Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

            The news reports are pouring in.

            The NVA are closing in on Saigon.

            Refugees are fleeing away from the encroaching army as it surges south, and the news reels are non stop and terrifying, of truck convoys exploded by rocket fire, roadside bombs, and even mistaken friendly bombings.

            It makes Steve sick to even listen to the radio anymore.

            He knew something like this would happen. He’d been there, had seen how vastly superior the North Vietnamese Army was at fighting that war of attrition, and  the Americans withdrawing support from the South Vietnamese only sped the process along.

            Still, the news reels are shocking. Steve can imagine the anarchy happening in the cities, the panic spreading and compounding. There’s video on CNN of civilians in Danang climbing into overloaded rafts and boats, heading out to sea, of children being handed to anyone leaving the docks. Thousands are stranded or drowned in the confusion.

            Howard calls him.

            “I’ve been commissioned to fly over there and pick up personnelle. And you’re coming with me. There’s a lot of people going to die in horrible ways if we don’t help, and you can get in-country and see if anyone’s seen him lurking around.”

            Steve knows he should say no.

            “Howard… what about… your family, Howard, Peggy’s family.”

            “I think the US military is a tad preoccupied right now to be worried about Captain America sneaking back into Vietnam, and Nixon’s gone, Ford’s busy with the DOW, it’s our best chance, Steve. If you wanna help, we gotta head out right now. I can have a jet at Washington National in an hour to fly you San Francisco.”

            Steve swallows hard, his hand not holding the phone to his ear is balled in an iron tight fist. The one that is, makes the plastic receiver creak ominously.

            “Is Pierce still in Saigon?”

            “No clue. Haven’t asked after him, for obvious reasons. But it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s got himself a cushy job in the Pentagon right now. What’s it going to be, Steve?”

            Steve glares into space, and thinks of Bucky’s back disappearing into the jungle.

            “Do it. Send the jet.”

             Howard’s enormous cargo plane, nondescript but clearly state of the art, is on the damp tarmac at San Francisco and ready to go when Steve comes down the steps of the little private plane Howard had sent.

            There’s a few military types milling about, but Steve ignores them. He waits until he sees Howard, in a linen suit for Christ’s sake, yelling over the sound of engines at one of the ground crew.

            Steve raises a hand, and Howard waves him over frantically.

            “Let’s get moving. The faster we get in the air, the less likely anyone is to spot you and try and stop us.”

            They run up the back ramp, Steve with his duffel over his shoulder. He’d packed his usual black tac gear, all shadowed kevlar and articulated black body shielding, and a few handguns. He hadn’t been sure what to expect, and assumed the actual combat would be minimal. And besides, it wasn’t like Howard Stark couldn’t get his hands on a few weapons.

            Howard gets in the pilot’s seat, his butler Jarvis already waiting in the co-pilot seat.

            “Mr. Rogers. A pleasure, as usual. Committing treason again, are we?” Jarvis says, smiling pleasantly.

            Steve can’t help the laugh that explodes out of his mouth.

            “Yeah. I guess we are.”

            The flight in the huge plane is 16 hours, and Steve spends the first half of it thinking.

            About Bucky. About Pierce. About all the things he’s missed in the last five and a half years.

            “Let him be alive.” Steve says, pressing his hands into his eye sockets, “Please let me find him and let him be alive.”

            He decides he can’t sit alone with himself anymore, and so comes into the cockpit to sit in the jumpseat. He asks Howard about his son, Anthony, and about Maria. Jarvis adds to any and all stories, and Steve lets himself bask in the happiness they clearly are sharing.

            “And Ms. Carter comes to visit us often, as well. It really is wonderful- she brings the whole family and we have a lovely time.” Jarvis says, sighing fondly.

            Howard is grinning under his mustache and Steve can’t help but smile too.

            They’re silent for a little while, until finally Howard says, “You know, we’re just over halfway now, so I may as well tell you, Steve.” he takes a deep breath, “This whole… uh, deal, was Peggy’s idea.”

            Steve sits up ramrod straight.

            “What? How do you mean?”

            “Uh… well. Remember when I got busted by the MPs photocopying research files back in ‘70?”

            Steve blinks. “Yes?”

            “Well. They uh… didn’t catch Peggy.”

            Steve stands up so fast he almost drills his head on the overhead instrument panel.

            “Howard! You told her!? How many times did I tell you how important it is that you not tell her!?”

            “Steve, it’s goddamn Peggy Carter, she’s got x-ray vision! She sees whatever you’re hiding! She  got it out of me, I’m sorry!”

            “You put her in danger, her husband, her children, her grandchildren in danger,  Howard!” Steve is gripping the seatback so hard the leather is splitting.

            “She told me to shut my mouth and mind my own business and worry about my own skin! But, you know, in that scathing British way where you feel like you’ve narrowly missed being beheaded. And you know her, she’s… she’s good at what she does, Steve. Better than anyone. She knows how people discount her, and she uses it. And she told me not to tell you jack shit, because she knew you’d get all chivalric and martyr-y like you are right now!”

            “She could have been killed! Dammit, Howard.” Steve sits down heavily, fingers in his hair.

            “Yeah, well she didn’t. And she got information where she could, when she could. And she… well, after Watergate, she got a little more room. Pierce lost some of his sway, I think because he didn’t have a terrifying assassin dog on a leash anymore.” Howard winces, and glances back at Steve, “Sorry.”

            Steve groans and scrubs his face.

            “And for a while she was in charge of debriefing Soviet crossovers.” Howard says, and reaches into a leather messenger bag by his feet, “Which is why she got this.”

            In his hands in a file. A slim, recently labelled file, brand new and labelled with a label tape, with the words “Winter Soldier”.

            Steve takes it, eyebrows raised.

            It flops open in his hands, and his mouth falls open.

            It’s polaroids.

           Polaroids of Bucky.

            They aren’t labelled, but judging by the yellowing of the paper, they’re at least a decade old.

           Bucky strapped into a doctor-type reclining chair, Bucky restrained with chains, Bucky with 6 IV lines in his arm, Bucky (Steve has to close his eyes and turn his head briefly, swallowing bile) with the entire flesh of one side of his ribcage excised open, revealing the extent of the metal fused to his bones to support the metal arm.

           He’s awake in the photo.

          Steve closes the file, puts it down on the metal floor.

          “Jesus.” he says, and his hands are shaking.

          “Yeah.” Howard says. “She… she was given those by a KGB operative who worked under the East German wing of Hydra. Apparently they had him… they called him the Winter Soldier... in the fifties, and then the American’s got him. And she… well, once she saw those. You know her. She doesn’t stop unless you make her stop. And there’s not many people who can do that.”

          “She’s crazy.” Steve says, eyes screwed shut.

          “Yup. But effective. And she loves you, buddy. She knows what he means to you.”

           Steve doesn’t say anything for a very long time.

              Howard eventually begins their descent into Vietnam airspace, and Steve pulls out his duffel, stripping off his shirt and getting ready to change.

             “What?” Howard says, seeing what Steve’s doing, “No! No, no, no, no, you aren’t wearing those. Look in the big black hard case by the bulkhead back there. That’s for you.”

             Steve raises an eyebrow, and then glances at Jarvis, who is looking too innocent.

              Steve navigates his way back into the massive empty body of the plane, loud and cavernous, and locates the hard case. He kneels and opens it.

             Inside is a suit- a dark blue, highly structured tactical jumpsuit. When Steve lifts it out, he’s amazed at the lightness of it, at its precision and utility in comparison to the heavy outfit he wore in Europe. There’s no bright colours, just the understated navy…

            Except, in the centre of the chest, is a star.

             Steve sighs.

           He returns to the cockpit, holding the suit.

           “Howard, I’ve told you fifty times. I’m not Captain America anymore. I can’t wear this.”

           Howard grips the handles of his steering column, and looks dead ahead.

           “Abraham Erskine and I worked on the serum and the Vita Ray machine for four years together, and before that, he worked on it for twenty three. He escaped Berlin in ‘35 because he was afraid of what his country was becoming, and he smuggled his work out of the Reichstag inside a rolled SS flag.

           “ He told me the day before we made you into you that you were without a doubt, the most worthy candidate we could ever encounter. And that if you were to be the culmination of all his life’s work, then he had fulfilled his greatest hopes for his project; a great man with not only the ability to be a hero, but the desire to be one too. And you went out there, and you not only proved him right, you surpassed every expectation ever placed on you. You never quit, never backed down, never broke. And when you should have been done and finished, you picked right back up and kept going when nobody asked you to.” Howard glances at Steve, and then back at the horizon, “That’s you, Steve. It’s who you are. It doesn’t matter what the US government says, what the Army says, what the newspaper or radio says, what goddamn anybody says. You’re Captain America. It’s who you are, in every molecule of your body.”

            Steve just stares at the back of Howard’s head, nonplussed and speechless.

           “And if it’s any consolation at all, sir, I’d add that the red white and blue incarnation of that suit, I managed to convince Mr. Stark to leave at home.” Jarvis says mildly, smiling in his benign manner at Steve.

           “Dammit, Jarvis.” Howard mutters.

          Steve doesn’t know what to say, so he settles on placing both hands on Howard’s shoulders from behind.

          “Thanks, Howard. For everything.”

           “Yeah, yeah. Get dressed.”

              They land on the dark black ink that is the ocean at night, the belly lander plane skiing into the harbor. All the battleships are lined up, lights blaring white and yellow, sonars spinning, decks crawling with people. Even inside the cockpit, they can hear the sirens blaring across the bay.

             Steve can already feel the soldier’s mindset creeping back into his mind; try as he might to crush it, he was made for this.

            “You jumping ship before we dock?” Howard asks, steering towards a massive concrete wharf.

          Steve frowns. “No. I have an idea. Just follow my lead.”

             They dock among other battleships, with tanks and trucks rolling up ramps loaded with materiale. Steve inhales a huge breath of air, squares his shoulders and walks into the belly of the plane. He comes to a halt at the top of what will be the stairs onto the wharf.

           He’s about to press the button, when Howard calls his name.

         “Cap. Hang on a second.”

           Steve turns, and his heart skips.

           Howard is standing there, smiling a wry smile, holding the shield.

           “You’re missing something.” Howard says, grinning slowly.

             Steve hesitates for only a second, before approaching Howard.

             He holds out a hand, but he’s afraid to touch it. It’s been almost thirty years since he saw it, and he’s still afraid of it, afraid of what it means, of the legacy is carries.

             “Howard, I…”

             “It’s yours, Steve. It’s only ever been yours.”

             Steve sighs, and reaches out.

             It settles into his hold like the handshake of an old friend, familiar and solid, fitting his hands like it never left.

             “Thank you, Howard.” Steve says, turning the shield over in his hands a few times. He swings it up onto his back, where the magnetic pieces in the shoulder harness of his suit hold it for him, just as he knew they would.

            Howard grins at him, wide and proud.

           “You look good.” he says, hands on his hips.

           Steve can’t help but roll his eyes, but smiles right back.

            He presses the button, and the doors hisses with equalizing pressure and then opens, unfolding onto the concrete below. He schools his expression back into one of austere superiority, clasping his hands behind his back. He knows he cuts an imposing figure on any day, but the new suit accentuates the breadth of his shoulders and chest, cutting in tight to his narrow waist and thick arms.

             Sure enough, the men on the wharf stare with slack jawed expressions, and immediately snap into a salute when Steve starts his calculated descent.

           “C-Captain America!” says a nearby Lieutenant, who appears to be the highest ranking person in the vicinity, “We… we had no idea you were coming!”

            Steve’s about to open his mouth with the rote response of “It’s Major Rogers, actually” when he realizes that he isn’t Major Rogers anymore.

           He feels the weight of the shield on his back. Feels Howard’s gaze on the back of his head, feels Peggy’s trust deep in his chest, Dr. Erskine’s profound faith in every molecule of his body… Bucky’s fate, in his the marrow of his bones.

           He could be Captain America.

           “At ease, Lieutenant. I need a Jeep for Mr. Stark and myself. We’re rounding up civilians and getting them out of here.”

           The Lieutenant glances at a nearby corporal, who looks equally confused.

           “Er…well, Captain, sir, our orders are to-”

           “Don’t tell me what your orders are, son. I just told you what your orders are. A Jeep, please, and quick about it.”

           The streets of Saigon at night are rainslicked and packed with panicked people. Everyone is trying to find their way out of the city, including many South Vietnamese ARVN army trying to escape the inevitable sack of the city.

           They drive at ridiculous speeds towards the American embassy, darting in and out of crowds, and the smell in the air, of smoke, exploded rockets, rain… it all comes back to Steve. It’s like he never left.

          There’s eight marines on the gate at the embassy, yelling and waving at the massive crowd formed around them. There’s people shouting back, waving pages of documentation and photos of American’s they know, begging to be let in and evacuated.

           Steve and Howard abandon the jeep when the crowd gets too thick, and Steve’s massive shoulders carve them a swath through the to the gates. They’re immediately let in on sight, no questions asked. Steve stares around the nighttime yard, his eyes and head swivelling as he surveys the area. There’s large trees, deep shadows. He isn’t sure why he knows Bucky is nearby- he could be anywhere in the world right now, but for some reason, he feels like he knows.

         “I’m going to start talking to people in charge around here. Organize what I can. What’s your plan?” Howard says.

          Steve nods to himself.

          “I’ll stick with you. Let people know we aren’t playing around and we aren’t going to waste time. Let’s save as many civilians as we can. We can at least get them out of Saigon, and we’ll worry about logistics later.”

           “You’re sure?” Howard says.

           “Yup. Let’s get to work.”

             They start with the group out front, trying to get the hundreds of panicked civilians to head towards Howard’s waiting plane. It takes some coaxing, translating and Steve using his ‘Captain America’ voice on a few American marines to get them to cooperate.

              They try to get as many large families as they can, and even though they have every right to panic, Steve’s presence seems to calm everyone. Even though the American’s have lured the South Vietnamese into a drawn out war, gotten so many of them killed, and then abandoned them to their fate,  Steve as a symbol of the United States seems to reassure their frightened faces.

             As people start to see what’s happening, more and more people flood into the nighttime streets. Howard calls in two more cargo planes from Taiwan and Tokyo, and Steve uses his loud voice to direct crowds and crowds of people to the docks.

