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“When I went under, the world was at war.
I wake up, they say we won.
They didn’t say what we lost.”
— Steve Rogers/Captain America, The Avengers
* * *
The smell of coal and soot from the coming-and-going trains permeates the air, as does the smell of metal from the train tracks. Everything is gray and smoky…and crowded. So crowded. It’s starting to rain and Steve doesn’t have an umbrella, but he couldn’t care less. He’d wait under a rain of lava if he had to.
There are other people crowding the sidewalk, vibrating with trepidation just like he is. People who have waited and prayed and despaired and hoped, just like he has. Steve doesn’t care about any of them. Steve doesn’t care about the rain. Steve doesn’t care about the thickness of the air in the soot-filled station that’s making breathing just a little bit harder than it should be.
Steve only cares about Bucky. Bucky who’s on the next train in. Bucky who’s coming back from the war, back home, back to Steve. Whole. Alive. Safe. Bucky.
Bucky. Bucky. Bucky.
Steve’s heartbeat spells out the name and his head is filled with it. Filled with him. Bucky.
It feels like an entire lifetime before the train finally pulls in. Steve hears the whistle and his heart jumps to his throat. Not long. Not long now. Almost. Almost. Bucky.
The crowd gets thicker then, the same overwhelming excitement that’s making Steve’s blood rush to his ears taking hold of pretty much everyone else around him. Suddenly there are more bodies in his way, blocking his path and the view.
Steve panics. Bucky is on this train and Steve can’t see a damn thing past the wall of overexcited people, and God, what if he doesn’t spot him? What if he misses him among the sea of limbs and bodies? Worst yet, what if Bucky doesn’t see him? What if they miss each other and Bucky comes home from the war only to believe no one is there to welcome him?
It’s irrational, Steve knows it is. Of course they’ll find each other; they always do. But he can’t help it. He can’t help the urgency, the frenzy, the near-hysteria that have taken a hold of him. Because in all the time they have known each other, in all their lifetime together, Bucky has never once asked Steve for anything, but he did ask for this.
Bucky’s last letter was short and to the point:
“I’m coming home. Be there, punk.”
Attached was a copy of an Army-issued train ticket from Boston to New York, with information about the platform and time and train number.
“Be there, punk,” Bucky wrote, and goddamnit, Steve is gonna make damn sure he’s the first thing Bucky sees once he steps off that train.
“’xcuse me,” Steve hears himself say as the urgency takes full control of his body and propels him forward. “Pardon me. Sorry.”
He pushes and elbows his way through the crowd, and if anyone protests his somewhat aggressive advance, Steve doesn’t hear it. He finally manages to carve out a path for himself, narrow and not entirely clear, but enough to allow him to see past shoulders and heads and hats.
A few minutes later, Steve sees him step off the train. Bucky walks tall and confident as ever, a rucksack slung over his shoulder, military hat askew on his head and a shit-eating grin on his face. He’s smirking because he does indeed see Steve, spots him immediately despite the hundreds of people pressing in around them.
‘Oh, God. Bucky.’
There is no pause, no split second of immobility to let the sight of each other for the first time in over two years sink in. Steve has started moving as soon as he spotted him and Bucky has already let the rucksack fall to the ground.
Steve runs at full speed past bodies and duffel bags and barrels into Bucky, literally throwing himself at him and not giving a damn what it must look like. Bucky catches him as readily as he always has. He stumbles back a step but rights himself quickly, hat flying off his head upon impact, arms wrapping firm and tight around Steve.
Steve feels himself being lifted off the ground, and while he would normally give Bucky a hard time about it (he’s not some dame to be literally swept off his feet, thankyouverymuch), right now he just holds on tighter and inhales deeply, breathing Bucky in. Bucky smells like aftershave and cigarettes, and Steve can’t recall ever smelling anything sweeter.
“Buck,” Steve finally chokes out, voice raspy and face half-buried into the crook of Bucky’s neck.
Bucky, if possible, holds him even tighter. “Hiya, punk.”
Steve makes a half-choked sound that he doesn’t recognize.
“Bucky,” he says again, like it’s the only word he knows. It sure is the only word that matters, anyway.
“Yeah,” Bucky says, followed by a suspicious sniffle that just about undoes Steve right then and there.
He doesn’t know how long they stay like that, wrapped up in each other and in the knowledge that they’re both here and they’re safe and it’s over. However long it is, it’s not nearly as long as Steve would like it to be. Bucky lets go, even though Steve can feel the reluctance in his body. He has always been smarter than Steve in these matters, more careful, more keenly aware of what might happen if they held on a little too tight, if their touches lingered a little too long while they’re out in public.
