Archive of Our Own

I had to break the code, go mad

I tried to make a soul from scratch

If I could dream you in meticulous detail

Would you ever come alive?

Would you ever come alive?

I'll dedicate my days and fourteen of my nights

Will you ever come alive?

Will you ever come alive?

I want this, a confusing happiness

Never knowing what comes next

I want this, all the agony and bliss

From confusing happiness

The dawn, no birds around

Reborn, without a sound

Oh no, the fire drowned

---

Steve has waited for this moment for so, so long. He has borne so much for this, withstood so much suffering, misery and torture. He has worked so hard.

For the first time in over seventy years, Steve is holding Bucky Barnes in his arms.

Bucky’s flesh is cold. Not cold like ice, but cold like feet in the wintertime, pressed into someone else’s shins. Not cold like ice, but not warm like he should be either.

He is warmer than he was mere minutes before though. That’s all thanks to Tony Stark, who is Howard Stark’s son, and Bruce Banner, who is sometimes the Hulk. Because they were the ones to build the chamber that he and Bucky now rest in, which creates a tiny insulated bubble of heat in which temperature can be controlled exactly, which monitors core temperatures, REM, heartbeats and blood pressure without any point of contact with those that rest inside, which has IV lines built into the outer casing through to the inner lining.

Of course Steve couldn’t let Bucky lie in here alone. He couldn’t let the first waking experience for Bucky in so long under ice be of waking up in a strange futuristic capsule alone. Steve knows, he knows that-

Wouldn’t be nice.

Bucky’ll wake up soon. His lips are blue, but his eyes are flickering now behind his lids. The IV lines have all been out for an hour now. Bucky’s lungs are breathing and his heart’s beating all on their own, and regularly. Tony Stark’s machine is probably even now monitoring and analysing and predicting. How long now? How long until all that he’s waited decades for? How long until Bucky opens his eyes and-

Steve doesn’t know what the machine’s conclusions are, because there’s no read out on the inside of the capsule. There’s no space for one; Stark built it for one patient to be held within, and he didn’t have enough time to convert it completely between when Steve realised that this was the case and corrected him and the time when Steve needed the capsule to be ready.

(Now, now, now, yesterday is too late, a decade ago is too late, how far back do I have to go before it would not be too late?)

As it is, there’s barely enough space in here for the both of them. Steve’s body is wrapped around Bucky’s. The light is orange and warm and the walls are white. The bed of it is padded and they’re lying at a slight angle to the ground so they’re not completely horizontal, on their sides, parallel and facing each other.

This is right. This is how it’s supposed to be. Close together with Bucky. This is how it always was Before, at nights. Before-

Steve knows exactly what he is going to say when Bucky wakes up. He knows how he will talk about the time gap between the last thing that Bucky remembers and where they are now. He knows how he will talk about why and how Bucky is missing his left arm, and how he will comfort him. He remembers how to do that from Before -

Of course, the very fact that Bucky is missing his arm is -

But Steve knows how he will make it all ok for Bucky. How he will wake him up slowly and gently and kindly. Just how he never -

Bucky’s lips had turned lilac, and now they’re pink. His eyelashes are fluttering a little against his cheek. He’ll be awake soon. Soon soon soon. And Steve knows what he will say.

He’s wrapped completely around Bucky. Their torsos are pressed together, their feet tangled. Bucky’s lying on his right arm, so as to avoid putting pressure on the delicate stump of the left, a deep dip pressed into the spongy memory foam beneath them to accommodate him comfortably. His short hair is brushed off his face. He’s still sleeping - soon - and he looks so peaceful. So beautiful. Every bit as beautiful Steve remembers, maybe more so. Memory corrodes with time. Especially Steve’s. And it has been such a long time -

Steve is not as Bucky remembers. On the outside, he’s similar. His hair was longer, though he’s cut it now so it’s as it used to be, Before. He’s not much more muscular than he was as Captain America. There are light wrinkles around his eyes, though they’re barely there, despite how long he’s been alive. So long.

Bucky might not even notice it. If he’s lucky, he won’t. But Bucky will want to know what Steve’s been doing for the past seventy years, and Steve can’t lie to him. He’s different on the inside now, and he can’t hide that from Bucky. So he’ll have to tell him -

He doesn’t know how he’ll talk about this -

His spine curves so his head’s above Bucky’s. Steve’s lashes blink against Bucky’s forehead. His hand strokes over Bucky’s cheekbone. He can breathe in Bucky’s breath. Bucky is perfect.

When they got him out of the cryo chamber, he was covered in old, old slime. It went right down into his lungs, his stomach. They had to pump it out. They washed out his insides, washed his limbs too. Banner had done most of it. Smoothly, gently, with water and no soap, while Steve supervised carefully. He didn’t like the idea of anyone else touching Bucky, but he trusted Banner, just enough for this, and it felt wrong that anyone who had anything but clinical detachment to the inanimate body before them should be allowed to move their hands like that, all over Bucky. It wasn’t right that Steve should do that. He wasn’t -

(clean, right, good, pure. He was filthy, contaminated, infected-)

But he’s touching Bucky now. They’ve both got soft cotton trousers on, but no shirts, so that the machine can more easily pick up it’s readings from Bucky, and so that Steve can press his chest against Bucky’s. Bucky’s not radiating warmth, but Steve still feels warmer touching him.

Bucky starts shivering, lightly, so very slightly. Steve feels the machine around them surge a little in preparation, the heat increase another fraction back up to just above room temperature. Bucky’ll wake up soon. Steve’s already prepared. He knows what he’ll say. He knows how he’ll lay it all out.

Bucky twists his head, slightly, and presses his foot further between Steve’s. There’s heat surging in Steve now. Warmth and love and hope.

Bucky licks his lips, blinks his eyes. Steve can feel his lashes flutter like butterfly wings against his shoulder. Steve moves his hand away from Bucky’s cheekbone.

Surely at least some of this disproportionately huge hope is unfounded. Because yes, Bucky’s will awaken soon, his life can begin again, but that's not going to change Steve's life much. It’s not like Bucky will stay with him now, in the future. Not once he knows. But still, because Bucky will soon be living and safe, the feeling grows bigger and bigger within him.

“Steve?” Bucky’s voice is croaky and rough, like it always used to be when he woke up after a long lie in at weekends.

It’s the first time anyone’s called him by that name in seventy years.

It’s Bucky’s first word awake, and it’s his name.

He tightens his arms where his left lies under Bucky’s neck and his right brackets Bucky’s left shoulder protectively.

“Yeah Buck, it’s me.” His tone is calm; he doesn’t want to scare Bucky. But it sounds - warm. Soft, even. He’d forgotten he could sound like that.

Bucky nuzzles his head further into Steve’s shoulder, and then pulls back and blinks his eyes all the way open.

For the first time that he can properly remember, Steve sees the perfect blue-grey of Bucky’s eyes. He’d forgotten how beautiful they are. He’s entranced, immediately.

Bucky blinks again, eyes focusing on their surroundings. “What -um.” He stops to swallow, lick his lips again, blinks groggily. “Where are we?”

Steve has to say, has to talk, has to explain. He’s panicking, he’s experiencing emotional extremes

(One, a wordless swell of panic that something will go wrong and Bucky will not be ok, despite all of the brain scans and body scans he had Stark perform, despite how careful he’s been at every stage.

Two, hope for Bucky’s happiness that feels like a balloon in his chest, a swell of love and devotion towards this man, a wordless rejoicing in an aim so long strived for finally met.

Three, a longing for what he can’t have - will never have again.

Four, a reaction against Three, anger. Against time and himself and the ones who made him like this, who made him unworthy of Bucky’s touch-)

but he can calm himself, he can project an outward appearance of calm. He knows what he’s going to say.

“Stark’s looking after us. You got bashed up pretty bad back there. What’s the last thing you remember?”

“Mm. There was a mission to get. Zola. A train in the Alps. Really fucking cold. I fell and...It was really fucking cold.”

“Yeah, it was.”

Bucky’s frowning now. He knows there’s something wrong. Couldn’t know all of it, not from what he can see, but the most obvious thing would be

“What the- Where’s my arm!? Where the hell is..? What, what happened-”

He’s twisting his neck to the left, trying to see the stump, struggling to reach it with his right hand despite being pinned by his body weight. It’s cauterised, under all the wrapping and bandaging, but there was no way for Tony Stark to guarantee that there would be no pain, despite Steve motivating him to minimise any Bucky might experience.

“You fell a long way Buck. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry - the doctors tried, but they couldn’t do it. They couldn’t save it. I’m sorry-”

“But I- I can’t feel-” His face, so calm in sleep, is all rumpled up now with stress and worry, and Steve would do anything to wipe it all away. “I haven’t got - Stevie.”

The last word is a plea. A plea to make it all better, to take the pain away. Steve can’t do that. It’s too late. It has been too late, medically speaking, for almost seventy years. It’s been too late for too long.

Bucky’s sobbing, wordless, agonised cries, and it makes Steve want to tear apart the ones that did this to him even though -

Steve can still offer comfort. He strokes his hand through Bucky’s hair, soothing, repetitive, predictable, just like he knows Bucky likes (though he can’t remember how he knows or when he first learned that).

Steve just waits for Bucky to calm, tells him, “I know, shh, shh, I know.”

The agony of it washes through Steve and aches in his chest, because this is the first thing Bucky has experienced for seventy years, and because he’s powerless to stop it, and because he knows how bad Bucky must be hurting to cry out like that.

Bucky’s breathing rate still hasn’t slowed down, and he shouldn’t be putting this much strain on his body as it’s only just recovering from the massive trauma of being frozen for so long.

“I know. I know, Bucky. But look, Stark’s already cooking you up a new one. He’s got a new way of getting near-perfect motor control and sensitivity. You won’t even realise it’s a prosthetic. He can make it look and feel like skin if you want it to. And he’s gonna give it lasers and a built in gun and super strength, it’ll be way better than any regular old arm you could have.”

Bucky’s staring into Steve’s eyes with his beautiful sky-before-rain eyes, matching his breathing to Steve’s, who’s deliberately keeping his own steady and regular. This is what they did in the army camps when either he or Bucky woke from their nightmares shaking hard and covered in sweat.

They’re lucky it’s impossible to dream in cryo. It’s a black blank empty void in his mind -

But it’s better that way for Bucky.

“That so Stevie?” Bucky asks. Steve knows it doesn’t matter what he’s saying, just as long as he keeps talking. He knows that, knows how all that matters is the tone, the person speaking.

“That’s right. You fell a long way but the doctors worked on you, and you’re all ok and all in one piece apart from that one arm, but Stark’s going to fix you up a new one and you’ll be able to do everything that you could before just the same, I swear. You don’t gotta worry one bit.” He speaks slowly and enunciates clearly.

“You sure Stark can really do everything he says he can?”

“This time I am, yes. I’ve seen some of the blueprints, and it’s looking pretty good so far.”

“Ok. Ok.” Bucky’s breaths are long and slow and even now, but he’s determinately not looking at his left arm. Or rather, at the lack of it. His skin is paler than it was when he first woke up, and his eyelids are drooping again.

“Bucky, I think you’re still in shock.”

“Yeah.” His voice is slow, low and quiet. It sounds like it’s coming from a long way away even though Bucky’s right here, he’s right here, Steve’s right with him.

“If you’re trying to stop yourself from going back to sleep, Bucky, I shouldn’t bother.”

“I think I just. You’re a little fuzzy...”

“That’s ok. You can go right off back to sleep. The doctors said it might be like this. Don’t worry about it Buck. It’ll still be here when you wake up.”

“You be certain about that, ok?”

“I am.”

“Ok.” Bucky’s eyes’ roll back in his head, and his breathing calms further.

Stark had indeed said it would be like this. That Bucky’s mind may take a little time to reboot all the way.

“You gotta remember,” the man had said, whilst lying underneath the half-constructed capsule fiddling at it with a screwdriver, “that his mind hasn’t really been asleep this whole time. No brain activity. His heart stopped. He’s effectively been dead for seventy years, medically speaking at least, so when he comes back, he’ll probably be a little...different. We’re pretty sure he’s not brain damaged, which is a goddamned miracle on it’s own with technology from the forties, but he’s probably gonna sleep a lot. Take a while to move like he used to. He’ll probably be weak. You gotta not freak out about that, ok?”

Steve hadn’t answered. Of course he hadn’t. Stark wasn’t a friend, he was barely even an acquaintance, he just liked talking at him. To Steve, Stark was just the man that Steve knew would be able to do the job he needed doing, thawing Bucky out safely, and the man the instincts of his shattered mind had indicated him towards, probably due to his old friendship and trust with Howard.

That’s probably why when he cornered Stark in the basement car park of his tower after he’d broken in, his first words had been, “Please help me,” rather than, “I need your help or I’ll kill you.”

The instinct to tolerate even his incessant talking was one of the few remnants of the person he used to be Before, and he had so few of those, he hung on to every one he had. Because the person he used to be was a good person, someone worthy of Bucky.

He wishes he were-

But he’s not, and he never will be again.

He still tries though. Stark’s continuing existence, even after he has fulfilled his purpose, is evidence of that.

Because Stark had helped him. Had enlisted Banner’s help too. Had built this capsule for Bucky, helped to take care of him, had done everything he could to ease the transition from cryo chamber to warming capsule. Had corrected it so that Steve could fit in with him, even though Steve had glowered at him, towered over him, threatened him wordlessly as he said, in the toneless voice of the Soldier that he isn’t any more, “You will change it, now,” because he’d been so angry, so afraid and so so angry, at the idea of being separated from Bucky when he wakes up, of a wall between them when he’s only just awake, maybe panicking, maybe clawing to get out like Steve always tried -

He’d just said, “Ok, ok, Cap, just calm down, ok? I can change it, I’ll change it. I will, I’ll go do it now. Just calm down, ok?” while Banner slipped out of the room for everyone’s safety.

And he had, so Steve hadn’t killed him. Basically, Stark’s a good person, and Steve is trying to be one too.

Stark calls him Cap. As if he were still Captain America. As if he weren’t the Soldier. It’s nice. He’d much rather have just been the Captain. He’d much rather the Soldier had never happened. The years of pain and torture and emptiness and loneliness and killing and -

But he’s lying next to Bucky now, so maybe it was all worth it.

