Chapter Text
It is 1927, and Steve’s eyes are bright with fever. Bucky has been told several times to stay away, the last time by Steve’s mother, her kind face taut with worry.
And Bucky, well, he has never been terribly good with following orders (to his parents’ chagrin), and every day for two weeks, he stands at the Rogers’ door until Mrs. Rogers lets him in.
It gets to be a sort of routine, a script that they both follow.
“James,” she always says. “Go home, you’ll get sick.”
“I don’t care,” he always tells her, and he means it every time.
And she’ll just shake her head and let him in, and Bucky will dart to Steve’s room.
Steve can never help the smile that breaks over his face when he sees Bucky, even as he warns Bucky to stay back. “I’ll get you sick,” he says, and coughs.
Bucky grins at him. “Then I’ll get to stay home and miss school like you.”
Steve rolls his eyes, but doesn’t say anything as Bucky turns on the radio to look for the ballgame.
The next week, Bucky does get sick, and then he really does stay away because he refuses to be the reason Steve has to spend whole days in bed as coughs wrack his body.
*
It is 1930, and Steve glares at Bucky. “Buck,” he says, “I don’t need you to fight my battles.”
Bucky is still trembling with anger and adrenaline. “It was three against one, I was evening the odds.”
“You don’t have to protect me,” Steve says quietly.
Bucky wants to say, Then stop getting into fights. Stop pissing off guys that are three times your weight. Stop getting hurt. Please, stop getting hurt, because one day I will kill someone for it.
He doesn’t.
“I was bored, kid,” Bucky says. “You had ‘em on the ropes.”
Steve smiles, and there is blood running down his face and a bruise blossoming on his cheek, and he says, “My mom is going to kill us.”
“Us nothing,” Bucky says as he slings an arm around Steve’s shoulders, relieved at the lighthearted tone. “She’s gonna kill you. I’ll make sure to write a real good speech for your funeral.”
“Gee, thanks, Buck,” Steve says, eyes glinting. “I’ll make sure I leave you everything in my will.”
*
It is 1935, and Bucky has a different girl on his arm every time Steve sees him, and sometimes one girl on each. (“Let’s go to the movies,” he’d say, and Steve would go, and feel the disappointment radiating from whichever unlucky girl stuck with him.)
If Steve misses the days when it was just him and Bucky, well. You can’t go back to the past; you just have to keep moving forward.
If Bucky goes through one girl after another, and finds ones he likes well enough but never any he likes more than Steve, well. Girls will come and go (mostly go), but he’ll always have Steve.
*
It is 1937, and Bucky fractures a rib and sustains a concussion when he diverts attention from Steve to himself during a drunken street brawl. To be fair, they’re not the drunk ones, and Steve just couldn’t stop himself from antagonizing one particularly drunk brute twice his size, and Bucky has never been one to stay away from a fight, especially when Steve is in the thick of it.
When they’re finally away, Bucky collapses against a wall, trying to focus on Steve’s face.
“Bucky!” Steve says, concern threading through his tone, although it could also have been pain. He had taken just as many blows as Bucky.
“M’fine,” Bucky says, fighting back a dizzy spell.
“Sit,” Steve says, and Bucky does, before he falls over. “I think you’re concussed.”
“You think?” Bucky says, a bit snappily. He’s sorry when he sees Steve flinch a little, though, and says so.
“Buck,” Steve says, in a low voice. He’s sitting too, now. “You’ve got to stop fighting my battles. I’m serious.”
Bucky looks Steve dead in the eyes. “Your battles are my battles,” he says.
(Later, when memories come trickling back, he’ll think that this was the first time he said I love you to Steve.)
*
It is 1939, and Bucky finds himself pleading with Steve to stay with him after Sarah dies.
“Thank you, Buck,” Steve says, “But I can get by on my own.” There’s something like pride, mingled with gratitude, in the set of his shoulders.
“The thing is,” Bucky says, and he wants to take Steve by the shoulders and shake him until he understands. “You don’t have to. I’m with you to the end of the line, pal.”
