Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Steve,” a horrified voice hisses in the dark, and Steve’s eyes snap open and he grabs his shield from behind the headboard and comes up ready to swing it, still aching from this afternoon’s latest fight and expecting--AIM, he mentally corrects himself mid-motion, not Axis soldiers or HYDRA agents, it’s been years (and decades) since either of those attacked in the night, AIM is the current . . . threat . . .

Except the only person in the room is Bucky, crouched by the side of his bed with his hair a tangled mess down around his shoulders and wearing the hideous Iron Man pajama bottoms that were supposed to be ironic five years ago but have mysteriously not left his wardrobe in all that time. Steve has a moment of vertigo looking at him, something like double-vision having him seeing a sleek-haired, smirking boy from the thirties that’s stayed up beside him in his fever overlaid with the rumpled, scarred man in 2020 who’s stayed up because he still can’t sleep a full night through.

Six years since the helicarriers burned, five since the Winter Soldier came in out of the cold, more than seventy-five since Bucky fell and he froze, and Steve still has those moments, sometimes.

“Bucky?” he manages, blinking stupidly and rubbing sleep out of his eyes, wincing a little as he jars aching muscles that were wounds and bruises a few hours ago. Then he gets a clear look at the other, sees the panicked expression on his face, and instantly forgets all the minor aches and pains to heft the shield again. “What’s wrong?”

“I wanna step out with Wilson,” Bucky says, audibly traumatized. Steve blinks again, and lowers the shield.

“Uh,” he says. “Come again?”

“I wanna step out with Wilson,” Bucky repeats, his fists clenching against the bedsheets with a worryingly loud whirring. “Make time, hit the town, hit that, whatever the damn kids are calling it these days, I want to do it all and then some and then bang him like a drum.”

“. . . uh,” Steve says. “Are you sure you’re using the right expressions?”

“Dammit, Steve!”

“Sorry, sorry,” Steve says, rubbing sleep out of his eyes and forcing himself to sit down on the bed in an attempt to quiet the adrenaline still swish-swoshing through his veins like a particularly irritable rinse cycle. It doesn’t work, mostly because super-soldier adrenaline is technically a narcotic-grade substance, and he sighs. “You want to step out with Sam.”

“No,” Bucky says emphatically, then winces and just as emphatically says, “Yes. Desperately. How does that work now? What am I saying, like you’d even know.”

“I’m a hundred and one, not dead,” Steve retorts, eyeing him sourly. This is increasingly less worth waking up for, it’s not like Bucky doesn’t always have a . . . new . . .

Wait.

“Wait,” he says, eyes widening. “You want to step out with Sam. You want to date someone.”

“Shut up!” Bucky hisses defensively, frazzled and red-faced, and Steve just looks back at him and really genuinely almost cries, because it’s the same way Bucky used to get when they were kids and he first got all doll dizzy, before he was actually any good with girls and only made it by with the ones he liked on cocky bluster.

“No fooling, Buck?” he manages finally, and Bucky scowls up at him.

“This. This is the thing you think I’d decide to start cracking jokes about after seventy-five years, Jesus, Rogers--”

“Alright, alright, can’t blame a guy for checking,” Steve murmurs, finally setting aside the shield to raise his hands in surrender. “. . . and you’re not drunk, right--”

“STEVE!”

“Alright!” Steve throws his hands up again, but Bucky glares anyway. Steve can’t really blame him. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I just . . . c’mere, c’mon.”

“You’re a fucking asshole,” Bucky mutters, crawling into the bed anyway. Steve resists the completely irrational urge to bury him in pillows and wrap him up tight, because God knows that never saved anyone from anything, it’s just . . . Bucky should be warm, always, warm and comfortable and well-fed and content. Even though Bucky came in of his own volition six years ago and started calling him “Steve” again not long after that and can even look him in the eye now, the most minor signs of distress in him still invoke a neurotic need to be sure he’s okay.

Someday it won’t, Steve’s sworn to himself, but today is not quite that day.

“Sorry,” he says again, reaching over to grip the other’s shoulder tight--the flesh and blood one. The scar tissue on the other is sensitive, and Bucky doesn’t like having it squeezed or slapped or shoved. “You surprised me. Not in a bad way, I just . . . honest, I didn’t think you were gonna be looking at anyone for a while yet still.”

“It’s been six years,” Bucky says, jaw locking stubbornly.

“Buck, you can look at anyone you wanna,” Steve swears with all his sincerity, ducking his head to catch the other’s eyes on the same level. “I just didn’t think you did wanna.”

“Well. I do, now,” Bucky mutters, looking away with a conflicted expression. There’s a lot Steve could say, most of it about how he knows Bucky never looked twice at a boy growing up, but he’d never harassed the kids at the queer bars either, and just because the forties hadn’t been kind to mixed couples didn’t mean--well, there’d been a girl or two, so he knew Bucky didn’t give a damn about that either.

But he sure looks like he gives a damn about something right now.

