Chapter Text
When Bucky falls, he falls alone.
They make it onto the train together, and inside of it, but they’re split up after that. Closed off in separate train cars with bullets flying. When Steve finally manages to get back to Bucky he thinks they’re almost there, they’ll shut this down between the two of them, but then the side of the train is blown wide open by the cannon blast of a HYDRA guard.
They’re both knocked off their feet and before Steve has even blinked Bucky is back up—standing fierce and unafraid, with Steve’s shield raised in one hand and a pistol in the other.
It isn’t enough. Another shot from the cannon sends him flying out of the wrenched open side of the car. Steve takes the guard out and runs to Bucky, but that isn’t enough either. He can’t reach him. He can’t wrap his hand around Bucky’s, or touch his face, or take him in his arms and kiss away the terror in his eyes.
He can only watch the rail Bucky clings to break away from the fractured body of the train, and cry out his name as Bucky breaks away with it.
His entire past and future dropping into a jagged expanse of ice. His heart and his hope winking out like a smothered flame.
He watches him until the rocks and snow have swallowed Bucky whole, and his screams are only inside of Steve’s head.
This, he knows, is really the end.
* * *
When Steve falls, he falls alone too.
He’s done all he can. Zola’s been captured, Schmidt’s been taken out, and all that’s left is to set the Valkyrie down where its belly full of bombs can’t hurt anyone. Not even Steve, because he can’t be hurt anymore.
He’s been numb since the moment he lost Bucky. He’s already frozen before he breaks the surface of the Arctic Ocean and drops beneath it like a stone.
In the long, quiet moments before the last bits of warmth are drained away, he prays that he’ll wind up wherever Bucky is. They’ve killed and they’ve protected and he doesn’t know what any of that means for their souls, but Heaven or Hell, it doesn’t matter.
He prays that maybe two endings can add up to a beginning, and he’s comforted, as the darkness seeps into the last bits of his awareness, by the certainty that his soul will know Bucky’s when they meet again.
* * *
The problem—Steve finds, when he wakes up in neither Heaven nor Hell but something in between—is that Bucky doesn’t know Steve.
It takes Steve two years to find out Bucky made it into a whole new century just like he did, and Bucky looks at him with clouded, grey eyes that only narrow in confusion when Steve says his name.
"Who the hell is Bucky?" he asks, and Steve thinks maybe all of this has broken him after all. Maybe it’s not Bucky. Maybe Steve’s just seeing what he wants, because all he wants—all he’s wanted every goddamn day since he woke up—is to see Bucky again.
"He’s not your friend anymore," Sam tells him later, gentle and firm.
Bucky is the Winter Soldier. Has been since Steve didn’t catch him, didn’t save him or dive out of the train to fall with him like he should have, and why didn’t he? Why the hell didn’t he, when he was put on this fucking earth to be there when Bucky needed him?
"It wasn’t your fault," Natasha says, just like Peggy had.
Steve knows, though. He knows Bucky was trusting him and Steve failed him. He knows this is a miracle, this chance to try again.
Bucky was gone before Steve could even repeat his name, but they’re brought back together before long. Steve is Bucky’s mission now, and Bucky is his.
"Your name is James Buchanan Barnes," he says on the Helicarrier he’s supposed to be hijacking. He’ll do it, he has to, but he has to do this too. "Bucky, you’re… look at me, Buck," he says, taking careful steps closer and closer.
Bucky is dressed in black, and his left arm gleams silver. The arm Steve used to sleep under, the fingertips he’s kissed, that little scar Bucky got from climbing fences with Steve—those are gone. His hair is down to his shoulders, tangled and unwashed. His eyes are afraid.
"Please," Steve says, when he’s right in front of Bucky, lifting his hand slowly until his fingers brush Bucky’s cheek. "Please know me. You’ve always known me."
Bucky shakes his head and takes a step back. He hits Steve when he tries to get close again. He hits him over and over when Steve has set the chip in place to reset the programming in the Helicarrier. When it's being fired upon, and Project Insight is going up in flames, and the only thing that matters is that Bucky still doesn’t know his name.
He’s killing Steve, and that’s okay, because if the only alternative is Steve killing Bucky, there’s really no alternative at all.
"Finish it," he says, looking up at Bucky with metal digging into his back and Bucky’s hand clenched in the front of his suit. He’s not even really seeing the sparks flying, glinting off Bucky’s raised metal fist.