            A rocket goes off at 4 am, exploding a few streets over, and that’s when the real panic starts to set in. Steve can’t stop them running if he tried, the flow of humanity surging along narrow roads. One of the marines yells and points his gun in the air, and Steve can see the future in that moment.

            Before he’s even aware of what he’s doing, the shield is off his back and whistling through the air, cleaving the rifle in half and embedding itself in the wall behind it.

           The marine just stares, slack jawed, at his half M-15.

           Steve shoulders his way through the crowd, pulling his shield out of the wall and replacing it on his back.

           The marine just stares at him, and swallows in almost comic dread.

            “I think more panic is the last thing we need, son.” Steve says, patting him hard on the shoulder, before heading towards the docks with everyone else.

            There’s a backlog at the pier, and Steve sees a line of American soldiers, all holding weapons.

            There’s a Major standing at the front, yelling and pointing and waving his arms at the crowd gathering in front of him and his line up.

            “There’s no air lifting happening here! I’ve got no word of it, and if I don’t know, then it isn’t happening! Who the hell do you think you are?”

            Steve shoulders his way to the front, and the major visibly deflates as soon as he sees him.

           “Captain America.” he says, in that awed, disbelieving way Steve always gets.

            “Howard Stark and I are organizing a mass civilian airlift. If you want to streamline this, then get your men to help, or step aside.”

            The major’s eyes flick over the crowd, and then back to Steve.

            “I… I have orders, sir.” he looks like he regrets every word out of his mouth.

            Steve isn’t wearing his major’s bars, and still he’s being called sir.

            “Who’s the ranking officer in Saigon right now?” Steve presses.

           The major’s eyes go from Steve to a few nearby crowd members, who all are watching him.

              “C… Colonel Pierce was the last...  who I spoke to… but... well, there’s a chopper coming to get him-”

              Steve’s blood runs Antarctic cold, and then flashes bright hot with volcanic rage.

             “Where? Where is he?” Steve steps forward, and he’s fisted his hand in the front of the major’s uniform before he’s even aware that he’s moved.

             The soldiers around the major lurch into motion, but all of them are visibly terrified of pointing a gun at Captain America.

              “The embassy! He has an office on the top floor! He’s been hiding in there, giving orders over the radio! I haven’t seen him in a month! There’s a Huey coming to evac him and his personnel tonight!” The major is grabbing at Steve’s hand, scrabbling ineffectually.

              There’s a series of booms behind the crowd, and Steve can see explosions reflecting in the major’s eyes as more rockets are fired into Saigon. There’s the rattle of machine gun fire in the distance.

            The NVA are here, and they’re going to take the city in a matter of hours.

            “You’re going to start loading people on the plane. And I’m going to go explain the situation to Colonel Pierce. Am I understood?” Steve says, jaw clenched.

          The major nods frantically, and Steve lowers him to the ground again. He hadn’t even realized he’d been holding him up.

          Steve turns and begins to wade back through the crowd, all of whom are visibly terrified as more rockets and explosions go off. The air is smelling more and more smoky.

          He finds Howard at the back of the crowd, sitting in a jeep and talking into a HAM radio on the seat beside him, yelling into the receiver and holding a headset up to his ear.

           Steve yanks the whole deal out of his hand, throws it in the back and gets in, glowering at Howard’s indignant face.

          “I was using tha-”

          “Pierce is here.” Steve cuts him off, “At the embassy. He’s being evac’d before morning.”

          Howard’s brows furrow deeply. “He...what? No one said anything about him. I had all of the ranking officers with me getting cars mobilized. You’re sure?”

         “Sure or not, I’m still going to look.” Steve says, and points in the direction of the embassy, “Drive.”

            They drive past streams of people, some with baggage but many without, all running towards the harbor.

            Howard doesn’t slow, and Steve is staring hard into the middle distance, brows pinched.

            He isn’t sure what he’ll do if he finds Pierce. There’s a lot of things he knows he should ask, but there’s a large part of him that want to simply throttle the man, or throw him out a window.

            He wants to hear it from Pierce’s lips who ordered the napalm strike on him and his team. He wants to know how the American army ended up acquiring Bucky, a Hydra weapon made by a German, utilized by the Soviets.

            They’re in a quieter part of the city near the embassies, where the rich would have lived if they hadn’t already paid their way out of Vietnam. There’s nobody on the streets, no trucks and no army blockades.

            They whip around a corner towards the embassy, and Howard swears and slams on the brakes.

            Because Bucky is standing in the middle of the road, facing them, still as a statue.

            Steve is out of the jeep before it comes to a stop, one hand stretched out like he’s trying to calm a spooked wild animal.

            Bucky looks not too dissimilar to how he did when Steve last saw him- his hair is still long, the top half tied back behind his head, and he has a close beard. He’s in rough American fatigues, most of his silver arm covered by faded dirty green material. In his flesh hand he’s holding a gun, in the metal one, what appears to be a huge specialized grenade. He’s got a massive buck knife strapped to one thigh, and a bandolier of small hand grenades across his torso.

            His skin glistens with sweat and smears of dirt, and his eyes are wild and gleaming in the headlights.

 He’s heartbreakingly beautiful.

            His brows are furrowed, but he’s looking at Steve with frightening lucidity.

            “Bucky.” Steve says, taking a few steps closer. He’s trying to keep his voice steady, but it’s difficult. He feels like Bucky must be a hallucination, and he’s asleep on the plane or, God, maybe back in the States.

            Bucky’s eyes flit from Steve to Howard, who is staring with a slack face of complete shock.

            “You shouldn’t be here. Why are you here?” Bucky says sharply. His voice is much more sturdy than the unsure quaver Steve had heard last.

            “For you, Buck. I’m here to find you.” Steve keeps approaching, and he doesn’t move away.

            Bucky frowns at him, his whole face darkening.

            “No.” he says, “Go home. It’s not safe here anymore.”

            Steve is within a yard of him now, and he can see the grain of his skin, the striations in the blue of his irises, the sheen on the sweat on his neck. It’s taking every ounce of self control he has not to touch him.

            “Come with us. Come with us, Bucky, please.”

            Bucky shakes his head.

            “I can’t go with you, Steve. You need to leave.”

            Steve’s breathing is hard and sharp in his chest, and hearing Bucky say his name so easily makes his whole body ache with longing.

            “Not without you, Buck. Never without you. Not ever again.”

            At this, Bucky makes an actual huff of frustration.

            Steve takes a calculated risk, unable to hold himself at bay any longer, and puts a hand on Bucky’s flesh shoulder.

            Bucky still doesn’t move, just glances quickly at Steve’s arm, and then up at his face.

            His brow creases suddenly, and his lips press into a frown. His flesh hand puts away the pistol he’s holding and quickly, with a strange sort of concerned air, his hand comes up to Steve’s chin.

            Steve’s breath hitches in his chest. Bucky is staring at where his hand is, and Steve feels his thumb graze over the pink napalm scar on the edge of his jaw, and where it trails down and gets wider down his neck, before disappearing under the suit. Bucky’s brows draw in, annoyed at the old wound he’s seeing.

            Then his eyes dart back up to Steve’s, and his hand falls heavily back to his side. His face returns to the careful neutral of before.

            “Go home, Steve.” Bucky says, very quietly.

            Steve shakes his head, hard, and his throat is aching from choking on unshed tears, and he is helpless to stop himself from stepping in closer and enfolding Bucky in his arms, one around behind his shoulders, the other tight around his waist.

            “I won’t. I won’t leave you.” Steve says, face pressed into Bucky’s throat.

            He smells of heat and life and jungle, rust and sweat, and Steve fills his lungs with him like a greedy child filling their pockets. He’s been dreaming of finding him and holding him for almost six years, but not a single dream comes close to the starving, grasping ache of reality. He can feel every breath, every beat of his heart… that same wonderful heart he’d known since he was a boy, 50 years ago.

            Bucky is motionless under Steve’s arms, stiff and unyielding.

            “Steve.” It’s Howard’s voice cutting through the fog surrounding them, “If we’re gonna get Pierce, we gotta go now.”

            Bucky lurches in Steve’s arms, shoving him away. His eyes are wild again, his crimson lips dragging in huge lungfuls of air.

            “Pierce?” he says, and there’s a mechanical whir coming from his arm as he clenches his fists, “Where?” he grabs Steve this time, both hands on Steve’s shoulders, thumbs pinching onto his clavicles, hard, “You know where he is?”

            Steve nods, hands coming up to hold both Bucky’s wrists, just for the contact, “The embassy. He’s at the US embassy, top floor. I’m gonna get him, Buck.”

            Bucky looks calculating, going to Steve and to Howard behind him. Steve can almost see the wheels turning.

            Then, in a blur of movement so fast even Steve can’t defend against it, he gets an undercut to the diaphragm with the metal arm, effectively dropping him onto the ground and incapacitating him.

            There’s a hissing noise too, like the air being let out a tire, and Bucky saying “Don’t. Follow me.”

            Steve is folded on the ground, both arms around his middle, eyes streaming, coughing and gasping and gagging.

            He can blearily see Bucky disappearing at a rate of speed only Steve is able to run.

            But he can’t give up now.

            Steve rolls onto his knees as Howard reaches him, and feels hands on his back.

            “Jesus! Jesus, you went down like a stone! Are you alright? Christ, he could have killed you!”

            Steve just shakes his head and wheezes, trying to wave Howard off.

            “No… no…” Steve gasps, and gets one foot under him. He feels Howard get his arms under his armpit and together they are able to lever him onto his feet, “He knows what’ll ...kill me and what...won't. It’s the same… for him.” Steve drags in a breath and gasps out another one.

            He glances at the jeep- just as he thought, there’s a small knife sticking out of a very flat tire, which is still whistling as it goes down.

            “Steve.” Howard says, his voice a vague warning.

            Steve runs.

            His chest and abdomen ache awfully, but he pushes it out of his mind. He has to catch him. Has to find him.

            There’s more rockets being fired into the city from all sides, and there are fire alarms and sirens blaring around him. It’s a storm of sound and smoke, the world glowing with distant flames illuminating the massive cloud over the city, occasionally striped by spotlights from the harbor and airport. The electricity is flickering on and off, and Steve is running through wet streets, so fast it only takes him another few minutes to skid into the yard at the embassy.

             It’s already in chaos when Steve arrives, men groaning on the ground. The door is ripped off its hinges, and several soldiers are getting gingerly to their feet.

             “Where!?” Steve yells, grabbing one by the collar and shaking him, “Where did he go? The man with the long hair and metal arm, did he go inside?!”          

            “Yes! Yes, Jesus, he went in!”  the man sputters, trying to pry Steve’s fingers off him.

            Steve drops him and runs in through the broken door, its massive metal hinges twisted and warped with tremendous force. There’s a massive marble staircase and he’s already leaping up it, taking the steps four at a time and whirling around each landing with a hand on the banister, making the whole thing creak.

            It’s at about floor ten when he almost crashes into an elite force of soldiers, all dressed in black. None of them have any bars, badges or stripes denoting them as part of the army, but Steve recognizes them almost immediately; they’re part of Pierce’s elite force.

            They all stare at him, clearly not expecting Captain America to come running up the stairs behind them.

            There’s twelve of them, and they all pivot to face him, forming a menacing semi-circle.

            Steve stands his ground, arms at his sides, shoulders back.

            “I’m only going to say this once; let me through.” his voice is hard and unwavering and gives absolutely no quarter.

            “Can’t do that, sir.” says the nearest man, raising his huge custom rifle to Steve’s chest.

            Steve doesn’t flinch. He slowly takes a step forward, closer to the barrel pointed at the star on the centre of his chest.          

            He holds eye contact with the agent, and takes another step until the muzzle is pressed right over his heart.

            He says nothing, just stares at the man, stone faced.

            Steve can feel all the agents looking at each other. He knows none of them want to be the man who shoots Captain America, unarmed and point blank.

            “We.... have orders.” the agent says, and he’s breathing faster now.

            Steve snarls at him and his hand comes up in a blur, grabbing the barrel and slapping it away from his chest…

            … right as a massive explosion rocks the building.

            All the agents around Steve stumble as the building shakes violently, and it’s Steve who recovers first, spinning into a roundhouse kick and sending the man who’d been pointing the gun at him flying into three other agents.

            Steve punches another over the railing, and then he’s sprinting up the stairs again as smoke alarms start ringing, and the sprinklers come on, effectively dousing him and the slippery marble stairs.

            His stomach still aches from the armbar Bucky gave him, and his feet are squeaking and sliding on the steps as he leaps up them, but he can’t stop now.

            He hears gunshots and screams from above in the stairwell, and tries to run even faster. He’s left the agents behind him by a few floors now, and he can’t hear them over the shrill rattle of the alarms.

            As he nears ascends, he can see that the water running down the steps is changing colour- first to a dilute orange, but then redder and redder until it’s clear that there’s blood in the stream trickling past his feet.

            “Shit, shit, shit, shit.” Steve says, throwing himself around a landing. He tries to blink water out of his eyes, shaking his head sharply.

            He almost steps on the dead man, who’s  haphazardly strewn across the stairs. He’s American, in fatigues, and he’s been shot in the head, precisely between the eyes.

            Steve keeps running, and he hears more shouting and more gunshots, closer this time, and panicked yelling and then more shots.There’s still blood pouring down the stairs, more now in fact, and it’s actually making the stairs slicker and greasier under his boots.

            He comes hurtling around a corner, feet sliding in the bloody water, and comes face to face with a scene of carnage unfolding.

            There’s a team of about eight men, all of whom appear to be in the non-descript outfit of Pierce’s men, trying to kill Bucky, and they are absolutely not succeeding. Steve doesn't slow, just rips the shield off his back and hurls it at the nearest agent, sending him flying forward into a wall, head first. Steve catches it on a rebound, takes a running leap and, using his momentum, does a flying aerial kick to the next man’s back, crashing him right into Bucky.

            Bucky is a ruthless, brutal, spectacular fighter; his balance is balletic, but he’s a machine of unrelenting force and terrifying precision. Steve watches as he uses his metal arm to throw one man into another, using the momentum of the throw to tuck, roll, land on his back and handspring up with his metal arm into another man. He kicks the barrel of a rifle away from his head, spinning in perfect acrobatic fashion and is up on his feet, then flying roundhouses yet another man off the landing into the stairwell below.

