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Asset.
Soldier.
James Buchanan Barnes.
He remembers… a very little. Flashes of memory that crash through his mind like forked lightning. But feelings… linger. Though they slip through his fingers when he tries to hold them. Fragments of shattered pieces that just won't come together. The edges don't fit. They're too far broken.
But there is the face.
That face.
The man on the bridge. They tried to wipe him, but he came back. In the helicarrier. In the water. On the shore.
Steve.
Steven Grant Rogers, according to the information he’s looking at right now.
Punk, according to the fleeting glimpses of memory.
Stevie...
The feelings are easier to hold onto when he pictures that face in his mind. It’s a good face. Pretty almost. Beautiful. Strong nose, square Jaw, high cheekbones, freckled peachy, golden skin. And something about it makes the Asset - Bucky - it makes his heart hurt. Makes his chest tight. His eyes burn.
He’s looking at the picture now and there’s a warmth in his gut that’s worrying. Is he malfunctioning somehow? It’s been days since he left that river bank. A week since his last wipe. Since he had any maintenance. The last two days he couldn’t function enough to walk outside of his safe house, squatting in an abandoned building, just one of a handful of broken people, hiding from their trauma.
But whatever drugs they, his handlers - Hydra - had him on would burn out of him so fast, he figured the withdrawal would be fast too. And today he can walk. Can breathe. Can see. Keep water down.
Today he can start looking.
The asset moves quickly from the videos in the museum. They hurt too much to look at - not because of Steve, he could look at that face for hours, but because of the haunting face of Steve's so named 'childhood friend'.
Bucky Barnes.
Bucky.
Beautiful in his own way, laughing with Steve, the black and white film stock doesn't give him a complexion to work from, but his hair is darker than Steve's, his cheekbones sharper.
So fresh, so young. So human .
The asset - Bucky - doesn’t remember what that felt like.
He does remember that he left that face, Steve's beautiful face, broken and bleeding, coughing and spluttering on the banks of the Potomac. And it cuts through him, to think of the face like that. To think that he did that. He broke it. The asset. And then he left him there.
It eats at him painfully. Enough that, as he’s walking from the museum, stolen hat on his head, eyes averted but constantly searching, he can’t focus on anything but that feeling of guilt. Of horror.
So he lets his feet take him to different hospitals across the city. It takes him some time to find the right one. And when he does, the face is gone. Steven Grant Rogers has been discharged.
It doesn’t take him that long to find out where he went. Steven ( Stevie...) isn’t much for stealth. Something about that thought sits with the asset, feels familiar. And he lets it. Lets it float around inside him without trying to catch it - lest it slip through his fingers again. He just lets it fill him with that worrying warmth, and appreciates how different it is from the cold that he’s used to.
The asset hates the cold.
When he gets to the building - Steven Grant Rogers' building - he climbs the exterior walls and takes the window. It’s not even locked (the asset wants to shake his head at this, so like Steve to be reckless… but it’s helpful to him, so he leaves the thought alone).
He waits in the kitchen, at one of four chairs around a small round table. A dent and two long scratches marr the table top and Bucky lets his mind wander over them while he waits.
He watches the door, he evens his breathing.
He doesn’t have to wait long.
The face, Steve, barrels in through the front door, favouring his right side and paying zero attention to his surroundings. Shield in a black case under his arm. Civilian clothes (blue jeans, white t-shirt, brown leather jacket).
The asset waits for the face to turn to him. The full brunt of it is like looking into the sun.
When Steve spots him he freezes. Drops the shield. He makes an aborted attempt to reach for the asset and then clenches his fists at his sides.
Steve, the face, looks much improved from their last encounter. There is bruising, yellowing and faded now. But the asset can see the lingering pain of the damage he caused and he feels that warmth in his gut turn cold. He hates this feeling.
He needs to get rid of it.
The face, Steve, is staring at the asset, his mouth open, his eyes wide, eyebrows comically high. The asset finds the combination strangely appealing. That perhaps once upon a time, in another life, he might have smiled at the sight. But he doesn’t remember how. This body doesn't know smiles, or laughter, not like the body from the video. Not like the body in his flashes of memory.
The asset sits, and watches, until the face, Steve, seems to physically shake himself out of it.
‘Bucky…’ Steve whispers, letting out a held breath with the word.
The asset tilts his head to the side. He doesn’t want to appear too still. But he doesn’t know what to say. How to answer.
‘Are you…? How did you…?’ Steve’s voice is still a whisper, as if by not speaking the words he can keep the asset’s presence here a secret. As if the asset isn’t capable of travelling unnoticed. As if he is as deficient at stealth as Steve himself.
