Chapter Text
The suit they gave him was not properly tailored to his body. It was loose at the bicep, the waist, its previous owner clearly a good fifteen to twenty pounds heavier than its current occupant. This was not entirely unexpected, however, as the man looking back at him in the mirror had been cut down by the past sixty-eight years as if by a razor, giving him the uneasy air of a starving wolf.
Metal hand rose to touch stubbled cheek. He smiled, baring teeth at the mirror. The photograph taped to the corner caught its subject mid-laugh, turning to look at someone else just out of frame. The Winter Soldier frowned, then tried the smile again, giving it his best approximation. His handlers had been very clear — his whole performance hinged on that smile.
One more try, turning his head just right to look at whatever the man in the photograph was looking at. Eyes crinkling at the corners, one cheek dimpling, flash of pearly, slightly crooked teeth.
Close enough. It would have to do.
He buttoned his jacket closed slowly, metal fingers clicking against the buttons. With the suit complete and in place, he barely recognized himself. But then, that was not particularly difficult to achieve. He picked up the thin black glove from the edge of the sink, sliding it neatly onto his left hand, obscuring the writhing shift of metal plates across the backs of his knuckles. Now he was more than unrecognizable — he was human.
The Winter Soldier peeled the photograph off the mirror and put it in his breast pocket, in case he needed it for reference later. It was not easy for him to soften his face, to melt the candle of his wariness until he could appear just as warm and fond as the man in the image; he had spent the vast majority of his time in recent memory doing exactly the opposite, sharpening, his mind steel on HYDRA’s whetstone. The pretty scabbard he folded himself into now would not make him any less a blade.
The Soldier combed Brylcreem through his recently-cut hair, slicking it back, and did not allow himself to remember the smell.
The neighborhood was popular, which the Soldier did not find promising. His target’s apartment sat on the corner junction of two busy streets, big windows on each side pointing down at the pavement below. The Soldier jogged up the front steps, hands deep inside jacket pockets to wrap fingers around the switchblade handle, to fiddle with the tin of poison capsules.
The late afternoon sun shone down with a brazen eye, and he found that he did not care for this daylight, this exposure. His missions were typically done best under cover of dark, or at least under cover. He was a sniper, and he was not comfortable anywhere he did not have a good vantage point. The sun shone down. The Soldier watched his own feet ascend the steps, polished leather gleaming. The boots, at least, fit right.
The door code had been provided to him by his handlers, and once inside, he breathed easier. He passed a woman on the stairs who carried a small dog under one arm, and he smiled at her, the practiced smile that still sat unnaturally on his face. A rumble of a growl vibrated at the back of the dog’s throat, and the woman’s answering smile turned very apologetic. She shushed the dog, hurrying away down the stairs. The Soldier tracked her retreat with his eyes.
Under other circumstances, he might have killed her for the delay. There would be a soft spot just beneath her jaw, where his metal thumb could apply enough pressure to crush her throat before she could scream. He had done it before. It would be easy.
His hand used to tremble slightly, just before it tightened. But this had been many years ago, and his handlers assured the higher-ups that this defect had been overcome by the mid-seventies. The Winter Soldier wouldn’t know. He hadn’t had to test it in a long time.
As he walked down the hall, the Soldier adjusted his posture. He loosened his stride at the hip, giving himself a slight sway in his step, a hint of a swagger. He relaxed at the shoulder, the elbow, making his gestures more fluid. The smile, the damned smile, rested lightly on his lips, ready to be drawn like a blade across his mouth. Room 315, at the hallway’s junction with the far wall. Corner apartment. Home to Captain Steven Rogers, O-462362.
With adrenaline humming just beneath his skin, the Winter Soldier knocked.
“One second,” came a muffled voice from behind the door, the sound of sock feet on hardwood floor. The Soldier put his left hand in his pocket and cocked his hip to the side, whole body poised at the ready as he listened to the lock turn, the creak of door hinges.
Captain Rogers appeared from behind the door just as he did in the photographs HYDRA had shown the Winter Soldier: he was tall, blond, well-muscled and broad across his shoulders, eyes impossibly blue and hands the perfect shape for making fists. His mouth parted as if to speak, but no noise came out — the living color drained from his face, leaving him pale as the dead.
