"i wish you guys could know sebastian...he's the sweetest human being on the planet."
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Latest Posts by wxntermelon - Page 5
☥ ˖ִ ࣪ 🦇 memory wave. ⠀s. rogers & b. barnes . . .
( ♱ ) … the winter soldier is coming back to himself. what now? (tw for emetophobia, panic attacks, and general mental instability)
777 。。masterlist
“Maybe if I’d fucked you more and loved you less I could have left this battlefield wearing just bruises and teeth, but I’m sure that even the cavalry knows that there’s a crack in my heart and it’s been leaking your name ever since we stopped fighting this fight. What I’m trying to say is: you win. It’s all yours. I’m tired and I tried. I’m tired and I love you. I’m tired and I didn’t mean to.”
— Azra T.
—
“I don’t need a babysitter,” Bucky says lowly. His head is tilted down, away from Steve’s intense eyes, dark hair likely a tangled mess around his head. He hasn’t moved from the bed yet. Hasn’t looked up or shifted or switched positions. It doesn’t feel right to do so—the bed’s too soft and unfamiliar. He twists his fingers in the stretched hair tie around his wrist again, the elastic pulling further.
“I know,” Steve responds. “And I tried to argue it, but Tony won’t budge. You stay here with someone or not at all. And I thought if I couldn’t convince him of that, I could at least let you have this.”
This: a bedroom across the hall from Steve’s, with Steve as his babysitter/guard. The whole floor is Steve’s, his presence bleeding through the walls.
“You were always too stubborn for your own damn good,” Bucky mutters. His voice rasps in his throat, aching and rough from disuse. “Guess you finally met your match, huh?”
“I guess,” Steve responds. Bucky can almost feel Steve’s apprehension; he’s waiting for something Bucky doesn’t know how to give. His hair tie snaps, the elastic caught in the twisted fabric.
The silence drags, thick and heavy. Bucky can feel nothing but the weight of Steve’s stare and the bitter cold of the room. His skin itches uncomfortably, but the feeling doesn’t leave as he drags his nails over his forearm. It’s deeper than his skin, settled too far beneath the surface for outside touches to have any effect.
Steve is still staring—waiting, watching. Bucky’s skin starts to crawl.
“I’ll bring some food,” Steve says abruptly. Bucky swallows down an instinctual urge he can’t put a name to.
Steve turns sharply, and Bucky raises his head just enough to see Steve past the curtain of his hair. Steve pauses before he opens the door, hand on the handle. He shakes his head and tugs it open.
Steve is gone, and Bucky still can’t breathe.
An hour later when he returns, Bucky has moved to sitting on the floor across the room from the bed. Dusty footprints streak the floor between the two spaces. Bucky hears Steve sigh—something tired and sad.
“I brought soup, a sandwich, carrots, apples, chips, and chocolate,” Steve murmurs. He sets the tray beside Bucky on the floor and lowers himself down beside it.
For a long, heavy moment, Bucky waits. His fingers twitch against his knees—drawn to his chest; always protect the heart—but Steve doesn’t move.
“Aren’t you going to—” Bucky breaks off, swallowing nervously. He’s not sure what to say now. Anything he does say will probably prompt one of those mournful noises Steve lets out whenever he hears about Bucky and—and HYDRA.
“The food is yours, Buck,” Steve murmurs patiently. It’s streaked through with tinges of sadness he either can’t hide well or doesn’t try to hide. “You can eat it. Not poisoned, not altered in any way. Unless you count adding salt.”
It’s a weak attempt at humor—reaching out with clawed hands in hopes of grasping something strong enough to pull yourself up from the edge with. But it falls flat, and Bucky doesn’t smile. He doesn’t think Steve does either.
But Bucky does as Steve says, and pulls the tray closer to eat. The sandwich first—simple turkey and cheese, something Bucky devours within seconds. He sets aside half the chocolate bar and the chips (something in his head rings Steve Steve Steve) and begins gulping down hot mouthfuls of chicken and noodles.
When Bucky finishes all the food that he hadn’t set aside, he’s still a little hungry, but the gnawing ache is gone. He pushes the tray back towards Steve.
“For you,” he mutters roughly.