(It’s the second time he can remember saying I love you in no uncertain terms, and more than seven decades later, when Steve repeats it back to him as they fall from the sky, it jars something in his ravaged memory, and when Steve goes plummeting amidst the debris from the crashing helicarrier, he dives after him without thinking.)
*
It is 1941 and they are sitting in Bucky’s room and Steve says, “I think America is going to join the war.”
Bucky runs a hand through his hair. “Don’t say that.”
“If we do,” Steve says, “I’m going to enlist.”
“War changes things,” Bucky says. He doesn’t say that the army would never take Steve, with his small frame and his asthma and his penchant for catching every bug that sweeps through the population.
Steve doesn’t say anything, not for a long while.
Bucky has almost forgotten the conversation when Steve says, “Not us.”
“What?” He looks up at Steve, who hasn’t looked up from his sketchbook.
“Not us,” Steve repeats. “It won’t change us. I might change, and you might change, but it won’t change us.”
(When he remembers this conversation, he can’t help thinking that this was the first time Steve said I love you to him, and he laughs until tears leak from his eyes at the irony of it all.)
*
It is 1942, and Steve stares up at the sky. It’s a stifling summer night, they’re on a hill in Central Park, and the moon is a deep red.
“It’s called a blood moon,” Steve says conversationally. He had insisted that they stay out to see it, and of course Bucky had acquiesced.
Bucky is sprawled lazily across the grass, and Steve is sitting with his sketchbook in his lap.
“Whose blood?” Bucky asks, half-jokingly. He picks at the grass idly.
“Everyone’s,” Steve says, and Bucky half sits up, propping himself on his elbows.
“Not ours,” Bucky says firmly. America is at war, and so is the rest of the world, but they are not. They are not.
“Yet,” Steve says, and Bucky’s lips are thin on his face, pressed together in anger.
“Not ours,” Bucky repeats, and he doesn’t understand why Steve is bent on spilling his own blood for his country; it’s not like he has much to waste. (No, that’s a lie. He knows why; he knows Steve through and through and he knows Steve feels like he owes it to his country, he knows Steve wants to contribute, he knows Steve wants to do the right thing.)
Conversation stops, but when the moon regains its silver glow and they finally get up to leave, Steve rips a page out of his sketchbook and wordlessly hands it to Bucky.
Bucky finds himself looking at his own face.
“I thought you were here to draw the moon,” he says, stupidly. He thinks maybe he’s blushing, but at least it’s too dark for Steve to see.
“I got distracted,” Steve says. There’s something that might be heat in his voice, and Bucky looks at him.
“Steve,” he says, and there’s nothing like seduction in his tone; seduction is for an endless string of girls that are too good for him and meaningless nights spent in rooms other than his own and casual flings that last a week at most. Steve is none of those, although he is certainly too good for Bucky.
Steve just smiles at him before saying, “Let’s get home. It’s late.”
*
It is 1943, and the sun is beginning to set over the city and Bucky stares blankly at the draft notice in his hand, and it feels like the world is ending.
Steve has tried to enlist three times already, and been turned away each time.
Bucky hasn’t tried once, because there is no reason for the army not to take him, and he has never left Steve behind before, and isn’t going to start now.
And now he’s going to have to, he has no choice in it, and god.
What a stupid, stupid time to realize he is in love.
*
It is 1943, and Steve has been turned away from the recruitment office for the fourth time, and Bucky tries to keep his voice steady as he tells Steve that he enlisted. (He cannot tell Steve that the army wants him, he who has never once expressed the slightest interest in serving, while continuing to reject Steve at every turn.) He thinks that Steve will hear the lie in his words, catch a hitch in the sentence.
Steve doesn’t. His face goes blank for a brief moment, and then a smile comes, brimming with sincerity as his smiles always do. “That’s my Buck,” Steve says, and Bucky nearly shivers under the phrase. He is Steve’s, through and through, and he is in love, and he is going to war.