Bucky’s started lightly snoring now, really just heavy breathing, and Steve is lulled by the sound. He has fallen asleep to that sound so many times. In Brooklyn, in the war. In cramped beds and camp bunks and battlefield roll mats. Whenever he was able, he slept near Bucky. After bad days and good days, summer and winter, after arguments and nightmares and after long, slow fucking. The best days and the worst days. The best days in Brooklyn. The worst after Zola. Of course, things got even worse after the fall -

But he’s here now. After the worst nightmare of a lifetime, he’s lying next to Bucky. So maybe it will be worth it. Maybe the worst is worth it for the best.

Bucky’s torso is smooth and soft and only a little scarred. Steve runs his hands over it. He knows all of those scars. They’re from fights in Brooklyn, or the war, or from Zola. He knows every single one of them better than the stars in the night sky he was trained to know for navigation and orientation.

Bucky’s scars orientate him now. There’s one on his forearm from a broken bottle that should have hit Steve’s face. There’s a bullet graze on his ribs from the time he’d been at war when Steve hadn’t been with him. There’s a scar from an incision Zola made. There’s a stab wound he got from covering Steve’s back from a Nazi.

Steve uses Bucky’s scars to orientate himself in his own mind, linking them to memories. The moment they happened, or when Bucky told him about how he got them. The time he spent patching the wounds up when they were still bleeding. Kissing the bandages, the words, “kiss it better,” layered upon each other in his memory with repetition. Licking along the long-healed scars, licking up Bucky’s torso where he’s hand is going now, biting and sucking and -

But he can’t have that anymore.

Because he’s dirty.

The most obvious mar on Bucky’s body is his missing arm. Steve was there when he got that one too. Steve was there when he fell. Fell too.

Steve’s skin doesn’t have any scars. The serum made sure of that. He has been cut into hundreds upon hundreds of times. His skin should be cross-hatched and pockmarked with them. He should look deformed, mutilated, abused. But you can’t see his scars from the outside. He looks just the same as he has since the serum in 1943. He does not have the tangible evidence to link the memory to the certification of fact. He cannot trust his own body to truthfully tell his own story.

But Bucky’s missing arm proves that the fall happened. So Steve doesn't need to worry that he'll forget that there ever was a Before. They used to make him forget, and his body didn’t remind him. His skin’s as smooth as a baby’s and they made his mind to match. Empty, unblemished. Then they messed him up, scrubbed him down, and it healed, and they did it again -

But Bucky’s here, and he’s real, and so are his scars, and so is Steve.

A long time has passed since Bucky was last awake. Now, his breathing rate is changing, is increasing. He’ll wake up again soon. Steve is calm, is projecting the outward appearance of calm. He knows what he will say, right up until the point where he doesn’t. Until Bucky asks what he’s been doing, because -

Bucky’s eyes are fluttering again, the muscles in his legs tensing against Steve’s. He’s waking up.

“Hey, Bucky, you there?” He sounds like it’s 1938 and the war hasn’t reached their shores yet. He sounds just like his old self, and he’s glad of it.

“Mph. Wha?”

Bucky never was really a morning person. He preferred lie ins, late nights and catnaps. Therefore, so did Steve. Any opportunity for more time to lie by his side.

“You gonna wake up again, huh Buck?”

“Mebbe.” He’s nuzzling his face into Steve’s shoulder, as if to avoid the soft, warm yellow-orange light of the capsule.

“Do you remember where you are?”

(“His memory might be a little patchy too, as a side effect of the cryo stasis,” Stark had added as an afterthought, scratching at the back of his head with the screwdriver. To that, Steve had replied in a growl, “I know,” because he did, intimately. But it won’t be as bad for Bucky as it was for him, Bucky’s only had to wake up the once, instead of being frozen and thawed countless times -)

Bucky draws his head back from Steve, makes eye contact. His beautiful eyes.

“‘Course I do. How could I forget? Stark’s place, missing crucial parts. Actually,” he says after a pause, looking up from Steve’s shoulder, “where exactly are we? What is this thing?” He’s looking over Steve’s shoulder, above both their heads to the glowing capsule roof.

“Stark’s magical healing pod. It’s supposed to warm you up a little after all that cold.”

“Yeah. Brr." Bucky’s eyes are focused somewhere else now. “How exactly did we get out of that, Steve? Did Stark come rescue us?”

Steve is prepared for this question. He knows how he will talk about this. He is prepared.

“Not exactly, no. Look, Bucky, that story’s got some pretty big plot twists, and I don’t want to freak you out, ok?”

“What, is it worse than my fucking missing arm?” Bucky’s mouth is twisted up at the side.

He’s trying to joke about it. Of course he is. He wants to be fine, he wants to be ok. He’s lost so much, but he doesn’t want Steve to think he’s too upset, he doesn't want to upset Steve more than he knows he already must be about something neither of them can change, so he’s fronting.

“Nah.” Steve’s voice is a little broken. “Not as bad as all that.”

“All right then, tell me all about it.”

“I just want you to prepare yourself. I want you not to worry. The important thing is that we’re ok now, and it’s all sorted out and fine.”

“Stevie, just out with it please.”

“All right. This is what I’m gonna do; I’m gonna tell you what happened, and then we’re gonna bust out of this magical healing capsule of Stark’s and talk to the man himself for a while. Get you all checked out. We can move on from there.”

“Ok. I’m ready, just tell me already. You’re winding me up here.”

“I’m sorry, I’m just trying to make it clear-”

“Steve-”

“That you’re not in any way stuck here. Ok, ok, all done. So. You remember the fall from the train, into the snow?”

“Yes.”

“After that.” He leans his face down to breathe in Bucky’s hair so he doesn’t have to look at him. It smells of clean and comfort. “After I saw you fall, I jumped.”

“You fucking idiot-”

“If I hadn’t, you’d have died. That would have been worse.”

“Steve, please, please buddy, would it kill you think with your brain for a change-”

“Yeah, well, the other thing hasn't killed me yet. Look, I did it now, it’s over. Don’t you wanna hear what happened after that?”

“Ugh. Fine. But we are talking about this later.”

“Again?”

“Again, until it sticks.”

Steve has to stop the slightly hysterical laughter burbling out of his mouth at that. Steve hasn’t heard Bucky reprimand him for his risk taking in so long, but he knows everything he’d say by heart and in advance, that’s how many times they used to have this argument. But he doesn’t want to start laughing now, in case it turns into crying.

“Alright, fine. So after that.” He clings a little closer to Bucky, insomuch as that’s possible, presses their legs a little closer. He’s fine. He’s projecting the outward appearance of calm.

“I caught you in the air, wrapped round you. When we hit the ground, I got most of the blow, but it was snow and ice, not rock, so I didn’t get as badly hurt as I could have done. All apart from where your arm got smashed, that was rock. And then your arm was...all mangled up and..bleeding. Pretty gory. You weren’t really conscious, I don’t think. Weren’t talking, weren’t responding. I tried to keep you warm, curl round you, but it didn’t work. You got so cold. I couldn’t move much, couldn’t move you off me because it hurt too much, and because I was scared of hurting you. You were barely breathing, but you were still breathing, then.”

“Then? What -”

“What did I say? I said not to worry about it, because it’s all fine now.”

“Right, sure, but -.”

“You gonna let me finish?”

“Yes. Explain.”

“Ok.”

His heart’s beating thump thump thump in his chest. All the points of contact where he’s pressed up against Bucky, Bucky can probably feel it. He knows Steve’s scared, upset. He’s shutting up to make it easier for him. Steve loves him so much.

Bucky’s not going to love him once he knows it all.

He forces out, “After that, we got found by Hydra. Their soldiers.”

He can feel Bucky flinch against him, but he doesn’t stop speaking.

“They took us to a base. Put you in a cryofreeze chamber. Made you so cold you were mostly dead, but perfectly preserved, so you could be reanimated. Took me somewhere else. I. I lost you.”

It might be a little painful for Bucky now, how close he’s pressed against him, but he still tries to pull Steve in closer, says, “Hey, it’s ok now, you got me back. I’m right here, I’m ok.”

“Yeah. Right. Ok.” Steve clears his throat. His voice was getting a little rough.

“Now comes the major plot twist, ok Buck?”

“I’m ready. I’m just fine Stevie, don’t worry about me.”

He’s not fine. He’s not fine, but he’s pretending, for Steve.

“You. Hydra uh.” He stops. Starts again, “Hydra had you for a long time Buck. A real long time.”

Bucky’s heart rate’s picked up at those words, but his voice is even when he says, “How long?”

Steve takes a deep breath, “Seventy years.”

“What.”

“It’s 2015.”

“It’s- Are you kidding me Stevie? Is this like that time you convinced me that the serum gave you x-ray vision?” He’s unbelieving, half-smiling. It looks good on him. He’s not going to look so happy soon.

“That was still completely hilarious, I don't care what you say. But no, I’m not lying. It’s 2015. I failed to get you back for seventy years.” He’s breathing harder, though there’s no reason to, he’s not planning on going anywhere. “The good news...we won the war. Hitler committed suicide in 1945. And there wasn’t another one like that, after. Not quite like it. There was the Cold War, with soldiers and spies and politicians. We came close to doomsday a couple times, but not many people actually died. Barely any civilians. There’s a lot of countries a lot different from how you remember them. Hell of a lot more people nowadays. Not all that many starving overall, I guess. The planet’s a little fucked up though.”

Bucky believes him now. He’s staring at him, and the incredulousness is still frozen on his face, but he believes him.

“Lots of good stuff too though. Lots of cool technology nowadays, Buck, you’re gonna love it. No flying cars, but everybody and their mother’s got a car. There’s telephones that are also cameras and video cameras - and they’re all in colour now.”

His smile’s faded completely now. Steve wishes it could last, would do anything to get it back. “And you can carry them around with you and put them in your pocket, even. There’s a whole internet full of knowledge now. They can do anything with science as well. It’s like all those pulp fiction novels you used to read, yeah?”

Bucky’s not looking at him anymore. His eyes have dropped, looking down.

“They put a man on the moon - can you believe it Buck?”

He’s been waiting to tell Bucky that since he found out about it. He’d been alone, looking for knowledge, for anything, and he’d found that tidbit of information, and his first thought had been I can’t wait to tell Bucky that, before he’d even really remembered who Bucky was properly -

Bucky’s face is scrunching up, but he still looks more confused than sad. It hasn't kicked in for him really, not yet.

“And your arm, it’ll be so good, Bucky, Stark’s gonna build it so well.”

“Stark?”

Oh. Well. Steve just put his foot in it.

“Howard’s son.”

“Howard’s -”

“Howard is dead. Yeah. So’s - So’s everyone.”

“Right.” Now Bucky’s the one who’s choked up. He blinks, and there are tears. They run down the side of his face, along the inward curve at the edges of his eye sockets and into his hair, they pool in his tear ducts.

Steve’s crying too, but he’s ignoring it.

“Everyone...everyone except me and you?”

“Yeah.”

“You-”

“The serum, it-”

“Right.”

Steve can see the moment he goes to wipe his eyes and realises he can’t, because the stump at his shoulder twitches and he frowns, and then his expression crumples. Steve hastens to wipe his tears away instead, with the heel of his hand, then brushes the last remaining droplets with the pad of his thumb. Gently, so gently. His hands, they’ve caused so much death-

“Thanks, I guess.” Bucky’s really not looking at Steve now.

“S’okay.” Steve pulls him into a hug, so that both of them can hide their faces. He holds Bucky tight, so tight and so hard but so careful not to crush him. Steve doesn't think Bucky's fully comprehended yet, exactly what he's lost. He expects it'll take a little longer to sink in, for him. He wants to get Bucky out of here, somewhere private, before it hits him. He also wants to give Bucky some more solid proof of the situation, so that there can't be any part of him left that doubts it.

Steve clears his throat, says, “So, we’re gonna get out of this thing now, and we’re gonna talk to Stark Junior, and he’ll check you're ok, no lasting damage other than...your arm. So you can see a little bit of the world, what’s new, just so you can be sure that I’m not kidding you. And then we can talk more later, ok?”

Bucky sniffs, says, “Yeah, ok, fine.”

Steve reaches his arm away from Bucky and knocks twice on the door of the capsule, the prearranged signal that means Stark opens it up. He knows that Jarvis, Stark’s artificial intelligence, has ears inside the capsule, and will have alerted Stark anyway. But he doesn’t think that Bucky’s quite up to hearing about listening ears and AIs just right now.

The capsule door opens, and a sun browned arm reaches in at the same time as Tony Stark’s voice, saying, “Right you are then, up you get grandpa, let’s get you two up and at ‘em-”

Steve grabs it and pulls himself upwards, and climbs up and out of the capsule where it’s lying, propped up at the head end, on one of Stark’s laboratory tables. Bucky’s blinking in the brighter, whiter light of the lab, and it hurts Steve’s eyes a little too but he keeps his gaze unbrokenly focused on him as he turns and lifts Bucky upwards gently by his torso until he can get his right arm under himself and can move on his own. Bucky sits up, pushes himself up and out of the chamber as Steve balances him, and he lands with his own, instinctive grace, looks around the lab. Steve knows what he’ll see; a bright white room full of silver metal and futuristic equipment. Everyone had agreed it’d be better that Banner should be absent for this, so Stark’s the only other one here. He’s still talking, probably, but Steve just hears Bucky say, “Where am I?”

“Stark Tower, New York. Tony built it.”

“That’s me by the way. Nice to meet you.” Stark reaches out to shake Bucky’s hand, and Bucky takes it, tentatively. Steve does not like the idea of Stark touching Bucky, of anyone touching Bucky, but neither of them notice, because he is still projecting an outward appearance of calm. “Most people have heard of me because of my super powered suit, my multimillion dollar company and my generous philanthropism, but I hear that you actually knew my father?”

“Yes, I. Howard.”

Stark gives one of his twisted smiles, and Howard’s cunning grin turned into this bitter, cynical mask gives even Steve, with his patchy, patchwork, reworked memory a pang of painful nostalgia. Bucky, to his credit, only blinks.

“Yeah, well, none of us can help where we came from can we? Stark’s just a name. Now, I imagine-”

“I like your father. Howard's an ok guy, once you got past the...asshole. I mean, was.” Bucky says.

Tony actually pauses, and Steve hasn’t seen him do that before. Granted, he doesn’t think he’s ever done that much talking in a conversation with Tony either. “Right. Not sure if you’ll find the same with me, who knows? Anyway, I imagine that you’re in shock, what with the waking up after a seventy year nap with the stone soldier here, in a coffin, yeah?” Bucky glances at Steve, then back at Tony.

“Little bit thrown, yeah.”