            Steve uses the shield to bash another man into a wall, and punches another when he tries to slash at him with a huge combat knife. Bucky catches the knife from the falling man’s hand and hurls it with inhuman precision into the throat of a man trying to aim at him with a handgun.

            The last man standing is just turning when Bucky backhands his rifle with his metal arm, and then shoots him point blank with the pistol he has in his other hand.

            Then it’s just the two of them, equally drenched as the sprinklers pour above them.

            But before Steve can open his mouth, Bucky has him by the front of the uniform with his metal hand, and tosses him back down the nearest flight of stairs.

            As he lands in a clattering heap on the landing, Steve hears him yell, “I said not to follow me!”

            Steve grits his teeth as he gets back up, disoriented from the impact but largely unhurt.

            “Dammit, Buck.” he hisses into the cacophony of the fire alarm, and starts back up the stairs, weaving around the bodies of the men they’d just defeated.

            Bucky has disappeared into the fog, and Steve knows he’s continued up.

            So Steve continues up as well.  

            Smoke is filling the corridors and stairwell, getting thicker and blacker, and it smells of burning plastic and insulation. He sees flames at the far end of one hall, and walls and floors are missing.

            “Bucky!” he shouts, and he hears a yell above him by a few floors, and then more gunshots.

            There’s a trail of more bodies, agents, army men, all dead and collapsed on the steps exactly where they died. Some have been shot with chilling precision, others with their necks clearly snapped by what Steve can only assume is a metal cybernetic hand.

            It continues like this, a trickle of bodies to follow like breadcrumbs, until finally the stairs stop.

            As Steve reaches the top floor, he starts coughing uncontrollably. The smoke is so thick he can barely see, and his eyes start watering. The floor is pooled with blood and ash, and Steve is reminded chillingly of the napalm from six years earlier.

            There’s roaring flames at the end of the hall, making the smoke glow. Steve stumbles in that direction, arms outstretched in case he bumps into anything or anyone.

            “Bucky!” he shouts again, coughing and blinking away the smoke, tears pouring down his face as his eyes water.

            He trips over a body, and sees it’s yet another of Pierce’s elite agents, his throat slit expertly. There’s more bodies, too, killed in a variety of ways but all with the same ruthless precision.

            Steve continues on, and it’s because of the thick smoke, he almost falls into the huge hole blown in the side of the building.

            The hole is massive, spanning several floors, which makes sense of what Steve had seen down the hall as he climbed higher in the building. It goes up the roof as well, smoke pouring out of the gaping wound in a massive cloud, and Steve looks around, trying to get his bearings.

            There’s a huge  mahogany and leather desk, charred papers flying everywhere in the vacuum caused by the fire, and ash and debris is swirling across the marble floor in little cyclones.

            There’s a private staircase in the corner, and near the door, laying on the ground, frame broken and glass shattered, is a photo of Alexander Pierce shaking hands with Richard Nixon, beaming and handsome and proud.

            Steve looks back to the private staircase.

            If you’re on the top floor, and the threat is coming at you from below, what’s your only option to get away?

            Steve approaches the stairwell, and sees the door had been ripped open. There’s five distinct grooves in the metal, each corresponding to a finger.

            Steve steps into the stairway, much smaller and more secret than the other. There’s smoke pouring in from the hole in the wall, and Steve can see the glowing smokey night sky if he looks up.

            He throws himself up the stairs, and he comes careening out onto the roof at full speed, feet sliding on the rubble. The smoke is thick and then thin and then thick again as massive gusts of hot air blast around him, his wet hair drying as it blows every which way.

            He’s 25 stories up, on one of the highest buildings in Saigon, and he can see fires all over the city now from rockets.

            “Bucky!” he shouts, squinting through the smoke.

            He starts to walk, looking around wildly, eyes streaming and lungs starting to ache. He starts coughing, and he’s reminded rudely of the winter of 1936, when he got bronchitis from a regular old cold.

            “Bucky!” he calls out again, and as he nears the partially obscured massive hole in the roof, he sees him.

            Or rather; sees them.

            Bucky is standing right near the hole, his soaked dark hair gleaming in the firelight, chrome arm reflecting the flames and gleaming bright like a cinder.

            With that arm, he’s got Pierce by the throat, and is holding him out at arms length, dangling him over the hole in the building.

            “Bucky!” Steve leaps a metal vent and comes closer, coughing again.

            Bucky doesn’t look around at him. He’s staring at Pierce, his blue eyes full of nothing but hatred and the fire surrounding them.

            It’s unbelievably hot this near the fire, and Steve can see the Pierce is burned. He’s very much alive though, scrabbling desperately at Bucky’s relentless metal fingers.

            “Stop there, Steve.” Bucky says, his voice hard and loud. He doesn’t look around.

            Steve stops where he is, about fifteen feet away. 

            “Talk to me, Buck.” Steve says earnestly.

             Bucky’s head turns, and he looks at Steve out of the corner of his eye.

             “I told you not to follow me.” he says flatly.

              “And if you remember me at all, you knew that wasn’t gonna happen.”

              Bucky goes back to looking at Pierce, and his jaw clenches.

            “I’m not going to let you take him.” Bucky hisses.

             Steve’s eyes go to Pierce, who is desperately trying to pry the fingers off his trachea.

            “We can turn him in, Buck. Put him on trial. Show the American people what he’s done.”

            “He dies here. He contributed to this mess; he’s going to die in it.”

            Steve takes a deep breath and closes his eyes.

             He doesn’t want to take this away from Bucky. If anyone deserves it, it’s him. But he knows how Pierce can serve Bucky better than by dying.

            “We can save you, Buck. He can testify what happened to you. You can come home.” Steve takes another step closer, but Bucky’s head whips around to stare at him.

            There’s so much profound sadness in his eyes, so much anger and loss and acceptance of his guilt.

             “There’s no saving me, Steve.” Bucky says quietly, and Steve feels his heart breaking in his chest.

             Suddenly there’s a crash behind him, and Steve whips around as a dozen agents pour out onto the roof.

             “Freeze!” one shouts as the agents fan out.

             Steve looks back, and he sees that Bucky has Pierce clasped to his chest now, metal arm locking him against him, acting as a shield between him and the agents.

            Pierce must have his mouth free, because he lets out a huge hacking cough and shouts “Fucking shoot him, for christssakes!”

           “Which one, sir!?” shouts the agent in charge as they inch closer.

           “Either of them!” Pierce shouts, and there’s a crunch as Bucky adjusts his hold to bring his arm around Pierce’s throat, effectively silencing him.

           Steve doesn’t dare take his eyes off the agents, who are trying to flank him and Bucky.

            Out of the corner of his eye he sees Bucky take a step backwards towards the yawning chasm of the blown out building dragging Pierce with him. The building is collapsing, and the hole is now more than ten stories of glowing inferno.

           “Buck,” Steve says in warning, holding out an arm in his direction but also at the nearest agent.

           “Release the colonel and get down on your knees!” shouts another agent, inching closer step by step.

           “Stand down!” Steve yells, arms still outstretched, trying to be placating.

             “Stand aside, Captain Rogers!” another agent has a different weapon, which looks like a modified enormous stun gun, black and terrifying, “Or I’ll have to put you down!”

          Steve opens his mouth to retort, but he freezes when he hears Bucky’s voice.

          “Steve!”

         Steve turns, and Bucky is glaring at him, eyes sharp and bright as starlight.

          “I need you to make me a promise. Okay?”

          Steve flounders, but nods despite himself.

           “I need you to promise me that you’ll keep going. You have to keep going. The world needs you.”

           Steve can feel his whole body thrumming with tension. He wants to leap at the nearest agent and rip him apart for even daring to point his gun at Bucky, and he wants to leap at Bucky and wrap him in his arms and never let him go again.

           For some reason, his mind is being dragged back in time. All he can hear is the melodic rasp of big band swing played on a phonograph record player, echoing down the hall and into their apartment.

            He can see Bucky, suspenders dropped off his shoulders, arms tanned from working outdoors, bangs hanging rakishly over his forehead. Let’s dance, Stevie! It don’t gotta be just the little girls that get a turn. The roguish wink and salacious grin that deserved a clip round the ear.

            “Bucky, I don’t-” Steve says, hands clenched in tight fists.

            “Promise me! I said promise me, Steve.” Bucky isn’t shouting. He’s assured and calm.

            Steve swallows hard, and his tongue tastes like blood and ash.

            “I… I promise.”

            “Release the colonel and get down on the ground!” yells an agent.

            Bucky takes another tiny step backwards, eyes never leaving Steve’s, and Steve suddenly realizes what’s about to happen.

            “Bucky!” Steve shouts for all he’s worth, and he moves towards him, but there’s a strange snap, and suddenly every muscle is cramping and convulsing as waves of electricity course through him.

            He falls onto his hands and knees, fighting with every molecule he’s worth to stop from collapsing entirely.

            He watches Bucky, watches his silhouette in the roaring rising flames behind and around him. He looks like a creature sprung from the depths of hell, a fallen angel made of memories and metal.

            Bucky just nods at Steve, tiny and private, and then takes a big step backwards, bringing Pierce with him, falling off the precipice into the huge yawning hole below.

            Steve comes to screaming, yet again.

            He’s restrained and immobile, and he howls with rage and anguish, straining ineffectually at his bindings.

            Bucky’s gone.

            He’s fallen, again, and again, Steve wasn’t close enough to grab him.

            Howard is suddenly over him, and his eyes are red, his face lined with fear and grief.

            “Steve, Steve, Steve, calm down, please calm down.” Howard begs, voice shaking, a hand on Steve’s forehead.

            Steve realizes he’s sobbing, dragging in huge shuddering lungfuls of air.

            “He’s gone. He’s gone and I couldn’t stop it.”

            “I know. I know, God, I’m sorry Steve. I’m so sorry.” Howard says, and his voice breaks.

            “He’s gone. I lost him, he’s gone.” Steve can’t stop repeating it over and over, chest heaving with sobs between each word.

            “I’ll let you up, but you gotta promise me you won’t do anything stupid.” Howard says, and suddenly Steve’s arms are free.

            Steve barely sits up before he’s being embraced, and he lets himself be held as he cries and cries.

            He’d been so close.

            He’d been so close to having him, but he’d been too late. Too far, too slow.

            For the second time in far too many and too few years, he’s watched Bucky fall away from him.

            “I’m sorry, Steve. I’m sorry.” Howard says, squeezing Steve tight.

            Steve is aware that he’s on a modified stretcher in the belly of a cargo plane, hidden behind ammunition crates. He’s aware there’s no one around to watch Captain America dissolve, and this is a conscious decision made by people smarter than him.

            But none of it matters at all to him.

            So he holds Howard tight and sobs.

            He doesn’t really come conscious again until he’s sitting on the guest bed in Howard’s home in Malibu.

            He’d gone more or less catatonic, staring into middle space for the whole flight back to the States, for the disembarking, for the ushering into a secret van and driving hours back to Howard’s home.

            He’d stared right past Maria, who’d gasped at his and Howard’s faces when she opened the door.

            Anthony, who was only five, had stared at Steve just as owlishly as his mother, but with less comprehension and more fear.

            And now, Steve sat on the guest bed, still in his modified new uniform, and blinked back into reality.

            He’d failed.

            He’d gone back to try find Bucky. And he had- but he’d lost him just as quickly, as cruelly and suddenly as he had in 1945.

            Steve puts his head in his hands, rakes them through his hair.

            And all he could think, was what was it that he and Bucky had done that had made God hate them so. What cosmic wrong had they done that made it that they could survive years beyond mortal means, just to be taken away from each other again, in the same way?

            He got to his feet, shaky and unsteady, and peeled himself out of the costume. He made himself shower, just standing blankly under the spray and letting the water rinse away the salt and ash from his skin. He dried himself in a daze, avoiding the mirror at all costs.

            He climbed into the huge king sized bed and stared at the wall opposite, and wondered how many more years of this torturous life he would have to live before the serum finally gave up and let him go.

Ⅷ

            The MPs come and get him and Howard four days later.

            They’re flown on a small military jet to Washington in handcuffs. They don’t have any special strong ones, but Steve doesn’t have the heart to break them.

            They go on special trial in the Supreme Court building for about three hours, at which point Peggy comes storming into the room and shouts a bit. About what, Steve doesn’t really listen. He’s a few hundred miles away, and about four decades. She has a massive stack of files and a wild look in her eye that says that if he knows anything at all, it’s to keep his mouth shut.

            They're released after another six hours of debating across the table, and manage to evade the forest of press camped outside. A helicopter took them to SSR headquarters in New York, and Steve is installed in yet another temporary bedroom, this one even more impersonal and devoid of life.

            It doesn’t matter to him all that much- he feels like he was barely attached to his own body, is just hovering above it, a single fibre holding him down. It’s as if he is watching himself pass through the world as a husk, watching impartially as someone he doesn’t know walks his body around.

            He’d failed.

            The next few years are a forest of publicity, wherein he testifies at various trials, hearings, councils. He goes on the stand when the evidence against Pierce and his cronies come out,  implicating them in war crimes. He testifies against the war effort in general. He’s protested by those who supported the war effort, and lauded by those who did not.

            He refuses talk-shows and public appearances.

            He lives by himself in a little apartment in Staten Island, away from anything too familiar.

            He consults occasionally at Peggy’s agency, now a massive international conglomerate with millions of moving parts.  He does as he’s asked, as usual.

            For the most part, though, he stays in his apartment. He reads books. He takes long walks. He rides his motorcycle on long cross country tours, up and down, East and West.

            He doesn’t draw.

            Any thoughts of Bucky are avoided. The guilt, the anger, the regret, have all fused into a firewall through which there is no passage. The memory of Bucky lives in a prison in Steve’s mind, with no windows to look in or out of.

            Outside of a professional setting, Steve mostly stays away from Peggy and Howard. He knows they will only express their worry for him, their pity, their love. He doesn’t want any of it. Peggy’s moved to DC, where her main agency has its headquarters, and Howard flies between his Manhattan base and Malibu.

