Chapter Text
"Whence, I often asked myself, did the principle of life proceed? It was a bold question, and one which has ever been considered as a mystery; yet with how many things are we upon the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries." - Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
A Modern Frankenstein AU
(or: a relenafanel dark!fic / romance)
Bucky hated the living, the dead spoke to him much more clearly. Their bodies told the stories of their lives in silence, bearing their secrets to his keen, observational eye without bias or extraneous filler. Bucky could slice open a corpse and learn what a person had for dinner or how hard they were on their liver. A body never lied - it might hide truths he didn’t have the equipment to see, but a body never looked him in the eye and told a falsehood without blinking, not like a living person would. It also didn’t try to brag about the success of its diet, or talk about the weather, or offer unsolicited advice, unlike the small talk a person might make. He appreciated those silences.
Bucky fucking hated small talk. Some days he was convinced that at least 30% of the reason he specialized in dead bodies was due to the fact that he didn’t have to listen to them express stupidity. For the most part, their last expression of stupidity had been in dying .
The other 70%? That was dedicated to Bucky’s interest in finding ways to make death non-permanent - not in the pursuit of longevity or eternal life, but in the pursuit of science and medical discovery. Being a medical examiner gave him access to all the body parts he needed to experiment with reanimation.
If he ever succeeded maybe he’d just have to stitch his creation’s mouth closed so it didn’t speak to him. It was looking more and more like Bucky would never succeed. Even though he’d managed to restart the heart and reanimate limbs, so far they’d also been completely brain-dead, a twitching shell of a human being without the capacity to even breathe on their own. It was hard to tell if the body was working when the natural CPU had turned to mush in the time the body was on ice in the morgue’s fridge.
He’d have to consider bringing in a computer programmer if it persisted, and that would be a fun explanation.
He’d get there.
And if he did, it seemed inhumane to consider silencing his work just so he could continue to have silence in his lab. He didn’t hate small talk so much that he’d force silence on his creation, he could just deal with it a little less at work.
The worst of it came from the uniforms at the crime scenes Bucky was called into. They didn’t know how to speak to him and felt uneasy around death, like forcing Bucky to baby them through seeing a corpse through making conversation about the Yankees was the best way to expedite the situation.
Idiots.
Firstly: the Yankees!!
Secondly: they should be used to it by now.
He was on his knees in front of a body, a few hours old with more blood spilled on the asphalt than left in the corpse and starting to smell for it in the sweltering mid-summer heat. He noted the way the blood pooled in his notes, bending further to chase an elusive scent mingling with the blood and feces and the garbage from the nearby dumpster. He ended up with his nose hovering close to the corpse’s groin, debating whether he was scenting perfume or some kind of rot. Both had very distinctive scents, and this one hovered between the two.
“So it’s true you fuck the corpses, Barnes?” one of the uniforms on duty asked, posturing to show off his big-guy wit at watching Bucky’s process. Someone else snickered, but for a crowd of seven cops the joke wasn’t well-received.
That was what happened when the corpse used to be a city commissioner. A bunch of cops got uneasy and started hovering in Bucky’s space while wringing their hands and cracking morbid jokes.
Bucky rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I fucked your mom’s last night.”
The officer frowned in confusion, which was really indicative of the state of law enforcement these days. “My mom ain’t dead.”
“My mistake,” Bucky said in a bored and dismissive tone, his smile sharp as he gestured for one of the attendants to hand him a swab.
One of the detectives on the scene snorted and Bucky spared a glance over to find a blond man beaming at him like Bucky had said something clever and had also taken someone down a peg, and that deserved a friendly level of affinity. The smile was welcoming and open and bright, and Bucky felt the corners of his own mouth turn up in response. It gave him pause, because Bucky rarely responded positively to people.
It stuck in his mind, and it shouldn’t have, because Bucky wouldn't label anything about this situation as a positive interaction.
But it did. It was still on his mind as he prepared the body for autopsy and looked at the notes in the postmortem paperwork to find the detectives attached to the case.
Sam Wilson.
Steve Rogers.
There was no hint as to which the blond man was, but Bucky’s eyebrows quirked up when he noted they were both part of vice.
So that was why he’d never encountered them before. The medical examiner rarely had a reason to meet divisions that weren’t homicide.
x.x.x.
Bucky had a habit of ignoring police officers for a few moments after they came into his space unannounced as though they were entitled to just walk in and have him bend over backwards to accommodate their requests. He didn’t look up as someone entered the morgue, walking like a cop and wearing his badge so it reflected off the bright overhead lights from the corner of his eye.
