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The first time it happens, Bucky has no idea how to react. He and Steve are walking down the street, when a slight woman takes in Bucky’s terrified eyes, the dark circles so bad they almost look like bruises, and Steve’s protective hand resting on his lower back, guiding him down the busy sidewalk (but it must look possessive, to someone looking for a sign), and comes to the wrong conclusion.
She glares at Steve, who curls his fingers against Bucky’s spine when she reaches for her purse, and pulls out a card. “When you’re ready to leave, just call,” she says, pressing the little card-stock rectangle into Bucky’s hand.
Bucky accepts it, blinking in confusion, while Steve flushes hot and swallows down the anger and shame at her misconception. It’s good that people are concerned about him. Steve wants Bucky to know that people care. Steve watches the way her straight, black hair hangs down her back as she walks away—there isn’t a single strand out of place.
Bucky is quiet the rest of their walk, but when they get back home, he’s all questions. “Why did she give me a card?” he asks. “Why was she mad at you? What did she mean about me leaving?” his voice takes on a panicked edge on that last part. “Is she with them? Are they going to take me away?”
“No one is taking you away, Buck,” Steve says. He brings Bucky’s hand to his lips, to kiss Bucky’s knuckles. They’re bruised, from when he put the wrong hand through a wall after a nightmare. “I promise.”
That calms Bucky, almost in an instant. The way that Bucky trusts him, when no one would blame Bucky for never trusting another soul again, makes something warm and flutter in Steve’s chest, every time.
Bucky moves in close for a hug, and Steve pulls Bucky close and holds him there for a long moment. Since Bucky made the shattering (and jesus, had it been shattering to watch) discovery that physical contact did not necessitate pain (and Steve will never forget the stunned look of realization on his face, never, never, never), he has been eager to use touch for comfort. No one should ever have to realize a thing like that, but it is progress, and when it comes to touching him, Steve can never get enough.
The way Bucky feels in his arms—the mixture of fragility and tensile strength—makes the protectiveness surge in Steve’s chest. Bucky’s warmth pierces straight through seventy years in the ice. Steve wants always to have him near like this, pressed skin to skin. Steve wants to kill everyone who’s ever hurt him, and kill anyone who might try to hurt him again.
Once Bucky has had his fill, Steve lets him go. The loss of contact aches, but in all likelihood, Bucky will want to cuddle in front of the television after they eat. He is starved for positive contact the same way that Steve is starved for him. Steve doesn’t think that Bucky quite understands his own feelings yet, but they were intense enough to break him through decades of torture and brainwashing, and this new Bucky’s trust and faith and the warmth that emerges as the ice melts away all take Steve’s breath away.
“What did she mean, Steve?” Bucky says.
Steve is making them sandwiches, and heating up a vat of tomato soup from the restaurant they both like. It is easy to try and stall, but he is never going to keep the truth from Bucky, not about anything. “She thought I was hurting you, Buck,” Steve says, spreading mustard on thick-cut whole wheat bread. “She wanted to help.”
Bucky frowns. It’s an expression Steve has gotten used to seeing on his face, but that doesn’t make him like it any better. ”You don’t hurt me.”
“It’s the last thing I would ever want to do,” Steve says.
“But why did she think that you do?” Bucky says. He’s eyeing the sandwiches like he’s not one-hundred percent sure he’ll be allowed to partake.
Steve piles all the fixings onto one quickly, so that he can cut it in half, and give it to Bucky straight away. Bucky crams the thing into his mouth in a few inelegant bites—he’s the one person in the world who gets hungry just as quickly as Steve does—and waits for the answer.
“You, um,” Steve chooses his words with a great deal of consideration. Leaving the house is already enough of a challenge, and he doesn’t want to give Bucky a complex. “People who pay attention can tell, just by seeing you, that you’ve been through a lot. You’re...wounded from everything they did to you. It’s harder to see those kinds of wounds, but some people do.”
Bucky looks troubled.
“There’s nothing wrong with you, Buck. It’s normal, after what you went through. You’re amazing, and doing so well, and I’m so proud of you, and—”
Bucky shakes his head. That isn’t it. Steve waits. Sometimes, it takes a little time for Bucky to express himself. “She doesn’t know me,” Bucky says, after a while. “Why—why does she care if someone hurts me?”
“People care, Buck,” Steve says. “When people see someone being hurt, they want to help. Good people—when they see something wrong, they don’t just stand by. They try to fix it.”
Bucky processes this new piece of information, teeth worrying the plump swell of his lower lip. He looks upset, face screwed up, and blue eyes too shiny.
“Hey, hey, what’s wrong?” Steve reaches out to put a comforting hand on his shoulder, but Bucky flinches away.
“There were people,” Bucky says, after a long pause. “Lots of people, when I was with HYDRA. Techs, and scientists, and doctors, and guards…”
“Those were bad people, Bucky. They stood by and watched—everything that was done to you, and some of them even helped hurt you,” Steve says. He tries to be as gentle as possible.