Steve, with his beautiful face fighting to stay calm, is moving slowly towards the asset, one arm outstretched. The asset is unsure if he means to placate, or if it’s Steve's intention to try and touch him.
The asset doesn’t know which he wants more.
And that prompts him to speak up. It’s just one word, ‘Steve,’ said low and carefully, but it sends a wave of something over Steve, causes him to catch his breath, stops his forward momentum.
‘Buck?’
The asset - Bucky - nods. He doesn’t feel like ‘Buck’ but to Steve he looks like him. The asset doesn’t want to hurt Steve anymore than he already has. Every part of him that is warming up, coming back to life, is screaming at him to make this man, the face, Steve , happy. Keep him calm. Keep him safe .
‘Oh god,’ Steve says, and his eyes fill with tears, he seems to collapse in on himself and falls into a chair. His hands are over his mouth, ‘Oh god.’
This is not the reaction the asset was expecting.
‘Are you okay?’ Steve asks, through gasps and tears and muffled by the hands over his mouth. ‘Are you… do you remember... ?’
The asset keeps position but shrugs his shoulders, ‘Some.’
‘What are you doing here?’ Steve says quietly, back to whispering.
‘You.’
‘What?’
‘You, Steve,’ the asset says, first sign of inflection in his voice, ‘I left you.’ He says the last with shame. He should not have left him.
‘I’m fine Buck, I’m perfect, you pulled me out, you saved my life,’ Steve is saying, getting louder with every word, hands coming away from his mouth and reaching across the table, ‘You saved me.’
‘I hurt you,’ the asset says. Because he does remember that. He remembers the sounds of bones breaking under his fists. He remembers the blood. It hurts his chest to think of it.
‘Nothing I haven’t had before, Buck, look at me,’ Steve sits up straighter in his chair, stretching his arms out wide, ‘Good as new already.’
The asset knows that’s not true. He clocked the still healing ribs, the remaining bruising, the slight limp of his leg, all when Steve walked in the door. And he doesn’t know what possesses him (further lack of maintenance perhaps), but he reaches a hand out to Steve’s face and gently traces the line of the bruise from his temple to his cheekbone. Steve closes his eyes to the touch of the asset's hand.
‘I’m sorry,’ the asset says, barely audible, the words not more than a breath. He means it though. He would take it back if he could, these bruises. This hurt.
‘You’re here,’ Steve says, leaning into the touch of the asset's hand, ‘You came home to me,’ he reaches up to touch the asset in return, and the asset flinches away from Steve's hand, who pulls it back sharply. ‘I’m sorry.’
Bucky shakes his head. He doesn’t want Steve to be sorry, he does want Steve to touch him, but he still feels damaged. Dirty. ‘It’s okay,’ he says, ‘I’m just not… clean.’
‘Oh, Buck,’ Steve says, crumbling again, his giant shoulders folding in towards the asset, ‘I don’t care about that.’
‘I do.’ And the asset means it. Though it feels like it comes from somewhere that isn’t himself. Some want deep inside him to be clean, to look nice. For Steve.
Steve looks him up and down as the asset sits at the table, taking in, no doubt, his filthy clothes, sweat soaked and dirt caked from being slept in for too many days. His gritty skin, unwashed. The cap on his head, covering knotted, manky hair. Who knows how long it's been since it was washed. Or even brushed.
‘Would you…’ Steve shifts his gaze away and back again, ‘would you like to get clean, Buck?’
Bucky just stares back.
His hair, in the video, had been fluffy, wavy. Full of bounce and life.
Under this cap it's greasy. Lank.
Revolting.
‘You could use the bathroom, I have plenty of hot water. It just flows and flows for hours now, isn’t that crazy?’ Steve is rambling now, starting to stand up out of his seat, ‘I can actually even set the temperature.’
The asset watches him move towards a small white box on the wall, over the kitchen sink.
‘I can make it whatever you like.’
‘Hot,’ The asset says without thinking. But now that the thought is in his head, he wants it. Hot, hot water. To wash everything away. Hot enough to burn.
‘Hot! Yes, I can do hot,’ Steve says, smiling, pushing buttons on the white box, increasing the temperature, ‘And I can get you some clean clothes. Whatever you want, Bucky, I’ll get it for you.’
Bucky looks at Steve, at the enthusiasm, at the way his face has been lit up with purpose. He likes to see him like this.
The asset thinks about what else he might want. 'A brush?’