He stood across from Bucky, watching his process as Bucky made the last few cuts to extract the intestines. Bucky made sure not to look up as he was working, and unlike the majority of detectives who came into the morgue, this one didn’t launch right into demands while Bucky had a scalpel in his hand.
Smart man.
Finally, Bucky looked up to meet the gaze of the blond detective he’d made eye contact with at that crime scene a few weeks back. “Oh,” he said with an uneasy sort of surprise for being urged into vocalizing any sort of surprise at all. “Hello.”
“Detective Steve Rogers,” the man said, offering his hand. “I’m here for Tyler Picoult.”
“Just a moment,” Bucky said, stripping off his bloody gloves and grabbing a fresh pair before heading over to one of the closed cold temperature chambers and opening it, bringing the body into view. The cause of death was a bullet hole to the chest, and Bucky had extracted it and passed it into evidence. There hadn’t been a need for a full autopsy, and it didn’t look like Tyler’s family was going to claim the body, so Bucky had already earmarked the corpse for his special project.
He’d have to rebuild the heart anyway. Bucky was developing a hybrid model for circulation that used electrical impulses, not just to regulate the heart’s electrical conduction system, but to mimic life .
And he was close.
Rogers sighed when Tyler was revealed, closing his eyes for a moment.
“I can get you a computer if you need to pull up the case file.”
“This isn’t a case I’m working on,” Detective Rogers said, looking down at the body with tears in his eyes. Bucky would have noticed the emotional response without Rogers’ voice cracking in grief, but it was helpful to understand. “I volunteer with a mentorship program and a few years ago Tyler was my mentee until he aged out of the program. Aging out doesn’t mean that I would ever just drop him. He was smart. Too smart for this.”
“Sorry for your loss,” Bucky said, almost by rote, because he didn’t know what else to say to that. The detective seemed to be a good person, and Bucky had more than enough familiarity with people who seemed to be a good person. His own father was known as being a philanthropist and he didn’t have an altruistic bone in his body.
“I’d like to make arrangements to have him buried,” Detective Rogers said.
All of Bucky’s plans for the corpse crashed around him. No matter how well-meaning Rogers’s kindness was, burying his mentee would be a waste to the scientific community. Bucky’s experiments could be a gift to mankind. He might be working on immortality. Any corpse lucky enough to land on the table in his lab could be contributing more in their death than they would be alive.
“I’ll grab the paperwork,” Bucky offered, leaving Steve standing over the body and heading to the file cabinet. “You know,” he continued conversationally, while digging through the filing system. He wasn’t the best at organization, but there were five other staff members who used the cabinet and they seemed to be worse than he was. “You can absolutely pay out of pocket for him if you want, but in another few days the city is going to pay for him to be cremated and the ashes interred respectfully in a nice little cubby. There’s visitation. Personally, I’d prefer that to be my final resting place than a box in the ground or knowing that someone who cared for me spent more than they should on my burial.”
He looked up with the documents in hand to find Detective Rogers watching him with a frown on his face that told Bucky he’d managed to hook him. Barneses had always been a charismatic, convincing lot, Bucky just didn’t use those skills the same way. It made him more genuine, in his opinion.
“I have the paperwork here. It’s your choice. I promise, if you leave Tyler with me, I’ll make sure special care goes into the process.”
Detective Rogers continued to look at the body of his friend, his mouth turning down at the corners. He looked sad, and his grief was making him hesitate. “It seems wrong to let him go unclaimed to the city.”
“I know,” Bucky answered, and he knew he had to tread very carefully. Most people would have agreed with Bucky’s points immediately, making the offer more out of a sense of dutiful guilt than anything else. He could tell that Steve’s mindset was similar, but there was also a passionate fire to it, a need to do what was right. “But I promise.” His tone was sincere. Detective Rogers paused with his hands on the paperwork Bucky handed him, looking at his face. “I will personally take care of Tyler for you. You have my word.”
“I…” he hesitated in response before nodding resolutely. “I believe you.”
And that was the Barnes family charm. It was their curse and their gift.
x.x.x.
In some ways Bucky was a normal guy. He had a Netflix account and he sometimes shopped at Walmart. He’d willingly search for days for a pair of shoes that were: stylish, comfortable for standing for 8 hours at a time, and blood repellent. He skipped meals and ate street meat while on the run between the morgue and a crime scene, and he sometimes came into work with bloodshot bleary eyes from an all-nighter.