Bucky shakes his head. “They took care of me.”
Yeah, they took care of him alright—took care of him so good that when Bucky first came home, he’d stared at the shower like he was waiting for somebody to shove him in and hose him down (Steve will never forget how shocked he looked, once Steve turned on the water and helped him step inside, that it turned out to be warm). They took care of him so good that it had taken weeks—weeks—of puking up damn near everything until Bucky could process solid food again. The tiniest decisions still leave him exhausted for hours.
Making the Winter Soldier dependent had made him easier to control, and it’s an uphill battle every single day to help Bucky regain any of the things that were taken from him.
“I’m not mad at you,” Steve says, because he is an easy person to read, and Bucky shuts down at the first sign of anger from anybody. It isn’t Bucky’s fault—it’s only human that he cannot accept the fact that for seventy years, every single person that came into contact with him, including the ones who saw to his physical needs, meted out only abuse.
“They took care of me,” Bucky repeats. “If they—if they didn’t stop what was happening, that means it wasn’t wrong. I was bad. It was because I was bad.”
It’s easier to blame himself, so that’s what Bucky does.
—
Bucky’s shaking, so Steve isn’t going to push him any further, at least not today. They’re going to have to work on this, but Steve has learned to exercise caution where caution is due, if only where Bucky is concerned.
“Let’s eat, Buck,” Steve tells him, voice pitched low, and then he ladles out two hot bowls of soup, and splits up the giant tower of sandwiches between two plates.
They sit down at the table together, and Steve bumps Bucky’s knee with his own while they scarf down food.
Bucky’s vibrating too much out of his skin to cuddle, or even to watch TV, but he consents to sitting out on the deck to watch the sun go down, and eventually, to Steve’s hand running through his hair. “You take care of me, too,” Bucky says, dreamy in the gold of the magic-hour light. “But it’s different.”
“Yeah,” Steve tells him, smiling, because it’s progress—it’s something. Besides, Steve has his fella, and a view of the city with its backdrop of a pink-tinged sky—he’d have to be a damn sight stupider to not be smiling.
—
There’s another HYDRA cell a week later. Bucky’s been having a rough couple of days, but he insists on coming along, and Steve doesn’t have the right not to let him. This is, after all, his revenge, even if Steve is the one being consumed by it.
They wind up in a cold, sterile room full of techs and equipment—including another one of those damn chairs (Bucky stands quietly off to the side once the fighting is done, lost).
One of the scientists, a woman who looks too young to be there—and of course, of HYDRA starts them that young—looks from the Winter Soldier’s face, to the concerned furrow in Captain America’s brow, and realizes the precise reason that her reckoning is now upon her. “Please, I didn’t know,” she begs.
She’s terrified, having just watched the more trigger-happy among her co-workers put down by Captain America and friends. That doesn’t stop her words from sending Steve over the edge. He slams her up against the wall. It isn’t like they’ve got a thing to do until Sharon radios in and confirms that the perimeter’s secure, and he may as well teach at least one of these HYDRA assholes a valuable lesson. (Steve is angry, but he is careful not to break bones).
She starts crying right away, and repeats it. “I didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what?” Steve asks her. “That he was a human being, who didn’t deserve to be tortured? That he didn’t deserve to be made into a weapon and forced to kill people against his own will? That it was a stupid idea to join a Nazi organization?”
Steve hazards a glance towards Bucky’s corner. He is watching, perplexed. The scientist just cries more.
“No, you didn’t know who he was, or that there were people who cared about him enough to ever do something about what was done to him,” Steve says. “How many times? How many times did you see them put him in that chair?” (Steve has seen footage, and he has heard Bucky’s screaming, and he will never, ever forget that—not in all the unnaturally long years of his life).
“Once!” she says through her tears. “My job was to monitor him while he was in cryo. I saw the procedure once! Please, please don’t kill me.”
“Captain America ain’t gonna kill an unarmed girl,” Sam chimes in—it’s a reminder for Steve, as much as anything else.
“The Falcon’s right, I’m not gonna kill you,” Steve says. “But I wish you could have his nightmares, just for one night. One night, of what he’s gotta go through now, because hundreds of people like you ‘didn’t know.’”
Steve lets her go, and she sinks to the floor, sobbing.
“Be better than that,” Steve says. “Remember the sound of his screams, and be better.”
Sharon apparently finished her check at some point during Steve’s little demonstration, and she rolls her eyes when Steve notices her. The group of them begin the process of arresting everyone—Sharon will make sure that criminals and evidence alike wind up in the correct hands.
Natasha had been watching over Bucky while Steve had his little chat with the scientist (he brings out the soft side in everyone these days, and it will be a horrible superpower once Bucky is well enough to use it).