“I’ll kill lots of Nazis just for you,” Bucky says, and smiles. He wonders if Steve can see how brittle it is. “Now come on, we’re going out tonight. Just you and me.”
They drink, and even Steve has a little more than he probably should, and if Bucky was in full control of his mental facilities, he’d realize that Steve is more upset than he had originally let on.
Actually, he’s completely soused, and he still knows that Steve is upset.
“Steve,” he says, and he’s proud that he didn’t slur at all. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to leave you.” It’s an I love you, and he hopes Steve hears it.
“I’ll find a way to join you,” Steve promises, and Bucky’s damned if that isn’t an I love you too.
*
It is 1943 and the night before he leaves, he and Steve go out with two girls.
He returns by himself, early—he liked the girls plenty, but when Steve had drifted away he had lost interest in dancing. He had been hoping that Steve would already be back at the apartment, but no luck.
He means to stay awake until Steve gets back, but exhaustion wins out, and he wakes up the next morning to an empty room and two pieces of paper tacked to his door.
The first is a note, in Steve’s neat and compact hand: Bucky, I’m sorry, but last night was hard enough, and it isn’t a goodbye, not really. Stay safe out there, and don’t do anything too stupid while you’re gone. –Steve
The second piece of paper is a sketch of the two of them, with Bucky’s arm casually slung around Steve’s, as they were wont to do. There’s something scribbled on the back, and Bucky smiles as he reads it. Buck, I felt pretty stupid drawing myself, but I had to give you something to remember me by, didn’t I?
There’s the I love you he was looking for, and he folds both pieces of paper and slides them into his bag.
“I love you too, kid,” he says out loud, as he closes the door behind him.
(Later, when he thinks he is dying, he wants to kick himself for not finding and kissing Steve once before leaving. What was there to lose?)
*
It is 1943 and Steve does not know his own body anymore. Not that his old one was terribly good, as far as bodies went. This new one is much better, but it is disconcerting.
It is also disconcerting that he has been gifted with incredible speed, reflexes, strength, recovery time—and yet, he is nothing but a walking, talking propaganda tool.
He should be fighting, he should be on the frontlines, he should be helping.
(He should be with Bucky.)
*
It is 1943 and Bucky can’t breathe. He is going to die here, like a lab rat, and God, he should have kissed Steve. Should have told him “I love you,” should have done it when he had the chance.
Now he is going to die and Steve will never know for sure, and after a few days there is nothing but his name and rank and serial number and Steve, Steve with his clever hands and easy smile and clear blue eyes like the sky in late spring. Steve, who is the best person he knows, the best person he has ever known. Steve, with his heart of a lion and a spine of steel and his moral compass pointing true north and his unshakeable faith in good prevailing over evil.
“Sergeant James Barnes, 32557046,” he says hoarsely, with an unbearably bright light shining into his eyes and something, god, something being injected into his arm, and pain wracks his body and death would be kinder than this, to be nothing but a test subject for a crazy Nazi scientist, providing unwilling aid in research.
“Sergeant James Barnes, 32557046,” he says out loud. I’m sorry, Steve. I didn’t want to go, I would never have left you, I would have let them arrest me for ignoring my conscription, I love you, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
*
It is 1943 and Steve’s heart is in his throat and he has never, never been so scared, because Bucky is strapped down and his eyes are horribly blank, Bucky, whose eyes are the most expressive part of a wonderfully expressive face, and he’s muttering his name and his serial number in an unsteady voice, and God forgive him, Steve has never wanted to hurt anyone in his life until now. Now, given the chance, he would tear the people who did this to Bucky into pieces.
When he undoes the straps, he’s relieved to see Bucky focus on him. “I thought you were dead,” he says, light tone at odds with the tension in his entire body.
“I thought you were smaller,” Bucky quips, and something eases in Steve.
(It tightens again when Bucky refuses to leave without him, refuses to get out like he should, and if it had been just him he might not have had the courage to jump the chasm, but because Bucky is waiting on the other side and because his new body hasn’t failed him yet, he jumps, and makes it, and lives. And isn’t it just like Bucky to be saving him without even knowing it?)