This, if nothing else, is familiar. Memories have been coming back in fragmented stops and starts, but Bucky remembers saving the best of his meals (when he got them free or away from home) for Steve. ‘Best’ sometimes meant sweets (relentlessly rare and always immediately devoured) and things like blueberries, which Steve loved, or meats and butters, because they got less of those when Steve needed them most. Thin, sickly Steve who Bucky gave the best of nearly everything to.
There’s a brief, hesitant silence before Steve says, “I’m not hungry.” His voice cracks slightly.
Too much thunders through Bucky’s head and he stumbles to his feet and lurches unsteadily out of the room and down the hall. He collapses at the foot of the toilet, heaving back up everything he just ate until his stomach is empty.
Sometime during the ordeal Steve knelt behind him, clumsily clutching Bucky’s hair in his hands, pulling it back. He’s not really touching Bucky’s skin, but Bucky can feel the burning heat of Steve with how close they are. He yanks away from it—away from the soft glide of Steve’s skin and the heat burned along his nape from the nearness of the touch.
He sees Steve’s lips purse before his vision flickers—again, not the first time—everything rapidly going from blurry to clear and back again. He doesn’t process the sweat stinging along his skin until Steve presses a cool, damp towel into his hands. Unsteadily, Bucky wipes at his mouth and his temples, hands wracked with tremors.
“Bucky.”
Bucky groans and tilts his head back against the wall. He’s nearly panting—breaths escaping too fast, tongue lolling like a dog’s. His eyes latch onto a crack in the wall paint, near where it meets the ceiling.
“Bucky.”
“Steve,” Bucky groans. “Steve, Steve, I can’t—”
“Shh, shh,” Steve shushes him. His worried face wobbles in Bucky’s sight. He always draws his eyebrows together, putting a crease between them. “Just breathe. You need to breathe, Buck.”
Bucky groans again, long and low. His skin feels tacky with sweat. Breathing is a hitching, broken affair. Time passes syrupy-slow, everything aching as Bucky regains his breath.
“That’s it, keep doing that,” Steve murmurs as Bucky draws in breaths slowly.
When he feels well enough to (read: like he won’t throw up again), Bucky hangs his head, hiding his face from Steve. He squeezes his eyes shut to ward off the pain of an impending headache. They always come in moments like this—his mind is a porcelain jar, and sharp memories from before crack the surface until light shines onto the inside, dust flying through the air.
“I’m sorry,” Bucky grates out, “about the food.”
“We have more,” Steve responds. Bucky winces at the softness of his tone. He’s just thrown up what Steve gave him and Steve should be angry. But since Bucky got here Steve hasn’t been responding to anything like Bucky anticipates he will. He responds like Steve and somehow that’s more terrifying than the familiarity of anger.
Bucky picks at a stray string along the seam of his pants. Steve is saying something; Bucky’s not listening. He tugs the string harder and a little hole opens up.
“Bucky,” Steve stresses.
“What?”
Steve gapes like a fish and Bucky is just able to see the expression through his hair.
“You just threw up and nearly had a panic attack and you’re fucking—” Steve groans and tugs at his hair. Bucky laughs. It’s broken and gutted and far from happy.
“You didn’t have to bring me here,” Bucky says. “You chose to do that. No one made you. And now—” Bucky gestures at himself “—you get to deal with the mess that comes with it.”
“You’re not a mess,” Steve says firmly. “You’re hurt and that’s not the same.”
Bucky shrugs and drags himself to his feet. He wobbles unsteadily for a moment before brushing past Steve and out of the bathroom, careful to not let their arms touch. A headache has started now. Pressure between his eyebrows, his temples, at the curve of his neck.
The hall lights are blinding. Bucky staggers into his room and slams the door shut in Steve’s face.
Throughout the entire night, Bucky doesn’t sleep. His body trembles with bone-deep cold and his mind paces like a restless wolf.
Steve never comes to the door.
—
The days melt into gusty winds and pounding rains. There’s nothing between him and the slams of thunder across the sky, nothing between insanity and the clutches of humanity curling at the edges of his mind. Nothing but a weak, easily shatterable barrier.
Bucky spends his days curled in a thin blanket on the floor. He stares at the walls, the floor, the ceiling. Empty spaces of nothing but dust.
He hears Steve in the apartment. Steve leaves plates of food outside his door. Sometimes Bucky eats it. Sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes he throws up.
His room is warm. He always pulls a blanket tight around his body, especially across his shoulders and back. It feels like protection—a poor imitation of armor.