            Steve is far enough out of their way, he hasn’t seen either of them outside of a courtroom since 1976.

            In the early spring of 1979, a call comes.

            He and Howard are going to be awarded medals by the President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, for their efforts to evacuate trapped Vietnamese civilians in Saigon four years earlier; Steve, the Congressional Medal of Honor, and Howard, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

            Steve hedges on declining, but the award is leaked to the press by someone in the White House, and Steve knows he has to accept then.

            He flies to DC on a windy Wednesday, the sky grey and the world greyer. It’s been a long cold spring, without a spell of warm enough weather to start the trees greening or the grass growing.

            He has a few hours after he checks into his hotel- which is actually The President’s Guest House hotel- and he takes a cab to Peggy’s condo.

            She’s been semi-retired for two years now, working only a few days a week, or as much as she wants, which apparently is quite a bit more than only a few days. Steve’s heard about her in the occasional memos, the occasional passing discussion, read a piece about her in TIME.

            He hasn’t really spoken to her in… God, years and years.

            The taxi drops him off outside a huge, spectacularly maintain condo building, with glass doors with doormen in uniforms.

            Steve, in his Levi’s, well loved Adidas sneakers and navy windbreaker, immediately feels too shabby to even be on the property.

            As he approaches, the doorman beams at him as he lets Steve in.

            “Who are you here for, sir?” he asks.

            “Uh...Carter? Mrs. Peggy Carter?” Steve tries a charming smile, which he’s a bit out of practice at these days.

            The doorman looks delighted. “Oh! Another one for the party, eh? Right on up then. 1501, can’t miss it.”

            Party? Steve swallows but continues to the elevator when he’s let through the interior door.

            The elevator is a swank number in polished slate and mirrors, and Steve glances at himself and grimaces. He leans nearer and rakes his nails through his beard, trying to get it all to lay flat, and takes off his Rangers cap and tries to get his hair to behave perhaps a bit, but it’s too long now to be combed into the style he used to do. It’s era appropriate, certainly, but not the tidily slicked hair Peggy had seen him in the most.

            The doors ding, and he steps out into a beautifully appointed marble hall, with real paintings and actual cut calla lilies in a vase on a little table. It even smells classy.

            Steve approaches 1501, and steeles himself.

            It sounds like a party inside, raucous and warm and friendly. All the things Steve hasn’t been in… decades.

            He doesn’t belong among the happy normal people, with wonderful lives, careers, social lives.

            He was made into a weapon, not a social butterfly.

            He turns as if to go, when suddenly the door opens, and there’s Peggy’s husband Brian. He’s older, greyer, thicker in the middle, but beaming from ear to ear, a bag of empty cans in one hand.

            He falters as he sees Steve, and then beams again, only wider.

            “Steve! What a surprise! I had no idea you were coming!”

            Steve immediately tries to recover, smiling back and laughing.

            “I...yeah, it’s a bit unannounced, I guess. I can come back later, or-”

            “Nonsense! We’re just bringing out the cake, come on in!” Brian waves Steve in, clapping him on the back as he ushers Steve into the beautiful foyer. He looks up at Steve’s face and shakes his head in wonder. “Christ, but… you haven’t aged a day since… hell, since I met you! You don’t have a grey hair on your head!”

            “Nah, there’s a couple here and there in the beard.” Steve says abashedly, cheeks heating and looking down at his feet as he kicks off his shoes.

            “Well, sure, but you’re still built like a brick shithouse. Not carrying around the old spare tire, eh?” he pats his belly a few times, grinning unapologetically.

            Almost forty years on, and Steve is still amazed and envious of how completely comfortable the man is in his own skin.

            “Who is it, darling?” there’s the click of heels, and in comes Peggy, who is just as ravishing as ever, her hair streaked with distinguished silver, sparkling brown eyes creased with years of smiling, lips still perfectly rouged. She sees Steve, and the shock and delight are immediate.

            “Steve! My God, Steve, it’s so lovely to see you!” She throws her arms around him, and suddenly, Steve doesn’t feel quite so terrible.

            She still feels the same in his arms, in his soul. The tiny, asthmatic 120 pound Steve still matters to her, still exists to her.

            “How are you? You’re getting a medal tomorrow!” Peggy says, hands on his cheeks, eyes bright and so happy. Steve doesn’t regret coming at all.

            “Oh, Jesus, that’s right!” Brian says, smacking himself on the forehead, “You’re meeting the president tomorrow and getting a gee-dee Medal of Honor!”

            “Yes, that’ll be how many presidents you’ve met, then? Seven?”

            “Eight, actually.” Steve says, and can’t help but grin when she winks at him.

            “Eight indeed. Well, do you want to come in? It’s Amelia’s twenty first birthday, we’re having cake and presents!”

            Steve’s mouth falls slightly open. Twenty one years. Jesus.

            “Uh… I don’t want to intrude, I just came by to-”

            “Nonsense! You could never intrude, you know that.” Peggy takes his hand and squeezes it.

            There’s quite a few people sitting around the living room, holding fancy glasses of punch and dull blue Melmac plates. Steve doesn’t really recognise anyone, but then, how could he? It’s not like he’s an actual part of Peggy’s life anymore.

            Peggy doesn’t make him go in and interrupt, bringing him to a gorgeous nearby bar laden with party snacks and a massive pineapple upside-down cake with a little striped blue candle in the centre.

            “I won’t make you meet everyone. I know you’ve got more than enough of that lined up for tomorrow.” Peggy says, smiling and scooping him a cup of punch as he sits at a bar stool.

            “I really didn’t mean to party crash. Just wanted to… you know… say hi.”

            Peggy gives him a long look, one that Steve knows too well. She’s sussing out his secrets with her special brand of x-ray vision.

            “I haven’t heard much from you in a long time, Steve. How are you? Really? And don’t give me that “I’m fine” nonsense, because I won’t be having it.”

            Steve can’t help but snort at this.

            “I’m alright, Pegs. Really. I read, I travel, I work when I want. It’s not that bad, really.”

            “Is that so? So why do you look like a child’s toy in need of a wind-up? You’re hurting, Steve, and I do wish you’d let me help you.”

            Steve looked down at his hands on the white marble bar.

            “I don’t think there’s a lot of help you can give me. I’m kinda a… unprecedented case, you know? I don’t age, I don’t die, I just… you know… keep going.”

            Peggy lets out a long breath, and puts a hand on his.

            “You’re special, not unprecedented. And I think you could be happy, Steve. But it isn’t an automatic process. You have to work at it. It isn’t easy, and it isn’t always free.”

            Steve strokes his thumb across hers, smiling dully to himself.

            “I think it’s part of the serum… I don’t forget things like everyone else. Memories don’t fade, they just stay, raw and right there. My brain just holds it all and… it’s hard to try to be really happy when everything that ever made you unhappy is right in front of you.”

            He’s never admitted this particular assumption aloud before. It’s a hypothesis he’s been building for decades now, and the more he thinks about it, the more it makes sense.

            He looks up when he hears Peggy sniff hard, and she brushes a perfectly painted and shaped nail under her eye.

            “How is it that every time you come visit, I end up all sniffly, Steve Rogers.” she says, and comes around the bar to hug him. As he’s sitting on a stool, he’s perfect height for her to enclose him in her arms, resting his forehead on her collarbone.

            “I wish you’d told me all this years ago.” she says, her nails gentle on the back of his neck. It’s the most physical contact he’s had in…so, so long.

            “We were too busy saving the world.” Steve says, smirking when he hears her laugh quietly.

            She leans back and holds his face in both her hands, examining him close up. Her eyes are still a little watery, lower lip a bit trembly.

            “I’m sorry we couldn’t save him, Steve. God knows, really, I am.” she says, voice rough.

            “We tried. That’s… all we can do.” Steve says, and lets her hold him again.

            They stay that way for a while, and if any of Peggy’s family members find it odd that their matriarch is cuddling Captain America, they don’t mention it.

            Steve leaves quietly after cake, smiling on from a nearby corner as everyone sings Happy Birthday. He gives Amelia a hug, who looks a bit owlish, and she blushes bright, bright red.

            Brian takes a picture on his Polaroid, beaming as he flaps it around.

            “Even my daughter isn’t immune!” he says, laughing when Amelia socks him in the arm.

            “Good luck tomorrow, darling.” Peggy says, kissing his cheek, “and remember; you have to work at it.”

            “Yes, Agent Carter.” Steve says, smiling wryly when she rolls her eyes at him good naturedly.

            The elevator ride down is fast and smooth, and Steve stares at himself in the mirrored walls.

            You have to work at it.

            The ceremony itself is quick, but the hurry-up-and-wait mentality of getting ready, being in his dress blues, getting his shaggy hair combed back and beard trimmed and brushed by an aide, having his hand shaken a million times, that takes hours.

            He stands next to Howard, he looks suitably serious as President Carter stands behind him and loops the medal around his neck, he shakes his hand and salutes as he’s supposed to. The President gives him a huge smile and says, quiet enough that only Steve hears, “It’s an absolute honor to meet you. You’re a great American and a hero to us all.”

            Steve just smiles a benign, hollow smile. Sincere or not, he’s pretty sure he doesn’t qualify as a “great” anything anymore. And he isn’t even a good American.

            Howard on the other hand  is beaming huge. He winks at Maria in the crowd, waves at Anthony, and throws an arm around Steve’s shoulder, even though Steve has to bend at the waist slightly to let this happen.

            Steve doesn’t remember how it feels to be that free and happy, but God, he wants to.

There’s a reception, which Steve knows he’s obligated to stay for. He shakes everyone’s hands again, drinks champagne, which he doesn’t like, eats fancy hors d’oeuvres, which he doesn’t like, and meets diplomats and politicians, who he doesn’t like. The President leaves after about half an hour, then a mob of photographers insist on he and Howard standing for portraits for another half hour, and then finally, it’s over.

            Steve lifts Anthony up onto his shoulders as they wade out of the Whitehouse, which results in more photos, but Steve doesn’t stop. The public has had its pound of flesh for the day, and he has no interest in giving them an ounce more.

            Once they get outside, he walks the lawn with Maria and Howard, and occasionally he’ll pretend to start wobbling and stumbling and bend right over, causing the boy on his shoulders to start shrieking with laughter and pull Steve’s hair and ears.

            “You doing okay out in Staten all by yourself?” Howard asks, giving Maria his suit jacket as a brisk spring wind blows past.

            “Good as can be.” Steve says, smiling a half smile.

            “You’re always welcome to come stay with us, long as you need.” Maria says, with that unerringly bright smile of hers.

            “Yeah! Come stay with us! I built a rocket!” Anthony yells, gripping a sturdy handful of Steve’s long hair, now completely out of the style it had been carefully combed into.

            Steve has a few moments of nostalgia, from after he and Howard had returned from Vietnam, and Steve had lived in Howard’s guest room for two months.

            Anthony, in his matching top-and-bottom pajamas that were always somehow too short in the wrist and ankle, had snuck in around 7 am every morning with some sort of toy or other, and Steve would wake up hearing the quiet “nyyeeewwwwwmm, bbvvvzzzzzzzzz” noises of a kid miming robot or airplane noises, laying flat on his back next to Steve, miming some sort of epic battle. He would look over at Steve, say “Morning, Uncle Steve.” and then return to his battle.

           It was those moments that kept Steve going in those horrible months.

           “Thanks, Maria. I’ll come visit soon, I promise.”

           He lets Anthony off his shoulders when they reach the place that Howard’s towncar and Jarvis are waiting, and hugs and kisses Maria goodbye. Howard gives him a huge, tight hug, and looks him dead in the eyes.

           “You call me anytime, day or night, you hear me?”

          “Will do, Howard.”

           Howard smacks him on the ass as he goes to get in the back, and then hesitates, and he shoots Steve a saucy grin.

          “And uh… live a little, you know?” he waggles his eyebrows.

           Steve can’t help but snort, and he waves the car away.

            He goes back to the President’s Guest House, which is of course immediately adjacent to the Whitehouse, and changes back into his regular civvies: Levi's, worn tee shirt, pullover.

            He walks from Blair House to President’s park, around the Ellipse and across Constitution Avenue towards the World War Two memorial. It’s a chilly day, only a bit above freezing and breezy, but the serum keeps him toasty warm, even in the fingers and ears.

            As he nears the war memorial, he hears the sound of brass instruments, playing a tune he realizes he hasn’t heard since 1945.

            For some reason, his heart is in his chest as he nears the little group of people, all huddled in long coats, watching a similarly dressed band right in front of the memorial.

            They’re playing the Harry James hit “It’s Been a Long, Long Time”, and Steve can’t help but wince. The singer has made an effort to look a bit vintage, pinning up her hair and wearing bright red lipstick. It does nothing for Steve beyond make him suddenly so horribly nostalgic it aches in his chest.

            He can almost hear the giggles of a little girl teetering around on Bucky’s feet, and see the incorrigible swoop of his lips.

            Steve’s isn’t sure what strange serendipity occurred to make this all line up this way, but he knows he can’t stand in with the crowd for long. As he walks around the band in a wide berth, he starts to look at the pillars around the fountain. He stands under the Atlantic arch and looks across the babbling water, the notes from the brass band blowing in on the crisp breeze.

            After a few moments, he reaches into his jeans pocket and pulls out the parchment paper envelope, just holding it in his fingertips.

            He hasn’t had it on him in years- not since he left Saigon that last horrible time. It’s been packed away with his passport, untouched and fugitive.

            He hasn’t been able to look at it, or even really think about it. It’s all been too raw, too exposed, too godawful.

            He watches as his fingers carefully slide the tongue of the envelope open, and gently, careful with the aging paper, he draws out the sketch.

            It’s still just as horribly perfect as it’s always been.

            Steve sniffs hard, trying to stop his wet eyes from spilling over, but it doesn’t work well. He wipes his cheek roughly, the rest of the wetness getting caught in his beard.

            He knows what he has to do.

            He knows the work Peggy means; the work of letting go.

            It’s work he knows he has to do, but God, he doesn’t want to.

            Steve approaches the nearest pillar, on the shade side out of the wind, and crouches, looking at the sketch.