“Heya, Steve,” the Soldier said, leaning on the Brooklyn accent he’d spent a week perfecting. “You gonna let me in, or do I have’ta do our secret knock?”
“Bucky?” Rogers asked, voice breaking.
The Soldier took his hands out of his pockets, and the practiced smile bloomed across his face, although he did not know how to make it touch his eyes. “Y’know, when I imagined our reunion, there was more hugging,” he remarked, cocking a brow.
Rogers was on him before the Soldier could blink. Rogers threw his arms around him, squeezing so hard it took herculean effort not to tense up or push him off. The Soldier exhaled through his teeth, his own arms rising to encircle Rogers’ waist and hold him close enough to hear Rogers’ shaky breaths in his ear. He was very warm and his whole body was hard with muscle. The Soldier felt fear touch him with an icy hand, fear of this powerful body and what it could do, how difficult it would be to overpower him.
“You died,” Rogers said thickly, shoulders trembling. “You died, I watched you die.”
“It didn’t take,” the Soldier said. He put a hand to the small of Rogers’ back, thumb stroking cautious circles. “You really wanna do this in the doorway, pal? Let your neighbors get a good eyeful?”
“Fuck,” Rogers said, with feeling. “Christ. Okay.” He tugged the Soldier inside the threshold and kicked the door closed. The click of the lock after sent a flicker of dread down the Soldier’s spine.
Rogers had yet to stop touching him. He put his hands on the Soldier’s shoulders, his hair, the flutter-sharp pulse just beneath his jaw, fingertips alighting only briefly before landing somewhere else. The Soldier let him. Ice-blue eyes tracked the movement of Rogers’ hands, trying to decide what to do next, what to say. His handlers had emphasized that this would be the most difficult part of the operation, although Rogers’ desire to believe would give him a strong advantage.
“How are you here, Buck?” Rogers asked, desperation seeping into his voice like blood through a shirt. “You fell a thousand feet.”
“Twelve hundred, actually.” The Soldier’s mouth twisted. He stepped deeper inside the apartment, unbuttoning his jacket as he did so, and glanced around for a hook to hang his coat on. He could hear a hiss of wind very faintly, a threat of winter in his ears, roused by sense memory of falling. He had been hurt in a myriad of ways, in HYDRA’s training. The reminder of specifics was not alarming or unexpected.
Rogers, however, let out an audible breath. The Soldier turned back to look at him, coat now neatly hung in the hall, and watched Rogers breathe hard where he was rooted at the door.
“One thousand two hundred feet,” Rogers repeated, hoarse.
The Soldier held his gaze. “Give or take.”
Rogers’ eyes flicked toward the hall closet, where the Soldier could see the glint of red and blue that meant his shield. “Gonna need more of an explanation than that,” Rogers said, steel creeping into his voice. The hair on the back of the Soldier’s neck rose.
“It’s not a pretty story.” The Soldier set his jaw. “You sure you wanna hear it?”
“Bucky,” Rogers said roughly.
“HYDRA found me in the snow,” the Soldier explained. He kept his mouth soft around the words, hands open and guileless where they rested at his sides. “Put me on ice. I hear you know a thing or two about that.”
Rogers’ lips parted with shock.
“Fell into the Soviets’ hands after the war,” the Soldier added, allowing his voice to crack. “Got passed around like a prize.” He felt his lower lip tremble on cue, big doe eyes watering as he clenched his right fist at his side hard enough for his fingernails to bite into the meat of his palm. It was difficult to fake this kind of emotion — the shock of pain made it easier to make his face do what he wanted, eyelashes damp against his cheek when he blinked.
Rogers staggered forward a step, then another, until he was standing right in front of the Soldier once more. His shaking hand reached up to touch the Soldier’s face again, wiping the wet tear-track from the Soldier's cheek. “How’d you make it back to me?” he asked, helpless.
“SHIELD,” the Soldier said. He leaned into Rogers’ palm. “Found me. Told ‘em to let me tell you myself, soon as I heard you were alive too. Knew you wouldn’t believe it ‘till you saw me.”
“Fuck,” Rogers said.
“I know,” the Soldier said, and laughed, bemused. “Who’d’a thought, huh? Both of us makin’ it this far.”