He’s seeing Bucky above him in their bed, riding him for the first time with his chest flushed pink. Bucky leaning over him to kiss him, with soft curls brushing Steve’s skin. Bucky laughing on a Sunday afternoon when they’ve stayed in bed all day. Eyes closed and dust motes dancing in the sun around him.
"It’s okay, Buck. You’re okay. I’ll be waiting for you."
Bucky shakes his head, his fist clenching, and Steve tries to smile at him even though it tugs at the split in his lip. They’ll find each other again, he’s sure of it. Even if his soul has to wait a century more.
"I’m with you, till the end of the line."
Something opens up in Bucky’s face, something raw and aching that drives into Steve’s chest, and then everything around them breaks. Steve doesn’t have time to think of this as an ending before he’s unconscious, but he doesn’t believe in endings anymore anyway.
He wakes thinking he really has reached Heaven this time. He’s leaning back against a solid chest, with a heavy arm wrapped around him. Metallic fingers stroking through his hair. He’s soaking wet and streaked with mud, and Bucky’s lips are pressed to the top of his head.
"Buck?" he croaks, his throat burning. They’re on the bank of a river and he should probably be in a hospital instead, but not one part of him wants to move.
"I don’t… you’re Steve."
"Yeah," Steve says.
"I don’t know what’s… this isn’t what I’m supposed to do, but I… I can’t."
"Can’t what?"
"I can’t kill you. I can’t leave you."
Steve’s tears are warm on his cheeks when they fall, and it sets off a stabbing pain in his chest but he manages to move his hand and rest it on Bucky’s, right over Steve’s heart.
"I’m real glad to hear that, Buck," Steve says.
He passes out again with Bucky holding him tight. Holding him even though he’s not sure why.
That’s more than enough for Steve.
* * *
There’s a long road to walk after that, but they make their way along it together, step by step. Bucky gets Steve to the hospital, Steve gets Bucky to stop slipping out the window anytime someone comes into the room.
There are beginnings upon beginnings, so many Steve feels rich with them. There’s Bucky agreeing to meet Tony, and Sam, and Natasha. The little family Steve has been building here while he’s tried to keep himself going without his heart. There’s Steve agreeing to rest for a while, even though there are things that need to be done. People who need to be helped.
"Wouldn’t kill you to take it easy for once, would it, Cap?" Tony says when he shows Steve and Bucky to a suite of rooms in the Tower, and Steve feels Bucky watching. Silently agreeing. "The elderly need to be gentle with themselves, after all."
Bucky snorts, and it makes Steve’s heart light. He looks at him out of the corner of his eye as the elevator takes them up and up.
His hair is clean and tied in a little ponytail, as it is most days. He wears Steve's sweatshirt, and the fluffy socks that Natasha keeps buying for him. His muscles are hard and lean, and his lips are as soft as they’ve always been.
Steve loves the months they spend in the Tower. Eventually he leaves to go on missions every so often, and Bucky leaves for therapy, and for sparring matches with Maria, and mysterious outings with Natasha. They both stay in with Sam, watching baking competitions. They stay in, just the two of them, listening to their favorite old songs. Finding new favorites that Bucky hums along with when he’s kneading dough or folding laundry.
Tony says they don’t need to do any of those things, there’s always someone who could do it for them, but Bucky likes it. The quiet motions, the accomplishment of something simple and necessary.
Steve loves watching him find peace.
"Tell me something," Bucky says one night, almost a year into their stay at Tony’s. They’re holding hands, pressed close together under a soft, cable-knit blanket. "Tell me if I’m remembering this right."
He usually is, but he still likes to check, and Steve never minds being the one to say, "Yeah, Buck, that’s exactly right."
"You asked me to marry you, didn’t you? Poorly? In a bathroom?"
"Hey now," Steve says. "I did not ask you."
"No?" Bucky asks, turning to Steve with his eyebrows raised in genuine surprise.
"I said I would ask you, when we made it home."
"Ah," Bucky says. "That sure took us longer than expected."
Steve nods, running his thumb over the back of Bucky’s hand. "That was right before—"
"I know," Bucky says, cutting Steve off before he can get maudlin about it, and pressing a kiss to his cheek.
They've talked about this a number of times. About Steve’s perceived responsibility, and Bucky’s certainty that Steve is an idiot. His declaration that he’d have punched him if Steve had jumped off the train after him, with no reason to think Bucky could have survived.
"My own fault for not telling you more about what happened in Kreischberg," he said once.
"Why didn’t you?" Steve had asked, and Bucky had been quiet for a spell.