“There’s that lovely emotionally repressed forties stoicism we like to see. So, I have prepared for you a little crash course for the twenty-first century for when you actually come to terms with things a little more, in the form of all of the amazing and wonderful pop culture you have missed and some info about politics and history and shit also.”

“Right. Uh...thanks, I guess?” Bucky’s glancing at Steve again.

Steve sighs. “Look, you can ignore about half of what comes out of his mouth. Stark’s going to give us both a place to stay until you” run from me “get back on your feet. As a favour, for a family friend. He’s got the cash for it. He’s making you a new arm as well. And the popular culture crash course is not urgent, or mandatory.”

“What are you talking about, of course it’s urgent. And, woah, talking! That is officially the most words I have ever heard out of your mouth in one go. That right Jarv?”

“Yes, sir,” slides the smoothly droll, British and mechanical voice from the speakers, and Bucky spooks.

Once Steve is sure that Bucky is calm, checking his breathing where his chest rises and falls and his heart rate in the thrum in his neck as well as his outward expression, he turns to glare at Stark, who says, “Oops. Forgot about that. So, basically, Bucky - can I call you Bucky? The good Captain here does-”

“Sure, whatever.”

“Coolio. So basically, that was my AI, Jarvis. He’s...well he’s sort of. A computer. He’s an artificial intelligence that I designed and made myself. He’s not a person, but he really is, if you get me.”

“Are, um, AIs, particularly common? In the future?”

“No. Jarvis is one of a kind. Stark is...exceptional,” Steve says as it hits him in the chest like a sack of bricks that he still thinks of the present as “the future”, just like Bucky does, even after all this time, even after more than two years of being awake and free. Properly awake, that didn’t count as awake-

"That I am, exceptionally so. So, if you don’t want to take a crash course in a short history of everything you missed, I suggest the next most important thing is food. You should be still all full up from the last IV line, but I would try out your digestive system for size, seeing as it hasn’t had anything to do in a while? I would suggest liquids and no actual food. That might just be asking a bit much at the moment.”

“Ok. Sure.” Steve sort of thinks that maybe Bucky’s just going along with everything because it’s too much to take in, and he’s expecting to wake up any second now.

Steve wishes that were true. He would exchange anything for that to be true. That they could just wake up in 1945 with nothing changed. He wouldn’t care if they won or lost that war, as long as they were together at the end of it. Or, better still, in Brooklyn in the thirties. Any of the thirties, any of that time he’d spent with Bucky. Any of Before.

But it doesn’t matter what he’d exchange, there’s no one to broker the deal to, so it doesn’t matter. Bucky will realise soon, when he hears the answer to the question he’s bound to ask. Why didn’t you come get me earlier? What have you been doing for the last seventy years, Steve? Steve doesn’t know what he’ll say, he’s so unprepared, and he’s never unprepared, he doesn’t know what to say-

“Right.” Stark’s walking backwards, reaching out behind him to a flask on the edge of one of his work tables. Not showing his back. Is he planning an attack? Or is he distracted? “I actually have just such a thing for just such an occasion. Well, actually it’s designed to be an ideal, all inclusive work out diet drink, but it tastes of chocolate. So here you go.”

Bucky takes the drink, looks at it, looks at Steve. Steve takes the drink, takes a little sip of it, gives it back. Bucky looks perplexed.

That was probably not a good way of showing him that it was safe to drink.

“Uh, thanks.” Bucky gulps it down it, doesn’t make much of a face.

“Well, that was either cute or creepy. Not sure which. Maybe both. You want anything, Man with a Plan?”

“No.” He needs to focus his attention on Bucky. His body’s needs will wait.

"People still remember that song? After seventy years?" A small grin is growing on Bucky's face.

"Oh yeah, absolutely," Stark buts in before Steve can speak. "The song, the dance, the speeches, the memorabilia. Kids of my generation all grew up with this guy's face plastered all over posters, t-shirts, lunch boxes, bedspreads, you name it. There was even a line of trading cards, I think. Now they're 'collectable antiques'."

Bucky's smile fades, and Steve can practically see the weight of the realisation of all the time that has really passed settle in his mind. There's nothing like Tony's rambling to introduce a person to the obnoxious present. He doesn't want that weight on Bucky, he doesn't want Bucky to hurt -

"Well, lucky them," he says, "I'm sure I was an inspiration and a role model to kids everywhere."

"Role model? What the hell are you talking about role model, punk? Your ugly mug all over their beds probably gave little kids nightmares."

Steve snorts gently in laughter. Bucky flicks a smile back at him, but Stark stops and stares. “No. This is weird. This is too surreal. I can’t deal with this Captain Antique stoic-soldier adorableness shit anymore. How about you guys settle into the guest rooms. You can go and...whatever.”

“Yeah, sure, that’d be good,” Bucky says when Steve says nothing.

He doesn’t really care what they do next. He can’t remember the last time he laughed. He’s trying, but he can’t. He can remember laughing, sure, but he can’t remember the last time it happened. A long time, definitely. Or maybe that’s one of the things he did and then forgot soon after. There’s a lot of them. It’d be nice to imagine that some of them were as innocent as laughing. He knows most of them weren’t.

“Ok, well I’m gonna stay here and get started on this, and you can go somewhere else and ‘whatever’ together. There’s a fully stocked bar in every room, and all the TVs - that’s televisions to you, sleeping beauty - have all the channels. Also Netflix. Not saying that you have to catch up on all the films and TV you’ve missed before you do anything else, I’m just suggesting it. Jarvis knows what to play. And wifi - you are going to love the internet. And they all have fully stocked kitchens. General stuff. If you have any questions ask Jarvis. My butler will show you to your rooms.”

The elevator dings open at those words.

“That’s...hm. Sentient computer.” Bucky looks incredulous again. Steve wishes that would never break. Doesn’t want to see what he knows will come after.

“Yeah, but don’t hold it against him. He’s really very nice when you get to know him.” Stark’s opening up his many holoscreens with gestures and flicks.

“Why thank you, sir.” The invisible voice comes from the walls and the ceiling, and Steve does not jump or spook and his vitals do not spike.

“You’re welcome Jarv. See you boys later.” Stark is pulling images of some of Bucky’s full-body scans from the capsule on his screens now. Bucky’s gaze catches, drags, lingers, before he finally turns to Steve.

“Shall we?”

Steve nods. They get in the elevator, and Steve is calm, even though the space is small and metal. The only one here is Bucky.

Bucky is here.

Steve reaches for his arm as the doors close. He bends down, presses his face into the left side of Bucky’s neck, holds his right wrist, his back to the door.

“Hey, hey, it’s ok. I’m fine, we’re both fine.”

“I’m sorry I...”

“It’s alright, you're all right. I guess you haven't seen me in a while, huh?"

"No. I. I missed you," when I remembered to, he doesn't say.

"Yeah, fuck, that's weird. The war, that mission, the train. I guess that was a long time ago, now.”

“A while, yeah. The war's in history books.”

“Steve, what have you been getting up to all this time?”

The question is quiet, curious, kind.

The question is the end.

Steve doesn’t know what to say, but, “Let’s get settled in upstairs, and then we can talk about all of it,” is the first thing he can think of.

“Alright. But,” Bucky pulls back, looks him in the eyes, his eyes are so pretty, dark lashes, pale cheeks, “you are ok, right?” and he knows Bucky already knows that it’s not true.

Steve tries to smile reassuringly, but he hasn’t done that in so long, never practiced it in the mirror, so it just comes out crooked. “I’m fine. I’m...I’m all in one piece.”

You can’t see. You can’t see from the outside, everything that’s so fucked up within. If you could, people would run screaming. But they can’t. So he’ll have to tell Bucky, have to show him, and he doesn’t want to, doesn’t want Bucky to run, to flinch, to blanch at him and leave him. And that’s all he’ll do. Steve is disgusting, inside. Bucky will be disgusted.

The elevator doors chime as they reach their floor. They open to a wide, short corridor and Jarvis says, “The third door on the left leads to your guest apartments,” and they take it. The space inside is high-ceilinged, open plan. The sitting room has expansive sofas in neutral tones, a bar spread along the wall to the right, past the open door to the en-suite bedrooms, and windows across the whole left wall. The city is darkening; it’s early evening. The lights of the skyscrapers are just beginning to light up, bigger and better than any Christmas Steve remembers. But similar to the other huge cities he remembers, patchily.

Bucky has never seen a city like this before. He gravitates to the windows. Steve would be worried, but he checked with Jarvis before he approved this room for their lodgings and the glass is bulletproof. Bucky gazes out across the city, the buildings across the street and the ones visible across the city from their high viewpoint, down below to the busy street full of people and people in cars. They can’t see Brooklyn from here, but New York’s landmarks are visible. The Chrysler building is right across the street. They’d seen it go up.

“New York, huh.”

“Yeah.” He’s quiet, as quiet as Bucky was.

“Home sweet home.”

Steve pauses, lets him look a little longer.

"It's like - I can see the city I know, but it's like... fuck, it's like I'm seventy years in the future. This is...this is too surreal. I just, I can't believe that this is real. But we're in the east side of Manhattan, right?"

"Yeah, that's right. 'Course, it's kinda different from how it used to be. We can go and see the rest of the city too, if you want to. We can go visit Brooklyn sometime. And Lady Liberty’s still up and kicking.”

“Life in the old girl yet, huh? I’d like that, but maybe not today.” His mouth twisted up now, his eyes downcast.

“Absolutely. I mean, whenever.”

“Sure. Sometime.”

Steve waits until Bucky takes one last glance out of the window before coming back towards him.

“Are you feeling ok?”

“Little tired, actually. I know it’s weird, I’ve slept enough, but-”

“It’s fine. It’s to be expected. Apparently.” How will he say this. How will he say this. How-

“Maybe we could just go to bed?” Bucky asks when he comes up close to Steve. Not touching, but close enough that Steve could count his lashes. “Some of this might make a little more sense in the morning.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it. Are you sure there’s nothing else you need? Food? Water?”

“Stark’s drink got me covered on both. Stark. God. Howard’s son. Howard’s got a son. And he’s...he’s dead.”

Steve wishes that this didn't have to happen. He wishes he'd never asked Bucky to join him in the war after Azzano, he wishes he'd planned better on that last mission, he wishes he'd been able to pull Bucky up from the railing on the train, he wishes -

He wishes Bucky didn't have to go through the slow, sickening, dawning realisation that everyone he knows and loves grew old and died without him.

But he does, and this will hurt, so he will be strong. “Yes. He lived first though.”

“And the Commandos. My friends. Mom. Dad. My sister, is she - she’s...”

“She’s alive. She’s a grandma. We could go and see her, if you want to.”

“Oh God. Little Becca...I want to see her, just-”

“Not yet.”

“Yeah. But they all - did they...do ok?"

"Your Pa passed about five years after the war ended-"

"Oh God." Steve can see the awfulness of the thought dawning on his face, "Fuck! Ma, Becca - they must have thought I was dead!"

"Yes."

"But, couldn't you have told them that -"

"I didn't know for sure." Lying, he's lying through his teeth, he knew but they didn't, he couldn't tell them, he doesn't want Bucky to know why he couldn't tell them-

"Oh God, oh my God, I can't believe - it must have been Hell. I did that to them, I -" Bucky's cracking up, his one good hand coming up to cradle his head, his face a rictus of pain, and Steve knows Bucky might hate him for it later, but he cannot bear to see Bucky in pain and the only way he knows how to offer comfort here is with touch. He hugs Bucky as tight as he can, without constricting him.

"It wasn't your fault. It was hard on them, I'm sure it was, but...you weren't the only one not to come back from war. Everybody lost somebody. It wasn't your fault, it was the war."

"I...God, I can't believe it. I wasn't there - when they needed me, I wasn't there. Becca's kids, they don't even know me. Everyone, fuck, everyone..." Bucky's crying now, horrible wrenched open sobs.

"Do you want me to tell you?"

"Yeah. Yes."

"Becca became a nurse after the war, and then later she went through additional training to become a doctor. You know she always used to be smart." Bucky nods, blinks away tears. "I think she met her husband in the hospital. She married really late, I think everyone expected her to be an old maid, but I expect she wanted to have a career first, you know? She had three kids. One of her sons died in the Vietnam war. One of her daughters got a doctorate like her. I think her other daughter does something for the government. Your ma, she saw all three of them grew up, she died in 1963. The others, um...all the other commandos survived the war, they all got pretty good jobs in other services afterwards. They were in high demand. Peggy, she became head of the SSR, made into a different agency, called SHIELD. It did a lot of good before it...had to be shut down. Peggy, she had a husband, kids. Do you want to know more?"

"No, no I. It sounds like, they were more or less...but, Becca's kid died and I wasn't there for her." He's still crying, but he's calmed down a little, now.

"I know, I know. Shh, shh, it's ok. She had her husband, she had your ma, she had two daughters. She was fine, she's ok. She's gonna celebrate her 95th birthday soon. You're gonna be a Hell of a surprise present for her."

"I've...I've missed her whole life, haven't I?"

"Not all of it. Not yet. And you still have the whole of yours."

"Shit. I can't. I..." He's stopped crying like he's breaking now, but he looks dazed instead. And he hasn't remembered the question again yet. Perhaps...perhaps he should get a little more rest before he deals with the shock of that, on top of everything else. Until he looses his erstwhile best friend along with everyone else he's ever known.

(Perhaps, Steve could have just a little while longer in his company before Bucky is lost to him forever.)

"Do you want to try and get some more sleep?" he asks, voice gentle.

"I...I do still kinda feel tired. Which is ridiculous, seeing as I haven't done anything for seventy fucking years, apparently."

"No, like I said, Tony thinks that'd be normal. It's ok though, it's only temporary. You shouldn't have any long term damage from the cryosleep." Probably. Although Steve is really the only long-living test subject of the cryofreeze exposure, and he is in no way a typical specimen.

"Yeah. Thank God for small miracles." Bucky's cupping the stump of his left arm with his right hand. He takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly. He says, "So, all in all, I lost an arm but Stark's son will make me a new one, everyone we know is dead but they all lived their lives first, the war is over, it's 2015 and you're immortal."

"Y-What? I'm not immortal?"

"But you haven't aged? The serum, you said - I thought."

"No, I. No."

Steve is terrible at lying, he has always been terrible at lying, but above all he has never and will never be able to lie to Bucky, and no amount of training or conditioning will ever change that.

Bucky is looking at him with a mix of caution and concern on his face that makes Steve feel broken just to have directed at him.