He had a dead guy in his basement.
If anyone looked at Bucky they might think the strangest thing about him was his fully articulated metal arm or his ability to walk into any murder scene without gagging at the scent, including bloated floaters and bodies found decomposing in dumpsters.
They might think it was strange that Bucky didn’t do relationships.
It was true, he didn’t do crushes. It didn’t occur to him that there was more to life than his work and his scientific explorations.
He might have forgotten Brooklyn PD’s golden boy if that had been the only time he saw Steve Rogers.
But Steve Rogers stuck.
His growing crush on Steve Rogers might be the most normal thing about him.
x.x.x.
Bucky went home with Tyler’s body in the back seat of his car, navigating through the tight alley behind his property. The house was shrouded in shadows, deep looming blackness from the surrounding apartment buildings dwarfing the gothic eves. It was a remnant of a time when property lines in Brooklyn weren’t as tight as they were now, and a prevalent reminder of the Barnes family name. When he left for work in the morning, the sun shining on the front was picturesque, giving the house the visage of a stately historical piece of architecture that made people stop on the sidewalk and stare.
At night, when Bucky returned home, the shadows showed it for what it was.
The house barely kept the dark secrets he had hidden in the basement. Three stories made from old red brick the color of fresh blood and with gothic arched windows in a dark attic, it looked like the kind of house with a secret room beneath the wine cellar.
The kind of room that meant his great grandfather couldn’t sell the house in a premium market.
There were bodies hidden beneath the floorboards; blood fertilizing the Barnes land for generations until it looked like it seeped up walls, creeping towards the roof.
The Barnes family: one of the original Brooklyn families. An upstanding name denoting philanthropists dedicated to the community, donating their time and money to the betterment of their city. Life-saving surgeons with the kind of skill that rarely came without hours of practice but seemed to come intuitively to them. Barnes surgeons were responsible for some of the most important medical innovations to ever come out of America.
People had been disappearing in Brooklyn for centuries. That was Bucky’s legacy.
The living didn’t interest Bucky. There was no challenge to giving life to someone still alive. It was much more skill-testing to give life to someone dead and who had been dead long enough for their brain activity to have completely stopped, long enough for their families and friends to miss them and claim their bodies.
Or to have the chance to.
Bucky didn’t take the living. He only took the dead and the forgotten - the bodies the city paid to be incinerated so they didn’t take up space in the graveyards. The unclaimed dead whose deaths weren’t suspicious enough to be considered murder. The forgotten. The lost. The homeless and the elderly and the orphans of a big city where no one knew their neighbors and a quarter of the people were running from something and using the masses to disappear.
And they did disappear.
But they had disappeared before Bucky took them. They’d disappeared long before they died. That, too, was his legacy. Bucky might not be the outward benefactor to Brooklyn that his family had used as a front for years while they kidnapped people in secret and experimented on them. He gave back to his community by breaking the cycle, and none of them would ever know enough to be grateful for it.
x.x.x.
Bucky put in the final suture, closing up the internal wiring he’d painstakingly placed in Tyler’s corpse. It was equally as much engineering as it was medicine, a modern marvel of complicated nerve grafts, hard-wiring, and bionics. Bucky had spliced wiring through his nervous system, designed to conduct electricity to power the body, utilizing parts that already existed. The heart was wired with a rechargeable battery, and he’d solved the distribution and recharging problem by installing bolts in areas where conductivity broke down and the wiring got delicate and complicated. It completely worked with and as an alternative to the body’s natural nerves.
In theory.
Theoretically, with enough charge, all that delicate wiring would completely power the body and brain, bringing Tyler back to life. Bucky stood back and observed his creation, and for the first time before testing the final phases, he felt like a god. Usually the people he picked to experiment on had no one in their lives, and so bringing them back from the dead only meant something to further Bucky’s scientific experimentation.
Tyler had Steve, and the knowledge of it reminded him for the first time in a long while that he was working on a real person. He ruthlessly pushed down that feeling of power. A bit of ego was ok, but his father had been verging on megalomania and it was something he deliberately tried to control him himself.
The body bucked as the powerful charge went through it. He’d perfected the process enough that the scent of burnt hair and singed flesh in the room was very mild, even if the process itself was violent.