"I hardly understood what they did to me myself, and you… you would have been a dog with a bone trying to get to the root of it. Trying to fix me when I knew it was already too late."
"I would have driven you crazy, you mean."
"You would have worried yourself sick, and I couldn’t have it."
Steve hadn’t been able to come up with any argument to that. He wouldn’t have chosen to make Bucky worry like that either. He would spare him anything that he could, that’s what he’s always tried to do, and of course Bucky’s always been doing the same for him.
"What made you think of it?" he asks now. "The almost-proposal."
Bucky just smiles at him, touches his cheek and turns Steve's face so the next kiss he gives him lands soft on his lips.
They’ve been taking it slow, all of this, but it’s been easy to slip back into, a little bit at a time. The first things that came back to Bucky were memories of Steve. He crashed onto Steve’s hospital bed one night, a week after the Helicarrier, hugging him so painfully tight and crying into his neck. Sobbing with relief because he remembered now, when he’d woken up on his back in the Alps, broken and half frozen. He remembered how horribly he missed Steve. How terrified he was that he’d never find his way back to him.
"Stevie, my Stevie," he’d cried, and Steve had held him close and wept with him. He’d felt something coming alive in himself that had gone so cold and still when Bucky fell away from him
"I’m here, sweetheart," he’d said, and Bucky only ever slept next to him after that.
It took time to work up to other things, all the things they learned to do together so many years ago. Seven months into their time at the Tower, Bucky pulled Steve into the shower with him and let Steve wash his hair, lathering it up and massaging his scalp gently. He washed Steve’s for him next, then ran his hands over Steve’s skin so slowly, pressing his thumbs into the grooves of Steve’s hips. Brushing his fingertips along the underside of his cock.
"I remember you in my mouth," he said, and Steve's whole body went hot. "Sometime… I want that again."
Steve nodded and took Bucky’s hand in his, kissing him softly under the warm fall of water. There was no need for them to hurry.
A few weeks after that, Bucky woke him in the night, pressing up against his hip and panting in the silence.
"Steve… Steve," he’d breathed. "Haven’t felt this in... in so long, I don’t—I want you with me."
"I’m here, I’m right here," Steve said. He held Bucky in the circle of his arms while Bucky tugged his sleep pants low enough to curl his hand around himself. He kissed Bucky’s temple while Bucky gasped at his own touch, while he shook and moaned until he spilled over Steve’s stomach.
He asked to touch Steve’s cock a week or so after that, and watched with wide eyes when it swelled in his hands and Steve came apart for him. A month later Steve spread Bucky’s legs wide under the covers. Knelt down with sunlight filtering through the woven blanket above him, and held him in his mouth while Bucky sighed and stroked Steve’s hair.
Bucky went down on Steve for the first time just a week ago. Well, the second first time, but that’s the beautiful thing about new beginnings. It made Steve’s lips tingle. It made him put a crack in their handsome wooden headboard.
"Easy, tiger," Bucky had said, grinning up at Steve with spit-slick lips gone rosy red. His hair was free from its usual tie, curling loosely. His jaw dark with stubble and his eyes sharp. He was still Steve’s perfect, beautiful boy, and he was something new and wondrous too. Something strong as flint and bright as flame.
He’s soft under Steve’s lips now, curled up against him under the blanket on the wide, leather chair they love to share.
"I was just thinking about home," he says. "About Brooklyn."
"You want to go back? Go find the old place?"
Bucky shakes his head. "The new one. The one with the yard."
"Oh," Steve says, and it’s 1944 again. There's just a sliver of a moon, and Bucky is painting pictures with his words in the dark, and Steve is so desperately in love. That hasn’t changed a bit. "And the dog."
Bucky nods, his lip caught between his teeth in a nervous, hopeful smile. It’s funny, the habits he’s held onto even with the new ones he’s developed. Steve loves seeing the little things he recognizes. He loves learning the things he doesn’t.
"Let’s see what we can find," he says, and Bucky doesn’t stop smiling even as he kisses him again.
* * *
The new house is not actually new at all, it’s nearly as old as Steve and Bucky are, but it’s been reworked and remodeled over the years, just as they have. It has the windows Bucky wanted for Steve, and the yard Steve wanted for Bucky. It has ivy trailing up brickwork, and a wild, overgrown garden that Bucky refuses to tame.