"But, Stevie, you barely look like you've aged a day. And, well, you never did say how you got me out of there - or whatever else you've been up to."

He doesn't know what to say he can't say it he doesn't want Bucky to know Bucky can't know please please please let Bucky never look at him with that knowledge in his eyes please can he just have one person alive who still loves him -

No, he can't, because he is not worth loving, and Bucky does not deserve to be tricked into loving someone he no longer knows. He cannot lie to Bucky; he deserves the truth.

(But, one more night. So that Bucky can rest.)

He forces the blankness and emptiness that he had lived in for decades to come to the front, and it is hard, because Bucky is here, but it is probably not as hard as it should be.

"I've been - working for SHIELD. Running missions. Trying and failing to get you back, mostly. But I'll tell you all the boring ins and outs of it later, right now you need to sleep it off some more."

"Yeah, ok." Bucky knows something's wrong, he's known it since the elevator, but he's not going to force Steve to talk, he's going to let him come out with it in his own time. And Steve is thankful to him, and Steve loves him for it, but the truth is he's stalling and all he can do is prolong the inevitable, because there's no good way to tell Bucky this.

Bucky's watching him carefully, but the look in his eyes is gentle, not suspicious as he says, “Let's go to bed then. Do you know where?”

“Through here,” Steve says. He knows Jarvis will leave them alone now, unless asked directly for aid. He likes the AI for that. For his predictability, reliability. Of course, machines are only as safe as the men using them. They are not always obedient -

But it is Stark that commands Jarvis, and Stark is an ally. And Jarvis will remain obedient. He does not have a reason not to.

He leads Bucky through the door to the en-suite. Their bed is made. Stark’s servants - visible, human ones - made it this morning. Steve watched them. Jarvis has assured him that none others have or will enter. This space will be their own, and no one else’s.

Steve waits until Bucky is sitting on the edge of the bed before he says, hesitantly and awkwardly, because he has never asked this before, “Do you want me to stay or- there’s another bedroom.”

“No, of course not- I mean, of course you should stay.” Bucky seems shocked at the very question, and it’s such a relief, but then he says, “Unless...shit, I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. It’s been so long...if there’s someone else now, I completely understand-”

“There’s not.”

“Oh, ok-”

“There never was.” Bucky’s smile is trembling, tentative. He’s happy, Steve can see that. Because he thought for a second that he had lost something that he had never previously doubted, but now he knows that it still belongs to him, and always has. But, on the other hand, he’s worried, because it’s been a long time, and, “Never? Not even once?”

“Not. Not as such. I.” Steve shouldn’t stand over Bucky in the doorway. It’s too threatening. He’s blocking his exit. He eases onto the bed next to Bucky mechanically, turns to face him but can’t look him in the eye. "It's complicated. I don't want to tonight - if that's ok? Just, let's just sleep and, tomorrow, maybe you'll feel better and I'll...I'll tell you all about it."

The way Bucky looks at him now is so familiar, from all the autumns when Steve swore, God's honest truth he felt fine when he could feel another bout of influenza breathing down his neck, and Bucky's saying, sure, ok Stevie, and being careful not to make it too obvious that he knows Steve is lying, because he understands the way skinny, weak, pathetic, hot-headed Steve hangs onto his pride with both fists and his teeth.

And Bucky says, "Sure, ok Stevie," and Steve smiles and wants to kiss him both for who he is and what he means to Steve but he doesn't.

"Thank you," he says instead, and his hand’s grabbing onto Bucky’s wrist. He’s leaning into Bucky’s ruined shoulder. He just wants to. Wants to touch him. Be pressed against him. Not to be separated ever again. He will be, soon, but he'll get to lie next to Bucky sleeping one more time first.

"There's um, there's a toilet, new toothbrushes..." Steve gestures to the relevant door.

"Ok," Bucky says, still looking at Steve like he used to, and he cups Steve's face with his hand before he disentangles to go to the bathroom. Steve sits, for a moment, and stares at nothing, and feels the hot after-echo of Bucky's hand on his skin. He faintly hears the noise of clattering, water running and a frustrated "ugh" noise before Bucky sticks his head back around the door and says, "Steve, a hand?" pauses, and then adds, "Pun absolutely intended," with a grin on his face that says, no, he isn't ok, but yes, he is determined to be ok eventually.

Steve can't help but laugh at his goddamn terrible sense of humour as he stands and goes to Bucky to find him holding a toothbrush in half-dismantled plastic packaging that Bucky seems to have approached in the least efficient method possible. Steve takes it, and examines it momentarily, and comments only, "Those are bite marks."

He undoes the packaging while Bucky says, "Yeah, well, it's not my fault is it, stupid war and then stupid future, why would you bother to do it like that anyway? It's completely pointless, it's only going to be useless when you've taken out the toothbrush."

"The twenty-first century is extremely wasteful in comparison to what we're used to."

Steve holds out the toothbrush while Bucky unscrews the toothpaste with the cap in his mouth and a frown on his face. Steve's not worried; Bucky's bad moods tend to be fierce but brief. He waits until Bucky's brushing his teeth to start brushing his own, and they nudge and jostle each other a little in a play of such good-natured and familiar mundanity that Steve can't help but grin, huge and tooth-paste-toothed, at everything he hadn't even thought or even remembered to miss. Bucky pulls a face and mutters a garbled "Yuck" at his dripping smile before finally kicking him away to sit on the edge of the bathtub while Bucky spits and rinses. Steve waits obediently until he's done to finish up himself, and then clears out while Bucky uses the toilet to sit on the bed and wait for him. He sits, and thinks of how lucky he is, and prays silently and pointlessly to the empty room that he will think of something that he can tell Bucky in the morning that will keep him near without repulsing him.

He's still staring a listlessly at the wall when Bucky comes in. He barely has time to look up before Bucky is there, right there, and his hand is on Steve's neck, tilting his head up, warm and callused and right where his breath is rushing through him and Steve can't help when his eyes roll back in his head but he doesn't care because of the way it makes Bucky gasp.

"So, no one else, huh?"

"No one else." Steve echoes. Bucky's thumb's on his lip and Steve wants to swallow it, Bucky's fingers brush his jugular and Steve would let him slit it if he wanted to, as long as he stayed until Steve bled out.

"You spent seventy years waiting to get me back?"

Nameless wordless screaming emotion build up inside him. That is so close to the truth. He wishes that was the truth.

Through the rushing in his ears, he chokes out, "Yeah."

"Well, if that ain't dedication baby, then I don't know what is." The praise sinks into his bones as Bucky's hand slides backwards into his hair and Steve's whole head goes back with it, following the sensation. It's so good, it's so good. It's better than anything they ever-

But Bucky shouldn't touch him like this when he doesn't know how dirty he is. He thought he could let this happen. He thought he could hold himself together long enough for Bucky and him lie next to each other one last time, but he should have known better. Oh well. At least he still had the time in Stark's chamber.

Tears fall from his lashes as he says, "Actually, Bucky I don't think it can wait until morning. I think I'd better tell you all about it sooner rather than later. So you can- You can still decide not to-" He can't tell what he's saying anymore. His head is full of the knowledge that he’ll say this, and it will be over so fast. In a blink. He’s barely got Bucky back, and he’ll loose him again. It’ll be better, of course, better than Bucky as good as dead, not living, but still without, still the worst, he’s never going to be happy again-

“Hey, Stevie, it’s ok. Just breath, ok? You’re gonna be fine, just calm down.”

“I am calm. I was calm. I will be. Just. I just.”

Bucky’s grasped Steve’s whole forearm in his one hand, he’s trying to hold him steady, but Steve’s trembling. He’s not thinking about it, but his hand is twisting out of Bucky’s grip, sliding up Bucky’s forearm to his elbow to his bicep to his shoulder to his neck, and he’s holding on, and Bucky’s hand is over it. Holding him down, keeling him safe. Bucky’s skin is so smooth against his palm, and Steve’s hand is smooth too. Has no callouses. Not even from a gun, it’s been that long since he fired one. His body heals everything. No scars remain, outside.

“Whatever it is, you don’t have to worry, Steve. You don’t have to be scared. It can’t ever be something so awful that you need to be scared to tell me.”

“But it is, Bucky.” He doesn’t want to. Doesn’t want to say the words and Bucky’s name in once sentence, because one is pure and the other is filthy, and he doesn’t want one to taint the other until there’s nothing good left. It doesn’t make sense, because Bucky won’t get dirty, Bucky will just leave, but the result is still the same. Steve will be left in the darkness, alone.

“Ok. Alright. Maybe it is but- Steve, you’re shaking.”

He is. All of his limbs are so tense they’re trembling. The only part of his body not exerting crushing tension is the hand he has wrapped around the side of Bucky’s neck. He lets go before that changes. Tries to. Bucky pulls him back.

“Hey, no, don’t pull away. You don’t have to pull away. Ok, look, you need to relax. Let’s just lie back and relax.” Bucky’s leaning back and pulling Steve with his one arm, and Steve goes down with him because that’s what he will always do.

Bucky scoots back on the bed, so Steve copies him, until they’re both at the head end. The blankets were folded up at the bottom of the bed, and Bucky drags them halfway up with his feet, and then grabs them and pulls them up to Steve’s shoulder. He presses up to Steve, front to front, like he used to, always. When Steve was ill and needed the heat, when they kissed, before and after they made love, when they slept in the war, always. This is a constant. This has always been a constant.

“There now, that’ll warm you up in no time.”

Steve does not need to say he is not cold. Bucky knows. Stark’s rooms are never chilly, even when they are both shirtless. They both know that it is the comfort of Bucky’s body wrapped around him that will relax him, not the heat.

“Yeah. I feel better already.”

They lie there, and Steve looses track of time, though it probably isn’t for more than sixty seconds. He just lies there, and listens to Bucky’s breathing until his own matches it in pace. Until his heartbeat is normal. Bucky’s hair is soft and fluffy against his chin, his stomach is hard against Steve’s right hand, his back warm against his left. Bucky’s own right hand is on Steve’s shoulder. Comforting. Grounding.

Eventually, Steve moves to prop pillows under Bucky’s left side, so that his shoulder is not pressed uncomfortably into the mattress. Bucky smiles, tensely, in thanks, but averts his eyes. He has still not properly processed the loss of his limb. Steve feels great sadness and pity, but takes care not to show it. Bucky would not want to be pitied any more than Steve did when he was young and weak and feeble.

“Steve, before you start talking, I want you to know that whatever you can say, it will not make me stop loving you. You don’t need to be scared. You’re not risking that.”

“Don’t say that. Please. You don’t know what you’re saying, and I need you not to make promises you can’t keep.”

“But I know what I need to know Stevie. I know it’s you. I know that I love you.”

“Stop.”

“Ok. But it doesn’t stop it being true.”

“It might.”

“Well, tell me whatever it is, and then we’ll both know for sure.”

“I will. I just. For right now, I want to.” Steve turns his head, nuzzles into Bucky’s neck.

“Ok,” Bucky murmurs into Steve’s hair, “we can do that.”

Bucky turns his head, tilts his head to Steve’s, and kisses him.

Steve knows that once Bucky finds out what he has done, the memory of this will repulse him. He doesn’t care.

He kisses back, does everything he knows Bucky likes. Nips and pulls Bucky’s lips with his own, bites down gently and carefully on the tongue inside his mouth, not drawing blood, not even applying any real pressure, just teasing.

This is the last kiss. His last kiss, ever.

He will never have these lips, this mouth, this man again, and he will never want another.

Bucky breaks to breathe, and Steve pulls away. Because he has to at some point. He can’t go further than this, because that would be betraying Bucky. He’ll be disgusted, later, at the knowledge that he kissed someone like Steve, and he does not want to tar Bucky with his own blackness any more than he has to. Than he needed to.

This is not his first kiss since 1945.

He wishes, he wishes, he wishes it was, but his mother whom he just remembers used to say if wishes were horses beggars would ride, which basically meant that all the prayers he made in church, all the deals and bargains with fate in his head meant shit if there was no God listening, and there wasn’t. Isn’t.

Bucky tries to pull him back, after they’ve both caught they’re breath, but Steve says, “No. I’ll tell you.”

“Ok, if you’re sure. You don’t even have to, if you don’t want to.”

Steve would love it, if-

But that is not an option. Deceiving and destroying Bucky is not an option.

“I do. I have to.”

He presses one last, last ever, chaste kiss to Bucky’s lips. Then he wraps himself as tightly and as close as he can until their entire bodies, arms and legs and groins and stomachs are pressed together, right up until their chests, where their torsos and shoulders pull back from each other so they can make eye contact.

They used to talk like this, for hours. Hours and hours and hours of memories, and Steve still has some of it. He can’t remember all they used to speak of, but it doesn’t matter.

This will be the last time Bucky touches him like this.

There are tears, but he pushes them down.

“In 1945. After we fell. After they put you in cryofreeze, and took me somewhere else.”

“You told me about that. What about when you escaped?”

He breathes in. Breathes out.

“I didn’t.”

Blank shock. “You- What?”

Steve was a little worried that this was too much for Bucky, to much for him to hear all in one go on his first day in this century, but he’d decided to, figured that he should just get it all out in one go. At least partly because the longer he left it, the longer he’d have to resist having sex with Bucky - because he would know that Bucky wouldn’t want to touch him if he knew. Maybe that was selfish, maybe he should just stop, take it back-

But he can’t stop now.

“Hydra took me prisoner.”

Bucky’s face crumples up in sorrow, in grief, “Steve, oh God Stevie I’m so sorry,” and he doesn’t even know-

Steve closes his eyes.

Bucky doesn’t even know the worst of it.

“It couldn’t have been avoided.”

“You could have not fucking jumped-”

“Not an option. And worth it. Saved your life. You’re safe now.”

“But you weren’t- How long did they have you?”

A huff of breath puffs out of him. He opens his eyes, but doesn’t look at Bucky. Can’t. “Mmmm. Ah, yeah, nearly seventy years.”

“Oh God. Oh Stevie.” Shock doesn’t begin to describe Bucky right now. Steve can read complete startled horror, anger, sadness, and fear. Not fear of Steve, but for him. The former will come later.

He has to talk now. That’s not the worst of it. He has to tell Bucky the worst of it. But first, “Listen, after I tell you what I did, you can leave here, if you want. Or I will. Whichever. I can go away, and you’ll never see me again. Or you can go anywhere you want to - Stark will pay for you. I’ll. You won’t see me. I’ll make sure you’re ok, but you’ll never see me. I won’t approach you. You won’t even know I’m there, I just have to know that you’re safe, that’s all-”

“No. No, whatever happens, whatever happened, we’re staying together. You’re my best friend, my best guy. It’s us, together no matter what, remember? ‘Till the end of the line,” that was before the war, the first time he said that, “I love you, and I’ll always love you, no matter what they did.”

