Chapter Text
Agent Natasha Romanoff brought a box of cupcakes and a carefully mild expression to Steve’s apartment, the former of which unnerved the Soldier, and the latter he instantly distrusted. Rogers hugged her as soon as she crossed the threshold, bending down to do it, and she met the Soldier’s eyes over his shoulder with an assessing gaze that made a shiver of ice slither down his spine. He smiled winningly. She did not smile back.
“So why don’t you introduce me to your friend, here,” she said, once Rogers drew back with a final squeeze to her upper arm. It was only once Rogers was looking at her that her face relaxed. “Or you could keep crushing me, that works too.”
“Aw, Nat,” Rogers said, grinning. “You like it, c’mon.”
Romanoff quirked an eyebrow, her smile veering toward indulgence.
“This is Sergeant James Barnes,” Rogers said, putting an arm around the Soldier to draw him forward into the direct line of Romanoff’s stare. “My best friend.”
The Soldier effectively stamped down the frisson of fear that threatened to stop him dead in his tracks.
“Everyone I like calls me Bucky,” he said, and stuck out his hand - his right hand - for her to shake. “Pleased to meetcha.”
Romanoff shook his hand. She had a firm grip, and as the Soldier studied her arm, he calculated that there were at least six ways she could possibly attempt to take him down with just such a hold. He could see it in his mind’s eye, the slam of compact fist to solar plexus, yanking his extended arm to propel him forward into the sharp collision of her knee.
“I heard you were dead,” Romanoff said pleasantly, taking her hand back.
The Soldier took back his own, flexing it a couple times before he put it back at his side. “Don’t believe everything you hear,” he replied, and gave a magnanimous shrug, as if to say who’d’a thought it, huh? “I’m breathing, ain’t I?”
Rogers’ eyes kept bouncing back and forth between them, his excitement slowly deflating into something that the Soldier wasn’t sure was disappointment or confusion. Possibly both. The nuances of other people’s emotions were not easy for him to guess, despite his training.
“You certainly seem to be,” she agreed. “Coffee, Steve? It’s been an interesting morning, and that was before I met your old war buddy.”
“Oh,” Rogers said, and blinked, like he’d just remembered his manners. “Right, yeah, of course.” He nodded the pair of them toward the kitchen, where he busied himself setting up the coffee pot, gathering mugs.
“You haven’t aged a day,” Romanoff said as she perched on one of the kitchen chairs.
The Soldier sat in the other. “Cryostasis. It was -”
“HYDRA,” Romanoff finished. “Yes, I know.”
The Soldier watched her carefully. What else did she know?
“Do you remember Odessa?” she asked.
Rogers’ back stiffened in the Soldier’s periphery. “Nat -”
“It’s alright, pal,” the Soldier said, and leaned back in his chair, waving a hand. “Let her finish.”
Romanoff blinked slowly, and then leaned back in her seat as well, hiking her shirt up to expose her lower belly. A scar splintered out in a star just above her right hip, an ugly knotted thing not at all dissimilar from the jagged teeth of tissue that bit all the way around the Soldier’s left shoulder socket.
“It’s been a long time since I saw you last,” Romanoff said. “But I’d know you anywhere. Do you remember this? You shot a target straight through me.”
Wind howled in the Soldier’s ears. He did not remember. “What are you talkin’ about, huh? I may be a helluva shot, but that’s inhuman,” he replied firmly. “You got me mixed up with the wrong guy, ma’am. I’ve never even been to Odessa.”
“No? Steve said the Russians had you for a while.” She tugged her shirt back down again, smoothing out the wrinkles. “Ukraine isn’t far from Russia.”
A sudden sun-burst of memory bloomed behind his eyes, a young woman no older than twenty-five putting her body between him and his target - he remembered her head on fire, but that was - her hair, possibly -
“Lady, you got the wrong guy,” he repeated, exerting conscious force not to give a jerk of his head to shake the memory off. “I was a prisoner of war, not a fuckin’ secret agent.”
Romanoff regarded him silently for a long moment. The Soldier was aware, now that the moment of tension had reached its peak, that Rogers had turned around at the counter at some point and was staring at him with open horror. Get a fucking poker face, the Soldier thought, and then felt uncomfortable. It was in his best interest for Rogers’ emotions to be clear and easy to understand at first glance. He didn’t understand his twinge of unease at the sight.