They’re settled in by late spring and Bucky sits out there for hours, letting the sun fall over him with his eyes closed and his palms pressed to the grass. The cat weaves around him and noses at the pansies and snapdragons. Bucky named her Grant, because of course he’d never forget that he swore he would.
The dog’s name was left up to Steve. He’s a gangly, affectionate piebald Boxer with pale blue eyes, and Steve never thought of calling him anything but Jamie.
"Buck," he calls, on a late May evening that’s starting to cool and darken. Bucky has been quiet out there in the garden for so long. Sometimes when he doesn’t talk it’s just because he’s meditating or feeling pensive, but sometimes he gets trapped in his head and his words can’t come out, so Steve likes to check in. "Bucky?"
Bucky turns, looking over his shoulder towards the back porch where Steve sits with Jamie sprawled out over his feet. "Bed time?" he asks.
"If you’re ready. I’ll stay out if you’re not."
Bucky stretches his arms above his head, then holds out a hand to Grant, stroking her cheek when she trots over to rub against him. She’s ornery as anything with the rest of the world, but not with Bucky.
"Let’s see what you drew," Bucky says, after getting to his feet and strolling up the lawn to Steve.
They go inside together, and Steve sets a record playing while Bucky flips through the last few additions in Steve’s little sketchbook. Brushing his fingers over bright sunflowers, and the curled form of Grant, and Bucky’s own broad shoulders. All captured with the soft colored pencils Bucky picked up for Steve as part of his housewarming present.
"You don’t have to draw me every time," he says, but he’s smiling like he’s pleased that Steve always does.
"Don’t have to, but I want to," Steve tells him. He sets the sketchbook aside so he can take Bucky’s hand and lead him up the stairs to their bedroom. They can still hear the music playing down below, soft and nostalgic.
This is one of their routines, something they started doing at Tony’s to help Bucky relax at night. First the music, then Bucky sitting on their bed with Steve behind him, gently working his fingers through Bucky’s hair. Weaving it into a loose crown of braids the way Natasha taught him to, then kissing the nape of his neck, and then his right shoulder, and then his left.
"I love you," he says with his lips brushing the cotton of Bucky’s t-shirt.
Bucky hums and leans back into him, shifting with him till they’re lying down. Steve holding Bucky the way Bucky held him when he pulled him from the river.
"Love you, Stevie," Bucky says, already half asleep. He’s heavy in Steve’s arms. He’s a work of goddamned art in the darkness, the light from the hallway kissing the edge of his cheekbone, the corner of his jaw.
In the morning he’s even more beautiful. His braids loosened and soft, locks of hair fallen out of place to frame his face. His cheeks are still flushed from sleep, even when Steve has left and come back with a big mug of honeyed tea for them to share.
"Tell me something," Bucky says when they’ve almost finished it, and Steve smiles at what has become such a familiar phrase. "Our first time—I mean, the first time we, you know..." He raises his eyebrows at Steve until Steve laughs and nudges Bucky with his foot. "It was raining, wasn’t it?"
"That’s right."
"And I was... I was upset, because you’d done something stupid and dangerous."
Steve feels his eyebrows draw together. "It was an accident."
"Sure."
"It was!"
Bucky grins, in that bright boyish way that Steve fell in love with eighty-odd years ago, and touches Steve’s face. "You wanted to make me feel better."
Steve nods, his breath catching at the brush of Bucky’s thumb over his lips.
"You’re pretty good at that."
"I—I try," Steve says. "What's this about, Buck? Did… do you want me to make you feel better now?"
Bucky shakes his head, and Steve tries not to react. They haven’t gone far beyond touching each other with their hands and mouths, and that’s okay. He thought maybe, maybe since Bucky brought it up… but it's really okay. He doesn’t want Bucky to think he’s disappointed.
"Alright," Steve says. "Sorry, I—"
"You make me feel better all the time, Captain Dumbass."
Steve glares at Bucky and tries not to smile. Sam taught him the term dumbass, and Bucky is certain it was invented specifically for Steve.
"What I meant was…" Bucky’s tongue darts out to wet his lips, and Steve knows this face—the tilt of Bucky’s eyebrows and the vulnerable set of his chin. Bucky wants something. He wants Steve.
"Buck?"
"I wanna make you feel better, Stevie. I want—I want to make you feel what you make me feel. What you've always made me feel."
"You want… Buck, you don’t need to—"
"When does anyone ever really take care of you?"
"I don’t—"
"No, listen," Bucky cuts him off with a frown and a shake of his head. "It’s your own damn self-sacrificial fault, probably, but you’ve spent your whole life worrying about what I need, what everyone else needs, and I want... when does Steve Rogers ever just let go, huh? Tell me that."