"Why was Steve angry at her, if she wasn't one of the people who hurt me?" Bucky asks.
Steve expects Natasha’s answer to be sarcastic or humorous in nature, the way she can be when called upon to talk about emotions. Instead, what she says is, “Steve is a real stand-up kind of guy, who thinks watching a bad thing happen and doin’ nothing is just about as bad as doing the bad thing yourself.”
Bucky’s brow furrows in confusion.
“Steve loves you very much,” Natasha continues, “so he is very angry that someone could watch bad things happen to you, and do nothing to help.”
“Steve always wants people to be the best that they can,” Bucky says, after a long hesitation.
“Yeah,” Natasha says, “it works half the time, too.”
—
Bucky has a rough couple of days, the way he always does after a brush with HYDRA. There's a lot of silence, and the nightmares are bad, made even more vivid by the exposure to the equipment that was once used to hurt him. Steve finally coaxes Bucky into leaving the house with promises of brunch—Bucky even picks the restaurant himself. It’s his favorite, and an easy choice for him, but Steve’s happy that he’s got a preference, regardless.
Steve leads them on the scenic route there, so they can stop by a facet of the neighborhood that’s remained unchanged since they were kids—a sweet shop where they used to go as children. He buys Bucky a fat hunk of chocolate-covered caramel (Bucky asks him to please choose), and a cluster of nuts and dried cherries encased in chocolate for himself. With two super-soldier appetites, they are unlikely to spoil their meal.
Brunch is delicious. Bucky chooses for himself, this time—a tall stack of pancakes with chunks of apple inside, smothered in a tart berry sauce, along with every side on the menu (Steve does it, too. They’re both in the habit of ordering like that these days). Steve’s main dish is something fancy with eggs and fresh corn, equal parts hearty and light. They steal bites from each other’s plates and giggle at the faces members of the waitstaff make as they watch two fit young men put away enough food for at least half-a-dozen people.
It’s about as idyllic of an afternoon as they have had since Bucky came home, so of course there has to be a bump in the road.
They’re halfway home, Steve’s arm around Bucky’s waist, sheltering him, steering him away from fellow passerby to make sure no one bumps him, when a woman comes up to them. She’s older, and stylishly dressed, her hair a natural silver-grey, styled in rows of braids that start at the scalp and continue past her shoulders. It’s a striking image, one that Steve itches to draw.
Steve knows what this is going to be about before she ever starts speaking. Even loved-up and full of good food, Bucky looks fragile, especially with the streets crowded on a warm Sunday afternoon.
“Honey,” she says, “if he hurts you, it don’t matter how sweet he apologizes, or how handsome he is, or how much you love him. You get yourself out.”
Bucky looks at Steve in helpless confusion. His eyes are huge. Steve gives his hip a reassuring little squeeze, which seems to help a little.
“I volunteer at the women’s shelter three blocks over on weekends. There ain’t much out there for boys in your situation, but you come by, and you ask for Yvonne. We’ll figure something out for you.”
Bucky stares at her, silent, for a long moment, but when she’s about to walk away, he says, “Wait!”
It stops the woman—Yvonne—in her tracks.
“He—he doesn’t hurt me,” Bucky says, and then he looks over at Steve for approval. Talking to strangers is still hard, and he wants some indication that he did it right. Steve gives him a little smile. Steve is impressed at how hard Bucky is trying.
That doesn’t help her believe Bucky’s story any, of course. Yvonne’s mouth curls up at the edges, and she says, “You’re ready when you’re ready, honey,” and then she walks away.
—
Bucky is exhausted when they finally make their way home—the excitement of the outing coupled with the stress of interacting with someone new has him weary to the bones.
They wind up on the couch with the television on, Bucky’s head in Steve’s lap. Steve hopes he might nap—every minute of sleep Bucky gets is a victory—and the way his eyes flutter as his fingers curl into Steve’s thigh seems like things might be heading in that direction. In any case, Steve’s got a blanket ready.
“It was real sweet how you defended me back there,” Steve says, running his fingers through Bucky’s hair. It’s soft even though it’s a mess, and Bucky murmurs and hums—sweet, contended little sounds—in response.
“I don’t like it when people think you hurt me,” Bucky says, after a while, closing his eyes. “She thought I was lying.” Sometimes, people confuse him, but other times Bucky is hyper-aware of people’s reactions. Since Bucky came home, Steve has read enough literature to understand why.
“Still, you were brave,” Steve says, “and you and I know the truth.”
“Well, someone’s got to look out for you,” Bucky says, his mouth curved into something like the little half-smile that Steve has not seen for seventy years.
Steve cannot help but grin, bright and delighted. “That’s what I got you for, pal.”
“Yeah,” Bucky says, and then he buries his face in Steve’s thigh and drifts off to sleep.
Steve covers him with a blanket, and keeps the TV quiet. He couldn’t imagine a sweeter way to spend an afternoon.