Steve’s eyes are getting wet with all the tears he’s refusing to shed, his chest tight with sobs he won’t release, because it is imperative that he give Bucky this information first, and then he can break apart.

“Ok. Whatever you want. I’ll tell you this, and then you can decide.” He just wants Bucky to stop arguing. He just wants to get this over and done with. He just wants to say it all, as fast as he can. At the same time, he doesn’t want to ever say any of it, for Bucky to never know. And that’s dangerous.

He angles his face downwards so he can’t see Bucky’s eyes, and starts talking. “After we were captured, they took me to a cell. I was alone. They left me there for a long time. Maybe they were deciding what to do with me. Then they took me somewhere else, and you were there. In the cryochamber. I could see you through the glass, but I couldn’t touch you. You were so cold. You weren’t breathing. But they said you were still alive. They said they could bring you back, if they wanted to. I didn’t believe them. But when they threatened, I couldn’t let them kill you for sure, either.

“So they took me somewhere else, and then they put me in a lot of pain. It’s a little hazy, there. I think, maybe, some of it was medical procedures. Trying to replicate the serum. If it was, it didn’t work, there was only ever me. Or maybe it was just pain for the sake of pain. They did a lot of that too. Making me more co-operative. Because at that point, the only way they had to get me to do what they wanted was to threaten to wake you up, to hurt you or kill you, and they knew and I knew that they could never actually do that, because then they’d have nothing left. No more bargaining chips. I could just commit suicide in peace.”

Bucky opens his mouth, Steve talks over him. “They weren’t even sure if you would wake up, or if you were already dead. I wasn’t sure. But the pain on it’s own worked to a certain extent. That and the isolation, the deprivation. I lost my mind a little, I think. They could get me to agree to stuff, anything to stop the pain. I would perform exercises, tests. I wasn’t obedient to them, yet, though, not really. I wouldn’t kill for them, if they put someone in front of me. Wouldn’t torture, wouldn’t interrogate. If they’d let me in the field, I would have escaped -

“I should have said. That’s what they wanted, I figured it out pretty early on. They wanted me to be their soldier. Winter Soldier, that was the project name. They called me that. But back then, I was still more or less me. Still pretty much Steve Rogers from Brooklyn. Just a little broken.”

“You still are Steve Rogers from Brooklyn.”

Steve makes eye contact for the first time since he began speaking. “You don’t know shit about what I am.”

Bucky clenches his jaw, swallows. “I know you’re still Steve.”

“How would you know?”

“Because I know you. Because you saved me. Because you’re telling me this. Because I know you escaped, somehow, broke out-”

“Too late. But whatever.” It’s irrelevant. He has to finish this, first. Then he can break apart. “Anyway. That, where I’d do what they said but only so far, that carried on for a while. They kept finding new ways to hurt me, but I didn’t do what they said. It was an impasse. Because we both knew they couldn’t kill you.

“Then they made a break through. The first time I killed for them. It was, maybe, five or six years after the fall. They’d figured out how to reverse the state they’d created. They woke you up, or tried to. You weren’t conscious, but you were alive. They started hacking at your arm. What was left of it. It would never have worked properly again but. They made sure. You were. It was obvious you were alive. They had you hooked up to machines, breathing for you. There were brainwaves. Maybe you were dreaming. Do you.”

Bucky’s shaking his head. He’s crying. “I don’t remember. I don’t remember any of this.”

“Good. Better that way.”

“Steve, I’m so sorry-”

“Why? You did nothing wrong. Don’t be.” Steve feels strangely calm now. He’s completing his own, self-set objective. He’s doing well. He’s nearly there. Bucky will know soon. Mission complete. Soon.

“They did that, and I said I’d do anything to make them stop. They put someone in front of me. Young. A girl. They said shoot and I did.”

Bucky’s body breaks in a sob. “You didn’t have to do that for me, Stevie.”

“Well. I did.” Steve holds still, keeps calm. Holds him. Bucky’ll break away soon. Steve should hold him while he can.

“They stopped hurting you, when I killed her. But I still wasn’t loyal to them. I felt bad, afterwards. If they’d let me out in the field, I still would have run. Would not have obeyed. And it was delicate, because they didn’t know how much they could hurt you in that state without killing you. They couldn’t let you die.

“But then they made another break through. Or some other branch of Hydra did. Something they were trialling in Russia, with great results. From the Red Room, I think. A machine that could wipe someone blank. By that I mean, empty. No memories. No personality. Electrotherapy. Brain damage. Remote lobotomy. They put me in a chair and tied me down and sent electricity through my brain until there was nothing left. It was only temporary though, especially for me. Because of the serum. The longer they left it, the more I’d remember. I’d aways remember you first, especially if I could see your face. If they kept you near, even in the cryochamber.

“So they struck up a balance between the two methods. The chair, to keep me complacent. To stop me from thinking. They had to be careful with that too, because at too high a voltage and coupled with the drugs it probably could have killed me. But the serum made me tough. And then, the threat of you. Even when I couldn’t remember you, I learned to remember that you were precious, more and more as time went on. I’d just remember that you were important, that I loved you, and then they’d start the wipe, and I’d make sure the memory of you was one that stayed. Other stuff I got back, too. Flashes. Bits and pieces.

“It wasn’t enough though. I never got enough of myself back to fight them with, before they’d wipe me again. If I even remembered enough to question, they’d threaten to kill you. So what with the wipes and the threats, with those two things, they owned me. I was a perfect soldier. They could tell me to do anything, and I’d do it. I was the Winter Soldier. I didn’t even know my own name.”

Bucky’s clinging onto him, hard, arms and legs. His head’s buried in Steve’s chest. His breathing is harsh and uncontrolled.

This. This is the worst.

He doesn’t want to say it. The words catch in his mouth before he can spit them out. “I killed for them. I was their assassin. I killed - God, it must have been dozens of people. Hundreds. I can’t remember all of it. The machine fucked it up. They would freeze me, like you, when they didn’t need me, then wake me up and send me out on missions. Brief me, put a gun in my hand and sent me out. I’d always do it. Every time. I used the shield. It was like a Hydra publicity stunt. Everyone who was in the know was scared. I was infamous. Captain America gone dark, all through the Cold War. And then, after as well. For a long time.

“They kept your body close to me. If I started to remember anything, they’d take me to you. That’d confuse me, break me up so I didn’t start to fight. They’d tell me that you were their loyal soldier, that my work was to wake you up. Or that they’d kill you if I didn’t do it right. Some shit like that. Depended on the employer. I’d lap it all up. I’d believe anything they told me.

“I’d do anything. Everything. They.”

No, actually. This is worse. Because up until now, Bucky’s only been clinging closer to him with every sentence. He’s only felt sympathy. Pity. That’s ok.

But soon, he’s going to break away. He’s going to be disgusted.

Soon.

Now.

Say it.

“They’d use me for other things too. Not just missions. For rewards. For other agents. For fun. Because I’d let them. I’d let them fuck me.” Bucky’s breath rushes into his lungs in a gasp. Steve can feel it, where they’re pressed together. “Or I’d suck them off. Anyone. I just didn’t think not to.”

“Steve-”

But it feels like it’s pouring out of him. Poison, spilling over his lips and down his chin. It would be better held within, but he can’t stop it now. “Whenever my employer wanted to impress someone. To seal a deal. Or as a reward for a promotion. And I’d let them do anything, anything at all. They could beat me or fuck my ass or stick it down my throat until I choked, and I wouldn’t stop them. They could make me beg for more, even. They taught me how to do it good. Taught me all the tricks. Taught me how to be a perfect whore. They could tie me up and I wouldn’t fight. Call me names. Make me drink piss. Anything.”

“Oh God.” The noise Bucky’s making could be gagging, but Steve still hasn’t finished choking up the truth.

Just get through the mission, Soldier. Just get through this one goddamned mission. Do it. Say it.

“They. Sometimes they made it good for me. Made it so I would come. While I was raped. Not often though. They liked to watch me scream better. Or not scream. Stay silent because they told me to.”

“Stevie-” Hands stroking down his face. He’s not looking at their eyes.

“Then someone realised that it could be used tactically. They were already using it in other programs. Other assets. Why not me? I could seduce my targets. I’d-”

He can remember. So many times.

“I’d find them wherever they went for sex. Pose as a prostitute. Get them to pick me up. Let them take me home. Kill them. While they were fucking me, or just after. Leave them like that. It was like a calling card.

“Of course it wouldn’t work every time. Lots of straight guys. Gay women. They had other operatives for that though. It still happened a lot. And agents, too. People - agents - could just use me, whenever, wherever, as long as it didn’t jeopardise the mission. I think they thought it backed up my programming. Helped to cement in my mind the idea that I was worth nothing. It worked. It did. I really forgot I was anything other than their whore, their killer.

“I think at one point I learned to like it. They didn't touch me at any other time, you see. I got ignored, beaten or fucked. Sometimes it was better than the alternatives. They made it into a reward system. So if I killed someone well, I was allowed to come without being hurt.”

“No.” The other’s voice breaks. Why do they say this? Denial of the truth is pointless.

“That was probably at the worst point. I barely ever remembered him anymore. They’d been wiping me for so long. I wasn’t a person. I was a tool. A knife, a gun. A hole to fuck.”

They’re speechless now. Haven’t pulled away yet. Probably still in shock.

“They made me kill Howard Stark. This girl I trained, Natalia, they sent me after her and I shot her.”

“How.” They swallow. “How did you escape?” Their voice is rough like a stone. Why are they asking this. Why haven’t they pulled away. They were supposed to...

“Are you listening to what I’m saying?”

“I am. But- that...isn’t the end. You didn’t stay there. You didn’t stay with them. You escaped?”

“Too late, too late.” His own hands in his hair, pulling at the roots - he can still get his fingers in it, though it’s short. Because he looks the same on the outside. Fucked up within. Fucked up. Ruined. Dirtied. Broken. Destroyed.

“No, no, stop,” One hand on his wrist, pulling his own away. Pulling his hand to the other’s face. They shouldn’t. Why are they? He’s dirty. Shouldn’t be touched.

“Tell me about how you got out, Steve. Focus on that. Focus on how you escaped.”

“I never did.” “Yes, you did. You had to.” They doesn’t sound so sure. Sound scared. They should.

“I never escaped them. They’re still here. They’re still in my head. I never got away from them. I never will.”

“No. Sorry, Steve, but that’s stupid talk. Look at me.” A direct command. But he doesn’t want to.

“Look at me.”

He does.

Pretty grey-blue eyes.

“You do not belong to them.”

Eyes like storm clouds, just before rain.

“They do not own you.”

So gorgeous.

“They hurt you, but you don’t belong to them.”

Bucky’s eyes.

“You got away from them, and you saved me. What they did to you wasn’t your fault.”

“Bucky.”

“Yeah, Stevie, I’m here.”

Mission’s over. Task complete. His duty is done.

“Stay,” he begs.

“I will. ‘Till the end of the line.”

“No. We’re past that. Forever.”

“Ok. Forever.”

The word flows through him like honey.

Safe.

But. But, no, because “No, you shouldn’t. You mustn’t. You can’t want me.”

“Of course I want you.”

And Steve was just clawing his way back to the here and now, but that throws him for a loop because, “How?”

“What do you mean, how? I’ve always wanted you. I’ll always want you.” Bucky’s smiling, though not all the tears are dry on his face. “You’re mine.”

Those words go through him like the light of the sun through paper. He’s warm, all the way through. Clear. Happy. Content. Wanted.

But, “I’m an assassin. I’m a whore. You’re good. You’re a good person. You can’t want someone like me.”

“I don’t want someone like you. I want you. Just you.”

That, that’s too much. He can’t hold back anymore.

Steve’s reaches up, pressing his lips against Bucky’s.

Not the last time.

Bucky still wants him.

Bucky’s lips are gentle, and he doesn’t let Steve in. But he’s still letting Steve kiss him, so it’s ok. He’ll take anything. Anything Bucky’ll give him.

Eventually Bucky pulls away. “Steve, I want to finish this conversation first. And then talk more about this. I don’t want to do anything wrong here.”

“Ok.”

Steve is floating up above where there are clouds. He is where there is only sunlight. He is summer in their childhood, summer in their apartment. He is warmth soaking into skin. He is euphoria.

But Bucky wants him to go back to the darkness, so he will.

“You might not believe this Buck.”

“Try me.”

“Ok. There were aliens.”

“Fine.”

“Really?”

“That kind of day.”

Steve almost laughs, the relief is so acute, because Bucky is still here, despite everything. “I s’pose. Well, aliens tried to invade New York.” Yeah, he’s crashing back down now, but it doesn’t matter because Bucky’s still there. He won’t hurt now. Bucky’s back and he’s safe. “This was just a couple years ago now. No wait, three. Hydra had infiltrated SHIELD - that was an organisation Peggy set up after the war to be a force of good, but by the end, it was almost completely rotten to the core. SHIELD were organising a defence against the aliens, a race called the Chitauri. Their plan was a last ditch attempt to save humanity. It was called the Avengers initiative.

“But Hydra figured it might not be enough. And they wanted to protect the world, I guess because you can’t rule the world from the shadows if it’s been destroyed. So they sent me out to join the fight. By complete luck, I was awake, not frozen, and I was on the right continent. They got me to New York for the Battle, just. I killed a few dozen of them, bought down one of these massive space-whale things - look, you had to see it to believe it. I’ll tell you all about that some time. It was pretty impressive. Gives pick on someone your own size a whole new meaning. Well, anyway. I was there, in New York, and it was so weird, it was like walking through a daydream. Like deja vu come to life. I was ordered not to make contact with any of the other fighters SHIELD put together, but there was this woman. Natalia. From before, with Hydra. I’d trained her. I loved her. She wasn’t - not like you. But I loved her. And I thought I’d killed her on that mission when I shot at her, but she was there in the middle of it, beautiful like she always was, and alive. And I saw Tony Stark. He looks so much like his father.

“I don’t know what did it, but something pushed me over the edge. After the Battle everything was chaotic for a while. Hydra and SHIELD were both all over the place. I just slipped away. I knew how.