It storms that afternoon. Steve is home—Bucky heard him come in earlier. Bucky’s window doesn’t open, something about Tony believing him dumb enough to jump rather than face the Avengers/Steve, but he can see the dark clouds and pouring rain gathering over the city.
Bucky shudders violently as new memory slips into his head, jagged around the edges.
Before the war, Steve hated this weather. It always meant stuffy noses and, in the colder months, the possibilities of sickness heavy in his lungs. Bucky grew to hate it too, because he hated everything that hurt Steve.
Now that means he hates himself.
There’s a knock on Bucky’s door and he turns his unseeing gaze towards the white painted wood.
From behind the door, Steve says, “Uhm, this is—it’s dinner? Lunch? I don’t really know, sorry. If you’re hungry later, let me know and I can make something. Or—you can. Doesn’t have to be me. Anyways, I think it’ll be easier on your stomach, it’s supposed to be good for that.”
Bucky waits until he hears Steve’s footsteps disappear to crack open his door. It creaks wildly and Steve can surely hear it, but by now he knows it’s better to leave Bucky be. Easier for both of them.
He tugs the plate in—bowl of soup, slice of sourdough bread (a delicacy always too expensive for them during the war) with butter, cup of steaming tea.
He’s angry. He wants to hate it—dump the soup and tea down the toilet and throw the bread to the birds. Scream to Steve that everything is different and he’s different and that Steve needs to let go already. Steve doesn’t cook—that’s Bucky’s job. Nothing is right or the same and Bucky is angry.
Instead of any of that, he curls up in the corner of the room and hates himself as he downs spoonfuls of creamy leek soup.
It goes down easy, and his stomach settles.
He doesn’t throw it up.
—
Bucky takes a bath. Not for a while. Not in those first few tentative weeks at the start. But when he decides to take one, single-mindedly focused on this to stave off the twisting pains in his gut and chest, he realizes he doesn’t know how to work Steve’s fancy tub.
He asks Steve, in the end.
(Human connection is exhausting. Bucky rarely talks to Steve—takes it upon himself to stay away for the benefit of both of them—but when he approaches him about a food he’d like Steve to make more or something he hated, he comes back to his room with a pounding heart and layers of exhaustion.
All that matters is trying, Bucky used to tell Steve after another rejection from a nice-looking dame. Now he’s not so sure.)
Steve jumps on the bath idea like an overeager puppy. He has Bucky sit on the closed toilet lid while the water runs, so he can show everything he’s adding to the tub. Bucky just wanted hot water.
“This is bath oatmeal,” Steve murmurs as he pours it in. “And these are some bath salts.”
Bucky stays resolutely silent as Steve explains what each thing does. Steve looks so different, and Bucky still can’t get over it. He looks like he fits in his skin. Somewhere along the line, when Bucky wasn’t there, Steve shifted to fit the muscles and the height and the new weight. It’s disconcerting.
Somehow, though, he’s still Steve. Still doesn’t know when to stop fighting or stop running his mouth. Still hates rules and authority. Still doesn’t know how to be anything but true to his beliefs.
Sometimes Bucky thinks he hates Steve. Other times he thinks he really just hates himself.
Steve declares the bath ready with a grin. Bucky’s eyes trail after him as he walks out of the bathroom. The door closes and Bucky is alone again. Somehow, despite his purposeful self-seclusion, being left alone stings.
Bucky undresses slowly, pulling off his numerous layers with care for his aching shoulders. (A pain that, recently, is ever-present.) He ties his hair up with a rubber band from a jar on the counter, something Steve said about doing for relaxation before washing. When he sinks down into the hot, sweet-smelling water, it feels like coming home. Like when Bucky first walked onto Steve’s floor after Steve had unlocked the door. The brief, hesitant moment where he could pretend. Pretend that it was 1945 and they’d just won the war and were coming home to their small, shared apartment. Pretend that they’d eat supper together on the couch and curl up together in bed high on excitement and trading kisses—
Bucky jerks up with a violent gasp, clutching at the edges of the tub as water sloshes wildly onto the floor. A gasping half-sob is wrenched from his throat and he squeezes his eyes shut to ward off the tears as his chest heaves.