—
They get a few good days in before the next disaster. They go to the farmer's market, and plan a day-trip to Montauk when Bucky remembers that their first kiss was on the beach. They have a new first kiss in the kitchen, with the sun filtering through shut curtains, and cookies in the oven making the whole apartment smell warm and sweet. (And nothing is as sweet as the way Bucky's lips feel pressed against Steve's, their bodies slotted together like they've never forgotten the fit).
Sam comes over for one lunch, and also makes the food (he's a better cook than Steve could ever dream of being), and Sharon video-chats from the world's most boring stakeout, which turns into a rather eventful chase. Natasha, who is back in Europe, sends a card that makes Bucky smile. Steve makes Bucky laugh on three separate occasions, rich and low and warm and like he had forgotten how.
Steve is almost starting to wonder how life can possibly be so vibrant and so full of love and wonder, when one morning, Bucky's mind wanders in the shower and winds up someplace that nobody should ever have to go.
Bucky crashes through the sliding shower door. Steve spends an hour frantically picking shards of glass out of Bucky's wounds because he isn't sure whether Bucky's body will force them out, or heal over them. The three hours after that, once Bucky's physical injuries have been seen to, he spends rocking Bucky in his arms and promising Bucky that he isn't mad, that Bucky is safe. Steve tells Bucky that there will be no punishment, that anyone trying to hurt him will have to get through Steve first.
Bucky does not believe him, or sleep. He spends most of his time shut away in his room, huddled up under the covers, blue eyes staring out and seeing somewhere else.
It’s the worst week they have had in a long, long time.
—
Their grounding techniques don’t help. Sitting with Bucky and stroking his hair doesn’t help. Steve fixes the bathroom, and taking Bucky by the hand and showing him the results, that everything is fine now, doesn’t help either.
When Sam comes over to offer his knowledge and skills, Bucky hides under the bed and does not emerge until he is gone.
Steve sits with Bucky, some of the time; he keeps baseball games playing on the TV, and homey smells coming out of the kitchen, and he hopes, with every fervent thing in his heart, for the best.
—
It’s days before Bucky comes out of his room, a sheepish look on his face, and his metal hand carding through long hair. “I’m sorry I scared you,” he says. “I’m sorry I wouldn’t listen.”
Steve smiles so hard he thinks it might crack his face. “It’s okay, Buck,” he says.
Bucky stares at him, awkward, until Steve says, ‘C’mere,” and it doesn’t take long to close the distance between them. Steve holds Bucky in his arms; Bucky shakes, and lets Steve make it better.
“It’s not your fault, Buck. None of it is your fault.” Steve rains kisses all over his face—his temple, his nose, his closed eyes. His heart aches, but he is happy. He didn’t stop believing Bucky would shake this last setback—that just isn’t something Steve can do—but that doesn’t mean that anything is more elating than this, Bucky overcoming, yet again.
—
Bucky isn’t eager to re-enter the world, after that, and it’s not like Steve can really blame him. There are enough threats lurking about in his own head without having to worry about anything outside their door, outside of Steve’s steady presence.
All the same, the little world they make with just the two of them in their Brooklyn apartment is not enough. Bucky has to go other places and see other people.
Sam gets Bucky to capitulate to a lunch out by promising stories about his date with Maria. They’d both been on Skype for Sam’s rather uncharacteristic freakout about “what the hell a man wears on a date with a woman who could kill him with a sideways glance—I’m serious guys, she could. Oh, what the hell am I asking you two for, you’ve been all loved up since nineteen-freakin’-thirty-two,” and have been quite eager to hear about the results.
Bucky’s panicky in the hours leading up to the outing—Steve suspects that it is why Sam decided on last-minute plans, but leaving the house, this time around, is a valve that releases some of the pressure. By the time they meet up with Sam, he is in better shape.
As it turns out, the date was good. Sam and Maria are both competent, sensible people (panics about button-up shirts notwithstanding).
“Maria cleans up real nice,” Sam says, grinning, just a little bit dopey, “and the lady can appreciate a little romance. She liked the flowers, I could tell. Don’t tell, y’all, but I think this is gonna be a good thing.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Steve says, smiling. It’s good to see his friends happy, and he can see the gears in Bucky’s head turning, mulling over the subject of dates, considering.
—
“Hey, Buck,” Steve says, when the table has been cleared, and Sam has gone his own way. “Go on a date with me.”
Bucky smiles, bright and beautiful, spreading across his face a bit at a time. Over the course of the meal, he went from stone-silent to animated, and something that could almost be considered chatty. It makes Steve want to flirt.
“How about it, Bucky?” he asks. “Right now—let’s go on a date. I’ll take you somewhere real nice.”
Bucky shakes his head. He looks a little bit...bashful. The Bucky of old was never shy, not about anything, but Steve loves him, with all of his changes.