"Taking care of you takes care of me too, Buck. Feels just as good for me as I think it does for you, I swear to God."
Bucky’s frown smooths away and he nods his head, his lips soft and satisfied. "Good. Then it will feel just as good for me when I take care of you, won’t it?"
"Are… are you saying you want to fuck me?" Steve asks, feeling a little turned around by all this talk so soon after waking up. Feeling a little dizzy with desire at the implications. A few days ago Bucky got himself off by grinding his cock between Steve’s pectoral muscles while Steve just flexed for him and watched, and that alone sent him into something close to cardiac arrest. "Because you don’t gotta convince me, you can just—"
"I’m not just going to fuck you, Rogers," Bucky says, and suddenly Steve’s been pushed flat on the bed, and Bucky is looking down at him. The little flyaway hairs that have escaped his braid gilded by the morning sun at his back.
"Oh?" Steve says. He’s not exactly breathless, his lungs are too good at their job now, but the anticipation dancing over his skin carries the same feeling with it. Bucky’s left hand is spread across his chest and Steve can feel the latent power in it. The way Bucky presses just hard enough to restrain.
Bucky’s body has changed, in the last seventy years. Not exactly the way Steve’s has, but similarly. It’s powerful, and lithe, and aging just as slowly as Steve’s. It’s almost as if, as restitution for all of the loss and the pain, they were given this one thing. They were made to match.
"You never just fucked me, did you?" Bucky goes on, his voice gentle now, thoughtful. "I don’t remember everything we did, but I remember… I know how I felt."
Steve shakes his head—it was never just about sex, not from the very first time Steve knelt in front of Bucky and took him in his hand. It was about finding the deepest need in Bucky and kissing away the ache of it. Filling him up with heat until anything that hurt him was burned off, until everything inside of him was bright and good. Until there was no space left, no awareness of anything except how goddamn precious he was to Steve.
"No, I... I loved you. I was always just loving you."
"Right," Bucky smiles. "That’s what I remember. You got right into my blood and my bones. You loved me so hard they couldn’t get you out of me."
Steve swallows thickly. "You’re in me like that too."
"I know," Bucky says, folding over Steve to kiss his lips. "We’re made of each other, Stevie."
Steve nods, tipping his chin up for another kiss, and sighing when Bucky gives it to him. Licks gently over Steve’s lips, then slowly between them until Steve can taste the honey on Bucky’s tongue.
"I wanna fuck you till that’s all you know. Till it's just me in you… nothing else."
"Okay," Steve says, and he does sound breathless even though he has to assume his lungs are still working as they should. It’s hard to really register anything but the heat of Bucky’s body and the gravel in his voice.
He sits up for Bucky when he starts to pull Steve’s shirt up, and they undress each other slowly. Pausing again and again to press lips to shoulders, to skim hands over ribs and hips and thighs. Steve is on his back again by the time they’re both completely bare, Bucky kneeling between his legs with slick fingers and eyes lit up bright. He’s pulled the elastic out of his hair so it falls in loose waves past his shoulders, brushing so soft over Steve’s skin when he dips to kiss the center of Steve’s chest.
"I didn’t finger you very often, did I?" he asks, running the knuckles of a loose fist up and down Steve’s half-hard length. "Unless I’ve just forgotten."
"No, you’re right. I usually fingered you."
Bucky bites his lip. Drags his knuckles down to rub over Steve’s perineum with his eyes still on his face. "I liked it."
"So did I," Steve smiles.
"You liked having me inside you, too." Bucky’s knuckle skims lower to nudge against Steve’s hole, and Steve’s cock twitches, stiffening further just from that light touch. It’s been… a long, long time.
He nods his head, barely resisting the urge to press his ass closer to Bucky’s hand. "Loved being touched by you, Bucky. Any way at all."
"I do remember… once…" Bucky pauses, shifting so he can lean close to Steve while he strokes over his entrance with the pad of one finger. "I don’t know exactly when, but your bangs were so long they were always in your eyes, and you… God you were always so pretty, Stevie."
Steve doesn’t remember exactly when that was either, and it’s hard to focus on dates at all when Bucky’s saying sweet things and pressing his finger into Steve. Letting it rest there, just up to the first knuckle.
"You were sucking me off, looking up at me with your hair all in your face, and I had my finger in you, just like this."