Bucky picks up his fallen hat and presses it back down onto his head, and Steve grabs the rucksack and hoists it over his own shoulder, because he’ll be damned if he lets Bucky carry more weight than what he can already see in Bucky’s eyes.
Bucky smiles, tired and grateful and somehow glowing despite everything, and he wraps one arm around Steve’s shoulders.
“Come on, man, let’s get outta here,” he says, pulling Steve into his side. “All this smoke can’t be good for your lungs.”
Fuck, Steve loves him so much.
They don’t go far, just out of the station with its crowd and soot, and then Steve is shoving Bucky into the nearest back alley, because there’s simply no way he’s waiting until they’re back to the godforsaken hole of an apartment Bucky has managed to convince him to call home after Steve’s ma passed away.
Whether he’s just as impatient as Steve or simply too exhausted to protest the recklessness of the act, Bucky goes along, lets himself be manhandled past garbage cans and residues of rain. He falls back against the wall with boneless movements that Steve stores away in his head to be investigated later, and tilts his head back, looking down at Steve through half-slit eyes, a tired but expectant grin on his face.
Steve reaches up and pushes the hat off Bucky’s head. It tumbles to the ground, a discarded vestige of what stole Bucky away for two long years. Neither of them makes a move to pick it up.
Steve studies Bucky’s face carefully, drinks in familiar features and catalogs new elements. Bucky looks bone-weary. Despite the smile on his face, there’s a haunted look in his eyes that Steve knows he’ll never begin to understand.
There’s a bruise on Bucky’s forehead, just above his left eyebrow. It stretches over to his temple, oblong and discolored and ugly, and it makes something in Steve crack and his blood boil. He reaches up to ghost his fingertips along the mark. He tries to imagine what he might find under Bucky’s clothes—how many more bruises, how many scars.
“I’m fine, Steve,” Bucky says, but he doesn’t pull away from Steve’s touch.
“Sure you are,” Steve says, soothing, and he brushes errant strands of hair off Bucky’s forehead.
Bucky lets out a shuddering breath, and that’s all it takes. Steve slides his fingers into Bucky’s hair and Bucky bends down low and crashes their mouths together, wrapping one arm around Steve’s waist and cupping the back of his head with the other, fingers splayed along Steve’s scalp.
Steve fists his hands into the front of Bucky’s uniform and tugs him impossibly closer, tongue swirling and lips on fire. He makes sure his kisses say everything, convey every message, deliver every single word of salvation—you’re home, I’ve got you, you’re safe, you made it.
Bucky must hear it all, because he holds him even tighter and lets out a choked sound that tears Steve’s heart in half.
“Steve,” Bucky gasps out moments later, breath hot against Steve’s lips and voice broken with that something he’s brought back with him from the trenches.
“Shhh,” Steve says. He cups Bucky’s cheek with one hand, touches shaven skin and too-sharp features. “’s all right. I got you. You’re all right.”
They’re standing with their foreheads pressed together, breaths mingling and bodies vibrating with something larger than themselves—larger than the whole world around them. Bucky’s hold is tight and desperate around Steve, and Steve’s hand that’s not on Bucky’s face is clinging just as strongly to Bucky’s jacket.
“Steve,” Bucky says again, murmurs it quietly with his lips not even an inch away from Steve’s.
“Yeah,” Steve says immediately, a man on a mission to mend the broken notes in Bucky’s voice. “Right here.”
He cards his fingers through Bucky’s hair, exposing his features fully, and pulls back just enough to look into Bucky’s face.
Bucky smiles at him, some of the tension around his eyes and mouth already loosened, and Steve knows then that they’re going to be all right.
He smiles back, something wild and restless within him finally shifting and quieting, tamed now that he has Bucky back.
“The war’s over, Bucky,” Steve says. “We can go home.”
* * *
For once, Steve wakes slowly. There is no start, no being ripped away from haunting nightmares, no breath catching in his lungs, no gasp being torn from his throat. There is only a peaceful transition from sleep to wakefulness. It’s somewhat new, and Steve thinks he might get used to it.
Bucky’s weight is warm, pressed into Steve’s side, Bucky’s arm slung across his abdomen. Home. Bucky’s home.
Steve reaches up slowly to stroke his palm along Bucky’s forearm—
—and he finally startles.
Metal. There’s metal under his fingers.
He jerks half-upright, heart hammering in his chest. Beside him, Bucky stirs but doesn’t wake, quieting down almost immediately.
Everything comes rushing back, facts and figures breaking through the fog in his brain. He’s in his apartment in Brooklyn, the one with a reasonable rent price that Tony helped him find. The pink-orange light of dawn is creeping in through the white curtains. His body is big and strong. Healthy. Super-charged. And Bucky’s got a metal arm.