Rogers put their foreheads together, squeezing his eyes closed. They stood like that for a very long moment, the Winter Soldier and Captain America, Rogers clinging to him.
“I’ve been tricked before,” Rogers rasped. The raw wanting in his eyes did not ease when he opened them again, but the open hunger was tinged with wariness. “Tell me I’m not being tricked now.”
“It’s me,” the Soldier said. He put his hand to Rogers’ hip, his side, and squeezed. “Don’t you know me when you see me?”
Rogers crushed the Soldier close, hand cupping the back of his head, and he did not say anything at all. But the Soldier knew he had won, because Rogers was allowing the Soldier’s dangerous hands all over his unprotected back — his metal palm lay just above the soft space between ribs through which he could slide a knife as easy as cutting butter.
“Thank God,” Rogers whispered. “Oh, Christ, Buck, I really... I really thought you were gone this time.”
“Didn’t I always promise to come back to you?” the Soldier murmured back, just as quiet. He stayed still for Rogers’ holding, letting himself get rocked back and forth a little as they stood. “Didn’t you believe me?”
Rogers gave a choking sob and squeezed even tighter. Over his shoulder, the Winter Soldier looked at the window in front of himself, eyes gone dead now that no one was observing them.
Rogers set him up in the guest bedroom, so the Winter Soldier assembled his base while Rogers arranged supper. He retrieved all his weaponry from different pockets, hiding them in convenient locations all throughout the room; a knife taped beneath the nightstand; a gun in the dresser drawer beneath the linens; poison capsules in the pocket of the pants he folded neatly, once he’d undressed. He would need these weapons eventually, but for now, it was most important that he maintain his cover.
The Soldier was not comfortable without a weapon in his hand. He lay on the bed with his knees bent and legs dangling over the end, eyes on the ceiling, breaths deep and even as he listened to the sound of Rogers puttering about the kitchen. It was a rhythmic sound, regular. The Soldier began to predict when a footfall would make the floorboards creak.
Then, footsteps coming down the hall, and the Soldier had to allow his stiff body to sink into the mattress a little and his eyes to drift shut. The rap of knuckles against the door frame did not make him jump.
“Should get some food in you before you sleep,” Rogers said apologetically. “Come have dinner.”
It was only five p.m. — an early meal indeed. But the Soldier just nodded and stretched, jaw popping with a yawn, and sat up. “Still actin’ like you think you’re my Ma or something,” he tried to tease.
Rogers shot him a strange look. “You’re one to talk, pal.”
The Soldier blinked at him, face frozen, and then made himself laugh. “S’pose I shouldn’t be a hypocrite,” he said warmly, trying to fix whatever he’d said wrong. “I just remember how you were when I first got my orders.” He thought of the dossier he’d been given (Rogers and Barnes were inseparable on both schoolyard and battlefield) and the knowledge that Barnes had been drafted. The spark of confusion in Steve’s eyes flickered out as he ducked his head and smiled.
“Okay, wise guy,” he said, and patted the door frame twice. “I’ve got grilled cheese and tomato soup waiting on you.”
Rogers retreated to the kitchen and the Soldier absently stroked a hand across the edge of the bed, over and over until he’d traced a deep wrinkle into the bedspread’s fabric.
He ended up waiting three and a half minutes to join Rogers in the kitchen, so by the time he did, Rogers already had place settings and cups of water on the table. The Soldier spilled himself into a chair in an easy sprawl, whole body projecting ease, and waited to be spoken to again. He didn’t have to wait long.
“I want to call my friend Natasha,” Rogers said, carrying two bowls to the table, then going back for the sandwiches. “To get some more information about what you went through. I work with SHIELD on a day to day basis, it’s weird that this is the first I’m hearing about it.” A pinched expression appeared on his face, then, mouth twisting. “Although I’m not really surprised they kept it from me. They keep their cards very close to vest, this organization.”
The Soldier knew this, as well as he knew that Romanoff was dangerous, and he would have to play his own cards very well indeed in order to get around her. He wasn’t sure he could manage it without tipping his hand.
“D’you think you can give it a bit?” he asked, voice soft and a little sad, and timed it with a rubbed-temple gesture to suggest he had a headache. “We definitely gotta get to the bottom of everything, but I’m so tired.” He gave Rogers a small, pathetic smile.