“And then I just drifted. Went all over the States, trying to hide, but eventually I went back to New York. I remembered everything. I remembered myself. I sort of...I tried to build myself up again. To figure out how to be a person. Remember how. It wasn’t quite from scratch but...it kinda felt like it some days. I’d been nothing for so long...but I think it worked. I think I got there.”

Bucky’s smile is quivering, a little, and sad, but it’s proud too, and it widens and he nods when Steve looks at him, encouraging, so Steve continues. “I got used to doing things for myself again. Dressing, eating, washing. And I remembered you. I had no idea where they’d take you. I was worried, and scared. I was kinda all over the place too, and. I did something - I’m still not sure if it was right.”

“It’s ok, Stevie, don’t worry. None of that was your fault. You’d been hurt so bad.” Bucky is controlling his face very carefully, but Steve has known him for a long time. Bucky is angry, but trying to crush his emotion.

He’s not angry at Steve. He’s angry for him.

No one has been angry at his treatment save him for such a long time. Most of his life. It’s actually nice to have a partner in it, to have someone feel protective of him. He feels loved.

And Bucky can’t realise just how much that nickname still hits him, like a punch in the gut but good, somehow.

Steve clears his throat. “You gotta stop doing that, you know. Forgiving me in advance. Makes me doubt your sincerity.”

“Never doubt that.”

“Ok.” He won’t. Not now Bucky’s said it like that.

Bucky’s fingers running over his temple. His warmth, all down Steve’s front, wrapped around his side, on his face.

“Tell me.”

“I decided to bring down Hydra. Which meant bringing down SHIELD. And I decided to do that before I found you. It was a risk. I couldn't be sure you'd be safe once I had but I couldn't wake you up if they could just hurt you again. I had no one to trust. I risked your life. I'm sorry."

"Stevie, I probably wouldn't have lived past the fall if you hadn't saved me. I definitely wouldn't have survived intact without you all the time they had us. I owe you everything. Whatever risk you took, it seems to have paid off."

"I. I hope so." The idea of Bucky owing him. It's uncomfortable, because he probably doesn't deserve it, but it feels like he's done something right. It feels like he did a good thing.

"I'm still here aren't I? Now tell me how you killed the bastards, Stevie." And Bucky smiles that old grin with the sharp edges, the one he never did give out to strangers, only ever shared with Steve before a fight, and Steve knows, he knows that what he did was right.

“Well, because of all of their idiotic shit, people were worried anyway. Already scared of me. I was a conspiracy theory, on the deep web - oh, right. I’ll explain later. Basically, I was a ghost. Because of fighting with the shield, and leaving important corpses covered in come. I think maybe Hydra just couldn’t resist. Their mistake.

“Whatever the case, it meant that when I let myself be seen taking down every Hydra base I knew of, which was all of them, people payed attention. It was in the newspapers, on the television - which everyone watches nowadays. It prompted full-scale enquiries, across countries, across governments and organisations. They got Hydra out of SHIELD, burned it out. The army. The police. They sacked a few members of congress. That was just the US. I went everywhere. I was very thorough. 

“Some countries, not much changed. I couldn’t end the wars I helped to start. I can’t wipe away the blood I spilt, the fear I caused. I can’t give back the lives I took. But I still feel like maybe I did a little good, wiping out Hydra once and for all.”

“I should damn well think so,” Bucky huffs a laugh.

“Yeah.” Steve grins, then it fades. “I just. I still doubt it. Because maybe I should have looked for you first, woken you up first, made sure you’d be safe. I would have, but some of their larger reaching plans were time-sensitive and-”

“No. Steve, you did the right thing. You put other people’s lives first. God - Steve, after everything you’d been through, and the first moment you get your own head back, you do everything you can to help other people. To fix what you’d done. Your goddamned saint’s morals, they never washed out. I’m just - I’m awed. I’m proud of you.”

Steve fills up with light. He’s overspilling with it. It’s filling up his chest, his stomach.

“Hey, easy there.” Bucky’s hands on his face. Still here, despite everything. Forever. Safe. Bucky is safe. Bucky is safety.

“Ok.” He slows his breathing rate, but keeps the feeling of light, saturating his skin and his blood and his flesh. Holds it inside him. Holds the knowledge of Bucky’s pride within him like the sun.

“And also, thank you. Thank you for keeping me alive, for saving me. I’m so sorry you had to do that stuff to do it.”

The praise reverberates through Steve like the vibrating air inside a struck drum.

They never used to tell him he was good. Not unless they were fucking him.

“Finish telling me what happened?”

It’s ok. It doesn’t hurt, not while he’s cocooned in light like this. “After I took down Hydra, I tracked you down. I tracked you down where they were hiding you - I was banking on the fact that they wouldn’t kill you even while I was tearing the organisation apart, because you’d be the only thing left they could use to stop me. I was right. It was a race against time though, in case you weren’t somewhere safe, or they hadn’t secured your location or - anything. I was. I just looked for you. Until I found you.

“Once I had your location, I secured it. You were in a bank in DC, where this project, Project Insight, was set to launch before I took down Hydra. They had you heavily guarded. I couldn’t ensure your safety if I got you out alone, and even if I did, I wouldn’t be able to keep you stable. The cryostasis chamber needed a constant energy supply, and I didn’t know how to wake you up safely. I sure as hell couldn’t do it alone. So I made sure you were safe, and went to Stark.

“It was a gamble, to trust him, but there wasn’t anyone else. It think it was mostly because he’s a Stark. We fought near each other, during the Battle, although I didn’t let him see me. And he helped me - I still don’t quite know why. Sent me out on a jet to get you with a team of vetted ex-SHIELD personnel,” he’d vetted them again himself to be sure, “brought us both back here. That was only a couple of weeks ago now. Banner and him worked to fix you up, figure out how to wake you up without hurting you. And here we are.”

“Here we are.”

The light inside him is starting to feel hot. Hot like sunshine, hot like fire in his stomach. “Will you kiss me again now?” His left hand had been on Bucky’s shoulder blades, but now he moves it down Bucky’s spine to his waist. The other traces Bucky’s lips.

Bucky laughs, “‘Course. You don’t have to ask for that, you big lug. But oh, shit, wait-”

But Steve’s already kissing him, as his mouth forms the words. Had been since he gave his permission. Steve’s lips meet his own fingers at the corner of Bucky’s mouth. He licks along Bucky’s lips, and past them into the wet warmth. He lingers for a while before he pulls back a little, starts kissing over Bucky’s cheek, his jaw, murmurs, “What?” against his face.

“I, mm,” as Steve nips at his chin, and lets his right hand drift into the soft strands of Bucky’s hair, "Steve, maybe we should go slow for a bit. I mean, I know you've waited a long time, but it sounds like you've been through Hell. You've done so well, but maybe you're not...in the best place right now. I don't want to make things worse for you by trying to help. There's no reason to rush this-"

"Bucky," Steve interrupts, then pauses. Tries to find a way to express the adorable needlessness of Bucky's concerns. "There is nothing to make worse, I'm - I've been away from Hydra for two years. I've been figuring myself out, then trying to get you back, I've been missing you, wanting you, for two years. And having you here, finally - I'm in the best place I can remember being for decades. Right here with you. You couldn't possibly make anything worse. You can only make me feel good."

“Mmm, Steve, you're so sweet. I just, I don’t want to...I don’t want to do anything you don’t want. I don’t want you to feel...you said they made you, I don’t want you to feel obliged-”

Steve laughs, taking a break from licking down Bucky’s neck, along the throbbing pulse point, but still moving downwards. “I don’t feel obliged. I know you’re not making me do this. I want to - God I want to. I’ve been without you for so long. Want everything, all of you...” He’s reached Bucky’s nipple, sucks on it and bites down, gently, just grazing it with his teeth.

“But, I don’t want to do any of the stuff they did. I don’t want to do anything wrong.” Bucky’s voice is a little breathless now.

“You won’t. You won’t beat me. Or shock me, or drown me, or burn me, or dig needles or knives in my skin, or tell me to kill anyone-”

“Of course I wouldn’t-”

“I know that. You’re you. So it’s fine. Everything’s fine.” Bucky won’t hurt him. Bucky’s safe.

“But I could still, m-mess it up.” Steve’s hand had drifted out of Bucky’s hair and down his neck, fingers brushing the sensitive skin of his collar bones and clavicle, to stroke across his nipple, still cool with spit, while Steve’s mouth was busy talking. “I don’t want to make you feel bad.”

How can he explain this so that Bucky will understand, without disgusting him?

“I’ve...I’ve had a lot worse. So much worse. There’s a point where, if you go past it, nothing else can ever be as bad. Pain is relative, and...” sadness is rising in Bucky’s eyes like a shimmering mist, and Steve put it there. He backtracks fast.

“Look, all that matters is that you can’t hurt me. I mean, it’s you. I love you, like I have never and will never love anyone else. You make me feel so good, just by being here, by being alive. Whatever you do, I’ll feel good.”

Was that too much? Does he sound like too much of a slut? He’s just trying to be honest, to make Bucky understand-

“But I don’t want to do anything bring back bad memories. I don’t want to even remind you of how they treated you, before.”

Steve thinks his answer through carefully before saying, “You...can’t not. I don’t think that’s possible.”

“Wh-what? What do you mean?”

“I mean I can’t forget what they did. The wipes didn’t work like that. What they did to me, it's part of who I am now. Always. And their training, that was permanent. I remember you, but I’m not really. Not the guy you remember.” He doesn’t want to be talking about this. This is making him feel dirty. He just wants Bucky to fuck him. “It doesn’t matter. I can ignore what I remember. And now is not the same as before. I''ll enjoy this, don’t doubt that,” he tries a smile, and Bucky’s mouth flickers in return, though there’s still pain in his eyes. “I still want you to touch me just the same.”

Steve shifts their legs so that his hip is against Bucky’s groin and Bucky’s thigh is rubbing against his own hard cock. He doesn’t know when he got hard, or when Bucky did. They both are, now, and though Bucky’s eyes are sad they flick closed when Steve shifts his hips a little, grinds into Bucky, simultaneously finding some much-needed friction himself.

“No. No, that isn’t right. I need to be sure - mm - sure that I’m not going to do something wrong. That I won’t trigger any bad memories, or, or let it go wrong, so you feel like you’re being forced.”

Steve sighs. He just wants to feel hot, he just wants to burn, here and now with Bucky, hotter than he ever has before. But Bucky doesn’t want this to blur lines between now and then, so “I can do it just like we used to do it. I remember. I won’t use any of the things they taught me. It can just be me and you, like before.”

“No, that’s not what I mean.” Steve still hasn’t stopped grinding down on Bucky, rubbing up against him in return, and Bucky’s breath hitches now, between words. “I don’t - look, cut it out for a second, won’t you, let a guy think?” Steve stops, immediately, because Bucky told him to, but he doesn’t want to. He wants to keep going until he finds release - God, he’s such a disgusting slut. He just wants it so much, doesn’t he, rutting up against Bucky like an animal. He wishes he could turn it off, but he can’t. He’ll always be dirty. He backs off, away from Bucky like he was asked to.

“Hey, hey now. Stevie, look at me.” Bucky’s hand grabs his chin from where he’d angled it away from Bucky’s face. “Stay with me, yeah?”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“This, this is what I mean. I didn’t mean to upset you, when I told you to stop, but I did anyway, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, ok. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

It is though. It’s his fault for being the broken one.

“I need to know, Stevie. I need to know if you don’t feel good.”

How can he make Bucky understand?

“You keep saying that - I think we mean different things. If you’re touching me like that, if you’re having sex with me, then I’ll be aroused. I’ll enjoy it. I won’t want you to stop.”

“Because of what they did.” Bucky’s anger still makes him feel loved, but the warmth fades, a little, because,

“No!” Steve says, without bothering to think about it, and then pauses and thinks perhaps. But he will not tell Bucky that, ever, because Bucky looks relieved at his answer and he won’t take that relief away. And it is not a lie when he says, “It’s because it’s you. Because I love you. That makes me feel good.”

“Yeah I know.” Bucky’s hand on his face caresses his jaw. “I’m real glad to hear that. You make me feel good too.”

Steve almost doesn’t, in case the answer changes, but he has to check, “Even despite everything?”

“Yes. And I guess...also because of everything. Because you had all that happen to you, and you still kept your humanity. Still took down Hydra. Still found me.” Bucky’s hand traces over his eyebrow, his forehead. “Because despite everything, you kept your conscience, your morals. Your soul.”

The words sing through him, rekindle the light that was fading at his admittance.

“Please, please let me kiss you now.”

“I want to- just, swear to me that you’ll tell me you’ll say if you don’t feel good. And by that I mean...Ugh. This is hard. If I do something that’s reminding you too much of something from then that made you uncomfortable. If I’m hurting you, or making you feel bad, or weak, or sad, or- or anything.”

“Ok. I promise.” “Ok then.” Steve surges up the bed to press his lips to Bucky’s. He’s firm, and Bucky’s gentle, and overall it feels perfect.

Bucky’s lips, his eyes, his hair, his skin, his body pressed up against Steve so close, he wants. He was never allowed to want like this. This is so much better than anything he was ever allowed.

He twists them, slowly, so that Bucky can stop him, until Bucky’s on his back, and Steve’s above him. He kisses his way down Bucky’s chest. His hands span the sides of Bucky’s ribs, then he slides them lower, kneads into Bucky’s lower back until there’s no tension left in the muscles there.

“Fuck...that feels good.” That word. They used to say that. Call him a fuck-whore, a fuck-hole, or yell it while he serviced them-

But Bucky only ever used to say it while they were alone. He picked up all sorts of filthy language at the docks, but he was a perfect gentleman, and he never used it. Apart from when Steve made him feel so good he couldn’t help it.

Bucky’s hand is on the back of Steve’s head, his nails scritching into his skull lightly, so lightly that there’s no pain at all. It just feels good. It feels so good.

He’s kissing down Bucky’s stomach now. He’s trying to show Bucky, through it, how much he loves him, trying to give back at least a little of the heat that’s pooling in his torso, his limbs, his skull, to make Bucky feel good in return. It must be working at least a little, as Bucky moans from deep in his throat, says, “Yeah, Stevie, just like that.”

That name. A nickname that means he is loved. That he is safe. People used to beat him, sometimes, Before, but Bucky would always come save him. Always wanted to protect him. Loved him.

Steve moves his hands round to Bucky’s hips, the bones there, the muscles of his abdomen, and pulls his pants down past his groin until Bucky’s cock is free of them.

“Steve,” Bucky says, and grabs his hair, too, to get his attention, “You know you can stop?”

“Yes.”