“Ain’t you s’posed to give a guy some time to get ready?” Bucky says, mouth curled and eyes shining. Steve loves him, with all of the ways he has remained the same.
“I think you look swell just the way you are,” Steve says, grinning the one-sided, megawatt grin he learned for those old Captain America movies.
“Well, I guess it’s alright then,” Bucky says, laughter in his eyes, in his voice; watching him rediscover his sense of humor, like watching him rediscover any part of him, is a beautiful thing, “seeing as you’re the only one I’m tryin’ to impress.”
And how did Steve ever live three days—let alone three years—without him? “I don’t think you’ve gotta worry much about that, Buck,” Steve says. He has been impressed for a long, long time.
The pleased look on Bucky’s face is the expression of somebody who knows that he’s got Steve wrapped, well and truly, around his little finger.
—
Steve takes Bucky to the park. It’s a warm, beautiful day out, and there won’t be so many more of them before autumn sets in. They walk around, and people-watch. Bucky is delighted by a group of women who are practicing elaborate tricks with colorful hoops. Steve itches for a pencil when they come across some people walking on a low-hanging line strung between two big trees.
There are the ordinary things, too, less eye-catching but no less fascinating once you look—a mother, hand-in-hand with a toddling child, the father crouched low to take pictures; a girl who seems like she must be too young for the newspaper spread across her knees; two old men playing chess—quotidian tableaus that could fill a whole sketchbook. Steve resolves to bring one, next time.
Eventually, Steve and Bucky settle down on a bench. The sunlight filters through the leaves of a nearby tree, and it’s tucked just far back from the paved path that none of the passerby come too close. There’s a salesman walking around with some roses, and Steve laughs, because it’s too perfect, and then he tells Bucky, “I’ll be right back. You gonna be alright?”
He gets a smile and and a hesitant nod, and then Steve is hurrying back, and handing Bucky a wrapped-up flower with a bow and a flourish. “Red rose. Romantic love and enduring devotion.” Steve learned about flower meanings a long time ago, when they were young and infatuated and trying to carry on in secret.
“Enduring? I’ll say.” The light in Bucky’s eyes is worth everything.
Steve wraps an arm around Bucky’s waist, and Bucky melts into his touch; they sit together for a long, lovely moment—no words, just sounds of birds singing, and strangers laughing.
—
The sound of an ice cream cart is what breaks Steve’s reverie. “Hey Buck? Do you remember any of our ice cream dates?” There were sticky-hot summers, and cones bought with saved pennies, trying to resist putting Bucky’s hand to his mouth to lick away melted drops, at least until they were safe out of sight.
Bucky ducks his head, the melancholy coming over him in an instant. Steve feels it, too—those summer afternoons are a hell of a thing to be made to forget.
“Hey, hey,” Steve says, because it’s not his job to pine for Bucky’s lost memories. He cups Bucky’s chin. “We’ll have another one, right now.” Steve steals a brief, sweet kiss, before running off to divest the salesman of his supply of drumsticks and ice cream sandwiches.
It takes longer than the flower—Steve keeps letting small children who are vibrating out of their skin with excitement skip ahead of him in line. One little girl stares at him with the huge eyes and awed silence that say she knows exactly who he is, and when Steve smiles at her it lights up her little face.
When Steve finally makes his way back, his large bounty of ice cream in hand, there is someone coming up to Bucky—a man, skinny, with tattoos winding all the way up both his arms. Steve is concerned, but he stays far enough away that he can watch the situation develop—it’s good for Bucky, to take these steps, and he can always step in if Bucky isn’t ready.
“I had a boyfriend like that once,” the man says. “I’m sorry. Hi, I’m Michael.”
Steve’s enhanced senses mean that he can hear the conversation from where he stands.
Michael reaches out his hand, and Bucky stares at it like it’s a loaded weapon. After a long moment, he accepts the handshake. He doesn’t offer a name in return.
“He was gorgeous—arms like a Greek god, blinding smile. Great in bed. I finally left him after he put me through a glass sliding door. It took—dozens of stitches and a pint of my blood. Bruises, and a broken wrist, before that. He was always so sorry.” He gestures to the flower. “There were—gifts, and dates—and I was...so in love. So in love.”
Bucky doesn’t say anything.
“I’m sorry, I—I don’t usually do this. The scars you’ve got. I have ones like that, under my tattoos.” Bucky’s still got some marks from his run-in with the shower door—the deepest cuts, the ones that would have needed stitches if he were anybody else. His version of the serum will take care of that in another couple of days. “And your boyfriend, he’s the same ‘type,’ and I just wanted you to know it isn’t worth it. It’s so much better once you leave. Hard, but better.”