*
It is 1943, and Bucky is a fool, and he would follow Steven Rogers through the depths of hell. Enemy territory is nothing.
*
It is 1944, and Bucky is finally, finally getting used to the super soldier thing.
He still watches Steve’s back, partly out of habit and partly because his primary role in the Commandos is to be a sniper, a damn good one, and part of that job description is to keep Steve safe.
He sees that the world, or at least the Allies’ side of the world, is in love with Captain America, and bitterly thinks that he was first to love Steve Rogers, the man behind the shield, as it were.
And he thinks Steve Rogers will fall in love with Peggy Carter, thinks Steve is half in love with her already, and God, it stings. But she’s smart and beautiful and has a fighting spirit to match Steve’s own, and she likes him, maybe even loves him, and she’s so much better for Steve than he could ever be.
And he wants to hate her, he does, but he can’t. Can’t do that to Steve, and anyway, she’s got a sense of humor that aligns closely with his own, and when Steve tells him to ask her about the day in training camp that she punched some asshole named Hodge, Bucky does and finds that he wants to be her friend.
Of course, Agent Carter is as sharp as anyone he’s ever met, and one day he’s sitting at the bar when she slides onto the stool beside him. “Sergeant Barnes,” she says.
“Call me Bucky,” he says, and means it.
“Bucky, then,” she says, lips curving into a smile. She is beautiful. “Call me Peggy.”
He finds it in himself to smile back. He likes her, even if he doesn’t want to, and he’s never been one for lying to himself. “What can I do for you, Peggy?”
She looks him dead in the eyes, and seeing her steady gaze, he’s surer than ever that Steve deserves nothing less than her. “I wanted to thank you for keeping Steve safe, and for being his friend.”
Bucky thinks that she couldn’t have twisted the dagger harder if she tried. “It’s my job, ma’am,” he says.
“No,” Peggy says. “I’m serious. There aren’t very many people who know Steve, really know him, and you’re the one who knows him best, and you mean so much to him.”
“You do too,” Bucky says, wondering if his voice betrays his emotions.
“Bucky,” she says, somewhat admonishingly, “I’m not here to ask your permission to date your Captain. He can decide that for himself.”
Bucky finds himself laughing, however bitterly, at her candor. I’m in love with him too, he wants to say. I’ve been in love with him for years. “If you’re waiting for him to ask you on a date, you’ll be waiting a while. I’ll put in a good word for you,” is what he actually says, and winks. It’s what he ought to do, and Peggy is maybe the only person in the world that’s good enough for his best friend, and what does it matter that his heart is constricting?
“I don’t need that that, either,” Peggy says. “Steve was just an excuse to properly meet you. I hear you’re a good shot. I bet I’m better.” There is a twinkle in her eye.
Bucky accepts the challenge and follows her to the shooting range.
He wins, just barely, when Peggy misses a bullseye by an inch to the left. She laughs when he whoops victoriously, and sticks her hand out to shake. “I’ll get you next time,” she says.
(She does win the next time.)
*
It is 1944, and he is falling, falling, falling, with Steve’s frantic, desperate yell echoing in his ears.
The day had started so well, with Steve’s cheeks flushed in the crisp mountain air, his eyes particularly blue against the sky, his hair shining golden under the rays of the sun. Beautiful, and Bucky had drank in the sight of him.
“Buck, stop looking at me like that,” he had said, but his lip had been twitching. “I think you’re supposed to be packing up the radio equipment.”
“I got distracted,” Bucky had said, deliberately, and had enjoyed watching the flash of recognition cross Steve’s eyes, had enjoyed the brilliant smile that flickered across Steve’s face.
And now he’s falling and it’s funny, people say that your life flashes before your eyes when you’re falling to your death, but all he can see is Steve.
Then again, maybe people were right.
He falls, and he hopes that Steve is alive and fighting. He hopes that Steve will not mourn for too long, and he hopes that Steve marries Peggy and has the family he deserves, and he hopes that Steve knows that he dies gladly for him.