            It’s got dirty fingerprints, smudges, old blood, yellowing and just plain age, but it’s still just as accurate a representation of Bucky as it’s always been.

            With shaking fingers, he reaches out and carefully sets the sketch down, propping it up against the limestone.

            He stands up slowly, staring down at it. Staring it down... he loses.

            It looks so unprotected there, Bucky looks unprotected, vulnerable and alone.

            Steve takes a huge deep breath, turns around, and walks away, into the trees.

            His eyes are blurry, and he avoids a dogwalker and jogger as best he can. There’s a business woman on her break, an old man taking a stroll, and he’s about to duck around a tree when he hears a voice, clear and loud and impossible.

           “Steve.”

           He stops walking.

           He stays frozen for a heartbeat and a lifetime, and then pivots.

            Standing there, only a few yards away, dressed in bland clothes comically similar to him, his hair chin-length and shining, a black ball cap screwed onto his head, is Bucky.

            Steve stares, every cell in his body riveted to this exact second in time.

             Bucky smiles at him, crooked and endearing, and  he looks so Bucky that the world ends, a new planet is formed from the rubble, and then keeps spinning on just the same.

            “Bucky.” Steve’s voice is a hoarse rasp, and then they’re coming together, arms wrapping around bodies and necks, hugging so feral and tight normal bones would break.

            Steve takes a huge heaving breath, buries his face into Bucky’s neck, and squeezes and squeezes.

            “Bucky. Bucky, Bucky, Bucky, Bucky, Bucky.” Steve can’t stop saying it, can’t think of anything else.

            “It’s me, buddy. It’s me.” Bucky says, squeezing back just as hard.

            Steve leans back just enough to see his face. He puts both hands on his cheeks, just holding him.

            “How? How, how, Bucky, how?” he says, shaking his head, tears pouring unhindered now.

            “Didn’t you listen to nothing Pierce said? We’re basically fireproof.” He grins back, and Steve can’t help the strangled half laugh, half sob that garbles its way out of his throat.

             He lunges back to hugging him, both arms around his torso, holding them together like unsplittable atoms of gold.

            “God. You’re here, you’re here.” Steve babbles, eyes screwed shut.

           “I’m here. Been looking for you all day but yeah, I’m here.”

            Steve sniffs hard and leans back to blink at Bucky.

            “Looking for me? Here?”

             “Yeah. I heard last week on the radio you were getting a medal today. I waited outside a bit, saw you with Maria and Howard. Figured I’d wait. But then you were gone and wandering off so I followed you.” he’s grinning again, eyes crinkling at the sides in a way so familiar Steve’s knees start to shake, “And here we are.”

              Steve can’t stop pawing at him, feeling him under his hands. His body is solid and warm, alive and wonderful. His left arm is unforgiving metal under his jacket, his right, dense ropey muscle.

            “I thought I lost you again. I thought you…” he can’t say it, just takes a huge deep breath, and Bucky pulls his face back down to his shoulder.

             “I know. And you almost did. But I guess I got lucky.”

                Bucky tells Steve to follow, and Steve is of course helpless to refuse. Bucky glances at him before they go, smirks a devastating half-smirk, and then takes off his cap and jams it down onto Steve’s head.

              “Let’s go.”

              Steve takes a step after him, and then his heart suddenly leaps into his chest.

              “Wait!” he says, grabbing Bucky’s elbow, turning him. Steve takes off back to the Atlantic arch, and comes skidding to a halt in the loose leaves on the concrete.

               He stoops, and picks up the portrait, cradles it in his hands, and carefully folds it back into its wax paper envelope as he walks back to Bucky, who is looking vaguely amused.

              “You ready?” Bucky says, raising an eyebrow.

              Steve follows him out of the park, away from the busy epicentre of the government and all its terrible connotations. They go through alleys, across streets at irregular junctions, through the front of a bodega and out the back of it.

              Steve realizes this is because Bucky is trying to ensure they aren’t followed, and Steve hadn’t even thought of that once. God, what if he’d led some sort of terrible harm right to Bucky? He couldn’t stand it.

             “Is there somebody following us?” Steve asks, jogging slightly to keep up with Bucky.

             “No. But I like to keep it that way.”  Bucky doesn’t turn, just keeps walking nonchalantly yet inescapably forward, hands in his pockets, strides long but unhurried.

              Steve falls back just behind Bucky, trying to keep in the lee of the easy path he carves through people. Steve keeps having to step around, but people seem to get out of Bucky’s way instinctively.

             The two of them are dressed in similar style, easily fitting into this strange era; Bucky’s in a faded jean jacket and has a big hoodie under it, nondescript and red. His jeans are black, well worn, plain, boring, and he’s in black Converse high tops. He looks, and Steve knows this is quite intentional, very much like everyone else on the street.

             After about twenty minutes of weaving a curious trail through the city, they stop in front of a cute little tea shop with a row of big windows above the main sign, and a heavily locked resident door just to the side, with a street number and a mailbox.

            “You live up there?” Steve says, looking up at the little second-floor flat.

             Bucky just pulls out his keys and lets them in, entering a tidy little landing at the bottom of the narrow stairs.

              Steve kicks off his shoes when Bucky quickly unlaces his, and follows him up the steps.

              It’s a gorgeous studio apartment, and Steve can’t help but wonder at the domestic, easy homeyness of it. The entire streetfront wall is a strip of windows above a shallow bench that runs the whole length of the room, and it’s covered in various plants, some even hanging in baskets from the ceiling. There’s a sort of irregular grid system of open, backless bookshelves that divide the front from the back two thirds of the apartment, beyond which is a bedroom on the right, and kitchen on the left. There’s no actual doors or rooms, just a single solid wall that divides the two, and beyond the edge of the wall Steve can see the entrance to a bathroom and a closet area.

           “Bucky, I… I love the place. It’s great.”

            Bucky smiles a little smile as he takes off his jean jacket and hangs it on a peg, “Thanks. I’ve been here a while now. I’ve really come to like it. It’s like a little paradise in the middle of chaos, you know?” He takes off Steve’s hat and hangs it up as well.

            Steve watches as Bucky moves through the space, putting his keys in a bowl, unzipping his red sweater and throwing it on his bed as he moves to the kitchen.

             Steve watches as more of his body is revealed- he’s in a well loved black t-shirt with a band Steve doesn’t recognize, and it hugs to the thick muscles of his shoulders and back. His body is big- larger than it had ever been in either Brooklyn or in the European theatre. Whatever it was they did to him, it made him carry muscle like Steve.

             His left arm gleams in the half light, glinting orange then white then bright silver.

              “You want anything? Some coffee, tea, a beer? I think I have a beer. I tried a few the other day; I don’t think they work on me.”

             Steve follows him, timid in what is clearly Bucky’s space.

              “Uh... coffee. Coffee would be great.” Steve crosses his arms and realizes he’s still in his windbreaker. He shrugs it off and, after a moment of hesitation, throws it onto Bucky’s queen bed, on top of Bucky’s sweater.

             When he comes back around into the kitchen, Bucky is standing, facing away, watching the kettle come to a boil, both hands in fists on the countertop.

             Steve can see the tension in his shoulders, and when he watches him reach up and pull down a mug, his flesh hand shakes a little.

             “Bucky.” Steve says carefully, taking a step closer, and then pauses, “Are you…” he trails off, unsure how to continue.

             Bucky takes a deep fortifying breath and waves it away. “Yeah, yeah. All good.”

             Steve comes up, cautious and slow, to stand beside him.

             Bucky is looking down at the counter, at the mugs and the kettle gurgling away.

            His mismatched hands are curled into tight fists, and as Steve watches, they curl tighter.

           “I’m sorry, I don’t… I don’t know why I’m-” Bucky says wretchedly and swipes at his face, and Steve realizes his voice is choked with tears.

           “Jesus, Buck.” Steve pulls him in with both hands, wrapping him up, both arms around Bucky’s neck so Bucky’s face is cocooned against him. Bucky wraps his arms around Steve’s middle, hands clasping at flesh and holding on. Steve buries his face down into Bucky’s hair and just breathes him in as Bucky cries quietly.

          “I haven’t cried in… in years, I can’t even remember,” Bucky says, voice harsh and annoyed.

          “You’re allowed to cry, Bucky. For fuck sakes, you’re allowed.” Steve tells him.

          Bucky holds Steve just as tight, arms locked around him as if he’s scared to let go. Steve doesn’t blame him; he’s fallen away from Steve far too many times.

          “Can we go sit, maybe?” Steve asks into Bucky’s hair, which smells of Prell shampoo and the cold wind.

          Bucky nods into Steve’s chest, and they break apart just enough.

          Bucky sniffs hard, his eyes red-rimmed, and angrily rubs at his cheek.

         “I’ve been fine. I hadn’t cried or nothin, and then you walk in and suddenly I’m just a wreck. Christ.” he says wretchedly, and leads Steve back around to his bed, which he sits on and rubs at his eyes again.

          Steve sits beside him, right along his side.

         “Buck, I’ve been cryin' myself out about you for the last...hell, thirty five years."

         Bucky snorts in that annoyed, amused way. “Yeah. Well. I’m just playing catch-up, I guess.”

         Bucky gets up and walks to the bookshelf, which is covered in random eclectic items, trinkets, and only the occasional stack of books. He goes to a cubby that seems to be mostly files, and he pulls out one of the thicker ones.

         He walks back to Steve and holds it out, at arm’s length.

         “I...got this for you. It’s only right that you have it. It’s too dangerous to end up in the wrong hands.”

          Steve blinks and takes the file.

           It says “Operation July Sundown” on it.

            “Jesus, Bucky. How did you get this?” Steve stares down at the file. The last time he’d seen it, Alexander Pierce had been holding it in a blown out concrete shelter in Vietnam, more than ten years ago.

            Bucky snorts darkly. Instead of answering, he goes to another of the cubbies on the bookshelf and sorts through a stack of cassette cases, before choosing one and going to his silver boombox, in the adjacent shelf, popping the tape in and pressing play. He waits for the first few notes to filter out, and he returns to the bed and sits, then lays back, and scoots himself up so his head is on a pillow.

            He heaves out a great, defeated sigh.

            “Which time? First or second?”

           Steve looks at him over his shoulder.

          He recognizes The Benny Goodman Orchestra floating over from the boombox.

          “Either you want to tell me. Or none. You don’t have to tell me anything, if you don’t want to.”

         Bucky looks aggravated by this answer.

          “Stop being so understanding. I showed up out of nowhere, Steve; you’re allowed to have questions.”

          “And you’re allowed to not have answers. I’m okay, Buck, really; I’m just so… so glad that you’re here at all,  I don’t even need to know how it happened.”

         Bucky fixes Steve with a look, one that’s calculating and dark and almost certainly one that he never would have had before the war.

          “The information in that file was compiled by the Axis, using what they knew from Erskine, Shmidt and later, Arnim Zola. Zola gave them some of what they needed to know about how to kill you,  but the war was over before Unternehmen Juli Sonnenuntergang could be brought to fruition.”

            Steve can’t help but shudder when he hears the German words roll easily off Bucky’s tongue.

            “When the Red army took Berlin, they took all the files they could find back to the KGB headquarters. They eventually decided to test the file contents on me, because I was the next best thing. They kept me in East Berlin for, I dunno, ten years? Experiments. Conditioning. Training. Washing my brain out with the electricity equivalent of bleach. You name it.” Bucky is laying on his back, fingers clasped together on his chest, staring at the ceiling as he talks.

             Steve feels like he wants to puke, the occurrence of which is something he can count on one hand since he got his improved body.

            “Eventually they gave up trying to keep me docile all the time, so when the couldn’t put me in a glorified freezer, they got a fucked up asshole from Vladivostok to invent a hyper focused brain zapper. Basically turned my head to mush so all I could rely on was my instincts and training. That stuck a lot more, was a lot harder to come back from, let me tell you.”

            Steve puts the file down on the bedspread, and scootches up so he’s laying beside Bucky, head on the other pillow. He stares at the ceiling too.

           “The Russians didn’t like you being in Korea, and then you went to Vietnam, so they reached out to their contacts in deep cover in the US, got a few high ranking people on board with a plan to basically...well, you saw what happened. Make it look like an accident. And you were politically inconvenient, so it wasn’t a hard sell. I went back and read some of what you said to the BBC in ‘63 and ‘69- frankly, I’m surprised I wasn’t sent to assassinate you when I did Kennedy.”

           Steve blinks.

           “You killed Kennedy?”

            Bucky makes an annoyed noise.

           “That’s hardly the point I’m making. What I mean is that you made yourself a big, stupid target in a warzone where people were getting fragged for much less. You really are still as dumb as you were when you were a kid, eh?”

            Steve rolls his head to look at Bucky, who is smiling fondly.

           Steve is speechless with how beautiful he is.

            “Yeah. Guess so.” he rasps.

             “Anyway. So the KGB gave your file to the NVA to do a handover, but as soon as their brass figured out what they had, they were real reluctant to be giving it to any Americans. Can’t blame them, to be honest. Anyway, they sent me in to extract it. Killed a bunch of Americans, bunch of NVA. Didn’t matter to Pierce as long as I got the file, which I did. But he’d fucked up and miscalculated- it’d been months since I’d been in Vladivostok to get my head fried. And the longer I went, the more I started to remember, to disobey him, to get violent. I’d almost killed a couple of his guys a few weeks before. And so when I opened the file, there was this old picture of you, and it crossed a bunch of wires. I don’t remember a lot of what happened, but I know I almost killed a bunch of people when they tried to bring me back in.”

             “Yeah.” Steve interjects, “Yeah, I saw one of them. They had him a secret ward in the basement at that MASH, with me. And that guy, Henderson, he’d been choked, I could tell.”

           “Yeah, well. They chained me to a chair for about a week, waiting for a window to ship me back to Vladivostok for reconditioning. But, well… that’s where you come in.”

            “Where did you go? After, when you went into the jungle?”

            Bucky heaves a huge breath, pinches the bridge of his nose and rubs his eyes.

            “I...it’s all pretty foggy. A lot of stuff from then is. I don’t remember leaving you… I think, if I’d have been even a bit more lucid, I’d have taken you with me. Thank god I didn’t, or you mighta bled out.”