“In that case,” Romanoff said, smiling. She reached for the box of cupcakes and sliced the sticker on the lid open with her fingernail. “It’s good to meet you, Bucky.”
She opened the box like a peace offering, so the Soldier huffed a breath and rolled his eyes like he was supposed to, reaching in to take one. “Jeez,” he said, and peeled the wrapper down. “Are all dames this suspicious in this century?”
“Don’t say dame, Buck,” Rogers corrected. “It’s out of fashion now.”
Romanoff’s smirk was unreadable, as were her eyes. “We’re always telling Steve about what’s in fashion these days,” she said. “Catching him up to 2014 one internet meme at a time.”
“He wasn’t any more en vogue in 1945, you might be fighting a losing battle,” the Soldier said, which made Rogers make a deeply aggrieved noise, Romanoff’s smile widening.
The Soldier didn’t quite put his ear to the door when Rogers walked Romanoff out again, but he stood near enough to listen, trusting his enhanced hearing to close the distance.
“What was all that about Odessa?” Rogers demanded, the hurt in his voice obvious even without seeing his face. “That’s Bucky, Nat, after everything I’ve told you about him, I thought you of all people would -”
“Let you barrel headfirst into a trap?” Romanoff interrupted gently. There was a soft sound, hand to fabric. The Soldier pictured her fixing Rogers’ crooked shirt collar and tasted bile faintly on the back of his tongue. “Whoever the man in your apartment is, he isn’t what you want. You asked me to search SHIELD to corroborate his story. It came back clean.”
Someone scuffed their foot against the floor. “Then what’s your issue?” Rogers asked.
“It came back too clean. Every detail ready, waiting to be found,” she said.
“Maybe because he’s telling the truth. I know that’d be new with the company you keep, but...”
“Steve.”
“...Sorry.”
“Do you trust me?” A beat of silence. “Steve.”
“You can’t ask me to trust you more than I trust him,” Steve bit out. “You just can’t, Natasha. You know what he is to me.”
“I remember the face of the man who put me in the hospital for a month,” Romanoff countered.
The Soldier wanted to draw back at that, wanted to disappear into the apartment and not hear another word. The grainy, cloying taste of cupcake frosting lingered in his mouth. He wanted to brush his teeth with the toothbrush Steve had given him until his gums bled.
The mission. He needed to focus.
“...careful,” Romanoff was saying. “Okay? Can you do that for me?”
“Yes,” Steve said.
“Thank you.” A smack of a kiss, too dry to be on the lips. “Keep me updated. Don’t let him out of your sight for too long.”
“Well, that wasn’t going to happen anyway,” Steve said wryly. Romanoff laughed at that, and for the first time, the Soldier thought it was probably a real one.
Steve would be coming in soon. The Soldier slipped back into the kitchen and arranged himself at the table once more, mismatched hands around his coffee cup. The door opened, Steve shutting it quietly behind himself, the two locks clicking into place. He rejoined the Soldier and heaved a deep sigh.
“Sorry, Buck,” he said. “That didn’t go like I’d hoped.”
“Does it ever, with you and women?” the Soldier asked, smiling crookedly.
Steve shot him a glare. But he also looked relieved. “Oh, shut it,” he said.
The Soldier just raised his eyebrows and took a long drink of now-lukewarm coffee. He didn’t realize that he’d stopped calling the man Rogers.
The Soldier watched Steve like a hawk the rest of the day, trying to tell if Steve trusted Romanoff’s intel. Although there was some lingering tension in his shoulders, Steve kept smiling at him, kept touching him every now and then - hand to shoulder as he passed, nudge of foot beneath table - and the Soldier did not think he would do this if he was truly convinced that the Soldier was the imposter Romanoff believed he was.
She was right, of course. The Soldier worried the inside of his cheek between his teeth and watched Steve move about his day, kept him company, allowed him to dress the Soldier up in his spare clothes so he could run errands with him without standing out. The Soldier was swallowed up by an old sweatshirt that smelled faintly of Steve’s cologne. He spent a long moment in the grocery store with his face tucked into the hood while Steve paid, just smelling it.