He hopes Steve knows he loves him, has always loved him, will always love him.
*
It is 1944 and it’s ironic that Steve has never wanted to drink away his troubles until today, when he no longer can.
He gives it a good try, though.
None of the Commandos had been able to meet his eyes when they returned to base, one man short. Or maybe he hadn’t been able to meet theirs. God knows he hadn’t been able to meet Peggy’s, for fear of—what? Sorrow? Sympathy? No matter. He couldn’t face anyone, just then. Or now, come to think of it.
He drinks, and he drinks, and nothing happens. He can still picture Bucky clear as day. Bucky, with eyes that sometimes spoke louder than his words, who was always in motion, whose smiles ranged from quick and sharp and bitter to slow and happy and loving. Bucky, with his sharp tongue and sharper mind, with the biting sarcasm that masked affection. Bucky, who had been the one constant in his life, who had been there through thick and thin. Bucky, who is first, last, and always in his mind.
This is what a broken heart feels like, he thinks.
Two years ago, Bucky had almost kissed him under a moon just come out of an eclipse; he’s sure of it.
This is what a broken heart feels like.
*
It is 1945, and Steve is cold in more ways than one.
He can’t even remember the last time he didn’t have Bucky, and he finds that he does not like it at all.
Peggy is a boon, and her matter-of-factness, her staunch belief that Bucky had made a choice willingly, would not have regretted anything, that helps more than he ever could have imagined. “Allow him the dignity of his choice,” she had said, and he is trying to, he is.
But sometimes he catches himself turning to say something to Bucky, catches himself thinking, I’ve got to show Buck later, catches himself waiting to hear Bucky’s voice in his ear. And every time he remembers, it’s like watching Bucky fall all over again.
*
It is 1945 and Steve is in a plane with its nose pointed towards the ocean, and he is going to die.
He doesn’t have very many regrets.
If he really thinks about it, he only has two: missing out on Peggy, because God, Peggy with her perfect lips and piercing gaze and steady, steady hands. Peggy, who is brave and unyielding in her fight for good, who takes no shit and certainly no prisoners, who might have let him forge a world by her side after the war.
And Bucky. Bucky who is first, last, and always, who has always been everything. Best friend, brother in arms, and maybe something more, if fate hadn’t had its way, and if he had just let Bucky kiss him under the soft light of a full moon just losing its red tinge.
Steve doesn’t know if he believes in a heaven, and he doesn’t even need there to be, all he needs is to be with Bucky, and he can’t stop thinking of a drunken night when he had vowed to Bucky that he’d find a way to join him, and now—.
Telling Peggy what he’s going to do is maybe the second worst thing he’s done, and he can’t bear that he’s the one causing the tears in her voice when she realizes what he’s going to do.
“I’m going to need a rain check on that dance,” Steve says into the radio, and his heart is cracking along the fault lines that are already there.
“All right,” she says, a little unsteadily. “A week next Saturday at The Stork Club.”
Oh, she is so brave and good, and he is leaving her behind.
“You’ve got it,” Steve says.
“Eight o’clock on the dot,” she says, strength returning to the timbre of her voice, and even now, even now she’s giving him exactly what he needs. “Don’t you dare be late, understood?”
“You know,” Steve says, and he draws from the strength she’s offering him, finding it in himself to banter with her one last time. “I still don’t know how to dance.”
“I’ll show you how,” Peggy says, and she’s crying now, in earnest, and Steve is sorry for the pain he’s causing. “Just be there.”
“We’ll have the band play something slow,” Steve says, and oh, the plane is plummeting, and he’s falling, falling, falling out of the cold blue sky, and God, he does have one regret, and that’s that he never kissed either of the two people he loves. “I’d hate to step on your—“
*
It is 1945, and Bucky and Steve are lost to the world and frozen in time and the earth continues to turn without them.
(It is fitting, in a way, for James Buchanan Barnes and Steven Grant Rogers to share a fate, if not a resting place.)