Rogers’ face went awash with understanding, and the Soldier tried not to let it disgust him, but failed.
“I’ll talk to her tomorrow, how’s that?” Rogers said gently, and nudged the Soldier’s foot under the table with his own. “We’ll get some rest first, and another meal or two in ya.”
“Now you’re doing it on purpose,” the Soldier said, rolling his eyes. Rogers laughed, and when the Soldier joined him, it almost managed to sound real.
The Soldier lay in bed, but he did not sleep. The digital clock on the top of the dresser across the room from him read 12:32. With the window cracked, the sounds of traffic from the street below had free reign to seep into the room like a stain. This was along with the warmth still lingering from the day, barely cool under the cover of dark. The Soldier had stripped down to shorts and undershirt, and he caught himself enjoying the breeze as he watched the shadows creep across the ceiling and waited to make his next move.
Weapons most likely were not meant to have a metric by which to gauge the plesantness of an evening. However, the Soldier had long ago stopped volunteering information his handlers did not specifically request, and as such, he retained the ability. It was a pleasant night. The feeling of warm air gently blown against bare skin made gooseflesh break out down the back of his right arm.
At 12:50, the Soldier rose from the guest room bed and silently stalked down the hall toward Rogers’ bedroom. His handler’s words echoed around in his mind (Take Rogers to bed if you have to, Soldier) and although Rogers was already very much in bed, the Soldier could feel the precarious edge of his current position. If he wanted to cement it properly before Romanoff arrived, he needed to raise the stakes.
Pure speculation, if Rogers and Barnes had been in a sexual relationship, they’d told him. Tread carefully, Soldier.
That must have been a joke. The tactical boots they routinely gave the Winter Soldier were not built for light treading, and nor were the feet inside.
“Steve?” the Soldier murmured, rapping knuckles against the door frame.
There was an audible rustle of blankets behind the door, soft sounds of foot to carpet. The door opened, and judging by Rogers’ rumpled state, he’d been asleep or close to it.
“You okay?” Rogers asked, voice soft and raspy until he saw the Soldier’s left arm and his eyes widened comically, jaw dropping. “Buck — your arm —"
“Lost it when I fell,” the Soldier said, trying to cut him off. “It’s fine.”
But Rogers was already reaching for it, and the Soldier had to bite back a grimace as Rogers grabbed it, weighing the elbow in a cupped palm, back of metal hand cradled in the other.
“Hell,” Rogers breathed. “Does it hurt?”
They chopped off the stump of what little arm was left above the elbow without anesthetic, not to be cruel, but because they did not have much time. They bolted the metal straight to the bone, and through the next several weeks, the Soldier could feel ragged nerves refiring randomly as they connected to a complicated network of wires — and foreign titanium fingertips twitched in response —
“Not really,” the Soldier answered. He twisted his left arm one way and then the other, making the plates recalibrate with a quiet, uneasy shiver. The servos in his elbow whirred softly. “It’s just an arm.”
Rogers looked at him, gazing into his eyes, and the Soldier peeked back at him through his eyelashes, trying to look non-threatening.
“I knocked on your door because I can’t sleep,” the Soldier told Rogers in an attempt to yank the conversation back to more common ground. “And I haven’t seen you in a hundred years, so it seemed silly to keep my distance.”
Rogers had yet to let go of his arm. “Sixty-eight years,” he murmured. “Technically.”
The Soldier turned his wrist just slightly, so he could wrap his fingers around the jut of Rogers’ elbow. “Technically,” he agreed. “Can I stay with you?” He took a shuffled half-step forward into Rogers’ space. “It’ll be like old times.”
Rogers’ eyes were unreadable, but he drew back willingly enough, holding the door open for the Soldier so that the light from the hallway and the shadows they both cast tumbled into the room before them. The Soldier knew without really looking that his shadow was darker, seeping inky-black into the carpet.
“Right or left side?” Rogers asked, nodding toward the bed.
“Right,” the Soldier answered, because then Rogers would be able to hear him better.
He paused. Where did that thought come from? In no document he’d been given had there been any detail about Captain Rogers’ hearing; as far as he was aware, Rogers was in peak physical condition in every aspect of his terrifying body.