“Good. That’s good. And also, hah” as Steve wraps a hand around his cock and starts jerking him off, slowly, gently, lovingly as he can, “also, you should tell me. Would you prefer it if I didn’t move much? Would it help if I talked to you? Just tell me, baby, just tell me what you’d like.”

And oh, God, he’s so lucky. He’s so lucky that Bucky is good enough to ask him that. He’s so kind, so thoughtful, he does so much for Steve. He always did. “Would it...could you talk? Just, tell me. If I’m doing good. Or if you want me to stop. Let me know exactly what you want, how to make you feel good.”

“Ok, I will.” Bucky’s hand is caressing his face, so gently. His fingers skate past Steve’s mouth, so he sucks them in, glances at Bucky’s cock standing upright so prominent in his eye line where he’s still rubbing him off.

“Oh, fuck, yes.” It means he’s doing good. That word means he’s doing good. It’s like praise. “You look so hot like that Steve. What else?”

“I’d like it if you moved,” he says around Bucky’s fingers. “So...so I don’t feel like I’m just...” servicing you.

“I understand. So this isn’t just one-sided.” Steve is so, so grateful to Bucky for even not making him say that, for doing so much to make this easier for him, to make it good for him. For caring enough even to try. He licks Bucky’s fingers, twists his tongue round them delicately, rubs his cheek into Bucky’s hip a little. Bucky’s torso shudders, “Oh, God, Steve, that’s so fucking filthy.”

Filthy. He is. He’s a dirty little cockslut. He’s worthless. He’s disgusting. He’s lucky Bucky’s even touching him.

But - Bucky liked it? He’s still turned on, he still wants this. Maybe -

But he’s not like them, he doesn’t want Steve to be like that, he’s Bucky -

“No, no, Steve, look at me.” His tongue was still twining intricately around Bucky’s fingers, but his eyes had slipped closed. “Hey, you’re ok, you’re ok Stevie.” Bucky’s hand slips out of his mouth and he suppresses a whimper at the loss in case Bucky doesn’t want him to act like such a pathetic desperate airhead. Bucky’s hand caresses his head, strokes into his hair, pulls Steve’s face to look up at him and Steve blinks his eyes open. “Steve, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that, should I?”

“Doesn’t matter.” It’s true.

“Yes it does. If it upset you, it matters.” Steve is so bothersome. This is Bucky’s first night awake in so long, Steve should be making him feel good, should sooth him, help him to feel at home. Why did he have to make a fuss about one little word?

“You said you’d tell me if...”

He’s disobeyed Bucky’s orders, he’s been bad -

Request, Bucky’s request -

“Hey, come up here, Steve.” Bucky tugs him up the bed again, his hand on Steve’s neck, and Steve goes. He can’t even please Bucky enough to get to suck his cock.

Bucky settles him on his left, so that Steve’s pressed all along his vulnerable side, and his hand goes to Steve’s upper arm, holding him firm and secure.

“Lets do things a little differently. I can’t talk to you if you’re all the way down there, can I?”

Steve shakes his head, makes sure his face hides his dejection.

But Bucky’s looking at him closely, and Bucky’s known him for a long time. Not recently, but better than anyone else ever did. “Maybe...maybe it would be best if we didn’t do this straight away. If we took it slower...”

“No! No, I do want to fuck, I really do. I missed you so bad...I’ve been waiting for so long...”

“Ok, that’s ok, it’s alright, don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere, I’m staying right here. You don’t have to worry.” Bucky strokes his hair, reassuringly, and Steve stops clutching onto him quite so tight. His cock’s not as hard as it was before, but he grinds into Bucky’s hip, kisses Bucky’s cheek chastely, remembers Bucky’s praise, and it starts filling with blood once again. Tries to prove to Bucky with his body how much he wants this, wants him.

“I’ve missed you too, Stevie. We hadn’t had much time in the war. Though I guess that was a long time ago now.”

“Yeah. We didn’t, though. So many times, I wanted to get you alone, anywhere, and just kiss you.”

“Mmm. I’ve missed making out. Maybe we should just try that for a while.”

“Ok.” Anything. Anything Bucky will give him.

Bucky kisses him, careful and skilled. It occurs to Steve, as Bucky strokes along Steve’s tongue gentle enough to make his whole body shiver, that Bucky knows everything that he likes, too. Or at least, the things he likes when he has a choice.

Bucky’s hand goes to his back, between his shoulder blades, and applies just enough pressure that Steve feels held close, held dear, not trapped. He wouldn’t actually care if he was trapped right now, if he was restrained at the wrists and ankles, so long as Bucky kept kissing him.

The kiss goes on and on until Steve gets lost in it. Until he becomes nothing more than his lips moving over Bucky’s, until his world is two mouths and nothing else matters. It feels incredible. It feels solely good. Usually, there was something he was blocking out, at least one sensation he was ignoring, trying to concentrate on the pleasure to distract himself, but right here, there’s nothing but Bucky, and nothing but pleasure.

They aren’t stopping to breath often, and Steve is getting lightheaded, dizzy, high on endorphins. He feels hungry for Bucky, like he’s been starved.

He could live like this.

Steve keeps grinding against Bucky until they’re both fully hard all over again, and finally, after what could be hours but is probably minutes, Bucky pulls away. There’s a pause while both of them catch their breath. “Listen, Steve,” he pants, “I know you want to, I want to as well. We just have to be careful, ok?”

“Ok.” There is nothing he wouldn’t do for Bucky, and especially for this.

“So I’ll talk to you, I’ll tell you how I want it. Do you think you could do the same, maybe?”

“I...probably.”

“We’ll try it out, ok? Maybe you could just try to keep talking to me, tell me what you’re thinking?”

“Yeah...”

“If it’s ok?”

“But, what if it’s not really something you want to hear during sex?” He’s full up with blackness, he doesn’t want any of it to slip into Bucky. Sometimes they wanted him to talk dirty back to them. What if he says something disgusting by accident?

But then so what? Bucky won’t punish him.

And Bucky says, “That’s ok, Steve. This isn’t just about me. I want to do the right things to make you feel good, too,”

And the feeling of being cared for sings through Steve’s chest. Bucky cares. Steve wants him, God, he wants to show Bucky just how grateful he is-

“Tell me, ok?”

Steve tries to answer as honestly as he can. “Right now, I’m not really thinking. I’m just feeling. I just feel good. I...want.”

“I’m so glad to hear it, Steve. You deserve it. You deserve to feel good. You’ve been so brave, all this time. I can’t believe you’ve done so well, been through so much and come back from it. I’m so proud, Stevie, so proud of you-”

The sound that Steve makes probably sounds closer to a mewl than anything else. His head’s a mess of pleasure, gratitude and arousal. He’s desperate to do something, anything, to give back even a fraction of the pleasure Bucky’s giving him. His hand goes to Bucky’s cock, and he strokes the silky soft skin over the inner firm hardness, runs his thumb over the wet slit. Bucky chokes a little, then hums with pleasure, his spine curving forwards so his face presses into Steve’s shoulder, his hips closer to Steve’s hand.

“Steve, Stevie, baby.” Bucky’s voice is rough enough to almost be a growl. “Wanna fuck you, wanna fuck...”

“Yes, please, please, do it, yes,” Steve says, his words interspersed with kisses pressed into Bucky’s soft silky hair, his cheek, his shoulder.

“Yeah.” Bucky’s hand pulls away from Steve’s back, where he’d been pressing them closer together, goes back to Steve’s shoulder. “Yeah, yes, but I we’ll do it like this. So I can see your face. And...and you’ll talk to me. If I say a word that’s wrong again, if it upsets you, just tell me...tell me no.”

“I wouldn’t want you to stop, though. I’d never want you to stop.”

“But I need to know, so I don’t say it again.”

Bucky’s tone sounds frustrated. Steve is frustrating him. He tries harder to understand Bucky’s point, says, “I’ll tell you. I will.”

“Good. Perfect. Thank you, Stevie, thank you for helping me take care of you...you’re so good...”

If he could, he’d purr with the praise. It’s filling him up. The darkness slips off like oil when Bucky says things like that.

“You like that, yeah? When I tell you you’re good?”

Steve smiles. Of course Bucky notices everything. He’s so attentive, he’s so kind to Steve. “So much...”

“See, that’s good to know. Used to be, you thought it was condescending, or patronising, or whatever, so it's good to know that now - hey, what’s wrong?”

Steve tried to hide his reaction, but Bucky caught it anyway. All of his walls, all of his training, it’s all crumbling in the face of the pleasure Bucky’s giving him. He doesn’t care. Let it burn.

“I...I wish I could still be how I used to for you. I’m sorry for reminding you...of everything I’ve done. Everything I am now.”

“No, sweetheart, you don’t have to feel sorry for any of that. None of it’s your fault. It’s alright, I’ll love whoever you are now. People always change. It’s ok, I don’t mind. I’ve just got another way to make you feel good now, and that’s ok.”

“I guess so. Thanks, Buck.” Steve loves hearing Bucky say sweetheart. It used to be a secret, something they can only say when they were alone together. Something precious, to be treasured, coveted.

“That’s ok. It was good of you to tell me when it upset you.”

Steve can’t help but preen a little, and Bucky smiles indulgently, kisses the tip of his nose. Steve lets him, then catches Bucky’s lips again, kisses him. He’s almost quivering with anticipation as Bucky’s hand leaves Steve’s shoulder, ghosts down his front, lightly over the sensitive skin of his stomach, under the waistband of his pants and onto his cock. Steve gasps at the contact, couldn’t stop his hips rocking forward into the touch if he tried. Bucky, he wanted to know what he thought, so he forces out, “They never used to do that. Never used to let me have that. Or, barely ever, anyway. F-feels so good...”

“Yeah? You like it then? You want more?”

“Yesss...”

Then Bucky moves Steve’s hand away from his cock, but it’s ok, because he doesn’t want to stop. He shifts closer until his cock is pressing up against Steve’s, wraps his hand around the both of them, moves both of their hands his just a little faster, but still so gentle, still taking care to make it good for Steve. He’s thrusting into their shared grip, he can’t stop himself and he doesn’t care, and he feels vulnerable, but so safe, and the contrasting emotions seem to compliment each other, push him higher, send him back up into the clouds, and Bucky’s hand is firm and kind, and it’s Bucky, it’s Bucky-

“Look at you, Stevie. So good for me. I’m pleased you told me what you like. You’re so pretty like this, Stevie.”

They used to say that, pretty slut, pretty mouth, pretty hole, they used to say-

“I don’t...I don’t like that word. Pretty.”

Bucky’s hand falters. “Oh, shit, I’m sorry. I won’t say it again. Do you want me to stop?”

“No! No-”

“Fine, ok, I won’t.” Bucky picks up their pace again. Steve had stopped, when Bucky said that word, but Bucky didn’t tell him off. Bucky didn’t mind.

Bucky’s hand twists around his cock, and his fingers rub deliberately up against all the places he knows Steve likes, the sensitive underside, the head, the slit. They’ve been giving each other hand jobs almost for forever, and Steve knows Bucky’s dick as well as his own, so he knows he’s giving Bucky as good as he’s getting, even as he feels himself drifting with the pleasure. They’re both pushing their hips together, and it’s so familiar, and if he weren’t already raw from pleasure he’d be raw from the memories of it. Layers and layers of them. Bucky and him. In their parent’s houses, in their sun-soaked apartment, in someone else’s attic in a bombed out war zone-

Get off already whore, hurry it up, we may have to maintenance you but this is not about you, just come already-

“Hey, Stevie, look here, look at me,” and Bucky has the prettiest grey-blue eyes in the whole of existence.

“I’m here. I’m here,” Steve replies, making it true, and Bucky smiles so his eyes crinkle round the edges, mouth panting and open.

He’s close. He’s missed Bucky so much for so long, hasn’t come since the last time he was made to and this isn’t everything he wants, but he can have anything he wants now, it’s within his reach, and Bucky’s every touch is sending shivers up and down his body. His muscles are tensing, his hips thrusting into Bucky’s grip. It’s out of his control, but he doesn’t have to worry about it, because he’s not hurting Bucky, he’s safe.

His mind is drifting into gold. He can feel his orgasm building like a wave, higher and higher until it drowns him. Almost. Almost...

He remembers his manners, just. “I’m close, Buck, I’m close, I’m gonna come.”

“I know. I know, and it’s ok, I want you to. Want you to feel so good, Stevie...Come for me,” and Steve does.

As his stomach tenses and his dick spurts come, Steve is a million miles away. His mind is a haze of golden sunlight. He’s lost in it. His eyes flicker shut and it feels like his body’s suspended in warm, thick, sweet air.

Distantly, he feels Bucky move up against him, hears his voice saying, “Hey, there now sweetheart. There you are. You’re okay, you’re good...” Loving nonsense. Steve curls into him, curls closer. Wants to wrap himself up in this feeling, this emotion, and never experience anything else again.

Bucky’s voice. Bucky’s skin, warm against his own. Steve has been so cold and so alone for so long. He had tried hard to remember everything he could, but he had forgotten this. He had forgotten the perfection of this kind of ecstasy, this worn elastic bliss.

When he opens his eyes, it feels like waking from a trance, from a deep sleep, but it’s only been seconds. Bucky’s still hard.

He’s beyond desperate to reciprocate, now. Bucky’s given him so much, Steve is so grateful to him. He knows how to show that, he knows what Bucky likes. He slips down Bucky’s body, skims his lips over the length of Bucky’s cock before swallowing him down. He can only get about half of it in his mouth, it’s been too long, but Bucky doesn’t seem to mind. He’s choking on air, his hand going to the back of Steve’s head, and then he’s panting, saying, “Oh, God, Stevie, fuck, you’re so fucking good at that,” as he uses his hand on the length he can’t yet fit into his mouth.

He takes progressively more of Bucky into him every time he bobs his head, getting his throat used to it gradually so he doesn’t wretch, before he swallows all of Bucky deep into his throat.

It’s something Hydra taught him, but it’s bringing Bucky pleasure. It’s ok. It’s like when he was using the assassination skills they taught him to kill them all; he’s utilising the useful parts of what they did to him for a good end.

Bucky cries out, “Hah-ah, yes, fuck, God, yes, fucking perfect Stevie,” and he hums at the praise, then hums again for the beautiful way Bucky’s eyes squeeze shut and his spine arches, throwing his head back and his hips forward, and his hand tightens in Steve’s hair.