             In the back of Steve’s brain, he thinks that dying in Bucky’s arms, away from all the hurts that had plagued them, doesn’t sound all that bad.

             “I just ran, for the most part. All I wanted to do was get away from everything that was confusing me, hurting me, making me feel like I was breaking into pieces. I don’t remember much other than I ended up in Cambodia somehow. Way into Cambodia. That’s when Mony found me. I was curled up in a ball and delirious in her shed. She’s about eighty, but she wasn’t afraid or anything. She gave me a blanket and a cup of the strongest hooch you ever tasted. She made me rice with basically half a rooster in it, and it was so spicy I started hiccuping, and then she put me to bed and talked to me the entire time she wove palm mats. I didn’t understand a word she said, but she didn’t seem to care. She hid me from the few people that came along, because she didn’t want anyone to know she had a runaway GI, let alone one with a metal arm. She was pretty isolated though, and let me help her with all her farm work. I figured out eventually that her husband and son had both died recently, leaving her with all this work she couldn’t do by herself. I worked pretty hard for her, tried to make her life as easy as I could. I mean, she didn’t speak a word of English, and no one ever seemed to think I should speak Khmer, but I can speak Vietnamese, and she had a few words in that, so we communicated relatively well. I think she was just glad for the company, to be honest.”

             Steve can’t help the tears trickling down his cheeks. He thinks of his Bucky, confused and scattered and delirious,  picked up and loved by a little old lady who found a lost creature and took it in. He sniffs hard, and wipes his cheeks roughly.

             Bucky looks over and smirks slightly.

            “See, now you’re crying. Don’t worry, Mony is fine. I went to check on her last year.”

            “No, no, it’s not… I’m just glad you found someone. I’m sorry it couldn’t have been me.”

             Bucky heaves a great sigh and look back up at the ceiling. He looks like he’s considering something before he decides to reveal it.

             “I mean, you were there. In a way.” He rolls away from Steve just enough to reach a book sitting on the nightstand. Apparently, he’s reading The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. He opens it’s front cover and reaches into the flap of the dust jacket, withdrawing a well creased, much looked at black and white photo of…Steve.

             Bucky looks at it, smiling a wan smile, before holding it out for Steve to take.

            “This was what was in the file. It was the only belonging I have that’s been with me since I got away. Well, I mean, and this, I suppose.” He holds up his left hand, wiggling the metal fingers in demonstration, “But I always had you with me. Even when I didn’t know why you were important, I kept you. And later, when I was starting to remember, it… helped.” Bucky looks over at Steve, and Steve in the picture, and smiles a gradually growing smile, “You did help me.”

             Steve looks at the photo of himself, brows furrowed.

             It’s bizarre, how he barely recognizes himself. It’s not as if he’s aged really, but the man in the photo… he’s so… shiny. New. So clean. He radiates righteousness and surety.

             The Steve that he recognizes now, who he sees in the mirror, is so much more tired. So much more grimy in all the places it doesn’t show, so conflicted and confused, bent under the weight of time and grief.

            “Well, then I have a confession that’ll seem even weirder by comparison.” Steve says, handing back the photo.

            Bucky laughs quietly as he tucks away the picture and puts the book back on the nightstand.

            “Go ahead. Make my day.”

            Steve side-eyes him as he reaches into his pocket.

            “Did you watch Dirty Harry?”

            “Might’ve done.”

            Steve pulls out the wax paper envelope and hands it over in an exact mirror of Bucky’s earlier action.

            Bucky just raises an eyebrow and takes it, carefully opening the flap and sliding out the drawing paper.

            He unfolds the sketch,  pivoting it so it’s right side up, and then goes motionless when his eyes finally take in the picture on the page. He goes so still, in fact, that Steve wonders if maybe his brain has stopped working properly and is stuck like a film on a reel.

            Bucky stares at the facsimile of himself, cerulean blue eyes wide and, Steve finally registers, getting gradually wider.

            “You… you…” Bucky says, and then sits up all at once. He holds the picture in both hands, staring down at it, his face shrouded in a curtain of dark hair.

            Steve sits up as well, and hesitates before carefully putting a hand on Bucky’s shoulder.

            “Uh… Becca. She came to see me after VE day. Gave me that. I’ve had it ever since. I kept it with me, always.”

            Bucky shakes his head slightly, and then looks up at Steve.

            It’s a strange look, one that Steve can’t even begin to decipher. He looks… disappointed, almost, but also shocked and confused.

            Steve isn’t sure what to say, or how to react.

            Bucky looks back down at the picture in his hands, and then, after a moment, he starts to laugh.

            Now Steve really doesn’t know what to do.

            Bucky puts the picture on his lap and puts both hands on his face, fingers sliding into his hair and pulling it back from his face. He flops backwards heavily onto the bed again, and keeps laughing at the ceiling.

            “Jesus. Best laid plans of mice and men, eh? Try and try and try, and still you can’t take a goddamn hint  even when it’s shoved in your face. Jesus, but are you something else, Rogers.”

            Steve frowns down at him.

            “What?”

             Bucky groans, shaking his head and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes.

             “I tried. I really did. But leave it to you to carry a torch for half a goddamn century.”

            Steve just stares down at him. He feels like his hearing has been sucked away.

             Bucky lets his arms fall to his sides, and he fixes Steve with a tired look.

              He sits back up and gently lifts the sketch from his lap, then pivots and sits cross legged, right in front of Steve.

              He looks at his face from close up, eyes darting all over it.

              “God, how I tried to protect you, Stevie. It took every ounce of energy I had not to be selfish, and even then, it wasn’t enough. God, I wanted you so bad, and I knew it was terrible. I knew what would happen to us. To you. What would have happened before the war, and how it could never have happened after.”

              Steve’s hold world inverts on him. His mouth falls open, and he thinks his brain has a connection suddenly explode into sparks inside his skull.

             “What? What? You… how...Bucky I wanted you-”

              “I knew how you felt, Steve. I don’t think others could see it, but I knew you inside and out. It’s one of the first things I remembered. Wanting you, and knowing that I could never let myself have you. I remembered the drawings you would do of me when you thought I wasn’t looking. You looked at me like I looked at you, except I didn’t have any evidence of it to leave behind like you did with your pictures.”

              Steve’s heart is hammering, so loud and hard he’s amazed the lights in the room aren’t shaking.

            “Bucky. Bucky, why didn’t you say something to me? God, what I would have done, if I’d-”

              “Exactly.” Bucky says sharply. “Before the war, if I’d have said something, you’d have jumped right in. And then you’d have been beaten and killed like all those other men. And during? Jesus. You really think they’d have let Captain goddamn America be a queer? You’re a lot of things, Steve, but you’ve never been delusional. You’d have been hung out to dry, crucified and ruined. And there was no way I was letting that happen, not while I was still drawing breath.”

             Steve just stares at him, breathing big and ragged breaths. He’s angry suddenly; he’s furious.

            Bucky looks back down at the picture in his lap, tracing his fingers along the edges of it.

             “And I saw how you looked at Carter. And I knew that if I said nothing, did nothing, you’d go off with her. Marry her, have kids, all that. Leave old uncle Bucky back in France where he belonged.”

             Steve scoffs, disbelieving.

             “You… you don’t get to decide things like that for me! I… there was no way I would have just walked out of that war without you, Buck. Because when I did, it goddamn broke me! How could you just plan me, like I didn’t even factor into the equation?”

             Bucky gives him a tired look and flops back onto the bed.

             “Because you’d probably throw yourself off a bridge to save even the worlds biggest shithole of a human being, so Lord knows that you’d have thrown it all away for me. You’re the worlds most predictable martyr, Stevie, I’m sorry. You never knew what was good for you, and you sure didn’t like being told either. The world needed Captain America. And he sure as shit didn’t need me.”

             Steve’s rage is an angry simmer, bubbling inside like magma.

            He leans over and glares down at Bucky, who just looks resigned.

           “So, what? You aim me at Peggy, hope for the best, and toodle on home, confident in a match well made? Fuck you, that’s bullshit and you know it.”

            Bucky gets a strange look on his face then, and he sits up, this time facing away, legs off the edge of the bed.

            “I knew I wasn’t coming home.” he says, voice terribly quiet.

           Steve frowns deeper.

           “What? What do you mean, you knew?”

          “It’s hard to explain. I just… you know that feeling? When you can picture yourself in the future, doing something? I… I lost that. After Zola had me in the lab, after you rescued me I just… I couldn’t see myself back home. Couldn’t picture it. I knew it in my bones, Steve, that I wasn’t making it back. And, I mean. I was right.” Bucky laughs dryly, humorlessly, “I never came home, did I?” his voice is tired and quiet.

             Steve can’t help himself. He surges forward and wraps his arms around Bucky’s torso from behind him, pulling him into his chest, presses his face into his hair. He lays them down on their sides, clinging to him still, feeling Bucky’s hands come up and gently lay over top of his.

             Steve fits himself along Bucky’s back, knees into knees, chest to scapula, and just holds him tight.

            It feels so good to hold him. To feel the heat of him, the shift of his breathing, to smell him, hear the air coming in and out of his lungs.

            Bucky doesn’t seem concerned or uncomfortable. In fact, he holds Steve’s wrists gently, with both metal and flesh hands, and doesn’t let go.

             Steve’s eyes are closed, his nose pressed to the back of Bucky’s neck.

             “I still wish you’d’ve told me, Buck. Even if you had all these big plans. I still wish you had.”

            Bucky heaves a giant sigh, and Steve loves that he can feel his ribcage expand and contract under his arm. He loves that he can feel how alive he is, and right there. He feels like he could melt their flesh together with the warmth they make side by side.

            “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” Bucky mutters.

            Steve hums in response. It’s an old idiom of his mother’s, and it makes Steve’s whole chest ache with fondness and grief for a life long lost to the inexorable plod of time.

            They listen to the Benny Goodman Orchestra, and the hush and shush of traffic outside.

            Eventually, Steve says “Will you tell me about after Cambodia? And how you got the file the second time?”

            Bucky shifts a little against Steve, wiggling a little but not trying to leave or make space between them. He seems content to be cuddled, and Steve is incandescently pleased by this.

            “Okay. Well. Things were… starting to come back. It was tough, because the older the memory, the harder it was to add significance to. I would get flashes and chunks of things, totally randomly, but it was like… I dunno, looking at a bunch of photos of people you don’t know? Meaningless faces. Yours came first, but even then, it took a while to remember that Big You and Little You were the same guy. There was a few months there where I thought you were different people. But then everything started to leak in. I think my brain was healing from all the shocking and freezing they did to it. I mean, I can heal everything else, so why not that?

            “Anyway, I left Mony after about a year. I got her set up so it would be easier for her to run things alone, but she also had a great-niece coming to stay with her soon and she didn’t want to have to explain the weird American with the metal arm. So I left. Snuck back into Vietnam. Followed the Ho Che Minh trail south a ways and tried to get wind of Pierce but there were so many GIs around and he was buried pretty deep, so I changed tactics. Went north to Hanoi, snuck onto a train headed back to Russia.”

            “You went back to Russia?” Steve says, careful not to exclaim too loud right next to Bucky’s ear.

            “Yup. I had business to attend to and I needed information. And I got it. By any means necessary. It wasn’t nice and it probably wasn’t ethical, but then, neither was what they did to me.”

            Bucky’s gone stiff against Steve, as if awaiting his expected angry reprisals.

            But that was Old Steve. Current Steve has been at war too many times to believe in ethics as anything other than an enormous swath of grey.

            “You did what you had to. And you’re right; it isn’t like they didn’t have it coming.”

            Bucky softens slightly against him, relaxing.

            “I didn’t…. It’s not like I tortured anybody. I was much more merciful than they deserved, and I sure didn’t enjoy it, which is more than can be said for a lot of them.” his voice is almost a snarl, and Steve gives him a reassuring squeeze, letting him know he’s safe in Steve’s arms, “But I got what I needed. Pierce’s name, and all the names of his deep contacts, in Vietnam, the Pentagon, everywhere. And, I found your file. Pierce has it sent back to Vladivostok for safe keeping. I think he was worried people might start putting two and two together and didn’t want the MPs potentially finding it. And then, once I cleaned house in Russia, I hopped back on a supply train headed for Hanoi. It was... riding across China on the top of a train… watching the world go by… it was gorgeous, and it gave me time to get my head organized. The more I got back, the more I realized I was missing, but I kinda made a game of it. Start at something I could definitely place, and then work backwards. Tried connecting the dots. You’ll be happy to know; most of the dots were you.” Bucky tilts his head just so so Steve can see he’s smirking at him.

            Steve smiles and laughs quietly in his throat.

            “Yeah, well. Even with all my memories intact, all my dots were you. So what does that make me?”

            “Pretty goddamn pathetic, I reckon.”

            Steve snorts and buries his face back into Bucky’s hair.

            “And then what?” Steve says into his neck.

            “And then… well, I cleaned house in Vietnam too. Took me a while. Had to kinda dodge in and out of pretending to be a grunt, and then sneaking off into the jungle to avoid the NVA. I cut my hair to fit in with the GIs, not that you’d have noticed when you saw me in Saigon. By then, I was just hunting down Pierce. I think he started to realize I was coming for him, because all the little lights in his network were blinking out. It was tedious as hell, hunting them all down. And he got wise and started to cover his tracks and make false trails. I should have known he was hiding in the embassy. I’d been considering getting on a ship and getting back to the States, because he’d lain some false data about him being in Washington a few months before.  But then the NVA was closing in on Saigon, and I heard his voice over the radio telling a South Vietnamese diplomat to bug out. So I just had to find him in the city. And, well. Yet again, that’s where you come in.”

            Steve squeezes his eyes closed. He’s blocked out most of the memory of the rooftop, and the sedatives Howard had stabbed him with when the group of 10 agents had dragged him screaming and crying out of the burning embassy has done a good job making everything foggy and slippery in his memories.

            “You fell Buck. Again. Into a burning building. Fifteen stories.”