“Bucky? Bucky, are you alright?” Steve calls worriedly from somewhere deeper in the apartment. Bucky trembles, lips moving but unable to formulate a response. He opens his eyes, able to see only the bath’s faucet and the ripples splashing against the tub’s porcelain. Steve’s footsteps, rushed and panicked, move closer until he’s just outside the door. “Bucky, I’m gonna come in, okay?”
A piece of hair slips loose from his bun and hangs down, catching on his eyelashes. Another heaving breath catches in his chest and he coughs, eyes blurring with tears. The door creaks open and Bucky lifts his head enough to see Steve, still dressed in his ridiculous white shirt and jeans. Concern paints every crease on his face and Bucky tries to take another breath.
It breaks into a sob instead.
And then he’s crying, loud and heavy and ugly, and Steve is kneeling beside the tub and cursing it as he tries to pull Bucky close.
The bath is still hot. The air still smells like vanilla bath salt. The year is 2014 and the last time someone held him like this was the night before Bucky got shipped off to war, Steve’s rail-thin frame curled around his as if to shield him from the world, just for a little.
“I remember,” Bucky forces out, choking on the words. “I remember.”
Steve shushes him and holds him close, Bucky’s head tucked underneath his chin, skin dripping water across Steve’s shirt. They rock side to side, just a little, Steve humming under his breath. Bucky feels like a baby—raw and new and crying. Goosebumps have broken out all across his body at the contact, despite the heated water he’s still partially submerged in.
They sit there for a long time, until Bucky can breathe again, but not so long that the water has gone cool. When Steve finally pulls back, he gazes at Bucky softly, like there’s something to protect behind Bucky’s broken eyes and cracked soul.
“Let me get you a towel,” Steve says.
He brings one, white and fluffy, to the edge of the tub so Bucky can dry his face before it gets hung up on a hook. Steve goes to leave and Bucky, desperate and shaky, shoots a hand out to grab his wrist.
“Don’t—don’t leave,” Bucky stutters. His throat feels ripped raw. “Please.”
Steve smiles, and Bucky feels like he just crashed into the ocean.
That’s what Steve is, Bucky realizes. An ocean. Big and loud, doing whatever he wants whenever he wants with no care of the consequences while also being home to so many, a protector of those inside from the natural horrors of the human race.
Steve sits in the bathroom while Bucky washes his body, he lathers shampoo and conditioner in Bucky’s hair as a gentle massage when he asks. Steve pops the tub’s drain and bundles Bucky in the towel, helping him exit the tub and stand on newborn-doe legs.
Bucky sits, passive and quiet, on the edge of his bed, while Steve picks him out pants and a soft shirt to wear. He sits stock-still, scared to even breathe, as Steve runs a brush through his hair.
Everything is intimate and hushed—even his room feels small, lamp glowing golden on the nightstand.
Bucky closes his eyes and dreams that it’s 1945 and he and Steve are still young and in love.
—
It’s still raining outside and gusts of wind are Bucky’s new lullaby. He’s sleeping in his bed now. Fully clothed and with shoes on, because needing to run can occur any time, but in his bed nonetheless.
Sometimes he thinks about Steve. Or—seeing Steve, rather. About leaving his room for more than brief stints, enough to have a conversation or at least tell Steve good morning.
After his confusing, muddled bath from a week ago, Bucky isn’t sure if he can. He couldn’t leave his room for three days after that, confined to it with exhaustion and frustrated tears.
Mostly he thinks about Before. Flashes of memories, however brief, of him and Steve. Bucky learning to cook because Steve was always sick. Teaching Steve to ride a bike in their twenties because he never learned young. Ducking down for a private, chaste kiss from Steve before Bucky had to leave for work. Watching Steve draw and marveling at his luck to have him there.
Watching Steve get frustrated and scream and cry because Bucky was going out with another girl and of course Steve understood the want to be normal but Steve was halfway to dead anyways and Bucky was the only one who ever wanted him and couldn’t Bucky be okay with just him?
When Bucky falls asleep well into the night, he has violent nightmares about Steve. Steve dying, Steve dead—from asthma, pneumonia, his heart giving up. Nightmares of Steve and Bucky making love while Steve whispers into Bucky’s ear every terrible thing he’s ever done and why Steve can never love him.
But Steve brings him breakfast at 8 am on the dot the next morning and smiles softly when Bucky says good morning, so Bucky buries the dreams deep in his subconscious.