Steve turns his head to look at him and his heart seizes. Bucky’s hair is plastered to his forehead and the side of his face, a fine sheet of perspiration on his skin. There’s a tension in his features. It happens sometimes that Bucky’s nightmares are silent. Sometimes there are horrors in his head and he doesn’t make a sound, doesn’t wake up screaming. He just remains trapped in his sleep, the outside world none the wiser.
Steve lies back down and turns on his side, careful not to dislodge Bucky’s arm still draped over him. Bucky’s metal arm. Bucky’s arm that HYDRA—
‘Oh, God.’
Steve swallows hard and almost chokes on his own breath stuck in his throat. Tendrils of the dream are still coiled around him, reaching out through space and time and what-could-have-been, and he can’t breathe. His eyes trace the scar tissue on Bucky’s bare back, where metal meets flesh. There are horrors embedded in Bucky’s flesh and nightmares behind Bucky’s eyelids, and Steve can’t breathe.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, reaching out to brush Bucky’s damp hair off his face. He leans in and presses a kiss to Bucky’s forehead, tasting salt and seventy years of torture under his lips. “I’m so sorry.”
Bucky’s eyes blink open. Steve watches as the veil of nightmares lifts and the haunted look in Bucky’s eyes recedes into the deep recesses of his pupils to make way for recognition.
“Steve?”
Steve swallows. There’s a rock lodged in his throat. “Hi,” he says, forcing out a smile.
“Hey.” Bucky smiles back, but it’s quickly replaced with a frown. “What’s wrong?”
Really, Steve should have known. He should have known Bucky would see right through him.
“Nothing,” he tries anyway.
Bucky stares at him. “Steve,” he says. There isn’t any particular inflection in his voice, but Steve hears it all—“I know you’re lying,” and “Are you fucking kidding me?”. It’s pointed and long-suffering, and it sounds exactly like it did back in the ‘30s. Steve wants to cry.
“What is it? Did you have a nightmare?”
Bucky knows Steve gets nightmares too. Not as violent and not as frequent as Bucky’s, but he does get them. Bucky knows.
Steve feels something twist inside his gut, like somebody has plunged a knife there and is turning the blade over and over. Bucky knows too much about nightmares—both Steve’s and his own. He knows enough that he can spot them from a mile away, flushes them out with the same sharpness he used to flush out Nazis during the war.
The war he never came back from. The war he never got to win. The war that claimed his everything.
Bucky’s got a metal arm.
“Buck—” Steve’s voice dies in his throat, and no matter how hard he tries, he can’t revive it.
Bucky moves. He tugs at Steve’s shoulder and pulls him in against his chest, arms strong and sheltering around Steve’s frame.
Metal arm. Bucky’s got a metal arm.
“It’s okay,” Bucky says, his flesh hand cupping the back of Steve’s head and his fingers kneading the knots in Steve’s neck the way he did when they were kids. Before the war. Back when all of his limbs were made of flesh and blood and muscle. Before. “It’s okay, Steve.”
Steve wants to cry. It’s not okay. It’s anything but okay. Bucky should have gotten to come home from the war.
возвращение на родину .
Homecoming should have meant Brooklyn and sooty train stations and Steve.
возвращение на родину .
The file. That damn file. Those damn words. The blood. The pain. The dehumanization.
возвращение на родину .
Bucky’s got a metal arm.
Steve doesn’t cry. Steve gets angry. He pulls away from Bucky as though their bodies were both on fire and is on his feet in one swift, frantic movement, every muscle coiled tight with barely restrained rage.
“It’s not okay,” he snarls. His blood is boiling and his heart is about to hammer a hole through his chest. “It’s not okay, Bucky.”
It’s the furthest thing from okay. It’s not fair. Bucky’s got a metal arm and knows too much about nightmares, and it’s not fair. Steve wants to punch a hole through the wall, thinks he just might do it any moment now.
“Hey.” And then Bucky’s there. He’s standing in front of him, skin glistening with sweat from the monsters behind his eyelids, tall and proud and yet carrying himself with that hunted-animal tension that never really leaves him, not ever, not even around Steve. He reaches out and grasps Steve’s shoulder, squeezes in order to anchor him, the way they had to learn to do for each other. “Steve.”
Bucky’s got a metal arm.
Steve recoils, steps back as though the iron hand on his shoulder is made of lava.
Bucky’s got a metal arm.
Bucky frowns. He’s usually the one to pull away from touch after a nightmare, his skin on fire and his nerves bare, exposed and frayed as though the air itself was sandpaper scraping over his entire body.
Steve never recoils. Not ever. Not from Bucky. They both know it, and the reaction stills them both for a second.