            “I got lucky. That’s the only answer I have. I got burned badly, trust me, but not so hot as I couldn’t heal. Broke a bunch of ribs, couple vertebrae I think. Burned my hair pretty good too, so I cut most of it off again. I was able to kinda disappear into the confusion before anyone knew what was happening. I locked myself in a basement and sweated it out for two days, waiting for all the burns and my bones to heal. Ate some really questionable canned fish and drank mango nectar I found in a can. I don’t really have an answer for you about why I wasn’t killed by the fall. Probably like the last time- dumb luck. Or dumb bad luck, where I just can’t seem to die when I’m supposed to.”

            Steve lets out a long, strangled breath. There’s tears choking him again, and he’s only barely keeping himself together. Bucky must hear his shaky exhale, because he turns in Steve’s arms so they’re face to face

            He lifts his free hand- the flesh one, as the metal one is pinned beneath his body- and puts it gently on Steve’s cheek, his thumb stroking across the coarse hair at the edge of his beard. He looks at Steve, tired sweetness in every feature.

            “Somewhere, somehow, there was a future for us, Stevie. Where everything went right. Where we died as old men buried side by side, or in a hail of bullets and glory. But we just…. Hell, we just can’t seem to die right, can we?” he smiles a sardonic half smile, his signature.

            Steve closes his eyes tight shut, and can feel tears clinging to the lashes.

            “I can’t lie, Buck.” Steve says, swallowing hard, “I was getting pretty sick of living this ridiculous endless life, without you.”

            Bucky just scootches forward and puts their foreheads together, and Steve can feel his breath puffing against his cheeks and lips.

            “Doesn’t sound like something Captain America would say.”     

            Steve lets out another shuddering breath.

            “I don’t think I’m him anymore. I think he died when you did. Every time you did.”

            “God, Steve.” Bucky shuffles a bit, and then Steve’s face is pressed into his chest as Bucky pulls him close. Steve tightens his arms around Bucky’s waist, pressing in tight.

            They stay like that for a long time, as the minutes melt and blur into meaningless increments of nothingness. Steve listens to Bucky’s heart and Bucky’s lungs, and he both thanks and curses his dreams for becoming a reality.

            After a good long while, Steve says “Tell me more about when we get old and are buried together.”

            Bucky laughs, and Steve feels it against his nose and chin.

            “Uh, ok. Let’s see. Well, you and Carter have a whole mess of kids, and I-”

            “No, not like that. How is was supposed to be. How you wanted it to be.”

            Bucky hesitates, and Steve leans back just enough to see his face, which looks uncertain.

            “You said you wanted it.”

            Bucky looks tentative, and Steve realizes he’s afraid.

            Afraid of revealing too much. Of showing his hand. Steve doesn’t blame him; he’s usually in the same camp.

            “I’ll tell you how I wanted it to be, if that helps. You can add on if you want.”

            Bucky just watches him as Steve pulls himself up and puts his head on a pillow, so they’re talking to face to face.

            Steve bites his lower lip quickly, likewise nervous at revealing so much of what he kept hidden for so long.

            “Uh. Ok. Well.... do you remember Mrs. Caravaggio? Down the hall from our old apartment?”

            Bucky’s face contorts slightly, as if he’s trying to flex some mental muscle to make his memories resurface.

            Steve continues, hoping he can help.

            “She had a phonograph that she would wheel out into the hall on Saturday afternoons. You’d prop the door open and we would listen to her music.”

            Bucky blinks.

            “I… I think so? I… were there kids?” he looks confused at his own recollection.

            Steve beams. “Yes! The little girls from down the hall would come, and you’d balance them on your feet and dance them around our place. They loved it so much, Buck.”

            Bucky starts to smile again. “Yeah. Yeah, I kinda do remember.”

            “Once, after the girls mom called them back, a slow song came on. Glenn Miller, “Moonlight Serenade”. And you asked me to dance with you. Oh man how I wanted to. God, you were so handsome, I wanted to say yes so bad, but I was afraid of what you’d see once I got close up. That you’d see everything I was tryna hide. But, I mean. Apparently, you saw it all anyway.”

            Bucky just looks back at him.

            “So… that’s what I imagine. In a perfect world, where everything went right. I would have said yes. And we woulda danced the night away. And we would dance every night, until we were old and our knees were all creaky and even then we’d still dance.” Steve feels bashful suddenly, looking down at the bulky swell of Bucky’s chest under his t-shirt to avoid eye contact.

            When he glances back up, Bucky looks crestfallen, and Steve immediately reaches for him, both hands on Bucky’s.

            “I can’t remember. I can’t... remember, but… can we make that the story? Even if it didn’t happen, I… I want to remember that as real. If I can’t remember what really happened, I want to remember that.”

            Steve nods, and he lifts a hand and puts it gently, carefully on Bucky’s cheek.

            “Sure, Buck. That can be the story. I like it better anyway.”

            Bucky is suddenly up off the bed, and he goes over to the boom box. He ejects the tape, and starts to shuffle through his pile of cassettes. Their plastic cases make such a particular clatter as he puts them into haphazard piles, and finally, he seems happy with the tape he’s found.

            “This one?” he says, holding it up to Steve.

            Steve smiles as he gets off the bed and approaches. He takes the cassette and grins. Apparently it’s Greatest Vintage Slow Dance Hits, and Moonlight Serenade is the first track.

            “Yup. That’s it. First one.” he hands it back, and Bucky pops it into the player.

            They wait until the foggy sweet opening bars start, and Steve watches Bucky’s profile. He’s just staring into space, brows slightly furrowed.

            “He used to… play this music. Pierce. He had a record player and he’d put it on. I… it’s what I remember when I think of this song.” he frowns, “I don’t want that to be in my memory.”

            Steve can’t think of what to say, so he holds out his hand.

            Bucky slowly looks down at his hand, and then back up at him.

            “You’re sure?” his voice is quiet.

            Steve nods. “Very sure. Never been more sure.”

            Bucky takes his hand, the metal cool and smooth in Steve’s palm. He’s seen what this hand could do, but now he feels nothing but safe as he pulls Bucky close.

            It isn’t really dancing, when it comes down to it. They’re really just hugging and swaying, Steve’s hands clasped behind Bucky’s back, cheek against his hair, Bucky’s arms over his, his hands pressing flat against Steve’s shoulder blades, holding them together.

            The next song is 'Where or When' by Benny Goodman, so they keep right on dancing. Occasionally, their eyes meet and they’ll both split into big bashful smiles. Steve thinks he might otherwise have been embarrassed, but he isn’t in the slightest. It feels so entirely right to be holding him, as if he’s placed a missing organ back into his body and is finally allowed to heal.

            Holding Bucky like his, swaying to music he knows deep, deep in his bones… if he closes his eyes, they could almost be back in their moldy, musty old apartment.

            Bucky is smiling up at him when he looks again, and Steve smiles back. Their faces are so close, and Steve can feel the current that runs between them. It’s so strong, he wonders if maybe that’s what’s been keeping them alive and tethered all these years; an electricity that spanned thousands of miles and endless years.

            “Will you stay with me?” Bucky asks, very quiet.

            Steve is speechless so he nods a little, and gently shoves their foreheads together. He feels Bucky exhale sharply through his nose in a small facsimile of a laugh.

            Bucky pulls away from his arms and goes into the kitchen, putting away the coffee accoutrements they never ended up using. He glances at Steve.

            “You hungry?” he asks, seeming to have realized he’s missed an important part of being a host.

            Steve sort of sags where he stands and shakes his head.

            “No. No, I… I’m exhausted. I don’t know why, but this all….it took it right out of me, Buck.”

            Bucky looks relieved.

            “Ok. Come on.” he waves a hand at Steve in beckoning as he leads them back to his bed, which is all creased and indented now from them laying on it. He throws back the covers, and seemingly without a thought, pulls his shirt off over his head.

            Bucky is distracted pulling his snug Levi’s off his legs, but Steve can’t help but stare at the many scars ripping across his left shoulder, across his ribs and shoulder blade. Bucky seems to sense the eyes on him, because he goes still and glances back at Steve.

            “Sorry. I forgot. I can keep it on, if it makes you uncomfortable.”

            Steve shakes his head hard and sharp, and comes up right behind the other man, gently placing a hand on the thickest of scarring, right near the join of metal and skin.

            “Never, Buck. You could never make me uncomfortable.”

            Bucky smiles a vague smile, and then grabs the hem of Steve’s shirt and pulls it up over his head. Steve, surprised, complies and ducks his head into the collar, lifting his arms so Bucky can pull it all the way off.

            “Now we’re even.” he drops the shirt and gives Steve chest a once over. He starts off smiling a raunchy smile, a joke on his lips, eyebrows cocked, but then his face falls. He lifts his metal hand to the network of silvery pink scars on Steve’s right shoulder, the fingers cold but dull on the insensitive skin. He starts frowning, finger tips running along the strip that goes up his neck, then back down to the splash across his right pec.

            It’s been ten years, but the scars are still there, and show no sign of fading.

            “The napalm did this?” he asks quietly, finally making eye contact.

            Steve nods. “Didn’t heal like normal. Or… I guess it did heal like normal. That was the problem.”

            Bucky looks back at his hand, which he brings up to Steve’s jaw. He touches the place on the edge of his jawbone where the very tip of the burn is, carefully made invisible by strategic growth of his beard.

            “Come on.” Steve says, smiling at him and taking his hand in his, “I’m tired. And we can’t undo every bit of the past all at once, can we?”

            Bucky shakes his head no, and steps back. He climbs into his big double bed, shuffling over in clear invitation for Steve to come lay next to him.

            Steve sits and quickly shimmies out of his jeans, leaving him like Bucky, in simple briefs. He gets under the duvet, which is big and airy, and immediately, he feels Bucky’s arms reach for him.

            Steve comes closer, wrapping his arms around Bucky’s warm, big body. His skin is soft, his muscles relaxed and pliant under his hands. He buries his head into Bucky’s chest, as close to his heart as he can.

            Bucky just lets him burrow, metal hand stroking gently at his hair.

            “You can sleep, Stevie.” he says, and so Steve does.

            When he wakes up, he’s immediately disoriented.

            He’s warm and surrounded by softness, and he feels like he really slept as opposed to slipping into a vague loathsome unconsciousness like he usually does.

            He sits up, head whipping around.

            He’s alone, it’s dark outside… and it’s snowing. Big, fluffy flakes that fall lazily in meandering trails.

            “B...Bucky?” he says into the empty room, and he can feel panic rising in his chest and into his throat.  What if he’s gone again? Disappeared into the ether, a figment of Steve’s muddled mind.

            He’s terrified of this possibility, of every possibility, that took Bucky away.

            What if he really is just alone?

            But then he hears footsteps, and Bucky comes around the corner from the kitchen, a glass of water in his hand, still just in his nondescript black briefs.

            “Sorry, I was thirsty.” he says, and when he sees Steve’s wide eyes and heaving chest, he immediately looks worried, putting the glass down and climbing onto the bed, reaching for him, “Steve, are you okay?”

            Steve lets out a huge breath, so enormously relieved that he shakes as he wraps Bucky up indiscriminately in his arms and pulls him back down into the covers.

            “Sorry. Sorry. I just… you were gone and I was afraid.” his mouth is jammed into Bucky’s sternum, but he doesn’t move back at all.

            Bucky just hugs him back, like he had when Steve had fallen asleep, and Steve can feel him press his face into his hair.

            “Not gone. I’ll do my best to never be gone again, Steve, I promise. You’re not alone.”

            It’s those words that do it.

            Steve feels the crest of the wave coming. He can hear it. He can feel the weight of  the decades, the multitudinous cataclysms of simultaneous relief and despair.

            He starts to cry. It starts as just tears, but almost immediately, he’s sobbing, huge, full body gasping sobs into Bucky’s chest.

            He cries for the years they lost, and for the years he lived as a ghost. He cries for the life Bucky could and should have had, bright and young and beautiful. He cries for the deaths he saw, the deaths he didn’t.

            He cries for the complete and utter euphoria of the finding of lost things.

            Bucky doesn’t let go. He just holds him tight, rocking slightly. Steve can feel his lips pressed to the crown of his head, and it’s that that anchors him through his breaking and reforming, until he’s finally just sniffing and trying to wipe his eyes on Bucky’s meagre chest hair.

            “I think that was a long time coming.” Bucky says quietly, running his hands through Steve’s hair.

            Steve laughs wetly and sniffs hard. “Yeah. You’re probably right.”

            Bucky just smiles down at him, rubbing his metal thumb across Steve’s chin. The metal against the coarse hair makes a peculiar sound.

            Steve reaches over to the side table and gets a tissue, sitting up to blow his nose and throwing it somewhere before resettling back into Bucky’s arms.

            Bucky leans forward, shuffling them a bit so their foreheads are pressed together. Steve lifts his hand and puts it gently on the side of Bucky’s neck, stroking his thumb along that perfect jawline. His favorite jawline.

            “Why didn’t you come find me? Right after?” Steve whispers into their shared air.

            Bucky is quiet for almost ten full seconds, before he bites his lip a bit and responds.

            “There were bits of the network I had to unravel, you know. Things that had to be undone. I knew I couldn’t stop and reward myself with just running to you. I wanted to earn you. It… took me a while. Still not sure if I deserve this, really.”

            Steve frowns and shakes his head immediately.

            “Bucky. Bucky. You deserve everything. None of this was your fault, not a goddamn thing.”

            Bucky just meets is eyes, direct and unwavering.

            “It wasn’t yours, either.”

            Steve wants to argue. Wants to tell him about all the times he let Bucky fall. All the ways he could have saved him.

            “I can see all those denials piling up in your head.” Bucky says, lips twisting in a dry smirk.

            “I had choices, Buck. You didn’t. They took that from you.”

            Bucky just sighs and closes his eyes again.

            “Can’t change what’s done. Just what happens next, I guess.”

            Steve lets his gaze wander around Bucky’s face, so close at hand. The long dark eyelashes, the lips that still swoop in that beguiling catlike manner which was always so hard to translate onto paper. That noble chin of his, so sturdy and distinguished, like the chin of a tsar.

            “Can I kiss you?” Steve asks. He isn’t completely sure where the words came from, but they’re out now. He’s too hot suddenly, his entire skin glowing and tight.

            Bucky’s eyes snap open, pupils adjusting in the low light.

            He just blinks, inhales a quick breath, and then suddenly Steve is being kissed.