Bucky can hear the living room TV playing. Steve likes to do this—prop his feet up at the end of the day and relax watching a movie. Bucky usually falls asleep to it, letting the domestic background sounds relax him. Tonight, though, he has a plan.
His bedroom door creaks as he edges it open. He hears the TV pause.
“Bucky?” Steve calls out. “You need something?”
Bucky pads down the hallway and tries to remember to breathe. When he emerges into the living room, he’s greeted with the sight of Steve half-turned to look at him, arm across the back of the couch.
Bucky takes a deep breath. “Uhm. Can I watch? With you?”
Steve grins. Bucky’s heart pounds.
“Of course. There’s plenty of room.”
So Bucky sits at the opposite end of the couch to Steve with a blanket thrown over his lap. He tries to focus on the movie, really. But he ends up asleep halfway through, head tilted against the armrest.
It becomes a regular thing, the movies. Most of the time, Bucky is too exhausted to make it far through. Steve never seems to mind, always pleased just to have Bucky next to him.
—
They’re eating dinner at the kitchen island. Crispy, boneless chicken and carrots and sourdough and little cups of miso soup. It’s getting colder outside, fall melting into winter.
When they’ve finished eating and Steve is done washing their dishes, drying his hands on a checkered tea towel, Bucky asks before he can lose his nerve.
“Can I have a hug?” He nearly blurts it out. Steve pauses before dropping the towel on the counter. He rounds the island and smiles at Bucky—always smiling, like he’s happy just to look.
“Of course.”
His arms go around Bucky’s shoulders. Bucky leans into it, pressing their chests together with his arms around Steve’s middle and his head tucked beneath Steve’s chin. He lets out a shuddering sigh and trembles as he tries to relax in Steve’s hold. It’s awkward and uncomfortable and Bucky will die if Steve pulls away.
“I’ve got you,” Steve murmurs. His hand, big and hot, comes up to cradle the back of Bucky’s head. “I’ve got you.”
Bucky cried. He isn’t sure when it started or ended, only that when he stands before his mirror he has tear tracks streaked on his cheeks.
—
Bucky takes a lot of baths. Hot ones, where his always-cold feet and hands sting beneath the water. The steam turns his face pink and curls the hairs at his temples. Sometimes he lets Steve wash his hair. Steve’s hands are gentle—he’s always careful to keep the soap and water off Bucky’s face. His hands feel safe.
One night, Bucky almost falls asleep in the bath underneath Steve’s hands. The next night, Bucky falls asleep on Steve’s chest on the couch.
It feels like the ice is melting.
—
It’s snowing outside—light and fluffy flakes that will never stick to New York’s hot pavement. The heat is running in their apartment, and Bucky still bundles up in thick sweaters. Steve, sometimes, goes shirtless. He claims the apartment to be “the perfect temperature for it” even as Bucky argues that it’s not even seventy degrees. It’s nice, though, as much as Bucky grumbles about it. Sometimes, on really good days. Bucky will pull off his top layers and snuggle up with Steve, shivers wracking his body as he gets used to the feeling of someone else’s skin pressed against his.
“Steve?” Bucky asks on one such night. The heat is blasting and it’s perfectly warm. Bucky is tucked up against Steve’s chest, both of them shirtless, Steve laid back against the armrest of the couch.
“Hm?” Steve’s eyes are closed and Bucky thinks he might be half-asleep. His hand starts stroking slowly up and down Bucky’s spine.
Bucky pauses, his lips parted. He swallows thickly and settles back down against Steve’s chest. Steve runs hot and Bucky cold—exact flips of their younger selves. Bucky likes to imagine they’re meant to be. Broken, shattered; Bucky a shell of his past self and Steve fuller than he’s ever been, yet they still fit together like they did as kids and teenagers and new adults.
“I forgot,” Bucky lies softly. Steve hums in understanding and everything is good.
—
The nightmares come back. Violent, twisting beasts that lurk along the edges of Bucky’s mind. A lot of them are flashes, things he can’t make out—
The bright lights of Coney Island. The smell of eggs and soft background chatter. Creaking floorboards. Rustling sheets, Steve’s soft laugh.
—and usually, they start out innocent. Bucky’s worst nightmares begin with his favorite memories.
Steve is drawing. He’s sitting at their small, lopsided desk underneath the window. He’s shirtless—just woke up. The early morning light streaming in halos around him, highlighting his wiry frame. Sloping light and shadows create soft and sharp edges—the gentle fall of his shoulders, the jut of his elbows—and Bucky thinks this must be how Steve experiences the entire world.