Now that Bucky’s pulled up the details of it, Steve remembers too. The stretch of his lips and the sweat rolling down his spine. Bucky brushing the hair off his forehead for him, then gripping it tight in his hand. It was the first time Bucky had ever fingered him, and having Bucky in his mouth and his ass at once made Steve come apart faster than he ever had.
He nods his head, humming when Bucky nudges his finger in deeper and flicks his tongue over Steve’s nipple.
"It was just my fingertip, and you were clenching around it like it was everything, and I thought…"
"What did you—ah, Buck," Steve gasps when Bucky closes his lips around Steve’s nipple and sucks it between his teeth. "Jesus."
Bucky releases the reddened bud and runs his tongue over it gently as he looks up at Steve.
"I thought… maybe I’m his world, too."
Steve already finds himself without words, with only a sweet, heavy aching in his chest, and then Bucky pushes his finger in deep just as he takes Steve's nipple between his teeth again, and Steve can only moan for him.
"Loved you so much I couldn’t stand it sometimes," Bucky says, his breath cool against the wet, heated skin of Steve's chest. His finger slipping out and back in again. "Still do."
"Buck," Steve breathes, wanting to say that it’s all the same for him, that it always has been. Bucky’s so unbearably gorgeous though, looking down at him with his eyes a bright, clear blue and his smile so true and soft, and Steve can only blink at him like he’s looking right up at the sun.
"Shh," Bucky says, kissing Steve’s lips and crooking his finger inside him. "Just shut up and let me love you."
When Steve nods quickly, Bucky smiles against his lips. Deepens the kiss and licks into Steve’s mouth while his finger moves in and out of his ass. He keeps it slow, keeps Steve aching in anticipation for each time he shifts the angle to graze Steve’s prostate. Keeps going and going while he kisses Steve’s lips swollen, until Steve can’t stop himself anymore from rocking hard into Bucky’s hand, wordlessly asking for more.
Bucky chuckles as he draws out to finally press two fingers back inside, catching Steve’s tender lip between his teeth and tugging lightly.
"Always knew you’d be a bossy bottom."
"I didn’t say anything!" Steve protests, which just earns him a light swat on his ass. "I just need—"
"Think I don’t know what you need, Stevie?"
"I… no," Steve says, shaking his head. "I know you do. You know."
"That’s right," Bucky says, and he smiles when Steve relaxes again under his hands, not trying to take more than Bucky’s giving him. Sighing when Bucky goes right back to nibbling at Steve’s lips, fucking him slowly on his fingers.
He always had twice the patience that Steve did, except when they were in bed and he was begging Steve for what he needed. It’s strange, having it turned around now. Having Bucky tenderly taking Steve apart in a new way. Bucky kissing him so breathless his thoughts are whiting out and he’s left with just the hum of want in his blood, with need throbbing in his core. Deepening with every stroke of Bucky’s fingers. Taking him back to that long ago afternoon in his bed when Bucky cupped his neck and brought their lips together for the first time. When Bucky knew that Steve needed him too.
"Buck," Steve says, his fingers twisting tight in Bucky’s hair, wanting him closer.
Bucky hums and lets Steve pull him in so they’re chest to chest, but he doesn’t slow or rush the steady movements of his hand. He sucks on the side of Steve’s neck, fills him up with three fingers, over and over, then leaves him empty to tease at his rim instead. Circling it and pressing just the tips of his fingers in, while Steve’s pulse thuds in his ears and his cock drips and drips onto his stomach.
"Is that good, Stevie?" Bucky asks. A sweet, low rasp next to Steve’s ear that makes Steve’s muscles jump and sends heat shivering under his skin. It makes his eyes fill up with tears too, because there's that same, familiar need in Bucky's voice—the soft, open desire that Steve spent years melting him down to—even though it's Bucky turning Steve to putty in his hands.
"Yes, Buck, it's—it's—" He's panting, grasping at Bucky's hip, at his hair, and Bucky soothes him with warm kisses as he slips his fingers out.
"I know," he says, pressing Steve’s legs wide apart, and finally nudging the head of his cock against Steve’s entrance, hot and slick and blunt. "I know, sweetheart, I'm here. Let me in."
Steve bears down and lets out an unfamiliar sound, high and cracked open, when Bucky slips right inside of him. Presses in all at once till his hips are flush against Steve's skin, and Steve is so perfectly full. Tears spilling over his cheeks and hands clutching Bucky's back when Bucky shifts inside him with a gasp.