Steve used to hate this. Even when he was permitted to be in relative control of the situation, he hated having someone else use his mouth like this. He hated not being able to speak, to breathe; he had the inexplainable fear of feeling his airways blocked, of lungs shrinking, seizing up, of being unable to draw in breath, though he couldn’t remember the asthma properly back then. And he hated having to be so, so careful of his teeth, in case he got punished for letting them cause his superiors pain.

But this isn’t like that. He can feel Bucky’s length hot and heavy in his mouth, and he can feel Bucky’s hand on the back of his head, but Bucky’s not pushing him down. He’s not forcing Steve onto his dick, and when Steve bobs upwards to draw in air through his nose, Bucky doesn’t try to stop him.

Bucky lets him go slow, if he wants to, or push himself down as far as he can, until his nose is in the tight dark curls at Bucky’s groin. As flexes his throat around Bucky, he just groans and says, “Yes, Stevie, baby, that feels amazing,” and doesn’t tell him to hurry it up, or stop fucking around and make him come already, whore, or-

And when he decides, of his own free will, to speed up a little, to bob his head and hum, Bucky’s eyes snap open, and he looks down at Steve and says, “That’s perfect, that’s so good,” and that makes the light start glowing inside Steve again, despite what he’s doing. Bucky holds Steve’s eyes, smiles down at him, and tells him he’s good, and, “I’m so proud of you,” and, “Thank you, thank you for this, for everything, for being here, thank you” and “Your lips, so pr- so beautiful, you’re so, so beautiful” and it’s ok, because they never used that word, and anyway, he knows when Bucky says it he means it. And it’s ok if someone thinks he’s beautiful, as long as that someone is Bucky.

His fingers stroke around Bucky’s thighs, his balls, his perineum, his hole. They linger there, the spit and pre-come dripping down from Steve’s mouth slicking the way, as he rubs and gently teases and slips one finger in to the first then second knuckle, and then all the way, and massages Bucky’s prostate the way he knows feels best, in time with his head bobbing. Bucky’s biting back moans with every breath now, panting and begging almost incoherently, but it’s ok, because he’s not begging Steve to stop, he’s begging him to carry on, he’s enjoying it, he’s praising Steve.

Then Bucky says, “Stevie, Steve, darling, sweetheart, baby, fuck, I’m gonna come...” and Steve swallows around him, speeds up the movement of his hand, and Bucky comes in his mouth, Steve swallows all of it before Bucky pulls him up with a hand clenched in his hair, and Steve loves the pain because it’s evidence of how gone Bucky is, because of him. Bucky’s kissing him again and it’s the best reward Steve could ever ask for, it feels so good. He’s getting hard again, maybe has been for a while. Bucky notices.

“It’s the serum...”

“It’s ok. I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself.” Bucky smiles so wide his closed eyes go crinkly round the edges, and his skin is flushed and his breathing is only just slowing, and he looks so beautiful that Steve smiles too, just as wide. 


“I am, Buck. I really am.”

“And you still feel fine?”

“Amazing.”

He wants. He wants more, and he’s allowed to have, Bucky’s right here, and he’s safe, he’s not in danger anymore. Steve saved him, and Steve...

Steve’s good.

Because he saved Bucky, and he’s making Bucky feel good. Bucky said so.

“You said...” Steve starts.

“Yeah?”

“You said you wanted to fuck me.”

“Yeah, God, yes. Stevie...” Bucky reaches for his jaw and pulls him up until he can reach his lips and Steve goes pliant and soft and just lets Bucky kiss him, just basks in the warmth and the light, just floats in the anticipation of the pleasure to come.

Bucky’s here, he’s alive, and he wants Steve despite the dirt on him, because he’s good.

The warmth burns hotter with that thought, and Steve kisses Bucky back, licks into his mouth and lets Bucky bite his lip and Bucky’s hand is running down his back and onto his ass-cheeks and he’s squeezing, massaging, and Steve moans into the kiss. They break to breathe, and Bucky says, “Steve, I wanna, I wanna fuck you, but, you gotta give me a sec-”

He interrupts the apology to say, “That’s ok. I can wait. I can wait,” and then Steve is laughing, again, for the second time in such a short time for such a long time, and it’s because of Bucky, because Bucky’s here. Because Steve has waited for him for so, so long, borne so much for this, withstood so much suffering, misery and torture, he has worked so hard, and it’s all over now. All the pain and blackness he has lived through, it’s gone. It’s over. He’s in the light now, because Bucky’s here, and he’s alive, and he loves Steve forever.

Bucky’s smiling too, says, “I’m glad you’re happy.”

“I am. You make me happy.” He wants Bucky closer, now. He wants, and he can have. His right hand finds Bucky’s where it rests now at his lower back, and he squeezes it lightly before he brings it round to rest on his waist, Bucky’s thumb brushing his ribcage. Then he hitches his leg up to Bucky’s hip, opens himself up wide, and his fingers find his hole, careful not to touch his cock. He’s so worked up all over again, he can’t suppress a gasp just at the light touch. Bucky’s breathing picks up again in response, his hand flexing on Steve’s side.

“Holy shit, Steve, Stevie, baby...”

Steve shuts him up with a kiss because Bucky still doesn’t seem to understand what those words do to him, and he doesn’t want to come too early, before Bucky’s even inside him. He wants to give this to Bucky, give himself to Bucky.

They took and they took and they took, but they didn't take this. They didn't take his soul. Bucky told him so.

He rubs around the rim a few times before he pushes his finger in to the first knuckle, waits until the pain stops, relishes the rough slide.

He kisses Bucky, lets Bucky’s tongue inside his mouth, breathes in when Bucky breathes out.

He wants to burn up in heat and light and fire and burn all the blackness away forever.

He pushes in to the next knuckle, ignores the way his cock bobs against their stomachs, focuses on the stretch.

He wants Bucky to fuck him clean. He knows it doesn’t work like that, but he wants it anyway, and he’s allowed now, like he’s allowed food when he’s hungry and sleep when he’s tired.

His finger’s in all the way now, and he crooks it just the right way, his groan muffled in Bucky’s mouth. Bucky’s groan is louder, and then he pulls back and says, “Hey, wait, Stevie where’s the slick?” as Steve works a second finger in, starts scissoring himself open, getting himself ready for Bucky.

“Don’t need it.”

“What? I’m not fucking you with no slick.”

Steve’s hand stills, his breathing hitches, his eyes flick up to Bucky’s.

“Oh, shit. Sorry. Stevie, don’t worry, we’re still gonna fuck. I’m just trying to make sure it’s good for you, that’s all. I don’t want it to hurt you any more than necessary.”

“I know. I know you’re not going to hurt me.” He almost says, you don’t have to keep reassuring me. They’ve talked about this. But Bucky’s only trying to do good, and he’s trying to make Steve feel good, like he’s precious, like he’s worth pleasure. That’s how much Bucky loves him, that is tangible proof of love. “I don’t need slick, but I think there’s some in the draw.”

“Thank you for being so understanding,” Bucky praises and Steve blushes, even though the tone is slightly sardonic. Of course he picked up on what Steve didn’t say. He knows Steve so well. Loves him nonetheless. Steve is so lucky.

Bucky pushes himself up, leans slightly lopsidedly across Steve, and Steve rolls under him further to support Bucky with his free arm across his collarbones, until his legs bracket Bucky’s and Bucky hovers above him. He tries to lessen the movement of his hips as they shift onto his hand in case it destabilizes Bucky, but Bucky doesn’t seem to mind, so he doesn’t try too hard.

Bucky comes back with three different bottles of flavoured lube and raised eyebrows, and Steve says, “Stark,” in explanation.

“Huh. Ok.” He squints at the tiny bottles in his hand a little closer. “They make slick just for sex now?”

“Yup. It’s flavoured.”

“I see that. I don’t suppose you have a preference...”

“Just get it in me.”

Bucky drops two bottles at random and braces his legs under Steve’s so he can move back until he’s kneeling over Steve. It’s so right, having Bucky over him like this. He has all of Bucky’s attention and focus and he feels so safe. It’s so perfect.

Bucky glances pointedly at where Steve’s still fucking himself onto his fingers in small, jerky movements.

“My turn to do that now.”

“Yes. Yes, please.” Steve pulls his fingers out as Bucky flicks the cap of the bottle with his thumb, then Steve takes the lube and dribbles it over Bucky’s hand. Bucky settles on his haunches and reaches out to gently, teasingly trace his fingers round Steve’s hole, and they’re slick and warm and Bucky, and Steve’s world starts to come apart at the seams.

Bucky works his fingers all the way around, pressing gently with only just not enough pressure, and Steve says, “Please, come on, just a little more, come on,” and Bucky presses one inside and Steve says, “More, I can take more, please, I want more, give me more,” and Bucky gives him two and stretches and scissors and does not touch Steve’s prostate and he says, “Come on, you know, I need it, come on, please,” and Bucky pushes in a third and rubs them exactly where he needs them and Steve nearly comes and can only say, “Please."

Bucky doesn’t stop, keeps rubbing in exactly the right place in the right way with only barely enough pressure and Steve can only beg, “Please, please, please,” and he doesn’t even know what he’s begging for, only that it’s not for this to stop, he never wants this to stop. This is the opposite of the hours he’s spent begging for an end to pain, this is a million miles from the cold bright rooms and the machines and the men-

“Eyes open, Stevie, baby, I want you to look at me,” and he does, he’d do anything for that voice, and Bucky’s calves tense to balance him as he leans down to kiss Steve’s stomach, so gentle and sweet, maintaining eye contact the whole time and avoiding his cock maddeningly.

“Wait a sec,” Steve says, and wriggles up the bed until he’s at the headboard, and Bucky lets him pull him up by the shoulders, nudges him with his knees so that Steve’s thighs end up splayed open over Bucky’s lap and he’s curled up against the headboard at just the right height that Bucky can lean forward and kiss him.

Bucky’s fingers were jostled but he pushes them back in and keeps Steve dizzy with pleasure as he kisses him so he can’t breathe. He can’t get any leverage to move, all he can to is take it as Bucky pushes into him over and over and kisses him and he feels so trapped in such a good way, so safe and secured. There’s nothing Bucky wants for him except to feel good. Everything Bucky’s doing for him now is to give him pleasure. Buck’s mouth against his own makes him feel owned, wanted, loved.

He’s swimming in a sea so gold it feels like syrup, hot and sweet and caressing, and he doesn’t want it to ever end, but he has a vague idea that at one point he wanted something more than this, so he forces himself to break away from Bucky’s kiss for long enough to pant, “Fuck me, please Bucky, I’m ready.”

“Yeah, ok,” Bucky says breathlessly, and then, “God, you are so beautiful Steve. I love you so much,” as his hand leaves Steve, goes to the headboard, moving into a better position to fuck him, “You’re my sweetheart, aren’t you? You’re my baby...”

Steve’s dick jumps and he gasps “Yes, yours, all yours,” as Bucky lines himself up with Steve’s hole while Steve holds him steady. “All yours, take it all.”

“You like that then huh,” Bucky asks as his hips shift down and in until his dick’s pressed up against him, “Me telling you who you belong to,” and Steve practically yelps, “Yes,” as the head of Bucky’s dick sinks into him.

The preparation has lessened the burn, but it still hurts a little, and Steve uses it to focus himself in the moment for long enough to tell Bucky, because it’s important, “But not because of what they did. Only because it’s you. I’ve only ever belonged to you,” willingly, he does not say.

Bucky smiles like the cat that got the cream, says, “I know that Stevie,” and ignores what he does not say in favour of fucking into him and Steve’s world whites out to pleasure and Bucky and here. Words like, “Yes, please, more, yours, always yours,” babble out of his mouth, and Bucky answers him with “Mine, all mine, you’re perfect, you’re mine.”

Bucky’s not moving enough to make him come, so Steve’s squirming up against him, fucking himself onto Bucky’s dick and it feels so good.

Bucky’s voice is husky when he says, “You want it baby, don’t you? Tell me...tell me how much you want it...”

Steve says, “I want it,” and he does, so fucking bad.

They used to make him beg. They used to make him beg them to fuck him until he bled, and then they would. They’d slap his face and call him slut -

Bucky’s hand trails from where it was braced on his chest up to his face to his temple, and Steve flinches.

Bucky’s breath catches as he says, “Steve? Are you-”

“I’m fine. I’m good.” And he is. Because that was then, and this is now, and now, Bucky’s the one fucking him. “I’m yours.”

“Mine.”

He smiles against Bucky’s palm, twists his head into Bucky’s fingertips.

Then Bucky moves his hand to the headboard, and suddenly he’s got more power to press into Steve with, and he’s driving him higher, higher higher.

Every single thrust hits Steve exactly where he needs it - that is how well Bucky knows Steve. That is how much he loves him.

Bucky knows Steve, so when he says, “Good, you’re so good for me,” well, he would know. And he loves Steve, “love you so goddamn much baby, ‘till the end of the line, forever,” and he’s never ever going to leave, and Steve is safe.

Bucky’s dick fills him up more than his fingers ever could, and every time he thrusts against Steve’s prostate stars of pleasure spark up his spine. His dick is bobbing against their stomachs, dripping pre-come, but he ignores it in favour of holding Bucky steady.

He clenches around Bucky, tries his best to return the kisses that fall on his lips, but he needs to breathe and so does Bucky, so they’re mainly just panting against each other’s mouths, huffs of breath from the other’s lungs breathed in until it really doesn’t matter where one starts and the other begins, just like it never did.

His eyes are open, staring into Bucky’s beautiful sky-eyes, even when sweat stings. He can’t move his hips much, can’t reach his dick, he can only let Bucky give him pleasure and use him, hear him say, “I love you,” and whisper, “Yours.”

This is heaven.

This is hot and burning and sweet and singing in his chest. This is light and warm and high from the filthy ground and none of it will ever touch him again because Bucky’s here, he’s safe now. There is only grey-blue bright storm-cloud light.

This is the best day of his life, and this is not the last time, it’s the first of many.

Bucky says, “Sugar, I’m close, I’m gonna come,”

Steve says, “Yeah, yes,”

and Bucky says, “You can. You can come,” and he does.

Light blooms.

Bucky fucks him through it, and aftershocks run all the way through him until he feels like liquid.

Steve wakes up in the morning clean, because Bucky washed him up while he was sleeping. Warm, because Bucky’s wrapped around his him, legs draped over his, tangled up. His mouth is against soft hair, and when he moves Bucky leans his head back to look him in the eye, smiles so his gorgeous eyes crinkle round the edges, and says, “Good morning, Steve,” and Steve says, “I love you,” and kisses him.