“What’s wrong?” Bucky asks again. “Talk to me.”
Bucky’s got a metal arm.
Except Steve says it out loud this time. He’s horrified to hear the words tumble out of his mouth. “You’ve got a metal arm.”
Something flashes across Bucky’s features. It looks like shame. “Oh,” he says. He looks away, avoids eye contact like he suddenly doesn’t belong, like maybe he’s not supposed to be here.
Steve’s stomach rolls so violently it’s a wonder he doesn’t get sick right then and there. “No,” he says earnestly. He rushes forward, grasping Bucky’s metal hand. “Bucky, no.”
Bucky pulls away, slides his metal fingers out of Steve’s grasp with gentle and yet determined movements. “I get it, Steve. I know this thing ain’t natural.”
‘Oh, God.’
“Bucky, no,” Steve says again. “You don’t get it. Just…hey.” He reaches out when he sees Bucky pulling further back and about to retreat into himself. He has to stop him, stop it, fix it. Now. “Just look at me.” He cups Bucky’s cheek and gently turns his head so their eyes can meet. “It’s not that. It’s not you.”
Bucky’s frowning in confusion, and he looks like he did in the ‘30s, whenever Steve did something really stupid and then tried to explain himself. “What’s going on, Steve? What’d you dream about?”
Steve lets out a long sigh. He covers the distance between them and presses his lips gently over Bucky’s in silent apology. Bucky melts into him immediately, sighing into his mouth, and Steve knows the incident is already forgotten.
He pulls back just enough to rest his forehead against Bucky’s, lets Bucky’s solid presence anchor him in place. “I dreamed of what should’ve been.”
Bucky wraps one arm around his waist, gentle and life-saving. “What d’you mean?”
And then Steve is telling him. He’s telling him everything. They have moved to sit at the foot of the bed sometime during the tale, and by the time he’s done, Steve’s shoulders are hunched and his head is down. He can feel a tremor in his body, and he doesn’t know where to start to stop it.
Bucky’s got a hand splayed out in-between Steve’s shoulder blades, the weight of it warm and reassuring and alive. Steve feels like he might shatter from that touch alone.
“Steve,” Bucky says quietly, after Steve is done and the silence hangs in the room for a while. “It’s okay.”
Steve makes a choked sound and buries his face in his hands. “God,” he says, voice muffled and cracked from behind his palms. “Stop saying that. It’s not.”
“It is.”
Steve looks up then. He stares at Bucky incredulously. “It’s not, Bucky.”
“Is, too.”
“’s not!”
“Is, too!”
“You’re insufferable.”
“You love me.”
Like back in the ’20s.
‘Oh, God. Bucky.’
“You should’ve…” Steve trails off and clears his throat, feels razor blades lodged in there. “You should’ve gotten to come home.”
Bucky stares at him. He looks resolute and solemn. Steve doesn’t quite know what to do with the intensity of Bucky’s gaze except that it makes him want to kiss him until the end of days. “I did.”
Steve blinks. “What?”
“I came home, Steve. Took me a while,” Bucky says, and he smiles a small, self-deprecating smile that breaks something deep within Steve’s chest, “but I did it.”
“Bucky—”
Bucky places his thumb on Steve’s lips and cuts off his protests gently, hand cupping the side of Steve’s jaw. “It wasn’t ideal,” he says quietly. “What happened to us…it shouldn’t have happened. But it did. Ain’t nothing even Captain America can do about that.”
“Buck—”
“Shhh,” Bucky says, his thumb rubbing along Steve’s lips. “But we did it. We came home. The time might be off, but we’re in Brooklyn and we’re together. I’ve never wanted anything else.” Bucky stares at him. “Have you?”
Steve takes in a shuddering breath. “I wanted you safe.”
“I am now,” Bucky says. “I’m safe, and I’m home.”
Steve chokes then, his throat constricting with the enormity of everything. Seventy years of pain and loss crashing over him all at once. Seventy years of fighting his way through God only knows what exactly.
Bucky wraps his arms around him and pulls him in, and Steve clings to him with everything he has, his hands curling into fists over the bare skin of Bucky’s back.
“I got you,” Bucky says. There’s something affectionate in his voice, something that lulls over Steve like a security blanket. “Punk.” Bucky turns his head and presses a kiss to the side of Steve’s head. “It’s okay.”
Steve squeezes his eyes shut and half-buries his face against Bucky’s shoulder, right there where metal meets flesh. Bucky’s survival point. Steve’s safe place.
“The war’s over, Steve,” Bucky murmurs. “We’re home.”
Something wild and restless within Steve shifts and quietens, tamed now that he has Bucky back.
Homecoming.
FIN