"Steve… oh, sweetheart," he whispers again, stroking Steve's hair while Steve just keeps trying to catch his breath. Overwhelmed by everything Bucky's making him feel with his body hot inside Steve's, with his gentle, metal fingers moving over him. His sugar sweet breath calling Steve his own.
Bucky was always Steve’s sweetheart, but now Steve is Bucky’s. Steve is flushed and trembling for him. Steve is clenching around his cock and aching for more and he loves it—the rush of heat and comfort and wonder that comes from being known so well. Being loved so goddamn well.
"Gotta move, Stevie," Bucky says. "You're... Jesus, I thought your mouth was heaven, but this is—"
Steve gathers himself enough to show Bucky that he’s ready, arching his back to press himself harder against Bucky’s hips. It brings Bucky in just a little deeper and Steve cries out at the way he fills Steve, the way he moans into the crook of Steve's neck and curls his left hand in Steve's hair.
"Okay?" Bucky asks, double checking before he does anything. HYDRA may have tried and tried to turn him into something hard, but Bucky Barnes has a heart that's a mile wide, and they couldn't do a thing to change that.
"Yeah, yeah," Steve says, shifting his hips again. "M'ready, you feel perfect, Buck. You're... hah, God."
Bucky was perfect when he was just buried deep inside Steve, but now he's moving—drawing out slowly and pushing back in so his cockhead drags over Steve's prostate—and Steve doesn't know what the word for this is. He doesn't know if it's even Bucky's cock in him that's making everything light up so bright he's dizzy with it, or if it's just that Bucky's here, that they're both here, and Bucky's touching him like Steve's the only thing that's ever mattered and ever will.
He keeps kissing Steve, keeps pressing up closer to him. Pulls him right into his arms and sits up so he's on his knees with Steve in his lap.
Steve is nearly two hundred and fifty pounds of enhanced bone and muscle, but Bucky is strong and sturdy underneath him. He holds Steve with one hand tight on his ass and the other supporting his back, keeping him close so Steve's cock is pressed between Bucky's stomach and his own.
When Steve rolls his hips Bucky tightens his grip and stills him. "Let me," he says, holding Steve steady and fucking up into him, then sliding his cock out slowly and doing it again, and again.
Each snap of his hips sets off a burst of light behind Steve's eyes. Each drag of his own cock against Bucky's skin floods him with a heat so heavy he's not sure he could stay upright without Bucky's help. It's too much and not enough all at once, and he's shaking with it, moaning every time Bucky slips out and then splits him open again. Crying out when Bucky pulls him down hard into his lap and keeps him there, just grinding up into him with his mouth open at Steve's throat, hot breath and grazing teeth.
"Bucky, Bucky, please," Steve gasps, but he's not trying to move away, only pulling Bucky closer. Biting his own lip as Bucky mouths over Steve's chest, pressing wet kisses to his nipple while Steve is held open on his cock and wrapped up in his arms.
Bucky's everywhere, the heat and scent and promise of him. All over Steve's skin and so deep inside of him. His lips are at Steve's ear, saying his name, saying soft, sweet things while he curls a hand around Steve's aching cock. Trails heated, metal fingers down Steve's spine and finds the place where they're joined. Where Steve is stretched open for him, twitching and clenching for him.
"My love," Bucky breathes, tracing Steve's rim and rubbing his thumb over his leaking slit.
Steve has never let himself come before Bucky was ready to come with him, but he doesn't even try to stop himself when pleasure grips him so tightly he can hardly breathe. He falls into it with a cry and lets it sweep him away. Lets Bucky hold him and kiss him and stroke his cock while Steve spills and spills between them.
"Yes, Stevie, yes," Bucky says, and Steve wants to say it too but he's speechless and shaking, spasming around the solid length of Bucky still inside him. He's moving backwards suddenly as Bucky lowers him down, kissing him hungry and desperate the moment Steve's flat on the mattress. "Can I—"
"Yes," Steve finally manages, and Bucky's moving while the word is still on Steve's tongue. Fucking Steve with delicious, forceful drags of his cock that have Steve gasping, his nerves still singing as his climax hangs on and on.
"God, fuck," Bucky rasps. "Stevie, will you…" His voice breaks away, but he’s arching his back, his cock grinding into Steve and his ass pressing out in a way Steve knows so well. He's all red lips and sweet, entreating eyes, and Steve's chest aches at the sight of him. At the glory of having him and loving him. Of finding beginning after beginning with him. "Please?"