“I’m gonna grab a smoke, meetcha at the car?” he said, nudging Steve with his elbow while Steve put things on the conveyor belt.
“Don’t take too long,” Steve said, smiling as he nudged him back.
The Soldier showed his teeth in his dutiful grin, catching an amused look from the cashier out of the corner of his eye. On impulse, he rocked up onto the balls of his feet and kissed Steve’s cheek, rolling back onto his heels after. Steve’s face was blank with shock, jaw slack, hand paused in the middle of removing cash from his wallet. The Soldier shrugged, shot him a wink, and disappeared through the automatic doors again, relying on snap judgements to dictate how he reacted.
As long as he kept him off balance, the Soldier was fairly certain he could continue to distract Steve as the mission dictated. The way his heart raced as he shook a cigarette out of its box was inexcusable, though, and he narrowed his eyes at his hands to make sure they remained steady.
He struck a match well enough, shaking it out with a thoughtful snap of his wrist. His training was, at least, good for this.
While he was outside and away from Steve’s prying eyes, the Soldier checked his communicator for further instructions. The last three missives were the same as they’d been since his release from base:
- Gain entrance to Captain Rogers’ home.
- Earn his trust by whatever means necessary.
- Maintain a holding pattern and distract him until given further orders.
With no further orders, the Soldier had to assume that his job was still to continue to hold his attention. He leaned against Steve’s car and took a long drag from his cigarette, waiting for Steve to return with his grocery bags. He could see the shape of him inside the store through the glass doors, the curve of his arm and a vague impression of a smile when he turned his head just enough for the Soldier to see the corner of his mouth.
The smoke on the Soldier’s tongue tasted wrong. He made a face and dropped the cigarette to the sidewalk, stamping it out with his heel.
“You miss your lucky strikes, huh?” Steve asked. The Soldier glanced up, catching Steve’s pointed look toward the crushed cigarette. “Always were picky.”
“Damn right,” the Soldier told him. “Got used to having the best.” He timed this with a look that dragged up Steve’s body, landing on his eyes last.
Steve opened his mouth, closed it again, then shook his head briskly. “I can see you’re in a mood,” he said, walking around the Soldier to the trunk. “What’s with these lines of yours, Buck? Been saving ‘em up?”
“You complaining?” the Soldier drawled.
Steve shot him a look, arranging the three bags in the trunk so they wouldn’t fall over in transit. He was flustered, either by the teasing or the warm weight of the Soldier’s eyes on him; it was stark and obvious in the pink that crept up from underneath his shirt collar.
“Let’s go home,” Steve said. The trunk slammed closed with a satisfying sound. “Unless you wanna lean on the car looking moody some more.”
The Soldier pushed off the car and opened the passenger door. “Nah, I got my quota in.”
The drive back to the apartment was uneventful. The Soldier looked out the window and watched the city pass in a blur, watched the sun sink down toward evening, watched Steve’s reflection in the glass. Steve kept sliding little sideways glances over the center console, expression somewhere between suspicion and awe.
The Soldier could work with this. Neither of those emotions was an outright no.
He helped carry the bags inside, navigating the hallway and the kitchen while trying to keep his posture as loose and easy as Bucky Barnes was meant to be. This was more difficult than he expected, because having Steve at his back where he couldn’t see him made every muscle of his body want to tense up.
“I was thinking pasta for dinner,” Steve said, punctuated by dull metallic sounds as he arranged cans on their shelves. “Unless you wanna do something more elaborate.”
“Pasta’s good,” the Soldier said agreeably, waiting until Steve was occupied with the breadbox to come up behind him and wrap his arms around his waist, sliding both hands up his front. “Little early, though, no?”
Steve froze from head to toe. “Buck,” he said.
“What?” the Soldier asked, nuzzling into his nape. Steve was slightly taller than him, so his cheek rasped against the t-shirt collar. “It’s five.”
Steve’s hands released their death grip on the kitchen counter so he could lay them over the Soldier’s, stilling them. “What’re you doing, pal.”
“Thought it was obvious.” He kissed the soft skin beneath his cheek, where downy blond hair dotted down the back of Steve’s neck. “Is it not obvious?”
