmm?”
“Can… Can I kiss you?”
The whimper that leaves Steve’s throat is the most precious, tiny little sound Bucky had ever heard in his life. “Oh god, please…” Steve manages before Bucky leans in, letting his lips dust across the blond’s. It’s a subtle, chaste kiss, and Bucky pulls back hesitantly not a second later. But despite the simplicity, Bucky feels as though the air has been ripped from his lungs for a second time. Steve’s heart is hammering in his chest, and Bucky can feel it against his own. It feels like home. Bright eyes open again and peer down into Bucky’s, and the pair simply gazes at one another as if seeing each other for the first time.
It’s as if by magnetic force that they both simultaneously lean towards one another, lips reconnecting in a real kiss. Bucky’s eyes flutter shut, as he inhales sharply through his nose, the hand on the side of Steve’s face sliding around to the back of his neck. It feels like a surge of electricity runs through his body, sending each of his nerves into overdrive, and it’s the most beautiful thing Bucks has ever felt in his entire life. Steve sighs against his lips, his fingers tangling into Bucky’s long, thick hair. Bucky is sure that this time his heart actually stops beating, and that he’s died and gone to heaven.
Steve’s mouth is warm and soft, his body sturdy against Bucky’s. It’s the most perfect feeling and even better than he’d ever been able to imagine. They break apart reluctantly, once again looking into each other’s eyes. “I love you, so goddamn much.” Bucky tells the other through a wavering breath, flesh fingers idly carding through the neatly clipped strands of hair at the back of Steve’s neck.
“I love you, too.” Steve replies, a genuine smile spreading across his face, all the way to his eyes. Bucky wraps both arms around his friend then and buries his face into his shoulder, feeling Steve do the same.