Bucky looks up at him, with those sad, blue eyes that keep making strangers want to rescue him, and then he glances over at Steve, still far away. “He doesn’t hurt me,” Bucky says. It’s the most confident he’s ever sounded talking to somebody who isn’t Steve (it’s still unsure). “He doesn’t hurt me, but….someone else did. Before. He...he makes it better.”
“You haven’t said that very many times before, have you?”
Bucky shakes his head. He looks a little shell-shocked.
“It—well, saying it out loud makes it better, too,” Michael says. “Take care of yourself.”
—
Steve presents Bucky with half the haul of ice cream, and then kisses his temple, the sharp point of his cheekbone, his nose. “I’m so proud of you, Buck,” he says. “I am so proud.”
Bucky doesn’t smile, doesn’t speak, doesn’t do much of anything. He unwraps an ice cream sandwich. When Steve wraps an arm around him, he doesn’t push Steve away.
—
Bucky is quiet and still when they make their way home. The gravity of what he has just done has dawned, and it has overwhelmed him. Steve draws him a bath—it’s the sort of thing that Bucky does for himself most of the time these days, except for when Steve wants to treat him extra sweet. He adds one of the bath bombs that Natasha took them to a fancy store to buy. Bucky likes nice smells.
Steve leaves him alone—he needs the time.
Bucky comes out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his hips an hour later. His hair drips on the floor.
Steve pulls Bucky close and doesn’t care when his shirt gets wet.
“It was because of me,” Bucky says. “It was because of me. if it was someone else, it wouldn’t have happened. I killed people and I was bad and so it was me.”
Steve sighs. “I know you know that isn’t true. You said it. Today, you said it.”
“I didn’t want him to think it was you,” Bucky says. He hides his face in Steve’s neck. “It wasn’t you, but it wasn’t—it wasn’t…”
There’s no sincerity in it, though, not anymore. It’s a scramble to avoid accepting the terrible truth, but there’s no stuffing something like that back in the box.
“It was really bad, what happened to me, wasn’t it?” Bucky says. It’s a quiet little whisper.
Steve strokes his back. “Yeah, Buck, it was.”
“It was wrong what they did, wasn’t it? They were wrong.”
“There aren’t words for what they did to you, Buck,” Steve says.
He holds Bucky in his arms for a long, long time.
—
Bucky spends a few quiet days holed up in his bedroom alone. He leaves only for food. There’s a lot to process. For the first time, Bucky is trying to wrap his head around the fact that for seventy years—seventy years—every single moment of his life was marked by constant abuse.
If he wasn’t in the ice, if they weren’t forcing him to kill, they were hurting him. (The ice and the killing, that was hurting him, too). What HYDRA did to Bucky has been a knife in Steve’s heart since the first moment he saw Bucky’s face, Bucky’s blank eyes staring back at him, on that bridge where Steve realized that the love of his life didn’t die falling. It’s been making Steve’s blood boil since he first opened that file and realized that all of the worst things in the world happened to the best person.
How much harder it must be, realizing that all of it happened to him.
But Steve is hopeful—for this, too—because a part of Bucky might just be starting to believe that the things that were done to him weren’t some kind of karmic punishment for the things that he was made to do, weren’t something that he could have deserved, or something that he somehow earned with his nature.
—
Steve is there when Bucky calls for him. He is there to hold Bucky close and whisper, “You’re safe,” and “No one’s gonna take these memories, I swear,” and “I’ll kill anyone who tries to hurt you again” when Bucky panics; when it is anger instead, Steve holds his hand and promises that when they are done, HYDRA won’t have a straw hut standing. (No matter what, he always says, “I love you.” It is always true; it is always the thing that Bucky needs to hear.)
It is catharsis of the purest sort, and when it is done—when it’s done, and Bucky can leave the house again—he stands a little bit taller; his eyes are a little bit brighter.
—
Bucky asks if they could please start sleeping in the same bed all the time. He says, “I want to come home to you every night, no matter what,” and Steve thanks every lucky star and every deity and every dream for the fact that he gets to spend a single moment with Bucky, let alone two lifetimes.
—
Steve comes home from champagne brunch with Sharon the the sound of Bucky swearing. It’s probably just another ruined meal— they’re spending two afternoons a week apart now, really bad weeks notwithstanding, so Bucky can learn how to be own his own sometimes, and he has to either order takeout or cook for himself. It’s hard. Bucky has trouble focusing on tasks like that—there is too much in his mind that still calls him away.
It’s probably just another ruined meal, but Steve is still worried. “You okay, Buck?” he calls out.
“Yeah,” Bucky shouts, after a brief pause, from somewhere in now-their bedroom. “I can’t find the card.”
“What card?” Steve asks, following the sound of his voice. Bucky is halfway under the bed, rooting around for something. It would be a comical sight if it weren’t for the curve of his ass, the deadly muscle of his thighs.
Bucky shimmies out and looks at him, thoroughly unimpressed. A strand of hair is falling out of his ponytail and into his eyes. “The card. The first woman who thought you were hurting me. She gave me her card, and that means I can tell her she was wrong.”