Steve exhaled like it hurt, but he didn’t say anything else for a long moment. The Soldier took the opportunity to lay a string of strategic kisses from Steve’s hairline to his shoulder blade, his own dark hair escaping in wisps to brush against him as he went. Steve shivered. The Soldier squeezed Steve’s hip, tucking fingertips up beneath the hem of his shirt, chasing the way he could feel Steve’s stomach muscles clench.
“Moving kinda fast,” Steve managed. “Don’t you think?”
“Been sixty-eight years,” the Soldier murmured into his ear. Then he nipped the lobe of it, smirking on purpose with his lips to Steve’s skin so the other man could feel them quirk upward. “That too fast for you, old man?”
Steve made a garbled sound that might have been an attempt at a laugh. “I’ve never been any good at seeing this coming, you know that.”
“Let me, sweetheart.” The Soldier licked the little divot where Steve’s jaw met his skull and tried to skip over talking about what he knew and what he didn’t. “Lemme take care of you. Do you want me to?”
“Christ,” Steve spit.
The Soldier slid his hand the rest of the way up Steve’s shirt. His skin was warm and smooth, unbothered by scars, and he trembled just barely beneath the Soldier’s questing fingertips. “C’mon,” the Soldier coaxed, using the softest voice he knew how to use. It felt strange and foreign in his mouth, but it must have worked, because Steve twisted around in his arms enough that they were eye to eye.
“You just teasing me?” Steve asked breathlessly. “Or do you mean it?”
Caught off guard, the Soldier studied Steve’s eyes in search of the right answer. He’d thought this step wouldn’t come as a surprise to him - he’d thought it would be desired, would be simple. He swallowed hard, nodding sharply.
“Hey,” Steve said, gentler. He reached out and touched the Soldier’s cheek, smoothing back the errant curls from his face. “You scared? That why you’re acting weird?”
The Soldier decided to take the line Steve was throwing him and nodded again, arranging his features to one of slightly more trepidation. Steve’s smile turned very understanding as he cradled the Soldier’s face between both hands. This gesture was meant to be tender, most likely, but it made the Soldier think of strangulation, of snapping necks.
“I dunno how to do this,” the Soldier muttered truthfully. “You gotta gimme a hand, Steve.”
“Just a hand?” Steve’s eyes glinted. “Pal, we’ve never talked about this once. Seems a helluva time to try and start.”
With that, Steve seemed satisfied with the Soldier’s admission of nerves as an explanation and leaned in, kissing him soundly. The Soldier had been braced for something of the sort, but not for the intensity, how he would be bowled over by Steve’s kiss enough that he’d need the hand that appeared at the dip of his spine to keep him standing. He gasped, which Steve took as a sign to lick into his mouth, stroking their tongues together.
The Soldier didn’t like being kept off-kilter. Steve kissed him again and again and he felt he was a moment away from toppling right the hell over, grasping at whatever part of Steve was within reach. But this was, apparently, what Steve had been looking for; the suave sweet-talker the Soldier had tried to become hadn’t been accurate to Steve's expectation. The stumbling, desperate creature trying to keep up with Steve’s kisses must have hit closer to the mark, because Steve started walking him backward toward the bedroom, unzipping the sweatshirt he’d lent the Soldier as they went.
Steve’s hands on his skin scalded him. The Soldier tried to shy away, but he went cold as soon as they were separated more than an inch - and he’d spent enough time out of cryo to be disgusted by the chill again, even for a second. He pressed back into Steve’s touch and allowed himself to be stripped of the sweatshirt, the t-shirt under it, his own hands clumsy as they yanked Steve’s shirt up and off in return. He curled his trigger finger around a belt loop to tug him closer.
“Bossy,” Steve noticed, looking down at the Soldier’s hands as they snaked his belt free. “This part of that thing where you don’t let me spoon you anymore?”
“Pick up the pace if you don’t want me to take over,” the Soldier goaded, shoving a hand inside Steve’s pants as soon as he’d managed to undo his fly. Steve hissed, face screwing up, and the Soldier’s head swam when he could feel him beginning to get hard in his grip.
Steve gave the Soldier a little shove toward the bed, so the Soldier toppled down onto the edge of it, tipping his head back to look up at Steve. He put his hands behind himself. Leaned back, cocking a brow as he let his legs just barely spread. “Well?” he said. “See something you like?”