“I give life,” he muttered sarcastically into his tape recorder as Tyler lurched forward, limbs twitching. He then stepped up against the lab table and fell to the ground, limbs still moving in an approximation of walking. It looked like a fallen robot - the cheap kind built as children’s toys, and he sighed as he watched it happen. “The problem seems to be in the brain interface. I can reanimate limbs, but without a viable brain, medically I may as well just put them on a bypass machine. At this point I hypothesize that it’s due to the decay in the brain. I need fresher bodies.”
And, a small voice in the back of his head reminded him that if he wanted to, all he had to do was take after his father and go find a fresher body.
The freshest of bodies.
Bucky could murder someone.
But, despite the option being available, Bucky had always promised himself that there was a line he refused to cross, and he’d never kill someone for his work.
He would rather never be successful than turn into A Barnes.
x.x.x.
Bucky had an affinity for strong coffee. There was an old, cheap Mr. Coffee machine on top of the filing cabinet in his office that had been spitting out increasingly vile watery swill. Bucky wasn’t sure where it came from. He thought it might have been purchased by his predecessor in the 80s and he hadn’t thought much about it until it stopped working. He’d spent the last hour piecing together an unfortunate murder victim who had a post-mortem run-in with a wood chipper in order to locate the cause of death, and his eyes were ready to cross from the effort.
So of course Mr. Coffee gave him a mug of dirty water despite the amount of coffee grinds Bucky had fed it. He choked down a mouthful before deciding fuck it . He didn’t hate people so much that he couldn’t stand to be among them for five minutes. There was a hierarchy of priorities there.
Most Offices of Chief Medical Examiner - Brooklyn locations were in hospitals, but Bucky had chosen to work from one of the smaller, older facilities serving the Bushwick to Crown Heights area. It was the kind of place where the police station was on the same block as the morgue, one of those city holdovers from a different time, but certainly convenient for his co-workers. They’d arrive thirty seconds late for their shifts with coffee and an anecdote about one of the police officers everyone knew, and Bucky would be expected to make small talk on his way out the door.
He’d always avoided the cafe situated between both buildings, despite the coffee, for exactly that reason.
But, when he stepped through the doors and stopped at the end of the line up, he realized there was a flaw in his avoiding-small-talk lifestyle as his gaze slipped past all the people in front of him and landed on someone familiar.
Detective Rogers was in front of him in line, retrieving his to-go cup. He had his own travel mug, paying to have it filled, and there was something about that fact that had Bucky tucking the knowledge aside for later. Rogers turned and spoke to the person beside him, a man Bucky was sure had been at the crime scene the first time Bucky had turned towards a sound and his eyes met Rogers’s.
Bucky watched as the two of them turned back towards the door, chatting animatedly as they went and passing Bucky on their way out. For all that he hated small-talk, there was a small piece of Bucky that yearned for that. Not in general, but from Steve. He felt acutely alone in the world for a second, which surprised him enough that he didn’t know what to do with the feeling.
The door closed behind Steve, the glass still showcasing the way his dress pants hugged his ass, and Bucky realized his gaze had followed Steve out of the building. Bucky didn’t want things, and he rarely sought out people, but there was something about the man that had drawn Bucky in quickly and lingered in the same way Bucky’s eyes did as they followed him across the room, an overt secret that anyone could see if they looked.
People, even in a coffee shop full of cops, didn’t look. They might see what was in front of them, but they didn’t observe.
Bucky was glad for the anonymity of it.
x.x.x.
It got to be a habit. Bucky would stand in the long line at the coffee shop that signified a shift change, cops being neither subtle nor very concerned about having obvious habits that were easily exploited when it came to getting a caffeine fix, and he’d watch Steve Rogers stand in front of him. He observed the careful shift of weight from one leg to another, his right knee bothering him for about a week. He saw the way Steve smiled at the barista, but didn’t overtly flirt even when she hinted towards giving him her number.
He observed Steve’s partner look at him on week two, his eyes narrowed in suspicion. Bucky didn’t react. Reacting would confirm that he was doing something, and Bucky had kept darker secrets all his life to be caught out because he had a crush.
And, really, the time he’d taken a second to put his hair up in a short ponytail after a surprise gust of wind had made it unruly and Steve walked into the cafe door hadn’t been his fault at all.
x.x.x.
It got worse every time Bucky saw Detective Rogers standing in front of him in line. He’d perfected his timing and was beginning to learn Steve’s schedule so he was accurate in seeing him at least 3 times a week. It made his heart beat quickly, his palms sweat, and that part of his brain that told him when he was being an idiot to sarcastically give him a thumbs up every time he let Steve walk past him without saying anything to him, or even really acknowledging him with anything other than a polite smile.