Steve drops to the floor to pull Bucky into a kiss. “You don’t have to do that Buck. She’s just one person, and you and I know the truth.”
Bucky presses himself into Steve’s arms. Steve doesn’t know what it makes him, that he missed Bucky so much during only a few hours away. “It’s—it’s not like that,” Bucky says. “Even one person—even one person thinking that, it—I don’t like it. I’m not the person who stays. I’m not the person who stays, anymore.”
“What do you mean, Bucky?” Steve asks. Bucky is tense and so he runs a hand up and down Bucky’s back.
“The person who’s just...blind, and lets someone hurt them and hurt them and never goes away. That’s what I was like, when I was the asset.”
“But you did get away,” Steve says, voice very gentle. “You made a choice, and you saved yourself—saved me, too.”
“Couldn’t do it till I had you,” Bucky says, after a long pause, nuzzling Steve’s neck.
“It was all you,” Steve says, kissing his hair and his eyes and his cheek. They get distracted by the feeling of each other, for a little while. (Being in love is like that sometimes, and it is okay).
“Even one person thinking that I’m still like the asset is too much,” Bucky says, when the conversation has regained their attention. “Even one. It’s enough that sometimes I—.”
His voice breaks on that, and Steve understands. “C’mon,” he says. “I’ll help you look. No one gets to think about my best guy that way.”
When Steve helps Bucky to his feet, his eyes are red, but he is smiling.
—
It takes two hours, and the house turned upside down, but the card gets found, stuck in the couch, between two cushions (which, of course, have to be tossed on the floor).
Steve and Bucky leave the cushions where they fell, with just a bit of rearranging, and it’s sweet nostalgia when they settle down to make the phone call. Bucky doesn’t remember everything, but he remembers that. He rests his head on Steve’s lap (Steve’s hand idling in his hair), and dials the number. “Hello, Ms. Lin?” Bucky says. His voice is shaking.
“Please, call me Diane,” she says. (One of the perks of their hearing is being able to hear a conversation from both sides of the line).
“You gave me your card, a while ago,” Bucky says, “and told me to call if I needed to leave.”
“Yes, of course,” Ms. Lin says. She sounds surprised, and happy. “Are you somewhere safe right now? If I gave you an address would you be able to come, or would you need transportation?”
“It isn’t about that,” Bucky says. “I wanted to call and to tell you that you misunderstood.”
“Yes, of course,” she says. She doesn’t sound happy, not anymore.
Bucky swallows. He reaches back and Steve squeezes his hand. “I know it’s—it doesn’t sound like the truth, but my boyfriend doesn’t hurt me. He never would. It’s—someone else hurt me, before. For a long time. He was—he was the reason I could finally leave. I couldn’t admit what happened to me, for a while, but—once I did, the idea of anyone thinking it was like that with us, well—it hurt, too.”
“I understand,” Ms. Lin says. “I shouldn’t have given you that card, either way. If you were in a bad situation, I could have put you in danger, and I apologize for that. I know better. It was...a rough day.”
Bucky says, “It’s okay. You wanted to help, and...no one helped, for a very long time. My boyfriend says that seeing something bad happening, and not doing anything to help, makes you a bad person, too. You wanted to help, and that makes you good.”
—
They talk for a long time. As it turns out, Ms. Lin is a social worker who runs several support groups for survivors of abuse. There is a group that meets every Sunday, at eleven o’clock, (“but it’s alright if you can’t make it in on time”) for people who have lived through some of the worst things one human being can inflict upon another (“we don’t rank pain, but complex PTSD comes with its own set of challenges, so having a separate group is helpful. Feel free to come to any of the other groups, too.”).
Bucky wants to go. Bucky wants to go alone, which is a first.
He is nervous, and he is excited, and Steve is so proud. (Steve will be proud of every brave little thing Bucky does for the rest of his life, but this is its own sort of special).
—
“Stop it,” Bucky says, poking Steve’s cheek. “Stop it, stop it, stop it. Your face is gonna freeze in that creepy smile, and I’m gonna have to look at your mug like that for the rest of my miserable life.”
Steve does not stop smiling.
Bucky gives up, eventually. “You’ll take me there on the new bike, right?”
(Steve hasn’t denied Bucky anything in the better part of a century. It is far too late to start now).
—
“Steve!” Bucky says, and bounds up to him like an over-excited puppy to claim a hello-kiss on the lips.
Sam says only teenagers miss each other after two-and-a-half hours apart (“Now Maria and me? We got a mature relationship”). Steve will accept that designation if it means greetings like this, in the middle of a community center hallway. “How was group?”
“It was good! Easier every time.” Bucky says. He looks down. “I, um, want you to talk to Diane about something. She and I talked—well, kind of, and we thought maybe it would help, if—just talk to her.”