Steve touched the Soldier’s face again, thumbing over his lower lip. The Soldier caught the tip of his thumb between his teeth and closed his lips around it.
“Shit,” Steve breathed. “Buck.”
The Soldier just let his eyes sink half-closed and sucked. Steve curled the rest of his fingers beneath his chin, keeping him looking up at him with his neck arched back, the Soldier’s own mismatched hands clawing into the sheets beneath them. Steve’s thumb tasted of faint salt and nothing. The weight of it pressing down on his tongue made him swallow convulsively. For a moment, the Soldier looked up at the man standing in front of him and saw a smaller figure, blond and brittle in the sunset; his vision flickered again when he blinked, showing him the full bulk of Captain America's real body.
Steve removed his thumb and replaced it with two fingers, which the Soldier gladly allowed to distract him. They were thick in his mouth. Not enough to make him gag, but Steve seemed to be testing it, waiting for the Soldier to swallow hard again until he retreated.
“This what you were after?” Steve asked as he took a moment to shuck his pants off.
The Soldier breathed raggedly, panting. He had not known enough of the variables to anticipate this outcome, or how it would affect him. “Yes,” he lied. His voice rasped over the word.
“Show me,” Steve said.
The Soldier didn’t have enough room to get to him properly while still on the bed, so he pushed Steve back half a step and fell off the mattress to hit the carpet with his knees. He was reaching for Steve before he’d even landed, although the sharp thunk of his connection with the floor jarred all the way up his thighs while he leaned forward, taking the head of Steve’s cock into his mouth. It felt right to have the sharp shock of pain reverberate through him while he did this. The sting was enough to settle his bones. He dropped his jaw and took as much as he could, thinking of nothing but the sound Steve made when his cock nudged the back of the Soldier’s throat, hard and hot and present.
And he’d thought his mouth felt full with fingers. Steve got a fistful of dark hair at the back of the Soldier’s head and held on with a grip that somehow managed to be both firm and gentle, the Soldier looking up at him as he sucked, conscious of the way Steve’s gaze burned into him in return. He needed to make it look good. Needed to put on a show. But every time he leaned too far into his performance, Steve noticed he wasn’t behaving the way Bucky Barnes would behave. Better now to focus on pleasing him well enough to keep potential suspicion at bay.
He didn’t know why it bothered him so badly, that he was not gifted at behaving like Bucky Barnes. It dug claws into his heart.
“Look at you,” Steve whispered. The Soldier moaned when Steve pulled his hair, not realizing he’d closed his eyes until they fluttered open again. Steve shifted, rocking his hips with tiny, abortive little thrusts - the Soldier took the hint and moved quicker, bobbed his head, made a white-knuckled fist of his right hand not to gag when he went too far. “Shh, it’s okay,” Steve soothed, petting some more. “What’s the rush, huh? You in a hurry?”
The Soldier drew back to take a couple ragged breaths. “Yes,” he said.
Steve’s eyes were clear and focused as he scanned the Soldier’s face, trying to read him. “You want it that bad?”
The Soldier put his face to the crease of Steve’s hip so that whatever it was he was seeing was covered up. “Yes.”
“Okay,” Steve said. “Alright, Buck. I got you. I got you, open up.”
The Soldier let Steve draw his head back once more and opened his mouth. Steve guided his cock back inside, easy as that, and this time the Soldier didn’t even put up a pretense that he was in charge, letting Steve do what he wanted. Letting him hold him where he wanted. Letting him speak to him in a voice that made the Soldier’s head feel pleasantly blurred, whole body gone heavy and dumb like he was wading through honey, it was that slow and that sweet.
The only warning that Steve was close to climax was a sharp inhalation and a spasm of his hand at the base of the Soldier’s skull. Then he was coming, hot pulse of it on the Soldier’s tongue, the sound of his groan seared into the Soldier’s memory. He swallowed, throat working, but eventually he had to pull off with a wet, raw noise and catch his breath - although Steve didn’t let him recover long before he hauled him to his feet, guiding him back down onto the mattress. It was just as well that he helped. The Soldier’s legs were unsteady.