“What is it?” Steve asks, and the line of Bucky’s mouth goes sour.

“It drives me crazy,” he says. “I still don’t even remember everything and you can still read me like a--like a damn book. How’s that even work?”

“Lifelong friendship, no substitutions accepted,” Steve says, firm and resolute as he gives Bucky’s shoulder another squeeze before dropping his hand to the bed. That’s definitely not the answer to the question he was actually asking, though. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” Bucky says, eyes flickering away again. “Yes. I don’t know. I don’t even--I was good with gals, right? The books all say so. Was I--did I not do so good with fellas?”

“You never told me if you did,” Steve replies, because although he believes Bucky would’ve told him if he’d been making eyes at other men, he also knows Bucky still doesn’t always trust that he trusted him that much. Mostly because he can’t imagine Steve returning the favor, it seems. “But it was different, then.”

“Yeah.” Bucky gnaws at his lip, leaning forward as his eyes flick nervously from side to side, chasing an indistinct memory. It’s a familiar expression, now. “Woulda went an’ got my fool head smashed in and left you all alone, you’da been--yeah. I didn’t do nothing with fellas at all, did I.”

“Probably not,” Steve murmurs, more than a little bothered by that but knowing better than to let it show. Bucky’s memory is much-restored but still erratic, and can be a sensitive subject. “How’re you feeling about this?”

“Like running for it,” Bucky confesses, shoulders hunching. “Sam’s--he’s real swell, is Sam. Ain’t got no reason to waste time on a basket case like me.”

“You know that’s not true,” Steve tells him quietly, but Bucky just shakes his head.

“It is,” he counters firmly, “but he wastes it anyway and it’s . . . and he got his best friend shot outta the sky right next to him and I tore him outta the sky and he still flies, he still goes up there like it ain’t nothing, like what else would he even do? And he stood by you and Natalia with all of DC comin’ down on your heads, did it where I--where I couldn’t and . . . and he’s just . . .”

“Oh,” Steve breathes out in soft awe, eyes just barely widening, and Bucky grimaces and digs his fingers into the bed.

“Lemme guess,” he mutters. “Reading me like that damn book again.”

“More or less,” Steve admits quietly, squeezing the other’s arm. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen you feel that way about someone.”

"Didn't think I could no more," Bucky says quietly, his eyes on the bed. “Thought I had you, because I’ve--because I’ve always got you, and thought we had a team again, but . . .“

“I know,” Steve murmurs, chest clenching painfully at the way Bucky stuttered over that--at the way he had to say that.

“I have him,” Bucky mutters weakly, burying his face in a pillow, and Steve rubs the back of his neck and gives him a moment’s silence. That’s something Bucky would’ve had enough trouble saying so baldly even before he fell off the train--maybe even before getting captured the first time, before ever leaving Brooklyn at all.

“You have him,” he agrees, still rubbing the back of the other’s neck.

“I don’t even know if he’s interested in men,” Bucky mutters, pushing his face harder into the pillow. “Much less fucked up men. Much less me.”

“He’s interested in you not talking about yourself like that,” Steve tells him, and Bucky laughs weakly and lifts his head just enough to look up at him. He won’t be able to hold the eye contact long, Steve knows, but it still makes his heart clutch up to see him make it on purpose.

“Yeah,” Bucky murmurs after a moment, eyes already flicking away and arms wrapping around the pillow. “Yeah, he’s interested in that.”

There’s more Steve could say--advice he could offer, suggestions he could make, assurances he could give--but it all feels so unimportant next to Bucky laid out in bed beside him like when they were splitting the rent on a miserable Brooklyn apartment and doing just shy of everything together, Steve nursing the bruises of another misguided crusade and Bucky murmuring appreciative things about his latest crush in the dark.

Steve remembered those nights very specifically after the train, and at the time would’ve done just about anything to go home to one of them one last time.

“You’re not a waste of time,” he says instead of any of the other things, gripping Bucky’s shoulder tight.

“Yes I--” Bucky starts reflexively, and Steve cuts him off with a better option--the one he can’t argue with.

“Sam doesn’t think you’re a waste of time,” he says, voice lower this time. Bucky freezes, shoulders hunching, and stares down into the sheets like their thread count contains every explanation in entire universe. “You know he doesn’t.”

“Sam doesn’t think I’m a waste of time,” Bucky repeats in a quiet murmur, making it into one of the not-quite-mantras he uses to talk himself into believing good things. Steve’s chest clutches up again, because even now he knows how hard it is for Bucky to do that without someone walking him through it, giving him permission to believe something better.

There are a lot of awful, awful things he wants to do to absolutely everyone who had even the smallest part in doing that to him.

“You think I should tell him?” Bucky asks, biting his lip as that doll dizzy kid he used to be flashes a vertigo-afterimage in front of Steve’s eyes, and Steve breathes out and grips the back of the other’s closest hand without thinking to check which one it is first.

“You should do anything you want,” he tells him.