“Right now?” Steve says. He steals another kiss.
Bucky relents, but then swats him away. “Yes, right now.”
Steve lets go of Bucky to enter the room where the meetings are held. Ms. Lin is talking to someone, so Steve takes a moment to grab a cookie off the table. Bucky learned how to bake for this, but he wasn’t up to making anything this week. (His bright mood this afternoon is the sweetest sort of surprise).
Ms. Lin catches Steve with his third cookie halfway gone. He feels like a guilty child, but she just smiles, and says hello.
(“Call me ‘Diane’ this time, Steve, I’m begging you,” she says, but Steve can never really manage that with her).
“So,” Ms. Lin says, after a bit of small-talk, “most of the group has figured out who you two are.”
Steve develops a very sudden interest in his shoes.
“Quite awhile ago, actually. You were in all our history books, and maybe James—does he prefer being called James now, or is that meant to be a ruse?—could have slipped by on his own, but Captain America and Bucky Barnes are...very recognizable.”
“He likes ‘Bucky’ better,” Steve says. He is probably blushing.
“Bucky and I have spoken a bit—vaguely—about the possibility of him trying to talk to the group about what actually happened to him. He wanted to discuss it with you, first, but he was having trouble asking.” Ms. Lin says. “I usually try to encourage everyone to communicate openly with their loved ones, but given what’s he’s obviously been through, it’s understandable that he might need some help.”
They’d come up with a pretty decent cover-story together—childhood sweethearts, tragically separated, who ran into one another on a crowded DC street—James, too scared and traumatized from more than a decade of abuse to even answer to his own name. It is, as far as these things go, not too far from the truth. More importantly, it allows Bucky to share specific memories.
“Well,” Steve says, “it’s worse than anything you could imagine, and I know you’ve heard about some very bad things. It’s also highly classified, but I’ve broken worse rules to help him.”
Ms. Lin gives him a long, serious look. “You could get a non-disclosure agreement drawn-up by an attorney, if that would help. I’ve brought it up with some of the group members individually, and I think everyone would be willing. And you’d be welcome at meetings if he needs the support to open up.”
“Those are...ideas. Bucky and I will talk about it.” Maybe they can talk to Bernie, the lawyer whose tempestuous courtship with Sharon has been the latest hot gossip topic when they’re with Sam, especially since betting on whether or not Natasha is actually dating Clint got boring. “Thank you, Diane, really.”
“Thank you for your service, Captain Rogers,” she says, smiling.
He grins when he says, “Please, call me Steve.”
—
“You kept me waiting,” Bucky says. His eyes are bright and he is teasing, but Steve knows him well enough to see the cracks. He’s gotten good at putting on a brave face again—he always was, before—but staring into the past takes its toll. It’s time to get Bucky home.
Steve apologizes with a passionate kiss. “You should never be scared to ask me for things, you mook,” he says, pulling away, the ghost of Bucky’s warmth still on his lips. (It had been terrifying, bringing back the kinds of words had meant so much affection between them, before. Words can wound and Bucky has already been wounded too much, but after a few awkward moments when Steve wouldn’t tease back, they sat down and talked it out. “Just don’t call me a thing, and I’ll be alright,” Bucky had said, a bitter edge to his tone. “I’m fucked in the head, not made of glass.”)
They’ve talked about it, but Steve is still cautious. Nothing scares Steve so much as the idea of hurting Bucky in any way, but he is blushing and smiling a sheepish little smile—not hurt, not hurt at all. “I’ll try. Might have to remind me a few more times, though.”
He lets Bucky lead him back to the bike. Bucky perks up a bit when Steve pulls on the leather jacket. “The only reason you have me take you here is so you can show me off in this jacket,” Steve says. They both know the real reason, but joking makes it easier to swallow.
“Guilty,” Bucky says. The worn-down look is already starting to fade from his face.
The thought that it’s him, that being around Steve is what helps Bucky find the strength, is almost too much, always. “I’m just arm-candy to you,” he says, reeling Bucky in for another kiss—just two hours apart, Sam is probably right.
“Sure are sweet enough, sugar,” Bucky says.
They both dissolve into ungainly fits of laughter, and it’s another few minutes before they actually get on the bike. Steve sits in front; Bucky slides in behind him. Bucky’s hands skim over Steve’s chest, intimate and lingering—it’s a promise of something else sweet that has started to come back into their lives only lately, another part of Bucky discovering himself.
When Bucky’s arms wrap around Steve’s waist, though—that’s not sex, it’s security. Steve revs the engine and starts towards home, Bucky pressed safe and close against his back, holding on tight. It’s the middle of a warm, clear autumn day, the wind whipping through Steve’s hair. It’s full daylight, bright as anything, but it still feels a little bit like riding off into the sunset. (It feels a little bit like riding off into the sunset every time).