“You’re staring,” Steve accuses. He doesn’t even turn around. Bucky grins and props himself up on his bent arm, elbow sinking into the mattress of their creaky bed.
“Got a real nice view to stare at,” he replies. Steve groans and turns in the wooden chair. His fair skin is flushed from the top of his chest to the tips of his ears, putting his scattered freckles on display. As casually as he can manage, Bucky stretches out to put his own skin on display—completely naked, the thin sheets tangled around his hips—all lean muscle and long lines. Steve rolls his eyes at the display.
“Come on, doll,” Bucky goads. “Come back to bed. I miss you—you’re so far away.”
“Them dames know you talk like that?” Steve says, fumbling for an excuse.
“Don’t care about them right now.” Bucky tilts his head and smiles. “Come on, just one kiss?”
“It’s never just one,” Steve mutters, but he pushes his chair back and pads across the floor to the bed. He climbs onto it and Bucky pulls him down with an arm around his waist.
“Mm. Maybe stop lookin’ the way you do then,” Bucky returns. He presses their lips together, taking the opportunity of Steve’s lips parting to dip his tongue into Steve’s mouth.
Everything melts around him, becoming a flurry of sound and movement. When everything is clear again, Steve’s on his back in front of Bucky, completely naked with skin flushed and damp. Bucky leans down to kiss him again, letting his lips hit the edge of Steve’s mouth.
Steve takes them both in hand and Bucky exhales shakily against Steve’s cheek. He kisses Steve’s cheekbone, the hinge of his jaw, the spot below his ear.
“I hate you,” Steve whispers, lips brushing against the shell of Bucky’s ear. Bucky tenses, but doesn’t move. “You think I could ever love you? You’re fucking disgusting.” Steve spits the words out. Bucky tries to pull away but Steve holds him tight.
“Their blood is one your hands,” Steve hisses. “Every last one. Everyone you killed, everything you did—it can never be forgiven. You are a monster. You deserve nothing—”
Bucky jerks awake panting and gasping. His body is covered in a sheen layer of cold sweat. His hands tremble and slip as he yanks at the sheets tangled around him, desperately trying to get them off. A desperate pull has them ripping along a seam and Bucky nearly falling off the bed in his panic.
He’s down the hall before he realizes it. His chest heaves and his vision blurs as he knocks on Steve’s door—probably too hard, too loud.
Steve opens it, eyes wide and hair ruffled with an obvious urgency to his movements. He stops dead when he processes Bucky—breaths wheezing in his chest, legs trembling as they barely hold his weight—standing before him. Bucky stumbles forward until he collapses against Steve, whose arms come up to wrap tightly around his waist and shoulders.
“Shh, shh,” Steve whispers as Bucky’s breaths hitch and stutter. “You’re okay, you’re safe, it was just a dream.”
Bucky shudders. “You—it was you and you said…said that you hated me—”
“Oh, Buck,” Steve says, his voice cracking.
Steve moves them into his room and onto his bed. Bucky curls again his chest, shaking like a wet cat. He tucks his head beneath Steve’s chin and tries not to flinch when Steve’s hand starts stroking his back.
“Shh. I’ve got you.” Steve presses a gentle, barely-there kiss to Bucky’s temple. “Whatever I said in your dreams—it wasn’t real or true. Okay, Buck? None of it. I could never, ever hate you.”
Bucky grasps the front of Steve’s shirt in his shaky fingers. “You said I was a monster.”
“Never,” Steve swears instantly. “Bucky, you’re more human than anyone else I’ve ever met. Everything that happened—it was against your will. None of it was Bucky.”
Bucky sniffles as a few tears trail their way lazily down his face. “I don’t know if I’m worthy of you,” Bucky whispers.
“That’s not your decision to make,” Steve replies firmly. Bucky swallows past the lump in his throat and closes his eyes, trying to get through the frothing waves of emotion washing through him. Steve’s hand runs up and down his back, heavy and soothing, with enough pressure to keep Bucky in his body.
“I think I’m in love with you,” Bucky admits. His voice cracks horribly.
“Bucky…”
“No,” Bucky insists. “I am. Okay? I remember…I remember Brooklyn. Before the war. I remember you.”