It all changed on a Monday when Steve turned in line and saw Bucky, giving him a smile and a small, dorky wave. He then held up a finger like he was asking Bucky to wait for something, and turned to place his order.
Wait for what? Bucky subtly turned to look behind him to see if there was someone else Steve could be gesturing to, but there wasn’t. Steve was definitely talking to him.
Be calm.
Be Calm.
BE CALM, Bucky told himself as Steve Rogers stepped away from the counter with his coffee and looked towards Bucky, a pleased gleam in his eye that told Bucky that something was about to happen. Rogers deliberately walked towards him, confident and friendly, his body language open.
Bucky wasn’t calm, because that walk was lethal .
“Detective Rogers,” Bucky said in a serene tone as Steve paused in front of him with his travel mug and a take-out cup of coffee.
“Steve,” he replied, and his first name wasn’t the only thing he was offering, the take-out cup extended in his hand towards Bucky. He was smiling, openly, and Bucky knew enough about facial musculature to notice the way it reached his eyes. That was a cliche, wasn’t it? But it made Bucky smile back. “I wanted to thank you for taking care of Tyler.”
“Bucky,” he offered, because Steve had, taking the coffee from him. It was warm in his hand, and when his fingers brushed against Steve’s there was an illusion of heat from them as well. Bucky didn’t feel like pulling back and away from him awkwardly, which was close enough to being the same thing.
Steve’s grin got wider. “Thank you,” he said, and he subtly moved in a way that had Bucky following him so they weren’t blocking the line. “I know you must not offer your name to very many people. No one I asked seemed to know it, and I think if they did they couldn’t possibly be as terrified of you as they are.”
Bucky opened his mouth to take a sip of coffee but ended up gaping at Steve instead. “What are you trying to say?”
“It’s a cute first name - or nickname? - Doctor Barnes.” Then he leaned in, that flirtatious smile still on his lips. It made Bucky’s heart beat a little faster, his mouth dry enough that he wanted to take a drink of coffee, but didn’t allow himself to move. “Don’t worry, I’ll take your secret to my grave.”
“I…” Bucky started to say. “It’s not a secret.” But, as Steve had discerned almost immediately, he didn’t tell his preferred name to very many people. “I just… they’re not my friends.”
Steve’s expression softened as he looked at Bucky and it made him realize exactly what he’d just implied. “I’ll see you around, Bucky.”
“Sure,” Bucky replied, about as casual as he could get when his brain was screaming a combination of joy and fear at him. Having a crush was exhausting. “Thanks for the coffee!” he called out after him as an afterthought, and Steve turned back towards him to salute with his travel mug, catching the way Bucky was looking at his ass as he left.
It should have made Bucky feel more awkward and embarrassed, but it was hard to feel either of those things when he defied anyone not to watch Detective Steve Rogers walk away.
x.x.x.
“Another one for you, Doc,” Mannix, one of the morgue attendants said, wheeling in the gurney with the squeaky wheel. It grated at Bucky every time he heard it, because no matter how many ‘oil me’ passive aggressive stickies he left on it, no one did. He’d eventually get around to doing it himself, despite it not being even close to being part of his job description.
He was their supervisor, for fucksakes. If none of them did it willingly, he’d write it into their job descriptions.
“Put it in the hallway with the rest of the overflow,” Bucky said in an absent tone, removing particulates from the mass of sludge that used to be someone’s internal organs. If he could give anyone advice while they were dying, it would be to not liquify , thanks.
Mannix hesitated. “Uh…” he said, “I can’t. I was told to take special care of him.”
Bucky sighed in exasperation and turned. “I am literally up to my elbows in viscera,” he said, holding his hands up in front of him to minimize what they touched. For someone who handled bodies, Mannix sure couldn’t deal with seeing the result of them with the consistency of soup. “There are four more bodies on my table today to get through in order to make space for whatever very special person you have there, and I’m the only one here.”
Bucky’s sarcasm was biting, if the way Mannix paled was any indication. “It’s one of the Detectives from…”
Christ. Of course. Cops were overly sensitive when it was one of their own. If Bucky thought they made demands when it was a city commissioner, then it was triple-fold for another cop. Bucky hated compromising and exceptions, but he knew how to play the game. The game of not making a cop so pissed off that he started looking into Bucky’s life out of spite. “I’ll get to him the moment I’m done here.”