“You okay?” Steve asked, joining the Soldier on the bed. The pillow was very soft beneath the Soldier’s head, soft enough to be comparable to marshmallow, sinking all the way to the floor. “That looked intense.”
“Ain’t it always?” the Soldier replied as he turned his head to look at Steve. He was unsurprised to find his voice completely wrecked. “You’re the one who just came his brains out.”
“That’s a good point,” Steve said, thoughtful. He propped himself up on an elbow and smoothed his hand down the Soldier’s stomach, fingertips flirting with the waistband of the jeans he was still wearing. “I oughta even us out, yeah?”
The Soldier breathed shallowly, helpless to do anything but lift his hips so Steve could tug his pants down his legs and off the bed. His underwear was quick to follow, and he was alarmed to discover that he’d gotten hard without his own knowledge, dick curving up toward his stomach, purple-red at the head. The wetness that beaded up at the tip smeared his lower belly.
“You close already?” Steve asked. “God, I forgot how much you like doing that.”
The Soldier didn’t have an answer for him. His back arched when Steve wrapped a hand around him, and that part wasn’t for show at all, he was rapidly approaching his limit for stimuli - but if he appeared overwhelmed, Steve either didn’t notice or had decided to push through. The Soldier whimpered. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d tried to touch himself. It wasn’t like he’d had all that much time to rub one out between cryo sessions, and base camp wasn’t the sexiest place he could come up with.
Come to think of it, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d considered his body as a vehicle for pleasure at all. He’d forgotten he was even capable of it. He had a fully functional body, HYDRA would settle for nothing less, but at what point were weapons meant to orgasm?
“I got you,” Steve told him when the Soldier started making high, desperate noises in the back of his throat. “I got you, don’t worry.”
Perhaps unnerved by the bruised sounds the Soldier was making, Steve kissed him hard and stroked him off at the same time, his touch both familiar and sure. He touched the Soldier like a man confident in his abilities, and the Soldier watched his body respond in kind, the way a body would respond to a touch that had done this a thousand times before.
He felt nearly hysterical by the time he was close to coming. He bit Steve’s lower lip, writhed under him, hips shoving upward, although he wasn’t sure if he was trying to escape or prolong the pleasure. Nonetheless, his pleasure found him all the same, cresting over him in a wave that left him crying out against Steve’s mouth as he shuddered beneath him.
“There you go,” Steve said. He was smiling. “That’s it.”
The Winter Soldier looked up at the ceiling. His world had shifted just an inch to the left, enough to expose a chink in his armor - all that was left was for him to notice that the light was getting in.
Although Steve was a light sleeper, the Soldier was careful and quiet enough to slip out of bed unnoticed. He disappeared down the hall to the guest room where he’d hidden all his weapons and took a circuit around the room, retrieving his guns, his knives, the damn arsenic capsules. He gathered them up and retreated to Steve’s bedroom once again, laying them out in a line on the bedside table.
He wanted to dress himself again in the clothes he’d arrived in, it only seemed fair, but he didn’t want to take Steve’s sweatshirt off in order to do it. It still smelled like him, soft against the Soldier’s skin, zipped up over all his scars. He sat on the edge of the bed and picked up the gun.
His orders were not to kill Captain America, but he knew that HYDRA would accept a clean kill over handing himself over willingly to the enemy, and those appeared to be the only options at the Soldier’s disposal. There would be no tactical retreat, no regroup, this would end here and now or it would not end at all. He considered the safety on the handgun. He touched it with the tip of his finger. In his mind’s eye, he saw blood flower through the bedclothes covering Steve’s body, a slick hot spill like any other Winter Soldier kill. He would get some on him in the process. The blood would smell of rust and it would clog the plates of his metal arm until it was diligently cleaned.
The Soldier put the gun down again, back on top of its holster. He knew he couldn’t do it. There was nothing more to do but wait for Steve to wake up.
The Soldier also knew it was a given fact that Steve would kill him when he found out that he’d been impersonating his beloved. This was the only viable scenario. And even if by some stroke of weakness Steve found himself unable to do away with a man wearing his dead love’s face, HYDRA would pull the trigger for him as soon the Soldier reported back again, just like the Soldier had always known they would, should he fail a mission.