‘A brush! A brush…?’ Steve frowns, the lights up anew, ‘Yes! I have a brush,’ and he rushes into the bathroom, the asset hears him rummage in the drawer and dash back out again with a wooden brush in his hand. ‘Nat bought this for me, as a joke.’
He hands the brush to the asset, who takes it in his flesh hand, turns it over. It reminds him of something, but, as ever, the image runs straight through his mind, too thin to hold.
‘It’s… it’s meant to look old.’
The asset shrugs. He doesn't care, it looks like it works, so he puts it down on the table and uses his metal hand to carefully remove his cap, he hesitates at the idea of placing it on the table. It’s too dirty for Steve’s clean apartment.
‘It’s fine, Buck, it's fine,’ Steve says, still smiling, taking the hat from the asset and throwing it onto the table. ‘But we might need to wash this first,’ and he gestures to the asset’s hair, moving as if to run a strand through his fingers, but pulling back from touching the asset at the last second. ‘Come on.’ Steve gestures again, with a flick of his head this time, towards the bathroom, wanting the asset to follow him.
He does.
He looks over Steve’s shoulder and into the bathroom at the clean white tiles, the large, glass walled shower, a sink, a toilet, no tub but… it's not that big an apartment really. Though it seems odd to the asset, to have a shower but no tub. The asset doesn't bother to follow that thought. He focuses instead on what Steve is showing him. How to use the tap (just one tap that moves two ways - weird), where the towels are, that he’s just going to go get the asset some clothes that should fit.
The asset puts the brush down by the sink and starts to peel his filthy clothes off.
‘I’ll just, ah,’ Steve says quickly, backing away, ‘I’ll get those clothes,’ and he pulls the door mostly shut as he leaves the room.
The asset opens the glass door outward and climbs into the shower. The water is already going, Steve has turned it on for him, and it's so hot that steam is rising up off the tiles and towards the exhaust fan that Steve had flicked on as he left the room.
And the water feels so good on his back, on his chest, his shoulders, he lets it run over him, lets the heat seep into him. But when he puts his head under to wet his hair, the combination of the loss of sound, the whir of the fan, the closed in walls of the shower and the bathroom around it, all make Bucky feel closeted, trapped, muffled, and he panics, backing out from under the spray and nearly smashing the glass with his metal arm, pulling it back just in time not to connect.
He can feel his breathing intensify. His body is reacting badly to the lack of space, to the water, to the sensations of being muffled, his heart rate increases, if he doesn’t mitigate this it could be dangerous, he doesn't want to lose control.
(Bad things happen when the asset loses control).
‘Steve,’ he calls out, barely thinking, just reacting to what his mind wants, what his body wants, ‘Steve!’
‘Bucky!’ Steve calls back, bursting through the door, letting the clothes in his hand fall to the floor, ‘What is it? What’s wrong.’
‘It’s too much,’ he calls back, squeezing his eyes shut to the images that are bombarding him. Images of high pressure water sprayed at him like a weapon, hoods pulled down over his face, heavy metal doors closing him into a box, ‘Steve!’
And suddenly Steve is there, right behind him, reaching around the asset to turn the water off, but the asset stops him with a hand.
‘No,’ the asset says, opening his eyes to look back over his shoulder at Steve, dripping wet in his jeans and t-shirt, standing behind him in the steam and the spray of the water, ‘It’s okay, just… don’t go.’
And Steve is nodding, his eyes wide and shining with unshed tears, ‘Whatever you need, Bucky, I'm here.’
The asset can feel Steve’s body pressed right up against him and it grounds him. It helps deaden the sensation of the spray. He can feel Steve’s heartbeat and it helps him normalise his own. ‘Stay?’
‘Of course,’ Steve says simply. He flexes the hand that the asset is still holding and smiles.
The asset lets it go reluctantly. But Steve doesn’t really take it back, just offers it to him in a different way, placing it gently on his shoulder. And the asset leans into the touch. Leans into Steve. Lets his whole body rest along the length of Steve’s body.
It feels so good to lean against something real.
To not be alone.
‘You want me to do this for you, Buck?’ Steve asks, gently tugging on a strand of the asset's hair. The asset nods. He doesn’t even need to think about it. He knows he wants that, wants Steve to keep touching him and never stop. And his body follows Steve’s as it reaches up to get something down from the built in shelf on the back tiled wall. He likes the way they both shake as Steve laughs deep in his chest. ‘Okay, okay, hold still.’
And suddenly there are hands in his hair, long, strong fingers running across his scalp, digging in in circular motions, sending some kind of calming signal deep into the asset’s bones. He melts like butter into the touch.