Steve presses a lingering kiss to the top of Bucky’s head. The room is silent for a long, long time. There is nothing but the gentle winds outside and the rushes of their breaths in the air.
It’s a long time before Bucky realizes Steve is crying.
“I didn’t mean to—I’m sorry,” Bucky fumbles. “I can—”
Bucky starts to pull away, but Steve holds him tight in place.
“Don’t go,” Steve murmurs, his voice rough from crying. “It’s not your fault. I just didn’t think you remembered any of that stuff.”
“Oh,” Bucky says uncomfortably. “I remember a lot, I think. Mostly all the time I spent looking at you. Especially in those dance halls—I always wanted to teach you how. Guess I blew my chance, huh?”
It’s more than that. The real confession lies heavy beneath the surface, buried by a twisted past of seventy years they spent apart. More than a lost chance, it’s a cry of the ache of forgetting.
“I’d love to dance with you,” Steve replies softly. “You always shined. Were always the best dancer on the floor. Knew all the girls were infatuated with you; I certainly was.”
Bucky lets out a rush of breath in a gentle exhale that ruffles the collar of Steve’s shirt. “I didn’t—don’t—know if you still felt that way. Peggy…she made me think that you’d finally ‘became normal’ in the way I never could. Spent so many damn nights out with girls and I always came back home to you. Never could let go, even when you hated me because you thought you were just a way for me to get what I wanted when I couldn’t have a dame.”
“I love you,” Steve murmurs into Bucky’s hair. “I have for a very long time.”
He pulls back and tilts Bucky’s chin up, resting their foreheads together. Their noses brush, and Bucky feels the wet glide of tears.
“I love you,” Bucky repeats, words barely more than a whisper of breath. He tucks his head back beneath Steve’s chin. He hears Steve laugh softly and his hand comes up to wind through Bucky’s hair at his nape.
“I love you,” Bucky whispers again, just to
make sure this is real.
“I love you,” Steve murmurs back as he pulls Bucky closer.
Nomad + Murder Strut
ask and you shall receive :) @whoastitchywoman
[BBB fill: C5: Image of Winter Solider Bucky @buckybarnesbingo]
SEBASTIAN STAN as BUCKY BARNES in Thunderbolts* (2025) dir. Jake Schreier
Make Me Choose | @persuaison asked Bucky Barnes or Wanda Maximoff
Sometimes, being involved with fashion, it can give ideas to different things. It’s like a movie in itself. It’s just a different way to think about it.
“We were just there on set because we knew there was gonna be no dialogue. We knew it was just gonna play back in the museum as silent footage of them together so as we shot it, they were just talking to each other, not even as the characters, they were just talking to each other as Chris Evans and Sebastian Stan, trying to make each other laugh and have a good time just so we have this little moment between the two characters. We actually never had a script in terms of what was happening there in a storytelling level, it was just a moment to show the two were close and had a great relationship.”
– Anthony Russo
Chris Evans on What Is Your Life's Purpose? | Oprah's Book Club with Eckhart Tolle
try again T.T
thank @potofsoup for translation.
Bucky: *lots of moaning noises*
Steve: Bucky, are you okay? Do you need to take a break, maybe eat something?
Bucky: No
Steve: But you haven’t really eaten anything all day. I’m glad you’re so eager, but I don’t want you to push yourself too hard.
Bucky: I’m fine. *kissing Steve* You haven’t finished yet. I can continue.
Bucky’s stomach: *grumble*
Steve: hahaha, let me make you some food. If you faint again like last time, Fury would think I’m mistreating you or something.
Steve: *hands over large jar* Here, I think you’d like this — it’s the nutella that Natasha recommended. The other night you snuck out of your bedroom and finished the last jar, so when I saw it on discount, I bought a bunch.
Steve: If you’re hungry you should eat food — you need to take care of yourself.
*sexy finger-licking scene*
Bucky: Can I have a bit more?
*Steve puts some in his mouth and then kisses Bucky*
Steve: It tastes pretty good — making me a bit hungry, too. You wouldn’t mind sharing, would you?
*proceeds to put it all over Bucky and licking it off*
Steve: Bucky
Bucky: hmm?
Steve: Bucky, I love you. Will you…
*writes with nutella: “marry me?”*
Bucky: *shock* *turns around* Jerk.
You better have the ring ready.