A lock of hair lay across Steve’s forehead while he slept. The Soldier wanted to smooth it back, but he couldn’t bear to wake him. He didn’t have the stomach for it. He would let this moment spin out as long as it could, with the moonlight touching the arch of Steve’s cheekbone gently, giving him silvery gilt edges. I kissed that mouth, the Soldier thought. He’d put his lips right where the light caught the corner of it and bloomed sterling.
However much time passed, the Soldier did not know. Moonlight faded and was replaced with the first glow of dawn, thawing out the image of Captain America in repose with sepia tones. The Soldier watched his eyelids flutter. What was he dreaming of? The crease between his brows made the Soldier think it was probably nothing nice, and he felt a sudden sharp cramp in his arm from how badly he wanted to wake him.
Someone should be here to drag him out of his nightmares, he thought. But the only one who was here was him.
By the time the clock read 6:30, the Winter Soldier was still sitting in the same position he’d been all evening. Steve began to stir, accustomed to a military early morning - he rubbed his eyes with a yawn, smiling as he turned his face toward the other side of the bed -
“Good morning, Captain,” the Soldier said. Steve’s smile faltered as soon as he saw the weapons cache on the bedside table.
“What the hell?” Steve rasped, voice sleep-rough and beginning to work its way toward panic. He shoved himself up to sitting, hair in disarray. “Don’t call me that, you know I hate it.”
“I don’t,” the Soldier told him. “Know, that is.”
Steve stared at him, eyes wild. “Fuck me,” he breathed. “Natasha was right.”
There was an ache welling up in the Soldier’s gut that wouldn’t ease. “Yes,” he said.
The anguish on Steve’s face shone as brilliantly as a double black eye for two seconds before he masked it and went impassive as the dead. “Why are you telling me this?” His eyes flicked toward the weapons before back again to the Soldier. “You just blew your own cover.”
“In six hours, HYDRA intends to stage a coup inside SHIELD,” the Soldier said, ignoring his question. “I am meant to be your distraction.”
“Six hours,” Steve repeated flatly.
“Yes,” the Soldier said. “You’ll need to dispose of me quickly. I’ve wasted most of your time already.”
“You - what?” Steve made to reach for him, but aborted the gesture. “Buck - ”
“I’m not Bucky Barnes.” The Soldier stood, retrieving his gun and offering it to Steve grip-first with his own hand around the barrel. “I just got his face. Come on, Rogers. Do it fast. Find Romanoff.”
To his credit, Steve did take the gun. “This doesn’t make sense. Why are you helping me?”
The Soldier flinched. He shrugged, defensive, and shoved his hands inside the hoodie pockets as if that would make him any less dangerous than he was. “I don’t know.”
Steve’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve been guessing a lot,” he said, words coming slow and careful. “Which is why this whole thing has felt wrong. But you know things that HYDRA wouldn’t know.”
The Soldier wanted to squirm under the weight of that accusation, but he forced himself to stay still. “I was lying to you. I lied the whole time, stop trying to believe it.”
“HYDRA sent you here with orders to suck me off?” Steve demanded. “They told you to do that?”
The Soldier’s brow furrowed. “I - no, they - I was supposed to keep you occupied.”
“Well, you chose a helluva tactic,” Steve said dryly. He was still holding the gun. “Do you know me?”
“No,” the Soldier said. “I don’t. Pull the trigger, I coulda killed you.”
“What do you care? Means you did a good job with your mission,” Steve countered. “How did you know about us zipping our bedrolls together in France?”
The Soldier didn’t have an answer for him. His jaw worked around nothing, trying to speak.
“How’d they give you his face, pal?” Steve walked across the mattress on his knees toward him, moving as slowly as if he was approaching a cornered animal. “I’d know that face anywhere. You’re not just a dead ringer, and I don’t think they got that kind of tech.”
“Stay back,” the Soldier warned him, wavering. “I could hurt you.”
“I was sleeping a minute ago.” Steve put the gun down with finality. “If you were gonna hurt me, you would have already.”
“You got no idea what I woulda done,” the Soldier tried.
Steve reached out, fucking idiot, where was his sense of self-preservation? Bastard would probably get his arm bit off trying to pet a wolf. The Soldier snarled, baring his teeth, but Steve just put his hand at the base of his neck and squeezed, like he had nothing to be afraid of at all. “If you’re done faking it, why are you doing the accent again?” Steve asked gently.