Rogers, oblivious to the record scratching in the Soldier’s head, turned out the hallway light and walked over to the bed to fluff both pillows, rearranging sheets and blankets. The Soldier eased himself onto the mattress on his back, careful to keep the other man in his periphery at all times. Rogers followed suit. It was strange to see this body of his, which had been created for war — a weapon, just as the Soldier’s had been — lying peacefully on his stomach between soft grey sheets, head pillowed on his arms.
“Feel like I’m gonna wake up any second,” Rogers whispered, looking at him.
The Soldier huffed a dutiful laugh and reached across the distance, thumb ghosting over the curve of Rogers’ cheekbone. “I’m real, pal.”
The smile that broke over Rogers’ face was difficult to watch. The Soldier looked away, his own face turning to the darkness.
He didn’t anticipate the hand sliding across his bicep, and jolted, grasping for a knife at his side that was not there — but the sudden threat was only Rogers, looking abashed, arm hanging in the air between them like a held breath.
“Sorry,” Rogers said.
The Soldier didn’t say anything in response, he just rolled onto his side and nudged Rogers until he did the same, wrapping his left arm around that surprisingly tiny waist and holding him close to his chest. This way, there would be no more surprises.
“Lotta shit has happened since I saw you last,” he mumbled into the space between Rogers’ shoulder blades. “Startle easy, I guess.”
Rogers nodded. The Soldier felt it more than he saw it.
“Since when are you the big spoon?” Rogers muttered after a long moment, laying his hand over the Soldier’s forearm to hang on.
The Soldier rubbed his cheek against Rogers’ spine and said nothing, since Rogers’ comment did not seem to be a complaint. Whatever reply Rogers had anticipated was lost between one breath and the next, the syrupy darkness in the room cocooning both men in a drugging kind of silence, and before the Soldier could brace himself for whatever was coming next, sleep took him.
In the morning, Rogers carried on with the day like waking up next to his dead best friend was normal. As far as the Soldier knew, perhaps it was. It certainly lent more credence to his handlers’ theory that Rogers and Barnes had been romantically intertwined, in any case.
Rogers made breakfast, he set the table. The Soldier laughed along to his anecdotes and repeated details back to him, some that were fed to him through HYDRA, some that Rogers had mentioned earlier: a trip to Coney Island, remember that awful sunburn? Your face turned into one big freckle; the old apartment with it’s terrible plumbing; a stray cat that Barnes had kept feeding even though it nearly scratched his eye out and made Rogers sneeze; the quiet zipping together of their bedrolls on the war front that their teammates had tactfully declined to mention, out of respect or obliviousness or a conscious decision to ignore it.
“Well, it was cold,” Rogers said as he flipped eggs, ears turning red. “I’d forgotten all about that, actually.”
Had he? The Soldier tapped fingertips against his jaw, wondering where he’d pulled that story from. A lucky guess, perhaps.
“Wasn’t that cold,” the Soldier replied, leaning into his hunch, eyes half lidded when Rogers glanced over his shoulder at him. The Soldier smirked.
The rest of Rogers’ face joined his ears in hue, and he turned back to the stove in a hurry. This was an interesting reaction. The Soldier rose from the table and stepped up behind the other man, putting a hand to the small of his back while his cheek found his shoulder. Rogers froze the hell up, so the Soldier rubbed his back a little, sighing.
“Missed you,” he murmured into the soft cotton of Rogers’ t-shirt. Rogers made a choked-up sound and put his hand on the crown of the Soldier’s head to keep him there. “You’re burning the eggs, Stevie.”
“Shit,” Steve yelped, and jumped to save them.
Once they were both seated again — the eggs mostly salvaged — Rogers fiddled with his fork and shifted in his seat, casting his gaze across the table at the Soldier.
“I called Nat,” he said. His shoulders were squared, like he was bracing for an argument, and the Soldier did his best to look mild beneath the drum-beat panic that rose up in him. “She’s coming over before lunch. I know you said you were tired, but —”
“It’s okay, Steve.” The Soldier smiled. “I wanna meet her.”
Rogers' answering smile was very relieved. “I really think she’ll help,” he told him, and finally began to eat his breakfast. “She’s great. You’ll love her.”
She’ll eat me alive, the Soldier thought, and speared a bite of egg on his fork.