Steve massages shampoo into the asset's hair, something soft that smells fruity and sweet. And then he gently turns the asset around so he’s facing Steve and tips the asset’s head back to run under the water without having to have his whole head under the spray.
‘Better?’ Steve asks, one eyebrow raised.
The asset nods, humming his agreement.
‘Okay, turn again,’ and Steve turns him around putting something new, smelling even sweeter, into the asset’s hair and massaging, deeper this time - harder. Better. Steve’s fingers massage into the asset’s scalp and then run through his hair, pulling the product through to the ends, sending that warmth shooting towards his gut with every tug and curl of Steve’s hands.
He can feel it spread out through his body. Feel it warm every part of him. And it's a feeling he doesn’t remember ever having. Not in this life at least. Maybe in the last.
Maybe with Steve.
He feels safe.
He probably shouldn’t. He probably isn’t .
But he feels it. And that’s enough for now.
He lets Steve turn him again and rinse his hair. Lets Steve run a wash cloth over his body to scrub off the dirt that has almost set into his skin. The asset is so warm, and clean and safe. He lets his body lean forward into Steve’s, lets his forehead rest on Steve’s shoulder. Lets his words flow out without a filter.
‘Thank you,’ he says, sighing into the sodden wet sleeve of Steve's t-shirt, ‘Thank you, Stevie.’
And that name, a name from the flashes of his memory, a name he hadn’t even meant to use, flicks a switch in Steve, and all the tension drains out of him in an instant.
‘Anything, Baby,’ Steve whispers into the asset's ear, ‘Always.’
And Bucky - he is Bucky, at least some part of him, he can feel that now, feel him in there, where it's warm and safe - shifts his arms and wraps them around Steve’s waist. ‘End of the line,’ he says, not really knowing what it means, but speaking the words like a prayer.
‘Yeah,’ Steve breathes, nodding his head, his shoulders shaking with the intensity of pent up emotion, ‘You and me, Buck, till the end of the line.’
The asset, Bucky , watches Steve’s mouth, watches him form those words, words he knows he’s heard a thousand times but doesn’t remember. He watches Steve’s lips and wants to remember what they feel like. He doesn't know if he knows actually. He isn’t sure what they were to each other before he became the asset, but he wants to know now .
And he’s still dangerous, even clean as he is, he's still broken. And maybe it’s not fair to burden Steve with the damage inside him, the damage he might still cause. But Steve is looking down at the asset now too, looking at him with an unnameable longing, and the asset wants to give Steve everything, even if some of those pieces don’t fit yet.
‘Steve?’ he uncurls his right arm from around Steve’s waist and places it over Steve’s heart, ‘Will you kiss me?’
Steve doesn’t answer right away, but his lips quirk up slowly, building into the kind of smile that sets worlds on fire. ‘I’ve been waiting my whole life for you to ask me that Bucky Barnes,’ he says, leaning his forehead down to the asset’s, touching his nose to the asset’s, Bucky’s , nose. Finally closing the distance and ghosting his lips against Bucky's lips, resting against them, ‘I’ve been waiting to kiss you my whole god damn life .’
‘I think I have too,’ the asset says. Bucky too. Both of them, put back together wrong, but made into something that might be whole. He doesn’t wait for Steve to move first, he reaches up just a little more, presses his lips into Steve’s lips and tilts his head. Enough to drive Steve forward, to reach down and hold Bucky by the hips, tighten his grip on him, to push forward with his whole body, tipping Bucky backwards. Bucky opens into the heat of Steve’s mouth, tasting him, letting him in, and Steve takes. And takes. Before leaning back, sucking just enough on Bucky’s bottom lip to pull it into a pout as he lets go.
Steve’s watching Bucky with a light in his eyes that Bucky wants to keep. Bucky, the asset, all of him.
‘I wanna do that again, Buck, but lets get you dressed first, okay?’
‘Sure,’ the asset says, happy to comply. Seems like a waste of time, to get him into clothes only to take them off again, but he’s happy to make Steve happy, ‘Probably need to get you undressed though.’
Steve laughs down at the sodden mess of his outfit. ‘Yeah, I guess we do.’ The sound of that laugh brings the warmth settling back to the asset’s core. ‘Come on.’ And he turns the tap off and hustles Bucky out and into a huge fluffy towel.
The asset's warm. And clean. And he feels... he feels.
In the moment, Bucky can feel the truth like a blanket, whether he remembers it or just knows it, he can’t tell. Whatever happens next, broken or whole, damaged or healed, Bucky is sure, as long as he’s with Steve, he’ll be okay.
He’ll be home.