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When Bucky got back to the tower, the common area was empty and dark, but there were lights and low voices coming from the kitchen. He tried to sneak past and to his room as quickly as he could, but didn’t get far before he heard a chair scrape against the floor.
“Bucky?” Steve walked away from what looked to be a card game with Natasha, Clint, and Bruce, presumably the only ones yet to go to bed. He approached Bucky slowly, like he often had when Bucky first moved into the tower, as if he were afraid of scaring him off.
“I can’t have this conversation right now, Steve.”
“Bucky, please-“ Steve reached for Bucky’s hand.
“Don’t do this Steve. Or I’ll say something I’ll regret,” he said, jerking his hand away.
Steve looked unsure of whether to shut his mouth for once or keep pushing. He hadn't wanted to think that Bucky could be prejudiced against someone for loving someone else, regardless of sex, but it looked like he was wrong.
“Things are different now, Buck. It’s legal-“
“Well, thank Christ it’s legal! It’s so fucking great that it’s legal now, Steve!” Bucky shouted.
Steve’s face couldn’t decide if it wanted to be disapproving or resigned. Some small part of Bucky’s brain registered the disappointed looks Nat, Clint, and Bruce were trying not to show.
“I told myself when we were growing up that it was for the best that you didn’t love me like that.” Bucky stared at the floor, unable to look Steve in the eye as he spoke. If he had, he'd have seen the shock on Steve's face. “That even if you did, we’d never be able to be together. Even if we could be, we’d always have to hide. It’s how I got through the day. Then it was 2015-“ he said it two-thousand-fifteen, like the idea that those numbers could have meaning as a year in which he was young and alive was foreign to him, “-and it’s legal now. It’s fucking legal now. So I told myself you just weren’t wired that way. You liked women, and that was fine and good and no matter what century we woke up in, you couldn’t ever want me that way.
“But now it’s 2017,” twenty-seventeen like he’d finally adjusted to those words, to aliens and magic, and a penthouse that could walk him through how to use the coffee machine, “It’s 2017 Steve, and it’s legal, and I just walked in on you with-” tears were streaming down Bucky’s face but his voice didn’t break. “And I’m sure if you gimme some time I’ll be very happy for you and Sam.” Steve’s arm twitched like he might reach out towards Bucky again but Bucky took a half step back before he could. “But right now I need- I need to be away from you.” Bucky turned on his heel and left Steve standing there with a shell-shocked expression on his face. He left the sad, uncomfortable faces of his friends, sitting in the kitchen with a forgotten game of cards lying on the table.
And Steve felt like he’d just watched Bucky fall all over again.