"Yeah, Buck," Steve says, wetting his finger with the slick he's left all over his own skin. Reaching behind Bucky to find the soft pucker of his entrance, and pressing right in.
Bucky's eyebrows crease as his eyes fall shut, and he slams back into Steve. Fucks him with quick, short thrusts that are edging on too much for Steve with everything going sharp and oversensitive.
Steve wants it to last and last. He wants to drink in the burn of it, swallow down the way Bucky looks now—fever bright cheeks and parted lips, breathless at being caught between the heat of Steve's ass and the press of his hand.
But he knows Bucky's body, knows the sudden catch of his breath and the flutter of his rim around Steve's finger, and he wants this too.
"Stevie," Bucky cries, and Steve's already lifting his head to meet Bucky's trembling lips. Catching his shuddering moans on his tongue and letting his own rise from his chest as Bucky fills him with his release. Pulse after pulse so it feels like enough to reach every part of him. To trace through each vein, hot and bright and cleansing. Marking every bone in his body as Bucky's.
Eventually Bucky goes still on top of him and they're not kissing anymore, just breathing against each other. Breathing each other right in.
"Christ," Bucky says against the corner of Steve's mouth, then whines a little as Steve slips his finger out of him.
"Tell me something," Steve says, blinking up at him with heavy eyelids and what he knows is a stupid smile all over his face.
Bucky smiles right back at him. His hair is wild and tangled from Steve's hands. His eyelashes dark and wet. "What?"
"How was it? Taking care of me?"
Bucky's lips twitch and he presses them to Steve's before leaning back to study him, sprawled out under Bucky, bright with sweat and satisfaction.
"I think… you're right," Bucky says. "It's the same thing. Taking care of you is taking care of me."
Steve nods, it's what he's always known. They're woven around each other too tightly for it to be anything else.
"I loved it."
"Me too," Steve says, reaching up to brush his thumb over the cleft of Bucky's chin.
"I love you."
Steve blinks tears out of his eyes and cups Bucky's cheek, drawing him down to kiss him again. To whisper the same words against his lips, because he can never say them enough. Not after all the times he held them on his tongue when they were young and afraid. Not after the years he thought he'd never get a chance to say them again.
He pulls Bucky even closer, hands pressed to the sun-warmed skin of his back, and says it over and over with Bucky still held inside of him. With the bed they chose together soft underneath them, and the home they found together safe over their heads.
He says it until Bucky is laughing and kissing him quiet, and then he keeps saying it with his lips, his hands, his heart, because nothing can stop him. Nothing can stop them.
If he's learned one thing through all of these years, through all of these stops and starts, it's this: there will never be an end to their love.
* * *
When Steve asks Bucky to marry him it's in the middle of the yard Bucky dreamed up for them, on a bright July morning, humid and rich with sunlit memories.
He meant what he said, that day he lost Bucky—even though it was in another lifetime, when Steve and Bucky were both different versions of themselves. That doesn't change anything, not for them.
His love for Bucky is as old as time, kept right down in the marrow of his bones. Kept safe in the corners of Bucky's lips and the lines of his palms. It's brand new every day, lighting up inside him when Bucky writes silly little poems on napkins and leaves them under Steve's cup of coffee to make him smile. When he reads aloud to Steve from a worn, creased paperback they found at a yard sale, his voice low and soft on a quiet afternoon.
It's there in the stillness of the night when Bucky wakes Steve with trembling hands, tucks his head under Steve's chin the way he used to fit Steve under his, and lets Steve stand guard against the ghosts that haunt him. It's in the careful fingers that stroke Steve's hair when Steve is angry, or guilty, or afraid of something he can't name. The lips that kiss his wet cheeks and the gentle voice that sings to him until whatever felt too big feels small again.
Steve has fallen in love with Bucky a hundred times already, and he'll do it over and over again. Wherever they are. Whenever they are.
He knew what he wanted, that day he looked up at Bucky from the floor of an Army base and told him it was only a matter of time, and he wants it still. So it starts—this new chapter of their lives—with Steve down on one knee in the middle of Bucky's rainbow of wildflowers.
It starts with Bucky's pink cheeks and his breathless laugh as he drops to his knees too, before Steve even gets all the words out.
"Took you goddamn long enough," he says with his hands in Steve's hair and his face as sweet as sunshine.
"You didn't even let me do it right," Steve says, but he doesn't care at all. Bucky is his, and they can tell the whole world if they want to.
He is Bucky's, and that's all he's ever wanted to be.