            Steve inhales through his nose, a bit taken aback, but so immediately fiercely happy.

            Bucky angles his face, the warmth of his mouth coaxing Steve’s open, sweet and tender. Steve's lips are dry, but Bucky's aren't, and they slide and catch in a delicious way. Steve clutches at him, hands slipping into his thick long hair, holding them together. Bucky’s tongue is in his mouth, and oh. This was what it felt like to be kissing the love of your life; like being ripped open by the most pleasurable of hands, reaching into his chest and replacing his heart with a part of Bucky’s soul, throbbing deep in his chest from that moment on.

            Lifetimes, he’s waited for this. And for the first time in history, it feels just as it should.

            Steve lets himself be pushed onto his back, Bucky following him. He’s got his metal thumb under Steve’s jaw, tilting it up as he kisses Steve hungrily and thoroughly.

            He delves deeper into Steve's mouth with his tongue, and he pulls back when Steve groans involuntarily, gasping and wide eyed.

            They stare at each other, panting, and Steve can’t stop looking at Bucky’s mouth.

            “We… never did that before.” Bucky says, and the tip of his nose bumps Steve’s.

            Steve shakes his head and pulls Bucky back down, kissing him hard and pouring in every ounce of the incandescent desire he’s carried for almost fifty years. It glows between them, bright and hot, and makes their hands wander.  Steve feels like he’s made out of lava from the heat that’s flashing through him, burning up from the inside, or like he has a raging fever.

            In only their briefs, their chests are pressed together, skin on skin. Steve grabs handfuls of Bucky’s shoulders, rakes his hands down to his waist and grips at his hard obliques as they twist and flex. Bucky twines their legs together, palms Steve’s left pec and scratches with his nails, just a little.

            Steve realizes that he loves the weight of Bucky on top of him, holding him down, keeping him cemented firmly in reality. He loves the friction of their skin catching and sliding in turns, loves the slippery sweep of Bucky’s tongue in his mouth. He feels alive.

            He feels more real in that moment than he has since he stepped into the Vita Ray machine.

            Bucky runs a hand through his hair, tugging his head back, and he moves his mouth down to Steve’s neck, licking, sucking, biting below the edge of his beard. Steve’s eyes roll back in his head and he can’t help the keening noise he makes as Bucky’s tongue darts behind his ear.

            Other than a scant few dimly lit, ill advised hook ups in the back of a New York bar, Steve hasn’t been touched like this in almost twenty years. He’s lighting up under Bucky’s hands, nerves that have been dead for decades coming back with streaks of fire racing under his skin.

            He gets brave and lets his hands slide down to Bucky’s ass, which is perfectly shaped, round and powerful and fills his big hands in the most splendid way. Bucky inhales sharply against Steve’s neck and his hips lurch forward, and Steve can feel he’s getting hard against him.

            “Ah, ah, Steve.” he says, his breath hot and damp against Steve’s neck.

            “Are you okay? I don’t want to make you do anything, I-”

            Bucky gets up on his elbows above Steve, looking straight down at him with his dark brows furrowed, a crease right down the centre. He lifts a hand and reaches around behind his head, pulling all his dark hair over to one side of his neck.

            Then he puts the hand on Steve’s cheek, stroking across his lower lip with his thumb.

            “You ain’t making me do anything. You got any idea how badly I’ve been wantin’ you since we was just idiot kids?”

            Steve can’t help but laugh.

            “I think I do, actually. Bout as badly as me, I reckon.”

            Bucky grins at him, face shadowed and teeth glittering in the low light. He’s looking at Steve’s mouth, tilting his head as he considers it from his close up vantage.

            “I’m gonna keep kissing you. And I’m gonna touch you. I wanna touch you.” his eyes flick up to Steve’s, the question in them unmistakable.

            Steve inhales, nods sharply and pulls Bucky’s mouth back onto his, resettling his weight on top of him. “Yes, Bucky, yes, you can.” he gasps against his mouth.

            Bucky wastes no time. He tries to move off of being directly on top of Steve, but Steve only lets him go so far, and anyway one of Bucky’s legs is between his thighs and curled around his leg, so they’re  effectively locked together. There’s just enough space for Bucky to run his flesh hand down Steve’s abdomen, his short nails catching on every groove and dip in his heavy muscles. Every touch makes Steve’s flesh burn with bone deep and incinerating pleasure.

            He goes right under the waistband of Steve’s briefs, and Steve almost bites Bucky’s lip off when his hot hand closes around him, tight and God, so good.

            Steve makes an embarrassingly high-pitched keen into Bucky’s mouth, who in response chuckles darkly and sets about stroking Steve to full hardness.

            The skin of his hand is warm and soft and well tended, like someone who hasn’t been holding weapons recently. The delicate skin of Steve’s cock slides over the throbbing hard flesh underneath, dry but not bad, good Lord, not bad at all.

            “Jesus, Steve.” Bucky says, prying their lips apart, and then he’s kicking off the blankets, exposing them to the warm air. “I wanna see, get these off,” he yanks at Steve’s briefs, almost tearing them right in half as he does so, and Steve is too distracted to really pay it any mind.

            Bucky looks his fill, and his chest is rising and falling rapidly, his eyes hungry and darkly lidded.

            “God. Look at that. Jesus, did you have this giant thing the whole time? Guess I never saw you hard like this before, but God damn, Stevie, this thing is ridiculous.” he goes back to stroking, and Steve kisses his smarmy mouth, blushing even brighter.

            He’s never thought of himself as well endowed before, but then he’s never really stopped to think about it. The one woman and the few men he’s been with did always seem to get a bit wide eyed when they saw him naked, but he’d always put that down to the rest of his ridiculous body.

            Bucky could be onto something.

            Steve groans into the kiss, swiping in with his tongue. His mouth tastes sweet to Steve, and entirely unlike he ever imagined it to.

            Steve knows he isn’t going to last long, the build up too intense, the yearning too much. He’s clutching at Bucky hard enough to hurt, but Bucky keeps stroking, collecting the wetness seeping from the tip of his cock and using it to ease each slide of his hand. Steve knows he should be trying to reciprocate but it’s all so much that he can barely think straight, can barely remember to breathe.

            He breaks away from Bucky’s mouth, eyes screwed shut, and shoves his face into the crook of his neck, gasping.

            He can feel it cresting, feel all that enormous warmth that’s been crushing him concentrate and build inside him. It feels so horribly, terribly good that tears seep from the corner of his eyes, and he gasps Bucky’s name in a broken mantra, over and over.

            He comes everywhere between them, streaking the bed, their bodies, Bucky’s hand. Steve’s whole body shudders its way through, hips lurching helplessly, and Bucky’s strokes gentle to ease him along. Steve groans an involuntary, animal groan as every bit of pleasure is drawn out of him, gentle and merciless and perfection incarnate.

            Steve claws his way back to the surface and kisses Bucky’s gaping mouth, clutches them back together as tight as they can go. He can feel Bucky hard against him, and his own tireless supersoldier erection is more than ready for round two, trapped between them

            “Ah, Steve, Steve, Jesus,” Bucky says as Steve tugs his briefs off and takes him into his hand, feeling the living heat of him, the honest desire of his flesh. Bucky has one hand fisted in Steve’s hair, the other grabbing a handful of his ass, and honestly Steve can’t tell which is which, his skin is so overstimulated and burning.

            Steve wants to put his mouth on him. Wants to lick him everywhere, wants to fuck him, wants to be fucked. It’s an unruly and terrifying amount, how much he wants Bucky. Half a century hasn’t dulled the pull he feels, hasn’t rounded off all the sharp edges of his desire. He wants everything, all at once, all right now.

            “Just this. Just this, Steve, is okay.” Bucky, always a mind reader,  sits himself up on top of Steve, laying their cocks alongside each other and rolling his hips. Steve’s hands find their own way to his waist, before snaking up around his ribcage and pulling him down, letting himself be hidden inside the dark curtain of hair that falls around their faces as their lips meet.

            Bucky makes a truly delicious noise into his mouth, his tongue slippery and eager against Steve’s. He rolls his hips, sliding them together, and he groans again and pulls Steve’s hair, seemingly by accident, not that Steve cares.

            Steve moves his hands to Bucky’s face, sliding his fingers up into his hair, pulling it away from his face. The ends tickle Steve’s eyelids as they brush past, and Steve smiles into Bucky’s hot, demanding mouth.

            Bucky pulls back a bit, and says between two sharp inhales, “What’re you laughin’ at, huh?”

            Steve just shakes his head, looking up at Bucky’s face, put into stark relief  with his hair tugged back.

            “Nothin’. You’re just so damn beautiful is all.”

            Bucky rolls his eyes and latches his mouth onto Steve’s neck, setting to work with his teeth. He nibbles as he thrusts his hips, and then bites harder when Steve gets cheeky and slides a hand between their bodies to hold them together.

            It’s a hot and heavy drag of pleasure now, never really waned from when he came the first time, just a continuation of a colossal high. He feels like his skin might split right open with it all, overflow and melt him down.

            Bucky’s hips move faster and Steve’s big hand holds them tight, and he can’t help but gasp when he feels Bucky erupt in his hand and onto his belly, sticky and slippery and warm.

            Bucky’s face is buried in Steve’s neck just like Steve’s had been in his, but he’s got his mouth open and is sucking at Steve’s neck like he’s water in a desert.

            “Bucky, Bucky, please, kiss me, kiss me, please?” Steve begs, and Bucky obliges, pressing his swollen lips to Steve’s and bringing a hand down to finish Steve off for a second time.

            Steve goes off again within a minute of having Bucky’s hand back on him, making an even bigger mess of them. As his body shakes and judders, he pulls Bucky down onto him with all four limbs, rocking them together as one entity who share breath and life and blood and sweat.

            They kiss slowly, reverently, as they come down from their spectacular cloud. Their bodies are languid with heat and sated desire, and Steve runs his hands all over Bucky still, feeling every individual cell under his hands. God but he feels so alive, and Steve’s heart seems to finally have accepted that he in fact is. It makes him feel like he must be glowing.

            “I love you, Buck. Always have.” Steve says, just to say it. His eyes are gently closed, and he bumps their foreheads together. "Every day before, and then every day since, I loved you. Every day, Buck."

            Bucky laughs quietly and runs a hand through Steve’s sweaty hair, pressing a tiny soft kiss just between his eyebrows.

            “Love you every day too, Stevie.” 

            They stay that way for a long time, probably too long, just languishing in their shared bodies, before Bucky levers himself up and pulls Steve along with him.

            They have a fast and hot shower, standing in the steam, arms wrapped around each other. They rip off the sheets and put on fresh ones, haphazard and truly atrociously messy considering they’ve both been in basic training and commanded troops, and then climb in, heedless of their nudity or wet skin.

            They settle in enfolded into one another, nested in the other’s soul, and are asleep within a handful of moments.

            The dream is strange.

            It’s an idyllic scene, surreal and lovely.

            He’s walking along beside a mountain stream, which is trickling and babbling over big, round stones. The grass on the banks is bright green, and there’s scrubby pine trees growing against the canyon walls, which reach up on either side of the creek for hundreds of jagged feet.

            Steve watches as a butterfly lazily floats over the surface of the stream, flapping in a gentle breeze, alighting on a little yellow flower.

            He isn’t sure why, but he feels like he knows exactly where this strange place is, even though he’s sure he’s never stood here on these banks before.

            He keeps walking, picking his way through this untouched valley, which glows with summer vitality and life. He can see snow on the peaks of the mountains around him, but it’s lovely and warm down in the canyon, cushioned with grass and moss. He considers a few of the peaks around him, and he realizes he might be somewhere in the Alps.

            And then it happens.

            He inhales sharply, looks down, and there it is.

            It’s a body.

            Or rather...it was a body.

            The bones are half disappearing into the grass and earth, swallowed by time and the reclamation of nature. They are bleached with sun, the ribs curved delicately towards each other. The skull is non-descript, like every other fleshless human skull, ominous and unremarkable.

             There’s strands of fabric still clinging to the ribcage, the rough blue fabric faded to a grey wisp, twisting a little in the breeze. As Steve stares, the butterfly lands on a rib and opens and closes its wings in a vague fashion.

             He never saw where Bucky fell. Never saw the impact that he always assumed had shattered him into a million pieces, broken him, had taken him away from Steve forever.

            But now he can’t stop looking at this strange scene, so still and preserved.

            “Steve.”

             He jumps, whipping around in panic.

             Bucky is standing there.

           Not Bucky the soldier. Not Bucky the skeleton, not Bucky the tortured agent of shadow.

            Just Bucky, as he’d been when Steve had seen him in the park in DC.

            Bucky glances down at the bones of his past behind Steve, considers it for a moment, and then looks back into Steve’s eyes.

            “It’s time to go.” he says, voice clear and unwavering. He holds out his hand to Steve, and smiles a smile so warm it glows.

             Steve looks back behind him.

             Maybe they really are just bones.

            He looks back to Bucky, and takes his hand.

             “Let’s go.”

            Steve blinks awake, the afterimages fading from his mind as he comes back to lucidity.

             It’s early, the sunrise only just painting the sky orange outside the big windows. The city is awakening, but underneath the blankets, in the little studio apartment, Bucky is still asleep.

             Steve looks at Bucky’s face, so much younger in sleep, as it always was. Each exhale rustles a few strands of his hair, and Steve gently brushes them away, smiling.

             Bucky’s breathing changes slightly, and the arms around Steve flex as he wakes up.

             Steve watches as his eyes start to open, and grins even wider when his eyebrows furrow as he realizes Steve is awake.

             “ w’ time’z’t?” he says, coming closer and pressing his face into Steve’s neck.

             Steve just wraps Bucky in his arms, cocooning them in the warmth of their bodies.

             “Dunno. Doesn’t matter.”

             Bucky just hums in sleepy, amused agreement and weaves their legs together.

             Steve closes his eyes and listens to the sound of Bucky breathing, feels it against him, feels the beat of his heart right next to his.

            “Love you, Buck.” Steve says quietly, burrowing his face into the crown of Bucky’s head.

            Bucky hums again, and Steve feels lips on his neck, and the warm breath of a deep, peaceful sigh.

            They fall back asleep like that, tied together, as the sun rises on them for the first time in decades.