“But…”
“We’ve turned the temperature down in the hallway. Spending an hour covered with a sheet isn’t going to do him any harm. Leave him.” Bucky really meant LEAVE. All caps. Full stop. He didn’t have time to hold someone’s hand, especially when they would have a violent reaction to all the people goop on his fingers. He also didn’t have time to clean puke off his shoes.
“You need to sign,” Mannix reminded him, holding up the clipboard.
“Do you want to help me take these gloves off so I can pick up a pen?”
“I’ll leave the paperwork with him, then?” Mannix asked, and it was the first smart question he’d had all morning.
It was very much interoffice politics that had Bucky removing one of the bodies from the drawer it was temporarily interred in to make room for the dead police officer, and it annoyed him to do so. Everyone in his morgue had the same status, from the unnamed and unclaimed, to the fancy socialite with the crystal high heels he’d had to cut off. The statuses that took priority for him were the open case murders, especially the ones part of a larger context of crimes.
Despite all his grumbling and lack of people skills, Bucky was very good at his job.
But it was important, especially when keeping a secret the magnitude of all of Bucky’s, not to piss off the cops.
He paused for a second and realized that he’d have to be very careful if he decided to start a relationship with Steve Rogers. The door to his home lab was hidden in his basement, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t also have to think about the possibility of Steve stopping by unannounced while Bucky was dragging a body from his car. That would be awkward to explain.
Mannix hadn’t bothered to take the body out of the body bag, despite Bucky’s clear hint towards an instruction to remove it and put a sheet over it. He rolled his eyes and tried to remember if Mannix was the one trying to work his way through med school or if he just thought a job in a morgue was edgy and cool.
“Ok,” Bucky muttered to himself as he pulled on a fresh pair of gloves. There was no one around to hear him, so he followed it up with, “who am I derailing my whole day for this time?” The clipboard was on top of the body and he grabbed it, almost aggressive in his annoyance.
“Rogers,” Bucky read, saying the words out loud before his brain caught up with their meaning, “-Steve.”
The first name was said quieter as it hit him whose post-mortem paperwork he was holding. His hands shook as he dropped the clipboard back on the gurney at the corpse’s feet, not able to think of it as Steve until he made sure. His fingers were numb as Bucky stepped forward and fumbled as he tried to draw the body bag zipper down, revealing Steve’s golden blond hair first.
Then dirt and blood smeared on his forehead.
And his painfully familiar face.
“Oh,” Bucky whispered in a tiny voice, reaching out and tenderly dislodging dirt from Steve’s hair with no thought to proper procedure. Steve didn’t react, the skin of his face cooler than Bucky’s hand, even through the glove. “ Steve .”
He remembered Steve handing him coffee, a shy yet comfortable smile on his face.
He remembered Steve worrying about a street kid he’d mentored years before, willing to pay for burial costs.
He remembered Steve’s grateful smile and trust when Bucky promised to take care of Tyler.
He remembered the sun in Steve’s hair, the snort at Bucky’s caustic sarcasm the first time their eyes met. He thought about how he felt around Steve, alive and vibrant. Hopeful.
He remembered Steve’s enigmatic grin the last time they spoke as he leaned in and told Bucky he’s take his nickname to his grave .
....Steve had. Steve was dead, and his body was in front of Bucky, and he wouldn’t ever get the chance to say Bucky’s name again.
He’d never hear Bucky use his first name.
Oh.
Steve was dead, and it felt like the walls of the hallway were closing in on him. He couldn’t breathe, very much aware of his own heartbeat sounding through his body as his gaze narrowed on Steve’s face. He was paralyzed, unable to move, harsh breath echoing in the corridor as he flexed his hands in and out of a fist, a chill running up his spine as it felt like the warmth was draining out of his body.
Bucky inhaled, a gasp, ragged and raw. He was crying, his tears falling on the black body bag and running down the surface until they disappeared.
He watched Steve’s face. Bucky didn’t expect signs of life, but he still couldn’t take his eyes away from it as the tears ran down his cheeks and he tried, desperately, to stop crying.
He wept for Steve and the loss of that warm, golden smile, and he wept for himself.
He tried to catch his breath, the sound overwhelmed by the rest of Bucky’s physical responses. Bucky’s fingers locked around Steve’s shoulders as he rode out the last of the intense emotional reaction. His breathing steadied. He wondered if there was any coming back from this moment as he stared at Steve’s face, serene and placid, devoid of life, and thought Oh . So that was what it felt like to be overwhelmed by gratitude.
He’d mastered reanimation.
And now Steve could be his.
Forever.