The Soldier’s eyes went very wide. His eyelashes were wet against his cheek when he blinked. He hadn't noticed faint Brooklyn creeping back into his voice as the pressure around him rose, tongue curled around the syllables differently than before.
“Do you know me?” Steve asked again.
“I don’t know,” the Soldier answered, hoarse.
“You didn’t have to kiss me, y’know.” Steve’s smile was wry and crooked. “I was pretty distracted already.”
The Soldier looked at Steve’s lips, swallowing thickly. “I... yeah. I noticed.”
“Then why do it?”
“I wanted to,” the Soldier admitted. “I wanted to and I was afraid.”
“It was true, wasn’t it? Your story about falling from the train, being picked up by HYDRA afterward?” Steve’s hand had slipped inside the Soldier’s hood, thumb stroking rhythmic circles into his very top vertebra. “Nat could confirm that part of the story real well, it was the SHIELD stuff that didn’t make sense.”
“I,” the Soldier said. “I. I don’t.”
“I got you,” Steve said. “Hey. Hey, Buck. I got you. Come here.”
What could he do? The Soldier melted into Steve and allowed himself to be gathered in close, putting his head down on Steve’s shoulder. Those big arms swept him up, one hand cradled to the back of his skull, and it was just like their first hug in the hallway, except this time the Soldier meant it when he buried his face in Steve’s sleep shirt.
“Steve,” he whispered.
“You really thought I’d kill you?” Steve rubbed his back, up and down with brisk motions. “You thought there was a chance in hell I’d let you go like that?”
The Soldier nodded.
“Never,” Steve swore. “Never, cross my heart.”
“That don’t change the fact that you got - five hours and forty-five minutes left to save the world now,” the Soldier said, slightly muffled. “What’s your next play?”
“Well, first I gotta apologize to Natasha,” Steve said, and kissed the crown of the Soldier’s head. “Then I'm thinking maybe I’ll save the world.”
The Soldier made a harsh, desperate laugh into Steve’s shoulder. “Easy as that.”
“Considering I just turned a HYDRA operative with my dick? I’m feeling optimistic.”
Steve was grinning when the Soldier whipped his head back to stare at him, slack-jawed. “Excuse me?” he exclaimed, bristling. “Is that what you think just happened?”
“Bucky,” Steve started.
“The fuck’s your problem, Rogers? I almost fucking - I could have killed you! Is that funny?”
“Okay, okay, I know. Sorry,” Steve soothed, trying to pet the Soldier’s raised hackles back down. “I’m sorry. I can’t help it.”
“Where on earth is this good mood of yours coming from?” the Soldier demanded. “After all that!”
“I’m relieved,” Steve said. “This is relief.”
“How?”
Steve shrugged and gave a sad little twist of his mouth. “You finally sound like you.”
“Oh,” the Soldier said. His anger and disbelief deflated like a pricked balloon.
“Yeah,” Steve said. “You’re shit at undercover.”
The Soldier sat down heavily on the edge of the bed and grasped for Steve’s hand. He clasped it hard when Steve gave it to him. “What do I do?” he asked bleakly. “I didn’t think this far ahead.”
“Come with me,” Steve offered. He waited until the Soldier was looking at him to squeeze his hand, his expression as warm as a stained-glass prophet. “Help me take down the guys giving you orders.”
The Soldier’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. “You’d let me?”
“Hey, you’re the one with all the intel,” Steve pointed out. “I need you with me.”
There would be consequences to this decision, far-reaching consequences that he would not be able to anticipate. There would be blood, and terror, and a face-to-face confrontation with everything he’d known for the past century that would shatter his own foundation. The man sitting next to him could not save him from this, nor could he avoid it.
But the spot at Steve’s side that Steve offered him was irresistible, and the Soldier knew this as well. He wanted to be the man Steve thought he was. He wanted it so badly that it did not frighten him to think those words, I want.
“Okay,” he said. “I will.”
When Steve kissed him, a part of the Winter Soldier registered that there was no coming back from this.
However, it was Bucky Barnes who pressed forward and kissed him back.